The Princess and the Playboy

‘But the king did entrust you with chairing the cultural advisory board for this province.’

Talay gave a disdainful sniff. ‘A paper tiger, if you ask me. They put advisory in the title for a good reason, so we don’t get to actually do anything but advise, and the advice isn’t always listened to, as in this instance.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Talay gave a slow smile. ‘You and Michael go ahead and finalise your second honeymoon plans. I’ll find a way to let Mr Clendon know how I feel.’ As casually as she could, she added as an apparent afterthought, ‘I need somewhere quiet and private to work on some new designs. Can I use your villa while you’re away?’

CHAPTER TWO

JASE CLENDON filled his lungs with the glorious, ginger-scented air that was unique to the island kingdom of Sapphan and tried to relax. It was inconvenient of Michael Martine to be called away on business at the last minute but there wasn’t much either of them could do about it. The same thing had happened to Jase himself often enough.

It was strange of Michael to send a message, rather than calling direct. But it was decent of him to give Jase the run of the villa. As soon as he caught sight of the inviting pool, Jase changed into his swimming gear, intending to make the most of it. A swim was just what he needed to help him adjust to Sapphan time.

He was accustomed to luxury but this was on a scale unknown in Australia. The villa reminded Jase of a small palace, with ancient stone walls, a tropical garden studded with statuary and large, airy rooms with cool slate floors and walls panelled with aromatic eaglewood. The rattan furniture with its hand-printed silk coverings was as comfortable as it was beautiful. Michael had done well for himself, he thought, wandering around the casual living room which opened onto the pool area.

On a dresser stood a collection of family photographs, most of them meaning nothing to Jase. He considered Michael a friend but they gave each other a loose rein. Sometimes they were out of touch for a couple of years but when they got back together it was as if they’d never been apart.

His mouth twisted wryly. Male friendship was something women had trouble understanding. They wanted you there every minute, preferably talking or—more accurately—listening to them, or at least his former wife had. She’d never understood his need for solitude and quiet, a direct legacy of growing up in a boys’ home with dozens of other children who were never quiet.

Jase shrugged off the memory and started to turn away but his attention was caught by one photo in particular. It must be Michael’s wife, whom Jase had yet to meet, and it had been taken at some kind of graduation ceremony. It definitely wasn’t one of Michael’s photographs. For a start, unlike most of Michael’s photographs, you could actually make out the subject, which meant it was Jase’s first really good look at Michael’s wife, Allie.

Studying her, he felt his swimming trunks growing uncomfortably tight. Not only was she gorgeous, she looked out of the picture as if she owned the world. There was something—he searched for a word—regal about her.

Her dark hair fell in a satin curtain halfway down her back. She was tall for a Sapphan woman, judging by the doorframe behind her, and she had a figure like a model, tiny of waist and full...well, full everywhere else. There was also something familiar about her that he couldn’t pin down. It was probably because he’d half seen her a few times in Michael’s blurred attempts at family photography.

Jase’s grin was self-deprecating. Just as well she was married. Michael would laugh himself silly if he could see his friend, poring over a woman’s photograph like a lovesick puppy. If he wasn’t careful his reputation as a playboy would be in jeopardy and he had worked hard to create it It served him too well to drop now.

When you were as successful and wealthy as he had made himself you were fair game for every female for miles, not to mention their fathers, mothers and ugly sisters. His one experience of marriage had convinced him he was a lone wolf, better left to hunt solo. He’d need to watch himself in Sapphan if there were many women as bewitching as Allie Martine.

If she came back early from her week-long expedition to the capital, as Michael’s message had warned him she might, Jase would have to watch himself. Michael had assured him her presence wouldn’t interfere with Jase’s use of the villa, but it didn’t solve the problem of her extraordinary effect on him.

There was another problem, too. The key Michael had sent him didn’t fit the door to the guest pavilion, which he had assumed he was to use. It did fit the main house entrance so Jase had decided to move in there for the time being. If Allie came back while he was still here he would have her unlock the guest pavilion and he’d gladly move out there. Another glance at the photo in his hand warned him it might be wise to keep some distance between himself and Michael’s wife.

