Kitabı oku: «Ruthless Reunion»
Harlequin Presents never fails to bring you the most gorgeous, brooding alpha heroes—so don’t miss out on this month’s irresistible collection!
When handsome Peter Ramsey discovers Erin’s having his baby in The Billionaire’s Captive Bride by Emma Darcy, he offers her the only thing he can think of to guarantee his child’s security—marriage! In The Greek Tycoon’s Unwilling Wife by Kate Walker, Andreas has lost his memory, but what will happen when he recalls throwing Rebecca out of his house on their wedding day—for reasons only he knows? If you’re feeling festive, you’ll love The Boss’s Christmas Baby by Trish Morey, where a boss discovers his convenient mistress is expecting his baby. In The Spanish Duke’s Vigin Bride by Chantelle Shaw, ruthless Spanish billionaire Duke Javier Herrera sees in Grace an opportunity for revenge and a contract wife! In The Italian’s Pregnant Mistress by Cathy Williams, millionaire Angelo Falcone has Francesca in his power and in his bed, and this time he won’t let her go. In Contracted: A Wife for the Bedroom by Carol Marinelli, Lily knows Hunter’s ring will only be on her finger for twelve months, but soon a year doesn’t seem long enough! Finally, brand-new author Susanne James brings you Jed Hunter’s Reluctant Bride, where Jed demands Cryssie marry him because it makes good business sense, but Cryssie’s feelings run deeper…. Enjoy!
Ruthless Reunion
Elizabeth Power
MILLS & BOON
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All about the author…
Elizabeth Power
ELIZABETH POWER was born in Bristol, where she still lives with her husband in a three hundred-year-old cottage. A keen reader, as a teenager she had already made up her mind to be a novelist. But it wasn’t until a few weeks before her thirtieth birthday, when Elizabeth was thinking about what she had done with her first thirty years and realized she had been telling herself she would “start writing tomorrow” for at least twelve of them, that she took up writing seriously. A short time later, the letter that was to change her life arrived from Harlequin. Rude Awakening was to be published in 1986. After a prolonged absence, Elizabeth is pleased to be back at her keyboard, with new romances already in the works.
Of her writing, Elizabeth says emotional intensity is paramount in her books. She says, “times, places and trends change, but emotion is timeless.” A powerful story line with maximum emotion, set in a location in which you can really live and breathe while the story unfolds, is what she strives for. Good food and wine come high on her list of priorities, and what better way to sample these delights than by just having to take another trip to some new exotic resort. Oh, and of course, to find a location for the next book!
For Alan and the Bermudian Longtail.
CONTENTS
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 ONE
IT WAS the face behind the camera that intrigued him most.
In all the years he had been coming to Bermuda Alex had never seen anyone quite like her, and with all the problems he had left back in England—the responsibilities of a family fortune, discrepancies in investments, Luke’s death—his spring break here this year had scarcely appealed. Until now.
The young woman, however, was still intent on capturing the magnificent splendour of the ice sculpture standing near the far wall of the hotel ballroom behind him, and Alex took the opportunity to let his gaze wander, unashamedly and unnoticed, over the rest of this equally magnificent creature.
Tall, slim, in her very early twenties, she was one of the few females at the party tonight not wearing black, which marked her as independent-minded and free-spirited to his way of thinking. The heavy weight of her sleek dark hair—every bit as black as his own—was a striking contrast to the cream chiffon-fine dress that moved fluidly against her body, the long transparent sleeves somehow lending added sensuality to a bodice cut so low he could see where the deep cleavage of her generous breasts ended and the pale flesh of her midriff began.
As his eyes lingered on those full rounded breasts, a hard, basic urge ripped through him, stronger than any he had known in his life.
Reluctantly he forced his gaze down, noticing how the dress hugged her small waist and her smooth hips to whisper around her in a series of concealed splits, so that the barest movement revealed tantalising glimpses of her creamy thighs. The tapered hemline of the dress caressed long legs that finished in fine-strapped silver sandals, the height of the stilettos enhancing already shapely calves and ankles.
