It wasn’t until he drew out a small box that Karla realised she had been holding her breath. Almost in unison, the two of them looked around: there was no-one else close by.
“Open it,” she whispered. “Just a little. I want to see it.”
Slowly, Hayden drew back the lid as the two of them huddled closer together. Inside the case, placed on soft, black cloth, was a square diamond, its multitude of facets glittering in the light.
“Beautiful,” Hayden whispered. “It suits you perfectly.”
Karla began to offer a sarcastic reply, but the look in his blue eyes stopped her. Instead, she lifted herself onto tiptoe and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Thank you,” she replied.
“A shame to sell it, really,” he observed.
“Don’t even think it,” she told him. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen, but I’ve never been the kind of girl to get sentimental about diamonds. They’re just fancy rocks when all’s said and done—something to fund the kind of lifestyle I’m used to. Speaking of which, you can go and get me a new phone to replace the one you chucked in the Irish Sea.”
“Didn’t you keep Chantelle’s?” he asked, his eyes twinkling again.
She glowered at this. “That went overboard on the return journey—and don’t you ever mention that woman’s name again.”
“She’s very sweet when you get to know her.”
Karla nearly rose to the bait but instead mastered her temper, placing the box in her bag. “Go and buy me a new phone. Now. You can afford it.”
“We can afford it.” Hayden frowned as she began to walk away. “Hey, where are you going?”
“To the ladies’ room,” she replied. “I need to powder my nose. Don’t worry. Your rock is quite safe with me—you’re not getting rid of me that easily. In any case, you’ve got my luggage. There’s the latest Alexander McQueen in there and I’ve got no intention of losing that.”
He blew her a kiss as she sashayed to the bathroom, feeling like a million dollars and carrying several million more in her purse. A number of men watched her as she went by and she smiled to herself: there was only one pair of eyes she cared were fixed on her at that moment—even if Hayden Carter was as likely to be concerned as to the fate of the Wallenstein as admiring the way her hips swayed.
When she emerged a while later, there was a sparkle in Karla’s eyes. A more experienced spectator might have come to the conclusion that powdering her nose might have been a euphemism for another kind of chemical sustenance. An even more experienced spectator might have surmised that Karla Steel carried a discreet little helper in her bag to while away the boredom in solitary pleasures. Both of them would have been wrong. Nonetheless, it was true that she took slightly more careful steps as she exited from the bathroom.
A young girl looked up at her, just on the verge of her teens. She was a sweet thing and, full of the joys of life, Karla smiled at her.
“You’re very beautiful,” the girl said.
“Why, thank you!” Karla replied. “And you’re a very pretty thing. Are you going on your holidays?”
The girl nodded. “I like your bag,” she said, a little shyly.
“Would you like it?”
Again a nod.
“Here, why don’t you take it? It’s a Versace.”
“Really?” The girl’s face lit up with pleasure. “Do you mean that?”
“I most certainly do,” Karla replied. “I don’t need it any more.”
Amused at her impulsive act, Karla began to make her way to the terminals where she knew Hayden would be waiting. If nothing else, there was no way he was going to leave Heathrow while the two most important things in his life remained at the airport. As she crossed the concourse, a large entourage of visitors began to pour in through the doors, leaving the suite of limousines that had drawn up outside. The group, consisting of some twenty or so individuals, was led by a tall black man, a fur coat trailing flamboyantly across his shoulders and dark shades covering his eyes. Beside him walked a smaller, tough-faced woman who glanced at Karla curiously as she was caught up in the trail of lackeys.
“Hey,” Papa Dee called out, his baritone voice rich and soothing. “Make way for the lady.”
“Dankeschön,” Karla replied, bowing her head slightly as she waited to go past.
“Why in such a hurry?” asked Papa Dee, moving forward as though to reach her. Karla flashed her green eyes at him. He was a handsome fellow, that was for sure, but she would brook no interruption now.
“Wow,” he said quietly. “Your… eyes.”
“I am aware that I have two of them,” she replied in clipped German tones.
“And your voice… I love European accents.”
She bowed her head slightly and manoeuvred around him and the rest of his crew.
“Don’t you know who I am?” he called out after her.
“I certainly do, Papa Dee,” she said, not looking back. “You’re on tour, I believe. And your father is a diplomat. I think I met him. Once.”
“Don’t go!” the singer cried. “Baby! You’ve got something I want.”
“Two things, actually,” she smirked to herself.
