But their enforced proximity had not been the only reason, a nasty little voice in her head taunted her. She had thrown herself at him with all the finesse of a gauche teenager. It was likely that he had kissed her out of politeness, because he hadn’t wanted to embarrass her by rejecting her clumsy overtures. If he had really desired her then surely he would have wanted to have full-blown sex with her?
Thank heaven he hadn’t tried to, she thought, going hot and then cold as she imagined how humiliating it would have been if she’d had to explain that she was different from other women. Flawed.
‘The helicopter is on its way.’
His brisk voice jerked her from her painful thoughts.
‘Can you manage to put your jacket on if I help you?’
She remembered how tenderly he had taken care of her when he had carried her to the shelter. Clearly she had misconstrued his attentiveness and taken it as a sign that he felt something for her.
‘I think you’ve done enough,’ she said curtly, glad of the hot flare of temper to replace the mortification that bit deep into her soul.
‘I didn’t hear you object last night,’ he drawled, and his softly mocking tone made her long to sink through the floor.
She wished she could see the expression in his eyes, which were hidden behind his sunglasses. She felt exposed and, worse, she felt foolish for wanting him to claim her mouth with his and brand her with the hungry passion that had devoured them both—or so she had believed.
She had made a fool of herself, Holly thought miserably.
The whump, whump of a helicopter’s rotor blades was a welcome distraction. Jarek moved towards her and seemed about to say something, but just then a paramedic walked into the hut and started questioning Holly about the injury she had received. While she explained about the pain in her shoulder, and then insisted that she could walk and did not need to be carried on a stretcher, Jarek stepped outside.
The paramedic wrapped a foil blanket around her to raise her body temperature and helped her walk across the snow to the waiting helicopter. It was only when she was strapped into a seat and the helicopter was about to take off that she panicked, realising Jarek was not on board.
‘Your friend decided to ski down the mountain,’ the paramedic explained. We’ll fly you straight to the hospital. Try not to worry—you are safe now.’
Holly wasn’t worried for herself, but she was concerned about Jarek. Last night had been the first time he had opened up to her and revealed his guilt over his adoptive mother’s death. She was convinced he would find counselling beneficial, but she could no longer be his psychotherapist. Not after she had behaved like a slut and allowed him to take shocking liberties with her body.
She winced as she pictured herself naked in front of the fire, her principles abandoned and her legs spread wide. Her sense of honour demanded she must tell Professor Heppel that she could not continue in her role as Jarek’s counsellor because of a conflict of interest.
* * *
Several hours later a hospital doctor studied an X-ray of Holly’s shoulder and confirmed that it wasn’t broken, merely sprained and badly bruised from the impact of the avalanche. She was given strong painkillers and advised to rest her shoulder as much as possible for the next few days.
She knew she had escaped lightly, and Professor Heppel expressed the same opinion after Gunther had collected her from the hospital and driven her to Chalet Soline.
Holly had expected Jarek to be at the chalet, and her heart sank when Professor Heppel told her that he had checked out of the Frieden Clinic.
‘Obviously I will resign immediately,’ she said stiffly, thinking it would be marginally less embarrassing to leave of her own accord than to be fired for professional misconduct.
The clinic’s director looked puzzled. ‘Why do you wish to resign? Mr Dvorska gave an excellent report on how you had helped him in the brief time he was here. He has cut short his stay at the clinic because he heard this morning that his sister has given birth to her baby—several weeks early. I understand that there were complications with the birth and Jarek has gone to England to be with his sister.’
Holly’s relief that Jarek had not made a complaint about her inappropriate conduct was short-lived as she prayed that Elin and her baby were both all right. His concern for his sister might explain why he had been so off-hand with her at the hut, she brooded. He would have been impatient to get off the mountain, and understandably his thoughts would have been focused on Elin.
