The Tycoon's Virgin Bride

Jenessa smiled, a slow, secret smile. “You mean me?”

“You don't need to ask.” He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing her fingertips one by one.

For a moment sheer terror gripped her throat. As desire was inexorably replaced by anxiety, her nerves tightened to an unbearable pitch. In a very short time Bryce would know that she hadn't made love with anyone in the years since she'd ended up in his bed. That she was, at age twenty-nine, that anomaly—a virgin. And what would he conclude?

This book is Part Two in an exciting new duet

from talented Harlequin Presents
^®
author

Sandra Field!

In Book One,
The Millionaire's Marriage Demand
(#2395), you met Travis Strathern and Julie Renshaw—and bore witness to the explosive chemistry between them, which had dramatic consequences!

And here is Book Two,
The Tycoon's Virgin Bride:
Travis's sister Jenessa Strathern once had a mammoth crush on Travis's best friend, Bryce Laribee. Now, years later, she meets Bryce again—and this time the attraction is mutual!

Available only from Harlequin Presents
^®

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
HE
ridiculous thing was—so Jenessa Strathern decided afterward—that she had no sense of premonition when the telephone rang around seven o'clock on that sunny May evening. Nothing warned her to ignore the ringing, or told her to run outdoors and hide her head among the hydrangeas.

So much for feminine intuition.

She'd just stopped work, because the light was fading and she was so close to finishing this painting that she didn't want to risk any mistakes. Scrubbing a dab of alizarin crimson from her fingers with a stained rag, she picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hi, Jen,” her brother said. “Got a minute?”

She smiled into the receiver, plunking herself down in the nearest chair.

Travis Strathern, older than she by six years, lived in Maine with his wife, Julie, and their three-week-old daughter, Samantha. “For you,” she said, “all the time in the world. How are you? Or I should say, how's Samantha?”

“Are you suggesting I've been usurped?”

“Samantha's cuter than you.”

“I can't argue with that. Guess what? She can smile and hold on to my finger all by herself. Amazing, huh?”

Travis was a doctor who had a great many letters after his name and was highly qualified in tropical diseases. “Amazing,” Jenessa said solemnly.

“She's the reason I'm calling. She's going to be christened in three weeks, and we'd like you to come. More than that, we'd like you to be her godmother.”

Touched, Jenessa said, “That's sweet of you, Travis. But you do realize I'm a total dunce when it comes to babies? When you passed her to me in the hospital, I couldn't wait to pass her back—I was terrified I'd drop her.”

“You'll learn,” Travis said. “Anyway, she won't stay a baby for long. So you'll come?”

Jenessa hesitated. “Where's the christening taking place?”

“I knew you'd ask,” Travis said wryly. “On Manatuck, at Dad and Corinne's. Do come, though, Jen…it's time you and Dad buried the hatchet, wouldn't you say? Especially now there's another generation in the picture.”

She should say yes. She really should. It would hurt Travis's feelings if she didn't. As a child, she'd hero-worshiped her big brother, and as adult she both loved and respected him. Besides, she owed him a great deal, and although she hadn't seen a lot of Julie, she genuinely liked her. Julie had nearly lost Samantha in the fourth month of pregnancy; as a result, she and Travis had delayed a posting to Mexico until after the birth. So Samantha, Jenessa knew, was doubly precious to both of them.

So what if the christening was on Manatuck Island? She could surely behave in a civil fashion to Charles Strathern for a few hours, no matter that she normally avoided him like the plague.

But as Jenessa opened her mouth to accept the invitation, her brother added, “There's another reason I want you to come. We've asked Bryce to be Samantha's godfather…you know who I mean, Bryce Laribee, my old school friend?”

The color fled from Jenessa's cheeks and her heart began to thud as though a mallet was banging against her ribs. She made an indeterminate noise, her cold fingers clenched around the smooth plastic of the receiver. Obliv
ious to her reaction, Travis went on, “I don't think you've ever met him. Although that's hard to believe—I've known him since I was twelve. But now's your chance. He's a great guy, you'll like him.”

Travis was wrong: Jenessa had met Bryce. Once, many years ago. And the feelings she'd had for him could scarcely be called liking.

She wasn't about to tell her brother that, however. Some secrets were better kept, her lovemaking with Bryce Laribee being right up there at the top of the list. The only trouble with secrets, she now thought unhappily, is that they brought deception in their wake. She had no intention of ever finding herself within ten miles of Bryce again; but she couldn't tell her brother that, either.

