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www.millsandboon.co.uk
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
PETER RAMSEY SAW the traffic controller step out onto the pedestrian crossing, brandishing her stop sign, and slowed his car to a halt. A tribe of preschool children, kept in check by a couple of adults, were lined up on the sidewalk, waiting for it to be safe before heading over to the park on the other side of the road. They were all carrying lunch boxes.
Nice day for a picnic in the park, Peter thought, smiling at the happy little faces.
“Nice car!”
The appreciative comment from the traffic controller snapped his attention back to her. She had a wide infectious smile on her face, bright eyes dancing teasingly at him. Macho male in his BMW Z4 sports convertible being stopped for a pack of kids. She was enjoying her moment of power. Peter grinned back. I don’t mind, babe.
She turned aside to help shepherd her flock across the road just as Peter registered a buzz of interest in his mind. He liked the look of her. Her jeans hugged a very pertly rounded backside and long shapely legs. She was tall enough to be a good fit with his height. The scooped neck top she wore showed off a small waist and very attractive breasts, fulsome but not too big to be out of proportion with the rest of her figure. She was a babe all right.
He even liked the fact that her hair was pulled up into a ponytail—dark hair, almost black, the tail swishing as her head turned, keeping a watch over the safe passage of the children. She had a pert nose, too, slightly turned up at the end, and rather pixie-like ears, no lobes. Her skin was clear and shiny with good health. He couldn’t see any make-up except for the light pink lipstick that matched the pink in her top. No artful attraction about this woman. She was a natural. Mid-twenties? Difficult to tell her age.
The last of the children—a little boy—grabbed her free hand as though it was a highly prized connection, determined on pulling her along with him. I don’t blame you, kid, Peter thought, noticing how the boy looked adoringly at her, which probably meant she was one of the teachers from the preschool, briefly taking on traffic control.
She turned to look straight at Peter again, flashing the lovely wide smile as she waved her Stop sign in a cheeky salute to his patience. He raised his own hand in response, his mouth automatically curving as he had the weird sense of a fountain of pleasure bursting through him. He watched her accompany the little boy to the sidewalk on the park side of the road, wanting to follow her, meet her properly.
A car horn beeped behind him.
He drove on reluctantly, telling himself the impulse was stupid. What would a preschool teacher have in common with him? It flashed through his mind that Princess Diana had worked with preschool children before she married Prince Charles. Their marriage might have gone bad but Diana had become the Queen of Hearts. She’d reached out to people, touched them…
What woman had really touched him in recent years? Peter Ramsey, most eligible bachelor in Sydney, heir to billions and billionaire in his own right, and all too familiar with why he could have his pick of beautiful women. Which was fine for his sex life, but he had never been touched deeply enough for any attachment to last beyond an initial rush of lust. Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he had become too cynical about how much he was worth when it came to marriage.
Even the babe with the ponytail…had she smiled at him because of the car he was driving?
Great smile.
The buzz of interest lingered.
Take a second look, it said. You’ve got the time.
And the inclination.
After the deceitful artfulness of Alicia Hemmings—his recent ex—it would be…refreshing…exciting…to have a woman without any artifice responding to him. Especially in bed. No faking it with an eye to feathering her own nest. Smiling that lovely smile afterwards…
Even while mentally mocking what was probably sheer fantasy, Peter turned his car into the next side street, spotted a parking space and took it. A quick button-press and the convertible hood lifted back in position for secure locking up. Preferring not to be connected to the driver of the BMW, he removed his cap, sunglasses, jacket, tie, undid the neck buttons on his shirt, rolled up his sleeves, then stepped out for an idle stroll through the park.
It was possible he could be recognised as Peter Ramsey, given his high media profile, but who would believe it when he was so out of place? Besides, it didn’t matter anyway. The woman would be surrounded by children, hardly an appropriate time or place to make himself known to her in any sense. Pursuing this impulse was ridiculous, yet the compulsion to go on, if only to satisfy a niggling sense of curiosity about her, had become irresistible. She was different to the usual run of women who peopled his world.
