A Ring To Secure His Crown

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The bad timing was the twisting sensation in her stomach.

‘No need to be coy. I’m assuming that there is a boyfriend in the wings you want to break the news to? Does this guy know that you’ve been tagged as a sacrifice to the great cause of reunification for years?’

‘I am not a sacrifice!’

‘Sorry, a willing victim, then. How many barrels of oil do you reckon marrying my brother is worth, just an estimate?’

She clenched her teeth. ‘I am not a victim—’

‘And the oil deposits in your rocky little kingdom have nothing whatsoever to do with the sudden enthusiasm to reunify our lovely island state? Sorry, not actually sudden. How old were you when they told you the plan? That the feel-good factor of a royal wedding would silence the traditionalists on both sides of the border who cling to the good old days when we hated each other’s guts.’ He pushed his broad, muscular shoulders a little deeper into the leather backrest and let his head fall back. ‘It must make you feel very special to know that you make up an entire chapter in a legal document that took two countries ten years to agree on.’

‘You forgot one important factor...my family ran out of male heirs and, for the record, some guts,’ she told him with grim sincerity, ‘are easier to hate than others.’

His head lifted; he was grinning his insanely attractive smile. ‘Go ahead,’ he invited, tossing her his phone, which she caught on instinct. ‘I’ll pretend to be deaf.’

Lips clamped tight, she tossed it back. ‘Thanks but I have my own phone and I don’t have a boyfriend.’ At university she’d dated a bit, but nothing serious, and then her best friend had met, fallen for and got engaged to a fellow student all in the space of a month. And though Sabrina could not imagine finding herself similarly smitten she had asked herself, what if?

Did she really want to find her soul mate only to be forced to walk away from him? The anger she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself at the time suddenly found its voice—its loud voice.

‘I don’t date. You go on dates to hopefully get butterflies wondering if he is the one, right? So what would be the point?’ She stopped, bringing her lashes down in a concealing curtain across her eyes, appalled as much by the bitter outburst as the person she had chosen to open up to. ‘Besides, I’ve been far too busy with work for much else.’

‘And now you’re going to give that up too like a good little girl, anxious to please. I can see now why it never actually crossed anyone’s mind that you were the leak. The general consensus being that you have never broken a rule in your life.’

His scorn stung, even if what he claimed was depressingly true. She had always been the good girl; she was not about to apologise for it. ‘You make that sound like a vice.’

‘As opposed to what...a virtue?’ On the point of answering his own blighting question, he seemed to change his mind when after a short static pause he added, in an oddly flat voice, ‘The culprit—and, mea culpa, he is one of ours—has been found, and he is, as we speak, being dealt with severely.’

‘Dealt with?’ It sounded sinister, especially when Sebastian said it.

His grin reappeared but it didn’t reach his blue eyes. ‘Don’t worry, despite the bad press we get we haven’t actually executed anyone for a century or so, as for thumbscrews we have found them not really that effective, so we just sacked him.’

‘He lost his job?’

The air escaped through his clenched teeth in an irritated hiss. ‘You’re worried about the fate of a man who was responsible for throwing you to the wolves back there? Wow, you really are going to have to toughen up if you’re joining our family, sweetheart!’ he ground out. ‘But if it makes you feel better the guy won’t be penniless. His insider story of what goes on behind closed doors is pretty much guaranteed to make the bestseller list after it has been serialised in the Sunday papers.’

The colour that had been seeping back into her face retreated. ‘That’s terrible!’

‘But hardly news,’ he responded, sounding very relaxed about the situation. ‘The fact my stepmother has a plastic surgeon on speed dial is not exactly the best-kept secret, neither is my father’s tendency to throw the first thing that comes to hand when thwarted.’

It crossed Sabrina’s mind that an outsider’s view of the place could not be any more jaundiced than this cynical insider’s.

‘So what actually happens now?’

‘Now you go get measured for your wedding dress.’ His gaze slid down her body.

Smiling through clenched teeth, Sabrina struggled not to react to the calculated insolence in his scrutiny, sweat breaking out across her upper lip as she fought the impulse to lift a hand to shield her shamefully hardened nipples.

‘Size eight, am I right? Or maybe a ten up top and an eight in the hips?’ His eyes dropped to her legs where her ankles were neatly crossed one over the other, making her aware that she was rhythmically rubbing one calf against the other.

The abrupt cessation of movement brought his heavy-lidded gaze back to her face. ‘I’m curious—did it ever occur to you to say no?’

‘No?’ she echoed, wondering if any woman ever had to say no to him. It seemed very unlikely.

Her sense of disorientation increased as his eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Or are you actually content to be a pawn?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Really? Next you’ll be telling me that you love Luis, that he is the one.’

Her full lips thinned as she framed a carefully expressionless response to his contemptuous question. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything...’ Then spoilt the effect by instantly exploding resentfully, ‘I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.’

Sebastian levered his shoulders from the leather padded backrest and seat as he leaned forward, angling his body towards her. ‘And what exactly wouldn’t someone like me understand?’

She clamped her lips and shook her head, not that the action lessened the feeling of being cornered or the nerve-rattling impact of the aura of testosterone he exuded. If the option to crawl out of her skin had been offered at that moment she would have taken it.

‘Duty,’ she choked through clenched teeth.

His throaty laugh was mockingly ironic. ‘Of course, duty.’ His slow hand clap raised the levels of her animosity.

‘What is funny about that?’

He widened his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he said, sounding anything but. ‘Was I meant to look impressed by your sacrifice? Oh, I don’t think it’s funny, cara, I think it’s tragic that you are embracing martyrdom so enthusiastically. I’d blame the brainwashing but I think perhaps you were always the good little girl.’

The air left her lungs in a wrathful hiss. ‘I have grown up, unlike some people, and I do not consider myself a martyr!’ Her voice wavered; she was trembling inside and out with the violent rush of emotions his words had shaken loose.

It was a fact of life—or at least her life—that she had little control over a lot of things, but this was one occasion when she didn’t have to take it—or him!

‘You can mock the concept of duty and service, but I’d prefer to be a good girl, as you put it, than a selfish, thrill-seeking, hedonistic waste of space. Has there ever been a moment in your life when you haven’t put yourself and your pleasure above anything else?’

She probably imagined the flash of something that had looked like admiration before his head tilted to one side as he gave the appearance of considering her question. ‘Probably not,’ he conceded.

‘Well, being a selfish waster is not a luxury we can all have even if we wanted it.’

‘You enjoy your occupation of the moral high ground and in a few years’ time, when you are wearing the crown, I just hope you will still think it was worth the things you gave up.’

‘I haven’t given anything up.’

‘How about your work? Why did you waste time, effort and money to qualify as a doctor when you had no intention of ever using that skill?’

Her eyes fell. ‘Research is important.’

‘Granted, but it will have to survive without you, because my instructions are to deliver you to the embassy. Ours.’

‘I’m not a parcel, I’m a person!’

‘With feelings, of course—where are my manners? The shoulder to cry on...’ He leaned towards her and her nostrils flared as the male, warm scent of his body, mingled with a faint fragrance, filled them. ‘Feel free.’

‘I do not require a shoulder and if I did—’