“I never renege on a deal.” He shoved the check at her. “Take it.”

“Lucas.” Her voice trembled. “Whatever you’re thinking—”

“You need the money,” he said coldly. “Remember? And I sure as hell had everything I needed from you.”

She didn’t move. All the color had drained from her face. Tears glittered in her eyes. Something inside him seemed to crack. He wanted to take her in his arms, kiss her until she stopped weeping.

Cristos, she was a damned fine actress.

But she would never make a fool of him again.

His hand closed around her wrist and he hauled her against him. He bent his head, took her mouth, kissed her hard enough to make her gasp. She raised her hand, balled it, hit his shoulder—and then her fist loosened, her fingers sought his cheek, spread over it, and her lips softened under his, parted…

Lucas cursed.

Then he flung Caroline from him, let the check flutter to the floor, and walked out.

About the Author

SANDRA MARTON wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance. Since then she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® award finalist, she’s also received five RT Book Reviews magazine awards, and has been honoured with an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.

NOT FOR SALE

SANDRA MARTON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

LUCAS VIEIRA was mad as hell.

His day had not gone well. Not gone well? Lucas almost laughed.

An understatement.

His day had been chaos. Now, it was rapidly turning into catastrophe.

It had started with a mug of burned coffee. Lucas had not even known there could be such a thing until his P.A.—his very temporary P.A.—had brewed a pot of something black, hot and oily and poured him a cup of it.

One taste, and he’d shoved the thing aside, flipped open his cell phone to check his messages and found one from the same fool of a reporter who’d been badgering him for an interview the past two weeks. How had the man gotten his number? It was private, as was the rest of Lucas’s life.

Lucas cherished his privacy.

He avoided the press. He traveled by private jet. His two-level penthouse on Fifth Avenue was accessible only via private elevator. His estate on the ocean, in the Hamptons, was walled; the Caribbean island he’d bought last year was festooned with No Trespassing signs.

Lucas Vieira, Man of Mystery, some wag had once called him. Not exactly true. There were times Lucas couldn’t avoid cameras and microphones and questions. He was a multi-billionaire, and that stirred interest.

He was also a man who had risen to the top in a profession where lineage and background had significant meaning…

And he had neither.

Or, rather, he did—but not the kind Wall Street generally preferred. Not the kind he would discuss, either. The only questions he would ever consider were those that concerned the public face of Vieira Financial. As for how Vieira Financial had come to be such a powerhouse, how Lucas had come to be such a success at thirty-three.

He had tired of being asked, so he’d finally offered a response in a recent interview.

“Success,” he’d said, in his somewhat husky, lightly accented voice, “success is when preparation meets opportunity.”

“That’s it?” the interviewer had said.

“That’s it,” Lucas had replied, and he’d unclipped the tiny mike from the lapel of his navy wool Savile Row suit jacket, risen to his feet, walked past the cameras and out of the studio.

What he would never add was that to reach that point, a man could permit nothing, absolutely nothing, to get in his way.

Lucas frowned, swung his leather chair away from his massive Brazilian rosewood desk and stared blindly out the wall of glass that overlooked midtown Manhattan.

Which brought him directly back to today, and how in God’s name was he going to keep to that credo?

There had to be a way.

He had learned the importance of letting nothing come between a man and his goals years ago when he was a boy of seven, a dirty, half-starved menino de rua—a kid living on the streets of Rio. He picked tourists’ pockets, stole whatever he could, ate out of restaurant trash bins, slept in alleys and parks, although you didn’t really sleep when you had to be alert to every sound, every footfall.

There was no way out.

Brazil was a country of extremes. There were the incredibly rich who lived in homes that defied description, and the incredibly poor, the favelados, who eked out an existence in the favelas, the shanty towns, that clung to Rio’s hillsides. Lucas was not even one of them. He was nothing. He was vermin. And what seven-year-old could change that?

All he had was his mother. And then, one night, a man she’d brought home took a look at Lucas, trying to make himself invisible in the corner of their cardboard shack, and said forget it, he was not going to pay good money to lie with a puta while her kid watched.

The next day, Lucas’s mother walked him to the dirty streets of Copacabana, told him to be a good boy and left him there.

He never saw her again.

Lucas learned to survive. To keep moving, to run when the cops showed up because they’d as soon beat the crap out of you as not. Then, one night, somebody yelled, “Bichos!” but Lucas couldn’t run. He was sick, half-delirious with fever, dehydrated after vomiting up what little was in his belly.

He was doomed.

Except, he wasn’t.

On that night, his life changed forever.

Some do-gooding social worker was with the police. Who knew why? It didn’t matter. What did matter was that she took him to a storefront that housed one of the few organizations that saw street children as human. There, they pumped him full of antibiotics, gave him fruit juice to drink and, when he could keep that down, food. They cleaned him up, cut his hair, dressed him in clothes that didn’t fit, but who gave a damn?

The clothes were free of lice. That was what mattered.

Lucas wasn’t stupid. In fact, he was bright. He’d taught himself to read, to do math. Now, he attacked the books they gave him, observed how others behaved, learned to speak properly, to remember to wash his hands and brush his teeth, to say obrigado and por favor.

And he learned to smile.

That was the hardest thing. Smiling was not a part of who he was, but he did it.

Weeks passed, months, and then there was another miracle. A North American couple showed up, talked with him for a little while—by then, Lucas had picked up passable English from one of his teachers—and the next thing he knew, they took him to a place called New Jersey and said he was now their son.

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

Lucas had cleaned up nicely. He looked cute. Black hair, green eyes, golden skin. He smelled good. He spoke well. Inside, though, the boy who trusted no one was still in charge. He hated being told what to do and the New Jersey couple believed children should be told what to do, every minute of every hour of every day.

Things deteriorated rapidly.

He was not grateful, his would-be father said, and tried to beat gratitude into him. His heart was owned by demons, his would-be mother said, and demanded he seek salvation on his knees.

Eventually, they said he would never be any good. On his tenth birthday, they drove him to a hulking gray building and handed him over to Child Services.

Lucas spent the next eight years going from foster home to foster home. One or two were okay but most of them. Even now, as an adult, his fists knotted when he thought back to some of what he and others had endured. The last place was so terrible that at midnight on the day he turned eighteen, he’d tossed the few things he owned into a pillowcase, slung it over his shoulder and walked out.

But he had learned what would become the single most important lesson of his life.

He knew precisely what he wanted.

Respect. That was it, in a word. And he knew, too, that respect came when a man had power. And money. He wanted both.

He worked hard, picked crops in New Jersey fields during the summer, did whatever manual labor he could find during the winter. He got his GED—his General Educational Diploma—because he had never stopped reading and reading led to learning. He enrolled in a community college, sat through classes when he was exhausted and desperate for sleep. Add a helping of socially acceptable good manners, clothes that fit the long, leanly muscled body of the man he had become, and the way to the top suddenly seemed possible.

More than possible. It was achievable.

At thirty-three, Lucas Vieira had it all.

