“I used a condom. It made her crazy. ‘I want your baby,’ she said. “And then—”
Damian fell silent. Lucas leaned forward. “And then?”
“And then,” Damian said, after a deep breath and a long exhalation, “then she told me she’d conceived. That her doctor had confirmed it.”
“But the condom—”
“It broke, she said, when she—when she took it off me—” He cleared his throat. “Hell, why would I question it? The damned things do break. We all know that.”
“So—so she was pregnant again.”
“No,” Damian said flatly. “She wasn’t pregnant. Oh, she went through all the motions. Morning sickness, ice cream and pickles in the middle of the night. But she wasn’t pregnant.” His voice roughened. “She never had been. Not then, not ever.”
“Damian. You can’t be sure of—”
“She wanted my name. My money.” Damian gave a choked laugh. “Even my title, the ‘Prince’ thing you and I both know is nothing but outdated crap. She wanted everything.” He drew a deep breath, then blew it out. “And she lied about carrying my child to get it.”
“When did you find out?”
“When she died,” Damian said flatly. He drained his glass and refilled it. “I was in Athens on business. I phoned her every night to see how the pregnancy was going. Later, I found out she’d taken a lover and she’d been with him all the time I was gone.”
“Hell,” Lucas said softly.
“They were on Long Island. A narrow, twisting road on the Sound along the North Shore. He was driving, both of them high on booze and cocaine. The car went over a guardrail. Neither of them survived.” Damian looked up from his glass, his eyes bleak. “You talked about grief before, Lucas. Well, I did grieve then, not for her but for my unborn child…until I was going through Kay’s papers, tying up loose ends, and found an article she’d clipped from some magazine, all about the symptoms of pregnancy.”
“That still doesn’t mean—”
“I went to see her doctor. He confirmed it. She had never been pregnant. Not the first time. Not the second. It was all a fraud.”
The two friends sat in silence while the sun dipped below the horizon. Finally Lucas cleared his throat.
“I wish I could think of something clever to say.”
Damian smiled. “You got me to talk. You can’t imagine how much good that’s done. I’d been keeping everything bottled inside.”
“I have an idea. That club of mine. Remember? I’m meeting there with someone interested in buying me out.”
“So soon?”
“You know how it is in New York. Today’s hotspot is tomorrow’s trash.” Lucas glanced at his watch. “Come downtown with me, have a drink while I talk a little business and then we’ll go out.” He grinned. “Dinner at that place on Spring Street. A pair of bachelors on the town, like the old days.”
“Thank you, my friend, but I wouldn’t be very good company tonight.”
“Of course you would. And we won’t be alone for long.” Another quick grin. “Before you know it, there’ll be a couple of beautiful women hovering over us.”
“I’ve sworn off women for a while.”
“I can understand that but—”
“It’s what I need to do right now.”
“You sure?”
Inexplicably an image of the woman with green eyes and sun-streaked hair flashed before Damian’s eyes. He hadn’t wanted to notice her, certainly didn’t want to remember her…
“Yes,” he said briskly, “I’m positive.”
“You know what they say about getting back on the horse that threw you,” Lucas said with a little smile.
“I told Nicolo almost the same thing a year ago, the night he met Aimee.”
“And?”
“And,” Damian said, “it was good advice for him, but not for me. This is different.”
Lucas’s smile faded. “You’re right. Well, let me just call this guy I’m supposed to meet—”
“No, don’t do that. I’d like to be alone tonight. Just do a little thinking, start putting this thing behind me.”
Lucas cocked his head. “It’s no big deal, Damian. I can meet him tomorrow.”
“I appreciate it but, honestly, I feel a lot better now that we talked.” Damian held out his hand. “Go have your meeting. And, Lucas—Thank you.”
“Para nada,” Lucas said, smiling. “I’ll call you tomorrow, yes? Maybe we can have dinner together.”
“I wish I could but I’m flying back to Minos in the morning.” Damian gripped Lucas’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself, filos mou.”
“You do the same.” Lucas frowned. Damian looked better than he had a few hours ago but there was still a haunted look in his eyes. “I wish you’d change your mind about tonight. Forget what I said about women. We could go to the gym. Lift some weights. Run the track.”
“You really think it would make me feel better to beat you again?”
“You beat me once, a thousand years ago at Yale.”
“A triviality.”
The men chuckled. Damian slung his arm around Lucas’s neck as they walked slowly to the door. “Don’t worry about me, Reyes. I’m going to take a long shower, pour myself another brandy and then, thanks to you, I’m going to have the first real night’s sleep I’ve had in months.”
The friends shook hands. Then Damian closed the door after Lucas, leaned back against it and let his smile slip away.
He’d told Lucas the truth. He did feel better. For three months, ever since Kay’s death, he’d avoided his friends, his acquaintances; he’d dedicated every waking minute to business in hopes he could rid himself of his anger.
What was the point in being angry at a dead woman?
Or in being angry at himself, for having let her scam him?
“No point,” Damian muttered as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. “No point at all.”
