About the Authors

Canadian DANI COLLINS knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got ‘The Call’. Her first Mills & Boon Modern Romance won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First In Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.

MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. Now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire, with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without, and she produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

LOUISE FULLER was a tomboy who hated pink and always wanted to be the prince—not the princess! Now she enjoys creating heroines who aren’t pretty pushovers but are strong, believable women. Before writing for Mills & Boon she studied literature and philosophy at university and then worked as a reporter on her local newspaper. She lives in Tunbridge Wells with her impossibly handsome husband, Patrick, and their six children.

More Than a Vow

Vows of Revenge

Dani Collins

After Their Vows

Michelle Reid

Vows Made in Secret

Louise Fuller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08139-9

MORE THAN A VOW

Vows of Revenge © 2015 Dani Collins After Their Vows © 2011 Michelle Reid Vows Made in Secret © 2015 Louise Fuller

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Vows of Revenge

Dedication

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

EPILOGUE

After Their Vows

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Vows Made in Secret

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Vows of Revenge

Dani Collins

In my heart, my books are always dedicated to my husband and kids, my sisters and my parents. They’ve always been incredibly supportive, both emotionally and physically, by doing dishes and making meals so I could write.

When it comes to writing dedications, however, I often look to my editors. Writing is a lonely business. I’m a big enough control freak that I don’t ask other writers to look at my work and weigh in. It’s all on me until I hit “Send.” Then I rely on my editor to ensure I’m not embarrassing myself.

Kathryn Cheshire is my latest wing-woman in the Harlequin Mills & Boon offices. This is our first book together and she’s everything an author wants and needs: warm, insightful and encouraging.

I couldn’t do this without my family or you, Dear Reader, but a great editor is the linchpin in the whole operation. Thanks for being awesome, Kathryn.

CHAPTER ONE

SURROUNDED BY OLD money and cold-blooded cynicism for the first part of her life, Melodie Parnell wasn’t half as ingenuous as she looked. In fact, she actively tried to give off an air of sophistication by straightening her curly brown hair into a shiny curtain, adding a flick of liquid liner to downplay her round blue eyes and painting a bold red lipstick over her plump, pink lips. Her clothing choices were classic business style: a pencil skirt, a sweater set and her mother’s pearls.

At the same time, she privately offered people the benefit of the doubt. She believed the best whenever possible and always sought the brightest side of every situation.

That attitude had earned her nothing but contempt from her half brother and more than once resulted in a sting from social climbers and gold diggers trying to get closer to the men in her family. Being softhearted had definitely been her mother’s downfall. But, Melodie often assured herself, she wasn’t nearly as fragile or susceptible as that. The fact that she’d lost her mother very recently and kept slipping into a state of melancholy as she faced life without her didn’t make her vulnerable.

Yet, for some reason, Roman Killian took the rug right out from under her—by doing nothing except answering the door of his mansion.

“You must be the indispensable Melodie,” he greeted.

She was supposed to be immune to powerful men in bespoke outfits, but her mouth went dry and her knees went weak. He wasn’t even wearing a suit. He wore a casually tailored linen jacket over black pants and a collarless peasant-style shirt, three open buttons at his throat.

Not that she really took in his clothes. She saw the man.

He had black hair that might have curled if he let it grow long enough, tanned skin and gorgeous bone structure. Italian? Spanish? Greek? He certainly had the refined features of European aristocracy, but Melodie knew him to be a self-made American. His brows were straight and circumspect, his eyes decidedly green with a dark ring around the irises. He was clean shaven, urbane and acutely masculine in every way.

He met her gaze with an impactful directness that stole her breath.

“Roman Killian,” he said, offering his hand and snapping her out of her fixation. His voice was like dark chocolate and red wine, rich and sultry, but his tone held a hint of disparagement. No one was truly essential, he seemed to say.

“I am Melodie,” she managed to say. She watched his mouth as he clasped her hand in his strong grip. His upper lip was much narrower than his full bottom one. He smiled in the way men did when confronted with a woman they didn’t find particularly attractive, but were forced by circumstance to be polite toward. Cool and dismissive.

Melodie wasn’t offended. She was always braced for male rejection and surprised if she didn’t get it. It wasn’t that she was homely. She had just inherited her mother’s catwalk build and elfin features along with her pearls. The attributes were fine for modeling, but came off as skinny and exaggerated in real life. Spiderlike and awkward—or so she’d been told so many times she tended to believe it.

So his indifference wasn’t a surprise, but her skin still prickled and she warmed as though the sun had lodged in her belly and radiated outward through her limbs with a disarming feeling that she was glowing.

She shouldn’t be so nervous. She’d still had a pacifier in her mouth when she’d begun glad-handing, and rarely suffered shyness no matter how lofty the person she was meeting. Presidents. Royalty. Such things didn’t affect her.

Yet she found herself surreptitiously fighting to catch her breath, aware that she was letting her hand stay in his too long. When she tried to extract it, however, he tightened his grip.

“We’ve met,” he said with certainty. Almost accusingly. His eyes narrowed as he raked her face with his gaze, head cocked and arrested.

“No,” she assured him, but her pulse gave a leap while a romantic part of her brain invented a fanciful “in another life soul-mate” scenario. She was very good with faces and names, though, even when a person wasn’t nearly as memorable as he was. And he was too young to remember her mother, not that he looked the type to thumb through fashion magazines in the first place. There was an off chance he’d seen her in connection to her father, she supposed, but she was carving that particular man from her life one thought at a time so she didn’t bring him up, and only said, “I’m quite sure we haven’t.”

Roman didn’t believe her, she could see it.

“Ingrid and Huxley aren’t with you?” He flicked a look for her clients to where her taxi had dropped her next to the fountain in his paved courtyard.

“They’ll be along shortly,” she said.

He brought his sharp gaze back to her face, making her quiver inwardly again. Slowly he released her and waved toward the interior of his home. “Come in.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, disconcerted by everything about him.

He was so masculine, so confident yet aloof. Secure, she thought, with a twist of irony. He’d made his fortune in security, starting with a software package but now offering global solutions of all kinds. It was one of the few things she knew about him. She hadn’t researched him much, mostly relying on what Ingrid had shared, turned off by the idea she might wind up reading about her half brother if she looked up Roman online.

But knowing he was Anton’s competition had made her predisposed to like Roman. He also seemed to have a streak of magnanimity, supporting causes from homelessness to dementia research to donating computers to libraries. And he’d offered his home in the south of France for his employee’s wedding. Surely that meant he possessed a big heart under that air of predatory power?

“I didn’t expect a security specialist to have such a welcoming home,” she confessed, trying to ignore the sense that his eyes stayed glued to her narrow shoulders as she took in a modern house built with old-world grandeur. “I imagined something very contemporary, made of glass and stainless steel, all sharp angles.”

The high ceilings held glittering chandeliers. A double staircase came down in expansive arms of delicate wrought iron and sumptuous red carpet over yellowed marble. The tiles continued through the huge foyer to an enormous lounge where a horseshoe sofa in warm terra-cotta would easily seat twenty.

Did he entertain often? Something in the way his energy permeated this airy interior so thoroughly made her think he kept this all-comfortable splendor to himself.

“The sorts of things that people want to protect are often attractive. Jewelry. Art,” he supplied with a negligent shrug. “Six inches of steel works to a point, but surveillance and alarms allow for designs that are more aesthetically pleasing.”

“Are we being filmed right now?” she asked with a lilt of surprise.

“The cameras are only activated when an alarm is tripped.”

So it was just him was watching her, then. Nerve-racking all the same.

A formal dining room stood off to the right. It could be useful for the waitstaff, perhaps, since the four hundred wedding guests would eat in tents outside. And yes, the property allowed plenty of room for the ceremony, tents, a bandstand and a dance floor. Arched breezeways lined the house where it faced the Mediterranean. In the courtyard stood a square pool with a quarter circle taken out of it like a bite for a small dining area. Beyond its turquoise water a half dozen stairs led to a long strip of sandy beach. Off to the right a tethered helicopter stood on a groomed lawn. Once it had been removed, that space would be perfect for the ceremony and reception.

Melodie had grown up in luxury, but nothing as extravagant as this. Roman Killian was a very rich man. It was difficult to hide how awed she was.

She brought her gaze back to the bougainvillea training up the colonnades, and smaller pots of roses and geraniums and flowers she couldn’t identify. They gave off scents of anise and cherry and honey, dreamy and adding to the magical atmosphere of the place.

“This is all so beautiful,” she murmured, trying not to see herself as a bride, spilling in a waterfall of white lace down the stairs, emerging to blinding light and a strikingly handsome groom. The sunset would paint their future in rosy pink. Candlelight would burn like their eternal love.

She met Roman’s gaze and found him eyeing her as if reading her thoughts, making her blush and look away.

“It’s very generous of you to offer it,” she managed.

“Ingrid is an exceptional employee,” he said after a brief pause, making her think that wasn’t his real reason for offering his home. “Why didn’t you all come together? Are you not staying at the same hotel?”

“They’re newly engaged,” Melodie said wryly. “I’ve been feeling very third wheel since meeting them at the airport.” It was only four days, she reminded herself.

“Job hazard?” Roman guessed with a twitch around his mouth.

She couched a smile, suspecting he had a much lower tolerance than she did for witnessing nuzzling and baby talk.

“It can be,” she replied, aiming for circumspect, because this was only her second wedding and her first international society one. Her business was still so new the price tag hadn’t been clipped off, but he didn’t need to know that. She’d organized state dinners in her sleep, and this was exactly the sort of event she was ready to build her livelihood upon.

“How long have you been living here?” She was highly curious about him.

His manner changed. Their moment of commonality evaporated and she had the impression he stepped back from his body, leaving only the shell before her.

“It was completed last year. What else can I show you? The kitchen?”

“Thank you,” she said, hiding her surprise at how quickly she’d been shut down.

He waved her toward the end of the house, where he introduced her to his personal chef. The Frenchman was standoffish but had nothing on his employer. She was able to get a few details about the catering cleared up as Roman stood watch, keeping her on high alert.

* * *

Roman expected the single pulse from his silenced watch to be a notification that the rest of his guests had arrived. One glance at the face told him it was actually a request that he review an important security alert.

Given that security was his business, he didn’t take the request lightly, but an immediate threat would have been flagged as such and dealt with at the perimeter. And he had a guest. This wisp of a woman flickering through his home like sunlight and shadow through a copse of trees fascinated him. The conviction that she was familiar was incredibly strong, yet he’d sensed no lie when she’d assured him they were strangers.

Roman had a reliable radar for lies, one he listened to without fail. The one time he’d ignored his gut and convinced himself to have faith, he’d lost everything up to, and almost including, his life.

So even though he should have forced himself to the panel on the wall to review the alert, he stayed with his PA’s wedding planner, keeping her under observation—partly, he admitted to himself, because her backside was delightfully outlined by her snug skirt, proving she was round and perky in the right places. He liked listening to her voice, too. Her accent wasn’t heavy like Americans from the Deep South, but it had a lick of molasses, sweet and slow with a hint of rough darkness as she elevated and dropped each word. Very engaging.

She puzzled him at the same time. He was used to women being overt when they were attracted to him. He wasn’t so arrogant he thought all of them were, but he worked out, wore tailored clothes and was loaded. These were all things that typically appealed to the opposite sex. She was blushing and flicking him nervous looks, fiddling with her hair, obviously very aware of him, but trying to hide it.

She wasn’t wearing a ring, but perhaps she was involved with someone. If she wasn’t, that shyness suggested she preferred slow, complex relationships. She didn’t sleep with men for the fun of it, he surmised, which was a pity because that was very much a quality he looked for in a woman.

Roman had trained himself to keep emotions firmly at bay, but a blanket of disappointment descended on him. He was attracted to her, but apparently it wouldn’t go anywhere. That was a shame.

Melodie had noticed his glance at his watch and offered a wry smile. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have left the happy couple to their own devices. They’re quite late, aren’t they?”

“It’s not like Ingrid,” he allowed. If it had been, she wouldn’t be his PA. He wasn’t a tyrant, but he didn’t tolerate sloppy behavior of any kind.

At the same time, he was fine with having Melodie to himself for a little longer.

“Perhaps you could show me where she’ll dress?” she suggested, and showed him her smartphone. “I wouldn’t mind taking note of suitable photo locations. The bridal preparations and procession to the groom are always an important part of the day’s record.”

“Are they?” If he sounded disdainful, he couldn’t help it. He had lived hand to mouth for long enough that he didn’t see the point in extravagant ceremonies. Did he pay for top quality now that he could afford to? Absolutely. But weddings were already given too much importance without turning them into a Broadway musical—then filming behind-the-scenes footage for others to ooh and aah over. As much as he appreciated Ingrid for all the skills she brought to her work, he was hosting this performance strictly for business reasons.

“I take it you’re not a romantic,” Melodie said as though reading his cynicism. “Or is it just that you wish you hadn’t agreed to having your private space invaded?”

Both, he admitted silently, and realized he would have to work on controlling how much he revealed around this woman. She was very astute.

Or very attuned to him, which was even more disturbing.

“I’m a dedicated realist,” he replied, motioning for her to lead the way from the kitchen up a flight of service stairs to a breakfast room. “You?” he drawled.

“Hopeless optimist,” she confessed without apology. “Oh, this room is gorgeous.”

It was the second time she’d forced him to take stock of the choices he’d made in his surroundings. Part of him had been willing to go with the sort of design she’d said she expected of him: glass and chrome and clean, straight lines. But he’d spent enough time in an institution— juvenile, so not quite as stark as real prison—along with houses that weren’t his own. He’d wanted something that felt like a real home. Of course, it also had to be a smart investment that would fetch a tidy profit if his world ever collapsed again and he had to sell it. Which wouldn’t happen, but Roman was a plan B and C and D sort of man.

So even though he ate in this sunroom every morning, he wasn’t as charmed as she appeared to be by its earthy tones and view overlooking the lemon groves between the road and the fountain in front of the house. He had agreed with the architect that having the morning sunlight pour in through the windows made sense, as did the French doors that opened to the upper balcony that ran the side and length of the house facing the pool and the sea, but it could rain every morning for all the notice he took.

“I once had a fortune cookie that told me to always be optimistic because nothing else matters.”

Her remark caught him by surprise. His mouth twitched as he processed the irony. He quickly controlled it, but couldn’t help bantering, “They should all read, ‘You’re about to eat a dry, tasteless cracker.’”

“Ouch.” She mock frowned at him. “I dread to ask what you think of weddings if that’s your attitude toward fortune cookies. Dry and tasteless?” she surmised with a blink of her wide eyes.

She was definitely flirting with him.

Time to let her know that if she went down that road it would be for short-term amusement, not long-term commitment.

“The ceremony does strike me as a rather elaborate shell for a piece of paper that promises something about the future but ultimately has no bearing on what will really happen.”

His denunciation had her shoulders dropping in dismay. “That would be poetic if it wasn’t so depressing,” she informed him. “Weddings are as much a celebration of the happiness that has been achieved thus far as they are a promise of happily-ever-after.”

“You promise that, do you? Sounds as if you’re taking advantage of the gullible.”

“Meaning that people who fall in love and make plans to share their lives are suckers? On the contrary—they haven’t given up hope,” she defended, lifting her chin with pretended insult.

“For?” he challenged, secretly enjoying this lighthearted battle of opinion.

“Whatever it is they seek. How far would you have come with your company if you hadn’t dreamed beyond what looked realistic? If all you’d done was aim low?” She gave him a cheeky smile as she walked past him into his private sitting room, meeting his eyes as though sure she had him. “See? Being an optimist, I believe I can convert you.”

“I’m not that easy to manipulate,” he stated, confident he’d maintained the upper hand. “But go ahead and try,” he added with significance.

CHAPTER TWO

“OKAY— OH.” THE sitting room took up the corner of the house facing the water. More French doors opened to both the side and front balcony. The rest of the area was clearly the master bedroom.

Melodie had been so caught up in trying to be clever she hadn’t realized where she was going. She blushed. “I didn’t realize.” Why hadn’t he stopped her?

“There’s a guest room down the hall that Ingrid can use to dress,” he said drily.

She should have hurried to find it, but her feet fixed to the carpet as she took in the luxurious room in varying shades of blue. The bed was obscenely huge and was backed by mirrors to reflect the view. The wall onto the balcony was made of glass doors that doubled back on themselves so many times they ended up tucked into the corners. The partition between outside and interior had essentially disappeared.

Filmy curtains hung in tied bunches at the corners of the bed, presumably to afford some privacy to the occupant—occupants, plural?—if they happened to be in the bed with the doors open.

With that thought Melodie became acutely aware of the fact that she was a woman and Roman a man. He was tall and broad and his bed would accommodate his strapping body easily, along with any company he brought with him. She swallowed, trying not to betray the direction her thoughts were taking, even as she felt heat creeping through her, staining her cheeks.

As far as what he might be thinking, it was hard to tell whether he was attracted to her or just amusing himself at her expense.

“Oh, that’s very beautiful,” she said, letting the view draw her onto the balcony and away from the intimacy of his bedroom. She set her purse near her feet and used two hands to steady her phone while she took a snap. Her faint trembles grew worse as Roman came to stand next to her.

“How do you know Ingrid?” he asked.

Uncomfortable remaining where she could smell the traces of his aftershave, Melodie moved along the upper balcony, trying to pretend her dazzled state was caused by the band of turquoise just beyond the white beach before the blue of the sea deepened to navy. An indolent breeze moved through her sweater and hair, doing little to cool her. It was more of a disturbing caress, really. Inciting.

“Our mothers went to the same prep school in Virginia.” Looking for cool in the wrought iron rail, Melodie grasped only heat, but she let the hard cut of metal into her palm ground her as she added, “My mother passed away recently and Evelyn came to the service. It was auspicious timing, with Ingrid recently becoming engaged.”

Melodie’s father had been instrumental in this new job of hers, of course, not that she intended to broadcast that. After insisting they invite Evelyn to say a few words about Melodie’s mother—a request that had surprised the woman when she hadn’t spoken to her old friend in years— Garner had insisted Melodie go talk to her. Ask her about her daughter. Melodie had realized after the fact that Garner had been fishing for info on Roman through his PA, but she didn’t know why. She’d taken her time following up with Evelyn a couple of weeks after the service and kept it to herself. Her father and brother didn’t even know she was here. Heck, they didn’t know she was alive. She preferred it that way.

“Helping with the arrangements has taken my mind off things,” she provided with a faint smile. “Weddings are such happy occasions. Far better than organizing a funeral.”

A pause, then he asked, perplexed, “Are you saying the funeral was so impressive it prompted this woman to ask you to arrange her daughter’s wedding?”

Melodie chuckled, even though the subject was still very raw for her.

“Not exactly. It was a grand affair,” she allowed, trying to keep the disdain out of her voice. Her mother had wanted something small and private. Her father had wanted publicity shots. Melodie had wanted her mother’s ashes. She’d done what she had to and the urn was now in her home, where she’d keep it safe until she could complete her mother’s final wish, to have her ashes scattered in Paris. “But I think Evelyn was being kind to me, suggesting I get into this sort of thing as a career—”

Oops. She hadn’t meant to reveal that. Shooting a glance at Roman, she saw his brows had gone up with that detail.

“Which isn’t to say I’m not qualified,” she hurried to assure him. This wouldn’t be amateur hour with monkeys stumbling around his home overturning his life, if that was what he was thinking behind that analytical expression. Melodie intended to repay Evelyn’s faith in her by ensuring each detail of her daughter’s wedding went off perfectly and with the utmost taste. “I’ve done a lot of this type of thing, just hadn’t seen it as a career possibility. After she said what she did, I contacted her and we came to an arrangement.”

“So you’re just getting your company off the ground. There must be substantial investment up front,” he commented. “Flying here to scout the location. That sort of thing.”

“Some,” she replied with suitable vagueness. Complaining about money problems would not inspire his confidence. But the small policy she’d managed to take out on her mother’s behalf had merely paid for the worst of her health-care bills. Pretending she could afford a weekend in the south of France was pure bravado and something Melodie would build into Ingrid and Huxley’s final bill.

“Your office,” she assumed as she moved away from that topic and along the balcony, arriving in front of a pair of open doors. The interior of the room held a desk free of clutter surrounded by large, clear screens she previously had thought were an invention confined to sci-fi movies. “You’ll want to secure this on the day, obviously.”

A door led off one wall back into his bedroom. The opposite wall was completely covered in large flat screens. A single image of his company logo took up the black space on them.

Melodie stepped into the room, drawn by its spare yet complex setup. A blip sounded and Roman followed to press his thumb pad to a sensor.

“You’re quite the secret agent, aren’t you?” she teased.

“I like to consider myself the man who stops them,” he rejoined drily.

She bit back a smile at his supreme confidence and said, “This would be a stunning angle for a photo, with the water in the background. Would you stand in for Ingrid?”

