‘YOU’RE LATE.’ TATIANA kissed her brother’s lean cheek, grimacing a little as the sprinkling of designer stubble grazed her smooth cheek before one eyebrow rose. She struggled to hide her surprise as she shifted her gaze from her impeccably turned-out brother to the woman who stood with one hand possessively on his dark-suited arm.
‘You know Lucy Cavendish?’ Placing a hand across her shoulders, he drew the model, her famous dazzling smile firmly in place, close into his side. The redhead tilted her head. Unusually for a woman, in her heels she topped his shoulder.
‘I did Tatiana’s last catwalk show in Paris. What a lovely home you have.’ Lucy’s expertly made-up green eyes moved admiringly around the entrance hall with its chandeliers and dramatic staircase.
Tatiana inclined her dark head and delivered an air kiss. ‘Thank you. You’re looking well, Lucy...’ Tatiana looked up at her brother. ‘You growing a beard, Nik?’
‘With your views on facial hair, Ana, would I dare?’
‘Oh, I just lurve the moody, broody look.’ Lucy’s eyes sparkled with teasing amusement as she stroked his cheek, letting her red fingernails slide familiarly over the stubble.
Nik removed the hand firmly from his cheek where it had lingered and whispered so only she could hear him, ‘Don’t overdo it, angel.’
As they moved across the hall the sound of voices and laughter drifted out through the open double doors of the drawing room.
‘Anyone I know here?’ Lucy asked.
‘Just a small gathering of friends.’
Letting Lucy go ahead of them, Nik fell into step beside his sister. ‘Hope you didn’t mind me bringing Lucy.’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘I thought you might have had me paired off with some good breeding stock...?’
‘I don’t—’ Tatiana stopped and gave a shake of her head, admitting ruefully, ‘I suppose I do, but I just want you to be happy and...like you used to be...before...’
Impelled by an inconvenient spasm of guilt, Nik stepped in to hug his sister as suddenly the charade with Lucy seemed less of a good idea. ‘I am happy.’
‘I like Lucy. Are you two together?’
Nik’s glance slid away. She looked so hopeful that, although this had been the idea, he felt reluctant to raise her hopes, knowing full well they were false ones. ‘Early days,’ he prevaricated slickly.
‘I just hope Lucy won’t be bored silly,’ Tatiana fretted, glancing towards the model who was walking through the double doors. ‘It so happens that there is a woman here who might interest you—’
‘Just when I thought I might have misjudged you,’ he began sardonically.
‘Not in that way!’ Tatiana cut back. ‘She’s a good friend of mine.’
‘And you wouldn’t wish me on a friend?’
She slung him an irritated look. ‘I just want you to set a good example when you meet her, and give a really generous donation to the charity—set a good example for the others.’
‘Another of your worthy causes, Ana?’
‘This is important to me, Nik.’
‘Fine, I’ll be generous.’
* * *
Chloe glanced at the clock...maybe he was a no show? Annoyed with herself for caring one way or the other, she turned her back on the doorway and focused her attention fully on the man beside her, a middle-aged Greek man who ran a property development company and seemed genuinely interested in the charity.
‘I admire your enthusiasm but, and I don’t want to be negative, aren’t you being a little overambitious? Have you costed it up properly? The premises alone would—’
‘Yes suitable premises, especially here in London, will be difficult.’
‘Which is where I come in?’
Her smile glimmered. ‘Your specialist knowledge and advice would be much appreciated.’
‘And my money?’ he added shrewdly.
Chloe’s dimples appeared. ‘I know that Tatiana has already spoken to you about...sorry, I really can’t do this.’
The recipient of her half-empty glass of champagne looked startled and then amused as Chloe popped the finger food she had been holding into her mouth, swallowed, then smiled. ‘That’s better!’ she said as she held out her hand for her glass.
Tipping his head, her companion replaced the crystal wine cup in it.
‘Mostly I can multitask,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘I can do food or drink but not both at the same time. You wouldn’t believe how many outfits I’ve emptied glasses of wine down, which makes it sound as though I always wander round with a glass of pinot in my hand, which I don’t.’ She delivered another smile. ‘I can assure you that your donation will be in sober and sensible hands.’
The older man gave an appreciative chuckle at her tactics. ‘Nice try, but I don’t recall saying yes.’
Chloe conceded his point with a nod. ‘But you didn’t say no either and I’m an optimist.’
This time the man’s chuckle was loud enough to divert some of the attention currently being given to the model who was making her entrance. ‘So let me get this right, you’d like me to let you have the lease on several buildings for a fraction of what they are worth, and what do I get?’
