by Julia James
‘I thought you were supposed to be building a sandcastle,’ Lyn called out, laughing.
It was good to see Anatole relaxing, having more time to do so. His dedicated attentions to the Petranokos empire had been successful, and it was on a much surer footing now, with all the employees’ jobs secure, which allowed him to ease back significantly on his work schedule. Giving him far more time with his family.
With his adored Georgy.
And his adored bride.
They had married as soon as they had returned to Greece. Timon, enthroned in his wheelchair, had proved a benign and approving host for a wedding followed by a luxurious and leisurely honeymoon—with Georgy!—on a tour of the Aegean in the Petranakos yacht.
The honeymoon had been followed by a journey back to England to take possession of the seaside house in Sussex that Anatole had bought for Lyn. It would be their UK base for future visits and holidays. And they had attended, hand in in hand, their closeness and unity and their devotion to Georgy visible to the family court judge, the hearing of their application to adopt the baby they both loved as much as they loved each other. Their application had been approved, and now Georgy was theirs for ever.
Every day Lyn spent a considerable amount of time with Georgy and his great-grandfather—a lot of it here, on the beach that Georgy loved, with Timon’s wheelchair shaded by an awning.
‘We’ll start on the sandcastle any minute now,’ Anatole riposted. ‘Once Georgy’s got bored with hitting things!’
A low rumble of laughter came from Timon. Lyn glanced at him. He was looking healthy, considering... He was still doing well on the drugs, and it was buying him some time. The precious time he so desperately wanted.
As if he could sense her looking at him, Timon reached to take Lyn’s hand and pat it affectionately with his own gnarled one. He turned his head to smile at her.
Though she had had some trepidation, they had made their peace.
‘I wronged you,’ he had told her. ‘And from the bottom of my heart I apologise to you. It was fear that made me harsh—fear that you would take Marcos’s son from us. But I know now that you would never do such a thing. For you love him as much as we do.’ His voice had softened. ‘And you love my grandson too. You will both, I know, be the parents that Marcos and your sister could not be. I know now,’ he’d said, ‘that Marcos’s son is safe with you and always will be.’
It had been all she’d needed to hear. Just as now all she needed in the world was to be here, with her husband and their son, a family united in love. Tragedy had reached its dark shadows across them all, but now sunlight was strong and bright and warm in their lives.
Timon turned back to look at his grandson and Georgy.
‘The years pass so swiftly,’ he said. ‘How short a time it seems since it was Anatole and Marcos playing on the beach. But I am blessed—so very blessed—to have been granted this, now.’
She squeezed his hand comfortingly. ‘We are all blessed,’ she said.
Unconsciously she slid a hand across her still-flat stomach. Timon caught the gesture. They had told him as soon as they had known themselves of Lyn’s pregnancy. Timon needed all the reasons they could find to keep on fighting for his life. Another great-grandchild could only help that.
‘A brother for Georgy,’ he said approvingly.
‘It might be a sister,’ Lyn pointed out.
Timon shook his head decisively. ‘He needs a younger brother,’ he said. ‘Someone he can look out for, just as Anatole looked out for Marcos. Someone to encourage him to be sensible and wise.’
She smiled peaceably—she was not about to argue. Whether girl or boy, the new baby would be adored, just as Georgy was, and that was all that mattered.
As if sensing he was being discussed, and in complimentary terms, Georgy ceased his thumping and grinned at all of them.
‘Right, then, Georgy,’ said Anatole briskly, ‘this is how we build a sandcastle.’
Georgy turned his eyes to his new father, gazed at him with grave attention and considerable respect—then hit him smartly on the head with his plastic spade, chortling gleefully as he did so.
‘Oh, Georgy!’ exclaimed Lyn ruefully. ‘You little monster!’
* * * * *
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PROLOGUE
London, Summer 2008, a hotel
ANGEL’S EYES HAD adjusted to the dark but from where she was lying the illuminated display of the bedside clock was hidden from her view, blocked by his shoulder. But the thin finger of light that was shining into the room through the chink in the blackout curtains suggested that it was morning.
‘The morning after the night before!’
She gave a soft shaken sigh and allowed her glance to drift around the unfamiliar room, the generic but luxurious five-star hotel furnishings familiar, especially to someone who had slept in dozens of similar suites; someone who had imagined at one point that everybody ordered their supper from room service.
Since she’d had the choice Angel had avoided rooms like this as they depressed her. Depressed... Smiling at the past tense, she raised herself slowly up on one elbow. This room was different not because it boasted a special view or had a sumptuously comfortable bed. What was different was that she was not alone.
