Captive At Her Enemy's Command

The man she loves to hate

...is the only man she wants!

Stranded in Italy, Katie Whittaker is horrified when sexy security billionaire Jared Caine rescues her. After humiliatingly rejecting innocent Katie years before, he’s as complicated and brooding as ever. To protect Katie, Jared demands she stay at his luxury villa. But as sexual tension builds, will the temptation to finally succumb to their burning attraction be too much to resist?

USA TODAY bestselling author HEIDI RICE lives in London, England. She is married with two teenage sons—which gives her rather too much of an insight into the male psyche—and also works as a film journalist. She adores her job, which involves getting swept up in a world of high emotions, sensual excitement, funny, feisty women, sexy, tortured men and glamorous locations where laundry doesn’t exist. Once she turns off her computer she often does chores—usually involving laundry!

Also by Heidi Rice

Too Close for Comfort

One Night, So Pregnant!

Vows They Can’t Escape

The Virgin’s Shock Baby

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Captive at Her Enemy’s Command

Heidi Rice

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07197-0

CAPTIVE AT HER ENEMY’S COMMAND

© 2018 Heidi Rice

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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To Rob, thanks for the trip to Capri.

Best inspiration ever!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT. Don’t mess it up.

Katie Whittaker jammed her ear against the living room door, straining to hear Jared Caine’s voice through the wood as he talked on his cell phone. Her heartbeat thumped her throat in heavy staccato punches.

“Lloyd Whittaker’s arraignment hearing is tomorrow. I’ve got Danners and Ramirez escorting her to the courthouse to testify. She’s holding up okay. She’s not great at taking orders, but she’s pretty spunky for a kid whose old man beat up her sister right in front of her.”

A kid?

Heat exploded in her cheeks like a mushroom cloud—and her heart shrank in her chest.

She was nineteen. She wasn’t a kid. Not anymore. Not after what had happened two weeks ago.

A shudder reverberated down her spine at the memory of her sister Megan’s cries for help muffled by another door.

Don’t think about that now.

Megan was safe now in Italy with Dario De Rossi—the billionaire who had rescued her sister the night Lloyd Whittaker had gone rogue. The man Megan was going to marry.

Katie swallowed past the bubble of panic—and loneliness.

Megan deserved to be happy. Megan deserved to be the Whittaker sister having lots of hot sex on a private island in Italy with her handsome billionaire fiancé—because she’d stood up to their father, and taken the brunt of his anger, while Katie, as usual, had gotten off scot-free. Because, instead of busting down the door and saving Megan herself, Katie had run away and got Dario De Rossi to do the job for her.

Was that why Jared Caine—the security expert Dario had asked to look out for her—thought she was still a kid? Did he know what a coward she’d been?

Ever since their first meeting when Dario had introduced her to his friend Jared—and he’d clasped her fingers in a strong, unyielding grip that had sent five hundred volts of electrical energy zipping and zinging up her arm—she’d wanted him to like her. But everything she’d done to attract his attention, to get him to notice her, had backfired.

When she’d followed his instructions to the letter, he’d simply stopped coming around, leaving his men to watch over her. And, when she’d argued with his orders, instead of him realizing she was too old to be treated like a child he’d become even more detached, even more patronizing, listening patiently to all her concerns then telling her what to do anyway.

But tonight all that was going to change. She was going to show Jared she wasn’t that frightened kid who had run out on her own sister. She was going to show him the real Katie. Show him that she could be strong, smart and brave just like Megan. When she put her mind to it.

Panic wrestled with the mac and cheese she’d had for dinner.

All you have to do is show him who you really are.

She clasped the handle and willed herself to open the door.

“You know what you are, Katie? You’re just like your mother.”

Lloyd Whittaker’s oft-repeated observation whispered across her consciousness—insidious and destructive—and her fingers clenched on the polished glass handle.

It’s not true.

She was nothing like Alexis Whittaker. The woman who had let down everyone who loved her. Megan had told her as much over years and years, whenever Lloyd Whittaker had accused Katie of being reckless and stupid and shallow. And, anyway, they’d discovered two weeks ago that Lloyd Whittaker wasn’t even their biological father. He’d just pretended to be for years so he could steal money from their trust fund. So what did he know?

The latch clicked and Katie stepped into the room. The breath she’d been holding gushed out as Jared’s gaze rose from his cell phone. He stood in the window alcove, silhouetted by the street lamp outside, his tall, broad-shouldered frame on instant alert.

