Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  She looked away as he turned towards her, stiffened like mad when his hands snaked around her waist to gently crush fine muslin against her skin. A long brown foot with long brown toes appeared next to her foot so he could share the water sprinkling down on them.

  Next the smoothness of his cheek arrived against her cheek. ‘We are being watched, agapita,’ he warned huskily as she tried to pull away from him.

  It was all he needed to say to halt her attempt to escape. So she clamped her teeth together, kept her chin lowered and swapped one cleaned foot for the other and felt the intimacy deep in her trembling bones in watching Xander do the same thing.

  ‘You’re trembling all over. I like it,’ he remarked in a sexy, husky groan by her ear, felt the heat mount her cheek and laughed softly as he brushed his lips against that tell-tale heat.

  ‘I’m trembling because I’m angry with you,’ she said. ‘Look at me, Xander,’ she then said heavily. ‘I’m all wet and salty and now I have to go in there and meet your mother looking like this. You should have given me more warning then at least I could have found time to shower and change before she arrived … and she will know, won’t she,’ she then added unhappily, ‘what the papers have been saying about us?’

  ‘And that bothers you.’

  ‘It bothers you too or you would not have brought me here and hidden me away like you have.’

  His foot disappeared and she sensed a new grimness in him as he reached over her shoulder to turn off the shower. ‘I did not bring you here to hide you,’ he denied.

  ‘Yes, you did. The same as you’ve been hiding me away all year.’

  ‘So you thought you would make me wake up and take notice by involving yourself with another man?’

  ‘Isn’t that just typically arrogant of you to think I was trying to grab your attention?’ She tried to move away again but he still would not allow it, the flat of his hand resting lightly but firmly against her stomach to keep her trapped in front of him. She sucked in a short, tense breath. ‘I was leaving you, Xander,’ she stated bluntly. ‘And I was going, hoping never to set eyes on you again.’

  ‘You did more than set eyes on me a few minutes ago, Nell, and I don’t recall you turning away. In fact …’ He turned her to face him. His eyes wore a hard glitter. ‘I would say that you could not get enough of what you saw.’

  ‘That was just sex.’

  ‘And you know so much about it to sound so dismissive?’

  Nell didn’t answer. She was glaring at the ribbon of hard brown skin dressed with crisp dark hair showing between his gaping shirt and wishing with all her heart that her tongue didn’t tingle with a desire to taste.

  ‘We were talking about your mother.’ She slewed her eyes sideways to stare at the glinting pool.

  ‘She’s here to discuss some family business.’

  ‘Well, maybe she will be kind enough to give me a lift off this island when she leaves.’

  ‘You think I would allow it?’

  Green eyes flashed into contact with his. ‘Would you like to repeat that bit about not hiding me?’

  He went several steps further and lowered his dark head and kissed her, not hot and driven like before but slow and gentle with just enough passion to elicit a response. ‘That is why you’re here, agape mou,’ he murmured as he lifted his head again. ‘We are going to kick-start this marriage. Then let us see if you still wish to leave.’

  Xander could say this in that tone of voice because she’d responded. He could say it because her fingers were already in contact with his brown skin. This beautiful, defiant, contrary creature might not want to want him but hell, she did want him, Xander thought grimly.

  Letting go of her, he strode off, leaving her standing there knowing that he had won that little battle without her putting up much of a defence.

  Waiting in the coolness of the foyer, he viewed Nell’s arrival in the open doorway through carefully hooded eyes and had to lock his jaw to keep other parts of him under control. Lit from behind by the sunlight, she looked like a sea nymph standing in the jaws of a hungry shark.

  He was the hungry shark. If they had been alone here he would be closing those jaws and carrying her off to finish what he’d started out there. He’d laid down the gauntlet as to where this marriage of theirs was going to go from here and by the way she was hovering in the doorway he would say that she knew she did not stand a chance of changing that course.

  She began walking forward. As he watched her come closer his head played a tempting little scene that involved him carrying her up the stairs and laying her on the bed then stripping away the few scraps she wore.

