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Since that brief moment after the Halloween party when Alan had drunkenly taken her in his arms and given her a big wet kiss before he’d collapsed in a drunken stupor on the office couch.
That sad event had been her first—and only—kiss. In school she’d been too focused on her studies to date anyone. After her father had died and she’d dropped out of college, she’d been too grief-stricken. Then she’d been too busy as a temp in downtown L.A., working to take care of her heartbroken mother and younger brothers.
Grace had become a twenty-five-year-old virgin.
A freak of nature.
And a million miles away from Prince Maksim Rostov’s league!
But his car had splashed her, she argued with herself. He’d caused her to drop the lingerie. Wouldn’t it be fair to allow him to replace it, when the alternative could mean her ruin?
Tempted, she licked her lips nervously. The sensation of his hand against her own caused a swirling in the tender center of her palm that sent awareness prickling up to the flesh of her ear, tightening her nipples and making her breasts feel strangely heavy. She felt his gaze trace her lips. Her cheeks went hot and her mouth went dry. Every breath she took, every rise and fall of her lungs, became more shallow.
“It is cold,” he said. “My car is waiting.”
“But, but Leighton clothes are expensive,” she stammered, floundering. “They’re so expensive they make Hermès and Louis Vuitton look like a bargain-basement fire sale.”
He lifted his dark eyebrows.
“I think I can handle the expense,” he said dryly. Signaling with one hand, he put the other against the small of her back, guiding her gently toward the curb of a side street where she saw a black Rolls-Royce limousine.
She felt his hand on her back and shook all over. It was that touch which finally forced her surrender.
Looking back at him, she whispered, “Alan must never know.”
His lips trembled on the brink of a smile. “Agreed.”
The shock waves from his hand on her lower back continued to sizzle up her arms and down her legs as she breathed, “Thank you.”
“Thank you.” His eyes gleamed down at her. “I always enjoy the company of a beautiful woman.”
It broke the spell. She started to laugh, snorting through her nose before she covered it with a cough.
Her…beautiful? That was a good joke! She knew she wasn’t anything special. And at the moment, wearing no makeup, with a damp old coat over her second-hand skirt suit and her hair tucked back in a soaked blond ponytail, she looked like a half-drowned refugee from an office in a swamp!
So why had a handsome prince dropped out of the sky to help her? Just because his driver had splashed her with water from the street? Did he have that much honor and generosity of Christmas spirit?
Or was it something else?
The dark suspicion returned to her. When she was younger, she’d believed the best of people. But since she’d started working for Alan, she’d seen how devious people could be. Both in business and in love.
Was Prince Maksim hoping to use her against Alan to take back his merger and his marriage?
“I hope you know,” she said evenly, “that doing me this favor won’t make me discuss Alan or the merger.”
He just gave her a darkly assessing smile. “Do you think I need your assistance?”
“Don’t you?” she said uncertainly.
They reached the Rolls-Royce limousine purring next to the curb. With a dismissive shake of his head to the driver, the prince opened her door himself.
“Get in.”
Standing on the edge of the sidewalk, against the ebb and flow of Christmas shoppers, Grace looked at the open door of the car and hesitated. She wondered suddenly if she was doing a foolish thing, making a deal with the devil.
When she didn’t move, he said mockingly, “Surely you’re not afraid of me, Miss Cannon?”
Biting her lower lip, she glanced up at his handsome face. She was afraid of him. Afraid of his wealth, his power and well-known ruthlessness.
But even more than that, she was afraid of the sensual reaction that overwhelmed her body every time he touched her. Every time he even looked at her.
She shook her head uneasily. “No,” she lied. “I’m not afraid of you at all.”
He held the door wider. “Then get in.”
Flurries of sleet swirled around Grace in a sudden gust of wind. Wet tendrils of blond hair whipped against her cheek, sticking to her skin. But she didn’t feel the chill. His gray eyes seared through hers, sapping her will.
And she made her choice—which was really no choice at all. She climbed into the back seat of his Rolls-Royce.
He closed the door behind her.
Once released from his basilisk gaze, alone in the back seat, Grace was as suddenly shocked as if she’d just woken up sleepwalking in Buckingham Palace. What was she doing here? It wasn’t a dream. She was really in Prince Maksim’s limo. She was consorting with the enemy.
But he’s not my enemy, she thought in confusion as she watched his dark shadow walk around to the other side. He’s Alan’s enemy. And what do people say? The enemy of my friend is my enemy? Or is it that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
The door opened, and the most handsome, ruthless man in London climbed in beside her with a dark glance that made her feel hot and sweaty all over.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked.
“Am I being nice?”
“If it’s to get secrets about my boss—”
“It’s Christmas. The season of joy.” Festive lights from the nearby shops glinted off his wolflike teeth as he gave her a sharp smile. “And I’m going to give you joy.” He turned to his chauffeur. “Davai.”
The shadowy Rolls-Royce swept away from the curb. And just like that, Prince Maksim Rostov took her away from the drudgery and crowds and cold, and swept Grace up into his lavish world.
CHAPTER TWO
MAKSIM glanced down at the girl’s lovely, dazzled blue eyes as his chauffeur drove east through the crowded traffic on Knightsbridge Road towards Mayfair. She’d called him “nice.” He repeated the word in his mind as if he were trying to comprehend it.
Nice?
Prince Maksim Ivanovich Rostov had not become powerful by being nice.
His great-grandfather had been nice during his Paris exile, spending money as if he were still Grand Duke with his own fiefdom in St. Petersburg, giving largesse freely to every hard-luck story that walked into his pied-à-terre.