“Not likely,” he dismissed. Then smoothly turned things around with “You’d make a prettier bride. I’ll take the photo.” He held out his hand for her phone.

She hesitated, far more comfortable behind the lens than in front of it. She always had been, but she really didn’t want to cause even the smallest ripple in such a big commission.

“If you prefer,” she murmured with false equanimity and readied her camera app, walking back outside again as she did so. “We’ll do a series of shots from when the father of the bride fetches her from her room and all the way down the stairs. I had thought she’d come down the interior ones, but these ones are better. The guests will see her approach, and all this wrought iron is so gorgeous. We’ll take some couple shots on the inside stairs after the ceremony.” She was thinking aloud as she went to the rail and turned to face him.

He fiddled with her phone, then said, “Ready.”

After a few of the app’s manufactured clicks, he lifted his gaze and commanded, “Smile. You’re getting married.”

Caught off guard, Melodie laughed with natural humor, then clasped an imaginary bouquet and channeled her best bridal joy, as if the man of her dreams was awaiting her.

Despite being mocked mercilessly through her teens and suffering a self-imposed disaster that had put her off dating into her adult years, she had been telling the truth about being a romantic. She liked to believe a real-life hero existed for her. She needed to believe it, or she’d become as depressed as her mother had been.

Her mother’s illness had held Melodie back from looking for him, but now, despite the grief abrading her heart, she was open to possibility. Willing to take a risk. For just this one moment she let herself imagine Roman was the man made for her. Her soul mate.

Roman’s intense concentration lifted sharply from the phone, pinning her in the steely needle of his hard stare.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Heat climbed up her chest into her throat.

“Nothing.”

She licked her lips and moved along the balcony toward the outer stairs, trying to escape the moment of silly make-believe, but now that it was in her head she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to live with this savagely beautiful man.

Hard, she thought. But the right woman might be able to soften him.

The stairs descended in a curve to the area beside the pool. She stopped at the top and waved behind herself.

“She’ll have a train. We’ll fan it out here.” She twisted as she indicated the puddle of imaginary silk and lace. Lifting her gaze, looking back over her shoulder at him as if this was a bad idea. She was too far into the dream, unguarded and vulnerable. She had accidentally left herself open to his reading her thoughts. Her entire body became paralyzed in a kind of thrilled panic, as though he’d happened upon her naked, but she wasn’t afraid or ashamed. She was a nymph caught by a god.

He went statue still.

Her phone looked small in his hand, clicking, but practically forgotten as he looked past it and kept his eyes on her, taking his time as he toured her shoulder blades and waist and bottom and legs. The term brutally handsome came into her head and she understood it for the first time in her life. Roman was so gorgeous it was an assault to the senses, squeezing her lungs and pulsing heat under her skin.

He frightened her, but she wanted him to pursue her. It didn’t make sense, but from everything she’d heard about hormones, they were never big on logic. They were the opposite, and hers were responding unusually well to him. That was what frightened her. Not him, per se, but her reaction to him.

He abruptly glanced at his watch. “Ingrid has been delayed,” he said, touching the device. “She thinks she sprained her wrist. She’s at the clinic and asks if we can reschedule.”

* * *

He could have asked Melodie to stay for lunch, but he didn’t. He had his driver take her back to her hotel. He wanted time to consider how he was reacting to her before pursuing her openly.

Powerfully was the answer to how he was reacting. Taking her photo had been an excuse to study her, and he hadn’t seen a single thing he didn’t like. And even though he was far beyond getting hot over photos of women, clothed or not, for some reason he’d been fixated as he had watched her pose. There was definitely a strong sexual attraction between them, but more than that, he’d found her magnetic.

Why?

He shook off his perplexity as he pressed his thumb pad to the sensor in his office and tapped the screen, bringing up the security report he’d ignored earlier.

He swore aloud as the contents became clear.

Apparently the experts were right. He was a security genius, if late to the party this once. The myriad details that his gatekeeper and even his own eyes had missed had been refined by his closed circuit camera and proprietary software, filtered against online content, then tagged to warn him of an attack even more insidious than the one he’d suffered all those years ago.

A handful of matches had come up. He glanced through them, stomach knotting.

The surname comparison could be dismissed as coincidental. Melodie had given his guard the name Parnell, which had been tagged to Parnell-Gautier. Two and a half decades ago, a model named Patience Parnell had hyphenated to Parnell-Gautier when she married.

He flicked to a dated glamor shot from a defunct fashion magazine. Patience stared at him, young and nubile, her gamine face bearing a striking resemblance to Melodie’s big eyes and wide mouth. And there she was holding a baby girl named Charmaine. Not Melodie, but the date would put the baby in her early twenties today, precisely the age Melodie appeared to be.

Roman had met Patience once, very briefly, he recalled now. But he’d never considered her a direct threat because she’d gone into some kind of medical care several years ago.

His war, Roman had always believed, was with Anton Gautier and Anton’s father, Garner Gautier. Aside from one recent photograph, the daughter hadn’t been linked publically to either man since childhood.

He studied the photograph from a newsfeed dated two months ago. Melodie’s profile from her approach in the taxi today had been set against the profile in the news piece where a backlit woman, wearing a black hat with a netted veil, stood next to her American senator father as he bowed his head over a casket. Behind them stood Anton. The caption mentioned that Patience Parnell-Gautier was survived by her loving husband, stepson and daughter, Charmaine M. Parnell-Gautier.

How vile and just like Gautier to send his second spawn into Roman’s house like this. To use his PA’s mother to infiltrate his home.

He immediately dismissed any thought that Ingrid could be in on the scheme. She’d proved her loyalty again and again over the years. And it had been his idea to host the wedding, not hers. High-society circles were small and tight. She had connections he didn’t. He wouldn’t care about being accepted at that level if it weren’t for the fact that it was the one area the Gautiers had an advantage on him. He’d volunteered his home to even the playing field.

What he couldn’t understand was how Melodie had captivated him to the point that he’d ignored the security alert rather than read it and order her off his property. He wasn’t so uncivilized he’d have had her thrown out the way he’d been physically expelled from her father’s campaign office twelve years ago. Battered and kicked so badly he could barely walk away. Anton had been the thief, but Garner had had the power to turn it around and call Roman the criminal. He’d had the power to ruin Roman, which he had.

A red haze of fury rose with the recollection. He would not allow the Gautiers to play him again. Rage urged him to hurt them, deeply, for daring to try.

Despite being a man who actively sublimated everything resembling feelings, he found himself able to taste delicious vengeance on the tip of his tongue. He’d been longing to get back at this family for years, biding his time, wanting to first overtake Gautier Enterprises in the arena that would cause them the most discomfort: financial.

For years, their two companies had been neck and neck in a two-horse race, both improving on the same software that he, Roman, originally had written and that Anton had convinced him his father would back. Instead, the men had stolen his product, finished it, then made a mint while Roman had scraped by for another five years, rebuilding everything he’d lost and finally entering the marketplace so far behind them he’d despaired of ever catching up.

Finally, early last year, he had begun to see parity. It wasn’t enough. Not for him. He’d risked everything and had thrown all his resources behind completely reengineered software. The gamble had paid off. Corporations were dropping the dated Gautier knockoff and stampeding to Roman’s new, far superior product.

Gautier’s bottom line had to be feeling the pinch by now. It followed that they would send in a scout, thinking to once again steal what they wanted and step back into the top position.

Like hell.

Roman wasn’t just going to win this time. He would send a message to the Gautiers they would never forget. He would crush them into nothing, starting by flattening their emissary without a shred of mercy.

His first instinct was to have Ingrid fire Melodie immediately, but he forced himself to more coolheaded contemplation. The Gautiers had let Roman believe he was on the path to success right up to the moment when they explained his services with the software design were no longer needed and they would be taking possession of his ticket to a better life.

Therefore, he would ensure he had another wedding planner in place, so there was no inconvenience to Ingrid. Melodie would lose her contract and any chance of continuing in that field. Nice of her to drop the detail that it was a new venture, he reflected. He didn’t think for a moment she was serious about making a career of wedding planning, but as with any con artist’s ruse, the Gautiers would have put funds behind making it seem real. He was glad to at least cost them their investment.

A few investigative keystrokes later, he saw that Melodie lived alone. Surprisingly modestly, he noted. So had he, back in the day, but he’d still lost his home and all he owned. He knew that his eye-for-an-eye retribution wouldn’t have the same impact. Melodie would simply run home to Daddy, but it was the right message, so he started the wheels rolling on getting her kicked out.

The final touch would be the simple, crystal clear message that they’d failed. The sweetest retaliation of all.

* * *

Melodie had clearly pulled the rookie move of plugging her phone into the charger without checking that it was properly connected. When she pulled it off, one foot out the door to meet Ingrid and Huxley and leave for Roman’s, she saw it had not only failed to charge, but had lost the 4 percent it had had. Dead as a doornail.

Sparing a moment to throw it into the safe with her passport, she wound up putting her whole purse inside. She’d take a credit card as a just-in-case, but it was only going to be a quick lunch in a private home. She didn’t need to pack a bag.

Okay, yes, her mind was racing a mile a minute and she couldn’t make a rational decision to save her life. She was not just nervous but excited. Last night with Ingrid and Huxley it had been all she could do to keep her chatter confined to the suitability of Roman’s house as a venue for the wedding. The whole time she’d been longing to pump her client for more information on Roman, but she’d managed to wait until bed before doing a bit more online snooping. Then she’d lain awake fantasizing about him—creating scenarios in her head she hadn’t ever starred in before, but wanted to with him.

A short while later, having met up with Ingrid and Huxley en route, Melodie barely kept herself from dancing in place as Roman opened his door to them.

“I’m so sorry,” Ingrid moaned as they entered. “I slipped in the tub the other night and didn’t think it was that bad, but by the time we were on our way here yesterday, it was like this.” She motioned a ballooned wrist.

“She wanted to wait until we’d finished here before going to the clinic, but she was fighting tears in the car,” Huxley said. “I couldn’t let it go untreated.”

“Of course not,” Roman murmured smoothly. “I’m glad it’s just a sprain, and won’t impact your typing and filing once your vacation is finished.”

Ingrid giggled. “He’s being funny,” she said to Melodie over her shoulder. “The office is paperless and we do almost everything talk to text.”

Melodie smiled, wishing that Ingrid and Huxley weren’t pressed to each other like a pair of bubbles that were about to become one. She really needed them to diffuse all this aggressive male energy coming her way. It was as if Roman had developed a ten-fold power of masculinity overnight and it was now all beamed directly at her.

“Excellent photos, by the way. You have a hidden talent,” Ingrid said to her boss, thankfully drawing his attention for a brief moment.

He only said, “The camera loves her,” then trained his intent gaze back onto Melodie as though searching for something.

Huxley wanted to know what they were talking about and Melodie immediately regretted showing the photos to Ingrid. She’d been trying to explain the potential for wedding photos, but now had to brush aside Ingrid’s gushing with a brisk “I was hamming.”

The final shot, where she’d been looking back at Roman, was the most disturbing. Her slender figure against the ivory backdrop of the mansion’s west wing had projected elegant femininity while her expression had been one of sensual invitation. She hadn’t meant to be so...revealing.

Embarrassment struck once again as yesterday’s unfounded yearnings welled anew. This was why she hated having her picture taken. Too much of herself became visible.

“Why don’t we go outside and you can take a few photos yourself?” she suggested, trying to distract everyone.

* * *

As they sat down by the poolside for a light lunch, Roman continued to study Melodie, biding his time, confident yet highly cautious. She was a surprisingly dangerous woman beneath that projected innocence.

He’d thought her pretty yesterday, which had apparently been enough to mesmerize him. Today, having seen the glimpse of unfettered beauty in her photos, he now caught flashes of stunning attractiveness in her as she smiled and exchanged banter with Ingrid and Huxley.

The truth was he was having trouble remembering why he shouldn’t be drawn to her. He told himself he was giving her enough rope to hang herself, but deep down he wondered if he was putting off the denouement of his plan so he could spend a few more minutes admiring her.

It was sick and wrong. She was his enemy. Yet he suddenly found himself ensnared in the meaningful look she was sending him. She practically spoke inside his head as she flicked a rueful glance toward the couple, who had had to take a break from eating to rub noses. See? It never stops.

It was an odd moment of being on exactly the same wavelength. An urge to chuckle over their private joke rose in him while the sparkle in her eye and the flash of her smile encouraged him.

What the hell? How could he be gripped by anything except the fact she was here to commit a crime against him?

“Now that you’ve seen the place, shall I tell my staff it’s set in stone?” he asked Ingrid, pulling them all back to the supposed business at hand. Trying to put his train of thought back on its rails.

“Please,” Ingrid said, offering him a look of earnest gratitude. “And I can’t thank you enough. I’m still reeling that you’ve been so kind as to offer this. It’s his fortress of solitude,” she added in a teasing aside to Melodie. “No one is ever invited here.”

Roman brushed off the remark with a dry smile, but felt the weight of Melodie’s curiosity. He ignored the prickle of male awareness that responded to the intrigue in her gaze, set his inner shields firmly into place and wrote off a trickle of anticipation as a premonition of threat that he would heed.

“We all need a retreat where we can work in peace,” he said, partly to tantalize her—your move, he was saying—but his house was more than a sanctuary. It was a statement that he had arrived, and hosting the wedding would publish that headline.

“Well, it helps a great deal having a central location to bring the families into, since they’re coming from far and wide,” Huxley went on. “We appreciate it.”

Roman offered another vague smile, covering up the fact that he was very aware that Huxley’s father was a highly placed British ambassador in the Middle East, and the rest of his relations were blue bloods from the UK. Ingrid’s were old money Americans, including an aunt married to a German sitting on the EU Council of Ministers. Ingrid’s maid of honor was the daughter of a Swiss banker. The event was a who’s who of the international renowned and elite.

Being hosted by the son of a New York prostitute.

This was his entrée, he reminded himself dourly, wishing he felt more enthusiasm, but feeling more taken with the cat-and-mouse game he was playing with Melodie. What did it say about him that base things such as competition and survival still preoccupied him?

“How did you get into security software development?” Melodie asked, nearly prompting a sarcastic “really?” out of him.

He didn’t allow himself to be suckered by her solemn expression of interest. It struck him that she might not be here to steal, merely to damage. Her family had threatened to use his background to discredit him once before. They wouldn’t be above trying it again. Perhaps she intended to sabotage his hosting of the wedding, removing his chance to grow acquainted with the world’s top influencers.

He met her quietly lethal question head-on, neutralizing any bombshells she might be poised to detonate by getting there first.

“I was arrested at fourteen for hacking into a bank’s network server.”

“Are you serious, Roman?” Ingrid cried on a gasp of intrigue, cutlery rattling onto the edge of her plate. “I had no idea,” she exclaimed, eyes wide with delight in the scandal. “You’re getting information out of him I never did, Mel!”

Melodie’s ridiculously long lashes swept down in a hint of shy pleasure, betraying that she enjoyed the thought of having power over him.

Irritated by the amount of truth in Ingrid’s remark—Melodie was the reason he was going against habit and bringing up his past—Roman finished the story. If it left this table he was determined it would be framed as closely to the truth as possible, and not twisted to annihilate him the way Melodie’s father had threatened.

“Once I realized I could outsmart adults, the game was on to see how far I could go,” he said frankly. “The security specialist who caught me, a tough ex-marine named Charles, was impressed, especially because I was self-taught. Once I did my stint in juvenile detention, he brought me onto his payroll. Taught me how to use my talent for good instead of evil,” he summed up with mild derision.

Melodie’s surprise appeared genuine.

“You weren’t expecting honesty?” he challenged.

“It’s not that. I’ve just never met anyone with a natural ability for programming.” A shadow flickered behind her eyes, something he barely caught, but it colored her voice as she said, “I thought that sort of thing was a myth.”

She was talking about her brother, he was certain of it, but her smile wasn’t sly. She wasn’t trying to trick him or win him over. No, her comment was more of an inward reflection and a hint of confusion. Wondering if Anton was really as good as he’d always claimed?

Hardly.

As quickly as Roman formed the impression, her expression changed and he was looking at a different woman, one who seemed open and engaging, her cares forgotten in favor of enjoying a lively conversation.

“I’m certainly not intuitive with them. Someone had to show me how to set up my email on my tablet.”

And there was the “I’m harmless” claim Roman had been anticipating since he had realized who she was.

The conversation moved on to contacts and wedding arrangements. Iced coffees replaced the white wine everyone had sipped with lunch. Huxley said something about the dock and took Ingrid to inspect it.

Melodie made no move to follow, choosing instead to shift forward slightly and remove her sweater, revealing a matching sleeveless top that clung lovingly to her breasts as she twisted to drape the sweater over the back of her chair.

“I didn’t expect it to be this warm. It’s fall at home. Quite wet and chilly.” She sat straight and, as if she felt the chill across the Atlantic, her nipples rose against the pale lemon of her top.

A base male fantasy of baring those breasts formed in his mind. He saw pink tips resembling cherries melting off scoops of ice cream. He wasn’t a breast man per se, but the languid image of caressing and licking the swells, working his way to the sweet, shiny niblet at the peak, was so tangible he had to part his thighs to accommodate the pool of erotic heat that poured into his groin.

At the same time he realized conversation had stopped. She was very still.

He lazily brought his gaze up and realized she’d caught him blatantly ogling her. A strange jolt hit him like an electrical charge, deep in his gut and far stronger than a zing of static. It was like a full current that reverberated in his chest, making his heart skip a beat and his abdomen tighten.

Her blue eyes held his, fathomless and not the least offended. In fact, her reaction to his masculine interest was arousal. He’d seen it in the tightening of her nipples and read it now in the confused shimmer of excitement and indecision expanding her pupils. Her lashes quivered, eyes shiny, and the tip of her tongue wet her lips.

The pull behind his thighs became more insistent. He wondered if he had ever experienced a more carnal moment.

She swallowed and jerked her gaze from his as though it was a physical wrench of muscle from bone.

He mentally berated himself for letting her see his interest, highly irritated by how easily she had got to him. It was time to drop the ax.

“Does, um, he come around the office much?” she asked, gaze scanning restlessly toward the water. “Are you used to their displays?”

“Who?” he almost growled, then remembered two other people were here. Ingrid and Huxley. They held hands and bumped shoulders as they staggered, love drunk, across the sand.

Roman was behaving almost as inebriated, forgetting they were even here, manufacturing lurid fantasies of possessing a woman too lethal to imbibe. He tried to shrug away the strongest wave of sexual attraction he’d ever felt toward a woman and almost wondered if she’d slipped him something.

“He might, but I don’t,” he replied belatedly, forcing his mind back to the conversation. “The whole point in being on the cutting edge of technology is to use it.” He chinned upward to his office, rebaiting his hook. “I often telecommute.”

“And Ingrid is your avatar in New York?” she guessed.

That took him by surprise. He almost chuckled, then caught himself, dismayed by how easily she kept disarming him. He eyed her, searching for the source of her power. “I hadn’t looked at it that way. I suppose she is.”

“Working from home always seemed so ideal to me,” she mused, propping her chin on her hand. “But now I’m doing it, I find I’m becoming a workaholic, never letting it go. I keep sitting down for one more thing and losing another two hours.”

“You live alone, then,” he said, picking up on what he thought she wanted him to deduce. It shouldn’t please him to hear she was single. She was nothing to him, certainly not a woman he’d bed. Not in these circumstances. Perhaps his libido found her leggy build stimulating. That faint scent of citrus and roses emanating from her skin was pure seduction, but as much as he hated her family and wanted revenge, he wouldn’t stoop to grudge sex. He didn’t intend to touch her.

She could go ahead and offer herself, though. Rejecting her advances would make for a delightful twist. He wondered if she’d take this game of hers that far, and decided he would make it easy for her to humiliate herself.

A pulse of expectancy tugged at him.

This was a chess match, not a flirtation, he reminded himself.

“I do,” she answered, fingertips grazing the pearls at her throat where he thought he saw her pulse fibrillating. Her glance went to the house. He suspected she was mentally recalling whether she’d seen evidence of a paramour in there. She hadn’t. He kept his companions out of his private space.

“Me, too,” he provided.

Melodie’s flushed cheeks darkened with a deeper blush as she cut a glance toward him, perhaps trying to work out whether his remark was a signal of attraction.

There was no use pretending otherwise. She’d already caught him lusting, so he let her see that, yes, something in him found her appealing. He didn’t understand how it could happen when he held her in such contempt, but he rather enjoyed the fact that she was so disconcerted by her own response as she read his interest. Her reaction was too visceral to be fake, which was probably why he was aroused by it.

It was a bad case of misguided chemistry. She certainly wasn’t desirable to his rational mind, but maybe it was the risk of the situation that he found compelling. He’d developed a taste for plundering in his early years. Not of women. He was actually very cautious with how he approached relationships, but he loved finessing his way past defenses, exposing closely guarded secrets. He liked to prove he could. It filled him with enormous satisfaction.

