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Something flickered in his dark eyes but his stern mouth did not soften. ‘Happy birthday, Blondie.’
‘That’s not my name.’ She hated the nickname the tabloids had given her, with its implication that because she was pretty and blonde she must also be a brainless bimbo. ‘My name is Elin.’
‘I know.’
She tilted her head and studied him. The dimmed lighting in the room cast shadows over the hard angles and planes of his face and emphasised his austere beauty, making Elin long to explore the chiselled perfection of his jaw with her fingertips. As for his mouth... Her heart thudded as she imagined his sensual mouth covering hers. The knot in her belly tightened and every nerve-ending in her body felt fiercely alive.
‘How do you know my name?’ She was certain they’d never met before. Dear God, she would have remembered him.
She wondered if she’d imagined that he hesitated infinitesimally before he shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘I’m here at your birthday party and of course I know your name. There can’t be many people who haven’t heard of Elin Saunderson. Photographs of you falling out of nightclubs are a regular feature in the British popular press.’
Inexplicably she felt hurt by his cynicism, and she was tempted to explain that she’d deliberately courted scandal to turn the media’s attention away from her brother. But it would mean betraying Jarek and she would never do that, especially to a stranger. Even if he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever set eyes on. Her gaze locked with his and she saw his gold-flecked eyes blaze with a heat that burned her.
Every one of her heightened senses quivered with the realisation that he desired her. He might not want to want her, but he had no more control over the electricity that crackled between them than she did. He clearly believed she was the goodtime girl portrayed by the press so why shouldn’t she live up to her reputation for one night? Elin asked herself.
Some part of her recognised that this wild, reckless feeling wasn’t her. She shouldn’t want a complete stranger to cover her mouth with his and kiss her with the savage passion that she sensed he was capable of. She shouldn’t want him, but she did.
‘It would be good manners to introduce yourself.’
His mouth quirked then, not exactly a smile but it was enough to send scalding heat flooding through her. ‘There’s nothing good about me,’ he warned her in his deep, dark voice with a faint undercurrent of a Mediterranean accent. Once again he hesitated before he drawled, ‘My name is Cortez.’
‘You’re Spanish?’ His dark olive complexion and that raven-black hair indicated that he spent a lot of time in the hot sun. His name—Cor-tez... She silently repeated it the way he had pronounced it, emphasising the second syllable. It reminded her of a history book she’d read about the Spanish conquistadors who had invaded the Aztec and Inca civilisations in the sixteenth century. The conquistadors were reputed to have been utterly ruthless and she would be happy to bet that he was a descendent of those infamous adventurers.
‘Half-Spanish,’ he said after another pause, as if he had been about to say something else but had changed his mind.
She deliberately trailed her eyes over his chest and continued lower, down to his flat abdomen and lean hips, hugged by his black jeans. ‘Which half?’ she asked innocently.
He looked startled for a few seconds and then laughed. The sound was warm and golden, like liquid honey, Elin thought. ‘You are wicked,’ he told her. The bright flecks in his eyes gleamed and something almost feral flickered across his hard features. ‘And very, very beautiful.’
He stretched out his hand and wound a lock of her pale gold hair around his fingers. Elin could feel the frantic thud of her heart, and her breath caught in her throat. He must have heard the faint sound, and although he did not appear to move she sensed a sudden tension in him, as if he truly was a predator stalking its prey. He exuded danger and she should run for the hills, but the reckless feeling that had swept over her tonight made her ignore the voice of caution in her head.
The heavy bass music pounding in the room stirred her blood with its sensual rhythm. ‘Will you dance with me? You can’t refuse,’ she said when his eyes narrowed, ‘because it’s my birthday and I can have whatever I want on my birthday.’
He did not laugh now and the liquid honey in his voice was replaced by a harsh tone that sounded like rusty metal dragged across gravel. ‘What do you want, Elin?’
‘You,’ she heard herself say in a husky voice she did not recognise as her own. Once again she felt a peculiar sensation that she was floating outside her body and none of this was real. Perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps it was a dream, but it was a much better dream than her usual nightmare about her mother’s death.
