EIGHT SISTERS, EIGHT SCANDALOUSLY SEDUCTIVE STORIES

Scandal on the night of the world-famous one hundredth Balfour Charity Ball has left the Balfour family in disarray! Proud patriarch Oscar Balfour knows that something must be done. His only option is to cut his daughters off from their lavish lifestyles and send them out into the real world to stand on their own two feet. So he dusts off the Balfour family rules and uses his powerful contacts to place each girl in a situation that will challenge her particular personality. He is determined that each of his daughters should learn that money will not buy happiness—integrity, decorum, strength, trust…and love are everything!

Each month Mills & Boon is delighted to bring you an exciting new instalment from The Balfour Legacy.

You won’t want to miss out!

MIA’S SCANDAL – Michelle Reid

KAT’S PRIDE – Sharon Kendrick

EMILY’S INNOCENCE – India Grey

SOPHIE’S SEDUCTION – Kim Lawrence

ZOE’S LESSON – Kate Hewitt

ANNIE’S SECRET – Carole Mortimer

BELLA’S DISGRACE – Sarah Morgan

OLIVIA’S AWAKENING – Margaret Way

Emily’s Innocence
The Balfour Legacy
India Grey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A self-confessed romance junkie, INDIA GREY was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon® Writers’ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of Romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!

For the Elmhurst Olympics crowd, and for Louise in particular, much-loved keeper of the family flame.

xx

Family Tree

Prologue

‘CALL me when you grow up!’

As Emily ducked beneath the ghostly, blossom-shrouded trees and emerged onto the twilit lawn his voice followed her: mocking, amused and, with its faintly exotic accent, horribly sexy.

She quickened her pace, thinking only of putting as much distance as possible between herself and the man in the shadows. Head bent, oblivious to the curious stares of the guests scattered across the velvet lawns of Balfour Manor, she hurried towards the house, pressing her teeth down into a lip that still tingled and throbbed from where he had kissed her.

The 99th Balfour Charity Ball was in full swing and the sound of laughter, conversation and clinking glasses drifted above the music coming from the marquee. Ahead of her the majestic house shimmered with light from every window, its honey-coloured stone glowing in the dusk like old gold. Behind her the darkness of the garden pressed at her back, spreading goose bumps over her skin. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it all through her body, a rapid, throbbing pulse that intensified as she ran lightly up the shallow stone steps to the house.

He had ruined everything.

She’d looked forward to this party for so long—all those years at boarding school, when she’d been reduced to picking over the edited details of the annual Balfour Ball in celebrity magazines and piecing together snatches of gossip from her older sisters. This year, with ballet school all but finished, her time had finally come.

She blinked as she stepped into the brightness of the hallway. Heading straight for the stairs she gathered up the long skirt of her dress, trying not to think of the excitement with which she’d put it on only a couple of hours earlier. She had felt so grown up and sophisticated…

Until the moment those knowing, gold-flecked eyes had wandered lazily over her, and then she had felt something different altogether.

Reaching her bedroom she slammed the door and leaned against it for a moment, breathing hard. The room was filled with violet shadows which blurred the edges of everything, making the familiar objects seem suddenly strange and unrecognizable. She didn’t turn on the light though. Instead she found herself drawn towards the window.

Spread out before her the garden glittered with tiny lights. It was like a picture from a child’s storybook—an enchanted kingdom, the butterfly ball. And that’s what she’d wanted, she thought with a sob, leaning her burning forehead against the pane. She’d wanted it to be like a fairy tale, with the handsome prince just waiting to fall in love with her.

Her eyes were drawn beyond the delicate strings of fairy lights and the glittering crystal chandeliers that stood on the tables across the lawn; deeper, into the darkness itself, where inky shadows moved beneath the trees.

That’s where he was.

Emily pressed her hands to the glass, suddenly pierced by a shaft of longing so pure and painful that she couldn’t breathe. His cool, clean taste was still on her lips and she ran her tongue over them, remembering the moment when he had stepped out in front of her beneath the trees and pulled her to him—languidly, unhurriedly, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world…

And kissed her.

She had been too shocked to resist. It was as if some powerful tidal wave had been unleashed inside her and she was helpless to do anything as it sucked her down, into warm, secret whirlpools of unfathomable sensation, obliterating logic. His mouth moved over hers, slowly and expertly, and his fingers caressed the back of her neck, the hollow beneath her jaw, sending ripples of intense, shuddering pleasure down her spine, until she felt taut and fragile enough to shatter.

And then he lifted his head and in that moment she caught the gleam of his wicked gold eyes in the darkness. The spell was broken and she surfaced again, gasping and fighting for breath, speechless and horrified at her own unrecognisable behaviour. Terrified of the ease with which he had made her act like that.

Because Prince Luis Cordoba of Santosa was handsome, of that there was no doubt. But he wasn’t interested in love, and behind the designer suit and dazzling smile he was no harmless, fairy-tale Prince Charming.

Dangerous, compelling, beguiling…

He was the wolf.

Chapter One

One year later

BALFOUR MANOR—golden and majestic and glowing like topaz in a bed of emerald velvet. Every detail was as familiar to Emily as the back of her own hand. And yet it was the last thing she expected to see in the grimy, diesel-scented chill of the underground station.

It was rush hour. Carried along in the flow of harassed and preoccupied commuters, blinking in the sudden gloom after the brightness of the May evening outside, Emily’s first thought was that she was imagining it. That, after two months of self-imposed exile in a bedsit that added a whole new dimension to the word grim, her homesickness had finally got the better of her and she was hallucinating.

Behind her a man cannoned into her as she stopped in her tracks, and swore disgustedly. Muttering apologies Emily ducked her head and pushed against the stream of people, back in the direction of the news stand. She must have been mistaken. It was a picture of Buckingham Palace she’d seen—some story about a minor royal indiscretion or—

Illegitimacy Scandal Rocks Balfour Legacy

Light-headed with horror Emily snatched up a paper and scanned the column beneath the headline, her mind reeling. It bristled with exclamation marks and was dotted with sly ellipses, but the names jumped out at her: Olivia Balfour…Bella…Alexandra…Zoe…

Zoe?

‘Are you going to buy that paper? I’m not running a library here, you know.’

From an alternative reality the disgruntled voice of the newspaper-seller penetrated her consciousness. ‘Oh. Yes. Sorry. Of course,’ she said hastily, delving into the pocket of her cardigan for the five-pound tip given to her by a drunken businessman who had told her all about his wife and kids and then put his hand up her skirt. Mollified, the newspaper man gave her a conspiratorial wink.

‘’Ow the other’ arf live, eh? Beautiful houses in all the best spots across the world, cars, money, parties—but I ask you, is any one of them Balfours happy?’ Shaking his head, he gave an amused chuckle.

No, Emily thought numbly as she backed away, the paper clutched in her hands. I don’t think we are—not any more. She attempted to give him an answering smile, but her face was stiff, her eyes wide and unblinking as the words from the article swooped and swelled inside her head: shocking discovery…illicit affair…illegitimate…disgrace…scandal…

Just a year ago it had all been so different. As she rejoined the press of people the moment before the guests started to arrive and she had gone downstairs in her blue silk dress, feeling so grown-up.

But she hadn’t been grown up at all. Not then. She’d been stupidly, embarrassingly naive.

She rejoined the press of people crowding down into the airless tunnel, holding the newspaper with its lurid headline against her body as if that way she could keep its accusations and speculations secret from the rest of the world. As she waited on the platform she noticed with a stab of anguish that a woman to her left was holding a copy of the paper, her face bored and expressionless as she read the story beneath the headline, as if it was insignificant.

A rumble in the darkness indicated the arrival of the train. Pushing to the front of the crowd squeezing onto the train with uncharacteristic assertiveness, Emily slipped quickly into an empty seat, for the first time in her life without looking round to see if anyone else needed it. As the train jerked into the darkness of the tunnel she took a deep breath and unfolded the paper.

Exclusive! When Blue Blood Turns Bad

Last night there was only one place to see and be seen—at the Balfour Charity Ball! But despite the glitz and the glamour, all was not as it seemed.

Behind the scenes, Olivia Balfour and her scandalous twin Bella were locked in a battle over a shocking discovery—that their late mother, socialite Alexandra Balfour, had conceived their sister Zoe during an illicit affair!

Biting her lip against a whimper of distress Emily raised her head and stared blindly ahead of her as Zoe’s face swam into her mind. Beautiful, wild Zoe, with her dazzling green eyes that set her apart from her blue-eyed sisters.

