The Redemption of Darius Sterne
Carole Mortimer
So innocent. So tempting…Having built a global empire synonymous with excellence, formidable tycoon Darius Sterne is a man who gets what he wants. Always. And right now? He wants ex-ballerina Miranda Jacobs….in his bed and sighing his name in pleasure.Virginal Miranda can’t resist the allure of the brooding billionaire. But the closer he pulls her, the more Darius threatens the barriers she’s carefully constructed to conceal the scars of her past. Yet Miranda isn’t the only one with pain to hide…Can her pure love dance into his heart, and redeem the dark and damaged Darius Sterne?The Twin Tycoons DuetThese twin tycoons are about to learn there are some things money and power can’t buy…And that the greatest challenges net the most satisfying rewards.Book 1: The Redemption of Darius SterneBook 2: The Taming of Xander SternePraise for Carole MortimerA D’Angelo Like No Other4.5* TOP PICK RT Book ReviewMortimer’s final D’Angelo romance is intense and heartwarming. The eloquent dialogue flows, while the elegant Parisian settings glow. With the cutest tots as co-stars, the leery hero and spitfire heroine shine.A Prize Beyond Jewels 4.5* TOP PICK RT Book ReviewMortimer uses opulent New York City as her palette for an emotionally fraught romance with a mystery. Her heroine is complicated and spirited; her hero is tenacious with hidden depth. Their lively banter camouflages their fears and electrifies their lovemaking.A Bargain with the Enemy 4.5* TOP PICK RT Book ReviewMortimer’s opulent scenes enhance the flavor of this exceptional romance. Her frenemies enchant from beginning to end, and their dialogue is bitingly realistic.
The sexual tension between the two of them had been palpable downstairs in the restaurant earlier, and it was even deeper now that they had actually talked and then danced together.
‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night,’ Darius prompted abruptly as he turned to place a restraining hand on her arm before they could reach the table where her sister and brother-in-law were waiting for her.
‘I—What—? No!’ Miranda looked totally flustered by the invitation.
‘Why on earth not?’ He scowled darkly.
She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘As I said, I’m grateful to you for inviting us up to your club, and—and everything else. It’s made my birthday even more special. I just—This—You and me—It isn’t going anywhere.’
‘I only invited you out to dinner, Miranda, not to become the mother of my children,’ he pointed out dryly.
The colour deepened in her cheeks. ‘And when was the last time you invited a woman out to dinner without the expectation of taking her to bed at the end of the evening?’ Her pointed chin rose challengingly as she looked up at him.
‘And what makes you so sure that isn’t going to happen?’ he purred.
Miranda wasn’t sure of anything in regard to her undeniable and unexpected attraction to this man—that was the problem!
THE TWIN TYCOONS
Twin billionaire brothers—one dark and brooding, one blond and charming—which would you choose?
Billionaire brothers Darius and Xander Sterne have it all—power, wealth, and the world at their beck and call. Never challenged, always triumphant—nothing is unattainable when you own the world, and they’ve enjoyed every indulgence their affluent status affords.
Until now.
Because these twin tycoons are about to learn that there are some things money and power can’t buy … And that the greatest challenges net the most satisfying rewards.
Find out what happens in:
THE REDEMPTION OF DARIUS STERNEFebruary 2015
THE TAMING OF XANDER STERNEMarch 2015
The Redemption
of Darius Sterne
Carole Mortimer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CAROLE MORTIMER was born and lives in the UK. She is married to Peter and they have six sons. She has been writing for Mills & Boon
since 1978, and has written almost 200 books. She writes for the Modern Romance™ line, and also Regency romances for Mills & Boon
Historical. Carole is a USA TODAY bestselling author, and in 2012 was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II for her ‘outstanding contribution to literature’.
For Peter, as always.
Contents
Cover (#uf3e6d590-f3e7-519e-b7a1-6522f404fa09)
Excerpt (#u9a330d00-e28c-5066-a728-8e4ef0b349b7)
The Twin Tycoons (#u1f04e99c-9bc4-547e-984f-f89638fa3b89)
Title Page (#u85cded7c-6362-52e7-ae94-c593f7d37b59)
About the Author (#u89039387-74ed-538b-8c4d-101ec100ccdc)
Dedication (#u4fbde62f-6da7-58f8-b333-8109a0f16ac5)
CHAPTER ONE (#uf3e9348c-32b1-5027-8666-d2fc022af1c7)
CHAPTER TWO (#u72fee6c9-24d4-5250-a499-af050d550091)
CHAPTER THREE (#u21675a82-48d2-5e62-9d85-4234fb4dcc8e)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_a5c2c40e-c659-5a89-9b53-02b447a725c1)
‘WHO IS THAT?’ Andy exclaimed as she glanced towards the doorway of the exclusive restaurant and bar, Midas, in which she was currently celebrating with her sister and brother-in-law.
Her glass of champagne raised halfway to her lips, Andy openly stared across the elegant restaurant at the man standing just inside the doorway. Tall and grimly unsmiling, he removed his dark outer coat, before handing it off to the waiting maître d’.
Andy estimated him to be in his early to mid-thirties, and he was so dark and arrestingly handsome that Andy couldn’t have looked away if her life had depended on it.
Everything about the man was dark, she noted as she continued to watch him.
The elegant black suit and the shirt and tie he wore under it, the perfect tailoring emphasising rather than hiding the muscled perfection of his well over six feet height.
His tousled hair gleamed the colour of dark mahogany under the light of the overhead crystal chandeliers.
His complexion was olive.
As for his expression...
The longer she stared at him, the more Andy realised that grim didn’t even begin to describe the look on that hard and chiselled face. He had a high, intelligent forehead, glowering dark brows over narrowed eyes, blades for cheekbones, a sculptured and firmly unsmiling mouth, his jaw square and arrogant.
Overall the combined effect was best described as electrifying.
There really was no other word that quite described the man as he now glanced disinterestedly about the elegant restaurant, while at the same time continuing his conversation with the man accompanying him. A piercing glance, which now moved over and past Andy, and then slowly moved back again, before stopping.
Andy’s breath caught in her throat, her mind going completely blank as she found herself the focus of that piercing gaze.
For some reason Andy had expected that the man’s eyes would be as darkly arresting as the rest of him, but instead they were a clear and beautiful topaz in colour, with darker striations fanning out from the pitch-black pupils.
They were mesmerising eyes, which continued to hold Andy’s gaze captive even as he raised one questioningly dark brow at her obvious interest.
‘Aha!’ her sister murmured beside her as she saw the direction of Andy’s gaze and realised the reason for her earlier comment. ‘Absolutely gorgeous, isn’t he?’
‘Sorry?’ Andy was still held captive by that compelling gaze as she answered Kim distractedly, her heart pounding in her chest, her pulse racing.
‘The man you’re currently ogling, darling,’ her sister teased dryly. ‘Don’t you just want to rip his clothes off and—?’
‘Hello? Husband sitting right next to you,’ Colin reminded Kim ruefully.
‘That doesn’t stop me from window-shopping, my love,’ his wife replied pertly.
‘There’s window-shopping, and then there’s just completely out of your price range!’ Colin muttered teasingly.
‘That’s the whole point of window-shopping, silly!’ Kim chuckled affectionately.
Andy was barely aware of the bantering between her sister and brother-in-law, the stranger’s gaze continuing to hold hers captive for several more, heart-stoppingly long seconds, before he gave a curl of his top lip in the semblance of a smile. Then he turned away, as he and his dining companion now followed the maître d’ to their table.
Andy drew in a ragged breath, although her heart was still pounding, her pulse racing.
A small shiver waved over her body, a reminder of her unexpected physical reaction to that darkly delicious man.
And she was far from the only one watching the two men as they made their way through the restaurant, nodding acknowledgement to several acquaintances as they passed, before stopping at a table for four near the window. They greeted an older couple already seated there, before the maître d’ himself pulled back the two empty chairs so that the two men could join them.
