by Lynne Graham
‘We will move on to the subject of your father shortly,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, tell me what you read in this file. And don’t say you didn’t read anything, because you were engrossed in it.’
For long moments she didn’t answer, simply stared at him, her eyes squinting as if in thought. As if she were weighing him up... ‘Not much. Only that a company called RG Holdings is buying out Plushenko’s.’
Plushenko’s was a Russian jewellery firm whose trinkets were regarded as some of the most luxurious in the world and came with a price tag to match, the Plushenko brand rivalling that of the other famous Russian jeweller, Fabergé. At least, it had been regarded as such. In recent years the jewels had lost much of their lustre and sales were a fraction of what they had been a decade ago. Amidst the highest secrecy, Pascha was gearing up for a buyout, using a front company.
‘Oh, and I read that you own RG Holdings but that your name is being kept off all the official documents between RG and Plushenko’s.’ Her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to remember something, then her lips twisted into something resembling a smile. ‘What was the phrase I read? Something along the lines of, “it is imperative that Marat Plushenko does not learn of Pascha Virshilas’s involvement in this buyout”. Was that it?’
Only with the greatest effort did Pascha keep his features still. Inside, his stomach lurched, his skin crawling as if a nest of spiders had been let loose in him.
Her brown eyes held his, as if in challenge, before her lips curved upwards—amazing lips, like a heart tugged out at the sides. Her eyes remained cold. She leaned forward. ‘It’s obvious this buy-out is important to you and you need to keep it a secret. I suggest we make a deal: if you agree to withdraw the threat of legal action towards my father, I will keep the details of the Plushenko deal to myself.’
Pascha’s fingers tightened on the document in his grasp. ‘You think you can blackmail me?’
She raised her shoulders in a sign of nonchalance. ‘You may call it blackmail but I like to think of it as us making a deal. Clear my father’s name. I want it in writing that you’ll exonerate him from any potential charges or I will sing from the rooftops.’
Emily could see by the whitening of Pascha’s knuckles that he was fighting to keep his composure.
How she kept her own composure, she did not know.
She’d never been a wallflower, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d never been one for making war before either. To stand up against this powerful man—a man capable of destroying her father; of destroying her too—and know she was winning... It was a heady feeling.
From despair and anger at getting caught and failing her father, she’d found a way to salvage the situation.
‘I can have you arrested for this,’ Pascha said, his voice low and menacing.
‘Try it.’ She allowed herself a smile. ‘I’ll be entitled to a phone call. I think I’ll use it to contact the firm Shirokov —is that how you pronounce it?—and see if they’d be interested in representing me.’
How Pascha stopped his tongue rolling out the volley of expletives it wanted to say, he did not know.
Shirokov was the firm representing Marat Plushenko in the buy-out.
She dared to think she could threaten and blackmail him? This little pixie with a tongue as curling as her hair dared to think she could take him on and win?
He’d spent two years trying to make this deal happen, had even bought Bamber Cosmetics a few months ago as a decoy to avert any suspicion.
And now Emily Richardson had the power to blow it all to hell.
If Marat Plushenko heard so much as a whisper that Pascha was the face behind RG Holdings, he would abandon the deal without a backward glance and Plushenko’s, the business the late, great Andrei Plushenko had built from nothing, would be ground to dust. His legacy would be gone.
And so would Pascha’s last chance at redemption.
Could he trust her? That was the question.
He had no doubt her actions in stealing his files had been driven by exactly what she claimed—to prove her father’s innocence. He almost admired her for it.
But beneath the collected exterior lurked a wildness. It echoed in the flickers of light emitting from her dark eyes. He could feel it.
This was a woman on the edge.
That, in itself, answered his question.
No, he could not trust her.
In exactly one week, the Plushenko deal would be finalised, the contracts signed. Seven whole days in which he would be wondering and worrying if she really was capable of keeping her mouth shut, if something innocuous could set her off to make a phone call to Marat’s lawyer.
Beneath Emily’s bohemian exterior, which even the plain suit she wore couldn’t hide, lurked a sharp, inquisitive mind. A sharp mind on the edge could be a lethal combination.
An old English phrase came to mind: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
This deal was everything. It had to happen.
It had been eight years since he’d walked out on his family. It was too late to make amends with the man who’d raised him as his own, but he could restore his legacy and, maybe then, finally, his mother would forgive him.
And for that reason he needed to make Emily disappear...
Copyright © 2015 by Michelle Smart
ISBN-13: 9781460332351
Inherited by Her Enemy
Copyright © 2015 by Sara Craven
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He’s fallen 12,000 feet from the sky... Now he knows exactly what he wants!
