About the Authors

PIPPA ROSCOE lives in Norfolk, near her family, and makes daily promises to herself that this is the day she’ll leave the computer to take a long walk in the countryside. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t dreaming about handsome heroes and innocent heroines. Totally her mother’s fault, of course—she gave Pippa her first romance to read at the age of seven! She is inconceivably happy that she gets to share those daydreams with you. Follow her on Twitter @PippaRoscoe.

MILLIE ADAMS has always loved books. She considers herself a mix of Anne Shirley—loquacious, but charming, and willing to break a slate over a boy’s head if need be—and Charlotte Doyle—a lady at heart, but with the spirit to become a mutineer should the occasion arise. Millie lives in a small house on the edge of the woods, which she finds allows her to escape in the way she loves best: in the pages of a book. She loves intense alpha heroes and the women who dare to go toe-to-toe with them. Or break a slate over their heads…

Also by Pippa Roscoe

Conquering His Virgin Queen

Virgin Princess’s Marriage Debt

The Winners’ Circle miniseries

A Ring to Take His Revenge

Claimed for the Greek’s Child

Reclaimed by the Powerful Sheikh

This is Millie’s stunning debut for Mills & Boon Modern—we hope you enjoy it!

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir

Pippa Roscoe

The Scandal Behind the Italian’s Wedding

Millie Adams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90016-8

DEMANDING HIS BILLION-DOLLAR HEIR & THE SCANDAL BEHIND THE ITALIAN’S WEDDING

Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir © 2020 Pippa Roscoe The Scandal Behind the Italian’s Wedding © 2020 Millie Adams

Published in Great Britain 2020

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

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Scandal Behind the Italian’s Wedding

Back Cover Text

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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir

Pippa Roscoe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The woman he can’t forget…

The child he can’t deny!

Wild. Powerful. Ultrarich. Matthieu’s reputation was infamous. And he wanted to keep it that way! It was a way to shelter from the pain of his traumatic past. Until enchanting Maria entered his world of unimaginable wealth…and unraveled his carefully ordered life with a night of blistering passion.

She was the only woman to see the man behind the scars. Yet, to protect her, Matthieu pushed her away. Now Maria is back, with an announcement that leads him to question everything: “I’m pregnant.”

For Jasmine Rowlandson, whose incredible jewellery and sculptures ignited a wonderful spark of inspiration that became Maria.

CHAPTER ONE

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.

What on earth had she done? Maria had fled the opulent ballroom of the Hotel La Sereine after her argument with Theo—shaking and shivering at the devastation she’d seen in both his and his fiancée’s eyes, the moment she’d accidentally revealed Theo’s plans to leave Sofia at the altar. Theo Tersi—the man she thought she’d loved for nearly six years.

But, she hadn’t. She’d realised it the moment she’d seen the horror and grief on the faces of the engaged couple. Nothing she’d ever felt for Theo had engendered that much…pain. Maria Rohan de Luen sucked in a huge lungful of air around the tears that were now freefalling from her cheeks. Tears for them, for herself. Because she knew that she’d destroyed something between them that she’d been looking for herself for so, so long. Knew that what she’d thought she’d felt for Theo was nothing more than the desperate need to…be loved?

She cursed herself for that weakness. Part of her desperately wanted to go back, to find Sofia and explain, to apologise to Theo…but truly she feared she’d do more harm than good and instead, after taking one step forward and one back, collapsed onto the soft grass banking the smooth, mirror-like surface of the lake stretching out beneath the night sky.

She resisted the urge to peek into the depths of the water, reluctant to see what would be reflected back at her. Her hand grasped the cool glass neck of the bottle of champagne she’d been blindly holding as she’d hurled words that threatened to sever the bond between two people who very clearly loved each other. She’d never much had a taste for the stuff, but if there was ever a time to get blind drunk, at twenty-two years old, Maria decided that surely now was it.

Part of her was conscious that she was on the verge of over-indulging in self-pity, and the other part wanted to punish, believing that she didn’t even deserve that selfish act. Not after what she’d just done.

Theo, her older brother’s best friend, had loomedlarge in her life, ever since her sixteenth birthday. Sebastian and Theo had become almost instantly joined at the hip after a mutually beneficial business deal and there wasn’t a family memory in the last six years that didn’t have them both in it. Maria bit back a laugh at her inner thought’s use of the word ‘family’. She hadn’t seen her father or stepmother in almost eighteen months. And she was fine with that. In some ways they factored so little in her day to day life that occasionally a random thought or memory would catch her by surprise and remind her of them.

She wondered what her father would think of her and what had just happened. He’d probably give her that gaze, the one that said he wasn’t really seeing her, but another woman—one he had loved so all-consumingly that he’d not been able to recover from the loss of her. Then he’d almost start when Maria would speak because it only served to show that she wasn’t her mother, no matter how similar they might have looked.

She had nothing else of her mother, no memories, no heirlooms—Valeria, her stepmother, had seen to that—save but one necklace. The one she wore, always, even though it served as both an anchor and a homage to a woman who had died giving her life.

So no, while exiled Duke Eduardo Rohan de Luen would have been as ineffectual as always on the subject of what had just happened, Valeria would have sniffed in contempt and been only gleeful whilst declaring that she’d always known ‘that boy’, Theo Tersi, would cause nothing but trouble.

And Theo’s crime? Guilt by association. Valeria had never forgiven Sebastian for the drastic measures he’d had to take to save their family from complete and utter destruction. When Maria had been eight, Eduardo had doubled down on an incredibly risky oil investment in the Middle East and lost not only his own money, but a large portion belonging to other members of Spain’s nobility. A shocking and shameful moment that had seen the Rohan de Luens exiled from Spain, yet allowed to keep their hereditary title.

The only thing that had kept them from bankruptcy had been Seb who, at eighteen, had taken control of the financial purse strings and done what was needed. This included selling off almost every single piece of property and valuable item that wasn’t nailed down. And for a woman who had only married Eduardo for prestige and money, Valeria hadn’t taken it well at all.

For Maria? It had meant leaving behind everything she’d ever known, moving to Italy from Spain, and starting all over again. But in her heart, she’d known that the damage was already done. Suddenly unsure about even the most seemingly permanent things in life, Maria had withdrawn from friends and education, choosing instead to lose herself in her art and sculpture.

Until London’s Camberwell College of Arts had accepted her on a foundation course, and she’d fallen utterly in love with the place, the people and the freedom she’d found away from her family. The friends she’d made during her degree, the little flat-share she lived in… Now, sitting on the bank of the river, all she wanted was to be back there.

She groaned out loud into the night sky and pressed the heels of her palms into the orbs of her eyes.

Oh, God, what had she done?

‘Is this seat taken?’

From the first moment Matthieu had seen the figure down by Lac Peridot, some strange sense of self-preservation told him to walk away. Run. From the empty veranda sweeping around the ballroom of the Iondorran hotel where a charity gala was being held, he’d seen the white lace dress worn by the dark-haired woman glowing in the moonlight. Tendrils of her long, gently curled hair had hung almost down to her hips and the sudden memory of his mother’s favourite painting stole his breath. He’d not seen or thought of the painting for years and when the figure had turned, for just a moment, back to the ballroom, something in her features, as clearly picked out by the moonbeams as her dress, had called to him as if across the years.

Matthieu Montcour knew better than to approach a woman so clearly lost in her own private thoughts, but he couldn’t help himself. There was something almost tragically beautiful about her. And Matthieu had had his fair share of tragedy. He knew how life could be one thing in one moment and an entirely new thing in another.

He’d been about to turn away from the figure and the direction of thoughts he rarely visited, when he saw her inexpertly take a swig from the champagne bottle, failing to account for the back flow of the bubbles, and nearly smiled as the froth rushed from the mouth of the bottle forcing the woman to lean out of the way as the alcohol funnelled onto the grass beside her. Nearly smiled, because smiling was something Matthieu did very little of. The figure gave up, indelicately wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, placing the bottle in the nest of skirts she’d made between her legs and went back to studying the lake. The carelessness about her clothing spoke to her distraction. This was no skilled seductress, his usual preferred companion. There was an innocence about her, shining, glowing, and all the more reason for him to stay away. But something about her drew him in—even though he was the last person to play white knight. No. He was the beast that mothers warned their daughters about.

Yet for the first time in years, he simply couldn’t deny himself the urge to take a closer look at the woman who had caught his eye and imagination. He’d stepped away from the veranda, leaving the sights and sounds of the ballroom behind him, and slowly padded his way over the soft grass, pulling up about a metre away from where she sat.

‘Is this seat taken?’

She started, peering up at him from her seat on the grass, momentary shock painting her features that righted themselves back to neutral. He’d chosen English—it being the most widely used at the gala and, as such, he figured it a safe bet, given that it was highly unlikely she spoke Swiss French.

‘Standing room only, I’m afraid.’

Her response surprised him, as much as her gentle European accent. Spanish perhaps? Maybe Italian? Taking his shock for persistence, she finally inclined her head.

‘Pull up a pew,’ she invited.

Frowning again, and confused instantly—which was untenable to Matthieu—he chose to comment. ‘That’s a very English turn of phrase for such a European accent.’

‘That’s a very round about way of asking me where I’m from.’

And whilst Matthieu decidedly didn’t like confusion, he found the slightly circuitous bent of her conversation appealing. Too many women, once they knew who he was, decided upon a brute-force attack of the sensual kind, the only thing that he would respond to. But he didn’t see that jolt of recognition in her eyes. When she’d finally turned to take him in, the woman seemed only to pass over his features as if gazing over a far horizon. And damn him if there wasn’t a part of him that was pleased by that.

He took a seat beside her on the comfortable grass and felt a sigh of relief escape him. He was glad to be away from the ballroom. He hated this part of his role as CEO for Montcour Mining Industries. ‘Schmoozing’, Malcolm called it. Matthieu preferred to call it a waste of time. But he knew better than to argue with his Managing Director, oldest friend, and one-time legal guardian. The Iondorran Minister for Trade had decided that the charity gala would be a neutral arena to test the waters of a possible joint mining venture within the small European country. Matthieu was slightly on the fence about it—unsure as to whether Iondorra actually had the financial infrastructure to take on such an ambitious project. But he wasn’t ready to shoot it out of the water completely. Not yet anyway. These days Matthieu was incredibly choosy about his ventures, simply because he could be.

He saw, from the corner of his eye, the woman beside him—young, he noticed now that he was closer—wipe discreetly at her cheek. A blade of grass, or a bubble of champagne from earlier? A tear perhaps?