In fact, now that Andy was no longer completely under his spell she realised that the other diners weren’t just surreptitiously watching those two men, but that conversation in the room had become a hushed whisper; the very air seemed to be filled with tense expectation.
Which, considering this fashionable restaurant, was frequented only by the rich and the famous, who were usually too full of their own self-importance to be aware of anyone else’s, she found distinctly intriguing.
In fact, Andy had been slightly overwhelmed by the clientele when she’d first arrived.
The only reason that Andy and her sister and brother-in-law were able to dine in such exalted company at all was because Colin worked in the London office of Midas Enterprises. As an employee of Midas he was allowed to book a table at one of the Midas restaurants for himself and three guests once a year, and given an employee discount; none of them would ever have been able to afford to eat here otherwise!
The same didn’t apply to the Midas nightclub on the floor above; that was reserved for members only. And to become a member, you had to be approved by both the Sterne brothers, the billionaire owners of Midas Enterprises.
As well as most of the known universe, it seemed to Andy.
Social hermit that she usually was, even she had heard of Darius and Xander Sterne’s success. Her brother-in-law had told her that the brothers had burst onto the business scene twelve years ago, when they had launched an Internet social media company, which had rapidly grown and grown, until they’d sold it just three years later for several billion pounds. After that there had been no stopping them, as they’d bought up several electronic companies, an airline, media and film-production companies, hotel chains, and opened up exclusive restaurants and clubs just like this one, all around the world.
Everything they touched, it seemed, did turn to gold.
Which was probably the reason they had decided to name their company Midas.
‘Don’t let it worry you, Andy.’ Her sister now gave her hand a reassuring pat as she saw that grimace. ‘Everyone, male or female, reacts in exactly the same way the first time they set eyes on the Sterne brothers.’
‘The Sterne brothers?’ Andy repeated breathlessly, eyes wide; no wonder everyone in the restaurant was staring!
‘The Sterne twins, to be exact,’ Kim corrected knowledgeably.
‘Twins?’ Andy’s eyes widened incredulously. ‘Are you saying that there’s another one just like him at home?’ There couldn’t possibly be!
The man who had just walked into the restaurant was—well, he was utterly unique. In a dark and compelling way Andy could never imagine anyone else ever being. Certainly not in the form of an identical twin.
She knew little of the Sterne brothers’ personal lives. When they had first rocketed into the public eye she had only been thirteen and at ballet school, and totally caught up in that world. She had paid little attention to the world of business, or society photographs in newspapers and glossy magazines of the rich and the famous.
And after her accident she had been too busy trying to rebuild her future to be too aware of what was going on in other people’s lives.
She had known her brother-in-law had worked for Midas Enterprises for the last few years, of course, but the bachelor billionaire Sterne brothers inhabited a totally different world from her own—no doubt they could eat at a different one of their own restaurants every night around the world, and fly there on their own private jet!
But she would certainly have remembered it if she had ever seen so much as a photograph of the man seated across the restaurant.
‘Hardly, darling. That’s his twin sitting beside him,’ Kim explained softly.
Andy’s gaze shifted to the man who had walked in with Mr Dark and Compelling—Darius or Xander Sterne?—and now sat at the table with him talking to the older couple.
Definitely not an identical twin!
If one of the twins was dark and compelling then the other was light and magnetic; the second man’s fashionably tousled hair was a pale blond, his skin golden, a sexy grin lighting up his handsome and chiselled features, laughter lines fanning out from warm brown eyes, as if he smiled often. He was as tall and muscled as his brother, his impeccably black evening suit also tailored to perfection.
Under any other circumstances Andy knew she would have found the second twin the most handsome man in the room, but the dark twin was just so breathtaking she had to admit to having barely noticed his brother until now.
Dark twin. Light twin.
Andy’s gaze moved inexorably back to the dark twin. ‘Which one is he?’
‘Mr Gorgeous? That would be Xander,’ Kim supplied lightly.
‘Hello? I’m still sitting here,’ Colin put in pointedly, his own dark-haired and blue-eyed looks better described as homely rather than gorgeous.
‘You know how much I love you, love,’ Kim assured him warmly. ‘But no woman in her right mind could stop herself from looking at someone like Xander Sterne.’
Again, Andy was barely listening to her sister and Colin as they bantered back and forth. Mainly because the dark twin had just glanced her way again. And given another raise of that dark and mocking brow as he’d found her still watching him. Causing Andy to quickly look away, the warmth of embarrassed colour flooding her cheeks.
‘—all that gorgeous golden hair and those warm brown eyes. As for the delicious and toned body underneath that wonderful designer-label suit...’ Kim continued to sing the man’s praises.
‘I’m going to go to the bathroom, leaving you two ladies to continue drooling, before I develop a complex,’ Colin excused dryly as he stood up and left the table.
‘Xander is the blond one?’ Andy questioned her sister sharply once the two of them were alone, instantly revising her thoughts as she realised it was Darius she had been staring at, not the light twin, Xander.
‘Well, of course he’s the gorgeous blond,’ Kim teased dismissively. ‘I would hardly be drooling, as Colin so elegantly put it, over Darius.’ She gave a shiver. ‘All that dark, cold broodiness makes him just too scary for words!’
Dark, cold and scary.
Yes, Andy acknowledged, Darius Sterne was definitely scary. But, as far as she was concerned, not in the cold and brooding way her sister meant.
If Xander was light and good humour, then Darius was the opposite; a man as dark as sin—inside as well as out. His chiselled features were so grimly forbidding it looked as if he rarely found occasion to smile, let alone laugh.
But when he did?
How would it feel to be the woman responsible for putting a smile on that coldly arrogant face? To bathe in his appreciative laughter? To be the one responsible for putting the warmth of that laughter into those beautiful topaz eyes?
Or the heat of desire!
And on that note Andy brought her thoughts to a screeching halt.
Men like Darius Sterne, successful billionaires like Darius Sterne, she corrected herself ruefully, did not look at women like her. Women who so obviously did not even belong in a restaurant like Midas, let alone the rarefied world of extreme wealth that the Sterne brothers inhabited.
And yet Darius Sterne had certainly looked at her.
Only briefly, Andy admitted, but he had definitely returned her gaze.
Maybe that was because she had been caught staring at him eyes wide, mouth agape?
Well, yes. Maybe. But to be fair, everyone else in the restaurant had also been staring at the Sterne twins. Maybe not in quite the lustful way she had been staring at Darius Sterne, but they had all been looking, nonetheless.
Lustful?
Lord, yes, her feelings were lustful, if the tingling fullness in her breasts and the heat surging through her body was any indication!
And Andy was sure it was.
Though she had never, ever, responded in such a visceral way to any man before tonight. Before she’d looked at Darius Sterne and been unable to look away again.
Until the age of nineteen, her life and her emotions had all been totally dedicated to ballet and her career, with no time left for romance. After the months of recovering from the accident, Andy had had necessarily to concentrate on making something else of her life.
Her dream of one day becoming a world-class ballerina had been over, but she was by no means a quitter, and had no intentions of just sitting around feeling sorry for herself. Consequently she had known she had to do something with her life.
It had been a lot of hard work, and taken most of her own share of the money left to her and Kim by their parents when they’d died almost five years ago. But three years after making that decision, Andy had finished her training to teach and been able to open a ballet studio for five-to-sixteen-year-olds. Ballet was what she knew, after all. And maybe one day, if she was lucky, she might actually be responsible for discovering and training a world-class ballerina.
Her personal life had been the casualty of all those years of hard work, both as a ballerina and latterly her training to teach others to dance. As a consequence she’d had no intimate relationships before her accident. Or since...
The loss of both her beloved parents had been a terrible blow, and Andy had buried herself even more in her love of ballet as a way of coping with that loss. The accident just months later, putting an end to her career in ballet, had shaken her to her very core.
Oh, she had recovered some of her previous confidence these past four years, on the outside at least. But the physical scars that now marred her body were undeniable. She certainly hadn’t ever wanted to share those with any man.
