Blackmailed by the Spaniard

by Clare Connelly

  “I want you,” she said. “That’s no lie.”

  “I’m aware of that.” He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes holding hers with an intensity that pulsed in the air around them.

  “And you want me,” she said bravely, already doubting the proof of what she’d just felt. Of what he’d shown her he wanted.

  “Perhaps,” he shrugged his broad shoulders, giving her the impression that he was ‘take it or leave it’ with regards to their intimacy.

  “No,” she shook her head. “You can’t call me a liar and then lie yourself.”

  “Fine,” he said, his brows drawing closer together. “I want you. But not enough. Not enough to debase myself by sleeping with you while you continue to insist that the charade of our relationship was real.”

  She was too flummoxed by pleasure to comprehend. She didn’t immediately understand his meaning.

  “You are still trying to perpetuate your lies. Tell me the truth and I’ll take you to bed right now.”

  The words hung between them like a challenge, a challenge that Addie felt building around her. Tell him the truth? Tell him the truth?

  She ground her teeth together, her expression defiant. “I’ve been telling you the truth. Since that night at the restaurant, I’ve been completely honest with you…”

  “Why do you need fifty thousand pounds?” he pushed ruthlessly, swiping the carpet right out from under her feet, leaving her unbalanced and gasping for air.

  Out of nowhere, she pictured her mother. Not as she was now, but as she’d been then, before the accident. When her mother had been a respected, middle-class career woman, always in the latest fashions, hosting elegant dinner parties and impressing the neighbours with her ability to run a house, raise a family and hold down a job she loved.

  Addie thought of her mother as she’d been and tears cloyed in her throat. That was the woman she had promised to protect, the woman she owed her silence and allegiance to.

  She loved Guy, and she wanted, more than anything, for him to believe her. But her mother’s secrets were not Addie’s to share. They never had been.

  “It’s personal,” she said with a small shake of her head. Her body was cold, now. Though the sun was shining, she felt as though she’d slipped behind a storm cloud. Belatedly, she realized she was practically naked. Though the bikini offered little protection, she slipped it back into place, her fingers not cooperating as efficiently as she’d have liked.

  His expression was sardonic. “And yet you tell me you are being honest with me?”

  “I am,” she said, refusing to be cowered by him. “About what matters.”

  He visibly rejected her assertion. “None of this matters anymore, Ava. It’s all ancient history.”

  He stalked away, leaving her standing in the middle of a Mediterranean paradise, more miserable and confused than she’d ever been in her whole life.

  She thought about following him. About trying harder to open a dialogue, but Addie had been beating her head against that particular brick wall with him since the night at the restaurant. She couldn’t tell him the truth. She had to show him.

  That was why she’d come to Spain, wasn’t it?

  To make him remember what they shared? To remember the truth that defied words and explanations, the truth of a love that simply was?

  Her lips curved into a self-mocking grimace. She wasn’t doing a particularly good job. But the week was young, and, thanks to Cherie, her wardrobe was stocked with outfits designed with one thing in mind: seduction.

  Addie moved purposefully through the yacht, her determination growing with each step.

  He said he was angry with her, and he was. But he’d brought her to Spain, and she didn’t believe it was just because he thought her a talented actress. The same desire that was licking the soles of her feet was scorching him as well.

  She chose a red sheathe dress that had spaghetti straps and showed more than a hint of cleavage. It fell to mid-thigh and was far shorter than anything she’d normally wear. She had a matching red thong out ready to go, but at the last minute, decided to skip it altogether.

  He wasn’t the only one who could call the shots. When he came knocking, she’d be ready for him!

  Only Guy didn’t come knocking. Not for a long time, in any event. Addie sat with her book, on the deck, her legs out in the sun, her mind – and eyes – wandering from time to time to the windows he’d pressed her against that afternoon, before guiltily flashing back to the words on the pages of her book.

