Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  The older Greek flinched as though struck and Mathieu added in a softer voice, ‘We both wish it otherwise.’

  Anger flared in the older man’s eyes. ‘Wish it otherwise?’ he echoed, his lips twisted in a scornful grimace. ‘Your brother being killed as he was left you the sole heir … yes, your tears were most apparent at the time,’ he observed bitterly.

  This was a subject they had tiptoed along the edge of many times and this time, like the others, it was Mathieu who drew back, though emotion surfaced and flared for a moment like silver fire in his heavy-lidded eyes before he responded with a moderate, ‘We both wish it otherwise but this is the situation we find ourselves in. I suggest we both learn to live with it.’

  ‘How dare you speak to me this way?’

  Mathieu had learnt the hard way that showing emotion gave people the upper hand, but for once his iron control slipped and his emotions spilled out. ‘You mean not like the puppet dancing to your tune?’

  Andreos visibly recoiled from the blaze of fury written in every line of his son’s patrician features. ‘I have given you everything.’

  ‘And everything you gave was given out of a sense of reluctant duty. You tolerate me only because it was Mia’s dying wish. Has it not occurred to you … Father, that my actions are similarly constrained?’

  It was clear from the older man’s expression that he had not.

  ‘She was always kind to me even though my very existence must have caused her pain.’ He sucked in air through his flared nostrils and fought to regain his control. ‘And it is only in respect of her wishes that I did not leave after her death.’

  Both men were silent as they simultaneously recalled the last painful months of her life, which Mia had endured with cheerful dignity that had humbled those who had been lucky enough to be around her.

  ‘As far as I am concerned the only thing you ever had going for you was the fact that a woman like that could love you. She must have seen something in you that I have not.’

  ‘I will be leaving for Scotland tomorrow. You must do as you wish, Father…’

  CHAPTER TWO

  HER family’s and friends’ opinions were unanimous; Rose had lost her mind. Only a total lunatic, they reasoned, would leave a comfortable life in the capital where she had friends, family and a stimulating job she enjoyed to bury herself miles away from anything that remotely resembled civilisation, not to mention any place that served a halfway decent coffee.

  Her twin sister had been particularly vocal in her opposition. In fact, initially Rebecca had been unable to believe her twin was serious about the move. Then, faced with the black-and-white reality of her sister’s letter of resignation, she had stopped being amused and adopted a firm manner.

  ‘This is a massive overreaction, Rose. You fell in love with your boss.’ She lifted her slender shoulders in a so-what shrug. ‘Who hasn’t?’

  Rose winced at the casual reference to Steven Latimer, protesting, ‘Becky!’ as her twin, who did dramatic with style, ripped up the letter and held out her hands as though her action settled the matter.

  And Rose could see why she might think so. It was a classic case of someone believing their own press. Since they were children, people had been calling the more flamboyant Rebecca the dominant twin. It was probably only Rebecca’s husband, Nick, who recognised the true dynamics of the twins’ relationship.

  ‘Sure, Rose gives in to Becky, but haven’t you noticed it’s only on the little things?’ the shrewd New Yorker had observed. ‘Things that don’t actually matter. When it comes to something important, that she cares about, Rose could give a mule lessons in stubborn, though you don’t realise it because she says no with such a sweet smile.’ He had flashed his sister-in-law one of his own laconic smiles and winked.

  At that moment—Rebecca had dragged him along to convince Rose of the error of her ways—he earned himself a black look by observing when appealed to for support by his wife that it was pretty much up to Rose what she did.

  Rose would have been more grateful if he hadn’t added, for the record, that, yes, he did think that Steven Latimer was a lower form of human life.

  Rose glared at her brother-in-law and picked up a piece of torn paper from the floor. ‘All I have to do is print out another copy, Becky.’

  ‘Is this about Latimer, Rosie?’ Nick interrupted. ‘Are you leaving because he is putting pressure on you? Because you don’t have to put up with it, honey. Nowadays employers take a very dim view of sexual harassment.’

