Vows of Revenge

by Dani Collins

  Revenge never tasted so sweet…

  Calm and controlled Melodie Parnell has always wanted to experience insatiable passion. She thinks she’s found it in the bed of sinfully attractive Roman Killian. But in the sultry aftermath of their lovemaking, Melodie is catapulted back to reality when Roman reveals his true plans…to ruin her!

  Satisfying the longing in Melodie’s entrancing blue eyes was a glitch in Roman’s plan. Convinced she’d been sent by his enemy, he intended to simply punish her! Except it seems that Melodie was innocent, and now Roman’s plan takes a different turn… Could his vows of revenge become vows of marriage?

  “What do you really want from me, Melodie?” Roman asked in his deadliest tone, willing her to come clean.

  “Just, um… Honestly?” She blinked up at him, practically virginal with her gaze damp and defenseless, her mouth working to find words. “For you to kiss me again,” she said, voice a thin husk. “To see if…” She licked her lips, leaving an expectant silence.

  “Come and get it, then,” he said gruffly, trying to scoff, telling himself he was only seeing the extent she’d go in this industrial espionage of hers, letting her demean herself when he had every intention of rejecting her.

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  She absorbed his command with a small flinch, then lifted her chin as though gathering her courage. As she stepped up to him, her hands opened on his rib cage in a feathery tickle that made his entire body jerk in reaction. She was tall enough that when she lifted on tiptoes, her mouth reached his.

  She pressed pillowy lips to his. He told himself to shove her back and tell her—

  The rocking of her mouth beneath his parted his lips. He closed his arms around her, pulled her into him with a strength he barely remembered to temper and slanted his mouth to take full possession of hers.

  She opened to him, arched and pressed into him and moaned capitulation.

  Rational thought evaporated in a groan of craving.

  Canadian Dani Collins knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got “The Call.” Her first Harlequin Presents romance novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.

  Books by Dani Collins

  Harlequin Presents

  Seduced into the Greek’s World

  The Russian’s Acquisition

  An Heir to Bind Them

  A Debt Paid in Passion

  More than a Convenient Marriage?

  No Longer Forbidden?

  Seven Sexy Sins

  The Sheikh’s Sinful Seduction

  The 21st Century Gentleman’s Club

  The Ultimate Seduction

  One Night With Consequences

  Proof of Their Sin

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  DANI COLLINS

  Vows of Revenge

  In my heart, my books are always dedicated to my husband and kids, my sisters and my parents. They’ve always been incredibly supportive, both emotionally and by physically doing dishes and making meals so I could write.

  When it comes to writing dedications, however, I often look to my editors. Writing is a lonely business. I’m a big enough control freak that I don’t ask other writers to look at my work and weigh in. It’s all on me until I hit Send. Then I rely on my editor to ensure I’m not embarrassing myself.

  Kathryn Cheshire is my latest wing-woman in the Harlequin Mills & Boon® offices. This is our first book together and she’s everything an author wants and needs: warm, insightful and encouraging.

  I couldn’t do this without my family or you, Dear Reader, but a great editor is the linchpin in the whole operation. Thanks for being awesome, Kathryn.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM FROM ONE NIGHT TO WIFE BY RACHAEL THOMAS

  CHAPTER ONE

  SURROUNDED BY OLD money and cold-blooded cynicism for the first part of her life, Melodie Parnell wasn’t half as ingenuous as she looked. In fact, she actively tried to give off an air of sophistication by straightening her curly brown hair into a shiny curtain, adding a flick of liquid liner to downplay her round blue eyes and painting a bold red lipstick over her plump, pink lips. Her clothing choices were classic business style: a pencil skirt, a sweater set and her mother’s pearls.

  At the same time, she privately offered people the benefit of the doubt. She believed the best whenever possible and always sought the brightest side of every situation.

  That attitude had earned her nothing but contempt from her half brother and more than once resulted in a sting from social climbers and gold diggers trying to get closer to the men in her family. Being softhearted had definitely been her mother’s downfall. But, Melodie often assured herself, she wasn’t nearly as fragile or susceptible as that. The fact that she’d lost her mother very recently and kept slipping into a state of melancholy as she faced life without her didn’t make her vulnerable.

  Yet, for some reason, Roman Killian took the rug right out from under her—by doing nothing except answering the door of his mansion.

  “You must be the indispensable Melodie,” he greeted.

  She was supposed to be immune to powerful men in bespoke outfits, but her mouth went dry and her knees went weak. He wasn’t even wearing a suit. He wore a casually tailored linen jacket over black pants and a collarless peasant-style shirt, three open buttons at his throat.

  Not that she really took in his clothes. She saw the man.

  He had black hair that might have curled if he let it grow long enough, tanned skin and gorgeous bone structure. Italian? Spanish? Greek? He certainly had the refined features of European aristocracy, but Melodie knew him to be a self-made American. His brows were straight and circumspect, his eyes decidedly green with a dark ring around the irises. He was clean shaven, urbane and acutely masculine in every way.