Most especially a man as handsome and sophisticated as Darius Sterne, who no doubt dated some of the most beautiful women in the world. He certainly wouldn’t be interested in someone like Andy, who was scarred emotionally on the inside, and visibly on the outside.
* * *
‘Darius?’
Darius masked his irritation as he gave the beautiful blonde across the restaurant one last appreciative glance before turning his attention slowly back to the three people seated at the table with him. His twin Xander. His mother. And stepfather.
Darius had managed to block them all out in his preoccupation with the fragile-looking woman, having quickly assessed her dining companions when he arrived, and just as quickly dismissed them; the likeness between the two women, in colouring and facial features, meant they were probably sisters, and the man’s close proximity to the second woman showed he was with her rather than the woman who held Darius’s interest. There was no fourth place setting at the table, either.
The woman was ethereally beautiful, her ash-blonde hair a straight curtain to just below her shoulders, green eyes huge in the delicate perfection of her face. It was those hauntingly lovely green eyes that had first caught and held his attention the moment he’d entered the restaurant.
Surprisingly.
Because she wasn’t his usual type at all; his taste usually ran towards women who were older, and more sophisticated than the youthful-looking blonde. Women who expected nothing more from him than a night or two in his bed.
But there was something about the green-eyed blonde that had caught and held his attention.
Possibly because something about her seemed slightly familiar to him? The tilt of her head... The elegance of her movement...
And yet at the same time Darius knew he had never met her before; he would surely have remembered where and when if he had!
Maybe it was her other-worldly air that had caught his notice? She was so willowy she looked as if a puff of wind might blow her over, her bare arms incredibly slender, her collarbones and the hollows of her throat visible above the neckline of her black dress. Her face was hauntingly lovely; eyes fringed by thick dark lashes, cheekbones high, straight nose, full and sensuous lips, with a pointed, stubborn chin. That straight ash-blonde hair had the appearance of moonbeams, tempting a man to run his fingers through its silkiness.
Moonbeams?
He could never remember waxing lyrical about the colour and texture of a woman’s hair before.
Whatever the reason for his attraction to her, Darius had the definite feeling it was reciprocated, as he had felt those beautiful green eyes continuing to watch him through the curtain of her thick dark lashes as he and Xander strolled through the restaurant to join his mother and stepfather at their table.
But maybe a more plausible reason for having become so preoccupied by the blonde was that he didn’t really want to be here at the restaurant at all?
It was Darius’s reluctance to start the evening that had caused him to work so late at his office he hadn’t even had time to go to his apartment and change before meeting up with Xander outside the restaurant. The two of them had decided during a telephone call earlier today that presenting a united front tonight was probably the best policy.
His mother’s frown of disapproval, when he had bent to place the perfunctory kiss on her smooth and powdered cheek, had clearly told him that she had taken note that Xander and their stepfather were both wearing black evening clothes and Darius wasn’t.
Not that it had bothered Darius for many years whether or not he had his mother’s approval. Twenty years, to be exact. Since the death of the father he and Xander had hated and the husband Catherine had feared. The man that Darius so resembled, in looks, at least; no doubt it was difficult for Catherine to even look at the son who so reminded her of the husband she had disliked.
Darius could understand some of his mother’s aversion but it didn’t stop her rejection from hurting him. Over the years he had found the best way to deal with that hurt was to distance himself from his mother in return. It was not the ideal, by any means, but as the years had passed it had become the best way for him to deal with the situation.
Consequently mother and son now rarely talked, let alone spent evenings together like this.
Thankfully the rest of his family usually more than made up for Darius’s brooding silences.
Xander was currently behaving with his usual charming urbanity.
Their mother, Catherine, still beautiful at fifty-eight, was also presenting a gracious and charming front for the benefit of the other diners, who they were all only too well aware were continuing to watch the family surreptitiously.
Only Charlie, or Charles, as his mother preferred her second husband to be called, was being his usual warm and affable self as he ignored the other diners, and the underlying tensions at their table, in favour of keeping the conversation light and impersonal.
It might be Catherine’s birthday today, and the reason they were all sitting here, but his relationship with his mother was now such that it was out of respect and affection for Charlie that Darius had made the effort to make an appearance at all this evening.
‘Isn’t it time we drank the toast to your birthday, Mother?’ He picked up his glass of champagne. ‘I can’t stay long. I have somewhere else I need to be.’ He glanced towards the back of the restaurant where the second blonde’s escort had disappeared a few minutes ago. Probably on his way to the men’s room.
His mother gave another frown of disapproval. ‘Surely you can spare me one evening of your time, Darius?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ he cut her off unapologetically.
‘You speak to him, Charles!’ Catherine turned to appeal to her husband.
‘You heard the boy, Catherine, he has work he needs to do.’
Silver-haired, and in his mid-sixties, Charles Latimer obviously adored his wife, and Darius knew that the older man did everything in his power to ensure her happiness. But even Charlie knew better than to argue when Darius made a statement in that flat, uncompromising tone.
‘He didn’t say it was work.’
‘It is,’ Darius bit out tersely, deliberately choosing to ignore Xander’s accusing glare.
He had turned up tonight, hadn’t he? Had made the required appearance at his mother’s private birthday dinner celebrations, as he would make an appearance at the more public celebrations next weekend, at a dinner given in aid of one of his mother’s numerous charities. What more did any of them want from him? Whatever it was, the estrangement between Darius and his mother was now such that he wasn’t willing to give it.
He gave another glance towards the back of the restaurant, having just decided exactly what he did want.
* * *
‘It was Xander you were looking at, wasn’t it?’ Kim questioned with concern. Three years older than Andy, she had always taken her ‘protective big sister’ role very seriously, even more so since the loss of their parents.
Andy didn’t reply immediately, continuing to watch Darius Sterne as he suddenly stood up abruptly from his table.
The woman seated at the table with the three men was beautiful, but obviously aged in her fifties, and with her blonde hair and dark eyes she bore a resemblance to Xander Sterne. Perhaps she was the twins’ mother? Although Andy could see no resemblance to Darius whatsoever.
The older man didn’t look like either of the brothers, so perhaps he was the twins’ stepfather?
Whatever the relationship between the Sterne twins and the older couple, it had been impossible not to miss the edge of tension at the table since the twins sat down. A tension that seemed to ease as Darius Sterne now left their company.
Andy’s gaze continued to follow him as he walked towards the back of the restaurant.
‘No,’ she finally answered her sister distractedly, her breath leaving her in a whoosh as Darius disappeared from view down a marble corridor at the back of the restaurant.
Allowing her to realise she had actually stopped breathing, as well as being unable to take her eyes off him until he disappeared, his elegance of movement so like that of a stalking predator. A sleek and powerful jaguar, perhaps, or maybe a tiger? Definitely something feral and lethal!
‘I advise you not to even bother looking at Darius Sterne, Andy,’ Kim said hastily. ‘Admittedly he’s gorgeous, in a dark and dangerously compelling way, but he’s also way out of your league, my love. Well out of any sane woman’s league!’ her sister added with feeling.
Andy took a much-needed sip of the champagne in her glass; her mouth had gone dry just from watching Darius Sterne.
‘There have been stories and hints in the newspapers for years regarding the extent of Darius Sterne’s darkness,’ Kim cautioned as Andy made no reply.
She turned to give her sister a teasing smile. ‘You aren’t saying he’s into black magic?’
‘More like wielding whips and paddles.’
Andy almost choked on her champagne. ‘Kim!’ she finally managed to splutter incredulously. ‘Why is everyone so obsessed with that stuff nowadays?’ Personally, she could imagine nothing more demeaning to a woman than having some man put his collar of ownership on her and demanding she call him master. Or tying her to his bed before doing whatever he wanted with her. Or that same man demanding that she kneel subserviently at his feet until he told her otherwise. It made Andy’s skin crawl just to think about any man treating a woman like that.
Even a man she found as fascinating as Darius Sterne.
Her sister held up her hands defensively. ‘I’m not responsible for the gossip about him.’
