The Spaniard's Blackmailed Bride

‘I resent you because you’ve built your fortune by pulling others down, my father included.’

‘Is that so? And yet now I’m offering your father a chance to get re-established. He can see the sense in the offer. And yet still you resent me.’

‘I will always resent you.’

She turned in frustration to her father. ‘Please, tell me this is all a joke. You can’t really expect me to marry this arrogant Spanish import. This is twenty-first century Sydney, after all. We don’t do arranged marriages!’

Her father shook his head sadly. ‘Briar…’ His voice choked off as he sank down into an armchair, dropping his head into his hands. ‘Oh God, I’ve been such a fool.’

She rushed to him and knelt at his side, latching both hands on to his forearm, willing him some of her strength and hope. ‘Dad, listen to me. We don’t need Diablo’s money. I’ve got it all worked out. We can survive just like we planned—with my job and by auctioning the good furniture periodically. We don’t need to go crawling to people like him. We don’t need his money.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ her father murmured, shaking his head from side to side.

‘It is that easy,’ she assured him. ‘We don’t have to make this deal. I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet—because we can survive without it. So what that we won’t have servants?—We can cope. We’ve been coping. And I’ll have a job soon.’

‘We’re not coping! Look at the state of the house—it’s killing your mother that she can’t keep up with everything.’

‘Who cares if the floors don’t get cleaned every day? Things will get better, you’ll see.’

Her father grabbed her by the shoulders, his desperate fingers clawing into her flesh so hard it hurt. With his hurt, she knew. ‘No, it’s not that easy,’ he reiterated. ‘You have to listen. We have no money left. No credit. Nothing.’

‘We do,’ she argued, wanting to stop his pain. ‘Or we will, and enough to keep us going and to get us through these times. We don’t need anyone else’s money, let alone his. Let me go and get the schedule I’ve been working on. I’ll prove it to you. I’ve worked it all out.’

‘Briar,’ was all he said as he dropped his grip to her hands, holding on to them for all he was worth, not letting her rise. ‘Thank you. You’re such a good child. I’m so proud of you.’

She looked into her father’s eyes and saw his approval beaming out at her. She relished the moment as he pulled her close, wrapping her securely in his arms, and for a moment they were the only two people in the room. Nobody else counted. Nobody else mattered. Her father thought he had been carrying the entire burden of their debt on his shoulders. Now he knew that Briar had also been searching for solutions. And everything would look different when he’d seen her calculations. She’d soon show him they didn’t need to resort to people like Diablo for the funds to ensure their future.

‘So when are you going to tell her?’ jarred a voice from outside her perfect understanding. And she stilled within the circle of her father’s arms as dread turned her blood to ice.

‘Tell me what?’ she asked huskily, drawing back to search her father’s face. What the hell else could there be?

He looked down at her with his empty eyes and it was impossible not to feel his despair drape around her, damp and pungent. ‘There’s nothing left.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, willing life into his eyes, searching for the merest flicker of hope. ‘“Nothing left”?’

‘It’s all gone. All of it.’

‘But we’ve still got the house and the furniture! I told you…’

But, even as she was speaking, his head was shaking from side to side.

‘Gone,’ her father said. ‘All that was left is gone. It’s Diablo’s now. Everything. The house, the furniture. Everything.’

Fury took charge of her senses. She rose up and wheeled around. ‘You bastard!’ She moved closer. Never before had she had an urge to tear someone limb from limb but tonight was becoming a night for firsts. Her first arranged marriage. Her first fiancé. Why not her first homicide? She lifted one hand, resisting the desire to lash out at his smug face, instead curling it into a fist between them.

‘You scheming bastard. Not content to obliterate four generations of work, you couldn’t let up until you had taken every last thing, even our family home, and consigned us to the gutter. What a hero. Do you feel proud of yourself now?’

In the space of a blink he’d ensnared her wrist, the heat from his grip like a brand on her arm.

‘I’m offering a way to keep you all out of that gutter. I’ve told your father—he can keep the house and everything in it along with a sizeable lump of cash every year. All you have to do is be that good daughter your father seems to think you are. All you have to do is marry me and all your family’s unfortunate financial problems will be a thing of the past.’