  He met her gaze with an impactful directness that stole her breath.

  “Roman Killian,” he said, offering his hand and snapping her out of her fixation. His voice was like dark chocolate and red wine, rich and sultry, but his tone held a hint of disparagement. No one was truly essential, he seemed to say.

  “I am Melodie,” she managed to say. She watched his mouth as he clasped her hand in his strong grip. His upper lip was much narrower than his full bottom one. He smiled in the way men did when confronted with a woman they didn’t find particularly attractive, but were forced by circumstance to be polite toward. Cool and dismissive.

  Melodie wasn’t offended. She was always braced for male rejection and surprised if she didn’t get it. It wasn’t that she was homely. She had just inherited her mother’s catwalk build and elfin features along with her pearls. The attributes were fine for modeling, but came off as skinny and exaggerated in real life. Spiderlike and awkward—or so she’d been told so many times she tended to believe it.

  So his indifference wasn’
t a surprise, but her skin still prickled and she warmed as though the sun had lodged in her belly and radiated outward through her limbs with a disarming feeling that she was glowing.

  She shouldn’t be so nervous. She’d still had a pacifier in her mouth when she’d begun glad-handing, and rarely suffered shyness no matter how lofty the person she was meeting. Presidents. Royalty. Such things didn’t affect her.

  Yet she found herself surreptitiously fighting to catch her breath, aware that she was letting her hand stay in his too long. When she tried to extract it, however, he tightened his grip.

  “We’ve met,” he said with certainty. Almost accusingly. His eyes narrowed as he raked her face with his gaze, head cocked and arrested.

  “No,” she assured him, but her pulse gave a leap while a romantic part of her brain invented a fanciful “in another life soul-mate” scenario. She was very good with faces and names, though, even when a person wasn’t nearly as memorable as he was. And he was too young to remember her mother, not that he looked the type to thumb through fashion magazines in the first place. There was an off chance he’d seen her in connection to her father, she supposed, but she was carving that particular man from her life one thought at a time so she didn’t bring him up, and only said, “I’m quite sure we haven’t.”

  Roman didn’t believe her, she could see it.

  “Ingrid and Huxley aren’t with you?” He flicked a look for her clients to where her taxi had dropped her next to the fountain in his paved courtyard.

  “They’ll be along shortly,” she said.

  He brought his sharp gaze back to her face, making her quiver inwardly again. Slowly he released her and waved toward the interior of his home. “Come in.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, disconcerted by everything about him.

  He was so masculine, so confident yet aloof. Secure, she thought, with a twist of irony. He’d made his fortune in security, starting with a software package but now offering global solutions of all kinds. It was one of the few things she knew about him. She hadn’t researched him much, mostly relying on what Ingrid had shared, turned off by the idea she might wind up reading about her half brother if she looked up Roman online.

  But knowing he was Anton’s competition had made her predisposed to like Roman. He also seemed to have a streak of magnanimity, supporting causes from homelessness to dementia research to donating computers to libraries. And he’d offered his home in the south of France for his employee’s wedding. Surely that meant he possessed a big heart under that air of predatory power?

  “I didn’t expect a security specialist to have such a welcoming home,” she confessed, trying to ignore the sense that his eyes stayed glued to her narrow shoulders as she took in a modern house built with old-world grandeur. “I imagined something very contemporary, made of glass and stainless steel, all sharp angles.”

  The high ceilings held glittering chandeliers. A double staircase came down in expansive arms of delicate wrought iron and sumptuous red carpet over yellowed marble. The tiles continued through the huge foyer to an enormous lounge where a horseshoe sofa in warm terra-cotta would easily seat twenty.

  Did he entertain often? Something in the way his energy permeated this airy interior so thoroughly made her think he kept this all-comfortable splendor to himself.

  “The sorts of things that people want to protect are often attractive. Jewelry. Art,” he supplied with a negligent shrug. “Six inches of steel works to a point, but surveillance and alarms allow for designs that are more aesthetically pleasing.”

  “Are we being filmed right now?” she asked with a lilt of surprise.

  “The cameras are only activated when an alarm is tripped.”

  So it was just him was watching her, then. Nerve-racking all the same.

  A formal dining room stood off to the right. It could be useful for the waitstaff, perhaps, since the four hundred wedding guests would eat in tents outside. And yes, the property allowed plenty of room for the ceremony, tents, a bandstand and a dance floor. Arched breezeways lined the house where it faced the Mediterranean. In the courtyard stood a square pool with a quarter circle taken out of it like a bite for a small dining area. Beyond its turquoise water a half dozen stairs led to a long strip of sandy beach. Off to the right a tethered helicopter stood on a groomed lawn. Once it had been removed, that space would be perfect for the ceremony and reception.