“Jen? Are you there?”

Frantically she tried to gather her wits. She had to get out of this somehow, which meant she'd have to stretch the truth. Considerably. What other choice did she have? She said, doing her best to sound convincing, “Travis, I'm sorry…but I can't take the time. It's a long drive all the way up to Maine from here, and I have a show opening in Boston early in July. At the Morden Gallery, so you know what that means.”

“The Morden? Good for you—you're really going places.”

She wasn't so sure about that. Knowing this was no time to enter a discussion about artistic stagnation, Jenessa said, “I'm behind schedule—they want twenty paintings by the end of June. If I come to Maine, it'll blow three or four days, and I just can't afford that kind of time.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then Travis said in a voice Jenessa had only rarely heard him use, “Are you being straight with me, sis? Are you sure the real reason isn't Charles? You know I'd understand if it were—he wasn't what you'd call an ideal father.”

“I'm sure,” she said, glad she could, if only briefly, speak the truth. “This show is important for me—I'm on
the brink of making some sort of name for myself. The alternative is to sink into oblivion, and I've worked too hard the last twelve years to risk that.”

She'd met Bryce twelve years ago, in her first year at Columbia's School of the Arts, she thought with a sudden shiver. She'd been seventeen at the time.

With the ease of long practice, she closed her mind to that long-ago meeting with its lasting consequences. “I'm so sorry. But you know I'm devoted to Samantha, and that's what really counts, isn't it?”

“Julie's going to be disappointed.”

“So are you, by the sound of it.”

“Yeah…you didn't make it to our wedding, either.”

At which Bryce had been best man. Cursing the day she'd seen the poster advertising Bryce's lecture at Columbia all those years ago, Jenessa said, “Once the show's over, I promise I'll come for a visit. If you're both still speaking to me, that is.”

“Come off it,” Travis said, “you know we're not like that. Tell you what—why don't you let me pay for your airfare? That way you could do the whole trip in a day.”

“I owe you too much money as it is…I don't want to go any deeper in debt.”

“A gift, Jen. No strings attached.”

“I can't take any more money from you, Travis—I just can't.”

There was another pregnant silence. Then her brother said, “You'll have to accept the title of godmother-in-absentia, then. Because we don't want anyone else but you.”

Tears pricked at Jenessa's lids. Her mother had run away to France when she had been just a baby, and from the time she was little, her father had done his best to crush any wayward impulses in his only daughter. Simultaneously, he'd blatantly favored her twin brother, Brent. To this day, she and Brent were as distant as it was possible for twins to be. Travis had been the one who'd
been her rock as she grew up, despite his long absences at boarding school. To disappoint him now, hurt her deeply.

But she'd been utterly humiliated by Bryce in his hotel room in Manhattan; how could she possibly face him again?

She couldn't. It was out of the question.

She said valiantly, “How much does Samantha weigh? And is Julie getting enough sleep?”

Travis was happy to talk at some length about his daughter and his wife, both of whom he openly adored. In return, Jenessa described the new contract she had with her gallery, and the progress of her garden; finally, to her relief, Travis rang off. Slowly she put down the phone.

Once again she'd sidestepped any chance of coming face-to-face with Bryce Laribee. But the cost had been high; deep within her, Jenessa felt the slow burn of anger.

Against Bryce? Or against the young woman she'd been twelve years ago, so impressionable and so frighteningly vulnerable?

 

Late the following afternoon, Jenessa was down on her hands and knees in the vegetable garden. Tucked behind her tiny Quaker house, it was a peaceful spot, bathed in sunlight and alive with bees. A breeze whispered through the tall maples that bordered her property.

She'd finished the painting that morning. It was technically accomplished, as was all her work, its sunlit details overlying the sense of menace that haunted everything she painted.

She'd slept badly, dreaming of babies crying out from the high cliffs of Manatuck, and of her brother turning his back on her in an empty art gallery. And, of course, she'd dreamed of Bryce.

If only she'd never seen that poster on the bulletin board in the School of Arts…

 

His name jumped out at her first: Bryce Laribee. Best friend of her beloved brother, millionaire computer whiz. The title of his lecture was incomprehensible to her, although she did gather it had something to do with programming. It was his photograph in the top corner of the poster that held her skewered to the spot. Thick blond hair, gray eyes that looked right through her, a forceful bone structure that made her itch to draw his cleft chin, strong jaw and wide cheekbones.

