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Heir to a Dark Inheritance
Maisey Yates
They say that Alik Vasin’s heart is carved from the hardest diamond and the coldest ice…Alik is powerful, ruthless, and incapable of love. But when he discovers he has a daughter nothing will stop him from claiming the child as his own. Jada Patel will do whatever it takes to keep little Leena in her life – even if it means a convenient marriage. Though there can never be a future between them, resisting the powerful Alik is impossible.Jada thinks she’s known desire but, catapulted into Alik’s glittering world, she discovers an allconsuming, intoxicating passion that can melt even the coldest of hearts.‘Such intense characters, Maisey Yates just gets better and better for me.’ – Susan, 33, Marketing
He felt as if something was going to burst inside him. As if he was suddenly aware that there was a dam inside him—a great stone wall holding back the potential for torrential destruction.
And he had to stop it. Had to shore it up with something. Something simple. Something he understood. He stood, his hand shaking, his heart thundering.
Jada looked at Alik and froze. She realized in that moment what it was like to be a gazelle, stalked by a predator. Except she wasn’t going to run. She didn’t know why, only that she wouldn’t.
Alik was looking at her as if he wanted her. More than wanted. As if he needed her. There was something dark and deadly in his eyes now. Something desperate. And she liked it, responded to it. It was different than the flat nothingness she usually saw there, different than that blasted false, shallow front he usually put on.
In that moment, as his eyes met hers, everything fell away. Her present, her past. There was nothing but Alik, nothing but the intense, terrible ache he made her feel.
This was frightening. This was real. And it was enticing. A black flame dancing in front of her. So beautiful she couldn’t look away, so dangerous she knew she had to. But she wouldn’t.
Instead she reached out her hand and prepared to touch the fire.
SECRET HEIRS
OF POWERFUL MEN
Their command is about to be challenged!
Sheikh Sayid al Kadar and Alik Vasin
might not be related by blood, but these
brothers-in-arms forged an unbreakable bond
in the line of duty.
They’ve fought for their countries,
for their lives, but has that readied their hearts
for what could be the biggest battle of them all…?
HEIR TO A DESERT LEGACY April 2013
Sheikh Sayid discovers that his brother
is survived by a son, and he’ll do anything to
recover the true heir to the throne. Even if it means
taking on the child’s aunt; she’s like a lioness
who insists on fighting him every step of the way!
HEIR TO A DARK INHERITANCE May 2013
When Alik’s wayward past comes back to haunt him,
he’ll ensure that his young daughter will grow up
with a childhood nothing like his own.
But one woman is standing in his way,
and there may be only one solution…to marry her!
About the Author
MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon
Modern
Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.
Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.
Recent titles by the same author:
HEIR TO A DESERT LEGACY
(Secret Heirs of Powerful Men) HER LITTLE WHITE LIE AT HIS MAJESTY’S COMMAND (The Call of Duty) A GAME OF VOWS
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Heir to a
Dark Inheritance
Maisey Yates
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Jackie Ashenden,
my writing lifeline and lover of my dark heroes.
Thank you for always encouraging me.
PROLOGUE
ALIK VASIN DOWNED the last of the vodka in his glass and waited for the buzz to make it to his brain. Nothing. It was going to take a lot more alcohol tonight. To have some fun. To feel something.
Either that, or it was going to take a woman. And since that was next on his agenda, he figured he might as well skip the alcohol.
Alik pushed away from the bar and wove through the crush of bodies on the dance floor. The music was so loud there, the bass so heavy he could feel it in his blood. There would be no way to have a conversation with anyone in here. Which was fine by him. He wasn’t looking for a talk.
It didn’t take long for him to spot a woman who wasn’t looking to talk, either.
He approached the blonde skirting the edges of the dance floor. She smiled. Ah yes, he’d found the evening’s entertainment. No doubt about it.
He moved closer and she extended her hand, her fingers brushing his chest. Forward. He liked that. She might even be the kind who wouldn’t want to wait to get to the hotel room.
His pocket buzzed and he reached inside and wrapped his hand around his phone. In his experience, women didn’t like being thrown over for a phone call, but if his checking it chased her off, another one would come along in just a few moments. If he didn’t want to go to bed alone tonight, he wouldn’t.
He took the phone from his pocket and saw a number he didn’t recognize. Anyone who managed to contact him from a number he didn’t know was important.
He held his finger up, an indicator he wanted the woman to wait. She might. She might not. He didn’t really care.
He answered the call just before pushing the door open and put the phone up to his ear as he stepped out onto a crowded street in downtown Brussels. A group of women walked by and offered him inviting looks. He might keep an eye out for which club they went to, rather than going back to the blonde waiting for him inside.
He put the phone up to his ear. “Vasin.”
And suddenly the cobblestones didn’t feel so steady under his feet. He had to wonder if the vodka had finally started working. If it was the cause of the buildings appearing to close in around him. Of the tightness in his chest. If it was making him hear things. If he was imagining what the woman on the other end of the line was saying.
