Buch lesen: «Mistress of Convenience»

CHAPTER ONE

‘WOW, will you look at that? His Royal Highness and the industrialist everyone swears is not up for a knighthood. And don’t they look cosy together for two people who are supposed to be sworn enemies.’

As Suzy struggled to hear the voice of Jeff Walker, the photographer from the magazine they both worked for, over the noise of the busy launch party, she heard him saying excitedly, ‘I’ve just got to get a shot of that. Come on.’

This was her first month on the magazine, and immediately she followed him.

She had taken a couple of steps when she heard him saying bitterly, ‘Hell! He’s got Colonel Lucas James Soames with him. Ex-Commando, Special Forces, hero, and hater of the press!’ he explained impatiently when he saw Suzy’s uncertain frown. ‘Despite the fact that a female reporter with a certain British news team practically dribbled with lust every time she interviewed him during his last campaign.’

Suzy tried to look as though she was up to speed with what she was being told, but the plain truth was that she knew nothing of Colonel Soames. Already unnerved by the photographer’s comments, she looked round discreetly, but was unable to spot anyone wearing any kind of military uniform.

She knew she ought to be grateful to her university tutor for recommending her for this job. He had been so enthusiastic about it, telling her what a wonderful opportunity it would be for her, that she had felt she would be letting him down if she didn’t accept the probationary position. But after nearly a month working on the political affairs desk of the cutting-edge City magazine Suzy was beginning to suspect that she had made a mistake.

Maybe it was the fact that she had been out of the swim of things for so long whilst she nursed her mother through the last two years of her life that made her so uncomfortable about the methods the magazine adopted in order to get its hot stories. She had certainly felt immeasurably older than her fellow students when she had returned to university to complete her degree.

‘I’m sorry—’ She began to apologise uncertainly to Jeff. ‘I can’t see the Colonel.’

But she could see a man several yards away, who stood head and shoulders above every other man in the room—or so it seemed to Suzy. She was transfixed, every female hormone in her body focusing on him with an eager interest. Her mouth had gone dry and her heart had started to pound unevenly. The fact that he was standing alone, somehow aloof from everyone else, only piqued her interest further.

She had the most unexpected and dangerous urge to go up to him and make him…Make him what, exactly? Acknowledge her presence? Talk to her? Tell her that he was experiencing the same heart-wrenching, sanity-undermining, wholly unfamiliar need to be with her that she was experiencing for him? Was she going crazy? Her legs had gone weak and her heart was racing. She didn’t know whether it was shock that was running through her body with mercurial speed or excitement. Her? Excited by a man? A stranger? She was too sensible for such stuff. Too sensible and too wary!

Determinedly she started to look away, but he had turned his head, and her heartbeat went into overdrive whilst a surge of explicit and bewildering arousal and longing raced though her. Longing for a man she had only looked at? How could that happen?

And yet Suzy couldn’t help watching him. He wasn’t looking at her, but past her, she recognised. However, whilst he did so, Suzy was able to stare at him and greedily absorb every tiny physical detail. Tall, dark and handsome went nowhere near describing his full male magnificence. He was more than that. Much, much more! Suzy could feel her whole body responding to just about the sexiest man she had ever seen and was ever likely to see. Her heart gave another small nervous flurry of thuds when he turned his head again, as though he knew that she was now looking at him. He was now staring straight at her, imprisoning her almost, so that she felt unable to move!

She felt as though she was being X-rayed—and that there wasn’t a single thing he didn’t know about her! Pink-cheeked, she realised that his incisive gaze had finished sweeping her and was now fixed on her mouth. She felt her lips starting to part, as though they were longing for his kiss. Hurriedly she closed them, her face still burning.

His eyes were a shade of intense dark blue, his skin tanned, his hair so dark brown that it was almost black. His profile was that of a Greek god and, as though that wasn’t enough, Suzy was forced to acknowledge that he had about him that indefinable air that whispered into the female ear sex. And not just any old kind of sex either, but dream-breaking, heart-stopping, mind-blowing wonderful sex! In fact the kind of sex…

Somehow she managed to get her wayward thoughts under control just in time to hear Jeff telling her curtly, ‘You’re going to have to distract the Colonel’s attention whilst I get my picture.’

‘What?’ Suzy asked, anxiously scanning the crowd packed tightly around the Prince.

‘Where…where is he…?’

‘Over there—next to the Prince and the Secretary of State.’

Wildly Suzy looked from the photographer’s face to the man he had just indicated. The man. Her man…

‘But…but you said he was a colonel. He isn’t in uniform.’ She was stammering like an idiot—behaving like a woman who had fallen passionately in love! Now she knew that she was crazy.

