Robyn Donald - The Far Side of Paradise

As though the words were torn from him, Cade said roughly, ‘Damn. This is too soon.’

Taryn froze, every instinct shrieking that this was a bad, foolish, hair-raisingly terrifying idea.

Every instinct save one—the primal, irresistible conviction that if Cade didn’t kiss her she’d regret it for ever.

Her lips parted. ‘Yes,’ she said, in a husky, faraway voice. ‘Too soon.’

‘And you’re afraid of me.’

She dragged in a deep breath. Oh, no, not afraid of Cade.

Afraid— terrified —of being shown once more that she was cold, too cold to satisfy a man …

But she didn’t feel cold. This had never happened before—this wild excitement that shimmered through her like a green flash at sunset, rare and exquisite, offering some hidden glory she might perhaps reach …

ROBYN DONALDcan’t remember not being able to read, and will be eternally grateful to the local farmers who carefully avoided her on a dusty country road as she read her way to and from school, transported to places and times far away from her small village in Northland, New Zealand.

Growing up fed her habit. As well as training as a teacher, marrying and raising two children, she discovered the delights of romances and read them voraciously, especially enjoying the ones written by New Zealand writers. So much so that one day she decided to write one herself. Writing soon grew to be as much of a delight as reading—although infinitely more challenging—and when eventually her first book was accepted by Mills & Boon® she felt she’d arrived home.

She still lives in a small town in Northland, with her family close by, using the landscape as a setting for much of her work. Her life is enriched by the friends she’s made among writers and readers, and complicated by a determined Corgi called Buster, who is convinced that blackbirds are evil entities. Her greatest hobby is still reading, with travelling a very close second.

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* POWERFUL GREEK, HOUSEKEEPER WIFE * * part of The Greek Tycoons series BROODING BILLIONAIRE, IMPOVERISHED PRINCESS THE VIRGIN AND HIS MAJESTY * part of The Greek Tycoons series part of The Greek Tycoons series

ROBYN DONALD

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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STONE-FACED, Cade Peredur listened again to the tape of his foster-brother’s final call—a frantic, beseeching torrent of words recorded just before Peter Cooper killed himself.

‘Cade, where are you? Where the hell are you—oh, with Lady Louisa, I suppose. Damn it, Cade, I need you more than any woman could—why aren’t you home? Why can’t you be there for me?’

A short pause, broken only by his breathing, jagged and irregular, and then, ‘Cade, I’ve been such a fool—such an idiot.’

Not a muscle of Cade’s face moved at the sound of choked weeping.

At last Peter said in a thick, despairing voice, ‘Taryn was my last—my only —hope. It hurts—so bloody much, Cade, so much …’ Another wrenching pause and then, in a voice Cade had never heard before, Peter said, ‘There’s nothing left for me now. She laughed when I asked … laughed …’

The silence stretched for so long that when he’d first heard it Cade had been sure the call was over.

But eventually his brother whispered, ‘It’s no good, Cade. I’m sorry, but it’s no good any more. I can’t—I just can’t live with this. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. Tell the parents I’m sorry to be such a useless son to them, but at least they’ll still have you. You’re the sort of man they wanted me to be, and God knows I tried, but I’ve always known I didn’t have what it takes. Get married, Cade, and give them some grandchildren to adore. They’ll need them now …’

He stopped abruptly. Then he said unevenly, ‘Try not to despise me, Cade. I love you. Goodbye.’

Cade switched off the tape and walked across the luxurious room to look unseeingly across the London cityscape, fighting to control the rush of blind rage threatening to consume him. The call had come eight hours before he’d arrived home and by the time he’d got to Peter’s apartment his brother was dead.

Peter had worshipped him, emulated and envied him, then finally grown away from him, but Cade had always been intensely protective of his younger brother.

Hands clenching, he turned and walked into his office, stopping at his desk. The photograph on it had been taken at his foster-parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary a few months before Peter’s death—Isabel and Harold Cooper all smiles for the camera, Peter’s grin revealing a hint of feverish excitement.

As always, Cade was the odd one out—taller than the other two men, his features harsher and his expression unreadable.

His brother’s suicide shattered that secure, tight family unit. A fortnight after the funeral, Harold Cooper had died from a heart attack, and while Isabel was still trying to come to terms with the wreckage of her life she’d stepped out into the path of a car. Onlookers said she’d moved as though in a daze.

She’d wanted to die too, but not before she’d begged Cade to find out what had driven her son to suicide.

He’d held her hand while she’d whispered painfully, ‘If … if I knew why … it wouldn’t be so bad. I just want to know, Cade, before I die.’

‘You’re not going to die,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ll find out what happened.’

Her lashes had fluttered up again, revealing a spark of animation in her gaze. ‘Promise?’

To encourage that hope, that flicker of determination, he’d have promised anything. ‘I will. But you have to keep going for me.’

She’d managed a pale smile. ‘It’s a deal.’

That had been the turning point; valiantly she’d gathered her reserves and struggled back to cope with everything life had thrown at her. It had taken months of rehabilitation, and she was now adjusting to living the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

The letter Peter had left for his parents lay in its envelope on Cade’s desk. He flicked it open and read it again. Unlike the telephone call, it was free of overt grief. Peter had told his parents he loved them, that he was sorry to cause them pain, but his life was no longer worth living.

No mention of the woman who’d reduced him to this depth of despair. He’d never introduced her to his family, only spoken of her once or twice in a casual, throwaway fashion. The last time he’d gone home—to celebrate his first big commission as a sculptor, a work for a public park in a market town—he hadn’t referred to her.

So why that anguished, cryptic mention in his final call?

Cade turned away, his hard, arrogantly contoured face set. What part had Taryn Angove played in Peter’s death?