The Throne He Must Take
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Holly forced herself to study him objectively. His cheekbones were too sharp and his mouth too wide for him to be conventionally handsome. She estimated that there was at least two days’ growth of stubble on his square jaw, and his rakish appearance was accentuated by the streaked blond hair that hung down on either side of his face. He pushed it back with a careless sweep of his hand.
Needing an excuse to avoid looking at him, she jumped up and walked over to the sideboard where the clinic’s presentation packs were kept.
‘I’ll explain a little bit about the aims of the Frieden Clinic and give you another brochure so that you can read our mission statement in full.’
She spoke to him over her shoulder.
‘In a nutshell, our ethos is to identify and treat the root cause of each patient’s problems. The problems which may have led them to become reliant on potentially harmful substances or exhibit particular behaviour traits. At the Frieden Clinic we understand that every patient is unique, and we tailor an individual programme of treatment and support, matching the patient with a psychologist who will live at an Alpine retreat with them and provide therapy whenever the patient requires it, twenty-four hours a day. As well as clinical therapy, patients are encouraged to experience the wide range of complementary therapies which are available, such as massage and yoga. Leisure time is another important aspect of your stay with us, and there will be opportunities for you to ski and to enjoy many other activities in the beautiful surroundings of the Austrian Alps.’
Having located the brochures in the last drawer she looked in, Holly turned to face Jarek and discovered that he had picked up a newspaper and was reading it. Evidently he was more interested in the story on the front page than what she had to say, she thought, annoyed by his rudeness.
‘Would you like me to repeat any of what I’ve just told you?’ she asked, in a painfully polite voice that failed to disguise the bite in her tone.
He dropped the newspaper onto the table and for a split second she glimpsed a...a tortured expression in his eyes. There was no other word to describe it. But then he blinked and Holly told herself she must have been imagining things, for his ice-blue gaze was indefinable.
‘It all seems clear enough. If I’m a good boy I’ll be allowed to go skiing,’ he drawled.
He was her patient, and she would do her best to build a rapport with him even if it killed her, Holly told herself.
Through the window she saw a car draw up in front of the clinic.
‘Your personal chauffeur, Gunther, is here to take you to Chalet Soline. You have also been assigned a gourmet chef, and a maid who will take care of you during your stay. Professor Heppel will visit you this evening, after you have had a chance to settle in. Several social events have been arranged for your enjoyment, including an evening in Salzburg which will be an opportunity for you to meet the rest of the medical team and other patients who are receiving treatment. Part of the evening’s entertainment will be a chamber concert at the famous Marble Hall at the Mirabell Palace.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle that amount of excitement,’ he said drily. ‘I hope there will be a well-stocked bar.’
‘Clients are asked to abstain from alcohol whilst they are on a treatment programme,’ Holly reminded him. ‘But don’t worry—I will be with you to support and encourage you on your journey to sobriety.’
Jarek got up from the sofa and the lounge suddenly seemed to shrink. It wasn’t just his height that made him dominate the room. He exuded a raw magnetism that sent heat coursing through Holly’s veins when he raked his bright blue eyes over her, from her head down to her toes, lingering a fraction longer than was appropriate on the firm swell of her breasts.
‘I should have guessed from your schoolmarm appearance that you are a fan of chamber music. I bet your idea of an exciting night is to go to bed early with a milky drink,’ he said, in that lazy, mocking way that made her want to slap him. Hard.
‘My bedtime habits are not up for discussion,’ she snapped, stung by his unflattering description of her. ‘Schoolmarm’ made her sound like a frump.
He was testing her professionalism to its limits. She had never met such an infuriating man. She watched the corners of his mouth lift in a slow smile, as if he could not be bothered to exert more than the minimum of effort.
‘We could discuss my bedtime habits instead, if you like? I guarantee they are more interesting and...energetic than yours.’
‘I’m well aware of that. Anyone who reads the gutter press is regularly treated to intimate details about your love affairs.’
His grin widened, and his eyes had a wicked glint that made Holly’s heart beat faster. How could his eyes be as cold as ice one minute and in the next instant burn with blue flames that made her feel hot all over?
