Authors: Fiona Brand
of long standing, they were practical y living together. “How long have you known Peters?”
There was a moment of silence while she surveyed the heavy opulence of the suite. “Six years. Maybe seven. We met at a painting class.”
“When did he move in next door?”
His question was somewhat lost as Lilah strol ed through the overstuffed room. The suite, he realized, with its curvy furniture, swagged silk drapes and gilt embel ishment might not suit him, but it was a perfect setting for Lilah. Even dressed in the modern suit, she looked lush and exotic, like the expensive courtesans that, before Medinos had become a Christian nation, had been kept closeted in luxury behind lacy wrought iron gril s.
She trailed one slim hand over the back of a brocade couch. “As a matter of fact, I was the one who moved next door to him. Evan knew I was looking for a bigger place.
When the apartment became available he let me know. It was ideal for what I wanted, so I snapped it up.”
His jaw tightened. “And it was a bonus living so close to Peters.”
Lilah dropped her purse on the couch and paused to examine an ornate oval mirror. She met his gaze in the glass. “Evan and I are not involved. As you put it, he has a certain reputation in the business world. His painting and some of his artistic friends don’t fit the profile, so he keeps that part of his life under wraps.”
Involvement or not, it was the knowledge that Peters had likely shared Lilah’s bed that bothered him.
Although it had not been the blond accountant’s portrait lying on the floor in Lilah’s studio. Or Mark Britten’s, or Lucas’s.
The portrait had been his.
Before he could probe further, his new P.A., Elena, who occupied a single room down the corridor, appeared.
Plump but efficiently elegant in a dark suit and trendy pink spectacles, Elena had a clipboard in hand. Spiros appeared in Elena’s wake and carried Lilah’s bag through to the spare bedroom.
Zane made brief introductions and signed the correspondence on Elena’s clipboard. He suppressed his irritation at Elena’s bright-eyed perusal of Lilah and the fascinated glances she kept directing his way. No doubt she had read some of the more lurid stories printed about him, which would explain why she seemed to think he needed chocolate-dipped strawberries and oysters on the half shel in his fridge. If she knew how he had lived over the past two years, he thought grimly, she would not have bothered.
When both Elena and Spiros were gone, Zane shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it over a nearby chair and strol ed to the doorway of Lilah’s room.
The pressing questions surrounding the portrait she had painted of him were replaced by a sense of satisfaction as he watched her unload clothing into a huge, ornate dresser.
In
his
suite.
Maybe his personal assistant wasn’t so far off in her opinion of him.
According to the history books, on his various raids, Zander Atraeus hadn’t confined himself to stealing jewels.
At that moment, he formed a grim insight into how his marauding ancestor must have felt when he had stolen away the woman he had eventual y married.
Lilah glanced up, a stylish jewelry case in one hand.
“Your P.A. doesn’t approve.”
He settled his shoulder against the door frame, curiously riveted by the feminine items she placed with calm precision on top of the dresser. “Elena had a traditional Medinian upbringing. She would probably prefer you in a separate suite for propriety’s sake.”
Her expression brightened. “Great idea.”
“You’re staying here, where I can keep an eye on you. Al the suites and rooms at this end of the corridor are booked out to Atraeus staff. It’s safe because no one comes in or out without security checking.”
“What about the publicity?”
He shrugged. “Whether you have a separate room or share this suite, after what happened this morning, the story they print wil be the same. This way, at least,
I
know where you are.”
She zipped her empty case closed and placed it in the closet. “What I can’t figure out is why that should be so important to you.”
“I made a promise to Lucas.”
Hurt registered briefly in her gaze. “Sil y me,” she muttered breezily. “I forgot.” Pushing open the terrace door, she stepped out onto the patio.
Zane caught her before she had gone more than a few feet. “Not a good idea. The terrace isn’t safe.”
On the heels of the hurt that Zane was only fol owing Lucas’s orders in looking after her, Zane’s grip on her arm sent a smal shock of adrenaline plunging through her veins.
