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Then her lashes flickered. bringing her eyes back into focus, and the bleak look was gone. ‘No,’ she replied, and rose to her feet. ‘That, I’m afraid, is none of your business.’
‘It is if we are going to be man and wife,’ he claimed.
‘And are we?’ Mia raised her sleek brows in counterchallenge. ‘Going to be man and wife?’
‘Why me?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Why, if you did not make the selection yourself, did your father set me up for this?’
‘Are you serious?’ she gasped, her green eyes widening in scathing incredulity. ‘Last week you virtually undressed me with your eyes right in front of him! The week before that you invited me to spend the weekend in Paris with you in front of a room full of people—including my father! And there wasn’t a person present who misunderstood what your intentions were, Mr Doumas,’ she informed him. ‘You certainly were not offering to show the city sights to me!’
From the moment they’d met, he’d not even attempted to hide the attraction he felt for her!
‘You set yourself up for it!’ she told him. ‘I tried to head you off, freeze you out as best as I could do in front of my father. I even told you outright at one point that you were playing with fire, coming anywhere near me! Did you take any notice?’ Her green eyes flashed. ‘Did you hell!’ she snapped, ignoring the way his expression was growing darker the more she threw at him. ‘You just smiled an amused little smile that told me you had the damned conceit to think I was playing hard to get with you—and kept on coming on to me!
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ she continued, while he stood there, stiff-backed and riveted to the spot by what she was tossing at him. ‘Until you started pursuing me, you weren’t even up for consideration for this deal! But as soon as my father saw the way you looked at me you went right to the top of his carefully collected shoat-list of men fit to father his precious grandson! So, if you need to blame someone for this predicament you now find yourself in, blame yourself,’ she suggested. ‘You looked at me, you wanted me, you were offered me—on my father’s terms.’
‘In other words, your father is really your pimp,’ he hit back.
Oh, very good, Mia grimly acknowledged. She’d cut into him, and he had cut right back.
‘If you prefer to think of your future wife as a whore, then fine,’ she parried. ‘Though what that makes you doesn’t really bear thinking about.’
He jerked as if she’d stabbed him—and so he damn well should! He might not like what he was being dealt here, but it didn’t mean he could ride roughshod over her feelings!
‘As it happens,’ she tagged on, simply to twist the knife, ‘you also had to pass several other tests before you qualified. You were younger than the other candidates on my father’s list, as well as being more physically attractive—which was an important factor when my father was creating his grandson and heir,’ she explained. ‘But, most important of all, your family has a reputation for conceiving male children.’ There hadn’t been a female born to the Doumas line this century.
‘And, of course, you were hungrier than the rest, not only for me,’ she emphasized, ‘but for your precious island.’ And, therefore, so much easier to capture than the rest, was the bit she kept to herself.
But he took it as said. She saw that confirmed as his mouth took on a wryly understanding twist
‘And what happens to this—grandson and heir once he arrives in this world?’ he asked next. ‘Does your father come and snatch him from your breast an hour after his birth and expect me to forget I ever sired him?’
‘Good heavens, no.’ To his annoyance, she laughed again. ‘My father has a real abhorrence of children in any shape or form.’ Despite the laugh, her own bitter experience showed gratingly through. ‘He simply desires a male heir to leave all his millions to. A legitimate male heir,’ she added succinctly. ‘I am afraid I can’t go out and just get one from anywhere, if that’s what you were going to suggest next...’
It had been a half-question, which his shrug completely dismissed. ‘I’m not a complete fool,’ he drawled. ‘I would not suggest anything of the kind to you when it would mean my losing what I aim to gain from this.’
‘And the child would lose a whole lot more, when you think about it,’ Mia pointed out, referring to the size of Jack Frazier’s well-known fortune. ‘But I get full custody,’ she announced with a lift of her chin that said she expected some kind of argument about it. ‘That is not up for negotiation, Mr Doumas. It is my own condition before I will agree to any of this, and will be written into that contract my father mentioned to you.’
‘Are you saying that I will have no control at all over this child?’ he questioned sharply.
‘Not at all,’ Mia said. ‘You will have all the rights any man would expect over his own son—so long as we stay married. But once the marriage is over I get full custody.’