Almost.

Almost, he thought grimly, on this day that had started with bad coffee and an inept secretary, and he had no one to blame but himself.

Anger surged through him and he shot to his feet and paced the length of his big office.

A bad sign, that uncharacteristic show of fury. Learning to contain one’s emotions was also necessary for success. Still, it wasn’t as bad as his having missed the signs of his current mistress’s unrealistic reading of what she’d called a relationship.

When he’d thought about it at all, he’d called it an affair.

Whatever it had been, he was on the verge of disaster.

He was going to lose buying Leonid Rostov’s twenty billion dollar corporation. And the deal was close, tantalizingly close to finalization.

Everybody wanted the Rostov holdings but Lucas wanted them more. Adding them to his already formidable empire would validate everything he had worked so hard to become.

A few months ago, when word got out that Rostov might be selling, that he was coming to New York, Lucas had taken a gamble. He had not sent Rostov letters or proposals. He had not phoned the man’s Moscow office. Instead, he’d sent Rostov a box of Havana cigars—every photo of the Russian showed him with a cigar in his teeth—and a business card. Across the back he’d written, Dinner in New York next Saturday, 8:00 p.m., the Palace Hotel.

Rostov had swallowed the bait.

They’d had a leisurely meal in a private room. There was no talk of business. Lucas knew Rostov was sizing him up. Rostov ate heartily and drank the same way, Lucas ate sparingly and made each drink last. At the end of the night, Rostov slapped him on the back and invited him to Moscow.

Now, after endless flying back and forth, negotiating through translators—Rostov’s English was chancy but how could Lucas fault it when his Russian began with zdravstvuj—hello—and ended with dasvidaniya?

Now, Rostov was in New York again.

“We have one more meal, Luke-ahs, one bottle of vodka—and then I will make you happy man.”

Only one problem.

Rostov was bringing his wife.

Ilana Rostov had joined them the last time Lucas was in Moscow. She had a beautiful if surgically altered face; diamond earrings dangled like Bolshoi chandeliers from her ears. She moved in a cloud of choking perfume and she was fluent in English; she’d served as her husband’s translator that night.

She’d also had her hand buried in Lucas’s lap beneath the deep hem of a crisply starched tablecloth.

Somehow, Lucas had made it through the meal, the translator he’d hired for the evening oblivious, Rostov oblivious, only Lucas and Ilana Rostov aware of what was happening. He had barely escaped with his dignity, never mind anything else, intact.

And Rostov was bringing her with him tonight.

“No translators,” he’d said firmly. “Translators are functionaries of the state, da? You can, of course, bring a voman. But for talking, my Ilana will take care of you as good as she will take care of me.”

Lucas had almost laughed. And he could laugh this time, because he had an ace up his sleeve.

Her name was Elin Jansson. Elin, born in Finland, spoke flawless Russian. She was a model; she was Lucas’s current mistress. She would be his date, his translator…

And his protection against Ilana Rostov.

Lucas groaned, went to the window wall behind his desk and pressed his forehead against the cool glass.

It had all seemed so simple. He should have known better. Life was never simple, and today had proved it.

“Mr. Vieira?”

Lucas swung around. His temporary P.A. smiled nervously from the doorway. She was young and she made lousy coffee but far worse, no matter what he did to make her feel comfortable, she remained half-terrified of him. Right now, she looked as if one strong gust of wind might blow her over.

And well she should look exactly that way, he thought grimly. He had left orders that he was not to be disturbed.

“What is it, Denise?”

“It’s Elise. Sir.” The girl swallowed dryly. “I knocked but you didn’t—” She swallowed again. “Mr. Rostov called. I told him you were unavailable, just the way you said. And he said to tell you that he and Mrs. Rostov might be a few minutes late to meet you and—”

Her voice trailed off.

“You’ve told me,” Lucas said crisply. “Is there anything else?”

“I just—I just wondered if—if I should phone the restaurant and—and tell them there’ll be only three for dinner.””

Merda! This was going from bad to impossible. Did the entire world know what had happened?

“Did I ask you to do that?”

“No, sir. I just thought—”

“Don’t think. Just do what you’re told.” The girl’s face collapsed. Hell. So much for controlling his emotions. “Denise. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“It’s Elise,” she said in a wobbly voice. “And you don’t owe me an apology, sir. I just—I mean, I know you’re upset…”

“I am not upset,” Lucas said, forcing a smile the way he’d done when he was a boy. “Why would I be upset?”

“Well—well, Miss Jansson—when she was here a little while ago—” Another gulping swallow. “Mr. Gordon was at my desk. And we couldn’t help but hear—I mean, I couldn’t stop Miss Jansson from going by me and then, once she got inside your office…”

“So,” Lucas said, through his teeth, “I had an audience.” He attempted a smile but suspected it was more a grimace. “What about everyone on the other floors? Were they in attendance, too? ”

“I don’t know, Mr. Vieira, sir. I could ask around, if that’s what—”

“What I want,” Lucas said, “is that you never mention this again. To me or anyone else. Is that clear?”

The girl nodded.

Mental note, Lucas thought dryly. Offer to quadruple regular P.A.’s salary when she returns from vacation if she swears never to leave her desk again barring death, disease, or God forbid, marriage.

“It is, sir, and I want you to know how sorry I am that you and Miss Jansson—”

“Go back to your desk,” Lucas snapped. “And do not interrupt me again or you’ll find yourself at HR, collecting your final check. Understood?”

Apparently, it was. Denise, Elise, whoever in hell she was, slunk off, shutting the door behind her. Lucas glared at it for a couple of seconds. Then he sank into the chair behind his desk, tilted it back and stared at the ceiling.

Wonderful. In a couple of hours, he’d be meeting with a man who spoke little English and a woman who only wanted to get her hands inside his fly. He had no translator, and now his private life was the topic of discussion among his employees.

Why wouldn’t it be?

Elin had made one hell of a scene, storming in, demanding to know about “that blonde bimbo” as she tossed a photo on his desk. It had appeared online, on some gossip site, she said. One look and Lucas knew it was a Photoshopped miracle but done so carelessly that the “bimbo”—an actress, the text said—seemed to hover next to him, her feet a few inches off the ground.

He’d looked up, already smiling, a second away from telling Elin exactly that. Then he’d looked at her icy eyes, the grim set of her mouth, and inconsequential annoyances suddenly began to add up.

Elin’s little makeup bag, left in a vanity drawer. The jeans, shirt, and sneakers left in his closet. So she could get out of a cab at her place at seven in the morning, she’d purred, without raising eyebrows.

Stupid, he’d thought, worse than stupid! Elin didn’t care about raising eyebrows. Besides, half the women in Manhattan got out of cabs in the early morning, still dressed as they’d been the prior night.

And maybe the most obvious part of that lie was that he could count on one hand the number of times Elin, or any other woman, had slept in his bed the entire night.

He wasn’t into that. Sex was sex; sleep was sleep. You did one with a woman. You did the other alone.