The action had released a trail of perfume, wafting towards him on the warm night air, teasing his senses with tones of woody sage and something almost like the sea…salt, he realised. Inexplicably his mouth watered, desire creeping through his body.

‘Would you like some?’

He shook his head at the bottle she nudged with her knee. Matthieu rarely drank, refusing to allow anything to dull his senses to such an extent. But in the back of his mind, he wondered if he was already part drunk on the woman and the situation he found himself in.

They sat for a while in silence as if neither felt forced to speak. It was a blessed relief after the hours he’d spent in the gala being solicited by the Minister of Trade. Being peppered with unwanted and intrusive questions that were almost ritualistic in any negotiation. How are you finding Iondorra? What did you think of the capital Callier? Have you tried some unnameable food the small country hailed as their own pride and joy? The man’s offence that Matthieu had driven here from Switzerland, and intended to drive back without sampling any of this proud nation’s delights, had been both clear and disapproving. Not that it mattered—Matthieu hadn’t bothered with such things as niceties in a long while. He didn’t have to. He was Europe’s fourth richest man both in private income and net worth. People came to him.

But not this woman.

‘Do you think that there are some things that are unforgivable?’ she asked into the night air, without glancing his way.

In truth, he couldn’t imagine anything done by a girl who couldn’t even drink from a champagne bottle could be unforgivable. However he knew that yes, some things were beyond forgiveness. So he chose his words carefully. ‘I think there are two sides to every story.’

She seemed to take this in, as if considering her reply just as carefully.

‘I broke up an engagement tonight.’

‘Really?’ He couldn’t help the surprised word that fell from his lips. ‘Well, if that’s the case, he either wasn’t worthy of the engagement, or she wasn’t constant in her feelings enough for it.’

‘That simple?’ she asked of his blunt declaration.

‘It usually is, once you take emotions out of it.’ He was good at that. He had to be. ‘Do you love him?’ he asked, genuinely curious.

‘I thought I did.’

He knew that feeling too. ‘Then he either lied to you, or her.’

‘It’s not what you think. He had his reasons.’

‘They always do.’

‘No, I mean…he never… I never…’

He frowned at her confusion, not quite sure what she was unable to put words to.

She turned to him then for the first time and he was struck full force by her beauty. ‘What is it like to be kissed?’

He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. ‘You thought you loved him, but have never been kissed?’ he asked, unable to hide the incredulity from his tone.

Perhaps I don’t know what love is.

She hadn’t said the words out loud in that rich accented tone of hers, but her face was so expressive he could almost read her thoughts. He was used to the practised masks of women hell-bent on seduction. But hers? So open, so revealing, it distracted him for a moment.

Her skin glowed as much as her white lace dress in the beams of the moon. Flawless. Her jaw was strong, angular almost, stubborn even, but drew the eye to perfect rosebud lips slicked with just a trace of something that glistened in the night. Dark brows above dark eyes, highlighted with just a trace of mascara and liner as to outline, rather than dominate the deep rich dark eyes that stared back at him with confusion and hope—and a request he was almost one hundred per cent sure she wasn’t aware of.

What is it like to be kissed?

Maria was embarrassed. Should never have asked such a question. Especially not to a man like him. She might not have known who he was—which was partly why she’d felt able to speak her mind—but she didn’t have to know his name to know that he most definitely knew what it was like to kiss, to touch…to… She yanked her mind back before she could give away her thoughts.

A blush rose almost painfully to her cheeks and she hoped that he might not see it beneath the cover of the night sky. She felt naïve and uncouth next to him. And small. Because…his body, his presence, it was huge. She’d seen the impressive width of his arms as he’d sat down and leaned his weight back on his hands behind him. Arms and muscles that looked too wide for her to encompass with both her hands. If it hadn’t been for the champagne bottle, she would have pressed her thighs together against the feeling that was growing within her. She might have been innocent, but she knew the shocking arousal sparking within her was something she rarely felt, even with Theo.

She turned away, but even then, every single feature on his face glowed within her mind. Harsh cheekbones defined by the short beard that covered the strong line of his jaw, framing lips that were almost cruelly sensual. His eyebrows hung low above eyes that were a honey-green shade of hazel, so bright almost that she could have lost herself within their depths.

She thought he wouldn’t answer and almost jolted when he did speak.

‘There are lots of different types of kisses. Manipulative kisses, to get what you want. Cruel kisses to punish.’ Later she would wonder that he chose those two descriptions first. ‘Soft, gentle kisses a mother gives her child,’ he said, his tone unfathomable and causing a sudden yearning in the pit of her heart. ‘Passionate, mindless kisses that are all-consuming, thoughtless and more than a little selfish.’

She turned back to him, startled to find him looking so intently at her. As if trying to figure something out. As if…no. Surely it was only her wondering what it would be like to kiss this man.

‘But your first kiss? Honestly? Probably messy and awkward.’

Maria felt a little sad at that. As if somehow he’d taken away the promise of something that would be…good?

‘Perhaps I should just get it out of the way, then.’

He huffed out a gentle laugh—not at her, she realised. With her. There was a difference.

‘Perhaps,’ he said ruefully.

‘Would you do me a kindness, then? Would you kiss me?’

He met her gaze then, this man whose name she did not even know. And she felt it. That low hum through her body, as if his penetrating stare could reach into the depths of her soul and figure her out, understand her. That was what she’d wanted, she realised. All this time, all these years. Someone to understand. And, having done so, choose to stay.

His eyes roamed her face, looking for what, she didn’t know. The hairs on her arms lifted and goosebumps raised across her skin. She resisted the urge to shiver beneath his gaze, because she was scared. Not of him, but of what was happening to her. She’d never wanted something as much as she did his kiss. He frowned for a moment, as if fighting some inner battle she couldn’t imagine. He reached out his hand and raised her chin with his finger, looking at her, inspecting her almost.

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded, unable to speak. Wondering if he would walk away instead, or give into this strange web woven around them, separating them from the rest of the world.

He moved slowly, as if giving her the chance to turn away, to change her mind. She watched, wide-eyed and fascinated as he bent his head towards her, and…instead of pressing his lips to hers, he passed them, pressing his cheek to hers, stroking it almost, the heat warming her skin and heart, and she heard him breathe in, as if taking her into him, only to finally turn his head back towards her and almost brush a kiss across her lips. Once, then twice.

Her heart soared at the gentle yet firm feel of his lips against hers. Something within her rose to the surface of her skin, clamouring to reach out to him, to feel more than the simple contact of his finger beneath her chin and his lips against hers.

Desperate and fearful that he might pull away, that he might take this away from her, she reached up, inexpertly, to either side of his face, the soft hair of his beard against her palm, her fingers brushing the silky thick strands of his hair. Holding him gently, pulling him back towards her in case he turned away.

His lips hovered barely a centimetre away from hers, she felt his breath against hers, she drew it into her lungs and her stomach clenched as she wished so much that she knew what to do next. Instead, they hovered on this almost kiss, fire scorching through her veins, heart beating so wildly she thought she might never find equilibrium again. Then, as one, they moved, coming together—she opened to the tongue he’d pressed against the seam of her lips and she met it with her own, the first shocking feel of him against her, inside her, filling her and delighting her completely. She lost herself to the kiss, the dance of their bodies, the impossible almost dizzying feeling that consumed her.

She felt his hands in her hair, his fingers curling into the thick tendrils and tightening just a little in a way that strangely made her feel both safe and wanted at the same time. She stretched into the feeling, trying to hold on to each different strand of emotion and desire he was wringing from her with just a kiss.

She couldn’t hold back the moan of pure pleasure that fell from her lips to his and regretted it instantly as he finally broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers, breathing as harshly as she, as if as shocked as she.

‘Is it…is it always like that?’ she dared to ask.

‘No,’ he replied darkly. ‘Never.’

He took her hand in his, gently pulling it down from the side of his face, his thumb pressing against the palm of her hand soothing a little of the hurt, until it tripped over the scar that stretched over her palm to the top of her wrist. She pulled her hand away, rubbing at the scar with her thumb, not from pain but from the tingles and sparks his touch had created there.

She huffed out a little laugh, disguising her shock from the pleasure he’d just given her.

‘My stepmother hates them.’

‘What?’ he asked as if confused.

She shot a dark look his way. Surely he hadn’t missed the callouses, the little scars and nicks around the pads of her fingers, and the larger burn scar that topped the oblique arch of her palm.

‘My hands. The scars. She thinks that all well-born ladies should have delicate, unblemished, dainty hands and bathe in milk daily.’

‘And sleep on rose petals, I’m sure.’

‘And wrap themselves in cotton wool,’ she replied, continuing their word game.

‘And what do you think?’ he asked quietly, as if more weighed on her answer than just her thoughts about herself.

Maria turned her hands over, inspecting them impartially for the first time in a very long time. Seeing them as more than a body part, but as the tools she used to create her jewellery, to meld and mould precious metals, to create beautiful things.

‘I think they speak of hard work and sacrifice, hard-earned lessons, and I am proud of every single one of them.’

It was strange to hear her talk of the thing that had blighted so much of his life in a way that was full of pride and defiance rather than disgust or sick fascination. He had certainly met both those reactions. And then there was the other kind. The women who simply viewed what he could give them, in spite of the scars that covered almost half of his torso. The women who were more interested in his wealth or what pleasure he could give them.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said dismissively and he laughed. Properly then, out loud, from deep within him. She turned back to him, curiosity shining in her eyes.

He nodded once, quickly loosening his tie, releasing the button behind it and, moving his head to the side, he pulled slightly at the collar of his shirt. He knew that she would see the tendrils of scars that licked at his neck glinting in the moonlight. Then held out his arm, the same side of his body, and released the cufflink that held his shirt sleeves in place to reveal the edges of the scars that reached from his neck to his wrist.

‘I’m sorry.’

As he secured the cufflink, forgoing the button at his neck, he reflected that he’d heard that phrase so many times. From the doctors and nurses who had originally treated him, even from Malcolm. And worse, from the women who decided they couldn’t bear to be near him, to touch him. They’d all held that tone. Apologetic and, more often than not, disgusted. But this woman’s voice held neither of those and for the first time he found himself asking, ‘For what?’

‘That you feel you have to hide them.’

A jolt passed through his body. No one had ever said that to him. No one had ever accepted his scars so simply and his mind went blank. Well. Almost blank. Because suddenly he was plunged back into the memory of their kiss. He’d not lied when he’d said that a kiss had never been like that for him.

