Harlequin Presents January 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Sheikh's Desert Duty\Nine Months to Redeem Him\Fonseca's Fury\The Russian's Ultimatum (26 page)

“You make it sound sordid,” she gasped, putting her manicured hand against her chest in a fake laugh. “It wasn't like that!”

“Oh?” I said coolly. “So you didn't seduce him to get him to take you on as a client, and sell you to the show?”

“You're jealous! It's not my fault you gave up the audition and rushed home. The next day, when Lenny and I spent time together, he realized I was the perfect Moxie, not you. That's all!”

“He was fifty,” I said.

“I loved him!”

“You dumped him fast enough, after he got you your first movie role, and you realized that dating a big Hollywood director would help you further up the ladder. You didn't mind that he had to break up with his
wife
to do it.”

“Enough.” Jason rose from the table, his face like granite. He looked at Madison. “So I'm number five, am I?”

“You're different,” she whispered. “Special.”

“I don't feel special.” Jason looked at me. “I'm starting to think I chose the wrong sister.”

Madison looked frightened. “Jason—”

“Here.” Reaching into his pocket, he tossed a set of car keys onto the table. They skittered helter-skelter down the long polished wood. “I'm taking a car back to London. I'll leave the keys at the front desk of your hotel.”

“Wait,” she said desperately, rising to her feet. “You can't leave. I need you—”

He left without a backward glance.

Madison staggered back.

“Does this mean the wedding is off?” Edward inquired pleasantly.

Ignoring him, she slowly turned to face me. “Diana. I know I've done a lot of stupid and selfish things. But I never thought you would be the one to list them out. Not you.”

The injured fury in my heart deserted me, just when I needed it most. I rose to my feet.

“I never thought you would attack me like that.” Her crystalline eyes glimmered in the candlelight. Her voice caught as she looked away. “You're not my big sister. You're just like all the rest.”

My throat suddenly hurt as I remembered how we first met, virtual strangers to each other attending our parents' wedding as slightly-too-old flower girls, both feeling awkward, uncertain. My mom had told me Madison's mother died of a drug overdose when she was a toddler.
So be nice to her
, she'd chided.

Seeing her sad little face, I'd wanted to protect her.
We're family now
, I'd said at the wedding, hugging her over the flowers.
I'm gonna be your big sister, Maddy. So don't worry. I'll take care of you.

“Maddy—” I whispered.

“Forget it,” Madison choked out. “Just forget it.”

She turned away in a cloud of grief and expensive perfume, stumbling out of Penryth Hall, calling Jason's name, then her bodyguards'.

The great hall was suddenly quiet, the only sound the whipping of the wind outside rattling the glass panes of the windows.

Edward looked at me.

“I wondered what it would be like, if you ever really let yourself go,” he said quietly. “Now I know.”

A sob lifted to my throat. My knees wobbled beneath me, and suddenly Edward was there, catching me before I could fall. I stared up at him in bewilderment, wondering how he'd moved so fast.

“I was horrible,” I whispered.

“You were magnificent,” he said softly, brushing hair from my face.

“Magnificent?” I gave a harsh laugh. “I was so determined to list all her faults. But what I've done is worse.”

“What's that?”

“I told her I'd always take care of her,” I whispered. “Then I hurt her like this....”

“Seems like she had it coming,” he said softly, caressing my cheek.

I shuddered at his touch, longing for his comfort, fighting the desire to turn my cheek into his caress. “All these years I've blamed her for taking the role that might have made me a star. But it was never mine in the first place. She was right. I had the chance to audition. I went home.”

“To be with your mother...”

“Whatever the reason. It was a choice I made.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “After losing my parents, and the role of Moxie, I never wanted to have my heart crushed again. It's not Madison's fault I spent the next ten years hiding, not letting myself feel or want too much....”

“Until you fell for Jason,” he said.

But was Jason the exception? Or had he just been one more example of me taking the safe path? The thought was new and troubling.

Swallowing, I looked up at Edward through shimmering tears.

“It wasn't Madison's fault,” I whispered. “I did it to myself. I chose to be a coward.” My voice caught as I turned away. “Playing it safe has ruined my life.”