“You think it’s funny that you sneaked around? That you cheated on me?” Elin had slapped her hands on her hips. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”

That did it.

Lucas had risen to his feet. Elin was tall but at six-three, he towered over her.

“I do not cheat,” he’d said coldly. “I do not sneak. And I do not explain myself. To you or anyone else.”

She had grown very still. Progress, he’d thought, and he’d gone on, calmly, to remind her of how things were between them. That they were having an affair and it was enjoyable, but—

She’d screamed something at him. In Finnish, but still, he could tell what she’d said was not complimentary.

A second later, she was gone.

No big thing. That was what he’d thought. In fact, it was long past time they said goodbye to each other…

And then, reality had come rushing in.

The dinner. Leonid Rostov. His wife. For one wild second, Lucas had imagined going after Elin and asking if this meant she wasn’t going to go with him tonight…

He stalked to the built-in rosewood cabinet across the room, bypassed Denise-Elise’s witch’s brew, opened a sliding door and took out a thin Baccarat highball glass and a bottle of Macallan single malt Scotch.

It was all his fault. He should have known better than to mix business with pleasure but it had seemed perfect. A beautiful, sophisticated woman who would know which fork to use even as she translated Russian into English and English into Russian. Where in hell could a man find a woman like that at the eleventh hour, even in New—

“M-M-Mr. Vieira?”

“Damnit,” Lucas snarled, and swung toward the door. His P.A. was trembling. Beside her stood, hell, Jack Gordon. Lucas had hired him a year ago. Gordon was bright and innovative. Still, there were times Lucas wondered if there was more to Gordon than met the eye.

Or maybe less.

Lucas jerked his head. Denise-Elise stepped back and closed the door, and Lucas turned an icy look on Gordon.

“This had better be good.”

Gordon blanched but he held his ground. Lucas had to admire him for that.

“Sir. Lucas. I think, when you hear what I have to say—”

“Say it and then get out of here.”

Gordon took a breath. “This isn’t easy…” He took another breath. “I know what happened. You and the Jansson woman…Wait a minute, okay? I’m not here to talk about that.”

“You damned well better not be.”

“She was supposed to go with you tonight. To that meeting,” Gordon said hurriedly. “You mentioned it Monday morning, how Rostov didn’t want real translators, so he’d talk through his wife and you—”

“Get to the point.”

“Sir. I know someone who’s fluent in Russian.”

“Perhaps you weren’t listening to everything I said on Monday,” Lucas said with icy precision. “Rostov refuses to have anyone he thinks of as a functionary present tonight. He says that’s what official translators are, and perhaps they are, in his world, but what it comes down to is—”

“Dani can pretend to be your date.”

Lucas’s mouth twisted. “I don’t think I can fool our Russian friend into thinking I’ve suddenly decided to go in for boys.”

“Dani’s a girl, sir. A gorgeous girl. She’s smart, too. And she speaks Russian.”

Lucas felt a flare of hope. Then he faced reality. A girl, sight unseen? For an evening as important as this? No way. For all he knew, he’d be compounding what was already a mess into a disaster.

“Forget it.”

“Sir, it would work.”

Lucas shook his head. “It’s clever, Jack, but this is a twenty billion dollar deal. I can’t run the risk of this woman screwing things.”

Gordon laughed. Lucas’s eyes narrowed to emerald slits.

“Did I say something amusing?”

“No, no, of course not. Look, I’ve know Dani for years. She’s exactly what you need for a situation like this.”

“And if I were foolish enough to say yes to your suggestion, she would do this because…?”

“Like I said. We’re old friends. She’d do it as a favor to me.”

A muscle flickered in Lucas’s jaw. A twenty billion dollar deal, hinging on a man who drank too much vodka, a woman who had more limbs and libido than an octopus and a woman he’d never met?

Impossible.

And impossible to pass up.

“All right,” he said sharply. “Call her.”

Jack Gordon’s eyebrows rose. “You mean it?”

“Isn’t that what this conversation was all about? Call her. Tell her—”

“Dani. Dani Sinclair.”

“Dani. Tell her I’ll pick her up at seven-thirty. Where does she live?”

“She’ll meet you,” Jack said quickly.

“The lobby of the Palace. Eight o’clock sharp. No. Make it ten of the hour.” That way, he’d have time to hand the Sinclair woman cab fare and get rid of her if she turned out to be totally wrong for the job. “Tell her to dress appropriately.” He paused. “She can do that, can’t she?”

“She’ll dress appropriately, sir.”

“And, of course, make it clear I’ll pay her for her time. Say, one thousand dollars for the evening.”

He could see Gordon all but swallowing another laugh. Yes, Lucas thought coldly, why wouldn’t he find his employer’s predicament amusing? If this worked, he could take credit for saving Lucas’s corporate ass. But oh, if it didn’t…

“That sounds fine, sir.” Gordon held out his hand. “Good luck.”

Lucas looked at the outstretched hand, fought back a sense of repugnance he knew was foolish and accepted the handshake.

Jack Gordon hurried back to his own office before he pulled out his cell and hit a speed dial digit.

“Dani. Baby, have I got a deal for you!”

He explained as quickly as possible; Dani Sinclair was not one for long conversations but then, that wasn’t what men paid her for. When he’d finished, he heard the slow exhalation of her breath.

“So, let me get this straight. You told some guy—”

“Not just some guy, baby. Lucas Vieira. The Lucas Vieira. The guy with more money than God.”

“You told him I’d give him a date?”

“Yeah. Only, not that kind of date. This is dinner with Vieira, a Russian guy and the guy’s wife. You need to act like you and Vieira are a thing. And you need to translate.” Jack laughed softly. “I guess taking a degree in Cyrillic languages was a good idea after all.”

“I’m taking my Master’s,” Dani Sinclair said, “and a girl has to think about her future.” She paused. “How much did you say he’ll pay?”

“A thousand.”

Dani laughed. “Did you forget my going rate, Jack? It’s ten thousand for the evening.”

“Baby, we go way back. Elementary school. Middle school. High school.”

“Fine. I’ll give you a special discount. Five thousand.”

“Jeez. For a meal?”

“And, of course, my usual fee if your Mr. Vieira wants anything else.”

Jack Gordon rubbed the top of his head. “If he wants more, you can negotiate the fee yourself.”

Dani chuckled. “Jack, you wily fox. You haven’t told him about me. What, you want him to be shocked?”

“I want him to owe me,” Jack Gordon said, his tone suddenly cold. “And he will, no matter how this goes.”

“Charming. Okay, so when does this happen?”

“I thought I told you. Tonight. The Palace lobby. Ten minutes of eight.”

“Oh, but I…” Dani fell silent. Five K to eat a fancy meal, talk some Russian and in between, pretend she was the date of Lucas Vieira, the gorgeous, sexy, take-no-prisoners Wall Street tough guy. And a minimum of ten K if he ended up wanting to prolong the evening.

