Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  Oh, she was no hound-dog. Mia wasn’t so eaten up with self-hate that she couldn’t see that her hair, face, body and legs combined to present a reasonably attractive picture.

  Whatever this man was feeling about her right now, she knew that he had looked at her before today and had wanted her so his expression of distaste simply failed to impress her.

  Reaching the two chairs, she turned, felt his gaze dip over the slender curves of her figure—so carefully muted by the simple coffee-coloured pure wool dress she was wearing—and chose the chair which would place him directly in her sight so she could watch those eyes draw down the long length of her silk-stockinged legs as she sat and smoothly crossed one knee over the other.

  Alexander Doumas was no hound-dog himself, Mia had to acknowledge. In fact, she supposed he was what most fanciful females would have seen as ideal husband material—tall, tanned and undeniably handsome, with the kind of tightly contoured Greek-god body on which top designers liked to hang their very exclusive clothes.

  Indeed, that iron grey silk suit looked very definitely top designer wear. He wore his straight black hair short at the back and neat at the front, and the rich smoothness of his olive-toned skin covered superb bone structure that perhaps said more about his high-born lineage than anything else about him.

  He had a good mouth, too—even if it was being spoiled by anger and disgust at the moment—and his long, rather thin nose balanced well with the rest of his cleanly chiselled features.

  But it was his eyes that made him special—deep-set, dark brown, lushly fringed, deceptively languid eyes that, even when they were showing disdain, could still stir the senses.

  Her senses, she noted as she watched those eyes settle on the point where her slender legs disappeared under the hem of her dress and felt a warm, tingling sensation skitter along her inner thighs in response.

  ‘Well,’ she prompted, unable to resist the dig, ‘do you have a problem there?’

  He stiffened, the finely corded muscles along his strong jawbone clenching when he realised he had been caught staring. ‘No,’ he admitted on a rasping mutter.

  At least he’s being honest about it, Mia reflected ruefully. And so he should be, having spent the last month trying to get her into his bed!

  ‘Then your only problem,’ she went on coolly, ‘is having to decide whether you want your lost island of Atlanta—or whatever it is called,’ she mocked flippantly, ‘badly enough to relinquish your single status to get it.’

  ‘But it isn’t just my single status I’m being tapped for, is it?’ he threw back sourly.

  ‘No,’ she agreed, with another wry smile of appreciation at his wit, even in the face of all this horror. ‘And you are going to have to … er … produce pretty potently, too, if you want this arrangement kept short-term.’

  That had his gaze narrowing sharply on her studiedly impassive green eyes. He didn’t like the tone of voice she had used but she didn’t care that he didn’t like it. She didn’t like Alexander Doumas.

  However, she would go to bed with him, if that was what it would take to get what she needed to gain from this dastardly deal.

  ‘And what is the incentive that makes you agree to all of this?’

  Mia didn’t answer, wondering bleakly what his reaction would be if she told him the truth.

  He was still standing by her father’s drinks cabinet, his body tense and his expression tight with anger and contempt—for her, for himself, or even for both of them, she wasn’t sure. And it really didn’t matter because there was a whole lot more at stake here than his personal contempt—or even her own self-contempt, come to that.

  Her father wanted a grandson to replace the son who had foolishly got himself killed in a car accident several months ago. Alexander Doumas had been chosen to father that grandson—Mia to be the vessel in which the poor child would be seeded.

  This man’s reasons for agreeing to any of this were based on his own personal ambitions. He wanted to get back the family island that lay somewhere off the Greek mainland, which his father had been forced to sell during the downfall of the family fortunes. Jack Frazier was the only person who could return it to him since he now owned the deeds to the island.

  Mia, on the other hand, stood to gain far more than what amounted to a pile of ancient Greek rock. What was more, she was quite prepared to do anything to complete her side of the bargain she had made with her father.

  ‘Like you, I get back something that once belonged to me,’ she murmured eventually.

  ‘Am I to be told what?’

  Her eyes clouded over, her mind shooting off to some dark, dark place inside her that made her look so bleak and saddened it actually threatened to breach his bristling contempt.

