- -
- 100%
- +
Siena wished fervently Nick hadn’t come in.
Five years had gone by since she’d seen him last—she’d grown up from the naïve nineteen-year-old she’d been then, abandoning her adolescent fantasies of the perfect hero.
It was stupid to be so affected by his arrival.
Not that she’d been the only woman in the room to notice him. His arrogantly handsome features and leanly muscled height gave him a potent charisma that had caught the eye of most of the women in the restaurant.
A very dangerous charisma.
Don’t go there …
ROBYN DONALD can’t remember not being able to read, and will be eternally grateful to the local farmers who carefully avoided her on a dusty country road as she read her way to and from school, transported to places and times far away from her small village in Northland, New Zealand. Growing up fed her habit. As well as training as a teacher, marrying, and raising two children, she discovered the delights of romances and read them voraciously—especially enjoying the ones written by New Zealand writers. So much so that one day she decided to write one herself. Writing soon grew to be as much of a delight as reading—although infinitely more challenging—and when eventually her first book was accepted by Mills & Boon she felt she’d arrived home. She still lives in a small town in Northland, with her family close by, using the landscape as a setting for much of her work. Her life is enriched by the friends she’s made among writers and readers, and complicated by a determined Corgi called Buster, who is convinced that blackbirds are evil entities. Her greatest hobby is still reading, with travelling a very close second.
Recent titles by the same author:
THE FAR SIDE OF PARADISE
POWERFUL GREEK, HOUSEKEEPER WIFE*
*part of The Greek Tycoons series
One Night in the Orient
Robyn Donald
www.millsandboon.co.uk
CHAPTER ONE
LIFTING a glass of excellent French champagne, Siena Blake said, “Mum and Dad—here’s to your next thirty years together! May they be even happier than the ones you’ve already had.”
Diane Blake smiled, serenely elegant in the unfamiliar surroundings of an extremely upmarket London hotel. “Darling, if they’re only half as good as the past thirty years they’ll be wonderful.”
Siena’s father gave his wife a look that combined pride and love.
“They’ll be better,” he said confidently, “and one reason for that is our great good luck with our children. So I’ll return the toast—here’s to our twins, Siena and Gemma, for making our lives much fuller and more interesting.”
He raised his glass, adding slyly, “Although at our advanced ages I suppose we’re now expected to be eagerly waiting for grandchildren.”
Sparks flashed from the diamond in Siena’s engagement ring as candlelight danced across her taut fingers.
Her voice rang a little false in her ears when she said, “Well, I shouldn’t think Gemma has any maternal ambitions. She hasn’t yet found a man she’d like to marry, and you’d better give Adrian and me a few years yet.” Ignoring a nagging, unwelcome doubt, she took a sip of champagne and set her glass down. “Anyway, the important occasion right now is your anniversary.”
A little wistfully her mother said, “The only thing that would be more perfect is if Gemma could have been here too.” She smiled. “But she can’t, and your arrival yesterday was such a wonderful surprise. I’m only sorry Adrian couldn’t make it with you.”
Siena thrust aside her strange ambivalence. “He sends his love and best wishes, but he just couldn’t take time off work.”
Her parents understood. Together they’d built a business from nothing to a modest prosperity, and with their daughters had lived through times of hard work and sacrifices.
Swiftly Siena added, “Anyway, in a few weeks you’ll be home again in New Zealand, and we can celebrate again with Gemma and Adrian and all your friends.” She lifted her glass again. “So here’s to safe journeys. And a truly fantastic cruise for you both.”
As long as she could remember her parents had dreamed of cruising—of taking a leisurely trip through the Caribbean Sea and central America. After years of saving they’d finally set out on a round-the-world odyssey, first touring the United Kingdom before flying out early the next morning to join their ship.
A subdued flurry at the entrance caught her attention. Looking past her mother, she noted with hidden amusement the stately maître d’hotel increase pace perceptibly as he made his way across the room to greet some newcomers.
Clearly important newcomers. He’d barely acknowledged Siena when she’d arrived to join her parents.