An unapproachable face that drew her like a magnet.

Her artist's soul, fledgling though it was, knew she had to see him in person. Perhaps the photo lied. Perhaps when she saw him, she'd realize his face was nothing out of the ordinary, and there was no reason for this overwhelming urge to sketch him.

A portrait, she thought with a surge of excitement. Head and shoulders. In oils. Although she was new to portraiture, she was almost sure she could do him justice.

Realizing she'd been gazing at the poster like a star-struck groupie, Jenessa hurried off to her watercolor class. Telling none of her friends, the next evening she went to the lecture, sitting well at the back where she could see Bryce Laribee without being seen. He was standing full in the light on the auditorium stage; in the flesh, he far exceeded the promise of the photograph.

She had to sketch him. She had to.

But more than his features drew her. His rich baritone sent shivers up and down her spine, his sense of humor made her laugh, while his lucid descriptions almost made her understand what he was talking about. There was a reception in the department lounge after the lecture. She went, again tucking herself in the background, waiting until the crowd thinned to make her move. She'd decided on her first sight of him that she wasn't going to tell him she was Travis's sister; he was more than capable of subtracting six years from her brother's age and coming up
with seventeen. If he knew she was that young, he'd never take her seriously. Game over before it began.

Bryce had approached the bar for another drink. She walked up to him, her heart racketing in her rib cage, and said with assumed calm, “My name is Jan Struthers, I'm an art student. I'm wondering if I could buy you a drink after this is over—I'd like to sketch you.”

He looked her up and down, his gray eyes just as unrevealing as she'd expected: deep-set gray eyes over cheekbones hewn with potent masculinity. She swallowed hard. Wasn't his physical charisma exactly why she wanted to paint him? She couldn't back down now. That would be cowardly, and she'd never thought of herself as a coward.

His survey of her was leisurely; her heartbeat accelerated. She knew what he'd see: her spiky hair, its tips dyed bright orange, her elaborate makeup, contacts that made her eyes almost purple, and an outlandish beaded leather outfit that more than hinted at a sexuality she wasn't quite ready to acknowledge. For the first time, she found herself regretting she'd succumbed to the peer pressure of the other art students with their outrageous outfits; that her father would be appalled by her getup wasn't much help.

She should have toned herself down for this all-important meeting with Bryce Laribee.

As if proving her point, Bryce wasn't bothering to hide his amusement. “You're quite a creation. A work of art in itself.”

Jenessa looked pointedly at his tailored business suit and impeccable tie. “You have your uniform, and I mine.”

“Yours is more fun.”

“Either way, they're what we hide behind.”

“So we're basically the same underneath?”

She bit her lip, not sure what he was implying. “I didn't say that.”

“And just what part of me did you want to sketch, Jan Struthers?”

She flushed; simultaneously, anger flickered to life. He was playing with her, cat to mouse. She could have told the truth: a head and shoulders portrait. Instead she said, “A good artist never narrows her options before she begins.”

“She stays open to all the possibilities?”

“Of course.”

The sparks in his eyes made her feel weak at the knees. Virgin though she was—a rarity among her classmates—there was no mistaking that he was flirting with her.

Flirting? Or was he putting the moves on her?

He couldn't be. She was being overly sensitive to innuendo.

He said, “I have to say goodbye to the organizers of the lecture…do you mind waiting for a few minutes?”

“I'll sharpen my pencils,” she said demurely.

He laughed, his white teeth flashing, his whole face alive with a masculine energy that shuddered along her nerves. “I'll be as quick as I can,” he said, and strode across the room toward a couple of tweed-jacketed professors.

Jenessa tossed back the last of her glass of wine. She'd suggest they go to a restaurant for coffee, or to a bar, where there'd be other people. She'd be quite safe.

She didn't feel safe. She could recall every detail of Bryce's face: the dark flecks in his irises, the determination in his jaw, the sensuality of his strongly carved mouth. He was a big man, towering over her, making her feel small and feminine. Oh, God, she thought helplessly, what was going on?

Then Bryce crossed the room toward her, and in a rush of adrenaline she knew she should have run for her life. Safe? Anywhere in his vicinity? Nothing about him was remotely safe. She was way out of her league.