by Alison Kent
“Tristano, I’m not marrying you.” She crossed her arms over her chest, the cool silk fabric shaping her full, firm breasts. “It may be Christmas, and you may have my mother flying in, but there’s no wedding today and no wedding tomorrow. We’re lovers. Nothing more.”
He grimaced. “You explain that to your mother.”
“I will.”
“Because she’s thrilled. She’s like a kid at Christmas—” He broke off. “An English cliché, but you get the picture.”
Unfortunately Emily did. She headed for the bathroom, then turned in a circle, faced Tristano again, her head spinning. “I’m not a puppet or a doll—some little plaything you can manipulate.”
“I know.”
She couldn’t believe he was doing this—couldn’t believe he was controlling her like this, shifting her as if she had strings attached to her arms. Little wooden marionette girl.
There was a discreet knock on the door and Tristano opened it. One of the young French Caribbean housemaids carried a silver tray into the bedroom, setting up the coffee service on the round mahogany table—an antique piece sent over as a wedding gift to the daughter of the original plantation owners from England.
Emily waited for the young maid to leave, doors quietly closing behind her, before facing Tristano. Heart hammering, her eyes searched his. She needed to understand, needed the truth. “Why would you tell my mother we’re getting married?”
“Because I thought it’d make her happy—”
“You don’t tell people things like that…You don’t get their hopes up…”
“And I love you.”
Emily’s lips parted and then closed. She stared at Tristano, not knowing what to say now.
“We’re meant to be together, Emily. Ferre & Pelosi. It’s the way it always was. It’s the way it should always be.”
“But you don’t want a business associate.”
“No, I want a lover. A best friend. A wife.” He reached out, stroked her cheek, smiled down into her eyes clouding with tears. “And I do want you back in the business. I want you on my side, working with me, to make Ferre & Pelosi the best it can be.”
“Your father doesn’t want Ferre & Pelosi—”
“But he does.” Tristano’s voice dropped and his expression grew sober. “My father and I have discussed the mistakes we made—both then and now. We were both wrong. We acted rashly, my father and I. My father was angry, and I was determined to do what was right. But what I did wasn’t right. And I ask you to forgive us…forgive me…”
“I forgive you. But your father…” Her voice drifted away and she gazed across the bedroom, seeing not the painted walls or the view of the water but the morning she had discovered her father, the anguish of losing so much so quickly. “Your father prospered while my father died.”
“But my father didn’t prosper. My father went to hell, too.” He crouched before her, his hands on her thighs. “You don’t know how he suffered, Emily. How your father’s death broke him. My father loved your father. As you said, they were like brothers. It’s been a nightmare for the Ferres, too.”
But her father’s name had been blackened; her father’s shame had crushed them.
Turning her head, she looked at Tristano, and her self-righteous anger died. Because she saw now the suffering in Tristano’s face, saw the haunted expression in his eyes. Tristano had hurt, too. And Tristano was a man of his word. If he said his father, Briano, had suffered, regretted his actions, then Emily believed him.
Reaching up, she touched Tristano’s face, his hard cheekbone, the square cut of his jaw. “My father was just borrowing that money,” she said softly, needing to clear his name one last time. “It was a loan…he’d written a letter, had it notarized. He was going to pay the money back.” She blinked, looked into Tristano’s eyes. “Father wasn’t a thief.”
“I know. My father knows.” He hesitated. “My father isn’t the way you remember him. He’s quite ill, Emily. Very frail. He’s grieved terribly…and I don’t think he’ll ever recover. But know this: my father did love your father. We all did.”
Emily blinked again and a tear slipped free, sliding from the corner of her eye. “What now? How do we move forward?”
“We just do.” Tristano’s lips curved but his smile was hard, fierce. “We learn from our mistakes, we accept what we’ve lost and we decide we deserve happiness. We make a new life, together.”
“Again,” she whispered.
“Ferre & Pelosi.”
“Ferre & Pelosi,” she echoed, before biting her lower lip to keep the tears from falling.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“Yes.”
His eyes searched hers. “So you’ll marry me? You’ll come live with me, share a life with me, my own Emily?”
She couldn’t look away from his lovely blue eyes—the blue of the sky before midnight, blue like the sapphire waters surrounding St. Matt’s, blue she loved better than any shade in the world. St. Matt’s was like a precious emerald surrounded by sapphire and gold, and yet it was nothing…meant nothing…compared to the love she felt for him. Tristano. Her treasure.
“Yes.” She smiled at him, heart full, aching. “I’ll marry you, live with you, share a life with you.”
He kissed her, her lips trembling beneath his. She reached for him, hanging on to his forearms, needing his strength. The kiss stole her breath, weakened her knees, and warmed her soul all the way through.
She moved even closer to him, slipping into his arms, and the strength of his body comforted and teased. They’d made love for hours last night, and yet she hungered for him again.
“Make love to me,” she urged, shuddering as his hands slid beneath her robe, settling on her naked satin skin.
It was too sweet an invitation for him to resist.
Later, sated, their bodies still warm and damp, Tristano cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again, more lightly but no less tenderly.
