by Susan Napier;Kathryn Ross;Kelly Hunter;Sandra Marton;Katherine Garbera;Margaret Mayo
‘Your brother’s going to kill you.’
‘He owes me. I figure this will make us about even.’
Tristan looked at her. Looked at the car. ‘No, he’s going to kill you.’
‘Yes, well, I was wondering if you’d like to join me.’
‘To stop him from killing you?’
‘He’s not here. He’s not even in the country. Forget the killing part. Because, seriously, you’re way too focussed on death.’ This wasn’t going according to plan. He was supposed to jump at the chance to put the Monaro through its paces. ‘Do you, or do you not, want to come and drive this car at speed around an empty dirt racetrack this morning?’
‘It’s bait,’ he said. ‘You’re up to something.’
‘Cops are so suspicious. I hate that.’
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘I hate that too.’
‘I love this car,’ said Erin an hour later, pitching her voice above the throaty roar of an engine that was being put through its paces. They were midway round the bottom curve of the figure-eight dirt racetrack and Erin was driving, her hands sure and firm on the wheel. The Monaro’s front wheels were currently tracking a tight line around the bend. The rest of the car was following. She handled the car with a confidence born of fearlessness and a hefty dose of devilry.
She was doing it deliberately.
Tristan’s nerves were good. He hadn’t cracked yet. And then she hit the straight and hit the accelerator. The speedometer hit two-hundred kmph three quarters of the way down the two kilometre straight and Tristan started praying. ‘There’s a corner coming up,’ he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster. ‘Just thought I’d mention it.’
She hit the brakes and slid into the corner, taking an outside line this time with spectacular sideways results. He knew cars, knew she was in perfect control of this one, but it didn’t seem to make a jot of difference. She was precious to him; he was dying a thousand little deaths, not because of what was happening but at the thought of what could happen. He wanted her to pull over and park the car. Instead, he attempted to be rational and park his fear instead. He was doing it. He was. And then she spoke.
‘I know,’ she said, slanting him a naughty pixie smile. ‘Let’s talk about us.’
‘You mean now?’ He couldn’t believe the way a woman’s mind worked. ‘Wouldn’t you rather—oh, I don’t know—concentrate on your driving?’
‘Not at all.’ But she didn’t accelerate quite as aggressively out of the corner this time. Thank God.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk about this over coffee? Or beer? What about scotch?’ he said. ‘I know this bar. It’s quiet. Private. Stationary.’ The last word was a roar to match the engine.
‘When are we going to make love again?’
That did it. ‘Pull over.’
‘Pardon?’
She’d heard him, nothing surer, but just in case she hadn’t he roared a little louder. ‘I was going to do this the traditional way. There was going to be moonlight and music, palm trees and a hot pool. Maybe even a horse or two.’
‘It’s a pretty picture, to be sure,’ she said. ‘But let’s face it. It’s been done before.’
‘I was going to come for you in a meticulously restored thirty-nine Ford, bearing a picnic basket full of food—’
‘Presumably some time this decade,’ she said. ‘When were you going to get around to the lovemaking bit?’
‘And propose to you then, but—’
‘Propose?’
She hit the brake hard and they came to a sliding, screeching halt amidst a cloud of smoke and dust. ‘There go the brake pads.’
‘Define propose.’
‘You know. Ask the woman I love beyond reason to be my wife, but no. You had to rush me. So now you’re just going to have to make do.’
She was staring at him with what looked a lot like dismay. It wasn’t exactly reassuring. ‘I know I’m not what you want,’ he continued raggedly. ‘I’m overprotective. There’ll be details of my work that I can’t share with you, won’t share with you. But I will always put you first and I will always love you.’
Erin’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘You’re not supposed to cry. I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?’
‘No.’ Her tears started to fall. ‘No, it’s perfect.’
He hadn’t bought her an engagement ring. He dug in his pocket for what he had bought for her. ‘Hold out your hand.’
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Erin did as she was told. Her hand was trembling, her whole body was trembling, and when he turned her hand palm upwards and poured a fistful of rough diamonds into it she shook even more.
‘The big one’s the pink,’ he said. ‘But there’s whites and champagnes and cognacs as well. Whatever you don’t want for yourself I thought you could use for your business.’
She couldn’t see them through her tears but it didn’t matter. She would ogle them later. Right now she had more important things to do. ‘I love you,’ she said fiercely. ‘You’re all I’ll ever want and don’t you dare think otherwise.’ She closed her fist around the diamonds he’d given her, holding them tight. ‘Tell me what you want.’
He took a deep, ragged breath. His heart was in his eyes. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. ‘I want you to be my wife. I want laughter, even if it’s sometimes mixed with tears. I want a lifetime of it. With you.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
His smile was the sweetest she’d ever seen. He was going to kiss her now, nothing surer. And then he was going to make wild and passionate love to her, just as she’d planned. She loved it when a plan came together. He looked out the window at the deserted racetrack, looked back at her, and this time his smile was rakish. ‘And I’d really, really like to drive.’