‘Uniform?’ Jeff’s voice was impatient, contemptuous of her ignorance. ‘No, of course he isn’t in uniform. He isn’t in the Army any more. Where have you been? He works on his own, freelance, providing a bespoke protection service for those who need it. Not that he needs to work. He’s independently wealthy and well connected; his father was the younger son of an old county family, and his mother was American. He’s ex-Eton. Cut his teeth in Northern Ireland and got made up to Major, then was decorated for service above and beyond the call of duty in Bosnia—that’s when he got his next promotion. Like I just said, he isn’t in the Army any more but he still does the dangerous stuff—acting as a personal bodyguard. He’s in great demand on the “I’m an important person and I need a top-class protection service” circuit. Visiting politicians and heads of state, et cetera.’

All this had been relayed to Suzy in a grim whisper, but now suddenly Jeff exclaimed excitedly, ‘Look at that! Get that picture and I won’t ever need to work again. Yes, you stay right there, baby,’ he crooned to himself, before commanding Suzy, ‘Come on! You’ll have to distract the Colonel so that I can get this shot.’

‘What? What am I supposed to do?’ Suzy asked anxiously, and she looked to where the Colonel was standing casually in front of the two men, screening them from interruption.

Jeff gave her an exasperated look. ‘Why the hell did they land me with you instead of someone who knows the ropes? I’ve heard that Roy has only taken you on as a favour, and because he likes your legs—he probably interviewed you imagining what they’d look like wrapped around him.’

Suzy struggled not to let Jeff see how upset she was by his comments. Her boss’s openly sexual and often crude remarks to her were just one of the reasons why she was becoming increasingly unhappy about her job.

‘You’re a woman, aren’t you? Go over there and do what comes naturally!’ Jeff grunted, before pushing his way through the crowd, leaving Suzy to follow him.

Do what comes naturally! Oh, yes, she could quite easily do what came naturally with Colonel Soames…A thrill of dangerous emotion spiked through Suzy as she looked into the face of the man who was now standing right in front of her. He was, Suzy acknowledged, quite definitely the sexiest man she had ever seen. Those broad shoulders, that handsome face!

She was beginning to feel seriously alarmed by her reactions to him! Her friend Kate was always scolding her, telling her she didn’t get out enough, and now Suzy thought she might be right. To be affected like this, to react like this simply at the sight of one specific man…She closed her eyes, willing herself to be sensible, and then opened them again.

What was it about a man in a dinner suit? What was it about this man in a dinner suit? Well, for one thing he was wearing his with an unselfconscious ease that said he was used to doing so, and for another it fitted him somehow as though it were a part of him. What had he looked like in his dress uniform? In combats? A tiny shudder ripped through her.

And as for that tan and those teeth…teeth that she was sure gleamed nearly as white as his shirtfront! And she was sure there were real muscles beneath all that tailoring as well.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jeff glowering at her. A little uncomfortably Suzy took a deep breath and stepped forward, a muddled plan of action forming inside her head. A smile of recognition at the Colonel then a brief apology for having mistaken him for someone else. A few seconds’ work, but long enough, she hoped, for Jeff to get his picture.

Gritting her teeth against the knowledge that this kind of behaviour was quite definitely not her style, Suzy ignored the nervous churning of her stomach and stepped forward.

And then stopped! One step was all she had taken—so how come she now had her nose virtually against the Colonel’s pristine white shirt? How had he moved without her being aware that he was doing so? When had he moved? Suzy wondered frantically. In less than a blink of the eye he had somehow gone from standing a couple of yards away to being right in front of her.

Suzy’s sensitive nostrils started to quiver as she breathed in a discreet hint of cologne, underwritten by something very male and subtle that sent her self-control crashing into chaos.

He reached out and took hold of her arm, his grip firm and compelling. Suzy could feel her blood beating up around his encircling fingers as her body reacted to his hold.

Like someone lost in a trance she looked up at him. An instinct deeper than any thought or action seemed to have taken control of her, and she was powerless to do anything other than give in to it. The navy blue gaze fastened on her own. Her heart jerked against the wall of her chest, and the polite social apology she had been about to make died unspoken on her lips.

In a haze of dizzying desire Suzy felt her gaze slide like melting ice cream from the heat of his eyes to the curve of his mouth. Her whole body was galvanised by a series of tiny tremors and she exhaled on a small, soft, female sigh of wanton pleasure.

Without knowing what she was doing she lifted her free hand to trace the hard, firm line of his mouth—to see if the flesh there felt as erotic as it looked. But then her hand dropped to her side as another even more pleasurable way of conducting her survey struck her.

She had to reach up on her tiptoes in order to press her mouth to his, but the hand holding her arm seemed somehow to aid and balance her. The busy hum of conversation in the room faded as her lips made the discovery that just touching his mouth with her own was opening a door for her into a whole new world.

Blind and deaf to everything and everyone else around her, Suzy made a soft sound of pleasure deep in her throat. An aching whisper of female recognition.

