Sleeping Partners

Dear Reader,

We’re delighted to bring you Helen Brooks’s fortieth romance! Sleeping Partners is a wonderful story, brimming with passion and emotion…and we hope you’ll enjoy the sparkle and intensity that Helen always brings to her characters.

Helen Brooks is especially popular for the gorgeous, strong and dynamic heroes she creates. Always commanding, always highly sensual—and always tamed at last by a warm and spirited heroine!

A natural storyteller, Helen keeps readers around the world frantically turning the pages of her books. She creates emotional journeys for her characters with a powerful depth of feeling—with a few tears and plenty of smiles along the way.

Congratulations on your fortieth Harlequin romance, Helen!

With best wishes

The Editors

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

‘CLAY LINCOLN! Are you mad, Cassie?’ Robyn’s beautiful velvet-brown eyes were narrowed with disgust. ‘I’d rather walk through the streets of London stark naked than ask Clay Lincoln for help.’

‘You wouldn’t be asking him for help though.’ Cassie Barnes’s voice was as impassive as her face. ‘You would merely be giving him the chance to buy into a thriving little concern that will eventually net him a considerable profit.’

‘Whatever.’

‘He’s ridiculously well off, Robyn.’

‘So?’ It was truculent.

‘So…’ Cassie sighed patiently, her role of elder sister by five years very evident by the maternal streak in her voice ‘…you need a backer if you’re going to take your business onto the next stage, and everyone else you’ve approached is either flat broke or simply not interested, your bank manager included. Clay seems the perfect solution to me.’

‘Clay Lincoln is not a perfect anything!’ The bitterness was acidic. ‘And frankly I’d rather stay as a one-man band for the rest of my life than have anything to do with that low life.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’ Cassie looked at the lovely heart-shaped face in front of her which at the moment was flushed a defiant red, the colour indicative of the hot temper that went with the clouds of burnished red-gold curls tied high on Robyn’s head. She sighed again, this time silently. Robyn had inherited all of their mother’s volatile, fiery nature and none of their father’s placid equability.

‘You know you wouldn’t,’ she said again. ‘You’re ambitious and incredibly talented and good at what you do, and you’ve worked your socks off to get where you are right now. How many other women of twenty-eight have their own PR company? And you’ll go places, I know you will. You deserve success, Robyn.’

Robyn looked at her sister’s sweetly earnest face and the dark shadows beneath Cassie’s mild hazel eyes—courtesy of the fact that she had been up half the night with her twin boys which didn’t sit well with being five months pregnant—and felt instant contrition. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Cass, I am really. I’m being a pig and I know you mean it for the best but I couldn’t approach Clay Lincoln for all the tea in China.’

‘Well, Guy still sees him occasionally; I’m sure he would—’

‘Cassie, no!’ Robyn interrupted vehemently.

‘All right, all right.’ Cassie held up her hands in defeat. ‘Whatever you say, Robyn.’

‘I’ll expand in time and for the moment Drew is happy to work all the hours under the sun. She’s just thrown the latest live-in boyfriend out ’cos he was messing around, and she’s off men.’

‘Until the next one arrives,’ Cassie said darkly. She disapproved of Robyn’s assistant’s somewhat promiscuous lifestyle from her matronly position of being married for twelve years to Guy Barnes, her first boyfriend whom she had met when she had been sixteen and had married five years later.

‘As you say, until the next one arrives.’ Robyn laughed in agreement. If she was to speak truthfully she would have to admit to a sneaking admiration for Drew. She had known the tall, leggy blonde since they had done a postgraduate diploma in public and media relations together, and in all that time—seven years now—Drew’s torrid love life and penchant for picking the worst rats in society had never got the other woman down. After each disastrous affair Drew would have a little cry, declare she was going to devote herself exclusively to her career, her cats and her friends—usually in that order—and blow her current bank balance on designer outfits to cheer herself up. The longest the celibate state had lasted had been one month some years ago, and that had only been because Drew had had a severe attack of a particularly nasty flu and had been in bed for two weeks.

