Before he knew what was happening, she’d pressed herself against him from his pelvis to his chest. In contrast to the nothing-but-bones body of the model, Casey felt soft everywhere. Exactly the way a woman should melt against a man, and his man’s anatomy responded in a very predictable, if embarrassing, manner.

  He might be a prince and an ambassador to the UN, bound by courtesy and protocol, but he was also human. He hadn’t become so fully erect so quickly since his youth, but within seconds he’d reached a state that would normally lead to lovemaking.

  Casey’s eyes widened as she gazed up at him. She’d noticed his hardness. She couldn’t have missed it, snuggled up against him as she was. She didn’t say anything, but her lips parted. The model had pretended an invitation. Casey meant it, and he couldn’t help but bend toward her, seeking a taste of her mouth.

  “That’s hot,” the cameraman said as he clicked away. “Give me more.”

  Kurt shook himself mentally. For a moment, he’d lost track of reality. He’d only just met this woman and knew nothing about her but her first name. Even if they hadn’t had a witness, he couldn’t kiss her less than an hour after meeting her. And they did have an audience. He shouldn’t have reacted this way, and he shouldn’t want nothing more than to strip her slowly and guide them both to the carpet so he could sink into her.

  She gave him a hazy smile, full of sin and seduction. It set his heart to racing. The click of the camera grew constant so that he hardly noticed it any longer. He had a woman in his arms, soft in all the right places and as excited by the situation as he was.

  “You two are dynamite together,” the cameraman said. “Smoking hot.”

  “Let me try something else.” Casey stretched backward as the model had before. This time, the pose made sense…a woman offering her neck to her lover in hopes of a caress. Her skin had a rosy hue to it, and her pulse beat visibly at the base of her throat. This time when he bent toward the woman in his arms, he encountered the pleasant scent of shampoo he‘d noticed before.

  “Hold it right there,” the cameraman shouted. “Don’t kiss her. Just anticipate. That’s it…hold it…hold it…”

  As soon as the man told Kurt not to kiss her, the need to do exactly that consumed him. He paused, his lips an inch away from her soft skin, her curls brushing his nose. One more movement, and he could taste her. Instead he had to hold himself away. So unnatural. He should place caress after caress along a path up to her ear, and he would…if only that man would disappear and take his clacking camera with him.

  She made no secret that she felt the same way he did. She trembled in his embrace, and her breath grew unsteady. In a moment, he could have her moaning. Soon after that, he could hear her gasps and finally the cry that signaled her satisfaction. If only he were free to do what his body demanded.

  In the end, his willpower deserted him. He had to kiss her, or the lost opportunity would haunt his dreams. He closed the distance and pressed his lips to the place where her pulse raced. Now her perfume surrounded him, fogging his brain for anything but her. When she let out a soft gasp, he continued upward caressing her neck up to her ear.

  Abruptly, she pulled back, holding his face between her hands. “Do you have what you need now?”

  “Need?” Kurt repeated.

  “I meant Joe,” she said. “The guy taking pictures.”

  “Do I ever,” Joe said. “There should be at least eight or ten shots we can use.”

  “Well then…” she said.

  “Right.” Joe grinned. “I get the message.”

  Whatever message the man had received, it helped him to gather up his lenses and pack them in a case quickly. A moment after that, Joe left. Kurt was alone with his arms around a woman who obviously had the power to make him more than a little crazy.

  “You’re something else, Kurt,” she said.

  She was right. Something else or someone else. He’d started out the day his normal, predictable self. Now he found himself locked in an embrace with a perfect stranger, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  Because that stranger was smiling and not stepping out of that embrace, he could show her just how perfect she was. He did that by kissing her again. Not a press of his lips against her neck, but a total possession of her mouth. The word “sweet” exploded at the back of his brain as he nibbled, and stroked, and sucked.

  He’d had as much sexual experience as most men and rather more than some, but none of that prepared him for the power of his response to her. Even with her short stature, they fit together perfectly. Her softness welcomed him everywhere, especially where his stiff member pressed against her belly.

