‘Alex Arlov.’ He tipped his sleek head and to her intense relief released her hand.

How could I ever not have seen how arrogant he is? Angel grabbed a napkin from a passing tray and wiped it against the heel of her hand.

‘The name seems familiar …’

She gnawed lightly on her full lower lip, pretending to search her memory, before producing a bright smile and pausing to stretch the moment, hoping he was worrying that she might reveal all. If it wasn’t for her daughter she would, and who cared if people knew what a total fool she was.

But he didn’t look concerned, just vaguely amused as he elevated one dark brow. ‘That happens to me all the time … an instantly forgettable face.’

And so full of yourself, she wanted to scream as she smiled back, unable to repress a shudder as she looked directly into his ice-blue dark-framed eyes.

She willed herself to relax. Her life had moved on, and if time hadn’t completely healed the wounds it had allowed her to see things from a different perspective. She had made a mistake, but that mistake had given her Jasmine. This man had given her a gift and he didn’t know.

ONE NIGHT WITH CONSEQUENCES

A high price to pay for giving in to temptation!

When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire, it’s impossible to think past the morning after!

But with the sheets barely settled that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test—and it doesn’t take long for you to realise that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!

Only one question remains:

How do you tell a man you’ve just met that you’re about to share more than just his bed?

If you enjoy A SECRET UNTIL NOW

why not try

A DEAL WITH BENEFITS by Susanna Carr

and

PROOF OF THEIR SIN by Dani Collins

A Secret Until Now

Kim Lawrence

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Though lacking much authentic Welsh blood—she comes from English/Irish stock—KIM LAWRENCE was born and brought up in North Wales. She returned there when she married and her sons were both born on Anglesey, an island off the coast. Though not isolated, Anglesey is a little off the beaten track, but lively Dublin, which Kim loves, is only a short ferry-ride away.

Today they live on the farm her husband was brought up on. Welsh is the first language of many people in this area, and Kim’s husband and sons are all bilingual—she is having a lot of fun, not to mention a few headaches, trying to learn the language!

With small children, the unsocial hours of nursing didn’t look attractive so, encouraged by a husband who thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to, Kim tried her hand at writing. Always a keen Mills & Boon® reader, it seemed natural for her to write a romance novel—now she can’t imagine doing anything else.

She is a keen gardener and cook and enjoys running—often on the beach, as living on an island the sea is never very far away. She is usually accompanied by her Jack Russell, Sprout—don’t ask … it’s a long story!

Recent titles by the same author:

CAPTIVATED BY HER INNOCENCE

MAID FOR MONTERO (At His Service) THE PETRELLI HEIR SANTIAGO’S COMMAND

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my dad, Roy, who was always proud of his writer daughter.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE

London, Summer 2008, a hotel

ANGEL’S EYES HAD adjusted to the dark but from where she was lying the illuminated display of the bedside clock was hidden from her view, blocked by his shoulder. But the thin finger of light that was shining into the room through the chink in the blackout curtains suggested that it was morning.

‘The morning after the night before!’

She gave a soft shaken sigh and allowed her glance to drift around the unfamiliar room, the generic but luxurious five-star hotel furnishings familiar, especially to someone who had slept in dozens of similar suites; someone who had imagined at one point that everybody ordered their supper from room service.

Since she’d had the choice Angel had avoided rooms like this as they depressed her. Depressed... Smiling at the past tense, she raised herself slowly up on one elbow. This room was different not because it boasted a special view or had a sumptuously comfortable bed. What was different was that she was not alone.

She froze when the man on the bed beside her murmured in his sleep and her attention immediately returned to him—it had never really left him. She gulped as he threw a hand above his head, the action causing the muscles in his beautiful back to ripple in a way that made her stomach flip over. She couldn’t see his face but his breathing remained deep and regular.

Should she wake him up?

The bruised-looking half-moons underneath his spectacular eyes suggested he probably needed his sleep. She’d noticed them the moment she’d looked at him, but then she had noticed pretty much everything about him. Angel had never considered herself a particularly observant person but crazily one glance had indelibly printed his face into her memory.

Mind you, it was a pretty special face, not made any less special by the lines of fatigue etched around his wide, sensual mouth or the dark shadows beneath those totally spectacular eyes. There was a weary cynicism reflected in those electric-blue depths and also in that first instant anger.

He had been furious with her, but it wasn’t the incandescent anger that had made her legs feel hollow or even her dramatic brush with death or that he had saved her life. It was him, everything about him. He projected an aura of raw maleness that had a cataclysmic impact on her, like someone thrown in the deep end who from that first moment was treading water, barely able to breathe, throat tight with emotion as if she were submerged by a massive wave of lust.

It wasn’t until much later that she had recognised this as a crossroad moment. She didn’t see a fork in the road; there was no definable instant when she made a conscious decision. Her universe had narrowed into this total stranger, and she had known with utter and total conviction that she had to be with him. She wanted him and then she had seen in his eyes he wanted her too.

What else mattered?

Did I really just think that?

What else mattered? The defence of the greedy, absurdly needy and just plain stupid! Angel, who was utterly confident she was none of those things, was conscious that this particular inner dialogue was one it would have been more sensible to have had before, not after... After she had broken the habit of a lifetime and thrown caution, baby, bath water and the entire package out of the window!

The previous night there had been no inner dialogue, not even any inhibition-lowering alcohol in her bloodstream, no excuses. The words of a novel she had read years before popped into Angel’s head. Although at the time they had made her put the gothic romance to one side with a snort of amused disdain, now she couldn’t shake them. ‘I felt a deep craving, an ache in my body and soul that I had never imagined possible.’

The remembered words no longer made her snigger and translate with a roll of her eyes—yes, he’s hot!

Which the man in bed beside her was and then some, but Angel had met hot men before, and she had been amused by their macho posturing. She was in charge of her life and she liked it that way. History was littered with countless examples of strong women who had disastrous personal lives, but she was not going to be one of them.

Admittedly the macho men she was able to view with lofty disdain had not just saved her life, but Angel knew what she was feeling hadn’t anything to do with gratitude. Beyond this certainty she wasn’t sure of anything much. Her life and her belief system had been turned upside down. She had no idea at all why this was happening but she was not going to fight it. In any case, that would have been as futile as fighting the colour of her eyes or her blood type; it just was...and it was exciting!

‘Dio, you’re so beautiful.’ Her husky whisper was soft and tinged with awe as she reached out a hand to touch his dark head, allowing her fingers to slide lightly over the sleek short tufts of hair. Her own hair was often called black but his was two shades darker and her skin, though a warm natural olive, looked almost winter pale against his deeply tanned, vibrant-toned, bronzed flesh. It was a contrast that had fascinated her when she’d first seen their limbs entwined—not just skin tone, but the tactile differences of his hard to her soft, his hair-roughened virility to her feminine smoothness. She wanted to touch, taste...

Angel couldn’t understand how she felt so wide awake. Why she wasn’t tired. She hadn’t slept all night, but her senses weren’t dulled by exhaustion. Instead they were racing and her body was humming with an almost painful sensory overload.

Languid pleasure twitched the corners of her full, wide mouth up as she lifted her arms above her head, stretching with feline grace, feeling muscles she hadn’t known she had. Who wanted to sleep when it had finally happened? The man of her dreams was real and she had found him!

It was fate!

Her smooth brow knitted into a furrowed web. Fate again—this sounded so not her. When she had once been accused of not having a romantic bone in her body she had taken it as a compliment. She had never thought she was missing out; she’d never wanted to be that person—the one who fell in love at the drop of a hat and out again equally as easily. That was her mother who, despite the fragile appearance that made men want to protect her, had Teflon-coated emotions.

