Harlequin Presents January 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Sheikh's Desert Duty\Nine Months to Redeem Him\Fonseca's Fury\The Russian's Ultimatum (24 page)

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. I abruptly stopped on the path, causing Caesar to jump beside me, before he ran ahead with a snuff.

That
was the reason Edward had kissed me. Not because he wanted me. Not even just because he wanted a woman. Oh no.

He'd kissed me to shut me up. Because I'd been asking about his accident, probing with questions he didn't want to answer. He'd deflected me the easiest, simplest way he knew how. The way that always worked with any woman.

My cheeks were burning now, my throat aching with humiliation. Tears streaked down my face, leaving cold trails beneath the chill of the wind, as I looked out at the vast gray sea.

Edward St. Cyr was used to riding roughshod over people, especially women. He was used to twisting them all around his finger. I knew this. And I'd still let him do it to me.

I stared out at the ocean, watching the light's play of sparkle and shadows. My tangled hair flew around me in the chilly wind. Watching the seagulls fly away, I almost wished I could join them. To fly away and disappear and never be seen again.

Penryth Hall was supposed to be my place to hide. How did you hide from a hiding place?

Maybe there was nowhere to hide, I thought suddenly, when the person you were really trying to hide from was yourself.

Sooner or later, I'd have to go back to California. Face the scandal, the pity. Face the two people who'd ripped out my heart. And most of all: face myself.

Picking up a stick, I tossed it down the beach. With an eager yelp, Caesar ran after it. My mouth still felt seared from Edward's kiss. I touched my bruised lips. They still ached for him. For that one single moment, when I'd thought Edward wanted me—me, the invisible girl, completely unnoteworthy either in looks, intelligence or career—I'd felt like I was worth something. Like I
mattered.

I writhed with shame to remember it now.

Caesar barked happily, dropping the stick at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it farther down the rocky shore. I stayed out there, procrastinating for as long as I could. But by the time we were both wet with rain and freezing cold, I'd made up my mind.

I was leaving Penryth Hall.

As the dog raced ahead on the return path, I realized I'd finally found something that frightened me more than going back to California.

Staying here.

Edward didn't really need me anyway. Not anymore. I'd known that when I'd seen him running on the treadmill today.

“You don't need me,” I said aloud.

Need me, need me,
the wind sighed mournfully in return.

As Caesar hurried ahead of me on the wet path, his tongue lolling out as he raced eagerly to get back home to the castle of gray stone, my steps became slower. When I finally reached the door, my feet turned to the left, and I found myself walking around the house to the front door, procrastinating the moment I'd have to go inside and tell him I was leaving. Once I said it, I'd have to do it.

I stopped in shock.

Two expensive sedans were parked in front of Penryth Hall. Standing next to them were my stepsister's two bodyguards, Damian and Luis.

I stared at them, goggle-eyed. “What are you...”

“Hello, Diana,” Luis said, smiling. “Long time no see.”

But next to him, Damian glowered down at me. “Miss Lowe and Mr. Black are here to see you.” Seven feet tall, bald, and scowling, he shook his head at me. “And she's really, really mad at you.”

CHAPTER THREE

W
ATER
DRIPPED
NOISILY
from my raincoat to the flagstones as I walked nervously into the shadowy foyer of the castle. The thought of facing them all at once scared me to death.

Edward, Madison and Jason.

All at once.

I couldn't do it. I stopped, clenched my hands at my sides.

Caesar loped up beside me in the foyer. With a sympathetic look, he shook his fur, splattering me with water and mud. I gasped as cold wet dirt hit my face, then gasped again as I looked down at my messed-up hair, my muddy raincoat and sneakers. I hadn't buttoned the raincoat so even the T-shirt beneath, which Edward had recently groped, now had a splatter of mud across the front.

If I thought I couldn't face them before...!

With a satisfied snort, Caesar trotted happily down the hall, no doubt intending to plunk himself in his nice spot on the rug in front of the fire. What did he have to fear?
He
wasn't facing the firing squad.

I heard voices down the hall, coming from the library. Madison's high-pitched voice, two lower masculine ones. Sharing tea, or lying in ambush for me?

Maybe I could make a run for it. If I tiptoed down the hall, I'd sneak by the library unseen. Then I'd pack my bag and flee for Tierra del Fuego.

“What are you doing?” Edward said quietly.

He was standing in the hallway, his face in silhouette. He'd showered and changed from his exercise clothes. His dark hair was still wet, slicked back against his head, and he was actually wearing a jacket and tie, button-up shirt and trousers. It was...sexy. I licked my lips. “Why are you dressed up?”

“We have company.” Flickering firelight from the open doorway of the library cast shadows on his grim face. “Care to join us?”

He was so handsome and sophisticated. Everything I was not. It seemed incredible to me now that he'd kissed me, for any reason whatsoever. I put my hand to my hair. Yup. Just as I thought, it was damp with rain, tangled as a bird's nest. I put my hand down.

“Well?”

