To Marry For Duty

“No crueler than you asking your assistant to relinquish her ring because you’re the boss. I noticed it on her finger while she waited on me at the front desk.” He made a fist around it and put it in his pocket.

Piper might have known his eagle eye would catch her out in her blatant lie. Nothing got past him. “You’ve missed your calling as an undercover agent.”

“I was just going to say the same thing about you. More than ever I’m convinced you’re the only person who can help me.”

She let out an angry laugh and the movement caused the fine gold strands of her hair to settle around her jawline. “I bet Camilla doesn’t have a clue you’ve made this side trip to Kingston to dally with the last unattached, notorious Duchess triplet.”

“Camilla and her family will know soon enough,” the cryptic words dropped like icicles off a roof.

Though she was trembling with conflicting emotions, she would rather die than let him know it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I need your assistance. It’s important.”

“You said that before.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“If you’re talking money, forget it. You and your cousins may have bribed Signore Tozetti to lure Olivia back to Europe, but that kind of charade only works once. Don and I have our own business enterprise now. I prefer to earn my money the old-fashioned way.”

He moved closer, making it difficult for her to function or breathe. “I was thinking more along the lines of a baby.”

“A baby—”

“Yes. Both your sisters are expecting one in the near future. You could be too…”

Piper blinked in shock, trying desperately to connect the dots. What on earth was he getting at?

“If you’re insinuating I’ve been sleeping with Don, then you’re way off base! In the first place, neither of us has ever been interested in each other that way, and we would never do that to Greer.

“In the second place, if I were expecting Don’s baby, I certainly wouldn’t need your money. I’m doing just fine on my own.”

His sensual mouth broke into a condescending smile. “I’ve already satisfied myself about you and Jardine. I was thinking in terms of my giving you a baby.”

Piper couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly. “Why in the world would you think I want a baby, let alone yours?”

“Because I was in Luc’s office the day Olivia called you with her news. The speakerphone happened to be on.” Piper’s heartbeat picked up speed while she tried to recall her exact words. “The second your sister told you, you broke down in tears of happiness for her, then you said you thought she was the luckiest woman in the world.”

“Of course I said that!” Piper defended in the steadiest voice she could muster. “Olivia was fortunate enough to fall in love with a man who loved her and wanted to marry her. It’s the only way I would want to have a baby. By now you ought to know the Duchess sisters don’t sleep around.”

He cocked his dark head. “Once upon a time you invited me to take a nap in the grass with you.”

She gave him a fatuous smile. “That was different. I didn’t intend to sleep with you in the way you’re thinking. I was only having a little fun with you because I didn’t really believe you were in true mourning. Otherwise you would never have removed the band, not even to go undercover.”

Caught up in her emotions, she kept on talking faster and faster. “Since my purpose for being in Europe was to win a proposal from a Riviera playboy, then throw it back in his face, I decided to see if I could kiss one out of you for the sheer challenge of it.

“But it seems I underestimated your love for your deceased fiancée after all.” She shrugged her shoulders. “In any event none of it matters because it’s water in another ocean now.”

Shadows darkened his handsome face. “Not quite. Your instincts were right the first time. I never loved Nina Robles.”

Piper couldn’t be positive, but it sounded like he was telling the truth. She suspected that if he’d really been in love with Nina, he would have married her years before.

“So you wore the arm band a whole year to do penance for your sin?” she taunted.

“Yes,” came the surprisingly fierce rejoinder.

“Oh I see—” She flashed him another mocking smile. “Because you were born a royal, you were forced to enter into a loveless engagement and keep up the pretense. Poor Nicolas. In fairness to you, I don’t suppose most royal engagements are true love matches.”

“Some are,” he responded in a silky tone. “In my case the situation was complicated because my family and the Robles family are distantly related and have been very close over the years. A marriage between Nina and me was expected.

“Her untimely death has complicated things further because Señor Robles expects me to marry Camilla according to an old law.”

“Sounds Biblical to me.”

“That’s because it is,” he muttered. “My father is leaning heavily in that direction too.”

“So Camilla doesn’t appeal to you either?”

“No. I’m in love with someone else, but I can’t do anything about that because she’s not in love with me.”

Nic’s interest in another woman had to be the Parma-Bourbon’s best kept secret, otherwise her sisters would have heard about it. The devastating revelation drove Piper to her desk where she sat down before pain caused her to disintegrate right in front of him. He was so out of her reach.

In a wooden voice she said, “Why are you really here, Nic?”

“My official mourning period is over in three days. In order to foil both families’ future plans for me, I would like to arrive back in Marbella with a wife.”

“A wife, huh? Well you shouldn’t have any trouble. There must be a dozen eligible royal females who’ve had their eye on you for years.”

“None of them will do for what I have in mind. You’re the one titleless woman I could bring home that my family won’t be able to take exception to publicly, or ask me to renounce.”

“You mean I’m tolerable because my sisters are married to your cousins, therefore I win the prize by default?” she cried out, her face red hot.

“That’s part of it,” he came back quietly. “My parents have met you and find you charming. They know the history of the Duchess sisters, and are aware you and I have spent time together on two different occasions during my mourning perio—”

“Wait a minute,” she broke in. At this point she was so beside herself with anguish, she jumped to her feet again, then had to hold on to the edge of the desk for support. “That talk about a baby—you’re not suggesting we pretend we’ve been seeing each other on the sly, and now I’m pregnant with your—”

“There’d be no pretense if we got married and had a short honeymoon on our way back to Spain,” he interrupted. “By then we could tell the family it’s possible we’re expecting. That would make my marriage a fait accompli in every sense of the word.”

She shook her head. “No way— The favor you’re asking of me is impossible. Aside from the fact that I don’t like you, you’re in love with someone else!”

“Does that have to matter?”

His cold-blooded response left Piper nonplussed. “Obviously not to you, but it does to me. We’re not in love with each other, so it wouldn’t work. Furthermore I like my world just as it is. My career has taken off and I’m excited to see where it leads.

“Personally I can’t conceive of anything more absurd than the two of us parading around as man and wife in a loveless union just because you want to pull some stunt to get out of marrying Camilla, and I’m the nearest available pawn.”

After a period of uncomfortable quiet he said, “I understand how you feel.” His benign response managed to infuriate her even more. “My apologies for having asked something of you that is pure selfishness on my part and could even be dangerous. I won’t disturb you again.”

With one of those barely discernible yet imperious bows which was second nature to him, he started for the door.