Bridal Bargains

by Michelle Reid

  But, really, the waiting had got to everyone by then. No one ate, except Suzanna. No one spoke much, except Suzanna. In fact, it was all so very fraught that when Alex took the call on his mobile it was almost a relief to know the waiting would soon be over.

  ‘Right,’ he said briskly. ‘This is it.’ He sounded so invigorated that Mia suddenly wanted to hit him! ‘Carol, you were going to show Mia and Suzanna your upstairs studio, I believe,’ he prompted very smoothly.

  ‘Oh! Yes!’ Like a puppet pulled by its master’s string, Carol jumped to her feet and turned towards Suzanna. ‘Come on, poppet,’ she said over-brightly. ‘This is going to be fun! Wait until you see the size of the piece of paper we are going to paint a picture on!’

  Eager to fall in with any plans, Suzanna scrambled down from her chair and was at Carol’s side in a second.

  ‘Mia?’ the other woman prompted.

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ she said, turning anxiously towards Alex as the other two walked away. ‘Tell me what you are going to do!’ she pleaded.

  ‘Later,’ he promised. ‘For now I want you out of sight until your father has been and gone.’

  ‘But—!’

  It was as far as she got. ‘No!’ he exploded, turning angrily on her. ‘I will not have you exposed in any way to that man!’ he swore. ‘So do as you are told, Mia, or, so help me, I will make you do it!’

  Her chin came up, her green eyes coming alight with a defiance that showed the old Mia, whom he had spent the whole previous night loving into oblivion, had come rising up out of the ashes of all that time and effort. ‘Back to purdah again, I take it!’ she said cuttingly.

  ‘He’s at the gates.’ Leon’s voice came shiveringly flat-toned from just behind her.

  ‘Damn and blast it, woman!’ Alex rasped out frustratedly, and in the next moment Mia found herself cradled high in his arms and he was striding up the stairs with a face apparently carved from granite.

  He dumped her on a chair in her bedroom. ‘Stay!’ he commanded. Then he strode angrily back out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

  She stayed. She stayed exactly where she was as she listened to the sound of a car coming down the driveway, listened to it stop outside the house, heard a door slam—shuddered and closed her eyes on a wave of nausea when she heard her father’s voice bark something very angry. She heard Leon’s dark-toned level reply, heard footsteps sounding on the veranda floor …

  Then nothing. The whole villa seemed to settle into an ominous silence. She tolerated it for a while, just sat there and let that silence wash over her for several long wretched, muscle-locking minutes.

  But that was the limit of her endurance, and the next moment she was up, stiff-limbed and shaking, walking out of the bedroom and to the head of the polished stairway.

  As she moved downwards she could see the study door standing half-open, and hear the rasp of her father’s voice as he blasted words at Alex.

  As if drawn by something way beyond instinct, she walked silently towards that half-open doorway.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re damned well playing at!’ She heard her father’s angry voice as she approached. ‘But you won’t get away with it!’

  ‘Get away with what?’ was Alex’s bland reply.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about!’ Jack Frazier grated.

  Mia saw him then, and went perfectly still. He was standing with his back to her, every inch of him pulsing with a blistering fury as he faced Alex across the width of the desk. Alex was seated, looking supremely at ease in the way he was lazing back in his chair, his dark eyes cool, his lean face arrogantly impassive.

  But what really struck at the very heart of her was to see Leon, standing at his brother’s shoulder.

  Her breath stilled, her eyes widening as she instantly realised just what she was looking at. It was like being shot back to another scene like this—in another study, in another country altogether. Only here the roles had been reversed. This time it was her father who was pulsing with anger and frustration and Alex who was looking utterly unmoved by it all.

  Leon’s sole purpose was to stand silent witness, whereas in London it had been Mia who had played that role.

  A deliberate set-up? she wondered, and suspected that it most probably was. Jack Frazier had humiliated Alex that day when he had made him surrender his pride in front of Mia. Now it was her father’s turn to know just what that felt like.

  She shivered, not sure that she liked to see Alex displaying this depth of ruthlessness.

