Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  The next thing she knew, she was lying in the road and a dark-eyed stranger was leaning over her while someone in the background was talking wildly in a choked, shocked, shaking voice. ‘She just ran out in front of me!’ he was saying over and over. ‘I didn’t stand a chance! She just ran out in front of me—she just ran out in front of me …’

  Was he referring to her? Claire wondered dizzily, and on a frown of confusion attempted to sit up.

  ‘Don’t move,’ a quiet voice commanded. Vaguely she registered the hint of a foreign accent, liked the deep velvet sound of it and smiled accordingly.

  ‘OK,’ she complied. Crazily, it really did seem that simple. She still felt nothing, and, in those first few conscious moments, she remembered nothing, which didn’t seem to matter either. A strange state of mind, she decided—all fluffy and floaty.

  ‘Am I dying or something?’ she wondered curiously.

  ‘Not while I am here to stop you,’ replied the stranger.

  She found herself smiling at that too. Arrogant devil, she thought. And became aware of a hand resting on one of her shoulders while another hand was dispassionately travelling all over her body as if it had every right to do something like that. Yet—oddly—she let him. Her worry-bruised deep blue eyes solemnly studied him as he carried out his examination. He wasn’t young, she noted, but he wasn’t exactly old either. And his skin—like his voice—was definitely foreign, bronzed and sleek, and he had a nicely defined mouth that, for some reason, she wanted to reach up and trace with her fingertips.

  But really it was his eyes that held her attention. They were dark—so dark it was like looking into nothing.

  Catching her studying him, he sent her a brief grim smile that made something alien stir inside her. She didn’t understand it—didn’t recognise the feeling, but it was disturbing enough to make her close her eyes and shut him out again as a wave of dizziness rolled over her.

  She began to shiver suddenly—though she wasn’t sure why unless the cold was beginning to get her—yet she didn’t feel cold—not at all, actually—which was strange in itself considering the icy weather.

  Something warm and silky landed on top of her, and she realised that he had taken off his jacket and covered her with it.

  It was only then that it occurred to her that she shouldn’t be lying here; that she had been in a hurry to get somewhere—though for the life of her she couldn’t remember where she was supposed to be going.

  ‘I said—don’t move!’ the deep voice insisted.

  ‘Did I?’ she asked, frowning confusedly because she certainly wasn’t aware of moving.

  In fact she didn’t feel able to do anything very much—even breathing in air was strangely difficult. Her chest felt tight, her limbs heavy.

  And for all she knew she could be very seriously injured. It was well documented, wasn’t it—that the worse you were, the less you felt? ‘My chest hurts,’ she confided, meaning to reassure herself with that bit of information.

  He didn’t seem to understand that, though, because she heard his harsh expletive muttered beneath his breath. ‘Has someone called the emergency services?’ he demanded of—whoever. Claire wasn’t sure who, nor cared that much really. But she did become aware of hurried footsteps coming towards her.

  ‘I’ve seen to it,’ another voice announced breathlessly. Then, ‘I can’t believe she just ran out in the street like that!’ the voice added angrily.

  Her aunt. Claire winced on a rush of total recall.

  ‘Did that hurt?’ the stranger enquired concernedly. He was touching her right wrist, and, yes, it did hurt, she realised belatedly. But that wasn’t why she had winced.

  A pair of handmade Italian court shoes appeared beside her. ‘What made you do such a stupid thing?’ her aunt demanded furiously.

  Lifting up her injured wrist, she opened her fingers with effort. Lying there, half hidden amongst the crumpled wad of notes, was her aunt’s plastic gold card. ‘You left this behind,’ she explained. ‘I thought you might be needing it …’

  For the space of thirty long, taut seconds, no one else made a single solitary sound as they stared at the gold card in Claire’s palm.

  Then the stranger spoke. ‘You know this girl?’ he demanded sharply of her aunt Laura. ‘She is the niece you came here to see this morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ Laura Cavell confirmed with enough reluctance to make Claire wince all over again.