At the unexpected sight of the man who’d just walked in, Siena’s heart performed a swift jig in her chest. Setting down her glass with a sharp little movement, she asked abruptly, “Is Nick here to celebrate with us?”
Her parents’ surprised looks told her he wasn’t. Diane said, “Our Nick?”
“Nicholas Grenville,” Siena said, the sound of his name on her tongue tinged with bitterness and shame.
Flinching at her mother’s surprised look, she composed her face and disciplined her voice into a steadiness she was far from feeling. “He’s just walked in with a stunning woman.”
Without turning, Diane asked, “An ash-blonde? Tall, coolly exquisite, superbly dressed?”
“That certainly sounds like the same person.” Although all Nick’s lovers had been blonde, coolly exquisite, sophisticated, et cetera.
All except one …
Banishing that extremely unwanted thought, she said hastily, “You know, it seems so unfair I should be barely five foot four inches high when everyone else in our immediate family is tall and elegant.”
Even Nick. Unconsciously her gaze flicked across the room as Nick and his partner were shown into an area hidden from most of the diners by a screen of greenery.
Of all the unwelcome coincidences! At least he hadn’t seen them.
Smiling, her voice teasing, she said, “Are you sure the nurses in the maternity unit didn’t confuse me with another baby?”
Her parents laughed. “Positive,” Diane said comfortably. “Apparently you’re very like your father’s grandmother, who died young. According to family lore she was little and practical and sensible and very forthright. And she had your black curls and those stunning blue eyes.”
“I’m glad you still think of Nick as part of our family,” Hugh said thoughtfully.
Siena shrugged airily, and bent the truth. “Oh, well, while you were mentoring him Gemma and I saw him at least once a week for years and years, and every holiday while his mother was working. We thought he was wonderful. He was always lovely to us, although he obviously hadn’t had much to do with small girls.”
She’d managed not to look across the room again, but she couldn’t help asking, “Who is his—the woman with him?”
His latest lover, she thought, a raw edge of old pain surfacing unexpectedly.
Diane exchanged a cryptic glance with her husband. “Portia Makepeace-Singleton. We had dinner in his apartment the night after we arrived in London, and she appeared at his door halfway through the meal. Unexpectedly, I’d say, although you know Nicholas—he gave nothing away.”
“I presume she’s his latest significant other,” Siena said, hoping she sounded coolly dismissive.
Her mother shrugged. “Possibly. Naturally we didn’t ask.”
Siena looked from one parent to the other. “You didn’t like her,” she guessed.
Diane looked a little self-conscious and didn’t answer directly. “Have they seen us?”
“No, they’ve been seated out of sight of us less distinguished diners.”
But the evening was comparatively young—plenty of time to be noticed, and Nick always noticed.
She wouldn’t let Nick’s arrival spoil the evening. Defiantly she raised her glass, only to set it down when light scintillated again from Adrian’s diamond.
Adrian was a darling. She was very happily looking forward to marrying him next year. He would never hurt her.
Whereas Nick.
She drew in a sharp breath. Nick had almost shattered her.
At sixteen she’d successfully exorcised a crush on her father’s protégé. Even then she’d known that Nick was not for her. By the time she’d left high school he’d well outstripped his mentor, made his first millions, and based himself overseas for several years.
He’d stayed in contact with Hugh, sending cards on important dates, calling in to see the family on his visits to New Zealand.
Then, when she’d been nineteen, he’d returned to New Zealand for a few months.
And Siena had been forced to realise she’d been fooling herself. Far from being exorcised, that adolescent crush had metamorphosed into full-blown desire. Oh, she’d fought it, until he’d.
“Siena?”
Jolted back into the present by her mother’s puzzled voice, she lifted her glass again and drank a little too deeply of the champagne.
“Sorry,” she said automatically. “I was daydreaming, I’m afraid. I’m overwhelmed by all this glitter and luxury. I wonder what it would be like to live like this?”
Hugh surveyed her with indulgent amusement. “It wouldn’t be long before you’d be bored out of your mind. Why don’t you ask Nick some day? It’s his milieu now that he’s a permanent figure in the world’s financial pages.”
