CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Present day
C OMING TO Z ERMATT hadn’t been Atlas Voudouris’s idea and he already regretted agreeing to it.
Iris, his soon-to-be fiancée, had set it up. After dating for several months, they had needed a holiday away from their families and social circles and the prying eyes of gossip rags to discuss their future.
Iris’s friend owned a group of chalets here, and in return for extending them a complimentary stay, Atlas would owe the man a favor. It was exactly the give-and-take connection he was marrying Iris for. He had no objection to that, especially because the paparazzi hadn’t figured out yet where they’d gone.
Staying in Zermatt also allowed him to reach out in a very casual way to a sticky business contact, one who happened to be staying in Cervinia, on the Italian side of the Alps. Atlas had been trying to partner with that man for two years, but had barely managed more than an introduction. If he could finally grease those wheels, it might be worth the discomfort of being here.
But being here was uncomfortable. He couldn’t deny it. He’d been agitated since their arrival last night, unable to sleep because he kept bumping up on a memory he’d been trying to shake for five years, one where he had behaved just like Daddy .
He’d made a pass at a woman who was too young for him. Maybe she hadn’t been as inexperienced as he had initially judged her. She had been passionate as hell, completely undermining his good sense, but she had been in trouble with the law and she’d been one of the staff at the rented chalet.
That was close enough to messing around with a taverna owner’s daughter to make Atlas want to go back in time and kick himself.
Which was impossible, obviously. Instead, he walked around with a splinter he couldn’t dig out from under his skin. She wasn’t even here! Young people moved through ski resorts like migrating birds, landing for a season before moving on to greener fields.
He didn’t want to see her. As of last night, he and Iris had agreed to become engaged, likely to marry within the year. They would announce it in London this Saturday.
Oliver would be smugly pleased. He had handpicked Iris for Atlas, which rankled more than it should. Iris was charming and intelligent and beautiful. It didn’t matter that Atlas wasn’t particularly attracted to her. Passion was not something either of them expected from marriage.
They each had their own reasons for agreeing to it, though. For Atlas, it would give him a clear line toward taking the helm at DVE, the global conglomerate his father currently headed. Oliver’s family had started DVE as a publishing enterprise two hundred years ago. Through the twentieth century, it grew into a media and broadcasting powerhouse, but would have collapsed under the tech revolution if not for the clothing line Oliver’s wife had started before she died. The Davenwear athletic and wearable tech brand had propped up the rest of the company, thanks to Atlas’s fame and his sister’s notoriety. Once Atlas began climbing the ladder within DVE, he’d diversified into green and renewable energy, among other forward-thinking interests.
Taking over at DVE was more than a claim of his birthright—which was what Atlas’s mother had urged him to do when she had sent him to his father at fourteen. No, after nearly two decades of investing every part of himself into DVE’s growth and success, Atlas had earned the top spot. He could wait until his father died, which was unlikely to happen soon, considering Oliver was a very healthy sixty-four, or he could marry the woman Oliver had picked in exchange for Oliver’s agreement to retire.
They would make their announcement at Oliver’s birthday party at the end of the week, putting the wheels in motion for a transfer of power.
I’m getting what I want , Atlas reminded himself.
Yet he remained on edge.
Maybe if they’d gone skiing today, he would have worked out this restlessness. It was snowing heavily, promising fresh powder, but Iris was a fair-weather skier. Besides, after coming to their agreement last night, they’d had some shopping to do.
Atlas could have had the jeweler come to them, but despite five floors and ten bedrooms, the chalet felt claustrophobic. He brought Iris to the shop in the village where she had spent the last hour sipping mimosas and discussing designs with the goldsmith while Atlas mostly stared out the window.
He wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. It was generic people-watching because it would be rude to work off his phone while his new fiancée ordered up a twelve-carat square diamond flanked by a pair of two-carat trapezoid-cut diamonds in white gold.
He signed off on the eight-figure price tag, then told them to box up the pair of ruby earrings that had also caught her eye.
When they left, she looked across the street to a boutique so he walked his credit card into the shop and left her there to browse.
The shop owner invited him to sit in their lounge. He could have ordered any food or beverage of his choice, but he claimed a desire to look at watches and walked down the street to the coffee shop.