‘You’re responsible for reading it,’ Andy scolded. ‘What’s printed in the gutter press isn’t gossip, Kim, it’s pure fantasy most of the time. Sensationalised speculation, and luridly made-up headlines to encourage people to buy their newspaper rather than someone else’s.’
Her sister shrugged slender shoulders. ‘You’ve heard the saying, there’s no smoke without fire.’
She raised her brows. ‘I also remember Mum telling us years ago that it isn’t wise, or fair, to listen to gossip or hearsay, that we should make our own minds up about other people.’
‘If Mum were here, I have no doubts she would also tell you that there’s nothing in the least wise in being attracted to a man like Darius Sterne,’ her sister stated with certainty.
Both girls sobered at the mention of their mother. At the time of their parents’ deaths the sisters, Kim twenty-one, and Andy eighteen, had been absolutely devastated by the loss, but with the passing of time they had both come to appreciate the years they had been able to spend with their parents. Andy had always been grateful that at least they had lived long enough to see Kim happily married to Colin, and they had also been present the night Andy had appeared in the lead of Giselle with England’s most reputable ballet company.
Andy’s own accident, just six months after their death, had meant that she would never dance in public again.
Andy determinedly shook off the sadness that realisation still gave her, even four years later. She had her studio, was slowly, sometimes too slowly, making a success of it. She also conveniently lived in the flat above the studio. It was so much more than a lot of people had.
‘I really wouldn’t worry about it, Kim; I’m never likely to so much as set eyes on Darius Sterne again, so it really isn’t an issue,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘As you said, it’s nice to window-shop.’
‘You ladies are never going to believe what just happened to me in the Gents,’ a red-faced Colin announced as he arrived back at their table before plonking himself back down into his seat to look at them both expectantly.
His wife raised her eyebrows. ‘Do we want to know?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded with certainty. ‘It was nothing like that, Kim!’ He frowned at his wife as her eyebrows had risen even higher. ‘Honestly, sometimes I wonder if your mind isn’t constantly in the gutter.’
‘I think we just had this conversation.’ Andy chuckled as she gave her sister a pointed glance. ‘Kim’s just been regaling me with lurid tales of the licentious behaviour of the Sterne twins,’ she explained at Colin’s questioning glance.
‘One of the Sterne twins,’ Kim defended. ‘I’m sure that Xander is every bit as deliciously gentlemanly and uncomplicated as he appears to be.’
Andy gave a disbelieving snort; Xander Sterne might not be as obviously brooding as his twin brother, but there was no way a man of his age and wealth, and with those Adonis good looks, could possibly have remained single if he was as gentlemanly and uncomplicated as Kim claimed he was.
Admittedly, with that much money, the Sterne brothers could no doubt pick and choose when it came to women. As it would no doubt be difficult for either of the brothers to ever know if a woman wanted them for themselves, or their billions. But even so, it was unusual for two brothers, aged in their early to mid-thirties, never to have married.
Or at least Andy assumed neither of them had ever married; she really knew very little about them. They could both be married for all she knew, but had left their wives and half a dozen children at home this evening.
If that was true, it made Darius Sterne’s earlier flirtation with her decidedly questionable.
Andy decided there and then to look the Sterne brothers up on the Internet as soon as she got home. With special emphasis on learning a lot more about Darius.
‘Do I take it from that remark that it’s Darius Sterne you’ve been gossiping about?’ Colin gave Kim an irritated glance. ‘You do realise that he’s one of my employers? That we wouldn’t even be here this evening if he wasn’t? Talk about biting—literally—the hand that feeds you!’ he added crossly.
Kim’s cheeks coloured guiltily. ‘I was only repeating what I’ve read in the newspapers and magazines.’
‘Those glossy magazines you read that rave about a couple’s marital bliss one month, and then unashamedly write about their break-up the next?’ her husband came back scathingly.
‘He has you there, Kim.’ Andy smiled.
Her sister adopted a look of hurt superiority. ‘You were going to tell us what just happened to you in the men’s room, Colin?’
‘Oh. Yes.’ His youthfully handsome face lit up excitedly again as he sat forward. ‘Anyway, I was just drying my hands, when who do you think walked in the door?’
Andy’s heart suddenly skipped a beat, her breath once again ceasing in her lungs, as she suddenly knew exactly who had entered the men’s room.
The same person who, just minutes after Colin, had also disappeared down that marble hallway in the direction of the loo.
‘Darius Sterne,’ Colin confirmed excitedly. ‘Not only that but he actually spoke to me. I’ve worked for the brothers for seven years now, seen them around the building of course, but I’ve never spoken to either one of them before tonight.’
Kim gave Andy a narrow-eyed glance before turning back to her husband. ‘What did he say?’
‘You’re never going to believe it!’ her husband assured her. ‘I can hardly believe it myself.’
‘What did he say, Colin?’ Kim bit out through gritted teeth.
‘Well, if you stopped interrupting me maybe I’d have chance to tell you,’ he teased, obviously enjoying himself now that he had their full attention.
‘Andy, you can bear witness to just how annoying my husband is being right now—because I am seriously going to strangle him if he doesn’t tell us what Darius said to him, in the next thirty seconds.’ Kim’s hazel-coloured eyes sparkled warningly.
Andy was too transfixed by Colin’s air of excitement to take her sister’s threat in the least seriously. Especially when she was sure that Kim had to be just as eager as she was to hear what Darius had said to Colin to make him look so excited.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_884faf80-e340-593d-8567-57530cb87dea)
DARIUS’S EXPRESSION WAS GRIM as he looked down into the Midas nightclub from the window in his executive office on the second floor.
The club was busy tonight, as it was every night, the glamorous and the famous all wishing to see or be seen as patrons of the fashionable and prestigious members-only Midas nightclub.
Everything about the club spoke of the same opulence as the restaurant on the ground floor; the walls up here were covered in gold silk paper, the dance floor the same gleaming black marble as the pillars supporting the second-floor gallery, where people could stand and talk or just observe the other patrons. The tables placed about the club were rounds of black marble, on gold pedestals, surrounded by comfortable black leather armchairs and sofas.
And Darius, hands in the pockets of his trousers, was able to stand and observe it all, from his aerie on the second floor.
The coloured lights swept across the dance floor full of bodies gyrating to the heavy beat of the loud music. The quietly efficient bar staff, dressed in their black uniforms, were serving champagne and cocktails and everything in between to the people standing about the bar, or sitting at the tables that edged the dance floor. There were curved, leather-seated booths further back in the nightclub, for those patrons wishing for a more private, intimate evening.
It was to one of those booths in particular that Darius’s gaze had kept drifting for the past half an hour as he stood at the window looking out.
It was a booth that continued to remain empty, despite the reserved sign sitting in the centre of the black marble tabletop.
Darius’s mouth tightened in irritation with his own feelings of disappointment. Despite her youth, and the delicacy of appearance, he had hoped that the green-eyed blonde would accept the challenge he had laid down by inviting her and her family up to the nightclub as his guests. That the interest he had seen in her eyes would at least make her curious enough to encourage her family to accept that invitation. Learning during his conversation with Colin Freeman that the other man actually worked for one of Darius’s companies had been something of a bonus, after he had all but stalked the man into the Gents.
Even so, the emptiness of that reserved booth now continued to mock him.
He had been a fool to expect anything else. So the beautiful blonde hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him earlier. So what? Wasn’t the mouse just as mesmerised by the cobra?
No doubt the reason for her interest earlier had been because she’d known exactly who he was, and she had heard those dark rumours about Darius Sterne and been fascinated by the danger he represented. A danger that was no doubt the complete opposite of her own safe little life. An arm’s-length danger that she felt comfortable viewing across a crowded restaurant, but didn’t have the courage to actually meet head-on. As she didn’t have the courage to meet Darius face to—
There was the merest prickling sensation of warning at Darius’s nape, a quiver of awareness down the length of his spine before he looked up and saw the green-eyed blonde standing at the entrance to the nightclub.
