Читать книгу Prince of Montéz, Pregnant Mistress - Sabrina Philips - Страница 10

AS CALLY rested her head on the window of the train from King’s Cross back to Cambridge, the sky-rise landscape shrinking to a patchwork of green, she gave up sifting her memories for debris and concluded that, no, she had never felt more ashamed than she did right now.

She, Cally Greenway, had almost had a one-night stand with a total stranger.

And, what was worse, a tiny part of her almost wished she had.

No, she argued inwardly, of course she didn’t. She just wished he hadn’t subjected her to that hideous rejection, or at the very least that she’d been able to understand why he had.

Had the earth-shattering heat of their kiss, which she’d thought was mutual, actually been so one-sided that he’d realised she would be useless in bed? Or was it all part of a game he played to prove that he was so drop-dead gorgeous he could make any woman abandon her morals if he chose?

Cally spent the next week wavering between the two theories, subsequently caught between reawakened insecurities and fresh anger. In the end, frustration with herself for even caring made anger prevail. She should be glad thatshe’d had a lucky escape, and the reason for his insulting behaviour shouldn’t even matter when he was no one to her, a no one whom she was never likely to see ever again.

So why, whenever she thought back to that night, did that moment in the taxi hurt even more than losing the commission had done? Cally pressed her lips together in shame, but then released them. It was simply because up until that point she had thought that what she’d lost was her dream job. He had made her see that she’d spent so long with her eye on that goal alone that she’d sacrificed every other aspect of her life in the process. Yes, she thought, unwilling to dwell on the other broken dreams his rejection had resurrected, that was it. Finding herself devastated that she would never have Leon’s arms around her again just proved how long it had been since she’d actually got out there and spent any time in the company of anyone but herself, and occasionally her family.

Well, he might have reinforced her belief about the futility of trusting the opposite sex, but she had to acknowledge that maybe it was about time she accepted the odd invitation to go out now and again, instead of always having a well-rehearsed list of things she had to do instead. Particularly since the short list of restorations she had lined up for the next three months was hardly going to claim all of her time, she thought despondently as she booted up her computer to see whether her inbox heralded any new enquiries on that front today. It was all very well, deciding to get a social life whilst she worked out what to do next, but it was hardly feasible if it meant not being able to eat.

Three new mails. The first was a promotional email from the supplier she used for her art materials, which she deleted without opening, knowing she couldn’t afford anything above and beyond her regular order. The second was from her sister Jen, who was back from her family holiday in Florida, desperate to know if the little black dress she’d leant her had been as lucky for Cally as it had been for her when she’d worn it to the journalism awards last month and scooped first prize. Cally shook her head, wondering how her sister managed to pull off being a high-flying career woman as well as a wonderful wife and mother, and resolved to reply with the bad news when she felt a little less like a failure in comparison.

The third email was from a sender with a foreign-sounding name she didn’t recognise. She clicked on it warily.

Dear Miss Greenway

Your skills as an art conservator have recently been brought to the attention of the Prince of Montéz. As a result, His Royal Highness wishes to discuss a possible restoration. To be considered, you are required to attend the royal palace in person in three days’ time. Your tickets will be couriered to you tomorrow unless you wish to decline this generous offer by return.

Yours faithfully, Boyet Durand

On behalf of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Montéz

Cally blinked at the words before her. Her first reaction was disbelief. Here was an email offering a free trip to a luxurious French island, so why wasn’t she pinging it straight off to her junk-mail folder, knowing there was a catch? She read it again. Because it wasn’t the usual generic trash: You’ve won a holiday to Barbados, to claim just call this number… This sender knew her name and what she did for a living. It was feasible that someone could have seen one of her few restorations that had ended up in smallish galleries and been inspired to visit her website—but a prince?

She read it a third time, and on this occasion the arrogance of it truly sunk in. If it was real, who on earth did the Prince of Montéz think he was to have his advisor summon her as if she was a takeaway meal he’d decide whether or not he wanted once she arrived?

