“We have to move fast,” she’d said. “My brother—”
“I need sleep,” he’d interrupted. He’d drunk enough on the plane to kill a horse—and a lot of pain. He was in no shape to do anything.
She’d tried batting her eyelashes at him. “Please. I need your help.”
Her eyes were an odd shade between purple and blue, and he’d felt himself falling into them. He’d managed to say, “I know that probably works with most of the men you meet. I’m immune.”
She’d stuck her hands on her hips and those beautiful violet eyes had flashed angrily.
He’d felt himself go hard as a rock and realized he was as susceptible to her wiles as any other red-blooded male, ready and willing to do whatever it took to please her—and get her flat on her back. He hadn’t been hungry for a woman in a very long time. Right then he’d felt ravenous.
“You work for me,” she’d snapped.
“I don’t like bossy women.”
“I’m not bossy, I’m your boss.” She seemed to realize she was losing her cool, because she took a deep breath and let it out, then muttered, “If a savage like you is capable of telling the subtle difference between the two.”
He’d have been happy to have her lead the way—in bed. Not much chance of that. She’d made it plain that she considered him a dumb brute. He’d crossed his arms to keep himself from pulling her into them and said, “I’m my own boss.”
She was clearly desperate, because she laid a hand on his forearm and said, in a sultry voice that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, “Please.”
A shaft of desire shot like an arrow through his body. “Look, lady,” he said, his voice harsh with sexual need, “I’m going to be a lot more useful to you when my head is clear.” Which it sure as hell wasn’t. He felt off-kilter with her standing so close.
He could smell some kind of flowery stuff in her hair, which was tied up tight on the back of her head. He’d wanted to let it down and sift his fingers through it and see if it was as soft and silky as it looked.
“Time is of the essence,” she pleaded. “Couldn’t you just make a few phone calls to whatever contacts you have?”
He realized he was ready to do anything she asked, go anywhere she wanted. The last time he’d been that vulnerable to a woman she’d walked away and left him high and dry. His heart still hurt from that fiasco. Better to nip this attraction in the bud.
“No, I can’t,” he’d said. “Good night.”
“It’s morning!” she’d shot back.
That had been eight hours ago. Joe winced as he stood, remembering how he’d backed up and firmly shut the bedroom door in her beautiful, incredulous face. Time to get moving. He took a step and nearly howled with pain.
He was trembling and covered with sweat by the time he made it to the bathroom. No wonder the army had kicked him out. No wonder his fiancée had left him. No wonder his sister had shoved him out of the house and onto that plane. No wonder the most beautiful woman he’d ever met had looked at him with disdain.
“Aw, hell,” he muttered. The likes of Lady Lydia Benedict was not for him. Besides, he wasn’t going to give another woman a chance to kick him when he was down.
He was still peeing when he heard a crisp, British-accented male voice address the woman in the next room.
Chapter Five
Lydia realized that Sam Warren was finally awake when she heard the distinct sound of a male peeing like a racehorse. She grimaced. That was the sort of expression her mother abhorred and her father commonly used. Lydia tried to emulate the best of each of her parents, but too often she feared the opposite was true. She could never quite please either one of them.
Being both brainy and beautiful complicated everything. Beauty was a “get out of jail free” card for life. Men were awestruck. Women were envious. Both sexes gave her the benefit of the doubt when she got herself into trouble. And her family, well, as the baby of the lot, they gave her the greatest leeway of all.
Her brains made her judgmental of others, something she was ashamed of, and encouraged her to take risks, because she was so certain she could think her way out of any trouble she got herself into.
There was no thinking herself out of the situation she was in now. What she’d done this time, taking the Ghost without permission and then losing it, was beyond the pale. Her mother would be furious. Her father would be disappointed. Her eldest brother, Oliver, would chastise her. And the rest of her brothers—Riley, Payne, and Max—would laugh at her.
She hated being laughed at. Their laughter was dismissive, as though their little sister was of no account. She’d tried so hard to be more than beautiful, to use her intelligence to do something productive, but she didn’t have much to show for twenty-five years of living. She stared in the direction of the noise still coming from the other room.
For heaven’s sake! Couldn’t the man have closed the bathroom door? Sam Warren was crude, rude, and disgusting.
And her only hope.
She’d been waiting all day for the Texan to wake up, praying he’d have some idea where she should start her search for the Ghost, because she couldn’t think of a single place to look. She wondered why Warren had asked her to call him Joe, when his name was Sam, but decided it must be some American nickname. She’d thought he would be older, but apparently not. According to her mother’s personal assistant, this Joe Warren character was an exceptional private investigator.
Lydia had her doubts. She rose from the sofa, where she’d been watching the latest news on the TV in Italian, and headed toward the bedroom to confront the American PI. She was interrupted by a knock at her hotel room door and hurried to answer it, since she was expecting the delivery of several packages. When she opened the door, she found an unwelcome guest.
Her escort to the masked ball the previous evening, Harold Delaford, Earl of Sumpter, son and heir of the Marquess of Tenby, stood before her, holding an exquisite bouquet of violets.
