Lovers' Lies

Lovers' Lies
Daphne Clair

The price of deceit…It has been twelve years since they met - Felicia had been only a child - no wonder Joshua Tagget doesn't recognize her. But Felicia remembers him and how he betrayed her stepsister. And now, by making his attraction to Felicia more than clear, Joshua has unwittingly given her the means to pay him back in kind for his deceit… .But Felicia isn't immune to Joshua's charms, and she could find it's herself she's deceiving if she things she can walk away from him with her heart intact… .

Letter to Reader (#u7abddf7d-02ba-5bea-9a83-90e30d4fdcee)Title Page (#u9991a7b6-c9f6-5ef1-bf62-c62effe69a84)CHAPTER ONE (#u98f9b2e2-cc9d-5628-accf-599fa66fe37b)CHAPTER TWO (#u7127f16a-8cb2-5884-bf06-f50510ff0c01)CHAPTER THREE (#u92a21eb5-c4da-55d7-bb65-3b8c9d967af4)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader,

What a pleasure and privilege it is to be part of Harlequin Presents

twenty-fifth birthday celebration. For twenty-one of those years I have been a Harlequin author, and my fiftieth book is due in North America later this year. I hope that Harlequin and I will still be around for a long time yet, giving pleasure to millions of women around the world. Please write and tell me if you enjoy Lovers’ Lies, and ask for a newsletter so you won’t miss my next Harlequin Presents

. Box 18240, Glen Innes, Auckland, New Zealand.

Daphne Clair

Lovers’ Lies

Daphne Clair

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

BEIJING was the last place Felicia expected to meet Joshua Tagget again.

She had landed in China the night before, jet-lagged and in dire need of sleep following the eighteen-hour journey from New Zealand. After breakfasting in her room and coming down to the hotel lobby to meet her tour guide and the other members of her party, she still felt glassy-eyed and woolly-headed.

When her gaze lit on the well-remembered dark amber eyes under black brows, she was sure she must be hallucinating. The dreams in which Joshua Tagget used to feature had stopped, thank heaven, a few years after the events that had shattered her childhood.

His brows twitched upward in interrogation, and it dawned on her that he was dismayingly real, and also that her instant recognition wasn’t mutual. She was twenty-five years old and any resemblance to the impressionable, romantic thirteen-year-old he had briefly known had long since vanished.

Joshua had been the epitome of her ideal man, the fantasy figure that had woken her first immature stirrings of sexuality, and as unattainable to her as any pop star or film idol. Thank heaven she’d at least had the sense to hide her palpitating interest in him, hugging it to her like a delicious secret until her fragile feelings were cruelly shattered in heartbreak and disillusion.

He had barely altered; perhaps his shoulders were a shade broader, but otherwise he looked as lithe and lean as a panther. A small crease in his cheek emphasised the slight, enquiring lift at one corner of a chiselled mouth, and the tiny fanned lines by his eyes added an attractive maturity to his classic good looks. Even so, he appeared considerably younger than... She calculated rapidly that he must be thirty-seven or thereabouts.

‘Miss Felicia Stevens?’ the guide said, looking round the loose group of two dozen or so.

‘Yes.’ Felicia stepped forward. Now Joshua would surely recognise her. She could still feel his gaze—alert, amused, intrigued. Putting a totally wrong interpretation on her shocked stare.

The guide was a slim Chinese woman with smooth, pretty features and glossy bobbed hair, who invited the tour party to call her Jen or Jenny. She gave Felicia a dazzling smile and handed her a name tag, encased in plastic, and a linen carry-bag identical to those most of the group now held, before consulting her list again. ‘Mr Jo-sua Tagget?’

‘Here.’ Joshua took the plastic label and the bag the woman held out to him, his gaze sliding reluctantly away from Felicia. One of the other women spoke to him, and he bent his head slightly to listen, then threw it back in laughter.

Felicia heard the blood pounding in her head, felt the need to take an extra deep breath. He didn’t know her. Only two feet away from her, he hadn’t recognised her at all. Even her name had rung no bell of memory.

She ought to have been relieved, but her chief emotions was overwhelming anger. It was as if he had wiped all recollection of that hideous summer from his mind. Something she could never do. Never in a million years.

Shaking, she clutched the bag in her hand, her fingers clenching tightly on the limp straps. A middle-aged, dumpy woman standing nearby said in an unmistakably American accent, ‘Are you OK, honey?’

She must look pale. Mustering a smile, Felicia said, ‘Yes, thank you. It’s a bit hot.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ the woman agreed. ‘I hope the bus is air-conditioned.’

Jen was gathering her charges, hurrying them towards the door where a blue and white bus had pulled up a few minutes ago. ‘Miss Stevens?’ She had noticed that Felicia wasn’t moving along with the others. ‘Come,’ she said, flapping a hand with quick, anxious little movements, ‘please?’

