CHAPTER 6

THE FEMALE CROUPIER dipped into a curtsy when Burke stopped at her wheel, then placed a pile of chips in front of Sabrina. After explaining that unlike the multicolored chips used in America, European roulette used only a single color, Burke invited her to choose a number.

“There are so many.” Sabrina bit her lip. Although the plastic chips didn’t seem like real money, for some reason the decision seemed vastly important. The other gamblers, along with the tuxedo-clad woman at the wheel, waited patiently for Sabrina’s turn. Any guest of the royal family could take all night and there would not be so much as a whisper of complaint.

“Why don’t you start by choosing a color,” Burke suggested. “There are only two choices.”

That was easy. Sabrina chose red, the color of Burke’s dangerous-looking race car.

“A reckless woman,” he chuckled when she placed a single chip on the expanse of green felt. “At least this way it should take all night for you to lose all these chips.” The idea of spending the night with the lovely Sabrina was decidedly appealing, although Burke could think of far more pleasant ways to pass the time than playing roulette.

“Shh,” she hissed as the wheel began to spin. “I’m trying to concentrate.” She didn’t take her eyes from the bouncing steel ball, which eventually fell into the slot occupied by the red number twelve.

“I won!” She clapped her hands as the banker returned her chip, along with another one. “Oh, I’m going to do it again!”

Ignoring his amused glance, she placed another single chip on black, the color of Burke’s gleaming dark hair. She held her breath, every muscle in her body tense as the wheel spun round and round, the ball finally settling into the black number one.

They couldn’t lose. It was as if some benevolent genie were perched on Sabrina’s bare shoulder. As the night went on, Sabrina grew more lionhearted, moving on to numbers, playing hunches, winning every time. The pile of chips grew.

It was much, much later when she finally came down to earth. A brunette waitress, clad in a black Grecian-style gown, appeared at Burke’s elbow, with two flutes of champagne.

“Dominique sent this wine to celebrate your guest’s good fortune,” she said with a smile.

“Thank you.” Burke took the glasses with what Sabrina was beginning to recognize as his official royal smile. “Please tell Dominique that we appreciate the gesture.”

He handed a glass to Sabrina. “I believe a toast is in order.”

Wanting to share her good fortune, Sabrina was puzzled when she couldn’t catch sight of her sisters or her mother.

“Where are the others?”

“They returned to the palace an hour ago.”

“An hour ago?” Sabrina looked down at her watch, shocked to see that it was past midnight. “Why didn’t they tell me they were leaving?”

“Your mother didn’t want to chance breaking your lucky streak.”

“Oh.” That made sense, Sabrina admitted. Dixie had always been incredibly superstitious. “Well, we’d better be going as well. After all, you do have to race in just a few hours.”

“Whatever you wish.” His planned toast forgotten, Burke placed the untouched champagne on the tray of a passing waiter. “I’ll cash in these chips.”

While he went to the gilded barred window, Sabrina idly glanced around the room, surprised to recognize Burke’s American chauffeur seated at the bar.

“Your chauffeur seems to be making the most of his time,” she said when Burke returned.

“Drew never gambles while on duty,” Burke said mildly. “Nor does he drink. Hold out your hand.”

The chauffeur was immediately forgotten as Burke counted into her palm the stack of colorful bills vaguely reminiscent of Monopoly money.

“What in the world is all this?”

“Your winnings.”

She stared down at the money. “How much, exactly, did I win?”

“About one hundred thousand Montacroix francs.”

Shock waves reverberated through her. “What’s that in American money?”

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-five thousand dollars. Actually, a bit more than that.”

“That’s some neighborhood. How in the world did I win so much?”

“It’s not hard to do when you’re playing with hundred-franc chips.”

“Those were hundred-franc chips?” she repeated on a squeak. Fool that she was, she’d never thought to ask.

It was Burke’s turn to look surprised. “Of course. What did you think they were?”

“I don’t know. Five francs. Perhaps ten.”

“In Montacroix?” Burke asked, clearly amused at her naïveté.

Sabrina thrust the colorful paper money toward him. “I can’t keep this.”

