Mediterranean Men Bundle

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘You think that money means anything to me?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’ve sold me like some medieval bride!’

  ‘You could do a lot worse.’

  ‘I’d like to know how.’ She sprang off the sofa in agitation. ‘I hate him! He’s a criminal, or have you forgotten that little detail?’

  ‘We all make mistakes, Bryony…’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’ she gasped. ‘You were the one to send him off to whatever correction facility he went to. How can you allow him to step in and carry me off like some sort of caveman?’

  ‘You’re being hysterical just like your mother.’

  ‘I’m being hysterical? This whole farce is hysterical! I will not marry him and that’s my final word.’ She spun away and stomped to the door and had her hand out to turn the knob when her father spoke, instantly freezing her to the spot.

  ‘He has information about me that will send both your mother and I to prison for the rest of our lives.’

  Bryony turned around slowly, as if by prolonging the moment she might find her life had turned back to what it had once been, not the theatrical drama that was facing her now.

  No such luck.

  The look on her father’s face was nothing short of desperate and her mother was bent over double on the sofa, the sounds of her distress muffled but no less disturbing.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asked when she could move her stiff lips into gear. ‘Kill someone?’

  His eyes skittered away from hers. ‘I won’t distress you with the details.’

  ‘I think under the current circumstances I can handle it,’ she informed him drily. ‘My shockometer has already blown a fuse this afternoon so one more hit shouldn’t make much difference.’

  ‘I don’t wish your mother to be upset.’

  ‘You’ve made it your lifetime’s work to make her upset so I can’t see why you’re feeling so solicitous now.’

  ‘I won’t be spoken to like that, young lady,’ Owen growled at her darkly.

  ‘I’m not a child you can smack into obedience,’ she flashed at him, recalling all the times he had as if they were yesterday. ‘I’m twenty-seven years old so you can hardly resort to such brutality now.’

  ‘You deserve Kaproulias as your husband,’ her father snarled at her. ‘You need someone cruel and calculating to bring you to heel.’

  She didn’t think she had hated her father more than at that point in her entire life.

  She knew Austin had been his favourite child. She had never come first in his affections and had barely managed to scrape in second. His work was his life and he’d brandished his wealth about with self-indulgent pride. She would have walked away long ago and never looked back except for her mother…

  ‘So my fate is sealed.’ She flicked a glance towards the bowed figure on the sofa, her heart sinking all over again at the sight of her mother’s brokenness.

  ‘It’s the only way out,’ Owen said. ‘You owe us this. You’re a Mercer and we must always stand together.’

  ‘What a pity you didn’t consider that when you went on your little gambling spree.’ She sent him a disdainful look. ‘I’m assuming that’s where most of the money has gone?’

  He didn’t bother denying it. ‘I was on a winning streak, my numbers were up and then it all changed.’

  Oh, how it had changed, she thought with increasing despair.

  ‘Kaproulias is being quite generous,’ her father continued. ‘He’s paying for your mother and me to go on a trip to get out of the line of fire. There are people after me…’

  As far as she was concerned they were welcome to him but she couldn’t bear the thought of her mother suffering any more grief. In spite of her father’s mean-spirited nature, she knew her mother still loved him desperately.

  Bryony couldn’t imagine ever allowing herself to love someone so unguardedly. Her heart was untouched and, as far as she was concerned, it was going to stay that way.

  She left the harrowing spectre of her parents’ financial demise to the confines of the green sitting room and made her way towards the stairs.

  ‘I wish to discuss the details of our marriage with you.’ Kane’s deep voice sounded from behind her.

  She sucked in an angry breath and turned on her heel to look at him, wishing she’d made it up four or five steps so she could at least have given her craning neck a rest.

  Had he really been that tall all those years ago?

  She was a good five foot seven, could even stretch it to ten in some of her heels, but he still towered over her, making her feel small and insignificant.

  ‘I thought you would have taken the hint by now and left,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything to say to you.’

  ‘We have a wedding to arrange.’

  ‘It seems to me it’s already been arranged—’ she sent him a withering look ‘—by you.’

  ‘I want your input on one or two details.’

  ‘You’ve made all the decisions so far, so feel free to make the rest. I don’t give a toss.’

  ‘Do you not wish to know where we will live?’

  She hadn’t given it a thought. So much had happened in the last hour; she was still reeling from the staggering blow she’d received, her brain more or less paralysed by a combination of fear and sick resignation.

  Marriage to Kane Kaproulias was quite clearly inescapable. While she would have happily left her father to the pack of wolves currently after his blood, her mother was another thing entirely. Even if Bryony had to wed Lucifer himself it would be preferable to watching her mother destroyed.

  She would not—could not let that happen.

  ‘Mercyfields is out of the question,’ she said, carefully avoiding his eyes. ‘I need to be close to my work in the city.’

  ‘You won’t need to work once you are my wife, or at least not in that capacity.’

  She frowned at his statement. ‘Of course I must work. I love my job.’

  ‘I don’t mind if you have a job as long as you run my home for me according to my standards.’

  Her jaw dropped open. ‘What did you say?’

