His Most Exquisite Conquest Read Free Page B

star-struck by the storybook prince, Lucy might have been blindly selfish in so quickly agreeing to a foursome, not really consulting Ellie about whether it was okay with her.
    ‘Be nice to Elizabeth, Harry,’ Michael chided, ‘It’s her birthday.’
    ‘I am being nice,’ he protested.
    Ellie didn’t lose her temper over nothing, Lucy thought, taking proper stock of Michael’s brother. He was a very manly man, his white T-shirt and shorts displaying a lot of firm muscle and smoothly tanned skin. The slightly bent nose stopped him from being classically handsome, but the riot of black curls and the bedroom blue eyes gave him a strong, rather raffish attraction. He exuded a confidence that probably meant he was used to being popular with the opposite sex, but he’d be dead in the water with Ellie if she perceived him as a playboy.
    ‘Try harder,’ Michael advised, dismissing the distraction by lightly grasping Lucy’s elbow and turning her away with him to continue their stroll together.
    She couldn’t dismiss it so easily. ‘Does Ellie dislike your brother, Michael?’ she asked, hating the feeling that this foursome had been a very bad idea.
    If it was, she had to break it up, regardless of the miracle meeting with this man. A real prince who was truly, deeply attracted to her would pursue a relationship, anyway. It wasn’t fair to Ellie, messing up her birthday with a man she found hard to tolerate. Better for them to dump the men and go off together, though that was tricky with Michael being Ellie’s boss.
    ‘I don’t think it’s a case of dislike, ’ he answered with a slightly wry grimace. ‘I’ve never known anyone to dislike Harry. He’s a natural charmer, but he does tend to ruffle Elizabeth’s feathers with his flirting.’
    There was flirting and flirting, Lucy thought, and some of it could get a bit icky.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Michael went on. ‘He’ll behave himself now. I’ve warned him.’
    That made no difference if, deep down, Ellie couldn’t abide the man. Lucy needed to have a private word with her, suss out the situation to her satisfaction. Impossible right here. They had walked past the park with the children’s playgrounds, and were level with the swimming lagoon. Another ten minutes’ stroll would bring them to the Mariners Bar, Hopefully, she would get the chance to be alone with Ellie in the cocktail lounge before they went into the dining-room.
    In the meantime there was no point in not making the most of Michael’s company.
    ‘We’d got up to dancing,’ he reminded her with a grin, the grey eyes lit with amused curiosity. ‘Modelling, tour guiding, dancing—how did this lead to cemetery administration?’
    ‘Oh, there’s a lot of stuff in between,’ she said airily. ‘I was doing a beautician course while the dancing was paying off. That led to jobs in a department store and two of the holiday resorts up here.’ She slanted him a twinkling look. ‘I do a great foot massage and pedicure if you ever need one.’
    He laughed. ‘A woman of many talents.’
    She loved the sound of his laugh. It echoed in her ears and seemed to ripple down to her heart, where it tripped her pulse into racing overtime.
    What was she going to do if his brother was a frog? Please don’t let him be, she silently begged. It would ruin this highly promising lunch.
    Michael kept asking her questions, seemingly intrigued by her, which was a lovely feeling. Most guys wanted to talk about themselves. He gave her the sense that he’d never met anyone like her before and he couldn’t get enough of her, not right now, anyway. Whether that would last... Well, nothing usually did, not on this kind of high, but Lucy couldn’t help revelling in it.
    Of course, he wouldn’t be intrigued by her at all if he knew the truth—that she didn’t just flit from one job to another because she was attracted to something new and different. More times than not she ran into an unavoidable snag because of