SHE WAS A THIEF.
A thief...
Jasmine Nichols’s heart pounded the indictment through her bloodstream. She hadn’t stolen anything yet, but that was beside the point. She’d travelled thousands of miles for the sole purpose of taking something that didn’t belong to her.
Telling herself she had no choice didn’t matter. If anything, it escalated her helplessness.
By the end of the night, she would wear the damning label as close to her skin as her black designer evening gown clung now.
Because failure wasn’t an option.
Fear and shame duelled for supremacy inside her, but it was the deep knowledge that she couldn’t turn her back on her family that propelled her reluctant feet up the sweeping crimson carpet towards the awe-inspiring masterpiece that housed the Contemporary Museum of Arts, perched on a cliff-side overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Even the jaw-dropping beauty of her surroundings couldn’t detract her from the simple fact.
She’d come here to steal.
The smile she’d plastered on her face since alighting from the air-conditioned limo threatened to crack. To calm her nerves, she mentally recited her to do list.
First, she had to locate Crown Prince Reyes Vicente Navarre.
And there was her first problem.
All effective search engines had yielded no pictures of the reclusive prince, save for a grainy image taken at the funeral of his mother four years ago. Since then, no pictures of the royal family of the South American kingdom of Santo Sierra had been released to the public. They guarded their privacy with a rigour that bordered on fanaticism.
As if that weren’t bad enough, according to reports, the House of Navarre’s Crown Prince had left his kingdom only three times in the last three years, all his time spent caring for his gravely ill father. It was rumoured King Carlos Navarre wasn’t expected to live past the summer.
Which meant Jasmine had no means of identifying Prince Reyes Navarre.
How did she get close to a man whose identity she had no idea of, distract him long enough to get her hands on what she’d come for before her mother and, more importantly, her stepfather, Stephen Nichols, the man who’d saved her life, and whose name she’d adopted, found out what she was up to?
Stephen would be heartbroken if he knew she was being blackmailed.
A nerve-destroying shudder rose up from the soles of her feet, making her clench her teeth to stop its death rattle from escaping. She smiled some more, mingled with the insanely wealthy and well heeled, and tried to reassure herself she could do this. By this time tomorrow, she’d be back home.
And most importantly, Stephen would be safe.
If everything went smoothly.
Stop it! Negative thinking was the downfall of many a plan. How many times had Stephen told her this?
She fixed her wilting smile back in place, stepped into the main hall of the museum, but she couldn’t summon the enthusiasm to gawp at the stunning paintings and sculptures on display.
A waiter approached bearing a tray of champagne. Accepting the sparkling gold-filled crystal goblet, she smoothed a shaky hand over the pearl choker around her throat, ignored the nervous flutter in her belly, and made her way to the bowl-shaped terrace where the guests were congregating for pre-dinner drinks.
So far the plans set out by Joaquin Esteban—the man threatening her stepfather’s life—had gone meticulously. Her name had been on the guest list as promised, alongside those of world leaders and celebrities she’d only seen on TV and in glossy magazines. For a single moment, while she’d waited for Security to check the electronic chip on her invitation, she’d secretly hoped to be caught, turned away. But the man who held her stepfather’s fate in his cruel hands had seen to every last detail she needed to pull this off.
Everything except provide her with a picture of the thirty-two-year-old prince.
The first stage of the treaty signing was to take place in half an hour in the Golden Room behind her. And with the occasion coinciding with Prince Mendez of Valderra’s birthday, guests had been invited onto the terrace to witness the spectacular sunset and the prince’s arrival, before the signing and birthday celebrations began.
Crown Prince Reyes himself was expected at eight o’clock. A quick glance at her watch showed five minutes to the hour. With every interminable second that ticked by, Jasmine’s nerves tightened another notch.
What if she was found out? Certainly, she could kiss her job as a broker and mediator goodbye. But even if she succeeded, how could she ever hold her head high again? She’d worked so very hard to put her past behind her, to tend the new leaf she’d turned over. For eight years, she’d succeeded. And now, at twenty-six, she was on the slippery slope again.
Because once a juvie princess, always a juvie princess?
No. She hadn’t let that voice of her detention cellmate taunt her for years. She wasn’t about to start now.
And yet, she couldn’t stop the despair that mingled with anxiety as her gaze drifted over the orange-splashed water towards the stunning silhouette of Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance.
Under normal circumstances, the sights and sounds would have filled her with excitement and awe. For a girl with her past and dire upbringing, sights such as these didn’t feature in her normal. Except these weren’t normal circumstances. And fear was threatening to block out every other emotion.
Which was dangerous. She couldn’t afford to fail. Yet success would bring nothing but shame. Would prove that the past really never stayed in the past.
But the reality was her stepfather had gone too far this time, hedged his bets, literally, with the wrong person.
Joaquin, with his soft voice and deadly smile, had calmly given her two choices.
Come to Rio or watch Stephen rot in jail.
Of course, Joaquin had counted on the fact that, aside from his very public humiliation of being thrown out of his Foreign Office position for gambling away government money, Stephen Nichols’s devotion to his wife meant he would do anything to save her the distress of watching him suffer. As would Jasmine.
Even when Jasmine was a child, long before Stephen had entered their lives, her mother’s fragility had meant she had assumed the role of the caretaker. Her mother wouldn’t survive losing Stephen.
So here Jasmine was, about to step into a quagmire she wasn’t sure any amount of self-affirmation would wash her clean of.
‘He’s here!’
She roused herself from her maudlin self-pitying. A quick glance showed it was precisely eight o’clock. Her heart double somersaulted into her throat. When her stomach threatened to follow suit, she took a hasty sip of champagne. Whatever Dutch courage she hoped to gain was sorely lacking as the butterflies in her stomach grew into vicious crows.
Following the direction of excited voices and pointing, she focused on the bottom of the cliff. A sleek speedboat approached, foaming waves billowing behind the fast-moving craft. It gathered speed as it neared the shore. Swerving at the last second, it created a huge arc of water that rushed to the shore in a giant wave before heading away from the jetty.
The pilot executed a series of daredevil manoeuvres that brought gasps of delight from the crowd and left the other two occupants—bodyguards, judging by their bulging muscles and ill-fitting suits—clinging grim-faced to the sides.
Finally, bringing the vessel alongside the quay, the tuxedoed figure stepped boldly onto the bow of the boat and jumped lithely down onto the jetty. Smiling at the enthusiastic applause, he clasped his hands in front of him and gave a deep bow.
Jasmine