  Sometime in the early afternoon, going by the sun’s trajectory, he appeared beside her, his manner as imposing as if she were applying for a job at his firm wearing a hot-dog costume.

  “Have you eaten lunch?”

  “Lunch?” She frowned, like she’d never so much as heard of it.

  “Yes, Ava. You know, the meal that follows breakfast?”

  She refused to rise to the bait. “I haven’t,” she said with a shake of her head. “I hadn’t realized the time.”

  “It is nearly four o’clock,” he said with obvious disapproval.

  “Oh,” she shrugged. “That’s okay. I’m not particularly hungry.”

  “Fine,” he said. “That’s your decision. The kitchen is fully stocked if you should change your mind.”

  It was hardly a gracious offer to whip her up her favourite dish, but it was a civility she no longer expected from Guy. “Thank you.”

  He spun and stormed away, his mood apparently dark.

  An hour later, he was back. “Did you eat?”

  She stared at him, her frown deep. “No. I told you, I’m not hungry.”

  He looked, to all the world, like he was going to say something, but he compressed his lips and shrugged. “We are due at Santiago’s within the hour. You should get ready.”

  Addie arched a brow and slowly, painstakingly slowly, pressed a finger into the page of her book before standing. At full height, she was still at least a foot shorter than Guy, and the difference in their sizes was somehow more apparent like this – with him in jeans and a button-down shirt and her in a skimpy, sexy designer dress that would look more at home at a hip nightclub opening than at dinner with his grandfather.

  Still, Guy was the one who’d thrown it in her face that he’d moved on with other women; and she had no doubt just what those women would be like. Stunning, glamorous, wealthy.

  An ancient feminine pride not only to compete with them but to utterly trounce them fired in her veins.

  “Does it look like I’m not ready?” She prompted with an arched brow that invited him to argue.

  “It looks like you are going to give my grandfather a heart attack,” he muttered.

  Addie laughed, and suddenly, the sultry air around them dissipated. “I’ll get changed if you don’t think it’s appropriate. I like the dress…”

  “Don’t.” His hand curled around her wrist, pulling her body to his, holding her against him. And his eyes showed a conflicting current of feelings as he stared down at her, just like when he’d kissed her. Like he wanted her and hated that he wanted her, all at once. “I like the dress too.”

  *

  As the golf buggy pulled up outside the home, Addie stepped out and Guy caught a hint of her fragrance. The perfume she wore, but also her, that indefinable sweetness that had always imprinted itself on his sheets and pillows, so that even when she was absent from his home, he was somehow surrounded by her.

  Memories fired through him and he suppressed them, thrusting them deep into the recesses of his mind. They weren’t welcome.

  Memories of pleasure that was borne from her lies had no place in his life.

  He walked behind her, his eyes trained on the curve of her arse as she moved with a provocative sway towards the front door.

  She knew what she was doing to him. No, she was doing it on purpose.

  He could hardly blame her. If she wanted to weasel her way back into his good books, she was right to think sex was her only
shot. He’d never trust her again, he’d never care for her again, but the way their bodies harmonized was something he’d never before experienced.

  He could almost forget about her duplicity if it meant having the pleasure of her as his mistress. Almost, but not quite.

  “Guy,” Addie paused by the door, her voice lowered, her head tilted backwards, towards him. Her hair was loose, falling half-way down her back, and he aimed to wrap it in his fist, tugging on it just hard enough to expose her beautiful mouth to his once more. To make her gasp in surprise so he could plunder her anew.

  His body hardened and inwardly he swore. He didn’t particularly need to be dealing with visible proof of his attraction towards this woman when he entered Santiago’s home.

  “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  He barely caught the whispered statement and had to move closer, lowering his head. She stood on tiptoes and whispered, into his ear, so that the words were warm all the way to his brain, then right to his groin, “The dress is all I’m wearing. I just thought you should know.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE MOMENT THE DOOR opened, Addie wished she hadn’t chosen such a daring act of seduction. Sure, the dress was great for getting Guy hot under the collar and maybe even forcing him to act on the way they both felt, but for meeting his mother for the first time? It was definitely not how Addie would have chosen to do it.