The grip around her wrist tightened, forcing her towards him, closer to his dark eyes and his tight body and his masculine heat. If his gaze at the door had been sizzling hot, his hold and his closeness was like an incendiary device set to slow burn. Already her skin sizzled into life; how long would it take to get to flash-point?

‘Put like that, it seems you leave me no choice,’ she said through gritted teeth, watching his eyes flare with an anticipated victory.

‘I’m glad you’re willing to see reason at last,’ he said, loosening his grip.

‘Oh, yes, I see reason. I’ll take the gutter over you any day!’

She took advantage of his shock by wrenching her arm free, massaging the burning skin as she wheeled away.

‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for!’ Diablo countered. ‘You have no idea what it’s like to live in poverty, always desperate to find your next meal, never able to make ends meet, and with your pampered upbringing you won’t survive ten minutes out in the real world.’

She spun on her heel, lifted her chin determinedly. ‘Oh, we’ll survive.’

He scoffed. ‘What—you see yourself as the noble poor? Allow me to let you in on a secret—there are no noble poor. There are only the poor, the hungry and the desperate. There’s no place for nobility in that line-up. The gutter is no fairy tale romantic notion.’

She regarded him levelly. ‘What a coincidence,’ she mustered. ‘Neither, it seems, is marrying you.’ She turned to where her father still sat, looking like an empty shell of a man, a fallen ruler, vanquished and heartsick for what he’d lost, and pain for what he was feeling now encompassed her like a tide rolling in.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t do it. I just can’t marry him.’

Her father nodded his head and she knew that it was not in agreement but in resignation. He seemed to shrink before her eyes. ‘I understand,’ he croaked. ‘I should never have had to ask you. It’s all my fault—my fault. Now I just have to find a way of telling your mother that we no longer have a home.’

Briar’s heart plummeted.

‘Oh, God, you mean she doesn’t know? I thought she must have been in on this crazy idea.’

‘She doesn’t know we’ve lost Blaxlea. I didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily. But now…’

‘Oh, Dad, no…’

The grandfather clock clicked loudly in the ensuing silence as the mechanism for the chimes kicked in, the prelude for ringing out the midnight hour.

Diablo strode between them. ‘Can you do that to your mother, then? Deny her the chance to see out her days in this house rather than some doss-house? What kind of a daughter are you really?’

She said nothing, just let her eyes tell him how much she hated him while inside her heart ached for her mother. Because Diablo was right—how could she do that to her mother after what she’d been through? After losing Nat, then the business and along with it their fortune, to lose the family home would kill her.

‘I can see you need more time to think about it,’ Diablo decided. ‘So I’m prepared to give you one more chance. You have until the clock strikes twelve to decide once and for all. Marry me and your family live in comfort for the rest of their days. Turn me down and you’ll be out of this house by the end of the week.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘Watch me,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if you have anything left to pack.’

‘Even you couldn’t be so cold-hearted!’

‘It’s not up to me any more,’ he said as the clock finished its chimes and made the first of twelve strikes. ‘It’s up to you what happens next. Luxury or poverty, it’s your call. Will you abandon your parents in their hour of need or will you restore your parents to the life they desire?’

The clock struck again. ‘That’s two,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re thinking.’

Oh, she was thinking all right. Panicked thoughts with no beginning and no end and no hope. And, between them all, the clock struck again.

Would it kill her to marry him? Maybe not, but there was no doubt it would definitely kill her mother to leave Blaxlea, her childhood home and the seat of her mother’s family for generations.

And would she ever forgive Briar for rejecting the financial lifeline that Diablo was now offering?

The clock struck again and she looked up in panic. Had she missed one? How much time was left? There was too much to consider.

Why, oh, why, did it all have to come down to her? Oh Nat, she pleaded, what should I do? But she knew without question that if her big brother had survived the crash that had cut short his life, he wouldn’t hesitate to help. He’d do whatever it took to help his parents out, even if it meant sacrificing his own career and his own future into the deal. So why did the thought of sacrificing her own chances seem so abhorrent? After all, all she had to do was to marry Diablo.

