Prince of Montez, Pregnant Mistress Page 6

  Several minutes passed before Cally realised she was still staring at the empty space where he had been, her cotton bud poised inanely in mid-air. Racked with irritation that the ability to apply herself to her work was now even further from her grasp, she dropped the bud back into the container of water and stood up, hoping that stretching her legs and turning off the CD player would allow her to regroup her thoughts. But before she could stop herself she was stretching her legs back across the room to the wide glass doors.

  Cally touched a hand to her hair and looked behind her guiltily as she got closer to the threshold between inside and out. Which was ridiculous, because she was perfectly entitled to get up and look at the view, and it wasn’t as though anyone could see her anyway. She peered over the cliff edge and down into the expanse of blue below, then across the bay, out at the horizon and back again. It was so still there was hardly a wave. So where was he? She tried to pretend she didn’t care, that she was taking in the amazingly cloudless sky as her eyes frantically skimmed the water. Until—thank goodness—there he was, returning to the surface.

  However much she wanted to argue to some invisible jury that she was just admiring the glorious landscape, the sight of him held her transfixed. His muscular shoulders were stretched tight, his strong arms slicing rhythmically through the water; he was so focussed that she was not only mesmerised but envious. He dipped beneath the surface, sometimes for so long that she almost did herself an injury as she strained to see below the water, each reappearance causing a clammy wash of relief across her shoulders and down her back.

  Shockingly, half of her—like the woman in the paintings—felt the unprecedented impulse to brazenly remove her clothes and follow him into the sea. Her more sensible half told her that that was not only inexcusable, because she was his employee, but that she had to be deranged if she thought she had anything in common with the siren in Rénard’s painting. So why as she watched him was she unable to stop herself running her hands over the silk of her blouse as if to check it hadn’t disappeared of its own accord? And why did she feel the urge to close her eyes and explore the unfamiliar ache pooling between her thighs as her hand lingered over her breasts?

  Because you’re a fool, Cally, a voice inside her screamed at the exact moment that the memory of his kiss on the dark and crowded dance floor flew into her mind, and she suddenly remembered the auction. Remembered that he had lied to her from the moment she had met him, and that even if he hadn’t, thinking about him that way could only lead to disappointment. So why was she standing here allowing herself to feel this way—no matter that they were feelings she could never recall ever feeling before—when she was supposed to be working on her dream commission?

  It was because the thrill of getting this job had been diminished by the way in which it had come about, she thought pragmatically, knotting her hands behind her and walking back towards the paintings. It was discovering that her employer was not only the epitome of everything she loathed, but that he was also the man who had dented her pride on the first occasion in years when she had actually dared to live a little. If the London City Gallery had won the paintings the night of the auction, everything would have been different; she would have rung her family, euphoria would have hit and single-minded focus would have followed. Yes, Cally thought, what she needed was to be reminded of the enormity of this opportunity, to talk to someone who would know how much it meant to her.

  She bent down and rifled through her handbag in search of her paint-smattered mobile, scrolling through the shortlist of contacts until she found her sister’s number.

  Jen answered amidst the usual sea of background noise which seemed to follow her around; if it wasn’t the sound of Dylan and Josh using each other as climbing frames, then it was the hustle and bustle of a breaking news story. This time it sounded like the latter.

  ‘Cally? Are you OK?’

  ‘Hi, Jen, I’m fine,’ Cally replied, unsure why her sister’s voice was loaded with concern. Although she’d wanted to talk about it, she hadn’t told Jen anything about Montéz. Last time they’d spoken she’d been ninety percent sure that the email was a hoax, and, when the tickets had arrived, she’d decided it would be prudent to wait and see if it actually yielded a job first, rather than have to report back with another story of rejection if it didn’t. ‘Is it a bad time to talk?’

  ‘No, not at all—I’m outside Number Ten waiting for the prime minister to emerge, but I could be here for hours. It’s just that I left a message on your answer phone inviting you to dinner on Sunday and you haven’t replied.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Last night.’

