Acquiring Trouble (42 page)

"Sure. The downstairs
lav
is—"

"I remember where it is." Khan clapped Jake on the back, flashed smiles at Travis and Caleb. "I'll be right back."

What he needed was to splash his face with cold water, because he wasn't quite as calm as he'd insisted. If he were, he wouldn't have found himself looking for the Cruz woman…

And there she was, in the foyer, standing with her back to him as she put on a tan leather jacket.

Did she somehow sense his presence? She must have, because she went still. Then, slowly, she swung around and looked at him.

Her eyes widened.

Just for an instant, she looked wary.

Then she clutched the edges of her lapels. Her chin rose, her gaze zeroed in on his. It was a combative stance, and she erased any doubt when she flashed him a smile filled with contempt.

He could almost feel his blood pressure climb for the sky.

To hell with this, he thought grimly, and started toward her.

It was sheer pleasure to see that look of contempt change to one of fear. She was a woman with foolish opinions, he thought grimly, but she was not a fool.

She swung away from him, went quickly to the massive front door, opened it, and stepped out into the night.

Khan followed her.

She was heading for a red Honda parked in the gravel driveway. By now, she was damn near running but he was bigger, stronger and faster.

It was no contest.

He reached the Honda with seconds to spare.

"You were right," he said in a low, dangerous voice.

"Get out of my way!"

"Don't you want to know what you were right about?"

She reached in her pocket, took out her keys, started to point them at the car. Khan plucked them from her hand.

"You said I always get what I want. Then you called me a barbarian."

She started past him, back toward the house. He grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Let go of me," she gasped. "Let go, damn you, or I'll—"

"And what I want right now," he said, "is this."

Laurel read what he was going to do in his eyes, in the way his muscles tensed, in the way he looked at her mouth.

Then he lowered his head to hers.

Terror sent her heart racing.

"No!"

He laughed. She pushed against his chest, tried to twist her face away, but it was useless. He thrust one hand into her hair, cupped the back of her head, and it was all over.

The best she could do was steel herself for his kiss, meant to punish.
To subdue.
To reinforce what she already knew about men like him, that he didn't give a damn for anyone but himself and the few exalted souls he considered his equals.

She tensed, waited for his mouth to assault hers.

Wrong.

He brushed his lips over hers, did it again,
then
settled his mouth against hers in a kiss that was gentle and soft.

He slid his hand down her spine, drew her against him, lifted her into him. And he went on kissing her, kissing her until a breathless little sound escaped her throat, until she felt her lips soften, mold against his, part under his…

That was when he put her from him.

She blinked. And found
herself
staring up into eyes the frigid green of a winter sea.

"Possessed by a barbarian," he said in a low voice. "What a hell of a fate to suffer."

She wanted to say something witty or, at least, insulting. She couldn't. Her mind was a blank. All she could do was watch the Prince of
Altara
stride past her, get behind the wheel of a black Land Rover, and gun the engine to life.

The Rover sped off, leaving a spray of gravel in its wake.

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Excerpt from UNDENIABLE ROGUE

by
Annette Blair

The Rogues Club, Book One

Prologue

Military Encampment

Night before the Battle of Waterloo

June 17, 1815

“Stare death down, Rogues, and take an oath to The Club.”

“The Rogues Club,” said the men.

Gideon St. Goddard cleared his throat. “Those of us blessed and cursed to survive, and remember, hereby vow to protect the families of those here, now, who go to their just rewards with the dawn.”

“Aye,” they all repeated.

Gideon nodded and read from the parchment they had composed together. “Every dead rogue’s widow, mother, sister, brother, ward, will be blessed with a family of rogues who provide for them. Every corporeal need—food, shelter, warmth against the cold, and when due: a spouse, an education or a living.”

“Aye.” The second response came stronger and held more conviction.

“Raise your flasks,” Gideon said. “And repeat after me. ‘We the members of The Rogues Club, so do vow.’”

After the vow, and a drink to seal it, cheers resounded and hands were shaken, so it hardly seemed possible that in a few hours any of them might meet their maker.

Soon, the men began to talk among themselves, exchanging information about their families, and
Hawksworth
approached him.

June 18, 1815

After Bonaparte’s Defeat

My dear Sabrina, if you read this, I have passed, yet the sun shines for me now that you are settled. As I vowed, I found for you a husband. With time running out, I exacted from him what amounts to a deathbed promise to wed and protect you.

He is the new Duke of
Stanthorpe
, honorable, and wealthy beyond your needs. Tell him of your enemy, I implore you, for he will help.

You suffered as the wife of my late half-brother, and for that I make recompense. I shall call you my beloved sister into eternity.
Yours,
Hawksworth
.

CHAPTER ONE

London, November 3, 1815

By this time tomorrow, he would be wed.

Gideon St. Goddard, Duke of
Stanthorpe
, was having second thoughts. Though he approached his Grosvenor Square home for the first time in months, more dread than anticipation filled him, for beyond the black enameled door of number
twenty three
, his mystery bride awaited.

With a curse for fate and a tug on his horse Deviltry’s reins, Gideon slowed his pace, wishing the house stood empty of all but his few loyal retainers.
Loyal—odd choice of words, especially for him.
But, yes, they were, because he paid them well to be so.

