Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  Outside the door there was the noise of a bleeper shrilling and the sound of running feet, but the din did not register with Rose. ‘You like my smile?’

  ‘Like is not quite the right word…’

  She swallowed, still not quite daring to believe what she was seeing stamped into those sternly beautiful features, but wanting more than anything to allow herself to.

  ‘I used to think my life was stimulating and productive.’ A fleeting self-derisive smile tugged at the corners of his lips as he contemplated his naïvety. ‘I used to think that needing someone was a weakness, now I realise that the reverse is true. It requires strength, and also admittedly a little insanity, to care for someone, to put into their hands the power to hurt or heal.’ While he spoke he took Rose’s hand in his and unfurled each finger like the petals of a flower. ‘Such a pretty hand too,’ he murmured, lifting her hand to his mouth and brushing her palm with his lips, all the time holding her eyes with his.

  Rose’s eyes filled with emotional tears as she blinked up at him. ‘Needing someone… me…?’

  ‘You are infuriating and ridiculously stubborn and also totally adorable. I have known I loved you almost from the start. I was just too afraid to admit it to myself.’

  Mathieu was saying things she had never expected to hear him say outside her dreams, but she felt strangely dispassionate. Her clinical detachment wavered under the hungry, searching scrutiny of his narrowed eyes.

  ‘You are still wary of my motives.’

  ‘I don’t want to be,’ she admitted.

  He ran a finger down the furrow between her feathery brows and nodded. ‘Before I met you I was arrogant enough to imagine that a man had a choice about who he loved.’

  ‘So you love me against your better judgement?’ More than you expected, Rose, she reminded herself, but not enough even had she been inclined to take what he said at face value. ‘Because I don’t fit into your life.’

  The conclusion drew a strange laugh from him. He shook his head and drew his hand heavily across his stubble-covered jaw. ‘You are my life. Surely you know this?’

  His incredulous eyes swept across her face.

  ‘You have to know this, Rose.’

  ‘I have to know …’ she echoed, giving an odd little laugh. ‘I don’t think I know anything any more except that you look terrible,’ she husked. ‘I know you don’t want my advice, but shouldn’t you still be in hospital?’

  ‘You have no idea what I want,’ he retorted, covering her hand with his.

  ‘I know you didn’t want me to be a virgin.’

  ‘Dieu, I know I acted like a total fool,’ he groaned, lifting her hand to his lips. ‘You don’t know how often I wished I had not said the things I did.

  ‘I was totally irrational, but you have no idea what a shock it was to discover …’ Visibly shaken by the memory, he closed his eyes, his fingers tightening around Rose’s until she winced and, mumbling an apology, he let them go.

  ‘The truth is, Rose, that I had been rationalising my feelings for you, telling myself that it was just physical and you felt the same way, then when I discovered what a precious gift you had given me the pretence was ripped away and I had to face the reality of my feelings for you.’

  Rose’s heart lurched. There was no mistaking the sincerity glowing in his luminous eyes. ‘Keep talking, Mathieu,’ she encouraged.

  ‘I love you, Rose … marry me …’ Mathieu said, watching her face.

  With a cry she was in his arms and he was holding her and kissing her with a tenderness and passion that drove her last lingering doubts away.

  ‘You know,’ she said when they broke apart, ‘it’s going to take a lot of those.’ her eyes darkened as she followed the sensual curve of his mouth with a finger ‘… an awful lot,’ she warned him huskily, ‘to drive away the memory of these last weeks.’

  His smoky gaze slid over her face. ‘I will do my best,’ he promised, taking her hand and, before she realised his intention, sliding the big emerald back in place. ‘Now that,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘is where it belongs.’

  ‘And where do I belong?’

  ‘You have to ask? In my arms, of course.’ As he pulled her to him she gave a sudden laugh.

  ‘I’ve just thought—what will your father say when he finds out we’re back together?’

  ‘Does it matter? And, besides, miles may have separated us, but you were never for a moment out of my heart or thoughts.’

