by Pippa Roscoe
The woman he can’t forget...
The child he can’t deny!
Wild. Powerful. Ultrarich. Matthieu’s reputation was infamous. And he wanted to keep it that way! It was a way to shelter from the pain of his traumatic past. Until enchanting Maria entered his world of unimaginable wealth...and unraveled his carefully ordered life with a night of blistering passion.
She was the only woman to see the man behind the scars. Yet, to protect her, Matthieu pushed her away. Now Maria is back, with an announcement that leads him to question everything: “I’m pregnant.”
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. What you’re asking for,” Matthieu stated, almost angrily.
“I may be naive—”
“May be? You are an innocent, Maria. A true innocent.”
“Does that mean I don’t know what I want?”
“It means you don’t understand the implications of what you want.”
“Would anyone?” she asked.
“This is something that you should do with someone capable of staying with you.”
No one ever stays, her mind voiced, batting away each and every one of his arguments. She knew, deep down, that this was what she wanted with her entire being. She had never been more sure of anything, half-fearful that if he walked away now she would have lost something that she had only dreamed of in the darkest of nights and the deepest of sleeps.
“I haven’t asked for anything more than this night.”
Pippa Roscoe lives in Norfolk near her family and makes daily promises to herself that this is the day she’ll leave the computer to take a long walk in the countryside. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t dreaming about handsome heroes and innocent heroines. Totally her mother’s fault, of course—she gave Pippa her first romance to read at the age of seven! She is inconceivably happy that she gets to share those daydreams with you all. Follow her on Twitter, @pipparoscoe.
Books by Pippa Roscoe
Harlequin Presents
Conquering His Virgin Queen
Virgin Princess’s Marriage Debt
The Winners’ Circle
A Ring to Take His Revenge
Claimed for the Greek’s Child
Reclaimed by the Powerful Sheikh
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Pippa Roscoe
Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir
For Jasmine Rowlandson, whose incredible jewelry and sculptures ignited a wonderful spark of inspiration that became Maria.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EXCERPT FROM REVELATIONS OF A SECRET PRINCESS BY ANNIE WEST
CHAPTER ONE
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.
What on earth had she done? Maria had fled the opulent ballroom of the Hotel La Sereine after her argument with Theo—shaking and shivering at the devastation she’d seen in both his and his fiancée’s eyes, the moment she’d accidentally revealed Theo’s plans to leave Sofia at the altar. Theo Tersi—the man she thought she’d loved for nearly six years.
But, she hadn’t. She’d realised it the moment she’d seen the horror and grief on the faces of the engaged couple. Nothing she’d ever felt for Theo had engendered that much...pain. Maria Rohan de Luen sucked in a huge lungful of air around the tears that were now freefalling from her cheeks. Tears for them, for herself. Because she knew that she’d destroyed something between them that she’d been looking for herself for so, so long. Knew that what she’d thought she’d felt for Theo was nothing more than the desperate need to...be loved?
She cursed herself for that weakness. Part of her desperately wanted to go back, to find Sofia and explain, to apologise to Theo...but truly she feared she’d do more harm than good and instead, after taking one step forward and one back, collapsed onto the soft grass banking the smooth, mirror-like surface of the lake stretching out beneath the night sky.
She resisted the urge to peek into the depths of the water, reluctant to see what would be reflected back at her. Her hand grasped the cool glass neck of the bottle of champagne she’d been blindly holding as she’d hurled words that threatened to sever the bond between two people who very clearly loved each other. She’d never much had a taste for the stuff, but if there was ever a time to get blind drunk, at twenty-two years old, Maria decided that surely now was it.
Part of her was conscious that she was on the verge of over-indulging in self-pity, and the other part wanted to punish, believing that she didn’t even deserve that selfish act. Not after what she’d just done.
Theo, her older brother’s best friend, had loomedlarge in her life, ever since her sixteenth birthday. Sebastian and Theo had become almost instantly joined at the hip after a mutually beneficial business deal and there wasn’t a family memory in the last six years that didn’t have them both in it. Maria bit back a laugh at her inner thought’s use of the word ‘family’. She hadn’t seen her father or stepmother in almost eighteen months. And she was fine with that. In some ways they factored so little in her day to day life that occasionally a random thought or memory would catch her by surprise and remind her of them.
She wondered what her father would think of her and what had just happened. He’d probably give her that gaze, the one that said he wasn’t really seeing her, but another woman—one he had loved so all-consumingly that he’d not been able to recover from the loss of her. Then he’d almost start when Maria would speak because it only served to show that she wasn’t her mother, no matter how similar they might have looked.
She had nothing else of her mother, no memories, no heirlooms—Valeria, her stepmother, had seen to that—save but one necklace. The one she wore, always, even though it served as both an anchor and a homage to a woman who had died giving her life.
