The Royals Collection

He had vanished from view before she had made it halfway across the grass, but when she reached the top of the rise she had a lucky break: she saw his tall figure enter the massive garage block.

With cruel timing as she came around the building a sports car emerged through the open doors, kicking up a cloud of dust that made her cough as it vanished.

Well, that was it.

Feeling utterly deflated, she stopped to catch her breath, pressing her hand to a stitch in her side. She experienced a moment’s panic before telling herself not to be stupid. Pregnant women played sport, rode horses, did things a lot more physically demanding than jog a few hundred yards. Her only problem was she was unfit.

Actually it wasn’t her only problem. Why had she hesitated? If she had told him how she felt he wouldn’t have needed to be told she trusted him. He’d have known. But, no, she’d been busy covering her back, protecting herself from the man who, whether he had intended to or not, had shown her what love was about.

It had been weeks since she’d admitted it to herself and she’d been too scared to let him see she loved him. She was disgusted by her own cowardice. Maybe it was only sex for him, but she had to know. She needed to know. She needed to tell him she was alive and Amira was dead. She had to be brave for their baby.

Hands braced on her thighs, she leant forward to get her breath. It was time to be honest. If she didn’t it would be her own insecurity that stretched the gulf that had opened up between them tonight.

She was so caught up with her own internal dialogue that as she straightened up and brushed the hair back from her face she almost missed the figure that emerged from the garage block, the figure carrying the cane. The figure of the colonel...

For a moment literally paralysed with fear, Hannah felt herself dragged back to that room of her nightmares—the bright white light, the stains on the wall that she didn’t like to think about and the sinister tap, tap of that cane.

But he wasn’t tapping his stick. He wasn’t doing anything to attract attention to himself. As he moved towards the staff quarters he looked furtively left and right, then over his shoulder. For a moment he seemed to be looking straight at her and, standing there in the pale ball gown, she felt as though there were a neon arrow above her head. Then he turned and walked away quickly.

It was only after he had vanished that she began to breathe again.

She was ashamed that she’d felt so afraid. He couldn’t hurt her any more. He never had; he’d only been playing mind games. He was harmless really. But harmless or not, remembering the expression she had caught a glimpse of earlier that evening when his cold little eyes had followed Kamel across the room made her shudder.

‘Hannah, you’re way too old to believe in the bogey man.’ Firmly ejecting the hateful little creep from her head, Hannah was turning to retrace her steps when she lost her footing. By some miracle she managed not to fall, but she did jar her ankle. Flexing her toes and extending her foot to see the damage, she noticed a dark patch on the ground. There was a trail of similar spots leading all the way back to the garage. Unable to shake the feeling that something was not quite right, she found herself following the breadcrumb trail of spots. It led back into the large hangar of a building that housed Kamel’s collection of cars.

She had seen them before and had made a few appropriate noises of approval, though in all honesty her interest in high-end vintage cars was limited. So long as the car she drove got her from A to B she was happy.

The lights were off in the building, but as she walked inside the internal sensor switched them on, revealing the rows of gleaming cars inside. Only one was absent—the vintage sports car that Kamel had driven off in. Where it had stood in the empty space the trail came to an end.

While Hannah’s interest in cars was limited, a condition of her being given driving lessons for her seventeenth birthday had been she attend some basic car-maintenance classes. Some things had stuck with her, like the unpleasant smell of brake fluid.

She dipped her finger in the pool, lifted it to her nose and gave a whimper, the colour fading from her face. The images clicked through her head. The hate in that man’s eyes, his furtive manner as he’d left the building. Why hadn’t she challenged him? Would the little coward dare...?

She didn’t follow the line of speculation to its conclusion; she didn’t think of the security guard who might have kept a discreet distance but was undoubtedly within calling distance, or even the internal phone on the wall behind her. She just ran.

The palace compound was more like a village or small town than a single residence, and, though it was possible to take a direct route to the heavy entrance gates, there was also a more circuitous route. She had complained recently that Kamel treated it as if it were his own private racing track. He had laughed when she’d closed her eyes and squealed at the last hairpin bend, convinced they were heading straight into a wall.