“And described variously—depending on the journalist—as a buccaneer, a financial genius and an arrogant billionaire far too handsome for his own good,” Siena commented, hoping her parents didn’t notice the astringent note in her words.
“All accurate,” her father said, his tone not entirely approving.
He didn’t mention the gossip magazines, with their avid comments on Nick’s various relationships. Allowing for the usual frenetic exaggeration, there had been several of those.
Siena wished fervently Nick hadn’t come in.
Five years had gone by since she’d seen him last—she’d grown up from the naïve nineteen-year-old she’d been then, abandoning her adolescent fantasies of the perfect hero to settle for a happy future with a lovely man.
It was stupid to be so affected by his arrival.
Not that she’d been the only woman in the room to notice him. His arrogantly handsome features and leanly muscled height gave him a potent charisma that had caught the eye of most of the women in the restaurant.
A very dangerous charisma.
Don’t go there …
His presence added to a nameless unease that had been gathering in her for several weeks, a sense that her world—her life—was heading into a grey blandness.
Well, she was probably entitled to a certain concern about her future—a week ago she’d walked out of a perfectly good job.
And now was not the time to be thinking of that disaster. She set her jaw and pushed everything from her mind but the need to enjoy this evening with her parents.
To her relief, a band struck up the sort of music her parents loved. They’d met at a high school ball, and their shared love of dancing was the reason they’d chosen to celebrate their anniversary at this hotel, famous for its dinner dances.
Siena looked at her parents. “What are you waiting for? Up you get.”
“Nonsense,” her mother said robustly. “We’re not leaving you by yourself.”
“Mum, of course you must get up. I’m twenty-four! Sitting alone in a restaurant for a few minutes is not going to embarrass me. And I’d like very much to see you dance on your thirtieth wedding anniversary.”
After a little more encouragement her parents rose and made their way to the floor. Siena watched them go with a slightly twisted smile. They looked good together, moving with inbuilt, confident grace. Like them, her sister Gemma had hair and skin touched by gold and their long-boned, willowy stature, perfect for a model.
The sort of woman Nick favoured …
Oh, stop it! she commanded. OK, so her unfashionably curly tresses were black, and her skin so pale she didn’t dare spend more than a few minutes in New Zealand’s notorious summer sun unless she was slathered in sunscreen.
But she had inherited her parents’ love of dancing. Smiling, she realised one foot was tapping unconsciously. Using her savings to fly twelve thousand miles as a surprise had been an inspired decision, even if it had cleaned out her bank account. When she’d knocked on their hotel door the previous day her mother had fought back tears and her father had swallowed.
Siena glanced at a woman dressed with such superb taste she shone like a gem even in that gathering of the rich and the famous. Beside her was a notorious and inordinately handsome actor.
The skin between her shoulder-blades tightened. Refusing to turn, she kept her eyes on the dance floor while an odd, primitive apprehension throbbed through her.
From behind her a deep male voice said, “Five years ago you’d have turned to see who was watching you.”
Nick.
Deep within her something fierce and bewildering leapt into existence. No, was reborn …
Disconcerted, she focused on the diamond Adrian had given her, and squelched the automatic urge to swivel around. “Five years is a long time, Nick.”
Only then did she brace herself and turn to look up into his lean, handsome face. His brows lifted, one slightly higher than the other, as her wary gaze clashed with the hard, dense green of his eyes, exactly the burnished, many-layered colour of pounamu, the greenstone prized by both ancient Maori and modern New Zealanders.
Beautiful eyes, she’d thought as an adolescent—and far too perceptive, especially when they were half-screened by thick, long lashes. Once she’d been unable to meet his gaze without a secret inner thrill. The same foolish tension sawed at her nerves now.
“But you still know when someone’s watching you,” Nick drawled.
