by Various
‘I had a…disagreement with my dad. My mum was ill and I stayed until she died, but the day after her funeral…I…just couldn’t be there any more, knowing what he’d done.’
‘And what he’d done—’ Kiki probed gently ‘—makes going back out of the question?’
Emily’s hands tightened around her mug and she closed her eyes briefly. Cheating on her mother, fathering a child, lying to them all and expecting her to lie too…
‘Yes. It’s out of the question.’
Kiki sighed. ‘I wish I could help, but we just don’t have the budget to be able to pay you for what you do here. I would if I could.’
‘I wouldn’t do this for money,’ Emily said bleakly. ‘I do it because it’s the only thing that keeps me sane.’
‘Well, that’s another reason to hope we stay open,’ said Kiki with a rueful smile. It faded quickly. ‘So what are you going to do? You can’t stay under the same roof as the weird sex pest, and if your wages won’t stretch to somewhere decent…’
‘There is one thing.’
Emily was looking out of the window again, a strange, blank expression on her face. Outside the day hadn’t lived up to the promise of this morning, and along the street she could see the cherry tree she’d passed yesterday. Since then its extravagant froth of silken blossom had been stripped by the wind, and now it looked forlorn and ragged.
‘Marry a millionaire?’ Kiki suggested in a weak attempt at humour.
A car was drawing up by the kerb on the other side of the wire fence of the community centre—a huge, black, shiny car with tinted windows. Emily watched it dispassionately. Around here expensive cars like that meant only one thing.
‘If you could find me one that isn’t a drug dealer I’ll consider it. Until then I have to be a bit more pragmatic.’ Ruthlessly she pushed away the memory of Luis Cordoba and his tempting, tantalizing, far-too-good-to-be-true offer and said dully, ‘My boss at the Pink Flamingo has offered me a dancing job.’
‘Dancing?’ Kiki’s face fell. ‘I take it you’re not talking about ballet. Oh, Emily—you couldn’t. You haven’t said yes, have you?’
Emily’s hands were shaking, making the surface of the cooling coffee in her mug quiver. ‘I said I’d think about it. But actually, I think it’s best not to.’ She attempted a laugh, but it turned into a kind of strangled sob. ‘After all, what choice do I have? The money would be twice, three times, what I earn behind the bar, and until Prince Charming comes riding up on his white charger—’
A loud knock on the door made them both jump. Kiki rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘What do you want?’ she yelled.
The door opened. Emily gasped.
Standing there, looking relaxed and golden and as out of place as a sunflower in Siberia, was Luis.
‘Coincidentally, I want Miss…Jones,’ he said, answering Kiki’s question, but looking directly, unnervingly, at Emily. He was dressed in charcoal-grey trousers and a very pale pink shirt, the collar of which was open, as if he’d just discarded his jacket and torn off his tie. Suddenly Emily felt like she’d stepped out of the freezer and into a heatwave. ‘I hoped I might find you here.’
‘Your Highness…’ Flustered, Kiki slid down from the countertop and executed a kind of awkward curtsy. ‘I’m sorry—I mean, I didn’t know…’
Luis ignored her. His eyes were still fixed on Emily. ‘What’s wrong?’
Emily took a hasty mouthful of coffee, aiming for a fraction of the nonchalance he conveyed so effortlessly. ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
He shifted his gaze to Kiki, saying coolly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain?’
Kiki looked from one to the other, clearly confused and hugely uncomfortable. Her grasp on royal etiquette was shaky, but she was obviously of the opinion that saying, ‘What business is it of yours?’ to a prince wasn’t really an option. Looking apologetically at Emily she said falteringly, ‘Emily’s having a bit of trouble with her landlord. He’s this really creepy guy—and he…he’s been letting himself into her room and—’
‘Kiki.’ Emily hissed. The pure, profound relief she had felt when she had first seen Luis standing there had lasted only a second, and now she had the feeling that she was in a small canoe on a fast-flowing river. His presence seemed to fill every corner of the tiny kitchen, his aura of effortless glamour and his dazzling good looks making it seem even smaller and shabbier than usual.