Without brakes... She shook her head to clear the image and pushed on. On foot it was possible to take a much shorter, direct route. She ought to be able to cut him off before— She refused to think that she was not going to make it in time.

The information did not make it to her lungs. They already felt as though they were going to explode and when she was forced to stop to catch her breath it also gave her body time for the pain in her ankle to register. That was when she remembered the phone in the garage block. She could have rung through to the entrance gate—someone would be there now, ready to warn Kamel. She was trying to decide between the options of going back to the phone or trying to intercept him when she saw a really ancient bike propped up against a wall.

Sending up a silent thanks to whoever had left it there, she climbed aboard and began to pedal through the trees.

* * *

Kamel had gunned his way out of the garage.

It all happened so fast the sequence of events was a blur: the car appearing, throwing herself into the road, arms waving, then the crunch of metal as the front of the Aston Martin embedded itself into a tree.

I’ve killed him!

She felt empty, her body was numb—and then the door of the car was being wrenched open. It actually fell off its hinges as Kamel—large, very alive and in what appeared to be a towering rage—vaulted from the vehicle. The feeling rushed back and she began to laugh and cry at the same time.

‘You little fool! What the hell were you doing? I could have killed you!’ Looking white and shaken and a million miles from his indestructibly assured self, Kamel took her roughly by the shoulders and wrenched her around to face him. He registered the tears sliding down her face and hissed out a soft curse. How could you yell at someone who looked like that? ‘You just took ten years off my life.’ If he had no Hannah he would have no life; the blinding insight stretched his self-control to the limit.

‘I had to stop you—the car, the brakes...’

His ferocious frown deepened. ‘How the hell did you know about the brakes?’

She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of one hand and sniffed. ‘You knew?’

‘I stopped a few yards after I left the garage.’ To ask himself what the hell he was doing. Throwing some sort of tantrum because she didn’t immediately express unconditional trust? He’d moved the goalposts of this relationship on an almost daily basis. Hell, at the start, he hadn’t even wanted a relationship. If he had to work for her trust, he would. ‘Or tried to.’ He had used the gears to slow down to a crawl, planning to pull over at an appropriate place, which was the only reason he had not hit Hannah.

He closed his eyes and swallowed, reliving the nightmare moment when she had rushed into the road.

‘So you knew about what he tried to do?’

‘Who tried to do what?’

‘The colonel. He cut your brakes and I think he might be the one who sent the photos.’

Understanding softened his dark eyes as he placed a thumb under her chin, tilting her tear-stained face up to him. ‘Really sweetheart, that man can’t hurt you and I promise you will never have to see him again.’

She pulled away from him. ‘No!’ she gritted emphatically through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t look at me like that, and don’t even think about humouring me. I am not imagining things and it was you he was trying to hurt. You humiliated him. I saw the way he looked at you tonight, and then when I followed you he was in the garage and he didn’t want to be seen. So when I saw the brake fluid I knew...’ She pressed a hand to her chest and gulped back a sob and whispered, ‘I had to stop you.’

‘You were following me?’

‘I just told you—someone tried to kill you.’

‘I’ll look into it. He will be brought to justice if he is guilty.’ There was no hint of doubt in Kamel’s voice. ‘You followed me?’

She nodded.

‘Why?’ He hooked a finger under her chin and forced her to look at him, Hannah met his interrogative dark stare steadily, not trying to look away, feeling weirdly calm now the moment was here.

‘Because you asked me a question and you left before I could answer.’

‘You ran away.’

‘It was that or throw up all over your shoes.’

He stiffened. ‘You’re ill?’

‘Not ill.’ For the first time she struggled to hold his gaze. ‘You asked me if I trust you and the answer is yes, I do. Totally and absolutely. I know you always have my back—that’s one of the things I love about you. Of course, there are an awful lot of things about you that drive me crazy but they don’t matter because I love you...’ She gave a quivering smile. It hadn’t been as hard as she had anticipated, speaking the words that had been locked within her heart. ‘The whole package. You.’