  For her part, she seemed as caught up in the passion of the moment as he was. She clung to his neck as she parted her lips under his, and her tongue darted out to make explorations. When he touched it with his own, a shock traveled through him. Hot and strong, it sent a clear message—stop here or continue to the end.

  No. He didn’t know this woman. He didn’t have any protection. Though his body craved the ultimate with a hunger that shook him to his bones, his mind had to win out. He gently took her shoulders and put her away from him. Not far. Just enough to say “no more.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never lose control like that.”

  “Never?” She ran her tongue over her lips as if to taste him there. The gesture almost snapped his tenuous hold on sanity, so he closed his eyes for a moment and took even breaths.

  He searched through his lust-addled brain for an honest answer to her question. Had a woman ever moved him so completely with no more than a kiss? “Never.”

  “I think I’m flattered.”

  “I’m relieved.” He’d take flattered over angry at his forwardness. He really had pressed the kiss too far.

  “You thought I’d be offended?” Her blue eyes held the twinkle of a woman who knows she has a man at a disadvantage. “They must do things differently in Germany.”

  The reference to Germany shook him for a second. But then, he’d told her he was German to explain his accent. “I assure you men don’t take advantage of women in my country.”

  “I can slap your face, if you like, but it’s really not that big a deal.” She bit her lip, and the gleam in her eye turned positively wicked. “On the other hand, something was a big deal, wasn’t it?”

  “Lieber Gott.” His cheeks burned. He’d be blushing so brightly she’d have to notice.

  “Hey, look, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  In the outer room—the living room they’d walked through—a door closed.

  “Casey?” a man’s voice called. “Casey, where are you?”

  She flinched. “Shit, you have to get out of here.”

  He just stopped himself before he said “Lieber Gott” again, this time shouting. “That’s your husband? We’ve been standing here, doing…this…when you have a husband?”

  “My boss, and he can’t catch you here.” She went to the door, opened it, and stuck her head around the side. “I’m exercising, Phil. I’ll be out in a bit.”

  “At this hour? You’re supposed to be working on my blog tour,” the man’s voice called back.

  “I had to get my heart rate up, get the old juices flowing,” she said. “I’m really sweaty. Don’t come in.”

  “All right. I’ll be in the library. Ten minutes, Casey. I mean it,” Phil said.

  “Ten minutes. No problem.” She waited for a while and then let out a breath. “He’s gone. Out the back way. Hurry.”

  She once again grabbed him by the arm and started to lead him somewhere, but he hung back. “My clothes.”

  “Okay, but hurry up, will you?”

  He’d barely gone behind the screen and grabbed his things before she reached for his arm again and pulled him out the door and into a short corridor. That ended in a huge, state-of-the-art kitchen. He hardly had time to admire many hundreds of dollars worth of copper pots and pans hanging over a butcher-block work table before she propelled him toward another door.

  “Why do I have to hide from your boss?” he said.

  “If you knew Phil, you wouldn’t ask. He’s going to want to bite the head off everyone involved in that cover shoot.”

  Kurt dug in his heels, jerking her to a stop. “That includes you.”

  “I get my head bitten off at least once I week.”

  “Then why do you work for him?” Kurt demanded.

  “No time to explain.” She released him and opened the door to reveal a hallway of the kind servants used so as not to disturb their employers. “You have to leave.”

  He stood his ground. “How will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know…um…”

  “I can come back here when you finish work,” he said.

  “No. ” She put up both hands as if to warn him off. “Not here.”

  “Then where?” If he could pursue a more rational relationship with her, he might rightfully enjoy more of those kisses and follow them to their logical conclusion. He might be old world and cautious in how he approached affairs of the heart—at least he had been in the past—but he wasn’t foolish enough to throw away the promise of their embrace.

