Twin consequences of tha.., p.1
Twin Consequences of That Night, page 1
Gabi clenched her fist as she watched Nate stare at his children with something like awe, like love.
Was it that easy for him? To come in here after all this time and just be a father? Gabi hated the twist of resentment and tried to turn away.
“Which...” Nate swallowed visibly. “Which...”
Anger turned to pity in an instant. “Ana is on the left. She sleeps like the dead. Her hair is just a little shade lighter than Antonio’s, though you’d not be able to see it now. Antonio, he’s the light sleeper. He’ll wake up if a pin drops,” she said around a smile, her whisper dropping to an even quieter level, in case she conjured him from his sleep. “Ana is stubborn and determined. Antonio is happy and easygoing, but...”
“But?” Nate turned, his head close to hers, closer than she’d realized.
“But a little more delicate,” she said.
Nate nodded, the darkness of the room preventing her from seeing how he had interpreted her descriptions of their children. Their children.
Pippa Roscoe lives in Norfolk near her family and makes daily promises to herself that this is the day she’ll leave the computer to take a long walk in the countryside. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t dreaming about handsome heroes and innocent heroines. Totally her mother’s fault, of course—she gave Pippa her first romance to read at the age of seven! She is inconceivably happy that she gets to share those daydreams with you all. Follow her on Twitter @pipparoscoe.
Books by Pippa Roscoe
Harlequin Presents
The Wife the Spaniard Never Forgot
His Jet-Set Nights with the Innocent
In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard
A Billion-Dollar Revenge
Expecting Her Enemy’s Heir
The Royals of Svardia
Snowbound with His Forbidden Princess
Stolen from Her Royal Wedding
Claimed to Save His Crown
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Twin Consequences of That Night
Pippa Roscoe
For my incredible niece Izzi,
You are such an inspiration, and it has been nothing but a joy to watch you become the woman you are today.
Your strength, conviction, sense of adventure and sense of humour are boundless and wonderful, and I’m lucky to be part of your life.
All my love, always,
Auntie Pippa
xx
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM CONTRACTED AND CLAIMED BY THE BOSS BY CLARE CONNELLY
CHAPTER ONE
NATE WAS IN his sister’s flat. It looked the same, but certainly didn’t feel the same. There was a glass of wine in his hand, but he couldn’t remember how it had got there, and nor could he smell the rich fruity scent of what he was sure would be a Beaujolais. His vision was fuzzy at the edges and his sister was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. Sound was muffled, as if his head was wrapped in a blanket. His vision was tunnelled and her eyes widened in alarm, her mouth opening in shock, just as he was drowned in blackness...
‘Mr Harcourt, can you hear me? Mr Harcourt?’
He was being shaken roughly, pain slicing into his head. Something was wrong. His sister was sobbing. Begging.
‘Please help him. Please do something.’
His body rolled viciously and he landed on a bed with a thud. A light shone in his eye, blinding him, but he couldn’t close it. He tried to smack the hand away, but his arm wouldn’t move.
‘His left pupil’s blown.’
Words like ‘CT’, ‘angiogram’, ‘bloods’ swam as he tried to find his sister, but he couldn’t move a muscle. He was in hell, his body on fire. He felt everything: each needle-stick, each poke and prod, the knuckle against the arch of his foot. But his body wasn’t reacting. Nothing.
Numb, but not numb.
‘What’s going on?’
Hope sounded so scared that it terrified him. He knew that fear, the incomprehensible touch of death come to steal away loved ones, and he wouldn’t inflict that on her. He couldn’t.
The high-pitched moan of the monitor screamed until it descended into irregular pips.
‘You’re going to be fine, Nate. I promise. The best doctor is flying in right now to do the operation.’
What operation? What had happened?
‘Nate, you’re going to be fine,’ his sister whispered into his ear. ‘I promise.’
* * *
The cabin door on his small private jet slammed shut, yanking him from the nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare. Nightmares were baseless fears: terrors of the unknown, irrational monsters dredged from the unconscious. What Nate had just experienced was a sleeping memory. Events that had been real and had happened more than two years ago, the night he’d returned from the disaster that was the Casas deal. The night a headache that had started in Madrid had ended with him collapsed on the floor of his sister’s London apartment.
Of course, it had never crossed anyone’s mind to announce to the world that Nathanial Harcourt, English billionaire, had suffered a cerebral aneurism. It hadn’t even required discussion. It was imperative not only for Harcourts, but also the three businesses that he owned personally, that news of such a weakness not threaten the financial bottom line.
It had been somewhat bitterly amusing to Nate that the idea that he was taking a self-indulgent journey of discovery in Goa was favourable to a near death experience to his board members and the public. So it had been kept secret because of vultures, economics and public perception.
All of it: the successful operation done in London that very night, the medical flight to the private Swiss hospital where he would not only receive round-the-clock medical attention, but also intense and expert rehabilitation until he could return with absolutely no evidence of any mental or physical incapacity.
