by Cat Schield
“Then I will bring it home,” Raif vowed, straightening his father’s covers.
Cursed or not, the statue would bring peace to his ill father and allay the fears of the Rayasian people. And Raif knew who had stolen the priceless heirloom. He was about to grant Ann Richardson’s request and confront her in person.
* * *
Though he’d spent two years in Britain at college, it had been a long time since Raif had seen a woman in slacks, her shapely legs and rear end delineated by the soft fabric, indecently so by Rayasian standards.
But out in the garden, Ann Richardson wore a pair of clinging, faded blue jeans set off by high heels and a gleaming copper tank top. Her bare shoulders were creamy smooth, her short hair shimmered blond in the setting sun of the Valhan Palace gardens, while strands of teal beads decorated her neck, and matching earrings dangled from her delicate lobes. He’d seen pictures and knew her skin was honey-pale, eyes jewel-blue. And when she looked in his direction across the garden, he felt an unexpected and unwelcome jolt of arousal.
He reminded himself that this woman was the enemy. She’d taken from the Khouri family one of their most prized possessions.
“You brought her to the palace?” he asked his cousin Tariq, letting the censure come through his tone.
“You agreed to meet her in person,” Tariq reminded him.
“I meant at one of the offices downtown. She doesn’t deserve to be in the palace.” He’d let the woman cool her heels for three days since she’d arrived in Rayas, refusing to grant her a single courtesy.
“Then talk to her in the garden.” Impatience was growing in Tariq’s tone.
Raif shot him a sharp look.
“Your Royal Highness,” Tariq finished, his expression carefully neutral, so that Raif couldn’t tell if he was being contrite or sarcastic.
“You forget yourself,” Raif admonished.
“I forgot myself a long time ago,” Tariq returned.
Raif took one more long look at Ann Richardson, tamped down his inappropriate physical attraction to her, squared his shoulders and exited through the palace archway into the garden.
She watched him unabashed as he followed a winding stone pathway, past date and palm trees. The closer he got, the more beautiful she became. He’d seen many pictures, had her investigated quite thoroughly once he heard she was offering up his statue for sale. But nothing he’d seen had done her justice. She was quite simply the most stunningly beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Miss Richardson,” he greeted without inflection.
“Prince Raif,” she answered in return. No bow or curtsy. Perhaps Americans didn’t acknowledge royalty. The British did, though reluctantly if one wasn’t a member of the Windsor royal family. Still, there was some acknowledgment from them that he wasn’t a stable hand. Not so from Ann Richardson.
They were both standing, and he left it that way. The sun was dipping below the horizon, and he had a busy night ahead. Better to get this over with.
“You are here to confess?” he asked. It was the only acceptable outcome from his perspective.
She gave a throaty chuckle that seemed to strum along his nervous system, reigniting his arousal. “Hardly.”
“Then you’re wasting my time.” He turned to go.
“Wait. Prince Raif.” Her hand touched his arm.
He turned sharply and glared at her serious breach of protocol.
“I’m here to explain.”
If he thought her looks had aroused him, and that her voice had made the feelings more acute, her touch was threatening to push him over the edge.
“I would advise you to remove your hand,” he told her.
She stilled. Her expression faltered.
“My guards are watching, and you are forbidden from touching a royal.”
The guards were the least of his worries. His flesh burned under her touch, and his mind was filled with visions of dragging her into his arms and ravishing her lithe body.
Her eyes widening at his expression, she pulled back her hand. “You were about to walk away,” she explained.
“There’s no point in my staying.”
“I’ve come a long way to make you see reason.”
“You mean you’ve come a long way to lie.”
“I’m not here to lie. There are two statues. Waverly’s is not selling yours.”
Raif didn’t believe her for a second. If Waverly’s had truly discovered Princess Salima’s missing statue, they would prove it. “If you’re not here to confess, then you’re here to lie.”
“I’m here to help.”
Raif was growing impatient with her cute words. “I could have you thrown in jail.”
“How would that help?”
It was a fair question. It wouldn’t help at all. “It would give me a great deal of satisfaction.”
“But it wouldn’t get your statue back.”
“If you give back the statue, I won’t throw you in jail.”
Her blue eyes narrowed as if his words had momentarily thrown her. But she recovered quickly. “I thought we could compare notes.”
Raif widened his stance, crossing his arms over his chest. He’d give her about ten seconds more. She might be beautiful, and the sound of her voice might send desire flaring up his spine, but that didn’t mean he was going to stand here and let her waste his time.
“You tell me what you know,” she continued. “I’ll tell you what I know. Perhaps between the two of us, we can figure out what really happened.”
It was Raif’s turn to chuckle, and she had the good grace to blush—very easy to see with that pale skin of hers.
“So you can distract me?” he taunted. “Feed me false information and send me in the wrong direction?”
