Prologue

      “It is her.”

      Max Fortune’s muttered words went unheard, swallowed by the chatter that rose and fell in waves around him. Not that Max noticed. His focus remained riveted on the woman who’d captured his attention the instant he walked into the party at his Dakota cousins’ grand estate home.

      There’d been something about her posture and the way she tilted her head to listen intently to her companion’s conversation that had jangled at deeply buried memories. When she’d turned enough to reveal her face in profile, kick-gut recognition had shocked the words loose from his mind.

      It was Diana Fielding.

      Ten years older but there was no mistaking the distinctive dip in her nose or the low-set eyebrows that gave her face a somberness at odds with her smile. There was no mistaking that high-octane smile, either, or the startling contrast between her milky skin and night-dark hair. Still long, he presumed, although tonight she wore it up, drawing attention to the smooth line of her throat.

      There’d been a time when Max had kissed every inch of that long, slender column…when he’d kissed every inch of her long, slender body.

      What the hell was that body doing in South Dakota?

      Max had only arrived himself that afternoon. Despite the lengthy series of flights from his home in Australia via New Zealand and L.A., he’d accepted his hosts’ party invitation without hesitation. It provided the perfect opportunity to meet all of Nash Fortune’s family—Case, Creed, Eliza, Blake and Skylar, his cousins several-times-removed—in the one place. Max appreciated that kind of efficiency. In fact, he’d accepted Nash and his wife Patricia’s invitation to base this business trip here because Sioux Falls provided efficient access to all the horse breeding farms he aimed to visit.

      Visiting with this branch of his extended family for the first time was an added bonus.

      Revisiting the worst moment in his life—now that was an add-on he could do without.

      “What’s up, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

      Max turned to find Zack Manning, his New Zealand based friend, business partner and traveling companion, eyeing him closely. “Not a ghost,” he said with a casual shrug that belied the tension in his gut. “Just a woman I thought I knew once.”

      His friend’s breath whistled out between his teeth as he studied the object of Max’s distraction. “Y’know, I think you’d remember meeting her.”

      No kidding.

      “Looks European,” Zack decided. “Like a Russian princess.”

      She wasn’t, although speech lessons had edged her voice with an accent as regal as her show-biz-royalty blood. She’d hated him drawing attention to that; she’d determinedly played it down…until he’d mentioned how it turned him on. Then she’d employed it with impressive effect.

      “Looks as though you’re about to make the princess’s acquaintance,” Zack said.

      Everything inside him twanged like high tensile wire as his gaze swung across the room. There, at Diana Fielding’s side, his cousin Eliza was trying to catch his attention. Suddenly her presence here made sense. She was visiting with Eliza—the two of them had been friends at college. He should have remembered the connection since it had led, indirectly, to their meeting.

      Eliza waved her hand harder and, curse it, he couldn’t ignore that summons. Or the elbow his friend used to nudge him into motion. “Geez, Fortune. I’ve never known you so reluctant to meet a beautiful woman.”

      “I’m not here to meet women.”

      “A good thing,” Zack quipped, “given that scowl you’re wearing would send ’em screaming from the room.”

      In deference to his hosts and their guests, Max made an effort to wipe his mind and his expression clear of dark memories. Lord knew he’d had enough practice over the years.

      Ten years, seven months, two weeks, to be precise.

      When Eliza caught his hand and pulled him into the small group, he managed a stiff smile. “You know Case,” she said, indicating the eldest of her brothers, whom he’d met that afternoon. “This is his date, Gina Reynolds. And this is Diana Young.”

      Not Diana Fielding. Not any more.

      “Hello, Max.”

      His smile faded. He remembered the first time they’d met and the same warm I-am-pleased-to-meet-you look in her grey-green eyes as they looked into his. And he remembered the last time he’d seen her, the day he traveled to New York with a diamond ring in his pocket.

      The day he’d stood undetected in the shadows watching her walk through a petal-strewn garden to marry another man.

      “Diana…Young, is it?”

      He saw the confusion in her eyes, then the slight recoil as she absorbed the cool cut of his question.

      But that was nothing compared to the knife of betrayal she’d driven into him ten years before. At the time he’d thought that wound had pierced his heart. Later he’d decided it was only damage to his pride, his male ego, his crushed plans. The scar shouldn’t still hurt. It wouldn’t, he declared with absolute conviction, if this meeting hadn’t come as such a god-sudden out-of-the-blue shock.

      Turning his gaze to Eliza and Case and Gina, he detected a weight of curiosity in their silence and knew he couldn’t play nice for the sake of etiquette. He couldn’t fake small talk. And he was in no mood to explain his previous relationship with Diana Fielding Young.

      “If you’ll excuse