An Innocent, A Seduction, A Secret

A couple of small children were trying to peer in between a small gap in the curtains, giggling before being led away by their parents.

Sebastio felt a shaft of pain so intense that he almost stopped dead in the street. If not for the accident, Victor and Maya’s daughter would now be...

He shook his head to dislodge the thought and instinctively moved away from the main thoroughfare, ducking down a side street. He cursed the reporter again for having precipitated this avalanche of memories.

At that moment Sebastio turned his head and realised he was passing another of those famous windows, but this time the red velvet drapes were partially open.

He came to a reluctant standstill on the quiet pavement as the scene in the window snagged his attention. It was a magical fairy forest, with branches opening into hidden worlds and little faces and eyes peeping out. Fairies, goblins...

In spite of himself, Sebastio was momentarily captivated. It was Christmassy, but...not. It tugged on a memory deep in the recesses of his mind. An uncomfortable reminder that he hadn’t always hated Christmas.

He’d had an English grandmother, and his parents had used to leave Sebastio with her every Christmas while they went on holiday. Those Christmases had been magical. His grandmother had taken him to West End shows. They’d decorated the house, watched movies, played games. All the things he’d never done with his parents because they had been too busy either having affairs, fighting or indulging in lavish reunion holidays.

Sebastio had used to dread their return, and he could remember one year clinging to his grandmother in tears, his father pulling him away roughly...

His grandmother had died not long after that, and they hadn’t even come back to England for her funeral. Sometimes Sebastio had wondered if he’d made it up. So starved of affection by his parents that he’d concocted a benevolent loving grandmother like some pathetic fairytale...

As time had passed it had seemed more and more like a fantasy because no subsequent Christmas had ever been like those idyllic ones he remembered. And so he’d blocked them out and convinced himself that he hated Christmas, because he knew he would never experience anything close to that magic again and to want it was a weakness.

He saw movement, and followed it to see a woman standing at one side of the display. She had her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side as she looked up to where a young man was hanging a glittering star on the branch of a tree. They must still be dressing the window.

She shouldn’t have snagged his attention. She had her back to him and she was dressed in plain black trousers, a long-sleeved black top and flat shoes. He saw her shake her head, her shining cap of short hair glinting auburn in the lights. Then she bent down and picked up something else—another decoration—and handed it up to the man on the stepladder. As she reached up, her top rode high to reveal a taut pale belly and slim waist.

A beat of something pulsed to life in Sebastio’s blood. Awareness. Arousal. For a moment he almost didn’t recognise it, it had been so long since he’d felt it. Nearly four years. He welcomed it as an antidote to the bitter memories.

Then, as if sensing his attention on her, the woman slowly turned around. Sebastio wasn’t prepared for the kick to his solar plexus when he saw her revealed. She was stunning. Huge eyes framed by arching dark brows. Defined cheekbones and a lush mouth set off dramatically by her short hair, slightly longer at the front and feathering messily around her face.

It gave her a delicate gamine appeal that sent a definite surge of desire through Sebastio’s body. It confounded him. Being so tall and big himself, he’d always gravitated towards statuesque women. This one looked as if a puff of wind would blow her over. And yet he could sense an inner strength. Crazy when she was a total stranger, with a thick pane of glass separating them.

The woman was staring at Sebastio with an arrested expression. For a moment their eyes locked. Hers were deep blue, but even from here he could see the long lashes. And then, as if waking from a trance, she stalked over and dragged the drapes shut, leaving Sebastio looking back at his own distorted features in the glass.

He had the strangest sensation of déjà-vu—as if he had seen her somewhere before. But the feeling was too ephemeral to pin down.

He was stunned. No woman had ignited his interest or his desire so forcibly and immediately in four years. Not that anyone would believe it. Sebastio was a master of misdirection—covering up his flatlining libido with a series of high-profile dates that never went beyond a kiss. His reputation as a skilled lover and a connoisseur of beautiful women served as a smokescreen he used willingly.

He thought of the display in the window again. It had effortlessly captured his attention, taking him unawares, which was unusual when he had such an aversion to Christmas. He thought of the advice he’d been given to decorate his home and something occurred to him...

That woman might have sparked his libido back to life, but he needed her for something far more practical.