So tempting. If only she could do it. Trouble was, she already had a date for tonight, with a Texas oilman who came through the city once a month like clockwork.

There had to be a way…

“Dani?”

And there was. She could clear, say, forty-five hundred without doing a thing besides making a phone call.

“Yes,” she said briskly. “Fine. The lobby, the Palace, ten of eight.”

She disconnected, checked her cell’s contact list and hit a button. A female voice answered on the third ring, sounding breathless and a little rushed.

“Caroline? It’s Dani. Dani, from the Chekhov seminar? Listen, sweetie, I have a translating job that I don’t have time to take and I thought, right away, of you.”

Caroline Hamilton used a hip to shut the door of her Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, then tucked her cell phone between her ear and her shoulder, shifted the grocery bags she held so she could free a hand and secure the door’s three locks.

Dani from the Chekhov seminar? Caroline tried to picture her as she made her way across the six feet of floor space to what her landlord insisted was a kitchen. Yes, okay. Dani, a fellow Master of Arts student in Russian and Slavic Studies. Tall, stunning, dressed in the latest designer stuff. They’d never spoken except to say “hi” and “see you next time,” and to exchange numbers in case one needed to check with the other about an assignment.

“Caroline? You still there?”

“I’m here.” Caroline eased the grocery bags onto the counter, took a Lean Cuisine from one, worked at opening the little tear strip on the box while still keeping the phone at her ear. “A translating job, you said?”

“That’s right. An unusual one. It involves dinner.”

Caroline’s belly rumbled. She had passed on lunch. No time, less money. The phone slipped as she finally got the container from the package. She grabbed it before it hit the Formica counter.

“…as the pretend G.F. of a rich guy.”

“What?” Caroline said, reading the directions. Three minutes on high, peel back the liner, stir, another minute and a half—

“I said, it’s dinner. You meet this hotshot business guy at the Palace Hotel and you pretend you’re his girlfriend. See, there’s another couple and they speak Russian. Your guy doesn’t, so you’ll translate for him.”

Caroline put the Lean Cuisine into the nuker, shrugged off her jacket, pushed her thick, straight-as-a-stick mane of no-real-color hair back from her face, blew strands of it out of her hazel eyes.

“Why would I pretend I’m his girlfriend?”

“You just would,” Dani said, “that’s all.”

Caroline punched in the three minutes. “Thanks but I’ll pass. I mean, it sounds, well, weird.”

“One hundred bucks.”

“Dani, look…”

“Two hundred. And that meal. Then the night’s over, you go home with two hundred dollars in your jeans. Except,” she added hurriedly, “except, of course, you can’t wear jeans.”

“Well, that’s that, then. I definitely don’t have—”

“I’m a size six. You?”

“A six. But—”

“Size seven shoes, right?”

Caroline sank onto the rickety wooden stool that graced the counter. “Right. But honestly—”

“Three hundred,” Dani said briskly. “And I’m on my way. A dress. Shoes. Makeup. Think of what fun this will be.”

All Caroline could think of was three hundred dollars. You didn’t need to be a linguist to translate that into a piece of next month’s rent.

“Caroline! I need your address. We’re running out of time here.”

Caroline gave it. Told herself to ignore the prickly feeling dancing down her spine, told herself that same thing again, two hours later, when Dani spun her toward the mirror and she saw.

“Cinderella,” Dani said, laughing at Caroline’s shocked expression. “Hey, one last thing, okay? Let this guy think you’re me. See, the friend who set this up thinks I’m gonna do the date, I mean, be the date, and it’s easier all around if we keep it that way.”

Caroline looked at her reflection again. Dani’s fifty-dollar-a-bottle conditioner had taken her hair from no-color to pale gold. Her hazel eyes glittered, thanks to the light sparkle of gold shadow on her lids. Her cheekbones and mouth were a delicate pink and her dress…Cobwebs. Slinky black cobwebs that showed more leg than she’d ever shown except in shorts or a swimsuit. And on her feet, gold sandals, their heels so high she wondered if she’d be able to walk.

She didn’t look like herself anymore, and something about that terrified her.

“Dani. I don’t—I can’t—”

“You’re meeting him in half an hour.”

“No, really, it just feels wrong. To lie, to pretend I’m you, that I’m this Luke Vieira’s girlfriend—”

“Lucas,” Dani said impatiently. “Lucas Vieira. Okay. Five hundred.”

Caroline stared at her. “Five hundred dollars?”

“We’re running out of time. What’s it gonna be? Yes or no?”

Caroline swallowed hard. And said the only thing she could.

She said, “Yes.”

CHAPTER TWO

LUCAS went home, showered and changed clothes. White shirt, blue tie, gray suit. A little casual, a little businesslike. Now, all he had to do was calm down.

The hotel was fiftieth and Madison and he lived on Fifth Avenue, only a couple of blocks away. There was no need for his car; like any New Yorker, he knew the fastest way to cover that distance was to walk.

Besides, walking might give him time to tame his temper. He’d snapped at his driver on the way from the office to his condo; he’d barely responded to the doorman’s pleasant “good evening, Mr. Vieira,” he’d scowled at his housekeeper in response to a simple question.

He was breathing fire, and what for? Ultimately, he was the one responsible for this mess. Why turn his anger on everyone else?

He’d made a mistake, not recognizing that Elin was trying to make more of their affair than it ever could be, but the way to recover from a mistake was to learn from it and move on.

The Palace’s elegant lobby was crowded. Lucas found a relatively clear space that gave him an unimpeded view of the entrance, then checked his watch. It was seven forty-five. On the chance Dani Sinclair might have arrived early, he scanned the room for a late-twenties, tall woman with light brown hair, blue eyes and what Jack Gordon had slyly described as “a body that just won’t quit” when Lucas had phoned him for a description an hour ago.

“A total babe,” he’d said, with a low laugh. “Built for action, if you get my drift.”

Lucas’s mouth twisted. He didn’t like Gordon’s increasingly smarmy tone, and he had no interest in knowing if he and the woman had been intimate. As long as she looked presentable, seemed credible as his date and spoke Russian, he’d be satisfied.

There were lots of women in the lobby, some that met Gordon’s description, but none were alone as Dani Sinclair would be. If she ever showed up. Frowning, Lucas checked the time again. Four minutes had gone by.

Another slipped past.

Lucas folded his arms, felt a flicker of apprehension. She was late.

It was not a good start.

At five of eight, Lucas could feel the muscles in his jaw tense. Yes, Rostov had said he and his wife would be late but if the Sinclair woman didn’t show up soon—

A woman entered the lobby. She was by herself. Lucas felt a surge of hope until he realized this couldn’t be the woman he was waiting for. Nothing about her fit Jack Gordon’s description.

Her hair was pale gold, not brown. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes from here, only that they were wide-set, like a cat’s. Her face was oval, her mouth a soft pink.

Even at a distance, she was stunning.

Feminine. Delicate. Curves gently accented by an incredibly short, clinging silky black dress, long legs that lent sexiness to already-sexy gold sandals with stiletto heels. An erotic image flashed into his head. This woman, wearing only those heels and whatever wisp of silk she had on under that amazing dress.

