“I was such a fool, kalóz mou. I should have told you that I loved you. Instead, I hurt us both by trying to convince myself that I didn’t.”
“Samantha?” a man shouted. “Where are you?”
Sam groaned. “It’s Nick.”
“Sam,” another man yelled. “Answer us. Where are you? Are you all right?”
“And that’s Rafe.” Sam smiled at Demetrios. “They probably figured we’ve murdered each other by now.”
“Sam?” a third voice joined in. “Damnation, girl, you let us know if you’re all right, you hear?”
“Oh, hell. Jonas, too.” She sighed as Demetrios leaned his forehead against hers. “They’re going to find us in a couple of minutes.”
“That’s good.” Demetrios cleared his throat. “I wish to speak with Jonas. And with Marta.”
Sam looked up at him in surprise. “Why?”
“I am Greek,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Her eyebrows lifted. “What a surprise,” she said sweetly.
“I am Greek and old world, as you once pointed out. And I wish to ask your mother and stepfather for your hand in marriage.”
“Well,” she said softly, eyes bright with love, “in that case, I think you might keep in mind that I am American and new world, and you’d better ask me first.”
He knew she was teasing him, that she had already given her answer with her kisses and her tears, but he wanted this moment to be one they would remember all their lives, how they’d admitted what was in their hearts in a garden filled with flowers while water spilled like soft rain from a fountain and filled the air with its music.
Demetrios dropped to one knee and clasped Sam’s hand.
“Samantha. I love you more than life itself. I’ll be the best husband I can be, if you will marry me and share my life.”
Tears welled in Sam’s eyes and slipped down her cheeks. “Yes. Oh, yes, Demetrios. I will.”
He rose just as footsteps pounded down the path. Jonas Baron burst into the clearing with his wife, his stepdaughters and their husbands on his heels.
“There you are,” he yelled, “you lily-livered, no-account, no-good Greek son of a—”
“Son-in-law,” Marta said, putting her hand on her husband’s arm. “Isn’t that what you were going to say, Jonas?”
Jonas looked at the man who stood with his arm around Sam’s waist. He was big and hard-looking. And smitten, Jonas thought with delight. Absolutely, totally smitten.
“We have met before,” Demetrios said. He stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Perhaps you recall…”
Smitten and nervous, too. Jonas almost cackled with delight.
“Mr. Baron. Jonas. I ask for the hand of your stepdaughter. I love her with all my heart, and she loves me. We very much want your blessing. And yours, of course,” he said, flashing a smile at Marta, but steely determination replaced the smile in an instant. “But I should tell you both that if you refuse me the right to marry Sam, I’m going to marry her anyway.”
Marta laughed. Jonas grinned, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and held out his hand to Demetrios.
“Son,” he said, “welcome to the family.”
* * *
The four Baron brothers had been tossed out of the house by their stepmother.
“Out, all of you,” Marta had said. “You’re just in the way here. Go on, take a walk or something until it’s time for the ceremony.”
Travis, Slade, Gage and Tyler had shot each other looks and made a quick break for the door. It wasn’t often a man got away from all the hubbub that went with what their wives insisted on calling a simple little home wedding at Espada.
On the way through the kitchen, they stopped just long enough to grab a couple of six-packs…and to collect three other lost-looking males. Their cousin, Gray, looked as if he was trying to fade into the wall along with Nick and Rafe.
“What are you guys doing in here?” Tyler said in surprise.
“Trying to keep from being caught in the stampede,” Rafe muttered.
“Trying to avoid your old man,” Gray said bluntly. “I don’t think Jonas and I have said more than hello and goodbye in the last ten years but every time I turned around today, there he was.”
Slade grinned. “He wants something from you. That’s the old here-I-am and by god, there-you-are routine he’s so good at.”
“Well, that’s the problem. ‘You want to talk to me, Jonas?’ I finally said. And he got this look on his face as if I were crazy. ‘What the hell makes you think so?’ he said, and wandered away.”