Angel knew she did not inspire a similar reaction in men and neither did she want to; the thought of not being independent was anathema to her. As a kid she had been saved from a life of loneliness and isolation by two things: a brother and an imagination. Not that she ever, even when she was young, confused her secret fantasy world with real life.

Angel had never expected her fantasies to actually come true.

She stretched out her hand, moving her fingers in the air above the curve of his shoulder, fighting the compulsion to touch him, to tug the sheet that was lying low across his hips farther down. She was amazed that she could have these thoughts and feel no sense of embarrassment. It had been the same when she had undressed for him—it had just felt right and heart-stoppingly exciting.

No fantasy had ever matched the fascination she felt for his body. Her stomach muscles quivered in hot, hungry anticipation of exploring every inch of his hard, lean body again.

‘Totally beautiful,’ she whispered again, staring at the man sharing her bed.

His name was Alex. When he’d asked she’d told him her name was Angelina, but that nobody ever called her that. Apparently when she was born her father had said she looked like a little angel and it had stuck.

She tensed when, as if in response to her voice, he murmured in his sleep before rolling over onto his back, one arm flung over his head, his long fingers brushing the headboard.

Angel felt a strong sensual kick of excitement low and deep in her belly as she stared, the rapt expression on her face a fusion of awe and hunger. She swallowed past the emotional thickening that made her throat ache. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen or imagined.

In the half-light that now filled the room his warm olive-toned skin gleamed like gold, its texture like oiled satin. A tactile tingle passed through her fingertips. Perfect might have seemed like an overused term but he was. The length of his legs was balanced by broad shoulders and a deeply muscled chest dusted with dark body hair that narrowed into a directional arrow across his flat belly ridged with muscle. There wasn’t an ounce of excess flesh on his lean body to disguise the musculature that had the perfection of an anatomical diagram. But Alex was no diagram. He was a warm, living, earthly male, and he was sharing her bed.

A dazed smile flickered across her face as she felt all the muscles in her abdomen tighten. Last night had been perfect—perfect, but not in the way she had expected. There had been hardly any pain and no embarrassment.

Angel has still failed to grasp the concept of moderation. There is no middle ground—she is all or nothing.

The words on her report card came back to her.

Her form teacher had been referring to her academic record littered with As and Fs, not to sex, but there had been no middle ground last night either. Angel had held nothing back; she had given him everything without reservation.

* * *

‘I know this is bad timing, but there’s a problem.’

The words had been music to Alex’s ears. ‘Tell me.’

They had and he had acted. Crisis management was something he excelled at—it was a simple matter of focusing, shutting out all distractions and focusing.

He had gone straight from the funeral to his office, where he’d pretty much lived for the past month. He’d washed, eaten and slept—or at least snatched a few minutes on the sofa—there. It made sense, and it suited him. He had nothing to go home to any longer.

Then the crisis was over and Alex had been unable to think of any reason not to go home, where he had, if anything, less sleep. He did go to bed but by the small hours he was up again, which was why it felt strange and disorientating to wake up after a deep sleep and find light shining through the blinds of...not his room... Where the hell?

He blinked and focused on the beautiful face of the most incredible-looking woman. She was sitting there looking down at him wearing nothing but a mane of glossy dark hair that lay like a silky curtain over her breasts—breasts that had filled his hands perfectly and tasted—

It all came rushing back.

Hell!

‘Good morning.’

His body reacted to the slumberous promise in her smile, but, ignoring the urgent messages it was sending and the desire that heated his blood, gritted his teeth and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Guilt rising like a toxic tide to clog his throat, he sat, eyes closed, with his rigid back to her. This was about damage limitation and not repeating a mistake no matter how tempting it might seem.

She was sinful temptation given a throaty voice and a perfect body, but this had been his mistake, not hers, and it was his responsibility to end it.

‘I thought you’d never wake up.’

His spine tensed at the touch of her fingers on his skin. He wiped his face of all emotion as he turned back to face her.

‘You should have woken me. I hope I haven’t made you late for anything...?’

‘Late...?’ she quavered.

He stood up and looked around for his clothes. ‘Can I get you a taxi?’

‘I...I don’t understand... I thought we’d...’ Her voice trailed away. He was looking at her so coldly.

‘Look, last night was... Actually it was fantastic but I’m not available.’

Available? Angel still didn’t get it.

He felt the guilt tighten in his gut but he had no desire to prolong this scene. He’d made a massive mistake, end of story. A post-mortem was not going to change anything.

‘I thought—’

He cut across her. ‘Last night was just sex.’

He was speaking slowly as if he were explaining something to a child or a moron. The coldness in his blue eyes as much as his words confused Angel.

‘But last night...’

‘Like I said, last night was great, but it was a mistake.’ A great big mistake, but a man learned by his mistakes and he didn’t give in to the temptation to repeat them.

She began to feel sick as she watched him fight his way into his shirt, then he was pulling on his trousers. She responded automatically to pick up the object that fell out of the pocket and landed with a metallic twang on the floor just in front of her toes. She bent to pick it up; her fingers closed around a ring.

‘Yours?’

He was meticulously careful not to touch her fingers as he took it from her outstretched hand.

‘You’re married?’

For a moment he thought of telling the truth, saying that he had been, but no longer, that the ring was in his pocket because friends kept telling him it was time to move on. Alex doubted this was what they’d had in mind.

Then he realised how much easier and less painful a lie would be. It wouldn’t ease the guilt that was like a living thing in his gut, but it would make this scene less messy and allow her to say when regaling her friends later that the bastard was married.

‘I’m sorry.’

Her incredible green eyes flared hot as she rose majestically to her feet and delivered a contemptuous ‘You disgusting loser!’ followed up by a backhanded slap that made him blink. He opened his watering eyes in time to see her vanish into the bathroom, the door locked audibly behind her.

Angel ran, hand clamped to her mouth, across the room, just making it to the loo before she was violently sick.

By the time she returned to the bedroom he was gone.

Angel found herself hating him with more venom than she thought she was capable of. She hated him even more than her mother’s creepy boyfriend, the one who had tried to grope her when she was sixteen. The only person she hated more than Alex was herself. How could she be so stupid? He had treated her like a tramp because that was how she had acted.

By the time she left the hotel room later that morning, her tears had dried and her expression was set. She had decided she would never, ever think of him again, not think of him or last night.

It never happened.

He never existed.

It was a solution.

She could move on.

CHAPTER ONE

‘THEY ARE THE second biggest advertising firm in Europe and—’

‘There is something in it for you?’ Alex, who had been listening to Nico’s pitch while he read the small print on a contract, made the silky suggestion without rancour. He liked his big sister’s son and why should his favourite, actually his only, nephew be any different from everyone else?

The younger man acknowledged the point with a self-conscious shrug. ‘Well, I had heard there might be an internship going...?’

Alex finished reading, wrote his signature on the last page of the document and laid it on top of the done pile before pushing his chair back and stretching his long legs out in front of him. He flexed his shoulders and thought wistfully about the run he had promised himself as a reward for spending the morning at his desk. Not that he begrudged the youngster his time—Nico was a low-maintenance relative, unlike some who looked on him as their own personal bank. He was philosophical about the role but family was important.

‘Consider the decks cleared. You have my attention.’