Closing her eyes, she leaned into the male body, waiting hungrily for the Colonel to return the pressure of her lips, to part them with the swift, hard thrust of his tongue, to share with her the devouring intensity of need and longing that surged through her.

As she sighed her pleasure and hunger against his mouth she felt its pressure, his kiss heart-joltingly male. One of his hands slid firmly into the thick softness of her red-gold curls whilst the other pressed into the small of her back, urging her body closer to his own!

Suzy knew she was not very sexually experienced, and what was happening to her now was way out of her league! The way his mouth was moving on hers—firm, warm, knowing—the way his tongue-tip was laving the eager softness of her lips, was rewriting the logbook of her sexual history and adding a whole new chapter to it!

Lost in the rapture of what was happening to her, Suzy pressed closer, caught up in a cloud of hormone-drenched fantasy.

This was it! This was him! Her dragon-slayer and protector, the magical lover she had dreamed of in her most vulnerable moments. The hero she had secretly longed for all her life in her most private dreams. Her soul mate.

Suzy ached to tell him how she felt, how filled with delirious joy she was that he was here, how…

She gave a small shocked gasp as suddenly she was being pushed away.

Confusion darkened her eyes as she looked up at him, at a loss to understand what was happening until she saw the way he was looking back at her.

Instantly her joy was replaced with pain and despair. Shock gripped hold of her with icy fingers as she recognised the anger and loathing in the navy blue gaze boring into her.

‘No!’ She heard herself whisper the agonised denial, but it was no use. There was no mercy or softening in the hard, contemptuous gaze. Her whole body felt as though it was being drenched in shame and humiliation. Her soul mate? He was looking at her as though she were his worst enemy!

Anger, contempt, hostility, Suzy could see them all glittering in his eyes, before they were hidden away from her with a blank look of steely professionalism.

What on earth had she done? Why had she done it? She had made a complete and total fool of herself! What stupidity had made her resurrect that idiotic old dream of a soul mate? She’d thought she had had the sense to recognise it had no place in reality! It was a dream she had clung to for far too long anyway, like a child reluctant to relinquish the security of a worn-out teddy bear.

Her face was burning painfully—and not just because of the way he had looked at her. The shaky, sickly feeling invading her was surely a form of shock, a physical reaction to an emotional trauma. And she was traumatised, she admitted unwillingly. And not just by the Colonel’s contempt and dislike!

Her own feelings had left her even more shocked and distressed…

She could feel his concentration on her, but she refused to look back at him. Because she was afraid to? Somewhere inside her head she could still feel the unspoken words ‘I love you’ banging frantically against the walls of their cage, like a tiny wounded bird desperate to escape. But Suzy knew they could never be set free. They had to be kept imprisoned for ever now, to protect her own sanity and self-respect!

“‘Down and Dirty magazine.”’ She could hear him reading the name-badge she was wearing. ‘I should have guessed. Your tactics are as cheap and tasteless as your articles.’

Savage pain followed by equally savage anger spiked into her heart. Illogically she felt as though somehow he had actively betrayed her by not recognising the person she really was, by misjudging her, not caring enough to recognise what had happened to her.

‘I think your friend is waiting for you.’

The curt words were distinctly unfriendly, his voice clipped and incisive, and the look he gave her was coldly dismissive. But deep inside her Suzy could still feel the hard pressure of his mouth on hers.

Shaking, she turned to make her way towards the door, where Jeff was standing, an impassive bouncer holding his arm—and his camera.

Jeff’s face, she saw with a sinking heart, was puce with temper.

‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ he demanded once Suzy reached him. ‘I told you to distract the guy, not eat him!’

Red-faced, Suzy couldn’t think of anything to say to defend herself. ‘Did you get your picture?’

‘Yes! But if you hadn’t been so busy playing kissy-face with the enemy you would have noticed that one of his gorillas was taking my camera off me! Good, was he? Yeah, I’ll bet he was—after all, he’s had plenty of experience. Like I said, during his last campaign a certain news reporter really had the hots for him. He’s got quite a reputation with the female sex, has the Colonel. A killer instinct in bed and out of it.’

Suzy was beginning to feel nauseated, disgusted by what she was hearing. And even more so by her own idiotic gullibility. She couldn’t understand her reaction—never mind her behaviour. She must be going crazy—and certainly her friend Kate would think so, if Suzy was ever foolish enough to tell her what had happened.

Kate and Suzy had been at university together, and Kate had kept in touch with Suzy when she had decided to drop out of her course and go home to nurse her mother through her final illness. Kate was married now, and with her husband ran a very successful small, independent travel agency.

Kate was constantly urging Suzy to enjoy life a little more, but Suzy still had debts to pay off—her student loan, for one thing, and the rent on the small flat she had shared with her widowed mother for another!