‘Why?’
Now there was a good question, Mia mused whimsically.
‘I mean,’ he qualified when she didn’t answer him immediately, ‘since you are making it damned obvious to me that you are no more enthusiastic about all of this than I am, why should you demand full custody of a child you don’t really want in the first place?’
‘I will love it,’ she declared, ‘no matter what his beginnings. I will love this child, Mr Doumas, not resent him, not look at him and despise him for who and what he means to me.’
‘And you think I will?’
‘I know you will,’ she said with an absolute certainty. ‘Men like you don’t like to be constantly faced with their past failures.’ She’d had experience of men of his calibre, after all—plenty of it. ‘And agreeing to this deal most definitely represents a failure to you. So I get full custody,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Once the marriage is dissolved you will receive all the visitation rights legally allowed to you—if you still want them by then, of course,’ she added, although her tone did not hold any optimism.
His eyes began to Sash—the only warning she got that she had ignited something potentially dangerous inside him before he was suddenly standing right in front of her.
Her spine became erect, her eyelashes flickering warily as he pushed his angry face close to hers. ‘You stand here with your chin held high and your beautiful eyes filled with a cold contempt for me, and dare to believe that you know exactly what kind of man I am—when you do not know me at all!’ he rasped. ‘For my son...’ His hands came up to grip her shoulders. ‘My son,’ he repeated passionately, ‘will be my heir also!’
And it was a shock. Oh, not just the power of that possessiveness for something which was, after all, only a means to an end to him, but the effect his touch was having on her. It seemed to strike directly at the very heart of her, contracting muscles so violently that it actually squeezed the air from her tightened chest on a short, shaken gasp.
‘My son will remain under my wing, no matter who—or what—his mother is!’ he vowed. ‘And if that means trapping us both into a lifelong loveless marriage, then so be it!’
‘Are we?’ Despite his anger, his biting grip, the bitter hatred he was making no effort to hide, Mia’s beautiful, defiant eyes held his. ’Are we going to many?’
His teeth showed, gleaming white and sharp and disturbingly predatorial between the angry stretch of his lips, his eyes like hard black pebbles that displayed a grinding distaste for both herself and the answer he was about to give her.
‘Yes,’ he hissed with unmasked loathing. ‘We will marry. We will do everything expected of us to meet your father’s filthy terms! But don’t,’ he warned, ‘let yourself think for a moment that it is going to be a pleasure!’
‘Then get your hands off me.’ Coldly, she swiped his hands away. ‘And don’t touch me again until it is absolutely necessary for us to touch!’
With that she turned and walked back to the window where she stood, glaring outside at the lashing rain, while she tried to get a hold on what was straining to erupt inside her.
It didn’t work. She could no more stop the words from flowing than she could stop the rain outside from falling. ‘You seem to think you have the divine right to stand there and be superior to me. But you do not,’ she muttered. ‘You have your price, just like the rest of us! Which makes you no better than my father—no better than myself!’
‘And what exactly is your price?’ he challenged grimly. ’Give me one good reason why you are agreeing to all of this and I might at least try to respect you for it!’
It was an appeal. An appeal that caught at her heart because, even through his anger, Mia could hear his genuine desire for her to give him just cause for her own part in this.
Her green eyes flashed then filmed over, as for a moment—for a tiny breathless space in time—the sheer wretched truth to that question danced on the very edge of her tongue.
But she managed to smother the feeling, bite that awful truth down and keep it back, then spun to face him with her eyes made opaque by tears that had turned to ice.
‘Money, of course,’ she replied. ‘What other price could there be?’
‘Money...’ he repeated, as though she had just confirmed every avaricious suspicion he’d held about her.
‘On the day I present my father with a grandson I receive five million pounds as payment,’ she went on. ‘No better reason to agree to this—no worse than a man who can sell himself for a piece of land and a pile of ancient stone.’
He wasn’t slow—he got her meaning. She was drawing a neat parallel between the two of them—or three people if she counted her father’s willingness to give away a Greek island to get what he wanted out of this rotten deal.