She froze when the man on the bed beside her murmured in his sleep and her attention immediately returned to him—it had never really left him. She gulped as he threw a hand above his head, the action causing the muscles in his beautiful back to ripple in a way that made her stomach flip over. She couldn’t see his face but his breathing remained deep and regular.
Should she wake him up?
The bruised-looking half-moons underneath his spectacular eyes suggested he probably needed his sleep. She’d noticed them the moment she’d looked at him, but then she had noticed pretty much everything about him. Angel had never considered herself a particularly observant person but crazily one glance had indelibly printed his face into her memory.
Mind you, it was a pretty special face, not made any less special by the lines of fatigue etched around his wide, sensual mouth or the dark shadows beneath those totally spectacular eyes. There was a weary cynicism reflected in those electric-blue depths and also in that first instant anger.
He had been furious with her, but it wasn’t the incandescent anger that had made her legs feel hollow or even her dramatic brush with death or that he had saved her life. It was him, everything about him. He projected an aura of raw maleness that had a cataclysmic impact on her, like someone thrown in the deep end who from that first moment was treading water, barely able to breathe, throat tight with emotion as if she were submerged by a massive wave of lust.
It wasn’t until much later that she had recognised this as a crossroad moment. She didn’t see a fork in the road; there was no definable instant when she made a conscious decision. Her universe had narrowed into this total stranger, and she had known with utter and total conviction that she had to be with him. She wanted him and then she had seen in his eyes he wanted her too.
What else mattered?
Did I really just think that?
What else mattered? The defence of the greedy, absurdly needy and just plain stupid! Angel, who was utterly confident she was none of those things, was conscious that this particular inner dialogue was one it would have been more sensible to have had before, not after... After she had broken the habit of a lifetime and thrown caution, baby, bath water and the entire package out of the window!
The previous night there had been no inner dialogue, not even any inhibition-lowering alcohol in her bloodstream, no excuses. The words of a novel she had read years before popped into Angel’s head. Although at the time they had made her put the gothic romance to one side with a snort of amused disdain, now she couldn’t shake them. ‘I felt a deep craving, an ache in my body and soul that I had never imagined possible.’
The remembered words no longer made her snigger and translate with a roll of her eyes—yes, he’s hot!
Which the man in bed beside her was and then some, but Angel had met hot men before, and she had been amused by their macho posturing. She was in charge of her life and she liked it that way. History was littered with countless examples of strong women who had disastrous personal lives, but she was not going to be one of them.
Admittedly the macho men she was able to view with lofty disdain had not just saved her life, but Angel knew what she was feeling hadn’t anything to do with gratitude. Beyond this certainty she wasn’t sure of anything much. Her life and her belief system had been turned upside down. She had no idea at all why this was happening but she was not going to fight it. In any case, that would have been as futile as fighting the colour of her eyes or her blood type; it just was...and it was exciting!
‘Dio, you’re so beautiful.’ Her husky whisper was soft and tinged with awe as she reached out a hand to touch his dark head, allowing her fingers to slide lightly over the sleek short tufts of hair. Her own hair was often called black but his was two shades darker and her skin, though a warm natural olive, looked almost winter pale against his deeply tanned, vibrant-toned, bronzed flesh. It was a contrast that had fascinated her when she’d first seen their limbs entwined—not just skin tone, but the tactile differences of his hard to her soft, his hair-roughened virility to her feminine smoothness. She wanted to touch, taste...
Angel couldn’t understand how she felt so wide awake. Why she wasn’t tired. She hadn’t slept all night, but her senses weren’t dulled by exhaustion. Instead they were racing and her body was humming with an almost painful sensory overload.
Languid pleasure twitched the corners of her full, wide mouth up as she lifted her arms above her head, stretching with feline grace, feeling muscles she hadn’t known she had. Who wanted to sleep when it had finally happened? The man of her dreams was real and she had found him!
It was fate!
Her smooth brow knitted into a furrowed web. Fate again—this sounded so not her. When she had once been accused of not having a romantic bone in her body she had taken it as a compliment. She had never thought she was missing out; she’d never wanted to be that person—the one who fell in love at the drop of a hat and out again equally as easily. That was her mother who, despite the fragile appearance that made men want to protect her, had Teflon-coated emotions.
Angel knew she did not inspire a similar reaction in men and neither did she want to; the thought of not being independent was anathema to her. As a kid she had been saved from a life of loneliness and isolation by two things: a brother and an imagination. Not that she ever, even when she was young, confused her secret fantasy world with real life.
Angel had never expected her fantasies to actually come true.
She stretched out her hand, moving her fingers in the air above the curve of his shoulder, fighting the compulsion to touch him, to tug the sheet that was lying low across his hips farther down. She was amazed that she could have these thoughts and feel no sense of embarrassment. It had been the same when she had undressed for him—it had just felt right and heart-stoppingly exciting.