“Hello, Harry,” she said, standing in the doorway to block his entrance.
“It’s Harold,” he corrected with a smile that revealed very white, if slightly crooked, front teeth. “These are for you.”
The first time they’d met, Harold Delaford had remarked that her eyes reminded him of violets. Ever since, he’d brought her violets whenever he came calling.
“What do you want, Harold?”
He handed her the small bouquet and stepped into the room past her, as though she weren’t standing in his way trying to keep him out. “Why haven’t you answered any of my calls?”
Because I’ve lost the Ghost of Ali Pasha. “I’ve been busy,” she said. “You can’t stay, Harold.”
He turned and flipped the privacy lock on the door, then added the bolt that guaranteed no one would interrupt them. “We need to talk.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I believe I deserve an answer to the question I asked you at the ball,” the earl said.
Lydia lifted her chin. “What question was that?”
Harold dropped to one knee in front of her, which revealed the small bald spot at the top of his head. “Does this ring any bells?”
She hated herself for caring whether Harold still had all his hair. Really, the hair wasn’t the problem. It was the man wearing it. Harold was arrogant to the point of being unkind to lesser mortals like waiters and housemaids. He was too wealthy for his own good, and good-looking enough, if not quite handsome, to have cut a swath through the beauties of his generation.
She preferred not to be one of them.
Night before last, at the masked ball, Harold hadn’t bothered getting down on one knee. He’d phrased his marriage proposal in terms that suggested he thought her answer, her positive answer, was a foregone conclusion. She’d been whisked away by a dance partner before she could respond. She’d kept her distance the rest of the evening, or as much of the evening as she could remember. She still had no idea how she’d ended up
in her hotel room.
Who had drugged her? Who had taken her back to her hotel room? And why had he only stolen the Ghost, when he could have taken from her something very much more precious?
Fortunately, her dignity had remained intact, even if her trust in mankind had been shattered. Oh, how she wished she could love Harold! It would have made everything so much easier.
The earl was courting her with her father’s permission and approval. She’d simply gone along for the ride, never dreaming that Harold would push so soon for an engagement, let alone marriage. She’d learned too late that Harold was more than ready to settle down. He’d been working in his father’s import-export business for the past fifteen years, which made him what seemed to her a very ancient thirty-eight.
Lydia wasn’t in love with the earl, but she’d continued dating him because she’d wanted to please her father. She’d kept hoping she would fall in love with him. It hadn’t happened. In fact, she liked Harold less the more she got to know him.
To her horror, she heard the shower start running in the bathroom. She wondered when it would dawn on Harold that she couldn’t be in the shower if she was standing here in front of him. She wondered what Harold would do if he knew another man was in her hotel bedroom.
Surprisingly, her mother hadn’t approved of Harold Delaford as a prospective spouse. In fact, the Duchess had warned her to avoid all contact with him. When pressed, her mother had refused to give Lydia a reason for her dislike of the earl. In the end, it had been easier to date him to please her father than to avoid him to please her mother.
Her parents, Bella and Bull, were strange creatures to have ended up together. Her father was a larger-than-life character. An American by birth, he was the younger brother of Foster Benedict, an advisor to the American president. Bull had increased his father’s banking fortune until he was one of the richest men in America.
Her mother, Bella, was the Duchess of Blackthorne, a title she held by virtue of the heroism, and subsequent death, of all her male forebears in World War II. In order to keep the Blackthorne title from being extinguished, Parliament had declared the dukedom could pass in either the male or the female line.
As the elder of twin girls, Isabella Wharton had become the Duchess of Blackthorne at birth. She would hold the title until her death, when Lydia’s eldest brother, Oliver, currently Earl of Courtland, would become duke.
Lydia had always thought her parents’ love story was romantic. Twenty-nine-year-old Bull had been dating Bella’s second cousin when he’d met Bella at an embassy party in Washington, D.C. He’d fallen for seventeen-year-old Bella, and that had been the end of that. Bella and Bull were married a month later. Oliver had been born eight months after that.
A shadow crossed Lydia’s mind. Rumors persisted that Oliver wasn’t her father’s son, that Bella had forced her father into marriage to give some other man’s baby a name. Over the years, Oliver, the future Duke of Blackthorne, had been called bastard, and worse. It was a label difficult to deny, because her brown-eyed eldest brother had two blue-eyed parents.
Lydia had always thought it terribly unfair for Oliver to be punished for something that couldn’t possibly be his fault. Maybe that was why he was her favorite brother.
She wondered if her father had known the truth when he married her mother. Regardless of whether Bull had been forced to marry Bella, their marriage had become a love match, and they’d been happy together for twenty-five years. The past ten were another story entirely.
Despite her parents’ flaws, or perhaps because of them, she loved them desperately. Because her father was the most absent parent, she yearned for his approval. She wanted his love. She’d settle for having him notice her. Which was how she’d ended up with this unfortunate proposal from the Earl of Sumpter.
She found Harold’s appearance at her hotel suite annoying. With four older brothers, she was used to male bravado. She might even have found his visit amusing, if it hadn’t been for the man in the next room. She realized the shower was no longer running.
