Claiming His Hidden Heir Read online

  ‘Very.’ She took a sip of champagne and then smirked. ‘My ex is paying.’

  ‘Even better,’ he said, and then Luka laughed and it was the most delicious sound she had ever heard.

  But then he met her eyes and his voice was serious. ‘He must be a fool to have let you go.’

  ‘Not really,’ Cecelia said. ‘I let him down.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, but I did. I kept something very important from him.’

  ‘Then he should have got over it, or perhaps he should have taken the time to work out why you did what you did.’

  He saw a flash of tears and decided that there would be no tears now.

  ‘I shouldn’t really be seen drinking in the restaurant with a guest,’ Luka said. He held her eyes and the tears dispersed like a chink in the mist.

  ‘Then come back to mine.’

  It was the bravest thing she had done and he was so deliciously casual in his response.

  ‘Sure, though for the sake of discretion, you should leave first.’

  She would never not want him, Cecelia knew as she stood to go, but he caught her wrist.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like?’ he asked. ‘Anything at all?’

  He was inviting her to name her wants.

  This she did.

  Cecelia bent over and whispered into his ear and then pulled back, wondering at his reaction and if he might laugh at her request, but he just nodded.

  ‘No problem.’

  She felt as if she was on a high as she arrived back at the villa.

  A dizzy high and, yes, it might just be sex but she would take it if it afforded them a start.

  She did not turn on the lights. Instead, she slipped off her clothes and lay on the bed. Her body felt as though it might burst into flames of desire as she lay there.

  Waiting.

  Not wondering as to their future, not berating herself with the impossibility of it all, just waiting for her night with him.

  She heard the splash from the pool and closed her eyes as she listened to him move through the water and then she caught the slide of the villa doors.

  And then, dripping wet, he leaned over her.

  As per her request.

  She felt the mattress indent as he knelt over her and relished the cold drops of water on her skin. ‘I want you, Cece...’ he told her. His mouth found hers and she closed her eyes to the bliss of his kiss. ‘I’ve been crazy about you for so long.’

  His voice was raw with want, and even if he was simply saying it for this night of fantasy, even if he simply knew how to pleasure women through years of practice, she didn’t care just so long as this night he pleasured her.

  His kiss tasted of salty ocean water and his body was cold and wet while hers burnt beneath him.

  ‘There’s been no one since you,’ he told her. He broke the fantasy a little, yet she ached for it to be true and in response she gave in to his kiss.

  His tongue was tender yet probing and she could feel his erection between her thighs. She yearned for him to enter her, yet he held back.

  ‘I’m on the Pill,’ she told him.

  ‘That costs more, lady,’ he teased. He made her laugh and he joined her, and then he stopped laughing and took her arms, which were wrapped around him, and held them above her head, so that she could not move, and could only look at him.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her, and she closed her eyes.

  ‘Luka, don’t.’

  ‘Look at me,’ he said, and she did.

  ‘I love you.’

  He was tired of holding back, tired of denying it.

  ‘Please, please, don’t just say it,’ she begged. No matter how much she yearned to hear it, she could not stand that it might be a game and mere words delivered from silken lips by a man who knew what to say.

  ‘But I do,’ Luka said. He was starting to realise that Cece did need him to call the shots, and now he knew why and he went back to their conversation in the restaurant, when she had referred to him as her ex. ‘Perhaps your ex should have understood that for you it’s hard to believe someone might love you, when no one ever has before.’

  He was so right, and so for a moment she allowed herself the bliss of believing he did as Luka took her deeply.

  He moaned with relief as he slipped inside, and she gave in to bliss, to the dream that his love was hers and that the body that moved over and within her might be hers for ever.

  Eyes open, she watched as he moved with her, each stroke of him inside bringing her nearer to a peak, and she gave in to his kiss and shattered to his bliss.

  ‘Cece...’ he groaned as he spilled inside her. There could be no place better than this.

  In this still, dark place on a sultry night, she fell asleep in his arms and pretended this was love.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘I MEANT WHAT I said,’ Luka told her.

