Fiona Brand - Blade's Lady

Blade had suspected as much, but the reality still annoyed him. She’d met his gaze with those haunted grey eyes of hers, and she had lied.

Jack shrugged. “Easy enough to do, so long as she doesn’t own anything that requires record keeping—a house, a car, a bank account. She probably works for cash under the table, so there are no employment or tax records, and pays for any purchases with cash. There are plenty of employers willing to pay slave wages for an employee who’ll work all hours without complaint.”

The door popped open. Jack’s wife, Milly, who doubled as his personal assistant, strode into the room, vivid in a pants suit in some tropical print that was vibrant with blues and oranges. Somehow the colours didn’t clash with her red hair. Blade knew that Milly was forty-something, around the same age Jack was, but she looked closer to thirty.

She slapped some papers down on the desk, almost taking Jack’s nose off in the process. “Here’s the guest list for that charity bash on Saturday. Every man and his dog are gonna be there, including the Prime Minister.”

“Thank you,” Jack said meekly.

Milly planted her hands on her hips. “Don’t flash those blue eyes at me, Jack McKenna. You are not the flavour of the month.”

“No, ma’am.”

“In a few months time, you will be even less the flavour of the month.”

Jack rose to his feet, placed his hands on either side of Milly’s face and kissed her. When he was finished, he sat back down.

“Humph.” Milly glared at her husband, but Blade noticed the way her gaze lingered wistfully on the rumpled front of his shirt.

Before Jack met Milly, he had been obsessively neat. The knife-edge crease in his suit pants and his exquisite taste in ties had been a by-word in the business world. His ties were now definitely anarchistic, and he was frequently rumpled these days.

Milly strode out. The door closed firmly behind her.

Jack grinned and kicked back in his chair.

Blade’s brows went up; he didn’t think he had ever seen Jack so happy, or so satisfied, despite Milly’s bad temper. “Trouble in marital heaven?”

“Milly’s pregnant,” Jack said baldly. “She says it’s all my fault.”

Blade stared thoughtfully at the door, which Milly hadn’t quite slammed. He knew that she already had three grown children from a previous marriage. “Takes two to tango.”

“Amen to that. It was the tropical honeymoon that did it. She said I ought to be able to control her baser impulses. What can I say?” he murmured, picking up the papers Milly had brought in. “I tried.”

Restlessly, Blade paced the length of his office, halting in front of another bank of windows, this one facing into the city. He stared in the general direction of Joe’s Bar and Grill, the name that had been emblazoned on the front of Anna Johnson’s sweatshirt.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to keep a lid on the wild impatience that was eating away at his usual control. He should forget about her and turn his mind back to work—God knows, there was enough for him to do.

After spending several years with the Special Air Service, Blade had decided it was past time for him to take his place in the family business. He was almost thirty-four, and while he’d been injured twice on operations, once seriously, he counted himself lucky. No point in pushing that luck any further.

The construction of the casino and a retail complex was a massive undertaking. He and Jack were splitting the load between them. The risk involved in setting up the casino and the huge propensity for trouble it represented appealed to Blade far more than becoming involved in some of Lombards’ more conventional enterprises, and his family knew it; by nature, he was more conqueror than manager. At the same time, Blade was building his own dream further north, a quarter-horse stud on a wild piece of country caught between high, muscular hills and the Pacific Ocean. The property was remote enough—courtesy of the physical barrier of the hills—to be its own kingdom, yet close enough to Auckland to make for a reasonable commute. After years of travelling, he needed his own base. He was ready to settle down.

Instantly, his thoughts turned back to Anna. He frowned at both the way his mind had made the switch and the string of coincidences she represented.

She would probably be at work now, despite the fact that she should be resting. Her head would be throbbing, feet aching. She would be working for a damn pittance. He should let her get on with it.

If she was still there.

The thought slid into his mind as slick and easy as a knife. Anna was using a false name. She was as jumpy as a cornered cat, and she had been attacked. He was certain that she was on the run from something. Or someone.

She could be married and running from a husband.

The thought curled into his mind with the sour, savage taint of sexual jealousy. Blade’s jaw tensed. If he’d walked into a brick wall in broad daylight, he couldn’t have been more astounded. Jealousy. The emotion was alien, unsettling. As intrusive as the dreams. He enjoyed women, and he was naturally possessive, but he had never been jealous.

He remembered the softness of Anna’s breasts pressing against him when she’d scrambled out of that storm drain, and the thought that she might be tied in some way to another man filled him with fury.

He came from a long line of males who were used to taking what they wanted, and right now he wanted Anna. His genetic heritage was underlined by his name. Every few generations in the Lombard family, someone lost their head and named one of their sons Blade, after the original marauding rogue who had reaved and plundered, carving out the basis of the first Lombard fortune with raw muscle and the help of his trusty blade.

He fingered the ancient earring that pierced his lobe. The small cabochon ruby was said to have belonged to the first Blade and was traditionally passed down to whoever carried the name. He doubted this was the original gem—that had probably been lost in the mists of time—but it was certainly old.

Grimly, he wondered if his ancestor had had the same trouble with women that he himself was now having. If so, he could understand why he’d carved such a bloody swath through history. He had been a frustrated man.

Blade surveyed the bustling cityscape and let the irrational urgency that had chewed his patience to the bone have its way.

What if she was the woman in his dreams?

For the first time, he allowed himself to examine the possibility. He remembered how she’d looked last night: eyes wary with secrets, the exquisite curve of her cheekbones, and that pale, sultry mouth.

The primitive hunger that persistently invaded his dreams stirred to life. His jaw clenched against the hot flood of arousal and, more, an intense need to simply have her near.

He might have difficulty believing in anything with a supernatural bent, but he trusted his instincts, and he trusted his body’s reactions. He had never felt such a powerful physical response to a woman outside of his dreams. He fiercely resented the loss of control—giving in to the hunger went against the very essence of who and what he was. And yet, he was honest enough to admit that, in part, that was where the heady excitement lay.

The dichotomy should alarm him. It should scare the hell out of him. Instead, he felt a savage exaltation. He wasn’t prepared to admit that he had found his dream woman, but he had found a woman who touched him on some primitive level in a way he needed to be touched.

He might not understand much about what was happening, or why, but for Blade the problem had just been simplified. He understood his own burning sexuality very well, and when he needed a woman, his approach was time-honoured and straightforward: he went out and got her.