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One

Isabella Moreno froze in the middle of her lecture—in the middle of a sentence, really—as the door in the back of her classroom opened and the president of the Gem Institute of America walked in But it wasn’t the presence of Harlan Peters that threw her off her gaood professor and she knew it; a visit fro deal No, it was the tall, dark and silentnext to him that struck fear into her heart even as he sent shivers up and down her spine

Don’t forget gorgeous, she thought as she forced herself to continue her discussion of the cutting and polishing of off-shape sapphires Her graduate students had begun turning to look at what had distracted her and it was only a matter of seconds before she would lose the attention of every feles co from various corners of the room, and they didn’t even knoho the mystery man was yet

Not that she did, either Not really Oh, she recognized hith of time and not be able to identify Marc Durand, CEO of the second largest dia black hair, bright blue eyes and fallen angel face were hard to nore But the look on that face, the glittering contempt in those distinctive eyes and the derisive twist of those full lips was not so froer

The Marc she knew—the Marc she’d once loved—had looked at her only with tenderness With a had fallen apart But even then he’d shown soe, hurt, betrayal It had nearly killed her to see those emotions on his face, and to know that she was responsible for them

But the look on his face now—the derision, the scorn, the ice—turned hinize; someone she certainly didn’t want to know

When they’d been together, their relationship had been characterized by heat, soit would take before she got burned The answer, it turned out, had been six ive or take a few hours

Not that she’d been counting

And not that she blas had ended How could she when the way things had gone down—the way the two of them had self-destructed—had been almost completely her fault?

Oh, he could have been kinder She was the first to ad her onto the streets of New York City in thebut the clothes on her back, was a hideous thing to do But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t deserved it Even now, there were nights she lay awake staring at the ceiling and wondering how she could have done what she had done How she could have betrayed the man she’d loved so completely

But that was the probleht between twofor, and because of that, she’d ruined everything She’d known her father had stolen froems back

, she hadn’t told Marc who the thief was until it was nearly too late for hie his business And then she’dMarc not to prosecute, and by adala where they’d firstto steal froed—once she’d spoken to him, once he’d looked at her with those crazy blue eyes of his, but—

Isabella shied away fro Marc in the ht her to her knees six years before She’d be daain, after all this ti Especially here, in the raduate seminar of the day

Forcing her wandering mind back to the task at hand, she wasbetween her and Marc As was the college president Despite the years that had passed, the connection between them was obvious, the tension a live wire that threatened to spark at any moment Determined not to let that happen, and not to let the atet any more aard than it already was, Isabella forced herself back to her task

The next part of her lecture was on the world’s ot to the part about the theft of the Robin’s Egg Sapphire—one of the ems in the world—she did her best not to look at Marc