Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  Needing something to do to keep her muddled emotions hidden, she was glad that she had it—in the form of a white stretch-silk sleeve Althea had cleverly fashioned for her to wear over her plaster-cast.

  It was waiting for her on her dressing table, and she walked over to get it, stingingly aware of those dark eyes taking in the amount of naked back the wretched dress left exposed.

  ‘Where is your sling?’ he enquired levelly after a few moments.

  ‘I don’t need it any more,’ she said—then, with a half lift of one slender white shoulder, added, ‘Well, not all the time anyway.’

  ‘Here—allow me …’

  A long-fingered hand appeared from behind her to take the white sleeve from her grasp. ‘To cover your cast, I presume?’ he said lightly.

  The temptation to snatch it back from him and tell him she could manage very well by herself almost—almost got the better of her. But even in the strange antagonistic mood she was in she knew that would be just too childish.

  So she stood silent and still while he came to stand in front of her—her very own giant black-winged eagle, she mused as the feeling of being swooped down on overwhelmed her again. But then, she might be tall at five feet eight inches but he was one hell of a lot taller.

  Taller, wider, bigger, darker, she listed as he picked up her injured wrist and began feeding the sleeve over the plaster-cast protecting it.

  ‘Is the age thing a big problem to you, Claire?’ he asked her quietly.

  Older, tougher, calmer, cooler—the list went on. She gave a shake of her head in reply to his question.

  ‘Perhaps you are still angry with me because I—over-stepped the boundaries of our arrangement, then.’

  Wiser, she added. Because it hadn’t really hit her until he’d said it out loud that this was exactly the reason why she was feeling as emotionally confused as she was.

  ‘You blow hot and cold all the time,’ she felt constrained to answer. ‘I just don’t know how to respond to that.’

  ‘Then I apologise,’ he murmured rather grimly.

  Gracious, too, she added to the growing list. Because I’d have cut my own throat before I’d have had the grace to apologise as quickly and as sincerely as that.

  Giving that small shrug with her shoulder again in acknowledgement of his apology, she then added a small sigh. ‘It isn’t going to be easy for me, you know, having to deal with all of these people who are coming here tonight, knowing what they will all be thinking when they look at me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Althea said she thought I was brave to dress myself up like this for the party. But I’m not brave, not really. I’m just …’ She ran out of words on a discontented sigh.

  ‘Trying to cope the best way you can.’ He supplied them for her.

  Silly tears tried to fill her eyes because now she was having to add understanding and gentle and sympathetic to her list and it really couldn’t get any longer!

  Yes, it can. She then had to amend that thought as he put his hand to her cheek and used his thumb to gently draw her chin up so he could look gravely into her swimming blue eyes. Because he was touching her for real rather than touching her through the protection of her plaster-cast, and she now had to add dangerous to that list because his touch made her feel so—!

  He bent down to brush his mouth across hers, and the list was halted right then and there as it suddenly raced away from her in a mad, frantic blur of sizzling adjectives.

  ‘Althea should have said beautiful and brave,’ he murmured huskily as he drew away again.

  So he did like the way she looked! If Claire could have seen her own eyes then, she knew it must have been like watching a dark shadow pass over and the sun coming out.

  He smiled; so did she—the first real smile she had offered him in days. And while she continued to stand there feeling starry-eyed and breathless he picked up her other hand and slid something onto one of her fingers.

  ‘A betrothal ring for my betrothed,’ he murmured lightly as Claire glanced down then went perfectly still when she found herself staring at the most enchanting little diamond cluster ring she had ever set eyes on. ‘It is a necessary part of the game-plan.’

  The game-plan. Her heart thumped in her breast. How could she keep forgetting the game-plan?

  ‘And it fits, too,’ he added in that same lightly teasing vein. ‘Which means Grandmother is going to make me pay for the pleasure of placing it here.’

  ‘It’s your grandmother’s ring?’ Swallowing her silly sense of let-down, Claire glanced up at him questioningly.

  ‘The first of many my grandfather gave her,’ he said with a small grimace. ‘But this was her favourite. Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful ring,’ she murmured softly; it was not big enough to be ugly, not small enough to be cheap. ‘Thank you for allowing me to wear it tonight,’ she added, belatedly remembering her manners. ‘I promise to take precious care of it for you.’

  He had been about to move away from her when she said that. But now he stopped. ‘It is yours to keep,’ he stated rather curtly. ‘I was not expecting to get it back.’

  But Claire shook her head. ‘No.’ This ring did not belong to her and it never would. She could accept the new wardrobe of clothes and the luxury lifestyle she was being treated to here, because they only cost money and, as she had already learned with Andreas, money was a commodity he had more than enough of. But this ring—like the wedding dress—was different. Both had feelings attached to them, memories, for an old lady that belonged to this family, not to Claire, who was only passing through, so to speak.

  He knew what she was thinking. She could feel him reading the sombre thoughts as they passed over her face. As she stood there with baited breath, waiting for him to start arguing the point with her, he surprised her by not doing that at all.

  ‘You have integrity, Claire,’ he murmured quietly. ‘That is a rare commodity; try not to lose it.’

