Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  Hated having to lie here beside her in this bed when he was probably wishing himself a million miles away.

  With his mistress, most probably.

  He threw himself down in one of the easy chairs by the curtained window. She heard him sigh again, then—nothing. Nothing for long minutes while she held herself still, listening until she could stand to listen no longer and turned over in the bed to gaze at the dark bulk by the window.

  He was asleep, stretched out in the chair with his dark head thrown back and his face a mask of grim perseverance.

  Tears began to burn at the back of her eyes. Weak tears. Wretched tears. Foolishly hurt tears! She fell asleep like that, with the tears still clinging to her lashes.

  When she awoke next morning she was alone as usual. The knowledge that Alex had found it impossible to spend a whole night in the same bed with her lay like a lead weight across her chest.

  Then she remembered Suzanna and got up, showered quickly and dressed herself in a pair of comfortable stretch white leggings and a pale blue overshirt, before taking a deep breath and letting herself out of that bedroom to go in search of the others.

  She was just coming down the stairs when Alex walked out of one of the rooms off the hallway. He saw her and paused to watch her descent through those impenetrable brown eyes of his.

  ‘You still look tired,’ he observed huskily.

  Still stinging from last night’s humiliating rejection, she dropped her eyes from his and concentrated fiercely on the stairs in front of her. ‘It’s worry, not tiredness,’ she contended. ‘I would like to ring the hospital,’ she went on coolly. ‘Is there a telephone I could use?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Stepping back to the room he had just walked out of, he opened the door and gestured her through it. She found herself standing in a study that was very male in style—a lot of polished wood, walls lined with books and the more modern state-of-the-art communications hardware.

  There was a desk by the window, with a telephone sitting on it. Mia thanked him quietly and walked over to pick up the receiver.

  Her thanks had been a polite way of dismissing him but, to her annoyance, he didn’t leave her to her privacy but came to lean on the desk beside her so he could watch her face while she spoke to the hospital.

  Suzanna had spent a comfortable night, she was assured. She also knew that Mia had been in to see her late last night, and the fact that she was actually here in London had cheered the child up remarkably. ‘She keeps on asking when you are coming in again,’ the nurse told her.

  ‘Later this morning,’ Mia replied. ‘Tell her I will be with her just as soon as I can be.’

  ‘OK?’ Alex asked quietly as she lowered the receiver.

  Mia nodded, her lips pressed together to stop them from trembling, but it still hurt to think of that little girl spending the whole of yesterday sick and in pain and probably very frightened of what was happening to her.

  ‘Then what is the matter?’ he asked. ‘You look almost—hunted.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I n-need to ring my father next, that’s all.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Would you prefer me to make that particular call for you?’ he offered.

  Instantly her chin lifted and her eyes met his with their usual defiance to give him his answer. He smiled wryly. ‘You trust me about as much as you trust him, don’t you?’

  Mia didn’t answer—didn’t need to. He knew exactly how little she trusted him.

  The housekeeper answered her call. The moment she heard Mia’s voice she went off on a harried burst of speech that showed just how anxious she had been about Suzanna.

  Mia listened with her eyes lowered and her fingers clenched. Her knuckles were white around the receiver as she strove to contain the black anger that was building inside her.

  For three days Suzanna had been complaining of pain—and for three long, wretched days her father had cruelly dismissed the child’s distress as a ploy to bring her precious Mia back.

  Her eyes began to flash and her heart to pump on an adrenaline rush. Beside her, Alex shifted his position a little, catching her attention and bringing those green eyes flashing upwards to pierce him with enough burning venom to make his own blink.

  ‘No—no, Cissy,’ she murmured smoothly, in reply to whatever the housekeeper had said to her. ‘I’m right here in London. I visited Suzanna last night, and I’m going back to the hospital this morning so you don’t have to worry about her now.’

  Another volley of words hit her burning eardrums and Mia had difficulty containing what was screaming to be released inside her.

  Alex brought a hand up to grab her chin, then tugged it around in his direction. His eyes were black, boring into hers with stunned fascination. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘You’re cracking up! The ice is beginning to melt at last!’

  ‘Is my father there?’ she asked the housekeeper in a voice as cool and calm as a mill pond on a winter’s day, while her eyes spat murder into those probing black ones. ‘Can I speak to him, please?’

  Cissy told her that her father had meetings all day and that he had left the house very early, without even bothering to ask after Suzanna. Why? Because the child held no great importance in the real plan of things! She was simply a very small pawn he used to make Mia jump to his bidding.

  Another loss leader.

  It was cruel, it was sick and it was downright criminal. By the time Mia replaced the telephone she was shaking like a leaf and ready to hit out at the nearest person.

  Alex.

  Angrily she turned away from him, her slender arms wrapping around her own body in an effort to contain what was desperately clamouring to burst free.

  ‘Mia—’

  ‘Say one more word,’ she bit out, ‘and I am likely to spoil your handsome features!’

  There was a choked gasp from behind her. ‘What did she say to you?’ he demanded roughly.