‘Good of you.’ But not entirely comfortable for him as his uncle Alex’s eyes had always reminded Nico of ice chips. It wasn’t the colour, although that was an unnerving pale blue, as his own mother shared the same strangely coloured eyes with her much younger brother. It was the impression he’d had as a kid that those eyes had always been able to see right into his head. He was no longer a kid but he was always painfully honest around his uncle—just in case.

‘You know that Dad’s offered me a job and I’m grateful,’ came the hasty assurance.

Alex voiced the unspoken addendum. ‘But?’

‘But I’d like to do something that didn’t have anything to do with being his son or your nephew.’

‘I admire your intentions if not your practicality, and you seem to forget I was born with a silver spoon.’

‘And you turned it gold,’ the young man said gloomily.

There was no firm on the brink of the financial abyss for Nico to save. Thanks to Alex the shipping empire founded by his Greek great grandfather had recovered from years of mismanagement and had gone from strength to strength to be hailed as one of the success stories of the global recession.

Of course even if it hadn’t his uncle would still be fabulously rich as Alex had inherited the Arlov vast oil fortune a few years earlier from the Russian great grandfather that Nico had never met. That was when Alex had delegated the day-to-day running of the shipping business to his brother-in-law, Nico’s father.

‘And that is a bad thing?’

‘No, of course not, but no one thinks of you as a little rich boy who’s never done a day’s work in his life.’

A direct quote? Alex wondered, feeling a stab of sympathy for his nephew, who was all of the above but also a rather nice kid.

‘You don’t have anything to prove.’ His eyes fell. ‘Just forget it,’ he mumbled. ‘I knew I was talking out of my... I guess I knew you wouldn’t be up for it. I just wanted to impress the guy from the advertising firm and you should have seen his face when I mentioned your island, Saronia. He lit up like a firework. Pathetic or what.’ He reached out for the tablet he had opened on his uncle’s desk and drew back as Alex withdrew it from his reach.

‘You were trying to impress. Why apologise? Unless your interest is more personal? I am assuming the new face of this cosmetic firm is not ugly—one of your actress friends perhaps? Are you still dating...?’ The name of the pretty girl from the soap escaped him as he idly scrolled down the screen that showed the logo of the cosmetics giant that was apparently launching a new perfume.

It was not a world that Alex knew much about. ‘A big thing, is it, a new perfume?’

‘Massive,’ his nephew assured him. ‘They’re planning to make a series of ads to promote it using the same couple, six ads in all, really glossy and high production values, like a kind of serial each with a story and a cliffhanger like a romantic minisoap. They’ve got a big-name director and this guy from Hollywood to star in it—though he must be at least thirty-five.’

Alex fought a smile. ‘That old!’ Good to know he had three years to go before he was classed as elderly by his nephew.

‘They want to film the first three in an exotic setting—sand, sun and palm trees on an island paradise thing.’

‘And a connection with the golden age of Hollywood would not hurt,’ Alex inserted. He could see why Saronia would appeal to them as a location.

In its day the island had been the setting for his grandfather’s famous parties. Spyros Theakis—a man with a well-documented taste for starlets—reaping the financial rewards of his successful Greek shipping empire, had hosted lavish parties attended by all the stars of the day on his private island. The photos of those legendary events still surfaced from time to time, as did the tales of wild parties, torrid affairs and general excess. Most left out the fact that the mansion had been burnt down during an electrical storm. By some miracle none of the guests had been seriously hurt but the place had never been rebuilt. His grandfather’s fortunes, like those of the island, had gone into decline and the place had become uninhabited.

Alex had visited out of curiosity when the resort hotel he had commissioned was being built on the mainland just a few minutes away by boat. Emma, who had come with him, had been fascinated by the romance of the place. They had always planned to build a house there but the plans had been put on hold when she’d become ill and had been shelved permanently after the diagnosis.

He had gone back to Saronia for the first time a few months after her death, camping on the beach for a few days that had stretched into several weeks. Later that year he had commissioned a house, not the family house that he had planned with Emma but a small place, minimalist, no frills—though not the monk’s cell his sister had called it. It was his own retreat; he went there once or twice a year to recharge his batteries.... God knew there were few places where he could guarantee there were no photographers lurking around the corner, no phones, no news—he was off the grid when he was there.

As much as he admired his nephew’s enterprise he would sooner have invited cameras into his own bathroom than allow a film crew to invade this precious private sanctuary.

‘Louise,’ the younger man said suddenly as he took a seat on the edge of the big desk. ‘She had a really tough upbringing and she thinks I’m...spoilt.’

‘This is your soap star?’

Nico nodded.

‘And you want to impress her.’ Alex, who had been idly scrolling through the tablet, stopped. ‘Who is that?’ The lack of inflection in his voice might have made those who knew him better wonder...but Nico’s attention was on his own troubled love life, not the sudden tension in his uncle’s body language.

His nephew bent over, scanning the inverted image that filled the screen. It was a studio shot of an extremely beautiful young woman pouting provocatively at the camera with lips that were glossy and scarlet. Everything about her was provocative, from the swathe of dark wavy hair that fell artistically across one half of her face to the smile in her heavily lidded eyes, a smile that seemed to invite you to share a secret that gleamed in the shimmering emerald depths as she leaned forward displaying a large amount of cleavage in a gold sheath dress that clung like a second skin.

‘Angel. She’s a model.’

Angel... Angelina? ‘A model.’

It did not surprise him. What did surprise him was the instant effect of a face he had last seen six years ago.... An incident that had not been his finest hour, but one he had consigned to the past. The instant surge of sexual hunger that tightened in his belly had a very present feel to it.

His nephew nodded and looked amazed by his uncle’s ignorance. ‘You must have seen her in that underwear campaign last year. She was everywhere.’

‘I must have missed that one,’ he mused, seeing the beautiful sleek brunette not in underwear...not in anything. He went to stand but, not wanting to draw attention to the testosterone that had suddenly pooled in his groin, he sat back down again like some hormonal teenager, resenting his lack of control—or at least the cause of it.

‘Gorgeous, isn’t she?’ the young man continued, oblivious to any undercurrents in the air. ‘All that hair and those green eyes. They are going to build the campaign around her. It’s a calculated risk, they said, not to choose a big celebrity to be the new face for a perfume, but they want to build the campaign around someone who—’

Alex tuned out the explanation of the thinking behind employing a relative unknown—she was not unknown to him. Seeing that face, those eyes, remembering the sleek, sinuous body, the undulating curves, the golden toned skin, brought that night back so clearly that he could smell the scent of her shampoo.

Lust slammed through him again like an iron fist. With it came the guilt...always the guilt. Emma dead how many weeks...? And he had jumped into bed with the first available woman. She had led but he had followed.

His lips curled in self-disgust. He had moved on since then, when he’d felt ready. Not one-night stands, that was not his thing, but he had enjoyed a series of satisfying relationships with women who enjoyed sex but not drama, and none had been tainted with guilt. If that required he maintain a certain emotional distance it was a price worth paying.

‘Yes.’

He had no desire to revisit that place of agonising guilt but to recapture that...? It was not so much a thing he was trying to recapture but an absence that he was trying to fill. He gave his head a tiny shake, aware that he was guilty of the sin of overanalysing. She had been the best sex of his life, so why not make a push to sample it and her again?

Nico, who had taken his ringing mobile phone from his pocket intending to turn it off, dropped it. It lay where it had fallen as, jaw slack with shock, he scanned the face of the man who sat behind the big desk, a pointless exercise because he never could read his uncle.

‘Whaddaya... Yes...?’ he said, unable to believe he was this lucky.

