Scandalous Sins: Unwrapping His Convenient Fiancée / The Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner / Snowbound with His Innocent Temptation

All the things she wished for but hadn’t so far been able to find.

‘You remind me of Fraser before he met Zoe. He was always saying he’d never fall in love. Look what happened to him. A chance meeting with Zoe and now he’s married with twins and he couldn’t be happier.’

Cam blew out a frustrated-sounding breath. ‘It’s different for your brother. He’s had the great example your parents have set. He’s had that since he was a baby—all of you have. I had a completely different example, one I wouldn’t wish on a partner and certainly not on any children.’

Violet studied his tense expression, his even more rigidly set body and the way his eyes glittered with bitterness. And the way he had put some distance between their bodies as if he didn’t trust himself not to reach for her. ‘What exactly happened between your parents that you’re so against marriage?’

It was a moment or two before he spoke. ‘They only got married because my mother got pregnant with me. They were pressured into it by both of their families, although to be fair my mother was in love with my father, but unfortunately he didn’t feel the same. It was a disaster from the word go. The earliest memories I have are of my parents fighting. They’re the only memories I have, really.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you’d conduct a relationship like that,’ Violet said. ‘You’re not that type of person.’

He gave a short laugh that had a note of cynicism to it. ‘Thanks for the character reference but it won’t be needed. I’m fine with how my life is now. I don’t have to check in with anyone. I’m free to do what I want, when I want, with whomever I want.’

‘As long as they’re not married to your richest client or are your best friend’s kid sister,’ Violet said with a pointed look.

He pressed his lips together as if checking a retort. ‘Violet...’

‘It’s fine.’ Violet turned away with an airy wave of one hand. ‘I get the message. You don’t want to complicate things by sleeping with me. I’m not going to beg. I’ll find someone else. After our engagement is over, of course.’

It was a great exit line.

And it would have been even better if she hadn’t stumbled over the rug on her way out.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ue42be678-4086-5875-a52a-6059304618cf)

CAM SWORE AND raked his hand through his hair until he thought he’d draw blood. Or make himself bald. What was he doing even thinking of taking her up on her offer of a fling? Violet was the last girl he should be thinking about. Tempted by. Lusting over. She was so innocent. So vulnerable. So adorable.

Yes, adorable, which was why he had to be sensible about this. She wasn’t someone he could walk away from once the fling was over and never see or think of again. He would see her every time he was at a Drummond family gathering. He could avoid them, of course, but that would be punishing her family as well as himself.

Not that he didn’t deserve to be punished for dragging her into this farce. If he hadn’t asked her to that wretched dinner, none of this would have happened.

But if the dinner and the Christmas party tomorrow night weren’t bad enough, now he had her under his roof in one of the spare bedrooms. Now he would spend the night, or however many nights she would be here, in a heightened state of arousal. Forget about cold showers, he would have to pump in water from the North Sea to deal with this level of attraction.

What was wrong with him?

Where was his self-control?

Why had he kissed her? That had been his first mistake. The second was to keep touching her. But he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. As soon as she came within touching distance, he was at it again.

He had to stop thinking about making love to her. Stop picturing it. Stop aching for it. Just stop.

But truth was it was all Cam had been thinking about since running into Violet at that café. Which was damned annoying, as he’d never seen her that way before last Easter. For years she’d been one of the Drummond girls, just like Rose and Lily—a sister to him in every way other than blood. But it had all changed that last time he’d visited Drummond Brae. He could sense the exact moment when she turned her gaze on him. His body picked up her presence like a radar signal. His stomach rolled over and begged when she smiled at him. His skin tingled if she so much as brushed past him in a doorway. When his knees bumped hers under the table in the café he’d felt the shockwave travel all the way to his groin.

Even though she was safely in the spare room, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Her neat little ballerina-like figure, gorgeous brown eyes the colour of caramel, wavy chestnut hair that always smelled of flowers, a mouth that was shaped in a perfect Cupid’s bow that drew his gaze more than he wanted it to. He had fantasies about that mouth. X-rated fantasies. Fantasies he shouldn’t be having because she was like a sister to him.

