He had earmarked that money for a charity that helped traumatised children.
The irony of why he had chosen that charity would be funny if the situation were not so damn serious. The memories of Javier and Luis’s traumatisation at the death of their mother at the hands of their father had haunted him for years.
Benjamin had almost bankrupted himself investing in the Tour Mont Blanc project. He’d spent seven years clawing his way back, going higher than he had ever climbed before, investing and expanding his fine food business across the globe until he had reached the point where he didn’t owe a cent to anyone. All his assets, his business and subsidiaries were his alone and could never be taken from him. Now he could do some good with the great wealth he had built for himself and Javier and Luis had stolen his first significant act from him, just as they had stolen his money, his trust and all the memories he’d held dear.
‘Take it up with your lawyers.’
‘I have.’ Benjamin remembered the green colour Andre had turned when he’d had to tell his most lucrative client that the Casillas brothers were correct in their assertion that he was only owed five per cent of the profits.
It had been there in black and white on the contract he’d signed seven years ago, hidden in the small print. It could have been written in the largest font available and he doubted he would have noticed it back then. He had signed the contract without getting his lawyer to read it first. That was his own fault, he accepted that. It was the only contract he’d ever signed without poring over every word first. The brothers had been given until midnight to come up with the full asking price or the land would have been sold to another interested party and they would have lost the substantial deposit they’d already paid at that point.
They had come to him for help on the same day Benjamin’s mother had been told there was nothing more the medical team could do to stave off the cancer ravaging her body. Although not a shock—she had not responded well to any of the treatment she’d been given—it had been the single biggest blow in his life.
Benjamin had signed with only a cursory glance at the document and transferred the money there and then. If it had been anyone else he would have refused to even contemplate the investment but it had been Javier and Luis asking. Men he regarded as kin. Men his mother had regarded as kin. Men he’d trusted unconditionally. At the time he hadn’t cared that it would eat into his own cash-flow and that the chateau he’d intended to buy outright for his mother to pass the last of her days in would need him to take a hefty mortgage. It was that knock-on effect that had almost bankrupted him.
‘From a legal point of view there is nothing more I can do about it.’ The words felt like needles in his throat.
He’d refused to accept Andre’s judgement and had fast-tracked the matter to a courtroom. The judge had reluctantly agreed with Andre.
Benjamin’s rage at the situation had been enflamed when Javier and Luis successfully applied for an injunction on the reporting of the court case. They didn’t want the business world to know their word was worthless or the levels to which they would stoop in the name of profit.
‘Have you brought me here to tell me this thinking I will speak to Javier on your behalf?’ she asked, her disbelief obvious despite the composed way she held herself.
He laughed mirthlessly and took a paring knife off the tray. He doubted very much that Javier cared for Freya’s opinion. She was his beautiful prima ballerina trophy not his partner. Benjamin’s hope was that her value as a trophy was greater than two hundred and twenty-five million euros.
Cutting into the peel of a fat, ripe orange, he said, ‘I am afraid the situation has gone far past the point where it can be resolved by words alone.’
‘Then what do you want from me? Why am I here?’
‘Every action has a consequence. Javier and Luis have stolen from me and I am out of legal options.’ He cut the last of the peel off the orange and dropped it into a bowl. ‘In reality, the money is not important...’
She let out a delicate, disbelieving cough.
He cut into the flesh of his peeled orange. ‘I am a very wealthy man, ma douce...’
‘Well done.’
‘And if it was just the money I would write it off,’ he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him, cutting the orange into segments. ‘But this is about much more than money, more than you could understand. I am not willing to let it go or let them get away with it. You are my last bargaining chip.’
‘Me?’ For the first time since she had entered his home, her composure made an almost imperceptible slip. ‘But I had nothing to do with it. I was still in ballet school when you signed that contract.’
‘Oui. You.’ He looked at his watch and smiled. ‘In three minutes it will be midnight. In three minutes Javier will receive a message giving him exactly twenty-four hours to pay the money owed.’
She swallowed. ‘Or...?’
‘If the Casillas brothers refuse to pay what they have taken from me then by the laws of natural justice I shall take from them, starting with you. If they do not pay then, ma douce, the message Javier will receive any moment tells him his engagement to you will be over and that you will marry me instead.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE BURN THAT had enflamed Freya’s brain earlier returned with a vengeance. She gazed into the resolute green eyes that gave nothing away and felt her stomach clench into a pinpoint.
Freya had no illusions about her lack of intellect. Ballet had been her all-consuming passion since she could walk. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she hadn’t breathed dance and her education had suffered for it. She had one traditional educational qualification and that was in art.
But this didn’t mean she was stupid and she would have to be the dimmest person to walk the earth not to look into those green eyes and recognise that Benjamin was deadly serious.
This was revenge in its purest form and she was his weapon of choice to gain it.
She was his hostage.
Her kidnapper stared at her without an ounce of pity, waiting for her response to his bombshell.
