If she could get through that then she was equal to this, equal to Benjamin and the heady, powerful emotions he evoked in her. She could keep them contained. She must.
She could not predict what her future held but she knew what the consequences would be if she allowed this one clause to scupper their marriage plans: a slow, cripplingly painful death for her mother. She would do anything to ease her mother’s suffering. Anything. The first message that had popped into her phone when it had come back to life earlier was her father’s daily update. Her mother had had ‘a relatively comfortable night’. Translated, that meant the pain had only woken her a couple of times.
‘If you’re allowed to make a change in the contract then I must be allowed to make one too,’ she told him, jutting her chin out and refusing to wilt under the swirling green eyes boring into her. She would not let him browbeat her before they had even signed the contract.
‘Which is?’
‘I was supposed to be moving in with Javier. My flatmate’s already found a new tenant to take my room so I’m not going to have anywhere to live when I’m at work. I want you to buy me an apartment to live in in Madrid. We’re on a two-week shutdown so that’s plenty of time for a man of your talents to buy one for me.’
She saw the faintest clenching of his jaw before his eyes narrowed.
‘I will not have my wife working for my rival.’
‘The contract states in black and white that I continue my career for as long as I like and I do what is best for me and my career. You have no say and no influence in it.’
‘I can change the terms to include that.’
‘You said one change. Or have you forgotten you’re a man of your word?’
No, he had not forgotten, Benjamin thought grimly. It had simply not occurred to him that, having agreed to marry him, Freya would want to return to Madrid. She could work anywhere. It didn’t have to be there.
‘He will make your life a misery,’ he warned.
‘Javier has nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the company. He’s rarely there.’
But Madrid was his home. The thought of Freya living in the same city as him set his teeth further on edge.
‘There are many fine ballet companies in France who would love to employ you. I will never interfere with your career but in this instance I am going to have to insist.’
‘Insist that I quit Compania de Ballet de Casillas?’
‘Oui.’
The black eyes shot fire-dipped arrows at him. ‘So you want to punish me and an entire ballet company for the sins of its owners, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Non. I am saying I do not wish for my wife to work for her ex-lover. It is not an unreasonable request.’
Something shone in her eyes that he didn’t recognise, a shimmer in the midst of her loathing that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. ‘It’s a request now? That’s funny because the word insist made it sound remarkably like a demand.’
‘This will be my only interference.’
Her foot tapped on the carpet but her tone remained calm. ‘So I can get a job working in Japan and you won’t complain?’
‘You can work wherever you like.’ As long as it was far from the Spaniard who had captured her long before he’d set eyes on her...
‘Just not for Javier.’
‘Just not for Javier.’
She sucked in a long draw of breath before inclining her head. ‘I will hand my notice in but I will work my notice period. You can add that to the contract and reiterate you are never to interfere with my career.’
‘How long is your notice period?’
‘Two months. That will allow me to do the opening night of the new theatre. I’m on all the advertising literature for it. I can’t pull out. It’s the biggest show of my life. I’ve worked too hard to throw it away.’
‘D’accord.’ He took in his own breath. Two months was nothing. He could handle her working for Javier for that period.
He reminded himself that until that morning he had expected her to insist on returning to Madrid.
‘You share my bed when we are under the same roof and hand your notice in to Compania de Ballet de Casillas. I buy you a property to live in while you work your notice and guarantee never to interfere with your career again. I believe that is everything unless there was something else you wished to discuss.’
Colour rose up her cheeks, her lips tightening before she gave a sharp nod. ‘Just one thing I think it is best to make clear. I may be agreeing to share a bed with you but that does not mean you take ownership of my body. It belongs to me.’
‘I think the kiss we shared earlier proves the lie in that, ma douce,’ he said silkily.
The chemistry between them was real, in the air they both inhaled, a living thing swirling like a cloud, shrouding them.
‘Think what you like.’ She dropped her gaze. ‘I will not be your possession.’
‘I am not Javier. I do not expect you to be. But I do expect a wedding night. After that, you can turn your back to me as often as you wish. I do not forget the clause in the contract allowing Javier to take a mistress without question or explanation and, seeing as you have not requested that clause to be removed, it stands for me too. And as you know, I am a man who likes to have all options on the table.’
Her nostrils flared as she jutted her chin back out again, a sign he was starting to recognise meant she was straining to keep her composure.
Let her try and keep it. Come their wedding night he would shatter that composure and discover for himself if her veins ran hot or cold.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘YOU BOUGHT EVERYTHING you need?’ Benjamin asked as his helicopter lifted into the air to fly them back to Provence after what had proven to be an extremely long day. ‘It doesn’t look like much.’
They had sorted out the paperwork for their wedding first thing then flown to Paris. Having work to do, he’d arranged for his PA’s assistant who spoke English to take Freya shopping.