Dissatisfaction dogged him the whole way, amplified by the lift of a camera phone as he passed a woman on the street.
Celebrity was yet another price he’d paid to Oliver for the benefits of being his son. Yes, Atlas had gained recognition on his own. His gold medals as a swimmer had earned him a healthy following online and modest sponsorships had flowed in, but Oliver had parlayed Atlas’s good looks and athletic success into elevating the Davenwear line. Between that, and Carmel’s weekly scandals, and the attention that his socialite dates invariably attracted, Atlas remained a magnet for media attention.
He ignored it as he always did and opened the door to the coffee shop, stepping back because a woman was on her way out. She wore a fitted winter jacket and a sky-blue hat and checked her own step, flashing him a friendly smile that fell right off her face.
His entire world skipped from its groove. Had he conjured her?
He’d forgotten how blue her eyes were. There was a lake in Australia that held that same saturation of blue, but he’d never seen it anywhere else. Only there and here, in her astonished stare.
Something flared in those mesmerizing depths, but it was quickly eclipsed by horror. She tossed him a begrudging “Thanks” in the colloquial Swiss German and brushed past him. She was carrying a takeaway coffee and a paper bag that presumably held a pastry, judging by the aromas floating out from the shop’s interior.
“Stella.” He let the door close and remained outside with her.
She halted next to one of the empty bistro tables, staying under the awning where the sidewalk was still bare. Beneath her short jacket, she wore gray plaid trousers tucked into tall boots. The wool fabric clung lovingly to the valentine of her ass.
“I didn’t think you recognized me.” She turned and offered a stiff smile. “It’s nice to see you again, Herr Davenport.”
He’d heard enough lies in his life to recognize one. And Herr Davenport ?
“Voudouris,” he corrected. “Oliver Davenport was never married to my mother.” Reporters continued to mislabel him because Oliver did. In fact, Oliver had made it clear that the quickest way for Atlas to take the reins at DVE would be to adopt his father’s name, but he never would.
“You look well. I hope your family is well also.” Another lie. One so great, she had to clear it from her throat. “Are they here with you?”
“No.” He ignored the opportunity to say he was here with his fiancée. The weight of that knowledge scorched like acid in the pit of his stomach while the rest of him drank her up like an elixir.
She’d come a long way from a soaked, ill-fitting uniform. Her clothes were good quality, her jacket zipped halfway so it flared open to frame her ample breasts.
A fantasy of mapping her figure with his hands, with his lips , arrived so suddenly it was as though it had never left. As though the craving had sat as unfinished business in the depths of his most carnal urges.
No . He was the rational one in his family. The one who wasn’t driven by emotion and ego and libido. He kept all of that on a tight leash.
He was not just like Daddy .
“You’ve lived here all this time?” That thought annoyed him for some reason.
“Yes.” She looked over her shoulder. “I run the front desk at Die Gro?ten Hohen. Greatest Heights.”
“I’m at Chalet Ruhe—”
She nodded with familiarity so he didn’t bother naming the resort, especially because someone entered the shop behind him, forcing him to take a step closer to her.
She stiffened.
Now he was close enough that she wasn’t backlit by the brightness of the falling snow. He could see her features better.
She looked very much as he remembered her. Her hair was hidden beneath her hat and she wore no makeup. She wasn’t pretty in the classic sense, but he wouldn’t call her plain. Her nose was narrow and her eyes widely set. Her upper lip was thinner than her lower, the corners of her mouth sharp, but he remembered exactly how plump and erotic her lower lip had been against his tongue.
Then there was that combative chin.
Why he found the thrust of it so riveting, he couldn’t say, but he was both distracted and intrigued. She had had this same outward politeness and meek air back then, but like today, it was at odds with a bone structure that proclaimed she had a stubborn personality. It made him want to mine for the real Stella.
Which was a disconcerting impulse, especially today of all days. The edginess that had been plaguing him returned a thousandfold.
“I should—” she began.
“Where did you go that night? I was going to take you home.” He didn’t mean to speak over her, but he had always wondered if she had arrived home safely.
She must have. She was here, alive, snorting with disbelief.
“You left to avoid the police.” He’d always wondered about that, too. “Is that why you kissed me? To keep me from calling them?”
* * *
“What? No .” Stella’s stomach had been rolling like a cement mixer from the second she’d started to thank a stranger for holding a door only to come face-to-face with her nemesis.
