His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows

‘I’ll pay you back,’ she’d promised resolutely, not only for his benefit, but for her own. She didn’t like being in this man’s debt any more than she wanted to like him, but he was making it very hard for her not to do either.

Now, coming down into the hall, her heart sank when King appeared, looking dynamic in dark blue corduroys and an ivory-white shirt that left his forearms bare, just as she was asking one of the maids in her somewhat limited French if she could call her a cab.

One fluent instruction from him in the girl’s own language had the young maid almost bobbing in compliance before she cast a swift glance at Rayne and darted away.

‘What did you say to her?’ Rayne enquired, puzzled, because it certainly didn’t sound like anything as simple as ordering a taxi.

‘I told her I’d take care of it,’ he replied succinctly and without any of the mental disturbance that just the sight of him was producing in her.

‘I don’t need you to rescue me from every difficult situation,’ she assured him with a slight tremor marking her words, unintentionally conveying to him how unsettled he was making her feel.

‘Nevertheless … you’ve got me.’ There was triumph in the clear blue eyes that drifted lazily over her tie-waisted chequered blouse and white cut-offs. ‘Now, where did you want to go?’

‘Nowhere in particular,’ she said, being deliberately obstructive. She wanted his help even less than she wanted his father’s, and she certainly didn’t welcome how her body was responding just from the way he was looking at her. ‘I was just going to do a bit of sightseeing—and without having to worry about the car,’ she told him, wishing he’d just take out his phone and order the cab he’d said he’d deal with.

But with a hand at her elbow, sending her thoughts spinning into chaos, he said, ‘In that case, I’ll be more than delighted to show you around.’

She wanted to protest. To tell him that she was going out because the strain was proving too much, being in this house with her father’s bitterest enemies and not feeling able to tell them who she was. But mainly, she decided, it was because of King himself. Because he disturbed her equilibrium so much and made her feel so ashamed of how he made her feel every time he came near her that she wanted to put as much distance between him and herself as she possibly could.

But with King Clayborne, she was discovering, argument was futile.

Consequently, it was with a raging awareness of him and a mind that was far from relaxed that she allowed him to drive her into town.

She was relieved, though, when he kept the conversation light. Impersonal. Not touching on any awkward topics. Like why he made rockets go off inside her every time he touched her. Or why she pretended not to want to go to bed with him, when every betraying cell in her body assured him that she did!

Instead, he acquainted her with the lesser-known facts about Monaco as they drove down through its flower-decked streets which, earlier in the season, formed the circuit for the world-famous motor racing Grand Prix. And he gave her an insight into the country’s history and its royalty, making it interesting for her. Making her want to know more as she listened to his deep and sensually caressing voice, remembering how it had warmed and excited her all those years ago.

‘Did your mother receive the flowers?’ he asked as he finished parking the Lamborghini in a space he had had no difficulty finding.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Rayne responded succinctly.

‘Did she like them?’

‘Probably,’ she answered minimally again.

She caught the curiosity in his eyes and in the faint smile that touched his hard yet exciting mouth, and she knew she had to explain. He had paid for them, after all.

‘When I rang Mum earlier, the friend she’s staying with said she was still asleep. She offered to wake her to show them to her, but I thought it best not to disturb her. After what she’s been through, she needs to get all the rest and relaxation she can.’

‘She must appreciate having such a thoughtful and caring daughter,’ he commented, taking the keys out of the ignition.

‘She deserves no less,’ Rayne expressed, absurdly warmed by what had been no less than a compliment from him. ‘She’s always been there for me.’

‘You’ve been fortunate in having such a good relationship with your mother.’

‘Didn’t you with your mother?’

The question slipped out and she didn’t know why she had asked it. He could have had seven doting mothers for all it meant to her.

‘My parents divorced when I was five. My father got custody. I only saw my mother on a few occasions after that. She preferred rearing horses to rearing children. The last I heard, she was living on a stud farm with her third husband somewhere in Colorado.’

Rayne shrugged. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said, meaning it.