Cortez swore softly. The gold flecks in his eyes glittered and he seemed to be waging an internal battle with himself before he shrugged. ‘So be it then,’ he muttered as he moved towards her. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her against him so that they were hip to hip.
The effect on Elin was electrifying. The brush of his thighs against hers as they moved with the beat of the music turned the heat inside her into an inferno. Cortez danced with a fluid grace that was entirely sensual, and she gasped when he slid one hand down to the small of her back and exerted pressure to bring her pelvis into closer contact with his.
Her senses went into meltdown as he clamped her against his whipcord body. He smelled divine, a mixture of spicy cologne and the dry heat of his body that had its own unique scent. She wanted to press her face into his neck and breathe in the essence of him, lick his olive skin and taste him. Her hands were lying flat on his chest and she felt his heartbeat accelerate beneath her fingertips. Startled, she tilted her head to look at his face, and saw a stark hunger in his eyes that made her tremble.
She’d never felt like this before and she’d certainly never behaved so impetuously. She felt crazily out of control. For the first time in six months she felt alive instead of numb. Life, she’d learned, could be taken away in an instant, in the release of a trigger and a bullet fired from a gun.
She wanted to grab hold of life with both hands, and more than anything she wanted to be even closer to this dangerously beautiful man who made her feel like no other man ever had. And so she slid her hands up to his shoulders and stretched herself up against him, pressing her breasts with their pebble-hard nipples into his chest. She heard him mutter something in Spanish as he sank his hand into her hair and lowered his face towards hers. His mouth was tantalisingly close and with a low moan she closed the tiny gap between them and pressed her lips to his.
The world exploded in a firestorm of heat and colour. Cortez hesitated for a fraction of a second but then a shudder went through him and he took control of the kiss and plundered her mouth like a conquistador claiming the spoils of his conquest. It was hotter and wilder than anything Elin had ever experienced before. She felt consumed by his kiss, by him as he moved his hand to cup her jaw and angled her mouth to his satisfaction before he pushed his tongue between her lips and tasted her.
The kiss went on and on, becoming deeper and ever more erotic, a ravishment of her senses, and Elin hoped it would never end. When Cortez eventually tore his mouth from hers to allow them to snatch air into their starved lungs, he stared at her as if he was trying to figure her out.
‘This is madness,’ he grated. ‘I should tell you...’ He broke off when one of the other guests who was dancing wildly stumbled into them. ‘Dios!’ Cortez tightened his arms around Elin and his protective gesture made her melt even more. ‘Is there somewhere we can go to talk?’
Over Cortez’s shoulder, Elin saw Tom, the guy who had been plying her with drinks earlier, walk into the room. Keen to avoid him, she led Cortez through a different door to the narrow hallway and staircase at the back of the house, which had once been used by servants. Even here there were people sitting on the stairs playing a raucous drinking game, and so she continued up to the second floor and along the corridor to her bedroom.
‘We won’t be disturbed in here,’ she told him as she ushered him inside and closed the door. After the loud music downstairs the room was quiet, with just the distant thud of heavy bass audible through the floorboards. On some level Elin knew she must be crazy to have invited a stranger into her bedroom. Except that he wasn’t a complete stranger, she reassured herself. She knew his name and she assumed Virginia knew him. Why else would he have come to the party unless her friend had invited him?
Even so, a tiny, sane part of her realised she was acting a little bit crazy tonight. She couldn’t explain the buzz of exhilaration that felt as if she were riding on a big dipper at a theme park, but she didn’t want the feeling to end. She stared at Cortez and thought how unbelievably gorgeous he was. No wonder Virginia had kept quiet about him. But he had kissed her.
In the mirror she could see her mouth was swollen from when he had crushed her lips beneath his. She hardly recognised herself in a sexy scarlet dress, with her hair dishevelled and her mouth reddened...and inviting. She looked back at Cortez and watched his eyes narrow as she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
‘You said you wanted to tell me something. Are you married?’