“So? Problem solved.”
“Yeah.” Gray sighed. “Except, he looks like a man with something on his mind…” He shook his head and reached for a six-pack. “How about we get out of here for a while?”
Tyler clapped his cousin on the back. “The man’s a genius,” he said. “Is it any wonder he’s a big-shot New York lawyer?”
The little group laughed, went out the back door, almost ran over a pair of gardeners giving a last-minute manicure to some shrubs and made a beeline for the barn.
“We used to hold meetings here, when we were kids,” Travis said. “Well, Slade and Gage and I did. Nobody ever found us.” He looked from one man to the other. They were all wearing tuxes, white shirts with ruffles and the pained expressions of men who knew they looked foolish and couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Anybody worried about gettin’ dirt on these monkey suits?” He waited, then chuckled. “I didn’t think so.”
Moments later, the men of the Baron clan were sitting in the old hayloft, their backs against the planked walls as they soothed their parched throats with gulps of cold beer.
“Man,” Slade said, “you’d think women would get tired of these things.”
“Weddings?” Gage sighed. “Never.”
“He’s right,” Travis added. “Women love all this stuff. The flowers. The candles. The music. The fuss. And I’ll be damned if I can understand the reason.”
“The reason,” Tyler said smugly, “is because they’re women.” His brothers looked at him. So did Nick, Rafe and Gray. “Well, it’s the truth. There are X chromosomes, and Y chromosomes, and—”
“And you can tell the ones that are X’s,” Gray offered, “because they’re dressed in pink.”
“Definitely dressed in pink.” Nick said solemnly. “Yeah, I read about that new scientific discovery.”
They laughed, sighed, drank more beer. Rafe cleared his throat.
“The man’s okay, you know.”
They all knew what he meant and they all nodded.
“He’d better be,” Slade said, after a minute. “Otherwise, we’ll set him straight.”
“You mean, Sam’ll set him straight,” Gage said.
The men chuckled.
“She’s one tough piece of work,” Tyler said, and smiled. “Like my Caitlin.”
“Like all of them,” Travis said. “Baron men don’t marry weak women.”
“And Brewster women don’t marry weak men.”
They mulled that over, looked at Gray who raised his hands as if to say they could count him out. Everybody laughed again, and then Nick raised his beer bottle in salute.
“Here’s to Demetrios. All he needed was a good woman to straighten him out.”
Bottle clinked gently against bottle. “Yeah,” Slade said lazily, “well, some men are like that, I guess.”
Nobody made eye contact. Then someone snickered. Seconds later, they were all laughing. They went on laughing until they heard Caitlin calling from below.
“Club meeting’s over,” she yelled. “Come on down.”
“You wanna come up?” Travis yelled back. “There’s some beer left, and you’re an honorary Los Lobos member.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too little, too late.” But her voice had a smile in it that made the men smile, too. “Actually, I’d love to, but they’re about to start.” She stepped back as the men came down the ladder. “Ushers? Bes
t man? Places, gentlemen. It’s time.”
* * *
It was time, Demetrios thought as he waited at the altar, time for his new life to start.
He and Sam had talked about eloping, just flying to Las Vegas and getting married, but Marta wanted to make her last unmarried daughter a wedding, a real one, she said. Finally Sam said well, maybe a wedding with flowers and music and things—maybe that would be nice. Didn’t Demetrios think it would?
What he’d thought was that he’d have walked through fire, if it made her happy, so he’d smiled and said yes, sure, the idea of putting on a silly suit and sharing the most wonderful moment of his life with a bunch of strangers was a great idea. Well, of course, he hadn’t said any of that except for the “yes” part…
“Here she comes,” Nick said softly.
Demetrios looked up and felt his heart turn over.
