The Blackmail Baby

Tiredly Imogen closed her eyes. She had come to England for one purpose and one purpose only and that was to claim whatever money might be owing to her. And to persuade Dracco to transfer her interest in the business into the name of the charity so that in future it could benefit direct from her inheritance. Anything else…

‘I haven’t come back to discuss our marriage, Dracco.’ Firmly Imogen took a deep breath, determined to take control of the situation. ’I’ve already written to David Bryant, explaining what I want, and that is—’

‘To give away your inheritance to some charity,’ Dracco interrupted her grimly. ‘No, Imo,’ he told her curtly. ‘As your trustee, there’s no way I would be fulfilling my moral obligation towards you if I agreed, and as your husband…’

She ached to be able to challenge him, to throw caution to the wind and demand furiously to know just when moral obligations had become important to him. But some inner instinct warned her against going too far. This wasn’t how their interview was supposed to go. She was an adult now, on an equal footing with Dracco, and not a child whom he could dictate to.

‘Legally the money is mine,’ she reminded him, having mentally counted to ten and calmed herself down a little.

‘Was yours,’ Dracco corrected her harshly. ‘You insisted that you wanted nothing to do with your inheritance—and you put that insistence in writing—remember.’

Imogen took another deep breath. The situation was proving even more fraught with difficulties than she had expected.

‘I did write to Uncle Henry saying that,’ she agreed, pausing to ask him quietly, ‘When did he die? I had no idea.’

Dracco had turned away from her, and for a moment Imogen thought that he had either not heard her question or that he did not intend to answer it, but then without turning back to her he said coldly, ‘He had a heart attack shortly after…on the day of our wedding.’

Horrified, Imogen could only make a soft, anguished sound of distress.

‘Apparently he hadn’t been feeling well before the ceremony,’ Dracco continued as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘When he collapsed outside the church…’ He stopped whilst Imogen battled against her shock. ‘I went with him to the hospital. They hoped then… But he had a second attack whilst he was in Intensive Care which proved fatal.’

‘Was it…?’ Too shocked to guard her thoughts, Imogen blurted out shakily, ‘Was it because of me? Because I…?’

‘He had been under a tremendous amount of pressure,’ Dracco told her without answering her anguished plea for reassurance. ‘Your father’s death had caused him an immense amount of work, and it seems that there had been certain warning signs of a heart problem which he had ignored. He wasn’t a young man—he was ten years older than your father.’ He paused and then said abruptly, ‘He asked me to tell you how proud he had been to give you away.’

Tears blurred Imogen’s eyes. She had a mental image of her father’s solicitor on the morning of her wedding, dressed in his morning suit, his silver-grey hair immaculately groomed. In the car on the way to the church he had taken hold of her hand and patted it a little awkwardly. He had been a widower, like her father, with no children of his own, and Imogen had always sensed a certain shyness in his manner towards her. Her father had been a very loving man and she had desperately missed the father-daughter warmth of their relationship. She had known from the look in his eyes that, like her, Henry Fairburn had been thinking about her father on that day.

She had been sad to learn of his death from his nephew, but she had never imagined…

‘If you’re going to throw yourself into a self-indulgent bout of emotional guilt, I shouldn’t bother,’ Dracco was warning her hardly. ‘His heart attack was a situation waiting to happen and would have happened whether or not you had been there.’

Somehow, instead of comforting and reassuring her, Dracco’s blunt words were only making her feel worse, Imogen acknowledged.

‘I don’t want to argue with you, Dracco,’ she said quietly. ‘You are a wealthy man in your own right. If you could just see the plight of these children…’

‘It is a good cause, yes, involvement with the shelter. My sources inform me that—’

‘Your sources?’ Imogen checked him angrily. ‘You have no right—’

‘Surely you didn’t think I would allow you to simply disappear without any trace, Imo? For your father’s sake, if nothing else; I owed it to him to—’

‘I can’t believe that even someone like you could stoop so low. To have me watched, spied on,’ Imogen breathed bitterly.

‘You’re overreacting,’ Dracco told her laconically. ‘Yes, I made enquiries to ascertain where you were and what you were doing and with whom,’ he agreed. ‘Anyone would have done the same in the circumstances. You were a young, naïve girl of eighteen. Anything could have happened to you.’

He was frowning broodingly and Imogen had to shake herself free of the foolish feeling that he had been genuinely concerned about her.

‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Dracco, I’m not going to give up,’ she warned him determinedly. ‘The shelter needs money so desperately, and I warn you now that I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure it gets mine.’