Marriage…

The clock sounded again, straining her nerves to breaking-point. It was almost time.

Marriage sounded so final. But then hadn’t she always planned on getting married one day? Indeed, she’d been groomed from the day she was born for being a society wife with a rich husband…Would it really matter if it was to Diablo? And it didn’t have to be for ever. He’d get sick of her before too long—she’d make sure of it—and then he’d have to agree to divorce her. How long would it take—one year? Two? She’d make sure there were no children to suffer in the fallout. And then she’d have her life back. It wouldn’t kill her. Marrying Diablo didn’t have to be a life sentence.

All too soon it was just an echo that rolled around the room. The clock had rung out for the last time. The witching hour was here—the time when bad things crawled out of the night and ruled supreme. Diablo, the Spanish devil, was nothing if not faithful to the old legends.

She looked across at her father, who sat there looking like the beaten man he was. He looked up at her as if he’d realised too that this was it, his eyes bearing a rare spark of defiance. ‘Don’t do it,’ he urged in a gruff entreaty as he rose to his feet, some measure of his fighting spirit renewed. ‘This is my fault—all of it. You shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes. We’ll make it through somehow.’

She smiled and mouthed a silent thank you.

‘Well?’ demanded the Spanish devil, drawing closer, obviously impatient to seal the deal. ‘What have you decided?’

‘That I hate you,’ she snapped. ‘With all my heart and soul.’

He lifted a hand to her face quickly and she recoiled, but his touch, when it came, was surprisingly gentle as he ran the backs of his fingers along the line of her jaw. She shuddered at the sizzle of flesh against flesh as his eyes bored into hers, rendering her breathless, unable to move. ‘Hate is such a useless waste of passion.’ He sighed and turned away and she dragged in air hungrily.

‘But so be it. Under the circumstances,’ he stated coldly, ‘I want you all packed and out of here by the end of the week.’

‘No!’

He spun around. ‘What do you mean, “no”? My terms were clear.’

‘It means we won’t be leaving.’

‘Briar,’ her father implored, ‘don’t do it. You can’t—’

Diablo held up one hand that silenced her father in a heartbeat as he scrutinised her face, the barest hint of a smile returning as the dark vacuum of his bottomless eyes sucked in hers. ‘Tell me,’ he insisted.

She took a deep breath and prayed for strength. Because she needed strength if she was going to do this. And she had no choice but to do this.

For my mother, she told herself, for my family.

‘I’ll do it,’ she whispered, feeling like a swimmer out of her depth, going down for the third and final time.

‘I’ll marry you.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT’S taking you so long?’ asked Carolyn Davenport, bustling with excitement as she swept into Briar’s room, holding her turquoise gown’s ample skirts up high and trailing a silky layered train in her wake. ‘It’s just fabulous downstairs,’ she announced. ‘Everyone’s here. Even with the short notice, I think the whole of Sydney society has turned out.’

Only out of morbid curiosity, thought Briar cynically as she applied the finishing touches to her make-up. No matter what story Diablo’s spin doctors had concocted to release to the press, there wasn’t a chance anyone believed theirs was a love match.

Anyone, that was, apart from her mother.

Carolyn Davenport had taken the news of the impending nuptials like the true society doyenne she was, swinging into mother-of-the-bride mode as if she was born to it. Any hint that she’d known about a link between her daughter’s rushed marriage and the fact that now suddenly they had servants again, with the funds to pay for them and much more besides, like her brand new Lisa Ho gown, for example, seemed to have been conveniently deleted from her memory. Her mother seemed all too ready to believe in the whole sorry fairy tale.

‘Fairy tale romance’, my eye, Briar thought, reflecting on the latest headline as she snapped the blusher compact closed. But even the business pages hadn’t been immune to the press bombardment.

‘Marriage Merger’ had been their angle—‘a blending of new money with old, the brash success of the young entrepreneur merged with the proven track record of the establishment’.

How the papers would lap it up if she came clean with her own version of the headline—‘Blackmail Bride—sold to save her family from financial ruin’. But that story would never come out, no matter how true.