Daredevil Rafael Revaldi has always lived for the moment. But having cheated death, the Conte di Monterrato is focused on the future. He needs an heir, but to get one he’ll face his toughest challenge yet—winning back his estranged wife!
Lottie returns to the castle she once called home with a newfound strength. The intense sensual connection between Lottie and Rafe remains, but so do the emotional scars of their marriage. Can Lottie risk her heart again to give them the child they both so desperately want?
Could she say yes? Rafael somehow made the decision sound so straightforward. He made everything seem possible.
But then, he had no thought or care for the life she had made for herself in England. Built up so painstakingly, brick by brick, from the demolition rubble of their marriage. She had finally reached the stage where she felt financially stable and emotionally settled. Most of the time anyway.
Could Lottie really take this enormous gamble and throw caution, common sense and self-preservation to the wind? Hurl them up into the blue sky and watch to see where they fell? The same blue sky that Rafael had fallen from that had brought her here in the first place?
It was so tempting.
Rafael waited, as if sensing that words were no longer needed. So close now she could feel the soft whisper of his breath against her face, feel herself weakening beneath the unbearable scrutiny of his gaze and the lethal, sensual intoxication of his nearness.
Sitting up very straight, Lottie pushed back her shoulders and mirrored his penetrating stare. This was her decision, and she was going to make it.
The answering flash in Rafael’s eyes was so intense that she had to blink against it, her mouth suddenly dry with the cotton wool words.
“My answer is yes. I will do it.”
ANDIE BROCK started inventing imaginary friends around the age of four and is still doing that today; only now the sparkly fairies have made way for spirited heroines and sexy heroes.
Thankfully she now has some real friends, as well as a husband and three children, plus a grumpy but lovable cat.
Andie lives in Bristol, and when not actually writing, could well be plotting her next passionate romance story.
This is Andie’s stunning debut—we hope you love it as much as we do!
ANDIE BROCK
The Last Heir of Monterrato
For my mum. Who would have been very proud.
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
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS THE SCAR that halted Lottie in the doorway. A thin, livid wound, it sliced down from his brow, skipping over the eye socket before continuing an inch along his cheekbone. The sight of it clutched at her stomach, weighted her feet to the floor.
‘Rafael?’
Silence stretched tightly between them as they stared at each other across the dark panelled office.
‘Charlotte.’
‘How...how are you?’
‘Still alive.’ As he eased himself to stand against the edge of the desk his voice was cold, flat. ‘As you can see.’
‘Yes. Indeed.’ Lottie swallowed. Upright now, he stood with his hands splayed on either side of him, fingertips anchoring him to the desk. ‘I was very sorry—to hear about the accident, I mean.’
‘Thank you.’ His clipped reply snipped at her words, clearly designed to stop any outpourings of sentiment.
Not that she intended to show him any, of course. She knew she wasn’t here to display any sort of concern, express any sympathy. Rafael wasn’t the kind of man to tolerate such emotions. Especially from her.
She watched as he moved out from behind the desk and walked stiffly towards her, tall and rigid in a sober grey suit, his height towering over her as they came together. For a second they stood there, like repelling magnets, until Rafael bent forward to brush her cheek once, twice, three times. Lottie closed her eyes as she felt the whisper of his breath, the touch of his skin; him.
He pulled away immediately, leaving her staring up at his injuries.
Scratches of various lengths and depths crisscrossed his face and a purple bruise spread colourfully down one side. The scar, Lottie now realised, resembled the lash of a whip. That didn’t help at all.
‘So...um...your face...?’ She knew she shouldn’t go on about it, that he would hate her even mentioning it, but she needed reassurance, needed to stop looking at him as if she was witnessing a pig having its throat cut. ‘I assume the injuries are quite superficial?’
‘You assume correctly.’
‘And the rest of your body?’ His unnerving stare stupidly made her blush. So much for trying to appear detached. She gave a small cough. ‘I mean, what other injuries do you have?’
‘All fairly consistent with someone who has plummeted twelve thousand feet from the sky.’
‘I’m sure.’ Lottie pulled a face at the idiocy of her question. How many people had fallen twelve thousand feet and lived to tell the tale? Anyway, she already knew the extent of his injuries; it had all been there in the newspaper article: punctured lung, dislocated shoulder, three cracked ribs. ‘Did you ever find out...what went wrong? Why your parachute didn’t open?’