  Rose shook her head firmly. ‘Steven isn’t like that, Nick. He’s a very honourable man.’

  ‘I wonder if your marvellous Steven would be quite so honourable if his wife wasn’t the boss’s daughter?’

  ‘Becky, that’s not fair.’

  ‘Was it fair of him to tell you he was desperately in love with you?’

  ‘It wasn’t something he planned.’

  ‘In my opinion Steven Latimer plans everything. The man hasn’t a spontaneous bone in his body—which I admit isn’t bad. He’s also the most calculating person I’ve ever met … and I’ve met a few.’

  ‘Steven might come over as a little ambitious sometimes.’

  Her twin didn’t mince her words. ‘He’d sell his grandmother for a seat on the board.’

  ‘He went to Eton with a guy I know.’

  Rose turned her head at the interruption. ‘Eton?’ Anyone else she might have accused of lying, but her brother-in-law was as straight as they came. ‘No, your friend must be mistaken. Steven went to an inner-city state school.’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ Rebecca snorted, bending to pick up the shredded paper from the rug. Looking at her twin, she began to thread it between the perfectly manicured fingers of her right hand.

  ‘Why would he lie?’

  ‘Because he isn’t a nice man. The man you fell in love with only exists in your head, Rose,’ Rebecca said, tapping the side of her own blonde head with its new gamine crop. ‘He’s a self-serving bastard and you’re such a hopeless romantic.’ She sighed. ‘You know, I think you prefer a tragic unrequited love because it’s safer than the real thing—you’re a coward, Rose!’

  Rose shook her head. This had been a hard decision to make but she knew it was the right one, no matter how Rebecca tried to twist things.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to go to the Scottish Highlands,’ she reminded her sister.

  ‘Go, not live,’ Rebecca exploded, running a frustrated hand over the hair. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually serious.’

  ‘I just need a break. This man needs his book collection catalogued. I only fell into the marketing job. I originally trained as a librarian—’

  Rebecca gave an impatient snort. ‘Don’t try and pretend this is about musty old books, because we both know it isn’t. You’re running away; it’s a big mistake. For God’s sake, it’s not like anything happened.’ She stopped and gave her sister a sharp look. ‘Is it …?’

  ‘He’s married.’

  Rose’s outraged expression had seemed to amuse her sister. ‘It has been known, Rose, for married people to have affairs,’ she taunted gently. ‘You do know you’re something of a rarity in the twenty-first century, don’t you?’

  Rose had been stung by her sister’s affectionate mockery. ‘Because I won’t sleep with a married man?’

  ‘No, actually that doesn’t make you totally unique—even with my colourful history I might have a few qualms about that.’

  Despite the levity in her sister’s tone Rose knew that she had strayed on sensitive ground. Rebecca could be pretty touchy about what she liked to call her ‘summer to forget’. It was a subject that by tacit agreement neither referred to.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that you’re …’

  ‘That I’m an abandoned hussy?’ Rebecca suggested with a twinkle. ‘Relax, Rosie, Nick knows all about my chequered history, don’t you, darling?’

  Her tall husband stretched laconically and offered her a lopsided grin wi
th his nod of wry agreement. ‘A paragraph,’ he announced with a hint of complacence. ‘My past would fill several volumes.’

  Behind his teasing there was profound love and commitment that brought an emotional lump to Rose’s throat. Her sister had found the man of her dreams too. Why couldn’t Rebecca recognise that the only difference between them was that Nick had been available?

  Was everything in life merely down to timing?

  ‘The Scottish Highlands! You know I can’t believe you’re actually serious about this. You’re mad, totally insane!’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Rose had defended her sanity but as a second sickening splintering sound issued from under her feet and the crack in the ice spread rapidly she was forced to consider the very real possibility Rebecca might have had a point.

