“You realize what this means?”

Suzy stared at Luke uncomprehendingly. “What what means?” she asked.

His mouth thinned. He had no time to play games, no matter how much Suzy Roberts might enjoy them. One minute the ingénue, another the femme fatale. A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw as he tensed his body against unwanted memories.

“I have to make sure you can’t tell anyone what you’ve seen,” Luke informed her.

A cold thrill ran through Suzy. “So what are you going to do?” she asked him anxiously.

“I’m going to take you back to the villa with me—as my mistress.”

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CONTENTS

Cover

Excerpt

Title Page

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

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘WOW, will you look at that? His Royal Highness and the industrialist everyone swears is not up for a knighthood. And don’t they look cosy together for two people who are supposed to be sworn enemies.’

As Suzy struggled to hear the voice of Jeff Walker, the photographer from the magazine they both worked for, over the noise of the busy launch party, she heard him saying excitedly, ‘I’ve just got to get a shot of that. Come on.’

This was her first month on the magazine, and immediately she followed him.

She had taken a couple of steps when she heard him saying bitterly, ‘Hell! He’s got Colonel Lucas James Soames with him. Ex-Commando, Special Forces, hero, and hater of the press!’ he explained impatiently when he saw Suzy’s uncertain frown. ‘Despite the fact that a female reporter with a certain British news team practically dribbled with lust every time she interviewed him during his last campaign.’

Suzy tried to look as though she was up to speed with what she was being told, but the plain truth was that she knew nothing of Colonel Soames. Already unnerved by the photographer’s comments, she looked round discreetly, but was unable to spot anyone wearing any kind of military uniform.

She knew she ought to be grateful to her university tutor for recommending her for this job. He had been so enthusiastic about it, telling her what a wonderful opportunity it would be for her, that she had felt she would be letting him down if she didn’t accept the probationary position. But after nearly a month working on the political affairs desk of the cutting-edge City magazine Suzy was beginning to suspect that she had made a mistake.

Maybe it was the fact that she had been out of the swim of things for so long whilst she nursed her mother through the last two years of her life that made her so uncomfortable about the methods the magazine adopted in order to get its hot stories. She had certainly felt immeasurably older than her fellow students when she had returned to university to complete her degree.

‘I’m sorry—’ She began to apologise uncertainly to Jeff. ‘I can’t see the Colonel.’

But she could see a man several yards away, who stood head and shoulders above every other man in the room—or so it seemed to Suzy. She was transfixed, every female hormone in her body focusing on him with an eager interest. Her mouth had gone dry and her heart had started to pound unevenly. The fact that he was standing alone, somehow aloof from everyone else, only piqued her interest further.

She had the most unexpected and dangerous urge to go up to him and make him…Make him what, exactly? Acknowledge her presence? Talk to her? Tell her that he was experiencing the same heart-wrenching, sanity-undermining, wholly unfamiliar need to be with her that she was experiencing for him? Was she going crazy? Her legs had gone weak and her heart was racing. She didn’t know whether it was shock that was running through her body with mercurial speed or excitement. Her? Excited by a man? A stranger? She was too sensible for such stuff. Too sensible and too wary!

Determinedly she started to look away, but he had turned his head, and her heartbeat went into overdrive whilst a surge of explicit and bewildering arousal and longing raced though her. Longing for a man she had only looked at? How could that happen?

And yet Suzy couldn’t help watching him. He wasn’t looking at her, but past her, she recognised. However, whilst he did so, Suzy was able to stare at him and greedily absorb every tiny physical detail. Tall, dark and handsome went nowhere near describing his full male magnificence. He was more than that. Much, much more! Suzy could feel her whole body responding to just about the sexiest man she had ever seen and was ever likely to see. Her heart gave another small nervous flurry of thuds when he turned his head again, as though he knew that she was now looking at him. He was now staring straight at her, imprisoning her almost, so that she felt unable to move!

She felt as though she was being X-rayed—and that there wasn’t a single thing he didn’t know about her! Pink-cheeked, she realised that his incisive gaze had finished sweeping her and was now fixed on her mouth. She felt her lips starting to part, as though they were longing for his kiss. Hurriedly she closed them, her face still burning.

His eyes were a shade of intense dark blue, his skin tanned, his hair so dark brown that it was almost black. His profile was that of a Greek god and, as though that wasn’t enough, Suzy was forced to acknowledge that he had about him that indefinable air that whispered into the female ear sex. And not just any old kind of sex either, but dream-breaking, heart-stopping, mind-blowing wonderful sex! In fact the kind of sex…

Somehow she managed to get her wayward thoughts under control just in time to hear Jeff telling her curtly, ‘You’re going to have to distract the Colonel’s attention whilst I get my picture.’

‘What?’ Suzy asked, anxiously scanning the crowd packed tightly around the Prince.

‘Where…where is he…?’

‘Over there—next to the Prince and the Secretary of State.’

Wildly Suzy looked from the photographer’s face to the man he had just indicated. The man. Her man…

‘But…but you said he was a colonel. He isn’t in uniform.’ She was stammering like an idiot—behaving like a woman who had fallen passionately in love! Now she knew that she was crazy.

‘Uniform?’ Jeff’s voice was impatient, contemptuous of her ignorance. ‘No, of course he isn’t in uniform. He isn’t in the Army any more. Where have you been? He works on his own, freelance, providing a bespoke protection service for those who need it. Not that he needs to work. He’s independently wealthy and well connected; his father was the younger son of an old county family, and his mother was American. He’s ex-Eton. Cut his teeth in Northern Ireland and got made up to Major, then was decorated for service above and beyond the call of duty in Bosnia—that’s when he got his next promotion. Like I just said, he isn’t in the Army any more but he still does the dangerous stuff—acting as a personal bodyguard. He’s in great demand on the “I’m an important person and I need a top-class protection service” circuit. Visiting politicians and heads of state, et cetera.’

All this had been relayed to Suzy in a grim whisper, but now suddenly Jeff exclaimed excitedly, ‘Look at that! Get that picture and I won’t ever need to work again. Yes, you stay right there, baby,’ he crooned to himself, before commanding Suzy, ‘Come on! You’ll have to distract the Colonel so that I can get this shot.’

