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“Have you been giving money to random gypsies ever since?”
“It’s not like I come across a lot of them. Alhough …” He pretended to ponder. “I suppose a charitable foundation wouldn’t be out of order.”
“I’m sure they appreciate it.”
Sinclair’s cell phone chimed.
She opened her purse to check the lighted number. “Kristy.”
It chimed again under her hand.
“Better answer it,” Hunter advised. “She’s probably worried.”
“So was I,” Sinclair said over the sound.
His hand covered hers for a brief second. “We’ll talk more.”
Sinclair pressed a button and raised the phone to her ear. “Hey, Kristy.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“And Hunter?”
Sinclair looked at him. “He’s had better mornings.”
“What was he thinking?” There was a clear rebuke in Kristy’s tone. “Going out on his own. Jack says that Hunter was being dangerously cavalier with the family fortune.”
Some protective instinct leapt to life within Sinclair. “He was thinking it was a good deal.”
Hunter shook his head, mouthing the word, “Don’t.”
Sinclair ignored him. “And they might want to look closely at it before they decide it’s a bad risk.”
Hunter stood to lean over the table, but Sinclair turned away, protecting the phone. The least she could do was come down on his side.
“Are you defending him? Did he try to make this your fault? It wasn’t your fault, you know. You were being honest. He was being underhanded.”
“He was being smart.”
There was a shocked silence on the line.
“Are you sleeping with him again?” Kristy demanded.
“None of your business.”
“That’s it. I’m coming to Paris.”
Hunter lunged forward and grabbed the phone from Sinclair’s hands.
“Goodbye,” she quickly called as he snapped it shut.
“Have you lost your mind?” asked Hunter.
“She said you were being underhanded.”
“You can’t fight with your sister over me.”
Sinclair folded her arms over her chest and blew out a breath. “Sure, I can.”
Hunter handed back the phone. “No. You can’t. She’s your sister. Keep your eye on the long game.”
Meaning Hunter was the short game?
“And she loves you,” he said.
“She’s coming to Paris.”
“You want to go to London?”
Sinclair grinned. “We couldn’t.”
Hunter sighed. “You’re right. We couldn’t.”
She caught a figure in her peripheral vision, turning to see Jack pulling up a chair at their table.
“You okay?” he asked Sinclair.
“You’re as bad as Kristy,” Sinclair responded. “What exactly do you think he’d do to me?”
“What did he do?”
“He invited me to go ballroom dancing. We’re getting ready for the Valentine’s Day ball on Thursday.”
Jack shot his gaze to Hunter. “That true?”
“What if it is?”
“I just had a call from Kristy,” said Jack.
“She’s coming to Paris,” announced Sinclair.
Jack nodded. “That’s what she said.” He was still eyeing up Hunter suspiciously. “You’d better sign us up, too.”
After the day they’d had, Hunter wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and hold Sinclair tight in his arms. He’d discovered he hated fighting with her. And he hated that her family and his had decided to protect her from him. Even now, across the floor in the Versailles Ballroom, Kristy was scoping them out, staring daggers at him.
A private jet had whisked her across the Atlantic in time for dinner.
Part of him wanted to thumb his nose at the lot and haul Sinclair away so they could be alone. Another part of him recognized they had legitimate concerns. His efforts to help her had gotten all mixed up with his desire for her.
He didn’t want to hurt her, but he might in the end. The Lush Valentine’s Day ball was only a few days away. He’d make sure she was a smash hit there, but then what?
She’d still work for him. Could they possibly keep sleeping together? Could they keep it a secret? And what did that say about them if they did?
As he guided her through a simple waltz, he considered the possibility that Kristy was right. After all, who would have Sinclair’s best interests at heart more than her twin sister? A twin sister whose thinking wasn’t clouded by passion?
God knew his was clouded by something.
Sinclair had dressed for the evening in a brilliant-red strapless satin gown. When he glanced at her creamy shoulders, the hint of cleavage, and her long, smooth neck, his thoughts were definitely on his own best interest. And that best interest was in peeling the gown off inch by glorious inch to reveal whatever it was she had, or didn’t have, on underneath.
The bodice molded gently over her breasts, it nipped in at her waist, then molded over her bottom, while the full skirt whispered around her gorgeous legs.
“How am I doing?” she asked as the music’s tempo changed.
“Fine,” he told her, forcing his thoughts back to his job as dance instructor. “Ready to try something more?”
She nodded, blue eyes shining up at him, making him wish all over again that he could whisk her away.
He led her into a turn. She stumbled, but he held her up, tightening his hand in the small of her back, filing the sensation away in his brain.
“Sorry,” she told him.
“No problem. Just pay attention to my hand,” he reminded her, demonstrating the touches. “This means left. This means right. Back, and forward.”
He tried the turn again.
She stumbled.
He tried one more time, and this time she succeeded.
But, while she grinned, she fumbled the next step.
He tried not to smile at her efforts. “I can see this is going to take practice.”
“You’re too sudden with your signals. And why do you get to call all the moves?”
“Because I’m the man.”
“That’s lame.”
“And because I know how to dance.”
“Okay, that’s better.”
Someone tapped Hunter on the shoulder. He turned to see Jack, looking to switch partners. Before he knew it, Kristy was in his arms.
“Hello, Hunter.” She smiled, but he could see the glitter of determination behind her eyes.
“Hello, Kristy.”
“I see you’ve spirited my sister away to Paris.”
“I’m helping her out.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“What’s another?” he challenged, keeping half an eye on Jack and Sinclair.
“Why don’t you tell me what your intentions are?”
To have sex with Sinclair—the most amazing woman I’ve ever met—until we can’t see straight. “I don’t know what you mean?” he stalled.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
He did. And that was the problem. His interests and Sinclair’s did not coincide.
“I have no intention of hurting her,” he told Kristy honestly.
“You think Jack intended to hurt me?”
“I think Jack was insane to marry you.”
Kristy’s eyes flashed.
“You know what I mean. He went into it for all the wrong reasons.”
“Unlike you and Sinclair?” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. “She’s going to fall for you, Hunter. You’re wining her and dining her and she’s thinking she’s become a fairy princess. How could she help but fall for you?”
“Point taken.” Hunter tried a turn with Kristy, and she easily followed his lead. But it wasn’t the same as dancing with Sinclair. It was nothing at all like dancing with Sinclair.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“For tonight—” Hunter took a deep breath and made up his mind “—I’m going to switch rooms with you and Jack.”
Kristy and Jack were on a different floor of the hotel. And Hunter knew deep down in his heart that the adjoining door with Sinclair would prove too much of a temptation.
“You’re a good man, Hunter,” said Kristy, her eyes softening.
“Can I have that in writing? It might sway your husband.”
“I’m talking about your moral code, not your business savvy.”
“Nice.”
“But that’s none of my business.”
“The push and pull has been going on a long time,” said Hunter. “Jack, Gramps, the investors gripe and complain, but they take the dividends all the same.”
