Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘And not true,’ he continued. ‘Nothing is for free in this world.’

  This cynical outlook caused her brow to furrow, but she bit back her instinctive protest.

  ‘We all of us do things we regret in life. It is not helpful to be reminded of them constantly, especially when you have obviously made an effort to turn your life around.’

  My God, this was priceless. Rose Hall, the fallen woman, trying to live down her past … what would he say if he knew the truth?

  Rose would have laughed if her ironic appreciation hadn’t been severely dented by her response to the light seductive touch of his lips on her skin. Being this close to him short-circuited any sense of self-preservation she had left.

  She pulled her hand away, but the sensitised skin of her wrist carried on tingling.

  ‘You’re offering me some sort of grudging pardon?’

  Forgiveness from Mathieu Demetrios. A man who by all accounts had hardly led a blameless existence.

  ‘That’s really big of you,’ she responded with a smile of dazzling insincerity. ‘But for your information I haven’t done anything I’m ashamed of … well, not the anything you’re talking about anyway.’ She stopped. ‘Are you listening to me?’

  The disturbing smile twitched the corners of his lips as he shook his head and confessed, ‘No … I was having a Eureka moment.’

  ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’

  ‘I have thought of a position that you might be suited for. Yes, the more I think about it …’ His narrowed eyes travelled from the tip of her glossy fair head to her toes and back again. He slowly nodded. ‘Yes, you might just do.’

  ‘Do what? What are you talking about?’

  ‘You need a job; I need …’ He paused, a smile that filled her with deep distrust spreading across his lean features. ‘I have a vacancy.’

  ‘A vacancy for what?’ She had demanded a job on impulse and had not for an instant expected him to come up with the goods. She still wasn’t sure he wasn’t just messing with her.

  ‘You’re choosy suddenly.’

  ‘What is this position?’

  ‘I need a fiancée.’

  In the act of brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, she froze dead. ‘You need a fiancée?’ she repeated flatly. He said it the same way someone else would say they needed more petrol.

  ‘Before you get excited.’ Too late, she already was if the heaving bosom was any indicator. ‘The position,’ he explained, dragging his reluctant gaze upwards, ‘is purely temporary.’

  Rose pointed to her face with a not quite steady hand. ‘What you are seeing is not excitement,’ she told him. ‘This is fear of being in the same room as an insane person.’

  The man was quite definitely off his head, but, that being a given, his mental state was apparently more stable than her own. For a split second there she had almost allowed herself to consider his offer. Not in a serious way but thinking about it in any way at all was worrying.

  ‘If you need a fiancée I suggest you put an ad in the situations vacant column.’

  Or announce it on any street corner and you’ll be mobbed, she thought, watching as his lips curved into a smile that was almost as dangerous as the gleam in his incredible metallic eyes. As her eyes lingered on the sensual curve of his lips heat exploded somewhere deep in her belly and radiated outwards and downwards.

  Deeply ashamed of the heavy ache low in her pelvis, she struggled to school her features into a bland mask that gave no hint—she hoped—of the physical reaction over which she had no control. The wave of colour that washed over her skin she couldn’t hide; she just hoped he attributed it to anger.

  ‘Let me explain …’

  Rose didn’t want explanations; she wanted the nervous excitement fluttering in her stomach and causing her mouth to grow dry to subside.

  Feeling the panic rise, Rose assured herself what was happening was no big deal. It was normal. He was an incredible-looking man. It was just shallow physical attraction, nothing to get worked up about … just biology. Something over which you had no control, like a sneeze.

  Think sneeze, Rose.

  It wasn’t easy to stand there and think sneeze when you were looking up at someone who was just possibly the most incredible-looking man on the planet.

  ‘Save your breath,’ she advised tersely. ‘I’m not enjoying the joke.’

  ‘It isn’t a joke. There is a girl that my father wishes me to marry.’

  Rose looked at him in exasperation. He wasn’t even attempting to make this plausible.