Her brother-in-law had referred to her as Andy when the two men had spoken earlier. It seemed far too masculine a name for a woman who looked so totally feminine.
Darius’s narrowed gaze remained fixed on her as her brother-in-law spoke briefly to Stephen, the security man Darius had warned to expect them, before the three of them then followed the security guard into the darkness of the club.
Andy walked ahead of her sister and brother-in-law, her head held high, almost in challenge. Almost as if she knew someone was watching her. As she walked her ash-blonde hair moved silkily about her shoulders.
She was taller than Darius had thought when she was sitting down in the restaurant, possibly five-eight in her stockinged feet, putting her height at about five-ten in the two-inch-heeled black strappy sandals she wore. They were conservative heels, considering that some of the women in the club tonight were wearing heels as high as six or seven inches.
Her black dress was also modest in style; it was sleeveless, yes, revealing those bare and gracefully slender arms, but the curved neckline wasn’t even low enough to reveal the soft swell of the tops of her breasts, and its knee-length was a complete contrast to the bottom-skimming dresses being worn by every other woman in the club.
Darius realised she was even less his usual type than he had initially thought she was.
* * *
‘Andy is a man’s name.’
Andy’s fingers tightened about the stem of her champagne glass at the first sound of that huskily censorious voice coming from just behind her. A sexily throaty voice that she knew instinctively, without even needing to turn and look, belonged to none other than Darius Sterne.
After all, who else could it be?
She was pretty sure she didn’t know anyone else in this place apart from Kim and Colin, who were currently out on the dance floor somewhere. And no doubt the couple were still arguing over the fact that Kim hadn’t wanted to come up to the Midas nightclub at all and Colin had insisted that they had to, that it would be extremely rude of him not to take up his employer’s generous invitation.
It was an argument Andy had stayed out of, mainly because her own feelings on the subject were mixed. Part of her had wanted to go up to the club to see if Darius was there, another part of her had hoped that he wouldn’t be.
His presence behind her had now answered that particular question, at least.
But Darius’s sudden appearance at that private booth, so soon after Colin had persuaded Kim to go and dance with him, the two of them having now totally disappeared into the midst of the other gyrating dancers, made Andy question whether or not Colin working for Midas Enterprises had been the reason they had received special treatment, after all...
She had felt as if she were being watched when they arrived at the club. As if unseen eyes were following her progress as she’d walked to the table ahead of Colin and Kim. Although a surreptitious glance around the room had revealed mild interest from several of the men present, it was not enough to have caused that quiver of awareness down the length of her spine.
Except the feeling had persisted.
Just the thought of being watched by Darius now made Andy shift uncomfortably.
She straightened her shoulders, firmly instructing her fingers to stop their trembling as she composed her expression before she turned to look up at him. There would be no wide eyes and gaping mouth for her.
Instead her breath caught in the back of her throat as she was once again struck by the immediacy of Darius Sterne as he stood just feet behind her.
There was that zing of electricity, of course, but he also looked so very tall and sinfully dark in the dimmed lighting of this part of the room.
Andy had to force herself to meet the intensity of his gaze as she moistened the sudden dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue, before finally answering him. ‘It’s short for Miranda.’
Darius nodded, liking the soft huskiness of her voice. And the name Miranda. It was so much more feminine than Andy. As Miranda herself was totally feminine.
Miranda was also a name that a man could murmur fiercely into the side of a woman’s throat as he thrust into her before climaxing inside her...
He was close enough to Miranda now to be able to reach out and touch the silkiness of her hair. Her skin was pale and luminescent, a soft glow against the black of her dress, and she wore little or no make-up, perhaps mascara and a soft peach lip gloss. He could see now that her eyes weren’t just emerald-green, as he had thought they were earlier, but shot through with shards of gold and blue. They were unusually beautiful eyes for an unusually beautiful woman.
A beautiful woman who had once again succeeded in arousing him at a glance. An arousal that had deepened as he’d watched the moistness of her tongue sweep across the fullness of her lips before she spoke with that sexily husky voice.
A voice he could easily imagine crying out his own name as they climaxed together.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he prompted as a waitress appeared and placed a fourth champagne glass on the table before quietly disappearing again.
Miranda raised blonde brows in the direction of that fourth glass. ‘It would appear that you already have.’
‘It would, wouldn’t it?’ Darius acknowledged as he made no move to sit down but instead moved to stand further inside the booth, his back to the room, at the same time as he blocked Miranda from looking at anything but him.
‘Do we have you to thank for the champagne?’ She held up her glass.
Darius nodded. ‘It’s the same champagne you were drinking with your meal earlier on this evening.’
A frown appeared between those magnificent green eyes. ‘You noticed that from across the room?’
‘I asked the sommelier on my way out of the restaurant,’ he admitted huskily as he slid into the leather seat opposite her, his gaze continuing to hold hers as he poured himself a glass of champagne.
A blush warmed her cheeks and she was the first to look away.
‘We were celebrating.’
‘Oh?’
She nodded. ‘It’s my birthday today.’
Darius found himself scowling. What were the chances of this woman’s birthday being the same day as his mother’s?
‘I’m twenty-three today,’ Miranda supplied abruptly, as if his continued silence unnerved her.
So she was ten years younger than his own thirty-three years, Darius realised—and a lifetime in experience. Yet another reason why he should just get up and walk away from this woman.
‘Would you like to dance?’ he heard himself say instead, his mind, or another, more demanding, part of his anatomy, obviously having other ideas on the subject.
The soft curve of her jaw instantly tensed. ‘No, thank you.’
‘That was a very definite no,’ Darius murmured.
‘I don’t dance in public.’ Those green eyes now met his probing gaze unblinkingly.
Darius looked at her searchingly, noting the increased tension in her shoulders, and the way her fingers had tightened about her champagne glass until the knuckles showed white. Of course, it could be that he made her nervous just by being here, but somehow he thought there was more to it than that.
‘Only in private?’ he prompted softly.
‘Not then, either.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded abruptly.
She blinked at his terseness, before just as quickly regaining her composure. ‘Maybe I’m just no good at it?’
Darius couldn’t believe that when everything about this woman spoke of grace and poise: the delicate arch of her throat, the way she held herself so elegantly, her fingers long and tapered, her legs slender and shapely. Even her feet and toes appeared graceful in those black strappy sandals. They were graceful and elegant toes he could all too easily imagine moving caressingly along the bare length of his thigh as he made love to her.
‘Now tell me the real reason,’ he bit out harshly.
Andy gave an inner start, not just at Darius’s perception, but also his ability to cut out all unnecessary conversation and just go straight to the point of what he wanted to know. No doubt that stood him in good stead in business, but she found it more than a little disconcerting on a personal level.
Everything about this man was disconcerting on a personal level. The perfect fit of his suit jacket over those wide and muscled shoulders. The flatness of his abdomen beneath the black shirt. The long, long length of his legs.
Those sharply arresting features, dominated by the intensity of that probing topaz gaze as it remained fixed on her so intently.
She forced a smile to her lips. ‘You appear to know my name, and have helped yourself to some of my birthday champagne,’ she added dryly, ‘but so far you haven’t even bothered to introduce yourself.’
‘Let’s not play games, Miranda; we’re both aware that you know exactly who I am.’
Yes, of course Andy knew who he was. She just had absolutely no idea what Darius was doing even talking to her, let alone engaging in what she felt sure was, for him, flirtation.
Just looking at that hard and chiselled face was enough to tell her that this wasn’t a man who would heap flowery compliments and charm on a woman in order to seduce her. That he was far too self-contained, too sure of his own attractiveness, to ever need or want to do that.
But she did believe he was flirting with her now.
Oh, yes, every single nerve-ending in Andy’s body was screaming out that awareness; her nipples were hard buds against the soft material of her dress and there was a heat, a swelling, between her thighs.
Darius Sterne was definitely flirting with her. Andy just had no idea why he was even bothering with someone like her when there were so many glamorously beautiful women in the room. Women who would be only too happy to dance or do anything else with or for him.
‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘It was very kind of you to extend an invitation to Colin and his family to come up and enjoy your nightclub, Mr Sterne.’
‘I thought I said no games, Miranda,’ he bit out challengingly.
She eyed him warily. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘We both know I invited you to come up to my nightclub, Miranda, so that the two of us could meet,’ he corrected harshly. ‘Your sister and brother-in-law were incidental to that invitation.’
Andy swept a slightly hounded glance in the direction of the dance floor, silently cursing when she still couldn’t see Kim and Colin amongst the writhing bodies, let alone send one of them a silent plea for help. She was finding it more and more difficult to maintain any semblance of polite conversation with a man who just refused to reciprocate that politeness.
‘You still haven’t answered my question as to why it is you don’t dance in public.’
Andy felt decidedly uncomfortable at being the focus of the intensity of this man. It was as if Darius could see into the very depths of her soul. And that by doing so he was also able to see all of her hopes and dreams.
And how most of them had been shattered four years ago.
That notion was ridiculous. This man didn’t know the first thing about her.
‘Hell, now I realise why you seemed familiar to me earlier,’ he murmured slowly. ‘You’re the ballerina Miranda Jacobs.’
So he did know something about her.
He knew everything about her that truly mattered...
Andy drew her breath in sharply. ‘Not any more,’ she bit out stiffly, very aware that her face had paled in shock, and that it was no longer just her hands that were trembling but all of her. ‘Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom!’ She quickly gathered up her black clutch bag before moving along the leather seat, with the intention of making good her escape.
Only to find that escape circumvented as one of Darius’s hands moved quickly across the table and his fingers clamped about her wrist. Not hard enough to actually hurt her, but definitely firmly enough to prevent her from escaping.
The intensity of his penetrating gaze was enough to cause her protest to die in her throat; she knew instinctively, that Darius simply wasn’t a man who took orders, from anyone.
Andy blinked hastily as her vision blurred. She wouldn’t cry. Not here, and certainly not in front of Darius Sterne. ‘Please let go of my arm, Mr Sterne.’
‘Darius.’
She gave a protesting shake of her head. ‘Please, release me.’
He didn’t remove his hand. Andy instead felt the soft pad of Darius’s thumb move caressingly, soothingly, against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. Increasing her physical awareness of him, despite the fact that seconds ago she had just wanted to escape from the painful memories his words had evoked.
‘I was there that night four years ago, Miranda,’ Darius stated evenly, able to feel the wild fluttering of her pulse beneath the pad of his thumb, to see the look of pained shock in those green eyes for exactly what it was, as well as the deathly pallor of her cheeks. ‘I was in the theatre that night,’ he added, so that there could be no doubts left in her mind as to exactly what he was talking about. ‘The night of your accident.’
‘No!’ she protested weakly.
‘Yes.’ Darius nodded grimly, remembering clearly, as if in slow motion, watching the young ballerina on the stage as she seemed to stumble, attempt to stop herself from falling, before losing her balance completely and crashing down off the stage.
The whole audience had gasped, including Darius, followed by a hushed silence as the music and other dancers froze, and they all waited to know the extent of her injuries.
The realisation that she was the same Miranda Jacobs, the up-and-coming ballerina who had been lauded by the press and critics alike but had been forced to retire four years ago, following that aborted performance as Odette in Swan Lake, now explained so much about her.
That recognition Darius had when he looked at her, for one thing.
Her natural, almost ethereal slenderness, for another.
That fluidity of grace she possessed, just walking across a room. A gracefulness that was apparent in everything she did. Sitting, crossing her ankles, or lifting her champagne glass to her lips.
Everything about this woman was innately graceful.
Even the pained vulnerability he could now see in her eyes.
He had touched on a subject that so obviously caused her immense pain and distress.
Not surprising, when just four short years ago Miranda Jacobs had been called the Margot Fonteyn of her age. She had been an absolute joy to watch that night, mesmerisingly so. And that hadn’t been just Darius’s opinion, but also that of all the reviewers and the newspapers the following day as the headlines had delivered the news of the terrible accident on stage that might possibly mark the end of such a young and promising career.
That had been the end to Miranda Jacobs’s career as a professional ballet dancer; those same newspapers had reported just days later that her injuries were so extensive she would never dance professionally again.
Well, that might be true professionally...
Darius stood up abruptly before moving round the table and exerting a light pressure on Miranda’s wrist as he pulled her to her feet beside him. ‘Let’s dance.’
Her expression was panicked as she pulled against that hold on her wrist. ‘No.’
Darius stilled. ‘Is there any medical reason that says you can’t do a slow dance?’
Her eyes flashed a glittering emerald. ‘I’m not a cripple, Mr Sterne, I’m just no longer capable of dancing in a professional capacity.’
‘Then let’s go.’ His tone brooked no argument as he released her hand to instead place his arm firmly about the slenderness of her waist, holding her possessively into his side as he strode towards the dance floor, deliberately catching the eye of the DJ and giving the other man a barely perceptible nod of his head as he did so.
Mere seconds later the tempo of the music changed to a slow love song.
‘That was convenient,’ Miranda bit out abruptly as the two of them stepped onto the dance floor.
‘No, actually, it was deliberate,’ Darius dismissed unapologetically; he wanted this woman in his arms, and he wasn’t about to pretend otherwise.
She gave a protesting shake of her head, the straight curtain of her hair moving about her shoulders as she placed her hands against his chest, with the obvious intention of pushing him away. ‘I really don’t want to dance.’
‘Liar,’ Darius stated arrogantly as he refused to release her; he had felt the increase of the pulse in her wrist, and his arms about her waist now allowed him to feel the fluttering of excitement that ran through the whole of her body. Very like that of a caged and wounded bird longing to be set free.
Damn it, he was starting to sound poetic again!
If nothing else, his mother’s distant behaviour towards him these past twenty years had taught him that women were fickle and cold and not to be trusted with his feelings.
Nor did he become involved, in any way, with women who were complicated, or wounded, as Miranda Jacobs so obviously was. He carried around enough emotional baggage, the rest of his family’s as well as his own, without taking on someone else’s. Hell, he didn’t become involved with women at all, except in the bedroom, and even then only on a purely sexual basis. Just a scratch to his itch.
But having forced the dancing issue he could hardly back down now. ‘Move your feet, Miranda,’ he encouraged huskily as he lifted her hands up onto his shoulders before pulling her closer still as he began to move slowly in time to the music, leaving Miranda with no choice but to follow his lead.
She was so slender in his arms that Darius almost felt as if he might bruise the willowy slenderness curved against his much larger and harder frame. And if he feared bruising her, just from dancing with her, how much more likely was it that he would completely crush her if he were to ever attempt to make love with her?
That was no longer even a possibility.
Making love to this woman was a definite no-no as far as Darius was concerned. Knowing who she was, who she had been, he also knew this woman was just too vulnerable, her past making her far too emotionally complicated, for him to even contemplate continuing his pursuit of the attraction he felt between the two of them. One dance together, and that was it. Then he would take her back to her booth, before returning to his office until she and the rest of her family had left the nightclub.
Never to return.
Yes, that was what he would do.
Her hair felt smooth as he rested his cheek lightly against it, those silver-gold tresses smelling of citrus and some deeper, enticing spice, that caused his hardened body to throb achingly as he breathed the scent deeply into his lungs. An arousal that Miranda, with the proximity of their two bodies, couldn’t help but be completely aware of.
* * *
Andy was too disturbed at first, at finding herself dancing in public again, albeit in a crowded club, to be aware of anything else. But as her nerves slowly settled, and the trembling stopped, she couldn’t help but become completely aware of the man she was dancing with.
She was five-eight in her bare feet, and even adding a couple of inches for the heels on her sandals Darius still towered over her by a good five or six inches. The width of his shoulders felt hard and muscled beneath her fingers. His chest and abdomen felt just as firmly muscled as he curved her body against and into his. As evidence, perhaps, that he didn’t spend all of his time behind a desk counting his billions.