She looked down at the paper again, scanning over the rest of the article as her mind whirred and her stomach churned. She was trembling, as if she was cold, and had to grip the paper tightly in both hands to hold it steady enough to read.

The Balfour name might be synonymous with glamour and style, but this is the second illegitimate family member to be outed in as many months. It seems this dynasty is rotten to its core…

Which was more or less the same accusation that she’d hurled at her father on the night of Mia’s untimely arrival at Balfour Manor. Emily stiffened as the memory of that appalling evening seized her in an icy grip. Poor Mia. She had come in search of a happy family and had instead had walked straight into a tragedy worthy of Chekhov.

The train jolted to a standstill in another station, bringing Emily roughly back to the present. She blinked, looking around her as another tide of people ebbed and flowed through the doors—anonymous faces with lives and interests and joys and heartaches she couldn’t begin to guess. And she was just another of them. Another anonymous face in the crowd. A girl on her way home from work, just like any other.

A void of loneliness opened up in front of her, and before she could do anything she felt herself hurtling into it. She squeezed her eyes shut, sucking in a breath, momentarily dizzy and disorientated with homesickness. It happened from time to time; she was getting used to it. It was just a case of holding on and waiting for it to pass. The problem was, up until two months ago, her family and her dancing had been her whole life. And now she had neither.

She looked down at the newspaper, avid for any crumbs of information about the people she loved and had turned her back on so completely. At the bottom of the front page article she read: ‘For a full report and pictures of last night’s sparkling charity ball, see pages 12-13…’

With shaking fingers she turned the pages, smoothing the paper across her knees as she came to the colourful splash of photographs. Tears leapt into her eyes, but she blinked them away impatiently. Oh, God, there was Kat, looking gorgeous in a dress of scarlet satin, and Bella and Olivia standing together, their dazzling, practised smiles not quite hiding the tension in their eyes. ‘The calm before the cat-fight,’ read the caption beneath the picture. Looking into their familiar faces Emily realised that she was smiling, even though her heart felt like it was being prised open with a pickaxe, but her smile faded as her gaze moved to a picture of her father standing next to a familiar and distinguished English actress. She was a long-time friend of the family, but noticing the way Oscar’s hand was looped lightly round her waist Emily suddenly found herself wondering if she’d ever been more than that…

The shadows gathered at the corners of her mind, the dark shapes slipping through the trees.

Hating herself for her cynicism and suspicion, hating her father for planting it in her mind, she glanced quickly away, to the next photograph.

And froze.

She tried to tear her gaze away. Really, she did. She didn’t want to keep looking helplessly into the slanting golden eyes that stared straight out at her from the page, or remember how it had felt to have them looking back at her for real. Moving over her body. Glittering with amusement and delicious wickedness…

‘Prince Luis Cordoba of Santosa arrives at the party,’ said the text beneath the picture. ‘But will the newly reformed playboy prince be able to withstand the temptation of the wild and wayward Balfour girls?’

At that moment the train juddered to a halt and dazedly Emily realised she’d reached her stop. She sprang to her feet, bundling the paper up. For a split second she considered leaving it on the seat, but instead found herself tucking it under her arm as she got off the train.

Because she hated the thought of a stranger picking it up and poring over the sordid details of her family’s disgrace, she told herself as she walked briskly towards the stairs. Not because she wanted to read any more about Luis Cordoba, or gaze longer at the photograph of him looking brooding and beautiful in black tie, for goodness’ sake.

Of course not.

Why would she? He was dangerous, and Emily didn’t like danger. She had no interest in him whatsoever—a fact which she’d made perfectly clear at last year’s ball.

And just to prove it to herself again now, she dropped the paper into the first bin she passed at the entrance to the station. And she allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction as she walked purposefully away.

‘Where in hell’s name are we, exactly?’

Luis gazed moodily out of the blacked-out window as his car nosed its way slowly through the traffic-clogged outer reaches of London. At least he assumed they were still in London, though the dingy rows of scruffy houses bore little resemblance to the elegant city he was familiar with.

His private secretary consulted his clipboard. ‘I believe it’s a place called Larchfield Park, sir,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s an area with a high proportion of unemployed residents, and significant problems with drug abuse, gang violence and gun and knife crime.’

‘How charming,’ Luis drawled, leaning back against the soft leather upholstery with a twisted smile. ‘Tomás, may I suggest that if you ever leave your job in the royal household you don’t apply for a position as a holiday rep. If I’d wanted to die I could have simply crashed my helicopter into the nearest cliff in Santosa.’

Tomás didn’t smile. ‘Sir, please let me reassure you that the car is fully armoured. You’re in no danger. Since the crown prince’s death we’ve increased security by—’

‘I know,’ Luis interrupted wearily. ‘I was joking. Forget it.’

He closed his eyes. His hangover, held at bay all day by a combination of strong painkillers and stronger coffee, was threatening to make a comeback, hammering at his temples with depressing persistence. He had only himself to blame, of course…

But then he was used to that.

Anyway, he thought bleakly, given that his behaviour for the past ten months had been completely exemplary, he could just about forgive himself one minor lapse at the Balfour Charity Ball. Especially since no high-profile models had been involved. No married women. No women at all, in fact. His vow to Rico was intact. It had just been him and a rather too plentiful supply of Oscar Balfour’s excellent champagne.

It was all so different from last year.

He looked out of the window, not seeing the evening sunlight slanting onto the graffiti-daubed walls, the litter-strewn streets, but a pair of blue eyes—Balfour blue, people called it—and remembering the way their clear, cornflower-coloured depths had darkened when he’d kissed her. With shock, and with desire perhaps, but also with…

Deus.

He felt a stab of self-disgust as he pushed the memory away. Perhaps it was just as well Oscar’s youngest daughter hadn’t been there last night. Emily Balfour had been every bit as beautiful as her older sisters—a fact which had initially distracted him from her quite astonishing lack of experience. If he’d known how green she was he would have taken it more slowly, taken more time to draw out the tremulous passion he had sensed beneath her rigidly polite veneer. But hindsight was a wonderful thing. Last year, if he’d known a lot of things that now seemed all too bloody obvious, his life would look very different.

‘We’re here, sir.’

Tomás’s voice interrupted his thoughts and Luis realised the car had pulled into a sort of compound surrounded by high wire-mesh fencing. It was now coming to a standstill outside a shabby-looking single-storey building that had clearly seen better days.

His security team had arrived ahead of them and were attempting to be discreet as they patrolled the perimeter of the compound, while a guard stood in the doorway and talked into a microphone headset. A small crowd of gangly youths in hooded sweatshirts had gathered on the other side of the fence.

Luis sighed inwardly.

‘Remind me what we’re here for again?’

‘Well, sir, it’s a dance group of—’

Luis groaned and held up his hands. ‘OK, you can stop right there, unless the next part of that sentence was going to be “eighteen-year-old exotic belly dancers”.’

‘No, sir.’ Tomás consulted his clipboard again. ‘It’s mixed programme. This is a local youth centre, which provides a number of different sports and dance classes for children aged from four to sixteen. Tonight we’re here to watch a performance of tap, jazz, street dance and ballet.’

‘Ballet?’ Luis repeated scathingly, ‘Meu Deus. I take it this is all part of the master plan to reinvent me as sincere, high-minded patron of the arts.’

‘The press office did think this kind of involvement with children’s community arts would be a useful way of highlighting a more sensitive side to your character, yes, sir.’

Despair and frustration closed in on Luis, surrounding him as palpably as the high wire fence against which the youths were gathering outside. ‘In that case you’d better nudge me when it’s time to clap,’ he said wearily. ‘And wake me up if I start to snore.’

Emily turned the corner from the tube station and hurried in the direction of the community centre. She was late. Across the road a cherry tree in full blossom was like a ghostly galleon in full sail in the gloom, and as she walked quickly past, a gust of sudden wind sent white petals swirling across the street, their scent for a moment overpowering the spicy smell of Indian and African food from the takeaway shops at the end of the street. Emily pulled her lumpy second-hand cardigan more tightly around her, bracing herself against another wave of homesickness as she remembered the Japanese cherry trees at the end of the rose walk at Balfour. Where Luis Cordoba had kissed her, a wicked little voice reminded her.

She quickened her pace, automatically lifting her hand to her mouth at the memory as if she could scrub it away, and along with it the disturbing, insistent feelings it aroused in her.

But the next moment all that was forgotten as she saw the crowd of hooded teenagers pressed against the fence of the community centre. As she got closer she could see what was drawing them: two black, official-looking cars with darkened windows were parked in front of the building.