  Mathieu had risen early, long before anyone else in the house was awake. He enjoyed solitude, time to recharge his batteries and gather his thoughts without the distractions of phones and faxes, but moments like this one had become increasingly rare over the past months.

  Not that he was complaining. Against all the odds he found he loved what he was doing, and he was learning all the time.

  It was a steep learning curve, but he relished the challenge and knew that even if it ultimately proved impossible for him to work with Andreos he would take these new skills with him when he left.

  And, on a less charitable note, in the meantime he had the pleasure of knowing Andreos, who had never disguised the fact that he didn’t think his bastard son had what it took, was struggling to hide his frustration when he hadn’t fallen flat on his face.

  Yet, he corrected himself with a mocking grin. You know what they say about pride and falls, Mathieu.

  Someone had recently asked if he hadn’t found the restrictions of riding a desk after the freedom of the racing circuit crushing. They had not understood why he had laughed, but like many they hadn’t had the faintest idea of the sort of physical and mental discipline both required to compete at the level he had.

  They saw the glamour but not the struggle to remain at the peak in a competitive environment.

  He slipped his rucksack from one shoulder to the other and rotated his neck to ease the tension that still remained in his shoulders. The chair in Jamie’s study was not designed with human posture in mind and he had worked long into the night, poring over the accounts, a flattering description for the collection of papers and illegible scribbles in the ledgers that Jamie had supplied him with.

  They did not make for happy reading. Far from exaggerating the situation as he had suspected, Jamie had if anything underplayed the seriousness of his position.

  It had been dawn when he had tackled the climb so, with any luck—his glance skimmed his watch—yes, he ought to make it back in time for breakfast and to place a few calls.

  The post-climb general sense of well-being combined with the dregs of the adrenaline rush were still circulating in his blood as he made his way to the spot where he had parked the Land Rover. He glanced once more at the metal-banded watch on his wrist and quickened his pace already planning his strategy, though he suspected it would come down in the end to plan B … it was always good to have a plan B.

  He was about half a mile from the Land Rover when movement in the periphery of his vision made him turn his head in time to see a red-hatted figure moving below. Someone else who enjoyed the morning, he thought, moving off again. He had reached a steep slope of scree directly above the loch when some instinct made him stop and seek out the distant figure.

  ‘Nobody is that stupid.’ He held his breath for a moment as the figure stepped out onto what he knew to be paper-thin ice.

  He hit the ground running. He didn’t waste his breath shouting, knowing the person below would never hear him above the wind that whistled through the valley.

  He was fifty yards away when the stillness was rent first by a loud cracking sound, then a woman’s scream. A final sprint brought him to the edge of the ice in seconds.

  A girlfriend had once accused him of having too little imagination to be sensibly scared of anything, but she was wrong.

  He just saw little benefit under the circumstances of wasting time to linger on the lurid details of death by drowning in cold, icy water. Instead as he pulled off his light padded outer jacket he scanned the ice estimating his chances.

  His actions were swift but not hurried, his brain working out all the factors. It was his ability to think clearly in situations like this that had made him a successful racing driver. That combined with lightning reflexes, nerves of steel and, according to some of his competitors, more than his fair share of ruthless cunning.

  Mathieu didn’t think of it in those terms, but he did know that his thought processes were at their sharpest when the stakes were high. Right now they were as high as they got—a life.

  The situation did not allow for further preliminary evaluation so, sucking in a breath, he tucked his ice axe into the belt of his trousers and lay down flat on his belly to distribute his weight as evenly as possible on the thin ice. Then Mathieu began to crawl as quickly as possible towards the hole that stood like a gaping black wound in the silvered surface of the frozen water.

  He saw the top of a red hat surface, heard the stifled yell and pushed himself faster regardless of the warning creaks of the fragile ice underneath him. He reached the edge of the gash in the ice in time to see the white hand vanish beneath the water.