Thinking of her mother made Suzy’s greeny-gold eyes darken. Her mother had been widowed before Suzy’s birth, her father having been killed in a mountain-climbing accident. It was Suzy’s belief that her mother had never got over the death of the man she loved, nor ceased blaming him for having died.

As she’d grown up Suzy had been the one who cared for her mother, rather than the other way around. Money had been tight, and Suzy had worked since her teens to help—first with a paper round and then at whatever unskilled work she could find.

Suzy remembered now that Kate often said she had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and that she allowed others to put upon her. She couldn’t imagine Colonel Lucas James Soames ever allowing anyone to put upon him, Suzy decided bitterly. If anyone were foolish enough to turn to him for help or compassion he would immediately reject them!

Suzy tensed, angry with herself for allowing the Colonel into her thoughts. And yet running beneath her anger, like a silent and dangerously racing river, she could still feel an unwanted ache of pain. Fear curled through her with soft, deadly tendrils. Why had she had such an extraordinary reaction to him? She wasn’t that sort of person. Those emotions, that fierce rush of sexual longing, just weren’t her! She gave a small shudder of distaste.

It was an experience she was better off forgetting—pretending had never happened, in fact!

And that was exactly what she intended to do!

Luke studied the schedules in front of him. Meticulously detailed plans for his upcoming work. The Prince had hinted that he would like him on board for his permanent staff, but that kind of role wasn’t one Luke wanted. Perhaps his American mother’s blood was responsible for that! He had never been someone who enjoyed mundane routine. Even as a boy he had liked the challenge of pushing back boundaries and continually learning and growing.

His parents had died in an accident when he was eleven years old. The Army had sent him home to his grandmother and the comfortable country house where his father had grown up. His grandmother had done her best, but Luke had felt constricted at the boarding school she had sent him to. Even then he had known he would follow his father into the Army, and the happiest day of his life had been the day he had finally been free to follow that ambition.

The Army had been not just his career but his family as well. Until recently. Until he had woken up one morning and realised that he had had enough of witnessing other people’s pain and death. That his ears had grown too sensitive to the screams of wounded children and his eyes too hurt by the sight of thin and starving bodies. He had seen it happen too many times before to other soldiers to hesitate. His emotions were getting in the way of his professionalism. It was time for him to move on!

The Army had tried to persuade him to change his mind. There had been talk of further promotion. But Luke had refused to be swayed. In his own mind he was no longer a totally effective soldier. Given the choice between destroying an enemy and protecting a child Luke knew he could no longer guarantee he would put the former first.

And working for His Royal Highness was definitely not for him! Too tame after the demands of Army life. Although there were some similarities between the two! He started to frown. Female reporters! He loathed and despised them! They were a hundred times worse than their male equivalent, in Luke’s opinion. He had seen at first hand the damage they could wreak in their determination to get a story. A shadow of pain momentarily darkened his eyes, and the newly healed wound just below his hipbone seemed to pulse.

And as for the lengths such women were prepared to go!

His mouth hardened. So far as he was concerned Suzy Roberts and her ilk were as contemptible as the rags they worked for.

Reporter? Scavenger was a more appropriate word.

He turned his attention back to his paperwork, but, maddeningly, she would not be ejected from his thoughts.

What the hell was the matter with him that he should be wasting his time thinking about Suzy Roberts? That auburn hair and the way her gold-green gaze fastened on him must have addled his brain.

Had she really thought he was so idiotic that he would be deceived by that obviously fake look of longing she had given him? That equally fake tremor he had felt run right through her body when he had touched her? And as for that faint but unmistakable scent he could have sworn he could still smell…

Angrily he got up and strode across the room, pushing open a window, letting in an icy cold blast of air. Perhaps the unintentional celibacy of his life over these last few years had suddenly begun to affect him. But to such an extent that he wanted a woman like Suzy Roberts?

Like hell he did! But the sudden tension in his groin told a different story.

It was late, and he had a business appointment to keep. Finishing what he was doing, he made his way from the office to the privacy of his own apartment, automatically watching and checking as he did so. Once a commando always a commando—even when he could no longer…

Suppressing thoughts he did not want to have to deal with, Luke walked into his suite and headed for the shower.

Stripping off, he stepped into it, the hot needle-jets of water glistening on his body as he moved beneath the shower’s spray. The light fell on old scars on his chest, and the newer one low down on his body.

Having finished showering, he stepped out onto the marble floor, padding naked into his bedroom to extract a pair of clean white boxer shorts from a drawer. The phrase ‘going commando-style’ might have a certain sexual edge to it when used to describe the choice not to wear any underwear, but from his own point of view weeks, sometimes months of living in the field, in one set of sweat and dirt-soaked combats had given him a very different take on the matter! To anyone who had experienced desert combat conditions the luxury of quantities of clean water was something to be truly appreciated.