Robyn Donald - By Royal Command

“Really?” he said politely. “I can think of plenty of words to describe such a marriage, but ridiculous doesn’t come to mind. As for the affair—I thought we’d already had it.”

“We spent a few days together,” she corrected, gripped by intolerable anguish. Yet she had to send him out of her life. “I’m sorry, but a tropical fling is not expected to last beyond the tropics. I’ll always be grateful to you for saving my life, because I suspect that’s what you did.”

“Stop right there,” he advised with an inflection so deadly it chilled her into temporary paralysis. “If you’re telling me that you slept with me out of gratitude, I’ll just have to show you that you’re wrong.”

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PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHEN the hair on the back of Guy Bagaton’s neck lifted, he finished cracking a joke with the bartender before straightening to his full, impressive height and allowing his tawny gaze to drift casually across sand as white as talcum powder.

A woman was coming towards the bar, the fierce Pacific sun summoning blue flames from her hair as she emerged from the feathery shade of the coconut palms. Camouflaged by the woven side panels of the bar, Guy admired the way her crimson sarong set off bare white shoulders. On her the all-purpose cover-all looked coolly sophisticated, especially paired with frivolous sandals that emphasised long, elegant legs. Yet he’d be prepared to bet she hadn’t come to the resort to lie in the sun; in spite of the sarong and the erotic sway of her hips, she walked with purpose.

Guy’s body stirred in primal interest. ‘Who is that?’ he asked the bartender, pitching his voice so that it wouldn’t travel.

The barman looked up. ‘That’s Ms Lauren Porter—got in on the plane from Atu a couple of hours ago. She’s staying two nights.’

‘I see,’ Guy said without expression.

When the manager had rung Guy an hour previously, disturbed because their newest guest had broached her intention of visiting a mountain village, the name had rung bells somewhere in his mind. It hadn’t taken him long to trace the thin thread of memory to its source—a conversation a few months ago with one of his cousins, an elderly Bavarian princess who had a keen nose for gossip and a connoisseur’s eye for a good-looking man.

‘I noticed you talking to Marc Corbett and his charming wife,’ she said after one of her famous dinner parties. ‘I wonder if Paige knows that he keeps an English mistress.’

‘I doubt it,’ Guy said curtly. Paige Corbett had struck him as straightforward and very much in love with her husband, a magnate with varied interests and a reputation for honest dealing.

‘Not many people do; they are very discreet and never seen together, but of course you can’t stop gossip—someone always knows. She is a Miss Lauren Porter, who is long-legged and beautiful and English. She works in his business. Very clever, I’m told. She has been close to him for years now.’

Guy raised his brows but said nothing.

The elderly princess nodded. ‘And now you don’t like him very much. Even as a child you had a rigid sense of honour. I like that in a man—it’s so rare.’

He’d smiled cynically down at her, but his respect for Marc Corbett had lessened. When Guy made promises he kept them.

Now, narrowing his eyes against the tropical sun, he watched Lauren Porter approach the bar. Her travel arrangements had been made by the Corbett organisation, so this had to be the same woman.

What the hell was she doing here?

When she got close enough for him to see her face, he blinked in something like shock and inhaled swiftly. An enchantress—no wonder she kept Marc Corbett on a leash! Skin like silk, large eyes so pale a grey they glinted uncannily like crystals, and a mouth sultry enough to set the world aflame, allied to a body that gave new meaning to the words sexual chemistry—Lauren Porter had all the necessary attributes for a mistress.

Why did she plan to visit a small, dirt-poor village in the mountains? It had to be business, and so it had to be connected to Marc Corbett, who had fingers in all sorts of industrial pies around the world.

Ignoring the reckless drumming of lust through his body, he frowned and watched her veer away from the bar and disappear into the reception area. He’d better go and find out what she was up to.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade her not to leave the resort; women who looked as though they’d just emerged from a fashion magazine scared easily. He’d mention that mountain cockroaches were huge, follow it up with an allusion to leeches, and she’d probably pass out.

Yet even as he grinned derisively, that sense of unease, of prospective danger, thickened around him. Although he had no information to back it up, the tenuous foreboding had been correct too often to dismiss; a couple of times it had saved his life.

He should have collected his mobile phone from the office before coming down to the resort.

‘So you’ve heard nothing about any problems,’ he said to the bartender.

The man shrugged. ‘There’s talk,’ he said, ‘but on Sant’Rosa we talk a lot.’

‘Sit in the bush and drink grog and gossip,’ Guy returned tolerantly. ‘OK, forget I asked.’

The young man had been polishing glasses. He stopped now and looked up, the concern in his dark eyes and dark face mirrored in his tone. ‘What have you heard?’

‘Nothing,’ Guy told him truthfully. ‘Not a single thing, but you know me— I like to gossip too.’

‘War,’ the bartender said wearily, picking up another glass. ‘We hoped it had finished, but since this preacher started talking about John Frumm bringing in food and drink and cigarettes and all the good things from America, people are getting nervous.’

‘I know. Just keep your eyes and ears open, will you?’ Guy nodded towards the reception area. ‘I think I’ll go and make the acquaintance of Ms Porter.’

And once he’d convinced her a trip into the mountains wasn’t feasible, he’d talk to the receptionist. She came from a village close by the border, so she might have heard something that would explain the elemental warning running down his spine like a cold finger.

The younger man grinned. ‘That Ms Porter, she’s pretty—skinny, though. Don’t know why you Europeans like skinny women.’ He shook his head over the weird tastes of western men, then added, ‘She’s nice—she smiles and talks to you when you carry her bags.’