Fergus (Wynter Hearts #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Fergus knew someone was following him.

Correction: it would be more accurate to say he knew exactly who was following him. A young woman. The same young woman who had been dogging him every time he had stepped out in public for the past two days.

Oh, she thought she’d been clever, staying out of sight whenever he chanced to glance in her direction. But what she hadn’t realized was that Fergus was using the windows of the shops he passed or paused in front of to also observe what was behind and to either side of him.

He’d seen the same young woman too many times in that reflection the past two days for it to be a coincidence. What she probably didn’t know was that Fergus was just as guilty of watching her every chance he got.

Because from the moment he’d first seen it, he’d decided she had the singularly most delectable and bitable arse he had ever had the pleasure of looking at.

Those twin globes were both small and pert, and Fergus instinctively knew they would fit perfectly in the palms of his hands. The more he looked at them, the more he wanted to squeeze and caress, to bite them.

He had always thought of himself as a leg man. He liked and enjoyed a woman’s breasts, as he did all parts of a woman’s body, but he’d always loved having a pair of long legs draped over his shoulders or wrapped about his waist as he licked and sucked a woman’s clit to orgasm or thrust inside her with the same result.

This woman’s lack of height meant that although her legs were slender, they weren’t long. Her breasts were small too. But that arse…

Fuck, he was getting hard just thinking about baring and taking his time pleasuring it!

What held him back from introducing himself was the fact he had no idea why she had been following him for the past two days.

To double-check that he wasn’t being suspicious about someone newly moved to Paris who just happened to be developing the same routine as him—leaving his house at eight o’clock to go to his office at Wynter Security, leaving the office building at ten o’clock to stroll to his favorite coffee shop on the Champs-élysées, sitting down to enjoy coffee and a croissant and people watch before strolling back to his office, and the same again at lunchtime—this morning, Fergus had left his house at the normal time but waited until ten thirty and then taken a different route to the coffee shop.

Within seconds, he had spotted the woman’s reflection behind him in half a dozen store windows.

Even now, he could see her loitering at a bus stop a few yards away, supposedly waiting for a bus and checking information on her cell phone. So far, two buses had stopped to drop off and pick up passengers, and she hadn’t made any attempt to get onto either of them before they pulled away.

She was extremely beautiful in a pale and ethereally slender way. As far as he could see, she wore little makeup. Her eyes were light in color, but she hadn’t ever been close enough for Fergus to tell exactly what that color was. Her nose was small and snub, her lips full and bow-shaped. Her straight, light brown, shoulder-length hair revealed red highlights in the sunshine.

She was thin in that way so many other women envied, because she could wear anything and look amazing in it. Even the fitted denims and T-shirts she had been wearing the past couple of days looked elegant on her.

It was because her jeans and T-shirts fit her so well that Fergus could clearly see that the only thing she had in the back pocket of her jeans was a cell phone in a case that probably also housed her credit cards and cash. Nor did she carry a shoulder bag or backpack in which she might have also stored a weapon. If she had, Fergus would have put an end to what he considered her stalkerish behavior on the first day he’d noticed her.

But he’d had enough now. It was past time for this shit to stop.

Fergus threw several euros onto the table to pay for his coffee and croissant, plus the added tip, before walking straight toward her.

* * *

Thea’s eyes widened in alarm as she realized, after days of keeping her distance, deliberately arranging for it to be that way, Fergus Wynter was now heading purposefully in her direction.

No, she must be mistaken. He?—

She wasn’t.

Nor was she imagining that his eyes, those deep and mesmerizing emerald-green orbs, were totally focused on her. So much so that he almost plowed down a young couple who got in his way, his apology for doing so distracted at best as he kept his gaze fixed on his goal.

There was now no denying Thea was that goal.

She tried to move, to get away before Fergus reached her. But her feet seemed to weigh a ton each and had rooted themselves to the pavement, making it impossible for her to go anywhere.

She heard the sound of the brakes of another bus as it pulled into the stop behind her, followed by the whoosh of the doors opening. A glance back revealed a single person stepping off the bus, but there was no one getting on it. Would she be able to get on board before?—

“Don’t even think about it,” Fergus Wynter grated as his hand curled about the top of her arm, just tight enough to keep her in place but not to hurt her. “You aren’t going anywhere until you’ve explained exactly why you’ve been following me for the past two days and…approximately three hours?” he added after a glance at the watch on his wrist, which Thea knew had cost as much as some people’s houses.

It was alarming to be told he was aware of exactly how long Thea had been following him.

She’d done her homework and had already known where Fergus now lived and worked in Paris, and where the Wynter Security offices were situated. But she had needed to know more about him than that before she attempted to speak to him. Before she dared trust him.

Because at the moment, she was afraid to trust anyone.

Thea knew that the normal thing to do would have been to telephone the Paris offices of Wynter Security and make an appointment to see Fergus. The problem with that was Thea hadn’t been sure, once Fergus heard her name, if he would refuse to see her and cancel the appointment.

