Prince's Love-Child

Colour darkened his cheeks, his eyes the blue-grey of a stormy sea now. ‘And if I had?’ he bit out icily. ‘What was your excuse?’

She could be selective, make excuses, could even evade the issue. But the truth, she knew—or at least the part she was willing to admit to Rik!—was much more likely to put an end to this conversation. ‘Me?’ she echoed self-disgustedly. ‘I had just watched the man I loved marry someone else!’ She now met Rik’s gaze unflinchingly.

Because it was only part of the truth of what had happened to her that day. Sapphie had gone to Dee and Jerome’s wedding believing she was still in love with Jerome, and had felt nothing but misery as she’d watched him marrying Dee.

But then something—she wasn’t sure what—had made her glance around the church, and her eyes had come to rest abruptly on Rik Prince as he’d stared broodingly down the aisle at the couple being married, obviously as unhappy about it as she was.

Until that moment, love at first sight had just been a phrase to Sapphie, not something that ever happened to real people like her. Well, except perhaps those people who realised the following morning, as they looked at the person beside them in bed, that it had probably been lust at first sight, rather than love!

She wasn’t one of those people; she’d woken at dawn the morning after Dee and Jerome’s wedding to gaze hungrily at the man sleeping beside her, knowing that not only did she love every hard plane and hollow that made up his physical being, but that she also loved his gentleness, his intelligence, and sense of honour too.

She had gone to the wedding the day before believing herself in love with one man, but after the celebration had realised that she was irrevocably in love with another.

A man who’d made no secret of the fact that he was in love with Dee…

* * *

Jerome?

Was Sapphie Benedict referring to Jerome Powers?

Sapphie, with her mesmerising, amber-coloured eyes, and her grim determination to discuss and dismiss their first and—until now—only other meeting, had been hurting as much as Rik had five years ago because she’d been in love with Jerome Powers? She’d spent the wedding reception with him, and the night with him, because she had just watched the man she loved marry someone else?

But hadn’t he just admitted to having done the same thing? Wasn’t that night—and Sapphie herself—something he had kept buried deep at the back of his consciousness, the door to it tightly locked and bolted?

Yes, of course it was. But that was because he had always felt guilty about that night, about the fact that he had used Sapphie as a way of blocking out his pain. Knowing she had used him in the same way added a dimension now that filled him with anger. His fury wasn’t logical, and it certainly wasn’t fair, but it was how he felt, none the less.

‘Are you still in love with Powers?’ Rik rasped contemptuously. ‘Is that the reason you’re still hanging around the two of them? Hoping to step into Dee’s shoes if the marriage should falter?’

‘How dare you?’ Sapphie gasped incredulously, having paled dramatically, those amber eyes the only colour in her face now. ‘For your information, Mr Prince, I’m not hanging around the two of them at all. I happen to have been in Paris for four days now, doing some research. Dee and Jerome decided to stop off here yesterday in order to see me on their way to Dee’s film première in London next week.’

‘How convenient for you,’ Rik scorned.

He hadn’t even attempted to see Dee since her wedding day five years ago, whereas this woman appeared to have remained friends with both Dee and Jerome. Masochistic or what?

‘It isn’t convenient at all,’ Sapphie came back forcefully. ‘And as for my wanting to step into Dee’s shoes if the marriage should falter—if you listened to what I said just now, then you’ll have realised I used the past tense concerning my feelings towards Jerome. I was in love with him then, but I’m not now.’ She was breathing hard in her agitation, her eyes sparkling with anger.

Considering how defensive she was, Rik wasn’t sure that he believed her.

But somehow, looking into those amber-coloured eyes and seeing the contempt gleaming there, he doubted Sapphie Benedict cared whether he believed her or not!

What was hard to believe, as he looked at her now, seeing how her eyes gleamed challengingly, twin spots of fiery colour burned her cheeks, and the fullness of her mouth had thinned to a taut line, was that he had ever explored every inch of that slenderly tiny body, that he had run his hands time and again through the auburn thickness of her shoulder-length hair, kissed every inch of her gamin-featured beauty and tasted the intimate delight of her luscious lips and mouth.

Sapphie, as if becoming aware of Rik’s lingering gaze, of the thoughts running through his head, seemed to gather herself up to attack. ‘Let me make one thing clear, Mr Prince—’

‘I thought it was to be Rik and Sapphie,’ he reminded her tauntingly, smiling his thanks at the waiter as he placed the pot of fresh coffee and cups down on the table.

‘Mr Prince,’ Sapphie enunciated carefully once they were alone again, ‘I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. Is that clear enough for you?’

