Loe raamatut: «The Virgin's Debt To Pay»

CHAPTER ONE

NESSA O’SULLIVAN HAD never considered herself capable of petty crime, and yet here she was, just outside a private property, under the cover of moonlight, about to break and enter to steal something that didn’t belong to her.

She grimaced. Well, to be accurate, she wasn’t really going to be breaking and entering, because she had her brother’s keys to his office in the Barbier stud farm offices. Luc Barbier. Just thinking of the owner of this stud and racing stables made a shiver of apprehension run through Nessa’s slim frame. She was crouched under an overhanging branch, on the edge of a pristine lawn in front of the main reception buildings. She’d left her battered Mini Cooper a short distance away from the gates and climbed over a low wall.

Nessa’s own family home was not far away, and so she knew the land surrounding this stud farm very well. She’d played here as a child when it was under different ownership.

But any sense of familiarity fled when an owl hooted nearby, and she jumped, her heart slamming against her breastbone. She forced herself to suck in deep breaths to calm her nerves, and cursed her hot-headed older brother again for fleeing like he had. But then, could she really blame Paddy Junior for not standing up to Luc Barbier—the intimidating French enfant terrible of the thoroughbred racing world, about whom more was unknown than known?

His darkly forbidding good looks had rumours abounding...that he had been orphaned by gypsies, and that he’d lived on the streets, before becoming something of a legend in the racing world for his ability to train the most difficult of horses.

He’d progressed in a very short space of time to owning his own racing stables outside Paris, and now he owned this extensive stud farm in Ireland attached to another racing stables, where his impressive number of successful racehorses were trained by the best in the world, all under his eagle-eyed supervision.

People said his ability was some kind of sorcery, handed down by his mysterious ancestors.

Other rumours had it that he was simply a common criminal who had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, and had managed to climb out of the gutter to where he was now by using a fluke talent and ruthless ingenuity to get ahead.

The mystery of his origins only added to the feverish speculation surrounding him, because along with his racing concerns, he had invested in myriad other industries, tripling his fortune in a short space of time and securing his position as one of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. But racing and training remained his main concerns.

Paddy Jnr had talked about the man in hushed and awed tones for the last couple of years, since Barbier had employed Nessa’s brother as Junior Stud Manager.

Nessa had seen him herself, once or twice, from a distance at the exclusive Irish horse sales—where there was a regular attendance of the most important names in racing from all over the world. Sheikhs and royalty and the seriously wealthy.

He’d stood out, head and shoulders above everyone around him. Inky black hair, thick and wild, touching his collar. A dark-skinned, hard-boned face and a stern expression, his eyes hidden by dark glasses. Thickly muscled arms were folded over his broad chest, and his head had followed the horses as they’d been paraded for the prospective buyers. He’d more resembled the taciturn security guards surrounding some of the sheikhs, or a mysterious movie star, than an owner.

He’d had no obvious security around him, but even now Nessa could recall the faint air of menace keeping people away. He would be well capable of protecting himself.

The only reason she was even here tonight, indulging in this hare-brained exercise for her brother, was because he’d assured her that Luc Barbier was currently in France. She had no desire to come face to face with the man himself, because on those occasions when she had glimpsed him from a distance she’d felt a very disconcerting sensation in her belly—a kind of awareness that was totally alien to her, and very inappropriate to feel towards a complete stranger.

She took another deep breath and moved forward from under the tree, across the lawn to the buildings. A dog barked and Nessa halted, holding her breath. It stopped, and she continued moving forward. She reached the main building and went under the archway that led into a courtyard, around which the administrative offices were laid out.

She followed Paddy’s directions and found the main office, and used the bigger key to unlock the door. Her heart was thumping but the door opened without a sound. There was no alarm. Nessa was too relieved to wonder why that might be.

It was dark inside, but she could just about make out the stairs. She climbed them to the upper floor, using the torch app on her phone and breathed a sigh of relief when she found his office. She opened the door with the other key, stepping inside as quietly as she could, before shutting it again. She leant against it for a second, her heart thumping. Sweat trickled down her back.

