Taken Over

by Penny Jordan

  What were Miranda and Nico doing here? Cassie looked at Joel, but his expression was unreadable.

  ‘When Joel rang me last night I could hardly believe it,’ Miranda told Cassie softly. ‘Oh Cassie, I can’t tell you how happy I am. Nico and I decided to fly over straight away. I had to see Joel for myself.’

  ‘I…’ Joel had rung Miranda last night?

  ‘I haven’t had a chance yet to tell Cassie that I spoke to you,’ Joel interrupted. ‘I was so furious with you for what you said to me that I had to get away,’ he told Cassie quietly. ‘I got in the car and simply drove around—for almost two hours, thinking, going over what you’d said, until I realised I simply had to know the truth…I stopped at a small hotel and rang Florence.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when the ‘phone rang and it was Joel,’ Miranda interrupted excitedly. ‘He told me what you’d said to him, Cassie, and asked me if it was true. Long ago I recognised the harm I’d done by trying to protect his father, and so I told him the whole story.’

  ‘And I found myself listening and believing,’ Joel cut in. ‘Perhaps I’d known in my heart of hearts all along that my father’s version of events was biased, but…’

  ‘But you couldn’t forgive me for what you saw as my betrayal,’ Miranda said softly. ‘You thought I hadn’t cared about you.’

  ‘I was jealous,’ Joel admitted. ‘Jealous of the fact that another man meant more to you than your husband and children; than me, and that jealousy had stayed with me as an adult, tainting my whole attitude towards women. I admit that now…’

  ‘I simply couldn’t wait to see him,’ Miranda told Cassie. ‘I had to see him for myself, to believe that it was true…that he’d forgiven me at long last.’

  ‘There was nothing to forgive,’ Joel said quietly.

  A deep sense of loneliness swept over Cassie. She felt excluded from the happy family circle, an outsider, whose part in their drama was over, and who was now superfluous to events. Joel didn’t need her any more; after last night his company would be assured of all the financing it needed; enough faith had been expressed in his current project for her to be sure of that. Her angry revelation of the truth had helped to heal the breach between him and Miranda—Joel no longer needed her as his wife. She emerged from her deeply morose thoughts to hear Nico saying genially, ‘No, I insist lunch must be my treat, but I must rely on you, Joel, to suggest an appropriate venue.’

  ‘There’s a very good hotel not far from here—an old country house in very attractive gardens. I’ll give them a ring…’

  He picked up the ‘phone and Cassie heard him book a table for four. So she was to be included in the luncheon party. She shrank from going; from witnessing their happiness when she felt so miserable. She knew why Joel had been so kind to her last night, and again this morning. He was grateful to her. She could see it in the way he looked at her and it touched her heart with bitterness.

  She waited until he had hung up to say casually, ‘I’d rather not go if you don’t mind, Joel… I’m rather behind on my work, it will give me a chance to catch up.’ She turned away from him as she spoke and missed his quick frown.

  ‘But, cara…’ Miranda pleaded, only to fall silent as Cassie flashed her a determinedly bright smile, and said quickly,

  ‘No, please…this is essentially a family celebration. I should only feel awkward, and I really must do some work.’ Her mouth went dry with tension in the heavy silence that followed.

  ‘But, Cassie…’ Joel started to object until Miranda cut in quietly.

  ‘Don’t push her, Joel, if Cassie doesn’t want to join us, she must be allowed not to do so. In fact it might be as well if we left her now to get on with her work.’ She slipped her arm through Joel’s as she spoke, and Cassie knew if they stayed any longer she would betray herself by breaking down in tears. She couldn’t bear the hurt in Miranda’s eyes, nor the anger in Joel’s, but neither could she endure sitting across a table from Joel trying to appear light-hearted and happy all the time knowing that her time with him was quickly coming to an end.

