Clare Connelly is the internationally best-selling author of over fifty romance novels available digitally and in print, including novels in the Harlequin Presents/Mills & Boon Modern and Dare series.
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All the characters in this book are fictitious and have no existence outside the author’s very-vivid, non-stop imagination. They have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names and are pure invention (mwah-ha-ha).
All rights reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reprinted by any means without permission of the Author.
The illustration on the cover of this book features smokin’ hot model/s and, as gorgeous as they are, bears no relation to the characters described within.
First published 2018
(c) Clare Connelly
Cover Credit: adobestock
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CHAPTER ONE
DESPITE THE TWILIGHT SUN on her back, Addie was shivering. She referred to the crumpled piece of paper once more, her eyes skimming the address that Guy probably didn’t even remember mentioning in passing.
Hell, he might not even remember her.
Addie’s eyes swept closed at even the idea that the six months since he’d ended their relationship might have shut the door on all his thoughts of her. That would have been such a cruel irony when he’d been on her mind every day and night since.
A fine bead of sweat broke out on her upper lip and she wiped at it impatiently, taking one final step closer to the door and lifting her hand.
Her stomach swooped correspondingly, nerves at what she was about to do making her fingertips quiver as they hovered over the doorbell. She dropped her hand and stepped back, dropping her head forward so that her dark hair likewise fell, as a curtain, over her pale face.
I can’t do it.
She bit down on her full lower lip, her teeth moving over the pillow of flesh anxiously, as she thought over her situation. Was there any other avenue of help? She’d never get a loan from a bank – not with her credit rating. And she absolutely couldn’t let the place in the rehab centre go – which it would, without a deposit. No way would she sell the house. Not unless she absolutely had no other option. Not when it was all she had left to remind her of happier times.
Addie had one of those smiles that could stop the world from spinning. Bright and contagious, it lit her whole face up, digging dimples into both cheeks and generally eliciting an answering smile from whomever she was passing.
She wasn’t smiling now. Her lips were pulled downwards and there was wariness in every line of her body.
Her caramel eyes narrowed as she regarded the front door of this inner-city mansion – more like a palace. She’d known Guy to be incredibly wealthy, but the more she’d found out about him, after he’d left her, the more she’d realized how seriously out-of-her-league she’d been.
His family was one of the most prominent in Spain, tracing their lineage back for thousands of years. They were rumoured to own a third of the city’s buildings. Including this house he’d mentioned often, just in passing, but with enough specificity for Addie to be able to find it with a bit of hard work and diligence.
Knowing that it would leave her pride in tatters, she nonetheless lifted her finger to the doorbell and pressed it before she had another moment for doubt.
Her throat was parched, and her heart beat heavily in her chest, banging painfully against her ribs from the inside out.
She moved slightly to the left, so that she could check her reflection in the darkly tinted windows that ran on either side of the door. It was a warm, summer’s evening, and she’d been travelling all day. Her dress was crinkled, her ebony hair flat. She grimaced, wishing she’d made more effort, given that they were seeing one another for the first time in six months.
Six months? Had it only been that? Surely it had been an eternity.
Footsteps, unmistakably, approached the door and she waited, with a growing sense of panic and disbelief at what she was about to do.
You are nothing but a liar. I cannot believe I was so stupid to fall for your game of make-believe. You are the worst kind of woman, simply looking for what she can get. You disgust me.
He’d hated her, in the end. The fact she’d lied to him about everything: her name, her occupation, the fact she had implied she moved in his world when she could barely scrape together enough money to buy the essentials each week! He’d been furious. Livid.
And the worst part was, she couldn’t even defend herself! She had looked at him, and weathered his invectives, she’d worn them like bullet holes against the skin of her self-regard, and she’d said nothing.
Nothing of why she’d lied.
Memories are frail, like eggs’ shells. If too many people hold them, there’s no knowing they won’t crack, and for Addie, her memories were too precious and irreplaceable to risk. Memories of the family she’d lost – two members to death, and one to addiction. She’d been keeping her memories close to her heart for so long that it had become a habit. A habit to keep that part of her locked tightly away. A habit to protect her mother from gossip and embarrassment. A habit to cover her mother’s gambling at any cost. A habit not to let anyone know how poor their financial situation was – how terrifying the reality of her life.
Addie had held her secrets, and her memories, for so long, that when Guy had caught her in a lie, she still hadn’t found her way to the truth.
And so she’d let him throw his accusations at her, and when he was done, she’d simply told him that she loved him. That she’d lied to him, but it didn’t change a thing about how she felt. About what they were. She’d hoped it would be enough – that he might see through the dishonesty and trust her heart’s truth.
