Modern Romance - The Best of the Year

‘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 [e-mail]

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!