‘Robyn, most days you’re in your office before eight a.m. and you don’t get home until eight or nine; later when there’s a launch party of something. When do you ever relax?’ Cassie said worriedly.

‘It’s not as bad as that.’

‘It’s worse,’ Cassie said plaintively. ‘You never get the chance to meet anyone.’

‘Cass, I meet people all the time,’ Robyn said firmly, knowing where this conversation was going to lead. It was the same one they had had many times in the past and it never varied in its content.

‘You know what I mean.’ Cassie had got the bit between her teeth, her freckles all but popping off her face in protest. ‘The last time you went out on a date was months ago. All work and no play—’

‘Makes this lady a fulfilled and happy one,’ Robyn interrupted with a grin at her sister’s disgruntled face. ‘I like my life the way it is, Cass.’ And at her sibling’s snort of despair, she added, ‘I do. You know I’ve never been one for serious relationships, Cass. It’s not my style.’

‘No relationships at all is your style,’ Cassie retorted promptly.

‘Perhaps, but that’s me. You chose Guy and kids and domesticity; I chose career.’ Robyn was trying very hard to keep it friendly and calm but it was hard. Since their parents had moved to a retirement bungalow in the south of France Cassie had taken on the role of bossy and protective older sister with a vengeance. She meant well, Robyn reminded herself, and there wasn’t a malicious or nasty bone in Cassie’s whole body, but she did go on at times!

‘But having a career doesn’t cut out meeting Mr Right,’ Cassie began fervently, only to stop and lift her head as she added, ‘That’s Guy and the kids home, and just when we were having such a good chat.’

‘Pity,’ Robyn agreed drily, noting with a pang of guilt that the sarcasm went completely over Cassie’s head.

At least Guy’s return from his Sunday afternoon visit to the park with the twins focused Cassie’s attention on tea and baths for her exuberant offspring, but once Robyn was on her way home to her little flat above the office of her PR business in Kensington later that evening, she found her thoughts returning to the conversation with her sister, or to one particular part of it anyway.

Clay Lincoln. If she shut her eyes—which would be very dangerous considering she was driving her little blue Fiesta—she could see him as clearly as anything. Black hair, ice-blue eyes and a smile to die for—or so she had thought once, she corrected herself swiftly. Twelve years ago to be exact, when she had been a very young and silly sixteen and he had been a devastingly experienced twenty-three.

He had been at university with Guy and so had briefly been part of her sister and brother-in-law’s circle. She had idolised him from afar as a spotty adolescent just going into her teens when Clay had spent time with Guy and his friends in the university recesses. If he’d deigned to speak to her at all it had been with the sort of indulgent kindness most adults applied to children.

And then her spots had cleared up and she had had the brace off her teeth and had learnt how to manage her riotous mass of curly hair, just in time to be Cassie and Guy’s bridesmaid when her sister had got married.

Her stomach turned over and she breathed deeply, willing the memories back under lock and key. It worked usually; she kept the little box in her mind labelled Clay Lincoln closed at all times having learnt from past experience that she only had to relax her guard for a while and the lid flew open, regurgitating all the pain and humiliation. Tonight, though, seemed to be an exception.

She brought the car to a halt at some traffic lights and opened the window while she waited for the lights to change, breathing deeply again of the mild June air which was laden with the peculiarly distinct smell of the city.

It had all happened so long ago, she told herself firmly. She had been a different person then, coping with rampaging hormones and tumultuous emotions under the fragile exterior of burgeoning womanhood. Being tall and slender she had looked older than her sixteen years but the childish heroworship with which she had adored Clay had been there still under the surface. And she had been so thrilled, so elated when she had looked at herself in her bridesmaid finery and seen a slim young woman who had looked every day of twenty or so. After the years of spots and braces it had gone to her head.

