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Feeling slightly drugged and stupid, Leila said, ‘It’s a woman’s scent.’
He cocked a brow again. ‘So spray some on your wrist and I’ll smell it.’
The shock that reverberated through Leila was as if he’d just said Take off all your clothes, please.
She had to struggle to compose herself, get a grip. She’d often sprayed perfume on her own skin so that someone could get a fuller sense of it. But this man had made the request sound almost indecent.
Praying that her hand wouldn’t shake, Leila took the top off the bottle and pulled up her sleeve to spray some of the scent. When the liquid hit the underside of her wrist she shivered slightly. It felt absurdly sensual all of a sudden.
Alix Saint Croix still had a hand wrapped around her arm and now he moved it down to take the back of her hand in his, wrapping long fingers around hers. He moved his head down to smell the perfume, his dark head coming close to her breast.
But he kept his eyes on her, and from this close she could see lighter flecks of grey, like silver mercury. Leila’s breath stopped when she felt his breath feather along her skin. Those lips were far too close to the centre of her palm, which was clammy.
He seemed to consider the scent until Leila’s nerves twanged painfully. Her belly was a contracted ball of nerves.
A movement over his head caught her eye and she saw a sleek, tall blonde emerge from the back of the car with a phone clamped to her ear. She was wearing an indecently tight, slinky dress and a ridiculously ineffectual jacket for the cool autumn weather.
He must have picked up on her distraction and straightened to look out of the window too. Leila noticed a tension come into his body as his girlfriend—mistress—saw him and gesticulated with clear irritation, all while still talking on the phone.
‘Your...er...mistress is waiting for you.’ Leila’s voice felt scratchy.
He still had his hand wrapped around hers and now let her go. Leila tucked it well out of reach.
He morphed before her eyes into someone much cooler, indecipherable. Perversely, it didn’t comfort her.
‘I’ll take it.’
Leila blinked at him.
‘The perfume,’ he expanded, and for a moment a glint of what they’d just shared made his eyes flash.
Leila jerked into action. ‘Of course. It’ll only take me a moment to package it up.’
She moved to get a bag and paper and quickly and inexpertly packaged up the perfume, losing all of her customary cool. When she had it ready she handed it over and avoided his eye. A wad of cash landed on the counter but Leila wasn’t about to check it.
And then, without another word, he turned around and strode out again, catching his...whatever she was...by the arm and hustling her back into the car.
His scent lingered on the air behind him, and in a very delayed reaction Leila assimilated the various components with an expertise that was like a sixth sense—along with the realisation that his scent had impacted on her as soon as he’d walked in, on a level that wasn’t rational. Someplace else. Somewhere she wasn’t used to scents impacting.
It was a visceral reaction. Primal. His scent was clean, with a hint of something very male that most certainly hadn’t come out of a bottle. The kind of evocative scent that would make someone a fortune if they could bottle it: the pure essence of a virile male in his prime. Earthy. Musky.
A pulse between Leila’s legs throbbed and she pressed her thighs together, horrified.
What was wrong with her? The man was a king, for God’s sake, and he had a mistress that he was unashamed about. She should be thinking good riddance, but what she was thinking was much more confused.
It made alarm bells ring. It reminded her of another man who had come into the shop and who had very skilfully set about wooing her—only to turn into a nasty stranger when he’d realised that Leila had no intention of giving him what he wanted...which had been very far removed from what Leila had wanted.
She looked stupidly at the money on the counter for a moment, before realising that he’d vastly overpaid her for the perfume, but all she could think about was that last enigmatic look he’d shot her, just before he’d ducked into the car—a look that had seemed to say he’d be back. And soon.
And in light of their conversation, and the way he’d made her feel, Leila knew she shouldn’t be remotely intrigued. But she was. And not even the ghost of memories past could stop it.
* * *
A little later, after Leila had locked up and gone upstairs to the small flat she’d shared with her mother all her life, she found herself gravitating to the window, which looked out over the Place Vendôme. The opera glasses that her mother had used for years to check out the comings and goings at the Ritz were sitting nearby, and for a second Leila felt an intense pang of grief for her mother.
Leila pushed aside the past and picked up the glasses and looked through them, seeing the usual flurry of activity when someone arrived at the hotel in a flash car. She tilted the glasses upwards to where the rooms were—and her whole body froze when she caught a glimpse of a familiar masculine figure against a brightly lit opulent room.
She trained the glasses on the sight, hating herself for it but unable to look away. It was him. Alix Saint Croix. The overcoat was gone. And the jacket. He had his back to her and was dressed in a waistcoat and shirt and trousers. Hands in his pockets were drawing the material of his trousers over his very taut and muscular backside.
Instantly Leila felt damp heat coil down below and squeezed her legs together.
