Marriage Made in Blackmail

by Michelle Smart

  Whistling, Luis strolled out of the sky lounge with the weight of Chloe’s glare burning into his back.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘FEELING BETTER?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Still seasick?’

  ‘Yes. Very seasick.’

  Luis’s cynical laughter ringing behind her ear sounded like a hammer to Chloe’s brain.

  She tightened her grip on the railing and kept her gaze fixed on the clear waters surrounding her. She had been standing at the front of the yacht for almost an hour, inhaling the fresh air to clear her banging head.

  She knew she wasn’t fooling him with her woes of seasickness.

  Faking seasickness had been better than admitting she was slightly—okay, a touch more than slightly—drunk.

  The last time she’d consumed that much alcohol she’d been living in London but that had been spread over a number of hours, never in such a short space of time.

  She had never drunk as much black coffee as she had since either. Cut her and she was quite sure she would bleed caffeine.

  She’d needed the alcohol’s numbness to smother the tortured emotions that had been engulfing her. There was nowhere to escape, nowhere to flee the heat his kiss had generated and her excruciating embarrassment at being called out as a virgin.

  How had he known that? Did he have psychic powers? Or had he been with so many women that he could tell an innocent by one kiss?

  Reaching the age of twenty-five a virgin was just something that had happened, not something intentional and not something she had been embarrassed about before.

  When she’d moved to London months before turning nineteen to take on her apprenticeship with the ballet company, all the freedom in the world had suddenly been in her lap. It hadn’t been that she’d been denied her freedom before then; she’d lived with her father and stepmother for the year following her mother’s death and neither of them had shown the slightest concern for her whereabouts, then she’d spent a year living with her brother, who had watched her closely but never stifled her. This had been a different freedom.

  Her whole life had opened itself out to her, unanswerable to anyone. She had embraced that freedom with gusto.

  She had loved her life in London. Living in a shared house with three other young women had meant lots of partying and a growing number of friends. Long days and long nights, young enough to burn the candle at both ends without any ill effects...yes, she had loved her life back then but not as much as her housemates had.

  Rarely a morning had gone by when Chloe would go downstairs for breakfast and not find a man or two in the kitchen, different faces on a seemingly daily basis. She’d recoiled from such casual hook-ups for herself. She’d dated though, even kissed a few of them, but nothing more. The mechanism inside her friends that allowed them to discard their inhibitions and embrace sex whenever and wherever they could seemed to be faulty in her.

  ‘You’re too choosy,’ her best friend Tanya had drunkenly told her one night. And she had been right. Chloe loved her male friends but she did not trust them. There were only two men she’d trusted. One was her brother, the other had been Luis.

  She hadn’t deliberately sought Luis out. When she had seen his ballet company advertising for a costume maker she’d been ready for a fresh challenge.

  To discover her old teenage feelings for him had been merely dormant and then to find her resurgent desire reciprocated had been both exhilarating and terrifying.

  She had spent the past two months consoling herself that at least she hadn’t accepted his offer of a nightcap.

  Everything she had believed about Luis for her whole life had been torn asunder.

  He had ripped her misplaced trust to shreds.

  And now she knew her self-consolation had been pointless too. She still desired him. She’d been pinned beneath him and instead of kicking him where it hurt she had melted for him.

  Worse, he knew it too.

  ‘You will be glad to know we will be docking within the hour,’ he said nonchalantly placing his hand on the railing beside her.

  Chloe’s heart leapt, although whether that was at his sudden closeness or his announcement she could not be sure.

  She stepped to the side, away from him, not quite daring to get her hopes up. ‘You’re going to let me go?’

  ‘No, bonita. I’m taking you to my island.’

  ‘Your island?’

  ‘Sí. I bought it with the yacht.’

  ‘You bought an island to trap me on as well as a yacht?’ Her leaping heart sank in dismay as that tiny glimpse of freedom disintegrated.

  ‘They came as a package. I had intended to stay at sea a few more days so that Marietta’s furniture could be moved out but necessity has brought the schedule forward. I have a video conference in the morning. This yacht, as magnificent as she is, was designed as a pleasure vessel and does not yet have business facilities.’

  A swell of something hot and rabid pulsed in her chest. ‘You bought the island off Marietta too?’

  ‘I’ve met her a few times socially—I’d attended one of her parties on this yacht. When I learned where you were hiding and its close proximity to her island, I called her with my offer. The stars aligned for me that day, bonita.’

  ‘If the stars aligned for you then God knows what torturous trick they were playing on me,’ she whispered bitterly.

  ‘What can be torturous about staying in paradise?’

  ‘How about that I’ll be staying in it against my will?’

  His tone became teasing. ‘At least you won’t have to worry about seasickness.’

  She tightened her hold on the railing and breathed in deeply. ‘How long will we stay there?’

  ‘You will stay until you agree to marry me. It really is very simple. Marry me and then we return to the real world.’

