She stared down at him in half-shock, half-tenderness, unconsciously memorizing his face as her eyes scanned his features. His long lashes framed his cheeks, resting against his cheekbones in a way that softened the firm, hard angles of his face. Sage slowly leaned down and caressed his cheek with the back of her hand, noting with surprise that his face was soft.
He looked so peaceful as he slept, almost like a baby, and was it her imagination or were his red lips somewhat puckered in slumber, she thought with a delighted grin.
Raven stirred in his sleep and murmured, “Sage.”
Her heart skipped a beat; how could he be murmuring her name in his sleep already?
Panicked, she edged away from the bed, moving as silently as possible. A quick glance at the alarm clock told her it was just 4:00am. Slowly, she struggled into her dress and picked up her strappy sandals in her hand. As her hands brushed against her naked breast, she blushed anew, remembering how Raven had worshipped them during their lovemaking. As she turned to leave, she subconsciously looked around for some sort of keepsake to remember him by.
Her eyes alighted on the wallet flung carelessly on the tabletop; she didn’t dare take his wallet, that would be too cheap. As though on cue, her phone beeped again, and this time, she looked at the screen. It was a message from Eden that said simply, “Don’t forget the last leg of the bet; snatch his wallet!”
She turned away, resolutely, to face the door, determined to just leave before he woke up. The rest of her life seemed to stretch emptily in front of her and with a frustrated sigh, Sage slowly turned back toward the bedside table and picked up the wallet. This was a very personal belonging and would remind her of him. Her eyes went to his gold watch resting beside the wallet. She returned the wallet to its position and picked up the watch instead; it was cold to the touch, but it was customized with his initials stenciled at the back of the watch and his picture inserted as the background on the face of the watch.
As she left the room, his watch dangling in her hand, she cast one last look over her shoulder, bidding him a silent goodbye.
Sage didn’t notice the tears streaming down her face as she went downstairs to her own room with the girls; she didn’t notice that her hair and clothes were tellingly disarrayed; she didn’t notice that other guests stared at her with curiosity as she descended; all she knew was that her heart was breaking into tiny pieces with every step that took her away from the one man that had touched her heart so profoundly in a matter of hours and left an indelible mark of his essence on her soul.
CHAPTER SIX
Raven Hawthorne steeped his fingers together in front of his face as he stared with acute displeasure at the bumbling private detective in front of him. The man was Irish with freckles on every inch of his face and eyes that seemed smart and intelligent, but so far, he wasn’t impressed.
“Are you telling me that, in two months, you have been unable to find even one of the three women?” he inquired silkily.
The man paled, his thin upper lip trembling as he croaked, “We have expended considerable resources, Sir. We can’t trace the women. They might as well have dropped off the face of the earth for all the clue they left us.”
“But I gave you the name of one of them…Sage! Sage Talbot.”
“We doubt if that is her real name, Sir, and even if it were, there are over three thousand Sage Talbots living in the States alone,” the private eye wheezed.
Raven hid his disgust behind a polite smile as he rose to his height and offered the man a parting handshake. This man was wasting his time and if he didn’t get rid of the loser in under two seconds, he would probably be tempted to strangle the man.
In the two months since he had woken up to find Sage if that was even her real first name gone, he hadn’t been himself. He had become unusually cold and ruthless, firing employees at the drop of a hat and driving bargains that were so hard that most of his business associates were openly becoming wary of him.
She’d had the unmitigated gall to screw his brains out and then steal away in the dead of night, taking his favorite wristwatch with her, like a common thief. A hitherto unrevealed and lame sentimental side tried to tell him that perhaps she had taken the wristwatch to serve as a keepsake; a memento to remember him by. He ruthlessly shoved that thought aside. There was no justification for what she had done; she had stolen from him and he would hunt her to the ends of the earth, if he had to, to take back what she stole from him.
His hotel records had not been able to yield much about the three friends because they had paid cash, but he had a friend in the FBI who might be able to help him. He recalled that he had managed to take a picture with her in one of those public photo booths. He ripped the picture out of his wallet, breathing a sigh of relief that at least she had not taken his wallet as another souvenir.
He would send the picture to a friend at Quantico; see if he could use some sort of face recognition software to help him.
He spun his chair around to stare out the huge French windows at the bubbling streets of New York. Somewhere in this world was the woman who had stolen his wristwatch, the last gift his mother had given him before she died and he would find her, or die trying.
She had stolen something else too, he admitted to himself, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely to ascertain what it was.
* * *
Sage Tariq bent over the toilet and emptied the contents of her stomach, her face twisted in a grimace as she stared at what she had thrown up.
It wasn’t every day a person learned she had gotten pregnant by a faceless stranger with the unlikely name of Raven Hawthorne. She could track him down, she knew, but she didn’t want to. She knew his hotel in Spain and his restaurant too, but he wasn’t a Spaniard; he was American. She had never tried to find out if he lived in America or Europe, but she knew one thing, she wanted this baby. It was unexpected, yes, but it would be a reminder of the most magical night of her life. She stared, with regret, at the wristwatch she had taken from him as a keepsake; if she had known he had given her something as precious as the life she carried beneath her breast, she would never have taken a mere watch. Eden and Beth had not even remembered to ask if she picked his wallet in line with the bet’s rules; they had been too involved in getting the details of their lovemaking.
