Purchased for Passion: Shackled by Diamonds / A Mistress for the Taking / His Bought Mistress

‘Do you know—’ her voice sounded taut and strange ‘—Khalil wanted to give me a ruby bracelet? I said no. He wanted to give me lots of jewels, but I always said no. It made him angry, I know. He hid it, but it did.’ Her eyes went down to the ruby bracelet lying across the palm of her hand, winking in the lamplight.

‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’ she said, and her voice still had that strange breaking quality about it. ‘If I’d just taken one, just one of all the jewels he wanted to give me, I’d be all right now. I could sell it and have enough…enough money to…to escape with. But I never took them. Not one. Even though he wanted to give them to me.’

She touched one of the stones with her finger.

Carefully, very carefully, Anna spoke.

‘But these aren’t Khalil’s jewels, Jen. And he never gave them to you.’ She paused. ‘I’ll take the bracelet back.’

She reached across to lift it from Jenny’s palm. For a moment so brief it hardly happened she saw Jenny’s fingers start to claw shut over the bracelet. Then, as if exerting a vast invisible effort, the fingers stilled.

‘You can’t keep it, Jen. You know you can’t.’

Anna’s voice was quiet, reassuring.

Slowly Jenny opened her palm completely, letting the glittering stones run red across her hand. She stared down at them.

Anna lifted them away. Her heart was beating fast, the icy water still in her stomach. Slowly she got to her feet. Her mind was racing, almost going into panic. But she mustn’t panic—she mustn’t.

What the hell am I going to do?

And, shooting right through her panicking brain, came one grim question.

How long have we got before it’s discovered missing?

Claws pincered in her stomach. The security arrangements for the Levantsky jewels were draconian. They had to be, obviously. Every time they were brought out or put away—either for a shoot, or for her and the other models to wear the night before—security guards were all over the place. Every item was catalogued and signed in and out on a computerised check system personally entered by Leo Makarios’s sidekick, Justin.

So how the hell had Jenny walked off with a bracelet?

There was no time to think about that—no time to do anything except hope and pray she could somehow, anyhow, get the bracelet back.

Back where, though?

She could hardly just swan up to Justin and calmly inform him he’d missed a piece! Everyone would go totally ballistic! There’d be a full-scale Spanish Inquisition, and that would end up with every damn finger in the Schloss pointing at Jenny!

And that was all Jenny needed! Police sirens and lawyers and the press—and a prison sentence for theft.

Because one thing was for sure. Leo Makarios was not the type to let anyone, anyone waltz off with a single Levantsky jewel!

She swallowed. She must not panic Jenny. Whatever happened, that was essential. Jenny was on the edge of a total breakdown, she could see. Well, already over the edge, actually, she realised, if she’d been driven to try and walk off with a priceless ruby bracelet…

Anna forced her voice to sound calm.

‘Don’t go anywhere, Jen. Just stay here. And don’t answer the door unless it’s me. Promise?’

The other girl still seemed to be in a state of shock. Anna wasn’t surprised. God knew what state she must have been in to even think of taking any of the Levantsky jewels—and as for actually taking any…

Her stomach churning, panic nipping at her, Anna slipped out of Jenny’s bedroom, hastily stuffing the bracelet inside the pocket of her trousers.

Its weight hung like a dead, accusing albatross.

She felt sick with fear.

Leo could hear his mobile vibrating deep beneath his skiing jacket as he slewed to a halt at the end of the run. With the light gone, his guests were discarding their skis and getting ready to board the waiting fleet of four-by-fours to take them back down to the Schloss.

Leo wished each and every one of them to perdition. He’d had to smile and converse and be a good host all damn day, and totally hide from them that inside he was in a worse mood than he could recall for a very long time. His temper was evil. He could feel it, lashing around inside him, not allowed an outlet.

But he knew exactly what outlet it wanted.

And it was one it wasn’t going to get.

He wanted that damn girl, and he wasn’t going to have her.

Anna Delane.

Sable-haired and breathtakingly desirable…

All through a night in which sleep had been persistently and exasperatingly scarce, all through a day which had tested his patience to the limit with its demanding and tedious social requirements, her image had kept intruding. He had banished it a hundred times, and it still came back.

And more than an image.

His memory was tactile.

Erotically, sensually tactile.

The feel of her silken mouth beneath his, the swelling roundness of her breast in his hand, the straining peak rigid beneath his stroking thumb, his body hardening against hers…

With savage control he hammered down the pointless, treacherous thoughts that heated through him.

OK, so he was frustrated. That was all. He’d gone a month without sex, and for him that was a long time. Last night had been punishing because he’d been on the brink of sexual release and then he’d been balked of it. No wonder his body was protesting!

But it was more than his body, he knew. If, say, he’d been interrupted by some kind of business emergency he’d have been a lot less angry than he was now. It wasn’t just the absence of sex that was winding him up tighter than a watch spring.

It was her—that black-haired, green-eyed witch, who’d given him every damn come-on in the book and then called time on him in an outburst of self-righteous outrage as if he were one down from some kind of lascivious groper!

Thee mou, but she had wanted it as much as he had. She’d been melting for him, soft and honeyed, aroused and responsive.

And then to turn on him like that. Make those accusations, those spitting, contemptible accusations of harassment, harassment—

He felt his anger bite viciously.

A liar—that was what she was. Saying no when her body said yes. Had been saying yes all evening to him. All the way until he’d been about to lower her down on her bed…

With monumental effort he slammed shut the lid on his snarling thoughts. He would simply put Anna Delane out of his head, and that was that. There were plenty of other women around—willing women—who didn’t play infantile and hypocritical games about sex.

Plenty who would be happy to be taken up as his mistress!

The trouble was, he couldn’t think of any right now who held the slightest interest for him.