Modern Romance - The Best of the Year

The Dimitrakos Proposition

Lynne Graham

When Falcone’s World Stops Turning

Abby Green

The Sheikh’s Last Seduction

Jennie Lucas

What the Greek’s Money Can’t Buy

Maya Blake

The Only Woman

to Defy Him

Carol Marinelli

The

Heartbreaker

Prince

Kim Lawrence

At No Man’s Command

Melanie Milburne

His Forbidden Diamond

Susan Stephens

The Housekeeper’s Awakening

Sharon Kendrick

An Heiress for His Empire

Lucy Monroe

To Defy a Sheikh

Maisey Yates

Taken Over by the Billionaire

Miranda Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

The Dimitrakos Proposition

Introduction

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Excerpt

When Falcone’s World Stops Turning

Introduction

Blood Brothers

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Excerpt

The Sheikh’s Last Seduction

Introduction

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Excerpt

What the Greek’s Money Can’t Buy

Introduction

The Untamable Greeks

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Extract

The Only Woman to Defy Him

Introduction

About the Author

PROLOGUE

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

Extract

The Heartbreaker Prince

Introduction

Royal and Ruthless

About the Author

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

Extract

At No Man’s Command

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

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

Extract

His Forbidden Diamond

Introduction

Dear Reader

About the Author

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

Epilogue

Extract

The Housekeeper’s Awakening

Introduction

AT HIS SERVICE

About the Author

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

An Heiress for His Empire

Excerpt

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

To Defy a Sheikh

Introduction

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Taken Over by the Billionaire

Introduction

About the Author

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

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

The Dimitrakos Proposition

Lynne Graham

‘I’ll do anything it takes to keep her …’

Acheron frowned, his dark, deep-set eyes narrowing. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What do you think? I’m desperate to keep Amber. If you have any suggestions on how I can be a better parent to her I’m willing to listen,’ Tabby said.

‘I thought you were offering me sex,’ Acheron confided bluntly.

‘Seriously?’ Tabby gasped in shock at that misconception.

Acheron nodded cool confirmation.

Tabby was helplessly aware of the tension in the atmosphere. As she collided with his stunning dark-as-midnight gaze she saw a message even she couldn’t ignore. He attracted her. This filthy rich Greek with his dazzling good-looks and hard-as-granite heart attracted her.

‘There is a way you could keep Amber with you,’ Ash drawled. ‘But we would need to be married first,’ he delivered smoothly.

He would not admit the truth that he would have a great deal riding on the arrangement as well. That acknowledgement would tip the power balance between them, and he refused to take that unnecessary risk. The less she knew, the better.

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

CHAPTER ONE

‘BEARING IN MIND the history of the company’s expansion and success, it is a most unjust will,’ Stevos Vannou, Ash’s lawyer, declared heavily in the simmering silence, a wary eye locked to the very tall, dark and powerfully built male across the office.

Acheron Dimitrakos, known as Ash to his inner circle, and Greek billionaire founder of the global giant DT Industries, said nothing. He did not trust himself to speak. Usually his control was absolute. But not today. He had trusted his father, Angelos, as far as he trusted anyone, which was to say not very much, but it had never once crossed his mind that the older man would even consider threatening the company that Ash had single-handedly built with the bombshell that his last will and testament had become. If Ash didn’t marry within the year, he would lose half of the company to his stepmother and her children, who were already most amply provided for by the terms of his father’s will. It was unthinkable; it was a brutally unfair demand, which ran contrary to every honourable scruple and the high standards that Ash had once believed the older man held dear to his heart. It just went to show—as if Ash had ever had any doubt—you couldn’t trust anybody, and your nearest and dearest were the most likely to plunge a knife into your back when you were least expecting it.

‘DT is my company,’ Ash asserted between compressed lips.

‘But regretfully not on paper,’ Stevos countered gravely. ‘On paper you never had your father transfer his interest to you. Even though it is indisputably the company that you built.’

Still, Ash said nothing. Cold dark eyes fringed with ridiculously long black lashes locked on the sweeping view of the City of London skyline that his penthouse office enjoyed, his lean, darkly handsome features set in hard, forbidding lines of restraint. ‘A long court case disputing the will would seriously undermine the company’s ability to trade,’ he said eventually.

‘Picking a wife would definitely be the lesser evil,’ the lawyer suggested with a cynical chuckle. ‘That’s all you have to do to put everything back to normal.’

‘My father knew I had no intention of ever marrying. That is exactly why he did this to me,’ Ash ground out between clenched teeth, his temper momentarily escaping its leash as he thought of the utterly unhinged woman his misguided father had expected him to put in the role. ‘I don’t want a wife. I don’t want children. I don’t want any of that messing up my life!’

Stevos Vannou cleared his throat and treated his employer to a troubled appraisal. He had never seen Acheron Dimitrakos betray anger before or, indeed, any kind of emotion. The billionaire head of DT Industries was usually as cold as ice, possibly even colder, if his discarded lovers in the many tabloid stories were to be believed. His cool, logical approach, his reserve and lack of human sentiment were the stuff of legend. According to popular repute when one of his PAs had gone into labour at a board summit, he had told her to stay and finish the meeting.

‘Forgive me if I’m being obtuse but I would suggest that any number of women would line up to marry you,’ Ash’s companion remarked cautiously, thinking of his own wife, who threatened to swoon if she even saw Acheron’s face in print. ‘Choosing would be more of a challenge than actually finding a wife.’

Ash clamped his mouth shut on an acid rejoinder, well aware the portly little Greek was out of his depth and only trying to be helpful even if stating the obvious was more than a little simplistic. He knew he could snap his fingers and get a wife as quickly and easily as he could get a woman into his bed. And he understood exactly why it was so easy: the money was the draw. He had a fleet of private jets and homes all over the world, not to mention servants who waited on him and his guests hand and foot. He paid well for good service. He was a generous lover too but every time he saw dollar signs in a woman’s eyes it turned him off hard and fast. And more and more he noticed the dollar signs before he noticed the beautiful body and that was taking sex off the menu more often than he liked. He needed sex as he needed air to breathe, and couldn’t really comprehend why he found the greed and manipulation that went with it so profoundly repellent. Evidently somewhere down inside him, buried so deep he couldn’t root it out, there lurked an oversensitive streak he despised.

It was worse that Acheron knew exactly what lay behind the will and he could only marvel at his father’s inability to appreciate that the woman he had tried to push Acheron towards was anathema to him. Six months before the older man’s death there had been a big scene at his father’s home, and Acheron had steered clear of visiting since then, which was simply one more nail in the coffin of the proposed bride-to-be. He had tried to talk to his stepmother about the problem but nobody had been willing to listen to common sense, least of all his father, who had been sufficiently impressed by the lady’s acting ability to decide that the young woman he had raised from childhood would make his only son the perfect wife.

‘Of course, perhaps it is possible that you could simply ignore the will and buy out your stepmother’s interest in the company,’ the lawyer suggested glibly.

Unimpressed, Ash shot the older man a sardonic glance. ‘I will not pay for what is mine by right. Thank you for your time.’

Recognising the unmistakable note of dismissal, Stevos hastily stood up to leave while resolving to inform his colleagues of the situation immediately to sort out a plan of action. ‘I’ll put the best business minds in the firm on this challenge.’

Jaw line clenched as hard as a rock, Ash nodded even though he had little hope of a rescue plan. Experience told him that his father would have taken legal advice as well and would never have placed such a binding clause in his will without the assurance that it was virtually foolproof.

A wife, Ash reflected grimly. He had known since childhood that he would never take a wife and never father a child. That caring, loving gene had passed him by. He had no desire for anyone to grow up in his image or follow in his footsteps, nor did he wish to pass on the darkness he kept locked up inside himself. In fact, he didn’t even like children, what little contact he had had with them simply bearing out his belief that children were noisy, difficult and annoying. Why would any sane adult want something that had to be looked after twenty-four hours a day and gave you sleepless nights into the bargain? In the same way why would any man want only one woman in his bed? The same woman, night after night, week after week. Ash shuddered at the very suggestion of such severe sexual confinement.

He recognised that he had a decision to make and he resolved to act fast before the news of that ridiculous will hit the marketplace and damaged the company he had built his life around.

* * *

‘Nobody sees Mr Dimitrakos without an appointment and his prior agreement,’ the svelte receptionist repeated frigidly. ‘If you don’t leave, Miss Glover, I will be forced to call Security to have you removed from the building.’

In answer, Tabby plonked her slight body back down on the plush seating in the reception area. Across from her sat an older man studying documents from a briefcase and talking urgently in a foreign language on his cell phone. Knowing she looked like hell did nothing for her confidence in such luxurious surroundings but she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep for some time, she no longer owned any decent clothes and she was desperate. Nothing less than desperation would have brought her to DT Industries seeking an interview with the absolute seven-letter-word of a man who had summarily refused to take any responsibility for the child whom Tabby loved with all her heart. Acheron Dimitrakos was a selfish, arrogant pig and what she had read about his womanising exploits in one of her clients’ glossy scandal-sheet magazines had not improved her opinion. The man who had more money than Midas had turned his back on Amber without even expressing a desire to meet with Tabby as his co-guardian, or checking out the little girl’s welfare.

The call to Security by Reception was duly made in clear crystalline tones undoubtedly intended to scare Tabby off before the guards arrived. Her small face stiff, she stayed where she was, her slight body rigid with tension while she frantically tried to think up another plan of approach because gatecrashing Acheron’s office wasn’t going very well. But it wasn’t as if she had had a choice, although she acknowledged that the situation was very serious indeed when such a callous personality became her last hope.

And then fate took a hand she wasn’t expecting and she wasted a split second simply staring when she saw the tall dark man from the magazine pictures striding across Reception with a couple of suited men following in his wake. Tabby flew to her feet and raced after him. ‘Mr Didmitrakos...Mr Dimitrakos!’ she launched, stumbling over the syllables of his wretchedly complicated surname.

And at the exact same moment as her very tall and commanding quarry paused by the lift wearing an expression of sheer disbelief at her approach, the security guards came at a literal run, muttering fervent apologies to the man in front of her!

‘I’m Amber’s other guardian, Tabby Glover!’ Tabby explained in feverish haste as both her arms were suddenly grabbed by the two men with him and she was yanked back a step from her proximity to him. ‘I need to see you...I tried to get an appointment but I couldn’t even though it’s desperately important that we talk before the weekend!’

Security really was in need of sharpening up if they allowed him to be cornered on the top floor of his own building by a crazy woman, Ash reflected in exasperation. The young woman was wearing a worn jacket, track pants and trainers, her fair hair tied up in a high ponytail, pale shadowed face bare of make-up. She was small and plain, not at all the kind of woman who would have attracted his attention...although no sooner had he decided that than he noticed her remarkable blue eyes, which were an unusual violet in shade and dominated her pinched features.

‘Please!’ Tabby gasped. ‘You can’t be this selfish—nobody could be! Amber’s father was a member of your family—’

‘I have no family,’ Ash informed her drily. ‘Escort her out,’ he told the security officers, who took over from his bodyguards in restraining Tabby even though she hadn’t put up a struggle. ‘And make sure this doesn’t happen again.’

Taken aback that he wouldn’t even give her five minutes of his time, that he betrayed no recognition even of Amber’s name, Tabby was momentarily silenced. Then she swore at him like a fishwife, angrily employing language that had never left her lips before. In response, his brilliant dark eyes glittered with a raw angry hostility that momentarily shocked her because that cool front he wore evidently concealed much murkier depths.

‘Mr Dimitrakos...?’ Another voice interposed, and Tabby turned her head in surprise to see the older man who had been seated near her in the waiting area.

‘The child—you’ll recall your late cousin’s guardianship request, which you turned down a couple of months ago?’ Stevos Vannou hurtled forward to remind Acheron Dimitrakos in a quiet, respectful undertone.

An inconsequential memory pinged in the back of Ash’s shrewd brain and drew his straight black brows together into a frown. ‘What of it?’

‘You selfish bastard!’ Tabby raked at him, outraged by his lack of reaction and the consequences that his indifference to Amber’s fate were about to visit on the child. ‘I’ll go to the press with this...you don’t deserve anything better. All that wretched money and you can’t do anything good with it!’

‘Siopi! Keep quiet,’ Acheron told her sternly in Greek and then English.

‘And you and whose army is going to make me?’ Tabby snapped back, unimpressed, the fighting spirit that had carried her through many years of loss and disappointment rising to the fore again to strengthen her backbone.

‘What does she want?’ Acheron asked his lawyer in English as if she weren’t there.

‘I suggest we take this back into your office,’ Stevos remarked on a loaded hint.

Savage impatience gripped Ash. Only three days earlier he had returned from his father’s funeral and, without even allowing for his grief at the older man’s sudden death from a heart attack, it had turned into a very frustrating week. The very last thing he was in the mood for was a drama about some child he had never met and couldn’t have cared less about. Troy Valtinos, oh, yes, he could remember now, a third cousin he had also never met, who had unexpectedly died and, in doing so, had attempted to commit his infant daughter to Ash’s care. An act of sheer inexplicable insanity, Acheron reflected in exasperation, thinking back incredulously to that brief discussion with Stevos some months earlier. He was a childless single male without family back-up and he travelled constantly. What on earth could anyone have supposed he would do with an orphaned baby girl?

‘I’m sorry I swore at you,’ Tabby lied valiantly in an effort to build a bridge and win a hearing. ‘I shouldn’t have done that—’

‘Your mouth belongs in the gutter,’ Acheron breathed icily and he addressed the security guards, ‘Free her. You can take her out when I’m done with her.’

Tabby gritted her teeth together, straightened her jacket and ran uncertain hands down over her slender denim-clad thighs. Ash briefly studied her oval face, his attention lingering on her full pink mouth as a rare flight of sexual fantasy took him to the brink of picturing where else that mouth might be best employed other than in the gutter. The stirring at his groin put him in an even worse mood, reminding him of how long it had been since he had indulged his healthy libido. He knew he had to be in a very bad way if he could react to such an ignorant female.

‘I’ll give you five minutes of my valuable time,’ Acheron breathed with chilling reluctance.

‘Five minutes when a child’s life and happiness hang in the balance? How very generous of you,’ Tabby replied sarcastically.

Roaring rancour assailed Acheron because he wasn’t accustomed to such rudeness, particularly not from women. ‘You’re insolent as well as vulgar.’

‘It got me in the door, didn’t it? Politeness got me nowhere,’ Tabby traded, thinking of the many phone calls she had made in vain requests for an appointment. As for being called cheeky and vulgar, did she really care what some jumped-up, spoilt snob with loads of money thought about her? Yet her brain was already scolding her for her aggressive approach, telling her it was unwise. If she could get around the freeze front Acheron Dimitrakos wore to the world, he was in a position to help Amber while she was not. As far as Social Services were concerned, she could not be considered a suitable guardian for Amber because she was single, had no decent home and was virtually penniless.

‘Start talking,’ Ash urged, thrusting the door of his office shut.

‘I need your help to keep Amber in my custody. I’m the only mother she’s ever known and she’s very attached to me. Social Services are planning to take her off me on Friday and place her in foster care with a view to having her adopted.’

‘Isn’t that the best plan in the circumstances?’ Ash’s lawyer, Stevos Vannou, interposed in a very reasonable voice as though it was an expected thing that she should be willing to surrender the child she loved. ‘I seem to remember that you are single and living on benefits and that a child would be a considerable burden for you—’

Acheron had frozen the instant the phrase ‘foster care’ came his way but neither of his companions had noticed. It was a closely guarded secret that Ash, in spite of the fact his mother had been one of the richest Greek heiresses ever born, had once spent years of his life in foster care, shifted from home to home, family to family, enduring everything from genuine care to indifference to outright cruelty and abuse. And he had never, ever forgotten the experience.

‘I haven’t lived on benefits since Amber’s mother, Sonia, passed away. I looked after Sonia until she died and that was why I couldn’t work,’ Tabby protested, and shot a glance brimming with offended pride at Acheron’s still figure. ‘Look, I’m not just some freeloader. A year ago Sonia and I owned our own business and it was thriving until Troy died and she fell ill. In the fallout, I lost everything as well. Amber is the most important thing in my world but, in spite of me being chosen as one of her guardians, there’s no blood tie between Amber and me and that gives me very little real claim to her in law.’

‘Why have you come to me?’ Ash enquired drily.

Tabby rolled her eyes, helplessly inflamed by his attitude. ‘Troy thought you were such a great guy—’

Ash tensed, telling himself that none of what she had told him was any of his business, yet the thought of an innocent baby going into foster care roused a riot of reactions inside him drawn from his own memories. ‘But I never met Troy.’

‘He did try to meet you because he said his mother, Olympia, used to work for your mother,’ Tabby recounted.

Acheron suddenly frowned, straight black brows pleating as old memories stirred. Olympia Carolis, he recalled very well as having been one of his mother’s carers. He had not appreciated when the guardianship issue had arisen that Troy was Olympia’s son because he had only known her by her name before marriage, although if he stretched his memory to the limit he could vaguely recall that she had been expecting a child when she left his mother’s employ. That child could only have been Troy.

‘Troy was frantic to find a job here in London and you were his business idol,’ Tabby told him curtly.

‘His...what?’ Ash repeated with derision.

‘False flattery won’t advance your cause,’ Stevos Vannou declared, much more at home in the current meeting than he had been in the last, for the matter of the will would require considerable research of case law to handle.

‘It wasn’t false or flattery,’ Tabby contradicted sharply, angry with the solicitor for taking that attitude and switching her attention back to Ash. ‘It was the truth. Troy admired your business achievements very much. He even took the same business degree you did. That and the fact he saw you as head of his family explains why he put you down as a guardian in his will.’

‘And there was I, innocent that I am, thinking it was only because I was rich,’ Acheron breathed with sardonic bite, his dark deep drawl vibrating down her spine.

‘You really are a hateful, unfeeling creep!’ Tabby slammed back at him tempestuously, fiery emotion ablaze in her violet eyes. ‘Troy was a lovely man. Do you honestly think he realised that he was going to die at the age of twenty-four in a car accident? Or that his wife would suffer a stroke within hours of giving birth? Troy would never have taken a penny from anyone that he hadn’t earned first.’

‘Yet this lovely man left both his widow and child destitute,’ Ash reminded her censoriously.

‘He didn’t have a job, and Sonia was earning enough money at the time through the business we owned. Neither of them could possibly have foreseen that both of them would be dead within a year of having that will drawn up.’

‘But it was scarcely fair to name me as a guardian without prior discussion of the idea,’ Acheron pointed out drily. ‘The normal thing to do would have been to ask my permission first.’

Rigid with tension, Tabby made no comment. She recognised that he had a point but refused to acknowledge the direct hit.

‘Perhaps you could tell us without further waste of time exactly what you imagine Mr Dimitrakos could do to help you?’ Stevos Vannou sliced in, standing on the sidelines and thoroughly disconcerted by the sheer level of biting hostility erupting between his usually imperturbable employer and his visitor.

‘I want to ask Mr Dimitrakos to support my wish to adopt Amber.’

‘But is that a realistic goal, Miss Glover?’ the lawyer countered immediately. ‘You have no home, no money and no partner, and my own experience with Social Services and child-custody cases tells me that at the very least you need a stable lifestyle to be considered a suitable applicant to adopt.’

‘What the heck does having or not having a partner have to do with it?’ Tabby demanded defensively. ‘This past year I’ve been far too busy to waste time looking for a man.’

‘And with your approach it might have proved a considerable challenge,’ Acheron interposed without hesitation.

Tabby opened and closed her lush mouth in angry disconcertion and took a seething step closer to the Greek billionaire. ‘You accused me of having no manners? What about your own?’ she snapped in outrage.

Studying the two adults before him squabbling and insulting each other much as his own teenaged children did, Stevos averted his attention from them both. ‘Miss Glover? If you had had a partner it would certainly have made a big difference to your application. Raising a child today is a challenge and it is widely believed that two parents generally make that easier.’

‘Well, unfortunately for me a partner isn’t something I can dig up overnight!’ Tabby exclaimed, wishing the wretched man would think of something other than picking holes in her suitability to adopt Amber. Didn’t she have enough to worry about?

A germ of a wild idea leapt into Stevos’s brain, and he skimmed his insightful gaze to Acheron and addressed him in Greek. ‘You know, you could both help each other...’

Ash frowned. ‘In what possible way?’

‘She needs a stable home and partner to support her adoption application—you need a wife. With a little compromise on both sides and some serious legal negotiation, you could both achieve what you want and nobody would ever need to know the truth.’

Acheron was always quick on the uptake but for a split second he literally could not believe that Stevos had made that speech, could even have dared to suggest such an insane idea. He shot a disdainful glance at Tabby Glover and all her many obvious deficiencies and his black brows went skyward. ‘You have to be out of your mind,’ he told his lawyer with incredulity. ‘She’s a foul-mouthed girl from the back streets!’

‘You’ve got the money to clean her up enough to pass in public,’ the older man replied drily. ‘I’m talking about a wife you pay to be your wife, not a normal wife. If you get married, all your problems with regard to ownership of the company go away—’

In brooding silence, Acheron focused on the one massive problem that would not go away in that scenario—Tabby Glover. Not wife material screeched every one of his sophisticated expectations, but he was also thinking about what he had learned about Troy Valtinos and his late mother, Olympia, and his conscience was bothering him on that score. ‘I couldn’t marry her. I don’t like her—’

‘Do you need to like her?’ Stevos enquired quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have thought that was a basic requirement to meet the terms of a legal stipulation to protect your company. You own many properties. I’m sure you could put her in one of them and barely notice she was there.’

‘Right at this moment the first thing on my agenda has to be the child,’ Acheron startled his lawyer by asserting. ‘I want to check up on her. I have been remiss in my responsibilities and too quick to dismiss them.’

‘Look...’ While Stevos was engaged in giving Ash an alarmed look at that sudden uncharacteristic swerve of his into child-welfare territory, Tabby had folded her arms in frustration and she was glowering at the two men. ‘If you two are going to keep on chatting in a foreign language and acting like I’m not here—’

‘If only you were not,’ Ash murmured silkily.

Tabby’s hands balled into fists. ‘I bet quite a few women have thumped you in your time!’

Shimmering eyes dark as sloes challenged her, his lean strong face slashing into a sudden smile of raw amusement. ‘Not a one...’

Amber, Tabby reminded herself with painful impact, her heart clenching at the thought of the child she adored. She was here to ask for his help for Amber’s sake, and Amber’s needs were the most important consideration, not how objectionable she found the despicable man. His charismatic smile struck her like a deluge of icy water. He was incredibly, really quite breathtakingly, handsome and the fact that he found her amusing hurt. Of course, Tabby had never cherished many illusions about her desirability factor as a woman. Although she had always had a lot of male friends, she’d had very few boyfriends, and Sonia had once tactfully tried to hint that Tabby could be too sharp-tongued, too independent and too critical to appeal to the average male. Unfortunately, nobody had ever explained to Tabby how she could possibly have survived her challenging life without acquiring those seemingly unfeminine attributes.

‘You want to meet the child?’ Stevos stepped in quickly before war broke out again between his companions and wasted more time.

A sudden smile broke across Tabby’s face like sunshine, and Acheron studied her intently, scanning her delicate features, realising that there could be an attractive female beneath the facade of bolshie belligerence. He liked women feminine, really, really feminine. She was crude and unkempt and the guardian of Olympia’s granddaughter, he reminded himself doggedly, striving to concentrate on the most important element of the equation. And that was the child, Amber. He cursed the fact that he had not known of the connection sooner, cursed his own innate aversion to being tied down by anything other than business. He had no relatives, no loving relationships, no responsibility outside his company and that was how he liked his life. But not at the expense of basic decency. And his recollection of Olympia, who had frequently been kind and friendly to a boy everyone else had viewed as pure trouble, remained one of the few good memories Ash had of his childhood.

‘Yes. I want to see the child as soon as possible,’ Acheron confirmed.

Tabby tilted her head to one side, taken aback by his change of heart. ‘What changed your mind?’

‘I should have personally checked into her circumstances when I was informed of the guardianship,’ Acheron breathed grimly, angry with himself for once at the elaborate and very protective support system around him that ensured that he was never troubled by too much detail about anything that might take his mind off business. ‘But I will take care of that oversight now and be warned, Miss Glover, I will not support your application to adopt the little girl unless I reach the conclusion that you are a suitable carer. Thank you for your help, Stevos, but not for that last suggestion you made...’ Sardonic dark eyes met the lawyer’s frowning gaze. ‘I’m afraid that idea belongs in fantasy land.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I COULD’VE DONE with some advance warning before you came to visit,’ Tabby remarked thinly, after giving the uniformed chauffeur the address of the basement flat where she was currently staying, courtesy of her friend, Jack.

Jack, Sonia and Tabby had become fast friends and pseudo-siblings after passing their teenaged years in the same foster home.

Tabby eased slowly into the leather upholstered back seat of Acheron’s unspeakably fancy limousine and studiously avoided staring starstruck at her surroundings but, dear heaven, it was a challenge not to stare at the built-in bar and entertainment centre. She had, however, enjoyed a mean moment of glorious one-upmanship when she sailed out of the front doors of the DT building with the doors held open by the same security guards who had, the hour before, manhandled her on the top floor.

‘Obviously a warning would’ve been unwise. I need to see how you live without you putting on a special show for my benefit,’ Acheron responded smoothly, flipping out a laptop onto the small table that emerged at the stab of a button from the division between front and back seats.

Tabby gritted her teeth at that frank admission. Any kind of fake special show was not an option open to her in the tiny bedsit that she was currently sharing with Amber. It was purely thanks to Jack, who was a small-time builder and property developer, that she still had Amber with her and had not already been forced to move into a hostel for the homeless and give up Sonia’s daughter. It hurt that her long-term friendship with Sonia counted for nothing next to the remote blood tie Acheron Dimitrakos had shared with Troy. What had they been? Troy’s gran had been a cousin of Acheron’s mother, so Acheron was what...a third cousin or something in relation to Amber? Yet Tabby had known and loved Sonia since she was ten years old. They had met in the children’s institution where they were both terrorised by the older kids. Tabby, having grown up in a violent home, had been much more used to defending herself than the younger girl. Sonia, after all, had once been a loved child in a decent family and tragically orphaned by the accident in which her parents died. In comparison, Tabby had been forcibly removed by the authorities from an abusive home and no longer knew whether her parents were alive or dead. There had been a few supervised visits with them after she was first taken away, many attempts to rehabilitate her mother and father and cobble the family back together, but in reality her parents proved to be more attached to their irresponsible lifestyle than they had ever been to their child.

Acheron Dimitrakos worked steadily at his laptop, making no effort to start up a conversation. Tabby compressed her generous mouth and studied him. She knew he had already decided that she was a rubbish person from the very bottom of the social pile. She knew he had taken one look and made judgements based on her appearance...and, doubtless, her use of bad language, she conceded with a sneaking feeling of shame.

But then she doubted he knew what it felt like to be almost at the end of your tether. He was so...self-possessed, she decided resentfully, her violet gaze wandering over his bold bronzed profile, noting the slight curl in his thick black hair where it rested behind his ear and the extraordinary length of his dense inky-black eyelashes as he scrutinised the screen in front of him. Imagine a boyfriend with more impressive lashes than you have yourself, she ruminated, unimpressed, her soft mouth curling with disdain.

It annoyed her that he looked even more gorgeous in the flesh than he had in the magazine photographs. She had believed the photos must’ve been airbrushed to enhance his dark good looks but the evidence to the contrary was right before her. He had high aristocratic cheekbones, a perfectly straight nose and the wide, sensual mouth of a classic Greek statue. He was also extremely tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and long-legged—in fact, he was graced with every attractive male attribute possible.

Not a nice, caring person though, she reasoned staunchly, determined to concentrate on his flaws. Indeed, thinking of how he had outright refused to take any interest in Troy and Sonia’s daughter, it was a challenge to understand why he should be suddenly bothering to come and see Amber now. She decided that she had made him feel guilty and that, after all, he had to have a conscience. Did that mean that he would support her application to adopt Amber? And even more importantly, would his opinion carry any weight with Social Services?

* * *

Acheron could not concentrate, which annoyed the hell out of him. Tabby Glover never sat still, and the constant movements of her slight small body on the seat beside him were an irritating distraction. He was too observant, he thought impatiently as he noted the bitten nails on her small hands, the shabbiness of her training shoes, the worn denim of jeans stretched taut over slender thighs, and he suppressed a sigh. He was out of his depth and although he had told Stevos to return to his office he was not enjoying the course he had set himself on. After all, what did he know about a young child’s needs? Why did he feel guilty that he had already made up his mind to the hard fact that this young woman was not a fit sole guardian for a baby girl?

When the car came to a halt, Tabby slid out of the limo and bounced down the steps to stick her key in the front door of the basement flat. Here goes, she conceded nervously as she spread wide the door.

Ash froze one step inside, aghast at the indoor building site that comprised her accommodation. There was scaffolding, buckets and tools lying around, wires dangling everywhere, plasterboard walls. Tabby thrust open the first door to the left of the entrance.

Acheron followed her into a small room, packed with furniture and a table bearing a kettle and mini-oven and scattered with crumbs. Baby equipment littered almost every other surface. A teenage girl was seated on the bed with work files spread around her and when she saw Tabby she gathered up her files with a smile and stood up to leave. ‘Amber’s been great. She had a snack, enjoyed her bottle and she’s been changed.’

‘Thanks, Heather,’ Tabby said quietly to the girl who lived in the apartment above. ‘I appreciate your help.’

The child was sitting up in the cot wedged between the bed and the wall on one side. Acheron surveyed the child from a safe distance, noting the mop of black curls, the big brown eyes and the instant dazzling smile that rewarded Tabby’s appearance.

‘How’s my darling girl?’ Tabby asked, leaning over the cot to scoop up the little girl and hug her tight. Chubby arms wrapped round her throat while curious brown eyes inspected Acheron over Tabby’s shoulder.

‘What age is she?’ Ash enquired.

‘You should know,’ Tabby said drily. ‘She’s over six months old.’

‘Do the authorities know you’re keeping her here?’

A flush of uneasy colour warmed Tabby’s cheeks as she sat down on the bed because Amber was getting heavier by the day. ‘No. I gave them Jack’s address. He’s a friend and he bought this apartment to renovate and sell on. He’s allowing us to stay here out of the goodness of his heart. He hasn’t the space for us at his own place.’

‘How can you live in such a squalid dwelling with a young child and believe that you’re doing the best you can for her?’ Acheron condemned.

‘Well, for a start, it’s not squalid!’ Tabby flared defensively and hurriedly rose to set Amber back into her cot. ‘It’s clean. We have heating and light and there’s a fully functional bathroom through that door.’ She pointed a hand to the opposite wall, and the gesture fell down in effectiveness because her arm shook and she hurriedly lowered it again. Tears were suddenly stinging the back of her eyes, and her head was starting to thump with the onset of a stress headache. ‘For the moment I’m just doing the best I can but we’re managing.’

‘But you’re not managing well enough,’ Ash stated curtly. ‘You shouldn’t be keeping a young child in accommodation like this.’

Her brow pulsing with the band of tension tightening round it, Tabby lifted her hands to release the weight of her hair from the ponytail. Acheron watched a torrent of long blonde hair fall down to her waist and finally saw something he liked about her appearance: blonde hair that was natural unless he was very much mistaken, for that pale mass had no dark roots or streaky highlights.

‘I’m doing the very best I can,’ Tabby countered firmly, wondering why he was staring at her, her self-conscious streak on override, her pride still hurting from the ‘squalid’ comment.

‘And how are you supporting yourself?’ Acheron asked with a curled lip.

‘I’m still cleaning. I didn’t lose all my clients when I had to close my business down, and those I kept I’m still working for. I take Amber with me to the jobs. Most of my clients are out at work anyway so her coming with me doesn’t bother them,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘Take a look at her. She’s clean and well fed and happy. We’re rarely apart.’

Ash assimilated the information with a grim twist of his expressive mouth. ‘I’m sorry, but your best isn’t good enough. Nothing I’ve seen here will convince me otherwise. You don’t have a proper home for the child. You’re clearly living on the poverty line—’

‘Money isn’t everything!’ Tabby protested. ‘I love her and she loves me.’

Ash watched the slender blonde lean over the cot rail to gently stroke the little girl’s head and saw the answering sunny smile that the gesture evoked. No such love or tenderness had featured in his childhood experience, and he fully recognised the fact, but he was also bone-deep practical and not given to changing his mind mid-course. ‘Love isn’t enough on its own. If you had a supportive family to back you and a proper home to raise her in I might feel differently, but you on your own with her in this dismal room and dragging her out with you to cleaning jobs is wrong,’ he pronounced with strong conviction. ‘She could do better than this, she should have better than this and it is her needs and not your own that you should be weighing in the balance.’

‘Are you saying that I’m selfish?’ Tabby prompted in disbelief, because she had given up so much that was important to her to take care first of Sonia, after she had suffered her first stroke, and ultimately her baby daughter.

Beneath the shocked onslaught of eyes the colour of rain-washed amethysts, Acheron’s stubborn jaw line clenched hard and his mouth compressed. ‘Yes. You have obviously done the best you can and given her continuity of care since her mother’s death but now it’s time for you to step back and put her best interests ahead of your own personal feelings.’

The tears glistening in Tabby’s eyes overflowed, marking silvery trails on her cheeks, and for the first time in years Acheron felt like a real bastard and yet he had only told the truth as he saw it. I love her and she loves me. Yes, he could see the strength of the bond before him but it couldn’t cover up the cracks in the long-term struggle for survival he saw for them both. Olympia’s grandchild deserved more. Yet how did he put a price on the love and then dismiss it as if it were worthless?

‘What age are you?’ he pressed.

‘Twenty-five.’

‘I should’ve dealt with this situation when it first came up,’ Acheron acknowledged grimly, thinking that she was surely far too young and immature to take on such a burden and that he should have taken immediate action to resolve the situation the instant the guardianship issue arose. It was his fault that Tabby Glover had been left to struggle on with the child while becoming more and more dangerously attached to her charge.

‘Not if it meant parting Amber and me sooner,’ Tabby argued. ‘Can’t you understand how much I care about her? Her mother and I became best friends when we were kids, and I’ll be able to share my memories of her parents with her when she’s old enough to want that information. Surely there’s something you could do to help?’

But on a personal level, Acheron didn’t want to be involved. He always avoided emotional situations and responsibilities that fell outside company business, and it had been that very detachment that had first roused his late father’s concern that his only son should have set himself on such a solitary path.

Tabby searched Acheron’s handsome features, marvelling at his masculine perfection even as she appraised the glitter of his dark-as-jet eyes and the hard tension round his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I’ll do anything it takes to keep her...’

Acheron frowned, his brow furrowing. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What do you think? I’m desperate to keep Amber. If you have any suggestions on how I can be a better parent to her, I’m willing to listen and take advice,’ Tabby extended with the new-found humility of fear.

‘I thought you were offering me sex,’ Acheron confided bluntly.

‘Seriously?’ Tabby gasped in shock at that misconception. ‘Does that happen to you a lot? I mean...women... just offering?’

Acheron nodded cool confirmation.

Her violet eyes widened in astonishment and she lifted her head, pale blonde hair cascading in a silken tangle round her shoulders with the movement. In the space of a split second she travelled from possibly pretty to decidedly beautiful in Acheron’s estimation, and desire kindled; a desire he neither wanted nor intended to act on. His body was stubborn, though, and the pulse of heaviness at his groin was utterly disobedient to his brain, throwing up outrageous images of her lying on his bed, that lovely swathe of hair spread over his chest, that lush mouth gainfully employed in pleasuring him. He gritted his perfect white teeth, suppressing the outrageous fantasy, furiously conscious of the child’s innocent presence and his unprecedented loss of self-discipline.

‘Women just offer themselves? No wonder you’re so full of yourself,’ Tabby remarked helplessly, aware of the tension in the atmosphere, but unsure of its source as she stared back at him. She liked looking at him, didn’t know why or exactly what it was about those lean sculpted features that fascinated her so much. But as she collided with his stunning dark-as-midnight gaze, liquid warmth surged between her legs and her nipples tightened, a message even she couldn’t ignore or deny. He attracted her. The filthy rich Greek with his dazzling good looks and hard-as-granite heart attracted her. How foolish and deceptive physical chemistry could be, she reflected ruefully, embarrassment colouring her pale cheeks.

I’ll do anything it takes to keep her... And suddenly Acheron, rigid with the force of his self-control, was reasoning with a new and unfamiliar sense of freedom to think outside the box and he was thinking, Why not? Why the hell not? Possibly Stevos’s bright idea had not been as off the wall as it had first seemed. He and this strange girl both wanted something from each other, and he could certainly ensure that Amber benefitted from the deal in every way, thereby satisfying his uneasy conscience where the child was concerned.

‘There is a way you could keep Amber with you.’ Ash dangled the bait straight away, as always impatient to plunge to the heart of the matter.

Tabby leant forward where she sat, wide violet eyes intent on him. ‘How?’

‘We could apply as a couple to adopt her—’

Thoroughly disconcerted by that unexpected suggestion, Tabby blinked. ‘As a couple?’

‘With my backing it could be achieved but we would need to be married first,’ Ash delivered smoothly, deciding there and then that he would not admit the truth that he would have a great deal riding on the arrangement as well. That acknowledgement would tip the power balance between them and he refused to take that unnecessary risk and find himself being blackmailed. The less she knew, the less power she would have.

Astonishment was stamped on her small oval face. ‘Married?’

‘For the sake of the adoption application. I should think that the most traditional approach would have the likeliest and quickest chance of success.’

‘Let me get this straight...you’re saying you would be willing to marry me to help me get permission to adopt Amber?’ Tabby breathed in frank disbelief.

Acheron dealt her a sardonic look. ‘Naturally I’m not suggesting a proper marriage. I’m suggesting the legal ceremony and a joint application to adopt her. We would then only have to give the appearance that we are living below the same roof for as long as it takes to complete the proceedings.’

So, not a real marriage, a fake one, she mused, but even so she was still transfixed by the concept and the idea that he might be willing to go to such lengths to help her. ‘But why would you do that for us? A couple of months ago, you simply dismissed the idea that you could have any obligation towards Amber.’

‘I wasn’t aware then that she was Olympia Carolis’s grandchild—’

‘Olympia...who?’ Tabby queried blankly.

‘Troy’s mother. I only knew her by the name she had before she married. I knew her when I was a child because she worked for my mother and lived with us,’ Acheron volunteered with pronounced reluctance. ‘I lost all contact with that side of the family after my mother died. But I liked Olympia. She was a good woman.’

‘Yet you don’t have the slightest true interest in Amber,’ Tabby commented with a frown of incomprehension. ‘You haven’t even tried to hold her.’

‘I’m not accustomed to babies and I don’t want to frighten her,’ Acheron excused himself glibly and watched her process his polite lie. ‘I should’ve taken a greater interest in the child when I was first informed that I was one of her guardians. Your situation would not have reached crisis point had I accepted that commitment and taken my share of the responsibility.’

His admission of fault soothed Tabby, who had not been prepared for that amount of candour from him. He had made a mistake and was man enough to acknowledge it, an attitude that she respected. He had also moved a step closer to the cot and Amber, always a friendly baby, was beaming up at him in clear expectation of being lifted. But his lean brown hands clenched into taut stillness by his side, and she recognised that if anyone was frightened it was not Amber, it was him. Of course, he was an only child, and she assumed he had had little contact with young children because his rigid inhibited stance close to the baby spoke loudly for him.

‘So, you’ve changed your mind and you think I should adopt her?’

‘Not quite that,’ Ash declared levelly. ‘If we go ahead with this, I will be on the spot to oversee Amber’s welfare and if I’m satisfied that you’re a capable mother, I will release her fully into your care after we divorce. Naturally I will also ensure that when we part you have a proper home to raise her in.’

In other words, she would be on probation as a parent for the duration of the fake marriage, which was not good news on her terms. But Acheron Dimitrakos had to really care about what happened to Amber to be willing to get so involved and make such a sacrifice as marrying a stranger for the child’s benefit alone, she thought ruefully, suddenly ashamed of her prejudices about him.

He would be killing two birds with one stone, Ash decided with satisfaction, solving all his problems in one decisive act. He would choose a discreet location for the ceremony but at the same time, if anyone was to be expected to believe that they were a couple and the marriage genuine, she would have to undergo a major makeover first.

‘I’ll take you home with me now,’ Acheron pronounced. ‘Bring the baby...leave everything else. My staff will pack your possessions.’

‘Are you joking? Walk out the door with a strange man and move in with him?’ Tabby breathed in stark disbelief. ‘Do I look that naive and trusting?’

Acheron studied her levelly. ‘You only get one chance with me and, I warn you, I’m not a patient man. I can’t leave you and the child living here like this and, if we decide to go ahead with the marriage and adoption plan, there are things to be done, forms to be filled in without further waste of time.’

Tabby leapt up. As he shifted his feet in their highly polished leather shoes and elevated a sleek black brow in expectation he emanated impatience in invisible sparks, filling the atmosphere with tension. He thought he was doing her a favour and that she ought to jump to attention and follow his instructions and, because that was true, she wasn’t going to argue with him. In fact, just for once, she was going to keep her ready tongue glued to the roof of her mouth and play nice to keep him happy and willing to help. Yes, she would trust him, but common sense suggested that a male as rich and gorgeous as he was had many more tempting sexual outlets than a woman as ordinary as she was.

‘OK...’ Tabby stuffed nappies and bottles and a tub of formula milk into the worn baby bag, and threaded Amber’s chubby arms into a jacket that was slightly too small before strapping her into the car seat that she had had no use for since she had had to sell her car.

Acheron was already on his phone to his PA, telling her to engage an emergency nanny because he had no plans to trail the baby out shopping with them. The deal was done, only the details had to be dealt with now and he was in his element.

Ash stayed on the phone for the first ten minutes of their journey, rapping out instructions, making arrangements, telling Stevos to make a start on the paperwork. For the first time in a week he felt he was back in control of his life and it felt good. He stole a reluctant glance at Tabby, engaged in keeping Amber occupied by pointing out things through the windows. The awareness that Tabby Glover was going to prove very useful to him compressed his hard mouth because he was convinced that she would be difficult.

‘Where are you taking us?’ she asked, still in something of a daze after that discussion about adoption and marriage. She was scarcely able to credit that her and Amber’s luck had turned a magical corner because Acheron Dimitrakos bore not the slightest resemblance to a fairy godmother.

‘Back to my apartment where we will drop off...Amber,’ Acheron advanced warily.

‘And who are you planning to drop her off with? Your staff? That’s not going to happen,’ Tabby began forcefully.

‘I have organised a nanny, who will be waiting for us. We will then go shopping to buy you some clothes.’

‘Amber doesn’t need a nanny and I don’t need clothes.’

Acheron treated her to a scornful dark appraisal that burned colour into her cheeks. ‘You’re hardly dressed suitably. If we’re to put on a convincing act, you need clothes,’ he contradicted.

Anger flared in her violet eyes and her head turned sharply. ‘I don’t need—’

‘Just say the word and I’ll return you both to your clean and comfy basement,’ Acheron told her in a lethally quiet tone of warning.

Tabby sucked in a sudden deep breath and held it, recognising that she was trapped, something she never ever allowed herself to be because being trapped meant being vulnerable. But if she said no, refused to toe the line, she would lose Amber for good. There would be no coming back from that development because once Amber was removed from her care, she would be gone for all time.

Had Acheron Dimitrakos been right to censure her selfishness in wanting to keep Sonia’s daughter as her own? It was a painful thought. She hated to think that he could know better about anything but she knew that outsiders often saw more clearly than those directly involved. All she had to offer Amber was love, and he had said love wasn’t enough. But Tabby valued love much more highly because she hadn’t received it as a child and had often longed for the warm sense of acceptance, well-being and security that a loving parent could bestow. Only time would tell if Amber herself would agree that Tabby had made the wisest decision on her behalf.

Amber hugged Tabby in the lift on the way up to Acheron’s apartment, the little girl clinging in reaction to Tabby’s increasing tension. Acheron stood poised in the far corner of the mirrored compartment, a comfortable six feet three inches of solid masculine detachment. Tabby studied him in growing frustration, noting the aloof quality in his gaze, the forbidding cool of his lean, strong face. He was so unemotional about everything that he infuriated her. Here she was awash with conflicting emotions, terrified she was doing the wrong thing, putting her feelings rather than Amber’s needs first...and whose fault was that? She had not doubted her ability to be a good mother until Acheron Dimitrakos crossed her path. Now she was facing the challenge of also surrendering her pride and her independence to meet his expectations.

‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ she told him helplessly. ‘We mix like oil and water.’

‘A meeting of true minds is not required,’ Ash imparted with sardonic bite. ‘Stop arguing about every little thing. That irritates me.’

‘A nanny is not a little thing. Who is she?’

‘A highly trained professional from a reputable source. I would not put the child at risk.’

His intense dark eyes challenged her, and she looked away, her cheeks burning, her mouth dry, her grip on Amber still a little tighter than it needed to be. For a split second she felt as though Amber were the only sure element left in the world that he was tearing apart and threatening to rebuild. He intimidated her, a truth that made her squirm. Yet he was willing to help her keep Amber, she reminded herself doggedly, and that should be her bottom line. Whatever it took she should bite the bullet and focus on the end game, not how bad it might feel getting there.

‘Won’t the sort of marriage you suggested be illegal?’ she heard herself ask him abruptly. ‘You know, a marriage that’s just a fake?’

‘Why would it be illegal?’ he countered with icy cool. ‘What goes on within any marriage is private.’

‘But our marriage would be an act of deception.’

‘You’re splitting hairs. No one would be harmed by the deception. The marriage would simply present us as a conventional couple keen to adopt.’

‘You’re hopelessly out of date. Lots of couples don’t get married these days,’ Tabby pointed out.

‘In my family we always get married when it comes to child-rearing,’ Acheron told her smoothly.

That’s right, remind me that I’m not from the same world! Tabby thought furiously, a flush of antagonism warming her face as embarrassment threatened to swallow her alive. Her parents had not been married and had probably never even thought of getting married to regularise her birth.

Her gaze strayed inexorably back to him until she connected with smoky dark deep-set eyes that made her tummy lurch and leap and heat rise in her pelvis. There was just something about him, she thought furiously, dragging her attention from him as the lift doors whirred open and she hastily stepped out into a hallway, something shockingly sexy and dangerous that broke through her defences. She did not understand how he could act like an unfeeling block of superior ice and still have that effect on her.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NANNY, COMPLETE with a uniform that suggested she belonged to the very highest echelon of qualified nannies, awaited Acheron and Tabby in the spacious hall of Acheron’s apartment and within minutes she had charmed Amber out of Tabby’s arms and borne her off.

‘Let’s go,’ Acheron urged impatiently. ‘We have a lot to accomplish.’

‘I don’t like shopping,’ Tabby breathed, literally cringing at the prospect of him paying for her clothes.

‘Neither do I. In fact, usually the closest I get to shopping with a woman is giving her a credit card,’ Acheron confided silkily. ‘But I don’t trust you to buy the right stuff.’

Mutinously silent as she slid back into the waiting limousine in the underground car park, Tabby shrugged a slight shoulder, determined not to battle with him when it was a battle she could not win. Even so, he could dress her up all he liked but it wouldn’t change the person she truly was. No, she would be sensible and look on the clothing as a necessary prop for their masquerade, another move in what already felt more like a game than reality because in no realistic dimension did a girl like her marry a guy as rich and good-looking as him.

A personal shopper awaited them at Harrods where, surprisingly enough, Acheron appeared to be in his element. Tabby did not attempt to impose her opinions and she hovered while Acheron pointed out what he liked and the correct size was lifted from the rail. She soon found herself in a changing cubicle with a heap of garments.

‘Come out,’ Ash instructed impatiently. ‘I want to see you in the pink dress.’

Suppressing a groan, Tabby snaked into the classy little cocktail frock, reached down to flip off her socks and walked barefoot out of the cubicle.

Acheron frowned as she came to a halt and he strolled round her, staring at her slight figure in surprise. ‘I didn’t realise you were so tiny.’

Tabby gnawed at her lower lip, knowing she had skipped too many meals in recent months, painfully aware that she was too thin and that what delicate curves she had possessed had shrunk along with any excess body fat. ‘I’m a lot stronger than I look,’ she said defensively.

Acheron studied her doll-like dimensions with unabashed interest, his narrowed gaze running from her fragile shoulders down to her pale slender legs. He could’ve easily lifted her with one hand. He liked curves on a woman yet there was an aesthetically pleasing aspect to the pure delicacy of her build. Her breasts barely made an indent in the bodice of the dress and her hips made no imprint at all. Yet with that tousled mane of long blonde hair highlighting her pale oval face and bright violet eyes, she looked unusual and extraordinarily appealing. He wondered if he would crush her in bed and then squashed that crazy thought dead because sex would naturally not be featuring in their agreement. As she turned away, he froze, taken aback by the sight of the colourful rose tattoo marring the pale skin of her left forearm.

‘That dress won’t do,’ Acheron told the assistant thinly. ‘She needs a dress with sleeves to cover that.’

Gooseflesh crept over Tabby’s exposed skin, and she clamped a hand over the skin marking she had forgotten about. Beneath her fingers she could feel the rougher skin of the scar tissue that the tattoo pretty much concealed from view, and her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach, remembered feelings of bitter pain and heartache gripping her in spite of the years that had passed since the wound was first inflicted. She had made the clear considered choice that she could live better with the tattoo than she could with that constant reminder of her wretched childhood catching her unawares every time she looked in the mirror. Of course, the skin ink wasn’t perfect because the skin surface beneath it was far from perfect and the tattooist had warned her of the fact in advance. As it was, the rose, albeit a little blurred in its lines, had done the job it was designed to do, hiding the scar and providing a burial place for the bad memories. Only very rarely did Tabby think about it.

‘How could you disfigure your body with that?’ Acheron demanded in a driven undertone, his revulsion unhidden.

‘It’s of a good luck charm. I’ve had it for years,’ Tabby told him unsteadily, her face pale and set.

The personal shopper was already approaching with a long-sleeved dress, and Tabby returned to the cubicle, her skin clammy now with the aftermath of shock—the shock of being forced back, however briefly, into her violent past. The rose was her lucky charm, which concealed the vivid reminder of what could happen when you loved someone unworthy of that trust. So, he didn’t like tattoos; well, what was that to her? She put on the new dress, smoothed down the sleeves and, mustering her self-possession, she emerged again.

Acheron stared her up and down, his beautiful face curiously intent. Heat blossomed in her cheeks as he studied her with smouldering dark eyes, his tension palpable. Desire flickered low in her pelvis like kindling yearning for a spark, and she felt that craving shoot through every fibre of her body, from the dryness of her mouth to the swelling sensitivity of her nipples and the honeyed heat between her thighs. It made her feel light-headed and oddly intoxicated, and she blinked rapidly, severely disconcerted by the feelings.

‘That will do,’ he pronounced thickly.

She wanted to touch him so badly she had to clench her hands into fists to prevent herself from reaching out and making actual contact. She felt like a wasp being drawn to a honey trap and fiercely fought her reactions with every scrap of self-control left to her. Don’t touch, don’t touch, a little voice warned in the back of her head, but evidently he was listening to a different voice as he stalked closer and reached for her hands, pulling them into his, urging her closer, forcing her fingers to loosen within his grasp.

And Tabby looked up at him and froze, literally not daring to breathe. That close his eyes were no longer dark but a downright amazing and glorious swirl of honey, gold and caramel tones, enhanced by the spiky black lashes she envied. His fingers were feathering over hers with a gentleness she had not expected from so big and powerful a man and little tremors of response were filtering through her, undermining her self-control. She knew she wanted those expert hands on her body exploring much more secret places, and colour rose in her cheeks because she also knew she was out of her depth and drowning. In an abrupt movement, she wrenched her hands free and turned away, momentarily shutting her eyes in a gesture of angry self-loathing.

‘Try on the rest of the clothes,’ Acheron instructed coolly, not a flicker of lingering awareness in his dark deep voice.

Hot-faced, Tabby vanished back into the cubicle. Evidently he pressed all her buttons, and she had to stop letting him do that to her, had to stand firm. Of course he was sexy: he was a womaniser. He had insulted her with that crack about her tattoo and had then somehow switched that moment into something else by catching her hands in his and just looking at her. But she wasn’t some impressionable little airhead vulnerable to the merest hint of interest from an attractive man, was she? Well, she was a virgin, she acknowledged grudgingly, as always stifling her unease about that glaring lack in her experience with men. After all she had not intentionally chosen to retain her virginity; it had just happened that way. No man had ever succeeded in making her want to get that close to him, and she had no plans to share a bed with someone simply to find out what it was like.

And then Acheron Dimitrakos had come along and turned everything she thought she knew on its head. For, although he attracted her, she didn’t like him and didn’t trust him either, so what did that say about her? That she had a reckless streak just like her long-lost and unlamented parents?

Tension seethed through Acheron. What the hell was the matter with him? He had been on the edge of crushing that soft, luscious mouth beneath his, close to wrecking the non-sexual relationship he envisaged between them. Impersonal would work the best and it shouldn’t be that difficult, he reasoned impatiently, for they had nothing in common.

He watched her emerge again, clad in cropped wool trousers, high heels and a slinky little burgundy cashmere cardigan. She looked really good. She cleaned up incredibly well, he acknowledged grudgingly, gritting his teeth together as his gaze instinctively dropped to the sweet pouting swell of her small breasts beneath the clingy top.

He had done what he had to do, he reminded himself grimly. She was perfect for his purposes, for she had as much riding on the success of their arrangement as he had. Thankfully nothing in his life was going to change in the slightest: he had found the perfect wife, a non-wife...

He left Tabby alone with the shopper in the lingerie department and she chose the basics before heading for the children’s department and choosing an entire new wardrobe for Amber, her heart singing at the prospect of seeing the little girl in new clothes that fitted her properly. The chauffeur saw to the stowing of her many bags in the capacious boot of the limousine, and she climbed in beside Acheron, who was talking on the phone in French. She recognised the language from lessons at school and raised her brows. So, that was at least three languages he spoke: Greek, English and now French. She refused to be impressed.

‘We’ll dine out tonight,’ Acheron pronounced, putting the phone away.

‘Why the heck would you want to do that?’ Tabby demanded in dismay at the prospect.

‘If we want to give the appearance of a normal couple, we need to be seen out together. Wear that dress.’

‘Oh...’ Tabby said nothing more while she wondered what social horrors dining out with him would entail. She had never eaten out in a fancy restaurant, having always cravenly avoided such formal occasions, intimidated by the prospect of too much cutlery and superior serving staff, who would surely quickly spot that she was a takeaway girl at heart.

Two hours later, having showered and changed, Acheron opened the safe in his bedroom wall to remove a ring case he hadn’t touched in years. The fabled emerald, which had reputedly once adorned a maharajah’s crown, had belonged to his late mother and would do duty as an engagement ring. The very thought of putting the priceless jewel on Tabby’s finger chilled Acheron’s anti-commitment gene to the marrow, and he squared his broad shoulders, grateful that the engagement and the marriage that would follow would be one hundred per cent fake.

‘Fine feathers make fine birds’ had been one of her last foster mother’s favourite sayings, Tabby recalled as she put on mascara, guiltily enjoying the fact that she had both the peace and the time to use cosmetics again. Make-up had been one of the first personal habits to fall by the wayside once she took on full-time care of Amber. But the nanny had been hired to work until eleven that night, leaving Amber free to dress up and go out like a lady of leisure. A lady? She grimaced at the word, doubting she could ever match that lofty description, and ran a brush through her freshly washed hair before grabbing the clutch that matched the shoes and leaving the room.

Acheron’s apartment was vast, much bigger than she had expected. Tabby and Amber had been relegated to rooms at the very foot of the bedroom corridor, well away from the main reception areas as well as the principal bedroom suite, which seemed to be sited up a spiral staircase off the main hall. Acheron Dimitrakos lived like a king, she conceded with a shake of her head, wide-eyed at the opulence of the furnishings surrounding her and the fresh flowers blooming on every surface. They truly did come from different worlds. But the one trait they shared, she sensed, was an appreciation of hard slog and its rewards, so she hoped he would understand why she needed to continue to work.

‘Put it on,’ Acheron advised in the hall, planting an emerald ring unceremoniously into the palm of her hand.

Tabby frowned down at the gleaming jewel. ‘What’s it for?’

‘Engagement ring...marriage?’ Acheron groaned. ‘Sometimes you’re very slow on the uptake.’

Tabby rammed the beautiful ring down over her knuckle and squinted down at it, her colour high. ‘I didn’t know we were going for frills. I assumed you would choose more of a basic-package approach.’

‘Since we’ll be getting married pretty quickly and without a big splash our charade needs to look more convincing from the outset.’

‘I’m already living with you and wearing clothes you bought for me,’ she parried flatly. ‘Isn’t that enough of a show?’

‘Many couples live together without marrying, many women have worn clothing I paid for,’ Acheron derided. ‘What we have has to look more serious.’

The restaurant was dimly lit and intimate and their table probably the best in the room. Certainly the attention that came their way from the staff was so constant that Tabby found it almost claustrophobic. Having studiously ignored her during the drive while talking on his phone, Acheron finally allowed himself the indulgence of looking at his bride-to-be. Her blonde mane tumbled round her shoulders framing a vivid and delicate little face dominated by violet eyes and a lush fuchsia-tinted mouth. He couldn’t take his eyes off that mouth, a mouth modelled to make a man think of sin and sinning.

‘How am I performing so far as your dress-up doll?’ Tabby enquired mockingly to take her mind off the fact that she had still not established which knife and fork to use with the salad being brought to them.

‘You answer back too much but you look amazing in the right clothes,’ Acheron conceded, startling her with that compliment. ‘So far I’m very satisfied with our bargain, and you can be assured that I will play my part.’

As he reached for one fork she reached for another and then changed course mid-movement, her gaze welded to his lean brown hands. Just copy him, her brain urged her.

‘I’ve applied for a special licence. The legalities should be in place in time for the ceremony to be held on Thursday,’ Acheron delivered. ‘My lawyer is making all the arrangements and has contacted Social Services on our behalf with regard to our plans for Amber.’

‘My word, he’s a fast mover,’ Tabby remarked breathlessly.

‘You told me you didn’t want the child to go into foster care,’ he reminded her.

Her skin turned clammy at that daunting reminder of the unknown destination that would have awaited Amber had Tabby not gained his support. ‘I don’t but there are things we still haven’t discussed. What am I supposed to do while we’re pretending to be married?’

A winged ebony brow lifted. ‘Do? Nothing. You concentrate on being a mother and occasionally a wife. I will expect you to make a couple of appearances with me at public events. That is the sole commitment you have to make to me.’

‘That’s great because I want to start up my business again...in a small way,’ Tabby admitted abruptly.

His handsome features clenched hard. ‘No. That’s out of the question. The child deserves a full-time mother.’

Tabby couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Most mothers work—’

‘I will cover your financial requirements,’ Acheron delivered with unquenchable cool. ‘For the foreseeable future you will put the child’s needs first and you will not work.’

Tabby gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t want to take your money.’

‘Tough,’ Acheron slotted in succinctly.

‘You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.’

‘Can’t I?’

Tabby’s pulse had quickened until it felt as if it were beating in the foot of her throat, obstructing her ability to breathe and speak. Frustrated rage lay behind her choked silence as she stared across the table at him, her small face taut and pale. He was pulling strings as if she were a puppet. And wasn’t she exactly that?

A chill settled over her rage, safely enclosing it. He was willing to help her to adopt Amber and she was stuck with his outdated idealistic attitude whether she liked it or not. Yes, she could walk away from him but if she did so she would also be walking away from the child she loved. And that, Tabby reflected hollowly, she could not do.

Amber had tugged at Tabby’s heartstrings from the day she was born and Sonia was too weak, having suffered her first stroke within hours of the birth, even to hold her daughter. Consequently, for as long as Tabby needed Acheron’s support she would have to conform to his expectations. Facing and accepting that ugly frightening truth had to be one of the most humbling experiences Tabby had ever known because it ran contrary to every tenet she had lived by since adulthood. The threat of no longer being in full charge of her life genuinely terrified Tabby.

‘You seem to have lost your appetite,’ Ash remarked, watching her move the food around her plate without lifting anything to her ripe pink mouth.

It was a steak cooked rare, not the way she liked it. But then she had coped with the menu being written in pretentious French simply by making the exact same menu choices as he had.

‘You killed my appetite,’ Tabby countered thinly.

A forbidding look flitted across his chiselled features. ‘If restarting your business means that much to you, you should give up your desire to adopt a child, who will need much more of your time than you could give her as an independent businesswoman.’

Well, that certainly put his point of view across, Tabby conceded ruefully, sipping her water, ignoring the full wineglass beside it. She never touched alcohol, didn’t trust the effect it might have on her, feared it might even awaken a craving she might find hard to control. She couldn’t argue with Acheron Dimitrakos because setting up her business again would demand a great deal of her time. She compressed her lips, reasonably certain she could’ve coped without short-changing Amber but questioning for the first time whether or not that would have been fair to the child she loved. After all, she had personally never enjoyed the luxury of being a full-time mother and perhaps it would be more sensible to give that lifestyle a shot rather than dismissing it out of hand.

‘Are we on the same page?’ Acheron Dimitrakos asked impatiently over the cheese and crackers.

Mouth full at last of something she wanted to eat, Tabby nodded while trying not to imagine what it would feel like to be financially dependent on a man for the first time in her life.

As they emerged from the restaurant, Acheron banded an arm round her stiff spine, and she blinked in bewilderment at the daunting acknowledgement that they were literally surrounded by photographers. ‘Smile,’ he instructed her flatly.

And, hating it, she did as she was told.

‘What was that all about?’ she demanded once they were driving away.

‘Public proof of our relationship,’ Acheron supplied drily. ‘There’ll be an announcement of our engagement in The Times tomorrow.’

What relationship? Tabby thought with wry amusement. He said jump, she said how high? That was not a relationship, it was a dictatorship, but possibly he didn’t know the difference.

* * *

The plaintive cry roused Acheron from a sound sleep. He listened for a while but the noise continued. After a moment, he rolled out of bed with a curse on his lips and reached the bedroom door, before groaning out loud and stalking back to rummage through a drawer and extract a pair of jeans. He hated having guests. He hated any interruption to his usual routine. But Tabby was a better option than a real wife, he reminded himself with satisfaction, and a good deal less likely to develop ambitious ideas about hanging on to her privileged position.

He pushed open the door of the nursery and saw the baby in the cot. It was kicking its arms and legs in furious activity, its little face screwed up as it loosed a wail that would have wakened the dead. Only, apparently, not her wannabe adoptive mother. Ash hovered by the cot, his wide, sensual mouth on a downward curve. The baby sat up in a flash and looked expectant, even lifted its arms as if she expected him to haul her to freedom. It looked far too lively for a baby supposed to be sleeping.

‘No more crying,’ Ash decreed firmly. ‘I don’t like crying.’

The baby’s arms lowered, its rosebud mouth jutting out in a pout while its bright brown eyes studied him uncertainly.

‘You see, crying gets you nowhere,’ Ash explained helpfully.

Another heartbroken sob emanated from the baby. She looked incredibly sad and lonely, and Ash stifled a groan.

‘Aren’t you going to lift her? She needs comforting,’ Tabby murmured from the doorway, studying the little tableau of inflexible male and needy baby. It was infuriating to register that she couldn’t take her eyes off him when he was wearing only a pair of jeans. He had a six-pack that could have rivalled a top athlete’s and his lean, muscular bronzed chest was state-of-the-art perfection, showcasing a male body that could have played a starring role in any female fantasy.

‘Why would I lift her?’ Ash enquired with a raised brow, flashing her a glance and noticing in that one brief look that she was wearing a pale nightdress that revealed more than it concealed of her tiny body while she stood with her back turned to the light in the corridor. He glimpsed delicate little pink nipples and a pale shadowy vee between her thighs, and his body reacted with instantaneous arousal.

‘Because if you expect our adoption application to impress the powers-that-be, you need to be confident that you can handle Amber.’

‘I will be perfectly confident if the situation demands that of me, but at this hour of the day it would be very unwise to remove her from the cot,’ he declared. ‘She’s there for the whole night. It’s two in the morning, in case you haven’t noticed. Why raise her hopes by lifting her?’

Amber released another howl and, gripped by frustration, Tabby marched over to the cot, swept up the little girl and settled her without ceremony into Ash’s arms. ‘If she has a nightmare she needs comforting. She needs to know someone is there for her and a little cuddle usually soothes her.’

Amber was as shocked as Acheron to find herself in his arms. Wide brown eyes anxiously observed him. ‘Cuddle?’ Ash almost whispered the word in appalled disbelief. ‘You actually expect me to cuddle her?’

CHAPTER FOUR

WITH A GASP of irritation, Tabby removed Amber from his awkward hold and pressed her close. ‘Skin-to-skin contact is important,’ she demonstrated, kissing Amber’s hot brow.

‘I’m not doing the kissing stuff either,’ Acheron breathed witheringly.

‘Then smooth her hair, rub her back, make her feel secure in other ways,’ Tabby advised ruefully. ‘Stop being so resistant to my suggestions.’

‘And how do you suggest I do that? With a personality transplant?’ Acheron derided. ‘I’m no good with kids. I have no experience of that sort of affection.’

‘It’s never too late to learn,’ Tabby told him with determination, settling Amber carefully back into his arms. ‘Hold her closer, pet her. And please don’t tell me you have no experience of petting women.’

‘I don’t pet them. I have sex with them. This is not an appropriate conversation to have around a child!’ Acheron bit out in exasperation.

Picking up on his annoyance, Amber whimpered. He spread his fingers across her back in an uneasy rubbing motion.

‘Bring her closer,’ Tabby urged, approaching him to tuck the baby into the curve of his shoulder. ‘She’s not going to bite.’

Acheron could never recall feeling quite so tense or uncomfortable. He knew what she wanted from him but he didn’t want to do it. Then he thought of DT Industries, which would be one hundred per cent his only after the wedding, and he held the baby against him, deeming it a sacrifice worthy of such a result.

‘And talk to her,’ Tabby suggested.

‘What about?’ Acheron demanded with perfect seriousness, freezing as the baby nestled close of its own volition, disconcerted by the alien warmth and weight of her as she dug little hands into the flesh of his shoulder.

‘Stocks and shares if you like. It doesn’t matter at this age. It’s the sound and tone of your voice that matters,’ Tabby explained.

Acheron mumbled a Greek nursery rhyme.

‘And if you walk around the room with her, it might make you feel more relaxed.’

Acheron gritted his teeth and started to tell the baby exactly what he thought of Tabby in Greek, careful to keep the antagonism out of his voice. Amber looked up at him with big trusting brown eyes, and he marvelled at her ability to award that amount of trust to a complete stranger. If the baby could try, he could as well even if it did stick in his throat to be listening to Tabby’s instructions and following them. She maddened him, he acknowledged grimly, gently rubbing Amber’s back as he talked. The baby slowly rested its head down on his shoulder.

‘Give her to me,’ Tabby murmured. ‘She’s going back to sleep.’

‘And so ends lesson one,’ Acheron mocked as she settled Amber back into the cot and covered her again. Only it was not the child he was watching but Tabby. The pale grey silk glimmered in the dull light from the corridor, splaying across her thighs, outlining the plump little curves of her derriere as she bent over the cot rail, prominent nipples visible against the flimsy fabric as she straightened again.

Acheron was hard as a rock by the time he completed that far from fleeting appraisal. ‘You might want to cover up more around me,’ he commented. ‘Or is this a come-on?’

Her violet eyes flew wide as she faltered at the doorway, and she flashed him an incredulous glance back over a narrow shoulder. ‘Do you think you’re irresistible or something?’

Acheron strode over to the doorway. ‘You can’t be that innocent. Men are fairly predictable when there is so much bare skin on display.’

‘I am not on display,’ Tabby countered furiously, crossing her arms defensively over her lightly clad length, sharply disconcerted by the idea that he could see her body beneath the nightie. ‘When I came in I had no idea you would be in here.’

Acheron closed a hand around her wrist and tugged her into the corridor, shutting the door behind him. ‘I like what I see,’ he informed her softly.

Tabby stared up at him with fulminating force, noting the dark shadow of stubble outlining his stubborn jaw line and how that overnight growth enhanced his sheer masculinity. ‘But I’m not offering myself.’

‘No?’ Acheron dipped his handsome head and nibbled at the corner of her inviting mouth, invading with his tongue as soon as she parted her succulent lips. Without further ado, he hauled her up against him, hands weaving across her slender back and then sliding up to glance over the taut peaks of her breasts in a caress that made her shiver.

That single kiss had unholy pulling power. Tabby bargained with herself to continue it. One second, just one second more to feel the hungry plunge of his tongue that raised a riot of damp heat low in her body and then his hands, dear heaven, his hands skimming, brushing the tender tips of her breasts before cupping her urgently sensitive flesh. ‘No,’ she told him shakily.

‘No?’ Wine-dark eyes glittered down at her, and her swollen mouth ran dry because she wanted another kiss, wanted the wildness she experienced beneath his skilled hands, wanted more with a ferocity that terrified her. Long fingers splayed to her spine, tipping her into revealing contact with the erection that his jeans could not conceal. ‘We could have fun for an hour or two.’

‘Do I strike you as that easy?’ Tabby prompted tightly, outraged by the tone of his proposition. Did he think she was flattered by the idea of being his entertainment for a couple of hours? A quick and easy sexual convenience because there was no more appealing prospect available?

His stunning eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t make judgements like that about women. I’m not sexist. I enjoy sex. I’m sure you do as well.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she began heatedly, thinking he was little different from the men who, having bought her a drink, had assumed that they were entitled to her body and could not comprehend her reluctance. Sex as a leisure-time pursuit was not her style.

‘If you haven’t enjoyed sex before then you’ve been with the wrong men,’ Acheron assured her silkily, running a caressing finger along the ripe curve of her lower lip, and the breath feathered deliciously in her throat, a ripple of treacherous, unwelcome response quivering through her slender length.

‘You’re a class act in the persuasion stakes,’ Tabby told him very drily, stepping back out of reach, fighting the unexpected chill of separation from the allure of his warm, vital body. ‘But it’s wasted on me—though I’m a virgin, I’m well aware that a man will tell you practically anything to get you into bed.’

‘A...virgin?’ Ash echoed in an astonished undertone, disbelief clenching his taut dark features. ‘Seriously? Or is that a hook to pull me in deeper?’

Tabby slowly shook her head and then surrendered to laugh out loud. ‘You are so suspicious of women it’s not real. I don’t want to pull you into anything. In fact, I think it would be a very bad idea for us to get that involved.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of involvement...I was thinking of sex,’ Acheron traded smoothly. ‘A simple exchange of pleasure.’

Tabby noted the way he even had to separate involvement from the act of sex and registered that he was positively phobic when it came to the concept of commitment. He did not want her to misunderstand what was on offer: a bodily exchange of pleasure, nothing more, no strings whatsoever. ‘Goodnight,’ she said gruffly, turning on her heel.

‘A virgin...seriously?’ Acheron breathed in her wake, the dark deep richness of his accented drawl vibrating through her in the stillness of the silent apartment.

Tabby turned her head slowly back to him. ‘Seriously.’

Acheron frowned, dark brows drawing together, and stared at her, his eyes gleaming golden with curiosity and fascination in the overhead lights. ‘But why?’

‘I’ve never wanted to.’ Until now, a little voice piped up in her brain, for that passionate kiss and the carnal caress of his well-shaped hands had roused more hunger in Tabby than she had ever felt in her life. A fierce physical hunger that she sensed could easily get out of hand.

‘You wanted me, hara mou...’ Acheron murmured with assurance as she walked away from him, blonde hair streaming down her back like a pale flowing river highlighting the curve of her bottom.

Tabby knew she should say nothing, but she couldn’t resist the little devil inside herself that he provoked and she turned her head again, succumbing to temptation to murmur softly, ‘But obviously...not enough.’

That crack might have affected some men like a challenge, Acheron mused broodingly as he strode back to his room for a cold shower, but he was not one of those men because logic had always ruled his libido. If he slept with her it would clearly get messy, and he hated messy relationships and didn’t tolerate them for longer than it took to delete such women’s numbers from his phone.

He reminded himself of the dire consequences of his last reckless encounter, and it was even worse that Tabby was still a virgin. He found that hard to credit but could not see any advantage in her telling such a lie. A woman who was still a virgin at twenty-five had to have very high expectations of her first lover for why else would she have waited so long? He would not be that man, would never fit that framework or meet the demands she would make. He had been warned and from now on he would keep his distance....

* * *

Tabby screened a yawn and settled Amber down on the rug at her feet. So far, it had been a very boring morning. Acheron’s lawyer, Stevos, had arrived with a bundle of documents, which had been painstakingly filled in, and now he was engaged in explaining the pre-nuptial contract to her clause by painful clause. Naturally Acheron wanted to protect his wealth, and discussing the terms of divorce before they even got as far as the wedding would have been depressing had she been in love with him, but she wasn’t in love with him and couldn’t have cared less about his money.

‘But I don’t need anything like that amount of cash to live on after the divorce,’ Tabby protested worriedly. ‘I know how to live well on a small budget and even a quarter of that amount would be more than generous.’

‘You’re supposed to be out for all you can get,’ Acheron chipped in helpfully from his restive stance by the window. ‘Sign the contract and forget about it. Once you’ve lived in my world for a while, you’ll find your tastes have changed and that you want more.’

Tabby slung him a look of resentment. ‘I only want Amber out of this arrangement. I’m not going to turn into a greedy, grasping manipulator overnight either!’

‘Mr Dimitrakos simply wants you and the child to enjoy a secure and comfortable future,’ the lawyer interposed soothingly.

‘No, Mr Dimitrakos wants to buy my loyalty and my loyalty is not for sale!’ Tabby replied with spirit. ‘I very much appreciate what he is doing to help me keep Amber in my life and the very last thing I will do is take advantage of his generosity in any way. Please accept that.’

‘Sign,’ Acheron slotted with raw impatience. ‘This nonsense has taken up enough of my morning.’

‘You mustn’t forget to be present at the visit from the social worker this afternoon,’ Stevos reminded him doggedly.

Stevos planted another document in front of Tabby when she had signed the first. ‘It’s a standard confidentiality agreement, which will prevent you from talking about the terms of your marriage to anyone outside this office.’

‘That it’s a big fat fake has to stay a secret,’ Acheron interposed bluntly.

Suppressing a sigh, Tabby signed and then glanced up to watch Acheron as he talked to his lawyer in Greek. He was wearing a dark grey suit with a very subtle pinstripe and a purple shirt and he looked...absolutely amazing, as if he had stepped live out of a glossy magazine shoot. Sleek, sophisticated and breathtakingly handsome, he instantly commanded her gaze whenever he came within sight. There was no harm in looking at him and appreciating the view, she told herself ruefully. He was like a beautiful painting she could admire without needing to own, particularly as any woman with ideas of ownership where Acheron Dimitrakos was concerned was, in Tabby’s opinion, in for a very rough ride.

They had shared the breakfast table in his dining room earlier that morning but the table was literally all they had shared. He had read his newspaper while she tended to Amber and munched toast, struggling to eat as quietly as a mouse in a cat’s presence. It had proved neither sociable nor relaxed and she had already decided to eat her meals in the kitchen from now on.

‘One of my assistants is going to take you shopping now for a wedding dress,’ Acheron divulged as Tabby bent to lift Amber off the rug before she got her little hands on his shoelaces. ‘And we will have to engage a nanny to take care of Amber when we’re busy.’

Tabby straightened. ‘I don’t want a wedding dress...or a nanny.’

Scorching dark eyes assailed hers. ‘Did I ask for your opinion?’

‘No, but you’re getting it, no extra charge.’

‘A wedding dress is not negotiable.’

‘Nothing’s negotiable with you!’

Dark eyes flared sensual gold. ‘If you were willing to try a little harder to please, you might be surprised,’ he murmured huskily.

He was thinking about sex again: she knew it by the look in his eyes and the husky tone of his voice. Colour burned up hotly over her cheekbones as she dealt him a quelling glance.

‘I’ll be honest about this—I don’t want to waste a wedding dress on a phony marriage. It just seems wrong,’ Tabby admitted, lifting her chin. ‘I want to save the white wedding dress for the day I do it for real.’

‘Tough,’ Acheron responded obstinately, moving closer. ‘This may be a rush wedding but I want it to look as normal as possible and few women choose to get married without frills.’

Amber held out her arms to him and smiled.

‘Cuddle her,’ Tabby instructed, dumping the little girl into his startled arms. ‘Practice makes perfect and, just as I have to look convincing at the wedding, you have to look convincing as an adoptive father-to-be this afternoon.’

Amber yanked at Acheron’s silk tie with gusto and an appreciative grin suddenly slashed his mouth, shocking both his companions. ‘Amber really doesn’t give a damn about anything but attention and what amuses her in the moment.’

‘A baby’s needs are simple,’ Tabby agreed wryly, striving not to react to that intensely charismatic smile of his, which made her want to smile back like a dream-struck idiot. Just looking at him, amusement falling from his features, she felt slightly light-headed and her tummy hollowed as if she were travelling downhill at breathtaking speed on a roller coaster. ‘The nanny?’

‘A necessity when you will have other calls on your time,’ Acheron pronounced. ‘Be practical.’

Tabby breathed in deep, reluctant to argue with him when the social services interview was to take place within a few hours. She took Amber back into her arms and strapped her into her buggy where the little girl screwed up her face and complained vehemently.

‘She knows what she wants,’ Acheron remarked. ‘You will need to be firm as she gets older.’

‘Obviously.’

‘And you might find it a challenge to wear that wedding dress for real for some man when you already have a child in tow,’ Acheron delivered with lethal cool. ‘I don’t date single parents.’

‘Tell me something that surprises me,’ Tabby urged witheringly. ‘You’re too selfish, too concerned about protecting your own comfort level.’

‘I just respect my limitations.’

‘Nonsense. You can’t stand the idea of having to consider someone else’s needs before your own,’ Tabby traded.

‘So, what am I doing now in marrying you?’ Acheron demanded curtly.

‘You’re righting the wrong you committed a couple of months ago when you refused to be Amber’s guardian and no doubt that makes you feel so unselfish and perfect you think you’re one hell of a guy!’

Listening to that exchange, Stevos was staring in shock at Tabby and her colour was high when she released the brake on the buggy and wheeled it out of the door.

Acheron’s PA, Sharma, greeted her in the outer office and took her straight out to a limo for the shopping trip. Tabby was surprised to be taken to an exclusive and very fashionable wedding boutique rather than a department store, but appreciated that with the time available it would be a challenge to come up with a sophisticated dress that fitted the bill. While Sharma played with Amber, Tabby tried on gowns, finally selecting the least fussy available and choosing the accessories suggested by the attentive proprietor. That achieved, she returned to Acheron’s apartment and rang Jack to tell him that she was getting married and to invite him to the civil ceremony the following day.

‘Is this a joke?’ Jack asked.

‘No. It is kind of sudden but I know exactly what I’m doing. Acheron wants to adopt Amber with me.’

‘You’ve kept this very quiet. How long have you been seeing him for?’ Jack enquired ruefully.

‘A while. I didn’t know it was going to turn serious or I’d have mentioned it sooner,’ Tabby fibbed, wishing she could just have told the truth.

‘It’ll solve all your problems,’ Jack pronounced with satisfaction. ‘I’ve been really worried about you and Amber.’

* * *

Acheron turned up just in time for the interview with the social worker and swiftly proved a dab hand at twisting the truth, contriving to make it sound as if they had known each other far longer than they had. The older woman was so palpably impressed by Acheron and his incredible apartment that she asked few searching questions.

An hour later Tabby was feeding Amber and stealing bites from her own meal in the kitchen when Acheron appeared in the doorway, his expression thunderous. He swept up the highchair with Amber in it and turned on his heel.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Tabby cried, racing after him.

Acheron set the chair down at one end of the dining table. ‘We eat in here together. You do not eat in the kitchen like a member of my staff. That will not support the impression of a normal married couple.’

‘I shouldn’t think any of your staff could care less where we eat!’ Tabby replied.

‘But you need to be more cautious about appearances,’ Acheron spelled out the warning grimly. ‘Any one of my staff could sell a story to the tabloids and blow a massive hole in our pretence of being a couple.’

Tabby fell still. ‘I never thought of that. Can’t you trust your employees?’

‘Most of them but there’s always a rotten apple somewhere in the barrel,’ Acheron answered with cynical cool.

Tabby nodded and returned to the kitchen to fetch her meal. He thought of every pitfall from every possible angle and it shook her that he had evidently already suffered that kind of betrayal from someone close to him. It was little wonder that he continually expected the worst from people, she reflected ruefully.

‘Why were you eating in the kitchen?’ he enquired as she settled at the table.

‘I know you like your own space,’ Tabby said quickly.

‘You’re not comfortable eating with me. I noticed that in the restaurant the first night,’ Acheron commented, resting level dark eyes on her rising colour. ‘You’ll have to get over that.’

‘Yes, but it was a strain that first night,’ Tabby admitted, grudgingly opting for honesty. ‘I couldn’t read the menu because my French isn’t up to it. I didn’t even know which cutlery to use.’

A stab of remorse pierced Acheron. It had not even occurred to him that she might feel out of her depth at his favourite restaurant. ‘Cutlery isn’t important, hara mou—’

‘Believe me, it is when you don’t know which utensil to use.’

‘In future, ask.’ Acheron compressed his wide, sensual mouth, irritated that he had been so inconsiderate of the differences between them. ‘I’m not...sensitive. I won’t pick up on things like that unless you warn me. By the way, Sharma has engaged last night’s nanny to work for us. I’ve also secured permission for us to take Amber abroad.’

‘Abroad?’ Tabby exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘We’re heading to Italy after the wedding. I have a house there. It will be easier to keep up the newly married act without an audience of friends and acquaintances looking on,’ Acheron pointed out with irreproachable practicality.

* * *

Tabby woke early the next morning. Well, it was her wedding day even though it bore no resemblance to the very special event she had once dreamt the occasion would be. For a start, Sonia would not be there to play bridesmaid as the two women had always assumed she would, and momentarily Tabby’s eyes stung with tears because sometimes the pain of losing her best friend felt like a wound that would never heal. She reminded herself that she still had Jack, but Jack was a man of few words and his girlfriend, Emma, was uneasy about his friendship with Tabby. As a result Tabby kept contact with Jack to the minimum. With a sigh, she rolled out of bed to go and tend to Amber and get dressed.

The nanny, Melinda, was in Amber’s bedroom. Tabby had forgotten about the nanny, forgotten that she was no longer the only person available to care for the little girl, and Amber was already bathed, dressed and fed. A little pang of regret assailed Tabby because she had always enjoyed giving Amber her first peaceful feed of the day. But Sonia’s daughter still greeted her with uninhibited love and affection, and Tabby buried her nose in the little girl’s sweet-smelling hair and breathed deep, reminding herself why she was marrying Acheron and meeting his every demand. Amber was worth almost any sacrifice, she conceded feelingly.

The ceremony was to be held at an exclusive castle hotel, and Tabby was amazed at how much it had been possible to arrange at such speed. Then she reminded herself that Acheron’s wealth would have ensured special attention and she scolded herself for being so naive.

Sharma had arranged for a hairstylist and a make-up artist to attend her at the apartment, and Tabby hoped that their professional skill would give her at least a hint of the glossy sophistication that Acheron’s female companions usually exuded. As quick as she thought that, she wondered why his opinion should matter to her. Was it simply a matter of pride?

Sharma helped lace Tabby into her dress while the stylist adjusted the short flirty veil attached to the circlet of fresh flowers attached to Tabby’s hair.

‘With those flowers on your head you look like the Queen of Summer...’ Sharma burbled enthusiastically. ‘Mr Dimitrakos will be blown away.’

It dawned on Tabby for the first time that she was dealing with someone who thought she was about to attend a genuine wedding and she flushed with discomfiture, quite certain that the last thing Acheron would be was ‘blown away’.

‘And watching the boss go to so much trouble to get married in such a hurry is so romantic,’ Sharma continued. ‘I used to think he was so...er, cold, no offence intended...and then I saw him with the baby and realised how wrong I was. Of course fatherhood does change a man...’

And Tabby registered that Sharma had, not unnaturally, added two and two to make five in her assumption that Acheron was Amber’s father. ‘Actually, Amber is the daughter of my late best friend and Acheron’s cousin,’ she explained, deeming it wiser to put the other woman right on that score.

* * *

Grim-faced, Acheron paced while he awaited the arrival of the bridal car. He was very tense. It might be a fake wedding but with the arrival of his stepmother, Ianthe, and two of her adult children along with several good friends, it felt unnervingly real and he was already fed up with making polite conversation and pretending to be a happy bridegroom. Unhappily, a wedding without guests would not have been a very convincing affair, he reminded himself impatiently, and at least the woman whose attendance would have been least welcome had failed to show up. Stationed by the window of the function room adorned with flowers for the ceremony, he watched as a limousine embellished with white ribbons that fluttered in the breeze drew up at the hotel entrance.

Tabby stepped out in a sleek bell of rustling white fabric and petticoats, little shoulders bare, her veil and glorious streamers of golden-blonde hair blowing back from her oval face. Acheron’s expressive mouth hardened even more, a nerve pulling taut at the corner of his lips. She looked as dainty and delicate as a doll and utterly ravishing, he noted in exasperation, cursing his all-too-male response to so feminine and alluring an image. Tabby didn’t just clean up well, in Stevos’s parlance; she cleaned up spectacular, Acheron conceded wryly, only absently registering the emergence of the new nanny clutching Amber, who was looking similarly festive in a candy-pink dress and matching hairband.

Tabby was guided straight into the ceremony where music was already playing. Her apprehensive glance took in the sea of faces and then lodged on Acheron and stayed there as if padlocked. Whoosh! She could feel all her defences being sucked away by the pure power of his compelling presence. He stared back at her, making no pretence of looking forward to the registrar, his stunning dark eyes golden and bright as sunlight in his lean face and so gorgeous he made something low in her body clench tight like a fist. Knees a tad wobbly, she walked down the short aisle between the seated guests and stilled by his side, the words of the brief ceremony washing over her while she frantically reminded herself that finding Acheron attractive was a one-way trip to disaster and not to be risked lest it should somehow threaten Amber’s future as well.