But no. He wasn’t. Yes, he was Alik Vasin. Yes, he had been in that region of the United States more than a year earlier.
He stood still for a moment, waited for the earth to right itself beneath his feet. Everything fell away in pieces. The clubs. The women. And he could no longer remember why he was there, on a dark street in Brussels.
There was only the phone call.
Adrenaline shot through his veins. The jolt he’d been missing all night. He would not freeze up. He was not that kind of man. He acted.
Alik hung up and stuffed his hands in his pockets, walking quickly away from the club, his steps heavy and loud on the cobblestone. He had to get to the airport. Had to get to a lab so he could get confirmation.
He took his phone out of his pocket, searching for Sayid’s number. His friend would know what to say. Would know what to tell him.
Because it wasn’t the vodka. It was just the truth. He knew it, deep in his bones.
He was a father.
CHAPTER ONE
“DID YOU REALLY THINK you could keep my child from me?”
Jada stopped on the courthouse steps, the hair on her arms standing on end, the back of her neck prickling with cold sweat. It was the voice of her most dreaded nightmare. A voice she’d never heard before outside of her dreams, and yet she knew that it was him.
Alik Vasin.
A stranger. The man with the power to come in and rip the beating heart from her chest if he chose to do so. The man with the power to devastate her life.
The father of her daughter.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jada said, inching up the stairs that led to the courthouse. But she knew. She absolutely knew, and apparently he did, too.
“You had the court date changed.”
“I had to change it,” she said, defiant, confident in her lie. It didn’t feel wrong, or even like a lie, not when she’d told it to protect her child. Jada had spent her life behaving, following the rules, but there were no rules for this situation. There was no right, no wrong. There was only need. The need to keep Leena with her.
“And you thought that since I had to travel halfway around the world on short notice, I would be forced to miss it. Too bad for you I have a private jet.”
He didn’t look like the kind of man who owned a private jet. He didn’t look like a man ready for a court hearing. He was wearing low-slung jeans, held onto his lean hips with a thick belt. He had a rumpled button-up shirt on that somehow looked all the better for being wrinkled, the sleeves pushed up past his elbows, revealing muscular forearms. And aviator sunglasses. Like he was some sort of rock star or something.
He turned his hand and adjusted the buckle on his watch, revealing a dark tattoo, an anchor, on the underside of his wrist. She wondered, briefly, how much something like that had hurt. She wondered what it said about him. He was danger personified, and just looking at him made a shiver course through her body.
On the plus side, his blatant lack of regard for convention made her feel more and more confident about her chances. She’d had Leena in her custody for a year, after all. And this man, her father, had no claim on her beyond the genetic.
Blood was certainly thicker than water, but dirty diapers trumped blood. And she had changed more than her share of those over the past year.
He looked at his watch. “Looks like I’ve made it with time to spare. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Don’t rush,” Jada said. She took a seat in one of the chairs that lined the door outside of the family courtroom. She wished she could hold Leena right now, but Leena was with the social worker. Jada’s arms felt empty. She picked her purse up from the floor, her phone out of one of the pockets, opened an app and played it mindlessly. She just needed to keep her hands busy. And her mind vacant.
“Good. I didn’t miss anything.”
She looked up and a swear word rushed out of her mouth. He looked…it wasn’t fair how he looked. He was in a black suit, open at the collar, everything fitted perfectly to his well-muscled physique. The dark fabric poured over him like liquid, flowing with his movements, revealing strength, power. He looked like the sort of man who got what he wanted with the snap of a finger. The kind of man who had women falling at his feet with a glance.
He’d gone from rumpled traveler to James Flipping Bond in ten seconds flat.
Although, Bond was always fighting the Russians, so maybe he was more of a Bond villain.
“I see you decided to dress for the occasion,” she said.
He’d removed the sunglasses, and for the first time she could see his eyes. They were somewhere between blue and gray, like the sea during a storm.
“It seemed the thing to do,” he said, his lips quirking up into a smile. He seemed entirely unruffled, as if the outcome of this didn’t matter to him at all. It meant everything to her. This, Leena, was her entire life. All she had left.
“It seemed the thing to do? Well, I suppose it’s good that going out for Chinese food didn’t seem the thing to do at the moment instead. Is that all she is to you? Just…is this just an experiment for you? Why did you even bother to show up?”
“She’s my daughter,” he said, his tone betraying no emotion, no concern. Just stating a fact. “That means I must claim responsibility for her.”
“Responsibility? Is that what she is to you?”
She caught a hint of steel in his eyes. “She’s my blood. Not yours.”
Jada snorted and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’ve only raised her from the time she was born. What do I matter?” She didn’t know where this strength was coming from. She only knew she had it, and she had to use it. There was no one standing behind her. No one on her side. No one but herself.
“I didn’t know about her,” he said.
“Because her mother thought you were dead. And why did she think that? Did you tell her you were going off on some secret mission? That’s the sort of thing a man like you might say to get a woman into bed.”
“If I told her that, it was true,” he said.
She blinked. “If? You don’t remember?”