“Where is home?” he asked. He’d read the answer yesterday, but he liked seeing how his attention put her in a state of conflicted sexual awareness.

“Virginia,” she answered, smile not sticking. “For now. I’m considering a move to New York, though.”

“Don’t bother,” he said instinctively, then closed his mouth in distaste at reacting so revealingly. “It’s a perfectly livable city, but I don’t care for it,” he said in explanation. “More than my share of unpleasant memories,” he added, to see if she’d pick up that the filthiest ones involved her family. Others were so heartbreaking he pushed them to the furthest reaches of his mind.

She only murmured, “I feel like that about Virginia.”

Her tone exactly reflected his feelings, as though she’d opened the curtain and stepped inside the narrow space where he stored his soul. It was so disturbing he bristled, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Her wrinkled brow relaxed and she forced a cheerful smile. “I need a fresh start. And you’ve inspired me now with your talk of telecommuting. Tell me how you manage it. Ingrid said you’re a global company, so I assume you travel a lot? I expect I will, too, as I become more established. What are the pitfalls and best practices?”

She was very smooth in her way of bringing the conversation back to his business. He had to admire her for her dogged stealth.

“The happy couple is returning,” he noted, avoiding answering by directing her attention to where Ingrid and Huxley had stopped at the far end of the pool, admiring the view of the beach.

Ingrid glanced at him, and he inferred that a consultation was requested.

He stood and held Melodie’s chair, getting another eyeful of her breasts, not intentionally, but he was a man and they were right there.

Her sultry cloud of scent filled his nostrils, imprinting him with the image of marble and turquoise and sunlight off dishes so he would never forget this moment of standing here, her lithe frame straightening before him. She had a slender waist and hips he longed to grip so he could press forward, bend her to his will, cover and possess. He had to school himself against setting a proprietary hand on her back as they moved to where the bride and groom were debating logistics.

What the hell was it about her?

She moved with remarkable grace, he noted. Not so much skinny as long limbed. A thoroughbred. Not a mutt like he was. If he didn’t have so much contempt for her bloodline, he might have questioned whether he was good enough for her.

Instead, he was the one with ethics while her sort wore an air of superiority that was only a surface veneer of respectability provided by old money. Perhaps she wasn’t overt about thinking herself better than those around her, not the way her father had been, and perhaps she didn’t act entitled, but she was among her own with Ingrid and Huxley. She took it for granted she was accepted. He couldn’t help but appreciate that confidence.

“Would the guests moor here overnight?” Huxley asked.

“That’s up to Mr. Killian,” Melodie deferred, turning to him.

“Roman, please,” he said drily. She could use his first name until he made his position clear, which would be about five minutes from now. “There’s a shoal to be wary of,” he said to Huxley, stepping forward so he could point.

He was fully aware of Melodie’s proximity to his own. He had no intention of bumping her, though, and actually reached out absently to ensure he didn’t.

Melodie was the one who recoiled in surprise, taking a hasty step backward.

He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, heard her squeak of shock and snatched again, more deliberately.

She was already tipping backward. He missed her, tried again. Their fingertips brushed, but he failed to catch her. Her face pulled into a cringe as she fell backward into the deep end of the pool. Roman stepped back from the splash and stared at her one shoe caught in the grate.

CHAPTER THREE

ONCE MELODIE REALIZED her fall was inevitable, she let it happen, only splaying out her arms and holding her breath. Above her, through the rippled water, three blurry faces stared. Roman was throwing off his jacket and looking as if he might dive in.

She let herself sink, waiting until her foot tapped the bottom, then kicked herself back to the surface.

What an idiotic thing to do!

But that damned Roman had been throwing her for a complete loop, being all masculine and sexy, sending mixed messages of lust and disapproval, hovering next to her like a raptor, smelling tangy and male. She’d been standing next to him, admiring his build, thinking his voice was too hypnotic, when he’d reached toward her as if he knew she was there, as if he was a lover searching for the hand of his mate.

Her reaction had been startled fear that she’d betray how thoroughly he was affecting her if he touched her. She’d jerked back and...

“Pah!” she spat as she came up for air. “You might want to change the design of that grate before the wedding. Either that or we advise all the women to skip the stilettoes and wear flip-flops.”

Ingrid and Huxley laughed unreservedly. Roman wore a more severe look.

It wasn’t easy to tread water in a narrow skirt. Her second shoe came off as she kicked toward the edge.

Roman squatted as she reached for the lip of the pool. His strong hand grasped her forearm, dragging her closer whether she wanted his help or not. His other hand got hold of her opposite arm and he pulled her up and out of the pool as though she was a teensy ballerina, not a five-foot-ten mermaid pushing a hundred and thirty pounds. Soaking wet, she added with a private cringe.

Water sluiced off her, and she rather wished he had let her take stock before landing her in front of him, dripping and plastered with wet clothes, not a single thing left to the imagination. Her makeup had to be running and— Okay, good. Her pearls were still here, but seriously. She felt absurd.

She crossed her arms to hide the way her nipples hardened and risked a quick sweep of her gaze around the faces goggling at her. Ingrid was still snickering, hand cupped over her mouth while her eyes danced with laughter.

“What on earth, Mel?” she asked.

“You left your shoe on the bottom, Cinderella,” Huxley teased, moving to where a large net lay against the low garden wall.

“I can’t believe I did that,” Melodie grumbled, mortified but able to laugh at herself. It was so ludicrous.

Roman didn’t seem to think it was funny, though. He was staring at her so hard her wet clothes should have been nuked off her body.

“May I have a towel?” she prompted.

“Of course.” He snapped into motion.

“Oh! I have a bathing suit you can wear,” Ingrid exclaimed. “I bought it yesterday and left it in my bag.” She disappeared into the house and Melodie shook her head. It was far too late for swimwear.

She followed Roman into the nearby cabana where he turned with a towel in his hand. His gaze raked down her again, making her acutely aware of how her clothes were suctioned to her like a second skin. She plucked at her knit top, which only stretched the neckline and ruined it.

Roman came forward, shaking out the towel and slinging it around her. He was so tall it was no problem at all for him to get it around her.

Her heart did another somersault and his musky scent stole through the air of chlorine as his wide chest filled her vision. Weakness attacked her.

“I—” It would be silly to apologize. She hadn’t fallen on purpose, but he looked so thunderous. “Thank you” was all she could manage as he drew the edges of the towel to where her waiting fingers brushed his.

“When you sank like that, I thought I was going to have to come in after you.”

“It was quite refreshing, to be honest. I needed to cool off.”

She shouldn’t have said that. The sexual tension she was fighting became something they both had to acknowledge, like it was a real thing holding them in its vortex.

She found herself staring at his mouth, anticipating its feel against hers. Kisses were about as far as she went these days after losing her virginity for all the wrong reasons. Even kisses, however, always seemed to fall short of the hype. She always felt as though she was going through the motions, not really losing herself to the experience. If she couldn’t get caught up in that much, there was no use going further, she’d decided.

But she remained ever hopeful that she’d find a man who made things different. Today, at least, she wanted to be kissed. Deep longing filled her, making her ache to know how it would feel to kiss the man before her.

Distantly she was aware of his hand grasping her upper arm. He stepped closer. His head tilted.

She should have been startled, but it felt so natural. She dampened her lips. Parted them. And gasped when he branded her with the heat of his mouth.

So hot, so smooth and commanding, instantly hungry. Claiming her like a desert warrior stealing her for his pleasure. His hand splayed in a firm pressure behind her tailbone, bringing her imperiously into the wall of his muscled frame.

Heat burned through her wet clothing, sealing them tight with only the friction of dampened fabric between them.

He kissed her as though he meant it. As though he was making sure she’d never forget this moment. As though she was his and he was ensuring she knew it.

She kissed him back with the same passion, not thinking of anything beyond exploring this new pleasure. Letting him have her because what he was doing to her was fresh and exciting and incredible. His kiss made her feel desired. His tongue touched hers and shivers of delight stung her skin. A flood of arousal seared between her thighs, urged her to lean into him and let a moan of pleasure fill her throat.

“Here you are—oh!” Ingrid said on a breathless burst, then laughed with embarrassed hysteria.

Roman jerked back, keeping one hand on Melodie’s arm to steady her. His firm grip hadn’t hurt her, but his touch left a tingling impression. She massaged the spot, trying to dispel the odd vibration while she noted the front of his clothing wore her moist imprint.

“I’ll come back,” Ingrid offered, grin mischievous.

“No,” Roman blurted, brushing past Ingrid as he moved swiftly out of the cabana.

Ingrid, nearly doubled over she was laughing so hard, she stepped and pulled the curtain across. “O. M. G,” she said with exaggerated significance, eyes huge.

Melodie dropped her burning face into her damp hands, eyes closed in mortification. “I don’t know how that happened,” she groaned.

“Oh, please,” Ingrid chortled. “He’s Roman Killian. You should see what the office looks like when it’s announced he’ll be in. It’s like a red-carpet event, there are so many women wearing push-up bras and designer labels. I’m not the least bit surprised you—pun intended—fell for him.”

“No, I haven’t...” Melodie tried to protest, but her bones were still weak, and if Roman had walked back in and told her to come with him, she would have gone without a second thought.

“Don’t bother,” Ingrid instructed with a shake of her head. “If I hadn’t been crushing on Huxley my entire life, I would have fallen for Roman. He’s gorgeous. What intrigues me, though,” Ingrid lowered her voice to murmur, sidling closer with a little wiggle of excitement across her shoulders, “is the way he is falling for you.”

Melodie shook her head. “You’re mistaken—”

“He can’t take his eyes off you,” Ingrid insisted, enjoyment gleaming in her eyes as she gave Melodie’s drowned-rat state a good once-over. “To be fair, I don’t see him with women very often. I think he’s the sort who compartmentalizes. Work. Play. Know what I mean?” Ingrid made little stalls with her hands. “But when I have seen him with a date, he keeps up that aloof facade of his, never planting one on them as if he can’t wait for everyone else to leave. And they’re always blonde and stacked. Kittenish. Not really striking me as his intellectual equal.”

“I fell into the pool, Ingrid. Hardly a sign of great intelligence,” Melodie argued, heart galloping at the idea that Roman had been unable to resist kissing her.

She was not the type to provoke men to passion. Most of them thought she was too tall and wiry. Her half brother had done a number on her as a child, tearing her self-esteem to shreds in a way she’d only been able to rebuild once she had left home, so she still considered herself an ugly duckling who’d arrived at goose, not swan.

That dented self-esteem, along with her mother’s need of her, had kept her from a serious pursuit of love, but she longed for a deep connection with the opposite sex. With her mother gone, there was more than just a hole in her daily schedule. She felt her single status very keenly. The sight of couples and families made her feel very lonely. She wanted someone to share her life with. Not the facade of a shared life that her parents had had, but the sort of deep, abiding love that Ingrid and Huxley had.

She opened the towel and wrapped it like a turban on her head, throwing off self-pitying thoughts as she peeled away her wet clothes.

Ingrid pulled the tags off the bathing suit and something else that she held up for inspection. “Look. Huxley bought a shirt. You can borrow this, too.”

Any relief Melodie felt evaporated a moment later. Ingrid was decidedly smaller than she was. The bikini would be microscopic even on her client. On Melodie, it was downright lewd.

Ingrid was not deterred. She dropped Huxley’s sleeveless white shirt over Melodie’s head. “It’s a bit risqué, but nothing I wouldn’t wear poolside or to the beach.”

Or in the bedroom to incite her fiancé?

Melodie looked at the thin fabric hanging from narrow straps over her shoulders to scoop low across her breasts and waft in an indecently high hem across her thighs, barely covering her bottom. Even on the beach, this outfit would be nothing less than bait. With the pearls resembling puka shells around her neck, she looked like a surfer groupie trolling for a vacation hookup.

Unfastening the necklace, she muttered, “I can’t believe this has happened. I look so unprofessional.”

“It’s fine. Better than fine. Your legs should be licensed as a deadly weapon,” Ingrid said with a meaningful lift of her brows. “Let’s see if Roman likes them,” she added with a wicked grin, gathering up Melodie’s wet clothes and zipping outside with them, leaving the curtain to the cabana open.

Melodie hesitated, not wanting to be so encouraged by what Ingrid had said about Roman’s interest. She really wasn’t very experienced with men. Aside from her insecurities, a lot of the reason was exactly what she’d told Roman: she was a workaholic. She’d been supporting herself a long time, spending what little extra time she had visiting her mother, advocating for her. The few men she’d been loosely involved with had been nice enough, just not the type to inspire her to make room in her life for them.

Not that she expected Roman to want a place in her life! Quite the opposite. He struck her as a man who expected his women to be self-sufficient and sophisticated. Which she definitely wasn’t—not when it came to relationships. She might not be an actual virgin, but she was a one-time wonder, still not sure what had possessed her to go through with it the first time.

Well, realistically, she knew that immaturity and helpless fury had driven her. She’d wanted to strike back at Anton and had wound up hurting herself and a man who hadn’t deserved to be used. Anton’s friend, a young man Anton had been using so he could party on his family’s yacht, had had a crush on Melodie. She’d reveled in the opportunity to show Anton that not only did his friends find her attractive after all, but she had the power to influence them. She’d made the boy turn down Anton’s demand to sail in favor of taking her for a private cruise. She went through with the lovemaking she’d promised him, but it had been awkward and disappointing. He’d realized she didn’t truly care for him and had been quite devastated. The entire experience had turned into a lesson in being kind to others and true to oneself, which she had tried to follow ever since.

Today, the truth was she might not know Roman enough to care deeply about him, but she was fiercely attracted to him. She wanted to sleep with him. Really wanted that more than she’d ever imagined possible.

With an impatient noise, she reached for the damp towel and slung it around her waist, needing the shred of added protection as she went out to face him.

He wasn’t there, which made her heart sink in an alarming way.

“He went up to change,” Huxley said, jerking his head toward the balcony, adding with a smirk, “Probably having a cold shower, too.”

Ingrid finished hanging Melodie’s wet clothing across the back of the chairs and said to Huxley, “If we’re going to test those jet skis you reserved, we’d better run. You can get a cab, can’t you, Mel? We’re going the opposite direction to the hotel. We’ll see you tomorrow at the meeting with the hotel manager about the room block.”

Could she be more obvious? Melodie liked Ingrid, but at this moment she wanted to push her into the pool. Don’t leave me alone with him.

But the customer was always right, she reminded herself.

Scanning her gaze across the table, she looked for her phone and realized all she had was her credit card in the pocket of her sweater—which was dry, at least. Thank goodness she had that much.

“Sure,” Melodie said with a stiff smile, as if she was still wearing her conservative suit and had this situation fully under control.

“Bye!” Ingrid blew a kiss, grabbed her fiancé’s sleeve and hauled him away.

Blushing with embarrassed annoyance, Melodie contemplated whether to head into the kitchen and ask the chef to call her a cab or stick around to see if Roman wanted to finish kissing the daylights out of her.

Okay, her hormones cried excitedly.

She had to get out of the sun. She was blistering.

Moving to the bottom of the outside stairs, she wavered, but told herself she couldn’t leave without at least saying goodbye.

Yes, wanting to see him again is all about good manners, she mocked herself.

She climbed with trepidation, heart pounding as though she was descending the basement stairs in a thriller movie. So silly. He wasn’t going to attack her. That kiss had been a surprise, but invited and totally mutual. She had wallowed in it.

The part of her that wanted it to happen again and maybe go further was what scared the daylights out of her. She wasn’t that girl. She wasn’t blasé about intimacy. She wasn’t desperate or angry or deluding herself into love at first sight.

She was just really, really enticed by everything about him.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she grew cautious, feeling like a burglar, afraid she’d catch him indisposed.

“Roman?” she tried.

A very deliberate noise sounded, like someone striking a single key on a keyboard, hard. “Yes,” he said from his office.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you to call me a cab.” She tried to act casual as she moved forward. “I didn’t bring my phone and...”

She came even with the open doors of the office and discovered him standing before his clear screens. He had changed, dispensing with a shirt altogether, and now wore only a pair of drawstring linen pants that hung with rakish sexiness off his hips, accentuating his smooth, powerful back and the curve of his buttocks.

“I’d ask Ingrid for hers, but she and Huxley just left...” She could hardly speak. Her throat had gone dry.

He turned. His flat abs and nicely developed chest fixated her. Animal attraction gripped her.

Why? She didn’t understand it, and lifted her gaze to his, trying to work out where this attack of sexual craving was coming from.

He was scanning down her low neckline, taking in the outline of tiny triangles that barely covered her nipples beneath the translucent cotton, eyeballing the towel that she gripped around her hips.

His Adam’s apple worked. “Why are you here, Melodie?” His tone was graveled with intolerance and something almost erotic. Desire?

“I— What do you mean?”

“Here, in my home.” He joined her on the balcony, confrontational and ominous, arms and shoulders tanned and powerful, bare feet planted firmly. “Why are you here?”

“The wedding,” she stated, nerves strummed by the suspicion in his tone.

“Be honest.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t plan this,” she said, waving at her borrowed garb, suddenly realizing how it could look. But she hadn’t made this happen. She wasn’t using it as an excuse to stick around and throw herself at him. Not really. Okay, maybe she was throwing herself at him a little, but—

Oh, good grief. Could this get any worse?

“I didn’t bump you,” he bit out, eyes narrowing. “I didn’t even touch you.”

“No, I know. I was just...nervous,” she stammered, attacked by the same hit of discomfiture that had made her avoid him by the pool. She’d instinctively known his touch would have a devastating effect on her. She’d leaped back from his reaching hand as though he could have burned her. He had burned her. When he’d kissed her in the cabana, the contact had seared all the way to her soul.

“Nervous,” he charged, brows elevating as if he’d caught her out. “Why?”

Because he was a force, not a man. Her reaction to him was so strong it petrified her.

“You’re different,” she hazarded, but couldn’t explain it even to herself.

“How?”

Boy, he was like an extension of his technology with those robotic commands for more information.

She crossed her arms, annoyed, but Ingrid’s words were ringing in her ears. Was he reacting to her and feeling as out of sorts by this situation as she was?

The thought brought a soaring of buoyancy that she quickly tried to tame. A million things were running through her head, all her thoughts coming back to the fact that she was finally meeting a man who made her feel alive. She was interested and excited. Running away like a teenage girl too shy to speak to him would be silly. She’d kick herself forever if she did that. They were grown-ups. She was, by nature, an honest person.

“I find you attractive,” she admitted, and immediately blushed. It was as if she’d deliberately stepped onto a gangplank high over the concrete. Her footing seemed wobbly and threatened to drop her into a hard fall.

“Do you,” he disparaged.

His tone peeled a layer off her composure. She told herself she was being mature and didn’t have enough invested to have anything to lose, but her self-respect grew thin and strained. Bug eyes. Don’t talk to my friends. They all think you’re ugly anyway.

At the same time, she put herself into Roman’s shoes and thought she knew the source of his cynicism. “If you think I’m making some kind of awkward play for the rich guy, that’s not true.”

“You’d think I was just as attractive if I lived in a cardboard shack in a back alley?” he scoffed, arms folding and chin coming up with arrogant challenge.

Dear Lord, he was attractive. Like a Greek god with all that burnished skin over toned muscle, his aura one of superiority and might.

She almost blurted out how she’d walked away from the sort of wealth and education that would have made any job unnecessary for the rest of her life. If he only knew how much contempt she reserved for powerful men and how sorry she felt for the women who loved them...

But all that was behind her, and this moment was only about her and him. Who they were in this moment.

“I might,” she allowed with a weak shrug. This was a physical thing. She suspected no matter where she had encountered him, she would still be unable to control her response to him.

“You don’t even know me,” Roman derided. “Why—?” He bit off the word, looking out to the water, gripped by an angry frustration that went beyond his response to her. He closed his hand on the rail, trying to retain his grip on the situation.

But his gaze tracked unerringly back to Melodie. The low neckline of her shirt accentuated her slender neck and delicate collarbone, offering a teasing glimpse of the upper swells of her breasts. Her damp hair fell in waves around her bare face. She had the sensual innocence of a maiden from a primitive jungle culture, pure temptation in her open regard, Eve-like in her patience for him to succumb to the desire drumming through him. The message was subliminal and as irresistible as a siren’s.

Come to me.

All he could think was, This is a damned sight more than attraction. He was blind with lust, trying to hang on to a cool head while his body still felt the writhe of hers nudging against his erection. She’d inflamed him with their kiss, promising untold pleasure, appealing straight to the basest part of him and completely undermining his capacity for logical thought.

Thank God Ingrid had interrupted them. He was disgusted with himself for kissing her in the first place, let alone allowing her response to ignite his own. The moment he’d walked away from her, he’d begun grasping for rationalizations to explain how he’d reacted so uncontrollably. Maybe he had it wrong. Maybe she wasn’t Gautier’s daughter. Maybe her presence here wasn’t by design.

