the owner of the hotels he managed—and, even worse, he had now been found out. He faced a lengthy prison sentence if charges were pressed.
‘I can’t go to jail, Skye!’ he had wept. ‘Not now, not with your mother so ill! It would kill her. She just can’t manage without me. You have to help me!’
‘I’ll do anything I can, Dad.’ Skye had reacted instinctively, knowing there was nothing else she could say.
Her mother’s heart condition had been a cause of great concern for some time, but lately her condition had deteriorated. Now it seemed that if the next operation she had didn’t succeed, her only hope was a transplant. ‘Anything at all—though I don’t know what help I can be!’
But her father had known. Cyril Antonakos had already proposed a way out of the terrible trap in which Andrew Marston found himself. And Skye had listened in horror as he had revealed just how vital she was to their scheme. Cyril wanted an heir. To achieve that end, obviously he needed a wife and, as his last marriage had ended in an acrimonious divorce, he had selected Skye as the potential mother of his child. If she married him, gave him the heir he craved, he wouldn’t prosecute.
In order to save Andrew Marston from imprisonment, she was being asked to marry a man older than her father.
And tomorrow she had to give him her answer.
That was why she was here tonight. That was why she was out on her own, spending her one last night of freedom in the impersonal bright lights and busy streets of London. She could only pray that those bright lights—and the crowded bars—were enough to distract her from what tomorrow would bring.
Not giving herself time to reconsider, she had swung into the wide doorway, struggling with the big glass doors, pushing her way through the crowd, trying to reach the bar.
And immediately she had felt that she had made a mistake.
The bar was warm and bright, true. It was also very busy. And everyone there seemed to know someone else. No one was on their own, without anyone else to talk to, to smile at.
And even if they had been alone, she told herself, no one else could ever be quite so lonely, quite so isolated as she felt right now.
She had been about to turn round and go back out when she had spotted the one other person who, like her, was on his own.
Should she—could she—make herself go up and talk to him? That had been her plan from the start. To meet someone and talk to them, so, hopefully, driving away this appalling sense of isolation and loss, melting the cruel block of ice that seemed to surround her world, and giving her some moments of freedom and relaxation before the world closed in on her again.
But this man didn’t look the type who could fulfil that hope for her. He was too big, too dark, too dangerous-looking. His long body lounged in the chair, apparently at ease, but there was an air of menace, of carefully leashed power, about him that made her heart kick inside her chest, so that she caught her breath in shock. His black-haired head was turned away from her, and hooded eyes stared down into a glass half-filled with red wine.
It was almost as if she had come across a sleek, honed hunting cat crouching in wait in some small, shaded jungle clearing. Just seeing him slowed her steps to a halt, making her hesitate and rethink.
And that was when the call from the nearest table had distracted her.
‘Hello, darling. Looking for someone?’
If she hadn’t been so diverted by the appearance of the dark-haired man in the corner, so desperate for company and distraction, Skye would have simply switched on an automatic smile, murmured something about having ‘just spotted them, thank you,’ and moved on. But her steps had already slowed, she had stopped beside the table, and somehow she couldn’t find the words to extricate herself.
And they clearly thought that she was with them for the evening—and more. Their smiles, the hot, lascivious way their eyes travelled over her, made her feel uneasy. She might have been looking for a last chance to spend her time as a free, single twenty-two-year-old, but this was not what she’d had in mind.
She tried to turn down the offers of a drink with what she hoped was an apologetic smile, an expression of regret, but she could see that they weren’t appeased. The blond was growing noticeably aggressive, and when she tried to step back and move away she found that his black-haired friend had grabbed her arm and was gripping it in a bruisingly tight hold.
‘So what’s wrong—aren’t we good enough for you?’
‘No—really—I—I’m waiting for someone.’
‘Like who?’ Frank disbelief sounded roughly in his voice.
‘My—my boyfriend. He said—he’d meet me here.’
The blond made an elaborate play of looking around the room, searching for the imaginary boyfriend.
‘Then I think you’ve been stood up, Red. He’s clearly not coming for you.’
The grip on her arm tightened cruelly, pulling her closer so that she had to bend slightly to adjust to the tug on her wrist.
‘He—he’s just late.’
‘Do you know what I think, Red?’
It was a mocking whisper, a malicious gleam lighting in his eyes.
‘I think he’s not coming. In fact, I have this suspicion that you’re telling me lies—that this lover of yours just doesn’t exist.’
‘Oh, but he does.’
Skye jumped like a startled cat as the words came from behind her. The deep, gorgeously accented, sexy male voice was the last thing she had ever anticipated. It was the fantasy she might have wished for—the dream lover turning up to rescue her from the awkward, uncomfortable situation in which she found herself.
But this was no fantasy. The startled gaze of her tormentors had gone from her face to somewhere behind the back of her head, shock and consternation showing in their eyes. The controlling grip on her wrist had loosened, letting her pull free. ‘Oh!’
The soft cry of shock was pushed from her as a pair of tightly muscled arms slid round her waist from behind. A hard, powerful frame was pressed up against her back, its heat and strength reaching right through the material of her jacket, to her skin, her bones—seeming to scorch her soul.
She felt safe, protected, surrounded by this unknown man. His warmth and strength enclosed her, the sound of his breathing tantalised her ears, and the scent of his skin filled her nostrils.
‘Sorry I’m late, darling,’ the husky voice murmured against her neck. ‘You know how these meetings drag on. But I’m here now.’
‘Mmm.’
It was all she could manage and she didn’t care if it sounded more like a sigh of sensual response than any coherent answer.
Her body was tingling all over, burning in instant response to just this unknown man’s touch. She couldn’t see his face—the only parts of his body that were visible to her were the hands that were clasped around her waist.
And they were intensely masculine hands. Big and square and capable-looking. They dwarfed her own smaller, slimmer fingers as they closed warmly over them. No rings. The only adornment was a sleek platinum watch on one wrist, just above an immaculate white shirt cuff, the steel-grey of an elegant and expensive jacket.
‘Forgive me?’
‘Oh, yes!’
How could she say anything else? She would have agreed to anything, accepted anything from him. It was impossible to think straight, and what tiny fragments of thoughts still lingered inside her head were totally shattered, blasted into oblivion by what he did next.
She sensed movement behind her, just out of sight. Felt the brush of silky hair against her cheek, then suddenly there was the press of warm lips against the back