Even now he felt the throb of desire coiled tight within him. His heart was still racing, which had probably accounted for why he had shown her his scars. Perhaps unconsciously he’d been trying to scare her away. Because she was threatening to undo him in a way he’d never experienced before.

‘Passionate, mindless kisses that are all-consuming, thoughtless and more than a little selfish.’

His words came back to haunt him and he realised the truth of them. Because it had made him selfish. Her kiss had made him want more, a need rising within him, demanding to be heard and satisfied. More. He laughed at himself cynically. He didn’t just want more, he wanted it all. Everything she could give him. Need fired his blood, throbbing thick and heavily through his veins. He desperately fought the urge to haul her into his lap and simply feast on her like the beast he was.

‘They’re from smelting,’ she said, cutting through the raging desire he felt and pulling him back to the present. ‘It’s—’

‘I know what smelting is.’ His voice had come out harsher than he’d intended and she had noticed, if her look of confusion was anything to go by. ‘Professional interest. Mining.’

She nodded as if that explained everything, including his seven-point-four-billion-dollar net worth that she clearly didn’t know about. ‘You don’t like it though,’ she stated.

‘I don’t like fire.’

‘I can’t work without it,’ she replied, not dwelling on the probable cause of his injuries. She tapped the series of silver bracelets hanging loosely on her wrist. Jewellery. She must make jewellery.

He wished she hadn’t said that. Because now there was an image of her taming molten silver, harnessing the power of fire and heat—his greatest foe—and bending it to her will. It would require a greater deal of strength than he’d thought her capable of only ten minutes before. But looking at her now, the pride and innate confidence about her work…her scars even, made her glorious to him.

‘One of your own making?’

‘Yes. My first piece,’ she said lovingly of the simple silver band, not smooth like so many others, but beaten, textured, perfectly imperfect.

Matthieu hadn’t realised how strong the cast of light was from the ballroom until it went out. The charity gala had ended and the staff of the hotel had clearly finished their clean up. A brief glance at his watch showed that it was nearly two a.m.

‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked, almost reluctantly.

She shook her head and shrugged a delicate shoulder. ‘Not sure. I can’t go back to the suites as my brother will be there and I’m not ready to…’ Her rich accented voice trailed off.

‘You can’t stay out here all night.’

He might be a bastard, but he wasn’t that much of a bastard. She had started to shiver as if the gentle light from the hotel behind them had offered both warmth and illumination. He shrugged out of his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, resisting the urge to smooth down the material that swamped her small frame. She smiled her thanks up at him and he cursed the innocence shining in her eyes. If only…

‘The hotel is fully booked from the gala. You can have my suite.’

And for the first time that night it was as if his words had broken the spell. There, finally, was that hesitation, that sense of insecurity about his intentions, about him. It was only to be expected, from women who got in over their heads, women who weren’t quite ready to ‘bed the beast’ as he’d heard one such descriptor of himself. She need not worry. He could never touch an innocent such as her.

‘You will have it to yourself. Alone,’ he concluded firmly.

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, standing, firmly tucking his desires and wants for her away. He held out his hand to her. ‘Come.’

CHAPTER TWO

MARIA FOLLOWED HIM through the dark halls of the hotel, still clutching the bottle of champagne she had snagged earlier in the evening, thankful that he had his wits about him when hers felt as if they’d fled. Because at first when he’d told her that she could have his suite, she’d been momentarily unsure. But when he had added that she’d have it to herself, alone, she’d been…disappointed.

Which was silly. Even she could recognise that. After all, she’d told him that she’d been in love with another man only hours ago. But Theo had never, ever, installed feelings that this man had conjured from her with his presence, his touch…his lips.

She knew she should be ashamed, but she couldn’t quite bring the feeling to mind. His impressively broad shoulders took up almost the entire width of the hallway she followed him down, gentle night lighting casting him in shadows. He was huge in comparison to her. Maria didn’t usually consider herself small at five foot four, but he must be well over a foot taller than her.

He drew up short at the last doorway at the end of the corridor. Turning to one side, he slid the slim black key card over the electronic plate beneath the handle, pushed the door open and gestured for her to enter.

She stepped past him, registering the oaky cologne that made her think of autumnal woods, earth and something else…something musky and enticing. Her thoughts on that, it took her a moment to recognise the sheer opulence of the room she had entered and she nearly gasped.

Yes, her family might have once been well versed in luxury, but her little flat-share in South London had adjusted her expectations. And this? Plush cream carpets met floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the stunning night panorama of Lac Peridot, her gaze instantly drawn to where the two opposing mountains met low in the distance.

From the corner of her eye she could make out almost obscenely expensive furnishings and a doorway that presumably led to a bedroom and en suite bathroom, perhaps. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the view from the windows, just beyond which she could see a small wooden deck with a table and chairs.

She turned, expecting to find him right behind her, wanting to even, but instead, she was surprised to find him hovering at the threshold as if reluctant to enter.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said, her words a whisper that pitched somewhere between humour and surprise.

‘Do you need it?’ he asked with a small answering smile curving his lips.

‘I’d like to thank you properly.’

‘Matthieu.’

She repeated his name, the word rolling off her tongue, shaped by her accent, and read sudden and shocking desire in his eyes as she did so. She felt it. Bound to it, to him. Firing in her a confidence she didn’t know that she possessed.

‘Thank you, Matthieu.’

He shook his head, dismissing her thanks, and made to turn, but she wasn’t ready for him to go. Not yet.

‘I—’ she said, halting his departure, but also desperately searching for something to say, something to bring him into the suite, to her. ‘I told you a secret. Before you go, would you share one with me?’

He frowned then, as if remembering her earlier confession, as if choosing whether to give into her request, and something passed over his features, something hard won.

‘What? Like my favourite colour?’ he asked, stalking towards her silently on the plush carpet.

‘No,’ she said, casting her head to one side, taking the entire breadth of him in her gaze. ‘It’s blue,’ she asserted and then smiled when she caught the look of surprise. ‘Your suit is deep blue, your watch straps are blue leather.’ She shrugged her shoulder.

‘That simple?’

‘It usually is,’ she replied, using his words from earlier that evening. He liked that, she could tell and it warmed her strangely, somewhere beneath her breast bone.

He had reached her and, now that they were standing so close, she had to crane her neck back to look at him. He really was breathtaking, his piercing eyes, a colour similar to rich honey, bearing down into hers.

‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper, as if it really was a secret to be shared.

‘Truly?’ she asked as a wide smile pulled at her mouth.

‘I don’t…usually do celebrations,’ he said somewhat distastefully.

She wanted to tell him then that she understood. That she hated her birthday too. But it felt…too personal, too intrusive. His birthday was about him. Not her. She pulled up the bottle of champagne she still clutched, and offered it to him, wondering whether he would take a sip this time.

He gently took the neck of the bottle in his large hands, put it to his lips, making sure there was enough air angled in the throat of the bottle not to funnel the bubbles over him.

But not once did he take his eyes from hers. After he’d taken a mouthful, he passed the bottle back to her and she placed her lips where his had been. The knowledge of it fired her blood once again, bringing a blush to her cheeks and the low v between her breasts. She followed his actions as she took a sip, faintly happy that she didn’t end up with a face full of bubbles and look as naïve as she felt in that moment.

She didn’t know what she was doing…how to do what she wanted to. And she really wished that weren’t the case. Wished, suddenly, for experience to entice, to draw him to her. To know whether it was just her enthralled to this madness.

Matthieu could see it—what her body was asking for—and feared that she wasn’t even aware of it. And God help anyone when she became aware of her power. The beauty of this woman could fell armies.

‘You know my name,’ he stated.

She smiled and nodded her head slowly, understanding the implied question, and delighting in teasing him for it. And surprisingly, he liked it. That teasing sense of her with no emotional undercurrent or ulterior motive. He watched as the teasing morphed into something else…something more primal yet serious.

‘Maria. Maria Rohan de Luen.’ It was said with a slightly Spanish flare and he mentally rolled it around his mind, liking the way it bounced within him. Unconsciously he mouthed the words, drawing her attention to his lips. The way she looked at his mouth caused that infernal beast within him to roar with pride and need and all the things he knew he should lock down tight. He should not be here. Not tonight, when this woman was threatening his cast-iron defences against things he had not thought of for years.

A timely reminder and one he needed to heed. He nodded once, to himself at his decision made, and then again at Maria, silently bidding her adieu. Because if he didn’t leave here soon, he might not leave at all. And she was too pure, too innocent for that. Had never been kissed until this night.

He gave her an almost apologetic smile, the gesture unfamiliar on his lips, and turned to go. He had reached the door, his fingers around the handle before her words stopped him.

‘Before you go, can I ask one more thing?’

He turned his head, not a single clue as to what she might ask for. But whatever had run through his mind, it hadn’t been what she proceeded to say.

‘Would you show me your scars?’

White noise was all he could hear in his mind and below that, somewhere deeper, a furious roar, snarling and gnashing as if some great wound had been reopened. It must have shown on his face, because Maria took a step back for which he felt instantly regretful. He didn’t want her to be scared. But she would be if she saw them. They all were.

Instantly he was transported back to the first time he’d bared himself to a woman. At seventeen, he’d been naïve enough to think that Clara had cared for him. The swift fury that streaked through him at the memory of betrayal had him turning away from Maria.

But…

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘That you feel you have to hide them.’

And why couldn’t he show them to Maria? It wasn’t as if he would ever see her again after this night, not once he left this room. She’d found strength and pride in her own scars, but what would she find in his?

‘They’re not pretty,’ he warned.

‘I don’t care for pretty,’ she responded defiantly, not once taking her eyes from his. There was that strength again. The steel that he recognised encased in soft perfection.

Gritting his teeth, he turned and stalked back to her, lifting his shirt from his trousers as he did so. One by one he undid the shirt buttons and still she didn’t drop her gaze. The women he usually spent his time with either hungrily sought out the scars that had fuelled his reputation as a beast, or were barely interested in anything above his belt.

Having reached the last button, he took one last look at her before shrugging out of the white shirt and casting it aside, standing there before her unwavering gaze. Maria didn’t break the connection between their eyes, not immediately and he gave her credit for that. But finally he closed his eyes, unwilling and unable to see those beautiful features puckered with disgust.

He felt her close the distance between them, the heat from her body pressing against his skin. The undamaged skin, because his nerves had been dulled by the injured tissue and skin grafts that covered nearly half of his torso. He felt her circle him, could have sworn he felt the weight of her gaze sparking a thousand starbursts across his body, even the damaged parts. He sensed when she had come back to face him and braced himself as he opened his eyes. But where he had expected revulsion and horror, even the morbid fascination he occasionally experienced, instead he saw wonder and something like awe.

