Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  ‘Understand?’ Mia repeated. Oh, yes, she acknowledged heavily, she understood. Alex’s island in the Aegean was not just a piece of rock for which he was willing to sell his soul. It was home. It was where his heart lay, right there with his mother and his brother and where his father needed to lay his own heart.

  She finally did understand that the grip her own father had on Alex was easily as tight as the grip he had on herself. Blackmail—emotional blackmail. A far more powerful vice than mere financial blackmail.

  Her hand came up to cover her mouth. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she choked, and had to run to the nearest cloakroom.

  It was ironic, really, that Alex should choose to call her that same evening. ‘Are you all right?’ he demanded the moment she announced herself on the phone. ‘Carol said you were sick earlier.’

  ‘Something I ate. I’m fine now,’ she said dismissively, hoping Carol hadn’t told him exactly why she had been sick.

  And what had made her sick? Her own words coming back to haunt her. Cruel words, dreadful words, where she’d condemned him for selling himself for physical gain while she’d self-righteously seen herself as selling herself for love.

  ‘You must not overdo it now that Suzanna is out of hospital,’ he commanded rather curtly.

  ‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘She’s quite an easy child to entertain.’

  ‘I noticed,’ he muttered. ‘Too damned easy to please. Have you seen your father?’

  Mia frowned at his sharpened tone. ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘Good,’ Alex grunted. ‘Let us hope it stays that way.’

  ‘Is that why you’re calling?’ she asked. It was so unusual for him to bother. ‘Because you’re concerned about my father showing up here? He won’t, you know,’ she assured him. ‘Having reassured himself that all is going to plan, he won’t waste thinking time on me again until the baby is due.’

  ‘Does that bother you?’

  Bother me? Again she frowned at the strangely sharp question. ‘No,’ she said firmly. Her father’s lack of interest in her as a person had stopped hurting her a long time ago.

  ‘Good,’ he said again. ‘I have two reasons for calling you,’ he went on, suddenly becoming all brisk and businesslike. ‘You are due your monthly check-up with the doctor this week. Since it is not logical to transport you to Athens for a simple doctor’s appointment, I have therefore arranged an appointment at a clinic in London for you.’

  He went on to give her names, addresses, dates and times which she had to hurriedly write down.

  ‘And the other reason I called,’ he continued, ‘is because I have just discovered that I have your passport here in Athens with me. I must have stashed it in my briefcase without thinking about it, when we travelled to London, and there it has stayed until I unearthed it this morning. I also happened to notice that it still bears your maiden name, which makes it invalid.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She hadn’t given a single thought to either her passport or the fact that it was no longer valid. ‘I suppose that means I will have to apply for a new one.’

  ‘I am already arranging it,’ he announced. ‘Leon is seeing to the paperwork so we can get it rushed through before you leave for Greece. You will need to put your signature to the forms Leon is preparing and supply a new photograph. Can you see to that first thing in the morning?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but I could just as easily have seen to the rest as well. I’m pregnant, not an invalid, you know!’

  ‘I never meant to imply you were.’ He sighed. ‘But I presumed you would prefer to devote your time in England to Suzanna,’ he said, in a tone meant to remind her exactly where her priorities lay.

  Which it did—irksomely. ‘Is that it?’ she said, sounding childishly uncivil even to her own ears.

  She heard him mutter something that sounded very much like a profanity. ‘Why do you have to turn every conversation into a battle?’ he said wearily.

  ‘Why do you have to be so damned arrogant?’ she shot back, for want of something to toss at him.

  ‘Because I’m trying to save you a lot of unnecessary hassle.’

  ‘I don’t like my life being organised for me!’ she snapped.

  ‘I am trying to help you, damn it!’ he exploded. ‘When are you going to stop being so damned bitter and realise that I am your ally, not your enemy!’

  When you stop tying my emotions in so many knots that I just can’t tell what you are any more! she thought wretchedly, and slammed down the phone before she actually yelled the words at him!

  Then she stood, shaken to the very roots by her own anger, because she didn’t know what she was angry about!

