The Blackmailed Bride

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The last thing she remembered was getting on the flight for Palma; her memories of that were perfectly clear. She’d ended up holding a baby all the way for the harassed young mother travelling alone with two active toddlers and a fretful six-month-old. The mother had been grateful; the baby had expressed his gratitude by throwing up all over her cream linen designer suit.

The unthinkable suddenly occurred to her. What if she wasn’t alone in the strange bed? Holding her breath, she reached behind her, a relieved sigh escaped her lips as the search came up empty.

Javier entered the room just as she was blindly patting the pillow, her eyes screwed tightly shut. He heard her hoarse sigh from the other side of the room. A spasm of amusement lightened the severity of his lean, dark features as he approached, a nightdress folded over one arm.

It wasn’t too hard to interpret his guest’s actions. Ms K. M. Anderson—it hadn’t taken long to discover that they did indeed have a K. M. Anderson staying—was wondering if she’d woken up beside a stranger. From her reactions, it seemed safe to assume this wasn’t an everyday occurrence for her.

Javier found himself idly wondering what her response would have been if her hand had encountered his own body instead of the pillow lying there beside her. For a brief moment he imagined her turning, arms outstretched, a smile of invitation on those full sexy lips. Reality intervened; it was much more likely, considering her reckless streak, she’d have picked up the nearest heavy blunt object and knocked him senseless with it. All the same, even his remarkable will power could not totally banish the lingering image of warm, welcoming arms.

Frowning, Kate rolled onto her back. The large fans swooshing silently overhead seemed in keeping with the tasteful and expensive Colonial-style furnishings in the room around her. Her parents’ beachfront bungalow had similar furnishing, though it wasn’t nearly as spacious.

Of course! She was on holiday. She was in bed at the hotel in the room she shared with Susie… Her relieved expression faded—this theory only worked to a point. This lavishly appointed space wasn’t their much more modest bedroom with its twin beds, rattan furniture and a nice view of one of the pools from the dinky veranda.

‘My head hurts,’ she complained out loud.

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘You!’ Kate shrieked in loathing.

She shot bolt upright, bristling with antipathy. The mystery of her brain blanking out the last few hours was a mystery no longer; it had merely been a protective reflex. Protecting her from the worst day of her life.

‘How did I get here?’ Not under her own steam, that much she knew, and where was ‘here’? ‘Kidnapping is a very serious offence.’ It was in England, and she had no reason to believe the Spanish treated this offence any differently.

One slanted brow rose politely. ‘So I believe.’

It was frustratingly apparent her stern warning hadn’t had any effect on his bone-deep air of assurance—other than to infuse it with a slight edge of infuriating, indulgent amusement—but then why would it…? She was talking to a hardened, desperate criminal. There was every likelihood he had probably done a lot worse than kidnapping! Perhaps he still thought she was some junkie who nobody would miss?

‘And there are people who will miss me…lots of people…’ She broke off abruptly clutching her head as an arrow of agony shot through her temple.

Through a miasma of pain, Kate felt the mattress give as he came to sit on the edge; her nose quivered as she encountered the attractive male fragrance emanating from his warm body—any closer and she might feel the warmth too. Kate tensed at the thought. This was getting way too intimate for her liking! With a muffled cry of protest that hurt her head, she tried to shuffle blindly away, but a firm hand on her elbow prevented her.

‘I won’t hurt you.’ Kate was mad with herself for instinctively believing him, despite all the evidence to the contrary. ‘You should lie down; you took quite a knock.’

‘You should know, you probably delivered it,’ she retorted through gritted teeth.

‘Actually you ran full pelt into the wardrobe—solid mahogany. Renewable sources of course; the owners have a very green policy…’

This information did actually correspond with Kate’s own hazy recollection of the incident. ‘You make it sound as if I did it on purpose,’ she muttered truculently. ‘Actually, I had my eyes closed.’ Like now.

Her blue-veined eyelids flickered as she felt the pad of one fingertip brush aside a strand of hair from her forehead. Her mind supplied a vivid lifelike image—possibly aided by the fact she could still smell his elusive male scent—to go with the action. The image of long, sensitive, tapering fingers, very dark in dramatic contrast to her fair creamy skin, lingered in her mind as her stomach muscles began to quiver uncomfortably.

