Surely they’d heard the same thing. The Hotel Crillon had formerly been a palace, built for Louis XV. Royalty. Palace. It had seemed funny to her, but her little attempt at breaking the ice fell flat. Instead of cracking jokes, she counseled herself, she should concentrate on accomplishing what she’d come for, then getting out with her skin still intact.
“The Hotel Crillon is the closest exclusive, high-priced hotel to the place where—” She stopped again, this time for a different reason, and cleared her throat. “Where—”“Where you threw yourself at me and kissed me,” he supplied, his tone helpful, his expression anything but.At the second mention of a kiss, the attitude of the other two Damarons changed slightly. Now they seemed more interested than hostile. With a glance at each other, they settled back in their chairs, obviously having no intention of going anywhere.Danielle passed her fingers across her forehead. She could feel her face growing hot with embarrassment. “Look. If I can just have a private word with you. I’ll explain everything.”Nathan shook his head. “My cousins and I don’t keep secrets from one another. Besides, if they don’t find out about it now, they’ll find out about it when I bring our legal department in on this.”Danielle felt the color drain from her face. “Legal department?”“What did you expect? Paparazzi are very un-popular these days, plus if you plan to sell your tape to a tabloid—”Her mouth nearly fell open. “Sell the tape? I have no intention of selling it.”“Surely you don’t think you can blackmail me. It was only a kiss.”Only a kiss. Right, she reflected. If that had been only a kiss, then the Mona Lisa was only a painting. “Of course not. ”Abruptly the cousin with the jade-colored eyes stood. “I’m afraid our manners have been severely lacking. I’m Sinclair Damaron,” he said. “This is my cousin Lion.” Lion nodded to her.“How do you do.” She gave Sinclair a grateful smile and extended her hand. “I’m Danielle Savourat.”He held an empty chair out for her. “Please sit. I don’t know about my cousins, but I’m getting a crick in my neck from having to look up at you.”She sat, thankful for the chair, because somewhere along the line, her legs had become weak.“I gather you already know Nathan,” Sinclair said, taking his seat.“In a manner of speaking.” She cast a wary glance his way.A waitress glided up to the table. “May I get you something to drink?”She rarely drank, and she’d certainly never been one to resort to alcohol for courage, but in this case, she decided she’d take it any way she could get it. “I’ll have whatever they’re having.”“Good choice,” Sin said. “We’re having Napoleon brandy. You’ll never taste anything smoother.”Dani nearly choked. There was no way she could afford even a single glass of the stuff. “On second thought,” she said to the waitress, “I don’t want anything. Thank you, anyway.”“Are you sure?” Sin asked.She nodded, then smiled. “I just remembered I’m allergic to anything alcohoHc.”Lion and Sin looked at her oddly.“Gentlemen, do you need refills?” the waitress asked. The three men shook their heads and the waitress departed.Danielle smiled at Sinclair again. “Thank you for the introductions. I wasn’t certain of your names.” Her gaze slid to Nathan. “Except for yours, and I only knew after some friends told me.”“It’s generally enough for a blackmailer or a member of the paparazzi to know they have a Damaron in the crosshairs of their camera,” Nathan said. “They find out our names later, just as you did.”Lion nodded. “But you’re unique. I don’t think we’ve ever had either of those type of people come up to us and introduce themselves.”“It’s definitely a novel approach,” Sin agreed, his tone vaguely sympathetic, “but I have to tell you that you’re going to be no more successful than the blackmailers who have come before you.”“People try, but one way or another, we always stop them,” Lion added.She glanced at Nathan. He was silently watching her, his gaze still hard, but now she thought she saw something else there. Thoughtfulness. It was as if his initial anger with her was slowly dissolving into assessment. Lord, he was really something to look at. No wonder she’d chosen him to kiss. He was wearing a navy tweed jacket over a dark blue shirt, opened at the throat, and she could feel herself involuntarily softening as she remembered how right it had felt when he’d held her in his arms.“Of course,” Lion said, “none of the blackmailers have been as pretty as you are, but if I were you. I’d concentrate on a tabloid sell. It would be much easier for you.”That did it. She’d had enough. She put up her hands, palms out. “Okay, stop. Both of you. And just listen to me. I appreciate your primer on the dos and don’ts of blackmailing and selling to a tabloid. Career advice is always valuable. Who knows? One day I might have need of it. However, that’s not why I’m here.” She looked at Nathan. “I came here for one reason—to apologize to you.”Lion nodded with approval. “Once again, a fresh approach.”She flashed him a glance of rebuke. “Be quiet. I need get this out. Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account that I’d have to deal with three of you—”“You’ll often find us in packs,” Sin offered, then when she sent a cutting look his way, he shrugged.“Just thought you’d like to know for any future plans.”She sighed. “Obviously you two took my arrival as your evening’s entertainment, but I have something very important to say to Nathan, and if either one of you says one more word. I’ll dump that two-hundred-year-old brandy on your head.”Sin’s dark brows shot up and Lion’s golden eyes narrowed. “At least I’d give it my best try,” she amended. “Now . . .” She directed her attention to Nathan. “As I said before, my name is Danielle Savourat. My father is Edouard Savourat. Before his retirement, he and his company. United Electronics, did a great deal of business with Damaron International.”“Oh, you’re Edouard’s daughter,” Lion said. “He’s a good man.”“Thank you.” She looked back at Nathan. “So when I reahzed that the man I’d kissed on the quay was a Damaron, I knew I had to come and apologize. Even though my fatlier has retired and no longer does business with you and your family, he would be quite upset at my behavior this evening.”She paused, but she couldn’t tell if her words had any effect on Nathan. But it was all right. She’d accomplished what she’d come to do. “So that’s it. Again, I’m very, very sorry, and I can assure you it will never happen again.” She pushed away from the table, but before she could stand, Nathan’s voice stopped her.“Just a minute. You haven’t told me why you did It."She drew in a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay. You deserve to know that. There was nothing nefarious or mercenary about my actions. I was simply on a scavenger hunt.”Lion shook his head in admiration. “Once again, I have to give it to you, Danielle. There’s certainly nothing cliched or hackneyed about you.”She ignored him and kept her gaze on Nathan. “I had a group of very close friends during school, and when we graduated, we vowed we’d always stay close. So once a year we try our best to gather together somewhere for however long we can manage. This year, as it happened, two of our friends have been living here, so we decided we’d all come to Paris and bunk in with them.”She glanced at Sin and Lion and saw that they had relaxed back in their chairs and were listening with great enjoyment. She returned her gaze to Nathan, who, unfortunately, hadn’t relaxed at all. “So last night, we decided to have a scavenger hunt. There were a lot of crazy things on our list. You know, like a bow from a poodle’s ear, or a Maxim’s menu autographed by the maitre d’, which by the way, was very hard to get. Another hard one involved. willpower—a whole freshly baked chocolate eclair. It couldn’t be eaten until we all got back to the apartment and after the prize had been awarded. Oh, and a picture of a dog eating a T-bone from fine china on the floor at a restaurant. Surprisingly, that wasn’t hard at all to get. Ummm ... a picture of one of us riding atop an equestrian statue. That wasn’t hard either. There are so many of them in this city. It was just a matter of finding one without a gendarme in the area.” She shrugged. “As I said, silly things. And to keep us all legal, each team of two had to videotape the other getting the object.”“Object?”She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Or thing, such as a kiss from a stranger. My teammate, Kevin, is engaged to a girl back in the States, so he said I had to do that part.” Sometliing flickered in Nathan’s eyes, so she rushed on. “We already had a lot of the items on the list and our time was nmning out. That’s when I saw you. I got the kiss from you and then we ran back to the apartment and managed to arrive just minutes before the deadline was up.” She shrugged again. “And that was pretty much it.”“Not quite. Did you win?”She shifted in her chair. “As a matter of fact we did. We were tied with two other teams, but when we ran our tape and, uh, everyone saw me kiss you, they decided Kevin and I had won hands down.”“And why’s that?”“Because they noticed what I didn’t.” She nodded toward his head. “The silver streak in your hair. My friends immediately recognized you. Many of them had gotten kisses from strangers, but no one had managed to get a kiss from someone famous.”Sin glanced at Lion. “Just think of the confusion we could have caused if we’d gone out. Ties, wins— they would have been up all night trying to figure out who topped who.”Lion grinned. “What criteria do you suppose they would have used to declare the winner then? Perhaps who kissed the oldest Damaron?”“Or maybe who kissed the best-looking?”Lion flashed a dazzling smile. “That would be me, of course.”“Not on your longest day.”She liked Sin and Lion, she decided. Too bad their cousin didn’t appear to see the humor in the situation as they did. “There was only one thing that would have beaten the kiss from Nathan,” she said to the two of them.Lion grinned. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this one.”“The real hunchback of Notre Dame.”Sin and Lion burst out laughing.“What was the prize?” Nathan asked quietly.“The prize?”“What did you win because you kissed me?”“An Eiffel Tower snow globe.”