Sam, his beautiful Sam, was floating towards him on her stepfather’s arm, an exquisite vision in white lace. Her hair was gathered high on her head in a loose knot ringed with tiny white and yellow roses. Her gown had a low neckline and tiny sleeves he’d heard her sisters refer to as caps before Marta had noticed he was in the room and shushed them to silence. The skirt was long and slender, and his gaze lingered on the beautiful little rounding of her belly, where his child lay in unborn slumber.
Jonas brought her to the altar, kissed her cheek and went to sit down beside Marta in the first row of white chairs that had been arranged in the garden.
“Hello,” she said softly, smiling up at Demetrios.
He smiled back. “Hello, sweetheart,” he whispered and though he knew he wasn’t supposed to do it, he bent his head and brushed his bride’s soft mouth with his.
“I love you, gataki,” he murmured. “With all of my heart. And I will love you forever.”
Tears of joy glittered in Samantha’s eyes. “Forever,” she whispered.
Moments later, they were husband and wife.
* * * * *
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Sharon Kendrick’s next book,
THE SHEIKH’S SECRET BABY
Sheikh Zuhal is shocked to discover he has a son! To claim his child, he must get former lover Jazz down the palace aisle. And he’s not above using seduction to make her his wife!
Read on for a glimpse of
THE SHEIKH’S SECRET BABY
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS THE LAST place he’d imagined her living.
Zuhal frowned. Jasmine? Here? In a tiny cottage in the middle of the English countryside, down a lane so narrow it had challenged the progress of his wide limousine? The woman who had loved the sparkle and buzz of the city, hiding herself away in some remote spot. There had to be some kind of mistake.
His frown became a flickering smile of anticipation. Not that he had given a lot of thought to her accommodation. If ever he’d stopped to think about his lusciously proportioned ex-lover—something he tried not to do, for obvious reasons—then it had usually been a predictable flashback to her soft skin. Or the tempting pertness of her breasts. Or the way she used to rain kisses all over his face so that his heart used to punch with pleasure. His groin, too.
He swallowed.
And that, of course, was the reason for his unexpected appearance today. The reason he’d decided to drop in and surprise her.
His throat dried. Why not? He liked sex and so did Jasmine. Of all his lovers, she had been the one who had really lit his fire. Sparks had flown between them from the start and it seemed a pity not to capitalise on that explosive chemistry with a little trip down memory lane. After all, it wasn’t as if either of them had entertained any unrealistic expectations. There had been no dreams to be shattered. They hadn’t asked for the impossible and had known exactly where the boundaries lay. They had conducted their affair like adults. What possible harm could it do to revisit the past and revel in a little uncomplicated bliss at a time in his life when he needed some light relief like never before?
He felt the smile die on his lips as part of him questioned the sanity of revisiting the past—and a woman—like this. Because he never went back. If you reignited an old relationship, then a woman could almost be excused for thinking it meant more to you than it really did…and no relationship ever meant more than sex to Zuhal Al Haidar.
And since Jazz was realistic enough to accept that, maybe this one time he could be excused for breaking one of his own rules, because destiny was leading him down an unwanted path—a path which had altered his whole future. Silently, he simultaneously cursed and mourned his foolish brother, but all the wishing in the world wasn’t going to bring him back, or rewrite the pages of history which had changed his own destiny. He wasn’t going to think about that. He was going to concentrate on Jasmine Jones and her soft body. To have her obliterate everything except desire and fulfilment. He was growing hard just thinking about it, because she was the sweetest lover he had ever known.
He stepped over a cracked flagstone, through which a healthy-looking weed was pushing through. It had crossed his mind that she might have replaced him in her affections during the eighteen months they’d been apart, but deep down Zuhal refused to countenance such a scenario—mainly because his ego would not allow him to.
And if she had?
If that were the case, then he would graciously bow out. He was, after all, a desert king, not a savage—even if at times Jazz Jones had possessed the ability to make him feel as primitive as it was possible for a man to feel. He would wish her well and take his pleasure elsewhere, although he couldn’t deny he would be disappointed not to revisit her enchanting curves and seeking mouth.