“I’m not going—”
“I’m not that gullible, Miss Richardson.”
“Ms.”
“Ms.,” he enunciated, drawing out the sound. “I’m not that gullible.”
“I’m here to help.”
He didn’t believe that for one second.
“This is messing up my life, too, you know,” she told him.
“In what way?” he demanded, losing his usual iron grip on his temper. “Because Waverly’s will make a fortune? Because you’ll get a fat commission? My father is gravely ill. My sister is wreaking havoc on the family honor. My navy needs a new admiral. A multi-billion dollar trade deal is about to blow up in my face. And I’m wasting valuable time chasing after a priceless heirloom. But, please, do tell me how this is messing up your life?”
Ann set her jaw. “Your accusations are destroying my professional reputation. When this is all over, you’ll still be the Crown Prince, but I’ll be out of a job.”
So, there was going to be some small consequence for her actions. It was hollow comfort. “You should have thought of that before you stole my statue.”
“I did not—”
“This is getting us nowhere.”
The sun had fully set now, and traditional, evening horns sounded in the distance. Torches were being lit in the garden near the palace, but Raif and Ann were in a dark corner.
She moved close to him, her voice lowering. “I agree. You are wasting your time. If you chase me, the real thief will get away.”
“If I chase you?” His voice rose. “If? I am chasing you, Ann. And I’m going to catch you. And when I do, you are going to be held accountable for the grief you have caused my family.”
She considered him for a long moment. “Why am I picturing dank dungeons and gruel?”
It took him a moment to realize she was mocking him. She doubted the extent of his power? This was his country. He could have her thrown in jail with the wave of one hand.
He leaned in, affecting his most imperious tone of voice. “Tread carefully, Ann.”
But she didn’t back off. “Your statue is gone, Prince Raif. And I’m innocent. This is my one and only offer to help you. Take it or leave it.”
He co
uld smell her now, vanilla, intoxicating. And he was drawn into those crystal blue eyes. The urge to haul her into his arms was overpowering. Haul her into his arms and do what, he asked himself? Shake her? Throttle her? Kiss her?
It was to kiss her, he admitted to himself. And he sure didn’t want to stop there.
Her voice turned to a whisper, her breath sweet against his own. “Take it or leave it, Raif.”
He took it. But it wasn’t what she was expecting.
He had a fleeting glimpse of her surprised gasp, before his lips came down on hers. His arm went around her waist, jerking her tight against an instantaneous erection.
She pushed against his shoulders, struggling to speak.
But he didn’t back off. His kiss was carnal and determined. He overwhelmed her mouth, his tongue assailing the seam of her lips. His free hand plunged into her hair, fingering its satin smoothness, trapping her against his mouth.
Then her hands stopped pushing, and her lips went pliant. She opened to let him in.
When her tongue tangled with his, fireworks ignited his brain stem, sizzling their way to the top of his skull. Her body molded against his, and he braced himself, letting soft meet hard.
Her lips were parted, and she was kissing him back. A whimper sounded deep in her throat. She wasn’t fighting, not that it had actually occurred to him to care. Well, not until this second, when he remembered who they were and what was between them, and now he knew he’d have to bring things under control.
But not yet.
For a stolen moment longer, he was going to let this passion race between them. He wrapped his arms fully around her, coupling their bodies together, pretending it didn’t have to end. Her own arms went around his neck, pulling the little tank top, revealing a strip of her bare skin at her midriff.
He ran his fingertips along the warm softness. She shivered, and he bent her backward, boldly running his hands beneath her top, stroking her flat stomach, trailing his thumbs below the mound of her breasts.
“Prince Raif,” she gasped, and the sound of his own name arced his arousal.
He kissed her temple, her ear, the curve of her neck. One hand explored her bare skin, while the other cupped her bottom, holding her firmly against the driving need of his body.
She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, still squeezing him tight, drawing deep, labored breaths. “We have to stop.”
His mind screamed no, but he forced his hands to still.
“Right,” he agreed on a strained gasp.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” she rasped.
That wasn’t strictly true. But it was getting Raif a whole lot of places he didn’t dare go.
He’d never lost control like this. His sex life was carefully orchestrated, planned, executed. But Ann had gotten under his skin in a way that was dangerous. Especially considering who she was.
How had he forgotten who she was?
He drew back, steeling himself. “I hope you didn’t think to use your body to change my mind.”
She blinked at him. “You kissed me, remember?”
“To put you in your place.” At least that was how it had started. “But you took the opportunity quickly enough.”
“Is that the way things work in Rayas? When a woman stands her ground, you accost her?”
Raif wanted to laugh at Ann’s protest. She’d been an enthusiastic participant in the kiss, and they both knew it.
“I’m the crown prince,” he drawled, refusing to either defend or explain. “If that’s the way I want things to work, that’s the way they work.”
“You have absolute power?”
“Absolutely.”