He had been so consumed in recent months with his feud with the Casillas brothers that he’d neglected his business. He’d hardly stepped through the headquarters of Guillem Foods in weeks and knew from bitter experience how dangerous it could be to take his eye off the ball. Now that the first part of his revenge had been extracted he needed to concentrate on his business for a while before making his next move. Luis would have to wait.
Yet even though he’d needed his brain to engage with Guillem Foods, he’d had to fight to keep his attention on the job because his mind kept wandering back to the woman who would be his wife in three days’ time.
What was it about Freya that consumed his thoughts so much? She’d lodged herself in his mind from that first look, a fascination that had refused to shift that, now she was under his roof, was turning into an obsession.
Things would be better once he’d bedded her. The thrill of the chase and the unknown would be over and she would become mere flesh and bone.
He stared at her now, convinced she was the perfect wife for him. When the desire currently consuming him withered to nothing she would not care. Her own desire for him, unwanted as it was to her, wouldn’t last either. Her heart was too cold for lust to turn into anything more. The marriage agreement she had willingly signed giving herself to two separate men proved that.
Freya was a gold-digger in its purest form. A gold-digger who at some point in the future would give him a child...
A sudden picture came into his head of Freya dancing, a miniature Freya at her feet copying her moves; the child they would have together, the child that would make the chateau he had bought for his mother to end her days in a home.
It was a picture he had never imagined with anyone in all his thirty-five years and the strength of it set blood pumping into his head and perspiration breaking out over his skin.
So powerful was his reaction to the image that it took a few moments to realise she was answering his question.
‘Sophie’s packing my stuff up for me. I’ve arranged for the courier to collect it later when he gets my passport.
‘Will you not need it for your new apartment in Madrid?’ How he hated to think of her returning there but a deal was a deal. The contract had been signed over breakfast.
He’d already instructed an employee to hunt for a suitable home in Madrid for her. The main stipulation was that it be located as far from the district Javier called home as possible.
‘I’ll decide what to take with me when I go back,’ she said. ‘It’ll be mostly my training stuff I take.’
‘Would it not be easier to have separate wardrobes for each home?’ He spent the majority of the year in his chateau but had apartments in Paris and London and houses in Australia, Argentina and Chile. Each had its own complete wardrobe, allowing him to travel lightly and spontaneously when the need or mood arose.
She shrugged, not looking at him. ‘That would be wasteful.’
Incredulous, he stared at her. ‘You’re going to have two hundred thousand euros credited to your account every month for the rest of your life on top of your earnings and you are worried about being wasteful?’
The black eyes found his.
His heart thumped in the unnerving way it always seemed to do whenever those eyes captured his.
‘I learned not to waste things as a child.’
‘You had strict parents?’
‘No, I had poor parents.’ She said it matter-of-factly but with a hint of defiance and more than a little hint of pride.
‘How poor?’ Sob-stories of childhoods were everywhere. Some were even genuine.
However much he might despise the Casillas brothers Benjamin would never deny how traumatic their childhood had been. It made his own seem like one of the fairy tales Freya danced to.
‘So poor that when I was offered a full scholarship to the ballet school with boarding fees included, they had to let me board as they couldn’t afford the commuting fees.’
‘Did the scholarship not include travelling fees?’
‘Only for me, not for them. Commuting would also have meant one of them would have had to give up one of their jobs to get me there and back twice a day and they were on the breadline as it was. They didn’t think it was safe for me to travel from one side of London to the other on my own.’
‘How old were you when you went to boarding school?’
‘Eleven.’
Benjamin winced. That was a horribly young age to leave home. ‘Were they those awful pushy parents we read so much about nowadays?’
Her eyes glinted with anger. ‘No. They were wonderful. They held down two jobs each and juggled things so one of them was always home with me. They worked their backsides off to pay for my ballet lessons when I was little and then to support me at ballet school because the full scholarship didn’t cover everything. They did it because they loved me and wanted me to be happy.’
‘Ballet makes you happy?’ It might have sounded like a stupid question but he remembered from his early childhood on tour with Clara Casillas the haunted faces of some of the dancers who had definitely not been happy with their lives.
‘More than anything else. It’s my life.’
He studied her in silence, their gazes fixed on each other.
He had never felt the pull of a woman’s eyes the way he did with Freya. It was like staring into a black pool of unimaginable depths.
‘Do you want to invite your parents to the wedding?’ Their marriage had such a surreal quality to it that the thought she might want the people she loved there had never occurred to him until that moment.
‘They don’t travel.’
‘Were they not going to come to your wedding to Javier?’
She shook her head.
‘Have you told them?’
‘That I’ve exchanged fiancés like a child swapping marbles in the playground? Yes, I spoke to my dad about it this morning. I told him you had stolen me.’ The faintest smile curved on her lips. ‘At least it wasn’t a lie. How he interpreted it is up to him.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘I told you, my parents only want what’s best for me. They love me and want me to be happy. Are you going to invite anyone?’