“Of course you can.” He took the bills, unfastened the clasp of her evening purse and stuffed them inside. “If the idea of spending it on yourself is a problem, consider it my contribution to the Sonny Darling tax-relief fund. Besides,” he added, “don’t forget, you could have just as easily lost it all.”

Her knees weakened at that idea. That had always been one of the reasons she never gambled. She’d accompanied her husband and his friends innumerable times on junkets to Atlantic City, where glitter brightened the night sky and the smoky air was static with expectation, desperation and tragedy.

Sabrina had already chosen a chancy career; that was all the risk she felt prepared to handle in one life.

* * *

BEHIND THE CASINO, a man and a woman met in the shadows.

“You failed.” His voice was coldly angry; his eyes resembled hard black stones.

“It wasn’t my fault.” She was trembling, not from the night air but from a very real fear. “He took the drugged champagne, just as you said he would, but then that American woman wanted to leave, and—”

The man’s curse was quick and harsh. “You will forget everything about tonight.” He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of black leather driving gloves. “You will erase from your mind the fact that you’ve ever met me.”

“Yes. I will.” Her eyes were riveted on his hands as he pulled on the gloves. “I promise. I will forget everything.”

His smile flashed in the muted light with the deadly intent of a stiletto. “Yes,” the man agreed as he ran one hand down her ashen cheek. “You will definitely forget everything.”

His fingers trailed down her face, then her neck. Sensing his intent, the woman tried to flee, but she was too frightened to move quickly, and her attacker was too intent on his deadly mission. His black gloved fingers curled around her throat. And then he squeezed, strangling off her attempted scream for help. Her eyes grew wide and terrified, her face lost all its color. And then, she slumped to the ground.

The man stood there, eyeing her slender feminine body sprawled lifelessly on the wet dark cobblestones.

“Such a waste,” he murmured. His fleeting expression of regret quickly faded, replaced with renewed determination. Then, pocketing the gloves, he disappeared into the Montacroix night.

* * *

SABRINA’S MIND was still spinning with thoughts of how Dixie was going to react to this unexpected windfall as they climbed into the back seat of the limousine. It had begun to rain; a steady drizzle that diffused the lights lining the street.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she murmured.

“If you feel the need to thank someone, thank Lady Luck. I was just along for the ride.”

His gesture was more than generous, she mused as she looked out the window. And the way he’d suggested she use her winnings to help pay off the IRS debt proved that he understood—and shared—her intense loyalty to family.

A lone man, clad in a black leather trench coat and slouch hat was walking briskly along the sidewalk. For a moment, when he glanced toward the passing limousine, Sabrina thought their eyes met. But that was impossible, she reminded herself. The windows of the limousine were heavily tinted. But that didn’t prevent her from studying him as the limo paused at a red light.

His face was lean and angular, his mouth thin, his eyes sunken deep beneath protruding brows. There was something about those black eyes—something cold and foreboding—that made her shiver.

“Are you all right?” Burke asked, seeing her slight tremor. “If you’re cold, I can have the driver turn up the heat.”

“No.” Sabrina dragged her gaze from the stranger’s stony face. “A cat just walked over my grave.”

“A cat?”

“It’s an expression.” As the light turned green and the limousine continued on its way, she shook off the strange, uneasy feeling and managed a faint smile that only wobbled slightly. “Describing a feeling...like ice up your spine.”

“Ah. That I know,” Burke agreed. “Was it something I said that brought on this feeling?”

“No,” she said truthfully, deciding not to reveal her odd premonition. “It was probably just fatigue. And excitement from the gambling.”

“Perhaps,” Burke agreed. But he didn’t look fully convinced. Instead, Sabrina considered, he looked genuinely concerned. She found such honest regard for her feelings even more dangerous than the fact that he was a dynamite kisser.

“You’re not at all what I expected,” she admitted softly.

Her scent—an erotic perfume suggestive of sex and sin—had been driving him to distraction all night. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know,” she hedged, not wanting to ruin a lovely night by admitting to her own prejudices. “It’s difficult to put into words,” she murmured, pretending a sudden interest in the scenery outside the window.

“Let me try,” Burke suggested. “How about self-indulgent, egocentric, hedonistic. An unprincipled playboy. An oversexed libertine without conscience or scruples. Am I getting warm?”

