A Tycoon to Be Reckoned With (Harlequin Presents)

by Julia James

  An eternity ago.

  There was no sign of Bastiaan. The shower was still running.

  She had to go. Right now. Because she could not bear to stay there and have Bastiaan tell her it was over.

  Slowly, with a kind of pain netting around her, her mind numb, she turned and left the villa.

  * * *

  Bastiaan cut the shower, seizing a towel to wrap himself in. He had to go back into the bedroom. He could delay it no longer. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see her again.

  Wanted to wipe her from existence.

  How could I have believed her to be innocent? How could I?

  He knew the answer—knew it with shuddering emotion.

  Because I wanted her to be innocent—I didn’t want her to have taken Philip’s money, didn’t want it to be true!

  That was what was tearing through him, ripping at him with sharpest talons. Ripping his illusions from him.

  Fool! Fool that he had been!

  He closed his eyes in blind rage. In front of his very eyes she’d waltzed into that bank in Nice, paid in whatever it was she’d taken from Philip—or another man. It didn’t matter which. The same branch of that bank—the very same. A coincidence? How could it be?

  A snarl sounded in his throat.

  Had that cheque she’d paid in this afternoon been from Philip too? Had that postmark been from Paris? Had it been his writing on the envelope? His expression changed. The envelope would still be in her bag, even if the cheque were not. That would be all the proof he needed.

  Is she hoping to take me for even more?

  The thought was in his head like a dagger before he could stop it. Was that what was behind her ardency, her passion?

  The passion that burns between us even now, even right to the bitter end...

  Self-hatred lashed at him. How could he have done what he’d just done? Swept her to bed as he had, knowing what she truly was? But he’d been driven by an urge so strong he hadn’t been able to stop himself—an urge to possess her one final time...

  One final time to recapture all that they’d had—all he’d thought they’d had.

  It had never been there at all.

  The dagger thrust again, into the core of his being.

  He wrenched open the door.

  She was not there. The rumpled bed was empty. Her clothes gone.

  Emotion rushed into the sudden void in his head like air into a vacuum. But quite what the emotion was he didn’t know. All he knew was that he was striding out of the room, with nothing more than a towel snaked around his hips, wondering where the hell she’d got to.

  For a numb, timeless moment he just stood in the hallway, registering that her handbag was gone too, so he would not be able to check the writing on the envelope. Then, from the kitchen, he heard the sound of the coffee machine spluttering.

  He walked towards it, seeing that the room was empty. Seeing the note by the coffee jug. Reading it with preternatural calm.

  Bastiaan—we’ve had the most unforgettable time. Thank you for every moment.

  It was simply signed ‘S.’

  That was all.

  He dropped it numbly. Turned around, headed back to the bedroom. So she was walking out on him. Had the sum of money she’d extracted this time been sufficient for her to afford to be able to do so? That was what Leana had done. Cashed his cheque and headed off with her next mark, her geriatric protector, laughing at the idiot she’d fooled and left behind.

  His mouth tightened. Well, things were different now. Very different. Sabine did not know that he was Philip’s trustee, that he knew what she had taken and could learn if she’d taken yet more today. She had no reason not to think herself safe.

  Is she still hoping to take more from Philip?

  Memory played in his head—how Philip had asked him to loosen the purse strings of his main fund before his birthday—how evasive he’d been about what he wanted the money for. All the suspicions he’d so blindly set aside leapt again.

  Grim-faced, he went to fetch his laptop.

  And there it was—right in his email inbox. A communication today, direct from one of Philip’s investment managers, requesting Bastiaan’s approval—or not—for Philip’s instruction to liquidate a particular fund. The liquidation would release over two hundred thousand euros...

  Two hundred thousand euros. Enough to free Sabine for ever from warbling in a second-rate nightclub.

  He slammed the laptop lid down. Fury was leaping in his throat.