  Yes, you do, a little voice inside her head told her. You want him to show you a little care and consideration, but when he does you get so frightened it isn’t real that you simply go off the deep end!

  Leon produced the relevant forms for her to sign the next evening—several of them, which made her frown.

  ‘Copies in case I mess up,’ he explained dismissively.

  She shrugged and signed where he told her to sign, and handed over the requested photographs—four surprisingly good snaps, taken in a passport booth in the local high street. Carol had gone with her and so had Suzanna, and between them they had turned the excursion into a game.

  Mia now had in her possession several photos of Suzanna pulling silly faces into the camera, and even a couple of Carol, doing the same thing.

  She kept her appointment at the exclusive London clinic Alex had arranged for her. They gave her the full works, blood pressure, blood tests, physical examination and an ultrasound scan. No problems anywhere, she was relieved to hear. The dizzy spells were a sign of low blood sugar levels, easily remedied by keeping light snacks handy. Other than that, she was assured, they were nothing to worry about. She left the clinic feeling very relieved to have a clean bill of health—and a black and white photograph of her darling baby curled up inside her womb.

  ‘Did it hurt?’ Carol asked suspiciously as she studied the picture.

  ‘What, the scan?’ Mia asked. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It just feels a bit strange, that’s all—and they did prod and poke the poor thing a bit until they could get him to lie in a good position.’

  Carol handed back the photograph, but there was an odd look in her eyes that Mia couldn’t interpret—a look that bothered her for days afterwards, though she didn’t know why.

  Another week went by, and Alex didn’t call again—not that she expected him to after the last row they’d had. But it hurt in some ways that he hadn’t even bothered to call to see how her visit to the clinic had gone—though she would rather die that let him know that.

  Then other, far more immediate concerns began to take precedence, not least the way Suzanna grew quieter and more withdrawn as their three weeks raced towards their imminent conclusion.

  Carol found Mia one evening, weeping over Suzanna’s school trunk which Mrs Leyton had had sent over to the house that day.

  ‘Oh, Mia.’ Carol sighed, and knelt to put her arms around her. ‘Don’t do this to yourself,’ she murmured painfully.

  ‘I can’t bear to leave her,’ Mia confided wretchedly. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do it! She hates that school!’ she sobbed. ‘She hates being away from me! It’s going to break her poor little heart and it’s going to break mine, too!’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Carol groaned thickly. ‘I can’t cope with this. Mia, listen to me!’ she pleaded. ‘You—’

  ‘Carol …’

  It was the flatness in Leon’s tone that stopped Carol from saying whatever she’d been about to say.

  ‘Don’t meddle,’ he warned.

  ‘But, Leon!’ Carol cried. ‘If Alex knew how—’

  ‘I said, don’t meddle,’ he repeated.

  He was standing in the open doorway to Mia’s bedroom, and he sounded so formidable that when Mia glanced at him through tear-washed eyes she thought she could see Alex standing there.
Alex, grim with resolve.

  She shivered. They had a bargain, she and Alex, she reminded herself staunchly. A bargain that was too important to both of them for her to stumble at one of the very last hurdles.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, pulling herself together so that by the time she had pulled herself to her feet all that cool dignity she had used to bring her this far was firmly back in place. ‘I’m all right now.’ She smiled a brittle smile at the tearful Carol as she also straightened. ‘But thank you for caring.’

  ‘We all care, Mia,’ Carol murmured anxiously. ‘Though I can well understand why you wouldn’t believe that.’

  The next day Suzanna’s trunk left for the school by special carrier. The morning after that, pale but composed—they’d both been through this many times before, after all—Mia and Suzanna came down the stairs together, the child dressed in her dour black and grey school uniform and Mia in a sober grey long-jacketed suit, prim high-collared white blouse and with her hair neatly contained in a rather austere, if elegant, French pleat.

  She expected to find Alex’s chauffeur waiting for them, but she had not expected to see both Leon and Carol standing there also.

  ‘We’re coming with you,’ Carol explained. ‘Alex’s orders.’

