Chantelle Shaw - The Throne He Must Take

But Jarek had always refused to abandon his little sister, and had constantly risked his life to take her down to the cellar, where she would be safe. Elin had been about a year old when the war had begun, and even then she had been remarkably pretty. When a wealthy English couple—Ralph and Lorna Saunderson—had decided to adopt a Bosnian orphan they had chosen a golden-haired angelic little girl. But Elin had become so distressed when they’d tried to separate her from her older brother that Lorna had insisted on rescuing Jarek too, and so the children had escaped hell and gone to live at stately Cuckmere Hall on the Sussex Downs.

For years Jarek had not thought too deeply about his strange affinity with mountains. He did not take anything too seriously, because he was afraid that if he did the darkness in his soul might devour him. But that goddamned letter—from a man who had allegedly worked for Vostov’s royal family over two decades ago—had unlocked Pandora’s Box. The only way he could prevent the nightmares which had plagued him recently was to drink enough vodka so that he did not so much sleep as sink into oblivion for a few hours, if he was lucky.

He had convinced himself that the letter was a hoax and ignored it. But when he’d arrived at the Frieden Clinic and seen that newspaper headline about Vostov something had flashed into his mind that he might have believed was a deeply buried memory—if it hadn’t been so crazy. Unthinkable. He didn’t want to think, and he certainly wasn’t going to allow Dr Holly Maitland access to the innermost secrets that his instincts warned him were best kept hidden.

‘Hey, Gunther.’ Jarek leaned forward to speak to the driver. ‘How far is it to the chalet where I will be staying?’

‘We should be there in approximately ten minutes, sir,’ Gunther replied in perfect English. ‘We will soon come to a town and ski resort called Arlenwald. Chalet Soline is on the other side of the town, a little higher up the mountain.’

‘Does Arlenwald have any good bars?’

‘Bibiana’s Bar is a popular place with young people who like to drink Schnapps and watch the dancing girls. Or the Oberant Hotel is very charming. I believe they have a string quartet who play music while guests enjoy afternoon tea.’

‘Hmm...tea or Schnapps—what is your preference, Gunther?’

‘I am not fond of tea, sir.’

‘Nor me. How about we stop at Bibiana’s Bar so I can buy you a drink?’

‘Dr Maitland instructed me to take you straight to the chalet,’ Gunther said doubtfully.

Jarek smiled. ‘There is no need to tell her that we took a short detour, is there?’

* * *

‘What do you mean, he’s not here?’ Holly stared at Karl, the chef and butler at Chalet Soline. ‘The chauffeur left the Frieden Clinic with Mr Dvorska two hours ago, to make a journey that has taken me twenty minutes.’

Admittedly the four-by-four she had used to drive herself to the chalet was better suited to the mountain roads than a limousine, but it should have taken the chauffeur no more than half an hour to deliver Jarek to the luxury alpine lodge where he would stay while he underwent a course of psychological treatment.

‘I understand that Mr Dvorska wished to spend some time in Arlenwald,’ Karl told her. ‘Gunther telephoned to say he had left the patient in the town, because he had to attend another appointment, and that Mr Dvorska intended to walk the last part of the journey to Chalet Soline.’

Holly frowned. ‘I know Gunther had to go to Salzburg today, but I expected him to follow my instructions and bring the patient here first. Goodness knows what Mr Dvorska has found to do in Arlenwald. There are only a few ski shops and hotels—and that dreadful bar where the waitresses dress up in supposedly Austrian folk costumes. I doubt the traditional dirndl was as low-cut as the dresses worn by the girls at Bibiana’s Bar,’ she said drily.

The lively bar, which was a popular venue for the après-ski crowd, was just the kind of place that Jarek would head for, she thought grimly. She shouldn’t have let him out of her sight. Jarek’s fondness for alcohol had been extensively documented in the tabloids, and she should have stuck to him like glue and escorted him to Chalet Soline herself. Instead she had sent him off with the chauffeur to give herself time to try and understand why he, of all men, had made her aware of her sensuality in a way she had never felt before.

Just thinking about his too-handsome face and his sexy grin that was both an invitation and a promise caused heat to unfurl in the pit of her stomach. She grimaced. Sexual alchemy was an enigma, and scientific research had yet to fully explain the complex biological and psychological reasons why one person was attracted to another. At a basic level her awareness of Jarek was the purely primal reaction of a female searching for an alpha-male, Holly reminded herself. But she was an intelligent, educated woman of the twenty-first century and she was not at the mercy of her hormones. She would simply have to ignore the thunder of her pulse when Jarek looked at her with that wicked glint in his eyes that made her want to respond to his unspoken challenge.

Her conscience queried whether she should ask Professor Heppel to assign a different psychotherapist to work with Jarek—except that she could not think of a good reason to request being taken off his case. She certainly could not admit that she was attracted to her patient. It would be tantamount to professional suicide.

Besides, she thought as she climbed into the four-by-four and headed towards the town that she had driven through five minutes earlier, right at this moment her feelings for Jarek Dvorska were murderous rather than amorous.

Bibiana’s Bar was at the far end of Arlenwald’s pretty main street. Popular with skiers and snowboarders, even at five o’clock in the afternoon the place was packed with people clutching huge steins of beer, and Holly struggled to thread her way through the crowd over to the bar. Rock music pumped out from enormous speakers and the heavy bass reverberated through her body and exacerbated her tension headache. It seemed impossible that she would be able to find Jarek in this crowd, and she didn’t even know for certain that he was here.

After a fruitless search, with her head pounding in competition with the music, she was about to give up. Then her attention was drawn to two girls wearing micro mini-skirts and cropped blouses that revealed their lithe figures, who were dancing on top of a table.

Following her instincts, she made her way across the room and felt a mixture of relief and anger when she spotted Jarek sitting in an alcove. Another girl was perched on his knee, and as Holly watched him slide his hand over the girl’s bare thigh her temper simmered.

Trust him to find a dark corner to commit dark deeds, she fumed. She would have loved to walk away and leave him to get on with his sordid lifestyle of booze and bimbos, but she did not relish having to confess to Professor Heppel that she had failed in her first assignment.

She became aware that Jarek was not watching the girls who were dancing so frenetically in front of him. His brilliant blue eyes were focused on her. Once again her body responded to the challenge in his bold stare and she felt her nipples pull tight. He was unfairly gorgeous, and she was helpless to prevent her body’s treacherous reaction to him. The cruel beauty of his angular face and that too-long dark blond hair that he pushed off his brow with a careless flick of his hand were a killer combination. Few women would be able to resist his rampant sensuality and the devil-may-care attitude that warned he was untameable.

The girl sitting on his lap clearly found him irresistible. Holly was irritated as she watched Jarek lower his head and murmur something to the girl, who giggled as she slid off his knee and glanced over at her.