She found Hayden a few moments later, staring up with a frown at a television screen. His bandaged nose made him look both strangely comical and incredibly sexy at the same time.
“What is it?” she asked.
He didn’t reply but simply pointed up at the screen. Looking up, Karla recognised the familiar, pasty-white face on the screen.
“Maarten,” she gasped.
Hayden nodded. “They found him in a shipping container down past the Isle of Dogs. Apparently he’d been bundled in there with food a few days ago. He was rambling on about a Norwegian killer on the loose. Look.”
Karla watched the tickertape news at the bottom of the screen as the presenter’s face replaced that of Maarten Kropp. It said that police were looking for a tall, blonde-haired man in his mid-fifties who was incredibly dangerous. An identikit image flashed up and Karla nearly laughed.
“They’ll never find him with that,” she scoffed.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Anything about us?”
Hayden shook his head. “Maarten’s made no mention of you.”
This made her sigh. “Maybe I misjudged him.” She dismissed any regrets with a shake of her head. “What about the Wallenstein? Any news?”
“Nope. My guess is that Boeckman’s want to keep that under wraps until they know Lars has failed. We’ve probably got a couple more days.”
“Speaking of which,” she said, coming closer. “You’ll never guess who I just bumped into.”
Hayden shook his head. His frown was just too cute, Karla thought to herself.
“Papa Dee,” she told him. “If I remember rightly from when I was checking up on him, he was due to head back to Europe for the next leg of his tour…”
“...And after that he’d pick up his diamond,” Hayden concluded.
“By which time we’ll be long gone.”
“Yeah,” Hayden said thoughtfully, letting Karla snake her arm through his as they walked towards passport control. “Just the two of us.”
There was something odd about his voice. “What is it?” she asked.
“Let’s face it,” he said, suddenly looking a little glum, “this relationship’s probably doomed.”
This made her stop short. “What do you mean?” she asked sharply, staring at him intently with her green eyes.
“Neither of us is made for commitment, but we’ll try. I mean, we’re both crazy enough about each other to try, right? We’ll attempt to settle down, get married, have kids and I’ll even seek out something approaching a civilian occupation which will leave me bored out of my brain with a growing drinking problem. You’ll get sick of being a lady who lunches and start sleeping with the pool attendant simply because you can’t help yourself, and in revenge I’ll start fucking my secretary—you know, the beautiful one who’s no
t too sharp between the ears. Then, when you find out, you’ll divorce me, get custody of the kids, the house—hell! You’ll even take the car, leaving me with nothing but a first world war revolver with which I’ll blow my brains out one day.”
“Jesus, Hayden! I never had you down as the depressive type.”
He sucked in his cheeks and then grinned at her. “Nah. I just get a bit twitchy between jobs. I like to remind myself of what I don’t intend to do with my life.”
This made her relax slightly. “Well, that’s a relief.” Then she scowled. “But you better not mean it—what you said, about this relationship being doomed.”
He leaned forward and kissed her paternally on the brow. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of trying at all. If it doesn’t come naturally, I’m outta here.”
She jabbed his ribs at this and he groaned in mock pain. “In any case,” she said sweetly. “Do I look like the sort of woman who plans to have children? It takes a lot of effort to fit into a Stella Mccartney like this, and I’m not having some little snotty bastard mess with my figure, thank you very much!”
“That must be why I love you. Oh, that and the fact you had a multi-million Euro diamond when I first met you.” Hayden paused at this. “By the way, where is it? I almost forgot about it during our little chat.”
“That must be the first time today. It’s quite safe. Don’t worry.”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to try and get through customs with it?”
She raised one eyebrow and smirked. “What? Turning chicken? I don’t want to ever take that bloody train to Holyhead ever again. If we fly, we can get it to Uncle Coilin all that much quicker. Anyhow, I told you: it’s safe.”
Hayden could feel beads of sweat forming across his brow. “Where is it?” he hissed.
“In my purse.” Without looking at him, she began to walk carefully to passport control. Shaking his head he started to follow her but then stopped short.
“Wait a minute, you haven’t got a purse.”
She stopped and winked at him and he rushed to catch up with her. Clutching his shirt, she pulled herself up on tiptoe to whisper in his hear.
“My purse is where I keep my most precious items—you know, like your cock and the Wallenstein diamond.”
He stared at her blankly for a few moments then his mouth fell open.
“What the... You’ve got it inside you?”