She missed him, she realized. She had not been herself since she returned from her trip, and she had even quit her job because everything that used to interest her, suddenly did not.
Her friends were worried about her; according to them, she had been moping around, as though her heart had been broken, since they got back from Spain and they didn’t understand it or like it. But try as she might, Sage could not dredge up much interest in anything. Flowers seemed dull and lifeless, work was a monotony she had to escape by resigning, even her usual evenings with the girls hardly appealed to her. Maybe because she hadn’t told them she was pregnant. It didn’t help, either, that Brent had been inundating her with calls since she returned; apparently, he had had a change of heart. Well, as far as she was concerned, he could take his changed heart and shove it!
Lately, she had taken up her one true passion; painting. She painted on large canvasses, from morning till night; bright, bold, exotic colors that reminded her of Spain and a passionate dark-haired lover with smoldering eyes as black as night.
On impulse, she ripped away a canvas she had been doodling aimlessly on for days and placed a fresh, blank, paper on the easel. She impatiently grabbed the tendrils of blond hair falling all over her face and did them up in a haphazard knot at the very top of her head, knotting it firmly and holding it securely in place with a rubber band.
Sage closed her eyes, letting her mind drift over the streets of memory. Images of Raven, lying peacefully atop the bed, his eyes shut in slumber, floated through her mind and she licked her lips slowly, almost feeling his lips on hers.
With a sigh, she let her brown eyes flicker open and with that image in her mind’s eyes,
she started to paint, drawing large, bold brush strokes across the blank canvas, enjoying the feel of the brush beneath her hand as she drew him from memory. She must have sat there for hours, but it felt like mere minutes; when she looked out of the window though, night had fallen.
With a sigh, she turned away from the canvas, not stopping to admire her work as she strolled toward the kitchen for a snack. This baby would have her fat in no time, she thought. She had been eating every chance she got of late when she wasn’t puking her guts out, that is.
She grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the kitchen cabinet and used a spoon to scoop some out of the jar. She licked the spoon, shutting her eyes in bliss as the tangy flavor of the peanut butter hit her tongue.
A knock at the door drew her attention and with a weary sigh, she headed toward it. As she passed the partially open curtains of the living room, she spied Eden’s Yaris parked outside.
“Eden, you really need to get off my back,” she sighed as she opened the door.
She froze.
Eden and Beth stood on the doorstep with identical wary expressions on their faces; behind them stood Brent, sweating profusely.
Sage glared at the trio, disbelief and betrayal roiling through her. “What is this?”
“Sage, hear him out,” Beth began.
Eden was nodding vigorously, her large green eyes earnest in her pretty face. “You do need to hear him out. I chewed him out when he came to us, but he’s sincere.”
“Just as he was sincere the last time he strolled off with Jessamine on his arm after calling me fat!”
“Sage” Brent began.
“No! You don’t get to say my name,” she cut in icily, swinging her head around to glare at him. She must have moved too fast because, suddenly, she was dizzy. “I’m going in to sit down,” she declared weakly.
“Are you all right?” Beth asked, concern etched on her small face.
“You two muttonheads may come in if you want,” she declared. “But Brent, if you so much as set one foot past that door, so help me, I will chop it off!”
Brent paled, sweat standing clear on his upper lips. Then, just when she thought she would have to physically shove him out, dizzy or no, he mercifully turned around and skulked away.
As she watched him leave, Sage couldn’t help comparing the twerp to Raven and she wondered for the umpteenth time what she had ever seen in Brent Davies; the man was not in the same league as Raven. Heck, he was not even in the same stratosphere!
Another wave of dizziness assailed her and she turned away and slowly walked into her living room, sinking onto the nearest sofa and shutting her eyes.
Eden and Beth followed her worriedly, identical expressions of guilt etched on their features. They were so worried they left the front door wide open, but Sage was too busy trying not to keel over to notice.
“Sage?”
“I need to rest, please.”
“You don’t look good, honey. What’s wrong? You’ve been acting weird since we got back from Spain and you keep saying nothing’s wrong,” Beth said, biting her lip.
“The man didn’t have something you caught, did he?” Eden asked, sounding even more worried than Beth.
Sage stifled a laugh. She had caught something all right, but not the way Eden meant. “Right on the money,” she said derisively.
Her friends paled and exchanged glances.
“That bastard! He infected you with something?” Eden whispered in disbelief.
“I caught something from him all right; I caught his sperm.”
They both paused, confused.
“That doesn’t make sense, Sage,” Beth said gently, in case Sage was losing her mind.
“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly.
The shock on their faces was so comical Sage actually began to laugh. She sat up, feeling the dizziness pass as she enjoyed the expression on their faces.
