Frustrated, she gave up on trying to go back to sleep, wrapped herself in a thin cotton robe and clipped the portable baby monitor to the pocket. The clever gadget had been delivered the day after her arrival, along with a whole host of other items, including boxes and boxes of clothing for both her and Liam. In the haze of her sleep deprivation at the time she hadn’t had the energy to insist she would pay for the items. But she knew she must repay Duarte somehow. She refused to fall under the spell of a rich man and then begin to feel like she owed him something.
Lost in thought, she almost missed the faint sound outside the house, but her heightened senses alerted her to the fact that something wasn’t right. Frozen in place, she hardly breathed as the sound came closer to the large plate-glass windows that lined the back of the house. In the absence of the moon, she could see nothing but shadows and the crash of the waves in the distance below the cliffs made it hard to distinguish what exactly was out of place.
But then she heard it again. Footsteps on gravel, slow and deliberate. Heavy steps—much too heavy for the delicate, swanlike nurse or the housekeeper, neither of whom would be outside in the dark in the middle of the night.
Her brain made quick calculations as she moved instinctively to the side of the doors, out of sight. A tall shadow moved along the glass in her peripheral vision and Nora felt panic climb in her throat. All too quickly the quiet sound of the catch sliding sideways in the doorframe became apparent. To her horror, it seemed to have been left unlocked.
She watched as the door slid slowly open and the intruder pushed their tall, hulking frame inside.
Duarte felt his breath rushing in his lungs, hardly believing the events of this night. He’d been less than ten minutes from the villa when one of his security guards had informed him there was a break-in in progress. Two large men in a dark blue car had arrived shortly after midnight and managed to scale the gates.
Duarte and the guard had arrived just as the intruders had overpowered the second guard he’d left in charge of the surveillance of his home and its occupants.
Fury such as he had never known had possessed him as he had attacked the men and subdued them, using perhaps a little more force than necessary. His knuckles had become bloody, marking his white shirt and dark trousers, and he’d growled into his phone for his investigation team to send a van to pick the intruders up and take them for questioning. He’d left his security team to handle the rest, needing to get inside and ensure that Nora and the baby were unharmed.
Something about the two burly intruders snagged on his memory. He stepped into the darkened kitchen, feeling a memory surface like a television screen coming into focus. He froze with one hand still on the door handle, his mind conjuring an image of himself being thrown into a dark room, the smell of damp earth mingling with the scent of the sea in his nose. And then there had been Valerio’s furious voice, asking him if the woman had been behind everything.
The woman?
He pulled at the details, hoping for more, cursing as he felt them slip away.
He heard the movement behind him too late. Something hit him with sharp force behind his knees, jolting his equilibrium and sending him down onto the porcelain tiles. He landed on his left shoulder. The pain lanced through him like fire, a primal roar ripping from his throat.
A blur of white moved in his peripheral vision—someone trying to step over him in the narrow space. On autopilot, after months of running on his survival instinct he reached out, grasping bare flesh. The skin was butter-soft, his brain registered, and his thoughts were confused between defence and attack. He tightened his grip but did not pull, straining his eyes upwards in the darkness.
His hesitation was all his opponent needed to turn the tables.
Within seconds he found himself pinned to the floor, with something cold and metal pressed tight against his sternum. A familiar lavender scent drifted to his nostrils and his eyes finally adjusted enough for him to make out a cloud of familiar red curls.
‘Nora...’ he breathed, shocked to feel his body instantly react to the sight of the wide-open split of the white nightgown she wore. ‘It’s okay. I’m—’
‘I’ve got a high-voltage electronic Taser here, so I wouldn’t try to move.’ She cut him off, pressing her knee down harder onto his shoulder to prove her point. ‘I’ve already pressed the panic button, so don’t try anything.’
‘Listen, I’m not—’
‘How did he find out I was here?’ she gritted out, and there was a slight tremor in her voice even as she kept her aim firmly at the base of his throat.
Duarte froze, taking in the confidence in her pose, the steel in her voice. He had to admit he was both impressed by such obvious skill and worried about where she’d honed it. Why it might have been a necessity.
Suddenly, her hurry to leave the hospital took on a much darker tone...
‘I don’t know who he is.’ He spoke slowly, trying not to wince at the pressure of her knee on his injured shoulder. ‘I’m here because I own this house.’
She froze, easing up on her pressure with a single jerky movement. Her voice was a shocked whisper. ‘Duarte...?’
‘In the flesh.’
She scrambled to her feet and Duarte tried but failed to avert his gaze from another tantalising glimpse of those long bare legs. The lights were turned on suddenly, momentarily blinding him as he pulled himself up to a seated position. His left arm hung limply at his side, and a familiar burning pain was travelling from his neck to the top of his shoulder blade before disappearing into numbness.
Partially dislocated, he’d bet. After months of gruelling physiotherapy sessions, he recognised the symptoms of his recurring injury.
‘I’m so sorry... I thought you were someone else.’ She stood on the opposite side of the kitchen, arms folded across her chest. ‘A burglar.’