Oh, God. Her heart plummeted and her footsteps faltered as fear seized her. What was it this time? Another stabbing? Or a shooting…

And then she was running, her heavy plait thudding against her back with every step, her eyes fixed on the scruffy building to which she had become so attached in the past two lonely months. Larchfield Youth Centre offered a refuge from the problems of the outside world and gave a new sense of purpose to the lives of hundreds of underprivileged, displaced and disillusioned young people.

And to one overprivileged, displaced and disillusioned heiress too.

A sinister-looking man was standing by the door, wearing a headset. She glanced at him nervously, half expecting him to try to stop her from going in, but he merely stared at her impassively which worried her even more somehow. Heart thudding uneasily, she hurried along the dingy corridor, breathing in the now-familiar smell of teenagers—hormones and hair gel, undercut with a faint trace of stale cigarettes—towards the girl’s changing room at the far end. As she opened the door she was instantly enveloped in chatter of fifty excited voices.

In the midst of the crush of Lycra-clad girls, Kiki Odiah, Larchfield’s youth worker, was spraying glittery hairspray over the head of a small girl in a silver leotard and tap shoes. Emily pushed her way over, shrugging off her bulky cardigan as she went.

‘Sorry I’m late. I haven’t had time to go home and change.’

Through a cloud of glitter Kiki threw her a glance of pure relief. ‘You’re here now, honey, that’s all that matters.’

‘What’s going on?’ Emily couldn’t keep the anxiety from her voice. ‘I saw the cars outside—is it immigration? They haven’t come for the Luambos, have they?’

Kiki shook her head so the beads in her hair gave a musical rattle. Her dark eyes glittered with suppressed excitement as she sprayed hairspray on the next small head. ‘You’ll never guess.’

‘Tell me, then!’

‘Royalty.’

‘What?’ Emily gasped, a chilly sensation of misgiving prickling at the base of her spine. Several of the minor royals were friends of Oscar and regular visitors to Balfour. ‘Who?’

Kiki shrugged. ‘Not British, that’s all I know.’ Luckily she was too absorbed in hairspraying to register Emily’s visible relief, shaking the can with a rattle as she continued. ‘But then I’m just a lowly youth worker. I only found out about all of this when a carload of men in suits arrived and started crawling over every inch of the place this afternoon. And now the whole of the council youth services department have showed up, and are suddenly taking an interest in what we do.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Which is what you might call ironic, seeing as we’ve only got enough money to keep us open for the next two months.’

‘Maybe that’s why they’re here, whoever they are, to give us the money to stay open?’ Emily suggested hopefully. The issue of funding hung over everything at Larchfield like a guillotine.

‘I don’t see why. I’m no expert, but it sounds to me like these guys are talking Spanish, and I can’t imagine why any Spanish royalty would be interested in giving money to Larchfield.’

Emily frowned. ‘I can’t imagine why Spanish royalty would be coming to watch our dance show either. I mean, the children have worked really hard, but it’s hardly Sadler’s Wells.’

‘Search me.’ Kiki looked over the children’s heads to the swarthy, olive-skinned guard who had just come into the room, and giggled. ‘In fact, I wish he would search me. I just can’t resist those dark Latin types, can you?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I can,’ said Emily a little too tartly, as the image of Luis Cordoba flashed, in-furiatingly, into her head. ‘Especially at the moment, when we’ve got fifty children to get ready to go onstage in a little over fifteen minutes.’

‘OK, Miss Prim and Proper!’ Kiki grinned. ‘You go and organise your cygnets and I’ll practise my curtsy.’

And she grabbed the hands of the nearest little silver-clad tap dancer and whirled her round, singing, ‘One day my prince will come,’ and laughing.

All that was missing were the thumbscrews and a tuneless rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, thought Luis as he surreptitiously slid back the starched cuff of his shirt and tried to check his watch.

Smothering a sigh he shifted position on the hard plastic chair that was way too small to accommodate his shoulders and the length of his legs. Actually, even without the thumbscrews it was a pretty effective torture. Beside him, Tomás was smiling benignly at the stage where numerous little girls dressed in silver leotards clattered chaotically through a tap routine. But, of course, Tomás had a little daughter of his own, which clearly gave him some sort of mystical insight into the whole thing. Parenthood did that: turned perfectly intelligent, discerning adults into misty-eyed fools.

Even his own brother—the eminently rational Rico—hadn’t been entirely immune, he thought with a stab of anguish. From the moment Luciana had been born her every yawn, every smile, had been scrutinized and analysed with an intense interest to which Luis had found it impossible to relate.

And still did.

Guilt lashed through him—familiar, but still painful enough to make him tense and catch his breath. Tomás threw him a curious glance and Luis forced a smile, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead while the blurry impression of Luciana’s small face swam into his mind’s eye.

He couldn’t even remember with any sort of clarity what she looked like. Or when he’d last seen her. How old was she now? Another whiplash of guilt struck him as he realised he didn’t know for sure. Five, was it? Or six? It had been ten months since Rico and Christiana had died, and Luciana had been five at the time—he knew that because the newspapers had focused so relentlessly on the tragedy of being orphaned at such a young age. Luis’s hands were curled into fists. Had she had a birthday since then?

The performance on the stage appeared to have ended, and the children curtsied with varying degrees of grace. Automatically Luis joined in the applause, taking advantage of the opportunity to lean over and say quietly to Tomás, ‘It is finished?’

‘Not quite, sir. I believe there’s one more item on the programme. Are you all right?’

‘Never better,’ Luis murmured blandly.

Part of the punishment was bearing the pain alone, in silence. He didn’t have the right to share its burden.

He settled uncomfortably back as a line of little girls in snowy white tutus filed onto the stage. These ones were younger than the last group, smaller and more intimidated by the presence of the audience. A collective ‘ahhh’ went up from the rows of people behind Luis as they shuffled into position, sucking their fingers and looking out beyond the stage lights with huge, solemn eyes.

The music began—Dance of the Little Swans. Luis wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the clichéd predictibility of it, or weep for the protracted torment. Instead he arranged his face into what he hoped was an expression of appreciation and watched as the children raised their arms and began to bend their knees in a series of careful pliés.

One little girl at the back stood still, frozen in anguish. The other children rose up onto their tiptoes and pirouetted shakily, but the only movement she made was that of her wide, terrified eyes which kept darting to the safety of the wings. The girl next to her was unimpressed by her failure to perform and nudged her heartily in the ribs.

Laughter rippled through the audience. At the front of the stage the other children were stolidly going through their routine, pointing toes, making sweeping movements of their arms and casting occasional furious glances at their classmate at the back. Luis watched her. Maybe it was because he’d just been thinking about his little niece, but something about the girl onstage reminded him of Luciana, even though she looked nothing like her. No doubt a psychiatrist would enjoy explaining that it was just another manifestation of guilt. The child before him had shrunk backwards a little so she was standing outside the spotlight’s glare, but other than that she hadn’t moved, and from his place of honour in the front row he could see the glisten of tears in her eyes and the tremble of her bottom lip.

And then it struck him. It wasn’t just his tormented mind playing tricks on him; it was her attitude of patient suffering, of dignified misery, that reminded him of Luciana. He had seen the same expression on the face of his little niece, sensed the same silent anguish in her in the little time he’d spent with her, and it had made him feel every bit as helpless as he did now.

It wasn’t a good feeling.

A movement in the wings caught his eye. Keeping to the shadows, an older girl ran lightly across the back of the stage and dropped to her knees beside her. For a moment Luis was too relieved to register properly the narrow, very straight back, the glossy dark plait that hung heavily between her shoulder blades, but then she stood again and it was impossible not to notice the length of her extremely shapely legs encased in thick black tights.

She was wearing a short black skirt and a fitted T-shirt, emblazoned across the back of which were the words Pink Flamingo.

Ten months ago he had made a vow to his brother and buried his appetite for women and excess alongside Rico in the family vault on Santosa. Now Luis felt his dormant interest flicker almost painfully back to life. Leaning over to Tomás he whispered, ‘Isn’t the Pink Flamingo a gentlemen’s club?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir.’

No, of course not. But Luis did, and he was intrigued to know what a girl who worked in a lap-dancing club was doing helping out at a children’s ballet show. Bending down, still with her back to the audience, the Pink Flamingo girl took the little dancer’s hand and whispered something in her ear. Relief spread across the small, pinched face as the older girl turned around and began to join in the steps of the dance.

