A Virgin For The Taking

MILLS & BOON

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You really can’t travel to a place like Broome, Western Australia, without burning to set a book there. Set between the stunning Kimberley and the turquoise Indian Ocean, the town imparts a real sense of drama, romance and passion. It’s a fascinating town, with a fascinating history, marked by isolation, incredible hardships, colorful characters and the quest for riches—first by the collection of pearl shell for mother-of-pearl, but more recently for the cultivation of the magnificent South Sea pearls themselves, truly the most beautiful pearls in the world.

This book is dedicated to the town of Broome and to its people, a special breed for a very special place.

And very special thanks to the moon, for doing its thing that cloud-free night by rising spectacularly over the tidal flats of Roebuck Bay and making that wonderfully special phenomenon, the Stairway to the Moon.

Simply the most romantic place on earth.

Simply magic!

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 FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

ZANE BASTIANI stepped on to the tarmac of Broome International Airport and felt the late wet-season humidity close around him like a vice. He glanced skyward in irritation, to where the source of the melting heat shone so unforgivingly above.

He’d forgotten about the heat. Other things had slipped his mind, too—like the sharp blue of the sky, the clear salt-tinged air and the sheer quality of the light. Nine years of dreary London weather and grey concrete architecture had disarmed him completely. He felt like a foreigner in his home town.

Nine years.

Hard to believe it was so long since he’d left with just his name and the conviction to make it big time on his own. Not that he’d wasted a minute of it. Now, with a terrace house in Chelsea, a chalet in Klosters and the chairmanship of the most aggressive merchant bank in London, he was well on his way.

And for every one of those nine years he’d been waiting for his father to call and admit that he’d been wrong, but when the call had finally come it hadn’t been from his father at all.

‘Not critical,’ the doctor had assured him, ‘but Laurence asked to see you.’

He’d asked to see Zane.

It might have taken a heart attack, but after all the bitterness between them, any request had to be worth something.

So Zane had taken the first flight out of London to anywhere that might offer the fastest connection with this remote north-west Australian location. His platinum credit card had taken care of the details.

He shrugged the kinks out of his shoulders as he headed for the terminal, steeling himself for meeting his father once again. When Zane had been just a kid growing up, Laurence Bastiani had always seemed larger than life, always the big man with the big voice and the big ideas who’d never succumbed to as much as the common cold. It made sense that it would take something like a heart attack to stop him in his tracks. Even so, it was impossible to picture him now, lying ill in hospital. His father would hate it. He’d probably have checked himself out of there already.

Inside the arrivals’ terminal, ceiling fans spun languidly overhead, stirring up barely more than a breeze as travel-weary passengers began to crowd around the luggage carousel.

His one hastily packed leather bag, its red Priority tag swinging, came through first. He reached down, hauling it from the carousel, then headed towards the exit, making for the line of waiting taxis, increasingly aware the fine cotton of his shirt was already heavy with perspiration.

How long would it take to re-acclimatise to Broome’s tropical temperatures, given he’d been away so many years? Not that it really mattered, he thought dismissively as he curled himself into a taxi and snapped out a brisk command to the driver. He’d be back in London long before there was any chance of that happening.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CRASH TEAM had departed, the tubes and needles removed, the equipment turned off. Strange—she’d grown to hate that incessant beeping of the monitor over the last couple of days with its constant reminder of Laurence’s increasingly frail condition. But right now Ruby Clemenger would give anything to have that noise back—anything to break the deathly quiet of the room—anything at all if it meant that Laurence was still really here.

But Laurence was gone.

Her eyes felt scratchy and swollen, but there were no tears, not yet, because it was just so hard to accept. And so unfair. Fifty-five was way too young to die, especially when you had the vision and energy of Laurence Bastiani, the now late head of the largest cultured South Sea pearl operation in the world.

Even now he looked like he was sleeping, his hand still warm in hers. But there was no tell-tale rise and fall of his chest under the sheet, no flicker of eyelashes as if he was merely dreaming, no answering squeeze of his fingers.

She let her head fall forward on her chest, her eyelids jammed together as she tried to see past the yawning pit of despair inside her. But logic had deserted her tonight just as swiftly as Laurence’s unexpected departure. And now all she could think about were his final words to her, half whispered, half choked, his fingers pressing urgently into her flesh as the attack that had finally taken his life overcame him.

‘Look after him,’ he’d managed to whisper. ‘Look after Zane. And tell him—I’m sorry…’

And then the monitor’s note had changed into one continual bleep and her thoughts had turned to panic. A heartbeat later the doors to the room had crashed open to a flurry of blue cotton and trolleyed machinery and in one swift blur she’d been expertly manoeuvred outside.