Self-assured. Poised. A woman who didn’t mind being noticed. Or one, he thought suddenly—conversely—with his keen, trained mind kicking into gear, who needed to advertise her confidence in order to conceal a distinct lack of any.
But her camera had come to rest on him.
As the sudden flash captured the hard, questioning angles of his face, he saw her mouth open, as though her own audacity had surprised her. Her mouth, like her toes and the scarlet-tipped fingers still holding the small device, was creamy red, a full, sultry mouth that he had the sudden hot and almost unbearable urge to plunder.
Slowly then, she lowered the camera, and Alex felt as if his breath was being dragged through his lungs when he saw that her face matched everything her body promised.
It was the face of an angel—and a siren. Her skin resembled porcelain against the deep sheen of her hair. Her eyebrows were finely arched, her lashes long and dark over seductively slanting eyes.
The sounds of the party going on around him seemed—like the chatting, laughing faces that filled the hotel’s glittering ballroom—superimposed on his brain. For him there was no one else in the room but this sensuous, unsmiling beauty. Nor did he want there to be. He wanted them all to disappear so that he could walk over to her unhampered, get her to acknowledge him—accept him—and do what his primal instincts were urging him to do. Possess her utterly and completely.
He dipped his head in the subtlest acknowledgement. She didn’t turn away, just stood there, as though hypnotised by the same powerful force that held him in thrall. But neither did she smile, and suddenly, in those strikingly amber eyes of hers and through his own private turmoil, he recognised misery of the most devastating kind.
Curiosity, on top of everything else, would have had him abandoning his companions to close the gap between him and this beautiful girl. But then the youth standing next to her touched her arm to gain her attention and she turned abruptly away.
She didn’t want to be here. She hadn’t wanted to come.
After the trauma of the past five weeks Sanchia Stevens couldn’t understand how she had allowed herself to be talked into attending a party to celebrate the expansion of one of the island’s largest hotels—except that Francine and Rick had insisted upon it, had said that it would do her good. But Rick and Francine had already left, under the pretext, she was sure, of Francine having a headache, and she guessed that they thought she had ‘fixed herself up’ with the sycophantic young man who seemed determined to cling to her and had decided to leave her to it.
They didn’t know that she had declined to go with them because she hadn’t wanted to go back to the hotel, didn’t want to be alone—because that meant thinking, and she didn’t want to have to think. Nor did they know that this was supposed to have been her honeymoon. They had naturally assumed she had come on holiday alone, simply looking for a good time, which was why they had been so ready to abandon her. But that had been nearly an hour ago, just as she’d been taking pictures of that swan sculpted out of ice, and the man she had been reckless enough to capture with her camera hadn’t taken his eyes off her since.
His black wavy hair, brushed straight back, was impeccably groomed, like the rest of him, although the immaculate tailoring of his dark suit, white shirt and tie did very little to tame the contours of a body that was honed to disciplined fitness: lean, broad-shouldered, intensely male.
Sitting on one of the high stools that flanked the bar, she could see him still, across the heads of several other guests, talking with the same group of people he had been talking to all night. Serious-minded, important-looking people, from the intensity of their conversation. Dignitaries or government officials? Sanchia speculated, and recognised one from a picture she’d seen hanging in the vestibule as the owner of the hotel. However, where dominance and sheer physical presence played a part, the man who was interesting her most outstripped them all.
His features were strikingly etched, uncompromisingly handsome beneath the rich bronze of a Bermuda tan. But it was that air of authority that drew her eyes unwittingly to him as much as to those darkly aloof features. Instinctively, she knew he would be a formidable opponent, would command respect and inspire awe in whatever game he chose to play.
And he had chosen to play for her.
A little shudder ran through her at that inexplicable acknowledgement, immediately followed by a leap of hard excitement when she saw that his company was now dispersing and he was already striding over to the bar.
‘Hello, I’m Alex.’ His voice was chocolate-rich and deep, that air of authority coupled with the impact of a devastating sexual charisma now that he was up close, making her put her reluctant fingers into the firm, warm clasp of his. ‘And you are?’
