Invincible. Joan Johnston
had loved that story, which also involved a fair maiden, a duke with amnesia and twin eight-year-old girls lost in the hidden passageways of the Abbey leading to the dungeon.
“Max?”
He realized he’d drifted off again. Damn and blast, K. What are you doing to me?
“Where was I?” he said with a rueful grin.
“Making me feel beautiful and desired.”
Max didn’t see the feline smile that accompanied the words, because he was lost again in the past.
“You make me feel so beautiful.”
Those were the words K had said when he’d looked at her naked for the first time. She’d been surprisingly bold—taking his dare when he’d shown up at her hotel room one afternoon unannounced, two years after they’d first met—dropping the hotel’s white terry cloth robe, which she’d donned after her shower, and standing before him in all her glory. Especially since he’d still been dressed in sweaty tennis clothes. He’d been so startled by what she’d done, he hadn’t said anything for a moment. She’d lowered her gaze, suddenly a shy fifteen-year-old again.
He’d quickly taken the few steps to bring him close, lifted her chin with a forefinger, looked into her eyes and said, “You are so beautiful.”
That was when she’d said the words that had thrilled and enthralled him. “You make me feel so beautiful.” He could see it was true. She blossomed like a flower before him, her eyes full of joy and her smile wide and happy. It was the most wonderful, most powerful feeling he’d ever had in seventeen years of living—the ability to bring another human being utter joy.
And he’d only looked at her.
That precious moment had been interrupted when her father knocked on the door and called out to her. Max had raced for the hotel closet and hidden there while K grabbed the robe she’d discarded and anxiously tied it tight at her waist. Her father had wanted to discuss tactics for the next day’s match, so Max had spent an uncomfortable hour fending off a bunch of empty hangers.
When Harry had finally gone, K’s playful mood had left along with him. She’d pleaded fatigue and apologized. Max had left without touching her, without even kissing her. But he’d been entranced with her from that moment on. To say he’d wanted her would be to understate the matter. He’d craved her.
Because of their separate tennis schedules, the opportunity to finish what she’d started didn’t come for almost a year. When he’d finally convinced her to sleep with him, he’d been so impatient to be inside her—and so ignorant of the true state of her innocence—that he’d hurt her. And disappointed her. Despite only wanting to love her, he’d somehow made her hate him.
K had kept him at arm’s length forever after. Or at least until he’d been forced by his uncle to approach her and ask her to work with him.
It had been an awful lesson to learn about human nature. You couldn’t make a person love you, no matter how much you loved them. What had happened with K was exactly what had happened with his mother. Once he’d let her in, she’d shut him out. The pain the second time was terrible enough to cure him of the disease.
Love was for fools and idiots.
“Max, would you rather we didn’t do this?”
Max was startled to discover he’d been neglecting his date again. He’d spent a great deal of time talking Veronica Granville, a reporter for the Times of London, into spending the weekend with him at Blackthorne Abbey, his family’s hereditary castle—complete with moat—in Kent. He’d arranged her seduction carefully, and it was proceeding according to plan. Or had been, until that knock had interrupted them.
And thoughts of that infuriating female from my past.
Max made himself focus on pressing kisses against the throat of the woman in his arms, but as he brushed aside Veronica’s long, straight blond hair, memories of Kristin intruded. He remembered ribbing K about her corkscrew curls, which she hated. And shoving K’s lush blond curls out of the way to kiss her nape as he lay beside her. He remembered how she’d shivered with pleasure in his arms. And how good it had felt to finally press his naked flesh against hers.
He supposed it was K’s lack of sexual experience that had made kissing her and caressing her so memorable. He couldn’t help smiling as he recalled how amazed she’d looked when he’d kissed the tip of her small breast.
“I’m glad to see you’re enjoying yourself,” Veronica said as she turned in his embrace.
The smile disappeared as he acknowledged how totally Kristin Lassiter had been dominating his thoughts.
The knock came again.
The statuesque blonde in his arms stared at the thick, wooden-planked door, with its enormous black wrought-iron hinges and said, “I thought you said we were the only guests at the Abbey.”
“We are.” He’d told the reporter he was a distant cousin of the Duchess of Blackthorne’s estranged husband, and that the duchess had offered to let him stay as a guest at the Abbey. He’d learned from bitter experience that he couldn’t trust a woman’s feelings when she knew from the outset that he was the youngest son of the infamous Bella and Bull.
Max blessed his mother for the diligence she’d used in keeping photos of her children out of the papers and off the internet. With some fancy footwork during his brief junior tennis career that included refusing to pose for photos or turning his head when the cameras flashed during the trophy presentation, he’d remained virtually invisible both in print and online. There were pictures, but not good ones.
“I heard you tell the butler we didn’t want to be disturbed,” Veronica said. “Who could it be?”
“Ignore it,” he murmured, brushing aside her silky blond hair and teasing her ear with his teeth, determined, this time, to banish K from his thoughts.
The knock came again, cracking like thunder.
And he bit Veronica’s ear.
“Ouch!” Veronica grabbed her ear as she pulled away and shrugged her blouse back onto her shoulders. “Answer the damned door, Max,” she snapped, turning her back as she rebuttoned her blouse.
Since she was dressed again, he sighed and headed for the door. When he opened it, he found the Blackthorne butler, whose forebears had worked at the Abbey since medieval times, wearing formal clothes and holding a silver platter containing a blue-tinged white envelope. The word TELEGRAM, framed by four red stripes, was written in blue on the upper left hand corner.
“I presume that’s for me, Smythe,” Max said quietly.
“Yes, your lordship,” the butler replied, just as quietly. “It was delivered by personal messenger.”
It was impossible to get Smythe to call him Max. He’d been trying since he was a boy of six. It was Lord Maxwell, or your lordship, as though they were living a century or two in the past. Considering the English laws of succession, there was no way he should be a lord.
It was Smythe who’d explained to him how, thanks to his courageous ancestors—and an act of Parliament—he remained fourth in line to inherit the Blackthorne dukedom.
It was a pretty good story, actually. One of K’s favorites, back in the days when they were speaking to each other.
When all the male Blackthorne heirs had died heroically during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War, Parliament had amended the Letters Patent creating the Dukedom of Blackthorne so the title would pass “to all and every other issue male and female, lineally descending of or from the said Duke of Blackthorne, to be held by them severally and successively, the elder and the descendants of every elder issue to be preferred before the younger of such issue.”
Which meant that either males or females could inherit the dukedom. This prevented the title from being extinguished by the death of the last male