“That thing should be under armed guard,” Hyatt commented. “If it belonged to me, I wouldn’t loan it out for a trade reception.”
“Yeah,” Shane agreed.
“I guess it’s got state-of-the-art security,” the man murmured.
“Uh-huh,” Shane answered, repressing a secret grin.
Supposedly the security system guarding the gem was flawless. But he’d used his covert skills to get up here earlier, and he knew that the precautions the guards from Beau Pays had taken were laughable—at least in the face of one of his newer inventions, a bypass system that would fool the alarm into thinking the protective grid was still in force.
Hyatt drifted away, and Shane stood for several seconds contemplating the gem—until the feeling of being watched made him turn. He expected to see one of the security men zeroing in on the case with the sapphire. Instead, a porcelain-skinned beauty in a gown that matched the sapphire-blue of the gem was staring at him from across the room.
He took in details like a camera snapping shots in rapid succession. Her hair was light blond and worn in an upsweep, decorated with a gold tiara as delicate as her features. Her eyes were light blue or green. He couldn’t tell the exact color from this distance. She was small and slender, yet the way she stood, tall and straight, gave her a regal bearing.
The crowd of people around him dimmed to a blur. Suddenly he felt as if he’d stepped from the reception room into the middle of a dream.
What was that line from the old Broadway musical? Something about seeing a stranger from across a crowded room. And knowing that person was the one.
He felt as if a hundred-pound hammer had thunked him in the chest. His heart skipped a beat, then started up again in double time.
It was several heartbeats before he remembered to breathe, several seconds before his brain engaged again. When it did, one thought surfaced. He wanted to be alone with this woman in a bedroom, although the sudden lustful ache was nothing compared to the emotions flooding through him.
In the next moment, his memory for names and faces clicked into place. He’d never met her in person, but he knew who she was—and knew that he didn’t have a chance in hell of being anything more than her casual acquaintance.
Princess Ariana LeBron was off-limits to the likes of Shane Peters.
ARIANA LEBRON STOOD stock-still, struggling to keep her face from revealing any emotion as she stared at the tall, lean-bodied man on the other side of the room.
He was devastating in formal attire. She suspected he’d be just as appealing in a pair of faded jeans, T-shirt and scuffed loafers.
His shiny black hair was styled to perfection. His eyes were dark, too, and focused on her with a laser intensity that tied her stomach into an instant knot.
His name was Shane Peters. She knew that from her recent research.
To aid her in identifying the foreign dignitaries and others attending the reception, the State Department had supplied her with an annotated guest list. As she’d crossed the Atlantic in her private jet, she’d read up on many of the men and women who would be attending. Being prepared for any situation went with the job of heir to the throne of Beau Pays.
As she’d studied the information, she’d been especially interested in Shane Peters because her father had talked about him on more than one occasion. He was ex-Special Forces. A security expert. And also an inventor of specialized electronics equipment.
Of all the pictures she’d looked at on the plane, his had stopped her. He’d intrigued her. She’d taken in his sinfully long lashes, his ebony eyes, his perfect white teeth. Now she knew that the photograph had been a pale shadow of the flesh-and-blood man.
She could see that there was more to Shane Peters than a biography and the photo he’d slapped onto the information sheet about his company. An aura of danger surrounded him, and she knew instinctively that he’d be a bad man to have on the opposing side of any fight.
Which was one good reason for staying away from him, she reminded herself. Another was the pull she felt when she stared at him. He was a brash American, just the wrong sort of man for her. She couldn’t date a man simply because she was attracted to him. Duty to her people and to her country came first.
Since her brother, Rolf, had died in a skiing accident four years ago, she was the heir to the throne. And since she would be thirty in two months, she’d selected a suitable fiancé from among the nobility of her country.
His name was Jean Claude Belmont, and he would inherit a dukedom. She had thought of practicality, not love, when making her selection.
From observing her own parents’ polite and friendly marriage, she knew that love was just a fairy tale. You picked a mate because he fulfilled certain purposes. Like Jean Claude, who had a Ph.D. in government. He would father her children and give her advice when she needed his counsel.
He was home now, attending a meeting she’d had to skip to come here—a meeting of the committee setting up a program where poor women in her country could get free day care for their children while they entered job-training programs and then went out into the workforce.
But when her father’s gout had flared up, he’d asked her to attend this reception in his place. And she hadn’t refused because duty had been drummed into her since she was a child.
Still, for just a moment, she let herself wonder what it would be like to go off alone with a man like Shane Peters. What it would be like to let her hair down and do anything she wanted.
“Is something wrong, Your Highness?”
She blinked, coming out of her reverie and ruthlessly snapping off the fantasy. Turning to her bodyguard, Manfred, she flashed a brilliant smile.
“No. I was just admiring the Beau Pays sapphire,” she said, smoothly disguising her state of mind.
“Yes. It looks stunning,” Manfred agreed. “The centerpiece of the reception.”
“As it should be,” she murmured, then took a slow, calming breath as she looked around the room, taking in the richly dressed men and women. The Americans, she noticed, tended to overdo the glamour scene, and the women often showed too much flesh in their choice of attire.
As she and Manfred talked, she couldn’t stop herself from looking for Shane Peters in the crowd. He appeared to be circulating around the room, talking easily to people he knew. But she could tell he was keeping her in his sights.
Well, she knew he was brash. What did he think—that they were going to slip off into some private room together?
She felt her skin heat as she realized she’d been having exactly that thought. The wrong thought.
Or did she have an excuse for talking to the man? After all, he’d been on that mission with her father. That gave them something in common. And maybe he could fill her in on some of the details from that long-ago night that she’d never been able to get her father to talk about.
Still, the back of her neck prickled as she watched the security expert circle toward her, making it look as if she weren’t in his radar at all. But as a princess, she had a lot of experience reading people.
Well, she didn’t like being stalked. Maybe she could leave before he made his move. Right after the president made his little speech, she’d go back to her room at the Ritz-Carlton to study the Women’s Workshop proposal.
She felt herself wavering again. The indecision wasn’t like her.
Lifting her head, she turned away from Peters, looking for one of the waiters circulating through the room. One glass of champagne wouldn’t hurt, she decided.
Just as she found one of the servers and took a