  How can anyone be so uncomfortable with the fact that they possess family? Claire wondered bleakly. And at last managed to pull herself into a sitting position while everyone’s attention was elsewhere.

  ‘Look, Mr Markopoulou …’ Aunt Laura was saying, sounding unusually anxious for her. ‘If you want to leave this situation to me now, you could still just manage to catch your flight to Madrid.’

  That was the moment when Claire realised that the tall, dark stranger was none other than Aunt Laura’s hot-shot tycoon employer! No wonder she is sounding so anxious, she mused ruefully.

  ‘I thought I told you not to move,’ the dark voice censured.

  ‘I’m fine now—really,’ she lied. ‘No one needs to miss their flight. In fact, I think I would like to get up now.’

  ‘I think not,’ the stranger drawled, his black eyes autocratic. ‘You will remain exactly where you are until the emergency services arrive to check you over.’

  No way, Claire thought. If they took her to hospital then Aunt Laura would have her certified as unfit to take care of Melanie before she could even turn around!

  Then, ‘Oh, no!’ she gasped, scrambling shakily to her feet. She’d left the baby in the flat on her own!

  Her head felt groggy, her shoulders stiff, and her insides were shaking so badly that they were making her feel sick.

  ‘Where do you think you are going?’ the stranger demanded, vaulting to his feet like a well-honed athlete.

  ‘I have to go now,’ she murmured hazily.

  Barely registering the small crowd clustered around them, she took a few staggering steps forward—then remembered the gold card still clutched in her hand—the cause of all of this trouble in the first place, she acknowledged mockingly as she spun back towards Aunt Laura.

  ‘Here …’ she said, plucking the card out from amongst the crumpled bank notes and handing it over.

  Her aunt took it in grim silence, her red-painted mouth tight with angry embarrassment.

  Turning back to find the stranger had moved to stand directly in her path, Claire mumbled an awkward, ‘Thanks for your trouble,’ went to divert around him only to come to yet another confused halt when she noticed the pristine whiteness of his shirt.

  No jacket …

  Glancing behind her, she was appalled to see his jacket lying on the road where it had slid away from her unnoticed when she’d got up. ‘Oh—I’m so sorry!’ she gasped, making a move to go and collect it.

  He got there before her, though. Tall, dark, whipcord lean, he bent to retrieve it in one smooth movement.

  ‘I’m so very sorry.’ Claire apologised a second time.

  His idle shrug dismissed the oversight. ‘Here …’ Instead the jacket landed back around her shoulders. ‘You seem to need it more than I do at this moment,’ he explained. Then he bent his head towards her to add gently, ‘You are shivering.’

  ‘But …’ The rest of what she had been going to say got lost in a sudden wave of dizziness. Her wrist was hurting, her chest felt very tight, and her head was beginning to thump. She became aware of a cluster of blurred faces all staring at them in rapt curiosity.

  An arm came gently about her shoulders. ‘Come on,’ her aunt Laura’s boss said coolly. ‘Show me where you live and I will see that you get there …’

  ‘It really isn’t necessary,’ she protested.

  ‘It is, I assure you,’ he insisted rather grimly. ‘For I am not leaving until I am sure you have been checked out professionally.’

  And it was amazing—but he meant it! He even s
ounded as though he cared! Hot tears suddenly filled her eyes, though she had no idea why they did. ‘It isn’t even as though it was your car that hit me!’ she choked out in something between a sob and a protest.

  ‘No, my van did that,’ another male voice intruded. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ the newcomer then enquired worriedly.

  ‘Yes—really.’ Seeing the shock still whitening the driver’s face, she sent him a reassuring smile. ‘A bit winded,’ she confessed. ‘But otherwise I’m OK. I’m sorry I was so stupid.’

  ‘No problem—no problem,’ the other man said, and he walked off looking relieved to be getting away from it all without getting into more trouble.

  Claire felt another wave of dizziness wash over her. The arm resting across her shoulders suddenly became supportive. ‘Lead the way, Miss Cavell,’ his grim voice commanded.