For the next few days she was virtually housebound, while her injured shoulder gradually healed, and with time on her hands she found her thoughts centred on Jarek, and the notion that he had been distracted by worry for his sister rather than deliberately dismissive of the scorching passion they had shared. When she had knelt in front of him and kissed him he might have rejected her. But he had kissed her with a fierce intensity, as if he had been lost in a desert and had suddenly stumbled on an oasis where he could assuage his thirst.
The idea that he had responded to her out of a gentlemanly desire to save her from embarrassment just didn’t fit. She was thirty-one, and although she did not have a long list of previous lovers she was experienced enough to recognise white-hot lust. Jarek’s erection had been as hard as a spike beneath his sweatpants, so he couldn’t have been pretending to desire her. It had been the real thing.
His mobile phone number was in his file. Holly reminded herself that it was not unusual for a therapist to call an ex-patient for a follow-up report after they had left the clinic, but her hands shook as she entered his number on her phone.
He answered on the third ring, and his sexy, smoky voice curled around her like a caress. She grimaced when she felt her nipples tighten. If he could have such a strong effect on her when he was a thousand miles away, God help her if he asked to see her again.
‘Hi, Jarek, it’s me...um...’ She flushed, ‘I mean Dr Maitland...from the Frieden Clinic.’
‘I’m perfectly aware of who you are, Holly,’ he drawled, sounding amused, and she just knew that he knew that her face was scarlet.
She cleared her throat. ‘I called to ask how your sister and her baby are. I mean... I hope they are okay.’
She sensed his surprise and wished she’d listened to her common sense, which had urged her not to phone him.
‘Mother and baby are both fine now. Elin had a health scare in the late stages of her pregnancy and her daughter had to be delivered by Caesarean section a month early. Rosalie is tiny but healthy, my sister is over the moon and my brother-in-law is besotted with the two females in his life,’ Jarek said drily.
‘I’m glad.’ She hesitated. ‘I want to apologise for snapping at you in the morning...after we had spent the night in the emergency shelter. I thought you regretted what had happened between us. But then I heard from Professor Heppel that you had rushed away to be with your sister.’
Jarek’s silence on the other end of the line wasn’t encouraging, but Holly ploughed on.
‘I was hoping to persuade you to continue your course of treatment with another psychotherapist. Clearly I cannot be your therapist due to our personal relationship—’
‘I hardly think that one night together constitutes a relationship,’ he interrupted curtly. ‘I told you—I don’t have relationships. What happened between us in the hut was a mistake brought about by an excess of adrenalin after we had survived the avalanche.’
Ow!
Holly gripped her phone tighter and told herself to end the call now—this second. But she must have a masochistic streak, because she muttered, ‘An excess of adrenalin? Really? Most people would call what we both felt...feel...desire.’
‘Look, Holly—’ he sounded impatient ‘—we had a good time together but it wasn’t memorable—at least not for me. I suggest you forget me. You’re a nice girl, and you deserve to meet a great guy who will fall in love with you.’
This was worse than ow! It was excruciatingly embarrassing. Holly
wanted to die a thousand deaths, but pride forced her to say lightly, ‘I’m thirty-one. By no stretch of the imagination could I be described as a “girl”. I’m sorry I made the mistake of believing that beneath your playboy image there was a man of substance.’ And then, because she was innately truthful, she said quietly, ‘As a matter of fact I still believe you are a better man than you think, and I urge you to engage a counsellor to help you face up to your past.’
She ended the call before he could say anything else she did not want to hear. The knowledge that her humiliation was self-induced, because against her better judgement she had phoned him, only made her feel worse. She wanted to burst into tears. Instead she gave in to the childish urge to throw her phone across the room and heard a satisfying thud as it hit the wall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAREK CRADLED HIS phone in his hand long after it had gone silent, as if holding it would somehow prolong his contact with Holly. He knew he would not hear from her again—which had been his intention when he’d rejected her so cruelly. Right from the start he had wanted to protect her from his destructive nature, but he’d been able to tell from the huskiness in her voice that he had hurt her—and not only her pride.