If Fergus was still the same honest and trustworthy man he’d been ten years ago, then Thea needed him not to refuse to see or speak to her simply because of her name and what that represented to him.

That first morning, she’d been standing outside the house he lived in in Paris’s 7 th arrondissement—the wealthiest and most exclusive area in the city, of course—when he stepped through the security gates enclosing the property shortly after eight o’clock.

She’d followed discreetly as he chose to walk to the building on the Champs-élysées, where the offices of Wynter Security were situated. She’d done the same when he left midmorning to go to the coffee shop, and again when he went for lunch at one of Paris’s most elite restaurants. At the end of his working day, she’d then followed him back to his home.

She’d been a little surprised when he didn’t leave his house again until the following morning. She’d imagined he would be out every evening enjoying the Parisian nightlife. Or possibly spending the night at a woman’s apartment.

But on both nights, Fergus hadn’t gone out again after returning from the Wynter Security offices. At least, he hadn’t done so before Thea had left at ten o’clock to go back to her hotel and order some food from room service before falling into bed.

After two days of watching his every move, Thea believed she had established that Fergus was well-liked by the locals, whom he greeted by name and who greeted him back with the same familiarity and warmth. The staff in the offices at Wynter Security, three women and two men, all seemed happy enough to be working for and with him based on the chatter Thea overheard between them on their way in and out of the building. As did the steady stream of clients who had called on him during those same two days.

At no time had Fergus given any indication that he knew Thea was following him. Which was why she was totally unprepared to have him confront her in the way he was now doing.

Revealing that he had known all along she’d been following him?

Knowing of his history, both in the military Special Forces and at Wynter Security, Thea realized she had been naive to think he wouldn’t have noticed her sometime during the past two days and grown suspicious about her presence. Now that she thought about it logically, she was surprised he had waited this long before confronting her.

The grip he had on her arm and his determined expression didn’t give the impression he intended letting her go again until she had explained herself. Even the bus had now closed its door and pulled away.

“Do I know you?” he now questioned guardedly, narrowed gaze sweeping over her in assessment.

And so it began!

“Not exactly.” Thea gave him a less-than-reassuring smile. “My name is Thea. We met once, briefly, ten years ago,” she revealed with a wince.

“I don’t recall—” He tensed as he abruptly ceased speaking, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Did you say Thea? As in Thea Morgan ?”

Thea stared at him with wide eyes, too surprised he had remembered her and her surname so quickly to be able to do anything else. “How on earth did you realize that’s who I am just from the name Thea?” she finally managed to ask.

He shrugged. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who has that name.”

They really had met only once and briefly. Thea had been fourteen at the time and, to her mind, totally forgettable, with her mousy brown hair, braces on her teeth, and plagued still with puppy fat.

Nowadays, she regularly had red highlights put into her styled shoulder-length hair. The braces on her teeth had done their job, and her teeth were now perfectly straight. The puppy fat had long since disappeared, leaving her too slim, if anything. She certainly had no luscious curves with which to tempt a man.

As Martin, her last boyfriend, had taken great delight in telling her when they broke up shortly before her mother’s death four months ago.

She had ignored Martin’s attempts to come back into her life since then. Because she’d known, considering her curves hadn’t changed in the slightest since he’d described her arse as being “too damned skinny” for his taste, that his interest must now be in the money she had inherited from her mother after their breakup, rather than a sudden realization he was in love with her after all.

Naively, at first, she had believed his sympathy over her mother’s death and his regret over their breakup to be genuine. But Thea had very quickly realized from his conversation about what he envisaged their future together being—instant retirement for him, a large house in London, servants, luxury holidays—that his interest was only in the money her mother had left her rather than in Thea herself.

Needless to say, Thea hadn’t taken a single one of Martin’s calls or answered any of his texts once she had realized what his real motive was in wanting her back.

More importantly to the situation right now, she looked nothing like that awkward fourteen-year-old Fergus had met ten years ago when he briefly dated her mother, so how the hell had he recognized her so easily?

She, of course, would have recognized him in a crowded room full of other attractive men aged in their early forties.

Because Fergus had always been so much more than that.

Oh, he looked very Parisian now, elegant and sophisticated, in his perfectly tailored suit and snowy white shirt with a pale green silk tie. His overlong dark hair with distinguished gray strands running through it was artfully cut into that careless style that looked as if he had just climbed out of bed and run a hand through that dark thickness before getting on with his day.

But those bespoke clothes and expensive hairstyle in no way disguised the edge of danger that had always surrounded Fergus like a second skin and was probably one of the reasons he had appealed to her mother.

Jessica had always been drawn to dangerous men. Ones with hard but arrestingly handsome features. In Fergus’s case, those features were piercing green eyes, a sharp blade of a nose, and sensuously sculpted lips above a square jaw.

Up close and personal like this, Thea couldn’t deny the effect those harsh good looks were having on her own equilibrium. Not only was Fergus the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, but the aroma of his aftershave, something citrus combined with a male musk, warmed and aroused her senses in a way she could never remember happening before with any other man.

There was also that edge of danger which was never far from the surface. She had discovered the reason for that edge when she did her research on Fergus before coming to Paris.

