[Montacroix Royal Family Series 02] - The Prince & the Showgirl (5 page)

"I do apologize for not arriving on time to greet you all properly," he said. "But if you will forgive me, I shall excuse myself to wash the road dirt away."

His gaze, as it circled the room, treating each of the Darling women in turn to its warmth, lingered momentarily on Sabrina.

All the Darling women were surprisingly attractive, Burke conceded. Including the mother. But this one was absolutely stunning.

Her face was a classical oval, her complexion a flawless roses and cream. Her hair was a sleek flow of gold that reminded him of winter wheat warmed by a benevolent sun. Her eyes were a muted gray, touched with silver facets that glowed like moonbeams. They were fringed with a thick row of lashes and tilted up the slightest bit at the corners.

Her mouth was so full and shapely that Burke wondered if those rosy lips would be as soft as they looked. He suspected they would. The woman's only flaw was a stubborn chin, Burke decided.

As he continued to study her, color tinged her high cheekbones.

She was wearing an off-the-shoulder silky gown of hues ranging from scintillating pink to sinfully scarlet. Sparkling gold gypsy hoops hung almost to her smooth bare shoulders.

Most women Burke knew—with the exception of Chantal, who gave a new definition to the word glamour—were cut from the same expensive cloth. Sleek, rich, intelligent, and coolly sophisticated, they were women perfectly at home in European drawing rooms smelling of hothouse flowers, furniture oil and expensive, custom-blended perfumes. If they'd been cars, they would have ranked among Rolls-Royces. Or Bent-leys.

This woman was more like a Ferrari. And she was not at all what he'd been expecting. So much for the cheap rhinestones and stiff cotton-candy hair, he mused, realizing that he'd been guilty of stereotyping the Darling sisters.

While Burke was studying Sabrina, she in turn was examining him. The prince had a lean, intelligent face, with good bones and nicely chiseled features, she admitted reluctantly.

Disapproving of the man's sybaritic life-style, she hadn't expected to admire anything about him. He had thick dark hair with warm sun streaks—visible proof that he didn't spend all his time inside the family palace. Sabrina had always liked brown eyes, and Prince Burke's velvet eyes were the rich hue of chocolate. And they looked as if they never missed a thing. His gaze was dark, direct, disturbing. It was hot enough to turn water to steam.

She found it difficult to think straight when he was looking at her so intently; Sabrina couldn't remember ever being so nervous. Not even seven years ago, when she'd walked onto that Broadway stage for the first time to star in her new husband's play,
Take Three
.

The blatantly autobiographical play had depicted their courtship and subsequent marriage. Unsurprisingly, given her husband's Broadway track record, it had instantly become a smash hit.

Reminding herself that she'd given up on waiting for Prince Charming to show up a very long time ago, Sabrina forced her muscles to relax.

"Burke, dear," Jessica said, her smooth silky voice finally, blessedly, shattering the expanded moment, "I believe you were about to go upstairs to change?"

"Of course."

He was speaking to his stepmother, but his eyes did not leave Sabrina's. Something stirred inside him.
Desire
. Burke recognized it, then chose to ignore it. For now.

"I shall return shortly."

As she watched him leave the dining room, Sabrina could not decide whether to take Prince Burke's words as a promise. Or a threat.

3

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The white-gloved butler had already served dessert—sweet strawberries in champagne—when Burke returned to the dining room. He was wearing a charcoal gray Italian suit, white shirt and a red silk tie imprinted with the Giraudeau crest—a crowned lion, which thanks to Dixie's omnipresent tour book, Sabrina knew stood for the family motto
honneur, fidelite, et courage
—honor, loyalty, and bravery. His hair, still damp from his shower, was combed straight back.

After expressing his apologies once again, he sat in the empty chair next to Sabrina's. The crisp scent of pine soap clung enticingly to his tanned skin. Sabrina was vaguely surprised; she would have expected a prince to smell of some expensive, overpowering French male cologne. Her husband's cologne had given her sinus headaches, but when she'd asked him to forego the musky scent, he'd refused, instructing her to take an aspirin.

"This problem you had with the car," Prince Eduard addressed his son on a rumbling voice, "will it cause you to forfeit the race?"

Burke grinned as he put his snowy white damask napkin onto his lap. "Sorry. But it was simply a loose hose."

"Your mother worries about you." Eduard glared from beneath shaggy pewter brows, looking fierce enough to send enemies to dungeons, dangerous enough to conquer countries. But from the furrowed lines creasing the older man's forehead, Sabrina got the impression that it wasn't just Burke's mother who worried.

"I know." Burke exchanged another fond glance with Jessica. "And I promise that I will not take any undue chances."

On the other side of Sabrina, Chantal rolled her eyes and muttered something into her water goblet.

"I suppose that's all a mother can ask," Jessica agreed. Her warm gaze was laced with both acceptance and maternal concern. "However, I can't help wishing that you harbored a burning desire to be European backgammon champion, instead."

The rich deep sound of Burke's laugh plucked a distant chord within Sabrina. She frowned and directed her attention toward her dessert.

The conversation turned first toward Burke's chances of winning the Montacroix Grand Prix, and then to the upcoming coronation, and finally, Jessica amused the group by sharing stories of moviemaking during what had become known as Hollywood's golden age.

"I just realized where I've seen you before," Burke said quietly to Sabrina as his mother cheerfully described how she'd been perched atop a rock on the island of Mykonos, playing the role of a mermaid caught in a Greek fisherman's net, when she'd met the man who would become her husband.

