Page 192 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

As if to expose the lie, the name, which she had chosen because it shared the first syllable with her own, crackled like popping candy on her tongue and her stomach fluttered as he looked at her closely, narrowed eyes appraising her in a way that made her feel as though he were looking beneath her skin, seeing into her soul.

Under any other circumstances it wouldn’t have been a comfortable feeling.

But she barely noticed because she was still reeling from the shock of his beauty. Although it shouldn’t have been a shock because she already knew what he looked like. Even before she had done her research, scouring the Internet for stories of his unscrupulous and line-blurring behaviour, his face had been familiar, but she had assumed the pictures she’d seen of him had been edited to flatter or that the camera had caught him on a good day.

But the truth was that none of the images she had seen did him justice. His face was arrestingly, astonishingly beautiful with a clean jawline and high sculpted cheekbones that would grace the pages of any Renaissance artist’s sketchbook. And those eyes—

On her laptop, they looked light brown, but in person and up close, they were gold like the sun, only they lacked the sun’s warmth. Instead, they were hard and glittering and unreadable.

Her own eyes skated across his face. Everything about him was hard, uncompromising, even his mouth. And yet for some reason there was something undeniably sensual about the shape of his lips, so that even though they were currently set in a line she could imagine them softening to fit against hers. The thought made her heart jerk forward and, to cover her reaction, she held out her hand.

‘I’m not permanent. I’m covering for Maddie.’

As his eyes locked on hers, she swore silently. What was she doing? She was supposed to be keeping her head down. Not drawing attention to herself.

‘I see,’ he said slowly, taking her hand in what must surely be a reflex action, but as his fingers wrapped around hers she felt a sharp shock like electricity and she jerked free of his grip.

‘Sorry, it’s static,’ she said quickly. ‘I get it sometimes from the keyboard.’

He stared at her for so long that she thought she had missed his reply, but then he said in that same smooth, deep voice, ‘Are you enjoying working here?’

‘Yes.’ Smiling slightly, she nodded, because it wasn’t a total lie. She liked her colleagues and, if things were different, she might have enjoyed being Sierra for real, aside from the heels. Walking in them required the use of muscles she hadn’t known she had and it was a miracle she hadn’t broken her neck. But like the manicure and the designer handbag, they were part of her Sierra costume. And she would be glad to go back to being herself. Leading a double life was giving her sleepless nights. Frankly, she would be happy when five o’clock came and she would be able to put this chapter of her life behind her and get her life and, more importantly, her brothers’ lives back on track.

She owed them that. Owed them her freedom, and a life lived without fear.

She nodded. ‘Everyone here has been very kind and helpful.’

Two tiny lines formed a crease in the centre of his forehead and his burnished gaze got more intense. ‘You’re a long way from home, Ms Jones.’

Her stomach lurched sideways like a boat hit by a rogue wave. ‘I’m sorry—’ She tried to keep the panic out of her voice but she felt it wash over her anyway.

‘California, isn’t it?’

How did he know that? She lifted a hand to her suddenly pounding heart, feeling the trap snap shut.

His mouth tugged up minutely at one corner. ‘We have a research and development test site up in the hills so I’ve spent a lot of time there and I recognised your accent. I’m guessing San Francisco.’

As relief flooded her, she managed to make her smile stay in place. ‘Los Angeles.’

‘Ah, the city of angels,’ he said slowly. ‘Ever visited New York before?’ As she shook her head, his gaze moved past her to his desk and then back to her face. ‘May I?’

His grip didn’t hurt but when it came to physical contact she liked to be in control. Only she was still dizzy and off balance from this sudden breach of her invisibility, so when he took her elbow and steered her towards the window, she didn’t pull away the way she normally did when someone touched her without warning or permission.

She could feel the calluses on his fingers, so that story about him working in the mines was true. For some reason that surprised her. She had thought it was just spin, propaganda designed to reinforce his status as the ordinary working man made good.

‘This is the only way to see New York,’ he said softly, and then he let go of her arm and she felt suddenly confused and angry because for the first time in years she hadn’t minded being touched. On the contrary, she could feel herself leaning into his orbit, and her skin was quivering, itching to feel the warm, firm grip of his fingers again.

And not just on her arm.

Her pulse was a smooth, dizzying drum roll of panic and something else. Something deeper, more dangerous. Something she couldn’t name. But it didn’t need a name, apparently, to make her breath back up in her throat and her mind go blank as if everything she knew were gone, lost, forgotten, irrelevant. As if this was the moment when her life started. And although she knew that was absurd, she also knew it was true.

‘So why did you leave LA? Was it a whim or did you have a particular reason?’

Yes, she thought. His name was Noah and he had almost broken her. He had taken her away from her family and friends. First to a flat and then to a tiny, isolated house far from any neighbours.

Far enough that nobody would hear her screams.

She still had the scars from their time together, although his cruelty had not been restricted to physical violence, so some were not ever visible. The bruises from when she had exhausted his patience and he had twisted her arm until she’d thought it would snap, they had faded. The hair he had pulled out had grown back.

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