Keeping her eyes closed, she told herself, had nothing to do with being afraid of seeing his raw sex appeal up close. The light hurt her eyes—that was all.

‘From the look of your spectacle lenses, it wouldn’t have made much difference if you’d had them open,’ he murmured, his deep voice laced with disparaging amusement. ‘Does the light hurt your eyes?’

‘A little.’ Kate was willing to ignore this insulting slur on her eyesight. He had her glasses—she needed them, and much as it went against the grain it was time for a bit of pleading. ‘You’ve got my glasses? Give them to me.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Please,’ she added gruffly. ‘Being without them is like…like being naked.’ It was hard enough to explain the vulnerability of being short-sighted to anyone not similarly afflicted, but to someone as genetically perfect as this man it was probably a waste of breath.

His perfection was hard to miss this close too. She didn’t need her specs to assimilate the dark, brooding magnificence of his strong-boned features—looking at them alarmingly intensified the dizziness she was experiencing.

‘I’m afraid I stepped on them in the dark.’

‘You did it deliberately!’ she heard herself wail childishly.

‘They say your other senses compensate…’

Kate watched with total fascination as his long fingers made a stroking sensation a hair’s breath away from the pale skin of her forearm. As if those well manicured fingertips were electrified, the fine hairs on her skin became erect.

Was this the unnatural affinity she’d heard abductees developed with their kidnappers? she wondered hazily as her insides dissolved in the flood of scalding liquid heat which cascaded through her body. Like hell it is, Kate! Face facts! This is lust, sexual attraction—at least, on my side—plain and simple. His motivation for playing cat and mouse games were less immediately obvious.

‘…when one sense is compromised,’ the insidiously sexy drawl continued. ‘In my experience, closing my eyes often enhances and heightens tactile sensations…’

Her shameless brain immediately provided several steamy images of situations where he might feel obliged to close his eyes. The situations revealed in those fragmented images uniformly necessitated him being naked, his golden skin gleaming beneath a layer of sweat. The hoarse groan of pleasure she imagined being ripped from his throat was so realistic that a swiftly subdued whimper emerged from her own throat—this was getting out of hand.

So the man was incredibly good-looking, sinfully sexy and packed more masculinity into his little finger than most men did in their entire bodies… That was no excuse to lose the plot, Kate told herself sternly.

‘This might help that naked feeling you were talking about.’

Kate looked blankly from his enigmatic face to the creamy cotton scoop-necked nightdress he handed her. Her brain made the link between his words and the garment and she bit her lip. She wasn’t—was she?

She hardly dared, but she forced herself to look downwards at her own body—it could have been worse, but not much. Her skin looked dramatically pale against the black of the simple bra she wore; she couldn’t see them but she knew her matching pants would afford an equally stark contrast.

‘You took my clothes off!’ she choked, her voice shaking with outrage and suspicion. Was that all he’d done…?

‘I did,’ he confirmed, coolly unapologetic. ‘It seemed the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. You were burning up.’

If she hadn’t been, she was now! With a fraught squawk of dismay, she belatedly slid beneath the duvet, leaving only her face and tousled ash-blonde hair peeking out.

One dark brow rose expressively. ‘There is really no need for a display of false modesty; women on the beach wear less than you are.’ One corner of his mouth lifted as a devilish gleam appeared in his eyes. ‘Considerably less, actually,’ he added drily. ‘Or are you afraid you’ll inflame my lust? Don’t…I have strong control.’

In other words, he wasn’t that desperate!

His languid drawl sent an extra-sharp stab of pain through Kate’s pounding skull. Though she never normally envied Susie her looks, at that moment she wouldn’t have minded having the equipment to make this man eat his contemptuous words.

‘Oh, yes, you struck me right off as someone oozing strong moral fibre,’ she sneered, oozing hostility. ‘And as for women on the beach, they haven’t been interfered with by a raving lunatic.’

‘Do you always have such lurid fantasies?’

Kate’s cheeks flamed. With one quirk of an eyebrow he’d managed to give the distinct impression he wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot barge pole. ‘None involving you!’