  “I’ll give you my phone number.” He fumbled with the suit draped over his arm and found the pocket of his jacket. After pulling out his pen, he reached for a business card. He couldn’t use that, though, without revealing his status as prince of Danislova and United Nations ambassador. “Do you have a piece of paper?”

  “Reams of it,” she said. “In the other room. With Phil.”

  He handed her his pen and continued fumbling.

  “Give me your hand,” she said.

  “My hand?”

  “Just do it.”

  He did as she ordered and she pressed the pen to his palm. After a moment, she’d written her phone number on his skin. “There you go. Now, you really have to leave.”

  With that, she pushed him out the door and closed it behind him. Prince Kurt Wilhelm Richard VonRamsberg, third in line to the throne of Danislova, found himself standing in a servants’ corridor wearing too-tight pants and a shirt open to his waist, his own clothes tangled in his arms and a young woman’s phone number scrawled on his palm.

  For the love of God, what had just happened to him?

  *

  Casey took the ninth and tenth minutes her boss had given her to snatch the sheet off the machines and stuff it and the screen into the closet of the exercise room. Then she took a few seconds Phil hadn’t given her to check around and make sure she’d hidden all evidence of the crime. Everything appeared in order, including the towels hanging where Phil liked them and his precise setting on the elliptical machine.

  “Casey!” he yelled from the other room.

  She straightened her clothes and did her best to get her hair out of her face without the clip, which she must have dropped somewhere. That done, she plastered a smile on her face and went into the living room.

  All six feet of spoiled, self-absorbed male author stood by the window, his back to a spectacular view of the East River. “What took you so long?”

  “I had to freshen up before I changed clothes.”

  “Well, you’re here now. Let’s get to work.”

  If anyone were to send down to central casting for a surfer dude, they might well end up with Philip Comstock. Sandy-haired, tall, handsome, and oh-so male, he hardly seemed the type to have started out writing historical romance novels under the pseudonym Lisa Parnell. Lisa Parnell had penned stories so compelling and so sexy, they still graced Casey’s keeper shelf. Naturally, Casey had jumped at the chance to work for that writer—even knowing Lisa was a man. Instead she’d ended up an assistant to Philip Comstock, author of hard-boiled detective mysteries.

  “Publicity at Raven set me up with a blog tour,” Phil said. “The first is due in a week, and we don’t have a topic yet.”

  She went to one of the couches and sat down. He could stand in the middle of the room, if he wanted. She’d already run herself ragged, and it wasn’t even noon.

  “Character interviews usually work well as blogs,” she said.

  “I already interviewed Joe Stark on Gun for Hire dot Com,” he said.

  “How about the mystery female? If the interview asked more questions than it answered, that could pique readers’ interest.”

  “I suppose we could do that.” he said.

  Of course, the “we” in this deal meant she’d end up writing the piece. Just as she’d written the blog for Phil’s gumshoe hero, Joe Stark. She shouldn’t complain. That’s what she got paid to do, after all.

  “Put in a bunch of sexual innuendo, too,” he added. “You know that’s a hallmark of a Joe Stark mystery.”

  “How high on the Crude-O-Meter?”

  “The blog’s PG,” he answered.

  “Got it.”

  He crossed his arms over his muscular chest. “Shouldn’t you be taking notes?”

  “My pad’s in the library.”

  Phil didn’t move except for the slight arch to his eyebrow that told her she’d given him the wrong answer.

  “Be right back.” She got up and walked across the thick carpet and then up two stairs to the door to the library. Once inside, she had to flip through magazines and press releases at her small work station to find her steno pad. Amazing that anyone still made these things as no one in the world gave dictation or took shorthand any longer. But Phil insisted on them, probably because they made her look properly secretarial. She’d just found a pen when her cell phone rang. She pulled it from the pocket of her skirt and glanced at the number…the modeling agency.

  “Casey Vaughn here,” she said.

  “This is the Midtown Agency. We apologize for our male model this morning.”