  ‘All I know,’ she heard Alex reply, ‘is that you have been standing here, throwing out a lot of threats and insults, but I am still no wiser as to exactly what it is you are actually angry about.’

  ‘Don’t play bloody games with me,’ her father grated. ‘You’ve reneged on our deal, you cheating bastard! And you’ve stolen my youngest daughter! I want her back right now—or I’ll have you arrested for abduction!’

  ‘The telephone sits right there. By all means,’ Alex said invitingly, ‘call the police if you feel this passionate about it. But I think I should warn you,’ he added silkily, ‘that the police will demand proof of your claim before they will act. You have brought that proof with you, I must presume?’

  Silence. It suddenly consumed the very atmosphere. Mia’s spine began to tingle, her breath lying suspended in her chest while her eyes fixed themselves on her father’s back as she waited for him to produce the proof that she of all people knew he had.

  Yet … he didn’t do anything! He just stood there, un-moving, in that steadily thickening silence.

  It was Alex who broke it. ‘You have a problem with that?’ he questioned smoothly.

  ‘We don’t need to get the police involved in this if you are sensible!’ her father said irritably.

  ‘Sensible,’ Alex thoughtfully repeated. ‘Yes,’ he said agreeably, ‘I think I can be sensible about this. You show me your proof of claim, and I will hand Suzanna over to you with no more argument.’

  Mia felt the blood freeze in her veins, an excruciating sense of pained betrayal whitening her face as she took a jerky step forward. Then her pained eyes suddenly clashed head-on with a pair of burning black ones as Alex finally saw her there, and she went perfectly still.

  No! those eyes seemed to be telling her. Wait! Trust me!

  Trust him. Her hand reached out to clutch at the polished doorframe. Trust him! her mind was screaming at her. If you don’t, you will lose him! He will never forgive you!

  Trust him. She swallowed thickly over the lump of fear that had formed in her throat and remained where she was.

  ‘I keep that kind of stuff with my lawyers,’ her father snapped out impatiently, ‘not on my person!’

  Mia lost Alex’s attention as he fixed it back on Jack Frazier. ‘I possess all the usual communication equipment,’ he pointed out. ‘Call up your lawyers, tell them to fax the relevant information here and all this unpleasantness could be over in minutes.’

  He even rose to lift the telephone receiver off its hook and held it out to her father! His body was relaxed, his face utterly impassive, and he did not so much as flicker another glance in Mia’s direction as a new silence began to stretch endlessly, along with Mia’s nerve-ends as she stood there, clutching the wooden doorframe with fingers that had turned to ice.

  Then she jumped, startled as Alex suddenly slammed the telephone back on its rest. ‘No,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You cannot do it, can you, because there was no official adoption!’

  His hand shot out, picking up something from the desk and then slapping it back down again in front of Jack Frazier.

  ‘You conned Mia into believing she was signing away all rights to her baby,’ he bit out, ‘when in reality what she did sign was not worth the damned paper it was written on!’

  Her father was staring down at whatever it was that Alex had slapped down in front of him. Mia’s eyelashes fluttered as she, too, looked down at
the desk where she could just see a corner of a sickeningly familiar document.

  It was her own copy of what her father had made her sign seven years ago. It had to be. Alex must have gone through her private papers, without her knowing it.

  ‘She did sign it, though!’ Jack Frazier suddenly hit back jeeringly. ‘In fact, she was only too bloody eager to hand over her bastard child to me!’

  ‘Oh,’ Mia gasped, having to push an icy fist up against her mouth to stop the sound from escaping.

  He wasn’t even bothering to deny it!

  ‘Or be out on the streets, as you so charitably put it at the time!’ Alex tagged on scathingly. ‘You played on her youth, her naïvety, her desperation and her inability to tell a legal document from absolute garbage!’ he went on. ‘And you did it all with a cold-blooded heartless cruelty that must make her very happy that you are not her real father!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Jack Frazier jerked out.

