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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
COMING NEXT MONTH
CHAPTER ONE
HE COULD feel the tension in the air. The thick heat of the late afternoon was oppressive and, even in his lightweight suit, Kane Falconer felt decidedly uncomfortable.
Normally, Barcelona was a place in which he liked to linger, but now, striding through the tree-lined, pedestrian thoroughfare, past the stalls with their souvenirs and bright floral displays and the open-air cafés, he was glad his business was over.
The student protest march in which he had very little interest, had brought the city to a standstill. In the surrounding streets, horns blared, throttles revved, with the lurid Spanish phrases being hurled from dusty cabs adding to the noise pollution. A squawking from one of the stalls grazed his already raw nerves, drawing his reluctant gaze to some brightly feathered creatures, caged, ready for sale, their fluttering wings ineffectual in the cramped confines of their environment.
Kane looked away in disgust and longed for his own space. At least he could walk away. He wasn’t trapped here in this noise and heat and dust, he thought gratefully, already sensing mounting vibes of unease. He cast a glance towards the bright blooms of a basket decorating one of the stalls, his gaze falling on the girl who was standing on tiptoe, head thrown back as she inhaled one of the hanging blossoms.
The pale cascade of her hair moved like honey against her arched back, the striking length of that oh, so elegant neck bringing him up short with a swift, sharp stab of recognition.
Shannon Bouvier! Of all the places in all the towns in all the world, he hadn’t expected to find her here.
When he had enquired at the address he had been given for her in Milan over six months ago, he had been told by a rather surly landlord that she had left to move in with her boyfriend—that the two of them had gone abroad—but no one could tell him where.
Shannon Bouvier. Society girl. Rich bitch—as those less kindly disposed were apt to call her. Heiress to a national development company she neither wanted nor cared about.
She was thinner, he noted from an assessing glance over her clinging red crop-top and low-slung, rather shabby combat trousers—much thinner than when he had seen her last. Her features were almost gaunt compared with those of the blooming teenager who had kept her dignity—if not her reputation—under the claws of the mauling British Press—but it was definitely her.
His jaw was set in a determined cast, his body tense from an awareness he didn’t want to acknowledge as he steeled himself to close the distance between them.
Shannon took the pale orchid the elderly stall-keeper handed her—a gesture the Spanish woman had taken to making often when the ‘fragile-looking señorita’, as she called her, passed her stall.
Now the woman shrugged, her arms thrown wide at all the shouting and horn-blowing induced by the marchers. It was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration, but some dissidents had threatened to disrupt it, Shannon remembered uneasily, flicking a glance over her shoulder towards the advancing students. She gasped at the sight of the man blocking her view.
‘Hello, Shannon.’
Something leapt inside her, that familiar excitement she had always felt in his presence coupled with something else which instantly put her on her guard. He was the last person she had expected to see. Yet here he was, as large as life.
No, larger than life, she thought hectically, as his dark and dominating presence seemed to put everything else out of focus so that he became the only noticeable person in Las Ramblas, and the demonstration gaining momentum down the surging thoroughfare was like the backdrop to a movie. Unreal. Only secondary to what was going on between the two of them.
‘Kane!’ If she had wanted to appear unfazed, then that shocked little utterance would have denied her even that simple pleasure. Too long, it seemed, her eyes rested on his hardboned face, reacquainting her with every well-remembered feature; the thick, expertly cut brown hair, the high forehead and firmly-set square jaw; that distinctive and tantalising cleft in his chin. ‘What are you doing here?’
From the pale tailored suit that accentuated the hard fitness of his body, he was obviously there on business, although he was tie-less and his fine white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, offering a glimpse of tanned flesh beneath the corded strength of his throat.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing.’ Above the blaring horns and angry voices his tone was soft and deep—relaxed. He didn’t seem tense or agitated as she was, left wondering what to say. ‘I thought you’d gone much farther afield.’ Assessingly, his eyes seemed to scour the delicate lines of her face, touched briefly on the equally delicate perfection of the orchid she was holding. ‘Someone told me you were in Rio.’