She really was beautiful, Rik acknowledged slightly dazedly; not that he had thought—even five years ago when he needed to block out the pain—that he would have been attracted to someone who wasn’t beautiful. It just came as a surprise to him now to realise quite how beautiful Sapphie Benedict was.

More beautiful than Dee? Well…no. But Dee’s beauty was made up of golden hues, whereas this woman was all fire and light; her hair, for example, gleamed red as the sunlight caught it, and her eyes had taken on the colour of leaping flames.

There was also the fact that, notwithstanding how much in love he’d been with Dee five years ago, the two of them had never gone any further than a few clandestine kisses. Whereas he and Sapphie Benedict had shared the most complete intimacy there was between a man and a woman.

‘Very clear, Sapphie,’ he finally answered her slowly. ‘But if that really was the case, how would I know about the birthmark you have on your—?’

‘Will you stop that?’ she snapped furiously, sitting forward. ‘Dee and Jerome are on their way back now,’ she hissed warningly after a brief glance over his shoulder. ‘This conversation is over as far as I’m concerned!’

Rik turned to give a cursory glance in the direction of the married couple as they strolled along hand in hand, pausing to look in a store window now, his mouth twisting with distaste even as he acknowledged how right they looked together: Dee so tall and goldenly beautiful, Jerome with that natural confidence of a successful middle-aged man.

‘I would keep that emotion under wraps too, if I were you,’ Sapphie bit out impatiently. ‘Jealousy can be so unattractive!’

Rik turned back to find her looking at him scathingly. Jealousy? Of Jerome’s role as Dee’s husband, was what Sapphie meant. Was he still jealous of Jerome? No, in all honesty, he couldn’t say that he was, any more.

Did that mean that he really was over his love for Dee…?

He raised dark brows as he returned Sapphie Benedict’s challenging look. ‘You would know, I suppose,’ he drawled mockingly, but took no pleasure in the way her face fell at his deliberate taunt.

How ironic, how absolutely incredible, that the two of them should both have been in love with other people five years ago. Although Sapphie denied that she still felt that way about Jerome. And he…He realised with another lightening of his heart that, without even knowing it, he’d got over Dee. She was still one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, but he could now view that beauty dispassionately.

Sapphie eyed him dismissively now. ‘I never took you for an idiot, Rik. Misguided in your love for Dee, perhaps, but never an idiot.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘You don’t like Dee very much, do you?’ he realised wonderingly; he had never met anyone before, male or female, who didn’t instantly fall under Dee’s charming spell. Although being in love with the other woman’s husband would probably do it, he allowed.

‘Of course I like Dee,’ Sapphie bristled resentfully. ‘Knowing a person’s weaknesses and faults doesn’t preclude your liking them.’

Rik gave her a rueful grin. ‘Knowing mine doesn’t seem to have endeared me to you!’

She eyed him bleakly. ‘There are always exceptions to every rule,’ she retorted before turning to smile warmly at Dee and Jerome as they rejoined them, her expression affectionately indulgent as she took in the new handbag that Dee carried. ‘I see you preferred the larger design,’ Sapphie teased.

Dee grinned unabashedly, her pleasure in the gift obvious. ‘If you’re going to have a designer bag, then it may as well be a big one!’ She dropped gracefully into the chair next to Sapphie before placing the new purchase on the table. ‘Isn’t it absolutely gorgeous?’

The white bag, printed with a pattern of the designer’s motif in different colours, was certainly big, Rik acknowledged. However, it also wasn’t the little purse initially suggested. But then, why shouldn’t Dee choose a much more expensive number? Jerome was so rich he made the multimillionaire Prince brothers look like paupers!

‘It’s lovely,’ Sapphie assured the other woman warmly.

Rik couldn’t help but admire, on the other couple’s return, the way in which Sapphie seemed to have shaken off her obvious animosity towards him. Anyone glancing in their direction now would be sure to think they were just four friends enjoying a cup of coffee together on this glorious Parisian day.

Rik wasn’t actually quite sure whether he could really class the four of them as friends, given all the emotions teeming beneath their surface politeness!

Nevertheless, he was reluctant for their time together to end. It had taken five years for him to meet Sapphie Benedict again and—surprisingly!—he found he was so intrigued, that he didn’t want there to be another five before it happened again!

‘I was just suggesting to Sapphie,’ he gave her a sideways glance, his mouth quirking humorously as he noticed the disapproving tightening of her full lips, ‘that it would a good idea if the four of us were to have dinner together this evening.’

He had turned back to the married couple by the time he made this suggestion, so he didn’t actually see Sapphie’s reaction to his suggestion—but he certainly felt it!

Shock was quickly followed by waves of pure animosity in his direction which she made no effort to conceal!