The Argentinian's Virgin Conquest. Bella Frances

Princess.’

      And he turned on his heel.

      ‘No—no, you can’t. Please!’ Lucie heard herself begging and saw herself reach out, grab his arm, pull him back. She really pulled him back.

      He turned. Looked down at her, hands on hips.

      ‘Please? Please, what? What do you expect me to do? Help you? Are you serious? After the way you’ve acted?’

      ‘I can’t go in there.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘I simply can’t.’

      She didn’t know herself what she expected him to do. All she knew was that for some reason his presence, his body—whatever it was—she felt warmed by it. And when she felt warm she was less likely to run away—or in this case swim away.

      He turned to look at the room full of people. Restless people.

      ‘All these good people here are waiting patiently for you to go in there and start this off, aren’t they?’

      Lucie nodded, held her head in her hands.

      ‘And you’re in no fit state to deliver. Are you?’

      Her shoulders drooped as she shook her head. What an idiot she was. A gauche idiot with social anxiety as an extra talent.

      Suddenly she felt her chin being lifted up.

      ‘Is it nerves? Is that it? You’re stressed out because your mother hasn’t turned up and suddenly the spotlight’s on you?’

      She heard him murmur the words. Someone understood. Someone genuinely understood. How many times had she tried to explain to the people close to her that she simply couldn’t do the things they could? How many times had she heard the word ‘nonsense’ fired at her? And how many times had she seen her mother sweep past her, shaking her head and rolling her eyes, making her feel such an abject, worthless piece of garbage just because she wasn’t like her?

      ‘God only knows why I’d do anything other than get as far away from you as possible, but I don’t suppose it would kill me to help you out. And I can’t really stand back and watch you let all those people down...’

      She stared up into that face. It was suddenly serious, the dimples subsumed into all that beautiful golden skin. His eyes were grave. And she felt again that strange sense of caring, of kindness, of being anchored.

      Lucie nodded. She stood in the shelter of his warm, strong body and nodded.

      He looked at her for a long second, then stepped away, shaking his head.

      ‘God only knows...’

      She watched his back as he walked into the crowd, her breaths lengthening and her heart gradually steadying. Easy and lazy—no problem at all for him to go and stand before a crowd, all eyes trained on him.

      Lucie’s gaze fixed on the breadth of his shoulders, the slight swing of his backside, so fabulously formed inside those trousers, the angle of each leg as he stepped so damn nonchalantly onto the podium, before the crowd of women who clearly thought exactly the same as she did closed over his path like waves of hungry harpies.

      She might have solved one problem, but she had the feeling she had launched herself head-first into another.