Actually, he’d hit the nail precisely on its head. “Something like that,” Sabrina mumbled, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. “Except I hadn’t thought of ‘libertine.’”

“Given a bit more time, I’m sure it would have occurred to you,” Burke said easily. “So, with the danger of having my ego deflated even further, what do you think of me now?”

She turned toward him, surprised to find that he’d moved closer. Their faces were little more than a whisper apart.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that you are a very complex man.”

“A fairly accurate assessment,” he agreed. “Which I suppose isn’t all that surprising, coming from an equally complex woman.”

“But I’m not at all complex.”

He lifted a disbelieving brow. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course not. Why, everyone has always said that I was the most extroverted of Sonny Darling’s three daughters.”

“You are the best actress,” Burke corrected. “But while you are flamboyantly displaying whatever it is you want people to believe, you work overtime at keeping your true feelings hidden away, bottled up deep inside you. Which isn’t always successful, because your remarkable eyes give you away.”

Only with him, Sabrina could have told him, but didn’t. Although she was, admittedly, an emotional person, others only saw what she wanted them to see. During the past four days, Sabrina had come to the conclusion that Burke was an intelligent man. Now she realized he was insightful as well.

“You should have told me that you inherited Katia’s gift for second sight.”

“I didn’t. The truth is, Sabrina, that you and I are a great deal alike. We wear our public masks in much the same way my ancestors once wore those protective suits of armor you saw earlier this evening. Having both suffered feelings of abandonment as children, we’ve built walls around ourselves. But there is something I believe you have yet to learn.”

She desperately wanted to argue. To deny everything he was saying. But she couldn’t. Because it was all true.

“What’s that?” she asked on a whisper.

His long fingers encircled her chin, holding her wary gaze to his. “The same walls so painstakingly erected to keep others out, also keep us in. And before long, we find ourselves in a prison of our own making.”

He was so close. Too close. She put her palms against his chest, intending, if not exactly to push him away, to at least hold him at bay. “I’m not—”

“Oh, yes, you are,” he insisted, cutting off her planned denial. His thumb stroked a line of sparks around her lips. “Lower the drawbridge, Sabrina.” Bending his dark head, he brushed his mouth against hers, silkily, enticingly. “Let yourself feel again.”

His lips were soft and warm and so exquisitely gentle that Sabrina felt herself melting into the glove-soft leather seat. Once again Burke had surprised her: she’d been expecting an instantaneous flare of dangerous passion. But instead his gentleness was shattering her defenses, crumbling her parapets, in ways that hot masculine demands never could.

Her hands clutched at his pleated white dress shirt, her head fell back in surrender, and her lips parted, inviting the sweet invasion of his tongue.

Kissing Sabrina was like falling into a sensual dream from which he never wanted to awaken. His hands tangled in her hair, scattering pins, ripping apart the artfully simplistic coiffure that had taken Ariel nearly an hour to create.

Burke sensed Sabrina’s surrender, and instead of feeling victorious, he was humbled by her willingness to trust so completely. To give so openly.

With a pang of regret, he broke the leisurely kiss long enough to lean forward and push a button on the console. “We’ll be taking the long way back to the palace, driver.”

Drew Tremayne, displaying properly servile demeanor, did not even glance up at the rearview mirror. “Yes, Your Highness,” he replied blandly.

Burke pushed another button, causing the thick tinted glass to rise between the front and back seats.

When he turned back to Sabrina, the sight of her momentarily took his breath away. Her golden hair was tousled from his fingers, her lips were parted invitingly, and her eyes were wide and clouded and, he noticed reluctantly, unsure.

For one brief, fleeting moment, his mind brought forth a picture of Sabrina lying in a sun-kissed bed of wild buttercups, her catlike eyes smiling up at him, her arms outstretched.

Forcing the evocative image away, Burke ran his knuckles down her flushed cheek in a slow, tender sweep. “I promise, chérie, I will not hurt you.”

Even as she knew Burke honestly meant those gravely stated words, Sabrina knew he was wrong. Because he would hurt her. Oh, he wouldn’t mean to. But whatever happened between them tonight, they would have no choice but to part. She would resume the tour designed to salvage her father’s reputation while he would remain here, where he belonged, in Montacroix.