  Then her lashes flickered, bringing her eyes back into focus, and the bleak look was gone. ‘No,’ she replied, and rose to her feet. ‘That, I’m afraid, is none of your business.’

  ‘It is if we are going to be man and wife,’ he claimed.

  ‘And are we?’ Mia raised her sleek brows in counter-challenge. ‘Going to be man and wife?’

  ‘Why me?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Why, if you did not make the selection yourself, did your father set me up for this?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ she gasped, her green eyes widening in scathing incredulity. ‘Last week you virtually undressed me with your eyes right in front of him! The week before that you invited me to spend the weekend in Paris with you in front of a room full of people—including my father! And there wasn’t a person present who misunderstood what your intentions were, Mr Doumas,’ she informed him. ‘You certainly were not offering to show the city sights to me!’

  From the moment they’d met, he’d not even attempted to hide the attraction he felt for her!

  ‘You set yourself up for it!’ she told him. ‘I tried to head you off, freeze you out as best as I could do in front of my father. I even told you outright at one point that you were playing with fire, coming anywhere near me! Did you take any notice?’ Her green eyes flashed. ‘Did you hell!’ she snapped, ignoring the way his expression was growing darker the more she threw at him. ‘You just smiled an amused little smile that told me you had the damned conceit to think I was playing hard to get with you—and kept on coming on to me!

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ she continued, while he stood there, stiff-backed and riveted to the spot by what she was tossing at him. ‘Until you started pursuing me, you weren’t even up for consideration for this deal! But as soon as my father saw the way you looked at me you went right to the top of his carefully collected short-list of men fit to father his precious grandson! So, if you need to blame someone for this predicament you now find yourself in, blame yourself,’ she suggested. ‘You looked at me, you wanted me, you were offered me—on my father’s terms.’

  ‘In other words, your father is really your pimp,’ he hit back.

  Oh, very good, Mia grimly acknowledged. She’d cut into him, and he had cut right back.

  ‘If you prefer to think of your future wife as a whore, then fine,’ she parried. ‘Though what that makes you doesn’t really bear thinking about.’

  He jerked as if she’d stabbed him—and so he damn well should! He might not like what he was being dealt here, but it didn’t mean he could ride roughshod over her feelings!

  ‘As it happens,’ she tagged on, simply to twist the knife, ‘you also had to pass several other tests before you qualified. You were younger than the other candidates on my father’s list, as well as being more physically attractive—which was an important factor when my father was creating his grandson and heir,’ she explained. ‘But, most important of all, your family has a reputation for conceiving male children.’ There hadn’t been a female born to the Doumas line this century.

  ‘And, of course, you were hungrier than the rest, not only for me,’ she emphasized, ‘but for your precious island.’ And, therefore, so much easier to capture than the rest, was the bit she kept to herself.r />
  But he took it as said. She saw that confirmed as his mouth took on a wryly understanding twist.

  ‘And what happens to this—grandson and heir once he arrives in this world?’ he asked next. ‘Does your father come and snatch him from your breast an hour after his birth and expect me to forget I ever sired him?’

  ‘Good heavens, no.’ To his annoyance, she laughed again. ‘My father has a real abhorrence of children in any shape or form.’ Despite the laugh, her own bitter experience showed gratingly through. ‘He simply desires a male heir to leave all his millions to. A legitimate male heir,’ she added succinctly. ‘I am afraid I can’t go out and just get one from anywhere, if that’s what you were going to suggest next …’

  It had been a half-question, which his shrug completely dismissed. ‘I’m not a complete fool,’ he drawled. ‘I would not suggest anything of the kind to you when it would mean my losing what I aim to gain from this.’

  ‘And the child would lose a whole lot more, when you think about it,’ Mia pointed out, referring to the size of Jack Frazier’s well-known fortune. ‘But I get full custody,’ she announced with a lift of her chin that said she expected some kind of argument about it. ‘That is not up for negotiation, Mr Doumas. It is my own condition before I will agree to any of this, and will be written into that contract my father mentioned to you.’

