‘Don’t even think about it, cara,’ he warned.

The thinly veiled threat brought her to her senses as a sudden and acute sense of shame washed over her. But it was too late for redress because, with one final look of frustrated contempt, the golden-eyed man turned and walked from the room without another word.

For several disbelieving moments she just stood there until, in the distance, Cathy heard the muffled sound of tyres squealing over gravel and she hurried over to the window to see two expensive black cars racing down the drive at high speed. Automatically, she registered the sound of their powerful engines, and frowned. Now where had they come from, and where were they disappearing to? she wondered dazedly.

Trying desperately to compose herself, she smoothed her hands down over her hair before walking back into the reception area—to find a plump middle-aged man standing by the desk, wearing paint-covered overalls and holding a large notebook in his hand. He looked up with a wide smile when she appeared.

‘Can I…can I help you?’ asked Cathy—though some chilling sixth sense began to clamour out a terrible warning in her head.

‘I certainly hope so,’ said the man, in a cheerful Irish accent. ‘I’m the painter. Well, the foreman—to be exact. And I’ve come to measure up. So where would you like me to start?’

STANDING in the small bedroom of her cottage, Cathy stared into the mirror and shook her head in mute horror. How could she possibly go to work, looking like this? Like…one of those women you sometimes saw falling out of the pub late on a Friday and Saturday night. The kind of woman who poured herself into her clothes without stopping to consider whether they might be the right size. Yet surely the dressmaker couldn’t have got her measurements wrong when she’d been for, not one, but two fittings?

She did a little swivel to regard her back view, and shuddered—because from the back it looked even worse, if that were possible. The material clung to her bottom and seemed to draw cruel attention to its over-generous curves.

Her nerves were already shot to pieces and picking up her new uniform from the dressmaker’s had only made her precarious mental state seem a million times worse. She’d put it on with trembling fingers but it seemed unsuitable no matter what angle she came at it from. Too small and too tight—the man-made fabric strained over the lush lines of her breasts and made them look absolutely enormous.

She didn’t want to wear clothes which made her feel self-conscious about her curvy figure, nor to plaster her face in make-up—which she hadn’t a clue how to apply properly. But Rupert had read her the Riot Act and so she had reluctantly complied—just as she had agreed to jettison her normal comfy flat shoes and replace them with a pair of heels so high she could barely walk in them. Beneath the mascara and lip gloss, she felt like a fraud, but one who was not in any position to object—because how could she possibly do that when she had placed herself in such an unwise situation?

Her boss was ignorant of the fact that she had behaved like a complete fool who had allowed a complete stranger to kiss her in a way that still made her cheeks burn when she remembered it. Only in this case, the complete stranger had turned out to be a royal prince. A guest of honour who would shortly be arriving with all his royal entourage.

A lying and duplicitous prince, she reminded herself bitterly—and one who clearly found it funny to unleash his potent sex appeal and to amuse himself with a na"ive and stupid woman who had fallen completely under his spell. Playing games with commoners—was that how he got his kicks?

After he had walked out of the hotel last week it had taken only minutes for Cathy to work out that the man with the golden eyes had not been a humble decorator—but Prince Xaviero himself. A fact which had been confirmed by her subsequent heart-sinking search on the Internet, where his official portrait had flashed up in front of her disbelieving eyes. Yet the sternly handsome face which had stared back at her from the computer screen had seemed worlds away from the denim-clad man who had kissed her with such careless sensuality.

On the official website of Zaffirinthos Xaviero had been pictured dressed in some sort of formal uniform—wearing a dark jacket with several medals pinned to the front of it. His black hair had looked tamed instead of ruffled and his lips had been hard and unsmiling. And try as she did to resist, Cathy hadn’t been able to help drinking in his remarkable beauty—before reminding herself that he had deliberately deceived her.

Dragging her eyes away from his portrait, she’d clicked onto the history of the island instead. Zaffirinthos. A beautiful, crescent-shaped paradise set in the Ionian Sea—close to Greece and at no great distance from the southernmost tip of Italy. It was rich in gold and other precious minerals, and the di Cesere family was fabulously wealthy—with property and business interests in just about every part of the globe.