  ‘And you, I suppose, always do what your father wants.’ She rolled her eyes, relieved that she had her hormones back in check. Mathieu being a dutiful obedient son was about as likely as him asking her to marry him for real.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, picking up her case, ‘say another word. I’m leaving.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HAD Mathieu really expected her to say yes to such a crazy idea?

  ‘My God, I’m not that desperate!’ Rose muttered, slamming the taxi door and in the process trapping the hem of her ankle-length coat in it. ‘Damn,’ she groaned, opening it and rescuing her coat that was now liberally coated with mud along the hem.

  After a second definitive slam that made the driver wince, she slumped back in the seat and, eyes closed, exhaled a heavy sigh.

  ‘The station, please.’

  The past half an hour had all been slightly surreal.

  She still wasn’t totally sure if he had even been serious. If it had been his idea of a joke. People just didn’t go around asking other people to pretend they were engaged. Though she was learning fast that Mathieu Demetrios was not exactly a man who felt obliged to follow the rules. In fact he seemed most comfortable making them up as he went along.

  And he had a way of making the most outrageous suggestion sound almost normal. She sighed and straightened up. Pulling a compact from her bag, she flicked it open.

  ‘If you’d stayed around a minute longer,’ she told her reflection, ‘you’d have ended up agreeing with him.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed at her joke. Then frowned because her laughter had a slightly hollow ring to it—also the driver was looking worried.

  She hadn’t been tempted, not for a second.

  Turning her frowning glare on the dour grey stone façade of the house as they drew away, she reached inside her bag for her mobile. The sooner a line was drawn under her Scottish misadventure, the better.

  Her twin picked up straight away.

  ‘Is this a good time?’

  ‘Rose, of course, I was just thinking about you. How are things in bonny Scotland?’

  Rose didn’t waste time wrapping it up. ‘Terrible. I’m coming home. As you and Nick are in New York until March, would it be all right if I stayed at your place for a couple of weeks?’

  There was a pause that grew longer.

  ‘This is where you say I told you so closely followed by I can’t wait to see you’

  ‘Of course I can’t wait to see you …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But the thing is, I was going to call you, but Nick said I should leave well enough alone and … the thing is, Rose, Steven’s wife is divorcing him.’

  Rose’s eyes opened wide.

  She screwed up her face as she made an effort to visualise his face. Should a person have to make an effort to see the face of the person they had decided was the unrequited love of their life?

  Even when she had formed a mental image to go with the name his eyes kept switching from blue to silver-grey and another mouth, one that was both sensual and cruel, kept superimposing itself over his.

  ‘Are you still there, Rose?’

  Rose gave her head a little shake and forced a smile even though there was nobody there to see it. ‘Yes … so Steven is getting a divorce?’

  Which made him available and ought to make her deliriously happy.

  Only she wasn’t, which probably meant that Rebecca had been r
ight all along and whatever she had felt for Steven Latimer hadn’t been love. And had, she realised with dawning shock, was the key word. Whatever it was she had felt for Steven was simply not there.

  Which made her shallow and superficial—even worse than that, he was getting divorced because of her and she could barely remember what the poor man looked like.

  ‘Steven is divorcing his wife?’ This is all my fault.

  ‘No, Rose, she’s divorcing him.’

  The hand with the phone in it fell into her lap as she sighed. ‘Thank God for that.’ Feeling light-headed with relief, she lifted the phone back to her ear.

  ‘Rose … Rose! Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘No, sorry, I lost the signal,’ she lied cheerfully.

  ‘God, does that mean I have to tell you again?’

  ‘Tell me what again?’ Rose asked, her curiosity roused.

  ‘Steven’s wife is divorcing him because she found out that he’s been having an affair.’

  ‘No … no, there was no affair, you were right, I—’

  ‘Not with you, Rosie. The reptile has been having an affair with the nanny.’

  Rose’s jaw dropped. ‘The nanny!’

