told her mother, her bleak plan had been to use the fast-dwindling amount of money she’d secretly squirrelled away to rent a tiny flat, somewhere in a cheap part of the costas, and then get the first job she could find to bring in a salary, however meagre. Her mother would be appalled, but what else could she do?
But if she insisted on that now, after the doctor’s grim warnings, she would be risking her mother’s life by forcing her to leave the villa and abandoning all hope.
By morning, dull-eyed and heavy-hearted, and filled with a kind of numb, dreadful resignation, Talia had come to the only conclusion she could. After her bleak exchanges with the lawyers in London, when they’d told her she and her mother were penniless and homeless, she had finally tracked down the headquarters of the mysterious LX Holdings. A morning flight had brought her here.
And now, paralysed by shock and disbelief, she was standing in the doorway of the huge office she had forced her way into in sheer desperation.
It could not be—it could not be...
Luke? But how—? Why—?
Shocked words fell from her frozen lips. ‘I don’t understand—’
With a curt gesture he dismissed his PA who backed away, closing the door as she left. She saw him step towards her. Heard him speak.
‘Talia...’
There was a hoarseness in his voice but his face was closed, filled with tension.
‘Why did you come here? How?’ The questions shot from him like bullets.
Talia felt her face work, but speaking was almost impossible. Two absolutely conflicting realities echoed in her head. Then slowly, as the hideous truth dawned on her, she made the connection—forced herself to make it.
‘It can’t be—you can’t be...’ Her voice was faint. Her face convulsed again. ‘You can’t be LX Holdings—’
She saw Luke’s brows snap together, as if what she’d said made no sense. His mouth twisted. ‘How did you find me?’ he said. He looked at her. ‘How did you know?’ he demanded. He had said nothing of his identity to her that fateful night—no more had she told him hers. So how...?
‘They...they told me. Your lawyers in London. When they spoke to me.’
Her voice was staccato, shock thinning her words. He was still staring back at her as if what she’d said made no sense at all. Her face worked again.
‘I’m Natasha Grantham,’ she said.
LUKE FELT THE world reel. He heard her words—how could he not?—but he felt only denial slice through him. No, he would not let her be that! Anyone but that!
She was speaking still, and he could still hear her—hear her and want only to silence her.
‘I’m Gerald Grantham’s daughter. You’ve taken everything he possessed. But...but I’m asking you not...not to take the Marbella villa as well. That...that’s why I’ve come here.’
Her voice faltered and she fell silent.
He stilled, and now a new emotion filled him—one that was cold, like ice water.
‘You are Gerald Grantham’s daughter?’ he repeated.
He had to be sure. In his head skimmed fractured memory from long years ago, when he’d first set himself to studying everything he could about the man he was going to destroy. Grantham had a daughter, yes, and a wife, too—always being trotted out at his side, dressed to the nines, glittering with jewellery, frequenting expensive venues, spending his ill-gotten money.
What had been the wife’s name? Marcia? Marilyn? Something like that...
And the daughter?
He felt that ice water fill his veins, heard her faltering voice echo in his pounding head, forced the connection through his brain. Natasha, she had said.
Logic clicked. Natasha. Wasn’t that a diminutive of Natalia? Talia...?
Talia!
Savage emotion seared through him, but he quenched it with the ice-cold water in his veins. His eyes rested on hers but they were masked, letting nothing show in them. He saw her nod and lick her lips. Those full, passionate lips that had caressed his body in ecstasy.
And all along she had been the daughter of the man he had spent his adult life seeking to destroy...
The irony, as savage as the emotion shredding his brain right now, was unbearable. How could the woman who had burned across his life so incandescently, so briefly, turn out to be the daughter of Gerald Grantham?
He tore his mind away. Focussed only on the present. Ruthlessly he slammed control over himself, refused to let any part of the emotion tearing across him show. There was no expression in his eyes and his body was taut and tense.
‘And you have come here wanting to keep the villa in Marbella?’ He echoed her words, his voice as impassive as his face.
He saw her nod again, as if her neck were stiff.
For one long, endless moment he just looked at her, fighting for control as the shock of her identity rampaged through his consciousness. He studied her as she stood in front of him, her stance rigid, clearly as shocked as he, and hiding it a lot less well.
Deliberately he let himself take in everything about her. She was wearing a suit in dark aubergine, a designer number, though too fussily styled to show her to her best advantage. Her glorious hair was confined to a plait, her make-up was subdued, and he thought she looked thinner than when he had seen her at that party.
He considered what had caused that: the sudden poverty she’d been plunged into...the complete reversal of her circumstances... What a blow that must have been to her.
Talia Grantham.
The name was like a dead weight around his neck. Gerald Grantham’s daughter—the gilded, pampered daughter of his enemy.
She was that all along and I didn’t know.
The realisation, coming as it had out of the blue, was like a savage blow to his guts, doubling him up with the force of it.
And now she was here, in a designer outfit Gerald Grantham’s money had bought for her, wanting to go on living in a palatial villa on an exclusive gated estate in the rich man’s playground of Marbella. As if she had every right to do so. Every expectation that of course she could go on living there.
Gerald Grantham’s daughter—taking the world for granted. Taking what she wanted just as her father had. Splashing his money on herself—money that had been bled from her father’s victims.
He could feel another emotion beginning to mount in him. It was an emotion he knew well, that had