‘The only person I would want is my sister but she is away.’ Chloe was still in the Caribbean, taking advantage of the ballet company’s shutdown for a well-deserved holiday and an escape from the fall-out.
Javier’s representatives had issued a short statement that morning saying that his engagement to Freya Clements was over. No details had been provided and the press were in a spasm of speculation, the main question being whether Freya’s disappearing act with Benjamin at the gala had been the cause.
‘No other family to ask?’ she asked.
‘You are interested in me?’
‘Not in the slightest. I’m merely curious as to what I’m marrying into.’
‘My mother died seven years ago. My father and I are not close and never have been.’ Not even when they had lived under the same roof. His mother had raised him as if she were a single parent and his father had let her, never suggesting that their only son stay behind with him rather than tour the ballet world. A second unplanned pregnancy ten years after the first had been the final nail in his parents’ precarious marriage.
He’d barely noticed when his father left, let alone missed him.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to have anyone there?’ he pressed. ‘There is not much time if you do.’
‘I would have said Sophie but she told me earlier that she’s going to make the most of the shutdown and go off somewhere. I suppose it saves her being put in a compromising position.’
‘Because she works for Compania de Ballet de Casillas?’
‘Like all ballet companies it’s a hotbed of gossip.’
‘Then don’t go back,’ he stated immediately, seizing the advantage.
‘Do you really think I could care less what my colleagues think of me?’ she asked coolly. ‘Sophie is the only one I care about. We’ve been friends since ballet school.’
‘A long friendship then,’ he observed. Not many friendships survived childhood. He’d thought those that did were the strongest. He’d learned the hard way how wrong that notion was.
‘The only time we’ve been apart since we were eleven was when I first moved to Madrid.’
‘She followed you there?’
She shrugged and turned her face to the window. Soon they would be landing back in Provence, time speeding on. ‘There were vacancies for new dancers to join the corps de ballet. I put in a good word for her. She’s the only dancer I’m close to. The others can say what they like about me, it doesn’t matter in the slightest, but I will not have Sophie hurt.’
He stared at her shrewdly, nodding his head slowly. ‘I can see why Javier thought you were the ideal woman for him to marry. Neither of you invite closeness. But you seem to have loyalty, which he does not possess. And there is fire in your veins, ma douce. There is passion. I have seen it and I have felt it. What I find myself wondering is if he ever saw it or if it was something you kept hidden from him.’
‘How very poetic.’ If not for the quiver in her voice and the tapping of her foot, he could believe the drollness of her tone was genuine.
‘It is no matter.’ He leaned forward. ‘In three nights’ time I will discover for myself how deep the fire runs inside you.’
* * *
Freya’s eyes were just reaching that heavy about-to-fall-asleep stage when the motion of the car driving over the cattle grid pulled her back to alertness. She stared out of the window her forehead was pressed against; the forest that marked Benjamin’s territory overhung and surrounded them, the moonlight casting shadows that made her shiver. This was a fairy-tale forest where the nightmares came out at night.
The prickling of her skin told her Benjamin, beside her in the back of the car, was watching her.
He was always watching her. As much
as she wished she could claim differently, her eyes always sought his too.
It was the night before their wedding. The intervening days had been relatively easy to handle as he had spent them in Paris or in his office working. She had occupied herself as much as she could, taking long walks in the forest that scared her so much at night but which during the day came alive with wildlife and glorious colours. But there was nowhere to dance, not a single room within the multitude where she could risk putting pointe shoes on and letting her body relax in the movement that had always invigorated and comforted her.
The evenings were the hardest.
They dined together but the dishes they were served were entirely separate. Benjamin favoured dishes like juicy steaks and creamy mashed potato while she ignored the tantalising aromas and concentrated on her super-salads and grilled chicken, the meals punctuated by periodic polite conversation.
It was all the unspoken conversations that had her feet tapping and her limbs aching for movement, when their eyes would lock together and electricity would flow between them, so thick she felt the currents in her veins. She could never finish her meals fast enough to escape to the sanctuary of her quarters where, mercifully, he had not attempted to join her again.
If he did, she was no longer confined to practising yoga in her underwear; all her leotards and practice outfits had been delivered from Madrid with her passport and neatly put away.
She kept her passport on her at all times.
That night he had taken her out to the theatre to watch a play she couldn’t remember the plot of, the movements and words on the stage passing her by in a blur, her concentration focused solely on the man sitting in the private box beside her.
‘We are home,’ he said quietly as the chateau appeared before them, illuminated in its magnificence.
‘This is not my home.’ Her denial was automatic.
‘This will be our main marital house and the base for which we lead our lives. I want it to feel like home for you but you need to be the one to make it that. Do whatever you feel is necessary.’
Unable to help herself, she turned to look at him.
Billionaire's Bride for Revenge (Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge) Page 8
