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He charged a hefty fee for those services. A diplomatic Svengali who worked under the radar of the press, he also had a canny eye for start-ups with potential and, as such, his investments had made him rich beyond his wildest dreams. Gabriel Serres was the billionaire no one had heard of. Intensely private and disdaining of the celebrity-fixated world, this anonymity was exactly how he liked it. His affairs—though he disliked calling them affairs when they involved two consenting adults enjoying each other until the time came to move on—were conducted under the same intense bounds of privacy, and never with a client. To find himself attracted to his client’s daughter, a woman who lived her life in the glare of a media circus, was disconcerting to say the least. Gabriel’s childhood had been one huge media circus, and it was a state of being he’d actively avoided ever since.
‘And what of his bride?’ the object of his attraction bit out in the husky voice that evoked thoughts of dark, sultry rooms and sensual pleasure. ‘Does she get a say in it? Or is she being married against her will and without her consent?’
Her anger and concern was genuine, he recognised. Princess Alessia Berruti, the darling of the European press, a woman who’d mastered the art of social media to display herself and her royal family in the best possible attention-grabbing light, was not as self-centred as he’d presumed.
‘She has agreed to the marriage,’ he assured her.
Gabriel’s expression was indifferent, his smooth, accented voice—an accent Alessia couldn’t place—dispassionate, but there was something about the laser of his brown stare and the timbre in his tone that sent a shiver racing up her spine. It was a shiver that managed to be warm and was far from unpleasant. For the beat of an instant, a connection passed between them, sending another warm shiver coiling through her. But then he snapped his eyes shut and when they next locked on hers, the dispassion in his voice was matched in his returning stare.
A man clearly used to being listened to and heeded, Gabriel Serres had a presence that commanded attention even when he wasn’t speaking. Alessia had noticed him a number of times since their introduction and, though most of those times he’d been at a distance from her—apart from in the castle’s private car park when she’d come close to losing her footing when their eyes had suddenly met—he’d certainly commandedherattention. There was something about him she found difficult to tear her gaze from, something that made her belly warm and soften even though she’d come to the conclusion that there was nothing warm or soft about him. Under the impeccably tailored grey suit lay an obviously hard, lean body that perfectly matched a hard, angular face with hooded dark brown eyes that were as warm as a frozen waterfall. Even his thick black hair had been tamed into a quiff she doubted dared escape its confines.
Anger rising that he could be so detached about a situation where a woman was required to give her entire future just to save her family’s skin, Alessia eyeballed him and snapped. ‘What, like Clara consented?’
‘It has been agreed,’ her mother said in a voice that brooked no further argument. ‘Gabriel has gone to great lengths to bring a rapprochement between our nations. Your brother is in agreement, the king is in agreement and the bride is in agreement. The wedding preparations start now. The pre-wedding party will be held in two weeks, the wedding in six. You will be a bridesmaid and you will smile and show the world how happy you are for the union. We all will.’ And with that, her mother rose with the innate grace only a born queen had, and swept out of the room without another look at her youngest child.
Devastated to have caused her mother such disappointment and realising she was in danger of going into a full-blown meltdown in front of her father, brother, Ice Man and the staff, Alessia got to her feet. Casting each of them a withering stare, she left the meeting room with her head as high as she could manage.
Gabriel had a tension headache, caused no doubt by three days of intense negotiations between a despotic king and a rival royal family desperately trying to salvage their own image. Having had little sleep in that period didn’t help, and neither did the engine problem with his plane he’d been notified about earlier. His plan to leave the Berrutis’ castle and fly home to Spain delayed, he’d accepted King Julius’s offer of a bed for the night. After dining with the king and queen and the heir to the throne, he was escorted through the warren of wide corridors to his appointed quarters. Once inside, he rolled his neck and shoulders and took a shower.
As far as royal families went, the Berrutis were relatively decent. Relatively. They inhabited a privileged world where, by virtue of their births, they were exalted and deferred to from their very first breaths, and, as such, took being exalted and deferred to as their due. Compared to King Dominic Fernandes, however, they were modest paragons of virtue. Gabriel cared little either way. His job was to be impartial and broker an agreement both parties could live with and he’d done that. Negotiating a marriage was, however, a first, and had left a bad taste in his mouth, which he unsuccessfully tried to scrub out with his toothbrush. He was quite sure Princess Alessia’s outrage about the marriage had contributed to the acrid taste on his tongue.
Despite his exhaustion, Gabriel was too wired to sleep. After twenty minutes of his eyes refusing to close and fighting his mind’s desire to conjure the pint-sized princess, he gave up and threw the bedsheets off. Pulling on a pair of trousers, he prowled the quarters he’d been appointed, found a fully stocked bar and helped himself to a bourbon. If he wished, he could lift the receiver on the bar and call the castle kitchen, where an on-duty chef would prepare anything he desired. He would give the Berrutis their due, they were excellent hosts.
Taking the bottle of bourbon with him, he opened the French doors in his bedroom and stepped onto the balcony. The warm air of the night had lost much of the day’s humidity, the distant full moon lighting the castle’s extensive grounds. With a strong gothic feel, it was an intriguing castle dating back to the medieval period, and full of mysteries and secrets. In the distance he could see the ancient amphitheatre, which divided the castle’s two main sections...
His thoughts cut away from him as the strong feeling of being watched made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
Alessia had been laid in her hammock for hours. Unable to face another meal with her family, unable to bear seeing more of her mother’s disappointment, unable to look at the brother whose life she’d ruined, she felt desperately alone, wracked with guilt and so very ashamed. Now, though, her heart was thumping, because a man had emerged through the shadows on the adjoining balcony, and as he turned his head in her direction her heart thumped even harder as recognition kicked in.
It washim. The gorgeous Ice Man who made her belly flip.
Under the moonlight, he somehow seemed even more devastatingly attractive, and she sucked in a breath as her gaze drifted over a rampantly masculine bare chest.
For a long, long moment, all the demons in her head flew away in the face of such a divine specimen of manhood.
Suddenly certain her misery had conjured him, she blinked hard to clear his image, but it didn’t clear anything. That really was the gorgeous Ice Man.
Impulse took over and before she could stop herself, she called out. ‘Having trouble sleeping too?’
Gabriel’s heart smashed in instant recognition of the husky voice. Holding his breath, he rested an arm on the ancient waist-high stone balustrade that adjoined the neighbouring balcony, and peered into the adjoining space. There he found, laid out on a hammock in the moonlight’s shadow, the woman whose unguarded words had almost caused a war between two nations and whose image had prevented him from sleeping.
He cursed silently even as his heart clattered harder into his ribs. He’d been unaware his appointed quarters adjoined hers.
‘Good evening, Your Highness,’ he said politely. ‘My apologies for disturbing you.’
Though her spot in the shadows prevented him from seeing her features clearly, he could feel her gaze on him.
‘You’re not disturbing me... Is that a bottle of scotch you’re carrying?’
‘Bourbon.’
‘Can I have some?’
The silence that fell during his hesitation was absolute. The last thing he should encourage was a late-night conversation with the beautiful princess who’d occupied so much of his thoughts these last few days.
‘Please? I could do with a drink.’
What harm could a quick drink with each remaining on their respective sides of the balcony do? He would make sure it was a quick drink. Allow her one nip and then make his excuses and return to his room. ‘Of course.’
