Reclaiming His Pregnant Widow. Tessa Radley

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СКАЧАТЬ cacophony of rising voices faded. There was only Clea …

      She was smiling.

      Her mouth curved up, and her eyes sparkled. A shimmering ball gown clung to her curves, her arms bare except for a gold cuff that glowed in the light from the opulent chandeliers … and on her left hand the wedding band he’d chosen for her glinted.

      Brand sucked in his breath.

      For an instant he thought she’d cut off the riot of curls he loved. But as she turned her head he caught a glimpse of curls escaping down behind her back from where the dark tresses had been pulled away from her face. He let out the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding in a jagged groan. She looked so vital, so alive and so stunningly beautiful.

      Longing surged through him and his chest expanded into an ache too complex to identify.

      Clea’s hand reached out and touched a jacketed arm. Brand’s gaze followed. The sight of the bronze-haired man she was touching caused Brand’s eyes to narrow dangerously. So Harry Hall-Lewis was still around. When she tipped her face up and directed the full blast of her smile at the man, Brand wanted to yank Clea away. To pull her to him, hold her, never let her go.

       Mine.

      The response roared through him. Basic, primal … and very, very male.

      “Champagne, sir?”

      The waiter’s interruption broke his concentration on Clea. Brand helped himself to a glass from the tray with hands that shook, and he gulped the golden liquid down to moisten his tight, parched throat.

      Then he set the empty glass down and drew a steadying breath.

      He had his life back … and he had no intention of spending another moment away from the woman who had lured him back from beyond the darkness with the memory of her smile.

      There was no time to waste.

      Yet, when he looked across the room again, Clea and her companion had vanished.

      After a terse exchange with her father near the Egyptian room, Clea then sneaked behind a tall pillar while Harry ventured into the crowd to fetch her a drink. Leaning against the cool column, she shut her eyes. If her father saw her he’d lecture her about duty, about the importance of networking and getting out in front of all the television cameras in attendance. Clea pursed her mouth in a moue of resignation. Of course he was right. But she needed a little time alone. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk, and the growing whispers were causing the latent tension within her to spiral out of control.

      “Clea.”

      That voice. She jerked around like a puppet on a string, eyes stretched wide, shock punching the air out of her lungs.

      Breathless, she whispered, “Brand …?”

      It couldn’t be. Disbelief made her blink. Brand was dead.

      The man coming toward her was tall, dark and very much alive.

      A ghost from the past.

      Heat seared her, instantly followed by an icy chill. He was a dead ringer for her very dead husband—the man she’d officially had declared dead eight months ago, a month after being given his ring back.

      This was cruel. Brand was gone. Forever. Hadn’t she spent the past nine months trying to come to terms with the final proof of his death after nearly four years of terrible, traumatic uncertainty?

      Blood rushed to her head. The sudden airlessness of the room pressed in on her.

      Clea couldn’t breathe, and she felt horribly ill. Her father would never forgive her if she was sick all over the marble floor … with press cameras everywhere to immortalize the moment.

      “Clea!”

      The hands that came down on her shoulders were so intimately familiar … yet so painfully strange. She shook her head, resisting the cold mist closing in on her. He was dead. Yet the fingers cupping her shoulders were warm, strong and very much alive.

      This was no ghost.

      This was a human being. A man she knew too well.

      “Don’t faint on me,” he warned in that deep, slightly hoarse voice.

      “I won’t.” She’d never fainted in her life. Yet she had to admit that she felt weak, dizzy … dazed. “You’re supposed to be dead!” She sucked in a ragged breath, and then added inanely, “But you’re back.”

       Clea!

      A raw, burning hunger he hadn’t experienced for more than a thousand nights overpowered Brand. He pulled the woman he’d dreamed of every day—every night—toward him, drinking in the scent of her, a heady mix of honey and jasmine. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Her warmth and fragrance flooded him.

      Beneath the exploring pads of his fingers her shoulders were more slender than he remembered, the bones fragile, but her skin was as soft as ever. “You’ve lost weight.”

      She stiffened under his touch. “Maybe.”

      Brand buried his face in the side of her neck, iron bands of emotion constricting his chest.

      “I’ve missed you,” he breathed, “so much.” Without her, a void had replaced the man he’d been. His arms tightened around her slender frame, words pouring from him, rough guttural sounds against her smooth skin.

      “Brand, I can’t hear you.” Clea drew away a little. “It’s too loud in here—let’s find somewhere quieter.”

      She slipped out of his hold and a sense of loss swamped Brand.

      Clea held out a hand. “Come.”

      He took the fingers she offered, the delicate link frighteningly fragile.

      She pulled him along with her, threading between the press of staring people until they broke clear, escaping through open double doors into a carpeted corridor beyond. Clea halted outside a set of glass doors in the clear floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Letting go of his hand, she fished in her evening purse looped over her shoulder by a delicate chain and extracted a keycard, which she swiped in the security slot. The doors sprang open and Brand followed her into a reception area and the corridor beyond. “My office is through here.”

      Brand paused. “You used to be down in the basement.”

      Her chin tilted up in a gesture that was pure Clea, and his heart clenched.

      “I’ve moved up in the world,” she told him, her eyes hungrily searching his face. “I’m more important now.”

      Clea pressed a wall switch and light flooded the room, catching forgotten glints of precious copper in her long, dark curls, hinting at the fire that lay beneath.

      Lust caught him by the throat.

      He’d missed her so damn much. Missed talking to her. Missed touching her.

      Most of all he’d СКАЧАТЬ