Maria was enthralled. Utterly and completely. I don’t like fire, that was what Matthieu had said. Yes, his torso had been badly disfigured from the scars that swept around his forearm and reached up to his neck, where she’d seen the silvery traces earlier in the evening. They covered almost half of his chest and, she had seen, wrapped around his flanks and up across his shoulder blades. The twists of tissue, strangely pale, nearly white against his tanned skin, and in some places shiny and criss-crossed from what she could only presume to be many, many skin grafts to help the full thickness burns she could see were from years ago.

The patterns she found on his chest were painfully beautiful to her and she couldn’t even imagine the kind of agony he must have experienced for these to heal, nor the time it must have taken. His skin had reformed over the powerful muscles of his arms, just as large as she’d imagined, and the scars rippled over the muscles in his abdomen, the powerful outline of a six pack that spoke to a brutal physical training regime. Because that was what screamed at her most as he stood there, shirtless, his lower limbs encased in low-slung blue superfine trousers. Strength and raw power. Power that was almost straining at some kind of self-imposed leash.

‘What do you see?’ he asked. Demanded almost.

And she said the words that had come to her mind. ‘Magnificence.’ Raw masculinity, but she couldn’t let herself say that last out loud. Because it spoke too much to her desire for him. It would have betrayed her.

She reached out a hand, but he caught it in the air between them. His large fingers wrapping easily, firmly but gently, around her slim wrist.

She threw her gaze to his, aware that her breath had hitched in her lungs. Aware that her skin was on fire as surely as his had once been. But hers was an invisible flame, one created by him and the need to feel his skin against the palm of her hand. Not from curiosity, but the desperation to make that connection. To feel that same incredible sensation she had experienced when they had kissed earlier. And then she realised to her shame how selfish that was. Just as he’d said earlier about passion. But it was more than that. She wanted to be with him, to soothe that ragged sense of…of…she couldn’t put a name to what she saw in his eyes.

She pressed past her hand, still clasped in his, and closed the distance between their bodies. He held himself still, but she could see what an effort that took and she was torn…torn between recognising the stress he put himself under and the need to offer consolation. Instinct won out and she pressed a gentle kiss to his chest, on his pectoral muscle that had the twist and turn of a scar that had shaped itself in such a way that made her think of a great white oak tree, gnarled but majestic.

She traced the trail her lips covered across his chest with her free hand, delighting in the hitch in his breathing as cruel as it was. Because she wanted him with her in this. As utterly devastated and destroyed by the attraction that flamed between them. Though she was innocent, she could recognise the desire in his eyes, recognise it because she felt it within herself.

Pressing another kiss in the centre of his chest, she felt oddly exposed, wanting his arms to wrap around her, hide her from the passion that was almost overwhelming her. He was so broad that she realised only lower around his waist would her arms meet were she to encircle him. But one hand was still captured by his, and the rapid rise and fall of Matthieu’s chest was the only outward sign that he was not made of stone.

No. This man would never have been made of stone…pure silver, she thought, only just tempered, still seething with heat from the furnace, still malleable, but just as dangerous. A quiver of desire racked her body and only then did Matthieu finally release her hand. She looked up into eyes that were boring down into hers.

‘Stop.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t know what you’re doing. What you’re asking for,’ he stated, almost angrily.

‘I may be naïve—’

‘Maybe? You are an innocent, Maria. A true innocent.’

‘Does that mean I don’t know what I want?’

‘It means you don’t understand the implications of what you want.’

‘Would anyone?’ she asked.

‘This is something that you should do with someone capable of staying with you.’

No one ever stays, her mind voiced, batting away each and every one of his arguments. She knew, deep down, that this was what she wanted with her entire being. She had never been more sure of anything, half fearful that if he walked away now she would have lost something that she had only dreamed of in the darkest of nights and the deepest of sleeps.

‘I haven’t asked for anything more than this night.’

Matthieu had been wrong. She was a seductress. A temptress. Offering him something he could barely stand to walk away from. She was so beautiful, so pure…the light to his darkness and he would drag her down with him if he gave her what she wanted.

I haven’t asked for anything more than this night.

He had never allowed himself to take anything so pure. His chosen bedfellows were ones who understood. Who knew the game. Pleasure to be given and received and nothing more. Because he had learned long ago that anything more was a foolish dream. And he refused to be the one to teach Maria that lesson.

But he couldn’t help the thought that if he turned away now, if he left her alone, it might break something deep within him.

He shut that thought down as quickly as it had formed in a mental move practised over many years. What he was considering was madness. But then she pressed another kiss to his chest and everything in him was plunged into thick swathes of desire and need, and he felt the growl start at the back of his throat, desperate to stifle it before it escaped into the room.

‘Please?’ she asked between the infernal kisses she was drawing on his body, his skin, the places usually specifically avoided by others.

‘Don’t you see, Maria? You shouldn’t have to beg for this.’

‘I am not begging, I am asking. This is my choice. My request. Stay with me, just for this night. Please.’

And finally Matthieu lost the battle. The battle against being decent, walking away and leaving Maria untouched. Because he could stand it no longer. He wanted to touch her, feel her smooth skin, so pale against his it seemed almost to glow. He wanted to tease pleasure from her so much that it was almost a physical ache within him. Finally he was about to live down to his reputation as a beast in the truest sense, because he felt the last vestige of restraint burn to dust beneath her lips.

This time he was unable to stifle the growl that rose in the back of his throat, as he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her to him and feasting on her lips as he’d wanted to from that very first moment.

This was no practised, gentle first kiss, this was desire, desperation even, as he plunged the depths of her mouth with his tongue, drawing little mewls of pleasure from her. Her hands, now free, swept into his hair, pulling him further down towards her. Not enough, he thought, it was nowhere near enough.

He lifted her up, so that her legs wrapped around his waist, and her lips met his, until finally he nudged her head aside and found the delicate, smooth arc of her neck and pressed open-mouthed kisses against her skin, lathing it with his tongue. Maria’s head fell back, exposing the pale column of her neck and the v of her perfect breasts, accentuated by the silver necklace dipping between them.

He marvelled at how light she was. He could have held her there for an eternity. But her body shifted restlessly in his arms, wanting more, demanding it. She might have not known the words, but her body knew the moves, instinct driving them closer together in their need.

He carried her through to the bedroom, not once breaking the contact between his lips and her skin. As he placed her on the edge of the bed, he cursed. Her pupils so large her eyes were almost completely black, she was drunk on desire.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Never more so,’ she said with a faint smile, faint only because the rest of her features were a mask of pure need and want.

‘I need you to understand that you can stop this at any time. Any time.’

‘You want me to give you a safe word?’

He barked a laugh at the mock coquettishness in her tone. ‘No, I don’t want a bloody safe word.’ The sudden and surprising humour delighting him and, from the look in her eyes, Maria too. As if somehow she’d known they needed a moment, a brief respite from the all-consuming passion that had driven them this far. ‘What do you know of safe words?’ he queried.

‘I may be innocent, but I’m not naïve.’

He dragged in a lungful of air, looking at her in the half light of the moon, cast through the large windows fronting the entire side of the room. Her white lace dress hanging low on her shoulders, exposing collarbones so enticing, he couldn’t resist.

He leaned forward, Maria shifting her legs apart to give him room, and placed kisses there, his lips meeting the hard bone covered in soft skin and sucking gently. He pulled back only to place his forehead against hers.

‘I want you to know that you can say “no”, at any point. I want you to be able to say it.’

‘I don’t want you to stop, Matthieu. I want you to kiss me. To touch me, to—’

He couldn’t take any more of her desires, he was battling enough of his own, so he stifled her words with a kiss. Her lips opened for him, offering him entry and damnation at the same time.

He gently pulled at the thin lace of the dress, exposing the smooth pale planes of her chest, the silver necklace she wore a guide line as he leaned her back against the soft bed and kissed his way towards her breasts. The rosy tips stark against the gleaming white skin. He took one in his mouth, his tongue sweeping over the stiff peak, drawing a moan of pleasure from her body and bringing her closer, pressing into his mouth instinctively.

In one hand he fisted the lacy material of her dress, drawing the material tight against her leg. She was glorious in her pleasure and he reached for her thigh, bringing it up on the bed, and feeling the length of her calf, the smoothness of her thigh, more. He wanted more.

Releasing his hold on the delicate lace he’d bunched around her waist, he pressed kisses against the plane of her skin where her hip dipped naturally, leading him to the flat stretch of her stomach, as he gently pressed her thigh to the side with one hand and drew her white panties down with the other to expose the dark curls between her legs.

He cradled her backside in one hand, gently pulling her body towards his, as he slipped the silky material down her thighs and away from her ankles. He ignored the slight tremor of his hands, the almost painful arousal pressing against the seam of his trousers, as he spread her before him and bent forward to taste, to delight in the secret heart of her. The taste of her sweet wet heat was almost too much for him to bear, but he would. He wanted to give her every pleasure she could experience.

Maria was shaking. Never before had she felt anything like this. Pleasure so acute and so extreme, she trembled, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across the back of her neck. Her hips bucked against the exquisite torture his tongue was wringing from her body and she bit her hand to prevent the cry of sheer pleasure that wanted to escape from her lips. The other fisted the sheets of the bed, anchoring herself to something, anything, before her body threatened to drift away on a tide of pleasure so powerful she feared she might never return.

Rolling waves covered her body, as if desperately trying to reach the shore, but not quite, not yet. Again and again they bit at the edge of her body, threatening to drag her under. Then Matthieu threaded a finger deep within her, the pressure inside her coiling tight, her body unconsciously trying to hold him within her.

Her pleas became unintelligible demands, her breathing both desperate and stifled at the same time, her body on the brink of something she couldn’t quite define, waves ebbing and flowing faster and faster until…

The orgasm he had wrung from her body plunged her deep beneath the surface of the water, the pounding waves now all she could hear as her body shook and shuddered, soothed only when she felt Matthieu’s arms come around her, cocoon her in his embrace, keeping her safe and anchored to him while her soul soared towards the night sky.

As if on a string tied to him, her mind returned to the man surrounding her, caging her as if trying to keep out the night, the dark…the morning perhaps. Her arms reached around his trim waist, feeling along the powerful muscles bracketing his hips, and meeting the soft midnight-coloured material of his trousers. They were still clothed, she both marvelled and regretted. She wanted to feel him, all of him, against her skin, without barriers. Her hands sought out the fastening of his trousers and he shifted as if realising her intention.