“Merry Christmas, Em,” he murmured, his voice still husky. “I hope we can spend every Christmas here.”
“Together, you mean,” she corrected lazily, her palm pressed to his abdomen, loving the feel of sleek sinewy muscle beneath golden skin.
“Together, yes, but specifically here.”
“Here?”
“St. Matt’s.”
It took her a moment to understand, her mind as languid as her limbs, and then with a prickle of heat and another prickle of joy she pushed up on her elbow to gaze down at him. “You’re not selling the island?”
“I can’t.” He reached up, drew her down to him, kissed her deeply.
She could hardly breathe. “Why not?”
His eyes glinted at her for a moment and then, tossing back the covers, he leaned out of bed, opened a drawer on the nightstand and pulled out an envelope. “Open it,” he said.
Hands shaking, she tore the back of the rich cream envelope open and drew out a Christmas card. She read the sentiment on the front, opened the card and read the verse printed inside. It was romantic, emotional, but it was what he’d written below, in his own strong, firm handwriting that brought tears to her eyes.
To commemorate our first Christmas together, I deed the island of St. Matthew’s to you, Emily Pelosi.
She looked up at him, eyes burning, tears not far off. But she’d had enough tears, didn’t want to cry.
She shook her head, struggled to speak, words nearly impossible. “You’re giving the island back to me?”
“It should be yours. No one will ever love St. Matt’s like you do.”
And despite her best efforts the tears fell. It was impossible to hold such fierce, hot emotion in.
Wrapping her arms around Tristano, Emily held him tightly, afraid to let go. This wasn’t a dream, was it? This wasn’t a wonderful dream that would disappear when she woke?
“Tell me you’re real.”
“I’m real.”
“Tell me I’m awake.�
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“You’re awake.”
But it wasn’t enough. Her heart burned, bursting, and she needed him more than she could ever say. “I love you, Tristano,” she whispered against his neck, where his skin was warm and fragrant and everything she loved best. “You’ve no idea how much I love you.”
He reached up to cup the back of her head. “But I do. That’s just it, Em. I do.” His deep voice broke and he drew her even closer, holding her within his arms, holding tight, as if to protect her from every gust of wind and storm. “A life for a life, Emily, and you have mine.”
The Sultan’s Seduction
Susan Stephens
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
‘WHEN you walk through those doors you leave your world behind and enter mine.’
Was that a threat? Lizzie Palmer wondered, drawing herself up as she followed Kemal Volkan’s gaze across the vast palace courtyard.
‘Who told you where I live?’ he demanded as she walked past him through the gilded gates.
Wisely, Lizzie kept her own counsel, but she caught the glint of something in Kemal Volkan’s eyes that made the tiny hairs stand up on the back of her neck. In spite of her resolve, she suddenly felt apprehensive. And then he laughed. It was a harsh, masculine sound that bounced off the damp black cobbles between them.
‘You’ve got some cheek,’ he said.
Determination? Definitely. Cheek? Perhaps, Lizzie reflected, moving ahead of the man they called The Sultan, making for the entrance to his home. But it couldn’t be helped.
There were just two things in life that mattered to Lizzie: her work as a lawyer, and her brother Hugo. And her brother always came first. She only had to remember Kemal Volkan was holding Hugo somewhere in Turkey to know she was right to be forcing her way into his home.
After the static-fuzzed call from her brother, Lizzie had caught the next flight to Istanbul. What she had learned about Kemal Volkan had only increased her level of concern. It seemed he lived like a feudal warlord, surrounded by a wall of silence. She’d had to use all her legal expertise and connections to dig a little deeper into his affairs, and as she had done so, she’d discovered that his acquired name was no exaggeration. The Sultan was an immensely powerful man, and accustomed to ruthlessly wielding that power.
When she had turned to the embassy for help, they’d said she was on her own. This was a commercial matter, rather than political or criminal, and the Foreign Office couldn’t get involved in the legal process of another country. So she had tracked down a local lawyer who specialised in commercial work, and Sami Gulsan had told her the really bad news: the company Hugo had been working for during his gap year was in trouble.
The passports of company employees were being withheld until parts missing from the machinery Hugo had helped to install arrived on site. Volkan intended to barter the men’s freedom for those parts, and heaven knew where he was holding them in the meantime. Even Sami Gulsan couldn’t tell her that. And with the company in financial difficulties, Lizzie knew that the parts would be almost impossible to obtain.
She stole a glance at her adversary, knowing she had to make him see sense. It was almost Christmas; surely he didn’t plan to keep the men over the holidays?
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said, in an attempt to build a bridge between them. ‘I can assure you I would not have troubled you at home had I not considered this a matter of the utmost urgency.’
He dipped his head briefly without shortening his stride. She couldn’t tell if he had softened towards her or not. But he was right about one thing, Lizzie realised as they reached the grand entrance to the palace building—his world was very different from her own. Even the air felt different. It had the peculiar stillness only the extremely rich seemed to gather round them. And there was a faint scent too—sandalwood, she guessed—worn by Kemal Volkan. Normally she reacted violently to any strong perfume, but somehow this was different.
