AllFreeNovel
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First published 2018
(c) Clare Connelly
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Prologue
“I KNOW YOU.” THE words came from behind her shoulder, and in the midst of a busy society fundraiser, Ellie shouldn’t have been able to discern them so perfectly. She shouldn’t have been able to hear them at all, really, let alone to feel every husky vibration of the simple statement trembling across her flesh.
But the voice was one she hadn’t heard in four years, yet remembered in every cell of her body.
The voice was the sound of her dreams and the tenor of her fevered, painful nightmares.
Her back was already ramrod straight but she stiffened her spine, squared her shoulders, and sucked in a desperate, aching breath, wishing her pulse would settle.
Perhaps if she ignored him, he’d go away.
No. A moment later, she felt him move closer, and she swept her eyes shut, knowing the next few seconds would be the most important of her life.
Seconds to convince him he was wrong, even when Xavier Salbatore was never wrong.
Seconds to convince him they’d never met, when in fact, they’d spent forty-eight hours together four years earlier.
Seconds to convince him they were strangers when they were, in fact, parents to a beautiful little three year old.
“I do know you, don’t I?” The question was soft and low, asked close to her ear so that the words seemed to glance across the exposed flesh of her shoulder and neck. The question husked right into her ear and buried in her heart.
Her traitorous heart. How could he make it race even after all he’d done?
He was a cheat. A liar. A man she never wanted to see again.
But fate, cruel fate, had other ideas.
Steeling herself to be strong, conjuring the image of Xavier as he’d been four years ago so that his gorgeous looks wouldn’t fell her at the knees in the way they had in the past, she turned slowly, her eyes swept shut, her breath held.
And then, she forced herself to look at him, and her world tilted completely off its axis and all her breath escaped on a rush of horror.
For this man was, unmistakably, Xavier Salbatore, but he was different too. His face was scarred on the left side in a way that marred the perfection he’d once boasted of – or enhanced it, if she wanted to be completely honest. Where he’d been absolutely symmetrical and film-star handsome before, there was a roughness to him now, a cynicism and air of danger that she knew matched the horrid turn of his heart.
When he looked at her now, it was with a sense of complete coldness – where, in the past, there had been only heated passion.
He’d forgotten her.
No wonder! He’d probably had lots of affairs. There was no reason to think she’d been anything special to him.
Her lip curled in a derisive dismissal. If he’d forgotten her then she saw no reason to enlighten him. None whatsoever.
“No.” She imbued the word with a cool crispness she was very proud of. “We’ve never met.” And she walked away from him as though her heart wasn’t pounding so hard and fast in her chest that it was in very real danger of escaping.