  Last night? She hadn’t replied in less than twenty-four hours and that automatically made her sister think something was up? Cally pulled at a loose thread on her shorts and frowned. She’d always thought her swiftness to reply to people was a positive thing—she was the first one to send out thank-yous after Christmas, always RSVP-ing on time to invitations to weddings and parties, even if it was to decline them. Only now did she realise how much it screamed ‘I need to get out more'.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m afraid I can’t come. I’m in Montéz.’

  ‘Montéz?’ The utter disbelief in her sister’s voice bugged her. ‘Good for you. It’s about time you had a holiday.’

  ‘I’m not on holiday. I’m working on the Rénards.’

  ‘Cally, that’s fantastic! How? Tell me everything. You found out who bought them?’

  ‘The buyer found me.’

  ‘That’s because you’re the best person for the job. Didn’t I tell you that was a possibility? So, who is it?’

  Cally hesitated, not having foreseen that this discussion would inevitably end up being about the very person she was trying to put out of her mind. ‘He’s the prince here.’

  There was a shocked pause. ‘Oh my God—don’t tell me you’re working for Leon Montallier?’

  Cally almost dropped the phone. ‘How on earth do you know his name?’

  Jen whistled through her teeth. ‘Everyone who works for a paper knows his name. We’re just not allowed to print anything about him. Not that anybody knows anything—he’s too much of an enigma.’

  ‘Too much of a bastard,’ Cally corrected, turning to pace in the other direction as she realised that during the conversation she’d walked herself dangerously close to the glass doors once more. ‘There’s nothing else worth knowing.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. Hasn’t he just given you your dream job?’

  ‘Yes, he has,’ Cally admitted, trying to sound enthused as she recalled that this was the whole purpose for her call. ‘And the chance to infill for a master like Rénard is incredible but—’

  ‘But what? Oh, don’t tell me that because he’s royalty he thought that gave him the right to try it on?’

  The frankness Jen had developed from her years reporting on the wealthy and powerful usually amused Cally, but today its accuracy—or rather its inaccuracy—only succeeded in making her feel more wretched.

  ‘But he doesn’t plan to display the pictures in a gallery, that’s what. They’re nothing more than a symbol of his nauseating wealth.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised about that, I’m afraid,’ Jen said, unaware how close her initial remark had been to the bone. ‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t share your restoration process with the public, does it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The paper could run a story. Our arts specialist, Julian, would kill to do a piece on it!’

  ‘I wish. But he’s so anti-press that it’s written into my contract that I can’t even—Jen?’

  The volume of the background noise suddenly doubled, and Cally could hear the clash of a thousand cameras and the sound of bodies jostling forward.

  ‘Jen, can you hear me?’

  ‘Sorry, sis, gotta go!’

  ‘'Course—look, just forget I even mentioned him, OK?’

  Leon’s mouth curved in amusement as he app
roached the studio doors to find her concentrating hard on facing the wall as she finished her call. She was making a show of trying to stick to her word, he’d give her that. But, if it was for his benefit, she needn’t bother. Didn’t she know that he had seen her from the water? And didn’t she know that it made no difference whether he witnessed it or not?

  Her desire for him was written into every move her delectable body made. It had been from the very first moment she had looked at him with those expressive green eyes. He wondered how much longer she would keep fighting it, pretending that what mattered to her were the paintings. Had she forgotten how clear she had made it in that insalubrious bar in London? Had she forgotten that she had told him she was only interested in this job to gain renown? Since he had made sure that wasn’t an option, her reason for accepting was obvious—him. But, then, he was well aware that women were experts at pretending to be driven by their careers in order to entice a man. Women who claimed to have moved on from their nineteenth-century counterparts, who learned a handful of accomplishments to try and coerce a man into marrying them, but who really hadn’t changed at all. They had simply got more devious.