He scowled.

What kind of nonsense was this? He was here on important business. Besides, it would be a while before he’d want to be with a woman again. The thing with Elin had left a bad taste.

Still, he lifted his gaze, took one last look at the woman’s face…

And found her staring at him.

For a heartbeat, their eyes met and held. Lucas felt something knot, deep in his belly. He took a step forward—and then her gaze swept past him and the moment, whatever it had been, was over.

Hell.

He needed a break.

He’d finish the Rostov deal, clear up a couple of other things and then he’d go out to his house in the Hamptons for a long weekend. Alone. Just him and the sun and the sea. Three, four days like that and he’d be ready to get back to work, and to women.

All he had to do was wind things up tonight—except, how was he going to do that? His watch read five after eight.

No question about it.

Dani Sinclair had been a mistake.

Lucas ran his hand through his hair.

He could call the Rostov suite. Plead sudden illness. No. That was the easy way out. More to the point, he wanted things settled, tonight. His only real choice was to go through with the dinner plans, let Ilana Rostov do all the translating, try to ignore her fingers in his lap and if things got bad enough—

“Excuse me.”

If things got bad enough, say to hell with it and tell Rostov that he needed to leash his barracuda of a wife…

“Sir? Excuse me.”

A hand fell lightly on his arm. Damnit, what now?

“Yes?” he growled as he swung around…And saw the blonde with the cat’s eyes looking up at him. This close, he could see that her eyes were hazel, that she was even lovelier than he’d thought.

A woman on the prowl. New York had more than its fair share of assertive women. Or she might be a high-priced call girl. New York had plenty of those, too, and though places like this did all it could to discourage them, they were around.

Either way, he wasn’t interested. He liked assertive women but not tonight, with a deal like this on the agenda. And if she was a so-called working girl, even an expensive one…

Forget it. He’d never paid for sex in his life and he never would.

“I—ah, I wonder if you—if you—”

“No. I would not.”

She flinched. Hell, she turned pale. Lucas felt a twinge of guilt. She wasn’t a pro. And he was behaving like an ass. It had been a long day and it was going to be an even longer evening, but why let it out on her?

“Look,” he said, “you’re a beautiful woman. I’m flattered that you’d like to have a drink, dinner, whatever—”

“No,” she said quickly, “that’s not—”

“I’m meeting someone. On business. Your timing is off, okay?”

Those hazel eyes turned cold.

“You have an interesting opinion of yourself, mister.”

Lucas raised his eyebrows. “Hey, I’m not the one who—”

“I’m not interested in a drink. Or dinner.” The woman drew herself up, steel suddenly in her spine and in her voice. “Actually, I’d sooner have drinks with—with SpongeBob Squarepants than someone as rude and self-centered as you.”

Lucas blinked. Then, despite himself, he laughed.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” She tossed her head and strands of her hair fell against her cheek. He fought back the insane desire to take those strands between his fingers and tuck them back behind her ear. “And what’s so amusing? Do you like having people tell you what you are to your face?”

“No one ever does,” he said. “No one would dare.”

Her smile was sweet enough to make his teeth ache. And to make him grin.

“What a pity.”

“You’re right. I owe you an apology. I’m in a bad mood but that’s no reason to take it out on you.”

He could see her trying to decide whether or not to accept his request for forgiveness. Suddenly, it seemed important that she would.

“Truce?” he said, holding out his hand.

She hesitated. Then her lips curved in a smile. She put her hand in his and he could have sworn he felt a jolt of electricity.

“Truce.”

“Good.” He smiled back at her. “Look, this really is a bad time. Why don’t I give you my card? Call me tomorrow. Better still, give me your number and—”

The blonde tugged her hand free.

“You don’t get it.” The steel was back in her voice. “I’m not trying to—to pick you up. I’m supposed to meet someone here. On business, the same as you.”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “A man?” he said slowly. She nodded. “And what does he look like?”

“Well, that’s just it. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never met him. But I’m pretty sure he’s middle-aged. And probably, well, probably not very good-looking. And…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What’s this middle-aged, homely guy’s name?”

The blonde’s chin lifted. “I don’t think that’s any of your—”

“Is it, by any chance, Lucas Vieira?”

Her mouth fell open.

“Ohmygod,” she said, “ohmygod!”

“Don’t tell me,” Lucas said slowly. “You can’t be…Dani Sinclair?”

The woman looked as if she might faint.

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t be Dani Sinclair. But I am.”

Impossible, Caroline thought.

No. Not impossible.

Insane. This entire thing, from the minute Dani had called her, right up until now.

This was Lucas Vieira? This tall, dark-haired, absolutely spectacular hunk? She’d noticed him instantly. And she wasn’t the only one. The lobby was crowded. It was a Friday night, warm even for early June, and it seemed as if everybody was out for the evening.

There must have been a couple of dozen women milling around with their dates, their husbands and boyfriends, and from what she’d been able to see, every one of them managed to shoot little assessing looks at the gorgeous guy standing all by himself.

He’d been watching the door, as if he was waiting for someone.

Okay, she’d thought. He was alone, he was waiting for someone.

But he couldn’t be Lucas Vieira.

A man who looked like that wouldn’t need to hire a woman to pretend to be his date. True, there was more to it than that, Lucas Vieira needed a date who could translate Russian—even more bizarre, really—but whatever the situation, this was not her guy.

If only he was…

And, even as she’d thought the words, she’d realized his eyes were focused on her. Her heart had thumped; she’d felt a rush of heat in her breasts, in her belly, in her blood. It went with the way she’d been feeling since leaving her apartment, as if she had stepped into a different reality, assuming another woman’s identity, wearing her clothes, about to meet a stranger and pretend she was his girlfriend.

The stranger’s eyes had seemed to narrow. He’d taken a step forward.

Caroline had torn her gaze from his and set out blindly through the crowd, heading anywhere but in his direction. She had to concentrate on finding Lucas Vieira, but how to identify him? Dani hadn’t described him beyond saying he’d be alone and that he was incredibly rich.

The “incredibly rich” tag could probably be hung on most of the men in the lobby, but none of them were alone—except for the one whose eyes had blazed with fire when he’d looked at her.

Could he be the guy she was supposed to meet? Unless she’d missed something, he was the only man by himself. And he’d been watching the door with such intensity.

There was only one way to find out.

She’d taken a deep breath. And another. Then she’d walked up to him, said “excuse me” as politely as possible…Someone had jostled her. She’d teetered on the ridiculous heels. The stranger’s hand—Lucas Vieira’s hand—had closed around her elbow, steadying her. She’d already teetered once tonight, getting into the cab that had brought her here.

Then, all she’d thought was how huge a sum she’d owe Dani if she fell and tore this dress.

Now, all she could think of was the burn of this man’s fingers on her skin.

Her heart began to race. She tried to step back and he caught hold of her hand again.

