Prisoner Of The Heart

Prisoner Of The Heart
Liz Fielding

Buchanan's woman! Elusive celebrity Chay Buchanan had made it only too plain that trespassers weren't welcome at his secret island hideaway - but Sophie's precious sister was missing, and she'd run any risks to find her!Driven to desperate measures, Sophie suddenly found herself a reluctant houseguest of this broodingly handsome, enigmatic and intensely private man. Desperate to escape, yet captivated by his charm, Sophie realized that the price of freedom could be her own loving heart!

The man behind the mask…

Sophie Nash always knew that trespassing on elusive celebrity Chay Buchanan’s Mediterranean island hideaway would be risky—and that’s before she’s caught red-handed, risking her life to take a photo of him! Even more worrying is her instant attraction to the gorgeous man in front of her…

Chay values privacy above all else, so when an accident requires that the delightfully bubbly Sophie must share his island sanctuary a little longer, he’s totally thrown. And that’s before he kisses her…!

“Please let me go, Chay.”

Sophie whispered the plea, her eyes huge.

“Don’t do that!” Chay lifted his hand to her heated cheek, to graze it with his thumb. “Or I’ll have to kiss you again...until you beg me to let you stay.”

“You’ve got a great notion of your physical attraction,” she declared roundly.

“Have I? Are you confident enough of your willpower to put it to the test?”

LIZ FIELDING was born in Berkshire, England, and educated at a convent school in Maidenhead. At twenty she took off for Africa to work as a secretary in Lusaka, where she met her civil engineer husband, John. They spent the following ten years working in Africa and the Middle East. She began writing during the long evenings when her husband was working away on contract. Liz and her husband are now settled in Wales with their children, Amy and William.

Prisoner of the Heart

Liz Fielding

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

Table of Contents

Cover (#u804409c0-6eb3-5da0-ae4d-bde369f3eeb7)

“Please let me go, Chay.” (#u84a4d2d7-eb8d-5640-a90b-f078116aa980)

About the Author (#u590707f6-5ef3-5955-a831-c1a12d5d2af3)

Title Page (#u73483441-7f86-580c-93cb-962872bb6e65)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_5f341082-2623-50cd-8547-c8f08c69dece)

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_2364dcb8-1c72-56e5-998e-6ba359860821)

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a9d7d043-6bf1-5efb-908c-e1c87a4f2be2)

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)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_9da37f16-de05-54ab-9e4e-8d90e5977139)

‘GOT you, Chay Buchanan!’ Sophie Nash’s triumphant exclamation was a tightly contained whisper. Perched on a rocky ledge fifty feet above a rock-strewn bay, she had waited too long–all an apparently endless afternoon, while the sun had crept around the headland, stealing her shade, beating into the exposed crevice with barely enough room to ease her aching back or flex her legs–to risk giving herself away now.

And she had almost given up. The sun was sinking fast, taking with it the precious light. Another ten minutes, she had promised herself, and she would end the torture and climb the fifteen or so feet back up to the top of the cliff. She had pressed herself a little closer to the comfort of the rock-face. The ledge had seemed larger viewed from the safety of the cliff-top and she had been so certain that she would be able to see the wide expanse of terrace between the tower and the sea. But she had been wrong. Only the tantalising glimpse of the pool had kept her riveted to her eyrie, praying that the sudden rise in temperature would tempt her quarry out for a swim. And finally it had.

The man fixed in her sights was staring out to sea, his hand raised against the westering sun. She released the shutter and the motor-wind drove the film forward as the wind whipped up a dark lock of hair and feathered it across his forehead. He was relaxed now, at ease in the safety of his keep. All that would change if he discovered that he was being observed. She shivered involuntarily, despite the heat. He had made himself more than clear. Warned her to stay away. Warned her that if she was ever unfortunate enough to be found anywhere near the old watch-tower that was his home with a camera in her possession she would discover that the dungeon was still a working feature.

Sophie shrugged away the disquieting thought of being locked inside the dark recesses of his tower. He had been simply melodramatic, trying to scare her off. Well, he would find out that she didn’t scare off that easily. His dungeon was undoubtedly nothing more threatening than a wine cellar these days. Besides, she wasn’t trespassing. There wasn’t a thing he could do to her. Oh, no? The thought was in her head before she could stop it. No! His property began on the other side of the great overhanging rock that so effectively protected his privacy. All but the pool at the sea’s edge. And he would never know she had been there until the photographs appeared alongside Nigel’s feature in Celebrity.