  She woke to his words and found he was spooned in behind her. His hand moved from her breast as he played with the stones of her necklace.

  They were rubies, not glass, and way too much of a gift for a PA.

  A mixed message indeed, even for him, for when it had finally arrived in his life, Luka had not recognised love either.

  ‘Why couldn’t you tell me how you felt, Cece?’

  ‘Because so many woman have made fools of themselves over you and I didn’t want to be another one of them.’

  He could not argue with that.

  ‘If it wasn’t for Pandora,’ Cecelia said, still facing away, ‘there would be no us.’

  ‘Had you been walking in the street that day alone, I would have called you. And,’ Luka added, ‘when my father died, it was you I wanted to reach out to. I told myself to wait. To get through the funeral and clear my head. I told myself I wasn’t thinking straight, but I was lying because since that night with you things have never been clearer. There’s been no one since you.’

  She hadn’t believed him when he’d told her that last night. Cecelia had thought he was just saying the words she wanted to hear.

  ‘I think I loved you back then but, hell, Cece, you made it hard to get close. All I can say was I loathed the thought of you being gone.’

  She was starting to believe that there might be a chance for them, but her mind knew only how to doubt.

  ‘Even if we try to make a go of it, one day you’ll throw it back in my face that I kept Pandora from you...’

  ‘Would the world end if I did?’ Luka asked. He guessed that from the way life had treated her, or rather people had treated her, that, yes, it would seem that way to her.

  He smiled that rare smile and she glimpsed a future, one where he tossed her flaw in her face and it did not end them.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when—if—I do hurl it at you, perhaps you will remind me of the many women I bedded, and the flowers you ordered on my behalf, and what an ass I was...’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, torn between laughing and crying.

  It was a love where perfection was not a prerequisite, one where you were allowed to mess up.

  ‘Marry me, Cece.’

  She sat up in bed and wasn’t certain what she’d just heard. ‘I thought we were going to take things slowly. I’ll be back in a few weeks...’

  ‘If you think I am letting you get on a plane this morning, then you don’t know me at all.’

  She turned and smiled.

  It was the smile that felt like summer to him.

  ‘Do you know what day it is?’

  Cecelia shook her head.

  ‘It’s your birthday...’

  But this year it wasn’t candles and cake, or a necklace she was gifted with, but a ring.

  ‘Were you going to ask me last night?’ Cecelia gasped, as he slipped a huge diamond on her finger, faint with horror for her handling of things.

  But she didn’t know him completely yet, for Luka shook his head.

  ‘No, it was always meant for this morning, because I
don’t want you ever to have another birthday that passed unnoticed.’

  Sometimes she thought he just said the right thing, the things she wanted to hear. But this didn’t feel like that. This felt real somehow.

  ‘Come on, then!’ He kicked off the sheet. ‘We’ve a wedding to get to.’

  ‘We can’t just get married.’ Cecelia laughed. ‘We need approval, and what about guests and—?’

  ‘I practically own the island,’ Luka pointed out. ‘I can do what I want, we can deal with the legalities later. I might just have to marry you again, but I want a wedding ring on your finger today and,’ he added, ‘it’s never coming off.’

  ‘But what about Pandora?’

  ‘Where I come from, children don’t generally attend their parents’ wedding,’ Luka said. ‘Had you bothered to tell me you were pregnant we could have sorted it out and we’d have been married many months ago and Pandora wouldn’t come from a broken home.’

  He was throwing it all back in her face, yet she smiled.

  ‘Luka, I don’t have anything to wear.’

  ‘Then I’ll marry you in a sheet, but, Cece...’ he took her arms and pinned her down, staring right into her eyes ‘...you have to want it too.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And you have to fight for us as well,’ he said, and then halted, for she was the one who had fought for them last night. He thought of her, so shy and reserved, yet she had walked into the restaurant, and somehow forgiven his past. ‘You’re going to marry me now and then we’re going to collect out daughter together. As a married couple, as her parents...’