  Silent as a grave and stiff-backed as a corpse, Laura Cavell stalked into the house while they followed behind her. Her aunt was going to despise her for showing her up like this in front of her boss, Claire thought wearily as they trod the stairs. ‘You don’t have to go to this much trouble, you know,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘I really am all right.’

  ‘No, you are not,’ the man beside her replied. ‘Your right wrist is injured. You have a cut on your head that needs attention. And when you breathe you gasp—which suggests you may have cracked a rib or two.’

  An injured wrist. A cracked rib or two. Claire closed her eyes and wondered bleakly when something good was going to happen.

  There didn’t seem to be much use in hoping for it, she decided heavily. Things around her seemed to be going from bad to worse with every passing minute.

  When they reached her flat she broke free from him so she could precede him through the door. Laura was standing by the clothes-horse—valiantly trying to hide it, Claire suspected, with the first hint of humour she’d felt in weeks.

  Then, from behind her, she could sense her aunt’s boss running his gaze over his shabby surroundings and all hint of humour completely left her. Outside in the street stood a limousine belonging to a man who was rich enough to travel everywhere in absolute luxury. His clothes shrieked of bespoke tailoring. No doubt his many homes were large and palatial, and here he was, Claire concluded, standing in what was probably the shabbiest abode it had ever been his misfortune to experience.

  Shame washed through her. Why she didn’t know, because the feelings of a complete stranger really shouldn’t matter to her. But something made her turn around to confirm the look of distaste she just knew would be written all over his lean, dark, super-elegant features.

  It was there.

  She felt hurt, so very hurt.

  Then, as if to completely demolish her, a soft snuffling sound came from the corner of the room, and the way his expression altered to a look of shocked horror as he accurately registered just what that sound belonged to finally wrecked what was left of her fragile composure. In an act of teeth-gritting defiance, she whipped off his jacket and threw it at him.

  Startled, his black eyes widened on her. ‘You don’t have to come in,’ she clipped, suddenly alight with a bristling hostility. ‘And actually I would prefer it if you didn’t.’

  ‘Claire!’ her aunt objected furiously.

  ‘I don’t care!’ she flashed. ‘I just want you both to get out of here!’

  Angrily she spun away to hurry over to the small baby crib where Melanie was still sleeping peacefully, she was relieved to discover.

  But the tears weren’t far away. She could feel them coming as she stood there leaning over the crib with an aching wrist hanging limply by her side and her ribcage beginning to pain her badly.

  Behind her the silence went on and on. They hadn’t gone and she wished that they would because she was beginning to feel rather hot and shaky.

  ‘Please go,’ she pleaded. Then, without warning, she fainted.

  Maybe he saw it coming. Maybe he was already walking over to where she stood without her being aware that he’d moved. Whatever, as Claire felt herself going, as the blood slowly drained away from her head and her legs began to go limp, a pair of arms came securely around her, and the last thing she recalled was hearing the distinctive wail of an ambulance siren as she slumped heavily against him.

  After that everything became a bit hazy, and she didn’t really start making sense of what was happening to her until she was travelling in the ambulance—accompanied by none other than Aunt Laura’s boss who was cradling Melanie.

  But no Aunt Laura.

  ‘She will be joining us later,’ the stranger replied when Claire queried her aunt’s absence. ‘She needed to attend to some urgent business.’

  Frowning at him through huge, pain-bruised blue eyes, she wondered why he wasn’t taking care of his own urgent business. But their arrival at the local hospital forestalled any more conversation between them when she was taken away to be examined and x-rayed.

  Her ribs, she discovered, were only bruised, but her wrist was a different matter. A broken scaphoid, the doctor called it, and they would have to put her out briefly to reset it.

  ‘What about Melanie?’ she fretted as the pre-med they had given her began to send her brain fuzzy. ‘How am I going to cope with my wrist in plaster? Where’s Aunt Laura?’

  ‘If you want your aunt here, then I will get her here,’ a deep voice that was starting to sound very familiar quietly promised. She had expected Aunt Laura’s boss to melt away once they reached the hospital, but to her surprise he had stayed with her the whole time.