Had they? Mentally, Shannon dragged herself from the mesmerising effects of those blue-grey eyes. Had he been discussing her? Or had it been just a casual comment on someone else’s part? A careless reference to the girl who wrecked lives, who had made the headlines for a few days nearly three years ago, providing sustenance for a scandal-loving public?
‘Well…as you can see…’ she gave a careless laugh—threw out her arms ‘…I’m not.’ Then wished she hadn’t when the action drew the man’s attention to the swell of her small breasts beneath the scarlet crop-top with its logo emblazoned across it: Emancipation for Bulls.
His mouth—a cruel mouth, she had always thought—firmed, and those steely eyes looked, as they had often looked—as though they were mocking her. Except that they hadn’t the last time. ‘Still fighting the cause of the underdog, Shannon?’
She didn’t even glance down. ‘Someone has to.’
His mouth moved again, a twist of lips that was somewhere between a grimace and a smile. ‘I veer towards the view that if you’re a guest in someone else’s country, you respect their customs.’
With a dignity she hoped she was managing to hang on to, she lifted her chin and said quietly, ‘You’re entitled to your view.’
His head dipped briefly, leaving her feeling like someone who had just won a round merely because their opponent had let them. ‘So what are you doing here in Spain?’
She glanced across at a young couple browsing through the handcrafted jewellery on one of the adjacent stalls. What was she doing here?
About to tell him, she thought better of it and, with a small shrug, uttered, ‘Killing time.’ Well, it was the truth—of sorts.
The amusement went out of the hard masculine face and his mouth took on a decidedly grim line. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
Shannon tensed, catching the disapproval in those dangerously soft tones. But then, he had always disapproved. Just like everyone else with his preconceived ideas about her. And no more so than that last time, when he had called her an attention-seeking little socialite. Surprisingly, the memory still hurt.
‘I mean it’s as good a place as any to do nothing.’ To get over things. Recharge one’s batteries, she thought. To get well.
‘Is that what you’re doing?’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, stretching the fabric across hips that were lean and hard. ‘Nothing?’ The disdain on his lips assured her he wasn’t too impressed with her answer.
She shrugged again, a careless gesture saying nothing—expressing everything. Everything he would expect from her, she thought bitterly.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman behind the flower stall studying them both, weighing them up, obviously considering them an item. The tall, dynamic-looking man and the equally tall blonde girl. She wondered if everyone considered them a couple; wondered if they could sense that underlying current of electricity that charged the air between them, a sexually charged awareness that had always been there—albeit unacknowledged by either of them—even before Kane had stormed out of her father’s office for good, refusing, unlike the other members of the board, to bend to Ranulph Bouvier’s will.
‘Where are you staying?’ Even as he asked it, Kane felt the tension building inside him, a tension every bit as keen as that that he sensed boiling around them.
The district she named was impressive, but he wouldn’t have expected anything less.
‘On holiday?’
Almost imperceptibly she appeared to hesitate before shaking her head.
‘Are you here alone?’ As his eyes roved over that gaunt, yet strikingly beautiful face, she seemed to be making her own silent assessment of his motives for asking.
‘Yes.’
So the boyfriend hadn’t lasted. ‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘I don’t know. Why doesn’t it?’
God! She was confident! What was she now? he wondered. Twenty-one? But then, even as a gangling adolescent she had had more poise than some women twice her age. He was surprised to realise how vividly he could remember that.
‘You have an apartment here?’
‘A house,’ she corrected. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she returned, hating his derogatory tone.
No, he didn’t, he thought, wondering why she was so shabbily dressed, wondering what had happened to her. But he didn’t want to pursue the point—didn’t want to discover, to his own unexpected annoyance, that there was a boyfriend after all.
‘So what happens when you’ve grown tired of doing nothing in Barcelona?’ His words were scathing. ‘Or isn’t that very likely?’