Well...no, she was sure that Darius spent a lot of energy exercising in his bedroom too. Horizontally!
None of which changed the fact that being so totally aware of the hardness of his thighs, and the heavy length of his arousal pressing against her contrasting softness, had completely taken her mind off the fact that she was actually dancing in public again. More of a shuffle, really, but it was still dancing.
And it was with Darius Sterne.
Darius had to be at least ten years older than her, as well as far more experienced and sophisticated. He was a man who no doubt changed the women in his bed as often as some minion changed the silk sheets for him afterwards, which would be often.
Andy already knew those silk sheets would be black—
Already knew?
Did that mean she was seriously imagining herself one day sharing Darius’s bed sheets with him? Sharing his bed?
She hadn’t needed to be in this man’s company for two minutes to know that she should have heeded Kim’s warning earlier. To know that Darius would eat her alive. Totally possess her. Devour her. Inch by fleshly inch. Bit by arousing bit!
The shiver that now coursed down Andy’s spine was one of pleasurable anticipation. A longing, a yearning, for whatever Darius wanted to give her.
She couldn’t do this.
No doubt other woman, so many other women, would be flattered just to have attracted the attention of a man like Darius. Even more so, to know that he had deliberately engineered her presence in the Midas club tonight, before he had swooped down on her, his arousal now unmistakeable as he danced so close against her.
Other women would be flattered.
Andy couldn’t have the luxury of allowing herself to be flattered by the attentions of a man as dangerous as she considered Darius to be. Not when she knew it could ultimately lead nowhere.
Four years ago her dreams had been shattered. The dream she’d had since the age of five, of being a world-class ballerina, had come crashing down about her ears. Just as surely as she had come crashing down off the stage, shattering her hip and thigh bones.
It had taken over a year of operations and physical therapy for Andy to even be able to walk again, let alone be strong enough to rise up from beneath the misery threatening to bury her. But she had finally done it, had known she had no choice, that she needed to seriously consider her options for the future, now that she could no longer pursue her longed for career.
In the end she had realised that ballet was all she knew; she had won a scholarship to ballet school when she was eleven, had lived, eaten and breathed that world for so long, she couldn’t imagine ever cutting herself off from it completely.
Opening up her own dance studio, while making her painfully aware of her own inadequacies, had seemed the natural solution.
Even that had taken hard work, and Andy had studied hard to take her teaching certificate, before just six months ago finally managing to open her own dance studio. She still had a long way to go for it to be as successful as she wanted it to be.
She certainly didn’t have the time, or the emotional energy, to indulge in even a flirtation with a man like Darius. A man who she had no doubts broke women’s hearts on a regular basis. A man who would have made no secret of the fact that none of those women had meant any more to him than just another conquest, a beautiful body to be enjoyed in his bed, and totally forgotten about the following morning.
Except Andy’s body was no longer beautiful; how could it be, when it bore the physical scars from those many operations?
She pulled out of his arms the moment the song came to an end. ‘As I said, thank you for inviting us all up here, and for the champagne and the dance.’ She made her voice deliberately light, her smile bright and meaningless. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see that my sister and brother-in-law are waiting for me at the table, no doubt so that we can all leave,’ she added wryly. Kim, at least, was glaring accusingly across the room at Darius.
He frowned. ‘It’s still early.’
‘Maybe for you.’ Andy nodded. ‘Some of us have to get up for work in the morning.’
‘Doing what?’
Her chin rose. ‘I now own my own dance studio, teaching ballet to children. Yes,’ she snapped as she saw his eyebrows rise, ‘a typical example of “those that can’t, teach”! Now, if you’ll excuse me?’
‘No!’
Andy looked up at him uncertainly as she heard vehemence in his tone. ‘No?’
It was one thing for Darius to have decided he couldn’t take his attraction towards this woman any further than he already had, and quite another for Miranda to decide to walk away from him.
Damn it, had he really become so arrogant that he couldn’t accept a woman’s lack of interest in him for what it was?
Hell, yes, he was that arrogant!
Most especially when he knew that Miranda wasn’t uninterested in him at all.
The sexual tension between the two of them had been palpable downstairs in the restaurant earlier, and it was even deeper now that they had actually talked, and then danced together.
‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night,’ Darius prompted abruptly as he turned to place a restraining hand on her arm before they could reach the table where her sister and brother-in-law were waiting for her.
‘I— What—? No!’ Miranda looked totally flustered by the invitation.
‘Why on earth not?’ He scowled darkly.
She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘As I said, I’m grateful to you for inviting us up to your club, and—and everything else. It’s made my birthday even more special. I just— This— You and me— It isn’t going anywhere.’
‘I only invited you out to dinner, Miranda, not to become the mother of my children,’ he pointed out dryly.
The colour had first drained and then deepened in her cheeks. ‘And when was the last time you invited a woman out to dinner without the expectation of taking her to bed at the end of the evening?’ Her pointed chin rose challengingly as she looked up at him.
‘And what makes you so sure that isn’t going to happen?’ he purred.
Andy wasn’t sure of anything in regard to her undeniable and unexpected attraction to this man; that was the problem!
It would be too easy to become completely caught up in Darius, in his mesmerising attractiveness, in that arrogance and certainty, only to have all of that crash down about her ears when he realised, when he saw, her physical imperfections.
Physical imperfections, scars, which she had no doubts would illicit either pity or disgust. And Andy wanted neither of those things from Darius.
‘I said no, I won’t have dinner with you tomorrow, Mr Sterne. Or any other time,’ Andy added as she pointedly removed her arm from his grasp. ‘Excuse me.’ She didn’t wait for a response from him this time as she turned and walked away determinedly.
As she turned and walked away from the man she knew, instinctively, was capable of capturing her heart before just as quickly breaking it.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_aa671cb3-245a-53d0-9b8d-716c59851448)
‘I THOUGHT I WOULD wait for your students to leave before I came in.’
Andy froze as Darius Sterne’s voice echoed across her otherwise empty dance studio, her gaze now riveted on the mirrored wall in front of her as she saw his reflection in the doorway behind her.
It had been a week since she had left him at Midas, and he looked as tall and darkly forbidding as ever. Today he wore a charcoal-coloured suit and paler grey shirt and tie, beneath a dark overcoat. The darkness of his hair was even longer than a week ago, and more tousled about those harshly patrician features, his topaz gaze fixed on her intently.
Andy’s last class of the afternoon had just left and she was currently standing beside the barre on the wall going through the routine of exercises and stretches that she did at the end of each day, before going up to her apartment to shower and change.
What on earth was Darius even doing here?
How was he here at all? Andy didn’t remember telling him where her dance studio was located, only that she had one.
He was Darius Sterne, and if he wanted to find out exactly where that dance studio was situated, then no doubt he could just instruct one of his employees to find out for him.
The real question was: why had he?
Andy had tried her best not to even think about this disturbing man for the past week. Or her unprecedented physical response to him!
And for the most part she knew that she had succeeded, spending the weekend either going out with Kim and Colin, or cleaning her flat, and keeping herself busy at her studio the rest of the time, as she kept thoughts of Darius at bay.
Unexpectedly hearing the husky sound of his voice, and just a single glance at his reflection in the mirror, and Andy knew she had been wasting her time trying so hard not to think about this man this past week. She could feel the moist heat gathering between her thighs, and her breasts were already tingling with arousal.
And those were the reasons Andy couldn’t turn and face him, but instead continued to look at his reflection in the mirrored wall in front of her, her fingers now curled so tightly about the barre beside her that her knuckles showed white.
‘I had to separate two of those little angels before class began; they were arguing over whose leotard was the prettiest,’ she answered dryly.
‘Women in the making,’ he teased.
‘No doubt,’ Andy answered dismissively before asking the question she really wanted an answer to. ‘What are you doing here, Mr Sterne?’
At this precise moment, Darius was exerting all of his considerable will power to control the urge he felt to quickly cross the studio and kiss her delectable lips, before baring her body and kissing that too!