She responded by using the only means she had at her disposal, her only weapon. Her body.
Jumping up from the sofa, she swept an arm over the coffee table, scattering the crockery and glasses on it, but didn’t hang around to see the damage, already racing through the non-existent wall and out into the warm grounds. Benjamin’s surprised curse echoed behind her.
Security lights came on, putting a spotlight on her but she didn’t care. She would outrun them. She dived into the thick, high shrubbery that she hoped surrounded the perimeter of the chateau and hoped gave adequate camouflage until she found the driveway they had travelled to reach the chateau and which she would follow until she found the road.
She had run from Benjamin earlier. She had reluctantly gone back to him because she had thought he was the unknown that posed the least danger.
She had made the wrong choice. Her heated responses to his physicality, the strange chemical responses that set off inside her every time she looked into his green eyes had stopped her recognising the very real danger she was in.
How big was this chateau and its grounds? she wondered desperately as she cut her way through the trees and hedges, trusting her sense of direction that she was headed the right way.
It seemed to take for ever before she peered through the shrubbery to find the courtyard Benjamin’s driver had dropped them off at. The night was dark but there were enough ground lights for her to see the electric gates they had driven through.
Quickly she looked around it and saw the gate, a high wrought-iron contraption with spikes at the top that linked the high stone wall she would have to scale if she were to get away.
Keeping to the shadows, Freya treaded her way to the wall, her heart sinking the closer she got.
It was at least twice her height.
She stepped cautiously from the high tree she’d hidden behind for a bette
r look. The wall was old. It had plenty of grooves and nooks for her to use to lever herself up. If she kept to the shadows she’d be able to scale it away from the estate lights...but then she wouldn’t be able to see what was on the other side if she were in the dark.
Determination filled her. If she didn’t climb this wall she would never escape.
She took one deep inhalation for luck then darted forward.
The moment she stepped off the thick, springy ground of the woods and onto the gravelled concrete, it seemed as if a thousand lights suddenly shone on her.
Not prepared to waste a second, she raced to the wall, found her first finger holes and began to climb.
She’d made it only two feet off the ground when she heard shouts. Aware of heavy footsteps nearing her, she sped up. The top of the wall was almost within reach when she stretched to grip a slightly protruding stone and, too late, realised it was loose.
With a terrified scream, she lost her hold entirely and fell back, would have crashed to the ground and almost certainly landed flat on her back had a pair of strong arms not been there to catch her as assuredly as any of her dance partners would have done.
Instinct had her throw her arms around Benjamin’s neck while he made one quick shift of position to hold her more securely.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried her hardest to open her airwaves.
She couldn’t breathe. The shock of the fall and the unexpected landing had pushed all the air from her lungs. But her terrified heart was racing at triple time, tremors raging through her body.
How had he reached her so quickly? He must have run at superhuman speed.
‘Do you have a death wish?’
His angry words cut through the shock and she opened her eyes to find his face inches from her own, furious green eyes boring into hers.
He was holding her as securely as a groom about to cross the threshold with his new bride but staring at her with all the tenderness of a lion about to bite into the neck of its prey.
Then he muttered something unintelligible under his breath and set off back to the chateau.
‘You can put me down now,’ she said, then immediately wished she hadn’t spoken as now that she could breathe again she could smell again too. Her face was so close to Benjamin’s neck she could smell the muskiness of his skin under the spicy cologne.
He shook his head grimly.
She struggled against him. ‘I’m quite capable of walking.’
His hold tightened. ‘And have you run away and put yourself in danger again?’
‘I won’t—’
‘What were you thinking?’ he demanded. His footsteps crunched over the gravel. ‘If I hadn’t been there to catch you...’
‘What did you expect?’ Her words came in short, ragged gasps. The feel of his muscular body pressed so tightly against her own made her wish he were made of steel on the outside as well as the inside. Damn him. If he were a robot or machine she could ignore that he was human and that her body was behaving in the opposite manner that it should to be held in his arms like this.
Her lips should not tingle and try to crane closer to the strained tendons on his neck, not to bite but to kiss...
‘I expected you to listen, not run into the night. The forests around the chateau are miles deep. You can spend days—weeks—lost in them and not meet a soul.’
‘I don’t care. You can’t kidnap me and hold me to ransom and think I’m going to just accept it.’ She squeezed her eyes shut to block his neck from her sight.
If only she could block the rest of him out too.
God, she could hardly breathe for fear and fury and that awful, awful awareness of him.
Pierre had the door open for them. As Benjamin carried Freya over the threshold, the butler saw her feet and winced.
Benjamin sighed inwardly before depositing her onto the nearest armchair and instructing Pierre, who really should have long gone to bed, to bring him a bowl of warm water and a first-aid kit.
‘Telling him to bring handcuffs so you can chain me in your horrible house?’ his unwilling guest asked snidely.
‘That’s a tempting idea, but no.’ Tempting for a whole host of reasons he refused to allow himself to think of.