Yet despite her obvious embarrassment she had told him she still believed in him, thought that he was a better man than he knew himself to be. He wished it was true, but he was afraid that the dark shadows in his mind hid even darker secrets.
It was why he had left Austria and flown to London immediately after he’d skied down the mountain where he had so nearly been responsible for another tragic death. He went cold when he thought of how easily Holly could have been swept away by the avalanche. He’d checked out of the Frieden Clinic because he did not want her to discover that her faith in him had been misplaced.
He turned away from the window and the uninspiring view of a bleak winter sky and the bare skeletons of the trees. February in England was his least favourite time of the year. In another month or two the Cuckmere Hall estate on the South Downs would begin to look green, rather than grey and dead, and Elin would no longer be fretting about frost damaging the new shoots in the estate’s vineyards.
Although at the moment his sister was too enamoured of her brand-new baby daughter to have time to worry about Saunderson’s Wines, Jarek mused.
He had never shared Elin’s interest in the winery that Lorna Saunderson had established. But Elin’s husband Cortez was a world-renowned vintner, and the sparkling wine now produced on the estate had won several prestigious awards.
Jarek looked across the room to where his sister and brother-in-law were sitting close together on the sofa. Elin was cradling baby Rosalie and Cortez was bouncing their two-year-old son Harry on his knee. They were the perfect family, and Jarek certainly did not begrudge them their obvious happiness. Despite a rocky start he and Cortez had become friends, and he was always made to feel welcome at Cuckmere Hall. But he had never felt that he belonged at the gothic mansion he had once expected to inherit from Ralph Saunderson. And anyway Ralph had chosen his illegitimate son to be his heir, rather than the adopted son he had accused of being reckless.
Moodily, Jarek walked over to the fireplace, where a cheery fire burned in the grate. Under Cortez’s supervision Cuckmere Hall had been transformed from a draughty old house to a stylish and comfortable home. But it wasn’t Jarek’s home any more than his starkly minimalist penthouse in London or the various other properties he owned around the world felt like home.
An image flashed into his mind of a big, bright room. Sunlight streamed in through the windows and there was a wooden rocking horse—white, with a red harness. He heard a child laughing, and with a jolt of shock he realised that the child was him. He couldn’t have been at the orphanage, he realised, because he did not remember ever laughing there. He sensed that the room he could visualise was a nursery, and knew without knowing how he knew that he had felt safe there, and—his heart gave a lurch—loved. Was the vague figure in his mind whose face he could not quite see his mother?
‘I saw Baines carrying your suitcase downstairs.’
Elin’s voice jerked him back to the present, and to his bitter frustration the images in his head disappeared like smoke drifting up the chimney.
‘Are you going back to the clinic in Austria?’
‘No.’ He felt a stab of guilt at his sister’s concerned expression.
‘How did you get on with Dr Maitland? She sounded nice when I spoke to her.’ Elin gave him a close look. Is she pretty?’ she asked mischievously.
He pictured Holly lying in front of the fire, with her silky brown hair spread around her shoulders and her naked body so unutterably beautiful that he had sunk to his knees and worshipped her.
‘Pretty enough, I suppose,’ he said dismissively. ‘But I prefer fun-loving blondes to serious brunettes.’
Or that had been true in the past—before he had met his beautiful psychotherapist, he brooded.
‘I’m going to Vostov,’ he said abruptly, steering the conversation away from Holly.
‘The principality has been in the news recently,’ Cortez commented. ‘Rumours abound that the ruling family of the House of Karadjvic may have been murdered during the conflict in the Balkans in the early nineteen-nineties. And there is another rumour that the royal children might have survived.’
‘But those children would be adults now—surely they’d know if they were royalty,’ Elin said.
Cortez shrugged. ‘Perhaps they were too young at the time for them to remember.’ He glanced at Jarek. ‘Are you thinking of investing in Vostov? The low business taxes there have enabled the principality to establish a thriving economy.’
