CHAPTER 1

NANDINI stood still as a statue at the glass viewing window. Her wide emerald eyes were burning.

Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension. Every muscle ached. Only the most fierce self-discipline held back her exhaustion. It had been a long night and a devastating dawn. And every minute, every agonizing hour of it was etched into her soul.

The nurse wheeled over her nephew's cot and displayed him with a wide smile.

She probably didn't know, Nandini thought numbly. She looked back at the nurse, her fine-boned face ashen and strained, her facial muscles frozen into a mask.

The nurse stopped smiling but Nandini didn't notice. Her attention had locked into her nephew. He had a shock of black hair and a pair of furious dark eyes.

There was nothing of Jenny in him. He was Mediterranean-dark, his foreign ancestry clearly apparent.

He was screaming. He looked so unhappy. She wondered if on some strange wave length he knew that his mother was dead. Dead. She flinched inwardly away from the word and began to walk up

the corridor on legs that didn't feel strong enough to support her.

Women didn't die in childbirth these days. Or so she had believed. And Jenny hadn't even been a woman in her sister's opinion. At eighteen, Jenny had been on the shady boundary line between child and adult.

A golden girl with beauty, intelligence and everything to live for.. .until Karan Malhotra had come into her life and laid it to waste. An immense bitterness gripped Nandini. The emotion was so intense, it literally frightened her.

'Miss Khanna ”. The sound of that voice halted her in her tracks. That dark,accented drawl cut into her like a razor. She shuddered. Slowly she raised her head. He stood several feel away.

A male few would overlook. He had to be at least six feet three. His superbly tailored dark grey suit outlined broad, muscular shoulders and long, lean legs.The fabric and the cut alone screamed expense. He had the lethal, in born grace of a wild animal and the intimidating and instinctive authority of a man born to command.

Nandini stared in disbelief as he extended a lean brown hand. The long fingers, she noticed absently, were beautifully shaped. 'Please permit me to offer my most sincere condolences on your sister's tragic death,' he murmured in a taut under tone.

Nandini took a quick backward step, repulsed by the threat of any form of bodily contact. 'What are you doing here?' she demanded shakily.

'You left an urgent message with my secretary,' he reminded her.

' Jenny made me phone, but I didn't ask for you to come, Mr Malhotra ,' Nandini breathed jerkily. 'I asked for your brother.'

' Karan is in Greece .' Kunal Malhotra watched her with impassive eyes as dark as a winter's night.

'I have already informed him of your sister's death. He is most deeply distressed,' he asserted.

A hysterical laugh escaped Nandini.'Really!' she gasped incredulously.

'I would like to see my nephew,' Kunal responded, ignoring her response with supreme cool.

'No!'Nandini gritted, her slight body stiffening with a sudden rush of raw aggression that came from fathoms deep down inside her. She hated and detested Kunal Malhotra more than any man alive.

Her hatred had festered over many months. Now it was like a cancer inside her,eating away until it consumed every other emotion. 'Your right is no greater than mine-----'

'Right?' Nandini echoed half an octave higher. 'You dare to talk about rights after what you did to Jenny ? You have no rights over Jenny 's child, no rights whatsoever! You sicken me!'

'You are distraught,' Kunal Malhotra informed her with apparent calm, but she was not fooled. A dark line of blood had risen over his high cheekbones and his mouth had flattened into a pale line.

People did not speak to Kunal Malhotra in such a tone. He was fabulously rich and terrifyingly powerful. His minions bowed and scraped. His family walked in awe of him. His word was law.

He did not expect opposition. The media had published several blood curdling stories about what happened to those foolish enough to challenge Kunal Malhotra in business. But Nandini had no fear of him.

Nandini would have given twenty years of her life to have the power to hurt Kunal Malhotra as he had hurt her sister.

'Youmurdered her... you killed her with unkindness. I hope you're satisfied now!' Nandini shot back at him with raw venom.

'Miss Khanna .' A strong hand caught her wrist as she attempted to walk past him.

"Let go of me, you swine!' Nandini hissed in outrage.

'Were it not for the fact that I am capable of making allowances for your understandable grief, I would demand an apology,' Kunal slashed down at her from his imposing height, tiger's eyes raking her enraged face. 'But this is not the place for such a confrontation. Compose yourself before I lose my temper!'

Nandini was shivering as though she were caught in a force-ten gale. Outright fury controlled her as he retained that bruising hold on her wrist. She lifted her free hand and hit blindly up at that dark, arrogant

face with all her strength. He released her with an incredulous growl, a lean hand flying up to one sculpted cheekbone.

Nandini staggered back. 'Don't ever come near me again!' she slung wildly, dimly shocked by that raw surge of uncharacteristic violence. She could not remember ever striking another human being before. Even as a child she had been a pacifist.

Fora split-second, she collided with splintering golden eyes, incandescent with disbelief. And then she tore her gaze from his and forced herself to walk straight-backed down the corridor and out of the

hospital.

She was in shock, so deep in shock that she didn't even know where she was going. Jenny was dead. She could not yet accept that. Their parents had died in a car crash when Nandini was seventeen.

There had been no money. Jenny had only been eleven.

'Look after Jenny ,' her mother had moaned repeatedly in Intensive Care. Padmini Khanna had still been fretting about her youngest child when she'd breathed her last.

Nandini had left school, given up all hope of any further education and concentrated on her sister's needs. She had persuaded her father's cousin Nina to let them live with her. With Nina in the background, the social services had allowed Nandini to keep her sister.

Nandini had worked as a waitress. Every day she had come home to cook and clean and tidy up after Nina , who had regarded her as unpaid domestic help and had, in addition, taken almost every penny of her meager wages.

As soon as she was eighteen, Nandini had found other accommodation. She had done her utmost to give Jenny a secure and loving home. She had made her sister her number one priority. And Jenny had

thrived.A golden girl with the long-legged lithe good looks of a Californian blonde.

Smart into the bargain, Nandini observed with helpless pride. It hadn't been easy to keep her lively extrovert sister's mind on the necessity of studying to get on in the world.But Nandini had managed it. Jenny had passed her A levels and gone on to university to study languages.

Nandini had been as proud as any mother could have been. She had taken on another job part-time in the evenings so that Jenny wouldn't be short of money.

Everything had been going so well before Karan Malhotra had entered her sister's life.

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