Edward said quietly, “Your life isn't over yet.”

Our eyes locked in the shadowy great hall. An almost palpable electricity crackled between us.

“I have a private island in the Caribbean,” he said huskily. “That's where I'd go if I needed to escape a broken heart. I stayed there after my accident. I needed to be alone.” He gave a grim smile. “Well, alone with a doctor and two round-the-clock nurses.” Reaching out, he gently twisted a long tendril of my hair. “No one can get at you there, Diana. There's no internet, no phones, no way to even get on the island except by my plane.” He gave me a smile. “Want to go?”

Looking up at him, I tried to smile back, but couldn't quite manage. “Thanks, but it wouldn't help.” I looked down at my hands. “Not when the person I want to escape from is myself.”

Reaching out, Edward tilted up my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. His dark blue eyes gleamed with silver and sapphire light, like the half-bright sky at dawn. “I understand,” he said quietly. “Better than you might think.”

“You do?” I whispered. Of its own will, my hand reached up to stroke his tousled black hair. It was so thick, and soft, just as I'd thought it would be. Five o'clock shadow traced the sharp edges of his jaw. Everything about him was masculine and foreign to me. I didn't understand him at all. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

He gave a sudden crooked smile. “Maybe it's just to lure you in my bed.” His hand moved gently from my hair to my cheek. “Did you ever think of that?”

I gave a tearful, hiccupping laugh. “You don't have to try this hard for me.”

“I don't?”

I looked up at him.

“No,” I whispered.

His hand froze on my cheek. His expression changed as he looked down at me.

Cupping my face in his large, strong hands, Edward lowered his mouth to mine, slowly, deliberately. I could have pulled back from his embrace at any time. But I didn't move. I held my breath in anticipation as time suspended.

Then his lips finally touched mine, and I exhaled with a sigh. My breath comingled and joined with his. His lips were tantalizingly soft at first, sweet and warm. He lured me in, made me lean forward against his chest, reaching up to wrap my arms around his shoulders. Then he shifted me in his grip. As he held me more tightly, the world started to whirl around us.

He'd seen me at my worst, but he still wanted me....

His kiss deepened, became hungrier, more demanding. I clutched his hard, powerful body to my own, like a woman seeking shelter in a storm. Edward was solid, like a fortress in my arms. And if somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice shouted at me to stop, telling me this would destroy me, I pushed it away. I clutched Edward to me, kissing him with every cell in my body, my skin hot with need.

I was tired of being safe.

With a low growl, Edward lifted me up into his arms. Leaving the great hall, he carried me up the sweeping stairs.

Held against his chest, I looked up at him, dazed, lost in desire. I watched the play of shadows against his hard, handsome face as he carried me up the stairs. He carried my weight like a feather.

Edward St. Cyr was taking me to his bed. In just moments, my virginity would irrevocably be taken by this cold playboy, this breaker of hearts.

But he was so much more than that.

Lifting my hand to his cheek in wonder, I felt the roughness of his skin, the dark bristles along the hard edge of his jaw. He was so powerful. So masculine. So different from me in every way.

And yet somehow, tonight, I felt we were not so different. Out of anyone on earth, Edward understood me. He'd seen the scared girl I'd been, and the bold woman I wanted to be. He knew me....

Using his shoulder, Edward pushed open his bedroom door. I'd never been inside it before. The room was dark with shadows. Dark, Spartan furniture lined the edges of the walls.

A large white bed was at the center of the black-lacquered floor, illuminated by a pool of moonlight from the window like a spotlight.

Kicking the door closed behind us, Edward gently set me down on the moonswept, king-size bed. He hadn't said a word since we'd left the great hall. I looked up at him, shivering in my headband and simple skirt and blouse. I was twenty-eight years old, but felt as innocent as a schoolgirl.

Never taking his eyes off me, Edward slowly pulled off his tie. He dropped it to the lacquered floor. He moved toward the bed.

And I started to shake.