Beth recovered first. “Oh my goodness, that’s amazing! It is amazing, right?” she asked cautiously, watching Sage’s face.
Sage nodded, her blond curls dancing around her face. “It’s the best thing that has happened to me in years.”
Eden was still speechless.
“And who’s the father? Brent or Raven?” Beth asked.
“Raven, of course. Brent hadn’t touched me in months before we split. You haven’t said anything,” Sage noted, looking over at Eden.
“Oh, she’s said a lot,” Beth assured her. “On the inside.”
“So have you told Raven?” Beth asked, her eyes shining.
“No, and I don’t plan to. And speaking of, what were you thinking, bringing Brent here?”
“You had been moping around since we got back and we just thought the breakup hit you harder than we realized. Little did we know, you had gone and fallen for Raven!” Beth said.
“I don’t want to talk about Raven. I don’t even want to think about him,” Sage declared, rising to her feet and pacing, unaware of the tall, silent man who had strolled in the door.
“Is that why you painted a giant picture of him?” Eden asked saucily, finally recovering her vocal cords.
“I was going to ask the exact same question myself,” someone said bitingly from the doorway.
All three friends turned in horror to see Raven Hawthorne standing just inside the living room, his face alive with wrath as he glared at the life-like painting of himself gracing the easel.
It was all too much, Sage felt herself slide helplessly onto the floor as darkness overtook her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Sage? Sage!”
Sage’s eyes slowly flickered open, but when she looked up straight into an arresting pair of midnight black eyes, she almost slid right back into a dead faint.
“Raven,” she breathed, his name like a prayer and a curse on her soft lips.
“Yes,” he affirmed as he leaned back and slowly helped her to sit up.
Sage looked around the room; Eden and Beth were gone.
“Where are my ”
“Gone,” he informed her shortly. “I had them exiled.”
“WhatWhat on earth did you do that for?” Sage sputtered furiously, looking about as though she expected the other women to somehow magically reappear.
“I needed to talk to you in private,” he said reasonably.
Sage’s tongue flickered out nervously and she licked her lips, her eyes huge in her already pale face as she stared at him and waited.
She saw his dark eyes follow the motion of her tongue and darken immediately with reaction.
“Where is it?” he demanded, his hand stretched out.
Sage stared at him. He had gone to all this trouble to track her down for a mere watch? Angry color suffused her face. She was angry at herself. When would she learn? She was nothing to him apart from a convenient receptacle for his lust during the occasional holidays.
Angrily, she struggled to her feet and marched over to her bedroom. In mere seconds, she was back, the wristwatch in hand. She slapped it into his palm and immediately stepped back out of reach.
She was too preoccupied with her own disappointment that she didn’t notice the one blazing in his dark eyes. Even though he had known she’d taken it, he had somehow held out hope that she hadn’t.
“Why?” he asked, staring at her now.
Sage shrugged, refusing to meet his eyes as she folded her hands around her mid-section to keep from doing something absolutely asinine, like reaching for him. “Keepsake, nothing more,” she said.
Her nonchalance infuriated him. For the two months since he had seen her, he had been living life on the edge, like a man with a death wish. He had become such a ruthless business man that his success had tripled, even though he had managed to at the same time destroy some competitors so completely that one of them had taken his own life. He felt dirty, unclean, as though he had become the sort of businessman his father had been.
“Why did you creep out of my bed in the dead of the night like
a common doxy returning to the wharves?” he asked unkindly.
Sage’s eyes widened as she gasped in shock. Then before she thought better of it, she swung her palm in a wide arch and slapped his face as hard as she could. His head snapped back with the force of the hit and she felt a bitter surge of satisfaction sweep through her.
His eyes shut as he prayed for patience. He opened his eyes to see her glaring at him, unrepentantly, her blond hair scattered around her head like a damn halo while her lips trembled with the effort it took her to hold in her tears.
He had hurt her, he realized, and genuine sorrow swept through him. Whatever else she might be, he didn’t want to hurt her.
He reached for her, but she stumbled backwards out of reach, almost falling over in her haste to avoid his touch. “Don’t you dare lay one bleeding finger on me!”
His anger returned. “Why? Because, apparently, all I have to do is touch you and you’re wet and ready?” he asked.
Her face whitened as she recognized the words he flung so carelessly at her. She had whispered those exact words to him that night in Spain in the throes of passion.
“How dare you?” she whispered, her voice trembling with unshed tears.
“Oh, there’s nothing both of us wouldn’t dare,” he said, indicating the watch in his hands.
Her eyes lit on the now-hated piece of jewelry. “You got what you came for. Now take it and get out of here.”
“I also came to find out if you’re as delectable as I remember, Miss Talbot,” he said silkily.
“It’s Tariq,” she corrected unnecessarily. Of course he knew her surname. He wouldn’t have found her otherwise. “How did you find me?”
“The next time you decide to fleece some poor geezer you fucked out of his wits in some foreign country, you might want to remember that there’s such a thing called airport cameras.”
Mated to the Highland Wolf Page 101