But he’d reviewed everything and it was all too neat. Her mother hadn’t been in society in years, yet her funeral had been a who’s who of the Eastern Seaboard. Melodie had not only started her new wedding business the minute she had put her mother to rest, but had immediately curried favor with an old family friend who happened to be the mother of his PA. The timing was auspicious indeed. And her fall into the pool, orchestrated so beautifully, allowing her to linger in his home while her clothes dried, was equally suspicious.

Not only that, since yesterday he’d learned that Gautier Enterprises was bleeding red ink by the gallon. And he’d turned up additional photos showing Melodie under her father’s wing, all of them beautifully stoic in the face of her mother’s death. Most significantly, sly moves were happening behind the scenes. Roman’s customers were being offered exorbitant discounts if they signed exclusively with Gautier. False promises were being made about the performance of the most recent Gautier product, and dishonest warnings were circulating about Roman’s.

A fresh rush of hatred had encompassed him a moment ago as he’d looked at a photo of her with her father. Grim anger coiled through him that Melodie had anything to do with the man. He wanted her to be real, not a weapon her father was wielding. Not a willing foot soldier against him.

And he hated himself for being susceptible to her. He’d fallen for Anton’s lies once and was edging dangerously close to being taken in by Melodie’s. It was intolerable.

He’d learned all her weak points, though. Her father might have insulated himself very thoroughly, but she was wide-open. All his plans were in motion. With a tap of a key, he had ensured Ingrid would pick up his email insisting she fire Melodie, and with another ensured Melodie would have no home to go back to in Virginia. The rest of the false front she’d built would collapse like a row of dominoes over the next hours and days.

All while she continued to look at him with those Bambi eyes soft with invitation, a hint of irreverent humor in her smile.

“How well do you usually know the women you’re attracted to when you first meet them?” Melodie asked, pulling him back to the present moment.

Touché. He snorted, privately admitting that physical attraction was typically the reason he set out to learn a woman’s name. Ironically, he had learned more about Melodie before he’d kissed her than he’d ever learned about most women he’d slept with.

Of course, he’d been more attracted to Melodie at first glance than he’d ever been before. He’d only become more intrigued as each minute had passed. And now, despite everything he knew, despite already taking steps to crush her plans, he could barely take his eyes off her breasts, rising and falling in a shaken tremble that was utterly fascinating.

The basest male in him wanted to kiss her again. Feel her under him. Be inside her and see how high the flames would fan.

“Do you think I’m not struggling with this, too? I don’t kiss strangers. I don’t...” She offered a helpless palm, averting her face so he only saw a look of confusion and longing in the profile she turned to the water.

The rest of her was pure temptation, nipples peaking in excitement beneath the tiny red bikini top. Her legs went on forever and his hand itched to find the skin beneath the drape of that oversize, yet completely inadequate, shirt. He was hardening at the thought.

“I just keep wondering how else you get to know someone except by spending time with them?” Her gaze came back to his, earnest and unsure.

He shook his head, amazed by how good an actress she was, relieved on some level that she wasn’t genuine because he would have to do some serious soul-searching before involving himself with such a multifaceted yet sincere woman. He wasn’t cut out for relationships with a future. That was why he was careful how and when he fell into the loose ones he did enjoy.

Fortunately she was a huckster peddling a shell of such relationships, amazing him with her tenacity and smooth attempts to manipulate him, her mouth trembling in a struggle to smile as she offered a hesitant, “Of course, if it’s not a mutual thing, I’ll...”

She took a few steps closer, gaze drifting to the patio below, lashes lowering and brow pulling together in a wince of rejection.

He didn’t move. How could she be this good? How could he be feeling like this? He didn’t want anything to do with her, but he wanted to understand why he was this easily taken in so he could guard against such things further down the road.

“What do you really want from me, Melodie?” he asked in his deadliest tone, willing her to come clean.

“Just, um... Honestly?” She blinked up at him, practically virginal with her defenseless gaze, her mouth working to find words. “For you to kiss me again,” she said, her voice a thin husk. “To see if...” She licked her lips, leaving an expectant silence.

“Come and get it, then,” he said gruffly, trying to scoff, telling himself he was only seeing the extent she’d go to in this industrial espionage of hers, letting her demean herself when he had every intention of rejecting her.

But it didn’t happen that way.

She absorbed his command with a small flinch, then lifted her chin as though gathering her courage. As she stepped up to him, her hands opened on his rib cage in a feathery tickle that made his entire body jerk in reaction. His nipples hurt, they pulled so tight. She was tall enough that when she lifted on tiptoes, her mouth easily met his.

She pressed pillowy lips to his. He told himself to shove her back and tell her—

The rocking of her mouth parted his lips. He caught the first damp taste of her and his tongue shot out instinctively, greedily plunging into her mouth the way he wanted to plunge into her body. He closed his arms around her, pulled her into him with a strength he barely remembered to temper, and slanted his mouth to take full possession of hers.

She opened to him, arched and pressed into him and moaned capitulation.

Rational thought evaporated in a groan of craving.

CHAPTER FOUR

MELODIE HAD JUST wanted to see, that was all. See if he really did make her feel like this. See if something special existed between them.

But, oh, things raced out of control quickly. As their lips met and the kiss took hold, she stopped thinking, only vaguely aware that no man had ever run his hands over her skin like this. Such strong hands. Such an amazing feeling to be petted and shaped, firm fingers digging in as he pinned her tightly to his naked chest, then explored her with a touch like velvet.

Her body’s reaction was a study in biology, skin growing so sensitive his touch was almost abrasive, yet inciting at the same time. She could feel the scrape of his chest hair through the light shirt she wore, could feel the burn of his body heat, and even though she could barely stand the conflagration, she wanted to be closer and closer still. Her arms went around his neck so she was belly to belly with him, loins to—

He was hard.

His hands cupped her buttocks and his teeth closed on her nape, making her bones turn to sand while she rubbed instinctively against that hard ridge. Something deeper than desire, a craven need, punched like a blow right there, where she felt him against her most private flesh. The ache was hurtful and demanding. Nothing like she had ever felt. Never had sensations overwhelmed her like this. It was stunning, absorbing, erasing all thoughts except primal want. Please. More. Now.

Her fingers went into his hair. She was pure reflex, wanting his mouth over hers, wanting to open and give and take.

He smothered her with his passionate, hungry kiss, hands smoothing up the contracting muscles in her belly to cup her breasts, making her sob with relief at the pressure of his touch on those tender, aching orbs. The cups of the bathing suit went askew and then he had her bare breasts in his palms, massaging, fondling, rubbing at her nipples so streaks of white-hot arousal shot straight into her loins.

She whimpered, seeking pressure where desire was pooling like thick lava. She didn’t know how to tell him, only knew that his skin was as taut as a drum under her searching hands, his tongue erotic as he played with hers. A distant part of her wondered how this was happening, but another part didn’t care, only wanted him to keep touching her, keep playing with her nipples, keep stirring and stimulating her.

His hand went to her hip and eased the bathing suit down. He stepped back to look as the bottoms dropped around her ankles. Watching his own hand, he slid his touch to the front of her thigh, up to her belly, then down, fingers combing, pressing—

“Oh!” she gasped, never having felt her body respond like this. Sharp and wicked and wanton sensations prickled through her as he sought with a fingertip and toyed with her, pulling her in for another kiss with a hand behind her neck, utterly devastating her with the waves of pleasure he was rocketing through her.

She caressed him with restless hands, wanting to touch everywhere at once, wanting to fill her palms with him, wanting to excite him the way he was doing to her. She no sooner cupped his hard shaft through linen, though, and his hand bumped hers, ceasing to caress her so he could release his drawstring.

His pants fell and he stepped out of them, completely naked. He was ferociously aroused, dark and thick and ready. She hadn’t got a proper glimpse of her first lover, and Roman wiped all thoughts of the past from her mind. He fascinated her.

She wasn’t frightened. No hint of hesitation struck. She was pure eagerness and excitement as she took in his nude frame, so perfect he was like a statue sculpted by a master, formidable and flawless, rampant and ferociously masculine.

Catching her up hard against his front, he lifted her as he moved, muscles shifting under her hands as he held her nose to nose, feet off the ground and dangling. His mouth nipped at hers, inciting her to kiss him back. She curled her arms around his neck, ran her tongue over his bottom lip, then drew on it, sucking flagrantly, liking the way his hands hardened on her. He took the few steps to his bed where he followed her to the mattress, spreading her legs as he came down over her.

Yes, she thought. It was the only word in her head. Her body was in a state of undeniable demand. Her entire being yearned for the feel of Roman’s hard muscles and his weight and yes. The feel of his aroused flesh rubbed against hers, parting and arousing, teasing and dampening. Seeking.

Her arms cradled his head, her mouth pulled at his parted lips, licking and panting as he breathed raggedly along with her, breaths mingling, their gasps and growls carnal and unfettered.

With a blind, startled shake of his head, he drew back. “I didn’t—”

“Don’t stop,” she cried, arching to offer herself where she could feel him ready to penetrate, needing him inside her. She was so aroused she would die, actually die, if he didn’t keep pressing right there. “Please, Roman, please.”

He groaned and the insistent pressure increased. Her tight flesh gave way, parting and accepting.

Oh. It had been a long time and this was... Burning. Intimate. So much more like she’d always wanted it to be. His length pushed in, filling her, making her hold still to savor, wanting all of him...

With a growl, he opened his mouth against her neck, drawing a love bite up to the surface of her skin. She practically levitated off the bed, pressing up into him, surrendering utterly to the experience. His tongue licked against the artery pounding in her throat and he shuddered as his body came flush against hers, pressing tight, possessing her to the limits of their joined flesh.

She closed her trembling legs around his hips, astonished, beyond aroused. Mindless. She was pure sensation, her only dim thought that she was happy it was like this. Pure, abject passion infused the moment.

He lifted his head and looked at her, eyes fogged with passion. Something clouded his gaze, as if he was becoming aware of how fast they’d arrived at this point.

She didn’t care about that. It was supposed to be like this. Animalistic, but with both of them caught up in overwhelming desire. She licked her lips.

His gaze followed the signal and his head bent.

They were lost again. Kissing deeply. Her body eased its tight grasp on his, inviting him to move. He did, muscles trembling, and his excitement fueled hers. She stroked his back and rubbed her thighs against his sides and lifted her hips to accept the return of his, seeking pressure where she ached for it most.

He made a feral noise and moved with more deliberation, making her gasp at the sensation of friction and something that strummed the very heart of her. It was the most instantly addictive feeling she’d ever encountered. She made a noise of female ardor and encouraged him with primal arches and a grind of her hips. The more he moved, the more reality fell away. All she cared about was the next thrust and the next.

More. Now. Please. Please.

They writhed in ecstatic struggle, fighting to hold on to the moment, lascivious sounds filling the air as the intensity grew, as he moved faster, as climax approached with merciless demand.

The paroxysm struck her suddenly, holding her in a hard grip, mouth open in a silent scream. Sensations detonated then reverberated through her, rocking her to her core.

Roman’s arms locked straight, a ragged cry of triumph tearing through the air as his hips sealed to hers and pulses of heat met her clasping orgasm, strengthening and prolonging her pleasure.

They were wholly attuned, joined in body and involvement. It wasn’t happening to him or her. They were the experience.

With broken cries, they collapsed into weakness, sweaty and wrung out, panting and shaking. Tears of deep emotion leaked to dampen Melodie’s lashes as she kept her eyes clenched shut, so shaken by the wildness of her actions she could barely face what they’d just done.

That had been...

She didn’t have words.

* * *

That was—

Roman lifted off Melodie and pushed clumsily to his feet, arms weak, knees shaking. The friction of leaving her was a pleasurable stroke that turned to the chill of loss. He had to turn away to keep from falling under her spell all over again.

No condom. He turned away, aghast at his carelessness. He never forgot, never lost his head. He liked sex, but he was always, always aware of protection.

He’d started to pull away as he felt her naked flesh against his pulsing erection. She was the one who’d yanked him back into the act, begging. Offering herself with such abandon he’d discarded all cares but getting inside her.

He shot a wary look her way, genuinely shaken by the way she’d slithered past his shields.

She’d rolled onto her side, but was still diagonal on the bed, knees together now, shirt pulled low to hide her nudity, head pillowed on her curled arm. Her big eyes blinked in sensual shock as she offered him a tentative smile.

“I’ve always wanted to be swept away by passion.” Her languid tone was a caress and an invitation, as alluring as a drug to an addict. She made him want to join her, to lock out the world and let her become everything he needed.

Which was probably what she had planned. First, dull his senses with the kind of sex that reset the bar. Then lower his guard so he’d let her wander his home so she could, what? Dig through his files while he slept?

He had not meant to touch her. He hated himself for being weak enough to do so. He’d been on the verge of coming downstairs to spell out exactly how he was taking his revenge, but she’d come to him and coldcocked him with seduction.

A mix of emotions rose in him: contempt for both of them, fury, disappointment, a kind of defeat that took him back to a time when he’d been completely powerless... He hated feeling these things, especially all at once. With ruthless discipline, he shut himself down, refusing to be drawn by her sultry afterglow. Women were as vulnerable after sex as they were during, but he closed himself off to that, too.

Melodie must have read something in his look. Her lashes quivered and one hand tugged her shirttail down a little more. “Maybe it’s always like that for you,” she murmured self-consciously.

“It is,” he lied flatly, unable to stomach how he’d let lust, for her, sweep him completely beyond himself. “I know who you are,” he continued, before her flinch of defenselessness could have an impact on him. He strode across to gather his pants and stamped his feet into them, straightening to tie them into place with jerky movements. “You’re wasting your time.”

“What...? What do you mean?” She tucked her legs to the side as she sat up, brow furrowing.

“Charmaine Parnell-Gautier,” he pronounced without inflection, as though they were exchanging information over a boardroom table. “I know your father and brother sent you here. Whatever you thought you could do to me isn’t working. I’m three steps ahead of all of you.” He picked up her discarded bikini bottom and brought it to the bed, placing it near her knee. “It’s time for you to leave.”

Her plump lips parted and her skin went so pale he thought she might faint. His heart lurched with alarm.

But she gathered herself quickly, drew a shaken breath and straightened her spine, shoulders going back.

“You think my father sent me here?”

“I know he did.”

“You’re wrong.” Tilting her head at him in an admonishing stare, she looked him right in the eye. “My birth certificate says Garner Gautier is my father, but I don’t have anything to do with him.” Bitterness flashed in her expression. “I’m not surprised you might have a bone to pick with him. He buys friends and makes enemies, but whatever he’s done to you has nothing to do with me.”

Wow, he thought distantly. She certainly knew how to shuffle her hand and play a new card. He was supposed to be reassured, he imagined, by her pretending they had a common adversary.

“What he did was steal my work and lose me my home. I might believe you had nothing to do with his crimes if I hadn’t spent yesterday afternoon reviewing recent photos of you two together.”

Her lip curled in revulsion. She shook her head. “That’s not what—”

“Melodie,” he interrupted coldly. “This isn’t a conversation. I don’t care what you have to say. I’m simply telling you that your idea to use my PA to infiltrate my home has failed.”

“I’m not infiltrating! I’m planning her wedding—”

“No. You’re not,” he informed, oddly empty of feeling as he served up the next slice of his revenge. This should feel good, but it just made him bitter. “I’ve instructed Ingrid to fire you. If she wants to hold her wedding here, which she does, she will find another planner. One who actually does this sort of thing for a living.”

* * *

Melodie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Clammy fear was pulsing through her, killing her afterglow and beginning to make her feel dirty and cheap. She was sitting here half-naked, a very personal tenderness reminding her of what they’d been doing a few short minutes ago.

Snatching up the bathing-suit bottom, she tucked her feet into it and worked it up her legs, giving Roman her back as she pulled it into place. Her skin felt flayed under his regard, her inner self yanked into the open, kicked and spat on.

It was such a shock her mind could hardly make sense of it. All she knew was that this had something to do with her father and Anton. She knew all too well what a bitter taste they left in one’s mouth. She clung to reason with her fingernails, tried to regain her poise and some semblance of control over this crazed situation.

She didn’t sleep with strangers. She didn’t—

Think, Melodie.

“You can’t fire me,” she said firmly. “I have a contract.” She reached through the neckline of the shirt to straighten the bikini top. Where was her power suit when she needed it?

“Do not charge any cancellation fees,” he warned. “If you try to recover any costs from this trip, if you so much as contact Ingrid to plead your case, I will make this worse than a job loss and eviction. Now go home, tell your father you failed and never come after me again.”

“Stop,” she insisted, spinning to confront him with an upraised hand, barely able to process what he was saying—eviction? She knew the cold fury and bloodlust that came of dealing with her father and half brother. Better than he ever would. She just needed to make him realize they were on the same side. “Roman, listen. I have nothing to do with him or Anton. Firing me will not impact them at all.”

“It’s time to leave,” he said with quiet frost.

“They’re not even going to know,” she asserted, hearing the crack of growing emotion in her voice and clawing hard to keep her cool. It was really hard when voices in the back of her head were saying, They’re still doing it. They’re still able to hurt you. “What you’re doing impacts me, not them.”

“You’re all one and the same.” The Gautier lack of mercy left a virulent flatness behind his eyes. Broader understanding began to hit. He really thought she was some kind of spy. That she had been put up to this by her father and brother.

Oh, she vaguely knew what her brother did for a living. She’d never understood how. He was the furthest thing from a techno-genius, and now pieces were falling together. Of course Anton would have stolen the product that had filled his bank account. Of course her father would have covered for him and profited along with him.

“I don’t know how to convince you, but you’re wrong. Before you go through with all this, stop. Think about what you’re doing. Give me a chance to explain.”

“There’s no stopping. It’s done,” he said matter-of-factly.

She swallowed, barely breathing, not wanting to believe him.

“You’ve already told Ingrid—”

“I emailed her before you reached the top of the stairs.”

She shook her head, absorbing the magnitude of losing this contract. This wedding was supposed to put her on the map. She was finally starting a real job. A career she could feel excitement about. No more juggling two or three minimum-wage jobs at makeup counters or bistros. Her aspirations of finally moving into a decent apartment, maybe traveling because she wasn’t tied down by her mother and debt, dimmed and doused like a candlewick gutting out, leaving only a wisp of smoke to sting her nostrils.

“You can’t do this,” she insisted numbly. Her mind leaped to wondering if she could start over somewhere, but as he’d pointed out, there was an investment in starting up a business like this. Without Ingrid’s payment, she was in a very deep hole. Then there was the loss of Ingrid’s circle of contacts. Starting over meant starting at the bottom, not stepping into a tony crowd with money and taste. “You’re destroying my life,” she informed him, heart beginning to tremble in her chest.

“Be sure to tell your father exactly how it feels.”

He wasn’t going to hear her on the lack of communication between her and Garner. She wouldn’t bother mentioning it again. This was happening. She could see his resolve and, if dealing with her father had taught her nothing else, she had learned to accept that there was evil in this world. The best you could do was mitigate the damage.

Exactly what was the damage?

“What...?” She was afraid to ask. “What did you say about eviction?”

He folded his arms, feet planted firmly. “I’ve made an offer to the owner of your building, one he can’t refuse. It’s on condition that your unit be made available immediately.”

Fury closed her fists into painful knots. “You can’t do that.”

He didn’t react beyond saying, “Your things are being removed as we speak.”

“To where?” she cried.

“The nearest Dumpster?” he offered with a pitiless shrug.

“You—” Her voice caught and realization began to squeeze her in its icy fingers. Fine quakes accosted her. She shook her head in convulsive denial as the buildup of emotion threatened to break the walls of her control. One thought formed and clung like a teardrop to a lash. “You’re having my mother thrown in the Dumpster. Is that what you’re saying? What the hell kind of man are you? There are laws.”

His brows jerked together, the first sign of emotion since they’d been writhing with passion. “What do you mean?”

“My mother’s ashes are in my apartment. You can’t just throw someone away like that. You can’t even—” Oh, what the hell did a man like him care about how hard it was to make the arrangements for scattering ashes?

Anxiety brought tears to her eyes, and she dashed them away, furious that she was breaking down, but this was the last straw. Losing things, starting over, having nowhere to live... Those were all problems she’d overcome before. Defiling her mother’s remains was more than she could withstand. Her breath hissed in her pinched nostrils while her mind raced through all the hours of travel it would take to get back to Virginia to save her.

“I’ll make a call,” he said.

Because the wheels were already in motion.

It hit her that he’d been making these arrangements yesterday, long before he’d kissed her in the cabana. He had set up all these horrible things, consigned her mother to the Dumpster, then had sex with her. She recoiled as she realized he’d already been filled with hatred and thoughts of revenge as he’d carried her to this bed.

Her revulsion must have shown. He reacted with a dark flinch.

“I will,” he assured her, glancing around as though he was looking for the nearest phone.