“Careful,” he said. “This mob is like a herd of wildebeest on the Serengeti. They’d trample you before they knew they’d done it.”

It was such an accurate description that Caroline laughed.

“That’s good. You have to relax. We won’t be able to pull this off unless you’re at ease with me.”

Her smile faded. This was business. How could she have forgotten that, even for an instant?

“You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”

Business, for sure. The smile, the charm, the I’m-male, you’re-female thing had vanished.

“I know. But the traffic—”

“I’d wanted a little time for us to get a feel for each other.”

She already had a feel for him. Not just rich but disgustingly rich. Not just good-looking but fantastically good-looking. Charming when he wanted to be, bitingly cold when he thought that would work better.

Oh, yes, she had a feel for that kind of man.

Her mother’s kind.

Not rich like this, of course. You grew up in a small town at the end of nowhere, the men with all the money and power owned the Chevy dealership. The gas station. The shops on what really was called Main Street. And none had been as handsome as Lucas Vieira but the basics were the same.

Too much money, too much power, too much arrogance. Mama had always fallen hard for men who were rich and good-looking and one hundred percent no-good.

Caroline had never understood it. Mama was bright. She was logical about everything else; you had to be, to raise a child without money or a husband. Still, she’d fallen for the same kind of guy over and over.

One good thing was that Caroline had learned from Mama’s mistakes. She’d avoided boys like that in high school, in college, here in New York.

So, what in hell was she doing tonight?

She could never pull this off. Pretend to be Lucas Vieira’s date. His girlfriend. Anybody’s girlfriend, in a setting like this.

“Mr. Vieira,” she said, rushing the words together, “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

“I agree. But the people we’re meeting haven’t shown up yet, so—”

“I shouldn’t be here. I’m not—I’m not going to be very good at this.”

“You’ll be fine.”

There was a grim quality to his voice. He was desperate, but how could a man like this be desperate? He could snap his fingers and damned near every female in the place would come running. Okay. He needed a translator. She could, she supposed, be that, but she could never pull off pretending to be involved with him.

“I can translate for you. But the rest—”

“The rest is the most important part.”

Caroline frowned. “I don’t get it. Why would me pretending to be your date be important?”

“Not just my date.” His mouth thinned. “My lover. My mistress.” His hand moved up her arm to her shoulder. She could feel the heat of his fingers on her bare skin. “We’ll need to convey a sense of intimacy, Dani. Do you understand?”

She blinked. Dani? Right. Right. That was her name tonight. She was Dani. Oh, if only she were! She had no idea what Dani did when she wasn’t in class but there was a sense of sophistication to her that suggested Dani would know how to deal with a man who looked like this. Who sounded like this, that faint, sexy accent, that husky tone of command. A man whose scent was clean and masculine and crisp, if you could call a scent “crisp.”

And when had they moved closer to each other? She didn’t recall that happening but, somehow, it had, close enough so she had to tilt her head back to look into his face.

“Dani. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

“Intimacy,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Yes.”

“But why? If this is a business dinner—”

He hesitated. To her surprise, faint stripes of color appeared on his cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders and she thought, why, he’s almost human!

“The man I’m doing business with has a wife. She’s—she’s an unusual woman. Very assertive. Make that aggressive. When she wants something, she goes after it.” The color in his face deepened. “No matter what that something is, no matter if that something reciprocates or not—”

“She’s hitting on you?”

“You, ah, you might say she’s…” He paused. “Damned right, she is. And I’m counting on your presence to stop it.”

Caroline swallowed hard. “Mr. Vieira—”

“Lucas.”

“Lucas. That just cinches it. I can’t—there’s no way I could—”

“Damnit!”

He was staring over her head. The expression on his face went from harsh to grave.

Caroline stiffened. “What?” she said, and tried to look back, but his hand tightened on her shoulder.

“No. Keep looking at me.”

“But—”

“It’s the Rostovs. The people we’re meeting. They’re coming toward us.”

If he’d said Genghis Khan’s army was thundering out of the steppes at that moment, she couldn’t have felt a greater flash of terror.

“This is not good, Mr. Vieira.”

“For God’s sake, it’s Lucas. Lucas! Mistresses do not call their lovers by their surnames!”

“But I’m not your mistress. I don’t want anyone to think I’m your mistress.” Caroline could hear the rising panic in her voice and she took a steadying breath. “I don’t believe in women being mistresses. In them being property. In being owned and supported and—and held as chattel by men, and—”

“Luke-ahs!”

A meaty hand slapped Lucas on the shoulder. The man that went with it was meaty, too. “Enormous” was a better word, Caroline thought. He had small eyes, a big nose and a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

“Leo,” Lucas said. “It’s good to see you again.”

Leo Rostov’s gaze slid to Caroline.

“Ah. This is your voman.”

“No,” Caroline said, “I’m—”

“Yes,” Lucas said with a little chuckle that had no connection to the pressure of his fingers digging into her flesh as he slipped his arm around her waist and brought her to his side. “But she’s one of the ‘liberated’ women, Leo, if you know what I mean. She’ll bristle if you call her ‘my woman.’” He looked down at Caroline. “Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

Was that a note of desperation in Lucas Vieira’s voice? A glint of it in his green eyes? Well, he’d got himself into this mess. How he’d done it was anyone’s guess but he could damned well get himself out of—

“Luke-ahhhs!”

A woman slipped from behind Rostov’s bulky figure. One look, and Caroline understood everything. Ilana Rostov was stunning. Big hair. Big breasts. Big diamonds.

And from the way she looked at Lucas, she was, without question, a cougar on the hunt.

“Luke-ahhhs, oh Luke-ahhhs, you darling man. How lovely to see you again.”

“Ilana.” Lucas’s arm tightened around Caroline. “I’d like to introduce my—”

“Howdoyoudo?” Ilana said, without taking her eyes from Lucas. Smiling, batting her lashes, she stepped in front of him, her face upturned, her breasts touching his chest. “A kiss, darling. You know that is how we Russians greet old friends.” Smiling, she rose on her toes and wound her arms around his neck. Lucas jerked back but it didn’t matter. Nothing was going to stop her.

Not true, Caroline thought. Something could, and would. Her spiked gold heel, nailing Ilana Rostov’s instep.

Ilana shrieked and stumbled back. Caroline threw her a look of abject innocence.

“My goodness, did I step on your foot? I am so sorry!” Swinging toward Lucas, taking the place Ilana Rostov had vacated, Caroline looked up at him. The expression on his face was priceless; it took all her effort not to burst into giggles, but why spoil things now? “Lucas? Sweetie? I’m thrilled to meet your friends but what about dinner?” Still smiling, she moved closer, until they were a breath apart. “I’m absolutely starved, darling.”

She watched the swift play of emotions across his face as surprise gave way to sheer delight—and then to something darker, deeper, and far more dangerous. His arms went around her. She spread her hands flat against his chest, felt the strong, steady beat of his heart.

“Yes,” he said. “So am I.”

No way was he talking about a meal.