‘And what?’ he said, turning back to Emily.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ she said curtly. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘Looking for you,’ he replied, leaning against the door frame and smiling easily. He was back to being the laid-back playboy she remembered—all signs of the tension, the despair, she’d sensed in him earlier carefully erased.
Emily gritted her teeth. ‘Kiki, would you mind—’
‘No. I’d like Ms Odiah to stay,’ he interrupted smoothly. ‘What I have to say concerns her too and I believe there’s something you haven’t told her.’
She felt as if the ground had just moved slightly beneath her. The bastard. He was going to give her away. She was trying…she was trying so hard to survive on her own, away from her family and without her name, and he was going to turn the only friend she had against her. And why? As some kind of revenge for turning him down this morning? Or was this all about the fact that she’d turned him down before that? A year ago.
She dragged her tongue over dry lips and gave him a look that was filled with venom. ‘Luis…Your Highness…’
He raised his eyebrows and said reasonably, ‘About our conversation this morning.’ He turned to Kiki. ‘I’m very impressed with what you’re doing here, Miss Odiah. The performance last night was excellent, and it made me think of my little niece back home in Santosa. She’s very keen on ballet, but terribly shy, and as I watched last night it occurred to me how much she would benefit from Miss Jones’s tuition.’
Emily had never seen Kiki dumbfounded before. Working at Larchfield she was resolutely unfazed by violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy, self-harm and many of the more extreme aspects of youth culture. But she was clearly floundering now. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said in bewilderment. ‘You’ve asked Emily to go to Santosa and teach the princess ballet?’
Luis smiled. ‘That’s right.’
Kiki gave a short, incredulous laugh. ‘But that’s—’
‘Out of the question,’ Emily cut in sharply. ‘I don’t want to leave here.’
‘What? You’re kidding, aren’t you? I don’t want to lose you but, Emily, this solves everything.’ A smile spread across Kiki’s face and she took hold of Emily’s arms, her silver bangles jingling as she shook her slightly, excitement shining in her eyes. ‘You can leave that horrible bedsit and tell your slimy boss to shove his revolting lap-dancing job up his—’ She stopped just in time, and cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, Your Highness.’
‘Lap dancing?’ Luis threw Emily a look of unconcealed disdain. She ducked her head.
‘I hadn’t said yes.’
‘But you were going to because you didn’t have a choice,’ Kiki said happily. ‘That’s what you said a moment ago, but now—’
Emily felt like the canoe was hurtling headlong towards the top of a huge waterfall. ‘But what about the children?’ she interrupted, looking imploringly at Kiki. ‘About Larchfield?’
‘I’ve thought about that.’ Levering himself gracefully away from the door frame, Luis reached into his pocket. ‘I know it will be a blow to lose such a valuable member of your team, Ms Odiah, so I want to make a donation to the centre. Perhaps then you could hire someone to continue Miss Jones’s classes…?’
Kiki’s eyes widened cartoonishly as she looked at the figure on the cheque he held out.
You had to hand it to him, Emily thought dully. She was utterly outclassed and outmanoeuvred. That little hesitation before he said ‘Jones’ wasn’t lost on her. He had her over a barrel and he knew it.
‘Aren’t you both forgetting some
thing,’ she snapped. ‘I haven’t agreed to any of this yet.’
He smiled lazily, his eyes glittering with menace. ‘But I hope you will. You can think about it while we go back to your flat and pick up your belongings. I’m sure you won’t want to stay another night in that horrible bedsit. I’ll wait in the car, shall I?’
He went out and instantly the room seemed to darken. Emily slumped forward, the breath whooshing from her in a ragged sigh. Stepping forward, Kiki took hold of her arms again, bending so she could look into her face. Her eyes were still shining with excitement. ‘Hey—talk about Prince Charming! That’s all your problems solved at a single stroke, and…and…crikey, Emily, he’s absolutely gorgeous!’
Yes. He was.
And that was a whole new problem all on its own.
Chapter Six
SANTOSA is an archipelago of twelve islands in the Atlantic, some fifty kilometres from the coast of Brazil. With its crystal-clear waters, exquisite white-sanded beaches and excellently preserved sixteenth-century Portuguese colonial architecture, the biggest and only inhabited island is one of the most seductively beautiful places in the world.
