Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Tossing it on the desk, he flung open the folder, flicked on a lamp and stared down at the photographs. It was a year since he had last seen them but they still had the effect of hitting him like a punch in his guts. The man he didn’t know, though the investigator he had hired had told him that that was indeed Roy Stanton. And the woman’s face was hidden so that she could be anyone. He had tried to convince himself that the investigator had been mistaken, that she was someone other than Becca. But the ring was the killer blow. There was no mistaking the ring on her hand.

  It was the ring that had marked the betrothal of his great-grandmother to his great-grandfather, and had been passed down to him to give to his own future bride. He had put it on her finger himself when she had first agreed to marry him.

  ‘What are those?’

  The question came from behind him, making him start, spin round in shock. Becca stood in the doorway, her face pale, her eyes wide and her white cotton nightdress still floating round her from the effects of her movement, making her look like some ethereal spirit that haunted his home.

  ‘Nothing important.’

  His answer would be more convincing, Becca told herself, if it hadn’t been so swift, so uneven, so blatantly obviously defensive in every way. Just the way he spoke and the look in those dark, dark eyes gave away the fact that whatever was in the file he had been looking at was very far from ‘nothing important’.

  ‘Just something I planned on shredding.’

  ‘At three in the morning?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Neither could I—not after you left the bed.’

  Of course, that wasn’t the truth. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there, alternately listening to Andreas tossing and turning, and knowing that he was lying far too still, trying so hard not to wake her. She didn’t know what kept him from sleeping, and she’d been afraid to ask.

  What if the week of total sensual indulgence had been enough for him? What if that was long enough to get her out of his system so that he was no longer getting what he had declared he wanted? Had his ardour cooled so fast that he was lying awake, wondering how to tell her?

  When he’d crept from the room, she tried so hard to convince herself that wondering how to tell her wasn’t Andreas’ way. If he’d tired of her, he would tell her straight, no hesitation, no cushioning the blow. But even knowing that hadn’t provided any comfort. In fact, it had only made things so much worse. If he wasn’t trying to think of a way to tell her that, then what else was going through his mind to keep him on edge throughout the darkest hours?

  She hadn’t been able to stay where she was, with the space beside her in the bed growing colder with every second that passed. The feeling had reminded her too closely of the way she had felt when she had gone home after the disaster of their wedding day and had had to try to fall asleep in the bed that she had once shared with Andreas, knowing that she would never, ever sleep with him again. And so she had pulled on her nightdress and crept down the stairs after him.

  But now she wished that she’d never done so. The look on Andreas’ face, the sense of withdrawal that had hooded his eyes, tightened his jaw, worried her even more than his restlessness had done. There was something very wrong here and she couldn’t begin to guess what.

  And being in this room with him like this, in this incomprehensible mood, brought back unhappy memories of the way that he had confronted her here, on the night of their wedding.

  ‘Then I should take you back there. I’m sure I can think of a way of helping us both to sleep.’

  It was smoothly done. Almost convincing. But Becca’s nerves were already on red alert, and, hypersensitive as she was to everything about Andreas, she caught the faint uneven-ness of his tone, the way his gaze had flicked to the file on the table and then away again.

  There had been a file on the desk then too. In fact, she wasn’t sure that it wasn’t the same file.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Just business …’

  His hand went out to close the file, but, alerted by his tone, Becca was there before him. Grabbing at it to get it from him, she sent it flying, the file, and the photographs it contained, falling wildly to the floor.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry … let me… Oh…’

  On her knees beside the desk, she froze, staring down at the photographs in each hand.

  ‘Who’s this with Macy—and why do you have a picture of my sister?’

  ‘Give them to me…’

  Andreas had crouched down beside her, reaching for the pictures, but then he too froze, staring at her in blank confusion.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  The look in his eyes made fear clutch at her heart. Just what was happening?

  ‘No—the rest of it. “Who’s this with …?’” he prompted.

  ‘With Macy?’

  Was that what he wanted? Or something else? ‘If you want the man’s name then I can’t …’ ‘You don’t recognise him?’

  If the look in his eyes had been bad, then the raw urgency in his voice made her tremble.

  ‘No—I—Andreas, what is this—what are you asking—what is this picture?’

  He didn’t answer but just held out his hand to take the photos from her. Then he gave her the other hand and helped her to her feet. All in total silence. When she was upright, he spread the photos on the desk and focused the beam of the lamp directly on them.

  And waited.

  This was important. No words needed to be used to tell her that. Andreas’ silence and that wary, watching stance of his meant that she had to give the right answer. But what was the right answer?

  There was only one way she could go with this.

  The truth.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Andreas, but I’ll tell you what I see.’

  She touched the photograph lightly, her fingertip resting on the image of the slender, dark-haired woman.

  ‘That’s Macy—my half-sister—and that building behind her is where she has her flat. Or, rather, had her flat. Since she discovered she was expecting Daisy, she moved in with me and …’

  Her voice trailed off as realisation dawned and suddenly she was looking at the picture again, knowing just when it had to have been taken.