  ‘And the thing is, Rose …’ the pity in her twin’s voice made Rose half suspect what was coming next ‘… well, the thing is, it’s been going on for two years. I wouldn’t have told you, but if you’re coming back to London you’d have been bound to have found out.’

  Rose closed her eyes. ‘You both warned me, didn’t you? And I didn’t listen.’ The memory of one of the last conversations she had had with Nick and Rebecca before she’d left began to replay in her head.

  Rebecca and Nick had seen what he was like all along.

  Eyes bleak, she lifted the phone to her ear. ‘Well, it’s easy to see why he found it so easy to keep his hands off me.’ They were all over the nanny. She closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall forward. ‘I thought his love was pure. Tell me, Rebecca, is there much insanity in the family? God, when I think about how he must have been laughing at me.’ She scrunched up her face and swallowed the humiliation burning like bile in her throat.

  ‘I could kill him,’ Rebecca said at the other end of the line.

  Releasing a strangled laugh, Rose raised her head and, phone pressed to her ear, she pushed her hair back from her face with the crook of her elbow. ‘Not if I get to him first,’ she said, allowing her head to sink into the backrest.

  ‘Just don’t do anything crazy. I’m catching the next plane over there. Planes do go up there, don’t they? I’ll ask Nick. Nick …’ Rose could hear the sound of a muffled conversation. ‘Nick says—’

  Rose cut her off. ‘Calm down, there’s no need to fly over here from New York. I’m fine.’

  ‘Liar, but if it makes you feel any better he’s had the push from his job … even before the affair came out. He made a major and very costly mistake and there was no Rose there to cover it up for him.’

  ‘I did cover up his mistakes, didn’t I?’ she said with a groan as she thought of all the unpaid overtime she’d put in to make sure that he looked good. ‘You must think I’m a total fool.’

  ‘Who am I to throw stones, Rose? It’s not as if I have a brilliant track record when it comes to men.’

  ‘You’ve got Nick.’

  ‘I wish you had a Nick.’

  ‘You and me both. But the Nicks of the world are pretty rare.’ ‘Rose says you’re rare.’

  ‘I’m unique … how is she? Tell her I’ll beat the skunk up for her if she—’

  Rose, who had been listening with half an ear to the conversation between husband and wife, suddenly cut in. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Rosie,’ Rebecca said, sounding worried. ‘You sound really odd. You’re not what?’

  ‘I’m not coming back to London.’ She didn’t love Steven. The Steven she had loved had never actually existed outside her fertile imagination, but she could tell Rebecca this until she was blue in the face and it wouldn’t do any good. And sympathy and understanding were the last things she needed right now. They would only remind her of what a prize idiot she had been.

  What did she need? That was the question…

  ‘So you’re staying there?’

  ‘Can’t. I got the sack.’ Rose barely registered her sister’s shocked gasp. She was considering her options—they were rather limited. She’d sublet her flat. She wanted to avoid her sister flying back from the States, her parents’ searching questions, and she was reluctant to dip into her meagre savings.

  Was this the moment to throw her customary caution to the wind? Well, being cautious and doing the right thing hadn’t got her very far except in the geographical sense.

  ‘You got the sack?’ Rebecca could not have sounded more incredulous, but Rose barely registered it. Her thoughts were racing.

  There was a way out … Mathieu had offered it her, but it was just too crazy … She couldn’t do that, could she? When you’d stopped waiting for Mr Right because the penny had finally dropped that he didn’t exist—wasn’t that the totally right time to take a leap into the unknown, and if that leap brought you into intimate contact with a man who made bits of you quiver you didn’t know you had wasn’t that a plus? So far avoiding temptation and being a good girl had made her a pathetic laughing stock.

  She sucked in a decisive breath. ‘I’m going for it.’

  ‘You sound strange, Rose. Rose is going for it. No, Nick, I’ve no idea what she’s going for, and will you stop interrupting? Rose, what are you—?’

  ‘Why not?’ Rose’s unexpected whoop had her twin lifting the phone with a wince from her ear. ‘You’re right, Becky, I’m a coward. But no more.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ her twin protested.