  ‘Nothing you would find unacceptable,’ she retorted. Then, because she knew she needed to calm down because she could feel the usual dizziness surging up to pay her back for allowing herself to get this agitated, she took a jerky step towards the door. ‘I need to—’

  ‘No!’ The hand that closed around her wrist stopped her from going anywhere. ‘I want to know what she said to make you so angry,’ Alex insisted grimly.

  Mia rounded on him like a virago. Her teeth bared and her eyes spitting green fire, she hit out at him with her free fist. It missed its target because he ducked out of its way—which in turn sent her off balance so she stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her to him.

  ‘What the hell was that for?’

  ‘Three days!’ she choked out. ‘She was ill for three whole days before my father condescended to let Cissy bring in a doctor!’

  ‘And you think I could be that callous?’ He looked white suddenly—white with anger. ‘I am not your damned father!’ he railed at her furiously.

  No, she thought, you are just the man who is breaking my heart in two! ‘Oh, God,’ she said brokenly when she realised just what she was telling herself. ‘Let go of me,’ she whispered, feeling the all too ready tears beginning to build inside.

  Maybe he sensed them threatening—certainly he could feel the way her body was trembling as he was holding her so close—because, on a driven sigh, he let go of her. ‘You should not let yourself get upset like this,’ he muttered. ‘In your present condition it cannot be good for you.’

  Ah, her present condition. Mia allowed herself a tight smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she said grimly, pulling herself together. ‘It’s my sister’s health that worries me, not my own.’

  ‘Your daughter,’ he corrected.

  ‘Sister,’ she repeated. ‘She will not be my daughter again until I have safely delivered this child I am carrying now.’

  Alex came with her to the hospital that morning, though Mia wished he could have shown a bit of sensitivity and let her hav
e this first very painful meeting with Suzanna alone.

  As it was, the child took one look at her as she walked in the room and dissolved into a flood of tears. Mia just gathered her gently into her arms and held her there, struggling hard not to weep herself.

  ‘Daddy said you wouldn’t come,’ the child sobbed as she clung to her. ‘He said you didn’t want me any more because I’m a nuisance.’

  ‘That’s not true, darling,’ Mia murmured reassuringly. ‘You will never be a nuisance to me and I will always come if you need me. Always. Didn’t I promise you that the last time I saw you?’

  ‘But he said you’d gone away to start your own family!’ the child sobbed out accusingly. ‘S-so I’d better get used to you not being around! But I missed you, Mia!’

  It was a cry from the heart that cut so deep even Alex, a silent witness to this tragic overload of emotion, could not stay silent any longer.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, stopping Suzanna’s tears as if he’d thrown a switch.

  Her face came out of Mia’s shoulder so she could look towards that deep, smooth, very male voice, first in surprise because she hadn’t noticed him come in with her precious Mia and then with all the natural wariness of a child towards any total stranger.

  A very tall, very dark, very handsome stranger, who was smiling the kind of smile that made Mia’s heart flip because she recognised it as the same smile he had once used on her—before her father’s bargain had effectively killed it.

  ‘My name is Alex,’ he introduced himself. ‘Mia is my wife.’

  Wife. Her heart flipped a second time. He had formally acknowledged her as his wife for the first time ever, and the word seemed to echo strangely inside her head.

  Like a lie that wasn’t quite a lie but still sounded like one nonetheless.

  ‘And you are Suzanna …’ With each gently spoken word he came closer, holding Suzanna’s attention like a hovering hawk mesmerising a wary rabbit. He came down on his haunches beside the bed where Mia was holding the child against her. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

  He offered Suzanna his hand in greeting. Her tear-spiked lashes flickered to the hand, then uncertainly back to his face again—before finally looking to Mia in search of some hint as to how she should respond.

  Don’t ask me, Mia thought drily. I still haven’t worked that one out and I’ve been living with him for months. She smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s OK. You can like him. He’s nice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alex murmured in a dry undertone that said he’d caught the mocking intonation behind the remark.

  By then Suzanna was cautiously placing her little hand in his, and Alex’s full attention was back on the child.

  It was a revelation, simply because Mia had never known he had it in him, but within minutes Suzanna had forgotten her tears, forgotten her woes. In fact, she seemed to have forgotten everything as, with amazing intuition, Alex breached the little girl’s natural shyness with men in general by encouraging her to describe—in lurid detail—every stage of her emergency dash to the hospital in an ambulance and the ensuing course of events that had led to her waking up here in this bed with stitches in her tummy.

  ‘They’re horrid,’ she confided. ‘They hurt when I move.’

  ‘Then try not to move too much,’ advised the man, whose simple logic seemed to appeal to the child.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mia murmured gratefully an hour or so later, when Suzanna had drifted into a contented sleep.

  ‘For diverting her mind from the horrors your father has fed into her?’ He got up from the bed where somehow he had managed to swap places with Mia so she had ended up seated more comfortably on the bedside chair. ‘That does not require thanks,’ he stated grimly. ‘It requires defending.’

  He was right. It did. Mia didn’t even take offence at the comment. ‘He is not a nice man.’ She sighed. ‘He likes to control people. You, me, Suzanna—anyone he can gain power over.’