Like hell she is.

Was that why he’d offered to bring her back here? Had some dark corner of his subconscious leapt at the opportunity to have her under his roof so he could take things to the next level? The level Violet wanted? The level that would change everything between them? Permanently. Irrevocably. How would he ever look at her in the future and not remember how her mouth felt under his? He was having enough trouble now getting it out of his mind. He could think of nothing else but how her mouth responded to his. How her lips had been as soft as down, her tongue both playful and shy. How her body felt when she’d brushed up against him. How her dainty little curves made him want to crush her to him so he could ease this relentless ache of need. How he wanted to explore every inch of her body and claim it, nurture it, release it from its prison of fear.

But how could he do that, knowing she had so much more invested in their relationship? She was after the fairytale he was avoiding because loving someone to that degree had the potential to ruin lives. If—and it was a big if—he ever settled down with a partner, he would go for a companionable relationship that was based on similar interests rather than the fickleness of love that could fade after its first flush of heat. His mother had paid the price—was still paying it—for loving without caution. It hadn’t just ruined her life but that of several others along the way, as well. He didn’t want that sort of emotional carnage. He already had feelings for Violet. Feelings that could slip into the danger zone if he wasn’t careful. Having her here under his roof was only intensifying those feelings. The thought of her being only a few doors away was a form of torture. Making love with Violet would be exactly that: making love. Encouraging love, feeding love, nurturing it to grow and blossom. Sex was easy to deal with if he kept his feelings out of it. But having sex with Violet would be all about feelings. Emotions. Bonding. Commitment. All the things he shied away from because they had the potential to disrupt the neat and controlled order of his life.

He had to be strong. Determined. Resolute. Violet was looking for someone to give her heart to. She was vulnerable and it would be wrong of him to give her the impression an affair between them could go anywhere.

Why couldn’t it?

Cam slapped the thought away like he was swatting away a fly. But it kept coming back, buzzing around the edges of his resolve, making him think of how it would be day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year with Violet in his life. Having her not just as a temporary houseguest but as a permanent partner. He wasn’t so cynical that he couldn’t see the benefits of a long-term marriage. He had only to look at Violet’s parents to see how well a good marriage could work.

But how could he guarantee his would work? There were no guarantees, which was what scared him the most.

* * *

Violet didn’t expect to sleep after the evening’s disturbance. She thought she’d have nightmares about her flat being invaded but the only dreams she had were of Cam kissing her, touching her, making her feel things she’d never expected to feel. With time to reflect on it, she understood his caution about getting involved with her sexually. Of course it would be a risk. It would change everything about their relationship. Every single dynamic would be altered. You couldn’t undo something like that. Every time she saw him at family gatherings in the future it would be there between them—their sensual history. He had only kissed her and held her and yet she was going to have a task ahead of her to forget about it. It was like his touch had seeped through every pore of her skin, tunnelling its way into her body so deep she instinctively knew she would never feel like that with anyone else. How could she? His touch was like a code breaker to her frozen sensuality. It unlocked the primal urges she had hidden away out of shame. He’d awoken those sleeping urges and now they were jumping up and down in her body like hyperactive kids on a trampoline.

Violet threw off the bedcovers and showered but when she looked at her overnight bag of belongings she’d hastily packed last night she knew she could never bring herself to touch them, let alone wear them. How could she know for sure if the intruders had touched them? What if she wore them and then out on the street the burglars recognised them as the ones they had rifled through last night? She had only the clothes she’d been wearing for the dinner last night. She didn’t fancy putting them on again after her shower and, besides, the velvet cocktail dress was hardly Saturday morning wear. It was way too dressed up. If she went out in that get-up, she would look like she had been out all night. She rinsed out her knickers and dried them with the hairdryer she found in one of the drawers in the bathroom. There was a plush bathrobe hanging on the back of the bathroom door so she slipped it on over her underwear.