Mistresses Bought with Emeralds
Sandra Marton
Katherine Garbera
Margaret Mayo
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Emerald Fire
Sandra Marton
Sandra Marton wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer someday and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college, she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood, though looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother, she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.
At last, Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts forever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™. Since then, she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® award finalist, she’s also received five Romantic Times Magazine awards and has been honoured with RT’s Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.
Chapter One
SLADE MCCLINTOCH was at the reception desk of the Hotel Florinda when he first saw the woman. She was coming down the rickety wooden steps that led into what passed for a lobby, the expression in her blue eyes as cool as the white cotton dress she wore, and the sight of her was so incongruous that Slade almost forgot how annoyed he was with the rat-faced little man lounging behind the desk.
She paused on the last step, her hand on the banister. Tall, slender, her face a pale oval beneath a short, shining cap of golden hair, she was about as perfect a sight as a man could hope to see in New York or San Francisco, let alone in this God-forsaken town on the edge of the Peruvian jungle—and
disapproval was etched into every line of her beautiful face.
Well, why wouldn’t it be? Slade thought, with a lift of one dark eyebrow. The only thing attractive about the Hotel Florinda was its name. Nobody, not even the most dedicated optimist, could find anything to like in the cheap furnishings, smeared walls and worn floorboards.
Its singular claim to fame was that it was the only hotel in Italpa. That was why Slade was here. As for the woman—why she was here was anybody’s guess. From the looks of her, she was probably a tourist who’d strayed from her group. There were increasing numbers of them down here lately, pampered rich folks happy to shell out whatever it cost to taste the dangers of the savage jungle—but at a safe and sanitized distance.
Whatever the woman was, she was as out of place in this grim setting as an Amazon orchid would have been in a tangle of sawgrass.
‘A lovely flower, is she not, señor?’
The desk clerk leaned toward Slade over the scarred mahogany counter, a sly grin on his rabbity face. For a second, Slade wondered if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. No. He was tired—but not tired enough to have begun talking to himself. Not yet, anyway, although if he didn’t get some sleep soon…
The clerk bent closer. ‘She is a sight to behold, yes?’
Adrenaline surged through Slade’s veins. He worked in a world of men; he knew such speculative comments about women were commonplace, knew, as well, that, as such remarks went, the clerk’s was mild and harmless. Still, he didn’t like it. Maybe it was the man’s shifty smile or the way he lowered one eyelid in an exaggerated wink.
Or maybe, Slade thought, forcing a smile to his lips, maybe it was just that he hadn’t had any sleep in damned near fourteen hours.
‘Indeed,’ he said pleasantly. ‘She is almost as lovely as this charming establishment—for which, I assure you, I have a reservation.’
The clerk pursed his lips. ‘I will check again, señor, but—’ His shoulders rose then fell in a gesture of eloquent distress. ‘I still do not see your name on my list.’
Slade fought to keep the smile on his face. He had been patient, even gracious; he had played the game, which involved pretending innocence even as he slipped the sleazy little man a fistful of intis, and now, by God, he’d had enough.
Perhaps the clerk wanted a bigger bribe. Perhaps the reservation was truly lost. Perhaps a miracle had occurred and the Florinda had turned into a tourist mecca, booking suites and deluxe accommodations to high society. Hell, anything was possible here, on the edge of the Amazon.
Slade didn’t give a damn. He was exhausted. He was short-tempered. He wanted a cold beer, a hot shower and a soft bed. He wanted the room he was entitled to, and he wanted it now.
He counted silently to one hundred while the clerk made an elaborate show of thumbing through a stack of papers.
‘It is as I feared, señor,’ the little man said finally. ‘There is no reservation in your name. I cannot imagine what we can do to solve this problem.’ His hand crept to the desktop where it lay palm up, fingers lightly curled, like a rhinoceros beetle that had been flipped on its back and awaited salvation. ‘Unless you can, perhaps, think of some solution…?’
Slade smiled, his teeth flashing whitely against his tanned skin. He crooked his finger, motioning the clerk closer, and the man obliged, smiling slyly in anticipation of more intis.
‘I can, indeed, think of something,’ Slade said, very softly. His eyes, as cold as green glass, locked on the other man’s and he whispered a few words in Spanish.
The clerk’s smile turned sickly. He reached under the counter and came up with a key dangling from a brass tag.
‘Ay, caramba,’ he said in amazement. ‘Look at this, señor. I have found your reservation. Such a foolish error. You will forgive it, yes?’
Slade grinned. ‘Certainly.’ He reached across the scarred desktop, patted the clerk lightly on the cheek, and picked up the key. ‘We all make errors from time to time.’
‘You are most gracious, señor. May you have a pleasant stay at our humble establishment.’