‘Do you routinely confront dangerous intruders and pin them down for questioning?’ he drawled, moving to stand up.
The pain in his shoulder intensified, taking his breath for a moment and putting stars in his vision. He sat back against the glass door with a growl.
‘You’re covered in blood!’ She moved towards him, her face a mask of shock and concern. ‘What on earth...?’
‘Not from you.’ He breathed deeply against the lancing pain. ‘I was in a fight.’
His first instinct was to brush off her concerns—male pride winning out over his need for assistance. His shoulder was the last stubborn remnant of his injuries, along with the memory loss. There was an angry, bitter part of him that would rather languish in agony than admit any further weakness. But then Nora leaned down, gently placing one hand on his arm, and his mind seemed to go blank.
‘But this is from me.’ She spoke softly, the flash of her silver eyes briefly meeting his own. ‘Is it your shoulder or your arm?’
‘Shoulder. It wasn’t entirely your fault.’
He felt the warmth of her skin through the material of his shirt as she lifted the sleeve. The scent of lavender grew stronger.
Duarte closed his eyes, clearing his throat. ‘It’s fine. It’s an old injury.’
She snatched her hand back as though burned and he tried not to mourn the loss of contact.
With a deep inward breath, he pinned his arm to his chest as he slowly moved to stand up. ‘Besides, I was lucky you were far too busy threatening me and asking questions to do any real damage.’
The slim black device in her hand caught his eye; he could now see it was not a Taser at all but a digital monitor. The small screen showed an image of a sleeping infant. A hollow laugh escaped his lips.
Nora frowned, realising he’d noticed her deception. ‘I... I had to think on my feet.’
‘You’re quite practised in that, it would seem.’
Her posture changed at his comment, her shoulders straightening and her lips pressing into
a thin line. But still she offered no explanation for her belief that she had been found by someone. Nor did she explain who that someone was.
Duarte had always been good at reading people, and right now he could see distrust settle into her eyes. She was the very definition of a flight risk, and if he had any hope of keeping her safe and finding out what her connection to his kidnapping was he needed to keep her here.
Almost as though she could hear his mind working, she took a step away, towards the living room. ‘I should be getting back to bed...’
‘Not so fast.’
She turned back and placed both hands defensively on her hips.
‘I need your help with this,’ he said. ‘I don’t think your nurse would be happy to be awoken at this hour.’
‘I... I’m not a medical professional. Could you take something for the pain?’
‘I know what I’m doing. I just need your hands.’
‘My hands?’ she repeated, eyeing the space between them with a strange expression.
Duarte tried not to feel affronted by her obvious reluctance to touch him. ‘It’s the least you can do, really, after you knocked me to the ground without effort.’ He raised a brow in challenge.
When the barest smile touched her lips Duarte felt something inside him ease. She had clearly known fear in her life, and to think she had been afraid of him had made something dark and heavy settle right in the centre of his chest.
When she moved to stop beside him he deliberately avoided her gaze, needing a moment to clear his thoughts and ready himself for the manoeuvre.
‘Will it hurt?’ she asked quietly, her teeth worrying her lower lip.
‘It’s not without pain, but it’s quick and then I’ll be able to sleep. If you let me guide your hands, I’ll show you.’
She placed both her hands into his much larger ones and Duarte felt again that strange echo of memory in the back of his mind as he took in the contrast of her porcelain skin against his dark brown tones. Brushing off the sensation, he placed her palms on the front of his shoulder, right where the pain burned most. As expected, her touch intensified the discomfort, but he instructed her to hold her grip. Her eyes were wide with fear and yet she did as she was told, keeping her hands steadfastly in position.
He told her how and when to apply counter-pressure and then did a quick countdown, biting down on his lower lip as he quickly guided his joint to where it needed to go with a swift jerk. The muffled roar that escaped his lips was quite mild in comparison to other times, when he’d been forced to do this alone.
He took a few deep breaths as the pain ebbed, and when he opened his eyes she was in front of him with a glass of water and two aspirin, which he accepted.
‘That’s not the first time you’ve done that...’ Nora frowned at him, her expression troubled as she watched him drink the water, leaving the medication untouched.
‘My memory is not the only part of my body that has been injured. I have a whole collection of scars owed to my time in captivity and the men behind it all. They were an energetic bunch of guys.’
Duarte thought of the memory he’d recovered earlier and felt a shiver run down his spine.
She stood close enough for him to see her eyes move to the long thin scar that moved from his temple down behind his ear. ‘Duarte, I’m so sorry.’
He hadn’t heard her speak his name since that first day in the rain. The sound of it on her lips, the way it rolled smoothly off her tongue...something about it called to him.
‘Why should you be sorry? It’s not your fault.’
At that she looked away, clearing the glass into the sink. With her back turned, Duarte took a moment to sweep his gaze along the length of her body, noticing her narrow waist and lush curves. It had only been a month since she’d given birth and the woman looked like she could step onto a catwalk.
