Janette Kenny - Pirate Tycoon, Forbidden Baby

“Watch him.” André slipped his mobile in his pocket. “How much longer are you going to dawdle over what to take?”

“I only need a few more things, and my files.” She moved to a desk and secured a laptop. “Everything is here so I can keep abreast of the hotel.”

“You cannot mean to continue working?”

“I’m not one to sit around and while away my time.” She flicked him a defiant glare and slipped the laptop in a carryon. “And I don’t require your permission.”

“Do not be too sure of that.”

André had the satisfaction of watching her face drain of color before his mobile chirped again. He answered it curtly.

“Paparazzi just arrived,” his guard said. “They’re swarming around Peter Bellamy.”

Damn. The last thing André wanted to do was engage in another public confrontation with Kira and the media at the start of his takeover.

He met her questioning gaze. “We need to leave without the gossipmongers seeing us. Unless you prefer a repeat of our last encounter?”

She flushed crimson and shook her head. He feared she’d balk—that she’d court the media’s attention again. “The service entrance is our best choice.”

He repeated that to his guard. “Meet us in five minutes.”

“But I’m not ready yet,” she said.

He swore and checked his watch. “You have three minutes. Then we leave, no matter your state of dress.” He gaze slid over her body, openly appreciating her curves. “Or undress.”

She stiffened, as if ready to argue.

He fed on his annoyance and tapped a finger on his watch. “You’re down to two minutes and forty-five seconds.”

Mumbling an oath, she grabbed lacy undergarments from a drawer and ran to the walk-in closet. He made to follow.

“Don’t you dare come closer,” she said, making him wonder if she could read minds.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He strode to her suitcase, zipped it shut and heaved it from the bed.

With five seconds to spare, she stepped from the dressing room wearing a floral skirt that hugged her firm bottom and thighs and stopped above her knees to accentuate the curve of her calves and dainty ankles. A fashionable summer sweater in a clear turquoise molded the full bosom he knew filled his hands. She stepped into sling heels that were sexy as hell, and tossed a smaller bag into her carryon.

She zipped it shut with impatient finality. Her small hand closed around the reinforced handles, her intent clear.

“I’ll take that.” André slung the strap over his shoulder.

She grabbed her purse and slipped a mobile inside it. He took the bag from her and removed the phone, setting it high on a shelf. “So you managed to ring Peter after all?”

“I left a message for my solicitor.”

“I trust you bade him au revoir , for we leave now, Kira.” André held the door for her.

She glanced once at the shelf, then swept past him, her head high. He smiled and followed. She moved with a staccato click of heels and a beguiling sway of her hips down the corridor to the lifts.

Oui , enjoying her luscious body would assuage his rage.

She stepped inside the lift and he joined her, wrestling the baggage behind them and forcing her closer to him.

The doors started to shut. The ones on the car directly across from theirs opened in perfect synchronization.

In that split second, when each had a full view of the opposite lift, André locked gazes with Peter Bellamy. His rival fixed a black scowl on him, then looked sharply to André’s side, where Kira stood.

Bellamy stared, then his mouth dropped open as he realized his lover, his deceitful accomplice, was at his enemy’s side. His furious gaze snapped back to André.

André smiled, draped an arm around Kira’s slender shoulder, and gave his arch rival a smart salute.

CHAPTER TWO

KIRA wondered if this day would ever end as she exchanged André’s private jet for the limousine waiting for them at Aimé Césaire International Airport. And what had her solicitor made of the harried message she’d left him?

She had no way of knowing. At least the flight from Las Vegas to Martinique had gone smoothly, but nearly fourteen hours of travel had exhausted her.

André’s stony silence had drained the last of her energy. She’d hoped to talk with him rationally on the flight, but he’d closed himself off from her. Now she was in no mood to engage in heartfelt conversation with him.

Her summer-weight sweater smothered her, and the skirt she’d thought would be refined and comfortable hung like a limp rag. The island humidity, vastly different from the dry Nevada air, urged her heavy hair into the natural curl that she’d struggled to straighten all of her life. She was sure the make-up she’d applied before André dragged her from the Chateau was gone.

But she had the satisfaction of not being the only one wearied by the trip. Though André’s perfectly tailored suit retained the crisp lines that complemented the brooding intensity of his dark eyes and matched his arrogance, dark stubble delineated his arrogantly handsome face.

That rogue’s shadow emphasized the grim set of his mouth and gave him a dangerously sexy look. She caught herself remembering how those firm lips had felt moving against hers, tearing down her defenses and arresting her fears. How his hands and mouth and powerful body had brought her to her first shattering climax, and then continued to do so more times than she could recall, until she’d been deliciously sated and more happy than she’d ever been.

That had been the calm before the storm. What she couldn’t fathom was what tempest now brewed in André, as the limo raced past fields of sugar cane toward Fort-de-France.

