style="font-size:15px;"> He guided her to a chair and she sat on it nervelessly. His own mind was still reeling, still trying to come to grips with what he had just learnt. The double tragedy surrounding Marcos’s baby son.
Where was he? Where was Marcos’s son?
That was the question he had to have answered now! A cold fear went through him. Newborn babies were in high demand for adoption by childless couples, and a fatherless baby whose mother had died in childbirth might have been just such a child...
Had he been adopted already? The question seared in Anatole’s head. If so, then he would have a nightmare of a search to track him down—even if he were allowed to by the authorities. And if he had already been adopted then would his adoptive parents be likely to let him go? Would the authorities be likely to let him demand—plead!—that they accede to his need for Timon to know that he had an heir after all?
He stood looking down at the sister of the woman who had borne his cousin a child and died in the process. He swallowed.
‘Where is my cousin’s son?’ he asked. He tried not to sound brusque, demanding, but he had to know. He had to know!
Her chin lifted, her eyes flashing to his.
‘He’s with me!’ came the answer. Vehement, passionate.
Abstractedly Anatole found himself registering that when this drab dab of a female spoke passionately her nondescript features suddenly sharpened into life, giving her a vividness that was not drab at all. Then the sense of her words hit him.
‘With you?’
She took a ragged breath, her fingers clutching the side of the chair. ‘Yes! With me! And he’s staying with me! That’s all you need to know!’
She leapt to her feet, fear and panic impelling her. Too much had happened—shock after shock—and she couldn’t cope with it, couldn’t take it in.
Anatole stepped towards her, urgency in his voice. ‘Miss Brandon, we have to talk—discuss—’
‘No! There’s nothing to discuss! Nothing!’
And then, before his frustrated gaze, she rushed from the room.
Lyn fled. Her mind was in turmoil. Though she managed to make her way into her next lecture she was incapable of concentrating. Only one single emotion was uppermost.
Georgy is mine! Mine, mine, mine!
Lindy had given the baby to her with her dying breath and she would never, never betray that! Never!
Grief clutched at Lyn again.
‘Look after Georgy—’
They had been Lindy’s final words before the darkness had closed over her fevered, stricken brain and she had ebbed from life.
And I will! I will look after him all my life—all his life—and I will never let any harm come to him, never abandon him or give up him!
‘Just you and me, Georgy!’ she whispered later as, morning lectures finally over, she collected him from the college crèche and made her way to the bus stop and back home for the afternoon.
But as she clambered on board the bus, stashing the folding buggy one-handed as she held Georgy in the other, she completely failed to see an anonymous black car pull out into the road behind the bus. Following it.
Two hours later Anatole stood in front of the block of flats his investigator had informed him was Lynette Brandon’s place of accommodation and stared bleakly at it. It was not an attractive building, being of ugly sixties design, with stained concrete and peeling paint. The whole area was just as dreary—no place for Timon Petranakos’s great-grandson to be brought up!
Resolve steeling, he rang the doorbell.
Copyright © 2014 by Julia James
Jennie Lucas
“Thank you for hiring me,” Irene said softly.
As the bodyguards trailed past him to the rear cabin Sharif frowned in surprise. “Thank you for solving my problem.”
A flight attendant served some sparkling water on a silver tray. Taking a sip of the cool water, Irene looked at her new employer.
Sharif looked handsome and powerful in his stark white robes, sitting on a white leather sofa on the other side of the spacious cabin.
A low laugh escaped her lips. “No one would ever have guessed I’d someday be companion to a princess of Makhtar. Are you still sure about this?”
He set down his glass. His handsome face was inscrutable as he slowly looked her over. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Irene hesitated, feeling self-conscious. “I told you I have a bad habit of talking back to employers. Knowing the kind of woman I am, Your Highness, are you sure you really want me as your employee?”
“I’m sure, Miss Taylor. There can be no doubt.” His black eyes met hers as he said huskily, “I want you.”
JENNIE LUCAS grew up dreaming about faraway lands. At fifteen, hungry for experience beyond the borders of her small Idaho city, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and travelled around the US, supporting herself with jobs as diverse as gas station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant.
At twenty-two she met the man who would be her husband. After their marriage she graduated from Kent State with a degree in English. Seven years after she started writing she got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.
Since then life has been hectic, with a new writing career, a sexy husband and two small children, but she’s having a wonderful (albeit sleepless) time. She loves immersing herself in dramatic, glamorous, passionate stories. Maybe she can’t physically travel to Morocco or Spain right now, but for a few hours a day, while her children are sleeping, she can be there in her books.
Jennie loves to hear from her readers. You can visit her website at www.jennielucas.com, or drop her a note at [email protected]
To Pete,
who said, “OF COURSE you should go to Dubai!”
Thanks, honey, for giving me the world, every single day.
HE KNEW HE wanted her from the moment he saw her.
Sharif