He took another leisurely swallow of the strongly flavoured local beer Michael favoured. Jase didn’t mind serving himself, but it was odd to be in such lavish surroundings without any servants. He shrugged inwardly. Maybe it was a Sapphanese custom to give the servants time off when the boss was away.

Outside his air-conditioned cocoon the air steamed. It was the end of the dry season and the humidity levels were starting to build. He finished the beer, returned the glass to the kitchen and threw open the wide doors leading to the pool and waterfall. After his reaction to Allie’s photo he needed to cool off more than ever. He took a running dive into the pool.

His dive cut the water cleanly, his body knifing through the deep water like a torpedo until he surfaced on the far side of the pool, slicking his hair back and gasping for breath. This beat the heck out of cold showers.

Talay heard the sounds of someone in the pool and froze. Now the moment had arrived she was tempted to turn around and flee the house before Jase Clendon discovered her presence. He had accepted without question her message, saying that Michael would be overseas when he arrived. It wasn’t exactly a lie. Allie and Michael were in Paris by now, enjoying their second honeymoon before their baby was due, Michael having also received a message saying Jase’s arrival would be delayed for a couple of weeks.

She hadn’t forged anyone’s signature. She had simply ‘forgotten’ to append any name or signature at all. In these days of faxes and e-mail messages lots of people did. It was a sin of omission, she recognised, but she was desperate enough to try anything.

There was still time to change her mind, she assured herself as she moved cautiously towards the open French doors leading to the pool area. First she would take a look at her adversary.

He wouldn’t hear her over the splashing of the waterfall, but she moved softly until she could see him without being seen. The effect was instant and electrifying. He had levered himself onto the stone rim of the pool and water streamed from muscles she had rarely seen on a male body outside the statues in her uncle’s palace.

Apart from a thin band of salmon-coloured Lycra, clinging to his narrow hips, he was naked, and his Australian tan gleamed in the Sapphanese sun. Straight arms braced wide shoulders and his posture was erect, probably from his experience as a yachtsman, she guessed. His dark hair was slicked back but looked collar-length, an unusual choice for a businessman, she considered, but somehow looked right on him. Like a buccaneer from Sapphan’s far past, or a modern-day pirate.

She sucked in a breath, feeling her heart race. As far as she was concerned, he was a pirate, as dangerous to her beloved coastline and its gentle people as any buccaneer in history. Still, with Jase filling her field of vision, it wasn’t hard to understand how, in times past, women sometimes fell in love with pirates and ran away to sea to spend their lives with them.

Then he lifted his head and shock slammed through her so hard she had to cling to the doorframe for support. Those eyes! She had never met Jase Clendon before, yet the eyes inspecting the surface of the pool looked as familiar as her own in a mirror.

It was crazy, she told herself. Beyond the photograph Allie had shown her, she knew very little about him as a person. As far as she knew, their paths had never crossed. So why was she gripped by an unshakeable sense of familiarity, as if she had chanced across a former lover instead of a complete stranger?

She gave herself a mental shake. He was the enemy, and she had no business allowing foolish fantasies to interfere with her mission.

‘It’s OK, you can come and join me. I don’t bite.’

Lost in a daydream of pirates and plunder, she was startled to hear his voice. It was deeply resonant with a hint of Australian accent, as tauntingly familiar as his eyes, although the source of the feeling remained equally elusive. Shock must have made her betray her presence, and panic whirled through her. She should leave now before she got herself in any deeper. She hadn’t actually spoken to Jase Clendon so maybe Uncle Philippe would excuse her behaviour as female curiosity.

Of course the king hadn’t specifically forbidden her to meet Jase, otherwise she would have felt duty bound to obey. He had advised against it because he considered her committed to Luc Armand. But unless she met Jase Clendon she had no hope of convincing him to change his plans. In any case, she told herself, it wasn’t Her Royal Highness Princess Talay Rasada, meeting Jase Clendon, but Allie Martine, the wife of his old friend. The thought bolstered her failing courage. Gathering her flowered sarong around her, she stepped out of the shadows. ‘Good afternoon. You must be Mr Clendon.’