Matthieu leaned back, almost regretting the loss of contact. For the first time ever he had found something like peace in her pleasure, in offering something of himself to another. But one look at the determined jut of her jaw, the challenge in her eyes daring him to ask her if she might want to stop, ironically only fuelled his need for her, as yet unquenched and unsatisfied.

Slowly he reached for the button of his trousers, gliding the zip down and loosening the stranglehold the material had on his crotch. His erection jutted free as he swept his trousers and underwear over his hips, down his legs, and kicked them away.

He watched and waited as she took in the sight of him, the unconscious way her tongue curved over her bottom lip and the teeth that plunged into the soft, wet pink flesh. He groaned again at the effect she had on him and his heart almost stopped as she reached for the hem of her white lace dress and pulled it up, over her thighs and hips, over her chest and head, casting it to some distant part of the room. She was glorious, her legs bent at the knee, sitting up, only her hands fisting the sheets of the bed giving expression to the barely leashed desire he felt meeting his own.

He reached into his wallet and retrieved the packet, tearing the foil with his teeth, not once taking his eyes from her. He watched her eyes grow wide with fascination as he rolled the condom over his length, her gaze glancing between his face and his erection, and if he’d had any doubts as to her certainty, the way she parted her legs, making room for him as he came down between them, burned them from his mind.

He leaned to support his weight on one elbow, the fingers of his free hand dipping and tripping over the skin from the centre of her collarbone, following the silver lines of her necklace down the irresistible v between her breasts, and over the gentle swell of her abdomen. Maria’s body gently shivered in the wake of his fingers and he couldn’t help but press his lips to the centre of her chest. Her hands swept to either side of his face, fingers splaying in his hair and nails gently scraping against his scalp. He leant into her touch, kissing her wrist, and finally turned back to her watchful gaze.

A slight nod was all he needed from her as he gently pressed into her, forcing himself to go slowly despite how everything roared within him for instant completion. The damp wet heat of her surrounding him was so incredible it rendered him mindless, but not heedless, as he felt her stiffen beneath him, bringing an instant halt to his movements.

The hitch in her breath, the slight frown to her brows, through which he held his breath. If she wanted him to stop he’d do it. It might kill him, but he’d do it. But she didn’t. She looked into his eyes, as if understanding the battle that waged within him, a small smile pulling at the curve of her lips. ‘Please?’

‘Please what, Maria? Because—’

‘Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.’

Her hand swept around his neck and pulled him to her, into her kiss, into her more deeply and into an insatiable madness he didn’t know he’d survive. Slowly he began to move, his hips gently driving into her depths, feeling her completely encase him, and he wondered somewhere if this was what he’d been missing his entire life. Her.

Maria’s breaths became faster, her moans, full of pleasure and need, filled the air between them. Her hips raised against his, holding him within her, deeper and longer… The rhythm she was setting, she was dictating, one that only fired his blood and his arousal to a point where he didn’t know whose heartbeat he could feel in his chest.

He reached beneath her and drew her closer to him, his chest pressed against hers, inhaling the sweet scent of her at the edge of her neck, the soft curls of her long hair tickling the skin on his chest. Soon thought became ephemeral, words intangible, and all he knew was her and the exquisite feeling of losing himself within her depths. Need and arousal became his oxygen and he inhaled it like a drowning man, intoxicated by her, lost to her.

As he felt her tighten around him, heard the way her breath hitched at its highest point, he knew they were both on the edge, on the brink, and one final thrust of his hips saw them cut their ties to the night and melt away.

Through the night hours, between sleep and waking, they reached for each other, finding pleasure, seeking more, and as the sun’s early morning rays tripped into the room Maria spread her arm out behind her feeling only the cool silky sheets beneath her palm. Matthieu had done what he’d promised. Given her one night and then…left.

CHAPTER THREE

MARIA SHIFTED ON the seat to relieve the pins and needles that were creeping around the base of her spine. Her knee tapped an incessant rhythm, partly because after three and a half hours of sitting there, she really needed to go to the bathroom.

The foyer of the office building in Switzerland was immaculate—all concrete and steel—but faintly cold in the encroaching evening’s darkness. The silver letters of Montcour Mining rose high above the reception desk she’d not been allowed to pass. Her knee bobbed away, which the blond haired male receptionist misunderstood and took as a sign of impatience.

She’d studied every inch of the two large canvasses bracketing the broad wooden-fronted desk. Rothko. In all probability real rather than reproduction. She deduced this not from the fine artistry, but more from the research she had done to discover Matthieu’s last name and location.

It had been three months since she’d seen him. Two since she’d started to feel the waves of nausea that had completely taken her by surprise. One month since one little blue line had changed her life for ever, and only a few days since she’d had the first scan that truly confirmed that her life—their lives—had changed for ever.

Maria had thought she’d have to spend hours trawling through reams of pages on the Internet and had already considered reaching out to Princess Sofia, who had patronised the charity where Maria had met Matthieu for a list of attendees that night. Having reunited with Theo, Sofia had forgiven Maria for her indiscreet argument with Theo. It had been swept under the carpet with happiness and love that shined from the couple on their wedding day.

In the past, thinking of such a thing would have brought her the sharp agony of unrequited love—but that was before Matthieu and before… Her hand unconsciously swept over her abdomen. She avoided another glare from the frustrated receptionist, by focusing on the beautiful modern chandelier suspended from a ceiling that rose at least ten stories high. The lights fiercely illuminating the space, yet tempered and golden hued to soften the impact on the eye. The building screamed money. But then when a person was as wealthy as Matthieu Montcour it could be afforded.

She supposed that many would have considered themselves lucky to be tied to such a wealthy man. She was not one of those people and instead was more concerned about how he might feel being tied to her.

She had left his suite in Iondorra that morning and returned to find a furious Sebastian ready to read her the Riot Act for disappearing the night before. But he’d taken one look at her and when she had asked to go home, he’d relented and taken her back to her flat-share in South London.

For a month she had lost herself in days full of work, her jewellery making and her part-time coffee-shop job. But her nights? They were lost to dreams of Matthieu and the pleasure he’d wrung from her body.

In Camberwell, the daily reality of her life trudged on and he became something almost mythical to her, fantastical and almost imagined. She’d not said a word about him to Anita, or Evin, her two flatmates, who she’d met in the first week of her Foundation Course.

After the staunchness of her Italian schooling, Camberwell had been both a breath of fresh air and truly liberating. She fell hard for the heady mix of cultures, the strange juxtaposition of houses worth millions and council estates worth almost nothing. She felt as if it suited her life, having known both sides, extreme wealth and sudden shocking poverty after her father’s near bankruptcy and subsequent exile from Spain.

She risked a glance at the imperious receptionist banging away on a keyboard as if it might make her disappear. But Maria wasn’t going anywhere.

One month ago, after the third week of being unable to hold in her nausea, Anita had handed her a pregnancy test, given her a small smile, a pat on the arm, a cup of tea—so very English—and left her to it. Maria barely remembered the following two days. She had been numb with shock and battered by so many unanswered and unanswerable questions, and only one thought had remained constant. Remained true.

I’m keeping the baby.

She promised herself that once she reached three months, once she’d had her first scan, only then would she tell Matthieu.

The clipped sound of stiletto heels machine-gun-fired across the marble foyer, drawing Maria into the present. An obscenely glamorous woman in an ankle-length wool coat with a fur trim swept an about-turn to face a trio of sheepish-looking men in suits.

‘That man is absolutely impossible. No wonder they call him a beast.’ The last word was hissed, as if to be conveyed in a whisper, but rang like a bell.

Maria had no doubt as of whom she was speaking. Not after her Internet search of Matthieu. She’d had two words. His name, and mining—his ‘professional interest’. She hadn’t held up much hope, but she’d been wrong. A second after she’d hit enter, the screen had filled with the image of his face—a stern headshot, his piercing golden eyes so intense she’d felt a blush rise to her cheeks as if he could see her searching for him.

‘No wonder he’s as rich as Croesus, when he’s that tight-fisted with his business interests.’

Maria had discovered that too. Reportedly he was the fourth richest man in Europe. And it had shocked her. Clearly he had been wealthy, must have been to gain entry to the gala, but reports stated that his net worth was near eight billion. Billion.

But it had come at such a terrible cost. She’d gasped as she’d read descriptions of the fire that had not only consumed the estate where Matthieu had lived as a child, but also his entire family. The one that had caused the scars she’d felt beneath the soft palm of her hand, hard and twisted, but somehow also defiant and magnificent. The sheer number of articles on the years of treatments was surpassed only by the fascination with the shocking amount of the life insurance heaped upon an eleven-year-old boy, making him unimaginably wealthy independent of his family’s business. Maria’s heart had broken at the grainy images from years ago of the small boy accompanied by his, then, legal guardian following behind five coffins: his parents, two uncles and one aunt. She couldn’t even conceive how devastating that must have been.

As the woman swirled back towards the exit, taking the suits and the drama with her, Maria was dragged into the present and stifled a wave of nausea as the woman’s sickly perfume reached her on the ruffled air.

The receptionist cleared his throat and stood, apparently having reached the end of his patience at housing the unwanted and uninvited guest in his domain.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to—’

‘Maria?’

Her head turned to the bank of elevators tucked off to the right of the reception desk to see Matthieu Montcour looking as shocked as she suddenly felt at seeing him in the flesh again after twelve weeks.

Matthieu watched her spring up from the sofa she’d been sitting on, a bundle of energy in the almost silent reception.

‘Where’s your bathroom?’ she asked breathlessly, her tone betraying her desperation.

‘It’s—’

‘I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted this to go, it’s just that I really…’ she did a little dip as if to punctuate her need ‘…really need the bathroom. Please don’t go anywhere, we need to talk, it’s just that I need the—’

‘Bathroom. Got it. Round the corner on the left,’ he said, gesturing with his arm.

She ran, literally ran around the corner, skidding a little on her boot heels as she rushed through the doors.

And he couldn’t help but laugh. A sound startling to his own ears, let alone his stiff receptionist.

He shook his head, trying to jolt himself free from the effect of her sudden and shocking appearance. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought of her in the last three months, thought of finding her, his fingers itching to type her name into the search engine on his computer. In truth, there hadn’t been a day—or night—that he hadn’t remembered her soft sighs, or the feel of her beneath him. The wrenching he’d felt that morning after, when he’d sneaked out of the room, leaving her asleep in the bed of his suite. Both hating himself and knowing that it was right.

But why was she here? What did she want?

Then a cold steel clamp choked his thoughts.