  Though maybe he would leave the G-string in place, he thought darkly, seeing his mouth tracing its skimpy white lines with a chain of tongue-tipped kisses that would have her begging him to take it off.

  That was how he wanted her—begging. He wanted her spreading those slender golden thighs and inviting him in. He wanted her arms around his neck and her eyes pleading and—

  A frown clipped his brows together. ‘Go and make yourself presentable while I entertain our—guest,’ he instructed.

  ‘But your mother will think it rude if I don’t—’

  His eyes made a glinting sweep over the now damp strip of Indian cotton that was doing so little to hide the brevity of what was beneath. ‘Trust me, you will feel better if you take time to change.’

  A self-conscious flush mounted her cheeks. ‘You don’t look so presentable yourself,’ she still had the spirit to hit back as she walked by him.

  Xander just grinned. ‘The difference being that I don’t care what other people think when they look at me.’

  Only because he still managed to look fabulous even with bare feet and his damp shirt lying open down his hair-tangled, muscle-contoured, bronzed front, Nell thought as she took to the stairs without further argument.

  If she’d looked back she would have caught him quickly fastening buttons and combing long fingers through his hair. And the expression on his face had changed from lazily indifferent to grim.

  He could have done without this intrusion from his mother today of all days. When she had rung his apartment in Athens this morning with an urgent request to see him, only to be told he was coming to the island, the last thing he had expected was for her to promptly invite herself and he’d told her not to come.

  Though in truth, now she was here, he had some things of his own he needed to thrash out with his mother, things he preferred to get out of the way before his single-minded seduction of his beautiful wife continued along its present course.

  Thinking about that exciting creature he’d met in the cove an hour ago set his nerves on edge. Nell had turned the tables on him with her provocative performance, and what was bothering him was why she had done it.

  As the aggravating witch had just pointed out, three weeks ago she had been leaving him for another man.

  A man, no less, that she’d been trying to contact via the telephone in his study here ever since she’d arrived on the island, but, like himself and the small army of people he had out there looking for him, Nell had discovered that Marcel Dubois had effectively disappeared from the face of the earth.

  Scared of the repercussions when he heard of Nell’s accident and knew that her husband was about to find out about them? If so, the Frenchman should have thought about those repercussions sooner—before he lured Nell into taking flight.

  But that was not the point that was troubling Xander right now as he stood outside the salon door, grimly tidying himself. Nell was still trying to contact the cowardly swine yet she’d responded to him like a woman who’d been suppressing her desires for too long.

  Hedging her bets? Using him as a substitute for her new love? Had that bastard woken her up to her own sexual desires and after three weeks without him she was hungry enough to let any man have her—even the one she believed was having an affair with another woman?

  Anger bit its sharp teeth into him at the
mere idea of another man taking what belonged to him. He threw open the salon door and stepped inside to the smell of his mother’s perfume and to see an aunt who was all beaming smiles because her favourite person had come for a visit.

  Shame that the son did not feel the same way. ‘OK, Madre, let us make this brief. I have more important things to do than listen to your business troubles today.’

  ‘I think you have already been dealing with your—business, caro,’ his mother drawled with a swift up-and-down glance of his dishevelled state despite the attempt to tidy up. ‘And there was I, thinking as I flew here that at last Alexander will know what it feels like when a marriage flounders on the rocks …’

  ‘Your marriage did not flounder; you scuppered it,’ he incised.

  ‘If you two are going to fight I will leave you,’ Thea Sophia put in and headed for the door, her beaming smile lost. ‘You might also like to embrace each other before you tear each other to pieces,’ she added sternly before she walked out.