  She glared at Guy, her sense of betrayal obvious, as several family members turned to face the door, appraising the newest arrivals with undisguised interest.

  “You didn’t want to tell me your family was going to be here?” She said through a false smile.

  His frown was infinitesimal. “I told you my family was coming for the week.”

  “But that we were early,” she responded in a low whisper. “I had no way of knowing they’d be here tonight.”

  “Is this a problem?” He whispered back, but his expression showed a total lack of comprehension as to why she was so bothered.

  “Well, yes,” she said crossly, her cheeks glowing pink. “For one thing, I’m dressed like…”

  “I suggested you might like to change…”

  “But you didn’t tell me why!”

  “Guy!” A woman was pacing towards them, tall, brunette, and so incredibly beautiful that she could only be Guy’s mother.

  “Luciana,” he said, putting an arm around Addie’s waist and pulling her closer. “I thought I heard a helicopter.”

  “We arrived hours ago, and you are only just here now?” She volleyed in Spanish.

  Guy responded pointedly in English. “We were invited for dinner.”

  “You don’t need an invitation to Santiago’s, son,” his father appeared behind Luciana, a glass of red wine in hand, eyes smiling as they skimmed the apparently happy couple. “Then again, Santiago did mention you’ve got other things on your mind.”

  Other things, Addie gathered, meant her. She swallowed, forcing a smile to her lips. She wished she was wearing something beautiful and modest, but instead, she was in this stripper dress, and there was nothing for it but to grin and bear it and pray she didn’t inadvertently flash her naked backside to anyone in Guy’s family.

  “Luciana, Carlos, this is Ava Peters.”

  Her heart throbbed heavily but her smile didn’t drop. “A pleasure to meet you,” she murmured, extending a hand to Luciana. The other woman took it, her smile reserved.

  Carlos was less dubious. He shook Addie’s hand, then put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her deeper into the beautiful living space. Santiago was sitting on the balcony, as he had been the night before.

  “We thought we’d eat outside, as the sun goes down. I presume these two have told you of their ritual?”

  “Sunsets?” Addie asked, stepping out onto the balcony.

  “Sunsets,” Carlos confirmed. “Always sunsets.”

  “Only on the island,” Guy said from behind them, reaching for Addie’s hand and squeezing it in his. Could he sense her nervousness? Her apprehension?

  “Santiago.” She approached the older man, her heart warming when met with his look of genuine pleasure at seeing her again. “Have you had a good day?”

  “I have worked,” he said with a shrug, confirming what Guy had told her the night before. Having seen the way Guy operated, she could understand Santiago’s drive. With Guy, it wasn’t about needing to work. Heavens, they were richer than anyone needed to be. Money conservatively invested would still return an exorbitant income for them to live off. No, they worked because they needed to, because it was a compulsion that ran through their blood. She could see many similarities between Guy and his grandfather.

  “The Australia deal?” Guy asked, guiding Addie to the same seat she’d occupied the night before, on the sofa opposite Santiago. She sat and crossed her legs neatly, tilting her head towards Guy by accident and then wishing she hadn’t, when the heat from his eyes almost burned through her.

  Santiago made a grunt of acknowledgement and then gaze shifted, to some of the staff who were bringing trays of food and bottles of wine.

  The low-set table between them was overtaken with platters of delicious morsels, all finger-food size, and beautifully fragranced. Addie’s tummy, so silent all day, gave a little kick of interest now.

  “Have something,” Guy murmured, his hand creeping to her knee and curving around it. Warmth spread through her body. She knew he was playing a part, but God, she loved it when he touched her. When he used that gentle, coaxing tone with her, the voice that she’d taken for granted when they’d been dating before.