He slid a ring onto her finger and she did the same for him. Afterwards, he retained his grip on her hand, ignoring her attempt to tug gently free, and suddenly there was a crowd of people round them murmuring congratulations, and introductions were being made.

His stepmother was a decorative blonde with a shrill voice and she had a son and a daughter by her side, both of whom seemed rather in awe of Acheron, which gave Tabby the impression that he had never been a true part of his father’s family. Jack appeared with his girlfriend, Emma, and the other woman was friendlier than Tabby had ever seen her. Tabby chatted at length to Jack and turned only to find Acheron studying her, his handsome mouth compressed.

‘Who was that?’

‘Jack’s an old friend and the only person I invited,’ she proclaimed defensively.

‘How much did you tell him?’ Acheron enquired grimly.

‘I told him nothing,’ Tabby responded, wondering what his problem was. ‘He thinks this is all for real.’

Drinks were being poured and toasts made by the time a tall, curvy brunette in a sapphire-blue suit swept into the room without warning.

Someone close to Tabby vented a groan. The brunette marched up to them like a woman on a mission and shot an outraged look at Acheron’s stepmother, Ianthe. ‘Mother, how could you take part in this insane charade when it goes against my interests?’ she demanded loudly. ‘I should have been the bride here today!’

‘Let’s not go there, Kasma,’ her brother, Simeon, advised sheepishly. ‘We’re here to celebrate Ash’s wedding, and I know you don’t want to spoil the day by creating a scene.’

‘Don’t I?’ Kasma struck an attitude, furious dark eyes glittering bright. She was a very beautiful woman with a great figure, a perfect face and a torrent of long dark hair, Tabby noted in a daze of agitation. ‘Tell me, what has she got that I haven’t, Acheron?’ she demanded in a fierce tone of accusation.

Amber was starting to cry and Tabby took the opportunity to step out of the drama to join Melinda, the nanny, at the back of the room. After all, family squabbles and bitter ex-lovers were none of her business. Had Acheron had an affair with his stepsister? By the looks of it, it had been a rash move to utilise his charisma within the family circle, and she could understand why he had said on the first day that they met at his office that he had no family. His late father’s family spoke to Acheron as politely as the strangers they so clearly were. Evidently he had never lived with them, which made her wonder who he had lived with when he was younger because Tabby was convinced she remembered his very famous mother’s death being announced on television while she herself was still only a child.

Tabby took Amber into the baby-changing room, thinking that the histrionic Kasma would, with a little luck, be gone by the time she returned to sit down to a late and much-needed lunch.

But she was to have no such luck. No sooner had she finished undressing Amber than the door opened to frame Kasma’s lush shape. ‘Is that child Ash’s?’ she asked drily.

Tabby changed Amber, who was squirming like mad and craning her neck to look at the visitor. ‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so,’ Kasma said snidely. ‘Ash has never been the daddy type.’

Exasperation kindling, Tabby straightened her shoulders and turned her head. ‘Look, I don’t know you and I’m busy here—’

‘You know why Ash married you, don’t you?’ the brunette continued thinly. ‘I should have been Ash’s bride. No one understands him as well as I do. Unfortunately for all three of us, he’s too stubborn and proud to accept being forced to do what he should have done long ago.’

‘I don’t need to know what you’re talking about,’ Tabby told her uncomfortably. ‘It’s really none of my business.’

‘How can you say that when by marrying Ash you’re winning him a fortune?’ Kasma demanded resentfully, her mother’s vocal shrillness feeding into her sharp tone. ‘According to the terms of his father’s will if he stayed single until the end of the year he would lose half of his company to my family! And, of course, anyone who knows how Ash feels about his company would know that he would do virtually anything to protect it...even marry a totally unsuitable nobody from nowhere to maintain the status quo!’

CHAPTER FIVE

KASMA’S ACCUSATION RANG in Tabby’s ears like a nasty echo during the flight to Italy. After the brunette’s departure, lunch had proceeded quietly but Tabby had not had the advantage of a private moment in which to question Acheron. She had intended to raise the subject during the flight but Melinda was looking after Amber at the back of the cabin and she did not feel that she could speak freely.

Was it possible that Acheron had had a far more self-serving motive to marry than he had admitted? Tabby deemed it perfectly possible when she compared his refusal of all responsibility for Amber only months earlier with his sudden change of heart. Why on earth hadn’t she been more suspicious of that rapid turnaround of his? He had to think she was as dumb as a rock, she thought painfully, feeling betrayed not only by his lack of honesty but also by her own gullibility. What terms had been included in his father’s will? How could he possibly lose half of a company that belonged to him? And if Kasma’s information was correct, why hadn’t Acheron simply told Tabby the truth?

And the answer to that question could only be power, Tabby reflected with steadily mounting anger. As long as Tabby had believed that Acheron was doing her a favour for Amber’s sake she had been willing to meet his every demand because she had been grateful to him, believing that he was making a big sacrifice even if theirs was only a fake marriage. But what if it wasn’t like that at all? What if Acheron Dimitrakos had needed a conformable wife just as much as she needed the support and stability that would enable her to adopt Amber? That very much changed the picture and made them equals. But Acheron had never been prepared to treat Tabby as an equal. Acheron preferred to dictate and demand, not persuade and compromise. Well, those days were gone if Kasma had told her the truth...

‘You’re very quiet,’ Acheron commented in the car driving them through the Tuscan countryside. She had changed out of her wedding gown before leaving London, and he had felt weirdly disappointed when he saw her wearing the violet dress he had personally chosen for her in London instead. The fabric and long sleeves were too heavy for a warmer climate and there was a flush of pink on her face in spite of the air conditioning. The colour, however, brought out the remarkable shade of her eyes and somehow accentuated the succulent fullness of her pink mouth.

Acheron breathed in slow and deep, dropped his gleaming gaze only for it to lodge on a slender knee and the soft pale skin beneath, which only made him wonder if her skin would feel as silky to the touch as it looked. He gritted his teeth, cursing his high-voltage libido. It had never once crossed his mind until now that, even with the options he had, a platonic relationship might still be a challenge, but evidently he was suffering from sexual frustration. Why else would he find her so appealing?

‘I’m enjoying the views,’ Tabby proclaimed stiltedly, so angry with him that she had to bite her lower lip before she started an argument while still trapped in the car with him. ‘Where exactly are we going?’

‘A villa in the hills. Like most of my properties it once belonged to my mother but I had it renovated last year.’

Despite her anger, curiosity stirred in Tabby. ‘Your mother died when you were still quite young, didn’t she?’ she remarked.

His lean bronzed features clenched hard, dark golden eyes screening. ‘Yes.’

The wall of reserve he used as a shield cast a forbidding shadow over his expressionless face. ‘I lost my parents quite young too,’ Tabby told him, rushing to fill the uneasy silence with an innate sensitivity towards his feelings that annoyed her. ‘I went into foster care. That’s where I met Jack and Amber’s mum, Sonia.’

‘I didn’t realise you’d been in foster care,’ Acheron breathed flatly, well aware she would not have had the escape route from that lifestyle that had eventually been granted by his inherited wealth.

‘Well...’ Tabby responded awkwardly, colliding with impenetrable midnight eyes heavily fringed by spiky black lashes and fighting a sensation of falling...and falling...and falling. ‘They weren’t the happiest years of my life but there were some good times. The last foster home I was in was the best and at least the three of us were together there.’

That appeared to be the end of that conversation as Acheron compressed his lips in grim silence while Tabby fought that light-headed sensation and struggled to focus on her anger. So, Acheron Dimitrakos was gorgeous and he kept on making her hormones sit up and take notice but he was also a skilled manipulator and deceiver and only a complete fool would forget the fact. In addition, it had not escaped her notice that he really wasn’t interested in learning anything about her background and who she was as a person. But then had he ever seen her as a person in her own right? Or simply as someone he could easily use?

The car turned off the road and purred up a sloping driveway to the very large ochre-coloured stone building sprawling across the top of the hill. Tabby had to tense her lower lip to prevent her mouth from dropping open in comical awe because what he called a villa she would have called a palace. A fountain was playing a rainbow of sparkling water droplets down into a circular pool in the centre of a paved frontage already embellished with giant stone pots of glorious flowers. As she climbed out into the early evening sunshine, a flicker of movement from a shrubbery attracted her attention and a white peacock strutted out, unfurling his pristine feathers. The light caught his plumage as he unfurled it like a magnificent silver lace fan. The peacock posed, head high, one foot lifted, his confidence supreme in spite of his aloneness.

‘You remind me of that bird,’ Tabby muttered as the car carrying Amber and her nanny with the bodyguards drew up behind them.

Acheron raised an ebony brow enquiringly.

Embarrassed, Tabby shrugged. ‘Never mind. Could we have a word in private?’ she asked then.

‘Of course,’ he said without expression, but she didn’t miss the frowning glance he shot in her direction as she moved to speak to Amber and her nanny. The little girl was fast asleep though, and a last feed and an early night were clearly what she most needed after a long and exhausting day.

The hall of the villa was breathtaking. Gleaming stretches of marble flooring ran below the arches that separated the reception areas. Tabby had never seen so many different shades of white utilised in a decor or anything so impractical for a household with a child in tow. Of course they would not be staying for long, she reminded herself, and Amber wasn’t yet mobile so all the sharp-edged glass coffee tables and stylishly sited sculptural pieces on pedestals would scarcely endanger her.

‘Very impressive,’ she pronounced while Melinda followed the housekeeper up the wrought-iron and marble staircase.

‘I have a few calls to make,’ Acheron informed her and he was already swinging away, a tall, broad-shouldered male in a beautifully cut lightweight suit made of a fine fabric that gleamed in the light flooding through the windows.

‘We have to talk...’

Over the years, far too many women had fired that same phrase at Acheron and had followed it with dramatic scenes and demands for more attention that he found abhorrent. His powerful frame tensed, his lean, strong face shuttering. ‘Not now...later.’

‘Yes...now,’ Tabby emphasised without hesitation, violet eyes shimmering with anger, for she was not going to allow him to rudely brush her off as if she were the nobody from nowhere and of no account that Kasma had labelled her. If she toed his line and treated him like a superior being she would soon be thinking the same thing about herself.

‘What is this about?’ Acheron enquired coldly.

Tabby walked very deliberately out of the hall into the area furnished with incredibly opulent white sofas and slowly turned round, slim shoulders straight, chin lifted. ‘Is it true that to retain ownership of your company your father’s will required you to take a wife before the end of the year?’

His stubborn jaw line clenched. ‘Where did you get that story from?’ he asked grittily and then he released his breath with a measured hiss of comprehension. ‘Kasma...right?’

‘It’s true, then,’ Tabby gathered in furious disbelief. ‘She told me the truth.’

‘The terms of my father’s will are nothing to do with you,’ Acheron stated with chilling bite, his dark eyes deep and cold as the depths of the ocean.

But Tabby was in no mood to be intimidated. ‘How dare you say that when getting married must’ve suited you every bit as much as it suited me? Didn’t you think I deserved to know that?’

Acheron gritted his even white teeth together in a visible act of restraint. ‘What difference can it possibly make to you?’

‘I think it makes a huge difference!’ Tabby slung back at him, violet eyes darkening with seething resentment. ‘You made me feel as if you were doing me an enormous favour for Amber’s benefit.’

‘And wasn’t I?’ Acheron slotted in, utilising a tone that was not calculated to soothe wounded feelings.

‘And you can stop being so rude right now!’ Tabby launched at him, that derisive tone and superior appraisal of his lashing her like an offensive assault. ‘Yes, Acheron, it is rude to interrupt and even more rude to look at me as if I’m some bug on the ground at your feet! I was completely honest with you but you, and no doubt your lawyer, deceived me.’

Eyes smouldering gold, Acheron was having trouble holding on to his temper. ‘How you were deceived? I did exactly as I promised. I married you, I helped you to lodge an adoption application and I have ensured your future security. A lot of women would kill for one half of what I’m giving you!’

Her slender hands closed into irate fists. She wanted to pummel him as he stood there, the king of all he surveyed, cocooned from ordinary mortals and decent moral tenets by a level of wealth and success she could barely imagine. ‘You are so arrogant, so hateful sometimes I want to hit you and I’m not a violent person!’ Tabby hastened to declare in her own defence. ‘Do you honestly not understand why I’m angry? I was frank with you. There were no lies, no pretences, no evasions. I believe I deserve the same respect from you.’

His wide, sensual mouth curled. ‘This doesn’t feel like respect.’

‘Is this how you normally deal with an argument?’

‘I don’t have arguments with people,’ Acheron responded levelly.

‘Only because people probably spend all their time trying to please and flatter you, not because they always agree with you!’ Tabby snapped back in vexation. ‘For someone who appears very confrontational, you’re actually avoiding the issue and refusing to respond to my natural annoyance.’

‘I don’t wish to prolong this argument, nor do I see anything natural about your annoyance,’ Acheron admitted curtly. ‘I don’t make a habit of confiding in people. I’m a very private individual, and my father’s will certainly falls into the confidential category.’

‘I had the right to know that I didn’t need to be grateful and submit to your every demand because you were getting even more out of this marriage than I was!’ Tabby condemned, refusing to be sidetracked by a red herring like his reserve. ‘You used my ignorance like a weapon against me!’

‘The will was a matter of business and was of no conceivable interest to you,’ Acheron stated in a raw undertone.

‘Don’t talk nonsense. Of course it was of interest to me that you had as much need to get married as I did!’ she flashed back at him. ‘It levels the playing field.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, there is no playing field because this is not a game!’ Acheron countered angrily. ‘I married you and now that you’re my wife, you’re trying to take advantage of your position.’

Her violet eyes widened and she planted her tiny hands on her hips, just like a miniature fishwife getting ready to do battle, he decided, torn between grudging amusement and exasperation. ‘Take advantage? How am I taking advantage? By standing up to you for once? By daring to state my side of the case?’ she hissed back at him with simmering rancour.

Acheron strode forward, planted two hands over hers and hauled her up into the air before she could even guess his intention. He held her there, entrapped. ‘You don’t have a side of the case to argue, moraki mou—’

Enraged by his behaviour, Tabby glowered down at him. ‘If you don’t put me down, I’ll kick you!’ she launched at him furiously.

In response, Acheron banded her closely to his big powerful length, ensuring that her legs were as trapped as her hands. Dark golden eyes fringed by heavy black lashes held hers fast. ‘There will be no kicking, no hitting, no bad language—’

‘Says who?’ Tabby bit out between gritted teeth.

‘Your husband.’ Acheron frowned as though that aspect had only just occurred to him and he was as much amused as irritated by the reality.

It was as if she were a firework and he had lit her up inside. Rage blazed through Tabby. ‘You are not my husband!’

Unholy amusement lit Acheron’s eyes, whipping up the lighter tones she had noticed before and giving him an extraordinary appeal that made her mouth run dry and her tummy perform acrobatics. ‘Then what am I?’

‘A rat with a marriage certificate!’ Tabby snapped at him informatively.

Acheron gave her a look of mock sympathy. ‘Your rat because you’re stuck with me.’

‘Put...me...down!’ Tabby ground out fiercely. ‘Or you’ll regret it!’

‘No, I much prefer this set-up to you shouting at me from across the room.’

‘I was not shouting!’

‘You were shouting,’ Acheron repeated steadily. ‘That is not how I conduct disputes.’

‘I don’t give a monkey’s about how you like to conduct your disputes!’ Tabby fired back.

It was those sparkling eyes, that incredibly succulent and inviting mouth of hers, Acheron mused abstractedly, conscious that she somehow hauled fiercely on every libidinous hormone he possessed and fired him up like a horny teenager. He didn’t understand it, didn’t care, didn’t think he needed to, but without conscious volition he drew that tempting mouth up to his and crushed it under his, and the taste of her was as rich and fragrant and luscious as juicy strawberries on a summer day.

‘No... No,’ Tabby’s dismayed objections, voiced as much to her wayward self as to him, were swallowed up by the hot, hungry pressure of his erotically charged mouth on hers.

Nobody had ever kissed Tabby as he did with all the passion of the volatile nature he kept under wraps, but which she sensed every time she was with him. He demanded and teased and the force of his sensual lips on hers followed by the invasive plunge of his tongue was unbelievably exciting and sexy.

He was very, very sexy, she acknowledged dimly, as if it was an excuse, and as he hoisted her higher to get a better grip on her slight body he let go of her hands and, instead of using them to get free of his hold, she balanced one on a broad shoulder and delved the fingers of the other into the springy, luxuriant depths of his black hair. With a guttural sound low in his throat he brought her down on something soft and yielding and then sealed her fast to the hard, driving length of his powerful frame.

And even as a faint current of alarm blipped somewhere in the back of Tabby’s head she was aware of how much she loved feeling his strong, muscular body over and on hers. In fact, her every skin cell was leaping and bouncing with pent-up energy long before his fingers closed over the slight thrust of her achingly sensitive breast, and she strained up breathless and bound by a new tide of sensation. Indeed, desire had infiltrated her with such powerful effect that she scarcely knew what she was doing any more. Nothing had ever felt more necessary; nothing had ever felt more thrilling than the hot, hungry stimulation of his mouth and his hands. Spasms of excitement were quivering through her in a gathering storm. But then other sounds suddenly cancelled out those physical responses: a stifled gasp linked to the rattle of china and the sound of hastily receding footsteps.

‘My goodness, what was that?’ Tabby exclaimed, dragging her mouth from beneath his to find that she was lying on a sofa beneath him. Beneath him, her brain repeated, and her body went into panic mode when she collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and pushed at his shoulders, wriggling out from under his weight at frantic, feverish speed.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ Acheron husked, closing long brown fingers over hers.

And it’s just that simple and casual for him, she told herself angrily, furious that she had not contrived to resist him. She perched at the far end of the sofa, smoothing her tumbled blonde hair back from her brow, a slight tremor in her hands and her face so hot with mortification she could have boiled eggs on it. ‘No, let’s not...it would mess up things.’

‘The bed would be more comfortable than the sofa,’ Acheron declared single-mindedly.

‘I’m not talking about where...I’m saying no, we’re not going to do that!’ Tabby slung back at him in frustration, wincing at the nagging bite of separation from his lean, hard body, fighting the ache of longing between her thighs with defiant determination. No way was she planning to be one more in a no doubt long line of easy women for Acheron, a mere female body to scratch an itch for a male unaccustomed to doing without sexual satisfaction.

Acheron sprawled back at the other end of the sofa, long powerful thighs spread so that she noticed, really couldn’t help noticing, that that little tussle with her body had seriously aroused his. Her face burned even hotter and her tummy hollowed just looking at the prominent bulge at his pelvis, reactions to a physical craving she had never experienced before assailing her in an unwelcome wave.

All of a sudden and no thanks to Acheron for the lesson, she was realising why she was still a virgin. No other man had ever attracted her enough to make her drop her guard and yearn for sex. Sex, yes, that was all it would be, straightforward, unvarnished sex, not something a sensible woman would crave, and she was very sensible, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she? It really bothered her that even while thinking along those lines and carefully realigning her defences she was still fully engaged in appreciating the pure male beauty of Acheron’s lean bronzed face and long, powerful body.

‘You want me,’ Acheron breathed a little raggedly. ‘I want you.’

‘Weird, isn’t it...? I mean, we can’t even be civil to each other,’ Tabby pronounced shakily, still as out of breath as he was, recalling that wild entanglement and the fierce need he had sent powering through her and then suppressing the uncomfortable memory before standing up, smoothing down her dress with careful hands.

‘Yet you burn me up, hara mou,’ Acheron breathed huskily, springing upright with easy grace.

Tabby turned her head away. ‘Let’s not talk about that...you and me? It would be a very bad idea. We have as much in common as a cat and a dog. I’d like to see my room,’ she completed, moving back with determination towards the hall.

‘I’ll show you. We’ve frightened off the staff,’ Acheron volunteered with an unconcerned laugh. ‘I think that noise was someone bringing us coffee and we were seen.’

‘Yes, I can imagine what they saw,’ Tabby cut in stiltedly, wishing he would drop the subject.

‘Well, that’s at least one person who will believe that we’re genuine honeymooners,’ Acheron replied nonchalantly, refusing to take the hint as he led the way up the marble staircase.

‘But we’re not,’ she reminded him doggedly.

‘You’re not a very flexible personality, are you?’

‘You’d roll me out like pastry if I was,’ Tabby quipped. ‘I’m still mad at you, Acheron. You took advantage of my ignorance.’

‘I’m an alpha male, programmed at birth to take advantage,’ Acheron pointed out with unapologetic cool. ‘But you called me on it, which I wasn’t expecting.’

He pushed open double doors at the end of the corridor and exposed a small hall containing two doors. ‘That’s my room.’ He thrust open one door and then the second. ‘And yours...’

Tabby worried at her full lower lip. ‘Do we have to be so close?’

‘I don’t sleepwalk,’ Acheron murmured silkily. ‘But you’re very welcome if you choose to visit.’

‘I won’t be doing that.’ Tabby strolled in the big room, glancing into the en suite that led off and then into a dressing room to slide open a wardrobe, only to frown at the garments packed within. ‘Didn’t your last girlfriend take her clothes with her?’

‘Those are yours. I ordered them,’ Acheron explained. ‘You’ll need summer clothes here.’

Tabby spun back to study him with simmering violet eyes. ‘I’m not a dress-up doll.’

‘But you know that all I want to do is undress you, moraki mou.’

Tabby went pink again and compressed her lips.

‘You blush like a bonfire,’ Acheron remarked with sudden amusement as he strode off to make use of another door on the opposite side of the room that evidently led to his suite.

Tabby thought about turning the lock and then decided it would be petty, for surprisingly on that level she trusted him and had no fear that he might try to take what she was not prepared to offer. If she withstood his appeal, she was quite certain he would withstand hers and find some far more amusing and experienced quarry to pursue. Unfortunately, she didn’t like the idea of him with another woman in the slightest and she told herself off for that because she knew she couldn’t have it both ways. Either they were together or they were not; there was no halfway stage to explore.

Acheron stripped off for a cold shower. He was still ragingly erect and wondering when a woman had last turned him down. He couldn’t remember, and the shock of Tabby’s steely resolve still rankled. But it was a timely warning to steer clear, he reflected impatiently, his sensual mouth twisting as he stifled the urge to fantasise about having her tiny body wrapped round him while he satisfied them both. If she attached that much importance to sex, he definitely didn’t want to get involved because sex meant no more to him than an appetite that required regular satisfaction.

Tabby rifled through the new wardrobe he had acquired for her without even mentioning his intent. She tugged out a long cotton dress that looked cool and, more importantly, covered up anything that she imagined a man might find tempting. If he kept his hands off her, she would keep her hands off him. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth. She had wanted to rip his clothes off him on that sofa, and the incredible strength of the hunger he had awakened still shocked her in retrospect. But nothing more was going to happen, nothing, she stressed inwardly with more force than cool. She could handle him, of course she could. He might be a very rich, very good-looking and very manipulative male but she had always had a good gut instinct about how best to look after herself.

Buoyed up by that knowledge, Tabby got changed, freshened up and went off to find out where the nursery had been set up.

CHAPTER SIX

‘IT’S TIME YOU told me something about yourself,’ Acheron declared, settling back into his seat and cradling his wineglass in one elegant hand.

Tabby was ill at ease. The grand dining room and the table festooned with flowers and fancy dishes for the first meal they were to share as a married couple made her feel like Cinderella arriving at the ball without a prince on hand to claim her. He had watched her watching him to see which cutlery to use, and the awareness had embarrassed her, making her wish that she had never confessed her ignorance. ‘What sort of something?’

Acheron raised an ebony brow. ‘Let’s be basic—your background?’

He was so relaxed that he infuriated her, sheathed in tight faded denim jeans and a black shirt left undone at the throat. She had assumed he would dress up for dinner much as aristocrats seemed to do on television shows and, if she was honest, that was probably why she had picked the long dress. But instead of dressing up, Acheron had dressed down and, maddeningly, he still looked amazing, black hair curling a little from the shower, stubborn jaw line slightly rough with dark stubble, lustrous dark eyes pinned to her with uncompromising intensity and she couldn’t read him, couldn’t read him at all, hadn’t a clue what he was thinking about.

‘My background’s not pretty,’ she warned him.

He shrugged a shoulder in dismissal of that objection.

Tabby clenched her teeth and stiffened her backbone. ‘I imagine my conception was an accident. My parents weren’t married. My mother once told me they were going to give me up for adoption until they discovered that having a child meant they could get better housing and more benefits out of the welfare system. They were both druggies.’

Acheron no longer seemed quite so relaxed and he sat forward with a sudden frown. ‘Addicts?’

‘I warned you that it wasn’t pretty. Their drug of choice was whatever was cheapest and most easily available. They weren’t parents in the normal sense of the word, and I don’t think they were even that keen on each other because they had terrible fights. I was simply the child who lived with them,’ Tabby proffered tightly. ‘And I got in the way...frequently because children have needs and they didn’t meet them.’

Acheron forced his shoulders back into the chair, his astonishment at what she had told him concealed by his impassive expression. He almost told her then and there in a revelation that would have been unprecedented for him that they had much more in common than a cat and a dog.

‘Have you heard enough?’ Tabby enquired hopefully.

‘I want to hear it all,’ Acheron contradicted levelly, slowly comprehending the base level of painful isolation and insecurity from which that chippy, aggressive manner of hers had undoubtedly been forged. Tabby had been forced at an early age to learn to fight for her survival, and that he understood.

‘I was the kid in the wrong clothes at school...when they got me there, which wasn’t very often. Then my father started to take me with him as a lookout when he burgled houses,’ she confided flatly, hating every word she was telling him but somehow needing him to know that she could handle her troubled, crime-infested childhood and indeed had moved far beyond it. ‘Social Services got involved when he was caught in the act and eventually, because I was missing so much school and my parents were incapable of looking after me properly, I was put into care.’

‘As was I,’ Acheron admitted gruffly. ‘I was ten years old. What age were you?’

Tabby stared back at him wide-eyed. ‘You...were in care? But your parents must have been so wealthy.’

‘Which doesn’t necessarily mean that they were any more responsible than yours,’ Acheron pointed out drily. ‘Believe me, my mother’s money didn’t protect me, although it did protect her until the day she died from an overdose. Her lawyers rushed her out of the country before she could be prosecuted for neglecting me.’

‘What about your father?’ Tabby prompted sickly, still shaken and appalled that he, who seemed so very assured and rich and protected, could ever have lived within the care system as she had. All at once she felt guilty about the assumptions she had made.

‘His marriage to my mother only lasted about five minutes. When she got bored with him she told him that the child she was expecting—me—was the child of her previous lover...and he believed her,’ Acheron explained flatly. ‘He couldn’t have afforded to fight her for custody in any case. I met him for the first time when I was in my twenties. He came to see me in London because a relative of his had noticed how very alike we looked in a newspaper photograph.’

‘So what did your mother do with you?’ Tabby asked, sipping at her glass of water.

‘Very little. The trust who controlled her millions paid for a squad of carers to look after her and keep her worst excesses out of the newspapers. She was addicted to drugs too,’ Acheron divulged tautly. ‘But once I was no longer a baby none of her staff had a direct mandate to look after me, and my mother was, all too frequently, high as a kite. So I was left to my own devices, which eventually attracted the attention of the authorities. I had no other relatives to take responsibility for me.’

Painfully aware of the grim memories shadowing his eyes and the sad knowledge that his father could not have been waiting in the wings to take charge of him, Tabby stretched her hand across the table without even thinking about it and rested it down on his, where his long, elegant fingers were braced on the tablecloth. ‘I’m sorry.’

His arrogant dark head came up at a combative angle even as he lifted his hand to close it round hers, glancing down at their linked hands in virtual bewilderment as if he couldn’t quite work out how that connection had happened. Dark colour crawled up to accentuate the high cheekbones that gave his face such strength and definition. ‘Why would you be sorry? I imagine I got off lighter than you. I suspect you were physically mistreated...?’

Her oval face froze. ‘Yes,’ she almost whispered in confirmation.

‘I only met with physical abuse after I entered the care system. I was an obnoxious little brat by then, semi-feral and may well have deserved what I got,’ Acheron volunteered between gritted teeth.

‘No child deserves pain,’ Tabby argued.

‘I endured two years of complete hell and innumerable different homes until my mother died and the trustees rescued me. I was sent off to boarding school for what remained of my childhood.’

Tabby’s heart squeezed tight and her throat thickened at the awareness that just like her he had grown up knowing nothing of the love and security of a happy home and committed parents. She had been so wrong about him and it shamed her that she had been so biased purely because his late mother had been a famous Greek heiress. ‘You never forget it...how powerless and lost you feel,’ she framed unevenly.

Acheron looked across the table at her, his stunning dark golden eyes glittering. ‘You leave it behind you, move on,’ he told her squarely, suddenly releasing her hand.

‘Yes, but it’s always there somewhere in the back of your mind.’ Starstruck even as she yanked her hand back, she collided with his eyes and the rare warmth of connection there and it made her feel not as if she was falling but instead flying high as a bird, breathless and thrilled.

‘Not if you discipline yourself,’ Acheron asserted smoothly.

‘Tell me about your father’s will,’ Tabby urged, already dreading the return of the cold reserve that was beginning to clench his lean, darkly handsome features again.

‘Some other time. We’ve raked over enough personal stuff for one evening...surely?’ A sleek black emphatic brow lifted, the force of his will bearing down on her from the lambent glow of his beautiful lustrous dark eyes.

And Tabby, who was usually like a nail stuck to a magnet when in the grip of curiosity, quelled her desire to know more, conceding that, for a male as famously reticent as he was, he had been remarkably frank with her when he hadn’t needed to be, for she knew of no stories referring to his dysfunctional upbringing that had ever appeared in the media. She swallowed back her questions and lifted a fork to attack the dessert that had been brought to the table.

‘I’m crazy about meringue,’ she confided. ‘And this is perfectly cooked, crunchy on the outside, soft inside.’

A flashing smile crossed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘A little like you, then? All fight on the surface and then all tender when it comes to another woman’s child?’

In receipt of that rare smile, she felt her heart race. ‘I only want Amber to have all the things I never had.’

‘An admirable ambition. I’ve never had the desire to reproduce,’ Acheron admitted, watching the tip of her tongue flick out to catch a tiny white crumb of meringue that could not possibly have tasted any sweeter than her lush mouth. Just like that he was hard as a rock again, imagining what else she might be able to do with her tongue, and the heavy pulse of mounting need at his groin was infuriating. It made him feel out of control and, because he despised that kind of weakness in any part of his life, he gritted his teeth and battled for restraint.

‘I’ve never been the broody sort,’ Tabby burbled, licking the fork before dipping it into the delicious dessert again, uncomfortably aware of the dark golden swoop of his gaze following her every move. ‘But I was with Sonia when Amber was born and then I had to look after her the first few weeks until Sonia was strong enough after her stroke to leave hospital. I’m afraid that by that stage I was committed heart, soul and body to Amber...our attachment just happened and then Sonia had the second stroke and died immediately.’ She paused, clashed with his caramel-shaded eyes and felt her mouth run dry. ‘Please stop staring at me.’

‘Then stop playing with the fork,’ Acheron suggested huskily. ‘Naturally I’m picturing you spread across the table as an infinitely more appealing main course than the one I’ve eaten.’

Surprised colour sprang into her face, and she dropped the fork with a clatter. ‘Do you ever think of anything but sex?’

‘And you’re not thinking about it too?’ Acheron derided thickly, studying her with burning intensity.

And the pink in her cheeks burned hotter than ever because he was perfectly correct. His raw masculine virility called to her on a visceral level. The table between them felt like a barrier she wanted to push out of the way. She wanted things she had never wanted before. She wanted to taste that intriguing little triangle of brown male skin visible below his throat, kiss a path along that stubborn jaw line, touch, explore. And even worse the mere thought of such experimentation made the blood race through her veins, her nipples tighten and push against her bodice while a liquid sensation of squirming warmth flowered between her thighs. So, this is lust, she told herself sharply. Grow up and deal with it like a woman, not a frightened little girl.

Acheron thrust back his chair and vaulted to his full commanding height of well over six feet. ‘Come on...’

‘No, sit down,’ Tabby told him shakily, very much afraid that she knew exactly where he wanted her to go and even more afraid that she was ready to say yes, for never in her life had she ever felt anything as powerful as the primitive longing he awakened in her.

‘Don’t look at me like that and then try to tell me what to do, hara mou. It doesn’t work,’ Acheron advised, strolling round the table to move behind her and tug out the chair with her still seated in it.

‘One of us has to try to be sensible,’ Tabby protested in desperation.

Acheron bent down and scooped her out of the chair as if she were a child. ‘Why?’ he queried thickly, his warm breath fanning her throat. ‘We’re not hurting anyone. We’re both free agents. We can do as we like—’

‘That’s not how I live.’

‘You’ve trapped yourself in a cage of irrational rules because that makes you feel safe,’ Acheron countered, striding across the hall with her still cradled in his arms. ‘But I can keep you safe too...’

Only he could still hurt her, just as easily as he could silence her arguments and sweep her literally off her feet, Tabby acknowledged feverishly even as her fingers reached up of their own accord to skate admiringly along the clean, hard line of his jaw. ‘You don’t make me feel safe.’

‘But then you don’t trust anyone,’ Acheron countered with a swift downward glance at her anxious face. ‘Neither do I. Even so, I can promise you that I won’t lie to you.’

‘Not much of a comfort when you could give tips to Machiavelli on how best to get your own way by nefarious means,’ Tabby traded, provoking a surprised laugh from Acheron as he mounted the stairs. She knew decision time had come and gone and she wanted his mouth on hers so badly that it literally hurt even to think about it.

He lowered her to the carpet to open the first door, grabbed her hand as though he was afraid she would run off last minute and virtually dragged her into his bedroom. ‘Now, I finally have you where I want you. Can you believe that this is our wedding night?’

‘But it isn’t...we’re not really married.’ Tabby leant back against his bedroom door, taut with tension because she was sincerely out of her comfort zone and could scarcely breathe for nerves. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves about that. Neither one of us ever had any plans to make this a proper marriage. I may be wearing a wedding ring but it’s meaningless.’

Acheron didn’t know a single woman of his acquaintance who would have reminded him of that fact at that precise moment, or who would have come to his bedroom without a carefully set agenda of ambitious and mercenary acquisition in mind. In the strangest possible way, Tabby was a breath of fresh air in his life, he reflected, uneasy with the thought.

‘I know.’ Like a hunter stalking a wary doe, Acheron approached and closed both of his hands over hers to pull her forward into his arms. ‘But nothing that feels as exciting as this could possibly be meaningless,’ he traded huskily.

‘It’s only hormones.’

‘Says the woman who hasn’t a clue what’s going to be happening in that bed,’ Acheron teased, feathering his mouth hungrily over the soft, silky contours of hers and making her shiver.

‘Of course I know what happens...’ But she still didn’t quite know what she was doing there with him, breaking her rules of self-protection by letting him get that close, risking the vulnerability she always shunned. ‘It’s just sex,’ she told him staunchly.

‘It will be amazing sex,’ Acheron predicted, skimming the straps down on her dress, pressing his hungry mouth to a slight-boned shoulder while pressing her close, letting her feel the hard-packed urgency in his lean body while reminding himself that he would have to go slow.

‘I love your confidence,’ Tabby whispered half under her breath.

‘I thought it annoyed you.’

Tabby stretched up on tiptoe to link her arms round his neck and tug his handsome dark head down to her level. ‘Shut up,’ she told him helplessly, entrapped by dark eyes blazing like a banked golden fire across her face.

Acheron hoisted her off her feet and brought her down at the foot of the bed to flip off her shoes. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he admitted.

‘If it hurts, it hurts,’ Tabby said prosaically, determined not to surrender to apprehension because, with the single exception of her deep attachment to Amber, she had never felt as much as he made her feel either emotionally or physically. She supposed she was suffering from some kind of idiotic infatuation with him but assumed it would fade as time went on. ‘Is this a one-time thing?’ she asked him abruptly.

Engaged in slipping off her shoes, Acheron glanced back at her, amusement playing attractively about the wilful, passionate set of his mouth. ‘You can’t plan everything in advance, Tabby.’

‘I do,’ she told him tautly. ‘I always need to know exactly where I am and what I’m doing.’

And his mouth claimed hers slow and deep and hungry and the tight knot of anxiety inside her unfurled because, in that moment, her senses locked to his, her body screaming with eagerness for more...more...more, and she couldn’t stay focused the way she usually did. He unzipped the dress and extracted her from its folds with an ease and exactitude that briefly chilled her because she discovered she couldn’t bear to think of him with the other lovers who must have honed his skills.

‘What’s wrong?’ he prompted, more attuned to her than she had expected, instantly picking up on her renewed tension.

Perhaps she was, at heart, a terribly jealous, possessive person, she reasoned in mortification, troubled by her thoughts and wondering how she could possibly know what she was like when she had never enjoyed a deeper relationship with a man. There she perched, shivering a little in spite of the warmth of the room, suddenly conscious that she was clad only in bra and knickers and that her body was far from perfect.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she breathed while he continued to study her troubled face with a frown. ‘All right!’ she exclaimed as if he had repeated the question. ‘I was just thinking that you’re very smooth at stripping clothes off a woman!’

And Acheron burst out laughing, revelling in that honesty, appreciating that she would simply say whatever she thought without considering its impact and instead saying only what he might want to hear. That quality was another rarity in his world. ‘Thank you...I think,’ he teased.

‘And you’re still wearing too many clothes,’ Tabby protested, all too aware of her own half-naked state as she struggled not to recall that she had really tiny breasts and was pretty skinny everywhere else where it was said to matter to a man. After all, regardless of her deficiencies, he wanted her. That was a certainty that buoyed her up as she watched dark golden eyes flare over her with unashamed desire and appreciation.

He laughed and shed his shirt, kicked off his shoes with the complete unselfconsciousness of a male who had never been inhibited in a woman’s presence or constrained by the fear that a woman might not admire what he had to offer. Her throat ran dry as he unveiled the superb expanse of his bronzed torso, exposing the lean, ripped muscles of his six-pack. Poised there, black stubble darkening his handsome jaw, eyes glinting, hair tousled by her fingers with his jeans hanging low on his narrow hips as he unzipped them, he was as gorgeous as a tiger in his prime: glossy and strong and beautifully poised.

She tried and failed to swallow when she saw the tented effect of his boxers, the all too prominent evidence of his readiness outlined by the fine fabric. When his long, elegant hands began to sweep off that final garment she averted her attention and reached back awkwardly to unhook her bra, peeling it off before scrambling below the linen sheet to rip off her knickers in an effort to seem a little more in control than she was.

‘I want you so much, koukla mou,’ Acheron growled, yanking the sheet off her from the foot of the bed so that she sat up again, wide-eyed and thunderously aware of her nakedness. ‘I also want to see you, watch you—’

‘There’s not a lot to see!’ she gasped, her small body crowding back against the banked-up pillows.

Acheron locked a hand round one slender ankle and pulled her very gently down the bed. ‘What I see is beautiful,’ he breathed thickly, his hungry scrutiny skimming from the tangle of blonde curls at the apex of her thighs to the glorious hint of secret pink beneath and the mouth-watering swell of her breasts topped by prominent pale pink nipples. In one movement he was up on the bed by her side.

‘I’m not.’

‘Don’t want to hear it!’ he interrupted, long fingers fisting in the tumble of her golden hair to hold her still as he skated his mouth back and forth over her lips until they parted and his tongue speared inside, delving and exploring with a thoroughness that deprived her of breath and sanity. He could kiss, oh, yes, he could kiss, and then his fingers teased very gently at her straining nipples and he lowered his mouth there, catching a painfully sensitive peak between his lips and plucking it with a tugging intensity that made her nipple throb and arrowed heat straight down into her pelvis.

She trembled, and her spine arched as he pressed her flat on the mattress, dividing his attention now between the distended buds, suckling on her, flicking his tongue back and forth until the tingles of awareness rose like a tide to engulf her. She trembled, insanely aware of the gathering of heat and moisture between her thighs and the intolerable ache building there along with the desperate desire to be touched.

‘You’re very responsive,’ Acheron purred, studying her with heavy-lidded eyes the colour of melted toffee set between the twin fringes of his black lashes. He skimmed a hand down her thigh, stroked her between her legs, and her hips shifted up in supplication. He possessed her swollen mouth again with carnal hunger before he sent a finger delving into her hot, damp heat.

A sound of helpless keening pleasure was wrenched from Tabby. All of a sudden everything she was feeling was centred in that one tormentingly sensitive area of her body. He settled his mouth to her throat and nuzzled a leisurely trail along the side of her neck, awakening nerve endings she had not known she possessed. What she could not understand was that in the space of minutes she had travelled from not being very sure of what she was doing to craving what he was offering with every straining sinew in her body.

‘If at any stage you want me to stop, just say so, koukla mou,’ Acheron husked.

‘Wouldn’t that be very difficult for you?’ she whispered, her hand smoothing down over his muscled chest to discover the thrusting power of his erection.

‘I’m not a teenager. I can control myself,’ Acheron growled, arching up into her hand as she traced the velvet-smooth hardness of his shaft while marvelling at the size of him. In that field, he had more than she had expected, more width, more length, and she didn’t want to think about how on earth he could make them fit as nature had intended. With a slight but perceptible shudder of reaction he relocated her stroking fingers to his muscled abdomen and added, ‘As long as you don’t do too much of that.’

Satisfied that she could affect him as much as he affected her, Tabby lay back only to release a whimper of startled sound as he circled her clitoris with expert fingers, unerringly striking the exact spot and the exact pace that would drive her over the edge fastest. Her heart was racing when he shifted down the bed, slid between her thighs and employed his mouth there instead. She had known about that, of course she had known, and had never thought she could be that intimate with any man but the insane pleasure he gave her drove all such logic from her mind, and she gasped and writhed and cried out. Enthralled by an exquisite torture of sensation that built and built, her body leapt out of her control altogether and jerked spasmodically into an intense climax that left her weak.

In the aftermath, Acheron rose up over her, lean, dark features taut and flushed with hunger, and she could feel the wide, blunt tip of him at the heart of her, pushing, precisely stretching her inner sheath until a sudden sharp pain made her cry out in surprise, and he froze in place.

‘Do you want me to stop?’ Acheron prompted raggedly.

‘No point now.’ Tabby could see he was in no condition to stop, could feel him hard and pulsing and alien inside her. In any case, the pain of his invasion had already faded and the ache of hollow longing he had roused still lingered. She wrapped her arms round him, instinctively urging him on, fingers smoothing across the bronzed satin of his broad back.

‘You’re so tight,’ he rasped, shifting with an athletic lift of his lean hips to surge into her again, deeper, further, harder in a technique that met every physical craving she hadn’t known she had. ‘I’m incredibly turned on.’

The flood of sensation returned as he withdrew and plunged back into her again, ensuring that she felt every inch of his penetration. The intensity of sensation shocked her and the powerful contracting bands in her pelvis turned her into a fizzing firework of wild excitement. He moved faster and she clung, riding out the electrifying storm of passion with a heart that seemed to be thumping in her eardrums. The explosion of raw pleasure that followed stunned her as the inner convulsions of her body clenched her every muscle tight as a fist. He vented a shuddering groan of completion while the waves of delight went on and on and on, coursing through her thoroughly fulfilled body.

In a dazed state of abstraction, Tabby lay in the tumbled bedding afterwards, watching Acheron stride across the room to retrieve something before vanishing into the bathroom, from which she soon heard the sound of running water. The instant their encounter had finished, the very moment he had attained release, he had rolled away from her and made no effort to touch her again. She was painfully aware of how much she would have liked him to hold her close in a caring, affectionate way that acknowledged their new intimacy and it disturbed her that she should feel so hurt by his withdrawal. After all, she wasn’t looking for, or expecting, love or commitment, was she? No, she wasn’t that naive.

She had slept with Acheron because for the very first time she had felt a fierce desire to experience that extra dimension with a man. But his swift departure from the bed had disappointed her, leaving her feeling ridiculously used and rejected. That was silly, she told herself firmly, because when it came to what they had just done he had not taken advantage of her in any way. Indeed, to some degree she was willing to acknowledge that she had taken advantage of him the moment she had estimated that he would undoubtedly possess the erotic skills that were most likely to ensure that she received pleasure from her first experience. That didn’t, however, entitle him to forgiveness for disappointing her in the sensitive aftermath of sex.

Slithering out of bed, Tabby swiftly got dressed, finger-combing her tangled hair back off her damp brow before she approached the bathroom door.

A towel linked round his narrow bronzed hips, Acheron was in the act of stepping out of the shower cubicle.

‘A-star for the sex, F for failure for the follow-up,’ Tabby pronounced with scorn, mentally blocking out the lean, powerful vibrancy of his commanding presence. Yes, Acheron Dimitrakos was gorgeous but in her scheme of things that was unimportant in comparison to the way he treated her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IN RECEIPT OF that attack, Acheron stiffened in astonishment and angled his arrogant dark head back, his black-as-jet eyes gleaming with angry incomprehension even as his attention lingered on how astonishingly lovely Tabby looked fresh from his bed with her long blonde hair in a waving, tousled mass round her shoulders, her small face warm with self-conscious colour and her ripe pink mouth still swollen from his kisses. Even as he fought to think clearly, his reaction to that view and those thoughts was instantaneous and very physical. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The instant you had your satisfaction you leapt out of bed and abandoned me as though I was suffering from some horrid contagious disease,’ Tabby condemned. ‘Not an experience I would be tempted to repeat—you made me feel like a whore!’

‘That’s melodramatic nonsense,’ Acheron fielded with derision, willing back his increasing arousal with every fibre of his self-discipline.

‘No, I don’t think it is. You couldn’t even bear to hold me close for thirty seconds,’ Tabby reminded him doggedly. ‘Well, I think it’s sad that the only way you feel comfortable physically touching anyone is in a sexual way.’

Acheron cursed in Greek. ‘You don’t know me as well as you think you do. But I warned you that I didn’t do cuddling.’

‘You think that excuses you?’ Tabby asked with scornfully unimpressed eyes of violet blue dominating her flushed and furious face. ‘It doesn’t. It simply shows you up as selfish and inconsiderate, and I deserved better.’

‘I don’t fake affection for anyone just because it’s the acceptable thing to do,’ Acheron bit out between clenched teeth. ‘And I have so little practice at it, I would feel foolish and uncomfortable!’

And that was the most strikingly truthful thing he had told her about himself to date, Tabby reckoned, stunned by the raw honesty of that irate reply. Indeed his admission of ignorance and discomfiture squeezed her heart like a clenched fist. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she closed the distance between them, deliberately invading his personal space to stretch her arms round his neck and look up at him.

‘Practise on me,’ she urged quietly. ‘I practised on Amber. I wasn’t a very touchy-feely person either before I got to hold her for the first time.’

Acheron swallowed hard, insanely aware that she was making a platonic approach and quite impervious to the reality that below the towel he was still ragingly erect. He didn’t want to hug her as though she were his friend; he wanted to shag her senseless. But he knew that option wasn’t in the ring at that moment and he closed his arms round her slowly and lifted her to the other side of the big bathroom. ‘You shouldn’t have got dressed again,’ he scolded.

‘I assumed we were done,’ Tabby confided bluntly.

Acheron bent down and lifted the hem of her dress to take it off over her head. Totally disconcerted, Tabby froze there for a split second, her arms crossed defensively across her bare breasts. ‘What are you doing?’

Acheron hooked a finger into her knickers and jerked them down, lifting her again into his arms to trail them off. ‘I may have leapt out of bed but I was thinking about your comfort,’ he breathed as he lowered her down into the warm embrace of the scented water filling the bath. ‘Now lie back and relax.’

Thoroughly disconcerted, Tabby surveyed him in wonderment. ‘You came in here and ran a bath for me?’

‘I hurt you...I thought you’d be sore,’ he breathed huskily as he lit the candles in the candelabra by the sink and doused the lights.

‘It was just one of those things, not your fault.’ But Tabby reddened and sank deeper into the soothingly warm water, resting her head weakly back on the cushioned padding on the rim. In truth she was sore, that part of her so tender she was now uncomfortably aware of her pelvic area. What a pair they were, she thought morosely. He couldn’t do ordinary affection and she couldn’t do sex.

There was a pop as Acheron released a cork from a champagne bottle and sent bubbling golden liquid down into a pair of goblets.

‘Where did that come from? And the candles?’ she pressed weakly.

‘Honeymoon couple, wedding night? The staff had all the trimmings waiting in the bedroom... It would be a shame not to use them,’ Acheron remarked, perching on the side of the bath to offer her a glass of champagne.

‘No, thanks. I never drink,’ she said stiltedly.

Acheron thrust the glass into her hand. ‘Unless you have a drink problem, one glass isn’t going to do any damage.’

Her small fingers tensed round the stem. ‘No, I don’t have a problem but my parents did.’

‘That doesn’t mean you have to avoid it altogether.’

‘I always like to play it safe,’ Tabby confided, taking a small sip of the champagne, tiny bubbles bursting below her nose and moistening her skin.

‘I’m more of a risk-taker. I enjoy excitement,’ Acheron traded wryly.

‘I think I could’ve worked that out for myself.’

Acheron compressed his mouth, his eyes semi-concealed by his black lashes. ‘I didn’t stay in bed with you because I didn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations of our relationship.’

She grasped what he meant immediately and wished she didn’t, a tiny pang of hurt pinching somewhere down deep inside her. He didn’t want her getting the idea that there was anything more complex between them than straightforward sex. ‘I may be inexperienced but I’m not stupid,’ Tabby told him with pride.

‘And I’m not good with words if I gave you that impression,’ Acheron acknowledged grimly. ‘Tabby, I don’t have conversations like this with women. I’ve never met a woman like you.’

‘Are we still talking about me being a virgin?’ Tabby asked in a small voice.

‘I’m accustomed to women who know the score.’

‘I know it too,’ Tabby breathed, skimming a glance across his hard-edged profile, her chest tightening with a sense of constraint. ‘I’m a very practical person.’

Acheron scanned her small, tight face, the set grip of her tiny hands over her raised knees as he read the valiant defensiveness she used as a screen and his stomach hollowed out at the prospect of hurting her. He had never felt that way around a woman before and he didn’t like it at all. She might be fragile but she had made a choice, just as he had done, and they were both adults, he reminded himself impatiently as he straightened again.

At the same moment, Tabby sat up abruptly and set down the champagne flute, water sloshing noisily around her slight body. ‘Oh, my goodness, what am I doing in here? I can’t stay! The baby monitor is in my bedroom.’

‘Melinda will take care of Amber’s needs. Relax,’ Acheron urged.

‘Melinda can’t be expected to work twenty-four hours a day. I told her I’d take care of Amber at night,’ Tabby countered as she rolled onto her knees, concern for Amber overcoming her self-consciousness, and began to stand up. ‘Pass me a towel—’

‘No, you stay where you are,’ Acheron instructed, his hand closing over her shoulder to press her back into the warm water again. ‘I’ll collect the monitor and check on Amber as well.’

Her violet eyes widened. ‘You...will?’

Acheron strode back into the bedroom to retrieve his jeans and wandered back to the doorway, dropping the towel with total unselfconsciousness to pull on the jeans. ‘Why not? You’ve already shown me what to do with her if she’s crying.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to help,’ Tabby commented. ‘It’s my job, not yours, after all.’

‘Our arrangement isn’t that clear cut. This is a joint venture when it comes to me requiring a wife and you requiring an adoptive father figure,’ Acheron reminded her, turning on his heel.

Stiff with uncertainty, Tabby lay back in the warm water and sipped the champagne while still feeling thoroughly confused by Acheron’s behaviour. She had got him wrong when she condemned him for abandoning her immediately after sex. But then, had the simple act of sex put him into a particularly good mood? Could a man be that basic? In consideration of her needs, he had run her a bath before he went for his shower. Now he was actually off to check on Amber for her as if the child was something more than the extra baggage she had assumed he deemed her to be. At the same time, however, he had also clearly felt the need to spell out the lowering message that the only thing between him and Tabby was sex. As if she didn’t already know that!

Acheron was the ultimate womaniser, steering clear of involvement and commitment. And why shouldn’t he? common sense asked. A young, handsome, wealthy male was in high demand in the world of women and had no need to settle on only one. In addition, Acheron had issues but then who didn’t after such a childhood as they had both undergone? In remembrance, Tabby suppressed a shiver. He had probably learned just as she had that if you kept everyone at arm’s length you didn’t get hurt.

But Tabby had moved on from that self-protective stance when she first opened her heart to friendship with Sonia and then Amber and finally understood how much more warm and satisfying life could be with love and loyalty in it. She knew she had lost her business and her first home because she had chosen to personally care for Sonia and Amber but she had no regrets about the choices she had made.

Amber was now her sole responsibility, she recalled, while wondering what she was doing lying back in a luxury bathtub drinking champagne when the baby she loved might be in need of her. In an instant she had clambered dripping out of the bath and swathed herself in a big warm towel, hurriedly patting herself dry before reaching for her dress again. It was time to get back to the real world, she told herself urgently, and there was nothing ‘real world’ about lounging around lazily in Acheron’s opulent bathroom.

Acheron groaned when he heard the baby crying through the monitor. The little plastic speaker was set on the dressing table and as he studied it he became aware that something had been written on the mirror.

‘Go home, whore!’ someone had printed with what looked like a red felt-tip pen.

Bemused, nerves still jumping at the sound of the baby crying, Acheron hesitated only a moment before striding into the bathroom to snatch up a towel, dampening it and walking back to wipe the mirror clean again before Tabby could see it. For a split second he paused, brooding over the disturbing awareness that only his household staff had access to the bedroom and that one of them clearly wasn’t trustworthy. But why leave such a message for Tabby to find? he questioned furiously. She was his wife, his legal wife with every right to be in his house. Who would target Tabby? His handsome mouth down-curved: Kasma was the most likely suspect. Pure rage blazed in Acheron as he dug out his cell phone, called his head of security and brought him up to speed on the development. His temper uneven, he strode off to take care of the baby. She was only a baby, he told himself bracingly, of course he could handle one tiny baby without help.

Amber was sitting upright screaming at the top of her voice, her little face red as fire. Acheron hovered a few feet from the cot. ‘Nothing’s that bad,’ he told Amber in what he hoped was a soothing tone.

Amber lifted up her arms expectantly.

‘Do I need to come that close?’ Acheron asked uneasily. ‘I’m here. You’re safe. I assure you that nothing bad is going to happen to you.’

Amber fixed bewildered brown eyes on him, tears rolling down her crumpled face, and lifted her arms again in open demand.

Acheron released his breath on a slow measured hiss and moved closer. ‘I’m no good at the cuddling stuff,’ he warned her ruefully, reaching down to lift the child, who startled him by wrapping both arms tightly round his throat and hanging on as firmly to him as a monkey gripping a branch.

An exhausted sob sounded in his ear, and he splayed a big hand across the little girl’s back and shifted his fingers in a vague circular motion aimed at soothing her fears. A vague shard of memory featuring a woman’s face momentarily froze him where he stood. He didn’t recall what age he had been but he had certainly been very small when the woman had come in the night to comfort him, rocking him in her arms and singing to him until he stopped crying. Had that woman been Olympia, Amber’s late grandmother and his own mother’s former carer? Who else could it have been? Only Olympia had ever shown him concern and treated him as if he was something other than a nuisance part of her well-paid job.

‘I owe you,’ he told Amber heavily and he rearranged her awkwardly in his arms and began to rock her, suppressing that rare memory of the past with the profound discomfort that such images always brought him. ‘But even for you I can’t sing.’

Amber startled him by smiling widely up at him, showing off her two front teeth, and he smiled back before he even knew what he was doing.

And that was how Tabby saw them when she came to a halt in the doorway: Acheron with a tousled black curl falling over his brow, his haunting dark eyes locked to Amber while the most glorious smile lifted his wide, sensual mouth. Barefoot and bare-chested, well-worn jeans hanging low on his lean hips, he looked both extravagantly handsome and unusually human at the same time. Her breath feathered in her throat and her mouth ran dry because that smile was pure sensual dynamite.

‘Let me take her,’ she proffered quietly. ‘I’ll put her back in bed.’

‘We were managing fine,’ Acheron announced, not without pride in the accomplishment as he settled Amber into Tabby’s arms. ‘Obviously she’s not very choosy.’

‘Well, you’re wrong there. She can actually be quite choosy and can be difficult with some people,’ Tabby admitted as she rested Amber down on the changing mat and deftly changed her before placing the child back into her cot, gently stroking her cheek when she grizzled. ‘It’s bedtime, sweetness. We don’t play at bedtime.’

‘I’ll organise cover for the nights,’ Acheron remarked as she joined him in the corridor.

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘You can still go to her if you want but you can’t be dragged out of bed every night,’ he told her drily.

‘I’m still the woman who wants to be her mother. It’s my duty to be there for her,’ Tabby reminded him gently. ‘I don’t want other people looking after her all the time.’

‘Be reasonable.’ Acheron paused outside the two doors that led into their separate bedrooms. ‘Are you joining me for what remains of the night?’

The ease with which he asked the question disconcerted Tabby because she had assumed that once his lusty curiosity was satisfied she would no longer be of interest to him. His approach both pleased and annoyed her. ‘I’m afraid if I did join you, there would have to be rules,’ she murmured awkwardly, her hand closing on the handle of her own bedroom door.

‘Rules?’ Acheron repeated in wonderment. ‘Is that your idea of a joke?’

‘No, I rarely joke about serious stuff,’ Tabby countered gently. ‘If you want to hear the rules, ask me.’

‘I don’t do rules,’ Acheron ground out between gritted teeth. ‘Perhaps it has escaped your attention, but I’m not a misbehaving child!’

Tabby closed the door quietly in his face.

She had donned one of her slinky new nightdresses before the door opened again. She scrambled hastily below the top sheet and looked across the room enquiringly.

‘What bloody rules?’ Acheron slung at her, poised hands affixed to his lean hips, his hard-muscled abdomen prominent.

‘One,’ Tabby enumerated. ‘Any relationship we have has to be exclusive and if you plan to stray you have to tell me and finish it decently. No secrets, no sneaking around on me.’

Acheron surveyed her with wild golden eyes of increasingly wrathful incredulity. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’

‘Two,’ Tabby continued unconcerned. ‘You treat me with respect at all times. If I annoy you, we have it out but not around Amber.’

‘You’re absolutely out of your mind,’ Acheron breathed with unsettling conviction while he studied her with seething, dark golden eyes. ‘And I married you.’

‘Three,’ Tabby pronounced woodenly, although her colour was high and her hands clenched into fists by her side. ‘I’m not a toy you can pick up and put down again whenever you feel like it. I’m not the entertainment when you’re bored. If you treat me well, I will treat you equally well, but if you don’t...well, all bets would be off then.’

‘Na pas sto dialo!’ Acheron murmured wrathfully. ‘It means, go to hell, and take your precious rules with you!’

Tabby didn’t breathe again until the door had snapped closed behind him and then she lay back in bed, her body feeling heavy as a stone dropped from a height, her tummy rolling like a boat on a storm-tossed sea. Well, that was one way of getting rid of Acheron without losing face, one way of ensuring he was forced to see her as an equal. What else could she have said? Sliding willy-nilly into a casual sexual affair with no boundaries was not her style and with a man as volatile as he was it would be a sure recipe for disaster. But now that the ultimate womanising, free-spirited man knew that she would make major demands, he would be careful to avoid her from now on.

And what sort of idiot was she to feel sad about that fact? She would get over her silly notions about him—of course she would, because there was really no other option open to her. He wanted one thing, she wanted another, so it was better to end it before it got messy and painful and humiliating. Better by far...

* * *

In the middle of the night, Acheron went for a cold shower. His erection wouldn’t quit and he was still in an unholy rage. Rules, blasted rules. Was he suddenly back at school? Who did she think she was dealing with? Even more crucially, what did she think she was dealing with? Did she assume he had got into that bed and somehow signed up for the whole relationship charade? Trust a woman to take a concept as simple as sex and complicate it!

Even so, he was as furious with himself as he was with her. He had suspected that her naivety would lead to problems and he knew he should have listened to his misgivings. But just as the hot blood pulsing through his tense, aching body wouldn’t stop, his desire for her had proved unrelenting. He’d had to know what she was like and he’d found out and, even worse, she had been amazing and no sooner had he stopped than he wanted to go again...and again...and again. His even white teeth clenched hard. That fast he was recalling the hot clenching of her tight little body around him, an explicit memory that did nothing to cool his overheated libido.

* * *

‘So, who’s the cutest little baby in the world?’ Tabby chattered the next morning while Amber waved her spoon in the air, cheerfully responding to the warm, loving gush of Tabby’s appreciation.

Acheron suppressed a groan and slung himself down into a chair by the dining table on the terrace. Baby talk at breakfast time, one more thing she had brought into his life that was not to his taste. First thing in the morning he liked sex and silence and since he had had neither he could not be expected to be in a good mood, he reasoned impatiently. The sight of Tabby in a little red strappy top and shorts that exposed far too much bare creamy skin for his delectation didn’t help. Even a glimpse of the tattoo on her arm as she swivelled in her seat failed to switch off the ever-ready pulse at his groin.

Tabby tried to scan Acheron without being obvious about it, sending little flips of her eyes in his direction with her lashes quickly dropping again. He was so beautiful; it was surely a sin for a male to be so beautiful that she was challenged to stop staring at him. Even the awareness of the lingering tenderness between her legs couldn’t dull her appreciation of that long, lean, powerful frame of his, gracefully draped in the chair like a work of art to be admired. The sunlight glittered over his black springy curls, and she wanted to run her fingers through his hair, stroke that stubborn jaw line set like granite until she awakened that wonderful smile again. Disconcerted by her treacherous thoughts, Tabby twisted her head away, resisting temptation.

Amber extended both arms in Acheron’s direction and beamed at him. ‘Not right now, koukla mou,’ he murmured. ‘Have your breakfast first.’

That he had acknowledged Amber’s presence but not hers aggravated Tabby. Last night she had only been a body but this morning she was evidently invisible into the bargain. ‘Good morning, Acheron,’ she said curtly.

‘Kalimera, yineka mou,’ Ash murmured silkily, noting the fiery brightness of her extraordinary violet eyes as she settled her gaze on him. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Like a log,’ Tabby lied, wondering why he brought out a mean streak in her that she had never known she had.

A maid poured his coffee, and the rich aroma flared her nostrils, inexplicably reminding her that Sonia had become preternaturally sensitive to certain smells when she first fell pregnant with Amber and an edge of panic suddenly sliced through Tabby’s surface calm. ‘Last night...’ she prompted abruptly, waiting with a rapidly beating heart and hot cheeks for the maid to retreat. ‘You did use protection, didn’t you?’

Magnificently nonchalant in the face of that intimate question, Acheron widened lustrous, dark golden eyes in mocking amusement. ‘You think I would be stupid enough to neglect such a precaution?’

‘I think in the heat of the moment if you wanted something enough you would take risks,’ Tabby admitted tautly.

Acheron lifted a winged ebony brow and cocked his handsome head in Amber’s direction. ‘Not if it meant risking the acquisition of one of those,’ he declared. ‘Passion doesn’t rule me.’

‘Or me,’ she echoed half under her breath. As she leant forward to help Amber clear her plate, her breasts stirred beneath her tee with the movement, pushing her unbearably sensitive nipples against the fabric, and made her think that a bra would have been a better idea than going without. Particularly in Acheron’s radius.

The same view was not wasted on Acheron either, who recalled the precise pout of her delicate flesh and his almost overpowering desire to eat her alive. While the smouldering silence at the table stretched, the nanny entered and removed Amber from her chair to bear her off for a bath.

Acheron dragged in a deep, cooling breath of the sunshine laden air, knowing that, for the sake of peace and better understanding, he had to challenge Tabby’s misconceptions. ‘Your rules?’ he mused with a dismissive shrug of one broad shoulder. ‘My rules? I never ever get involved with clingy, needy women.’

Coming at her out of nowhere, that statement crashed down on Tabby like a brick dropped on glass and her head flew up, violet eyes wide. ‘Are you calling me clingy and needy?’

‘What do you think?’

Tabby sprang out of her chair, the feet of it slamming back noisily across the tiles underfoot as she stabbed her hands down on the table for support. Anger had gripped her in a stormy surge. ‘How dare you? I’ve never been clingy or needy in my life with a man!’

‘Yet your first move is to try and hedge me round with rules. You want reassurance and promises about a future that is unknown to both of us,’ Acheron reasoned with cold precision. ‘I don’t own a crystal ball.’

‘I don’t like the way you operate!’ Tabby vented fiercely.

‘Yet you know nothing about me. For years I’ve been exclusive in my affairs and I don’t move on without saying so when I lose interest,’ Acheron declared lazily, rising upright to study her, his brilliant, dark eyes hard and glittering. ‘It is offensive that you should condemn me for lies and infidelity on the basis of your assumptions about my character.’

‘You’re so smooth...I wouldn’t trust a word that came out of your mouth!’ Tabby hurled at him accusingly, refusing to acknowledge that he had a point.

‘Now who’s guilty of prejudice?’ Acheron riposted with soft sibilance. ‘What do you find most offensive about me? My public-school education, my wealth or my lifestyle?’

Ferocious resentment held Tabby rigid where she stood, her small face taut and flushed with indignation, but it was the soft pink fullness of her lush mouth that welded Acheron’s attention there. ‘What I find most offensive is your certainty that you know best about everything!’

‘I do know that we are poles apart and that this arrangement will work most efficiently if we stick to the original agreement we made.’

Tabby’s tummy flipped as though she had gone down in a lift too fast, sheer strain locking her every muscle into tautness. ‘You should’ve kept your blasted hands off me!’ she slammed back.

Acheron flashed her a grim appraisal from his stunning golden eyes, and his mouth twisted sardonically. ‘Sadly, I couldn’t...’

And with that final admission, Acheron strode back into the air-conditioned cool of the villa and left her alone to contemplate the truly fabulous view. The rolling green Tuscan hills stretched out before her marked out in a colourful patchwork of woodland, olive groves and vineyards. She snatched in a deeply shaken breath, the hot air scouring her lungs. He wanted them to return to the sensible terms of their platonic agreement, which was exactly what she had believed she wanted. Why, then, when she had achieved her goal, did she feel as though she had lost the battle? Indeed, instead of feeling relieved and reassured by his logical approach to their differences, she felt ridiculously hurt and abandoned...

CHAPTER EIGHT

TABBY ROLLED THE soft ball back to Amber where the child sat below the dappled shade of an ancient spreading oak tree. Amber rolled over and crawled to the edge of the rug, a look of glee in her bright eyes as she scanned the wide green expanse of freedom open before her.

Tabby marvelled at the speed with which the little girl had learned to embrace independent movement. One minute she had been rolling over and over again to explore further afield and the next she had perfected crawling. At just over seven months old she was a fairly early developer but she had always been a physically strong baby who met every developmental guideline in advance, and Tabby wasn’t really surprised that Amber had discovered how to get around without adult assistance ahead of time. As she watched the little girl pulled a blade of grass and stuck it in her mouth.

‘No...no,’ she was saying while retrieving the grass when Melinda strolled up and offered to give her a break.

‘Yes, and you’re welcome,’ Tabby confided ruefully. ‘She’s much more of a handful now, and I wouldn’t mind a little break to sunbathe and read.’

‘We can manage that. I’m going to put her in the buggy and take her for a walk,’ the blonde nanny told her smoothly. ‘I just love it here.’

Tabby glanced at the younger woman, wondering why she found it such a challenge to like her and feeling rather guilty about the fact. After all, Melinda was great with Amber, a diligent worker and friendly. Perhaps it was the hungry little glances she often saw Melinda aiming at Acheron that had prevented Tabby from bonding more with the other young woman. It was not that she was jealous, Tabby reasoned uneasily, simply that she wasn’t comfortable with a woman prepared to show that much interest in the married man who employed her. In any case, and to be fair to all parties concerned, Acheron had shown not the smallest awareness of Melinda’s curvaceous blonde allure.

‘Any idea when we’ll be leaving here yet?’ Melinda asked as she gathered up Amber’s toys and stuffed them in a bag.

‘Not yet, sorry...my husband hasn’t decided how long we’ll be staying,’ Tabby replied, wryly impressed by the way that possessive label slid off her tongue. But that, she had learned, was the easiest way to refer to Acheron in front of the staff.

Yet he was as much a husband as a caged tiger in a zoo would be, she conceded unhappily, lifting her book and her sunglasses and heading for the cool courtyard in which the pool was situated. For the past week she had barely seen Acheron, who confined himself to his office most of the day and often half the night to work. Even when he was around his phone was always ringing and his single-minded focus on business was exactly what she should have expected from a goal-orientated alpha male.

Occasionally he would join her for a cup of coffee at breakfast time and he generally put in a rather silent appearance at the dinner table, eating quickly and then politely excusing himself. He was a cool and distant companion at those meals and there was never so much as a hint of sexual awareness in either his looks or his conversation. It was as though that wild bout of passion on their wedding night was the product of her imagination alone, but Tabby still found it a distinct challenge to revert to treating him like a stranger and that embarrassed her, denting her pride and her belief in her own strength and independence because no woman of character should continue to crave the attention of a man set on treating her like the wallpaper.

Yet amazingly, infuriatingly, Acheron was playing an entirely different ball game with Amber. Melinda swore that Acheron never passed the nursery door without coming in to talk to and play with her charge and Amber had already learned to make a beeline for Acheron whenever he was in her vicinity. In fact, when it came to Acheron, Amber took her welcome for granted. Maybe Acheron’s ego was flattered by the amount of attention Amber gave him. Maybe he was even belatedly discovering that he actually liked and enjoyed the company of children? How could she possibly know what motivated his interest? Tabby had not got through a week of virtually sleepless nights without acknowledging that she knew very little at all about Acheron Dimitrakos. Her husband was a mystery to her in almost every conceivable way.

* * *

Acheron stood at the window and groaned at the sight of Tabby arranging her slim pale body on a lounger like an exhibition banquet for the starving. A purple bikini cupped her rounded little breasts and slender hips and every shift of her slim thighs drew his considerable attention. He shifted uneasily, struggling to rein back the heavy pulse of arousal that was making his nights so long and frustrating.

Although he had kept watch, as he told himself a protective husband should do, he had yet to see Tabby go topless to eradicate the risk of tan marks. He frowned, not wanting her to show that amount of naked flesh when there were always staff roaming the grounds. It was very strange, he acknowledged in bewilderment, that in spite of the fact he thought it was a very old-fashioned attitude, which he would not have admitted even under torture, he didn’t like the idea of anyone but him seeing any part of Tabby bare. He thought that there was a very weird possessive streak in him somewhere and blamed it on the surprising fact that he had become his wife’s first lover.

His wife, a label he had never thought he would use, he conceded hard-mouthed, his dark eyes hooded and unusually reflective. Had Tabby genuinely been his wife, however, she would have been in his bed throughout the long hot hours of the afternoon abandoning herself to the demands of his passion and losing herself in the release he would have given her. As his body hardened afresh under the onslaught of that X-rated imagery he cursed bitterly under his breath.

Regretfully, Tabby had all the flexibility of a steel girder: he could do the rules or he could do cold showers. There would be no halfway measures, no get-out clause with her. It would be all or nothing and he knew he couldn’t do it, couldn’t walk that line and change himself to suit when he knew there was no future in it. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Yet right at that precise moment Tabby’s rules had more pulling power than a ten-ton truck.

* * *

That evening, Tabby selected a drop-dead gorgeous blue dress from the closet. Over the past week she had worn a different outfit every day, reasoning that the clothes were there and there was little point wasting them. In any case it would be downright silly to choose to overheat in the jeans and tops that were virtually all she had left of her own clothes since her life first began to unravel after she had lost her own home. Back then she had had to surrender an awful lot of her possessions, whittling her collection of clothing and objects down until she retained only what mattered most and what she could carry.

She tossed the dress on the bed, put on her make-up and brushed her hair, not that how she looked mattered when Acheron was treating her as though she were someone’s maiden aunt. But then Acheron wasn’t the reason why she took the trouble to dress up, she reminded herself staunchly. She did it for her own self-esteem and the knowledge that behaving, at least on the outside, like a rich honeymoon bride was part of her role. Clothed, she eased her feet into perilously high heels and surveyed herself critically in the mirror, mouth momentarily drooping while she wished she were taller, curvier and more striking in appearance...like Kasma? The Kasma whom Acheron never, ever mentioned? But then what business was Kasma of hers? The fiery fury, ignited only a week before by the discovery that Acheron would benefit as much as she did from their marriage, had drained away. After all, she had married Acheron for only one reason: to become Amber’s adoptive mother, and all she needed to focus on now was getting through their little charade of a marriage as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Worrying about anything else, wanting anything else was unnecessarily stressful and stupid.

Acheron was crossing the hall when Tabby reached the head of the marble staircase. Obeying instinct, she threw her head back and straightened her spine even as she felt perspiration break out across her skin. There he was, sleek, outrageously good-looking and sophisticated even when clad in jeans and an open-necked shirt. Her heart went bumpety-bumpety-bump like a clock wound up too tight, and she gripped the bannister with an agitated hand to start down the stairs. Unfortunately for her, her leading foot went down, however, not onto a step but disorientatingly into mid-air and she tipped forward with a shocked cry of fright, her hand slipping its light hold on the stair rail, her whole body twisting as she tried to halt her fall so that her hip struck the edge of a hard marble step and her ankle was turned beneath her.

‘I’ve got you!’ Acheron bit out as the world steadied again.

Mercifully Tabby registered that she was no longer falling but that pain was biting all the way from her hip down her leg...no, not her leg, her ankle. She adjusted as Acheron swept her up into his arms with too much enthusiasm and her leg swung none too gently and she couldn’t bite back the cry of pain that was wrenched from her throat. ‘My ankle...’

‘Thee mou...you could’ve been killed falling on these stairs!’ Acheron breathed with a rawness that took her aback, striding back down into the hall with his arms tautly linked round her slight body. He called out in Greek until one of his security staff came running and then he rapped out instructions.

Against her cheek she could feel the still-accelerated pounding of his heart and she wasn’t surprised that he was still high on adrenalin because he must have moved faster than the speed of light to intercept her fall. She felt quite queasy at the realisation that but for his timely intervention she might have fallen all the way down the marble staircase and broken her neck or at the very least a limb or two. Relief that she had only wrenched her ankle and bruised herself filtered slowly through her. ‘I’m OK... Lucky you caught me in time.’

Acheron laid her down with exaggerated care on a sofa and squatted athletically down to her level. ‘Did you feel anyone push you?’ he asked, brilliant dark heavily fringed eyes locked to her face.

She was astounded at the tenor of that question; her violet eyes rounded. ‘Why would anyone push me down the stairs?’ she asked weakly. ‘I lost my balance and tripped.’

Acheron frowned. ‘Are you certain? I thought I saw someone pass by you on the landing just before you fell.’

‘I didn’t see or hear anyone.’ Her brows pleated and her lashes screened her eyes, the heat of embarrassment washing away her pallor because she knew exactly why she had tripped but wild horses wouldn’t have dragged the confession from her. ‘Yes, of course I’m certain.’

If she hadn’t been so busy admiring Acheron and trying to pose like a silly teenager to look her very best for his benefit, she would never have missed her step, Tabby was reflecting in deep, squirming chagrin.

‘I’m afraid I have to move you again...I’ll try not to hurt you,’ Acheron told her, sliding his hands beneath her prone length. ‘But I have to get you into a car to get you to a doctor.’

‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t need a doctor!’ Tabby exclaimed in growing embarrassment.

But over the next couple of hours while she was subjected to every possible medical examination at the nearest hospital, she might as well have been talking to a wall because Acheron refused to listen to a word she said. Furthermore, far from behaving like the cool, reserved male she was accustomed to dealing with, Acheron was clearly all wound up although why he was, she had no idea. He paced the floor outside her examination cubicle, talked to her through the curtain to check she was all right and not in too much discomfort, insisted on an X-ray being done while virtually ignoring the doctor who assured him that she was suffering from nothing more serious than some nasty bruising and a sprained ankle. Even more embarrassing, his security team spread out round them on full systems alert as if awaiting an imminent rocket attack on the casualty department.

‘Ah...very much the adoring and anxious husband,’ the middle-aged doctor chuckled in his ignorance.

If only the man knew how wrong he was, Tabby thought unhappily, feeling like a wretched nuisance and a malingerer taking up valuable medical attention when really there was nothing very much amiss with her.

* * *

If Tabby had died, it would have been his fault. Acheron brooded on that thought darkly, rage and guilt slivering through him in sickening waves and like nothing he had ever felt before. But then he had never been responsible for another life before and, though he would have liked to have thought otherwise, he believed that his wife was very much his responsibility. Naturally he was appalled by the suspicion that someone who worked for him might have attempted to hurt his wife. Having seen the rude message left on her bedroom mirror, he was unimpressed by her conviction that she had simply had an accident. In the split second it had taken for Tabby to lose her balance and topple she might not even have noticed that someone had lightly pushed her or tripped her up.

He was even more frustrated that his security staff had failed to come up with anything suspicious on any member of the villa staff. Acheron’s mouth twisted. Unfortunately the Tuscan villa had rarely been used, hence the renovation the previous year and the hire of employees who were a new and unknown quantity and whose dependability would only be confirmed by the test of time. His lustrous eyes hardened and his stubborn mouth compressed into a tough line of determination. Tabby’s safety was paramount and as he was very reluctant to frighten her with his suspicions. The wisest strategy would be to immediately vacate the villa and seek a more secure setting. That decision reached, Acheron gave the order, refusing to back down even when the chief of his security pointed out that such a move would entail rousing the baby from her bed as well. Regardless of the drawbacks of his plan, Acheron could hardly wait to get Tabby and the baby away from the Tuscan villa, which now, to his way of thinking, seemed a tainted place. He watched the doctor bandaging her swollen ankle, annoyance still gripping him that he had failed to prevent her from getting hurt.

‘Sorry about all this.’ Tabby sighed in the limo as they left the hospital.

‘When you have an accident you don’t need to apologise for it. How are you?’ Acheron pressed.

‘A bit battered and sore—nothing I won’t quickly recover from,’ Tabby responded with a smile. ‘It’ll certainly teach me to be more careful on stairs from now on.’

Acheron was quietly stunned. No woman of his acquaintance would have neglected to make a huge fuss over such an incident by exaggerating their injuries and demanding his sympathy and attention. Tabby, however, characteristically downplayed the episode and asked nothing of him, an acknowledgement that only increased his brooding discomfiture with the situation.

‘Where on earth are we going?’ Tabby enquired as he lifted her out of the limo and stowed her in the wheelchair already waiting for her use. ‘Is this the airport?’

‘Yes, we’re flying to Sardinia,’ Acheron said casually.

‘Seriously? I mean, like right now?’ Tabby stressed in disbelief. ‘It’s ten o’clock at night.’

‘Amber and her nanny are already on board the helicopter, as is your luggage,’ Acheron admitted.

There were many things Tabby could have said but she was fighting a dropped jaw and had already learned to think twice before she spoke her mind around Acheron. She clamped her lips firmly together and assumed that he was bored at the villa and that the evident appeal of a change of surroundings had persuaded him to act on impulse. Not only was he dragging Amber out of bed, but he was also forcing Tabby to travel when she was exhausted and in pain. Her lush mouth down-curved: he was being selfishly inconsiderate but she supposed that was normal behaviour for a male accustomed to thinking only of his own needs.

The helicopter was very noisy and Tabby, who hadn’t eaten since lunchtime, was almost sick with hunger. She insisted on taking Amber from Melinda, though, and soothed the overtired baby herself. She was surprised when Acheron eased the drowsing child from her arms and settled her on his lap instead. Amber looked up at him, stuck her thumb back in her mouth and closed her eyes again, seemingly content with the exchange. Tabby must’ve dozed off at that point because she wakened confused by the bright light on her face and the jabs of pain from her ankle as Acheron carried her into a house.

‘How do you feel?’ he enquired again, stunning gaze sweeping her pale, taut face.

‘I’ll be fine—’

‘Don’t be a martyr—you look like death warmed over,’ he countered impatiently. ‘You’re going straight to bed, yineka mou. I’ve organised food as well.’

A bed and a meal sounded very appealing to Tabby at that moment. He mounted a staircase and a faint breeze cooled her cheekbone. Her lashes swept up on a tall open window framed by pale fluttering draperies just as Acheron laid her down on a ginormous bed and began to carefully ease the bedding from beneath her. It struck her that for once he was being very kind and that set her teeth on edge.

‘Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?’ Tabby demanded abruptly.

That single question said so much that Acheron didn’t want to hear just then that he almost groaned his frustration aloud. Leave it to Tabby, he thought ruefully. Leave it to Tabby to say what nobody else dared to say to Acheron Dimitrakos. He breathed in slowly. ‘You’re hurt.’

‘You don’t do rules and I don’t do pity,’ Tabby told him, tilting her chin in challenge.

‘You’re my wife.’

‘Not really.’

‘Enough my wife that I want to treat you like one,’ Acheron contradicted almost harshly.

Tabby screened eyes blank with incomprehension and she was horribly tempted by an urge to slap him. He should have come with a dictionary or some sort of instruction manual that explained how he worked because once again she was all at sea as to what went on his complex and infuriating head.

‘I want to make you feel better,’ Acheron announced.

‘No pity parties here, please.’

‘I haven’t behaved very well,’ Acheron muttered in a harsh driven undertone. ‘I am trying to make amends.’

‘Pity’s pity,’ Tabby told him, unmoved by that argument.

Acheron came down on the bed beside her. There was something wild about the glitter in his seething golden eyes as he gently knotted one hand in the fall of her golden hair and closed his mouth hungrily over hers. He sent a jolt of such savage hunger rocketing through her that she froze in sheer fright.

‘Does that feel like pity?’ he growled.

Tabby made no comment because she could barely breathe. She wanted him to do it again and for longer and was only just able to keep her hands off that lean, powerful body so very close to hers for the first time in a week. One little touch and he made her feel like a sex addict ready to run scarily out of control. In sudden retreat, she dropped her head and then mercifully they were interrupted by the entrance of a woman carrying a tray.

‘You need to eat,’ Acheron told her unnecessarily.

With his assistance, Tabby leant back against the pillows and lifted the knife and fork. She literally didn’t dare look at him again, couldn’t trust herself that far, knew that she couldn’t risk reliving that burning, driving sensation of sexual need in his presence. Hungry though she undoubtedly was, she had to force herself to eat because the sheer level of tension holding her taut was suppressing her appetite. She ate in silence while Acheron paced restively round the big room, constantly drawing her eyes until she remembered that she couldn’t afford to look, and in fact had to blank him out to stay in control. And what did that say about her? Was she really that weak that she couldn’t withstand him? This guy who had virtually ignored her for the past week? The same one who had slept with her and then backed off at supersonic speed? Shame engulfed her, increasing the exhaustion she had been fighting to contain.

The tray was removed from her lap. Her lashes drooped, eyes so heavy she literally couldn’t hold them open any longer.

‘Get some sleep,’ Acheron urged, and for once she was in the mood to obey.

* * *

Tabby awoke with a piercing need to go to the bathroom, eyes flickering open on darkness and a strong feeling of disorientation. She struggled to sit up and gasped in dismay at the pain that shot through her ankle while she stretched out a wildly flailing hand in search of a bedside light. Mercifully she found the switch attached to a hanging wire, and light illuminated the bedroom a scant second before the male lying on a sofa against the wall leapt upright.

‘Ash?’ she whispered in disbelief. ‘What are you doing in here?’

Acheron was bare-chested and barefoot, low-slung denim jeans clinging to his lean hips. Her startled gaze clung to the muscled expanse of his magnificent bronzed torso and then flicked guiltily higher to take in the dark stubble masking his lower jaw and the unnerving intensity of eyes that glittered like black diamonds in the low light. ‘I couldn’t leave you in here alone.’

‘Why not?’ Tabby queried, her face hotter than fire as she forced herself to swivel her hips and shift her good leg off the edge of the bed. ‘Why would you sleep on a sofa for my benefit?’

‘What on earth are you trying to do?’ Acheron demanded, striding across the room.

‘I need the bathroom,’ she breathed between gritted teeth, mortification rolling over her like a tidal wave.

‘You are so stubborn, koukla mou. Right now, you need help and I didn’t want to put a stranger in here with you,’ he admitted impatiently, pushing the walking stick resting against the bedside cabinet into her hand and then slowly pulling her upright to take advantage of its support. ‘Now go slow or you’ll hurt yourself.’

But Tabby had already worked out that there was no way of moving her leg without her ankle hurting her and she simply clenched her teeth and got on with it, tears stinging her eyes as she hobbled clumsily towards the connecting door he had already opened for her benefit.

Acheron groaned something in Greek and carefully scooped her up into his arms to carry her into the bathroom and gently settle her down on the stool by the vanity unit. ‘Pain’s always worse in the middle of the night. You’ll feel better tomorrow,’ he predicted. ‘Shout when you’re ready to go back to bed.’

Reckoning that there would be two blue moons in the sky before she willingly asked for his help, Tabby studied her tousled reflection in the mirror in cringing horror. She was still wearing the make-up she had put on for dinner the night before and she had panda eyes, sleep creases on her cheek and hideously messy hair. How come he looked gorgeous in the middle of the night but she looked like the Bride of Dracula?

She glanced down and fingered the skimpy nightdress she now wore and swallowed back a groan. Acheron must’ve undressed her. So what? He had already seen her naked, she reminded herself doggedly, so he had seen nothing new and it was very silly to be embarrassed about it. Levering herself upright, she took care of necessities and then made use of the facilities to clean herself up as best she could. Feeling considerably fresher but pale and stiff with the amount of pain her every movement had made her suffer, Tabby hobbled back out of the bathroom.

Acheron was waiting to scoop her up and deposit her back on the bed.

‘I still don’t understand what you’re doing here with me,’ she said weakly, perspiration breaking out on her brow.

‘There’re only three bedrooms in the main house. I knew you wouldn’t want Amber staying away from you in the staff quarters and Melinda needed the third room,’ Acheron explained drily.

