by Penny Jordan
‘No, Luke,’ she told him despairingly, standing up. ‘It just wouldn’t work.’
She attempted to turn her back on him and walk away, but her sore leg had gone stiff while she’d been sitting down and she half stumbled so that he reached out and caught hold of her, bringing her breathtakingly close to his body.
She couldn’t help it—her glance was automatically drawn to his face, his eyes, his mouth. She drew a shuddering breath of air and closed her eyes.
‘Melanie, Melanie. I love you so much.’
She knew he was going to kiss her and protested thickly, ‘No, Luke, please don’t.’
But it was already too late. Already his mouth was on hers. She could sense that he was trying to restrain himself, to rein in his passion. She could even feel him trembling as he drew her into his body.
She tried to resist him, to resist herself, but it was impossible.
As he kissed her, he moulded her scalp with his hands, buried his fingers in her hair, whispered her name over and over again between kisses, telling her how much he loved her, how much he wanted her, how much he needed her.
When he finally released her, Melanie was trembling so hard that she could barely stand up.
‘Luke, I can’t stand any more of this,’ she told him shakily. ‘No matter how much you say you love me, I can’t forget, can’t believe. I can’t trust you, Luke,’ she told him flatly. ‘I can’t trust you to always be there for me, and I need that; perhaps I need it more than I should. I don’t know. I only know that because of the way I lost my parents, because of having to grow up so alone, I have this need in me—’
‘I think I know what you’re trying to say,’ he interrupted her gently. ‘And believe me, Melanie, you can trust me.’
She gave him a sad smile.
‘I wish I could, Luke—believe you, I mean. Oh, and by the way I think I really can manage on my own now, you know—’
‘You mean, you want me to leave?’ he interrupted flatly.
She couldn’t look at him, but neither could she endure any more of this present torture, wanting him, loving him. It would be easier to cope with her feelings if he wasn’t constantly there with her, reminding her, weakening her.
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
There was a long pause and then he said quietly, ‘All right. I’ll go. Will tomorrow be soon enough?’
Tomorrow… Her heart clenched with pain and fear. She couldn’t let him go…she couldn’t.
‘Yes,’ she whispered back. ‘Tomorrow will be fine.’
* * *
WHILE HE WAS looking after her Luke had insisted on taking on all the domestic chores so that she could rest, and after he had cleared away from their meal he asked her if she would mind if he went upstairs into the attic.
‘If I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he added huskily.
‘Yes…yes…you go ahead.’
He seemed to be gone for a long time. It was quiet downstairs without him. Quiet and very, very lonely. A long shiver went through her. This was what the rest of her life was going to be like. Was she really doing the right thing, or was she simply being a coward, punishing them both because she did not have the courage to take a risk…to take him on trust?
Trust…that was what it all came down to in the end. She believed she could not trust Luke because he had misjudged her. But he had misjudged her when he hadn’t known her…when she’d been a stranger to him, and yet wasn’t she now equally guilty of misjudging him, and with much less reason?
As she tried not to listen to the urgings of her heart, she wondered what on earth Luke had found in the attic to occupy him for so long.
So long. He had been away from her for less than three hours and she was behaving as though it were a lifetime. How would she react when she really was forced to endure a lifetime, her own lifetime, without him?
While she was still trying to come to terms with the magnitude of that loneliness she heard Luke coming downstairs.
He almost burst into the sitting-room, and rushed over to her, carrying a heavy file of papers.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he announced. ‘Something that’s probably going to give you a bit of a shock.’
Melanie stared at him. It had happened after all. He had found another will. Well, she had half expected it all along, had always felt as though somehow, somewhere, there had been a mistake.
‘Well I suppose it’s only fair, really,’ she interrupted him dully. ‘At least I haven’t touched the money…or at least not much of it.’
‘To hell with the money,’ Luke told her. ‘And, for God’s sake, will you please try to forget this obsession you seem to have that I’m looking for some way to overset John’s will? In point of fact, if anyone has a legal right to do any such oversetting that person would be you,’ he added gently.
Melanie stared at him, thoroughly perplexed.
‘Me? What on earth…?’
She was still seated in the armchair, and now Luke put down the file of papers and dropped down beside her, kneeling on the floor as he reached out and took hold of both her hands in his.
‘Melanie, there’s no easy way of telling you this. I suppose I should have thought of it earlier, especially knowing John’s obsession with the family, but it simply never occurred to me, and…I hardly knew James. He was still at school when I was born, and he went straight from there into the army. I suppose I must have seen him when he came home on leave, but I don’t have any memories of having done so, and of course after their quarrel John would never allow his name to be mentioned. Later, when he’d told us that James was dead, Mother told me that he removed every photograph, every single one of James’s possessions, every single thing that could have reminded him of James and forbade anyone to ever mention his name again—’
‘James? Who are you talking about?’ Melanie interrupted him in confusion.
‘James, my darling love, was John’s son.’ He paused, and then, gripping her hands tightly, looked straight into her eyes and said softly, ‘And your father.’