He was looking at something in front of him, and Leila tensed even more when the woman he’d been with came into her line of vision. She’d taken off the jacket and the flimsy dress was now all she wore. Her body was as sleek and toned as a throughbred horse. Leila vaguely recognised her as a world-famous lingerie model.
She could see that she held something in her hand, and when it glinted she realised it was the bottle of perfume. The woman sprayed it on her wrist and lifted it to smell, a sexy smile curling her wide mouth upwards.
She sprayed more over herself and Leila winced slightly. The trick with perfume was always less is more. And then she threw the bottle aside, presumably to a nearby chair or couch, and proceeded to pull down the skinny straps of her dress. Then she peeled the top half of her dress down, exposing small but perfect breasts.
Leila gasped at the woman’s confidence. She’d never have the nerve to strip in that way in front of a man.
And then Alix Saint Croix moved. He turned away from the woman and walked to the window. For a second he loomed large in Leila’s glasses, filling them with that hard-boned face. He looked intent. And then he pulled a drape across, obscuring the view, almost as if he’d known Leila was watching from across the square like a Peeping Tom.
Disgusted with herself, Leila threw the glasses down and got up to pace in her small apartment. She berated herself. How could a man like that even capture her attention? He was exactly what her mother had warned her about: rich and arrogant. Not even prepared to see women as anything other than mistresses, undoubtedly interchanged with alarming frequency once the novelty with each one had worn off.
Leila had already refused to take her mother’s warnings to heart once, and had suffered a painful blow to her confidence and pride because of it.
Full of pent-up energy, she dragged on a jacket and went outside for a brisk walk around the nearby Tuileries gardens, telling herself over and over again first of all that nothing had happened with Alix Saint Croix in her shop that day, secondly that she’d never see him again, and thirdly that she didn’t care.
* * *
The following evening dusk was falling as Leila went to lock the front door of her shop. It had been a long day, with only a trickle of customers and two measly sales. Thanks to the recession, niche businesses everywhere had taken a nosedive, and since the factory that manufactured the House of Leila scents had closed down she hadn’t had the funds to seek out a new factory.
She’d been reduced to selling off the stock she had left in the hope that enough sales would give her the funds to start making perfumes again.
She was just about to turn the lock when she looked up through the glass to see a familiar tall dark figure, flanked by a couple of other men, approaching her door. The almost violent effect on her body of seeing him in the flesh again mocked her for fooling herself that she’d managed not to think about him all day.
The exiled King with the tragic past.
Leila had looked him up on the Internet last night in a moment of weakness and had read about how his parents and younger brother had been slaughtered during a military coup. The fact that he’d escaped to live in exile had become something of a legend.
Her immediate instinct was to lock the door and pull the blind down—fast. But he was right outside now and looking at her. The faintest glimmer of a smile touched his mouth. She could see a day’s worth of stubble shadowing his jaw.
Obeying professional reflexes rather than her instincts, Leila opened the door and stepped back. He came in and once again it was as if her brain was slowing to a halt. It was consumed with taking note of his sheer masculine beauty.
Determined not to let him rattle her again, Leila assumed a polite, professional mask. ‘How did your mistress like the perfume?’
A lurid image of the woman putting on that striptease threatened to undo Leila’s composure but she pushed it out of her head with effort.
Alix Saint Croix made an almost dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘She liked it fine. That’s not why I’m here.’
Leila found it hard to draw in a breath. Suddenly terrified of why he was there, she gabbled, ‘By the way, you left far too much money for the perfume.’
She turned and went to the counter and took out an envelope containing the excess he’d paid. She’d been intending to drop it to the hotel for him, but hadn’t had the nerve all day. She held it out now.
Alix barely looked at it. He speared her with that grey gaze and said, ‘I want to take you out to dinner.’
Panic fluttered in Leila’s gut and her hand tightened on the envelope, crushing it. ‘What did you say?’
He pushed open his light overcoat to put his hands in his pockets, drawing attention to another pristine three-piece suit, lovingly moulded to muscles that did not belong to an urban civilised man, more to a warrior.
‘I said I would like you to join me for dinner.’
Leila frowned. ‘But you have a mistress.’
Something stern crossed Alix Saint Croix’s face and the grey in his eyes turned to steel. ‘She is no longer my mistress.’
Leila recalled what she’d seen the previous night and blurted out, ‘But I saw you—you were together—’ She stopped and couldn’t curb the heat rising. The last thing she wanted was for him to know she’d been spying, and she said quickly, ‘She certainly seemed to be under the impression that you were together.’
She hoped he’d assume she was referring to when she’d seen the woman waiting for him outside the shop.
Alix’s face was indecipherable. ‘As I said, we are no longer together.’
Leila felt desperate. And disgusted. And disappointed, which was even worse. Of course a man like him would interchange his women without breaking a sweat.