  ‘Are you saying that I will have no control at all over this child?’ he questioned sharply.

  ‘Not at all,’ Mia said. ‘You will have all the rights any man would expect over his own son—so long as we stay married. But once the marriage is over I get full custody.’

  ‘Why?’

  Now there was a good question, Mia mused whimsically.

  ‘I mean,’ he qualified when she didn’t answer him immediately, ‘since you are making it damned obvious to me that you are no more enthusiastic about all of this than I am, why should you demand full custody of a child you don’t really want in the first place?’

  ‘I will love it,’ she declared, ‘no matter what his beginnings. I will love this child, Mr Doumas, not resent him, not look at him and despise him for who and what he means to me.’

  ‘And you think I will?’

  ‘I know you will,’ she said with an absolute certainty. ‘Men like you don’t like to be constantly faced with their past failures.’ She’d had experience of men of his calibre, after all—plenty of it. ‘And agreeing to this deal most definitely represents a failure to you. So I get full custody,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Once the marriage is dissolved you will receive all the visitation rights legally allowed to you—if you still want them by then, of course,’ she added, although her tone did not hold any optimism.

  His eyes began to flash—the only warning she got that she had ignited something potentially dangerous inside him before he was suddenly standing right in front of her.

  Her spine became erect, her eyelashes flickering warily as he pushed his angry face close to hers. ‘You stand here with your chin held high and your beautiful eyes filled with a cold contempt for me, and dare to believe that you know exactly what kind of man I am—when you do not know me at all!’ he rasped. ‘For my son …’ His hands came up to grip her shoulders. ‘My son,’ he repeated passionately, ‘will be my heir also!’

  And it was a shock. Oh, not just the power of that possessiveness for something which was, after all, only a means to an end to him, but the effect his touch was having on her. It seemed to strike directly at the very heart of her, contracting muscles so violently that it actually squeezed the air from her tightened chest on a short, shaken gasp.

  ‘My son will remain under my wing, no matter who—or what—his mother is!’ he vowed. ‘And if that means trapping us both into a lifelong loveless marriage, then so be it!’

  ‘Are we?’ Despite his anger, his biting grip, the bitter hatred he was making no effort to hide, Mia’s beautiful, defiant eyes held his. ‘Are we going to marry?’

  His teeth showed, gleaming white and sharp and disturbingly predatorial between the angry stretch of his lips, his eyes like hard black pebbles that displayed a grinding distaste for both herself and the answer he was about to give her.

  ‘Yes,’ he hissed with unmasked loathing. ‘We will marry. We will do everything expected of us to meet your father’s filthy terms! But don’t,’ he warned, ‘let yourself think for a moment that it is going to be a pleasure!’

  ‘Then get your hands off me.’ Coldly, she swiped his hands away. ‘And don’t touch me again until it is absolutely necessary for us to touch!’

  With that she turned and walked back to the window where she stood, glaring outside at the lashing rain, while she tried to get a hold on what was straining to erupt inside her.

  It didn’t work. She could no more stop the words from flowing than she could stop the rain outside from falling. ‘You seem to think you have the divine right to stand there and be superior to me. But you do not,’ she muttered. ‘You have your price, just like the rest of us! Which makes you no better than my father—no better than myself!’

  ‘And what exactly is your price?’ he challenged grimly. ‘Give me one good reason why you are agreeing to all of this and I might at least try to respect you for it!’

  It was an appeal. An appeal that caught at her heart because, even through his anger, Mia could hear his genuine desire for her to give him just cause for her own part in this.

  Her green eyes flashed then filmed over, as for a moment—for a tiny breathless space in time—the sheer wretched truth to that question danced on the very edge of her tongue.

  But she managed to smother the feeling, bite that awful truth down and keep it back, then spun to face him with her eyes made opaque by tears that had turned to ice.

  ‘Money, of course,’ she replied. ‘What other price could there be?’