‘There’s only three bedrooms?’ Tabby remarked in amazement. ‘You really didn’t plan this move very well, did you?’

Acheron dealt her a fulminating appraisal in seething silence. ‘It’s three in the morning...let’s talk about it tomorrow.’

Tabby watched him move back towards the sofa and released her breath on a reluctant sigh. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, share the bed... It’s as big as a football pitch. I’m sure we can manage to avoid each other.’

Acheron swung round, his surprise unfeigned, but he said nothing. He switched out the light, and she lay very still in the darkness, listening to the sound of his jeans coming off and trying very hard not to picture what he looked like without them. The sheet moved, the mattress depressed and she forced herself to relax. She was safe as houses with him, she told herself wryly. Acheron was powered by reason, not emotion, not passion. He knew they were a match made in hell.

It was dawn by the time Tabby woke again. Soreness and stiffness assailed her with her first involuntary movement, and she screwed up her face in silent complaint. She turned her head only for her breath to hitch at the sight of Acheron lying asleep only inches away from her. His hair, rumpled into ebony curls, stood out in stark contrast to the white pillow case, his black lashes luxuriant fans that rimmed his strong cheekbones, his wilful passionate mouth full and relaxed. She couldn’t stop staring at him. The sheet was wrapped round his hips, the corrugated musculature of his bronzed chest and abdomen exposed as well as a long, powerful, hair-roughened thigh. The pure haunting beauty of his perfectly sculpted body grabbed her by the throat and shook her inside out while heat pooled in her pelvis. She wanted to touch him; she wanted to touch him so badly it hurt to be denied.

His lashes swept up and he stretched slowly and languorously, long, taut muscles defined like ropes below his smooth brown skin. ‘Kalimera, yineka mou.’

Tabby arched a brow. ‘Which means...?’

‘Good morning, wife of mine,’ Acheron translated with rich amusement lightening his dark eyes.

‘I’m not yours,’ Tabby hissed back faster than a striking rattler.

A lean brown hand lifted and wound slowly and carefully into the tumbled fall of her blonde hair, his glittering dark golden eyes hot as boiling honey on her skin. ‘How else would you describe yourself? You married me and then you accepted my body into yours. Don’t you appreciate that that means that we legally consummated our union?’

Seized by chagrin and confusion, Tabby stiffened. ‘I...I...’

He covered her mouth with his, lingering to nibble teasingly at her full lower lip before moving on to taste her with explosive eroticism. A chemical reaction took place inside her, her body jerking in response while within seconds a giant mushroom of heated hunger and longing surged up inside her, blowing her best intentions to hell. Helpless in the grip of that sensual offensive, she kissed him back and his tongue drove deep between her lips with a raw sexual charge that roared through her like a rocket attack.

‘Ash?’ she mumbled when he freed her long enough to breathe again.

He stared down at her with lancing impatience, every line of him rigid with tension. ‘To hell with your rules,’ he growled in a tone of decision, his broad chest vibrating against her swollen breasts. ‘I only play by my own.’

Those words were still ringing in her ears when he slid his hands underneath her and lifted her slowly onto her side. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.

‘I’m making what we both need possible,’ Acheron rasped in her ear, his warm breath fanning her neck as he buried his mouth in the sensitive slope between neck and shoulder while his hands slid up from her waist to cup her achingly tender breasts. ‘As you’re in no condition to run away, shout loud if you want to say no.’

In stark disconcertion her violet eyes opened to their fullest extent and locked onto the sofa he had occupied the night before. She had invited him into the bed in the first place. Had he assumed her body was included in the offer? Or was he just as entrapped as she was by the chemistry between them? Naturally that latter interpretation pleased her more but, in the midst of her pondering, long fingers plucked at the straining peaks of her breasts and actual thought became too much of a challenge.

Acheron tasted the soft white skin of her throat and the sweet scent of her enclosed him, heightening his arousal to an almost unbearable extent. In need of release he pressed his throbbing erection against her bottom, and she gasped and leant back into him while he lifted her nightdress to caress the swollen bounty of her small, taut breasts, paying special attention to her plump pink nipples. ‘I love your breasts,’ he told her thickly. ‘They fit perfectly into my hands, moli mou.’

Every tiny muscle straining as she trembled, Tabby looked down at the fingers, so dark against her paler skin, expertly caressing her. Sharp biting arrows of need were spearing down between her legs where her indescribably sensitive flesh was tingling. She shifted and a faint sound of discomfort was wrenched from her as she accidentally moved her ankle.

‘Lie still,’ Acheron urged. ‘You don’t need to do anything. Let me do all the work.’

Her desire was already so strong that she wanted to scream, wanted to tell him what to do and to do it quickly. The shock of the thought and a vision of his reaction cooled her teeming thoughts. But she hadn’t known, hadn’t ever dreamt that a kiss and a little intimate touching could send her temperature shooting from zero to overload and she knew that she was finally understanding the very basic reason why he had become her first lover. He burned her up like a lightning strike, awakened a craving that overwhelmed her defences.

His hand shimmied down over her thigh, flirting, teasing more intimate areas without delivering on the promise. She ached, she actually ached deep down inside where she felt hollow and desperate, her entire being locked to the playful passage of that provocative hand. Fingertips traced her hidden core, stroking nerve endings that were impossibly delicate. She dragged in a sustaining breath while he nibbled an enervating path down the side of her extended throat. ‘In a minute I’m going to kill you,’ she swore shakily.

‘No, you’re going to ask me to do it again.’

‘You really don’t suffer from low self-esteem,’ she noted even more unevenly, her breath catching in her convulsing throat as a fingertip brushed her clitoris, and flame leapt through her entire core.

‘Not between the sheets...no,’ Acheron agreed silkily.

‘You’ve been told you’re wonderful?’

‘Many times. I’m filthy rich. Telling me I’m rubbish in bed—even if it’s true—wouldn’t be profitable,’ he advanced with cynical cool.

Consternation seized Tabby. ‘That’s awful—’

‘Awful,’ he mimicked, stroking the most sensitive spot on her whole body so that she jackknifed back against him with a startled yelp.

‘I don’t want your money,’ Tabby exclaimed helplessly. ‘I just want your body!’

A stark little silence fell, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut in horror. I didn’t say that, I couldn’t possibly have said that!

‘I’ve got no objections to that goal,’ Acheron husked, biting at her ear lobe with erotic intent, ostensibly undeterred by her claim. ‘It’s earthy and honest...why not?’

He touched her again and her mortification drowned in a sea of shivering response. She lay back against him, tiny muscles twitching, soothed by the heat and strength of him even as that amplified physical contact heightened her awareness. With immense delicacy he stroked the seam of her femininity and then slid inside where she was warm and wet and, oh, so needy. She quivered, pitched straight to a high of longing that she couldn’t quell or even control. He sank a finger inside her, and she jerked and gasped as he plunged slowly in and out, raising her temperature to boiling point, making her squirm and shift, forgetting even the twinges of pain in her ankle.

‘Hot, tight, ready,’ Acheron growled hungrily in her ear as she arched back into his lean, hard body, instinctively seeking the fulfilment that only he could give while he angled away from her to don a condom. ‘I’ve been fantasising about this for days.’

‘Days?’ she parroted in surprise as he lifted her undamaged leg to spread her open for him.

‘Every night since that first night, every day I saw you in that teeny tiny bikini, glyka mou,’ Acheron confided, tilting her forward, long fingers tightening their hold on her slender thigh as he entered her with a groan of intense masculine satisfaction.

A muffled scream of pleasure was torn from Tabby’s throat as her body was forced to adjust to his size, her inner channel stretching to the brink of insane pleasure.

‘All right?’ Acheron murmured thickly.

‘Well, I wouldn’t want you to answer your phone right now!’ Tabby admitted shakily, her heart thundering, her blood racing, her whole body thrumming with sensation as he eased back and then slammed into her again, jolting her with wicked pleasure.

‘No boundaries!’ he ground out forcefully. ‘No boundaries between us!’

She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak for the intensity of what he was making her feel. He tugged her head back and took her mouth with passionate, driving need and the taste and heat of him scorched her all the while the slow, sure thrust of his engorged shaft stimulated her senses to an unbearable peak of excitement. Her hips writhed. The pace quickened. The heat built. She was crying out, sobbing she knew not what when her wayward body finally clamped down convulsively on him and she soared over the edge in a frenzied crescendo of release that took her by storm.

Ecstasy was still rippling through her weak body in small blissful waves when he wrapped his arms round her and kept her close.

‘You’re amazing,’ he husked.

‘You too,’ she whispered, exhaustion pinning her to the bed.

‘And we’re going to do this over and over again,’ Acheron decreed with lethally sexy assurance. ‘No more cold showers, no more separate beds, no more posing in teeny tiny bikinis I can’t rip off.’

‘Sleepy,’ she framed apologetically.

‘Sleep...you’re going to need all your energy,’ he said.

CHAPTER NINE

WHEN TABBY WOKE for the fourth time in twelve hours, she was totally disorientated and she blinked in the strong sunlight flooding through the French windows. A split second later, she sat up and checked her watch to discover that it was mid-afternoon.

My goodness, she had slept half the day away! In guilty dismay, she clambered awkwardly out of bed, learning that Acheron had got it right when he had suggested she would feel better in the morning. Her hip still ached like the very devil but the pain in her ankle had become more bearable. Curious to see her surroundings, having arrived in complete darkness the night before, she limped over to the French windows with the aid of her stick and went out onto the sunlit balcony to stand at the rail.

A craggy cove stretched out below her, the towering rocks encircling a stretch of pure white sand lapped by a turquoise sea so clear she could see the ocean bottom. The lush tree-filled gardens ran right to the edge of the beach. It was absolutely idyllic and very beautiful but Tabby’s attention was drawn straight to the couple standing together in the rippling surf. Amber’s pram was parked in the shadow of the rocks and Melinda, clad in a minuscule red bikini that exaggerated her bountiful curves, was talking with apparent urgency to Acheron, whose lean, powerful body was sheathed only in trunks.

It was an unexpectedly intimate and disturbing sight, and Tabby couldn’t take her eyes off the couple, jealousy spearing through her with an immediacy that appalled her. She jerked in dismay and snatched in a startled breath when Melinda rested a hand down on Acheron’s arm. To his credit the contact only lasted for a second because he took an immediate step back from the forward blonde and with a brief final word strode back across the sand towards the house. Tabby hobbled back hurriedly indoors to get dressed, her brain struggling to encompass what she had seen at the same time as she accepted that, yet again, the very foundations of her relationship with the man she had married had been demolished and everything had changed.

Sexual desire had stimulated that change, she conceded, shame slivering through her. No boundaries, Acheron had proclaimed with passion and he was certainly correct on that score: the rules she had tried to impose had been blown right out of the water along with her nonsensical belief that she could resist him. Even more pertinently, seeing Melinda touch Acheron had inflamed her with ferocious possessiveness and the sort of angry jealous feelings she had never before experienced. What did that say about her intelligence? What was she letting him do to her? Where were these violent conflicting emotions coming from? She was behaving like a lovesick idiot! Was that the problem? Had lust first sucked her in and then left her childishly infatuated with him?

Opening her as yet still packed cases, she extracted underwear and a long, loose sundress before stepping into the bathroom to freshen up. The whole process took her much longer than usual having to wash her hair in the sink, which was a challenge, and left the bathroom floor swimming by the time she had finished. When she finally emerged after mopping dry the floor, however, she felt more like herself with clean, tidy hair and a little make-up applied.

Acheron strolled into the bedroom and there Tabby was; captured in a patch of sunlight, long golden hair rippling down to softly frame her delicate features, her tiny body sylphlike in a pale blue dress that reflected her amazing eyes, which were currently pools of anxious troubled violet that evaded his. She was so open, so honest in her reactions, it literally shocked him. Nothing was concealed; nothing was hidden from him. His broad chest tightened as he expelled his breath and gritted his teeth. He could not begin to imagine how frighteningly vulnerable that lack of concealment and reserve made her. If he didn’t act first, she was undoubtedly about to unleash a rash volley of accusations and questions about their renewed intimacy, which threatened to put them both right back where they had started after their car crash wedding night and her proclamation of her unnecessary rules.

‘Tabby,’ he murmured evenly, noting avidly that he could see the little points of her deliciously prominent nipples showing below the fine material of her dress as well as the slender outline of her shapely legs. An overpoweringly strong urge to claim her again assailed him.

‘Ash,’ she said breathlessly, studying his lean, darkly handsome features with a sinking heart because that fast she was out of breath and dizzy just looking at him. ‘We need to talk.’

‘No, we don’t, glyka mou,’ Acheron contradicted with stubborn assurance as he drew closer. ‘Let’s do this my way. We don’t talk, we especially don’t agonise over anything. It is what it is and we just enjoy it for as long as it lasts.’

He had snatched the confused words out of her mouth before she had even collected her thoughts enough to speak. She suspected that his solution was vintage Acheron in the field of relationships—say nothing, do nothing and the problem will go away. ‘I wasn’t about to agonise over anything,’ she protested, swaying slightly because she found it hard to stand still for long and had to grip the walking stick in a tighter hold.

He closed hands round her forearms to steady her and slowly trailed his hands down to her waist. ‘You can’t help yourself.’

As she looked up at him, her lush full lips tingled and she was conscious of a sensation like prickling heat curling low in her pelvis. He angled his mouth down and kissed her with intoxicating urgency.

‘Oh...’ she said in breathless surprise at the development, her body humming into ready awareness with an enthusiasm that disconcerted her.

He lifted her dress slowly, brazen dark golden eyes locked to hers, daring her to object. Anticipation pierced her, sharp as a lance, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. His gaze not once leaving hers, he found her with his fingers, eased below her lace-edged panties and stroked and that fast she was hotter than the fires of hell, leaning up against him for support, making no objection when he gently lowered her back onto the bed. The stick fell forgotten on the floor.

‘I only just got up,’ she exclaimed, her surprise unconcealed.

‘You should’ve waited here for me, glyka mou,’ Acheron told her sibilantly.

‘I can’t believe you want me again already.’ Tabby studied him with confused and wondering eyes.

‘The instant I look at you I want you,’ Acheron admitted in a slightly raw undertone because there was a lack of control and a weakness in such a truth that deeply disturbed him.

‘Not the very first time you saw me,’ she reminded him stubbornly.

‘You swore at me...not your finest hour, glyka mou,’ he mocked. ‘Now that I know you, it wouldn’t bother me at all or make me stop thinking that you’re the hottest woman on the planet.’

Eyes wide with astonishment, Tabby was transfixed by that statement. ‘You really mean that?’

‘You have to ask? Here I am throwing you down on the bed to ravish and you have to ask how much I want you? I can’t wait to get you horizontal and that’s not OK,’ Acheron groaned, yanking off her panties with scant ceremony and splaying her legs with a voracious hiss of all-male satisfaction, fully appreciating the pink glistening femininity he had exposed. ‘No, don’t spoil the view,’ he censured when, hot-cheeked, she tried to scissor her thighs together again. ‘I like to look and I love to appreciate.’

Tabby forced herself to remember that while he peeled off his trunks, revealing his long, thick erection. Heat rolled through her, moisture gathering at the heart of her along with a soul-deep yearning that should have terrified her. She realised that she was acting on instinct, not even pausing to think about what he had said, skipping the agonising as he had phrased it because what woman wished to be viewed in that light?

‘Thee mou, hot, hot, hot,’ Acheron rasped as he came down on top of her, punctuating every word with a passionate kiss and hands that traced every erogenous zone she possessed until her impatience steadily rose to match his.

Only then did he sink into her hard and fast, muttering something in Greek before he paused to press his lips to her brow. ‘Am I hurting you?’ he grated uneasily.

‘Only if you stop,’ she traded helplessly, her whole body clenching round him as possessively as her arms, hands smoothing over his satin-smooth back, clenching there, nails curving inward as he ground into her, and she cried out in helpless delight. Excitement rose in an unstoppable tide, and she lost the self she knew in it, living from one glorious moment of intense sensation to the next until the great gathering storm became too much to contain and the passion swept her off the heights down into the ecstatic rippling aftermath.

‘Well, there wasn’t much finesse about that,’ Acheron remarked, cradling her up against him in a damp tangle of limbs. ‘My apologies.’

‘No need,’ Tabby countered, pressing her mouth softly to his chest, revelling in the hot, musky smell of his skin and the closeness that he was embracing. ‘It was another ten out of ten.’

‘You’re grading me now?’ he demanded in obvious horror.

‘If you drop down to a five or lower, I’ll warn you,’ Tabby teased, smiling because she felt amazingly light-hearted while she was studiously engaged in not agonising. The minute she forgot his maxim though the real world immediately flooded back and, assailed by those whirling doubts, insecurities and unanswered questions, she became tense again and marvelled that she had so easily suppressed what she had seen.

‘I saw you with Melinda on the beach,’ she told him baldly, putting it right out there without holding back and judging her words and their effect.

Acheron’s big powerful frame stiffened and he tilted her head back to study her troubled face. ‘I’m bringing another nanny in to work with Melinda, who will eventually replace her. I’ve already made the arrangements. I don’t want Amber upset by too sudden a change in staff,’ he volunteered.

Tabby was wildly disconcerted by the announcement but relieved to know that Melinda would soon be moving on, while being impressed and touched that he had also been careful to consider Amber’s need for consistent care. ‘You’re planning to sack Melinda?’

‘She’s on a temporary contract. We can let her go any time we like but I’d prefer to dispense with her services in the usual way. She knows a little too much about our marriage for my comfort.’

Frowning at that admission, Tabby prompted, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Melinda is clearly aware that we were using separate bedrooms at the villa. When we were on the beach she offered to share Amber’s room so that I could take over hers,’ Acheron explained grimly.

Wings of hot pink reddened Tabby’s cheeks. Annoyance and embarrassment that their unconventional sleeping arrangements had evidently attracted the attention of the staff engulfed her. ‘Perhaps she was planning to do a little wandering during the night once you were conveniently close. She was coming on to you, wasn’t she?’

Lean, extravagantly handsome features impassive, stunning dark eyes screened, Acheron nodded. ‘It happens.’

Tabby looked up at him, weak with relief that he had told her the truth without fanfare or fuss. ‘Often?’

Acheron released a rueful chuckle at the innocence of that question. ‘All the time. If I ignore it, it usually dies a natural death but Melinda doesn’t take hints...possibly because she’s already reached the conclusion that ours is not a normal marriage. She could take that information to the press, laying me open to a potential charge that I only married you to circumvent my father’s will.’

Tabby grimaced. ‘We’ll have to work harder at being a more convincing couple. Share a room, spend time together, fake it up to behave more like a honeymoon couple is expected to behave.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be fake now,’ Acheron pointed out with lazy assurance.

But in her heart she would know it was fake, Tabby reflected painfully. He gave her great sex but he wasn’t offering to give her anything more. Maybe that was the only kind of giving he knew—short-term physical stuff with a built-in time limit, she conceded fairly, not wanting to judge him just because he was different. After all, was she any more evolved in the field of relationships? She wanted him so much, wanted his attention as much as Amber did, was willing to do whatever it took to hold that attention. But she was not willing to admit even to herself that he was also stirring up emotions that she was afraid she couldn’t handle.

‘Why did your father write a will that forced you to get married when you didn’t want to?’ Tabby asked quietly, knowing that that was the heart of the matter and the mystery that he had so far avoided explaining.

‘In a nutshell? He wanted me to marry Kasma,’ Acheron told her tersely, his beautiful mouth hardening. ‘And I don’t ever want to talk about that.’

With difficulty, Tabby swallowed an irritated comeback on that omission, knowing such a response would only reinforce his reserve and make him dig his stubborn heels in even harder. She could leave the thorny question of Kasma to one side for the moment and concentrate on other aspects. ‘But surely your father knew how you felt? How close were the two of you?’ Tabby persisted.

A tiny muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling jaw. ‘I only met him in my late twenties,’ he reminded her drily. ‘I suppose it was more of a business relationship than most. His company was struggling. He asked me for advice. I went in to help and ended up taking over.’

‘Didn’t he resent that?’

‘Not at all. He wasn’t much of a businessman, more of a family man desperate to give his loved ones a secure future.’

‘That was your stepmother and her children?’

Acheron compressed his lips. ‘My father married her when her kids were very young and raised them as his own but I didn’t meet them until about eighteen months before he died.’

‘Why not?’ Tabby asked in surprise.

‘His family weren’t relevant to me or to our relationship. They were strangers. There was no blood tie and I’ve never had a family, so I was very wary about getting involved in that side of his life. As things turned out, I was right to be wary and to have kept my distance for as long as I did,’ he pronounced with dark finality.

A silence full of undertones enclosed them in the aftermath of that assurance, adding to Tabby’s discomfiture. She was trying desperately to work out what his past relationship with his stepsister, Kasma, had entailed. Obviously there had been an affair that left the beautiful brunette with expectations that Acheron was not prepared to fulfil. Presumably the affair had ended badly with bitterness on both sides. Had some tragedy occurred? Had Kasma fallen pregnant or some such thing? Mightn’t that explain why his late father had got such a bee in his bonnet about Acheron marrying his stepdaughter? Certainly the other woman had believed very strongly that she was the only woman who should become Acheron’s wife. Was Kasma in love with him? Or was she more fixated on his money and his status? But regardless of why Kasma wanted Acheron, what did it matter when he didn’t want her? Tabby asked herself irritably, weary of suspicions that were winding up her tension for no good reason. If it was that simple though, why couldn’t he just say so?

‘I wish you didn’t keep secrets. I wish you were more frank and straightforward about things,’ she admitted before she could think better of it.

‘You’re so honest sometimes you terrify me, glyka mou,’ Acheron confided ruefully. ‘And if this honeymoon is going to work, we will each have to compromise our most cherished ideals.’

* * *

Acheron peered down at the red-rose tattoo adorning Tabby’s slender arm with a frown and stroked a finger gently across it. ‘The skin underneath feels rough and the design is already blurred. The tattooist must have damaged your skin.’

Tabby gritted her teeth, relaxation abandoned as she yanked her arm free of his light hold. ‘Don’t touch me there.’

Lustrous dark golden eyes scrutinised her from below inky-black lashes. ‘Why not?’

‘Are we about to have another one of those conversations in which you suggest that I go for laser treatment to have it removed?’ Tabby condemned, her small face taut and pale as she decided it was time to tell him the truth, which would surely conclude his interest in the subject. ‘If you must know, I won’t have it removed because it’s covering up an ugly scar. In fact, the scar was there first. The tattooist did a marvellous job but he couldn’t have made the ink design perfect when my skin was far from perfect to begin with.’

His lean dark features were frowning now. ‘What sort of a scar?’

‘Take it from me...you really don’t want to know,’ Tabby told him warningly, pulling away from him to scramble to her feet in the shade of the pine trees that overhung the pinkish pale sand. After checking that Amber still lay splayed out on her blanket in sleeping abandonment, her olive-skinned chubby limbs protruding starfish fashion from her white broderie anglaise playsuit, her rosebud mouth soft and relaxed, Tabby stalked on down the beach, a slight figure clad in shorts and a bikini top.

Acheron, she thought, her hands knotting into fists, her teeth grinding together in angry frustration. There were times she wanted to throw him into the sea from a great height. She had thought she was the nosy one but he didn’t quit once he was on a trail either. Even worse, he was a domineering perfectionist. Although he wasn’t planning to spend the rest of his life with her and Amber, he still wanted to persuade her that she should have the tattoo removed and he was as relentless as a steam roller running down a hill. At breakfast he had asked her if she would be happy for Amber to get something similar done, and Tabby had been betrayed into looking in dismay at Amber’s smooth soft forearm and Acheron, being Acheron, had noticed that revealing appraisal.

‘So, you do regret getting it done,’ he had exclaimed with satisfaction.

Yes, Acheron had some infuriating traits, she acknowledged, but over the past month in Sardinia he had also been a highly entertaining companion, a very sexy lover and a patient and caring father figure for Amber. At that moment, Tabby couldn’t begin to work out how an entire four weeks had flashed past faster than the speed of light. The first week had been a challenge while she was still hobbling round with a stick and pretty much sentenced to passing her time at the beach house. But once her ankle had healed, they had begun to go out and about.

Snapshots of special moments they had shared filled her memory with more comforting images. They had climbed the massive staircase to the Bastione terrace to see the amazing panoramic view of the rooftops of Calgiari. While she was still wheezing from the climb and overheated from the sun, he had told her that there was actually a lift but that he had assumed that she would enjoy the full tourist experience more. It had taken several cocktails and the cooling effect of the lovely breeze on the terrace before she had forgiven him, and if she was truthful her resistance had only truly melted when he slid long brown fingers into hers in the lift on the way down again.

They had made an evening visit to Castelsardo, a beautiful village dominated by a magical citadel all lit up at night, to enjoy live music in the piazza. Amber had adored all the noise and bustle going on around her and Acheron had enjoyed the baby’s bright-eyed fascination.

The following night, however, they had sought out more adult fun, dancing until dawn at the Billionaire club where Tabby had felt distinctly overshadowed by the number of gorgeous women, sleek and deadly as sharks, cruising for a wealthy hook-up. That Ash had acted as if he only had eyes for her and had kissed her passionately on the dance floor had done much to lift her self-esteem.

Memory after memory was now tumbling inside Tabby’s head. For forty-eight hours they had sailed a yacht round the national park of La Maddalena, a group of protected and largely uninhabited islands teeming with flora and wildlife. The last night they had skinny dipped in a deserted cove and made love until the sun went down. Exhausted, she had wakened to find Acheron barbecuing their evening meal, stunning dark golden eyes smiling lazily at her and making her heart somersault like a trapeze artist.

Of course, they had done all the usual things as well, like strolling round the famous boutiques on the Costa Smeralda, an activity or a lack of activity that Acheron was astounded to discover bored his bride to tears.

‘But you must want me to buy you something,’ he had protested. ‘You must have seen something you liked. You do realise that the only thing I’ve bought you since we arrived is that bed linen?’

Tabby had seen the exquisite bed linen in an upmarket handicrafts shop and her childhood memories of being clumsy with a needle and thread had given her a true appreciation of the amount of skill involved in producing such beautiful embroidery. That had been a purchase to treasure, a gift she truly loved, and only later had it occurred to her that she would never see that winter-weight linen spread across a bed that she shared with Acheron and that it would inevitably adorn a bed she slept in alone. Once the summer was over, their marriage would be history.

But then while she had known they would be faking their honeymoon and had dutifully posed with him for a persistent paparazzo, who had followed them round Porto Cervo, she had not appreciated the lengths Acheron might go to in making their relationship look genuine from the inside and the outside. So, if occasionally she got a little confused and thought about him as if he were her real husband, who could blame her for making that mistake?

Or for falling madly and irrevocably in love with him during the process, she reasoned wretchedly. After all, no man had ever treated her as well as he did, no man had ever made her so happy either, and only he had ever made love to her several times a day, every day, as if she were indeed the hottest, sexiest woman on the planet. Naturally her emotions had got involved and she suppressed them as best she could, knowing that the last thing Acheron required from her was angst and a broken heart, which would make him feel guilty and uncomfortable.

It wasn’t his fault she had fallen for him either. It certainly wasn’t as though he had misled her with promises about the future. In fact, right from the outset she had known that there was no future for them. He had never made any bones about that. Once they had succeeded to legally adopt Amber, their supposed marriage would be left to wither and die. Tabby would make a new life with the little girl she loved while she assumed Acheron would return to his workaholic, womanising existence. Would she ever see him again after the divorce? As she confronted that bleak prospect an agonising shard of pain slivered through Tabby and left a deep anguished ache in its wake. Would Acheron want to retain even the most distant relationship with Amber? Or would he decide on a clean break and act as if Amber didn’t exist?

Acheron crossed the beach, noting how Tabby’s figure had rounded out once she was eating decent food, recalling with quiet satisfaction that she no longer bit her nails—small changes that he valued.

‘How did you get the scar concealed by the tattoo?’ he demanded obstinately, interrupting Tabby’s reverie and shooting her back to the present by wrapping both arms round her from behind, carefully preventing her from storming off again. ‘Were you involved in an accident?’

‘No...it wasn’t an accident,’ Tabby admitted, past recollections making her skin turn suddenly cold and clammy in spite of the heat of the sun.

He was being supportive, she reminded herself doggedly, guilt biting into her former annoyance with him. When Amber had cried half the night because she was teething and her gums were sore, Acheron had been right there beside her, helping to distract the little girl and calm her down enough to sleep again. She had not expected supportiveness from Acheron but his interest in Amber was anything but half-hearted. When it came to childcare, he took the rough with the smooth, serenely accepting that children weren’t always sunny and smiling.

The new nanny currently working with Melinda was called Teresa, a warm, chattering Italian woman whose main source of interest was her charge. Within a week the English nanny would be leaving to take up a permanent position with a family in London.

‘Tabby...I asked you a question,’ Acheron reminded her with deeply unwelcome persistence. ‘You said you didn’t get the scar in an accident, so—’

Dredged from the teeming tumult of her frantic attempt to think about just about anything other than the past he was trying to dig up, Tabby lifted her head high and looked out to sea. ‘My mother burned me with a hot iron because I knocked over a carton of milk,’ she confessed without any expression at all.

‘Thee mou...’ Acheron growled in stricken disbelief, spinning her round to look at her pale set face and the yawning hurt still lingering in her violet eyes.

‘I was never allowed to be with either of my parents unsupervised again after that,’ she explained woodenly. ‘My mother went to prison for burning me and I never saw either of them again.’

Bewildered by the great surge of ferocious anger welling up inside him, Acheron crushed her slight body to his, both arms wrapping tightly round her. For some reason he registered that he was feeling sick and his hands weren’t quite steady, and in that instant some inexplicable deep need that disturbed him was making it impossible for him not to touch her. ‘That must’ve been a relief.’

‘No, it wasn’t. I loved them. They weren’t very lovable people but they were all I had,’ Tabby admitted thickly, her dry throat scratching over the words as if she was reluctant to voice them. She had learned as a young child that loving gestures would be rejected but now more than anything in the world she wanted to wrap her arms round Acheron and take full advantage of the comfort he was clumsily trying to offer her, only that pattern of early rejection and knowledge of how abandonment felt kept her body rigid and uninviting in the circle of his arms.

‘I understand that,’ Acheron breathed in a raw driven undertone. ‘I rarely saw my mother but I still idolised her—’

‘What a pair we are!’ Tabby sniffed, her tension suddenly giving way as tears stung her eyes and overflowed, her overloaded reaction to having had to explain and indeed relive what she never, ever talked about to anyone.

Acheron stared down at her tear-stained visage, pale below his bronzed skin, his strong facial bones forbiddingly set. ‘I can’t bear to think of you being hurt like that, yineka mou—’

‘Don’t...don’t talk about it!’ Tabby urged feverishly. ‘I try never to think about it but every time I saw the scar in the mirror as a teenager, I remembered it, and sometimes people asked what had happened to me. That’s why I got the tattoo...to cover it up, hide it.’

‘Then wear that tattoo with pride. It’s a survival badge,’ Acheron informed her with hard satisfaction. ‘I wish you’d explained weeks ago but I understand now why you didn’t.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, let’s talk about something more cheerful!’ Tabby pleaded. ‘Tell me something about you. I mean, you must have some happy childhood memories of your mother?’

Acheron closed an arm round her slight shoulders to press her back across the beach towards Amber. ‘The night before my first day at school she presented me with a fantastically expensive pen engraved with my name. Of course, I was only allowed to use a pencil in class but naturally that didn’t occur to her. She was very fond of flamboyant gestures, always telling me that only the very best was good enough for a Dimitrakos—’

‘Maybe that was how she was brought up,’ Tabby suggested quietly. ‘But you still haven’t explained why that pen made you happy.’

‘Because generally she ignored me but that particular week she was fresh out of rehab and engaged in turning over a new leaf and it was the one and only time she made me feel that I genuinely mattered to her. She even gave me a whole speech about education being the most important thing in my life...that from a woman who dropped out of school as a teenager and couldn’t read anything more challenging than a magazine,’ he told her wryly.

‘Do you still have the pen?’

‘I think it was stolen.’ He sent her a rueful charismatic smile that tilted her heart inside her chest and interfered with her breathing. ‘But at least I have that one perfect moment to remember her by.’

* * *

Acheron could not relax until he had commissioned a special piece of jewellery for Tabby’s upcoming birthday, which surprisingly fell in the same week as his own. That achieved, he worried about having taken that much trouble over a gift. What was wrong with him? What sort of man went to such lengths for a wife he was planning to divorce? Keep it cool, a little voice chimed in the back of his uneasy mind. But it had proved impossible to play it cool when confronted with the harsh reality of Tabby’s childhood experiences, which had had the unexpected effect of showing Acheron that he had a good deal less to be bitter about with regard to his own. His mother had been a neglectful, selfish and inadequate parent but even at her worst he had never doubted that she loved him. And possibly, but for the malicious machinations of a third party, his father might have learned to love and appreciate him as well...

The constant flow of such unfamiliar thoughts assailing him kept him quiet over dinner. Aware of Tabby’s anxious gaze, he was maddened by the knowledge that he wasn’t feeling like himself any more and that, even in the midst of that disorientating experience, withdrawing his attention from her could make him feel guilty. Never a fan of great inner debates, or even in the habit of staging them, he was exasperated and bewildered by the emotions Tabby constantly churned up inside him. She was too intense, too rich for his blood. He needed to take a step back, he decided abruptly; he needed some distance, and the instant he made that decision he felt better and back in control again.

‘I have to go away on business for a couple of days,’ Acheron volunteered as he strode out of the bathroom, a towel negligently wrapped round his lean, muscular body. His black hair tousled and damp, his lean, devastatingly handsome face clean-shaven, he looked amazing and Tabby’s mouth ran dry before she could even process what he had said.

Realising that he was leaving her, Tabby went rigid and then scolded herself because he had done very little work in recent weeks and could hardly be expected to maintain that lifestyle indefinitely. No, she had been spoilt by his constant company and had to learn fast how to adapt to his absence. Was that why he had been so quiet and distant over dinner? Had he worried about her reaction? Well, it was time to show him that she was strong and not the complaining type.

‘I’ll miss you, but we’ll be fine,’ she responded lightly.

Acheron ground his teeth together, having expected her to object or even offer to travel with him. This was definitely a moment when he had believed she would cling and make him feel suffocated. He watched her clamber into bed, slender as a willow wand, the modest nightdress concealing the hot, secret places he loved, and lust kicked in so fast he felt dizzy with it. Lustrous dark eyes veiling, he discarded the towel, doused the lights and joined her. Not tonight, he thought grimly, as though he was fighting a battle; tonight he could get by without her.

Eyes sparkling in the moonlight, Tabby rolled over to Acheron’s side of the bed and ran delicate fingers hungrily across a hair-roughened thigh while her hair trailed over his pelvis.

Acheron closed his eyes in despair. He could always lie back and think of Greece. If he said no like a frightened virgin, he would probably upset her, and there was no point doing that, was there? Why risk upsetting her? She found his swelling shaft with her mouth, and his hips shifted upward in helpless encouragement. It crossed his mind that the divorce might upset her because she acted as if she was fond of him, looked at him as if he was special, dived on him in bed if he didn’t dive on her first, never missed a chance to put her arms round him...although strangely not this afternoon on the beach when he had put his arms round her in an effort to offer sympathy for what his thoughtless questions had made her cruelly relive. A particularly strong wave of pleasure blanked out the subsequent thought about why she might not have responded, yet another thought he didn’t want to have. All that sentimental stuff, he thought grimly—he never had been any good at that. He had probably been clumsy.

Afterwards, Acheron didn’t hold her the way he usually did, and Tabby felt cold inside and abandoned. She curled up on her side, hating him, loving him, wanting him, fretting and reckoning that love was the worst torture in existence for a woman. There was no point always wanting what he wouldn’t give her, didn’t even want to give her, she reflected painfully. Their divorce was not only written in the stars but also written into a pre-nuptial contract from which there would be no escape.

And maybe he still had feelings for Kasma, whom he would not discuss although she had on several occasions worked the conversation helpfully round in that direction to give him an easy opening. But trying to get Acheron to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about was like trying to get blood out of a stone. In her experience though, people only avoided topics that embarrassed or troubled them, so his failed relationship with Kasma must have gone deep indeed to leave behind such conspicuous and quite uncharacteristic sensitivity...

* * *

The following morning, Tabby drifted out of sleep to discover that Acheron had made an early departure and without leaving even a note. She spent a quiet day with Amber and it was the next day before the silence from Acheron began to niggle at her. He didn’t have to stay in touch when he was only planning to be away forty-eight hours, she conceded ruefully, and she was not so needy that she required him to check in with her every day. But as she lay in the bed that felt empty without him the day stretched before Tabby like a blank slate, shorn of anticipation, excitement and happiness.

Thoroughly exasperated with her mood, she went for a shower and got dressed in the bathroom, emerging to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the tall cheval mirror across the bedroom and wonder why she couldn’t see it properly. As she automatically moved closer to see what was amiss with the mirror she realised that someone had written something on it, and she frowned at it in bewilderment.

He’s using you! Tabby was gobsmacked. Why would anyone write that on their mirror for her to see? Clearly it was meant to be personal, and presumably Acheron was the ‘he’ being referred to. What on earth did it mean? Whatever, it really spooked her that someone had come into their bedroom while she was in the bathroom and left a message presumably intended to shock and insult her. After all, only someone in the house could have had access to their room and that knowledge made gooseflesh blossom on her exposed skin.

Without hesitation she lifted the house phone and asked to speak to Ash’s security chief, Dmitri. Almost before she had finished speaking, Dmitri joined her in the room to see the mirror for himself. If his forbidding expression was anything to go by, he took the matter very seriously. Dmitri, however, was a man of few words and she left him to it and went downstairs for breakfast.

CHAPTER TEN

‘CAN I ASK you where you’re planning to go?’ Melinda asked with a sunny smile, joining her at the breakfast table, which she never dared to do when Acheron was around.

‘Into Porto Cervo to shop,’ Tabby admitted. ‘I’m looking for a birthday present.’

‘There’s some great jewellery boutiques...try the Piazzetta delle Chiacchere,’ Melinda advised helpfully.

Tabby nodded, feeling guilty about how much she disliked the curvaceous blonde who would, by the end of the week, mercifully be gone from the household to take up her new appointment. Since Teresa’s arrival and increasing involvement with Amber, Melinda seemed to spend a lot of time hovering unnecessarily and watching their comings and goings. Once, Tabby had even suspected that the blonde was eavesdropping on her and Acheron. No doubt the nanny had now registered that their detached marriage had developed into something closer. Or was that only her own wishful thinking at work? Tabby wondered heavily.

Acheron had been gone only one day and she felt bereft. That was a pretty poor show for a strong, independent woman, she conceded shamefacedly. She missed him so much, and her outlook wasn’t improved by her recollection of his unusual behaviour on that last night they had spent together. He had been silent and moody, extraordinarily uninvolved when she had made love to him, saying nothing, doing nothing, in fact, acting like a right—

‘Miss Barnes?’ Dmitri appeared in the doorway. ‘Could I have a word with you?’

‘Right now?’ Melinda prompted with a sparkling smile that seemed wasted on the granite-faced older man.

‘Now would be a good time,’ Dmitri responded evenly.

Tabby left Teresa in charge of Amber, having decided that dragging the little girl out to trail round the shops during the hottest part of the day would be unwise. The message was still on the mirror when she walked past into the bathroom to renew her lipstick and it made her shiver. He’s using you. Well, as far as their marriage was concerned they were using each other, she told herself doggedly. Although things had changed drastically once they began sharing a bed in reality. Was Acheron only sleeping with her because that intimacy added to the illusion of their having a normal marriage? After all, if he was seen out by the paparazzi with another woman while he was supposed to be a happily married new husband, it wouldn’t look good. So, was she being used on that basis? But how could she call it using when she was in love with him and wanted him to make love to her? Did that make her a silly lovelorn fool? Or was she taking equal advantage of him?

From the instant Dmitri phoned him and broke the news, Acheron hadn’t been able to stay still or think with his usual logic. Gripped by insane impatience and mounting concern, he just wanted to get back to Sardinia and stand watch over Tabby and Amber. Unfortunately for him, getting a last-minute slot for the jet to take off in Athens and jumping the queue took longer than he had envisaged. He cursed the fact that he had left them behind in the first place, cursed his conviction that he should protect Tabby at all costs from what Kasma might do next.

Why had he chosen to leave Tabby when he actually wanted to be with her? What did that say about him? That he couldn’t recognise his own emotions and was prone to running away from what he couldn’t understand? Feelings had never been so intense for him before and he had been torn between a kind of intoxication at the fire of them and a kind of panic at knowing he was out of control. He had never allowed that to happen to him before but he’d had no choice. He had jumped on the panic as an excuse and now he was paying the price. Thee mou, if anything was to happen to them, he brooded darkly, his fists clenching aggressively just as his pilot signalled him from across the VIP lounge that they were good to go.

* * *

‘I really do believe that your husband would prefer you to stay in today,’ Dmitri informed Tabby quietly.

Unfortunately, Tabby was in no mood to be grounded like a child and marvelled that Acheron could even think he could give out orders that way through Dmitri, particularly when he had taken off himself at such short notice. What was it? Why was he trying to keep her on the home front? Some sort of control issue on his part? And poor Dmitri was embarrassed to have to say such a thing to her; she could see it in the older man.

‘I’m sorry but it’s really important that I go out today,’ she said levelly. ‘I have something I have to buy.’

‘Then I’ll accompany you and I’ll drive, Mrs Dimitrakos,’ Dmitri responded with determination.

For the sake of peace, Tabby nodded agreement but knew she was going to have to have a discussion with Acheron with regard to the intense security presence he maintained in their lives. Was it really necessary that they be guarded and watched over every place they went? Was there a genuine risk of their being robbed or kidnapped? Was there some kind of specific threat out against Acheron?

‘You’ll be very bored,’ she warned Dmitri as she settled into the passenger seat of the SUV and watched another car full of security men follow them out of the entrance to the beach house with wry acceptance.

‘It’s not a problem. I’m used to going shopping with my wife,’ Dmitri told her calmly. ‘She can stare at one shop window for ten minutes before she’s satisfied she’s seen everything.’

Tabby knew she would be even more of a drag because she didn’t even know what she was planning to buy and was hoping to be inspired by something she saw. What did you buy for the man who had everything? The massive monthly allowance he had awarded her, however, had piled up in her bank account and thanks to his generosity she had got to spend very little of it, so she had plenty to spend.

Dmitri following behind her, Tabby prowled through the exclusive boutiques and jewellery outlets. Acheron wasn’t the sort of guy who wore jewellery. He wore a wedding ring and occasionally cuff links and that was all. But short of copping out by buying him another silk tie when he already had a rail of them, what was she to give him for his thirty-first birthday? Mulling over that thorny issue, she saw the pen. Actually the pen was the only possible description for a pen that bore a world-famous designer label. It would cost a fortune, she reckoned. But equally fast she recalled the pen his mother had bought him and decided that the cost was less important than what it meant, although why she was so keen to buy a significant gift for a man who couldn’t even be bothered to phone her, she couldn’t explain. Maybe it was the desolate thought that the pen might survive with him a lot longer than their marriage and act as a reminder of what they had once shared. Depressing, much? She scolded herself impatiently for her downbeat thoughts.

She bought the pen and arranged for it to be inscribed with his name and the date. She had to make use of the platinum credit card he had given her to make the purchase and, while trying to act as if she spent such sums all the time, she was secretly horrified at spending so much money and worried that Acheron would think she had gone mad. Pale and shaken after that sobering experience, she told Dmitri that she wanted to go for a coffee. He led the way to an outdoor café and insisted on choosing a seat a couple of tables away from her.

She had just bought the most expensive pen in the history of the world, she reflected guiltily, and when he saw the bill he might well freak out and regret telling her that her card had no upper limit. She was sipping her latte slowly, savouring the caffeine, when a shadow fell across her table.

Kasma settled her long elegant body down smoothly into the seat opposite. ‘You’ve been so unavailable you’ve forced me into all this cloak and dagger stuff,’ she complained.

Totally taken aback by the other woman’s appearance, Tabby stared at the beautiful brunette with wide, questioning eyes. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘You’re here, Ash is here...where else would I be?’ Kasma asked, rolling big dark eyes in apparent disbelief at the question. ‘I refuse to believe that you’re so stupid that you can’t accept that Ash belongs with me.’

‘Miss Philippides...’ Dmitri broke into the conversation, standing straight and tall beside Kasma’s chair. ‘Please leave—’

Kasma slung him a defiant glance. ‘We’re in a public place and I can go where I please on this island. We’re not in Greece now.’

‘May I suggest then that we leave, Mrs Dimitrakos?’ Dmitri continued, regarding Tabby expectantly.

Tabby breathed in deep. ‘When I’ve finished my coffee,’ she murmured, determined to hear what Kasma had to say since she sure as heck wasn’t going to receive any information from Acheron.

Grim-faced, Dmitri retreated to an even closer table.

‘I believe in getting straight down to business,’ Kasma informed her. ‘How much money do you want to walk out on this absurd marriage?’

Dumbstruck, Tabby stared at the older woman. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Oh, I’m always serious when it comes to Ash. We belong together and he would have married me, not you, had my stepfather not foolishly tried to force the issue in his will,’ Kasma contended confidently. ‘You must know how proud Ash is.’

‘Staying here, entering into this dialogue is a very bad idea, Mrs Dimitrakos,’ Dmitri leant closer to spell out.

Kasma shot a vicious burst of Greek at the older man and the look on her face was downright scary. With the sudden suspicion that Dmitri’s advice to retreat from the scene might well be the most sensible move, Tabby lifted her bag, settled some money on the table for the bill and stood up. Before she walked away, however, she had something to say. ‘No matter how much money you offered me I wouldn’t walk out on Acheron,’ she murmured tautly. ‘I love him.’

‘Not as much as I love him, you bitch!’ Kasma launched at her in a seething shout of fury that shook Tabby rigid.

Cupping her elbow firmly in his hand, Dmitri walked her away from the café at a fast pace. ‘Kasma Philippides is a dangerously unstable woman. Your husband has a restraining order out against her on Greek soil and she’s not allowed to approach him or make a nuisance of herself there. You can’t talk to her. You can’t reason with her. We’ve learned that the hard way.’

‘Ash should’ve warned me. If he’d warned me, I would’ve walked away immediately,’ Tabby protested defensively. ‘I could see that she was obsessed with him at the wedding but I didn’t understand how much of a problem she was in his life.’

‘He wasn’t expecting her to follow you here. He had no idea she was on the island. By the way, he’s flying back as we speak.’

Relief swept Tabby. He would finally have to tell her the whole story. But he had had to take out a legal restraining order to keep Kasma at a distance? What had driven him to take his father’s stepdaughter to court? That must have taken some nerve, particularly while his father was still alive. Had Kasma been acting like some sort of psycho stalker?

They were driving along the coast road when she noticed that Dmitri kept on looking worriedly in the driving mirror. Tabby glanced over her shoulder to notice the bright red sports car behind them. The driver had long dark hair just like Kasma’s.

‘She’s following us,’ Dmitri told her flatly. ‘Make sure your belt is safely fastened. I may have to take evasive manoeuvres but I’ve already alerted the police.’

‘Evasive manoeuvres?’ Tabby gasped when there was a sudden jolt at the rear of the car. ‘She’s trying to ram us? Is she crazy in that tiny little car?’

Dmitri didn’t answer. His concentration was on the road because he had speeded up. Tabby’s heart was beating very, very fast as she watched in the mirror as the red car tried to catch up with them again. They were zooming round corners so fast that Tabby felt dizzy and she was still watching Kasma’s car when it veered across the road into the path of another car travelling the other way.

‘Oh, my word, she’s crashed...hit someone else!’

Dmitri jammed on the brakes and rammed into Reverse to turn and drive back. He leapt out of the SUV. The team from the other security car were already attending to the victims of the crash, carrying the passenger to the verge, the driver, still conscious, stumbling after them. The red sports car had hit a wall and demolished part of it. Tabby slowly climbed out, her tummy heaving as she approached the scene of frantic activity. Dmitri was talking fast on his phone as he approached her. ‘Stay in the car, Mrs Dimitrakos. You don’t need to see this. Miss Philippides is dead.’

‘Dead?’ Tabby was stunned, barely able to credit that the woman who had been speaking to her only minutes earlier could have lost her life.

‘She wasn’t wearing a belt—she was thrown from the car.’

‘And the people who were in the other car?’ Tabby asked.

‘Very lucky to be alive. The passenger has a head wound and the driver has a leg injury.’

Tabby nodded and got back slowly into the SUV, feeling oddly distanced from everything happening around her. That sensation, which she only vaguely recognised as shock, was still lingering when she gave a brief statement at the police station with a lawyer sitting in, volunteering information she couldn’t understand in the local language. That completed, she was stowed in a waiting room with a cup of coffee until Acheron strode through the door. He stalked across the room, emanating stormy tension, and raised her out of her seat with two anxious hands.

‘You are all right? Dmitri swore you were unhurt but I was afraid to believe him,’ Acheron grated half under his breath, his lean, darkly handsome features taut and granite hard as he scanned her carefully from head to toe.

‘Well, I was fine until you made me spill my coffee,’ she responded unevenly, setting the mug down and rubbing ineffectually at the splashes now adorning her pale pink top. ‘Are we free to leave?’

‘Yes, I’ve made a statement. Thee mou,’ Acheron murmured fiercely. ‘Kasma had a knife in her bag!’

‘A knife?’ Tabby repeated in horror.

‘But for Dmitri’s presence she might have attacked you!’ Acheron lifted a not quite steady hand and raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘I was so scared when I heard she’d come here, I felt sick,’ he confided thickly.

‘She’s dead,’ Tabby reminded him in an undertone.

Acheron released his pent-up breath and said heavily, ‘Her brother, Simeon, is on his way to make the funeral arrangements. He’s a decent man. I hope you don’t mind but I’ve asked him to stay with us.’

‘Of course, I don’t mind. No matter what’s happened, your father’s family deserve your consideration and respect.’

‘Melinda’s flying back to London,’ Acheron volunteered. ‘She was responsible for the messages on the mirror.’

‘Messages...there was more than one?’ Tabby queried in consternation.

Acheron told her about the message he had seen at the villa in Tuscany and how Dmitri had instantly worked out that Melinda had to be the perpetrator when the nanny did it a second time. Confronted that same morning after breakfast by Dmitri, Melinda had confessed that Kasma had approached her in London and had offered her a lot of money to leave the messages and to spy on Acheron while keeping Kasma up to date with information on where they were staying. It was Melinda who had warned Dmitri that Kasma was actually on the island, news that had alarmed Acheron into making an immediate return.

The fountain of questions concerning Kasma that had disturbed Tabby earlier in the day was, by that stage, returning fast, but the haunted look in Acheron’s lustrous dark eyes and the bleak set of his bronzed face silenced her. He escorted her out to a car, and she slid in, appreciating the air-conditioned cool on her overheated skin.

‘I have a lot to explain,’ Acheron acknowledged flatly and then he closed his hand over hers.

In a reflexive movement, Tabby rejected the contact and folded her hands together on her lap. ‘After the way you behaved that last night and the fact that you haven’t been in touch since, I think holding hands would be a bit of a joke,’ she said bluntly. ‘You don’t need to pretend things you don’t feel to pacify or comfort me. As you noted, I’m unhurt. It’s been a horrible day but I’ll get over it without leaning on you.’

‘Maybe I want you to lean on me.’

Tabby raised a brow, unimpressed by that unlikely suggestion. ‘I’d prefer to fall over and pick myself up. I’ve been doing it all my life and I’ve managed just fine.’

Acheron compressed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I should have explained about her weeks ago but the subject of Kasma rouses a lot of bad memories...and reactions,’ he admitted with curt reluctance.

‘Kasma’s the reason you thought someone might have pushed me down the stairs at the villa,’ Tabby grasped finally.

‘Maybe she made me a little paranoid but she did destroy my relationship with my father before he died.’

‘And that’s why he wrote that crazy will,’ Tabby guessed.

‘I told you that I only met my father’s family about eighteen months ago. I only agreed in the first place because it seemed to mean so much to him. What I didn’t mention before is that the week before that dinner engagement took place at his home, I met Kasma without knowing I was meeting Kasma,’ he told her grittily.

Tabby frowned. ‘Without knowing it was her?’ she echoed. ‘How? I mean, why?’

‘I doubt if I could ever adequately explain why from Kasma’s point of view. She introduced herself to me as Ariadne. She certainly knew who I was,’ he delivered with perceptible bitterness. ‘I was in Paris on a stopover between flights and she was staying in the same hotel. I’ve never believed that was a coincidence. I believe I was set up. I was alone. I was bored. She targeted me and I fell for it...and you could not begin to understand how deeply I regret taking the bait.’

Tabby was studying him with confused eyes. ‘The bait?’

‘I had a tacky one-night stand with her,’ Acheron ground out grudgingly, dark colour accentuating his spectacular cheekbones, his jaw line clenching hard on the admission. ‘A couple of stolen hours from a busy schedule of work and travel. I’m being honest here—it meant nothing more to me. Although I treated her with respect I never pretended at any stage that I wanted to see her again.’

Tabby averted her eyes, reflecting that respectful treatment would not have compensated Kasma for his ultimate rejection, when presumably she had persuaded herself that she could expect a much keener and less fleeting response.

‘She picked me up in the hotel restaurant. Afterwards she started acting as though she knew me really well. To be frank, it was a freaky experience and I made my excuses and returned to my own room.’

Tabby was swallowing hard at a level of honesty she had not expected to receive from him. ‘But if she already knew who you were, why did she lie about her own identity?’

Acheron shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Obviously because I would never have touched her had I known she was my father’s precious little girl.’

‘His precious little girl?’ Tabby queried.

‘Her mother was widowed when Kasma was only a baby. My father raised Kasma from the age of three. She was the apple of his eye, his favourite child, and he couldn’t see any fault in her,’ Acheron advanced tautly, his lips compressing. ‘When I walked into the family dinner the week after the hotel encounter I was appalled to realise that Kasma was my father’s stepchild and furious that she had lied to me and put me in that position, but that wasn’t all I had to worry about. Before I could even decide how to behave, she stood up and announced that she had been saving a little surprise for everyone. And that surprise—according to her—was that she and I were dating.’

‘Oh, my word...’ Tabby was as stunned as he must’ve been by that development. ‘And that one...er...episode at the hotel was really the extent of your relationship with her?’

‘It was, but not according to Kasma. She had a very fertile imagination and over the months that followed she began acting like a stalker, flying round the world, turning up wherever I was,’ he explained, lines of strain bracketing his mouth as he recalled that period. ‘She tried to force her way into my life while telling my father a pack of lies about me. She told him I’d cheated on her, she told him I’d got her pregnant and then she told him she’d had a miscarriage. He fell for every one of her tales and nothing I could say would persuade him that my relationship with his stepdaughter was a fantasy she had made up. And having made that first mistake by getting involved with her that night at the hotel, I felt I had brought the whole nightmare down on my own head.’

‘I don’t think so—’

‘It was casual sex but there was nothing casual about it,’ Acheron opined grimly. ‘I went to bed with a woman who was a stranger and maybe I deserved what I got.’

‘Not when she set out to deliberately deceive you and then tried to trap you into a relationship,’ Tabby declared stoutly. ‘I don’t agree with the way you behaved with her but she was obviously a disturbed personality.’

‘She assaulted a woman I spent time with last year, which was why I was so concerned about your safety and Amber’s.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She forced her way into my apartment and punched the woman while ranting about how I belonged to her.’ He grimaced at the recollection. ‘My father begged me to use my influence and prevent it from going to court but I was at the end of my rope. Kasma was dangerous and she needed treatment but as long as her family turned a blind eye and I swallowed what she was dishing out, she was free to do as she liked. The court accepted that she was lying and had never had a relationship with me and therefore had no excuse whatsoever for attacking the woman in my apartment and calling it a domestic dispute.’

‘Didn’t that convince your father that you were telling him the truth?’

‘No, Kasma managed to convince him that I must’ve bribed someone and she had been stitched up by me to protect my own reputation,’ he proffered with unconcealed regret. ‘The sole saving grace was that after that court case I was able to take out a restraining order against her and at least that kept her out of my hair while I was on Greek soil.’

Tabby slowly shook her head, which was reeling with his revelations. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her? Why wouldn’t you explain?’

His bold bronzed profile clenched hard. ‘I was ashamed of the whole business and I didn’t want to frighten you either. My wealth didn’t protect me from the fact that Kasma could still get to me almost everywhere I went. You have no idea how powerless I felt when she even managed to gatecrash the wedding because I didn’t want to make a scene with my father’s family present,’ he confessed grittily. ‘I didn’t want to publicise my problems with her while my father was still alive either. She caused him enough grief with her wild stories about how badly I’d treated her.’

‘So why on earth did he want you to marry her?’ Tabby queried, struggling to understand that angle.

‘He believed she loved me and he genuinely thought I owed her a wedding ring. He blamed me for her increasingly hysterical outbursts and strange behaviour.’

‘That was probably easier for him than dealing with the real problem, which was her. He would’ve had more faith in you if he had ever had the chance to get to know you properly,’ Tabby opined, resting a soothing hand down on his. ‘Kasma had the advantage and he trusted her and that gave her the power to put you through an awful ordeal.’

‘It’s over now,’ Acheron reminded her flatly. ‘Her brother, Simeon, believed me and tried to persuade her to see a therapist. Perhaps if she had listened she might not have died today.’

‘It’s not your fault though,’ Tabby countered steadily. ‘You weren’t capable of fixing whatever was broken in her.’

Acheron groaned out loud. ‘It’s so not sexy that you feel sorry for me now.’

‘I don’t feel sorry for you. I just think you’ve been put through the mill a bit,’ Tabby paraphrased awkwardly. ‘No wonder you don’t like clingy, needy women after that experience.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if you clung occasionally,’ Acheron admitted.

Tabby rolled her eyes at him. ‘Stop being such a smoothie...it’s wasted on me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Acheron asked harshly as the limo drew up outside the beach house.

‘It’s not necessary to charm me. We both had good reasons to get married and that’s the only fulfilment either of us require from our agreement. You got a wife and, hopefully, I will eventually be able to adopt Amber,’ Tabby spelt out as she slid out of the car and walked into the house.

‘That’s not how I feel,’ Acheron informed her stubbornly.

‘We’re not twin souls and nor are we required to be,’ Tabby flipped back, walking through to the lounge, which stood with doors wide open to the terrace and the view of the cove, draperies fluttering softly in the slight breeze that never seemed to leave the coast. ‘I think we’re overdue a little plain speaking here.’

Outside, she leant up against the rail bordering the terrace and folded her arms in a defensive position. She knew what she needed to say. She was more than halfway to getting her heart broken by the stupid, dangerous pretence that she was on a real honeymoon with a real husband! How had she let that happen? How had she let herself fall in love with a male who was simply doing what he had to do to give the appearance of being a newly married man?

‘Meaning?’ Acheron prompted, stilling in the doorway, six feet plus inches of stunning male beauty and charisma.

Tabby looked him over with carefully blank eyes. He was gorgeous; he had always been gorgeous from the crown of his slightly curly black head to the soles of his equally perfect feet. He focused sizzling dark golden eyes on her with interrogative intensity.

‘Tabby?’ he prompted afresh.

‘Unlike you I call a spade a spade. I don’t wrap it up.’

‘I appreciate that about you...that what you say you mean,’ he countered steadily.

Tabby threw her slight shoulders back, violet eyes wide and appealing. ‘Look, let’s just bring the whole charade to an end here and now,’ she urged. ‘Melinda was spying on us and she’s gone. We’ve done all the newly happily married stuff for weeks and now surely we can both go back to normal?’

‘Normal?’

Tabby was wondering what the matter with him was, for it was not like him to take a back seat in any argument. Furthermore, he looked strained, having lost colour while his spectacular strong bone structure had set rigid below his bronzed skin. ‘We were strangers with a legal agreement, Ash,’ she reminded him painfully. ‘We’ve met the terms, put on the show and now surely we can return to being ourselves again behind closed doors at least?’

‘Is that what you want?’ he pressed curtly, lean brown hands closing into fists by his side. ‘Don’t you think this is a decision best shelved for a less traumatic day?’

Tabby lifted her chin, her heart squeezing tight inside her chest, pain like a sharp little arrow twisting inside her because, of course, it was not what she wanted. She wanted him; she was in love with him but she had to protect herself, had to force herself to accept that what they had shared was only a pretence. ‘No.’

‘You want to go back to where we started out?’ Acheron demanded starkly.

Tabby dropped her shoulders, her eyes veiling. ‘No, I just want us to be honest and not faking anything.’

Acheron breathed in very slow and deep, dark golden eyes glittering like fireworks below the shield of his luxuriant black lashes. ‘I haven’t been faking anything...’

Tabby’s dazed mind ran over all the romancing, the sexing, the hand-holding, the fun, and she blinked in bemusement. ‘But of course you were faking.’

‘It may have started out that way, but it ended up real, yineka mou.’ Acheron surveyed her steadily but she knew he was putting up a front because he was really, really tense.

‘How...real?’ Tabby questioned, her heart thumping like mad.

Acheron lifted his arms and spread his hands in an oddly defenceless gesture. ‘I fell in love with you...’

Tabby almost fell over in shock, her brain refusing to accept that he could have said that he loved her. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re just scared that I’m about to walk out on our marriage agreement and you’ll lose your company—but you don’t need to be scared of that happening because I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m still as determined to adopt Amber as I ever was, so I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to,’ she pointed out honestly.

‘When I try to say, “I love you” for the first time in my life to a woman, you could at least listen to what I’m saying and stop talking a lot of rubbish!’ Acheron shot back at her with scorching effect.

Tabby was struck dumb by that little speech. He was serious? He wasn’t joking, faking, trying to manipulate her in some nefarious way? She stared back at him fixedly.

‘And it was bloody hard to say too!’ Acheron added in angry complaint at her response.

‘I’m in shock,’ Tabby mumbled shakily. ‘I didn’t think you had any feelings for me.’

‘I tried very hard not to. I fought it every step of the way,’ Acheron admitted ruefully. ‘But in the end you got to me and you got to me so hard I ran away from it.’

‘Ran away?’ Tabby almost whispered in growing disbelief.

‘I was feeling strange and that’s why I took off on business...to give myself a little breathing space,’ Acheron qualified tautly. ‘But the minute I got away I realised I only wanted to come back and be with you.’

Tabby blinked slowly, struggling to react to that explanation when all her crazy head was full of was a single statement: that he loved her. He loves me. She tasted the idea, savoured it, very nearly careened across the terrace and flattened him to the tiles in gratitude, but mercifully retained enough restraint to stay where she was. ‘You got cold feet, didn’t you?’ she guessed.

Acheron nodded. ‘It was a little overwhelming when I realised what was wrong with me.’

Tabby moved closer. ‘No, it wasn’t anything wrong with you. It was a good thing, a wonderful thing...you love me. I love you.’

‘If you feel the same way I do, why the hell are you putting me through this torture?’ Acheron demanded rawly.

Tabby almost laughed, a sense of intoxication gripping her as she searched his darkly handsome features and the masculine bewilderment etched there. ‘Talking about love is torture?’

Acheron rested his arms down on her slim shoulders and breathed, ‘I thought once I said it, that would be that, but I was scared you wouldn’t feel the same way and that you wanted it all to be fake.’

Tabby closed her arms round him and snuggled close. ‘No, real is much better than fake. So, does this mean we’re really and truly married?’

‘Absolutely,’ Acheron confirmed, and bent to lift her up into his arms. ‘It also means we’re going to be adoptive parents together because I sort of developed a fondness for Amber as well. Seems this love business is contagious...’

‘Wow...’ Tabby framed as he carried her upstairs to their bedroom and Teresa, with the baby in her arms, retreated back into the nursery with a warm smile. ‘But how did it happen?’

Acheron arranged her on the bed with the care of a man setting up an art installation and stared down at her for what felt like ages. ‘I think it started when I realised I was with a woman who was willing to sacrifice her home and her business to look after her sick best friend and child. I respect that level of loyalty and unselfishness. I respect what you were willing to do to retain custody of Amber even though I was pretty rough and crude about everything at the time. You stuck it out...you stood up to me...’

‘And out of that came love?’ Tabby whispered in shock.

‘Out of those experiences came a woman I couldn’t live without,’ traded Acheron with a tender look in his lustrous dark eyes that she had never seen before. ‘Thee mou...if you had still wanted the fake marriage and the divorce I don’t know what I would’ve done.’

‘I don’t want a divorce...I don’t ever want to let go of you,’ Tabby confided against his shirtfront.

‘That desire is just about to come in very handy, agape mou,’ Acheron murmured thickly, claiming her ripe mouth with his own, sending a thrill of heat and anticipation travelling through her relaxed body.

About an hour later, Acheron leapt naked out of bed to retrieve his trousers and dig into a pocket to produce a jewellers’ box, which he pressed into her hand. ‘I know it’s not your birthday for another twenty-four hours but this is burning a hole in my pocket,’ he admitted ruefully.

Tabby opened the box to find an unusual ring in the shape of a rose with a ruby at the centre.

‘What do you think?’ Acheron demanded anxiously. ‘I wanted you to know that it was made in the image of your tattoo because it will always remind me what made you the special woman you are.’

‘It’s...gorgeous!’ Tabby carolled as he removed his late mother’s engagement ring from her wedding finger and replaced it with the new ring. The diamonds on the rose petals caught the sunlight and cast a rainbow of little sparkling reflections across the white bedding. ‘But why on earth do you think I am so special when I’m so ordinary?’

‘You’re special because in spite of all the bad things that happened to you, you still have an open heart and a loving spirit. You love Amber, you love me—’

‘So much,’ Tabby emphasised feelingly as she smiled up at him. ‘Although you might feel you love me a little less when you see what I spent on my credit card.’

‘Never,’ Acheron contradicted. ‘You’re the least extravagant person I know.’

‘You might change your mind on that score,’ she warned him, hoping he at least appreciated the gift of the pen on his birthday in three days’ time.

‘I love you,’ he breathed softly, his attention locked on her smiling face.

He had fallen in love with her, he had genuinely fallen in love with her, Tabby savoured finally, and she allowed the happiness to well up inside her along with a sense of release from all anxiety. Somehow, by the most mysterious process of love known to mankind, two people who had loathed each other on sight because of their misconceptions had found love and formed a happy home and family and she was delirious with the joy of that miracle.

* * *

Tabby sucked in her tummy and studied the mirror. No, it was pointless: she was pregnant and there was no escaping that pregnant apple shape, no matter how well cut her maternity clothing was. With a wry smile at the foolishness of her vanity, Tabby went downstairs to check the last-minute arrangements for Amber’s fourth birthday party.

The party was a catered affair, everything set up to entertain a whole posse of Amber’s nursery-school friends. There was a bouncy castle in the garden of their London town house, purchased after the birth of their first child, Andreus, who was already a rumbustious noisy toddler. Closely pursued by his nanny, Teresa, who had become as much a part of the family as the children, Andreus hurtled across the hall to throw his arms up to be lifted by his mother.

Tabby tried not to wince at the weight of her son, but, at eight months along in her second pregnancy, lifting a child who was already outstripping his peers in size was becoming quite a challenge. He hugged her tight, black curls like his father’s silky against her throat, her own big blue eyes bright in his little smiling face. Sometimes, Tabby was still afraid that if she blinked her happy family life would disappear and she would discover she had been trapped in an inordinately convincing and wonderful daydream. And then she would look at Acheron and the children and she would be soothed by the closeness of their bonds.

Admittedly she would never have picked Acheron out as a keen father figure when she first met him, but exposure to Amber’s charms had soon raised a desire in Acheron to have a child of his own. By the time the legalities of Amber’s adoption had been settled and she had officially become their daughter, Tabby had been expecting Andreus. The little girl whom Tabby was currently carrying had been more of an accidental conception, thanks to a little spur-of-the-moment lovemaking on the beach in Sardinia where they had first found love, and which of all Acheron’s properties they visited the most, although they had quickly extended the house to add on more bedroom capacity.

His father’s widow, Ianthe, and her two surviving children had stayed with them there to attend Kasma’s funeral. It had been a sad and sobering occasion but it had also done much to build a bridge between Ash and his father’s former family. Ianthe had admitted to having been seriously worried about her daughter’s mental health but Ash’s late father, Angelos, had refused to face up to that reality. Kasma’s brother, Simeon, and his family also had young children and the two couples had become close friends since that last sad encounter.

The front door opened and Andreus scrambled down from his mother’s arms to hurl himself violently at Acheron, shouting, ‘Dad!’ at the top of his voice.

Tabby watched Acheron scoop his son up, and a warm smile curved her generous mouth because she never loved Acheron more than when she saw him with the children. He was kind, affectionate and patient, all the things that they had both so badly lacked when they were kids themselves. ‘I thought you wouldn’t make it back in time.’

‘Where’s the birthday girl?’ Acheron enquired.

Amber came racing downstairs, a vivid little figure clad in a flouncy new party dress, and flung herself at her father with very little more circumspection than her toddler brother. ‘You’re here!’ she carolled. ‘You’re here for my party.’

‘Of course, I am,’ Acheron said in the act of producing a present from behind his back, only to laugh as the housekeeper opened the door to let Amber’s best friend and her mother enter and the two little girls went running off together. ‘So much for being flavour of the month there!’ he teased.

‘But you’re always my favourite flavour,’ Tabby rushed to assure him in an undertone before she went to greet the arriving guests.

Acheron watched her acting hostess with quiet admiration. His Tabby, the best and luckiest find he had ever made, always warm, sunny and bright and still the most loving creature he had ever met. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest that he loved her more with every passing year.

* * * * *

Read on for an extract from A MAN WITHOUT MERCY by Miranda Lee.

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT DO YOU mean, I can’t have Vivienne?’ Jack said. ‘I always have Vivienne.’

Nigel suppressed a sigh. He didn’t like disappointing his best client but there was nothing he could do about it.

‘Sorry, Jack, but as of yesterday Miss Swan doesn’t work for Classic Design any longer.’

Jack’s head jerked back with shock. ‘You fired her?’

Now it was Nigel’s turn to look startled. ‘Hardly. Vivienne was one of my best designers. No,’ he added, with true regret in his voice. ‘She quit.’

Jack could not contain his surprise at this second piece of news. Admittedly, he didn’t know Vivienne all that well, despite her having worked for him on his last three building projects. She was an extremely self-contained young woman who didn’t engage in idle chitchat. When on a job, her focus was always on her work, which was simply brilliant. He had asked her not long ago why she didn’t open her own interior design firm, and she’d replied that she didn’t want that kind of stress, especially now that she was engaged to be married. She’d said she didn’t want to live just for work any longer, a sentiment which Jack had not appreciated—till yesterday.

He’d been driving around the Port Stephens area, looking for suitable land for another retirement village, when he’d come across a small acreage for sale which had totally blown him away. It wasn’t what he was looking for, not even remotely. Not the right kind of land, for starters; not flat enough. There’d also been a huge house smack dab in the middle of the lot, perched on top of a hill. A house unlike anything Jack had ever seen, with a name that was as unique as the building.

Despite knowing he was wasting his time, Jack had still felt compelled to inspect Francesco’s Folly. From the moment he’d walked inside and out onto the first of the many balconies which all faced the bay, he’d known he wanted the place. Not only wanted it but wanted to live in it. Crazy, really, since Port Stephens was a good three-hour drive north of Sydney. Jack’s normal place of residence was a conveniently located and relatively modest three-bedroomed apartment in the same CBD building which housed his construction company’s head office. Aside from its inconvenient location, Francesco’s Folly was as far removed from modest as a residence could get, with eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and an indoor/outdoor swimming pool which would have put a Hollywood mansion to shame.

As a confirmed bachelor who never entertained at home, Jack had no need for a house this size, but it was no use. He simply had to have it, telling himself that maybe it was time for him to relax and live a little. After all, he’d been flogging himself for two decades, working six and sometimes seven days a week, making millions in the process. Why shouldn’t he indulge himself for once? He didn’t actually have to live in the place twenty-four-seven. He could use it as a weekender, or a holiday home. So could the rest of his family. Thinking of their pleasure at having such a dream place at their disposal had sealed the deal for Jack, so he’d bought Francesco’s Folly that very afternoon, getting it for a bargain, partly because it was a deceased estate, but mostly because the interior was hideously dated—hence his need for an excellent interior designer, one whose taste and work ethics matched his. It annoyed Jack considerably that the one person whom he could trust to do the job, and do it well, was unavailable to him.

But then it suddenly occurred to Jack that maybe that wasn’t the case.

‘So who was the sneaky devil who head-hunted her?’ he demanded to know, excited by the possibility that he could still hire the decorator he wanted for the job.

‘Vivienne hasn’t gone to work for anyone else,’ Nigel informed him.

‘How do you know?’

‘She told me so. Look, Jack, if you must know, Vivienne’s not feeling well at the moment. She’s decided to have some time off work.’

Jack was taken back. ‘What do you mean, not feeling well? What’s the matter with her?’

‘I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you. It’s not as though it isn’t public knowledge.’

Jack frowned. It certainly wasn’t public knowledge to him.

Nigel frowned also. ‘I’m guessing by the look on your face that you didn’t read the gossip columns in Sunday’s papers, or see the photos.’

‘I never read gossip columns,’ Jack replied. He did sometimes skim through the Sunday paper—mostly the property section—but he’d been busy yesterday. ‘So what did I miss? Though, truly, I can’t imagine a girl like Vivienne making it into any gossip column. She isn’t the type.’

‘It wasn’t Vivienne. It was her ex-fiancé.’

‘Ex-fiancé... Good Lord, when did that happen? She was solidly engaged last time I saw her a few weeks back.’

‘Yes, well, Daryl broke off their engagement about a month ago. Told her he’d fallen in love with someone else. The poor girl was shattered, but she was very brave and soldiered on. Of course, the rat claimed he hadn’t cheated on her whilst they were still engaged, but yesterday’s paper proved that was just rubbish.’

‘For pity’s sake, Nigel, just tell me what was in the darned paper!’

‘The thing is, the girl Daryl dumped Vivienne for wasn’t just any old girl. He left her for Courtney Ellison. You know...? Frank Ellison’s spoiled daughter. Vivienne did the decorating job on the harbourside mansion you built for Ellison, so I guess that’s how the two lovebirds met. Anyway, the bit in the gossip column was announcing their engagement. In the photos—there were several—the Ellison girl is sporting a diamond engagement ring the size of an egg—as well as a much bigger baby-bump, meaning their affair’s been going on for quite some time.

‘Naturally, there was no mention of Courtney’s handsome husband-to-be having been recently engaged to another woman. Darling Daddy would have quashed that. You don’t get to be a billionaire mining magnate in this country without having lots of connections in the media. As you can imagine, Vivienne is very cut up about it. She was in tears on the phone yesterday, which is not like her at all.’

Jack could not have agreed more. Tears were not Vivienne’s style. He’d never met any female as cool and collected as Vivienne. But he supposed everyone had their breaking point. He shook his head, regretting now that he’d recommended her to Frank Ellison. Jack hated to think that he was in some way responsible for Vivienne’s unhappiness. But how could he possibly have known that Ellison’s man-eating maniac of a daughter would get her claws into Vivienne’s fiancé?

Still...if ever there was a man willing and ready to be eaten by the likes of Courtney Ellison, it was Vivienne’s now ex-fiancé.

Jack had only met Daryl once—when he’d briefly dropped in on Classic Design’s Christmas party last year—but once had been enough to form an opinion. Okay, so darling Daryl was movie-star good-looking. And charming, he supposed, if you liked silver-tongued talkers who smiled a lot, touched a lot and called their fiancée ‘babe’. Clearly, Vivienne did, since she’d been planning on marrying him.

It saddened Jack that Vivienne had been unlucky enough to lose her heart to one of that ilk, but he had no doubt that she would, in time, see that she’d had a narrow escape from long-term misery as a result of Daryl’s defection. Meanwhile, the last thing that girl needed was to be allowed to wallow in her present misery. Jack understood that Vivienne was probably feeling wretched, but nothing would be achieved by cutting herself off from the one thing she was good at and would make her feel good about herself: her work.

‘I see,’ he said, quickly deciding on a course of action. ‘You wouldn’t have Vivienne’s address, would you, Nigel? I’d like to send her some flowers,’ he added before Nigel gave him some bulldust about privacy issues.

Nigel stared at Jack for a long moment before looking up the company files on his computer and writing down the address.

‘I don’t like your chances,’ he said as he handed the address over.

‘My chances of what?’ Jack replied, poker-faced.

Nigel smiled a dry smile. ‘Come now, Jack, you and I both know you don’t want Vivienne’s address just to send her flowers. You’re going to hotfoot it over to her place and try to get her to do whatever it is you want her to do. Which is what, by the way? Another retirement-home project?’

‘No,’ Jack said, despite thinking that Francesco’s Folly would make a perfect retirement home, when and if he ever actually retired. ‘It’s a personal project, a holiday house I’ve bought which badly needs redecorating. Look, it’ll do Vivienne good to keep busy.’

‘She’s very fragile at the moment,’ Nigel warned. ‘Not everyone is as tough as you, Jack.’

‘I’ve often found that the gentler sex are a lot tougher than we men think they are,’ Jack said as he stood up and extended his hand in parting.

Nigel tried not to wince when Jack’s large hand closed around his much smaller one. But truly, the man didn’t know his own strength sometimes. Didn’t know women as well as he thought he did, either. No way was Vivienne going to let herself be bulldozed into working for him. Aside from the fact that she was in a dreadful emotional state at the moment, she’d never overly liked the owner of Stone Constructions—something which Jack obviously didn’t know.

But privately she’d expressed the opinion to Nigel that Jack was a pain in the neck to work for, a driven workaholic with impossibly high standards which, whilst admirable in one way, could be very trying. Of course, he did pay very well, but that wasn’t going to help him where Vivienne was concerned. Money had never interested her all that much, possibly because she’d inherited plenty of her own when her mother had died a couple of years ago.

‘If you want some advice,’ Nigel called after Jack as he headed for the door, ‘Actually taking Vivienne some flowers—not red roses, mind you—might improve your chances of success.’

Though Nigel seriously doubted it.

Copyright © 2014 by Miranda Lee

When Falcone’s World Stops Turning

Abby Green

‘Samantha.’ Rafaele smiled. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.’

Sam’s hand clenched tightly around the door. Panic rushed into her blood. Finally rousing her.

‘Now isn’t a good time. I thought I made it clear that I’m not interested.’

A dull flush accentuated Rafaele’s cheekbones, but Sam was barely aware of it when she heard the high-pitched, ‘Mummy!’ which was accompanied by small feet running at full speed behind her.

She felt Milo land at her legs and could almost visualise his little round face peeping out to see who was at the door. As if she were trying in vain to halt an oncoming train, Sam said in a thready voice, ‘Now really isn’t a good time.’

Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly. Dazed, he glanced up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour.

Panicked. Guilty.

Just like that something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.

BLOOD BROTHERS

Power and passion run in their veins

Rafaele and Alexio have learned that to feel emotion is to be weak. Calculated ruthlessness brings them immense success in the boardroom and in the bedroom. But a storm is coming with the sudden appearance of a long-lost half-brother and three women who will change their lives for ever …

Read Rafaele Falcone’s story in: WHEN FALCONE’S WORLD STOPS TURNING February 2014

Only one woman has come close to touching this brooding Italian’s cold heart, and he intends to have her once more. But Samantha Rourke has a secret that will rock his world in a very different way…

Read Alexio Christakos’s story in: WHEN CHRISTAKOS MEETS HIS MATCH April 2014

His legendary Greek charm can get him any woman he wants—and he wants Sidonie Fitzgerald for one, hot night. But when that night isn’t enough will he regret breaking his own rules?

And coming soon …

Cesar Da Silva’s story June 2014

The prodigal son is tormented by his dark past.

Can one woman save this Spanish billionaire’s tortured soul, or is he beyond redemption?

ABBY GREEN spent her teens reading Mills and Boon® romances. After repeatedly deferring a degree to study Social Anthropology (long story!) she ended up working for many years in the film and TV industry as an assistant director.

One day, while standing outside an actor’s trailer waiting for him to emerge, in the rain, holding an umbrella in gale force winds, she thought to herself, Surely there’s more than this and it involves being inside and dry?

Thinking of her love for Mills and Boon, and encouraged by a friend, Abby decided to submit a partial manuscript. After numerous rewrites, chucking out the original idea and starting again with a new story, her first book was accepted and an author was born.

She is happy to report that days of standing in the rain outside an actor’s trailer are a rare occurrence now. She loves creating stories that will put the reader through an emotional wringer (in a good way, hopefully!), and yet leave her feeling satisfied and uplifted.

She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and you can find out more about her and her books here: www.abby-green.com

This is for Gervaise Landy, without whose influence I would most likely still be speaking into a walkie-talkie outside an actor’s trailer in a car park somewhere, in the rain, trying to explain what the delay is. Thank you for all the great conversations about Mills & Boon, and that first memorable one in particular all those years ago. As soon as we recognised a fellow fanatic in each other we were kindred spirits. You were the one who put the idea in my head in the first place about writing for Mills & Boon, and you were the one with the tape on how to write one—which I still have, and which I will return to you as soon as you promise me you’re going to sit down and finish that manuscript. With much love and thanks for sowing the seed of a dream in my head!

In thanking Gervaise I also have to dedicate this book to Caitríona Ní Mhurchú, at whose party I first met Gervaise. From the age of sixteen I have idolised this glamorous, confident, sexy, intelligent woman, so if you see any of those traits in my heroines it comes from a deep well of inspiration.

PROLOGUE

RAFAELE FALCONE LOOKED at the coffin deep inside the open grave. The earth they’d thrown in was scattered on top, along with some lone flowers left by departing friends and acquaintances. Some of them had been men, inordinately upset. Evidently there was some truth to the rumours that the stunning Esperanza Christakos had taken lovers during her third marriage.

Rafaele felt many conflicting emotions, apart from the obvious grief for his dead mother. He couldn’t say that they’d ever had a close relationship; she’d been eternally elusive and had carried an air of melancholy about her. She’d also been beautiful. Beautiful enough to send his own father mad with grief when she left him.

The kind of woman who’d had the ability to make grown men completely lose all sense of dignity and of themselves. Not something that would ever happen to him. His single-minded focus was on his career and rebuilding the Falcone motor empire. Beautiful women were a pleasant diversion—nothing more. None of his lovers were ever under any illusions and expected nothing more than the transitory pleasure of his company.

His conscience pricked at this confident assertion—there had only been one lover who had taken him close to the edge but that was an experience he didn’t dwell on...not any more.

His half-brother, Alexio Christakos, turned to him now and smiled tightly. Rafaele felt a familiar ache in his chest. He loved his half-brother, and had done from the moment he’d been born, but their relationship wasn’t easy. It had been hard for Rafaele to witness his brother growing up, sure in the knowledge of his father’s success and support—so different from his own experience with his father. He’d felt resentful for a long time, which hadn’t been helped by his stepfather’s obvious antipathy towards the son that wasn’t his.

They both turned and walked away from the grave, engrossed in their own thoughts. Their mother had bequeathed to both her sons her distinctive green eyes, although Alexio’s were a shade more golden than Rafaele’s striking light green. Rafaele’s hair was thicker and a darker brown next to his brother’s short-cut ebony-black hair.

Differing only slightly in height, they were both a few inches over six foot. Rafaele’s build was broad and powerful. His brother’s just as powerful, but leaner. Dark stubble shadowed Rafaele’s firm jawline today, and when they came to a stop near the cars Alexio observed it, remarking dryly, ‘You couldn’t even clean up for the funeral?’

The tightness in Rafaele’s chest when he’d stood at the grave was easing slightly now. He curbed the urge to be defensive, to hide the vulnerability he felt, and faced his brother, drawling with a definite glint in his eye, ‘I got out of bed too late.’

He couldn’t explain to his brother how he’d instinctively sought the momentary escape he would find in the response of an eager woman, preferring not to dwell on how his mother’s death had made him feel. Preferring not to dwell on how it had brought up vivid memories of when she’d walked out on his father so many years ago, leaving him a broken man. He was still bitter, adamantly refusing to pay his respects to his ex-wife today despite Rafaele’s efforts to persuade him to come.

Alexio, oblivious to Rafaele’s inner tumult, shook his head and smiled wryly. ‘Unbelievable. You’ve only been in Athens for two days—no wonder you wanted to stay in a hotel and not at my apartment...’

Rafaele pushed aside the dark memories and quirked a mocking brow at his brother, about to dish out some of the same, when he saw a latecomer arrive. The words died on his lips and Alexio’s smile faded as he turned to follow Rafaele’s gaze.

A very tall, stern-faced stranger was staring at them both. And yet...he looked incredibly familiar. It was almost like looking into a mirror. Or at Alexio...if he had dark blond hair. It was his eyes, though, that sent a shiver through Rafaele. Green, much like his and Alexio’s, except with a slight difference—a darker green, almost hazel. Another take on their mother’s eyes...? But how could that be?

Rafaele bristled at this stranger’s almost belligerent stance. ‘May we help you?’ he asked coolly.

The man’s eyes flickered over them both, and then to the open grave in the distance. He asked, with a derisive curl to his lip, ‘Are there any more of us?’

Rafaele looked at Alexio, who was frowning, and said, ‘Us? What are you talking about?’

The man looked at Rafaele. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

The faintest of memories was coming back: he was standing on a doorstep with his mother. A huge imposing door was opening and there was a boy, a few years older than him, with blond hair and huge eyes.

The man’s voice sounded rough in the still air. ‘She brought you to my house. You must have been nearly three. I was almost seven. She wanted to take me with her then, but I wouldn’t leave. Not after she’d abandoned me.’

Rafaele felt cold all over. In a slightly hoarse voice he asked, ‘Who are you?’

The man smiled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’m your older brother—half-brother. My name is Cesar Da Silva. I came today to pay my respects to the woman who gave me life...not that she deserved it. I was curious to see if any more would crawl out of the woodwork, but it looks like it’s just us.’

Alexio erupted beside Rafaele. ‘What the hell—?’