“I beg your pardon?”Her brow pleated as she looked at him. “It’s a glass hall that holds snowlike flakes and, in this case, the Eiffel Tower. Turn it upside down, then right-side up again, and it snows on the Eiffel Tower.”Lion’s eyes glittered with laughter. “I for one am impressed. Think about it, Nathan. You’re worth a snow globe. I don’t know of many people who could say that.”Sin laughed, then glanced at his watch and nudged Lion. “I almost forgot. You and I have a conference call coming in from Geneva. We’d better go up to the suite.”Lion frowned. “Conference call?”“Yes,” Sin said meaningfully. “From Geneva. For you and me. Not Nathan.”Lion glanced at Nathan. “Oh— right. Now I remember. Conference call from Geneva. You. Me. Not Nathan.”“It was very nice meeting you, Danielle,” Sin said, standing.Lion also rose to his feet. “And very interest-ing.”Smiling, Danielle nodded. “It was nice meeting you too.” After the two men left, she returned her gaze to Nathan. “I’ll be going too. Once again, I’m very sorry. My father has always thought a great deal of you and your cousins. When he was doing business with Damaron International, he constantly sang your praises. He greatly admired the way you and your cousins took over the business after your parents’ deaths. That’s just one of the reasons I wouldn’t want anything I did to reflect badly on him.”“Don’t worry about that. I know your father. He’s a man of integrity.”“Yes, he is.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for saying so. Well . . . good night.”She put her hands on the table to push herself up, but he reached across the table and grabbed her wrist. “Stay.”“I’ve said everything I have to say.”“But I haven’t.”Even though Nathan had felt he would see her again, he hadn’t expected it would be so soon and under these circumstances. But he was glad that she’d come, and that the man she’d been with hadn’t been her boyfriend after all. He was equally glad and relieved that she hadn’t turned out to be a con artist. Not that either of those things would have ultimately mattered to him.He knew her name now. Danielle. And she was even more lovely than he’d been able to see down on the quay. She had misty blue eyes and long, light brown hair. If he’d seen her walking on the quay, she would have attracted his attention. If she’d smiled at him, as she had a minute or so ago, he would have been captivated.He’d been smiled at by many beautiful women, but there was something unique about Danielle.Very few things he could think of would have gained her his complete and undivided attention as quickly as the Idss had. It had been a sucker punch. He hadn’t seen it coming, and when it did arrive, he’d been helpless to guard against it.He’d been thinking about it ever since.He’d looked forward to their next encounter, because he’d thought he would be able to make her pay for kissing him as she had, for making him want her, then for running away with another man.But she’d fooled him.“Isn’t a scavenger hunt kids’ play?”“I suppose it depends on your point of view. My friends and I thought it was great fun, and we didn’t break too many laws.”“Too many?”She shrugged. “More importantly, no one got hurt.”“I suppose that depends on your point of view.”“You’re talking about the kiss, aren’t you?”“That was the only part of the scavenger hunt I was personally involved in.”Firmly she shook her
He slowly smiled. “Dani.”By the time she returned to the apartment, her friends had already crashed for the night. She threaded her way across a floor full of sleeping bodies and made it to the bathroom. There, she undressed, washed up, and finally, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, sHpped into her own sleeping bag.“Dani?” she heard her friend Marcia whisper.She rolled over to face her. “Yeah?” she whispered back.“How’d it go?”“Somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and a meat grinder.”“Hey, at least you’re back in one piece.”“I’m not so sure.”“Why?”“He wants me to fly back with him on his private jet tomorrow and attend a ball Saturday night.”“Hey, way to go. Sounds like you caught yourself, Damaron.”“I don’t think so. It’s more like he caught me.”There was a subtle grace about Dani, even while she slept, Nathan reflected as he watched her. They hadn’t really talked since they’d boarded the jet in Paris. As was his custom, he’d pulled out his work even before the jet bega
“And just what will I have to do to solve your problems?”He shrugged. “Nothing too hard. I will only require you to perform a small service for me.”“Excuse me, but the only service I agreed upon was to be your date.”“Right, and in doing so, you will be . . . doing a job, so to speak.”She pondered that a moment. “So let me understand this. To pay off my debt to you, I must attend the ball with you, but while doing so, I should look upon it as a job and not as an opportunity to have been?”“Mmmm, Em afraid you don’t quite have it yet. I said if you had nothing but fun, it wouldn’t constitute paying off your debt.”“I see.” She nodded. “I must suffer part of the time. Okay. So what type of suffering would you prefer?”“Not suffering, just a little bit of work.”“Oh, we’re back to the job part. Okay, I’m game. You have dishes that will need to be washed? Floors that need to be scrubbed? What?”“More like debutantes and their mamas to be blocked, along with the odd divorced socialite o