In six short days, Burke would become regent. And Sabrina had come to know enough about him to accept the fact that in time, he would do his duty to his family and country by choosing a proper wife capable of giving him the heirs necessary to ensure the continuation of the Montacroix principality.

Oh, he might think of her from time to time, she considered. But eventually she’d fade from his mind like a distant dream. Or a summer dalliance with an appealing American commoner.

Every ounce of common sense Sabrina possessed told her that she should back away from this temptation, now. Before it was too late for choice.

But as his caressing hand moved down her cheek, and then her throat, creating a terrible pitch of excitement in her blood, Sabrina knew it had been too late from the beginning. From that first moment she’d found herself drowning in his smoky dark eyes.

“I don’t want to talk,” she said, raking her hands through his crisp black hair and pulling his mouth back to hers. I don’t want to think. Her avid lips plucked hungrily at his, her kiss hot and hungry. Her slender hands, naked of any jeweled adornment, clutched at his hair, bringing his mouth back to hers, again and again.

When her teeth plucked at the cord in his neck, need punched like a fist into his gut, surging through Burke’s furnace-hot body. His tongue stabbed deeply into her mouth, his greedy hands moved over her, clutching pieces of gold-lamé-covered flesh.

He was no longer gentle, but—for some reason she promised herself to think about later, when her head ceased spinning and her body was no longer aflame—Sabrina did not want gentleness.

Her hands ripped at the starched shirtfront, sending black ebony studs flying. She pushed the material away, her fingers twisting in his black chest hairs as her mouth ate into his.

Need pumping through him, Burke unfastened her gold dress, the zipper sounding unnaturally loud in the close confines of the limo. He yanked the clinging bodice of the gown to her waist, giving his hands access to her breasts.

When he lowered his head and took a taut rosy peak between his teeth and tugged, Sabrina made a low, deep sound in her throat that was half purr, half growl. Pulling her into his arms, he arranged her so that she was lying across his lap. Attempting to regain control, he forced himself to be satisfied with long, slow kisses. Her taste coursed through him like a roiling river, a roaring filled his head. Tension built, and as much as he wanted to bury himself deep in her moist warmth, Burke held back.

She was sprawled wantonly across him, her gold kid shoes on the seat of the car, her skirt riding high on her long legs.

“You are so beautiful.” He slipped his hand beneath her skirt and trailed his fingers up her thigh, tracing a seductive pattern that left her trembling. “That first moment I saw you, looking like a ravishing blond gypsy, you took my breath away.”

“I felt it, too,” she admitted on a throaty voice that was half honey, half smoke. “I didn’t want to. But I did.”

His lips curved into a satisfied smile that only hours earlier would have irritated her. But now her own ravished lips returned his rakish grin. They smiled at each other for an exquisitely long time.

Underlying the aura of sensuality was a familiarity so strong Burke felt as if he could reach out and touch it. He’d dreamed about her—or someone remarkably like her—for so long that it seemed as if he’d been waiting for her his entire life.

He’d fantasized about horseback riding with her beside the diamond-bright waters of Lake Losange, imagined kissing her in a hidden Alpine grove, dreamed of making love in front of a blazing fire. During these atypical flights of fantasy, when she finally arrived, no words were needed. He’d simply known.

Perhaps, Burke thought with a burst of self-directed humor, he had inherited a smattering of Katia’s second sight. Because as a slow flame spread through him anew, it was as if he could read Sabrina’s mind; as if their sensual thoughts had tangled.

Burke had never experienced anything like this with any other woman. Any other lover.

It would be so easy, he mused. Another kiss, a touch here, a long, lingering caress there, and he could have her in his arms crying out for release. But then what? What of tomorrow?

As his gaze swept over her softly flushed features, Burke admitted that he wanted a great deal more than a tumble in the back of a limousine.

Dragging his eyes away from Sabrina, he glanced out the steamed-up window. “We’re almost at the palace.”

“Yes.” Her voice was breathy with anticipation.

With hands that were not as steady as he would have liked, Burke reluctantly rearranged her clothing, then nudged her back onto the seat beside him. “I’ll walk you to your door. And then I must go to the garage.”

“The garage?” She didn’t even try to keep the surprise and disappointment from her voice.