Rafaele was too stunned to move. He knew the Da Silva name. Cesar was behind the renowned and extremely successful Da Silva Global Corporation. His mind boggled to think that he might have met him and not known that they were brothers. With a sickening sense of inevitability, he didn’t doubt a word this man had just said. Their fraternal similarities were too obvious. They could be non-identical triplets.

That half-memory, half-dream had always been all too real—he’d just never known for sure, because whenever he’d mentioned it to his mother she’d always changed the subject. Much in the way she had never discussed her life in her native Spain before she’d met his father in Paris, where she’d been a model.

Rafaele gestured to his brother, ‘This is Alexio Christakos...our younger brother.’

Cesar Da Silva looked at him with nothing but ice in his eyes. ‘Three brothers by three fathers...and yet she didn’t abandon either of you to the wolves.’

He stepped forward then, and Alexio stepped forward too. The two men stood almost nose to nose, with Cesar topping his youngest brother in height only by an inch.

Cesar, his jaw as rigid as Alexio’s, gritted out, ‘I didn’t come here to fight you, brother. I have no issue with either of you.’

Alexio’s mouth thinned. ‘Only with our dead mother, if what you say is true.’

Cesar smiled, but it was thin and bitter. ‘Oh, it’s true, all right — more’s the pity.’

He stepped around Alexio then, and walked to the open grave. He took something out of his pocket and dropped it down into the dark space, where it fell onto the coffin with a distant hollow thud. He stood there for a long moment and then came back, his face expressionless.

After a charged silent moment between the three men he turned to stride away and got into the back of a waiting dark silver limousine, which moved off smoothly.

Rafaele turned to Alexio, who looked back at him, gobsmacked.

‘What the...?’ he trailed off.

Rafaele just shook his head. ‘I don’t know...’

He looked back to the space where the car had been and reeled with this cataclysmic knowledge.

CHAPTER ONE

Three months later...

‘SAM, SORRY TO bother you, but there’s a call for you on line one...someone with a very deep voice and a sexy foreign accent.’

Sam went very still. Deep voice...sexy foreign accent. The words sent a shiver of foreboding down her spine and a lick of something much hotter through her pelvis. She told herself she was being ridiculous and looked up from the results she’d been reading to see the secretary of the research department at the London university.

Kind eyes twinkled mischievously in a matronly face. ‘Did you get up to something at the weekend? Or should I say someone?’

Again that shiver went down Sam’s spine, but she just smiled at Gertie. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. I spent all weekend working on Milo’s playschool nature project with him.’

The secretary smiled and said indulgently, ‘You know I live in hope, Sam. You and Milo need a gorgeous man to come and take care of you.’

Sam gritted her teeth and kept smiling, restraining herself from pointing out how well she and Milo were doing without a man. Now she couldn’t wait to take the call. ‘Did you say line one?’

Gertie winked and disappeared, and Sam took a deep breath before picking up the phone and pressing the flashing button. ‘Dr Samantha Rourke here.’

There was silence for a few seconds, and then came the voice. Low, deep, sexy—and infinitely memorable. ‘Ciao, Samantha, it’s Rafaele...’

The prickle of foreboding became a slap in the face. He was the only one apart from her father who had ever called her Samantha—unless it had been Sam in the throes of passion. All the blood in her body seemed to drain south, to the floor. Anger, guilt, emotional pain, lust and an awful treacherous tenderness flooded her in a confusing tumult.

She only realised she hadn’t responded when the voice came again, cooler. ‘Rafaele Falcone...perhaps you don’t remember?’

As if that was humanly possible!

Her hand gripped the phone and she managed to get out, ‘No... I mean, yes. I remember.’

Sam wanted to laugh hysterically. How could she forget the man when she looked into a miniature replica of his face and green eyes every day?

‘Bene,’ came the smooth answer. ‘How are you, Sam? You’re a doctor now?’

‘Yes...’ Sam’s heart was doing funny things, beating so hard she felt breathless. ‘I got my doctorate after...’ She faltered and the words reverberated in her head unspoken. After you came into my life and blew it to smithereens. She fought valiantly for control and said in a stronger voice, ‘I got my doctorate since I saw you last. How can I help you?’

Again a bubble of hysteria rose up in her: how about helping him by telling him he has a son?

‘I am here in London because we’ve set up a UK base for Falcone Motors.’

‘That’s...nice,’ Sam said, a little redundantly.

The magnitude of who she was talking to seemed to hit her all of a sudden and she went icy all over. Rafaele Falcone. Here in London. He’d tracked her down. Why? Milo. Her son, her world. His son.

Sam’s first irrational thought was that he must know, and then she forced herself to calm down. No way would Rafaele Falcone be calling her up sounding so blasé if he knew. She needed to get rid of him, though—fast. And then think.

‘Look...it’s nice to hear from you, but I’m quite busy at the moment...’

Rafaele’s voice took on a cool edge again. ‘You’re not curious as to why I’ve contacted you?’

That sliver of fear snaked down Sam’s spine again as an image of her adorable dark-haired son came into her mind’s eye.

‘I...well...I guess I am.’ She couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic.

Rafaele’s voice was almost arctic now. ‘I was going to offer you a position with Falcone Motors. The research you’re currently conducting is exactly in the area we want to develop.’

Sheer blind panic gripped Sam’s innards at his words. She’d worked for this man once before and nothing had been the same since. Her tone frigid, she said, ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m committed to working on behalf of the university.’

Silence for a few taut seconds and then Rafaele responded with a terse, ‘I see.’

Sam could tell that Rafaele had expected her to drop at his feet in a swoon of gratitude, even just at the offer of a job, if nothing more personal. It was the effect he had on most women. He hadn’t changed. In spite of what had happened between them.

The words he’d left lingering in the air when he’d walked away from her resonated as if it had happened yesterday: ‘It’s for the best, cara. After all, it wasn’t as if this was ever anything serious, was it?’

He’d so obviously wanted her to agree with him that Sam had done so, in a flat and emotionless voice. Her body had seemed drained of all feeling. Relief had been a tangible force around him. It was something that she hadn’t forgotten and which had helped her to believe she’d made the right decision to take full responsibility for Milo on her own. Even so, her conscience pricked her now: you should have told him.

Panic galvanised Sam, so that Rafaele Falcone’s offer of a job barely impinged on her consciousness. ‘Look, I really am quite busy. If you don’t mind...?’

‘You’re not even interested in discussing this?’

Sam recalled the bile that had risen within her when Rafaele had made his uninterest in her all too clear and bit out curtly, ‘No, I’m not interested. Goodbye, Signor Falcone.’

* * *

Goodbye, Signor Falcone, and this from a woman he knew intimately.

Rafaele looked at the phone in his hand for a long moment. Not comprehending the fact that she had just hung up on him. Women did not hang up on him.

Rafaele put the phone down and his mouth firmed. But Samantha Rourke had never been like other women. She’d been different from the start. He felt restless and got up from his seat to pace over to the huge window that overlooked operations at his new UK base on the outskirts of London. But for once his attention wasn’t on operations.

She’d come to his factory in Italy as an intern after completing her Masters in Mechanical Automotive Engineering. The youngest and only woman in a group of men. Scarily bright and intelligent. He would have had no compunction hiring her on the spot and paying her whatever she asked just to keep her working for him...but he’d become distracted.

Distracted by her sexily studious air and her tall, slim body. Distracted by the mannish clothes she’d insisted on wearing which had made him want to peel them off to see the curves hinted at but hidden underneath. Distracted by her flawless pale Celtic skin and those huge almond-shaped eyes set in delicate features. Grey eyes...like a stormy sea.

Distracted by the way she would look at him and blush when he caught her eye, the way she would catch her lower lip between small white teeth. Distracted by that fall of inky black hair which she’d kept tucking behind her ear. And, as time had worn on, distracted by the slow-burning licking flames of desire that had grown hotter and stronger every time he saw her.

Rafaele had fought it. He hadn’t liked it—and especially not in the workplace. There were plenty of females working in his factory and yet none of them had ever turned his head. His life was run on strict lines and he’d always kept his personal life well away from his work. But she had been so far removed from the kind of woman he normally went for: polished, sophisticated. Worldly wise. Women who were sexy and knew it and knew what to do with it. Cynical, like him.

Sam had been none of those things. Except sexy. And he’d known she didn’t know that. She’d seemed to have absolutely no awareness of the fact that men’s gazes lingered on her as she passed by. It had enraged Rafaele. The hot spurt of possessiveness had been an alien concept to him. Before they’d even kissed!

In the end sexual frustration had been such a tight ball of need inside him that one day he’d called her to his office and, without being able to say a word, had taken her face in his hands and kissed her, drowning in an intoxicating sweetness he’d never tasted before.

Even now that memory alone had an effect on Rafaele’s libido and body. He cursed. He’d thought of her months ago, at his mother’s funeral. He thought of her more often than he liked to admit. Sam was the one who had taken him too close to the edge. They had shared more than just a brief sexual history. They had almost shared...a child.

Even now a shiver of fear snaked down Rafaele’s spine. How close he’d come to dealing with something he never wanted to deal with. That was what he needed to remember.

He swung around and stared blankly into his huge office. Clearly she wanted nothing to do with him, and he should want to have nothing to do with her.

He should not have given in to the compulsion to track her down. He should steer well clear of Samantha Rourke and put her out of his mind. For good.

* * *

Samantha woke up on Saturday morning when a small warm body burrowed into the bed beside her. She smiled sleepily and wrapped her arms around her sturdy son, breathing in his sweet scent.

‘Morning, handsome.’

‘Morning, Mummy, I love you.’

Sam’s heart clenched so hard for a second that she caught her breath. She kissed the top of his head. ‘I love you too, sweetheart.’

Milo pulled his head back and Sam cracked open an eye and grimaced at the morning light.

He giggled. ‘You’re funny.’

Sam started to tickle Milo and he screeched with glee. Soon they were both wide awake and he was scrambling back out of the bed to clatter down the stairs.

She shouted after him. ‘Don’t turn on the TV yet!’

She heard him stop and could imagine his thwarted expression, and then he called back, ‘Okay. I’ll look at my book.’

Sam’s heart clenched again. He would too. She knew when she went downstairs he’d be looking at his book studiously, even though he couldn’t really read yet. He was such a good boy. Such a bright boy. Sometimes it scared her, how intelligent he was, because she felt as if she didn’t have the means to handle it.

Bridie, her father’s housekeeper, who had stayed on after he’d died two years previously, would often look at her with those far too shrewd Irish eyes and say, ‘Well, where do you think he got it from? His grandfather was a professor of physics and you had your head in books from the age of two.’

Then she would sniff in that way she had and say, ‘Now, obviously, as I don’t know anything about his father, I can’t speculate on that side of things...’ which was Sam’s cue to give her a baleful look and change the subject.

If it hadn’t been for Bridie O’Sullivan, though, Sam reminded herself as she got out of bed, she would never have been able to get the PhD which had got her onto the lucrative research programme at the university, and which now helped pay for food, clothes and Bridie’s wonderful care for Milo five days a week.

Bridie lived in the granny flat that had been built onto the side of the house some years before.

As Sam tied the belt on her robe, and prepared to go downstairs to get breakfast ready for herself and Milo, she tried to suppress the resurgence of guilt. The guilt that had been eating at her insides all week since she’d had that phone call. The guilt that had been a constant presence for four years, if she was completely honest with herself.

It unsettled her so much that she slept badly every night, tortured with memories while awake and by dreams while asleep, full of lurid images. Hot images. She woke tangled in the sheets, her skin damp with sweat, her heart racing, her head aching.

Rafaele Falcone. The man who had shown her just how colourless her world had been before demonstrating how easily he could deposit her back into perpetual greyness. As if she’d had no right to experience such a lavish, sensual dream.

Even now she wondered what on earth it had been about her that had caught his eye. But whatever it had been, to her everlasting shame, she would never forgive herself for believing that it had been more. For falling for him like some lovestruck teenager.

She reassured herself for the umpteenth time that week that he didn’t deserve to know about Milo because he’d never wanted him in the first place. She would never forget how his face had leached of all colour when she’d told him she was pregnant.

Sam sagged back onto the side of the bed, the onslaught of memories coming too thick and fast to escape. He’d been away on a trip for three weeks and during that time Sam had found out she was pregnant. He’d asked to see her as soon as he’d returned, and after three weeks of no contact Sam hadn’t been able to stop her heart from pumping with anticipation. Maybe he hadn’t meant what he’d said before he’d gone on the trip...

‘It might be no harm, cara, for us to spend some time apart. My work is beginning to suffer...you’re far too distracting...’

But when she’d walked into his office he’d looked stern. Serious. Before she could lose her nerve Sam had blurted out, ‘I have to tell you something.’

He’d looked at her warily. ‘Go on, then.’

Sam had blushed and nervously twisted her hands, suddenly wondering if she was completely crazy to have a feeling of optimism that he might welcome her news. They’d only spent a month together. One heady, glorious month. Four weeks. Was that really enough time—?

‘Sam?’

She’d looked at him, taken a deep breath and dived in. ‘Rafaele...I’m pregnant.’

The words had hung ominously between them and a thick silence had grown. Rafaele’s face had leached of all colour and Sam had known in that instant with cold clarity that she’d been a complete fool. About everything.

He’d literally gone white, his eyes standing out starkly green against the pallor. She’d thought he might faint and had moved towards him, but he’d put out a hand and asked hoarsely, ‘How?’

She’d stopped in her tracks, but hadn’t been able to halt the spread of ice in her veins. ‘I think...when we were careless.’

An understatement for the amount of times they had been careless...in the shower, in the living room of Rafaele’s palazzo when they’d been too impatient to make it to the bedroom, in the kitchen of her flat one evening, when he’d pushed her up against the counter and pulled down her trousers...

Sam had felt hot and mortified all at once. It felt so...lurid now. So desperate. It had been sex, not romance. Had she ever really known him? The vulnerability she’d felt in that moment was a searing everlasting memory.

He’d looked at her accusingly. ‘You said you were on the pill.’

Sam got defensive. ‘I was—I am. But I told you it was a low-dosage pill not specifically for contraception. And I had that twenty-four-hour bug a few weeks ago...’

Rafaele had sat down heavily into his chair. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in ten seconds. ‘This can’t be happening,’ he’d muttered, as if Sam weren’t even there.

She had tried to control her emotions, stop them from overwhelming her. ‘It’s as much of a shock to me as it obviously is to you.’

He’d looked up at her then and his face had tightened. ‘Are you sure it’s a shock? How do I know this wasn’t planned in some attempt to trap me?’

Sam had almost staggered backwards, her mouth open, but nothing had come out. Eventually she’d managed, ‘You think...you truly think I did this on purpose?’

Rafaele had stood up and started to pace, some colour coming back into his cheeks, highlighting that stunning bone structure. He’d laughed in a way that had chilled Sam right to her core, because she’d never heard him laugh like that before. Harsh.

He’d faced her. ‘It’s not unheard of, you know, for a woman who wants to ensure herself a lifetime of security from a rich man.’

The depth of this heretofore unrevealed cynicism had sent her reeling. Sam had stalked up to Rafaele’s desk, her hands clenched to fists. ‘You absolute bastard. I would never do such a thing.’

And then she’d had a flash of his expression and his demeanour when she’d come into the room, before she’d given him a chance to speak. A very bitter and dark truth had sunk in.

‘You were going to tell me it was over, weren’t you? That’s why you asked to see me.’

Rafaele had had the grace to avoid her eye for a moment, but then he’d looked at her, his face devoid of expression.

‘Yes.’

That was all. One word. Confirmation that Sam had been living in cloud cuckoo land, believing that what she’d shared with one of the world’s perennial playboys had been different.

She’d been so overcome with conflicting emotions and turmoil at his attitude to her news and his stark lack of emotion that she’d been afraid if she tried to speak she’d start crying. So she’d run out of his office. Not even caring that she’d humiliated herself beyond all saving.

She’d hidden in her tiny apartment, avoiding Rafaele, avoiding his repeated attempts to get her to open the door.

And then it had started. The bleeding and the awful cramping pain. Terrified, Sam had finally opened the door to him, her physical pain momentarily eclipsing the emotional pain.

She’d looked at Rafaele and said starkly, ‘I’m bleeding.’

He’d taken her to a clinic, grim and pale, but Sam hadn’t really noticed. Her hands had been clutching her belly as she’d found herself willing the tiny clump of cells to live, no matter what. For someone who hadn’t ever seriously contemplated having children, because she’d lost her own mother young and had grown up with an emotionally absent father, in that moment Sam had felt a primitive need to become a mother so strong that it had shaken her to her core.

At the clinic the kindly doctor had informed her that she wasn’t, in fact, miscarrying. She was just experiencing heavier spotting than might be normal. He’d said the cramps were probably stress-induced and reassured her that with rest and avoiding vexatious situations she should go on to have a perfectly normal and healthy pregnancy.

The relief had been overwhelming. Until Sam had remembered that Rafaele was outside the door, pacing up and down, looking grim. He was a ‘vexatious situation’ personified. She could remember feeling the cramps come back even then, at the very prospect of having to deal with him, and again that visceral feeling had arisen: the need to protect her child.

She’d dreaded telling him that she hadn’t miscarried after all.

And then a nurse had left the room, leaving the door ajar, and Rafaele’s voice had floated distinctly into the room from just outside.

Everything within her stilling, Sam had heard him say tightly, ‘I’m just caught up with something at the moment... No, it’s not important... I will resolve this as soon as I can and get back to you.’

And just like that the small, traitorous flame of hope she’d not even been aware she was pathetically harbouring had been extinguished. Obviously because of doctor/patient confidentiality Rafaele was none the wiser as to whether or not she’d actually miscarried. He believed that she had.

He’d terminated his conversation and come into the room. Sam had looked out of the window, feeling as if she was breaking apart inside. She’d forced herself to be calm and not stressed. The baby was paramount now.

Rafaele had stopped by the bed. ‘Sam...’

Sam hadn’t looked at him. She’d just answered, ‘What?’

She’d heard him sigh. ‘Look, I’m sorry...really sorry that this has happened. We should never have become involved.’

Sam had felt empty. ‘No,’ she’d agreed, ‘we shouldn’t have.’

Even then a small voice had urged her to put him straight, but she’d felt so angry in that moment and had already felt her stress levels rising, her body starting to cramp. Dangerous for the baby.

Feeling panicked, she’d finally turned her head to acknowledge Rafaele and said, ‘Look, what’s done is done. It’s over. I have to stay in for a night for observation but I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going home.’

Rafaele had been pale but Sam had felt like reaching up to slap him. He felt no more for her than he did for the fact that as far as he was aware he’d just lost a baby. He just wanted to be rid of her. ‘I will resolve this as soon as I can...’

‘Just go, Rafaele, leave me be.’ Please, she’d begged silently, feeling those stress levels rising. Her hands had tightened on the bedcover, knuckles white.

Rafaele had just looked at her, those green eyes unfathomable. ‘It’s for the best, cara. Believe me... You are young...you have your career ahead of you. After all, it wasn’t as if this was ever anything serious, was it?’

Sam’s mouth had twisted and she’d resolved in that moment to do her utmost to focus on her career...and her baby. No matter what it took. ‘Of course not. Now, please, just go.’

Sam’s control had felt so brittle she’d been afraid it would snap at any moment and he’d see the true depth of her agony.

Rafaele had stepped back a pace. ‘I will arrange for your travel home. You won’t have to worry about anything.’

Sam had stifled a semi-hysterical giggle at the thought of the monumental task and life-change ahead of her. She’d nodded abruptly. ‘Fine.’

Rafaele had been almost at the door by then, relief a tangible aura around him. ‘Goodbye, Sam.’

Feeling a sob rise, and choking it down with all of her will and strength, Sam had managed a cool-sounding, ‘Goodbye, Rafaele.’ And then she’d turned her head, because her eyes had been stinging. She’d heard the door close softly and a huge sob had ripped out of her chest, and tears, hot and salty, had flowed down her cheeks.

By the time Sam had been at home for a week she’d begun veering wildly between the urge to tell Rafaele the truth and the urge to protect herself from further pain. Then she’d seen on some vacuous celebrity TV channel that Rafaele was already out and about with some gorgeous Italian TV personality, smiling that devilishly sexy smile. As she’d looked at Rafaele, smiling for the TV cameras, his arm around the waist of the sinuous dark-haired Latin beauty, she’d known that she could never tell him because he simply wasn’t interested.

‘Mummy, I want Cheerios!’

Sam blinked and came back to reality. Milo. Breakfast. She pushed aside the memories, tried to ignore the guilt and got up to attend to her son.

* * *

That evening when the doorbell rang Sam looked up from washing the dinner things in the sink. Milo was playing happily on the floor in the sitting room with his cars, oblivious. As she went to answer it she assured herself it was probably just Bridie, who had forgotten her keys to the flat again.

But when she opened the door on the dusky late winter evening it wasn’t Bridie, who stood at five foot two inches in heels. It was someone over a foot taller and infinitely more masculine.

Rafaele Falcone.

For a long, breathless moment, the information simply wouldn’t compute. Suspended in time, Sam seemed to be able to take in details almost dispassionately. Faded jeans. Battered leather jacket. Thin wool jumper. Thick dark brown hair which still had a tendency to curl a little too much over his collar. The high forehead. The deep-set startling green eyes. The patrician bump of his nose, giving him that indelible air of arrogance. The stunning bone structure and that golden olive skin that placed him somewhere more exotic than cold, wet England.

And his mouth. That gorgeous, sculpted-for-wicked-things mouth. It always looked on the verge of tipping into a sexy half-smile, full of the promise of sensual nirvana. Unless it was pulled into a grim line, as it had been when she had seen him last.

Reality slammed into Sam like a fist to her gut. She actually sucked in a breath, only realising then that she’d been starving her lungs for long seconds while she gawped at him like a groupie.

‘Samantha.’

His voice lodged her even more firmly in reality. And the burning intensity of his green eyes as they swept down her body. Sam became acutely aware of her weekend uniform of skinny jeans, thick socks and a very worn plaid shirt. Her hair was scraped up into a bun and she wore no make-up.

Rafaele smiled. ‘Still a tomboy, I see. Despite my best efforts.’

A memory exploded into Sam’s consciousness. Rafaele, in his palazzo, presenting her with a huge white box. Under what had seemed like acres and acres of silver tissue paper a swathe of material had appeared.

Sam had lifted it out to reveal a breathtaking evening gown. Rafaele had stripped her himself and dressed her again. One-shouldered and figure-hugging, in black and flesh-coloured stripes, the dress had accentuated her hips, her breasts, and a long slit had revealed her legs. Then he’d taken her out to one of Milan’s most exclusive restaurants. They’d been the last to leave, somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, drunk on sparkling wine and lust, and he’d taken her home to his palazzo...

‘Still a tomboy, I see...’

The memory vanished and the backdrop of Sam’s very suburban street behind Rafaele came back into view.

Sexy smile. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s cold out here.’

Sam’s hand clenched tight around the door. Milo. Panic rushed into her blood. Finally. Rousing her.

‘Now isn’t a good time. I don’t know why you’ve come here. I thought I made it clear the other day that I’m not interested.’

Sam forced herself to look at him. Four years had passed and in that time she’d changed utterly. She felt older, more jaded. Whereas Rafaele only looked even more gorgeous. The unfairness of it galvanised her. He’d known nothing of her life the last few years. Because you didn’t tell him, a voice pointed out.

‘Why did you come here, Rafaele? I’m sure you have more important things to do on a Saturday evening.’

The bitterness in Sam’s voice surprised her.

Rafaele’s jaw tightened, but he answered smoothly. ‘I thought if I came to see you in person you might be persuaded to listen to my offer.’

A dull flush accentuated Rafaele’s cheekbones, but Sam was barely aware of it as she heard a high-pitched ‘Mummy!’ which was accompanied by small feet running at full speed behind her.

She felt Milo land at her legs, clasping his arms around them, and could almost visualise his little round face peeping out to see who was at the door. Like trying in vain to halt an oncoming train, Sam said in a thready voice, ‘Like I said, now really isn’t a good time.’

She could see awareness dawn on Rafaele’s face as he obviously took in the fact of a child. He started to speak stiltedly. ‘I’m sorry. I should have thought... Of course it’s been years...you must be married by now. Children...’

Then his eyes slid down and she saw them widen. She didn’t have to look to know that Milo was now standing beside her, one chubby hand clinging onto her leg. Wide green eyes would be staring innocently up into eyes the exact same shade of green. Unusual. Lots of people commented on how unusual they were.

Rafaele stared at Milo for what seemed like an age. He frowned and then looked as if someone had just hit him in the belly...dazed. He looked up at Sam and she knew exactly what he was seeing as clearly as if she was standing apart, observing the interplay. Her eyes were wide and stricken, set in a face leached of all colour. Pale as parchment. Panicked. Guilty.

And just like that, something in his eyes turned to ice and she knew that he knew.

CHAPTER TWO

‘MUMMY, CAN WE watch the cars on TV now?’

Sam put her hand to Milo’s head and said faintly, ‘Why don’t you go on and I’ll be there in a minute, okay?’

Milo ran off again and the silence grew taut between Sam and Rafaele. He knew. She felt it in her bones. He’d known as soon as he’d looked into his son’s eyes. So identical. She hated that something about his immediate recognition of his own son made something soften inside her.

He was looking at her so hard she felt it like a physical brand on her skin. Hot.

‘Let me in, Samantha. Now.’

Feeling shaky and clammy all at once, Sam stepped back and opened the door. Rafaele came in, his tall, powerful form dwarfing the hallway. He smelt of light spices and something musky, and through the shock Sam’s blood jumped in recognition.

She shut the door and walked quickly to the kitchen at the end of the hall, passing where Milo sat cross-legged in front of the TV watching a popular car programme. His favourite.

She was about to pull the door shut when a curt voice behind her instructed, ‘Leave it.’

She dropped her hand and tensed. Rafaele was looking at Milo as he sat enraptured by the cars on the screen. He was holding about three of his favourite toy cars in his hands. If his eyes and pale olive skin hadn’t been a fatal giveaway then this might have been the worst kind of ironic joke.

Sam stepped back and walked into the kitchen. She couldn’t feel her legs. She felt sick, light-headed. She turned around to see Rafaele follow her in and close the door behind him, not shutting it completely.

Rafaele was white beneath his dark colouring. And he looked murderous.

He bit out, ‘This is where you tell me that by some extraordinary feat of genetic coincidence that little boy in there isn’t three years and approximately three months old. That he didn’t inherit exactly the same colour eyes that I inherited from my own mother. That he isn’t my son.’

Sam opened her mouth. ‘He is...’ Even now, at this last second, her brain searched desperately for something to cling onto. Some way this could be justified. He was his father. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the right any more. She’d never had the right. ‘He is your son.’

Silence, stretching taut and stark, and then he repeated, ‘He is my son?’

Sam just nodded. Nausea was churning in her belly now. The full implications of this were starting to hit home.

Rafaele emitted a long stream of Italian invective and Sam winced because she recognised some of the cruder words—they were pretty universal. Her belly was so tight she put a hand to it unconsciously. She watched as Rafaele struggled to take this in. The enormity of it.

‘No wonder you were so keen to get rid of me the other day.’

He paced back and forth in the tiny space. She could feel his anger and tension as it lashed out like a live electrical wire, snapping at her feet.

Suddenly he stopped and looked at her. ‘Are you married?’

Sam shook her head painfully. ‘No.’

‘And what if I hadn’t decided to pay you a visit? Would you have let me remain in blissful ignorance for ever?’

Stricken, Sam whispered, ‘I don’t...I don’t know.’ Even as she admitted that, though, the knowledge seeped in. She wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. She would have told him.

He pinned her to the spot with that light green gaze which had once devoured her alive and was now colder than the arctic.

‘You bitch.’

Sam flinched. He might as well have slapped her across the face. It had the same effect. The words were so coldly and implacably delivered.

‘You didn’t want a baby,’ she whispered, unable to inject more force into her voice.

‘So you just lied to me?’

Sam could feel her cheeks burning now, with shame. ‘I thought it was a miscarriage, as did you. But at the clinic, after the doctor had done his examination, he told me that I wasn’t miscarrying.’

Rafaele crossed his arms and she could see his hands clenched to fists. She shivered at the threat of violence even though she knew he would never hit her. But she sensed he wanted to hit something.

‘You knew then and yet you barefaced lied to me and let me walk away.’

Clutching at the smallest of straws, Sam said shakily, ‘I didn’t lie...you assumed...I just didn’t tell you.’

‘And the reason you didn’t inform me was because...?’

‘You didn’t...didn’t want to know.’ The words felt flimsy and ineffectual now. Petty.

‘Based on...?’

It was as if he couldn’t quite get out full sentences, Sam felt his rage strangling his words.

Her brain felt heavy. ‘Because of how you reacted when I told you in the first place...’

Sam recalled the indescribable pain of realising that Rafaele had been about to break it off with her. His abject shock at the prospect of her pregnancy. It gave her some much needed strength. ‘And because of what you said afterwards...at the clinic. I heard you on the phone.’

Rafaele frowned and it was a glower. ‘What did I say?’

Sam’s sliver of strength started to drain away again like a traitor. ‘You were talking to someone. You said you were caught up in something unimportant.’ Even now those words scored at Sam’s insides like a knife.

Rafaele’s expression turned nuclear. His arms dropped, his hands were fists. ‘Dio, Samantha. I can’t even recall that conversation. No doubt I just said something—anything—to placate one of my assistants. I thought you’d just miscarried. Do you really think I was about to announce that in an innocuous phone call?’

Sam gulped and had to admit reluctantly, ‘Maybe...maybe not. But how did I know that? All I could hear was your relief that you didn’t have to worry about a baby holding your life up and your eagerness to leave.’

He all but exploded. ‘Need I remind you that I was also in shock, and at that point I thought there was no baby!’

Sam was breathing hard and Rafaele looked as if he was about to kick aside the kitchen table between them to come and throttle her.

Just then a small, unsure voice emerged from the doorway. ‘Mummy?’

Immediately Sam’s world refracted down to Milo, who stood in the doorway. He’d opened it unnoticed by them and was looking from one to the other, his lower lip quivering ominously at the explosive tension.

Sam flew over and picked him up and he clung to her. Her conscience struck her. He was always a little intimidated by men because he wasn’t around them much.

‘Why is the man still here?’ he asked now, slanting sidelong looks to Rafaele and curling into Sam’s body as much as he could.

Sam stroked his back reassuringly and tried to sound normal. ‘This is just an old friend of Mummy’s. He’s stopped by to say hello, that’s all. He’s leaving now.’

‘Okay,’ Milo replied, happier now. ‘Can we look at cars?’

Sam looked at him and forced a smile, ‘Just as soon as I say goodbye to Mr Falcone, okay?’

‘Okey-dokey.’ Milo used his new favourite phrase that he’d picked up in playschool, squirmed back out of Sam’s arms and ran out of the kitchen again.

Sam watched Rafaele struggle to take it all in. Myriad explosive emotions crossing his face.

‘You’ll have to go,’ she entreated. ‘It’ll only confuse and upset him if you stay.’

Rafaele closed the distance between them and Sam instinctively moved back, but the oven was behind her. Rafaele’s scent enveloped her, musky and male. Her heart pounded.

‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’

After a long searing moment, during which she wasn’t sure how she didn’t combust from the anger being directed at her, Rafaele turned on his heel and left, stopping briefly at the sitting room door to look in at Milo again.

He cast one blistering look back at Sam and then he was out through the front door and gone. Sam heard the powerful throttle of an engine as it roared to life and then mercifully faded again.

It was then that she started to shake all over. Grasping for a chair to hold onto, she sank down into it, her teeth starting to chatter.

‘Mummeeee!’ came a plaintive wail from the sitting room.

Sam called out, ‘I’ll be there in one second, I promise.’

The last thing she needed was for Milo to see her in this state. Her brain was numb. She couldn’t even quite take in what had just happened—the fact that she’d seen Rafaele again for the first time since those cataclysmic days.

When she was finally feeling a little more in control she went in to Milo and sat down on the floor beside him. Without even taking his eyes off the TV he crawled into her lap and Sam’s heart constricted. She kissed his head.

Rafaele’s words came back to her: ‘This is not over, Samantha. I’ll leave now, because I don’t want to upset the boy, but you’ll be hearing from me.’

She shivered. She didn’t even want to think of what she’d be facing when she heard from Rafaele again.

* * *

On Monday morning Sam filed into the conference room at the university and took a seat at the long table for the weekly budget meeting. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness. Unsurprisingly she hadn’t slept all weekend, on tenterhooks waiting for Rafaele to appear again like a spectre. In her more fanciful moments she’d imagined that she’d dreamt it all up: the phone call; his appearance at the house. Coming face to face with his son. A small, snide voice pointed out that it was no less than she deserved but she pushed it down.

Robustly she told herself that if she’d had to go back in time she would have done the same again, because if she hadn’t surely the stress of Rafaele being reluctantly bound to her and a baby would have resulted in a miscarriage for real?

Gertie, the secretary, arrived then and sat down breathlessly next to Sam. She said urgently, ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened over the weekend...’

Sam looked at her, used to Gertie’s penchant for gossip. She didn’t want to hear some salacious story involving students and professors behaving badly, but the older woman’s face suddenly composed itself and Sam looked to see that the head of their department had walked into the room.

And then her heart stopped. Because right on his heels was another man. Rafaele.

For a second Sam thought she might faint. She was instantly light-headed. She had to put her hands on the edge of the table and grip it as she watched in mounting horror and shock as Rafaele coolly and calmly strode into the room, looking as out of place in this unadorned academic environment as an exotic peacock on a grubby high street.

He didn’t even glance her way. He took a seat at the head of the table alongside their boss, looking stupendously handsome and sexy. He sat back, casually undoing a button on his pristine suit jacket with a big hand, long fingers...

Sam was mesmerised.

This had to be a dream, she thought to herself frantically. She’d wake up any moment. But Gertie was elbowing her none too discreetly and saying sotto voce, ‘This is what I was about to tell you.’

The stern glare of their boss quelled any chat and then, with devastating inevitability, Sam’s stricken gaze met Rafaele’s and she knew it wasn’t a dream. There was a distinct gleam of triumph in those green depths, and a more than smug smile was playing around that firmly sculpted mouth.

Her boss was standing up and clearing his throat. Sam couldn’t look away from Rafaele, and he didn’t remove his gaze from hers, as if forcing her to take in every word now being spoken, but she only heard snippets.

‘Falcone Industries...most successful...honoured that Mr Falcone has decided to fund this research out of his own pocket...delighted at this announcement...funding guaranteed for as long as it takes.’

Then Rafaele got up to address the room. There were about thirteen people and, predictably, you could have heard a pin drop as his charismatic effect held everyone in thrall. He’d finally moved his gaze from Sam and she felt as if she could breathe again, albeit painfully. Her heart was racing and she took in nothing of what he said, trying to wrap her sluggish brain around the ramifications of this shocking development.

‘Samantha...’

Sam looked up, dazed, to see her boss was now addressing her, and that Rafaele had sat down. She hadn’t noticed, nor heard a word.

‘I’m sorry, Bill, what did you say?’ She was amazed she’d managed to speak.

‘I said,’ he repeated with exaggerated patience, clearly disgruntled that she appeared to be on another planet while in such illustrious company, ‘that as of next week you will be working from the Falcone factory. You’re to oversee setting up a research facility there which will work in tandem with the one here in the university.’

He directed himself to the others again while this bomb detonated within Sam’s solar plexus.

‘I don’t think I need to point out the significance of being allowed to conduct this research within a functioning factory, and especially one as prestigious as Falcone Motors. It’ll put us streets ahead of other research in this area and, being assured of Falcone funding for at least five years, we’re practically guaranteed success.’

Sam couldn’t take any more. She rose up in a blind panic, managed to mumble something vague about needing air and fled the room.

* * *

Rafaele watched Sam leave dispassionately. Since the other evening he’d been in shock. Functioning, but in shock. His anger and rage was too volcanic to release, fearsome in its intensity. And fearsome for Rafaele if he contemplated for a second why his emotions were so deep and hot.

Sam’s boss beside him emitted a grunt of displeasure at her hasty departure, but Rafaele felt nothing but satisfaction to be causing her a modicum of the turbulence in his own gut. Through his shock Rafaele had felt a visceral need to push Sam off her axis as much as she’d pushed him off his.

He recalled bitterly how reluctant she’d been to talk to him in the first place about the job he was offering, all the while knowing her secret. Harbouring his son. With one phone call to his team Rafaele had put in motion this audacious plan to take over the research programme at her university and had relished this meeting.

While Sam’s boss continued his speech Rafaele retreated inwardly, but anyone looking at him would have seen only fierce concentration.

He breathed in and realised that he hadn’t taken a proper breath since he’d seen Sam looking at him with that stricken expression on her face in the doorway of her house the other evening. The initial punch to his gut he’d received when he’d first thought that Sam was married, with someone else’s child, was galling to remember—and more exposing than he liked to admit.

Nothing excused her from withholding his son from him for more than three years. Rafaele had been about Milo’s age when his world had imploded. When he’d witnessed his father, on his knees, sobbing, prostrating himself at Rafaele’s mother’s feet, begging her not to leave him.

‘I love you. What am I if you leave? I am nothing. I have nothing...’

‘Get up, Umberto,’ she’d said. ‘You shame yourself in front of our son. What kind of a man will he be with a crying, snivelling wretch for a father?’

What kind of a man would he be?

Rafaele felt tight inside. The kind of man who knew that the most important things in life were building a solid foundation. Security. Success. He’d vowed never to allow anything to reduce him to nothing, as his father had been reduced, with not even his pride to keep him standing. Emotions were dangerous. They had the power to derail you completely. He knew how fickle women were, how easily they could walk away. Or keep you from your child.

Rafaele had driven back to Sam’s house on Sunday, fired up, ready to confront her again, but just as he’d pulled up he’d seen them leaving the house. Milo had been pushing a scooter. He’d followed them to a small local park and watched like a fugitive as they played. Dark emotions had twisted inside him as he’d watched Sam’s effortless long-legged grace and ease. He’d known that if he hadn’t reappeared in their lives this would have just been another banal Sunday morning routine trip to the park.

Seeing his son’s small sturdy body, watching him running around, laughing gleefully, something alien inside him had swelled. It was...pride. And something else that he couldn’t name. But it had reminded him of that day again—the darkest in his memory—when his mother had gripped his hand painfully tight and pulled him in her wake out of their family palazzo outside Milan, leaving his father sobbing uncontrollably on the ground. A pathetic, broken man.

That was one of the reasons Rafaele had never wanted to have children. Knowing how vulnerable they were had always felt like too huge a responsibility to bear. No one knew better than he how events even at that young age could shape your life. And so he’d never expected that, when faced with his son, there would be such a torrent of feelings within him, each one binding him invisibly and indelibly to this person he didn’t even know properly yet. Or that when he’d watched him running around the other day there would be a surge of something so primal and protective that he just knew without question, instantly, that he would do anything to prevent his son from coming into harm’s way.

From far too early an age Rafaele had been made aware that the absence of a father corroded at your insides like an acid.

Resolve firmed like a ball of concrete inside him. There was no way on this earth that he was going to walk away from his son now and give him a taste of what he’d suffered.

Cutting off Sam’s boss curtly, Rafaele stood up and muttered an excuse, and left the room. There was only one person he wanted to hear talk right now.

* * *

Sam’s stomach felt raw after she’d lost her breakfast, minute as it had been, into a toilet in the ladies’ room. She felt shaky, weak, and looked as pale as death in the reflection of the cracked mirror. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth out, knowing that she had to go back out there and face—

The door suddenly swung open and Sam stood up straight, hands gripping the side of the sink. For once she prayed it might be Gertie, even though she knew it wasn’t when every tiny hair seemed to prickle on her skin.

She turned around and saw Rafaele, looking very tall and very dark as he leant back against the door, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Even now her body sang, recognising the man who had introduced her to her own sensuality, and she clamped down on the rogue response, bitterly aware that not even the harsh fluorescent lighting could strip away his sheer good looks.

Welcome anger rose up and Sam seized on it, crossing her arms over her chest. Her voice felt rough, raw. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Rafaele? How dare you come in here and use your might to get back at me? These are people you’re playing with—people who have invested long years of study into their area—and suddenly you sweep in and promise them a glimpse of future success when we both know—’

‘Enough.’

Rafaele’s voice sounded harsh in the echoing silence of the cavernous tiled ladies’ bathroom.

‘I am fully committed to following through on my promise of funding and support to this university.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Unless you’ve already forgotten, I had contacted you initially to ask you to work for me. I had every intention of using your expertise to further this very research for my own ends.’

He shrugged minutely. ‘There’s nothing new in that—any motor company worth its salt is on the lookout for new research and ways of beating the competition with new technology. You have single-handedly elevated this research to a far more advanced level than any other facility, in a university or otherwise.’

His words sent Sam no sense of professional satisfaction. She was still in shock. ‘That may be the case,’ she bit out tightly, ‘but now that you know about Milo you’re seeking to get back at me personally.’

She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

‘It just so happens that you have the means to be able to come in and take over the entire department to do your bidding.’

Fresh panic gripped her when she recalled her boss saying something about Sam herself going to work from his factory. Her arms grew tighter over her chest when she recalled the hothouse environment of working in Rafaele’s Milan factory four years ago and how easily he’d seduced her. The thought of going back into a similar environment, even if Rafaele would prefer to throttle her than sleep with her, made her clammy.

‘I will not be going to work for you. I will remain here at the university.’

Rafaele took a few paces forward and Sam saw the light of something like steel in his eyes and his expression. Her belly sank even as her skin tightened with betraying awareness.

‘You will be coming to work for me—or I will pull out of this agreement and all of your colleagues are back to square one. Your boss has informed me that if I hadn’t come along with the promise of funding he was going to have to let some people go. He can’t keep everyone on the payroll due to reduced projected funding this year. You would have been informed of that at this very meeting.’

Vaguely Sam was aware of the veracity of what he said. It had been rumoured for weeks. Once again she was struck by how little she’d appreciated how ruthless Rafaele was. ‘You bastard,’ she breathed.

Rafaele looked supremely unperturbed. ‘Hardly, when I’m saving jobs. It’s very simple if you do the right thing and accede to my wishes. And this is just the start of it, Samantha.’

Ice invaded her bloodstream. ‘Start of what?’

To her shock she realised belatedly how close Rafaele had come when he reached out a hand and cupped her jaw. She felt the strength of that hand, the faint calluses which reminded her of how he loved tinkering with engines despite his status. It was one of the things that had endeared him to her from the start.

In an instant an awful physical yearning rose up within her. Every cell in her body was reacting joyously to a touch she’d never thought she’d experience again. She was melting, getting hot. Damp.

Softly, he sliced open the wound in her heart. ‘The start of payback, Samantha. You owe me for depriving me of my son for more than three years and I will never let you forget it.’

* * *

For a moment Rafaele almost forgot where he was, who he was talking to. The feel of Sam’s skin under his hand was like silk, her jaw as delicate as the finest spun Murano glass. He had an almost overwhelming urge to keep sliding his hand around to the back of her neck, to tug her towards him so that he could feel her pressed against him and crush that pink rosebud mouth under his— Suddenly Rafaele realised what he was doing.

With a guttural curse he took his hand away and stepped back. Sam was looking at him with huge grey eyes, her face as pale as parchment with two pink spots in each cheek.

She blinked, almost as if she’d been caught in a similar spell, and then something in her eyes cleared. The anger was gone.

She changed tack, entreated him. She held out a hand and her voice was husky. ‘Please, Rafaele, we need to talk about this—’

‘No.’ The word was harsh, abrupt, and it cut her off effectively. Everything within Rafaele had seized at her attempt to try and take advantage of a moment when she might have perceived weakness on his part. To play on his conscience. With the shadows under her eyes making her look fragile and vulnerable.

He’d witnessed his mother for years, using her wiles to fool men into thinking she was vulnerable, fragile. Only to see how her expression would harden again once they were no longer looking and she’d got what she wanted. She’d been so cold the day she’d left his father, showing not an ounce of remorse.

Once, he mightn’t have believed Sam was like that, but that was before she’d kept his son from him, demonstrating equal, if not worse, callousness.

Rafaele took another step back and hated that he felt the need to do so. That volcanic anger was well and truly erupting now. He gritted out, ‘If you were a man...’

Sam tensed and her chin lifted. Gone was the soft look of before, the husky entreaty.

‘If I were a man...what? You’d thrash me? Well, what’s stopping you?’

Rafaele could see where her hands had clenched to fists by her side. He looked at her disgustedly. ‘Because I don’t raise my hands to women—or anyone, for that matter. But I felt like it for the first time when I realised that boy was my son.’

He couldn’t stop the words spilling out. That initial shock was infusing him all over again.

‘My son, Sam, my flesh and blood. He’s a Falcone. Dio. How could you have played God like that? What gave you the right to believe you had the answer? That you alone could decide to just cut me out of his life?’

Sam seemed to tense even more, her chin going higher. Those spots of red deepened, highlighting her delicate bone structure. ‘Do I need to remind you again that you practically tripped over your feet in your hurry to get out of the clinic that day? You could barely disguise your relief when you thought there was nothing to worry about. You just assumed the worst. It didn’t even occur to you to question whether or not I’d actually had a miscarriage, because you didn’t want a baby.’

Rafaele coloured, his conscience pricked by the reminder of how eager he’d been to get away from those huge bruised eyes, the raw emotion. The shock. The awareness that Sam had strayed too far under his skin.

Tightly he admitted, ‘I never had any intention of having children. But you gave me no reason to doubt the inevitable conclusion of what we’d both believed to be a miscarriage.’

Sam choked out, ‘You were quite happy to wash your hands of me, so don’t blame me now if I felt the best course was to leave you out of my decision-making process.’

Rafaele looked at Sam across the few feet that separated them and all he could see was her eyes. Huge, and as grey as the rolling English clouds. She was sucking him in again but he wouldn’t let her. She’d wilfully misdirected him into believing she’d miscarried when all the while she’d held the knowledge of their baby, living, in her belly.

He shook his head. ‘That’s just not good enough.’

Sam’s voice took on a defensive edge. ‘I was hardly encouraged to get in touch and tell you the truth when I saw you with another woman only a week after that day.’

She was breathing heavily under her shirt and he could see her breasts rise and fall. A flash of heat went straight to his groin and Rafaele crushed it ruthlessly. He focused on her face and tried to forget that he actually hadn’t slept with another woman for about a year after Sam had left, despite appearances and despite his best efforts. Every time he’d come close something inside him had shut down. And since then...? His experiences with women had been anything but satisfactory. To be reminded of this now was galling.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare try to put this on me now, just to deflect your own guilt.’

But the guilt that had struck Rafaele wouldn’t be banished, much as he wanted it to be. Damn her! He wouldn’t let her do this to him now. She’d borne his child. His son. And said nothing.

Sam’s voice was bitter. ‘God forbid that I would forget what our relationship was about. Sex. That was pretty much it, wasn’t it? Forget conversation, or anything more intimate than being naked in bed. It wasn’t as if you didn’t make that abundantly clear, Rafaele, telling me over and over again not to fall for you because you weren’t about that.’

‘But you did anyway, didn’t you?’ Rafaele couldn’t keep the accusing note out of his voice and he saw Sam blanch.

‘I thought I loved you.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘After all, you were my first lover, and isn’t it normal for a virgin to develop an attachment to her first? Isn’t that one of the helpful warnings you gave me?’

Rafaele saw nothing right then but a memory of Sam’s naked and flushed body as she’d lain on his bed before him, her breasts high and round, her narrow waist, long legs. Skin so pure and white it had reminded him of alabaster—except she’d been living, breathing, so passionate. And she’d been innocent. He’d never forget how it had felt to sink into that slick, tight heat for the first time. It was his most erotic memory. Her gasp of shock turning to pleasure.

She continued, ‘But don’t worry. I soon got over it and realised how shallow those feelings were. Once I was faced with the reality of pregnancy and a baby.’

‘A reality,’ Rafaele gritted out, angry at that memory and at how easily it had slipped past his guard, ‘that you decided to face alone.’

Reacting against her ability to scramble his thought-processes, Rafaele changed tack.

‘Was it a punishment, Sam? Hmm?’ He answered himself. ‘Punishment for my being finished with you? For not wanting more? For letting you go? For not wanting to have a baby because that’s not what our relationship was about?’

Rafaele couldn’t stop the demon inside him.

‘I think the problem is that you fell for me and you were angry because I didn’t fall for you, so you decided to punish me. It’s so obvious...’

CHAPTER THREE

SAM CLOSED the distance between them, her hand lifted and she hit Rafaele across the face before she even registered the impulse to do so. She realised in the sickeningly taut silence afterwards that she’d reacted because he’d spoken her worst fears out loud. Here in this awful, stark, echoey room.

With a guttural curse, and his cheek flaring red where Sam had hit him, Rafaele hauled her into his arms and his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her angrily, roughly.

It took a second for Sam to get over the shock, but what happened next wasn’t the reaction she would have chosen if she’d had half a brain cell still working. Her reaction came from her treacherous body and overrode her brain completely.

She started kissing him back, matching his anger with her own. For exposing her. For saying those words out loud. For making her feel even more ashamed and confused. For being here. For making her want him. For making her remember. For kissing her just to dominate her and prove how much she still wanted him.

Her hands were clutching Rafaele’s jacket. She tasted blood and yet it wasn’t pain that registered. It was passion, and it sent her senses spiralling out of all control. Rafaele’s hands were bruisingly hard on her arms and tears pricked behind Sam’s eyelids at the tumult of desire mixed with frustration.

She opened her eyes to see swirling green oceans. Rafaele pulled away jerkily and Sam could hear nothing but the thunder of her own heartbeat and her ragged breathing. She was still clutching his jacket and she let go, her hands shaking.

‘You’re bleeding...’

The fact that Rafaele’s voice was rough was no comfort. He was just angry, not overcome with passion.

Sam reached up and touched her lip and winced when it stung slightly. Her mouth felt swollen. She knew she had to get out of there before he saw something. Before he saw that very close behind her anger in that exchange had been an awful yearning for something else.

‘I have to go. They’ll be wondering where we are.’ Her insides were heaving, roiling. She was terrified she might be sick again, and this time all over Rafaele’s immaculate shoes. She couldn’t look at him.

‘Sam—’

‘No.’ She cut him off and looked at him. ‘Not here.’

His jaw tightened. ‘Fine. I’ll send a car for you this evening. We’ll talk at my place.’

Sam was too much in shock to argue. Too much had happened—too much physicality. Too much of a reminder that he aroused more passion in her just by looking at him than she’d ever felt in her life with anyone else. She simply didn’t have it in her right then to say anything other than a very reluctant, ‘Fine.’ She needed to get away from this man before he exposed her completely.

* * *

That evening, Sam waited for Rafaele in an exclusive townhouse in the middle of Mayfair, demesne of the rich and famous. Anger and an awful sense of futility had simmered in her belly all day as she’d had to put up with her colleagues excitedly discussing the great opportunity Rafaele Falcone had presented them with while knowing that it was only to ensure he gained as much control of her life as he could.

She was afraid of the volatility of her emotions after what had happened in that bathroom earlier and, worse, at the thought of working for him again. She forced herself to take deep breaths and focused on her surroundings. Luxurious sofas and chairs, dressed in shades of grey and white and cream. Low coffee tables and sleek furnishings. Seriously intimidating.

She felt very scruffy as she was still in her work uniform of narrow black trousers, white shirt and black jacket. Flat shoes. Hair pulled back. No make-up. These surroundings were made for a much more sensual woman. A woman who would drape herself seductively on a couch in a beautiful silk dress and wait for her lover.

It reminded Sam painfully of Rafaele’s palazzo on the outskirts of Milan, where sometimes she had fooled herself into believing nothing existed beyond those four walls. And that she was one of those beautiful seductive women.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

Sam whirled around so abruptly when she heard his voice that she felt dizzy. She realised she was clutching her leather bag to her chest like a shield and lowered it.

She really wasn’t prepared to see Rafaele again so soon, and that swirling cauldron of emotions within her was spiked with a mix of anger and ever-present shame. And the memory of that angry kiss. Her lips were still sensitive. He looked like the Devil himself, emerging from the shadows of the doorway. Tall, broad, hard, muscled. And mean. His face was harsh, his mouth unsmiling. Making a mockery of his apology for keeping her waiting.

Nothing had changed from earlier. But despite her anger Sam’s conscience stung. Tightly, she said, ‘I’m sorry...for hitting you earlier. I don’t know what came over me...but what you said...it was wrong.’

Liar. She burned inside. She might as well have held her tongue. She was lying to herself as much as to him.

Rafaele came further in. Grim. ‘I deserved it. I provoked you.’

Sam blanched and looked at him. She hadn’t expected that, and somewhere treacherous a part of her melted.

He walked past her and over to a drinks board, helping himself to something amber that swirled in the bottom of a bulbous glass. He looked at her over his shoulder, making heat flood her cheeks. She hadn’t even realised that she’d been making a thorough inspection of his broad back, tapering down to lean hips and firm buttocks.

‘Drink?’

She shook her head hurriedly and got out a choked, ‘No. Thank you.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to a nearby couch. ‘Sit down, Sam—and you can put down your bag. You look as if your fingers might break.’

She looked down stupidly to see white knuckles through the skin of her fingers where they gripped the leather. Forcing herself to take a breath, she moved jerkily over to the couch and perched on the edge, resisting the design of it, which wanted to seduce her into a more relaxed pose.

Rafaele came and sat down opposite her, clearly far more relaxed than her as he sank back into the couch, resting one arm across the top. Sam fought the desire to look and see how his shirt must be stretched across his chest.

‘What kind of a name is Milo anyway? Irish?’

Sam blinked. It took a minute for his words to sink in because they were so unexpected. ‘It’s...it was my grandfather’s name.’

Sam was vaguely surprised he remembered that detail of her heritage. She was one generation removed from Ireland, actually, having been born and brought up in England because her parents had moved there after her brilliant father had been offered a job at a London university.

Sam sensed his anger building again. ‘I did intend to tell you...some day. I would never have withheld that information from Milo for ever.’

Rafaele snorted a harsh laugh. ‘That’s big of you. You would have waited until he’d built up a childhood full of resentment about his absent father and I wouldn’t have even known.’

Rafaele sat forward and put down his glass with a clatter. He ran his hand impatiently through his hair, making it flop messily onto his forehead. Sam’s insides clenched when she remembered how she’d once felt comfortable running her hands through his hair, using it to hold him in place when he’d had his face buried between—

Shame flared inside her at the way her thoughts were going. She should be thinking of Milo and extricating them both from the threat that Rafaele posed, not remembering lurid X-rated memories.

In a smaller voice she admitted, ‘I’ve been living day to day...it didn’t seem to be urgent right now. He...he doesn’t ask about his father.’

Rafaele stood up, towering over her. ‘I’d say it became urgent about the time you gave birth, Sam. Don’t you think he must be wondering why other kids have fathers and he doesn’t?’

Words were locked in Sam’s throat. Milo mightn’t have mentioned anything yet, but she had noticed him looking at his friends in playschool when their fathers picked them up. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start asking questions.

She stood up too, not liking feeling so intimidated.

Rafaele bit back the anger that threatened to spill over and keep spilling. Looking as vulnerable, if not more so than she had earlier, Sam said tightly, ‘Look, I can’t stay too long. My minder is doing me a favour. Can we just...get to what we need to discuss?’

He’d been unable to get Sam’s pale face out of his mind all day. Or the way he’d hauled her into his arms like a Neanderthal, all but backing her up against that sink to ravish her in a tacky bathroom. The feel of her against him, under his mouth, had dragged him back to a place he’d locked away deep inside, unleashing a cavalcade of desire more hot and urgent than anything he’d ever encountered.

He struggled to curb some of the intense emotion he was feeling.

‘What’s going to happen is this: I am going to be a father to my son and you will do everything in your power to facilitate that—because if you don’t, Samantha, I won’t hesitate to use full legal force against you.’

Rafaele delivered his ultimatum and Sam just looked at him, trying not to let him see how his words shook her to her core. ‘I won’t hesitate to use full legal force against you.’

‘What exactly do you mean, Rafaele? You can’t threaten me like this.’

Rafaele came close to Sam—close enough for his scent to wind around her, prompting a vivid memory of how it had felt to have her mouth crushed under his earlier that day. He looked at her for such a long, taut moment that she stopped breathing. And then he moved back to the couch to sit down again and regarded her like a lounging pasha.

‘It’s not a threat. It’s very much a promise. I want to be in Milo’s life. I am his father. We deserve to get to know one another. He needs to know that I am his father.’

Panic boosted Sam’s adrenalin. She couldn’t have sat down if she’d wanted to. Every muscle was locked. ‘You can’t just barge in and announce that you’re his father. He won’t understand. It’ll upset him.’

Rafaele arched a brow. ‘And whose fault is that? Who kept this knowledge from him and from me? One person, Sam. You. And now you have to deal with the consequences.’

‘Yes,’ Sam admitted bitterly, ‘I recognise that, and you’ve already made your sphere of influence obvious—but not at the cost of my son’s happiness and sense of security.’

Rafaele leant forward. ‘You have cost our son his happiness and security already. You’ve wilfully cost him three years of knowing he had a father. You’ve already irreparably damaged his development.’

Our son. Sam’s insides contracted painfully. She was feeling shocked again at the very evident emotion on Rafaele’s face. Quickly masked, though, as if he was surprised by his own vehemence.

‘So what are you proposing, Rafaele?’

A part of Sam, deep down inside, marvelled at that moment that there had ever been intimacy between them. That she had ever lain beside him in bed and gazed deep into his eyes. On their last night together...before he’d gone on his business trip...she’d reached out and touched his face as if learning every feature. He’d taken her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, and there had been something she’d never seen before darkening his eyes, making her breath grow short and her heart pound...

‘What I’m proposing is that, as I’m due to be here in England for the foreseeable future, I want to be a part of Milo’s daily life so that he can get to know me.’

Sam struggled to take it in. ‘“The foreseeable future”? What does that mean? You can’t get to know him and then just walk away, Rafaele, when your business is done.’

Rafaele stood up and put his hands deep in his pockets, as if he was having second thoughts about physical violence. Silkily he replied, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Sam, I have no intention of walking away—ever—no matter where my business takes me. Milo is my son just as much as he is yours. You’ve had unfettered access to him for over three years of his life and you will never deny me access again. I want him here—with me.’

Sam’s mouth opened and closed again before she could manage to articulate, ‘Here with you? But that’s preposterous. He’s three!’

Rafaele clarified with clear reluctance, ‘Naturally you would also have to come.’

Sam emitted a scared laugh, because even though what Rafaele was saying was insane he sounded eminently reasonable. ‘Oh, thanks! Should I be grateful that you would allow me to stay with my son?’

Rafaele’s face darkened. ‘I think any judge in any courtroom would look unfavourably upon a mother who kept her son from his father for no apparent good reason.’

Sam blanched and tried to appeal to him. ‘Rafaele, we can’t just...uproot and move in with you. It’s not practical.’ And the very thought of spending any more time alone with this man than she had to scared the living daylights out of her.

His voice sounded unbearably harsh. ‘I am going to be under the same roof as my son, as his father, and I will not negotiate on that. You can either be part of it or not. Obviously it will be easier if you are. And, as we’re going to be working together again, it can only be more practical.’

Anger surged again at Rafaele’s reminder of that small detail and his intractability. ‘You’re being completely unreasonable. Of course I need to be with my son...that’s non-negotiable.’

Rafaele took a step closer, and even though his hands were in his pockets Sam felt the threat reach out to touch her.

‘Well, then, you have a measure of how I’m feeling, Samantha. I will expect you back here with your bags and Milo by this time tomorrow evening or else we take it to the courts and they will decide how he will divide his time between us.’ He added, ‘You’ve proved that you believe one parent is dispensable—what’s to stop me testing out the theory with you?’

Sam gritted out, ‘I do recognise that you’ve missed out on time with Milo...and I should have told you before now. But I had my reasons and I believed they were valid.’

‘Very noble of you, Samantha,’ Rafaele mocked, with an edge.

Trying to concentrate and not be distracted by him, she said, ‘It’s just not practical for us to come here. This might be your home, and it’s beautiful—’

‘It’s not mine,’ Rafaele bit out. ‘It belongs to a friend. I’m renting it.’

Sam lifted her hands in an unconscious plea for him to listen. ‘All the more reason why this isn’t a good idea—it’s not even your permanent home. Milo is settled into a good routine where we are. We have a granny flat attached to the house and that’s where Bridie lives.’

Rafaele arched a brow. ‘His minder?’

Sam nodded. ‘She was my father’s housekeeper since I was two, after my mother died. She cared for me while I grew up and she stayed on after my father passed away two years ago.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rafaele offered stiffly, ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Thank you...’ Sam acknowledged. ‘The thing is,’ she continued while she had Rafaele’s attention, ‘Bridie has known Milo since he was born. She...helped me.’

Sam coloured as she imagined the acerbic retorts going through Rafaele’s mind and she rushed on. ‘We have a good arrangement. Regular affordable childcare like I have is gold dust in London.’

Rafaele asserted, ‘I don’t think I need to point out that affording childcare would be the least of your worries if you let me organise it.’

Sam was tense enough to crack, and all of a sudden she felt incredibly light-headed. She must have shown it, because immediately Rafaele was beside her, holding her arm and frowning.

‘What is it? Dio, Sam, you look like death warmed up.’

His use of Sam caught her somewhere vulnerable. She cursed herself inwardly. She was no wilting ninny and she hated that Rafaele was seeing her like this. She pulled away from his strong grip jerkily. ‘I’m fine...’

Rafaele all but forcibly manoeuvred her to the couch and made her sit down again. Then he went to the drinks cabinet and poured some brandy into a glass. Coming back, he handed it to her.

Hating herself for needing the fortification, Sam took it.

She took a sip, and as the pungent and strong alcohol filtered down her throat and into her belly, felt a bit steadier. She put the glass down and looked directly at Rafaele, where he too had taken his seat again, opposite her.

‘Look, you’ve said yourself that you’re just renting this place. It would be insane to uproot Milo from the only home he’s known since he was a baby.’ She pressed on, ‘My father’s house is perfectly comfortable. Bridie lives right next door. His playschool is at the end of the road. We have a nearby park. He goes swimming at the weekends to the local pool. He plays with the children from the surrounding houses. It’s a safe area. Everyone looks out for everyone and they all love Milo.’

Rafaele’s face was unreadable. Sam took a breath. She’d just spoken as if in a lecture, in a series of bullet points. Never more than right now did she appreciate just how much Rafaele could upset their lives if he wanted to. And it was entirely her fault.

He drawled, ‘The picture you paint is positively idyllic.’

She flushed at the sarcasm in his voice. ‘We’re lucky to be in a good area.’

‘How have you managed financially?’

Rafaele’s question blindsided Sam for a minute. ‘It...well, it wasn’t easy at first. I had to defer my PhD for a year. My father was ill... But I had some savings to tide us over. And he had his pension. When he died the mortgage was protected, so that was paid off. Bridie looked after Milo while I did my doctorate and I was lucky enough to be taken onto the research programme soon afterwards. We get by. We have enough.’

Unmistakable pride straightened Sam’s spine. Rafaele could see it in the set of her shoulders and he had to hand it to her—grudgingly. She hadn’t come running to him looking for a hand-out as soon as she’d known her pregnancy was viable. He didn’t know any woman who wouldn’t have taken advantage of that fact. And yet Sam had been determined to go it alone.

‘Would you have come to me if you’d needed money?’

Rafaele could see her go pale at the prospect and something dark rushed to his gut. She would have preferred to struggle than to see him again. Since last Saturday’s cataclysmic revelation Rafaele had been avoiding looking at the fact that he’d felt so compelled to see Sam again he’d ignored his earlier warning to himself to stay away and had gone to her house with more than a sense of anticipation in his belly. It had been something bordering much closer to a need. He’d tried to ignore it, but he’d been incensed that she’d been so dismissive. Uninterested.

Rafaele stood up. ‘I fail to see what all this has to do with me getting what I want—which is my son.’

Sam stood up too, her cheeks flushing, making her eyes stand out like glittering pools of grey. Desire, dark and urgent, speared Rafaele.

‘That’s just it. You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about you or me. It’s about Milo and what’s best for him. He’s not a pawn, Rafaele, you can’t just move him around at will to get back at me. His needs must come first.’

Rafaele felt stung at her tirade. She had the right to maternal indignation because she’d experienced the bonding process. He hadn’t. But he knew that she was right. He couldn’t just waltz in and pluck his son out of his routine, much as he wanted to. But he hated her for this.

Tightly he asked, ‘So what is your suggestion, then?’

The relief that moved across her expressive fine features made him even angrier. Did she really think it would be this easy?

‘We leave Milo where he is, at home with me. And you can come and see him...we’ll work something out while you’re here in England...and then, once we see how it goes, we can work out a longer term arrangement. After all, you won’t be here for ever...’

He could see her spying her bag nearby and she moved to get it. His eyes were drawn against his will to her tall, slim form as she bent and then straightened, her breasts pushing against her shirt, reminding him of how badly he’d ached to touch them for the first time, and what it had felt like to cup their firm weight, made perfectly to fit his palms. The fact that the memory was so vivid was not welcome.

Sam was the only woman who’d ever had this ability to make him feel slightly out of his comfort zone. Coasting on the edge of extreme danger. And not the kind he liked, where he ultimately had control, say in a car.

Danger zone or no danger zone, something primal gripped Rafaele deep inside at seeing Sam preparing to leave, looking so relieved—as if she could just lay it all on the line like this and he’d agree.

She was backing away, tucking some loose hair behind her ear, and it was that one simple familiar gesture that pushed Rafaele over an edge. ‘Do you really think it’s that easy? That I’ll simply agree to your terms?’

She stopped. ‘You can’t do this, Rafaele—insist on having it your way. It’s not fair on Milo. If he’s going to get to know you then it should be in his own safe environment. He’s going to be confused as it is.’

Rafaele moved closer to Sam, almost against his will. ‘And whose fault is that?’ he reminded her, as an audacious plan formed in his brain. ‘What do you hope for, Sam? That after a couple of visits I’ll grow bored and you’ll be left in peace?’

She swallowed visibly and looked faintly guilty. ‘Of course not.’

But she did. He could tell. She hoped that this was just a passing display of anger and might. She was probably congratulating herself on the fact that he now knew and that she and her son—his son—would be left in peace to get on with their lives once he’d lost interest.

Suddenly Rafaele wanted to insert himself deep into Sam’s life. Deep into her. He remembered what that had felt like too—that moment of exquisite suspension when neither of them could draw in a breath because he was embedded so deep inside her—

‘This will work my way or no way,’ he gritted out, ruthlessly crushing those incendiary images, exerting a control over his body he rarely had to call on.

‘Rafaele—’

‘No, Samantha. I will concede that you are right that Milo must come first, so I agree that he should stay where he is most secure.’

‘You do?’

Rafaele didn’t even bother to agree again, he just continued, ‘So, with that concern in mind, I will compromise.’

She swallowed again. Now she looked nervous. Good. She should. Rafaele smiled and got a fleeting moment of satisfaction from the way her eyes dropped to his mouth and flared with something hot.

‘I’ll move in with you.’

Sam’s eyes met his and grew wider. He saw her struggling to compute the information. She even shook her head slightly.

‘I’m sorry... I don’t think I heard you properly... You said you’ll what?’

Rafaele smiled even more widely now, enjoying himself for the first time in days. ‘You heard me fine, Samantha, I said I’ll move in with you. Then you will have no reason to deny me access to my son as I’ll be doing everything in my power to accommodate you—isn’t that right?’

Sam felt as if she was suspended in time, disbelieving of what she’d just heard. But then the smug look on Rafaele’s face told her she hadn’t misheard. Twice.

‘But...you can’t. I mean...’ Her brain seemed to have turned to slush. ‘There’s no room.’

Rafaele quirked a brow. ‘It looks like a decent-sized house to me. I would imagine there’s at least three bedrooms? All I need is one.’

Sam cursed his accuracy and diverted her thoughts away from remembering Rafaele’s palatial bedroom in his palazzo, with the bed big enough for a football team. They’d covered every inch of it.

Stiffly she said, ‘It’s not a good idea. You wouldn’t be comfortable. It’s not exactly up to this standard.’ She gestured with her arm to take in the surrounding opulence.

Rafaele grimaced. ‘This place is too big for just me.’ And then his eyes glinted with sheer wickedness. ‘I find my preferences running to much more modest requirements all of a sudden.’

Sam felt old bitterness rise. No doubt he meant much in the same way his preferences had become more ‘modest’ when he’d found himself briefly in thrall to her. Seduced, presumably, by her complete naivety and innocence because he’d become momentarily jaded by the far more sophisticated women he usually went for. This had been evidenced by the fact that he’d never even taken her out in too public a social setting, preferring to keep their dates secluded and secret.

Sam shook her head, the mere thought of Rafaele in her house for an extended period making her seize inwardly. Not to mention the fact that he expected her to work for him.

‘No. This is not going to happen. Maybe if you moved closer—’

Suddenly Rafaele was far too close and Sam’s words faltered. Any hint of wickedness was gone.

‘No, Samantha. I am moving in with you and there is nothing you can do or say to put me off this course. I’ve missed important milestones already in my son’s life and I’m not about to miss another moment.’

Shakily Sam said, ‘Please, there must be another way to do this.’

Rafaele stepped even closer. Sam could smell him now and see the lighter flecks of green in his eyes. See the dark shadowing of stubble on his jaw. He’d always needed to shave twice a day. Her insides cramped.

‘The reason you don’t want me to stay, Sam... It wouldn’t be because there’s still something there...would it?’

Had his voice grown huskier or was it her imagination? Sam just looked at him and blinked. His eyes were molten green, hot. And she was on fire. It was only when she saw something very cynical and dark in their depths that she managed to shake herself free of his spell. She was terrified he’d touch her again, like earlier, and stepped back, feeling cold all over.

The thought that she’d given herself away, that he might analyse her reaction and suspect that there had been something deeper there than anger made her sick with mortification and shame.

In as cool a voice as she could muster, Sam said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rafaele. I’m no more attracted to you any more than you are to me. That died long ago.’

His eyes flashed. ‘So there should be no problem with my sharing your house to facilitate me getting to know my son, who you have kept from me for the last three years?’

It wasn’t really a question. Much as in the way he had ridden roughshod over her department at work, ensuring she would be under his control. With a sinking sense of inevitability Sam knew that if she fought Rafaele further he’d only dig his heels in deeper and deeper. And perhaps he’d even feel like toying with her again, proving a point, and perhaps this time she’d really give herself away.

The thought made her go clammy. She must never forget his cruel rejection or let him know how badly he’d hurt her.

She reassured herself that he was a workaholic, after all, so she’d probably barely see him. And for all his lofty talk she didn’t seriously see him lasting for longer than a week in the leafy but very boring London suburbs.

A man like Rafaele—son of an Italian count and a renowned Spanish beauty—was accustomed to beautiful things and especially beautiful women. Accustomed to getting what he wanted.

Seizing on that, and also anticipating his realisation that her house would not be a haven for his mistresses and would soon bore him to tears, Sam lifted her chin and said, ‘When do you propose to move in?’

CHAPTER FOUR

FOUR DAYS LATER it was Friday evening, and Sam was tense enough to crack in two, waiting for Rafaele’s appearance. He was moving in tonight, and all week his staff had been arriving at the house to prepare it for his arrival.

When she’d come home from his house the previous Monday evening she’d had to come clean and tell Bridie what had happened. The older woman had reacted with admirable nonchalance.

‘He’s his father, you say?’

‘Yes,’ Sam had replied, sotto voce, giving Bridie a look to tell her to be mindful of small ears nearby as Milo had been in the sitting room, watching a cartoon before bed.

Unfortunately Bridie had been enjoying this revelation far too much. She’d taken a sip of tea and then repeated, ‘His father... Well, I never, Sam. You’re a dark one, aren’t you? I always thought it might have been a waiter or a mechanic at the factory or something...but it’s actually himself—the Falcone boss...’

Sam had gritted out, ‘He’s only moving in temporarily. He’ll be bored within a week, believe me.’

Bridie had sniffed disapprovingly. ‘Well, let’s hope not for Milo’s sake.’

Sam’s hands stilled under the water now, as she washed the dinner dishes. She could hear Milo’s chatter to Bridie nearby. She was doing this for him. She had to stop thinking about herself and think of him. It was the only way she’d get through this, because if she focused for a second on what it meant for her to be thrown into such close proximity with Rafaele again she felt the urgent compulsion to run fast and far away.

Bridie bustled into the kitchen then, and Sam noticed her badly disguised expression of anticipation. She might have smiled if she’d been able.

‘You really don’t have to wait till he gets here.’

The housekeeper smiled at her sunnily and started drying dishes. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Sam. It’s better than the Pope’s visit to Dublin back in the seventies.’

Suddenly the low, powerful throb of an engine became obvious outside. To Sam’s chagrin she found that she was automatically trying to analyse the nuances of the sound, figuring out the components of the engine.

Milo’s ears must have pricked up, because he came into the kitchen excitedly and announced, ‘Car!’

They didn’t have a car themselves, much to his constant disappointment, and Sam couldn’t stop him running towards the door now. When the bell rang her palms grew sweaty. Before she could move, though, Bridie was beating her to it, and Sam only noticed then that Bridie, who never wore an apron, had put one on. She wanted to roll her eyes.

But then the door opened and Sam’s world condensed down to the tall dark figure filling the frame against the dusky evening. She hadn’t seen him since Monday and she hated the way her heart leapt in her chest.

Milo said with some surprise from beside Bridie, ‘It’s the man.’ And then, completely oblivious to the atmosphere, ‘Do you have a car?’

Rafaele’s gaze had zeroed in immediately on Sam, and she was glad now that she had the buffer of Bridie at the door. Bridie was doing her thing now, extending her hand, introducing herself, practically twinkling with Irish charm. Lots of ‘sure’ and ‘Won’t you come in out of that cold?’. Ridiculously, Sam felt betrayed.

Rafaele stepped in and Sam’s chest constricted. He looked so alien, foreign. Too gorgeous for this environment. Finally she found her legs and moved forward to pick Milo up. His eyes were huge as he took Rafaele in, again.

Milo repeated his question. ‘Do you have a car, mister?’

Rafaele looked at Milo and Sam could see how his cheeks flared with colour. His eyes took on a glow that she’d never seen before...or maybe she thought she had...once. Her arms tightened fractionally around Milo. Bridie had bustled off somewhere, saying something about tea and coffee. Now it was just the three of them.

His voice was so deep it resonated within Sam.

‘Yes, I do have a car... I’m Rafaele...and what’s your name?’

The fact that Rafaele’s voice had gone husky made Sam’s guilt rush to the fore again. Milo buried his head in Sam’s neck, his little arms tight around her neck.

She said to Milo’s obscured face, ‘Don’t you remember me telling you that Mr Falcone would be moving in to live with us for a while?’ Milo nodded against her neck, still hiding. She looked back at Rafaele. ‘He’s just a bit shy with strangers at first.’

Rafaele’s eyes flashed dangerously at that reminder of his status and Sam said quickly, ‘You can leave your jacket and things in the hall.’

He started to divest himself of his expensive black coat, revealing a dark suit underneath. Bridie reappeared then, unusually pink in the cheeks, and took Milo from Sam’s arms, saying, ‘I think it’s bedtime for someone...there’s refreshments in the drawing room.’

Sam wanted to roll her eyes again. Since when had Bridie referred to the main reception room as the drawing room? Or said refreshments? Or got pink in the cheeks from preparing tea?

She called after them. ‘I’ll be up to read a story in a little while.’

All she could hear, though, was Milo’s plaintive, ‘I want to see the car,’ and Bridie reassuring him briskly that he could see it in the morning if he was a good boy and brushed his teeth before bed.

Hating Rafaele right then, for imposing himself on them like this and upsetting their equilibrium, Sam forced herself to look at him and bit out, ‘I’ll give you a tour, shall I?’

Rafaele smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘That would be lovely.’

As perfunctorily as she could, while uncomfortably aware of Rafaele breathing down her neck, Sam showed him around the ground floor of the house.

He stopped in the study and took in the impressive array of equipment set up for his benefit, surprising her by saying, ‘This was your father’s study?’

‘Yes,’ Sam answered, more huskily than she would have liked, caught by a sudden upsurge of emotion at remembering her scatty, absent-minded father spending hours on end in here, oblivious to everything. Her chest tightened. Oblivious to his daughter.

‘They should not have set up in here...it’s not appropriate.’

Sam looked at Rafaele, surprised by this assertion. By this evidence of sensitivity.

‘No...it’s fine. It’s been lying empty. It should be used.’ Her mouth twisted wryly. ‘Believe me, you could have set all this up here while he was still alive and he wouldn’t have even noticed.’

Feeling exposed under Rafaele’s incisive green gaze, Sam backed out of the room.

‘Upstairs. I’ll show you your room.’

She hurried up the stairs, very aware of Rafaele behind her, conscious of her drab work uniform. Again.

She opened and closed doors with almost indecent speed, and they passed where Milo was chattering nineteen to the dozen with Bridie as she helped him brush his teeth in the bathroom, standing on a little box so he could reach the sink.

Rafaele stopped outside for a long moment, and when he finally turned to keep following Sam she shivered at the look of censure in his eyes. That brief moment of sensitivity had evidently passed.

When she didn’t open the door to her bedroom, but just gestured at it with clear reluctance, Rafaele pushed past her and opened the door. He looked in for a long moment, before slanting her an unmistakably mocking look. She burned inside with humiliation and hated to imagine what he must think of the room. It hadn’t been redecorated since she’d left home for college and still sported dusky pink rose wallpaper.

The faded décor now seemed to scream out her innermost teenage fantasies of not being the school nerd, of her deeply secret wish to be just like all the other girls. No wonder Rafaele had seduced her so easily. He’d unwittingly tapped into the closet feminine romantic that Sam had repressed her whole life in a bid to be accepted by her father, turning herself into a studious tomboy.

Aghast to be thinking of this now, she swallowed her mortification, reached past Rafaele and pulled the door firmly closed in his face. Then she led him to his room.

Thankfully it was at the other end of the house from her room and Milo’s, which was opposite hers. And, even better, it had an en suite bathroom. After that cataclysmic moment in the university the other day she had no intention of running into a half-naked Rafaele on his way to the bathroom.

Rafaele barely gave the room a cursory once-over. As she led him back downstairs Sam sent up another silent prayer that he was already chafing to get back to his own rarefied world, where his every whim was indulged before he’d even articulated it out loud.

Bridie had indeed set out tea and coffee in the front room. Sam poured coffee and handed it to him, watching warily as he sat down on the comfy but decidedly threadbare sofa.

He looked around, taking in the homely furnishings. ‘You have a nice house.’

Sam took a seat as far away from Rafaele as possible. She all but snorted. ‘Hardly what you’re used to.’

He levelled her a look that would have sent his minions running. ‘I’m not a snob, Samantha. I may have had a privileged upbringing, but when I set out to resurrect Falcone Industries I had nothing but the shirt on my back. I lived in an apartment the size of your porch and worked three jobs to put myself through college.’

Sam frowned, a little blindsided by this revelation. ‘But your stepfather—he was a Greek billionaire...’

Rafaele’s mouth twisted. ‘Who hated my guts because I wasn’t his son. The only reason he put me through school at all was because of my mother. He washed his hands of me as soon as he could and I paid him back every cent he’d doled out for my education.’

He’d never told her this before—had always shied away from talking about personal things. She’d always assumed that he’d been given a hand-out to restart Falcone Industries. It was one of the most well-documented resurrections of a company in recent times. Spectacular in its success. She recalled his mother ringing from time to time, and their clipped conversations largely conducted in Spanish, which was her first language.

At a loss to know what to say, Sam went for the easiest thing. ‘How is your mother?’

Rafaele’s face tightened almost imperceptibly but Sam noticed.

‘She died three months ago. A heart attack.’

‘I’m sorry, Rafaele,’ Sam responded. ‘I had no idea...’ She gestured helplessly. ‘I must have missed it in the papers.’

His Spanish mother had been a world-renowned beauty and feted model. Her marriages and lovers had been well documented. The rumour was that she had cruelly left Rafaele’s father when it had become apparent that he’d lost everything except his title. But this was only hearsay that Sam had picked up when she’d gone to Milan to work for Falcone Industries as an intern.

Rafaele shook his head, his mouth thin. ‘It was overshadowed by the economic crisis in Greece so it barely made the papers—something we welcomed.’

Sam could remember how much Rafaele had hated press intrusion and the constant glare of the paparazzi lens. He put down his cup and stood abruptly. Sam looked up, her breath sticking in her throat for a minute as he loomed so large and intimidating. Gorgeous. Lord, how was she going to get through even twenty-four hours of him living under the same roof, just down the hall? Did he still sleep naked—?

‘...will you tell him?’

Sam flushed hotly when she registered Rafaele looking at her expectantly. He’d just asked her a question and she’d been so busy speculating on whether or not he still slept naked that she hadn’t heard him.

She stood up so quickly her knees banged against the coffee table and she winced. ‘Tell who what?’

Rafaele looked irritated. ‘When are you going to tell Milo that I am his father?’

Sam crossed her arms over breasts that felt heavy and tingly. ‘I think...I think when he’s got used to you being here. When he’s got to know you a bit...then we can tell him.’ She cursed herself for once again proving that her mind was all too easily swayed by this man.

He nodded. ‘I think that’s fair enough.’

Sam breathed out, struck somewhere vulnerable at seeing Rafaele intent on putting Milo’s needs first, over his wish to punish her.

Just then Bridie put her head around the door. ‘I’m off, love, and Milo is waiting for his story. If you need me over the weekend just call me. Nice to meet you, Mr Falcone.’

Sam moved towards the door, more in a bid to get away from Rafaele than a desire to see Bridie out, but the older woman waved her back with a definite glint in her eyes.

‘Stay where you are.’

Rafaele murmured goodnight and then Bridie was gone. Sam heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. And now she really was alone in the house with the man she’d hoped never to see again and her son. Milo. The incongruity of Rafaele Falcone, international billionaire and playboy, here in her suburban house, was overwhelming to say the least.

She backed towards the door. ‘I should go to Milo. He’ll come looking for me if I don’t.’ Why did she suddenly sound as if she’d just been running?

Rafaele inclined his head. ‘I have some work to attend to, if you don’t mind me using the study?’

Sam was relieved at the prospect of some space. ‘Of course not.’

And then she fled, taking the stairs two at a time as she had when she’d been a teenager.

Rafaele heard Sam take the stairs at a gallop and shook his head. He looked around the room again. Definitely not the milieu he was accustomed to, in spite of his defence to Sam. Those gruelling years when he’d done nothing but work, study, sleep and repeat were a blur now.

He felt slightly shell-shocked at how easily he’d told Sam something he never discussed. It was no secret that he’d turned his back on his stepfather to resurrect his family legacy, but people invariably drew their own conclusions.

His mouth tightened. He’d resisted the urge to spill his guts before—had been content to distract them both from talking by concentrating on the physical. Avoiding a deeper intimacy at all costs.

Rafaele cursed and ran his hands through his hair, feeling constricted in his suit. He’d come straight here from a meeting in town. As soon as he’d walked in through the front door he’d felt the house closing in around him claustrophobically and he’d had a bizarre urge to turn on his heel, get back into his car and drive very fast in the opposite direction.

For a wild few seconds when he’d looked at Sam waiting in the hall the only thing he’d been able to remember was how he’d all but devoured her only days before. He’d assured himself that he could just send in his lawyers and have her dictated to, punished for not telling him about Milo.

But then he’d seen Milo, held in her arms, and the claustrophobia had disappeared. That was why he was here. Because he didn’t want more months to go by before he got a chance to let his son know who he was. More months added on top of the three years he’d already missed. Rafaele had never really forgiven his own father for falling apart and checking out of his life so spectacularly. For investing so much in a woman who had never loved him. For allowing himself to turn into something maudlin and useless.

For years Rafaele had been jealous of his younger brother, Alexio, who had grown up bathed in his father’s love and support. So much so, however, that Rafaele knew how stifling Alexio had found it, prompting him to turn his back on his own inheritance. He smiled grimly to himself. Maybe that just proved one could never be happy?

He made his way to the study and sat down behind the desk, firing up various machines. He stopped abruptly when he heard movement above his head. His heart twisted at the realisation that he must be underneath Milo’s room. Obeying an urge he couldn’t ignore, Rafaele stood up and walked out of the room and up the stairs, as silent as a panther.

He saw the half-open door of Milo’s room and stopped when he could see inside. The scene made him suck in a breath. Sam was leaning back against a headboard painted in bright colours with Milo in her embrace. She held a book open in front of them and was reading aloud, putting on funny voices, making Milo giggle.

Rafaele had forgotten that she wore glasses to read and write. They made her look seriously studious, but also seriously sexy. Her mouth was plump and pink. Even in the plain white shirt and trousers her slim curves were evident. This sight of her was hugely disconcerting. He’d never expected to see her in this situation. And yet something about it called to him—an echo of an emotion he’d crushed ruthlessly when she’d first told him she was pregnant. Before the shock had hit, and the cynical suspicion that she’d planned it, had come something far more disturbing. Something fragile and alien.

He hated her right then for still having an effect on him. For still making him want her. For invading his imagination when he’d least expected it over the last four years. He would find it hard to recall his last lover’s name right now, but Sam...her name had always been indelible. And this was utterly galling when she’d proved to be as treacherous as his own mother in her own way. When she’d kept the most precious thing from him. His son.

For a moment Rafaele questioned his sanity in deciding to take over funding the research programme at the university in a bid to get to Sam. But then he remembered looking down into Milo’s green eyes and recognising his own DNA like a beacon winking back at him.

As much as there was a valid reason behind his rationale, it had also come from that deeper place not linked solely to rationale and he hated to admit that.

His eyes went to his son and Rafaele put a hand to his chest, where an ache was forming. He would make it his life’s mission to keep Sam from sidelining him from his own son’s life. Whatever it took. Even if it meant spending twenty-four hours a day with her. He could resist her. How could he desire a woman who had denied him his most basic right of all? His own flesh and blood.

