MILLS & BOON

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      CONTENTS

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      PROLOGUE

      ALEXEI CONSTANTIN slid into the dark leather seat of the large, sleek black car waiting for him at the kerb, the door having been opened promptly for him by the uniformed chauffeur. The door closed, the chauffeur took his place at the wheel, started the engine and moved off into the early morning London traffic.

      For a brief moment Alexei contemplated how easily he took such luxurious comfort for granted now, how easily he accepted the vast distance he’d travelled in the fifteen years since he’d set out for the Adriatic ferry port on his eighteenth birthday, a scrawny teenager with little more than the clothes he was wearing, and with his dark eyes burning.

      Now, the same dark eyes no longer burned. They were veiled.

      Unreadable.

      Long lashes swept down over high cheekbones as he settled his lean shoulders against the smooth leather upholstery and picked up the topmost of the sheaf of newspapers that had been placed on the seat beside him, extracting the company news section. He glanced at the distinctive pink newsprint of the Financial Times.

      ‘Hawkwood—AC International tightens the net’ announced the headline.

      He read the article swiftly, scanning the lines, his face expressionless. With the same methodical swiftness he worked his way through the papers. Only one caused him to pause.

      It was a photograph, clearly taken at some society event, sited beside yet another news story about AC International’s takeover battle for Hawkwood Enterprises. Alexei’s gaze stilled as he looked down at the image in front of him.

      Giles Hawkwood.

      The man dominated the photograph, the way he sought to dominate anything and everything. He was wearing evening dress, the tuxedo straining across his thickening torso. His familiar features, with the characteristic strong nose, were framed by thick greying hair. He was looking his age, thought Alexei, his regard emotionless. For a moment he did nothing except look at the face of the man who was the object of the remorseless siege that he was conducting. Then, having taken his fill, he allowed his gaze to take in his companions.

      There were two women, one either side of Hawkwood. One was of the same generation, although her handsome features were immaculately preserved. The Honourable Amabel Hawkwood, daughter of the sixth Viscount Duncaster, looked out at the world with a haughty, patrician expression. Acidly, Alexei wondered whether she looked so haughty and patrician at the extremely discreet detox clinic she was rumoured to habitually frequent.

      His eyes slid to the other woman, standing on Hawkwood’s left.

      She was facing away from the camera, turned towards someone else cropped out of the photo.

      His eyes narrowed, his gaze arrested.

      There was little to see of her beyond a bare shoulder, the line of her evening gown and the pale fall of her hair, a glint of diamond at the lobe of her ear. But Alexei knew who she was.

      Eve Hawkwood, twenty-five years old and only child of Giles Hawkwood.

      He felt his mouth tug into a cynical twist.

      Like her aristocratic mother, Eve Hawkwood was a sophisticated socialite, adorning her wealthy father’s arm at glittering events such as the one where this photo had been taken. With her father’s money backing her, Eve Hawkwood could spend her life swanning around the luxurious places of the world, buying all the clothes she wanted, indulging herself all day long.

      She had no need for anything as menial as a job.

      Alexei’s expression grew even more cynical. Except that Eve Hawkwood, it was rumoured, did in fact work for a living.

      If you could call it work.

      Giles Hawkwood, a man who got what he wanted by any means he considered effective, was not averse, so the rumours ran, to exploiting all the resources he had to hand. Not only had he married the Honourable Amabel for her social standing, putting up with her well-known little ‘weakness’ which kept her increasingly out of circulation, but he was also not averse to making the most of his daughter’s youth and beauty.

      Alexei stared down at the photo. He might not be able to make out Eve Hawkwood’s features, but there was a tilt to her averted chin, a straightness to her spine, that gave her an air echoing her mother’s—a hauteur, a remoteness, an untouchability in every line of her body.

      Again Alexei’s mouth twisted. Except Eve Hawkwood, so he had heard, was not untouchable at all.

      But only—his dark eyes hardened—only when Daddy told her not to be…

      Abruptly, he tossed the newspaper aside.

      Neither Eve Hawkwood nor the Honourable Amabel were of the slightest interest to him. They were not in his sights at all. Only Giles Hawkwood.

      His prey.

      CHAPTER ONE

      EVE sat in the wide, soft leather aeroplane seat, legs slanted gracefully to one side, flicking unseeingly through a copy of Vogue. There was only one other passenger in the private jet winging its way south over France towards the Côte d’Azur. Across the aisle her father was working through papers, a frown on his face, his jaw clamped tight.

      His mood was grim, Eve knew. It had been growing grimmer ever since the takeover bid by AC International had been launched. At first her father had been contemptuous, sneering, but as one shareholder after another had started to look favourably on the bid, or succumb to the lure of the premium price AC International was offering for Hawkwood shares, his reaction had changed.

      The takeover bid had become a battle. A battle her father was now taking to the man who had the audacity to try and wrest his company from him.

      ‘When I come face to face with him it’s got to look like nothing more than a coincidence,’ he’d barked at Eve. ‘If you’re with me it will just look like a social occasion.’

      It was a familiar role for Eve to be required to play. The socially poised daughter, the charming guest, the gracious hostess—whenever her father required youthful but respectable female company. Eve’s eyes hardened. The times when far from respectable females had been at her father’s side