She shut her eyes tightly, gripping the steering wheel with knuckles that turned white. She had played with fire, manipulated it even, and she had been badly burnt. It had been her own fault, all of it, but the resulting scars were still tender and had shaped the person she was today in a way she could never have imagined that summer’s day so long ago.

As an irate horn behind her brought her eyes snapping open she saw the lights were green and in her hurry she stalled the engine, causing the car behind her to emit another loud blast.

Damn! Her cheeks were scarlet by the time she moved off. She hadn’t stalled a car in years and it was all the more galling that it had happened through thinking about Clay Lincoln! How could just thinking about him reduce her to a flustered sixteen-year-old schoolgirl instead of the cool, sophisticated woman of the world she now purported to be?

She bit her lip hard, angry with herself and the world in general and especially Clay Lincoln. Ruthless ice man that he had been. She repeated the thought for extra emphasis before she determined to put Clay back where he belonged: in the box in her mind with his name on it and with the words, The past—dead and buried, in great red letters beside it.

It was just beginning to spot with rain when she drew up outside the narrow, terraced, three-story property she had purchased five years before, courtesy of an inheritance left by her maternal grandmother. Her mother had been an only child but after Robyn’s grandfather had died her parents had made it plain they preferred any inheritance to be split between their two daughters rather than having anything themselves.

Consequently both Robyn and Cassie had been the sole recipients of their grandmother’s estate, which had afforded the two women a very nice nest egg of some one hundred and fifty thousand pounds each. Cassie had been planning to start a family and she and Guy had decided to keep a portion of their windfall for all the expenses that would entail, just buying an estate car and banking the remainder of the money. But Robyn had put every penny of her hundred and fifty thousand pounds into buying her first home which had mean her mortgage was gratifyingly small.

The house had been well-maintained but was dark and gloomy, and so she’d ploughed much of the salary she’d earned working as a PR assistant for a record company into it over the next two years, always with a view to the future. And the future had meant her own PR firm, which she had achieved with Drew as her assistant just as Cassie had finally fallen with the twins after two years of trying.

The ground floor of the house was one long open-plan office, the floor above, Robyn’s bathroom and kitchen, and the top floor her living quarters which again was one long room with a bedroom area at one end. She had painted this room in pale buttery yellow and had sanded and varnished the floorboards. Due to it being south-facing the new colour scheme drank in every ray of sunshine which was reflected in the warm-ochre bed-settee, pine table and chairs and the floating brick-red viole drapes at the French windows which led onto the minute balcony. It was radiant and cheerful and Robyn loved it; she loved the whole house, along with the work she did. Life was good.

She nodded to the thought as she opened the front door and stepped inside out of the drizzle. Yes, life was good. The last three years had seen an increase in clients which had surprised and delighted her, mainly because she was passionate about her work and right from the beginning had had the courage to only get involved in products she truly believed in. Journalists were canny folk: they could always see straight through any dissimulation.

Without pausing downstairs she climbed the stairs—again varnished and devoid of carpet—to the bathroom, where she began to run a bath before making herself a cup of hot chocolate in her bright streamlined kitchen. Once undressed and in her thick towelling robe she carried the hot chocolate through to the bathroom, setting it on the floor at the side of the bath before she sank into the silky bubbles.

If only her bank manager had been more positive about the business loan she’d applied for… She drained the mug and leant her head back against the smooth surface of the big cast-iron bath the house had boasted when she’d bought it, and which she had had resurfaced in gleaming white. She desperately needed a second assistant; Cassie had been right this afternoon in that the workload was becoming too much. But only in that! All that talk about Clay Lincoln had been crazy.

Her eyes closed as the caressing warmth of the hot water did its work on tired muscles, and before she could stop it, her mind had taken her back in time to Cassie’s wedding day. As bridesmaid, she’d been dressed in a gorgeous dress of pale jade silk, her curls threaded with tiny, fresh white orchids and her face alight with the wonder of being sixteen and desirable. Or at least she had imagined she was desirable.

