Read an Excerpt
"MARK, do you think she's one of the strippers? Or..." a significant pause followed by a little laugh '...do they parade her now and then as a horrible example of what can happen if you aren't careful?"
Heat stung Paige Howard's skin, although she acquitted the speaker of deliberate rudeness; the woman couldn't know that a trick of acoustics carried every cut-glass syllable from the foyer of the old hotel to the top of the staircase.
And the posters for the club on the upper floor, offering lap dancing and massage, were too blatant to miss. It was an understandable mistake to assume that Paige was one of the women who offered their services to any man with the money to pay for them.
However, she wasn't going to tell them that she'd never seen the inside of the strip bar! She had more important things to worry about than a momentary humiliation. Frowning, she glanced at the baby in her arms, worried by his increasingly flushed little face.
The woman and her Mark would be tourists on one of the routes that showed off Napier's stunning collection of Art Deco buildings, built after a devastating earthquake seventy years previously. The small city on the sweep of New Zealand's Hawke Bay was now a destination for pilgrims who enjoyed both the architecture and the superb wines of the region.
Paige knew she'd never see this couple again, and she didn't care a five-dollar note what they thought of her.
Although five dollars, she thought grimly, would come in handy right now. She had been made redundant a few weeks previously, and her meagre savings had almost disappeared.
When baby Brodie's temperature had got to the worrying stage she'd had to break the strip club's rules and contact his mother, who worked there. Sherry had thrust money for the doctor into her hands, and gone back to dancing with tears in her eyes.
Brows pinching together, Paige smoothed the shawl back from Brodie's crumpled little face, checking it with real fear building beneath her ribs. Dusky patches darkened the skin around his eyes and he was panting between pale, dry lips.
How could a baby—perfectly normal an hour ago—deteriorate so quickly?
At that moment he jerked in her arms, his face screwing up in pain although he made no noise. Increasing her speed as fast as she dared down the stairs, she pitched her voice to a low soothing murmur.
"Hush, darling. Shh, little man, we're on our way to the doctor and you'll soon feel much, much better..."
She'd almost reached the bottom of the staircase when the couple turned from their admiration of the panelled reception area. Unwillingly she glanced up. Her astounded gaze clashed with brilliant blue eyes in a dark, arrogantly aristocratic face—eyes that blazed with incredulous dis-belief across the distance between them.
Not Mark, she thought sickly. Marc.
Marc Corbett. "Paige!"
Irrational panic kicking her in the stomach, she missed the last step and pitched forwards. Hampered by the child in her arms, she instinctively twisted to protect him from the marble floor.
Cruelly strong hands bit into her waist, hauling her up against a lean, hard body, supporting her until she could gasp, "I'm all right!"
Brodie's high-pitched wail cut through Marc Corbett's reply, but she could hear his deep voice reverberate through his chest, and for a moment—a brief, shocked second—she remembered what it had been like to be held in those arms as music swirled around them on the dance floor...
He let her go and demanded harshly, "What the hell are you doing here?"
Brodie stiffened and shrieked again, the sound abruptly cutting off as though someone had clamped a hand across his mouth. His little body jerked, arms and legs thrashing wildly.
"What's the matter with that child?" Marc's voice cracked liked a whip.
Terror squeezing her heart, Paige scanned Brodie's unconscious face; his eyes were closed and his lips had turned an ominous purple.
"Oh, God, he's so sick," she whispered, touching his forehead. The fine, soft skin burned the back of her hand. Terrified, she tightened her arms around him and swivelled, heading as fast as she could for the doors.
The woman with Marc said on a concerned note, "I think it's having a convulsion."
"Where's the nearest doctor?" Marc gripped Paige by the elbow, ignoring her mute resistance as he steered her up the street. "Get into the car."
He indicated a large BMW a few metres along the pavement, as timelessly elegant as the surrounding buildings. Paige bolted into the front passenger seat and gabbled directions at Marc, barely registering the woman who climbed into the back.
Marc glanced once over his shoulder before forcing his way into the stream of traffic, judging the narrow gap to a nicety. Heart hammering, Paige felt Brodie's small body relax. Oh, God, she thought feverishly, please, no. Please, no!
Almost sagging with relief, she saw his eyelids twitch; seconds later his lips gained a little healthy colour. He blinked a couple of times before giving a pathetic little wail.
In a voice she didn't recognise, she said, "He looks better," and tucked the shawl carefully around the little body.
Marc Corbett didn't take his eyes from the road. "How's his breathing?"
Unevenly she said, "Regular." And, indeed, Brodie seemed to have slipped into a deep, natural sleep that was immensely reassuring.
"His colour?" 'Normal."
She sneaked a rapid sideways glance. Bad move. An ache rasped her throat and she turned her face resolutely to the front. Not fair, she thought fiercely. It simply wasn't fair that Marc Corbett should turn up when her life seemed to have crumbled into dust around her. It was a wonder he hadn't arrived in a clap of thunder, with lighting effects and a sinister laugh.
She knew that handsome face—the strong jaw and high cheekbones—as well as her own. Six years hadn't dimmed the brilliance of his eyes—a blue so intense they blazed with the colour and fire of sapphires. Looking into Marc Corbett's eyes was like being spun into the heart of an electrical storm.
How many times had she caught a glimpse of a tall dark man and suffered this passionate, shameful excitement? Too many to count...
But until now it had never been the man she'd unconsciously been looking for; just as well, because six years previously he had married her childhood friend Juliette.
And two years ago Juliette had died in a tragic, senseless road accident. Paige's throat closed as she remembered the girl who'd been a charming substitute older sister to her.
