The Throne He Must Take

by Chantelle Shaw

  He knew why Ralph had chosen Cortez to be his heir. Ralph had blamed him, Jarek, for Lorna Saunderson’s death, and Jarek had for once agreed with his adoptive father.

  He was haunted by memories of when his adoptive mother had been fatally shot by an armed raider during a robbery at a jeweller’s. The four years that had passed since that terrible day had not dimmed the images in his mind of Lorna lying crumpled on the floor, and Elin kneeling beside her sobbing hysterically. The keening cry his sister had given when she’d realised that her adored mama was dead would echo in his head for ever.

  In Sarajevo, Jarek had seen the bodies of dead soldiers and heard the rattling last breaths of young men—some of whom had been teenagers, only a few years older than him. He’d thought that nothing could be worse than the atrocities he’d seen in that bloody and brutal civil war, but the knowledge that Mama had died because of his reckless attempt to overpower the gunman was an agony that would be with him for ever.

  He would never forgive himself, even though Elin loyally insisted that he wasn’t to blame.

  It had been his idea to set up a charity to support orphans in honour of Lorna Saunderson and, ironically, his willingness to take risks on the stockmarket meant he had earned a fortune for Lorna’s Gift. It was some kind of reparation for what he had done, but nothing would ever ease his guilt.

  God knew what a psychologist would make of him if he ever revealed the dark torment in his soul, Jarek thought grimly. But he had no intention of exploring his emotions with the deliciously sexy Dr Maitland.

  Some things were best left alone—which was why he had decided not to respond to the request he had received from the head of the National Council of Vostov, asking him to have a DNA test which might prove that he was related to Vostov’s royal family, who had all perished in a car accident twenty years ago.

  There was no possibility that it could be true, he assured himself. The idea was ridiculous. But what if his nightmares were not simply horrific figments of his imagination? his conscience whispered. It would mean that the images in his mind were of real events, real people...his parents.

  At the orphanage he had been told that his mother and father had been killed early in the war, when the apartment block where they’d lived had been destroyed by a bomb. Jarek and his baby sister had been pulled from the rubble and the trauma had wiped out all his memories of his life before that day.

  He’d accepted the explanation eventually—after he had been beaten by the orphanage staff whenever he’d talked about his strange dreams. But now his nightmares had returned, more vivid and terrible than when he was a boy. And if the scenes that played out in his subconscious mind were real events then he had something even more devastating than his adoptive mother’s death on his conscience.

  Jarek pushed his hair off his brow and acknowledged that if he had not been stuck halfway up a mountain he would have headed to the nearest bar and sought to escape the demons inside him with another bottle of vodka and an attractive blonde—or two. He remembered the girls at Bibiana’s Bar and for a moment was tempted to take the four-by-four parked outside the chalet and drive himself to Arlenwald, to hook up with Halfrida and her friends.

  It would be worth it just to ruffle Dr Maitland’s feathers.

  His lips twitched as he remembered Holly’s outraged expression when she’d discovered him in the bar. The truth was he would like to do more than ruffle her, he brooded. His body stirred as he pictured her delectable curves. She was an intriguing mix of uptight schoolmistress and sensual siren, and Jarek couldn’t remember the last time he had been intrigued by a woman.

  If she had been someone other than his psychologist... Hell, if he had been someone else—someone better than the man he knew he was—he would have enjoyed allowing their mutual sexual attraction to reach its logical conclusion and taken her to bed.

  But Holly had stated that she wanted to find out what made him tick, and he was utterly determined to prevent her from uncovering the secrets buried deep in his soul.

  CHAPTER THREE

  JAREK FOUND AN outlet for his restless energy in the chalet’s gym. He could think of other, more enjoyable ways to get hot and sweaty than pounding his fists into a punch-bag. But he had promised his brother-in-law there would be no more scandalous stories about his personal life in the tabloids—which meant that until Elin’s baby was born he had to keep away from bars and airhead blondes who were attracted to his multi-millionaire status and bad-boy image.

  The truth was he’d never cared about what was printed about him—which was mostly lies. Any publicity, good or bad, was publicity for Lorna’s Gift, and he seized every opportunity to promote the vital work of the charity.

  But Elin’s husband Cortez took a different view.

  ‘Elin gets upset when she sees your name in newspaper headlines or on the pages of gossip magazines, invariably with intimate details of your sex-life,’ Cortez had warned him. ‘She has gestational high blood pressure, which could lead to more serious complications with her pregnancy, and her obstetrician says it is crucial she doesn’t suffer any stress that could cause her blood pressure to rise even higher.’

  Jarek shared his brother-in-law’s concern. Elin and Cortez had not been together when Elin had nearly died giving birth to their first child, and it had been Jarek who had sat by her bed in ITU, willing her to pull through for the sake of her baby son in the hospital nursery.

  There were worse places to spend the next few weeks than the spectacular Austrian Alps, he mused. Chalet Soline offered six-star luxury, and next to the well-equipped gym there was a sauna room while outside on the decked area stood a hot tub. He would find it relaxing after his punishing workout to lie in a bubbling hot tub and look up at the snow-covered mountains, or count the stars that glittered diamond-bright in the night sky.