* * *

Later, when Sam was in bed, the familiar creakings of the old house which normally comforted her sounded sinister. Rafaele Falcone was separated from her only by some bricks and mortar. And reality was slowly sinking in. Her new reality. Living and working with Rafaele Falcone. She suspected that he’d flexed his muscles to get her to work for him as much to irritate her as for any bona fide professional reason, even if that was why he’d first contacted her.

The thought of going back into that factory environment made her feel clammy. Although she’d loved it the first time around—it had been so exciting, getting an internship with one of the most innovative and successful motor companies in the world.

Rafaele had made his initial fortune by devising a computer software program which aided in the design of cars, and that was how he’d first come onto the scene, stunning the world with its success. That was how he’d been able to fund getting Falcone Motors off the ground again—injecting it with new life, turning around the perception of the Falcone car as outdated and prehistoric. Now Falcone cars were the most coveted on the race track and on the roads.

And Sam had been in the thick of it, working on new cutting edge designs, figuring out the most fuel-efficient engine systems. From her very first day, though, she’d been aware of Rafaele. She’d gone bright red whenever she saw him, never expecting him to be as gorgeous in the flesh as he was in press photos.

He’d surprised her by being very hands-on, not afraid to get dirty himself, and invariably he knew more than all of them put together, displaying an awesome intelligence and intellect. And, in a notoriously male-dominated industry, she’d met more females working in his factory than she’d encountered in all her years as a student. Clearly when he said equal opportunities he meant it.

Sam had found that each day she was seeking him out...only to look away like a naive schoolgirl if he met her gaze, which he’d appeared to do more and more often. She’d been innocent—literally. A childhood spent with an emotionally distant father and with her head buried in books hadn’t made for a well-rounded adolescence. While her peers had been experimenting with boys Sam had been trying in vain to connect with her scatty but brilliant father. Bridie had been in despair, and had all but given up encouraging Sam to get out and enjoy herself, not to worry so much about studying or her father.

The irony of it all was that while the more predominantly masculine areas did appeal to her—hence her subsequent career—she’d always longed to feel more feminine. And it was this very secret desire that Rafaele had unwittingly tapped into so effectively. Just by looking at her, he had made Sam feel like a woman for the first time in her life.

One of their first conversations had been over an intricate engine. The other interns and engineers had walked away momentarily and Sam had been about to follow them when Rafaele had caught her wrist. He’d let her go again almost immediately but her skin had burned for hours afterwards, along with the fire in her belly.

‘So,’ he’d drawled in that sexy voice, ‘where did your interest and love for engines come from, Miss Rourke?’

The Miss Rourke had sounded gently mocking, as if some sort of secret code had passed between them. Sam had been mesmerised and it had taken a second for her to answer. She’d shrugged, looking away from the penetrating gaze that had seemed to see her in a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying.

‘My father is a professor of physics, so I’ve grown up surrounded by science. And my grandmother...his mother...she was Irish, but she ended up in England during the Second World War, working in the factories on cars. Apparently she loved it and had a natural affinity for working with engines—so much so that she kept her job after the war for a few years, before returning home to marry.’ She’d shrugged again. ‘I guess it ran in the family.’

Sam looked back at her young naive self now and cringed. She’d been so transparent, so easy to seduce. It had taken one earth-shattering kiss in Rafaele’s office and she’d opened herself up for him, had forgotten everything her upbringing had taught her about protecting herself from emotionally unavailable people.

He’d whispered to her that she was sensual, sexy, beautiful, and she’d melted. A girl who had grown up denying her very sexuality had had no defence mechanism in place to deal with someone as practised and polished and seductive as Rafaele.

She’d fallen for him quicker than Alice in Wonderland had fallen down the rabbit hole. And her world had changed as utterly as Alice’s: beautiful dresses, intoxicating dates—one night he’d even flown them to Venice in his helicopter for dinner.

And then there had been the sex. He’d taken her innocence with a tenderness she never would have expected of a consummate seducer. It had been mind-blowing, addictive. Almost overwhelming for Sam, who had never imagined her boring, almost boyish body could arouse someone—never mind a man like Rafaele Falcone, who had his pick of the world’s most beautiful women.

During their short-lived affair, even though he’d told her, ‘Samantha...don’t fall for me. Don’t hope for something more because I have nothing to give someone like you...’ she hadn’t listened. She’d told herself that he had to feel something, because when they made love it felt as if they transcended everything that bound them to this earth and touched something profound.

At the time, though, she’d laughed and said airily, belying her own naivety, ‘Relax, Rafaele! It is possible, you know, for not every woman you meet to fall in love with you. I know what this is. It’s just sex.’

She’d made herself say it out loud, even though it had been like turning a knife towards her own belly and thrusting it deep. Because she’d been so far out of her depth by then she might as well have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She’d been lying, of course. She’d proved to be as humiliatingly susceptible to Rafaele’s lethal charm as the next hapless woman.

If anything, he’d given her a life lesson and a half. For a brief moment she’d lost her head and forgotten that if it looked like a dream and felt like a dream, then it probably was a dream. Her real world was far more banal and she’d always been destined to return to it. Milo or no Milo.

Punching the pillow beneath her head now, as if she could punch the memories away too, Sam closed her eyes and promised herself that not for a second would she ever betray just how badly that man had hurt her.

* * *

‘Mummy, the man is still here. He’s downstairs in the book room.’

Sam responded to the none-too-gentle shaking of her son and opened her eyes. She’d finally fallen asleep somewhere around dawn. Again. Milo’s eyes were huge in his face and Sam struggled to sit up, pulling him into her, feeling her stomach clench at the reminder of who was here.

‘I told you that he’d be moving in with us for a while, don’t you remember?’ she prompted sleepily.

Milo nodded and then asked, ‘But where’s his house?’

Sam smiled wryly. Little did her son know that his father had a veritable portfolio of houses around the world.

‘He doesn’t have a house here in London.’

‘Okay.’ Milo clambered out of the bed and looked at her winsomely. ‘Can we get Cheerios now?’

Sam got out of bed and reached for her robe—and then thought better of it when she imagined Rafaele giving its threadbare appearance a caustic once-over. No doubt he would wonder what on earth he’d ever seen in her.

Hating to be so influenced by what he might think, Sam reached for jeans and a thin sweatshirt and yanked her sleep-mussed hair into a ponytail. No make-up. She cursed herself. She wasn’t trying to seduce Rafaele, for crying out loud.

Milo was jumping around now and then stopped. ‘Do you...do you think he’ll eat Cheerios too?’ He looked comically stricken. ‘What if he eats my Cheerios?’

Sam bent down and tweaked Milo’s nose. ‘He won’t touch your Cheerios while I’m around. Anyway, I happen to know for a fact that he only likes coffee for breakfast.’

Something poignant gripped her as she remembered lazy mornings when Rafaele would take great pleasure in feeding her but not himself, much to her amusement.

‘Ugh,’ declared Milo, already setting off out of the room, ‘Coffee is yuck.’

Sam heard him go downstairs, sounding like a herd of baby elephants, and took a deep breath before following him. The study door was ajar, and as she passed she could hear the low deep tones that had an instant effect on her insides.

Milo was pointing with his finger and saying in a very loud stage whisper, ‘He’s in there.’

Sam just nodded and put a finger to her lips, then herded Milo towards the kitchen, where he quickly got distracted helping to set the table.

And even though she knew Rafaele was in the house she still wasn’t prepared when she turned around and saw him standing in the doorway, looking dark and gorgeous in faded jeans and a thin jumper. It did little to disguise the inherent strength of his very powerful masculine form, akin to that of an athlete. He was so sexy. With that unmistakable foreign edge that no English man could ever hope to pull off.

The memory of his initial effect on her four years ago was still raw, but she forced herself to say civilly, ‘Good morning. I hope you slept well?’

He smiled faintly but she noticed it barely touched those luminous green eyes. ‘Like a log.’

Milo piped up, ‘That’s silly. Logs can’t sleep.’

Rafaele looked at his son and again Sam noticed the way something in his face and eyes softened. He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table near Milo. ‘Oh, really? What should I say, then?’

Milo was embarrassed now with the attention and started squirming in his chair. ‘Aunty Bridie says she sleeps like a baby, and babies sleep all the time.’

‘Okay,’ Rafaele said. ‘I slept like a baby. Is that right?’

Milo was still embarrassed and avoided Rafaele’s eyes, but then curiosity got the better of him and he squinted him a look. ‘You sound funny.’

Rafaele smiled. ‘That’s because I come from a place called Italy...so I speak Italian. That’s why I sound funny.’

Milo looked at Sam. ‘Mummy, how come we don’t sound like the man?’

Sam avoided Rafaele’s eyes. She put Milo’s bowl of cereal down in front of him and chided gently, ‘His name is Rafaele.’ And then, ‘Because we come from England and we speak English. To some people we would sound funny.’

But Milo was already engrossed in his food, oblivious to the undercurrents between the two adults in the small kitchen. Sam risked a glance at Rafaele and blanched. His look said it all: The reason he thinks I sound funny is because you’ve denied him his heritage.

Sam turned to the coffee machine as if it was the most interesting thing on the planet and said, too brightly, ‘Would you like some coffee?’

She heard a chair scrape and looked around to see Rafaele standing up. ‘I had some earlier. I have to go to the factory for a while today but I’ll be back later. Don’t worry about dinner or anything like that—I have to go out tonight to a function.’

‘Oh.’ Sam rested her hands on the counter behind her. She hated the sudden deflated feeling in her solar plexus. But hadn’t she expected this? So why was she feeling disappointed? And angry?

The words spilled out before she could stop them. ‘I forgot that weekends for you are just as important as any other day.’ Except for when he’d spent that whole last weekend in bed with her, and diverted his phone calls.

Rafaele’s eyes flashed. ‘We’re taking in delivery of some specially manufactured parts today and I need to make sure they’re up to spec because we start putting them into new cars next week. Something,’ he drawled, with that light of triumph in his eyes, ‘you’ll be dealing with next week when you come to work.’

Sam’s insides clenched hard even as a treacherous flicker of interest caught her. She’d forgotten for a moment.

Before she could respond, Rafaele had dismissed her and was bending down to Milo’s eye level. His ears had inevitably pricked up at the mention of cars. ‘I was thinking that maybe tomorrow you’d like to come for a drive in my car?’

Milo’s eyes lit up and he immediately looked at Sam with such a pleading expression that she would have had to be made of stone to resist.

‘Okay...if Rafaele still feels like it tomorrow. He might be tired, though, or—’

He cut her off with ice in his voice. ‘I won’t be tired.’

‘But you’re going out tonight,’ Sam reminded him.

Immediately her head was filled with visions of Rafaele and some blonde—of him creeping back into the house like a recalcitrant student at dawn, dishevelled and with stubble lining his jaw.

But he was shaking his head and the look in his eye was mocking, as if he could read her shameful thoughts. ‘I won’t be tired,’ he repeated.

He was walking out of the kitchen when Sam thought of something and followed him. He looked back at her as he put on his leather coat and she held out a key. ‘The spare front door key.’

He came and reached for it and their fingers touched. A sizzle of electricity shot up Sam’s arm and she snatched her hand back as if burnt, causing the key to drop to the ground. Cheeks burning with humiliation, she bent and picked it up before Rafaele could and handed it to him again, avoiding his eye.

And then, to her everlasting relief, he was out of the door. She turned around and breathed in deep, barely aware of Milo running to the reception room window so he could see the car pull away. She had to get a hold of herself around this man or she’d be a quivering wreck by the end of a week.

CHAPTER FIVE

WHEN SAM HEARD the telltale purr of a powerful engine as she lay in bed that night she looked at her clock in disbelief. It was before midnight and Rafaele was home? Home. She grimaced at how easily that had slipped into her mind.

Feeling like a teenager, but unable to help herself, she got out of bed and went to her window, pulling back the curtain ever so slightly. Her heart was thumping. Rafaele hadn’t got out of the car yet, and even from here she could see his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.

Sam had the uncanny feeling that he was imagining the wheel was her neck. Then suddenly the door opened and he got out, unfolding his huge frame from the sleek low-slung vehicle. In any other instance Sam would have sighed in sheer awe at the stunningly designed lines.

She stopped breathing as she took in Rafaele, just standing there for a moment. He wore a tuxedo. Sam knew from past experience that he had a dressing room and fully stocked wardrobe at his office. His shirt was open at the throat, his bow tie hanging rakishly undone.

Rafaele shut the car door and then surprised her by leaning back against the car and putting his hands deep in his pockets, crossing his long legs at the ankle. He looked down, and something about him was so intensely lonely that Sam felt like a voyeur. She hated the way her heart clenched.

She’d been so stunned to see him again that she hadn’t really contemplated how much of a shock it must have been for him discovering he had a son. He would never forgive her.

Sam quickly shut the curtain again and climbed back into bed, feeling cold from the inside. Eventually she heard the opening and closing of the front door, and then heavy footsteps. She held her breath for a moment when she fancied they stopped outside her door, and then, when she heard the faintest sounds of another door closing, let her breath out in a shuddery whoosh.

About an hour later Sam gave up any pretence of trying to sleep. She threw back the covers and padded softly out of her bedroom. All was quiet and still. She looked in on Milo, who was sprawled across his bed fast asleep, and then made her way to the kitchen to get some water. She was halfway into the room before she realised she wasn’t alone.

She gave a small yelp of shock when she saw Rafaele in the corner of the kitchen, in low-slung faded jeans, bare feet and a T-shirt, calmly lifting a coffee cup to his lips.

She put a hand to her rapid heart. ‘You scared me. I thought you were in bed.’

Rafaele arched a brow mockingly. ‘Don’t tell me—you couldn’t sleep until you knew I was home safe?’

Sam scowled and hated that he’d caught her like this: sleep-mussed, wearing nothing but brief pants and a threadbare V-necked T-shirt.

Anger rushed through her. Anger at the day she’d spent with her thoughts revolving sickeningly around one person—him. Anger that she had to face him like this in what she would have once considered her sanctuary. And, worst of all, anger at herself for not having told him about Milo when she should have.

Feeling emotional, and terrified he’d see it, she stalked to the sink. ‘I’m just getting some water. I couldn’t sleep and it has nothing to do with you coming home or not.’

Liar.

Sam heard his voice over the gush of water.

‘I couldn’t sleep either.’

Sam remembered the intensely lonely air about him as he’d waited outside before coming in. Now she felt guilty for having witnessed it. She held the glass of water in both hands and turned, feeling disorientated.

She looked at the coffee cup and remarked dryly, ‘Well, that’s hardly likely to help matters.’

Rafaele shrugged and drained the coffee, the strong column of his throat working. He put the cup down. ‘When I couldn’t sleep I came down to do some work.’

His gaze narrowed on her then, and Sam’s skin prickled. She gripped the glass tighter.

He drawled, ‘But as I’m just a guest in your house perhaps I should ask for permission?’

Sam’s anger was back just like that. Anger at herself for thinking she’d seen Rafaele vulnerable even for a moment. ‘But you’re not really a guest, are you? You’re here to punish me, to make me pay for not telling you about your son.’

Feeling agitated, Sam put down the glass, sloshing some water over the side. She clenched her hands and rounded on Rafaele. ‘I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Milo. I should have, and I didn’t. And I’m sorry.’

Rafaele went very still and put his hands in his pockets. The air thickened between them and swirled with electricity. He looked relaxed, but Sam could tell he was as tense as she was.

‘Why?’

One word, a simple question, and Sam felt something crumble inside her. He hadn’t actually asked her that yet. He’d asked her how she could have, but not why.

She looked down and put her arms around herself in an unconscious gesture of defence, unaware of how it pushed her breasts up and unaware of how Rafaele’s eyes dropped there for a moment or the flush that darkened his cheekbones. She was only aware of her own inner turmoil. She would never be brave enough to tell him of her hurt and her own secret suspicion that it had been that weak emotion that had been her main motivator. She was too ashamed.

She steeled herself and looked up. Rafaele’s eyes glittered in the gloom. ‘It was for all the reasons I’ve already told you, Rafaele. I was in shock. I’d almost lost my baby only days after finding out that I was pregnant in the first place. It was all...too much. And I truly believed you had no interest—that you would prefer if I just went away and didn’t bother you again.’

She almost quailed at the way his jaw tightened but went on. ‘My father was not really there for me. Ever. Even though he brought me up and we lived in this house together. He didn’t know how to relate to me. What I needed. I think...I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping Milo from a similar experience.’

Rafaele crossed his arms too, making his muscles bunch. It felt as if something was fizzing between them under the words. A subtext that was alive. All she could see was that powerful body. Lean and hard.

‘You had no right.’

Sam looked at him, willing down the way her body insisted on being divorced from her mind, becoming aroused as if nothing had happened between them. As if he didn’t hate her.

‘I know,’ she said flatly. ‘But it happened, and you’re going to have to let it go or Milo will pick up on it—especially now you’re living here too.’

Anger surged within Rafaele at her pronouncement. He uncrossed his arms, unable to disguise his frustration. Sam was standing before him, and despite the charged atmosphere and the words between them he was acutely aware that all he wanted to do was rip that flimsy T-shirt over her head and position her on the counter behind her so that he could thrust deep into her and obliterate all the questions and turmoil in his head.

When she’d walked into the room all he’d seen had been the tantalising shape of her firm breasts, their pointed tips visible through the thin fabric. Her sleep-mussed hair had reminded him of when she’d been on top of him, riding him, her head falling back...

Desire was like a wild thing inside him, clawing for fulfilment. It wasn’t helped by the fact that in a bid to prove that Sam didn’t have this unique effect on him, he’d found himself hitting on his friend’s mistress at the function earlier. Flirting with her, handing her his card—desperate to provoke some response in his flatlining libido. He’d acted completely out of character, managed to insult his friend Andreas Xenakis, and he’d proved nothing.

Except that he wanted this woman more than ever.

He hated her. But he wanted her. And he wanted his son.

‘Let it go?’ he asked now with deceptive softness, and something in him exulted when he saw how Sam paled slightly. ‘I think I’ve more than proved myself to be accommodating where my son and your deception are concerned.’

Rafaele knew he was reacting to Sam’s almost patronising tone and to his anger at this inconvenient desire.

His lip curled. ‘Do you really think I would be here in the suburbs with you if it wasn’t in my son’s best interests? Do you really think I want you working at the factory for any reason other than because I want to keep you where I can see your every treacherous move?’

She paled even more at that, and Rafaele felt something lance him deep inside, but he couldn’t stop.

‘You’ve put us all in this position by choosing the path that you did. By believing that you knew best. Well, now I know best and you’re just going to have to live with it. You’re going to have to let it go, Samantha.’

The hurt Sam felt at Rafaele’s words shamed her. He looked as hard and obdurate as a granite block just feet away. And as unyielding. The thought of them ever reaching some sort of amicable agreement felt like the biggest and most ludicrous fantasy on earth. And yet between her legs her panties chafed uncomfortably against swollen slick folds of flesh. She wanted to scream out her frustration at her wayward body.

Just before he’d fallen asleep earlier Milo had asked, in a small, hesitant voice, ‘Will the man...I mean Rafelli...will he remember to take me in the car tomorrow?’

Anger at Rafaele’s assertion that he was doing his utmost to think of Milo when all he seemed to be concerned about was needling her made her lash out. ‘You might feel like you’re sacrificing your glamorous life for your son, Rafaele, but when will you get bored and want out? Milo has been talking about you all day. He’s terrified you won’t remember to take him out in the car tomorrow. He’s fast heading for hero-worship territory and he’ll be devastated if you keep leading him on this path only to disappear from his life.’

Sam was breathing heavily. ‘This is what I wanted to avoid all along. Milo’s vulnerable. He doesn’t understand what’s going on between us. You can punish me all you want, Rafaele, but it’s Milo who matters now. And I can’t say sorry again.’

Rafaele was completely unreadable, but Sam sensed his tension spike.

‘What makes you think that I am going to disappear from Milo’s life?’

The words were softly delivered, but Sam could sense the volcanic anger behind them.

‘You know what I mean. You’re not going to stay here for ever. You’ll leave sooner or later. Milo will be confused. Upset.’

Sam was aware that she could have been talking about herself, about what had happened to her.

Panic at the way Rafaele took a step closer made Sam’s breath choppy. Instinctively she moved back. ‘I think this was a very bad idea. I think you should move out before he gets too attached. You can visit us. That way he won’t be so upset when you leave...we’ll have proper boundaries.’

‘Boundaries, you say?’ His accent sounded thicker. ‘Like the kind of boundaries you put around yourself and my son when you decided that it would be a good idea not to inform me of his existence?’

‘You’re just...not about commitment, Rafaele. You said it yourself to me over and over again. And a child is all about commitment—a lifetime of it.’

Rafaele was so close now that she could see veritable sparks shooting from those green depths.

His voice was low and blistering. ‘How dare you patronise me? You have had the experience of giving birth to a baby and all the natural bonding that goes with it—a bonding experience you decided to deny me. I now have the task of bonding with my son when his personality is practically formed. He has missed out on the natural bonding between a father and son. You have deprived us both of that.’

He stopped in front of her and Sam found it hard to concentrate when she could smell his musky heat. The anger within her was vying with something far hotter and more dangerous.

‘I can give my son a lifetime of commitment. That is not a problem. If and when I do leave this place he will know I am his father. He will be as much a part of me and my life as the very air I breathe.’

His eyes pinned her to the spot.

‘Know this, Sam. I am in Milo’s life now, and yours, and I’m not going away. I am his father and I am not shirking that responsibility. You and I are going to have to learn to co-exist.’

Sam’s arms were so tight now that she felt she might be constricting the bloodflow to her brain. ‘I’m willing to try to co-exist, Rafaele. But sooner or later you’ll have to forgive me, or we’ll never move on.’

* * *

Rafaele stood for a long moment after Sam had left, his heart still racing. She had no idea how close he’d come to reaching for her, pulling her into him so that he could taste her again.

Sooner or later you’ll have to forgive me.

For the first time Rafaele didn’t feel the intense anger surge. Instead he thought of Sam’s stricken pale features that day in the clinic. He remembered his own sense of panic, and the awful shameful relief when he could run away, far and fast, and put Sam and the emotions she’d evoked within him behind him.

For the first time he had to ask the question: if he’d been in her position would he have done the same thing? If he’d believed that his baby was unwanted by one parent? It wasn’t so black and white any more. Rafaele had to admit to the role he’d played.

Completely unbidden a memory came to him of something Sam had told him one night while they’d been lying in bed. It was something he avoided like the plague—the post-coital intimacy that women seemed engineered to pursue—but this hadn’t been like that. Sam had started telling him something and then stopped. He’d urged her on.

It was her mention of her relationship with her father just a short while before that had brought it back to him. She’d told him then of how one night, when she’d been about six, she’d not been able to sleep. She’d come downstairs and found her father weeping silently over a picture of his late wife—Sam’s mother.

Sam had said, ‘He was talking to her...the picture...asking her what to do with me, asking her how he could cope because I was a girl. He said, “If she was a boy I’d know what to do...but I don’t know what to do or say to her.”’

Sam had sighed deeply. ‘So I went upstairs to the bathroom that night, found a pair of scissors and cut all my hair off. It used to fall to my waist. When our housekeeper saw me in the morning she screamed and dropped a plate.’

Sam’s mouth had twisted sadly. ‘My father, though, he didn’t even notice—too distracted with a problem he was trying to solve. I thought I could try to be a son for him...’

Rafaele could remember a falling sensation. Sam’s inherent lack of self-confidence in her innate sensuality had all made sense. He too had known what it was like to have an absentee father. Even though he’d spent time with his father growing up, the man had been so embittered by his wife leaving him that he’d been no use to Rafaele and had rarely expressed much interest in his son. In some small part Rafaele knew that even resurrecting the family car industry had been a kind of effort to connect with his father.

It had been that weekend that Rafaele had let Sam stay in his palazzo. It had been that weekend that he’d postponed an important business trip because he’d wanted her too much to leave. And it was after that weekend, once he’d gained some distance from her, that he’d realised just how dangerous she was to him.

And he’d just proved that nothing had changed. She was still just as dangerous and he must never forget it.

* * *

The following day Milo was practically bursting with excitement at being in Rafaele’s car. It was the latest model of the Falcone road car—the third to be rolled out since Rafaele had taken control of the bankrupt company.

It was completely impractical as far as children went, but Rafaele had surprised Sam. She’d seen that he’d got a child’s car seat from somewhere and had it fitted into the backseat. Every time Sam looked around Milo just grinned at her like a loon. She shook her head ruefully as Rafaele negotiated out of the driveway and onto the main road with confident ease.

Sam tried to ignore his big hands on the wheel and gearstick. But there was something undeniably sexy about a man who handled a car well—and especially one like this, which was more like an art form than a car. Rafaele was a confident driver, and not the kind of person who felt the need for speed just to impress.

Happy sounds were coming from the back of the car—Milo imitating the engine. Sam felt a flutter near her heart and blocked it out. Dangerous. She still felt tense after that impassioned exchange the previous evening. Predictably, she hadn’t been able to sleep well and she felt fuzzy now. She’d avoided looking directly at Rafaele this morning over breakfast, preferring to let Milo take centre stage, demanding the attention of this new, charismatic person in their midst.

Rafaele had seemed equally keen to be distracted, and Sam could only wonder if he’d taken anything of what she’d said to heart. Was he prepared to forgive her at all?

Sam noticed that Milo had gone silent behind them and looked back to see that he’d fallen asleep. Rafaele glanced her way and Sam quickly looked forward again, saying a little too breathlessly for her liking, ‘He was so excited about today... He doesn’t really nap any more but sometimes it catches up with him.’

She was babbling, and the thought of increased proximity to Rafaele when she started working with him tomorrow made her feel panicky. She steeled herself and turned to his proud profile. The profile of a great line of aristocratic Italian ancestors.

‘Look, Rafaele...about me working at the factory...’ She saw his jaw clench and rushed on. ‘You said yourself last night that you’re only doing it to keep me where you can see me. I can work perfectly well from the university. After last night I can’t see how our working together will improve things.’

His hands clenched on the wheel now, and Sam looked at them, so strong and large. She recalled how hot they’d felt exploring her body.

Distracted, she almost missed it when Rafaele said in a low voice, with clear reluctance, ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t entirely true.’

Sam gulped and looked back at him. ‘It wasn’t?’ Somewhere a tiny flame lit inside her, and against every atom of self-preservation she couldn’t douse it.

‘After all,’ he reminded her, ‘I contacted you about working for me before I knew about Milo and you refused to listen.’

The panic she’d felt then was still vivid. ‘Yes,’ she said faintly. ‘I...it was a shock to hear from you.’

Rafaele slanted her a look and said dryly, ‘You don’t say.’ He looked at the road again. ‘But the fact remains that I knew about your research. You were mentioned in an article in Automotive Monthly and I realised that you were leading the field in research into kinetic energy recovery systems.’

The little flame inside Sam sputtered. Of course he hadn’t been motivated by anything other than professional interest. ‘I see,’ she responded. ‘And that’s why you wanted to contact me?’

Rafaele shrugged minutely, his broad shoulders moving sinuously under his leather jacket, battered and worn to an almost sensual texture. Dammit... Sam cursed herself. Why did everything have to return to all things physical even when he was wounding her with his words? She looked away resolutely.

He continued, ‘I knew we were setting up in England, I figured you were still based here... It seemed like a logical choice to ask you to work for us again...’

Out of the corner of Sam’s eye she saw Rafaele’s hands tighten on the wheel again. His jaw clenched and then released.

‘About last night—you were right. I agree that the past is past and we need to move on. I don’t want Milo to pick up on the tension between us any more than you do.’

Something dangerous swooped inside Sam at hearing him acknowledge this. She recognised the mammoth effort he must be making to concede this.

‘Thank you,’ she said huskily. ‘And I’ll have to trust that you won’t do anything to hurt Milo.’

The car was stopped at a red light now and Rafaele looked at her. ‘Yes, you will. Hurting my son is the last thing in the world I want to do. It won’t happen.’

The fierce light in his eyes awed Sam into silence. Eventually, she nodded, her throat feeling tight. ‘Okay.’

A car horn tooted from behind them, and with unhurried nonchalance Rafaele released her from his gaze and moved on.

After a while Rafaele said in a low voice, ‘And you will be coming to work with me, Sam...because I want you to.’

After a long moment Sam replied again. ‘Okay.’ In her wayward imagination she fancied that something had finally shifted between them, alleviating the ever-present tension.

They were silent for much of the rest of the journey, but something inside Sam had lessened slightly. And yet conversely she felt more vulnerable than ever.

She noticed that they were pulling into what looked like a stately home and raised a questioning brow at Rafaele, who answered, ‘I asked my assistant to look up some things. It’s an open house at weekends and they have a working farm. I thought Milo might like to see it.’

Milo had woken up a short while before, and from the backseat came an excited, ‘Look, Mummy! Horsies!’

Sam saw Rafaele look to his son in the rearview mirror and the way his mouth curved into a smile. Her chest tightened and she explained, ‘It’s his other favourite thing in the world apart from cars. You’re killing two birds with one stone.’

Rafaele looked at her for a long moment, his eyes lingering on her mouth until it tingled. Sam grew hot and flustered. Why was he teasing her with looks like this when he couldn’t be less interested? Was it just something he turned on automatically when any woman with a pulse was nearby? It made her think of that angry kiss—how instantly she’d gone up in flames when he’d only been proving a point.

‘Shouldn’t you look where you’re driving?’ She sounded like a prim schoolmistress.

Rafaele eventually looked away, but not before purring with seductive arrogance, ‘Cara, I could drive blindfolded and not crash.’

This was what she remembered. Rafaele’s easy and lethal brand of charm. Disgusted with herself, Sam faced forward and crossed her arms.

When he had parked and they’d got out, Milo clearly didn’t know what to do first: stand and looking lovingly at the car, or go and see the animals. For a second he looked genuinely upset, overwhelmed with all these exciting choices. It made guilt lance Sam—fresh guilt—because the local park or swimming pool was about as exciting as it had got so far for Milo.

To Sam’s surprise, before she could intervene, Rafaele bent down to Milo’s level and said, ‘Piccolino, the car will still be here when we get back...so why don’t we see the animals first, hmm?’

Milo’s face cleared like a cloud passing over the sun and he smiled, showing his white baby teeth. ‘Okey-dokey, horsies first.’ And then he put his hand in Rafaele’s and started pulling him the direction he wanted to go.

Sam caught the unguarded moment of emotion in Rafaele’s eyes and her chest tightened at its significance. It was the first time Milo had reached out to touch him.

She followed them, doing up her slimline parka jacket and tried not to be affected by the image of the tall, powerful man, alongside the tiny, sturdy figure with identical dark hair.

Within a few hours Sam could see the beginnings of the hero-worship situation she’d predicted unfolding before her eyes. Milo had barely let go of Rafaele’s hand and was now in his arms, pointing at the pigs in a mucky pen.

She was watching Rafaele for signs that this situation was getting old very quickly—she knew how demanding and energetic Milo could be—but she couldn’t find any. Again she was stunned at his apparent easing into this whole situation.

Rafaele looked at her then and Sam coloured, more affected by seeing him with Milo in his arms than she cared to admit.

He looked grim and said, ‘I think now is a good time.’

Instantly Sam understood. He wanted to tell Milo who he was. Panic flooded Sam. Until Milo knew Rafaele was his father it was as if she still had a way out—the possibility that this wasn’t real. It was all a dream. But it wasn’t, and she knew she couldn’t fight him. He deserved for his son to know. And Milo deserved it too.

Jerkily, feeling clammy, Sam nodded her head. ‘Okay.’

So when Milo had finished inspecting all the animals exhaustively they found a quiet spot to eat the food they’d got from the house’s café and Sam explained gently to Milo that Rafaele was his father.

She could sense Rafaele’s tension and her heart ached for him. Her conscience lambasted her again.

With all the unpredictability of a three-year-old though, Milo just blinked and looked from her to Rafaele before saying, ‘Can we look at the horsies again?’

To his credit, Rafaele didn’t look too surprised but when Milo had clambered off his chair to go and look at something she said, ‘It’s probably a lot for him to take in—’

But Rafaele cut her off, saying coolly, ‘I know he took it in. I remember how much three-year-olds see and understand.’

He got up to follow Milo before Sam could make sense of his words and what he’d meant by them.

* * *

When they were back in the car Milo began chattering incessantly in the back.

‘Rafelli, did you see the pigs? Rafelli, did you see the horsies and the goats? And the chickens?’

Sam looked out of the window, overcome with a surge of emotion. It was done. Rafaele truly was his father now. No going back. Tears pricked her eyes as the enormity of everything set in. She’d kept Milo from his own father for so long. Guilt was hot and acrid in her gut.

Suddenly her hand was taken in a much bigger, warmer one and her heart stopped.

‘Sam?’

Panicked that he’d see her distress, Sam took her hand from his and rubbed at her eye, avoiding looking at him. Breezily she said, ‘I’m fine. It’s just some dust or something in my eye.’

CHAPTER SIX

TWO WEEKS LATER Sam was trying to concentrate on test results and threw her pen down in disgust when her brain just refused to work. She got up from her desk in her decent-sized office at the factory and paced, rolling her head to ease out kinks as she did so.

It felt as if an age had passed since that day at the stately home. Within a few days Milo had been tentatively calling Rafaele Daddy, much to Bridie’s beaming approval, Rafaele’s delight and Sam’s increasing sense of vulnerability.

Bridie had also paved the way for Sam to go to work with Rafaele every day, assuring her that she had nothing to worry about where Milo’s care was concerned. So in the past two weeks a routine had developed where Rafaele took Milo to playschool, either with or without Sam, and then they left for work and returned in time for Milo’s supper. Sam had put her foot down, though, and insisted that she still only do a half-day on Wednesdays as that had been her routine with Bridie.

And also she felt the need to establish some control when it felt as if Rafaele had comprehensively taken everything over. They’d even come home one evening to find a chef in the kitchen and Rafaele saying defensively something about it being unfair to expect Bridie to cook for them as well as taking care of Milo.

Needless to say Sam could see that Bridie was not far behind Milo in the hero-worship stakes. Most evenings now Rafaele tucked Milo into bed and read him a story, making Sam feel redundant for the first time in a long time.

In the middle of all this change and turmoil was the sheer joy Sam felt at being back working on research within an environment where the actual cars and engines were only a short walk away. The scale of Rafaele’s English factory had taken her breath away. It proved just how far he’d come even in three and a half years. Professionally she would have given her right arm to be part of this process, and now she was overseeing a group of mechanics and engineers, focusing their expertise on the most exciting developments in automotive technology, thanks to Rafaele’s unlimited investment.

But overshadowing everything was the fact that she was working for Rafaele. Back in a place where she’d never expected or wanted to be. She felt as if she was that girl all over again—that naive student, obsessed with her boss. Watching out for him. Aware of him. Blushing when their gazes met. It was galling and humiliating. Especially when Rafaele appeared so cool and seemed to be making every effort to steer well clear of Sam. Only addressing her in groups of people. Never seeking her out alone.

Even on their car rides to the factory and back their conversation centred mainly around Milo or work.

Her hands clenched to fists now, even as her whole body seemed to ache. She was glad. She was. She didn’t want history to repeat itself. Not in a million years. It had almost been easier when Rafaele had hated her; now that they were in this uneasy truce it was so much more confusing to deal with.

Sam noticed the clock on the wall then, and saw how late it was. Normally Rafaele’s assistant would have rung to inform her that he was leaving by now. Giving up any pretence that she could continue to work while waiting, Sam decided to pack up and find him herself. She would inform him she was going home. He’d offered her one of the cars if she wished, so now perhaps it was time to assert some more independence from him.

Heading for his office, she saw it was quiet all around, most of the other staff and the main engineers and mechanics having left. His own secretary’s desk was clear and empty in the plush anteroom of his office.

She hesitated for a second outside his door and then knocked. After a few seconds she heard him call abruptly, ‘Come in.’

* * *

Rafaele glanced up from his phone call, frowning slightly at the interruption, and then when Sam walked in his whole body reacted, making a complete mockery of any illusion of control over his rogue hormones. She stopped in her tracks and made a motion to leave again, seeing he was on the phone, but everything within him rejected that and he held up his finger, indicating for her to wait.

She closed the door behind her and he couldn’t stop the anticipation spiking in his blood. For two weeks now Rafaele had thought he was doing a good job of avoiding her. But it didn’t matter how much space he put between them; he saw her everywhere. Worst of all was in the house at night—that cosy, domestic house, with his son sleeping just down the hall—when all he could think about doing was going into Sam’s room, stripping her bare and sinking deep between her long legs.

His body was hardening even now, shaming him with his lack of control. The person on the other end of the phone continued talking but they might as well have been talking the language of the Dodo for all Rafaele heard. His gaze travelled down Sam’s back and legs hungrily, taking in her slim build and the sweet lush curve of her buttocks as she turned away to look at a model of one of the first cars he’d designed.

When she turned back slightly he could see the profile swell of her breasts and immediately a memory came back, of spilling drops of Prosecco onto one pebbled nipple, making it grow hard— Sweat broke out on Rafaele’s upper lip. This was untenable.

Abruptly he terminated the phone conversation, giving up any pretence of control. Sam had turned around to face him and he asked, more curtly than he’d intended, ‘What do you want?’

Her face flushed and Rafaele pushed down the lurch of his conscience. Damn her and the way she did that, making him feel like a heel.

‘I just...it’s after six. We usually leave before now.’

The we struck him somewhere forcibly. He stood up and saw how Sam’s eyes widened. His body reacted to that look and he cursed her again.

He reacted viscerally. ‘I think this is a mistake.’

She frowned. ‘What’s a mistake?’

‘You...here.’ Dammit, he couldn’t even string a coherent sentence together. The longer she stood there, the more he was imagining her naked, opening up to him, giving him the release he’d only ever found with her. Seeing her here at the factory these past two weeks had been giving him moments of severe déjà vu.

She was still frowning, but had gone still. ‘Me...here... What exactly do you mean, Rafaele?’

Why was it that the way she said his name in that soft, low voice seemed to curl around his senses, making everything even more heightened?

He gritted out, through the waves of need assailing him, ‘I shouldn’t have insisted you work here. It was a bad idea.’

The unmistakable flare of hurt made her eyes glow bright grey for a moment, reminding Rafaele uncomfortably of another day, in another office, four years before.

Stiffly she said, ‘I thought I was doing everything you wanted—we set up the research facility here in one week. I know it still needs more work, but it’s only been two weeks—’

Rafaele slashed a hand, making her stop. ‘It’s not that.’

Sounding wounded, she said, ‘Well, what, then?’

Rafaele wanted to laugh. Could she not see how ravenous he was for her? He felt like a beast, panting for its prey.

He smiled grimly. ‘It’s you. Uniquely. I thought I could do this. But I can’t. I think you should go back to the university...someone else can take over here.’

Sam straightened before him and her eyes flashed—but with anger and something more indefinable this time.

‘You insisted on turning my world upside down, Rafaele, and now, just because you can’t abide the sight of me, you think you can cast me out again? It seems as if you rather overestimated your desire for control, doesn’t it? Well, if you’ve quite decided where it is you want me then don’t worry. I’ll be only too happy to get out of your way.’

* * *

Sam was quivering with impotent rage. She wanted to go over and slap Rafaele. Hard. It could be four years ago all over again. With nothing learned in the meantime. She was standing before Rafaele in his office and he was basically rejecting her. Again.

And, like before, Sam was terrified she’d crumple before him, so she fled for the door. But when she tried to open it with clammy hands it slammed shut again, and she squealed with shock when she felt a solid, hard presence behind her.

She whirled around to find her eye level at Rafaele’s broad chest and looked up. Emotion was high in her throat. Her eyes were burning. ‘Let me out of here, now.’

The hurt that had gripped her like a vice in her belly at hearing him say so starkly that he basically couldn’t stand to see her every day was still like acid.

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he gritted out, jaw tight, seemingly oblivious to what she’d just said. His hand was snaking around her neck under her hair, making her breath catch. His eyes were like green gems. Glittering.

Sam swallowed the pain, determined he wouldn’t see it, but she was acutely aware of how close he was—almost close enough for his chest to touch her breasts. They tightened, growing heavy, the nipples pebbling into hard points.

‘Got what wrong?’ she spat out.

‘I didn’t overestimate my desire for control... I overestimated my ability to resist you.’

Sam blinked. But now Rafaele’s chest was touching her breasts and she couldn’t think straight. His hand tightened on her neck and his face was coming closer. Her lips tingled in anticipation. All the blood in her body was pooling between her legs, making her hot and ready.

Fighting the intense desire not to question this, Sam put her hands on Rafaele’s chest. ‘Wait...’ she got out painfully. ‘What are you doing?’

Rafaele’s breath feathered over her mouth, making her fingers want to curl into his chest. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from his, green boring into grey, making reality melt away.

Sam struggled to make sense of this, when only moments ago she’d believed he wanted her out of his sight because something about her repulsed him. ‘But you don’t...you don’t really want me.’

He asked, almost bitterly, ‘Don’t I?’

Confusion filled Sam—and a very treacherous flame of hope. She fought it desperately, fearing exposure. She pushed against him but he was like steel. ‘Let me go, Rafaele. I won’t be your substitute lover just because you’re turned on for five seconds. I don’t like to repeat mistakes.’

Rafaele laughed again and it was unbearably harsh, scraping over Sam’s sensitised skin like sandpaper.

‘Five seconds? Try four years, Sam—four years of an ache that never went away, no matter how much I tried to deny it...no matter how many times I tried to eclipse it...’

His voice had become guttural, thick. Sam couldn’t fully process his words, but somewhere deep inside her they did resonate, and she felt something break apart—some resistance she’d been clinging onto.

‘I want you, Sam, and I know you want me too.’

And then his mouth was on hers and it was desperate, forceful. Like before, but not. Without the intense anger and recrimination behind it. And once again, like a lemming jumping over a cliff to certain death, Sam couldn’t help but respond. And she couldn’t deny the fierce burst of primal pleasure within her, deep inside where she’d locked it away.

But the kiss didn’t stay forceful. Rafaele drew back, breathing harshly, and Sam followed him, too much on fire to be embarrassed by how much she wanted him. He wanted her, and the knowledge sang in her blood. She had nothing to be ashamed of.

Rafaele bent close again, and when he pressed a hot kiss to her neck Sam felt his hand do something behind her. She heard the snick of the lock in the door. It should have made alarm bells ring in her head. It should have reminded her of similar heated moments in the past. But it didn’t. Or she wouldn’t let it. She was weak and she’d ached for this for too long. Long nights when Milo hadn’t wanted to sleep and she’d walked up and down, breasts sore from breastfeeding, but aching, too, for another far more adult touch.

Rafaele straightened and with an enigmatic look took Sam by the hand. For a second she felt absurdly shy and bit her lip. Rafaele stopped and reached out, freeing her lip with his thumb.

He muttered, ‘Dio, I’ve missed that.’ And Sam’s insides combusted.

He drew her over towards the desk and then turned to take Sam’s bag off her shoulder, along with her jacket. They fell to the floor. Sam felt the back of the desk against her buttocks. Her legs were wobbly.

Rafaele cupped her face and jaw with his hands and then his mouth was on hers again, hot and hard, firm but soft. Demanding and getting a response that she had no control over. Her tongue stroked along his. She was desperate to taste every inch of him, revelling in the spiralling heat inside her. She was vaguely aware of her questing hands going to his chest, exulting in the feel of rock-hard muscle, her fingers finding buttons and opening them so that she could reach in and explore, feel that hair-roughened skin.

Rafaele’s hands moved down, coming to her buttocks, kneading them, and then lifting her so that she rested on the desk. He came closer, wedging himself between her legs so that his belt buckle was hard against her belly. Below, the most potent part of his anatomy was also hard, right there between her legs, constrained by their clothes and making her want to strip everything between them away.

One of his hands clasped her head, tilting it so that he had deeper access. His tongue was mimicking another part of his anatomy now, and his hips were moving against her, making her squirm and whimper softly as the fever of desire rose within her.

Suddenly Rafaele pulled away and Sam looked up through a heat haze, aware of her heart pounding and her ragged breath. Rafaele’s shirt hung half open.

‘I need to see you,’ he said thickly, and began to undo the buttons on her shirt.

As the backs of his hands brushed against her breasts she shivered minutely at the exquisite sensation, already imagining him touching them with his hands...his mouth and tongue.

Her shirt was drawn off and her bra dispensed with in an economy of movement, and then he just looked at her for a long moment, with an enigmatic expression that made butterflies erupt in Sam’s belly. About to scream with the mounting tension, she felt Rafaele’s hand finally cup her breast and shards of sensation rushed through her body. She tensed and arched her back, subconsciously begging him...and he needed no encouragement.

Cupping the full mound of firm flesh, Rafaele bent his head and surrounded that tight peak in moist heat. The feel of his intense hot sucking made Sam cry out.

Blindly, while Rafaele’s mouth was on her breast, Sam reached for his belt and undid it, her hands and fingers clumsy. She pulled it free of his trousers and it dropped to the floor, but before she could put her hands to his fly he was standing up again and helping her, pushing his trousers down, leaving him bared to her hungry gaze. Dear Lord. He was as magnificent as she remembered. Thick and long and hard. For her.

Sam felt hot, as if she was on fire. She moved her numb fingers to Rafaele’s shirt buttons, wanting to finish undressing him. Her breath was loud in the quiet of the office. All that mattered to Sam was getting Rafaele bared to her, and when she finally pushed his shirt open and off his shoulders she breathed in deeply, her hands smoothing over hard musculature roughened with dark hair, nipples erect and hard.

Unable to resist the lure, Sam explored with her tongue around those hard pieces of puckered flesh, aware of Rafaele’s hand on her head. He sucked in a breath, making his broad chest swell. He was so sensitive there. Sam moved her mouth up now, stretching her whole body, trailing kisses and tasting with her tongue along his throat, discovering the hard resoluteness of his stubbled jaw grazing her delicate skin.

Her hands on his head drew him down. She was searching for his mouth again, like a blind person looking for water in a desert. Sucking him deep into her own mouth, Sam could feel his erection strain against her, and she dropped one hand to put it around him, feeling him jerk with tension.

‘Sam...’

She almost didn’t recognise his voice. It sounded so tortured. Sam tore her mouth away from his to look up and she was dizzy with need and lust. It was just them and this insane desire. He was so firm in her hand, so strong, and her mouth watered when she remembered how she’d tasted him before, how she’d sucked that head into her mouth, her tongue swirling and exploring around the tip, her hand pumping him the way he’d shown her...

She didn’t even realise her hand was moving rythmically until he tipped up her chin with his fingers and said, ‘I need to be inside you.’

Sam’s sex throbbed. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, lifting her hips to help Rafaele when he went to pull her trousers and panties off. She was vaguely surprised she still had them on, that they hadn’t melted off her before now.

Rafaele took himself in his hand—an unashamed and utterly masculine gesture. Sam was sitting on the desk naked, legs spread like a wanton, but she couldn’t drum up any concern. She wanted him inside her so badly. Rafaele ran his hand down over her quivering body, teasing her until she bit her lip. He pushed her legs apart further and looked at her.

He stroked one hand up her inner thigh and let it rest for a moment at the tantalising juncture before his long fingers explored the wetness at her core—and then in one move he thrust them inside her.

Sam gasped and grabbed onto Rafaele’s shoulders, unable to look away from that glittering, possessive green gaze. His fingers moved in and out, and her body started to clench around them, the anticipation building to fever-pitch.

On some level Sam rejected this. She didn’t want to splinter apart while Rafaele looked on. She took his hand away from her and said roughly, ‘No—not like this. I’ll come when you come.’

Rafaele smiled and it was fierce. The smile of a warrior. He took her mouth in another devastating kiss and her wetness was on the fingers that he wrapped tight around her hips. Rafaele thrust deep inside her in one cataclysmic move and swallowed her scream of pleasure, his hand holding her steady when she went so taut with excitement that she thought she’d splinter apart there and then, despite her brave words.

But slowly, inexorably, expertly, Rafaele drew her back from that brink and then, with slow, measured, devastating thrusts of his body into hers he rewound that tension inside her until it built up higher and higher all over again.

Sam wrapped her legs around Rafaele’s waist, her ankles crossed, her feet digging into his hard backside, urging him on, begging without words for him to go deeper, harder. Pushing her away from him slightly, but supporting her with an arm around her, he thrust harder and deeper.

Sam’s head went back. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t take it—couldn’t articulate what she needed. She needed to come so badly, but Rafaele was relentless. She knew she was only seconds from begging. Overwhelmed, she felt tears prick her eyes—and then Rafaele thrust so deep it felt as if he touched her heart.

Eyes flying open, tendons going taut all over her body, Sam came in a dizzying, blinding crescendo of pleasure so intense she couldn’t breathe. She gasped and felt Rafaele thrust deep again, sending her spiralling into an even higher dimension of pleasure. His body jerked between her legs and she felt her endless pulsating orgasm milking him of his essence, which was a warm flood inside her.

In the aftermath of that shattering crescendo Sam barely knew which way was up. Her legs were still locked around his slim hips. Rafaele’s head was buried in her neck and she had the strongest urge to reach out and touch his hair, but when she lifted a hand it was trembling too much.

His chest was heaving and damp against hers. Her breasts were tender. Rafaele was still hard inside her, his strength ebbing slowly. And then suddenly he reared back, eyes wild, making Sam wince as he broke the connection between their bodies.

‘Protection. We didn’t use protection.’

Sam looked at him and went icy, before reason and sanity broke through. Relief was tinged with something bittersweet. ‘No,’ she breathed, ‘It’s okay, I’m...safe.’

She bit her lip, suddenly acutely aware of how she was balancing precariously on the desk with Rafaele’s eyes on her. She felt raw, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off her body. She clenched her hands.

‘Are you sure?’ he demanded.

Sam forced herself to look at Rafaele. Her mouth twisted. ‘Yes. I’m sure. My period just finished.’

He sighed deeply. ‘Okay.’

Sam couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘You believe me, then?’

He paused in reaching down to grab some clothes and looked at her. ‘I believe you. I don’t think you’d want to repeat history any more than I would.’

The words shouldn’t have hurt her. Much as his earlier words shouldn’t have hurt her. But they did. Sam didn’t want to question why.

Grimacing slightly when her muscles protested, she stood shakily from the desk and took her shirt and bra from Rafaele’s outstretched hand.

She couldn’t look at him. Face burning, she turned away to put on her clothes and castigated herself. She was repeating history right here, right now. Making love with him in his office exactly like she used to. She could remember what it had been like to go back onto the factory floor, feeling exhilarated and shamed all at once, as if a brand on her forehead marked her as some sort of fallen woman. The boss’s concubine.

She pulled on her pants and trousers with clumsy fingers, aware of Rafaele just feet away, dressing himself, sheathing that amazing body again.

When she was dressed he said coolly from behind her, ‘Shall we go?’

Sam steeled herself and turned around to see Rafaele looking hardly rumpled, his hair only slightly messy. She knew she must look as if she’d just been pulled through a hedge backwards. The tang of sex was in the air and it should have sickened her, but it didn’t. It made her crave more.

‘Yes,’ she said quickly, before he could see how vulnerable she felt.

* * *

Rafaele burned with recrimination as he negotiated his car out of the factory in the dark with Sam beside him, tight-lipped. His recrimination was not for what had happened; he’d do that again right now if he could. His recrimination was for the way it had happened. He’d behaved like a teenage boy, drooling over his first lay with finesse the last thing on his mind.

When she’d asked him just now if he believed her, his reaction had been knee-jerk and not fair. He was already repeating history with bells on, and he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to resist her even if he wanted to.

It had been a miracle that he’d had the control to make sure Sam had come first—but then he recalled how ready to explode she’d been when he’d just touched her with his fingers. Just like that he was rewarded with a fresh, raging erection and had to shift to cover it in the gloom of the interior of the car.

He’d taken Sam on his desk. He’d only ever let one other woman get to him at work—the same woman. Until he’d met Sam his life had been strictly compartmentalised into work and pleasure. That pleasure had been fleeting and completely within his control. As soon as he’d laid eyes on her, though, the lines had blurred into one.

He could still remember the cold, clammy panic that last weekend four years ago at finding himself waking in his own bed with Sam wrapped around him like a vine. Far from precipitating repugnance, he’d felt curiously at peace. Until he’d realised the significance of that and that peace had been shattered. He’d postponed an important meeting that weekend to spend it with Sam. He’d even turned off his phone. Had not checked e-mails. He’d gone incommunicado. For the first time. For a woman.

It had been that which had made something go cold in his chest. Realising how far off his own strict path he’d gone.

Even now he was aware of that, but also aware of Sam’s slim supple thighs in her black trousers next to him. Albeit slanted away, as if she was avoiding coming any closer than she had to in the small, intimate space.

Dio. If she was his he’d make her wear skirts and dresses all the time, so that all he’d have to do would be to slide his hand— If she was his. Rafaele let the car swerve momentarily and very uncharacteristically as that thought slid home with all the devastation of a stealth bomb.

He could feel Sam’s quick glance of concern and imagine her frowning.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and regained control of himself. He could see from the corner of his eye that Sam had crossed her arms over her breasts. She was so tense he fancied she might crack in two if he touched her.

Her silence was getting to him, making his nerves wind tight inside him. He wanted to provoke her—get her to acknowledge what had just happened. What it possibly meant to her. Was the same round of unwelcome memories dominating her head?

Injecting his voice with an insouciance he didn’t feel, Rafaele asked, ‘Don’t tell me you’re already regretting what happened, cara.’

She snapped at him, ‘Is it that obvious?’

Rafaele’s mouth tightened in rejection of that, despite his recent thoughts. ‘It was inevitable and you know it. It’s been building between us from the moment we saw each other again.’

He glanced at Sam and their eyes met. A jolt of electricity shot straight to Rafaele’s groin.

She hissed at him, ‘It was not inevitable. It was a momentary piece of very bad judgment. You were obviously feeling frustrated—maybe it’s because you’ve been forced to move to the suburbs so you can’t entertain your mistress.’

Rage was building inside Rafaele and he responded with a snarl, ‘I don’t have a mistress at the moment.’

Sam sniffed. ‘Maybe not, but I’m sure there’s been a number in the last four years.’

And not one of them Rafaele could remember right now. But if he was a painter he could paint Sam’s naked body with his eyes closed. He recalled seeing Sam bite her lip and how he’d let slip ‘I’ve missed this.’ He’d also told her that no one had come close to her in four years. Then he’d all but admitted that he’d used other women to try and forget her. His belly curdled.

He ground out, ‘Are you expecting me to believe that you’ve been celibate for four years?’ He glanced at her and saw her go pale in the gloom. ‘Well? Have you?’

Sam stared straight ahead. Stonily. ‘Of course not. There was someone...a while ago.’

For a second Rafaele only heard a roaring in his ears. He saw red. He almost gave in to the impulse to swerve the car to the kerb. He’d fully expected her to say of course not, and his own hypocrisy mocked him. But, he told himself savagely, he hadn’t given birth to a baby.

He was aware that irrational emotions were clouding his normally perfectly liberal views and it was not something Rafaele welcomed.

‘Who was he?’ he bit out, knuckles white under the skin of his fingers on the wheel. Just the thought of Sam even kissing someone else was making him incandescent.

‘He was a colleague. He’s a single parent too...we bonded over that.’

Rafaele felt as if a red-hot poker had been stabbed into his belly. In a calm voice, belying the strength of his emotions, Rafaele said, ‘You were a single parent by choice, Samantha. You are not a single parent any more.’

Rafaele struggled to control himself. He wanted to demand Sam tell him more—how many times? Where? When?

As if sensing his intense interest, Sam blurted out, ‘It didn’t amount to anything. It was just one time. We went to a hotel for an afternoon and to be perfectly honest it was horrible. It felt...sordid.’

She clamped her mouth shut again and Rafaele realised he was holding his breath. He let it out in one long shuddery breath. His hands relaxed. Even though he still wanted to find this faceless, nameless person and throw him up against a wall.

From the moment Sam had stepped into his office earlier he’d been on fire. The culmination of weeks of build-up. The inferno inside him had been too strong to ignore. Feeling Sam in his arms, her mouth under his, opening up to him, pressing herself against him... He’d been thrusting into the tight, slick heat that he’d never forgotten right there on his desk before he’d even really acknowledged what was happening. He’d been in the grip of something more powerful than his rational mind.

They hadn’t even used protection. Sam was the only woman that had ever happened with, and the result of that was probably being put to bed right now. He looked at Sam again and saw that she was still pale, a pulse throbbing at the base of her neck. She’d uncrossed her arms finally and her breasts rose and fell a little too quickly, giving her away. They were stopped in traffic and he reached over and took her hand, gripping it when she would have pulled away.

He forced her to look at him and her eyes were huge. Rafaele saw something unguarded in their depths for a split second, but then it was gone and he crushed down the feeling of something resonating deep inside him. The jealousy he felt still burned in his gut.

He wanted to hate Sam for ever appearing in his life to disrupt his ordered and well-run world. A world where nothing had mattered except rebuilding Falcone Industries and ensuring that he would never be ruined like his father. Sam had jeopardised that for a brief moment in time and now it was happening all over again. But he found that he couldn’t hate her for that any more because Milo existed. And because he wanted her.

‘Let me go, Rafaele,’ Sam breathed.

Never resounded in his head before he could stop it. He kept his gaze on hers, slightly discomfited that it wasn’t harder to do so. Usually he avoided women’s probing looks. But not this one. Something solidified within him. He couldn’t not have Sam again after that passionate interlude. It was an impossible prospect.

‘No, Sam.’

He lifted her resisting hand and brought it to his mouth, pressed his lips to her palm. Her scent made him harder. His tongue flicked out and he tasted her skin, fancying he could distinguish her musky heat—or was that just her arousal he could smell?

Frustration at the prospect of the weekend ahead gripped him. He couldn’t make love to her in the house. Not while his son lay sleeping. The thought of Milo waking and witnessing how feral Rafaele felt around Sam was anathema after his own experience of being that small and witnessing his father’s breakdown.

Sam’s eyes grew wide. Glittering. Pupils dilating. They were distracting him. Making him regret that he couldn’t make love with her again for at least a few days. It would not happen in his office again. Never again. But they weren’t done—not by a long shot.

‘I’m not letting you go. Not until this is well and truly burnt out between us. I let you go too soon once before and I won’t make that mistake again.’

The lights went green and Rafaele let Sam’s hand go. He turned his attention to the road again and the car moved smoothly forward.

* * *

Sam clasped her tingling hand and turned her head, staring straight in front of her. Her whole body was still deeply sensitised after what had happened and yet she already felt ravenous for more. His words sank in: I let you go too soon. He’d said something earlier about trying to eclipse her memory... His admission made her heart race pathetically.

And why on earth had she spilled her guts about her one very sad attempt at another relationship? To score points? To try and convince Rafaele that he hadn’t dominated her life so totally?

But that was what she had attempted to do with the perfectly nice and normal Max. He’d caught her at a particularly vulnerable moment one day. Sam had seen a random newspaper report documenting the launch of a new Falcone car and there had been a picture of Rafaele with his arm around some gorgeous blonde model.

More than upset, and disturbed that she was still affected by him and the memories which would not abate after so much time, Sam had recklessly taken Max up on his offer of dinner. After a few weeks of pleasant but not earth-shattering dating Sam had felt a need to try and prove to herself that her memory of Rafaele was a mirage. That surely any other man could match him in bed and then she would not feel such a sense of loss, that she’d never experience such heights again.

It had been her suggestion to meet in a hotel one afternoon. As if they were both married and having an affair. But she’d thought it practical, considering their children were in their own homes, being minded. And Sam hadn’t felt at all comfortable with introducing Max to Milo...even though he’d been hinting that the time to do so had come.

The afternoon had been awkward and horrendous from the first moment. Completely underwhelming. Disgusted with herself, because she had known that she’d acted out of weakness, Sam had called it off there and then.

Something very dangerous and fragile fluttered in the vicinity of her heart, where she’d blocked off any emotions for Rafaele a long time ago. Sam had fancied for a second that he had appeared jealous when she’d mentioned Max...which was ridiculous. What right had he to be jealous? He’d given up that right when he’d been with a woman less than a week after letting her go.

Sam took a deep breath and tried to crush the nebulous and very dangerous feeling growing within her. She would be the biggest fool on this planet if she was to read anything into Rafaele’s possessive gesture and demeanour just now. As he’d said himself, he was only interested in whatever this was between them until it burnt out.

As Sam knew to her cost it was far more likely to burn out for him than for her, and she’d be left picking up the pieces again—except this time it would be so much worse because they were forever bound together now through Milo, and she had a very sick feeling that she was in danger of falling for him all over again. Or, more accurately, that she’d never stopped.

She went cold inside to think that perhaps part of her reluctance to tell him about Milo had been to avoid this very selfish scenario.

Rafaele smoothly drove the car into the space outside her front door and Sam blinked. She hadn’t even been aware of the journey. Just then a curtain moved and Sam saw Milo’s small face appear, wearing a huge grin. Her heart clenched hard. She could imagine him declaring excitedly, ‘Daddy’s home!’ as he’d been doing for the past few days according to an approving Bridie, who seemed to see nothing but good in Rafaele’s appearance in their lives.

It was Friday. They had a weekend to get through now, and Sam had no expectation that Rafaele would be sneaking in through her bedroom door at night to pick up where they’d left off. She knew from experience that he liked to keep her a secret, on the periphery of his world.

Sam took a deep breath and schooled her features, hoping that Rafaele would never guess the extent of her turbulence around him, or that even now she ached between her legs for one of his hands to press against her and alleviate her mounting frustration.

The fact that she was back in a place she’d clawed her way out of four years before was not a welcome revelation. At all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ON SUNDAY SAM was folding laundry in the little utility room off the kitchen. Rafaele had taken Milo swimming on his own earlier, and since they’d come home they’d played with Milo’s cars in the sitting room. Now he was putting him to bed.

She’d felt like a cat on a hot tin roof all weekend. Lying in bed at night, aching with frustration. Locking her muscles to avoid walking down the hall to Rafaele’s room to beg him to make love to her. She refused to give herself away so spectacularly. And she’d been right. He’d treated her coolly all weekend, clearly reluctant to draw what had happened in his office into the domestic sphere.

Sam was only good enough within an environment which suited him. Nothing had changed. The bitterness that scored her shocked her with its intensity. Her emotions were see-sawing all over the place.

What hadn’t helped was the little surprise Rafaele had had lined up when they’d woken that morning. The sleek supercar Rafaele had been using since he’d appeared in their lives had been replaced, probably by some hardworking minion, with a far more sedate family car.

‘What’s this?’ Sam had asked faintly from the front door as Rafaele had deftly strapped Milo into his car seat to take him swimming.

He’d cast her a quick dry glance. ‘It’s a car, Sam. A more practical car, I think you’ll agree, for a child...’

Sam had felt as if she’d just tipped over the edge of a precipice. All she’d been able to think about after they’d left, with an ecstatic Milo in the back, was of how Rafaele—one of the most Alpha male men she’d ever met, if not the most—had segued from playboy with a fast car into man with a child and a safety-conscious car without turning a hair. And somehow that had made Sam more nervous than anything else. She was too scared to look at all the implications and what they might mean...

She heard a noise then and tensed as she sensed Rafaele’s presence behind her in the kitchen. She felt far too vulnerable to face him right now.

‘I want you and Milo to come to Milan with me.’

Sam went very still for a moment, and then proceeded to fold a sheet as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb from a great height. Irritation with herself, with him, at the sexual frustration clawing at her insides, laced her voice. ‘What are you talking about, Rafaele? We can’t just go to Milan with you.’

Sounding impatient, Rafaele said, ‘Sam, I can’t talk to your back.’ His voice changed and grew rougher. ‘As delectable as it is. And your bottom in those jeans... Dio, do you know how hard it’s been not to touch you all weekend?’

That made Sam whirl around, her blood heating instantaneously and rushing to every erogenous zone she had. She dropped the sheet from nerveless hands.

Despite her own craving need all weekend she hissed, ‘Stop it. You can’t talk to me like that. Not here, with Milo in the house.’

Rafaele was leaning against the doorjamb, far too close. His eyes narrowed on her, taking in her jeans and shirt. Grimly he admitted, ‘I know. That’s precisely why I restrained myself.’

Something gave way inside Sam at hearing him admit that his concern for Milo had been uppermost. It made her feel exposed, vulnerable. Between her legs she throbbed almost painfully.

Sam picked up the sheet and thrust it at Rafaele’s chest. ‘Here’s some fresh linen for your bed.’

Rafaele caught the linen when it would have dropped to the ground again. His mouth had gone flat and tight.

‘Well? Did you hear what I said about Milan? I want you and Milo to come with me this week.’

The thought of going back to the scene of the crime made Sam’s emotions seesaw even more. She turned around again and blurted out, ‘It’s not practical, Rafaele. You can’t just announce—’

‘Dio, Sam.’

Sam let out a small squeak of surprise at Rafaele’s guttural voice and saw the linen she’d just shoved at him sail over her head to land back on the pile haphazardly. Then she felt big hands swing her round until she was looking up in his grim face.

‘Sam, I—’ He stopped. His eyes went to her mouth and then he just said, ‘Dio!’ again, before muttering something else in Italian and then pulling her into him.

His mouth was on hers, branding her, and she was up in flames in an instant, every point of her body straining to be closer to his hard form.

With a moan of helpless need and self-derision Sam submitted to the practised and expert ministrations of Rafaele’s wicked mouth and tongue. Some tiny morsel of self-preservation eventually impinged on the heat and gave Sam the strength to pull free. She looked up into Rafaele’s face and almost melted there and then at the sight of the feral look in his eyes. She put a hand to his chest, but that was worse when she felt his heart pounding.

‘We can’t. Not here...’

Rafaele smiled, but it was humourless. ‘Maybe we’ll have to book a hotel as you’re partial to that kind of thing.’

That gave Sam the impetus to move, and she scooted out of the small space and rounded on Rafaele, arms crossed over the betraying throb of her breasts. Her voice was low with anger. ‘You have no right to judge me when you were jumping into bed with someone new barely a week after I left Italy.’

Rafaele frowned. He looked volcanic. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I wasn’t with anyone.’

Sam emitted a curt laugh and tried to hide the flare of something pathetic within her. Hope. ‘Well, that’s not what it looked like—you were photographed all over the place with some Italian TV personality.’

Rafaele opened his mouth to speak but Sam put up a hand, stopping him.

Fiercely, she said, ‘I don’t care, Rafaele.’ Liar.

Irrational guilt over her own liaison made her even angrier.

‘Even if I had told you about Milo, it wasn’t as if we were going to become some happy family. You told me what you thought of marriage and how you never wanted it in your life.’

Sam stopped, breathing heavily, and saw how Rafaele’s face had become shuttered. Clearly he didn’t like to be reminded of that.

‘I seem to recall you agreeing fervently, Sam. Something about how seeing your father weep over your mother’s picture had made you dread ever investing so much in one person only to lose them and be lonely for the rest of your life?’

Sam’s insides contracted. She felt dizzy for a second and then mortification rushed through her like a shameful tide. She’d been so open with him. Had told him every little thing. As if he’d even been interested! Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done, though? After a mere month in this man’s bed she’d been ready to invest everything in him, only to realise how far off-base she’d been.

Panicking, she said the first thing she could think of to try and get them off this topic. ‘What did you mean...about Milan?’

Rafaele’s jaw clenched, but to her intense relief he appeared prepared to let it go.

‘I want to take Milo to meet his grandfather—my father. It’s going to come out sooner or later in the press that I have a son and I’d like Umberto to meet him before that happens. Also, he is old and frail...I’m conscious of his mortality.’

The words were delivered dispassionately enough to shock Sam slightly. Rafaele had never spoken of his father much before, except to say that he lived in a place called Bergamo, not far from Milan, and that he’d moved away after the family business had disintegrated and they’d lost everything. Sam knew that one of the first things Rafaele had done was to buy back the Falcone palazzo just outside Milan, as that was where he’d lived four years ago.

She hadn’t met Umberto Falcone during the time she’d been with Rafaele, and against her better judgment her interest was piqued at the thought of seeing this tantalising glimpse of another aspect of Rafaele’s life. And also to acknowledge that Milo had one grandparent still alive.

Rafaele continued, ‘He’s coming to Milan next week for a routine medical check-up and he’s staying at the family palazzo just outside the city. I have to go back for a few days to attend a board meeting and drop in on the factory there. It would be a perfect opportunity to do this.’

She still resisted, despite being intrigued. ‘Perfect for you, maybe... Milo has playschool, a routine. And what about my work?’

Rafaele’s lip curled. ‘Please—do you really expect me to believe that Milo will be irreparably damaged by missing a few days of playschool? And...’ those laser-like eyes narrowed on her ‘...I think that your boss would be very amenable to you taking the time off.’

Looking smug, Rafaele delivered the final nail in the coffin of Sam’s hopes to escape.

‘I spoke with Bridie about it when we met her outside just a while ago and she said she’d be only too happy to come to Italy with us and help watch Milo. She confided that as a devout Catholic she’s always wanted to visit Rome, and I promised her we could make a stop there on the way back...’

Sam clenched her hands into fists at her sides. ‘That’s low-down and dirty manipulation, Rafaele.’

He shrugged lightly. ‘Call it what you want, Sam, but I believe I’m entitled to a little “manipulation”. You, Milo and Bridie are coming to Italy with me in two days’ time so you’d better get prepared.’

Sam watched Rafaele turn and walk out and welcomed the rush of anger. No doubt he’d been planning this all along, lulling her into a false sense of security by moving into the house, demonstrating his capacity to compromise for his son’s sake. Rafaele was just showing his true colours now: his desire to dominate.

But worse, much worse than that, was the prospect of how hard it would be to return to the place where it had all started. If she was barely holding it together here, how would she manage when she was face to face with the past?

* * *

Two days later, in accordance with Rafaele’s autocratic decree, they were on a private plane belonging to Rafaele’s younger half-brother, the Greek aviation and travel billionaire Alexio Christakos.

Bridie was in silent raptures over the plush luxuriousness of it all and Milo was like a bottle of shaken-up lemonade—about to fizz over at any moment. Every day for him at the moment seemed to bring nothing but untold treasures, and Sam looked at him kneeling on the seat beside her now, watching the world get smaller and smaller beneath them.

It was his first time on a plane and Milo automatically looked for his new favourite person on the planet: Rafaele. Pointing with a chubby finger, he said, ‘Look, Daddy, look!’

Sam’s heart squeezed so tight she had to put a hand there, as if that could assuage the bittersweet pain and the anxiety. How could she trust that Rafaele wouldn’t grow bored and disappear from their lives, leaving Milo bereft? And her... Sam didn’t even want to go there.

They were cruising now, and Rafaele stood up and managed to dwarf the very comfortable ten-seater plane. He held out a hand to Milo. ‘Do you want to see the cockpit?’

He’d barely stopped talking before Milo had leapt off the seat and run to him. Rafaele picked him up. Milo didn’t even look to Sam for reassurance.

Sam felt silly tears prick her eyes and turned away, but she heard Bridie saying quietly from across the small aisle, ‘He’s a good man. He’ll take care of you both.’

Sam fought valiantly for control and looked at Bridie, gave her a watery smile. She couldn’t hide anything from this woman who had seen her devastation when she’d come home from Italy. Her father hadn’t even noticed, and had barely acknowledged her pregnancy in his sheer self-absorption. When Milo had appeared her father had merely raised an eyebrow and proceeded to behave as if he’d always been there.

Sam reached out and took Bridie’s hand, squeezing it. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

‘So am I, love,’ Bridie said, and then with obvious glee, ‘I’m going to meet the Pope!’

Sam laughed, ‘I know Rafaele can do most things, but I’m not sure his influence extends to that.’

‘Not sure my influence extends to what?’

Sam tensed and looked up to catch Rafaele’s green gaze. She blushed and said, ‘Nothing... Milo should eat now. He’ll be hungry.’

Bridie stood up and took Milo from Rafaele. ‘I’ll have a word with the stewardess and we’ll get him sorted.’

Rafaele sat down in Bridie’s vacant seat when they were gone and extended his long legs into the aisle. He was the epitome of Italian masculine elegance today, in a dark grey suit, white shirt and tie. But all Sam could think of was the raw magnetism lurking under the surface of that urbanity.

‘It’s rude to talk about people behind their backs, you know,’ he observed without rancour.

Sam was immediately suspicious of this more civil Rafaele. He was undoubtedly happy to be returning to his own milieu.

She smiled tightly and avoided his gaze. ‘Don’t worry. Your number two fan only has good things to say about you.’

‘Unlike you...’

In a bid to break the sudden tension Sam asked quickly, ‘Your father...he knows about us coming?’

Rafaele sat back a little further. Milo could be heard chattering happily further up the plane.

The reserve that came over Rafaele’s features at the mention of his father didn’t go unnoticed by Sam.

‘I spoke to him on the phone and explained.’

‘How did he take the news of...of a grandson?’

Rafaele’s mouth thinned. ‘He’s looking forward to meeting the next generation.’

‘You’re not close to him, are you?’

Rafaele looked at her and asked almost accusingly, ‘How do you know?’

She shrugged minutely. ‘You never spoke about him much...and I know you didn’t grow up with him.’

‘No,’ he conceded. His mouth was even thinner, making Sam want to reach out and touch him. She curled her hands into fists in her lap.

With evident reluctance he said, ‘My mother left him when I was three and took me with her. He was in no state to care for me even if she’d wanted to leave me behind.’

In an instant Sam remembered the day they’d told Milo who Rafaele was and Rafaele had made that enigmatic comment about being three years old. He must have been referring to this.

‘Your mother wouldn’t have done that, surely...?’

Rafaele arched a dark brow. ‘No? So why did she abandon my older half-brother? Her firstborn son?’

Sam’s mouth opened and closed. ‘You have another brother?’

As if regretting saying anything, Rafaele said briskly, ‘He turned up out of the blue at my mother’s funeral. Alexio and I had no idea he even existed... Well, I had a memory of meeting him briefly when I was small but I thought it had been a dream.’

Half to herself, Sam said, ‘So Milo has two uncles...’

Rafaele emitted a curt laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not likely we’ll be getting together as one big happy family any time soon. Alexio is busy running his empire and Cesar wants nothing to do with us.’

Just then Milo came running down the aisle and grabbed Rafaele’s hand, pulling him out of the seat. ‘Lunch is ready!’

Rafaele let himself be pulled up and held out a hand to Sam.

She felt unsettled and a little vulnerable after their conversation. It was another snippet Rafaele hadn’t revealed before. She put her hand into his and let him pull her out of the seat. He held it tightly all the way to the other end of the plane but Sam didn’t feel as if the gesture was meant to be romantic. On the contrary—it was meant to remind her that they had unfinished business.

* * *

Rafaele’s palazzo was as she remembered it: imposing, beautiful and impressive. The lush green gardens were stunningly landscaped. Its faintly crumbling grandeur hid opulent luxury inside. Four years ago Rafaele had still been in the process of doing it up and now it was finished.

As they approached up the grand steps Sam didn’t even notice how tense she’d become until Milo said plaintively, ‘Ow Mummy, too tight.’ She immediately relaxed her grip on his hand.

A different housekeeper from the one Sam remembered met them at the door and Rafaele introduced her as Luisa. She was soon busy directing the driver with their bags. Bridie was open-mouthed with shock and awe, and Sam felt a semi-hysterical giggle rise up, but it faded fast when she saw the stooped figure of a man with a cane approach them.

He barked out something in Italian and Sam saw Rafaele tense just a few feet ahead of her. She had that disturbing urge again to touch him, to offer some comfort.

He said curtly, ‘In English, Papa. They don’t speak Italian.’

The old man snorted and came into view. His eyes were deep set and so dark they looked black, staring out from a strong face lined with age and disappointment.

Milo was clutching Sam now and she lifted him up.

‘Well?’ Umberto growled. ‘Where is my grandson?’

Hesitantly Sam moved forward to stand beside Rafaele. She felt him snake an arm around her waist and didn’t like the way something within her immediately welcomed and gravitated towards the support.

‘Papa, this is Samantha Rourke, our son Milo, and Sam’s friend Bridie.’

Our son.

Sam nodded in the man’s direction. His black gaze seemed to be devouring them. He said nothing. Then, to Sam’s complete surprise, Milo squirmed to be set free and she had to put him down.

Holding her breath, Sam watched as Milo started to walk towards his grandfather. She wanted to snatch him back, as if from the jaws of danger, and even moved. But Rafaele’s hand stopped her, gripping her waist, making her über-aware of his hard body alongside hers. Even now...

Milo stopped in front of the man and asked with all the innocence of a child, ‘Why do you have a stick?’

The man just looked at him for a long moment and then barked out a laugh. ‘Dio, Rafaele, it’s like looking at you when you were that age. He’s a Falcone—no doubt about it.’

Rafaele’s hand gripped her waist so tightly now that Sam looked at him, but she could only see his hard jaw, a muscle twitching. Before she could do or say anything Rafaele had let her go and strode over to crouch down near Milo, who curled into him trustingly.

Huskily he was saying, ‘This is your grandpapa, piccolino.’

Umberto Falcone held out a hand to his grandson. ‘I am pleased to meet you.’

Milo grinned and took his hand, shaking it forcefully, making Umberto wince comically. Milo giggled and looked at Rafaele. ‘Can we play now?’

Rafaele stood up, still holding onto Milo’s hand, and something tense seemed to pass from him to his father. He said to Milo, ‘Why don’t we settle in first, hmm? We can play later.’

‘Okey-dokey.’ Milo took his hand from Rafaele’s and came back to Sam, who picked him up again.

Rafaele was now drawing her and Bridie forward to introduce them to Umberto, but gone was the joking man of moments ago. He seemed to have retreated again.

Bridie was saying politely, ‘You have a beautiful home here, Mr Falcone.’

The old man glanced at his son and said stiffly, ‘It’s not mine...it’s Rafaele’s. He bought it back after—’

‘Papa,’ Rafaele said warningly, and the man’s mouth shut.

He looked at Bridie then and said, ‘Come, let us take some refreshments and leave these young ones to settle in.’

Bridie looked at Sam, and Sam noticed that she was a bit pink in the cheeks. Sam pushed her gently in the direction where Umberto was setting off, surprisingly agile despite his cane and stooped figure. ‘Go on—sit down and have a rest. We’ll be fine.’

The housekeeper was despatching a younger woman in the direction of Umberto and Bridie with rapid Italian before leading them up the stairs herself. Sam was clinging onto Milo, afraid of the onslaught of memories lurking around each corner. She and Rafaele had made love all over this palazzo. He’d used to bring her here after work, apart from a couple of times when he’d taken her to her apartment, too impatient to wait, but she’d never spent a weekend here with him until that last weekend...

They were walking down a familiar corridor now, and Sam’s heart thumped hard when she recognised Rafaele’s bedroom door to the left. Thankfully they stopped at another door, just opposite.

‘This is your room. Milo is in an adjoining one.’

Sam walked into the room indicated by Rafaele. The housekeeper disappeared. Milo wriggled to be free and she put him down so he could explore. The room was sumptuous without being over the top. Understated luxury. Lots of discreet flower designs and soft greys. Sam heard a squeal of excitement from Milo and followed him into his room.

It was a small boy’s paradise. His bed was made in the shape of a car. The walls were bright. Books and toys covered almost every available surface. Sam looked at Rafaele helplessly as Milo found a toy train set.

He grabbed it up and went to Sam, ‘Is this mine, Mummy?’

Sam shot Rafaele a censorious look. She bent down. ‘Yes, it is, sweetie. But this is Rafaele’s house. You’ll have to leave it behind when we go home.’

Milo looked perturbed and turned to Rafaele. ‘Will you mind it for me when we go home?’

Rafaele sounded gruff. ‘Of course, piccolino.’

Milo’s lip quivered. Sam could see that it was all too much.

‘But...but what if another little boy comes and wants to play with it?’

Rafaele bent down and looked Milo in the eye. ‘That won’t happen. You are the only little boy who is allowed to play here, I promise.’

Instantly reassured, Milo spun away to start playing again.

Sam hissed at Rafaele. ‘This is too much for him. You can’t buy his affection, Rafaele.’

Rafaele stood up and took Sam’s arm, leading her out of earshot. ‘Damn you, Sam, I’m not trying to buy him... I want to spoil him—is that so bad?’

Sam looked into Rafaele’s eyes and felt herself drowning. She knew instinctively that Rafaele had done this out of the generous good of his heart, not out of any manipulative desire. He might do that with her, but all along he’d been ultra-careful to take her lead on how to deal with Milo.

She crossed her arms and felt like a heel. She looked down. ‘I’m sorry...that wasn’t entirely fair.’

Rafaele tipped her chin up. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

All Rafaele could see were those swirling grey depths, sucking him down and down to a place he didn’t want to investigate. Like Milo feeling overwhelmed, he suddenly felt the same. Letting go of Sam’s chin, he stepped back. He needed space. Now.

‘I’ll have Luisa bring you up some refreshments. You and Milo should settle in and rest. We’ll eat at seven.’

When he reached his study on the ground floor he closed the door and took a deep breath. He headed straight for his drinks cabinet and poured himself a shot of whisky, downing it in one. To his chagrin it wasn’t even Milo and the fact that he had his son in this house that seemed to be featuring prominently in his head. It was Sam. Having Sam back here. Reminding him of the heated insanity he’d felt around her before. Of how badly he’d needed her, how insatiably.

How sweet she’d been—so innocent. So bright. So unlike any other woman he’d known, seducing him effortlessly into a tangled web of need from which he’d only extricated himself with great effort. And he had been relieved to do so, no matter what the dull ache he’d felt for four years might have told him.

The ache had disappeared as soon as he’d decided that he’d contact her in England. He’d told himself that it would be different, that he wouldn’t still desire her. That he would be able to demonstrate how he’d moved on... But even at the first sound of her voice on the end of the phone his body had convulsed with need...

And then...Milo.

Rafaele felt pain lance his hand and looked down stupidly to see that he’d crushed the delicate glass. Cursing himself, he got a tissue and told himself he was being ridiculous. Seeing Sam here again, with his father too, in this palazzo...it was something he’d never expected to have to deal with. That was all.

* * *

The following morning when Sam woke up she was disorientated for a few long seconds, until the opulent surroundings and softer-than-soft bed registered. She sat up in a panic.

Milo.

Quickly she got out of bed and went to the open adjoining door. Milo’s bed was tossed, his pyjamas were on the ground and he was nowhere to be seen.

Bridie must have taken him for breakfast. The previous evening had seen them all seated for dinner—Milo sitting on big books on a chair to elevate him, insisting on feeding himself like a big boy, wanting to impress his new grandpapa, who had looked on approvingly.

To Sam’s relief, after dinner Rafaele, far too disturbing in jeans and a black top, had made his excuses and disappeared to his study. And then Bridie had insisted on taking Milo up to bed, as he’d been barely able to keep awake long enough to feed himself his new favourite dessert: gelato.

Sam had felt awkward, sitting with Umberto on her own, but the man had stood up and indicated for her to follow him and have some coffee, so she had. He’d led her to a small room off the dining room—comfortable, cosy.

Luisa had come and poured them coffee and Sam had felt she needed to break the ice. ‘I’m sorry...that you didn’t know about Milo before now.’

The old man had waved her words aside and admitted gruffly, ‘I gave up any right to pry into Rafaele’s life a long time ago.’

Not knowing how to respond, Sam had just taken a sip of coffee. She’d always loved the strength and potency of well-made Italian coffee.

‘Milo is the same age as Rafaele was when he left here with his mother.’

Sam had looked at Umberto.

‘He was very young.’ The old man’s face had darkened. ‘Too young to witness what he did.’

Sam had frowned. ‘I’m sorry... I don’t know...’

Umberto had looked at her, his gaze shrewd. ‘When my wife left me, Samantha, I was a broken man. I’d already lost everything. My house, the family legacy, the factory. My dignity. I begged her on my knees not to leave me but she did anyway. Rafaele witnessed my lowest moment and I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for it.’

Sam had tried to take it in. She’d known Rafaele’s mother had left, but not the extent of it. She wondered how traumatic it must have been for a child to see his mother turn her back on his father and it was as if something slid home inside her—she could see now where Rafaele’s intensely commitment-phobic issues might stem from.

‘It was a long time ago...’ Umberto had said. ‘It’s good that you are here with Milo. This will be a challenge for my proud son, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing.’

Sam blinked in the morning light of her bedroom, the memory fading. She remembered now that she’d had disjointed dreams all night of a man on his knees, begging, pleading, with Milo looking on, crying in distress... She pursed her lips. One thing she could guarantee pretty categorically was that Rafaele would never be reduced to begging on his knees to anyone.

Trying not to think of that vulnerable three-year-old Rafaele, when all she could see was Milo in her mind’s eye, Sam washed and dressed and went to search for Milo and Bridie. She found them in the dining room with the sun pouring in.

Sam bent to kiss her son, aware of a cool green gaze on her from the head of the table. Umberto and Bridie broke off from their conversation to greet Sam and Rafaele stood up. Sam had to quell a dart of hurt. She felt as if the minute she entered a room he wanted to leave it.

‘I’ve got to go to the factory this morning for my meeting... I’ve arranged for a driver to come and pick you all up in an hour. He will drop Umberto off at the doctor’s and take you into Milan to sightsee. I’ll join you there this afternoon for a late lunch.’

Umberto muttered something rude about doctors and Sam saw Bridie smile.

Milo was asking Sam, ‘What’s sightsee?’

Rafaele had pinned Sam with that unreadable gaze and instantly she felt breathless. ‘I have to go to a function this evening. I’d like it if you accompanied me.’

Sam opened her mouth. ‘I...’

Bridie chipped in quickly. ‘Of course she will. You could do with a night out, Sam, love. I’ll be here, and Milo can sleep with me so you won’t have to worry about disturbing him.’

Sam glared at Bridie, who looked back at her with an innocence she didn’t trust for a second. Umberto was unhelpfully silent.

Sam looked at Rafaele and was loath to let him see that she might not want to go for very personal reasons.

She shrugged a shoulder. ‘Sure—why not?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

THAT EVENING SAM realised a fundamental flaw in her plan to join Rafaele for his function. She had no dress. She hadn’t even thought about it earlier, while in Milan, too caught up in the whistlestop sightseeing tour Rafaele had arranged for Bridie and Milo, who obviously hadn’t been there before. Then they’d picked Umberto up from the doctor’s and met Rafaele for lunch.