  ‘Integrity?’ she repeated, sending him a wry little smile that thoroughly mocked the suggestion. ‘Where is the integrity in marrying someone you don’t love, even if it benefits the both of us?’ she asked him cynically.

  He didn’t answer, and she didn’t blame him because there really was no answer that did not confirm she was telling the truth.

  ‘Come on,’ he prompted rather harshly instead. ‘It is time for us to go and greet our guests.’

  And that small amount of harmony they had managed to create between them withered and died as they both remembered what this was really all about: a stranger’s child that he, for no apparent reason, had decided to adopt as his own. For the first time since he had talked her into this, Claire began to question his reasoning because, knowing him better now than she had when they’d struck this deal, she could no longer accept that he needed to legally adopt Melanie to make this deception work.

  After all, no one yet had questioned his claim that Melanie was his child. And if he genuinely needed an heir that badly, then why not find himself an olive-skinned boy-child? Unless choosing a girl was all part of the deception—a clouding of the scent to keep people’s minds working on the wrong problem.

  Could he be that devious? That tactically calculating? Glancing up at him as they began the long walk down the wide staircase, she saw the ruthlessness and cynicism etched into his dark profile and thought with a shiver, Yes, he can be that calculating.

  Which still did not answer the question as to why he was determined to make it all legal. For if this was for his grandmother’s sake, and from what he had already prepared Claire to expect his grandmother would not be around for very much longer, Melanie was too young to feel the loss of a father who was not her real father in the first place.

  So what was really going on here? She frowned thoughtfully.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ he scolded levelly beside her. ‘I won’t let them eat you.’

  But they did—or almost did—with curious looks laced with a disbelief th
at none of them seemed able to keep hidden, which made her feel uncomfortably like an alien being who was trying to infiltrate their selective society.

  Though, to be fair, no one was openly rude or questioning. The older element said teasing things to Andreas in Greek to which he replied with smooth aplomb. The younger ones—especially the men—ogled Claire in a way that made her blush and earned them a light but real warning to watch their manners from Andreas.

  All very protective, very—possessive of him, she acknowledged. Like the way he kept her left hand enclosed in his right hand all the way through the ordeal while cheeks were brushed against cheeks in typical continental fashion.

  ‘See, it was not so bad in the end, was it?’ he drawled when the introductions were over.

  Where were your eyes? she wanted to counter. But, ‘No,’ was what she actually said.

  One person in particular gave her reason to feel really uncomfortable. Desmona glided in through the door looking absolutely stunning in the kind of dramatically simple black sheath gown that made Claire stingingly aware of her own complete lack of sophistication.

  But she had to admire the way the other woman coped with the small silence that fell on her entrance.

  The rejected one, that silence was shouting. Yet not by a flicker of her silver-grey eyes did she reveal any response to that.

  She kissed Andreas on both cheeks and exchanged softly spoken words with him in Greek that had him smiling sardonically as he answered. Then she was turning to Claire, and for the next few minutes really impressed her as she smiled pleasantly and asked after Melanie.

  As Desmona eventually moved away, it suddenly occurred to Claire that her being here to meet them on their arrival in Greece could have been pre-planned with this awkward moment in mind.

  ‘A very classy lady, don’t you think?’ Andreas remarked.

  ‘I feel sorry for her,’ she confessed, watching the other woman join a group of people and begin talking lightly as if this were just any old social affair.

  ‘Then don’t,’ was his rather curt rejoinder. ‘For she is the sleeping panther in our midst whose teeth are none the less still sharp even though she is not baring them at present.’

  As a clear warning to beware—though of what Claire wasn’t sure—it certainly sent a cold shiver chasing down her spine.

  She found that out later when Desmona decided to sink those teeth into Claire’s shaky self-confidence.

  Feeling flushed and breathless after having been danced around the large hallway by a rather enthusiastic old gentleman called Grigoris who was apparently to give her away at her wedding, Claire stood on the sidelines, alone for the first time since the whole extravaganza had begun.

  She was watching Andreas dance with a rather lovely dark-haired creature whose name she could not recall. He was relaxed, smiling, and looked a completely different man from the one she was used to seeing. More the urbane man of sophistication, enjoying being with his own kind, she thought.

  Then a smooth-as-silk voice drawled lightly beside her, ‘Have you worked out yet which one is his mistress?’

  Mistress? Claire struggled to keep her expression from altering, but the sickening squirm that suddenly hit her stomach sent some of the warmth draining from her cheeks.

  Desmona saw it happen. ‘You didn’t know,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, how tragic for you—and on your betrothal night, too. I am so sorry …’

  No, you’re not, you’re enjoying yourself, Claire silently contended, aware that she was being baited by a woman who—as Andreas had warned her—was out for her blood.

  ‘He doesn’t have a mistress.’ She coldly dismissed the suggestion, but in reality she found herself suddenly having to face the fact that he most probably did have one somewhere. A man like Andreas would not put himself in a marriage of convenience without having that side of his needs adequately covered—surely!

  ‘All Greek men of class have mistresses, darling,’ Desmona drawled deridingly. ‘You could almost say it is expected of them. So, which one do you think?’ she prompted. ‘The lovely thing he is dancing with? Or the other one over there who can’t take her eyes off him—or maybe the one standing in the corner, who looks too besotted with her husband to even notice Andreas.’