A corner shop provided him with sandwiches and a can of cola and he carried them into the park, feeling as though it would look perfectly reasonable for him to be having his lunch there. In fact, he was enjoying the novelty of it, enjoying the pretend game of being just anyone. Acting on this particular impulse was definitely not boring.
The children were seated on the grass, shaded from the midday sun by the widely spread branches of a Moreton Bay Fig. They were all looking enthralled at the ponytail babe who was apparently telling them a story. Peter settled on a nearby bench seat where he could surreptitiously watch and listen to the story-teller.
Her face was full of animation, very watchable. She also had a voice worth listening to. It lilted beautifully as she recited the rhyming verses of a fairy tale—a charming story about a princess with a magic rainbow smile and a heart of gold who’d come from the land of Evermore to bring joy to all the children.
Of course, there was the villain of the piece—a sneaky kid who always wore black and was really a rat—who set out to spoil every bit of happiness and spread lies about the princess, making her disappear from the children’s lives. But one small boy didn’t believe the rat’s trickery and he cried out in a mighty lion’s roar, bringing the princess back from the land of Evermore and exposing the rat for the stinking, rotten liar he was.
Standard stuff—good triumphing over evil—yet Peter was completely captivated by the rhyming verses and the perfectly pitched emotional delivery of them. The preschoolers listening so avidly to every word, actually came in on some lines as though they knew much of the story by heart, especially the lion’s roar bit. It had tremendous appeal and no doubt came from a popular children’s book. Peter decided to look for it, buy it as a gift for his nephew some time in the near future.
Once the last line had been recited, the children clapped and jumped up to form a dancing ring. There was a bit of a scuffle over who got to hold the storyteller’s hands. One of the other adults dryly advised, “You’d better be the princess in the middle, Erin.”
Erin…
Nice name.
And she was great with the children, all of whom clearly adored her.
He was feeling very attracted to this woman, and not just on a physical level, though her sexual appeal was certainly getting stronger by the moment. He imagined her telling him fairy tales in bed…erotic ones…like Sheherazade, keeping her sultan entranced with her stories, making every night too good to miss.
He’d like that.
Very much.
So how was he going to meet Princess Erin in an acceptable fashion?
She could be married for all he knew, or attached to some guy she was in love with. Peter didn’t care for that thought one bit, quickly brushing it aside to concentrate on what tactic would give him the result he wanted.
There was no easy in here, not like for his friend and now brother-in-law, Damien Wynter, who’d taken one look at Peter’s sister and charged straight into getting Charlotte to marry him instead of the fortune-hunter who’d almost had a wedding ring on her finger.
He remembered asking Damien how he knew Charlotte was the one for him. The answer was still imprinted on Peter’s mind.
“There’s a buzz in your brain that tells you not to miss out on what you could have with this woman. She fits what you’ve been waiting for.”
Were his instincts telling him that Erin might be the one? The mocking voice of past experience said that was jumping too far too fast. Right now he was hooked enough to know he didn’t want to walk away from her, shutting a door that might lead to something good, something better than he’d had in the past. No matter how unlikely it was…
“Hey!”
The startled cry of alarm came from one of the teachers as a man charged the circle of dancing children and grabbed one of the little boys, snatching him up in his arms and hugging him tightly against his shoulder.
“He’s my son!” he threw at the three women who started toward him, protesting his action. It was like an animal growl, fiercely possessive, and the man backed away, eyeing them wildly, still clutching the boy to his chest.
The women argued with him.
The children started wailing, agitated by the sense of volatile conflict that had so suddenly erupted.
Peter sprang into action, catching snatches of the argument as he circled the Moreton Bay Fig to come around behind the threatening kidnapper.
“I’m his father. I’ve got every right to take Thomas with me.”