‘What? What am I supposed to do?’ Suzy asked anxiously, and she looked to where the Colonel was standing casually in front of the two men, screening them from interruption.

Jeff gave her an exasperated look. ‘Why the hell did they land me with you instead of someone who knows the ropes? I’ve heard that Roy has only taken you on as a favour, and because he likes your legs—he probably interviewed you imagining what they’d look like wrapped around him.’

Suzy struggled not to let Jeff see how upset she was by his comments. Her boss’s openly sexual and often crude remarks to her were just one of the reasons why she was becoming increasingly unhappy about her job.

‘You’re a woman, aren’t you? Go over there and do what comes naturally!’ Jeff grunted, before pushing his way through the crowd, leaving Suzy to follow him.

Do what comes naturally! Oh, yes, she could quite easily do what came naturally with Colonel Soames…A thrill of dangerous emotion spiked through Suzy as she looked into the face of the man who was now standing right in front of her. He was, Suzy acknowledged, quite definitely the sexiest man she had ever seen. Those broad shoulders, that handsome face!

She was beginning to feel seriously alarmed by her reactions to him! Her friend Kate was always scolding her, telling her she didn’t get out enough, and now Suzy thought she might be right. To be affected like this, to react like this simply at the sight of one specific man…She closed her eyes, willing herself to be sensible, and then opened them again.

What was it about a man in a dinner suit? What was it about this man in a dinner suit? Well, for one thing he was wearing his with an unselfconscious ease that said he was used to doing so, and for another it fitted him somehow as though it were a part of him. What had he looked like in his dress uniform? In combats? A tiny shudder ripped through her.

And as for that tan and those teeth…teeth that she was sure gleamed nearly as white as his shirtfront! And she was sure there were real muscles beneath all that tailoring as well.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jeff glowering at her. A little uncomfortably Suzy took a deep breath and stepped forward, a muddled plan of action forming inside her head. A smile of recognition at the Colonel then a brief apology for having mistaken him for someone else. A few seconds’ work, but long enough, she hoped, for Jeff to get his picture.

Gritting her teeth against the knowledge that this kind of behaviour was quite definitely not her style, Suzy ignored the nervous churning of her stomach and stepped forward.

And then stopped! One step was all she had taken—so how come she now had her nose virtually against the Colonel’s pristine white shirt? How had he moved without her being aware that he was doing so? When had he moved? Suzy wondered frantically. In less than a blink of the eye he had somehow gone from standing a couple of yards away to being right in front of her.

Suzy’s sensitive nostrils started to quiver as she breathed in a discreet hint of cologne, underwritten by something very male and subtle that sent her self-control crashing into chaos.

He reached out and took hold of her arm, his grip firm and compelling. Suzy could feel her blood beating up around his encircling fingers as her body reacted to his hold.

Like someone lost in a trance she looked up at him. An instinct deeper than any thought or action seemed to have taken control of her, and she was powerless to do anything other than give in to it. The navy blue gaze fastened on her own. Her heart jerked against the wall of her chest, and the polite social apology she had been about to make died unspoken on her lips.

In a haze of dizzying desire Suzy felt her gaze slide like melting ice cream from the heat of his eyes to the curve of his mouth. Her whole body was galvanised by a series of tiny tremors and she exhaled on a small, soft, female sigh of wanton pleasure.

Without knowing what she was doing she lifted her free hand to trace the hard, firm line of his mouth—to see if the flesh there felt as erotic as it looked. But then her hand dropped to her side as another even more pleasurable way of conducting her survey struck her.

She had to reach up on her tiptoes in order to press her mouth to his, but the hand holding her arm seemed somehow to aid and balance her. The busy hum of conversation in the room faded as her lips made the discovery that just touching his mouth with her own was opening a door for her into a whole new world.

Blind and deaf to everything and everyone else around her, Suzy made a soft sound of pleasure deep in her throat. An aching whisper of female recognition.

Closing her eyes, she leaned into the male body, waiting hungrily for the Colonel to return the pressure of her lips, to part them with the swift, hard thrust of his tongue, to share with her the devouring intensity of need and longing that surged through her.

As she sighed her pleasure and hunger against his mouth she felt its pressure, his kiss heart-joltingly male. One of his hands slid firmly into the thick softness of her red-gold curls whilst the other pressed into the small of her back, urging her body closer to his own!

Suzy knew she was not very sexually experienced, and what was happening to her now was way out of her league! The way his mouth was moving on hers—firm, warm, knowing—the way his tongue-tip was laving the eager softness of her lips, was rewriting the logbook of her sexual history and adding a whole new chapter to it!

Lost in the rapture of what was happening to her, Suzy pressed closer, caught up in a cloud of hormone-drenched fantasy.

This was it! This was him! Her dragon-slayer and protector, the magical lover she had dreamed of in her most vulnerable moments. The hero she had secretly longed for all her life in her most private dreams. Her soul mate.

Suzy ached to tell him how she felt, how filled with delirious joy she was that he was here, how…

She gave a small shocked gasp as suddenly she was being pushed away.

Confusion darkened her eyes as she looked up at him, at a loss to understand what was happening until she saw the way he was looking back at her.

Instantly her joy was replaced with pain and despair. Shock gripped hold of her with icy fingers as she recognised the anger and loathing in the navy blue gaze boring into her.

‘No!’ She heard herself whisper the agonised denial, but it was no use. There was no mercy or softening in the hard, contemptuous gaze. Her whole body felt as though it was being drenched in shame and humiliation. Her soul mate? He was looking at her as though she were his worst enemy!

Anger, contempt, hostility, Suzy could see them all glittering in his eyes, before they were hidden away from her with a blank look of steely professionalism.

What on earth had she done? Why had she done it? She had made a complete and total fool of herself! What stupidity had made her resurrect that idiotic old dream of a soul mate? She’d thought she had had the sense to recognise it had no place in reality! It was a dream she had clung to for far too long anyway, like a child reluctant to relinquish the security of a worn-out teddy bear.