  ‘Are you telling me that that…’ a wave of her hand indicated the man in the picture, small and slim and with a boyishly handsome but weak, self-indulgent-looking face ‘ … is Roy Stanton?’

  And that was the moment when she knew that something had really changed. Because when she looked into Andreas’ eyes as she spoke the words she saw none of the anger, none of the hostility that her use of that name had always created, but instead there was a stunned expression in their darkness. And she could almost have sworn that there were new shadows under his eyes, giving them a bruised, exhausted look.

  ‘How do you know that’s your sister?’ he asked now and his voice was so husky and raw that it made her wince. ‘You can’t see her face.’

  ‘No, but I know the T-shirt she’s wearing—and the shoes. Macy just loves the highest heels she can find. Of course, from the back she could almost be me but there’s …’

  The impact of what she’d said dried her throat, taking the words from her. In the half-light Andreas’ face looked drawn and haggard, and that stunned look had given way to one of real horror.

  ‘Is that what you thought, Andreas? Is that what—what someone told you?’

  Once more she looked down at the photograph, seeing it this time as he might have seen it, if someone had told him that she was the woman in the picture.

  A woman who had flung herself into the arms of the man with her. Into Roy Stanton’s arms. A woman who had her own arms up and around his neck, one hand almost buried in the man’s fair hair as she pressed her lips against his in an ardent, passionate kiss.

  Almost buried. Because there was one finger that could be seen only too clearly. And on that finger was…<
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  ‘She’s wearing my ring!’ Becca exclaimed.

  ‘Forgive me.’

  The words came together almost in unison, so that Andreas’ voice clashed with hers in the same moment that she spoke. And for a second she couldn’t quite register what he had said. But as she paused, a small, confused frown creasing the space between her brows, he spoke again, and this time there could be no doubt about what he said.

  ‘Forgive me for ever doubting you. For thinking that she could be you. For believing you could be capable of marrying me for what you could get when really you were…’

  He choked off the end of the sentence, too shaken to go any further.

  ‘For … Is that what he told you I’d done? Oh, Andreas, I knew he was evil, but I never thought he’d take things that far.’

  Her heart thudding in shock, she reached out and placed her hand over Andreas’ where his rested still on the desktop. For a moment he showed no response, remaining absolutely still, but then his fingers curled around hers and held tight.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said softly.

  ‘Just one thing first.’

  She had to know. She had to ask. And his answer to this would mean so very much. It would mean all the world.

  ‘Were you really going to shred these?’

  Her answer was there in his eyes, in the expression on his stunning face. She didn’t need any more but he gave it to her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice strong and firm this time, with no room for doubt in his tone. ‘Yes, I was going to shred them—and burn them. And then—’

  But Becca stopped him there, pressing a finger to his lips to keep back the rest of what he had been about to say.

  ‘Later,’ she whispered, looking deep into his eyes and willing him to believe there would be a ‘later’. A much better, easier—please God—a happier time, when whatever he had been about to say could be spoken with no hesitation, no doubts.

  ‘Let me tell you about my sister. The sister I should have told you about.’

  She’d hurt him with that, Becca knew now. It had really stung that she hadn’t trusted him enough. That she’d been so afraid of losing her one blood relative that she had kept Macy’s existence even from him. If they’d stayed together longer she would have told him.

  And now she could tell him. There were none of the restrictions Macy had placed on her when they had first met. All the need for secrecy had gone now. So she could be as open as she wanted—as she needed to be.

  So she launched into the story of how she had tried to find her birth mother, only to find that she had died just six months before. But there was a daughter, Becca’s half-sister.

  ‘Macy was barely nineteen then—and she was making a real mess of her life. She’d got in with a bad crowd, been in trouble with the law—she had a drug habit. I was so conscious of how good my life had been with my adoptive parents—how different from hers—so I begged her to let me help her. She promised me that if I’d stick by her—help her out—then she’d try to go straight. But to do that, she had to get away from everyone she knew. She made me promise not to tell anyone who she was or where she was. If I did, then she would just disappear and I’d never see her again. There was one man in particular—a man she owed money to. Lots of money.’

  She paused, searching for the strength to go on, to bring that name into the conversation. But she didn’t need to. Andreas was there before her.

  ‘Roy Stanton.’

  ‘Yes. They’d had a relationship—she was crazy about him, would do anything he asked. He’d got her hooked on drugs, and when she couldn’t pay for more he loaned her the money she needed—but at a ruinous rate of interest. The debt had just mounted up and up, until there was no way at all that she could pay it.’

  ‘So you paid it. Using the money I gave you.’

  Becca nodded slowly.

  ‘I’m sorry …’ she began but Andreas stopped her urgent words with a gentle shake of his head.

  ‘Don’t be—it was the only thing that you could do. I understand. But oh, Becca, agape mou, did you never think what might happen? Rats like Roy Stanton are never satisfied, even when you’ve paid them off. They always want more. And if one source dries up, then they’ll find another way to get the cash they want.’

