Mediterranean Tycoons. JACQUELINE BAIRD
choice but to look at him.
‘Yes,’ she said thinking fast. ‘It is a little earlier in England.’
Rion raised a brow, dark eyes gleaming with suspicion. ‘I’ll believe you—but what else might I have got wrong, I wonder? I had the distinct feeling you had met Justin Bratchet before tonight. Have you?’
Shaking her head, she dislodged his finger and taking a step back, gave an emphatic ‘No!’ relieved she could tell the truth.
‘Yet you seemed to recognise him. Maybe from your travels? I looked you up on Google today and discovered you really are a high-flyer in your profession.’
‘You did what?’
‘You are listed on the website of the international agency you work for.’
‘Oh.’ She was glad she’d had the foresight to tell Beth not to list her on the charity’s website. She valued her career, and at least one of her previous employers would not be happy discovering what she did in her spare time. ‘Anyway, I don’t know and have never met Mr Bratchet before, and with luck I will never meet him again,’ she said adamantly.
‘You could have fooled me. I have met the man a few times in New York and I know he has a reputation of being a bit of a womaniser. You seemed to be encouraging him.’
She had, because she’d wanted to find out where he was going, and had succeeded. But she couldn’t tell Rion that.
‘When he asked you what you did you responded flightily—”As little as possible.” Which I know is a lie. Why?’
‘Because it is easier to tell that type of rich man who thinks he is God what he wants to hear—satisfied?’ she snapped. She had said more than she ought. Plus Rion, barefoot and with his shirt undone, was an endearing sight.
‘You really have it in for the poor man,’ Rion returned, studying her flushed face. ‘So he likes women and flirts? Hardly an offence.’
‘Yes, well, you would say that—given he is your friend. It is his wife I feel sorry for, poor woman.’
‘Your sympathy is wasted on Alice. She was a widow when she married Justin three years ago. He takes care of her and her daughter, and now her grandson. She has hit the jackpot; trust me, she will never leave him. I recognised the type the minute I met her.’
‘Okay—if you say so,’ she agreed. It was late and this conversation was going nowhere.
‘Is that another example of telling a man what he wants to hear?’ Rion asked sardonically and reached for her shoulders to draw her close. ‘Not that I mind in this instance,’ he mocked, and kissed her with a hungry thoroughness that left her breathless.
He pulled the shoulder straps of her dress down her arms and she helped, wanting to block the horrible evening from her mind and craving what she knew only Rion could give her. She gazed up into his lustrous dark eyes, shaded with passion, and her heart raced.
‘I knew you were braless,’ Rion groaned. ‘You have perfect breasts,’ he murmured, his dark gaze lingering on the creamy mounds for a moment before he lifted his eyes to hers. ‘You have no idea what you do to me, Selina. I have been aching to remove this dress from the second I saw you wearing it.’
‘I thought it would appeal to you,’ she replied.
Rion smiled and began removing his clothes. Breathless, she simply stared as he revealed his magnificent bronzed body to her avid gaze, and she reached for the dress at her waist, eager to wriggle out of it.
‘No, let me,’ Rion commanded. He picked her up and laid her down on the bed and stretched out beside her. ‘I want to take it off.’
He folded an arm around her and she was suddenly on her stomach. He trailed a string of kisses down her spine and slowly peeled her dress over her hips. Her whole body trembled as his clever fingers stroked and caressed while his lips continued their devastating path down her thighs, the backs of her knees. With the dress finally removed he turned her over and kissed and caressed his way back up her body. Finally his mouth took hers in a deeply passionate kiss as he settled between her thighs.
Selina wrapped her arms around him as if he was the only solid matter in the universe, her hands caressing his satin-smooth skin, tracing the length of his spine as she planted frantic kisses on the broad chest, the dark male nipples. She heard his guttural growl as, lifting her hips, he surged into her willing body, and she cried out with the exquisite pleasure of his possession, the feeling intensifying with every powerful thrust, growing into a mindless, mutually ecstatic climax.
But later—much later—listening to the steady sound of Rion’s breathing, she realised that tonight even the oblivion of orgasmic sex was not going to help her sleep.
Luckily she had never told Rion about the rescue centre Beth and her husband ran in Cambodia for a children’s charity. Selina had helped to set it up and finance it.
She and Beth had spent their last summer vacation before finishing university travelling through Thailand and Cambodia. Beth had met Trevor, an American, and it had been love at first sight. It was Trevor who had shown them the horrific child sex trade in Cambodia and explained how unscrupulous dealers travelled the countryside, telling poor families who lived off the land that they had a job for their son or daughter in a big city hotel, as a maid or boot boy, and offering them money. Of course there was no hotel work—though the children were kept in a hotel of sorts, where they were abused and forced into the sex trade. The really tragic part for Selina was that the children, after having to suffer such vile abuse from adults every day of their young lives, were too ashamed to tell their parents what was really happening to them.
Planeloads of men flew into the capital regularly from Europe, Japan and the USA, on specially organised sex trips. A lot of them wanted children—the younger the better.
Trevor had explained that the reason he knew so much about the trade was because his father worked for the American government, and the USA was one of the few countries to have passed a law enabling them to extradite any American citizen arrested for paedophilia in Cambodia and take them back to the USA to stand trial. The sentences there were a lot harsher. It had been listening to his father talk about his work and seeing the damage done for himself that had made Trevor determined to set up a rescue centre.
Beth, always passionate about injustice, was his perfect partner, and during that holiday the idea for a rescue charity was born. Selina had never touched her divorce settlement because she’d still had her father’s trust fund. She’d left university the following summer and donated the money to help set up the charity. With the help of Beth’s father the legal technicalities had been dealt with, and property bought. It had been converted into a fifteen-bedroomed centre with schoolrooms, craft rooms—everything necessary to help the children to regain their self worth and equip them with the skills to earn a legitimate living.
Beth and Trevor had got married at Christmas. Selina had been a bridesmaid. The following year, the rescue centre had opened, and with the help of a Cambodian politician, a police inspector and a local lawyer, they’d taken in ten children. Selina had stayed for three months to help, then spent the next three months in Australia, working as a translator for a tourist firm on the Gold Coast that specialised in Chinese tourists, and taking her diving certificate in her spare time. Then she had signed on with the international agency she still worked with now.
To date the centre had rescued over forty children—some of them as young as six. All had been counselled and some had returned to their families. Some had learnt new skills and found legitimate work, others were still at the centre, and sadly a couple of the older girls—if you could call fourteen old—had gone back to the sex trade. They were already HIV-positive and sure that in their culture no man was ever going to marry them …
Accepting a glass of fresh orange juice from Louis, Selina refused any food. Cradling the glass in her hand, she crossed to the huge glass doors that opened out onto the deck and paused for a moment. The sun was hot in a cloudless sky, as it had been for the whole trip—which