  Enchanted by this romantic confession, she wound her arms around his neck and froze, her anxious eyes seeking his. ‘The operation … I don’t want to hurt you…’

  ‘I have a scar, which I will show you later,’ he promised with a look that made the heat bloom in her cheeks. ‘But,’ he added firmly, ‘I am not fragile or breakable. I will cause metal detectors in airports some stress …’ he shrugged ‘… but the surgery was a total success.’

  Rose sighed as she felt the last cloud vanish from her emotional horizon. She struggled to stay sensible and focused even though his lips were tantalisingly close. ‘About your father, though, Mat—’

  His mouth a few inches from hers, Mathieu groaned.

  ‘I really didn’t mean to make things worse between you with the things I said to him.’

  ‘My father and I are fine—well, for us fine at least.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’ With a wave of his hand he brushed aside the subject. ‘But not now.’ Now there were other things he needed to tell her. He curved his hand around her face. ‘You know, for a split second when Rebecca walked in through the door I thought it was you.’ The joy he had felt had sprung from the depths of his soul. The bitter disappointment and sense of loss when he had realised his error had been equally profound. ‘Then I saw it wasn’t and it was like having heaven snatched away. I am incomplete without you, Rose.’

  Rose covered her mouth with her hand as tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Please don’t say that if you don’t mean it, Mathieu.’

  ‘I have never meant anything more in my life.’ There was no mistaking the total sincerity ringing in his statement. ‘In my life I have loved people …’ His eyes slid from hers as he said huskily, ‘My mother…’

  She watched the muscles in his brown throat work as he swallowed, clearly fighting to contain strong emotions. Heart aching with empathy, she reached out and caught his hand.

  As he raised her hand to his lips his eyes lifted and connected with her wide-eyed, sympathetic gaze. His eyes not leaving hers for a moment, he opened her fingers one by one and pressed his lips to her palm. The tenderness in his expression and the gesture made her throat constrict with emotion.

  When he lowered her hand he didn’t release it, but kept it tightly enfolded between his big hands.

  ‘You remind me of her sometimes.’

  ‘I do?’

  He nodded, one corner of his mouth lifting in a lopsided smile that squeezed her heart. ‘Not in looks. She was very dark.’ His eyes brushed her fair hair, letting the silky strands fall through his fingers. ‘But she was a fighter like you and stubborn too. And her pride sometimes …’ he reflected, a shadow crossing his face ‘… made her suffer more than was necessary, but she was never bitter, you know, or angry. I had enough anger for us both,’ he admitted, dragging a hand through his dark hair.

  ‘What I am trying to say is, Rose, that I have loved people … my mother, then my stepmother and my brother. I lost them all.

  ‘It hurt so much that I think to avoid ever feeling that way again I sealed away my emotions and nailed down the lid.’ His brooding gaze rested on her face and the grimness lifted. ‘Then you came along and I no longer had any control over my feelings …’ Unable to resist the temptation of her lush lips another second, he closed his mouth over hers with a hunger that drove the breath from Rose’s body.

  When they broke apart Rose’s head was spinning and she was smiling with dreamy content.

  �
��What I felt for you, ma petite, could never be confined within any box. Somehow, I knew that to lose you,’ he rasped in a voice that throbbed with raw emotion, ‘would be unbearable, and it was.’ Eyes bleak, he drew a hand across his face as if to extinguish the memory of the last ten weeks. ‘For delivering me from my private hell a day early, I will always be grateful to your sister.’

  ‘Me too,’ Rose admitted. ‘I can’t imagine what your father made of her.’

  ‘He did mention the fact that it could be worse—she might be the one I had to marry.’

  ‘Had to marry? Nice to know he approves,’ she teased, running a loving hand down his lean cheek.

  ‘Approves might be a little strong,’ he admitted, turning his face into her hand and pressing a warm kiss into the small palm.