Only his sister and his grandfather knew that instead of sunning himself on a beach he’d been learning how to ‘make pain his friend’.
Bugger that.
The initial operation had been a walk in the park compared to the long-term fallout. He might have been in the best private medical facility that money could buy, but it didn’t mean a thing. The rehab, the fatigue, the headaches, the clicks he heard whenever he moved, the hearing loss, the jaw pain, the back pain, the slowed reaction times? These were untenable to a man who had been raised to see weakness as anathema, an abomination to be rooted out, cut out like a cancer before it could impact stock share prices and public perception.
They were daily reminders, taunts, cruel and constant, in those first twenty months, reminding him that he was not the man he’d once been. That he needed to be careful, watchful of his health, his diet, his exercise...his stress levels. For a man who’d rarely denied himself a thing, his life had become about strictures and rules: scheduled medications and vitamins, check-ups booked in the diary years in advance.
And his grandfather refusing to meet his eye.
‘You should consider reducing your workload. Considerably.’
For more than two years, Nate had worked harder than he ever had before to get back to where he could resume his life seamlessly, so that he didn’t have to reduce his workload ‘considerably’. He had grown his hair out a little—attributing it to his self-indulgent adult ‘gap years’ and not down to the fact that it now hid a scar line. He had lost weight which, according to the latest headlines, was from partying too hard rather than a loss of appetite from diminished aptitude for taste and smell.
But the impact on reactions, his decisiveness, the things that had made him a truly excellent businessman? Utterly devastating. It was as if he were constantly wading through liquid amber: holding him back, slowing him down, making it hard to think and breathe sometimes.
He saw it in the faces of his staff, his sister, his grandfather. The confusion, the doubt, the frustration with his slowness... He just wasn’t the same as he’d been before. The doctors insisted that it wasn’t ‘a cause for concern’. That it would ‘go away with time’. And he could see it; they just didn’t understand. Didn’t get what it was like to have your whole life change with the flip of a switch. A switch that had flipped the moment he’d returned from that damn business with the Casases.
‘Flight time to Madrid is just over two hours from London, Mr Harcourt.’
Nate nodded to acknowledge he’d heard the air stewardess making her way towards him. He closed his eyes, hoping to relieve the ache left by the nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare, and leaned back against the headrest.
‘And if there’s anything,’ she continued, ‘at all,’ she said, pressing a hand on his shoulder, his eyes opening quickly enough to see a flash of fire engine red talon against his white shirt, ‘I’d be very happy to oblige.’
If there had been any doubt about the intent of her words, it was obliterated by the lascivious look in her ey es.
A little over two years ago Nathanial Harcourt would have smirked, caught her wrist, pulled her into his lap and given her, in vivid Technicolor, her heart’s desire, uncaring of what the captain and his co-pilot did or didn’t see.
Back then, he’d been in his prime, the enfant terrible of the British business scene. He owned three companies personally and was the CFO of his family’s business, Harcourts—a brand and name synonymous with luxury, exclusivity and opulence. The international department store had been in his family for generations, and he was hotly tipped to be the next CEO. After all, he’d been groomed to lead it, first by his father and then, after his parents’ death, by his grandfather. But in order to prove himself to the board, he’d been on his way to Madrid to secure a deal with a Spanish fashion conglomerate, Casas Fashion. And success had been within his reach...
Until he’d met Gabriella Casas.
Nate looked down to find his hand fisted on his thigh and the air stewardess still waiting for him to respond to her invitation.
‘Thank you, darling, I’ll take a whisky,’ he said, purposely misunderstanding her, his voice full of a gravel dragged from bitterness the air stewardess was utterly oblivious to.
She withdrew her hand from his shoulder and, masking her disappointment, disappeared towards the jet’s impressive galley.
Nate looked out of the small round window, seeing the moon painting clouds in an unearthly glow.
Gabriella Casas.
Even now his body betrayed him, reacting to the memory of her in ways that he couldn’t control. Erotic tension teased him into an arousal he didn’t want. His stomach clenched as the small private jet taking him back to Madrid hit an air pocket and dropped him back into the first time he’d laid eyes on her, when he’d not known her name. When he’d arrogantly thought it wasn’t even important.
She was, simply put, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And Nathanial Harcourt, who never made the first move, had been completely unable to stop himself. Large, startlingly hazel eyes locked on his and he felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. He’d spent years thinking over every single moment of that night, unpicking where he’d gone wrong, where he’d failed to spot the warning signs. Wondering if the cerebral aneurism had perhaps already started affecting him even then.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.’
‘I only asked you for a drink—nothing more.’
Nate could still feel the heat of her gaze on him, seemingly as unable to look away as he’d been. He, who had seduced countless women in countless countries, had been utterly seduced by what he thought was an innocent.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘And I want to hear everything you want to say, but first... I need... I want to do...this.’