  “Yes, yes,” Luciana took the seat beside Santiago, and gestured a manicured hand over the platters. “There are many local delicacies here. The calamari is particularly good.”

  “You always loved the calamari,” Santiago said with a laugh.

  Luciana shrugged, her shoulders slim, her tan golden. She was very beautiful, and she was also very … expensive looking. There was an indefinable quality to the woman, but it all added up to create the image of someone who spent a lot of time and money on beautification. Her hair was immaculately cut and styled, falling in long dark waves down her back. Her lashes were long and surely synthetic? Her nails, the same. Her lips appeared slightly cosmetically enhanced – though very tastefully done – her breasts likewise. Even her feet were works of art, perfectly painted toes that showed off slim, tanned feet and ankles that were crossed.

  “It’s too slippery for me,” Carlos said, taking the only armchair available, his back to the view.

  “Oh, you should sit here,” Addie said instantly, standing to gesture to her seat. “You won’t see the sunset.”

  “I’ve seen many sunsets from this balcony,” Carlos assured Addie, at the same time Guy said,

  “You are sitting here, querida.”

  Querida. Dear. He’d called her that all the time back then, and the word had feathered through her soul, lifting her up and making her fly. To be someone’s dear was a beautiful thing. It spoke of being adored and cossetted, loved and cherished.

  And she had been.

  At least, she’d felt like it. Guy had found her heart, a heart that had been turning colder and colder in the wake of The Accident, and he’d brought it back to life. It was the worst possible time, but emotion throbbed in her gut, making tears tang the back of her throat with their saltiness.

  She swallowed, and leaned forward, her own hair forming a curtain that disguised the rich emotions in her face as she lifted a little ball that looked deep-fried.

  “It is a crab croquetas,” Guy said softly, leaning closer.

  “Croquettes?” Addie took a bite from one end, and couldn’t help the low moan that escaped. Her eyes clung to Guy’s. “It’s so good,” she said as soon as she’d swallowed, lifting the salty morsel back to her mouth for another bite.

  “I’m glad you approve,” he grinned, such warmth flowing to her from the simple gesture that her stomach flipped.

&
nbsp; “Your mother was just explaining the logistics,” Santiago said with a mock-impatient tone, earning a light slap from Luciana.

  “You would rather turn eighty five and have no fanfare?”

  “Fanfare is fine; fanfare I have no problem with, but you are hosting something akin to an Olympic opening ceremony.”

  “Nonsense. Just a few hundred people!”

  Addie almost choked on her tapas. “A few hundred people?” She repeated, trying to think if she even knew that many people.

  “Who could I exclude?” She directed the question to Santiago but from the way Carlos and Guy were looking at her, Addie gathered this was a long-running behavior for the Spanish beauty. “My family? My sisters and cousins? Their children?”

  “Perhaps their next-door-neighbours, though,” Guy said with indulgent amusement.

  “Oh, hush, I’m not so bad.” She turned to Addie. “You, surely, can understand my predicament. Santiago has so many friends and admirers. It was impossible to plan his birthday without inviting…”

  “Half of Spain,” Santiago cut in with a throaty laugh. “I’m only teasing, Luciana. Do not make Ava defend you, for I know she feels as I do.”

  “Oh, I do, do I?” Addie asked with a grin, leaning forward and reaching for another croquetas.

  “Si, for you do not like fuss either.”

  “How do you know that?” Addie asked.

  “I can tell,” Santiago lifted his champagne glass and almost instantly a man appeared, topping it up to the rim. He did the rounds then, re-filling any that were low.

  The comment refocused attention on Addie. She felt all of their gazes lock to her, except Guy’s, who was doing the perfect imitation of an attentive lover, just as he’d promised he would.

  “So,” Luciana’s smile was somewhat tight on her beautiful face. “I have many questions for you.”

  Did she imagine the way Guy stiffened beside her? It was almost imperceptible, but not quite, and Addie was attuned to his every tiny movement.