  ‘The real world where I’ll be your wife?’

  ‘That’s what marriage means, bonita. We marry, make some public appearances together to kill the heinous rumours and speculation being spread about me and my brother and then you go free. It will all be over. You will be free to resume your life and your brother will not have to spend his life watching his back for my vengeance. You can put an end to all of it. The power is in your hands.’

  She stared down at Luis’s hand, tanned and huge, holding the rail so loosely beside her own. That was a powerful hand, in more ways than one. It could swallow her own hand up.

  If she didn’t find a way out of this mess he would swallow her whole.

  But this was a mess she didn’t know how to resolve. She couldn’t marry him.

  Just having him there beside her, that masculine scent her nose hungered for catching in the breeze and filtering through her airways had her senses dancing with awareness.

  But she couldn’t stop her eyes darting back to those hands. They had pinned her wrists together without any effort at all.

  Her abdomen clenched, warmth flooding her to imagine them touching her again...

  She would not let that happen. Luis would never lay a finger on her body ever again and she would not allow herself to touch him either, whether she married him or not.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that Luis was taking her to an island which meant new people, telephone lines—her phone had no means of communication on this yacht—and transport. Which all meant potential escape routes...

  But what if he meant it about ending the feud with her brother? Her being trapped here in his power proved the lengths Luis would go to.

  She could laugh at her naivety. As if she could trust a word Luis said, after everything he had done.

  Gathering all the raging emotions zipping within her and squashing them into a tight ball, Chloe twisted to look him right in the eye and then immediately wished she hadn’t.

  She was trapped, in m
ore ways than one.

  All she could do was gaze into the dark hazel eyes staring at her with a force that made her stomach melt and her fingers itch to touch him all over again.

  Those strong fingers she had only moments ago stared at with a strange aching feeling reached out to smooth a lock of her hair behind her ear.

  ‘Marry me, bonita,’ he whispered, then craned his head towards her and brushed those sensuous lips over hers.

  Chloe’s feet were still stuck to the decking when he pulled his hand away and strode back into the sky lounge. It wasn’t until the door closed behind him that the strange fog-like thing that had happened in her head filtered out to be replaced with anger, at Luis and especially at herself.

  So much for never allowing him to touch her again. She had barely lasted a minute from making that vow.

  In disgust, she wiped her still-tingling mouth with the back of her hand.

  Must try harder, she thought grimly as she stared back out to sea with a heart still thumping madly.

  * * *

  Chloe came to a stop on soft golden sand upon which dreams were made. In front of her, gleaming like a Maharaja’s palace under the descending sun, set in an island within the island, was a whitewashed mansion with a terracotta roof from which even more fantastical dreams were made.

  They had been met off the yacht by a skinny boy of around ten, who skipped alongside her, clearly bursting with excitement. In rapid-fire English he happily told Chloe that he was the caretakers’ son and had lived on the island his whole life.

  His cheerful presence was a welcome respite from the turbulence she had been through that day, although did nothing to lessen the coils knotted tightly in her belly.

  Luis walked some way behind them, deep in conversation with the yacht’s captain. She felt his presence like a spectre.

  Determined to blank him out while she could, she tried hard to concentrate on the child’s chattering while taking in everything around her.

  The closer she got to the palace-like structure, the more she realised her initial thoughts were an illusion. What she’d thought was one palatial villa was a complex of interlinked homes around one huge main house nestled with high palm trees and traversed by the longest swimming pool she had ever seen, snaking the perimeter and weaving between the individual beautiful buildings. Only as she crossed a bridge over the swimming pool did she realise it was a saltwater pool filled with marine life that must feed directly from the sea.

  Following the wide path, she saw what was undoubtedly a traditional pool snaking the main house like a moat, more bridges leading to the smaller homes.

  Chloe sighed with pleasure then hated herself for it, immediately following her self-castigation with the thought that it was better to be locked away in paradise than in a cell.

  She’d thought the complex she was staying on in Grand Bahama was paradise. This was nirvana.

  ‘Who else lives on the island?’ she asked the boy when she could get a word in.

  His nose wrinkled but before he could answer, Luis got into step beside her.

  ‘No one,’ he answered cheerfully, the look in his eyes telling her clearly that her hopes of finding escape off this island were as futile as her hopes of finding help on the yacht. ‘I will bring new staff in soon.’

  ‘Jalen!’ a loud, harsh voice called out. ‘Come here.’

  The little boy’s skinny frame froze momentarily before he pulled himself together and ran off, back over the bridge they had just crossed to a scowling, weather-beaten man who’d emerged from the side of the main villa.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Chloe asked, following Jalen with her eyes.

  ‘Rodrigo. His father.’

  She looked at Luis and found his gaze was also following the boy. ‘The caretaker?’

  He nodded, his attention still on the boy. ‘He looks after the island with his wife, Sara.’

  ‘Jalen said they’ve been here for a long time.’