“I want to check the car before tomorrow’s time trial.”

“Oh.” His rejection, after the passion they’d shared, felt like a slap in the face. She felt embarrassed and ashamed and couldn’t bear to meet his look. “I understand.”

“Non, ma chère,” he corrected gently, taking her downcast chin and forcing her to look up at him. “I don’t believe you do.”

“Really, Your Highness—”

“Surely we’ve progressed to a point where you feel comfortable using my first name.”

When she didn’t answer, he said, “I want very much to make love to you, Sabrina.”

“Of course you do,” she returned, her Darling temper flaring to rescue her from humiliation. “That’s why you’re rushing off to the garage the minute we get back to the palace.” Sabrina hated the cold, petulant sound of her own voice. If she’d been reading for a play, the margin notes would have read: woman scorned.

“I want to make love to you,” he repeated gently, but firmly. To prove his point, he took her hand, which had tightened into a clenched fist in her lap, slowly uncurled her fingers and pressed it against an aching part of his anatomy.

“See what you do to me?” he growled. “All it takes is a single glance of your polished silver eyes, or the musical sound of your laughter, or the merest touch of your slender hand against mine, for my body to betray itself in an embarrassing, painful way.”

The frustration in his tone, along with a lingering desire was enough to make her believe him. “Then why?”

He stroked the back of her hand, which was still pressed against his groin, with his fingertip. He couldn’t entirely explain his feelings to her because he hadn’t succeeded in explaining them to himself. “We will make love, Sabrina. When the time and the place is right. And although I doubt that I shall sleep the rest of this night, I wish to do this properly.”

As the limousine pulled beneath the porte cochere, Burke lifted her trembling hand to his lips.

“I do, however, have one request before I behave like the gentleman I wish I wasn’t and resist this delightful temptation.”

Afraid that she was close to giving Burke whatever he wanted, her eyes turned wary. “What request is that?”

“I would be honored if you would let me take you on the tour of the vineyards tomorrow morning. This morning, actually,” he corrected.

An image of making love to Burke amid thick green vines pregnant with lush purple grapes, flashed enticingly through Sabrina’s mind. She could smell the rich dark earth mingling with the sweet scent of ripening grapes; she could feel the sunshine warming their flesh. She could see their entwined bodies...

This had to stop! Burke was not just playing havoc with her body; ever since they’d met, her imagination had gone into overdrive.

“I don’t know if that would be a very good idea.”

“Please, Sabrina.” His lips brushed her knuckles, creating a now-familiar flare of desire.

She let out a long breath as her mind and heart raced. “I wouldn’t imagine that ‘please’ is a word a prince would have to use very often.”

“I’m a man, first,” he reminded her unnecessarily. “Before I’m a prince. But you are right, I save begging and groveling for the really important occasions.”

She tugged her hand free and was about to retort that she hardly considered his request to be either begging or groveling when she saw the relaxed humor in his eyes.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No.” His gaze warmed. “Not exactly.”

“What exactly do you find so humorous?”

“Us, I suppose. The situation. This chemistry.”

“Chemistry,” Sabrina murmured, feeling the heat flooding her cheeks yet again. “Is that a polite term for lust?”

“Whatever you want to call it, Sabrina, you can no longer deny that it exists. Not after tonight.”

“No. I can’t.”

Sabrina had never believed in lying. Not even to herself. Especially to herself. She took another deep breath and felt her equilibrium begin to return.

“I don’t understand. I’m usually much more circumspect in my relationships with men.” She hated Burke thinking that she literally threw herself into the arms of every handsome man who came along. In truth, she hadn’t been with a man since her marriage disintegrated.

And even before she’d caught him in bed with her understudy, she and her husband had maintained separate bedrooms for months. In the beginning, he’d professed not to want to hurt her after her surgery. In the end, Sabrina came to realize that it had only been an excuse not to make love to her. Which wasn’t that surprising. She’d always known, from their debacle of a Caribbean honeymoon, that she was incapable of satisfying an intensely sexual man such as her husband.

So what made her think she could satisfy this man? she asked herself now. That idea, which had not occurred to her while she’d been burning in the prince’s arms, was horribly depressing.