  When accused of turning his back on his parental responsibilities, Mathieu—already shaken to the core by the news he was about to be a father—had retorted without his usual self-restraint that this comment was nothing short of breathtaking hypocrisy.

  In the following bitter exchange the simmering resentment of years had spilled out. Even that eavesdropped conversation from years before had been dredged up and in his turn Andreos had accused Mathieu of being a thankless wretch incapable of showing affection and always looking for an opportunity to throw his generosity back in his face.

  In the end Mathieu had turned his back with every intention of walking away for good, and he would have except he had happened to look back to deliver one final comment.

  It was a comment that he had never voiced, nor had he walked out of the door. Andreos Demetrios, the man who could make other strong men wilt with a look, had been standing, his face contorted with grief, as tears ran unchecked down his cheeks.

  Mathieu had only paused for a moment before he had moved to comfort him. He had listened while his father had told him that if he had stayed outside that door a little longer he would have heard the rest of the conversation.

  A conversation in which Andreos had admitted to his wife that he knew it was irrational to blame a child for his own sins, even if it was guilt that made him unable to show affection to his older son—that and the belief that the boy hated him.

  It would have been an overstatement to say that the past had been washed away, but it was a beginning, which was just as well because he suspected that Rose would not rest until she had seen everyone kiss and make up.

  ‘So you’re marrying me because your father tells you to …?’ She laughed.

  His eyes darkened as he caught her passionately to him and growled, ‘I’m marrying you because I adore every hair on your glorious head. I’ve just made a very interesting discovery.’

  ‘You have?’ she asked, letting her head fall back as he kissed the base of her throat.

  ‘There is no back in this thing.’ He laid his hand on the smooth curve of her bottom that was exposed to the elements and the gaze of anyone who happened to look through the glass panel in the door.

  With a shriek of protest Rose backed away, holding the sides of her gaping gown together. ‘Stay away from me. This is a hospital and the radiologist could come back any moment.’ Conscious this was a very real possibility, Rose retook her place on the couch and rearranged the blanket primly over her legs. ‘You,’ she warned, ‘keep your distance.’

  Mathieu looked at her, a wicked glint glittering in his eyes. ‘You don’t get turned on by the idea of being caught in the act, then?’ He watched her blush … Dieu, but he loved that blush.

  ‘No, I do not …’ She slid him a curious look. ‘Do you?’

  Mathieu threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Oh, I’m dark and twisted—ask anyone.’

  ‘I like to form my own opinion,’ she told him, dimpling prettily.

  He folded his arms across his chest and strolled over to her side. ‘And what’s your opinion of me?’

  He recognised the irony. He’d spent his entire adult life not giving a damn what anyone thought of him and now there was someone who he desperately wanted to think well of him. The most surprising thing was recognising the new vulnerability did not appall him as it once might.

  ‘Too soon to tell. Ask me again in twenty years or so.’

  ‘I will,’ he promised thickly.

  Rose’s eyes filled as he laid a warm hand over her abdomen. ‘This baby, mon coeur, you’re happy about it …?’

  ‘More,’ she promised with a palpable sincerity that drove the last trace of lingering uncertainty from his face, ‘than you can imagine.’

  ‘So tell me,’ he said, dragging a chair and placing it beside her. ‘About this scan? Is the image 3D? Do we get a DVD? Are—?’

  She held up her hand, laughing. ‘Oh, no, you’re going to be one of those men who cut the cord, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ he drawled, giving a visible shudder. ‘I’ll stick to moral support.’ He caught her small hand to his lips. ‘It is my job to keep you safe, ma petite, and I will,’ he swore solemnly, ‘do that with the last breath in my body. I will do that.’

  ‘Oh, Mathieu.’

  The radiologist returned a few minutes later. She paused, shocked, on the threshold for a moment before silently retracing her steps.

  She waited a tactful space of time before returning, making sure that a tone-deaf wall could have heard her approach.

  The pink-cheeked and tousle-haired mother-to-be with the just-kissed look smiled as she walked in and said brightly, ‘We were just wondering what had happened to you.’