Biting her lip and wondering what to do, Sam went to the wardrobe, fully expecting it to be empty. When she opened the door, though, she gasped and her heart stopped cold in her chest. There was a dress hanging up inside, and it was the dress Rafaele had bought her four years before. She remembered the big white box it had come in, along with the matching underwear, shoes and jewels. She’d left it all behind at the palazzo because she’d felt as if it had never really belonged to her.

About two months after Sam had returned to England the box containing the dress, shoes, underwear and jewellery had arrived via a courier company. As soon as she’d realised what it was and had read the accompanying note—I bought this for you. Rafaele—Sam had sent it back with the note torn in two pieces.

And now it was here.

Sam felt short of breath. She took the dress out of the wardrobe, its material heavy and slinky, and stalked out of her bedroom and across the hall to Rafaele’s, not bothering to knock on the door.

Her eyes widened when she took in a naked Rafaele, strolling out of his bathroom and rubbing his hair with a towel. For a long moment he just stood there, and Sam’s eyes were glued to that broad, magnificent chest. Instant heat bloomed in her belly.

With a strangled sound she lifted her eyes and held the dress out. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

With supreme nonchalance Rafaele secured the towel around his waist and quirked his mouth sexily on one side. ‘It’s amazing how you can still blush, cara.’

Sam gritted out, ‘Don’t call me that. I’m not your cara. Why do you still have this dress?’

Rafaele’s face was inscrutable. He shrugged. ‘It seemed a shame to throw it away just because you didn’t want it.’

Bile rose inside Sam. ‘And how many lucky women have worn it since me?’

A muscle popped in Rafaele’s jaw. ‘None. I thought you’d appreciate blending in with the crowd tonight instead of appearing in your habitual tomboy uniform.’

To Sam’s disgust she felt tears prick her eyes. ‘I’ll try not to disappoint you, Rafaele. After all, I know what an honour it is to be taken out in public with you, because you never deemed it appropriate before.’

She whirled around and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

Rafaele winced and put his hands on his hips. His chest was a tight ball of blackness. He cursed himself. He should have followed his head and thrown that dress out as soon as he’d realised she’d left it behind—instead of sending it to her, almost intrigued as to how she might respond when even then he’d known that he couldn’t have anything more to do with her.

When it had arrived back with the torn note, then he should have thrown it out. But instead he’d instructed his housekeeper to hang it up and had refused to analyse why he’d done such a thing.

It was just a dress.

Thoroughly disgruntled now, and regretting the impulse he’d had earlier to ask Sam to accompany him this evening, Rafaele got dressed.

* * *

Sam was still tight-lipped in the back of one of Rafaele’s chauffeur-driven cars about an hour later. She was as far away from him as she could get without falling out of the door, and she hated the electric awareness that pulsed between them.

As they’d been leaving Milo had been holding Umberto’s hand in the grand hallway of the palazzo and he’d gasped. ‘Mummy, you look like a princess.’

Sam had gone red, and then grown even hotter when Rafaele had appeared, looking stupendously gorgeous in a classic tuxedo. Suddenly she’d been glad of the effort she’d made. She needed all the armour she could muster.

Her hair was up in a topknot, held in place with a jewelled pin loaned to her by Bridie. She’d put on more make-up than she’d normally wear, outlining her eyes and thickening her lashes. And wearing the vertiginous heels that had come with the dress Sam reached to Rafaele’s shoulder.

He hadn’t touched her while they were leaving. He’d merely indicated that she should precede him and, feeling horribly exposed under his cool gaze, Sam had walked out, praying she wouldn’t fall over.

Now they were pulling up outside the glittering façade of a building with men in uniforms waiting to assist all the guests in their finery. Butterflies swarmed into Sam’s belly.

She felt her arm being taken in a warm grip and showers of electric shocks seemed to spread through her body. Reluctantly she looked at Rafaele, and the momentarily unguarded look on his face took her by surprise.

‘I should have told you earlier... You look beautiful.’

‘I...’ Sam’s voice failed. ‘Thank you.’

And just like that she felt the animosity drain away. She realised that as soon as she’d seen the dress hanging up she’d harboured a very treacherous wish that Rafaele had kept it for sentimental reasons, and that was the basis for her lashing out at him. It had been anger at herself for her own pathetic weakness.

Rafaele had let her go. Sam’s door was being opened and someone was waiting for her to step out. When she did so, Rafaele was standing there, his face unreadable again. She wondered if she had imagined what he’d just said...

He took her arm and led her inside and Sam was glad he was supporting her, because nothing could have prepared her for the dazzling display of wealth and beauty as soon as they walked in.

She felt instantly gauche: both underdressed and overdressed. Rafaele got them drinks and almost immediately was surrounded by gushing acolytes—a mixture of men and women. As they stood there the number of women seemed to increase. They shot Sam glances ranging from the curious to the downright angry—as if he had no right to come here with a woman.

Clearly Rafaele was a prize to be fought over, and Sam really didn’t like the way her own hackles rose and her blood started to boil in response. She felt a very disturbing primal urge rise up within her to claim him in some way. The fact that she had borne his child seemed to resonate deep within her, and she wanted to snarl at the women to back off.

With a lazy insouciance that did nothing to help cool her blood, Rafaele reached out and drew her to his side. The level of malevolence coming from the women increased exponentially.

He said to the people surrounding them, ‘I’d like to introduce you to Samantha Rourke.’

Something in Sam went cold at this very bare introduction, which left her in some kind of limbo land—what exactly was she to him?

But what had she expected him to say? Meet the mother of my child, who is such a pushover that she lets me sleep with her even though she knows I hate her...?

Sam caught one or two smug looks from a couple of the women. As if to say, She’s no competition. Her blood boiled over.

She managed to keep it together until they were alone again and then she rounded on him. ‘If you brought me here just to deflect the attention from those man-eaters then I think I’ve done my bit. I’d prefer to be at home with Milo than to witness your simpering fan club line up to tell you how marvellous you are.’

Furious at herself for feeling so emotional, Sam stabbed Rafaele’s chest with a finger. ‘I’m the mother of your child—tell that to your next prospective mistress.’

Rafaele looked at Sam and felt something pierce his chest. Her words were lost to him for a second in the glare from those grey eyes. She looked so young, so stunning. Her neck was long and graceful, her skin so pale he could see the delicate veins underneath. The dress hugged and emphasised every curve, fitting her better now than it had four years ago. His eyes dropped down over the swell of her breasts and her words resounded within him: I’m the mother of your child.

Moments ago, when he’d reached out to pull her to him and introduce her, he’d felt a second of blind panic. The realisation had been immediate and stark: he’d just introduced his peers to Sam and when the news emerged of his son, and that she was his mother, they would assume that they were together. And that thought wasn’t making him want to flee.

Rafaele had not even considered this prospect when he’d asked Sam to the function. He’d just looked at her that morning and the words had spilled out... Proving once again how she scrambled his thought processes. How she effortlessly tapped into something deep and instinctive within him that led to choices and decisions that his head might normally balk at.

He couldn’t even blame her. It wasn’t as if she’d inveigled her way to an invitation—if anything she’d looked horrified at the suggestion. Rafaele’s blood simmered. He felt the imprint of Sam’s finger in his chest. The rest of the room died away and he saw only her. Need and desire rose up to strangle him and magnified his feeling of exposure.

Reaching out a hand, he snaked it around her neck and brought her closer. Something triumphant moved through him when he saw those eyes flare with awareness. But the realisation of how comfortable he was with people knowing who Sam was, assuming they were together, was too raw, too new. He needed to push it back. Push her back.

‘I have the only mistress I need right here, Sam. Why would I go looking when you’ve already proved yourself so amenable?’

Her cheeks went white and Rafaele felt the punch of something dirty and dark down low.

‘You bastard.’

She pulled away from him and spun around, moving through the crowd. It was a long second before Rafaele could function again, and then he set off after her, a dense darkness expanding in his chest when he thought of those huge eyes and the pain in their depths that he’d just witnessed. That he’d just caused. Wilfully. From weakness.

* * *

Sam could barely drag enough oxygen into her lungs. She was seething. Hurt and angry with herself for letting Rafaele get to her. For feeling so possessive and jealous around those other women. For ever hoping even for a second that his bringing her here tonight had meant something...

She raised a hand to get the doorman’s attention, to ask him to call her a cab, but just then it was caught by a firm grip and she was whirled around.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Rafaele looked as livid as she felt, and he had no right to be. Sam pulled her arm free. ‘I’m going home, Rafaele. I don’t need to be reminded publicly how little you like to acknowledge me in your life.’

She turned around again, but gave a gasp of dismay when she saw Rafaele’s chauffeur-driven car stopping at the foot of the steps. He was marching her down to the open door before she could do anything. The door was quickly shut and he was sliding in the other side. Sam had a perverse urge to open the door and jump out but she curbed the childish desire. And also she realised she didn’t have enough money for a cab. She scowled at herself. Being with Rafaele was eroding her very independence.

Rafaele issued a terse instruction to the driver and the privacy window slid up noiselessly. His eyes glittered at her in the gloom of the backseat but even now Sam’s muscles clenched in her pelvis, and she felt the betraying heat of desire getting her body ready for this man. Her man. The stupid assertion flashed again. She could have growled with frustration.

Eventually he bit out, ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did back there. You didn’t deserve that.’

It was the last thing Sam had expected to hear, and she said faintly, ‘No, I didn’t.’ And then, ‘Why did you bring me with you, Rafaele? People will only ask questions...when they find out about Milo... We shouldn’t be seen together. It doesn’t help matters.’

Rafaele’s face looked as if it was carved out of stone. ‘You’re the mother of my child, Samantha. It’s inevitable that we’ll be seen together, no matter what happens in the future.’

Sam had an image then of Rafaele, married to some cool blonde beauty, and of an older Milo heading off on a plane on his own to stay with his father and his new family. The image made her suck in a breath of pain and she scooted as far away from him in the back of the car as she could.

Mixed in with the pain she was feeling was the ever-present and building sexual frustration. She felt as if she was going mad. Heat burned her insides and made her skin prickle. All she could see in her peripheral vision was the huge dark shape of Rafaele and imagined that powerful body, naked and surging into hers, thrusting so deep that she’d finally feel some measure of peace.

She had to hold back a groan, and was aware of Rafaele’s quick glance at her through the thick tension between them.

Lord. It had been a long time since Sam had had to pleasure herself, but if this need wasn’t assuaged soon she’d go mad.

‘Sam.’

Rafaele’s voice was thick and Sam’s heart palpitated. Reluctantly she looked at him and a pulse throbbed between her legs. She clamped her thighs together desperately.

He reached over and took her hand and Sam almost cried out at the sensation. She tried to pull back but he wouldn’t release her.

‘I want you.’

His face was in shadow but she could sense his desperation. It was little comfort. Inevitability rose up inside her. She could resist anything but this declaration. This promise that soon, if she allowed it, he would ease this ache that was inside her, tearing her apart. It transcended even what had just happened.

Helplessly, in a whisper of supplication that she hated, Sam just replied, ‘Yes...’

* * *

Yes.

Rafaele felt primal satisfaction rush through him, hardening his body. He wanted to devour Sam, consume her, brand her. He wanted her for ever.

No!

Rafaele rejected that rogue assertion, which had slid into his mind before he’d even acknowledged it.

He couldn’t let her hand go, though, even when she turned her head away to look out of the window. The rapid rise and fall of her breasts beneath the dress made him curl his other hand to a fist, just to stop himself reaching out to cup their heavy weight.

Sam was clearly aware of the same ramifications as he, of being seen together and how that might be construed. But the thought of her rejecting that suddenly made him want to claim her. In any way that he could. Publicly and in private.

But right now he couldn’t really focus on what that meant. Right now he wanted the physical.

As the car swept gracefully through the palazzo gates anticipation spiked like a fever in his blood. When the car came to a halt he got out and strode around to Sam’s door, helping her out himself. She looked up at him with those huge expressive eyes and desire was hot and urgent inside him—part of the tangled mess of emotions this woman inspired in him on a regular basis.

With one smooth move he picked her up into his arms. Her mouth was tight with a need that resonated within him. He felt like a beast. He couldn’t speak. What he needed right now was not something he could even articulate. It was visceral, physical. Urgent.

* * *

Sam was in Rafaele’s arms and he was striding through the front door of the palazzo. All she could feel was her breasts crushed to the solid wall of his chest and the pulse of awareness between them, like a tangible forcefield of energy.

The house was quiet. He was striding up the stairs now and Sam bit her lip. Rafaele carried her straight into his bedroom. She tensed against the leap of her blood at the promise of satisfaction. A moment of sanity intruded, reminding her of the certain self-recrimination she would face in the aftermath and all the uncertainty about how he felt about her.

Weakly she seized on the first thing she thought of. ‘Wait... Milo...’

Rafaele was putting her down, sliding her along the length of his hard body, one part of which in particular was very hard. He was already pulling down the strap of her dress and her skin tingled.

His voice was rough. ‘Milo is with Bridie, as you well know.’

That sliver of sanity compelled her to try again, even though every part of her protested. ‘Rafaele...’

‘Stop talking, Sam. I want you. You want me. It’s very simple.’

It wasn’t that simple, though, and Sam opened her mouth to protest again. But then Rafaele was kissing her, and pulling the strap of her dress down further, and she felt the rising lust suck her under and weakly...she gave in. She wanted to forget sanity and take this.

Between her legs she was slick and throbbing. She didn’t have a hope of resisting when Rafaele bared one breast and cupped it in his hand, squeezing the plump flesh, his thumb grazing her nipple.

Letting out a soft moan halfway between frustration at her own weakness and excitement at her building desire, Sam wound her arms around Rafaele’s neck and pressed herself against him, trapping his hand on her breast.

Rafaele’s other hand came down and cupped her buttocks, kneading the flesh, making Sam’s hips roll against him impatiently. She could feel the thick length of his erection between them and fresh heat pulsed to her core.

Rafaele pulled back for a moment, breathing harshly, his eyes glittering fiercely. It was hard for Sam to open her eyes. She felt dazed. He’d always had this effect on her—one touch and she felt drugged.

He was dragging off his jacket, tie and shirt, dropping them to the ground, unbuckling his belt, undoing his trousers.

His voice was guttural. ‘I want you naked now.’

Sam’s flesh prickled with anticipation. Her hands felt stupid as she tried to pull down her strap and, issuing something that sounded like a curse, Rafaele took over, turning her around and finding the zip, pulling it down and peeling the heavy fabric from her body.

Sam kicked off her shoes. Now she wore only black lace panties. Rafaele turned her around again and that hot green gaze swept down her body, lingering on her breasts, which seemed to swell and tighten under his look.

‘You’re so beautiful.’

Sam ducked her head. ‘No, I’m not.’

Rafaele tipped up her chin, forcing her to look at him.

‘Yes, you are.’

He’d done this before—made her feel buoyant. Feminine. And it had all been ripped to pieces when he’d rejected her. But Sam couldn’t focus on that now.

He pulled her into him again and Sam swayed towards him like a magnet. He kissed her, tongue thrusting deep, fanning the flames of lust within her. He was naked now, and her hand instinctively sought to touch him, finding and encircling his erection, moving up and down, feeling the slip and slide of satin skin over all that steely strength.

His mouth not leaving hers, Rafaele skimmed his hand down from her breast over her belly, down to her panties and underneath, his fingers seeking and finding that sweet molten spot, making her legs part so that he could have more access.

As he stroked and explored Sam broke off the kiss. And then one of Rafaele’s fingers thrust inside her and Sam’s legs went weak with the sharp, spasming pleasure that gripped her.

With dextrous hands Rafaele pushed her panties down and lifted her, to deposit her on the bed. Sam could only look up at Rafaele and marvel at his sheer masculine magnificence. He was so broad and powerful. Narrow waist and hard-muscled thighs and between them... Her mouth watered.

She sat up and looked up at Rafaele. He was watching her almost warily and she felt a heady rush of power. She moved to the edge of the bed and reached for him, her hands going to his hips, pulling him towards her.

‘Sam...’

She ignored him and drew his length into her hand, and then she took him into her mouth. The remembered taste and feel of him was like an explosion on her senses. She barely heard his deep moan of satisfaction as she swirled her tongue around the bulbous tip, relearning his shape and what made him tense. His hands were in her hair, gripping her head.

Her hand encircled him and her mouth and tongue licked and sucked. He’d taught her how to do this.

‘Dio, Sam...’

Sam felt him tensing, the instinctive thrusting of his hips towards her, as if he couldn’t help himself. His hands were trying to pull her back, but she knew it was against his will. He’d never let her go this far before but stubbornly Sam wanted to see him lose control because of her and she kept going, ignoring his rough entreaties, until finally she felt the heat of his climax gush into her mouth and throat, felt his hips jerking.

Sam kept her mouth on him for a long moment and then finally pulled back. She couldn’t help a smile when she saw Rafaele’s dazed-looking expression. Slowly that expression cleared and his eyes narrowed on her. She felt a shiver of trepidation mixed with anticipation go through her and recognised that he wasn’t happy with the way she’d made him lose it like that. She felt more powerful in that moment than she’d ever felt...

Rafaele bent down and loomed over her on his hands, forcing her to move back onto the bed. She collapsed onto it.

‘I think I’m going to have to restrain you...’

Sam looked at Rafaele blankly for a second, and then watched him stand up and go to a nearby cabinet. He pulled out two long slivers of silk and she realised they were ties. Something deep inside her quivered—but it wasn’t with fear, it was excitement. She didn’t know what he intended but secretly wanted to find out...

He took each hand and quietly wound a tie around each wrist, knotting it. Sam looked at him and bit her lip. Then Rafaele stretched her hands over her head, and Sam only realised what he’d done when she couldn’t bring her hands down again...he’d tied them to one of the bed’s four posts.

‘Rafaele... What...?’

He came back down and over her. Not touching her, but letting her feel his body heat. ‘I want you to know what it feels like to lose control...’

Sam could have laughed. She lost control every time she looked at this man! And there was something that felt so wickedly decadent about being restrained it overshadowed the sliver of discomfort. She trusted Rafaele above anything else, and that deep-seated knowledge shook her now. She hadn’t realised just how much she trusted him till this moment.

He bent his head then, and his mouth was a hot brand on hers, opening her up to him, demanding a response which she gave unerringly. Already she felt the frustration of being bound. She wanted to touch him but couldn’t. She moaned softly with it, and could have sworn she heard Rafaele chuckle darkly.

His mouth moved down, trailing over her jaw and neck. His hands were smoothing over her body, touching her but staying away from erogenous zones, making her grit her jaw to stop herself from begging. Her hands pulled ineffectually at the silken ties.

And then Rafaele’s mouth was on her breast and her back arched. Yes. He lavished both taut peaks with attention until they were tingling and stinging. His hand had moved down to her belly and, like a wanton, Sam felt her legs part in mute appeal. Rafaele reared back for a moment and looked at her body. Sam gazed down to see his arousal already hard again, still glistening wetly from her mouth and tongue. She ached inside.

Rafaele’s hand went to the juncture at her legs and then he was moving down, his mouth leaving little trails of fire as he pressed kisses under her breasts, to her abdomen and down. Sam’s breath stopped when she felt him pull her legs wide apart. Her hands pulled at the ties. She’d never been so bared or so vulnerable.

Rafaele’s mouth settled there, between her legs, and Sam’s breath came back, choppy. She felt too hot, too tight, too...sensitive.

‘Rafaele...’

But his tongue was on her now, exploring her sex, finding where she was so wet for him, opening her up, stabbing deep, making her moan uncontrollably, making her hips twitch. And then his tongue was replaced by his fingers, thrusting deep, and his other hand had found her breast, his thumb and forefinger pinching a nipple.

A broken scream emerged from Sam’s mouth—a feral sound. Her hips were lifting off the bed, begging Rafaele for more, for him to drink from her as she came...as she’d done to him. And then the pleasure was peaking and spiralling out of all control, wresting her sane mind from her brain and leaving behind nothing but heat and deep, boneless satisfaction, with his mouth on her right to the end.

Rafaele slowly came up and over her body. He pressed a kiss to her mouth and Sam could taste the essence of her desire on him. Could he taste himself on her? The thought ignited new fires deep down, diminishing her need to curl up and cling onto the boneless feeling. Sam was barely aware of being restrained now. She didn’t think she could have lifted her arms even if she’d wanted to.

And then Rafaele was sliding into her...deeply. Sam sucked in a breath, her eyes going wide. He looked down at her and all she could see was green. And heat. And broad shoulders damp with sweat. He moved back out...slowly. One arm came around her back, arching her into him, making one breast pout up towards him, so he bent his head and took it into his mouth, suckling fiercely as he thrust, going a little deeper, harder.

Sam gasped. It was too much. And now she did feel the restraints and she pulled against them. She needed to anchor herself to something. She felt as if Rafaele was going to drive her over the edge completely and she’d have nothing at all to hang onto.

But she couldn’t articulate any words. Rafaele’s chest against her breasts was delicious torture. The ruthless rhythm of his body in and out of hers drove her higher and higher. She could only look deep into his eyes, as if that alone could hold her to this earth.

Just at that moment something pierced her—anger at Rafaele, for reducing her to this mindless wanton, gasping and mute being. His powerful body was going so hard and deep now that Sam had to close her eyes, feeling as if a very secret part of herself was being bared to him in a way that she wasn’t ready for.

Rafaele’s voice was guttural. ‘Sam, look at me.’

But she couldn’t. He’d see it if she did. She’d never been laid so bare, made so vulnerable, and if she looked at him now he’d see how much she loved him—because she’d never stopped loving him. Even after all that had happened and the million reasons he’d given her for not loving him.

‘No,’ she said, equally guttural.

Sam heard his rough shout as he made his frustration clear, but both their bodies were locked in a primal dance now and they were equally unable to stop. They could only go on, until the tight grip of tension was shattered and they orgasmed moments after each other, Sam’s body convulsing around Rafaele’s thick length so hard that she could feel it. She was milking him, taking his very essence into her, and the feeling was so intense and powerful on top of this awful, excoriating vulnerability that tears pricked her eyes.

She turned her head away. Rafaele’s body was still within her, pulsing, slowly diminishing. She felt a tear slip down one cheek and finally managed to find the words she hadn’t been able to till now.

‘Untie me Rafaele.’

She was trembling from an overload of pleasure and the revelation of just how deep her feelings for him were, still.

‘Sam...’

‘Just untie me.’ Her voice sounded harsh to her own ears.

His hands reached up. She felt his arms and chest brush her body and she shivered convulsively against him. Even now. Deftly he undid the knots and Sam’s arms were free again, her wrists sore after pulling against the restriction. Terrified that Rafaele would see her emotions bared, Sam scooted out from under him and off the bed. She grabbed the nearest covering she could find, which was his shirt, and pulled it on and walked to the door.

She heard Rafaele curse behind her and say, ‘Sam, wait... Where are you—?’

But she was gone, walking blindly, on very wobbly legs, going anywhere that was away from his presence and his ability to reduce her to a melting mass of sensations and turbulent emotions. He’d wanted to dominate her and show her who was in control and he had done that beyond doubt. The eroticism of what she’d just been through felt tawdry now, as she imagined Rafaele coolly and clinically deciding how he would best show her who was boss. She had to get a grip before she faced him again.

* * *

Rafaele felt poleaxed. Self-recrimination rose upwards like bile. He would have an image burnt onto his retina for ever of Sam, with her hands bound above her head, her face turned away and a tear slipping down one cheek. He could still feel the strength of the pulsations of her body around his, and knew that it wasn’t pain or discomfort that had made her turn away.

His last moment of semi-rational thought, he remembered, had been just before he’d come into Sam’s mouth, his body thrusting against her, his hands holding her head so that he could— He cursed and got up off the bed, a restless jagged energy filling his body.

She’d always pushed him further than any other woman. He’d looked down at her when she’d taken her mouth from him—that wicked device of a torture more pleasurable than he could ever remember. She’d smiled at him and it had been full of something inherently feminine and mysterious... Rafaele’s first insidious thought had been...Did she do that with him? The lover she’d taken? Had he been the first to experience her mouth around him, taking him in so deep that he’d not been able to pull back but had gone to the brink and over it... Had she milked him the same way?

The thought had made him see red. He’d felt exposed—far more exposed than just being naked in front of her. Vulnerable in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. It had had echoes of the past, when he recalled his mother looking at his father so dispassionately, even though he was broken, at her feet.

And suddenly Rafaele had wanted to regain control of a situation that was careening out of all control. He’d been losing it. So he’d bound her...so she couldn’t touch him and make him forget again...but he’d still lost it anyway. Tying her up had only heightened the experience, making it even more erotic, compelling...and it had done nothing but highlight the fact that even while restrained she exerted a power over him that he couldn’t deny.

He grabbed some clothes and pulled them on perfunctorily. Rafaele’s gut felt sick as he left his room. She’d been crying. He looked in her room first, but it was dark and the bed was untouched. Then he went downstairs.

He found her in the drawing room, standing at the window through which he could see a full moon hanging low in the sky. On Sam his shirt reached down to the backs of her thighs. Her legs were long and slim underneath. She looked incredibly fragile in the voluminous white material.

‘Sam...’

CHAPTER NINE

SAM’S SHOULDERS TENSED. Rafaele padded silently towards her on bare feet and she turned around, as if afraid he’d come too close. He saw a tumbler in her hand with a dark golden liquid.

She smiled and it was tight, lifted the glass towards him. ‘Chin-chin.’ And then she took a deep gulp, draining the glass.

He saw her cheeks flush but she made no sound. The evidence of tears was gone but her eyes looked huge, bruised.

‘Sam...’ He spoke through a sudden constriction in his throat. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you...’

‘You didn’t hurt me, Rafaele, I enjoyed it. You’ve obviously developed a kinkier side since I knew you... Was it any mistress in particular? Or is it just a sign of the times—routine sex is too boring?’

Rafaele gritted his jaw. He knew that Sam had been with him all the way because he’d felt the excitement in her body pushing him on...her distress had come afterwards...

‘I’ve never done that with another woman,’ he admitted reluctantly. He’d never felt the need to.

Sam emitted a curt laugh and raised a dark brow. ‘So it’s just me? I should feel flattered that I made you so angry you felt you had to restrain me...?’

Rafaele frowned, losing the thread. ‘Angry?’ Had it been that obvious? His fit of jealousy and vulnerability?

But Sam was continuing. ‘I know you’re angry about Milo, Rafaele, but you can’t take it out on me like this.’

Half without thinking, Rafaele said, ‘But I’m not angry about Milo.’

He realised in that moment that he truly didn’t feel angry about that—not any more. It had faded and been replaced by a much darker anger...stemming from this woman’s unique ability to make him lose his self-control and lose sight of what was important to him. Anger that he felt so vulnerable around her.

But Sam seemed not to have heard him. She came closer to put the empty glass down and Rafaele could see the tantalising curve of her breast through the haphazardly tied shirt. Instantly his lower body was on fire, reacting. He had a momentary revelation: he was never going to get enough of this woman, not even in a lifetime. It would never burn out between them, only grow brighter.

Rafaele was stunned, his head expanding with the terrifying knowledge that he would never be free of this insatiable need. He was barely aware of Sam walking out of the room. His brain was working overtime, trying to take in the knowledge that had come to him earlier, before he’d really been ready to deal with it, that he couldn’t let her go. And now it was the most obvious thing in the world.

* * *

Sam gripped the bannister as she went up the stairs. Rafaele might have just said that he wasn’t angry about Milo...but he was still angry with her. It was as clear as day. Maybe it was because he wanted her and resented himself for it?

Any control she’d clawed back before Rafaele had appeared and during that brief conversation had drained away again, leaving her feeling shaky. Somehow she got to her room, closed the door behind her and sagged against it. Tears pricked her eyes. Again. More tears for the man downstairs whom she would probably never be able to read.

Sam was too drained to deal with buttons. Her body was made weak from pleasure and sensation. She ripped Rafaele’s shirt, making buttons pop and fall silently to the ground, and crawled into bed. In the morning she would shower and wash the scent of sex off her skin, but right now—treacherously—she didn’t want to. In spite of what had happened.

* * *

‘Rafaele said that we’ll be leaving in an hour for Rome.’

Sam looked up with a studied air of nonchalance at Bridie, who had just come into the dining room. ‘Oh?’

Bridie had Milo by the hand and he ran over to Sam, who picked him up and hugged him close, revelling in his sturdy body and sweet baby scent.

Bridie helped herself to some coffee and asked, ‘How was the function last night?’

When Sam had woken that morning and come downstairs Bridie, Milo and Umberto had evidently already eaten, because the detritus of breakfast had been at the table but they had not. To her intense relief it appeared as if Rafaele had eaten also, as his place at the head of the table had already been used.

‘It was...very swish,’ Sam replied, knowing Bridie would love to hear about all the gowns and luxury. She took the cowardly way out and detailed to Bridie all of those things, while trying to ignore the disturbing memories threatening to spill into her mind at any given moment.

* * *

It took less than an hour to get from Milan to Rome and they arrived by lunchtime. Rafaele had arranged for one of his assistants to meet them at the airport with a car, and Bridie was whisked off in it to the Vatican, for the private tour Rafaele had arranged for her—much to her delight.

Another car was waiting for them, and Sam saw that Rafaele was going to drive them himself as he deftly secured Milo into the child’s car seat installed in the back. It made Sam think once again of how seamlessly Rafaele had incorporated Milo into his life and her heart ached to think of what might have happened if she had told Rafaele from the start about her pregnancy.

Sam got into the car and her heart thudded heavily when Rafaele settled his powerful body behind the wheel. So far this morning she’d managed to avoid saying anything more than yes or no.

He glanced at her now and she had to acknowledge him. She turned and his gaze on her was intent. Her face grew hot as lurid images from the previous night came back.

‘Okay?’ he asked, disconcerting her because there was a quality to his voice she hadn’t heard before. It sounded intimate. Concerned.

Sam was sure she’d imagined it so nodded quickly and looked back at Milo, who smiled, showing his small teeth. He was clutching a floppy teddy bear that Umberto had gifted him on their departure. Sam had been surprised to see what had looked suspiciously like tears in the old man’s eyes as they’d left, and also a lingering glance or two at Bridie, who had looked a bit more flustered than she usually did.

As Rafaele negotiated their way out of the private airfield Sam said, ‘Your father...was not what I expected.’

Rafaele’s mouth tightened, but he said, ‘No...I was surprised at how he welcomed Milo so instantaneously.’

‘It was nice,’ Sam admitted. ‘After all, he’s his only living grandparent now. My father was only alive to see Milo as a baby, so they didn’t really connect and Milo won’t remember him. Bridie is like a granny to Milo, but it’s different when it’s blood...’

Rafaele looked at her, his face inscrutable. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It is.’

For the first time Sam didn’t feel that Rafaele was getting in a dig. He was sounding almost as if he was realising the same thing himself.

‘We should...’ Sam blushed and stopped. ‘That is, I should make sure to try and let Milo see Umberto as much as possible. Do you think he’d come to England?’

Rafaele’s mouth quirked and he slid another glance to Sam. ‘I think he could be persuaded—especially if Bridie is going to be there.’

Sam smiled, rare lightness filling her chest. ‘You noticed it too, then?’

Rafaele looked at her and grew serious. He took her hand from her lap and held it. Immediately Sam’s body reacted. She tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let her. Memories of the bondage of last night came back. Arousing her. Disturbing her.

He said something crude in Italian and had to let Sam’s hand go to navigate some hairy traffic. When it was clear again he said, ‘Sam, we need to talk...’

‘No,’ Sam said fiercely, panicked at the thought of dissecting what had happened last night. She looked back at Milo, who was still happily playing with the toy, and then back to Rafaele. ‘There’s nothing to discuss.’

‘Yes, there is, Sam,’ he asserted, ‘whether you like it or not. Tonight we’ll go out for dinner.’

‘Rafaele—’

But he cut her off with a stern look.

Sam shut her mouth and sat back, feeling mutinous. But deep down she knew Rafaele was right. They had to talk, but she would make sure that it would centre around the future and what would happen with Milo and also on the fact that she didn’t want to sleep with him again. Liar, a voice mocked her. But she quashed it. Last night had almost broken her. She’d nearly revealed just how much Rafaele made her feel. And if they slept together again...she wouldn’t be able to keep it in.

‘I’ll drop you and Milo off at the apartment and show you around, and then I’m afraid I have to go into the office for a couple of hours.’

‘Okay,’ Sam said, too quickly, seizing on the fact that she’d have a few hours’ respite from Rafaele’s disturbing presence. Maybe then these memories would abate and give her some peace.

* * *

Rafaele’s Rome apartment was situated in a beautiful crumbling building just streets away from the famous Piazza Barberini, right in the heart of Rome’s bustling centre. A smiling housekeeper met them and conversed easily in English for Sam’s benefit. Rafaele showed Sam to her room, which was stunning, with parquet floors and delicate Rococo furnishings. There was another door which Milo was already reaching up to try and open, but the handle was too high.

He turned around, comically frustrated, and Rafaele scooped him up. ‘First you have to grow a little more, piccolino.’

Rafaele opened the door and walked through, leaving Sam to follow them. It was a room for Milo, and once again Rafaele had obviously given instructions for it to be decked out for a three-year-old. It was a kiddie’s paradise, and Milo was already jumping out of Rafaele’s arms to explore all the treasures.

Rafaele looked at Sam, as if expecting another diatribe, but she could only smile ruefully and shrug her shoulders as if to say, What can I do?

He came closer then, blocking out Milo behind him, and cupped her jaw with a hand, his thumb rubbing her lower lip, tugging at it. Instantly Sam craved his mouth there, kissing her hard, pressing his body against hers.

Heat flooded her and she had to pull away with an effort. She shook her head, warning him off.

He said silkily, ‘Tonight, Sam. We’ll talk then.’ He turned back to Milo. ‘Ciao, piccolino. I have to go to work now.’

Milo stopped what he was doing and for the first time since Rafaele had entered their lives, ran to him and gave him a kiss when Rafaele bent down to hug him.

‘Bye, Daddy.’

Milo’s easy and rapid acceptance of this whole situation made Sam’s chest ache, and that emotion threatened to bubble over. She’d never in a million years envisaged that it could be this easy...or this cataclysmic.

Rafaele left and a long, shuddering breath emerged from her mouth. In truth, she’d not known what to expect if she’d ever plucked up the courage to tell Rafaele about Milo, but it had ranged from complete uninterest to his storming into their lives to take over, demand to take control.

It had definitely veered towards the latter end of the scale, but also not. For one thing she hadn’t expected Rafaele still to want her. Or to admit that he had thought about her—that he’d never stopped wanting her.

Questions made her head hurt... So why had he let her go, then? If he’d wanted her...? She knew instinctively that she’d got too close. Was that why he’d pushed her away?

‘Mummy, play with me!’ came the imperious demand that sounded suspiciously like someone else.

Sam looked at her son and smiled. She got down on the floor beside him and devoted herself to the fantastical world of a bright, inquisitive three-year-old and welcomed the distraction.

* * *

That evening Bridie was still brimming over after her trip to St Peter’s and the Vatican. ‘I was the only one looking at the Sistine Chapel—the only one! And I think I saw the Pope walking in a private garden, but I couldn’t be sure... A lovely priest said Mass in Latin. Oh, Sam, it was gorgeous.’

Sam smiled indulgently as she went to pick up her bag. Rafaele had called to say he was sending a car to pick her up and he’d meet her directly at the restaurant.

Suddenly Bridie broke off from her raptures and said in a shocked voice, ‘You’re not going out like that?’

Sam looked down at her outfit of jeans and a plaid shirt. Trainers. Suddenly she felt gauche. Of course Rafaele would have probably booked somewhere extremely fancy and expensive. She should have realised.

Bridie was bustling off. ‘I know you packed that black dress, Sam. You have to change.’

Sam followed Bridie, knowing that she couldn’t leave without changing now. Bridie seemed determined to throw her and Rafaele together, clearly believing that a fairytale ending was in the making.

When Sam walked into the bedroom Bridie was shaking out the plain black dress that Sam had packed just in case.

‘Now, put this on and do your make-up. I’ll let you know when the car gets here.’

Milo came barrelling down the hallway. Bridie caught him and said, ‘Right, dinnertime for you, young man, and then an early night. We have to go home tomorrow so you need to be fresh.’

Sam quickly changed clothes and grimaced at her reflection, finally putting on some foundation to take away the pallor of her cheeks and then some mascara.

Home tomorrow. No wonder Rafaele wanted to talk now. He would have strong ideas about how they would proceed from here, she didn’t doubt it, and she felt a shiver of trepidation that he would want to change their routine utterly.

This was all an exciting holiday to Milo now, but it couldn’t continue like this. He needed routine and stability, and his life—their lives—were in England.

Sam heard Bridie call out, ‘Sam, the car is here!’

Taking a deep breath and slipping on the one pair of low-heeled shoes she’d brought, Sam went to meet her fate.

* * *

The restaurant was nothing like Sam had expected. The car had taken her across the river to the very hip and bustling Trastevere area and the building looked small and rustic, with tables outside despite the cool early February air. Golden light spilled onto the pavement and the smells coming out of the door were mouth-watering.

Sam went in and immediately her eye was drawn to the tall man who’d stood up. Her heart kicked betrayingly, as if she hadn’t seen him just hours ago. She felt ridiculously shy all of a sudden too—which was crazy, considering what had taken place in Rafaele’s bedroom last night.

By the time a solicitous waiter had taken her coat and she’d made her way through the small tables to Rafaele her face was burning.

He held a chair out for her and Sam felt self-conscious in her dress, hoping that Rafaele wouldn’t think she’d gone to any extra-special effort.

In a bid to deflect his attention she said quickly, ‘Bridie thought I should dress up a bit...’ She looked around the restaurant. ‘But I don’t think I needed to. I thought you might choose somewhere more upmarket.’

‘Disappointed?’ Rafaele’s voice sounded tight.

Sam looked at him quickly and felt her hair slide over her shoulder. ‘Oh, no! I love it. It’s just...I never expected you to like a place like this.’

Something relaxed in Rafaele’s face and seeing the faint stubbling on his jaw made Sam feel hot for a second as she imagined the abrasive rub of it between her legs. She pressed them together tightly under the table, disgusted with herself.

‘This is my favourite restaurant. They specialise in cuisine from the north and they’re world renowned. But they’ve remained humble and haven’t sold out...’

Just then a man with a huge barrel chest came over and greeted Rafaele effusively, before taking Sam’s hand in his and lifting it to his mouth to kiss. She couldn’t help smiling, even though she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. She caught ‘bellissima’ and blushed, which only made him gush some more.

Eventually he left, and Rafaele indicated after him with his head. ‘That’s Francisco—the manager... I’ve known him since my student days when I used to work here.’

Sam’s eyes widened as she recalled Rafaele telling her about his working three jobs to get through college. ‘You worked here?’

He nodded and broke some bread to dip into oil and balsamic vinegar. Sam took some bread too, a little blindsided at imagining a younger, driven Rafaele working here, with women drooling over him in his waiter’s uniform of white shirt and black trousers.

She admitted wryly, ‘That’s a little hard to believe.’

Rafaele arched a brow, mock affronted. ‘You don’t think I’m capable of taking orders and clearing tables?’

Sam felt a flutter near her heart and looked away, embarrassed. This was so reminiscent of before, when Rafaele had been intent on wooing her.

She looked at him. ‘You never...talked about this stuff before...’

Immediately his expression closed in and Sam wanted to reach out and touch him. Her hands curled to fists.

‘Before was different...’

Sam’s mouth twisted and old bitterness rose up. ‘I know. You didn’t want to be seen in public with me.’

Rafaele looked at her, his jaw tense. ‘It wasn’t like that—’

A waiter interrupted them then and asked for their orders.

Another couple entered the restaurant, hand in hand, and Sam felt a bittersweet yearning rise up within her. Damn Bridie for making her wish for something that would never exist. She’d been foolish enough to hope for it in the past. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

When the waiter had left with their menus Sam sat back and looked at Rafaele. ‘What was it like, then?’

For a second he looked so like Milo did when he was reluctant to do something that he took her breath away and she felt tenderness fill her.

‘I didn’t want to share you...that’s the truth. I wanted to lock you away in my palazzo. It used to drive me crazy that you worked all day surrounded by men who would look at you and want you.’

Sam had to bite back a strangled laugh and ignore a very treacherous swooping of her belly to hear the evident jealousy in Rafaele’s voice. ‘No, they didn’t!’

‘They did,’ Rafaele growled. ‘You didn’t notice, though—oblivious to your effect on them. I’d never met another woman like you, and certainly not one who could match any man around her for knowledge and expertise. One who managed to turn me on more than I’d thought was possible.’

The swooping sensation intensified and Sam felt increasingly out of her depth—as if the rules had changed and she wasn’t sure where she stood any more. Their starter arrived and Sam concentrated on it as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. She was in uncharted waters with Rafaele, and not sure where this conversation was headed.

After the starter was cleared Rafaele sat back and took his wineglass in his hand. Sam sensed the interest coming from a couple of women who had come in a few minutes before and, like last night, felt the rush of jealousy in her blood.

Slowly he said, ‘Sam...last night at the function...’

She tensed. She really didn’t want to talk about it. That acrid jealousy was all too recent and current.

‘I didn’t mean what I said...about you becoming my mistress. I know you’re not that kind of woman.’

Sam emitted a small laugh and felt a dart of hurt. ‘You can say that again.’

He leant forward and put his wine down, ‘Dio, Sam, stop putting words in my mouth. I meant that you’re worth more than any other woman who was there last night.’

She looked at him and her heart jumped into her throat. His eyes were intense on hers.

With imperfect timing the waiter appeared again with their food, and Sam looked at the fish she’d evidently ordered but couldn’t remember selecting now. You’re worth more than any other woman who was there.

She looked at Rafaele and whispered, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Eat...then we’ll talk.’

Sam felt as if she could no more eat than walk over hot coals, but she forced some of the succulent food down her throat and wished she could enjoy it more. She was sure it was delicious.

When the dishes were cleared away Sam felt very on edge. Rafaele regarded her steadily and her nerves felt as if they were being stretched taut.

Finally he clarified, ‘I should have thought more about it before taking you with me last night.’

He obviously saw something Sam was unaware of on her expressive face because he put up a hand and went on, ‘Not because I don’t want to be seen with you in public but because you were right. We need to know what...we are.’

Sam frowned. ‘What we are?’

Rafaele reached out and took her hand. Sam looked at her much smaller pale hand in his dark one and her insides liquefied.

‘Sam...I think we should get married.’

Sam raised her eyes to his. Shocked. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I said, I think we should get married.’

Sam was barely aware of Rafaele letting her hand go so that the waiter could put down coffee and dessert in front of them. She was stunned. Blindsided.

She shook her head, as if that might rearrange her brain cells into some order so that she could understand what Rafaele had just said. She had to be sure. ‘Did you just say that you think we should get married?’

He nodded, looking at her carefully, as if she was made of something explosive and volatile.

‘I... Why on earth would you say that?’

Now that the words were sinking in, a reaction was moving up through Sam’s body, making her skin prickle. Four years ago, in the time between finding out she was pregnant and seeing Rafaele again, she’d daydreamed of such a moment—except in her dream Rafaele had been on one knee before her, not sitting across a table looking as if he’d just commented on the weather.

The most galling thing of all was that she had grown up vowing never to marry, terrified of the way her father had effectively gone to pieces after losing her mother. But she’d forgotten all about that when she’d met Rafaele, weaving dreams and fantasies around him that had had no place in reality.

‘Why?’ she repeated again, stronger now. Almost angry. Definitely angry, in fact. ‘Do you think that I’m some kind of charity case and I’ll be only too delighted to say yes because you can take care of me and Milo?’

She couldn’t stop now.

‘Decorating a few bedrooms doesn’t a father and husband make, Rafaele. So I don’t know where you’re getting this notion from. It’s just another way to control us, isn’t it?’

His eyes flashed at her outburst. ‘No, Sam. Think about it. Why shouldn’t we get married? I’ve been thinking about buying a home in London. We could live there. Bridie could come too... We could look for a good school for Milo. A lot of my work for the foreseeable future will be in England, and my commutes to Europe shouldn’t take me away too much...’

He had it all figured out. Square Sam and Milo away in a convenient box and tick them off the list. On the one hand the image he presented tugged at a very deep and secret part of her—a fantasy she’d once had. She only had to think of last night and how close she’d come to baring herself utterly. She didn’t doubt that he hadn’t factored in the reality that she would want to be a wife for real.

Terrified at the strength of emotion she was feeling, Sam stood up and walked quickly out of the restaurant.

Rafaele watched Sam leave. Not the first time he’d provoked her into walking away from him. She’d looked horrified. Not the reaction a man wanted when he proposed. He grimaced and acknowledged that he hadn’t exactly proposed. But since when had Sam wanted hearts and flowers? Did she want that? What he was suggesting was eminently practical. Logical. Unfortunately Sam plus any attempt on his part to apply logic always ended up in disaster.

Rafaele stood up. His friend Francisco was waving him out of the restaurant to go after his lover. The old romantic. Rafaele just smiled tightly.

When he emerged into the street it was quiet. This time of year it was mainly locals. But in a few months the place would be warm and sultry and heaving. Sam was stalking away, and when he called her she only seemed to speed up.

Cursing softly, Rafaele followed her and caught up. ‘Your coat and bag, Sam.’

She stopped and turned around, arms crossed mutinously across her breasts. She reached out and grabbed for them, pulling the coat on, hitching her bag over her shoulder.

She looked at him and her eyes were huge in the gloom. ‘I don’t know why you would even suggest such a thing.’

Rafaele curbed his irritation. Did she really have to sound so repulsed at the idea?

He dug his hands into his pockets to stop himself from reaching for her—he didn’t know if he wanted to shake her right now or kiss her. Actually, that was a lie. He’d always want to kiss her, no matter what. That thought sent shards of panic into his bloodstream.

‘I happen to think it’s a very good idea. There are far more reasons why you should consider this than not. We have a history. We get on well. We have a child together... And there’s the physical chemistry. You can’t deny that, cara.’

‘The chemistry will burn out.’

That was said with a desperately hopeful edge that resonated within Rafaele.

He had to make her see what he’d realised last night—that marriage was the solution... To this tangled mess of emotions you don’t want to deal with, his conscience sneered. He ignored his conscience. Surely by marrying her he would no longer experience this wildness around her? This need to devour, consume? This loss of all reason? It would negate this completely alien need to possess her... It would publicly brand her as his, and maybe then he’d feel some equanimity again.

‘We have a child. Is that not enough of a reason? I want Milo to have my name. He is heir to a vast industry and fortune.’

‘No, Rafaele,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s not enough. I might have thought it would be at one time, but not any more. I want more for me and Milo. He deserves to have two parents who love each other.’

Rafaele responded with a sneering edge to his voice. ‘You and I both know that fairytale doesn’t exist. What we have is better than that, Sam. We can depend on each other. We respect each other.’

She lifted her chin. ‘How do I know you’ve forgiven me for keeping Milo from you? That you won’t use it in the future? That it won’t be a reason for resentment when you think about it?’

Rafaele slashed a hand through the air. ‘Sam, it’s not about that any more. I appreciate that you had your reasons, and I admit that I didn’t give you any indication to believe that I would welcome a child into my life. We can’t change the past, but we can make sure we go into the future right.’

For a long moment Sam just looked at him, and then she said, ‘I won’t marry you. Not just to make things nice and tidy. To make things easier for you. I want more...’ She shrugged her shoulder in a gesture of apology.

Rafaele felt the red mist of rage rising when he thought of some other man moving into that cosy house in the quiet suburbs, waking up next to Sam, having lazy early-morning sex...

‘Do you really think someone like your ex-lover can give you a happy-ever-after? When it doesn’t even exist?’

Sam started to back away. ‘I’m not talking about this any more, Rafaele. I don’t want to marry you. It’s plain and simple.’

Rafaele felt his chest tighten and an awful cold feeling seeped into his veins. ‘Well, then...’ He almost didn’t recognise his own voice. ‘It would appear that you’re giving me no option but to take the legal route to establish custody of my son.’

Sam stopped and crossed her arms. She whispered, ‘It doesn’t have to come to that, Rafaele. We can come to an arrangement.’

Rafaele felt as hard inside as granite. ‘I want my son, Sam, and I want him to have my name.’

‘I can’t fight you in a court, Rafaele. I don’t have those kinds of resources.’

Rafaele pushed down his conscience. He was full of darkness—a darkness that had clung to him all his life. He was standing in front of this woman and for one second, when she’d said she didn’t want to marry him, he’d been tempted to go down on one knee to convince her. It had been fleeting, but there. And it had been like a slap in the face. Had he learnt nothing?

Sam would not reduce him to that. No woman would. All that mattered was his son. He would not walk away from him and leave him to fend for himself as his own father had done with him.

Rafaele’s voice was as cold as he felt inside. ‘You’re the one who started this, Samantha.’

Sam’s arms tightened and Rafaele could see her knuckles turn white against the skin of her fingers.

‘You were stringing us along all this time, lulling me into a false sense of security. We’re leaving here tomorrow to go home. Do your worst—see if I care.’

Rafaele felt impervious to anything in that moment. He was numb. He saw Sam spot a taxi driving slowly alongside them. A very rare Rome taxi. She hailed it and jumped in. When she passed him, her profile was stony through the window. Rafaele felt something trying to break through, to pierce this numbness that had settled over him, but he pushed it down ruthlessly and tried to ignore the feeling that something very precious had just shattered into pieces.

CHAPTER TEN

THE FOLLOWING DAY Rafaele saw them off at the airport. They had been booked onto a scheduled flight home, albeit first class.

Milo was confused and kept saying, ‘Why is Daddy not coming too, Mummy?’

Sam repeated for the umpteenth time, praying that she wouldn’t start crying, ‘Because he has to work. We’ll see him again soon.’ Probably in a courtroom! she thought half hysterically.

She’d gone straight to her bedroom last night when she’d got in, and locked the door. Not that Rafaele would be banging it down to get in. Rafaele’s cold proposal had shown her that nothing had changed. He wanted Milo and he merely saw her as a way to get to him.

Once she’d said no to him he’d revealed his true colours. She felt sick to think that perhaps even the physical side of things had been a monumental act for him. Going through the motions so that he could use that as one more thing to bind them together.

Sam caught a worried glance from Bridie and forced a smile. She couldn’t take Bridie’s maternal inquisitiveness now. Better that she think nothing was wrong and everything was as per schedule—Rafaele had told them on the flight over that he would be staying on in Rome for work. Sam’s head hurt when she thought of what would happen in the immediate future, with regard to Rafaele staying in her house.

Rafaele had Milo in his arms and was saying in a low, husky voice that managed to pluck at Sam’s weak and treacherous heartstrings, ‘Ciao, piccolino. I’ll see you very soon.’

Milo threw his small chubby arms around Rafaele’s neck and Rafaele’s eyes met Sam’s over Milo’s shoulder. His green gaze was as cold as ice and it flayed Sam. Their flight was called and she put her hands out for Milo. After a long moment he handed him over.

Then Bridie was saying goodbye to Rafaele, and gushing again over her trip to the Vatican, and Sam was walking away towards the gate, feeling as if her heart was being ripped to pieces.

* * *

‘I thought I might stay on here for a while, if you don’t mind?’

Rafaele curbed the urge to snarl at his father. It had been a week since Sam and Milo had returned home and an aching chasm of emptiness seemed to have taken up residence in his chest.

‘Of course,’ he said curtly. ‘This is your home as much as mine.’

The old man smiled wryly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you it would have remained in ruins, owned by the bank.’

Rafaele said gruffly, ‘That’s not important. Everything is different now.’

‘Yes,’ Umberto said. ‘Milo is...a gift. And Sam is a good woman. She is a good woman for you, Rafaele. Real. Honest.’

Rafaele emitted a curt laugh and said, ‘Don’t speak of what you don’t know, Papa. She kept my son from me for nearly four years.’

Rafaele stood up from the dining table then and paced to the window. He’d only come back to Milan to check on the factory and now he felt rootless. He wanted to go back to England to see Milo but was reluctant because... Sam. She brought up so many things for him.

‘She must have had good reason to do so.’

Yes, she did. You gave her every reason to believe you couldn’t wait to see the back of her.

Rafaele’s conscience slapped him. It slapped him even harder when he thought of the resolve that had sat so heavily in his belly when he’d decided that he would have to let her go. Of her face when he’d confirmed that he didn’t want to see her any more. It was the same feeling he’d had in his chest the other night in the street.

His jaw was tight as he answered his father. ‘Once again, it’s none of your business.’

He heard his father’s chair move behind him but stayed looking out the window, feeling rigid. Feeling that old, old anger rise up even now.

‘I’m sorry, Rafaele...’

Rafaele tensed all over and turned around slowly. ‘Sorry for what?’

Umberto was looking at him, his dark gaze sad. ‘For everything. For being so stupid as to lose control of myself, for gambling away our fortune, for losing the business. For begging your mother not to leave in front of you... I know seeing that must have had an effect...’

Rafaele smiled and it was grim, mirthless. It hid the awful tightening in his chest, which made him feel as if he couldn’t draw enough breath in. ‘Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just let her go? Why did you have to beg like that?’

His father shrugged one shoulder. ‘Because I thought I loved her. But I didn’t really love her. I just didn’t know it then. I wanted her because she was beautiful and emotionally aloof. By then I’d lost it all. She was the one thing left and I felt that if she went too then I’d become vapour. Nothing.’

Rafaele recalled his words as if it was yesterday. ‘How can you leave me? If you leave I’m nothing. I have nothing.’

‘I wanted you, you know,’ he said now in a low voice. ‘I wanted to take you back when I got a job and was making a modest living. But your mother wouldn’t let me near you. I was only allowed to see you on those visits to Athens.’

Rafaele remembered those painfully tense and stilted meetings. His mother had been vitriolic in her disgust at the man who had once had a fortune and had lost it, compounding Rafaele’s sense of his father as a failure and compounding his own ambition to succeed at all costs.

‘Why are you telling me this now?’ Rafaele demanded, suddenly angry that his father was bringing this up.

‘Because I can see the fear in you, Rafaele. I know that it’s driven you to become successful, to build Falcone Industries from the ground up again. But you don’t have to be afraid. You’re not like me. You’re far stronger than I ever was. And you won’t do to Milo what I did to you. He will never see you weak and humiliated.’

Rafaele felt dizzy now, because he knew that he did have the capacity to repeat exactly what his father had done. He’d almost done it the other evening, albeit not in front of his son. Thank God.

Umberto wasn’t finished, though. ‘Don’t let fear ruin your chance of happiness, Rafaele. I lived with bitterness for a long time and it makes a cold bedfellow. You have proved yourself. You will never be destitute... Don’t be afraid to want more.’

Rafaele saw his father then, slightly hunched, his face lined with a sadness he’d never truly appreciated before.

‘I’m not afraid,’ he said, half defiantly. But he knew it was a lie. He realised he was terrified.

* * *

‘Come on, you, it’s time for bed.’

‘No. Don’t want to go to bed.’

Sam sighed. Milo had been acting up ever since they’d got home, and every single day he asked for Rafaele.

‘Where’s my daddy? When is he coming back in the car? Why can’t we have a car? Where is Grandpapa?’

Sam shared a look with Bridie, who was helping to clear up Milo’s things, just as the doorbell rang. They looked at each other and immediately Milo ran for the door, shrieking, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’

Sam went after him, her heart twisting. ‘Milo, it won’t be him...’

She pulled him back from the door and opened it, fully expecting to see just a neighbour or a door-to-door religious tout. But it wasn’t either of those.

‘Daddy!’ Milo’s small clear voice declared exactly who it was.

He was jumping up and down, endearingly still too shy to throw himself at the man who had only so recently come into his life. But when Rafaele bent down and opened his arms Milo ran straight into them and Sam’s heart squeezed so tight it hurt. She heard Bridie behind her exclaim and usher Rafaele in.

Sam could see that he was holding something in his hand, and when he put Milo down he handed it to him. It was a mechanical car.

Milo seized it with inelegant haste. ‘Wow!’

Sam chided him automatically through a fog of shock. ‘Milo, what do you say?’

‘Thank you!’

Sam was so tense she could crack. She avoided looking at Rafaele, dreading seeing that ice-cold green again.

Bridie was taking Milo by the hand and saying, ‘Come on, you promised you’d help me to find my spectacles in my flat earlier—’

Milo started protesting, and Sam felt like doing the same, but Bridie had lifted Milo up and was quelling his protests by promising him a DVD. And then they were gone before Sam could get a word out, and she was alone in the hall with Rafaele.

She still hadn’t really looked him in the eye as he reached out and pushed the front door closed. Finally she looked at him and her eyes widened. He looked terrible. Well, as terrible as a gorgeous Italian alpha male could look—which was not terrible at all. But Rafaele looked tired, drawn, pale. Older. Somehow diminished.

Immediately Sam was concerned and said, ‘What is it? Your father?’

Rafaele shook his head. ‘No, it’s not my father. He is fine. Asking after you all.’

‘Well...what is it, then? You look...’ As bad as I feel.

Rafaele smiled, but it was tight, and then it faded again and he’d never looked more serious.

Sam crossed her arms and started babbling out of nervousness. ‘Are you here ahead of your team of lawyers? Because if you are you could have saved yourself the bother, Rafaele...’

He shook his head and looked pained. For an awful moment Sam thought there might be something wrong with him and she felt weak.

‘No. I should never have said that to you. I’m sorry. Of course there won’t be a team of lawyers...’

Sam wanted to sit down. Relief swept through her like a cleansing balm. ‘But why did you say it then?’

Rafaele gave out a curt laugh. ‘Because you threaten me on so many levels and I thought I could control it...control you.’

His words sank in. You threaten me. And then, as if feeling constricted, Rafaele took off his battered leather jacket and draped it over the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing a light sweater and worn jeans and Sam could feel her blood heating. Already.

Suddenly Rafaele asked, ‘Do you mind if I have a drink?’

Sam shook her head and stood back. He walked into the front room and, bemused, she uncrossed her arms and followed him. Rafaele was at the sideboard, pouring himself a shot of her father’s whisky. He looked around and held up a glass in a question but she shook her head. She stood tensely inside the door. Half ready to flee.

Her voice felt rusty, unused. ‘Rafaele, why are you here?’

He turned around to face her. ‘Because we need to talk. Properly talk.’

Sam tensed even more, and as if sensing she was about to say something Rafaele put up a hand to quell her.

‘I told you that I was about Milo’s age when my mother left my father and took me with her?’ he began.

Sam nodded carefully.

Rafaele’s mouth became a thin line. ‘Unfortunately that day I was subjected to a vision of my father prostrating himself at my mother’s feet...begging her not to go. Crying, snivelling. I saw a broken man that day...and I believed for a long time—erroneously—that it had been my mother’s fault, that she had done it to him. When, of course, it was much more complicated than that... It didn’t help that he blamed her for most of his life, refusing to acknowledge his own part in his downfall.’

Sam took a breath. ‘Your father told me a bit...’

Even now her heart ached, because she thought of Milo’s pain and distress if he were to witness something like that. How would a scene like that affect a vulnerable, impressionable three-year-old?

But Rafaele didn’t seem to hear her. He was looking at the liquid in the glass, swirling it gently. ‘And then my stepfather... He was another piece of work. I’d gone from the example of a broken man who had lost everything to living with a man who had everything. What they had in common was my mother. They were both obsessed with her, wanted her above all. And she...?’ Rafaele smiled grimly. ‘She was aloof with them both, but she chose my stepfather over my father because he could provide her with the status and security she’d come to enjoy...’

Rafaele looked at her and his smile became bleak.

‘For a long time I never wanted to think about why she did those things...but since I’ve discovered my older brother and learned she abandoned him I have to realise that perhaps for her, security had become the thing she needed most—above warmth and emotion. Above anything. God knows what happened with her first husband to make her do such a drastic thing as to leave her son, leave his father...’

His mouth twisted.

‘From an early age I believed instinctively that women could ruin you even if you had money and success. I believed that to succeed I had to hold women at the same distance my mother had always done with the men around her. I wouldn’t ever be weak like my father or stepfather, and never lose control.’

Rafaele smiled again but it was impossibly bleak.

‘And then you came along and slid so deeply under my skin that I didn’t realise I’d lost all that precious control until it was too late.’

Sam’s heart was beating like a drum now. She felt light-headed. ‘I don’t... What are you saying, Rafaele?’

He looked at her and his gaze seemed to bore into her. ‘I still want us to get married, Sam...’

Something cold settled into her belly. He wasn’t going to let this go. He’d basically just told her how he viewed the women in his life and that only the fact that she’d proved herself to be completely different had merited her this place in his life. She backed away to the door and saw him put down his glass and frown...

‘Sam?’

Sam walked out through the door and went to the front door and opened it. Rafaele appeared in the hallway, still frowning.

She shook her head. ‘Rafaele, I’m really sorry that you had to see so much at a young age, and that it skewed your views of women... And I can see how Milo is at an age where he must have pushed your buttons... But I can’t marry you.’

She forced herself to keep looking at him even though she felt as if a knife was lacerating her insides. ‘I want more, Rafaele... Despite what I told you about my views on marriage I’ve always secretly hoped I’d meet someone and fall in love. I thought I could protect myself too, but I can’t...none of us can.’

* * *

Rafaele saw Sam backlit in her porch and even in such a domestic banal setting she’d never looked more beautiful. His heart splintered apart into pieces and he knew that he had no choice now but to step out and into the chasm of nothing—and possibly everything.

He walked into the middle of the hall and looked at Sam. And then very deliberately he got down on his knees in front of her. For a terrifying moment Rafaele felt the surge of the past threatening to rise up and strangle him, heard voices about to hound him, tell him he was no better than his father... But it didn’t happen. What he did feel was a heady feeling of peace for the first time in a long time.

Sam was looking at him, horrified. She quickly shut the door again and leant against it. ‘Rafaele, get up... What are you doing?’

Somehow Rafaele found the ability to speak. ‘This has been my nightmare scenario for so long, Sam, and I’m tired of it. The truth is that I want more too. I want it all. And I am willing to beg for it—just like my father. Except I know that this is different. I’m not him.’

Sam shook her head and Rafaele could see her eyes grow suspiciously bright.

Her voice sounded thick. ‘You don’t have to do this just to prove a point. Get up, Rafaele...’

He shook his head. The view from down here wasn’t bad at all, Rafaele realised. Prostrating himself in front of the woman he loved was something he’d do over and over again if he had to.

Almost gently now, he said, ‘Sam...don’t you realise it yet?’

She shook her head faintly. ‘Realise what?’

Rafaele took a deep breath. ‘That I am so madly and deeply and crazily in love with you that I’ve made a complete mess of everything...’

He looked down for a moment and then back up, steeling himself.

‘I know you don’t feel the same way...how could you when I’ve treated you so badly in the past? But... I truly hope that we might have enough to work with...and in time you might feel something. We have Milo...’

Sam just looked at him for a long moment, and then she whispered, ‘Did you just say you love me?’

Rafaele nodded, sensing her shock, feeling icicles of pain start to settle around his heart despite his brave words. Humiliation started to make his skin prickle. The demons weren’t so far away after all.

Sam closed her eyes and he heard her long, shuddering breath. When she opened them again they overflowed with tears.

‘Sam...’ he said hoarsely, and went to stand up.

But before he could move she’d launched herself at him and they landed in a tangle of limbs on the floor. The breath was knocked out of Rafaele’s chest for a second, and then he saw Sam’s face above his own, felt her tears splash onto his cheeks. And he couldn’t resist pulling her head down so that he could kiss her. Even in the midst of not knowing, he had to touch her.

The kiss was desperate and salty and wet, and then Sam drew back, breathing hard. She put her hands around his face and said again, ‘You love me?’

She was lying on his body, they touched at every point, and Rafaele could feel himself stirring to life. He nodded. ‘Yes. I love you, Sam. I want you in my life for ever...you and Milo. I want us to be a family. I can’t live without you. When you left last week...I died inside.’

A sob escaped Sam’s mouth and Rafaele felt her chest heaving against his.

Finally she managed to get out, ‘I love you, Rafaele. I fell for you four years ago, and when you let me go I thought I’d die...but then there was Milo...and I thought I’d stopped loving you and started hating you. But I hadn’t. I’ve always loved you and I will always love you.’

Rafaele sat up and Sam spread her legs around his hips so they faced each other. She sat in the cradle of his lap, where his erection was distractingly full, but he forced himself to look at her, sinking willingly into those grey depths and wondering how on earth he’d not let himself do this before now. It was the easiest thing.

His chest expanded as her words sank in and he felt a very fledgling burgeoning sense of trust take root within him and hold...

‘I fell for you too...but it was so terrifying that I ran. You got too close, Sam—closer than I’d ever let anyone get—and when I realised it I couldn’t handle it. Like a coward I left you alone to deal with your trauma...’

Sam smoothed his jaw with a tender hand. She looked at him, her eyes wounded. ‘I punished you...in the most heinous way. You were right. I was hurt and upset, heartbroken that you didn’t want me... I kept Milo from you, and you didn’t deserve that.’

Rafaele tucked some hair behind Sam’s ear. He was very serious. ‘I understand why you did it. You sensed my reluctance, Sam, my need to escape. But it wasn’t from you, it was from myself... You never really left me. You haunted me.’

Sam’s eyes flashed. ‘Not enough to stop you going to bed with another woman almost immediately.’

Rafaele struggled to comprehend, and then he recalled her accusing him of being with another woman a week after he’d left. He shook his head and smiled wryly, knowing that she was going to demand every inch of him for the rest of his life and not wanting it any other way.

‘Would it help you to know that, despite appearances to the contrary I didn’t sleep with anyone for a year after you left?’ He grimaced. ‘I couldn’t...perform.’

Sam’s eyes widened with obvious feminine satisfaction. ‘You were impotent?’

Rafaele scowled. ‘I’m not impotent.’

Sam wriggled on his lap, feeling for herself just how potent he was. ‘You’re not impotent with me.’

Rafaele groaned softly, his hands touching her face, thumb pressing her lower lip. ‘I could never be impotent with you. I just have to look at you and I’m turned on.’

Sounding serious, Sam said, ‘Me too...’

‘Sam...that night when I tied you up...’

A dark flush highlighted those cheekbones and something inside Sam melted anew at seeing him so unlike his usual confident, cocky self. He was avoiding her eye and she tipped his chin towards her.

‘I liked it...’ she whispered, blushing.

‘But you cried afterwards...’

Her eyes softened. ‘Because I had just realised how much I still loved you. I felt so vulnerable, and I thought you were still punishing me for Milo.’

Rafaele groaned. ‘I was angry, but it was because you were under my skin again and I didn’t want you there. You brought up too many feelings, made me feel out of control...so I needed to control you.’

A wicked glint came into Sam’s eyes. ‘We can call it quits if you let me tie you up next time.’

Sam felt Rafaele’s body jerk underneath hers.

He quirked a brow at her. ‘Bridie has Milo...’

Needing no further encouragement, Sam scrambled inelegantly off Rafaele’s lap and stood up. She looked down at him and held out a hand. Rafaele felt his heart squeeze so much that it hurt. The symbolism of the moment was huge as he put his hand in Sam’s to let her help him up, but just before he came up all the way, he stopped on one knee.

‘Wait...there’s one more thing.’

Rafaele’s heart beat fast at the way Sam bit her lip. He gripped her hand like a lifeline and with his other hand pulled out the small but precious cargo from his pocket.

He held up the vintage diamond ring and looked at her. ‘Samantha, will you marry me? Because I love you more than life itself—you and Milo.’

She looked at the ring and her eyes glittered again with the onset of fresh tears. ‘It’s beautiful...’

He could see the final struggle in her face, the fear of believing that this was real...but then she smiled and it bathed him in a warmth he’d never known before.

‘Yes, I’ll marry you, Rafaele.’

She held out her hand and it trembled.

With a none too steady hand himself, Rafaele pushed the sparkling ring onto her finger. And then, with his other hand still in her firm grip, she pulled him up out of the painful past and into a brighter future.

A month later...

Sam took a deep breath and started her walk down the aisle of the small church in the grounds of Rafaele’s Milan palazzo. Umberto was giving her away and he wasn’t even using his cane. He was walking taller and stronger almost every day...especially on the days when Bridie was around...

Milo walked ahead of them in a suit, throwing rose petals with chaotic random abandon. He’d look back every now and then with a huge smile and Sam would have to prompt him to keep going. The small church was filled with people, but Sam was oblivious. She saw only the tall figure of the man waiting for her at the top of the aisle. And then he turned around, as if unable to help himself, and he smiled. Sam smiled back.

Umberto handed her over with due deference and then Rafaele was claiming her, pulling her into him. The priest’s words washed over and through Sam. She would never have said she was a religious person, but something in the ritual seemed to complete the process she and Rafaele had embarked on a month before, cleansing away any vague residual painful pieces of the past.

There was only now and the future, and the heavy weight of the wedding band on her finger, and Rafaele bending to kiss her with such a look of reverence on his face that she could have wept. In fact she did weep, and he wiped her tears away with his fingers.

Later, as they danced at their reception, which had been set up in a marquee in the grounds of the palazzo, Rafaele said, ‘Have I told you yet how beautiful you look?’

Sam smiled. ‘About a hundred times, but I don’t mind.’

And Sam felt beautiful, truly, for the first time in her life. Even though her dress was simple and her hair hadn’t been styled by a professional and she’d done her own make-up. She felt confident, and sexy, and most importantly loved.

Milo appeared at their feet and Rafaele lifted him up and that was how they finished their wedding dance—in a circle of love, the three of them.

Over in a corner of the marquee stood Alexio Christakos, Rafaele’s half-brother. He’d been best man, done his duty and given his speech, made everyone laugh. Made the women giggle and look at him covetously. Even now they surrounded him, waiting for their moment to strike, for the slightest gesture of encouragement.

Alexio grimaced. He was starting to feel claustrophobic. Hell. Who was he kidding? He’d been feeling claustrophobic on his brother’s behalf ever since Rafaele had told him that he was getting married and had a son!

He shook his head again and grimaced when he saw Rafaele kiss his bride for the umpteenth time. Alexio looked at her. He guessed she was pretty enough, in a subtle and unassuming way, but he couldn’t see how she made Rafaele turn almost feral whenever another man came close. Even Alexio had been sent none too subtle hands-off signals from the moment he’d met her.

Alexio wondered how it was possible that Rafaele couldn’t see that she must be marrying him only for his security and wealth. Had he become so duped by good sex that he’d forgotten one of the most important lessons they’d learnt from their dear departed mother? That a woman’s main aim in life was to feather her nest and seek the security of a rich man?

Alexio mentally saluted his brother and wished him well. He told himself he’d try not to say I told you so when it all fell apart. Mind you, he had to concede the kid was cute. His nephew. He’d actually had quite an entertaining time with him earlier, when he’d looked after him for a bit between the wedding and the reception. Still... He shuddered lightly. He had no intention of embarking on that path any time soon, if ever...

Alexio stopped focusing on his brother and his new wife and son for a minute and took in the crowd around him. From nearby, a gorgeous brunette caught his eye. She was tall and lissom, with curves in all the right places. She looked at him with sexy confidence and smiled the smile of a practised seductress.

Alexio felt his body stir, his blood move southwards. It wasn’t the most compelling spark of attraction he’d ever felt...but when was the last time that had happened...? Alexio ignored that voice and smiled back. When he saw the light of triumph in her eyes at catching the attention of the most eligible bachelor in the room, Alexio forced down the feeling of emptiness inside him and moved towards her.

* * * * *

Read on for an extract from SECURING THE GREEK’S LEGACY by Julia James.

CHAPTER ONE

ANATOLE TELONIDIS STARED bleakly across the large, expensively furnished lounge of the penthouse apartment in the most fashionable part of Athens. It was still as untidy as it had been when his young cousin Marcos Petranakos had last walked out of it a few short nightmare weeks ago, straight to his death.

When their mutual grandfather, Timon Petranakos, had phoned his older grandson he had been distraught. ‘Anatole, he’s dead! Marcos, my beloved Marcos—he’s dead!’ the old man had cried out.

Smashed to pieces at twenty-five, driving far too fast in the lethal supercar that had been Timon’s own present to Marcos, given in the wake of their grandfather’s recent diagnosis with cancer.

The death of his favourite grandson, whom he had spoiled lavishly since Marcos had lost his parents as a teenager, had been a devastating blow. Timon had since refused all treatment for his cancer, longing now only for his own death.

Anatole could understand his grandfather’s devastation, his mind-numbing grief. But the fallout from Marcos’s tragic death would affect more lives than their own family’s. With no direct heir now to the vast Petranakos Corporation, the company would pass to an obscure Petranakos relative whose business inexperience would surely, in these parlous economic times, lead inevitably to the company’s collapse and the loss of thousands of jobs, adding to the country’s sky-high unemployment levels.

Though Anatole had his own late father’s business empire to run—which he did with tireless efficiency and a pressing sense of responsibility—he knew that, had Marcos lived, he could have instilled a similar sense of responsibility into his hedonistic young cousin, guiding him effectively. But the new heir—middle-aged, self-important and conceited—was resistant to any such guidance.

Frustration with the fate awaiting the Petranakos Corporation—and its hapless workforce—Anatole started on the grim process of sorting out his young cousin’s possessions. Bleakly, he began his sombre task.

Paperwork was the first essential. As he located Marcos’s desk and set about methodically sorting out its jumbled contents a familiar ripple of irritation went through him. Marcos had been the least organised person he’d known—receipts, bills and personal correspondence were all muddled up, demonstrating just how uninterested Marcos had been in anything other than having a good time. Fast cars, high living and an endless procession of highly temporary females had been his favoured lifestyle. Unlike Anatole himself. Running the Telonidis businesses kept him too occupied for anything more than occasional relationships, usually with busy, high-powered businesswomen he worked with in the world of finance.

Frustration bit at Anatole.

If only Marcos had married! Then there might have been a son to inherit from Timon! I’d have kept the Petranakos Corporation safe for him until the child grew up!

But to the fun-seeking Marcos marriage would have been anathema! Girls had been for casual relationships only. There’d be time later for getting married, he’d always said.

But there was to be no later...

Grim-faced, his honed features starkly etched, Anatole went on sorting through the papers in his cousin’s desk. Official in one pile, personal in another. The latter pile was not large—not in this age of texting and the internet—but one drawer revealed a batch of three or four envelopes addressed to Marcos in cursive Roman script with a London postmark and UK stamps. Only one had been opened.

Anatole frowned. The lilac-coloured envelopes and the large, looping script suggested a female writer. Though Marcos’s dramatic death had been splashed across the Greek tabloids, a British girlfriend might not have heard of it. It might be necessary, Anatole thought reluctantly, for him to let her know of Marcos’s fate. That said, he realised as he glanced at the envelopes’ postmarks, none of these was dated more recently than nine months ago. Whoever she was, the affair—or whatever it had been—was clearly long over.

With a swift impatience to be done with the whole grim business of sorting through Marcos’s personal effects Anatole took the folded single piece of paper from the one envelope that was open. He flicked open the note and started to read the English writing.

And as he did he froze completely...

* * *

Lyn made her way out of the lecture hall and sighed. It was no good, she would far rather be studying history! But accountancy would enable her to earn a decent living in the future and that was essential—especially if she were to persuade the authorities that she was capable of raising a child on her own: her beloved Georgy. But for now, while she was still waiting so anxiously to learn if she could adopt him, she was only allowed to be his foster carer. She knew the welfare authorities would prefer for him to be adopted by one of the many childless couples anxious to adopt a healthy baby, but Lyn was determined that no one would take Georgy from her! No one!

It didn’t matter how much of a struggle it was to keep at her studies while looking after a baby as well, especially with money so short—she would manage somehow! A familiar regret swept over her: if only she’d gone to college sooner and already had her qualifications. But she hadn’t been able to go straight from school because she’d had to stay home and look after Lindy. She hadn’t been able to leave her young teenage sister to the indifference and neglect which was all her mother had offered. But when Lindy had left school herself and gone to London, to live with a girlfriend and get a job, her mother had been taken ill, her lungs and liver finally giving in after decades of abuse from smoking and alcohol, and there had been no one else to look after her except Lyn.

And now there was Georgy...

‘Lyn Brandon?’

It was one of the university’s admin staff.

‘Someone’s asking to see you,’ the woman said briskly, and pointed to one of the offices across the corridor.

Frowning, Lyn walked inside.

And stopped dead.

Standing by the window, silhouetted by the fading light, was an imposing, dark-suited figure. Tall, wearing a black cashmere overcoat with a black cashmere scarf hooked around the strong column of his neck, the man had a natural Mediterranean tan that, along with his raven-dark hair, instantly told Lyn that he was not English. Just as the planes and features of his face told her that he was jaw-droppingly good-looking.

It was a face, though, that was staring at her with a mouth set in a tight line—as though he were seeing someone he had not expected. A frown creased his brow.

‘Miss Brandon?’ He said her name, his voice accented, as if he did not quite believe it.

Dark eyes flicked over her and Lyn felt two spots of colour mount in her cheeks. Immediately she became conscious of the way her hair was caught back in a stringy ponytail. She had not a scrap of make-up on, and her clothes were serviceable rather than fashionable.

Then suddenly, overriding that painful consciousness, there came a jolt of realisation as to just who this clearly foreign man must be—could only be...

The Mediterranean looks, the expensive clothes, the sleekly groomed looks, the whole aura of wealth about him... She felt her stomach constrict, filling with instinctive fear.

Across the narrow room Anatole caught the flash of alarm and wondered at it, but not nearly as much as he was wondering whether he had, after all, really tracked down the woman he’d been so urgently seeking ever since reading that letter in Marcos’s apartment—the woman who, so his investigators had discovered, had most definitely given birth to a baby boy...

Is he Marcos’s son? The question was burning in hope. Because if Marcos had had a son then it changed everything. Everything!

If, by a miracle, Marcos had a son, then Anatole had to find him and bring him home to Greece, so that Timon, who was fading with every passing day, could find instead a last blessing from the cruel fate that had taken so much from him.

And it was not just for his grandfather that a son of Marcos’s would be a blessing, either, Anatole knew. This would persuade Timon to change his will, to acknowledge that his beloved Marcos had had a son to whom he could now leave the Petranakos Corporation. Infant though he was, Anatole would guard the child’s inheritance, keep it safe and prosperous for him—and save the livelihoods of all its employees.

Tracking down the author of the letters had led him first to a council house in the south of the country and then, through information given to his detectives by neighbours, to this northern college, where he’d been told the young woman he was so urgently seeking—Linda Brandon—had recently moved.

But as his eyes rested now on the woman he was addressing he felt doubt fill him. This was the woman he’d trekked to this grim, rainswept northern town to find in a race against time for his stricken grandfather? Marcos wouldn’t even have looked twice at her—let alone taken her to his bed!

‘Are you Miss Brandon?’ he asked, his voice sharper now.

He saw her swallow and nod jerkily. Saw, too, that her entire body had tensed.

‘I am Anatole Telonidis,’ he announced. His voice sounded clipped, but his mission was a painful one—and an urgent one. ‘I am here on behalf of my cousin, Marcos Petranakos, with whom I believe you are...’ he sought the right phrase ‘...acquainted.’

Even as he said it his eyes flicked over her again doubtfully. Even putting aside her unprepossessing appearance, Marcos’s taste had been for curvy blondes—not thin brunettes. But her reaction told him that she must indeed be the person he was looking for so urgently—she had instantly recognised Marcos’s name.

And not favourably...

Her expression had changed. Hardened. ‘So he couldn’t even be bothered to come himself!’ she retorted scornfully.

If she’d sought to hit home with her accusation she’d failed. The man who’d declared himself Marcos Petranakos’s cousin stilled. In the dark eyes a flash of deep emotion showed and Lyn saw his face stiffen.

‘The situation is not as you suppose,’ he said.

It was as if, she realised, he was picking his words carefully.

He paused a moment, as if steeling himself to speak, then said, ‘I must talk to you. But the matter is...difficult.’

Lyn shook her head violently. She could feel the adrenaline running through her body. ‘No, it’s not difficult at all!’ she retorted. ‘Whatever message you’ve been sent to deliver by your cousin, you needn’t bother! Georgy—his son!—is fine without him. Absolutely fine!’

She saw emotion flash in his dark eyes again, saw the shadow behind it. Out of nowhere a chill went through her.

‘There is something I must tell you,’ Anatole Telonidis was saying. His voice was grim, and bleak, as if he were forcing the words out.

Lyn’s hands clenched. ‘There is nothing you can say that I care about—!’ she began.

But his deep, sombre voice cut right through hers. ‘My cousin is dead.’

There was silence. Complete silence. Wordlessly, Anatole cursed himself for his blunt outburst. But it had been impossible to hear her hostility, her scorn, when Marcos lay dead in his grave...

‘Dead?’ Lyn’s voice was hollow with shock.

‘I’m sorry. I should not have told you so brutally,’ Anatole said stiffly.

She was still staring at him. ‘Marcos Petranakos is dead?’ Her voice was thin—disbelieving.

‘It was a car crash. Two months ago. It has taken time to track you down...’ His words were staccato, sombre.

Lyn swayed as if she might pass out. Instantly Anatole was there, catching her arm, staying her. She stepped back, steadying herself, and he released her. Absently she noticed with complete irrelevance how strong his grasp had been. How overpowering his momentary closeness.

‘He’s dead?’ she said again, her voice hollow. Emotion twisted in her throat. Georgy’s father was dead...

‘Please,’ Anatole Telonidis was saying, ‘you need to sit down. I am sorry this is such a shock to you. I know,’ he went on, picking his words carefully again, she could tell, his expression guarded, ‘just how...deep...you felt the relationship was between yourself and him, but—’

A noise came from her. He stopped. She was staring at him, but the expression in her face was different now, Anatole registered. It wasn’t shock at hearing about Marcos’s tragic death. It wasn’t even anger—the understandable anger, painful though it was for him to face it—that she’d expressed about the man who had got her pregnant and then totally ignored her ever since.

‘Between him and me?’ she echoed. She shook her head a moment, as if clearing it.

‘Yes,’ Anatole pursued. ‘I know from your letters—which, forgive me, I have read—that you felt a strong...attachment to my cousin. That you were expressing your longing to...’ He hesitated, recalling vividly the hopelessly optimistic expectations with which she had surrounded her announcement that she was carrying Marcos’s baby. ‘Your longing to make a family together, but—’

He got no further.

‘I’m not Georgy’s mother,’ Lyn announced.

And in her bleak voice were a thousand unshed tears.

For a moment Anatole thought he had not heard correctly. Or had misunderstood what she had said in English. Then his eyes levelled on hers and he realised he had understood her exactly.

‘What?’ His exclamation was like a bullet. A blackening frown sliced down over his face. ‘You said you were Linda Brandon!’ he threw at her accusingly.

His thoughts were in turmoil. What the hell was going on? He could make no sense of it! He could see her shaking her head—a jerky gesture. Then she spoke, her voice strained.

‘I’m...I’m Lynette Brandon,’ Anatole heard her say.

He saw her take a rasping breath, making herself speak. Her face was still white with shock with what he’d told her about Marcos.

‘Lindy...Linda—’ she gave her sister’s full name before stopping abruptly, her voice cutting off. Then she blinked.

Anatole could see the shimmer of tears clearly now.

‘Linda was my sister,’ she finished, her voice no more than a husk.

He heard the past tense—felt the slow, heavy pulse of dark realisation go through him. Heard her thin, shaky voice continuing, telling him what was so unbearably painful for her to say.

Her face was breaking up.

‘She died,’ she whispered. ‘My sister Linda. Georgy’s mother. She died giving birth. Eclampsia. It’s not supposed to happen any more. But it did...it did...’

Her voice was broken.

She lifted her eyes to Anatole across a divide that was like a yawning chasm—a chasm that had claimed two young lives.

Her mind reeled as she took in the enormity of the truth they had both revealed to each other. The unbearable tragedy of it.

Both Georgy’s parents were dead!

She had thrown at Anatole Telonidis the fact that his uncaring, irresponsible cousin wasn’t wanted or needed by his son, but to hear that he had suffered the same dreadful fate as her sister was unbearable. As unbearable as losing her sister had been. Tears stung in her eyes and his voice came from very far away.

‘You should sit down,’ said Anatole Telonidis.

He guided her to a chair and she sat on it nervelessly. His own mind was still reeling, still trying to come to grips with what he had just learnt. The double tragedy surrounding Marcos’s baby son.

Where was he? Where was Marcos’s son?

That was the question he had to have answered now! A cold fear went through him. Newborn babies were in high demand for adoption by childless couples, and a fatherless baby whose mother had died in childbirth might have been just such a child...

Had he been adopted already? The question seared in Anatole’s head. If so, then he would have a nightmare of a search to track him down—even if he were allowed to by the authorities. And if he had already been adopted then would his adoptive parents be likely to let him go? Would the authorities be likely to let him demand—plead!—that they accede to his need for Timon to know that he had an heir after all?

He stood looking down at the sister of the woman who had borne his cousin a child and died in the process. He swallowed.

‘Where is my cousin’s son?’ he asked. He tried not to sound brusque, demanding, but he had to know. He had to know!

Her chin lifted, her eyes flashing to his.

‘He’s with me!’ came the answer. Vehement, passionate.

Abstractedly Anatole found himself registering that when this drab dab of a female spoke passionately her nondescript features suddenly sharpened into life, giving her a vividness that was not drab at all. Then the sense of her words hit him.

‘With you?’

She took a ragged breath, her fingers clutching the side of the chair. ‘Yes! With me! And he’s staying with me! That’s all you need to know!’

She leapt to her feet, fear and panic impelling her. Too much had happened—shock after shock—and she couldn’t cope with it, couldn’t take it in.

Anatole stepped towards her, urgency in his voice. ‘Miss Brandon, we have to talk—discuss—’

‘No! There’s nothing to discuss! Nothing!’

And then, before his frustrated gaze, she rushed from the room.

Lyn fled. Her mind was in turmoil. Though she managed to make her way into her next lecture she was incapable of concentrating. Only one single emotion was uppermost.

Georgy is mine! Mine, mine, mine!

Lindy had given the baby to her with her dying breath and she would never, never betray that! Never!

Grief clutched at Lyn again.