By the time they’d let her back in it was over and she’d never had a chance to ask him what he’d meant and why the son who hadn’t bothered to contact his father the best part of a decade should need looking after or why Laurence felt he was the one who should apologise for his son’s neglect. And she’d never had a chance to demand to know why the hell Laurence would expect her to be the one to do it.

But she had no time to squander on the prodigal son. After the way he’d neglected his father, Zane was so low on her radar he didn’t register. Right now she’d lost her mentor, a father figure and an inspiration. Most of all, she’d lost a dear friend.

‘Oh, Laurence,’ she whispered, her voice cracking under the strain. ‘I’ll miss you so much.’

The door swung open behind her. She sniffed and took a calming breath. The staff would be wanting her to leave so they could complete the formalities. She lifted her head to acknowledge their presence.

‘I’m almost ready,’ she said, only half turning towards the door. ‘Just a moment longer, if that’s okay.’

There was no immediate response, no drawing back and closing of doors, and a strange feeling of unease crawled its way up her spine. Her back straightened in reaction, her arms prickling into goosebumps as the room chilled to ice-cold.

‘I’d prefer to visit with my father alone.’

Her head snapped around to where the stranger with the ice-cold tone filled the doorway. And yet, for the briefest second, her heart skipped with recognition—until harsh reality resurfaced, snuffing out her momentary joy.

Oh, they might have been Laurence’s eyes she’d been staring at, with their same dark caramel richness, the same shape and heavy-hooded, almost seductive lids. But whereas the older man’s eyes had been filled with a mixture of affection and respect, their corners crinkled with laughter over a shared joke or with natural delight at discovering the perfect pearl, the eyes turned upon her now were cold and imperious.

Zane, she realised, her first-impression sensors screaming a red-light warning. So what that he was Laurence’s son?—clearly that didn’t make him her friend.

His body language made that more than plain. His unyielding stance was imbued with antagonism, from his unshaven jaw and short finger-combed dark hair to his designer black jeans and hand-crafted leather boots, planted on the tiled floor like they owned it. Even the contrasting white shirt failed to soften the impression, instead only emphasising his olive skin and dark features. He wore power like a birthright.

She forced her aching back ramrod straight in her chair as his icy gaze swept over her, noticing when it finally came to a halt where her fingers rested, still curled around his father’s hand. Disapproval came off him in waves, but she pointedly maintained her hold. She had a right to be here even if he didn’t like it. And he obviously didn’t. Too bad.

And yet, whatever his faults, part of her recognized that he had to be hurting, too. Despite the two not speaking for years, his father’s death must still have come as a huge shock. Even just one day ago Laurence had been expected to make a complete recovery, so when Zane had boarded that plane from London, the prospect of his father’s death would have been a remote and unlikely possibility. He would have to be made of granite not to be affected by what he’d discovered once he’d arrived. Nobody could be that hard. Nobody could that insensitive.

‘You must be Zane,’ she said, trying to steer some kind of course through the jagged ice floes cluttering the atmosphere between them. ‘I’m Ruby Clemenger. I worked with your father.’

‘I know who you are,’ he snapped.

She blinked and took a steadying breath, instantly rethinking her earlier assumption. Maybe he was that hard and insensitive, after all.

‘I am sorry about your father,’ she persisted, trying again, if only for Laurence’s sake, because even if she didn’t give a rat’s about Zane, she’d wanted so much for Laurence to have his last wish met. She shook her head. ‘He wanted so much to see you. But you’re too late.’

His eyes narrowed in on hers, intensifying their laser-like quality.

‘Too late?’ he repeated. ‘Oh, yeah, it sure looks that way from where I’m standing.’

She shivered in the frosty atmosphere. Why did she get the distinct impression he was talking about more than his father’s untimely death?

Zane battled to hold his mounting irritation in check. Trust her to be here. He hadn’t seen a single photograph of his father over the last few years that hadn’t also featured this woman clinging to his arm. Ruby Clemenger—his father’s constant companion, his father’s right-hand woman. His father had always been a leg man, and, judging by the long sweep of golden limbs tucked beneath her on the armchair, nothing much had changed.

But right now all he wanted was for her to use those legs to get out of here. This was his father, his grief, his anger. He’d travelled the best part of twenty-four hours, only to be cheated out of seeing his father by one. He didn’t want to share this time with anyone, let alone with the likes of her.

At last it seemed she was taking the hint. The spark of fight that had flared in her azure eyes had dimmed as she unwound herself out of the chair, her movements slow and deliberate, like she’d been sitting too long. But still she didn’t move away from the bed, her filmy skirt floating just above knee length.

Even in their jet-lagged state his eyes couldn’t help but notice—he’d been right about the legs. But now she was standing, it was clear her attributes didn’t stop there—they extended much further north, an alluring mix of feminine curves and sun-kissed skin, of blue eyes framed by dark lashes and lips generous enough to be begging to be kissed—just the way he liked them.

