BOOK 1

Surely they’d heard the same thing. The Hotel Crillon had formerly been a palace, built for Louis XV. Royalty. Palace. It had seemed funny to her, but her little attempt at breaking the ice fell flat. Instead of cracking jokes, she counseled herself, she should concentrate on accomplishing what she’d come for, then getting out with her skin still intact.

“The Hotel Crillon is the closest exclusive, high-priced hotel to the place where—” She stopped again, this time for a different reason, and cleared her throat. “Where—”

“Where you threw yourself at me and kissed me,” he supplied, his tone helpful, his expression anything but.

At the second mention of a kiss, the attitude of the other two Damarons changed slightly. Now they seemed more interested than hostile. With a glance at each other, they settled back in their chairs, obviously having no intention of going anywhere.

Danielle passed her fingers across her forehead. She could feel her face growing hot with embarrassment. “Look. If I can just have a private word with you. I’ll explain everything.”

Nathan shook his head. “My cousins and I don’t keep secrets from one another. Besides, if they don’t find out about it now, they’ll find out about it when I bring our legal department in on this.”

Danielle felt the color drain from her face. “Legal department?”

“What did you expect? Paparazzi are very un-popular these days, plus if you plan to sell your tape to a tabloid—”

Her mouth nearly fell open. “Sell the tape? I have no intention of selling it.”

“Surely you don’t think you can blackmail me. It was only a kiss.”

Only a kiss. Right, she reflected. If that had been only a kiss, then the Mona Lisa was only a painting. “Of course not. ”

Abruptly the cousin with the jade-colored eyes stood. “I’m afraid our manners have been severely lacking. I’m Sinclair Damaron,” he said. “This is my cousin Lion.” Lion nodded to her.

“How do you do.” She gave Sinclair a grateful smile and extended her hand. “I’m Danielle Savourat.”

He held an empty chair out for her. “Please sit. I don’t know about my cousins, but I’m getting a crick in my neck from having to look up at you.”

She sat, thankful for the chair, because somewhere along the line, her legs had become weak.

“I gather you already know Nathan,” Sinclair said, taking his seat.

“In a manner of speaking.” She cast a wary glance his way.

A waitress glided up to the table. “May I get you something to drink?”

She rarely drank, and she’d certainly never been one to resort to alcohol for courage, but in this case, she decided she’d take it any way she could get it. “I’ll have whatever they’re having.”

“Good choice,” Sin said. “We’re having Napoleon brandy. You’ll never taste anything smoother.”

Dani nearly choked. There was no way she could afford even a single glass of the stuff. “On second thought,” she said to the waitress, “I don’t want anything. Thank you, anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Sin asked.

She nodded, then smiled. “I just remembered I’m allergic to anything alcohoHc.”

Lion and Sin looked at her oddly.

“Gentlemen, do you need refills?” the waitress asked. The three men shook their heads and the waitress departed.

Danielle smiled at Sinclair again. “Thank you for the introductions. I wasn’t certain of your names.” Her gaze slid to Nathan. “Except for yours, and I only knew after some friends told me.”

“It’s generally enough for a blackmailer or a member of the paparazzi to know they have a Damaron in the crosshairs of their camera,” Nathan said. “They find out our names later, just as you did.”

Lion nodded. “But you’re unique. I don’t think we’ve ever had either of those type of people come up to us and introduce themselves.”

“It’s definitely a novel approach,” Sin agreed, his tone vaguely sympathetic, “but I have to tell you that you’re going to be no more successful than the blackmailers who have come before you.”

“People try, but one way or another, we always stop them,” Lion added.

She glanced at Nathan. He was silently watching her, his gaze still hard, but now she thought she saw something else there. Thoughtfulness. It was as if his initial anger with her was slowly dissolving into assessment. Lord, he was really something to look at. No wonder she’d chosen him to kiss. He was wearing a navy tweed jacket over a dark blue shirt, opened at the throat, and she could feel herself involuntarily softening as she remembered how right it had felt when he’d held her in his arms.

“Of course,” Lion said, “none of the blackmailers have been as pretty as you are, but if I were you. I’d concentrate on a tabloid sell. It would be much easier for you.”

That did it. She’d had enough. She put up her hands, palms out. “Okay, stop. Both of you. And just listen to me. I appreciate your primer on the dos and don’ts of blackmailing and selling to a tabloid. Career advice is always valuable. Who knows? One day I might have need of it. However, that’s not why I’m here.” She looked at Nathan. “I came here for one reason—to apologize to you.”

Lion nodded with approval. “Once again, a fresh approach.”

She flashed him a glance of rebuke. “Be quiet. I need get this out. Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account that I’d have to deal with three of you—”

“You’ll often find us in packs,” Sin offered, then when she sent a cutting look his way, he shrugged.

“Just thought you’d like to know for any future plans.”

She sighed. “Obviously you two took my arrival as your evening’s entertainment, but I have something very important to say to Nathan, and if either one of you says one more word. I’ll dump that two-hundred-year-old brandy on your head.”

Sin’s dark brows shot up and Lion’s golden eyes narrowed. “At least I’d give it my best try,” she amended. “Now . . .” She directed her attention to Nathan. “As I said before, my name is Danielle Savourat. My father is Edouard Savourat. Before his retirement, he and his company. United Electronics, did a great deal of business with Damaron International.”

“Oh, you’re Edouard’s daughter,” Lion said. “He’s a good man.”

“Thank you.” She looked back at Nathan. “So when I reahzed that the man I’d kissed on the quay was a Damaron, I knew I had to come and apologize. Even though my fatlier has retired and no longer does business with you and your family, he would be quite upset at my behavior this evening.”