Behind the desk Alex brought his formidable mental control into play and pushed the increasingly erotic images from his head.

He raised one dark brow. ‘Yes.’

Nico surged to his feet, radiating the sort of youthful excitement that made Alex, who was all of what, twelve years his senior, feel old. ‘Seriously...? This isn’t a wind-up... No, you don’t—’

Alex quirked a dark brow and suggested, ‘Have a sense of humour?’

Maybe the boy was right; maybe he had eradicated that along with his conscience.

A conscience was an inconvenient thing, he thought, seeing the expression in those big eyes. He needed to draw a line under what had happened, and this was an unexpected opportunity to do just that. A girl who adopted a ‘jump into bed first and ask questions later’ policy should have expected a few surprises, yet innocence was an odd word to use with someone who had been so sexually uninhibited. But for some reason...? Again, he was overthinking this.

Take away the acrid taste of guilt and she remained the best sex he had ever had, and due to pressures of work it had been months since he had enjoyed any sex, which might go some way to explaining the strength of his physical response. He didn’t try to justify it. He didn’t just need sex, he needed a question mark in his life; he needed highs and lows, not a predictable flat-line monotony.

Wondering where that thought had come from, he was aware he sounded like a man who was not satisfied with his life. He was; of course he was. Alex got to his feet and picked up the jacket he had slung over the back of the chair.

‘You going to pick that up?’ He nodded towards the phone.

Looking dazed, his nephew nodded. ‘What...? Oh, sure...’

‘You will keep me up to speed?’

‘Me? You want me to... Great, of course... So should I run the details past...?’ Though tall and blessed with an athletic build, the younger man was forced to tilt his head back to look up at his uncle who, at six-five, was a couple of inches taller than him, and significantly more than a couple inches broader across the shoulders.

‘Me,’ Alex said, shrugging on a fine wool jacket that was tailored to fit across his broad shoulders so it fell into place without a crease.

‘You really mean this? You’ll actually let them film on Saronia?’

He’d made the pitch but in his wildest dreams Nico had never seriously expected it to work. Everyone knew how jealously Alex Arlov protected his privacy, even more so since someone had hacked into his wife’s medical records not long before she died. It was after the resulting tear-jerking newspaper article that he had gained the reputation of being ferociously litigious, someone prepared to go after perpetrators who crossed the line in the sand regardless of the cost. Some people suggested that this meant he had something to hide, and pointed out the lives he had ruined by taking legal retribution, but they did so in very small voices and only after taking extensive legal advice!

Nico, who was not averse to seeing his own picture on the pages of celebrity magazines, privately considered that Uncle Alex took it a bit far. The paparazzo who had ended up fully clothed in a swimming pool at his mother’s birthday bash last year, camera and all, might have agreed with him.

‘With certain restrictions obviously. They stay on the mainland and make the daily commute. I don’t want them anywhere near the house. I can leave the details with you?’

‘Wow... Yes, absolutely and, thanks, you won’t regret this.’

Alex watched the boy bounce from the room oozing enthusiasm and incredulous joy. If Alex had been the type to dwell on the motivations behind his decision he might have spent the next hour doing so with increasing frustration. But he wasn’t, so he spent the next hour running instead.

* * *

Angel poked her head around the door of the lounge where most of the people involved had congregated. Used to the handful involved in a fashion shoot, she thought there seemed to be an awful lot of them.

‘I think I’ll go for a walk. Anyone fancy some fresh air?’ She was an active person, and being cooped up in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the luxury hotel was getting to her.

Several astonished pairs of eyes turned her way. Someone whose name she had forgotten replied, his tone indulgent, ‘It’s raining, Angel, honey.’

It never rains in August.

Angel had lost count of the number of times she had heard this statement since they had arrived at the resort, but the fact remained that, despite the lack of precedent, it was raining and it had been for two days solid. In fact, it had been ever since they had arrived at the island paradise, this paradise they had yet to set foot on.

The delay to the photo shoot had caused tempers to fray and the money men to start muttering. For Angel it was two days she could have been at home with her daughter, not hundreds of miles away.

‘It’s just water.’

Her response drew blank looks. ‘But you’ll get wet.’

‘I need the exercise.’

‘I’m just off to the gym,’ said India, the actress playing her mother in the ad—though the woman was only ten years older than Angel. ‘Come with me.’

‘I don’t really do the gym thing. I’m allergic to Lycra.’

‘Seriously?’

‘No, not seriously, India, she’s joking,’ Rudie, the lighting man, explained.

‘Your hair will get wet.’ The objection was made by the man responsible for making her hair look perfect. He was still recovering from the shock of discovering that, not only was the waist-length ebony hair all her own, but the glossy colour had never been enhanced or altered.

‘It will dry.’

‘What’s that smell?’

‘Me, I’m afraid.’ Angel brought her concealed hand out from behind her back. ‘I can’t resist lashings of onions.’

‘Is that a hot dog?’

Angel glanced at the item that was causing the executive from the cosmetic company to look so shocked. The only person in the room who didn’t seem horrified was the handsome young Greek, Nico. She assumed from his appearance he was one of the Theakis family who owned the luxury resort and any number of others around the world, and probably the shipping line of the same name, but she wasn’t sure what his connection was with the owner of Saronia who he was representing.

‘I really hope so.’

Again the young Greek was the only one to laugh so she winked at him and murmured, ‘Tough crowd to play,’ in a terrible New York drawl.

‘But you had a full breakfast.’ The critical follow-up came from the stylist.

Walking in the rain had clearly not been received well, but she could tell from the general air of disapproval in the room that eating an actual meal was considered aberrant behaviour by those present. But Angel coped with their disapproval by refusing to recognise it.

The same way she had refused to recognise the broad hints earlier that she might be better selecting a pot of low-fat yogurt rather than a full English. She was all for a peaceful life.

‘And it was delicious.’ Angel could feel the woman staring at her as though they expected to see her developing unsightly bulges as she watched.

Her grip on her hot dog tightened as she fought the urge to say something that would make everyone look at her with the opposite of their current disdain. It had taken time, but she had conquered her need to seek approval, recognising late in the day that the one person—her mother—from whom she wanted that approval was never going to give it.

Only very occasionally these days did she find that eager-to-please tendency resurfacing. When it did she quashed it ruthlessly. Needy was just not a good look, and not the sort of example she wanted to set for her daughter.

She lifted her chin and embraced them all with a brilliant smile. ‘Then it’s just as well I’m going to go for a walk.’

The figure who had been hiding behind a newspaper lowered it, revealing the lived-in features of a photographer who was more famous than the A-list people who posed for him.

‘Relax, guys, our girl here never puts on an ounce. Do you, darling?’ His brows lifted as his glance slid down the supple curves of the young woman framed in the doorway. ‘Looking particularly lush this morning.... Purely a professional observation, you understand, Angel, luv.’

* * *

Alex nodded to a gardener whose eyes widened as he recognised the person who had manoeuvred his way past the ladder he had set up against the trellis.

Alex liked to fly under the radar when he could. He had arrived the previous night in a private jet that had landed at a private airport and had made the short crossing alone in the rain that had been falling ever since. It was, according to the information supplied by his spy in the camp, Nico, playing havoc with the filming schedule.

The rain had just stopped and the dampness underfoot was already being turned to misty vapour by the late-afternoon sun. Someone had forgotten to adjust the sprinkler system, which was adding to the moisture, but a few of the holidaymakers had already begun to venture out of the hotel, including a large family group who were playing a boisterous game of cricket on the beach.