‘Misfortune, fate—call it what you like.’ Rafael shrugged his shoulders as if already bored with the subject. ‘It’s of no consequence now.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ But despite his casual dismissal Lottie didn’t doubt that the accident had been thoroughly investigated. And if someone had been found responsible it would be their own life they should be worrying about now. ‘But you were very lucky, as it turned out.’
‘Lucky?’ His tone suggested otherwise.
‘I mean lucky that a tree broke your fall. It could have been so much worse.’
‘True.’ His reply was deadpan. ‘I could have been dead.’
‘Ha!’ Why was she laughing? Nothing about this was the least bit funny.
It was pure, unmitigated torture.
She had prepared herself, of course, endlessly rehearsed how she would behave, what she would say when faced with Rafael again. She’d still been running through her calm and measured responses on the aeroplane over here, her twitching lips attracting the attention of her nosy nine-year-old neighbour. She had bullied herself into believing that she was ready. That she could cope—survive this one last meeting.
But as she looked at him now, past the recently inflicted injuries to the man beneath, the man she had fallen so madly in love with, all her confident convictions seemed to slide away. She remembered every tiny detail of his face. The thick, untidy brows that arrowed above almond-shaped deep brown eyes. The harsh sweep of his jawline, the square chin where a small cleft nestled, dark with stubble.
Yep, she remembered everything. She wished she didn’t.
‘Well, thank goodness for that tree, eh?’ Shifting her position, she crossed one leg in front of the other, the balletic pose spoiled by the hand that was shoved deep into the pocket of her jeans. Her voice sounded hideously chirpy but it did at least mask her desire to ask where this tree was, so she could throw herself on its dirty roots and thank it for saving Rafael’s life. ‘I’m so glad it was in the right place.’
A curl of disdain twitched Rafael’s perfectly formed lip. ‘How nice that you should care.’
It didn’t sound nice—not at all. Everything about his cold, sarcastic manner, the harsh light in his eyes, the formal, brittle posture, was telling her one thing. He hated her.
If Lottie had hoped that time had washed over their past, smoothed the jagged edges of her actions, time had seriously let her down. It had been two years since she had left, wrenched herself away from the wreckage of their marriage and fled back to England. But being back at Palazzo Monterrato, staring at Rafael now, she knew that those two years were as nothing. The atmosphere between them was almost as horrendous, as harrowingly painful, as the day she had left.
‘Of course I care.’ Something about the absurdity of his comment made her want at least to attempt to put the record straight. Make him see that, despite her all too convincing performance, she wasn’t all bad. ‘That will never change.’
‘Very touching, I’m sure.’ Rafael’s words sliced through her tentative confession. ‘But your misplaced sympathy is of no interest to me.’ He moved back to his side of the desk. ‘You are here because there is an important matter I need to discuss with you. Please, sit down.’
Lottie took a seat opposite him, her rapped knuckles clasped in her lap, her back very straight. She knew what was coming; she had been waiting for this ever since she had received his email.
It had been just another afternoon at work when she had opened her inbox and there it had been: a message from Rafael Revaldi. To see his name like that, out of the blue, had sent a hot flush of panic through her body. She had had to count to three before she’d even dared open it, darting a look at the only other people in the exclusive London art gallery—a whispering gay couple, admiring a vast canvas they were never going to buy—in case they had noticed her alarm.
The curt, dictatorial message had stated that it was necessary for them to meet; two different dates for the following week had been marked for her consideration and flight tickets would be emailed on receipt of her confirmation. As her mind had whizzed with the flurry of possibilities it had quickly settled on the cold blanket of truth behind the message. He wanted a divorce.
Tipping her chin, Lottie forced herself to meet his gaze, affecting as much detachment as she could muster, determined to be strong now. ‘I know why I’m here. Let me assure you that I am as keen to get this over and done with as you are. I have no intention of being difficult, of trying to prolong the situation.’
There was a dangerous flash in Rafael’s eyes before they narrowed to conceal anything further. He said nothing.
‘If you have already had the papers drawn up...’ she was babbling now, in her hurry to get this over with ‘...and it’s just a matter of signature I can sign straight away and—’
‘Let me stop you there, Charlotte.’ Raising a hand, he silenced her, a gold cufflink glinting in the low afternoon light. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘The divorce, of course.’ Lottie felt heat rising to her cheeks at the very use of the dreaded d word. ‘I know I am here because you want a divorce.’
Rafael leant forward, the fine fabric of his jacket pulling taut against his broad shoulders as his elbows rested on the desk in front of him, his hands linked.