“We’re responsible for him, Mr Harper. His mother left him with us for the day and…”
“His mother took him from me. He’s my son!”
“You need to sort this out with your wife.”
“She won’t let me have him but she dumps him with you people who are nothing to him. Nothing! I’m his father!”
“We’ll have to call the police if you take Thomas.”
“Mr Harper, this is not a good move. If you end up in jail, you’ll never see your son.” That was Erin’s voice, gently pleading reason.
A high crazed laugh derided any reasonableness. “There’s justice for you. I do nothing wrong but I lose my son and my cheating bitch of a wife just gets him given to her.”
“You have to take this to the family court,” Erin pressed. “You’ll get a fair hearing.”
“Nothing’s fair!” The exploding anger cracked into spurts of tears as grief and despair poured from him. “She’s told a stack of lies about me to her big-shot lawyer. I’ve got no chance except this. No chance! You tell my wife she’s welcome to her money-bags lover, but taking my son…no…no…no…”
The tortured sobs of the man were gut-wrenching. He was shaking his head, backing away from Erin in a blind stumble.
“I’m calling the police,” one of the other teachers said, a cell phone already in her hand.
“Don’t!” Peter commanded as he moved in and clamped an arm around the bereft father’s heaving shoulders, stopping and supporting him.
Erin lifted a startled gaze to his. “Who are you?” she asked.
She had green eyes.
Beautiful green eyes.
And Peter felt a compelling urge to answer every question in them. Except…he didn’t want to throw the weight of his name around with her.
“I’m just a guy who hates to see another man reduced to tears,” he said, then shot a look of incisive authority at the teacher with the phone. “Stop that right now. I’ll take care of this. Calling in the police will only make everything worse.”
“I’m in charge of these children,” the woman argued. She was a good deal older than Erin, maybe in her fifties, iron-grey hair cut short, plump figure, and puffing herself up officiously. “I have to answer to Mrs Harper about what happens to Thomas.”
“Nothing is going to happen to Thomas,” Peter assured her. “Mr Harper just needed to hold his son for a few minutes. Fair enough in the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”
“He has to give him back,” the woman insisted.
“Yes. And you can trust me to see that he does. I’m big enough to do it. Okay?”
The man he was holding was too shattered to put up a fight and would have no hope of winning against Peter even if he did pull himself together.
The woman protesting his interference took stock of Peter’s height—well over six feet tall—his broad, muscular shoulders and powerful physique, all of which made him a formidable opponent in any arena. Harper was a relatively small man, the top of his head barely reaching Peter’s chin, his far more slender frame almost dwarfed in comparison. If it came to physical force, it was obvious who would end up controlling the situation.
“Make him give the boy back now,” the woman demanded.
The boy spoke for himself. “I want my daddy. I love my daddy.” He flung his little arms around his father’s neck and snuggled his head close. “Don’t cry, Daddy, I don’t like you crying.”
Tearing him away from his father would be brutal. There were other, kinder solutions to this situation. “Let’s take a bit of time to calm everything down,” Peter directed at the woman, trying to engender a spark of sympathy. “I’m going to walk Mr Harper over to that park bench…” He nodded to where he’d seated himself earlier. “He can sit with Thomas while you supervise the other children at play.”
“They’re all upset now,” she protested. “We should take them back to the kindergarten and settle them down.”
Peter switched his attention to Erin whom he found looking straight at him, a curious wonder in her lovely, luminous green eyes. Desire hit him hard and fast. Close up to her like this, any lingering doubt about pursuing this woman completely disintegrated. The adrenaline rush in his blood, the tingling in his groin—nothing jaded about these feelings. He wanted her and he was going to have her.
“Tell them another story,” he suggested, smiling to push the connection that had to be made. “You’re very good at it. I was listening to you while I ate my lunch. I’m sure you can make any trauma fade away.”