Cally opened a new tab and typed ‘Prince of Montéz’ into Wikipedia. The information was irritatingly sparse. It didn’t even give his name, only stated that in Montéz the prince was the sovereign ruler, and that the current prince had come into power a year ago when his brother Girard had died in an accident aged just forty-three, leaving behind his young wife, Toria, but no children. Cally cast her mind back, roughly recalling the royal-wedding photos which had graced the cover of every magazine the summer she’d graduated, and hearing the news of his tragic death on the radio in her studio some time last year. But there was no further information about the late prince’s brother, the man who thought that she, a lowly artist, could drop everything because he commanded it.

Cally was tempted to reply that, attractive though the offer was, the prince was mistaken if he thought she could fit him into her busy schedule at such short notice. But the truth was he wasn’t mistaken. Hadn’t she only just been wishing she had more work lined up, and thinking she ought to start saying yes to something other than Sunday lunch at her parents’ house?

Which was why she decided she would let the tickets come. Not that she really believed they would, until the doorbell rang early the following morning, thankfully interrupting a fervid dream about a Frenchman with a disturbingly familiar face.

Nor did she really believe she’d dare to use them until the day after, when she heard the voice of the pilot asking them to please return their seats to the upright position because they were beginning their descent to the island.

The last and only time Cally had been to France was on a day trip to Le Touquet by ferry whilst she’d been at secondary school, most of which had been spent trawling round a rather uninspiring hypermarket. She’d always fancied Paris—the Eiffel Tower and the galleries, of course—but she’d somehow never got round to taking any kind of holiday at all since uni, nor felt she could justify the unnecessary expense. So when she stepped out of first class and was greeted by the most incredible vista of shimmering azure water and glorious tree-covered mountains sprinkled with terracotta roofs, it was no wonder it felt like this was all happening to someone else. For the first time in years she felt the urge to whip out a sketch pad and get to work on a composition of her own.

A desire that only increased when the private car pulled up to the incredible palace. It almost looked like a painting, she thought as the driver opened the door of the vehicle for her to depart.

‘Please follow me, mademoiselle. The prince will meet you in la salle de bal.‘

Cally frowned as he led her through the impressive main archway, trying to remember her GCSE French in order to decipher which room he was referring to. He must have caught her perplexed expression.

‘You would say “the ballroom”, I think?’

Cally nodded and rolled her eyes to herself as they passed through the courtyard and up a creamy white staircase with a deep red carpet running through the centre. There was a very good reason why she hadn’t needed to know the word for ballroom for her project on ‘ma maison’.

The thought reminded her just how hypocritical it was to feel impressed by the palace when the man who lived here was guilty of the excess she loathed. She was even more ashamed to look down at her perfectly functional black jacket and skirt, teamed with a white blouse, and wish she had brought something a little more, well, worthy. Why should she be worried what clothes she was wearing to meet the prince? Just because he had a palace and a title didn’t mean she ought to act any differently from the way she would with any potential client. Any more than he should judge her on anything but her ability as a restorer, she thought defiantly, hugging her portfolio to her chest.

‘Here we are, Mademoiselle Greenway.’

‘Thank you,’ Cally whispered as the man signalled for her to enter the ballroom, bowed his head and then swiftly departed.

She entered tentatively, preparing to be blown away by the full impact of the magnificent marble floor, the intricately decorated wall panels and the high, sculpted ceiling that she could see from the doorway. But, as Cally turned into the room, the gasp that broke from her throat was not one of artistic appreciation, it was one of complete astonishment.

The Rénards. Hanging, seemingly innocuously, right in the centre of the opposite wall.

Cally rushed to them to get a closer look, momentarily convinced that they must be reproductions, but a quick appraisal told her immediately that they were not. She felt her heart begin to thud insistently in her chest, though she couldn’t accurately name the emotion which caused it. Excitement? She had wanted more than anything to discover the identity of the mysterious telephone-bidder, to have the chance to convince them she was the best person to carry out the restoration. Now it seemed that somehow he had found her.

Or was it horror? For wasn’t this exactly the fate of the paintings she had feared—shut away in some gilded palace never to be looked upon again? She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples, trying to make sense of it, but before she could even begin a voice behind her cut through everything.

‘See something you recognise?’

A voice which made her eyes fly open, every hair on the back of her neck stand on end and every thought fly from her mind. Every thought, except one.

Leon.

Stop it, she scolded herself. The Prince of Montéz is French, of course he’s going to sound a little like him. God, she really did need to get out more if that one meaningless episode had the power to make her lose all grip on reality every time she heard a man with a French accent. The voice belonged to the Prince of Montéz, who had brought her here as his potential employee, so why was she still staring rudely at the wall? She turned sharply to face him.

