She gave him back a smile she knew would dazzle but tell him nothing. "Ah, that's a long story."

Still his gaze lingered, intent enough to kick-start that hum in her chest again, and, as they often did when she felt ill at ease, her fingers went of their own volition to the small silver charm that hung from a narrow chain around her neck, nestled in the hollow at the base of her throat. She rubbed it idly as she watched Nikolas shrug and go back to measuring dark roasted coffee beans into the grinder.

He switched it on, and for the next few seconds the racket made conversation impossible. The grinding completed. Nikolas poured water into the espresso machine, closed and secured the lid and punched a button. He turned back to her, then, and picked up his glass of wine and the thread of conversation he'd temporarily put aside.

"Might I ask what your specialty is with the Lazlo Group? You do seem an unlikely choice of field agent to send after a notorious suspected terrorist." This time a smile crinkled the corners of the eyes studying her across the rim of the wineglass, though it didn't diminish their intensity one bit.

"My specialty?" Her smile was small and wicked. "I locate and retrieve lost children."

Caught in mid swallow, Nikolas gave a sputter of laughter and quickly lowered his glass. He touched the back of his hand to his mouth and managed to say in a choked voice. "A lot of call for that, is there?"

"Unfortunately, yes." She wasn't smiling now.

"I'm well aware of the sad state of the world." Nikolas said, matching the new seriousness of her tone as he stared at the contents of his glass. He'd been enjoying himself entirely too much, he realized, given the fact that it was this woman's intention to fetch him back to Silvershire whether he wanted to go or not. That he could enjoy himself at all. under any circumstances, was surprising in itself. It had been rather a long time since he'd found anything in his life amusing. "I meant in the context of the Lazlo Group, of course. Isn't their clientele pretty much limited to the rich, royal or famous?"

"Theirs is," she replied shortly. "Mine isn't."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, the ability to take cases pro bono when it suits me is one of the conditions of my…shall we say, employment agreement."

"I'm impressed." He was, too. He hadn't thought there was anybody on the planet who could dictate terms to Corbett Lazlo, and that included royalty. He sipped wine while he studied the woman lounging with easy grace in his kitchen doorway. Tall and lithe, but curvy as well-truly an amazing body, as he had ample reason to know, and he really did need to discipline his mind past those recent memories of her. Under the circumstances, they were proving entirely too distracting. He couldn't afford to be distracted with this one; he had a feeling if she'd intended to take him by force he'd already be hog-tied and on a plane bound for Silvershire, so it was a safe bet she must have something else up her sleeve. "I gather, then, that you're quite good at what you do. Might I ask how you go about it-this business of finding lost children?"

She smiled, the enigmatic little Mona Lisa smile he'd seen before. "Oh, the Lazlo Group has resources you can't even imagine." The smile vanished again-fascinating, the way it came and went, like the sun playing hide-and-seek with clouds. Something he couldn't identify flickered in her eyes, and her hand went again to whatever it was she wore on that silver chain around her neck. He couldn't quite make out what it was-something oddly shaped but familiar as well- and it was beginning to intrigue him.

"And then," she went on in an entirely different kind of voice, "I suppose I probably just have the knack."

"The knack?"

She shifted, as if the door frame against her back had grown uncomfortable. "Instinct. You know-a sixth sense. I just always have been good at finding people. Particularly kids."

"Ah. You mean, like second sight?"

She gave him a brief, hard look. Suspected him of mocking her, he imagined. Which he wasn't; he'd seen too much of the world and of things in it that defied logical explanation to scoff at the unknown and unproven. When it came to the mysteries of the human mind, he preferred to keep his open.

The espresso machine chose that moment to erupt with a gurgling, hissing cloud of fragrant steam, and the last thing he saw before he turned to attend to it was Rhia's lush pink lips tightening and her long slender throat rippling as she bit back and swallowed whatever it was she'd been about to say.

Second sight? Yeah, that was what Mama called it. Her gift to me. Now it's the only thing I have of her, except my music and my memories. And this necklace.

Rhia fingered it briefly as she watched her assignment- and host-pour steaming black liquid into a tiny cup and place it on the table along with a spoon and a bowl filled with sugar cubes, and was thankful for the lifelong habit of self-control that made her keep those thoughts inside.