Just the way his father liked them.

Bitterness congealed like a lead weight inside him. She had to be at least three decades younger than Laurence’s fifty-five years; with a body and a face like hers, his father hadn’t stood a chance—she was a heart attack waiting to happen!

As he watched, she lifted the hand she’d been holding and pressed it to her lips before gently replacing it at Laurence’s side. Then she leaned over and smoothed a thumb over his brow. He watched her dip her head, the loose tendrils of her whisky-coloured hair falling free of the clasp at the back of her head as she kissed his father on the cheek one final time.

‘Goodbye, Laurence,’ he heard her whisper. ‘I’ll always love you.’

The words struck him like a blow deep in a place already overflowing with rancour and tainted by a cynicism borne from working on some of the ugliest corporate take-overs in Europe. Her performance was no doubt all for his benefit. He knew what people were capable of when there were fortunes at stake.

Ruby Clemenger was merely an employee of the Bastiani Pearl Corporation, although clearly her ‘duties’ extended way beyond her jewellery design. Of course, she would know the Corporation was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Would she hope to establish there was more to the extracurricular arrangement she had with his father than mutual-needs fulfilment? Was this her way of staking a claim on the business now that Laurence was gone?

She’d have to try one hell of a lot harder than that if it was.

‘How touching,’ he said, the bile rising in his throat, his patience at an end. ‘Now, if you’re quite finished?’

Her back went rigid and she stilled momentarily before reaching out her hand to Laurence’s cheek one last time. Then she turned and, with barely a glance at him from her glacial blue eyes, side-stepped around Zane and slipped out of the room.

Her scent lingered in her wake, fresh and light in the clinical hospital atmosphere.

Seductive.

Irritating!

He growled his frustration out loud as he moved closer to the bed where his father lay. He was tired, he was jet-lagged and he was angry. His race halfway around the world had been for nothing; as a man who prided himself on beating every deadline thrown his way, the fact that he’d been cheated out of this one cut bone-deep.

But worse still was the realisation that, even with all that going on around him, still he could be swayed by the lingering scent of the last person he should be thinking about—his father’s mistress!

‘Can I give you a lift to the house?’

Ruby had been waiting outside Laurence’s room the last twenty minutes for Zane to emerge. And when he finally had, he’d pointedly ignored her and her question and headed directly to the nurses’ station to talk to the medical staff.

Personally, she didn’t care less where he stayed or how he got there, her only wish being that he’d turn around and disappear under whatever rock he’d been hiding under for the past decade, but Laurence’s request kept pulling her back. ‘Look after Zane,’ he’d implored her. And if he had been able to think fondly about a son who hadn’t bothered to get in touch with him for nigh on a decade, then she could at least be civil—if only for Laurence’s sake.

The staff slowly filtered away, one retrieving a bag for him from inside the nurses’ station. So, he’d come direct from the airport? He’d need a lift somewhere, then. She pushed herself from the chair and tried to forget how much she disliked this man already.

‘I wondered if you’d like a lift to the house?’ she repeated.

He turned towards her, his features and his jaw set hard as he swung the bag up over his shoulder. The action exaggerated the broad sweep of his chest, revealing all too clearly the power in his muscled arms. Though his build was similar to his father’s, he was taller and more threatening than Laurence had ever been. She felt tiny alongside him.

‘I heard you.’

‘And?’

‘And I can take a cab.’

‘That would be pointless, seeing as I’m going there, anyway.’

‘Is that right?’ One eyebrow arched as his eyes glinted with what looked like victory. ‘And why would you be doing that?’

For just a moment she hesitated, the arrangement she’d had with Laurence and accepted as normal suddenly sending alarm bells through her. Things were going to have to change, and soon—it was one thing to share a house with Laurence, who’d been more like a father to her than a colleague; it was another thing entirely to imagine living there with his son, with his overt hostility and his latent danger. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she stumbled over her answer.

‘Because…I live there.’

His lip curled. A live-in mistress. ‘How very convenient,’ he said. ‘My father must have enjoyed having…’ your services on tap ‘…your company.’

She angled her chin higher while her eyes remained glued to his. ‘Your father was a remarkable man. We shared a special friendship.’

‘I’ll bet,’ he said dismissively. His father had a habit of forming ‘special friendships’. The last one had cost Laurence the respect of his son and the complete breakdown of a father-son relationship. He was determined this one wouldn’t cost him a thing.

It was only a short trip from the hospital to the house, but the BMW’s air-conditioning made driving the clear winner over walking. Zane spent the brief journey staring out the windows, reacquainting himself with his old neighbourhood and trying to ignore the scent that reminded him exactly whose car and whose company he was in.