Her face was burning painfully—and not just because of the way he had looked at her. The shaky, sickly feeling invading her was surely a form of shock, a physical reaction to an emotional trauma. And she was traumatised, she admitted unwillingly. And not just by the Colonel’s contempt and dislike!

Her own feelings had left her even more shocked and distressed…

She could feel his concentration on her, but she refused to look back at him. Because she was afraid to? Somewhere inside her head she could still feel the unspoken words ‘I love you’ banging frantically against the walls of their cage, like a tiny wounded bird desperate to escape. But Suzy knew they could never be set free. They had to be kept imprisoned for ever now, to protect her own sanity and self-respect!

“‘Down and Dirty magazine.”’ She could hear him reading the name-badge she was wearing. ‘I should have guessed. Your tactics are as cheap and tasteless as your articles.’

Savage pain followed by equally savage anger spiked into her heart. Illogically she felt as though somehow he had actively betrayed her by not recognising the person she really was, by misjudging her, not caring enough to recognise what had happened to her.

‘I think your friend is waiting for you.’

The curt words were distinctly unfriendly, his voice clipped and incisive, and the look he gave her was coldly dismissive. But deep inside her Suzy could still feel the hard pressure of his mouth on hers.

Shaking, she turned to make her way towards the door, where Jeff was standing, an impassive bouncer holding his arm—and his camera.

Jeff’s face, she saw with a sinking heart, was puce with temper.

‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ he demanded once Suzy reached him. ‘I told you to distract the guy, not eat him!’

Red-faced, Suzy couldn’t think of anything to say to defend herself. ‘Did you get your picture?’

‘Yes! But if you hadn’t been so busy playing kissy-face with the enemy you would have noticed that one of his gorillas was taking my camera off me! Good, was he? Yeah, I’ll bet he was—after all, he’s had plenty of experience. Like I said, during his last campaign a certain news reporter really had the hots for him. He’s got quite a reputation with the female sex, has the Colonel. A killer instinct in bed and out of it.’

Suzy was beginning to feel nauseated, disgusted by what she was hearing. And even more so by her own idiotic gullibility. She couldn’t understand her reaction—never mind her behaviour. She must be going crazy—and certainly her friend Kate would think so, if Suzy was ever foolish enough to tell her what had happened.

Kate and Suzy had been at university together, and Kate had kept in touch with Suzy when she had decided to drop out of her course and go home to nurse her mother through her final illness. Kate was married now, and with her husband ran a very successful small, independent travel agency.

Kate was constantly urging Suzy to enjoy life a little more, but Suzy still had debts to pay off—her student loan, for one thing, and the rent on the small flat she had shared with her widowed mother for another!

Thinking of her mother made Suzy’s greeny-gold eyes darken. Her mother had been widowed before Suzy’s birth, her father having been killed in a mountain-climbing accident. It was Suzy’s belief that her mother had never got over the death of the man she loved, nor ceased blaming him for having died.

As she’d grown up Suzy had been the one who cared for her mother, rather than the other way around. Money had been tight, and Suzy had worked since her teens to help—first with a paper round and then at whatever unskilled work she could find.

Suzy remembered now that Kate often said she had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and that she allowed others to put upon her. She couldn’t imagine Colonel Lucas James Soames ever allowing anyone to put upon him, Suzy decided bitterly. If anyone were foolish enough to turn to him for help or compassion he would immediately reject them!

Suzy tensed, angry with herself for allowing the Colonel into her thoughts. And yet running beneath her anger, like a silent and dangerously racing river, she could still feel an unwanted ache of pain. Fear curled through her with soft, deadly tendrils. Why had she had such an extraordinary reaction to him? She wasn’t that sort of person. Those emotions, that fierce rush of sexual longing, just weren’t her! She gave a small shudder of distaste.

It was an experience she was better off forgetting—pretending had never happened, in fact!

And that was exactly what she intended to do!

Luke studied the schedules in front of him. Meticulously detailed plans for his upcoming work. The Prince had hinted that he would like him on board for his permanent staff, but that kind of role wasn’t one Luke wanted. Perhaps his American mother’s blood was responsible for that! He had never been someone who enjoyed mundane routine. Even as a boy he had liked the challenge of pushing back boundaries and continually learning and growing.

His parents had died in an accident when he was eleven years old. The Army had sent him home to his grandmother and the comfortable country house where his father had grown up. His grandmother had done her best, but Luke had felt constricted at the boarding school she had sent him to. Even then he had known he would follow his father into the Army, and the happiest day of his life had been the day he had finally been free to follow that ambition.

The Army had been not just his career but his family as well. Until recently. Until he had woken up one morning and realised that he had had enough of witnessing other people’s pain and death. That his ears had grown too sensitive to the screams of wounded children and his eyes too hurt by the sight of thin and starving bodies. He had seen it happen too many times before to other soldiers to hesitate. His emotions were getting in the way of his professionalism. It was time for him to move on!

The Army had tried to persuade him to change his mind. There had been talk of further promotion. But Luke had refused to be swayed. In his own mind he was no longer a totally effective soldier. Given the choice between destroying an enemy and protecting a child Luke knew he could no longer guarantee he would put the former first.

And working for His Royal Highness was definitely not for him! Too tame after the demands of Army life. Although there were some similarities between the two! He started to frown. Female reporters! He loathed and despised them! They were a hundred times worse than their male equivalent, in Luke’s opinion. He had seen at first hand the damage they could wreak in their determination to get a story. A shadow of pain momentarily darkened his eyes, and the newly healed wound just below his hipbone seemed to pulse.

And as for the lengths such women were prepared to go!

His mouth hardened. So far as he was concerned Suzy Roberts and her ilk were as contemptible as the rags they worked for.

Reporter? Scavenger was a more appropriate word.

He turned his attention back to his paperwork, but, maddeningly, she would not be ejected from his thoughts.

What the hell was the matter with him that he should be wasting his time thinking about Suzy Roberts? That auburn hair and the way her gold-green gaze fastened on him must have addled his brain.

Had she really thought he was so idiotic that he would be deceived by that obviously fake look of longing she had given him? That equally fake tremor he had felt run right through her body when he had touched her? And as for that faint but unmistakable scent he could have sworn he could still smell…

Angrily he got up and strode across the room, pushing open a window, letting in an icy cold blast of air. Perhaps the unintentional celibacy of his life over these last few years had suddenly begun to affect him. But to such an extent that he wanted a woman like Suzy Roberts?

