Rumours: The Dishonoured Copelands. Jane Porter

      In the steamy marble bathroom, she ran a brush through her long hair before drawing it back into a sleek ponytail and headed for her door, careful to keep her gaze averted from the bed’s tousled sheets and duvet.

      The maid would remake the bed while she was gone, and probably change the sheets, and Morgan was glad. She didn’t want to remember or reflect on what had just changed there. It shouldn’t have happened. It was a terrible mistake.

      She took the stairs quickly, overwhelmed by emotion—worry and hope for her father, longing for Drakon, as well as regret. Now that they’d made love once, would he expect her to tumble back into bed later tonight?

      And what if he didn’t want to make love again? What if that was the last time? How would she feel?

      In some ways that was the worst thought of all.

      It wasn’t the right way to end things. Couldn’t be their last time. Their last time needed to be different. Needed more, not less. Needed more emotion, more time, more skin, more love …

       Love.

      She still loved Drakon, didn’t she? Morgan’s eyes stung, knowing she always would love him, too. Saying goodbye to him would rip her heart out. She only hoped it’d be less destructive than it had been the first time. Could only hope she’d remember the pain was just grief … that the pain would eventually, one day, subside.

      But she wouldn’t go there, either. Not yet. She was still here with him, still feeling so alive with him. Better to stay focused on the moment, and deal with the future when it came.

      Reaching the bottom stair she discovered one of Drakon’s staff was waiting for her. “Mrs. Xanthis, Mr. Xanthis is waiting for you in the terrace sunroom,” the maid said.

      Morgan thanked her and headed down the final flight of stairs to the lower level, the terrace level.

      The sunroom ran the length of the villa and had formerly been a ballroom in the nineteenth century. The ballroom’s original gilt ceiling, the six sets of double glass doors and the grand Venetian glass chandeliers remained, but the grand space was filled now with gorgeous rugs and comfortable furniture places and potted palms and miniature citrus trees. It was one of the lightest, brightest rooms in the villa and almost always smelled of citrus blossoms.

      Entering the former ballroom, Morgan spotted Drakon and another man standing in the middle of the enormous room, talking in front of a grouping of couches and chairs.

      They both turned and looked at her as she entered the room, but Morgan only had eyes for Drakon. Just looking at him made her insides flip, and her pulse leap.

      She needed him, wanted him, loved him, far too much.

      Her heart raced and her stomach hurt as she crossed the ballroom, her gaze drinking in Drakon, her footsteps muffled by the plush Persian rugs scattered across the marble floor.

      He looked amazing … like Drakon, but not like Drakon in that soft gray knit shirt that hugged his broad shoulders and lovingly molded to his muscular chest, outlining every hard, sinewy muscle with a pair of jeans. In America they called shirts like the one he was wearing Henleys. They’d been work shirts, worn by farmers and firemen and lumberjacks, not tycoons and millionaires and it boggled her mind that Drakon would wear such a casual shirt, although from the look of the fabric and the cut, it wasn’t an inexpensive one—but it suited him.

      He looked relaxed … and warm. So warm. So absolutely not cold, or controlled. And part of her suddenly wondered, if he had ever been cold, or if she’d just come to think of him that way as they grew apart in those last few months of their marriage?

      Which led to another question—had he ever been that much in control, too? Or had she turned him into something he wasn’t? Her imagination making him into an intimidating and controlling man because she felt so out of control?

      God, she hoped not. But there was no time to mull over the past. She’d reached Drakon’s side and felt another electric jolt as his gaze met hers and held. She couldn’t look away from the warmth in his amber eyes. Part of him still burned and it made her want to burn with him. Madness, she told herself, don’t go there, don’t lose yourself, and yet the air hummed with heat and desire.

      How could she not respond to him?

      How could she not want to be close to him when he was so fiercely alive?

      “It’s going to be all right,” he murmured, his deep voice pitched so low only she could hear.

      Her lovely, lovely man that made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the entire world. Her lovely, lovely man that had pushed her to the brink, and beyond, and he still didn’t know … still had no idea where she’d been that first year after leaving him, or what had happened to her trying to separate herself from him.

      Part of her wanted to tell him, and yet another part didn’t want to give him that knowledge, or power. Because he could break her. Absolutely destroy her. And she wasn’t strong enough yet to rebuild herself again … not yet. Not on top of everything else that had happened to her father and her family with the Amery scandal.

      “I promise you,” he added.

      She heard his fierce resolve and her heart turned over. This is how she’d fallen in love with him—his strength, his focus, his determination. That and the way he smiled at her … as if she were sunshine and oxygen all rolled into one. “Yes,” she murmured, aware that once upon a time he’d been everything to her … her hope, her happiness, her future. She missed those days. Missed feeling as if she belonged somewhere with someone.

      There was a flicker in his eyes, and then he made the introductions. “Morgan, this is Rowan Argyros, of Dunamas. Rowan, my wife, Morgan Copeland Xanthis.”

      Morgan forced her attention from Drakon to the stranger and her jaw nearly dropped. This was Rowan Argyros? This was one of the founders of Dunamas Maritime Intelligence?

      Her brows tugged. She couldn’t mask her surprise. Argyros wasn’t at all what she’d expected.

      She’d imagined Drakon’s intelligence expert to look like one, and she’d pictured a man in his forties, maybe early fifties, who was stocky, balding, with a square jaw and pugilistic nose.

      Instead Rowan Argyros looked like a model straight off some Parisian runway. He was gorgeous. Not her type at all, but her sister Logan would bed him in a heartbeat.

      Tall and broad-shouldered, Argyros was muscular without any bulk. He was very tan, and his eyes were light, a pale gray or green, hard to know exactly in the diffused light of the ballroom. His dark brown hair was sun-streaked and he wore it straight and far too long for someone in his line of work. His jaw was strong, but not the thick bulldog jaw she’d come to associate with testosterone-driven males, but more angular … elegant, the kind of face that would photograph beautifully, although today that jaw was shadowed with a day-old beard.

      “Mrs. Xanthis,” Rowan said, extending a hand to her.

      It bothered her that he hadn’t even bothered to shave for their meeting, and she wondered how this could be the man who would free her father?

      Rowan Argosy looked as if he’d spent his free time hanging out on obscenely big yachts off the coast of France, not planning daring, dangerous life-saving missions.

      She shook his hand firmly and let it go quickly. “Mr. Argyros,” she said crisply. “I would love to know what you know about my father. Drakon said you have information.”

      “I do,” Rowan said, looking her straight in the eye, his voice hard, his expression as cool and unfriendly as hers.

      Morgan’s eyebrows lifted. Nice. She liked his frosty tone, and found his coldness and aloofness reassuring. She wouldn’t have trusted him at all if he’d been warm and charming. Military types … intelligence types … they weren’t the touchy-feely sort. “Is he alive?”

      “He is. I have some film of him