  ‘Yes, you did, and you’re right. I hate being nice. Nice people just get kicked in the teeth and laughed at. You know, I didn’t sleep with the wrong man because I’m too nice. Is that good or bad? I can’t decide,’ she mused. ‘When you think about it you might as well sleep with someone you don’t give a damn about because they can’t hurt you and I might actually find out what I’ve been missing.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Rebecca groaned down the other end of the phone. ‘Are you thinking of anyone particular you don’t give a damn about?’ she asked warily. ‘Look, Rosie, now might not be the best time to make big decisions … you’re feeling hurt and—’

  ‘I’m not hurt.’

  ‘Of course you’re not hurt.’

  Rose brought her teeth together in a frustrated grimace. Her twin had obviously decided that she was being plucky and brave trying to hide her broken heart. It was deeply frustrating that nothing she could say was likely to convince Rebecca otherwise.

  ‘There is no need to humour me. I was already completely over Steven.’ Rebecca had had her ‘summer to forget’ before she had found Nick. Maybe she was due a winter to forget—or remember, depending on how things turned out…?

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘It’s true—I’m not heartbroken, I’m just mad and I feel like a total idiot.’

  ‘Look, you don’t have to put on a brave face for me. I’ve been there. These things take time.’

  ‘Not for me. I’ve met someone else.’ The moment the words were out of her mouth Rose regretted introducing a face-saving lover. The chances were Rebecca wouldn’t believe her anyway.

  ‘You haven’t mentioned him before…?’

  ‘It’s early days and I didn’t want to tempt fate,’ Rose improvised brightly, pretending not to hear the sceptical note in her sister’s voice.

  ‘So what’s he like?’

  ‘Like …?’

  ‘Yes—tall, short, dark, fair? Married or single?’

  ‘I do not make a habit of falling for married men and he’s tall.’ She closed her eyes and leaned back into her seat. A faint smile curved her lips as the image in her head solidified. ‘Tall and very dark, with grey eyes that have a dark ring around the iris and really long
dark lashes. His mouth … well, he’s got a really great smile … when he does … smile, that is …’

  ‘Wow, does he have a brother?’

  The laughing query jolted Rose from her contemplative silence.

  ‘Look, Rebecca, I have to do something and, don’t worry, it’s not crazy … well, it is, but good crazy. I think. I’ll get back to you.’ She slid the phone back in her bag and leaned forward to speak to the driver, who had been unashamedly eavesdropping. ‘Could you turn around and take me back to the estate, please?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘SO DO you want me to wait?’

  Rose took the notes from her wallet and handed them over. ‘No, thanks.’ She was burning her bridges—no escape route to allow her to chicken out.

  She stood, her case at her feet, and watched as the taxi vanished. When it was gone she stayed where she was, staring after it.

  ‘Have you any idea what you’re doing, Rose?’

  Good question.

  She spun around. Her heart gave a lurch as she looked at Mathieu … He represented all the reckless excitement she’d been avoiding all her life.

  And if you wanted to learn about sex he would probably be a pretty good guide. And there would be no possibility of emotional complications because it didn’t seem a big leap to assume he wasn’t into deep and meaningful relationships.

  ‘I came back.’

  ‘So I see. Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not really.’ Only if you count the fact I’ve gone insane as a problem, she thought as his tactile voice sent an illicit shiver down her spine. That alone should have warned her she was making a mistake. ‘I came back.’

  ‘We covered that. I’m surprised.’

  ‘Good surprised or bad surprised?’

  ‘That kind of depends if you’re going to take another swing at me.’

  ‘That depends on how rude you are to me. Do you find me attractive?’

  The question seemed to throw him; she suspected not a lot did.

  ‘Or do you say the stuff you do because people expect you to?’

  ‘Is this,’ he asked, ‘some sort of test? Multiple choice, perhaps?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, you don’t have to say. I was thinking …’