“Sometimes,” she evaded, a shiver scudding the length of her spine. Unbidden, wildly unsettling memories flooded her brain with disturbing, erotic images. Five years previously she’d lived for a few short weeks in a fantasy world, only to have it all crash down on her in a maelstrom of shattered hopes. Since then she’d made sure she hadn’t met him again.
“Do sit down, Nick—you make me feel like a hobbit confronted by an elf.” Her words came too quickly, almost tumbling out.
Nicholas Grenville was overpowering in every way. Superbly tailored evening clothes emphasised powerful shoulders and long legs, the white shirt contrasting with his coppery tan and black hair and those compelling eyes. But what made him stand out in this assembly of well-dressed, sophisticated men was an unconscious air of command, of hard-edged, formidable authority.
He lowered himself into the chair her father had vacated and enquired, “What are you doing in London? Your parents didn’t say they were expecting you.”
“They weren’t,” she told him, still struggling for composure. “I surprised them by arriving yesterday out of the blue.”
“Are you on holiday?”
“No,” she said crisply. “I left my job.”
His brows were raised again. For once, she thought, startled by her satisfaction at the thought, she’d surprised him.
“Why? I thought you were happily settled managing some plant shop.”
Her parents must have told him, and Nick would have filed the information away in that computer brain of his.
Furious and alarmed by the swift surge of warmth that thought aroused, she said, “It wasn’t only a plant shop; I managed quite a big nursery as well.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Very much.”
Nick leaned back in his chair and surveyed her. Five years had made quite a difference; a slender blue dress skimmed her body, subtly hinting at tantalising curves beneath, and she’d highlighted the incredible blue of her eyes and her silky, translucent skin with a skilful use of cosmetics. She hadn’t quite managed to tame her tumble of ebony curls, and the gaze that met his was reserved, but he discerned a familiar hint of challenge in both eyes and attitude.
Ruthlessly he subdued his body’s spontaneous and exasperating response. “So why did you leave?”
She hesitated, then lifted her small square chin in a defiant movement he recognised. “The business was sold, and unfortunately the new owner decided I’d be perfect as a nice little bit on the side.”
Gripped by cold, uncompromising anger, Nick forced himself to control it. “And were you?”
Lips tightening, she lifted her hand and splayed the fingers to reveal an engagement ring. “Not interested. But it made for a difficult situation, so I left.”
Whatever he’d expected, it hadn’t been the sight of that ring. His anger mutated into an emotion he didn’t recognise, one he refused to face. He should be—he was—pleased she’d fallen in love. Presumably with someone who valued her, a man she could trust—unlike the one who’d taken her virginity and then walked out on her.
That ring and all it implied should go some way to easing his guilt.
It didn’t.
It took most of his iron self-control to say curtly, “With a handsome redundancy payment, I hope.”
“Absolutely.” She beamed at him, a smile that had always meant mischief. “I gave it to a charity for abused women. In his name. They were terribly grateful and no doubt will contact him regularly asking for further donations.”
Nick’s smile showed his teeth. “A nice little revenge—and typical of you. I assume you had a contract?”
“A contract I broke.”
“For reasons that could have seen your boss up before the employment court,” he said uncompromisingly. “What did your fiancé think of that?”
Siena’s eyes widened. Adrian had been angry about the situation, but he’d accepted her handling of it. “He was fine.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as defensive as she felt.
Apart from a subtle narrowing of those coolly watchful eyes Nick’s expression didn’t change. “A rather muted response, surely?”
For him it would have been; even as an adolescent he’d been protective towards two small girls.
But Adrian was nothing like Nick. Adrian would never make love to her as though she was the only woman in the world, then leave the next morning without a word of explanation beyond a few curt phrases of apology for getting carried away.
Adrian wouldn’t break her heart.
“Not everyone has your killer instinct,” she told Nick with a taut smile. “Adrian knows I can deal with my own problems.”
Nick leaned back in his chair and let his gaze rest a moment on her ring finger. Siena had to repress a weird instinct to hide it protectively under the table.
Relentlessly he demanded, “So you walked out of a situation you should never have had to face, with nothing more than your wages, then decided to hop on a plane and meet your parents in London?”
