A Ring To Secure His Crown. Kim Lawrence

brother vanished into the bathroom. ‘I’m not a rebel like you. I need to... I care about what people think about me.’

      Sebastian re-emerged with a fresh towel, which he rubbed vigorously over his damp hair.

      ‘And this marriage isn’t about me, it’s about bigger things. I’m realistic about it.’

      ‘So how does she feel about it?’

      Luis gave an uncomprehending shrug. ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘I mean what does Sabrina expect from this marriage? Is she realistic too?’ He gave a sudden shrug, annoyed with himself for wasting time on a subject that was none of his business. ‘Is the warm glow of doing the right thing enough for her too?’ He began to vigorously rub his already towel-dried hair, asking himself where this swell of outrage was coming from. She’d made her bed and she seemed happy to lie in it...with his brother. ‘Hell, Luis, do you two even talk?’

      ‘We have a lifetime to talk,’ Luis responded, not sounding as though the life he saw stretching ahead filled him with joy. ‘But you mean sex, don’t you? It’s not like you to be so squeamish. Actually no, I haven’t slept with her.’

      ‘That’s not what I meant, but as you’ve shared aren’t you taking this untouched virgin bride stuff a bit too far, Luis?’

      Luis laughed. ‘Even father doesn’t expect that.’

      ‘How incredibly liberal-minded of him.’ Sebastian was still struggling with the implication of some of Sabrina’s unguarded comments. Was it really possible that Sabrina had not had a lover, out of fear of falling in love?

      ‘What if you’re not compatible? Have you thought of that?’

      Luis for once looked annoyed. ‘For God’s sake, Seb, this isn’t about how good she is in bed!’

      As the comment unlocked a stream of graphic images that flowed relentlessly through his head, Sebastian lowered his eyelids to half-mast. His jaw clenched as he struggled to stem the flow and pretended an amusement he was a long way from feeling. ‘But it would help.’

      It would help him even more, Sebastian mused darkly, if he could stop thinking of unfastening glossy honey hair and watching it fall over bare shoulders, pushing it back to reveal small firm breasts...

      Oblivious to the tension underpinning his brother’s taut delivery, Luis laughed. ‘I really like her.’

      ‘Like?’

      Luis tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘She’s sweet,’ he began with the attitude of a man who was clutching at straws.

      ‘And,’ he ploughed on with determination, ‘she has a lot of common sense.’

      Were they even talking about the same woman? Sebastian wondered, thinking about the woman who had attempted to punch her way out of his locked car just to avoid being shut in there with him.

      He recognised she’d been driven to this drastic move by desperation and fear and he had fully intended saying something to soothe her, but the expression on her face when she’d recognised him, the fact that she’d looked as though she had just discovered she had jumped into a car beside the Devil himself...he simply hadn’t been able to resist playing up to her prejudices a little.

      But then she had challenged his own firmly embedded prejudices. In the abstract he had been able to despise Sabrina Summerville, or at least the idea of her, a woman who, despite coming from a different generation, was just as willing as his own mother had been to be a compliant, political pawn.

      The first surprise had been the desire that had twisted inside him when he’d found himself sitting just inches away from her, which shouldn’t have happened. He had seen the photos. He already knew that she was good-looking, admittedly more classy than classically beautiful. But what those photos had not prepared him for was the crystal clarity of her skin, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her small straight nose, the deep liquid darkness of her eyes that seemed to reflect her every mood like a mirror. And last, but definitely not least, the pink lushness of her amazing lips.

      The blood-roaring primal intensity of his reaction had effectively blocked everything else from his mind for what might only have been seconds, but could have been an hour.

      And the hits had just kept coming!

      He’d expected a passive victim; he had got a feisty fighter, who clearly thought he was a total waste of space. What had got to him the most had been the conflict in her eyes, her vulnerability.

      He’d just wanted to tell her not to do it. Not to marry Luis. Instead he’d kissed her...a greedy response to a need that had been visceral in its intensity.

      ‘I’ve never seen her lose her temper,’ Luis said.

      Sebastian could not control the bark of laughter that bubbled up from his chest as he lifted a hand to his cheek where the imprint of her fingers had lasted, but he didn’t react to his brother’s puzzled look.

      ‘Perhaps you should try giving her cause and see what happens?’

      ‘She’s very pretty,’ Luis added, his tone almost defensive as though he expected his brother to deny the fact.

      Was Luis serious? The woman was beautiful. She wasn’t his type, he had never leaned in the direction of cut-glass delicacy, but even he could recognise her natural beauty, the rare ‘get out of bed with her hair mussed and still look knockout gorgeous’ beauty, not that he would ever get the chance to prove his theory.

      She was his brother’s.

      The reminder slowed the heat rising inside him but did not stop its slow, inexorable progress.

      What are you, Seb? Fifteen? Get a grip, man!

      ‘Are you asking me for an opinion?’ Sebastian struggled hard to tap into the sympathy he normally felt for his brother, who was the one expected to make a marriage of convenience, the one looking ahead to a life of being the acceptable public face of the crown.

      ‘No, yes? I suppose?’ His brother produced one of his genuine smiles, seeming to suddenly shrug off his mood with an ease that Sebastian envied.

      ‘Maybe you should go on a date.’

      ‘With Sabrina?’

      ‘Well, the dating ritual is kind of what people do before they get married, unless you have one of those “wake up in Vegas with a tattoo, a hangover and a wife” marriages. I can recommend the first two as a way of passing a weekend.’

      Luis’s eyes slid from his brother’s as he sketched a smile. ‘I haven’t thanked you yet, for getting her out of that press scrum.’

      ‘Glad to be of help,’ Sebastian said, wondering about the change of subject and his brother’s unusually evasive attitude. Luis, he decided as he studied his brother’s face, looked positively shifty.

      ‘I’m sure she took it all in her stride.’

      Sebastian clamped his jaw as he fought a compulsion to defend Sabrina from the criticism he could hear behind this faint praise. ‘You’d have preferred she’d have fallen apart?’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘Actually she was pretty shaken, but she came out fighting.’ He saw no point adding that the fight had been mostly directed, quite deservedly, at him.

      Luis got to his feet. ‘She was lucky you were so close.’

      ‘She might not agree... I’d been drinking.’

      Luis looked amused. ‘Fall asleep and snore, did you?’

      Sebastian’s eyes fell. ‘Not exactly.’

      * * *

      Sabrina stubbornly refused to acknowledge the lump in her throat as she unpacked. The task didn’t take long. There wasn’t much, just a few pieces of clothing and personal items she had