  Was that what Philip had texted her about? Bastiaan hadn’t been mistaken in recognizing him as the sender—he could not have been. Was that why she’d given that soft, revealing chuckle? Was that why she’d bolted now, switching her allegiance back to Philip?

  Rage boiled in Bastiaan’s breast. Well, that would never happen—never! She would never go back to Philip.

  She can burn in hell before she gets that money from him!

  His lips stretched into a travesty of a smile. She thought herself safe—but Sabine Sablon was not safe. She was not safe at all...

  And she would discover that very, very shortly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SARAH REACHED FOR the second false eyelash. Glued it, like the first, with shaky hands. She was going through the motions—nothing more. Hammers seemed to be in her brain, hammering her flat. Mashing everything inside her. Misery assailed her. She shouldn’t be feeling it—but she was. Oh, she was.

  It was over. Her time with Bastiaan was over. A few precious days—and now this.

  Reality had awaited her. Max had greeted her with relief—and apology. And with some news that had pierced the misery in her.

  ‘This is your last night here. Raymond insisted you show up just for tonight—because it’s Friday and he can’t be without a singer—but from tomorrow you’re officially replaced. Not with the real Sabine—someone else he’s finally found. And then, thank God, we can all decamp. We’ve been given an earlier rehearsal spot at the festival so we can head there straight away.’

  He’d said nothing else, had asked no questions. Had only cast an assessing look at her, seeing the withdrawal in her face. She was glad of it, and of the news he’d given her. Relief, as much as she could feel anything through the fog of misery encompassing her, resonated in her. Now there was only tonight to get through. How she would do it, she didn’t know—but it would have to happen.

  As she finished putting on her lipstick with shaky hands she could feel hope lighting inside her. Refusing to be quenched. Was it over? Perhaps it wasn’t. Oh, perhaps Bastiaan hadn’t been intending to end it all. Perhaps she’d feared it quite unnecessarily. Perhaps, even now, he was missing her, coming after her...

  No! She couldn’t afford to agonise over whether Bastiaan had finished with her. Couldn’t afford to hope and dream that he hadn’t. Couldn’t afford even to let her mind go where it so wanted to go—to relive, hour by hour, each moment she’d spent with him.

  I can’t afford to want him—or miss him.

  She stared at her reflection. Sabine was more alien than ever now. And as she did so, the door of her dressing room was thrust open. Her head flew round, and as her gaze fell upon the tall, dark figure standing there, her face lit, joy and relief flaring in her eyes. Bastiaan! He had come after her—he was not ending it with her! He still wanted her! Her heart soared.

  But as she looked up at him she froze. There was something wrong—something wrong with his face. His eyes. The way he was standing there, dominating the small space. His face was dark, his eyes like granite. He was like nothing she had seen before. This was not the Bastiaan she knew...not Bastiaan at all...

  ‘I have something to say to you.’

  Bastiaan’s voice was harsh. Hostile. His eyes were dark and veiled, as if a screen had dropped down over them.

  Her heart started to hammer. That dark, veiled gaze pressed down on her. Hostility radiated from him like a force field. It felt like a physical blow. What was happening? Why
was he looking at her like this? She didn’t know—didn’t understand.

  A moment later the answer came—an answer that was incomprehensible.

  ‘From now on stay away from Philip. It’s over. Do you understand me? Over!’ His voice was harsh, accusing. Condemning.

  She didn’t understand. Could only go on sitting there, staring at him, emotion surging through her chaotically. Then, as his words sank in, a frown convulsed her face.

  ‘Philip?’ she said blankly.

  A rasp of a laugh—without humour, soon cut short—broke from him. ‘Forgotten him already, have you? Well, then...’ and now his voice took on a different note—one that seemed to chill her deep inside ‘...it seems my efforts were not in vain. I have succeeded, it seems, in...distracting you, mademoiselle.’ He paused heavily and his eyes were stabbing at her now. ‘As I intended.’

  His chest rose and fell, and then he was speaking again.