Like hell he did! But the sudden tension in his groin told a different story.

It was late, and he had a business appointment to keep. Finishing what he was doing, he made his way from the office to the privacy of his own apartment, automatically watching and checking as he did so. Once a commando always a commando—even when he could no longer…

Suppressing thoughts he did not want to have to deal with, Luke walked into his suite and headed for the shower.

Stripping off, he stepped into it, the hot needle-jets of water glistening on his body as he moved beneath the shower’s spray. The light fell on old scars on his chest, and the newer one low down on his body.

Having finished showering, he stepped out onto the marble floor, padding naked into his bedroom to extract a pair of clean white boxer shorts from a drawer. The phrase ‘going commando-style’ might have a certain sexual edge to it when used to describe the choice not to wear any underwear, but from his own point of view weeks, sometimes months of living in the field, in one set of sweat and dirt-soaked combats had given him a very different take on the matter! To anyone who had experienced desert combat conditions the luxury of quantities of clean water was something to be truly appreciated.

CHAPTER TWO

Six months later

SUZY paused and studied the sleek yachts clustered in the harbour of the small Italian coastal resort. Two women walked past her, expensively groomed and wearing equally expensive designer clothes. Suzy had dressed as appropriately as she could for this luxurious resort, in white linen trousers and a brief sleeveless matching top, with sandals on her feet and the de rigueur sunglasses concealing her eyes, but no way was she in their league—and no way was she made for such an exclusive resort.

She had tried to tell Kate as much when her friend had announced that since she and her husband could not take up the week’s holiday they had been offered via their business they wanted to give the treat to Suzy instead.

‘Oh, no, Kate, I couldn’t possibly accept your generosity,’ Suzy had protested.

‘It isn’t generosity,’ Kate had retorted. ‘You need this break, Suzy. You’ve been through a lot these last few years—nursing your mother and then losing her, working every spare hour you had to finish your degree, and then that awful job you had!’

Suzy had sighed. ‘I shouldn’t have handed in my notice, really. My tutor had been so kind, getting the intro for me, I feel so guilty.’

‘You feel guilty?’ Kate had exploded. ‘Why on earth should you? You said yourself that you hated the way the magazine worked, its lack of morality with regard to how it got its stories and everything. And when I think of the way that slimy boss of yours tried to behave towards you! If anyone should be feeling guilty it’s them, not you, Suzy! I’m surprised they’re allowed to get away with treating you as they did. You know my opinion—you should have reported them for sexual harassment!’

Just listening to Kate’s words had been enough to make Suzy shudder a little.

‘It wasn’t as easy as that, Kate,’ Suzy had reminded her. ‘For one thing I was the only female working there. No one would have backed me up.’

Hearing the strain in her friend’s voice, Kate had shot her a quick look of concern before continuing, ‘Suzy, I know how strong you are, and how independent, but please just for once put yourself first. You need this break. You need time to relax and reflect, to pick up the threads of your life and weave them into a new pattern. You need this breathing space! I want to do this for you and I shall be very hurt if you refuse.’

Put like that, how could she refuse? Suzy had acknowledged ruefully. And besides, there had been enough truth in what Kate had said to make her see that her friend was right.

She still shook with anxiety and nervous tension when she thought about the scene in the Down and Dirty office the day she had handed in her notice. The crude insults her boss had hurled at her still made her face burn with embarrassment and loathing.

‘You aren’t leaving—I’m sacking you,’ he had told her furiously. ‘No jumped-up little nothing is going to mess me about!’

He had then claimed publicly that he was sacking her because she had offered him sex in exchange for promotion—but privately told her he would rescind his claim if she agreed to go to bed with him.

Her flesh still crawled at the thought.

Roy Jarvis might be the magazine’s editor-in-chief, but so far as Suzy was concerned he was the most morally corrupt man she had ever met. And her opinion was not just based on his attitude towards her, but on the way he ran the magazine and obtained its articles. Roy Jarvis’s reporters were told to let nothing stop them in their pursuit of obtaining a story. She had been like a fish out of water in such an environment.

And Kate had been right, Suzy acknowledged unhappily now. She did need some time out to reassess her life. And her emotions.

Suzy closed her eyes and tried to swallow past the hard ball of pain and misery lodged in her throat. Panic prickled over her skin as she fought against allowing herself to think about the cause of her pain.

Instead she switched her mind to more easily dealt with issues. The difficulties of the past few years, then the misery of realising she was in a job she hated, and working with people whose morals she could never accept, never mind adopt, had all affected her. But she still needed to earn a living—somehow! And giving in to Kate and accepting this holiday was not, in her opinion, going to aid that.

No, but it might stop her from dreaming about a man she should have forgotten.

And this pretty Italian fishing village, perched precariously on the steep sides of a small bay, was surely a perfect spot in which to chill out and ground herself, to assess her own ambitions and think again about her original desire to become an archivist, perhaps. Her tutor had scorned her ambition, but Suzy had a deep longing for the cloistered quiet of such career.

Skirting the pretty harbour, with its chic and very expensive restaurants, Suzy headed for the steep path that led to the top of the cliff.

Half an hour later she had reached it, and she paused to study the magnificent view and to take a couple of photographs to show Kate.

Another hill rose up a short way along the path, and Suzy headed for it, wondering what lay beyond.

Its incline was steep, and she was a little out of breath when she finally made it to the top. She gasped, her eyes widening in delight as she looked down into the lush valley below her at the stunningly beautiful Palladan villa at its centre. She just had to get a photo of it to show Kate and her husband.

Rummaging in her bag, she found the small digital camera Kate had insisted on lending her.

‘If you get any really good pictures we can put them on our Web site,’ she had announced when Suzy had tried to protest.

The camera was obviously expensive, and Suzy had said as much, but Kate had dismissed her concern, shrugging it aside as she reassured her, ‘It’s insured—and if you do lose it—which I know you won’t—then we shall replace it.’