He hadn’t been able to stop himself. He should have asked first, but the sheer shared desire he could feel between them made the air so thick with want it was almost impossible to think. A kiss...just a touch of lips, that was all he’d intended. But he hadn’t realised, hadn’t known that he’d not be able to stop at that. And even then, he’d wondered whether he’d be able to spend the rest of his life without her in it. It was like heaven, just before it turned into hell.
The next morning he’d opened his eyes to an empty bed and he’d been shocked. A cynical part of himself now mocked the irony mercilessly. The number of beds he’d sneaked away from hardly stacking up to the single time it was done to him. He’d sat up, looking around at his clothes strewn about the floor, each one a sensual memory and a censure at the same time.
He’d caught sight of a small glittery clutch beneath the side table and reached for it. With no compunction whatsoever, he’d opened it, looking for some sign of who he had spent the most spectacular night of his life with. No phone, no ID, just a credit card and a room key: G Casas.
He’d stared at it numbly for moments while his usually rapid-fire brain made sluggish connections it didn’t want to make. Anger poured through his veins and he dressed with furious, jerky movements.
After he’d realised who he had spent the night with, he’d paid his investigators more than triple their rate to find out whatever it was that had been missed the first time, because he’d known that they must have missed something. That was when he’d discovered the depths of Renata Casas’s treachery.
Gabriella Casas had been, he could only presume, sent by her mother to seduce him, probably because her own stomach-churning attempts to do so had failed spectacularly. He should have paid heed to the gleam in Renata Casas’s eye as he’d informed her they would be keeping things strictly professional. But he hadn’t expected her to send her own daughter to distract him from the fact that they were trying to fleece him out of millions by selling him shares in a company they didn’t own.
But confronting Renata and Gabriella Casas that afternoon had been a mistake. That was the conclusion he’d come to after reliving the events of that twenty-four-hour period over and over again through the merciless sessions of physio and rehab.
‘Get her out of here. I never want to look at her ever again. She’s no better than a whore.’
Gabriella’s mother’s words stung like a vicious slap. And he’d hardened himself against the image of Gabriella standing there shaking, her eyes full of pleas, regrets, apologies.
Lies, it was all lies.
Renata had illegally tried to sell him shares she didn’t own in a business that wasn’t hers. Her son’s business.
‘Lady, you’re crazy. My lawyers are going to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb and when they’re done...’
He’d left them with that threat and returned straight to his sister’s apartment in London. And then a small blood vessel had ruptured everything he’d ever known.
Nate knew that it was irrational to link the two together—emotional rather than evidentiary. But he kept telling himself that once he was done with Casas Textiles, his whole life would get back to normal. Just like it was before.
Which was why, two years later, he was flying to Spain to be a key witness in a fraud and embezzlement trial against Renata Casas. Nathanial Harcourt never made a promise he didn’t keep and now he was here to make good on it.
Renata Casas and her daughter would rue the day they’d tried to make a fool out of Nate Harcourt.
* * *
‘Are you okay in there?’ Gabi’s brother worriedly called through the toilet door. Javier Casas was worried about the idea of her giving evidence at her mother’s trial, but that wasn’t why she was hiding in the bathroom.
‘Yes, just a minute,’ she replied.
She stared at herself in the mirror. The long dark tresses that she had once taken so much pride in were now pulled back in a chaotic bun—not artfully designed by a stylist, but thrown back with little time or care. Clothes that had once been so much of her focus—fabric, colour, style, cut, design—were now chosen by cleanliness level and, even then, the top she wore betrayed a spatter of tomato sauce from lunch. Cheeks that had once been flushed pink with youth and excitement were now thinner, cheekbones pronounced from lack of opportunity rather than diet or contour. She looked pale, putting it kindly, she thought as she skirted over the thumbprints of darkness smudged beneath her eyes.
She’d spent too long staring at the newspaper she’d sneaked in here with her. The words had long ago become blurred and the only thing she could see clearly was the eyes of the still handsome man she had spent one spectacular night with, a little over two years ago. The picture was black and white, but she would have sworn she could see the espresso-rich depths of his gaze, staring straight at the camera—staring straight at her.
Nathanial Harcourt.
He’d grown his wheat blond hair out. That night, it had been short, efficient. She remembered the feel of his scalp beneath her nails, the way he’d unfurled beneath her as she’d done that while they’d kissed. Her breath caught as she remembered the feel of his tongue, his touch, his need for her. The way his skin had pebbled as she chased the goosebumps with her kisses, fascinated by his reaction to her all the while he was trying to distract her with her own responses. She blinked back tears, remembering how they’d laughed, how he’d let her get things wrong. He’d let her explore him, learn the feel of things, of them together, the way her heart pounded, passion sighed, her legs trembled, her hands fisted, the way she had gasped, the way he had growled. The way that—
