The Throne He Must Take. Chantelle Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ drink,’ he said, in that lazy, mocking way that made her want to slap him. Hard.

      ‘My bedtime habits are not up for discussion,’ she snapped, stung by his unflattering description of her. ‘Schoolmarm’ made her sound like a frump.

      He was testing her professionalism to its limits. She had never met such an infuriating man. She watched the corners of his mouth lift in a slow smile, as if he could not be bothered to exert more than the minimum of effort.

      ‘We could discuss my bedtime habits instead, if you like? I guarantee they are more interesting and...energetic than yours.’

      ‘I’m well aware of that. Anyone who reads the gutter press is regularly treated to intimate details about your love affairs.’

      His grin widened, and his eyes had a wicked glint that made Holly’s heart beat faster. How could his eyes be as cold as ice one minute and in the next instant burn with blue flames that made her feel hot all over?

      ‘Presumably you read the tabloids, as you seem to know so much about me,’ he said softly. ‘The intimate details you mention are fifty per cent true and fifty per cent the product of an editor’s fevered imagination. But I don’t have love affairs.’ His tone hardened. ‘Love plays no part in my sexual adventures. As long as you remember that, we should get on fine.’

      ‘Why do I need to remember it? I’m not interested in your sex-life except in my professional capacity as your therapist.’

      ‘Of course you’re interested in me, angel-face. Those big brown eyes of yours soften like molten chocolate every time you look at me. Do you think I haven’t noticed the hungry glances you’ve been darting at me when you think my attention’s not on you?’

      His smoky, sensual voice sent a shiver of unwanted reaction the length of Holly’s spine. It was imperative that she took back control of the situation and of herself. Her reaction to Jarek was utterly inexplicable. He was an arrogant, over-sexed playboy and the absolute anathema of the intellectual men she had dated in the past.

      Before she’d left London she’d had dinner a couple of times with Malcom, who was an art historian, and he had told her some really quite interesting facts about Islamic art. Although admittedly after three hours of listening to him talking about his favourite topic her attention had started to wander.

      ‘You’re wrong, I’m afraid.’ She was pleased that she sounded cool and collected—the opposite of how she felt. ‘All I care about is doing my job to the best of my ability, and my interest in you is purely from the perspective of my role as your psychotherapist. I’m determined to discover how you tick, Jarek. You’ve described yourself as a prisoner,’ she said gently, ‘but perhaps the prison bars are inside your head.’

      * * *

      Jarek sprawled in the back of the limousine and considered telling the driver to turn the car around and take him back to the Frieden Clinic, so that he could jump on his motorbike and get the hell out of Dodge. But he had given his word to his brother-in-law that, for Elin’s sake, he would spend six weeks undergoing psychotherapy. And, because his sister was the only person in the world whom he loved, he would stick it out even though it promised to be the most boring few weeks of his life.

      Although perhaps it wouldn’t be as tedious as he’d first feared, he mused, visualising the delectable Dr Maitland.

      He had told her the truth—the only time he intended to do so—when he’d admitted that she was different from his expectations of her. Holly was a stunning brunette, but he had imagined her as a matronly figure, possibly wearing a tweed suit—rather like the vicar’s wife in Little Bardley, who had always been kind to him when he’d been an angry teenager and constantly at loggerheads with Ralph Saunderson, his adoptive father.

      But Holly looked nothing like a vicar’s wife, and even her uninspiring clothes couldn’t hide her gorgeous curvaceous figure. The sight of her too-tight blouse straining across her breasts, affording him a tantalising glimpse of creamy flesh where the material gaped around the buttonholes, had sent a rush of heat straight to his groin.

      Frankly, she had rendered him speechless—which was not a condition Jarek often suffered from. He was clever with words, and always knew the right things to say—to women especially. That was why he could not understand why he had blurted out to Holly that she was beautiful. He’d sounded like an adolescent on a first date. Usually he was the king of cool, and the funny thing was that the more he acted as if he didn’t care the more interested women were in him.

      The truth was he really didn’t care about anything or anyone apart from his sister, whom he had protected since she was a baby. But Elin was married to Cortez now, and they had a son, Harry. Soon their second child would be born. Jarek had accepted that Elin’s life had moved on and, although they would always share a close bond, that her priorities were her husband and family. Hell, he’d even accepted that Cortez, who was actually Ralph Saunderson’s secret son and heir, was a decent guy.

      But, while his sister deserved to be happy, Jarek knew he would never come to terms with what he had done, and the grief he had caused to both Elin and Ralph Saunderson. It was his fault that Lorna Saunderson had died, and the raw pain inside him was his punishment—it was what he deserved.

      He steered his mind away from the dark path of memory, which inevitably led to the self-destructive behaviour his sister had begged him to seek help for. The truth was no one could help him. He pictured Dr Maitland’s doe eyes and her serenely lovely face. He’d nicknamed her ‘angel-face’ but there was nothing angelic about her sinfully sexy mouth. He’d found himself longing to taste and explore it with his tongue.

      At another time—even a month ago—he would have viewed Holly as an enjoyable distraction, and nothing would have stopped him from taking advantage of the awareness of him that she had unsuccessfully tried to hide.

      But the letter he had received three weeks ago had made him question everything he’d believed he knew about himself. It had even made him wonder...who was Jarek Dvorska?

       CHAPTER TWO

      JAREK STARED OUT of the car window at the stunning Alpine landscape. All around him majestic snow-white mountains touched the sky and were reflected in a gentian-blue lake. The pine trees growing on the slopes looked as if they had been dusted with icing sugar, and here and there quaint Hansel and Gretel chalets peeped out from beneath snow-covered roofs.

      The mountainous scene was exquisite, but there was also an inexplicable familiarity about it that he found puzzling. Ever since his adoptive parents had taken him on a skiing holiday in Chamonix, when he was twelve, Jarek had felt ‘at home’ in the mountains. But that did not make sense, because he had spent the first nine years of his life in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. He had no recollection of his family’s home in the city, but he remembered the grim grey orphanage where he and Elin had lived after their parents had died.

      Why did he feel a sense of recognition when he skied down a mountain? he had once asked Lorna Saunderson, when he’d been trying to make sense of the images inside his head that he thought must be snatches of dreams—because how could they be real memories? For that matter, how had he known instinctively how to ski, without any help from an instructor, on that trip to Chamonix?

      His adoptive mother—the only woman he had ever called Mama, since he had no idea who his real mother was—had reminded him that Sarajevo was surrounded by mountains. She’d suggested that perhaps staff СКАЧАТЬ