‘Yes, Miles,’ she said miserably, looking at the floor. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘There’s no need—I’ve said I’m going, and that’s that.’
Miles turned back to the Prime Minister and said with forced cheerfulness, ‘My sister hasn’t been…well. She’s still recovering and she needs keeping an eye on.’
It was too humiliating. Bella seemed to spend her whole life these days trying to forget what had happened, but it was impossible when to everyone else it was the single most significant thing about her. Speechless with suppressed rage, she whirled round, the plate clasped in front of her like a weapon, and walked straight into someone stepping towards her.
As if in slow motion she watched caviar blinis sail gracefully through the air and rain down all around her. The plate jolted against her hipbones, coming between her and the body of the man with whom she had collided. In a daze of embarrassment and misery she sank instantly to the floor and started to pick up scattered canapés, desperate to clear up the damage and get out.
The man she had bumped into dropped to his knees beside her.
‘It’s fine,’ she muttered miserably, without looking up. ‘Please don’t bother. I can manage.’
‘Leave it.’
His voice was very low, and very French. And very filled with barely suppressed anger.
She froze. Then, full of foreboding, she dragged her gaze upwards. Her indrawn breath made a little gasping sound. She was looking straight into the dark, gleaming eyes of the man from the auction house.
‘Wh—what? I don’t understand…’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Taking you away.’ Removing the plate from her hands, he put it on a side table and gently pulled her up. She was suddenly aware of Miles behind her, looking at her with obvious dismay that she’d managed to make a fool of herself again. She could hardly blame him. She was standing liberally smeared in first-class beluga caviar just a few feet away from the Prime Minister and some of the most important, most famous and influential people in the country.
And in front of possibly the best-looking man on the planet.
Without warning, hot tears stung her eyes, but before they spilled over she felt the man from the auction take her chin in his fingers and gently tilt her head up.
‘Oh, no you don’t, beauty. You’re not going to cry,’ he murmured as he bent towards her, and in a heartbeat his mouth closed over hers, warm and firm. For a second she felt herself stiffen, but her gasp of shock was lost in his kiss.
The bright, tasteful room full of people dissolved, the loud music of the band faded away, and along with it her shame and humiliation. She was in a dark, secret world of lips and hands, and the only sound was the frantic drumbeat of her heart. Or his heart. Or both together…
After a second, a minute, a lifetime, he lifted his head and with one hand in the small of her back moved his mouth to her ear.
‘OK, cherie, smile nicely and head for the door.’
Bella opened her mouth to protest, but he swept his thumb swiftly across it.
‘Don’t speak,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Don’t say a word. You can thank me later.’
CHAPTER THREE
OLIVIER followed her through the crowded room.
Already, he noticed, she was walking taller, holding her head higher. There was a provocative sway to her hips. In short, a glimmer of the brilliant spark he had noticed yesterday in the auction room had returned.
With just one kiss.
Dieu, what he would do to her with a whole night.
The thought brought the ghost of a smile to his set face. He had decided already that seducing Genevieve Lawrence’s granddaughter, sleeping with her, would be a matter of cold-blooded score-settling, but if the change he’d just witnessed was anything to go by it would almost be too pleasurable to count as vengeance.
How would it feel to touch the flesh that had been so forbidden to his father? How would it feel to possess such a priceless pearl…the daughter of the Delacroix dynasty…and then cast it away as if it were worthless? Would it make up for what they had done?
On the landing outside the sitting room she stopped and turned to him. There was a pink stain in her cheeks and an intense, almost feverish glitter in her eyes.
‘Thank you? I’m supposed to thank you for this?’ She looked down at herself. Beads of caviar gleamed darkly on the pale skin of her arms and the ivory swell of her breast. ‘Of course. Caviar body paint is such a good look…’
Olivier smiled lazily. She might be being sarcastic, but she was actually completely right. She looked good enough to eat. ‘Believe me,’ he drawled, ‘it’s a lot better than being completely humiliated in public by some overbearing bastard treating you like a child.’
‘Do you mind?’ she gasped. ‘That was my brother!’
‘And that makes it all right for him to treat you like that?’ Olivier asked coolly.
‘He’s protective. He just—’ Bella broke off, shaking her head in confusion. ‘Look, I don’t know what this has to do with you…’
‘I don’t like bullying. Now, which is your room?’
‘Why?’ she demanded.
He paused, looking at her thoughtfully. Standing there with her eyes sparking with fury she looked oddly sweet, and he couldn’t help but admire her defiance. The prospect of seducing her was like a sudden and unexpected blow to the stomach. ‘Let’s just say I don’t like people who use their natural advantages to repress people who don’t have the same power,’ he said quietly.
She laughed suddenly: a short, joyful peal that broke the tension. ‘I didn’t mean that.’ She looked up at him and their gazes locked. ‘I meant, why do you want to know which is my room?’
‘Because I think you need to get out of that dress.’
The sparkling laughter faded from her eyes, and was replaced by something much more intense.
Gently, not wanting to frighten her, he reached out and cupped her breast in the flat of his hand, feeling the ripeness and heat of her skin through the severe black crêpe. A small shiver ran through her. Slowly, lazily, he ran his thumb over the bare skin above the low-cut neckline of the dress where her cleavage spilled out, scooping up black beads of caviar that glistened against the creamy flesh. Her eyes stayed fixed to his the entire time, and he saw the momentary flicker of her eyelids at his touch.
Removing his hand, he put his thumb to his lips and sucked off the caviar.
She drew in a soft, shuddering breath. ‘Up there,’ she said in a low voice. ‘My room is up there.’
‘Then allow me…’ Olivier almost expected her to protest as he took her hand and led her to the stairs, but passively she allowed him to lead her. Even so, he had the impression that a fierce battle was going on beneath that graceful exterior. This little rich girl had been brought up to be polite and well behaved, but all the etiquette and good breeding couldn’t quite conceal the wildness that heated her blue-tinged blood.
Just like her Grandmother. Just like the original Dame de la Croix.
He followed her across the thickly carpeted upper landing. She opened a door, revealing a pretty room with a window set into its sloping roof. Outside a blue August twilight was gathering over the treetops in the residents’ garden opposite, casting deep, inky shadows in the