AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The tension in his shoulders spread down his spine, knotting at the base of his back, new pain mingling with the old.
Boarding school had finished what his stepfather had started, effectively turning him into a nomad, a citizen of nowhere. A small boy with a suitcase that for a long time had been bigger than he was.
Returning to the States at the end of the first term, he’d found that as well as another new home he had a new stepfather—Mike. But by the time he’d left school, Mike was long gone. His mother was never alone for long. Unlike him.
Thinking back to the men who had come and gone over the years, he felt the ache in his chest press against his ribs. As it turned out, they had all been pretty interchangeable. After an opening flurry of dad-like activities none of them had bothered pretending they wanted to be a father—not a father to him, anyway.
Then again, why should they? He hadn’t belonged to them. Hadn’t belonged anywhere. He was like the cat in that Rudyard Kipling story. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.
He glanced around the apartment.
Like all his properties, it was real estate gold. Tall ceilings, big windows, plenty of open space, all decorated in largely neutral shades. There were no distinguishing features, no familial photos.
His fingers tightened around the smooth glass tumbler. He would have preferred to go back to the Stanmore, but there was a chance that Roman—or, worse, Tamara—might still be at the hotel and he didn’t trust himself to be either calm or kind.
And that incensed him more, for it seemed to validate Effie Price’s accusation. Maybe that was why he had been sitting on this sofa for over an hour now. Sitting and stewing over her parting shot.
He gazed morosely out of the penthouse’s panoramic window, his eyes tracking across the skyline, leapfrogging between London’s iconic landmarks. There was no reason that he should still be thinking about what Effie had said. She was nothing to him. Aside from her name, he knew nothing about her. And yet he felt as though she was here, sitting beside him, staring at him gravely.
Leaning back against the sofa cushions, his body tense, nostrils flaring, he suddenly knew why he was feeling that way. It was because she was here. Or at least her scent was, and it was filling his senses.
He felt his pulse accelerate.
Mostly he wasn’t a big fan of women’s perfumes, but this one...
Lowering his face, he breathed in the smell of her, heat creeping over his skin. It wasn’t overtly seductive or cloyingly floral, like a lot of the perfumes women wore. But then it wasn’t really a perfume. Perfume was manmade, stoppered in a bottle in a factory and sold to the masses.
Effie’s scent was something more subtle...both delicate and tantalising, like a promise hovering over her skin.
His pulse slowed a little as he remembered the moment when he’d pulled her down onto the seat beside him. Their bodies had barely touched, but her scent had travelled over his skin like the softest caress, so that for a moment he’d had to fight against the urge to pull her close and keep inhaling her scent.
Infuriated by the memory of how near he’d come to losing control, he stood up and stalked across the room and out onto the balcony that wrapped around two sides of his apartment. In the early afternoon sunlight London looked oddly peaceful, with a warm, golden glow gilding the steel-framed skyscrapers and softening the sharp brick edges.
His mouth twisted. If only his father’s edict could be similarly softened into something more appealing.
Had this been a business negotiation it would be easy to bat away Andreas’s demands. But he couldn’t take that chance—couldn’t risk his father turning his back on him, couldn’t risk losing the chance to get what he was owed.
For weeks now he’d been trying to find a solution. Only, thanks to Effie, instead of focusing on a reconciled future with his father he’d spent the best part of the day brooding over a past he couldn’t change.
‘Excuse me, Mr Kane.’
Achileas turned. It was Beatrice, his housekeeper.
‘What is it?’ he snapped.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir. Crawford found this in the car, and he wondered if you would like him to dispose of it or return it.’
She held out a folder.
He stared at it for a moment, and then took it.
It was cheap-looking, made of plastic. The kind a child might use at school for handing in an essay. Flipping it open, he felt his breath snag on the name at the top of the first page: Effie Price.
It was a business proposal for a perfumery. Suddenly he was conscious of the hammering of his heart.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘No, leave it with me.’
Walking back into the apartment, he sat on the sofa, put down his glass and started to read, skimming down the page with practised speed.