‘So make this a marriage for life if it suits you,’ she defied him. ‘I don’t care. I will be wealthy in my own right and therefore independent of you no matter how long the marriage lasts! But we will soon know how strong your resolve is,’ she added derisively, ‘once the marriage is real and your sense of entrapment begins to eat away at you!’
‘Entrapment?’ he picked up on the word and shot it scornfully back at her. ‘You naively believe I will feel trapped by this marriage? That I am prepared to change a single facet of my life to accommodate you or the vows we will make to each other?’
It was his turn to discharge a disdainful laugh, and Mia’s turn to stiffen as his meaning began to sink in. ‘I will change nothing!’ he vowed. ‘Not my way of life or my freedom to enjoy it wherever the mood takes me!’
His eyes were ablaze, anger and contempt for her lancing into her defiant face.
‘I have a mistress in Athens with whom I am very happy,’ he announced, using words like ice picks that he thrust into her. ‘She will remain my mistress no matter what I have to do to fulfil my side of this filthy bargain! I will not be discreet.’ he warned. ‘I will not make any concessions to your pride while you live with me as my so-called wife! I will hate and despise you—and bed you with alacrity at regular intervals until this child of the devil is conceived, after which I will never touch you again!
‘But,’ he added harshly, ‘if you truly believe I will also let you walk away with that child then you are living in a dream world because I will not!’
‘Then the deal is off,’ Mia instantly retaliated, using her father’s tactics to make her own point.
After all, he hadn’t given in to the big one—namely, agreeing to marry her and produce Jack Frazier’s grandchild in what amounted to cold blood—without being desperate! And she would have her way in this if only because she had to glimpse some light at the end of this long dark tunnel or she knew she would not survive.
‘Try telling your father that,’ he derided, his eyes narrowing as her cheeks went white. ‘You are afraid of him. I saw that from the first moment I set eyes on you.’
‘And you want what only he can give you more than you want a child!’ Mia countered. ‘So I am telling you that you agree to my having full custody or the deal is off! This may also be a good moment for me to remind you of the shortlist of other names waiting to be called upon at a moment’s notice,’ she added, playing what she saw as her trump card.
To her immense satisfaction, his handsome face fell into harsh lines of raw frustration. ‘You are as cold-blooded about this as your damned father!’ he spat at her in disgust.
Mia said nothing, her chin up and eyes cool, her defiance in the face of his disdain so palpable it could almost be tasted in the air between them. Air that seemed to sing with enmity, picking at her flesh and tightening her throat as she watched him turn and stride angrily for the door.
‘I will speak to my lawyers,’ he said in a clipped voice as he reached it, ‘and let you know tomorrow what I decide.’
‘F-fine,’ Mia said, not quite managing to hide the sudden tremor of anxiety in her voice.
He heard it, and read it for exactly what it was. ‘Your father is going to be bloody furious with you for not clinching this here and now, isn’t he?’ he taunted.
She merely shrugged one finely sculptured shoulder. ‘My father knew my requirements before you arrived here. Why else do you think he left us alone like this when he actually had you so nicely caught in the bag?’
Take that, you nasty swine, she thought, her eyes gleaming with her own contempt.
One set of long, brown, lean fingers was gripping the brass doorhandle in preparation to open the door, but that final taunt had them sliding away again, and on a quiver of real alarm, which made her spine warily straighten, Mia watched him turn and begin to walk slowly towards her. Her heart began to hammer, her tongue cleaving to the dry roof of her mouth as he came to a halt mere inches away.
He was tall—taller than herself by several daunting inches. It meant she had to tilt her chin to maintain that most necessary eye-to-eye contact bitter adversaries always used as a weapon on each other.
His eyes were black, hard and narrowed, the finger he used to stroke a feather-light caress down the arched column of her throat an electric provocation that had her teeth gritting behind the firm set of her lips as she fought to stop herself from flinching away from him.
‘You know...’ he murmured, super-light, super-soft, ‘you are in real danger of provoking me one step too far. I wonder why that is?’
‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said tremulously, feeling that trailing finger make its electrifying journey back up her throat again.
‘No?’ he said quizzically.
