Bull thought back to the first time he’d seen Bella, at a British Embassy reception in Washington, D.C. His heart had leapt in his chest when she’d smiled up at him and asked, “Are you really called Bull?”
His mouth was suddenly bone dry, and he’d needed to clear his throat before he could say, “I am.”
“Then you’re the one courting my cousin.”
Bull had come to the reception with twenty-one-year-old Lady Regina Delaford, daughter of the British ambassador to the United States, the Marquess of Tenby. He’d dated the girl exactly twice, which wasn’t even close to “courting” as far as he was concerned. Instead of denying the relationship he said, “Your cousin?”
“Second cousin, very far removed,” she explained, her smile becoming a mischievous grin. “I’m Isabella Wharton. You may call me Bella.”
She said it as though she were the Queen of England allowing him the honor of addressing her, Bull thought. Before he could say a word, Regina showed up at his elbow, slid her arm possessively through his, and said, “You’re looking very fine tonight, Bella.”
“You didn’t tell me he was so handsome,” Bella said to her cousin.
Bull had flushed at the discussion of his looks.
“He’s mine, Bella, so don’t get any ideas,” Regina said.
He’d eyed Regina sideways but didn’t contradict her. He would tell her later, in private, that she didn’t own him.
“Surely you won’t mind sharing him long enough for us to have a dance,” Bella said, taking Bull’s hand and leading him away from her cousin onto the dance floor.
He’d marveled at her audacity, but he was entranced by her violet eyes, her perfect alabaster skin, and her dark, shiny hair. Full breasts were revealed by a hint of teasing cleavage in a full-length, strapless black dress that fit her like a snake’s skin. She smelled of some dusky perfume that made him think of black silk sheets on a large bed. He was glad for the chance to hold her in his arms.
She kept a bare inch between them, enough for him to feel the heat of her body but not the contours of it. He wanted her closer and pressed his hand against the small of her back until their bodies touched from breast to hip.
He heard a small gasp, and when she met his gaze he saw that her violet eyes had darkened until they looked like dangerous storm clouds. She caught her lower lip in her teeth as she lowered her lids to hide her eyes from him. “I wish you were mine,” she said in a voice that sent shivers down his spine.
His breath caught in his throat. Was she saying what it seemed she was saying? “Look at me, Bella.”
Her lashes came up, and when their eyes met, he felt his body harden to stone. She was Eve, the first woman, seemingly innocent but tempting him to sin.
Bull stopped dancing, grabbed her hand, and said, “Come with me.” He didn’t give her a chance to refuse, simply headed for the staircase that led to the upper rooms in the embassy.
“My aunt will be looking for me,” she protested. “Where are you taking me?”
He found an empty room intended for meetings, with a long conference table surrounded by rolling chairs, pulled her inside, and closed and locked the door.
He pressed her against the door with his hips and caught a handful of her hair before he lowered his mouth to hers. God help him, she tasted sweet! He sought the zipper along the back of her dress and slid it down.
She made a sound of protest that was lost as he deepened the kiss. Her hands slid from his shoulders up into his hair and then back down to his nape, making him quiver with desire.
As the sleek black dress slid into a pool on the floor he released her to see what he had. She stepped out of the circle of material and eased her feet from her high heels, lowering her three inches, so her head came to the middle of his chest.
Her breasts were high and full in a black strapless bra, her waist easily spanned by his hands, her stomach flat. Her long, slender legs were encased, heaven help him, in black silk stockings held by a beribboned black garter belt over a scrap of black underwear.
He released the bra and her warm breasts fell into his hands. He lowered his mouth and heard her gasp as he sucked a nipple into his mouth. His fingers and thumb teased the other nipple before his mouth gave it equal attention.
She moaned, and his body tautened.
He looked into her eyes and whispered, “Touch me.”
She leaned back with dazed eyes to look at him, and he saw her cheeks were flushed. “I . . .”