“I don't think I can do this,” I whispered. My heart was pounding, my feet ready to take flight. “I thought about it on my walk. After all that's happened, I've realized you don't need me anymore and maybe it's time for me to just—”

“Is that you, Diana?” Madison's voice carried sharply from the library. “Get in here!”

Edward's eyebrow lifted. He came closer, and I shivered as he pulled my raincoat off my body. I felt the brush of his fingertips. I breathed in his scent, masculine and clean, like a Bavarian forest. Hanging up the wet coat, he turned back to me.

“You're going to have to face them sooner or later, Diana,” he said quietly. His hand fell bracingly on my shoulder. “Might as well be now.”

His camaraderie made me feel strangely comforted, even strengthened. That brief moment helped me square my shoulders, lift my chin and walk with my head held high into the library.

The firelit room was impossibly elegant, two stories high, with leatherbound books on all sides, a ladder to reach them and an enormous white marble fireplace at one end. Not to mention two movie stars sitting on the white leather sofa near the fire.

Madison looked beautiful as always. Her long blond hair was straight, her eyes huge beneath fake eyelashes, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Even casually dressed in a white cropped jacket of tousled fur, thousand-dollar silk blouse and size 0 toothpick jeans, no one could have mistaken her for anything but a movie star.

Jason sat beside her, his hand protectively on her knee. Handsome, broad shouldered and corn-fed like the Texas farm boy he'd once been, he looked different than he had just six months ago. The gloss of success covered him now, like his newly expensive clothes.

Looking at them, my body flashed hot, then cold. Jason started to rise to his feet, but Madison grabbed his hand, keeping him seated beside her.

“Diana,” she said coolly. “It was rude of you to keep us waiting. But I don't blame you for being afraid to face me after what you did.”

I would have staggered back, except Edward was behind me, his hand supportively on my lower back. I felt his strength and somehow my knees steadied themselves.

“What
I
did?” I queried dangerously.

“You left me when I needed you most!”

I gaped at her. “I went to California to give the reporter a tour of your house—as you asked me to!”

She waved her hand dismissively. “That? All that happened ages ago. I'm talking about my movie premiere last night. You should have been there for me!”

“Are you kidding?” I breathed.

“You know how nervous I get, being at public events. You promised you'd always be there....”

“Yeah, when I was your assistant.” I swallowed looking between her and Jason. “Before I was completely humiliated in front of the whole world—”

“Are you still trying to punish me for that?” she demanded. “We didn't mean to fall in love. It was an accident. When it's right, you just know.” She looked lovingly at Jason, then glared at me. “It's petty of you, Diana, it really is, and I'm disappointed. You and Jason didn't even sleep together.”

“You told her that?” I breathed, staring down at him.

Rubbing the back of his blond head, Jason gave me the rueful smile I used to find so irresistible. “You and I were friends, Diana. We dated and yeah, there was a little flirting going on, but hell,” he shook his head, “you never let me touch you. Said you wanted to wait for true love or some such...but this is the twenty-first century. I don't know what century you're living in, but as far as I'm concerned, if there's no sex, there's no relationship.”

For a second I couldn't breathe. No relationship? As if I'd imagined it all in my mind? “You—”

And it was then I saw the sparkle on Madison's left hand.

A huge canary-yellow diamond ring.

On
that
finger.

With an intake of breath, I covered my mouth with my hand. For a moment, the only sound in the library was the crackle of the fire in counterpoint to the miserable drip-drip-drip of water from my hair as I stood like a mud-splattered, drowned rat in front of my beautiful stepsister, who had a ten-carat engagement ring on one hand, and the man I'd loved holding the other.

“You're—” I was horrified to feel tears burning the backs of my eyelids as I looked between them. “You're engaged?”

Madison put her hand over the ring. “Yes...” A smile softened the sharp lines of her face as she looked at Jason. “He asked me last night, after the premiere.”

Jason smiled back. Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it. “Best night of my life.”

Their eyes glowed as they looked at each other. They were in love. Really, deeply in love. It was one thing to know it in my mind, and something else entirely to see it right in front of me. I not only felt sick, I felt invisible. An echo went through my mind.

I feel sorry for you. How it must hurt to know they'll never be punished for hurting you. That while you suffer, they're making love in oblivious joy. You're so meaningless, they've forgotten you even exist.

“Stop pouting and be happy for us.” Madison turned back to me. “Come back and work for me. I need you. Someone will have to coordinate with the wedding planner...”

Wedding planner!

“And don't worry,” Jason said to me kindly. “You'll find a real boyfriend someday, Di. Great girl like you. It's bound to happen, even if it takes a while...”

Violently, I held up a trembling hand, unable to bear another patronizing word. My heart was collapsing in my chest, squeezing into hard little pieces, about to fly out of my ribs like bullets. In another moment, I'd weep in front of them, and then I really would have to die.

“Darling.” Edward purred behind me, suddenly wrapping his arms around me. Pulling me back protectively against his body, he murmured, “Didn't you tell them?”

I looked back at him blankly. “Tell them?”