  ‘No,’ she sighed in shaky refusal, shifting restlessly where she lay because he didn’t understand. It wasn’t that she wanted her aunt—she just needed to know where she was and what she was doing because she didn’t trust her not to take matters into her own hands where Melanie was concerned, while she was in no fit state to stop her.

  ‘Don’t let her take her away from me,’ she mumbled slurredly.

  ‘I won’t,’ the voice promised.

  That was the last thing she remembered for the next hour or so, so she had no idea that he continued to stand there beside her bed grimly watching over her until they came to wheel her away.

  When she did eventually resurface, it was to find herself lying in a small side room with her wrist encased in its new plaster cast and secured by a sling. They had left her fingers and thumb free at least, she noticed—not that she felt overwhelmed with gratitude for that because she knew she still wasn’t going to be able to handle a baby.

  What did concern her was that it was going to take up to eight weeks to mend.

  Eight weeks …

  Sighing heavily, she closed her weary eyes and tried pretending that this was all just a bad dream.

  ‘Worrying already?’ a deep voice dryly intruded.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CLAIRE’S eyes flicked open, something disturbingly close to pleasure feathering across her skin as a tall, dark figure loomed up in front of her in the very disturbing form of Aunt Laura’s hot-shot tycoon banker.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he enquired politely.

  ‘Dopey,’ she replied, with a shy little grimace.

  His dark head nodded in understanding. ‘Give yourself time to recover a little from the anaesthetic,’ he advised. ‘Then—if you feel up to it—they say you can go home.’

  Home … That sounded good. So good in fact that she made herself sit up and slide her feet to the ground. It was only then that she realised what a poor state her clothes were in. Her jeans were scored with dust and tar from the road, and her blouse had managed to lose half of its buttons.

  No wonder he threw his jacket over me, she thought wryly, making a half-hearted attempt to tidy herself. But it was difficult to look pin-neat after the kind of day that she’d had, she decided heavily. While this man, whose eyes she could sense were watching her so intently, still looked elegant and sleek and clean even though he had spent most of the day rescuing fallen maidens, abandoned babi
es, and—

  ‘Where’s Melanie?’ she asked sharply, unable to believe she had been so irresponsible as to not give the poor baby a single thought until now!

  For the first time today, he suddenly looked cross. ‘I would have expected by now that you would trust me to ensure your child is perfectly safe and well taken care of,’ he clipped out impatiently.

  ‘Why?’ Claire immediately challenged that. ‘Because my aunt Laura works for you?’

  Something made his broad shoulders flex in sudden tension, though what made them do it Claire had no idea, but she felt her own tension rise in response to it.

  ‘Just because you were gracious enough to pick me up and dust me off, then condescended to accompany me here instead of going off to Milan, that does not automatically win trust, you know,’ she pointed out, coming upright on decidedly shaky legs.

  ‘Madrid,’ he corrected her absently—as if it really mattered!

  ‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ Claire continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘For all I know you may be one of those weirdos that prey on innocent young females in vulnerable situations!’

  A wild thing to say—a terrible thing to say considering what he had done for her today. Watching the way his elegant frame stiffened in affront, Claire was instantly contrite.

  But as she opened her mouth to apologise he beat her to it—by retaliating in kind.

  ‘Young you may be,’ he grimly conceded. ‘What are you, after all—not much more than eighteen? And vulnerable you certainly are at the moment—one only has to look at your face to know that a relatively minor road accident was not enough to cause quite that amount of fatigue in one so young. But innocent?’ he questioned with cutting cynicism. ‘One cannot be innocent and give birth to a child, Miss Stenson. It is, believe me, a physical impossibility.’

  Two things hit her simultaneously as she stood there absorbing all of that. One was the obvious fact that he had got her age wrong. And the other was his mistaken belief that Melanie was her daughter!

  Had Aunt Laura not bothered to explain anything to him? she wondered. And who the hell did he think he was, standing in judgement over her, anyway?