When she felt slightly calmer she moved further into the office, using her phone to guide her to the desk Paddy had said was his. He’d told her that his laptop should be in the top drawer, but she pulled it open to find it empty. She opened the others but they were empty too. Feeling slightly panicky, she tried the other desks but there was no sign of the laptop. Paddy’s frantic words reverberated in her head: ‘That laptop is the only chance I have to prove my innocence, if I can just trace the emails back to the hacker...’

Nessa stood in the centre of the office biting her lip, feeling frantic now herself.

There was no hint of warning or sound to indicate she wasn’t alone, so when an internal door in the office opened and light suddenly flooded the room, Nessa only had time to whirl around and blink in shock at the massive figure filling the doorway.

It registered faintly in her head that the man filling the doorway was Luc Barbier. And that she was right to have been wary of coming face to face with him. He was simply the most astonishingly gorgeous and intimidating man she’d ever seen up close, and that was saying something when her brother-in-law was Sheikh Nadim Al-Saqr of Merkazad, as alpha male and masculine as they came.

Luc Barbier was dressed all in black, jeans and a long-sleeved top, which only seemed to enhance his brooding energy. His eyes were deep-set and so dark they looked like fathomless pools. Totally unreadable.

He held up a slim silver laptop and Nessa looked at it stupidly.

‘I take it this is what you came here for?’

His voice was low and gravelly and sexily accented, and that finally sent reality slamming back into Nessa like a shot of adrenalin to her heart. She did the only thing she could do—she pivoted on her feet and ran back to the door she’d just come through and pulled it open, only to find a huge burly security guard standing on the other side with a sour expression on his face.

The voice came from behind her again, this time with an unmistakable thread of steel. ‘Close the door. You’re not going anywhere.’

When she didn’t move, the security guard reached past her to pull the door closed, effectively shutting her in with Luc Barbier. Who patently wasn’t in France.

With the utmost reluctance she turned around to face him, very aware of the fact that she was wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a close-fitting black fleece with her hair tucked up under a dark baseball cap. She must look as guilty as sin.

Luc Barbier had closed the other door. The laptop was on a desk near him and he was just standing there, arms folded across his chest, legs spread wide as if to be ready for when she bolted again.

He asked, ‘So, who are you?’

Nessa’s heart thwacked hard. She kept her mouth firmly closed and her gaze somewhere around his impeccably shod feet, hoping the cap would hide her face.

He sighed audibly. ‘We can do this the hard way, or the harder way. I can have the police here within ten minutes and you can tell them who you are and why you’re trespassing on my property...but we both know it’s to get this, don’t we?’ He tapped the laptop with long fingers where it sat on the desk. ‘You’re obviously working for Paddy O’Sullivan.’

Nessa barely heard the last phrase. Totally ridiculously, all she could seem to focus on were his beautiful hands. Big and masculine but graceful. Capable hands. Sexy hands. The quiver in her belly became something far more disturbing.

Silence lengthened between them again and suddenly Barbier issued a low, violent-sounding curse in French and picked up the laptop, moving towards the door. He was almost there before Nessa realised that involving the Irish Gardaí would be even more of a disaster. The fact that Barbier hadn’t called them yet left a sliver of hope that something of this situation could be salvaged.

‘Wait!’ Her voice sounded very high in the silence.

He stopped at the door, his back to her. It was almost as intimidating as his front. He slowly turned around. ‘What did you say?’

Nessa tried to calm her thundering heart. She was afraid to look up too much, using the lip of her cap to keep herself hidden as much as possible.

‘I said wait. Please.’ She winced. As if a nicety like please would go over well in this situation.

There was more silence and then an incredulous-sounding, ‘You’re a girl?’

That struck Nessa somewhere very vulnerable. She knew she was dressed head to toe in black and wore a hat, but was she really so androgynous? She was well aware of her lack of feminine wiles, having spent much of her life knee deep in muck and wellies. She hitched up her chin and glared at him now, too angry to remember to try and stay hidden. ‘I’m twenty-four, hardly a girl.’