Moonlight glazed the bed around me as his strong hands tangled in my hair. “This is the first thing to go,” he murmured, and he pulled my headband aside. Bracing his arms on the mattress around me, he leaned forward. Gently, he kissed me. His mouth seared mine, pushing my lips apart as he pushed me back against the bed.

My head fell back against the soft pillows, and he gave my cheeks little feather-soft kisses before returning to my mouth. His tongue flicked possessively between my lips before he trailed kisses down my throat. My head tilted back as I gave a soft gasp. Feeling lost. Feeling new.

“I don't love you,” I breathed—speaking to him? Or myself?

“No.” His dark blue eyes gleamed. “You want me. Say it.”

My voice was almost too quiet to hear. “I want you.”

“Louder.”

I lifted my gaze. “I want you.”

My voice had turned strong. Dangerous. Reckless.

He looked at me with such intensity I forgot to breathe.

“And I want you.”

Lowering his mouth hard against my own, Edward pushed me deeper into the soft white pillows. His hands stroked slowly down my body, light as a whisper, hot as a desert wind. His kiss deepened. Reaching down, he cupped my breasts that were aching beneath my prim white shirt.

I barely felt his fingertips move against my blouse. The buttons were just suddenly undone, and the unwilling thought crossed my mind that he'd had a lot of experience. He pulled my body up, and my blouse vanished into thin air, revealing my flimsy bra of blue silk.

What had made me wear my only truly pretty bra today, underneath my blouse? A coincidence? Or had I known, even before I came downstairs for dinner, that I intended to end my night this way?

“So beautiful,” he whispered, his hands touching everywhere, sliding over my bare skin. “You've been driving me mad....”

“Me too...” I breathed. We'd been both alone, I realized, both wounded deep inside, in injuries we'd caused ourselves. But in this moment, it felt like loneliness no longer existed. My heart and my arms were both overflowing. We were together. We were the same....

I pulled him down hard against my body, wanting to feel his weight over mine. I heard the appreciative murmur from the back of his throat as I kissed him, hard, and tried to unbutton his shirt. My hands were trembling and clumsy.

“Stop,” he said huskily, putting his hands over mine. For a moment, I was afraid he'd changed his mind. Then I realized he was unbuttoning his shirt for me, his expert fingers doing it three times as fast. Rising from the bed, he unbuttoned his cuffs and dropped his expensive tailored shirt to the dark floor. I gasped when I saw the muscles and planes of his naked chest, lit by the slanted moonlight. I'd seen his body before, during massage and occasionally when I'd taken him to swim at the local center. But never like this. Never with the full knowledge that I could run my hands over his skin, that I'd soon feel his naked body roughly take my own.

Edward's eyes never left mine as he deliberately undid his trousers and pulled them with his silk boxers down his thickly chiseled thighs. A choked noise came from the back of my throat as he stood naked in front of me. He'd been naked in the gym that morning, but I'd been afraid to look. I was still a little afraid now. Blushing, I started to look away.

His gaze locked with mine, challenging me. With a deep breath, I lifted my chin, and looked, really looked, at his naked body.

He was not ashamed, standing there with quiet pride and giving me time to look, to accept. His shoulders were broad, and a dusting of dark hair trailed like a V from his nipples and hard-muscled chest down to a taut, flat waist. His legs were powerful as a warrior's, and as he shifted his weight in front of me, he moved with an athlete's grace. His thighs were hard and huge. Which could also describe what I saw if I dared to look between his thighs... But there my nerve failed me.

He was powerful. He'd been healed. But the injuries had left scars that couldn't be denied. The raised scars across his torso, where his ribs had been broken, left white lines across perfect olive-toned skin. Similar lines slashed brutally across his right shoulder and arm, and his left leg, like cobwebs of his body's memory, forgiven but not forgotten.

Men prey on the tender weakness of the feminine heart,
Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley had warned.
He will lure you into bed by using your own heart against you.

Turning away, I squeezed my eyes shut. The mattress moved beneath me. I felt Edward come closer, felt the warmth of his body as he said in a low voice, “What is it?”

“This is wrong,” I whispered. “You are my patient.”