‘What?’ He looked startled. ‘No, of course not. I would not have kissed you if I were married.’
‘Why did you kiss me?’
‘Why the hell do you think?’ he said roughly.
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps you should kiss me again and I might work out the reason.’ There it was again, that teasing, flirty voice that she didn’t recognise as her own. But the truth was she wanted him to kiss her, and she wanted more. She wanted... Her eyes flicked to the huge double bed that she’d only ever slept in alone. She heard Cortez mutter something incomprehensible as he followed her gaze.
‘You are an irresistible temptation.’ He made it sound like an accusation as he closed the gap between them in a couple of strides. Her bedroom seemed to shrink and she could not tear her gaze from him. The golden gleam in his eyes promised he would make her birthday wish come true.
‘Are you going to resist me?’ she murmured when he stood in front of her and cupped her cheek in his big hand. The skin on his palm felt rough and she wondered briefly what he did for a living.
‘Not a chance,’ he growled as he pulled her against him, into his heat and strength and intoxicating maleness, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that plundered her soul.
‘Do you want this?’ he demanded, lifting his head and staring into her eyes as if he was trying to read her thoughts.
‘Do you have to ask?’ replied the voice she didn’t recognise that belonged to the bold creature who had taken over her body. It was that woman who wound her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers—a scarlet-clad temptress who murmured words of encouragement when he lifted her up and placed her on the bed before he stretched out on top of her.
His weight pinned her to the mattress and his muscular body felt alien and hard against her softness. He kissed her mouth, demanding a response she gave willingly. She wanted everything he could give her, and her urgency increased when he trailed his lips down her throat.
Their clothes were a frustrating barrier and she pushed his jacket over his shoulders while he tugged the straps of her dress down her arms. There was the sound of material ripping and then the feel of cool air on her bare breasts.
She moaned when he bent his dark head to her breast and took her nipple into his mouth. The sensation of him sucking her was exquisite, and flames shot down from her breasts to the molten place between her legs as he transferred his mouth to her other nipple and tugged on the taut crest.
‘Please...’ she choked. Instinct took over and she lifted her hips towards him as he thrust a hand beneath her skirt and skimmed his palm over the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. He dragged her panties down her legs, and then his fingers were there where she was desperate for him to touch her, probing her slick heat before he slid one digit, two, into her and moved them expertly so that within moments she was trembling on the brink.
‘I want...’ she gasped. She had never felt desire like this before, so fierce and urgent, making her shake with need.
‘I know.’ His voice was like rough velvet. He kissed her mouth again and in between hungry kisses he pulled his sweater over his head. His skin felt like satin overlaid with wiry chest hairs that scraped her palms as she moved her hands down to the zip of his jeans.
Everything was colour and heat and fierce, frantic need that built in intensity as he swirled his fingers inside her. Somehow Cortez was naked and the sight of his erection made Elin draw a swift breath. He was awesome—so beautiful, so big. But her faint doubt was obliterated when he twisted his fingers inside her and she shattered, her orgasm so overwhelming that she gave a keening cry.
‘I don’t have a condom.’ His harsh voice broke through the haze of sexual excitement fogging her brain and she heard him swear as he lifted himself off her. She didn’t want him to stop. Frantically she clutched his shoulders and remembered the packet of condoms which had been given out for free when she had been a fresher at university. She had shoved them into the bedside drawer, wondering if she would ever need them.
‘In the top drawer,’ she muttered.
It took him mere moments to locate the packet and don a protective sheath before he positioned himself over her and nudged her legs apart with his thigh. And then he entered her with a hard thrust that made her gasp. The slight discomfort was over almost immediately. She felt him hesitate, but the sensation of being stretched by him and filled by his steel-hard length was so incredible that she arched her hips and urged him to possess her utterly.
The intense pleasure of her first orgasm made her greedy for more and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, anchoring herself to his powerful body as he drove into her again and again, taking her higher and making her sob with need, until finally the world exploded and she heard him groan as together they fell over the edge of the abyss.