She shifted in the water, but it was too late. She was sixteen again: young, vulnerable and breathtakingly in love with life. With life and Clay Lincoln. He had been so handsome that her knees had turned to jelly every time she’d seen him and on this day, Cassie and Guy’s wedding day, he had looked like a Hollywood film star. Better than a Hollywood film star. The smart suit and silver-blue shirt and tie which had exactly matched the devastatingly cool eyes had held her transfixed.

And he had noticed her. For the first time he had noticed her. She had seen something in his eyes when she had followed the bridal pair down the aisle, her arm in that of Guy’s married brother who had been the best man. She couldn’t have found words to describe what she’d seen, she’d just known that in the three years before that day it had not been there.

It had made her want to shout and dance, to act crazy, but instead she had stood outside the church posing for pictures as though the only thing on her mind was the success of Cassie’s special day.

Clay had stood at the back of the crowd, his dark good looks brooding, but she’d been aware of every little movement he had made. The minute he had turned his head, whom he had spoken to, how many times he had smiled or nodded—her mind had recorded it all, along with the breadth of his strong shoulders, the magnetic pull of his overwhelming masculinity.

The reception had been typical of such occasions, she supposed. Feverish gaiety, endless speeches, toasts and more toasts, but all she had known was that when the dancing had started Clay had danced with everyone but her.

It had hurt. Desperately, tragically, in a way that only sixteen-year olds can feel, and towards the end of the evening she had passed through every emotion known to man.

The reception had been held at a lavish hotel overlooking a vast, man-made lake, and just before ten o’clock she had noticed Clay walk out of the big open doors at the end of the room and disappear into the shadows beyond. Even now she didn’t know what had made her follow him. Curiosity, desire, frustration, desperation, love… Probably a mixture of all of them.

The sky had been a deep indigo velvet pierced with stars, flooded with an ethereal whispering stillness that had made the scented air rich and heavy. It had been intoxicating.

He had been standing at the edge of the lake some distance from the lighted hotel, his dark bulk silhouetted against the water, and he hadn’t been aware of her presence until she had almost reached him. She’d gazed at him, aching with love.

‘Robyn?’ He turned as she trod on a small twig which alerted him to the fact that she was there. And then the look of bemusement changed and he said, his voice forced and teasing in a way she found insulting, ‘What are you doing out here? You’ll spoil that pretty dress of yours if you aren’t careful,’ as though she was six years old instead of sixteen.

‘It’s hot in there.’ She continued to his side, her stomach churning with her temerity. She paused, and then summoned every ounce of courage she possessed and said, her voice quiet and her eyes wide and serious, ‘Why didn’t you want to dance with me, Clay?’

‘Dance with you?’ He cleared his throat before smiling carefully, but she noticed it didn’t reach the silver blue of his eyes. ‘You’re in such demand tonight no one can get near you.’ His voice with its faint American accent was overhearty.

‘That’s not true.’ She didn’t know what was driving her but the night was timeless and enchanting and she had loved him so much for so long, and then to be disappointed afresh…

‘No?’ He opened his mouth to make some light, throw-away remark—she saw it in his face—but then as his eyes met hers he froze and it seemed as though they both stopped breathing. ‘Robyn…’

‘What?’ She moved even closer, her heart thundering at the look on his face. She might never get a chance like this again.

‘This is madness.’ It was a husky murmur, almost a sigh. ‘You’re a baby.’

‘I’m not a baby.’ She was hardly aware of reaching up to put her arms round his neck, her body pliant as the delicious smell of him wrapped round her. She’d show him she wasn’t a baby.

Slowly and very gently his arms pulled her against the hard solid wall of his chest, and as his face had come nearer she waited for the kiss in a rush of excitement that was too intense to bear. The taste and the feel of him was spinning in her head as his lips met hers, and as she gave a little moan of longing he answered it with a harsh, guttural sound of his own, his mouth becoming urgent and hungry.