He looked sceptical. ‘Crawling through undergrowth to trespass on private property is hardly the activity of a grown woman.’

The thought of the kind of women a man like this would know—a world away from Nessa—made her skin prickle with self-consciousness and her vulnerability turned into defensiveness. ‘You’re meant to be in France.’

Luc Barbier was shocked. And he was not a man who was easily shocked. But this slip of a girl—woman?—was talking back to him as if she hadn’t just flagrantly invaded his private property with clearly criminal intentions.

‘I was in France, and now I’m not.’

He allowed his gaze to inspect her more closely, and as he did he felt something infuse his blood...interest. Because he could see it now. Yes, she was a woman. Albeit slim and petite to the point of boyishness. But he could see her breasts, small and perfectly formed, pushing against the form-fitting fleece of her black top.

He could make out a jaw too delicate to be a man’s, and wondered how he hadn’t noticed it before. He also saw a very soft lower lip, which was currently caught between white teeth. He felt a very unwelcome stirring of desire and a need to see more.

‘Take off your cap,’ he heard himself demand before he’d even registered the impulse.

The small chin came up and that soft lip was freed from white teeth. He saw the tension in her. There was a taut moment when he wasn’t sure what she would do. Then, as if realising she had no choice, she raised a small hand and pulled the cap from her head.

For a moment Luc could only stare stupidly as a coil of long, dark red hair fell over her shoulder from where it had been stuffed under the cap.

And then he took in the rest of her face and felt even more foolish. He’d seen countless beautiful women, some of whom were considered to be the most beautiful in the world, but right now they were all an indistinct blur in his memory.

She was stunning. High cheekbones. Flawless creamy pale skin. A straight nose. Huge hazel eyes—flashing green and gold, with long dark lashes. And that mouth, lush and wide.

His body hardened, and the shock of such a reaction to this whippet of a girl made Luc reject the rogue reaction. He did not react to women unless it was on his terms. He was reacting because she was unexpected.

His voice was harsh. ‘Now, tell me who you are, or I call the police.’

Nessa burned inwardly from the thorough once-over Barbier had just given her. She felt very exposed without her cap. Exposed to the full impact of him up close. And she couldn’t look away. It was as if she were mesmerised by the sun. He was simply...beautiful, in a very raw, masculine way, all hard angles and sharp lines. But his mouth was provocatively sensual—the only softness in that face. It was distracting.

‘I’m waiting.’

Nessa flushed, caught out. She diverted her gaze, focusing on a picture of a famous racehorse on the wall behind him. She knew she really didn’t have a choice but to give him the information. The alternative was to give it to the Gardaí and, coming from such a small, close-knit community, she knew that word would go around within minutes as to what she had been doing. There was no such thing as privacy or anonymity here.

‘My name is Nessa...’ She hesitated and then said in a rush, ‘O’Sullivan.’ She snuck a glance back at Barbier and saw that he was frowning.

‘O’Sullivan? You’re related to Paddy?’

Nessa nodded miserably at what a disaster this evening’s escapade had become. ‘I’m his younger sister.’

Barbier took a moment to digest this and then he said, with a curl to his lip, ‘He’s sending his baby sister to do his dirty work?’

Nessa instantly rose to her brother’s defence. ‘Paddy is innocent!’

Luc Barbier looked unimpressed by her impassioned outburst. ‘He’s made a bad situation worse by disappearing, and the facts haven’t changed: he facilitated the purchase of a horse from Gio Corretti’s Sicilian stud. We received the horse a week ago and the one million euros duly left my account but never reached Corretti’s. It’s clear that your brother diverted the funds into his own pocket.’

Nessa blanched at the massive amount of money, but she forced herself to stay strong, for Paddy. ‘He didn’t divert funds. It wasn’t his fault. He was hacked—they somehow impersonated the stud manager in Sicily and Paddy sent the money through fully believing it was going to the right place.’

