“Your Highness,” she said, and smiled with him, “you stop being a gentleman the moment there’s competition. If you could have thrown me first, you would have.”

It was true enough. “Care to try it again?”

A dare was something she could never, would never be able to ignore. Eve took a last sip of vermouth and rose. “At your service.”

Bennett stood and with one foot shoved the table away from the couch. After tossing back his untidy hair with one hand, he narrowed his eyes. “Now as I recall, I was to come up from behind and grab … just here.” One tightly muscled arm hooked around her midriff. “Then I—”

The rest was cut off as she knocked his foot out from under him and sent him flat on his back. “Yes.” She brushed her palms together as she looked down at him. “That’s precisely as I remember it.”

“I wasn’t ready.” He propped himself on an elbow.

“All’s fair, Your Highness.” With a laugh she knelt beside him. “Did I hurt you?”

“Only my pride,” he muttered, and gave her hair a tug.

When Alexander walked in, he saw his brother sprawled on the Turkish carpet, his hand intimately twined in Eve’s dark fall of hair. Their faces were close, smiling, their bodies just brushing. His jaw set, then tightened.

“I apologize for interrupting.”

At his voice Bennett looked languidly over his shoulder, and Eve’s shoulders snapped straight. He looked precisely as she remembered, dark, thick hair curling down his neck and over his ears. He wasn’t smiling, though he rarely did that she’d seen, so that his face was rigidly handsome. Royalty suited him. Even as she resented it, she had to acknowledge it. He might have been one of the portraits she remembered from the palace gallery—high cheekbones well defined, the skin tanned and smooth over them. His eyes were dark, almost as dark as his hair, and as disapproving as his full, sculpted mouth, which was drawn now in a tight line. As always, he was militarily straight and impeccably dressed.

She felt mussed and travel-stained and foolish.

“Eve’s been giving me another lesson in the martial arts.” Bennett rose, then taking Eve’s hand, pulled her up beside him. “I’ve come out second best. Again.”

“So I see.” His bow was formal and just this side of polite. “Miss Hamilton.”

She curtsied, but there was no gleam of humor in her eyes this time. “Your Highness.”

“I apologize for not being able to meet you at the airport. I trust your flight was pleasant.”

“Delightful.”

“Perhaps you’d like to freshen up before we discuss the reason I sent for you.”

That brought her chin up. He’d hoped it would. Deliberately she reached down and picked up the small envelope bag she’d left on the sofa. “I’d prefer to get our business over with.”