He pushed open the little gate, which even his untrained eye could tell needed a coat of paint, and made a mental note as he walked up the narrow path. Perhaps he would send someone out here to do just that. He lifted the loose door-knocker, which clearly had a screw missing, and frowned. Maybe even get someone to fix that for her, too.
Afterwards.
After he had enjoyed some badly needed solace.
He lifted the knocker, and as it fell heavily against the peeling paintwork he could hear the sound echoing through the tiny house.
* * *
Bringing the whirring drone of the sewing machine to a halt, Jasmine lifted her head to hear the sound of loud knocking, and she narrowed her eyes. Eyes which were tired and gritty from sewing until late last night. She rubbed them with the back of her fist, and yawned. Who was disturbing her during this quiet time when she’d got a rare opportunity to do some work? For a moment she was tempted to ignore it and stay there, neatly hemming the velvet curtains which needed to be delivered to her demanding client by next Wednesday, at the latest.
But she chided herself as she got up from her work spot in the corner of the sitting room and went to answer the unexpected summons. Surely she wasn’t being suspicious just because someone was knocking at the door? If she wasn’t careful she would become one of those sad people who became nervous at the thought of an unplanned caller. Who twitched whenever they heard a loud noise and were too scared to face the world outside. Just because she’d recently completed a radical lifestyle change and moved out of the city lock, stock and barrel didn’t mean she had to start acting like some kind of hermit! Especially since she had discovered nothing but friendliness from the locals since arriving in this quiet hamlet—a factor which had helped cushion her sudden and dramatic change in circumstances. It was probably somebody selling raffle tickets for the local spring fayre.
She pulled open the door.
It wasn’t.
It most definitely wasn’t.
Shock coursed through her like a tidal wave. She could feel the physical effects of it and fleetingly thought how much they resembled desire. The rapid increase in her pulse and the rush of blood to her face. The wobbly knees, which made her glad she was gripping the door handle for support. And most of all, that slightly out-of-body sensation, which made her think this couldn’t be happening.
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It couldn’t.
Heart still pounding, she studied the man who was standing on her doorstep—as if he might disappear in a puff of smoke if she stared at him long enough. But he stayed exactly where he was, as solid as dark marble and as vital as the mighty oak tree which towered over the nearby village green. She wanted to somehow be immune to him but how could she, when just seeing him again made her heart clench with longing and her body quiver with long-suppressed lust?
His face was angled—slashed with hard planes and contours which spoke of an aristocratic lineage, even if his proud bearing hadn’t confirmed it. With hair as black as coal and eyes a gleaming shade almost as dark, his rich gold complexion was dominated by a hawk-like nose and the most sensual lips she’d ever seen. Yet the suit he wore contradicted his identity for it was urbane and modern, as was the crisp white shirt and silken tie. But Jasmine had seen photos of him in flowing robes, which made him look as if he’d stepped straight from the pages of a fairy tale. Pale robes which had emphasised his burnished skin and hinted at a hard body which had been honed on the saddle of a horse, in one of the world’s most unforgiving desert landscapes.
Zuhal Al Haidar—sheikh and royal prince. Second son of an ancient dynasty which ruled the oil-rich country of Razrastan, where diamonds had been discovered close to its immense mountains and world-class racing horses were bred. The man to whom she had given her body and heart—although he had wanted only her body and she had pretended to be okay with that because there hadn’t been an alternative. Well, the alternative would have been to have spurned his unexpected advances and that had been something she’d found herself unable to do. There hadn’t been a day since they’d parted that she hadn’t thought about him but she’d never thought she’d see him again because he had cut her out of his life completely.
And that was the thing she needed to remember. That he hadn’t wanted her. He’d cast her aside like yesterday’s newspaper. She bit her lip as questions flooded through her mind.
The Pregnant Mistress Page 18