  ‘This is what it means …’ Another piece of paper landed on the desk. ‘Your blood group,’ he said curtly, then slapped another piece of paper on top of it. ‘Karl Dansing’s blood group.’ Another piece of paper arrived the same way. ‘And finally—thankfully—my wife’s blood group!’ Alex said with grim satisfaction. ‘Note the odd one out?’ he prompted bitingly.

  ‘Any questions?’ he then asked. ‘No, I thought not, because you knew this already, didn’t you? Which is why you have been punishing her all these bloody years. Well …’ He leaned forward, his dark face a map of blistering contempt for the other man. ‘It is now over,’ he said. ‘And you are no longer welcome here.’

  ‘But what’s the matter with you, man?’ Jack Frazier blustered in angry frustration. Something had gone wrong with all his careful planning and he still had not worked out exactly what that something was. ‘If I am prepared to accept Mia as my daughter, then the damned island is yours when she gives birth to my grandson!’

  ‘But Mia is not carrying your grandson,’ Alex coolly contradicted. ‘She is carrying my daughter.’

  ‘What? You mean she couldn’t even get that right?’

  Dark eyes suddenly began to look very dangerous. ‘Watch what you say here,’ Alex warned. ‘This is my home—and my wife—you are maligning.’

  ‘A wife you didn’t damned well want in the first place!’ Jack Frazier said scornfully. ‘But if you’ve decided to keep her, there will be other children no doubt—sons!’ he added covetously. ‘All you have to do is give me back Suzanna, and Mia will be as compliant as a pussy cat, I promise you. Another year and you could still have your island!’

  ‘You can keep the island,’ Alex countered coldly. ‘I have no wish to set foot on it again. In fact,’ he added, ‘you have nothing I want that I have not already taken away from you. Which makes you defunct as far as any of my family are concerned. So, as you once put it so eloquently to me—the door, Mr Frazier, is over there.’

  ‘But—!’

  ‘Get him out of here,’ Alex grated at his brother, his face drawn into taut lines of utter disgust.

  Leon moved, and so did Mia, jolting out of the stasis that had been holding her to move shakily back to the stairs. She had no wish to come face to face with Jack Frazier. She had no wish to set eyes on him ever again.

  She was standing by the bedroom window when Alex came looking for her.

  ‘I hope you are pleased with yourself,’ he said in a clipped voice.

  ‘Not really.’ She turned to send him a wryly apologetic smile. He still looked angry, his beautiful olive skin paler than it should have been. ‘I almost blew that for you,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why did you come down there when I specifically asked you not to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘It was a—compulsion. I couldn’t see any way that you could make him give up Suzanna, without giving him what he wanted, you see.’

  ‘And in return for your lack of trust in me you learned a whole lot more about yourself than you actually wanted to know!’

  That made her eyes flash. ‘I learned that you had the bare-faced cheek to go through my private papers!’ she hit back indignantly.

  ‘Ah …’ At least he had the grace to grimace guiltily at that one. The anger died out of him, his warm hands sliding around her body to draw her close. ‘I was desperately in love with a woman who refused to trust me as far as she could throw me,’ he murmured in his own defence. ‘Men that desperate do desperate things. Forgive me?’ he pleaded, bending his dark head so he could nuzzle her ear.

  Mia wasn’t ready to forgive anyone anything. Her head moved back, away from that diverting mouth. ‘When did you go through my private papers?’ she demanded to know.

  He sighed, his smile at her stubbornness rueful. ‘I came straight here after leaving you in London,’ he told her. ‘Initially, I wanted to see if there was any way we could reverse the adoption,’ he explained, ‘but the moment I read that damned thing I knew it was not legal!’ His angry sigh brushed her face.

  ‘But I needed to get that confirmed with my own lawyers before I dared take action. And you had signed it, agape mou,’ he added gently. ‘My lawyers were afraid that if I faced your father with what I had discovered while you were still in London, he could have used the fact you had signed away your right to Suzanna to make the child a ward of the British courts while we fought over her.’

  ‘And thereby gain himself a different way of blackmailing us into doing what he wanted us to do.’ Mia nodded understandingly.

