Pirate Tycoon, Forbidden Baby

A smile wreathed her face. “Bonjour, Monsieur Gauthier.”

“Bon après-midi, Otillie.” André shouldered through the door with Kira in his arms, speaking rapidly in the island patois which sailed right over Kira’s head.

Otillie volleyed back with what sounded like affronted questions, and stepped in front of André, bringing him up short.

After a few choice words from him, Otillie tossed her hands in the air and quit the living room, muttering under her breath.

“What was that about?” Kira asked.

“Otillie is annoyed with me for not telling her I was bringing a guest home.”

“You should have let me rent a cottage.”

“I should have kicked you off my island when you first came here to play out your vengeance.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked, refusing to be baited into the same argument about her reasons for coming here.

“Because you intrigued me.”

That feeling had been mutual. She’d never met a man like André. Never felt such a strong connection to another man. It had been more than sex to her, yet she suspected that was where their similarities ended.

He climbed the steps with apparent ease and continued down a hall swathed in shadows. Her blood heated and her heart quickened, for she knew there were only bedrooms on this level.

And she knew exactly which room was his.

Tingles of awareness streaked through her, sending her heart into a crazy rhythm. Was that where he was taking her? Would she be a prisoner in his bed?

Surely not? Even André couldn’t be that barbarous. Yet he’d taken her from the Chateau and brought her here. She was on his island. In his house. At his mercy.

Mercy? She gave in to a shiver. He had none.

He was a ruthless corporate pirate and a master of seduction. She might not be a match for him in business, but she’d proved she was his carnal equal. In that they were well suited.

That admission terrified her more than anything, for she was fatally attracted to him—like a moth to a flame. She’d been burned once by tumbling into his bed. The next time the flames of desire would consume her—if his quest for vengeance didn’t destroy her first.

He passed the door to his chamber without pause—the room where they’d made love, the room where the world had intruded on their ideal, the room she’d fled in anger and shame.

She shook off those memories as he shouldered open a louvered door midway down the hall, and pushed into a cool, dark room. A gorgeous canopied bed dominated the space, its mosquito netting rippling in the refreshing breeze that filtered through the room.

André headed straight toward the bed, his features so hard and unyielding they looked carved from stone. Yet he laid her on the bed gently, his touch lingering a telling moment.

Instead of pouncing on her, as she’d half expected he’d do, he stood back and stared at her with cold derision. She sensed he waged a war within himself, and a part of her commiserated, for she was fighting her own private battle to remain unmoved by him. It had been so good between them that one glorious night.

Though her heart pounded louder than the drums that had greeted them on their arrival, she sat up and faced him. And waited for him to break the tense silence.

“I’m a private man,” he said, pacing before the foot of the bed. “I guarded my business and my private life. But in one night you stripped me bare and invited the world as witness.”

“I had nothing to do with that swarm of paparazzi.”

He sliced a hand through the air. “Of course you would deny your part in that.”

“What about you?” she asked, having learned after Edouard’s death that André wasn’t a man to be crossed—or trusted. “You’re as much to blame for the dissolution of your engagement.”

He released a cold, hard laugh. “As much as I value privacy, my former fiancée cherished it more. You destroyed that and humiliated her.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” she said, in a burst of irritation.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.