Then he showed her exactly what he meant as that taunting finger suddenly became a hand that cupped her jaw then tilted her head as his mouth came down to capture hers.
It was not a passionate kiss or even a punishing one. He simply crushed her slightly parted lips against his own, tasted her, using his tongue to lick a lazy passage along the vulnerable curve of her mouth, then straightened, his eyes still like dark glass as they gazed into her own rather startled ones.
‘W-why did you do that?’ she gasped.
‘Why do you think?’ he replied mockingly. ‘I wanted to know if I would taste the acid that drips constantly from your lips. It wasn’t there,’ he softly confided. ‘In fact, you tasted so sweet I think I will have to taste you again...’
And he did, that warning all she had before he was crushing her lips again, only this time his exploring tongue was sliding sinuously along the edge of her own, and as she released a protesting gasp his free hand snaked round her waist and pulled her against the long lean length of his body—a body she could feel already tightening with an arousal that actually shocked her.
But what shocked her more was the way her own senses went absolutely haywire, slinging out all kinds of demands that had her simmering from head to toe. The static-packed build-up of sensual excitement set her quivering all over and it was an effort not to give in.
What was the matter with her? she wondered deliriously. She didn’t even like this man!
Yet she was on fire already, and she had to admit he was good. He seduced her mouth with an expertise that had her groaning, the splay of his hands across her body holding her trapped so he could move against her in a blatant demonstration of what the friction between their two bodies was doing to him.
To her horror, her own inner thighs began to pulse in hungry answer, her mouth quivered, her breathing quickened and her hands came up to cling to his shoulders as, on another helpless groan, her defences finally collapsed, and she was kissing him back with a passion that held her totally captivated.
It was raw and it was hot and it was so utterly basic that his deep-throated laugh of triumph against her clinging mouth had to be the worst humiliation she had ever experienced.
‘Now this is a surprise,’ he murmured silkily as he drew away. ‘I knew our sparring was arousing me, but I did not realise it was having the same effect upon you. That adds a little spice to my final decision, does it not?’
Mia took a shaky step backwards, her trembling fingers falling from his shoulders and her cheeks blooming with shock and a dreadful consternation.
‘Lie back and mentally switch off?’ He mocked her earlier remark. ‘I think you will be doing a whole lot more than that, Mia Frazier.’
‘I never said I was frigid,’ she shot back stiffly.
‘But your father must think you are or why else does he believe he has to pay to get a man to bed you?’
‘Not just any man, but the man of his own choice!’ Her chin was up again and, despite the quivers still shaking her body, her eyes still managed to spit out defiance. ‘Please remember that while you make your decision—you are not my personal choice. I am simply willing to do anything for that five millions pounds.’
Which was about as good as a slap in the face for him. He stepped right away from her, his expression so utterly disgusted that she almost—almost—wished the words unsaid.
‘I will call you with my decision tomorrow,’ he said abruptly as he moved back to the door.
‘It’s my father you will be dealing with, not me.’
‘You,’ he repeated. ‘I will deal personally with you. Your father will be dealt with through my lawyers.’
CHAPTER TWO
MIA was staring out of the study window again when her father entered the room. She had just watched Alexander Doumas take off down the driveway with enough angry force to forge a vacuum through the storm still raging outside. There were tears in her eyes, though she didn’t know why—unless those tears had something to do with the awful person she had been forced to play here today who bore no resemblance to the real Mia Frazier.
‘Well, how did it go?’
‘He has until tomorrow to agree to my terms or the deal is off,’ she replied, without bothering to turn.
In the small silence that followed she sensed her father’s frown of irritation. ‘Don’t spoil this for me, Mia,’ he warned her very grimly, ‘or you will be spoiling it for yourself.’
‘I was taught by an expert.’ Mia’s smile was bleak. ‘He will come around to my way of thinking simply because he has no choice.’
‘Neither do you.’
‘He doesn’t know that, though.’
‘Ah.’ Jack Frazier lowered himself into the chair behind his desk with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘You didn’t tell him.’
‘You warned me not to.’
‘So, what does he think I am holding up as your incentive to agree to all of this?’
‘I get five million pounds from you on the day I produce your grandson,’ she informed him.