  But when he glanced at his watch he realised he did not have time before Professor Heppel arrived.

  About to head back to his room, to shower before dinner, he glanced out of a window and noticed that the lights had been switched on around the hot tub. Steam was curling up from the surface of the water, forming wispy white clouds against the black night sky.

  Jarek stopped dead and stared at the figure of a woman rising out of the steam like a mystical goddess. And what a figure! He swallowed as he watched Holly wade across to the edge of the pool. It was no exaggeration to say that she was a goddess, with an hourglass figure that was reminiscent of the silver screen sirens from a previous era, like Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor.

  She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit with cut-out sections at the sides that drew attention to her slender waist. Jarek wanted to explore the tantalising areas of her bare skin on display with his hands. He lifted his eyes higher to her voluptuous breasts, barely contained within the tiny triangles of gold material that formed the bra cups of the swimsuit, and felt himself harden. He was fascinated by her daring choice of swimwear, which was such a contrast to the unexciting clothes she’d worn earlier.

  Moving his gaze lower, he followed the rounded curves of her hips and her toned thighs, exposed by the swimsuit’s high-cut legs.

  Who was the real Holly? he wondered. The serious psychologist, or the sizzling sex bomb who made the blood thunder in his veins? His body felt taut and energised after his gym workout and he wanted—quite possibly more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, he discovered—to pull Holly beneath him and ease her stretchy swimsuit aside so that he could thrust his rock-solid erection home.

  It was lucky he had worn loose sweatpants for his session in the gym, Jarek thought derisively. He was so turned on by the sight of Holly in her barely there swimsuit that he felt he might explode.

  His common sense told him to head back to his room. But he rarely heeded good advice.

  The temperature outside the chalet was way below zero, and as the icy air hit his heated skin every nerve-ending in his body tingled.

  Jarek allowed the door to thud closed behind him as
he stepped outside onto the wooden decking. The sound caused Holly to jerk her head round, and she gave a startled cry when she saw him, followed by a curse when she dropped the towel that she had just picked up from the deck into the water.

  ‘You startled me. I thought you were working in the study,’ she muttered in an embarrassed voice, as if he had caught her naked—which she very nearly was, Jarek mused as he roamed his eyes over her insubstantial swimsuit and felt the ache in his groin clamour to be appeased.

  He did not reply, for the simple reason that he could not think of anything to say—couldn’t think of anything at all but how utterly perfect she was with her skin flushed pink from the heat of the hot tub and a deeper flush on her pretty face.

  Her hair was piled on top of her head and loose tendrils curled about her cheeks. She was a luscious goddess, and he wanted nothing more than to drop to his knees in front of her to worship her bounteous beauty with his mouth and explore every secret place on her body with his tongue.

  He was jolted from his sexual haze by the sound of her clipped voice.

  ‘Would you please pass me another towel? There’s a pile of clean towels on the shelf outside the sauna room,’ she said when he didn’t move, just stared at her while he tried to control the conflagration of lust that burned down to his bones.

  ‘Jarek, for heaven’s sake—I’m freezing.’

  He couldn’t tear his gaze from the prominent points of her nipples, clearly outlined beneath her clingy swimsuit. His mouth went dry as he imagined peeling the swimsuit from her breasts to feast his eyes and then his lips on those provocative peaks.

  Somehow he forced himself to turn and walk into the house, and he grabbed a towel before retracing his steps back across the decking.

  Holly held out her hand for the towel, but Jarek did not pass it to her immediately. ‘First let your hair down,’ he growled.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Her brown eyes widened.

  There was shock, anger and something else that was harder to define but made him ache even more, in her expression.

  ‘Do you want me to catch pneumonia?’

  She didn’t wait for him to reply—which was probably a good thing, he acknowledged, because he would have to admit that what he wanted was her legs wrapped around his back.

  Throwing him a look of sheer irritation, she lifted her hands up and released the clip on top of her head so that her hair tumbled down around her shoulders in glossy waves of rich chocolate-brown. ‘Satisfied?’

  He doubted he would ever be satisfied again with the too thin, too blonde, brittle women who came and went from his bed in an endless stream of unmemorable sexual encounters. They always came, he thought sardonically. He was as good at sex as he was at making money, yet neither activity ever filled the emptiness inside him.

  Finally he heeded his common sense, aware that indulging his sexual desire for Holly might satisfy him temporarily but that he would soon grow bored of her. It was just how he was: ‘a restless soul’, Mama had once described him, while his adoptive father had accused him of being reckless. Ralph had been proved right.

  He gave Holly the towel and she immediately dragged it around her shoulders to hide her gorgeous body from him before she stepped out of the hot tub and stalked back to the chalet.

  Jarek caught up with her in a few long strides. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded, placing his hand on her arm to prevent her walking through the door that led from the gym annexe into the main part of the house.

  ‘Where else would I be?’ She tensed beneath his hand and with obvious reluctance raised her eyes to his face.

  ‘I assumed you had gone to wherever you live. Do you rent a place in Salzburg? Or is there staff accommodation at the Frieden Clinic, where we met earlier?’