  ‘But do not flatter yourself that my....attentions were for any purpose other than to convince you that my cousin is no longer yours to manipulate.’

  She was staring at him as if he were insane. But he would not be halted. Not now, when fury was coursing through his veins—as it had done since the veils had been ripped from his eyes—since he’d understood just how much a fool she’d made of him. Not Philip—him!

  I so nearly fell for it—was so nearly convinced by her.

  Anger burned in him. Anger at her—for taking him for a fool, for exploiting his trusting, sensitive cousin and for not being the woman he’d come to believe, to hope, that she was.

  The woman I wanted her to be.

  The irony of it was exquisite. He’d seduced her because he’d believed her guilty—then had no longer been able to believe that she was. Then all that had been ripped and up-ended again—back to guilt.

  A guilt he no longer wanted her to have, but from which there could be no escape now. None.

  He cut across his own perilous thoughts with a snarl. ‘Don’t play the innocent. If you think you can still exploit his emotional vulnerability to you...well, think again.’

  His voice became harsh and ugly, his mouth curling, eyes filled with venom.

  ‘You see, I have only to tell him how you have warmed my bed these last days for his infatuation to be over in an instant. Your power over him extinguished.’

  The air in her lungs was like lead. His words were like blows. Her features contorted.

  ‘Are you saying...?’ She could hardly force the words from her through the pain, through the shock that had exploded inside her, ‘Are you saying that you seduced me in order to...to separate me from Philip?’ There was disbelief in her voice. Disbelief on so many levels.

  ‘You have it precisely,’ he said heavily, with sardonic emphasis. ‘Oh, surely you did not believe I would not take action to protect my cousin from women of your kind?’

  She swallowed. It was like a razor in her throat. ‘My kind...?’

  ‘Look at yourself, Sabine. A woman of the world—isn’t that the phrase? Using her talents—’ deliberately he mocked the word she’d used herself when she’d first learnt who he was ‘—to make her way in the world. And if those talents—’ the mockery intensified ‘—include catching men with your charms, then good luck to you.’ His voice hardened like the blade of a knife. ‘Unless you set your sights on a vulnerable stripling like my cousin—then I will wish you only to perdition! And ensure you go there.’

  His voice changed again.

  ‘So, do you understand the situation now? From now on content yourself with the life you have—singing cheap, tawdry songs in a cheap, tawdry club.’

  His eyes blazed like coals from the pit as he gave his final vicious condemnation of her.

  ‘A two-cent chanteuse with more body than voice. That is all that you are good for. Nothing else!’

  One last skewering of his contemptuous gaze, one last twist of his deriding mouth, and he was turning on his heel, walking out. She could hear his footsteps—heavy, damning—falling away.

  Her mouth fell open, the rush of air into her lungs choking her. Emotion convulsed her. And then, as if fuse had been lit, she jerked to her feet. She charged out of the dressing room, but he was already stepping through the door that separated the front of house from backstage. She whirled about, driven forward on the emotion boiling up inside her. A moment later she was in the wings at the side of the stage, seizing Max by the arm, propelling him forward.

  Anger such as she had never felt before in her life, erupted in her. She thrust Max towards the piano beside the centre spot where her microphone was. She hurled it into the wings, then turned back to Max.

  ‘Play “Der Hölle Rache”.’

  Max stared at her as if she were mad. ‘What?’

  ‘Play it! Or I am on the next plane to London!’

  She could see Bastiaan, threading his way across the dining room, moving towards the exit. The room was busy, but there was only one person she was going to sing for. Only one—and he could burn in hell!

  Max’s gaze followed hers and his expression changed. She saw his hands shape themselves over the opening chord, and with a last snatch of sanity took the breath she needed for herself. And then, as Max’s hands crashed down on the keyboard, she stepped forward into the pool of light. Centre stage.

  And launched into furious, excoriating, maximum tessitura, her full-powered coloratura soprano voice exploding into the space in front of her to find its target.