‘I’ve arranged to meet someone to discuss various things,’ Jarek said noncommittally.
If he told Elin of his crazy suspicion that their parents had been a prince and princess she would insist that he sought help from a psychiatrist. He could not tell anyone the real reason for his trip to Vostov was so that he could meet Asmir Sunjic.
Jarek was certain the old man’s story was an elaborate hoax. But his nightmares were becoming more frequent and troubling, and he was determined to find out the truth about his past.
* * *
Twenty-four hours later Jarek rode the motorbike he had hired along a twisting mountain road in Vostov, on his way to a remote village. The landscape of tall pine trees and snow-capped mountains was similar to Alpine countries, which might explain why it seemed familiar. Harder to explain was the sense of belonging he’d felt the moment his private jet had landed at a small airfield. He had not wanted to draw attention to his visit by arriving at the principality’s main airport.
He was sure he recognised the style of the traditional grey stone houses with steeply sloping tin roofs as he rode into the village. Some of the villagers came out to stare at him as he knocked on the door of a house. An elderly woman ushered him inside. She spoke in a language that sounded similar to Bosnian and Jarek guessed was Vostovian. He was startled to find that he understood some of the woman’s words, but then his attention swung to the old man who slowly rose out of a chair next to the fire.
Time had left its mark on the man’s features, but Jarek knew he had seen him before—a long time ago—and pain ripped through him as if he had been shot through his heart.
* * *
From the air, the tiny island of Paradis sur Terre looked like an emerald jewel set amid a cerulean sea. As the helicopter descended Holly saw that most of the island was covered in dense green forest and surrounded by pure white sandy beaches. Even the name which, translated from the French, meant Heaven on Earth, was a perfect description of the privately owned island in the Indian Ocean.
It was a pity there was a serpent in paradise.
Her stomach muscles tightened as the helicopter swooped low over the one building on the island—a charming colonial-style house with direct access onto the beach. A wooden jetty ran from the beach out over the crystal-clear sea, and at the far
end of the jetty stood a blond-haired Viking.
Holly’s heart gave a jolt when she caught sight of Jarek, and she almost asked the pilot to fly her back to the international airport in the Seychelles capital city of Victoria. She must have been mad to agree to his request to see him again, let alone fly halfway round the world to meet him, she thought for the hundredth time. Although Jarek had not so much requested as demanded that she be on the private jet he had sent to Austria to bring her to the Seychelles.
Her mind flew back forty-eight hours, to when she’d answered her phone without first glancing at the screen to check the name of the caller. The sound of Jarek’s voice had nearly made her drop her phone which was still held together with tape after their last conversation three weeks ago had resulted in her hurling the handset at the wall.
‘I’ve decided to take your advice and carry on with therapy,’ Jarek had told her, ignoring any conventional greeting like Hello, how are you? Although even if he had asked she would have rather died than admit that she felt sick with misery and had lost her enthusiasm for life since he had left Austria.
‘I think your decision is sensible.’ She had been pleased that she sounded cool and calm when her heart had been pounding. ‘All the clinical staff here at the Frieden Clinic are highly qualified to help you. I’ll check with Professor Heppel to see which of them is available to give you counselling.’
‘I don’t want a different psychotherapist. I want you.’
Jarek’s smoky voice had wreaked havoc with Holly’s equilibrium. Just when she had been making progress in forgetting him, she’d thought, but had known she was fooling herself.
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. My schedule is full and I will be working with other patients,’ she’d told him crisply.
‘Your other patients might change their mind and decide not to seek treatment from you if they hear about how you behaved so unprofessionally with me. Social media is very useful for spreading rumours,’ he’d drawled. ‘And when Professor Heppel reads my report concerning certain aspects of my experience as a patient at his clinic—which I will email to him if you refuse to see me—you may even find yourself out of a job.’
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