“You’ll make a call,” she repeated as she edged toward hysteria. “You’re just full of consideration, aren’t you, lover,” she spat. The word tasted like bile.

“Do you want me to do it or not?” His gaze flashed back to hers with warning.

She was ready to take him apart with her bare hands and he must have known it. He tensed with readiness, stance shifting as he balanced his weight on his planted feet, darkly watchful. His lethal air should have terrified her, but she was pulsing with the sort of protective instincts that drove people to lash out in a blind rage. Her mother’s well-being throbbed in her brain, urging her to injure and incapacitate in order to save. She wanted to hurt him. Badly. So badly.

Don’t, a voice whispered in her head. Don’t be like them.

“As if I’d trust you,” she managed, voice wavering, whole body beginning to rack with furious shakes. “I will make a call,” she said raggedly, knocking her breastbone with her knuckles. “I’ll keep her safe. I’m the only one who ever has. The only reason I went back there was for her,” she cried, throwing the truth at him like a grenade. “I swore I’d never set foot in that house again, but my father wasn’t going to let me have her ashes unless I put on a state funeral and gave him those damned photos you’re so convinced prove I’m here on his behalf. You think you’re the only person they’ve ever hurt, Roman? Don’t be so arrogant. You’re not that special!”

She spun toward the door.

“Melodie,” he ground out. “I’ll call to make sure—”

“My friends call me Melodie. You can call me Charmaine. Like they do. Because you’re just like them.”

She went through the interior of the house. It was faster and allowed her to avoid going anywhere near him as she made her exit. She ran down the hall, blind to anything but a blur of yellowed marble and red carpet, barely keeping her footing on the stairs before she shot out the front door.

She heard her name again, but didn’t look back. The paving stones were hot on her bare feet, burning her soles, but she barely felt the scorch and cut of the pebbles. Her only thought was that she needed to get away from him. Needed to get to her mother.

CHAPTER FIVE

THREE WEEKS LATER, Roman was in New York, conscience still smarting from everything that had happened with Melodie. Her final words—you’re just like them—kept ringing in his head, growing louder as time progressed, cutting like a rope that grew tighter the more he struggled against it.

Initially, he’d thought she was merely twisting things around as she’d seen her plans falling apart. He’d had very little pity for her in those first postcoital moments, too angry with himself to hear that he might have computed things wrong.

The bit about her mother’s ashes had bothered him, though. He had nothing of his own mother except vague, poignant memories of a woman who had seemed broken and defeated, voice filled with regret as she promised to get him back. Given how hard she’d tried to turn her life around, he’d felt doubly cheated when she had died before she was able to regain custody. The fact he’d only been informed of her death as an afterthought had been insult to injury.

He quickly turned away from those painful memories, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to keep his mind plugged into work. It had always been his escape from brooding and he needed it more than ever.

Yet he found himself rising and stepping away from his desk to look over his view of Central Park. At least his eviction plans hadn’t actually put the ashes in danger. As Melodie had pointed out, there were laws. His ability to have her things removed required thirty days’ notice. She’d arrived home and cleared out within days, according to the building manager. Her mother’s ashes had been safe the entire time, and Melodie had taken them with her when she’d left.

Twelve years ago, he had been thrown out of his home overnight, losing everything. The locks had been changed while he had hitchhiked from Virginia to New York, still nursing broken ribs and two black eyes after confronting Anton at his father’s campaign office. His meager possessions had been gone when the super had let him into his apartment, not that he’d cared about anything except his custom-built computer. Taking that had been pure malice. They’d already had the files. They’d wanted to set him back, quite literally disarm him, and it had worked.

Roman hadn’t dared go to the police. Not after Garner’s threats of charging him with hacking. Roman had that prior conviction and no money to hire a lawyer. No time to wait for the wheels of justice to turn. Survival had been his goal.

Living on the streets, really understanding what his mother had been up against, he’d not only come to understand and forgive her, but he’d even considered a form of prostitution himself. The temptation had been high to sell his skills to the highest bidder and embrace a life of crime. Honest work hadn’t been paying off.

Somehow, though, he’d found himself outside Charles’s house—the security specialist who had helped him all those years ago. He’d walked as though he was being pulled toward a beacon, arriving without understanding why or how his feet had carried him that direction. Charles hadn’t been there. He’d been in a home, suffering dementia. But his wife, Brenda, had let him in.

Until then, as a product of the foster system, Roman hadn’t really believed things such as friendship and kindness and loyalty were real. He’d seen Charles’s singling him out as a mercenary move, a specialist developing a skilled apprentice for his own benefit. Anton had befriended him to exploit him, as well. That was how it was done, Roman had thought. Nothing personal. People used people. That was how life worked.

But as Charles’s wife had taken him in for no other reason than because Charles had always spoken fondly of him, Roman had begun to comprehend what one person could mean to another. Not that he took advantage of her. No, he had carried his weight, taking out the garbage and giving her what he could for groceries and rent every week.

She hadn’t needed his money, though. She wasn’t rich, but she was comfortable. She had grown children she saw often, so she wasn’t lonely. The house had been well alarmed in a good neighborhood. She hadn’t needed his protection. She’d had no legal obligation to help him.

She’d done it because she had a generous heart.

It had baffled him.

He still wondered what he might have resorted to if she hadn’t taken him in for bacon and eggs. Told him to shower and provided him with clean clothes. If she hadn’t listened to his story and believed him.

He’d been wary, not allowing her to be as motherly as she had wanted to be. Almost his entire life to that point had been a reliance on strangers. He hadn’t wanted to go back to that kind of setup, but her unconditional caring had been a glimpse of what he had missed in losing his own mom. Parents, good ones, were a precious commodity.

So the thought of Melodie’s mother’s ashes being mistreated still bothered him, even though nothing terrible had come to pass. It had been more than the basic indecency of such a thing. He simply wasn’t that cruel.

Meanwhile, the claim Melodie had made about how she’d come to have those ashes had shaken his assumptions about her and her family. He had needed to know more, to understand if what she had claimed about her estrangement from her father could be true. He’d made a number of calls over the ensuing days, first talking to her building manager at length.

Melodie, it seemed, was a perfect tenant who paid on time, lived quietly and took care of minor repairs herself. In fact, until the recent passing of her mother, she’d spent most of her days out of her apartment, working or visiting her mother at the clinic.

When Roman had looked more closely at her finances, he’d learned that she’d been living simply for years. Her income was low, especially for the daughter of a senator who received dividends from a global software company. For six years she had worked in a variety of part-time and minimum-wage jobs, only taking on debt to improve her mother’s care and then to start her wedding planning business.

He’d spoken to Ingrid’s mother, too, learning more about Melodie’s mother than Melodie herself, but even that had been an eye-opener. Patience Parnell had been a fragile sort at college. She’d been given to tears and depression over the tiniest slight. She’d quit school when a modeling agency had scouted her, but after the initial boost to her self-esteem, that sort of work had ground her down. She’d left that career to marry a rich widower, expecting to be a homemaker and help him raise his son. Instead, she’d been his trophy wife, constantly on display as he set his aspirations on Washington. The demands of networking, campaigning and entertaining had grown too much for her. She never really recovered from postpartum depression after having Melodie. She’d checked into a sanitarium six years ago and, it was whispered, had checked out under her own terms.

When she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, she had refused treatment, letting it take her life in a type of natural suicide.

Every time he thought about it, he saw Melodie before him in that ridiculous outfit. Her anguish had been so real as she’d said, I’ll keep her safe. I’m the only one who ever has.

That crack in her control was the thing that niggled most. She had been such a coolheaded fighter up to that point. He’d seen it in the way she’d doggedly tried to argue with him. At any other time he would have admired such a quick, clear ability to reason her way out of conflict. Hell, he probably would have tried to hire her. People who could step past emotion to straighten out a tense situation were gold.

All he’d seen at the time, however, was an attack. A cold-blooded one. His mind had been so skewed by his experience with her father and brother he’d stayed on the offensive, refusing to hear her, especially because she’d been so levelheaded in her defense. He’d read her wrong because, until those last moments, she hadn’t flinched or broken down.

That strength in her had thrown him, making him see her as an adversary. Now all he could think about was how it would feel to put all one’s energy into fighting for someone, for your mother, and lose her to a lack of will to live.

He swallowed, pushing stiff fists into his pockets, knuckles coming up against the string of pearls he should have returned to Melodie by now. He kept thinking she might contact him, but, in her shoes, would he want to talk to him?

If there was a good enough reason, he thought she would.

The beads rubbed mercilessly against his knuckles, the way a certain question kept rolling around in his mind, rubbing and aggravating.

Did no condom mean no birth control?

A lead blanket descended on him each time he recalled his fleeting moment of sobriety, as he had recognized the mistake he was about to make.

He was a man of logic. He didn’t believe in giving in to feelings. He still couldn’t understand how he had, especially with his view of Melodie as dark as it had been. He’d been appalled in those first seconds afterward for so much as touching her.

Yet it had been the most profound sexual experience of his life.

Had it been the same for her? Had their physical attraction been real? Please, Roman, please. His entire body clenched with tension and his breath drew in and held, savoring the memory of skin and musky scents and hot, wet welcome pouring over him like a bath. Behind his closed eyes, another question, the most burning question, glowed brightly.

Was she pregnant?

* * *

Beggars can’t be choosers. It was a truth Melodie had learned to live with the day she’d come home six years ago to discover her father had badgered her mother into a hospital she couldn’t leave.

She’s an embarrassment, he’d said.

He was the embarrassment, Melodie had informed him. Terrible words had followed, ending with her nursing a bruised cheek, a sore scalp and a wrenched shoulder while she’d begged through choked-back tears for permission to see her mother. He’d forced her to stay silent on his abusive behavior if she wanted so much as a phone call.

After striking that deal, Melodie had walked out, going to a friend’s house and never returning. Her privileged life had ended. She’d learned the hard way how to make ends meet, taking whatever job she could find to survive.

Of course, there was one job she had refused to stoop to, but today might be the day she completely swallowed her pride. They’d noticed at her temp office job that she had a flare for organization. They wanted to offer her a permanent position with a politician’s campaign team. Become a handler. A political gofer. Barf.

But the money was significantly better than entry-level clerk wages.

And her mother’s wish to have her ashes sprinkled in the Seine was weighing on her.

So Melodie begrudgingly put on a proper tweed skirt and jacket over a black turtleneck, put her hair in a French roll and closed the door on her new apartment far earlier than necessary so even if she missed her first bus, she wouldn’t be late for her interview.

This was an old building, bordering on disrepair, and it smelled musty, but the price was right and all the locks worked.

As she walked down the stairs, she told herself to be thankful she had anything at all. After a lifetime of watching her mother struggle against negative thoughts and spirals of depression, Melodie had learned not to dwell on regrets or could-have-beens. She accepted her less-than-ideal circumstances philosophically and set goals for a better situation, confident she would get to where she wanted to be eventually. This apartment and taking a job she didn’t want was merely a step in the process.

This was also the last time she started from scratch, she assured herself, grateful her mother hadn’t lived to see her fall on her face this way.

Mom. Pearls. France.

Her hand went to her collar, didn’t find the necklace, and her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.

She tried not to think of France, but Roman crept into her thoughts day and night, taunting her with how horribly she’d misjudged him.

She blamed her sunny ideals. All her life she had wanted to believe deep emotional connections were possible, even though her mother’s yearning for a better love from her father had been futile. And even though, among the loose friendships Melodie had made over the years, she’d seen more heartbreaks than success stories.

Ingrid and Huxley had fed her vision, though. Every once in a while, she came across a couple she wished she could emulate: the people who communicated with a glance and did sweet things for each other, just because.

The only way she’d coped with her barren early years had been by promising herself that real, true love would come to her eventually.

She’d mistaken a sexual reaction for a signal of mental and emotional compatibility where Roman was concerned. Maybe she wasn’t as delicate as her mother had always been, but grief had been taking its toll. A month past her out-of-character encounter with Roman and she could see how susceptible she’d been that day. Ingrid’s joy in her coming nuptials had created impatience for a life partner in Melodie. She’d seen the possibility of a future in a kiss from a superficially attractive man.

Relationships, she decided, could wait until both her finances and her heart were back on their feet. The thought allowed her to feel resilient as she reached the ground floor. She was capable of meeting challenges head-on with equanimity. She would take this job and rebuild her life.

After striding across the lobby, she pushed open the glass door onto the street.

The bluster of a nor’easter yanked it out of her hands.

Actually, it was a man. He filled the space, blocked her exit. He wore a suit and an overcoat. His dark hair glistened with rain. He was clean shaven and green eyed like a dragon. Heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

Roman Killian.

* * *

Melodie was still in Virginia, but had moved to Richmond.

The moment that detail had been reported to Roman, he’d booked a flight. The dry, musty interior of her apartment building, with its ugly red-and-silver wallpaper, closed around him as he stepped into the foyer, forcing her back several steps into the wall of mailboxes. He barely took in his surroundings. He was too busy studying her.

She looked...thin. A stab of worry hit him as he considered what that could mean for an unborn baby. Her face was wan, too, beneath her makeup. She wore a smart suit beneath an open coat, but her eyes swallowed her face. Her pale lips parted with shock. Whatever she held dropped from her grip with a muffled thump.

It was just her purse, but he shot forward in instinctive chivalry.

She snatched it before he could, jerking upright to stare down on him.

It was the oddest moment of juxtaposition. She was the one living in a low-end ZIP code in a modest suburb of the city. He appeared on list of Fortune 500 CEOs as one of the richest men in the world. His suit was tailored, his handkerchief silk.

Yet Melodie stood above him like a well-born lady. Which she was.

He knelt like a peasant. A scab on the complexion of society.

Which he was.

He held her gaze as he rose, shedding any traces of inferiority. Refusing to wear such a label. Not anymore. The struggle to get here had been too long and too hard.

Her eyes grew more blue and deep and shadowed as he straightened to his full height. He found himself resisting the urge to smile as they stood face-to-face. He’d forgotten she was so tall. She met his eyes with only the barest lift of her chin. And she impacted upon him with nothing more than turmoil and silence.

The same fascination accosted him that he’d suffered in France. He was instantly ensnared. If anything, her pull was stronger. Now he knew what it felt like to kiss her and touch her, to possess her and release all of himself into her. The power she had over him was deeply unsettling. Through air coated in layers of old carpet and must, his nostrils sought and found the hint of roses and oranges.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

That sweetly ambling voice of hers made him want to sit back and relax. “We need to talk.”

“I’m busy,” she said flatly, thumbing the face of her phone to check the time. “I have an interview.” She started to move around him, but he held out his hand.

It was enough to stop her. She very pointedly held herself back from accidentally brushing his arm.

Her aversion stung.

“I have to catch a bus,” she said stiffly.

Seeing her in this low-end building, using public transport, gave his conscience another yank. He had another reason for being here besides the possibility of pregnancy. He needed to know for sure. Was she really estranged from her father? Had he really crushed an innocent beneath his heel that day?

“I have your things in my car,” he said, “I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”

“Mom’s pearls?” Her averted gaze flew to his, round and anxious. “Why didn’t you bring them in?”

“I saw you through the window as I was getting out. I thought—” That she might somehow escape him if he didn’t act fast to catch her here in the foyer. His actions had been pure reflex.

She figured out what he’d almost revealed. “We have nothing to say to each other, Roman,” she said tonelessly. “Just go out and get them. I’d like them back.”

“We do have to talk,” he asserted firmly, watching her for signs of evasion. When she only gave a firm shake of her head, refusing to look at him, he reminded her, “I didn’t use anything that day.”

Her expression blanked before comprehension dawned in a dark flood of color. Her jaw fell open, appalled. “I’m not pregnant!” she cried.

Someone down the hall opened a door and peeked out.

Melodie was scarlet with embarrassed anger. Her dismayed blue eyes glared into his as she folded her arms defensively, mouth pouted in humiliation. “I’m not.”

“Are you sure?” he challenged.

“Of course I am. But I’m stunned that you’ve tracked me down to ask. I assumed you’d been careless on purpose. When it comes to ruining a woman’s life, leaving her with an unplanned pregnancy is about as effective as it gets.”

That bludgeoned hard enough to knock him back a step.

“I wouldn’t do that.” He was deeply offended she would think him capable of such a coldhearted form of revenge. When she only lifted disinterested brows, he insisted, “I wouldn’t. I know too well what it’s like to be an unplanned baby. I’m here to take care of my child if I have one. Do I?”

* * *

“No,” Melodie insisted, forcing herself to meet his gaze even though it was very hard. She was telling the truth, but she didn’t want to see his sincerity or have empathy and understand him. She only wanted to put him and her grave error behind her.

But his being here, asking the question, affected her. She’d been relieved when things had cycled along as normal. Of course she’d been relieved. Yet a small part of her had suffered a wistful moment. A baby would have been a disaster, but it would have been family. Real family. The kind she could love.

Holding out a hand, she said, “Can you just give me my mother’s necklace?”

“There’s definitely no baby.”

“Definitely.”

He absorbed that with barely a twitch of his stoic expression before he jerked his head and held the door for her.

Dear Lord, he was handsome with those long, clean-shaven cheeks set off by his turned up collar, his mouth pursed in dismay, his short thick hair tossing in the bluster of wind that grabbed at them.

The fierce breeze yanked her bound hair and shot up her skirt to bite at her skin. She clenched her teeth and beelined for the limo at the curb.

He opened the back door himself. “What’s the address of where you’re going?”

“Don’t do me any favors, Roman. I’ll just take the necklace and go.”

“You’re refusing my help out of spite?”

“I’m protecting what’s left of my self-respect.” Her knees knocked as the blustering cold penetrated mercilessly. Teeth chattering, she held out her hand. “Pearls?”

“They’re right there. Get in. I have more to say.”

“To quote you, I don’t care.”

With an air of arrogant patience, he closed another button on his coat and set his back to the wind, adopting a stance of willingness to wait for the spring thaw.

“You won’t just hand them to me. You’re determined to make me miss my job interview. Look around. Getting me fired did nothing to my father,” she charged.

“I know that I misjudged you,” he snapped back. “But your father and brother are on the attack against me. That’s not up for dispute. It’s reality. And it’s not common knowledge that you’ve lived apart from them all these years. Given the way things looked in the funeral photos, it was an easy mistake to make.”

“I know,” she said with the same impatience. She could understand and almost forgive that part. She had plenty of unexpressed anger of her own toward her father and brother. “And I have no problem believing they stole from you.”

His brows went up a smidgen. “Not many would take my word for it.”

“Anton isn’t capable of writing his own email, let alone launching a high-tech start-up. I’ve always wondered how he managed it.” She smiled bitterly. “And I have a lot of experience with how low they can sink.”

His gaze sharpened and she dropped her own, shielding herself, unprepared to let him delve into all the anguish and fury roiling inside her.

“So get in.”

“No.”

“For God’s sake, why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you!”

His head went back and his expression grew carved and stoic. “I’m not going to touch you. I didn’t mean to sleep with you that day.”

“Oh, that’s funny,” she choked, trying to end that topic before it went any further. She was mortified he’d brought it up.

“It’s the truth,” he shot back, his energy like a living thing that whipped and raced on the tail of the wind, lashing her with its force. He was tense. Very tense as he confronted her, as if he was willing her to believe him. It was weirdly fascinating.

She tore her gaze away, not wanting to get caught up in trying to decipher the truth from his lies. Not wanting to hear excuses and let down her guard. He’d already gotten past her defenses too easily, setting her back so she was as naked and defenseless as she’d been that day. It wasn’t him she mistrusted, but herself.

She ought to be able to shut him out the way she had with her father and Anton. Roman meant nothing to her. Less than nothing. As bitter as she was toward her father and half brother, she went days, weeks even, without thinking of them, but no such luck with Roman. He was top of her mind every day, ambushing her with memories of kisses and caresses and wrenching pleasure.

She swallowed, not wanting the recollections to surface now.

Her blood warmed anyway. Her senses heightened, making her aware of his scent, masculine and sharp, beneath the sweet smell of rain and the comforting notes of damp wool. Clothing didn’t make a man, but everything about his appearance amplified his stark masculinity. His cheekbones were proud and chiseled, his nose a blade, his lips twitching almost into a closed-mouth kiss as he prepared to speak.

“I slept with you in spite of who you are, not because of it,” he said in a growl.

“Had a staggering crash in your standards, did you?” Insult blindsided her as she absorbed that he was saying she’d been willing and he had merely taken advantage. Any man would. “At least when I thought you seduced me for revenge, it was personal. I honestly thought I couldn’t feel worse about that day. Thanks, Roman. You’re a real guy.”

“And you’re twisting me into a far more vicious bastard than I am.”

She stared at him, astonished. “You made hatred to me.” The words swelled in her throat. She clenched her jaw, trying to hold back convulsive shivers, trying to hold on to control and not allow emotion to rise up and sting her eyes. “At least I had some respect for you that afternoon, before you started ruining my life.”

“Would you get in the damned car?”