Caroline felt her heart thud. When had he seized control of the game?

“Mr. Vieira,” she said, “I mean, Lucas—”

He laughed, bent his head to hers and took hot, exciting possession of her mouth.

CHAPTER THREE

THAT little slip, Dani calling him “Mr. Vieira,” could have been Lucas’s undoing.

That was the reason he kissed her. The sole reason. Anything to convince the Rostovs that he and the woman in his arms had an intimate relationship.

Why else would he kiss her? He didn’t know her and she didn’t know him. He didn’t have any wish to know her; he was off women for a while.

Kissing the woman with the pale gold hair and hazel eyes was a matter of expediency. It was meant to establish intimacy, to take the sting out of the way she’d addressed him and that glimpse he’d had of Ilana’s raised eyebrows.

And, while he was at it, the kiss was to remind her of her function here tonight.

For those reasons, no other, Lucas took his supposed mistress in his arms and kissed her. It wasn’t even much of a kiss, just a light brush of his mouth over hers.

But her lips were warm. Silken. Her little “oh” of shocked breath was warm, too, and tasted of mint. Toothpaste, he thought in surprise, a taste that didn’t quite go with the sexy dress, the do-me shoes, and.

And, he stopped thinking.

Everything around him faded. The crowd. The noise. The Rostovs. It was as if each of his senses was solely concentrated on the woman in his arms.

Lucas drew her closer. Slid one hand to the base of her spine and lifted her slightly, just enough so that she fit the contours of his body while he cupped her face with his other hand.

He felt the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest. The tilt of her hips against his. The delicate arc of her cheekbone under his fingers.

Felt himself turn hard as granite.

His lips parted hers. She made a little whisper of sound and he thought, Yes, that’s it, kiss me back.

She did. For a heartbeat. Then she stiffened. She was going to pull away.

He told himself, with admirable logic, that he couldn’t permit that. If they were lovers, she would be eager for his kisses. Anytime. Anywhere. Not just in bed.

Which made him imagine her in his bed, her hair spilling in golden disarray over his pillows, her eyes hot with hunger as he entered her.

Dani sank her small, sharp teeth into his lip.

“Cristos!” Lucas jerked back. Touched the spot with his finger. No blood, nothing but a flash-fire rush of fury.

Rostov roared with laughter. Ilana’s eyebrows sought refuge in her hairline. And Dani…Dani looked as if she might turn and run and, damnit, he could not let that happen!

Lucas’s life had taught him many lessons. Quick recovery. Damage control. Self-control. He needed all those skills now. Somehow, he managed a smile as he wrapped his hand around the blonde’s slender wrist. She’d have to wrestle herself free of his grasp and he was betting she wouldn’t let that happen.

“Now, sweetheart,” he said, his smile changing, going sexy and intimate, “you know we don’t play those games in public.”

Another laugh from Rostov. A pause, and then a little sigh from Ilana.

And the best reward of all, the cold pleasure of seeing crimson sweep into his defiant translator’s beautiful face.

“No,” she said, “we—you and I—we don’t pl—”

“Exactly, darling. We don’t.” She looked as if she were torn between embarrassment and the desire to murder him, and that made it easier for him to tug her closer, curve his arm around her waist and hold her captive against his body. “If you want your reward, you have to wait until the evening ends. You know that, Dani.”

He knew the second his message registered. If she wanted his thousand dollars, she’d have to play the role Jack Gordon had crafted for her.

“Understand, sweetheart?”

Her eyes flashed. No embarrassment now, no fear. “I understand completely—sweetheart.”

Lucas laughed. The lady had guts. He had to admit, he liked that in her. He wasn’t accustomed to it. Women rarely stood up to him. Well, not until he ended a relationship and then some of them balked, but flying into a rage wasn’t the same thing as standing up to him.

Rostov elbowed him in the side. “Your lady is vildcat, Luke-ahs.”

Yes. She was.

She was a great many things. Beautiful. Bright. Skilled in Russian—he had no proof of that yet but, somehow, he felt no reason to doubt it. Add the sweet taste of her mouth, the alluring scent of her skin, the lush feel of her against him and she was an intriguing package, the embodiment of sex and intellect rolled into one.

Except for her name.

It didn’t fit her. It was flippant. Unfeminine. And she was neither. She’d be an interesting woman to get to know.

Too bad that wasn’t on the agenda.

“You know,” he said, glancing at his watch, “it’s getting late. Why don’t we go straight to the restaurant and have drinks there?”

“Ve vill haff champagne,” Rostov said, clapping Lucas on the back, “once we walk over two tiny spots, da?”

Lucas cocked his head. Dani rattled off something in Russian, Rostov answered, and she looked at Lucas.

“He means that there are two small areas of concern in the deal you and he have made, and he wants to talk about them.”

Lucas smiled.

His plan had worked. Rostov was ready to conclude things, Dani understood the nuances of translating. And seeing her now, cheeks still slightly flushed, hair a little disheveled, eyes glittering, not even Ilana would question their relationship.

He could relax.

All that remained was a final few hours of sociability. Then he and Rostov would shake hands and say goodbye, Ilana would become a bad memory, he’d give Dani Sinclair a check for a thousand dollars and they’d never see each other again.

He’d have to thank Jack Gordon.

This wasn’t the disaster he’d anticipated. In fact, it was working out just fine.

Caroline sat across the restaurant table from The Woman With The Frozen Face and wondered how she could have got herself into such a situation.

Two rich men. A woman married to one of them but on the make for the other. And she, the buffer between them.

Actually, that part had worked out just fine.

She still couldn’t believe how quickly Lucas Vieira had got out of the quicksand after she’d bitten him. She still couldn’t even believe she’d bitten him!

Hell, he was lucky she hadn’t grabbed the nearest lethal object and brained him with it.

Kissing her that way. Pulling her against him. Letting her feel the beat of his heart, the warmth of his body. The swift hardening of his aroused flesh.

Biting him was better than he’d deserved and though she’d been furious at how easily he’d turned the bite into something sexy, she had to admire him for being fast on his feet.

Caroline reached for her champagne flute and brought it to her lips.

And for using the incident to convince the Botox Cougar that they were lovers.

Ilana had bought the entire act. She’d followed Caroline into the loo after they’d taxied to the restaurant and looked at her reflection in the mirror that hung above the elegant triple vanity.

“Congratulations, Miss Sinclair.”

“Who?” Caroline had almost said, but she’d remembered just in time.

“Your lover is quite a man.”

A blush had crept into Caroline’s face. What did you say to that?

“Surely,” the Cougar had purred, “he is remarkable in bed.”

The mirror had shown Caroline the color in her face going from pink to red.

“He’s all right,” she’d blurted.

Ilana had laughed. Even the attendant, who’d come to the vanity to provide them with little hand towels, couldn’t repress a smile.

“I think he must find your attitude a change from the usual, da? The careless way you treat him.” The Cougar’s eyes had met Caroline’s in the glass. “You know, I did not at first believe you were his mistress. You do not seem his type.”

