Читать книгу The Tycoon's Hidden Heir - Yvonne Lindsay - Страница 6

Twelve years ago…

Black, ice-cold water swirled around her, sapping the last of the heat from her body, the last of her will to survive. A tinge of irony touched her mind that she should die this way. Helena Milton, full of life, colour and crazy dreams, and powered by a get-go attitude to life that had alternately amazed and dismayed her quieter elderly parents.

Her parents—would they ever understand why she’d left? Why she’d agreed to marry Patrick Davies and settle for less than love? Deep in her heart she knew she was doing the right thing—for herself, sure, but most of all for them and for the sacrifices they’d made for her.

But she’d failed. An uncontrollable skid on the ice-and snow-strewn road had plunged her car through the bridge barrier and into the swollen river below. The river which now flumed with chilled water from the melting snow that came straight off New Zealand’s central plateau mountains.

Helena lifted numbed frozen fingers to try the switch for the electric windows again. Futile. Not even her ever-weakened attempts to break the glass had any effect. With the doors jammed and the car’s electrics out of commission she remained trapped. Helena closed her eyes again. What was the point in keeping them open when all around her was nothing but blackness?

A spark of anger lit briefly in her chest that she could die like this—alone and with her goals unfulfilled, no chance to earn her father’s pride instead of being the object of his quiet disappointment. Defeat had an ugly, bitter taste.

Let go, whispered the little voice at the back of her head. Let go. She sagged deeper into her car seat, accepting the cold that penetrated to her bones, and let her mind drift. How long would it take, she wondered.

A new and different sound from outside penetrated the thickening fog of reluctant acceptance in her mind. She forced her eyelids up and scanned around her. Fairy lights on the road above. A crazed laugh, broken and weak, choked from her throat as some of her usual humour surfaced. Whatever happened to the white light at the end of the tunnel everyone talked about?

A dark figure loomed at her driver’s window, a pale face pressed against the glass. Water foamed around the figure and against the window’s edge. Helena felt the car shift slightly with the increasing pressure of the river’s pummelling force. The man’s lips moved but she shook her head slowly in response. What was he saying? His arms raised and she recognised the outline of an axe clenched in his hands. He tapped it against the glass. Helena suddenly understood what he’d been trying to say. She threw herself sideways, into the deepening pool in her car, oblivious to the dice-shaped pieces of broken safety glass that showered her body.

The roaring growl of the water, muffled before, now crashed intrusively against her ears. Strong hands reached in to grab her by her jacket, her hair, anything that gave her rescuer purchase. Helena struggled to help him as he dragged her through the gaping window but she flopped uselessly as her limbs refused to obey. With one powerful lift he manoeuvred her slight frame free from the car. The shield of his body protected her from the hungry determination of the swirling current as he carried her to the bank.

The bank was hard, blessedly so. Helena relished each pressure point of discomfort as confirmation she still lived. She’d been so close to giving in. The concept that she was finally safe rejoiced through her mind. Now, all she wanted to do was sleep, except the man who’d pulled her from the car seemed determined not to let her.

“Is there anyone else in the car?” her rescuer shouted in her ear. “C’mon! Answer me, is there anyone else?”

Slowly, her lips formed the words, her voice weak. “No. Alone.”

“Thank God. Are you hurt? Did you lose consciousness?”

She felt his hands, strong and capable, probe her scalp then skim her body as she shook her head. The cold air bit through her wet clothing all the way to her bones.

“Doesn’t look like you’ve broken anything. Let’s get you somewhere dry.”

“My things? My car?” she managed to ask through frozen lips.

“Sorry, hon. Your car’s heading downstream. First order of business is to get you dry and warm.”

Her rescuer lifted her into his arms and strode toward what she now recognised as a large truck and trailer unit parked in a lay-by to the side of the road. A tiny smile pulled at her lips as she recognised the source of her earlier confusion. A long-distance trucker, his rig was festooned with driving lights.

“What’s so funny?”

His voice was deep, young. Reassuring. She wanted to see what he looked like but the effort required to tilt her head and pick out his profile in the shadows cast by the truck’s lights remained beyond her.

“Fairy lights,” she whispered.

A deep chuckle rumbled through his body. “Sure, fairy lights.”

He lifted her up into the cab of his truck then climbed in after her to settle her into the basic sleeping compartment behind.

“Do you remember how long you were in the water? What time you crashed?”

“J-just after nine…I think.”

He flung a look at the clock on the dash. “About half an hour then. What the hell were you doing out on the road without chains? Didn’t you see the warning signs?”