She realized people were walking by, staring. Overhearing.

She was freezing, and warm air radiated from the interior. With a sob of annoyed misery, she threw herself into the backseat.

He followed and slammed the door, adjusting the vents so hot gushes of air poured directly onto her.

She didn’t thank him, even though her legs were stinging and her fingers were numb. She attacked the box with her name on it, spilling her mother’s necklace into her lap. Picking it up, she pressed the treasured beads to her lips.

“I only meant to do to you what they did to me, which was cut short your career and leave you with bills to pay,” Roman said.

She dropped her hands. “But you accidentally slept with me, even though you hated me,” she charged, going hot again. Bristling with temper.

“Yes,” he asserted, as if that proved some kind of point beyond the fact he was a conscienceless womanizer.

“To humiliate me,” she confirmed in a jagged voice, looking over at him in time to see guilt flash across his expression before he controlled it.

“I thought you were throwing yourself at me for their purposes. It looked as if you were trying to trick me into letting you stay in my house. I let you come on to me so I could turn you down,” he admitted.

“But you went through with it,” she said, returning to that deep sense of bitterness that had burned through her with every step of her journey back to the hotel that day, as she’d absorbed that what had looked like a white knight had actually been the same blackened soul that the men in her family possessed. “How do people like you sleep at night? That’s what I want to know.”

“Do not lump me in with them, Melodie,” he fired back, temper riled enough to darken his expression and press her into her seat. “Do you see them chasing you down the East Coast to ask about consequences? I am not just like them.” His jaw worked. “I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a good man, definitely not a great one, but I’m not as immoral as they are.”

The way she’d set him on the same reprehensible shelf as the Gautier men ate at him. She could see it. That should have been more satisfying, but it just made her feel small.

“Sleeping with you just happened,” he muttered.

“Because I threw myself at you,” she provided, feeling the sting press forward from the backs of her eyes to blur her vision. “Because you couldn’t resist me.” Spider arms. Freak.

She narrowed her eyes, turning her face away as she willed Anton’s voice to silence and willed her tears to dry before they squeezed past her lashes and fell.

“Yes.”

She hated Roman in that moment. Really hated him. Because he sounded so begrudging as he said it. Not smooth and charming and manipulative. Resentful. He sounded as confounded by his reaction as she was by hers. That made him sound truthful even though she was convinced he had to be lying.

“I know I’m not beautiful. At best, I’m striking,” she said, straining to keep emotion from her voice. “I’m certainly not the type who inspires lust, so give it a rest. You wanted to hurt me. Which you did.”

“I’m not here to hurt you again,” he ground out, flinching as though she’d slapped him. “I can’t take back what I did. If I could...” he began tightly, emotions so compressed she couldn’t read anything in his tone but intensity.

He would take it back? Her heart clenched in a surprisingly strong contraction of agony.

Of course she would take it back, too, she assured herself, even as their heights of pleasure danced through her consciousness, reminded her how rare and singular the experience had been. He’d ruined her for accepting anything less, if he wanted the truth, which left her feeling bleak and hopeless.

“You told me that day that you were attracted to me,” he said.

“Don’t throw that in my face,” she cried, recoiling from being mocked.

“I was attracted, too. More than I knew how to handle. That’s why I slept with you. Not out of revenge. Not to humiliate you.”

She swallowed, wavering toward believing him, but it strained credulity. “It wasn’t love at first sight, Roman. I saw the way you looked at me the day I arrived. You weren’t interested.”

“I didn’t let my interest show. There’s a difference.”

She had to turn her nose to the window then, hope rising too quickly. Did she have no sense of self-preservation? Believing in him had only gotten her a giant helping of heartache the last time.

But he was very contained, not giving away much, very good at keeping his thoughts and feelings well hidden. Maybe he had been attracted.

Even if he had been, so what?

With a troubled sigh, she realized she was crushing the pearls in her clenched hands. Her fingers were warm enough to work now. She reached to close the strand around her throat.

Wool slid against leather and Roman was in her space, fingers brushing hers.

With an alarm that came more from a jolt of excitement than fear, she released the pearls and let him take over, angling herself so he could finish quickly. Her skin tightened all over her body as his knuckles brushed the tiny, upswept hairs at the back of her head. Beneath her layers of clothing her nipples tightened into sharp peaks and her blood grew hot, radiating heat outward to dispel any lingering chill for the rest of time.

The moment he was done she shifted away from his disturbing touch, adjusting the weight of the necklace so it felt right, and flashed a nervous glance his way.

He was watching her intently. “I felt it, too. There’s something in our chemistry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she dismissed with an unsettled shake of her head. If the traffic hadn’t been so busy, she would have pushed out her side of the car. “I need to get to my job interview. Let me out.”

“Don’t start lying to me now, Melodie. Not when we’re clearing the air.” He didn’t move.

Her heart began to pound with a trapped bird sort of panic. “Look,” she said, tugging the hem of her skirt down her knee. Electricity seemed to crackle between them like fingers of lightning. “I know I gave you the impression I’m easy. I’m not. So don’t start with your moves.”

“Moves,” he repeated on a dry chuckle. “Like how I seduced you that day? You kissed me.”

“Don’t remind me!” she cried.

“I will remind you,” he said, leaning into her. “And I’ll even be honest enough to admit I lied to you that day. I said it’s always like that for me, but who has an encounter like that ever in their lifetime?”

Melodie shot her gaze to his. He was so close and disturbing. His brow was pulled into a perturbed line, his skin taut with challenge and something else. Discomfort, maybe, with how much he was admitting.

Between one breath and the next the shared memory of their wild coming together filled the tiny space behind these tinted windows.

She couldn’t look away from his rain-forest eyes. He pinned her in place with nothing but a tiny shift of his attention to her mouth.

Her heart began to race and her blood felt as though it zigzagged in her veins. Her breasts flooded with heat, growing heavy and achy, the tips tight with reaction.

Desire clouded his irises.

A fog of longing smothered her consciousness, making sensible thought slippery and vague. She found herself looking at his mouth. In her dreams those lips plundered hers. She always woke with one question uppermost in her mind: Had it really been that good?

His lips parted as he came closer.

She opened with instinctive welcome.

They made contact and intense relief washed through her as a great thirst was finally slaked. His hand came to the side of her face, open and tender. She tilted into his touch, feeling moved and cherished as he cradled her head and gently but thoroughly devoured her.

She drew on him with greedy abandon, forgetting everything except that he filled a vast need in her. There were no words, just a craving that both ceased and grew as they locked mouths and touched tongues. His body closed in, pressed. He overwhelmed her as he wrapped his arms fully around her.

She moaned, pleasure blooming in her like a supernova. She instantly ached for more intimate contact with him.

His arms tightened, gathering her to draw her with him as he sat back, pulling her into his lap.

The shift was enough of a jolt to make her pull back and realize where they were, how her knees had fallen on either side of his thighs, skirt riding up. She was losing all contact with reality. Again.

Then what?

“This can’t happen,” she gasped.

She pushed off him, throwing herself awkwardly onto the seat opposite and glaring back at him. She felt like a mouse that might have freed herself from the cat’s mouth, but only until he wanted to clamp down on her again.

“Not here, no. Come to my hotel with me,” he said, voice sandpapery and exquisitely inviting.

“For what?” she cried.

“Don’t be dense,” he growled. “We’re an incredible combination. You can feel the power of it as well as I can.”

“You’ve really perfected this technique of yours, haven’t you?” she choked. “Listen, you might sleep with people you loathe, but I don’t. I won’t sleep with a man I hate.”

He snapped his head back.

Her conscience prickled. She didn’t hate him. There was too much empathy and understanding in her for such a heartless emotion.

“Well, that’s that. Isn’t it?” He thrust himself from the car, holding the door open for her.

Icy wind flew in to accost her, scraping her legs and stabbing through her clothes as she rose from the cozy interior to the ferocity of winter, entire body shaking, heart fragile.

“Goodbye, Roman,” she said, feeling as if she was losing something as precious as her mother’s pearls.

“Melodie.”

Not goodbye, she noted, but his tone still sounded final and made her unutterably sad. Clutching the edges of her jacket closed, she walked to the bus stop on heavy feet.

CHAPTER SIX

ROMAN WENT BACK to his house in France where he could live in his own personal exile and ruminate, but despite only being here once, Melodie infused the place.

He never should have gone after her. If it hadn’t been for the possibility of a baby, he wouldn’t have, but there was no way he could have let a child of his grow up the way he had—not just poor and alone, but with a million questions and a million facets of rejection glittering into the furthest corners of its psyche. The one time he’d asked his mother about his father, she’d said, “He was a rich man who said he loved me, but I guess he didn’t because he didn’t come back.”

He was a rich man, one who was very careful not to use those words and provoke false hope. He’d always hated his father for being a liar while secretly fearing he was just like the man: incapable of real love. He wasn’t particularly likable. He knew that. Foster care had taught him to hold back, be cautious, not expect that he was anything but a burden to be tolerated. He came in too late with any sign of caring, long after he’d been written off as stunted. This was why he didn’t pursue serious relationships with women or even have close friendships.

But he didn’t usually provoke people to hatred. It maddened him that Melodie felt that way. He shouldn’t have kissed her, he knew that, but the attraction between them had still been there. She’d responded to his touch.

Yet she reviled him too much to let things progress.

While he could think of nothing but touching her again. Grazing the warmth of her neck with his fingertips had been the height of eroticism. Kissing her again had inflamed him.

The fact that she was driving him insane, mentally and physically, told him it was time to cut ties altogether. It was time to forget her and move on with his life.

* * *

Melodie had always read her horoscope, trusted in karma and hoped fate really did have a plan for her. For the sake of her sanity she clung to the belief that good things happened to good people if they stuck in there long enough. The Gautier men were masters of cynicism, but she was different. And she wouldn’t crumble under the weight of the dark side like her mother had, taking the first path out of life that was offered. She would fight and prevail.

Then Roman Killian had happened.

He’d not only shown her that she couldn’t trust her own instincts and judgment, he’d provoked bitterness and pessimism in her. A depressing attitude lingered in her long after her encounter with him in his limo, an aimless feeling of “what’s the point?”

That wasn’t like her, but she couldn’t seem to shake the mood. Her only hope was that fulfilling her mother’s wish for her remains to float down the Seine would help her find closure and move on. Accomplishing that was the reason she had sold her soul and taken the job campaigning with Trenton Sadler.

And, since fate had a sense of humor, that seemed to demand she face Roman Killian again.

As coincidences went, winding up at a New York gala he was attending was a kick in the teeth from the karmic gods, but what had she done to make the planets align against her so maliciously?

Maybe it was just a fluke. She was traveling in higher circles these days, literally traveling, finally seeing New York if only from a hotel window. Her new employer was actively seeking corporate introductions, happy to be seen hobnobbing with lobbyists and special-interest groups.

He was exactly like her father, and she’d made her deal with Trenton Sadler like a blues guitarist shaking hands with Satan at the crossroads. He didn’t know she was a senator’s daughter. No, he thought she was simply a surprise talent he’d rescued from a temp agency, one who’d dabbled in catering and event planning. But Melodie was pulling out every maneuver she’d ever learned at Daddy’s knee. Trenton loved her for it.

She didn’t care for him at all, hated the work because it had everything to do with political-party advancement and nothing to do with the needs of the people, but she was good at it, and the compensation was more than a livable wage. And Trenton had promised her a bonus if he got the nomination he was after. It would be enough to square up her line of credit and fund her trip to Paris.

That was the only reason she was living out of a suitcase along with the rest of Trenton’s handlers, renting black strapless evening gowns and pressing palms while conjuring a vapid smile. Tonight she’d lost track of whether they were buying or selling, whether this was a fund-raiser or a charity auction or a grand opening. All she knew was that she was in another hotel ballroom. She felt as if she’d come full circle, accomplishing nothing with her life, when she glanced toward the entrance and saw him.

Her heart gave a lurch.

Roman Killian had the uncanny ability to make whatever he wore fall into the background so all she noticed was the magnificence of the man. His head was tilted down to a beautiful blonde by his side, but with a disconcerting suddenness he jerked his head up and scanned the room.

Melodie watched with morbid fascination, thinking she was imagining what she was seeing, but as she watched, Roman cataloged the crowd like a robotic laser shone from his eyes. The blonde continued speaking, but he didn’t seem to notice. His visage slowly rotated toward Melodie, as though he was computing every face in the room until—

He stopped when he spotted her.

She was almost knocked back a step. All of her froze except her pulse, which galloped like a spooked horse, kicking and squealing. His hair was extra rakish tonight, suggesting that the woman’s fingers had ruffled it. His jaw looked hard and polished. His expression was completely unreadable as he kept his gaze fixed on her.

“Who is that?” Trenton asked beside her, rattling her out of her stasis.

“Roman Killian.” Her throat was dry. Her entire being went numb as Roman flicked his gaze to Trenton and came back to her before he turned his attention to the blonde, his expression inscrutable.

“Tech-Sec Industries?” Trenton asked, forcing Melodie to bring her mind back from a limo and a kiss that had been every bit as profound and memorable as the ones in France and twice as much of a letdown afterward. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a connection like that?”

“I don’t,” she said huskily. “We’ve only met once. Twice.” Three times. “We’re not friends,” she assured him.

“Sure about that?” Trenton asked, giving her the kind of male once-over he’d started sending her way this trip. She had watched him flirt openly with more than one impressionable young supporter in his office, despite having a wife who kept the home fires burning. He hadn’t gone out of his way to hit on Melodie, though, preferring to bark orders for coffee and sandwiches in her direction. Being the only female traveling with the group seemed to have elevated her to a target, however.

“I’m sure,” she affirmed, recalling her last words to Roman, which had been most unfriendly. She tried to clear the catch from her throat as she added, “I should leave, or I might become a liability.”

“No,” he said with a thoughtful glance at the way Roman had joined a group near the bar, but had positioned himself so Melodie was in his line of sight. “Introduce us. Be as nice as you have to be to get him on my side. I want his support.”

We don’t always get what we want, Melodie wanted to say.

“He wasn’t on the list,” she reminded him. Mrs. Sadler had stayed home for this whirlwind junket. The rest of the team had stayed in their rooms and Melodie was standing in as Trenton’s date, something he seemed to think gave him the right to hands-on access. She’d been finding ways to sidestep, but she had her assignment when it came to ensuring the right connections were made. Roman Killian wasn’t one of the names in the room they had to touch base with, though.

In fact, if she’d known he’d be attending, she would have wormed her way out of this evening altogether. Mentally reviewing the guest list, she recalled a Swedish actress had been on it. Roman must be her plus one. Why his being involved with someone should cause a pinch near her heart, Melodie had no idea, but she didn’t want to get close enough to see how deep his involvement with the stacked blonde went.

Trenton didn’t care about her needs, though. “Introduce us,” he repeated firmly.

Paris, she thought.

“If you like.” She gathered her courage and found a stiff smile.

It took time to work through the crowded ballroom. They had to stop midway to listen to a speech about the refurbishment of this iconic hotel, one of New York’s first skyscrapers. Applause happened, balloons fell, dancing started.

Melodie tried to pretend she wasn’t in an intricate waltz with Roman, one in which she took two steps forward and sidestepped one. She was aware of his every shift and turn as he and his date worked the room. When he took the actress to the dance floor, Melodie told herself she only noticed because he was Trenton’s quarry. They were gaining on him.

He came off the dance floor feet away from where she stood with Trenton, practically an invitation to approach. The tray of champagne appeared to have been their goal. Roman took two and turned his back on Melodie as he handed a flute to the blonde, but the opportunity was at hand.

Melodie felt his nearness like the heat off a blaze. Anticipation began to buzz in her. She neutralized her nerves by setting a light touch on Trenton’s arm to break into his current conversation.

“I believe our opening has arrived,” she told him, smiling a goodbye at the navy general and his wife as Trenton covered her hand, insisting she maintain the contact while they crossed the small distance to where Roman and his girlfriend were sipping their drinks.

Roman looked at her, and it was the same sweep of her feet out from under her as ever. All the air seemed to leave her body under the impact of his cool, green gaze and she had to gather her composure just to speak.

“Mr. Killian. What a surprise to bump into you here. I don’t think you know Trenton Sadler—”

“I’ve seen the ads,” Roman said, flicking a cynical twitch of his lips at Trenton as they shook hands. “This is Greta Sorensen.”

“I’ve seen some of your films. I love romantic comedies,” Melodie said, sincere for the first time all evening.

“I’m filming one now. That’s why I’m here in New York,” Greta said in her prettily accented English.

“And she has to be at work very early tomorrow morning,” Roman said. “So we were just leaving. Good night.” It was quite a snub, one that made Greta’s eyes widen slightly before she turned it into a smoky look of anticipation aimed straight at Roman.

“I’ll assume that brush-off was meant for you, not me,” Trenton said tightly as Roman steered Greta toward the exit.

“I told you we weren’t friends.” Melodie reeled from the rebuff, her entire body stinging as though she’d been lashed front and back. Something in her ought to have been worried about how this would impact her job, but all she could think was that the encounter had made her incredibly sad. Especially if he was in a rush to make love to his date before she got her unnecessary beauty sleep. Lucky Greta.

“You didn’t exactly try to kiss and make up, did you?” Trenton charged.

Ah, the temperament of the politically hungry. Melodie ignored his tone, swallowed back a disturbing thickness in her throat and adopted her own implacable smile as she nudged Trenton toward a paunchy older gentleman. Work. Paris. She would not speculate on what Roman was doing with that Swedish sex kitten.

Nor would she wonder what her life would look like right now if she’d allowed Roman to take her back to his hotel room that day four months ago. Had she been tempted? On a physical level, absolutely. Even now, she regularly woke up damp with perspiration, deeply aroused, remnants of sexually explicit dreams lingering behind her clenched eyes.

Why did he have to torture her this way?

A man who could set aside revulsion toward a woman and bed her anyway was obviously incapable of the sort of love and respect she had always wanted. He’d battered her heart so thoroughly she doubted she’d ever recover.

Which made her furious with him all over again.

Firm hands descended on her waist from behind.

She gasped under a jolt of electricity, nerve endings flaring hotly, immediately aware who was touching her. She covered his hands, trying to remove them, but he only held on more possessively.

Trenton broke off midspiel and glanced at her, brows going up as he recognized who stood behind her. “I thought you were taking your date home?” he said.

“She’s staying on the eleventh floor. Dance with me, Melodie.”

No. She couldn’t breathe to speak.

“Good idea,” Trenton said, piercing her with a significant “be nice” look.

Numbly she let Roman guide her onto the dance floor. Actually, she wasn’t numb. She was so sensitive every touch and smell and sound overwhelmed her. She couldn’t pick out the beat in the music or tell whether his hands were hot or her skin was flushing in reaction to his hold on her. Her throat hurt where her pulse thrummed. Her limbs felt clumsy as she set one hand on his shoulder and the other hand in his.

“Why—?” she tried, but her voice didn’t want to work. She wasn’t sure what she was asking anyway. So many questions crowded up from the hollow space between her knotted stomach and her tight lungs she couldn’t make sense of a single one.

“Are you sleeping with him?” he asked with seeming disinterest. “He’s married, you know.”

She snorted, disdainful words choking past the locked gate of her collarbone. “I’m aware, and no. He’s my boss. What happened to Greta? Turn you down?”

“I don’t sleep with clients, but she wanted to make an appearance.” His touch on her changed, fingers closing more firmly over hers. His hand weighed more heavily at her waist. A hint of dry humor glinted in his eye. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way...”

“I don’t care,” she tried, but came up against her own dishonesty as quickly as his smirk flashed and disappeared.

“No. Of course not. You hate me. Why are you dancing with me, then?”

“I was told to be nice to you.” Offering a lethal mimic of Greta’s smoky look, she warned, “Do not get me fired, Roman. I will kill you.”

“He’s a sycophant.”

“So am I,” she retorted, squirming inwardly at being caught out as one of Trenton’s minions. “It pays the bills.”

Roman’s mouth tightened briefly before he allowed, “You’re good at working a room. I’ve been watching you.”

Melodie tingled with awareness at the idea of his watching her, covering her reaction with a blasé “Mom always needed a wing woman at these sorts of things. When it was her turn to host, I made all the arrangements. Ingrid’s wedding really would have come off beautifully under my hand, you know. How are the arrangements coming along?”

“I have no idea. She’s training her replacement and that’s enough comedy for my tastes.”

“Because weddings are a joke? Falling in love is for the weak and pathetic? I’m beginning to agree with you, Roman. Which makes me hate you all the more,” she added with a quiet burst of ferocity.

He spun her off the dance floor and behind a mirrored column.

“I tried to apologize to you that day,” he reminded hotly.

“You tried to pick me up,” she threw back, scraped raw all over again.

* * *

Four months had passed since their last meeting and Roman had managed to convince himself he’d forgotten her. The moment he had entered the room, however, a preternatural sense had sparked awake in him. He’d known she was here.

