The Secrets She Must Tell

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

Sitting on the crimson velvet banquette that curved around a table upon which sat a bottle of bubbles chilling in a bucket, Georgie Wallace took a sip of champagne and felt it fizz down her throat to join the unfamiliar buzzing in her stomach.

Her pulse thudded in time to the beat of the sultry music drifting over from the dance floor. The blood pounding through her veins was thick and hot. This pull, this dizzying breathlessness, this inability to concentrate on the conversation going on around her had never happened to her before.

But then, she’d never seen anyone quite like him before either.

She’d noticed him the moment he’d entered the room what felt like an eternity ago but could only have been a matter of seconds. One minute she’d been laughing at something one of her friends had said, the next the air had started vibrating with a strange sort of electric tension that had sizzled straight through her, igniting her nerve-endings and robbing her of all coherent thought. Her gaze had located the source of it with the precision of a heat seeking missile, and his impact had dealt her a blow to her senses from which she’d yet to recover.

Now he was striding across the floor away from her, dominating the space as if he owned it, all towering height, confident authority and purposeful intent. Anyone in his way instinctively stepped out of it. No one appeared inclined to inform him of the club’s no-jeans policy.

‘Magnificent,’ Georgie murmured to herself, watching transfixed as he slid onto a stool at the far end of the busy bar and summoned the bartender with nothing more than a barely perceptible lift of his head.

That was what he was.

In command.

Compelling.

And clearly in need of a drink, if the way he knocked back the one that appeared in front of him was anything to go by.

‘Huh?’ said Carla, her oldest and best friend, who was sitting beside her and who she could see out of the corner of her eye was bopping to the music while plucking the bottle from the bucket to refill her glass.

‘The guy at the bar,’ Georgie said, unable to wrench her gaze away.

‘Which one?’

Wasn’t it obvious? ‘Far left. Dark hair in need of a cut, checked shirt.’

‘Big and broad with his sleeves pushed up?’

‘That’s him.’

Carla replaced the bottle in the bucket and sat back. ‘A bit dishevelled for my liking,’ she said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Nice back, though. Good shoulders.’

‘Very.’ With muscles clearly visible beneath the cotton that stretched across them, they were possibly the finest set of shoulders Georgie had ever seen.

‘Did you get a look at his face?’

‘Not properly.’ Just a tantalising glimpse of a strong masculine jaw and straight nose as he strode past her.

‘It would be helpful if he shifted round a bit more.’

‘True,’ Georgie said with an assessing tilt of her head. ‘But even if he did, he’d still be too far away to make out the details.’

‘Shame.’

It was indeed because just imagine if his face matched up to the promise of his body. He’d be breathtakingly gorgeous and that was something she wouldn’t mind taking a good long look at.

But intriguingly, what was equally as arresting as his physique on the move was his stillness and his containment as he sat alone at the bar. Now furnished with another drink, which he was taking more slowly than the last, he seemed to be utterly lost in thought, an island of immobility in a sea of activity, his bleak sobriety a sharp contrast to the hedonistic atmosphere of the club, and oddly desolate.

Who was he?

What was he doing here?

And would he like some company?

At that distantly familiar thought, Georgie inwardly stilled, her heart skipping a beat before racing.

Oooh, how interesting.

Once upon a time, as an out-of-control teenager desperate for parental attention and discipline, she hadn’t thought twice about approaching good-looking men in bars for a spot of light flirting or dirty dancing and she’d been extremely good at it.

But ever since she’d come to the distressing realisation at the age of sixteen that if she wanted boundaries she’d have to set them herself, she’d given up that sort of reckless, impulsive behaviour and had knuckled down to the serious business of adulting. With a love of rules that had been missing from her upbringing, she’d pursued a career in law – much to the horror of her hippie parents – and had slowly built the structure she craved into her life.

She’d had dates, of course, relationships even, but they were casual affairs with guys at college or, later, with men she generally met at friendsʼ dinner parties, men she already faintly knew instead of random strangers picked up in bars.

And while sheʼd liked and respected and fancied all of them, none had made her heart race particularly fast. Her last relationship – six months with a perfectly nice but ultimately unexciting banker – had fizzled out over a year ago and she’d neither lamented its demise nor been on the lookout for another.

For the last twelve months, in fact, she’d become so engrossed in the job she loved, so determined to get the promotion she’d been after, that she hadn’t given the opposite sex a moment’s consideration. She hadn’t wanted the distraction. She hadn’t needed the hassle.

Tonight, however, with her promotion in the bag and her foot easing off the accelerator a fraction, it appeared she wouldn’t mind some of both.

‘Good song,’ Carla said in response to a shift in the music as she bopped about on the seat a bit more energetically. ‘Want to dance?’

Not particularly.

In fact, Georgie wanted something quite different. Because while hitting the dance floor with her friends and forgetting all about the brooding hunk at the bar would be by far the safest, most sensible option, she didn’t want to forget about him. And for once, she didn’t want to be sensible. She wanted to meet him. Talk to him. Flirt with him. She wanted to give in to the scorching heat and the dizzying lust rushing through her and see where they took her.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced such an intense and immediate attraction, or felt so alive. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed the heady thrill of sexual excitement, how long she’d been treading water. Besides, it was her birthday. If she couldn’t let her hair down tonight of all nights, when could she?

‘Maybe later,’ she said, her stomach tightening and her pulse racing at the thought of what could happen if she went for it.

Beside her, Carla stilled, her eyes wide. ‘Oh? But you usually love dancing.’