It took her several seconds to absorb what he was saying, and when she did, she denied it instinctively, shaking her head and saying, ‘But that’s impossible. My father’s name was Thomas…Thomas Foden. It’s there on my birth certificate, my parents’ marriage certificate.’ Her face crumpled. ‘On the death certificate.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know. But I promise you that James Burrows was your father. It’s all here in this file.
‘Listen, and I’ll try to explain it as simply as I can.
‘Your father James was, according to what my mother told me, a shy, quiet boy. He wanted to become a teacher, but his father was utterly opposed to his having such a career. He wanted his son to go into the army. In those days, national service was still compulsory. Your father must have been one of the last set of young men to have been obliged to undergo it. Quite what happened while he was in the army I don’t know. My mother may have more knowledge of the details. All I do know is that as soon as his time in the army was at an end James told his father that he was leaving to train as a teacher. John was furious with him. He wanted James to make a career for himself in the army.
‘James told him that this was impossible, that even if he wanted to do so, which he didn’t, the army wouldn’t have him. There was a terrible quarrel. John lost his temper—when did he ever not? He told James that unless he stayed on in the army he would no longer consider him to be his son. James had always been a gentle, quiet type. I suspect that John had tended to bully him, and fully expected him to give way and stay on in the army. What, I suspect, he had not bargained on was James simply disappearing, simply walking out of this house and never coming back.
‘While it’s always been common knowledge in the family that James disappeared and later died, what none of us ever knew was what I’ve found in three papers. Quite simply, once he had left here James changed his name. Quite why he picked the name Thomas Foden I have no idea. There certainly isn’t any family con
nection, but John obviously knew. Not initially—these papers show that it took him a long time to trace James, and that when he had done so it was already too late: James—your father—was dead.’
Melanie could scarcely take it all in. She could only stare at Luke with anguished eyes and ask painfully, ‘But if he knew all the time that I was his granddaughter, why did he…?’
‘Never acknowledge it…never get in touch with you…allow you to be brought up by strangers?’ He shook his head. ‘My darling, I don’t know. He was a very strange man; a very lonely man; a very stubborn man; a man full of pride and bitterness.’ A sad smile touched his mouth. ‘Perhaps we’ve both inherited more of those family traits than is good for us.’ He touched her face fleetingly.
‘I can’t give you all the answers, Melanie. I suspect most of them have died with John. All I can tell you is that you are most definitely his grandchild, and that this is undoubtedly why he made you his beneficiary.’
‘But after ignoring me for all those years…’
She was crying now, cleansing, healing tears, not of bitterness or misery, but of sadness, not for herself but for the man who had lived out his life so lonely and so bitterly, as she herself could so easily do, as she herself had been going to force herself to do. She breathed in sharply, causing Luke to stand up and take hold of her, lifting her up in his arms and taking her place in the chair, cradling her against him, as he whispered, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have broken it to you like that…I should have waited.’
‘No. I’m not crying for myself,’ she told him truthfully. ‘I’m crying for him, my grandfather. Oh, Luke, he must have been so alone…so unhappy…’ She gave a final shudder and whispered hesitantly, ‘Luke…would you please hold me? Close…closer.’
‘What’s wrong?’ he murmured anxiously against her hair as he felt her body shudder.
‘Nothing…not any more. I was just thinking, realising—I could have ended up like him, like Mr…like my grandfather.’
She felt his body tense against hers, and then he said huskily, ‘Could have? Does that mean…?’
‘It means that you’re right. That I do love you, and that that love is worth taking a risk for,’ she told him passionately.
She felt the tension in the breath he expelled.
‘You won’t be taking any risk,’ he assured her unsteadily. ‘I’d never let you take any risk, just as I’d never do anything to hurt you. Whatever else you can believe in, my love, you can believe in this: I shall always be there for you, no matter what. Always.’
His lips were so close to her own that she couldn’t resist reaching out and touching them, first with her fingertips and then with her mouth, shyly exploring their male contours until he growled softly in his throat and opened his mouth against hers, kissing her with such fierce intensity that she could only cling to him, trembling with need and love.
‘So…no more doubts,’ he demanded when he had stopped kissing her.
‘No more doubts,’ Melanie responded truthfully. He saw the shadow that crossed her face and told her, only mock teasingly,
‘And if you think for one moment that I’m going to let go of you until you’ve promised to marry me…!’
Melanie laughed and teased back. ‘If you think for one moment that I’m not going to marry you…!’
‘Then why were you frowning?’
‘I was just thinking about this place; wishing I hadn’t been so precipitate. I suppose it’s sentimental of me, but I’d have liked to have kept it. When we have children…’
‘Ah. Now, I’m afraid, I have a confession to make: I’m buying the cottage.’
He saw her face and shook her gently.
‘Listen to me. Do you really think I could let anyone else live here, sleep here in the room where I first kissed you, first made love to you?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I was determined that if I couldn’t have you then at least I’d have this place and its memories…its echo of you.’
‘Well, there’s no need for you to buy it now.’