  Alex’s orders. She almost smiled at the phrase, only she couldn’t smile.

  The journey to Bedfordshire was utterly harrowing. Suzanna sat between Mia and Carol in the back of the car while Leon took the front seat next to the driver.

  One of the little girl’s hands was locked in Mia’s and, clicking into a sort of autopilot, Mia talked softly to the child as they swept out of London onto the motorway and kept on talking as the car ate up the miles far too quickly.

  As they left the motorway Suzanna began to recognise her surroundings and grew tense, her hand clinging all the tighter to Mia’s. A couple of miles away from the school entrance the tears began to threaten. Carol muttered something very constricted, then reached out jerkily to grab at Suzanna’s other hand.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, with very forced lightness, ‘this is an adventure for me. I’ve never been this way before!’

  ‘I hate it,’ Suzanna whispered.

  ‘But look!’ Carol urged. ‘There’s a private airfield over there! I can see a beautiful white plane sitting on the tarmac.’

  Airfield.

  Mia shivered. It ran through her like a dousing from an ice-cold shower.

  ‘You know,’ Carol was saying brightly, ‘Alex has a plane just like that one! Do you think he may have come to—?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mia interrupted sharply as the car suddenly took a sharp right turn. She leaned forward, staring out of the car window. ‘Why have we turned here?’ she demanded.

  To her confusion, Carol chuckled. ‘A magical mystery tour,’ she chanted excitedly.

  The car stopped. Mia stared and her heart began to pound heavily in her chest for in front of them, just as Carol had indicated, stood a gleaming white Gulfstream jet, with its engines running.

  ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘No!’ she gasped more strongly as a horrified suspicion of what was actually happening here began to take a firm hold on her. ‘Carol, this is—!’

  But Carol was already clambering out of the car—and taking Suzanna with her!

  ‘Leon!’ Mia entreated jerkily.

  ‘Trust us,’ he said, then climbed out of the car—and that was when panic suddenly erupted.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ she protested, scrambling out of the car in time to see Carol and Suzanna disappear onto the jet. ‘No!’ she shouted after them. ‘Oh, God!’ Leon’s arm came round her shoulders. ‘Leon, for the love of God, you don’t understand!’

  ‘Believe me,’ he said soothingly, ‘I do understand. It’s OK …’ He began urging her towards the plane. ‘Alex has fixed everything. You have no need to worry. Trust him, Mia. He has your best interests at heart …’

  Best interests at heart? Her blood pressure began to rise in a swirling red mist that almost completely engulfed her. She stumbled up the steps, dangerously out of control and near collapse. With her eyes she frantically searched out and found Suzanna—then saw the man who was squatting next to the child, talking to her.

  ‘Alex,’ she gasped in confusion.

  His dark head came up, his eyes giving her a look of such grim determination that any small threads of pretence she might have been clinging to that this was not what she feared it was snapped at that moment.

  As if in rehearsed confirmation, Suzanna’s voice reached out towards her, shrill with rising excitement. ‘I’m coming to Greece to live with you, Mia! I don’t have to go back to that horrid school!’

  ‘No,’ she breathed in pulse-drumming horror. ‘Alex, you just can’t do this!’

  ‘Go and sit next to Carol and fasten yourself in, Suzanna,’ Alex urged the ecstatic child.

  He straightened, lean and lithe and dauntingly real in a casually loose taupe linen jacket, black trousers and a black T-shirt that did nothing to disguise the tight contours of his body as he began striding towards her. Even in the midst of all this trauma Mia found herself in a tense state of suspended animation, her senses remembering the man’s sensual might and not the might of his ruthless intellect.

  ‘Be calm,’ he was murmuring soothingly. ‘There is no need to panic …’

  No need to panic. The words rattled frantically around her. No need to panic? Of course there was a need to panic! This was wrong! This was crazy! It was going to ruin everything!