Her temperature sky-rocketing, she lifted heavy eyes to a pair that were a steel-hard, penetrating grey. ‘Wishing you’d let go of my hand.’
He didn’t immediately, retaining it just long enough for her to recognise the power of an intrepid will. Through her silent wretchedness a little voice warned her to be careful.
‘Could I get you another drink?’
‘Very probably,’ she murmured, her claws unsheathed by the pain of bitter betrayal, making him a scapegoat for all his sex. ‘I’d imagine there’s very little you couldn’t do,’ she added levelly, looking him up and down in a way designed to faze him but which only resulted in producing a throb of something elemental in her that was almost frightening in its intensity.
‘Then I’ll rephrase that.’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, and amended with emphasis, ‘May I get you a drink?’ From his perfect diction it was clear he was neither Bermudian or American, but full-blooded English. From the hint of impatience in that deep voice, it was also obvious he didn’t usually have to work this hard.
‘Better.’ Her sultry mouth curved in the merest smile as she picked up the Martini glass from the bar, put it to her lips. ‘But the answer’s still thanks, but no thanks.’
‘Too complicated?’
‘Much too complicated,’ she responded, noticing now the fine lines around his eyes and the grooves etching his mouth, as though he had been driving himself too hard, or been under some strain.
‘Really? I was under the impression you wanted me to come over and speak to you.’
‘Were you?’ She gave a brittle little laugh, unintentionally tantalising, provocative, and saw the glint of something dark and dangerous leap in his eyes. Setting her glass back down on the bar, she glanced away, feigning interest in some laughter coming from one of the tables before enquiring casually, ‘Are you married?’ Not that it mattered, she assured herself firmly. He was much too sophisticated and dangerous for her to be playing with.
‘Married?’ He made it sound as though she had insulted him even by suggesting it. ‘No, I’m not married.’
Perhaps she had insulted him, she thought, some sixth sense telling her he wasn’t the type of man to approach a woman if he had a wife somewhere. A man with ethics. Uncommitted. In control. A man who could make her forget…
Sanchia shook the shocking, disturbing notion away, wondering where it had come from.
‘What’s your name?’
Above the soft music drifting out from behind the bar, the equally soft command stirred a contrary desire in her to rebel—against him, against the effect he was having on her, against herself. ‘Is that a prerequisite?’
Something like annoyance flashed in his eyes but was quickly erased. ‘A prerequisite for what?’
A rather sensual smile played around his mouth now and, held by the snare of his flagrant masculinity, Sanchia’s gaze faltered, her brain acknowledging the power of mind and body that lay behind that impeccable façade. He would know how to please, pleasure, protect a woman—for as long as she was his at any rate, she fantasised, shaken by her own wild speculation. He could also hurt her, if she played this dangerous game with him. But maybe that was what she wanted, she thought suddenly—crazily. The diversion this man could provide would numb the pain.
She had had more to drink than was wise if she was thinking like that. Not that she’d really had very much, and not so much that the man standing beside her would have noticed, but certainly one or two glasses more than she was accustomed to.
Her sparkling eyes turned the deepest amber as she looked up into his face. A hard, handsome face, whose forcefulness filled her with such a contrary mixture of rebellion and excitement that she wanted to challenge it and lose herself to it all at the same time.
She gave a heedless shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she answered, with another fleeting little smile, and felt his gaze burn over her shoulders and her generous breasts in tacit acknowledgement. A reckless heat licked through her, and deep inside her something throbbed in startling response. ‘Isn’t it all part of the game?’
‘The game?’
‘You ask my name. You buy me a drink. We wind up in bed. Isn’t that the natural progression of things?’
‘You’re very direct.’
You’d be direct, her mind screamed, if your fiancé had just killed himself and the other woman he’d been shacking up with!
‘Is there any other way to be?’ Her dark lashes swept downwards, camouflaging agony. ‘Why cloak it behind a charade of needless civilities?’
‘Why, indeed?’
She could sense that he didn’t mean that. He was just a little bit shocked by her plain speaking, she suspected, although he wasn’t allowing it to show.
