‘CALLING RIDERS IN the vicinity of the Strand. Got a pick-up at the jeweller’s Mallow and Sons. Drop-off in Bloomsbury.’
Alison Jones skidded to a stop at the amber light on Waterloo Bridge to decipher the crackle of the dispatcher’s voice on her radio through the driving rain.
Cold water had seeped through her waterproof hours ago as the rush hour had slowed to a crawl in London’s West End. She’d been ready to crash head-first into a bubble bath since six o’clock and lick her wounds from another evening pedalling the mean streets of Soho. But once she’d registered the instruction, she clicked on the call button and shouted into her receiver. ‘Rider 524. Got it!’
She still had several instalments to pay on the debt she’d racked up four years ago for her mum’s funeral—and next month’s rent on her room in the house she shared with a group of other fashion students in Whitechapel wasn’t going to pay itself. Plus she’d already reached peak misery for the evening. She certainly couldn’t get any wetter.
The dispatcher confirmed her pick-up as she tried to focus through her exhaustion.
‘Delivery’s a wedding ring,’ he shouted. ‘Client’s name for drop-off is Dominic LeGrand, address is...’
A shiver wracked Ally’s body, the address barely registering as the name scraped across her consciousness, triggering a wealth of disturbing memories from the summer she had turned thirteen.
The heady scent of wild grass and roses. The baking heat of the Provence sun warming her skin. Pierre LeGrand’s face—so handsome, so charming—his voice deep and paternalistic.
‘Call me Papa, Alison.’
Her mother’s smile, so untroubled and full of hope.
‘Pierre is definitely the one, Ally. He loves me. He’ll take care of us now.’
And then the pulse of heat settled low in her abdomen as she pictured Dominic. The memory of Pierre’s sixteen-year-old son was as vivid and disturbing as if she’d seen him yesterday, not twelve years ago.
Those sensual lips always quirked in an insolent, don’t-give-a-damn smile; those chocolate eyes full of resentment and secrets; the mysterious crescent-shaped scar that hooked his left eyebrow; the brutally short dark blond hair that had lightened in the sun and given his brooding beauty a golden glow.
Dominic, who had been beautiful and bad and fascinating, and landed like a fallen angel into that perfect summer bringing with him danger and excitement.
‘I can’t take the job,’ Ally croaked into the receiver, as the memory of her final night in Provence returned, too.
Her mother’s face—so sad, so fragile—a purpling bruise marring her cheekbone. The cloying scent of lavender and gin. Her mother’s voice—frantic and fearful and slightly slurred.
‘Something terrible’s happened, baby. Pierre’s very angry with me and Dominic. We have to leave.’
A bus horn blared beside her, jerking Ally out of her trance. She shoved the distressing, confusing memories back where they belonged. When she’d buried her mother four years ago, she’d finally stopped reliving the horror of that night as she stood over the grave and felt nothing but relief that Monica Jones was finally at peace.
She couldn’t take this job. She didn’t want to see Dominic LeGrand again. Especially as Dominic wasn’t the reckless, delinquent boy who had starred in all those innocent adolescent fantasies a lifetime ago, but a billionaire property developer now. Hadn’t the tabloids dubbed him ‘Love-Rat LeGrand’ a year ago after one of his supermodel girlfriends had sold her story of their affair for a six-figure sum? The wedding ring had to be for the fairy-tale romance with Mira Somebody Ally had read about a month ago.
‘What do you mean you’re not taking the job? I just put it through the system.’ The dispatcher’s voice sliced into Ally’s misery. ‘Either you do it or I’m pulling you from the roster. Make up your mind.’
Ally breathed in and breathed out, trying to control the panic making the air clog in her lungs.
She had to take this job. She didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t afford to lose the work. Pressing her freezing finger on the radio, she spoke into the receiver. ‘Okay, I’ll take it. Give me that address again.’
* * *
‘The wedding’s off, Mira. Your hook-up with Andre the ski instructor has seen to that.’ Dominic LeGrand kept his voice even; he wasn’t sad or upset, he was furious. They’d had a deal. And his so-called fiancée had broken it.
‘But I... I told you it was nothing, Dominic.’ Tears sheened Mira’s eyes, her voice breaking with emotion. Dominic’s impatience sharpened his fury. The woman had the emotional maturity of a two-year-old.
‘I thought I made it plain before we entered into this arrangement I expected exclusivity. I’m not marrying a woman I can’t trust.’
‘But I didn’t sleep with Andre... I swear,’ Mira said. ‘I was a little drunk and flirtatious, that was all.’ She leaned across his desk, her breasts pressing provocatively against her low-cut gown, her lips pursed into the pout he’d found hot two months ago, when they’d first met. ‘I’m not going to lie—I quite like that you’re a little jealous,’ she added.
The coy flirtatious look on her face was probably supposed to be enticing. It wasn’t.
‘I’m not jealous, Mira. I’m angry. It’s a breach of our agreement. It could jeopardise the Waterfront deal.’ Which was the only reason he’d asked her to marry him in the first place.
The Jedah Consortium, who owned the tract of real estate in Brooklyn he wanted to develop, was made up of conservative businessmen from a string of oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. They’d been wary of doing business with him after Catherine Zalinski’s kiss-and-tell article last year had made him look like a man who couldn’t control his own libido, let alone the women in his life.
This marriage was supposed to fix that, until pictures of his fiancée kissing her ski instructor had hit the tabloids this afternoon.
‘The whole purpose of this marriage was to stop any more unsavoury gossip about my private life,’ he added, in case she didn’t get it.
‘But you left me alone for a whole month.’ The pout became more pronounced. ‘I waited for you to come to Klosters but you didn’t. We haven’t slept together in even longer. What did you expect me to do?’
He hadn’t had time to go all the way to Klosters to visit her. The fact he hadn’t been particularly desperate to ease the sexual drought confirmed something else—this agreement had been ill-advised from the start. He’d grown bored of Mira even sooner than he’d expected, in bed as well as out of it.
‘I expected you to keep your mouth off other men. And your legs closed.’
‘Dominic, don’t say things like that.’ The shocked hurt in her eyes looked genuine. Almost. ‘It makes me feel cheap.’
He let his gaze coast down the designer dress he’d paid for.
‘Mira, the one thing you’re not is cheap,’ he said wryly.
She stiffened at the insult.
‘Find your own way out,’ he said. ‘We’re done here.’
‘You... You heartless bastard.’
Mira’s hand whipped out so fast, he heard the crack before the pain blazed across his cheekbone.
He leapt out of his chair, holding her wrist before she could strike him again. But the smarting pain where she’d struck him had a bitter memory spinning back of another slap, from the summer he’d finally been invited into his father’s world—only to be kicked out again a month later—and the voice of the girl who had defended