The earl grasped her hand and said, “Lydia, darling, will you marry me?”
She’d opened her mouth to respond when a brusque male voice demanded, “Tell me, honey, where the hell are my clothes?”
Chapter Six
The earl jumped to his feet and glared with narrowed eyes at the half-naked man. He turned to her and demanded, “What the bloody hell is he doing here?”
Lydia’s heart jumped to her throat as her gaze shot to the American who’d been sleeping in her bed.
Joe Warren stood stark naked except for a white towel wrapped low around his hips, his hair dripping in wet strands on forehead and nape. He leaned back against the door frame, cocked a brow, and waited.
Lydia stared at the triangle of dark curls on his broad chest. She was surprised to see that the jagged scar on his face continued down his body. It angled its way from his collar bone—across spectacular abs—all the way to his navel, disappearing under the edge of the towel. Once upon a time this warrior must have been bronzed and buff, but his deep tan had faded, and Lydia could see his ribs. His dark eyes met hers, then moved to the other man in the room.
Harold turned red in the face and glowered at Lydia. “Why do you have a half-naked man in your room?”
Lydia’s temper sparked at the earl’s presumption that he had any right to direct or control her behavior. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“I’m your fiancé,” Harold blustered.
“No, Harold, you’re not.”
The earl backed up a step. He looked shocked.
Lydia reached out to touch his arm, but he jerked away.
“I’m sorry, Harold. I should have told you when you asked the first time. I can’t marry you. I don’t love you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” he retorted.
It was Lydia’s turn to look shocked, although she knew she shouldn’t be. For centuries aristocrats had used marriages for alliances to secure kingdoms, to consolidate property, to continue dynasties. There was nothing so different about Harold’s proposal. It would unite two prosperous, upper-class British families. The beautiful daughter of a duchess was an appropriate wife for a wealthy earl who would someday be a marquess of the realm.
“My clothes?” Joe said into the silence.
“Oh. I—” Lydia heard a knock on the hotel room door and hoped it was the delivery she was expecting. She turned her back on both men and headed for the door. When she opened it she found a porter waiting with a valet cart stacked high with packages bearing designer labels. “Come in,” she said, smiling at the porter. “Please take everything to the bedroom.”
“What’s all this?” Harold said as the porter pushed past him.
“Clothes for Joe.” Lydia flushed when she realized how that must sound to the earl. “Joe doesn’t have—” She cut herself off. Whatever explanation she made would reveal far too much about her desperate circumstances. She put her hands on her hips, looked her would-be fiancé in the eye, and said, “You should leave, Harold.”
Harold stared daggers at Joe Warren, who’d stepped aside to allow the porter to push his load of packages into the only bedroom in the suite.
“Who the hell are you?” the earl asked in a crisp British voice.
“Who the hell are you?” Joe replied in his Texas drawl.
The earl bristled and turned his agitated gaze toward Lydia. “I want an explanation. What is a cur like this doing in your—”
“This isn’t what you think,” Lydia interrupted.
“Then what is it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
The earl lifted an aristocratic brow. “Can’t? Or won’t?”
“It’s the same thing,” Lydia said.
“We’ll see what your father has to say about this,” Harold threatened.
“What I do is none of Daddy’s business, either.”
“You think not?”
“Harold—
” Lydia bit her lip. She wasn’t going to beg him to hold his tongue. She knew her father hated a tattletale. Maybe Harold would blacken himself so much in Bull’s eyes that her father would decide that the earl wasn’t such a perfect suitor after all.
Harold started toward the door, then turned on his heel and crossed back to Joe. He stopped short, perhaps alarmed by a subtle change, a sudden threatening awareness, in Joe’s posture, and said through gritted teeth, “Keep your filthy hands off. She’s mine.”
Joe held his palms out to look at them, turned them over, and surveyed his knuckles. Obviously, right out of the shower, they were clean. He bunched his hands into fists as he met the earl’s gaze. Then he turned to Lydia, as though the earl was of no account, and said, “Give me a hint, honey. Where the hell are my clothes?”
Lydia was appalled. This stranger was throwing gasoline on a raging fire, with no concern for who might get burned in the conflagration. Harold was a powerful man with international connections in banking and politics. He could make life very difficult for someone like American PI Joe Warren.
She looked again and realized it was Harold who seemed to be in the greater immediate danger.
Unshaven, wearing barely a stitch of clothing and with no weapon except his fists, the American looked like a feral beast poised to attack.
Harold must have sensed the same menace Lydia perceived, because he suddenly backed up a step.
The American didn’t move so much as a hair.
Harold backed up another step and turned to Lydia. “I’ll be in touch after I speak to your father.” Then he turned and strode from the room.
The earl was followed almost immediately by the porter with his empty valet cart. Lydia grabbed some euros from an end table and put them in the porter’s hand as he crossed her path, then locked the hotel door behind him. She resisted the urge to sigh with relief. Instead, she crossed back to the private investigator she’d hired to help her find the Ghost and said, “Was that really necessary? Provoking Harold like that?”
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