Of that he was certain.
He drove on into the night.
* * *
‘Give me two minutes and I’ll be ready to go,’ Sarah said.
She strove for composure, but felt as if she’d just been released from a seizure of her senses that had crushed the breath from her lungs. How she’d managed to keep her cool she had no idea—she had only know that keeping her cool was absolutely essential.
What the hell had just happened to her? Out of nowhere...the way it had?
That had been the man whose assessing gaze she’d picked up during her final number. She’d been able to feel it from right across the club—and when he’d walked into her dressing room it had been like...
Like nothing I’ve ever known. Nothing I’ve ever felt—
Never before had a man had such a raw, physical impact on her. Hitting her senses like a sledgehammer. She tried to analyse it now—needing to do so. His height, towering over her in the tiny dressing room, had dominated the encounter. The broad shoulders had been sleekly clad in a bespoke dinner jacket, and there had been an impression of power that she had derived not just from the clearly muscular physique he possessed but by an aura about him that had told her this man was used to getting his own way.
Especially with women.
Because it hadn’t just been the clear impression that here was a wealthy man who could buy female favours—his mention of Le Tombleur had been adequate demonstration of that—it had been far, far more...
She felt herself swallow. He doesn’t need money to impress women.
No, she acknowledged shakily, all it took was those piercing dark eyes, winged with darker brows, the strong blade of his nose, the wide, sensual curve of his mouth and the tough line of his jaw.
He was a man who knew perfectly well that his appeal to women was powerful—who knew perfectly well that women responded to him on that account.
She felt her hackles rise automatically.
He thought I’d jump at the chance!
A rush of weakness swept through her. Thank God she’d had the presence of mind—pulled urgently out of her reeling senses—to react the way she’d managed to do.
What was it about him that he should have had such an effect on me?
Just what had it been about that particular combination of physique, looks and sheer, raw personal impact that had made her react as if she were a sliver of steel in the sudden presence of a magnetic field so strong it had made the breath still in her body?
She had seen better-looking men in her time, but not a single one had ever had the raw, visceral, overpowering impact on her senses that this man had. Even in the space of a few charged minutes...
She shook her head again, trying to clear the image from her mind. Whoever he was, he’d gone.
As she got on with the task of turning herself back into Sarah, shedding the false eyelashes, heavy make-up and tight satin gown, she strove to dismiss him from her thoughts. Put him out of your head, she told herself brusquely. It was Sabine Sablon he wanted to invite to dinner, not Sarah Fareham.
That was the truth of it, she knew. Sabine was the kind of woman a man like that would be interested in—sophisticated, seductive, a woman of the world, a femme fatale. And she wasn’t Sabine—she most definitely was not. So it was completely irrelevant that she’d reacted to the man the way she had.
I haven’t got time to be bowled over by some arrogantly smouldering alpha male who thinks he’s picking up a sultry woman like Sabine. However much he knocked me sideways.
She had one focus in her life right now—only one. And it was not a man with night-dark eyes and devastating looks who sucked the breath from her body.
She headed out to where Max was waiting to walk her back to her pension, some blocks away in this harbourside ville of Pierre-les-Pins, before carrying on to the apartment he shared with Anton, the opera’s composer.
As they set off he launched into speech without preamble. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘in your first duet with Alain—’
And he was off, instructing her in some troublesome vocal technicalities he wanted to address at the next day’s rehearsal. Sarah was glad, for it helped to distance her mind from that brief but disturbing encounter in her dressing room with that devastating, dangerous man.
Dangerous? The word echoed in her head, taking her aback. Had he been dangerous? Truly?
She gave herself a mental shake. She was being absurd. How could a complete stranger be dangerous to her? Of course he couldn’t.
It was absurd to think so.
‘BASTIAAN! FANTASTIC! I’d no idea you were here in France!’ Philip’s voice was warm and enthusiastic as he answered his mobile.
‘Monaco, to be precise,’ Bastiaan answered, strolling with his phone to the huge plate-glass window of his high-rise apartment in Monte Carlo, which afforded a panoramic view over the harbour, chock-full of luxury yachts glittering in the morning sunshine.
‘But you’ll come over to the villa, won’t you?’ his cousin asked eagerly.
‘Seeking distraction from your essays...?’ Bastiaan trailed off deliberately, knowing the boy had distraction already—a dangerous one.
As it had done ever since he’d left the nightclub last night, the seductive image of Sabine Sablon slid into his inner vision. Enough to distract anyone. Even himself...
He pulled his mind away. Time to discover just how deep Philip was with the alluring chanteuse. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I can be with you within the hour if you like?’
He did not get an immediate reply. Then Philip was saying, ‘Could you make it a bit later than that?’
‘Studying so hard?’ Bastiaan asked lightly.
‘Well, not precisely. I mean, I am—I’ve got one essay nearly finished—but actually, I’m a bit tied up till lunchtime...’
Philip’s voice trailed off, and Bastiaan could hear the constraint in his cousin’s voice. He was hiding something.
Deliberately, Bastiaan backed off. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘See you for lunch, then—around one... Is that OK?’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to tell Paulette to expect me, or will you?’
‘Would you?’ said Philip, from which Bastiaan drew his own conclusion. Philip wasn’t at the villa right now.
‘No problem,’ he said again, making his voice easy still. Easier than his mind...
So, if Philip wasn’t struggling with his history essays at the villa, where was he?
Is he with her now?
He could feel his hackles rising down his spine. Was that why she had turned down dining with him at Le Tombleur? Because she’d been about to rendezvous with his cousin? Had Philip spent the night with her?
A growl started in his throat. Philip might be legally free to have a relationship with anyone he wanted, but even if the chanteuse had been as pure as the driven snow, with the financial probity of a nun, she was utterly unsuitable for a first romance for a boy his age. She was nearer thirty than twenty...
‘Great!’ Philip was saying now. ‘See you then, Bast—gotta go.’
The call was disconnected and Bastiaan dropped his phone back in his pocket slowly, staring out of the window. Multi-million-pound yachts crowded the marina, and the fairy tale royal palace looked increasingly