The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

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СКАЧАТЬ cracked it open. ‘What do you want, Bastien?’

      He surged into the room. ‘What took you so long?’

      A few smart answers rose to her lips but she smothered the more hysterical ones when she caught his frown. ‘What...?’

      ‘You look pale. Are you all right?’ He laid a hand against her forehead.

      For several seconds she couldn’t speak. ‘I’m fine,’ she finally managed. ‘How did you get in here?’

      ‘This hotel belongs to me.’ He dropped his hand. ‘HH Geneva is one of several hotels owned by my bank.’

      The HH Group—Heidecker Hotels—was renowned for its understated opulence, was yet another feather in the Heidecker cap...a fact she’d missed with her weariness last night.

      ‘It doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my room,’ she replied, cringing as she wondered whether he’d heard her retching.

      ‘I told you to be ready at nine—that was five minutes ago. When you didn’t answer your door I let myself in. Don’t fret. If I’d hoped to catch you naked I’d have turned up an hour ago as you took your shower.’

      ‘Careful, there, Bastien, or I’ll add Peeping Tom to your list of unsavoury characteristics.’

      That earned her a mocking look as he returned to the sitting room and crossed to the open suite door. He didn’t slam it. Yet the decisive snick of the lock and a glimpse of what he held in his fist sent a shaft of pure, unadulterated dread through her.

      He unfurled another newspaper. The front-page picture was the same as on hers, but the language was different.

      ‘Tell me what you know about this,’ he invited softly.

      ‘If you’re asking if I’ve seen the paper, yes—I have.’ Her eyes inadvertently slid to the breakfast table. Her heart sank as he followed her movement.

      The temperature in the room dropped another degree. ‘Of course you have. Did you salivate over it before or after you had your breakfast?’

      ‘Excuse me?’

      He ignored her outrage. ‘How much are the tabloids paying you for this?’

      ‘What? You’re insane if you think I had something to do with this!’

      ‘So you deny you had anything to do with this rubbish?’

      ‘Absolutely I do,’ she stressed.

      ‘Then tell me what you were hatching with your flatmate on the tarmac yesterday.’

      Ana’s mouth dropped open. No words emerged and she knew her guilt was stamped on her forehead. Belatedly, she tried damage limitation. ‘Seriously, it was nothing like that—’

      ‘Do you take me for a fool?’

      ‘Only if you believe everything you read in the paper!’ The volatility of her words hit home the moment they left her lips. She surged on, regardless. ‘Bastien, think about this. What could I possibly have to gain by pulling this stunt?’

      He crumpled the paper and tossed it down on the nearby coffee table. It missed and landed on the floor.

      Slowly, with the precision of an Alpine wolf on a blood trail, he stalked her until he stood so close she could see the pulse leaping in his temple, smell the mixture of fury and his unique masculine scent.

      Nothing promised an upside to this situation.

      ‘Right now you need someone to fight your corner. Who better than the CEO of the company that’s about to turf you out on your ass?’

      She stared back, unable to look away from the hypnotic intensity of his eyes. ‘So you’ve decided, then?’

      ‘After this stunt I’d be a fool not to cut you loose,’ he replied.

      ‘Believe what you will. I had nothing to do with this article, whatever it says.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re now pretending you don’t know its contents?’

      Realising what she’d almost let slip, she pursed her lips. Besides her father, who’d been horrified when she’d finally confessed her secret and immediately fought to make things right, and her mother, who’d been the cause of it, no one else knew.

      ‘I stopped reading any stuff written about me a long time ago.’ The lie made her cringe, but it was way better than the shameful truth. ‘Maybe if you tell me which part so concerns you I can address it.’

      Bastien’s brows slowly lifted, incredulity darkening his eyes to gunmetal. ‘Which part so concerns me? Let’s see—how about the part that suggests we’ve been lovers for the best part of six months? No, actually, that doesn’t concern me too much—although it suggests I don’t mind sharing my woman with other men. Or how about the part where it states that I let you use my personal yacht for drug-fuelled parties? Or maybe the bit that says I came to your rescue yesterday because you could be carrying my child? And the soundbites in which your flatmate—Simone?—congratulates us on our impending nuptials were a genius touch. I must commend you on that. It ties everything up in a nice little bow, non?’

      Shock careened through her as the oxygen left her lungs. Some of these paparazzi were in a class of their own, but even Ana couldn’t believe they’d come up with such a preposterous story overnight.

      She looked up, ready to defend herself, and saw his gaze fixed on the picture. ‘I had no hand in any part of that story. But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?’

       ‘Excusez moi?’

      ‘The picture bothers you way more than the article.’

      Bastien’s gaze iced over. ‘You’re in danger of stepping way over the line.’

      ‘Why? Because this picture shows you looking at me as if you care? As if I get to you where no one else can?’

      To the untrained eye he looked as most people saw him—a cool, suave businessman who was in complete control of his world. Sure, the tight jaw and the broad shoulders held an edge of danger that anyone would be a fool to ignore. But the concern, the touch of gentleness in his eyes, that same look she’d seen a long time ago when she was eight, was clear for her to see.

      ‘You have a very active imagination, cherie,’ he breathed.

      ‘And you are not the icy, emotionless man you want the world to think you are. What are you so afraid of, Bastien?’

      He didn’t answer, merely speared her with his silver gaze as if trying to decipher whether she’d lost her mind. Hell, she might well have. She was tugging the tail of a dangerous beast.

      ‘Bastien...’

      ‘Let me be clear. Whatever you think you see in this photo does not exist. If you’re scheming, making little plans in that beautiful head of yours, kill them dead—understand?’

      Self-preservation СКАЧАТЬ