The lines in Barbier’s face were as hard as granite. ‘If that is the case then why isn’t he here to defend himself?’

Nessa refused to let herself crumble in the face of this man’s seriously intimidating stance. ‘You told him he would be prosecuted and liable for the full amount. He felt as if he had no choice.’

Paddy’s frantic voice came back into her head.

‘Ness, you don’t know what this guy is capable of. He fired one of the grooms on the spot the other day. There’s no such thing as innocent till proven guilty in Barbier’s world. He’ll chew me up and spit me out! I’ll never work in the industry again...’

Barbier’s mouth thinned. ‘The fact that he fled after that phone conversation only makes him look even guiltier.’

More words of defence sprang to Nessa’s lips but she swallowed them back. Trying to explain to this man that her brother had been entangled with the law when he’d gone through a rebellious teenage phase was hardly likely to make him sound less guilty. Paddy had worked long and hard to turn over a new leaf, but he’d been told that if he was ever caught breaking the law again he’d serve time and have a criminal record. That was why he’d panicked and run.

Luc Barbier regarded the woman in front of him. The fact that he was still indulging in any kind of dialogue with her was outrageous. And yet her vehemence and clear desire to protect her brother at all costs—even at her own expense—intrigued him. In his experience loyalty was a myth. Everyone was out for their own gain.

Something occurred to him then and he cursed himself for not suspecting it sooner. He’d been too distracted by a fall of thick red hair and a slender frame. It was galling.

‘Maybe you’re in on it? And you were trying to retrieve the laptop to ensure that any evidence was taken care of?’

Nessa’s limbs turned to jelly. ‘Of course I’m not in on anything. I just came here because Paddy—’ She stopped herself, not wanting to incriminate him further.

‘Because Paddy...what?’ Barbier asked. ‘Was too much of a coward? Or because he’s no longer in the country?’

Nessa bit her lip. Paddy had fled to America, to hide out with her twin brother, Eoin. She’d entreated him to come back, tried to assure him that his boss couldn’t be such an ogre. Paddy’s words floated back.

‘No one messes with Barbier. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got criminal links...’

For a moment Nessa had a sickening sensation. What if Barbier really was linked to—? She quickly shut that thought down, telling herself she was being melodramatic. But then a sliver of doubt entered her mind—what if Paddy was guilty?

As soon as that registered she lambasted herself, aghast that she could have thought it for a second. This man was making her doubt herself, and her brother, who she knew would never do something so wrong, no matter what his trangressions had been in the past.

Nessa’s jaw was tight. ‘Look. Paddy is innocent. I agree with you that he shouldn’t have run, but he has.’ She hesitated for a second, and then mentally apologised to her brother before saying, ‘He has a habit of running away when difficult things happen—he ran away for a week after our mother’s funeral.’

Barbier looked utterly remote and then he said, ‘I’ve heard the Irish have a gift for talking their way out of situations, but it won’t work with me, Miss O’Sullivan.’

Anger spiked again. ‘I’m not trying to get out of anything.’ She forced herself to calm down. ‘I was just trying to help by retrieving his laptop. He said that he could prove his innocence with it.’

Barbier picked up the slim silver laptop and held it up. ‘We’ve looked at the laptop extensively and there is no evidence to support your brother’s innocence. You’ve done your brother no favours. He now looks even guiltier and you’ve possibly implicated yourself.’

Luc watched as colour washed in and out of the woman’s expressive face. That in itself was intriguing, when so many people he encountered kept their masks firmly in place. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt free enough, if ever, to allow his real emotions to be seen.

Still, he wouldn’t believe this award-worthy display of innocence. He’d be a fool if he did and her brother had already taken him for a fool.

