A Ring To Secure His Crown. Kim Lawrence

swore softly, and then again as her efforts at juggling caused her toast to land butter-side down on the carpet. Why did it always do that?

      She dumped her bag, picked up the toast with a grimace and glanced at the caller ID before lifting the phone to her ear. The low-voiced conversation lasted a few moments as the junior lab assistant gave her the results she and the entire research team had been waiting for.

      Consigning the toast to the waste-bin, Sabrina was smiling when she opened the door; the results were not what they had expected, they were better! Embracing the buzz of excitement, she hitched her bag over her shoulder, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl to soothe her rumbling stomach and released the loose, heavy honey strands of hair that had got stuck down the collar of her jacket before backing out of the front door.

      It was the noise that hit her first, like a solid wall of sound; the voices calling her name seemed to come from everywhere.

      Dropping the apple, she turned and was immediately blinded by flashing lights. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes and turned her head to avoid the microphones being thrust in her face.

      Heart thudding like a piston, she tried to turn back but it was already too late. In seconds the weight of bodies pushing against her had already carried her several feet away and into the street and now she was surrounded.

      ‘Lady Sabrina... Lady Sabrina... Lady Sabrina...! When is the wedding?’

      ‘Will it happen before or after the island is reunified?’

      ‘When did Prince Luis propose?’

      ‘Is this a marriage of convenience?’

      ‘What sort of message do you think you are sending to young women, Dr Summerville?’

      The sound of her own name and the stream of questions coming from all directions felt like a physical assault. The conviction she had just walked into her own personal nightmare, the sense of galloping claustrophobia intensified along with the gut-freezing horror that literally paralyzed Sabrina. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even think past the static buzz of panic in her head. She just closed her eyes, put her head down and waited for the ground to open up.

      It didn’t.

      And then something did, though in amidst the confusion she didn’t immediately register anything about what was happening until the grip on her wrist tightened and another hand slid around her waist. She was no longer being carried along by the media crush, she was being pulled in the opposite direction by someone who was strong enough to make it seem easy and to make her wild attempt to hit out at her abductor a joke.

      It happened in a blur, one minute she was in the street trying to fight for her freedom and the next she was being unceremoniously dumped like a sack of potatoes into the back seat of a big sleek car that had been hidden from her view by the mass of bodies.

      People didn’t get kidnapped in front of the press and hundreds of cameras, she told herself while struggling to sit up. She managed it in time to see a camera being thrown at the crowd before the man who had climbed in beside her slammed the door on the noise outside. The mob were now pretty much hysterical.

      ‘Drive, Charlie, if you would!’ he drawled in an almost bored tone of voice.

      The man in the driving seat reacted by doing just that. He pulled away from the kerb with a squeal of brakes and with scant regard for the lives of the bodies blocking their way.

      Sabrina found her eyes connecting with the small, mean-looking eyes of the man in charge of the getaway in the rear-view mirror before she looked away. The tattoo in the shape of a dragon on the back of his thick neck was even less comforting.

      Although she knew all about the physical and chemical processes that led the body to over-produce adrenaline, could answer, and actually had answered, an exam question on them, she had never, up to that point, personally experienced how compelling the flight-or-fight reflex was.

      As the primitive survival response kicked in she literally threw herself at the door, pressing every button in a frantic effort to open it and sobbing with frustration when it didn’t budge. She began to batter on the window, more in desperation than with any real hope of attracting attention—they were travelling at speed and the windows were blacked out.

      ‘If you’re trying to break it I should tell you that it’s bulletproof, though that is quite a right hook you have, cara, and I consider myself lucky that you are not wearing heels.’

      Her clenched fists slid down the glass and for a moment she rested her forehead against the coolness of the glass before she took a deep breath and turned to face her captor. She might have lost the fight to open the door but she’d won the fight to hide her fear behind a mask of cool disdain—well, as disdainful as you could look when your face was wet with tears and your mascara had most likely run.

      ‘I am not your cara, I am not your anything, but if you don’t let me go I will be your worst nightmare,’ she promised. ‘You will stop this car and let me out this instant or I will...’ Her voice dried and her jaw hit her chest as she identified the man who was sitting in the corner, one arm resting along the padded backrest, the other holding a phone.

      He smiled, looking like a fallen angel on performance-enhancing drugs. It had always made total sense to her that the devil would be good-looking or else where was the temptation?

      Not that she was tempted in any way!

      * * *

      His electric-blue eyes glittering with amusement, Prince Sebastian Zorzi tipped his head and touched a gentle finger to her chin.

      Shock zigzagged along her nerve endings as Sabrina pulled her head away breathing hard. The initial relief she’d felt upon realising she was not actually being abducted, but in fact rescued, was swallowed up by a wave of antipathy as she met the mockery in the eyes of her future brother-in-law. His suit was beautifully cut and a dark charcoal, the jacket stretched across broad shoulders, unbuttoned to reveal the white T-shirt he wore instead of a shirt and tie. The T-shirt clung just enough to suggest the strong, well-developed contours of his broad chest. It wasn’t his tailoring that made her scalp tingle though—under the laconic surface there was an explosive quality about him. In the toughness stakes Sebastian Zorzi could have given the bulletproof glass a run for its money.

      Obviously she had been aware that the brothers were physically dissimilar. Nothing surprising about that; siblings often were. She and Chloe looked nothing alike, after all.

      But the Zorzi Princes were not just different, they were total opposites in everything. It went beyond their colouring or build, or even their smiles, actually especially their smiles! One’s made you feel safe, the other? She gave a little shudder. Safe was not a word she could imagine many people using when it came to Sebastian Zorzi!

      ‘That’s right, Lady Sabrina, I’m the rescue party.’ He lifted his hand and spoke into the phone cradled in his palm. Sabrina noticed his fingers were very long, the ends square-tipped and capable. They were definitely strong hands.

      ‘Yes, I’ve got her. She’s...’ The dark lashes lifted from the angular jut of his high carved cheekbones, his blue eyes seemed to consider her for a moment—the bone-stripping intensity making her shift in her seat before he responded to the question she couldn’t hear. ‘In one piece, just about. She looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards, but she retains the ability to look down her well-bred little nose... So, yes, all right—if you like that sort of thing.’

      His tone suggested that personally he didn’t like, but then, having seen the sort of women Sebastian thought of as fine, Sabrina was actually quite glad.

      He had a type.

      And it had nothing to do with IQ points.

      Hard to imagine that the endless succession of tall, leggy blondes whose names had been linked with his were universally dumb, but Sabrina had always imagined, with an uncharacteristic lack of charity, that they probably pretended to be dim! There was a type of man who just couldn’t cope with a woman who could challenge