They stared at each other in silence for a long moment.
He was dying to kiss her again. But he did possess some self-control. Though it had been tested.
“Go back to America, Ann,” he told her. “Either give me my statue, or go back to America. This ruse you’ve concocted about helping me is not going to work. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I can guarantee you, I am going to find out the truth.”
“Good.” Her gaze stayed steady on his. “You do that, Raif. You find out the truth. And when you do, I’ll expect an apology.” She eyed him up and down. “For the false accusation. For the unwanted kiss, and for anything else you manage to do between now and then.”
Before she could move, he grasped her chin. “If you don’t want a kiss, Ms. Richardson, you might want to keep your tongue to yourself.”
She held her ground without pulling back. “You took me by surprise.”
Surprise was putting it mildly from Raif’s perspective. “And if you don’t want me as an enemy,” he continued his warning, mentally blocking the kiss, “you might want to stop defying me.”
“Your threats don’t frighten me.”
“Really?” he drawled. “You’d be the first.”
Keep reading for an excerpt of Up Close and Personal by Maureen Child!
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One
“Laura, I know you’re in there!”
Ronan Connolly pounded on the brightly painted blue front door a few more times, then paused to listen. Not a sound from inside the house, though he knew too well that Laura was in there. Hell, he could practically feel her, standing just on the other side of the damned door.
Bloody hardheaded woman. How had he ever thought that quality attractive? Now that attractive hardheadedness had come back to bite him in the ass.
Seconds ticked past and there was no sound from within, which only irritated him further. He glanced at the sunshine-yellow Volkswagen parked alongside the house—her car—then glared again at the still-closed front door.
“You won’t convince me you’re not at home. Your bloody car is parked in the street, Laura.”
Her voice came then, muffled but clear. “It’s a driveway in America, Ronan. You’re not in Ireland, remember?”
“More’s the pity.” He scrubbed one hand across his face and rolled his eyes in frustration. If they were in Ireland right now, he’d have half the village of Dunley on his side and he’d bloody well get her to open the damned door.
“I heard that,” she said. “And feel free to hop onto one of your private planes and go back to Connolly-land anytime you feel like it!”
If only he could, Ronan thought. But he’d come to California to open an American branch of his business and until Cosain was running as it should, he was going nowhere at all.
At the moment though, he was tired, on edge and in no mood to be dealing with more females. Especially one with a head as hard as Laura’s.
He had spent the past six weeks traveling across Europe acting as bodyguard to a sixteen-year-old pop star whose singing was only slightly less annoying than her attitude. Between the girl and her grasping mother, Ronan had been more than ready for the job to end so he could get back to his life. Now that he was back, he’d expected peace. Orderliness. Instead…
Grinding his teeth together, he took a long moment or two and counted to ten. Then did it a second time. “Whatever the hell you want to call it, Laura, your car is here and so’re you.”
“I might have been out,” she shouted. “Did you ever think of that? I do have friends, you know.”
The Connolly temper lifted a couple notches inside him and
Ronan was forced to fight it back down.
“But you’re not out, are you?” he asked, entirely reasonably, and he gave himself points for it. “You’re here, driving me to distraction and making me shout at a bloody closed door like I’m the village idiot turned loose on his own for the first time.”
“You don’t have to shout, I can hear you,” she said, her voice carrying nicely through the door.
Laura Page lived on a tidy street in Huntington Beach, California, in one of a dozen town houses built to look like a Cape Cod village. When he’d first seen her place, he’d thought it charming. Now he glared at the building as if it were to blame for his current situation.
A cool ocean breeze shot down the narrow street and rattled the limbs of the nearly naked elm tree in Laura’s front yard. Roiling gray clouds overhead promised a storm soon, and he hoped to hell he wasn’t still standing on this bleeding porch when it hit.
“Your neighbors can hear me, too,” he pointed out with a brief nod at the man clipping his hedge with enough vigor to whittle it into a toothpick. “Why not open the door and we can talk this out. Together. In private.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
He laughed shortly. That would be a first indeed, he told himself. A more opinionated woman he had never met. In the beginning, he’d liked that about her. Too often, he was surrounded by smiling, vacuous women who agreed with everything he said and laughed at the lamest of jokes just to ingratiate themselves with him.
But not Laura.
No, from the first, she had been stubborn and argumentative and unimpressed with his wealth or celebrity. He had to admit, he had enjoyed verbally sparring with her. He admired a quick mind and a sharp tongue. He’d admired her even more once he’d gotten her into his bed.
He glanced down at the dozen red roses he held clutched in his right hand and called himself a damned fool for thinking this woman would be swayed by pretty flowers and a smooth speech. Hell, she hadn’t even seen the flowers yet. And at this rate, she never would.
Huffing out an impatient breath, he lowered his voice a bit. “You know why I’m here. Let’s get it done and have it over then.”