A twitch of a smile back. “Thank you. I think that’s a good idea.”
“Erin…” the other woman chided, obviously afraid of consequences with the situation taken completely out of her control.
“He is big enough, Sarah,” she stated confidently, waving away any further protest.
No rings on her left hand.
“Besides, you can always call the police if things don’t turn out right,” she added to appease ruffled feathers.
Triumphant pleasure surged through Peter. Erin was on side with him. Whether it was over this issue—fathers who got a raw deal when it came to divorce—or more a positive response to his presence on the scene—the man he was—he didn’t know, but a step had been made and he could exploit it.
Erin re-engaged with him, appealing for his co-operation. “We’ll have to collect Thomas on our way back to school.”
“Understood. Better make it you who does the collecting,” he pushed. “Thomas is less likely to cut up rough if he’s taken from his dad by the princess.”
She had pale creamy skin and it suddenly bloomed with colour. Peter couldn’t remember any women of his acquaintance ever blushing. He found it quite entrancing.
“All right,” she quickly agreed, then turned away to gather the children into a happy little group again.
The officious Sarah frowned disapprovingly at Peter but she clucked around her flock, not quite prepared to keep fighting his plan but still fretting over being thrust into the position of trusting a stranger. Nevertheless, having to call the police and deal with legal issues was not an attractive idea, either.
Having successfully manoeuvred a second meeting with Erin and won some time for the distressed father and son, Peter virtually scooped Harper along with him to the designated park bench, encouraging his compliance with a spate of sympathetic talk. “I know it’s all got on top of you, mate, but just fall in with me now and let’s see if we can find a better way to get you back with your son.”
There was no fight left in Harper. It seemed to Peter the man was completely at the end of his tether, almost collapsing onto the bench and rocking his little son in a kind of desperate love, having no hope at all for the future. When he was composed enough to speak, he looked at Peter with anguished eyes and said, “She told her lawyer I was an abusive father. It’s not true. Not true…”
Peter believed him. Far from showing any fear of his father, Thomas was clinging to him as though he’d missed his dad as much as Harper had missed his son. The caring was obviously mutual.
“A good lawyer should be able to set that straight,” he advised.
“I can’t afford one. Lost my job. Couldn’t give it the energy it needs…”
“What work do you normally do?”
“Salesman.”
“Okay. What if I find you another job, set you up with a lawyer who’s an expert on custodial rights, ensure you have the best advice on how to handle what’s happening now…”
“Why would you do this?” His eyes reflected confusion, an agitated mixture of uncertainty and mistrust. “You don’t even know me.”
It made Peter pause for a moment to sift through his motivation. Because a father shouldn’t be forcibly separated from his son? Because he hated seeing a man destroyed by a woman who took everything from him? Because of the sheer injustice of what was happening?
Or because impulse was ruling his life today!
Erin…
Connecting himself to Thomas’s welfare gave him a step into her work-place, a follow-up point for pursuing a connection with her. Harper didn’t know it, but he was a heaven sent opportunity for Peter to further his acquaintance with a woman he wanted.
However, the simple answer was, “Because I can. And I want to help you, Harper. I want Thomas to have his father in his life. It’s important.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You’re promising a hell of a lot.”
“Trust me. I can and will deliver on what I’m offering.”
A searching look, wanting to believe, hoping for a miracle, then the question…“Who are you?”
The same question Erin had asked.
Peter knew he had to answer this time. It would give instant credence to what he’d promised. He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers, opened it and showed Harper his driver’s licence for identification.
“Peter Ramsey,” the man read. The shock of the well-known billionaire-tag name hit him almost instantaneously. His eyes widened as he stared at the face that had been regularly displayed in the media for years—the squarish jawline, dark blond hair, blue eyes, strong arrowed nose, prominent cheekbones, a sprinkle of freckles from boyhood years in the sun—recognition sinking in. “What are you doing here?” spilled off his tongue.