  “No need. He was late, but we got the pictures we needed.” And she’d gotten a whole lot more than pictures. She had to hope he wasn’t the type for sweaty palms or her phone number would smear. But then, if that happened she could probably track him through Midtown.

  A silence of several seconds came through the ether to her ear. Finally, the woman cleared her throat. “There must be some mistake.”

  “You sent over a German guy named Kurt, right?”

  “Uh, no. Our model was Steve from the Bronx. He called a while ago to say he’d overslept and missed the appointment completely.”

  “You mean…” Casey rummaged through her memories of the morning and everything Kurt had said and done. He’d never represented himself as a model. In fact, he’d appeared quite surprised when she’d found him on the street and dragged him inside. So, if the agency hadn’t sent him over, why had he gone along with posing for the shoot?

  He’d seemed reluctant at first. In fact, he‘d acted pretty clueless about the whole process. She’d…oh, God…she’d grabbed at his shirt and unbuttoned it. Then she’d posed with him, forcing herself on him. Bad enough that she’d done that with a guy who’d been paid to pose, but she’d thrown herself at a stranger. You could probably consider that assault except for the very obvious and very enticing fact that he’d enjoyed the encounter.

  “We’re very sorry to have disappointed you,” the agency woman said.

  “Oh, he didn’t disappoint, not one little bit.”

  “I beg your pardon?” the woman said.

  “Excuse me. Figure of speech.”

  “Needless to say, we’ll be returning your check.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Casey’s mind drifted off to interesting territory as she broke the connection.

  One…she’d grabbed a stranger off the street and made him pose for a suggestive book cover. Given his incredible good looks—his wavy brown hair, glowing, tanned skin, and sensually curved lips—she’d naturally mistaken him for a model. Two…she’d ended up in clinch with him that had nothing to do with fiction. There were some things guys couldn’t fake, and he hadn’t had a gun in his pocket when he’d entered the building lobby. He’d had a rapid and forceful reaction to their embrace.

  Which left one more problem. If she didn’t know who the hell he was and if he didn’t call her, how could she find him? She had to for at least one reason—she owed him money for his work.

  She smiled as a warm feeling suffused her chest. Yes, indeed. One way or another she had to give him everything he deserved.

  Chapter Two

  Not properly dressed and late, late, late, Kurt did his best to blend in with a group of visitors to the United Nations. A man wearing tight pants with his shirt hanging open got attention, even in a place as used to human eccentricity as Manhattan. He clutched his real clothes against his nearly naked chest and kept his head down in sincere hope no one would recognize Danislova’s ambassador arriving with his pectorals on display. If he could conceal himself in a crowd, he could escape to a men’s room and get out of this ridiculous costume. He’d already kept the Minister for Eastern European Rural Development waiting, and his secretary would be searching for him everywhere.

  What had he been thinking when he’d allowed that young woman…Casey…to waylay him? Sunshine and birdsong, blue eyes full of mischief and yards of thick curls were no excuse. And neither were small, firm breasts pressed against his chest. No, no, no. Especially not those.

  “Say, don’t I know you?” A woman’s voice caught his attention. The guide who’d be leading the tour he’d supposedly joined. Sybil, Sarah, someone. They’d encountered each other a few times. A young woman who dressed in the latest styles, including insanely high heeled shoes. Today, she stared at him as if she’d seen him before but had never really looked at him. Now, she looked, and looked.

  He cleared his throat. “We’ve never met.”

  That wasn’t much of a lie, as they’d never spoken more than a word or two to each other. He gave her a half-smile and a bow. Very formal and quite out of keeping with his clothes.

  Her answering smile wasn’t half-anything but fully warm and welcome. For some unknowable reason, he seemed to have charmed two women within a period of less than an hour. Although his normal appearance wouldn’t frighten animals or small children, he tended to disappear into the wallpaper in the presence of his more flamboyant brothers and father. Here at work, he blended in with the rest of the diplomats. He needed to do that again now, and her attentions weren’t helping matters.