"I don't suppose you'd have any hot milk?" She kept her voice as bland as the request.

He lifted that damned eyebrow. "Milk? Sorry."

"That's okay. I'm adaptable." She pushed away from the door frame. It was only two short steps to the kitchen table, but her pulse quickened as if it was a tiger's den she'd entered.

She sat in the nearest of the two chairs and shifted it so the small arched window and its rain-blurred view of the Paris lights was at her back. She stirred a sinful amount of sugar into the espresso-she hated cubed sugar because it always seemed as though someone might be keeping count. How many, dear, one lump, or two? Yeah, right. How about…ten? Then she settled back with one elbow propped on the tabletop to watch the future king of Silvershire take eggs and a variety of other things out of the fridge and scatter them across the sink and countertop with the reckless abandon of a gourmet chef.

The future king… How remote and unreal that seemed to her now, with her pulse tap-tapping away and that strange little vibration humming somewhere deep inside her chest and an intense awareness of silk slithering over her naked skin-because what, after all, could be more of a turn-on to a woman than watching a smolderingly handsome and mysterious man cook dinner for her?

She took a cautious sip of the potent coffee-though Lord knew she didn't need any more stimulation-and tried to coax her mind into placing the man presently whacking merrily away at a pile of mushrooms into his proper setting, one that included his royal peers-the Grimaldis of Monaco…the DuPonts of Gastonia…the Dutch and the British royals. But her rebellious mind kept returning, like a drunk to his bottle, to the memory of what his body had felt like, out there on the balcony, lying full-length on top of hers.

And why did that memory kindle another, one that flared bright for frustratingly brief moments, then before she could grasp it, vanished into the darkness of her mind like a lightning bug in a bayou summer night?

"I'd give a lot more than a penny to know what you're thinking right now."

Rhia blinked the heir to Silvershire's crown into focus and found him studying her with-naturally-one eyebrow a notch higher than the other, and a similar tilt to his smile.

"It would take more than you've got to find out." she retorted, and gave up. for the moment, trying to think of him as royalty. After all, she reminded herself, at the moment he was merely Nikolas Donovan, college professor, rabble-rouser, rebel and fugitive, and she was the special agent hired to bring him in. "But," she added after a moment, "since you 're cooking me dinner, I guess I can give you one for free." She paused. "You have to know I feel a little odd about that- you fixing me dinner. Considering you're the future-"

"Look." he interrupted, before she could say the K-word again. "You're here, it's time to eat-what did you expect me to do?" A smile slashed crookedly across his austere features again. "Ask you to do the cooking?"

"I've known men who would." Rhia said drily.

"Ah. Well." He watched his hands maneuver the knife across the chopping board. "Since I grew up without benefit of a mum. I suppose I never acquired the prevailing attitude that a woman's primary purpose is to serve a man."

"Oh, wow." she said in an awed tone. "You really are a revolutionary, aren't you? My mama would have loved you."

He glanced at her. his eyes unexpectedly gentle. "Would have. She's gone, then, your mum?"

She nodded, and found to her surprise and dismay that it was the only answer she was capable of giving him just then. Where had it come from, she wondered, this bright shaft of pain and loss, like a lightning strike out of a clear blue sky?

Nikolas watched her struggle with it, soft mouth and pointed chin gone vulnerable as a child's, those exotic golden eyes fierce as a tiger's, and her fingers once again fondling the tiny silver charm at her throat. Something shivered through him. a new awareness, a magnetic tugging he was pretty sure had nothing to do with sex.

"Sony to hear that," he said, careful not to let too much softness into his voice, suspecting it wouldn't take much in the way of sympathy to send her scurrying for cover. "When did she die?"

"When I was eighteen."

"Ah-well-" he broke an egg and plopped it into a bowl "- at least you had a chance to know her."

He heard her take a breath, sharp and deep. He knew she had herself in hand again when she said with a soft, breathy chuckle. "What I remember most about my mama is her laugh, you know? She had this great big laugh, and when she laughed, her eyes sparkled. She laughed a lot. too. My mama did know how to have a good time."