Alex had a few hours to kill before the meet-and-greet cocktail party Nico had arranged later that evening. The young man thought that Alex was making the effort to attend as a favour to him. Alex, whose motivation was far less selfless, had seen no harm in letting his young relative—and by association his older sister—think just that. It was always handy to have a favour in hand with his sibling.

Heading towards the noise on the beach, he made his way down the flower-filled terraces that led to the tree-lined walkway above the beach. Normally at this time of day it would have been dotted with parasols and supine brown bodies, but the weather meant it was almost empty except for the family group in the midst of their raucous ball game.

Alex was conscious of an uncharacteristic impatience as he anticipated the evening ahead. The tall, luscious brunette had been the best sex of his life, and he had felt nothing that had approached that level of carnal passion since. But would the incredible chemistry between them still be there?

Seeing her face had definitely aroused the dormant hunting instincts in him, and, though Alex had no intention of investing emotionally in any relationship, he had normal appetites.

He shook his head and decided he would spend the remainder of the evening running through the details of the extension project with the contractors that would double the size of the spa. He was a firm believer in multitasking; to combine business with pleasure was a pragmatism he was comfortable with, but he was considerably less comfortable with the inescapable scent of obsession attached to moving heaven and earth to engineer a meeting with a one-night stand from six years ago.

Thinking it over did not remove her face from his head. Instead, it was the ball that was hurtling towards him at great speed that did that. It would have hit him had not some sixth sense made him turn his head and, without thinking, he shot out his hand to catch it.

There was a ripple of applause to congratulate this display of lightning reflexes and natural coordination, followed by a chorus of apologies from the beach. He nodded acknowledgment and responded to the light-hearted invitation to join in the fun from the players with a negative motion of his head before he tossed the ball back and continued along the wide boulevard.

‘Go deep, go deep!’

Someone was yelling, and he turned his head and saw a figure who was doing her level best to follow the instruction. It was a figure who... He stopped dead. Alex had imagined the object of his lustful machinations sunning herself, maybe topless? Sipping a cocktail or taking advantage of the spa facilities, but not pelting across the sand barefoot in a pair of shorts and a cut-off T-shirt, her hair flying and yelling wildly.

‘I’ve got it!’

Before he had a chance to assimilate this extraordinary turn of events she caught the ball, released an exultant whoop, jumped high in the air and was promptly wrestled to the ground by one of the male players. Alex watched with distaste as they rolled around on the ground, the man’s hands seemingly everywhere. It was one of those moments when a man felt the layers of civilisation peel away, and he wasn’t aware until he had begun to walk rapidly away that his hands were clenched into fists.

* * *

Angel, hot, sweaty and deeply involved in the match, didn’t see the throw but she did see the distant figure fling the ball back with an accuracy that caused a second ripple of applause.

There were millions of tall, dark, athletically built, handsome men in the world and some of them projected an aura of authority and, well...sex. So over the years she had experienced a few heart-thudding, stomach-clenching moments of shocked recognition only to discover after all the breathless anticipation that as the object of her antipathy got nearer it was not HIM, but a pale imitation who did not possess that level of raw sensuality that she had responded to on a primal level.

But she was a mother now and her primal days were in the past. The chances she would ever meet HIM—she always thought of Jas’s father in capital letters—again were remote, and if she ever did it was not likely it would be here, she thought, tearing her eyes from the tall figure. Even though she knew it wasn’t HIM, her heart was still racing as she followed the bellowed instruction to go deep from the bowler, a ten-year-old who had a well-developed competitive streak.

When she did catch the ball a few moments later she found herself rugby tackled by the handsome husband of the woman who had invited her to join the game. When she disentangled herself and emerged triumphantly holding the ball aloft the suited figure on the broad walkway who had dredged up memories that were better left undisturbed was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

AT THE END of an exhausting game the friendly family invited her to take afternoon tea with them as they were celebrating the grandparents’ diamond anniversary. Refusal, they told her, was not an option, so after nipping back to her bungalow to quickly shower and change she joined them in a private lounge where she ate cakes and no one pointed out the fat content.

It was the first time Angel had enjoyed herself since she had arrived, or even come close to relaxing, though watching one of the grandchildren who was Jasmine’s age did make her throat swell with emotion as she wondered what her daughter was doing.

As a result, she ate more cake and stayed longer than she’d intended. So after the lively afternoon the silence and emptiness of her bungalow felt rather depressing. Not that it wasn’t a lovely room—actually it was a two-bedroom suite furnished in a very expensive version of rustic, with dark, chunky wooden furniture and floors with splashes of colour provided by the original art displayed on the white walls.

All the bungalows had flower-bedecked private terraces with spa tubs, some with a view of the pool with its mountain backdrop; others, like the one that Angel had been allocated, had a sea view. The sand lapped by the turquoise waves was sugary white and dotted with palms. The storm of the previous day seemed a dim and distant memory this evening.

Before stepping back into her room Angel dusted the sand off the soles of her bare feet. It was not hard to see why the place was popular with honeymooning couples lucky enough to be able to afford the prices the very upmarket resort charged. But then paradise didn’t come cheap. As gorgeous as it was, the place lacked a vital ingredient that was essential for Angel’s paradise.

God, she thought, giving her head a tiny shake before she crossed the room to the side table, her bare feet silent on the wooden floor. Her chest tightened and she felt the sting of tears in her eyes as she picked up the framed photo of Jasmine.

‘Here five minutes and homesick already! Your mum is a wimp,’ she told the picture of the laughing child before she kissed the glass, swallowed the emotional lump in her throat and with a brisk, ‘Pull yourself together, Angel,’ she replaced it carefully on the side table.

Then after a last wave to the photo she straightened her shoulders and headed for the open French doors, pausing to slip her feet into a pair of flat sandals as she headed for the bedroom. It had been made very clear that the drinks party was not optional! And she was... She glanced at her wristwatch. Yes, she was running late.

So no time to change.

‘Drinks and butter up the rich owner...?’ She pursed her lips, staring as she aimed a frown at her reflection in the full-length mirror.

The frown was for the rich owner who would most likely have a monumental ego, and the question was purely rhetorical. The thin cotton dress she was wearing was not by any stretch a cocktail dress. It was little more than an ankle-length cover-up she had chosen earlier, a deep cobalt blue shot with swirls of green. It left her smooth brown shoulders bare, or they would have been if it hadn’t been for the straps of her halter bikini.

Angel might move in the world of high fashion but she was no slave to the latest trends. She knew what suited her; she had an individual style and the confidence to carry off anything she wore.

Poise, the scout from the talent agency had called it. It was, he had told her later, the reason he had picked her out from countless pretty girls in the park that day, that and the length of her legs. Her legs were quite good, and Angel and the scout were quite good friends these days despite the fact that her brother, witnessing the first encounter, had warned the middle-aged man off in no uncertain terms. Her brother was the only male of her acquaintance who thought her incapable of taking care of herself. Exasperating, but she tolerated it because she knew his intentions were good, though his methods sometimes a bit Neanderthal.

She reached the bow behind her neck and, tongue caught between her teeth, managed to unclip the fastener of her bikini. She gave a grunt as she managed to whip it off without disturbing the dress. Already moving towards the door, she slung the top on the bed as she twitched the neckline, pulling it a few modest centimetres higher over the slopes of her breasts as she glanced in the mirror.

