The Mistresses Collection. Оливия Гейтс

out.

      ‘How are you doing with that ambition?’ Bastian derided, making her teeth grind together in frustration.

      ‘I am not childish and I am not cowardly,’ Emmie returned resentfully to his determination to blame her for walking away from a difficult relationship.

      ‘No? Well, at the very least you have some strange hang-ups,’ Bastian condemned, interrupting her without hesitation as he dug a magazine out of his pocket and slapped it down aggressively on the hall table. ‘She’s your sister, your twin, and presumably the reason you go around dressed in a frumpy disguise most of the time! But did you think to mention her existence to me even once?’

      Emmie froze in consternation as she found herself gazing down at a magazine photo of Saffy and Zahir’s wedding day. Laughing and smiling with happiness, Saffy looked fantastic and Emmie’s heart constricted at the sight, regret belatedly stabbing her that she had avoided playing a role at her sister’s nuptials. ‘How did you find out?’

      ‘Nessa saw it and put it in front of me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,’ Bastian admitted with angry dark eyes. ‘At first I thought it was you marrying royalty and then I saw her name…she’s Sapphire, you’re Emerald, so it was obviously no coincidental likeness. I did some research and that’s when I realised how much you had been hiding from me.’

      ‘There was no need for you to know.’

      ‘I couldn’t believe she was your sister.’

      Emmie lost colour at that admission. ‘I understand that. We may be identical twins but she still looks very different from me.’

      ‘Yes, even though it was only photos I was merely fooled into thinking it was you for about five seconds,’ Bastian spelt out.

      Unsurprised by the assertion but dreading the comparison he had to be making between her and her gorgeous sister, Emmie lowered her head, her face shadowing. ‘Yes—’

      ‘You have a beauty spot on one cheekbone and your eyes are a lighter blue,’ Bastian contended, sharply disconcerting her for few people were that observant. ‘I also suspect that you’re smaller—’

      ‘By at least an inch. Even after the surgery on my leg I never quite caught up with Saffy in height,’ Emmie conceded. ‘I don’t wear a disguise though—you don’t understand…I just don’t like being mistaken for Saffy and, believe me, it happens a lot if I dress up and go out and about in London. She’s a celebrity, after all. I’ve also found it’s just easier not to mention that she’s my sister to the people I meet.’

      ‘I can imagine that but you’re not the same—you’re not carbon copies of each other.’

      ‘You don’t think so?’

      ‘I don’t quite understand it but when I look at her, she does as much for my libido as a blank canvas on the wall, but when I look at you I have an instant reaction,’ Bastian confessed in a husky undertone.

      Emmie wasn’t quite sure she could believe that, for she was much more accustomed to thinking of her sister as a vastly superior, more sophisticated and sexier version of herself—in every way a supermodel-perfect creature. But then Saffy had always been the prettier, livelier, more talented twin, Emmie the sickly, shy one, who was boringly academic, not that she had had much choice on that score when her disability had meant she couldn’t go out and about like her twin. She glanced up at Bastian, her lovely face pink with self-consciousness, wondering if it could possibly be true that he found her more sexually appealing than her sister. After all, all her life she had been second-best to Saffy.

      ‘It happens every time I look at you,’ Bastian imparted thickly, his dark deep drawl vibrating down her spine, his stunning dark golden eyes hotly pinned to her in a smouldering look that created an atmosphere of shocking intimacy. ‘Because while I know it’s just sex, it’s still the most freakin’ fantastic sex I’ve ever had with a woman!’

      A surge of responsive heat flooded Emmie’s pelvis, swelled her breasts, tightened her nipples and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t suppress that wave of physical awareness. Bastian was attempting to turn an insult into a compliment and failing abysmally, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t going to pick him up on it; she wasn’t going to go there at all. Talking about sex with Bastian was a bad idea because talking about it made her think about it and she was determined to keep the door closed on that kind of misleading intimacy.

      Breathing in deep, she turned her head away to duck his direct gaze and said tautly, ‘So how did you find out where I was living?’

      ‘Once I had linked you to your celebrity sister I had enquiries made and discovered this place,’ Bastian told her, his handsome mouth compressing with annoyance. ‘I drove up here straight away but you weren’t here and the house was locked up.’

      ‘Oh…’ Emmie was surprised he had come to the farmhouse on a previous occasion and couldn’t hide it. ‘Did you come here at the weekend? I must have been staying with Kat.’

      Bastian was frowning down at her. ‘Your eldest sister? The one married to the rich Russian, who owns this house?’

      Emmie studied him in surprise at the level of his knowledge. ‘You have been doing your homework about my family.’

      ‘Enough to know that you shouldn’t be living here, forced to rely on the generosity of another man.’

      ‘That other man happens to be my brother-in-law—’

      ‘It doesn’t matter. You’re in this situation because of me and I’m the one who should be taking care of you.’

      Emmie threw her head high, her lovely face taut with strain as she shifted her weight onto her one leg while rubbing at the thigh of the other. ‘I don’t need anyone taking care of me when I can do that for myself.’

      ‘But I want to do it,’ Bastian grated in a raw undertone, watching her massage her leg. ‘Your leg’s hurting you right now. Why don’t you sit down? I want to look after the mother of my children. Is that so wrong?’

      Emmie was disconcerted by that blunt declaration and that he had actually noticed that her leg was beginning to bother her. ‘No, not wrong, but maybe a little surprising after some of the things you’ve said.’

      ‘Why don’t you forget what I’ve said in the past and look to the future instead? I think right now that would be a lot more useful,’ Bastian countered with ringing confidence, striding into the cosy living room where a log fire had burned low in the grate.

      Emmie followed him at a slower pace. ‘What future?’

      ‘Yours and the twins’,’ Bastian specified, gazing back at her with challenging intensity. ‘I want you to come back to Greece with me and meet my family.’

      Her eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Er…I’ve already met your family,’ she protested.

      ‘Not as the future mother of my kids. You can’t keep us in the closet with two babies on the way,’ Bastian informed her with dark eyes glittering with amusement. ‘You’re part of my life now and that’s not going to change.’

      ‘I still don’t think that there’s any need for you to take me back to Greece with you and make some sort of formal announcement,’ Emmie contended.

      ‘I think it’s important.’ Bastian’s stubborn jawline clenched his face taut as he stared back at her. ‘Family connections mean a great deal to me. It’ll be easier for you to make that connection now before the twins are born.’

      ‘I’m not interested in visiting Greece right now,’ Emmie declared, throwing her shoulders back.

      ‘I want the time to see if we can work this relationship out,’ Bastian admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I shouldn’t have to spell that out to you.’

      Her troubled eyes widened a little and remained glued to his stunning