Revenge At The Altar

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But she never finished her sentence. Instead she made the mistake of looking up at him, and instantly the words stalled in her throat.

She felt her body tense, almost painfully, and then her legs started to shake just as they had the first time she had ever seen him. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt that hugged the muscles of his arms, and wearing dark glasses, he had looked like a cocktail of one part glamour to two parts cool. And then he’d taken his glasses off, and it had been like a thunderclap bursting inside her head.

Over time she had, of course, grown used to how he looked. But at least once a day it had caught her off guard, and now apparently nothing had changed. The seemingly random arrangement of mouth, nose, cheekbones still had the same power to rob her of even basic impulses, such as breathing and speaking.

‘Without what?’

Her stomach tightened with awareness. The air felt suddenly charged with a different kind of tension, and his voice had grown softer. Too soft.

She could feel it slipping over her skin like a caress, so warm and tempting and—

Deceptive! Had she really learned nothing from what happened between them?

Ignoring his eyes, she crossed her arms in front of her body, shielding herself from the pull of the past. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does. You see, I need an answer,’ he said, and the smoothness of his voice in no way diluted his uncompromising statement.

‘Well, tough!’ Her eyes widened. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to give you one here and now?’

For a moment he didn’t reply, just continued to stare at her thoughtfully, as though he was working out something inside his head.

‘Actually, I can—and I am.’

Her pulse shifted up a gear as he glanced at the surprisingly understated watch on his wrist.

‘Deals have deadlines, and this one runs out when I walk back out through that door.’

She took a breath, fear drumming through her chest. ‘But that’s not fair. I need time—’

‘And I need an answer.’

The commanding note in his voice whipped at her senses so that suddenly her head was buzzing and the glare of the sunlight hurt her eyes.

‘And, to be fair, you have had ten years.’

Margot blinked. ‘You can’t compare what happened then with this.’ She felt suddenly sick. Surely he didn’t think that this ‘proposal’ somehow picked up where they’d left off?

‘This is nothing like before,’ she said shakily.

‘I agree. This is far better.’

She gaped at him speechlessly, uncertain of how to interpret his words, and then suddenly she shook her head, her eyes snapping upwards. ‘Better! What are you talking about?’

Her voice was too loud. So loud that someone in the corridor would be able to hear her. But for the first time in her life she didn’t care what other people might think.

‘How is this better? How could this ever be better?’

‘It’s simpler. More transparent.’ His gaze dropped to her throat, then lowered to the V of her dress. ‘What you see is what you get. And, despite all your talk of mutual loathing, I think we can agree that we both like what we see.’

Margot felt something dislodge inside her. His closeness was making her unravel. She wanted to disagree. To throw his remark back in his face. Only she didn’t trust herself to speak—not just to form the words inside her head but to say them out loud.

Her pulse hiccupped with panic, and his gaze cut to hers. Surely though he couldn’t sense the way he made her feel?

But of course he could—he always had. And, as though reading her mind, he reached out and gently stroked her long blonde hair, his touch pulling her not just closer, but back to a past that she had never quite relinquished.

‘I can’t give you time, Margot, but I can give you a reason to marry me.’

His gaze rested on her face, his eyes drawing her in, and she felt her nerves quiver helplessly in response to the message in the darkening irises.

‘You have given me a reason, Max,’ she said shakily. ‘It’s called blackmail.’

There was a moment of silence, and then his gaze shifted from her eyes, dropping and pressing onto her mouth. Suddenly her skin felt too hot and too tight, and she had a slip-sliding sense of dеj?-vu as he took another step closer, the intensity of his eyes tangling her breathing.

‘Actually, I have a better reason.’

For perhaps a fraction of a second her brain was screaming at her to turn, to move, to run. And then his lips closed on hers and heat surged through her body as his arm curved around her waist. Her hands rose instinctively, palms pressing into the rigid muscles of his chest—but not to push him away. Instead her fingers curled into the front of his shirt and she was pulling him closer, even as his hand curled around her wrist.

The touch of his mouth, his hands, his body, was so familiar, so intoxicating, that she would have had to be inhuman not to respond. He was warm and solid and real—more real than anything else in the room, in the world.

It was impossible to deny, and he was impossible to resist...like drowning. The pain and the misery of the last ten years was fading into a pleasure that she had never expected to feel again, a pleasure she had only ever felt in Max’s arms.

Something stirred in her head and she felt a kick of resistance.

Only it was all a lie, a cold-blooded seduction. He hadn’t felt anything. Not then, and definitely not now.

And just like that the spell was broken. Heart still racing, she jerked her mouth free and pushed him away.

Resurfacing into the cool, sedate daylight of the boardroom, she felt heat burning her face. Only now it was the heat of humiliation. How had she let that happen? Why had she given herself to this man? A man who felt nothing for her and used her feelings as a weapon against herself.

Oh, he wanted her—but certainly not because he was powerless to do otherwise...

Skin burning, she took a step back and pressed her hand against her mouth, trying to blot out the imprint of his lips, wishing there was a way she could erase him as quickly and permanently from her life and her memory.

But the truth was that even when she’d had every reason to do so she hadn’t managed to wipe Max from her mind. And now she actually had a reason for him to be in her life.

Her pulse fluttered and she felt a momentary swirling panic rise up inside her chest like storm water. And then just as swiftly it drained away. This was not a time for feelings to get in the way of facts. And the facts were bleak.

The business was not just failing, it was heading for bankruptcy. And it wasn’t just Duvernay the business that was facing ruin. If—no, when the business collapsed, her family would be thrown into the spotlight, humbled and humiliated. Worse, they would be homeless.

She didn’t want to marry Max, but without his money her life and that of her family—the life they all took for granted—would not just be difficult, it would cease to exist. And how would she—how would they?—cope living like ordinary people?

Her heart contracted. They wouldn’t. And she couldn’t expect them to do so.

Briefly, she felt the weight of her responsibilities. For if this was to work then once again she would have to put her family before herself. To lie and keep secrets. But what choice did she have?

Right now, Max was her only option. Without him all would be lost.

Heat burned in her cheeks. But wasn’t there just a tiny part of herself that was relieved to have Max there, going into battle alongside her? And, really, was marriage such a big sacrifice to make for the sake of your family and a two hundred year legacy?

She stilled her breathing, like a diver preparing to jump, and then, before she could change her mind, she said quickly, ‘Okay, I’ll marry you. But it has to look and feel real, like a traditional wedding. We’ll need to talk about it properly.’

As an attempt to reassert her power it was pretty meaningless. She was in no position to demand anything—she knew it, and he knew it too—and yet she also knew instinctively that she couldn’t allow herself to be a push-over.

She’d half expected him to rise to her challenge. Only he didn’t. Instead he merely nodded, as though she’d asked him to email her an invoice rather than discuss the conditions of their marriage of convenience.