Amy had snatched up her bag and hurried across the city, expecting to meet an outed MP’s son or an heiress being blackmailed with revenge porn.
The hotel manager had brought her to the Royal Suite, a title Amy had not taken seriously despite the pair of men guarding the door, both wearing dark suits and inscrutable expressions. One had searched through her satchel while the other inspected the jacket she had nervously removed in the lift.
When they opened the door for her, Amy had warily entered an empty lounge.
As she set her bag and jacket on a bar stool, the sound of the main door closing had brought a pensive man from one of the bedrooms.
He wore a bone-colored business shirt over dark gray trousers, no tie, and had such an air of authority, he nearly knocked her over with it. He was thirtyish, swarthy, his hair light brown, his blue eyes piercing enough to score lines into her.
Before she had fully recognized him, a hot, bright pull twisted within her. A sensual vine that wound through her limbs slithered to encase her, and yanked.
It was inexplicable and disconcerting—even more so when her brain caught up to realize exactly who was provoking this reaction.
The headlines had been screaming for weeks that the Golden Prince, recently crowned the king of Vallia, would be coming to London on a state visit. King Luca had always been notorious for the fact he was powerful, privileged and sinfully good-looking. Everything else about him was above reproach. According to reports, he’d dined at Buckingham Palace last night where the only misstep had been a smoky look of admiration from a married duchess that he had ignored.
“Call me Luca,” he said by way of introduction, and invited her to sit.
Gratefully, Amy had sunk onto the sofa, suffering the worst case of starstruck bedazzlement she’d ever experienced. She spoke to wealthy and elite people all the time and never lost her tongue. Or her hearing. Or her senses. She refused to let this man be anything different, but he was. He just was.
She saw his mouth move again. The words he’d just spoken were floating in her consciousness, but his gorgeously deep voice with that Italian accent evoked hot humid nights in narrow cobblestone alleys while romantic strains of a violin drifted from open windows. She could practically smell the fragrance of exotic blossoms weighting the air. He would draw her into a shadowed alcove and that full-lipped, hot mouth would smother—
“Will you?” he prodded.
Amy yanked herself back from the kind of fantasy that could, indeed, ruin him. And her. He was a potential client, for heaven’s sake!
A cold tightness arrived behind her breastbone as she made the connection that she was, once again, lusting for someone off-limits. Oh, God. She wouldn’t say the king of Vallia reminded her of him. That would be a hideous insult. Few men were as reprehensible as him, but a clammy blanket of apprehension settled on her as she realized she was suffering a particularly strong case of the butterflies for someone who potentially had power over her.
She forcibly cocooned those butterflies and reminded herself she was not without power of her own. She could turn down this man or this job. In fact, based on this off-the-rails attraction she was suffering, she should do both.
She would, once she politely heard him out. At the very least, she could recommend one of her colleagues.
Why did that thought make this weird ache in her diaphragm pang even harder?
She shook it off.
“I’m sorry,” she said, managing to dredge the words from her dry throat. “Did you say someone is trying to ruin you? London Connection can definitely help you defuse that.” There. She almost sounded like the savvy, confident, cofounder of a public relations firm that her business card said she was.
“I said I want you to ruin me.”
You. Her heart swerved. Did he know? Her ears grew so hot, she feared they’d set her hair on fire. He couldn’t know what had happened, she assured herself even as snakes of guilt and shame writhed in her stomach. Her parents and the school’s headmistress had scrubbed out that little mess with all the alacrity of a government cleanup team in a blockbuster movie. That’s how Amy had learned mistakes could be mitigated so well they disappeared from the collective consciousness, even if the stain remained on your conscience forever.
Nevertheless, her hands clenched in her lap as though she had to physically hang on to all she’d managed to gain after losing everything except the two best friends who remained her staunchest supporters to this day.
“Our firm is in the business of building reputations.” Muscle memory came to her rescue, allowing her voice to steady and strengthen. She said this sort of thing a million times a week. “Using various tools like media channels and online networking, we protect and enhance our clients’ profiles. When a brand or image has been impacted, we take control of the narrative. Build a story.” Blah, blah, blah.
She smiled while she spoke, hands now stacked palm up in her lap, ankles crossed. Her blood still sizzled because, seriously, he was positively magnetic even when he scowled with impatience. This was what a chiseled jaw looked like—as though a block of marble named “naked gold” or “autumn tan” had been chipped and worked and shaped to become this physical manifestation of strength and tenacity. Command.
“I know what you do. That’s why I called you.” Luca rose abruptly from the armchair he’d taken when she’d sat.
He paced across the spacious lounge. His restless movement ruffled the sheer drapes that were partially drawn over the wall of windows overlooking the Thames.
She’d barely taken in the decor of grays and silver-blue, the fine art pieces and the arrangements of fresh flowers. It all became a monochrome backdrop to a man who radiated a dynamic aura.
