by Maya Blake
His aim since that bleak winter had been to protect himself against that feeling at all costs. And he’d succeeded...for the most part. Until Ana.
His gaze dropped to her still-damp lips—lips that had tasted much sweeter than he’d remembered from that one other time when he’d lost control and let her slip beneath his guard. The day he’d almost stripped her naked on the deck of his yacht.
His groin hardened all over again as he recalled the smooth valley between her breasts, now fully covered with the wide lapels of a coat two sizes too big. His mouth had grazed the hard nub of her nipple only briefly, but the imprint remained vivid, branded on his lips.
With a swallowed groan he dropped his hand, willed his control back, and cast around wildly for a subject to kill the desire swirling inside him.
‘How’s your mother these days?’
In the dim light her eyes widened warily at the change of subject before she glanced down at her hands. He knew very well that he hadn’t answered her question, or given her the promise she sought. He had no intention of doing so.
Ana Duval had no right to seek promises from him. Certainly not ones he wasn’t entirely sure he could keep. She unsettled him far too much, emotionally and physically, for him to be anywhere near certain about any damned thing.
When she looked up her anxious expression was gone, replaced by an icy hauteur that was meant to freeze him out. He almost laughed.
‘She’s fine—but somehow I think you know that.’
She wasn’t wrong. Lily Duval’s thirst for the limelight made her impossible to ignore.
‘Since we’re being polite, how’s your father?’ she returned, her tone conversational, as if she’d bounced back from the passionate storm that had so nearly ravaged them.
But the wild pulse beating at her throat betrayed her. He prided himself on his control, and even he hadn’t brought his body to heel yet.
‘My father retired seven years ago. He and my mother live in Gstaad for most of the year now.’
His father was living with his guilt from sixteen years ago. Away from the shame he’d brought to his family and the chaos his actions had caused the company.
‘Do you see them often?’ she asked in a low, tentative voice.
He shrugged and answered despite the unsettling ache thinking about his parents brought. ‘I make a trip when my father insists on seeing me.’
‘When was the last time?’
The ache intensified. ‘Three weeks ago.’
As usual his mother had barely known who he was, stoked up by the drugs prescribed for her condition. When his father had tried to prompt her memory he’d only succeeded in agitating her further. The visit had gone downhill very fast and Bastien had left, ignoring his father’s pleas to stay.
‘I’m glad they’re still together,’ she ventured, a wary little smile teasing her lips. ‘Your father was nice to me.’
‘Oui, he’s always had a weakness for a pretty face.’
She flinched, and mingled regret and bitterness bit deep, finally eradicating the last of his unwanted desire. Whereas he’d have smothered the emotions before, this time he gave them space. He needed to remind himself why control over his emotions was imperative. Why the erratic feelings between Ana and him risked pulling away the rivets he’d fastened over his emotions.
Because even as an angelic eight-year-old Ana had charmed and entranced everyone around her—including his father. He remembered his father’s encouragement for Bastien to get to know sweet Ana—‘She’ll be your sister one day, you know.’
The last thing he’d felt towards her then was brotherly, because every time he’d looked at her he’d been reminded that he was witnessing his family’s destruction.
And the woman who sat next to him now, with her smooth legs crossed in the most alluring of ways, her eyelids lowered over chocolate-brown eyes as if keeping seductive secrets from a lover, engendered no brotherly feelings whatsoever inside him. A handful of minutes ago her body, warm and tempting, had surged against his, and her breath had come in passionate pants as she’d lost herself in her pleasure.
Mon Dieu, brotherly was the last thing he’d ever feel towards her.
He clenched his fingers against the urge to grab her chin again and make her look at him; to kiss her again and smother the bitterness of the past and the hunger of the present. He took a deep breath instead, reasserted control and reminded himself of one thing.
Regardless of their past, Ana Duval was as guilty as hell of the chaos now rippling through his life right now. She’d tested his control two months ago and she continued to test the edge of his resolve, reminding him of the vulnerability of emotion.
And that he would not forgive.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANA TOOK ONE last look at her image and brushed a hand over her dark grey suit jacket. Its precise, severe style suited her purpose. With her hair caught and pinned up out of the way, she projected a professional image—one that was far removed from the image the paparazzi had plastered all over the internet in the last twenty four hours.
Although the cost of the Armani skirt suit, chosen hurriedly from the hotel’s boutique last night, would put a serious dent in her finances, she’d had no choice. Facing Bastien’s board members wearing anything from her suitcase wasn’t an option.
A knock signalled the arrival of breakfast, although eating was the last thing she felt like doing.
Bastien’s taut silence after that incident in the car last night gave her little hope that he’d be any different today. He’d closed down, shutting her out as effectively as he’d done at fifteen.
On arrival at their luxurious hotel he’d left her outside her suite with an order to be ready at nine. But sleep had been elusive, and her long, restless night had been spent reliving that kiss and how she would survive the next three weeks in the emotional cauldron that was being around Bastien.