An honest girl, Kate knew she would in the future. It was inevitable; he was the sort of male that made the female unconscious run riot. She just hoped her fantasies would wait until she was safe in the bosom of her family—she refused to allow herself to contemplate if. She was going to get away from this man.

Javier saw her wince. ‘You really should not shout or get agitated,’ he remonstrated.

‘Advice from you I can do without.’

He gave a shrug. ‘I removed your clothes because you were dressed inappropriately for the weather conditions. Though ideally for a spot of larceny,’ he added slyly.

‘Are you calling me a thief?’ she gritted.

‘If the cap fits…?’

‘Takes one to know one…’ she countered childishly.

‘Takes a thief to catch a thief,’ he riposted without a pause.

‘Gosh, your colloquial English is really very good.’ I can’t believe I just said that…! I’ve been knocked unconscious, kidnapped, I’m lying as good as naked in a strange bed in the company of an indisputably dangerous man who could do anything at any moment and all I can do is admire his grammar…!

His heavy lids drooped hiding the expression in his deep set eyes momentarily from Kate. ‘The British, they’re just priceless.’

‘Pardon?’

Those lush dark lashes lifted off his cheekbones revealing cynical blue. ‘Shades of the empire; you refuse to learn another language and delight in commenting on foreigners’ funny accents.’

Kate, who was mortified by this interpretation of her unthinking observation, couldn’t help but observe that his deep velvety drawl could be classified as many things, including dangerously seductive, but funny wasn’t one of them!

‘I didn’t mean it like that!’ she exclaimed, horrified to have him lump her together with an unpleasant, ignorant minority she had nothing whatever in common with. ‘Anyhow, it’s an absurd generalisation, and I was not being patronising.’ Why am I making such a fuss? she wondered eyeing the good-looking cause of her discomfort resentfully. His good opinion is not something I’m going to lie awake at nights thinking about—now his mouth, that was another matter, her wilful thoughts added naughtily.

‘You look feverish.’

Kate stiffened as a cool hand touched her perspiring forehead—she could hardly explain the likely reason for her sweaty state. The hand lifted and she sighed.

‘I’m prepared to give the benefit of the doubt,’ he announced abruptly. Their eyes met and something indefinable passed between them that made Kate’s breathing quicken perceptibly. ‘Actually, I went to school in England,’ he added casually.

Kate frowned. ‘Boarding school?’ That suggested a privileged background, as did his autocratic manner. Had he chosen crime out of choice or had circumstances forced him down that road? It seemed a wicked shame that someone she sensed had so much potential should waste his talents.

‘Do I detect a hint of disapproval?’

The edge of indulgent amusement in his voice made Kate bristle. ‘Well, if I had children I wouldn’t ship them away…’ She encountered the interested glint in his eyes and bit her lip. Like he’s really interested in what you’d do with your children, Kate… A sane person didn’t enter into a debate on private versus state education with her abductor.

‘It didn’t do me any harm.’

Kate couldn’t stop herself snorting derisively when he wheeled out the tired old line.

‘In fact…’

‘It got you where you are today—which I’d say was looking at a kidnapping charge, at the very least.’

‘Does that mean if I let you go you’ll run straight to the police?’

Kate’s face fell as she realised her smart tongue had got her into even more trouble. ‘I’m in no position to go to the police without incriminating myself.’ She waited, fingers crossed, for his response.

‘You being such a hardened criminal…’

Kate unable to interpret the odd inflection in his tone frowned. ‘Not hardened, exactly… You went to school in England—does that mean you’re not Spanish?’

‘A man could be forgiven for thinking you’re trying to change the subject.’

‘I’m curious, that’s all…’

‘About my ancestry?’

‘About your eyes…’ She cleared her throat and blushed hotly as the dangerous glint in his eyes intensified. ‘I just happened to notice they’re blue,’ she explained carelessly. ‘It’s unusual for someone with your colouring,’ she added defensively.

‘Yes, it is. I have a Scottish grandmother.’

‘It’s never too late, you know…’ she heard herself blurt out suddenly.

Much to her dismay, he eased himself farther onto the bed and folded his arms comfortably across his chest. Kate had his full, undivided attention and she didn’t want it!