In answer she saw the firm masculine mouth compress. ‘Not really. I went to boarding school, which was best for Mitch and for me. I learned how to be self-sufficient-independent—from a very early age, which stood me in good stead, as it turned out.’ He wasn’t actually spelling it out, but Rayne didn’t need to ask to know that he was talking about Mitch’s accident. ‘I don’t know whether I would have been so equipped to handle everything that was thrust on me if I’d had the type of family life that most people take for granted. I think it’s true what they say. That what you’ve never had, you never miss.’

Rayne didn’t wholly agree with that. After all, if he had had a bit more maternal love perhaps he wouldn’t have been so ruthless and insensitive towards other people. Like her father, she thought achingly, her teeth clamping together as she looked away.

‘I was lucky,’ she murmured half to herself and in a tone that emphasised the whole poignancy of her loss. ‘Dad was always there too and he was quite simply the most caring, understanding and honourable man I’ve ever met.’

‘Quite a happy family, then?’ He sounded quite cynical, and Rayne wondered why. Was it because he hadn’t known that sort of stability himself? Being packed off to boarding school. Being made to feel abandoned—although he hadn’t said so—by both his parents.

She could almost have felt sorry for him, except that King Clayborne wasn’t the type of man to inspire pity.

Even so, against all the odds, she was surprised to find herself enjoying his company as he guided her around the Principality. She even found herself laughing at something he was saying as he brought her across the tree-fringed square that gave onto the wide imposing frontage of the palace.

Pale and majestic with its crenellated towers, it was once the home, Rayne reminded herself, of the beautiful actress of the nineteen-fifties who had been plucked out of Hollywood and brought here by her prince, only to steal the hearts of his people.

In fact there were photographs of her adorning shop windows all over the town, Rayne had noticed, still a lure for the tourists even so many years after her death, a beautiful legend whose name had become synonymous with Monaco.

‘It must have been like a fairy tale for her,’ Rayne whispered a little later when she saw yet another image of the princess in the latest shop window they were passing. ‘To win not only a prince’s love—but a whole country’s.’

‘Even a country that is less than five hundred acres across.’

She pulled a face and smiled, amazed at how small an area Monaco took up, amazed too by King’s knowledge of it.

‘And you? Do you believe in fairy tales, Rayne?’ he asked, his voice suddenly strung with mocking amusement.

‘Fairy tales?’ She pretended to be considering it as she looked up at him askance.

‘Happy ever afters. Two people living side by side and loving each other until death they do part.’

‘Well, it’s obvious you don’t,’ she lobbed back, noting the cynicism with which he’d said it. But then, after the way his parents’ marriage had broken up, she supposed she could understand why.

‘I know what Mum and Dad had,’ she murmured almost reverently. ‘All right, it wasn’t exactly a fairy tale. They had their ups and downs. But they loved each other, and knew they always would.’ And they had instilled in their only daughter the importance of the qualities that kept a marriage strong. Love, trust and faithfulness. It was something she strongly believed in and it was something she staunchly refused to allow anyone to dismiss lightly. Even King Clayborne. ‘You were just unlucky,’ she said, moving away from the window and the image that had sparked off this unwelcome conversation with him in the first place.

The cathedral. The palace. The exotic gardens. They did it all. He even showed her the amazingly palatial building of the famous casino, although they didn’t actually go inside.

It wasn’t until they got back into the car that Rayne realised she’d switched her phone off before going into the cathedral and had forgotten to switch it back on. She chastened herself for letting everything go out of her mind simply because she was with King.

She started when her phone began to ring almost as soon as she had switched it on.

‘Lorrayne?’ Cynthia Hardwicke said when Rayne put the phone to her ear.

Immediately Rayne tensed up. King hadn’t yet switched the car’s engine on. Could he have heard the way her mother had addressed her?

Trying to sound normal, she wished her mother a happy birthday when she had finished enthusing about the bouquet Rayne had sent her.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ she breathed, relaxing a little, relieved to hear her mother sounding so buoyant. She envisaged Cynthia Hardwicke, with her grey-tinged auburn hair freshly tinted for her holiday, starting to regain the weight she had lost, her skin—usually as pale as her own—beginning to bloom again beneath a welcome Majorcan sun.