Dutifully Suzy had photographed everything she thought might be of interest to her friend, and she knew that Kate would love this wonderful villa in its beautiful setting. From her vantage point Suzy could see the layout of its formal gardens within the high walls surrounding them, and the lake that lay beyond with its picturesque grotto.

Carefully she focused on the villa, pausing for a moment, as sunlight glinted on the metal casing, to stare in bemused awe at the sight of four imposingly large men in military uniform heading for an even equally imposing large black Mercedes, almost hidden from view beyond the entrance to the villa. What an impressive sight! She had to get a photograph of it—and of them! Who on earth were they?

On his way across the courtyard—having escorted the private security officers who had arrived to check out the villa without giving any warning, and against Luke’s strict instructions, to their huge Mercedes with its blacked-out windows—Luke froze as he caught the unmistakable glint of sunlight on metal. Automatically he reached for his binoculars, training the powerful lens on the steep hillside above the villa.

He had done everything he could to avoid having to take on this commission, but pressure had been put on him, via his old commanding officer and certain other people, and reluctantly he had given in—although not without first enquiring grimly why on earth MI5 operatives could not be used.

‘Because it is so sensitive, old boy,’ had been the wry answer he had received. ‘And because we don’t have anyone in the field of your calibre.’

Reluctantly Luke had bowed to the pressure he’d been under.

Making sure that the Foreign Secretary was able to conduct a very politically sensitive meeting with the President of a certain turbulent African state, without either arousing the curiosity of the press or certain factions within the African state required optimum vigilance. And why on earth anyone had ever thought it a good idea to conduct such an exercise so close to a popular Italian resort—visited by the rich and famous and followed there by the paparazzi—Luke had no way of knowing.

Of course he had tried to initiate a change of venue, but he had been overruled.

A smooth-talking suit from MI5 had announced that no one would suspect that the Foreign Secretary would be seeing anyone political whilst enjoying a holiday with his children.

Children? Luke had baulked furiously at that point. No matter how many reassurances or platitudes the MI5 suit might choose to utter, this was potentially a dangerous mission.

The African President was insisting on bringing his own private guards with him, and he was a man who was obsessed with a fear of betrayal—both at home and abroad. If things should go pear-shaped Luke did not want to have to worry about two young children as well as their father. He had said as much to Sir Peter Verey when they had been introduced, suggesting that his children might be better left with their mother.

‘My dear chap,’ had been Sir Peter’s drawled response. ‘I wish I could oblige, but you see my ex-wife is insistent that they come with me. Thinks I’m not doing my fatherly duty and that sort of thing.’

Luke knew all about Sir Peter Verey’s ex-wife. She had left him for a billionaire industrialist who had little liking of his predecessor’s offspring, with the result that she had placed both children at boarding school.

Luke frowned as he swept the hillside for whoever had been responsible for that telltale glint.

The resort less than a couple of miles away seethed with celebrities and minor continental royals, all of whom seemed to be followed by their own pack of predators, feeding off them as if they were carrion.

It didn’t take Luke’s trained eye long to find its quarry—in fact, he reflected in disgust, it did not need a trained eye to spot her at all. She was standing there openly photographing the villa. She? Luke frowned as he studied the familiar features. Suzy Roberts! It was as little effort for him to conjure up her name as it had been for him to recognise her face. Suzy Roberts, reporter for Down and Dirty magazine. Automatically he swept the area around her to see if she was on her own, before focusing on her once again.

She looked thinner, paler—and what the hell was she doing standing in the strong sunlight without the protection of a hat when any fool could see that she had the kind of delicate skin that would burn?

How on earth had she got wind of what was going on? The editor of the magazine she worked for got his stories by trawling in the gutter for them.

Luke’s mouth compressed. The gutter, maybe, but then Roy Jarvis did specialise in ‘revealing’ the failings and vices of those in power, as well as breaking some extraordinarily sensitive news stories. Someone was supplying him with his information, and Luke knew that if he had been in charge of finding out who it was the leak would have been stopped a long time ago.

Luke refused to believe that anyone could have got through his own rigorous security, but he was not the only person who knew what was happening. Somehow Roy Jarvis had been given a tip-off about the upcoming meeting, and he had obviously sent Suzy Roberts to find out what she could and confirm the story so that he could publish it. After all, a reporter like Suzy had the extra assistance of her sexuality to help her get her story—and she would have no qualms about using it!

Lucas had seen it happen over and over again in the theatre of war, and of course he had already discovered for himself that there were no lengths Suzy Roberts was not prepared to go!

Silently Luke slipped out of the villa grounds, moving quickly and stealthily towards his quarry.

Oblivious to the danger, Suzy pushed her hair back off her face. The villa really was a gem. She paused to admire it again before lifting the camera to take another shot.

Luke, who had circled up behind her, waited until she had raised the camera before making his move.

As Suzy focused the camera he reached for it…

Someone was trying to steal the camera!

Instinctively Suzy turned round, and then froze in shocked disbelief whilst Luke took it from her.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded as soon as she could speak.

Lucas Soames—here! She could feel the colour leaving her face and then surging back into it. Her heart was thudding in panic, and she felt as though she was trembling from head to foot. Emotions she had assured herself she had totally destroyed were taking a frightening hold on her, threatening to swamp her.

Frantically she tried to ignore them, to focus instead on what she should be feeling. These emotions had no right to exist. Lucas Soames meant nothing to her, and one of the reasons she was here on holiday was to make sure she was fully recovered from whatever it was she had experienced six months ago.

Willing her physical reaction to him to subside, Suzy demanded sharply, ‘Give me back my camera!’

Her eyes widened as she watched Lucas delete the pictures she had just taken.

‘No!’ she protested, trying to snatch back the camera, to stop him ruining her photographs.

Luke reacted immediately, fending her off with one deceptively easy movement that kept her at arm’s length from him, his fingers locked around her wrist as he finished what he was doing.

Despairingly Suzy closed her eyes, trying to blot out the physical reality of him in an effort to protect herself. But almost immediately she realised her mistake. Deprived of sight, she felt all her sensory receptors focusing instead on the feel of Lucas Soames’s hand around her wrist—the texture of his flesh, the powerful strength of his grip, the coolness of his skin against the heat of her own. Weakening thrills of sensation were running up her arm, and she could feel the frantic jump of her pulse.