The silence that followed her passionate outburst caused a tiny sliver of apprehension to needle its way into Imogen’s nervous system. Dracco was looking at her as though…as though…

Why had she never realised as a girl how very hawkish and predatory he could look, almost demonically so? She shivered and instantly blamed her reaction on the change of continent.

‘Well, you’re a woman now, Imo, and not a girl and, as you must have surely come to realise, nothing in this life comes without a price. You handed your inheritance over to me of your own accord. Now you wish me to hand it back to you, and not only the income which your share of the business has earned these last four years, but the future income of that share as well.’

‘It belongs to me,’ Imogen insisted. ‘The terms of my father’s will stated that it would become mine either on my thirtieth birthday or when I married, whichever happened first.’

‘Mmm…’ Dracco gave her a look she could not identify.

‘You have told me what it is you want me to give you, Imo, but what are you prepared to give me in exchange for my agreement—supposing, of course, that I am prepared to give it?’

Imogen started to frown. What could she give him?

‘We are still married,’ Dracco was reminding her yet again. ‘Our marriage was never annulled.’

Imogen’s face cleared. ‘You want an annulment,’ she guessed, ignoring the sharp, unwanted stab of pain biting into her heart and concentrating instead on clinging determinedly to the relief she wanted to feel. ‘Well, of course I will agree, and—’

‘No, I do not want an annulment,’ Dracco cut across her hurried assent. ‘Far from it.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU don’t want an annulment?’ Imogen stared at Dracco as though she couldn’t believe what she had heard. ‘What…what do you mean?’ she demanded.

She could hear the nervous stammer in her voice and despised herself for it. Dracco couldn’t mean that he wanted to remain married to her. That was impossible. And just as impossible to accept was that sharp, shocking thrill of excitement his words had given her.

Dracco watched her carefully. As Imogen’s trustee, it was his moral duty to safeguard her inheritance for her, to be worthy of the trust her father had placed in him, and that was something he fully intended to do. And if in helping her he was able to progress his own personal agenda, then so much the better! And as for him telling her just why…but, no…that was totally out of the question. Fate had generously dealt some very powerful cards into his hand, and now it was up to him to play them successfully. And he intended to play them and to win!

Imogen felt a nervous tremor run through her body as she waited for Dracco’s response. His expression was hard and unreadable, his eyes cold and distant.

‘I hope that you don’t need me to remind you of just how much your father meant to me,’ he began abruptly.

‘I know that you married me because of his will,’ Imogen responded ambiguously. She had wanted to give Dracco a subtle warning that she was not the naïve girl who had trusted him so implicitly any longer, but even she was shocked by the swiftness with which he decoded her message. Shocked and, if she was honest, just a little bit apprehensive when she saw the immediate and fearsome blaze of anger in the look he gave her.

‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’ Dracco challenged her softly.

Imogen took a deep breath. There was no way she was going to allow him to face her down! There was too much at stake. She had a responsibility to those who were dependent on her for her help.

‘I was very young when I married you, Dracco,’ she told him as calmly as she could. ‘My father’s will, as we both know, stipulated that I should have control of my share of the business upon my marriage. Naturally, since I was so young, I would have deferred to you where matters of business were concerned, so that in effect you would have had full control of the business—and the income it generated. Of course, had you chosen to sell the business and utilise the profits from that sale on your own behalf…’

‘What?’

For a moment Dracco looked almost as though she had shocked him.

‘If you are trying to imply that I married you for financial gain then let me tell you you’re way off the mark. In fact, I am wealthier now than your father ever was—thanks, I have to admit, to everything he taught me.’

He was speaking to her as though he were admonishing a child, Imogen decided angrily.

‘So why exactly did you marry me, then?’ she asked him sharply.

‘You know why.’ He started to turn away from her so that she couldn’t see his face, his voice becoming curt.

Imogen could sense that her question had made him uneasy in some way. Because he felt guilty? Well he might!

‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ Imogen agreed acerbically. ‘My father—’

‘Your father was a man I admired more than any other man I have ever met.’ Dracco cut across what she had been about to say, his tone warning her against questioning the truth of his words. ‘In fact, in the early years of our friendship, I often wished that he had been my father. I have never met a man I have respected or loved as much as I did John Atkins, Imogen. I felt proud to have his friendship and his trust. He was everything I myself most wanted to be. He was everything that my own father was not.’

He paused, whilst Imogen silently swallowed the huge lump of emotion in her throat.