So no, while exiled Duke Eduardo Rohan de Luen would have been as ineffectual as always on the subject of what had just happened, Valeria would have sniffed in contempt and been only gleeful whilst declaring that she’d always known ‘that boy’, Theo Tersi, would cause nothing but trouble.
And Theo’s crime? Guilt by association. Valeria had never forgiven Sebastian for the drastic measures he’d had to take to save their family from complete and utter destruction. When Maria had been eight, Eduardo had doubled down on an incredibly risky oil investment in the Middle East and lost not only his own money, but a large portion belonging to other members of Spain’s nobility. A shocking and shameful moment that had seen the Rohan de Luens exiled from Spain, yet allowed to keep their hereditary title.
The only thing that had kept them from bankruptcy had been Seb who, at eighteen, had taken control of the financial purse strings and done what was needed. This included selling off almost every single piece of property and valuable item that wasn’t nailed down. And for a woman who had only married Eduardo for prestige and money, Valeria hadn’t taken it well at all.
For Maria? It had meant leaving behind everything she’d ever known, moving to Italy from Spain, and starting all over again. But in her heart, she’d known that the damage was already done. Suddenly unsure about even the most seemingly permanent things in life, Maria had withdrawn from friends and education, choosing instead to lose her
self in her art and sculpture.
Until London’s Camberwell College of Arts had accepted her on a foundation course, and she’d fallen utterly in love with the place, the people and the freedom she’d found away from her family. The friends she’d made during her degree, the little flat-share she lived in... Now, sitting on the bank of the river, all she wanted was to be back there.
She groaned out loud into the night sky and pressed the heels of her palms into the orbs of her eyes.
Oh, God, what had she done?
‘Is this seat taken?’
* * *
From the first moment Matthieu had seen the figure down by Lac Peridot, some strange sense of self-preservation told him to walk away. Run. From the empty veranda sweeping around the ballroom of the Iondorran hotel where a charity gala was being held, he’d seen the white lace dress worn by the dark-haired woman glowing in the moonlight. Tendrils of her long, gently curled hair had hung almost down to her hips and the sudden memory of his mother’s favourite painting stole his breath. He’d not seen or thought of the painting for years and when the figure had turned, for just a moment, back to the ballroom, something in her features, as clearly picked out by the moonbeams as her dress, had called to him as if across the years.
Matthieu Montcour knew better than to approach a woman so clearly lost in her own private thoughts, but he couldn’t help himself. There was something almost tragically beautiful about her. And Matthieu had had his fair share of tragedy. He knew how life could be one thing in one moment and an entirely new thing in another.
He’d been about to turn away from the figure and the direction of thoughts he rarely visited, when he saw her inexpertly take a swig from the champagne bottle, failing to account for the back flow of the bubbles, and nearly smiled as the froth rushed from the mouth of the bottle forcing the woman to lean out of the way as the alcohol funnelled onto the grass beside her. Nearly smiled, because smiling was something Matthieu did very little of. The figure gave up, indelicately wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, placing the bottle in the nest of skirts she’d made between her legs and went back to studying the lake. The carelessness about her clothing spoke to her distraction. This was no skilled seductress, his usual preferred companion. There was an innocence about her, shining, glowing, and all the more reason for him to stay away. But something about her drew him in—even though he was the last person to play white knight. No. He was the beast that mothers warned their daughters about.
Yet for the first time in years, he simply couldn’t deny himself the urge to take a closer look at the woman who had caught his eye and imagination. He’d stepped away from the veranda, leaving the sights and sounds of the ballroom behind him, and slowly padded his way over the soft grass, pulling up about a metre away from where she sat.
‘Is this seat taken?’
She started, peering up at him from her seat on the grass, momentary shock painting her features that righted themselves back to neutral. He’d chosen English—it being the most widely used at the gala and, as such, he figured it a safe bet, given that it was highly unlikely she spoke Swiss French.
‘Standing room only, I’m afraid.’
Her response surprised him, as much as her gentle European accent. Spanish perhaps? Maybe Italian? Taking his shock for persistence, she finally inclined her head.
‘Pull up a pew,’ she invited.
Frowning again, and confused instantly—which was untenable to Matthieu—he chose to comment. ‘That’s a very English turn of phrase for such a European accent.’
‘That’s a very round about way of asking me where I’m from.’
And whilst Matthieu decidedly didn’t like confusion, he found the slightly circuitous bent of her conversation appealing. Too many women, once they knew who he was, decided upon a brute-force attack of the sensual kind, the only thing that he would respond to. But he didn’t see that jolt of recognition in her eyes. When she’d finally turned to take him in, the woman seemed only to pass over his features as if gazing over a far horizon. And damn him if there wasn’t a part of him that was pleased by that.