‘Look after Georgy—’

They had been Lindy’s final words before the darkness had closed over her fevered, stricken brain and she had ebbed from life.

And I will! I will look after him all my life—all his life—and I will never let any harm come to him, never abandon him or give up him!

‘Just you and me, Georgy!’ she whispered later as, morning lectures finally over, she collected him from the college crèche and made her way to the bus stop and back home for the afternoon.

But as she clambered on board the bus, stashing the folding buggy one-handed as she held Georgy in the other, she completely failed to see an anonymous black car pull out into the road behind the bus. Following it.

Two hours later Anatole stood in front of the block of flats his investigator had informed him was Lynette Brandon’s place of accommodation and stared bleakly at it. It was not an attractive building, being of ugly sixties design, with stained concrete and peeling paint. The whole area was just as dreary—no place for Timon Petranakos’s great-grandson to be brought up!

Resolve steeling, he rang the doorbell.

Copyright © 2014 by Julia James

The Sheikh’s Last Seduction

Jennie Lucas

“Thank you for hiring me,” Irene said softly.

As the bodyguards trailed past him to the rear cabin Sharif frowned in surprise. “Thank you for solving my problem.”

A flight attendant served some sparkling water on a silver tray. Taking a sip of the cool water, Irene looked at her new employer.

Sharif looked handsome and powerful in his stark white robes, sitting on a white leather sofa on the other side of the spacious cabin.

A low laugh escaped her lips. “No one would ever have guessed I’d someday be companion to a princess of Makhtar. Are you still sure about this?”

He set down his glass. His handsome face was inscrutable as he slowly looked her over. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Irene hesitated, feeling self-conscious. “I told you I have a bad habit of talking back to employers. Knowing the kind of woman I am, Your Highness, are you sure you really want me as your employee?”

“I’m sure, Miss Taylor. There can be no doubt.” His black eyes met hers as he said huskily, “I want you.”

JENNIE LUCAS grew up dreaming about faraway lands. At fifteen, hungry for experience beyond the borders of her small Idaho city, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and travelled around the US, supporting herself with jobs as diverse as gas station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant.

At twenty-two she met the man who would be her husband. After their marriage she graduated from Kent State with a degree in English. Seven years after she started writing she got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.

Since then life has been hectic, with a new writing career, a sexy husband and two small children, but she’s having a wonderful (albeit sleepless) time. She loves immersing herself in dramatic, glamorous, passionate stories. Maybe she can’t physically travel to Morocco or Spain right now, but for a few hours a day, while her children are sleeping, she can be there in her books.

Jennie loves to hear from her readers. You can visit her website at www.jennielucas.com, or drop her a note at jennie@jennielucas.com

To Pete,

who said, “OF COURSE you should go to Dubai!”

Thanks, honey, for giving me the world, every single day.

CHAPTER ONE

HE KNEW HE wanted her from the moment he saw her.

Sharif bin Nazih al-Aktoum, the Emir of Makhtar, had been laughing at the joke of a friend when he turned and saw a woman, standing alone in the Italian moonlight, on the shores of Lake Como.

She stood past a thicket of trees farther down the hill. Her white dress was translucent in the silvery glow of light, and the bare trees of November left latticed shadows like dark lace against her skin. Her black hair cascaded down her shoulders, tumbling, lustrous as onyx. Her eyes were closed in her heart-stoppingly lovely face as her sensual lips whispered unheard words.

Sharif’s laughter fled. Was she a ghost? A dream?

Just some wedding guest, he told himself harshly. Nothing special. A trick of moonlight.

And yet...

He stared at her.

Moments before, he’d been chuckling at the poor bridegroom, who’d recently been a famous playboy but had made the mistake of getting his housekeeper pregnant. The new bride was very beautiful, yes, he conceded, and seemed loyal and kind. But still, Sharif would never get caught that way. Not until the bitter end.

Not until—

Sharif pushed the thought away, jerking his chin in the direction of the lakeshore. “Who is that?”

“Who?”

“The woman. By the lake.”

His friend, the Duque de Alzacar, craned his head right and left. “I don’t see anyone.”

Between them and the unknown woman well-dressed wedding guests were milling about the terraces, drinking champagne and enjoying the coolness of the late-autumn night. The intimate evening wedding, held in a medieval chapel on an Italian tycoon’s estate, had just ended, and they were waiting for the dinner reception to begin. But surely his friend could see the angel by the lake. “Are you blind?” Sharif said impatiently.

“Describe her to me.”

Sharif parted his lips to do just that, then thought better of it. The Spanish duke was the most reckless, irredeemable womanizer he knew—which reminded him of the old saying about the pot and the kettle. But looking back at the soft moonlight on the houri by the lake, Sharif felt the sudden strange need to protect her, even from another man’s glance. She seemed from another world. Sensual, magical—pure...

“Never mind,” he said abruptly. “Excuse me.” He started walking down the path toward the shore. He heard a low snort of laughter behind him.

“Take care you don’t get bewitched by the moonlight, my friend,” the Duque de Alzacar called. “I’d hate to be soon attending one of these events for you...”

Sharif ignored him. Holding up a hand to tell his bodyguards to remain behind, in the shadows of the villa, he went down to the thicket of trees. Where was she? Had he lost her?

Had he dreamed her?

He saw a flash of movement and exhaled. She had moved farther down the shore. He followed silently in his white robes, stalking her like one of the lions that had existed in his Makhtari homeland centuries before.

She moved so sensually. He heard her softly whispered voice. Sharif’s eyes narrowed to see whom she was speaking with, but there was no one. Half expecting her to disappear, he came out into the clearing beside her, feeling suddenly clumsy as he stepped on a branch.

At the sound, the woman whirled to face him. They stared at each other.

She wasn’t dressed in white, as he’d first thought, but in a pale pink dress, the color of spring’s first blush. Her skin was creamy and smooth, plump cheeks the colour of faint roses, standing out starkly against her long black hair. She was barely over twenty, he guessed, and of middle height. Her features were too strong to be conventionally beautiful, with her sharp nose, slash of dark eyebrows and the determined set to her chin; but her full mouth was tender, and her eyes were deep brown, big and wistful and wise. And they were full of tears.

Looking directly into her face, Sharif caught his breath.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

Sharif blinked. Then frowned. “You don’t know who I am?”

She shook her head. “Should I?”

Now Sharif knew the woman had to be from another place or time. Everyone knew the playboy sheikh who’d swathed his way through continents of the world’s most glamorous women, the Emir of Makhtar who often spent millions of euros on a single evening out with his entourage, who always had six bodyguards close at hand and who was rumored to have a bedroom in his royal palace made entirely out of diamonds—false—and that he’d once offered to buy Manchester United on a drunken whim—true.

Did she truly not know who he was? Or was it a pretense, a way for her to play hard to get? He shrugged but watched her closely as he said, “I’m a wedding guest.”

“Oh.” She exhaled. “Me, too.”

“Why are you crying?”

“I’m not.”

He watched as a single tear escaped her lashes to trail down her cheek in the moonlight. “No?”

She wiped her cheek fiercely. “No.”

He tilted his head, frowning. “Are you in love with the bridegroom? Is that why you’re crying?”

“No!”

“Many women were. Half of the women of London, it is said, wept when they heard Cesare Falconeri was to wed his housekeeper...”

“I’m Emma’s friend!”

He tilted his head. “So you’re crying because you’re planning to betray her, and seduce him after the honeymoon is done?”

She stared at him as if he was crazy. “What kind of women do you hang out with? I would never—I could never—” She shook her head, and wiped her eyes again. “I’m happy for them! They’re meant for each other!”

“Ah,” Sharif said, bored by such trite, polite statements. “So it is not him. You weep over some other man.”

She grit her teeth. “No...”

“Then what is it?”

“What it is—is none of your business!”

Sharif stepped toward her, just two of them hidden behind a copse of trees on the shore of the lake. They were almost close enough to touch. He heard her intake of breath as she took an involuntary step back. Good. So she was aware of him then, as he was of her, no matter her feisty words.

Her eyes held infinite depths, he thought, like a night filled with stars and shadows. He felt strangely dazzled. He’d never seen eyes so full of warmth and buried secrets. Secrets he wanted to learn. Warmth he wanted to feel against his skin.

It was also possible he was just desperate to be distracted from his own thoughts. If so, this woman offered a very pleasurable distraction indeed.

Lifting his eyebrow, Sharif gave her the smile no woman could resist—at least, none ever had—deliberately unleashing the full power of his attention on her. “Tell me why you’re crying, signorina,” he said softly. “Tell me why you left the wedding party and came down to the shore alone.”

Her lips parted, then closed. She looked away. “I told you. I’m not crying.”

“Just as you also told me you have no idea who I am.”

“Correct.”

If she was lying about the one, Sharif decided, she was likely lying about the other. Good to know where he stood. He slowly looked up and down her body. The pale pink dress fit her like a glove. She was so curvaceous. So...different.

She blushed beneath his gaze, becoming more impossibly desirable than ever. Sharif suddenly realized it wasn’t just his desire to forgot about weddings and marriage that made him want her. He’d been bored for a long, long time. He craved different. He craved this woman.

And so, he would have her.

Why not?

Whether she knew who he was or not, whether she was truly ignorant of his identity or merely putting on an act in an attempt to gain his attention, this woman was nothing truly magical or rare, no matter what his body was telling him. She was different from his usual type, yes. But beyond that, she was nothing more than a beautiful stranger. And he knew exactly how to deal with a beautiful stranger.

“The night is growing cold.” Sharif’s voice was a low purr as he held out his arm. “Come back to the villa. We will continue this conversation over champagne. Over dinner.”

“W-with you?” she stammered, looking startled. She didn’t move.

He cast a quick glance to her left hand. “You are not married. Are you engaged?”

She shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” he said.

She lifted her head sharply. “You can tell?”

He bared his teeth in a sensual smile. “You are just not the married type.”

To his surprise, she looked furious. More than furious. She looked as if he’d just served her a mortal insult.

“And why is that?” she said coldly.

Because of what he was planning to do to her tonight. Because of the delectable images that had started forming in his mind from the instant he’d seen her, of her curvaceous body naked against his, as her plump lips softly moaned against his skin. It had been impossible—absolutely impossible—that fate would be so cruel to have her already bound to another.

But Sharif didn’t think it strategically advisable to explain. Not when her dark eyes were glinting sparks of rage.

He frowned, observing the flush on her cheeks. “Why are you angry? What could I possibly have said to—ah.” His eyes crinkled in sudden understanding. “I see.”

“See what?”

“The reason you came down to the shore, in this quiet, hidden place.” He lifted a dark eyebrow knowingly. “I forget how women are affected by weddings. You no doubt wept through the candlelit ceremony, in romantic dreams at the beauty of love.” His lip curled at the word. “There is some boy back home that you wish would propose. You feel alone. That is why you were crying. That is why you are angry. You are tired of waiting for your lover.”

She pulled back, looking as if she’d been slapped.

“You are so wrong,” she choked out. “About everything.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” Sharif murmured, and he was. If there was no other man in the picture, his path to her bed would be a foregone conclusion. “In that case...whatever your reason for sadness, there will be no more tears tonight. Only enjoyment and pleasure. You are spending the evening with me.” His eyes met hers. “Not just the evening, but the night.”

He continued to hold out his arm in complete assurance. But the woman just stared at him. Her lips parted as she said faintly, “That’s your idea of small talk?”

He gave her a sensual smile. “I believe in cutting through unnecessary words to get to the heart of things.”

“Then you believe in being rude.” Still not touching him, she lifted her chin. “Excuse me.”

And without another word, she walked around him, as if the billionaire Emir of Makhtar were no better than a churlish boy. She walked fleet-footed up the path, heading toward the eighteenth-century villa on the hillside, where music and laughter wafted through the cool November night.

Twisting his head, Sharif stared up after her in shock.

* * *

Waiting for your lover.

Waiting for your lover.

The rhythm of the darkly handsome sheikh’s words seemed to taunt Irene Taylor’s footsteps as she went back up the path.

Waiting for your lover.

Irene blinked back tears. With unthinking cruelty he’d spoken the exact fear that had haunted her heart throughout her friend’s beautiful wedding. The words that had driven her to leave the other guests to stand alone on the lakeshore in quiet, silent heartbreak. She was twenty-three years old, and she’d been waiting for her lover all her life. She was starting to think he wasn’t coming.

She’d dreamed of the life she wanted, the home she wanted, since she was five years old and she’d come home crying from her first day of kindergarten. Her own house was silent, but their closest neighbor had seen Irene walk by, crying and snuffling with a broken lunch box in her hand. Dorothy Abbott had taken her in, wiped the blood off her forehead, given her a big homemade cookie and a glass of milk. Irene had been comforted—and dazzled. How wonderful it would be to live in a little cottage with a white picket fence, baking cookies, tending a garden, with an honest, loyal, loving man as her husband. Ever since that day, Irene had wanted what Dorothy and Bill Abbott had had, married for fifty-four years, caring for each other until the day they’d died, one day apart.

Irene had also known what she didn’t want. A rickety house on the desolate edge of a small town. Her mother, drunk most of the time, and her much older sister, entertaining “gentlemen” at all hours, believing their lying words, taking their money afterward. Irene had vowed her life would be different, but still, after high school, she’d worked at minimum-wage jobs, trying to save money for college, falling short when her mother and sister inevitably needed her meager earnings.

When Dorothy and Bill died, she’d felt so alone and sad that when the mayor’s son smiled at her, she’d fallen for him. Hard. Even when she should have known better.

Funny how it was Carter who’d finally managed to drive her out of town.

I just wanted to have some fun with you, Irene. That’s all. You’re not the type I’d marry. He’d given an incredulous laugh. Did you actually think a man like me, with my background...and a woman like you, with yours...could ever...?

Yes, she had. She wiped her nose, which was starting to snuffle. Thank heaven she hadn’t slept with Carter two years ago. Just the humiliation of loving him had been enough to make her flee Colorado, first for a job in New York, then Paris.

She’d told herself she wanted a fresh start, in a place no one knew about her family’s sordid history. But some secret part of her had dreamed, if she went away, she might return self-assured and stylish and thin, like in an Audrey Hepburn movie. She’d dreamed she’d return to her small Colorado town in a sleek little suit with a sophisticated red smile, and Carter would take one look at the New Her and want to give her his love. Not just his love, but his name.

Stupid. It made Irene’s cheeks burn to think about it now. She wiped the tears away fiercely. As if living in New York or Paris, as if mere geography, could achieve such a miracle—turning her into the type of woman Carter would want to marry! As if designer clothes and a new hairstyle would make him take her away from the shabby house on the wrong side of the tracks, the one that had men sneaking in so often at night on paid “dates” with her mother and older sister, to the enormous hundred-year-old Linsey Mansion on the hill!

Well, she’d never know now. Instead, she’d be going home even worse off than she’d left—unemployed, broke and with all the baguettes and croissants she’d eaten in Paris, not exactly thinner, either.

She’d thought she could make a better life for herself. Even after the unfortunate incident that had gotten her fired six months ago, she’d still held out hope she’d find a new job in Paris. She’d gone through her savings, even the precious thousand-dollar bequest that the Abbotts had left her when they died.

Irene stopped. She pressed her fingers against her eyes, trying not to feel the jagged pain in her throat.

There will be no more tears tonight. Only enjoyment and pleasure. She could still hear his low, husky voice. You are spending the evening with me. Not just the evening, but the night.

Why her?

She’d always tried to believe it was just her family’s reputation that made people in her home town so cruel. That it wasn’t personal. But if that was true, why had the dark sheikh immediately assumed the worst of her, asking if she intended to seduce Emma’s husband—as if she would want to! As if she could! Why had he assumed she would immediately fall into bed with him, just for the asking?

Irene closed her eyes, brushing her forehead with a trembling hand. Her cheeks were hot. All right, so she’d been attracted to him. How could any woman not be?

How could any woman not be attracted to a man like that, dressed so exotically in full white robes, with his black eyes and cruel, sensual lips? Anyone would be attracted to that darkly handsome face. To his strong, broad-shouldered body. To the aura of power and limitless wealth that followed him like his entourage of bodyguards.

If Carter was out of her league, then this sheikh was so far out of her league that she couldn’t even see his league. It was somewhere out in space. Possibly by Jupiter.

Why would a man like that be interested in her?

It was true that for Emma’s sake, Irene had done her best to look nice today, brushing out her black hair, putting on makeup. She’d even worn contact lenses instead of her usual soda-bottle glasses, and had on a beautiful, borrowed designer dress. But that didn’t explain it.

Had she just seemed like easy pickings, crying by the lake? Or was there something wrong with her, some black mark on her soul that only men like Carter and the sheikh could see?

She remembered how the man’s piercing black eyes had looked right through her soul, seeing far too much.

You feel alone. That is why you were crying. That is why you are angry. You are tired of waiting for your lover.

Pushing the memory of his low, sardonic voice away, she took a deep breath.

She couldn’t go back to Colorado. She couldn’t. But all she had left was twenty euros, a studio apartment in Paris paid for till the end of the week and the return flight home.

Hearing the clanging of a bell, Irene looked up the hill to the highest terrace. Beneath the wisteria-covered trellis with hanging fairy lights, she saw Emma, now Mrs. Falconeri, summoning her guests to the outdoor dinner reception. Emma’s new husband, Cesare Falconeri, smiled down at his new bride as their baby son, dressed in a tiny tuxedo, yawned in his arms.

Emma had found her true love, married him, had a baby with him. They were blissfully happy. And kind-hearted. Also, Cesare was a billionaire hotel tycoon, which couldn’t hurt anything. Without asking her, they’d simply tucked a first-class airline ticket from Paris to Lake Como in their wedding invitation. First-class. She smiled wistfully. Now, that had been an experience. The flight attendant had waited on her hand and foot, as if she were someone important. Crazy.

The truth was, she didn’t need first-class. She just needed to believe that someday she might have what Emma had, and what Dorothy Abbott had once had: a husband she could love, respect and trust. A happy, respectable life, raising children in a snug, warm home.

She slowly walked up the hill with the other guests. The shadowy terrace was long, filled with three large communal tables placed end to end down the middle, decked out with flowers and glowing candles and colored lights dangling from above. Irene shivered in the November air, in spite of four heat lamps at the corners of the terrace, all going full blast.

She looked at the happy couple holding their fat, adorable baby, trying to ignore how her heart was aching. She was happy for Emma, she truly was. But she wondered at times if she would ever have the same.

Swallowing hard, Irene turned away. And walked right into a hard wall of muscle.

She gasped, her high-heeled shoes sliding beneath her. She started to fall to the stone floor, but a strong hand reached out to grab her wrist.

“Thank you...” Then she saw the face of the wall that had caught her: the handsome, arrogant sheikh, in the white robes with that darkly handsome face and piercing eyes.

“Oh,” she scowled. “It’s you.”

He said nothing in reply, just lifted her to her feet. She felt the warmth and heat of his palm against her skin. It did strange things to her. He looked down at her in the moonlight on the villa’s veranda as wedding guests laughed and ambled beneath the fairy lights dangling from the trellis beneath the deep violet Italian sky.

She ripped her arm away. “Thank you,” she repeated, in a hostile tone directly at odds with the courtesy of the words.

But he did not immediately turn and leave as she’d hoped. Instead, he stared down at her, his eyes as black as the cord wrapped around his white headdress.

“You accused me of being rude, signorina,” he said in a low voice. “I was not.”

Unconsciously, Irene rubbed her wrist, as if he had burned it with his touch. “You insulted me.”

“When I invited you to spend the night with me?” He sounded almost bewildered. “How was that an insult?”

“Are you kidding? What else could it be?”

He looked bemused. “Women generally take it as a compliment...”

Irene flinched. Women. Of course he’d used the line a million times, on a million interchangeable women!

“How lovely for you,” she said coldly, “that ten words can usually make any woman fall into bed with you. Sorry I’m not following your agenda.”

His lips had parted slightly. His brow was furrowed as he stared down at her. “Have we met before?” he said faintly. “Do you have some reason to despise me?”

“We’ve never met before, if that’s what you’re asking. But yes,” she said grimly, “I have a reason.”

“Which is?”

“Look, I have no idea who you are or why you decided to make me your target, but I know your type.”

“My—type?”

“Do you really want me to spell it out? It might hurt your feelings. But then—” she tilted her head “—fortunately I don’t think you have any.”

“Try me,” he said flatly.

“I could say that you’re a heartless playboy who accused me, within five seconds of meeting me, of planning to seduce my friend’s new husband. Saying I was waiting for a lover and oh, lucky me, you’re the very man for the job! How dare you pretend you can see into my soul, and poke at my heart in a rude and selfish way? Those are the things I could say, but I won’t, because it’s Emma’s wedding and she deserves a perfect day. I don’t want to cause a scene. Because I was taught that if you can’t say something nice to someone, to say nothing at all.” Dorothy Abbott had taught her that over oatmeal cookies and peppermint tea. She glared at him. “Some people,” she said sweetly, “have good manners. If you’ll excuse me.”

She started to turn, but he held on to her wrist. She glared at his hand, then at his face. He abruptly let her go.

“Of course, signorina,” the handsome sheikh said, holding up both his hands. “You are right. I was rude. Please allow me to apologize.” His lips twisted. “The better I know you, the more I realize the great mistake I made. Of course you do not want a lover. No sane man would ever want to be your lover. It would be like seducing a cactus.” He gave her a short half bow with a sweep of his robes. “Please forgive me, signorina. And do not allow me to keep you from your eternally desirable solitude.”

In a single smooth movement, he turned away from her. Irene stared after him, open-mouthed, as he disappeared into the crowd.

She closed her mouth with a snap.

Ooh! Helplessly, she stomped her foot. Eternally desirable solitude! The big jerk!

But at least now he was no longer looking at her—near her—touching her, it was easier to think straight. She was relieved to no longer be under the intense scrutiny of his black eyes, his gaze that seemed to see straight through her soul.

She’d wanted to get rid of him, and she’d succeeded. She did know his type. Well—not exactly. A wealthy sheikh in full robes, with bodyguards hovering, was rare in Colorado. Even her mother and older sister had never managed to bring home someone that exotic. But she knew the playboy type. She hadn’t judged him unfairly. She hadn’t.

But still—she thought of those dark eyes. Of the way her heart had pounded in the moonlight when she’d first seen him standing in front of her on the lake, the very instant after she’d wished with such reckless, passionate yearning that someone would love her. Of the sizzle that had coursed through her body when he’d touched her—just from the touch of his hand on her wrist!

It was good she’d managed to scare him off. No sane man would ever want to be your lover. Yup. She’d scared him off thoroughly.

Good, she told herself. Better to be alone, better to be a virgin forever, than have her heart trampled into nothing.

She wanted more.

After her first day of kindergarten, when Dorothy had comforted her and Bill had gone to the school to set the bullies straight, Irene had started spending her afternoons with the retired couple. She’d tried to pretend the Abbotts’ tiny, warm house was her real home. When she was older, trying to ignore the cruel taunts of the girls and blatant come-ons of the boys in high school, Irene had once asked Dorothy how she and Bill had found each other. Dorothy had smiled.

“We got married at eighteen, both virgins, nervous and broke. Everyone thought we were too young.” She’d laughed, and taken another sip of peppermint tea. “But we knew what we wanted. Waiting made it special, a commitment between us. I know these days, people think sex is no big deal, a moment of cheap pleasure, easily forgotten. But to us, it was sacred. A promise without words. And we never regretted the choice.”

Hearing the story when she was eighteen herself, Irene had vowed to wait for true love, too. She’d watched her sister and mother have so many cheap, forgettable affairs until there was no promise left in it, very little pleasure and certainly no joy. She wanted a different life. Her love would last.

She’d nearly gone astray with Carter, but never again. No way. No how. And if there was one thing she knew down to her bones, it was that a man like the sheikh—exotically handsome and rich and full of himself—would never truly love her, not even for an hour, much less a lifetime. She’d been right to scare him off.

But still, as Irene looked for her assigned place at the long wooden table, she was relieved to see it was on the opposite end from the sheikh’s place. As the twenty or so wedding guests had a hearty dinner on the terrace, surrounded by heat lamps to make the November night feel like summer, he kept his distance. Irene tried not to look in his direction, but she felt his dark eyes on her. Taking her heart in her hands, she dared to look down the long table—only to discover that he was laughing, as two gorgeous young supermodel types fawned over him. Irene looked away grumpily. Silly her, to imagine he’d been staring at her. She couldn’t imagine why on earth she’d thought that....

The fairy lights hung above, swaying in the breeze. The moon was bright like a big pearl in the velvety sky. After the champagne toast and the delicious dinner served by the villa’s staff, the long tables were pushed aside to turn the veranda into an impromptu dance floor. A dark-haired man with soulful eyes brought a guitar from the music room and started to play.

She saw a flash of white in the corner of her eye, and her body went on high alert. But, turning, she saw it was only Emma, holding out her baby. “Will you hold him so we can have our first dance?”

“I’d love to,” Irene said, smiling, happy to cuddle the warm, sleeping baby. But after she had Sam in her arms, she had a sudden thought and touched Emma’s arm. “There’s a sheikh here—one of your guests. Who is he?”

Emma blinked, then frowned in a very “unhappiest day of my life” kind of way. Looking to the right and left, she lowered her head until her white translucent veil dripped to the floor. “That is Sheikh Sharif al-Aktoum, the Emir of Makhtar.”

“Emir?” Irene said, amazed. “You mean, the king? Of a whole country?”

“Yes.” Straightening, Emma gave her a hard stare full of meaning. “He’s very rich, very powerful and very famous for breaking many, many, many women’s hearts.”

“I was just curious.”

“Don’t be too curious about him.” She shook her head and said severely, “Just because Cesare reformed from being a playboy, you mustn’t expect that any other man...”

“I forgot about that,” Irene said. “Cesare used to be a playboy, too...”

Emma sighed. “He was. It used to be my job to buy designer watches as parting gifts for his one-night stands. I actually bought them in bulk. But the point is, Irene, most playboys never change. You know that, don’t you?”

Her friend looked so anxious that Irene gave her a reassuring nod. “Definitely.”

“Good.”

As Irene sat back into her chair with the baby, the new Mr. and Mrs. Falconeri went out alone on the dance floor, hand in hand. Swaying to the music, they looked at each other tenderly and passionately, as if no one else were there. Watching them, wistfulness filled Irene’s heart.

Someday...

Someday, a man would look at her like that. And she’d have a baby like this. She looked at the warm, slumbering little boy in her arms, with his dark lashes fluttering against his plump cheeks. When the time was right, when fate meant it to be so, she would meet the One. They’d fall in love and get married. They’d work hard, buy a home, have children of their own. They would do things properly.

But what if it never happened? What if she spent her whole life waiting, working hard, following all the rules, and still ended up broke and alone?

Believe. She squeezed her eyes shut. Have faith.

“You are not dancing, fräulein?”

She looked up with an intake of breath, but instead of the Emir of Makhtar, she saw a dignified blond man with blue eyes. She shook her head, feeling awkward. “No, thank you.” Then, remembering how the sheikh had so unfairly and wrongly compared her to a cactus, she forced herself to smile until her cheeks hurt as she indicated the sleeping baby in her arms. “It’s kind of you, but I can’t, I’m holding Sam while they dance.”

“Ah.” The man sighed and said with a German accent, “Such a pity.”

“Yes. Indeed,” she said, relieved beyond all measure when he moved on. She didn’t know how to react. Two men hitting on her in one night? This had never happened during her year in Paris. But then—she looked down at the sleek-fitting designer gown—she didn’t usually dress like this, either. But still, she wasn’t half as glamorous or beautiful or thin as the other female guests. Not even close!

Irene knew her flaws. Her thick black hair was her one vanity, but other than that... Her body was too plump. Her nose turned up at the end, and her eyesight was truly bad. She blinked hard. Her new contact lenses still felt strange against her eyeballs. She was used to wearing glasses. She was also used to being invisible. She was used to avoiding attention, staying at home reading books, quietly unnoticed in the corner. She thought longingly of the new Susan Mallery novel waiting on her bedside table.

“Good evening, señorita.”

Irene looked up at the deep, purring voice. It was the Spanish man who’d been playing the guitar so beautifully.

“You’re amazing,” she blurted out.

The Spaniard gave a wicked grin. “Who told?”

She blushed. “Your music, I mean. But if you’re here, then who...” She turned and saw there was now a four-person band playing the music. She hadn’t even noticed the change. She finished lamely, “You are very good on the guitar.”

“The least of my skills, I assure you. Would you care to dance?”

“Oh.” Her blush deepened. Another handsome playboy, way out of her league, flirting with her? Weird. Had Emma slipped a ten-dollar bill to the most handsome guests in an attempt to boost Irene’s confidence? Although these didn’t seem like the type of men to be swayed by a ten-dollar bill. Ten million dollars, maybe. Maybe not even then.

Biting her lip, she again indicated the sleeping baby. “Sorry. Emma left me in charge. I’d have only stepped on your feet anyway.” She added hastily, “Thanks, though!”

“Another time, perhaps,” the Spaniard murmured, and moved on without any apparent heartbreak to one of the wealthy-supermodel types she’d seen the sheikh talking to earlier. Irene looked down at the warm, sleeping baby in her lap. At least she didn’t need to worry that anyone had paid little Sam to pretend to like her.

“It must be exhausting,” a man’s sardonic voice observed behind her, “that the ruder you become, the more you have to beat potential lovers off with a stick.”

Irene felt a shock of electricity through her body. She turned her head to see the sheikh standing behind her, his black eyes gleaming. She hid the uncontrollable leap of her heart.

“You would know,” she murmured, looking at him sideways beneath her lashes. “Isn’t that how it usually works for you? You tell women that they mean nothing to you, that they’re just the next mark on your bedpost, and they are so enamored of this thought that they fall at your feet and beg you, Take me, take me now?”

His dark eyes held a bright gleam as he took another step toward her.

“Say those five words to me, Miss Taylor,” he said softly, “and see what happens.”

A tremble electrified her body, from her earlobes down her spine to the hollows of her feet. She licked her lips and tossed her head.

“That’s one thing I’ll never say to you. Not in a million years.”

“I could make you say it, I think,” he said softly. “If I really tried.”

He looked down at her with eyes black and hot as smoldering coals, and her throat went dry. She felt her body turning into putty, her brain into mush.

“Don’t bother trying,” she managed to croak. “You’ll fail.”

He tilted his head. “I don’t fail.”

“Never?”

“No.”

As they stared at each other, the air thickened between them. Something sizzled, something primal. The people around them became blurs of color, mere noise. Held in his dark gaze, Irene felt time stand still.

Then her heart started to beat again. “You used my name. How did you know? Did you ask about me?”

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “I was curious.”

“I know about you now, too. The famous playboy emir.”

He tilted his head toward her, as if confiding a secret. “I know something about you, too, Miss Taylor.”

“What’s that?”

With a slow, sensual smile, the billionaire emir held out his hand.

“The reason you refused to dance with those other men,” he said huskily, “is because you want to dance with me.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE INTENSITY AND focus of his gaze held her down like a butterfly with a pin, leaving her helpless and trembling. Irene’s heart pounded in her chest.

“I want to dance with you, Miss Taylor.” The sheikh looked down at her. “I want it very much.”

Her throat was dry, her mind scrambling. She exhaled when she remembered Sam sleeping in her arms. “Sorry, but I couldn’t possibly. I promised to hold the baby and...”

Unfortunately at that moment Sam’s mother brushed past them to scoop her sleeping baby up in her arms. “It’s time to put this sleepy boy to bed,” Emma said, holding him snug against her beaded white gown. She threw the sheikh a troubled glance and said in a low voice to Irene, “Be careful.”

“You don’t need to worry,” Irene said. Really, couldn’t her friend see that she could look out for herself? She wasn’t totally naive.

“Good,” Emma murmured, then turned and said brightly to the sheikh, “Excuse me.”

Irene looked at him, wondering how much of the whispered conversation he’d heard. One glance told her he’d heard everything. He gave her an amused smile, then lifted a dark eyebrow.

“It’s just a dance,” he drawled. He tilted his head. “Surely you’re not afraid of me.”

“Not even slightly,” she lied.

“In that case...” Holding out his hand with the courtly formality of an eighteenth-century prince waiting for his lady, he waited.

Irene stared at his outstretched hand. She hesitated, remembering how her body had reacted the last time they’d touched, the way he’d made her tremble with just a touch on her wrist. But as he’d said, this time he was just asking for a dance, not a hot, torrid affair. They were surrounded by chaperones here.

One dance, and she’d show them both that she wasn’t afraid. She could control her body’s response to him. One dance, and he’d stop being so intrigued by her refusals and leave her safely alone for the rest of the weekend. He’d move on to some other, more responsive woman.

Slowly, Irene placed her hand in his. She gave an involuntary shudder when she felt the electricity as their fingers intertwined, and she felt the heat of his skin pressing against her own.

His handsome face was inscrutable as he led her out onto the terrace’s impromptu dance floor. Above them, dappled moonlight turned wisteria vines into braided threads of silver, like magic.

He held her against his body, leading her, swaying her against him as they moved to the music. He looked at her, and Irene felt her body break out in a sweat even as a cool breeze trailed off the moonlit lake against her overheated skin.

“So, Miss Taylor,” he murmured, “tell me the real reason you were pushing me away—along with every other man here.”

She swallowed, then looked at him. “I will tell you. If you tell me something first.”

“Yes?”

“Why you have continued to pursue me anyway.” She looked at the women watching them enviously from the edge of the dance floor. “Those other women are far more beautiful than I. They clearly want to be in your arms. Why ask me to dance, instead of them? Especially when it seemed likely I would say no?”

He swirled her around to the music, then stopped. “I knew you wouldn’t say no.”

“How?”

“I told you. I never fail to get what I want. I wanted to dance with you. And I knew you wanted the same.”

“So arrogant,” she breathed.

“It’s not arrogant if it’s true.”

Irene’s heart was pounding. “I only agreed to dance with you so you’d see that there’s nothing special about me, and leave me in peace.”

His lips lifted at the corners. “If that was your intention, then I am afraid you have failed.”

“I’m boring,” she whispered. “Invisible and dull.”

His hands brushed against her back as they danced.

“You’re wrong. You are the most intriguing woman here. From the moment I saw you on the edge of the lake, I felt drawn to your strange combination of experience—and innocence.” Leaning down, he bent his lips to her ear. She felt the roughness of his cheek brush against hers, inhaled the musky scent of his cologne, felt the warmth of his breath against her skin. “I want to discover all your secrets, Miss Taylor.”

He pulled back. She stared up at him, her eyes wide. She tried to speak, found she couldn’t. His dark eyes crinkled in smug masculine amusement.

He twirled her to the music, and when she was again in his arms, he said, “I answered your question. Now answer mine. Why have you been pushing every man away who talks to you at this wedding? Do you have something against them personally, or just dislike billionaires on principle?”

“Billionaires?”

“The German automobile tycoon has been married three times, but still considered very eligible by all the gold diggers in Europe. Then, of course, my Spanish friend, the Duque de Alzacar, the second-richest man in Spain.”

“Duke? Are you kidding? I thought he was a musician!”

“Would it have changed your answer to him if you’d known?”

“No. I’m just surprised. He’s a good guitar player. Rich men usually don’t try so hard. They expect other people to entertain them. They don’t care who else gets their heart bruised trying to win their attention, their love—”

She broke off her words, but it was too late. Aghast, Irene met his darkly knowing glance.

“Go on,” he purred. “Tell me more about what rich men do.”

She looked away. “You’re just not my sort, that’s all,” she muttered. “None of you.”

The sheikh looked around the beautiful moonlit terrace. His voice was incredulous. “A German billionaire, a Spanish duke, a Makhtari emir? We are none of us your type?”

“No.”

He gave a low, disbelieving laugh. “You must have a very specific type. The three of us are so different.”

She shook her head. “You’re exactly the same.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Your eminence... I’m sorry, what am I supposed to call you?”

“Normally the term ‘Your Highness’ is the correct form. But since I suspect you are about to insult me, please call me Sharif.”

She snorted a laugh. “Sharif.”

“And I will call you Irene.”

It was musical the way he said it, with his husky low voice and slight inflection of an accent. She had never heard her name pronounced quite that way before. He made it sound—sensual. Controlling a shiver, she took a deep breath. As he moved her across the stone floor, they were surrounded by eight other couples dancing. The bride and groom were no longer to be seen, the wine was flowing and the lights in the wisteria above them sparkled in the dark night, swaying in the soft breeze off the lake.

“Explain,” he said darkly, “how I am exactly like every other man.”

She got the feeling he wasn’t used to being compared to anyone, even tycoons or dukes. “Not every man. Just, well—” she looked around them “—just all the men here.”

Sharif set his jaw, looking annoyed. “Because I asked you to dance?”

“No—well, yes. The thing is,” she said awkwardly, “you’re all arrogant playboys. You expect women to fall instantly into bed with you. And you’re full of yourselves because you’re usually right.”

“So I am conceited.”

“It’s not your fault. Well, not entirely your fault,” she amended, since she wanted to be truthful. “You’re just selfish and coldhearted about getting what you want. But when you throw out these lines, these false promises of love, women are naive enough to fall for them.”

“False promises. So now I am a liar, as well as conceited.”

“I am trying to say this gently. But you did ask me.”

“Yes. I did.” He pulled her closer against his body. She felt his warmth and strength beneath his white robes, saw the black intensity of his gaze. “We were introduced five minutes ago, but you think you know me.”

“Annoying, isn’t it? Just like you did with me.”

Sharif stopped on the dance floor, looking at her. “I have never given any woman a false promise of love. Never.”

Irene suddenly felt how much taller he was, how broad-shouldered and powerful. He towered over her in every way, and he had a dangerous glint to his eye that might have frightened a lesser woman. But not her. “Perhaps you haven’t actually spoken the promise in words, but I bet you insinuate. With your attention. With your gaze. With your touch. You’re doing it now.”

His hands tightened on her as he pulled her snugly against his body. His hot, dark eyes searched hers as he said huskily, “And what do I insinuate?”

She lifted her troubled gaze.

“That you could love me,” she whispered. “Not just tonight, but forever.”

For an instant, neither of them moved.

Then she moved her body two inches away from him, a safe distance any high school chaperone would approve of, with their arms barely touching.

“That’s why I wouldn’t dance with the others,” she said. “Why I’m not interested in you or any man like you. Because I know all your sexy charm—it’s just a lie.”

Sharif stared at her. Then his eyebrow lifted as he gave her a sudden wicked smile.

“So you think I’m sexy and charming.”

She looked up at him. “You know I do.”

Their eyes locked. Desire shot in waves down her body, filling her with heat. Making her tremble. She felt the electricity between them, felt the warmth and power of his body. Her knees were weak.

Most playboys never change. You know that, don’t you?

She hadn’t needed Emma’s warning. She’d learned it well. From the wretched lessons of her childhood. From Carter. She’d learned it up close and personal.

She abruptly let Sharif go.

“But you’re wasting your time with me.” She glanced back at the beautiful women watching him with longing eyes, as if they could hardly wait to throw themselves body and soul onto the fire. Irene’s lip curled as she nodded in their direction. “Go try your luck with one of them.”

Turning on her heel, she left without a backward glance. Praying he wouldn’t see how her body shook as she walked away.

* * *

He’d underestimated her.

Sharif’s jaw was tight as he stalked off the dance floor alone. He walked through the crowd of watching women, some of whom tried to talk to him as he passed.

“Your Highness, what a surprise...”

“Hello, we met once at a party, if you remember...”

“I’d be happy to dance with you, Your Highness, even if she won’t...”

Grimly, he kept walking, without bothering to reply. Perhaps he was rude, after all, just as Irene had accused. But these skinny women, with their glossy red lips and hollow cheekbones, were suddenly invisible to him. It wasn’t their fault. All other women were invisible to him now because he was interested in only one.

The one who wasn’t afraid to tell him the truth. Who wasn’t afraid to insult him. And who found it so easy to walk away.

Miss Irene Taylor. Of Colorado, the wild, mountainous center of the United States he knew only from skiing once in Aspen.

There’s nothing special about me.

He shook his head incredulously. How could she honestly believe that?

He wanted her.

He would have her.

But how?

“Having a good time?”

Sharif stopped. It took him a moment to focus on Cesare Falconeri, the bridegroom, standing in front of him in a tux. “Your wedding has been most exciting,” he replied. “In fact, the most interesting I’ve ever attended.”

“Grazie. Emma will be pleased to hear it.” The man gave him a sudden grin. “And this is just the start. Tomorrow, we have the civil ceremony in town, followed by all kinds of fun for the rest of the day, including the ball at night.” He clapped him heartily on the shoulder. “So save some energy, Your Highness.”

The rest of the weekend. As Cesare walked away, Sharif relaxed, took a deep breath. He still had two days. He felt rebounding confidence. Yes. What was he worried about? He had the rest of the weekend to seduce her. She’d already given so much of her true emotion away—too much. He knew she wanted him. She was fighting her own desire. That never worked for long. Willpower always gave out eventually.

Sharif would win. As long as he had the stamina for a long, drawn-out siege. He thought of her.

He definitely had the stamina.

But how to go about it?

All day tomorrow. A ball lasting far into the night. By the end of it, she would be in his bed. Simple as that.

He would seduce her, bed her, satiate himself with her, and they would part on mutually respectful terms the following morning, after the final breakfast. He dismissed Irene’s concern about his playboy nature out of hand. Perhaps she’d be right to fear some kind of emotional fallout if they had some kind of continuing connection. But they did not move in the same circles, so it was highly unlikely. This Italian villa—he looked up at the Falconeri mansion—was a weekend party out of place and time. It would be a pleasant memory for both of them, nothing more. One night together would hardly be enough to inspire love, even in a woman as romantic as Irene Taylor. She might be young, but she had an old soul. He’d seen it in her eyes. Heard it in the tremble of her voice as she spoke about the selfishness of playboys. One must have hurt her, once.

Sharif would distract her from the pain of that memory, as she would distract him from his own pain that lay ahead. He would fill her with pleasure. It would be a night they’d never forget.

She’d won the battle tonight, but he would win the war.

Sharif felt oddly exhilarated as he returned to the villa. One by one, his six bodyguards fell wordlessly into step behind him, then peeled off to their assigned rooms as he returned to his suite, two of them standing guard in the hallway outside his door.

Alone in the lavish bedroom, he smiled to himself as he removed his white keffiyeh and black rope of the agal. He ran his hands through his short dark hair. His head felt sweaty—and no wonder, since every inch of his body had felt overheated since he’d met the delectable Miss Taylor. He started toward the en suite bathroom for a shower, when he heard the ring of his cell phone.

He glanced at who was calling, and his jaw went tense with irritation. He had no choice but to answer.

“Has something happened with Aziza?” he demanded by way of greeting.

“Well...” Gilly Lanvin, the twentysomething socialite he’d hired as his young sister’s companion, drew out the word as long as she could, clearly scrambling to think of a way to keep him on the phone.

“Is she hurt?” he said tersely. “Does she need me?”

“Nooo...” the woman admitted with clear reluctance. “I was just wondering...when you’ll be back to the palace.”

“Miss Lanvin,” he snapped. “These calls have to stop. You are companion to my sister. Nothing more. It would be inconvenient for me to replace you so soon before her wedding. Do not make me do so.”

“Oh, no, Your Highness. I’m sorry if I interrupted you. I just thought you might be lonely. I just thought—”

He clicked off the phone before he was forced to endure hearing what she’d thought. He needed to replace her. He’d known it since she’d first started making eyes at him two months ago. But Aziza liked her. So he’d hoped to just ignore it until Aziza’s wedding, when a companion would no longer be required and he could send the woman back to Beverly Hills on the next flight.

Three months. Just three months and his sister would be married, and it would no longer be his problem. He stalked into the gleaming white marble bathroom and removed the rest of his clothes, then stepped into a steaming hot shower. He turned his mind back to the delicious Miss Taylor. He let his imagination run wild, picturing her in this shower with him, naked, as he soaped up those full lush curves of her body, hearing her gasp as he pressed her against the shower wall and took her deep and hard, as her wide-spread hands pressed against the steamed glass...

Oh, yes. Tomorrow night. Sooner, if he was at the top of his skill.

Climbing naked into his large bed, he slept very well that night, dreaming of everything he intended to do to Irene Taylor, in this very suite, before the next day was through.

He woke to see the sun shining gold through the tall windows. Yawning, he stretched in the huge bed, feeling the Egyptian-cotton sheets beneath his skin. Smiling to himself, he brushed his teeth, shaved, dressed with care. Not the traditional Makhtari dress today. Instead, he reached into the closet for a crisp white shirt and suit tailored for him in London. Unlike many men of his position, he preferred having no valet, something that had caused a minor scandal in his palace. But there were some things a man just liked to do for himself. He ran his hands impatiently through his black hair and smiled at himself in the mirror.

He would have her tonight.

Sharif went downstairs to join the other guests in the breakfast room. Soon, they were joined by the blushing bride and groom, who looked very happy and not a little tired. But there was no sign of Irene. He waited. Even when the other guests piled into the arranged limos, to take them all into town for the civil ceremony, he waited, waving off Falconeri.

“I’m not quite done with my coffee,” he’d said by way of explanation. The man gave him a strange look, as if he thought it wasn’t an entirely satisfying reason for a guest to miss a wedding. But they all left.

The villa became quiet, except for the low hum of servants preparing the next meal, and his own bodyguards conversing quietly on the edges of the cavernous, brightly painted breakfast room. Five minutes later, he heard high heels clicking rapidly across the marble foyer and sighed in anticipation.

He looked up from his Arabic-language newspaper with a ready smile as Irene burst into the doorway.

“Am I too late?” she cried.

“You just missed them,” he replied. “They left five minutes ago.”

Irene looked even more beautiful than last night, he thought. She was dressed in black pumps and a 1950s-style day dress that accented her hourglass figure—Valentino? Oscar de la Renta?—topped with a soft pink cardigan and pearls. A smudge of deep pink lipstick was her only makeup, accenting the slight bruise of violet beneath her huge dark eyes that suggested a sleepless night. Perhaps she hadn’t found the sensual dreams of them making love quite so comforting and pleasant as he had.

“Dang it!” She hung her shoulders. “I can’t believe I overslept. On Emma’s special day. I am the worst friend ever!”

“She has three special days,” he said sharply. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It doesn’t matter.”

“I can’t believe I was so careless.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “I must have turned off my alarm. I was just so tired, I didn’t fall asleep until dawn...”

“Oh?” He tilted his head suggestively. “I’m sorry to hear that. Something keep you awake?”

She opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. “Never mind.” She reached for the silver coffeepot and a china cup edged with a pattern of twenty-four-carat gold. As she poured the steaming hot coffee, followed by tons of cream and sugar, she glanced at his paper.

“What are you reading?”

“Today’s newspaper from my home country.”

“Today’s? How did you get it?”

“It was delivered to me by plane.”

“Can’t you get it online?”

“I like paper.”

“So you had a whole plane fly all the way here just because you—”

“Yes,” he said. “Just because.”

“Ridiculous,” she grumbled. Sitting on the very edge of the farthest chair, she sipped her coffee, glaring at him over the rim of her cup. “You expecting some kind of war today?”

“War?” Finishing the last of his espresso, Sharif calmly set the cup back in the saucer.

She looked pointedly at the four bodyguards, all now still as statues in the four corners of the room. “You brought your army along for breakfast?”

“I am Emir of Makhtar,” he said, as if it explained everything.

She snorted. “Are you afraid you’ll be attacked?” She looked at the cheerful yellow walls, the tall windows overlooking Lake Como, the high ceilings with their early-nineteenth-century frescoes. Her lips lifted. “Clearly this could be dangerous.”

He shrugged. “Standard procedure.”

“Having four hulking babysitters always hovering around sounds like my idea of hell. Although at least it’s easy to get rid of your lovers the morning after.”

“Are you looking to start a fight with me, Miss Taylor?”

“You said you were going to call me Irene. And yes, I’m looking to start a fight. It’s your fault I overslept. You’re the one who kept me up all night.”

He hadn’t expected her to admit it so easily. “Dreaming of me?”

“Dreaming?” She looked at him as if he was crazy. “It wasn’t a dream I heard all night, banging and moaning in the room next door. It was really quite...athletic, the length and stamina of it all. I’m glad you so eagerly took my advice and found another woman more willing to service you.”

“Length?” He looked at her with wickedly glinting eyes. He rubbed his jaw. “Stamina?”

Her cheeks flamed a delectable red. “Forget it.”

“I’m flattered you immediately assumed it was me.”

“Of course it was you,” she snapped. “I don’t appreciate how you kept me up all night. Now I’ve missed Emma’s civil ceremony because of you. Next time tell your bed partner to keep her opinion of your acrobatics to herself.”

“I appreciate the compliment, but it wasn’t me.”

“Sure,” she said scornfully.

Sharif looked at her.

“It. Wasn’t. Me.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then her expression changed. “Oh.” If anything, she seemed to get even more embarrassed. “Sorry.” She wiped her eyes fiercely, tried to laugh. “I really seem to be messing everything up today.”

“You are really so upset about missing the civil ceremony?”

She blinked back tears. “I don’t miss things like this. I don’t. I’m the one that people count on. What if she needs me to take care of the baby during the ceremony? What if she’s upset because I’m not there? What if...”

“With all those guests around them, she probably didn’t even notice your absence.”

“I let her down.”

“You slept in. It happens.”

“Not to me.” She rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I’ll never forgive myself for this.”

“Why?” he asked gently. “Why are you the only one who has to be perfect?”

“Because if I’m not, then...”

“Then?”

“Then I’m no better than...”

“Who?”

Her china cup clattered against the saucer. Snapping her mouth closed, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I failed.” She looked away. “It’s getting to be a habit.”

The last thing Sharif wanted was to endure another wedding, especially one in some dreary Italian registry office. But looking at the misery on her beautiful, plump-cheeked face, he rose from the table. Tossing down his napkin, he went to her. “My car is parked in the barn. My driver is here...”

Irene looked up with an intake of breath. “You’d take me?”

“I’m willing to take you anywhere. Anytime.” He lifted an eyebrow wickedly. “I thought that was clear.”

She blushed but said stubbornly, “Their wedding...”

“Personally, I think attending one wedding is enough. I have no particular need to see it all replayed out, this time in a civil office. But if it truly matters so much to you...”

“It does!”

“Then I will take you. When you’re ready.” He hid a private smile.

Chugging down the rest of her sweet creamy coffee, she stood up. “I’m ready now.” Warmth and gratitude shone in her brown eyes as she clapped her hands happily, like a child. “I take back every awful thing I said about you!”

Impulsively, she threw her arms around him. He felt her against him, right through the fabric of his suit, to his skin, all the way to blood and bone. His body stirred.

Stiffening, Irene pulled back, her eyes wide. He looked down at her.

“Feel free to kiss me,” he said lazily, “if you feel you truly must.”

Her expression sharpened, and she pushed away. “On second thought, everything I said about you still stands.” She looked with self-consciousness to the right and left at the bodyguards. “When can we leave?”

“Now.” Lifting his hand in the smallest signal, he caused the four unsmiling bodyguards to fall in behind them, and they left the villa.

“This feels ridiculous,” Irene whispered, holding his arm as she walked close to him. “Don’t you feel like...like a prisoner getting escorted to your cell?”

At her words, the trapped feeling rose inside him, the one he’d been trying so hard to avoid, for a reason that had nothing to do with the bodyguards. The thing that had trapped him for twenty years, that was soon to lock him down forever, the thing he’d come to this wedding to try to come to terms with.

“I’m accustomed to it,” he said tightly.

She shook her head. “I understand that as a powerful man you need bodyguards, but it just seems like it would be impossible to have any private life, any life at all really, when you have such a thick wall between you and the rest of the...”

Her voice trailed off. Sharif smiled at the dumbfounded look on her face as she stared at his black stretch Rolls-Royce, complete with diplomatic flags, inside the large, modern barn. A uniformed driver leaped to attention, opening the door for them. Sharif indicated for her to go first, something that made his bodyguards look at each other behind their aviator sunglasses. Well, let them wonder about the breach in protocol. Sharif didn’t care. He climbed in beside her.

Irene’s mouth was wide as she looked around the backseat of the limousine in awe. Seeing him, she kept scooting, pressing herself against the far wall.

“Are you so afraid to be near me?”

“Um.” She stopped, looking uncertain. “I was making room.”

“Room?”

“For all the bodyguards.”

His lips curved. “One of them will sit up with the driver. The rest will follow separately.”

“Oh.” She paused. “But there’s plenty of space. This car is ridiculous.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“I didn’t say that.” She stretched out her legs in illustration. “You could fit a football team in here. This space is big enough to be used as a house for a family of—five...”

Her voice trailed off as she caught him looking at her bare legs, and realized that her hemline had pulled halfway up her thigh. Exhaling, she quickly sat up straight, yanking down the hem like a prim Victorian lady. He hid his amusement because he knew by the end of the night he would have stroked and kissed every inch she was trying to hide from him now. And she would have stroked and kissed every inch of him. Her defenses would fall and she would succumb to her own desire. The passion he sensed beneath her facade, once unleashed, would burn them both to ash. Let her try to hide from him now all she wanted. It would just make conquest all the sweeter.

“What are you smiling about?” she said suspiciously.

“Nothing,” he said, still smiling. As the limo moved down the ribbon of road, he turned his head to look at the beautiful Italian countryside. Brilliant golden sunlight brushed his face, dappled with the shadows of clouds passing across the blue sky. He was aware of every movement Irene made in the seat beside him, and relished the hot anticipation building inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted any woman so much.

In a few minutes, the limo and following SUV pulled up in front of an officious-looking Italian building clinging to the edge of a cliff, tightly between the lake and the main road through town. Without even waiting for the driver to open her door, Irene opened it herself and jumped out. Standing on the sidewalk, she blinked up at the building, then glanced back doubtfully.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she asked Sharif.

“It is the address.”

Hesitantly, she followed him into the building. The bodyguards hung back in the hall as Sharif and Irene found the small, gray, official-looking room where the ceremony for Falconeri and his housekeeper bride had just begun. Quietly, they took the last seats in the back, behind the rest of the guests, and watched the couple marry in the civil ceremony.

Even Sharif had to admit the bride looked radiant, in a simple cream-colored silk suit and netted hat, holding her cooing baby son in her lap. The groom looked even more joyful, if that were possible. The Falconeris were the only bright light in a rather gray room.

“They look so happy,” Irene whispered.

“It’s beautiful,” he agreed sardonically.

She flashed him a glance. “It’s different from the ceremony last night, that’s all.”

He gave a low laugh. “Last night was about romance. This is about marriage. The legal, binding contract.” A hollow feeling rose in his gut. “Trapping them. To each other. Forever.”

Irene’s eyes lifted in surprise. Then she scowled. Leaning over, she whispered in his ear, “Look, your royalness, I get how you’re deeply uninterested in any sort of emotion that doesn’t end up in a one-night stand, but seeing as Cesare is your friend—”

“My business acquaintance,” he corrected.

“Well, Emma is my friend, and this is her wedding. If you have any rude thoughts about marriage in general or theirs in particular, keep them to yourself.”

“I was just agreeing with you,” he protested.

She stared at him, then sighed. “Fine,” she said, looking disgruntled. “This setting isn’t completely romantic.”

Sharif looked at her.

“Unlike you, Miss Taylor,” he said softly. “You, I think, are the last truly romantic woman of a cold modern age.” He tilted his head. “You really believe, don’t you? You believe in the fantasy.”

She looked away, staring fiercely at the happy couple.

“I have to,” she said almost too softly for him to hear. “I couldn’t stand it otherwise. And just look at them. Look at what they have...”

Sharif looked at her. He saw the yearning on her face, the wistful, almost agonized hope.

As the bride and groom spoke the final words that would bind them together forever in the eyes of Italian law, Sharif silently reached for Irene’s hand and took it gently in his own. This time, he wasn’t thinking about seduction. He was trying to offer comfort. To both of them.

And this time, she didn’t pull away.

CHAPTER THREE

“NOW, THIS—” IRENE sighed, leaning back on the blanket as she felt the warm Italian sun on her face a few hours later “—is lovely.”

“Yes,” Sharif’s low voice said beside her. “Lovely.”

Just the sound of his voice made her heart beat faster. Opening her eyes, she looked at him, lounging beside her on the picnic blanket on the hillside. He’d abandoned his jacket on the way back to the villa. She’d intended to return with the rest of the guests, but he’d convinced her otherwise.

“You’re not going to make me go back alone, are you?” he’d asked. “And desert me for a bunch of people you don’t care about?”

She’d hesitated, and when she saw that Emma had already left the town in a luxury sedan with Just Married written in a sign on the back, she’d found it impossible to say no.

The truth was that she was starting to...like him. It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. After all, it was only natural that she’d find his company slightly more appealing than that of the rest of the wedding guests, none of whom she knew. Why wouldn’t she feel more relaxed around Sharif, especially now that he’d traded the formidable native dress of the Emir of Makhtar for a tailored European suit that made him look exactly like every other man?

Well. Maybe not exactly like every man. And maybe relaxed was not the precise word to describe her feelings around him.

Irene shivered.

Stretched beside her on the blanket, Sharif emanated sex appeal, looking impossibly handsome in a gray vest and tie and tailored gray trousers. She licked her lips as her eyes dropped to the sleeves of his white shirt, rolled up to reveal the dusting of dark hair over his tanned forearms.

Just seeing that much of his skin made a bead of sweat break between her breasts that had nothing to do with the warm Italian sun.

He lifted a dark eyebrow, and she realized she’d been staring. And cripes, had she just licked her lips?

“It’s...warm for November...isn’t it?” she said weakly.

His dark gaze looked amused. “Is it?”

“Haven’t you noticed?” She sat up abruptly on the blanket. She was relieved to see the rest of the wedding party and guests picnicking in the post-wedding luncheon farther down the hill. Golden sunlight danced across the field of autumn flowers, in the meadow on the Falconeri estate. Picnic lunches had been arranged for all of them by the picnic butler. Honest to God, a picnic butler. Shaking her head at the memory, Irene reached for the big wicker picnic basket. She licked her lips again, trying to act as if she’d been thinking about only food all the while. “You must be hungry. When I’m hungry, I can’t think about anything but cream cakes. You’re hungry, right?”

“Starving,” he said softly, his dark eyes tracing her. “And you’re right. When a man is hungry, everything else stops. Until his craving is satisfied.”

Irene had the sudden feeling he wasn’t talking about food. A tremble went over her body as she looked at him.

He gave her an innocent smile with his full, sensual lips.

No man should have lips like that, Irene thought. It shouldn’t be legal. She suddenly wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by those lips.

No! She couldn’t let herself be tempted, not even for a moment. Virginity, once lost, was lost forever. She couldn’t let herself be lured by desire, not when the cost for that momentary pleasure would be the life—the committed love—that she really wanted!

She forced herself to look down at the basket. She took out Italian sandwiches on fresh crusty bread, antipasto and fresh fruit salad, all of which she put on elegant china plates before handing one to him, along with a fine linen napkin and a fork she suspected was made of pure silver.

“Thank you,” he said gravely.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, looking away. She noticed the four bodyguards at a distance, in strategic locations on the edges of the meadow. “They really follow you everywhere, don’t they? I know you’re emir and all, but how can you stand it?”

Sharif used a solid-silver fork to take a bite of antipasto off his elegant china plate. “It is part of my position that I accept.”

She shook her head. “But the loss of privacy...I’m not sure it’s a great trade-off. Wealth, power, fame. But also four babysitters dogging your feet wherever you go.”

“Six.” The corners of his lips tilted upward. “The other two are keeping an eye on my room at the villa.”

Irene stared at him. “Right.” Her voice was heavy with irony. “Because you never know when there might be a sudden attack on Lake Como.”

“You never know what the world will bring to your door.”

“It’s obvious, even to me, that six guards is overkill in a place like—”

“My father was shot down in broad daylight, twenty years ago, while vacationing with my mother.” He took a bite of pasta salad. “Shot down by an ex-mistress. In a private, gated villa on the French Riviera.”

Irene gave an intake of breath, then set down her forkful of fruit salad. She lifted her tremulous gaze. The hard lines of his face held no emotion.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “What...happened?”

“His mistress turned the gun on herself. She died at once. My father bled out on the terrace and died ten minutes later. In my mother’s arms.”

It was all so horrible, Irene felt sick inside. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, helplessly. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen.” His mouth pressed into a grim line. “At boarding school in America. A teacher pulled me out of class. Two men I’d never met before bowed to me, calling me the emir. I knew something must have happened to my father but it wasn’t until I arrived back at the palace that I discovered what it was.” Reaching out with an unsteady hand, he poured a bottle of springwater into one of the glasses. He drank it all in one gulp, then looked away. “It was a long time ago.”

She felt awful, needling him about bodyguards when his own father had died in a situation every bit as apparently safe as this. “I’m sorry...you...I’m such a...I can’t even imagine...”

“Forget about it.” Sharif looked at the rest of the wedding party farther down the meadow. “As you said, today is a day for celebration. What’s this?” Reaching into the basket, he pulled out a bottle of expensive champagne. “And still chilled.” His lips curved as he looked at the label. “Now, this is the right way to endure a wedding.”

Endure? She wondered at his choice of words. Then, she could hardly blame him for thinking so ill of romance, love or marriage, when his own parents’ marriage had ended as it had.

He looked up, his dark gaze daring her to ask him more about it. Her mouth went dry.

“It’s a little early for champagne, isn’t it?” was all she could manage.

Without answering, Sharif popped the bottle open and poured it into two crystal glasses. He held one out to her, with a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.

“Surely you, Miss Taylor, with your romantic nature,” he drawled, “would not refuse a glass of champagne to celebrate your dearest friend’s happy day?”

When he put it like that... “Well, no.” She took the glass. “And for heaven’s sake. Call me Irene.”

Sharif looked down at her across the blanket.

“Irene,” he said in a low voice.

Sensuality and power emanated from him in a way that fascinated her. In a way that was dangerous. Her eyes fell to his lips. To the slight shadow of scruff on his sharp jawline. To his neck.

Forcing herself to look away, she drank deeply from her glass. She’d never tasted champagne before, and it was every bit as delicious and bubbly and intoxicating as it looked in the movies. Sitting here in the meadow, beside a sexy Makhtari emir, overlooking a two-hundred-year-old Italian villa with the blue sparkling lake beyond, Irene felt as if she, too, had been transported into a movie, or a dream.

They ate in silence. With no words to fill the air, she was even more aware of Sharif’s every movement. She looked at him sideways through her lashes, at the gleam of golden sunlight against his tawny skin. The thick shape of his throat above his white collar and blue tie. His long, muscled legs beneath the well-tailored trousers. She felt a cool breeze on her own overheated cheeks and the bare legs peeking out from her dress. But just as she was desperately trying to think of something to talk about, he abruptly spoke into the silence.

“So, you live in Paris?”

It was such a small-talk sort of salvo, it surprised her. Irene suddenly wondered if, in spite of Sharif being a powerful, rich sheikh, he might also be a person, who himself might have been trying to think of conversation, just as she had been.

“I had a job there. As a nanny for the Bulgarian ambassador’s children.”

“Had?”

She ate some fruit salad. “I was, um, fired.”

He looked shocked. “You?”

“I loved the children, but...their parents and I had some creative differences.” She took a big bite of sandwich and chewed slowly, but after she swallowed, he was still waiting patiently for her to continue. She sighed. “I’ve never been good at holding my tongue. I felt the parents were spending too much time at parties and entertaining, and were neglecting the emotional needs of their girls and needed to get their priorities straight.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “And you—said this—to them?”

“I’ve always had a problem with telling the truth.”

“You mean the problem is that you actually tell it?” He gave a low laugh, and she loved the sound. So sexy. So warm. It made his dark eyes light up in a way that melted her inside.

“Don’t laugh,” Irene said. “You’re a billionaire and a king. I bet no one tells you the truth about anything. They’re too scared.”

“I doubt that very much.” He gave another laugh, but this time there was no warmth in it. “I wish some of my servants were a little more afraid, to tell you the truth. My sister has a companion who—”

He cut himself off.

“You have a sister?”

“Yes.” He looked away.

Birds sang above them, echoing plaintively across the valley. Feeling awkward, Irene lifted her glass to her lips to take a fortifying drink of champagne, only to discover she’d finished it already. How had that happened?

“Allow me.” Sharif brought the bottle to her glass. Placing his hand over hers, to steady her hold on the crystal stem, he tilted the bottle against the lip and poured deeply into her glass. Irene felt his larger hand over hers, felt the warmth of his palm against her skin, and a deep shudder went through her.

She looked up at his darkly handsome face.

“So where are you working now?” he asked.

She licked her lips. “I’m, um, not.”

“Taking time off?”

“I’m sadly between jobs,” she said lightly. “It’s been six months. I’m running out of money.”

Sharif frowned. “Can’t Mrs. Falconeri arrange a job for you at one of her husband’s hotels?”

“She probably could, if I asked her. But I won’t.”

“No desire to work in the hotel business?”

“It’s not that. I wouldn’t dream of presuming on our friendship that way. It wouldn’t be right.”

He was staring at her as if she were crazy. “What are you talking about?”

She glared at him. “I’m not that kind of person, okay? Feelings are feelings, friends are friends, and I’m not going to use any relationship for financial gain. I won’t. I’m not like—”

Like my family, she almost said, but cut herself off just in time.

Or maybe she didn’t. Sharif was looking at her with consternation. As if seeing her for the first time.

“What happened?” he said in a low voice. “I thought some man broke your heart. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Or else why wouldn’t you ask a good friend for help finding a job? Why would you be afraid?”

“I’m not afraid!” Her cheeks flamed. “I just prefer to find a job on my own, that’s all. I don’t need Emma’s help.” She wouldn’t let him see into her soul. She wouldn’t. “Don’t worry about me, Your Highness,” she said coldly. “I’ll be fine.”

He looked as if he didn’t believe her. His lips parted, as if he was about to ask her questions she wouldn’t want to answer.

Looking down across the meadow, she rose unsteadily to her feet. “Let’s pack up. I’m done.”

But after they’d silently packed the dishes and he’d folded the blanket, as she started to walk ahead of him, Sharif caught her arm.

“Wait.” Tilting his head, he gave her an impish, sideways smile. “Before we rejoin the other guests, I have something to show you.”

* * *

An hour later, Irene was still staring at it in shock.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said for the sixth time. She tilted her head, regarding it from the other direction. Nope. It still didn’t look real. It was too outrageously huge, too ridiculous to be believed.

Beside her, Sharif tilted his head as well, looking down at it with poorly concealed masculine smugness. “Like it?”

Irene licked her lips, trying to find the words.

“A little too big?” he offered finally.

She looked up at him. “You think?”

“It’s purely for your pleasure.”

“I didn’t ask for anything that huge.”

“You didn’t ask for anything at all. But I knew you wanted it. Every woman does.”

Irene bit her lip, staring at it.

“Touch it,” he said encouragingly. “Go on. Don’t be afraid. It won’t bite.”

“That’s what you think,” she muttered, but finally, the temptation was too much to resist. It was too spectacular not to touch. She wanted to feel it for herself, every hard delicious curve.

Reaching out, she gently stroked her fingertips over the diamond necklace he was holding out in the black velvet case.

The diamonds felt hard and smooth. Especially the center five stones, which had to be well over ten carats...each. They sparkled from the fire inside them.

Just as she did when she was near Sharif.

“Put it on,” he said, coming closer. “You know you want to.”

Yanking back her hand, she shook her head, setting her jaw. “I couldn’t possibly accept.”

“Why not?”

She looked at him in disbelief. “You really have to ask? After I told you how I feel about mixing the lines between relationships and financial gain?”

Sharif lifted a dark eyebrow.

“Why, Miss Taylor. Are we in a relationship?” he purred. “Am I to understand you cannot accept my small gift because you’ve fallen desperately in love with me?”

He’d caught her very neatly.

“Of course not,” she said, glaring at him.

“In that case...”

He pulled her to the full-length mirror in his bedroom suite. Removing her borrowed band of Emma’s pearls, he replaced them with the diamond necklace from the black velvet box.

She nearly gasped at the cool weight of the stones against her skin.

“You look beautiful,” Sharif said softly, standing behind her. “You will be the queen of the ball tonight.”

“No one will be queen but Emma,” Irene said. “It’s her day.” Then she swallowed as she looked at herself in his mirror.

Afternoon sunlight was beaming down from the tall windows of his bedroom. She saw her own big eyes, the pink flush on her cheeks, her full, trembling lips. In her borrowed Lela Rose dress, with the diamonds flashing fire against her skin, she did look like a queen. But she couldn’t kid herself it was the dress, or even the jewels that made her look so...alive.

It was the man standing behind her now. She couldn’t touch him. But she could touch this...

Unthinkingly, she raised her hand and ran it down the thick, hard jewels. “How much did it cost?”

“It’s not good manners to ask, is it?”

“How much?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “A minor amount that I can easily afford.”

Irene licked her lips, still staring at herself in the mirror. Take it off this instant, she ordered herself, but she found her hand wouldn’t obey. Instead of reaching back to undo the clasp at her nape, it was stroking the huge jewels as they trailed from her collarbone to the center of her breastbone. It probably cost as much as a car, she thought. A car? A house. A mansion.

“A loan?” she suggested weakly.

He shook his head. “A gift.”

Irene had never seen anything so lavish and exquisite as this necklace, and knew she never would again. Crazy to think she was wearing a million euros around her neck—or more—when she had less than twenty euros in her purse.

But it wasn’t a gift, whatever Sharif had said. It was payment in advance. No man gave something for nothing. What was the difference between accepting a diamond necklace from a sheikh or getting a hundred bucks from old Benny who pumped gas as the Quick Mart? No difference at all.

But she found herself still stroking the jewels for another five minutes before she gathered the willpower to reach for the clasp.

He put his larger hand over hers, stopping her. Their eyes met in the mirror.

“They’re yours.”

“I told you. I can’t accept.”

“I won’t take them back. They were bought for you today in Rome.”

“Rome?” she cried. “How?” Then she remembered his newspaper. “It’s very wasteful,” she grumbled. “Sending private jets all around the world at the drop of a hat. Buying diamonds for a stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger. Not anymore.” He shrugged. “If you don’t want the necklace, toss it in the lake. Bury it in the garden. I care not. It’s yours. I won’t take it back.”

“But—”

“I’m bored with this subject. Let’s find something fun to do.” He gave her a lazy smile. “Perhaps go congratulate the bride and groom on their civil ceremony?”

Guilt flashed through her as she recalled how she’d barely spoken three words with Emma all day. “Good idea,” she mumbled.

But for all the rest of the long afternoon, she found herself unable to take off the necklace, or to part company with Sharif, who was continually at her side, whispered shocking things to try to make her laugh, and then laughing himself when she whispered her own shocking things in return.

The beautiful, chic supermodel types goggled at them for the rest of the afternoon, and through dinner, too, as if they couldn’t imagine what the handsome, powerful Emir of Makhtar could find so fascinating about Irene. Oh, if only they knew. She was insulting him, mostly.

She allowed herself a small, private giggle with her after-dessert coffee. Then her eye caught Emma’s worried face across the table.

Irene’s smile fell. Looking away, she scowled. Emma should know she didn’t need to worry. She knew what she was doing.

Didn’t she?

After dinner, alone in her own room for the first time that day, Irene looked down in awe at the beautiful gown Emma had loaned her for the ball that night. It was strapless red silk, with a sweetheart neckline and a very full skirt. The perfect gown for a night that would be the culminating event of the wedding celebration. Tomorrow would be nothing but hangovers and staggered breakfasts, as guests scattered for the airport, for the train, back to their real lives. But tonight—tonight.

Tonight there would be fireworks.

Trembling, Irene looked at herself in the mirror, wearing only a red strapless lace bra and panties—and the necklace. Lifting her long dark hair off her neck, Irene bit her lip, turning her head to the left and right.

She’d wear it just a few hours more. Then she’d give it back to Sharif, she promised herself, and no harm done.

Irene brushed her long dark hair, then piled the heavy weight on top of her head in an elegant topknot. She put on black eyeliner and red lipstick. Pulled on the strapless scarlet ball gown. Zipped it up behind her.

Looked in the mirror.

A woman she didn’t recognize looked back at her.

Beautiful.

Exotic.

Rich.

An illusion, she thought. Just for tonight. Tomorrow she’d turn back into a pumpkin. She’d face the hollow choice of asking a friend for a job, against her pride and principles, or else going back to Paris to pack her things to return to Colorado, a penniless failure. She’d go back with nothing but the dream that someday, if she worked hard enough and followed all the rules, she’d be good enough. She’d find a good man to love her as she wanted to be loved. She took a deep breath.

But just for tonight, she would forget all that. She’d pretend she was someone else, just like the other women at the villa, wealthy and beautiful and without a care in the world.

Going out into the hall, Irene ducked back when she saw Emma and Cesare, both of them dressed for the ball, coming out of the next doorway. Emma was giving her husband an impish smile as she ran her hand down the front of his tuxedo. Cesare looked at her with a low growl, then gave her a passionate kiss, pulling her right back into their bedroom—next door.

Well, that was one mystery solved. Sharif wasn’t the one who’d kept her awake last night with all the noise. Smiling to herself, Irene counted to ten to give Emma and Cesare time to close their bedroom door before she went back into the hall.

She felt strangely nervous as she went down the sweeping stairs to the ballroom. Her hands were trembling for some reason she couldn’t imagine. She touched the diamond necklace again, as if it was some kind of good-luck charm.

Just for tonight, she repeated to herself. No harm done.

The gilded ballroom was packed with people. Already, the hum of excited conversation and the music of the orchestra filled the huge room all the way to the high ceilings and the enormous crystal chandeliers. Unlike most of the weekend, which had involved an intimate number of twenty or so guests, tonight’s event had brought celebrities and royalty and tycoons and politicians and billionaires, not just from Europe but also from South America and Asia and Africa. There had to be at least five hundred people, or maybe eight hundred. She had a hard time counting, and anyway, she didn’t really care, because even though she wouldn’t admit it to herself, there was only one person she was really looking for—

“Irene.” His low voice behind her caused a thrill of pleasure to rush through her body. “You dazzle me.”

Turning with a smile, she got her first look at Sharif in a tuxedo and her heart lifted to her throat. How could he look even more devastatingly handsome? How was it even possible?

Taking her hand in his, Sharif bent and kissed her skin. At the touch of his lips on her hand, the hint of his hot breath, a flush of heat covered her body. Her eyes were wide as he straightened. He smiled at her, then held out his arm.

“Shall we show them how it’s done?”

This time, there was absolutely no hesitation before she took his arm. They walked into the ballroom together. Irene was conscious of many pairs of eyes on them as they danced and danced and drank champagne and toasted the happy couple and danced some more. All night, they never left each other’s side. They spoke about everything and nothing, and as she smiled up at him, he looked down at her, caressing her with his eyes.

Every word, every moment, seemed filled with magic and a delicious sort of tension, as if the very night were holding its breath. Irene felt dizzy, drunk with happiness. Against her will, she found herself wondering what it would be like to be in Sharif’s arms, not just for these few hours, not just for this one night, but for tomorrow as well, and the day after that.

As they swayed to the music on the dance floor, he gave her a sensual smile, brushing an errant tendril of dark hair from her face. Just feeling the soft brush of his fingertips, even though they were in the middle of the ballroom with hundreds of couples around them, made her almost forget to dance. She stumbled, but he caught her smoothly, lowering her into a dip.

“Thank you,” she whispered breathlessly, looking up at him.

Sharif’s eyes were dark with heat. “My pleasure.”

It seemed like minutes or hours that he held her in the dip, almost horizontally, and she wondered wildly if this was the way he would look over her in bed. Her knees went wobbly, but before she could collapse completely, he pulled her back upright, tight against his hard body.

She licked her lips, pressing her cheek to the shirt of his tuxedo. She could feel his warmth beneath the fabric, feel the power and strength of his body towering over her own. She thought she could hear his heartbeat.

He stopped dancing. Took a ragged breath.

“Irene,” he said in a low voice.

Terror struck her—or maybe it was excitement—she no longer knew the difference. She only knew what was about to happen and that she could not stop it, even if she wanted to. And she didn’t. Slowly, she pulled away from his chest. She lifted her gaze to his.

Sharif’s eyes seemed to burn with dark fire. He ran his hands over her bare shoulders, softly down her back. She felt the roughness of his hands, the size of them, the strength. He ran his fingertips up her arms, to her neck. He stroked the edge of his thumb softly against her aching lips, sizzling where he touched, making her yearn, making her need.

Cupping her face, he tilted back her head. She felt the warmth of his breath. Felt the hard heat of his body against hers. For an instant, time seemed suspended. She forgot the people around them. Forgot to dance. Forgot all rational thought. Forgot to breathe.

He lowered his mouth to hers, and kissed her.

It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. The memory of Carter’s sloppy kisses of two years ago instantly evaporated, became laughable. Sharif took command, holding her in his arms, his lips hard and hot and sweet and soft. The music stopped. She heard only the rush of blood through her veins, making her dizzy, lost in the riptide of pleasure that tore through her, body and soul, leaving her weak and clutching his shoulders as if only this kiss could save her. As if his kiss were life itself.

She wanted him. She wanted this powerful billionaire sheikh, who had become simply Sharif to her. She wanted him. Even if it destroyed her...

“Fireworks! Come out now for the fireworks!”

The words rang out multiple times, in multiple languages. Irene heard the delighted response of the crowd, felt the rush as people started to leave the ballroom. Sharif pulled away. Her eyes opened slowly. She felt almost bewildered as she looked up at his handsome face, at his dark eyes, half-lidded with desire. Then she saw something else in his eyes.

Smugness. Masculine smugness.

She blinked. Took a deep breath. Eyes wide, she put her hand to her forehead.

“What are you doing to me?” she whispered.

“Don’t you know?” Sharif tilted his head as he looked down at her, his black eyes hot with desire. He stroked her cheek. “I am seducing you, Irene.”

A shock of awareness blasted over and through her, causing prickles to go up and down her body from her earlobes to her breasts and lower still. “You’re—you’re seducing me?”

“Forget the fireworks outside.” Running his hands down the bare skin of her shoulders above her strapless red gown, he lowered his head to her ear. “Come back to my suite and we’ll have our own.”

He pulled back from her, and she saw in his face that he expected her to say yes. He thought he’d won. In spite of all her protests, he’d always expected to win. Dawning horror rose inside her soul.

“All of our time together—it’s just been one long set-up? From the moment we met?”

Sharif twirled a tendril of her long dark hair around his finger. “I’ve never had to work so hard for any woman. But no woman has ever intrigued me more. Come back to my room, Irene. Let me show you everything the night can be...”

Irene ripped out of his arms, pressing her hands against her temples. One long set-up. All the laughter and banter. All the camaraderie and delight. She’d thought it was magic. She hadn’t seen the secret work of the magician pulling the strings.

“It was all just to get me into bed?” she whispered. “All our—our friendship was a lie?”

Sharif’s smug expression disappeared.

“Not a lie,” he said sharply. “A seduction. Surely even you can see the difference.”

“Even me?” Pain wrenched through her, the pain of shattered dreams, dreams she should have known better to have but that she’d allowed herself to believe in anyway. “Stupid. Stupid,” she whispered, hating herself.

“Irene...”

Looking up at him, she hated him even more. She couldn’t bear to meet his black gaze that always saw through her soul. Was he seeing through her now? Did he know what a fool he’d nearly made of her—the fool she’d nearly made of herself, letting herself fall into the magic, believing it to be real?

A sob lifted to her throat. Turning on her heel, she fled the empty ballroom, out into the night.

Outside, hundreds of wedding guests stood across the terraces, their eyes lifted up as the first explosions of colorful fireworks streaked across the sky, across the black mirror of the lake.

Irene fled in the opposite direction, toward the garden, her red silk skirts flying behind her. Only when she was in the dark quiet of the overgrown trees did she exhale. And cover her face with her hands.

She remembered how harshly she’d judged her mother and sister for falling for men’s lines, again and again, first for love, then for attention and finally for money. Oh, if only she’d known how it all started! With such breathless, foolish hope!

Sharif’s voice was low behind her. “I don’t understand.”

Trembling, she whirled around.

The moon had gone behind the clouds and in the darkness of night, she couldn’t see his face. “It’s been fun, hasn’t it?” he said. “Why are you reacting like this?”

Fireworks suddenly lit up the sky again, and she saw his face. He looked bewildered. He had no idea what he’d done to her.

Irene was glad for that, at least. She looked down, waiting for the sky to grow dark. Waiting for her voice to grow steady enough for her to speak.

“It’s just sex,” Sharif said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does to me,” she said. “Either it’s making love with all your heart, or else it’s just an empty, hollow shell of what it’s meant to be.”

He snorted. “You’re making a big deal out of—”

“I’ve waited my whole life for the man I will love. The man I’ll marry.”

Another boom of fireworks, a distant happy cry from the crowd, and she saw the shocked expression on his face. “You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.”

She waited for it to be dark again. Then she said quietly, “When I marry, it will only be for love. And our wedding night will be truly about making love. The kind that will last forever...” Her throat caught. “You’ve accused me of being romantic,” she said softly, blinking fast. “I’m just waiting for the One.”

“One at a time?” he said weakly.

She shook her head. He scowled.

“What difference does the number of lovers make?”

“To you, it doesn’t.” Irene looked up. “But it matters to me. Sex is sacred. It’s a promise without words. A promise I’ll only make to the man who will love me for the rest of his life, and I can love for the rest of mine.” Her throat ached as she asked him a question to which she already knew the answer. “Are you that man, Sharif?”

A last blast of fireworks ricocheted across the night like a lightning storm, illuminating his expressionless face.

“No,” he said dully.

The ache in her throat now felt like a razor blade. She forced herself to ignore it. To smile. “I didn’t think so.” Unclasping the necklace was suddenly easy. She blinked fast, and was proud of herself for her clear, unwavering voice as she said, “Thank you for a weekend I’ll never forget.”

Reaching for his hand, she pressed the heavy diamond necklace against his palm. He looked down.

“It was a gift,” he said.

Past his ear, she saw movement on the edge of the garden, his bodyguards hovering at a distance. It almost made her laugh. “Your minders are here.” With a deep breath, she reached up and touched his rough cheek. “I wish all kinds of beautiful things for you, Sharif.” She tried to smile. “There’s lots of magic to believe in. The kind people make for themselves.”

But as Irene looked at his stricken black eyes, her throat suddenly closed tight. Without another word, she turned and ran toward the villa. Above her, the fireworks’ grand finale exploded across the sky in exquisite bursts of color, like flowers blooming to life then just as swiftly fading away.

She’d passed the test. She’d won.

Irene barely reached her bedroom before her knees collapsed beneath her. Sliding to the floor in a splash of red silk, she covered her face with her hands, and cried.

CHAPTER FOUR

HE’D LOST. FAILED.

Sharif could hardly believe it.

I wish all kinds of beautiful things for you.

Remembering her lovely, anguished voice, he muttered a curse. He stalked through the crowd watching the last fireworks, stomping back toward the villa. Two bodyguards fell in behind him as always. One spoke to him in urgent Makhtari Arabic.

“Your Highness, you should know that—”

“Later,” he bit out. His whole body felt tight. For the love of heaven, couldn’t they leave him alone, even now? Stomping up the stairs, Sharif paused, looking down the dark hallway toward Irene’s room. But what was the point?

There’s lots of magic to believe in. The kind people make for themselves.

Furiously, Sharif turned toward his own suite. He could hardly believe that it was ending like this. That after hours of flirting with her, dancing with her, it had still ended with him going back to his bedroom alone.

For the last thirty hours, Irene had been the center of his battle strategy, the intense focus of his every thought. He’d used all his best techniques, the ones that never failed. He’d charmed her, listened to her, given her his complete attention—and not just for an hour, but for the entire day. More. He’d told her the truth when he said he’d never tried so hard before. He’d forced himself to seduce her slowly, an inch at a time, luring her as a horse trainer would tame a skittish colt.

And this was the result?

He looked down in disgust at the extravagant diamond necklace clenched in his fist. Women could never resist him. So how had she?

I’ve waited my whole life for the man I will love.

Sharif took a shuddering, incredulous breath. He’d never met a woman like this. She was crazy. But that was also why she’d drawn his interest, that light inside her. The fierce purity.

I don’t fail, he’d boasted to her once. Well. He rubbed the back of his head. She’d certainly proved the truth of that.

What did he care? he told himself harshly. What was one woman to him, more or less?

He just had never failed before. Not in any arena of his life. When he tried something, he always succeeded.

Until now. And he suddenly felt something for Irene he hadn’t felt for any woman in a long time.

Respect. No. More than respect. Envy.

Which didn’t make any sense at all. After all, he wasn’t bound by any antiquated, ridiculous rules about sex. He could have it whenever he wanted.

Well, except now. With her.

More irritated than ever, he stomped down his empty hallway. Four bodyguards were waiting near his door, glancing at each other, all of them looking nervous.

“Your Highness,” one of them tried.

It took all of Sharif’s self-control not to shout in the man’s face. “Later,” he growled, and pushed past them into his room, nearly slamming the door behind him. Your minders, Irene had called them. The symbols of a duty that in this moment chafed him almost beyond bearing. For God’s sake, couldn’t they leave him in peace, even for a moment?

In the dark bedroom, he tossed the ten-million-dollar diamond necklace carelessly across his desk, hearing it clatter and fall.

Then he heard something else.

“Your Highness,” a kittenish voice gasped in the darkness. “I’ve been waiting for you!”

Irene? But even as the thought flashed through his mind, he knew it wasn’t her. And if it wasn’t Irene... Coldly, he switched on the bedside light.

To his shock, he saw the beautiful blonde Gilly, his sister’s companion, who’d come from a respectable family with such excellent references.

“You sounded tired over the phone...” she purred, sitting up. She was naked, and smiling at him like a cat with a bowl of cream.

Sharif felt suddenly, crashingly weary. “How did you get past the bodyguards?”

“Oh. That.” She giggled. “I told them there was an emergency with Aziza and I had to speak with you privately as soon as you left the party.”

So that explained why they’d wanted to talk to him. His weariness faded, turned to anger. “And my sister?”

“She’s fine,” she said hastily, correctly interpreting his glare. “Well, except for counting down the days until her wedding.”

“Counting down?”