‘A warm glow knowing you’ve done the right thing? Or, failing that, the sort of publicity that money can’t buy? The sort of publicity that comes from having your company represent the caring face of capitalism,’ Chloe said, thinking wryly that she was getting quite good at this.
The man gave her an approving look tinged for the first time with respect. ‘I think we should schedule a meeting, Lady—’
‘Call me Chloe,’ she cut in quickly.
He tipped his head in acknowledgment of her request. ‘Right, Chloe, how about...?’
As the man’s eyes moved over her head and his voice trailed away Chloe turned to see what had snatched his attention. The answer was immediately obvious in the shape of a glamorous redhead in a glittering gown more suited to a red carpet event than a dinner party.
Immediately tolerant of her companion’s distraction, she turned to study the new arrival with some curiosity. In her experience people you had only previously seen beautifully lit on the screen or airbrushed in magazines rarely lived up to expectations, but Lucy Cavendish did and then some.
She looked beyond her hostess and the model to see if Lucy had come with someone. The woman’s past boyfriends had included not one but two Hollywood A-listers, a Russian oligarch and the heir to a banking fortune, so Chloe was expecting a handsome face or serious money, someone who might be interested in donating to a good cause, perhaps?
She got neither...or rather actually what she got was both!
What she also got when she saw that Lucy’s date was Nik was a jolt similar to the occasion her hairdryer had given her an electric shock, times a hundred. A home-made and dangerously uncontrolled defibrillation that felt as if a hammer had landed on her chest and made her limbs feel weak.
But this was fine; she could totally deal with it...
Not dealing with it, Chloe!
Ignoring the mocking voice in her head, she took a deep breath, straightened her slender square shoulders, cleared her throat and readjusted the chunky necklace of raw amethyst slices that hid the pulse pounding at the base of her throat.
Breathe...she told herself, so she did, and for good measure she focused on the positive.
The worst was over and, as worsts went, seeing the man you’d made the mistake of sleeping with without knowing his full name was, on the scale of things, pretty low-key. A couple of minutes and her nervous system would catch up with the message and by tomorrow she’d be laughing—all right, maybe smiling about it.
But that was tomorrow; being realistic today, as in the next sixty seconds, she was aiming for a less ambitious goal. Her legs stopping shaking would be a good start.
She stifled a stab of impatience; her nervous system was getting this situation way out of proportion. After all, what was the worst that could happen?
And what was the worst anyway: him remembering her or him not?
Her mobile lips quirked into a smile as she considered the alternatives. An awkward reunion or a hit to her ego?
Did it really matter?
The fact that she could even ask herself the question was a sign of how much she’d changed in a little over a year. There had been a time when, despite the outward confidence she projected, what people thought about her had mattered, and she wanted the right people to like her...she wanted to fit in.
The journey to where she was today had not been easy, but everything had changed. Well, maybe not everything, she conceded, watching the new arrival above the rim of the glass she raised to her lips. Still, even at a distance, he had the ability to make the muscles deep in her pelvis quiver...so it was lucky she could consider this phenomenon in an objective way, wasn’t it?
She might not be able to achieve total physical indifference to the male magnetism he oozed, but she was more than a bundle of hormones...despite the fact that he was, she thought, studying him through the protective sweep of her lashes, just as incredible-looking as she remembered.
They said you always remembered your first and it turned out they were right. The self-mocking glint in her wide-spaced sky-blue eyes faded and a tiny pucker appeared between her darkly defined feathery brows as she realised how intact her memory of him was, not just the way he looked, or moved, but the texture of his skin...the smell of his... She took a shaky breath and straightened her shoulders, slamming the door on that particular memory. It was just a lapse of judgement, ancient history, Chloe, she told herself. Do not revisit.
‘What a stunning woman!’
Chloe started slightly at her companion’s comment and tore her eyes from the tall figure whose dominant presence had made her forget about the woman he’d brought with him, although they made a pretty magnificent couple. ‘Yes, she is.’ Stunning was probably an understatement.
‘But I’d say she’s high maintenance, and I can’t see her climbing Kilimanjaro.
The comment startled a laugh from Chloe. ‘It sounds to me like you measure all women by some pretty high standards.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘My wife is an extraordinary woman.’
Chloe stood and listened as the man launched into what was clearly his favourite subject. An emotional lump settled in her throat as he talked about his wife. What would it feel like to be the centre of a man’s universe? she wondered wistfully.
* * *
Nik walked past his sister and moved to where Lucy stood.
‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ he muttered.
‘I was the one who told you that,’ the model reminded him. ‘But you’ve been my beard on more than one occasion, darling, so I kind of owe you. Do you realise how much money is in this room tonight?’