‘Presumably you read the tabloids, as you seem to know so much about me,’ he said softly. ‘The intimate details you mention are fifty per cent true and fifty per cent the product of an editor’s fevered imagination. But I don’t have love affairs.’ His tone hardened. ‘Love plays no part in my sexual adventures. As long as you remember that, we should get on fine.’
‘Why do I need to remember it? I’m not interested in your sex-life except in my professional capacity as your therapist.’
‘Of course you’re interested in me, angel-face. Those big brown eyes of yours soften like molten chocolate every time you look at me. Do you think I haven’t noticed the hungry glances you’ve been darting at me when you think my attention’s not on you?’
His smoky, sensual voice sent a shiver of unwanted reaction the length of Holly’s spine. It was imperative that she took back control of the situation and of herself. Her reaction to Jarek was utterly inexplicable. He was an arrogant, over-sexed playboy and the absolute anathema of the intellectual men she had dated in the past.
Before she’d left London she’d had dinner a couple of times with Malcom, who was an art historian, and he had told her some really quite interesting facts about Islamic art. Although admittedly after three hours of listening to him talking about his favourite topic her attention had started to wander.
‘You’re wrong, I’m afraid.’ She was pleased that she sounded cool and collected—the opposite of how she felt. ‘All I care about is doing my job to the best of my ability, and my interest in you is purely from the perspective of my role as your psychotherapist. I’m determined to discover how you tick, Jarek. You’ve described yourself as a prisoner,’ she said gently, ‘but perhaps the prison bars are inside your head.’
* * *
Jarek sprawled in the back of the limousine and considered telling the driver to turn the car around and take him back to the Frieden Clinic, so that he could jump on his motorbike and get the hell out of Dodge. But he had given his word to his brother-in-law that, for Elin’s sake, he would spend six weeks undergoing psychotherapy. And, because his sister was the only person in the world whom he loved, he would stick it out even though it promised to be the most boring few weeks of his life.
Although perhaps it wouldn’t be as tedious as he’d first feared, he mused, visualising the delectable Dr Maitland.
He had told her the truth—the only time he intended to do so—when he’d admitted that she was different from his expectations of her. Holly was a stunning brunette, but he had imagined her as a matronly figure, possibly wearing a tweed suit—rather like the vicar’s wife in Little Bardley, who had always been kind to him when he’d been an angry teenager and constantly at loggerheads with Ralph Saunderson, his adoptive father.
But Holly looked nothing like a vicar’s wife, and even her uninspiring clothes couldn’t hide her gorgeous curvaceous figure. The sight of her too-tight blouse straining across her breasts, affording him a tantalising glimpse of creamy flesh where the material gaped around the buttonholes, had sent a rush of heat straight to his groin.
Frankly, she had rendered him speechless—which was not a condition Jarek often suffered from. He was clever with words, and always knew the right things to say—to women especially. That was why he could not understand why he had blurted out to Holly that she was beautiful. He’d sounded like an adolescent on a first date. Usually he was the king of cool, and the funny thing was that the more he acted as if he didn’t care the more interested women were in him.
The truth was he really didn’t care about anything or anyone apart from his sister, whom he had protected since she was a baby. But Elin was married to Cortez now, and they had a son, Harry. Soon their second child would be born. Jarek had accepted that Elin’s life had moved on and, although they would always share a close bond, that her priorities were her husband and family. Hell, he’d even accepted that Cortez, who was actually Ralph Saunderson’s secret son and heir, was a decent guy.
But, while his sister deserved to be happy, Jarek knew he would never come to terms with what he had done, and the grief he had caused to both Elin and Ralph Saunderson. It was his fault that Lorna Saunderson had died, and the raw pain inside him was his punishment—it was what he deserved.
He steered his mind away from the dark path of memory, which inevitably led to the self-destructive behaviour his sister had begged him to seek help for. The truth was no one could help him. He pictured Dr Maitland’s doe eyes and her serenely lovely face. He’d nicknamed her ‘angel-face’ but there was nothing angelic about her sinfully sexy mouth. He’d found himself longing to taste and explore it with his tongue.