Another knock fractured her thoughts. She let the waiter in and he wheeled a trolley underneath the window facing a picturesque view of Lake Geneva.
In the early-morning light the Alps and Mont Blanc rose majestically in the distance, the rolling range curving almost protectively around the city. She’d travelled to other parts of Switzerland on photo shoots but had never visited its best-known city.
Ana sat down at the table...forced herself to eat two pieces of buttered toast and a mouthful of scrambled eggs. It was just as she lifted the glass of orange juice that she spotted it.
A newspaper was tucked underneath the napkin, and on its front page was her picture. Only it wasn’t just her picture. The photo showed her in Bastien’s arms, emerging from the court yesterday. Showed the way she’d clung to him like a limpet, her eyes closed and her face buried in his neck as if...as if he was her protector.
God...
But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was the look on Bastien’s face that made her hands shake as she unfolded the paper.
What she could understand of the caption froze her blood.
Heidecker’s New Love. Is He the Cure for this Drug-Addicted Supermodel?
Skimming the article, she desperately tried to recognise enough words to understand what the article said. Her horror grew as she spotted Simone’s name repeatedly. Her breakfast surged upwards, making a bid for freedom.
She barely made it to the bathroom before she emptied her stomach’s contents. Trembling from head to toe, she wrenched at the tap, rinsed her mouth, then clutched the sink, eyes squeezed shut, struggling to breathe.
This was the absolute last thing she needed...
Standing there, propped against the sink, she didn’t realise the pounding wasn’t just in her head until she heard her name called out.
‘Open the door, Miss Duval.’
Heart leaping into her throat, she prised h
er fingers from the cold porcelain and approached the bathroom door.
She cracked it open. ‘What do you want, Bastien?’
He surged into the room. ‘What took you so long?’
A few smart answers rose to her lips but she smothered the more hysterical ones when she caught his frown. ‘What...?’
‘You look pale. Are you all right?’ He laid a hand against her forehead.
For several seconds she couldn’t speak. ‘I’m fine,’ she finally managed. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘This hotel belongs to me.’ He dropped his hand. ‘HH Geneva is one of several hotels owned by my bank.’
The HH Group—Heidecker Hotels—was renowned for its understated opulence, was yet another feather in the Heidecker cap...a fact she’d missed with her weariness last night.
‘It doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my room,’ she replied, cringing as she wondered whether he’d heard her retching.
‘I told you to be ready at nine—that was five minutes ago. When you didn’t answer your door I let myself in. Don’t fret. If I’d hoped to catch you naked I’d have turned up an hour ago as you took your shower.’
‘Careful, there, Bastien, or I’ll add Peeping Tom to your list of unsavoury characteristics.’
That earned her a mocking look as he returned to the sitting room and crossed to the open suite door. He didn’t slam it. Yet the decisive snick of the lock and a glimpse of what he held in his fist sent a shaft of pure, unadulterated dread through her.
He unfurled another newspaper. The front-page picture was the same as on hers, but the language was different.
‘Tell me what you know about this,’ he invited softly.
‘If you’re asking if I’ve seen the paper, yes—I have.’ Her eyes inadvertently slid to the breakfast table. Her heart sank as he followed her movement.
The temperature in the room dropped another degree. ‘Of course you have. Did you salivate over it before or after you had your breakfast?’
‘Excuse me?’
He ignored her outrage. ‘How much are the tabloids paying you for this?’
‘What? You’re insane if you think I had something to do with this!’
‘So you deny you had anything to do with this rubbish?’
‘Absolutely I do,’ she stressed.
‘Then tell me what you were hatching with your flatmate on the tarmac yesterday.’
Ana’s mouth dropped open. No words emerged and she knew her guilt was stamped on her forehead. Belatedly, she tried damage limitation. ‘Seriously, it was nothing like that—’
‘Do you take me for a fool?’
‘Only if you believe everything you read in the paper!’ The volatility of her words hit home the moment they left her lips. She surged on, regardless. ‘Bastien, think about this. What could I possibly have to gain by pulling this stunt?’
He crumpled the paper and tossed it down on the nearby coffee table. It missed and landed on the floor.
Slowly, with the precision of an Alpine wolf on a blood trail, he stalked her until he stood so close she could see the pulse leaping in his temple, smell the mixture of fury and his unique masculine scent.
Nothing promised an upside to this situation.
‘Right now you need someone to fight your corner. Who better than the CEO of the company that’s about to turf you out on your ass?’
She stared back, unable to look away from the hypnotic intensity of his eyes. ‘So you’ve decided, then?’
‘After this stunt I’d be a fool not to cut you loose,’ he replied.
‘Believe what you will. I had nothing to do with this article, whatever it says.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re now pretending you don’t know its contents?’
Realising what she’d almost let slip, she pursed her lips. Besides her father, who’d been horrified when she’d finally confessed her secret and immediately fought to make things right, and her mother, who’d been the cause of it, no one else knew.