Emily shut the guidebook that Kiki had bought her as a leaving present. Oh, well, she thought, looking out into the hazy blue infinity beyond the window of the plane, if you were going to be miserable and lonely, you might as well be miserable and lonely in one of the most seductively beautiful places in the world.
Stifling a yawn, she leaned back in her butter-soft leather seat and stretched out her legs, taking care not to touch Luis’s as she did so. As a Balfour she was used to luxury travel. Childhood holidays had been spent in either Klosters or on Oscar’s island in the Caribbean, and flying in one of Oscar’s private jets meant that queuing to get through security and waiting in crowded lounges for delayed flights were not part of the Balfour holiday experience.
And yet even Oscar’s no-expense-spared attitude to travel began to look a little low-rent when compared to flying with the Crown Prince of Santosa.
But despite the jaw-dropping luxury of the plane she still felt pent-up and on edge, her brand-new designer trouser outfit as hot and restrictive as a suit of armour. When Luis had driven her round to Bedford Street he had taken one shuddering glance into the broken wardrobe and forbidden her from taking a single item. The next day Tomás had taken her shopping on Luis’s orders, waiting in the shiny black car which was parked on double yellow lines outside the front door of Harvey Nichols. After the grim financial struggle of the past weeks, entering the gleaming, perfumed halls of London’s most exclusive department store should have felt like a return to paradise but, aware that every designer garment had an invisible price tag that was nothing to do with the one displayed in pounds sterling, Emily had kept her purchases to a few businesslike basics. Clothes for work, not for pleasure.
Nothing as vulgar as money changed hands, of course. Upstairs on the designer fashion floor, each item she tried on had been whisked away from her by invisible hands and returned to her when she emerged, shrouded in tissue in shiny carrier bags. Emily found herself unable to meet the curious glances of the shop assistants as they handed them over. Despite the soberness of the clothes she had chosen she knew that they thought she was the Prince of Santosa’s mistress.
Which was ironic, she thought with a stab of black humour. She must be the only woman in the world between the ages of eighteen and eighty that he was actively not interested in.
Almost reluctantly she glanced over to where Luis sat. He was completely absorbed in reading the sports pages of the Santosan newspaper, giving her the opportunity to look at him without having to endure the scrutiny of those golden brown eyes. He was obscenely good-looking, she thought, her lungs constricting painfully. Even unshaven, with his too-long hair untidy where he’d pushed his fingers through it as he read, he looked like a screen idol, relaxing between takes for some Hollywood blockbuster.
Restlessly she forced herself to look away, turning her body slightly so she was facing the window. She winced as pain shot down her arm from the tender spot where a Harley Street physician had given her last-minute injections. Yellow fever and typhoid, he’d explained smoothly as he’d jabbed the needle into her arm—nasty illnesses that could really knock her for six if she was unlucky enough to be affected.
Emily sighed, closing her eyes and shutting out the view of the ocean far below. There was something she was at far more risk of suffering from, and which had the potential to cause her much greater discomfort. But there probably wasn’t an immunisation against the lethal attraction of Luis Cordoba.
Luis read the same line of the match report from Santosa’s game against Santa Cruz for a fourth time. Somehow, completely unexpectedly, Santosa had won, two goals to one, but Luis had no idea how this miracle had come about because his attention kept wandering away from the page and in the direction of the sleeping girl opposite him.
Not that she looked much like a girl in that outfit, he thought acidly, giving up trying to read and tossing the paper down on the table. He’d sent her out shopping for clothes to replace the monstrosities in her wardrobe, and she’d come back with stuff that made her look like an off-duty nun.
His eyes travelled disdainfully over her sober black trouser suit. No one could say she wasn’t going to be a suitable role model for Princess Luciana, but would anyone with half a brain buy the fact that there was supposed to be something romantic between them? She was as far removed from the women he was usually linked with as it was possible to be. Thank goodness Tomás had alerted him to the fact that she’d come out of the shop with suspiciously few bags, so he’d been able to ring Harvey Nichols’s personal-shopping department and order some more suitable clothes in her size. The assistants had been delighted and slightly vindicated to be able to package up all the items Emily had flatly refused to try on first time round.