‘It’s likely.’ In contrast her tone was light, deliberately careless.
‘When?’ he asked roughly. ‘When something—or someone—more exciting comes along?’
Beneath the soft fabric of her top, Shannon’s chest lifted with the effort of stopping herself from throwing some caustic response right back at that arrogant, handsome face. She could feel the latent anger beneath that cool, imperturbable exterior, which she could see no reason for. She had been a fool and she had paid for it. But that was all in the past, so why did he seem hell-bent on constantly reminding her of it?
Now, in answer to his remark about something exciting coming along, she murmured, ‘It usually does,’ refusing to let him see through the invisible barrier she had erected around herself, to see the real Shannon Bouvier.
‘And have you never given any thought to the fact that your father might be wondering where his only daughter has got to?’ Through the seething noise around them his question came hard and disparaging. ‘Just once considered giving some thought to going home?’
Pain vied with the anger his judgemental tone gave rise to, a keen, cutting emotion she fought to suppress. Because, of course, she dreamed of nothing else. But Ranulph Bouvier had made it all too clear after that scandal she’d been involved in what he expected of his only daughter—and it wasn’t a life she wanted. She had more self-esteem leading the life she had been leading for the past two and a half years—of which people like Kane Falconer knew absolutely nothing—than she had under the weight of her father’s controlling millions.
‘No, Kane. I haven’t. And I don’t really think it’s any concern of yours, do you?’
‘With not a word about how he is? How things are back in England?’
A swift surge of anxiety darkened the bright blue of Shannon’s eyes. At first she had kept tabs on how things were at home, reading papers, pumping for information anyone who might be remotely connected with the company, with her father. But that was some time ago now, and for the past few months she hadn’t exactly been in a position to go chasing information…
Tentatively, she asked, ‘Have you been in touch with him?’ If he had, then it would surprise her. From the way he had thrown up his job and the company, there had been no love lost between him and Ranulph Bouvier—no going back.
‘Forget it,’ he rasped. ‘As you said, what you do is none of my business.’ He slipped his other hand in his pocket, glancing over his shoulder at the pedestrian-packed thoroughfare, his jaw set like the hard, grim face of a rock.
He had wanted to say more. He could feel the words choking him as the traffic was choking the streets, because the marchers were at the top of La Rambla now. He could hear them chanting, people shouting, fuelling the aggravation produced by the demonstrators, and he had to raise his own voice to make himself heard.
‘What is this all in aid of?’ It was a rhetorical question. He had already asked it of the MD at the meeting earlier, a satisfactory conclusion of negotiations that had secured him the development of further luxury apartments along the Côted’ Azur.
‘They want fairness. Understanding,’ she answered quietly.
Was she appealing to him for those things? he wondered. Was that why she was looking at him as if he was some inexorable tyrant, because she thought he was treating her unfairly? Failing to understand her? The combination of her husky voice with her fair and fragile loveliness was touching the most elemental core of his masculinity, stirring him to the angry realisation that he was no less affected by her than every other man she must have known. Oh, he understood all right! Understood that Ranulph Bouvier was killing himself over the loss of his only child, while his self-centred, pleasure-seeking daughter was jet-setting round the world, enjoying herself, looking—as she had just admitted herself—solely for excitement. And yet when he had mentioned her going home, he could almost imagine he had seen pain beneath the rebellion in those baby-blue eyes…
‘Perhaps they’re going the wrong way about it,’ he declared loudly over the din. ‘They’re hardly likely to engender sympathy by stopping tired people getting home from work.’
Patches of colour suffused the pale yet flawless skin across her cheekbones. ‘Nor will they if they lie down and put up with everything the establishment dishes out!’
As she had refused to do? The thought rose unbidden in his mind, because, however she had behaved, there was no doubt that Ranulph Bouvier had ruled her with a will of iron, as he did everyone under him—his household staff, his work colleagues, his management. And, looking at the slender girl who stirred him in ways he was ashamed to admit to, and whose rebellious nature seemed too strong for her worryingly fragile appearance, he couldn’t help but understand how smothered she must have felt by it.