His eyes moved over the heads of the fellow guests assembled; most were members of the Greek expat community, and all of them would have considered not having a private yacht as being poverty-stricken. ‘That figures. Ana is raising money for one of her causes again.’
‘So you’re not in danger of meeting Ms Right here. Does that mean you’re dumping me already, darling?’
‘Funny... God, I need a drink.’
He placed a guiding hand under Lucy’s elbow, and she immediately exclaimed mockingly, ‘Ooh, darling, I do so love it when you’re masterful. Ah!’
She staggered a little as Nik suddenly released her arm without warning.
It was an automatic response to a soft peal of laughter that made Nik turn his head. Although it hadn’t been loud, there was something attractively infectious about the sound that tugged his lips into a smile.
As his eyes surfed across the heads of the other guests to the source of the sound, his smile snuffed out as recognition crashed through his nervous system like a tsunami, and for several seconds his mind went a total blank, the effect of sheer shock colliding with serendipity.
He took a deep breath and decided he’d call it something more mundane—convenient. Or he would once he got his rampant, raging libido under control. It took another few deep breaths to think beyond the heat that had streaked down his body and settled painfully in his groin.
His cognitive powers were clearly working on the reserve battery. He had no idea how long he stood there paralyzed, it could have been a second or an hour, before, like a man waking from a trance, he finally shook his head.
The air trapped in his lungs hissed out as in a single urgent sweep his dark, penetrating stare took in every single detail of her. The soft shiny blonde hair falling from a slight widow’s peak down her back and cut shorter at the sides to frame a vivid beautiful face, the sinuous curves of her lush body outlined by the flowing lines of blue silk.
She was stunning.
He’d sometimes wondered, generally around two a.m., if he exorcised the woman, would he finally exorcise the nightmare? The two seemed so intrinsically linked, maybe they were interdependent? It had been an intellectual exercise he’d never really taken seriously as he hadn’t expected their paths to cross again.
Well, it was no longer intellectual, and neither was the roar in his blood, and he knew that not to explore the theory now that he had the opportunity would be insane!
* * *
Chloe knew Nik was standing there even before Spiros’s glance moved past her, alerted by the fine invisible downy hairs on her body rising in reaction to his invisible presence.
She emptied her glass carefully, wiped her expression of anything that could be interpreted as a desire to dig a big hole and jump in it and mentally circled the wagons against attack.
If she refused to be defined by the scars she wore, she was definitely not going to be defined by a past mistake, even if he was six foot three and sinfully gorgeous!
Her defensive stance wasn’t against anything he might say or do, as there was a very strong possibility that he wouldn’t even remember the night they had spent together, but against her own indiscriminate hormones, which still, it seemed, responded independently of her intellect to his rampant animal magnetism.
Oh, for God’s sake, Chloe, you need to get a life!
While she was silently chastising herself Nik had moved level with her. ‘Spiros.’
His voice had the same rough velvet, almost tactile quality she remembered...but this time she was only shivering because she was standing in a draft, she told herself stubbornly.
They were actually standing level, side by side as he stretched out a hand to the older man, but Chloe didn’t turn her head. She didn’t need to, because she could already feel the sheer physical power of his tall, muscled frame.
‘No Petra tonight?’
‘No, she’s resting up. She sprained an ankle during training.’
Nik made a sympathetic noise in his throat. ‘For another marathon?’
The older man gave a rueful nod. ‘I think it’s addictive.’
‘You not going to join her?’
‘I know my limitations.’ Chloe, who felt as though her casual social expression could do with some work but needed all her focus to control her too rapid breathing, took encouragement from the fact that Spiros didn’t seem to notice anything amiss as he touched her arm and looked at Nik. She was still working her way up to it. ‘Do you know Chloe?’
She held her breath.
‘Of course; we go way back,’ Nik said smoothly.
‘Royal connections—you kept that quiet, Nik.’
No longer able to delay the moment, Chloe turned her head, her features arranged in a smile that was intended to project polite indifference, although she had a horrible feeling that a touch of the hunted animal had crept in!
Her first hope had been that he wouldn’t remember her; the second was that up close he would have some flaw she had forgotten, but again her fairy godmother had not granted her wish.
So Plan B it was, then: be polite, be distant, be... Oh, God, on an intellectual level the dark, predatory, raw animal magnetism stuff did nothing for her, only it seemed the message hadn’t filtered through to the non-intellectual parts of her that were only listening to the hormonal clamour—but then it was pretty loud.
His male beauty, and beauty was no exaggeration, hit her at a purely visceral level. She had never experienced anything like it before—well, just the once.