‘You could do with more colour than that,’ her mother protested, as Briar dropped the blusher back into a drawer. ‘You look so pale tonight—I knew we should have got your make-up done professionally. Are you feeling nervous?’

‘Not really.’ Feeling sick, more like it. Briar looked briefly back in the mirror to check—even against the white silk of her simple toga-inspired gown she looked pale—but then, what make-up was going to be a match for her mood? There was only so much you could do with powder and paint.

‘Never mind,’ her mother said, when it was clear her daughter was going to make no attempt to redress the issue. ‘I’m sure a glass of champagne will soon put some colour in your cheeks.’

Briar’s stomach clamped down in rebellion. Champagne was the last thing she needed. After all, tonight was hardly a celebration.

‘Come on, then,’ her mother urged. ‘Diablo’s waiting for you downstairs. Just wait till you see him; he looks so dashing tonight.’

‘That’s nice,’ she responded absently, slipping her feet into heels. Who cared what he looked like? He could be the most handsome man in the world, but it would still be the devil in disguise waiting for her. And frankly, he could just keep on waiting. Just because she’d agreed to marry him didn’t mean that she’d be dancing to his tune any time soon.

She’d done a lot of thinking over the last two weeks and she’d worked out her own musical score for this marriage. Diablo craved respectability and an entrée to Sydney society. He didn’t care about her and he almost certainly didn’t even like her. Given that the feeling was mutual, it shouldn’t take much to convince him that the best way to make this marriage work was for them both to lead separate lives. At least until he tired of her and agreed to a divorce. That way life might be bearable. She could put up with a year or two of inconvenience if she knew that at the other side of it she’d be free.

‘Oh, hasn’t Carlos done such a wonderful job with your hair?’ her mother exclaimed with delight. ‘It suits that gown perfectly. Although I still don’t understand why you wanted to wear that old thing. It is a special occasion, after all.’

Not that special. And this ‘old thing’ was barely twelve months old and only worn once as it was. But still, she turned and smiled at her mother’s never-ending enthusiasm. Someone had to be enthusiastic about this wedding and who better than her mother? Already she looked so much better than she had just two short weeks ago when this crazy marriage plan had been unleashed, her features less drawn, her frown vanquished. It wasn’t just that their financial situation had taken a turn for the better, she knew, but because her mother genuinely seemed to want this marriage to work out.

‘I’m just saving my splurge for the big event,’ she told her, with a passion she didn’t feel, taking her mother’s arm and pulling her in close. ‘Come on, let’s go meet these guests.’

The champagne flowed so freely it seemed the huge ballroom was awash with it. Champagne, old money and the celebrity A-List blended together in the Blaxlea ballroom, which fairly gleamed since the team of cleaners Diablo had organised to go over the place had done their bit. Huge arrangements of flowers were doubled in the enormous mirrors, their colours reflected in the crystal chandeliers, while a full wall of feature windows welcomed in the diamond lights of Sydney Harbour at night.

It was some place all right and it could have been his outright—indeed it had been, for just one night. But he was happy with his deal—they could keep the title to the house. Tonight he would gain himself something much more important than just bricks and mortar and a few hundred feet of prime Sydney Harbour frontage. Tonight he’d cement his place and his future with the society that had resisted him for so long.

Already he could sense the change in the way he was perceived, by the constant string of congratulations he’d received from people who would have crossed the street to avoid him in the past, as he stood alongside Cameron Davenport waiting for the ladies to appear. In marrying Briar there was no way they could ignore his hold on the Sydney property industry any more. Now he had the Davenport seal of approval. Now there would be no stopping him.

How fortunate that a man so unskilled in the ways of his business should have had such a suitable daughter. For there was no one he’d rather cement his future with than Briar Davenport. She would make the perfect wife. The bonus was she would also make a pleasant bed-warmer. Siring children with her would be no hardship.

There was a stir amongst the crowd before everyone hushed and his eyes drifted upwards to where the two women stood at the top of the stairs, the older woman in plumage peacock-bold, the daughter so deathly pale as to render any other mere mortal invisible.