  It was only when the others had departed for their lunch that Cassie realised what she ought to do. It would be the wisest and most sensible course, and yet she shrank from it, putting it off until she knew she could delay no longer. Upstairs in her room she found her suitcase, and slowly started packing. Totally engrossed in her task and her own misery she didn’t realise she was no longer alone until her bedroom door was abruptly thrust open. She looked up from her kneeling position on the floor beside her case to find Joel glaring down at her.

  ‘And just what do you think you’re doing?’ he gritted furiously.

  Trying to hold on to her self-control Cassie said as lightly as she could. ‘I should have thought it was obvious, I’m packing my clothes…’

  ‘Sneaking away behind my back you mean?’

  ‘Why aren’t you with your mother,’ Cassie retorted wildly, not wishing to continue such a potentially dangerous conversation.

  ‘Because I learned from her something so important, that I had to come back and test its veracity for myself,’ Joel told her softly. ‘Cassie, why are you packing?’

  ‘You don’t need me any more,’ she told him without daring to look at him. ‘You have sufficient financial backing for your projects now…’

  ‘And if I did need you?’ He asked the question softly, dropping down beside her on the floor, and pushing aside her case, his fingers cupping her jaw so that she was forced to look at him.

  ‘What could you possibly need me for now?’ she scoffed, trying not to tremble. ‘You have everything you want…’

  ‘Not everything.’

  The heat of his fingers caressing her skin was making her shake, her body aching with hunger for him. Another moment and she would betray herself completely. She tired to pull away, tensing as he demanded thickly, ‘Why did you let me make love to you…’

  What could she say? She shrugged, and tried to appear nonchalant. ‘Everyone has to start somewhere?’

  ‘And that’s all it was? Curiosity…a desire to experiment?’ That couldn’t possibly be pain harshening his voice.

  Cassie shrugged again. ‘Why not? After all you made love to me too and you can hardly claim that it was because you found me irresistible.’

  ‘Can’t I?’

  The husky question shocked her into stunned silence, pain flaring to life deep in her eyes.

  ‘Stop it,’ she demanded wildly. ‘Stop doing this to me. You didn’t even spare me a second look until you came to Florence, and found me with Bernardo. You married me because you wanted my company; my computer skill…’

  Hard fingers bit into her shoulders as Joel stood up, dragging her up with him. ‘I planned to marry you for that reason yes,’ he grated harshly. ‘I’d assessed you as a cold, emotionless female ready to exchange her skills in return for a husband, but the reality totally threw me. You were so prickly and defensive; you valued yourself so little. It infuriated me that you should have so low an opinion of yourself; that I should want you, when I had proved immune to so many other women.’

  His thumb was probing the soft fullness of her lips and Cassie stared up at him disbelievingly.

  ‘You didn’t even see me as a woman until I came back from Florence,’ she accused trying to escape the sensual spell he was waving around her.

  ‘Wrong,’ Joel told her softly. ‘I saw you very much as a woman right from the start. A woman who hid her femininity away from the world, it’s true, but a very feminine, vulnerable woman despite that, and one who had a dangerous hold on my senses. It infuriated me that I should want you; that my emotions were clouding my judgement to the extent where I was prepared to risk all my careful plans for the future simply because of my need to hold you in my arms.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because you feel sorry for me,’ Cassie interrupted flatly, ‘because Miranda told you that…’

  ‘That what?’ he prompted softly. ‘That you love me? I
s that it, Cassie?’

  The soft mockery in his voice drove her beyond the edge of caution. ‘Yes…yes, damn you,’ she stormed bitterly at him. ‘Yes I love you…but you needn’t think…’

  She gasped as the hard pressure of his mouth stemmed her words, his groaned, ‘Cassie… Cassie, how can you be so intelligent and such a fool,’ he muttered against her lips, and then he was kissing her as she had dreamed of him doing; with passion and hunger, and a need that drove her weak body into yielding acceptance of the hard pressure of his as she clung to him, returning the feverish intensity of his kiss, drowning herself in the surging pleasure of it, telling herself that nothing else mattered.