‘Or should we add the pearls?’ She chuckled to herself before warning her mirror image darkly, ‘First signs of madness, Angel.’ Snatching up the string of pretty green beads she’d bought at a crazy cheap price from an enterprising trader before a security guard had given him marching orders from the private stretch of beach, she left the bungalow at a trot, looping them around her neck as she went, reflecting it wasn’t what you wore, it was the way you wore it. A cliché but true nonetheless.

* * *

It was rare that Alex felt the need to rationalise his own actions, and why should he now? Looking at the situation objectively, all he had done was agree to Nico’s request. He’d helped out his nephew, which was what families did. Plus, he had business here. It was called multitasking, he told himself.

He was curious, no crime. It wasn’t as if he had engineered the situation solely for the purpose of meeting with the woman who had spent the night in his bed six years ago.

Sure you didn’t, Alex—you were just passing.

Of course, if he took advantage of a situation that had fallen into his lap, who could blame him?

The last time she had not fallen in his lap, she had jumped!

Alex, who believed contrary to popular belief very few people were capable of learning from past mistakes, was an advocate of living in the present. But as a pulse of hot lust slammed through his body he found his thoughts being dragged back to a moment six years ago, when, driven by the need he’d had then to fill his every waking moment with action, he had left his car and driver stuck in rush-hour traffic and walked instead along a crowded London street.

If he hadn’t been...?

She had stepped off the pavement into the moving traffic and he had literally dragged the young woman from underneath the wheels of a bus.

The memory, a moment frozen in time etched on his brain, was so vivid he could smell the exhaust fumes in the air now, hear the tortured squeal of brakes and the cry of a solitary onlooker who, alone among those busily going about their own business, had witnessed the moment of near disaster.

Alex’s reaction had been pure reflex, not related in any way to bravery, and his body’s response had been equally involuntary when he’d turned the figure around and looked down into the face turned up to him...and carried on looking.

His anger had melted.

She was stunning!

He could remember thinking what a crime it would have been for that face to be marked. A delicate, slightly tip-tilted nose; wide, full, luscious lips; a natural pout even in repose and incredible deep green, heavily lashed, almond-shaped eyes set beneath thick, darkly defined, arched brows, and all that general gorgeousness set against flawless satiny skin that had glowed pale gold in the grey city street.

He’d found himself holding the breathing embodiment of sensuality and his body had responded accordingly and instantaneously.

Fighting the impulse to keep her plastered against his body for longer—there was no way she couldn’t have picked up on how hard he was—he’d released her, but retained a steadying hold of her elbows as he’d pushed her a little away. His nostrils had flared as the scent of her shampoo had drifted his way.

She had been breathing hard and blinking in a dazed way. Even in the flat, unattractive boots she’d been wearing she’d been tall for a woman, reaching a little past his shoulder. Her slim but voluptuous curves had made the generic jeans and T-shirt she wore look anything but common.

‘Are you all right?’

She’d nodded, sending the magnificent waist-length curtain of hair that shone like polished ebony silk swishing around her face. He’d watched as, head tilted forward, she did a sweep of her feet upwards.

‘It’s all still there and in one piece,’ she’d murmured, sounding dazed. Her voice had had a delicious throaty rasp. ‘You really do see your life pass before your eyes.’ She’d tilted her head back and looked at him, breathing a soft ‘Wow!’ as her eyes widened.

He had found himself grinning, amused by her total lack of artifice, then watched in fascination as a visible wave of heat travelled up the long graceful curve of her neck, adding an extra tinge of colour to her smooth cheeks. He could not remember ever encountering a woman who wore her emotions so close to the surface. Yet despite the blush, the glowing, gorgeous young creature had held his gaze steadily.

‘I think you saved my life.’

He’d given the faintest of shrugs. ‘Do you make a habit of throwing yourself under moving vehicles?’

She’d then been staring as hard at him as he was at her. ‘It was a first for me.’

When not breathless, the throaty, sexy quality of her voice had intensified.

He’d felt her trembling. Post-trauma or was she feeling the same clutch of lust he was...?

There’d been more than a hint of provocative challenge in her attitude as she’d lifted her chin and asked, ‘Can I... Let me buy you a coffee, to thank you...? It seems the least I can do, unless you’re...?’

‘Coffee would be good,’ he’d heard himself say.

She had expelled a tiny sigh and beamed up at him in undisguised delight, and when he’d kept a guiding hand on one of her elbows she hadn’t pulled away. He’d felt her shiver and that time he’d known why.

Alex pushed away the memory; as always it was inextricably and painfully linked in his mind with guilt. On one level he recognised the guilt was irrational. He had no longer been married at that point, hadn’t cheated, he’d been free to have sex with a total stranger.

Even when Emma had been alive he could have taken a mistress with her blessing. Alex was not easily shocked but on the first occasion she had brought the subject up he had been—deeply. He’d known she’d had something on her mind and had coaxed her to tell him what was bothering her but he hadn’t been prepared for the incendiary suggestion she had made.

‘You’re a man, you have needs that I can’t...and you’ve been so patient with me, never said that I should have told you about the MS. I wanted to, but it might have been years before it came back or even never.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if I had known,’ he had told her, hoping it was true. Even wondering had felt like a betrayal.

‘I know that, Alex, but the fact remains you didn’t have the choice. I didn’t give you the choice. So if you need to, you know...date other women, that’s all right with me. I don’t have to know, I don’t want to know, so long as you stay with me while I’m— I hate hospitals so much, Alex...’

And there it was, the real fear, that he would send her to some anonymous nursing home. It had cut him to the core to know his wife had been willing to endure infidelities for the security and promise of staying in the home that she had enjoyed furnishing in those first months of marriage. She had enjoyed a lot of things before the disease that had finally killed her resurfaced.

A short year later she had been confined to a wheelchair and eaten up with guilt because she hadn’t told him before they’d got married. The constant apologising had been hard to hear and sometimes had made him angry with her. Guilt piled on top of more guilt. It had been a vicious circle.

‘This is your home, Emma, our home.’ Her hand had felt so small under his, the bones fragile as he’d squeezed. ‘There will be no hospitals and no other women, I swear.’

And he had kept his word to the letter if not the spirit. He might have been legally free but in his mind, in his heart, Alex had still been married when he had spent the night with Angelina. Though not once during that night had he thought of Emma. How could he have forgotten, even for a moment? The next morning he hadn’t been able to get out of there quickly enough.

If he had encountered the stunning Angel when Emma had still been alive would he have found it so easy to keep his promise? The question wouldn’t go away and he would never know the answer, but he was pretty sure that if he had it wouldn’t have given him any comfort.

Alex liked to think he was able to forgive weakness in others, but he set higher standards for himself. Though he’d got out of there as fast as he could the morning after, memories of the night before had haunted him. Well, he was about to lay that ghost—literally if things turned out as he intended—to rest.

‘Only the star is missing.’ His inability to prevent his eyes going to the doorway sent a surge of irritation through Alex. ‘Does the lady like to make an entrance?’

Beside him Nico responded defensively to the disdain in his uncle’s voice. ‘She’s really nice.’

The balding executive whom he had directed his sardonic comment to nodded in agreement with his nephew’s assessment. ‘She certainly doesn’t stand on ceremony and the last thing you can accuse her of is being a diva.’ He laughed at some private joke and took a sip of the orange juice he was nursing. ‘And if she wanted people to notice her she wouldn’t need any stunts. With Angel in the room no one else exists.’ He drew a line in the air and pronounced with utter confidence, ‘End of story.’