Slade nodded as he turned away. A pleasant stay? Only if you believed in miracles, he thought as he strode across the lobby. The best he could hope for was that the roaches weren’t bigger than rats, that the sheets would have been changed this month, that…
Damn! What room was he in, anyway? He hadn’t asked, and he should have. The Florinda was four stories high, and that fourth floor would be the only one that was bearable. Scowling, he dug in his pocket for the key and held it up, trying to read the number on the worn brass tag. With luck, noise from the street wouldn’t carry to the top floor. There might even be a breeze from—
‘Oof!’
The collision was swift and forceful. There was a whisper of silken hair across his chin, the faint drift of jasmine in his nostrils. He reached out and clasped a pair of slender, feminine shoulders.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to—’
He stopped in mid-sentence. It was the woman he’d noticed a little while ago. Close up, she was more than beautiful. She was stunning.
‘I didn’t mean to run you down,’ he said, smiling as much in appraisal as in apology, ‘but—’
‘That’s quite all right.’ Her tone was frigid, and if moments before her face had registered disapproval, now it radiated disgust.
Slade’s smile thinned, but hell, he could hardly blame her. He knew how he must look—the emergency call that had brought him here had taken him straight from a work site and the hours of travel that had followed would have done nothing to improve his appearance except to rumple his jeans further and add another layer of dust to his boots.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said pointedly.
He looked at his hands, still wrapped lightly around her shoulders.
‘Oh. Oh, sure.’ He let go of her and smiled again. ‘Sorry. I—’
‘You’re wasting your time.’
Slade blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, you’re wasting your time. And mine. I am not interested in a tour of Italpa.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘Nor am I interested in seeing the jungle by moonlight.’
‘Well, I’m glad to—’
‘And I certainly have no wish to buy a genuine shrunken head or a stuffed alligator or anything else you might want to sell me.’
Slade’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a relief. I unloaded my last shrunken head yesterday.’
A snort of muffled laughter drifted toward him. He turned sharply and glared at the desk clerk, who flushed and looked away, but not in time to conceal the smirk that curled over his mouth.
A dull wash of color rose along Slade’s high cheekbones as he swung back to the woman.
‘Listen, lady—’
He was talking to the air. Her shoulder bumped him as she brushed past. He stood still for a moment, and then he turned, marched after her, and caught her by the arm.
‘The first thing to learn about going slumming,’ he growled as he swung her around, ‘is that you ought to be prepared for what you’re likely to find.’
Color flew into Brionny Stuart’s face. She stared at the man, at this creature who smelled of sweat and dust. She’d seen his performance with the poor desk clerk, how he’d taken satisfaction in bullying a man half his size, and then he’d turned his attentions to her. Had her really expected her to greet him with a smile?
She gave him a slow, contemptuous look, one that went from his scuffed boots to the shadowy stubble on his face.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ she said coldly, and before he had time to react she turned on her heel and strode away. She could feel the man’s eyes boring into her back and she had to fight the almost overwhelming desire to hurry her pace.
Stupid, she thought. What she’d just done was stupid! You didn’t taunt a man like him in a place like the Florinda, but after a week in this miserable river town her patience was worn thin.
Professor I
ngram had warned her about Italpa, about the bugs and the filth, the heat and the unsavory opportunists who hung around its mean streets, but he needn’t have bothered. This might have been Brionny’s first expedition as a graduate student but it was hardly her first time in the field. Her father, a prominent archaeologist himself, had taken her with him on digs from childhood on.
Henry Stuart had grumbled about the sort of men who hung around places like Italpa, too. Liars, leeches and worse, he’d called them, looking to steal fortunes in antiquities from the scientists who found them.
Unfortunately, Brionny had had to learn that truth for herself.
Her blue eyes darkened as she remembered her seventeenth summer, when a dark-eyed Latin Lothario had wooed her under a Mexican moon, gaining her trust and parlaying it into a job at her father’s dig site when two of his regular workers fell ill.
The end of the story had been painfully predictable. The man had made off with a fortune in relics, her father had been furious, and Brionny had been left heartbroken, humiliated—and a whole lot wiser.
Wise enough to be immune to the kind of smooth operator who’d just come on to her, she thought now as she peered down a grimy service corridor that deadended off the lobby of the Hotel Florinda. Some women might have found him attractive, with his green eyes and his broad-shouldered, lean-hipped body, but she certainly wasn’t one of them. If anything, she was turned off by his sort.
Brionny sighed. Actually, the only man who interested her right now would be short, squat and white-haired.
‘Where the devil are you, Professor?’ she muttered under her breath.
The Ingram expedition was leaving in the morning on its quest for the legendary Eye of God, and there were still checks to write and last-minute things to buy. And, since Professor Ingram was not just half the team but the only half with the authority to sign checks and approve purchases, nothing could happen without him.