  ‘It was safer for me to get you both here to Greece before I faced him with what I knew.’

  ‘So you kidnapped us.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

  Frightened her? He’d put her through a hell of uncertainty over the last twenty-four hours! ‘You are as underhand and cunning as my father,’ she said accusingly. ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘I love you madly,’ he murmured coaxingly. ‘I would not hurt a hair on your beautiful head.’

  In answer to that blatant bit of seduction, Mia turned her back on him again—though she made no attempt to move out of those strong arms still holding her.

  And Alex was not going to stop the verbal seduction. ‘I adore you,’ he whispered softly against her ear. ‘I ache for you night and day I am so badly bitten.’

  ‘Which is why you keep a mistress, I suppose.’

  As a mood-killer it worked like a dream. His dark head lifted. ‘Ah,’ he said ruefully once more. ‘The mistress. You are after your pound of flesh again, I think.’

  I want more than a pound of your flesh, Alexander Doumas, Mia thought covetously. I want it all! ‘I apologise,’ she said with deceptive contrition. ‘I forgot for the moment that I am contracted not to mention the mistress.’

  He laughed, not fooled at all by her tone, and the arms holding her tightened their grip. ‘There is no mistress,’ he informed her drily. ‘And there never was a mistress.’ His mouth was tasting her ear again. ‘I have not looked at another woman since the first night I saw you across a crowded room and was instantly smitten—as I suspect you already know!’

  Mia smiled a smile of feline satisfaction. ‘Carol did imply something of the kind,’ she confessed, and arched her neck to give him greater access to the ear lobe he was tasting. ‘I just wanted to hear you say it.’

  ‘I’m going to rip that crazy contract up …’ he promised.

  ‘Good,’ she said approvingly.

  ‘And make you sign another one that will tie you to me for life,’ he added.

  ‘What makes you think I will sign it?’ she challenged.

  His mouth moved to her throat, his tongue arrowing directly for a particular pulse point he knew all about. ‘I have my ways,’ he murmured against that exact spot—and laughed softly as she drew in a sharp, shaken gasp of air. Her body was already beginning to throb in his arms with pleasure when a sound outside caught her attention.

  Glancing down
wards, she saw Suzanna appear, with Carol and Leon in tow. They were dressed for swimming, with towels draped around their necks. Hand in hand, they walked off towards the swimming pool area.

  ‘She has them wrapped around her little finger,’ Mia drily remarked.

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Alex murmured. ‘Her mama has me tied up the same way.’

  Mia smiled and said nothing, her gaze following the trio until they disappeared out of sight, then she lifted her gaze to the larger view of this, her new home. Out beyond the gardens the sea was shimmering lazily, and beyond it stood the misted green-grey string of smaller islands.

  ‘Which is your island?’ she asked.

  He didn’t answer for a long moment, seemingly much more interested in tasting her. Then his dark head came up. ‘The one you can see directly in front of us,’ he said, ‘with the two crescent-shaped patches of golden beach …’

  Is that why he had bought this villa, she wondered, because it looked out on his true home?

  ‘Your vision,’ she sighed. ‘I’m so sorry you lost it.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he replied, with no hint of regret. ‘Visions can change. Mine has changed. All I want is right here with me, in my arms.’

  ‘Still,’ Mia said sadly, ‘it seems so very unfair that you have to break a promise to your father because my so-called father is such a dreadful man.’

  ‘I have you,’ he said. ‘I have my child, growing inside you.’ His hands splayed across her abdomen in a gesture of warm possession. ‘And I have a miniature version of you in Suzanna, who worships the very ground I walk upon because I rescued her from your father. I am very content, believe me.’

  ‘Well, your contentment is going to fly right out of this window if you move your hands much lower,’ she informed him quite pragmatically—then tilted her head, her green eyes twinkling wickedly up at him.

  And he laughed, a deep, dark, very masculine sound that had her turning in his arms to face him. That was all it took. Their bodies fused … so did their mouths … and they were lost in each other.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.