  Not that Cally was claiming to want marriage, he thought dryly. But he didn’t doubt that those wistful looks into jewellers’ windows would inevitably come if he kept her in his bed for too long.

  ‘Someone special?’

  Cally jumped and swung round to see him crossing the studio as the deep timbre of his voice reverberated through her body. How the hell hadn’t she heard him come in this time? She looked down, convinced he mustn’t be wearing shoes. She was right, but for her gaze to have alighted on the bareness of his toes was a mistake. Not only did she notice that even his feet were impossibly sexy, but it only encouraged her to sweep her eyes upwards over the damp hairs clinging to his legs, to the towel slung about his waist and his mouth-watering chest.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The phone call. It must have been someone special, to interrupt what you were doing when you seemed so reluctant to stop.’

  ‘I—I’d finished the section I was on. I’m just about to start on the next.’ She sat back down in the chair and made to pick up a fresh cotton bud.

  He looked at her with amusement dancing in his eyes. ‘I wasn’t talking about the paintings.’

  Cally froze and felt herself blush redder than her hair as she realised what he meant. Wanting to die of embarrassment, she clutched around in her mind for some feasible excuse as to why she had been looking out to sea with her hands on her body, but it didn’t come.

  He broke into a wry smile and continued. ‘But, much as I would like to watch you continue, I’m afraid I cannot keep the French president waiting.’ Cally swallowed as he removed the towel from around his waist and laid it around his shoulders. ‘I will be back tomorrow evening, when the Sheikh of Qwasir and his new fiancée will be coming for dinner. I thought perhaps you might like to join us, show them what you’re working on.’

  Cally stared at him, her embarrassment turning to astonishment. Firstly that he had even asked her, and secondly that, despite his own rebuttal of the press, he socialised with two people who could not have had a higher media profile.

  ‘You mean the couple who are on the front of every newspaper in the world?’

  Leon tensed and gave a single nod.

  ‘And you wish me to show them the paintings?’ Even though she hated the idea of private buyers wanting famous artwork for no other reason than to impress their friends, she couldn’t help feeling both excited and honoured at the prospect of getting to share them with anyone.

  ‘That is what I said,’ Leon ground out, only now aware that, whilst he had envisioned a night with her beside him wearing one of those figure-hugging dresses he had selected, she saw it only as an opportunity to get herself known amongst the rich and famous.

  ‘Thank you—then I’m delighted to accept.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ he drawled, before walking over to the table and handing her the cotton bud she was still yet to pick up. ‘In the meantime, I’m sure you’ll want to get on with what you came here to do.’

  Chapter Six

  GET ON with what you came here to do. Leon’s sarcastic words were still reverberating through Cally’s mind as she tramped upstairs twenty-four hours later. If only she could. More than anything that was what she wanted, but to her horror another day had passed unproductively. Even though the supplies she needed had arrived that morning, even though she’d had the palace to herself, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from gazing up at the glass doors, imagining him rising half-naked from the sea.

  Allowing herself to get distracted in any way at all was completely unlike her, she thought as she entered the bedroom, never mind by thoughts of that nature. Everything she ever took on she always committed to one hundred and ten per cent until it was complete. Except her fine-art degree, she admitted ruefully. Was that it then—every time she met a man she found remotely attractive she was reduced to a mess of distraction which robbed her of all her artistic focus?

  Cally cast her mind back to the summer she had met David, when she had taken a job as a waitress at the tearoom in the grounds of his father’s stately home. Had she been so bowled over by his charms that it had rendered her completely incapable of holding a brush? No, she thought frankly, actually, she hadn’t. She’d been flattered by the unexpected attention he’d bestowed upon her, naively impressed by the upper-class world in which he lived, but she certainly hadn’t felt this kind of paralysis. That was not what had made her throw in her studies, it was that she’d foolishly believed him when he’d said she would never become a great artist spending all her time working towards a degree. Only later had she discovered that, just like his chauvinistic father, the idea of a woman going to university had appalled him, particularly one whose father was just a postman.