Deus, she was stunning. Towering above the tiny children on the stage she looked every bit the haughty, graceful swan amongst a gaggle of fluffy, ungainly cygnets. Beside her the little girl who had looked so lost a moment ago was now smiling tremulously, growing in confidence and stature by the second.

He watched the precise movements of her slender legs, the upright set of her shoulders and head, and felt a prickle of unease at the back of his neck. Dragging his gaze upwards to her face he blinked, frowning suddenly and leaning forwards in astonishment and disbelief.

It was incredible…impossible…

It was Emily Balfour.

Chapter Two

‘EMILY—are you in there?’

Kiki’s voice echoed off the tiles in the gloomy ladies’ loo. Slumped against the door of the middle cubicle, Emily gritted her teeth to disguise their chattering and tried to sound normal as she answered.

‘Yes, I’m here. Won’t be a second.’

‘Well, make sure you’re not. You just got yourself a royal audience, honey. The prince is coming backstage and he’s specifically asked to meet you so you’d better get out here quick.’

Emily opened the door and looked at Kiki with huge, anguished eyes. ‘I can’t, Kiki. Really—I mean, I’m hardly dressed for meeting royalty and I’ve only worked here for a couple of months anyway so—’

‘Hey.’ Kiki’s kind face was creased with concern. ‘Forget about what you’re wearing. What’s wrong, baby? You look dreadful.’

A quick glance at her reflection in the mirror above the sink told Emily that Kiki was absolutely right. Her face, always pale, was now the eerie white of an extra in a vampire movie, a fact which was emphasized by the way her dark hair was held severely back in her plait. She attempted a wan smile. ‘Thanks. I’m fine. It was just being on stage…dancing in front of an audience, with the music and everything, and—’

Kiki made a sympathetic noise. ‘Nerves, eh?’

No, Emily was going to say. Not nerves. More an absence of nerves. An absence of anything. She was just going through the motions as if she’d been programmed—why couldn’t she feel it any more?

‘Anyway,’ Kiki continued a little breathlessly before she had a chance to speak, ‘the Prince was very impressed. He wants to meet you, and your dance group. I’ve got them all lined up on the stage, and they’re really excited so hurry up.’

‘OK, I’m coming.’ Emily ran her hands under the tap and splashed cold water on her face to try to bring some colour to her cheeks. ‘Which prince is it anyway?’ she said into the depths of the basin.

But it was too late. Kiki had already gone, and the only answer was the bang of the door behind her. Left alone, Emily stared at her reflection in the mirror, not seeing her pinched face but looking instead into the bleakness of a future without dancing. God, less than a year ago when she’d danced the part of Sleeping Beauty in the Royal Ballet School’s final production, no one would have been surprised at the idea of her meeting royalty backstage after a performance. But as a soloist at Covent Garden, not in the capacity of an unpaid teacher in a struggling community arts centre.

But that had been when she could dance. In the few brief, brilliant months when the technical skill she’d built over all those years of training had come together with something else—the indefinable, dangerous something Luis Cordoba had unlocked in her when his beautiful mouth had covered hers in the darkness beneath the trees.

She let out a long breath, turning away from the mirror and smoothing her T-shirt down. A lot had happened in a year.

She pulled open the door and went back to join the children. She’d kicked her shoes off when she went onto the stage and the rough parquet floor snagged at her tights as she hurried back along the corridor. Great, she thought despairingly. That was all she needed. She was so behind with the rent on her horrible bedsit that buying a loaf of bread felt like wanton extravagance at the moment. Tights were as beyond her budget these days as a designer ball gown.

She ran lightly up the steps to the back of the stage. Beyond the wings she could see her class of little dancers lined up and standing very straight, which, along with the deep rumble of male voices, told her that the royal party was already there. Ducking her head she slipped silently onto the stage and took her place at the end of the line, glancing along the row of children as she did so.

Emily’s heart stopped.

His head was bent as he talked to one of the little girls, the stage lights shining on his broad, perfectly muscled shoulders and picking out the gold strands in his deliciously untidy tawny hair. Her stomach dissolved with horror. Oh, God. It was him. It was really him. The royalty Kiki had been talking about was Luis Cordoba, Crown Prince of Santosa, and he was making his way quickly along the line towards her.

Too quickly. The little dancers bobbed curtsies as he passed them, but he barely glanced at them. Emily had the sensation of standing on the track in the path of a speeding train, knowing that the moment of impact was almost upon her. He wouldn’t recognize her, she reassured herself desperately. Why would he? They’d only met once—and then only for a couple of minutes in a situation which was a world away from this. He must meet thousands of women…kiss thousands of women…

Someone was speaking. Dimly, Emily registered that it was one of the council members who’d been round to look at the Larchfield premises in expectation of the youth centre’s closure. ‘This is one of the valuable volunteers who bring new experiences into the lives of our young people. Miss Jones is a graduate of the Royal Ballet School…’

Like an automaton Emily bent her head and sank down in a curtsy. From an etiquette point of view it was the right thing to do, but more importantly it also gave her a great chance to avoid looking up at the man she’d last seen in the garden at Balfour, when he’d drawn her into the shadow of the trees and kissed her with an arrogance and an expertise which shocked and thrilled and horrified her.

Call me when you grow up…

She steeled herself, and looked up.

The express train hit. For a moment the breath was knocked out of her and it was like falling. Like skydiving into the sunset. And then realizing that you didn’t have a parachute.

Luis Cordoba raised one fine eyebrow a fraction. Beneath it his eyes were a hard, dull gold. ‘Really, Miss Jones?’

Oh, God. That sexy accent. Not Spanish—Kiki had been wrong about that. Portuguese. It almost distracted her from the slight emphasis he placed on her name. Or—correction—the random name she’d given when she started volunteering at Larchfield. There was a part of her that had hated the deception and felt that she was betraying the friends she had made by keeping her real identity secret, but the anonymity was like armour. It was her protection and she’d clung to it. And now she felt like she was standing there, naked and wrapped only in the skimpiest of towels, and that the man standing in front of her had hold of the corner and was ready to pull it off her. Just for fun.

‘Y-yes,’ she stammered, looking up into that lean and perfect face, silently begging him not to give her away.

‘The Royal Ballet?’ he said softly. ‘And from there you’ve chosen to come here to teach these children instead of concentrating on your own dancing career? Impressively altruistic. Your family must be very proud of you.’

Only she could hear the hint of challenge in his low, velvety voice. So he did recognize her, and he clearly knew exactly where to insert the knife, how to inflict the deepest wound where it wouldn’t show. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the room—the council officials, Kiki, the children getting restless now—on her, but all of them combined were nothing compared to his cool, metallic glare.

‘I’d like to think they would be,’ she said breathlessly, and instantly regretted it. The words if they knew hung in the air between them, and she waited for him to say them out loud. But Luis Cordoba didn’t play things the straightforward way.

He nodded, slowly, and for a long moment his eyes stayed locked with hers. And then his gaze flickered downwards to the Pink Flamingo logo on the front of her black T-shirt.

‘It’s good to know that you haven’t given up dancing altogether though,’ he said gravely. A brief smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. ‘Keep up the good work, Miss—?’

‘Jones,’ she croaked.

And then he was being ushered forwards by the council officials, who were no doubt keen to take him outside and show him the all-weather football pitch, a fraction of which had been paid for by a council grant. Out of the arc-light beam of his gaze Emily felt like a puppet that had suddenly had its strings cut. Around her the children relaxed into excited chatter, relieved at being released from the need to be on their best behaviour. Emily felt numb.

He’d got it all wrong. Bloody T-shirt. She wanted to run after him and grab his arm, force him to turn round so she could explain that she didn’t dance at the Pink Flamingo—she worked behind the bar. He might have awoken something in her when he’d kissed her, but he hadn’t changed her whole personality for God’s sake…

But he was gone, leaving nothing but a whisper of his masculine, expensive scent in the air. The lights seemed to dim and the shadows around her thicken. It was too late.

The wolf had slipped back into the forest, and she was safe.

So why didn’t she feel more relieved?

‘Stop the car.’

Tomás looked round sharply, surprised. ‘Sir?’

Luis stared straight ahead, his fingers drumming on the walnut inlay of the door. ‘We’ll wait here for a while, and then we’ll go back.’

‘Back, sir?’ Tomás looked alarmed. ‘Why? I thought you’d be keen to leave here as quickly as possible.’

‘I was. I am. But not without bringing “Miss Jones” with me.’

Alarm had turned to a mixture of panic and horror on Tomás’s open face now. ‘Sir…if I may say so, that’s not a good idea. The press office…The papers…The purpose of this trip was to put all those stories firmly in the past.’