Kay had made a fool of him. So what? Men survived worse. And if, in the deepest recesses of his soul he somehow mourned the loss of a child that had never existed, a child he’d never known he even wanted, well, that could be dealt with, too.
He was thirty-one years old. Maybe it was time to settle down. Marry. Have a family.
Thee mou, was he insane?
You couldn’t marry, have kids without a wife. And there wasn’t a way in hell he was going to take a wife anytime soon. What he needed was just the opposite of settling down.
Lucas had it right.
The best cure for what ailed him would be losing himself in a woman. A soft, willing body. An eager mouth. A woman without a hidden agenda, without any plans beyond pleasure…
There it was. That same image again. The green-eyed woman with the sun-streaked hair. Hell, what a chance he’d missed! She’d looked right at him and even then, trapped in a black mood, he’d known what that look meant.
The lady had been interested.
The flat truth was, women generally were.
He’d been interested, too—or he would have been, if he hadn’t been so damned busy wallowing in self-pity. Because, hell, that’s what this was. Anger, sure, but with a healthy dollop of Poor Me mixed in.
He’d had enough of it to last a lifetime.
He’d call Lucas. Tell him his plans for the night sounded good after all. Dinner, drinks, a couple of beautiful women and so what if they didn’t have green eyes, sun-streaked hair…
The doorbell rang.
Damian’s brows lifted. A private elevator was the sole access to his apartment. Nobody could enter it without the doorman’s approval and that approval had to come straight from Damian himself.
Unless…
He grinned. “Lucas,” he said, as he went quickly down the stairs. His friend had reached the lobby, turned around and come right back.
Damian reached the double doors. “Reyes,” he said happily as he flung them open, “when did you take up mind-reading? I was just going to call you—”
But it wasn’t Lucas in the marble foyer.
It was the woman. The one he’d seen outside Portofino’s.
The green-eyed beauty he hadn’t been able to get out of his head.
CHAPTER TWO
OH, WHAT a joy to see!
Damian Aristedes’s handsome jaw dropped halfway to the ground. Seeing that was the first really good thing that had happened to Ivy in a while.
Obviously his highness wasn’t accustomed to having his life disrupted by unwanted surprises.
Damian’s unflappable, Kay had said.
Well, okay. She hadn’t said it exactly that way. Nobody can get to him, was probably more accurate.
Not true, Ivy thought. Just look at the man now.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
She didn’t answer. The pleasure of catching him off guard was wearing off. She’d prepared for this moment but the reality was terrifying. Her heart was hammering so hard she was half afraid he could hear it.
“You were outside Portofino’s today.”
He was gaining control of himself. His voice had taken on authority; his pale gray eyes had narrowed.
“Are you a reporter for one of those damned tabloids? I don’t give interviews.”
He really didn’t know who she was. She’d wondered about that, whether Kay had ever shown him a photo or pointed out her picture in a magazine, but she’d pretty much squelched that possibility at the restaurant, where she’d followed him from his Fifty-Seventh Street office.
He’d looked at her, but only the way most men looked at her. With interest, avarice—the kind of hunger she despised, the kind that said she was a plaything and they wanted a new toy.
Although, when this man had looked at her today, just for a second, surely no more than that, she’d felt—she’d felt—
What?
She’d seemed to lose her equilibrium. She was glad someone had joined him because she knew better than to confront him with another person around.
This discussion had to be private.
As for that loss of equilibrium or whatever it was, it only proved how dangerous Damian Aristedes was.
That he’d been able to mesmerize Kay was easy to understand. Kay had always been a fool for men.
That he’d had an effect on Ivy, even for a heartbeat, only convinced her she’d figured him right.
The prince of all he surveyed was a sleek jungle cat, constantly on the prowl. A beautiful predator. Too bad he had no soul, no heart, no—
“Are you deaf, woman? Who are you? What do you want? And how in hell did you get up here?”
He’d taken a couple of steps forward, just enough to invade her space. No question it was a subtle form of intimidation. It might have worked, too—despite her height, he was big enough so that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes—but Ivy was not a stranger to intimidation.
Growing up, she’d been bullied by experts. It could only hurt if you gave in to it.
“Three questions,” she said briskly. “Did you want them answered in order, or am I free to pick and choose?”
He moved quickly, grasped her wrist and forced her arm behind her back. It hurt; his grip was strong, his hands hard. She hadn’t expected a show of physical strength from a pampered aristocrat but she didn’t flinch.
“Take your hand off me.”
“It’ll take me one second to phone for the police and tell them there’s an intruder in my home. Is that what you want?”
“You’re the one who won’t want the police involved in this, Your Highness.”
His gray eyes focused on hers. “Because?”
Now, Ivy thought, and took a steadying breath.
“My name is Ivy.”
Nothing. Not even a flicker of interest.
“Ivy Madison,” she added, as if that would make the difference.
He didn’t even blink. He was either a damned good actor or—A tingle of alarm danced over her skin.
“You are—you are Damian Aristedes?”
He smiled thinly. “A little late to ask but yes, that’s who I am.”
“Then—then surely, you recognize my name…”
“I do not.”