Felicia hesitated. She could say she was unwell, that she couldn’t make the trip today after all. Then she’d contact her travel agent, see if she could transfer to another tour...

‘Miss Stevens?’ The guide was looking puzzled. ‘You have forgotten something?’

No, she wanted to say. I’ve forgotten nothing. If only I could... Joshua Tagget seems to have successfully forgotten. He didn’t even blink an eyelid when you said my name.

She’d prepaid in New Zealand for this tour. Three weeks, all expenses included. It had cost her a lot of money and, realistically, she didn’t suppose there’d be any chance of changing the arrangements at this late hour. The tour company wouldn’t look kindly on a request for a refund. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’ She walked forward as if moving through water, and followed the guide outside.

The bus was filling up. Joshua had got himself a window seat. That didn’t surprise Felicia. Nor was she surprised that the best-looking woman in the party, a fresh-faced brunette with long hair waving to her shoulders and green eyes accentuated by thickly applied mascara and eyeliner, sat beside him. Joshua was looking out the window while the woman settled herself, tucking her bag under the seat. Passing them, Felicia wondered if they were together, or if the woman was just hopeful.

A group of young women occupied the rear bench seat, three fit-looking young men nearby eyeing them with covert interest. Middle-aged couples, a family with two children, and a few apparently unattached singles of both sexes made up the rest of the tour party. The small American woman, with a seat to herself, beckoned Felicia. ‘You can sit here if you like. I’m all alone.’

‘Thank you.’ Me too, Felicia thought. It had been that way for years, and usually she didn’t mind. Perhaps it was being in a strange country, among strangers, that caused a sudden wave of melancholy.

‘I’m Maggie,’ the American woman said. ‘Maggie Price. And you’re Felicia. Such a pretty name. It suits you.’

‘Thank you.’ Felicia smiled, brushing back from her cheek an ear-level strand of hair the colour of dark manuka honey.

The door closed smoothly with an airy sigh as the driver pulled out from the hotel and veered around one of dozens of yellow taxis weaving through the bicycles thronging the broad road.

‘I hope we can go shopping here later,’ Maggie remarked as they roared past market stalls set out under spreading shade trees on the pavements.

At a street corner a group of elderly men squatted around a card game. The woman sitting beside Joshua Tagget stood up, put a camera to her eye, and leaned across him to take a picture of them. Her colourful low-necked sunfrock must have allowed him an enjoyable view of a fairly spectacular cleavage.

Cat, Felicia scolded herself. She’d long since given up wishing for a more generous endowment in that department, or for shiny black hair and sea-green eyes, a smaller nose and larger hips.

She didn’t regret having had her over-prominent teeth straightened, even though it had meant two years with a mouthful of metal, and by now she knew that the long legs that had made her gawky and self-consciously taller than her classmates at twelve were an asset rather than a liability. The figure she’d finally developed as a late-blooming teenager was adequate if not sensational, the envy of many of her friends who constantly battled with their weight.

She’d dyed her hair once and it made her look like something out of The Munsters. These days she contented herself with an occasional strawberry rinse to give it extra life in winter. Some people professed to find her emphatically blue eyes beautiful, and she used eye-shadow sparingly to intensify their colour, as well as mascara to darken and lengthen her lashes.

The engine throbbed warningly and Joshua’s seat companion sat down again as they shot off round the corner, the driver blasting his horn with little visible effect on the massed cyclists.

Maggie put a hand to her chest and inhaled sharply as the bus narrowly missed an oblivious rider pulling a cart piled high with woven baskets. But she soon recovered.

‘Oh, look!’ she said, pointing. A teenage girl in a bright red regional costume stood hawking embroidered goods outside a building that combined twentieth-century business architecture with the distinctive curved roof lines of the Orient.

Felicia was grateful for the novelty of the passing scene, and the need to respond to Maggie’s excited comments. She couldn’t push Joshua Tagget entirely out of her mind, but at least he could be relegated to the fringes.

Eventually they drew up outside the looming pink wall of the Forbidden City. Emerging into blinding sun, Felicia put on dark glasses and the wide-brimmed hat she’d been advised to bring. She’d used sunscreen before leaving the hotel, and dropped the tube into her bag. She hoped the brunette now standing alongside Joshua while the guide waited for the rest of the party to alight had done the same. The woman had very fair skin, contrasting with Joshua’s tan. They made a striking couple.

Pain twisted inside Felicia, translating into anger as fierce as it was illogical. She could hardly expect the man to spend the rest of his life mourning the events of twelve years ago. But, she thought bitterly, watching the sunlight catch the surprising russet lights in the darkness of his hair as he bent his head and smiled at the woman beside him, he needn’t look so damned untouched, so impervious.

As if he’d felt the intensity of her gaze, he turned his head in her direction, and she hastily looked away, following the guide through the Tiananmen Gate, opposite the vast, famous square.