Panic and desperation speared through her. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, the sound of her voice raw and frantic in her ears as she recognised her fear and the reason for it.

What was it about this man that made her feel like this?

Luke studied her silently, assessing her behaviour and her reactions. She looked convincingly both distraught and distressed, and he mentally applauded her acting talent whilst cynically wondering how many victims she had honed it on.

Ignoring her anxious question, he asked one of his own. ‘Why were you photographing the villa?’

His response caught Suzy off guard.

There was something about the coldly intense way he was watching her that unnerved her, and Suzy felt a shudder of apprehension run through her body. Stubbornly she fought against giving in to it—and to him!

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she shot back. Antagonism towards him was a far safer emotion than that dangerous and overwhelming surge of longing she had experienced the last time she had seen him. Don’t think about it, she warned herself frantically. Don’t remember. Don’t feel…

Seeing him then had been like having the clouds part to reveal a miraculous space of blue sky and a dizzying vision of heaven. But things were different now, she reassured herself fiercely. She was different now!

Taking a deep breath, Suzy gave a deliberately nonchalant shrug before saying, ‘That’s what people on holiday do—take photographs.’

Her body language was flawless, Luke acknowledged grudgingly. Not by so much as the flicker of one of those ridiculously long eyelashes of hers was she revealing the fact that she was lying. He could feel his temper starting to rise. Immediately he checked it, alarmed that somehow she had managed to pierce the shield of his professionalism.

‘On holiday?’ He gave Suzy a comprehensive and cynical look. ‘Oh, come on—you can come up with something better than that, surely?’

Just looking at her now—anger sparking her eyes to brilliant gold, flushing her cheeks with heat—anyone other than him would have believed immediately that she was a woman righteously defending herself from an unwarranted attack. But he knew she had to be lying, given who she was, and sure enough, as he continued to watch her, she was unable to continue to return his gaze.

What was Lucas Soames trying to say? Suzy wondered frantically. Had he guessed how he had affected her? Did he think she was nursing some kind of desire for him and that she had followed him here?

Her face began to burn again. If he did then she was going to make sure…

‘Nice camera.’ Luke interrupted her thoughts, adding assessingly, ‘Expensive too.’ Still nervously on edge, Suzy told him stiffly, ‘It isn’t mine…it belongs to a friend.’

Luke could see the discomfort and the guilt in her eyes—but, to his own irritated disbelief, the knowledge that he was right to be suspicious of her made him feel more angry than satisfied. Determined to stamp on such feelings and destroy them, he responded coldly, ‘A friend? So, Roy Jarvis is a friend now, is he, as well as your employer?’

Her employer!

Suzy shook her head.

‘I don’t work for the magazine any more,’ she told him quickly. ‘I…I left.’ Even saying the words was enough to bring back the unpleasant memories, and she had to swallow against the bile of her distress.

‘Oh, come on. You don’t really expect me to fall for that, do you?’ Luke demanded unpleasantly.

‘It’s true,’ Suzy insisted fiercely. ‘I no longer work for the magazine. You can check if you don’t believe me!’

Her eyes were more green than gold now, Luke recognised. Reflecting her passionate nature? He frowned, irritated with himself for allowing his attention to be distracted from the professional to the personal.

‘Oh, I have no doubt that officially you might have left, but it isn’t unheard of for your boss, your friend, to use underhand methods to get what he wants. He has sent you here to work undercover—which is, as we both know, why you are up here photographing the villa and spying!’

Now cynicism had joined the cold disdain icing his voice, and Suzy decided that she had had enough. Not allowing him to finish, she interrupted him hotly.

‘That’s ridiculous! Why on earth would he send me to do that? It’s the resort that is full of the glitterati, not this villa, and as for my agreeing to spy on anyone—I have my own moral code!’ She gave him a bitingly scornful look, but her glare might have been directed at an invisible shield for all the effect it had on its intended victim.

‘Very affecting.’ Luke stopped her. ‘But you are wasting your breath and my time with this unconvincing show of innocence. I know exactly what you are, remember? I’ve witnessed your professional reporting methods—and your moral code—at first hand,’ he reminded her grimly.

A telltale crimson tide of guilt and misery flooded Suzy’s face. Illogically she felt not just humiliated by his words but emotionally hurt as well.

How could he say something like that to her? Hadn’t he been able to tell that she had kissed him because of her own overwhelming need to do so and not for any other reason?

Unable to stop herself, Suzy discovered that she was reliving the feelings she had had then. Anguish filled her. Did he really think she was the kind of woman who would do such a thing for any other reason than because she simply had not been able to stop herself?

The very thought of what he had implied disgusted and nauseated her, and she burst out defensively, ‘That wasn’t—I didn’t—I did it because—’

Abruptly Luke stopped her again. ‘You did it because you thought it would be an excellent way of providing a firescreen for your companion—yes, I know that!’ he told her grimly. ‘Unfortunately for you it wasn’t very effective.’ He paused, and then added curtly, ‘And neither was the kiss!’

What the hell was he thinking of? Luke asked himself savagely as his comment fell into the silence between them and he was forced to remember the kiss they had shared. A woman as experienced as this one must have felt his body’s arousal, and gloated over his response to her. Any minute now she would be reminding him of it and challenging him to deny it. And there was no way Luke wanted to be dragged into that dangerous and unreliable ground.

Yes, he had responded to her. He could not deny that! Yes, he had for a split second in time experienced the most extraordinary physical longing for her, and the most extraordinary emotions. But that had been a momentary weakness, quickly controlled, and of no lasting or real importance whatsoever!

‘What did Jarvis tell you to do—apart from take photographs?’ he demanded sharply, steering his questions back in the right direction.

Still grappling with her own feelings, Suzy told him angrily, ‘He didn’t tell me to do anything!’

