Breaking/Making Up: Something Borrowed\Vendetta

Two original stories in one unique collection
by
Miranda Lee and Susan Napier

Revenge is a powerful emotion—love’s
wrongs always beg to be righted. But
vengeance has its price, as each character in
this exciting collection of two brand-new
romances soon discovers!

Be enticed and involved by dangerous
desires, share the passion of bittersweet
seductions, as two irresistible men from
Down Under—one an Australian, the other
a New Zealander—find the time has come to
settle old scores. Will these gorgeous guys
win the women they’ve always wanted?

Turn the pages and find out!

MIRANDA LEE
is Australian, living near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boardingschool educated and briefly pursued a classical music career before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast paced and sexy. Her interests include reading meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.

SUSAN NAPIER
was born on Saint Valentine’s Day, so it’s not surprising she developed a never-ending love of romance. She started her writing career as a journalist in Auckland, New Zealand, trying her hand at romance fiction only after she married her handsome boss! Numerous books later she still lives with her most enduring hero, two future heroes—her sons!—two cats and a computer. When she’s not writing, she likes to read and cook, often simultaneously!

MIRANDA LEE
SUSAN NAPIER

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN
MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

About the Author
Title Page
MIRANDA LEE -
Something Borrowed

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN

SUSAN NAPIER -
Vendetta

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX

Copyright

MIRANDA LEE

Something Borrowed

CHAPTER ONE

‘J
AMES hasn’t seen your dress, has he?’ Kate asked, glancing at the magnificent satin and lace bridal gown hanging on the wardrobe door. ‘You know that’s considered unlucky.’

Ashleigh put down her mascara and smiled at her chief bridesmaid in the dressing-table mirror. ‘No, Miss Tradition. He hasn’t. Not that it would worry me if he had,’ she added with a light laugh. ‘You know I don’t believe in superstitions.
Or
fate.
Or
luck. People make their own luck in life.’

Kate rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve become annoyingly pragmatic over the years, do you know that? Where’s your sense of romance gone?’

It was killed, came the unwanted and bitter thought. A lifetime ago...

Ashleigh felt a deep tremor of old pain, but hid it well, keeping her mascara wand steady with an iron will as she went on with her make-up.

‘Just look at you,’ Kate accused. ‘It’s your wedding-day and you’re not even nervous. If I were the bride my hand would be shaking like a leaf.’

‘What is there to be nervous about? Everything is going to go off like clockwork. You know how organised James’s mother is.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the wedding. Or the reception. I was talking about afterwards... You know...’

‘For heaven’s sake, Kate,’ Ashleigh said quite sharply. ‘It’s not as though I’m some trembling young virgin. I’m almost thirty years old, and a qualified doctor to boot. My wedding-night is not looming as some terrifying ordeal.’

Oh, really
? an insidious voice whispered at the back of her mind.

Ashleigh stiffened before making a conscious effort to relax, letting out a ragged sigh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.’

‘You
are
nervous,’ her friend decided smugly. ‘And you know what? I think it’s sweet. James is a real nice man. Much nicer than...’ Kate bit her bottom lip and darted Ashleigh a stricken look. ‘Oh, I...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...I...’

‘It’s all right,’ Ashleigh soothed. ‘I won’t collapse in a screaming heap if you mention his name.’

‘Do you...ever think of him?’ Kate asked, eyes glittering with curiosity.

Too damned often, came the immediate and possibly crushing thought.

But Ashleigh gathered herself quickly, refusing to allow Jake—even in memory form—to mar her wedding-day.

‘Jake’s as good as dead as far as I’m concerned,’ she stated quite firmly. ‘As far as
everyone
in Glenbrook is concerned. Even his mother doesn’t speak of him any more.’

‘What about James?’ the other girl asked. ‘I mean...he and Jake are twins. Doesn’t he ever talk about his brother?’

‘Never.”

Kate frowned. ‘I wonder what Jake would think of his quieter half marrying his old girlfriend. Does he know, do you think? They say some twins, especially identical ones, have a sort of telepathy between them.’

Ashleigh’s fine grey eyes did their best to stay calm as she turned to face her old school-friend. ‘Jake and James never did. As far as Jake knowing...’ She gave a seemingly offhand shrug. ‘He might. His mother insisted on sending him a wedding invitation. God knows why, since she doesn’t even know where he’s living now. She posted it to his old solicitor in Thailand, who once promised to pass on any mail. Naturally, she didn’t receive a reply.’