Three months ago, on his island, they’d both expressed that they never wished to see the other again in the heat of anger. Yet she’d rung him, and he’d come for her. Or had he planned to come to the Chateau anyway, to steal her away?

She suspected that was the case, as he hadn’t even asked why she’d contacted him. And with his anger heating the very air she breathed, it was better she hold her secret a bit longer.

Too weary to make sense of this nightmare, she stretched her legs to ease the dull ache in her back. Like the other drivers racing down the boulevard in a hurry to get to their homes, she was anxious to get settled for the day.

This extended close proximity to André wreaked havoc on her senses. Every subtle shift of his powerful body, every heated glance, each casual touch, muddled her mind more and more.

A dozen times she’d nearly blurted out that she was pregnant with his child. Let him deal with that ! But his brooding silence had stopped her.

He barely resembled the teasing rogue she’d met on Petit St. Marc. The man who’d baited and lured her into rousing debate, who’d flirted shamelessly with her. Who’d made love to her with unbridled passion and made her feel wanted, if only for a moment.

He’d withdrawn from her like a wounded animal. She debated scooting closer and taking him into her arms. Intuition told her he wouldn’t welcome her gesture of comfort and empathy.

Kira bit her lower lip, exhausted and pensive. She’d never been this undone by a man, and her lack of control over her emotions mortified her. But then, she’d never been plunked into the middle of a dark drama without a script either.

She shifted on her seat as traffic slowed and the sleek white limo crawled past La Savane. Palms towered over the public gardens, lush with greenery and a profusion of flowers. How sad she’d not had time to visit the gardens when she was here before. She certainly wouldn’t ask André for a tour now.

As they neared the harbor, quaint shops and houses were stacked against the hills like colorful children’s blocks in bright crayon colors. A reggae beat from the market area danced in the air, yet the silence in the limo throbbed to the weary cadence of her heart.

“How much longer?” she asked, glancing at the harbor, where the docked sailboats resembled a denuded forest.

André gave a terse shrug, drawing her attention from the impressive breadth of his shoulders to the fatigue lines etched under his eyes. His was an intense gaze that seemed to look right through her. “An hour and a half at the most.”

No rest or respite anytime soon, then. She took small consolation in the fact he looked as weary as she felt.

Not for the first time she suspected he’d left near midnight to arrive in Las Vegas early this morning. Perhaps, like she, he’d had a sleepless night.

But where he’d likely dwelled on blackmailing her to leave the Chateau, her mind had spun with the miracle of motherhood. For the first time in her life she’d no longer be alone.

Kira rested a hand on her stomach and smiled. Last night she hadn’t been concerned about the hours ticking by while she lay in bed in wonder, awed by the precious baby growing in her.

She’d tried to envision how her life was about to change—had debated how she should let André know. She’d naïvely believed impending fatherhood might mellow him, that what they’d shared once could grow into something meaningful.

Love? Yes, the possibility of that blooming between them had played over in her mind as well, teasing her with how good her future with him could be.

For the first time in ages she’d taken a peek at the schoolgirl imaginings she’d painted in the dark of night back in the days of her youth, when she’d dreamed her prince would ride in on a white horse and whisk her away to his castle, where they’d live happily ever after. When she’d fall in love forever, and not just for a stolen moment.

Not once had she thought André would sail back into her life this morning like a bloodthirsty pirate, with pillaging and revenge burning in his soul. That he’d accuse her of joining forces with Peter to ruin him. If he only knew the truth.

No, if only he’d believe the truth!

She shut her eyes against cold, hard reality. Instead of a white horse bearing her to a castle, a white limo raced her toward an uncertain future. Instead of her prince gazing at her with loving eyes, André barely spared her a glance.

What would he do when she told him she carried his child? Accept his responsibility with resigned indifference, as her father had done? Surely he wasn’t that cold, that callous?

“What’s wrong?” André asked, his warm breath fanning her face. “Are you ill?”

I’m pregnant . She looked up at him, prepared to tell him, but his eyes were as dark and turbulent as a winter storm. She was simply too weary to brave the gale now.

“I was just—” Caught in a fairytale. But they never come true. Never. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long journey.”

He stared at her for a tense moment, his expression shifting to the hard, indifferent mask she’d come to hate. “You can rest on the boat.”

Kira laughed to herself as he moved to his side of the limo again, though the space between them afforded her no comfort. The express ferry she’d taken to and from the island before had provided seating, but no place where she could put her feet up.

Right now her ankles felt hot and swollen. Strange, since she’d refrained from satisfying her thirst so she wouldn’t spend the whole flight in the tiny restroom.

She stared at the glistening expanse of Flamands Bay, where a cruise ship dwarfed the catamarans and yachts that bobbed lazily in a turquoise sea. A welcoming breeze sent the palm fronds swaying, and gentled the tide to a mesmerizing ripple touched with gold. But she feared she couldn’t tolerate much more travel without succumbing to motion sickness.