The Throne He Must Take

Somehow he forced himself to turn and walk into the house, and he grabbed a towel before retracing his steps back across the decking.

Holly held out her hand for the towel, but Jarek did not pass it to her immediately. ‘First let your hair down,’ he growled.

‘Are you kidding?’ Her brown eyes widened.

There was shock, anger and something else that was harder to define but made him ache even more, in her expression.

‘Do you want me to catch pneumonia?’

She didn’t wait for him to reply—which was probably a good thing, he acknowledged, because he would have to admit that what he wanted was her legs wrapped around his back.

Throwing him a look of sheer irritation, she lifted her hands up and released the clip on top of her head so that her hair tumbled down around her shoulders in glossy waves of rich chocolate-brown. ‘Satisfied?’

He doubted he would ever be satisfied again with the too thin, too blonde, brittle women who came and went from his bed in an endless stream of unmemorable sexual encounters. They always came, he thought sardonically. He was as good at sex as he was at making money, yet neither activity ever filled the emptiness inside him.

Finally he heeded his common sense, aware that indulging his sexual desire for Holly might satisfy him temporarily but that he would soon grow bored of her. It was just how he was: ‘a restless soul’, Mama had once described him, while his adoptive father had accused him of being reckless. Ralph had been proved right.

He gave Holly the towel and she immediately dragged it around her shoulders to hide her gorgeous body from him before she stepped out of the hot tub and stalked back to the chalet.

Jarek caught up with her in a few long strides. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded, placing his hand on her arm to prevent her walking through the door that led from the gym annexe into the main part of the house.

‘Where else would I be?’ She tensed beneath his hand and with obvious reluctance raised her eyes to his face.

‘I assumed you had gone to wherever you live. Do you rent a place in Salzburg? Or is there staff accommodation at the Frieden Clinic, where we met earlier?’

She frowned. ‘I live here—at Chalet Soline. When I’m in London I share a flat with a friend, but for my job with the Frieden Clinic I am required to live at one of the clinic’s residences so that I can provide psychological support around the clock. Every member of the clinical team is assigned to a chalet, where they treat patients on an individual basis. Professor Heppel came up with the radical approach of providing access to twenty-four-seven treatment, rather than sessions which last for an hour once or twice a week. His highly successful method is explained in the brochure that you didn’t bother to read—and I also explained the set-up when I met you at the clinic’s reception centre earlier today. But you seemed more interested in reading a story in the newspaper than listening to me.’

Holly’s disapproving tone reminded Jarek of the headmistress who had expelled him from his exclusive private school at the age of fifteen, after he had been caught smuggling alcohol into the school and selling it to the other boys. He had argued that his business venture had shown entrepreneurial spirit, but the headmistress had warned that his rebellious nature would ultimately be his ruin.

He thought of the newspaper headline that had seized his attention when he had arrived at the Frieden Clinic.

What did happen to Vostov’s royal children?

Jarek feared the answer was buried in his subconscious mind, and that his nightmares might reveal a truth that was too shocking for him to contemplate. Certainly he could not risk Holly hearing him shout out in his sleep, as had happened on one of the rare occasions when he had spent a whole night with a woman he had picked up in a bar.

The next morning Tara... Tyra—he hadn’t taken much heed of her name—had said he’d kept her awake with his shouting and maybe he should talk to a psychiatrist or something about the crazy stuff in his head.

Jarek’s chosen method of preventing his bad dreams was to drink enough vodka until he was unconscious. But without access to alcohol God knew what his nightmares might reveal.

He realised that Holly was speaking again. ‘I believe you will find it beneficial to be able to discuss issues with your therapist whenever you need to, instead of having to wait for an allotted time for treatment sessions. If you want to talk to me in the middle of the night you can ring through to my room and wake me up. Part of my job is to be available whenever you want me.’

‘Is that so...?’

Jarek felt the hard thud of his pulse and knew he had to resist it—had to resist her. There was a curious innocence about Holly that made him want to protect her from himself.

‘There is only one reason why I would wake you in the middle of the night, angel-face,’ he drawled, ‘and it wouldn’t be because I want to talk.’

He watched a scarlet stain spread over her face and wondered when he had last seen a woman blush. For a few seconds he felt a tug of regret, because he could not allow this shimmering, ephemeral thing between them that was something other than sexual attraction—something more—to flourish. He was who he was: reckless, rebellious, with a knack of destroying everything that was good in his life.

‘There you go again with the sexual innuendo.’ She put her head on one side and studied him intently. ‘Are you trying to frighten me? Because I have to tell you that you aren’t succeeding.’

‘You should be afraid of me,’ he said roughly. ‘I am everything you have read about me and worse.’ He wanted to shout at her that he didn’t deserve the sympathy he could see in her velvet brown eyes. His jaw clenched. ‘This is a complication I don’t need right now.’

She wrinkled her nose and Jarek swore silently. He didn’t do cute, his brain insisted, but his body paid no attention.

‘What do you mean by “this”? she asked, looking puzzled.

He stretched out his hand and jerked the edges of the towel she was clutching around her from her fingers. With a cry of protest she tried to snatch it back, but he whipped it away from her body and trailed his eyes with slow deliberation over her skimpy swimsuit. Desire kicked hard in his gut as he stared at her lush breasts, half-spilling over the top of the swimsuit, and the hard points of her nipples that betrayed her so sweetly.