She knew. Who he was.

And just like so many women before him, Maria had come to cash in on his notoriety. Had thought to play on the vulnerabilities he’d accidentally exposed that night. The one night he’d offered her and no more.

Anger clenched his jaw. He had thought her different. He had thought her to be something…almost mythical in her purity. A purity that he had single-handedly taken that night. He should have known better. Had he not learned at seventeen what the female sex wanted from him?

The sound of her boots on the marble floor cut through his thoughts and he turned to find her looking up at him nervously, her hands twisting within each other, but valiantly bearing the weight of his scrutiny as he searched her expressive features for clues of her motivation for being here.

She was still breathtakingly beautiful. He’d half convinced himself that he’d imagined it. The shocking impact she’d had on him that night. The way that his pulse kicked up a notch, just being near her. The way his need rose within him to seize him by the throat.

‘Hi,’ she said simply.

He nodded, unable to trust himself to say more. To bring about the moment where she exposed her greed.

‘Can we…?’

‘Talk?’

She nodded, an almost sad smile on her features. And for a moment he almost felt sorry for her. Because while she obviously knew who he was, she clearly did not realise just who she was up against.

‘This way,’ he said, his words as clipped as the sound of their shoes as he led them to the last elevator.

He swiped his key card over the electronic plate and the doors swished apart revealing the mirror-lined lift that led only to the top floor where his offices were housed.

She silently followed him into the confined space and when he inhaled he was swamped by that scent of hers. Sage and salt, something so unique to her and that night that he had to fight against the sudden wave of desire that rose up within him from being this close to her.

He studied her in the mirrors, Maria determinedly looking ahead and not making eye contact, offering him the chance to take in her appearance. The night they’d met, she had been dressed in white lace. Now, she wore tight grey denim jeans and a black leather waterfall jacket that covered a loose T-shirt in a burnt-pink colour.

Her hair, loose again, fell in waves over her shoulders and down her back, the slight curls twisting strands of dark browns and reds, making him want to reach out and touch. But he stifled the ridiculous urge.

The elevator drew to a stop and the doors opened, prompting him to gesture for her to go first, and then he realised how silly that was, when she pulled up short in the large area between three glass-fronted rooms. Two of which were meeting rooms, the third, his office.

He stepped around her and entered the latter. Immediately regretting not showing her to one of the large meeting rooms and ensuring that she would be ill at ease and more likely to reveal the truth about her intentions under such stark surroundings.

Instead, his office was completely different. Dark brown leather sofas faced each other, with a corner chair bracketing the end nearest the side wall. A discreet unit fronted the rest of the wall on the other side of a hidden door in the panelling that led to a bathroom and shower unit. A fireplace was hidden by the large corner chair—one that he never used and tried as much as possible to ignore behind the smooth dark leather. His father had loved it when this office had been his and, as much as he’d wanted to brick it up, he couldn’t seem to do so.

The opposite wall, in front of which was his desk, was covered head to toe in shelves full of books. Beautiful leather-spined tomes that gave the room an almost gothic feel, despite the sleek modern technology that covered the desk. Two large monitors fed into a discreet desktop hidden on a lower-level shelf just beneath the surface of the desk—a feature that had forced him to raise the desk a few inches in order to seat his long legs comfortably and without taking his kneecaps off every time he sat.

He turned to watch Maria take in the space.

‘Would you care for a drink?’ he asked, his hands unaccountably reaching for the bottle of whisky that had remained largely untouched for the three years it had been in his office’s wet bar.

‘Sparkling water, please.’

Where had the woman so full of words and even a bit of humour gone? Perhaps it was him. Was she picking up on his cynical reaction to her presence?

He poured sparkling water over ice, the cubes splintering and fracturing beneath the liquid in each glass. He passed Maria’s drink to her and was about to say some pithy salutation when she blurted, ‘I’m pregnant.’

The glass hovered before his lips, his fingers gripping it so hard, his knuckles turned white from his apparent shock. His eyes went from speculative to furious in a heartbeat and Maria inwardly cursed, wishing she’d had the courage to say it more gently, to warn him… Anything other than what she’d just thrown between them like an unexploded bomb. Only it wasn’t unexploded. It had detonated three months earlier, though neither of them had known.

‘Congratulations. Who is the lucky man?’

Maria frowned, both shocked and confused by his question.

‘What do you mean?’ she said, wondering why she was still holding the glass of water and he his, as if they were having a polite exchange rather than the fact he’d just implied that…that…

‘Well, given that we used protection, every single time—’

‘Wait, what?’

‘You cannot really expect to turn up here a convenient three months after our…encounter, and lay claim to my being the father of this miraculous child?’

She was speechless. She had imagined this conversation so many times, but this? Not what she’d expected. Encounter? He’d called the night they shared an encounter? Now she was angry. Of all the feelings she’d experienced thus far, since discovering the fact she was to have a child, anger had not been one of them. Until now.

‘You bastard.’

‘I think the press prefer to call me a beast, but I suppose that will do just as well.’

‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, more to herself, rather than him. But it didn’t stop him from answering.

‘No, you probably shouldn’t have,’ he said, sighing as if she were an inconvenience rather than the mother of his child. ‘Many others have tried to lay claim to such a thing, and believe me, Maria, they were much more skilled at deception than you. And ultimately, they were proved to be the lying, scheming serpents that they were. I must say, I’m quite disappointed. I had thought you different.’

Maria shook her head. Both at the shocking hostility in his tone and at the awfulness that there had been women who had apparently tried to trick him in the past. In a second, all the things she thought they’d shared, the beauty of that one night she’d clung to as her world had morphed and changed before her eyes, burned to dust. She didn’t know this man. She was nothing to him. And she would never, never, force such a thing upon her child.

‘Not as disappointed as I am. I hope that your conscience is kind to you when you realise just how wrong you are,’ she stated, gathering her wits about her, and the scraps of her feelings from the floor. She placed the untouched glass down on the small coffee table, reaching into her bag to retrieve the black and white sonogram image of their, no her, child—the one thing that she could give him, the only thing, and, placing it beside the glass, she turned her back on him and stepped towards the door.

‘Wait.’

‘What for?’ she asked without turning, her back still to him. ‘For you to hurl even more insults at me? I don’t think so.’

‘Please.’

She turned then, not because his tone was pleading—which it wasn’t—but because she would give him this chance. She needed to. She found him standing by the coffee table, one finger on the corner of the sonogram. He wasn’t looking at her, but at it. The image of their child. She wondered what he saw in the grey shapes, the patches of darkness and the surprisingly detailed white figure of their baby. The head, the umbilical cord, arms and legs, all clearly visible.

Finally he looked up at her.

‘Do not lie to me about this, Maria. Do not test me.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not. I’m pregnant. The baby is yours.’

‘How?’

Again, shaking away the doubt and confusion she had felt when she’d first seen that thin blue line. ‘Condoms aren’t fail proof, I wasn’t on any other kind of contraception. I…’ She shrugged.

‘You’re pregnant. The baby is mine.’

Maria nodded and Matthieu’s whole world shifted on its axis. He cast his eye back to the small black and white image on the coffee table. His child?

‘I’m…’ stunned, shocked…what? His mind was completely blank. Though the one thing he could recognise above the white noise roaring in his ears was that Maria deserved an apology.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, the sea of confusion and chaotic thoughts making his tone dark, guttural almost. The instant refusal that had risen to his mind had been both cruel and devastating. He hadn’t missed the way her already pale skin had turned almost bone white beneath his taunt. But it hadn’t been that that had convinced him that she spoke the truth. No. It had been her ready departure. So different from the crocodile tears and insincere desperation he’d experienced in the past. Maria had been willing to walk away not just from him, but from what many others had tried to secure. His money. His ring.

A ring he’d once sworn never to put on a woman’s finger. Never imagining for a second the need to do so. Never being so unfailingly irresponsible to sire a child that would, along with its mother, invade his carefully ordered life.

He gestured for her to sit and only after she had stiffly approached the sofa opposite where he stood, and sat, or rather collapsed slightly into the deeply upholstered leather, did he finally sit down too.

‘What is it you want?’ he asked, holding her gaze with the steel trap of his own, ruthlessly seeking out her intentions, almost willingly seeing hints of her avarice.

‘Nothing,’ she said, seemingly confused by his question. ‘I just wanted to let you know. You…have that right.’

He bit back a cynical laugh. He doubted the truth of her words very much. She might not be after his money or his ring, but there must be something. There was always something.

‘You waited three months?’ he said, accusingly, not having to work hard to do the maths. He’d known every single one of the days since he’d last touched her, kissed her, brought them both to orgasm.

She nodded. ‘The first three months are so…precarious,’ she said, shaking her head and shoulders, as if she hadn’t been alone to bear the weight of that knowledge, that fear that something could have happened, could have taken away their…their child.

The child he could see formed by light and dark in the small black and white sonogram on the table between them.

‘Did you think that I would try to change your mind? Is that why you waited?’ Not needing to work hard to find the fury at the possibility that she would think such a thing of him.

‘It wouldn’t have mattered. I’m keeping this baby, Matthieu, whether you want to be part of its life or not.’

‘I would never—’

‘How would I know that?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t even know your last name.’

‘But you found out.’ The unspoken question in his mind rang loud, beating in time with his heart.

‘Only when I needed to.’ Her assurance, the promise offered by her words that she had not sought him out until she’d had to, melted the ire edging his anger, transforming it, lessening it—but only slightly. ‘Look, I respected what you said then about it only being one night,’ she pressed on. ‘I’m only here now to let you know, and to give you the chance to choose whether you would like to be in the baby’s life or not. Nothing more, nothing less.’

‘That simple?’ he asked, unconsciously echoing the conversation from that night.

‘I am beginning to see that where you are concerned, Matthieu, nothing is simple.’

He reached then for his water, not because he was thirsty, but to buy time. And he never had to buy time. He always knew what to say, how to react. Until now. Until her. He began to wonder if he ever had any choice in the matter at all. His body overriding all senses, all sensibilities.

Father.

He was going to be a father.

‘We will marry.’

The look on her face would have been comical in any other circumstance. The horror and shock overriding the fierce neutrality that she had presented in the last few moments.

‘No.’

That’s different. So many had tried to coerce themselves into his life, but of course Maria was different. He briefly wondered if this might have been part of some larger game, some grander scheme, but he decided not. There had been nothing about Maria then, or now, that indicated some ulterior motive. Wasn’t that what had driven him to her in the first place? Her innocence?