“Safest place for it. I mean, they’ve got no reason to strip search me and in any case, it would have to be a woman—and I’ve never let a woman touch me down there. Today, I’m the world’s most expensive mule. Damn! We could probably sneak in a couple of grand’s worth of coke if we tried. Ten grand if we use that delectable ass of yours as well.” She winked at him.
Hayden slapped his head and looked up at the ceiling. “What have I let myself in for?” he muttered.
“Having second thoughts?” she asked slyly.
“What, about hitching up with a psycho bitch? No, none at all. Nope. Can’t think why you’d ask.”
She patted his cheek then tugged at his hair so that he’d lower his face for her to kiss him. “Not psycho, sweetheart. Perhaps borderline bipolar and definitely someone with attention deficit issues, but other than that my mental health functions perfectly.”
Somewhat reluctantly, he followed. “Let’s hope you don’t meet some handsome idiot. He’ll end up with a sore cock and several million Euros richer.”
“I like it when you’re jealous, Hayden,” she said, smiling sweetly at him.
“I see you don’t deny you’re a bitch.”
“No more than you deny you’re a bastard. We’re made for each other. Come on, let’s go. A beautiful future awaits us.”
Other books by M. J. Lawless
The Crystal Fragments Trilogy
When the heart is stronger than stone.
This brings together all three Crystal Fragments books into one volume. When Kris Avelar runs away from another failed love affair to an isolated cottage in Scotland, her desire to be alone is nothing compared to that of the stranger she meets: Daniel Logan. Tall, handsome, but also scarred by more than the marks which line his face, his attempts to push her away only inspire her to greater curiosity about him—a curiosity that will lead to dark and forbidden desires as she enters his private world.
As she discovers that this mysterious stranger is actually Daniel Stone, the charming and urbane founder of Stone Enterprises, she seeks to discover more about him—just as he becomes increasingly obsessed with her. Yet if Kris is the most perfect lover that Daniel has known since the death of his wife, she is not the first, and others will seek to come between the two of them and their happiness.
When Daniel is caught up by his own dangerous past, Kris sets out to save him and to show that while everyone else will turn against him, she is determined never to let him down—or let him go. It is at that time that she discovers that her own submission, what she has thought of as a weakness inside her, is actually the source of her greatest strength.
The trilogy includes:
Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission
Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries
Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire
Orfeo
The road to heaven leads through hell.
They called him the black Orpheus, a New Orleans singer whose voice could instill desire in the angels themselves or tame the darkest demons. But nothing inspired Orfeo more than the rich and beautiful mistress of Xanadu, Ardyce, the woman who came to hear him sing each and every night.
Determined to make her his, thus begins a sensuous seduction and passionate romance. Orfeo's desires must face another challenge, however: the lusts of Earl, the criminal kingpin of New Orleans' underworld. When his love is stolen away Orfeo descends into that underworld to rescue her, seeking the only woman he cares for before a hurricane sweeps across the city and the levees break, throwing everything they have ever known into chaos and destruction.
The Long Last Summer (as Miriam Lawless)
A tale of innocence and of experience.
At the beginning of the long, hot summer of 1976, two young boys—Jake and Mark—are riding out into the fields that lie beyond the small mining town which is all they have known for their brief lives. The eldest of the two, Jake, wishes to show his brother something of the innocent pleasure that he has begun to discover in the wider world.
For their young mother, Kitty, such pleasures are tinged with the bitterest experience that for one of them this may be the last summer that he will ever know. As doctors fight to combat the disease that also took Jake and Mark’s father, so Kitty struggles as a single woman to raise her children in a provincial town where the close embrace of a community also represses all her desires to better herself.
For Doctor Reuben Heppner, the struggle to cure a young boy is a means to leave behind the messy chaos of his own divorce and redeem himself, but with Kitty Donahue he also starts to believe that her happiness will be the key to both their salvation. And yet as the summer burns on so tempers and desires begin to blaze with a heat that threatens to destroy everything, for even the longest summer must come to an end.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter One: Karla
Chapter Two: Maarten
Chapter Three: Hayden
Chapter Four: Maarten
Chapter Five: Hayden
Chapter Six: Lars
Chapter Seven: Karla
Chapter Eight: Lars
Chapter Nine: Karla
Chapter Ten: Hayden
Chapter Eleven: Hayden
Chapter Twelve: Karla
Chapter Thirteen: Lars
Chapter Fourteen: Karla
Chapter Fifteen: Hayden
Chapter Sixteen: Karla
Other books by M. J. Lawless
The Crystal Fragments Trilogy
Orfeo
The Long Last Summer (as Miriam Lawless)
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