The Duke's Boardroom Affair / Convenient Marriage, Inconvenient Husband. Yvonne Lindsay

a weekend visit with the folks. Like that would ever happen. She had the sneaking suspicion that being royals, they clung to slightly higher standards. Or maybe they would make her stay in the staff quarters and take her meals in the kitchen.

      Was that what she had been reduced to? Servant’s status?

      She and her father may not have been megarich, but they had lived a very comfortable lifestyle. The outer edges of upper crust. And to what end? Had he only been honest, lived within their means, she wouldn’t be in this mess.

      But now was not the time or the place to rehash her father’s betrayal.

      “I could ring her and tell her you don’t want to stay,” she told Charles. “That you have better things to do than spend time with your parents. Although, you know, they’re not getting any younger.”

      “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “You and my mother would get along great.”

      She doubted that. His mother didn’t strike her as the type to socialize with the hired help.

      “Was there anything else you needed?” she asked, wanting him off her desk. He was too close, smelled too good. “I’d like to get back to work.”

      “Pressing business?” he asked.

      “Keeping up on all the calls and e-mails from your female admirers is a full-time job.”

      “Maybe, but right now,” he said, locking his chocolate eyes on hers and leaning closer, so she was crowded against the back of her chair. “I only have one special woman in my life.”

      Uh-oh.

      Please, please, Victoria silently pleaded, let it be anyone but me.

      He held up the message slips. “And I’d better go call her and tell her just how much I’m looking forward to the party.”

      She let out a quiet, relieved breath.

      He rose from the corner of her desk, but his scent lingered as he walked to the door. “Buzz me if you hear about the ad.”

      “The second I hear anything,” she promised. Hoping this would be the last time she saw him until it was time to leave for the evening.

      Even that would be too soon. Maybe she could just sneak out unnoticed.

      It was a dangerous game they had begun playing, but she wasn’t about to surrender. She wouldn’t let him win. He needed to be knocked down a peg or two. Put in his place. And she was just the woman to do it.