Lap of Luxury (Love Don't Cost a Thing)

Ljubica? My eyes flutter open and I see the blurry outline of a ma

n with dark, curly hair and cheeks roughened by short bristles. As the world swims into focus, I see the heavy shoulders and gray eyes of the man I once called my boss. He looks so different from his former tailored and impeccably groomed self, and it dressed in a rumpled open-necked linen shirt and has haphazardly clippered beard.

“Mikhail!” I throw my arms around his neck and he grunts in surprise. There’s someone over his shoulder. A blonde someone with big, worried eyes and sun-kissed freckles across her nose. She’s got one hand on Mikhail’s shoulder.

Ciara and Mikhail.

Alive.

They unbuckle my life vest and pull seaweed from my hair as I grin stupidly at them. With a few swallows of water, my brain starts working again. They’re alive, and so am I.

Then panic floods through me as I realize that the sun is over the horizon, and hours and hours must have past since I fled the yacht. Damir could be anywhere. He might even be watching us right now.

I gasp and grab fistfuls of Mikhail’s shirt. “You and Ciara have to get out of here. He’s coming, and he’s going to kill us all.”

He turns and exchanges a grim look with Ciara. They don’t need to ask who I mean by him. They were expecting this. Hoping it wouldn’t happen, but preparing for the worst.

But they’re not doing anything. I scramble to my feet in a flurry of sand. Ciara’s eyes are wide with fear. I grab her arm and start to run blindly, dragging her along, knowing that Mikhail will follow wherever she goes. I don’t make it two strides, however, before strong arms wrap around me from behind and hold me back.

Mikhail bites out orders in a crisp voice. “We’re not going anywhere. Calm down.”

I struggle against him. “You don’t understand. Damir could be here any second! We’re in horrible danger.”

“You think I don’t know my own brother and what he’s capable of?”

“Which means you know we have to get out of here!”

“Think, Bethany,” he growls in my ear. “I know you’re scared, but we can’t just run. We have to have a plan, otherwise Damir will pick us off.”

I struggle for a moment longer, and then the fight goes out of me and I flop like a limp noodle in his arms. A limp, exhausted noodle with a thumping head and a churning stomach.

Mikhail releases me slowly. “Good. The first thing we’re going to do is get inside. Come on, quickly. I have guards up at the house.”

For the first time I notice the pretty white weatherboard house set among tropical flower bushes, three hundred yards along the beach. There are two men who look like security guards watching us. I notice that Ciara’s in Lycra running gear.

“Did you find me?” I ask her as we walk up the beach.

She nods. “I was out for my morning run and saw you lying on the shore. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it was you.” She bites her lip. “Damir isn’t far away, is he?”

“No. Just over the horizon in a yacht. I stole a life raft.”

All three of us turn and search the horizon. There’s nothing but unbroken ocean. Damir must have realized hours ago that I’ve escaped. By now, I’ll be another name on his murder list. A foe to vanquish. An enemy to destroy. There’s no room in his black heart for anything else.

Tears crowd into my eyes, but I blink them away quickly.

Mikhail takes me inside and sits me on the sofa in the living room. Ciara brings me a cold glass of water and a wet flannel to wipe my salt-encrusted face, and within a few minutes I start to feel more human. I didn’t cut my head open, but I have a tender bruise on my forehead. Ciara gives me some painkillers for my headache. I can hear Mikhail giving instructions to the guards to be on high alert.

He comes back into the living room and sits down in front of me, his fingers laced together and his blue-gray eyes deadly serious. “Tell us everything.”

I tell them about missing his phone calls and going to the office. About Damir capturing me and taking me prisoner on board his yacht. About Monte Carlo, Lucan Navarro, Nataša and the jewels. If Mikhail feels any grief at the mention of his dead sister’s name, he doesn’t show it.

“Who?” Ciara asks, glancing at Mikhail.

“I had a sister,” he says flatly. “Go on, Bethany.”

I remember what Damir said, that Mikhail never mourned his sister and that Damir was the only one in the family who cared she was dead. A shard of ice slips down my spine. And I thought Damir was the callous one.

I tell them about taking a life raft in the dead of night and getting into trouble on the rocks. I tell them everything, in fact, except for Damir becoming my lover. They won’t understand if I try to tell them that we’re in love, that we’re made for each other, but there’s so much bitterness in his heart that everything else has been eclipsed.