LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d laid out. ‘Quickly, quickly, before he comes.’

      Heart beating with heavy impact, Leola scrambled into the clothes, some inner part of her relishing the sleek luxury of silk against her skin, even though she hated the thought of being dressed by a man who’d treated her with such cavalier authority.

      The nurse disappeared while Leola grimly combed her hair and smoothed it back from her face. When she found herself tugging the same tawny-gold lock of hair for the third time, she bit her lip. Both the tugging and the biting were leftovers from her childhood methods of diffusing stress, and neither worked. She eased back into the armchair, took several deep, slow breaths, then deliberately relaxed every muscle in her body.

      That didn’t work either.

      Tension built exponentially until the nurse appeared again, and said without her usual smile, ‘The prince will see you now.’

      But when Leola got out of the chair, the older woman shook her head. ‘He will come here.’

      It was clear from her tone that she didn’t approve, and equally clear that she didn’t feel she could do anything about it.

      ‘Very well,’ Leola said, her voice too thin. She swallowed again and walked across to the window, standing with her back to the glorious view outside so that she could watch the door without her own expression being too clear.

      Apprehension pooled beneath her ribs. She wondered whether she’d be disappointed or relieved—or just plain spitting furious—if the man who came in through the door was the Viking.

      He appeared so swiftly, so silently, that her pulse jumped; one moment she was alone, the next he was in the room with her, radiating that unmistakable, intimidating aura of formidable power.

      ‘So you’re Prince Nico Magnati,’ she said unsteadily.

      The Viking smiled. ‘For my sins, yes.’ His cool grey eyes scanned her face. ‘How is your lip?’

      Colour burned through her skin when she remembered the tiny scratch, and his kiss.

      ‘It’s fine, but I’m pretty shaky,’ she flashed, adding caustically, ‘thanks to whatever sedative you’ve had me pumped full of.’

      ‘I wondered when you’d work it out.’ His ironic smile irritated her at the same time as it set off small clusters of fireworks in her veins. ‘Maria tells me you haven’t eaten much today.’

      ‘I don’t like being force-fed drugs. Why?’

      Broad shoulders sketched a wholly Mediterranean shrug, yet there was nothing casual in his gaze or his tone. ‘If you hadn’t been quite so articulate and stroppy when we first met I might not have felt it necessary, but I guessed you were not someone I could persuade easily to keep out of sight for several days.’

      ‘Youwereright,’ she said coldly. ‘Why wasit necessary?’

      ‘Because if it had become known that you’d been out and about at that time on that night you’d have been—in fact, you probably are still—in some danger.’

      Although he spoke levelly, without inflection, something in his tone, in the way he looked at her, made her go cold. He meant it.

      Still in that same dispassionate tone he resumed, ‘I think I got you out of sight before anyone noticed you, but I’m not sure. It was better for you to disappear.’

      ‘And how did you explain my absence to my landlord and his family?’ she asked with chilly politeness.

      The prince gave a sudden, sexy grin. ‘That was easy. I merely sent a maid to collect your clothes and let her tell them that you and I planned to spend the rest of your holiday together. It seemed the most likely explanation for your disappearance,’ he finished blandly, obviously amused by her reaction.

      Outrage rendered her wordless. All she could think of to say was How dare you! and she wasn’t going to fall back on clichés.

      And if she let her temper get the better of her, she’d be putting herself at a huge disadvantage. Prince Nico didn’t look as though he let anything crack that steely control.

      In the end she demanded, ‘Why didn’t you send my clothes here too?’

      ‘I didn’t want anyone finding out where you were, so in case I was being watched I had them forwarded to my yacht, which is cruising towards Morocco with us supposedly enjoying a passionate affair on it.’

      Eyes glittering, she said with searing sarcasm, ‘Presumably people believe this story because you make a habit of kidnapping women?’

      ‘Not a habit,’ he drawled, eyes hardening. ‘So far you’re the only one it’s been necessary to actually kidnap. My amours have always been with willing women.’

      Colour scorched her skin. She said between her teeth, ‘So tell me why it was necessary to go to such enormous trouble.’

      ‘No.’ He let that sink in, then added, ‘Instead, you are going to tell me exactly what you saw in the square the other night.’

      It was a direct order. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted, partly in anger, partly because something in his expression warned her that he wasn’t going to be put off.

      Leola narrowed her eyes, scanning the angular sculpture of his features with an intensity that surprised her. Could she trust him? ‘This is important?’

      ‘It is very important.’

      ‘Why should I trust you after all you’ve done to me?’

      ‘I can give you no reason. But know this, Leola Foster, I am being as honest as I dare to be with you, and whatever I have done, I have done in your best interests.’

      They locked gazes like bitter antagonists, hers challenging and wary, his cold and completely determined.

      In the end, she said quietly, ‘I told you what I saw.’

      ‘Everything?’

      She thought of the face she’d seen, sharply defined in the sudden flare of light. The face of an exploiter, she thought, sensual and cruel.

      She dragged in a jagged breath. ‘You must have seen it too.’

      ‘Tell me.’

      Reluctantly she said, ‘Just before you grabbed me, I noticed a sort of blur of movement beneath that big cypress tree at the base of the church tower.’

      ‘What sort of movement?’

      Frowning, she tried to remember. ‘It was people, but they seemed to have manifested themselves out of the air. And they didn’t make any noise. I couldn’t hear anything except waves on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.’

      ‘Where were they going?’

      ‘Towards the cliff.’

      As far as she knew there was no path down to the coast there; why would anyone want to clamber down to rocks when on the other side of the narrow peninsula there was a smooth white sand beach from a travel agent’s dream?

      Slowly she said, ‘But if they were actually going to be picked up by a boat they’d have used the port. Unless they didn’t want to be seen.’

      ‘And that’s all you saw—a blur of movement?’

      How much should she tell him? Tensely, torn between a lingering fear and her strange inclination to trust him, she glanced again at his face. The powerfully honed bone structure gave him an intimidating aura of tough ruthlessness that she knew to be well earned. He’d kidnapped and drugged her, but in spite of that and his arrogant and uncompromising aura he looked…clean.

      It was an odd word, yet it was the only one she could come up with. And she had only her sensory impressions to go on.

      If they’d met in other circumstances she’d trust him, she thought, wondering if she was being stupid.

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