She said cheerfully, “You must be a mind-reader.”
His smile was sharp, its humour almost mocking. “No, I happen to remember a wilful, determined child with a big heart. What do you intend to do once you get back home?”
“Find another job, of course.”
“Just like that?”
“Give me credit for some intelligence,” she said coolly. “I have extremely good references, both from my previous employer and the rat who propositioned me. And while I worked there I learnt a lot about landscaping as well.”
Nick nodded. “Your mother told me you’d planned the makeover of their garden. You did a good job—it looks superb.”
Hiding her pleasure at this, she said, “Gardening’s always been fashionable in New Zealand, and Auckland is a great place for it. Almost everything grows there.
As well, the recession has produced a huge surge of interest in being as self-sufficient as possible. Think vegetable gardens and home orchards. I’ll find a new position—a better one.”
“Still the same confident little thing,” he said in a tone tinged with irony. “Tiny and bossy and infuriatingly persistent.”
His summing up of her character stung. Producing her sunniest smile, she said, “Remind me to get a reference from you—it can only help.”
“Any time,” he said laconically. “So, having walked out of your job and on a point of principle donated money you should have put in the bank to a charity, it was an entirely logical decision for you to come to England?”
“It’s Mum and Dad’s thirtieth anniversary,” she explained.
He looked surprised. “They didn’t mention it when we had dinner together.”
“You know my parents.”
His arrogant features softened a little. “Yes. They wouldn’t have wanted any fuss.”
“We were going to have a party at home—just a small one—and then they planned just to fly over for their dream cruise, but they got a really good deal from one of the big travel firms, with a tour of the UK thrown in first. They weren’t going to take it, but Gemma wouldn’t have been able to make the party—she’s in Australia doing a big promotion for a fashion week there—so I persuaded them to go. And then I decided to come across for the actual day.”
He nodded. “And how did your fiancé feel about that?”
“Adrian?” She glanced across, met his burnished green gaze and felt a twinge of sensation in the pit of her stomach. Swiftly she said, “He thought it was a brilliant idea.”
“Clearly a very accommodating man.” Nick’s voice was sardonic.
Siena returned crisply, “Adrian comes from a big family in the South Island. He understands family dynamics.”
Too late, she remembered that Nick came from a dysfunctional marriage, and flushed, furious with herself. She was so foolishly conscious of him she couldn’t even organise her thoughts.
Nick gave her a narrow smile. “And I don’t?”
“I wasn’t referring to you.” She apologised. “I’m sorry—it was a crass comment.”
“But entirely correct,” he drawled. Once again he glanced down at her ring. “So when is the wedding?”
“We haven’t settled on a date yet,” she said, “but almost certainly in the spring next year.”
He looked curious. “A long time off. Are you living together?”
“No.” The heat in her cheeks flared up again. Her thoughtless comment had been returned with interest and cool deliberation.
Nick looked over her shoulder and rose to his feet, his expression well under control.
Expecting her parents, Siena was surprised by the woman who stopped at the table, but only for a second.
As Nick got to his feet she realised this had to be his latest lover.
CHAPTER TWO
ASSAILED by an emotion perilously close to jealousy—no, Siena corrected hastily, envy—she took in the newcomer’s tall blonde beauty with something like resignation.
“Nicholas,” the new arrival said in a modulated voice. “You see, I wasn’t away long.”
“Portia, this is Siena Blake,” he said negligently, and introduced her.
A pale, expert gaze appraised Siena’s blue silk. Appraised—and then dismissed it as a chain store irrelevance. A spark of rebellion lifted Siena’s chin a fraction.
Nick finished the introductions. “You met Siena’s parents a couple of nights ago,” he told the newcomer.
The blonde said smoothly, “I remember. Your fellow New Zealanders.” Dismissing them too, she gazed down an aristocratic nose at Siena. “So you and your sister are the—” Her brow crinkled a moment before she laughed softly and directed an arch, long-lashed glance at the man beside her. “I think the words Nicholas used were ‘the nearest things I have to sisters.’ Is that right, darling?”