The smile faded, and he looked thoughtfully at her sleeping face. Her dark hair was drawn back from her forehead in a way that might have been intended to look sophisticated but which merely seemed to emphasise her vulnerability. With her wide-set eyes closed, that incredible Balfour blue hidden, her face was oddly bleached of colour, giving her the appearance of a girl in a Victorian sepia-tinted photograph. His gaze lingered curiously on her lips, which were about the only part of her you could describe as plump…
He looked quickly away, shifting irritably in his seat as razor blades of forbidden desire cut through him. Deus, this self-imposed celibacy was doing unpleasant things to his head, and his body.
But of course that, he thought bitterly, was entirely the point of any punishment. It made you focus on your crime and repent.
Tomás appeared beside him. ‘We’ll be landing in a few minutes, Your Highness. Welcome home.’
Luis nodded, taking a deep breath in as the usual feeling of claustrophobia descended on him. ‘Home,’ he echoed ironically. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be where you can relax and be yourself?’
Tomás threw him a rueful look. ‘Very funny, sir.’ He nodded in Emily’s direction. ‘Would you like me to wake Miss Balfour?’
‘No. I’ll do it.’
Tomás wasn’t the only one who was surprised by the sharpness of his reply. Anyone would think I want an excuse to touch her, Luis sneered inwardly, moving round the table so he was sitting beside her. Her head was tilted to one side, exposing the long sweep of her pale, delicate neck, and his gaze travelled along it, from the sculpted hollow at the angle of her jaw to the place where it disappeared beneath the stiff fabric of her jacket. However, his imagination didn’t stop there. Eagerly it filled his head with images of the supple, girlish body under the grown-up clothes. The small breasts that he’d seen when he’d lifted her from the bath…the concave midriff and narrow hips…
Tomás’s quiet voice broke into his thoughts. Fortunately.
‘I just had a call from Josefina in the press office, sir. She’s tipped off her contacts about your arrival, so we can expect a…sel
ect press presence.’ Tomás glanced meaningfully at Emily.
‘Let the circus begin.’ Luis kept his voice very low so as not to disturb Emily, but the bitterness in it was still all too audible. ‘So tomorrow morning Santosa will be waking up to front-page pictures of me getting off the plane with my new “love interest”?’
‘That’s what we’re hoping, sir,’ Tomás whispered. ‘A feel-good story, to divert attention away from the less happy news of His Majesty’s illness. So perhaps if you just bear that in mind as you walk to the car with Miss Balfour…?’
‘What, and ravish her on the tarmac, just to get the message across?’
‘Oh, no, sir.’ Straightening up, tugging his cuffs smartly into place beneath the sleeves of his jacket, Tomás’s tone was brisk. ‘We’re trying to reinvent your image, remember? This isn’t about sex, it’s about showing that you’ve put those days behind you. Presenting you as a sensitive, honourable, caring prince.’
Letting his head fall back against the seat, Luis laughed. It was a harsh, joyless sound. ‘Tell me, Tomás. Does any of this ever strike you as wrong?’
‘Wrong, sir? What could be wrong with that?’
‘That in order to appear decent I have to lie? In order to appear honourable I have to use people?’
‘It’s part of the job, sir,’ Tomás said simply, looking out of the window. ‘You’re doing it for the monarchy. For Santosa. Ah. We’ll be landing directly. You’d better wake up Miss Balfour.’
It was dark, and Emily was dancing.
It felt good as her body took the familiar positions—neat, tight, controlled—but something was wrong, and as she raised her leg in a passé she realised that instead of ballet shoes she was wearing high heels.
She faltered, teetering dangerously as the darkness around her was filled with a loud roaring sound, and she was suddenly sickeningly aware that she standing on a very small platform, high, high up. Someone was holding her, with strong hands that were making warmth spread through her muscles, melting them and turning her body boneless and languid. She stiffened against them, knowing that she had to keep dancing, had to keep her body taut and hold those rigid positions, because if she didn’t she would fall into the void, but it was no good. However much she tried to resist, the warmth was seeping through her, and she was melting, unable to stop herself, and falling, falling, falling…rushing downwards…hurtling through space…
