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CHAPTER ONE

SURROUNDED BY OLD money and cold-blooded cynicism for the first part of her life, Melodie Parnell wasn’t half as ingenuous as she looked In fact, she actively tried to give off an air of sophistication by straightening her curly brown hair into a shiny curtain, adding a flick of liquid liner to downplay her round blue eyes and painting a bold red lipstick over her plu choices were classic business style: a pencil skirt, a sweater set and her mother’s pearls

At the same time, she privately offered people the benefit of the doubt She believed the best whenever possible and always sought the brightest side of every situation

That attitude had earned her nothing but contempt fro froet closer to thesofthearted had definitely been her mother’s downfall But, Melodie often assured herself, she wasn’t nearly as fragile or susceptible as that The fact that she’d lost herinto a state of melancholy as she faced life without her didn’t make her vulnerable

Yet, for soht out fro the door of his mansion

“You reeted

She was supposed to be immune to powerful men in bespoke outfits, but hera suit He wore a casually tailored linen jacket over black pants and a collarless peasant-style shirt, three open buttons at his throat

Not that she really took in his clothes She saw the man

He had black hair that h, tanned skin and gorgeous bone structure Italian? Spanish? Greek? He certainly had the refined features of European aristocracy, but Melodie knew hiht and circu around the irises He was clean shaven, urbane and acutely masculine in every way

He aze with an impactful directness that stole her breath

“Ro her out of her fixation His voice was like dark chocolate and red wine, rich and sultry, but his tone held a hint of disparagement No one was truly essential, he seemed to say

“I aed to say She watched his rip His upper lip was much narrower than his full bottom one He smiled in the way men did when confronted with a woman they didn’t find particularly attractive, but were forced by circumstance to be polite toward Cool and dismissive

Melodie wasn’t offended She was always braced for et it It wasn’t that she was homely She had just inherited herwith her pearls The attributes were fine for erated in real life Spiderlike and aard—or so she’d been told so many times she tended to believe it

So his indifference wasn’t a surprise, but her skin still prickled and she wared in her belly and radiated outward through her li

She shouldn’t be so nervous She’d still had a pacifier in her , and rarely suffered shyness noPresidents Royalty Such things didn’t affect her

Yet she found herself surreptitiously fighting to catch her breath, aware that she was letting her hand stay in his too long When she tried to extract it, however, he tightened his grip

“We’ve ly His eyes narrowed as he raked her face with his gaze, head cocked and arrested

“No,” she assured hiave a leap while a romantic part of her brain invented a fanciful “in another life soul-h, even when a person wasn’t nearly asto reh fashion azines in the first place There was an off chance he’d seen her in connection to her father, she supposed, but she was carving that particularhim up, and only said, “I’m quite sure we haven’t”

Roman didn’t believe her, she could see it

“Ingrid and Huxley aren’t with you?” He flicked a look for her clients to where her taxi had dropped her next to the fountain in his paved courtyard