Pirate Tycoon, Forbidden Baby

That admission terrified her more than anything, for she was fatally attracted to him—like a moth to a flame. She’d been burned once by tumbling into his bed. The next time the flames of desire would consume her—if his quest for vengeance didn’t destroy her first.

He passed the door to his chamber without pause—the room where they’d made love, the room where the world had intruded on their ideal, the room she’d fled in anger and shame.

She shook off those memories as he shouldered open a louvered door midway down the hall, and pushed into a cool, dark room. A gorgeous canopied bed dominated the space, its mosquito netting rippling in the refreshing breeze that filtered through the room.

Andrе headed straight toward the bed, his features so hard and unyielding they looked carved from stone. Yet he laid her on the bed gently, his touch lingering a telling moment.

Instead of pouncing on her, as she’d half expected he’d do, he stood back and stared at her with cold derision. She sensed he waged a war within himself, and a part of her commiserated, for she was fighting her own private battle to remain unmoved by him. It had been so good between them that one glorious night.

Though her heart pounded louder than the drums that had greeted them on their arrival, she sat up and faced him. And waited for him to break the tense silence.

“I’m a private man,” he said, pacing before the foot of the bed. “I guarded my business and my private life. But in one night you stripped me bare and invited the world as witness.”

“I had nothing to do with that swarm of paparazzi.”

He sliced a hand through the air. “Of course you would deny your part in that.”

“What about you?” she asked, having learned after Edouard’s death that Andrе wasn’t a man to be crossed—or trusted. “You’re as much to blame for the dissolution of your engagement.”

He released a cold, hard laugh. “As much as I value privacy, my former fiancеe cherished it more. You destroyed that and humiliated her.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” she said, in a burst of irritation.