  * * *

  Cecelia wore a silver sarong tied over one shoulder. Her hair was strawberry blonde and curly as she stood on the yacht and faced Luka.

  He wore black dress pants and a fitted white shirt but no tie and he had not shaved.

  It was informal, yet beautiful and impulsive too.

  Yes, she might be a little more than just a visual replica of her mother, for the wanton side of her nature appeared at times. But though a sudden wedding aboard Luka Kargas’s yacht might appear reckless to some, Cecelia knew that she stood before a man who was strong and who loved her.

  And who would not let her fall.

  The celebrant looked up at the sound of a helicopter buzzing overhead, and suggested that perhaps they move inside if they wanted to avoid being photographed.

  ‘Sure,’ Luka said, for he wanted to shield her, but as he went to take her hand and move below deck, she declined.

  ‘It’s fine.’ Cecelia gave a little shake of her head. ‘It will save us having to announce it.’

  With him she was both brave and free.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her as he slid a wedding band on her finger. ‘And if it takes the rest of my life to prove it to you, I will.’

  ‘You already have,’ Cecelia said, and then she looked into velvet brown eyes that were black when guarded. She knew him better than anyone else, and so she told him a truth. ‘And I’m so proud to be your wife.’

  She was.

  Cecelia was proud not just of the man he was but the man he had been, for he had been strong in the face of an impossible start in life.

  It meant everything to Luka to hear that.

  The press got one shot—Luka Kargas on his yacht, kissing his bride, but by the time the paparazzi had got wind of the news and circled ahead, awaiting the pulse of music and wild celebrations, the happy couple had long since left.

  They had somewhere else they wanted to be.

  Cecelia walked up the path towards her mother-in-law’s villa, feeling more than a little nervous, and saw Sophie sitting in a chair, holding Pandora. Beside them was a large silver box and a birthday and wedding breakfast awaiting.

  The late-morning sun was high in the sky and there was peace in the air as they returned to their daughter...a family at last.

  * * * * *

  Coming next month

  KIDNAPPED FOR HIS ROYAL DUTY

  Jane Porter

  Before they came to Jolie, Dal would have described Poppy as pretty, in a fresh, wholesome, no-nonsense sort of way with her thick, shoulder-length brown hair and large, brown eyes and a serious little chin.

  But as Poppy entered the dining room with its glossy white ceiling and dark purple walls, she looked anything but wholesome and no-nonsense.

  She was wearing a silk gown the color of cherries, delicately embroidered with silver threads, and instead of her usual ponytail or chignon, her dark hair was down, and long, elegant chandelier earrings dangled from her ears. As she walked, the semi-sheer kaftan molded to her curves.

  “It seems I’ve been keeping you waiting,” she said, her voice pitched lower than usual and slightly breathless. “Izba insisted on all this,” she added, gesturing up toward her face.

  At first Dal thought she was referring to the ornate silver earrings that were catching and reflecting the light, but once she was seated across from him he realized her eyes had been rimmed with kohl and her lips had been outlined and filled in with a soft plum-pink gloss. “You’re wearing makeup.”

  “Quite a lot of it, too.” She grimaced. “I tried to explain to Izba that this wasn’t me, but she’s very determined once she makes her mind up about something and apparently, dinner with you requires me to look like a tart.”

  Dal checked his smile. “You don’t look like a tart. Unless it’s the kind of tart one wants to eat.”

  Color flooded Poppy’s cheeks and she glanced away, suddenly shy, and he didn’t know if it was her shyness or the shimmering dress that clung to her, but he didn’t think any woman could be more beautiful, or desirable than Poppy right now. “You look lovely,” he said quietly. “But I don’t want you uncomfortable all through dinner. If you’d rather go remove the makeup I’m happy to wait.”

  She looked at him closely as if doubting his sincerity. “It’s fun to dress up, but I’m worried Izba has the wrong idea about me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “She seems to think you’re going to…marry…me.”

  Copyright ©2018 by Jane Porter

  Continue reading

  KIDNAPPED FOR HIS ROYAL DUTY

  Jane Porter

  Available next month

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