No fantasy had ever matched the fascination she felt for his body. Her stomach muscles quivered in hot, hungry anticipation of exploring every inch of his hard, lean body again.
‘Totally beautiful,’ she whispered again, staring at the man sharing her bed.
His name was Alex. When he’d asked she’d told him her name was Angelina, but that nobody ever called her that. Apparently when she was born her father had said she looked like a little angel and it had stuck.
She tensed when, as if in response to her voice, he murmured in his sleep before rolling over onto his back, one arm flung over his head, his long fingers brushing the headboard.
Angel felt a strong sensual kick of excitement low and deep in her belly as she stared, the rapt expression on her face a fusion of awe and hunger. She swallowed past the emotional thickening that made her throat ache. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen or imagined.
In the half-light that now filled the room his warm olive-toned skin gleamed like gold, its texture like oiled satin. A tactile tingle passed through her fingertips. Perfect might have seemed like an overused term but he was. The length of his legs was balanced by broad shoulders and a deeply muscled chest dusted with dark body hair that narrowed into a directional arrow across his flat belly ridged with muscle. There wasn’t an ounce of excess flesh on his lean body to disguise the musculature that had the perfection of an anatomical diagram. But Alex was no diagram. He was a warm, living, earthly male, and he was sharing her bed.
A dazed smile flickered across her face as she felt all the muscles in her abdomen tighten. Last night had been perfect—perfect, but not in the way she had expected. There had been hardly any pain and no embarrassment.
Angel has still failed to grasp the concept of moderation. There is no middle ground—she is all or nothing.
The words on her report card came back to her.
Her form teacher had been referring to her academic record littered with As and Fs, not to sex, but there had been no middle ground last night either. Angel had held nothing back; she had given him everything without reservation.
* * *
‘I know this is bad timing, but there’s a problem.’
The words had been music to Alex’s ears. ‘Tell me.’
They had and he had acted. Crisis management was something he excelled at—it was a simple matter of focusing, shutting out all distractions and focusing.
He had gone straight from the funeral to his office, where he’d pretty much lived for the past month. He’d washed, eaten and slept—or at least snatched a few minutes on the sofa—there. It made sense, and it suited him. He had nothing to go home to any longer.
Then the crisis was over and Alex had been unable to think of any reason not to go home, where he had, if anything, less sleep. He did go to bed but by the small hours he was up again, which was why it felt strange and disorientating to wake up after a deep sleep and find light shining through the blinds of...not his room... Where the hell?
He blinked and focused on the beautiful face of the most incredible-looking woman. She was sitting there looking down at him wearing nothing but a mane of glossy dark hair that lay like a silky curtain over her breasts—breasts that had filled his hands perfectly and tasted—
It all came rushing back.
Hell!
‘Good morning.’
His body reacted to the slumberous promise in her smile, but, ignoring the urgent messages it was sending and the desire that heated his blood, gritted his teeth and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Guilt rising like a toxic tide to clog his throat, he sat, eyes closed, with his rigid back to her. This was about damage limitation and not repeating a mistake no matter how tempting it might seem.
She was sinful temptation given a throaty voice and a perfect body, but this had been his mistake, not hers, and it was his respons
ibility to end it.
‘I thought you’d never wake up.’
His spine tensed at the touch of her fingers on his skin. He wiped his face of all emotion as he turned back to face her.
‘You should have woken me. I hope I haven’t made you late for anything...?’
‘Late...?’ she quavered.
He stood up and looked around for his clothes. ‘Can I get you a taxi?’
‘I...I don’t understand... I thought we’d...’ Her voice trailed away. He was looking at her so coldly.
‘Look, last night was... Actually it was fantastic but I’m not available.’
Available? Angel still didn’t get it.
He felt the guilt tighten in his gut but he had no desire to prolong this scene. He’d made a massive mistake, end of story. A post-mortem was not going to change anything.
‘I thought—’
He cut across her. ‘Last night was just sex.’
He was speaking slowly as if he were explaining something to a child or a moron. The coldness in his blue eyes as much as his words confused Angel.
‘But last night...’
‘Like I said, last night was great, but it was a mistake.’ A great big mistake, but a man learned by his mistakes and he didn’t give in to the temptation to repeat them.
She began to feel sick as she watched him fight his way into his shirt, then he was pulling on his trousers. She responded automatically to pick up the object that fell out of the pocket and landed with a metallic twang on the floor just in front of her toes. She bent to pick it up; her fingers closed around a ring.
‘Yours?’
He was meticulously careful not to touch her fingers as he took it from her outstretched hand.