“Katherine? Is there a problem?” He tucked his cell phone into the back pocket of his pants. The intensity of his gaze as he studied her had warmth blooming in her stomach, and it gave her the courage to walk across the room.

She loved the way he looked at her, as if she was the only person he could see. The only person who mattered in that instant. No one had ever looked at her with that much concentration before. Not even Megan.

She forced herself to keep on going, her bare feet making no sound on the rug.

“Maybe,” she said, past lungs clamped in a vice.

“What is it?” She heard the concern. Need rolled through her and her heart pumped so fast she could hear it thundering in her ears.

He did care, behind that wall of detachment, that veneer of professionalism.

She didn’t stop until she reached the alcove—and stood close enough to him to absorb the harsh beauty of his rough-hewn features. She let her gaze drift over the intriguing scar which bisected his upper lip, the closely cropped US Marine-style hair, which made him look fierce enough to wipe out a Taliban stronghold single-handed, the sensual mouth that never quite cracked a smile and the defined muscles on his arms and shoulders stretching the seams of the tailored white shirt.

At five foot eight she had always felt too tall, but Jared Caine had to bend his head to meet her gaze. The evidence of his height sent the whisper of sensation shuddering downward. And the vice around her lungs tightened.

“Why don’t you ever call me Katie?” she asked.

His gaze remained steady, the blue of his irises so deep and true in the light from the street, she felt herself drowning in them. Every inch of her skin prickled with reaction. The awareness of him was so strong, the muscles in her belly liquefied.

A muscle twitched in the stubble on his cheek. And his gaze flicked down.

A startling heat swept through her, driven by the five hundred volts she remembered from the only time she’d been able to touch him. But they weren’t touching now. The brushed cotton of her sleep T-shirt rasped across her nipples like sandpaper and tightened them into hard, rigid peaks.

She crossed her arms over her chest, mortified that she hadn’t worn a bra. Could he see the effect he was having on her? Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

He gave a sigh. “Go to bed, Katherine,” he said at last, his voice gruff.

“I don’t want to go to bed. I want to stay here with you,” she said, getting fixated on his lips and the white scar that bisected the bow on top. What would it feel like to kiss him? To have him kiss her back? Anticipation made her feel almost giddy.

“That’s not a good idea.” His voice was so husky now she could feel it rumble between her legs, reverberating in the spot she stroked in bed at night while she was thinking about him.

“Why not?” Her heart fluttered in her chest when his brows lowered. She could smell him, soap and musk. The tense muscle in his cheek jerked.

“I think you know why.”

It was all the encouragement she needed. He wasn’t looking at her as if she was a kid anymore. Endorphins careered through her system, obliterating every thought but one.

Just do it, already. Kiss him.

Rising on tiptoes, she flung her arms around his neck. Her tender breasts flattened against rigid muscles as she pressed her lips to his.

Peppermint-flavored breath brushed her burning cheeks as he grunted a curse word. But his labored breathing yanked at the sweet spot between her legs. Greedy for more, she licked at the scar, and scraped her fingernails through the soft bristles of hair at his nape. His lips opened and her tongue delved into the recesses of his mouth. Harsh and insistent, she gathered his taste like a starving person—the delicious tang of peppermint and desire.

Big hands grasped her waist as reaction shuddered through him. And his long fingers fisted in the thin cotton of her T-shirt. Fierce joy blossomed inside her as his tongue tangled with hers—dominant and demanding. The vicious heat throbbed, making the sweet spot swell.

But before she could grab hold of the euphoria, before she could bask in the hot glow, he reared back and ripped his mouth away.

“Damn it, Katherine. Stop it.” Grasping her wrists in an iron grip, he thrust her hands down and shoved her back.

His crystal-blue eyes were like chips of ice in that lean, masculine face. “What kind of a game do you think you’re playing?” The harsh words slashed through the euphoria like a machete.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I thought...”

“What? That I wanted you to kiss me?” The sharp tone sliced to the bone. “I don’t.”

She hunched her shoulders. Dragging her wrists free of his grip, she clasped her arms around her waist, trying to hold the agony of his rejection inside. Why did everyone always reject her in the end? Why had she always been so unworthy of love?

She wanted to disappear. To fold herself up so small no one could ever see her again. Especially when the one question she’d never been able to ask before burst out of her mouth.

“Why not?”

He thrust his fingers through his hair, looking tense, and more agitated than she had ever seen him. “Because you’re just a kid,” he said, but his voice had softened. “And I don’t kiss kids.”

She forced her face up, her humiliation beyond bearing.