How did he even remember her? Most people forgot her in five minutes. She might be tall, but she wasn’t memorable otherwise. She was ordinary and deliberately quiet and had a boring personality because she never did anything interesting. She kept her head down, worked hard, and stayed out of trouble.
Yet here she was, faced with a man who had only grown more handsome over the years. He wore tailored trousers over heavy-soled, laced boots and a quilted winter jacket with the Davenwear logo. His jaw was clean-shaven, his hair shorter than it had been five years ago. Snowflakes were melting on his black curls and his eyes still held that compelling light in their bronze depths. His mouth—
Don’t look at his mouth!
Her brain was zigzagging, trying to undo this meeting while her composure was just as confused. Part of her wanted to run away screaming. An equally unnerving elation pinned her feet to the ground while something in her sang, It’s you! Which didn’t make sense. She wasn’t happy to see him. She low-key hated him and his family. High-key, really, because of all the hardship they’d caused her. The shame .
“Why then?” he demanded.
Why had she kissed him? He could pull all her fingernails before she would admit she’d been overdue for her first kiss. And that she’d wanted it to come from him .
“I thought the police might look me up and call my father.”
“What if they had? How old were you?” he demanded with an appalled glare.
“Nearly nineteen. I told you that.” She looked to the lid of her coffee to be sure she wasn’t spilling any. “I took some money from him when I left. He was angry. I’ve since paid him back.” She wasn’t sure why she told him that. It didn’t really exonerate her and it wasn’t a good memory. Repaying her father hadn’t prompted any sort of forgiveness. He’d never loved her the way a father should and never would.
“Being assaulted by drunks was preferable to living at home?” It was a grimly perceptive summation of her childhood.
She jerked her shoulder in a half shrug, then looked into the falling snow.
“I should go. I’m on my lunch break and I don’t want to lose my job. Again.” It was as spiteful as she would allow herself to be. This town existed on tourists, especially the rich ones. She hadn’t risen to the position she enjoyed by talking back to them.
“Again?” he repeated, stepping forward to catch at her elbow before she could turn away. “What do you mean? My father had the chalet manager fired. Which he deserved.” His unflinching stare dared her to contradict him. “You weren’t fired, too?”
“Of course I was. And kicked out of my residence.” She closed her hand tighter on the bag holding her croissant and disdainfully lifted her elbow from his loose grip.
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” she choked out. “I only went into your room because you invited me.” She leaned in even though the weather had reduced the pedestrians to near zero. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen.”
Heat consumed her and her voice wavered as she stared at the angry slant of his mouth. Those stern lips had ravished hers. His clenched hand had cradled her naked breast. His erection had pressed against her thigh.
“I didn’t think you were a victim of anything,” she continued shakily. “But I was accused of taking advantage of a guest. ‘Fraternizing for my own gain.’ Because you lent me clothes that you get for free, I guess? They refused to pay me the wages they owed me as punishment.”
She’d actually been slut-shamed with a blistering lecture in front of the office staff when she’d gone in to protest. She still writhed on the flames of that humiliation.
“And now you’ve ruined my appetite!” She set her coffee and croissant on the nearest table, turned up her collar and stepped into the falling snow.
“Stella.” He caught her arm again.
Some wicked, sinful, foolish part of her was thrilled. She twisted to face him, held her breath, pulse fluttering in her throat as she waited for his apology. Waited for him to say something meaningful. Something that told her he’d thought about her as often as she’d thought about him.
“That shouldn’t have happened. None of it.” He was speaking under his breath, his words a cloud of breath that was heavy with dismay. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“Well, you did .” She yanked her arm free, crushed and mortified with herself for that moment of— Oh, she didn’t want to dwell on how adolescent her rush of hope was, wishing impossible things. “Leave me alone.” She offered one final glare of rancid fury, then hurried away.
Did she feel like a coward for her retreat? Not really. Some fights weren’t worth having. Sometimes running away was all you had.
She had worked hard to become someone who could get through a confrontation gracefully, though. That altercation had not been her best moment.
Usually, she was dealing with a guest who didn’t really affect her on a personal level, though. Atlas was the opposite. As aggrieved as she’d been all these years, he was also the man against whom she continued to measure all others.