  ‘Cassie, Cassie, how could you not know that I love you?’ Joel muttered shakily as he released her. ‘Why on earth did you think I made love to you?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t realise it was me…you said nothing…’

  ‘Because I thought I’d alienated you…hurt you…driven you away from me with the selfishness of my need to possess you. I felt guilty, can’t you understand that?’ He sighed, resting his forehead against hers, as he said in a low voice. ‘Do you honestly think that if anyone other than you had said what you did about my parents that I’d have believed them? It was only because it was you, Cassie, that I thought deeply about it; that I decided to speak to my mother. If it had been anyone else I wouldn’t have listened. I think I was half way to falling in love with you when I decided to marry you. The company was just a convenient excuse, but every time I touched you or came near you you rejected me…’

  ‘Because I was frightened of betraying my feelings…I thought you despised me…I was so plain and dull.’

  ‘No. You must never think that. You didn’t know how to use your natural advantages. Perhaps now you do, but you were never plain; never dull.’ He kissed her lightly and then more lingeringly before saying musingly, ‘I seem to remember that you and I have some unfinished business.’

  When Cassie glanced uncomprehendingly at him, he laughed softly. ‘We were interrupted at a most inopportune time this morning, wouldn’t you agree?’

  He laughed again when Cassie blushed. ‘Your mother,’ she protested weakly, ‘they’ll be back soon. Oh, and Joel, what must she think of me, refusing to have lunch with you, and then you leaving them to come back here.’

  ‘She was the one who told me to come back, when she realised how restless and morose I was.’

  ‘And she told you that I loved you?’

  ‘She suggested that we might both be suffering from the same malady,’ he agreed, ‘and since I already knew what mine was, it didn’t take long for me to deduce the identity of yours. Do you love me, Cassie?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you how much, without words, this morning,’ she whispered shyly, bending her head so that he could barely catch the words. His smile set her heart pounding with delirious anticipation.

  ‘I think you’d better refresh my memory,’ he suggested with mock gravity, picking her up in his arms and heading for the bed, ‘starting right at the beginning.’

  ‘If that’s what you really want,’ Cassie began docilely, only to blush vividly as he bent his head and whispered against her ear exactly what it was he wanted of her,

  ‘And that’s for starters,’ he added softly, watching her bright colour subside.

  * * * * *

  Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Michelle Smart’s next book,

  BILLIONAIRE’S BABY OF REDEMPTION

  The final book in her Rings of Vengeance trilogy!

  When Javier learns his explosive night with Sophie left her pregnant, he’s adamant they wed! But warm, compassionate Sophie demands more. Can Javier accept that giving them his all is the key to his redemption?

  Keep reading to get a glimpse of

  BILLIONAIRE’S BABY OF REDEMPTION

  CHAPTER ONE

  JAVIER CASILLAS KEPT his eyes fixed on the wide corridor ahead of him, jaw clenched, feet working automatically. He could feel the eyes upon him; had felt them all evening in the private box he shared with his twin. He’d steeled himself for it. His wildly infamous parentage meant the media spotlight was something he’d learned to endure but the past two months had magnified that spotlight by a thousand.

  HE WOULD GIVE them exactly what he had always given them. Nothing.

  He had not allowed a flicker of emotion to pass his face throughout the performance.

  Inside, the rage had built. He’d watched Freya, the woman he’d intended to marry, put on the performance of her life, listened to the rapturous applause and all he had wanted to do was go home and beat the hell out of his punching bag.

  Tonight was the culmination of a long-standing dream between Javier and his twin brother, Luis. A decade ago they’d finally had the funds to purchase the crumbling Madrid theatre and ballet school their prima ballerina mother had spent her childhood learning to dance at, buying the ballet company with it. They’d renamed it Compania de Ballet de Casillas in her memory and set about turning it into one of the most eminent ballet companies in Europe. They’d then bought another parcel of land close to it and built on it a brand new state-of-the-art theatre and ballet school. Tonight was its grand opening. The world’s media was out in force but instead of focussing on the theatre and ballet company and celebrating Clara Casillas’s memory, their focus was on Javier and his ex-fiancée.