His high knife-sharp cheekbones, strong aquiline nose, and angular jaw even dusted with stubble gave his face a patrician cast, though this was offset by the overtly sensual outline of his mobile mouth, twisted at that moment into a faintly cynical smile. The same emotion was reflected in his eyes, his quite simply spectacular eyes; deep set and heavy lidded, and fringed with dense, straight, spiky lashes, they were a stunning dark chocolate brown.
Pinned by those dark eyes, she experienced a ‘rabbit in the headlight’ moment and froze.
‘How are you... Chloe?’ He seemed to roll the word over his tongue as though he were tasting it.
As he’d tasted her... Chloe pushed the thought away but not before her body’s core temperature had raised a few uncomfortable degrees. She lifted a hand to her neck to feel the dull vibration of her heavy pulse, and she fingered the uncut gemstones that felt cold compared to her skin.
From somewhere she manufactured a smile but the effort made her cheek muscles ache while she silently struggled to keep the door locked against forbidden memories. It wasn’t about wanting to forget him, she thought, but more not wanting to remember and be reminded of the things she strongly suspected she might never experience again.
And maybe that was a good thing, she rationalised. Yes, head-banging, uninhibited sex was good—it was pretty excellent—but so was waking up with someone who actually cared for you, or for that matter was physically still there in the morning.
Refusing to acknowledge the sense of loss that still lay like a heavy weight in her chest, she reminded herself that she was looking, or she would be when the time came, for more in a man than his knowledge of the female anatomy... Hell, clumsy with feeling was infinitely preferable to the refined torture of a skilled touch with no emotion behind it.
‘How long has it been?’ he asked coolly.
‘I’m not sure,’ she lied, thinking, Eighteen months, eight days and thirty-one minutes...not that I’m counting.
She stiffened when without warning he bent his head and brushed her mouth lightly with his. His lips were warm, reminding her of when they had been even warmer, when he had tasted of her... The muscles low on her pelvis cramped as she stood as still as a statue, fighting with all her might the shameful urge to lean in and kiss him back.
The gasp she locked in her throat ached as she breathed in the warm male scent of him through flared nostrils.
It wasn’t until he lifted his head that she realised she was holding his sleeve, though she had no memory of grabbing it. Disturbing, but there was no point reading too much into it, she decided as she let it casually fall away, ignoring the tingling sensation in her fingertips.
Nik smiled. The quiver he’d felt run through her body as he’d kissed her reminded him of just how receptive she’d been that night...how giving she’d been. And he’d taken... He countered the irrational slug of guilt with a reminder that she was the one who had taken the initiative that night, she’d made all the running and she hadn’t acted like a woman who would take no for an answer.
His smile, the glimmer of dark danger glittering deep in his eyes, elicited an involuntary spasm of excitement in her belly that made Chloe feel ashamed.
‘You look well.’ She looked incredible, though up close there was less of the outdoorsy golden glow he remembered. Her skin was creamy, the faint touch of colour in her cheeks highlighting the smooth contours, the freckles along her cheekbones paler too, but she was, if anything, even more delicious than he remembered.
‘Thank you, and how are you—sorry, Nik, wasn’t it?’
The composed words aimed somewhere close to his left ear were prim, but the message shining in her deep cobalt-blue eyes as they glittered up at him was neither prim nor polite.
They said quite clearly, Go to hell!
Her reaction threw him off his stride, in the same way he realised he’d have been thrown if he’d reread a favourite book and found a main character had suddenly been given a different personality.
Except the woman in his dreams had never had a personality beyond being warm, giving, passionate and available when he had needed her, and he had not been curious about what lay beyond those qualities.
Realising that there was a beyond came with a sense of shock as Nik struggled to consider her negative reaction to him dispassionately, but got sidetracked by his own reaction to her.
The problem being there was very little room left for dispassion after the explosive blast of primal desire that obliterated everything else when he looked at her. It was like walking...no, running full pelt into a ten-foot wall of lust.
The time it took his stupefied brain to push past this fresh blast of raw hunger was only moments but it felt longer, and the mere fact that he had to make the effort deepened the frown lines in Nik’s broad forehead.
In his previous life, he had cultivated dispassion until it required no effort, and it was second nature. He’d seen men and women in his old line of work who hadn’t managed to do that, and the personal toll it had taken on them had not been good to see. You needed to be able to keep an emotional distance.
He had witnessed acts of bravery and self-sacrifice that were humbling, but for every one of those inspiring acts there were a hundred acts and images of suffering and inhumanity. You carried those nightmare images around with you and they ate you from the inside.
The sheer absurdity of comparing a war zone to a dinner party where people were toting glasses of wine instead of automatic weapons almost dredged up a smile. Almost.