A Secret Birthright

B’Ellahi, what was he thinking? He should be wishing that she was, that his search was over.

It shouldn’t make a difference that her drowned sky-at-dawn eyes dissolved his coherence and the sunlight silk that cascaded over her bosom made his hands ache to twist in it. It didn’t matter that the trembling of her lush lips shook his resolve and her graceful litheness gripped his guts in a snare of instant hunger. If she turned out to be Hesham’s Lyn…

His thoughts convulsed to a halt again.

He wanted her to be anything but that. Even another imposter.

B’Ellahi, why?

The answer churned inside him with that desire that had surged out of nowhere at her sight.

Because Hesham’s Lyn would be off-limits to him. And he wanted this woman for himself. He wanted her…

As he’d wanted her the first and only time he’d seen her.

He remembered her now!

It was the total unexpectedness of seeing her again, let alone here, that had thrown him at first. That, and the changes in her.

That time he’d seen her, her luminous hair had been scraped back in a severe bun. She’d been wearing makeup that he now realized had obscured her true coloring and downplayed her features. A dark suit of masculine severity had attempted to mask her screaming femininity. She’d been younger, far more curvaceous, yet somehow less ripe. Her vibe had been cool, professional…until she’d seen him.

One thing remained the same. Her impact on him. It was as all-consuming as it had been when he’d walked into that conference room.

He vaguely remembered people scurrying to empty a place for him at the front row. She’d been at the podium. It wasn’t until the stunning effect she’d had on him ebbed slightly that he realized what she’d been doing there.

She’d been delivering the very presentation he’d gone to that conference to attend, about a drug that helped regenerate nerves after pathological degeneration or trauma. He’d heard so much about the outstanding young researcher, the head of the R & D team. He’d had a mental image to go with her prodigious achievements, one that had collapsed under its own inaccuracy at the sight of her.

He’d held her gaze captive as he’d sat grappling with impatience for the presentation to be over so he could approach her, claim her. Only his knowledge that the sight of him had been as disruptive to her had mitigated his tension. His pleasure had mounted at seeing her poise shaken. She’d managed to continue, but her crisp efficiency had become colored by the self-consciousness he’d evoked. Every move of her elegant body and eloquent hands, every inflection of her cultured delivery, everything about her had made focusing on the data she’d been conveying a challenge. But her work had been even more impressive than he’d anticipated, only deepening his delight with her.…

“Is it all a lie? Are you a lie?”

He almost flinched. That red wine-and-velvet voice.

It had taken hearing it to know it had never stopped echoing in his mind. Now it was made even more potent by the raggedness of emotion entwined in it.

But had she said…?

The next second her agitation cascaded over him, silencing questions and bringing every thought to a shocked halt.

“Is your reputation all propaganda? Just hype to pave the way to more reverence in the medical field and adulation in the media? Are you what your rare detractors say you are? Just a prince with too much money, genius and power, who makes a career of playing god?”

Chapter Two

Gwen McNeal heard the choking accusations as if they came from a disembodied voice. One that sounded like hers.

It seemed the past weeks had damaged what had been left of her sanity. She’d made her initial request for a meeting with it already strained. But as time had ticked by and her chances of meeting him had diminished, her stamina had dwindled right along.

She’d thought she’d be a mass of incoherence when she was finally in his presence.

Then she was there, and the sight of him had jolted through her like a lightning bolt. The intensity of his gaze, of his impact, had slashed the last tethers of her restraint.

She’d just accused him of being an over-endowed sadist who lived to make lesser beings beg for his intervention.

At least the unchecked flow had stopped. All she could do now was stare in horror at him as he stared back at her in stupefaction. And realize.

He was what she remembered. Description-defying. Or there had to be new adjectives coined to describe his brand of virility and grandeur. Seeing him felt like being catapulted into the past. A past when she’d known where her life was heading. A life that had been derailed since she’d laid eyes on him.

Ever since, she’d told herself she’d exaggerated her memories of him, had built him up into what no one could possibly be.

But he was all that. It was all there, and more. The imposing physicality, the inborn grace and power, the sheer influence. She had no doubt time would continue to magnify his assets until he did become godlike.

One thing time hadn’t enhanced, though. His effect on her. How could it when that had been shattering to start with?

Then he moved. The move itself was almost imperceptible, but the intention behind it, to come closer, when that would engulf her even deeper into his aura, intensify his effect, went off inside her like a clap of thunder.

Desperation burst from her in a new rush of resentment. “Five minutes? That’s what you allow people in your presence? Then you walk away without looking back? Do you smirk in satisfaction as they run after you begging for a few more moments of your priceless time? Do you enjoy making them grovel? That’s how much regard the world’s leading philanthropist surgeon really has for others?”

A slow blink swept his sinful lashes down, before they lifted to level his smoldering gaze on her.

“I actually said ten minutes.”

She’d thought his voice had been hard-hitting in the videos she’d seen of his interviews, lectures and educational surgeries. In reality, the depth and richness of his tones, the potency of his accent, the beauty of his every inflection made the words he uttered an invocation.

“And when I said that…”

She cut him off, unable to hear more of that spell. “So you granted me ten minutes instead of five. I can see how your reputation was founded, on such magnanimous offers. But I’ve already wasted most of those ten minutes. Do I start counting down the rest before you walk away as if I’m not here?”

He shook his head as if it would help him make sense of her words, and L.A.’s winter afternoon sun slanting through the windows glinted off his raven mane. “I won’t do any such thing, Ms. McNeal.”