He hadn’t always run a security business with his two brothers and cousin, and the years Fergus had been a part of the British Special Forces had obviously hardened and honed that edge of danger.

Thea hadn’t been able to find out anything more than that, because the information was classified. But she did know that soldiers drafted into the Special Forces were the elite, with a skillset far superior to that of a regular soldier. Fergus had only been twenty-two at the time, so his skills had to have been extreme in nature.

She also knew Fergus had been active on behalf of the family-owned company for the first five years after its conception. Until the company became so big that the three older members of the Wynter family had taken over as heads of the London, Paris, and New York offices. Fergus’s younger brother, Linus Wynter, was the tech expert, and he tended to live and work wherever he was most wanted. Currently, that appeared to be in London.

For the past twelve years, Fergus had sat behind a desk in the Paris office and instructed the many employees of Wynter Security on their next security assignment, rather than going out into the field himself.

But it was obvious just from looking at him and feeling the coiled tenson in his body, seeing his muscular arms and chest up close, and the hard glitter of his eyes as he glared at her, that he had kept his body and himself ready for a battle, if it became necessary.

Thea hoped he wouldn’t consider it necessary in regard to her. She really had come in peace. She already felt as if she was fighting an uphill battle at home against both seen and unseen threats. She didn’t want Fergus to become her enemy too.

Unless, as she was her mother’s daughter, he already was?

“Why have you been stalking me for the past two days?” Fergus now demanded to know.

“I’m not… I admit to following you,” she conceded when he raised challenging brows. “But I don’t consider that as me stalking you.”

“I think that depends on your point of view and what your intentions are,” he bit out. “Or were, I should say,” he added grimly. “Because you certainly aren’t going to be able to carry them out now that I’ve been forewarned and know exactly who is stalking me, even if I have no idea why.”

“I mean you no harm,” Thea assured.

“As I said, that depends on your point of view and why you’re here.”

Thea knew his only previous knowledge of her was as the daughter of Jessica Morgan, the woman he had briefly dated. It hadn’t ended well.

Thea gave an inward snort at what an understatement “hadn’t ended well” was in this case.

Her mother had, as usual, been too wrapped up in herself and her own selfish needs, while being attracted to that dangerous edge she had obviously sensed beneath Fergus’s surface charm. She had failed to realize he would never bend to a woman’s will or allow himself to be blackmailed.

Her mother had been so convinced, after meeting the handsome and wealthy Fergus Wynter, back in England for several weeks, that she had found “the man who will keep me in the life to which I wish to become accustomed, and the bonus is he lives in Paris” that she hadn’t looked any further than those surface good looks and the fact he was obviously wealthy. Their first date, at an exclusive London restaurant, had only confirmed Jessica’s decision that Fergus, whether he knew it yet or not, was going to be her second husband.

She had seemed to be just as enamored with him when she came home from their dinner together at another expensive restaurant.

Unfortunately, Thea had to call her mother on her cell phone in the middle of their third date because she was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance with suspected appendicitis. She had tried not to call the emergency services, but the pain had become so bad that she’d had no choice. The paramedics driving her to the hospital had insisted that her mother be called so that she could come to the hospital and give her permission for Thea to be operated on. Her mother had grudgingly agreed.

Which was when Fergus Wynter had learned how much Jessica had lied to him about even the fundamental things. The main ones being that she had a fourteen-year-old daughter and wasn’t aged twenty-eight, as she’d told him she was. She was actually thirty-eight and so six years older than him.

Fergus would perhaps have been able to forgive her for all those lies if he’d been in love with her. But he obviously hadn’t been, and once he knew the truth, he had made that clear to Jessica.

If Jessica had had the good sense to leave the situation there, then perhaps Thea wouldn’t now be able to clearly see the contempt in Fergus’s narrowed green eyes as he looked down at her. But her mother never had known when to give up on a lost cause.

Except maybe Thea.

But that was another story.

“I was sorry to read about your mother’s death,” Fergus now surprised her by saying.

Thea’s eyes widened. “You were?”

He shrugged. “It’s always tragic when someone dies at what is socially considered too young an age.”

“But not as young as you first thought, though, hmm?” she derided.

“No,” he grated at this reminder of Jessica’s lies.

Thea gave a dismissive shake of her head. “I’m really not here to talk about my mother or the past.”

“Then why are you here?” he prompted huskily.

All the time they had been talking, Thea had been aware of the warmth of Fergus’s hand wrapped about her upper arm. Of how close he was standing to her. So close she could see the darker flecks of green in his eyes as she continuously breathed in that citrus and spicy male scent.

Thea was only five feet and four inches tall, and she was wearing flat Converse, which meant that Fergus towered over her by at least a foot. Those muscular shoulders and chest also dwarfed her slender frame.

He made her feel small and…vulnerable.

She really wasn’t happy about the latter emotion. Not when it was that very same feeling that was the reason she had felt compelled to seek him out in the first place.

Because for the past couple of weeks, Thea was convinced she’d had a stalker of her own.