His initial attraction to her had deeply perplexed him, considering her delicate condition, as had the depth to which she had become engrained in his thoughts in the weeks since. He’d deliberately been staying late at work in the city so he could get past whatever madness had taken over his mind since finding Miss Nora Beckett and becoming her unwitting protector.
He was not usually the kind of man who got off on rescuing damsels in distress; he didn’t feel the need to bolster his own masculinity. She was a beautiful woman and his libido responded to her as such—nothing more. The fact that he had not felt a similar attraction to any other equally attractive woman was just circumstantial.
Although truthfully, he hadn’t been looking at women very hard, preferring to dive deeply into his work and avoid distraction as he fought to make up for the time he’d lost.
He had promised her five weeks before he would question her again, but tonight had changed everything. The suspicions he’d had that she was in danger had just been confirmed with that break-in—as well as her words as she’d pinned him down—and he needed answers.
Nora took deep breaths to push down the wave of sorrow that threatened to overtake her at seeing the extent of the pain Duarte had suffered up close. She had felt the strange effects of her hormones shifting since Liam’s birth, but this was so much more. This was an echo of grief. The tears fell fast and heavy down her cheeks as she tried in earnest to turn her face away from Duarte’s perceptive gaze.
‘Are you crying?’
She heard him move from his seat and his hand was suddenly on her shoulder, turning her to face him before she could wipe her face or move away. His feather-light touch gently guided her chin so she was forced to look up at him.
‘You didn’t hurt me, honestly.’ He spoke quickly, one hand covering hers and gently stroking across her knuckles with the pad of his thumb.
She shivered, remembering him doing that before, what felt like a lifetime ago. She felt an insane urge to ask him if he remembered that night. If he remembered that he had told her how breathtaking she looked right before he’d kissed her senseless.
It had been their first kiss—the first of many over the long month of their whirlwind romance.
With his golden eyes on hers, Nora experienced a mad desire to lean in and feel his lips under hers again. Just one more time. She felt her tongue trace the edge of her own bottom lip, saw him follow the movement. His fingers flexed on her wrist and she could see a muscle in his jaw tick ever so subtly.
‘Why can’t I stop thinking about doing this?’ he murmured, his eyes dark as he leaned forward slightly and brushed his lips across hers.
Nora inhaled sharply at the contact, hardly believing it. Judging by the sudden widening of his eyes, he was just as shocked at himself. But the shock was short lived and Nora reached up on tiptoe and wound her arms around his neck, touching her lips to his again, seeking the heat of him.
Without warning, he took a step forward and spanned her waist with his big hands, holding her in place as she was pressed back against the kitchen units. The sleek wood was cool against her back and the hard, blazing heat of him engulfed her front. There was no softness in his kiss now...only fire and need. He somehow managed to be delicate even as his lips took hers in an almost brutal sensuous rhythm.
She heard herself moan against his mouth and felt him move even closer, one hand cupping her jaw as he deepened the kiss.
In the months after she’d lost him she’d lain in bed and tried to conjure up the memory of his kisses. They’d only spent a month together—a month of scattered secret moments in between his travelling and her own duties to her father’s organisation. They’d spent most of their time in bed...and yet it had felt like so much more.
She’d thought her memory vivid, but right now she knew nothing had done justice to what it actually felt like to be in his arms, his sinful mouth demanding and coaxing... And she also knew exactly what it would feel like to guide him up to the master bedroom and re-enact every detail of her dreams...
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She froze, pressing her hands against Duarte’s chest and putting a few inches of space between their lips. He frowned, his amber eyes black with desire. And then that frown deepened and she felt the atmosphere suddenly shift.
Duarte took a few steps away, bracing his hands on the marble counter of the kitchen island as he continued to breathe heavily.
‘You have been lying to me, Nora.’
Duarte’s voice was a sharp boom in the stillness. He turned back to face her, amber eyes narrowed with suspicion.
‘That was not the first time we’ve kissed, was it?’
CHAPTER FIVE
NORA CLOSED HER EYES, knowing she had made a fatal error.
‘Answer me,’ he demanded.
All trace of passion from their kiss had gone from his face.
‘No. It wasn’t the first time.’ Nora whispered, closing her eyes tightly as if to block out the weight of her words as she spoke them.
‘We were together.’ He said quietly.
It took her a moment to process the fact that his words were a statement rather than a question.
A strange look transformed his dark features. ‘We were...lovers.’
His words were like a whip against her frayed nerves and for a moment she feared that he had got his memories back—that he would figure out that he was Liam’s father and she would be completely at the mercy of his anger. But then she looked up into his eyes and saw a brief flash of uncertainty as he waited for her to speak.
She had always been a terrible con-artist. Her father had tried and tried to toughen her up and mould her to fit in with the other female operatives in his criminal empire, Novos Lideres. She was too innocent, he’d said. But that innocence had long ago been taken from her in so many ways.
She straightened her shoulders and met Duarte’s eyes. ‘We went on a couple of dates, Duarte. I saw no reason to further complicate things for you over a minor detail.’
‘You are still lying.’
His words were a menacing growl. He took a step forward, closing the gap between them.
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