This was the moment when in her dreams he confessed his love for her. But this wasn’t a dream; it was real. And he stood there, every muscle in his stark white face frozen, tension pulling the skin tight across the bones of his face.

Hannah walked into the wall of pain and kept going, her expression fixed in a reasonable mask. No matter how hard she wanted it, it just wasn’t going to happen.

‘It’s all right. I know that love was not part of the deal. I know that Amira...you will always love her, but it doesn’t have to be a deal breaker, does it?’

She felt the tension leave his body. ‘Say it again. I want to hear it.’

The glow in his eyes was speaking not to her brain, which was counselling caution, but directly to her heart. It stopped and then soared, and she smiled.

‘I love you, Kamel.’ She left a gap and this time he filled it.

‘Je t’aime, ma chérie. Je t’aime. I have been too stubborn, too scared to admit it to myself.’

‘Amira...?’

‘I loved Amira, and her memory will always be dear to me. But what I felt for her was a thing that... If I thought you loved another man I would not let you go to him. I would lock you up in a tower. I am jealous of everyone you smile at. That damned chef creep...’

‘Jealous? You... You’re not just saying that because of the baby?’ She saw his expression and gave a comical groan. ‘I didn’t mention that part yet, did I?’

‘Baby...there is a baby? Our baby?’

She nodded.

He pressed a hand to her stomach. ‘You do know how much you have changed my life?’

‘I thought that was exactly what you didn’t want.’

He shrugged. ‘I was a fool. And you were charming and infuriating and brave and so beautiful. You swept into my life like a cleansing breeze, a healing breeze.’

He opened his arms and, eyes shining, she stepped into them, sighing as she felt them close behind her. ‘I love you so much, Kamel. It’s been an agony not saying it. It got so that I couldn’t even relax properly when we made love—I was so scared of blurting it out.’

‘So it was not that you had tired of me?’

She laughed at the thought. ‘That is never going to happen.’

He put a thumb under her chin, tilting her glowing face up to him. ‘You can say it as often as you wish now. In fact, I insist you say it.’

She was giggling happily as he swept her into his arms, and still when the security guard accompanied by a grim-faced Rafiq found them.

‘Kamel, stop him. He’s calling a doctor. Tell him I’m not ill,’ she urged as her husband strode on, refusing her requests to be put down.

‘You have had a stressful day and you are pregnant and I think it might be a good idea if a doctor gives you a check-over.’

‘And I suppose it doesn’t matter what I say?’

‘No.’

She touched the hard plane of his lean cheek.

‘You’re impossible!’ she said lovingly.

‘And you are mine,’ he said simply.

* * * * *

Passion and the Prince

Penny Jordan

He wants to hate her, but he’s passionately attracted to her…

Just who is Lily Wrightington—cynical fashion photographer or studious art historian? Prince Marco di Lucchesi can’t hide his haughty disdain for this Englishwoman—or his strong attraction to her!

As they tour the captivating palazzos of northern Italy together for Lily’s work project, the atmosphere between them sizzles with dislike and sensual promise…until shadows from Lily’s past turn up to taunt her. But if Marco drops his guard and offers the protection Lily is seeking, the passion he’s trying to keep firmly under wraps might just unleash itself, too….

PENNY JORDAN, one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors, unfortunately passed away on December 31st, 2011. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over 100 million books around the world. Penny wrote a total of 187 novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour and Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the New York Times bestseller list. Loved for her distinctive voice, she was successful in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan, ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters.’ It is perhaps this gift for sympathetic characterisation that helps to explain her enduring appeal.

CHAPTER ONE

LIFTING her head from her camera, through which she had been studying a model posing provocatively in matching bra and briefs, Lily recoiled instinctively from the scene in front of her.

Almost naked male and female models—the girls all fragile limbs and pouting mouths, some of them open in conversation, or drinking water through straws so as not to spoil their carefully applied make-up, and the boys with their gym-toned bodies—stood together as they submitted themselves to the attentions of hovering hair and make-up artists. Fingers tapped away on mobile phones, gleaming tanned skin contrasted with the catalogue client’s underwear all the models were wearing for the shoot. Heavy beat music boomed out into the small space despite the fact that some of the models were listening to their own iPods.

