LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To all the fantastic writers at the 2011 Romantic Writers of Australia Conference who were so lovely and welcoming to me, despite my crippling jetlag. It was such a treat (and an honor) to get to spend time with you—and I hope I did justice to your beautiful country!

      And to my favorite Los Angeles-based Australian, Kate Rogers, who told me the truth about magpies.

      CHAPTER ONE

      “LOVELY view.”

      Kiara didn’t turn toward the deep, commanding voice, even as it washed over her and somehow into her blood, her bones, making her very nearly shiver. She’d sensed his approach before he’d helped himself to the chair next to hers—there had been a certain expectant stillness in the air around her, a kind of palpable, electrically charged quiet, as if all of Sydney fell silent before him. She’d pictured that easy, confident walk of his, the way his dark, powerful masculinity turned heads wherever he went, the way he’d no doubt been watching her with that intense, consuming focus as he drew near.

      But then, she’d been expecting him.

      “That’s a terrible pickup line,” she pointed out, a shade too close to flippant. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. She decided she wouldn’t look at him unless he earned it. She would pretend to be enchanted by the water of the harbor, the coming sunset. Not by a man like him, no matter how tall, dark and dangerous he might be, even in her peripheral vision. “Especially here. This particular view is famous, I think you’ll find. Renowned the world over.”

      “That should make it all the more lovely, then,” he replied, a thread of amusement beneath the steel-and-velvet seduction of his voice. She felt it like heat, pressing into her skin. “Or are you the dreary sort who finds a view is spoiled forever if too many others look upon it?”

      Kiara sat at a small outdoor table tucked in on the lower concourse beneath Sydney’s glorious, soaring Opera House and the sky above, with full and unfettered access to the famous and beautiful arch of the Harbor Bridge opposite. The setting sun above had just settled into rich and tempting golds, sending the mellow light dancing over the sparkling water of the harbor itself, as if taunting the jutting skyscrapers of the city—as if daring them to look away from the spectacular evening show.

      She certainly knew the feeling. And she wasn’t even looking at the man who lounged next to her as if he owned the table, the chair, and her, too, though she was aware of him in every possible way. In every part of her skin and blood and bones.

      “Don’t try to change the subject,” she said mildly, as if wholly unaffected by him and the great tractor beam of power and charisma that seemed to emanate from him. He was lethal. So compelling it almost hurt not to turn and let herself look at him, drink him in. “You’re the one who trotted out a tired old line. I only pointed it out. I don’t think that makes me dreary.”

      She knew intuitively that his particular brand of dark male beauty—so fierce and breathtaking, laced through with all that dizzying masculine power—would be equally dazzling if she dared turn her head and look at it. She could feel it. In the way her stomach clenched and, below, ached around a deep, feminine pulse. The way the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood at attention, almost making her shiver. The way the whole world seemed to shrink to just this table, this chair.

      Him.

      Instead, she fiddled with the coffee cup she’d drunk dry a while ago, even toyed with the ends of the wavy light brown hair she’d swept back into a high ponytail, her hands betraying her even as she sat there with such studied carelessness, pretending she was unaware of the great strength of him next to her. The imposing fact of him—ink-black hair against oddly light eyes, the stamp of his Arab ancestry in his fierce features, and that mouthwatering fantasy of a body—that she could grasp even with only the briefest glance from the corner of her eye. The impact on not only her, but the whole of the Opera House Bar around them.

      She could see the group of older women at the next table—the way they turned to look at him, then widened their eyes at each other before dissolving into besotted giggles better suited to the girls Kiara imagined they’d been some thirty years before.

      “Tell me how to play this game,” he said after a moment that seemed overripe with the gold sinking against the water, the murmur of the crowd of tourists all around them, his own dark magnetism spread over them like an umbrella. “Will I woo you with my wit? My appreciation of the local beauty? Perhaps I will tell you a series of pretty lies and convince you to come back to my hotel with me. Just for the night. Anonymous and furtive. Do you think that would work?”

      “You won’t know until you try,” she said, biting back a grin, even as carnal images chased through her head—none of them either

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