‘They are firmly in the past,’ Luis said with quiet, emphatic bitterness. ‘When was the last time I picked up a girl for a one-night stand?’

‘The public have long memories, sir. And those photos of you falling out of nightclubs and groping women in the back of the car still get published regularly. If the newspapers get hold of this…this Miss Jones…’

Luis smiled. ‘You mean if she were to kiss and tell?’

‘Exactly, sir. She could profit handsomely from such a story.’

‘My night of passion with the playboy prince?’ Luis suggested mockingly, then shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

‘With respect, sir, you don’t know that for sure. Some of these girls have no concept of privacy…’

‘With respect, Tomás, I do know it for sure, because I also know that that girl has considerably more to hide than I do. I’m not going to seduce her—I’m going to find out what a nice girl like Emily Balfour is doing in a place like this.’

‘Emily Balfour, sir? But I thought her name was—’

‘Jones? No. That, Tomás, was Oscar’s youngest daughter. Or the one that used to be his youngest until a subsequent claimant to the position arrived on the doorstep.’ Looking out of the window Luis frowned slightly.

‘I’ll ask security to go in and get her, shall I, sir?’ Tomás asked, glancing nervously around. ‘This probably isn’t the best place to hang around.’

‘The car is fully bullet-proof,’ Luis reminded him drily. ‘We’re quite safe. And I don’t think she’ll respond well to being hauled out by security. As I recall from last year, Emily Balfour won’t be pushed into doing anything she doesn’t want to.’

‘Ah, here she is now, sir,’ Tomás said with evident relief. ‘I’ll just get—’

But Luis had already got out of the car. Tomás swore with uncharacteristic crudeness, whipping his mobile phone out of his pocket and speed-dialling the head of security in the other car. At times he found the Crown Prince’s lack of regard for protocol and formality refreshing, but mostly it was just a giant pain in the backside. He just hadn’t seemed to grasp that, since his brother and sister-in-law’s shocking deaths, he was the future of Santosa.

God help them.

Trying to prepare Luis to take the reins of his ailing father was like taking a tiger from the jungle and trying to teach it to jump through hoops. Difficult and dangerous. And, he thought gloomily, if anything went wrong he would be the one to get his head bitten off.

‘’Night, Kiki—see you tomorrow!’

Hastily, not waiting for a reply, Emily slipped out of the door and into the cool, blue evening, wrapping her cardigan tightly around her. Usually she waited while Kiki locked up and the two of them walked part of the way home together, but tonight she just wanted to get out of there and be alone.

‘Can I offer you a lift?’

She jumped, giving a little gasp of shock as a figure emerged from the twilight and stood in front of her, barring her way.

‘Sorry,’ said the same husky, amused drawl. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. But I think that just proves my point that it’s really not safe for you to be out on the streets on your own in the dark. It’s just as well I’m not some drug-crazed youth with a gun in his hand.’

‘I’ll take my chances, thank you,’ Emily muttered, attempting to slip past him. But he was too quick for her. She bit back another gasp as strong fingers closed around her wrist, stopping her in her tracks and pulling her back round so she was facing him.

From the shadows beyond the car someone said something in rapid Portuguese. Luis didn’t turn his head, didn’t loosen his grip, didn’t take his eyes from hers. ‘Sim, obrigado, Tomás.’ he said curtly. ‘This won’t take long.’

‘No, it won’t,’ she said shakily, ‘because I’m not going anywhere with you. Goodbye…’

It was said with more hope than conviction. Her heart was hammering out an uneven rhythm against her ribs, her whole body flooded with adrenaline. In the violet dusk his face was indistinct, but she could see the shadows beneath his aristocratic cheekbones and the glitter of his eyes.

‘What a disappointment. I saw that Pink Flamingo T-shirt and just assumed you’d grown up a bit since last time we met.’

‘I have.’ She spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Which is why I’m not getting into a car with you. Now, if you’ll let me go, it’s been a long day and I want to get home.’

He let her go without resistance. ‘Funny. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

The icy edge to his voice stopped her in her tracks and filled her with sudden misgiving. She turned back to him.

‘What?’

‘Home.’ He paused, his face impossible to read in the gloom. Emily felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Beyond the black car that waited behind him she could hear the sound of voices from the street, the distant wail of a siren. ‘I was at Balfour Manor last night.’

A door slammed inside the community centre. Emily darted an anxious glance over her shoulder, hoping Kiki hadn’t heard him. ‘Please…’ she implored.

In one smooth movement he turned and pulled open the car door. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer to have this conversation in the car, before your cover is blown and your new friends find out that “Miss Jones” is really the daughter of a billionaire who could end all the financial problems of this extremely valuable community resource just by asking Daddy nicely…’

Emily shrank back, as if the plush interior of the car was the mouth of a giant whale, waiting to swallow her up. Her voice was cracked and faint. ‘But I have nothing to say to you.’

‘That’s fine.’ His voice was cool as he placed a hand in the small of her back and brought her forward. ‘You can just listen.’

There was someone else in the car—a man in his thirties perhaps, in a dark suit. He smiled as Emily slid reluctantly onto the seat beside him, and she felt slightly reassured. At least she wouldn’t be alone with Luis.

On the downside, there wasn’t so much room. As Luis finished speaking to the driver and got in beside her, Emily found herself far closer than was comfortable to his long, hard thigh on the seat. The only alternative was to move more towards the silent, suited man on her other side. Forget ‘better the devil you know,’ she thought miserably. No one could be more dangerous than Luis Cordoba. She inched away, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

No such luck.

‘That’s Tomás, my private secretary,’ Luis said sardonically. ‘You can sit on his knee, if you like. He’s very good with children.’

Tomás smiled, with the indulgent air of someone who had seen all this before. ‘Take no notice of His Highness, Miss Balfour.’

‘Thank you, Tomás.’ Emily turned back to Luis. ‘I’m not a child, and you’re certainly not my father, so I don’t know why you think you can order me around.’

The car pulled out of the Larchfield compound and onto the road. ‘Thank goodness I’m not your father,’ Luis said laconically. ‘From what I saw of him yesterday Oscar isn’t a happy man.’

‘W-what do you mean?’

‘Well, there’s all this for a start.’ He leaned forward and plucked a copy of the newspaper Emily had bought earlier from a pocket in the back of the driver’s seat.

Holding her head up very stiffly she glanced at it in distaste. ‘I know. I’ve seen it. Look, don’t you want to know where I live?’

‘No, not really,’ he said in a bored voice. ‘Not unless you’re going to insist on going back there to change.’

A dart of alarm shot through her. ‘Change? Into what?’

‘Anything that wasn’t hand knitted by medieval peasants from yak’s wool,’ he suggested disdainfully, his gaze travelling downwards from her cardigan to the cheap, flat shoes she’d bought for work. ‘As disguises go I must say you’ve chosen very well. Who would have thought one of the celebrated Balfour girls would go around dressed like a refugee from a hippy commune?’

Emily raised her chin, ignoring the jibe. ‘Why would I want to change? Where are we going?’ A horrible thought occurred to her. ‘Not home? Not back to Balfour, because I can’t. I—’

‘Relax.’ He cut through her mounting panic. ‘I’m taking you out to dinner.’

‘Isn’t it polite to ask first?’ Emily slumped back against the seat, folding her arms mutinously. Of course, the normal rules of courtesy didn’t apply to the Prince of Santosa. His title made him think he could do anything and have anything. Or anyone.

‘If I had asked would you have accepted?’ he said evenly.

She shook her head.

‘Exactly. Just think of it as being cruel to be kind.’

Emily gave a bark of harsh laughter. ‘The cruelty I can believe. Kindness? Not so much.’

‘When was the last time you ate properly?

Emily thought back to the bowl of cut-price breakfast cereal she’d had in her room before leaving for work earlier. The milk had been off, so she hadn’t felt like eating much. The rent she paid for her room in Mr Lukacs’s house was supposed to include use of the kitchen, but she found that whenever she ventured in there he would appear, finding some excuse to squeeze past her in the narrow space, or just watching her with his damp, beady eyes. She preferred to avoid it.

‘Why do you care? It’s got nothing to do with you.’

Despair made her uncharacteristically ungracious. Despair and the uncomfortable feeling that, having been hit by the express train, she had now been hauled aboard and was speeding away into unknown and dangerous territory.

‘You’re right, it’s not. Not in itself, and believe me I have plenty of other things to worry about. But given that your father looks like a dead man walking because he has no idea where you are, and I discover you living like…like…’ Lost for words, he gave a small exhalation of frustration. ‘It’s become my business whether I like it or not. So I’m going to feed you, and you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on.’

