very definite letters. Her heart jolted as she said, ‘Thank you.’
Back in her flat she arranged them in a glass vase in front of the window, admiring the way the autumn sunlight glowed through the silky, almost translucent petals. Had he chosen them to match her hair?
Only then, overcoming a kind of superstitious reluctance, she opened the envelope. I hope you are feeling much better this morning, he’d written, signing it with an arrogant ‘L’.
A swift shimmer of excitement took her by surprise. They were lovely, she thought, touching one of the lilies with a gentle forefinger.
Oh, all right, he’d probably said to someone, Send some flowers to this address, please, and forgotten about it immediately, but it was thoughtful of him. She swung around and caught up her camera. If only she could catch that silken transparency…
Glancing at her watch, she regretfully put the camera down. It would have to wait.
Alexa stamped into the flat late that afternoon, still tense after a hideous session with an actress who’d insisted on being photographed with her pair of psychopathic Dobermanns, laughing brightly every time they made a determined attempt to eat Alexa’s equipment.
The Peruvian lilies gleamed like copper tulle when she turned on the light, and her strained irritation mutated into a sweet, futile anticipation.
Carole had rung to say she had a full roster, so Alexa knew she wouldn’t see Prince Luka again, but she’d always remember his kindness and his flowers. She’d written a note to thank him for them, and would drop it off at the hotel in a few minutes.
The front doorbell jangled through the room. ‘Oh, great!’ she said, slinging her bag onto a chair. Perhaps it was a friend who’d called in for coffee.
But the man who waited there was no friend, although he looked vaguely familiar.
Before she had time to place him he spoke in an accent that told her what that familiarity was. ‘Miss Mytton?’
Her heart picked up speed. ‘I’m Alexa Mytton.’
‘The Prince wishes to see you,’ he told her impassively, although the dark eyes that lingered on her face were shrewd and perceptive. ‘I’m sorry it’s such short notice, but if you could come with me…’
When she hesitated he frowned and said, ‘I am sorry.’ He drew out a card and presented it with some ceremony.
He was Dion, followed by a long Dacian name. Alexa turned the card over, her eyes scanning the writing on the back—Prince Luka’s writing.
Please accompany Dion, it said, the brief note followed by that same ‘L’.
She was probably being paranoid after last night, but she wasn’t getting into a car with a total stranger. ‘I’m going past the hotel in ten minutes,’ Alexa said. ‘I’ll call in on my way.’
He looked taken aback, but said politely, ‘Yes, of course. I will meet you at the elevators on the third floor.’
Secretly, shamefully glad she was wearing a sleek trousersuit in her favourite bronze, with a silk mesh tank top under the blazer-cut jacket, Alexa closed the door on him and scurried back into the flat to renew her lipstick, before scooping up her car keys.
Why did Prince Luka want to see her? Expectant, yet strangely apprehensive, she parked in the visitors’ car park and took the lift into the hotel.
Sure enough, Dion with the mile-long name was waiting. Although he greeted her cordially enough she sensed his reservation as he opened another elevator with a key and ushered her inside. Kites jostling in her stomach, she stared at the wall until the lift stopped at the penthouse, where a security guard opened the door and ushered them both into a foyer.
‘In here, madam,’ her guide said, opening another door for her.
He stood back as Alexa walked through. Stopping when the door closed behind her, she ignored the huge, opulently furnished room to fix her eyes on the man who turned from contemplation of a crimson sunset to look at her with dangerous metallic eyes.
From somewhere Alexa remembered that when confronted by royalty you waited until you were spoken to. So, although she had to bite back the words that trembled on her tongue as he surveyed her with comprehensive and intimidating thoroughness, she stood silently.
But her eyes sparkled at his unsparing scrutiny, and her mouth tightened as she jutted her chin at him.
‘Have you seen today’s newspaper?’ he asked in a deep, cold voice.
Frowning, she abandoned any attempt at formality and protocol. ‘No. Why?’
He gestured at one spread out on a coffee table. ‘Perhaps you should read it now. In the last section, page three.’
After a baffled glance she walked across to the table and picked up the paper. The conference had made the front page, but the part he referred to was a lifestyle pullout. And there, in the gossip column, someone had ringed an item with a slashing black pen—the same pen that had written the letter ‘L’ on the paper accompanying her flowers.
Incredulously Alexa read the item.
The Prince of Dacia, heaven’s gift to romantic royalists now that the Prince of Illyria is married, is clearly a connoisseur of more in New Zealand than our scenery and wine. Last night, a small but dedicated bird told me, he was seen driving one of Auckland’s busiest young photographers home after the opening banquet of the banking conference. And she was wearing his jacket. What, we wonder, can this mean?
With scornful precision he asked, ‘Did you leak this?’
Alexa’s head jerked upwards. Bitterly—foolishly—hurt, she transfixed him with a furious glare. ‘Of course I didn’t!’
‘Then how did it get into the newspaper?’
She didn’t know what intimidated her more—his anger, frozen and harsh as a blizzard at the South Pole, or his flinty control.
‘I don’t know,’ she told him, clinging to her composure. ‘Someone saw us at the police station, I’d imagine. Fortunately she hasn’t linked you with any specific person.’
‘Perhaps your name will be in the next sly little morsel,’ he said with a cutting edge to his voice.
Her head jerked around and she met the full shock of his gaze. Dry-mouthed, she asked, ‘Why should there be a next one?’
‘Because whoever fed this to the columnist will make sure of it.’
‘Look,’ she said, trying to be reasonable, ‘it’s irritating and naff, but it isn’t the end of the world. People will forget it.’
‘I won’t forget it,’ he said, watching with hooded eyes the way the light smouldered across her hair, loose now around her face. With silky precision he said, ‘I don’t like being used, Ms Mytton.’
In the face of his scornful arrogance she felt hot and foolish and furious. Covering a stab of pain with seething denial, she asked indignantly, ‘Why would I want to use you?’
‘Usually it’s for money,’ he returned caustically, killing Alexa’s jab of sympathy by adding, ‘But often for notoriety—and I imagine that a link to me, however tenuous, would help you advance in your profession. I hope you took no photographs of me last night.’
Pale eyes glittering, Alexa almost ground her teeth. Her quip to Carole about hiding a camera came back to taunt her, bringing colour to her skin—which he noticed. ‘Not a single one,’ she retorted crisply. ‘And I don’t leak titbits to the press. This rubbish—’ she gestured contemptuously at the newspaper ‘—is your area, not mine. And it’s totally without any foundation.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ He crossed the room in two strides, stopping her instinctive retreat by grasping her shoulders.
The previous night