Which made no sense. He wasn’t that special. She met rich, handsome men every day. Some even flirted with her. Why did this particular man stick in her memory like a burr? Had she been so young when she met him that she had imprinted on him or something? Because she had grown up a lot since then. She’d dated and kissed and…
Okay, that was it, because all those later kisses and fondles had left her cold. No one had ever made her blood simmer the way standing in the snow, in the street, arguing with Atlas Voudouris did.
She didn’t want him stirring her up again! She’d already spent too many hours looking him up and wondering and wishing and dreaming…
That way lay madness.
But against her will, pins and needles were jabbing all over her, as though she was thawing from that long walk home without gloves or socks when her hair had been wet and her self-esteem thin as a tissue.
It was painful. Distressing.
Her father had always warned her against lust and boys and fooling around. Sure enough, when her hormones had awakened under Atlas’s kiss five years ago, her attraction toward him had gotten her fired and she’d lost her home. She’d tried to seek him out the next day, but he’d been gone, leaving her floundering.
The entire experience had left her cautious about her body’s natural reaction. She didn’t really think it was a sin to feel passion, but she had been glad on some level that her interest in sex had grown muted, allowing her to believe she was safe from suffering lust-related disasters again.
Other times, though, she had wondered if Atlas had left her a little bit broken. Which was deeply unfair, because she didn’t know how to mend that sort of damage.
Now she knew he was here in Zermatt and all her stupid longings were reawakening, ones that not only wanted him to rescue her from this rocky journey called life, but even more, she wanted him to touch her. Kiss her. Would it feel the same? She was dying to find out.
She cringed at herself, running through every single word that had passed between them, picking it apart, trying to be happy that she’d told him to leave her alone.
Which he would, because he had said he wished he had.
What a horrible thing to say! She never wanted to see him again in her life.
* * *
“Why don’t we have an early dinner?” Iris said when Atlas joined her for a drink in the sitting room between their two bedrooms.
He’d just spent an hour swimming laps so he was hungry, but she was putting more than a meal on the table. With her engagement ring on order, he had a green light for lovemaking.
No, thanks .
He flinched inwardly at his distinct lack of interest, especially because he definitely wanted sex. He was frustrated as hell. That’s why he’d swum himself into exhaustion, but his libido was fixated on plaid trousers and a belligerent chin and electric-blue eyes.
He poured himself a scotch, trying to work out how to tell Iris, I can’t. Not tonight. Maybe never .
It was a sobering thought, one he needed to look at from all angles before he pushed the button that would detonate everything he’d spent months—years really—putting into place.
And for what? A woman who justifiably hated him?
I only went into your room because you invited me. I didn’t mean for anything to happen .
Neither had he. He’d arrived into the chaos of the party in time to see her yanked into the tub. Her uniform had been soaked and clinging to her generous curves, but it had been a uniform. He had averted his eyes from the thrust of her nipples and the way the fabric had adhered to the notch in her thighs. He didn’t prey on the help and he didn’t let anyone else do it, either.
But fifteen minutes later, she had walked in on him changing. She’d been wearing his clothes and they’d looked damn cute on her. He remembered trying to exercise some restraint, but she’d stepped into his kiss and…
He closed his eyes against the memory. He’d relived it too many times for it not to spring forth in vivid detail, though. Heat. Softness. The fit of her breasts against his front. The smell of his body wash on her skin. The brush of her tongue against his own.
Somehow, they’d fallen onto the bed. Her passion had fed his and he suspected they would have gone all the way if they hadn’t been interrupted. He’d never been carried away so quickly or completely. Not before or since.
He’d never been so tempted to kiss someone as he had been today, to see if their chemistry was still as potent. It had taken everything in him not to follow her into the falling snow, pull her around and find out .
He probably would have gotten himself a knee to the stomach. Or lower. She’d been trembling with bitterness and he couldn’t blame her.
I didn’t think you were a victim…
He wasn’t.
It was no surprise that his father had turned her into one, though.
Ironically, Oliver saw himself as the primary victim anytime something went wrong. When that happened, someone had to pay. Never himself. It was never his fault. It wasn’t Carmel’s fault, either, for accepting an invitation to stay in a resort that specialized in wild parties, then hosting a dozen hard-drinking strangers. It wasn’t Oliver’s fault for going on a date knowing full well Carmel would let things get out of hand. It wasn’t even Atlas’s fault for failing to return in time to put a lid on it.