He smiled down at me, his expression tender, his dark blue gaze caressing mine. “About us.”

“Us?” I said.

“Us.” Edward looked at me as if it were all he could do right now not to lift me up in his arms and carry me upstairs to bed. No man had looked at me like that before. Not ever. The full seductive force of his gaze was a blast of heat, an intoxicating drug that made every part of me yearn to tremble and unfold like a flower. “Diana, why didn't you tell them...” he stroked back a tendril of my hair, “that we're lovers?”

What?
My heart stopped beating.

“What?” Madison said.

“What?” Jason said.

Edward looked down at me with concern. “But darling, you're chilled to the bone. Your clothes are wet. Were you taking the dog on a walk?”

Teeth chattering—and not just from cold—I nodded like a fool.

He gave me a slow, sensual smile. “Why don't you go upstairs to our room—”
our
room? I thought dumbly “—and change. We'll wait.”

“I will
not
wait,” Madison snapped. “Not until you agree to come back and plan our wedding.” Looking between Edward and me, no doubt comparing his perfect gorgeousness to my slovenly mess, she added suspiciously, “And I don't believe for a second that the two of you...”

Edward didn't even look her way. “Actually, Diana,” he whispered, twining a long muddy, tangled tendril of my hair as if it were silken perfection, “I think I'll come upstairs. Help you out of these cold, wet clothes.”

Any woman could get warm instantly, just by looking up into Edward's hot dark gaze. Had I wandered into some strange parallel universe, where I was the beautiful movie star, instead of Madison? Had I fallen on my walk and hit my head on a rock?

I felt my stepsister's gaze travel over us both, from the way I was standing to the way that Edward supported my arm. There was new doubt in her melodious voice as she said, “You're really—together?”

“Only recently,” Edward said, smiling down at me hungrily, cupping my cheek with his hand. As if he were already thinking about what he intended to do to me in bed. “I wanted Diana from the moment we met. But she tortured me,” his eyes traced mine, “making me wait. And wait. The sexiest, most desirable woman in the world.”

“She's just a physical therapist.” Madison sounded grumpy.

Edward finally looked at her. “Yes. A healer. And what Diana knows about the human body—” He exhaled, looking at me in wonder. “No wonder she's the most amazing lover I've ever had.”

My body flashed hot, then cold.

“The two of you are in love?” Jason said, dumbfounded.

“Love?” Edward snorted. “No.” He looked down at me, stroking my cheek, and I felt his fingertips against my skin. “What we have is purely physical. Sex. And fire.”

A little sound came from the back of Jason's throat as he stared between us, his eyes comically huge.

“I don't understand.” Madison's beautiful face was bewildered, as if she was confused how any other woman could be the center of a man's attention when she herself was in the room. “It's only been a couple months.”

“When it's right, you just know.” He smiled as he echoed her earlier words. Wrapping both his strong arms around me, he pulled me back against his chest. “I'm sorry Diana's not available to be your assistant, Madison. But after your long trip from London, perhaps the two of you will join us for dinner?”

“Uh.” Jason couldn't stop staring at me, as if he'd never quite seen me before. “I don't think...”

“Of course we will.” Madison looked at Edward with new, almost proprietary interest. “I look forward to getting to know your new boyfriend, Diana.”

“Good,” Edward replied, as if he hadn't noticed her sudden pointed look, like a cat who'd just noticed a particularly appealing mouse. But I'd noticed it. And by the crease in his forehead, so had Jason. “Please excuse us while I take Diana upstairs.” His voice lingered wickedly on the word
take.
“In the meantime help yourselves to tea, or there's drinks at the bar if you'd like something stronger.”

Edward pulled me out into the hall.

“
I
need something stronger,” I muttered.

“Hsst,” he said beneath his breath. Holding my hand, he drew me down the echoing flagstones of the dark hallway and up the sweeping stairs. It wasn't until we were at my bedroom door that I stopped, looking at him with my brow creased.

“You made them think we were lovers.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I felt like it.”

I swallowed, shaking my head. “I don't understand.”

Edward's eyes narrowed. “They were treating you so badly. Trying to guilt you into
planning their wedding
.
Don't worry, you'll find a real boyfriend someday
,” he mimicked Jason, then snorted with a flare of nostril. “Supercilious, condescending prats.”

An unwilling laugh burbled to my lips, then faded. “But maybe they were right,” I said softly, looking down. “I should have known he'd choose Madison over me. And I don't have a boyfriend. I'm starting to think I'll never—”

“Don't be an idiot.” He put his hand against my cheek. “You could have any man you want, any time you want. If you don't have one at the moment, it's by your choice.”

I swallowed, looking up at him. “You're being very kind, but...”

“I'm not kind.” He paused. “I just didn't like them treating you as if you were invisible. As if you were nobody.”

“I am nobody,” I whispered.

Dropping his hand, he gave a low heartfelt curse. “For the last two months, you've matched me toe-to-toe, like a fighter. An equal. But the instant you walked into the library, you changed into a timid little mouse. What happened?”