‘But I don’t even know you—you’re a total stranger.’
His mouth twitched slightly. ‘Which could be helped by sharing conversation over dinner, non?’
Leila had a very strong urge to back away, but forced herself to stand her ground. She was in her shop. Her space. And everything in her screamed at her to resist this man. He was too gorgeous, too big, too smooth, too famous...too much.
Something reckless gripped her and she blurted out, ‘I saw you. The two of you... I didn’t intend to, but when I looked out of my window last night I saw you in your room. With her. She was taking off her clothes...’
Leila willed down the embarrassed heat and tilted up her chin defiantly. She didn’t care if he thought she was some kind of stalker.
His gaze narrowed on her. ‘I saw you too...across the square, silhouetted in your window.’
Now she blanched. ‘You did?’
He nodded. ‘It merely confirmed that I wanted you. And not her.’
Leila was caught, trapped in his gaze and in his own confession. ‘You pulled the curtain across. For privacy.’
His mouth firmed. ‘Yes. For privacy while I asked her to put her dress back on and get out, because the relationship was over.’
Leila shivered at his coolness. ‘But that’s so cruel. You’d just bought her a gift.’
Something infinitely cynical lit those grey eyes and Leila hated it.
‘Believe me, a woman like Carmen is no soft-centred fool with notions of where the relationship was going. She knew it was finite. The relationship was ending whether I’d met you or not.’
Leila balked. She definitely veered more towards the soft-centred fool end of the scale.
She folded her arms and fought the pull from her gut to follow him blindly. She’d done that with a man once before, with her stupid, vulnerable heart on her sleeve. It made her hard now. ‘Thank you for the invitation, but I’m afraid I must say no.’
His brows snapped together in a frown. ‘Are you married?’
His gaze dropped to her left hand as if to look for a ring, and something flashed in his eyes when he took in her ringless fingers. Leila’s hands curled tight. Too late.
The personal question told her she was doing the right thing and she said frostily, ‘That is none of your business, sir. I’d like you to leave.’
For a tiny moment Alix Saint Croix’s eyes widened on her, and then he said coolly, ‘Very well, I’m sorry for disturbing you. Good evening, Miss Verughese.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_864c08f3-d6af-5af5-a672-ced3180bf80b)
ALIX WAS HALFWAY across the quiet square, fuelled by a surge of angry disbelief, before the thought managed to break through: no woman, ever, had turned him down like that. So summarily. Coldly. As if he’d overstepped some invisible mark on the ground. As if he was...beneath her.
He dismissed his security detail with a flick of his hand as he walked into the hotel, with staff scurrying in his wake, the elevator attendant jumping to attention. Alix ignored them all, his mind filled with incredulity that she had said no.
He’d ended his liaison with Carmen specifically to pursue Leila Verughese.
When Carmen had undressed in front of him in his suite he’d felt nothing but impatience to see her gone. And then, when he’d gone to his window and seen the light shining from a small window above the perfume shop and that slim figure, all he’d seen was her alluring body in his mind’s eye. The hint of generous curves told of a very classic feminine shape—not exactly fashion-forward, like Carmen, with tiny breasts and an almost androgynous figure, but all the more alluring for that.
He wanted her with a hunger he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a long time. And that impatience to see Carmen gone had become a compelling need.
When Alix got to his suite of rooms he threw off his coat and prowled like a restless animal. He felt animalistic.
How dared she turn him down? He wanted her. The exotic princess who sold perfume.
Why did he want her so badly?
The question pricked at him like a tiny barb and he couldn’t ignore it. He’d only ever wanted one other woman in a similar way. A woman who had made him think she was different from all the others. When she’d been even worse.
Alix, young and far more naive than he’d ever wanted to admit at the age of eighteen, had been seduced by a beautiful body and an act of innocence honed to perfection.
Until he’d walked into her college rooms one day and seen one of his own bodyguards thrusting between her pale legs. The image was clear enough to mock him. Years later.
As if his own parents’ toxic marriage hadn’t already drummed it into him that men and women together brought pain and disharmony.
Ever since then Alix had excised all emotion where women were concerned. They were mistresses—who pleasured him and accompanied him to social events. Until the time came for him to choose a wife who would be his Queen. And then his marriage would be different. It wouldn’t be toxic. It would be harmonious and respectful.
Alix thought about that now. Because that time would be coming soon. He was already being presented with prospective wives to choose from. Princesses from different principalities who all looked dismayingly like horses. But Alix didn’t care. His wife would be his consort, adept at dealing with the social aspects of her role and providing him with heirs.
So why is this woman getting under your skin?
She’s not, he affirmed to himself.
She was just a stunningly beautiful woman who’d connected with him on some very base level and he wasn’t used to that.
Alix didn’t like to recall that first meeting, when just seeing her had been like a defibrillator shocking him back to life.