In other words it was a normal chaotic studio fashion shoot.

‘Has that last male model arrived yet?’ she asked the hairstylist, who shook her head.

‘Well, we can’t hold the shoot any longer. We’ve only got the studio for today. We’ll have to use one of the other male models twice.’

‘I can spray on some dye that will darken the blond guy’s hair, if you like?’ the stylist offered, reaching out to steady the rail containing more underwear to be modelled as it swayed dangerously when one of the models pushed past it.

Looking around, Lily felt her heart sink. She had grown up in this world—until she had turned her back on it and walked away—and now she disliked, almost hated it, and all that it represented.

Given free choice, this cramped, shabby studio with its familiar smell—a mix of male pheromones, sweat, female anxiety, cigarettes and illegal substances that seemed to hang invisibly in the air—was the last place she wanted to be.

Edging past a chattering group of models to get to the door, she put down her camera on a nearby table and went to check the pose of the pretty girl with the wary charcoal-grey-eyed gaze, wondering as she did so how many young hopefuls had entered the industry imagining that they would leave with a contract to model in a top fashion magazine only to discover a much seamier side to modelling. Too many.

This kind of shoot was the unglamorous rump end of what it meant to work in fashion, and a world away from money-no-object glossy magazine shoots.

She hadn’t wanted to do this. She was here in Milan for a very different purpose. But she had never been able to resist her younger half-brother’s pleas for help and he knew it. Rick’s mother—her father’s second wife—had been very kind to her when she had been young, and she felt that it was her duty now to repay that kindness by helping her half-brother. She couldn’t ignore her sense of duty any more than she could ignore all their late father had been.

She had tried her hardest to dissuade Rick from following in their famous and louche father’s footsteps, but to no avail. Rick had been determined to become a fashion photographer.

Satisfied with the model’s pose, she went back to the camera—only to frown in irritation as the door to the studio swung open, throwing an unwanted shadow across her shot, along with an equally unwanted suit clad male torso. The missing male model had obviously finally arrived—and ruined her shot by stepping into it.

Thoroughly exasperated, she pushed back the shiny swing of her blonde hair and told him, without removing her gaze from her camera, ‘You’re late—and you’re in my shot.’

It was the sudden silence and the stillness that had fallen over the rest of the room that alerted her to the fact that something was wrong. Her senses picked up on it and reacted by sending a quiverful of tiny darts of anxiety skimming along her spine. She stepped back from the camera and looked up—right into the coldly hostile gaze of the man who had just walked in. A tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, expensively suited man, whose body language reinforced the same cold hostility she could see in his eyes along with proud disdain. Against her will Lily could feel her eyes widening as she took in the reality of the man confronting her, her pulse beating unsteadily against her skin.

Whoever this man was, he was obviously no model. Even stripped he would be… He would be magnificent, Lily acknowledged, her stomach suddenly hollowing out with a sensation that took her completely off guard. If asked, she would have said—and meant it—that she was inured to male good looks, and that as far as she was concerned sexual attraction was a cruel deceit on the part of Mother Nature, designed to ensure the continuation of the species and best avoided. She had grown up in a world in which beauty and good looks were commodities to be ruthlessly traded and abused, which was why her own beauty was something she chose to downplay.

She intended to be crisp, cool and in control as she queried, ‘Yes?’ But instead of the apology for ruining her shot and the explanation of his presence she was expecting, she received an even more hostile look of silent, angry contempt that raked her from head to toe.

As yet he hadn’t so much as given a sideways look at the scantily clad girls who were now, Lily saw after a look at them herself, all gazing at him. And no wonder, she admitted.

He made the young male models look like the mere boys they were, for all their muscles, but then he was extraordinarily handsome—handsome, but cold. And Lily suspected judgemental. He exuded an air of raw male pride and sensual power, even if there was a grim harshness about his expression that warned her that whatever had brought him here it wasn’t going to be good news—for someone. But not her. He couldn’t be here for her, so why did his presence have every one of her carefully rigged inner alarm systems breaking into a cacophony of warning?