* * *
Elin stirred and the light hurt her eyes before she’d even opened them. Cautiously, she lifted her lashes and winced as a shaft of bright sunshine fell across her face. Her head felt strangely woolly and it took several minutes to register that she was in her bedroom at the house in Kensington. She pushed back the sheet and discovered she’d fallen into bed wearing her dress. The top half was pushed down around her waist, leaving her breasts bare, and when she moved her hand lower she discovered that her knickers were missing.
Dear God! Vague memories swirled in her mind. There had been a party, loud music, candles on a cake. She remembered dancing with various men—with one man in particular. A savagely handsome man with jet-black hair and gold-flecked eyes who had said his name was Cortez.
She jerked upright and the room spun. Her stomach churned but her symptoms didn’t feel like a hangover. Patches of her memory of the previous night were blank but others were shudderingly vivid. She remembered that she’d danced with Cortez and they had kissed. Embarrassed heat flooded her cheeks when she recalled that she had initiated the kiss before she’d invited him up to her room.
What else had she done?
She spied her knickers on the floor and the answer hit her in a tidal wave of shame. She’d had sex for the first time in her life with a man she’d never met before, and the fact that she had woken alone at—the clock showed it was midday—suggested that Cortez had long since gone.
‘Elin, are you in there?’ Virginia’s voice sounded from outside the door.
‘Just a minute.’ She grabbed her robe and pulled it on over her crumpled dress, desperate to hide the evidence of her night of shame. Virginia was her best friend but Elin did not want to tell anyone what she’d done, how she’d behaved like a slut. She wanted to crawl away and hide in a hole, but she forced herself to smile when she opened her bedroom door.
‘Are you alone?’ Virginia sounded surprised. ‘I saw you disappear from the party with a gorgeous guy and thought maybe you’d spent the night with him. Who was he?’
‘He said his name was Cortez.’ Elin swallowed. ‘I didn’t get round to asking his surname. But I thought he was a friend of yours. Didn’t you invite him to the party?’
‘I’d never seen him before he turned up here last night.’ Virginia frowned. ‘It’s a bit odd. I haven’t spoken to anyone who was at the party who knows him.’
Virginia dismissed the mystery of Cortez’s identity with an airy shrug that Elin envied. ‘You missed all the drama last night. A guy called Tom Wilson was arrested on suspicion of spiking my friend Lisa’s drink. Apparently she felt strange after drinking a cocktail Tom had made her but she assumed she was drunk. A while later he tried to get Lisa to leave the party with him, but someone else warned her that they’d seen Tom slip something into her drink. The police were called, and when they tested the dregs of drink in the bottom of Lisa’s glass they found evidence of a substance which is a well-known date-rape drug.’
Something clicked in Elin’s mind and she sank down onto the bed. ‘Do you know what the effects of taking the drug are?’
‘Lisa said she felt dizzy and out of control and she described feeling detached from reality. Oh, my God,’ Virginia said in a horrified voice as she noticed Elin’s white face. ‘Do you think your drink was spiked too?’
‘Tom made me a cocktail and I felt strange after drinking it. But, like Lisa, I thought I was drunk.’
‘You had better inform the police that it’s possible you were another of Tom’s victims. Some so-called date-rape drugs can cause blackouts and amnesia and if you unwittingly took the drug it would explain why you’ve been asleep for half the day.’
If her drink had been spiked it would explain her bizarre, out-of-character behaviour last night. But it was a cold comfort, Elin thought grimly. Cortez would have been unaware that she’d been drugged. However, he’d mentioned her reputation as an It Girl—how she detested the label—and he had clearly believed she made a habit of sleeping with men she’d just met. The fact that he had disappeared after they’d had sex, without waking her, made her feel like a tramp.
As soon as Virginia had gone, Elin stripped off the scarlet dress that had become her badge of shame and shoved it into the bin. She felt soiled, but when she took a shower no amount of hot water and soap could scrub away her self-loathing or the marks on her body left by Cortez. Padding from the en suite bathroom back into her bedroom, she stood in front of the mirror and allowed the towel she’d wrapped around her to fall.