Hearing the gates close behind them, Lizzie knew it was too late to turn back now even had she wanted to, which she didn’t. A tip-off from Sami Gulsan had got her this far, and she had no intention of wasting the opportunity.
It might have been better to introduce herself more sedately, but she had not anticipated arriving at the palace in a beat-up old taxi at precisely the same moment as Kemal Volkan in his chauffeur-driven Bentley. On her instruction, the taxi had slewed across the entrance, blocking his way. Volkan had sprung out ahead of his driver and ordered the cab to move on, and she had almost fallen at his feet in her rush to waylay him. She could still feel the imprint of his hand on her arm from when he’d reached out to steady her, waving his bodyguards away…
Jolted out of her thoughts by the sight of men in jewelled, vividly coloured robes opening the splendid entrance doors for them, Lizzie was suddenly acutely aware of where she was—and of the man at her side. She hesitated briefly as he stood back to allow her to precede him, and then, raising her head high, she stepped over the threshold into the palace. She had allowed for Kemal Volkan wearing the mantle of power that came with immense wealth, had even allowed for his looks being different—more exotic, perhaps, than the people she was accustomed to dealing with. But nothing could have prepared her for a meeting with a man who possessed such a forceful aura.
It would take every ounce of her adversarial skill to bring her brother home in time for Christmas, Lizzie realised, mentally preparing herself for the confrontation that lay ahead.
‘Welcome to my home, Ms Palmer,’ he said, forcing her to turn and look at him.
‘Thank you. It is spectacular,’ Lizzie said frankly, gazing around. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere quite so beautiful.’ And he was stunning too, Lizzie conceded, glancing back at her host.
Kemal Volkan was tall, powerfully built, and rugged, so that in spite of his formal business suit he looked more like a buccaneer returning home from his latest expedition than the billionaire businessman she knew him to be. She could just imagine that by the time most people got over the sight of Kemal Volkan he would have tied them up in knots. But that could not happen to her. She had to ignore the way the blood was rushing through her veins, and stifle her growing sense of apprehension. She would somehow negotiate the release of the men—and she wasn’t going to leave until she did.
‘Won’t you come in, Ms Palmer?’ he said, gate-crashing her thoughts.
Glancing up, Lizzie saw that he had paused and turned to her on his way towards some inner door. Hearing her name roll off his lips with just the trace of an accent sucked a response from deep inside her. His deep, husky voice was every bit as disturbing as his striking appearance, she realised, wishing time had allowed for the anonymity of legal letters passing to and fro between them.
‘Ms Palmer?’
For the first time he could remember Kemal wished he could free himself from centuries of tradition. He wanted nothing more than to be alone and to relax after his long and particularly demanding business trip, but the code of Turkish hospitality had been hung around his neck at birth. However inconvenient it might be, custom decreed he must grant her a welcome. And he would—before sending her on her way as fast as possible.
She wouldn’t even have got this far if she hadn’t announced she was Hugo Palmer’s sister. And how had that happened? She and her brother were as different as could be. A repressed female on a mission was the very last thing he needed right now…
Repressed? Kemal’s eyes narrowed as he turned the word over in his mind. Ms Lizzie Palmer was certainly wound up as tight as a spring, but…His brow furrowed as he inhaled appreciatively. What was that? Lavender? And there was something more…amber, perhaps?
Very English—with just a hint of the East. Maybe there was hope for her after all, he conceded, feeling his senses stir.
Lizzie’s face burned as she sensed Kemal Volkan’s very masculine interest. She avoided his glance, affecting interest in her surroundings instead, and found she was genuinely captivated. The roofed entrance vestibule they were crossing was exquisite. Stretching the whole length of the palace, it was subtly lit, and awash with colour thanks to the moonlight streaming through glass panes as brightly coloured as jewels in the vaulted roof. Semi-precious stones glinted darkly beneath her feet, and there was a fountain playing in a raised central pool. There were even songbirds fluttering through the flower-strewn foliage cloaking the walls.
It was all very beautiful, but so foreign, and so dangerously beguiling. And she was here on business, not a pleasure jaunt. She could only be relieved that she had dressed the part. There was nothing remotely frivolous in her appearance. A plain black overcoat covered an austere Armani suit, and her soft blonde curls were tied back severely. She wore very little make-up, and neat designer spectacles provided the shield she always worked behind.
Before studying law she had longed to become an actress, but the precariousness of life on stage had ruled that out. Hugo’s security had always come first. She had embraced the responsibility for him gladly at eighteen, and since then her life had been geared to taking care of him. Over time her dreams of a life on the stage had faded, and now she found an amusing irony in the many similarities between that career path and her current profession: she still wore a gown and a wig—a costume, of sorts—to act as a barrister, and still fine-tuned her performance each day in court.
She understood only too well the importance of the visual message she sent out to men in the course of her work, and was glad of that knowledge now. It gave her the confidence to deal with a man like Kemal Volkan. She needed to treat him like an adversary, rather than waste time lapping up his masculinity like some gullible adolescent.