‘And have you always been so cynical?’ he went on.
A smile curved the corners of his mouth again, a hard, sexy mouth that in another situation would show a woman heaven. She wondered what it would be like to feel its demanding pressure on hers.
‘Cynical?’ Her slanting eyes made an unconscious survey of his magnificent physical attributes. Broad shoulders made sleek by exclusive tailoring. A solid walled chest, tight waist and hard, lean hips. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her smile was provocative, blazing from bright lips that were struggling to conceal pure pain. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Those grey eyes smiled, but there was a mild reprimand in the deep timbre of his voice.
He was using his gaze like dangerous visual foreplay—and it was working! She had never felt so aroused in her life. Those stimulating eyes had marked her out for his possession, and, much as she wanted to resist their lethally hypnotic power, she didn’t seem to have any defence against it. All night long there had been a silent exchange of something flagrantly sexual between them, a dark and mutually carnal demand that was screaming out to be met. She didn’t know how she could feel such a barrage of conflicting emotions. Excitement slashing through grief. Desire riding side by side with pain. The weight of it was almost unbearable.
‘So you prefer anonymity?’ That masculine voice throbbed with sensual amusement, and yet suddenly she recognised some raw and personal anguish behind the formidable strength in that face. ‘Most intriguing.’
‘Why not?’ Her fingers curled painfully into her palms from the urge to reach up and touch him, touch the elemental heart of whatever was causing him to suffer. ‘We aren’t going to see each other again.’
‘Aren’t we?’
The determination in those two words sent a little frisson through her. She wanted to challenge them—challenge that glaring authority—but words wouldn’t come.
‘Well, now that’s settled, let me tell you what I—’
She wasn’t aware of lifting her fingers to that firm, communicative mouth, only of its sensual warmth beneath their gentle pressure to silence him.
For a fleeting moment she stared at him, shocked by her own temerity. Mouth parched, breath coming quickly, blood pumping through every stimulated vessel, her hungry amber eyes were drowning in the incandescent heat of smouldering grey.
She had crossed a line, she realised hectically—stupidly! And if she stayed there would be no turning back.
Grabbing her camera off the bar, she jumped off the stool and, without a word, twisted away from him, out of the ballroom into the quiet lobby and into the haven of a waiting lift.
Slipping her camera strap over her shoulder, she stood breathless, trembling, wanting only for the lift to swallow her, when an impeccably sleeved arm sliced between the closing doors.
They yielded, allowing her pursuer entry, and whirred shut again, locking them both in a bubble of screaming intimacy that was swelling with each straining second.
They stared at each other like combatants, chests heaving, mouths turning almost savage.
There’s no way out, Sanchia thought, and felt the white-hot tide of desire pool in a molten heat in her loins.
And then the bubble burst and he was dragging her against him. Or had she reached for him first? She wasn’t sure. Only that that savage mouth was devouring her, just as hers was devouring him, responding to the fierce heat of his demands with throbbing, driving needs of her own.
His hands were twisting in the gleaming swathe of her hair with an almost painful pleasure, while hers revelled in the thick dark strength of his even as she sagged against him, weakened and clinging to him for support. Hungrily, she brought her fingers clawing down over his face, over the hard, exciting texture of his cheek and jaw, sinking her nails into his broad shoulders with a little cry of pleasure when one arm moved to catch her hard against his powerfully aroused body.
Her breasts ached for his hands, craving their warmth against their full, aching sensitivity, and like an extension of her own thinking he seemed to know. She felt the moist heat at the very heart of her as his hand slid easily inside her dress, the hard contraction of her body’s crying out to have this man possess her, to lose her pain and misery in the torturous rapture he could provide.
The whirr of the lift moving upwards was drowned by their laboured breathing. It whined to a halt, opening into a private corridor. A route merely to the penthouse suite.
It registered with Sanchia only numbly as the man lifted his head, his features flushed from the hunger that rode him—rode them both. She hadn’t even been aware of him pressing the indicator button.