  Melodie had grown up in luxury, but nothing as extravagant as this. Roman Killian was a very rich man. It was difficult to hide how awed she was.

  She brought her gaze back to the bougainvillea training up the colonnades, and smaller pots of roses and geraniums and flowers she couldn’t identify. They gave off scents of anise and cherry and honey, dreamy and adding to the magical atmosphere of the place.

  “This is all so beautiful,” she murmured, trying not to see herself as a bride, spilling in a waterfall of white lace down the stairs, emerging to blinding light and a strikingly handsome groom. The sunset would paint their future in rosy pink. Candlelight would burn like their eternal love.

  She met Roman’s gaze and found him eyeing her as if reading her thoughts, making her blush and look away.

  “It’s very generous of you to offer it,” she managed.

  “Ingrid is an exceptional employee,” he said after a brief pause, making her think that wasn’t his real reason for offering his home. “Why didn’t you all come together? Are you not staying at the same hotel?”

  “They’re newly engaged,” Melodie said wryly. “I’ve been feeling very third wheel since meeting them at the airport.” It was only four days, she reminded herself.

  “Job hazard?” Roman guessed with a twitch around his mouth.

  She couched a smile, suspecting he had a much lower tolerance than she did for witnessing nuzzling and baby talk.

  “It can be,” she replied, aiming for circumspect, because this was only her second wedding and her first international society one. Her business was still so new the price tag hadn’t been clipped off, but he didn’t need to know that. She’d organized state dinners in her sleep, and this was exactly the sort of event she was ready to build her livelihood upon.

  “How long have you been living here?” She was highly curious about him.

  His manner changed. Their moment of commonality evaporated and she had the impression he stepped back from his body, leaving only the shell before her.

  “It was completed last year. What else can I show you? The kitchen?”

  “Thank you,” she said, hiding her surprise at how quickly she’d been shut down.

  He waved her toward the end of the house, where he introduced her to his personal chef. The Frenchman was standoffish but had nothing on his employer. She was able to get a few details about the catering cleared up as Roman stood watch, keeping her on high alert.

  * * *

  Roman expected the single pulse from his silenced watch to be a notification that the rest of his guests had arrived. One glance at the face told him it was actually a request that he review an important security alert.

  Given that security was his business, he didn’t take the request lightly, but an immediate threat would have been flagged as such and dealt with at the perimeter. And he had a guest. This wisp of a woman flickering through his home like sunlight and shadow through a copse of trees fascinated him. The conviction that she was familiar was incredibly strong, yet he’d sensed no lie when she’d assured him they were strangers.

  Roman had a reliable radar for lies, one he listened to without fail. The one time he’d ignored his gut and convinced himself to have faith, he’d lost everything up to, and almost including, his life.

  So even though he should have forced himself to the panel on the wall to review the alert, he stayed with his PA’s wedding planner, keeping her under observation—partly, he adm
itted to himself, because her backside was delightfully outlined by her snug skirt, proving she was round and perky in the right places. He liked listening to her voice, too. Her accent wasn’t heavy like Americans from the Deep South, but it had a lick of molasses, sweet and slow with a hint of rough darkness as she elevated and dropped each word. Very engaging.

  She puzzled him at the same time. He was used to women being overt when they were attracted to him. He wasn’t so arrogant he thought all of them were, but he worked out, wore tailored clothes and was loaded. These were all things that typically appealed to the opposite sex. She was blushing and flicking him nervous looks, fiddling with her hair, obviously very aware of him, but trying to hide it.

  She wasn’t wearing a ring, but perhaps she was involved with someone. If she wasn’t, that shyness suggested she preferred slow, complex relationships. She didn’t sleep with men for the fun of it, he surmised, which was a pity because that was very much a quality he looked for in a woman.

  Roman had trained himself to keep emotions firmly at bay, but a blanket of disappointment descended on him. He was attracted to her, but apparently it wouldn’t go anywhere. That was a shame.

  Melodie had noticed his glance at his watch and offered a wry smile. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have left the happy couple to their own devices. They’re quite late, aren’t they?”

  “It’s not like Ingrid,” he allowed. If it had been, she wouldn’t be his PA. He wasn’t a tyrant, but he didn’t tolerate sloppy behavior of any kind.

  At the same time, he was fine with having Melodie to himself for a little longer.

  “Perhaps you could show me where she’ll dress?” she suggested, and showed him her smartphone. “I wouldn’t mind taking note of suitable photo locations. The bridal preparations and procession to the groom are always an important part of the day’s record.”

  “Are they?” If he sounded disdainful, he couldn’t help it. He had lived hand to mouth for long enough that he didn’t see the point in extravagant ceremonies. Did he pay for top quality now that he could afford to? Absolutely. But weddings were already given too much importance without turning them into a Broadway musical—then filming behind-the-scenes footage for others to ooh and aah over. As much as he appreciated Ingrid for all the skills she brought to her work, he was hosting this performance strictly for business reasons.

 
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