Something in his tone silenced the retort that had sprung to her lips. There was an edge there, a tension that she hadn’t noticed in him before. The Luis Cordoba she knew was laughing, insouciant, urbane—a playboy whose most serious decisions in life involved which party invitations to accept, and which women to seduce when he got there.

This man was different. Harder. Colder. And possibly even more dangerous than before.

The car had picked up speed now. The street lights stained the soft, early summer dusk a lurid shade of orange, and threw neon bars of light into the car as they sped along. They were heading out of the city, she realised with curious numbness. When he had said dinner she had imagined some exclusive West End restaurant, but the traffic was thinning as they left London behind them.

The events of the exhausting day seemed to pile up in the centre of Emily’s mind, blocking her ability to think properly. Instead she sat motionless between the dark-suited men, keeping herself very upright, her eyes fixed straight ahead of her.

A dead man walking.

The phrase echoed in her head. She longed to ask Luis what he meant, what Oscar had said, but couldn’t bring herself to do it in the presence of Tomás and the faceless driver. The damned newspaper still lay on the seat between them, its salacious headline seeming to emit some high-frequency signal into her brain, which made it impossible to quite ignore it. Her chest felt like there was an iron band across it as she thought of Zoe, and Olivia and Bella—what were they doing now, in the aftermath of the latest shocking news? And her father…

Suddenly she felt very tired, and knew that it wasn’t just from the events of the day. It was from the past two months of fighting to keep her head above water since she’d left home—of battling loneliness, the grimness of her surroundings, the shock of struggling to make ends meet for the first time in her life. It was from before that too—from the sheer, grinding misery of missing her mother, mourning her death and her father’s betrayal.

She tipped her head back against the cushioning leather and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind their lids she was even more aware of Luis beside her. He was lounging nonchalantly, but she could sense the restlessness that lurked beneath his outward show of calm, the strength and steely determination that infused his whole being.

And as her head drooped onto his shoulder and the soapy sweet scent of hawthorn drifted in on the warm May evening she forgot to be afraid of him.

She felt simply…safe.

Chapter Three

‘OSCAR, it’s Luis.’

At the other end of the line there was a slight pause. ‘Luis—how good of you to phone.’ The words were polite enough, but couldn’t quite disguise the weariness and disappointment in Oscar Balfour’s voice. ‘If it was just to say thank-you for last night’s party, I can assure you, there was no need.’

‘You credit me with rather more courtesy than I have, I’m afraid.’ Luis smiled, playing idly with the silken fringe on the overstuffed cushion beside him. ‘I wasn’t ringing to thank you, but to let you know that I’ve found Emily.’

‘Emily?’ Instantly Oscar was alert, and the rawness of the emotion in his voice almost made Luis flinch. ‘My God, Luis—where? Is she all right?’

‘Yes.’ He paused for a fraction of a second, thinking of the sharpness of her cheekbones, her bird-like fragility, the shadows beneath her eyes. ‘She’s fine. She’s teaching ballet to some inner-city kids in one of the charity projects I visited today.’ He thought it better not to mention the Pink Flamingo.

‘In town? Tell me where. I’ll get Fleming to bring the car and get there as soon as I can.’

‘No point.’ Getting up, Luis sloshed some whisky into a glass. ‘I’ve brought her down to my hotel for dinner. From what I gather in the papers you have enough on your plate today already. Let me talk to her, and I’ll update you tomorrow.’

Oscar hesitated, and when he spoke again he sounded old and uncertain—a million miles from the elegant patriarch of one of Britain’s most celebrated families, the powerful businessman at the helm of a billion-dollar empire. ‘All right. As you say, I have a few things to sort out here. You’ll probably handle her a lot better than I can anyway.’ He sighed heavily. ‘We had an argument, when Mia arrived, and afterwards she completely cut herself off from me. That’s what kills me, Luis—she just wouldn’t talk to me at all. I didn’t push it. Lillian was dying—’

His voice cracked, and Luis took a large swig of whisky while he waited for him to continue. ‘Nothing else seemed important. I thought that afterwards…when Lillian was gone I’d have time to talk to Emily, explain about Mia. But I didn’t get the chance. She left the day after the funeral.’

‘Did she give you any clue that she was going?’

Oscar gave a ragged, humourless laugh. ‘That was the hardest thing of all. Her leaving was so complete and so unexpected. No drama, no big scene. She just…did it—severed all her ties with us completely. She didn’t take anything with her—only her ballet things and the clothes she was wearing. She even left her mobile phone, which was a very obvious way of letting me know she didn’t want any further contact.’

Luis frowned. ‘She was serious about not being found, then.’

‘Oh, yes. But that’s Emily. She doesn’t do anything in half-measures. Never has. Whatever she does she does passionately, with her whole heart and soul. I’ve always admired her for that—I suppose it’s what made her do so well at dancing—but the trouble is she applies the same rigorous standards that she expects from herself to those around her. I’ve let her down—it’s as simple as that. She thought I was decent and honourable, and now she’s found out that I’m not.’

Luis let his eyelids flicker closed for a second. ‘None of us are,’ he said savagely.

‘Lillian was,’ Oscar said simply, ‘and Emily is so like her. She’s good, through and through. But strong too. She’d do anything for the people she loves.’

The memory of the little girl on stage earlier came back to Luis—the way Emily had taken her hand and danced alongside her, giving her the courage to carry on.

‘I’m sorry.’ Oscar’s rueful voice broke into his thoughts. ‘I’m boring you to death. Look, Luis, I’m so relieved that you’ve found her and that she’s all right. That’s the main thing, but if you could…’

The sentence trailed off. ‘Yes?’ Luis prompted. ‘What would you like me to do?’

Oscar laughed despairingly. ‘I was going to say, if you could make her understand…but of course that’s unreasonable.’

Meditatively, Luis swirled the dark amber liquid round in his glass and then drained it in one mouthful. ‘We’ll see, Oscar. Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you, Luis. I’m grateful.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘You’ll be all right here, Miss Balfour?’

Standing blinking in the doorway, Emily looked around the opulent room in front of her, and then turned to look at Tomás in alarm. ‘I—I don’t understand…whose room is this?’

‘Yours, Miss.’ Tomás’s tone was soothing. ‘Since you’re so tired His Highness thought you might like a chance to freshen up before dinner. Maybe to have a bath and relax a little before eating?’

Emily regarded the elegant antique furnishings, the soft lighting, the vases of flowers, warily, wondering what the catch was.

‘Where is Lu—His Highness?’

‘The Prince has a suite on the floor above, Miss Balfour. He’s in there right now having a drink and making some phone calls. Would you like me to ask him to come down when he’s finished?’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ Emily said hastily. ‘No, it’s fine. I’d love to have a bath.’

If only to put off the moment when she’d have to face Luis Cordoba over the dinner table, she thought, stepping forward and feeling her feet sink into the thick pile of the cream carpet. The room was huge, decorated in a classic English country house style which—apart from the addition of a Victorian-style bath standing on a raised platform in front of the huge French windows—was poignantly reminiscent of Lillian’s pretty bedroom at Balfour. Or at least how it had been before the paraphernalia of illness had crept in to spoil its carefully designed scheme.

‘Very good, Miss Balfour. Perhaps you could phone down to reception when you’re ready? One of our staff will be there to accept the message.’ Tomás left, quietly shutting the door behind him, and Emily wandered slowly over to the dressing table, running her fingers along its polished surface as if in a dream.

She leaned forward, looking into the mirror, where her own eyes stared back at her—smudged and dark with exhaustion. She was so tired, maybe it was a dream. Maybe she’d wake up any minute and find herself back in the narrow, lumpy bed in her bedsit, beneath sheets from which no amount of trips to the launderette could remove the smell of damp…

But then she remembered Luis Cordoba was waiting for her and felt her stomach clench with painful unease that left her in no doubt that she was wide awake. Compared to where she’d just come from this place might look and feel like paradise, but it certainly wasn’t without its serpents.

She straightened up quickly, tugging the band from the end of her plait and loosening her hair with shaking fingers.

She’d been stupid to let her guard down by falling asleep in the car, but just for a moment it had felt so wonderful not to have to think any more. She was so tired of thinking, and the relief of having someone come along and take over, tell her what was going to happen and what she had to do, was profound.