There was no one about. Only the two of them and the thick silence that came with the luxury he had paid for.
He was waiting. Giving her a choice, she realised in that split moment of breathless silence. Go or stay.
Something urged her to pull free from this reckless path she seemed to have carved out for herself. But she knew she had relinquished all choice downstairs in the bar.
She wasn’t aware of actually walking to his door, or of his using a card-key to open it. She was only aware, as his arms came round her again, that she had invited this, and that she couldn’t prevent what was going to happen any more than she could stop the boilers breaking over the reef beyond the coral-crushed beaches of the South Shore.
Their mouths melded, hot and hungrily—even before he had slammed the door behind them—in desperate imitation of the act that was to follow.
It was an act that Alex knew he couldn’t have denied himself even if he had wanted to.
He was using her—heaven help him! Using her to rid himself of the demons that were plaguing him. In the same way, he strongly suspected, that she was using him.
But for all that he couldn’t get enough of her. Of her sweet moist mouth, her perfume, the earth-shattering promise of her body. He couldn’t get enough of her, and to relieve himself of the deep ache of wanting he lifted her up, so that he could feel her luscious legs as well as her arms around him, his mouth plundering hers as he moved urgently through with her into his bedroom.
I can’t get enough of him! Sanchia thought, burning for him, inhaling the scent of his aftershave as though it was vital oxygen, excited by his strength, unbearably aroused by the grazing texture of that impeccable suit against the soft flesh of her inner thighs.
His suite was in darkness, though French doors stood open to the scents and sounds that filled the bedroom from a private roof garden, and the whistling of frogs and lizards in the softly illuminated foliage was a sensuous song that heightened the eroticism of the warm Bermudian night.
The big bed yielded beneath them as they toppled down onto it together.
I want you! she thought, glorying in his actions as he pushed back the flimsy barrier that separated her from him and claimed her full, responsive breasts as his own.
She gave a small strangled cry, her breath shuddering through her from the ecstasy of those marauding hands, the sudden heat of his mouth on one swollen tip bringing her straining towards him in a wild frenzy of need.
Oh, please…! She didn’t want to wait, couldn’t wait. She wanted him now!
Alex groaned from the heat of desire that was throbbing through his body. He had never felt so out of control in his life. He was far too hot—too hard, he realised, mentally flaying himself for getting himself into this situation, wondering how, if he let things run their natural course, he was ever going to last. He couldn’t even protect her—or himself. Gone were the days when he’d gone out equipped with a young stag’s hope of getting lucky. He was thirty-six years old. A leading barrister, for goodness’ sake! With responsibilities, common sense… Except that it seemed to have deserted him in his need for this girl.
He knew he should love her as she should be loved. With care and consideration, after a quiet, romantic evening, with all the skill and mastery of a long-perfected technique. Not like this, like some callow youth…
He hesitated for the briefest moment, dragged back from the edge of a precipice from which there could be no return. But then she arched her back and her writhing hips collided sensuously with his, shaking his very foundations from beneath him, and in that moment he knew he was finished.
He was doing this, Sanchia thought, as though he was seeking respite from something. She guessed that he wasn’t usually so rough or possessive as he caught her wrists above her head and ground his lower body against hers in hard domination, but whatever unknown entity was driving him, she didn’t want to know or care. He was dark and dangerous, and she needed the excitement he offered to obliterate her savage misery.
He made little work of dispensing with her white lacy string, his hands hard and uncompromising, but when his fingers slid into her softness, checking her readiness to receive him, they were unexpectedly gentle.
She whimpered her need, her body contracting around his fingers in a way that made Alex groan with frustration. He heard her moan softly in protest as he withdrew them, clenching his teeth in throbbing anticipation as he moved, adjusting his position before plunging into her, hard and deep.
She uttered a deeply choked sound that was lost beneath the chorus of the night creatures in the luxuriant foliage, and started to climax immediately, each deepening thrust of his body bringing her bucking and sobbing beneath him through the agonising ecstasy of his own release.
When Sanchia started to think again, she couldn’t believe what she had allowed to happen.
