Modern Romance Collection: July Books 5 - 8. Natalie Anderson

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       CHAPTER TWO

      SEBASTIAN SET HIS shoulder to the stiff door that opened out onto a small Juliet balcony. It gave suddenly, filling the warm room with a welcome breeze. The view was as dramatic as the plumbing was idiosyncratic. His shower had run cold and then it had almost scalded him. Oh, well, maybe it was time he learnt how the other half lived, even if that half could claim a heritage as illustrious as his own, such as it was.

      For a moment his lip curled into a cynical smile. For reasons obvious when you considered his nickname at school had been the royal bastard, Sebastian had never been able to take the whole heritage thing seriously.

      A tap on the door made him turn, but before he could respond Luis walked into the room, his normal smile absent.

      ‘Reading your body language I’d guess you were just told you’ve got weeks to live, or you’ve just had a heart to heart with our father. How is His Royal Highness?’

      Luis’s heavy sigh and despondent attitude would normally have evoked a sympathetic reaction from Sebastian, but today the only thing he felt was a surge of irritation. Didn’t Luis realise that until he showed a bit of backbone the King was never going to stop trying to micromanage his life? Maybe not even then, Sebastian, a realist, conceded. If he were in his brother’s shoes...

      But you’re not, are you, Seb?

      Luis gets the crown and the girl.

      ‘I didn’t think you’d come, neither did...anyone.’

      ‘You asked.’

      Actually his father had ordered, which under normal circumstances would have guaranteed Sebastian’s nonappearance, and yet he was here. So why? He rubbed the towel across his dripping hair and veered away from the question in his head before it formed.

      ‘I asked the last three times I came to visit the Summervilles.’

      ‘You know I have an allergy to duty.’

      ‘So you keep telling everyone. Seriously—’

      ‘It is a very serious allergy.’

      ‘I wanted you to get to know Sabrina.’

      ‘It’s you she’s marrying.’ And me she’s kissing, he thought, the sharp twinge of guilt he felt drowned out by the stronger slug of lusty heat that accompanied the memory of those soft, sweet-tasting lips. If Luis had kissed her more often maybe she wouldn’t have melted in his arms.

      That’s right, Seb, because it’s never your fault, is it?

      He waited for the familiar hit of mingled frustration, sympathy and affection as he watched Luis walk, shoulders hunched in defeat, across the room. Instead, Sebastian found himself feeling anger and something that, had the circumstances been different, he would have called envy.

      But of course it wasn’t.

      Envy would mean that his brother had something that he wanted, and Luis didn’t.

      Luis was welcome to the crown.

      There had been a time when they were growing up that being pushed into the background and being referred to as the spare had got to Sebastian, but that had been before he had recognised that it was a lot worse for Luis, carrying the expectations of a country on his young shoulders. Luis had no choices—even his wife was picked out for him.

      Luis was welcome to his bride; Sebastian had his freedom. His father had told both of his sons that privilege came with a price; well, so far he’d been proving his father wrong. Sebastian enjoyed the privileges that came with his title without any of the responsibilities.

      And Sebastian didn’t want to marry Sabrina—he didn’t want to marry anyone—he just wanted to take her to bed. Even thinking about her now, and that miracle of a mouth of hers, made smoky desire slither hotly through him.

      He ignored it. He’d kissed Sabrina and he wasn’t going to do it again, even if the primal attraction that drew him to this woman was stronger than anything he could ever remember feeling. He knew himself well enough to know that it would pass—it always did.

      And in the meantime there were plenty of women to kiss who were not about to marry his brother, who were not about to throw away their lives. Her business, he reminded himself, her choice.

      Luckily he had recognised, before the entire kiss incident in the car had got out of perspective, the real danger of building it up into something it was not. She had an incredible mouth, beautiful lips and they made him hungry. The need to taste had swept away every other consideration in his head, but it had been what it was: a ‘perfect storm’ moment. Or maybe a perfect moment of madness, fuelled by the alcohol he’d imbibed much earlier in the morning at the nightclub, where he had been even more bored than usual.

      The chances were, seeing Sabrina here, in her natural environment, as a woman who represented everything he had been rebelling against and rejecting all his life, that he would regain his normal objectivity.

      ‘I didn’t expect you to come, but I’m glad you did. I do appreciate the support.’

      ‘Support?’ Sebastian queried with a frown.

      ‘I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to tonight.’

      ‘Performance anxiety or...don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?’

      Luis turned away but not quickly enough to hide his flush of annoyance at the joke that presumably offended his highly developed sense of duty. If it was annoyance?

      Guilt? Could he have hit a nerve? Was his brother having second thoughts? Sebastian dismissed the possibility almost straight away, no matter what his personal feelings. For Luis, duty, no matter what form it took, came first.

      ‘So how is the blushing bride?’

      ‘Fine... I guess.’

      ‘You guess? You mean you didn’t spend the night saying hello?’ Sebastian said, immediately imagining himself saying a very long hello.

      ‘I only just arrived and she...we... She doesn’t blush.’

      Sebastian’s brows lifted. ‘Oh?’ he said, remembering the delicious rosy tinge that had washed over Sabrina’s pale skin.

      ‘Not that that is a bad thing.’

      Sebastian’s eyes narrowed in his brother’s face. ‘Which means that you think it is.’