The Billionaire of Coral Bay

by Nikki Logan

  No one had ever put themselves into danger for her. Or even vague discomfort. All her life she was the one who’d endured unease for the ease of others.

  Yet Rich had climbed down into the vast unknown of open water and swum with a whale shark...

  And he’d done it to get to her.

  ‘Why are you really here, Rich?’ she whispered.

  He’d apologised.

  He’d had an epiphany...all over the place.

  But he hadn’t told her why he’d come in person.

  He studied her close, eyes tracking all over her face, and she became insanely self-conscious about what she must look like, fresh out of the water with a face full of mask pressure marks.

  ‘I have something for you, Mila.’ He reached for another towel and carefully draped it around her shoulders, tucking it into her cold hands. ‘Come on.’

  He discarded his own towel and Mila padded silently into the galley behind him as he crossed to a shelf beside the interior sofa and tucked something there into his fist. Gentle hands on her shoulders urged her down onto the sofa as he squatted in front of her. All that bare flesh and candyfloss was incredibly distracting.

  ‘I should have reached out to you, Mila,’ he started. ‘Not left it nine weeks.’ His eyes dropped to his fist momentarily, as though to check that whatever was in there was still in there. ‘But it took me half of that to get my head around the things that you’d said. To get my head right.’

  That still left several weeks...

  ‘And then I didn’t want to come back to you until I had something tangible to offer you. Development permission on the Northern Studies Centre. A plan. Something I could give you that would show how much I—’

  His courage seemed to fail him just at the crucial moment. He blew a long, slow breath out and brought his gaze back to hers.

  ‘This is harder than stepping into that ocean,’ he murmured, but then he straightened. ‘I don’t have planning approval to give you, Mila. That’s still a week or two away. But I have this. And it’s something. A place-holder, if you like.’

  He opened his white-knuckled hand to reveal a small silk pouch.

  Mila stared at it and the tang of curiosity added itself to all the pineapple to create something almost like a delicious cocktail.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A gift. An apology.’ He took a deep breath, hand outstretched. ‘A promise.’

  That word stalled her hand just as it hovered over the little pouch. But he didn’t expand on it, just held his palm flat and not quite steady.

  That made her own shake anew.

  But the pouch opened easily and a pale necklace slid out. A wisp of white-gold chain and hanging from it...

  ‘Is that your pearl?’

  The one from the oyster stacks that day. The one she’d given him as a memento of the reef. The one that was small and a little bit too malformed to be of actual value.

  It hung on its cobweb-fine chain as if it was as priceless as any of its more perfect spherical cousins.

  More so because it came from Rich.

  ‘It’s your pearl,’ he murmured. ‘It always was.’

  She lifted her eyes to his.

  ‘I should have known better than to try and stage-manage this whole reunion,’ he said. ‘I guess I have a way to go in giving up control over uncontrollable things.’

  Her heart thumped even harder.

  This was a reunion?

  Her eyes fell back to the pearl on its beautiful chain. ‘But I gave this to you.’

  He nodded. ‘To remember you by. I would rather have the real deal.’

  She stared at him, wordless.

  ‘I know you’ve done it tough in the past,’ he went on. ‘That you consider yourself as much a misfit as your grandmother. And I know that’s made it hard for you to trust people. Or believe in them. But you believed in me when we met and I came to hope that maybe you trusted me a little bit too.’

  Still she could do nothing but stare. And battle the myriad incompatible tastes swamping the back of her throat and nose.

  ‘I’m hoping we can get that back. With time. And a fair amount of effort on my part.’

  ‘You lied to me, Rich.’ There was no getting around that.

  ‘I was lying to me, too. You raised too many what-ifs in my nice ordered life, Mila. And I didn’t deal in ifs, I only dealt in certainties.’

  Did he mean to use the past tense?

  ‘You threw into doubt everything I’d been raised to believe, and I...panicked. I fell back on what I knew best. And what I started to feel for you... It was as uncontrollable as everything I’d ever fought against.’

  ‘You said your world was in the city,’ she whispered. Saying it aloud was too scary because what if she reminded him? What if she talked him out of what she was starting to think he was saying?

  But she had to know.

  And he had to say it.

  ‘That’s because I had no idea then that you were about to become my world,’ he attested. ‘My world is wherever you are.’

  Pineapple suffused every other scent trying to get her attention. But every other scent had no chance. Not while she sat here, so near to a half-naked Rich with truth in his eyes and the most amazing miracle on his gorgeous lips.

  ‘We barely know each other.’

  Did she need to test him again? Or did she just not trust it?

  Rich leaned closer. ‘I know everything I need to know about you. And you have a lifetime to get to know me better.’

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that you can swim Wardoo’s sinkhole whenever you want. And you can use the Portus any time you need a ride somewhere. And you’ll have your own swipe key for the Science Centre and sole management of the spawn bank.’

  He forked his fingers through her hair either side of her face.

  ‘I’m saying that you have a standing welcome in any part of my life. I’m through putting impediments of any kind between myself and the most spectacularly unique and beautiful woman I could ever imagine meeting. I’m saying that your synaesthesia does not entertain me or confuse me or challenge me. It delights me. It reminds me what I’ve been missing in this world.’ His fingers curled gently against her scalp to punctuate his vow. ‘I will make it my life’s work to understand it—and you—because the Dawson kids are probably going to have it and I’d like them to always feel loved and supported, even by their poor, superpower-deficient dad.’

  Dawson kids?

  Her heart was out-and-out galloping now.