She took a panicked half step, at the same time twisting to free herself. In the process her heel skidded on the paver. A sharp little pain signaled that she had managed to turn her ankle.
“What is it?”
She balanced on one heel. “It’s not serious.” It was the shoe that was the problem; there was something not quite right with the heel.
A split second later she found herself lifted up, carried back inside and deposited on the bed.
Zane removed the offending shoe, which had a broken heel, tossed it on the floor then examined her ankle. The light brush of his fingers sent smal shivers through her.
“Stay there. I’l get some ice.”
“There’s no need, honestly.”
But he had already gone.
Wiggling her foot, which felt just fine, Lilah stared at the ornately molded ceiling, abruptly speechless. Gold cherubs encircled a crystal chandelier, which she hadn’t previously noticed.
She pushed up into a reclining position, and eased back into the decadent luxury of a satin quilted headboard and a plump nest of down pil ows. She wiggled her ankle. There was barely a twinge, nothing she couldn’t walk off.
Before she could slide off the bed, Zane appeared with a plastic bag fil ed with ice cubes. The enormous bed depressed as he sat down and placed the ice around her ankle.
She winced at the cold and tried not to love the fact that he was looking after her. “It’s real y not that bad.”
He placed a cushion under her ankle to elevate it. “This way it won’t get bad. Just stay put.”
He rose to his feet, his expression taking on a look of blunt possession that was oddly thril ing, and that soothed the moment of hurt when she had thought he viewed her as a problem. She decided that in the rich turquoise-and-gold decadence of the room, and despite his kindness over her ankle, she had no trouble placing Zane at al .
When someone looked like a pirate and acted like a pirate, they very probably were a pirate.
An hour on the bed without anything to read and no chance of drowsing off because she was on edge at being in Zane’s suite, and Lilah had had enough.
Pushing into a sitting position, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She put weight on the foot. A few steps, with the barest of twinges, and she judged it was perfectly sound. The ice pack, which she had taken into her bathroom as soon as Zane had left the room, was melting in the bathtub.
She checked the sitting room, relieved to see that it was empty, and noted the sound of water running, indicating that Zane was having a shower. After changing into jeans and a white camisole, she brushed her hair and wound it back into a tidy knot. Col ecting her sketchpad and a pencil, she slipped dark glasses on the bridge of her nose and stepped out onto the terrace. A recliner was placed directly outside her room.
Flipping the pad open, to her horror she discovered that she had picked up the wrong pad. Instead of her latest jewelry sketches, ornate pearl items based on a set of traditional Medinian pieces, she found herself staring at a charcoal sketch of intent dark eyes beneath straight brows, mouthwatering cheekbones and a strong jaw.
Flipping through the book, she studied page after page of sketches, which she had done over a two-year period.
Slamming the book closed, she stared at the blank office buildings and hotels across the street. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how fixated she had become.
She had simply drawn Zane when she had felt the urge.
The problem was the urge had become unacceptably frequent. It was no wonder that in the past two years she’d had trouble whipping up any enthusiasm for her dates. She had even begun to worry about her age; after al she was nearly thirty. She had even considered dietary supplements, but clearly food wasn’t the problem.
A shadow fal ing over the sketchpad shocked her out of her reverie.
Zane, wearing black jeans that hung low on narrow hips, his muscled chest bare. “You shouldn’t be out here. I told you, it isn’t safe.”
Lilah dragged her gaze from the expanse of muscled flesh, the intriguing tracery of scars on his abdomen. She was abruptly glad for the screen her dark glasses provided.
“We’re twenty stories up, with security control ing access to this part of the hotel. I don’t see how this terrace can not be safe.”
“For the same reason I have bodyguards. The Atraeus family has a lot of money. That attracts some wacky types.”
“Is that how you got the scars?”
He leaned down and braced his hands on the armrests on either side of the recliner, suddenly suffocatingly close. “I got the scars when I was a kid, because I didn’t have either money or protection. Since my father picked me up, no one’s gotten that close, mostly because I listen to what my chief of security tel s me.”
She stared at his freshly shaven jaw, trying to ignore the scents of soap and cologne. “Which is?”