Alex recalled Angelina, or Angel as it seemed he must learn to call her, in his room, an anonymous hotel room. For him that night, no one else had existed. He clenched his teeth in an effort to eject the image of her sitting on the bed gloriously naked and utterly unselfconscious, acting as if they had just shared more than lust, acting as if there would be a tomorrow.

Dragging himself into the present, he wondered if the executive’s admiration was purely professional. Was the man sleeping with the model? He knew little of the world they occupied but he supposed it would hardly be a revelation if they were.

‘Rudie says Angel simply doesn’t have a bad angle. The camera loves her,’ Nico, the new president of her fan club, informed him.

‘And Rudie is?’

‘Our lighting man, one of the best.’

The guy was probably in love with her too, Alex thought sourly.

* * *

Oh, God, she was the last to arrive. Angel fought the impulse to step back into the shadows, then smiled to herself at the irony that she made her living posing for a camera, having her image stared at by the public, though she genuinely hated being the centre of attention.

She didn’t retreat but paused in the doorway, her eyes sweeping the room, the light breeze pulling the silky fluttering fabric of her dress against long legs until Ross spotted her. The photographer grinned, giving a thumbs-up sign, in the process slopping what she knew would be tonic water down his front. People assumed he had a drink problem, and he let them think that. He had once confided to Angel that he simply didn’t like the taste of alcohol, but being thought an ex-alcoholic made him seem more interesting.

Angel’s spontaneous burst of throaty laughter alerted the others to her presence and she was immediately involved in a lot of luvvie air kissing.

Well, she’d been right about one thing: she was underdressed. The men, with the exception of Ross, were wearing suits and ties and the women cocktail dresses.

‘Worth the wait,’ he heard someone say and Alex could not disagree.

The late arrival’s appearance had sent a rush of scalding heat through his body. Six years ago she had been stunning, possessing a natural grace and sleek sensuality that had been all the more powerful for appearing totally unstudied. She still possessed all those attributes but now she held herself with the confidence that came when a woman knew the power she wielded with her beauty, when she enjoyed it.

Every man in the room was enjoying it.

Alex’s enjoyment was tempered by this knowledge and the discomfort that could be traced to the testosterone-fuelled ache in his groin. The intervening years slipped away as his blue eyes made a slow sweep upwards from her bare feet, and the pink-painted toenails—presumably the sandals dangling from her fingers belonged there.

Though it looked as if she could not have made less effort, you had to feel sorry for the women who had spent hours getting ready. Angel had stopped short of appearing in her shorts or arriving with a group of salivating half-dressed holidaymakers in tow, but her outfit was more beach than drinks party. Had she deliberately underdressed in order to stand out from the crowd? he speculated. If so, the effort was unnecessary. As the man had said, she would have stood out in every crowd and he doubted any man in the room could find fault with her choice of outfit.

She brought irresistibly to mind the archetypal image of a Greek goddess in the semisheer column that revealed every sinuous inch of her long, shapely legs from calf to thigh. Bare shoulders gleamed gold above the draped fabric that followed the lines of her full, high breasts and was cinched in beneath by a tie before flowing out in long, soft folds.

The fabric shimmered, Angel shimmered.

As far as he could tell she was wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up. Her face, with the full sexy mouth, cute nose and spectacular dark-lashed eyes, was beautiful, framed against a silken fall of river-straight hair that dropped to her waist.

Luckily, Angel thought, when reliving the moment later that night, she’d had a drink already thrust into her hand when the billionaire who had granted them exclusive use of his private island to film the series of commercials was pointed out to her.

‘Now, that’s what I call a face.’

If only she’d had some warning, some inkling. But then that was, she supposed, the definition of shock, and it hit Angel like a sudden immersion into icy water. Initially her mind went utterly blank, rejecting what she was seeing. Then the breath froze in her lungs; there was a solid block of ice in her chest. Was this a panic attack? she wondered, feeling like a drowning man going down for the final time as she struggled to mask her feelings, willed her face to stay blank.

She looked away and waited for the pounding throb of her heart to slow. Her first instinct had been to run, but that was not an option given her limbs were not acting as though they belonged to her, except for her hand, the one with the glass in it, which managed to find her mouth.

She swallowed the contents in one gulp, her eyes darting from side to side like a trapped animal. There was no place to hide and he was coming her way. Without looking, she could sense his approach.

How was she acting so normally?

She even managed to say something to Sandy, the pretty make-up artist who had initially pointed Alex out to her. What it was Angel had no idea, but she must have been funny because the other girl laughed. That’s me, funny Angel, smart Angel, lucky Angel... Scared witless Angel!

‘Are you cold? You’re shivering.’ The other girl sounded worried.

Angel swallowed and made herself respond to Sandy’s concerned question, forcing the words past the constriction in her throat.

‘No, I’m not cold.’ And she wasn’t. The warm glow in her stomach, the combination of champagne and brandy in the cocktail, had begun to seep into her bloodstream. ‘That’s Alex Arlov?’ Her voice sounded as though it were coming from a long way off. Her head was still spinning as she struggled to take on board the identity of her one-night stand, the father of her child.

Sandy misinterpreted the cause of Angel’s stunned expression. ‘I know, he looks even better in the flesh, doesn’t he? You could cut yourself on those cheekbones.’

The other woman seemed to take it for granted that Angel recognised the billionaire by sight. And Angel did know the name, of course—who didn’t? She could even have recited a potted bio of the man, not because she found money sexy or shared the popular fascination with people who had amassed a great deal of it, but because, and here the irony was so black a short, hard cough of laughter escaped her clenched teeth, her brother had tried in his oh-so-not-subtle way to set her up with the man!

The two men had met while both were driving ridiculously fast cars around a racing circuit for fun. Her brother’s excuse was it had once been his day job; the other guy, as far as she had been able to tell at the time, had been there because he enjoyed pushing the limits and he could afford the sort of toys that only very rich men could.

The two men appeared to have bonded over a mutual love of speed and obviously wives had not come into the conversation or Cesare would not have tried to set her up with the man. Her brother had been oblivious, of course, to the fact they were discussing the father of her child, and the man her overprotective sibling had, on more than one occasion, expressed a desire to dismember slowly. Angel’s response had been firm but dismissive. For Cesare, the habit of watching out for his little sister was deeply engrained.

‘I’m not interested in dating a Russian oligarch, even one who drives well in wet conditions,’ she’d said.

Her brother had grinned at the retort but protested. ‘Not dating—I was simply suggesting we invite him up for the weekend some time. I think you two would get on. He’d get your sense of humour and, let’s face it, that puts him in the minority. And he’s only half Russian; his father died before he was born and his mother fell out with his family and moved back home. There was a grandfather in Russia, hence the Russian oil, but as his mother was half Greek he was brought up by that side of his family, and actually he’s taken British citizenship.’

‘Fine, invite him, whatever you like,’ Angel had responded, making a mental note to be away any weekend her brother tried to play matchmaker. ‘But I think one adrenaline junkie is enough in any family.’

And it had been left at that.

It was her own adrenaline levels that presented the most immediate problem now. Light-headed to the point where she saw black dots dancing, and with her heart thudding like a metronome-driven sledgehammer against her ribs, it was taking a conscious effort to act with anything approaching normality. The muscles in her cheeks burned with the effort of keeping her smile pasted on as she absently licked the crystals of sugar deposited on her lips by the decorated rim of her now-empty glass. She watched him approach...nearer and nearer...

