Anger pierced him, sharp and sudden.
He’d almost been taken in by her little-girl-lost routine. Him and the rest of the male population, apparently, Olivier thought acidly.
He’d started the evening with one aim in mind, he reminded himself bitterly. To seduce Bella. That was what he’d set out to do, and he’d almost allowed some ridiculous, uncharacteristic and completely misplaced sense of chivalry and sentimentality to stand in his way.
He should be grateful that he’d realised how foolish he was being before it was too late. Bella Lawrence wasn’t the innocent she pretended to be.
She was as clever as she was beautiful, and she had played him like a fool.
As he approached she looked up at him, and he saw nameless emotion blazing in her midnight eyes.
‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked with savage courtesy.
‘Yes, please.’ She came towards him without hesitation. Her lips were still swollen from his own kisses. He summoned a glacial smile. At least he could now enjoy what was on offer without guilt.
A self-confessed romance junkie, India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon® writers’ guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she also gained a degree in English Literature from Manchester University and, in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of romance, met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity, and heaps of pink washing generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!
Recent titles by the same author:
MISTRESS: HIRED FOR THE BILLIONAIRE’S PLEASURE
THE ITALIAN’S CAPTIVE VIRGIN THE ITALIAN’S DEFIANT MISTRESS
TAKEN FOR REVENGE, BEDDED FOR PLEASURE
BY
INDIA GREY
This one’s for Daisy, who makes the hard times easier and the good times better. With love and thanks.
CHAPTER ONE
WAVES lapping on a silver-sanded beach… A warm breeze sighing through palm trees… Or how about, a wide blue sky filled with marshmallow puffs of pure white cloud…?
Nope. No good.
Bella Lawrence’s eyes snapped open and she bit her lip, focusing hard on the dainty French wirework chandelier currently under the auctioneer’s hammer. There was absolutely no point in trying to think calm thoughts at the moment; not while her heart was beating at roughly twice its normal speed and her hands were slick with sweat.
Not while she could still feel his eyes on her.
She wasn’t sure when he’d come in, only that he hadn’t been there when she’d taken her place at the start of the auction. She’d felt a growing awareness of heat on her skin and a tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach, and when she’d turned her head he’d been there. Looking.
At her.
Maybe she had lipstick on her teeth…
Sweeping her tongue nervously across them, she allowed herself another very swift glance from under her eyelashes, and felt her stampeding pulse rocket again. He was standing by the wall, making no attempt whatsoever to look interested in the rapid-fire voice of the auctioneer or the bids criss-crossing the crowded room. There was a compelling stillness about him that made her long to lift her head and gaze at him openly, letting her eyes linger on the breadth of his shoulders and the hard planes of his lean, tanned face. She needed to look at his mouth too, she thought desperately, staring hard at the chandelier. At first glance it had looked almost indecently perfect—the deeply indented upper lip sloping steeply upward from a full, sensual lower one—but she knew that if she looked again she might not be able to drag her eyes off him.
Maybe she knew him from somewhere?
Ha. Like she wouldn’t remember a face like that.
Taking a deep, steadying breath Bella twisted her rolled-up auction programme between her hands and tried to redirect her thoughts, as the expensive therapist her brother Miles had insisted on finding for her had urged her to do. When she felt her emotions running high, threatening to overwhelm her, she was supposed to think of something calming. Obediently she tried the beach thing again.
He was still looking at her.
Surreptitiously she untucked her short bobbed hair from behind her ear and let it swing forward over her face in a dark curtain, shielding her from the impassive scrutiny of his stare. The problem was silver-sanded beaches were such a cliché, and if she ever found herself on one she’d no doubt be bored to tears. There had to be some difference between feeling calm and feeling half dead with boredom, didn’t there?
It was a question she had asked herself repeatedly in the last five months.
Bella shifted restlessly on the hard auction room chair and unfurled her programme. Two lots to go. The wire work chandelier was dismissed in a crack of the gavel and an earthenware confit jar took its place. If she leaned forward she could just catch a glimpse of the porter waiting at the edge of the room, carrying a large, heavily framed painting. The painting that in a few minutes would hopefully be hers, and then she could leave the stuffy, overcrowded room and the unsettling…arousing stare of the stranger.
Which, she had to remind herself sternly, would be a good thing.
She fixed her eyes on the painting, trying to focus on the greyish rectangle of the house against its backdrop of green—anything to stop herself turning to look again at the man. This picture was completely and without a doubt the perfect present for Grandmère, and by bringing Bella to the auction rooms the very week that it had come up for sale it seemed that fate, for once, was on her side.
Although, actually, believing in fate was another habit she was supposed to be giving up. The expensive therapist said that it was important that she started to take responsibility for her own actions and reactions instead of blaming vague outside forces like fate or destiny. Or horoscopes. She sighed. It wasn’t easy. In fact in her darker moments she worried that all those things she was trying to give up weren’t so much habits as personality traits. Parts of herself.
What would be left afterwards?
The gavel dropped on the jar and Bella sat up. This was it. With a renewed sense of purpose and determination she kept her gaze averted from the dark stare of the stranger and focused all her attention on the auctioneer.
‘Lot four-six-five,’ he announced in a bored voice, as if he wasn’t about to sell a momentous piece of Bella’s family history. ‘Charming amateur oil on canvas of a beautiful French manor house. Who’ll start the bidding at twenty pounds?’
There was a shuffling of feet on the front row. A woman with dyed red hair raised her hand wearily.
‘Twenty pounds at the front here. Thirty with you, sir…’
A rapid flurry of bids followed,