Robyn Donald - Royals - Wed To The Prince - By Royal Command / The Princess and the Outlaw / The Prince's Secret Bride

‘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.’

She wasn’t smiling when Guy stopped just outside the door to the entry lobby; she was talking so intently she hadn’t noticed him arrive.

Recalling a fairy tale his English nanny had read to him, he thought, Hair black as coal, skin white as snow, lips red as roses…

Up close, she wasn’t beautiful, but with a mouth that fuelled erotic dreams, who cared? His body certainly didn’t; it was at full alert.

Yet in spite of that mouth and the high, small breasts and slim waist beneath the sarong, Lauren Porter was all poised control, even though she wasn’t getting what she wanted.

Time to bring on the cockroaches, Guy decided ironically, and stepped inside out of the sun.

LAUREN frowned. ‘Do you mean it’s impossible to get to this village?’

The receptionist hesitated before saying cautiously, ‘It is not impossible, ma’am, but it is difficult.’

‘Why?’

Anxious brown eyes avoided Lauren’s in a respectful manner. ‘The road is too dangerous, ma’am.’

On Sant’Rosa the word road was used loosely; the memory of the minibus juddering violently sent a reminiscent twinge through Lauren’s body. And that was on the road from the airport to the resort.

The prospect of tackling an even worse route wasn’t pleasant. So what, she thought grimly, was new? Nothing about this side trip had been easy.

Not for the first time, she wished she hadn’t promised to check out Paige’s favourite charity. In London it had seemed simple, a mere matter of breaking her journey to a New Zealand holiday with a couple of days on a tropical island.

Ha! Her flight to Singapore had been delayed so she’d missed the connection, and as she hadn’t got to Sant’Rosa until after midnight she’d had to wait for the early-morning plane to the South Coast.

After only a couple of hours’ sleep, her head was aching, her eyes were gritty, and her smile was hurting her lips. And now this! She pushed a stray strand of damp black hair back from her cheek. ‘What about public transport?’

Still avoiding her gaze, the receptionist stopped shuffling papers to adjust the scarlet hibiscus behind one ear. ‘Ma’am, there is nothing suitable for you.’

‘I’m perfectly happy to go on the local bus,’ Lauren said crisply.

The woman looked harried. ‘It is not suitable,’ she repeated. ‘And that village is very alone—apart.’

The village had set up an export venture that involved a factory, so it couldn’t be too isolated. A steely note running through her words, Lauren persisted, ‘In that case, where can I hire a car?’

From behind a hard masculine voice drawled, ‘You can’t. There are no car-hire firms on the South Coast.’

Lauren stiffened, every sense sounding alarms. The new arrival’s voice—deep, subtly infused with irony—oozed male confidence.

Slowly she turned. Although tall, she had to look up to meet half-closed topaz eyes between lashes as dark as her most forbidden desire. Her stomach—normally an obedient organ not given to independent action—lurched, then dropped into free fall.

Inanely she repeated, ‘No car-hire firms?’

‘Lady, the closest car-hire firm is in the capital, and that, as you already know, is an hour’s flight away over a mountain range.’

He infused the word lady with a slow, purring sexuality that fanned over her skin like the warm breath of a lover. And where did that thought come from? Clutching her tattered dignity around her, she asked crisply, ‘Then how can I get to this village?’

Because she couldn’t pronounce the name she thrust out the slip of paper Paige had given her.

His expression altered in some subtle way as he examined it, but his tone didn’t change. ‘I doubt if you can. The last rains brought down half a mountain onto the road.’