‘I stopped reading any stuff written about me a long time ago.’ The lie made her cringe, but it was way better than the shameful truth. ‘Maybe if you tell me which part so concerns you I can address it.’
Bastien’s brows slowly lifted, incredulity darkening his eyes to gunmetal. ‘Which part so concerns me? Let’s see—how about the part that suggests we’ve been lovers for the best part of six months? No, actually, that doesn’t concern me too much—although it suggests I don’t mind sharing my woman with other men. Or how about the part where it states that I let you use my personal yacht for drug-fuelled parties? Or maybe the bit that says I came to your rescue yesterday because you could be carrying my child? And the soundbites in which your flatmate—Simone?—congratulates us on our impending nuptials were a genius touch. I must commend you on that. It ties everything up in a nice little bow, non?’
Shock careened through her as the oxygen left her lungs. Some of these paparazzi were in a class of their own, but even Ana couldn’t believe they’d come up with such a preposterous story overnight.
She looked up, ready to defend herself, and saw his gaze fixed on the picture. ‘I had no hand in any part of that story. But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?’
‘Excusez moi?’
‘The picture bothers you way more than the article.’
Bastien’s gaze iced over. ‘You’re in danger of stepping way over the line.’
‘Why? Because this picture shows you looking at me as if you care? As if I get to you where no one else can?’
To the untrained eye he looked as most people saw him—a cool, suave businessman who was in complete control of his world. Sure, the tight jaw and the broad shoulders held an edge of danger that anyone would be a fool to ignore. But the concern, the touch of gentleness in his eyes, that same look she’d seen a long time ago when she was eight, was clear for her to see.
‘You have a very active imagination, cherie,’ he breathed.
‘And you are not the icy, emotionless man you want the world to think you are. What are you so afraid of, Bastien?’
He didn’t answer, merely speared her with his silver gaze as if trying to decipher whether she’d lost her mind. Hell, she might well have. She was tugging the tail of a dangerous beast.
‘Bastien...’
‘Let me be clear. Whatever you think you see in this photo does not exist. If you’re scheming, making little plans in that beautiful head of yours, kill them dead—understand?’
Self-preservation kicked in, along with a healthy dose of anger.
Courage, Ana. ‘I won’t allow you to bully me, Bastien.’
He merely shrugged and strode for the door. ‘Rest assured, any punishment I exact will be willingly accepted.’
‘Dream on!’
He merely smiled. ‘We’ll see.’
She forced herself to take her time. She straightened her jacket, picked up the paper from the floor and placed it on the coffee table. Going to her bedroom, she scooped up her purse and the coat Mathilde had lent her. Shrugging it on, she fastened the belt and returned to the living room.
Bastien hadn’t moved an inch. She slid past him and tried to ignore him as they rode the lift down.
The grand hotel’s opulent foyer barely sparked her interest. It took every ounce of her willpower just to put one foot in front of the other, to follow Bastien’s lengthy stride through the revolving doors to the car waiting at the kerb.
As they travelled along the cold streets of Geneva she struggled to come up with something to say, but appealing to Bastien’s better nature would be a waste of time.
A quick glance showed he’d become engrossed in a stack of papers, his pen flying as he drew harsh lines through the document.
‘Will you need me to speak to
the board?’
The newspaper article had worsened her position. Firing her had become a real option now.
Bastien’s lips firmed. ‘The damage is already done.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that now you get to reap the results of your little experiment.’
Her trepidation mounted as they drew up outside a large, elegant stone building. They’d left the gleaming, modern glass edifices behind a short while ago and entered the Old Town.
A liveried doorman complete with white gloves glided to the door and held it open. As she stepped into Bastien’s lair Ana was aware that she could be leaving here with the course of her life very much altered.
Plush cream carpeting muffled their footsteps. Impressive paintings graced the walls—discreet, yet sure to make an impact on the super-rich clients lucky enough to be invited to invest with the Heidecker Corporation.
From behind a semi-circular reception desk a superbly coiffed receptionist greeted Bastien. ‘The board members are assembled in the usual room, Monsieur Heidecker.’
He nodded. ‘Merci, Chloe. Can you tell Tatiana to meet us outside the boardroom?’
‘Of course.’ Her glance at Ana held unabashed curiosity as she picked up the phone to do Bastien’s bidding.
He stepped into the lift and pressed a button. ‘Tatiana’s my PA. She’ll make you comfortable while I’m in the meeting.’
Irritation surged through her. ‘So I’m expected to just cool my heels? I could’ve stayed at the hotel.’
‘We’ve already had this conversation. Where I go, you go,’ he reiterated arrogantly.
‘You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she snapped.
‘Why the sudden eagerness to present yourself to the board? I seem to recall you jumping out of a moving car to avoid coming here.’ His eyes skimmed over her. ‘You’ve even gone to great lengths to improve your appearance. Why is that, Miss Duval?’