The Viscount and The Virgin. Valerie Parv

to women.

      With a start, Kirsten realized that twenty minutes had passed since she’d returned to the office and become lost in her memories. She had eased the new shoes off, and her feet looked red and sore, as indeed they felt. But she had no other shoes in the office, and Rowe was probably pacing the curator’s office even now. He didn’t strike her as a man who appreciated being kept waiting.

      Reluctantly, she put the shoes back on and got to her feet, feeling as if her toes were being jabbed with pins. She hoped Rowe would keep this meeting short so she could collect Jeffrey from the Castle School and go home. With the head curator, Lea Landon, in Europe looking after a touring exhibition of treasures from the royal collection, Kirsten was carrying most of the load. She wished that Rowe hadn’t chosen today to put in his appearance.

      There would never be a good time, she thought as she made her way to the curator’s office. Rowe’s history with her sister meant she was never likely to welcome his arrival. The sooner she got this meeting over with, the better.

      Chapter Two

      Rowe Sevrin wasn’t pacing the office, but he was sorely tempted. His reaction to the woman Maxim had told him he would be working with had caught him completely by surprise. He was glad his royal cousin hadn’t been there to see Rowe’s response to Kirsten Bond, or he would never have heard the end of it.

      While she was undeniably attractive, he’d dated more than his share of beautiful women in his days on the racing circuit. Rather, Kirsten had an arresting quality that was lacking in more conventionally pretty females. Maybe it was her passion for her subject, but as she talked, he’d been captivated by the way her fine-boned face lit up with a glow that couldn’t be faked.

      As a man of strong passions himself, he found such unbridled verve a positive turn-on. He imagined taking Kirsten out and encouraging her to share her passions with him, and found the notion more arousing than he liked. Wasn’t he the one who had vowed to steer clear of romantic entanglements for the time being? Too many of the women he’d dated had coveted the title of viscountess to the point where he had begun to question whether the attraction was him or his royal status.

      He gave vent to a sigh of irritation. Why didn’t he admit the truth to himself? He was tired of investing his energy in relationships that went nowhere. At twenty-nine years old, he’d almost given up the notion of finding one woman with whom he could have a home, children, the whole package.

      Not that he intended to remain celibate. He wasn’t that far into self-denial. But for now, any relationship he embarked upon would be purely physical by mutual agreement. It was just as well that many women found such liaisons appealing for the same reasons he did. They were happy with the comfort of a physical relationship without the idea that anything more meaningful was involved, making him unlikely to want for bed partners. You never knew, he might even stumble across his soul mate that way. Sometimes the thing you most wanted came to you only when you stopped searching for it.

      None of which had anything to do with Kirsten Bond. From the way she had thrown him to the wolves during the tour without even batting a long-eyelashed eye, she was hardly likely to qualify as soul-mate material, so why was he wasting time thinking about her in that way?

      She intrigued him, that was why. Not only her energy, but her air of self-possession made her seem much more than a palace employee. She hadn’t been awed by his title. After fending off the candidates for viscountess, he was bound to find Kirsten’s indifference a challenge, but he knew that was only a minor part of her appeal. There was only one solution—get to know her better and satisfy himself that he was seeing more in her than she warranted.

      On the curator’s desk was a state-of-the-art laptop computer. Rowe pulled it toward him and called up the castle’s personnel records. Keying in his password got him swiftly past the security screens and he was soon looking at Kirsten’s photo and employment record.

      Sweet was how she looked, he thought, letting his gaze linger on the picture. When this was taken, her hair had been shorter, fluffing around her head like a fiery halo. She looked pure and innocent, untouched by the ways of the wicked world, the very opposite of the kind of women he was used to dating. Was that the source of the appeal he could feel coiling through him as he studied her image?

      He scrolled through her record, his hand freezing over a line that indicated she had a six-year-old child. A spear of disappointment shafted through him at the discovery that she was probably married. Why hadn’t he thought of that? According to this, she was twenty-seven years old. He should have expected a woman as attractive as she was to be spoken for by now.

      He steeled himself to find mention of a husband, not sure he liked the urge to do violence that had gripped him without warning. He should be glad if Kirsten was married. It would save him the trouble of deciding how she might fit into his life.

      His spirits took an unwarranted jolt upward again as he read that her marital status was single. Not widowed. And not divorced. Like him, she was from Carramer, where divorce had never been legalized. So she was a single mother. He sat back and stroked his chin with thumb and index finger, trying to analyze his confused feelings. When he thought she might be married, he had itched to get his hands around her husband’s neck. Now that he knew she was single and not the innocent he’d seemed, how did he feel?

      He let a slow grin spread across his features as he answered his own question. He felt foolishly pleased, that was how. She was single, therefore available. And she had a child, so he was unlikely to raise her hope of something permanent by pursuing her. All he needed was for her to feel the same way he did, and if he couldn’t convince her, he wasn’t the man he thought he was.

      A knock at the office door interrupted his thoughts. He flicked off the computer barely in time to stop Kirsten seeing her own face on the screen as she entered without waiting for his response.

      Her gaze flickered from the computer and back to him, making him wonder if she’d glimpsed the document, after all. Her composed expression gave him no clues. A challenge indeed, this Kirsten Bond.

      Had Rowe Sevrin really been studying her file? Kirsten asked herself as she took the seat he indicated across the desk from him. He’d switched the computer off as she came in, but she could have sworn he’d been looking at her picture.

      The interested look he turned on her now suggested she was right. But why? Unless…A cold fist of apprehension gripped her heart. Unless he had discovered who she was and decided at long last to claim his son.

      It wouldn’t be so easy, she told herself firmly. Soon after Jeffrey was born, Natalie had drawn up a will—one of the few responsible things she had done for her child—naming Kirsten as his guardian in the event of anything happening to her. Rowe could only come between them by challenging her guardianship in a court of law.

      The prospect sent a chill through Kirsten. She was careful with her money and had no real worries about everyday expenses, but a drawn-out legal battle could drain anyone’s resources. Any ordinary person, that is. With his royal connections and personal fortune, Rowe was far from ordinary.

      Not in any respect, her inner voice insisted. The reaction she’d had to him during the tour threatened to overwhelm her anew until she quelled it determinedly. She couldn’t do much about her susceptibility to his physical attractions, but her own family history, quite apart from Rowe’s role in her sister’s life, should be enough to warn her away from a man like him.

      Self-centered, footloose, fickle when it came to women. Mentally she ticked off Rowe’s well-publicized attributes and compared them with her father’s. Felix Bond, an artist, had also possessed good looks and abundant charm, qualities he had frequently employed in the pursuit of younger women. At first Kirsten thought her mother had tolerated his affairs because of her and Natalie, but that didn’t explain why she stayed with him once her daughters were well into their teens. Surely she hadn’t believed Felix when he swore that she was the only woman he really loved?

      It was possible. Felix always could charm the birds from the trees. For years Kirsten herself had believed