She was her parents’ daughter, Lily reminded herself. At some level that had to mean she was as vulnerable to that kind of overpowering male sensuality as her mother had been. And just as capable of using her own beauty for commercial exploitation? Lily struggled to repress the feeling that made her shudder—as though against an unwanted male touch. She would never allow herself to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

She was here to do a job, she reminded herself, not to give in to her own insecurities.

Whatever had brought him here to this shabby studio it wasn’t the prospect of modelling work. His face might be as commanding and as harshly delineated that a hundred thousand ancient Roman coins might have been struck in its patrician and imposing image. It might be the kind of face that could lead vast armies of men into war and entice any number of women into bed. But it was a face that currently bore an expression of such cutting contempt that if it was captured on camera it was more likely to send prospective buyers running for cover than rushing out to buy what he was supposed to be modelling.

Was he going to say anything to break the pool of tense silence he had created?

Lily took a deep breath, and repeated determinedly, ‘Yes?’

Another ice-cold look. The man must be close to inhuman, removed from the emotional vulnerabilities that affected the rest of the human race, not to be affected by the tension she could almost feel humming on the air.

‘You are the one responsible for this?’

His voice was quieter than she had expected, but redolent with the same power as his presence and grimly harsh.

Lily gave the studio and the models a brief concerned glance. He was obviously here on a hostile mission of complaint of some kind, and since she was standing in for her half-brother she knew that she was obliged to agree.

‘Yes.’

‘There’s something I want to say to you—in private.’

A rustle of reaction ran through the room. Lily wanted to tell him that there was nothing he could possibly have to say to her, and certainly not in private, but there was a nagging suspicion at the back of her mind that her half-brother might have done something to provoke this man’s anger.

‘Very well,’ she conceded. ‘But you will have to make whatever you want to say brief. As you can see, I’m in the middle of a shoot.’

The look of blistering contempt he gave her made Lily take a step back from him, before reluctantly moving forward through the door he was holding open for her. Out of old-fashioned good manners, or more in the manner of a guard determined not to allow his prisoner to escape?

The studio was in an old building, its door sturdy enough to block out the speculative questions Lily knew would be being asked by all the models and stylists inside it. She stood on the small landing at the top of the stairs that led to the studio, keeping as close to the door as she could.

At such close quarters to him there was nowhere to escape to—he was blocking her exit via the stairs by standing next to them.

‘Call me old-fashioned and sexist,’ he told her, ‘but somehow finding that it is a woman who is procuring young flesh for others and profiting financially by doing so is even more abhorrent and repellent than a man doing the same thing. And you are such a woman, aren’t you? You are a woman who lives off the vanity and foolishness of others, feeding them with false hope and empty dreams.’

Lily stared at him in disbelief. Revulsion filled her at the accusation he had made, accompanied by shock that he should have made it. The thought crossed her mind that he might be some kind of deranged madman—only to be squashed by the message from her senses that this was a man who was perfectly sane.

She pushed her hand into her hair a habitual gesture of insecurity and told him shakily, ‘I don’t know what all this is about, but I think you must have made a mistake.’

‘You’re a photographer who seeks out vulnerable young idiots with the promise of a glamorous modelling career that you know is all too likely to destroy them.’

‘That’s not true,’ Lily defended herself, but her voice wobbled slightly as she made the denial. After all, wasn’t what he was saying really very much in line with the way she herself felt about the modelling industry?

She took a deep breath, intending to tell him that, but before she could do so he continued grimly. ‘Have you no sense of shame? No compunction or guilt about what you do?’

Guilt. Ah, that was the word above all others that could trigger off an avalanche of dark memories inside her—a word like a poisoned dart aimed at her unprotected emotions. She had to get away from him, but she couldn’t. She was trapped here with him on the tiny landing. In her mind’s eye she saw the panic he was causing in her manifesting itself into a wild flight to escape from him, a desire to curl herself up into a ball of flesh so small that it could not be seen—or touched. But that was just in her imagination. The reality was that she could not escape.

‘This world into which you are attempting to drag Pietro—my nephew—is one of cruelty and corruption in which young flesh is used and abused by those who crave its beauty for their own debauched purposes.’