  ‘I’m saying that all of this will happen on your schedule, as soon as I’ve won back your trust and faith in me. You and I are meant to be together, Mila. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that we first met at a place that was so special to my great-grandmother. Nancy had my back that day.’

  He pressed his lips against hers briefly.

  ‘I’m asking you to be with me, Mila Nakano. To help me navigate the great unknown waters ahead. To help me interpret them.’ Then, when she just stared at him, still wordless, he added, ‘I’m saying that I love you, Mermaid. Weirdness inclusive. In fact, especially for that.’

  Mila just stared, overcome by his words, and by the pineapple onslaught that swamped her whole system. It seemed to finally dawn on Rich that she hadn’t said a word in a while.

  A very long while.

  ‘Have I blown it?’ he checked softly, setting himself back from her. ‘Misjudged your interest?’ She still didn’t speak but he braved it out. ‘Or am I the creepiest stalker ever to live, right now?’

  Mila caressed the smooth undulations of the imperfect pearl resting in her fingers. Grounding herself. She traced the fine chain away from it and then back again. But the longer she did it, the
clearer the pearl’s personality became.

  Rich’s soft voice broke into her meditation.

  ‘Is that a happy smile or a how-am-I-going-to-let-him-down-gently smile?’

  She found his nervous eyes.

  ‘It’s the pearl,’ she breathed. ‘My subconscious has finally given them a personality.’

  ‘Oh.’ The topic change seemed to pain him, but he’d just promised not to rush her. ‘What is it?’

  Maybe her subconscious had been waiting for him all this time so that she’d know it when she saw it. ‘Smitten.’

  Her cotton candy stole back in as a cautious smile broke across Rich’s face.

  ‘Smitten is a good start,’ he said, nodding his appraisal. ‘I can work with smitten.’

  ‘You won’t need to. It’s a small pearl,’ she murmured on a deep, long breath. ‘It only reflects a small percentage of what I’m feeling.’

  This time, the hope in Rich’s expression was so palpable it even engendered a burst of hot chocolate on his behalf.

  Well, that was a first.

  ‘Mila, you’re killing me...’

  ‘Payback.’ She smiled, then slipped the pearl chain around her neck and fiddled with the clasp until it was secure. Made him wait. Made him sweat, just a little bit. After nine weeks, it was the least she could do.

  And after a lifetime of strict caution, it was almost the best she could do.

  ‘It killed me to walk away from you the last time I was on the Portus,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing it again. I may need to take things slow for a bit, but—’ she took a deep breath ‘—yes, I would love to explore whatever lies ahead. With you,’ she clarified, to be totally patent.

  Rich hauled her to her feet and whipped the massive towel from around her until it circled him instead. Then he brought her right into its fluffy circle, hard up against him, and found her mouth with his own.

  ‘I think I first fell for you during the coral spawn,’ Rich murmured around their kisses. ‘Literally in the middle of the snow globe. And then the truth slammed into me like you slammed into that dugong and I was a goner.’

  ‘Yardi Creek for me,’ she murmured. ‘So I guess I’ve loved you longer.’

  His smile took over his face. ‘But I guarantee you I’ve loved you deeper.’

  She curled her arms around his neck and kept him close.

  ‘I guess we can call that a draw then. Although—’ she fingered the little pearl on the chain ‘—I think the oyster might have known before either of us.’

  He bent again for another kiss. ‘Oysters always were astute.’

  * * * * *

  EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT

  Pastry chef Gemma Rizzo never expected to see Vincenzo Gagliardi again. And now he’s not just the duke who left her broken-hearted…he’s her boss!

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  RETURN OF HER ITALIAN DUKE

  Since he’d returned to Italy, thoughts of Gemma had come back full force. At times he’d been so preoccupied, the guys were probably ready to give up on him. To think that after all this time and searching for her, she was right here. Bracing himself, he took the few steps necessary to reach Takis’s office.

  With the door ajar he could see a polished-looking woman in a blue-and-white suit with dark honey-blond hair falling to her shoulders. She stood near the desk with her head bowed, so he couldn’t yet see her profile.

  Vincenzo swallowed hard to realize Gemma was no longer the teenager with short hair he used to spot when she came bounding up the stone steps of the castello from school wearing her uniform. She’d grown into a curvaceous woman.

  “Gemma.” He said her name, but it came out gravelly.

  A sharp intake of breath reverberated in the office. She wheeled around. Those unforgettable brilliant green eyes with the darker green rims fastened on him. A stillness seemed to surround her. She grabbed hold of the desk.

  “Vincenzo—I—I think I must be hallucinating.”

  “I’m in the same condition.” His gaze fell on the lips he’d kissed that unforgettable night. Their shape hadn’t changed, nor the lovely mold of her facial features.

  She appeared to have trouble catching her breath. “What’s going on? I don’t understand.”

  “Please sit down and I’ll tell you.”

  He could see she was trembling. When she didn’t do his bidding, he said, “I have a better idea. Let’s go for a ride in my car. It’s parked out front. We’ll drive to the lake at the back of the estate, where no one will bother us. Maybe by the time we reach it, your shock will have worn off enough to talk to me.”

  Hectic color spilled into her cheeks. “Surely you’re joking. After ten years of silence, you suddenly show up here this morning, honestly thinking I would go anywhere with you?”

  Don’t miss

  RETURN OF HER ITALIAN DUKE

  by Rebecca Winters

  Available March 2017

  PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  Copyright © 2017 Rebecca Winters

  ISBN: 978-1-474-05925-1

  THE BILLIONAIRE OF CORAL BAY

  © 2017 Nikki Logan

  Published in Great Britain 2017

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

  By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  www.millsandboon.co.uk