Loyalty, constancy, fidelity; he did not possess the natural capacity to inspire those virtues, and he did not need another upon whom to test that ability and fail.

He did not need anyone.

Stanthorpe
Place, tall, bright white and inviting in the gentle winter sun, was not his best nor his biggest home. But Gideon had chosen it to house the woman he had agreed sight-unseen to marry, because of its proximity to the pleasures of London. If worse came to worse and he found himself leg-shackled to an antidote, he could always send her to the country to rusticate and bear his progeny, while he remained in town.

The realization that he need not bother with her more than once or twice a year might actually serve to relieve his anxiety, if the specter of his parents’ almost-perfect marriage did not crook its come-hither finger so beguilingly.

At least,
Grandmama
was pleased about his marriage. After his estranged brother’s scurrilous and untimely demise, her letter informing him of his unexpected ascendancy to the title had caught up with him in Belgium on the eve of battle. Even now, the Grande Dame believed that her letter insisting he “
Hie
thee home and get thee a bride,” rather than the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, had ultimately brought him back to England.

In actuality, her promise to make him her heir, if he did so, had more to do with it than her insistence, that and the mighty and mercurial hand of fate.

His coffers, while never empty, always needed topping-off. His first bride—though she never got quite that far—ran off with a wealthier bridegroom, reminding him that as far as money was concerned, one could never have enough. And Miss Whitcomb, according to her brother, needed a husband to protect her from a life of indigence. “So,” he told himself as he made his way ‘round to the mews, “‘tis all for the best.”

Nevertheless, as he left Deviltry to the eager stable-lad’s tender ministrations, Gideon’s heart beat like a drummer-boy’s timorous tattoo.

In an effort to divest himself of travel grime and don his best armor before meeting his intended, Gideon chose the service entrance so he could take the backstairs to his bedchamber.

In the kitchen, Cook was not to be found but a luscious wench looking set to pup shrieked when she saw him.

Arrested by an eerie sense of recognition, though he had never seen her before in his life, Gideon did not duck fast enough to evade the flour she tossed in guileless self-defense. Reduced to dusty ignobility, he bit off an oath that turned into a sneeze, and added spirited to luscious in his estimation of her.

Dusting flour from his shoulders, Gideon gave his attacker a slow sweeping perusal. Judging by the manner, if not the style, of her dress, the nymph was no servant. Round in all the right places, and then some, she obviously belonged to someone else.
But who?
And what was she doing in his kitchen?

“Where the
devi
—” A second sneeze diluted his vexation, to the point that Gideon sighed and gave it up. “Where is
Cook
?”

His attacker’s miffed mien turned sympathetic. “Oh, you must be hungry.”

Yes, he was, suddenly and inexplicably, but not for food, he decided, chagrined over his reaction to her. He did not normally lust after women in her interesting condition, though there had been that one incredible time.

Gideon cleared his throat. “And you are?”

He must appear as wide-eyed and assessing as she, he mused, even as he tumbled headlong into the bottomless depths of the most amazing violet eyes he had ever beheld. Sultry. Beguiling.

“S-Sabrina,” she said when the silence stretched nearly to snapping.

Shaken by the unlikely coincidence, Gideon waited without breath for her last name.

“Whitcomb. Sabrina Whitcomb.”

For the first time since the Battle of Waterloo, Gideon’s knees turned to jelly.

Behold his bride.

At first thought, the notion enticed, almost as much as it appalled. Yet he knew instinctively that if he took this woman to wife, his solitary existence would end in flames, for she burned bright and alive, and had the power to singe if he got too close.

And he would get close, by God, especially if she were his. Be damned to the burn.

Gideon lowered himself to a chair.

“You are hungry,” she all but cried, as she hurried to gather bread, cheese, and fruit, and fill him a plate.

Gideon added compassionate to her list of qualities, but not graceful, at least not in her delicate condition. Then again, delicate was not the word he would use to describe her. Lush, ripe, and blooming, he thought, yet with a naturally regal bearing, even now.

Soft and shapely, Sabrina Whitcomb possessed a body that would give a man ease and comfort. And despite every indication of perfidy—on the part of her brother, at the least—Gideon wanted, absurdly, to be that man and explore every gentle curve and rising crest.

Lust at first sight.

Suddenly dry of throat, Gideon drank the ale she placed before him.

He had hoped for passable looks in his bride, but he found this woman downright ravishing. By virtue of her, ah, assets, he expected she would be a sweet and succulent bed partner.

But how came she to him with child?
Or by whom?
he
should ask. And why had not
Hawksworth
prepared him for any of it?

Truth to tell, time had been running out for his friend, if
Hawksworth
could still be termed friend, after withholding certain weighty information, though Gideon supposed one did not quite view one’s sister as other men did.

At least he could stop worrying about having to work up the necessary enthusiasm to bed a homely virgin, Gideon thought, consoling himself. There must be something to be said for experience in a wife, but what that might be, he could not precisely recall as having any import at this juncture. Given his bride’s impending motherhood, however, he felt annoyed and duped. “I assume you were widowed something less than nine months ago?”