  * * *

  Bastiaan could see the exit—a dozen tables or so away. He had to get out of here, get into his car and drive...drive far and fast. Very fast.

  He’d done it. He’d done what he’d had to do—what he’d set out to do from that afternoon in Athens when his aunt had come to see him, to beg him to save her precious young son from the toils of a dangerous femme fatale. And save him he had.

  Saved more than just his cousin.

  I have saved myself.

  No!

  He would not think that—would not accept it. Would only make for the exit.

  He reached the door. Made to push it open angrily with the flat of his hand.

  And then, from behind him, came a crash of chords that stopped him.

  He froze.

  ‘Der Hölle Rache.’ The most fiendishly difficult soprano aria by Mozart. Fiendish for its cripplingly punishing high notes, for the merciless fury of its delivery. An aria whose music and lyrics boiled with coruscating rage as Die Zauberflöte’s ‘Queen of the Night’ poured out seething venom against her bitter enemy.

  ‘Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart!’

  Like a remotely operated robot, turning against his will, Bastiaan felt his body twist.

  It was impossible. Impossible that this stabbing, biting, fury of a voice should be emanating from the figure on the stage. Absolutely, totally impossible.

  Because the figure on the stage was Sabine. Sabine—with her tight sheath of a gown, her femme fatale blonde allure, her low-pitched voice singing huskily through sultry cabaret numbers.

  It could not be Sabine singing this most punishing, demanding pinnacle of the operatic repertoire.

  But it was.

  Still like a robot he walked towards the stage, dimly aware that the diners present were staring open-mouthed at this extraordinary departure from their normal cabaret fare. Dimly aware that he was sinking down at an unoccupied table in front of the stage, his eyes pinned, incredulous, on the woman singing a few metres away from him.

  The full force of her raging voice stormed over him. There was no microphone to amplify her voice, but she was drowning out everything except the crashing chords of the piano accompanying her. This close, he would see the incandescent fury in her face, her flashing eyes emerald and hard. He stared—transfixed. Incredulous. Disbelieving.

  Then, as the aria furioso reached its climax, he saw her stride to the edge of the stage, step down off it and sweep towards him. Saw her snatch up a steak knife from a pl
ace setting and, with a final, killing flourish, as her scathing, scything denunciation of her enemy was hurled from her lips, she lifted the knife up and brought it down in a deadly, vicious stab into the tabletop in front of him.

  The final chords sounded and she was whirling around, striding away, slamming through the door that led backstage. And in the tabletop in front of him the knife she’d stabbed into it stood quivering.

  All around him was stunned silence.

  Slowly, very slowly, he reached a hand forward and withdrew the knife from the table. It took a degree of effort to do so—it had been stabbed in with driving force.

  The entire audience came out of their stupor and erupted into a tremendous round of applause.

  He realised he was getting to his feet, intent on following her wherever she had disappeared to, and then was aware that the pianist was lightly sprinting off the stage towards him, blocking his route.

  ‘I wouldn’t, you know,’ said the pianist, whom he dimly recognised as Sabine’s accompanist.

  Bastiaan stared at him. ‘What the hell just happened?’ he demanded. His ears were still ringing with the power of her voice, her incredible, unbelievable voice.

  Sabine’s accompanist made a face. ‘Whatever you said to her, she didn’t like it—’ he answered.

  ‘She’s a nightclub singer!’ Bastiaan exclaimed, not hearing what the other man had said.

  The accompanist shook his head. ‘Ah, no...actually, she’s not. She’s only standing in for one right now. Sarah’s real musical forte is, as you have just heard, opera.’

  Bastiaan stared blankly. ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah Fareham. That’s her name. She’s British. Her mother is French. The real Sabine did a runner, so I cut a deal with the club owner to get free rehearsal space in exchange for Sarah filling in. But he’s hired a new singer now—which is very convenient as we’re off tomorrow to the festival venue.’