An Irresistible Bachelor (An Unforgettable Lady #2)(99)

Smith resumed looking around the room. In another twenty minutes, the ambassador would show up. There’d be the requisite photographs and genuflecting and then dinner would be—

Smith’s eyes caught on something.

Or someone, rather.

He stared through the crowd at a blond woman who had just arrived. Dressed in a shimmering silver gown, she was standing in the elaborate entrance to the ballroom looking too damn radiant to be real.

He recognized her immediately. But who wouldn’t?

The Countess von Sharone.

Conversation in the ballroom dropped to a hush as people registered her presence. The social status of the gala, already high, shot through the roof with her arrival, and the crowd’s approval was palpable.

If these fancy types hadn’t all been carrying drinks, they’d have burst out in applause, he thought drily. As if she were the honoree, not the ambassador.

Still, he had to admit she was a looker. With her blond hair twisted up high on her head, she was a classic beauty with delicate features and dazzling green eyes. And that dress. Molded to her body, it moved like water as she stepped into the room.

Christ, she was beautiful, he thought. Assuming you liked that patrician, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth type.

Which he didn’t.

Alston went up to her. She extended a hand and accepted air kisses on both cheeks from him, her expression warming. Someone else approached her and then another, until she was carried into the room on a wave of ingratiation. Smith tracked her every movement.

She’d been in the papers recently, he recalled, although it wasn’t like she was ever really out of them. Her clothes, her parties, that extravagant wedding she’d had—they were fodder for the tabloids and the real papers alike. What had he read about her lately, though? Her father had just died. That was it. And there’d been some spread about her and five other women in the Style section of the New York Times. He’d seen it lying faceup on the front desk of the Plaza.

Talk about being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, he thought, eyeing the heavy pearls and diamonds that were around her throat and dangling from her ears. Her family’s fortune was in the billions and that count she’d just married wasn’t exactly pulling down minimum wage either.

As she came deeper into the room, she turned in his direction and met his gaze. Her brows lifted regally when he didn’t look away.

Maybe she resented being stared at. Maybe she sensed he didn’t belong even though he dressed the part.

Maybe some of the lust he was feeling had crept into his face.

He hid his reaction as she scanned him. He was surprised by the shrewd light in her eyes and the fact that she lingered on his left ear, the one with the piece in it. He wouldn’t have expected her to be so observant. A first-rate clotheshorse for haute couture, sure. The favorite arm candy of some wealthy man, yeah. But hiding half a brain under all that fancy window dressing? No way.

The countess continued into the room as Tiny’s deep voice came through the earpiece. The ambassador was fifteen minutes away. Smith glanced down at his watch. When he looked up, she was standing in front of him, having broken away from her admirers.

“Do I know you?” Her voice was soft, a little low for a woman. Incredibly sexy.

The smile she offered him was gentle and welcoming, nothing like the aristocratic, chilly grimace he would have predicted.

His eyes flickered over her. Her breasts were concealed by the silver gown but they were perfectly formed and the waist below them was small. He imagined that her legs, which were also covered by the dress, looked every bit as good. He also noticed her perfume, something light and tangy that got into his nose and then his nervous system.

“Haven’t we met?” she repeated, putting out her hand and waiting for an answer.

Smith looked down. She’d given him her left hand and he caught a look at the jewels on her ring finger. She was wearing a monstrous sapphire and a thick band of diamonds.

The rings reminded him he’d just mentally undressed a married woman.

He glanced up into her eyes, wishing she’d go the hell away. They were beginning to attract attention as she stood there with her hand out.

“No, you don’t know me,” he said roughly, gripping her palm.

The instant he touched her, a flare of heat shot up his arm, and he saw an echo of it flash in her eyes. She pulled back sharply.

“Are you sure we haven’t met?” Her head tilted to one side while she rubbed the hand, as if trying to get rid of an unpleasant sensation.

His earpiece fired up with another update on the ambassador. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Smith turned and walked away from her.

“Wait,” he heard her call out.

He didn’t stop, just kept heading for the back of the ballroom. Pushing open an unmarked door, he stepped into a corridor that was filled with extra chairs and tables. Bald lightbulbs were suspended from the squat ceiling and they cast harsh shadows on the concrete floor. The hall would take him to the service entrance the ambassador was going to use.

When he heard a clicking noise behind him, he turned around. The countess had followed him.

Even under the glare, she was breathtaking.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Who are you?”

“What’s it to you?”

She hesitated. “It’s just that you were looking at me as if we’d met.”