“I’m Kay’s sister. Her stepsister.”
That got a reaction. His eyes turned cold. He let go of her wrist, or maybe it made more sense to say he dropped it. She half expected him to wipe his hand on his trousers. Instead he stepped back.
“Here to pay a condolence call three months late?”
“I’d have thought you’d have been the one to call me.”
He laughed, although the sound he made had no mirth to it.
“Now, why in hell would I do that? For starters, I never knew Kay had a sister.” He paused. “That is, if you really are her sister.”
“What are you talking about? Certainly I’m her sister. And, of course you know about me.”
The woman who claimed to be Kay’s sister spoke with authority. Not that Damian believed she really was who she claimed to be.
At the very least she was up to no good. Why approach him this way instead of phoning or e-mailing? What the hell was going on here?
Only one way to find out, Damian thought, and reached for his cell phone, lying on the marble-topped table beside the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling your bluff. You won’t answer my questions? Fine. You can tell your story to the cops.”
“You’d better think twice before you pick up that phone, Mr. Aristedes.”
His intruder had started out full of conviction, like a poker player sure of a winning hand, but that had changed. Her voice had gone from strong to shaken; those green eyes—so green he wondered if she were wearing contact lenses—had gone wide.
A scam, he thought coldly. She was trying to set him up for something. The only question was, what?
“Prince,” he said, surprising himself with the use of his title. Generally he asked people to call him by his first or last name, not by his honorific, but if it took royal arrogance to shake his intruder’s self-control, he’d use it. “It’s Prince Damian. And I’ll give you one second to start talking. How did you get up here?”
“You mean, how did I bypass the lobby stormtroopers?”
She was trying to regain control. Damned if he’d let it happen. Damian put down the phone, angled toward her and invaded her space again so that she not only stepped back, she stepped into the corner.
No way out, except past him.
“Don’t play with me, lady. I want straight answers.”
She caught a bit of her lower lip between her teeth, worried it for a second before releasing it and quickly touching the tip of her tongue to the flesh she’d gnawed.
Damian’s belly clenched. Lucas had it right. He’d been too long without a woman.
“A delivery boy at the service entrance held the door for me.” She smiled thinly. “He was very courteous. Then I used the fire stairs.”
“If you’re Kay’s sister, why didn’t you simply ask the doorman to announce you?”
“I waited all this time to hear from you but nothing happened. Telling your doorman I wanted to see you didn’t strike me as useful.”
“Let me see some ID.”
“What?”
“Identification. Something that says you’re who you claim to be.”
“I don’t know why Kay loved you,” Ivy said bitterly.
Damian decided it was the better part of valor not to answer that. Instead he watched in silence as she dug through the bag slung over one shoulder, took out a wallet and opened it.
“Here. My driver’s license. Satisfied?”
Not satisfied, just more puzzled. The license said she was Ivy Madison, age twenty-seven, with an address in Chelsea. And the photo checked out. It was the woman standing before him. Not even the bored Motor Vehicle clerks and their soulless machines had been able to snap a picture that dimmed her looks.
Damian looked up.
&nbs
p; “This doesn’t make you Kay’s sister.”
Without a word, she dug into her purse again, took out a business-card size folder and flipped it open. The photo inside was obviously years old but there was no mistaking the faces of the two women looking at the camera.
“All right. What if you are Kay’s sister. Why are you here?”
Ivy stared at him. “You can’t be serious!”
He was…and then, with breathtaking speed, things started to fall into place.
The sisters didn’t resemble each other, but that didn’t mean the apple had fallen far from the tree.
“Let me save you some time,” Damian said coolly. “Your sister didn’t leave any money.”
Those bright green eyes flashed with defiance. “I’m not here for money.”
“There’s no jewelry, either. No spoils of war. I donated everything I’d given her to charity.”
“I don’t care about that, either.”
“Really?” He folded his arms. “You mean, I haven’t ruined your hopes for a big score?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
Indeed, Damian thought grimly, that was exactly what he’d done.
“You—you egotistical, self-aggrandizing, aristocratic pig,” she hissed, her voice shaking. “You haven’t spoiled anything except for yourself. And believe me, Prince or Mr. or whatever name you want, you’ll never, ever know what you missed!”
It was an emotional little speech and he could see she was determined to end it on a high note by shoving past him and striding to the door.
There was every reason to let her go.
If she was willing to give up so easily and disappear from his life as quickly as she’d entered it, who was he to stop her?
Logic told him to move aside.
To hell with logic.
Damian shifted his weight to keep her trapped in the corner. She called him another name, not nearly as creative as the last, put her arms out straight and tried to push him away.
He laughed, caught both her wrists and trapped her hands against the hard wall of his chest. Anger and defiance stained her cheeks with crimson.
“Damn it, let go!”
“Why, sweetheart,” he purred, “I don’t understand. How come you’re so eager to leave when you were so eager to see me?”
She kicked him in the shin with one of her high heeled boots. It hurt, but he’d be damned if he let her know that. Instead he dragged her closer until she was pressed against him.
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