  Fifteen minutes later and Nell was coming down the stairs again after the quickest shower on record and with her freshly washed hair rough-dried by an urgent towel then left to do its own thing while she scrambled around for something suitable to wear. The fact that whoever had packed for her in England had chosen almost all of the clothes she’d bought for her nonexistent honeymoon did not make the choice a simple one. One, the clothes had been bought with Xander and romance in mind. Two, they were now a full season out of date. So to have to put on one of the slinky off-the-shoulder short dresses in last season’s rich jade colour did not give her confidence a major boost as she hovered outside the salon door, running nervous fingers down a mid-thigh-length dress that might do good things for her eyes and her figure but was going to look out-of-date to her super-elegant, fashion-guru mother-in-law.

  That she’d stepped into a war zone took Nell about two seconds to register. Xander was lounging in one of the chairs, looking for the world like the king of all he surveyed even with bare feet—while he shot angry sparks at his mother.

  Gabriela was sitting opposite him, giving the cool appearance that she did not notice the sparks. Heaven had left nothing out when they made this beautiful woman, Nell thought enviously. The sleek black hair, the sensational dark eyes, the long, slender figure which could pull off any fashion statement with panache.

  As he turned his head to look at her, Nell felt a blush coming on as Xander let his eyes narrow then linger on her shining hair with its still damp, spiralling ends touching the hollow of her back. She’d tugged the dress up onto her shoulders as far as it would let her but it still looked low-cut at the front and slinky—as those too expressive eyes had already assessed.

  ‘Ah, Helen, there you are.’ Her mother-in-law’s smooth voice brought her eyes swinging in her direction as Gabriela rose gracefully to her feet. ‘You look delightful, cara,’ she smiled as she came towards her, her expression revealing nothing as she swung her eyes down over Nell’s dress, but the criticism was there, Nell was sure that it was. ‘Enchantingly clean and fresh as you always look,’ Gabriela added, then they air-kissed while Nell tried not to cringe at the ‘clean and fresh’ bit. ‘And such hair! I am sure it grows two inches longer each time I see you. You know,’ she eyed Nell shrewdly, ‘with the touch of a gifted stylist I know in Milan it could be the most—’

  ‘You will leave Nell’s hair alone,’ Gabriela’s son interrupted as he rose to his feet. ‘I like it exactly the way it is.’

  ‘Don’t be snappy, caro,’ his mother scolded. ‘I was only going to suggest that if you gave me a week with Helen in Milan I could truly turn her into—’

  ‘I will extend on that,’ Xander put in. ‘You will leave Nell alone altogether. I like all of her exactly the way that she is.’

  ‘Well, of course you do,’ his mother agreed. ‘But—’

  ‘Exquisito, mi amore.’ Placing his mouth to Nell’s cheek, Xander spoke right over whatever Gabriela’s but was going to be. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he advised. ‘I do not need another fashion slave in this family.’

  ‘I am not a slave to fashion!’ his mother protested.

  ‘The couture houses of Europe wipe their feet on you, Madre, and you know what makes it so crazy?’ He looked down on her from his superior height. ‘You would look amazing in whatever you chose to wear, be it sackcloth. They should be paying you to wear their clothes.’

  ‘They do,’ Gabriela informed him stiffly. Then because, like Nell, Gabriela clearly did not know if he was teasing or being cruel, ‘Oh, go away and put some dry clothes on,’ she snapped, wafting a slender white hand at him. ‘You make a compliment sound like an insult and confuse me.’

  Xander made no attempt to enlighten her as to which had been his intention. He was angry, Nell noticed, so she had to assume the insult was what he’d meant.

  He went obediently enough though, pausing long enough to assure Nell that he would be back before Thea Sophia arrived with refreshment for them all. The door closing behind him left Nell and Gabriela alone with a small silence to fill.

  Gabriela did it. ‘We were arguing when you came in, as I am sure you noticed. Alexander likes to have things all his own way but cannot always have it.’

  The way her eyes slid away from Nell made her wonder if the argument had been about her.

  Or the ugly rumours about their marriage seemed likely.

  ‘Strong men are like that,’ Nell found herself saying—as if she knew much about them.