  Behind her she heard the muffled thud of the plane’s outer door sealing into its housing and the jet engines give a threatening roar. Her whole body quivered in violent reaction, the clammy heat of horror suddenly racing through her blood, and on a whimpering groan of pained accusation aimed at those compelling dark eyes that were coming ever closer she pitched dizzyingly forward into total oblivion.

  She came round to find herself stretched out across two soft leather chairs, with a pillow tucked beneath her head and Alex squatting beside her, his fingers impatiently dealing with the tiny pearl buttons that held her blouse collar fastened at her throat.

  He looked pale, grim-faced and extremely angry. ‘I swear to God, with everything I have in me,’ he railed at her the moment he saw her eyes flutter open, ‘that you will spend the rest of this pregnancy locked away in a bloody stress-free environment!’

  The blouse button sprang free. He sat back on his heels, his eyes flashing with rage when he saw her catch in a greedy breath of air.

  ‘And the power dressing gets its walking orders as well!’

  Still too dizzy to fight back, Mia lifted an arm to her face so she could cover her aching eyes with decidedly icy fingers. Almost instantly, the hand snapped away from her eyes again. They were already in the air! She could hear the aircraft’s engines as nothing more than a faint purr as they flew them ever further away from England!

  Shakily she pushed herself into a weak-limbed sitting position, her green eyes flicking urgently around the plush cream interior of the cabin.

  They were alone. ‘Where’s Suzanna?’ she demanded jerkily.

  ‘In the galley with Carol, having the time of her life,’ Alex said sardonically. ‘We told her you were sleeping. She didn’t see you swoon into my arms so she believed us.’

  Is that what I did? Swooned right into the arms of the enemy?

  So, what’s new? she grimly mocked herself. You’ve been swooning into those arms from the very beginning! Knowing he was the enemy has never made any difference.

  ‘Is anything else too tight on you?’ Alex asked. His hands were already pushing the grey jacket down her arms.

  ‘Will you stop doing that?’ she snapped, trying to slap his hands away.

  But the jacket came off, and his grim face did not unclench from the tension locking it as he angrily tossed the jacket away. Then he seemed to make a concerted effort to get a hold on his temper. A deep sigh ripped from him, his big shoulders flexed
…

  ‘I’m sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff,’ he said heavily. ‘I did not intend to frighten you so badly with it. I was afraid that if I had told you what I was going to do you would have panicked and warned your father.’

  Which she would have done—Mia freely acknowledged that. ‘But why, Alex?’ she cried. ‘Why are you doing this when you must know it will be Suzanna and me my father is going to punish for this bit of senseless defiance!’

  ‘No defiance,’ he said, shifting his long, lean frame into the chair directly opposite her own, where he leaned forward, placed his forearms on his spread knees and then, with the grimly controlled expression of a man who was about to drop a bombshell on the heads of the innocent, he announced impassively, ‘I am calling the deal off.’

  Mia just sat there, her blank, staring eyes telling him that she had not taken in what he was saying. He remained silent, waiting, watchful, noting the way her lips parted to aid the very frail thread of her breathing and the way her pale skin went even paler, the green of her eyes beginning to darken as the full import of his words finally began to sink in.

  Her reaction, when it came, was not what he was expecting. ‘Our deal?’ she whispered tragically.

  ‘No.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘That is a completely separate issue, which I am not prepared to deal with right now. I am talking about my deal with your father. I am calling it off and, because I know that my decision is going to have a direct effect on you, I am placing both you and Suzanna under my protection. Which is why we are flying to Greece.’

  ‘Protection?’ she repeated. He was placing them under his protection when the very act of how he was doing it was effectively removing the only form of protection they had! ‘How can you say that?’ she cried. ‘Legally, Suzanna is still his daughter! Legally, he can take her back whenever he wants to!’

  ‘You wanted to leave her behind?’ he challenged. ‘You wanted to dump her at that school and walk away?’

  No. ‘But that’s not the point,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My father—’

  ‘Can do what the hell he likes,’ Alex cut in grimly, throwing himself back in his seat in an act of indifference. ‘But he will have to do it through legal channels because it is the only way he will get to see either of you again!’