  Her partner grinned. ‘That was not what you said you were wondering about to me, mon ange.’

  The technician cast him a reproachful look, but thawed towards him when she saw the tears in his eyes as he looked at the first images of his unborn child.

  A man who looked like him, and he was in touch with his emotions—now that, in her experience, was rare. But not perhaps as rare as the look the couple exchanged as they linked hands.

  ‘We did this?’ Mathieu breathed as he stared with sparkling eyes at the tiny image magnified on the screen. ‘You are brilliant!’

  Rose smiled at his enthusiasm and awe. ‘I can’t take all the credit. This was a joint effort.’

  ‘We’re a team.’

  Rose gave a sigh of content. ‘Totally,’ she agreed, seeing no limits to what they could achieve together. She was the luckiest woman alive.

  THE MAGNATE’S

  INDECENT PROPOSAL

  Ally Blake

  About the Author

  When ALLY BLAKE was a little girl, she made a wish that when she turned twenty-six she would marry an Italian two years older than her. After it actually came true, she realised she was on to something with these wish things. So next she wished that she could make a living spending her days in her pyjamas, eating M&Ms and drinking scads of coffee while turning her formative experiences of wallowing in teenage crushes and romantic movies into creating love stories of her own. The fact that she is now able to spend her spare time searching the internet for pictures of handsome guys for research purposes is merely a bonus! Come along and visit her website at www. allyblake.com.

  To my editor, Bryony Green. Thank you for discovering me, indulging me with unexpected opportunities, and knowing just how to draw the best writing out of me. None of this would have been possible without you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHELSEA flicked a stray streak of wet mud off the nose of the beagle motif on her old umbrella as she ducked under the silver and black striped awning of Amelie’s, a newly opened Melbourne restaurant a stone’s throw from the Yarra River at South Bank.

  She peered through the floor-to-ceiling windows to see the place was peppered with bright and shiny types decked out in designer gear. While the chocolate-brown knee-length skirt she’d found in the back of her closet sat at a slightly askew angle to hide a fresh doggie shampoo stain.

  ‘In a couple of hours I’ll be out of these high-heeled boots and back into sneakers,’ she said aloud. ‘While you’
ll all have bunions before you’re forty.’

  As some kind of perverse justice, her boots teetered beneath her as she twirled out of the way of a rushing pair of suits barging out of the restaurant barking into their mobile phones rather than looking out for stray women on the pavement.

  Not wanting to push her luck, she slipped inside the glass doors and patted the criss-cross of bobby pins holding back her too-long fringe to make sure they were still in place and not dangling from the end of her hair like some odd mobile.

  ‘Do you have a reservation?’ the skinny, bald maître d’ in head-to-toe black asked.

  ‘I’m Chelsea London,’ she said, leaning back slightly to make sure he wouldn’t get a waft of the mothball scent of her recently de-cupboarded fancy clothes. ‘Meeting Kensington Hurley. She’s always madly early. I’d be happy to sneak through and find her myself—’

  ‘Not necessary.’ He gave her a cool smile.

  Phoney schmuck, she thought as she gave him a weak smile in return.

  He ran a bony finger down the pale pink diary page and nodded. Then said, ‘Your phone, please.’

  ‘Excuse me, my what?’ said Chelsea.

  ‘Your … mobile … phone,’ he repeated, more slowly this time. ‘They are a nuisance to other customers thus we don’t allow them in the restaurant. You would have been told at the time of reservation.’

  ‘My sister chose this place,’ she explained through gritted teeth.

  ‘Nevertheless, you need to check it into the cloakroom.’

  She bit her lip while she made up her mind about what to do. Her whole life was in her phone. Her address book, her appointments calendar, her grocery list, her emails, the profit and loss statements to take to the bank later that morning now that she’d finally made an appointment with a loan officer to see about expanding Pride & Groom, her pet-grooming business, from one salon to three. He might as well have asked for her future firstborn child for all it meant to her.