At another time—even a month ago—he would have viewed Holly as an enjoyable distraction, and nothing would have stopped him from taking advantage of the awareness of him that she had unsuccessfully tried to hide.
But the letter he had received three weeks ago had made him question everything he’d believed he knew about himself. It had even made him wonder...who was Jarek Dvorska?
CHAPTER TWO
JAREK STARED OUT of the car window at the stunning Alpine landscape. All around him majestic snow-white mountains touched the sky and were reflected in a gentian-blue lake. The pine trees growing on the slopes looked as if they had been dusted with icing sugar, and here and there quaint Hansel and Gretel chalets peeped out from beneath snow-covered roofs.
The mountainous scene was exquisite, but there was also an inexplicable familiarity about it that he found puzzling. Ever since his adoptive parents had taken him on a skiing holiday in Chamonix, when he was twelve, Jarek had felt ‘at home’ in the mountains. But that did not make sense, because he had spent the first nine years of his life in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. He had no recollection of his family’s home in the city, but he remembered the grim grey orphanage where he and Elin had lived after their parents had died.
Why did he feel a sense of recognition when he skied down a mountain? he had once asked Lorna Saunderson, when he’d been trying to make sense of the images inside his head that he thought must be snatches of dreams—because how could they be real memories? For that matter, how had he known instinctively how to ski, without any help from an instructor, on that trip to Chamonix?
His adoptive mother—the only woman he had ever called Mama, since he had no idea who his real mother was—had reminded him that Sarajevo was surrounded by mountains. She’d suggested that perhaps staff at the orphanage had taken the children on a trip to the mountains and he had forgotten it.
Jarek thought it was unlikely. His memories of early childhood were of fear and hunger and regular beatings from the staff—although he had no idea what he might have done to merit such severe punishment. He certainly did not remember being taken out of the orphanage, and his recollections of Bosnia were only of the war that had taken place there in the nineteen-nineties, when Sarajevo had been besieged by Serbian soldiers.
His boyhood memories were of the sound of machine gun fire and the loud explosions when bombs had fallen into the compound outside the orphanage, where the children had played. He and the other orphaned children had huddled together in a damp cellar while Sarajevo had been under fire. Sometimes the few staff who had not deserted the orphanage or been killed had been in such a rush to get down to the cellar that they’d left the babies upstairs in their cots when the bombing started.
But Jarek had always refused to abandon his little sister, and had constantly risked his life to take her down to the cellar, where she would be safe. Elin had been about a year old when the war had begun, and even then she had been remarkably pretty. When a wealthy English couple—Ralph and Lorna Saunderson—had decided to adopt a Bosnian orphan they had chosen a golden-haired angelic little girl. But Elin had become so distressed when they’d tried to separate her from her older brother that Lorna had insisted on rescuing Jarek too, and so the children had escaped hell and gone to live at stately Cuckmere Hall on the Sussex Downs.
For years Jarek had not thought too deeply about his strange affinity with mountains. He did not take anything too seriously, because he was afraid that if he did the darkness in his soul might devour him. But that goddamned letter—from a man who had allegedly worked for Vostov’s royal family over two decades ago—had unlocked Pandora’s Box. The only way he could prevent the nightmares which had plagued him recently was to drink enough vodka so that he did not so much sleep as sink into oblivion for a few hours, if he was lucky.
He had convinced himself that the letter was a hoax and ignored it. But when he’d arrived at the Frieden Clinic and seen that newspaper headline about Vostov something had flashed into his mind that he might have believed was a deeply buried memory—if it hadn’t been so crazy. Unthinkable. He didn’t want to think, and he certainly wasn’t going to allow Dr Holly Maitland access to the innermost secrets that his instincts warned him were best kept hidden.
‘Hey, Gunther.’ Jarek leaned forward to speak to the driver. ‘How far is it to the chalet where I will be staying?’
‘We should be there in approximately ten minutes, sir,’ Gunther replied in perfect English. ‘We will soon come to a town and ski resort called Arlenwald. Chalet Soline is on the other side of the town, a little higher up the mountain.’
‘Does Arlenwald have any good bars?’