‘I’m surprised you aren’t there—’ Kane’s chin jerked upwards ‘—leading the procession.’
‘I might have been, only I had—’ Her attention was distracted by something farther along the street.
Kane followed her gaze to where a group of young men were shouting and pushing one another outside one of the cafés.
‘Only you had what?’ he prompted, and then, unable to hold back the derision, ‘Something more exciting to do?’
For a few seconds those blue eyes of hers seemed to darken—impale him. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she returned with a defiant toss of her head, her smile artificially sweet. ‘I was—’
Something shot past them at shoulder level; an empty cola can, falling onto the ground behind her with a hollow clatter. It sent flares of danger shooting through Kane’s blood.
‘I think it’s time we got out of here,’ he urged.
Surprisingly, though, she shrugged away the hand clutching her elbow. ‘I don’t think I need—’ she started to say, but her sentence was punctuated by a small cry as a piece of jagged wood glanced across her forehead. ‘Ohh!’
As she crumpled, Kane’s arm shot out around her bare middle. He couldn’t contain the vehement little oath as he caught her, holding her upright. She felt as light as a sparrow against his own strength. ‘Are you all right?’
For a few split seconds everything looked as squidgy as the liquid in a plastic water bottle.
‘Shannon!’ Kane’s worried command fell hazily across her semi-dazed senses, like a shaft of light through a long, dark tunnel. She nodded and heard his heavily drawn sigh of relief.
‘Now will you listen to me?’ He sounded angry again, which was much more in keeping.
‘Why are you angry? You’re always angry with me.’ The words escaped her as if she had had too much to drink. Perhaps, she thought, this was what they meant by punch-drunk.
‘Shut up and walk. You can walk, can’t you?’
‘Of course I can walk,’ she asserted as her spirits returned. What she didn’t think she could do, though, was put up with the sensuous warmth of that soft-sleeved arm around her bare middle. It made her want to lean against him, let him take control, wallow in the comfort and protection he offered as the only link with home. ‘I’m fine,’ she breathed in protest, striving mentally and physically to liberate herself. Physically was easier.
‘Come on, then,’ he insisted, soundly oddly hoarse as he took her elbow again and, grabbing the grubby canvas shoulder bag she had dropped as she’d staggered, propelled her in front of him, away from the imminent danger zone.
‘My orchid!’
She glanced back, saw it lying there, crushed and broken on the pavement.
‘Leave it!’ he ordered, and she felt the unexpected rush of foolish tears prick her eyes as he hustled her away.
At the end of the pedestrian thoroughfare, he was bundling her into a taxi.
‘Why are we going to the marina?’ she asked when he climbed in beside her, having heard him giving the driver their destination.
‘Because I came in on the boat.’ The car door slammed ominously shut behind him. ‘You can rest aboard until all this chaos dies down.’
‘The boat?’ A pulse in Shannon’s temples began to throb. What boat?
Seeing her frown, he smiled. ‘A mixture of business and pleasure,’ he told her as the taxi began nosing its way through the clogged street towards the harbour. ‘Fortunately most of the business has been taken care of, for today at least.’
She didn’t think she could handle this—being marooned with Kane Falconer in something so confining as a boat. Not that she was worried he would treat her with anything but his usual cool courtesy. It was just the unsettling intimacy that the whole thing implied.
‘I really think I should try and get home,’ she stressed, glancing anxiously back over her shoulder.
‘And just how do you propose to do that? On the bus? Or are you hoping for a cab with wings to get you back through town?’
He’d obviously assumed—and correctly—that she didn’t have her own transport. Her Porsche, like most of her possessions, had been left behind when she had fled England and the life she had been unable to face any more.
He had a point though, she thought, looking back again at the city’s gridlocked traffic. The scene behind them had turned frightening and, back beyond the waterfront, not a vehicle was moving, every bus, coach and taxi stuck with private and commercial vehicles in one impossible jam.