It’s just a shame that that someone was a shallow, untrustworthy playboy whose interest in women extended only as far as the bedroom, she thought, crossing the room to where the bath stood in decadent splendour. Although today he hadn’t actually shown so much as a flicker of interest in her, she reflected miserably as she turned on the taps and remembered the cool, dismissive way he’d looked her over.

She stripped off quickly, wincing as she pricked her finger on the safety pin that held up the black skirt she’d bought in a charity shop. She threw it onto the bed, where it looked more depressingly cheap and nasty than ever against the silk coverlet and the smooth Egyptian cotton sheets. Quickly she reached for the hotel bathrobe that was folded, fat as a cushion, on the end of the bed and put it on, wrapping its miraculous softness around her too-thin body.

She could hardly blame him for not being interested in her.

Even she was repelled by the jut of her hipbones, the hard ridges of her ribs beneath her skin, so she had no illusions about anyone else feeling differently. Especially not a connoisseur of the female form like Luis Cordoba. Call me when you grow up, he’d taunted. But she hadn’t just grown up in the past year. She’d grown old.

The bath was full. Turning the taps off Emily shrugged off the bathrobe and hastily slipped into the water, lying back so that it covered her body completely. Closing her eyes she inhaled deeply, savouring the exotic, expensive fragrance of the designer bath oil and trying to refocus her thoughts. It was criminal to let anything spoil this moment of rare luxury. Sinking farther down in the deep water she exhaled again, feeling some of the tension that had taken up permanent residence in her shoulders lately ebb away, and with it a little of her iron-hard resolve.

God, she missed the physical comforts of her old life at Balfour. The day after Lillian’s funeral, when she’d walked out with nothing but a heart full of hurt and a head full of moral indignation, if she had known what she was letting herself in for she might have hesitated for a second before slamming that imposing door behind her. Her leaving was hardly planned, it was simply a logical response to what she’d come to consider an intolerable situation. She needed time and space to come to terms with what had happened, and she’d imagined going to London, getting a place in one of the major ballet companies there, and finding herself a pleasant, sunny flat in an area where popping out to buy a pint of milk wasn’t an extreme sport…

In other words, behaving like a grown-up.

How naive she’d been. Sheltered from reality by the Balfour wealth, she hadn’t even known how much a pint of milk cost.

She had easily got auditions with three ballet companies, but it seemed that the months of grief and turmoil had taken their toll in ways she couldn’t have begun to anticipate. Each audition passed in an excruciating embarrassment of clumsy footwork, mechanical arm movements and missed timing. It was as if she had lead weights inside her, pulling her down. As if she was trying to dance with a heart full of cement.

She had failed to win a place with any company.

After that nothing seemed to matter much. She had lost everything she cared about, and it simply became a matter of survival, which meant finding somewhere to live and a means of income. The advertisement for the job at the Pink Flamingo had caught her eye because it contained the word dancing.

It was only as she’d stepped into the beer-and-nicotine-scented gloom when she’d gone to see about the job that she realised what kind of dancing it was. Horrified, she had told the oily man into whose seedy office she was shown that she had made a mistake, but after running his eyes shrewdly over her he had offered her a job behind the bar.

Realising she had no choice but to accept it had been one of the lowest points of her life.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She had survived the past two months by using the self-discipline she had acquired during her years at ballet school to block out the bad stuff and focus on small pleasures and triumphs: sharing a coffee with Kiki in Larchfield’s shabby kitchen, seeing the pride on the faces of the little girls in her ballet class when they learned a new position. And now this…relaxing in a warm, scented bath as the twilight deepened beyond the windows and the scent of gardenia filled her senses. This was bliss. Heaven. In fact the pleasure of the moment was so exquisite that it almost made the past two miserable months worth it, just to feel this good.

She breathed in again, lifting her feet out of the water and resting them on the edge of the bath, flexing her toes and feeling the taut muscles in her insteps soften. The only sound was the trickling of the water, and the soft sigh of her own breathing, and she suddenly realised how much she’d missed silence. At Balfour she had taken that—like so much else—completely for granted. She simply hadn’t realised what a luxury it was to lie in bed and not be kept awake by cars revving their engines in the street below, by people shouting and the noises of fights and drunken laughter.

She closed her eyes, steadying the rhythm of her breathing, emptying her mind and consciously relaxing her body. Her chin sank beneath the water as the tension ebbed from her neck. She should probably get out, she thought distantly, but it felt too good just to lie there. She inhaled, exhaled, slipping farther down in the water, losing herself in the swirling darkness behind her closed eyes as warmth and peace enveloped her, and she finally felt safe enough to let go…

She came to the second her nose touched the water. Instinctively sucking in a breath she was suddenly choking on water, gasping and spluttering as her lungs filled, flailing wildly as she struggled to raise herself upright.

Someone was holding her, lifting her high out of the water. Angels? She waited for the moment when she would look down and see herself lying there in the bath, but her body felt all too present as she felt the iron-hard chest she was being held against, and the tawny tiger’s eyes that were looking down into her face were a far cry from angelic.

She wasn’t dead, then.

It was much worse than that.

She was lying in Luis Cordoba’s arms, and she was stark naked.

She wasn’t dead.

Seeing her like that—so still, her hair floating around her face like seaweed, and not a breath or a ripple disturbing the mirror-flat surface of the water—he had felt a moment of panic, along with the painful stirring of memories long buried.

Dropping her slippery, glistening body unceremoniously onto the bed he turned to pick up the bathrobe she’d dropped on the floor beside the bath.

‘Here. Put this on,’ he drawled acidly. ‘There’s little point in bothering to save you from drowning if you then catch your death of cold.’

Still coughing, she sat up, bringing her long legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms tightly around them. Grabbing the bathrobe from him she clutched it against her. ‘Don’t look,’ she croaked, ‘Please…’

With elaborate courtesy Luis turned and walked over to the large windows, staring out into the blue dusk, his heart still beating sickeningly hard. ‘Considering you work in a lap-dancing club, isn’t the modesty a bit misplaced?’

‘I don’t dance there—I work behind the bar,’ she said through chattering teeth. And then she added almost in an undertone, ‘I don’t dance anywhere any more.’

‘Can I turn round now?’ Why did he feel relieved?

‘Yes.’

She was sitting huddled up against the bed’s plump, padded headboard. Her damp hair was pushed back from her face, emphasising the sharpness of her cheekbones and the shadows beneath her eyes. Eyes that were looking at him as if she were expecting him to tie her up and ravish her at knifepoint.

‘I’m sure I wouldn’t have drowned,’ she said miserably. ‘I would definitely have woken up when—’

Luis cut her off with a sharp, impatient sound. ‘Forgive me for not testing that theory. Next time I’ll wait until you’ve been under the water for a few minutes before I haul you out.’

And have one more life on his conscience.

‘There won’t be a next time.’ She drew the robe more tightly around her, pulled her knees more closely to her body, her eyes sapphire pools of anguish. ‘There shouldn’t have been a this time. What were you doing watching me in the bath?’

‘You didn’t answer when I knocked, so I came in,’ he said coldly. ‘I half expected to find you’d escaped through the French windows and bolted into the night, but I wasn’t prepared for a suicide bid.’

‘It was not—’ she retorted hotly, and was about to argue more when there was a knock on the door.

‘That’ll be dinner,’

‘Dinner? But—’

She sprang to her feet as two pretty room-service staff brought in cumbersome trolleys laden with silver-domed dishes and, with much blushing and fluttering of eyelashes, asked Luis where he’d like them. He ignored the obvious double entendre that would have sprung from his lips without a second thought in his old life. ‘Obrigado. Just leave them there,’ he said, with the briefest of smiles before turning back to Emily. ‘You seemed too tired to want to go down to the restaurant. I thought you’d prefer to eat up here. Is that OK?’

Emily tried not to let the shock that ricocheted through her show on her face. She waited until the door had closed behind the pretty waitresses before turning to him, unable to keep the outrage from her voice. ‘No, it’s not OK! It’s impossible. I bet they think that we’re…’ She could feel a tide of colour wash into her cheeks. ‘That we’ve…’

Utterly unmoved by her discomfort Luis was already uncovering dishes and pouring wine. ‘Just had sex?’ he suggested.

‘Exactly!’

‘Frankly, querida, I doubt it.’ Coming towards the bed with a plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches and two glasses of wine Luis smiled lazily, but his eyes were cold. ‘If we had you wouldn’t be so bad tempered. Now, come and eat.’

She watched in alarm as he swung his long legs onto the bed and leaned back against the pile of pillows. ‘B-but I’m not dressed,’ she stammered.