He looked shocked and angry and a strangled laugh burst out of her mouth—the hysteria going some way to mask the hurt.

She had wanted to get a reaction out of Jared Caine, and now she had. Unfortunately, it was the wrong one.

His eyebrow shot up his forehead. “You think this is funny?” he snapped.

It wasn’t—in fact it was easily one of the least funny moments of her entire life—but she could never let him know that.

“I think it’s hilarious,” she lied as she shoved her chin out and stiffened her spine, adopting the pose she had used so often before when sassing Lloyd Whittaker to disguise the pain of his rejections.

“You spoiled brat.” Caine’s face hardened. “You try a stunt like that again and I’ll put you over my knee and spank you myself. I don’t care whose damn sister you are.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” she shot back. “You’re not even any good at it.”

It wasn’t true, of course. For that brief moment of bliss his lips had felt so firm, so sure, so perfect.

Swinging round, she raced out of the room and slammed the door.

But, as fast as she ran, she couldn’t escape the misery spreading through her like a virus.

Hitting her bed, she shoved her head under her pillow to muffle the wrenching sobs that poured out.

She didn’t want him to hear her crying.

But as the anguish slammed into her full force, it brought with it the cruel punch of memory. And the sounds of her father’s ranting—the words he’d shouted at Megan while he’d beat her sister with a belt.

“You’re just like her, both of you. No loyalty, no respect. Both little whores.”

Katie curled in on herself, trying to hold back the images which had tormented her for two long weeks.

But they played in her mind like a horror movie: Megan’s broken body curled on the floor, her arms flung over her head, the vivid welts on her shoulder blades accompanied by their father’s taunts and the sickening thud of leather hitting bone.

Katie gulped in breaths, the sobs so violent they wracked her whole body.

But the sweet spot between her legs still ached to be touched, her lips still felt tender and her cheeks still stung from the rasp of Caine’s jaw.

And the hideous truth kept repeating inside her head, over and over and over again.

Lloyd Whittaker had been wrong about Megan, punishing her for something their mother had done, but he had always been right about her.

And now Jared Caine knew it too.

CHAPTER ONE

Five years later, the Amalfi Coast, Italy

PLEASE DON’T DIE...please don’t die.

Katie prayed for all she was worth, but the god of smartphone batteries wasn’t listening because the phone screen cut to black.

She whimpered and stopped walking—or rather hobbling—along the narrow farm road as it dawned on her that having had most of her worldly possessions snatched by a couple of teenage sneak thieves wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her today.

The sun had sunk another inch toward the horizon, lengthening the shadows over the landscape of lemon and orange groves perched on the hillside.

She had been blown away by the wonder of the view at dawn that morning when she’d ventured down the deserted track on her second-hand Vespa to find a secluded cove to paint. But anxiety rose like a wave to add to her exhaustion now. In an hour, two at the most, it would be pitch-dark. And she would be stranded miles from the nearest town with no transport, no money, no means of communication, no luggage—she peered down at her bare legs and feet, covered in a layer of dirt that reached her knees—and no shoes.

Resisting the urge to hurl the offending phone—which hadn’t had a signal for hours—onto the rocks below, she shoved it into the pocket of her shorts.

How ironic that three months ago when she’d first arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport from New York with nothing but a backpack, the beautiful mahogany box of art supplies Megan had given her and her passport, the whole point had been to travel light. To support herself and spend some time on her own. To prove to herself and everyone else that she could be more than a serial screw-up or microcelebrity click bait.

On her first night in Paris, in a little hostel near the Bastille, she’d been terrified, but over the weeks and months since, she’d started to find something in Europe she’d never had in the US. Anonymity and hard work had finally given her the time and space she needed to grow up.

She’d made new friends—waiting tables in a brasserie in the Marais, making beds in a hotel near St Mark’s Square and hiking thirty miles on the Camino Real—but in the last month she had started to really appreciate her own company. She’d even managed to start earning real cash doing watercolor landscapes she posted each week to a gallery in Florence.

She hefted the box under her arm, which had begun to feel as if it weighed several tons about a mile and ten thousand blisters ago. At least she still had her paints.

But she’d discovered today she had a lot to learn about personal safety and not being an easy mark. If only she’d been less absorbed in her watercolor of the cove and more alert when Pinky and Perky had appeared from nowhere, maybe they wouldn’t have managed to hot-wire her scooter, wrestle her pack off her and then disappear in a cloud of dust and victorious whoops in the space of approximately twenty-five seconds.

