A Tycoon To Be Reckoned With. Julia James

      A silent shudder went through her. Dear God, if anyone in the opera world found out she was singing here, like this, her credibility would be shot to pieces. No one would take her seriously for a moment.

      And neither Violetta nor Manon was anything like her role in Anton’s opera War Bride. Her character was a romantic young girl, falling in love with a dashing soldier. A whirlwind courtship, a return to the front—and then the dreaded news of her husband’s fate. The heartbreak of loss and bereavement. And then a child born to take his father’s place in yet another war...

      The simple, brutal tale was told as a timeless fable of the sacrifice and futility of war, repeated down the ages, its score haunting and poignant. It had captivated Sarah the first moment she’d heard Max play it.

      What must it be like to love so swiftly, to hurt so badly? she’d wondered as she’d started to explore her role. For herself, she had no knowledge—had never experienced the heady whirlwind of love nor the desolation of heartbreak. Her only serious relationship had ended last year when Andrew, a cellist she had known since college, had been offered a place in a prestigious orchestra in Germany. It had been his breakthrough moment, and she had been so glad for him—had waved him off without a thought of holding him back.

      Both of them had always known that their careers must come first in their lives, which meant that neither could afford to invest in a deeply emotional relationship which might jeopardise their diverging career paths. So neither had grieved when they’d parted, only wished each other well. Theirs had been a relationship based primarily on a shared passion for music, rather than for each other—friendship and affection had bound them, nothing more than that.

      But this meant she knew that in order to portray her character now—the War Bride—as convincingly as she could, she would need to call on all her imagination. Just as she would need all her operatic abilities to do credit to the challenging vocal demands of the hauntingly beautiful but technically difficult music.

      She reached the end of her song to a smattering of applause. Dipping her head in acknowledgement, she shifted her weight from one high-heeled foot to the other. As she straightened again, sending her gaze back out over the dining area, she felt a sudden flickering awareness go through her. She could hear Max start the introduction to her next number but ignored it, her senses suddenly on alert. She heard him repeat the phrase, caught him glancing at her with a frown, but her attention was not on him—not on the song she was supposed to have started four bars earlier. Her attention was on the audience beyond.

      Someone was looking at her. Someone standing at the back of the room.

      He had not been there a moment ago and must have just come in. She shook her head, trying to dismiss that involuntary sense of heightened awareness, of sudden exposure. Male eyes gazed at her all the time—and there was always movement beyond the stage...diners and waiters. They did not make her pause the way this had—as if there were something different about him. She wanted to see him more clearly, but the light was wrong and he was too far away for her to discern anything more than a tall, tuxedo-clad figure at the back of the room.

      For the third time she heard Max repeat the intro—insistently this time. And she knew she had to start to sing. Not just because of Max’s impatient prompt but because she suddenly, urgently, needed to do something other than simply stand there, pooled in the light that emphasised every slender curve of her tightly sheathed body. Exposed her to that invisible yet almost tangible scrutiny that was palpable in its impact on her.

      As she started the number her voice was more husky than ever. Her long, artificial lashes swept down over her deeply kohled eyes, and the sweep of her hair dipped halfway across her jawline and cheekbone. She forced herself to keep singing, to try and suppress the frisson of disturbed awareness that was tensing through her—the sense of being the object of attention that was like a beam targeted at her.

      Somehow she got through to the end of the number, pulling herself together to start the next one on time and not fluff it. It seemed easier now, and she realised that at some point that sense of being under scrutiny had faded and dissipated. As if a kind of pressure had been lifted off her. She reached the end of the last number, the end of her set, with a sense of relief. She made her way offstage, hearing canned music starting up and Max closing down the piano.

      One of the waiters intercepted her. ‘There’s a guy who wants to buy you a drink,’ he said.

      Sarah made a face. It wasn’t unusual that this happened, but she never accepted.

      The waiter held up a hundred-euro note. ‘Looks like he’s keen,’ he informed her with a lift of his brow.

      ‘Well, he’s the only one who is,’ she said. ‘Better take it back to him,’ she added. ‘I don’t want him thinking I pocketed it and then didn’t show.’

      Her refusal got Max’s approval. ‘No time for picking up men,’ he said, flippantly but pointedly.

      ‘As if I would...’ She rolled her eyes.

      For a moment, it crossed her mind that the invitation to buy her a drink might be connected to that shadowy figure at the back of the room and his disturbing perusal of her, but then she dismissed the thought. All she wanted to do now was get out of her costume and head for bed. Max started opera rehearsals promptly every morning, and she needed to sleep.

      She’d just reached her dressing room, kicking off her high heels and flexing her feet in relief, when there was a brief knock at the door. She only had time to say, ‘Who is it?’ before the door opened.

      She glanced up, assuming it would be Max, wanting to tell her something that couldn’t wait. But instead it was a man she’d never seen before in her life.

      And he stilled the breath in her lungs.

       CHAPTER TWO

      BASTIAAN’S EYES ZEROED in on the figure seated at the brightly lit vanity unit with its trademark light-bulb-surrounded mirror. Backlit as she was by the high-wattage bulbs, her face was in shadow.

      But the shadows did nothing to dim her impact. If anything it emphasised it, casting her features into relief. On stage, she’d been illuminated in a pool of light, her features softened by the distance at which he’d sat. He’d deliberately taken a table at the rear of the room, wanting at that point only to observe without being noticed in return.

      It hadn’t taken him more than two moments to realise that the female poised on the stage possessed a quality that signalled danger to his young, impressionable cousin.

      Allure—it was an old-fashioned word, but that was the one that had come to his mind as his eyes had rested on the slender figure sensuously draped in low-cut clinging satin, standing in a pool of soft, smoky light, her fingers lightly curved around her microphone, the lustrous fall of her long blonde hair curled over her bare shoulder like a vamp from the forties.

      Her mouth was painted a rich, luscious red, her eye make-up was pronounced, with long, artificial lashes framing luminous eyes. Seeing her now, close up, she was even more alluring.

      No wonder Philip is smitten!

      His eyes completed his swift scrutiny and he was interested to see a line of colour running along her cheekbones. Curious... he thought. Then the tightening of her mouth told him what had accounted for that reaction. It was not a blush—a woman like her probably hadn’t blushed since puberty—it was annoyance.

      Why? he found himself wondering. Women were not usually annoyed when he paid them attention. Quite the reverse. But this chanteuse was. It was doubly unusual because surely a woman in her profession was well used to male admirers courting her in her dressing room.

      An unwelcome thought crossed his mind—was it his cousin’s wont to hang out here? Did she invite him to her changing room?

      Just how far has she got with him?

      Well, however far it was, it was going to stop