CHAPTER ONE

      AMMAR TANNOUS scanned the crowded ballroom of the Parisian hotel with a coldly dispassionate air, his mouth a compressed line. Somewhere amidst this glittering throng his wife waited. Although waited, he acknowledged, was the wrong word; Noelle had no idea he was here. She might not even know he was alive.

      He narrowed his eyes as he shouldered his way through the crowd, noting the way conversations sputtered into silence, followed by the hiss of surprised speculation. The newspapers, he knew, had carried the story of his miraculous escape from a helicopter crash two months ago, although he hadn’t been front page news. He never was. Ammar always kept a low profile; working for Tannous Enterprises required he maintain an intense privacy. Still, some here recognised him.

      ‘Mr Tannous …’ A thin, nervous man approached him, looking, Ammar saw, not just nervous but scared out of his wits. Ammar tried to place the face, but he had done business with too many people to recall every frightened underling who had experienced the punishing power of Tannous Enterprises’s fist. ‘I was going to make an appointment …’ the man stammered, fluttering his hands in apology. ‘Once I heard the news …’

      The news that he was alive. Not very good news for most people, Ammar knew. Now he remembered the man, if not his name. He had a small clothing factory outside Paris and Ammar’s father had become lien-holder. He’d called in the loan just before his death in an attempt to bankrupt the man and cease his paltry competition with Tannous’s own interests.

      ‘I’m not here about that,’ Ammar said tersely. ‘If you wish to make an appointment, call my office.’

      ‘Yes … of course …’

      Without another word Ammar moved past him. He could have assured the man he wasn’t going to enforce his father’s claim, but the words stuck in his throat. In any case, he didn’t want rumours to start flying, or his business associates and allies to wonder or worry.

      All he wanted was Noelle.

      It had been her face, the memory of her smile that had driven his survival. When he’d been starving and dying of thirst, wounded and feverish, he’d longed for her. He might not have seen her in a decade, he might have sent her away only months after they’d married, but he intended to find her now … and finally claim her as his wife.

      His expression grimmer than ever before, Ammar moved forward through the crowd.

      ‘Someone is looking for you, and he seems rather ferocious.’

      Noelle Ducasse turned at the sound of her friend Amelie’s voice, a smile firmly curving her lips, her flute of champagne held aloft. ‘Oh, really? Should I start quivering?’

      ‘Perhaps.’ Amelie took a sip of her own drink as she surveyed the crowd. ‘He’s about six foot four with a near-shaven head and a horrible scar on his face. The whole look is rather sexy, mind you, but also a bit fearsome.’ Amelie raised her elegantly plucked eyebrows, clearly curious. ‘Does that description ring a bell?’

      ‘Not really.’ Noelle gave her friend, always prone to exaggeration, a bemused look. ‘He sounds like an ex-convict.’

      ‘Maybe. Although his tuxedo is top of the line.’

      ‘Intriguing.’ Although she wasn’t particularly intrigued. Paris’s social scene was always buzzing. ‘My feet are killing me,’ she said as she deposited her half-empty glass of champagne on a tray held by one of the many circulating waiters. ‘I might call it a night.’

      ‘I knew those heels would murder you.’ Amelie spoke with gleeful satisfaction; she’d wanted to wear the five-inch silver stilettos that had been seen on the catwalk at Paris’s Autumn/Winter Fashion Week last March. Arche, the high-end department store they both worked for as assistant buyers, would sell them exclusively this autumn.

      Noelle shrugged philosophically. ‘All part of the job.’ Arche liked to have its junior buyers out and about in Paris’s social scene, modelling Arche fashions and looking glamorous. After five years, Noelle was tired of playing at being a pretty young thing, but she knew it was all about paying her dues. In another few months she’d be up for a promotion to senior buyer of women’s wear, instead of focusing just on shoes and accessories.

      ‘You can’t leave yet,’ Amelie protested with a pout, ‘it’s only eleven.’

      ‘And I have work tomorrow. As do you, I might add.’

      ‘What about your ferocious admirer?’

      ‘He’ll just have to admire from afar.’ A flicker of curiosity rippled through her—a shaven head and a scar? Really? In this crowd of preening socialites it seemed unlikely. Still, all she wanted now was her bed and a hot drink. And a good book. Her scary suitor would have to live with disappointment.

      She waved her farewell to Amelie, who had already moved on to the next crowd of social-climbers. Standing alone amidst the circulating crowd, Noelle suddenly experienced a sharp pang of loneliness, the kind she’d tried not to let herself feel in the ten years since she’d walked out on her marriage and rebuilt her life—a life she’d chosen, even if it bore no resemblance to the kind of life she’d expected to have. She liked Amelie and all of her other friends, but they weren’t kindred spirits. Soulmates. But then she’d given up on that idea long ago.

      Sighing, she pushed any recriminations, as well as that irritating pang of loneliness, to the back of her mind. She just wanted to go home. In bed with a book and a hot drink she’d feel better. And at least she’d be able to shed these ridiculous shoes.

      It took her a quarter of an hour to work her way through the crowd, knowing she needed to stop to smile or chat with various guests. She’d just reached the deserted foyer of the hotel when she heard a voice behind her.

      ‘I almost didn’t recognise you.’

      Noelle froze. She didn’t have to turn around to know who was speaking to her. She hadn’t heard that low, rumbling growl of a voice in ten years. He still, she acknowledged distantly, spoke with the cautious reserve of a man who chose his words with care and didn’t say many of them.

      Slowly she turned around and faced her former husband. The first sight of him in the shadowy foyer jolted her to the core. His hair was cut close, almost a buzz-cut. A long, livid scar of puckered reddened flesh bisected his right cheek, starting