She twisted the zoom lens, closing in on the tanned profile and a pair of well-made shoulders, naked but for the towel thrown about them. The skin of his back gleamed like bronze silk in the early evening sun, smooth, packed with muscle, like an ancient statue of an athlete she had seen once in a museum. Her mouth dried as she panned the lense downwards, but the briefest black swimsuit clung to his hips, and the smallest gasp of something that might have been relief escaped her lips.

She quickly swung the long lens back up to his face, almost jumping as she adjusted the focus and he suddenly appeared close enough to touch. That first sense of triumph evaporated as she acknowledged that her response to such compelling masculinity, even at this distance, was as immediate and disturbing as on their first encounter. She felt a hot, remembering flush of shame at the way his knowing eyes had declined the imagined invitation.

He wasn’t even handsome, Sophie thought furiously. Chay Buchanan possessed no feature that might lay claim to such an adjective. His face was rugged, lived-in. No, slept-in. She shifted, uncomfortable with the memory of the naive way she had knocked at the door of his fortress to ask if he would let her take a photograph of him. She should have known that it couldn’t possibly be that simple or Nigel would never have asked her... Her foot disturbed a small shower of stones and in a sudden panic, sure that the whole world must hear, she flattened herself against the cliff and held her breath as they rattled down to the sea.

But there was no shout of rage and finally she braved a peek over the ledge. He hadn’t moved, his fierce profile fixed upon a distant yacht, sails straining against the wind as it cut through the brilliant blue of the Mediterranean.

Turn, she willed the man. Look this way. If he would just turn towards her, every painful, cramping moment on the ledge would be worthwhile. And turn he did, as if her mind had somehow reached out and touched his.

She took a deep, steadying breath as the lens was filled with that unforgettable face. Dark brows jutted fiercely over the sea-green eyes that this morning had seemed to bore into her to search out her secrets, and she had to remind herself very firmly that he had no idea that she had found a chink in his armour and was at this very moment intruding on his seclusion. If he had, he certainly wouldn’t be standing relaxed and at ease at the edge of his pool.

Chay Buchanan had made it only too plain that trespassers were not welcome, and she wondered briefly if his nose had been broken defending that privacy. The most recent library photographs of the man had been more than six years old. He had been standing grim-faced at his brother’s graveside, and in that shot his nose had been arrow-straight.

It had been set without much thought as to the aesthetics of the matter, and with his sun-darkened skin it gave him the hawkish look of a corsair. Just the kind of man to keep his enemies in a dungeon, Sophie thought uncomfortably. His mouth was wide and might be pleasing when he smiled. She wouldn’t know. When she had seen it last it had been little more than a thin angry slash over an uncompromising chin. She released the shutter and claimed the image for her own.

He pulled the towel from around his neck, and dropped it on the rocks at his feet. Her finger hovered over the shutter release, capturing the moment of sheer power and grace as his body unwound and he dived into the water of a pool carved out of the rocks, fed and cleaned by a narrow channel from the sea.

With a series of workmanlike pictures of the reclusive writer safely on film, Sophie leaned back against the rock to catch her breath. A slight frown creased her brow as she watched the man carving his way through the water.

Chay Buchanan had once strutted the literary stage like a young lion, the darling of the media. But it was years since he had appeared on every prestigious arts programme as the literary find of the century. Years since his last book had done the almost impossible feat of flying to the top of the bestseller lists in London and New York before capturing one of the greatest literary prizes on offer.

Since then, nothing. No more books to win prestigious prizes and fly to the top of the bestseller lists. No more photographs of him accompanied by beautiful women to fill the gossip pages. He had simply disappeared.

According to Nigel, he had turned his back on the world, sold his London home and retreated to this island fastness. With an up-to-date photograph it would make a good feature. Long on speculation, short on facts. He was an ideal target for the kind of magazine that lived off scandal and well-known faces.

Sophie’s fingers tightened around the cassette of film as she anticipated what would be done with her photographs. After this morning she had no reason to feel anything but antipathy for the man yet, slightly sickened by what she had done, she had to resist a sudden urge to fling the thing into the sea. She hated magazines like Celebrity. Sophie eased her shoulders, pushed back a wayward strand of fair hair that had escaped her plait to cling clammily to her forehead and watched her quarry, now slicing relentlessly through the water.

She stared down at the cassette, then, before she could do anything so utterly stupid, she dropped it into the button-down pocket of her shirt. She had no choice, she reminded herself. If Chay Buchanan had nothing to hide then Nigel couldn’t hurt him. And she very firmly shut out the insistent voice that told her she was fooling herself.