“The dress had about twenty pounds of beads on it,” she said in further explanation.“I’m sorry,” he finally said, and funny enough she knew he meant it. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to go out and choose the dress myself, and all my assistant told me about it was that it was black.”“Don’t apologize.” Her reaction to his sincerity softened her voice. “As I said, it was a very kind thing fpr you to do, but it just wasn’t necessary.”In the end she’d gone home empty-handed from her sister’s and delved into her own closet. The dress she’d ultimately decided to wear was very simple, very light. There was a silk strapless underdress of mist blue, then a one-shouldered overdress made out of sheer silk chiffon in the water colors of mauves, greens, and blues. A graceful, floating dress, its skirt fell to an asymmetrical hem, on one side cascading downward in uneven gossamer layers to her feet, the other side stopping at her knees. A handful of blue sequins resembling glistening drops of wa
“I decided to teach ballet to all those who wanted to learn, regardless of their age, financial status, body type, or talent.”“How odd.”Dani chuckled. “Maybe. But to be a successful dancer one must focus all one’s energies into oneself. To be a successful teacher, one must focus all one’s energies outward to help others. That’s what I decided I wanted to do, and I love it.”Helene looked away from her, and since the Damarons were no longer on the stage, Dani took the opportunity to see if she could pick out Nathan from among the now mingling crowd. She couldn’t. The orchestra had started to play again and through the crowd, she could see that a few couples had started to dance.“Call me Helene.”Dani’s head jerked around in surprise. “Thank you, Helene. And please call me Dani.”“Dani?” She frowned. “I will call you Danielle.”Dani smothered a smile. “Very well.”“Danielle, did that Damaron you were with tonight tell you that I lost my daughter in an automobile accident?”“Yes, he d
Heat burned in his eyes and on her skin where he touched her. And deeper inside her, an aching need filled her. The anticipation of what would come had her aroused to the point that she wanted Nathan to start kissing her right there and then and not stop until they were both sated. But she knew he couldn’t. This was an event to raise money for a tremendously good cause, and people needed to be focused on giving money, not on two people in heat on the dance floor. “So, uh, getting back to Helene?”“Right,” he said, his voice rough. Then he let out a long breath, making her realize that he’d been thinking the same thing as she. “I’ve known Helene Sorge much longer than you and I’ve never once sensed she needed someone to talk to.” He paused, his gaze briefly lowering to her lips. The dance floor was crowded, but in moments like this it seemed to her they were the only two people there. “So why were you tlie only one in the place that received that impression?”“Maybe because I’m the onl
After the kiss he had rolled up his sleeves and, without complaint or excuse, had gone to work doing whoever she’d needed. His competence in handling all parts of a children’s picnic hadn’t surprised her. What had, however, was how easily he’d joined in the fun.The kids had taken to him immediately. He’d kicked off his shoes and joined them in toe painting her version of finger painting. And he’d refereed the potato-sack roll, two kids in the same potato sack, rolling toward the finish line, her version of the three-legged race. In short, he’d been marvelous all afternoon.He’d merely blinked when the horse she’d hired arrived with its owner. It had taken her months to find just the right horse and ask favors from friends and friends of friends to obtain the proper clearances, Then she’d secretly had to get the permission sUps signed by the parents. But in the end it turned out to be all worth it. When the kids saw the horse, they’d gone crazy.As soon as Nathan had gotten over the s
Then he kissed her, a hard, hungry, devouring kiss that stole away her breath and any thought of dinner she might have had. It was incredibly easy to simply go with the feelings he aroused in her, the feelings of need and desire that were all so new to her and kept her so on edge. The pressure of his mouth was firm, the thrust of his tongue demanding. She circled her arms around his neck and held on tightly.His hands slid up and down her back, then around to her breasts, stroking and caressing until she moaned with delight. He muttered something indecipherable, grabbed her long, slim legs, wrapped them around his waist, and pulled her against, him. Her skirt slid to the top of her thighs, but modesty wasn’t something she was concerned about at that moment.His hands soon found the bare skin of her thighs and his fingers traced daring patterns higher and higher until a finger slipped beneath her panties to the nub nestled between the sensitive, deficate folds of her femininity. There,