His grandfather had been nice, spending what little remained of the Rostov fortune down to the last penny in London as he waited impatiently for the Russian people to kick out the Soviets and beg him to return.
His father had been nice, hopelessly trying to support his young, sweet American wife by taking increasingly humiliating jobs until he’d finally followed his father’s lead of suicide-by-vodka, leaving his gentle wife, eleven-year-old son and baby daughter to fend for themselves in her native Philadelphia.
But Maksim…
He was not nice.
He was selfish. He was ruthless. He took what he wanted. It was how he’d built a billion-dollar fortune out of nothing.
And now…he wanted Grace Cannon.
For the past hour, he’d been waiting for her. His chauffeur had driven back and forth on Brompton Road, waiting to catch the girl as she came up from the Knightsbridge Tube stop on the way home to her basement flat in Barrington’s town house.
This young American secretary was the key to everything.
She would help him finally crush Barrington. The man had been a thorn in his side for far too long, and now he’d finally crossed the line by taking both the deal—and the woman—that rightfully belonged to Maksim.
Barrington thought he’d saved himself from ruin by taking Francesca as his fiancée. He’d soon find it was his last mistake. He would get neither the bride nor the merger.
Maksim would destroy him. As he deserved.
And Grace Cannon would help him. Whether she wanted to or not.
Maksim turned to her with a smile. Unfolding a soft cashmere blanket, he draped it over her shivering body.
“Thank you,” she said, her teeth still chattering.
“It’s my pleasure.”
“You’re not what I expected,” she whispered, pressing the blanket against her cheek. “You’re not like everyone says.”
“What do they say?” He carelessly placed his arm on the leather seat behind her. She was still shivering. He moved closer. Even though she was now covered with a blanket, her shivering only increased when he touched her.
“They say…you’re a…ruthless playboy,” she said haltingly. “That you spend half your time conquering business rivals…and the other half making conquests of women.”
He laughed. “They are right.” He moved closer, looking down into her face. “That is exactly who I am.”
His thigh brushed against hers, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She scooted away from him as if he’d burned her.
She was skittish. Very skittish.
There were only three possible explanations.
One—she was afraid of him. He dismissed that idea out of hand. She wouldn’t have agreed to get in his car if she’d been truly afraid.
Two—she had no experience with men. He dismissed that idea, as well. A twenty-five-year-old virgin? Almost impossible in this day and age. Particularly since she not only worked for Alan Barrington, she lived in his house. He surely had seduced her many times over.
That left only the third possibility. She was ripe for Maksim’s conquest.
He slowly looked her over. She wasn’t a girl that any man would immediately notice. Compared to fiery bird-of-paradise Francesca, who had bright-red hair, sharp red nails and a vicious red mouth, Grace Cannon was a drab sparrow, pale and frumpy with barely a word to say for herself.
And yet…
Now that Maksim really looked at her, he saw that the girl wasn’t nearly as plain as he’d first thought. Her ill-fitting coat and wet ponytail had made her seem so, but now he realized his mistake.
The fact that she wore no makeup only revealed the perfection of her creamy skin. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were so light as to be invisible, but that proved the glorious pale gold of her hair came from nature, not a salon. She wore no lipstick and her teeth hadn’t been bleached to blinding movie-star whiteness, and yet her tremulous smile was warmer and lovelier than any he’d seen. She wasn’t stick thin as the strange fashion for women dictated, but her ample curves only made her more lushly desirable.
He suddenly realized the dowdy secretary was a beauty.
A secret beauty, disguising herself away from the world. Beneath the unattractive clothing and the frumpy, frizzy hairstyle, her loveliness shone bright as the sun.
She hid her beauty. Why?
“What’s wrong?” She frowned up at him suddenly, furrowing her brow in alarm.
Had she guessed his plan? “What, solnishka mayo?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said simply. “Like sunshine in winter.”
She blushed, biting her tender pink lip as she looked away. Clutching the luxurious cashmere like a security blanket against her wet, threadbare coat, she scooted further away from him on the car’s leather seat. With a swallowed sigh, she stared out through the window at the passing Christmas lights beneath the thickly falling sleet. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know I’m not pretty.”
She didn’t know, he realized. She had no idea. She wasn’t purposefully hiding her beauty. She didn’t know.
“You are beautiful, Grace,” he said quietly.
At the use of her first name, she gave him a sudden fierce, sharp glance. “Don’t waste your flattery on me, Your Highness.”
He gave her an easy smile. “Call me Maksim. What makes you think it’s flattery?”
“You might be London’s most famous playboy, but I’m not that gullible. A few false compliments won’t make me blurt out details about the merger with Exemplary Oil. Alan has Lord Hainesworth’s support now. You won’t be able to win.”
So she was intuitive, as well as lovely. He was growing more intrigued by the moment. “I wasn’t lying.”
“I’m not a total fool. I know I’m not beautiful. There’s only one reason you’d say I am.”
“And that is?”
“You want me to betray Alan.” She lifted her chin. “I won’t. I’d die first.”
“Loyalty,” he said, staring at her with even greater interest. The girl felt something for her boss beyond what he’d expected. Was it possible she was in love with Alan Barrington?
A pity if the little secretary believed herself in love with him, Maksim thought. He’d just been starting to respect her.
Would money be enough to convince Grace to turn on her lover? Or would Maksim have to seduce her away from him?
Seducing a woman who was in love with another man would be an interesting challenge, he thought. And poetic justice.
But Maksim’s interest in Grace was no longer just about revenge. It was no longer just about rivalry or honor.