The sight before her almost made her keel over.

Her imagination hadn’t been playing a trick on her at all. It was him. Irritatingly perfect him, his impressive physique all the more striking in a formal navy suit.

Her mind went into overdrive as she attempted to make sense of what was happening. Leon was a university professor; perhaps he’d been invited here to examine the paintings in more detail; perhaps this was just one of life’s unfortunate coincidences?

But as she stared at his wry expression—impatient, as if waiting for her tiny mind to catch up—she suddenly understood that this was no coincidence. Her very first appraisal of him in that sale room in London—rich, heartless, titled—had not been wrong. It was everything else that had been a lie. Good God, was Leon even his real name?

‘You bastard.’

For a second his easy expression looked shot through with something darker, but just as quickly it was back.

‘So you said last time we met, Cally, but now that you know I am your potential employer I thought you’d be a little more courteous.’

Courteous? Cally felt the bile rise in her throat. ‘Well, since I can assure you I am not going to be capable of courtesy towards you any time this century, I think I should leave, don’t you?’

Leon gritted his teeth. Yes, he did think she should leave, the same way he’d thought he should in London. But after countless hot, frustrated nights, when all his body had cared about was why the hell he hadn’t taken her when he’d had the chance, Leon was through with thinking.

He blocked her exit with his arm.

‘At least stay for one drink.‘

‘And why the hell would I want to do that?’

‘Because, yet again, you look like you need one.’

Had he brought her here purely to humiliate her further, to revel in how much he had got to her? She fixed a bland expression on her face, determined not to play ball. ‘I’ll have one on my way back to the airport.’

‘You have somewhere else to be?’ he replied, mock-earnestly.

She knew exactly what he implied—that she had nowhere else to be today any more than when she had protested the need to return to her hotel room that night. It was the same reason he’d known she would come at short notice. And exactly why staying here could only quadruple the humiliation she already felt.

‘No, you’re absolutely right, I don’t. But anywhere is pre-ferable to being on this dead end of an island with some lying product of French inbreeding who has nothing better to do than to toy with random English women he meets for sport.’

‘Woman,’ he corrected. ‘There is certainly only one of you, Cally Greenway.’

‘And yet there is one of you in every palace and stately home on the planet. It’s so predictable, it’s boring.’

‘I thought that you liked things to turn out exactly the way you expect them to—or perhaps that is simply what you pretend to want?’

‘Like I told you, all I want is to leave.’

‘It’s a shame your body language says otherwise.’

Cally looked down, pleased to discover that if anything she had stepped further away from him, whilst her arms clutched her portfolio protectively to her chest.

‘And do you always take a woman’s loathing as a come-on?’

‘Only when it’s born out of sheer sexual frustration,’ he drawled, nodding at the gap between them and her self-protective stance.

‘In your dreams.’

‘Yours too, I don’t doubt.’ He looked at her with an assessing gaze.

Cally felt her cheeks turn crimson.

‘I thought so,’ he drawled in amusement. ‘But think just how good it will be when we do make love, chérie.’

‘I might have been stupid enough to consider having sex with you before I knew who you were,’ she said, trying not to flinch at the memory of her own wantonness. ‘But I can assure you I am in no danger of doing so again.’

‘You have a thing for university employees?’ he queried, raising one long, lean finger to his lower lip thoughtfully, as if observing an anomalous result in a science experiment. ‘Mediterranean princes just not your thing?’

No, men that self-important couldn’t be any further from her thing, Cally thought, not that she had ‘a thing’. So why in God’s name was she unable to take her eyes off his mouth?

‘Liars aren’t my thing. Men who lie about who they are, who pretend not to be stinking rich and who profess to lend a sympathetic ear when—’ Immediately the auction, which had slipped her mind for a moment, came back to her. The auction room. Leon the only one with the nonchalant glance. Not because he had nothing riding on it, but because he was so rich that he’d just instructed one of his minions to make the highest bid by phone on his behalf. That was why he had been there that night, to stand back and watch smugly whilst he blew everyone else out of the water. It had had nothing to do with coming back because he wanted her, and suddenly that hurt most of all. ‘When all the time you were the one responsible for wrecking my career!’

