Living in Secret: Living In..., Book 3 Page 19

  There was understanding in his eyes. “So am I. But we can do this, Victoria. I believe it and so should you.”

  Slowly, she let out a long breath and the last of her resistance along with it. “In that case…” Rising up on her toes, she pressed her mouth to his. “I love you,” she whispered against his lips. “And I’ll let you love me.”

  His arms tightened and he gave her his answer in a kiss that stole her breath and the last remains of her poor, battered heart.

  And afterwards, when they were both breathless and aching, she said, “I can’t go to London.” She paused, knowing the truth of it like an incontrovertible fact. “I can’t leave her again.”

  Connor didn’t let her go. He only looked down at her with a tenderness that made her feel close to tears for the third time that day. “Then don’t,” he said softly.

  So she didn’t.

  Turned out they both had a new crusade: happiness.

  Epilogue

  Victoria smoothed her dress for what was probably the fourth time in as many minutes. Her palms were sweaty and her stomach was in knots, and she wanted to go to the bathroom yet again.

  Connor’s warm hand settled over one of hers and instantly the nerves calmed. She turned to find his understanding blue gaze on hers. “It’ll be okay,” he said.

  They were sitting in the car outside the restaurant Jessica had specified, the street already busy with the lunchtime crowds.

  “What if she doesn’t turn up?” Victoria couldn’t help asking. “What if she changed her mind? What if—”

  “It’ll be okay,” he repeated and she could hear the conviction in his voice. “She’ll be there.”

  It had taken her a good couple of weeks after her decision to stay in New Zealand to finally contact Jessica. And over the past three months the two of them had exchanged emails and a couple of awkward, fraught phone calls. But it had been Jessica who’d suggested they meet, and even though Victoria had been ecstatic at the time, she was sick with nerves now.

  She turned her hand beneath Connor’s, laced her fingers with his, letting the warmth of his touch work its steadying magic.

  Three months they’d been together. She’d moved back in a couple of months ago and now they were starting to explore and rebuild a different kind of relationship. A different kind of marriage from the one they’d had before. It was exciting, challenging. Terrifying.

  A bit like her decision to finally meet her daughter, the last piece in her new crusade to accept the past and move on. To accept herself and the decision she’d made.

  “Okay,” she said. “If you say so.”

  “I do say so.”

  “But what if she doesn’t like me?”

  “She will like you.”

  “But—”

  Her words were cut off as Connor leaned over from the driver’s seat and kissed her. “Stop,” he murmured. “You’re perfect. You’re amazing. You’re my sexy, dirty girl and I love you.” He kissed her again. “Now get out of the car and go meet your daughter.”

  Victoria let the sweetness of his kiss wash away the nervousness. And when she drew back, she was calmer. “Okay,” she said firmly, decisively. “I’ll text you when I’m ready to go.”

  She put a hand on the door handle and got out, shutting the door behind her.

  The sidewalk was full of people, the bustling hive of the city all around her.

  Then someone said, “Victoria?”

  She turned and met the uncertain dark eyes of the young woman coming toward her. Olive skin, black hair. Beautiful. So heartbreakingly beautiful.

  The uncertainty vanished from the young woman’s features, a tentative smile taking their place. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Jessica.”

  About the Author

  Jackie has been writing fiction since she was eleven years old. Mild mannered fantasy/SF/pseudo-literary writer by day, obsessive romance writer by night, she used to balance her writing with the more serious job of librarianship until a chance meeting with another romance writer prompted her to throw off the shackles of her day job and devote herself to the true love of her heart–writing romance. She particularly likes to write dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines.

  She lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her husband, the inimitable Dr Jax, two kids, two cats and a couple of curious rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on Twitter, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband.

  You can find Jackie here:

  www.jackieashenden.com

  @JackieAshenden

  www.facebook.com/jackie.ashenden

  If you’d like to be kept up to date with information on Jackie’s new and upcoming releases, you can sign up to her newsletter—details are at www.jackieashenden.com

  Look for these titles by Jackie Ashenden

  Now Available:

  Falling For Finn

  Black Knight, White Queen

  Lies We Tell

  Taking Him

  Having Her

  Living In…

  Living in Shadow

  Living in Sin

  Finding his way out of the darkness could be the biggest fight of his life.

  Living in Shadow

  © 2014 Jackie Ashenden

  Living In…, Book 1

  Law professor Eleanor May is fine with taking over a class for a colleague on sabbatical. She’s not so fine with the hot student who’s always seated front and center. Once upon a time she was that student…and the scars remain eight years after it ended.

  Yet this guy seems different from the others. Despite the alarm bells in her head warning her about history repeating itself, she is drawn toward the forbidden once again—even though this time it could consume her.

  Lucien North’s past is darker than the ink on his skin, a reminder of a time when survival was a fight to the death. Seducing his beautiful professor wasn’t supposed to be part of his plan to put it behind him, but there’s something about Eleanor that’s gotten hold of him and won’t let go.