“That no matter how sunny the day looks, there are a lot of bad people out there, so you don’t take risks and you do what you’re told.” He lifted her dark glasses off the bridge of her nose.
She released her grip on the sketchpad to reclaim the sunglasses. Zane let her have the glasses, but straightened, taking her sketchpad with him.
Irritation at the sneaky trick, fol owed by mortification that he might glance through and discover her guilty secret, burned through her. “Give that back.”
She caught the edge of his grin as he stepped into the shadowy interior of the sitting room. Launching off the recliner, she raced after him, blinking as she adjusted to the dimness of the sitting room. She made a lunge for the pad.
Zane evaded her reach by taking a half step back.
“Why do you need it so badly?” His gaze was curiously intent, making her stomach sink.
“Those sketches are…private.”
And guiltily, embarrassingly revealing.
The drawings cataloged just how empty her private life had been. He would know just how much she had thought about him, focused on him and how often.
He handed her the pad but instead of letting it go, used it to draw her closer by degrees until her knuckles brushed the warm, hard muscles of his chest.
The relief that had spiraled through her when she thought he hadn’t checked out the drawings dissolved. “You
looked
.”
“Uh-huh.” Gaze locked with hers, he drew her close enough that her thighs brushed his and the sketchpad, which she was clutching like a shield, was flattened between them.
He lifted a dark brow. “And you would be drawing and painting me because…?”
Lilah briefly closed her eyes. The old cliché about wishing the ground would open up and swal ow her had nothing on this. “You saw the painting in my apartment.”
“It was hard to miss.”
She drew in a stifled breath. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
“Because then you could avoid admitting that you’re attracted to me. And have been ever since we met two years ago.”
Gently, he eased the sketchpad from her grip. “You don’t need that anymore.” He tossed the pad aside. “Not when you have the real thing.”
Seven
Lilah was frozen to the spot, gripped by the inescapable knowledge that if she wanted Zane, he wanted her. “Maybe I prefer the fantasy.”
“Liar.” His head dipped, his forehead touched hers.
“What now?” The question was soft and flat.
“Nothing.” She swal owed, unable to take her gaze from his mouth, or to forget the memory of the kisses that morning.
Just that morning
. In the interim a lot had happened. The passage of time seemed wildly distorted, as if days had passed, not hours.
And that was when she understood what had happened.
Somehow she had done the very thing she had worked to avoid. She had al owed herself to get caught in the grip of a physical obsession. And not just any obsession.
She stared into the riveting depths of Zane’s eyes. She had fol owed a path wel -trodden by Cole women. She had fal en victim to the
coup de foudre
.
That was why she had ended up on the couch with Zane.
It explained her inability to say “no” to kissing Zane on the flight and during the press conference.
Somehow, without her quite knowing how, she had al owed sex to sabotage her life.
Zane’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” But she knew.
Her guilty secret had been exposed, the emotions and longings she had kept quietly tucked away—al the better to deny them—had been forced to the surface.
And Zane wasn’t helping the process. Instead of backing off, he was making no bones about the fact that he liked it that she wanted him.
He dipped his head to kiss her. Lifting up on her toes, she wound her arms around his neck and met him halfway.
It was crazy. She hardly knew him, but already she knew how to fit herself against him, how to angle her jaw so his mouth could settle against hers.
With a stifled groan, he wrapped her close. Half lifting her, he walked her backward across the sitting room.
Somewhere in the distance, Lilah registered the phone ringing, then they were in his room. The back of her knees hit the edge of his bed.
He came down beside her. Conscious thought evaporated as his mouth reclaimed hers. Long minutes later, he rol ed and pul ed her on top of him, his fingers tangling in her hair. Charmed and utterly seduced by the clear invitation to play, to kiss him back, she framed his face and lowered her mouth to his.
His palms smoothed down the curve of her spine, pressing her against him so that she was intimately aware of every curve and plane of heated muscle, the firm shape of his arousal. On the upward journey, he peeled her camisole up until he met the barrier of her bra.