He’d laughed in her face, unleashed a harsh string of Spanish words and stalked away from her. Apparently, with every intention of never seeing her again.
Addie squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a breath that was supposed to be fortifying, but it snagged in her throat and she coughed, lifting a hand to her mouth as the door opened and Guy stood, like a vision from one of her dreams, but so, so much better.
His expression flashed, for the briefest moment, with a hint of the anger he’d expressed at their last meeting, and then he drew a mask around his features, a look of mocking boredom, if such a thing were even possible.
But God, how had Addie forgotten the degree of his physical beauty? Though she’d dreamed of him by night and lusted for him by day, it had ceased to be about his looks for her. It was the sound of his voice. The feel of his lips on hers. The way his eyes had looked at her with the kind of burning passion that had made her feel safe and wanted and protected for the first time in a very long time.
After six months apart, she stared at him and couldn’t help but receive
a crash course in all of the perfections that made up his appearance. His beautiful face, swarthy and shaped by the corsair heritage he carried in his blood, it was a face that was hard and implacable. Eyes that were the darkest brown with flecks of gold in their rims, a nose that was straight and unyielding, lips that were wide and generous and a chin with a cleft in its heart that she had dipped her tongue into when they’d been making love.
Her stomach churned at memories that were assaulting her from all sides and her body responded predictably. Heat ran through her and her breasts began to tingle, begging, silently imploring, him to touch her. To run his fingers over her and make her cry out as he once had.
She dropped her eyes lower to his body, a body that was as spectacular naked as was hinted at beneath his suit – a navy blue with a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned at the throat. Had he just returned from work? Or was he going out?
He always wore an expensive gold wristwatch and, as if to emphasise his boredom now, he lifted it higher to inspect the time.
“Ava?” He used the name she’d given him the night they’d met, the night she’d been playing a silly, innocent game with her cousin.
The night she’d met Guy. And she’d lied to him, just like she’d lied to everyone that night. Being ‘someone else’ had been the point, and she’d done it well.
Only she’d had no idea then that Guy would be a man she’d fall head over heels in love with. That her lie would become a trap, wrapping around her tighter and tighter – every time they spoke, laughed, kissed, loved. That the more she fell for him, the more she was with him, the more she would yearn to tell him the truth, and simply have no idea where to begin.
“It’s Addie,” she corrected, her voice croaky, the word soft.
His eyes narrowed. “Oh, yes. Your ‘real’ name,” his words were tinged with both derision and the Spanish accent that had always reminded her of citrus and spice, sunshine and warmth. Her gut rolled.
“How are you, Guy?” She pronounced his name as he’d taught her, the first night they’d met: a soft, sensual word that had flipped her inside out the first time she’d heard it from his lips, like a portent of what was to come.
“Are you standing on my doorstep, dressed like that, because you wish to have small talk with me?”
Addie’s cheeks flushed pink. Dressed like what? Her startled gaze flew back to the reflection, and she saw the dress as he must. The way it dipped low over her cleavage, revealing a hint of her curved breasts, the way it clung to her like a second skin. The way her nipples could now clearly be seen, pushing against the soft cotton of the dress.
Shame sparkled along the periphery of her mind.
“Well?” He prompted, crossing his arms over his chest, standing in the doorway and effectively blocking her from so much as seeing into his home. Let alone the invitation she’d been hoping he’d extend.
Addie’s throat was thick. Speech was suddenly difficult. This was a stupid idea.
She’d sell the house. She’d have to. She couldn’t ask this man for help. She’d gambled on the fact he would still feel something for her, something of the love that had set them both on fire during their impetuous affair. She’d gambled on a lingering sense of affection, a lessening of his anger in the intervening months.
There was nothing here now.
She shouldn’t have come.
“It… it doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, as if to mentally clear the ludicrous hopes she’d cherished that he might be able to help her. The wasteful, stupid hopes that had seen her use money she couldn’t afford to waste on a last-minute fare to Spain, on taxi fares through Madrid.
His eyes narrowed and now he moved closer, his expression one she’d never seen on his face – even when he’d been at his angriest with her, it had never been so chilling as this. Oh, but up close, she could smell his citrusy, alpine cologne, and every cell in her body surged with the instant rush of memories that were slamming into her.
“You’re pregnant?” The question was iced with disgust and outrage.
Addie’s eyes flew to his face, meeting his straight on for the first time since she’d arrived at his house. “Pregnant?”
“You don’t look it, but then, I don’t know. Are you?”
Despite the tension of the situation, Addie couldn’t help the smile that tingled on her lips. “Guy, we haven’t slept together in six months. Do I look like I’m six months pregnant?”