  ‘Which does not justify her being treated to that kind of mental torture,’ Alex countered harshly.

  Mia went pale, but she nodded in agreement. ‘Maybe now you can understand why I had to marry you. I had to do what was necessary so I can remove her from his influence.’

  ‘An influence she should never have been exposed to in the first place!’

  They had been talking in low voices by necessity in such close proximity to the sleeping Suzanna, but those words cut so deep into Mia’s bones that she could not sit still and take them on the chin as she really knew she should do.

  She got to her feet and walked right out of the room on legs that were shaking so badly they could barely support her.

  When Alex eventually came looking for her he found her standing in the corridor, staring out of one of the windows that overlooked the hospital car park.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said heavily as he came up behind her. ‘I did not mean to sound so critical of you. It was your father I was condemning.’

  She didn’t believe him. ‘You think I am the lowest of the low for handing my child over to him,’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘And don’t think that I don’t know it!’

  ‘That is your own guilty conscience talking,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I only wish you could have told me from the beginning why you had been forced to agree to this marriage!’

  ‘What was I supposed to say?’ she said cynically. ‘Oh, by the way, I’m doing this because I had another child but I gave her away and this is the only way I can get her back again?’ Her eyes flashed, her cheeks blooming with anger. ‘That would really have made you respect me, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘And you want my respect?’ he asked huskily.

  Her heart hurt with the truthful answer to that question. ‘I just want to get through these next few months without falling apart,’ she answered shakily.

  Silence greeted that, a grim kind of silence that held them both very still in that hospital corridor. Alex stood behind her, a dominating force as he stared over her shoulder at the car park beyond.

  Mia felt like crying. Why, she didn’t know—except maybe it had something to do with the need pounding away inside her breast that wanted her just to turn around and throw herself against the big, hard chest behind her.

  ‘Do you have copies of the adoption documents?’ Alex asked suddenly.

  She steadied her lips and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Where are they?’

  Mia frowned at the question and turned to face him. ‘I keep them with my other papers in my vanity case back at the villa in Skiathos,’ she told him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I would like to see them, if you have no objection.’

  No objection? Of course she had objections as a sudden fear drained her face of its colour. ‘You want to use them against me, don’t you?’ she accused him shakily. ‘You think that if I gave my child away once then a court of law would not give me custody of a second child! You—’

  ‘You,’ he cut in angrily, ‘have a nasty, suspicious, insulting mind!’ He was so very right!

  ‘And that makes you feel very superior to me, doesn’t it?’ she flashed back hotly. ‘Well, let me tell you something, Alex. I won’t ever think you superior to me while you go on believing that a lump of rock somewhere in the Aegean is more important to you than your own DNA!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ALEX rocked back on his heels as if Mia had struck him. He looked frighteningly angry and Mia couldn’t breathe—she didn’t dare to in case she released whatever it was she could see threatening to explode inside him. Her heart began to hammer, the world beyond his stone-like stance blurring at the edges. Then he moved, and so did she, sucking air into her starved lungs on a tension-packed gasp.

  What she’d thought he’d been about to do to her she had no idea, but when he turned on his heel and strode away she stared after him with horror that verged on remorse.

  Because it hit her—really hit her as she watched him go—that she had just inadvertently struck at the very he
art of him, though she did not know how or with what!

  When she was ready to leave Suzanna, after eating her tea with the little girl, it was Carol who appeared in the doorway to the little room.

  ‘Oh, you have to be Mia’s sister because you are like two peas from the same pod!’ she declared, making Mia jump nervously and scan the empty space around Carol in the flesh-tingling fear that Alex would be there.

  He wasn’t. For the next ten minutes Carol talked Suzanna into a blank daze as she produced, during her mindless chatter, little presents from the capacious black canvas bag she’d had slung over her shoulder when she arrived.

  A pocket computer game. ‘From Alex,’ she explained to Suzanna. ‘He thought it may help to fill the time in when Mia has to rest. She’s making a baby—did you know she’s making a baby?’

  Suzanna gave a nod about the baby, whispered a thank-you for the computer game and stared at the beautiful Carol with something close to star-struck idolisation as the other woman chatted on as if they’d known each other all their lives.

  ‘Now, I’ve been ordered by Uncle Alex to take Mia home and make her rest,’ Carol informed her latest conquest, ‘so she can be fresh as a daisy when she comes back here tomorrow.’

  ‘Will you come, too?’

  Mia felt the wall around her heart crack, oozing a warm, sticky liquid called heartache for this child of hers who was so hungry for this kind of warm affection.

  ‘I’ll be coming to collect Mia after I’ve finished work.’ Carol nodded.

  When Mia bent down to receive her goodnight kiss the little girl clung to her neck. ‘You will come back again, won’t you?’ she whispered anxiously.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ Mia promised.

  ‘What did you say to put Alex in such a bad mood?’ Carol asked the moment they were inside her car. ‘He’s been stomping around the hotel like a demolition man all afternoon.’

  ‘You work there, too?’ Mia asked in surprise.