He took her hand and pressed it against the fly of his tuxedo trousers where his body waited, hard and ready. He closed his eyes and held his breath as she slowly, with a sound of female appreciation, traced the length of him.
“I want you.” His voice sounded strange in his ears.
She didn’t respond in words, merely reached up and shoved his tuxedo jacket off his shoulders, all the while looking into his eyes. She reached up to release the bow tie at his throat, smiling like a cat with a pot of cream as she pulled it free. When he reached for the top button on his shirt, she stopped his hand. “I want to do it.”
She took her time, and his heart was pounding by the time he’d been relieved of suspenders, shirt, and cummerbund. Her hands played in the dark hair that covered his chest. She leaned forward to tease one of his nipples with her teeth, and he drew in a sharp breath.
She looked up at him with those amazing violet eyes and asked, “Did I hurt you?”
Everything that happened afterward occurred without conscious thought. Patience gone, he reached out and ripped away the fragile silk between her legs, then freed himself and lifted her enough to thrust himself deep inside.
She was warm and wet, and when she set her fingertips at his nape and stroked, he came so hard and fast and long that a guttural sound of agony was wrenched from his throat.
He dropped his head against her shoulder, panting, ashamed at how quickly he’d come. He hadn’t left a woman so unsatisfied since he was fourteen and didn’t know any better.
He lifted his head to apologize, took one look at the sated violet eyes staring back at him, and smiled as he placed a tender kiss beneath her ear.
He felt her shiver and was ready to play some more when Bella surprised him by saying he should go and that she would stay and repair herself. He’d taken a second look at her face and seen something in her eyes that bothered him. Fear? Guilt? Shame?
He hadn’t stayed to ask, because she clearly wanted him gone. He’d left knowing that he had to spend more time with her, to see if what had happened between them would happen again or whether it had simply been a time out of time.
When he’d called the next day to ask Bella to share dinner and the ballet, she’d refused, citing his relationship with her second cousin and adding, “What happened shouldn’t have happened.”
Bull didn’t ask again. He’d never begged a woman for anything, and he wasn’t about to start. But there had been an ache inside, as though a hole had been torn in his heart.
A month later, the girl’s aunt had come to him and said Bella was pregnant, that he was the father, and that he would have to marry her.
Bull had laughed in her face. He had no intention of marrying at twenty-nine. Then the old witch had dropped her bomb. Bella was only seventeen. If Bull didn’t marry her, he would be charged with statutory rape.
Bull had stopped laughing. He was rich enough to hire lawyers to drag out whatever charges there were against him for years. But a man in a conservative business like banking couldn’t afford to smirch his reputation. He’d agreed to marry Bella to give the child a name, but he’d vowed to make her pay for what she’d done to him.
Bull sighed. It was a marriage made in hell that had somehow found its way into the light and then descended into hell again.
There had been a nasty scene with Bella’s furious cousin, Regina, after she told the tabloids that billionaire banker Bull Benedict had been blackmailed into marrying Isabella Wharton, Duchess of Blackthorne. Bull had made it
clear that nothing and no one on earth could have compelled him to marry Bella if he hadn’t been enchanted by her.
It wasn’t until his brown-eyed son was born—a biological impossibility considering his blue eyes and Bella’s violet ones—that Bull realized how badly he’d been duped. But by then he was head over heels in love with his wife. He’d confronted Bella, and she’d admitted that there had been someone before him, but she’d sworn that she hadn’t known whose child she was carrying when she married him.
“So you picked the richest goose to pluck,” he’d snarled.
“My aunt did that,” she’d replied bitterly.
It turned out that the Blackthorne estate in England, Blackthorne Abbey, was in ruins and needed an infusion of capital. Bella’s aunt had taken advantage of Bella’s “misfortunate accident” to trap her a wealthy husband.
Bull hadn’t wanted to know who’d fathered his eldest son. But he’d always wondered. He’d felt particularly betrayed by Bella’s infidelity ten years ago when she wouldn’t deny that the person in bed with her was the same man who’d sired Oliver. He should have waited until the man turned around so he could see his face, should have confronted him then and there instead of running like some scared rabbit.