‘Bibiana’s Bar is a popular place with young people who like to drink Schnapps and watch the dancing girls. Or the Oberant Hotel is very charming. I believe they have a string quartet who play music while guests enjoy afternoon tea.’
‘Hmm...tea or Schnapps—what is your preference, Gunther?’
‘I am not fond of tea, sir.’
‘Nor me. How about we stop at Bibiana’s Bar so I can buy you a drink?’
‘Dr Maitland instructed me to take you straight to the chalet,’ Gunther said doubtfully.
Jarek smiled. ‘There is no need to tell her that we took a short detour, is there?’
* * *
‘What do you mean, he’s not here?’ Holly stared at Karl, the chef and butler at Chalet Soline. ‘The chauffeur left the Frieden Clinic with Mr Dvorska two hours ago, to make a journey that has taken me twenty minutes.’
Admittedly the four-by-four she had used to drive herself to the chalet was better suited to the mountain roads than a limousine, but it should have taken the chauffeur no more than half an hour to deliver Jarek to the luxury alpine lodge where he would stay while he underwent a course of psychological treatment.
‘I understand that Mr Dvorska wished to spend some time in Arlenwald,’ Karl told her. ‘Gunther telephoned to say he had left the patient in the town, because he had to attend another appointment, and that Mr Dvorska intended to walk the last part of the journey to Chalet Soline.’
Holly frowned. ‘I know Gunther had to go to Salzburg today, but I expected him to follow my instructions and bring the patient here first. Goodness knows what Mr Dvorska has found to do in Arlenwald. There are only a few ski shops and hotels—and that dreadful bar where the waitresses dress up in supposedly Austrian folk costumes. I doubt the traditional dirndl was as low-cut as the dresses worn by the girls at Bibiana’s Bar,’ she said drily.
The lively bar, which was a popular venue for the après-ski crowd, was just the kind of place that Jarek would head for, she thought grimly. She shouldn’t have let him out of her sight. Jarek’s fondness for alcohol had been extensively documented in the tabloids, and she should have stuck to him like glue and escorted him to Chalet Soline herself. Instead she had sent him off with the chauffeur to give herself time to try and understand why he, of all men, had made her aware of her sensuality in a way she had never felt before.
Just thinking about his too-handsome face and his sexy grin that was both an invitation and a promise caused heat to unfurl in the pit of her stomach. She grimaced. Sexual alchemy was an enigma, and scientific research had yet to fully explain the complex biological and psychological reasons why one person was attracted to another. At a basic level her awareness of Jarek was the purely primal reaction of a female searching for an alpha-male, Holly reminded herself. But she was an intelligent, educated woman of the twenty-first century and she was not at the mercy of her hormones. She would simply have to ignore the thunder of her pulse when Jarek looked at her with that wicked glint in his eyes that made her want to respond to his unspoken challenge.
Her conscience queried whether she should ask Professor Heppel to assign a different psychotherapist to work with Jarek—except that she could not think of a good reason to request being taken off his case. She certainly could not admit that she was attracted to her patient. It would be tantamount to professional suicide.
Besides, she thought as she climbed into the four-by-four and headed towards the town that she had driven through five minutes earlier, right at this moment her feelings for Jarek Dvorska were murderous rather than amorous.
Bibiana’s Bar was at the far end of Arlenwald’s pretty main street. Popular with skiers and snowboarders, even at five o’clock in the afternoon the place was packed with people clutching huge steins of beer, and Holly struggled to thread her way through the crowd over to the bar. Rock music pumped out from enormous speakers and the heavy bass reverberated through her body and exacerbated her tension headache. It seemed impossible that she would be able to find Jarek in this crowd, and she didn’t even know for certain that he was here.
After a fruitless search, with her head pounding in competition with the music, she was about to give up. Then her attention was drawn to two girls wearing micro mini-skirts and cropped blouses that revealed their lithe figures, who were dancing on top of a table.
Following her instincts, she made her way across the room and felt a mixture of relief and anger when she spotted Jarek sitting in an alcove. Another girl was perched on his knee, and as Holly watched him slide his hand over the girl’s bare thigh her temper simmered.
