A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite

Oh, God! She knew the delay with coming clean was not making things better, quite the opposite, in fact. With a sigh she dropped her head into her hands and began to scrub her eyes with the heels of her palms. She felt a surge of despairing disgust as she asked herself where was the woman who never avoided an awkward issue but met it head on?

As she tilted her head to look at him her hair fell back, revealing the beginning of a bruise on her temple. Staring at the discoloration, Alex felt his stomach muscles lurch and tighten with an emotion as strong as his previous anger and totally inexplicable.... Only a madman would feel protective towards this provocative witch with her smart mouth and her combative attitude.

He was not a madman. It was her sanity that was the issue here; her insane behaviour was what he was here to challenge, although the conversation had drifted somewhat. Time to refocus, Alex, he thought.

‘That was a crazy thing you did.’ Also brave; the private concession was made reluctantly. It was hard not to admire this woman’s fearlessness—at least from a distance. For those close to her it must make life hell, he thought grimly. ‘You could have killed yourself....’

He closed his eyes, seeing the scene again and experiencing the same awful sense of helplessness. The memory remained like an icy fist in his chest as he glared at her and spelt out the fact she seemed incapable of grasping. ‘You could be dead.’

‘I can’t die. I have Jasmine,’ she asserted confidently. It was a simple fact. Jasmine would have been without a mother and that couldn’t happen.... It nearly had!

Like a tower of cards her confidence slipped away. Oh, God, he was right. She was a mother—she couldn’t go around leaping in without thinking.

‘I’m a terrible mother!’

Hearing the anguished wail and seeing the tears rolling silently down her cheeks cut through the righteous anger that gripped him like a hot blade through butter. He was unable and unwilling to identify the emotion that tightened in his chest as tenderness, but he dropped back down beside her. His time when he touched her she did not pull away as though he were poison. Instead she leaned into him, melted into him softly, shaking her head on his chest.

One moment he was fighting the urge to throttle her, the next he was fighting an equally primal desire to comfort her. His emotions did one of those three-hundred-and-sixty-degree shifts that seemed to happen around her.

‘What if—?’

‘You have lived to tell the tale. There is no point in what ifs. So how old is she, your daughter... Jasmine?’ He spoke not out of genuine interest but a need to distract her. At the same time he ran a soothing hand over her wet hair, lifting it off her neck; the texture of her warm, damp skin beneath fascinated him.

‘She’s started school. Well, she had.’

‘Had?’

‘She was off a term as she wasn’t well, but she’s having some home tutoring and she’ll soon catch up. She’s smart.’

The audible pride in her muffled response caused his hand to still, though the dark strands of her wet hair remained coiled around his fingers. It was difficult for him to see her as a mother but, he thought to himself, You don’t have the exclusive on family feeling, Alex.

‘She’s better now?’ he asked, giving her time to regain control.

Angel nodded into his chest. ‘I took some time off but this opportunity was too good—’ He felt her stiffen before she pulled away from him. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she regarded him with a defiance that was echoed in her addition. ‘I suppose you don’t think mothers should work?’

She clearly expected his judgement. And why not, Alex? You’ve done little else but judge so far.

Quick to judge and slow to forgive. The words of his mother, a sad observation that he had lived to understand the meaning of but that had meant little to him when she’d spoken them soon after his half-sister had appeared like a disruptive whirlwind in their lives.

‘I know nothing of the pressures of being a mother...or a parent.’ His brow creased as he admitted, ‘I still struggle to think of you as one.’

‘A mother or an actual person, not a body that looks good in a bikini?’ Before he could respond to the bitter accusation she added wearily, ‘Being a mother is one job where experience is not a prerequisite.’

‘There’s nothing on your website that mentioned you have a daughter. Is that a professional thing?’

‘You’re not the only one who likes their privacy.’ She blinked her sooty lashes over wide emerald eyes as her voice dropped an astonished husky octave. ‘You looked me up?’

‘I was curious.’

So was she, and maybe it was the hint of evasiveness in his manner but she suddenly heard herself asking the question that she’d heard many people voice, but that as yet had no satisfactory answer. Everyone had theories but nobody could really understand why they were being allowed access to the private island.

‘Why are you giving us access to Saronia?’ The moment the words left her lips she regretted them, but it was too late to back off. ‘They say you’ve refused royal requests.’ Why would a man who’d refused honeymooning royals open his doors—or at least a restricted area of his shoreline—to them?

‘Do they?’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘You know they do.’

‘So what is your theory?’

She lifted a hand to shade her eyes. It was a bit late in the day to make out that she hadn’t thought about it, but she tried anyway. ‘I don’t have one, but if I had to guess I’d go with those who think it’s a bored, rich man’s whim, unless you really are thinking of expanding into cosmetics?’ Apparently the rumour had gone viral.

‘Are you asking for insider information?’

‘Hardly. The rumour has already sent the firm’s shares through the ceiling. Even we mere models have been known to read the financial pages,’ she observed, quite pleased to have surprised him. Her smug grin vanished as he hitched a brow and, holding her eyes with his, touched the sole of her foot with his finger. The light, barely there contact made her stomach dissolve and her toes curl of their own volition.

‘Has no one suggested that it is because I wanted to have you at my mercy?’

She fought against the seductive quality of his deep voice, hating that he was mocking her. ‘Now, that really would make me feel special.’

He shrugged and grinned. ‘No mystery. My nephew asked me to further his career.’

‘And you’re a very nice uncle who does favours for your nephew?’

‘It has been known, but I am an adequate uncle. It isn’t hard—Nico is a nice kid, and it pays to keep on the right side of my sister, Adriana.’

‘Do you have much family?’ she asked, thinking to herself, You have one more than you think.

‘My parents died some time ago in a car accident. I have two sisters.... There is Adriana—she’s ten years older than me.’ His mobile lips twisted into a half smile as he surprised her by confiding, ‘I was an afterthought.’

‘This is Nico’s mother?’

He tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘Her husband, Gus, was an international lawyer based in Geneva, but now he runs the Greek operation. They have just the one son.’

‘You said you had two sisters?’

There was a long pause.

‘Lizzie is your age.’

Lizzie did not strike Angel as a very Greek or Russian name. ‘I thought you said you were the youngest?’

‘Lizzie is my half-sister, the result of an affair—actually a one-night stand.’ The small shocked sound that escaped her throat awoke him to the fact that he had just revealed more private details in the past thirty seconds than he had in the past... Actually ever. ‘The details are not important.’ Just the sort of thing that blew a family apart. ‘As I said, she is my half-sister, the baby of the family.’

‘And you resent her existence?’

The speculation drew a heavy frown and a flash of anger. ‘Nobody in the world could resent Lizzie.’ Except his mother, who could have but had not.

The softening in his expression when he spoke of his half-sister could not have been feigned. It could be envied, though she was dismayed to discover she did not envy this girl who brought the warmth to his eyes. One thing Angel did not want to be was his sister!