Ten years later, Bull’s face flamed anew with anger and humiliation. He made himself focus on the beautiful summer flowers his secretary had put on his desk and the blue sky studded with fluffy clouds and the spiraling architecture that made Paris a haven for artists, as he waited for his heart rate to slow. He wished he’d acted differently. He wished he’d confronted Bella and her lover. At least then they might have been able to fight it out and either move forward or end their marriage.
Instead, they were stuck in this nightmarish limbo.
The jarring ring of his office phone was a welcome distraction from his troubling thoughts. Bull answered the phone as he always did, “Benedict.”
“I have something you might want back,” a distorted voice said.
“Who is this?” Bull demanded.
“Twenty-five million. That’s my price . . .”
Bull’s heart began racing as he imagined what someone might have stolen from him that was worth that much. Bella. He imagined her kidnapped, terrified and being held for ransom.
Before he could say he’d pay anything to have her back, the caller finished, “If you want the Ghost back.”
“What?”
“Too much? Too bad. Pay or I’ll sell it on the black market, and you’ll never see it again.”
Bull laughed. He knew Bella kept her jewels in a safe in the dungeon at Blackthorne Abbey. They were as tightly protected and inaccessible to thieves as the Crown Jewels. “If this is a joke, it’s in bad taste.”
“Check it out. The Ghost is a ghost.” The caller laughed, a horrible sound, distorted as it was.
A moment later a picture appeared on Bull’s phone of the Ghost lying on a copy of that morning’s London Times.
Was this some kind of joke? He would have sworn Bella would never loan the necklace to anyone. But it clearly was not in the vault at Blackthorne Abbey.
“Presuming you do, in fact, have the Ghost,” he said, “I’d need at least a week to get that much money in one place.”
The caller remained silent for a few moments. “You have forty-eight hours. I’ll be in touch.”
Bull found himself listening to a dead phone. He laughed shakily. He could hardly believe someone had just called to ransom the Ghost. Of course, the Ghost was priceless, not just in monetary value, but for what it meant to him and Bella.
He could still remember the day he’d given it to her.
After she’d given him three more healthy sons, Bull hadn’t wanted his wife to get pregnant again. She’d had a C-section with their youngest boy, and he didn’t want her to have to go through that again. But Bella had wanted him to have a daughter.
She’d laughed at his fear and denied her own. “You need the experience of having your darling daughter wrap you around her little finger. And I want a little girl I can dress in pretty clothes.”
He’d warned her that they would probably end up with another boy, but she’d been relentless, in the way only Bella could be. Teasing him. Taunting him. Refusing to bed him when he was using protection, meanwhile assuring him that she was willing and eager to make love to him as often and in as many positions as he could imagine, and in some he hadn’t imagined yet, so long as he came to her naked and ready.
What red-blooded male could resist such an invitation?
Bull hadn’t.
The delivery of their daughter had been as difficult as the doctors had warned it would be. Bella had barely survived the birth, but she’d given him the precious little girl she’d promised. Lydia Jane Benedict, a tiny copy of her mother, had promptly stolen his heart.
Bull had given Bella a gift of jewels on the birth of each of their sons, but he’d wanted something special to celebrate the birth of his one and only daughter. He couldn’t believe the Ghost of Ali Pasha, an enormous teardrop pearl, was on the market, but he’d jumped at the chance to buy it, despite its unsavory reputation. He didn’t believe a pearl could cause bad luck. He didn’t believe in jewels being jinxed.
The one-of-a-kind teardrop pearl had once been owned by the Ali Pasha of Yannina, an Albanian pasha from the western part of Rumelia in the Ottoman Empire. The notoriously cruel pasha had roasted rebels, flayed a man alive, and killed another by having his bones broken with a sledgehammer. Beginning in 1788, Ali Pasha had ruled most of Albania, western Greece, and the Peloponnese for more than thirty years.