  So why the hell was it this way with Leon? Cally wondered as she opened her wardrobe to find it had been miraculously filled with the contents of the fifty-four bags and boxes whilst she had been working—and to her amusement some additional T-shirts and casual cut-offs too. And why was she so tempted to wear one of the glamorous dresses now, when she loathed the excess they represented? Because his guests were an esteemed desert ruler and a model, which meant such an outfit was appropriate for this element of her work in the same way her sister’s black dress had been necessary for the auction, Cally justified, feeling both apprehensive and thrilled at the prospect of talking about the paintings. Even if talking about them was all she was able to do at the moment.

  In the end she selected a beautiful jade dress with an asymmetric hem that felt so good swishing around her legs as she came down the stairs that, when she reached the grand dining room, it took her a minute to process that the table was completely bare. She looked at the antique clock on the wall, wondering if she had got the time wrong. Noting she hadn’t, she decided she must have been mistaken about the place. Heaven knew, the palace was big enough, and Leon could hold the soirée in any number of rooms.

  ‘Boyet!’ Cally caught sight of him just as he was about to turn the corner of the inner stairs. ‘I was supposed to meet His Highness in the dining room for the royal dinner at eight. Is it to be held elsewhere?’

  ‘I believe there has been a change of plan altogether, mademoiselle.’ He looked at the floor, evidently embarrassed that he was in possession of information that she was not. ‘The last time I saw His Royal Highness, he was headed outside, as if he intended to go diving.’

  ‘In this?’ Cally gasped, concern furrowing her brow as she looked out across the hallway and through the high windows towards the inky blue sky, the rising wind beginning to whip against the glass.

  ‘Thank you, Boyet,’ she replied with a quick but earnest nod, turning on her three-inch heels in matching jade and hastening to the studio with none of the ladylike elegance with which she had just descended the stairs.

  The room was bathed in darkness, and her pac
e slowed as she approached the glass doors; she was almost afraid of coming upon the view of the sea too quickly for fear of what she might see. Eventually she reached the handle and, finding it locked, began fumbling around in search of a key.

  ‘Looking for something?’

  Cally turned sharply to find Leon sitting absolutely still on the sofa, bathed in shadows. The look of accusation in his eyes matched the warning tone of his voice.

  ‘Boyet said you were out in this.’ She raised one hand out towards the blackness of the ocean, as if the concept was the most preposterous thing she had ever heard, choosing to overlook his equally sinister mood. As far as she could see, she was the only one who had a reason to be angry.

  ‘I was,’ he said abruptly as she turned on the lamp next to the paintings, softly illuminating the room.

  He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that clung to his body in such a way that she could see his skin beneath was still damp. His hair was dark and heavy with moisture. If she hadn’t been so determined not to think it, she would have admitted it was the most alluring thing she had ever seen in her life.

  ‘Are you insane?’

  ‘Insane to risk being late for our high-profile dinner engagement?’ he drawled, eyeing her so critically that all the joy she’d felt in wearing the jade dress evaporated.

  ‘To go diving tonight, when the ocean is so restless,’ Cally corrected, wondering how he wasn’t shivering with cold when just thinking about being in the water had her arms breaking out in goose bumps. ‘Isn’t one scar enough?’

  Leon’s mouth twitched into a sardonic smile. ‘Though your observational skills are as touching as your concern, I can assure you that swimming in the cove outside my back door is hardly a risk in comparison to defusing a mine one hundred metres below sea level. I’ll admit it’s been a while, but—’

  ‘Fine.’ Cally blushed furiously. ‘So, what about dinner? Boyet said there had been a change of plan.’

  ‘There has. Unfortunately Kaliq and Tamara are unable to join us. Exhaustion after their journey here, I believe.’