‘I think I might go over and see if I can’t cheer him up instead.’

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then, an incredulous, ‘Seriously?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he does not look like the sort of suave sophisticated professional you usually go for these days. He looks...untamed.ʼ

‘I know.’ And that was the attraction.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Yup.ʼ Ish. Her chatting up skills were a bit rusty, and not only might he not be in the mood for company, he might also be spoken for. But what was the worst that could happen? If she crashed and burned, she could always give a nonchalant shrug and leave. If, on the other hand, she didn’t, and the attraction she was experiencing turned out to be mutual...well...the outcome could be explosive.

‘I thought youʼd given up that sort of thing.ʼ

‘It’s only conversation,’ she said while thinking, well, maybe. To start with, at least.

‘Sure it is,’ said Carla with a wry grin that Georgie couldn’t help returning as she put down her glass and got to her feet, her stomach churning with nervous excitement.

‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck. Not that you ever needed it. One thing, though...’

‘What?’

‘Just in case it isn’t only conversation and you leave before we’re back from the dance floor, message me his name and a photo, and call me in the morning.’

*

Oblivious to the energy and buzz surrounding him, Finn Calvert stared unseeingly into his drink, his usually ordered thoughts a jumble, his legendary focus blitzed.

Twelve months. Eighteen at most. That was how long his father had left.

Details of the phone call he’d received an hour ago, which had ripped him apart and shattered his world, ricocheted around his head.

Four weeks ago, unbeknownst to him, his father had gone to his doctor complaining of a prolonged cough and shortness of breath. Subsequent tests had revealed lung cancer. Metastasised. Incurable.

Devastating.

Ever since his motherʼs death when he was young his father had been his only family. He’d been the one who’d brought him up and who’d fished him out of the trouble he’d got into as an angry teenager. When, at eighteen, Finn had announced he wanted to buy the bar where he’d been working and which was up for sale, his father had been his initial investor. Over the years heʼd subsequently proved a solid sounding board and his staunchest supporter, and the bond they shared was deep and unassailable.

Now he was dying, and there wasn’t a thing he – Finn – with all his wealth and influence, success and power, could do about it.

His jaw clenched and his fingers tightened around the glass as he fought back a surge of hot powerful emotion, a tangle of helplessness, injustice and rage. Why had his father waited so long before seeing his GP? Why hadn’t ever he said anything about not feeling well?

And how had he not noticed that anything had been wrong? His father could be guarded at times and had practically invented the stiff upper lip but that was no excuse. Nor was the acquisition of a hugely grand yet derelict Parisian hotel, which had become so complex that Finn had barely had a moment’s thought for anything else. He should have made time. He should have visited more often. Then he might have seen that something wasn’t right.

But he hadn’t and now it was too late, and the guilt and the regret were crucifying him in a way that contrary to his hope, alcohol was doing nothing to dull. All he wanted from the whisky he was drinking was oblivion. Just for tonight. There’d be time for stoicism and practicality in the morning. But the whisky might as well have been water because the pain was as excoriating as it had been an hour ago and his chest still felt as if it were caught in an ever tightening vice.

By coming here he’d chosen the wrong place, he thought, downing the remainder of his drink and feeling the burn momentarily scythe through the turmoil. It was convenient, certainly, but it was too loud, too damn full of fun and laughter. He ought to leave and go in search of a darker, quieter, harder bar, one where he could sit on his own in the shadows and the alcohol would flow without question.

And he ought to leave now.

‘Hi.’

The soft voice came from his right, puncturing the dark fog swirling around in his head and freezing him mid-move. The sexy, feminine timbre of it hit him low in the gut and wound through him from there, heating the blood suddenly rushing through his veins and reigniting sensation everywhere.

Automatically, Finn lifted his head and turned it in her direction. She was standing a foot from him, enveloping him with an intoxicating combination of heat and scent, confidence and vibrancy. His gaze locked onto hers, and in that instant, the overall impression he had of dark tousled hair, dazzling smile and a short black sequinned dress was pulverised by a punch of lust so strong it nearly knocked him off his stool.

Lost in the soft brown depths of her eyes and unable to look away, he felt his pulse slow right down. The noise and activity of the club faded. His surroundings disappeared. His head emptied of everything but a strange sense of recognition.

Which was absurd, he told himself, getting a grip and blinking to snap the connection. His foundations had been rocked. His defences were weak. Recognition? No way. They didn’t know each other.

But they could.

They could get to know each other very well.

Because the intense attraction that had hit him like the blow of a hammer was not one-sided, he realised as he let his gaze drift over her in a leisurely assessment. She felt it too. Quite apart from the fact that she’d been the one to approach him, he could see it in the dilation of her pupils and the rapid rise and fall of her chest. In the flush on her cheeks and the accelerated flutter of the pulse at the base of her neck. He could hear it in the hitch of her breath and feel it in the way she was now very slightly leaning towards him.

And it occurred to him then that perhaps there were other ways to achieve the mindlessness he craved. Perhaps a night of hot sex and dizzying pleasure would succeed where alcohol had failed. Just the thought of it was pushing aside his father’s devastating diagnosis and his reaction to it. Imagine the reality. If he switched his focus and put his mind to it he wouldn’t even have to imagine.

‘Hello,’ he said, giving her a slow smile that had felled many a woman over the years and was clearly no less effective tonight if the sparkle that appeared in her eyes was anything to go by.

‘Would you mind if I joined you?’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’