HELENA SHAW HAD been sitting in the elegant marble foyer for the best part of two hours when the man she had trekked halfway across London to see finally strode into the exclusive Mayfair hotel.
She had almost given up. After all the effort she had devoted to tracking him down, she had almost lost her nerve. Had almost let cowardice—and the voice in her head crying insanity—drive her out of the plush upholstered chair and back into the blessed obscurity of the crowded rush-hour streets.
But she had not fled. She had sat and waited—and waited some more.
And now he was here.
Her stomach dropped, weightless for a moment as though she had stepped from a great height into nothingness, and then the fluttering started—a violent sensation that made her belly feel like a cage full of canaries into which a half-starved tomcat had been loosed.
Breathe, she instructed herself, and watched him stride across the foyer, tall and dark and striking in a charcoal-grey two-piece that screamed power suit even without the requisite tie around his bronzed throat.
Women stared.
Men stepped out of his way.
And he ignored them all, his big body moving with an air of intent until, for one heart-stopping moment, his footsteps slowed on the polished marble and he half turned in her direction, eyes narrowed under a sharp frown as he surveyed the hotel’s expansive interior.
Helena froze. Shrouded in shadows cast by soft lighting and half hidden behind a giant spray of exotic honey-scented blooms, she was certain he couldn’t see her, yet for one crazy moment she had the unnerving impression he could somehow sense her scrutiny. Her very presence. As if, after all these years, they were still tethered by an invisible thread of awareness.
A crack of thunder, courtesy of the storm the weathermen had been promising Londoners since yesterday, made Helena jump. She blinked, pulled in a sharp breath and let the air out with a derisive hiss. She had no connection with this man. Whatever bond had existed between them was long gone, destroyed by her father and buried for ever in the ashes of bitterness and hurt.
A hurt Leonardo Vincenti would soon revisit on her family if she failed to stop him seizing her father’s company.
She grabbed her handbag and stood, her pulse picking up speed as she wondered if he would see her. But he had already resumed his long strides towards the bank of elevators. She hurried after him, craning her neck to keep his dark head and broad shoulders in her line of sight. Not that she’d easily lose him in a crowd. He stood out from the pack—that much hadn’t changed—though he seemed even taller than she remembered, darker somehow, the aura he projected now one of command and power.
Her stomach muscles wound a little tighter.
Europe’s business commentators had dubbed him the success of the decade: an entrepreneurial genius who’d turned a software start-up into a multi-million-dollar enterprise in less than ten years and earned a coveted spot on the rich list. The more reputable media sources called him single-minded and driven. Others dished up less flattering labels like hard-nosed and cut-throat.
Words that reminded Helena too much of her father. Yet even hard-nosed and cut-throat seemed too mild, too charitable, for a man like Douglas Shaw.
She shouldered her bag, clutched the strap over her chest.
Her father was a formidable man, but if the word regret existed in his vocabulary he must surely rue the day he’d aimed his crosshairs at Leonardo Vincenti. Now the young Italian he’d once decreed unsuitable for his daughter was back, seven years older, considerably wealthier and, by all accounts, still mad as hell at the man who’d run him out of town.
He stopped, pushed the button for an elevator and shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. Behind him, Helena hovered so close she could see the fine weave in the fabric of his jacket, the individual strands of black hair curling above his collar.
She sucked in a deep breath. ‘Leo.’
He turned, his dark brows rising into an arch of enquiry that froze along with the rest of his face the instant their gazes collided. His hands jerked out of his pockets. His brows plunged back down.
‘What the hell...?’
Those three words, issued in a low, guttural growl, raised the tiny hairs on her forearms and across her nape.
He’d recognised her, then.
She tilted her head back. In her modest two-inch heels she stood almost five foot ten, but still she had to hike her chin to lock her gaze with his.
And oh, sweet mercy, what a gaze it was.
Dark. Hard. Glittering. Like polished obsidian and just as impenetrable. How had she forgotten the mind-numbing effect those midnight eyes could have on her?
Concentrate.
‘I’d like to talk,’ she said.
A muscle moved in his jaw, flexing twice before he spoke. ‘You do not own a phone?’
‘Would you have taken my call?
He met her challenge with a smile—if the tight, humourless twist of his lips could be called a smile. ‘Probably not. But then you and I have nothing to discuss. On the phone or in person.’
An elevator pinged and opened behind him. He inclined his head in a gesture she might have construed as polite if not for the arctic chill in his eyes.
‘I am sorry you have wasted your time.’ And with that he swung away and stepped into the elevator.
Helena hesitated, then quickly rallied and dashed in after him. ‘You’ve turned up after seven years of silence and come after my father’s company. I hardly think that qualifies as nothing.’
‘Get out of the elevator, Helena.’
The soft warning made the skin across her scalp prickle. Or maybe it was hearing her name spoken in that deep, accented baritone that drove a wave of discomforting heat through her?
The elevator doors whispered closed, cocooning them in a space that felt too small and intimate despite the effect of mirrors on three walls.
She planted her feet. ‘No.’
Colour slashed his cheekbones and his dark eyes locked with hers in a staring match that quickly tested the limits of her bravado. Just as she feared that lethal gaze would reduce her to a pile of cinders, he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out an access card.
‘As you wish,’ he said, his tone mild—too mild, a voice warned. He flashed the card across a sensor and jabbed the button labelled ‘Penthouse Suite’. With a soft whir, the elevator began its stomach-dropping ascent.
Helena groped for the steel handrail behind her, the rapid rising motion—or maybe the butterflies in her belly she couldn’t quell—making her head swim.
It seemed her ex-lover could not only afford the finest digs in London...he could afford to stay in the hotel’s most exclusive suite.
The knowledge made her heart beat faster.