Truth time. Caroline had taken a breath.

“Of course I’m his mistress,” she’d said calmly. “Why else would I be with him tonight? ”

For five hundred dollars, the voice within her had whispered.

Because, no question about it, Ilana Rostov was right. She was, most assuredly, not Lucas’s type.

She wasn’t the type that belonged in this restaurant, either.

The place was small, intimate and elegant. The patrons were elegant, too. She recognized familiar faces from movies and television and magazine covers. The women were expensively dressed. The men exuded wealth and power.

And almost all of them, men and women, had noticed Lucas, the men with nods and smiles of recognition, the women with glances that could only be called covetous.

More than one woman had looked at her in a way that said she was amazingly lucky to have such a man’s attention. And she was. Or she would have been, if any of this was real, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t, and she had to keep remembering that—and it was difficult because Lucas was so attentive.

And so dangerously, excitingly sexy, even when he and Rostov had dropped into intense conversation over drinks. Ilana had translated for her husband in a low voice. Caroline had done the same for Lucas.

It had gone very well—except for those times he’d posed a question to her, or leaned in, to hear what she had to say. Then he’d brought his dark head down to hers; she’d felt the whisper of his breath on her skin, found herself thinking that all she had to do was lift her head, just a little, and her cheek would brush his, she’d feel the faint abrasion of that sexy five o’clock stubble against her skin.

Even now, with the deal concluded, a second bottle of champagne opened and poured, the danger wasn’t over.

Every now and then, Lucas would touch her.

Her hair. Her hand. Her shoulder, when he lay his arm along the back of her chair and brushed his fingers against her bare skin.

It was part of the masquerade, or maybe he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. He was a man accustomed to being with women; everything about him made that clear. Either way, it meant nothing. But whenever he touched her—whenever he touched her.

A tremor shot through her. Lucas, who was talking with Rostov but had his hand on Caroline’s, leaned in.

“Are you cold, sweetheart? Do you want my jacket?”

His jacket? Warm from his body, undoubtedly bearing his scent?

“Dani? If you like, I can warm you.”

Her eyes flew to his. Something glowed in those deep green depths. Was he toying with her? Her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest.

“Thank you,” she said carefully, “I’m fine.”

He smiled. Her heart took another leap.

He had the sexiest smile she’d ever seen.

He had the sexiest everything.

Eyes. Face. Hands. Body. And that kiss…That just-for-show kiss. She’d felt it straight down to her toes. The warmth of his mouth, the feel of his hands…

She made a little sound. Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I just—I just can’t decide what to order.”

“Let me order for you, darling.”

She wanted to say “no” but that would have been foolish. Reading Chekhov was easier than reading the menu. Black truffle mayonnaise. Whipped dill. She doubted either had anything to do with what you put on a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, or the kosher dill pickle you’d eat with it.

It was only that saying she’d let him do something personal for her made her feel uncomfortable—

“Dani?”

And that was ridiculous. There was nothing personal about ordering a meal.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

Lucas brought her hand to his lips. “Two thank-yous in a row. I must be doing something right.”

The Rostovs smiled. That was good. After all, this performance was for them.

She had to keep remembering that.

Her toes curled.

Oh God, she thought again, as the waiter took their orders, she was as out of her element as a hummingbird in a blizzard. Not just here, in these surroundings.

She was out of her element with this man.

She could leave now. She could. She’d done her job. Ilana Rostov was behaving herself. Her translation duties were completed now that, metaphorically, twenty billion dollars had changed hands. Twenty billion! She couldn’t even start to envision that amount of money but Lucas had mentioned it with less fuss than Dani had shown about the five hundred she’d pay her for tonight’s masquerade.

It was a lie, all of it, and Caroline understood the reason for it. If she’d had the Botox Cougar after her, well, the male equivalent, she’d have done whatever it took to throw her off the trail.

It was just that—that there’d been moments tonight when she’d thought, when she’d wondered, when she’d imagined how it would feel if she really were Lucas Vieira’s date, if she were his lover, if the evening would end in a softly lit room with him undressing her, baring her body to his hands, his mouth.

And thinking like that was wrong.

The waiter brought the first course. Just in time. She needed food. She hadn’t eaten in hours and hours. No wonder her brain was in meltdown.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t swallow much more than a mouthful. She couldn’t eat the main course, either. She was sure it had to be delicious. It looked beautiful, nothing like food, but beautiful anyway.

Trouble was, her stomach had gone on strike. No room for food here, it said, butterflies in residence.

“Lucas.” Was that breathless, desperate little voice hers? “Lucas,” she said again, and he turned to her. “I—I—”

His eyes searched hers. A muscle knotted in his jaw. Then he took her hand, did that incredible-hand-kissing thing again and looked across the table at Leo Rostov, who was in the middle of telling an endless joke.

“Leo,” he said politely, “Dani’s exhausted. You’re going to have to excuse us.”

It was a request but it wasn’t. There was a tone of command in his voice. She heard it and she knew Rostov did, too. His ruddy face grew ruddier. Leonid Rostov wasn’t accustomed to having someone else call an end to the festivities.

“Lucas,” Caroline whispered, “it’s okay. If you have to—”

“What I have to do,” he said quietly, “is see you home.”

For the second time, she saw that her gorgeous, arrogant date was gorgeous and arrogant but that somewhere inside him, he was real.

There was a flurry of activity. Lucas took out his cell phone, arranged for his driver to meet him outside the restaurant. He waved off Rostov’s attempt to pay the bill and ordered another bottle of Cristal.

“You and Ilana stay and enjoy yourselves,” he said.

And then they were out of the restaurant, into the midnight streets. Lucas turned her toward him.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Thank you. I just—I’ve had a long day, and—”

His hands were warm and hard on her elbows. There was a look of concern on his face. They were standing so close that she could feel the heat coming off him, see that the emerald irises of his eyes were ringed with black.

Caroline shuddered.

“Damnit,” he said gruffly, and he took off his suit jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

Just as she feared, as she’d longed, the fabric held his warmth. His scent.

“No,” she said quickly, “really, I don’t—”

“Let me warm you,” he said, just as he’d said a while ago, but this time there was no questioning what she heard in his voice, what she saw in his eyes as she looked up at him.

The world seemed to stop.

“Hell,” he said roughly.

She could have asked why he’d said that. Why his voice sounded as if it had been run through gravel. But asking would have been foolish and she had done enough foolish things tonight, starting with accepting Dani’s proposal and ending with not walking out of the hotel lobby the second she’d laid eyes on Lucas Vieira.

“Dani,” he said, the single word dark with warning, and she made a little sound, took a step toward him and he knotted his hands in the lapels of the jacket and pulled her into the heat, the power of his body.

And did what he’d wanted to do the entire night.

Bent his head. Took her mouth. Kissed her gently and when she whimpered, rose on her toes and wound her arms around his neck. When she opened her lips to his, his kiss deepened, burned hotter than a flame.

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