‘Yes, there is—the money,’ he reminded her softly. ‘The money John left you, the money from the sale of this place. Do you still want to donate it to charity?’
Melanie looked at him. ‘I thought he’d been so alone, so impoverished emotionally, I thought…’ She flushed a little and then looked defiantly at him as she told him, ‘I thought it might somehow—’
‘Balance out the scales a little,’ he said gently for her. ‘I know why you wanted to do it, my darling. I was wondering; perhaps in memory of your own father… There are so many youngsters who leave home for one reason or another, only to find themselves alone and beset by all manner of difficulties… Perhaps a charity that aids them?’
‘Yes, Melanie agree sombrely. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’
* * *
‘WELL, what do you think of the use they’ve made of your generosity?’
‘Your generosity,’ Melanie corrected her husband as she turned in the passenger seat of his car to take one last look at the building they had just left.
It was a brand new, purpose-built shelter on the outskirts of Manchester, and John Burrows’s money—the money that she and Luke had jointly decided to donate to this particular organisation—had been used to furnish one of the dormitories with simple sturdy beds and to equip the shelter with bathrooms and a kitchen.
‘I think we’ve done the right thing,’ Melanie responded to him, and then added, ‘Those poor children, and they are still children, most of them. You know, I used to think the worst thing that could happen to any child was that it was orphaned, but it isn’t: the worst thing that can happen to a child is that it has parents who can’t or won’t love it as it needs to be loved. Those children…’
‘Many things happen in life that can’t be blamed on anyone, parent or child. People suffer pressures under hardships—’
‘But nothing like that will ever happen to our child,’ Melanie told him fiercely, her hand going instinctively to the small bump beneath her jacket.
‘No…because along with love we’ll give it respect and, I hope, enough freedom and acceptance to allow it to develop as an individual and not as an extension of ourselves. We won’t repeat the mistakes of the past, Melanie.’
‘No,’ she agreed softly, and she knew that he spoke the truth, just as she knew how much he loved her. But now she didn’t need that knowledge as a prop or a crutch. Luke’s love had set her free to be a whole person in her own right, to go out into the world with confidence and joy, without fearing that she was somehow going to lose him.
Luke had taught her with patience and with love to come to terms with the past, to accept it and to live with it. As she had just said to him, there were far, far worse things in life than being an orphan.
And now she had Luke and Luke’s love, and the promise of Luke’s child. She smiled secretly to herself. The first of several children, she hoped. Luke was already making plans to transfer the running of his business from London up to Cheshire so that they could make the cottage their permanent home. With the planning permission to extend the floor space, which they had applied for, there would be room for half a dozen children. Her smile broadened.
‘What’s that smile for?’ Luke asked her with husbandly suspicion.
‘Nothing,’ Melanie told him serenely. ‘Nothing at all.’
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of
Clare Connelly’s debut for Harlequin Presents,
BOUGHT FOR THE BILLIONAIRE’S REVENGE
Being forced to spurn Nikos Kyriazis devastated Marnie Kenington. Years later, he offers to absolve her family’s bankruptcy—if she marries him! Nikos wants revenge—and he knows that in the bedroom he can take Marnie apart…piece by sensual piece…
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
BOUGHT FOR THE BILLIONAIRE’S REVENGE
PROLOGUE
HIS CAR CHEWED up the miles easily, almost as though the Ferr
ari sensed his impatience.
He exited the M25, the call he’d received that morning heavy on his mind.
‘He’s broke, Nik. Not just personally, but his business too. No more assets to mortgage. Banks are too cautious anyway. The whole family fortune is going to go down the drain. He’s about to lose it all.’
Nikos should have felt overjoyed. There was something about chickens coming home to roost that ought to have brought him amusement. But it hadn’t.
Seeing Arthur Kenington suffer had never been his goal.
Using the man’s plight to avenge the past, though… That idea held infinite appeal.
For six years he’d carried the other man’s actions in his chest. Oh, Arthur Kenington wasn’t the first elitist snob Nikos had come up against. Being the poorest kid at a prestigious school—‘the scholarship boy’—had led to an ever-present sense of being an outsider.
But it had been so much worse with Arthur. After all, the man had paid him to get out of Marnie’s life, declaring that Nikos would never be good enough for his precious daughter. Worse, Marnie had listened to her father. She’d dropped him like a hot potato.
Marnie.
Or ‘Lady Heiress’, as she was known: the beautiful, enigmatic, softly spoken society princess who had, a long time ago, held his heart in her elegant hands. Held it, pummelled it, stabbed it and finally, at her father’s behest, rejected it. Thrown it away as though it were an inconsequential item of extremely limited value.
It had hurt like hell at the time, but Nikos had long ago credited it as the fuel that had driven his meteoric rise to the top of the finance world.
A dark smile curved his lips as he navigated the car effortlessly through London’s southern boroughs.
The tables had turned; the power was his and he would wield it over Marnie until she realised what a fool she’d been.
He had the power to help her father, to prove his own worth, and finally to hold her heart in his hands and see if he felt like being gentle…or repaying her in kind.
CHAPTER ONE
SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE come.