The woman in the back seat leaned forward to say, "Poor little boy! What is the matter with him? Do you know?"
She sounded so genuinely worried that Paige almost forgave her the sly comment about her being a horrible example.
Unevenly she answered, "He's feverish and he has a rash; I think he might have chickenpox."
But she couldn't banish the terrifying word meningitis from her mind.
She'd expected to have to repeat the directions to the surgery, but Marc Corbett didn't need his mind refreshed. As the building came into view, she said woodenly, "You can stop here—pull left."
"I know I am in New Zealand." A faint, alien inflection to his intonation betrayed the influence of his French mother.
Without thinking, Paige turned her head. A royal blue gaze seared across her face before returning to the road.
Very appropriate! Royal blue eyes for a man who owned and ruled a commercial empire. Nerves wound tight in unbearable tension, Paige swallowed. Meeting Marc again had been a hideous, meaningless coincidence. He'd drop her off here and disappear from her life.
Which was exactly what she wanted. The luxurious car drew into a miraculously empty length of kerbside. Anxiously searching Brodie's face, Paige wondered if Marc had ever had to search for a parking space like ordinary people. Probably not; his combination of ruthless determination and compelling charisma seemed to magic obstacles away.
"Thanks very much," she said awkwardly, releasing herself from the seatbelt to scrabble for the door handle.
"Wait there."
But as he strode around the front of the car she fumbled the door open. From the back came the woman's voice, amused yet chiding.
"It's best to do what he says. He's a very—dominant— man."
She invested that word dominant with a lingering amusement that made Paige feel sick. If this was Lauren Porter, she was obviously still very much in Marc's life.
Why not? A man who'd maintained a mistress during the four short years of his marriage wasn't likely to let his wife's death break up the relationship.
When he opened the door Paige attempted to scramble out, but worry and shock made her awkward, and after a moment Marc plucked her and Brodie from the car with a leashed violence that destroyed the last pathetic shreds of her composure.
Once he was sure she was steady on her feet, he dropped his hands as though she'd contaminated them. "Are you all right?"
His voice was cold and hard as iron, and as smoothly disciplined. Sensation flayed her with a diabolical combination of stimulation and fear—and, stronger than both, a weird, unnerving sensation of relief, as though she'd been lost and was now found again.
Clutching the baby, Paige stepped back and said tone-lessly, "Fine, thank you," before racing into the sanctuary of the surgery.
While the woman at the counter pulled Brodie's records from the computer she turned her head and watched Marc's companion—slender, dressed in the signature good taste of a fashionable designer—ease gracefully into the front seat of the car with a flirtatious hint of long, superb legs. As soon as the door closed the vehicle pulled smoothly from the kerb and merged into the flow of traffic, disappearing almost immediately.
No doubt he was as glad to get rid of her as she was to see him go. A sour jab of disillusionment, goaded by that acute, painfully physical awareness, propelled Paige across to the waiting area.
She sat down in a chair apparently chosen for its lack of comfort and rocked a now wakeful—and very fretful— Brodie. Marc's companion fitted the description Juliette had given of a height to match Marc's six foot three or so. Even their colouring matched. Her black hair was cut into a style that suited her fine features. And Juliette had admired her eyes—"Grey as an English dawn," she'd said.
The accent fitted too. "She is English and clever—an executive in Marc's organisation. Marc says she is brilliant," Juliette had told her, modern technology delivering the catch in her voice perfectly across the twelve thousand miles that had separated her from Paige. "At least he doesn't shame me with his choice of a mistress; she is lovely and wears clothes like a Frenchwoman."
Paige's knuckles gleamed white on the receiver. "You might be getting it all wrong, you know. Unless—has he admitted it?"
"Oh, no." Juliette sounded shocked. "I am not going to ask him—I don't need to. I have seen them together, and that is enough. They are very discreet, but there is a connection between them that is impossible to miss." 'What do you mean? Surely they don't—?" 'Flirt?" Juliette had sighed. "Marc would never humiliate me like that. I can't describe the link between them except to say that it is there, like an invisible chain binding them together."
And let's not go there now, Paige thought wearily, rocking the whimpering baby. Just concentrate on getting Brodie to the doctor, and working out how you can make your pathetic savings last until you get another job.
Half an hour later, when she walked out into the bright winter sunshine and heard a deep voice say her name, she wasn't surprised, although her heart contracted into a tight, hard lump in her chest. She'd known he'd be waiting for her.
"Did the doctor agree with your diagnosis of chicken-pox?" he asked in a hard voice with a disturbingly abrasive undernote.
Warily she thrust the prescription into her jeans pocket as Brodie snuffled beneath the shawl. Although bright sunlight gilded the city, a sharp wind blustering in from the sea promised a cold night.
Marc was alone, she realised with humiliating relief. Not breaking stride, she returned in a tone as chilly as the air, "Yes, she did. I'm sorry, I haven't time to talk. I need to fill a prescription and then take Brodie home."
Marc fell in beside her, saying inflexibly, "I'll drive you there."
To a grotty little flat down an alleyway behind a hamburger joint? Never. She said quickly, "It's all right; it's not far."
"It's not all right. The child is ill." 'The doctor was certain that it's the first stage of chick-enpox, which is not a serious illness." She paused, then said with a touch of malice, "I hope you've had it. Chickenpox is very infectious."
"I believe I had all the childhood diseases." His hard, handsome face revealed nothing. "Have you had it?"
"Juliette and I had it together," she said stonily. "I gave it to her, I believe."
