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‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, gently tapping the rim of her glass against his.
As the amber liquid burned down his throat Sebastian wondered if that feeling of peace would come now that everything was as it should be. A feeling that he’d been chasing for ten years that nothing and no willing woman had been able to appease.
Wi
th his father finally settled with his stepmother Valeria in Rimini, each happily making the other’s life a living hell, and Maria with Matthieu Montcour, it felt as if it was the first time that he’d had no responsibilities. The world was his oyster. His hotels were doing incredibly, the opening of the Caribbean flagship was less than a week away—an event that would allow him to wrap up all loose ends from the Bonnaire’s situation. Maybe then he’d find that sense of...
‘I lost you there for a minute,’ Aliah said.
‘Never,’ he replied, forcing a smile to his lips as it came time to say goodbye. ‘If you ever need anything, I mean it. Anything. Let me know.’
He leaned forward to let her kiss him on the cheek. It was a chaste kiss from a friend. And it was most definitely not responsible for the sudden slap of adrenaline and arousal that cut through him when he looked over Aliah’s shoulder and caught a glimpse of the woman sitting at the bar, her gaze locked onto him like a laser beam.
‘Seb?’ Aliah asked, the husky tone of her voice barely cutting through the power of whatever it was that had him in its grasp.
Ignoring her question, he stared deep into the pair of startling blue eyes as they clashed with his and he felt it like a punch to the solar plexus. For a moment he simply felt awed. A rich, almost terracotta-coloured swathe of gentle curls poured over slender shoulders and dropped almost halfway down pale-skinned and very toned arms. Silk in a regal blue sheathed a body from neck to ankle that made his mouth water. For all of the scantily clad women Sebastian had encountered in the last ten years, this one was the definition of modest, but she alone held the power to undo him. And when his eyes returned to hers, to take in the arch of high cut cheekbones and a mouth made for sin, he couldn’t help but pause. There was something about her... And then it dawned on him.
Oh, he was in trouble.
And he couldn’t for one minute bring himself to regret it.
Because this? This was going to be fun.
Sia barely noticed the waiter place her drink before her as she watched the Duke return to his conversation as if her entire world hadn’t shifted on its axis. Forcing her eyes away from him, she turned to the drink and blinked at it for a moment, having quite forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.
A blush rose to her cheeks and she hated it, hated herself, for in that moment—the brief pause before he’d smiled—Sia had forgotten everything. The potential loss of her job, the stolen painting, the fact she was sure that Sebastian Rohan de Luen, was at the heart of the entire mess. No. For that brief moment she’d been struck by an attraction so powerful that she’d almost forgotten her own name. A mistake, she promised herself, she’d not make again.
Reaching for her drink and letting the sweet spicy taste wash her lapse of judgement away and the sharp sting of alcohol bring her back to the task at hand, she realised that she hadn’t counted on him having company. Stunning company at that. Casting a quick glance back towards the darkened corner where the handsome couple were still discussing something discreetly, she couldn’t help but appreciate the woman’s beauty. The way his body was angled beside her was almost protective and for a moment Sia tasted the bitterness of jealousy on her tongue. Not for her, or him, but what they seemed to share. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but Sia couldn’t quite place her. It was hardly surprising that a man with Sebastian’s roguish reputation was with a celebrity of some sort.
Frowning, she thought over her plan which, she now saw, had more holes than a sieve. What had she been thinking? That she could play him? Seduce him even? The blush returned to her cheeks with a vengeance and embarrassed tears threatened at the corners of her eyes.
And that slight blur to her eyes was the reason she didn’t immediately notice that the Duque de Gaeten had crossed the room and come to stand beside her.
‘It’s a crime.’
The sensual tone of his voice rippled across her skin but it was the words that sparked outrage in her heart. Which was why it took her a moment to gather herself, to stifle the fury welling within her, before she could respond. That this man chose to refer to a crime... Did he know who she was? Was he playing the same game as she? A thin blade of anger cut through any concern. It made her mad. It made her bold.
‘What is?’ she asked, no trace of the heat in her veins or the pounding of her heart.
‘For a woman as beautiful as you to be sitting alone.’
‘The greater crime, surely, is the badly delivered line which has left me feeling somewhat cheated. I had expected more from, reportedly, the most renowned playboy in all of Europe.’
‘Renowned? You have me at a disadvantage. You clearly know me, at least by reputation.’
‘Henri.’ The name slipped from her tongue as if it hadn’t been more than twenty years since she’d been called by it. And when he repeated the name back to her, as if feeling the word on his tongue, it sent shivers down her spine.
‘You don’t look much like a Henri.’
Perhaps she didn’t. But Sia knew one thing very definitely. Sia Keating would never be able to do such a thing. Sia Keating was the good girl. She didn’t put a foot wrong, never complained, never spoke out, was never angry... Anger was passionate and passionate was too much like her mother. But Henri? Her father’s nickname for her, the shortened form of her middle name... Henri might just be able to pull this off.
‘Oh, really? What do I look like?’
My downfall.
Thrusting aside the errant thought, Sebastian cast a long, slow pursual from the golden halo of her hair to the point of her diamond-encrusted blue heels and back again. He knew that the gaze was insolent and tried to cling to that feeling instead of succumbing to the simple desire to relish her. She was exquisite.
He challenged any man to refute the allure of her hair. Stunning long, honeyed, golden tendrils fell in waves down her back. This close, he could see that her make-up was subtle, allowing an incredible innate beauty to shine. The sheen from the silk glowed beneath the subtle lighting of the room, the shadows showing the shapely outline of her legs, crossed at the knee, legs that were so long Sebastian thought she might actually stand face to face with his six-foot frame. The slash of silk across her collarbone perfectly displayed a long elegant neck and the sleeveless cut showed off arms that were slender but shapely. There was a concealed power to both her body and the whip-smart mind he could tell was running through myriad possibilities and reactions to the words that would next come from his mouth.