  ‘Money …’ he repeated, as though she had just confirmed every avaricious suspicion he’d held about her.

  ‘On the day I present my father with a grandson I receive five million pounds as payment,’ she went on. ‘No better reason to agree to this—no worse than a man who can sell himself for a piece of land and a pile of ancient stone.’

  He wasn’t slow—he got her meaning. She was drawing a neat parallel between the two of them—or three people if she counted her father’s willingness to give away a Greek island to get what he wanted out of this rotten deal.

  ‘So make this a marriage for life if it suits you,’ she defied him. ‘I don’t care. I will be wealthy in my own right and therefore independent of you no matter how long the marriage lasts! But we will soon know how strong your resolve is,’ she added derisively, ‘once the marriage is real and your sense of entrapment begins to eat away at you!’

  ‘Entrapment?’ he picked up on the word and shot it scornfully back at her. ‘You naïvely believe I will feel trapped by this marriage? That I am prepared to change a single facet of my life to accommodate you or the vows we will make to each other?’

  It was his turn to discharge a disdainful laugh, and Mia’s turn to stiffen as his meaning began to sink in. ‘I will change nothing!’ he vowed. ‘Not my way of life or my freedom to enjoy it wherever the mood takes me!’

  His eyes were ablaze, anger and contempt for her lancing into her defiant face.

  ‘I have a mistress in Athens with whom I am very happy,’ he announced, using words like ice picks that he thrust into her. ‘She will remain my mistress no matter what I have to do to fulfil my side of this filthy bargain! I will not be discreet.’ he warned. ‘I will not make any concessions to your pride while you live with me as my so-called wife! I will hate and despise you—and bed you with alacrity at regular intervals until this child of the devil is conceived, after which I will never touch you again!

  ‘But,’ he added harshly, ‘if you truly believe I will also let you walk away with that child then you are living in a dream world because I will not!’

  ‘Then the deal is off,’ Mia instantly r
etaliated, using her father’s tactics to make her own point.

  After all, he hadn’t given in to the big one—namely, agreeing to marry her and produce Jack Frazier’s grandchild in what amounted to cold blood—without being desperate! And she would have her way in this if only because she had to glimpse some light at the end of this long dark tunnel or she knew she would not survive.

  ‘Try telling your father that,’ he derided, his eyes narrowing as her cheeks went white. ‘You are afraid of him. I saw that from the first moment I set eyes on you.’

  ‘And you want what only he can give you more than you want a child!’ Mia countered. ‘So I am telling you that you agree to my having full custody or the deal is off! This may also be a good moment for me to remind you of the short-list of other names waiting to be called upon at a moment’s notice,’ she added, playing what she saw as her trump card.

  To her immense satisfaction, his handsome face fell into harsh lines of raw frustration. ‘You are as cold-blooded about this as your damned father!’ he spat at her in disgust.

  Mia said nothing, her chin up and eyes cool, her defiance in the face of his disdain so palpable it could almost be tasted in the air between them. Air that seemed to sing with enmity, picking at her flesh and tightening her throat as she watched him turn and stride angrily for the door.

  ‘I will speak to my lawyers,’ he said in a clipped voice as he reached it, ‘and let you know tomorrow what I decide.’

  ‘F-fine,’ Mia said, not quite managing to hide the sudden tremor of anxiety in her voice.

  He heard it, and read it for exactly what it was. ‘Your father is going to be bloody furious with you for not clinching this here and now, isn’t he?’ he taunted.

  She merely shrugged one finely sculptured shoulder. ‘My father knew my requirements before you arrived here. Why else do you think he left us alone like this when he actually had you so nicely caught in the bag?’

  Take that, you nasty swine, she thought, her eyes gleaming with her own contempt.

  One set of long, brown, lean fingers was gripping the brass doorhandle in preparation to open the door, but that final taunt had them sliding away again, and on a quiver of real alarm, which made her spine warily straighten, Mia watched him turn and begin to walk slowly towards her. Her heart began to hammer, her tongue cleaving to the dry roof of her mouth as he came to a halt mere inches away.