“You know—with dread.”

His jaw became granite. “Her engagement wasn’t my idea.”

“Yes, well...” Gilly waved her hand airily. “I’m sure it will all work out.”

Turning away from her, Sharif sat on the chair by the fireplace and pulled off his shoes, one by one. He’d hired her as Aziza’s companion only because, after years spent with an elderly governess, his young sister had begged him for someone closer to her own age. She’d been thrilled when Gilly Lanvin had moved into the palace, with her sophisticated ways and intense love of fashion. But the result for his sister had been nothing short of disastrous.

When Aziza, at barely nineteen, had been sent expensive gifts and flowers by the aging sultan of a neighboring country, Gilly had turned her head with fairy-tale dreams of being a queen. His sister had begged and pleaded with Sharif to allow her to accept the proposal. Finally, with some reluctance, he had. It was a good match politically, and if his sister truly was so sure...

Except Aziza’s certainty had now melted away as the wedding approached, and she realized she was about to become the wife of a man forty years older than herself, a man she barely knew beyond his excellent taste in Louis Vuitton handbags and Van Cleef & Arpels earring sets. She was desperate to get out of it now, but it was too late. Sharif had signed the betrothal. Some choices, he thought grimly, you just had to live with. He knew that better than anyone.

“...I knew you were hoping I would surprise you. I could tell.” He realized Gilly was still talking, crooning in a really annoying singsong voice. “If you’ll just come over here, Your Highness—Sharif—I’ll rub you down, make you feel so good—”

“Get out,” he said flatly.

She gasped. “But—”

“Get. Out.”

Rising to his feet, he opened the door and spoke coldly to his bodyguards in the hall. “Miss Lanvin is returning to Beverly Hills. Get her last paycheck and put her on the next plane.”

The bodyguards glanced at each other as if they knew they all had a good chance of being fired.

“Now,” Sharif said tightly.

The next second, the bodyguards were at his bed, and as one of them lifted the naked, whining woman from the mattress, another efficiently covered her with a thick white terry-cloth bathrobe from the en suite bathroom. Within thirty seconds, they were carrying her down the hall and down the stairs and permanently out of his life—and Aziza’s.

So the bodyguards were of some use after all. Sharif leaned back against his door, almost smiling to himself as he thought of using this point against Irene. Then his smile faded as he realized it was unlikely he’d ever talk to her again. The thought made him hurt a little inside. Why? Simply because he was too proud to accept failure? Surely he couldn’t be so childish as that?

Pulling off his tuxedo and silk boxer shorts, he stepped into the shower.

Irene wanted to wait for love and marriage. So be it. Even if he didn’t agree with her idealistic sentiment, he could respect it. He had no choice but to respect it.

His own life and ideals were different. When he married, love would have nothing to do with it. In fact, once he and his future wife had a child to be heir and another as requisite spare, he fully expected he’d avoid her for the rest of his life.

Climbing naked into bed, he gave a suspicious sniff. He could still smell Gilly’s flowery perfume on the sheets. It irritated him. He was tempted to call the villa’s housekeeping staff and have them change the sheets, but that seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention likely to cause a scandal. He could just imagine what Irene would say if she heard. Some scathing remark about the promiscuous nature of selfish, coldhearted playboys.

Getting up, he opened the large oak wardrobe, found some clean sheets and changed the bed himself. He’d never done such a thing before, as from birth all of his needs had been attended to by servants. He’d mostly been raised by an American nanny and Makhtari tutors who taught him history and languages, along with fencing and fighting and riding. Even at boarding school, someone else had changed his sheets. So cleaning up after himself, even in this small way, was new. His fingers were clumsy as he did it.

Finally, Sharif stood back from the bed, surveying his work with satisfaction. Just because he’d never done something before didn’t mean he couldn’t learn the skills. Again, he wished he could show Irene. Again, he reminded himself he’d never see her again.

There’s lots of magic to believe in. The kind people make for themselves. Her dark eyelashes had trembled against her pale cheeks.

Climbing into bed, he closed his eyes into a hard, dreamless sleep. He woke early, with the sound of his phone ringing.

It was his chief of staff, back at the palace. He was needed in Makhtar. His European vacation was over. No more pleasure. No more distraction. All that awaited him at home was cold hard duty and a young sister in tears at the mess she’d made of her own life. He’d have to find her a new companion to hold her hand for the remaining three months until her wedding.

Rising from the bed, Sharif yawned, rubbing the back of his head. He reached his arms upward, stretching his naked body before he dropped to the floor and did a few quick push-ups, just to wake up and get some of the adrenaline out of his bloodstream.

Find Aziza a companion? The situation seemed hopeless. He needed a woman who was both young, for Aziza’s sake, and old, for his. He needed someone he could trust, someone who wouldn’t jump into Sharif’s bed, someone who would be professional enough to put Aziza’s needs before everything else. Someone who...

Sharif’s spine snapped back as his eyes went wide. He picked up his phone again. He read through business emails, made a few additional calls. Without hurry, he dressed in his traditional Makhtari garb and, leaving others to pack his suitcases, he went down to the breakfast room, bodyguards falling into line behind him.

He walked straight through the pale yellow room, ignoring all the women who tried to catch his eye. He offered an absentminded “good morning” to the host and hostess, then saw the person he’d been looking for. Pushing past all the rest, he went straight to Irene, who was sitting at the table with a plate loaded with pastries and scrambled eggs as she poured a great deal of cream into her coffee. He stopped right in front of her.

“I want you to come work for me,” he said. “At my palace in Makhtar.”

* * *

Irene’s eyes still felt scratchy from a night of crying. She’d prayed she’d never have to face Sharif again. Foolish hope.

It had taken her hours to fall asleep, hours of running worried circles in her mind about the choice she’d make today. Would she take her first-class flight back to Paris, where she had only a few days left of paid rent, and then the open-ended economy ticket back to Colorado, to the rickety house on the wrong side of the tracks? Would she go back in penniless humiliation to the place where Carter had told her she’d never be remotely good enough for a man like him?

Or would she ask Emma to find her a job in one of her husband’s luxury hotels around the world—using a friendship for her own financial gain?

In her darkest hour, Irene had bitterly regretted her pride, which had made her spurn Sharif’s lavish gift of the diamond necklace. If she’d kept it, she and her family could have been wealthy—set for life!

But at what cost?

No. She’d done the right thing. He’d made her want him. Dazzled her with romance. But she’d resisted the temptation, and she’d never see him again. So the damage wouldn’t be permanent, either to her heart, or to her soul.

So how could she abandon her principles now, and ask Emma to arrange a job for her?

But how could she not?

Anxious and unsure, feeling exhausted and alone with her heart still aching over the coldhearted way Sharif had tried to seduce her, the way he’d kissed her, Irene had finally gotten out of bed. She’d taken a shower and dressed. No fancy designer clothes this time, but her own plain cotton T-shirt and hoodie and jeans fit for traveling. Going down to the breakfast room, she’d filled her plate with a mountain of food. She’d numbly sat down alone at the table.

Then she’d felt a shiver of awareness behind her. Without turning, she knew who’d just come into the breakfast room. A dark shadow came across the table in front of her.

“I want you to come work for me. At my palace in Makhtar.”

It was the same husky voice that had haunted her dreams. Irene looked up from her plate of food. A shiver went through her body as she met Sharif’s dark eyes, a hard aching tingle across her lips, which he’d bruised every bit as thoroughly as her heart.

He was once again dressed in his full sheikh regalia, with his bodyguards hovering behind him, the full presence of the Emir of Makhtar. And he’d never looked so handsome. The ultimate male figure of every woman’s romantic fantasy. Or at least hers.

Wrong, she told herself fiercely. Her ultimate fantasy was a smart, funny, loyal man who would mow the lawn of their little cottage, read books to their children and love her forever. A man who would notice if a little neighbor child walked past the house, crying after her first day of school. A man who would roll up the sleeves of his old shirt, pull down his cap and go up to the school to make sure it never happened again. Her mother hadn’t done it. She’d never known her father, either. Irene had been an accident, a mistake. Her mother had told her that all her life. Stupid condom didn’t work. Don’t know which one.

But after the first day of kindergarten, Dorothy Abbott had been the mother who’d comforted her, Bill Abbott the father who’d protected her. That was the house Irene wanted to live in. The parents she would someday give her own children.

There would be no accidents. Because until she met the right man, there would be no sex. No matter how she might be tempted.

“Work for you?” Irene repeated. She hated the weak sound of her voice and tossed her head, intending to give a sharper retort along the lines of Immature as you are, your worshipfulness, I don’t think you exactly need a nanny, then she remembered all the eyes upon them. That type of banter was private, between her and Sharif, not between Irene Taylor, the American nanny, and the Emir of Makhtar. The banter was in the past, anyway. It was when Sharif had wanted to seduce her, and when she’d nearly given him the chance.

“I was not aware you had any children, Your Highness,” she said coldly.

A half smile twisted the edges of Sharif’s lips. She had the feeling he knew exactly how she’d felt forced to choke back her real reaction. He’d probably set up this meeting in public for exactly those reasons, damn him.

“I have a younger sister,” he said.

Her lips parted. She tried to keep her expression impassive as she said, “Tell me about the position,” as coolly as if she had already had five job offers today and fifty thousand dollars in the bank.

He lifted a dark eyebrow. “I would be pleased to give you further details, Miss Taylor. Shall we talk outside?”

She nodded. Rising to her feet, she followed him out of the villa, to the very same terrace where they’d first danced. It already seemed so long ago.

The blue skies and warm autumn sun had evaporated. Winter, too long held at bay, had finally arrived full force into northern Italy. The lowering sky was gray, and mist covered the tips of the distant hills across the lake. A cold blast of wind made her shiver in her comfy pink hooded sweatshirt and old jeans.

Irene looked pointedly at the bodyguards who’d followed them outside. With a sigh, Sharif gave them a glance, and they backed up to the villa wall, out of earshot.

“Why are you asking me to work for you?” she hissed. “What kind of trick is this?”

“No trick.” He tilted his head, his eyes dark. “I’ve recently had reason to sack my sister’s current companion.”

“What happened? Let me guess. You fired her for talking back? If that’s the case, there’s no point hiring me. You know that I—”

“She showed up here last night. In my bed.”

Her cheeks went pink. “Oh,” she said faintly. “Delivery service. How nice for you.”

“No,” he said sharply. “I don’t sleep with employees. I threw her out. Now my sister needs a trustworthy companion until her wedding three months from now.”

“Wedding? How old is your sister?”

“Nineteen.”

Someone else getting married so young. It made Irene feel suddenly ancient at twenty-three. “Why would you choose me?”

Sharif’s dark eyes met hers.

“Because I feel I can trust you to look out for my sister,” he said quietly. “And I know I won’t find you unexpectedly naked in my bed.”

He sounded so sure of that. He didn’t know what turning down his offer last night had cost her. Irene shivered in her thin cotton hoodie, looking out at the gray lake. She thought of what was waiting for her in Colorado. What was waiting for her in Paris.

“When is the wedding exactly?” she said.

“Late February.”

“And the salary?”

“Ah.” He relaxed, tilting his head as he gave a shrug. “For a trustworthy person of this nature, you understand, no price would be too great.”

“How great is great?”

“Name your price.”

Name your price? That was something people said in movies, not in real life. “You can’t be serious.”

“Try me.”

Irene licked her lips. Recklessly, she thought of a huge amount, more than a whole year’s salary working for her previous families in either New York City or Paris. She opened her mouth to ask for that amount.

Then she snapped it shut.

She mustn’t be hasty. She’d read in a book once that women never valued themselves highly enough—that they were afraid to negotiate salaries out of a fear of being turned down, or even more ridiculously, of not being liked. Well, she didn’t care if Sharif liked her, did she? And he was making it plain she had him over a barrel. If there was ever a time to value herself highly, it was now.

She thought of what it would cost to send her mother to the best rehab facility in Denver. The cost of moving to a brand-new apartment in a brand-new city, of paying rent for the next five years so her sister could go to community college and never again be tempted to go looking for some sugar daddy in a bar. Irene thought of the cost of making sure none of them would ever have to go back to that sad little house by the railroad tracks again. A new life not just for Irene, but for her mother and older sister.

So she took that first number and exploded it, like turning a single-story building into a skyscraper. Taking her heart in her hands, she kept her face expressionless and looked him straight in the eyes. “A hundred thousand dollars.”

“Agreed,” he said, before she’d even finished the last word.

Oh, no! She’d blown it! The fact that he’d agreed so quickly meant she hadn’t asked for nearly enough!

“Per month,” she added quickly.

He gave her an amused smile. “Naturally.”

“Fine,” she said, wishing she’d had the guts to ask for more.

“Fine. I will have my people pack your things.”

“Thanks, but I prefer to pack my own stuff. I already did it in any case.”

“Of course you did. Independent and responsible as you are.” He smiled again, and his dark eyes seemed to caress her face, causing an answering spark of awareness to light like a match inside her. Match? That match had been lit from the moment he’d found her standing alone at the moonlit lake that first night. It had turned into a simmering fire that was waiting at any moment to explode.

She wouldn’t let it. She’d already passed the test, hadn’t she? She’d resisted her attraction to him and for the sake of the three hundred thousand dollars, more money than she’d ever seen in her lifetime or would ever expect to see again, she would resist it again.

Fortunately, she knew he wouldn’t pursue her romantically again. Obviously, he’d been just trying to amuse himself with a bit of slumming during his friend’s wedding weekend, but they were returning to real life now. To his home country.

Holy cow. Sharif was Emir of Makhtar. He’d made her forget. Once they were in Makhtar, though, she’d likely never see him in the palace, not until the day he paid her. Likely not even then. Paying the help? He had people to handle that sort of thing.

“So when do we leave?” she asked awkwardly.

He smiled. “As soon as we say our goodbyes and get the suitcases in the car.”

Two hours later, they were boarding his enormous private jet.

“So what did Mrs. Falconeri say when you told her you were coming to work for me?” Sharif asked as they crossed the tarmac.

Irene blushed. “I, um, never told her.”

He gave a low laugh that was way too knowing. She changed the subject. “What’s it like? Your home?”

“An oasis on the Persian Gulf. Sparkling new city, palm trees, a bright blue sky, warm, friendly people.”

She looked at him skeptically. “I already agreed to the job. You don’t have to sell the place like a tourist-board representative. I want to know what it’s really like.”

Sharif stopped, looking at her. “It’s the best country in the world. I would do anything for Makhtar. Sacrifice anything.”

His love for his country shone in his face. She’d never seen such passion, idealism, vulnerability in his dark eyes. She had to look away.

Fortunately, it was easy to find something astonishing to look at. The inside of his private 747 looked nothing like any of the flights she’d been on. Not even that first-class flight. The front cabin of his plane was wide and gleamed with light and comfortable white sofas and seats, with a bar on one side and a large flat-screen television against a wall. It looked like the contemporary interior of an expensive New York restaurant.

Overwhelmed, she sank into the closest seat. “I guess I should call you Your Highness now.”

“And from this moment, you are Miss Taylor,” he agreed.

Biting her lip, she looked out the window. As the jet’s engine warmed up, to take them away from Italy and up into the clouds, Irene felt her heart grow suddenly lighter. Thanks to this stroke of fate, she hadn’t had to give up her principles. And she’d never need to worry about money again. This would change everything for her family. Everything. With a deep breath, she looked at Sharif.

“Thank you for hiring me,” she said softly.

As the bodyguards trailed past him to the rear cabin, he frowned in surprise. “Thank you for solving my problem.”

A flight attendant, glamorously attired in a skirt suit and a jaunty blue hat and scarf, served some sparkling water on a silver tray. Taking a sip of the cool water, Irene looked at her new employer.

Sharif looked handsome and powerful in his stark white robes, sitting on the white leather sofa on the other side of the spacious cabin. Taking his own sparkling water off the tray, he smiled his thanks to the flight attendant. Irene sighed with happiness, leaning back against her own plush leather seat.

“I wish all the people who were mean to me in school could see this.” A low laugh escaped her lips. “No one would ever have guessed I’d someday be companion to a princess of Makhtar. Especially with my grades in geography. I couldn’t have placed Makhtar on a map.” Irene wasn’t a hundred percent certain she could do it now, but she kept that to herself. “Um, are you still sure about this?”

He set down his glass. His handsome face was inscrutable as he slowly looked her over. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Irene hesitated, feeling self-conscious. “I told you I have a bad habit of talking back to employers. Knowing the kind of woman I am, Your Highness, are you sure you really want me as your employee?”

“I’m sure, Miss Taylor. There can be no doubt.” His black eyes met hers as he said huskily, “I want you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

IRENE HAD NEVER flown on even a small private plane before, let alone the huge 747 that belonged to the royal house of Makhtar. But by the time the plane landed that evening, she was growing shamefully accustomed to the luxury that accompanied Sharif wherever he went. Even the stretch Rolls-Royce, and the attendant entourage of black SUVs for the guards, was starting to seem almost routine.

There was just one thing she couldn’t get used to. One thing that was a shock to her senses, each and every time.

She looked at him beneath her lashes, in the back of the limo. He was busy now, speaking with a young man, his chief of staff, who’d met him at the private airport at the edge of the city. The two men were speaking in rapid Arabic, leaving Irene free to sneak little glances.

Gone was the darkly seductive playboy she remembered. Here, Sharif was the emir. Formal. Serious. And definitely not paying the slightest attention to her. Telling herself she was relieved, she looked out the window, which was tinted against the shock of the hot Makhtari sun.

Makhtar City gleamed from the desert, like a polished, sun-drenched diamond in the sand. It was a new city, still being rapidly built with cranes crisscrossing the blue sky.

She saw prosperous people, families pushing baby strollers on newly built sidewalks to newly built cafés. It had to be almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit, from the blast of heat she’d felt walking across the airport tarmac to the air-conditioned limo. Very different from the chilly morning in the Italian mountains. But Sharif had told her on the plane that this was their winter.

“In November, people finally come out of their houses, as the weather turns pleasant. In summer, it can reach a hundred and twenty degrees. Tourists complain then that swimming in the gulf is like taking a hot bath—no relief whatsoever from the unrelenting heat.” He’d grinned. “Makhtaris know better than to try it.”

It sure didn’t seem like winter to her. The hot sun made her want to rip off her jeans and hoodie in favor of shorts and a tank top. But on the street, both men and women wore clothing that completely covered their arms and legs. They didn’t even look hot, strolling with their families. Irene still felt a little sweaty from her four minutes outside. It was way more humid than Colorado, too. She’d have to get used to it.

Still, there was something about this city, this country, that she immediately liked. It wasn’t just the gleaming new architecture of the buildings, or the obvious wealth she saw everywhere—luxury sports cars filling the newly built avenues, lined with expensive designer shops and gorgeous palm trees.

It was the way she saw families walking together. The way she observed, on the street, young people holding open doors for their elders. Family was even more respected than money. The wisdom and experience of age was respected even more than the beauty and vigor of youth. It felt very different from the neighborhood she’d grown up in. At least the house she’d grown up in.

As a child, she’d wanted so desperately to respect her mother and older sister. She’d wanted a mother who would give her hugs after school, a sister she could emulate and admire. She’d wanted a family who would look out for her.

But by the time she was nine, she’d realized that if she wanted milk in the fridge and the light bills paid, she’d have to take care of it herself. She’d learned how to run a household from watching Dorothy, but sadly there was nothing she could do for her mother and sister beyond that. Any attempt she made to suggest a different career path just made them accuse her of judging them.

Now, for the first time, Irene would really be able to help them. No more just sending them bits and pieces of her salary that didn’t really change anything. With such a huge amount of money as three hundred thousand dollars—or whatever was left after taxes—she could change not just her own fate, but the lives of the people she loved deeply, no matter how many times they’d broken her heart.

“Miss Taylor. You are ready?”

They’d arrived in a large, gated courtyard past the palace gate, filled with palm and date trees surrounding a burbling fountain. Sharif was looking at her quizzically.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

His eyes widened at her meek, impersonal tone. But she knew how grand households worked. One hint that she was anything but his sister’s companion, a single sly suggestion that she was also the emir’s mistress, and by nightfall she’d be despised by the entire palace staff.

A uniformed servant opened the door, and she stepped out.

“It’s cooler,” she said in surprise.

“The palace is on the gulf. And here in the courtyard—” Sharif’s eyes seemed to caress her “—you can feel the soft breeze beneath the shade of the palm trees.”

She looked up at the towering Arabic fantasy of the palace in front of her, like something out of a dream. “It’s just like you said it would be.”

“The palace?”

“The whole country.”

Sharif paused. “I’m pleased you like it.” He turned to his young chief of staff. “Please escort Miss Taylor to her new quarters.”

The young man looked at Irene with clear interest. “With pleasure.”

Sharif stepped between them. “On second thought,” he said abruptly, “I will do it myself.”

“Yes, sire,” the young man said, visibly disappointed. Sharif swept forward in his robes, and Irene fell into step behind him.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered once they were out of earshot. “You can’t show any particular interest in me. The other servants will talk.”

“Let them talk. I didn’t like the way he looked at you.”

“Friendly?”

Sharif scowled. “Flirty.”

“And that is bad because...he’s married.”

“No.”

“Engaged.”

“No.”

“A womanizer. A liar. A brute.”

Sharif’s jaw twitched. “No, of course not. Hassan is none of those things. He is an honorable, decent man. Of course he is. He’s my chief of staff.”

Irene looked at him from beneath her eyelashes. “So why not let him take me?”

“If any man is going to take you,” he said softly, “it will be me.”

She stopped, blushing in confusion. Surely he couldn’t still be thinking he...

“Your room is next to my sister’s. I am headed that way.”

She exhaled. “Oh.”

The palace was huge, with high ceilings and intricate Middle Eastern architecture. As they passed from room to room, each more lavish than the last, every servant they passed bowed at the sight of Sharif, with obvious deep respect.

So many rooms, so many hallways. Irene grew increasingly worried that she’d ever be able to find her way back again. After they went up a flight of stairs, she expected to see some sort of servants’ wing. Instead, the rooms just got more lavish still. A sudden fear seized her.

“Your bedroom isn’t in the same hallway as mine, is it?”

Sharif looked down at her with his inscrutable black eyes. “Why, Miss Taylor,” he said softly, “are you asking for directions to my room?”

“Yes—I mean, no! I mean...”

He tilted his head. After a full day since his morning shave, there was a dark shadow along his sharp jawline that made him seem even more powerfully masculine. “Your room is close to mine. That won’t be a problem, I presume?”

She licked her lips. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

Because part of her was still afraid she might forget herself some night and sleepwalk naked into his bed, just like hapless What’s-her-name who got fired. If Sharif knew the hot dreams she’d had last night, starring him... And he was her employer now.

Irene shook her head helplessly. “I just wouldn’t want you to think...”

He paused, his sensual lips curved as he looked down at her, close but not touching. “Think what, Miss Taylor?”

Her voice came out in an embarrassing little squeak. “Never mind.”

Sharif stared at her for a long moment, then setting his jaw, he turned away with a swirl of robes. “This way.”

She followed him down the new hallway, still shaking with the ache of repressed desire. As they went down the marble halls and approached the royal apartments within the palace, the hallways grew more crowded, not just with servants, but also with the emir’s advisers, serious men all in white robes, some of whom bowed as Sharif passed, others who merely inclined the tip of their heads. But in the faces of them all, Irene saw the most sincere respect.

“They love you,” she said.

He glanced at her. “Don’t sound so surprised,” he said dryly.

“It’s just that—I don’t see respect like this for leaders anymore.”

His jaw tightened. “They just remember how it was. Before.”

“Before?”

“Here we are, Miss Taylor.” His voice had gone cold and formal again. He pushed open a door, giving only a brief glance inside before he indicated she should go forward, while he waited in the hall.

Irene stepped into the room.

“Oh,” she gasped. She took two steps inside, looking at the enormous bed, the view over the Persian Gulf, complete with her own balcony. The lavishness of the Middle Eastern decor was like nothing she’d ever seen before. She’d thought her room at the Falconeri villa in Lake Como had been spectacular, but it had been like a roadside motel room, compared to this!

“This whole room is for me?” she said faintly.

Sharif did not enter the room.

“Dinner is at nine.”

She turned back to face him, her cheeks flooded with heat as, against her will, she immediately pictured an intimate dinner for two, with total privacy. “I don’t know if—”

“My sister will be joining us.”

“Oh.” Her blush deepened. “Then of course I will be there.”

“Of course, since I bid it.” His voice reminded her of her place here, and who was king. But his sensual dark eyes said something else.

She had to get a hold of herself!

“Thank you, Your Highness. I look forward to meeting my new charge.”

With an answering bow of his head, he left her.

Irene closed the door behind her, sagging back against it as she exhaled. Then she looked slowly around her incredible bedroom. It was twice as big as the whole house she’d grown up in. She looked at the silk damask, the fanciful decorations, the gold leaf on the walls. And most surprising of all: her meager possessions from her rented studio apartment in Paris had miraculously been transported here. How the heck had he done that? What was he, magic?

Well. Yes.

If not magic, he was a magician who knew well how to pull invisible strings.

But they had a deal. A business arrangement. Her whole family’s future was now riding on it. She couldn’t forget that. One slip-up, one indication that she was still desperately fighting her attraction to him—now more than ever—and she’d be thrown out as ruthlessly as her predecessor.

She just had to forget everything that had happened in Italy, that was all. Forget the heat of his skin on hers when he’d taken her hand. Forget his smile. The intensity of his dark eyes. The strength of his body against hers as he’d swayed her to the music. Forget the passion of the kiss that had set her on fire.

She had to forget the huskiness of his voice as he said, I am seducing you, Irene.

The Emir of Makhtar, powerful billionaire, absolute ruler of a wealthy Persian Gulf kingdom, had once wanted her—a plain, simple nobody. She had to forget that miracle. Forget it ever happened.

Irene put a tremulous hand to her bruised, tingling lips, still aching from his kiss the night before.

But how could she?

* * *

Sharif paced three steps across the dining hall.

Irene was late. It surprised him.

So was his sister, but that left him less surprised. He’d briefly spoken with Aziza earlier, after showing Irene—Miss Taylor, he corrected himself firmly—to her room. His sister had been glad to see him for about three seconds, before he’d informed her, without explanation, that he’d fired Gilly and hired a new companion.

“But she was going to take me to Dubai tomorrow,” Aziza had wailed. “Isn’t it bad enough that you’re forcing me to go through with this wedding? Do you also have to take away my only friend? I’m trapped here! Like a prisoner!”

And she’d fallen with copious sobs to her enormous pink canopy bed.

Irritated by the memory, Sharif paced back across the dining hall. He leaned his hand against the stone fireplace. It had been built nearly nineteen years before, along with the rest of the palace, in perfect replica of the previous building, which had been left in ruins during the brief dark months of civil war after his father’s sudden death.

Aziza could blame him if she wanted for her choice to marry. But he would not go back on his word. He would not risk scandal and instability. Not for his own happiness. Nor even for his sister’s.

He heard a noise and whirled around, only to discover his chief of staff. “Yes?”

The man bowed. “I regret to inform you, sire,” he said sadly, “that I carry a message from the sheikha. She wished me to relay to you that she is unwell and will not be attending you at dinner, nor meeting her new companion.”

Sharif’s eyes narrowed. Irritation rose almost to an unbearable level as he pictured his spoiled, petulant little sister coming up with this plan as a way to register her complaint and get her own way. The fact that it shamed him, as host and brother, that she was refusing to appear for dinner and meet her new companion would only make her happier still.

“Did she. Very well,” he said coldly. “Please inform the kitchen that no meals are to be brought to her room. Perhaps if she grows hungry, she will remember her manners.”

“Yes, sire,” Hassan said unhappily, and bowed again.

Sharif watched him go. He’d told Irene the truth. His chief of staff would be a fine choice for any woman to take as husband—a steady, good-hearted man of some consequence, and at twenty-eight, he was probably even looking for a bride. And yet, when he’d seen the young man starting to walk Irene to her room, seeing them together had caused a strange twist to Sharif’s insides. He hadn’t liked it. At all. It had almost felt like—jealousy. A sensation he wasn’t used to feeling.

His body tightened as he remembered how she’d trembled in his arms, when he’d seized her lips with his own. How she’d thrown her arms around him and leaned against his body, kissing him back softly and uncertainly at first, then with increasing force and a passion that matched his own. His one and only failure at seducing a woman. Ironic, since it was the one he’d wanted most. He still ached to possess her.

Sex is sacred. It’s a promise without words. A promise I’ll only make to the man who will love me for the rest of his life, and I can love for the rest of mine.

He pushed the memory away. He wasn’t going to waste any more time hungering for a woman he could not have. He was bewildered by her idealistic decision, yes. But he respected it. And realized now why he’d envied it.

Because love, or even lust, would never coexist with marriage in Sharif’s life. That pure lovemaking Irene had spoken of so wistfully would never be in the cards for him.

Few people have that anyway, he told himself harshly. Lust is brief, marriage is long and romantic love is a fantasy.

Turning away, Sharif lifted a silver goblet from the polished wood dining table. He took a long drink of cold water. He wiped his mouth.

Irene’s nervousness around him, the way she held his gaze for longer than strictly necessary, told him she still desired him. If he truly wanted to seduce her, in spite of her romantic ideals— He cut off the thought. He wasn’t that much of a selfish bastard. He would leave her alone. Let her go. Even after that searing kiss. Even though he wanted her more than he’d wanted any woman. He would not allow himself to...

“Sorry I’m late.”

Irene’s voice was breezy, unrepentant. It caused heat to flash through his body. He turned, but whatever mocking reply he’d been about to make died forgotten on his lips when he saw her.

She was dressed in white, the color of purity. Could her meaning be any more plain? But even if he knew what she was telling him, her plan had backfired. Because the white of her modest dress only served to set off her creamy skin. Her thick black hair looked exotic, her brown eyes mysterious and deep as midnight. She looked like a woman any man would willingly die for.

Her expression darkened as she looked left and right. “Where is your sister?”

Sister? He struggled to remember. Oh yes. “Aziza...” His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I regret my sister is not feeling well. She will be unable to join us tonight.”

Irene glared at him suspiciously.

“Not my idea, I assure you,” he said. “But if my sister is not hungry, I certainly am.” The understatement of the year. “Come. I’m sure my chef is growing antsy, as his dinner has certainly been ready for a while now.”

“Oh.” For the first time, Irene looked uncomfortable. “I am sorry. I didn’t think of that.” She bit her lip. “But just the two of us—I mean, it doesn’t really seem appropriate to—”

“To what? To eat?”

“Alone. Just the two of us.”

“What would you like me to do to avoid gossip? Invite someone else to join us? Perhaps my chief of staff?” he said coldly.

Her eyes brightened. “Good idea.”

He scowled. “Unfortunately he has other duties. He’s already gone home to his family.”

“To his girlfriend?”

“His mother. You take a great deal of interest in him for someone you just met.”

She shrugged. “He’s just the only person I’ve met. Other than the three different people I had to ask for directions to find the dining room, that is.”

So that was why she was late. He’d thought she’d done it on purpose, to taunt him. He relaxed as the servants brought out plates of food, stews of chicken and meat, rice, vegetables and traditional Makhtari flatbread. The air around them suddenly smelled of spice, of cardamom and saffron. She sniffed appreciatively.

“Tell me more about your country,” she said, digging into her dinner. “It is my home now, at least for the next few months.” She took another bite of chicken and sighed with pleasure. “You said it wasn’t always like this.”

“No.” He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell her. “If you are going to be companion to my sister, you’ll be expected to know,” he said finally. “When my father died, the country fell into civil war.”

The color drained from her face. She set down her fork. “Oh, no.”

“My father had held everything together. With him suddenly gone, none of the great families could agree on anything. Except that they didn’t want a fifteen-year-old boy on the throne.”

“How bad did it get?” she said quietly.

Gripping his silverware, he looked down at his plate.

“Half this city burned,” he said. “By the time I arrived back here from boarding school, this palace was ash. One day, I was a boy studying astronomy and calculus and history. The next, my father was dead, my mother prostrate with grief and rage, my home destroyed. And my country in flames.”

Silence fell in the shadows of the dining room.

Slowly, Sharif lifted his gaze to hers. He saw tears streaming down Irene’s stricken, beautiful face. Strange, when he felt nothing. He’d stopped feeling anything a long time ago.

“What did you do?” she choked out.

“What I had to.”

“You were only fifteen.”

“I grew up quickly. My mother’s brother, and my father’s former adviser, the vizier, were both trying to claim themselves as regent until my eighteenth year. They were destroying Makhtar in their battle. Even at fifteen, I could see that.” Feeling that he wanted to finish the topic as quickly as possible, he set down the goblet. “So I made the deal I had to make to save my country. Then I brought Aziza to live with us. She was a baby, a newborn.”

“She wasn’t living with you before?”

“She was with her mother.”

Irene frowned. “But your mother was with you.”

“Aziza is my half sister. The day I lost my father, she became doubly an orphan. She lost both her parents.”

“You can’t mean...” Irene gave a low gasp. “Aziza’s mother was your father’s mistress, who killed him?”

He gave a single nod.

Her hands covered her mouth as if she couldn’t bear the pain—but why? Sharif wondered, as if from a distance. It was not her pain to bear. Why was she taking it so personally?

“And you still brought her here? Raised her?”

“Aziza had been left with a paid servant. I couldn’t abandon her. She is my sister.” Setting his jaw, he looked away. His voice was thick as he said, “Nothing that happened was her fault. She needed me.”

For a long moment, Irene looked at him.

“You have a heart,” she whispered.

He set his jaw. “What else could I have done? Refused to even see her, as my mother did? Leave her to the orphanage or worse? She’s a princess of the blood. My sister.”

“You love her.”

“Yes.” No matter how Aziza irritated the hell out of him sometimes, Sharif could never forget the first time he’d seen her, a tiny baby crying so desperately she was nearly choking with piteous sobs. He’d never allow anyone to hurt her.

“You have a heart,” Irene repeated quietly. As if she still couldn’t quite believe it.

“Anyone would have done the same.”

“Your mother didn’t.”

Sharif felt a lump in his throat. “Don’t be hard on her. She’d just lost everything. She barely was able to look at me, either. Her heart gave out. She died a few months later.”

“So you were alone—ruling the country—at just fifteen? With a newborn baby sister to watch over?” She shook her head. “How did you do it? At fifteen, I could barely manage a part-time job after school to pay our utility bills. How did you manage to pull your whole country back together? All alone?”

Here it was, then. The one thing she didn’t know. The thing he’d been dreading to tell her. The thing that he had been trying to force himself to face.

Sharif put both his hands against the table. “Because even then, I understood human nature.” He wouldn’t be a coward. He wouldn’t. He looked at her. “I encouraged my uncle to believe he would have great influence over me, to make him give up the idea of a regency. And as for the vizier—to him, I made a promise.” He said quietly, “I promised to marry his daughter.”

Irene stared at him, as if she hadn’t heard right. She blinked.

“You...” She swallowed. “You’re engaged?”

“Officially, it has not yet been announced.” He looked back at the water, wishing for something stronger. In the royal palace he respected his country’s long custom and abstained from alcohol. How he wished he did not honor such niceties at the moment. He felt he could have drunk an entire bottle of scotch as he forced himself to say aloud the very words he’d been desperately trying not to think about for months. “But it is time for me to make good on that promise. Our engagement will be announced after Aziza’s wedding.”

“Do you—” She flinched, then whispered, “Do you love her?”

“It’s not a question of love. I made a promise. I cannot go back on my word. Even though I might wish otherwise.” He looked away. “When my time comes, I will make the sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice. You speak of it as if it’s a death.”

“Because it is,” he said in a low voice. “For these last few months of freedom I’ve tried to enjoy what pleasures I could. But even then, even now, I feel the bars starting to close in.”

Irene stared at him for a long moment, and he saw her beautiful face struggle between sympathy and anger. Anger won.

“How could you?” she said. “How could you live like you do—Europe’s biggest playboy...”

“My reputation as a playboy might be more than my actions truly deserve...”

“And all along—you’ve been committed to marry someone?” She rose to her feet, her face a mask of fury. “How could you flirt with me when you were promised to another woman? How could you try to seduce me? How could you kiss me?”

“Because I’m trying not to think about it,” he snapped, rising to his feet in turn, meeting her fury with his own—except Sharif’s anger was cold and deep and edged with despair. “Can you understand what it is like to despise someone to the depths of your soul, and know you’ll still be forced to call her your wife? To have a child with her?” He paced by the dining table, his jaw taut as he swiveled to glare at her. “You asked why I was at Falconeri’s wedding. I barely know the man! I went because...”

“Because?”

“Because I was trying to accept my fate!” he exploded. Turning away, he forced his voice to calm down, forced his heart to slow. He took a deep breath. “I went because I needed to feel like any ridiculous fantasies I ever had about marriage were wrong. I knew Falconeri was marrying his housekeeper for the sake of their baby. I thought, if I went to the wedding, I would discover the truth beyond their happy facade. I’d discover they could barely tolerate each other. Instead, I saw something different.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “And I met you.”

Looking at Irene’s beautiful, honest, stricken face, emotion filled Sharif’s heart. He found himself yearning for what he’d never known, and what he’d never have.

Their eyes locked. Irene’s expression became sad, vulnerable, filled with grief. “How could you?”

He looked at her.

“How could I not?” he said in a low voice.

Tears streamed down her face as she shook her head. “Never kiss me again,” she choked out, and fled the room.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE SHOULDN’T BE crying.

She had nothing to cry about.

Sharif—His Highness, Irene corrected herself savagely as she stomped up the stairs toward her room—was her employer, nothing more. So what if he’d kissed her in Italy while virtually engaged to another woman? It wasn’t as if Irene ever thought they might be together. She’d lost absolutely nothing. In fact, she should be glad to be proven right—Sharif was every bit the heartless womanizer she’d first believed him to be!

Though maybe not completely heartless...

Can you understand what it is like to despise someone to the depths of your soul, and know you’ll still be forced to call her your wife? To have a child with her?

No! She pushed away the memory of his hoarse voice and bleak eyes. She wasn’t going to have an ounce of sympathy for him. She was not!

I made the deal I had to make to save my country.

Childishly, she covered her ears as she continued to rush down the hall. Things were right and wrong. Black and white. There were no shades or colors between. Only excuses. She wouldn’t let herself feel a whit of sympathy. What he’d done was wrong!

Irene somehow managed to find her way back to her room. The dinner that had seemed so delicious was now churning inside her belly. She took a shower, brushed her teeth and caught a look at her face in the bathroom mirror. Her hand trembled as she set down her toothbrush. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then froze.

She still felt his kiss there. She touched her lips with her fingertips. She could still feel his mouth on hers, the way he’d claimed them so passionately as his own on that night of fireworks in Italy. She could still feel the way she’d kissed him back, with a lifetime of pent-up loneliness and need. With intoxicating hope.

Irene dropped her hand. She couldn’t think about that now. Glancing out her window, toward the moonswept Persian Gulf beyond the palace, she swallowed over the lump in her throat. Whatever it had been between them—a lie? a dream?—it was definitely over.

Climbing into her bed in the huge room, Irene pulled the luxurious sheets up to her chin. What would Dorothy have told her to do? She’d have said that Irene shouldn’t sell her integrity, not for any price. She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d couldn’t remain in Makhtar, under the same roof with him. Not now. She’d take the first commercial flight out of Makhtar City tomorrow morning, back to...

Her eyes flew open.

To where?

To her hometown in southern Colorado, to join her mother, drunk and bitter, and her sister, growing old before her time? She’d give up her newfound joy at the thought that she could take care of them?

Irene took a deep breath. No way.

She wasn’t going anywhere. She’d stay here the rest of November, then December and January and part of February. She could do it. She had to do it. So the answer was simple.

She wouldn’t be even slightly attracted to her dangerous, sexy, all-but-engaged boss. She’d look into Sharif’s face and be cold, cold, cold all the way to her heart...

She thought again of his handsome face, his dark, bleak eyes.

Can you understand what it is like to despise someone to the depths of your soul...

She wasn’t going to feel an ounce of sympathy. Why should she, for a man who had everything in the world, who was handsome, rich and powerful, the ruler of a wealthy Persian Gulf nation? The man had everything!

Except love. Or even hope of love, until the day he died...

Exhaling, Irene turned on her other side, squeezing her eyes shut. She would stay here and work, but nothing more. She wasn’t going to think of him for another moment, except as anything but her boss. She wouldn’t... She vowed, yawning. Wouldn’t...

Except she saw Sharif standing in the moonlight on the edge of Lake Como, dressed all in black.

What are you doing here? she choked out. He was the last person she’d expected to see.

He turned. The silvery light frosted the edge of his dark hair, illuminating his black eyes.

Don’t you know? he said softly, coming toward her. She shook her head. He pulled her into his arms, brushing back tendrils of her hair. His expression was different than she’d ever seen before. He looked tender, hopeful, yearning as he searched her gaze.

I’m seducing you, Irene, he said in a low voice. Their eyes locked. I’ve been waiting to seduce you for all my life.

Waiting for you...for you. The words echoed across the moon-swept Italian lake mockingly, like the plaintive cry of night birds, and each echo caused a new twist in her heart, somewhere between ecstasy and grief, because she knew she’d been waiting for him, too. But all the waiting was in vain.

But why? Weren’t they meant to be together? Hadn’t they been waiting in their loneliness for the other?

Sharif’s expression changed, became stark with need. As if claiming her, he whispered her name. She was breathless, spellbound, as he slowly lowered his mouth to hers.

Come to me, he whispered. Be with me. Love me. With every syllable of every word, she could feel the brush of his lips against hers, so close, tantalizingly close. His last two words were so faint she heard them only with her heart.

Save me.

And at that, her soul could no longer resist what her body hungered for. Wrapping her arms around him, she drew him against her and pressed her lips to his. She nearly gasped from the explosive sensation of his mouth against hers. She pulled him down against her, sinking back against the soft bed. Her hands twisted in his hair. She felt the deliciously heavy weight of him pressing her deep into the mattress, and gasped against his lips. She needed to feel more of this, more...

Wait a minute. An alarm went off in the back of her brain.

Mattress?

Irene’s eyes flew open. She suddenly realized two things.

First: She’d been dreaming about him on the Italian lake.

Second: She wasn’t dreaming now.

Sharif’s body was over hers on the bed. His weight on hers. His lips on her. So hot. So sweet. So impossible to resist...

Then Irene remembered why she must resist, and she pushed him away. Hard.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“What are you doing?”

Sitting up furiously, she turned on the light on her bedside stand. Sharif was sitting on the edge of her bed in a dark shirt and trousers.

“I told you never to kiss me again!” she accused.

“You,” he replied pointedly, “kissed me.”

“Don’t be—” Irene paused at the sudden humiliating memory of pulling him down against her on the bed, of pressing her lips to his. Oh, dear heaven, was it possible that she, while lost in her dream, could have—

Irene shook her head furiously. “You shouldn’t be in my bedroom!”

“That’s not what you seemed to think a moment ago.”

“I thought I was dreaming,” she retorted, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

His dark eyebrow lifted. “Dreaming of me, were you?”

Her cheeks flamed with heat. “It’s the middle of the night! What are you doing in here? Get out!”

Sharif rose from her bed, absolutely calm, as if what had just happened hadn’t affected him at all—even while it had left her overwhelmed, humiliated, intoxicated and furious. Stupid dreams! She hated them all!

He took a deep breath.

“I need your help,” he said quietly. “I need you to come with me. Right now.”

She stared at him. “Have you lost your mind? It’s—” she twisted her head to look at the elegant, nineteenth-century antique bedside clock “—three in the morning! I’m not going anywhere with—”

“My sister has run away.”

Irene cut off her angry words. She looked at his face in the dimly lit room.

“Run away? Are you sure?” She narrowed her eyes. “This better not be some kind of joke—”

“Do you think I would joke about my sister?”

She looked at him.

“No.” She sighed as all the anger went out of her, making her deflate like a balloon. Pushing her blankets aside, she stood up. Amusement flickered in his eyes as he looked at her long flannel nightgown, which went up to her neck and down to her wrists.

“Is something funny?” she demanded.

He cleared his throat. “Not a thing.”

Sheesh, did no one wear old-fashioned nightgowns anymore? Apparently none of Sharif’s lovers. Whatever. Irene liked it. A deliberate choice from all the tight knit camisoles and hot pants her mom and older sister used to lounge around in, on the off chance a current boyfriend might stop by the house for a booty call.

Irene lifted her chin, silently daring him to say something about her choice in sleepwear so she could bite off his head. Wisely, he didn’t.

“Aziza took no bodyguards. Only her old nurse is with her. It might be innocent. It might not be. Either way, I need you to help me find her. Quickly. Before any of the servants notice. Because once they do...”

Biting her lip, Irene nodded. Although many employees in a large household were loyal to death and would die before they said anything, others would find the gossip too delicious a currency to resist telling at least a friend or two. From there, rumors would spread like wildfire. “But why would she run away?”

Sharif’s face looked grimmer still. “Why is irrelevant. What matters is finding her. Quietly. Before the news gets back to her fiancé and the whole wedding is in an uproar.”

“But why,” she persisted, “would your sister run away from her own fiancé? If I were planning to marry, I’d be counting down the days. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me from the man I loved...”

“You are a private citizen. You have freedom that Aziza and I never will.”

“But—”

“You don’t need to understand. Just get dressed and come with me now.”

Was it possible his sister wasn’t keen on this marriage? But looking at Sharif’s hard expression and the impatient set of his shoulders, Irene knew there was no point in asking. She’d ask Aziza herself, once they found her. “Give me three minutes.”

He didn’t move.

“Wait outside!”

“Three minutes,” he warned her, “and I’m coming back in.”

She believed him. As soon as he went out in the hall and closed the door, she flew to her closet, putting on the quickest clothes possible, a casual maxi dress and a jean jacket. She pulled her unruly dark hair into a hasty ponytail and grabbed her purse. Three minutes? She’d done it in two. She opened her door. “Ready.”

He’d been leaning against the wall. He straightened, his face shocked.

Now she was the one to be amused. “Surprised?”

“I’ve never known a woman who could—” He pressed his lips together, then said tersely, “You’re different. That’s all.”

Not totally different, sadly. One of the things that had given her speed was that she didn’t want him back in her bedroom. But even now, against her will, she remembered how it had felt to have his body on top of hers. How it had felt to twine her hands in his hair as she pulled him hard against her and kissed him so deep she never wanted to let go...

“Um.” Her cheeks turned pink. So much for treating him only as an employer. She’d kissed him. Told him she’d been dreaming about him! Trying to pretend the kiss had never happened seemed like the best bet. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

He gave a single abrupt nod, then gestured for her to follow him down the silent hall. Her flip-flops thwacked against the marble floor, so she took them off to pad silently in bare feet.

Once they were out of the palace, he held up his hand harshly. She froze, confused. Then she saw that the gesture wasn’t for her, but for the bodyguards outside. For the first time since she’d known him, he was leaving all the bodyguards behind.

“Are we taking a plane?” she ventured.

Still walking, he shook his head. “It would involve too many people. I don’t want to take that risk until I know what she’s doing. We’ll have to travel in a way that no one will look twice at us. In a way that makes us invisible.”

Irene followed him across the gated courtyard, the only light the moon, the only sound the burble of the unseen fountain. He stopped in front of a building with large sliding doors. He paused, his hands clenched at his sides. She looked up and saw an expression on his face that truly shocked her to the core.

Fear.

She’d never thought Sharif could be afraid of anything. But she tried to imagine how she would feel if her sister had run away. If her mother was missing and unable to be found. The powerless fear that would grip her heart.

“We’ll find her, Sharif,” she whispered, trying to offer comfort. “We will. I’ll help you find her.” She reached for his hand. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

For a moment, he looked down at her hand.

“Thank you,” he said in a low voice. He pulled his hand away, the brief moment of vulnerability gone, the ruthless air of command returned, and he wrenched open the garage door. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“I still can’t believe this is your idea of invisible,” Irene grumbled a few hours later.

Sharif gave her a wicked grin from the driver’s seat of the insanely expensive red sports car. “Just trying to fit in.”

“Fit in,” she snorted. She stretched in the passenger seat, yawning. “You—”

Then she saw the bright skyscrapers in the distance. Her mouth snapped shut as her eyes went wide.

She breathed, “Is that—?”

“Yes,” he said. “Dubai.”

It was still early morning, and though the sun was barely in the sky, already it was growing hot. She’d slept through the first few hours of darkness, and had just a dim memory of a perfectly modern highway across bare, empty desert, and a sky that was inky black with stars.

They’d entered the United Arab Emirates at the Makhtari border, where they were welcomed with deep respect and courtesy that was fit for—well, a king; and yet with discretion that made it clear they understood this was not a state visit. Against her will, Irene had wondered if Sharif had done this trip before, and with whom.

They’d stopped for gas at a station outside Abu Dhabi. She’d gone inside and discovered the station was not that different from the ones at home. Same brand of candy bars, same sodas, same everything—except the labels had Arabic writing on one side and English on the other. Using her credit card, she bought a bag of chewy fruit candy and tucked it in her purse. She also got two coffees and brought them out to Sharif, who’d just finished refueling the flashy red car.

He’d stared at the outstretched paper cup, frowning, as if she were offering him jewels, not an espresso worth ten dirhams. Taking a long drink, he gave a sigh of satisfaction. He looked at her, his eyes deep. “Thank you.”

“It’s no big deal,” she’d said uncomfortably. “It’s just coffee.” She tilted her head. “Aren’t you used to people bringing you stuff?”

“Yes. Servants. Sycophants. But not—” He cut himself off. He looked at the coffee, then shook his head as his lips twisted upward on the edges. “It’s not poisoned, right? As a warning to make sure I never try to kiss you again?”

She snorted, then gave a wistful sigh. “I can’t really blame you for that. I’m the one who kissed you this time.”

His eyes met hers sharply, and for a single insane moment, electricity crackled between them.

No! She would not let herself want what she could not have!

Turning, she opened the passenger door. “Your sister,” she said.

“Yes.” His voice was low. Getting back into the car, he started the engine.

But as they drove north from Abu Dhabi, she’d looked out the window, far too aware of Sharif next to her in the small interior of the sports car. She tried to focus on the gleaming buildings, the desert, the brand-new, immaculate highway with road signs written in Arabic, with English translations beneath.

Now, as they approached Dubai, Irene said, “How do you know she’s here?”

“She was angry at me yesterday. For firing Gilly.”

“Gilly?”

“Her companion who thought it would be amusing to ambush me while she was naked in my bed.”

“Oh.”

“Gilly was not a good influence on Aziza. She convinced her that things—luxury handbags, jewels, royal titles and money—would make her happy.”

Irene leaned her arm against the window of the Ferrari and said sardonically, “I can see why that would bother you.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “She convinced my sister to accept the Sultan of Zaharqin’s proposal, because of his lavish gifts and high position. It wasn’t my idea. But now I’ve given my word. I cannot allow her to back out.”

“Nineteen-year-olds change their minds all the time.”

“If my subjects do not believe my word is inviolate, how can I expect their respect? Their obedience?” Setting his jaw, he stared at the skyscrapers of Dubai ahead of them. “I suspected Aziza might come to our vacation villa here...”

“Vacation villa, huh? For when you’re bored with being waited on hand and foot at the palace?”

“The guard called me a few hours ago. He confirmed that my sister’s there, with only her nurse as chaperone. I’m grateful it wasn’t worse.”

“Nurse? Is she ill?”

“Nanny, I guess you would call her. Basimah virtually raised her.”

“Why didn’t she call and warn you what Aziza was up to, then?”

“Basimah?” He snorted. “She’s protective of Aziza like a mother bear to a cub. She sees me as the enemy. Especially since the engagement.”

“Hard to believe. So why has your sister changed her mind about the wedding? Did the sultan send her a gift she didn’t like? Last season’s handbags? The wrong color of jewels?”

He stared grimly forward at the widening highway, as the traffic on the outskirts of Dubai increased. He said reluctantly, “The Sultan of Zaharqin is older than she is.”

“How much older?”

He paused. “Forty years.”

For an instant, Irene just stared at him, wide-eyed. Then she exploded.

“You are making a nineteen-year-old girl marry a man three times her age? Are you out of your mind?”

“Aziza agreed to it. If she’s changed her mind since, her duty is to serve her people,” he said coldly. “Just as it is mine.”

“It’s ridiculous!”

“No, Miss Taylor.” Sharif’s eyes were focused on the road, but his jaw was tight as he said, “You are ridiculous to criticize something you do not understand. You have no responsibility to anyone except yourself and your own family. You do not know what it means to rule a country. It is Aziza’s privilege and her duty to protect and defend all of our people. That means doing everything she can.”

“But she is only nineteen—”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I was fifteen.”

“You grew up early.”

“So did you.” He gave her a hard, quick look. “You’ve spent so much time asking why my sister ran away. Why did you?”

She stared at him. “I didn’t run away.”

“You left your home, went to New York, then thousands of miles across the ocean to take a job in Paris. Then you traveled even farther to the Middle East. What else would you call it except running away?”

“I just needed a job...”

“You had a good job in New York. But you chose to leave, when a position became available working for your employer’s cousin in Paris. It’s not just about money. You wanted distance.”

Her whole body went cold. If he already knew that...

“How much do you know about my past?” she whispered.

Sharif gave her a dark look.

“Everything. You think I would have hired you if I did not? I had a complete dossier on you before the plane even landed in Makhtar.”

The chill in her heart became a freeze. “Then you know my mother and sister...” Her voice cracked.

“Yes.” His expression changed, became gentle. “I know everything.”

“And you don’t—want me a million miles from your sister?”

He shook his head.

“But reputation matters so much to you—”

“Honor matters to me,” he corrected sharply. “And you are not to blame for the choices others have made. Even if they’re people you love.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and she suddenly remembered that Sharif, too, had good reason to believe this.

They drove in silence. Then he said, “The only thing I couldn’t understand from the report is how you got that first job in New York. Why would a wealthy family on Park Avenue choose you from their agency, and send for you all the way from Colorado?”

“I was so young and from a small town in the West.” She gave him a sudden impish grin. “They wanted a nanny with a wholesome, sheltered background.”

He snorted, then sobered. “You are sheltered in your way,” he murmured. “You protect your heart.”

“Yes.” Her smile faded. “And you’re wrong to force Aziza to marry against hers.”

Sharif’s expression turned to a scowl. “With your beliefs about the sanctity of marriage, I thought you would support me.”

Ahead of them, she saw gleaming skyscrapers, with futuristic architecture twisting improbably high, high, high into the blue sky. “Marriage isn’t just a bunch of words on paper. The commitment can only come from your heart. From love.”

Sharif’s lip curled. He turned forward to stare stonily at the road. “Spare me your further thoughts on the subject.”

Her cheeks turned hot. “Look,” she tried again, “as ruler of your country, I understand your sense of honor, but surely even you can see that—”

“You, Miss Taylor, may lead your life however you want.” He tossed her a contemptuous glance. “Make lifelong decisions based on romantic fantasies. Break engagements, marry on a whim, divorce as often as you like. You are free to make whatever self-indulgent, foolish choices you wish...”

“Foolish!” she cried. “Self-indulgent!”

“But my sister and I are not.” He tilted his head coldly. “Tell me, Miss Taylor. How many happy marriages have you seen in real life? Can you name even one?”

“Emma and Cesare!”

“Too easy. They’re newlyweds. Anyone can be happy for four days. Who else?”

She said slowly, “I was virtually raised by an elderly couple, neighbors who lived down the street. They were barely out of high school when they eloped to a judge’s office, but they were married for over fifty years. They never loved anyone but each other. They raised children, they took care of each other, grew old together. They died one day apart...”

“After fifty years of marriage, they were probably happy to die.”

“Shut up!” Irene shouted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, you can give out the truth, but you can’t take it?”

“They loved each other! I saw it! Their house was the only place I ever felt happy or safe in my whole childhood!”

Silence fell.

“Ah,” he said softly. “At last. The reason for your ironclad virginity. You think if you hold out for marriage, you’ll be happy and safe for the rest of your life. But it doesn’t work like that.”

“No? How does it work, then—sleeping around with women you don’t even like, that you can’t even remember? How is it working for you, knowing you’ll never truly have a partner, someone to watch your back, someone to protect and adore? Tell me more about your great life, Sharif, how wonderful it feels to never love anyone, or have anyone ever love you back!” She shook her head, blinking away furious tears. “You’re just scared to admit I’m right, because if you did—”

“Enough.” He suddenly sat up straight, every inch the arrogant, untouchable Emir of Makhtar. His broad-shouldered anger filled the space of the Ferrari. “I’ve allowed your honesty, even appreciated it, because it serves my ends. I need my sister to have a companion I can trust. But do not speak to me of love.” His low voice dripped scorn. “Love is nothing more than selfish delusion that weak-minded people allow to come before duty. Before honor. Before even their own good. People destroy their lives, and the lives of their families, over this poisonous thing that you call love.”

The sports car seemed to be going faster and faster through the heavy traffic, until they were darting around the big trucks and luxury sedans on the road. Sharif turned the car off the highway in a hard right, barely slowing down.

He’d been right about one thing, Irene thought unhappily. Their flashy red sports car fit right in. No one gave it a second glance.

She took a deep breath.

“I told you when you hired me,” she said shakily, “that you might regret it. Because I speak the truth.”

“It’s not truth. It’s your opinion. One that you are free to have because you have nothing to lose. You do not have the lives of two hundred thousand people depending on you.”

“No, but—”

“Share your feelings with me, Irene Taylor. Talk your head off whenever you want. But if you say one word of it to my sister—if you preach to her about love that lasts forever—that is your last day under my employment. You will be sent back home without pay. Do you understand?”

Setting her jaw, Irene looked away.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She gripped the edge of her leather seat as he turned the car sharply into a private driveway. Ahead of them, she saw a stucco fence at least ten feet high, with a guardhouse at the gate.

The air in the car, which had crackled with such sensual energy in the gas station outside Abu Dhabi, now seemed frozen over. How was it possible, Irene wondered miserably, that feelings could burn so hot one moment and so cold the next? Just a few hours ago, she’d been crying at the thought of his engagement.

Now, she would have dearly loved to push him out of the Ferrari and leave him in a ditch by the side of the road.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I CANNOT BELIEVE that you would take such a risk coming here unprotected... Knowing full well that your future husband might hear of this foolish escapade...”

Sharif set his jaw, folding his arms with a scowl as he looked down at his young sister. He’d been lecturing her for some time.

“Of all the selfish, idiotic...”

Aziza sat meekly on an outdoor sofa on the grand terrace of their family’s vacation villa, which overlooked an Olympic-size pool and the gleaming brilliance of the Persian Gulf beyond. His sister’s eyes were turned down, but he recognized the stubborn set to her jaw. It matched the stubborn expressions of the two women sitting on each side of her.

Old Basimah was on the left, glaring at him with hard beady eyes, her sagging jowls quivering with unspoken fury that he, the elder brother who was merely and unimportantly the emir and absolute ruler of Makhtar, would dare to scold her precious charge.

Ignoring her, Sharif continued harshly, “You must never do such a thing again...”

But at this, the woman sitting on Aziza’s other side, holding her hand, looked up sharply.

“She has explained why she came to Dubai, Your Highness,” Irene said coolly. “She apologized for not telling you her intention, but surely you would not begrudge the sheikha a simple, discreet weekend vacation.” Irene lifted an eyebrow, as if to say, You, of all people, cannot criticize her for that. When she saw her mark hit home, she relaxed and gave him a placid smile. “She is not, after all, a prisoner—is she?”

Sharif’s scowl deepened. He’d expected that Irene would get along well with his headstrong young sister. He hadn’t expected them to become friends so quickly. Or that she would take his sister’s side so craftily, in a way he could not easily fight. Aziza knew it, too. There was a reason his sister was arguing in English, not Arabic.

“There are many places to relax,” he replied through his teeth, “in Makhtar City.”

Irene gave him a sweet smile. “But Her Highness had her heart set on coming here, where she could test her skiing lessons at the indoor ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates.” She tilted her head. “She could have requested the use of your private jet, and flown off to a ski resort in Switzerland or Patagonia with an entourage. Instead, she came here simply and privately, at very little expense. Surely her thriftiness should be rewarded, not scolded.”

The woman should be in diplomacy, he thought grumpily.

“Of course,” he said through gritted teeth. She was not only giving his sister a reasonable defense, she was also obliquely pointing out his lavish spending on his own trips abroad. While not directly giving voice to her disapproval of Aziza’s coming wedding, she was undermining his authority and giving his younger sister greater confidence in her decisions, to better fight him later. Well played, he thought. But Irene didn’t know who she was dealing with.

Sharif looked down at his sister. Aziza’s plump cheeks were still stained with tears, her hands listless in her lap. She was, after all, just nineteen. He himself had first started taking illicit weekends himself at that age as a way to escape from the pressures of the palace. That was what he’d first feared when she’d left—that she was meeting some boy here, some waiter she’d met, or heaven knew what. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. So perhaps—just perhaps—he was being too hard on her.

Sharif took a deep breath. “All I want is for you to be happy...”

Aziza looked up. “How can I be happy?” she cried. “When I’m just waiting, waiting to marry that old man?”

“How indeed?” Irene murmured under her breath.

Thus encouraged, the younger woman glared at her brother and tossed her head defiantly. “It’s like having a date with the guillotine!”

Enough was enough.

“You made a promise,” he said sharply. “You know your duty. You have yours, just as I have mine...”

“It’s not fair! I went from an all-girls boarding school to the palace, and now I’m trapped there until I go to my husband’s house, where I’ll be trapped for the rest of my life.” She shook her head. “You’ve lived your life for the last nineteen years, Sharif, bossing everyone around as emir, enjoying yourself in London and all over the world. What about me? When is my time to live?”

Sharif looked at the three mutinous feminine faces in front of him and felt momentarily outgunned.

He saw the tenseness of Aziza’s trembling shoulders as she sat on the outdoor sofa. Saw the brittle expression on her face. All she’d wanted was a chance to swim and ski and distract herself from the engagement she’d entered into so hastily. He, of all people, could understand this.

“Perhaps in my desire to keep you safe, I haven’t given you enough freedom,” he said slowly. “I didn’t realize you felt trapped in the palace, Aziza.” He paused. “Shall we remain in Dubai for a few days? Have a holiday? Perhaps when you’re done skiing, we should go on a shopping excursion.”

“Shopping?” Aziza said hopefully.

“Every bride needs wedding clothes.”

“How much can I buy?”

“Anything you want.”

Aziza slowly rose to her feet, her eyes wide. “Anything? Five new handbags? A new wardrobe? Ball gowns? Jewels?”

“Anything and everything.”

“Thank you, Sharif! Oh!” she cried, tossing her arms around him. “You’re such a good brother!”

Now, Irene was the one to scowl. And he was the one to give her back a placid smile, as if to say, Did you expect to win so easily? I’ve been in politics my whole life.

“It’s just what I needed,” his young sister said, wiping her eyes. “It will make me feel so much better.”

Sharif smiled at her. This was what he liked best—for his orders to be met with thanks and joy. But in this case, he felt he shouldn’t take full credit. “Thank Miss Taylor,” he murmured. “It was her idea.”

Irene’s lips parted. “It wasn’t exactly my—”

“Thank you, Miss Taylor!” Aziza threw her arms around Irene’s shoulders. “You’re already so much more fun than Gilly!” A smug smile crossed the younger woman’s face as she crowed, “Just wait until Alexandra sees all the things I’m going to buy today—it’ll be twice as much as all the pictures she’s been posting from her dorm! I win! I win, win, win!”

Irene rose heavily to her feet. Sharif saw the sour expression on her face and hid a smile.

He spread his arms wide. “I will have my driver bring the car around. My bodyguards arrived ten minutes ago.”

“They did?” Irene said, then: “Of course they did.”

Twenty minutes later, the four of them—plus a driver and bodyguard—were in a gray limousine, speeding from the villa to the mall, with the other bodyguards driving SUVs ahead and behind.

Sitting in the back of the limo, Sharif felt Irene’s sideways glare. He didn’t mind at all. Like his sister, he’d won.

Aziza was settling down, on track to a marriage that would increase the stability and prestige of his small nation. And, he hoped, her older husband would stabilize her. Yes, the Sultan of Zaharqin was older, but he was steady and respectable. It would be a good match. Something that would last, and would in time, as they built their family, lead to mutual respect, Sharif hoped, even affection, between husband and wife.

Stability. Peace. Those were the things he valued, both in his country and in his life. His eyes fell on Irene sitting across from him in the back of the limo.

He wished he could say he felt peaceful now.

They were barreling down the road at a breakneck pace, the driver well accustomed to the traffic laws of Dubai, which were often treated more like suggestions, really, than laws. The battle of wits between him and Irene had his blood flowing. All his senses were aware of her.

Sharif’s gaze slowly traveled from the impatient tapping of her foot in those ridiculously casual plastic flip-flops, to the curvaceous outline of her body in the long knit cotton dress. A jean jacket covered her tightly folded arms in the frigid air-conditioning of the Bentley. He saw the angry set of her jaw. The warm creamy hue of her skin. She was staring out the window, her teeth biting down on her full, pink lower lip. She was clearly repressing the words she wished to say, but her body language said it all for her. She’d lost this battle, and she didn’t like it.

He couldn’t stop looking at her lips, the full sensual lips that had kissed him so suddenly and unexpectedly when he’d gone into her bedroom to wake her. Her beautiful eyes had fluttered open, she’d smiled, whispered something he couldn’t hear, then pulled him down hard against her on the bed. His whole body suddenly felt tight, his heart pounding at the memory.

What a woman. If it had been his choice, he would have chosen a woman like this for his queen, angry and sweet, sexy and idealistic and proud. He respected her. Even though it was a pain in his side, he admired the way she’d fought for his sister. Even before she’d met Aziza, she’d been protective of her. She wasn’t afraid to fight for what she believed in.

He suddenly wondered what it would be like to fight with Irene every day, having her argue with him furiously over the breakfast table, her deep brown eyes shooting sparks of fire. Then taking her to bed every night, where the fire could explode. It wouldn’t always be peaceful. Or stable. And yet it would be, because what was between them, both the good and bad, would always be real...

He cut the thought off. Real, he mocked himself. His lip curled. He was starting to sound as bad as Irene. Like a romantic. Real?

The promise he had made at fifteen to wed the vizier’s daughter was real. His need to protect his people and keep Makhtar prosperous and safe—that was real, too. He would announce his engagement to Kalila as soon as Aziza’s wedding was done. Kalila would be his queen, would provide him with the heir he needed.

That was the most real of all. Even if the thought of what he’d need to do to get that heir on Kalila repelled him. She was sly, devious, cold-blooded. It would be like bedding a snake.

Whereas the woman sitting close to him now—

Irene made him feel warm all over. Hot to boiling. She was passionate and alive. Everything she believed, she believed with all her heart. She wore her heart on her sleeve, even if that made her vulnerable, even if she risked looking like a fool. She appealed to him in a way he couldn’t explain, not even to himself.

But the longer he knew her, the more beautiful she was. Even now, when she was angry and tapping her foot with self-righteousness, she glowed from within.

He wanted her. Now, more than ever.

Perhaps he’d been too hasty in deciding not to seduce her.

Yes. He straightened in the backseat of the limo, suddenly liking this idea. It was true he had a self-imposed rule about not sleeping with employees. Apart from the risk to the tranquility of his household, it had always just seemed, well, tacky.

But his position on this issue was rapidly evolving.

Just look how distracted he was right now, half out of his mind with desire. His mind was so filled with thoughts, his body so tense with need, that it was probably good he wasn’t back at the palace, making decisions that affected the affairs of state. How could he be expected to make rational decisions in the condition he was in?

And Sharif was well experienced sexually. How much worse must it be for Irene, who was not? Every bit of her body language, from her tapping foot, to her teeth biting her pink lip, to her arms crossed tightly over her full breasts, told him that she felt the same overwhelming tension between them.

She wanted to remain a virgin until she was wed. Fine.

But how would she even be able to make a decent choice of husband, in the permanent lifelong decision of marriage, if she was half out of her mind with lust?

He could save her from the bad judgment that a mind clouded by lust could bring. Protect her from rushing headlong into a poorly considered marriage.

For her sake, he could seduce her. For her sake, and for his.

Because he wanted her too much. Even when she was angry. Even when she was blunt. Even when she was annoying him with her wildly wrong ideas. Seducing her, taking her virginity freely given, would help free both of them from this—obsession—so they could each move on with their well-planned lives.

Though he nearly growled aloud at the thought of any future man touching her. He wanted to be her man. He wanted to satiate himself with her, to feel her lips against his own, to fill her, to suckle and taste and caress every inch until she gasped and cried out with pleasure and held him tight, so tight, as if she’d never let him go...

“We’re here!” his sister squealed, jarring him from his thoughts. Blinking, he saw they were at the mall entrance.

“Skiing first?” he asked his sister. “Or shopping?”

“Skiing—definitely skiing. Then lunch at the Swiss fondue restaurant with the view over the ski hill...”

“How big is this mall?” Irene said, looking shocked.

“Dubai has the best and biggest malls in the whole world. Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone,” Irene echoed faintly.

Aziza turned back to him. “Your bodyguards can carry the bags while we shop afterward.” She tilted her head, her eyes sparkling beneath her head scarf. “I intend to buy a lot, Sharif,” she said warningly. “A lot.”

He looked at her. “And I intend not to complain.”

“Ah... This is the best day ever.” The teenager sighed. Sharif looked from Aziza to the elderly Basimah, whose wrinkled face was almost smiling at him—surely the first time ever? Could a shopping spree really mean so much?

The limo stopped and a bodyguard opened the door. Cooing happily, Aziza and the older woman hopped out.

Irene did not move. She still sat glaring at him, unimpressed. Her foot, still crossed over her leg, was now tapping as if she wanted to do nothing more than give him a hearty kick right out of the back of the limo. “Distracting a teenager from a lifelong decision with a shopping spree at the mall? Isn’t that like shooting fish in a barrel?”

“We all distract ourselves in different ways from things we cannot change.”

“But she still could—”

“If she was mature enough to accept a proposal, she’s mature enough to live with it.”

Irene started toward the open car door, then paused just long enough to throw back a glance like a fistful of daggers. “I just hope you’re happy.”

A gust of hot wind blew inside the car through the open door. Sharif inhaled the lingering vanilla scent of her hair, sensual and warm.

Not yet, he thought. A slow-rising smile lifted his lips. But I could be.

* * *

Irene floated on her back in the Persian Gulf, staring up at the starry night, feeling the warm water lap against her skin.

After three full days in Dubai, she’d seen everything, she thought. They’d gone to the top of the Burj Khalifa, they’d had high tea at a six-star hotel, the Burj al-Arab, shaped like an enormously high sailboat floating out in the water of the gulf. Now that there was no risk of scandal—now they had a story of “trousseau shopping” rather than “runaway bride”—Sharif made no effort to hide their presence. Yesterday, they’d taken a private helicopter to Abu Dhabi, where they’d met up with one of Aziza’s friends from boarding school and enjoyed Friday brunch with their family at the British Club.

If the other expat families enjoying mimosas on the patio had been shocked to see the Emir of Makhtar invade their quiet club with his entourage, they, being British, had hidden it well and swiftly returned to the pleasures of the morning and talking with their friends.

So much for the sights. Most of the last three days had been spent on one thing: shopping, shopping and more shopping. Irene had enjoyed it at first. It had been a relief to leave the indoor ski slope, after falling on her face again and again in the man-made snow, feeling as ungainly and clumsy as an ox with Sharif’s amused eyes on her. At least, she told herself he looked amused. Not smoldering. Not as if he was thinking, every time she fell into the snow, every time he took her hand and pulled her up, that he wanted to kiss her senseless.

Her cheeks still burned when she remembered how she’d kissed him back in Makhtar. Stupid dreams! Look at the trouble they got her into!

She’d tried to keep her distance from Sharif, keeping her focus on Aziza, as they went next to a different mall, where she saw a fish aquarium larger than a building, billed as the largest in the world. There were so many shops, people walking through them dressed in every way from tank tops and shorts to black abayas and face-hiding burqas. Although even they, if you looked closely enough, had high heels peeping out from beneath their hems, and carried ten-thousand-dollar handbags carelessly under their arms.

Watching Sharif buy so many things for his sister, Irene suddenly regretted she hadn’t contacted her mother or sister for a year, other than sending them money from her salary. She bought her mother a floral tea set of bone china and a box of baklava from Lebanon, and for her sister a touristy canvas handbag with DUBAI printed on it with big block letters and pink butterflies. She had it all shipped back home. After buying herself a bag of tasty treats from the biggest candy store she’d ever seen, she was done. Today they’d gone to the Gold Souk, but as Aziza and Basimah pawed through jewelry, Irene’s feet had hurt and she couldn’t stop yawning. The other two women had shopping stamina that put Irene to shame.

Even Sharif seemed to have infinite patience. He advised his younger sister on her purchases when asked, but always deferred to her choice. Perhaps he wasn’t a total disaster as an older brother, she thought grudgingly. Even if he was a total disaster for her.

Irene stretched out her body in the warm water, letting all her aches and tensions dissolve, letting her troubles float up to disappear into the soft, humid, starry night. Strange to be alone out here. She’d never imagined that she, Irene Taylor from Lone Pine, Colorado, who’d had her lunch box smashed her first day in kindergarten, and been pelted with insults she hadn’t even understood back then, would someday leave that misery behind and live half a world away, in a glamorous villa filled with royalty.

She sighed with pleasure. Aziza had gone upstairs to take photos of her haul to send to friends. Basimah was having a cozy game of cards with the cook. Sharif had disappeared to make phone calls, presumably about affairs of state in Makhtar.

So Irene had pulled on her modest one-piece black swimsuit, wrapped her body in a towel and sneaked outside.

She’d meant only to swim in the villa’s enormous pool. But as the sun had lowered in the sky, she’d found it impossible to resist the streaks of orange and persimmon light sparkling on the gulf. Would the water really feel as hot as a bathtub?

She’d looked around to see if anyone was watching, seen only the distant bodyguards and gates on the edges of the private beach. It seemed like overkill, in a city as bright and modern and safe as Dubai felt to her, but then everything about Sharif’s security arrangements always seemed like overkill.

Though when she remembered his heartbreaking story about his parents, she could almost understand why he would go to such extremes for security. And why he would believe romantic love was either illusion, or poison.

Can you understand what it is like, to despise someone to the depths of your soul, and know you’ll still be forced to call her your wife? To have a child with her?

Every time Irene remembered his bleak voice, she shuddered. Marrying someone you hated so much, sharing your life with them, your home, your children? It would destroy everything about Sharif. Everything that was, beneath his arrogant bossiness, so bright and alive. The marriage would be corrosive to him as acid.

The thought caused a hard pain in her chest. He would keep his honor. Maintain his country’s stability. But at what cost?

Perhaps she’d discuss that with him, convince him that...

No. Bad idea. She needed to try to avoid intimate conversations, not encourage them. The last thing she wanted to do was feel anything more for him than she already did. She couldn’t let herself see the emotion beneath his mask. She couldn’t let herself feel his feelings, any more than she could reach out to feel him in her arms.

The Emir of Makhtar was not for her, and he never would be. Not in any way she could accept.

In three months, she would go home. She’d take care of her family, go to college. Maybe she’d be a teacher. She wouldn’t give up on the life she wanted. Not for a momentary temptation, no matter how strong the temptation might be. When she loved a man, she would give him everything, or else nothing at all...

Lying on her back in the soft waves of the Persian Gulf, she looked up at the stars in the deepening night. If she turned her head one way, she could see the skyscrapers of the Dubai Marina towering overhead. If she looked the other, she could see in the distance the populated, man-made islands that were carved into the shape of a palm tree.

But here, floating in the water, she was totally alone, just her and the moon and the infinite stars in the dark, velvety sky. She closed her eyes, feeling the water caress her skin.

Then she felt a man’s hands beneath her. Her eyes flew open and she saw the outline of Sharif’s dark head in the moonlight, the gleam of his black eyes. Startled, she fell, putting her feet down in the sand and whirled to face him in the water.

“Sharif,” she breathed. “What are you—” She caught herself. “I mean, good evening, Your Highness...”

“We’re alone.” His eyes burned through her. “You don’t have to be polite.”

She stiffened, narrowing her eyes. “In that case, I’ll say what I’ve been thinking for the last three days. What the hell are you doing? Distracting Aziza with piles of cheap gifts...just so she can impress her shallow friends—”

“They weren’t cheap, I assure you.”

“This is her life we’re talking about.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She’s too young to realize the choice she’s making.”

He stood in front of her, his muscular chest tanned and bare, both of them swayed by the gentle roll of the water in the darkness.

“We become older by the choices we make,” he said. “By the responsibilities we take—or don’t take. You know this already. How old were you when you started taking on responsibilities for your family—responsibilities that should never have been yours? Was that your choice? Or were you just doing what you had to do?”

She felt the sandy bottom beneath her feet. The water was high—all the way to her chest, and up to his ribs. The water’s gentle waves swayed their bodies. One hard wave could push them together. “We’re not talking about me.”

“We are now.”

“You don’t understand what you are making her give up. If she marries without love, she’ll never be happy, ever.”

“And you think you will?” He took a step toward her, his black eyes glittering. “You’re so desperate to save your pure body for marriage. But how will you know the difference between love and lust, Irene? You who have never known either one? What will stop you from throwing your life away to the first man who makes your body come alive?”

Every inch of her body felt alive right now. She felt the waves caressing her overheated skin as she looked up at his handsome, angry face. She licked her lips. “I...I’ll just know...”

“You won’t know. That’s the whole point.” He looked angrier. “You need to be taught the difference. To understand. So you won’t promise your whole soul and future away to some man who will never deserve it.”

She felt his gaze fall to her lips, and trembled all over. Her mouth tingled, aching for his kiss. Remembering it. But as he started to move toward her, she stepped back in the water.

“Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“Your bride. What is her name?”

His handsome face was suddenly as immobile as stone. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“But I do.”

“What do you want to know, Irene? She is a poisonous snake who amuses herself with more lovers than drops of water in the sea.”

“I know there’s a double standard here, but have you considered your own long list?”

“It isn’t her lovers. It’s the way she relishes flaunting them. Telling me about them. She hates me even more than I hate her. She has—a cruel heart.”

Irene’s heart twisted at the thought of a woman like this being Sharif’s wife, at his side, in his bed. She swallowed. “And this is the woman you want to be queen of your country? The mother of your children?”

His eyes looked dark. “Leave it alone.”

“You think I might make a foolish choice in marriage because of lust?” she choked out. “Take a look at your own—because of pride!”

For a moment, she was afraid she’d pushed him too far. Then he looked away.

“It’s not pride,” he said in a low voice. “I am emir. I do not have the luxury of going back on my word, or offending Kalila’s powerful family. I cannot take the risk of Makhtar falling into chaos, into war, ever again. You don’t know what it was like.” He looked at her, his jaw tight. “I would die first.”

Irene looked at his taut shoulders. She thought of how few people she’d known in her life who would sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of strangers. She took two splashing steps toward him, then stopped, staring at his dark silhouette outlined by silver. His body was in shadow, illuminated by dappled moonlight, reflected from the water.

“Sharif.” She licked her lips. “I have to tell you something. I...”

He seemed to brace himself. She exhaled.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “All this time I thought you were a selfish playboy. The truth is you’re...noble.”

“Noble? No.” He shook his head. “I’m just...”

“What?”

“Doing my job.”

She felt a rush of admiration—even longing. She tried to push it aside. She couldn’t allow herself to feel desire, attraction...infatuation.

“I always knew I would someday be emir. I’ve known since birth that it was my fate.” He looked at her. “But you are free. You should enjoy it.”

Free? She’d never thought of it that way. But in some ways, it was true. Sharif, as a billionaire emir, was a prisoner of his people—the servant and slave of his country. While she, who’d grown up with nothing, who’d had to fight just to survive, had always had one thing he did not. The knowledge that the choice of what to do with her life was hers.

“What do you want, Irene?” Sharif said softly. “What will you choose for your future to be?”

The question made her throat hurt. Looking down at the water, she took a deep breath.

“I want to have security for my mother and sister. I want to help my mother go to rehab. I want to be able to pay for my sister to go to college if she wants. I want what I’ve always wanted. To take care of my family.”

“So we’re not very different after all. You’ve made sacrifices, taking responsibility for the people you love, even at a cost to yourself. You and I...” Cupping her cheek, Sharif said fiercely, “We are alike.”

Irene looked up at him with an intake of breath. For a moment, they stood together in the warm, swaying waters of the Persian Gulf, their eyes locked in the moonlight. She felt his hand against her cheek.

His gaze slowly fell down her body in the black swimsuit. Beads of water glistened on the tanned skin of his bare, muscular chest. The tension between them changed. His fingertips trailed down her cheek, then moved to tangle in her wet hair. He tilted her head back.

And lowering his head to hers slowly, very slowly, he kissed her.

The kiss was different than any between them before. Slow, and lingering, and deep. She felt the silk of his lips against hers, so powerful and strong, their tongues meeting and twisting and tasting, tangling together, like their souls.

Their nearly naked skin pressed against each other in the sliding waves of the water, pushing them against each other, pushing them apart. She wanted him...oh, yes. And he wanted her. Everything he’d said about lust was true. In this moment, with her smaller body wrapped in his, she wanted all of him, forever and ever. She didn’t think she could ever have enough. She wanted not just his body, but his heart.

She abruptly pulled away.

“You promised not to kiss me,” she said hoarsely.

“I never promised that. You asked. Then you broke your own rule by kissing me yourself.” He tried to keep his voice casual, but she heard the rough edge of his voice. “I still remember how you pulled me on top of you, in your bed.”

Her cheeks went hot. “I explained about that—”

“Yes.” His sensual mouth curved. “That you were dreaming of me.”

“I never said—”

“I thought,” he said, running a fingertip along her wet bare skin beneath her collarbone, “you were always going to tell me the truth.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“All right,” she said in a low voice. “The truth is that I was dreaming of you that night in the palace. I was dreaming of you kissing me. And then suddenly you were there.” She lifted her gaze to his. “It was the first time in my life that a dream came true.”

Sharif’s eyes were wide, as if he’d never expected her to admit so much. He said softly, “I would give anything to do more than just kiss you. If you’d give up the idea of...”

“Of being a virgin when I wed?” She took a deep breath, tried to smile. “It’s not just about my body. It’s about sharing the same level of commitment. In fact,” she tilted her head, “I’d prefer for him to be a virgin as well...”

Sharif’s shocked face looked almost comical. “You’re joking, right?”

She shrugged. “I just have my standards.”

“Impossible ones. Even as emir, even if I were free to choose, I wouldn’t expect my bride to be a virgin.”

“You don’t expect to love her either, so clearly we have different ideas about marriage.”

“Clearly,” he said, sounding irritated. “I believe in reality.”

“And I believe in dreams.” Irene looked away. “There’s a man out there, somewhere in the world, who will love me for the rest of my life.”

“And if he never comes? What then?”

“He will,” she whispered. “I have to believe it.”

He looked down at her, their faces inches apart. “What if you’re wrong?”

Irene shivered, feeling the heat and strength of his nearly naked body so close to hers in the night. She lifted her gaze to his.

“Then I’ll be very sad,” she said, trying to smile, “that I didn’t sleep with you when I had the chance.”

They stared at each other for a long moment in the moonlight.

“So that’s it?” he said finally. “I can’t change your mind?”

“Can I change yours?”

Wordlessly, he shook his head, and that was that. She exhaled. So did he.

Reaching out, he silently took her hand. He led her out of the water, splashing to the white sand beach.

He paused, looking at her. “A one-piece swimsuit?” His lips quirked. “A bold choice.”

“You know I like modest clothes.”

“Obviously so. Even Basimah has a bikini, I believe. But then you,” he said softly, coming closer, “are an old-fashioned girl.”

Irene looked up at him, her heart pounding, wondering if he would kiss her, wondering if she would resist.

Instead, he started walking, pulling her past the enormous pool with all the bridges and grottos and foliage and palm trees. He led her up the sweeping steps toward the villa.

Irene felt as if she was a million degrees hot. In spite of her words, she felt as if she wasn’t completely in control of herself, not anymore. Not since the moment they’d met. Her rational brain was shouting at her to do something, but the sound was completely obscured by the rush of blood in her own ears, by the pounding of her heart.

She exhaled when he dropped her hand, bending to pick up the beach towels left carelessly on the lounge chairs. He held out her towel. She took it wordlessly, unable to look away as she watched him towel off every inch of his hard, towering, half-naked body.

“So we are what—friends?”

She nearly jumped, and remembered that she, too, should be toweling off. She did it quickly and nodded. “Friends.”

“Interesting.” A strange gleam was in his dark eyes, illuminated by the lights of the villa. “I’ve never tried to be friends with a woman.”

“No?”

He paused. “Especially one who’s driving me out of my mind.”

She protested, “I haven’t argued anything about your sister’s wedding in at least—”

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, then blurted out, “You can put that aside, right? We can just be friends? Because I need this job. And I can’t wonder if, in a moment of weakness, you might...”

“I won’t keep you from waiting for your husband,” he said softly. “Whoever he may be.” He took a deep breath. “But I wonder if there’s something you would do for me.”

“What?”

Sharif’s jaw went hard, and he looked away. It took him several moments to speak, and when he did, his voice was strained.

“I wonder if...after Aziza is wed, and your job is done...if you’d stay a few extra days. Just until my engagement is announced. Just until—” His voice cut off. He looked at her. “Would you stay with me, Irene, not for money, not as my employee, but just as my friend? Until it’s over?”

Beneath his low, rough voice, she heard a hint of isolation, even despair. He was asking for a friend to stand beside him, to wait until the day he was forced to sign his life away. She suddenly realized that being emir, ruler of all but equal of none, must be a strangely lonely experience, in spite of all the servants and palaces and wealth. He was surrounded by people who expected him to be strong. He had to appear powerful at all times. Whom could he ever allow to see any vulnerability or weakness or regret? Who would ever protect him?

No one.

If only, Irene thought, I could be the one to spend my life at his side. We’re so different. But maybe we could have been happy just the same. The thought made a lump rise in her throat. But there was only one thing she could do. She held out her hand.

“Yes, Sharif,” she said. “I’ll stay till the end.”

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