‘See something you recognise?’
A voice which made her eyes fly open, every hair on the back of her neck stand on end and every thought fly from her mind. Every thought except one.
Leon.
Stop it, she scolded herself. The Prince of Montez is French. Of course he’s going to sound a little like him. She really did need to get out more if that one meaningless episode had the power to make her lose all grip on reality. She turned sharply to face him.
And the sight before her almost made her keel over.
Her imagination hadn’t been playing a trick on her at all. It was him. Irritatingly perfect him, his impressive physique all the more striking in a formal navy suit. Her mind went into overdrive as she attempted to make sense of what was happening. But as she stared at his wry expression she suddenly understood that this was no coincidence.
Sabrina Philips first discovered Mills & Boon© one Saturday afternoon in her early teens at her first job in a charity shop. Sorting through a stack of pre-loved books, she came across a cover which featured a glamorous heroine and a tall, dark, handsome hero. She started reading under the counter that instant—and has never looked back!
A lover of both reading and writing since childhood, Sabrina went on to study English with Classics at Reading University. She adores all literature, but finds there’s nothing else quite like the indulgent thrill of a Modern Romance—preferably whilst lying in a hot bath with no distractions!
She grew up in Guildford, Surrey, where she now lives with her husband—who swept her off her feet when they were both just sixteen. When Sabrina isn’t spending time with her family or writing, she works as a coordinator of civil marriages, which she describes as a fantastic source of romantic inspiration and a great deal of fun.
A decade after reading her very first Mills & Boon®, Sabrina is delighted to join as an author herself, and have the opportunity to create infuriatingly sexy heroes of her own, which she defies both her heroines—and her readers—to resist! Visit Sabrina’s website: www.sabrinaphilips.com
Recent titles by the same author:
VALENTI’S ONE-MONTH MISTRESS
THE DESERT KING’S BEJEWELLED BRIDE
PRINCE OF
NONTEZ, PREGNANT MISTRESS
BY
SABRINA PHILIPS
With thanks to Penny,
for her art expertise and her much-valued friendship.
And to Phil,
whose enduring patience continues to astound me.
Chapter One
HER heart was beating so loudly in her chest that Cally Greenway was convinced the whole auction room could hear it. Drawing in a deep breath, she uncrossed then recrossed her legs for the umpteenth time and tried to dismiss it as a flurry of anticipation.
After all, tonight was the night she had been waiting for. She looked at her watch. In less than ten minutes, the dream she’d worked so hard for would finally be a reality.
So why did it feel like her whole body was going into meltdown?
Cally closed her eyes and trawled her mind for a legitimate explanation as the penultimate lot, a heavily sought-after Monet, reached astronomical heights. Yes, that was it. She might be a restorer of art, but the art world—epitomised by nights like this, where beauty and expression became about money and possession—left her feeling out of her depth. She didn’t belong at Crawford’s auction house at the most prestigious art auction in their calendar, she belonged in overalls in her studio.
That was why she couldn’t concentrate, she argued inwardly as she tried to encourage the hem of the silky black dress she’d borrowed from her sister back towardsher knee. It absolutely, categorically, had nothing to do with the fact that he was here.
Cally castigated herself for even having noticed him arrive, let alone entertaining the idea that he had anything to do with the physical symptoms that were assailing her. There was no way any man could have that kind of effect on her, least of all one she’d never met before.
Well, technically. She had seen him once before, when she’d attended the sale preview two days ago, but she hadn’t actually met him. ‘Met’ implied that there had been some interaction between them, which of course there hadn’t been. He was classically handsome, and the expensive cut of his clothes—along with his very presence at an event like this—suggested he was filthy rich. He probably had some meaningless title like ‘duke’, or ‘count’, which altogether added up to him being the kind of man who wouldn’t give a woman like her a second glance. Which was absolutely fine, because she had no desire to meet someone that arrogant and conceited anyway. One man like that had been enough to last her a lifetime; she had no desire to meet another.
So why was it she hadn’t been able to drive the intensity of his deep blue eyes from her thoughts, ever since she’d walked into that sale room and had seen him standing there like Michelangelo’s famous statue come to life? And why was it taking all her willpower not to steal another glance over her shoulder to the second row in the back right-hand corner of the room? Not that she had plotted the layout on an imaginary piece of graph paper and knew his exact coordinates, or anything. Why would she? Because every time you look round he slants you an irresistible, one-sided smile which sends the most extraordinary shiver down your spine? an unfamiliar and thoroughly unwelcome voice inside her replied, but immediately she silenced it.
‘And finally we come to lot fifty. A pair of paintings by the nineteenth-century master Jacques Rénard, entitled Mon Amour par la Mer from the estate of the late Hector Wolsey. Whilst the paintings are in need of some specialist restoration in order to return them to their original glory, they are undoubtedly the two most iconic pieces Rénard ever painted.’
Cally drew in a deep breath as the auctioneer’s words confirmed that the moment she had been waiting for was finally here. She closed her eyes again, trying to visualise the air travelling up her nostrils and blowing her errant thoughts aside. When she opened them, the wall panel to the right of the bespectacled auctioneer was rotating in a spectacular one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn to reveal the stunning paintings, and the breath caught in her throat in awe.
She remembered the first time she’d ever seen them, or rather a print of them. Not long after she’d started secondary school, her art teacher, Mrs McLellan, had held them up as an example of how Rénard dared to push the boundaries set by his contemporaries by having a real woman as his subject rather than a goddess. The rest of the class had been lost in a fit of giggles; between the two paintings, Rénard’s Love by the Sea went from fully clothed to completely naked. But for Cally it had been a defining moment in her life. To her the pictures spoke of beauty and truth, of the two sides of every story—of herself. From that moment on, she had known unequivocally that her future lay in art. A certainty matched only by her horror when she had discovered that the original paintings were shut away on the country estate of a pompous aristocrat getting damp and gathering cigar smoke, rather than being on public display for everyone to enjoy.
Until now. Because now they were owned by Hector Wolsey junior, whose horse-racing habit had caused him to demand that Crawford’s auction house sell his late father’s paintings immediately, before they’d even had the chance to say ‘in-house restoration team’. Which meant the London City Gallery had been frantically trying to raise enough money to buy them, and had been lining up a specialist conservator