He got to his feet and moved smoothly around the edge of the pool, coming to stand close beside her and offer his hand. ‘Hello. I take it you’re Michael’s wife, Allie. I recognise you from your photograph.’

The touch of his fingers against her own started a chain reaction of tremors which travelled along her arm and somehow found the vein leading to her heart. Or so it felt ‘My photograph?’ Even though she had put all the pictures of Allie and Michael out of sight Talay was anxious enough to try to tug her hand free, but Jase’s fingers closed around hers.

He nodded. ‘On the dresser inside. Some kind of graduation thing.’

To add to her pretence of being Allie, Talay had left out the picture Allie kept of her. Jase must have seen it and drawn his own interpretation. Instead of making her feel relieved, Talay was disturbed by the success of her deception. ‘It was taken when I got my masters in business administration at the University of Andaman,’ she said, thankful she could be honest about this at least.

‘Brains as well as beauty. I’m impressed.’ Very slowly he drew her hand up to his mouth, his eyes never leaving hers. When his lips brushed the backs of her fingers she felt a coil of something hot and sensual so deep inside her that it almost eluded conscious awareness. It was the most gentlemanly of greetings, perhaps even old-fashioned, but there was nothing old-fashioned about her response.

He saw the startled reaction she was unable to conceal but misinterpreted it and released her hand. ‘I mustn’t give you the wrong idea about me, Mrs Martine.’

‘Call me Allie, please,’ she invited, horrified by how shaky her voice sounded.

‘And I’m Jase, Allie. No need to look so anxious. I’m sure Michael has filled you in on my...er...reputation with women, and some of it may even be deserved, but married women are strictly off limits, as Michael well knows or he wouldn’t have invited me to stay here while he was away.’

‘Of course.’ But Jase’s honeyed assurance only increased Talay’s alarm. What on earth had she got herself into? She had encouraged Allie to give the servants their holidays, thinking the fewer people around who could give her away the better, but it meant she was entirely alone with Jase.

Even Sam, her devoted bodyguard, had returned home at Talay’s insistence. She had told him she intended to spend the night at the Martine villa, which was true. Luckily, it hadn’t occurred to Sam to check that the Martines were actually in residence. He assumed Talay was safe with their staff, as well as the villa’s extensive security system, until he came to collect her the following afternoon.

She had thought that arranging the meeting would be the hardest part, but actually facing Jase himself was much more challenging than she had anticipated. Her own reaction was the problem, she acknowledged. She simply hadn’t expected the magnetic power of his personality to affect her so strongly. Why hadn’t anyone told her that a man could make her feel over-heated and chilled, confused and empowered, all at the same time?

‘Michael’s message said you were spending a few days in the capital,’ Jase went on. ‘You must be tired after your return journey. Why don’t you join me for a swim? According to your husband, you’re a real water baby who gets into the water at every opportunity.’

Allie was the true water baby. Talay also enjoyed swimming, but the thought of appearing in a swimsuit in front of Jase made her knees weaken. ‘I don’t think so, not today,’ she dissembled.

‘Then I must get dressed and join you inside. Anything else would be impolite,’ he insisted.

Alarm rippled through her. With him in it, the spacious room would seem confining, the walls closer together, the ceiling lower. It was his impressive breadth and height, she accepted, as well as the sheer presence he managed to exude. It was easy to see why he was so successful in business. He radiated the same kind of easy authority as her uncle, the king.

Philippe Rasada, nicknamed the Hawk by his supporters and political adversaries alike, had the same knack of dominating a room simply by entering it. Talay forced a smile. ‘In that case, I will have a swim after all,’ she said around a throat gone suddenly dry. ‘I don’t wish to spoil your pleasure.’

His gaze lingered on her for the longest time. ‘Sapphan has many pleasures. Her crystalline waters hardly compare with the attractions much closer to hand.’

He gave her no time to absorb the poetic compliment, far less frame a coherent response, before he led the way back to the pool and cut a sleek arc through the air as he dived in. She held her breath as he stayed under for a long time and only released it when he finally surfaced on the far side, treading water with powerful thrusts which he managed to make appear effortless.