The question was a mistake.
Because it invited him to drag his gaze down her body and this time, it was no cursory inspection. He towered over her, and he let his attention linger on the vantage point of her cleavage, and lower still, to the nipped in waist, the slender hips, and with every stroke of his attention, her body responded. Her skin pricked and her blood heated, her nerve endings jangled with recognition. He roamed his gaze back up, his eyes once more indulging in a slow, sensual appreciation of her breasts, so that when his sardonic gaze returned to her face, it was to discover cheeks that were pink and lips that were parted as breath burned its way out of Addie’s mouth.
“No,” he admitted finally, and with obvious relief. “You are not pregnant.” He took a step back, propping his shoulder against the doorframe with the appearance of indolent unconcern. “Which begs the question, why are you here?”
Addie’s emotions zipped through her. She’d launched from desire to amusement and back to desire all in the space of a minute and her brain was having a hard time keeping up. What could she say to his question? Because I need help? Because you’re the only person I know who can help? Because you once told me you’d do anything in the world to make me happy, and I’m hoping you still feel the same?
“I do not have all night, Ava.”
“Please,” she shook her head, her expression distracted. “Call me Addie.”
His eyes hardened with some of the legendary ruthlessness for which Guillem Rodriguez was renowned. In business, he was revered. Feared, even. His management of the Rodriguez empire had taken it from a position of considerable power to indomitable strength.
“I would rather not have to call you anything, ever again. Do you not remember what I said to you, the last time we spoke?”
Addie recoiled instinctively. His harsh invectives from that night were burned fiercely into her brain. “I remember everything you said.”
Satisfaction crossed his features. “And yet you are here?”
“It was a mistake to come,” she whispered.
“You said that then,” he rejected, scathingly. “A mistake. You seem rather… mistake-prone.”
Addie nodded slowly. He was right. She had made mistake after mistake after mistake where Guy was concerned.
No more.
How could she fulfill the accusation he’d laid at her feet – that she’d been using him for money? It would kill her to have that opinion confirmed.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, wishing she’d never come.
He leaned imperceptibly closer. “Oh, I have not ‘worried’ about you since I left London. I have not thought of you, in fact, since that night. And yet, here you are…”
His words cut deeply into her heart, because she didn’t doubt the truth of them for even a second. No doubt there’d been a succession of women in his life after her. She was ancient history.
“Then you were lying to me as well,” she heard herself allege softly, as reality began to explode inside of her.
His laugh was a harsh dismissal. “I? Lied to you?”
“You told me you loved me,” she said softly, fixing him with a direct stare. “That you were in love with me. No man could simply forget about a woman he loved, as you claim to have done with me.”
His eyes narrowed assessingly. “You killed what I felt for you. It died, instantly, when I realized that I never even knew you. I am not a fool, Ava, yet you would have turned me into one.”
“You did know me,” Addie whispered urgently. “You knew everything about me except my dam
ned name..!”
He lifted his hand and tapped his fingers, as if to enumerate. “Your name, where you live, where you work, who you are. I knew nothing about you.” He took a step closer suddenly and his expression was one of barely-contained fury. “You deceived me every moment we spent together.”
“It wasn’t like th…”
“Suficiente!” The word was scathing. “No more! No more lies. No more excuses. No more discussing. We were over a long time ago and I have no interest in rehashing our failed relationship.”
Addie had told herself she would be strong. That she would calmly explain, without giving away too much information, that she needed his help. That it would be a loan. She would repay him. She was banking everything she had on the rehab succeeding and her mother no longer proving to be such a dire strain on their meager resources. Within a couple of years, she hoped, she would be able to return the money to Guy.
She had prepared for this like a business meeting. Hell, she’d even brought pay-slips so he could see that she did have a job. That she was working sixty hour weeks to try to get ahead. She’d budgeted what she could repay him per week and drawn it up in a table.
But damn it, she’d been expecting Guy as he’d been then. Before that awful night when an inadvertent meeting had led to her secret being blown wide open.
The sting of tears clawed at her throat and she looked away, her gaze falling intently on the street that ran to the right. Enormous trees, each decorated with dainty fairy lights, stood proud and green against the twilight sky.
“I didn’t come to talk about us.”
“I’m glad. I have no interest in wasting my time in meaningless conversations. So? What is it, Ava?”
She winced at that name. How she’d come to hate it!
“Dios mio! You have flown to Madrid and come to my home…” he paused, his eyes dragging over her speculatively. “How did you know where to come? Where I live?”
Blackmailed by the Spaniard Page 1