  The whole damn world knew she’d left him for his oldest friend.

  What the whole world did not yet know was that Benjamin Guillem had stolen her in a sick game of revenge or that Freya had been happy to be stolen.

  They were welcome to each other. Freya meant nothing to Javier. She never had.

  The corridor he walked through on his way to the after-show party forked. About to turn left with the group he was with, which included members of the Spanish royal family, Javier felt a hand settle on his shoulder and steer him firmly in the other direction.

  No one other than his twin would have dared touch him in such a manner.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Javier asked, staring at his brother with suspicion as they walked.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you alone,’ Luis replied.

  There was something in his brother’s tone that lifted the hairs on the nape of his neck.

  Tension had simmered between them since his twin’s foolhardy trip to the Caribbean. How Luis thought that marrying Benjamin’s sister would restore their reputations was still, well over a month on, beyond Javier’s comprehension. Although wildly different from him in both looks and personality, his brother usually had excellent judgement. His opinion was the only one Javier ever thought worthy of consideration.

  Fortunately his brother had seen sense at the last minute and returned to Madrid as a single man but things had not been right between them since.

  Luis was his only constant. It had been the two of them, facing the world and everything it could throw at them, together, since they had shared the same womb.

  Luis waited until they were out of anyone’s earshot before turning to him. ‘You knew we were ripping Benjamin off all those years ago, didn’t you?’

  The rage that had simmered in Javier all evening blazed at the mention of his nemesis’s name.

  Seven years ago the Casillas brothers had invited Benjamin to invest in a project they were undertaking in Paris, the creation of a skyscraper that became known as Tour Mont Blanc. They had only invited his investment because the seller of the land, to whom they had paid a significant deposit, suddenly told them they had until midnight to pay the balance or he would sell to another interested buyer. They didn’t have the cash. Benjamin did.

  ‘We didn’t rip him off,’ Javier reminded him icily. ‘He was the fool who signed the contract without reading it.’

  ‘And you should have warned him the terms had changed as you’d said you would. You didn’t forget, did you?’

  Javier might be many things but a liar was not one of them.

  Luis had been the one
to invite Benjamin onto the project. His investment was worth twenty per cent of the land fee. In the rush of sealing the deal Luis had told Benjamin it meant twenty per cent of the profits. Their lawyer, who drew up the contract in record time, had been the one to point out that the Casillas brothers would be doing all the work and that Benjamin’s profit share should be only five per cent, a point Javier had agreed with.

  The contract had been changed accordingly. Javier had emailed it to Benjamin expecting him to read the damn thing and negotiate if the new terms were not to his liking.

  ‘I knew it.’ Luis took a deep breath. ‘All these years and I’ve told myself that it had been an oversight on your part when I should have accepted the truth that you never forget. In thirty-five years you have never forgotten anything or failed to do something you promised.’

  ‘I never promised to email him.’ Javier never made promises he didn’t intend to keep. People could say what they liked about him—and frequently did, although never to his face—but he was a man of his word.

  ‘Not an actual promise,’ Luis conceded. ‘But look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t a deliberate act on your part.’

  Luis had asked him to give Benjamin a heads-up about the changes in terms when Javier emailed the contract. At no point had Javier agreed to this request and Luis should be thankful for it. Benjamin’s failure to read the contract before signing it had made the Casillas brothers richer to the tune of two hundred and twenty-five million euros. Benjamin had still made an excellent profit—profit—of seventy-five million and all he’d had to do for that substantial sum was transfer some funds. That he’d had the nerve to sue them over it was beyond the pale. That Benjamin had refused to accept the court’s judgement when the judge had thrown the case out, and then stolen Javier’s fiancée from him, was despicable.

  And the world thought he was the bad man in all this?

  Blind, prejudiced fools, the lot of them. He knew what they all thought. The world looked at his face and saw his murderer father.

  ‘For what reason would it have been deliberate?’ he asked coldly.