  She frowned. ‘I live here—at Chalet Soline. When I’m in London I share a flat with a friend, but for my job with the Frieden Clinic I am required to live at one of the clinic’s residences so that I can provide psychological support around the clock. Every member of the clinical team is assigned to a chalet, where they treat patients on an individual basis. Professor Heppel came up with the radical approach of providing access to twenty-four-seven treatment, rather than sessions which last for an hour once or twice a week. His highly successful method is explained in the brochure that you didn’t bother to read—and I also explained the set-up when I met you at the clinic’s reception centre earlier today. But you seemed more interested in reading a story in the newspaper than listening to me.’

  Holly’s disapproving tone reminded Jarek of the headmistress who had expelled him from his exclusive private school at the age of fifteen, after he had been caught smuggling alcohol into the school and selling it to the other boys. He had argued that his business venture had shown entrepreneurial spirit, but the headmistress had warned that his rebellious nature would ultimately be his ruin.

  He thought of the newspaper headline that had seized his attention when he had arrived at the Frieden Clinic.

  What did happen to Vostov’s royal children?

  Jarek feared the answer was buried in his subconscious mind, and that his nightmares might reveal a truth that was too shocking for him to contemplate. Certainly he could not risk Holly hearing him shout out in his sleep, as had happened on one of the rare occasions when he had spent a whole night with a woman he had picked up in a bar.

  The next morning Tara... Tyra—he hadn’t taken much heed of her name—had said he’d kept her awake with his shouting and maybe he should talk to a psychiatrist or something about the crazy stuff in his head.

  Jarek’s chosen method of preventing his bad dreams was to drink enough vodka until he was unconscious. But without access to alcohol God knew what his nightmares might reveal.

  He realised that Holly was speaking again. ‘I believe you will find it beneficial to be able to discuss issues with your therapist whenever you need to, instead of having to wait for an allotted time for treatment sessions. If you want to talk to me in the middle of the night you can ring through to my room and wake me up. Part of my job is to be available whenever you want me.’

  ‘Is that so...?’

  Jarek felt the hard thud of his pulse and knew he had to resist it—had to resist her. There was a curious innocence about Holly that made him want to protect her from himself.

  ‘There is only one reason why I would wake you in the middle of the night, angel-face,’ he drawled, ‘and it wouldn’t be because I want to talk.’

  He watched a scarlet stain spread over her face and wondered when he had last seen a woman blush. For a few seconds he felt a tug of regret, because he could not allow this shimmering, ephemeral thing between them that was something other than sexual attraction—something more—to flourish. He was who he was: reckless, rebellious, with a knack of destroying everything that was good in his life.

  ‘There you go again with the sexual innuendo.’ She put her head on one side and studied him intently. ‘Are you trying to frighten me? Because I have to tell you that you aren’t succeeding.’

  ‘You should be afraid of me,’ he said roughly. ‘I am everything you have read about me and worse.’ He wanted to shout at her that he didn’t deserve the sympathy he could see in her velvet brown eyes. His jaw clenched. ‘This is a complication I don’t need right now.’

  She wrinkled her nose and Jarek swore silently. He didn’t do cute, his brain insisted, but his body paid no attention.

  ‘What do you mean by “this”? she asked, looking puzzled.

  He stretched out his hand and jerked the edges of the towel she was clutching around her from her fingers. With a cry of protest she tried to snatch it back, but he whipped it away from her body and trailed his eyes with slow deliberation over her skimpy swimsuit. Desire kicked hard in his gut as he stared at her lush breasts, half-spilling over the top of the swimsuit, and the hard points of her nipples that betrayed her so sweetly.

  ‘This,’ he growled, moving his hand over her body from her throat to
her hips, but not actually touching her. Not quite.

  He heard her catch her breath and it took all his will power to resist stroking his fingertips across her skin.

  ‘You can deny the sexual attraction between us all you like,’ he taunted, ‘but your body is sending out a different message.’

  He dropped his gaze to where the sides of her swimsuit were cut away and decided he would happily give away his entire fortune if he could trace his hands over the tantalising areas of bare skin. But if he touched her he did not trust himself to be able to stop. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so hungry for a woman, but no doubt the restless ache inside him was because he hadn’t had sex for almost a month.

  He wanted Holly so badly simply because she was there in front of him, wearing a sexy swimsuit, and because he’d never had to deny himself a woman before.

  It was an inconvenient time to discover that he had scruples, he thought sardonically. Delectable Dr Maitland was off-limits, and he had to content himself with stepping closer to her.

  He noticed the pulse at the base of her throat beating erratically. ‘Believe me, I’m tempted to accept the invitation you are sending out, angel-face,’ he told her softly. ‘But it will cause a lot less trouble for both of us if I cancel my booking with the clinic before we do something that you might regret and I will forget far too easily.’

  Anger flashed in her eyes. ‘Any invitation is purely in your imagination,’ she said tightly. And then a note of panic edged into her voice. ‘You can’t be thinking of leaving the Frieden Clinic? You told me that you had assured your brother-in-law you would undergo psychotherapy to deal with your anger issues and allay your sister’s concerns about you.’