  Without wanting them to, Claire’s eyes flicked from woman to woman as Desmona pointed them out to her. And all of them—all of them were so beautiful that she wouldn’t have blamed him for wanting any of them.

  ‘I would go for the besotted one if I were you,’ Desmona advised, not missing a single telling flicker of Claire’s blue eyes. ‘For the way she is clinging to her husband smacks of desperation to me …’

  ‘I think you’re lying,’ Claire responded, refusing to let the other woman get to her.

  ‘Then you are a fool,’ Desmona replied. ‘And maybe you deserve all you are about to receive from Andreas Markopoulou. For he may have good reason to want your child, but I cannot believe that he truly wants you—though he is cold-blooded and ruthless enough to take you if that is the only way he can achieve his aim. There,’ she concluded. ‘I have said what I needed to say. So now I will leave you to enjoy the rest of your betrothal party. Good luck, Miss Stenson.’ She smiled as she turned away. ‘I think you may well need it very soon …’

  But why had she said it? Claire wondered as she watched Desmona walk smoothly away. To hurt her—Claire—or to hurt Andreas because he had rejected her?

  In the end it didn’t matter, because now the seed had been planted Claire could feel herself looking at every female face with new suspicious eyes.

  Andreas was no longer dancing but talking to the woman Desmona had described as besotted with her husband. Well, she observed, there was no sign of the husband now as she laughed with Andreas, with her big eyes shining up into his.

  Was she his mistress?

  It’s none of your business! she told herself furiously.

  But knowing that didn’t stop her from studying their body language as Andreas touched a light finger to the woman’s shoulder, to her cheek, laughed softly at something she said to him and kissed the hand she used to teasingly cover his mouth when he gave what must have been a wicked reply.

  The woman spoke again, only this time her expression turned very serious. With her hand still resting in his, Andreas sobered also, then began glancing furtively around them before giving a grim nod of his head. Then, turning, they moved off into one of the other rooms.

  Even with that quick glance around to check that their withdrawal would not be observed, he didn’t even notice me, Claire noted painfully. Then she saw Desmona’s gaze fixed mockingly on her, and humiliation swept over her in a sickening wave.

  It was one thing to deceive but quite another to be deceived, she realised, hurt, so very hurt that she didn’t quite know what to do with herself as she stood there alone and feeling utterly unable to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  So when several of the younger guests approached her to say they had set up a disco outside on the pool terrace, then warily asked if she would like to join them, she was so relieved at the diversion from her own hectic thoughts that she accepted eagerly.

  Half an hour later she was a different person. A person her mother would have recognised if she’d been there to see the old laughing, teasing, fun-loving Claire who danced disco with enthusiasm rather than stuffy waltzes with reluctance.

  If there was something rather desperate about the way she threw herself into the fun, then no one seemed to notice that. They were just pleased to discover that Andreas Markopoulou’s newly betrothed was nothing like the hard-crusted English floozy they had all been led to believe she would be.

  Someone appeared with a case of champagne they’d pinched from somewhere. And for the next few minutes the small group threw themselves into the fun of making corks explode from bottles then quickly supping at the frothy wine as it spilled over the bottle rim.

  After that the wine flowed like water, and as the intoxicating bubbles entered h
er bloodstream Claire began to let go of what was left of her inhibitions. The music was throbbing—and she danced like a dream. There wasn’t one person there who didn’t pause to take note of that as her long, slender body swayed and gyrated inside the slinky dress, with the kind of innate sensuality that made the other girls envious and the young men throb to an entirely different beat.

  One young man who was bolder than the rest stepped up behind her to slide his hands around her silk-tulle-lined stomach and began gyrating with her. Claire laughed and didn’t push him away; instead she began exaggerating her movements to which he had to follow.

  ‘You are wasted on Andreas,’ he whispered against her ear. ‘He is too cold and stuffy for a wonderful creature like you.’

  ‘I adore him,’ Claire lied glibly, when really at that moment she was hating him so badly that she could barely cope with it. ‘He’s absolute dynamite.’

  Not so big a lie, she acknowledged bleakly from some darker place inside her that she refused to go off to. Instead she turned her head against her shoulder and smiled a stunning smile into her new consort’s captivated face.

  That was how Andreas came upon her. He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’ his deep voice harshly intruded, and effectively silenced the whole group in the blink of an eyelid as heads came up, twisted round, then simply froze to stare at him like guilty thieves caught red-handed.

  He was standing in a circle of light being thrown from the open French window that led to the indoor pool just behind him. And even with his dark face cast in shadows there wasn’t one of them present who didn’t know that he was furiously angry.

  Someone had the presence of mind to switch off the throbbing music. Then the silence that followed was truly stunning as he began striding forward.

  His hard eyes were on Claire—and specifically fixed on the place where her companion’s hands were splayed across her slender body.

  Andreas didn’t so much as glance at him, but with a sharp click of his fingers he had the young man snatching his hands away from her waist then stepping right back as if he was letting go of some stolen hot property.