Sebastio went back the way he’d come and turned the corner into the main street, thronged with people. He saw the main doors of the shop and strode towards them purposefully.

* * *

Edie Munroe was standing looking at the closed drapes like someone who’d been hypnotised. Or hit over the head. She’d never in a million years expected to see that guy again and yet...she just had.

And it had struck her today as forcibly as it had four years ago, when she’d first laid eyes on him in a crowded nightclub in Edinburgh.

It couldn’t be him, she told herself now, feeling her skin rise into goosebumps. It couldn’t be Sebastio Rivas.

The fact that she even remembered his name was not welcome.

What were the chances it was him? It had to be someone who looked liked him. After all, Sebastio Rivas was a mega-famous international rugby star. What on earth would he be doing walking down a random side-street in London?

But her accelerated heart-rate told her it was him.

It was galling to be reminded that no other man in four years had had the same effect on her. And she’d tried. She’d gone on Tinder dates, blind dates and internet dates. But on each date, when the guy had tried to take things a step further, Edie had felt herself shutting down.

Because she couldn’t get out of her head how he’d made her feel four years ago. Alive and energised. Buzzing. Connected. Hopeful.

And aroused.

For the first time in her life she’d understood what people were talking about when they spoke of instant attraction,or said, You’ll know it when you feel it. She had felt it like a palpable energy. Electricity.

It had been a wholly new sense of desire, and she’d known instinctively that only he could assuage the building sense of excitement in her core. A crazy assertion to have about a total stranger, but one so deep she could still feel it today.

It was pathetic. Her entire exchange with Sebastio Rivas had lasted about five minutes. He’d told her to run along. He’d been out of bounds, out of her league, and he hadn’t hesitated in letting her know.

The fact that she’d gravitated across a heaving dance-floor to orbit the sun of his smouldering sexuality—like every other woman in the room—was as freshly humiliating today as it had been then, especially after he’d sent her on her way.

She’d been so sure she’d seen something...sensed something in him. Their eyes had locked and a silent communication had throbbed between them. She’d seen something in his demeanour, in his eyes, a kind of brittleness. And it had resonated within her because she’d felt the same.

She’d just come through a major ordeal—cancer, which she’d contracted when she was seventeen, throwing her life into instant turmoil. It had become a fight for survival, an endless round of toxic treatments and sterile hospital rooms.

For the previous eighteen months she hadn’t known if she would live or die, and some of the time she’d been feeling so sick she’d almost wished—

Edie clamped down on that thought, remembering her parents’ worried, pinched faces.

That very day she’d been given the all-clear, and that night had been her first foray back into the world. She’d felt as if a layer of skin had been removed, making everything feel too bright, too sharp. Too much.

She remembered that she’d been wearing a dress borrowed from a friend. Short, silver and slinky. Not her style at all. But then, that whole night had been about a celebration she’d never expected to experience. A celebration of life.

And, because her hair hadn’t yet started to grow back, she’d been wearing a wig. A shoulder-length bob. Bright red and hot and scratchy. Yet none of that had stopped her from approaching the most beautiful man in the room.

She’d never seen or met a man who’d come close to his sheer charisma and good-looks. Well over six foot, he’d had the leanly muscled build of an elite athlete. The power in his body had been evident under his dark suit.

A little desperately, she tried to tell herself again that the man she’d just seen outside couldn’t be him. But she’d never forget that face. Sculpted from stone. All slashing lines and sharp bones. Hard jaw. Deep-set eyes under black brows. Thick dark hair flopping messily over his forehead. Curling around his collar.

And a mouth made for sin. Full and sensual. Softening those hard lines and the stern demeanor he’d exuded like a force-field.

‘Edie... Earth to Edie... Can I come down now?’

She whirled around, aghast at her reaction to someone who probably wasn’t even the man she was thinking of. She was losing it.

‘Of course, Jimmy.’ She gabbled, ‘I think the man in the window—I mean, the man in the moon decoration works better than the star.’ She hoped Jimmy wouldn’t see her face flaming at her Freudian slip.

‘Not that anyone will see it,’ grumbled the young man as he came down the ladder. ‘We’re all the way around the corner from the main windows.’

Edie said brightly, ‘It means we can be more creative with our wee display.’