How come I always have to learn everything the hard way?

She forced herself to keep going, even though her feet hurt from tiptoeing over the rocky path and her head was pounding as if someone had sideswiped her with her own pack. Probably because they had.

She tested the knot forming on her forehead with her fingertips.

If she ever caught up with Pinky and Perky, she was going to stab them both through the heart with a well-sharpened artist’s pencil. And then roast them like bacon.

The hum of an engine cut into her barbeque fantasies and a low-slung car appeared ahead of her, driving past the ruins of an old farmhouse. Or rather bouncing toward her on the uneven track.

Her breath gushed out, the wave of relief so extreme she felt nauseous. Maybe she could hitch a ride to Sorrento.

The sleek convertible was brand new and expensive. Apprehension cut off her optimism. What was this guy doing destroying his suspension on a farm track?

She brushed her hair over the bruising on her forehead and gripped the box in her arms, prepared to use it as a lethal weapon if her rescuer turned out to have the same moral compass as Pinky and Perky.

The car stopped a few yards ahead and a man stepped out. With the sun sinking, it was hard to make out more than a silhouette. But her heartbeat began to kick her ribs like a carthorse as he strolled toward her. His stride, leisurely and yet filled with purpose, looked familiar. And not in a good way.

Jared Caine? How the hell...?

The man stopped in front of her and his head dipped, as if he were checking her over.

The hum that started low in her abdomen was also disturbingly familiar.

It can’t be Caine. I must be hallucinating. Or seriously concussed. Or both.

“Hello, Katherine.” The deep voice, curt and businesslike, hauled her back to one of the lowest points in her life—even lower than this one, and that was saying something.

“What are you doing here?” she managed, still hoping she’d conjured him up from the depths of her sunstroke.

But then the shifting sunset glinted off the dark waves of his hair—no longer subdued by the buzz cut of five years ago—and cast a golden glow over his rugged features for the first time. A jolt of awareness hit her insides like a lightning strike, frying the tight knots of tension in her gut.

“Rescuing you,” he said, with only the barest hint of sarcasm. “Now, get in the car before you fall on your face.”

* * *

Jared Caine watched the horrified shock widen Katherine Whittaker’s emerald-green eyes as he searched her slender frame for any signs of injury.

She looked grubby and tired but otherwise okay—the sight of him more distressing than whatever had happened to have her sending her sister a garbled text about being in a spot of trouble hours ago.

It looked like more than a spot to him.

He forced himself to take a deep breath.

You’ve found her. She’s okay. Now all you have to do is get her on a plane back to New York and you can forget about her again.

The tension which had been grinding in the pit of his stomach since noon—and during the long hours of the afternoon, as he and a team of his men had combed the five square miles to where his IT guys had managed to triangulate her phone signal—began to ease. At least he’d found her before dark.

“I don’t need rescuing,” she said, her dazed expression hardening with animosity.

The fist which had been tightening around his throat for the last twenty minutes as he watched the sun head for the horizon thumped his larynx with a one-two punch.

“You’re kidding, right?” His gaze drifted over her, taking in the butt-hugging cut-offs, the dusty shirt, the tank top showing the subtle curve of her breasts, the filthy feet which... Where the heck were her shoes?

She planted one fist on her hip, the other one clinging to a carved wooden box that looked almost as heavy as she was. “No, I’m not kidding.”

She puffed with indignation, but the sweat-soaked hair stuck to her forehead stayed firmly in place. Unfortunately it did nothing to disguise her high cheekbones, the full, mobile mouth or the sunburnt patch on her nose. Or the exhaustion shadowing her mermaid-green eyes.

“I’m good,” she said, her arms tightening on the wooden box and her chin jutting out. “I don’t know how you found me, but you can just unfind me again. Okay?”

“No, that’s not okay.”

Frustration and extreme irritation twisted his insides.

It was a reaction he recognized. From the last time Dario had asked him to ride herd on his kid sister-in-law—and the single heartbeat of madness when he’d reacted without thinking to the sharp, spicy taste of that mouth.

“I’m not unfinding you,” he said. “And I’m not leaving you here. Dario wants you on a flight back to New York as soon as you’re found.”

Her eyebrows launched up her forehead. “I’m not going back to New York,” she said, sounding adamant for a woman who looked as if she was about to collapse. But then the box she was holding slipped. She struggled to regain it, stumbled, and then yelped as her bare foot landed on a rock.

“Okay, this conversation’s over,” he said.

Stepping forward, he scooped her and the box into his arms.