‘I don’t think you understand—’

‘No. It is you who doesn’t understand,’ Maria cut in. ‘That’s not why I came here. I have no intention of marrying you. I don’t want that, or your money. My only interest is the level of your involvement in my child’s—’

‘Our child’s,’ he said, interrupting her.

‘Our child’s life.’

‘And that is what I’m telling you, Maria. My interest will be deep, my level of involvement will be total.’

CHAPTER FOUR

MARIA FELT PULLED beneath a tide of emotion, some parts fear, some parts daunted, and all parts consuming. She hadn’t lied to him. She hadn’t come here to demand marriage, or anything more than maybe weekend visits. She hadn’t imagined that he’d even want that if she was honest. Certainly not after reading the hundreds of articles on the ‘notorious beast’. She hated herself for using that description even mentally. Because she knew why they had called him that. His scars had made him the subject of intense speculation, his wealth and almost cruel single-minded, driven success all the more so.

And now, to have all that focus pinned on her… She couldn’t help but want to shrink back from it. But she couldn’t. Not now that she had someone else to protect. Her unborn child. Her hands instinctively wrapped around her waist, his hawk-eyed gaze watching her every move.

‘Why?’ she couldn’t help but ask. Everything about Matthieu screamed isolation. The way he did his business, the way he reportedly lived.

‘I will protect my child,’ he said, his determined voice sending a shiver down her back.

‘Protect? Not love?’ she demanded. Because in truth that was all that mattered to Maria right now. It was the only thing that mattered.

‘Of course I will love my child,’ he said dismissively.

But not the mother of his child.

Maria pushed aside the sad thought. How had this happened to her? Just when she was on the brink of her freedom, her jewellery business beginning to find traction, her false feelings for Theo behind her, to discover who she was outside that, to find an independence that meant so much to her.

‘We don’t have to marry for you to…protect our child.’

He scoffed an almost cruel laugh. ‘Are you that naïve, Maria? Do you have even an inkling of what will happen when the press find out?’

She hadn’t thought of that. She simply hadn’t thought of anything past the point of telling Matthieu about the baby. Unease began to grow within her at the sheer conviction in his tone.

‘They will hound you, Maria. They will dig up every little thing they can find out about you. They will stalk your friends and family, they will offer money for any salacious story they could print, they will go through your rubbish and camp on your doorstep. They will follow you and anyone who knows you.’

Maria didn’t have to work hard to imagine the awful things he was saying. Because she knew how the press worked. Had experienced a little of it first hand when her father had been exiled, when her brother had been forced to assume the purse strings and sell off nearly every single thing they had owned. Even now they still stalked Sebastian and every single woman he encountered. Some thought he courted it, but Maria knew he resented it, hated it. But he was happy as long as they’d left her alone.

Her brother. Her protector. Just as Matthieu wanted to protect their child. She didn’t think for a minute that Seb could help her in this situation though. No. The Rohan de Luens were minor exiled nobility. Matthieu Montcour was a completely different level of notoriety and fame. She had seen that for herself within seconds of hitting enter on the search bar with his name in it.

His words had conjured exactly what he had intended. Fear. And more than that. His words had chipped away at her belief that she could still have her freedom, that she could still be in charge of her life the way she hadn’t before now, and now never would.

‘But how can we marry? I don’t know anything about you,’ she said, fighting back the rising tide of panic in her chest.

‘You know my birthday and my favourite colour. That is more than most know.’

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she said, almost on a whisper as her last defences began to crumble. He waited until she met his gaze before speaking and his words were the final blow.

‘I know that you make jewellery and that you do it in spite of your stepmother’s objections. I know that you are kind and thoughtful or you wouldn’t have been so upset at the idea of breaking someone’s engagement, no matter how you thought you felt about the groom. I know that you are not after my money or this conversation would have been significantly different, and I know that you are strong, defiant and determined. And I know that you will do whatever you need to do to protect our child.’

I also know the feel of your skin beneath mine, the blush that rises to your cheeks when you can’t fight your desires, and I know the sounds of your pleasure when you climax, Matthieu concluded silently, unwilling to speak his wayward thoughts out loud.

He watched as her eyes grew wide with surprise, a faint blush—as if conjured by his very thoughts—rising to her cheeks.

‘If we were to marry… If,’ she repeated as if she hadn’t already made her decision, which he very much believed that she had. ‘What would that…be like? What would it look like to you?’

Terms. He was good at this. Securing contracts and finalising practicalities. He would have time later to consider the implications of impending fatherhood. Feelings had no place here, not now. The irony of that would have struck a more righteous man in the heart.

‘You will live with me here in Switzerland. I can arrange for everything you could ever need to be available to you. As I’m sure you have already figured out, there are certainly benefits to marrying me. Especially for your business.’

‘No. That’s…that’s not up for discussion. My business is mine and I don’t want your involvement.’

He frowned. For many, that would have been enticement enough.

‘I have contacts around the world and the resources to give you access to some of the finest materials—’

‘I said no. I can source my own materials and any achievements I make professionally will be my own.’

Her words were fast and harsh, as dark as he’d ever heard her tone, both tonight and three months ago. Clearly her independence was important to her, but he resisted the urge to warn her not to let pride get in the way of success. Partly because he very much found pride in his own success. He knew what that meant and found that he respected her for it.

‘Do you have a particular stipulation in mind?’

He also gave her credit for not flinching, though clearly she wanted to. It might have been distasteful to discuss the matter in such a way, but necessary to avoid future upset, misunderstandings…he couldn’t say heartache, because he would never, never, allow himself such an indulgence.

‘I…we…would stay married until our child is at least twenty.’

He almost laughed then, at her naivety, her innocence. ‘Maria, hear this now. In the little time they were alive, my parents at least installed in me a sense of the sanctity of marriage. I may not be religious, but I do not believe in divorce.’

As if refusing to acknowledge his declaration, she looked at her hands.

‘I’m not sure that I can just pack up my life and move in with you.’

‘Really? I get the impression that you are more than capable of anything you put your mind to, Maria.’

Her gaze flew to his and her expressive face registered surprise, and something else…something warmer, serving only to heat his blood from within. He ruthlessly pushed that aside. It was absolutely vital that he got her agreement in this. He’d meant what he said. He would protect his child, and by extension her too. But he wouldn’t lie to her. She had asked him of his expectations and it was important that he state his intentions now.

‘My home is on the edges of Lake Lucerne, in the heart of this country. It is…certainly big enough for us, and our child.’ He knew his words were modest. The large sprawling estate was an architectural marvel and he forced himself to stifle the discomfort at the idea of opening it up to another person, to Maria. But he would. He’d have to. The idea of Maria and his child being anywhere other than with him? Simply untenable.

‘You will have access to anything you could want. Truly. But I need you to understand one thing, Maria.’ Her eyes grew watchful, assessing, as if she realised that this was the most important thing of all. ‘Do not build hopes and fantasies about me. I promise you now, that I will love, care for and provide every single earthly want for our child. But that is the extent of what I will offer.’

He was saying that he wouldn’t, couldn’t, love her. He was refusing her the one thing she’d only just realised she’d ever wanted. A wave of sorrow crashed over her and she thought, How funny. An engagement is supposed to be a happy thing.

She forced herself to focus on what he was offering her. Her child would want for nothing. Her child would grow up with the kind of security she had once taken for granted, until it had been lost. Never would her child experience the shocking devastation she had. Because she would protect their child. She, who had been protected all her life, would become protector and that thought fired her determination more than any other.

‘One condition.’

‘Anything.’ His response, quick and sure.

‘It will be a small wedding. No guests.’ She didn’t want that day to be a public spectacle. Didn’t want her family there, her stepmother turning it into a farce. She could already imagine the lascivious glint in Valeria’s gaze, the image of her mother in her father’s eyes, and the disappointment in her brother’s.

‘Just us and two witnesses?’

‘Yes.’

‘It will be so.’

He reached for her hand across the table, the heat of his fingers searing as they wrapped around her cool skin. A handshake, as if nothing more than a contract had been agreed to.

Tears threatened the backs of her eyelids, but she willed them away. Others might be full of joy and brimming with happiness, but she wasn’t one of those soon-to-be brides. No. She was a soon-to-be mother and would do whatever it took to care for, protect and love her child in the way that she had not felt herself.

Matthieu might have wanted a quick wedding, but even he, with all his might and money, could not force Swiss bureaucracy to bend to his will. Once their marriage application had passed through the churning machine of legalities and regulations they had still needed to wait ten long days before the ceremony could take place. And Matthieu had used that time well. He might not have known much about Maria before, but, having collected the many required details for the application, he did now.

He was going to be a father.

He almost resented Maria the time she’d had to mentally prepare for impending parenthood. She’d had about a month on him before informing him, but he had been forced to absorb it all in a matter of an hour or two that night. But since then?

The vehemence of the connection he felt to his unborn child shocked him. The determination to protect, to claim, the yearning to meet this heir of his was utterly astounding. So long he had lived, ruthlessly avoiding any sense of commitment or connection to another… He had thought it would chafe, that he would wrangle against it defiantly. But he had been wrong.

As if in a single moment, the compass points of his life had changed, now pointing solely to his child and Maria. And as he looked at himself in the mirror, dark blue suit and a shirt of such pale blue it was almost white, for the first time in more years than he could count he wondered what his father would think. Matthieu searched his own features for traces of the father who had loved him so much he had searched a flame-ridden building to drag Matthieu out, unthinking and unheeding of the danger and damage to himself. Before he had gone back in for his wife.

A blade-sharp pain twisted in his chest before he closed the door on his thoughts.

‘Ah, Matthieu.’

He turned to find Malcolm standing in the doorway of his office suite. The older man was nodding in approval. ‘They would be so proud of you.’

Matthieu gritted his teeth against the sentiment. He doubted very much that his parents would be proud of his knocking up an innocent and forcing her into a marriage she had no desire for.

‘Where is David?’ he enquired of Malcolm’s husband. The two had finally married once the bill allowing for same-sex marriage had passed in California. After almost eleven years of being together, Malcolm had felt that they didn’t really need a piece of paper to certify their relationship, but the battle for legal recognition had been hard fought and hard won, and David and Malcolm had married for the world they wanted as much as the love they already had.

Goosebumps rose over Matthieu’s skin, soothed only slightly by the soft cotton of his shirt. He didn’t have to wonder if Maria had wanted that kind of love in her life. He knew she had, and for the first time since demanding that she wore his ring, he realised the cost to her, despite having paraded all that she would gain before her.

‘David has gone to meet Maria at the hotel. He wanted to walk over to the register office with her.’