Nessa sensed any sliver of hope dwindling. Barbier was about as immovable as a rock. He put the laptop down and folded his arms again, settling his hips back against the desk behind him, legs stretched out, for all the world as if they were having a civil chat. There was nothing civil about this man. Danger oozed from every pore: Nessa just wasn’t sure what kind of danger. She felt no risk to her personal safety, in spite of Paddy’s lurid claims or the security man outside the door. It was a much more personal danger, to the place that throbbed with awareness deep inside her. An awareness that had been dormant all her life, until now.

Barbier’s tone was mocking. ‘So you really expect me to believe that you’re here purely out of love for your poor innocent brother?’

Fiercely she said, ‘I would do anything for my family.’

‘Why?’

Barbier’s simple question took her by surprise and Nessa blinked. She hadn’t even questioned Paddy when he’d called for help. She’d immediately felt every protective instinct kick into place even though she was younger than him.

Their family was a unit who had come through tough times and become stronger in the process.

Their older sister Iseult had kept them all in one piece—pretty much—after the tragic death of their mother, while their father had descended into the mire of alcoholism. She had shielded Nessa and her two brothers from their father’s worst excesses, and had slowly helped him to recovery even as their stud farm and stables had fallen apart around them.

But Iseult wasn’t here now. She had a much deserved happy life far away from here. It was up to Nessa to shoulder this burden for the sake of her brother, and her family.

She looked at Barbier. ‘I would do anything because we love each other and we protect each other.’

Barbier was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘So now you’re admitting that you’d go so far as to collude in a crime.’

Nessa shivered under the thin covering of her fleece. She felt very alone at that moment. She knew she could contact Sheikh Nadim of Merkazad, Iseult’s husband and one of the richest men in the world. He could sort this whole thing out within hours, if he knew. But she and Paddy had agreed they wouldn’t involve Iseult or Nadim. They were expecting a baby in a few weeks and did not need to be drawn into this mess.

She squared her shoulders and stared at Luc Barbier, hating his cool nonchalance. ‘Don’t you understand the concept of family and doing anything for them? Wouldn’t you do that for your own family?’

Barbier suddenly looked stony. ‘I have no family, so, no, I’m not familiar with the concept.’

A pang of emotion made Nessa’s chest tighten. No family. What on earth did that mean? She couldn’t fathom the lack of a family. That sense of protection.

Then he said, ‘If your family are so close then I will go to whoever is capable of returning either your brother or my money.’

Panic eclipsed Nessa’s spurt of emotion. ‘This just involves me and Paddy.’

Barbier raised a brow. ‘I will involve whoever and whatever it takes to get my money back and ensure no adverse press results from this.’

Nessa’s hands clenched to fists at her sides as she tried to contain her temper and appeal to any sense of decency he might have. ‘Look, not that it’s any business of yours, but my sister is going to have a baby very soon. My father is helping her and her husband and they don’t have anything to do with this. I’m taking responsibility for my brother.’

I’m taking responsibility for my brother.

There had been a tight ball of emotion in Luc’s chest ever since she’d asked if he understood the concept of family. Of course he didn’t. How could he when his Algerian father had disappeared before he was born, and his feckless, unstable mother had died of a drugs overdose when he was just sixteen?

The closest he’d ever come to family was the old man next door—a man broken by life, and yet who had been the one to show Luc a way out.

Luc forced his mind away from the memories. He was beyond incredulous that this sprite of a girl—woman—was insisting on standing up to him. And that she wasn’t using her beauty to try and distract him, especially when he couldn’t be sure that he’d hidden his reaction to her. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he felt a twinge of respect.

She was defiant, even in the face of possible prosecution. If she was calling his bluff she was doing it very, very well. He could still have the police here within minutes and she would be hauled off in handcuffs with the full weight of his legal team raining down on her narrow shoulders before she knew what was happening.

But it wasn’t as if the police were ever first on Luc’s list of people to turn to in this kind of situation. Not because he had more nefarious routes to keeping the law—he knew about the rumours surrounding him, and as much as they amused him, they also disgusted him—but because of his experiences growing up in the gritty outskirts of Paris. Surviving each day had been a test of endurance. The police had never been there when he’d needed them, so to say he didn’t trust them was an understatement.