  Together they light up the night, but will their powerful desire lead them to love—or drag them both to the brink of disaster?

  Warning: This book contains a younger man so hot he might scorch your fingertips, and forbidden lust so tempting, there’s no point in trying to resist. Check your inhibitions at the door—it’s WTFery 101 and class is in session.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Living in Shadow:

  English legal history. Fuck, Luc was starting to hate this class. It was his own special brand of hell: a lecture theatre full of people and him in the middle row with a slowly intensifying hard-on. And all because Professor Eleanor May was writing something on the whiteboard and her little pencil skirt was pulling tight around her extremely delectable ass.

  Luc glanced down at the laptop open on his desk. Anything so he didn’t have to look at her. The screen was completely blank. He hadn’t taken any notes whatsoever and they were almost done with the class.

  Jesus. This was the third time in as many weeks he’d sat there, hard and aching, thinking things he shouldn’t be thinking instead of taking notes. At this rate he wouldn’t be passing the paper if he didn’t get his head back into study mode, and since he had only a couple of semesters left before getting his law degree, failing a paper would be very bad indeed.

  She was talking again, her husky voice filling the room, and he didn’t want to look because he knew what he would see: a petite, fine-boned woman with golden-blonde hair in an elegant chignon. All feminine sophistication in a beautifully tailored pencil skirt of pale blue and a crisp white shirt, a small silver necklace around her
neck. It made her seem fragile, yet the impression she gave off was anything but. Her gray eyes were as sharp as a steel blade and she walked as if she were ten feet tall and bulletproof. Like she was keeping everyone at a distance.

  But not when she spoke. When she gave a lecture, her delicate face would light up and the impression of ice and steel and distance would vanish. She would look at everyone in the room as if they were all having a conversation together and she was interested in what they had to say. Becoming warm and approachable. And if questions were asked, she’d smile and it would be like the sun had come into the room.

  Christ, he wanted some of that sun.

  He’d been at Auckland University for four years, only spotting Eleanor May a couple of years after he’d started since she mainly taught postgraduate students. Even back then, he’d registered her but had dismissed the attraction. She was a professor. Polished and sophisticated and way too much like hard work for him. He preferred his pleasure easy to come by and undemanding, with women who didn’t want anything more from him than a couple of orgasms. Definitely not complicated, and seducing Professor May had complicated written all over it.

  And then she’d taken over his English legal history class from Professor Holmes who’d gone off on sabbatical. And every Thursday he’d found himself sitting in the same place, right down in the front of the class, in the middle of the row, so he could look at her.

  So he could figure out what the hell he found so fucking fascinating about her.

  Because it wasn’t only her beauty, though she had plenty of that. He could find beauty anywhere these days and though he’d once glutted himself on it, it hadn’t ultimately satisfied him.

  No, she had more than that. Perhaps it was the sharp intelligence he saw in her eyes whenever she spoke. Or maybe it was the distance she projected, as if she were holding the world at bay. The kind of distance that made him want to close it. Touch her.

  Or perhaps it was merely the contrast to all the other women he’d had up till this point. Women his own age or a couple of years younger. Who had no distance, no walls. Children, in many ways. Children who didn’t even know they were alive. Which was fine because that was the way children should be. Yet, at the same time, they offered no secrets. No challenges.

  Strange to find that was suddenly an issue, when challenges and secrets and complications were the last thing he wanted.

  Whatever it was that fascinated him about Eleanor May, it made every lecture pure fucking torture.

  Luc sat back in his seat, folding his arms. Watching her. Irritated with himself and his stupid fucking cock with its insistence on wanting a woman he wasn’t allowed to have anyway.

  She was reaching the part where she looked at each person in turn as she reiterated her main points, a tactic that worked well in drawing people in to what she was saying. Except that, for some reason, she never looked at him.

  God, he was sick of that too.

  He shifted on his seat, spreading himself out a little, pinning his gaze on her. She looked at his neighbor, then, like it always did, her gaze skipped him and went on down the row. As if he didn’t even exist.

  Oh fuck no. Not today. Today she was going to damn well look.

  Perhaps she’s not looking at you for a reason?

  Well, whatever the hell that reason was, it was not happening today.

  Luc raised his hand to his mouth and coughed.

  And she looked; cool, gray eyes seeking the source of the sound. Meeting his head on.

  The electric shock of the impact hit him like a plunge into an icy lake on a blistering-hot day. Echoing through him, all the way down to the soles of his feet.

  He stared at her and she stared back and he saw it—he fucking saw it—a flare of reaction in her eyes. So fast and fleeting that if he hadn’t already been aware of her with every inch of his being, he may have missed it. But it was there nonetheless.

  She looked away quickly, but by that time it was too late. He heard the falter in her voice. He saw the slight flush to her cheeks.

