Love is a Stranger
Table of Contents
LOVE IS A STRANGER
More Heat Than The Sun, Book One
JOHN WILTSHIRE
mlrpress
www.mlrpress.com
Blurb
Loving a total stranger can be very hard work sometimes.
How do you love someone who exists entirely in the shadows? How do you love a man who describes himself as dead? How do you get that ghost to love you back? Ex-SAS soldier Ben Rider falls in love with his enigmatic married boss, Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen, but Nikolas is living a lie. A lie so profound that when the shadows are lifted, Ben realises he’s in love with a very dangerous stranger. Ben has to choose between Nikolas and safety, but sometimes danger comes in a very seductive package.
Copyright Acknowledgement
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2014 by John Wiltshire
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
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Cover Art by Michelle Cary
Editing by Christie Nelson
ebook format
Issued 2014
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher.
Dedication
For Josh, who shows us all how to do it best, and for Molly, my number one fan, who had to have it read to her with all the best bits left out.
PROLOGUE
Ben Rider woke to the debilitating knowledge that there was someone else in the bedroom with him. He lay very still in his sleeping bag, listening to the silence of the abandoned house. The dog, Radulf, was vibrating with warning on his legs. Neither of them knew the man standing in the shadows, nor did they doubt his identity. He was, after all, the man Ben had been sleeping with for over four years and living with for the last six months. His partner. You got to know someone pretty well that way, in the roll and tumble of desire—or you were supposed to. Ben had realised two days ago he knew nothing at all about this man—not even his real name. Everything Ben had been told, everything he’d come to believe, had been based upon a lie. He had once accused the man of being nothing more than a shadow dance; a figure of masks, illusions, and transitory alliances. He’d thought he’d broken through the layers that protected this enigmatic man’s existence: diplomat, titled aristocrat. He’d thought the man had opened up and accepted him into his life. After all, Ben had allowed
him
into his body. It was all a sham, and Ben was hollow with the depth of the betrayal.
Six months. How had it all gone so wrong?
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
Six Months Earlier
Ben Rider crested the ridge, pushing, feeling strong, his legs aching slightly from the hard pace he’d been setting. Satisfied with his time, he stopped and bent, hands on his knees, breathing evenly. He’d done this run every morning since returning from Iraq and his times were gradually improving, the stress and inactivity of his last op finally worked out by the punishing regime. Straightening, he turned and began the easier jog downhill, hard on the knees but not even testing his breathing.
He glanced once more at his watch. Just over an hour gone—he should be home in less than forty minutes. He grinned as he ran, planning all the ways he could wake Nate, all the interesting ways he could warm down—they could warm up. Nate’s tempting, sleep-pliant body played in Ben’s mind, distracting him from the pain in his right knee where a steel toecap had once tried to end his running days. The sensation of sinking into the accommodating form took Ben’s mind off the nagging stitch from the still healing bullet wound in his side. He wasn’t even thinking about his cracked molar, which he couldn’t blame on the job but on dumb luck and possibly first-class food on British Airways. He was feeling a hot shower pounding on his naked skin and hearing the rasp of Nate’s stubble against his as they kissed under the water. He was revelling in the luxury of downtime after a successful mission, riding high on the thought of spending a whole day with Nate. Nate was willing to give Ben a
whole day
when others in his life were not. But he refused to think about the
other
man in his life. It made him too angry.
He
made him too angry.
He smelt the smoke first but thought only of the pleasure of autumn and the evocative aroma of burning wood that heralded the beginning of November and bonfire season. He didn’t hear the siren until he’d emerged from the forest and had begun the last, short stretch along the local B-road that looped around and led to the cottage. The ambulance screamed past as he stood pressed into the hedgerow. It was only then a faint tingle of anxiety made itself felt in the base of his spine. He began to run again, picking up the pace from his usual warm down on this stretch of the road. Now he could hear more sounds—hard to identify—possibly shouting but almost drowned out by roaring. And then he saw the flames. He’d never seen a house fire before and hadn’t realised flames could reach so high, be so all consuming.
No, not a house fire—a cottage fire.
His
cottage. He ran through the gate. It was a scene of chaos: fire engines; the ambulance, lights still blinking blue but sirens off; men everywhere shouting; and the flames coming out from every window consuming the thatch. Someone grabbed his arm, but he hit out automatically, sending the paramedic to the ground, and ran on toward the door. The heat beat him back. He began screaming Nate’s name, running back to the ambulance, realising he would be there not in the burning building—but it was empty. He whirled around, saw the downed medic and hauled him up, shouting in his face. And then he saw the figure being handed out of the bedroom window from a man in breathing equipment to another on a ladder. He felt another hand on his arm, a squeeze. He shook it off and went forward. Thank God, Nate was still asleep. But how could someone sleep through this? He wanted to shake him and wake him up; not even to make love to him as he’d been planning, but just so the guy could go on with his life, the simple one he’d enjoyed.
Ben had seen enough bodies in his life to recognise the difference between sleep and death. It wasn’t much, when all was said and done, but enough. Enough to ruin the lives of those left behind, those who still had to sleep and wake every day and go on living.
He didn’t watch them load Nate into the ambulance and tear out with an unnecessary siren. Instead, he sat on the dry stonewall at the front of the cottage and watched it all burn.
It was the start of bonfire season, after all.
CHAPTER TWO
One Month Later
Ben followed the doorman into his suite and slipped him the requisite gratuity before dismissing him. He didn’t want or need his bag unpacked. He wasn’t planning on staying long. When the door was closed, he went to the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared unseeing at the impressive view of London. He didn’t check his watch, even though Mikkelsen was late. He was the boss, it was his prerogative to be so.
When Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen finally arrived, he was over two hours late. If his tardiness bothered him, he hid it well. Ben suspected this perpetual air of disinterested nonchalance was largely an act, but then as the head of a Black Ops department within Britain’s Intelligence Agency, Sir Nikolas was probably required to play many roles. Ben often reflected that anyone making the acquaintance of this tall, handsome, impeccably dressed Dane would probably take him for a banker—perhaps an art critic. After their first meeting, untangling Sir Nikolas’s often incomprehensible accent, hearing his formal use of learnt English, Ben had been surprised to discover that his new boss was a member of the British Royal Family—married, in fact, to a cousin of the queen. Lady Philipa had once been a very popular “IT” girl and ex-nanny of the current heir. Ben had heard malicious rumours within the department that Sir Nikolas’s meteoric rise in the British Intelligence Agency—an institution not fond of giving its plumb jobs to foreigners—was entirely due to these impressive connections. Ben was sure Sir Nikolas was well aware what his detractors said about him. He was just as positive that Sir Nikolas didn’t care. Sometimes, disinterested nonchalance was an act played too well.
But Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen wasn’t the only one who could take on roles. Ben was just as capable of feigning disinterest as his boss. Ben knew very well he hadn’t been recruited from Special Forces into the world of Black Ops because he was the perfect grey man, the operative who could work unnoticed in any situation—anything but. He was always noticed. At six foot four with wide-set green eyes and high cheekbones, the department used Ben’s beauty as a sort of double bluff. Who would ever suspect such a pretty boy? Distracted by the charming, beautiful exterior, the skill and quiet self-possession beneath were often overlooked.