Cam was in the kitchen pouring cereal into a bowl when she came in. He looked up and Violet saw the way his eyes automatically scanned her body as if he was imagining what she looked like underneath the bathrobe. He cleared his throat and turned back to his cereal, making rather a business of sealing the inside packet and folding down the flaps on top of the box. ‘Sleep okay?’

‘Not bad...’

He took a spoon out of one of the drawers and then turned and opened the fridge for the milk. Violet drank in the image of him dressed in dark blue jeans and a black finely woven cashmere sweater with a white T-shirt underneath. There should be a law against a man looking so good in casual clothes. The denim hugged his trim and toned buttocks; the close-fitting sweater showcased the superb musculature of his upper body. His hair was still damp from a shower and it looked like his fingers had been its most recent combing tool, for she could see the finger-spaced grooves between the dark brown strands.

‘What would you like for breakfast?’ he said, turning from the fridge. ‘I’m afraid I can’t match your mother’s famous breakfast spreads but I can do cereal, toast and fruit and yoghurt.’

‘Sounds lovely.’ Violet perched on the stool opposite him. ‘Can I ask a favour?’

His gaze met hers. ‘Look, we had this discussion last night and the answer is—’

‘It’s not about...that.’ Violet captured her lip between her teeth. Did he have to rub it in? So he didn’t want to sleep with her. Fine. She wasn’t going to drag him kicking and screaming to the nearest bedroom. ‘It’s about my clothes. I need to get new ones. I can’t bear wearing any of mine from the flat, not even the ones I brought with me, and I don’t want to wear my cocktail dress because I’ll look like I’ve been out all night.’

A frown pulled at his forehead. ‘You want me to go...shopping for you?’

Did he have to make it sound like she’d asked him to dance naked in Trafalgar Square? ‘I’ll give you my credit card. I just need some basics and then I can do the rest myself once you bring those couple of things back.’

He blew out a breath and reached for a pen and a slip of paper, pushing it across the bench. ‘Write me a list.’

* * *

Cam had never shopped for women’s clothing before. Who knew there was so much to choose from? But choosing a pair of jeans and a warm sweater wasn’t too much of a problem. The problem was he kept looking at the lingerie section and imagining Violet in the sexy little lacy numbers. He had to walk out before he was tempted to buy her the black lace teddy with the hot pink feathers. Or the red corset one with black silk lacing. Once he’d completed his mission, he was making his way back to his house when he walked past a jewellery store. He’d walked past that store hundreds, if not thousands, of times and never looked in the window, let alone gone in. But for some reason he found himself pushing the door open, going inside and standing next to the ring counter.

It’s just a prop.

Violet’s office party was tonight and what sort of cheap fiancé would he look if he hadn’t bought her a decent ring? No need to mortgage the house on a diamond but that one at the back there looked perfect for Violet’s hand. He didn’t have too much trouble guessing her ring size; he had thought of her hands—holding them, feeling them on his skin—enough times to know the exact dimensions. Actually, he knew pretty much the exact dimensions of her whole body. They were imprinted on his brain and kept him awake at night.

Cam paid for the ring, placed it in his pocket and walked out of the store. Just as he was about to turn the corner for home, he got a call from Fraser. He couldn’t avoid the conversation any longer, but something about lying to his best mate didn’t sit too comfortably. ‘Hey, sorry I haven’t returned your calls,’ he said. ‘Things have been happening so fast I—’

Fraser gave a light laugh. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me, buddy. I saw the way you were looking at Vivi at Easter. Is that why you skived off to Greece? So you wouldn’t be tempted to act on it?’

Maybe it had been, now that he thought about it. Cam often had to travel abroad at short notice in order to meet with a client, but the chance to go to Greece for a few months had been exactly the escape hatch he’d needed. He’d felt the need to clear his head, to get some perspective, to have a little talk to himself about stepping over boundaries that couldn’t be undone. But the whole time he’d been away, Violet had been on his mind. ‘Yeah, well, now that you mention it.’