  His mouth tilted in a self-satisfied little smile. ‘I want you to be a proper wife. You will keep our home clean and tidy as well as cook on the occasions we don’t dine out.’

  She couldn’t believe her ears. She felt like shaking her head to make sure she wasn’t going deaf and misinterpreting what he’d said.

  ‘You want me to do housework?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘I don’t do housework,’ she stated emphatically.

  ‘All wives do housework.’

  ‘Not in this century they don’t.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to do everything, of course—’ he folded his arms casually ‘—or at least no more than your family demanded of my mother.’

  She was starting to put the pieces together in her head and it wasn’t looking pretty. Kane was out for blood for the way her family had supposedly treated his mother, but she could hardly recall ever speaking to the woman in the whole time she’d occupied one of the servants’ cottages at the back of the estate.

  Sophia Kaproulias had been a quiet and seemingly diligent worker, but Bryony hadn’t been encouraged to mix with the household or grounds staff, especially when a rumour had started going around about the housekeeper’s promiscuous behaviour with someone on the estate.

  Besides, she’d been at boarding school most of the year and during holidays at Mercyfields she’d pointedly avoided the housekeeper in case she came into contact with Kane who’d always seemed to her to be rather sullen.

  She refused to think about the one occasion she had come into closer contact with him…

  ‘You’re totally sick.’ She clenched her hands into fists by her sides.

  ‘On the contrary, I’m in the peak of fitness and health,’ he returned as he held her infuriated gaze with ease.

  She fought against the temptation to
run her eyes over his tautly muscled form as he stood before her. She could sense the strength of his body, and imagined each and every muscle had been honed to perfection by a strict and disciplined approach at some state-of-the-art well-appointed gym.

  She sucked in her post-Christmas tummy and gave him a glowering stare. ‘You think you’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Mr Nobody makes the big time and lands himself a trophy wife. But you’re in for a surprise, for I refuse to be any man’s slave in any room of the house.’

  Kane watched as her eyes flashed with hatred and couldn’t help wondering how passionate she’d be in bed. His body grew hard just thinking about it, speculating on how many men there had been before him.

  She had the sort of mouth that begged to be kissed, the softness of her bottom lip jutting in sulkiness, tempting him so much he had to push his hands into the pockets of his trousers to stop himself from reaching for her again.

  ‘I don’t need a slave, I need a wife.’

  ‘You don’t need a wife; in my opinion you’re in desperate need of a behavioural psychologist.’

  He laughed at her, the rich deep sound surprising her into silence.

  She stood immobile at the foot of the huge staircase, staring up into his eyes while the grandfather clock kept solid time in the background.

  One second…two seconds…three…four…five…

  ‘I have to get back to the city,’ he said, jolting her out of her stasis. ‘I’ll contact you at the city apartment to inform you of the arrangements.’

  She watched as he made his way to the front door of her family home as if he owned the place, realizing with a sickening little lurch of her stomach that he now did.

  And not just the house…

  Bryony waited until the sound of his car driving over the crushed limestone driveway faded into the distance, the crunch of displaced stones reminding her of the impact he’d had on her in the space of little more than an hour.

  How was she to cope with extended periods of time in his presence, much less marry him?

  Marriage to anyone was anathema to her, let alone to someone whom she hated.

  How had her father got them into this? And if her mother had known something of it, why hadn’t she thought to warn her?

  Too agitated to stay within the house but for some strange reason unwilling to leave by the same exit Kane had just used, she turned and made her way out through one of the rear doors into the gardens.

  She stood and breathed in the scent of sun-warmed roses, their heady fragrance a welcome relief from the cold and formal atmosphere of the house.

  A light afternoon breeze shivered over the surface of the lake in the distance, its fringe of weeping willows offering Bryony a solace she found hard to resist. She walked across the verdant expanse of well-manicured lawn, her light footsteps cushioned by the lushness of fastidiously clipped growth, and headed for the shade of the arc of willows on the far side of the lake.

  It was much cooler near the water.

  She sat on one of the large rocks and, slipping off her shoes, dangled her toes in the cool dark depths, watching as the bowing branches moved on the surface like feathery fingertips as the eddy of disturbed water reached them.

  She hadn’t been to this dark secluded spot for ten years.

  Even the gardeners didn’t come this far. Their work was to make the exposed parts of Mercyfields appear perfect at all times. Under here, where the pendulous branches of the willows shielded the house from view, was of no interest to them.

  She breathed in the earthy smell of the damp bank, the fragile lace of maidenhair fern shifting faintly as the warm breath of the breeze moved through the shady sanctuary, and her thoughts drifted just like the water she’d disturbed…

  It had been one of those unbearably hot afternoons the countryside of New South Wales was famous for, the smell of eucalyptus-tinged smoke lingering in the sultry air, the clouds overhead gathering in wrathful grey clusters as if deciding whether or not to take out their rage on the earth below.

  She’d come down to the lake to bathe in private, for even though the large kidney-shaped swimming pool lay near the wisteria walk at the rear of the house she hadn’t wanted to be observed, preferring the secluded shade of her favourite hideaway.