Holding Freya in his arms like that had felt too damn good. The awareness he’d felt for her from that first look had become like an infection inside him.
He must not forget who she was. Javier’s fiancée. His only possible means of getting his money back and giving Javier a taste of the betrayal he himself was feeling.
Kneeling before her, he took her left foot in his hand. She made to kick out but his hold was too firm. ‘I am not going to hurt you.’
‘You said that before,’ she snapped.
‘The harm you have caused to your feet is self-inflicted. Keep still. I want to look for damage.’
The full lips pulled in on themselves, her black eyes staring at him maleficently before she turned her face to the wall. He took it as tacit agreement for him to examine her feet. The foot in his hands was filthy from walking bare through all the trees and shrubbery but there was no damage he could see. He placed it down more gently than she deserved and picked up her right foot. It hadn’t fared so well. Tiny droplets of blood oozed out where she’d trodden on something sharp.
Pierre came into the room with the equipment he’d requested, along with fresh towels.
‘Going to do a spot of waterboarding?’ she asked with a glare.
He returned it with a glare of his own. ‘Stop giving me ideas. I’m going to clean your feet...’
‘I can clean my own feet...’
‘And make sure you have no thorns or stones stuck in them.’
‘You’re a doctor?’
‘Only a man with a sister who could never remember to put shoes on when she was a child.’ And rarely as a teenager either. Chloe had moved out of the chateau a few years ago and he still missed her lively presence in his daily life.
His much younger sister was as furious with the Casillas brothers as he was and had insisted on helping that night. He’d given her the task of delaying Luis from the gala and she had risen to it with aplomb. Now she was safely tucked up in first class flying to the Caribbean to escape the fall-out.
‘I’m a dancer,’ Freya said obstinately. ‘My feet are tough.’
‘Tough enough to risk infection? Tough enough to risk your career?’
‘Being held hostage is a risk to my career.’
‘Stop being so melodramatic. You are not a hostage.’ He took a sterile cloth and dipped it in the water, squeezing it first before carefully rubbing it against the sole of her foot.
‘If I’m not allowed to leave that makes me a hostage. If I’m being held for ransom that makes me a hostage.’
‘Hardly. All I require is twenty-four hours of your time. One day.’ He rubbed an antiseptic wipe to the tiny wounds at the sole of her foot, then carefully placed it down on its heel.
‘And what happens then? What if Javier says no and refuses to pay?’
‘You have doubts?’ He lifted her other foot onto his lap. ‘Are you afraid his love for you is not worth such a large amount of money?’
She didn’t answer.
Raising his gaze from her feet to her face, he noted the strain of her clenched jaw.
‘You are the most exciting dancer to have emerged in Europe since his mother died. You have the potential to be the best and Javier is not a man who settles for second best in anything. You are not publicity hungry. You will give him beautiful babies. You tick every box he has made in his list of wants for a wife. Why would he let you go?’ As he spoke he cleaned her foot, taking great care in case there were any thorns hidden in the hard soles not visible to the naked eye.
Freya’s assessment of her feet being tough was correct, the soles hard and calloused, the big toe on her right foot blackened by bruising.
His heart made a strange tugging motion to imagine the agonies she must go through danci
ng night after night on toes that must be in perpetual pain. These were feet that had been abused by its owner in a never-ending quest for dance perfection. And what perfection it was...
Benjamin had been dragged across the world in his younger years by his mother, who had been Clara Casillas’s personal seamstress as well as her closest friend. His childhood home had been a virtual shrine to the ballet but he’d been oblivious to it all, his interest in ballet less than zero. He’d thought himself immune to any of the supposed beauty the dance had to offer. That had been until he’d watched a clip of Freya dancing as Sleeping Beauty on the Internet the other week.
There had been something in the way she moved when she danced that had made his throat tighten and the hairs on his arms lift. He’d watched only a minute of that clip before turning it off. He’d tried to rid his mind of the images that seemed to have etched themselves in his brain ever since.
Freya belonged to his enemy. He had no business imagining her.
And yet...
As hard as he had tried, he had been completely unable to stop his mind drifting to her or stop the poker-like stabs of jealousy to imagine her in Javier’s arms that had engulfed him since he’d first set eyes on her.
‘Javier knows I am a man of my word,’ he continued, looking beyond the battered soles of her feet to the smooth, almost delicate ankles and calves that were undeniably feminine. A strange itch started in his fingers to stroke the skin to feel if it was as smooth to his touch as to his eye. ‘He knows if I say I will marry you then I will marry you.’
‘You’ve rigged everything to fall your way but unless you have something even more nefarious up your sleeve you can’t marry me without my permission.’ Steel laced her calm voice. ‘Besides, you said I only have to stay with you for one day—you’ve given me your word too. You are lying to one of us. Which is it?’
‘I have not lied to either of you. Have you not wondered why I had your phone tampered with?’
Billionaire's Bride for Revenge (Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge) Page 4