Her anger must somehow have heightened her senses, she decided, because suddenly she was aware of the musky male scent of Lucas Soames’s body. She could see the sunlight glinting on the fine dark hair of his muscular forearms. Her heart somersaulted and then attempted a cartwheel, crashing into her chest wall as it did so. She willed herself to drag her gaze away from his body, but somehow it was impossible to do so. The white tee shirt he was wearing, although not tight-fitting, still revealed an impressive breadth of shoulder and chest. Something dangerous was happening to her, and she seemed powerless to stop it.

Suzy began to panic.

The back of her head was burning from the heat of the sun. It was making her feel slightly sick and dizzy—or was it the intensity of the navy blue gaze, the shock of her own emotions that was responsible for her malaise?

She couldn’t give in to such feelings, Suzy warned herself frantically. She must not give in to them! She must think of something else! She must get away from here—get away from here and from Lucas Soames, and the sooner the better. If she didn’t leave, if she was forced to stay, she was terrified that she might be trapped into saying something that would betray how she felt about him. How she had felt about him, she corrected herself. Taking a deep breath, she searched for the right words.

‘I’m sorry if you feel you can’t believe me,’ she began politely. ‘But I assure you that I am telling you the truth. I do not work for the magazine any more and no one from it is responsible for my being here! Like I just told you, I am here on holiday!’

She was picking her words too carefully for them to be genuine, Luke decided.

‘On holiday? Alone?’ he challenged her softly. One dark eyebrow rose tellingly, and Suzy was hotly conscious of his merciless and unkind gaze sweeping her face and then her body.

‘I needed time on my own…to…to think…’

She had to get away from him!

‘Time on your own? A woman like you?’

The razor-edge contempt in his voice made her face burn, but before she could say anything he continued silkily, ‘So, if you aren’t, as you claim, working for Roy Jarvis any more, then who are you working for?’

His question caught Suzy off guard, and she had to wrench her thoughts away from the pain his insult had caused her in order to answer it.

‘I’m not working for anyone at the moment. I haven’t got another job yet…at least…’ She paused, her eyes darkening as his question reactivated her own anxiety about her future. After the contempt he had already shown her there was no way she was going to tell him that in order to make ends meet she had taken a job in a local supermarket.

Suddenly she had had enough.

‘Why are you questioning me like this?’ she demanded wearily. ‘Just because you’re here, guarding some government bigwig, that doesn’t give you the right to…to treat me as some kind of…of criminal. What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?’ she demanded nervously, fear trickling through her veins as she sensed that somehow something had changed, that the anger she had sensed in him before had been replaced by a steely determination.

‘How do you know who is staying at the villa?’ Luke questioned quietly.

For a moment Suzy was too bemused to answer him. Was it that that was responsible for the intimidating change in him?

‘I heard someone talking about it,’ she told him honestly. ‘I thought he was supposed to be here on holiday, but of course now that I’ve seen you, and those men who were leaving, I realise…’

Her voice trailed away, when she saw his expression, and Luke prompted her softly.

‘Yes? What is it exactly that you now realise? Something you know your boss Jarvis would be very interested in? Something that you just can’t wait to report to him?’

Suzy stared at him aghast.

‘No! No—nothing like that. He isn’t my boss anymore,’ she denied. ‘I’ve already told you that.’

Something about the way he was watching her made her feel very afraid.

‘So I was right.’

Suzy could feel her heart bumping heavily against her ribs as the deceptively soft words penetrated her awareness.

‘You realise, of course, what this means?’

Suzy stared at him uncomprehendingly. He had lost her completely now, she acknowledged, and she fought to drag her unwilling mind away from her worry about the physical effect Lucas Soames was having on her emotions to what he was saying to her.

‘What what means?’ she asked.

Lucas’s mouth thinned. He had no time for games, no matter how much Suzy Roberts might enjoy her play-acting. One minute the ingénue, another the femme fatale. A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw as he tensed his body against memories he didn’t want to have. Memories of the feel of Suzy’s body against his own, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin…

Savagely he turned away from her. This—she—was a complication he just did not need. It was bad enough that Jarvis had sent anyone here at all—but that it should be her!

Angrily, he examined the facts—and his options! Yes, they both knew why Suzy was here, but just how much did she know? How much information did she actually have?

He had destroyed the photographs she had taken of the African President’s private guards, but he could not eradicate that information from her memory. And he certainly could not allow her to pass it on to anyone else—and most especially not to Roy Jarvis, to publish in his wretched magazine!

There was only one thing he could do now, little as he relished the prospect!

Luke had had his fill of reporters, both male and female! He had seen at first hand the damage, the devastation their single-minded determination could cause. He had seen fighting men’s lives risked and innocent civilians’ lives lost for the sake of a ‘hot’ story. And he had seen…His mouth twisted, his expression hardening even further.

He’d seen children under school age, half starved, fighting for water and food…whilst excited reporters tried to film their pitiable situation. And worse! Much, much worse! He moved, and the scar low on his belly pulled against the wound it covered.

He had learned over the years to mistrust the media at large.

And Ms Suzy Roberts was not going to be an exception to his rule that all media personnel were to be treated as guilty and kept under strict surveillance!

Luke’s gaze narrowed.

Despite the fact that he was trained to keep his body still for hours on end, he suddenly felt he needed to move, step back a little from Suzy, and he grimly suppressed the unwanted knowledge that her proximity was affecting him.

‘You realise, of course, that I can’t let you tell anyone what you’ve seen?’ Luke informed her.

A cold thrill of horror ran through her.

‘But I’m not going to tell anyone,’ she protested.

‘I suppose the best and easiest thing to do would be for me to confiscate your passport and then have you thrown in jail,’ Luke said calmly.

‘What?’ Suzy’s face paled. ‘No—you can’t do that…’ She could hardly believe what she was hearing, but one look at Lucas Soames’s face assured her that he was deadly serious.

‘Oh, I think you’ll find that I can,’ Luke assured her.

‘But, knowing what you are capable of doing in order to get what you want, I think the best place for you right now is where I can make sure you aren’t able to make any kind of contact with Roy Jarvis.’

‘What—what are you going to do?’ Suzy asked anxiously,

‘I’m going to take you back to the villa with me—as my partner.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT?’

Suzy was totally lost for words as she struggled to comprehend what he had said. His partner! But that meant…Fear and then longing shot through her like a firework showering her insides and touching every single nerve-ending she possessed. Partners…lovers…soul mates! No. She just wasn’t strong enough to withstand this kind of torture!