Ashleigh sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, hoping to ease the constriction in her chest. ‘Jake wouldn’t give a damn about my marrying James, anyway,’ she finished. ‘Now...perhaps we’d better get on with my hair. Time’s getting away.’

Kate remained blessedly silent while she brushed then wound Ashleigh’s shoulder-length blonde hair into the style they’d both decided on the previous day. Even though Ashleigh appeared to be watching her hairdresser friend’s efficient fingers, her mind was elsewhere, remembering things she shouldn’t be remembering on the day she was marrying James.

Jake...holding her close, kissing her.

Jake... undressing her slowly.

Jake...his magnificent male body in superb control as he took her with him to a physical ecstasy, the like of which she doubted she would ever experience again.

A shiver reverberated through her.

‘You’re not cold, are you?’ Kate asked, frowning.

Ashleigh tried to smile. ‘No... Someone must have walked over my grave.’

Her friend laughed. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in stuff like that. You know what, Ashleigh? I think you’re a big fibber. I think you believe in fate and superstitions and all those old wives’ tales as much as the next person. And I’ll prove it to you before this day is out. But, for now, sit perfectly still while I get these pins safely in. I don’t want to spear you in the ear.’

Ashleigh was only too happy to sit still, her whole insides in knots as a ghastly suspicion began to take hold. Was she marrying James simply because of his physical likeness to Jake? Could she be indulging some secret hope that, when James took her to bed tonight, her body would automatically respond the same way it had to his brother?

She hadn’t thought so when she’d accepted James’s proposal. Ashleigh believed she was marrying him because he was the only man she’d met in years who seemed genuinely to love her, whom
she
liked enough to marry, and who wanted what she was suddenly wanting so very badly: a family of her own. Sex had not seemed such an important issue.

Now...with her wedding-night at hand...it had suddenly become one.

Perhaps she should have let James make love to her the night he’d asked her to marry him. At least then she would have known the truth. Looking back to that occasion, she had undoubtedly been stirred by his unexpectedly fierce kisses. Why, then, had she pulled back and asked him to wait? Why? What had she been afraid of? As she’d said to Kate...she was hardly a trembling virgin.

Ashleigh mentally shook her head, swiftly dismissing the possibility that her body—or her subconscious—
might
find one brother interchangeable with the other. She had
never
confused James with Jake in the past. Others had, but never herself. The two were totally different in her eyes, regardless of their identical features.

They’d been in the same class at school since kindergarten, she and Jake and James, though the boys were almost a year older than her. The three had been great mates always, spending all their spare time together. It wasn’t till the end of primary school that their relationship had undergone a drastic change. The three of them had seemed to shoot up overnight, Jake and James into lithe, handsome lads, and Ashleigh into a lovely young woman with a figure the envy of every girl in Glenbrook.

By the time they had finished their first year in high school the more extroverted, aggressive Jake had staked a decidedly sexual though still relatively innocent claim on Ashleigh. She’d become his ‘steady’, and from then on James had taken a back seat in her life, even though she had always been subtly aware that he was equally attracted to her, and would have dearly liked to be in his brother’s shoes.

But she’d had eyes only for Jake.

How they had lasted till their graduation from high school before consummating their relationship was a minor miracle. Oh, they’d argued about ‘going all the way’ often enough, with Jake sometimes becoming furious with her adamant refusal to let him. But she had seen the way other teenage boys talked about girls who gave sex freely, and had always been determined not to give in till Jake had proved he wanted her for herself, not her nubile young body.

Ashleigh almost smiled as she remembered the first time Jake had made real love to her, the day after her eighteenth birthday, two weeks after they’d graduated. What an anticlimax their first effort had been. Jake had been furious with himself, knowing he’d been too eager, too anxious.

‘Too damned arrogant and ignorant,’ were
his
words.

Jake had gone out then and there and bought a very modern and very progressive love-making manual, then quickly became the most breathtakingly skilful lover that any mortal male could become, mastering superb control over his own urgent young body, thrilling to the way he’d eventually learnt to give the girl he loved such incredible . pleasure.

Or so Ashleigh had romantically imagined at the time. She should have known that it was just Jake being his typical obsessive self. She certainly should have begun to doubt the depth of Jake’s love when he announced in the New Year that he was going overseas—
alone
—for a couple of months. She’d stupidly believed his story about his rich Aunt Aggie’s giving him the holiday as a reward for his great exam results and insisting he go immediately, saying it would broaden his mind for his future writing career. He’d promised Ashleigh faithfully to be back in time to go to university with her in March.