  He knew.

  She’d seen him. And not the student. She’d seen the man.

  A surge of heat went through him, vicious and wild. Winding the ache inside him even tighter than it was already. Fuck, he so did not need this. He didn’t get obsessed with women. They came to him if they wanted him, and, shit, he was happy to oblige. No harm, no foul. No one got hurt and that was how he liked it.

  But being attracted to his professor? Christ. This was against the rules and he was a great believer in rules. Pity his body didn’t seem to give a shit.

  She was finishing up now, the people around him starting to put their stuff away in preparation for leaving. But he didn’t want to go. He wanted those cool eyes on him again. Wanted to see that flash of reaction again. Because he was sure it had been a reaction. To him.

  As the people around him began to get to their feet, he watched her stand by the podium, fiddling around with her laptop. Not looking at him.

  Fuck. He needed to know. He needed to see if he was right. And he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on anything else until he did.

  Her temptation…his salvation.

  Living in Sin

  © 2014 Jackie Ashenden

  Living In…, Book 2

  At twenty, Lily Andrews has already lived a lifetime. Her battle with leukemia put her three years behind her ballet career, and now that the grueling treatment is behind her, she’s eager to put her dancing shoes back on—literally and figuratively.

  One man has been her personal light at the end of her tunnel, the one man she’s sure will help her rekindle her passion for life. Kahu Winter. And she’ll let nothing stand in the way of having him—not even Kahu himself.

  When Kahu catches Lily sneaking into his club, the desire in her eyes tells him it’s more than a delayed act of youthful rebellion. Her lively spirit calls to him, but Kahu is too cynical, too jaded, too broken for a sweet young thing like her.

  But Lily won’t take no for answer so he’ll make her a deal: She’s got one month to seduce him and after that, he’s moving on—figuratively and literally.

  There’s just one thing he forgot to keep out of her reach. His heart…

  Warning: This book contains a hot older man in need of some anti-cynicism pills, a snarky younger woman who’s going to get past his defenses and make him beg, more forbidden lust, and naked ballet dancing. Advanced WTFery for experienced users only.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Living in Shadow:

  “She’s here again.”

  “Oh fuck, really?” Kahu Winter leaned back in his office chair and stared at Mike, the bouncer who’d been working the door at the Auckland Club for the last five years.

  Mike, a huge Tongan guy who used to do a lot of pro-wrestling, folded his arms. “Yeah. And she says she wants to see you.”

  Since that’s what she’d been saying for the past couple of nights, Kahu wasn’t surprised. Jesus Christ. What a pain in the ass.

  He had more important things to do than fuck about dealing with Rob’s daughter. The guy was Kahu’s business partner and would not be happy at the thought of his twenty-year-old daughter hassling for entry into one of Auckland’s most exclusive private-member’s clubs.

  What the hell was she doing here? What the hell did she want?

  “That’s the third time this week.” Kahu threw the pen he’d been toying with back down on his desk. “And I’m getting pretty fucking sick of it.”

  Mike was unimpressed. “Perhaps if you go out and see what she wants, she’ll go away,” he pointed out.

  Not what Kahu wanted to hear. Christ, the last two nights he’d paid for a taxi to take her home and if she kept this up, it was going to start getting expensive.

  Of course, he could go out there and speak to her. But he liked being manipulated ev
en less than he liked being told what to do. And he hated being told what to do. Especially when the person doing the telling was a spoiled little twenty-year-old on some mysterious mission she wouldn’t talk to anyone about other than him.

  Jesus, it made him feel tired. And pretty fucking old.

  “Goddamn. I’m going to have to speak to her, aren’t I?”

  Mike lifted a shoulder. “Up to you, boss.”

  Yeah, he was going to have to.

  Cursing, Kahu shoved his chair back and got up. The work he was doing, going over the club’s accounts, could wait. And he probably needed a break anyway.

  In the corridor outside his office, he could hear the sounds of conversation from the Ivy Room, the club’s main bar and dining area. Friday night and the place was packed with members having a post-work drink or seven.

  The sound of success. Anita would have been so proud.

  Yeah, but not so proud of the fact you’re planning on ditching it, huh?

  No, probably not. She’d left him the club thirteen years ago, when she’d first realized she was getting sick. A gift he’d promptly thrown back in her face by fucking off overseas, refusing to accept the responsibility or the reality of her illness. It had taken him five years to come to terms with it. To come back to New Zealand, to take on the club, and most importantly, to care for her. The lover who’d rescued him from the streets and given him the stars.

  On the other hand, Anita was six months dead and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  As he approached the club’s entrance—a vaulted hallway with stairs leading to the upper floors, a parquet floor, and a chandelier dominating the space like a massive, glittering sun—people greeted him. Since he granted all memberships to the club personally, he knew everyone. Some more than others, of course, but he prided himself on the fact that he knew everyone’s names at least.