But at least she didn’t talk. He had too much to assimilate right now to continue their battle of words. Already he could feel a tidal surge of bone-tiredness, the legacy of both his long journey and its unexpected conclusion, creeping up on him, numbing his senses and his mind until there were only two things he could be certain of.

His father was gone.

And life for Zane Bastiani was about to radically change.

There was little prospect it would be for the better.

Ruby steered the car into a driveway, pulling up outside the sprawling colonial bungalow that had been Zane’s home for the first twenty years of his life. He uncurled himself slowly from the car, feeling a sudden and brief burst of warmth that had nothing to do with the brilliant sunlight as he took in the sight of the building.

London and his former life had never seemed so far away.

Built in the nineteen-twenties when pearl shell was gold and those who owned the pearl-lugger fleets were kings, the house was surrounded by wide verandahs and lattice fences lushly covered with flowering bougainvillea, a colourful invitation to the airy and cool interior.

The empty interior.

Bitterness seeped from a wound barely crusted over despite the passing of time. His mother had loved this house, the rambling, high-ceilinged rooms and timber floors, the large windows designed to let the slightest cooling breeze flow through. And she had loved the tropical gardens, which were always threatening to turn to jungle and overrun the house if left unchecked.

His sense of loss changed state inside him, becoming tangible, a solid thing deep in his gut. He could feel it swelling until it cramped his organs. He could taste its bitter juices in his mouth.

‘Welcome home,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘Are you okay?’

He absorbed her words rather than heard them, just one more element to the mix of sensations and memories that reached out to snare him and drag him back into the past.

‘My grandfather bought this house from one of the last of the old Master Pearlers,’ he said without shifting his focus, reciting the story he’d heard so often from his mother. ‘Laurence was just a kid back then. The pearl-shell industry was slowly dying and Grandfather put everything else he had in the new cultured pearl technology. He had a dream to become the first of the new breed of Master Pearlers.’

‘And he made it,’ she said. ‘Between your grandfather and Laurence, it’s quite a legacy they’ve left. Bastiani Pearls is now worth a fortune.’

Her words knifed through his thoughts, slicing them to ribbons, and he turned the full force of his glare on to her.

What was it with these mistresses? Anneleise could never stop thinking about money, either. Even at their last unexpected meeting, just two days before his desperate and now pointless rush to Australia, she’d staggered him by expecting some sort of compensation from him for finally getting it through her silvery blonde hair that it was over. And when he’d laughed out loud, she’d let go with the tears and lamented the opportunities she’d missed while Zane had held her undivided attention.

Even if that were anywhere near the truth, she had plenty of trinkets from their brief liaison that she could hock to tide her over if it came to that. Not that she’d take long to find another mark, if indeed she hadn’t already in the time since they’d parted company. She certainly was stunning enough, with her alabaster skin and a fragile femininity that had made him want to protect her at first—until he’d discovered her fragility extended character deep. But at least now he was free of her and her parasitic tendencies. He’d had enough of grasping women, every last one of them.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, her attitude making it clear that she resented his intense scrutiny.

He turned his gaze away, pulling his bag from the boot and slamming it shut. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.

Her skirt flirted around the backs of her knees as she led the way up the short set of stairs to the verandah and once again he found himself caught in the heady trail of her scent, the damnable price of chivalry.

His eyes took a moment to adjust as they entered the elegant bungalow. He looked around. The house might have been built over eighty years ago, but his mother had always seen to it that whatever renovations were made over the years had provided the most up-to-date conveniences while retaining the character of the colonial era. He let go a breath when he realised that Ruby’s tenure hadn’t impacted upon his mother’s vision.

‘I asked Kyoto to have your old room prepared in case you stayed,’ she said, turning slightly towards him. ‘I hope that’s okay.’

He paused, not believing what he’d heard. ‘Kyoto’s still around?’ It was inconceivable that he was still alive. The former Japanese pearl diver had worked for his family for years, first as cook and then housekeeper. He’d seemed a gnarled old man when Zane was just a boy. ‘Surely he’s not still working?’

She nodded, a watery smile temporarily lighting up her features. ‘Mostly he supervises now—we have a cook and cleaner to do the heavy work.’ He watched the wobbly smile slide away. ‘But I said he should go home today. He’s devastated by the news.’

She pressed her lips together and spun away, turning her back on him, but not before he’d recognised the crack in her voice, the slight tremulous quality to her movements as she’d uttered that last word that told him she was either trying very hard not to cry or, if Anneleise was any guide, trying her best to make him think she was. Anneleise could have written a thesis on the artful use of tears—although he doubted she’d ever shed a sincere one in her life. Why wouldn’t Ruby be armed with the same arsenal? It probably came with the job description.