She gasped and went rigid. “Put me down.” The angry glare infused the rest of her face with a shade of red to match her sunburn.

“Nope.” The spicy scent of lemon, sea salt and female sweat tightened the screaming tension in his gut as he marched up the track toward his car.

“What do you mean no? I... Oof!”

He dumped her unceremoniously into the passenger seat and slammed the door. After striding around the front of the muscle car, he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

Placing his arm across the back of her seat, he began to reverse down the track, wincing when he heard the muffler bounce off another rock.

“I see you still get off on ordering women about,” she said, but the insult lacked heat.

He slipped his sunglasses on and ignored her. From their sparring matches five years ago, he knew her default position was mouthy and it was better not to engage.

Katherine Whittaker had always been a piece of work. But, if the tabloid press was to be believed, her behavior had gotten a whole lot worse in the years since her old man’s trial and their aborted kiss in her housekeeper’s Brooklyn apartment. She’d dropped off the radar for the past few months, but according to Dario that was only because she’d left Manhattan and had been bumming around Europe on her own, freaking her sister out. So, basically, Katherine Whittaker had just spent the last few months causing trouble incognito.

He backed onto the coast road, slotted the transmission into drive and hit the gas. He could feel her angry glare but didn’t trust himself to speak.

This woman had everything—a lavish home, a family who loved her and the smarts to make something of herself. Instead of which, she’d chosen to thumb her nose at it all and behave like a kid in a candy store for years, probably all on Dario’s dime.

“I don’t know where you think you’re taking me, but you can’t make me do anything,” she said.

He glanced across the console. Her tip-tilted eyes had gone squinty around the corners.

“I’m not nineteen years old anymore,” she added. “And I don’t take orders from anyone, least of all you.”

He turned back to the road, but not before he’d noticed the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the soft cotton of her tank top.

“You want to get out and walk some more?” he asked, calling her bluff.

She glared at him but then swung her face away.

I didn’t think so.

Her slim shoulders slumped against the seat—reminding him of the troubled nineteen-year-old with a big mouth and a crush on him he’d taken great pains to ignore, until she’d gotten under his guard for a few gut-wrenching seconds.

The dying sunlight caught the gold in her hair and made the sweat misting the slopes of her breasts glimmer. Reaction kicked him hard in the gut.

Sometime in the last five years, the gawky duckling with the smart and way too tempting mouth had turned into a long-legged and stunningly beautiful swan, even under the layer of dirt, sweat and animosity.

He punched the gas to pass a truck laden with fruit trees. The sooner he got rid of Katherine Whittaker, the better.

“Why are you even in Italy?” she murmured. “Please tell me you didn’t come all this way just to get in my face?”

He let the snotty comment go, because even the hostile tone couldn’t disguise the weary resignation.

“I’m staying on Capri until Monday,” he said. “The company’s running security for the press opening of the new Venus resort. Dario contacted me to coordinate the search when you texted Megan this morning.”

“How fortuitous,” she said, the bite of sarcasm dulled by fatigue.

Not that fortuitous, really. The Venus project was a major contract, but Jared hadn’t planned to attend the event in person—despite all the noise from his PR department about the great publicity it would generate in the European market if he showed up for the four-day press launch. But his plans had changed this morning when Dario’s call had come in from New York, interrupting him in Naples during a meeting where he’d been finalizing the takeover of a small tech-security firm.

The urgency in Dario’s voice had hit first, then the wave of shame at the mention of a girl he had tried very hard to forget in the last five years.

When he’d discovered that Katherine was missing on the Amalfi Coast somewhere, that her sister Megan was freaking out big time and that they hadn’t been able to contract her, Jared hadn’t hesitated.

He’d redirected a team of his men from the Venus project to kick-start the search, and then taken a helicopter to Sorrento.

He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. He still didn’t know where that impulse had come from. Probably just his loyalty to Dario. It was true he’d never quite been able to forget Katherine Whittaker—and the desolation in her eyes after that aborted kiss—but he never got sentimental about women. Especially not women as troublesome as this one.

“How did you end up lost in Campania barefoot?” he asked, attempting to defuse the situation and get some answers. Although he suspected he already knew what had happened.

The Amalfi Coast was a mecca for billionaire property development and high-end tourism but, when you factored in the deprivation in Naples’ slums less than thirty miles away, opportunistic robberies weren’t uncommon.

“I’m not lost,” she said, snapping his olive branch in two. “I know where I am. And where I want to go. And it’s not back to New York.”