  He hauled himself to the edge of the hole and thrust his ice axe into the water. Relief flooded through him as it snagged on something. His face set in lines of grim determination, the sinews in his neck pulling taut, he began to pull.

  Even as she opened her mouth to scream for help Rose was very aware that the chance of anyone being around to hear her was, at the most optimistic, remote.

  The second scream of visceral fear remained locked in her throat as the ice beneath her feet opened up and she fell. She had never imagined that cold could be this extreme. It enveloped her, freezing the air in her lungs, its icy tentacles infiltrating every cell of her body. After the first paralysing shock she began to struggle, kicking out wildly in panic as she fought her way to the surface.

  Rose was a good swimmer but the extremely low temperature of the water sapped her strength within minutes.

  ‘Help me,’ she screamed as she felt herself sliding beneath the surface. Cocooned in the icy darkness, aware only of the heavy thud of her own heartbeat as it continued to pump the oxygen-starved blood around her body, she refused to accept the inevitable.

  I am not going to drown.

  But she was.

  Still Rose refused to accept the reality of it. Clinging stubbornly to the last flicker of hope, she kicked weakly for the surface even though she knew she wasn’t going to make it.

  Only she did. Just as she had used up the last reserves of strength and her lungs were burning she felt something snag in her coat, then she was being dragged upwards.

  Holding the bedraggled girl’s head above the icy water, Mathieu could just about make out her muffled words. The damsel in distress had reached the inevitable ‘what happened?’ phase. He didn’t waste his breath replying, though if she asked, ‘Who am I?’ he would have a harder time restraining himself. People called him a risk-taker, but any risks he took were of the clear-headed, calculated variety. If this girl wasn’t suicidal to pull a stunt like this she was … she had to be one of the most criminally stupid women ever to draw breath!

  ‘It is important to stay calm and not struggle,’ Rose heard the deep voice above her say.

  Struggle. Was he joking? At the moment breathing required all her energy and each raw breath she dragged in through blue lips hurt.

  ‘When I pull you clear…’

  Now that sounded like a good idea. It was also good that he hadn’t suggested she do this herself as her limbs were not responding to any requests; she couldn’t even feel them.

  ‘I’m just going to—’

>   ‘Wait!’ Rose protested, lifting her head in panic as she felt herself pushed briefly clear of the relative security of the ice. ‘N-no … don’t.’

  Her warning went unheeded.

  ‘I’m just going to put this rope around you. It’s all right, just be still.’

  Rose felt the rope her rescuer had just looped under her arms tighten.

  ‘That’s it, you’re perfectly safe now.’ Mathieu said this with a confidence he did not feel.

  He shot a glance over his shoulder towards the shore and safety. As he had crawled out there had been several moments when the ice underneath him had threatened to give way.

  She could feel the heat of her rescuer’s breath on her icy cheek as he bent closer. Her nostrils flared in response to the clean male scent of his body overlaid with a light citrusy scent. He represented safety but she really felt she ought to warn him that pulling her out of the water might not be so easy.

  ‘S … s … seven to ten p … pounds …’ Shut up, Rose, you sound unbalanced.

  ‘Seven …?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Still, it would be kind of ironic in a dark sort of way if the amount of excess the magazines said she needed to shed if she wanted any shot at happiness in this world was the amount that tipped the balance.

  What if her determination not to end up a victim to the prevailing fashion for unrealistically thin women ended up being the reason for her demise?

  She laughed and above her a man’s voice advised her once more to stay calm. She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t the type to have hysterics when the ice gave another loud warning creak and she changed her mind.

  Perhaps she was the type to have hysterics? Under these circumstances perhaps everyone was the type. Then she remembered the sound of her rescuer’s deep, calm voice, and thought maybe he was the exception, which was lucky for her.

  The situation was better than he had dared hope—there were no new major cracks visible. However, only an insane optimist would expect this situation to last for long. The window of opportunity for this rescue was small.