A book in the Marrying His Majesty series, 2009

INTO her crowd of beautiful people came…Nikos.

She was taking a last visual sweep of the room, noting descriptions for tomorrow’s fashion column.

The men were almost uniformly in black-black T-shirts, black jeans and designer stubble. The women were Audrey Hepburn clones. Cinched waists, wide skirts and pearls. The fifties look was now.

There was little eating. Cinched waists and ‘body slimmers’ didn’t allow for snacking, the waiters were sparse and it wasn’t cool to graze.

Nikos was holding a beer, and as the waiter passed with a tray of tiny caviar-loaded blinis he snagged four. He tipped one into his mouth, then turned back to search the room.

For her.

After all these years, he could still stop her world.

She’d forgotten to breathe. It was important to breathe. She took a too-big sip of her too-dry Martini and it went down the wrong way.

Uh-oh. If it wasn’t cool to eat, it was even more uncool to choke.

But help was at hand. Smooth and fast as a panther, Nikos moved through the crowd to be by her side in an instant. He took her drink, slapped her back with just the right amount of force, and then calmly waited for her to recover.

Nikos.

She could faint, she thought wildly. An ambulance could take her away and she’d be in a nice, safe emergency room. Safe from the man she’d walked away from almost ten years ago.

But fainting took skills she didn’t have. No one seemed about to call for help. No one seemed more than politely interested that she was choking.

Except Nikos.

She didn’t remember him as this big. And this…gorgeous? He was wearing faded blue jeans instead of the designer black that was de rigueur in this crowd. His shirt was worn white cotton, missing the top two buttons. He had an ancient leather jacket slung over his arm.