“D-didn’t w-want to stop. I have to get to Auckland.” The short speech took every last ounce of energy left within her.

“You won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

A sudden disembodied voice on the radio elicited a sharp curse from her rescuer before he responded. She tried to listen, catching only the words accident and hypothermia before drowsiness pulled at her with the strength of a super magnet. She began to slide into unconsciousness, rousing only as he shook her gently.

“Hey, don’t go to sleep yet. You have to get those clothes off and get warm again. Can you manage?”

“N-no. F-fingers t-too cold.”

She felt as helpless as a rag doll when he began to peel off her wet clothing, muttering under his breath as her limp limbs hindered the process and massive tremors racked her body.

“Shivering, that’s good. You’re on your way back.”

Pain seared through her as circulation sluggishly resumed. “B-b-back? I n-never got where I was g-going.”

He chuckled again, and Helena decided she liked the sound. It was deep and warm and made her feel alive again. Alive—something she’d taken for granted for far too long.

“I hate to tell you this, but we’re stuck here for the night. I’d hoped we could make it farther up the line to a motel but the authorities have closed the roads in both directions until morning.”

As soon as she was naked he laid her gently, almost clinically, on her side on the narrow bunk and tucked a down-filled sleeping bag around her body. She vaguely heard the sounds of his own wet clothing slap onto the floor. She couldn’t stop shivering and the sleeping bag slid away from her body, exposing the length of her back. She barely felt the mattress dip as he lay down beside her but the heat that radiated from his body was seductively welcome. She sighed as strong-muscled arms gathered her close against the rock-hard plane of his chest and was asleep before he settled the sleeping bag around them both.

It was still dark when Mason Knight woke, disoriented, to find a warm, slender and very naked female body on top of his. The crush of her breasts against his chest and the tangle of her legs in his brought him to full aching arousal. Disorientation fled as he remembered the rescue from the car stuck in the rising river and bringing the driver to the truck to get her warm. Standard survival procedure, he reminded himself—get naked, get dry, get warm—but nothing in his survival training during his stint in the New Zealand army had prepared him for this particular scenario.

He willed his body into submission but one part of his anatomy stubbornly ignored him. Slowly and deliberately he poured images through his mind designed to quell even the hottest ardour—no luck.

He tried to shift his hips and roll her to one side against the back wall of the sleeper but she squirmed against him—the central core of her body so close to him he could feel the heat that now emanated from that private part of her. Shit. She’d freak out if she woke now, and he sure wouldn’t blame her.

Shock jolted through his body as small feminine hands stroked feather-light across his torso, sending wild coils of desire tightening in ever-decreasing spirals. She rubbed her cheek against his chest, a sigh escaping her lips to brush over his sensitised skin.

“I need you.” Her voice was husky and travelled through the velvet midnight darkness like a caress.

“No, it’s just reaction to the accident. You’re in shock.” In shock? He was the one in shock. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I need this. I need you.” Her lips found one of his nipples and her tongue swirled around the sensitive flat disk, sending a raging hunger through his body that didn’t want to take no for an answer. “Show me I’m alive,” she whispered as she pressed her hips against his hungry flesh, a sharp moan punctuating her demand.

She rose up onto her knees—deft hands reaching for him, stroking his iron-hard shaft, her fingertips barely touching the swollen head, guiding him to the source of her heat—then she sank down onto him with a throaty groan that almost saw him lose control right there and then. A massive tremor rippled through her body as she took his full length deep within her and she stilled, her hands now resting on his shoulders. Then, she began to rock, slowly tilting her pelvis back and forth, maintaining the searing contact between their bodies, heat and moisture building between them like molten lava.

Mason trailed his fingers over her thighs and to her hips where he grasped a firm hold of her, silently encouraging her to up the tempo as his hips thrust upward to meet her every stroke.

This was crazy—he was crazy to let her do this—but somehow, in the anonymity of the dark night hours, it seemed as if it was the only right thing left in the world. To think that all her vitality, her heat, could have been gone forever. Yeah, he understood her need to affirm life—to feel life—right now.

Right. Now.

His climax hit him with the force of a runaway train and his fingers bit into her skin as he pumped against her. Her sharp cry of completion and the rhythmic pull of her muscles as they contracted around him prolonged the ecstasy even as she collapsed against him, shaking with the aftermath of pleasure.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her head resting against his chest where his heart pounded so hard he thought any second now it would leap right from his chest. He cleared his throat to speak, but she raised one finger and pressed it against his lips. “Shh, don’t say anything.” And then, just like that, she was fast asleep again.

