LITMIR.BIZ

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blue eyes.

      Beneath the panic, a treacherous wildfire memory stirred. Horrified, Abby swallowed. Oh, she remembered that mouth—remembered the feel of it possessing hers…

      ‘You know you should always have a chain on the door,’ he said, voice cool with mockery, gaze narrowed and glinting as he scanned her white face.

      Shaking but defiantly stubborn, she said, ‘Get out,’ only to realise that no sound came from her closed throat. She swallowed and repeated the words in a croaking monotone. ‘Get out of here.’

      Even though she mightn’t be able to master her body’s primitive response to his vital potency, she’d stand her ground.

      ‘Did you really think you’d get away with stealing my nephew?’ Contempt blazed through every word. He advanced on her, the dominant framework of his face as implacable as the anger that beat against her.

      The metallic taste of fear nauseated her; determined not to be intimidated, she fought it with every scrap of will-power. Although she knew it was futile, desperation forced her to try and sidetrack him.

      ‘How did you get the door key?’ she demanded, heart banging so noisily she was certain he could hear it.

      ‘I’m the new tenant.’ He surveyed her pinched face in a survey as cold as the lethal sheen on a knife-blade. ‘And you are Abigail Moore, whose real name is Abigail Metcalfe, shortened by her friends and lovers—and my sister—to Abby.’ His tone converted the sentence to an insult. ‘Drab clothes and dyed hair are a pathetic attempt at disguise. You must have been desperate to be found.’

      ‘If so, I’d have kept both my hair colour and my name,’ she said through her teeth, temper flaring enough to hold the fear at bay.

      His wide shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug. ‘Why didn’t you move to Australia?’

      ‘Because I couldn’t afford the fare.’ The words snapped out before she realised she’d been goaded into losing control. Just after she’d returned to New Zealand she’d read an article about him; he’d said that anger and fear made fools of people, and now she was proving it.

      Dragging in a shallow breath, she tried again to divert him away from the child sleeping in the back bedroom. ‘If you’re the new tenant, you’re not legally allowed in here until tomorrow. Get out before I call the police.’

      He glanced ostentatiously at the sleek silver—no, probably platinum—watch on his lean wrist. ‘It is tomorrow, and we both know you won’t call the police. The local constable would laugh at you as he tossed you into the cells; kidnappers are despised, especially those who steal babies.’

      Panic paralysed her mind until a will-power she hadn’t known she possessed forced it into action again; for Michael’s sake she had to keep a clear head. She said raggedly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

      In a drawl as insulting as it was menacing, he said, ‘You barely waited to bury Gemma after the cyclone before you stole her child and ran away.’

      ‘We were air-lifted out to New Zealand.’ She hid the panicky flutter in her stomach with a snap.

      He ignored her feeble riposte with a contemptuous lift of one sable brow. ‘I imagine the poor devils on Palaweyo were so busy cleaning up that no one had time or inclination to check any information you gave.’ He paused, as though expecting an answer; when she remained stoically silent he finished, ‘It was clever—although dangerous—to say he was your child.’

      Abby clamped her teeth over more tumbling, desperate words, only will-power keeping her gaze away from the door to Michael’s bedroom. Fear coalesced into a cold pool beneath her ribs.

      What else did Gemma’s brother know?

      Claiming Michael as her own might have been illegal, but it had secured his future. Once the prince discovered that his sister had died in one of the Pacific Ocean’s violent cyclones, he’d have flown to Palaweyo. And when he found that Gemma had given birth to a child, everything she’d feared—and made Abby promise to prevent—would have unfolded. He’d have taken Michael back to the life that Gemma dreaded—a life of privilege, bereft of love.

      Abby’s lie had worked a minor miracle; nobody had queried it. Instead, the overworked and pressured island authorities had immediately found her a flight to New Zealand, and once back home the authorities had fast-tracked documentation for her and Michael as mother and child.

      She said stonily, ‘He is mine.’

      ‘Prove it.’

      The words slashed her composure into ribbons. ‘Check his birth certificate.’ Trying to conceal her fear with a show of defiance, she stared at him with hostile eyes, but her glare backfired into sabotage.

      She’d met the prince a few times, usually when she’d called at his opulent mansion in one of Auckland’s exclusive marine suburbs to pick up Gemma for an evening out. And once, when she and Gemma were spending a weekend at the beach house on the island he owned in the exquisite Hauraki Gulf, he arrived unexpectedly.

      It had been an odd, extremely tense two days; she’d been certain he disliked her, until the final night when he’d kissed her on the beach under the light of a full, voluptuous moon.

      She’d gone up in flames, and it had been Caelan who’d pulled away, apologising in a cold, distant voice that had chilled her through to her bones.

      Snob, she thought now, compulsively noting the subtle changes the years had made to his arrogant face—a few lines around his cold eyes, a stronger air of authority. His potent charisma still blazed forth, and beneath bronzed skin the splendid bone structure remained rock-hard and ruthless, as it would for the rest of his life.

      That ruthlessness was stamped in his family tree. He looked every inch what he was—the descendant of Mediterranean princes who’d established their rule with tough, uncompromising pragmatism and enough hard tenacity to fight off pirates and corsairs and a horde of other invaders, all eager to occupy the rich little island nation of Dacia.

      He could have used his social position and his astonishing good looks to lead the life of a playboy. Instead, he’d taken over his father’s business in his mid-twenties and used his formidable intellect and intimidating personality to build it into a huge, world-wide organisation.

      Add to that power the fact that he kissed like a fallen angel and Abby knew she had every reason to be afraid of the impact he made on her. Praying he couldn’t see the mindless, bitter attraction stirring inside her, she wrenched her gaze away.

      ‘I haven’t changed as much as you,’ he observed silkily. ‘But then, I haven’t tried to.’

      A potent dose of adrenalin pounded through her veins, and, shockingly, for the first time in years she felt alive again.

      He noted the heat in her cheeks with a coldly cynical smile. ‘The child’s birth certificate is a pack of lies,’ he said with deadly precision, his hard, beautiful mouth curling.

      Her heart contracted. She had to take a deep breath before she could ask, ‘Can you prove that?’

      ‘I’ve seen him.’

      She stared at him, eyes huge and dark in her pale face. ‘So?’

      ‘He looks like Gemma,’ he said flatly. ‘I have a photograph of her at the same age, and, apart from the colouring, it looks like the same child.’

      ‘You call that proof?’ she asked, letting manufactured scorn ring through her voice. ‘You’ll need to do better than that to convince anyone.’

      Caelan let the silence drag on, ratcheting up her tension until she had to stifle a small gasp when he finally drawled, ‘Are you prepared to have a DNA test done?’

      It was a trap, of course, and her only chance was to carry it off with a high hand.

      ‘Of course not.’ She hoped her contempt matched his.

      ‘I

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