The evidence of her guilt was branded on her body. There were red patches on her breasts where Cortez’s rough jaw had scraped her delicate skin, and although there were no visible signs of the ache between her legs, the dull throb was an uncomfortable reminder that she had lost her virginity having casual sex with a stranger.
Thank God he had used a condom. Elin held her hands to her hot cheeks and wished she did have amnesia. But memories of her wanton behaviour were painfully clear in her mind. Cortez hadn’t forced her or coerced her to have sex with him, and even discovering that her drink might have been spiked by another of the party guests did not make her feel any better about herself. She’d behaved like a whore, and her only consolation was that she was unlikely to meet the Spanish conquistador who had taken her self-respect along with her virginity ever again.
CHAPTER TWO (#u22f8934d-e6c4-51e2-a156-7cfcba9ca0e0)
One year later
AN ICY BLAST of air swept into the church and the ancient oak door creaked on its hinges, heralding the arrival of a latecomer to Ralph Saunderson’s funeral. Sitting in a front pew beside her brother, Elin felt the cold draught curl around her ankles and wished she’d worn her boots. But her black patent four-inch stilettos looked better with her nineteen-fifties style coat and matching black pillbox hat with a net veil that the milliner had said made her look like Grace Kelly, and Elin had learned when she was four years old that looks were everything.
A faint frown creased between her perfectly arched brows as she listened to footsteps ring out on the stone floor of the nave. When she and Jarek had followed their adoptive father’s coffin into the church she’d noted that every pew was filled. It seemed as though the entire population of Little Bardley had turned out to bid farewell to the squire of the pretty Sussex village on the South Downs. Elin had made a mental note of the many familiar faces in the congregation so that she could thank each person who had attended the funeral.
Who had arrived halfway through the service? She felt a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades and although she tried to concentrate on the minister while he gave the eulogy, she could not dismiss an inexplicable sense of unease. When the congregation stood to sing a hymn, she glanced over her shoulder and her heart collided with her ribs when she thought she recognised the man standing at the back of the church.
Cortez!
It couldn’t be him. Elin drew a shaky breath. Her brain must be playing a cruel trick on her. It was over a year since her fateful birthday party when she’d had sex with a stranger who she’d known only as Cortez. There was no reason in the world why he would have turned up at her father’s funeral.
She jerked her head round to the front and stared down at the hymn book that shook uncontrollably between her fingers. Her brother swore softly as he slid his hand beneath her arm.
‘You’re not going to faint, are you?’ Jarek muttered. ‘The press pack who are slavering outside the church would love to snap you being carried unconscious from a venue for the second time this week. Of course there would be speculation in the tabloids that you were drunk or high at your dear papa’s funeral.’
‘You know I’m neither,’ Elin said in a low voice, while the congregation sang the second verse of the hymn. ‘I explained that I fainted at Virginia’s hen party two nights ago because it was so hot and stuffy in the nightclub.’
‘A more likely explanation is that you are still not fully recovered from Harry’s traumatic birth. I know he is three months old, but you lost God knows how many pints of blood when you haemorrhaged after giving birth,’ her brother said grimly. ‘I told you before you went to London that I didn’t think you were fit enough to return to your frenetic social life.’
Elin was stung by the faint censure in his words. The only reason she had become a familiar face on the London club scene a year ago had been so that she could try and keep Jarek out of trouble and out of the tabloids’ headlines. At least she no longer had to worry that Ralph would lose patience with her brother. Their adoptive father had died a week ago, a month after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. Jarek was destined to take over as head of Saunderson’s Bank and even though many of the bank’s board members were concerned by his reputation as a risk-taker, no one could prevent Ralph Saunderson’s heir from becoming chairman.
Elin bowed her head while the minister intoned a prayer, but her mind was on the man she’d seen in the church. She’d only caught a glimpse of him, and of course he couldn’t be Cortez, she reassured herself. Although he had known her name and London address, he had never tried to contact her in the past year and, as she did not know his surname, she’d been unable to find him to tell him about Harry.