  Sorting through the photographs, he found another sheet of paper and held it out to her. Becca stared numbly at the photocopy of the cheque she had written to pay off Macy’s debts.

  ‘He told you—but you said …’

  ‘I said I had you investigated and I did.’ Andreas’ tone was sombre, his eyes shadowed. ‘I wanted to clear you for your own sake—so that there was never any need for doubt. But it wasn’t the money that concerned me—you could have had all of that and more, and I wouldn’t have given a damn. What I did care about was the rest …’

  ‘The rest …’ Becca echoed, her heart seeming to stop still in dread. Now they were coming to it and she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to know what was coming. ‘What did he say, Andreas? Tell me!’

  But even as she spoke she was hearing in her thoughts the words he’d said just a few moments earlier.

  For believing you could be capable of marrying me for what you could get when really you were …

  ‘He told you that we were lovers.’

  She could see it all now. It was exactly the sort of thing that Roy Stanton was capable of. When she had paid off Macy’s debts with the money Andreas had given her, he must have thought he was on to a good thing and moved from dealing drugs into a little—he believed—highly profitable blackmail. And it must have been Macy who had told him about Andreas.

  ‘I think I know when this picture was taken,’ she said slowly. ‘In fact, it had to be then. I’d been visiting Macy and when I went to the bathroom I took my ring off when I washed my hands. By accident I left it on the side of the basin. I remember that when I went back to get it, Macy wouldn’t let me in—she was flustered and obviously embarrassed. She obviously had someone in the flat, but I never thought…’

  Becca’s eyes focused on the picture of her sister. On the hand that was up and half-hidden in Stanton’s hair.

  ‘She was obsessed with him—could never say no to him. But she knew what I would think, so she tried to keep him hidden from me. When I asked about my ring—she took it off her finger! She’d found it in the bathroom and tried it on.’

  ‘And that was the day that the investigator spotted them together.’ Andreas’ voice took up the story. ‘I believed he’d done what I hoped for—that he’d found no evidence, cleared you completely. And so I married you and brought you here. I thought we were free of it all… The photographs were waiting when I went into my office.’

  The horror of that moment was stamped so clearly on his strong features that Becca’s heart twisted in a pale reflection of the pain he must have felt.

  ‘And I thought it was just the money—Andreas, why didn’t you show me the pictures then?’

  She saw his answer in his eyes; in the pained glance he shot at the discarded photographs, with its dark echoes of what he had felt then, when he had first seen them.

  ‘Because I couldn’t bear to. I wanted you to think it was the money that mattered. I could not have shown you the photos. Could not have stood there while you looked at them and knew—as I believed you would know—that you’d ripped my heart out with your betrayal. With the thought that you loved someone else.’

  Andreas shook his dark head in despair at his memories.

  ‘I wanted you to leave thinking I hated you—not knowing how much I loved you, that in spite of everything I still loved you beyond bearing.’

  ‘Loved?’ Becca had to force herself to say it, to take the risk, though every nerve in her body clenched tight in fear that she might not hear what she wanted to hear most in all the world.

  But Andreas didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Love, ‘ he declared clearly and proudly, the emotion he was feeling burning bright in his eyes for her to se
e too. ‘I still love you Becca, always will. I can do nothing else. You are in my heart, in my soul. You’re part of me. With you I am complete. Without you I am only ever half a man.’

  ‘And I love you, my darling. You’re the other half of me.’

  Her voice was breaking on the words and she couldn’t have gone on. But she didn’t need to. Andreas gathered her into his arms, holding her tight against him, and his kiss was all that she needed to know that nothing more had to be said. Or could be said. There were no words to describe the love that was in that kiss. The love that was hers now and for ever.

  ‘So tell me,’ she whispered when, safe in his arms, she finally got a chance to speak again. ‘When you had shredded those photographs, what were you going to do?’

  Andreas’ smile was one of pure joy as he looked deep into her eyes.

  ‘I was going to go upstairs and wake you, very gently. And then I was going to beg you to let us start again. I was going to tell you that I couldn’t live without you. That even as I slammed the door behind you I knew that I’d made a terrible mistake—the worst mistake of my life—but I believed it was too late to take it back. That you’d been in my thoughts every day since you left. That you were the first person I thought of in the moments when I came round from the accident.’

  ‘I know—Leander told me that you were asking for me. That’s why I came here in the first place. Only by the time I got here, you’d lost your memory.’

  ‘Perhaps that was some sort of defence mechanism. They always say that you don’t lose your memory—you just don’t want to recall what has happened. Perhaps I wanted to forget what a fool I’d been ever to let you go.’

  Once more his arms tightened round her and his mouth came down on hers in a lingering, loving kiss that made Becca’s senses spin in hungry delight.

  ‘But never again,’ Andreas whispered in her ear. ‘I’m never going to let you go ever again. I want you with me all day every day so that I can spend the rest of my life loving you as you deserve to be loved. So that I can prove to you that you are the only woman for me.’