Aftershocks continued to quiver through his body. Mason hooked his arms about her and cradled her to him as he’d never held another woman before. In this timeless moment she was his woman and his alone. The overwhelming urge to claim her and protect her from the world came from out of nowhere—strong, feral, invincible. What the hell was he thinking? He didn’t even know her name! Who was she? What kind of woman was she, that she could make love with such abandon to a total stranger then fall asleep in his arms as if she belonged nowhere else?

By the time the wintry-grey fingers of dawn crept across the sky he was no closer to finding his answers. Silent and careful, he eased her from his body, watching as she instinctively nestled into the warmth of the depression where he’d lain. He stifled an oath as his toes made contact with the near-frozen wet clothing abandoned on the floor and quickly reached for clean dry jeans and a sweatshirt from the locker above the bed.

A quick check on the radio confirmed the roads had been declared safe enough to reopen. It was time to go. He had a lot of time to make up and a wedding to get to in Auckland later that afternoon. His boss was much older than his bride-to-be and had been alternately ridiculed and lauded in the tabloids about his forthcoming nuptials. Either way, Mason didn’t give a damn, but he did respect the man who’d given him his first job out of the army and had begun to teach him everything he knew about the transport industry in New Zealand. Mason considered it an honour to stand up for him when his boss’s adult son from his first marriage had point-blank refused to have anything to do with the wedding.

The rustle of bedclothes in the sleeper drew his attention back to his immediate problem.

“The roads are open again,” he said over his shoulder, reluctant to make eye contact.

“That’s good. Is there a chance I can borrow something of yours to wear until my clothes dry out?”

“Sure, just check the locker. There’s a spare belt in there somewhere, too.”

“Thanks.”

He felt her pause, as if weighing up the wisdom of bringing up last night. She’d obviously reached the same conclusion he had—ignore it and just maybe it would fade away. Every muscle in his shoulders clenched and he gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled fingers as he listened to her pull on some clothes. The thought of his clothes clinging to the satin-soft creaminess of her skin had him rock hard in a split second. He fought the urge to turn around and watch her. Did her body clamour to repeat their nocturnal experience in the cold light of day as loudly as his did?

Apparently not. Eventually she came forward and plopped down into the passenger’s seat in the cab and he got his first real look at her.

Hell, she barely looked twenty. Delicate fingers combed through tousled, long brown hair, hair that inthe streaks of early sunlight reflected reddish lights of burnished copper. Delicate fingers that had held him last night, had guided him inside her body. His gut clenched into a fiery ball of want and he forced his eyes forward to the frozen landscape that stretched ahead of them, not willing to see what lay in her green eyes, not wanting to commit the pale heart-shaped face to his memory. But it was already too late. He would never forget her. Not her scent, not her touch—nothing.

“Thanks. For everything.” Her voice was husky, hesitant, as if she found the words difficult to say.

“You’re welcome,” he ground out through teeth that ached, they were clenched so hard together. He forced his gaze back out the windscreen. It was clear she regretted her impulsiveness already. Okay, he could be a gentleman. He could ignore last night and the clawing need that the mere sight of her aroused in him. Somehow. “So, where are you headed?”

“Auckland, but you can drop me at the nearest town. I need to make a phone call first.”

“That’s it then?”

He heard her breath catch in her throat, just the slightest hitch, but quite enough to tell him she’d understood his question fully. Her answer was softly spoken but rang with finality as she turned to stare out the passenger window. “Yes, that’s it.”

Mason ran a finger inside the stiff white collar of his shirt and loosened his tie another blessed millimetre. All day he’d been plagued by last night’s memories. Finally, while he was getting ready for the wedding, he’d resolved to try to find out who she was. The registration of her wrecked car would be a good start once it was dragged from the river. A few calls would do it. Then he would track her down—to see if they could make something more of the incendiary passion they’d shared. He’d never known anything like it. Like her. He wanted to know more.

He thought of what he’d gotten up to as a teenager to rile his dad and of the five years he’d spent in the army—of how he’d constantly searched for that one thing that would make his life feel like it had a purpose. The one thing to fill the void he himself couldn’t define. For a brief time that void had been filled last night. He had to find her. He had to know if she was what he’d been looking for.

Patrick gave him a nudge as the opening strains of the wedding march drew the assembled congregation to their feet in unison. A hush settled amongst the crowd as the bride began her journey down the thickly carpeted centre aisle in Auckland’s oldest and largest city church. All heads turned for their first look at the wife-to-be of one of New Zealand’s wealthiest men and for the first time in his life Mason Knight nearly blacked out as his midnight lover glided down the aisle.