It was the fault of the staff for indulging a woman who lacked stopping sense—even if that staff included a teenage runaway living on the thin edge of survival.
Atlas tipped his head back. He should have tried to find Stella that night. Or the next morning before they left. He shouldn’t have allowed Carmel’s “just like Daddy” comment to get under his skin.
But he had. Chasing down a maid would have injected truth into his sister’s accusation, not just in their father’s eyes, but his own.
“Atlas?” Iris yanked him back to the chalet and the engagement he deeply regretted.
He turned, expecting her to be miffed at his inattention, but she wore an appalled expression and was staring at her phone.
“What’s wrong?”
“Carmel just sent me a link.”
He’d been ignoring his own phone. It was one of the reasons he loved to swim when he needed to think. Nothing external could intrude, especially whatever nonsense his sister was up to.
“Did you tell her we ordered the ring?” He wearily went back to his room to take his phone off its charger on the night table. “I told you she would try to interfere.” Carmel felt threatened by his takeover from their father. She had made a career of blocking all his efforts.
“No, this is…” Iris followed him to the double glass doors that separated his bedroom from the sitting room. Her glare was accusatory.
He touched the link under the string of Carmel’s Ha-ha-ha-ha! Photos appeared. Images of him. With Stella. From today.
He swore.
“It’s not AI,” Iris said shakily. “Is it?”
“No.” They were authentic photographs taken through the window by someone inside the coffee shop, the glare from the glass only causing minimal reflection to diffuse the clarity. They hadn’t raised their voices, but he couldn’t help wondering if the photographer had overheard them somehow. Had there been music playing inside the shop? He couldn’t remember.
The post was already going viral.
The ongoing speculation over whether he would propose to Iris had primed the pump, ensuring a photo of him with a different woman would be high-traffic gold. That’s why some enterprising tourist had begun clicking the moment they recognized him.
DVE’s team of legal, PR and image specialists were already reaching out to him. He’d missed two calls, but they had a draft statement prepared. They were paid to protect Atlas, the rest of the family and the DVE brand so their response leaned heavily on Stella being a crackpot opportunist setting him up for her own gain.
He swore again, this time more wearily.
“Who is she?” Iris demanded.
He ought to say, No one , but he couldn’t make his lips form the words. But who was Stella to him? Really?
On the other hand, “no one” was a tough sell when the panel of images ran the gamut from her forced smile of politeness, then her leaning in with a look of scorned anger. There was one of him holding her elbow, then another with his hand hanging uselessly in the air after she had shrugged him off.
The worst interpretation was that he had accosted a stranger in the street. Looked at with a shred more accuracy, it was a lover’s spat.
“We met briefly years ago.”
“Meaning you slept with her and ghosted her.” Iris sniffed with indignation.
“I’ve never slept with her.” It was the truth, but Iris wasn’t having it.
“It looks like you did!”
“I can see that.” He wasn’t going to repeat the false accusations that Stella had fraternized with him for her own gain. What a mess. “But it’s in the past—”
“No, it’s not! It’s happening right now.” Iris jabbed her phone, quoting, “‘With an engagement announcement between Davenport and Makepeace-Reid expected any day, another woman has appeared with a vengeance.’ Why vengeance , Atlas? I said last night I would tolerate discreet affairs. This is not discreet!” She shook her phone. “And I didn’t expect they’d start before we announced our engagement.”
“It’s not an affair.” He bit back an urge to say she was overreacting.
“You left me in the boutique to meet her.”
“We bumped into each other.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
Hell, he barely believed it. Iris was entitled to her outrage, but it was bringing down his carefully assembled house of cards.
As she started back to her bedroom, he asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Go back to London. What are you going to do?”
This was his chance to save their engagement. His only chance.
Go with you.
The iciest logic in his brain urged him to say it. To do it. He should go straight back to London, issue a statement that pushed Stella firmly under a bus, patch things up with Iris and take over DVE. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?
“I’m scheduled to heli-ski with Zamos tomorrow,” he reminded her.
Iris’s laugh was a high-pitched wobble before she delivered a stone-cold, “I’m keeping the earrings.”