‘I can walk,’ she said.
‘With that bang on the head?’ Incredulity laced his words. ‘You feel up to that, do you?’
She wished she could say she did, but the truth was, she didn’t.
‘Why the rush?’ he asked a little more gently when she didn’t respond. ‘Do you have some hungry pet waiting at home?’
‘No.’
He laughed softly, sensing her lingering reluctance. ‘Don’t worry,’ he advised. ‘If you’ve got a date tonight, I’m sure we can get you back there before he thinks you’ve stood him up.’
‘Thanks,’ she snapped, averting her head so that the hot June sun shining through the open window played across the bright gold of her hair, accentuating the tense beauty of her profile.
‘Have you?’ he prompted suddenly.
‘Have I what?’
‘Got a date?’
Whatever his motive for asking, she was sure it wasn’t for any magnanimous reason like helping her to keep it, and quietly she responded, ‘I don’t see that that’s anything to do with you.’
They were crossing the bridge, the imposing monument of Columbus that dominated the skyline catching his attention for a moment.
‘You’re right, it isn’t,’ he said.
‘Why did you ask, then?’ she challenged and, wanting to throw him off balance, tagged on, ‘Or was that an overture to asking me out yourself?’
He laughed then, a harsh, cynical sound that assured her of what he thought of that idea. He didn’t have to say anything. After all, he had had ample opportunity to ask her in the past, and he never had.
Suddenly, feeling ridiculously desperate for his approval, she murmured, ‘Believe it or not, Kane, even I stay at home sometimes to wash my hair.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I wasn’t doing anything in particular.’
The look he shot her was one of pure scepticism, which just showed her how pointless it was, she thought, even trying to change his mind about her.
‘Must be tough,’ he observed, his mouth turning mocking, ‘doing nothing all day and then having nothing to do all night.’ His eyes were more serious now, uncomfortably assessing. ‘I would have credited you with more intelligence than to drift around the world—as you admitted in your own words—“killing time”.’
Would he? She looked at him quickly. Did he consider her intelligent? Worth something? That her life had some value? Something warming and utterly reckless stole along her veins.
‘Who says I’m drifting round the world?’
‘Aren’t you?’ he said grimly. And before she could answer, ‘Life isn’t all one whopping big party, Shannon. I’d hoped you would have learnt that by now.’
She glanced out of the window, biting her tongue to stop herself hurling back just how big a party life had been for her. A little way ahead, rows of countless masts pointed skywards from the bobbing dinghies in the marina; small sailing craft, moored alongside the gleaming hulls of more powerful motor vessels.
‘Isn’t it?’ Hair stirring in the wind, she brought her attention back to him again. ‘Maybe not for you, Kane, but, as we both know, I’m one of the privileged few. I’ve never been required to work. Daddy foots the bill for my every need through direct debit once a month—and I sleep late most days so I can get my kicks out of enjoying myself every night!’
Something in her outburst made him gravitate towards her, broad shoulders turning, mouth firming in disdain. He was altogether too big, too dominant and too disturbingly sexy, she thought with a tightness in her throat, noticing the way the soft fabric of his trousers pulled across his thighs as he breathed in a voice low enough so that their driver wouldn’t hear, ‘And am I supposed to be impressed by that?’
It was no good, she realised, despairing at the condemnation that glittered beneath those thick, dark lashes. Because, of course, she hadn’t been trying to impress him, nor was any of it true. But the fact that he was so ready to believe the worst about her only fuelled her determination to let him.
‘Go to hell,’ she murmured, turning away.
In the marina, with Kane having paid off the taxi, Shannon shrugged aside the assistance he offered, making her own way beside him along the quay.
‘Which is yours?’ she quizzed sarcastically, glancing at some rustic-looking fishing tubs that made up the line of moored vessels, along with small masted craft and compact cabin cruisers, built for speed but with very little comfort.
She was lagging behind him, finding it increasingly difficult to match his stride.