Why had she done it? she berated herself mercilessly. She had never been so stupidly reckless in her life!
She groaned a protest under his pinioning weight, so that he moved away from her immediately.
She couldn’t look at him as she readjusted her dress over her virtual nakedness, then groped for her errant string on the crumpled bedspread.
‘Are you looking for this?’ He was on his feet on the other side of the bed, amazingly in control again. Not as she felt. Shocked by her actions. Cheapened by them. Ashamed.
She grabbed the scrap of lace from his tanned hand, unable to meet his eyes.
Dear heaven! He hadn’t even undressed! Such had been their urgency for each other. Grief and betrayal had driven her into his arms, she realised bitterly, but it had been a purely animal coupling, nothing more.
Now pangs of self-disgust, and one Martini too many after days of too little food, had her rolling off the bed and stumbling instinctively towards his bathroom, where she was physically sick.
What type of man took a woman without any preliminaries, she wondered, groping for a towel. Just out of pure need to sate his lust? But she knew she had been a willing participant, and she had shrugged off his attempt at those preliminaries, craving only the oblivion from her screaming emotions that she knew she would find in his arms. So what type of woman did that make her?
‘Are you all right?’
Her eyes hurt from the light he had snapped on.
She didn’t look at him, grateful for the hair that fell forward, hiding the mess of her make-up and her blotchy face as she wiped her mouth on a towel that smelled too keenly of his aftershave lotion. ‘Fine.’ It came out flat and muffled.
‘I hadn’t realised you’d had that much to drink. I thought you were in total control of what you were doing. I’d never have brought you up here if I had.’
He was blaming himself. That deep note of remorse in his voice told her all too chillingly that he didn’t normally give in to his animal urges with such basic disregard. And now he regretted it.
‘Don’t feel too bad about it.’ Unable to unload what had driven her to behave in a way that was grossly out of character with this total stranger—because he was still a stranger, for all the intimacy they had just shared—she didn’t even bother to explain that she hadn’t been drinking to excess, that she wasn’t proud—any more than he was—of what she had allowed to happen. He must think her a promiscuous, half-inebriated fool, and the quicker she got away from him, the better.
Matter-of-factly, he said, ‘It shouldn’t have happened like that.’
‘No.’
‘I should have put you in a cab and sent you home.’
She looked at him squarely at last, her stomach turning over even now from the impact of his devastating looks, that mouth that had kissed her senseless, his dominating, hard-edged masculinity.
‘Yes.’ What had she imagined? she wondered, feeling the pangs of a wounded injustice that seemed to anaesthetise all her other emotions. That a man like him would have wanted her in any other way than for her body?
‘I’ll get you some coffee,’ he said.
When he came back a few minutes later to check up on how she was, the bedroom was deserted. So was the bathroom, and the light that was still on illuminated his way as he strode purposefully back into the sitting room.
The door to the suite was ajar, he noticed, and quickly stepped out into the quiet corridor. The lift was in use, the illuminated buttons indicating its occupation, its movement on a lower level of the hotel.
It could be her, he realised, knowing he stood a cat in hell’s chance of catching her. Brow furrowing, his attention slid automatically to the Emergency Exit door at the end of the corridor, just past his own.
Something other than his five basic senses drew him towards it. The night-scented air greeted him with a rush of humid warmth as he pushed it open, bringing with it the continuous whistling of lizards and the restless surge of the sea.
He saw her then, some way off in the distance—a shadowy figure, illuminated by the beach lamps, sandals hanging from her fingers, racing away over the soft pink sand.
She had been so keen to get away from him she hadn’t waited for the lift. She had used the fire escape instead.
Inside, Alex felt numb. He knew he’d never catch her. She’d be lost to him even if he sprang after her now, jumped the steps below him two by two.
She had come to his bed and then left, unable, he felt sure, to face him. To face anyone, he suspected now. Which could be another explanation for her not using the lift.
But she could be carrying his child…
The thought jolted him like a whiplash and he cursed himself for his irresponsibility, for letting his raging hormones rule him instead of his head. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that she was taking the Pill.
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