She paused, but she couldn’t tell if her words had any effect on Nathan. But it was all right. She’d accomplished what she’d come to do. “So that’s it. Again, I’m very, very sorry, and I can assure you it will never happen again.” She pushed away from the table, but before she could stand, Nathan’s voice stopped her.

“Just a minute. You haven’t told me why you did It."

She drew in a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay. You deserve to know that. There was nothing nefarious or mercenary about my actions. I was simply on a scavenger hunt.”

Lion shook his head in admiration. “Once again, I have to give it to you, Danielle. There’s certainly nothing cliched or hackneyed about you.”

She ignored him and kept her gaze on Nathan. “I had a group of very close friends during school, and when we graduated, we vowed we’d always stay close. So once a year we try our best to gather together somewhere for however long we can manage. This year, as it happened, two of our friends have been living here, so we decided we’d all come to Paris and bunk in with them.”

She glanced at Sin and Lion and saw that they had relaxed back in their chairs and were listening with great enjoyment. She returned her gaze to Nathan, who, unfortunately, hadn’t relaxed at all. “So last night, we decided to have a scavenger hunt. There were a lot of crazy things on our list. You know, like a bow from a poodle’s ear, or a Maxim’s menu autographed by the maitre d’, which by the way, was very hard to get. Another hard one involved. willpower—a whole freshly baked chocolate eclair. It couldn’t be eaten until we all got back to the apartment and after the prize had been awarded. Oh, and a picture of a dog eating a T-bone from fine china on the floor at a restaurant. Surprisingly, that wasn’t hard at all to get. Ummm ... a picture of one of us riding atop an equestrian statue. That wasn’t hard either. There are so many of them in this city. It was just a matter of finding one without a gendarme in the area.” She shrugged. “As I said, silly things. And to keep us all legal, each team of two had to videotape the other getting the object.”

“Object?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Or thing, such as a kiss from a stranger. My teammate, Kevin, is engaged to a girl back in the States, so he said I had to do that part.” Sometliing flickered in Nathan’s eyes, so she rushed on. “We already had a lot of the items on the list and our time was nmning out. That’s when I saw you. I got the kiss from you and then we ran back to the apartment and managed to arrive just minutes before the deadline was up.” She shrugged again. “And that was pretty much it.”

“Not quite. Did you win?”

She shifted in her chair. “As a matter of fact we did. We were tied with two other teams, but when we ran our tape and, uh, everyone saw me kiss you, they decided Kevin and I had won hands down.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because they noticed what I didn’t.” She nodded toward his head. “The silver streak in your hair. My friends immediately recognized you. Many of them had gotten kisses from strangers, but no one had managed to get a kiss from someone famous.”

Sin glanced at Lion. “Just think of the confusion we could have caused if we’d gone out. Ties, wins— they would have been up all night trying to figure out who topped who.”

Lion grinned. “What criteria do you suppose they would have used to declare the winner then? Perhaps who kissed the oldest Damaron?”

“Or maybe who kissed the best-looking?”

Lion flashed a dazzling smile. “That would be me, of course.”

“Not on your longest day.”

She liked Sin and Lion, she decided. Too bad their cousin didn’t appear to see the humor in the situation as they did. “There was only one thing that would have beaten the kiss from Nathan,” she said to the two of them.

Lion grinned. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this one.”

“The real hunchback of Notre Dame.”

Sin and Lion burst out laughing.

“What was the prize?” Nathan asked quietly.

“The prize?”

“What did you win because you kissed me?”

“An Eiffel Tower snow globe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Her brow pleated as she looked at him. “It’s a glass hall that holds snowlike flakes and, in this case, the Eiffel Tower. Turn it upside down, then right-side up again, and it snows on the Eiffel Tower.”

Lion’s eyes glittered with laughter. “I for one am impressed. Think about it, Nathan. You’re worth a snow globe. I don’t know of many people who could say that.”

Sin laughed, then glanced at his watch and nudged Lion. “I almost forgot. You and I have a conference call coming in from Geneva. We’d better go up to the suite.”

Lion frowned. “Conference call?”

“Yes,” Sin said meaningfully. “From Geneva. For you and me. Not Nathan.”

Lion glanced at Nathan. “Oh— right. Now I remember. Conference call from Geneva. You. Me. Not Nathan.”

“It was very nice meeting you, Danielle,” Sin said, standing.

Lion also rose to his feet. “And very interest-ing.”

Smiling, Danielle nodded. “It was nice meeting you too.” After the two men left, she returned her gaze to Nathan. “I’ll be going too. Once again, I’m very sorry. My father has always thought a great deal of you and your cousins. When he was doing business with Damaron International, he constantly sang your praises. He greatly admired the way you and your cousins took over the business after your parents’ deaths. That’s just one of the reasons I wouldn’t want anything I did to reflect badly on him.”

“Don’t worry about that. I know your father. He’s a man of integrity.”

“Yes, he is.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for saying so. Well . . . good night.”

She put her hands on the table to push herself up, but he reached across the table and grabbed her wrist. “Stay.”

“I’ve said everything I have to say.”

“But I haven’t.”

Even though Nathan had felt he would see her again, he hadn’t expected it would be so soon and under these circumstances. But he was glad that she’d come, and that the man she’d been with hadn’t been her boyfriend after all. He was equally glad and relieved that she hadn’t turned out to be a con artist. Not that either of those things would have ultimately mattered to him.

He knew her name now. Danielle. And she was even more lovely than he’d been able to see down on the quay. She had misty blue eyes and long, light brown hair. If he’d seen her walking on the quay, she would have attracted his attention. If she’d smiled at him, as she had a minute or so ago, he would have been captivated.