‘No—no! You can’t do that. I won’t!’ she protested shakily.

He had already released her wrist, and as she spoke she was backing away from him, adrenalin pulsing through her veins. She had to get away! She had to!

As soon as she was out of his arm’s reach she turned and started to run, driven by her instinct to flee, to protect herself, to hide herself from the danger she knew lay waiting for her!

Intent on her escape, she did not even think about sticking to the path which led back to the resort, instead plunging headlong straight down the steep hillside, sending up a shower of dry earth and small stones as she did so.

Luke watched her, knowing how easily he could catch her, his grim look turning to a frown as he saw the obstacle ahead of her—a large boulder, right in her path. He waited for her to change direction to avoid it, knowing that if she didn’t—if she ran right into it—which she was going to do!

He caught her with a couple of yards to spare, knocking the breath out of her body as she fell towards the ground. But somehow, to Suzy’s astonishment, before she hit the ground their positions were reversed, and it was Lucas Soames who was lying on the hard earth, with her held fast on top of him. His arms were fastened around her like iron bands, one gripping her body the other cradling her head.

Winded and frightened, Suzy tried to free herself—only to find that she could hardly move.

‘Let go of me!’ she demanded, struggling frantically.

‘Stop that, you little fool, otherwise we’ll both be—’ Lucas began, and then stopped as one of Suzy’s flailing hands caught the side of his mouth.

Against instinct, certainly against training, and surely against wanting, he opened his mouth and caught hold of the two offending fingers.

Heat and shock poured through Suzy’s body.

Lucas Soames had her fingers in his mouth and he was…

She completely forgot what had been happening, and her own desperate attempt to break free of his imprisonment of her. Her body, her mind, her heart—all flooded with pure undistilled pleasure as his tongue slowly caressed her flesh.

The warm, wet slide of his tongue against her fingers caused images of shocking and unfamiliar sensuality to burst into her head. She wanted to replace her fingers with her mouth, her tongue. She wanted…Suzy could feel the dangerous familiarity of the ache inside her, in her breasts and low down in her body.

Desperate to protect herself, she wrenched her fingers away.

Deprived of the feel of her soft, sweet flesh against his tongue, Luke reacted immediately. The hand at the back of her head forced her towards him, and his mouth covered hers in devastatingly sensual punishment.

Suzy tried to resist but it was too late. Her lips were betraying her, softening beneath those of her captor!

And it was no wonder Lucas Soames was taking their reaction as an indication that she was inviting him to investigate their closed line, to torment it with the firm flick of his tongue. He probed the effectiveness of her defence and discovered that it was all too easily penetrated.

Held fast on top of him, his hands controlling her ability to move, there was nothing Suzy could do other than submit.

Submit? This was submission? This eager opening of her lips? This hungry greeting of his tongue with her own? This feeling that was spiking through her, impaling her on a rack of tormented feverish longing and need, whilst her hands gripped his shoulders and she forgot every single word of the promises she had made to herself. She was responding to him! Allowing herself to be deceived that the fierce, demanding pressure of his mouth on hers meant something! That the feeling possessing her was also possessing him. That they were…soul mates?

She gave a small gasp.

Luke wrenched his mouth from Suzy’s, his fingers biting into her soft flesh as he tried to find a logical explanation for what he had done.

And for what he was feeling!

He could feel his muscles straining as he willed his aroused body into submission. What the hell was happening to him? Physically he might be able to contain what he was feeling—the urgency of his arousal, the savage need he had to hold her and possess her—but it was what was going on inside his head, not his body, that was causing him the most concern. He had never mixed his professional life and his private life. And he had certainly never needed anyone with the intensity with which he had just been driven to possess Suzy Roberts’s mouth!

Angrily he fought to ignore both the ache the loss of contact with Suzy’s body was causing him and the inner voice that was urging him to continue, to possess the soft warmth of her breasts with his hands, to stroke and explore their feminine softness until he could feel the tight buds of her nipples rising to his touch…

Furious with himself, Luke checked his erotic thoughts.

‘Let go of you?’ he challenged Suzy, as if the kiss had never happened, angling their bodies so that she could see the rocks below them. ‘Take a look! You were heading right for them, and if I hadn’t stopped you right now you would be down there.’

Lifting her head cautiously, Suzy looked down the hillside, her stomach lurching as the saw the jagged rock less than a yard away from them.

‘I wasn’t anywhere near it,’ she lied.

But she was shuddering, and for some reason she was closing her eyes and turning her face into his shoulder.

Immediately Luke stopped her, his fingers digging into her arms as he held her away, a look of tightly reined anger compressing his mouth.

‘If I’d any sense I should have let you go ahead,’ she heard him muttering. ‘It would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble.’

He loathed and despised her that much?

‘Then why didn’t you? I can assure you that as far as I am concerned it would have been preferable to what I’ve just been subjected to!’

Luke had an almost violent need to take her back in his arms and prove to her that she was lying, but instead he derided, ‘If that’s your way of trying to persuade me you’re someone who’d choose death before dishonour, you are wasting your time!’

It wasn’t him who was causing her such pain, it was her own anger, Suzy told herself fiercely.

She couldn’t bring herself to look down at those rocks again, and she couldn’t escape from the knowledge that if he hadn’t actually saved her life then he had certainly saved her from hurting herself very badly.

No, she couldn’t escape from that knowledge, and it seemed that she couldn’t escape from him either. Right now, whilst the solid protection of his hard body beneath her own and the equally hard feel of his arms around her body might be protecting her physically, emotionally this kind of intimacy with him was not doing her any favours at all.

Emotionally? What was she thinking? Suzy knew perfectly well what she was thinking, even if she did not want to acknowledge it. With just one searing kiss Lucas Soames had shown her that, far from being over what she had fought so hard to convince herself had been a moment of uncharacteristic silliness the first time she had seen him, she was if any thing even more vulnerable to him now.

But not for much longer, Suzy promised herself determinedly.

She made a small movement, impatient to be free of him, and then froze with disbelief at the speed with which her flesh reacted to her careless action.

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