Leon raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you quite finished? Good. Firstly, I told you my name. You didn’t ask what my surname was, nor did you give me yours. All I said was that I was in England in connection with my university. I was. The new University of Montéz has just been built at my say-so, and I was there to purchase some pieces for the art department. Since you chose where we should go, I can hardly be blamed if the bar you selected gave no indication of my wealth. Which brings me to your accusation that I offered to lend a sympathetic ear with regards to your career—on the contrary, it was you who insisted we should not discuss work. You simply chose to, I did not.’

‘You consider being a prince a career choice?’

‘Not a choice,’ he said gravely. ‘But my work, yes.’

‘How convenient, rather like arguing that omitting the truth does not constitute a lie. If you and I were married—’ Cally hesitated, belatedly aware that she couldn’t have thought of a more preposterous example if she’d tried ‘—and you happened to be sleeping with another woman but just didn’t mention it, would such an omission be tolerable?’

Leon’s mouth hardened. Hadn’t he just known that she was one of those women who had marriage on the brain?

‘Tolerable? Marrying anyone would never be a tolerable scenario for me, Cally, so I’m afraid your analogy is lost.’

‘What a surprise,’ Cally muttered. ‘When it proves that I’m absolutely right.’ How utterly typical that he wasn’t the marrying kind, she thought irritably, though she wasn’t sure why she should care when she’d lost her belief in happy-ever-afters a long time ago.

‘But surely a welcome surprise?’ Leon seized the moment. ‘For, rather than being the one responsible for wrecking your career, I think you’ll find yourself eternally indebted to me for beginning it. What an accolade for your CV to be employed to restore two of the most famous paintings the world has ever known?’

Indebted to him; the thought horrified her. Yet he was also offering exactly what she had always wanted—well, almost. ‘You said you were in London to purchase some pieces for the university’s art department. Do you mean that once the Rénards are restored they will go on public display there?’

Leon lifted his arm sharply, the motion drawing back the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a striking Cartier watch. ‘I would love to discuss the details now, but I’m afraid I have a meeting to attend with the principal of the university, as it happens. Much as I’m sure that, given your predilection for university staff, you’d find meeting Professor Lefevre stimulating, it is something I need to do alone. You and I can continue this discussion over breakfast.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Breakfast. Petit déjeuner. The first meal of the day, oui?’ He stared at her face, which was aghast. ‘It is also a painting by Renoir, I believe—but, of course, you’re the expert.’

Could he have any more of a cheek? ‘I am well aware of the concept of breakfast, thank you. Just as I am well aware that I will be eating mine back in Cambridge tomorrow morning. You invited me here to discuss this today.’

‘And I subsequently discovered that unfortunately today is the only day Professor Lefevre can have this meeting. But since you have nowhere else to be this can wait until tomorrow, oui?’

Cally seethed. ‘I have a plane to catch. Home.’

‘But how can you make the most important decision of your career without knowing all the facts?’

There was nothing to decide, was there? How could she even contemplate working for a man who had humiliated and lied to her? Because the job was everything she’d strived for, she thought ruefully. She recalled the hideous boss she’d once had at the gallery gift shop who’d paid her a pittance for running the place single-handedly, how she’d ignored him and had just knuckled down. She could do it again for her dream commission, couldn’t she? But some-how she wasn’t sure that ignoring Leon would be so easy. Unless she could do the restoration without his interference. Rent a studio by the seafront and work on the paintings there, only return here when she’d completed them. The idea seemed almost idyllic without the threat of his presence.

‘If I stay for—for breakfast,’ she repeated, the concept still ludicrous to her. ‘You’ll be open to discussion about how I would wish such a project to be completed?’

‘Discussion? Of course.’

Cally did a mental calculation of whether she could afford one night in a French guesthouse, having presumed that she’d be back on a plane out of here this afternoon. She supposed that she had left that hotel in London a night earlier than planned…

‘What time would you have me return?’

‘I would have you here ready and waiting,’ he said, beckoning for her to keep up with his brusque steps out of the ballroom and into the hallway, where the man who had driven her here was waiting compliantly, head bowed. ‘This is Boyet. He will show you to your room and bring you dinner.’

And before she could argue the prince was gone.