He took a seat beside her on the comfortable grass and felt a sigh of relief escape him. He was glad to be away from the ballroom. He hated this part of his role as CEO for Montcour Mining Industries. ‘Schmoozing’, Malcolm called it. Matthieu preferred to call it a waste of time. But he knew better than to argue with his Managing Director, oldest friend, and one-time legal guardian. The Iondorran Minister for Trade had decided that the charity gala would be a neutral arena to test the waters of a possible joint mining venture within the small European country. Matthieu was slightly on the fence about it—unsure as to whether Iondorra actually had the financial infrastructure to take on such an ambitious project. But he wasn’t ready to shoot it out of the water completely. Not yet anyway. These days Matthieu was incredibly choosy about his ventures, simply because he could be.
He saw, from the corner of his eye, the woman beside him—young, he noticed now that he was closer—wipe discreetly at her cheek. A blade of grass, or a bubble of champagne from earlier? A tear perhaps?
The action had released a trail of perfume, wafting towards him on the warm night air, teasing his senses with tones of woody sage and something almost like the sea...salt, he realised. Inexplicably his mouth watered, desire creeping through his body.
‘Would you like some?’
He shook his head at the bottle she nudged with her knee. Matthieu rarely drank, refusing to allow anything to dull his senses to such an extent. But in the back of his mind, he wondered if he was already part drunk on the woman and the situation he found himself in.
They sat for a while in silence as if neither felt forced to speak. It was a blessed relief after the hours he’d spent in the gala being solicited by the Minister of Trade. Being peppered with unwanted and intrusive questions that were almost ritualistic in any negotiation. How are you finding Iondorra? What did you think of the capital Callier? Have you tried some unnameable food the small country hailed as their own pride and joy? The man’s offence that Matthieu had driven here from Switzerland, and intended to drive back without sampling any of this proud nation’s delights, had been both clear and disapproving. Not that it mattered—Matthieu hadn’t bothered with such things as niceties in a long while. He didn’t have to. He was Europe’s fourth richest man both in private income and net worth. People came to him.
But not this woman.
‘Do you think that there are some things that are unforgivable?’ she asked into the night air, without glancing his way.
In truth, he couldn’t imagine anything done by a girl who couldn’t even drink from a champagne bottle could be unforgivable. However he knew that yes, some things were beyond forgiveness. So he chose his words carefully. ‘I think there are two sides to every story.’
She seemed to take this in, as if considering her reply just as carefully.
‘I broke up an engagement tonight.’
‘Really?’ He couldn’t help the surprised word that fell from his lips. ‘Well, if that’s the case, he either wasn’t worthy of the engagement, or she wasn’t constant in her feelings enough for it.’
‘That simple?’ she asked of his blunt declaration.
‘It usually is, once you take emotions out of it.’ He was good at that. He had to be. ‘Do you love him?’ he asked, genuinely curious.
‘I thought I did.’
He knew that feeling too. ‘Then he either lied to you, or her.’
‘It’s not what you think. He had his reasons.’
‘They always do.’
‘No, I mean...he never... I never...’
He frowned at her confusion, not quite sure what she was unable to put words to.
She turned to him then for the first time and he was struck full force by her beauty. ‘What is it like to be kissed?’
He l
et out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. ‘You thought you loved him, but have never been kissed?’ he asked, unable to hide the incredulity from his tone.
Perhaps I don’t know what love is.
She hadn’t said the words out loud in that rich accented tone of hers, but her face was so expressive he could almost read her thoughts. He was used to the practised masks of women hell-bent on seduction. But hers? So open, so revealing, it distracted him for a moment.
Her skin glowed as much as her white lace dress in the beams of the moon. Flawless. Her jaw was strong, angular almost, stubborn even, but drew the eye to perfect rosebud lips slicked with just a trace of something that glistened in the night. Dark brows above dark eyes, highlighted with just a trace of mascara and liner as to outline, rather than dominate the deep rich dark eyes that stared back at him with confusion and hope—and a request he was almost one hundred per cent sure she wasn’t aware of.
* * *
What is it like to be kissed?
Maria was embarrassed. Should never have asked such a question. Especially not to a man like him. She might not have known who he was—which was partly why she’d felt able to speak her mind—but she didn’t have to know his name to know that he most definitely knew what it was like to kiss, to touch...to... She yanked her mind back before she could give away her thoughts.
A blush rose almost painfully to her cheeks and she hoped that he might not see it beneath the cover of the night sky. She felt naïve and uncouth next to him. And small. Because...his body, his presence, it was huge. She’d seen the impressive width of his arms as he’d sat down and leaned his weight back on his hands behind him. Arms and muscles that looked too wide for her to encompass with both her hands. If it hadn’t been for the champagne bottle, she would have pressed her thighs together against the feeling that was growing within her. She might have been innocent, but she knew the shocking arousal sparking within her was something she rarely felt, even with Theo.
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