Alone in a common park without the entourage that usually accompanied his public appearances…Peter shrugged it off. “Just taking a bit of time out of my life.”
“Like a chance in a million,” Harper muttered dazedly.
Which raised an ironic little smile. “Guess your luck was in for once.”
“You really mean it? You’ll help me like you said?”
“Yes, I will. You can come with me and we’ll get things moving in a positive direction for you right after Thomas has to go back to the kindergarten. In the meantime, why don’t you have a chat with your son, find out how life has been going for him since you’ve been separated?”
Harper thrust out his hand. “This is mighty generous of you, Mr Ramsey.”
“No problem,” Peter assured him, shaking his hand.
“I’m Dave. Dave Harper.”
“Good to know you, Dave.”
It was good—listening to the man reassuring the little boy that Daddy was okay now and they would get to see each other again soon.
Erin was weaving her magic with the kindergarten children, telling them another fairy tale in rhyming verses. Not one of them looked away from her to check on how Thomas was doing with his father. Disturbance over, Peter thought.
Nevertheless, the older woman, Sarah, would undoubtedly feel obliged to report this incident to Thomas’s mother when she came to pick him up later this afternoon. Which could cause Dave more grief. Although the kidnapping had been averted, the threat of it could be used against him. Better to fix that possible problem before it got rolling.
Besides, the fixing would give him the chance to meet Erin properly.
He would have to use the power of his name to get past Sarah’s objections to his interference, but he couldn’t remain incognito with Erin indefinitely anyway. He grimaced over the necessity for his identity to be revealed, knowing it would inevitably be a factor in how much she would want to know him.
It was always a factor.
But right now he didn’t care.
The desire to have her was far too strong to care about any other factors.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT a man!
Part of Erin’s mind kept buzzing over him even as she carried through his suggestion of concentrating the children’s attention on another story.
A big man in every sense, she decided—strength, compassion, authority, as well as having a fabulous physique emitting so much male power, her female hormones were leaping around in a frenzy of interest. Definitely a prince of a man, and I’d just love to be his princess, she thought dizzily.
She’d caught a glimpse of him strolling through the park earlier and instantly liked what she saw—very impressive. When he’d settled on the bench seat in easy earshot of her story-telling, it had been impossible to resist the impulse to show off to him, pouring much more vitality into her performance than she usually did. Which was really silly because he was an absolute stranger with no chance of their meeting, given that she was caught up with a group of children.
Then had come his amazing intrusion when Thomas’s father had been about to make a terrible mistake. Generally people did not involve themselves in problems that were none of their business. Yet this man had, taking firm control of a very scary situation and producing alternative courses of action right off the top of his head, which demonstrated a mind used to cutting through to the heart of the matter in no time flat.
He’d even flummoxed Sarah with his air of commanding authority and Erin had never known Sarah to surrender her own authority to anyone else. It was good that she had on this occasion, though. Thomas’s father obviously needed help, not a stint in jail, which would defeat any hope of getting visiting rights with his son. Erin felt sorry for him. Having his wife desert him for a richer man and taking their son with her…he was in a bad place right now.
Apparently Sarah had decided they were in a bad place, too. As soon as the story ended, she was urging the children to pick up their lunch-boxes and form a crocodile line, ready for their return to the kindergarten. She picked up the traffic Stop sign herself, and directed Erin to collect Thomas. “And don’t be put off by the guy who took them over,” she instructed emphatically. “The boy’s mother could sue us for negligence.”
“I’m sure he’ll see that the agreement is kept,” Erin replied confidently.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to trust a stranger?” Sarah grumbled.
By their actions you shall know them, Erin recited to herself as she set off to approach the big man and the father and son he had taken under his protection. This guy was good. In fact, with his tall, muscular build and thick mass of blond hair, he was the perfect image for a splendid Viking warrior, wielding his powerful sword to fix wrongs. She could already see him being the hero in her next story.