Matthieu bit back a curse. How had he not thought of that? Was he truly such a bastard that while he espoused the virtues of what his money could mean to her and their child, he had failed to even see to the first emotional requirement she might have on her wedding day? He would do better. He had to.

Maria stared at herself in the mirror, marvelling that it had almost been easier to pack up her entire life in Camberwell than to find a dress that would suit not only a civil ceremony but the burgeoning baby bump that still caught her by surprise.

Two days ago she had answered the door to an incredibly efficient removal team who had retrieved an almost miserably small stack of boxes containing her clothes, books, the few items of furniture she’d possessed to be sent on to Switzerland. But her equipment—her jewellery, the bits and bobs she’d gathered over the years—had been sent to her brother’s estate in Italy. Those boxes must have looked as if they belonged to a very talented magpie: rich colours, sparkling, semi-precious stones, bursting from the seams. Her moulds, her tools and the series of bracelets, rings, earrings and necklaces she had already started to amass had been by far the greatest part of her belongings. For some reason, one she neither could nor would put a finger on, she hadn’t wanted to take them to Switzerland.

She had bid a tearful farewell to Evin and Anita, and had allowed herself one last day in the small studio she had rented a space in, up near the Thames in Bermondsey. That was where she’d felt the pull greatest. That was where she had poured her hopes and dreams into the small projects that she had made for her first gallery showing only months earlier. That was where she had returned to after that fateful night with Matthieu and forged a new, determined and optimistic outlook for her future…until she had discovered her pregnancy and all her imaginings had disappeared in a puff of silver smoke.

And now when she thought of her future, one irrevocably bound to the father of her child, her future as his wife, she wondered at it. Would she be expected to be on his arm at business functions, the practically perfect wife? Or would he grow tired of her once she had his child and then package her off to some distant place? She had no idea what his home looked like, where she would be able to find space to create the pieces that were so important to her. Not once in the last two months had she been able to find that heady, almost meditative sense of creativity that would have, in the past, consumed and calmed her.

A knock on the door jolted her from her day dreams. She opened it to a tall, smiling, slightly rotund blond man, who seemed only to smile even more at her evident confusion.

‘Maria? I’m David Antoinelli.’

‘The witness?’ Maria had remembered his name from one of Matthieu’s emails.

‘Yes,’ he laughed easily. ‘I did hope that you’d recognise my name. Didn’t think you’d appreciate a complete stranger knocking on the door the morning of your wedding.’

She pulled the door open wide, gesturing for him to enter.

‘I thought you might like someone to walk with you to the register office, given that…’ He trailed off, clearly not wanting to point out that she was alone. But his rich, upper-class British accent was so wonderfully familiar, she instantly warmed to him.

‘You’re English.’

‘Ha! Yes. I grew up in North London,’ he said, leaning towards her conspiratorially.

‘I live—lived—in Camberwell.’

‘South of the river!’ he exclaimed. ‘I never really crossed the Thames much, but I did have some rather indecent nights in Vauxhall, but the less said about that to my husband, the better.’

Maria couldn’t help the smile that grew on her lips, and the well of relief that bloomed in her chest. The thought of walking towards her wedding on her own…

‘I must say,’ he said, taking her in with a beam of approval, ‘you look glorious.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, exhaling a breath of relief. The simple, knee-length dress had an empire waist cinching just above the beginning of her bump and a beautiful sweetheart neckline. The form-fitting cream satin was covered by beautifully detailed lace that rose up the material and covered her arms and décolletage. And even better, she’d been able to afford it with her meagre savings.

She had tamed her curls into braids either side of her head and pinned them up, leaving only a few strands of her dark hair free to frame her face.

David offered her his arm, and she held up a hand for one moment while she gathered the things she would need from the suite. The rest—her small bag of belongings—would, she had been told, be retrieved and sent on to Matthieu’s house before they arrived there that evening. She stifled the blush that rose at thoughts of just how that evening would be spent. It was perhaps one of the only things that hadn’t yet been negotiated and settled on.

She caught her shawl and the small bouquet of flowers she had ventured out for earlier that morning. She had looked longingly at the sweet bundle of white peonies, sage and rosemary. She knew that a herb bouquet might be slightly unorthodox but she hadn’t been able to resist them. With one last glance at herself in the mirror, one last look at herself as a single woman, she bid her adieu, took David’s proffered arm and closed the door on her past life, ready to assume the role of Mrs Montcour.

Matthieu and Malcolm were waiting on the steps of the register office he’d deemed perfectly suitable for their needs until he caught sight of Maria. He felt the heated glare of disapproval from Malcolm beside him as his oldest friend looked from Maria and his husband to Matthieu and the building behind him.

Matthieu felt the instant denial on his lips. I didn’t know. Because he hadn’t. He hadn’t known she would look so beautiful, almost ethereal. He hadn’t expected to see the small, perfectly formed shape of the promise of their child beneath her dress. He hadn’t realised that he would see her and think that he had absolutely got it wrong. They should have been in a church—the biggest one he could find, filled with everyone they knew to show off his stunning bride, with pride and adoration shining in his eyes. He just hadn’t known that he would feel that way.

When they finally drew close, David pronounced in his usually enthusiastic way, ‘If I wasn’t an already happily married man, I’d be tempted to run away with the bride.’

‘And now that I can see for myself exactly how lovely you are, Maria, I am tempted to do the same,’ Malcolm replied, leaning forward to kiss her cheek.

Maria shone beneath the words of their encouragement, and only took a moment to seem slightly bemused at the contrast between his friends’ open expressions and his utter silence. Because he was simply incapable of speech. The sight of her had robbed him of it.

The two men embraced leaving Maria and Matthieu to stare at each other, taking in each’s appearance in silence, in weighted anticipation of what they were about to do.

‘You look…beautiful,’ he said, aware that his tone was guttural and hoping that it didn’t sound begrudging. Because somewhere deep within, he did feel that way. Strangely resentful that he didn’t deserve this. Deserve her. Deserve the child they carried. But Maria most definitely deserved more than he was able and willing to offer.

‘Thank you,’ she said, casting her eyes away from his as if she was embarrassed or flustered by his simple words.

He guided her into the building, Malcolm and David close behind them as they made their way towards the office where the registrar was waiting for them. Despite the almost ugly functional exterior of the building, the interior was a relief. The rich tones of whisky-coloured wood flooring soothed. Expensive, yet tasteful chairs filled the almost empty room, the focus of which was a beautiful mahogany table where the registrar and the officiant waited to greet them.

Matthieu felt oddly detached from proceedings he’d never thought he’d experience. In every one of his past encounters he’d ensured that the only thing that passed between the women who had shared his bed and himself was pleasure. Given and received—nothing more. Once they had left his life, he gave them little thought. Only that hadn’t been true of Maria. There hadn’t been an hour that had passed in between that night in Iondorra and the night she’d crashed back into his life with news that had changed everything, that he hadn’t thought of her. From the very first moments leaving her bed, he’d tasted her on his tongue, felt her skin beneath his, the echoes of her sighs and gentle laughter, haunting his nights.

Now, he cast a look over to where Maria sat in the corner of the room with the celebrant, presumably going over the same questions that he was currently answering to the registrar. His mind working automatically to supply the requisite information as his heart picked itself up and reached for her.

‘Are you ready?’

The question mocked him, but he nodded, swift and sure, knowing what must be done.

She deserved more.

He would give her everything he could, he promised. Not just because of their child. But because she deserved it. She had uprooted her entire life, placed it in his undeserving hands and no matter what the future brought them, he would make sure that she was protected.

‘We are gathered here today…’

Maria let the words wash over her. She had wondered how she’d feel, ever since agreeing to Matthieu’s outrageous proclamation that they would marry, and now that she was here, now that she stood before the registrar and officiant and they were saying the words that every young girl had dreamed of hearing as a child, she just didn’t know. She didn’t know how she felt. She had expected fear, but—she thought, resisting the urge to shake her head—that wasn’t what she felt. Defiance? No, not that either. Hesitation? Oddly, no. Not even that. Numb, she decided. Numb as the words brought her closer and closer to the moment she would be bound to Matthieu for ever.

She suddenly felt as if she’d left something behind. That she’d forgotten something vital, but couldn’t for the life of her think what it was. She frowned, then realised that the officiant had said something that required a response from her. Mistaking her lack of response for nerves, the officiant smiled and repeated the question.

‘Will you, Maria, take Matthieu to be your lawful wedded husband?’

No words of love in this perfunctory service, then. No honouring above all else. But she wasn’t doing this for herself. She was doing this for their child. There would be love, would be honouring above all else. There would be protection and security and…

‘I will.’

‘And will you, Matthieu, take Maria to be your lawful wedded wife?’

Finally Maria found the courage to look to Matthieu then, startled somewhat to find him gazing at her with an intensity that reminded her immediately of that night. In his eyes she saw the lake in Iondorra, she saw the stars that blanketed the night sky. She saw the deep pull of arousal in his eyes, hypnotic and unfathomable. And if her heart hurt, because for just a moment she saw how it could have been, she chided herself for wanting more.

‘I will.’

‘The rings?’

Rings. That was what she’d forgotten. She didn’t know a single jewellery maker who hadn’t spent hours pouring attention and passion into a creation that symbolised a couple’s love for each other. She had once thought that she might make her own and her future husband’s. There was a special part of her designs and sketches that, long ago, she’d thought she might use as the basis for what she would one day wear for the rest of her life. But the intensity of the last few weeks, the practicalities, had thrown that from her mind. And for a moment she was relieved. Because this was not what she’d wanted. Not really. While Matthieu reached to his pocket, she ran a hand over the lower part of her abdomen. The small, firm bump cradling her soon-to-be child.

She realised that Matthieu’s eyes had snagged on the movement, and hesitated just a second before he produced something from his pocket. He reached for her hand and held the ring in his fingers in such a way that she couldn’t see it until he had slipped it over her finger.

And she stared.

Stared and stared. Because in some impossible way it was perfect. As if he’d found what she wanted without her even knowing it. The silver band gave way to a circle of small diamonds encasing a beautifully cut shard of jet.

‘This is how I see us, Maria,’ he whispered to her. ‘Joined together, surrounding our child with love and security, with protection.’

The sincerity and certainty shining in his eyes settled about her, her heart aching with the want of love, but appeased by the promise he was offering her. Not of fairy tales of happy-ever-afters, not with offers of obscene wealth that meant nothing to her, not with lies of unfelt emotions, but a promise of everything he could and would do for her and her child. Their child.

‘I now declare you husband and wife.’

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.