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, becau

se 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?’