Her galloping paranoia saw something predatory about his long-legged, straight-backed stride. When he got within a few feet of them her stomach went into a steep dive. In other circumstances she would have been riveted, not by fear, but by admiration. Alex Arlov carried himself like a natural athlete, every action screaming fluidity and grace, but also the arrogance that came when someone knew they were at the top of the food chain. Oh, and he could throw a decent pass too; she knew now he had to have been the man she had seen at the beach.

Angel was seized by an irrational certainty that if she took her eyes off him for even a second she would lose her nerve and just bolt...or faint, which would be a first. There had been a close call in the early months of her pregnancy when she hadn’t yet realised why she couldn’t stand the smell of coffee. She inhaled and closed the door on those thoughts.

By the time Alex had reached them—seconds? Who knew? It was all a blur—Angel had lost the rictus grin of fear and had her face composed into a mask of polite indifference. Bone-deep indifference, though her grip on her composure was not even a cell deep. But who cared as long as she didn’t make a fool of herself by giving in to the need to tell him exactly what she thought of him?

The indulgence of venting her real feelings, though tempting, would not exactly improve the situation. Angel knew exactly what she would say. She’d had nearly six years to figure it out, which didn’t make her some pathetic creature who’d been unable to move on, or someone who had spent the past six years thinking about him.

She had a life that she loved and he had no place in it. At least that was the way it had worked this morning.... Now he wasn’t an unidentifiable figure; he was here and real and present. She had always dreaded the future conversation with Jasmine that began with, ‘Sorry, I don’t know who your dad is,’ but when she thought of naming Alex Arlov as the man in question it suddenly became not such a terrible prospect.

He might not even recognise her...? No such luck, not the way this day was going, she thought, swallowing the bubble of hysterical laughter as she grabbed another drink.

But if he didn’t, if he had forgotten she existed the moment he had left the room, would it be so bad to keep him in ignorance? Well, yes, it would be, Angel thought to herself. You could stretch moral ambiguity just so far but it would make life a lot simpler.... She shook her head, unable to deal with the fallout, the deeper implications now. Not falling down was tough enough, she thought, struggling to focus on her contempt and not her near nervous collapse.

Maybe she focused too hard because as his eyes brushed her face for a split second she thought she saw a flicker of shock in those ice-blue depths, but then it was gone and so was his attention.

Angel experienced a weird sense of anticlimax and thought, Was that it? Sandy, the recipient of a smile of practised charm, lit up when he spoke to her in the deep gravelly drawl Angel recalled so well. She winced to hear the make-up artist respond with a high girlish giggle, but she couldn’t judge. Especially as someone who had gasped wow the first time she had seen him was in no position to judge anyone.

The memory made her cringe. Easy hardly covered how very eager she had been to be seduced. She’d been so convinced that she was feeling some deep spiritual connection that he hadn’t had to lift a finger to seduce her.

While Alex’s attention was on Sandy and she had pulled back from the brink of total panic, Angel took the opportunity to study him. She wasn’t the only one—most of the women in the room were checking him out.

The interest was no mystery—the aura of masculinity that had taken her breath away that first time was still intact, was presumably an integral part of him. He was the sort of man whose testosterone entered the room ahead of him, and, to Angel’s intense fury and eternal shame, even after being a victim of it she was still not immune to its effects.

The difference was she was not about to equate her physical response to his blatant sexuality with anything but hormones. The shameful heat between her thighs had nothing to do with love at first sight. She was almost too embarrassed to acknowledge she had ever been naive enough to believe that such a thing existed.

At almost twenty and just starting her art college course, Angel knew she had acquired a reputation for being sophisticated among her fellow students. She never could work out how or why, but the label had stuck.

‘You’re so independent,’ a homesick friend had once remarked enviously. ‘And you can talk to anyone.’

Well, Angel was certainly independent. Arriving home for the school holidays to find a cheque and a note from her mother to explain that she’d been invited to spend the week at a villa in Switzerland made a person independent. And ten schools in eight years made it essential that she could talk to people, though it had been hard on her grades and near impossible to cultivate long-term friendships.

Given her reputation, it was ironic that, unlike most of her contemporaries, at twenty, Angel’s experience of the opposite sex had been limited. Her sexual experience had been pretty much nil. Angel’s problem had not been low self-esteem or issues about her body or that she was a prude. No, much worse, Angel had been a closet romantic!

The fact was none of the men she had met up to that point had come close to the idealised lover she had imagined was out there waiting for her. And when she’d met the man who looked and acted like her fantasy lover he had turned out to be a lying, cheating rat!

Even though beside her Sandy was still talking, Alex was now staring at Angel. Presumably he thought that money and power negated the need for common courtesy. He probably— The contemptuous observation was not completed because he had her hand in his.... How had that happened?

Myriad half-formed, disconnected thoughts flitted through her head as she stared at his hand, noting with a tightening in her chest that he still didn’t wear a wedding band. His brown hands were strong, the fingers long and tapering. Her weirdly heightened senses could make out the slight calluses on his palms. The more she tried not to think about them gliding over her skin, touching her, the more space the images took up in her head.

She squeezed her eyes closed.

Her loss of control could only have lasted a fraction of a second but it felt like a lot longer. When, a moment later, she was able to meet his eyes, what she saw there answered one question—he remembered.

She didn’t fall apart. Instead she manufactured a frown as if she were struggling to place him and then widened her eyes and nodded as though she had retrieved the memory she was searching for.

She rewarded herself with the faintest of smiles.

‘Alex Arlov.’ He tipped his sleek head and to her intense relief released her hand. How could I ever not have seen how arrogant he is? She grabbed a napkin from a passing tray and wiped it against the heel of her hand.

‘The name seems familiar...’ She gnawed lightly on her full lower lip, pretending to search her memory before producing a bright smile and pausing to stretch the moment, hoping like hell he was worrying she was going to out him. If it weren’t for Jas she would, and to hell with people knowing what a total fool she was.

But he didn’t look concerned, just vaguely amused, as he elevated one dark brow. ‘That happens to me all the time—an instantly forgettable face.’

And so full of yourself, she wanted to scream as she smiled back, unable to repress a shudder as she looked directly into his ice-blue dark-framed eyes.

She willed herself to relax. Let it go, she told herself, life moves on. He’s just a landmark moment, not a threat.

Her life had moved on, and, if time hadn’t completely healed the wounds, it had allowed her to see things from a different perspective. She had made a mistake, but that mistake had given her Jasmine; this man had given her a gift and he didn’t know. Jas didn’t know either, didn’t know who her father was and one day... Did she have to tell him?

‘Are you enjoying island life, Miss...?’ He arched a brow and studied her. Her features had lost some of their youthful softness, revealing the truly lovely bone structure of her face. She was, he recognised, one of those women who would only improve with age, perfect bone structure compensating for the slight blurring of features as the years passed.

Angel could see his mouth moving, a mouth that was a miracle of stern sensuality, a mouth she had dreamed of. But all she could hear was, You’re married. Pride had been the only thing that day that had prevented her from crumbling when she had heard him speak the words that had crushed her, words that had turned what she had thought was beautiful into something nasty and sordid.

She blinked and struggled to focus as he repeated himself. Paul, the advertising executive who had followed Alex across the room, caught the question and said, ‘We’re all on first-name terms here—aren’t we, Angel?’

Reminded of a puppy dog eager to please, she flicked a glance his way. She felt sorry for the man, but not as sorry as she felt for herself.... This was a nightmare.

Breathe, she told herself. You’ve coped with worse.

Such as once she had got back to her room in the university residence, when she had locked the door and stood under a shower for forty minutes but still hadn’t been able to wash off that feeling of self-disgust, shame and the bitterness of disillusion.

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