His nephew? Lily’s heart was thumping wildly. Every word he said carved a fresh wound into her own emotions, lacerating the too thin layer of fragility that was all she had to protect them.

‘I have no idea how many young people have fallen victim to your promises of fame and fortune, but I can tell you this. My nephew will not be one of them. Thank goodness he had the good sense to tell his family how he had been approached with promises of modelling work and money.’

Lily’s mouth had gone dry. She had always particularly disliked this aspect of her father’s work, knowing what painful fires of experience young models could be drawn into by the unscrupulous. To be accused as she was being accused now was such a shock that it robbed her of the ability to defend herself.

‘Here’s your money back.’ The man was slamming down a wad of euros. ‘Blood money—flesh money… How many of the vilest sort of predators were you planning to introduce him to at this party you invited him to attend with you after the shoot? Don’t bother to answer. Let me guess. As many of them as you could. Because that is what this business is about, isn’t it?’

Rick had invited the young man to accompany him to a party? Lily’s heart sank even further. Rick was a sociable guy. It was normal for him to go out after shoots and have a drink. Besides, it was fashion week, and Milan was full of important people from the top of the fashion tree. It was also full of those at the bottom of that world, though. The kind who…

She could feel a shudder of revulsion gripping her as her skin turned clammy with remembered fear and her heart pounded. She wanted to breathe fresh air. She wanted to escape from the past this man and their surroundings had brought back to her.

‘People like you disgust me. Outwardly you may possess the kind of beauty that stops men in the street, but all that beauty does is cloak your inner corruption.’

She had to get some fresh air. If she didn’t she was going to pass out. Think of something else, Lily told herself. Think of the present, not the past. Focus on something else.

The effort of trying to refocus her thoughts caused her to sway slightly on her feet. Immediately he came towards her, taking hold of her to steady her. Her brain knew the truth, but her body was reacting to a very different message that had her demanding with fierce anguish, ‘Don’t touch me.’ Her reaction to being imprisoned was instinctive and immediate, ripped from deep within her as she panicked and used her free hand to try and prise his fingers away from her wrist. But all he did was drag her further into his imprisoning hold.

Crushed against his body, Lily waited for the familiar feelings of nausea and terror to flood through her, but instead—unbelievably, and surely impossibly—her senses were sending her messages of an awareness of her captor so unfamiliar to her that they stunned her into a bewildered stillness.

Could it really be happening that, instead of filling her with repugnance, the cool cologne-over-male-warmth smell of him was actually arousing her desire to move closer to its source? How was it that the solid strength of his male body against her own felt somehow right? As though it was something her flesh approved of instead of feared. It was as though she had opened a door and walked into a world that was topsy-turvy—an Alice in Wonderland world in which what she’d expected to feel had been replaced by the unexpected. The totally unexpected, she acknowledged as she looked with bewilderment at the way her free hand was splayed out against his chest, her skin pale next to the dark fabric of his suit.

Only seconds had passed—seconds in time but an aeon in terms of her emotions. Now, alongside the confusion of what she was feeling, she had a growing sense of urgency. A desire—no, a need to be free from the intimacy of his hold. And not because she feared him, but because she feared her own awareness of him.

There was an odd look in his eyes, a sort of shocked and furious disbelief, as though he couldn’t fully comprehend something.

‘Let me go.’

The words, echoing from her past, had a galvanising effect on her captor, banishing that look immediately and replacing it with the anger she could now see in his eyes. Anger was better—anger meant that they were enemies and on opposite sides, even though it was obvious to Lily that, whoever and whatever he was, he wasn’t used to women rejecting him. His gaze was a dangerous volcano of molten gold, fixing on hers, pinning her beneath it. She could feel herself starting to tremble, weakness filling her. Tiny betraying shivers of sensation rayed out all over her body from its point of contact with his hand. Sexual awareness? Sexual desire? From her? For this man who was a stranger to her—a stranger who had already shown his bitter contempt for her? How could he have such an intense impact on her, sidetracking her away from telling him just how wrong he was about her?