  ‘You think him strong?’ Gabriela quizzed thoughtfully. ‘I think him arrogant to believe that I should sacrifice my … Ah, but let us not talk about it.’ She cut herself off from saying what she had been about to say right at the intriguing point, as far as Nell was concerned. ‘Tell me about your accident and how you are recovering,’ she invited. ‘A much more interesting subject …’

  By the time they’d done to death the scant details Nell was prepared to give about her accident and her ensuing recovery, which she suspected by the far-away expression Gabriela barely heard, Thea Sophia arrived and the odd mood lightened as Gabriela found a true smile as she went to take the heavy tray from the older woman.

  There was a small tussle, which Thea won, as Nell knew from experience that she would.

  ‘Leave me be, Gabriela,’ she said. ‘I must feel useful or I may as well take to my bed and wait for God to come and get me.’

  ‘Wait for God indeed,’ Gabriela mocked as she went to sit down and the older woman crossed the room to set down the tray. ‘What you need, Thea, is to be taken out of yourself. When was the last time you left this brown dot of an island?’

  ‘This brown dot is Pascalis land,’ the old lady responded. ‘And you might not have liked it here, but I love it.’

  ‘Which did not answer my question.’

  ‘I do not recall when I last left it.’

  ‘Then it is high time that you did. Since Alexander refuses to let me make-over his wife, I think I will take you to Milan, Thea, and we will give you a complete make-over then find you a passionate man who will stop you talking about waiting for God.’

  To Nell’s surprise the old lady let out an amused chuckle. ‘He will be too old to fulfil my hidden passions.’

  ‘Not these days, carisima,’ Xander’s mother came back. ‘Today the old men have the Viagra to maintain their flagging passions and will be very useful indeed to you. No, don’t sit down right over there, Helen. Come and sit here beside me.’

  ‘Wicked creature.’ Sophia spoke over Gabriela’s command while Nell meekly did as she had been told. ‘If my nephew were still alive he would lock you in your room for speaking so disrespectfully to me.’

  ‘Ah, four years and I still miss Demitri,’ Gabriela sighed wistfully.

  ‘I was twenty-three when the war took my Gregoris and made me a widow but I still miss him every single day.’

  It was news to Nell that Thea Sophia had been married!

  ‘You miss his passions, Sophi
a?’ Gabriela prodded teasingly.

  ‘Of course!’ the old lady declared. ‘He was a big, strong, handsome man—as with all the Pascalis men. My bed felt cold for years.’

  ‘I understand the feeling,’ Gabriela sighed. ‘Maybe we should go to Milan to find ourselves a new man each. A cold bed is no pleasure, Thea. You would have liked my husband, cara.’ She turned to include Nell in the conversation. ‘Alexander is just like him—hewn from rock on the outside and deliciously protective by nature, but so jealously possessive of me that he rarely let me out of his sight. Yet what did he do but go and die in two short seconds while I was out of the room!’

  ‘What is this—a wake?’ Xander strode in on the conversation, wearing pale chinos and a fresh white shirt.

  ‘Your father was my one abiding love,’ his mother said sadly.

  ‘Maybe he was, but you …’

  The rest of the ‘but’ was completed in some cutting Italian that literally froze the discussion and turned Gabriela pale.

  Thea Sophia recovered first, bursting into a flurry of chatter as she handed out the small cups of strong black Greek coffee and Nell puzzled over what Xander could he have said this time to destroy his mother as effectively as that.

  She cast him a hateful look, which he returned with a grimace that seemed to say he was already regretting whatever he’d said. But no apology was offered and after giving him as long as it took him to lower himself into the chair he had been occupying earlier, Nell flicked him another hard look then turned to Gabriela.

  ‘A trip to Milan sounds very exciting,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been there and I’ve had a yen to have my hair cut—short and spiky,’ she added for good measure while Gabriela’s eyes began to glow. She knew what Nell was doing and it was working. Xander shifted in his chair. ‘Perhaps I could come with you,’ she suggested. ‘It would be fun to spend lots of money on new clothes and things, try out a new image—’

  ‘Try for a full recovery before you make any plans,’ Xander grimly put in.