Trust him to find a dark corner to commit dark deeds, she fumed. She would have loved to walk away and leave him to get on with his sordid lifestyle of booze and bimbos, but she did not relish having to confess to Professor Heppel that she had failed in her first assignment.
She became aware that Jarek was not watching the girls who were dancing so frenetically in front of him. His brilliant blue eyes were focused on her. Once again her body responded to the challenge in his bold stare and she felt her nipples pull tight. He was unfairly gorgeous, and she was helpless to prevent her body’s treacherous reaction to him. The cruel beauty of his angular face and that too-long dark blond hair that he pushed off his brow with a careless flick of his hand were a killer combination. Few women would be able to resist his rampant sensuality and the devil-may-care attitude that warned he was untameable.
The girl sitting on his lap clearly found him irresistible. Holly was irritated as she watched Jarek lower his head and murmur something to the girl, who giggled as she slid off his knee and glanced over at her.
The other girls jumped down from the table and blew extravagant kisses to Jarek as they sauntered away but he ignored them, and the smouldering gaze he directed at Holly made her feel as if she was the only woman in the room. It was what he did, she reminded herself. He was a master of seduction. But she was not about to climb onto the table and perform a sexy dance for him. She was his therapist, for heaven’s sake!
‘You were expected at Chalet Soline two hours ago, but it’s my fault entirely that you didn’t make it,’ she said breezily, to hide the fact that she wanted to strangle him. ‘I should have realised I would need to babysit you to keep you out of trouble.’
His grin made her heart give an annoying flip. ‘Ada, Dagna and Halfrida were no trouble,’ he drawled. ‘Especially Halfrida. She wanted to know if you are my wife, come to nag me.’
‘It’s a pity she didn’t ask me. I would have told her that if I was ever interested in marrying you would be the last person I’d choose for my husband,’ she said tartly, goaded by the memory of how the pretty blonde had cuddled up to him.
‘Really? I’m considered quite a catch.’ He sounded highly amused. ‘In fact a few of the tabloids have described me as “Europe’s most eligible bachelor”.’
‘The fact that you are a multi-millionaire no doubt goes a long way to explaining your eligibility.’
He laughed, and a gleam of admiration flickered in his eyes. ‘Your name suits your prickly nature, Holly. So, would you marry for money?’
‘Of course not. And as I have already said, I’m not looking for a husband.’
His brows lifted. ‘I’m surprised. I had you down as the type of woman who dreams of a cottage with roses round the door, marriage to a dependable guy and a couple of babies.’
She masked the sharp stab of pain in her heart with a brisk smile. ‘I grew up in the English countryside, and my experience of quaint old cottages is that they are damp and expensive to heat. I’m too busy with my career to think about marriage. Being a psychotherapist isn’t a nine-to-five job—which is why I am here at...’ she glanced at her watch ‘...ten to six in the evening to save you from yourself.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to be saved.’ There was steel beneath his soft tone.
Holly looked pointedly at the three-quarters empty bottle of vodka on the table in front of him. ‘Your notoriety with the press means you are very recognisable. For all you know, someone here in the bar might have taken a photo of you drinking and partying and posted it on social media. How do you think your sister will feel if she hears that you’ve wimped out of having treatment?’
His expression turned wintry. ‘I have never wimped out of anything in my life!’
‘Acknowledging and dealing with emotional baggage takes courage. It would be far easier to carry on with your selfish lifestyle, even though your drinking and wild behaviour hurts the people who love you.’
‘No one loves me,’ he said lightly, as if his flash of temper moments earlier hadn’t happened—as if he didn’t care.
Holly frowned. It was her job to understand people, but she could not read Jarek and she wasn’t sure if she had heard something raw in his voice or if she had imagined it.
‘Your sister must love you or she wouldn’t be concerned about you,’ she murmured.
His bland smile gave nothing away. ‘Elin has her own family—and good luck to her. I’m glad she is happy again. I was afraid I had ruined...’ He stopped speaking and his jaw clenched.
‘You had ruined what?’ Holly held her breath, hoping he would continue. She sensed that what he had been about to say was an important clue that might help her to fathom him out.