Jean-Baptiste Mercier washed his hands, checked his teeth for any lingering signs of dinner and left the men’s room.

Whereupon he ran directly into Queen Nefertiti.

Who was on her phone.

She was tall. Or maybe not. Maybe her height was simply an illusion created by her wedge-shaped electric blue crown, upon which glittered many colorful jewels in the shape of a cobra. At a quick glance, he saw that she wore a matching goddess gown.

He had a startling glimpse of dramatic dark eyes, heavily lined.

High cheekbones in a stunning shade of mahogany.

A whiff of sandalwood.

A lush mouth, thinning with annoyance as he plowed straight into her.

He tried to slow his trajectory, but there was no chance. Why? Because she’d startled him. Not by standing in the middle of a hotel hallway where he meant to walk.

No.

This one startled with her beauty and elegance.

Without thinking, he caught her by the upper arms. Steadied her, even as the smooth warmth of her bare skin sparked a frisson of awareness along all his nerve endings.

Her eyes widened, so perhaps she also felt it. She backed up a hasty step, taking her silky flesh with her. He felt the unexpected hardness of her gold cuffs as her arms slid out of his grasp.

“Pardonnez-moi, ma reine,” he said hastily, shocked into forgetting his English.

“Ça va,” she said, startling him again.

Actually, that was two startles. First, because she spoke French, and second, because she had the sort of voice—smooth, throaty, resonant—that would be right at home singing jazz in a club on the Left Bank back home.

“You speak French,” he blurted, the soul of sophistication in that proud moment.

She didn’t smile. A fourth surprise. Americans, in his experience, were like Labrador retrievers bounding through life, happy all the time and willing to grin at every passing fire hydrant on the street. But this one? She was all Parisienne, a sleek cat who required patience and wooing before she’d deign to trouble herself with your existence.

No, she didn’t smile. But the lines of her beautiful face eased, bringing her aloofness level down a notch or two.

“Un peu,” she said, nodding. A little.

With that, she pivoted to go on her sky-high heels, blowing the tattered remnants of his mind as she went. Slits in the bottom of her gown happily gave way to miles of gleaming brown legs. She had bright red toenails. Her sandals were golden, with straps that crisscrossed and wound their way up to the knees. Her ass? Big. Round. High. What would his buddy Daniel call it? Oh, yes. Tight.

Queen Nefertiti had a tight ass.

Her tits looked every bit as promising, although her half-moon jeweled collar had sadly blocked a good portion of his view in front.

His heart sank as he watched her walk toward the early Halloween party that was evidently in full swing in the hotel’s ballroom down the hall. His scrambled brain and dry throat kept him stupefied and helpless, tripping him up at the very moment he needed to be quick on his feet.

Don’t just stand there, Baptiste—do something!

At the eleventh hour, he managed a hurried step after her, his heart thumping in time to the burst of dance music from the party. “Nefertiti.”

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him. Once again, the electrical wiring in his brain sparked and smoked. In fairness, though, it wasn’t his fault. The long line of her neck distracted him and made it official:

He wanted to touch, nip, lick, suck, bite and possess every inch of this woman. He wanted her silken limbs wrapped around him the way the straps on her sandals wrapped around her shapely calves. He wanted her scratches up and down his back, her tongue in his mouth and her cries in his ears.

The vehemence of his sudden and unexpected desire made his blood hum and sent tiny shivers racing up the back of his neck and across his scalp.

“What a relief.” Her delicious lips crept closer to a smile. “You don’t know how many people have called me Cleopatra tonight.”

He stared at her for a long beat or two, floundering while a harried electrician inside his head worked frantically to get his thought process rewired.

She was only a woman, he reminded himself. No need to lose his mind.

He cleared his throat.

“Of course you’re not Cleopatra.” He approached her, edging around some sort of a zombie and his companion, a ruby slipper, short skirt and garter-wearing version of Dorothy who had evidently spent some time in a pornography shop. “You’re Nefertiti. I’ve seen your bust in the Louvre.”

She made a dismissive sound. “That’s hard to do, since it’s in Berlin at the Neues.”

Once again, everything inside him rose to attention, not least of all his queue.

Oh, yes.

This one.

He looked her up and down as he stepped closer. “Are you challenging me, madame?”

She looked him up and down, her expression disdainful even though her eyes were alight with mischief. “It’ll take me five seconds to prove you wrong.” She held the phone up for him to see. Gave him a rueful shrug. “Not much of a challenge there, monsieur.”

He grinned. Stepped closer still, which put him right in kissing range.

“This is an important issue,” he said, his voice turning husky. “We must get to the bottom of it. For…international relations.”

One sleek brow rose. “International relations?”

He pressed a hand to his heart. “What could be more crucial?”

She ducked her head, dimpling but denying him the full smile.

“I’m just finishing a business dinner with my colleagues in the restaurant.” He gestured to the Asian restaurant at the other end of the lobby. “Let me say good-bye to them, then I’ll join you at the party. For a drink.”

Her head came up. She studied him for a long, measured beat or two. Long enough for a glorious flush to creep up her neck and over her sculpted cheekbones. She opened her mouth. He waited on high alert, oblivious to a passing stream of costumed partygoers.

“As important as it is to maintain good international relations—”

“Between old allies,” he added quickly, sensing that the wind was not blowing in his favor. “Because if the French didn’t have your backs, you Americans would all be celebrating absolutely nothing on July the Fourth, and you’d fly a funny flag and sing ‘God Save the Queen’ at all your sporting events.”

That did it.

She finally laughed for him, a breathtaking display of shining eyes, dimples and white teeth in sharp contrast to her dark skin.

Desire coiled tighter inside him, pooling low in his belly.

“And I’m very grateful, because I don’t know all the words to ‘God Save the Queen.’”

He laughed again, at least until her smile tapered off and died.

“But I’m with my friends tonight. And I didn’t come to flirt with handsome Frenchmen.”

“Then you shouldn’t have worn that costume,” he said, trying to dial back some of his intensity at this confirmation that the attraction was mutual. “Not a very good plan, was it?”

She blinked and looked away, hesitating.

All was not lost, then.

“You can have a drink with me,” he murmured. “No doesn’t have to be your final answer tonight, does it?”

Another hesitation. A longer pause.

And then she surprised him again.

“It’s a private party,” she said, tipping her chin up in a gesture somewhere between an invitation to kiss her and a challenge. “Too bad you don’t have a costume. Or an invitation.”