Then he’d spied her, toffee hair swept up to reveal her long neck and those deliciously modest pearls. Her shoulders were bared by her dress. The rest of her gown had hardly impacted upon him as he’d taken in the statue-still bust her head and shoulders made staring back at him.

She still hated him, he’d seen immediately, judging by her lack of a smile.

Then he’d seen her date touch her arm and something had snapped awake in him, an emotion that was blade sharp and ferocious. He suspected it was jealousy, because for a moment he’d been blind. All the hairs had lifted on his body and his blood had pumped in anticipation as he had prepared to shove through the crowd to get to her.

Sense had prevailed, albeit very weakly. He hadn’t been able to dump his date fast enough and get back to Melodie once she’d opened the borders and spoken to him. Now her scent filled his nostrils and his muscles twitched to clamp his arms around her. He was primed to throw her over his shoulder and steal her from the room while fighting off rivals.

He was damned close to doing so. The bitter look she gave him was filled with acid and ate away at what control he had.

“Do you think I wouldn’t control this if I could? That I don’t hate you for affecting me like this?” He threw the words at her.

Her head flung back as if he’d slapped her.

“No, it doesn’t feel very good, does it?” he gritted out, skin threatening to split under the pressure of containing himself. “It’s not me doing this to you, Melodie. It’s us. I’m this close to having you against this damned wall with the entire room watching. It’s that powerful.”

“Even though you hate me.” She turned her face to the side, eyes glistening.

“What do you want me to say? That I love you?” The word caught like a barbed hook on the way out, snagging in his chest and the back of his throat. It wasn’t a word he even understood beyond its bastardized use. I love this car. I love crème brulée.

“I wouldn’t believe you if you did, but I want the man I sleep with to say it,” she said with a break of anguish in her voice. “I want to feel it. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going all those years, believing I’d make better choices with men than my mother did. I’m so lonely I want to cry, but I can’t bring myself to believe any of you anymore.” Her lips trembled. “You broke me, Roman. That’s why I hate you.”

He sucked in a breath that felt like razor blades.

“I hate being this person. I hate being skeptical and negative,” she went on, skimming trembling fingertips beneath her eyes. “I hate using words like hate.” She sent a quick, desperate glance toward the exit. “I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

Because she was falling apart.

He thought he might. Hell.

Catching her arm, he used his height and confidence to muscle through the crowd to where a bellman was checking names at the door. “You have something for me. Roman Killian.”

“Of course. Right here, sir.” The bellman handed over a small folder with a number on the inside cover. It contained Roman’s room key and the credit card he’d handed to a member of staff on his way back into the ballroom after dropping off Greta with a handshake.

He hadn’t intended to book a room here until he’d seen Melodie.

Melodie gave a muted sniff and turned toward a sign pointing out the facilities, but he drew her across the atrium toward the elevators.

“I can’t leave,” she said, accepting Roman’s handkerchief as he hustled her along. Then she paused to lean into her smudged reflection in an etched panel. “Actually, I should go to my room to fix my makeup.”

The elevator doors opened and he pressed her into the car.

“Six,” she said.

He ignored that and pressed the P.

“Roman—” She started to poke 6.

He stopped her. “We’re going to talk, Melodie. Clear the air once and for all.”

“There’s no point,” she insisted, voice husky and fatalistic. “You’re right. We do goad each other and bring out the worst. That means we should stay as far away from each other as possible.”

Her words spiked into him, making him fearful to draw breath, knowing it would burn. “Do you really think that?”

A rush of emotion welled in her eyes and made her clamp her lips together. She dropped her gaze.

“I didn’t listen to you that first day. We might not have damaged each other so badly if I had. This time we get it all on the table. Neither of us can move forward until we do.”

“I damaged you?” she asked with disbelief. “How?”

“You made me question whether I’m a worthy human being.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

MELODIE FLINCHED AT being called out for hurting him, astonished that she could.

And disturbed. It meant they really were bad for each other. So how could she drop her anger and embrace the idea they could sort things out? Anger was safe. Listening and understanding would only make her feel guilty and vulnerable. Trusting Roman would mean abandoning her defensive animosity, and that scared her. It would leave her with nothing to hold him off.

He still scared her, she admitted privately. Still caused a reaction in her that was stronger than logic. Whether it was fury or passion, she’d never dealt with such intense feelings. The closest she’d come had been the fire that had burned inside her while fighting with her father over her mother’s care. Those emotions had made sense, though. They’d been born of deep loyalty and love...

She cut short looking for similarities. Roman was a stranger. They’d only met a handful of times, and even she, with her Pollyanna ideals, suspected love at first sight was a myth. If it did exist it wouldn’t feel like this. As if a man she barely knew was a god with the power to smite her in a blink.

As they entered the penthouse, he went to the bar while she took in the well-appointed suite with its view of the New York skyline, its Old English furniture and its softly glowing vintage lamps draped in shimmering crystal beads.

“Scotch? Or wine?” he asked, holding up a bottle.

“I can’t stay long.” She glanced at the time on her phone, ignored a text from one of the aides asking how things were going and dropped the device back into her clutch, sighing heavily. “What is there to say anyway? I was feeling very low about my mother’s death when we met. I wanted to meet someone, to feel alive. I let myself think there was more potential between us than there was. I shouldn’t have slept with you, but I did. It gave you the wrong impression about how I conduct myself.”

He brought her a glass of white wine, the glass frosted by the chill of the liquid. His expression was cool and unreadable. She sipped, wetting her dry tongue and soothing her burning throat, trying to collect herself while the strange energy that emanated off him took her apart at the seams.

“Did you hear me that day in the car? I didn’t make hatred to you. There was nothing in my mind at that moment except the pleasure we were giving each other.”

“Don’t,” she said, brushing a wisp of hair behind her ear and using the motion to hide her flinch of self-consciousness.

“We have to be frank. I don’t like it any more than you do.” He brought his glass of neat scotch up to his lips but paused and lowered it again. “I don’t chase women for sport, Melodie. It’s important to me that you believe that. I’m lousy in a relationship, but not because I treat women like sex providers. If I hadn’t had a reason to kick you out that day, you would have been in my bed until you tired of me.”

“Does that happen?” she asked with a faint attempt at levity. It was supposed to be a swipe at the man she assumed him to be: a gorgeous playboy with enough money to hold any woman’s interest.

“I’m emotionally inaccessible,” he said with a pained smile, as if it was a tragic but proved fact. “And the sex has never been like it is with us.” He spoke as though it was something happening in the now, and indicated the invisible strands that pulled her toward him and, if he was to be believed, drew him just as inexorably.

She shifted away from the disturbing aura of sexual tension that grew between them so easily, feeling terribly weak. She would understand this gross sense of helplessness if she had given her heart to him. As a child yearning for love and approval from Garner and Anton, she’d walked around as spineless as her mother, taking each slight to heart. Eventually, living in the real world, she’d suffered fewer attacks, and most of them from people she cared little about. Her inner defenses had rallied and strengthened.

Now, after a handful of encounters with Roman, a man who should mean nothing to her, she was more emotionally sensitive than ever, responding to every word he said as if it was her own inner voice. It was disconcerting.

She eyed him, unsettled by his talk of feeling the same irrevocable pull. “I don’t understand how it can be like this if we don’t love each other.”

“I’ve never understood how love enters into sex at all.” He tilted his glass to watch the liquid move in the square bottom of his glass. “I’ve always thought pleasure was the point. Don’t look like that,” he chided gently, glancing up to catch what was probably a wounded expression on her face. “I didn’t say that to mock you. I’m being honest.”

She ducked her head. “It still hurts. You didn’t even think I was attractive, Roman. It wasn’t until the second day that you started to act as though you were interested, and that was after you knew who I was.”

“I told you in Virginia, just because I didn’t let it show doesn’t mean I wasn’t attracted. I’m not interested in serious relationships, Melodie. By that I mean marriage, kids, a lifetime commitment... I’m not cut out for that. You looked like the kind who is. So you’re right, at that first meeting I made sure to keep my interest hidden to avoid going down a dead-end road. Then you smiled for the pictures and...” He frowned, took a sip of scotch and curled his lip in self-deprecation. “The truth is I was captivated. I couldn’t hide how I was reacting when you came back the next day. I stopped trying. You’re very beautiful.”

She shook her head, not comfortable hearing that ever, but especially from him. Especially now. “Roman, I’m trying to believe you. I need to make sense of all this, but we have to be honest if—”

“Your mother was in magazines,” he cut in with a baffled look. “You resemble her. How could you not know how pretty you are?”

Anton. She didn’t say it. She wanted to be completely over him and his ugly criticisms.

“Mom was always described as unusual or arresting. She was just really emotive in front of a camera, unable to hide what she was feeling.”

“And you’re the same. Your true self comes through, and that woman is lovely, Melodie. I should have paid attention to that, not the fact that you happen to share the name Gautier,” he added in a mutter aimed at the bottom of his glass.

She took a few swift footsteps away. He made her feel positively defenseless. She did everything in her power not to react, even though she wanted to flinch, while her pulse tripped in alarm and insecurity attacked her. She had worked so hard to get over all the self-doubts instilled by her upbringing. If there was any benefit to her mother’s hospitalization, it had been the secondhand counseling she’d received. She may not have battled the same physiological depression her mother had fought, but her early years had been exactly the same steady erosion of her self-esteem that her mother had faced.

Now Roman was saying he could see past all the small shields she’d managed to assemble for herself. It was terrifying. She stood in silence, trying to pretend he held no such power while she waited to see where and how he’d use his power to advantage.

“I don’t want the ability to hurt you, Melodie,” he said finally. “I’m emotionally detached by conscious decision, but I can’t stay indifferent around you. You,” he said with a significant tone. “No one else gets under my skin this way.”

She almost found a shred of humor in his vexed tone. She could relate. The truth was she didn’t want the power to hurt him, either.

“I don’t understand why we’re like this,” she said. “We don’t know each other.”

“Don’t we?” He set down his drink and pushed his bunched fists into his pockets. His shoulders went back and his profile was a sharp silhouette against the black windows. “Who holds a woman’s ashes hostage so her daughter has to put her grief on display? It’s as bad as stealing a young man’s only hope for a future by threatening to expose his one mistake in the past.”

Melodie swallowed, acknowledging that he probably did understand her at a very deep level. “Did Anton contribute anything to that software program that built his fortune?”

“His name.” Roman’s expression lost its warmth, hardening. “He was doing me the favor of attaching himself to it. I was desperate enough to give up fifty percent for that. After a sound beating, I agreed to a hundred.”

Melodie gasped, feeling his words like a wrecking ball hitting her chest. But she supposed any man who could shake a woman until she begged for mercy could beat a man to a pulp.

“After Mom’s funeral they were never going to be in my life again. The job with Ingrid was a fresh start, finally a potential career. I couldn’t have traveled for work while Mom was alive. She needed to see me every day. We needed each other,” she corrected, setting down her own glass and purse on a side table to hug herself.

“Dad always had final say in her care, so he was always this dark presence that kept me on edge. Then, finally, even though it was only her ashes, she was in my care. I saw myself drawing a line under my childhood but...” She shrugged, accosted by vulnerability again, but it wasn’t as hard this time. She was beginning to feel safe making her confession to him. “You were supposed to be the redemption, Roman. You were supposed to prove that not all men are the same. You let me down. You proved that they can still hurt me. That all the brutality and ugliness they put into the world is still able to bounce back and hit me.”

“Melodie, I didn’t know.”

“I know,” she acknowledged with a jerky nod. “Anton has a daughter out there from a college girlfriend. I check in on her, send her money sometimes. He doesn’t care. You cared enough to show up and ask if you had a baby on the way. I knew that day in the limo that you weren’t really like them. I just...”

“Still hate me.”

“I’m trying to, Roman. If I don’t, then you’ll—”

“What?” he prompted quickly, demeanor changing.

He knew. She blushed and had to look away.

A muted noise sounded, and they both looked to the clutch where she’d set it next to her glass. Her mobile vibrated inside it.

“Trenton is wondering where I am,” she guessed, then made a face, feeling as though she was with a friend after all, she supposed, because she found herself saying a very uncharitable, “I should text back that I’m being nice to you.”

The banked sexual awareness between them flared like the catch of a match.

“That wasn’t—” she hurried to say.

“I know.” He sounded as though he was laughing at her, making her shoot a scowl his direction. “I’m not going to make another unwelcome pass, Melodie. No matter how much I want to.”

Which was a pass in itself, she noted drily, but managed to say, “Good.” Even though she was suddenly reluctant to accept that. Her mind was expanding with one ballooning thought. What would it be like now, when they’d set aside the misjudgments and animosity?

“I should go,” she said briskly. Before she lost her mind.

“I’ll walk you down.”

“You don’t have to.” She picked up her clutch and headed toward the door.

He pocketed his room key off the bar and followed her. “Better if we both reappear without looking flushed and disheveled.”

“Right.” Flushed. Disheveled. Skin damp and whole body tingling in the aftermath of orgasm. That would be bad. “Yes,” she affirmed. “You’re probably right.”

“Only probably? Don’t give me an opening, Melodie. I will take it,” he said.

They stood at the door, his hand on the latch, his white shirt and black jacket filling her vision.

“An opening for what?” She was playing dumb, not like her at all.

His mouth lifted at one corner, knowing. “I said I wouldn’t make an unwelcome pass,” he said, then touched her chin, gently forcing her to tilt up her face until she couldn’t avoid his eyes. “If this is not welcome, say so now.”

His touch was bringing her to life in ways she had thought were manifestations of an overactive imagination.

“I keep wondering—”

He covered her mouth and she knew. They were every bit as volatile as before. They stepped into the kiss with synchronicity, her arms going over his shoulders, his hands sliding to her lower back, pulling her hips into his. In heels she was eye level with his mouth, and they both moaned with pleasure at how perfectly they fit together.

The buzz sounded again from inside her purse.

They broke away.

She threw the clutch toward the sofa, missing. It hit the floor and slid while they stepped into tight contact again, lips meeting without hesitation or clumsiness. Her same distant thoughts of how and why penetrated, but she honestly didn’t care. He was the man who did this to her. She couldn’t turn away now that it had started. And there was no evidence of his trying to slow things down as his fingertips dug into her buttocks and he rotated to press her into the door.

Oh, the weight of him felt good!

Pushing into his thighs with her own, she incited where he was already hard.

He ground back, making a growling noise as he drew back just enough to smooth the fine hairs from her neck, then nipped and nibbled his way to her bare shoulder. The action was both tender and feral, as though he was asserting his dominance but with gentle care, demanding her capitulation in the exposure of her throat to him, rewarding her with caresses that trickled delicious fire through her whole body.

Threading fingers into his hair, she moaned his name, helpless to the onslaught of pleasure. Weak against the masculine power that didn’t need muscle to overwhelm her.

“Feel what you’re doing to me,” he said, lifting his head and dragging her hand to his neck. Beneath her palm his artery pulsed in hard, rapid pumps.

“Mine’s going to explode, too,” she said, drawing his hand to her chest, where her heart raced in such a rapid tattoo it alarmed her.

He slid his palm lower, cupping her breast, watching as he plumped the swell and circled the tip with his thumb, nipple tight and straining against silk.

Showers of delight glittered through her. She slid her hand to the back of his head and urged him to kiss her again.

He did, once, hard, then lifted his head. “I want to do it right.” He clasped her hand, drew it from his hair so he could kiss her wrist. “I want to take our time and do it because we make each other feel so damned good. Stay with me.”

It meant trusting him. Trusting that afterward he wouldn’t throw her out and ruin her life.

Her stupid purse hummed, making her look past his shoulder with an anguished noise. When she tried to step away from him, he resisted letting her go. For one long second his muscles locked in refusal. Then he sucked in a breath and stepped back, hands up with frustrated surrender, shoulders hitting the wall next to the door as he accepted her rejection with a stoic face and a knock of his head into the wall behind him.

Paris, she thought. And, Be nice.

Looking back at Roman, at the way he’d lowered his eyelids to hide his thoughts but couldn’t disguise the way his mouth had gone flat with dismay, she shrugged off doubts and skepticism. All she could think was I want him.

She walked over to kick her purse so it skittered under the sofa, then looked over her shoulder at him.

He came off the wall, alert.

Swallowing, she reached behind to begin lowering the zipper on her dress.

As it loosened across her bust, his breath hissed and his chest swelled. He came across to help.

She wanted to smile, but her gown puddled on the floor around her spiked heels. She hesitated, wearing only her bra and thong underpants, the vulnerability of the moment striking her with a sudden chill.

The way he looked at her bolstered her courage, though. His gaze ate her up while he shed his jacket, then pulled at his bow tie.

“Condom?” she managed to ask, trying to hang on to some shred of sense.

His expression blanked, hinted at panic, then he reached to pick up his jacket and swiftly went through the pockets, coming up with his wallet. Showing her the two foil packets he removed, he pushed them into his pants’ pocket, dropped his jacket and chinned toward the opposite side of the room.

“Bedroom,” he said in a graveled husk. “Or I’ll have you over the back of this sofa. You make me insane, Melodie.”

Yet he looked completely in control. It strained her trust, made her wonder for a bleak second if she was being reckless again. But the idea that she might have some kind of ability to provoke him was incredibly exciting.

She let her hips roll in a wicked sway as she walked ahead of him, providing what she supposed was a lurid view of her buttocks atop her long legs, but the thought made her feel sexy and desirable for the first time. With another twist of her arms behind her, she shed her bra as she went, leaving it on the floor, not turning around, smiling at the idea of teasing him.

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused, not sounding the least bit displeased as he came up behind her next to the bed and caught her back against him, one firm, confident hand capturing her breast as if he owned it.

It was both comforting and deeply provoking, especially when he gave her breast a firm caress and nearly buckled her knees with the catch of her nipple in a light pinch. She leaned into him weakly, legs shaking as he fondled more deliberately, playing with her nipple until she had to cover his hand to slow him down. It was getting too intense too quickly.

“Roman,” she whispered, part protest, part plea.

“I want it to be so good for you that you know without a doubt that it’s only about this, Melodie.” His other hand slid to the front of her lace undies, fingertips slipping under without hesitation, cupping, massaging, working with gentle but insistent pressure to part and find her slick center.

Gasping, she wriggled back from his hot touch only to feel the thick ridge of his erection against her buttocks. She stilled with surprise.

“Yes, you’re arousing me as much as I’m arousing you.” His caress became deliberate, flagrant, pressing her into the thrust of his clothed hips against her backside as he drove her relentlessly toward orgasm.

Her head fell back against his shoulder while he took full advantage of her capitulation, biting the side of her neck.

“I want us to be together,” she gasped, trying to still his hands on her, growing completely overwhelmed.

He lifted his mouth from sucking a mark onto her neck and said, “We will be. I’m going to lose it any second.” His voice grated roughly, as stimulating as his touch. “Look,” he said, shifting her slightly and there they were, caught in flagrante delicto in the mirror, his hands possessing her, his expression over her shoulder so filled with masculine intent she would have been alarmed, except then he strummed her again.

And told her how sexy she was, how badly he wanted her, how this was only the first of many so let him watch. Give him this because he needed to see he could make her feel good—

She cried out, embarrassed by the sight of herself losing control, so weakened by the buffet of climax she was wholly dependent on his support as he made it play out for her in lingering strokes that caused pulses of fading delight.

When she hung in his arms, he pressed hot, dry kisses and sexy compliments to her damp temple, finally turning her into his embrace so he could kiss her properly.

She belonged to him then. He utterly and completely owned her, and she didn’t care. If misgivings surfaced, she brushed them away before she could identify them, too busy cradling his face so she could kiss him, telling him with her lips and body how incredible he made her feel.

He was hard, so hard all over. Absolutely primed with arousal, chest like sun-warmed bronze as she opened his shirt and caressed his hot, hard muscles. When she kissed her way across his chest, lightly brushing his beaded nipples with her fingertips, he threw back his head and groaned at the ceiling.

His reaction wasn’t fake. What man as contained as he was would let her see the blind passion in his gaze as he cupped her cheeks and kissed the life out of her? What man that aroused would strip them both, then take his time pressing her to the bed?

What man wanting only to use a woman for his pleasure would kiss his way past her navel and ensure she was as ready as he was?

Sweeping her arms as though she was making angels in the satin sheets, she encouraged him with lusty moans, abandoning herself to the heaven of his tantalizing play. “Roman, I’m so close,” she gasped.

He turned his mouth into her thigh, biting the twitching muscle there, drunk on her scent and taste, wishing he could hold out to finish her like this and arouse her again, but wanting her with him when he lost it inside her.

With a growl of strained control he slid up the silken length of her, pausing for light bites of her gorgeous breasts, eyes nearly rolling into the back of his skull as she framed his hips with her bent knees, offering herself. It was all he could do to fumble a condom into place.

The barest few words could be found in the miasma of his consciousness—heat, softness, roses, citrus, wet, welcome. Melodie.