Dracco’s father had left his mother whilst Dracco had still been a baby; a gambler and a womaniser, he had been killed in a drunken brawl when Dracco had been in his early teens.

‘I have never lost either my admiration or my love for your father, Imo, nor the wish that he and I might share a closer, more personal tie.’ He paused meaningfully whilst Imogen fidgeted with anxiety. Whatever conditions Dracco imposed on his agreement to hand over her inheritance, Imogen knew that somehow she would have to meet them. There was no way she wanted to disappoint the nuns now, nor did she intend to do anything that would prevent her being able to improve the lot of those who were dependent on the shelter.

‘Your father could never be my father, Imo, but he could be the grandfather of my son—our son,’ Dracco told her meaningfully.

His son…their son. Stupefied, Imogen gaped at him. She couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly.

‘No!’ she protested frantically. ‘You can’t mean it.’ But she could see from his expression that he did, and her heart somersaulted inside her ribcage and then banged dizzyingly against her ribs themselves.

‘No,’ she whispered painfully. ‘I can’t. I won’t! This is blackmail, Dracco,’ she accused him. ‘If you want a child so much—’

‘I don’t want “a” child, Imo,’ he cut across her coolly. ’Haven’t you been listening to what I said? What I want is your father’s grandchild. My blood linked to his, and only you can provide me with that.’

‘You’re mad,’ Imogen gasped. ‘This is like something out of the Dark Ages…it’s…I won’t do it!’ she told him fiercely.

‘Then I won’t give you your money,’ Dracco informed her in a voice that was dangerously soft.

‘You’ll have to… I’ll take you to court. I’ll…’ Imogen began wildly, but once again Dracco stopped her, shaking his head as he told her unkindly,

‘Somehow I don’t think a court would agree to you giving away your birthright. Especially if it was to be implied that part of the reason your father set up his will as he did was because he feared that you were not financially astute enough to protect your own interests.’

Imogen glared furiously at him. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she began, but Dracco was smiling at her, a mocking smile that didn’t touch his eyes as he told her softly, ‘Try me!’

Imogen shook her head in angry disbelief. This was emotional manipulation at its worst. How on earth could she ever have loved Dracco? Right now she positively hated him.

‘You can’t do this,’ she protested, her face raw with emotion as she told him shakily, ‘If you could see these children—they have nothing, Dracco. Less than nothing. They need help so badly!’

‘And they can have it, Imo,’ Dracco told her calmly, ‘but not from your inheritance. As your trustee, I cannot allow that, but—’ he paused and looked at her, his penetrating gaze holding her own and refusing to let her look away ‘—but,’ he repeated coolly, ‘as your husband,’ Dracco continued with a pseudo-gentleness that made her tense her stomach muscles against whatever it was he was going to say, ‘as your husband,’ he stressed with deliberate emphasis, ‘I would be quite prepared to promise to pay one million pounds to the shelter now, and another one million when you give birth to our child.’

If Imogen hadn’t already decided she hated Dracco she knew she would have done so now. How could he be so cynical, so cruel, so corrupt? Two million pounds! He must be rich indeed if he could afford to part with so much money so easily and just so that… He had loved and revered her father, she knew that, and she could even see too why he might want to have a child who carried her father’s blood. But to go about it in such a way, when he knew that he would be forcing her to have sex with him and when he knew too that he didn’t love her… Imogen couldn’t stop herself from shuddering with angry loathing.

‘I…I need time to think,’ she told him defiantly.

‘To think, or to run away again? I thought this charity was all-important to you, Imo, but it seems…’

‘Stop it.’ Covering her ears with her hands, Imogen turned away from him.

His cruelty appalled her but she couldn’t stop herself from acknowledging the truth of what he was saying. When she thought about the difference his money would make to Rio’s homeless street children Imogen knew that she could not possibly put her own needs before theirs.

‘So do we have a deal—two million for your charity, a wife and, hopefully, your father’s grandchild for me?’

Somehow Imogen managed not to show how desperately tempted she was to refuse. Summoning all her courage, she took a deep breath and agreed huskily, ‘Yes.’

Bleakly Imogen stared out of the window of Dracco’s car—a sleek silver BMW now and not the Daimler she remembered him driving—as they sped through the uniquely green English countryside. She had not asked Dracco where they were going, had not addressed any questions or conversation to him at all, in fact, since she had woken up in his city apartment earlier on in the day. His apartment but thankfully not his bed; no, she had been spared that at least for now, having slept alone in his guest room.

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