The passionate mood had passed and Burke, for the time being, was relieved. “Perhaps it was my smooth, continental charm that was nearly your undoing.”

Dragging her mind back to their conversation, Sabrina chewed on a crimson fingernail and eyed him thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.”

“My devastatingly dark looks?”

“Sorry.”

“How about the fact that I am first in line to the royal throne of the principality of Montacroix?”

“What on earth would that have to do with anything?”

On the contrary, it was the main reason she felt so threatened by her feelings for him. With any other man, she may have allowed herself to hope. To risk. But with this man—this prince—Sabrina knew there could be no future.

“I have heard of something called a Cinderella complex, which states that despite what they say, all women secretly wish for a Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet, take them away from their boring, humdrum lives to his palace, where they and all the little princes and princesses will live happily ever after.”

He’d hit a little too close to home. Memories of her long-ago fantasies danced enticingly through her mind. Sabrina stubbornly ignored them.

“Not that I believe in that ridiculous bit of pop psychobabble in the first place, even if I did, I’d be forced to point out that my life—both professionally and personally—is far from humdrum, Your Highness.”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll readily agree with your professional acclaim, Sabrina. As for your far-from-humdrum love life, I suppose I’ll just have to take your word on that.”

“You do that.” Despite her lingering feelings of desire, Sabrina was amused by the deft way he’d managed to lighten the unsettling sensual mood. “So with my enviable professional acclaim, not to mention all those men waiting at the stage door, what could I possibly need with a prince?”

“What indeed?” Although he was determined to give her some space, Burke couldn’t resist touching her. Her hair, free of its pins, tumbled nearly to her waist.

Reaching out, he ran his palm down the silken waves. “You should always wear your hair down.”

The masculine possessiveness in his tone rankled. “Is that a royal command, Your Highness?”

“Not a royal command.” Without bothering to seek her permission, he captured several gilt strands and sifted them like grains of gleaming sand through his fingers. “Merely a man’s request.”

His words, his gaze, his touch, pleased her and Sabrina didn’t even try to hide it. “With lines like that, it’s no wonder that you have every woman on the continent chasing after you.”

It was, unfortunately, all too true. There had of course been women. Many of them. Perhaps even too many in his youth. As he’d grown older he’d realized that several women had wanted nothing more than the thrill of going to bed with royalty. When that realization struck home, he became a great deal more choosy.

And Burke didn’t want every woman on the continent. He wanted Sabrina.

“The press exaggerates. As I am sure you know all too well.”

Sabrina thought back on all the cruel, fictional stories that had been written about Sonny over the years. She certainly hadn’t escaped, either. In fact, if she’d had a dollar for every time some supermarket tabloid had put her father or her on the cover, she’d be able to move into one of those exclusive Park Avenue apartments with a view of Central Park.

“Point taken,” she murmured. “Well, I’d better be getting upstairs.”

Knowing that if they stayed together any longer, all his good intentions would dissolve like a sand castle at high tide, Burke didn’t argue.

“I really did have a wonderful evening,” she said into the relaxed silence surrounding them as they lingered once again at the door to her suite.

“You sound surprised.”

“I suppose I am.”

Even as he would have preferred a polite little lie, Burke found himself admiring her truthfulness. “We didn’t get off to a very auspicious start,” he admitted. “And I suppose the blame for that lies with me.”

“Not with you.” She leaned her head back against the silk-covered wall. “It was just a...” Sabrina’s voice trailed off. The long day, the excitement of the gambling, the heated kisses she’d shared with Burke in the back of the limousine, all conspired to make her suddenly exhausted. “Strange situation,” she murmured, willing her weary brain to come up with a proper explanation.

“You know we’re going to have to talk about it,” Burke said quietly. There was something important happening between them. Undercurrents they would not be able to ignore for very long.

Sabrina didn’t want to hear Burke list all the sane, practical reasons why he couldn’t offer her a future. She suspected that as the gentleman she now knew him to be, he would feel obligated to tell her there was nothing permanent about their relationship. That if she chose to make love to him, it would only be an affair.

“Tomorrow,” she murmured on a sultry Southern drawl. “At Tara.” Linking her hands around his neck, Sabrina lifted her face for Burke’s good-night kiss and allowed herself to risk.