She arched as he entered her, taking all of him in one slick thrust that sent a streak of sensation down his spine, flexing his shoulders and yanking his stomach muscles into a hot knot of masculine energy. His thoughts grew even more base. Thrust, own. She panted and clutched at him, opened her mouth to his kiss and licked at his tongue without inhibition.

The animal in him took over, protective enough to ensure he didn’t hurt her, but driven by instinct to imprint himself indelibly. He returned to her again and again, his tension and level of stimulation so high he was blind and deaf to everything but her wordless expressions of yearning and need. He wanted everything she was. Everything.

“Give it to me. All of it,” he ground out, needing her complete surrender to passion before he could give in to it himself.

Tossing her head, she cried out jaggedly, trembling beneath him, nails scraping down his upper arms as she bucked. Then it happened for her. He felt her release and his own struck like a hammer. He drove into her pulsing center and held himself there as they both were clenched in the paroxysm of orgasm.

Time stood still. Nothing mattered except this pleasure. No one existed but him and Melodie and this state of ecstasy.

* * *

Roman rolled away, forcing Melodie back to awareness of the room, how intimate they’d just been, that she was supposed to be working...

She covered her eyes with her forearm, not ready to face any of it.

The ring of the phone on the bedside table jarred into the silence. Roman came up on his elbow, damp skin brushing hers as he leaned across her, lifted the receiver and promptly dropped it back into its cradle.

Melodie peeked at him from under her arm. “Booty call from your Swedish friend?”

“For you, I imagine. I only booked the room an hour ago. No one I know would think to look for me here.” Continuing to loom over her, he slid his leg across hers, pinning her erotically to the mattress as he picked up the receiver again and punched a number before bringing it to his ear. “Put my phone on Do Not Disturb,” he ordered, then lowered the phone to ask Melodie, “Do you want anything?”

“I should go,” she said, shifting restlessly under the weight of his leg.

Holding eye contact with her, he said into the phone, “We’ll need a pair of overnight kits, toothbrushes and—” He paused to listen, then said, “Perfect. Thank you.” He hung up. “The drawer in the bathroom likely has everything a couple might need, including more condoms.”

“They said that?”

“It was implied.”

“Did I imply that we needed more? Because I think I said I should go.”

“Exactly. Should. Not that you were intending to.”

“I begin to see why women tire of you,” she said in a pert undertone. “Apparently you don’t tire at all.”

His grin flashed as he settled more of his weight on her and began searching her hair for pins. “Look, I’m no expert, but I’m thinking this hairdo of yours is not going back to the ballroom. So you might as well stay.”

She should have taken her own hair apart, but instead she turned her head on the pillow to allow him to find the rest of the pins while she played delicate fingers across his collarbone and down to his biceps, where he braced himself on his forearm.

This was nice, she thought. It was the sort of sweet moment that should happen after lovemaking. If only...

“Why the sigh?” he asked, making her aware she’d released one. The last of her hairpins went onto the night table and he slid lower so they were eye to eye. “Regrets?” His tone held a fresh note of reserve.

“No,” she said halfheartedly, then more sincerely, “No, this was...” Nice? Hardly. It had been basic and regressive. The blatant way he’d watched her come apart in the mirror, then devoted himself to her pleasure before stamping her with guttural thrusts rushed back at her. The burn of a self-conscious flush crept into her throat and face. “I’m embarrassed, if you want the truth. I don’t fall into bed with men. I don’t behave like this at all. Ever.”

“Except with me,” he said, as though making the statement of a closing argument.

“Except with you,” she agreed softly, shifting her head so she felt his forearm under her cheek and had her lips against the smooth skin inside his biceps. He tasted faintly salty against her openmouthed kiss and smelled dark and masculine as she drew another fatalistic sigh.

“I’m not intuitive, Melodie, but you don’t sound happy about that.”

“Because even if I stay the night, I still have to leave in the morning. I’ll never feel like this again and that’s depressing.”

“You don’t have to leave.”

“I do. We’re flying to, um, gosh, I’m losing track.” She looked to the headboard as though it had the answer. “Hartford, maybe. Leaving really early.”

“You don’t sound as if you enjoy this job. Quit.”

“I can’t. If I finish my contract and Trenton gets his nomination, I get a bonus.” As she brought her chin back down, she adjusted the pearls so they weren’t strangling her. “Before you think I’m all about the money, it’s for Mom. She always wanted to go back to Paris. I promised her I’d sprinkle her ashes in the Seine.”

“I’ll take you,” he offered smoothly.

“Please don’t ruin this by suggesting I become your mistress,” she admonished, both tempted and slighted. She’d thought they’d acted as equals here.

“I have companions, not mistresses,” he corrected, pulling back and letting his hand fall on her stomach, but at a subliminal level, he’d pulled way back. “I don’t buy women.”

“Really. You don’t support your lovers? Buy them clothes or jewelry? Take them on trips?” she asked skeptically.

“I meet their needs while they’re with me, yes, and sometimes that extends to after we’ve stopped seeing each other. But it’s not an exchange for sex.”

“You’re just that generous?”

“I try to be.”

He sounded truthful, if stiffly reserved. Insulted?

“Well, I only have to get through the fall with this job and then I can look for something else. So I will,” she said.

His lips twitched with dismay. “I don’t like that answer,” he informed her. “Quit now and look for something when it suits you.”

Yes, she was a fool to think they were equals. Here was the rich tycoon who got what he wanted without regard for other people’s wishes.

Proceeding delicately because she didn’t want to ruin this fragile accord they’d managed to find, she said, “Roman, my mother put her fate in the hands of a powerful man, then birthed me into the same situation. It didn’t work out well for either of us. I need my independence so I don’t feel trapped or obligated.”

“I’m not trying to trap you,” he said with a scowl. “You could leave anytime.”

“Then, I’ll leave in the morning,” she said gently.

He swore. “Walked into that one, didn’t I?” He set his teeth. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I suppose I’ll have to use other methods of persuasion.” His gaze tracked back to hers and the heat in his eyes made her heart leap with panic.

“Don’t!” She pressed her hands to his chest, holding him off as he started to tuck her beneath him.

He went motionless, only his head coming up slightly as he dragged his gaze from her nudity beneath him to the conflict that must be evident in her eyes.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Melodie,” he said, brows coming together with concern.

“I think you might,” she said, feeling her lips start to tremble. “You scare me, Roman. The way you make me feel. Please. If tonight is about making peace, please don’t use my weakness against me.”

He absorbed that in silence, only a small tick in his cheek letting her know he’d heard and was processing. Finally his mouth flattened in annoyance. “You’re telling me I have to help you resist what we both want? That will hurt you, Melodie. I don’t want to do that.”

She didn’t know much about computers, but she knew what circular logic was, and that was a big bunch of it right there. At the same time, her hands moved restlessly on him, smoothing his tight skin to his shoulders, pressing with involuntary invitation for him to lower onto her and kiss her.

They stole one brief kiss. Another. She could feel him hardening and opened her legs so he could settle properly between her thighs.

“I’m not going to deny you,” he warned, smoothing her loose hair back from her face. “I’m going to give you everything you ask for. I’ll stay just this side of barbaric as I ravish the hell out of you. If you can bring yourself to leave after that, I’ll let you go.”

Her heart trembled in her chest. Words stayed locked in her throat. All she could do was reach between them to guide him, telling him what she wanted. He teased her for a few moments, letting her feel his naked length against the growing ache in her loins, kissing her deeply until she was writhing with need beneath him. Then he covered himself and thrust, both of them catching ragged breaths as the agony of anticipation ceased and the perfection of joining commenced.

He was a man of his word; however, he dragged a pillow under her bottom so he could service her as thoroughly as possible, leaving her near weeping from the power of her release. Then he drew away, still hard, and proceeded to coax her down the road of sexual play all over again. He found all her erogenous zones and took his time stimulating her until she was ready for a firmer touch. A more insistent pull on her breast with his lips, a more erotic caress that he watched, soothing her when she tried to close her legs, claiming it was too immodest.

He gently dominated her then, rolling her so her stomach was on the pillow and covering her, but not taking her. He just stroked her with his body in a mimic of what they both wanted.

“Hurt?” he asked in a rasp. “I want everything in you, Melodie. Every last scream, but I won’t take them. You have to give them to me.”

She was sobbing, so aroused she was trembling. Shifting, coming up on her knees, she drew him to where she wanted him and clenched her fists in the sheets as he caressed her while he thrust. It was elemental and primitive, both of them stripped down to the very core. All her romantic notions of how men and women should come together dissolved in a flood of carnal hunger, decorum gone, both of them filling the room with erotic noises.

When they hit the peak, his fingers bit into her hips, locking them together as she cried, “Deeper, harder, yes, yes.” He bucked and she gave up a long cry of gratified fulfillment.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ROMAN SWORE, SNAPPING Melodie from a doze.

“What’s wrong?” she asked sleepily.

“Can’t you hear it? Does he think he owns you?”

She lifted her head off his chest, where the steady thump of his heartbeat had lulled her. She heard the distant hum of her phone vibrating in the other room. Glancing at the clock, she said, “He’s probably worried I’ll miss the flight.”

Roman’s arm tightened on her.

She rolled onto him, growing addicted to the feel of his body against her own, loving the freedom to be like this: more than familiar or intimate. Close.

Nuzzling her nose into the fine hairs at his breastbone, she hid the dampness that rose behind her eyes as she drank in his scent, murmuring, “I have to leave soon. Not should,” she clarified. “Have to.”

“I heard you,” he grumbled, massaging her scalp through the thick fall of her hair. “I still want you to stay.”

“I’m glad,” she said with a crooked smile, thinking of the way he’d thrown her out the first time. The remembrance didn’t hurt as badly now. She had this incredible memory to replace it. “But I think in the long run we’d wind up in conflict. I do want love and marriage and kids, Roman. You were right about that.”

His caress gentled to a light comb of his fingers through her hair. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to convince her he was a changed man, that they had a future. The silence caught at her tender heart, telling her she was making the right decision.

“But I could shower here,” she suggested, lifting her head to offer a sultry look through tangled lashes, a smile pouted with invitation. “Rather than in my own room, alone.”

“Deal.”

* * *

Roman was jealous. He wasn’t just annoyed on Melodie’s behalf that her boss thought he had first call on her time. He was illogically threatened and nursing an uncomfortable state of rebuff as he walked away from her closed hotel room door and forced himself back to the elevator and his own room.

Emotions.

He eschewed them at every opportunity. Hope, happiness, pride. Those were all harbingers of a fall to come. That was what he’d learned through a very hard childhood. Better to focus on sensory pleasures and external goals that had a hope of being accomplished than seek some sort of inner fulfillment.

Melodie was right in saying they would run into conflict in the long run. She might act tough, but she was very sensitive, and he would wind up hurting her with his active attempts to feel nothing.

Which was exactly what he tried to do after walking her downstairs and returning to his empty suite. He was exhausted from lack of sleep, muscles aching from their night of marathon lovemaking, but he wasn’t interested in crawling back into their wrecked bed. It looked too cold and empty. Unwelcoming.

Finding his scotch from the night before, he sipped it. It wasn’t yet six and he hadn’t slept, so that meant it was still last night, right?

One night. Since when did he feel depressed about any woman leaving, whether it was within hours of their coming together or months?

Forget her, he insisted, thumbing across the screen on his phone to check his emails. Just as quickly he swept that screen aside and flicked to Melodie’s contact card. Her number was still there. It hadn’t accidentally been erased. Checking was completely juvenile, but asking her for it had been even more adolescent. He didn’t chase women. He wouldn’t call her. He had just wanted to know if she was willing to give it to him.

He wished he’d taken another shot of her this morning, clean faced and wearing a hotel robe, ball gown slung over her arm as she’d slowly closed the hotel room door on him. Her expression had been soft with sensual memory, her smile sweet and wistful.

How the hell did he even know what wistful looked like?

It looked like wanting what you couldn’t have, he supposed, which was something he understood all too well. His childhood had been nonstop wishing. As an adult, he’d learned to get what he wanted or stop wanting it, very seldom coming up against a situation such as this.

I do want love and marriage and kids, she’d said. He turned that over in his mind, thinking how determined he’d been to find her in Virginia and take care of any child they might have conceived. There hadn’t been any hesitation in him on that score, but what would things look like now if she had been pregnant? Would they be married?

He supposed there were conditions under which he would seek a lifetime commitment, but those conditions weren’t love. His chest started to feel tight just thinking about opening himself up to that depth of emotion.

Damn it! Why the hell couldn’t she have simply forgotten her pearls again and given him an excuse to call? She’d taken them off at one point, but had asked for his help after her shower to put them back on.

He wandered the suite, scanning for forgotten items, finding only the hotel toothbrush she’d left in a glass next to the sink. Leaning in the bathroom doorway, staring at himself wearing his tuxedo pants and the shirt he’d been too lazy to close all the way, eyes dark with sleeplessness, shoulders slumped in defeat, Roman faced the fact he wasn’t going to forget her. Ever.

Which tightened the vice in his chest a few more notches.

You don’t tell me what you’re thinking. He heard female voices complain from the past. You go through the motions, but I don’t feel like you really care.

He cared. Cautiously. When it came to Melodie, he cared quite a bit. She was too sweet a person to deserve the battering of the Gautier gauntlet. He wanted to protect her from them, and he didn’t care for this new, overbearing boss of hers one bit, either. He should have given her his number, told her to call anytime. For any reason.

Not bothering to overthink it, he dialed her number to tell her exactly that.

A male voice answered.

“Sadler?” Roman guessed, even though it didn’t sound like him.

“This is his aide. Who’s calling?”

“I’m looking for Melodie. It’s Roman Killian.”

A muffled conversation, then a voice he recognized. “Killian,” Sadler said. “Melodie is no longer with us.”

The worst emotion, the one she seemed to bring out in him most and which weighed the heaviest—guilt—descended on him. “You fired her,” he deduced instantly. “For spending the night with me.”

“I need my employees to be accessible at all times,” Sadler said.

“But you told her to be nice to me,” Roman said with false conciliation. The man was lucky the sounds of traffic and car doors were coming through behind him, or Roman would be hunting him down in this hotel right now.

“Sluts become a liability,” Sadler said. “You know that.”

Roman closed his eyes, fighting the fire of rage that roared alive in him. Too intense. It had the power to murder. “I think you fired her because she wasn’t nice to you. You’re going to be very sorry you were not nicer to her.”

Roman ended the call and strode out of his room, straight to Melodie’s.

She didn’t answer his knock, so he took the stairs down to the registration desk, asking them to ring her room.

“She’s checked out, sir.”

He bit back cursing aloud, his fist so tight on the marble desktop he could have shattered the stone with a single pound. She was probably in a taxi heading to the airport and back to Virginia—

Wait. A woman sat in the lobby restaurant wearing a fitted business suit. She had her shiny brown-gold hair pulled into a clip at her nape. Coffee steamed next to the tablet she had propped before her.

She was going to splash that coffee into his face, he thought, but went straight over anyway.

* * *

Roman threw his disheveled form into the chair opposite her. He’d showered with her, still smelled faintly of hotel soap, but he hadn’t bothered shaving and, Lord, he was sexy with that stubble and hair that had dried uncombed. His shirt was still a deep, open V down his chest, the sleeves rolled back to his elbows. He was every woman’s walking fantasy.

And he wore the most thunderous expression.

“Really?” he demanded. “I got you fired again. Really.”

“It’s like a gift, isn’t it?” she said, thinking she ought to be more furious, but the relief was too profound. “Trenton phoned you to tell you? God, that’s just like him. He waited until I was down here, you know. So he could do it in front of everyone. He didn’t expect me to call him a hypocrite. Nice and loud, too. They all do it. I guarantee you all the other aides were picking up women in the bar while I was working the ballroom with him last night, but just because I’m a woman, I’m a slut. Men are such pigs.”

As Roman turned his face away, his expression falling into weary lines, she found herself feeling sorry for him.

“Present company excluded, of course,” she said.

He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. “I didn’t mean to do this.”

“You didn’t,” she said wearily. She was the one who had stayed in the penthouse with him, putting her physical gratification above her job, but she didn’t get a chance to say so. The waitress arrived with her breakfast special.

“I’ll have one of those,” Roman said.

“Take mine,” Melodie replied, snagging the fruit cup off the plate and nodding for the waitress to put the rest in front of Roman. “But he needs his own coffee.”

He nodded agreement to the waitress, then looked at the plate of eggs and hash browns before him as if he couldn’t face it. “You’re giving me your breakfast? After I got you fired?”

“I had a voucher, but this was all I really wanted.” She gently stirred the fresh berries into the yogurt beneath.

“How are you this forgiving? Because I want to slash the guy’s tires. I want to slash my own,” he added with self-disgust.

She shrugged. “I guess because I’d do it again,” she said, hearing the poignant rasp in her voice as she recalled their night together.

“Would you?” He lowered his cutlery as he pinned her with a green stare as brilliant as the heart of a flame.

“I meant...” Wow. This wasn’t going to be easy. He only had to look at her. Focusing on chasing a blueberry with the tip of her spoon, she said, “I mean that, given the chance, I wouldn’t have made a different decision last night. But the decision I made this morning still stands, Roman.”

“Why?” he challenged immediately. “You don’t have a job to go back to.”

“I’m aware,” she said tersely, glancing at the tablet that had gone black, but had conjured a handful of weak prospects a few seconds ago. “Rent is covered for next month, at least,” she muttered. “But everything else is going to be a challenge.”

Paris was out of the question for the foreseeable future.

“Melodie, you have to let me help you.”

She shook her head. “I’ll manage. I’m just bummed about Paris. I feel as if I’m letting Mom down.” When her mother had refused treatment, had declined in such slow pain, the promise of Paris had been the only thing Melodie had been able to offer as comfort.

He reached across to take her wrist, thumb caressing the back of her hand. “Let me take you.”

“Roman...” She turned her hand so she was gripping his fingers. “I can’t.”

“You can. You just don’t want to.” He pulled his hand away, jaw thrust out belligerently. He took up his fork with an air of impatience.

She acknowledged he was right with a jerk of her shoulder, wondering how he’d managed to make her feel guilty.

They ate in silence, breaking it only to thank the waitress when she cleared their plates.

Melodie took her last swallow of coffee, but struggled to get it down without choking as she realized this really was it. The end.

“Will you do something for me?” he asked, not letting on what was going on behind his aloof expression. “Will you come up and let me show you something in my room?”

“Etchings?” she guessed facetiously. “I really should get to the airport. I’ll be flying standby, so...”

“Please.” He stood and shouldered her travel bag.

“You can’t just tell me what it is?” She followed him to the elevator where she studied his enigmatic expression the whole way to the top floor. “You’re being very mysterious,” she said when he slid his key card into the reader.

“I’m really not,” he said with a disparaging smirk, leaving her bag just inside the door. Moving to the bedroom, he jerked his chin at the bed.

“What?” She stood beside him to look at the rumpled sheets and indented pillows.

“We’re both exhausted.” He turned his head to give her a somnolent look. “Let’s not make any decisions right now. I’m not asking for sex. I just can’t think when I’m this tired. I become very one track, and all I know is that I want you there.” He pointed at the bed.

“You really aren’t mysterious, are you?” she said, struck by a wave of emotion that maybe came from tiredness, but also from what sounded like an oddly revealing statement from him.

She was tired. Stupid Trenton had waited for her to check out before cutting her loose, so she couldn’t go back to her room and her own bed. She’d already been dreading the wait at the airport, trying to stay awake to hear if she’d been given a flight... It all began to look too overwhelming to face when there was a comfortable bed right there and a man peeling his shirt from his powerful chest.

She opened the button on her jacket, glanced at him with a small scold.

He said, “Thank you,” in a quiet voice that was strangely soothing. She removed her jacket, gave it a shake, then folded it and laid it over the back of a chair. The rest of her clothes went neatly folded onto the seat. She kept on her underpants, but shed her bra, never comfortable sleeping in one. Instead, she picked up his shirt from where he’d dropped it on the floor and slid her arms into it.

“Do you mind?”

“Not a bit.”

Closing a couple of buttons, she rounded the bed as he got in the other side. He held up the covers and she slid in beside him, feeling his arms close around her very comfortingly. Their bare legs braided together, and his lips nuzzled her hairline before he stole the clip from her hair and tossed it off the side of the bed.

Feeling secure and warm, Melodie let out a deep sigh. Roman’s arms grew heavier on her, and that was all she remembered.

* * *

She woke to feel his erection straining the front of his shorts and pressing into her stomach. He was still asleep, but she couldn’t help tracing the shape of him, already feeling liquid heat pooling between her legs in anticipation.

With a long inhale, Roman rolled onto his back, eyes opening to catch her gaze. They flashed with surprise and immediate desire.

“Come here,” he said in a sleep-rasped voice, lifting his hips to push his boxers down and off before drawing her to straddle his thighs.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.