LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      LOTTIE MARCHED INTO the ballroom with her cheeks still glowing hot enough to cook a couple of eggs on. He was playing with her like a mean-spirited cat does with a hapless little mouse. Teasing her, toying with her, making sport of her to pass the time. He was mocking her for her gaucheness, laughing at her. He wasn’t interested in her. He was playing a game. He was here under sufferance so what better way to amuse himself than to have a little flirtation just for the heck of it?

      Softly-softly indeed! Nothing about him was subtle. He was blatant. Flagrant. Shameless.

      And oh-so-tempting.

      She knew what he was up to. She was a challenge he hadn’t encountered before, but she would show him that there was at least one woman in the world that wasn’t taken in by sexy chocolate-dark eyes, a silver tongue and a body built for sin.

      She had to get him out of her hair before he tempted her to let it down … and she knew just the way to do it.

      The grand ballroom was as wide as it was long, and decorated in a Venetian palazzo style with a high ceiling painted a soft shade of grey with ornate crown mouldings of white and inlaid with gold. A series of archways lined three of the walls with plush crimson velvet curtains, and crystal chandeliers hung like giant handfuls of glittering diamonds, sending prisms of light over the highly polished parquetry floor. It was a perfect setting for a wedding reception. It had the signature Chatsfield style, glamour and sophistication about it that would make any gathering a memorable occasion.

      ‘Not bad, huh?’ Lucca said.

      ‘It needs flowers.’ Lottie walked across the floor, turning in circles as she checked out the corbels where she envisaged vases of flowers festooning like floral fountains. ‘Lots and lots of flowers.’

      He took out his phone and started scrolling through his messages, presumably from all of his female followers on Twitter. ‘Flowers aren’t my thing. I’ll leave that to your expertise.’

      Lottie didn’t tell him she had already discussed at length with the royal florist every placement of every bloom and petal. Instead she gave him a pert look. ‘No, you won’t. I need male input. I might make it too girlie or something. We can’t have all the male guests feeling intimidated, can we?’

      His eyes gave a little roll. ‘God forbid.’

      ‘Come on.’ She turned sharply on her heel. ‘We have work to do.’

      ‘Where are you taking me?’ To her delight his voice sounded a little pained as he put his phone away.

      ‘To the palace gardens. I want to pick a selection to see what would work best.’ She gave him a sugar-sweet smile over her shoulder. ‘You can fetch and carry for me. Won’t that be fun?’

      The palace gardens were pretty spectacular even for someone who couldn’t tell a rose from a ranunculus, Lucca thought. And early June was a fabulous time for any garden in the Mediterranean. Roses were in abundance everywhere, glorious fragrant bunches of them hanging in a sweet-scented arras over archways and trellises in a kaleidoscope of vivid colour. There were other beds of colourful blooms, old-fashioned cottage flowers such as sweet peas with a border of alyssum and lobelia, stately foxgloves and pink and blue larkspur, carnations and Canterbury bells and Queen Anne’s lace.

      Princess Charlotte was moving between the garden beds, stopping every now and again to pick a bloom with a pair of secateurs she had taken from one of the gardeners. She laid each bloom carefully in the flower basket she had hanging over her arm, and every artistic cell of his wanted to capture the vision of her on a canvas.

      The late-afternoon sunlight cast her alabaster skin in a golden glow. Her eyes were as mossy green as the clipped box hedges she was leaning over as she snipped a blood-red rose from a bush against a stone wall. Some strands of her hair had worked loose from her tight chignon and were bouncing in tiny cork-screws about her ears. With the abundance of flowers in the foreground and the ancient castle in the background, she looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale.

      He took out his phone and selected the camera option. Click.

      She suddenly turned and glared at him. ‘Did you just take a picture of me?’

      ‘Yes. It was a beauty. The light was amazing.’

      She put the flower basket down on the flagstones and stalked over to him with her hand outstretched. ‘Give me your phone.’

      Lucca held the phone just out of her reach. ‘What’s the problem? It’s just a photo.’

      Her eyes glittered and burned with resentment. ‘You had no right to photograph me without my permission.’ She made a grab for the phone by doing a series of little leaps. ‘Give it to me, damn you!’

      ‘Whoa there, sweetheart.’ He wrapped his fingers around her flailing arm to hold her steady on the uneven flagstones. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury bouncing about like that.’

      She stamped her foot like a three-year-old child, making those cute little curls beside her ears bob up and down like springs. ‘You are an odious brute!’

      ‘I know, but that’s part of my endearing charm.’ He loosened his hold a fraction. ‘Now be a good girl and I’ll show you how cool the photo is.’ He brought the picture up and repositioned himself so she was standing shoulder to shoulder with him. ‘See?’

      She looked at the picture for a moment and then glanced up at him with a frown puckering her brow. ‘Why did you take it?’

      He slipped the phone in his pocket. ‘No special reason.’

      ‘I don’t like being photographed.’ She gave his fingers around her wrist a scowling look. ‘And I don’t like being manhandled either.’

      He turned her wrist over and slowly raised it to his mouth so he could access the sensitive underside with his lips. He held her gaze as he brushed his lips against her delicately scented skin, watching as her eyes widened and her pupils flared like twin spills of black ink.

      Lust heated his blood, set it moving, thundering, roaring to his groin as the tip of her small pink tongue darted out and swept over her lips, making them glisten invitingly. Her slim throat rose and fell as she swallowed; he even heard the tiny gulping sound in spite of the background chirruping of birds and the light whistle of the breeze moving through the cypress pines in the distance.

      He lowered his head until he was barely a breath away from connecting with her lips, pausing there to give her the chance to pull back if she wanted to. He breathed in the sweet vanilla-milkshake scent of her breath as it danced over his lips as her mouth softly parted.

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