Who knew that a woman could look so sexy in a leotard and tights?
That Miranda Jacobs, specifically, would look so sexy in a white leotard and tights, with silky white ballet shoes on her slender feet?
The long-sleeved leotard hugged every inch of her body, outlining her small but perfectly rounded breasts tipped with ripe—and aroused?—berries. His gaze took in her tiny waist, the slight flare of her hips, her bottom two perfectly rounded globes, her legs long and shapely in white tights. Her hair was brushed back and secured in a ponytail at her crown and her face, completely bare of make-up, tinged with a slight glow of warmth to her satiny smooth skin. No doubt the latter was from her recent exertions with the dozen or so small children that had just left with their doting mothers in tow.
He had his own driver, but had chosen to drive himself to the dance studio. He’d arrived about fifteen minutes ago, the amount of other vehicles in the car park telling him that she must have a class on at the moment. Sure enough, shortly after he’d parked his car, the young students had all trooped out and disappeared off with their mothers in their various vehicles and directions.
For some reason Darius hadn’t expected that Miranda would be dressed in the same leotard and tights as her small charges wore. Or that it would take just one look at her in those revealing clothes for his body to harden to a painful throb!
It was a reaction that didn’t improve his temper in the slightest; he had already thought about this young woman far more over this past week than he was happy with—in the middle of business meetings, on a couple of long flights, in the shower, in his otherwise empty bed!—without becoming aroused almost the moment he set eyes on her again.
‘Mr Sterne?’
While he had been lost in the thought of exactly how and when he would like to have sex with her, Miranda had turned to face him, her head tilted curiously as those green and gold eyes looked across at him quizzically.
Miranda Jacobs was all and everything that Darius deliberately avoided in a woman.
And yet here he was, a week after their first meeting, hard and aroused after taking just one look at her.
Darius had tried taking out and bedding other women the past seven days—and nights—several of them to be exact. But every time it came to the end of the evening an image of ash-blonde hair and a willowy, desirable body would flash inside his head, totally deflating any desire he might feel to have sex with the woman he was with.
Every time he stepped into the shower, or climbed into bed at night, he could imagine that ash-blonde hair either slicked back and wet from taking a shower with him, or feathered out on his pillows, her green eyes sultry as she looked up at him invitingly, and making any idea of sleeping impossible. He also resented having to take care of his arousal himself.
He certainly didn’t appreciate having had an image of Miranda popping into his head in the middle of a business meeting, as it had earlier this week in Beijing!
Something had to be done. And the only solution Darius could come up with was to take her to bed, before then putting her firmly from his mind.
If that meant he had to wine and dine Miranda, charm her—although that part might be a strain on his usual taciturn nature!—before then seducing her and taking her to his bed, then that was what Darius had decided he had to do. For his own sanity, if not hers.
His mouth thinned. ‘I was under the impression you no longer danced?’ He swept his gaze up and over her leotard once more.
‘I dance enough to be able to demonstrate the moves to my students, and to be able to do that I need to dress as they do.’ Andy was thankful that the thick white tights she was wearing also hid the mesh of scars on her right hip and thigh.
‘So why are you here, Mr Sterne?’
He drew his breath in sharply. ‘I came to invite you to attend a charity dinner with me on Saturday evening.’
To say Andy was surprised by the invitation would be putting it mildly.
Although she did know, after finally giving in and looking him up on the Internet, that Darius wasn’t now, nor had he ever been, married, or even engaged to be married. In fact, at the age of thirty-three he had never been involved in a single serious relationship, as far as Andy could tell from the information available on him.
Which, surprisingly, hadn’t been as detailed as she had expected it to be.
There had been plenty of articles on how successful he and his brother were in business; it appeared they owned half the known universe, not almost all of it, as she had first thought!
There were also numerous publicity photographs of him and his brother, and others taken of him at exotic locations all over the world, with beautiful and glamorous women on his arm. Noticeably the majority of those women had been tall and shapely brunettes.
But Darius Sterne’s private life seemed to be exactly that: private.
Oh, on the surface of it there appeared to be plenty of details.
She’d discovered the names of the schools he had attended, followed by a degree at Oxford University. She’d read up on the social network site that had been the start of the successful business empire that he had owned with his twin brother for the past twelve years. As well, there had been a brief mention of the fact that his father had died when he was thirteen, and his mother had remarried when he was fourteen. But that was all it had been; there was nothing tangible about Darius himself. Nothing about Darius Sterne the man, or his relationship with the rest of his family, apart from that business partnership with his twin. And despite Kim’s warnings of a lurid past—and present?—there had been no ‘kiss and tell’ newspaper articles from any women Darius might have scorned.
Although Andy suspected that the reason for the latter was because Darius either owned, or had influence over, most of the world’s media.
She now also knew he lived mainly in a penthouse apartment in London, but also owned other homes in several capital cities around the world, including New York, Hong Kong, and Paris.
But again, none of those things were personal to the man.
After reading everything she could find that had ever been written on Darius, the only thing that Andy knew with any certainty was that she wasn’t, in any way, shape or form, his type!
And yet here he surprisingly was, and asking her to go out with him again.
‘Why?’ She picked up a towel and draped it about the dampness of her neck and shoulders, making sure it also covered her breasts. Her cheeks warmed as she walked across the smooth wooden floor towards him. Thankfully, without any sign of the limp she sometimes developed when she was tired.
And how, Andy wondered irritably, considering that she was covered completely, did the intensity of Darius’s gaze as he watched her approach somehow manage to make her feel as if she were naked from head to toe instead?
‘Saturday is only two days away,’ she taunted as she came to a halt just feet away from him. ‘So did your original date have to cancel?’
Andy gave an inner wince even as she asked the question; if Darius Sterne’s original date had cried off, for whatever reason, then there was a multitude of women who would happily have taken her place. He certainly didn’t need to resort to going to the trouble of seeking Andy out, for the sole purpose of inviting her to go with him.
‘I didn’t have a previous date.’ He raised dark brows, as the same thought obviously crossed his own mind. ‘It is a bit short notice, I admit, but I only arrived back from a lengthy business trip at six o’clock this morning.’
‘And no doubt you immediately thought of me!’ she dismissed scathingly.
‘What makes you think I ever stopped thinking of you?’ he challenged.
Andy found it hard to believe that Darius had given her a single thought after their first meeting, especially when he seemed to have been out of the country for the past week.
And yet he was asking her to believe that just hours after his return he had come here to see her?
Andy was determined not to read too much into that. ‘Arrived back from where?’
‘China.’
‘They don’t have telephones in China?’
His jaw tightened at her sarcasm. ‘You didn’t give me your telephone number or email address.’
‘I didn’t give you the address of my dance studio either, but you don’t seem to have had any trouble finding that out for yourself,’ she countered.
His eyes glittered his displeasure at the underlying sarcasm in her voice. ‘I thought you would prefer that I came here and made the invitation in person.’
‘Did you?’ Andy mused. ‘Or did you imagine I might find it harder to refuse you in person?’
Darius had convinced himself this past week that Miranda Jacobs couldn’t possibly be as intractable as he had thought she was being that night at his club. That maybe she had just been playing hard to get last week, in an effort to pique his interest. Just five minutes back in her infuriating company, and he knew that Miranda was every bit as stubborn as he had first thought she was.
He wasn’t used to being told the word no, by any woman. Not once, but twice!
Darius slid his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers, rather than reach out and touch Miranda, not sure which would win out if he did touch her: his need to shake her or kiss her!
‘You didn’t seem to have any problem with saying no to me in person last week.’
She gave a shrug of those slender shoulders. ‘Which begs the question, why are you bothering to ask me again, when you already know the answer?’
Darius breathed in sharply, his hands clenching in his trouser pockets, as he once again fought the need he felt to reach out and shake this woman. An impulse he resisted because he had every reason to believe he would then be tempted into kissing her. Senseless! ‘I thought the charity benefitting from the dinner might be of interest to you,’ he bit out between tightly clenched teeth.
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