point of her life if she couldn’t save others from what she’d gone through? Oh, she realised most of the children she met had families who cared for them, loved them—unlike Claudia, who’d been abandoned at twelve years old. But they still had to suffer the pain, the pity. The bewildering sense of shame. As with most childhood diseases, when adolescence gave way to adulthood the side effects waned. But she knew firsthand that was altogether too late to erase the emotional scars etched deep in the soul.
Eyes closing under the weight of fatigue, she inhaled deeply. She was so close to success she could taste musky victory on the tip of her tongue. Or was that his glorious woodsy scent? Good grief—she was losing it.
‘I need to speak with you on a matter of urgency,’ he said, the deep cadence of his voice ricocheting off the white-tiled walls.
God, that voice… ‘Have we met before?’ There was something vaguely familiar about him.
‘No,’ he said, standing with his feet slightly apart, hands behind his back, just inside the doorway.
Claudia suppressed an impulse to stand to attention. He was the most commanding man she’d ever seen. Almost military-like. Not that she had much to compare him to. One of the downfalls of self-imposed exile: she didn’t get out much. The upside was that she rarely broke out in hives and she didn’t get close to anyone. Claudia had no one and that was exactly how she liked it. No touching of her body mind or soul and there’d be no tears.
‘I’m extremely busy, Mr Garcia,’ she said, tugging at the cuffs of her coat, covering her wrists. ‘If you don’t mind …’
The words evaporated from her tongue as she caught the searing intensity in his blue eyes as he followed her every move, a frown creasing his brow.
Her stomach hollowed. Stop fidgeting and he’ll stop staring! ‘What exactly is it you want?’
‘May I come in?’ he asked, moving closer.
The word no was eclipsed from her mind as his body loomed impossibly larger. Within two seconds self-preservation kicked in and she edged her way around the desk to ensure a three-foot metal barricade. Back off, handsome.
Showing some degree of intelligence under all that ripped muscle, he paused mid stride, then devoured her face as if his eyes were starved. After he’d looked his fill their gazes caught…held. Claudia stared, mesmerised, as black pools swelled, virtually erasing the blue of his irises.
Pulse skyrocketing, the heavy beat echoed through her skull. After a few tense moments she blinked, trying to disconnect and sever the pull, unsure of what was happening. But no matter how hard she tried things just seemed to get worse: the temperature in the room soared and her spine melted into her pelvis under the scorching intensity.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ she whispered.
‘You look like …’ He blinked rapidly, his face morphing into a mixture of amazement and disgust as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind what he was feeling or thinking.
The past slammed into her and she stumbled back a step. She’d seen that look on too many faces as they’d stared at her juvenile muscle-fatigued body, ravaged by skin rashes as unsightly as they were unfair. Yet the most destroying memory of all was the black-hearted response from her own flesh and blood.
Oh, God, why was she thinking about that now?
‘What?’ she asked, reaching behind her to pat the desk, searching for her glasses.
Lips twisting, almost cruel, he said, ‘You look like your mother.’
Her hand stilled together with her heartbeat.
The glass door, the stark overhead lighting—all seemed to implode, raining shards of glass to perforate her carefully controlled, sanitised world.
Such a fool. So preoccupied with work. So pathetically enraptured by this man. She’d missed the signs staring her in the face.
His name. His deep, devastating voice. His fierce, powerful demeanour.
‘My parents sent you,’ Claudia breathed in a tremulous whisper.
No, no, no. She couldn’t go back to Arunthia. Not now. Maybe never. It was a place she was only willing to visit in her imagination during moments of agonising loneliness. If only to reassure herself she was better off on her own.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a cool remoteness that made her shudder and remember all at once. For her childhood years had been made up of her parents’ haughty detachment and hostile impatience.
It was their impatience that had condemned her, because Claudia had been an enigma no doctor could diagnose. Their detachment had sentenced her to extradition because she was an embarrassment—she’d been swept off to England, placed under the care of tutors, governesses and an army of paediatric specialists while her so-called loving parents forgot she’d ever existed.
They had betrayed her in the most unforgivable way.
The ache in her chest crawled up her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut.
It didn’t take a brainiac to decipher their message. This man said it all. They wanted something and this time they were deadly serious. Just fight, Claudia. You’ve done it before and you can do it again.
She just wasn’t entirely sure she had the strength.
Exhaustion pulsed through her weak leg muscles and her hand shot out to grip the edge of the desk as she begged her body to stand tall. Come on, Claudia, fight. They don’t need you. They didn’t want the imperfect child you were. Don’t give them the chance to hurt you again.
Memories gushed like a riptide, flooding her psyche with such speed they threatened to break through the dam and obliterate her every defence.
Within the blink of an eye Claudia’s day veered from bad to apocalyptic.
Lucas recognised shock when he saw it, and for the first time in his adult life the same emotion coursed through his veins, hot and unfathomable. While it blanched her exquisite flawless face, and widened her huge cat-like amber eyes, it completely severed his vocal cords from his brain.
Sans hideous spectacles, with wispy damp ebony curls framing her oval face, Claudia Thyssen was much like her mother. But where Marysse Verbault was strength personified, her daughter appeared almost…frail. The sight of her bending forward, her small hand pushing into her flat stomach, resurrected a dark tonnage of guilt that sat on his chest like an armoured tank.
Vulnerable. Undoubtedly timid. Traits he associated with the cold sweat of nightmares.
Yet his internal reaction to this woman was the complete opposite of chilling. The instant thrash of desire was so strong it knifed him in the gut.
She radiated supreme intellect, and Lucas would be the first to admit he preferred his women to be like uncomplicated candy. Covered from neck to calf in a frumpy lab coat, Claudia was more geek than glamour puss. So why did the mere sight of her raise his body temperature, thicken his blood?
Lucas frowned as his lethargic pulse slowed his every reaction and his mentally prepared speech drifted to the melamine floor in tatters.
Dios,