But not Briar. Her skin might be pale but her eyes shone like dream stones, amber and intense. And the dress might be colourless but it could not disguise the exquisitely feminine form beneath. A tiny waist that only accentuated the lushness of her breasts and hips, and legs that went forever and then some.

Briar. Like the rose that grew wild, spreading branches rambling, soon she would be clambering all over him. Already he could feel those long limbs wrapped around him, clinging to him, supported by him. Already he could hear her crying out, begging him for release. His body stirred in anticipation as the women slowly descended the wide staircase.

Oh, no, siring children with her would be no hardship at all.

The women reached the foot of the stairs. Carolyn took her husband’s arm. Diablo held out his hand for Briar and for the first time she looked at him.

Something jolted through her as their eyes connected, a prelude for the bolt of electricity that was unleashed when their hands touched. His dark eyes narrowed and regarded her strangely.

‘You look beautiful,’ he said. ‘Like a virgin sacrifice about to be tossed to the lions.’

How appropriate, she thought, though hardly willing to buy into that particular discussion. ‘And you,’ she replied, ‘look like the proverbial cat that got the cream.’

He drew her hand closer, pressing his mouth, warm and moist, to her skin while his eyes held hers. ‘Not yet; so far I only have the unopened package. But, I must confess, I’m looking forward to opening it up and then—’ his eyes narrowed and focused like dark torchlight ‘—and then sampling the treasure within.’

She dragged in air and turned her head away, suddenly too uncomfortable, too giddy, too hot. She didn’t need a mirror to tell her that there was plenty of colour in her cheeks now. Diablo’s words had achieved in an instant what the finest cosmetics in the world had failed to do.

Yet it wasn’t just his words heating her body. Her mother hadn’t been exaggerating. Tonight he looked magnificent in clothes that would have made a lesser man look ridiculous and yet on Diablo merely accentuated his masculine power. A snow-white shirt contrasted with his smooth olive skin and black fitted trousers that finished above hand-stitched leather boots. Over it all he wore a long black jacket with a Nehru collar that emphasized his long, lean length. With his hair tied back, all he needed was a gold hoop in his earlobe and he could have been a pirate out on the town celebrating his latest conquest.

And, if that wasn’t enough, just breathing the same air, laced with the heady tang of his aftershave, was like getting a shot of testosterone.

And damn him but somehow that scent was like a lure, snagging on her defences, tangling with her resistance. Purposefully she stiffened her spine. She would not be attracted to such a man. It couldn’t happen.

Someone—her father—made a toast and the room erupted into applause and congratulations. Briar made out not a word of it as she scanned the crowded ballroom without taking in a thing. She was too busy working out what to do next. They would have to talk—privately—and soon. Diablo had to be made to see under what terms she was prepared to marry him and that those terms in no way included him sampling anything!

‘Darling? Briar?’

It was hearing her name that brought her back and she turned to him, ready to protest that she was hardly his darling, but something in his eyes stopped her in her tracks.

‘Didn’t you hear the guests? They’re waiting for us to seal our betrothal with a kiss.’

And, before she could protest this latest indignity, that there was no way she would kiss him, least of all in front of two hundred people, his mouth was on hers and any protest was muffled, melted, by the sheer impact of his lips.

They were soft, she realised with surprise—soft but sure. He looked so powerful dressed as he was all in black, hard and unyielding, and yet his lips moved over hers with an elegance of movement and a grace that was as surprising as it was intoxicating.

Heat rolled through her in waves, a surging tide of warmth that crashed and foamed into her extremities and set her flesh to tingling and her protests all but forgotten. The room shrank around them until there was just this kiss, these sensations, this mouth, weaving magic on hers.

And then he lifted his mouth from hers and sounds and colour and people invaded her numbed senses once more. She blinked as the crowd cheered; she blinked as her state of daze sloughed away; she blinked as Diablo smiled back at her, success lining that passionate slash of mouth, as she realised what she’d done.

Dear God! She’d let Diablo Barrentes kiss her, in public. And his expression told her he was gloating about it. She lifted one hand, touched the back of it to lips that still hummed from his touch, but he stilled the movement, pulling her hand down within his.