The moment he set eyes on her, Burke had been struck by a feeling that they'd met before. He'd flipped through his mental file of names and faces while he'd showered and dressed, unreasonably frustrated when the answer hadn't come immediately to mind.

Sabrina glanced up at him, mentally bracing herself to deny those horrid tabloid stories. She'd not have thought a prince would stoop to reading such garbage, but there had been a time when she hadn't believed that sleazy papers could get away with printing out-and-out lies, either.

During the past year, her admittedly messy divorce following her collapse onstage and her subsequent emergency surgery, and then the tragedy of her father's death had made headlines all over the world. There had been occasions when Sabrina felt as if the Darling family were keeping all those gossipy tabloids in business single-handedly.

"Oh?" she asked with blatant disinterest.

Her gaze was strangely shuttered. Burke watched the wall going up in front of him and wondered at its cause. "I was in Great Britain attending a banking summit when you performed
Private Performances
in London's West End."

The mention of that particular performance, which critics had proclaimed her best, brought back unhappy memories that Sabrina would have just as soon not discussed.

After graduation from Tennessee State College with a degree in drama, ignoring Sonny's warnings about working with damn Yankees, she'd headed north to seek her fortune on the New York stage.

Once in Manhattan, she'd quickly discovered that Sonny's name, legendary in the music business, opened no doors on Broadway. On the contrary, once she heard a director refer to her as "that little barefoot hillbilly."

Miles away from her family, homesick, discouraged and horribly lonely, Sabrina had allowed herself to be rescued yet again. This time by Arthur Longstreet, a renowned, twice-married playwright—old enough to be her father—who cast her in the lead role of his new play, made her his third wife and spent the next six years putting every aspect of their personal life up on the New York stage.

Sabrina had resented having her every thought, word and deed dissected in public. But when she professed her feelings, even that became the basis for a new story, entitled
Private Performances
.

The play, which debuted with a two-week run in Great Britain, prior to returning to Broadway's famed Majestic Theater, had been her least favorite of the six plays in which Sabrina had starred. It had also been her last.

The day she walked out on her marriage, Arthur's latest protégée—Sabrina's former understudy—took her place onstage as well as in Sabrina's bed.

"
Private Performances
sold out in four hours," Sabrina said. It had, she recalled, set a record for West End ticket sales.

"The telephone lines were jammed, making it nearly impossible to reach the box office," Burke agreed. "By the time my secretary was able to get through, all the tickets had been sold. Fortunately Diana invited me to share her box."

He mentioned the glamorous British princess with a friendly ease that led Sabrina to decide that he was not trying to impress her by name-dropping. Still, for some reason, his words rankled.

"Obviously it's true what they say—rank does have its privileges."

"Not always." Burke thought of the large, silent man who'd spent the afternoon hovering about like some overprotective guard dog. Even now the bodyguard was posted just outside the dining room door. Putting aside his frustration, Burke flashed Sabrina his practiced smile. His teeth were strong and straight and brilliantly white in his rugged, outdoors complexion.

"The two hours I spent in that darkened theater will go down as one of the highlights of my life. You were magnificent."

She'd seen that smile before, on numerous magazine covers since the announcement of Prince Burke's upcoming coronation. But no photograph had done it justice or prepared Sabrina for the effect it would have on her.

The murmur of voices, the discreet sounds of silver on china and crystal faded into the distance.

"Thank you."

"Diana and I went backstage, after the performance, to congratulate you on such a tour de force after the final curtain. But your husband informed us that you were tired and overwrought from your performance and preferred to rest."

Sabrina's temper flared. Damn Arthur! The truth was, they'd had a terrible fight before the curtain rose that night. She'd accused him of having a mistress, something he'd steadfastly denied. Right up until the end.

Obviously he'd chosen to punish her for having the nerve to question his behavior by keeping any admirers away.

No wonder her dressing room had remained depressingly empty, Sabrina realized now. At the time, she'd been devastated, believing the lack of visitors had been because the London audience hadn't enjoyed her performance.

"That night was difficult," she murmured, unwilling to admit that her former husband had wielded such iron control over her life. Control she had naively handed over when she'd married.

The day she packed her bags and left their Trump Tower apartment, Sabrina had vowed never to be that foolish again.

"And for the record, I'm never overwrought."

Burke was intrigued by the emotion that had sparked in her eyes, like the warning flash of lightning on the horizon before a thunderstorm. There was a tender spot there, he determined, choosing to ease around it, for now.

"I can certainly understand why you would have been exhausted. If anyone could have harnessed the energy you were putting out that night, they would have kept every lamp in London blazing well into the twenty-first century."

Even the usually savage British critics had raved about her performance, Burke remembered. Indeed, the normally stodgy
Times
had declared her a world-class actor, stating that the lovely young American had possessed the "Sarah Bernhardt factor."

"You're very flattering." Sabrina reluctantly gave him points for his charm.

"I'm merely stating a fact. Didn't I recently read that you were playing Maggie in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
in New York?"

He'd also read that she had gotten a divorce. Indeed, the so-called inside reports of her failed marriage had set new lows for an already-tawdry celebrity journalism.

Now that he'd placed her, Burke wondered why he hadn't made the connection before, when Chantal had first brought up the idea of the female trio performing for the festival. Although Sabrina had used her married name—Sabrina Longstreet—on the stage, he vaguely recalled his sister mentioning something about two of the Darling sisters being actresses.

But his mind had been on other things—the coronation, the race, and the anonymous death threats—and he hadn't really been paying attention. If he'd realized that this woman was scheduled to arrive in Montacroix, it definitely would have piqued his interest in the trio's performance.