  At seventeen she’d been conscious of the weight she’d gained during her final term. An injury to her knee, her anxiety over exams and the stodgy diet ordered by Madame Celeste had taken its toll on her normally svelte figure. She hadn’t been able to dance for eight weeks and it showed.

  She’d slipped into the cool embrace of the dark water and sighed with pleasure, her limbs feeling like silky ribbons released after months of being tightly coiled. She’d swum back and forth beneath the shield of the hanging arms of the willows, glad to be finally free of the constraints of the school term.

  She’d lain on her back and looked up through the canopy, the dapple of sunlight speckling along her wet body as if someone had dropped a handful of gold-dust over her.

  Smiling at her overactive imagination, she’d begun stroking backwards, her arms slicing through the water, gradually gathering speed as she’d pretended she was in the final heat of the Olympic fifty metre backstroke, she was in front…she was going to win…Thump!

  Bryony had gagged on the mouthful of water she’d swallowed before turning around to see what she’d run into, expecting to find a fallen log or even a partially submerged rock.

  She had not expected to see Kane Kaproulias standing waist-deep in the water with his nose streaming blood…

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped while her feet searched vainly for a foothold in the slippery mud.

  ‘Did I hurt you?’ he asked as his hands came out to her shoulders to steady her.

  Bryony felt her feet sink into the velvet mud, offering her a stability she badly needed once Kane’s warm brown work-roughened hands touched the creamy skin of her shoulders.

  She stared up at him, fighting for breath, suddenly conscious of the tight cling of her Lycra bathing suit which, in her current physical shape, was at least two sizes too small.

  ‘No…’ she said a little breathlessly, ‘you didn’t hurt me at all but look what I did to your nose.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He let her go and rinsed his face in the water.

  ‘I didn’t know anyone was here, otherwise I would have—’

  ‘It’s just a nosebleed, Bryony, it won’t kill me.’

  She found it hard not to stare at his face. She hadn’t seen him for months. During her last holiday he’d been working part-time on a neighbour’s property, only coming home occasionally to see his mother. She’d heard he was saving up enough money to put himself through a university course but she had never asked him what he’d intended studying.

  He looked much fitter and stronger than the last time she’d seen him. At twenty-two he was only a year older than her brother but somehow he seemed to be so much more mature.

  Austin was boisterous and loud, as were most of his friends who often spent time at Mercyfields during their university vacations, their numerous boyish pranks in stark contrast to Kane’s silent brooding presence. She suspected his surly demeanour was an inbuilt part of his personality and not just a reaction to being labelled the cleaning lady’s son.

  She couldn’t imagine what her father would say if he could see her now, standing in the water with Kane, his broad smooth chest glistening with droplets of moisture as he looked down at her with eyes darker than the mud beneath her curling toes.

  ‘Do you usually swim here?’ he asked.

  ‘I…no…not usually.’

  ‘You shouldn’t come here, especially not alone.’

  She didn’t care for the quiet authority in his tone. She was the daughter of the house, he was the servant’s son—he had no right to tell her what to do.

  She tilted her chin at him. ‘Why not? It’s my lake, not yours.’

  The look he gave her was hard to decipher given the shady nook th
ey were in, but she suspected he was sneering at her behind the screen of his dark lashes.

  ‘If you hurt yourself no one would find you.’

  ‘How could I hurt myself? I’m a good swimmer.’

  ‘You’re a very careless swimmer.’ He gave his nose another wipe with the back of his hand. ‘Instead of me it could have been a rock you hit. You could have easily knocked yourself out and drowned.’

  ‘It’s none of your business what I do,’ she said, annoyed that he was right but unwilling to admit it. ‘If I want to swim here I will and nothing you say or do can stop me.’

  Bryony became increasingly aware of the pulsing silence. The shadows danced like wraiths around them, the water where his blood had spilled lapping gently against her thighs like a caress, heightening her awareness of his physical closeness in the most intimate and primal way.

  The sunlight shifted, revealing more of his face to her, and she was relieved to see that his nose had more or less stopped bleeding. But then she gave a tiny involuntary shiver as she saw his eyes slide down to the overflow of her breasts, her tight bathing suit doing an inadequate job of keeping them contained with any sort of decency.

  She crossed her arms and glared at him. ‘I’ll tell my brother you have insulted me by leering at me like that.’

  His gaze lingered another full ten seconds before he lifted it to meet her flashing one. ‘Do you imagine I am afraid of that spineless little jerk?’

  She was incensed by his attitude towards the older brother she adored. ‘You will be when I tell him you’ve touched me under the willows of the lake.’

  He didn’t say a word, just stood watching her steadily, which somehow made her even angrier.

  ‘Do you think he won’t defend his sister from the filthy hands of the cleaning lady’s son?’ she added spitefully.

  ‘He very probably will,’ he answered after another long cicadas-beating-in-the-background pause. ‘So in that case I’d better make sure that what’s coming to me is well and truly warranted.’

  She was still trying to make sense of his coolly delivered words when he reached for her, his strong arms coming around her, pulling her out of the sucking mud and up against his hard body. His mouth came down, his lips warm and firm as they explored the soft surface of hers.