He gave the pearl as a gift to his favorite concubine, a Circassian woman named Juba. Shortly thereafter, Juba was poisoned by another concubine who was jealous. When the guilty party wouldn’t reveal herself, Ali Pasha ordered every single one of the three hundred Christian, Muslim, Albanian, and Circassian women in his harem executed.
When Ali Pasha was finally defeated by his enemies and beheaded, he was wearing Juba’s pearl. His head was sent to the Sultan Mahmud II, where it was presented on a silver plate, the pearl still around the pasha’s throat. The sultan took the pearl as a prize of war—and was strangled by it in his bed.
Thus began the legend that the teardrop pearl possessed the ghost of Ali Pasha, which had wreaked a terrible vengeance on his enemy.
The Ghost of Ali Pasha ended up as part of the Spanish royal jewels. King Ferdinand VII was pictured wearing the pearl in 1806 in a painting by Goya, just before he was forced to abdicate the throne in favor of the Emperor Napoleon. The king hadn’t lost his head while he owned the Ghost, but he’d lost his position as head of state.
In 1840 Queen Isabella II of Spain gave the Ghost to Queen Victoria of England as a wedding present. The British queen feared the legend that went along with the pearl and sent it as a gift to Frederick II when he became King of Prussia. The king died without ever having children, keeping the legend alive. The Ghost somehow found its way to France and was sold to Tiffany’s in the late 19th century at an auction of French royal jewels.
Bull had arranged to have the enormous, perfect teardrop pearl set in a necklace with all the other precious and semi-precious stones he’d given to his wife over the years—sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. The result was stunning. And priceless.
The Ghost had a value for insurance purposes, of course, of twenty-five million. But he wouldn’t have sold it for twice that, because every time he saw it around his wife’s throat, it reminded me of the night they had made love and created their daughter. The day Bull gave Bella the Ghost was a happy day, maybe the happiest day, in his life. And the beginning of the end of their happiness as a couple.
The Ghost was cursed, all right.
Bull wondered if the Ghost had really been stolen, or if someone was trying to fleece him. He was a man of action, but he was also a very careful man. Rather than go off half-cocked, he called Smythe, the butler at Blackthorne Abbey, who had the keys to everythin
g, including the vault in the dungeon.
“Smythe,” the butler said when he answered the call. “How may I assist you, sir.”
Bull smiled. Smythe was the most recent in a long line of Smythe butlers to the Blackthorne family, going back several centuries. The butler was always reserved but always capable of providing whatever service was required.
“I need you to check the vault and see if the Ghost is still there,” Bull said.
“I don’t need to look, sir, to tell you the Ghost isn’t there.”
Bull was startled by the butler’s response. “Where is it?”
“On instructions from Courtland, I had the Ghost delivered to Lady Lydia in Rome. I expect it to be returned shortly. Is there a problem?”
“No. Thank you, Smythe.” Bull ended the call. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he considered the possibilities in light of what he now knew. Did Lydia ever receive the Ghost? Was it stolen in transit? Did Oliver have it? Did he know where it was? Why did Oliver make the request to send the Ghost to Lydia and not Bella? Did Bella know the Ghost was missing?
The best way to get answers was to go directly to the source. He clicked on the number to call his daughter’s cell phone. She picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hello, Daddy.”
Just the sound of his daughter’s voice made him feel warm inside. It had been too long since he’d seen Lydia. He should try harder to spend time with his children, although that was difficult with the rift between him and his wife, since it meant the kids had to visit her in one place and him in another. Not to mention how difficult it was to get five grown children, with completely different lives, together in one place.
Bull forced himself to focus on the issue at hand. “I got a strange phone call this morning.”
“I couldn’t accept Harold’s proposal. I’m sorry if that upsets you, Daddy, but I just don’t love him.”
Bull was taken aback. He’d thought Harold Delaford would be a calming influence on his flighty daughter, but he’d had no idea their courtship had progressed so far. “That isn’t why I called.”
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