‘Believe me, you look a lot more respectable like that than in that awful cardigan.’

She took a deep breath, determined to rise above his taunting. ‘Look, I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want—’

But Luis cut her off, his voice suddenly edged with steel. ‘The thing is, amada, right now I’m not overly bothered about what you want. This isn’t just about you, I’m afraid. It’s about your family. Your father. He’s just lost his wife—do you really think now was a good time for him to cope with losing a daughter too?’

Emily gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I think it was the perfect time, since he’d just gained another one to take my place.’

Luis speared her with his gold-flecked eyes and nodded slowly. ‘I thought as much. This is about Mia, isn’t it?’

‘No. No, it’s not about Mia at all,’ Emily said despairingly, sinking down onto the bed, as far away from him as possible, and taking a huge mouthful of wine. As its heat stole down inside her she could feel her defences slipping, melting away like snow in the glare of the sun. After two months of bottling it all up the urge to talk was suddenly overwhelming. ‘I have nothing against Mia herself—she seems very sweet. It’s hardly her fault.’

‘What’s not her fault?’

Pain knotted in Emily’s throat, making it difficult to swallow the mouthful of smoked-salmon sandwich. ‘That my father—sorry, our father—’ she corrected, her voice dripping with irony ‘—was so weak and stupid that he had a meaningless one-night stand with a woman he’d never met the night before his wedding and got her pregnant.’

She waited. Waited for his expression of surprise at this revelation about Oscar Balfour—irre-proachable pillar of the establishment.

It didn’t come.

‘No,’ he agreed nonchalantly, taking another sandwich and devouring it in one bite. ‘Accidents happen. You certainly couldn’t blame Mia for the circumstances of her own conception. Anyway, what does it matter now? Oscar still married your mother and remained happily married to her for—what—twenty years?’

She frowned, staring down at the crust of bread between her fingers, crumbling it into tiny pieces. ‘But it was based on lies,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘A good relationship can only be based on trust and truth. Love means not having secrets from someone, not having to hide anything.’

‘Does it really?’ he said softly, and with infinite scorn, as if what she had said was utterly facile. ‘And what if there are things the other person would be better off not knowing?’

She lifted her head, forcing herself to look at him. ‘Better for them, or better for you?’

He looked back at her. His eyes were narrowed, but for a fraction of a second she thought she saw something in them that was almost like uncertainty. ‘Better for you both.’

‘You have to trust the person enough to forgive you,’ she said, emotion turning her voice husky. ‘You have to give them a chance.’

He turned his head away from her and looked down. A lock of hair fell down over his eyes, making him look suddenly strangely unguarded. Emily felt a painful lurching sensation in her chest.

‘And your father didn’t do that?’ he said tonelessly. ‘He didn’t tell her, even when Mia came?’

Emily shook her head, not wanting to remember those dark days after Mia had shown up. Days that slipped by like sand in a bottle. ‘My father told us all to make sure she didn’t suspect a thing.’ She gave a bleak smile. ‘Mia pretended to be the new housekeeper, which wasn’t a great start to her life as a Balfour, but Mum had such little time left by then.’

Luis shrugged, leaning over to pick up the wine bottle from the bedside table. ‘There you are, then. At least he spared her the pain of finding out.’

‘What? So you think that makes it OK?’ Angrily she snatched her glass away just as he was about to fill it, so that wine spilled onto her bare legs.

A muscle jumped beneath the bronzed skin of his cheek. The room suddenly seemed very still. ‘I think it doesn’t alter the fact that your parents had a good, happy marriage,’ he said slowly.

Emily gave a snort of low, cynical laughter. ‘Oh, right. Your definition of a happy marriage being one where you can screw around as often as you like and it doesn’t matter as long as the other person doesn’t find out? What a lucky woman the future Crown Princess of Santosa is.’

‘That’s different.’ As if in slow motion she watched him reach out and catch the drip of wine that was running down her shin with his thumb. ‘When I marry it’ll be a business arrangement. Love will have no part in it, and I expect the future Crown Princess of Santosa will fully understand that.’

Emily turned to stone beneath his touch, terrified by the fire that was crackling along her nerves, like the fuse of a bomb. ‘A business arrangement?’ she rasped. ‘The terms of which will make it perfectly OK for you to sleep with whoever you like. And will she be free to do the same?’

‘As long as she’s discreet,’ he said softly, following the wet trail of the wine down her leg and over her ankle. ‘Jealousy is a nasty disease to which, thankfully, I’m completely immune. I’m a realist. Marriage fulfils a lot of needs—in my case practical, in your father’s case emotional. He loved Lillian, and one last fling before his wedding doesn’t alter that. It meant nothing.’

‘That’s the bit I don’t get,’ Emily said, forcing her mind to stay focused on the subject, and not on the sparks of pleasure his touch had ignited beneath her skin. ‘Why do it, then? Why have sex with someone if it means nothing?’

In the soft lamp light his face was beautiful but impossible to read. Thoughtfully he slid his hand beneath her instep, turning her foot round and studying it. Emily felt it flex helplessly, her toes curling downwards as if they had a life of their own. All the nerves of her body seemed suddenly to be concentrated in that foot, making it tingle as if with pins and needles. Distantly she remembered the sensation she used to get in her feet before a performance, how it felt as if they were coming alive.

‘If you have to ask the question you probably wouldn’t understand the answer,’ Luis said dryly, his thumb massaging her high arch. ‘Sexual attraction isn’t something you can rationalize, or sometimes even control. It’s called being human. Oscar might be your father but he’s still just a human being.’

‘I know that.’ Her voice was quivering and breathless.

‘And yet it seems to me that you want to punish him for it.’ He ran his fingertips over the hard, shiny calluses at the base of her toes, adding softly, ‘You have the most extraordinary feet.’

Sharply she pulled her foot from his grasp and stood, pacing over to the fireplace, desperate to get far enough away from him to think clearly—focus on the conversation they were having, not the very separate line of communication her body suddenly seemed intent on pursuing. ‘It’s not like that. I’m not punishing him. I just feel…betrayed. Everything feels like it’s falling apart…with my mother and Mia and now Zoe and that…that…stuff in the paper today. It’s like the whole family is damned or something—like some awful fairy tale where the wishes that the good fairy has given to the princesses turn out to be curses. The money and the good looks—they’ve just brought temptations that it seems no one can resist.’

‘Except you.’ He had got up and followed her to where she stood. Her back was towards him but in the mirror above the fireplace their eyes met and she felt her blood heat as he smiled right into them. ‘As I recall, you resisted most forcefully last year.’

‘Yes.’ She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. ‘Because I want more than that.’

He dropped his gaze, and she felt a split second of relief. But then he slid his hand beneath her hair and she stiffened again, gripped by emotions and sensations she couldn’t identify or control. Or resist.

‘Than what?’ He said softly, gently stroking the back of her neck.

‘Than quick…meaningless…sex.’ She gasped.

‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’ In contrast to her own voice, his was as smooth and slow and rich as sun-warmed honey.

‘And what makes you think I haven’t?’

It was a desperate attempt at bravado, but in the mirror she caught a brief glimpse of the golden gleam in his eyes as he bent his head and brushed his lips against her ear. Instinctively she flinched violently away from the thousand-watt electric shock that his touch sparked through her whole body.

He laughed softly. ‘That.’

Trembling, breathing as heavily as if she’d just run a marathon, Emily faced him. Cheeks flaming, she pulled the collar of the robe up around her neck and raised her chin defiantly and attempted what she hoped was a scornful laugh. ‘Just because I’m not willing to fall into bed with you the moment you click your fingers.’

Luis caught hold of the tie belt of the robe and pulled her gently towards him. ‘I see,’ he said gravely, wickedness glittering in the depths of his eyes, ‘you expect foreplay too, do you? Something like this…’

She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could make the words come out his lips had covered hers and darkness had exploded inside her head, obliterating everything but him: the heat and closeness of his body, the scent and taste of him. She was shocked rigid, shocked into helplessness, unable to think, to respond sensibly. She should be pulling away, but all she seemed to be capable of was standing as still and stiff as Joan of Arc at the stake with the flames licking up around her…

Devouring her.

She was trembling uncontrollably, parting her lips beneath the firm pressure of his, opening her mouth to the gentle probing of his tongue. A whispered, shuddering sigh escaped her as he moved his mouth from hers and began to kiss a path downwards to the angle of her jaw and her earlobe, and the hand that had been resting on her hip slid across her midriff, making her quiver and gasp as the feelings that had haunted her unsettled dreams since that night at Balfour zigzagged through her again.

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