India Grey - Wicked Secrets - Craving the Forbidden

INDIA GREY’s qualifications for a writing career include a degree in English Language and Literature, an obsession with fancy stationery and an inexhaustible passion for daydreaming. She grew up—and still lives—in a small market town in rural Cheshire with her husband and three daughters, loves history and vintage stuff and is a firm believer in love at first sight.

You can visit her website at www.indiagrey.com, check out her blog at www.indiagrey.blogspot.com or find her on twitter.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my blog regulars

With thanks for listening,

sharing and making me smile.

Cover

About the Author About the Author INDIA GREY ’s qualifications for a writing career include a degree in English Language and Literature, an obsession with fancy stationery and an inexhaustible passion for daydreaming. She grew up—and still lives—in a small market town in rural Cheshire with her husband and three daughters, loves history and vintage stuff and is a firm believer in love at first sight. You can visit her website at www.indiagrey.com, check out her blog at www.indiagrey.blogspot.com or find her on twitter.

Title Page Wicked Secrets India Grey www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication For my blog regulars With thanks for listening, sharing and making me smile.

Part One Part 1

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Part Two

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

Copyright Page

‘LADIES and gentlemen, welcome aboard the 16.22 East Coast Mainline service from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. This train will be calling at Peterborough, Stevenage…’

Heart hammering against her ribs from the mad, last-minute dash down the platform carrying a bag that was about to burst at the seams, Sophie Greenham leaned against the wall of the train and let out a long exhalation of relief.

She had made it.

Of course, the relief was maybe a little misplaced given that she’d come straight from the casting session for a vampire film and was still wearing a black satin corset dress that barely covered her bottom and high-heeled black boots that were rather more vamp than vampire. But the main thing was she had caught the train and wouldn’t let Jasper down. She’d just have to keep her coat on to avoid getting arrested for indecent exposure.

Not that she’d want to take it off anyway, she thought grimly, wrapping it more tightly around her as the train gave a little lurch and began to move. For weeks now the snow had kept falling from a pewter-grey sky and the news headlines had been dominated by The Big Freeze. Paris had been just as bad, although there the snow looked cleaner, but when Sophie had left her little rented apartment two days ago there had been a thick layer of ice on the inside of the windows.

She seemed to have been cold for an awfully long time.

It was getting dark already. The plate-glass windows of the office blocks backing onto the railway line spilled light out onto the grimy snow. The train swayed beneath her, changing tracks and catching her off guard so that she tottered on the stupid high-heeled boots and almost fell into an alarmed-looking student on his way back from the buffet car. She really should go and find a loo to change into something more respectable, but now she’d finally stopped rushing she was overwhelmed with tiredness. Picking up her bag, she hoisted it awkwardly into the nearest carriage.

Her heart sank. It was instantly obvious that every seat was taken, and the aisle was cluttered with shopping bags and briefcases and heavy winter coats stuffed under seats. Muttering apologies as she staggered along, trying not to knock cardboard cartons of coffee out of the hands of commuters with her bag, she made her way into the next carriage.

It was just as bad as the last one. The feeling of triumph she’d had when she’d made it onto the train in time ebbed slowly away as she moved from one carriage to the next, apologising as she went, until finally she came to one that was far less crowded.

Sophie’s aching shoulders dropped in relief. And tensed again as she took in the strip of plush carpet, the tiny lights on the tables, the superior upholstery with the little covers over the headrests saying ‘First Class’.

Pants.

It was occupied almost entirely by businessmen who didn’t bother to look up from their laptops and newspapers as she passed. Until her mobile rang. Her ringtone—’Je Ne Regrette Rien’—had seemed wittily ironic in Paris, but in the hushed carriage it lost some of its charm. Holding the handles of her bag together in one hand while she scrabbled in the pocket of her coat with the other and tried to stop it falling open to reveal the wardrobe horror beneath, she was aware of heads turning, eyes looking up at her over the tops of glasses and from behind broadsheets. In desperation she hitched her bag onto the nearest table and pulled the phone from her pocket just in time to see Jean-Claude’s name on the screen.

Pants again.

A couple of months ago she would have had a very different reaction, she thought, hastily pressing the button to reject the call. But then a couple of months ago her image of Jean-Claude as a free-spirited Parisian artist had been intact. He’d seemed so aloof when she’d first seen him, delivering paintings to the set of the film she was working on. Aloof and glamorous. Not someone you could ever imagine being suffocating or possessive or …

Nope. She wasn’t going to think about the disaster that had been her latest romantic adventure.

She sat down in the nearest seat, suddenly too tired to go any further. You couldn’t keep moving for ever, she told herself with a stab of bleak humour. In the seat opposite there was yet another businessman, hidden behind a large newspaper that he’d thoughtfully folded so that the horoscopes were facing her.

Actually, he wasn’t entirely hidden; she could see his hands, holding the newspaper—tanned, long-fingered, strong-looking. Not the hands of a businessman, she thought abstractly, tearing her gaze away and looking for Libra. ‘Be prepared to work hard to make a good impression,’ she read. ‘The full moon on the 20th is a perfect opportunity to let others see you for who you really are.’

Hell. It was the twentieth today. And while she was prepared to put on an Oscar-worthy performance to impress Jasper’s family, the last thing she wanted was for them to see her for who she really was.

At that moment Edith Piaf burst into song again. She groaned—why couldn’t Jean-Claude take a hint? Quickly she went to shut Edith up and turn her phone off but at that moment the train swayed again and her finger accidentally hit the ‘answer’ button instead. A second later Jean-Claude’s Merlot-marinated voice was clearly audible, to her and about fifteen businessmen.

‘Sophie? Sophie, where are you—?’

She thought quickly, cutting him off before he had a chance to get any further. ‘Hello, you haf reached the voicemail service for Madame Sofia, astrologist and reader of cards,’ she purred, shaking her hair back and narrowing her eyes at her own reflection in the darkening glass of the window. ‘Eef you leaf your name, number and zodiac sign, I get back to you with information on what the fates haf in store for you—’