She thought of her baby son, who had been asleep when she’d left him with his nanny in the nursery at Cuckmere Hall. Harry was innocently unaware that he had been conceived as a result of a few moments of lust between two strangers. But when he was older he was bound to be curious about his father, and Elin planned to make up a story that Harry’s father was dead. It would be better to tell her son a white lie than for him to learn that his father had abandoned him before his birth, she reasoned.
She and her brother had been abandoned by their own parents when she was a baby. Jarek had been six and he had a few vague memories of their mother and father. But Elin’s earliest memories were of looking through the bars of a cot. Jarek had told her that at the orphanage the younger children had been left in their cots, often for days. She hadn’t learned to walk until she was over two years old, and only then because her brother had sneaked into her dormitory and held her hand while she took her first steps.
Her own son had been conceived as a result of her night of shame with a stranger, but she was determined to love Harry twice as much to make up for the fact that he would never know his father.
The ceremony finished and she walked with Jarek behind Ralph’s coffin as it was carried out of the chapel. She looked closely at the people in the congregation but did not see anyone who resembled Cortez. Her imagination must have played a trick on her, she told herself, yet her sense of unease remained.
The procession of mourners filed into the graveyard and gathered around a freshly dug grave next to Lorna Saunderson’s headstone. Tears welled in Elin’s eyes. It was eighteen months since Mama had died and she still felt a deep sense of loss. Willing herself not to cry in public, she stared across the graveyard, and her heart lurched when she glimpsed a tall figure half-hidden behind the thick trunk of an old yew tree. She could not see the man’s features clearly from a distance, but something about his proud bearing and the breadth of his shoulders were familiar.
She blinked away her tears and refocused but the figure had disappeared. A flock of crows flew out of the tree, cawing loudly as if something had disturbed them. Had she imagined that she’d seen someone? Elin forced herself to concentrate on the minister reciting a final prayer, and when he finished she stepped forwards and dropped a white rose into her father’s grave.
‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ her brother told her later when they arrived back at Cuckmere Hall. ‘The old man is more likely to come back to haunt me than you. He did at least feel some affection for you,’ he added drily. ‘Ralph wanted to adopt a pretty little daughter but he was less keen to take on a ten-year-old boy with issues.’ Jarek strode into the house and took a glass of sherry from the butler, who was waiting in the entrance hall to greet them.
‘Ralph cared for both of us,’ Elin murmured, telling herself it was true. Admittedly she had not felt the close bond with her adoptive father that she’d had with Lorna Saunderson, but she’d been fond of the man who had been the only father she’d ever known. However, Jarek had struggled to settle into his new life in England and to accept Ralph’s authority.
‘We were his social experiment. Take a couple of kids from the lowest tier of society and see if he could mould them to fit in with the gentility.’ Jarek gave a sardonic smile. ‘It’s fair to say that Ralph had more success with you than with me.’
‘That’s not true. I’m sure he thought highly of you, and he respected your financial flair, which is why he appointed you in a senior position at Saunderson’s Bank.’
Elin took off her hat and coat and smoothed a crease from her black pencil dress. She declined the glass of sherry the butler offered her. ‘Baines, I noticed there is a car parked on the driveway. I presume that my father’s solicitor is here?’ She had hoped to run up to the nursery and spend five minutes with Harry, but she would have to wait until after the formal reading of Ralph’s will.
‘Mr Carstairs and his associate arrived ten minutes ago and I showed the gentlemen into the library.’
‘Business must be doing well for old Carstairs to drive an Aston Martin,’ Jarek commented. ‘I suppose he’s brought a trainee from the law firm with him, but there wasn’t much point. Ralph had no other family apart from us and his will must be straightforward. At least the reading of the will shouldn’t take long,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’m racing later this afternoon.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t race that damned motorbike,’ Elin muttered as she followed her brother across the hallway. ‘It’s such a risky sport.’
‘Everything carries an element of risk.’ A nerve jumped in Jarek’s jaw. ‘No one could have predicted that a trip to a jewellers would cost Mama her life.’