At first she felt a slight sense of shock, the tiniest recoil as his tongue moved probingly against her lips, but almost immediately it was replaced with waves of delight as sensation after sensation began to bring her tinglingly alive.

Her body was moulded against his now, the vital male smell of him filling her nostrils and the alien sense of his hidden power and dominance becoming real as the thrust of his body against hers proclaimed his arousal. How long they continued to kiss she didn’t know, but their bodies were so close she could feel his heart slamming against his ribcage and feel every small tremor as his mouth left hers to blaze a burning trail down her throat and into the soft swell of her breasts.

He tried to move away at one point, his voice hoarse as he said, ‘We have to stop, Robyn, now. You’re Cassie’s little sister for crying out loud…’

But she pulled his head down to hers in answer, her love for him taking precedence over anything else and her surrender complete. His kisses and caresses were better than her most erotic dreams and she knew—she knew—she would never love anyone but Clay. She was moving mindlessly against him as he kissed her with a hungry intensity that was thrilling, his hands exploring her soft curves and causing her to arch and twist.

Her dress was off her shoulders now, exposing the pure creamy skin enhanced provocatively by the special lacy strapless bra she had bought. Then that too was peeled away from her hot skin and the full thrust of her breasts laid bare.

She should have felt shy; this was the first time she had even kissed a boy let alone been caressed and touched like this, but she felt nothing but elation and a wish to be even nearer to him as first his hands and then his lips made her arch with pleasure. This was Clay, she had dreamed of this moment, tasted it.

What would have happened if her name hadn’t been called into the dark shadows in which they were enclosed, she didn’t know. Or then again she did, only too well…

Robyn twisted jerkily in the bath, a wave of water slopping perilously close to the edge as the memories became almost too painful to contemplate.

Cassie and Guy had been ready to leave the reception and she had been missed. As their bridesmaid she had to wave them off.

She had tried to ignore the searching voices but Clay had frozen at the first shout, his muscled chest clenching before his breath had been hissed out between his teeth as he had very firmly put her from him, drawing first her bra and then her dress into place with hands that had shook slightly.

She remembered she’d made a small sound of protest, her arms reaching out to him again, but he had stepped back a pace, his voice grim as he’d said, ‘This should never have happened, Robyn. Hell, it must be the wine and the atmosphere and the fact that you’re so different tonight. But you’re too young, a child still, and I should never have touched you.’

‘I’m not a child.’ It hurt, terribly. ‘I’m over sixteen.’ She couldn’t believe he’d called her a child again.

‘Sixteen?’ His laugh was harsh, like a bark. ‘Damn it all, I’m twenty-three.’ And he glared at her.

‘I don’t care.’ The voices were still there in the background and she felt desperate to make him understand before they were found. ‘I—I’ve loved you for ages.’

‘Loved me?’ The note in his voice cut her in two and it was in that moment she discovered that love and hate are different sides of the same coin. ‘You’re barely out of nappies for crying out loud. How can you know what love is?’

She stared at him, too devastated to say a thing, and he glared back at her as he continued, ‘I don’t know what you’ve been up to with boys at school but judging by tonight it’s too damn much. I came very near to having you just now; do you understand that? Now, whether it’d be the first time or not for you is neither here or there, I know I should never have laid a finger on you. I’ve let Cassie and Guy down as well as myself.’

Cassie’s voice rose above the other calls and on hearing it Robyn whirled round and away from him, skimming across the grass like a will o’ the wisp, her hands pressed to her lips as she struggled not to cry. She paused to catch her breath before she emerged from the concealing shadows into the lights of the massive patio outside the room her parents had hired for the reception, adjusting her clothes and smoothing her hair. Then, forcing a smile to her face, she called, ‘I’m here, Cass.’