  ‘Sara’s lived here for ever. Her parents were the caretakers before she took over.’ There was a grimness to his tone.

  Chloe looked back at Jalen. He’d reached his father and his head was bowed. He was obviously on the receiving end of a scolding. ‘What do you think he did wrong?’

  ‘I have no idea. I met the family three days ago when I took possession of the island. I know nothing about them.’ Luis shook his head and pushed his attention away from the young boy and back to the beautiful woman at his side.

  Small boys always pushed their luck. It was a parent’s job to discipline them. Just because Luis’s father’s methods of discipline had been extreme did not mean Rodrigo used the same methods.

  But when he met Chloe’s gaze he saw the same concern ringing out from her as needled in his own skin.

  ‘Where do they live?’ she asked.

  ‘In one of the staff cottages at the back of the main house.’ He pushed Jalen and Rodrigo more firmly from his head. He would have plenty of time to observe them interact and, he was sure—hoped—he would find the father-son relationship that he had spent so many years wishing for.

  His own history was not others’ reality. That was a truth he had always been aware of.

  Luis had long ago accepted that there had been something in his genetic make-up that had triggered his father’s violence towards him, something dirty and rotten.

  It had to be inherent otherwise Javier would have been on the receiving end of it too. He’d never bought Javier’s reasoning that he’d got away with only mild chastisement and a rumpled shake of the hair because their father had looked at Javier’s face and seen a mirror of himself.

  There was no denying that Javier had inherited their father’s looks while Luis had inherited a masculine version of their mother’s, and there was no denying that only Luis had been Yuri’s whipping boy, right until the day their father’s drunken, jealous rage had turned on their mother.

  His father had served ten years of his sentence for killing his mother. A year after his release he’d died of pancreatic cancer. Luis sincerely hoped he’d suffered every minute of his death.

  Dios, would it always be like this? Would he be condemned to a life where every time he saw a father chastise his child the memories of his own childhood would smack him in the face afresh?

  Would the past ever set him free?

  Strolling along another bridge that led to the door of a pretty villa, he said to the woman who could kill the demons from the past affecting his future, ‘This will be your villa while we’re here...’

  She raised a startled eyebrow. ‘I get my own villa?’

  ‘Did you want to share one with me?’ he mocked, glad to be back on familiar ground with her.

  ‘No!’

  He pushed the door open and winked at her.

  This was better. Flirtation and teasing. Let it flow between them. Let it warm the coldness that had settled in his veins.

  ‘If you change your mind, I will be in the villa next door.’

  ‘Get over yourself.’

  ‘I’d rather have you over me but I can wait.’

  ‘You’ll be waiting a long time.’

  He gazed at her flushed cheeks and smiled. ‘We shall see.’

  She scowled but there wasn’t the force behind it that had been there throughout the day.

  She had made no effort to step into her new home. ‘Are you not going to live in the main house?’

  ‘Not until Marietta’s possessions have been shipped out. I’ll show you around it tomorrow but, for now, I have a conference call to plan for and I need to make sure everything’s set up. Tonight, bonita, you get to amuse yourself. Sara will be with you shortly and will go through everything. She knows the island better than I do and has arranged the villa for your arrival. If there is anything you’re not happy with, take it up with her.’

 
‘You’re not scared I might try and escape?’

  He laughed. ‘There is no escape. And no rescue, if that’s what you’re thinking. This island is an unnamed dot on the map.’

  ‘What about the ship that’s coming for Marietta’s stuff?’

  He noticed the darkening of her eyes as she spoke Marietta’s name. It was the same darkening he’d noticed earlier.

  ‘She’s in no hurry for it.’

  ‘I can hijack the yacht.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Captain Brand’s taken it back to the mainland. He will return in a week and then he will marry us.’

  ‘He can’t.’

  ‘He’s a recognised officiate.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That he can marry us.’

  ‘But I haven’t agreed to marry you!’

  ‘You will and the sooner you accept it and say yes, the sooner we can marry and the sooner this nightmare will be over for the both of us.’

  He could manage a week away from the business but, he had realised earlier, no longer than that. He was still in communication with those he needed to communicate with but this island, for all its beauty, was cut off from civilisation as he knew it. For this to be a true holiday home he would need to purchase a helicopter to be permanently manned there and possibly get a landing strip put in and buy a smaller version of his private jet.

  He was confident he would gain Chloe’s acceptance to marry him in the seven-day deadline he had imposed.

  He could sense her resolve failing her. She knew there was no escape. If she wanted to leave the Caribbean she would have to marry him.

  She was the reason he was having to scramble together a conference call the next morning to salvage a deal that had been in the bag and stop the business he and his brother had worked so hard for from crumbling around them.

  Before she could respond, a slender, tired-looking woman with frazzled hair crossed the bridge to them.

  Luis shook Sara’s hand then introduced her to Chloe. ‘Please see that Miss Guillem has everything she needs,’ he said, then turned back to Chloe.