скачать книгу бесплатно
And then he was stalking down the long corridor again, holding her effortlessly, ignoring everything she’d said.
They passed a series of closed doors and then he swung round a corner, exiting the building under a covered walkway. The soft, balmy night air caressed her skin and she breathed deeply, trying to calm her racing pulse. From somewhere nearby came the sound of people, lots of people, enjoying themselves. Through the jumble of voices she heard a thread of music.
A party. She’d arrived when he was entertaining, and by the sound of it this was no intimate family gathering. That might explain the tension in him when he’d stormed in to confront her.
But nothing could excuse his behaviour since.
Tessa blinked back hot, futile tears at the realisation that the man she’d put on a pedestal for all these years was the sort of arrogant bully she most detested.
How had she got it so wrong?
And why did it matter? After tonight they’d never see each other again.
The walkway ended at another, larger building. He barely slowed his pace to negotiate the door and another corridor. There was no similarity between this architect-designed palace and the utilitarian security block they’d just left. The rooms here were discreetly opulent. Fresh flowers scented the air and there were fine furnishings, artfully placed, designed for both comfort and display. Spacious. Luxurious. The home of a mega-wealthy man.
The magazine had been right after all: Stavros Denakis had more money than she’d ever dreamed of. The divide between them was impossible to breach.
The realisation chilled her and she slumped in his hold.
She’d known from the first that he wasn’t like other men. His absolute self-assurance, his willingness to take charge, his split-second decision-making, even in traumatic circumstances, the power and confidence he radiated…She’d been so grateful for those qualities the day he’d rescued her. But now at last she understood—they were simply the qualities of a man used to command, a man with the riches to buy whatever he wanted.
The knowledge destroyed the last shred of her treasured dreams—the secret romantic image of the man who’d snatched her from the threat of torture and death.
Through four arduous years of hardship she’d fantasised that one day a man like him, a man with those same qualities, might find her. And when they met he wouldn’t act out of necessity, but out of desire. For her.
That old impossible longing to be loved just for herself. It was a wonder she hadn’t grown out of it after all she’d been through.
Stavros strode into the sitting room of a guest suite. The one nearest to his own rooms. He’d keep this troublemaker under close scrutiny until he sorted out a solution to the diabolical mess she’d created.
She lay passive in his arms now, as limp as a doll. No more of those useless struggles.
He’d been relieved to feel her surge of energy as she tried to escape his hold. She looked so fragile, her eyes huge in her delicately moulded face, her body more than slim. But she was surprisingly strong. Not enough to push him away, of course, but enough to reassure him that she wasn’t at death’s door.
That would be an unnecessary complication.
The situation was already fraught enough. The sizzle of connection he felt whenever he met Tessa Marlowe’s green-eyed gaze warned him of added danger. A flicker of heat burned his skin as he inhaled her fresh soap scent. It blazed when he thought about the way her body fitted perfectly in his arms. And it had nothing to do with his righteous fury. It hinted at something much more basic.
Yet he refused to acknowledge any attraction to this cheap, unprincipled opportunist.
The sharp possessive pleasure he experienced, clasping her tight to his chest, feeling her soft hair tease his neck, was an illusion. The product of shock at seeing her again. It couldn’t be anything else.
Nevertheless, the sooner he put some distance between them, the better. For even in her underfed state, Tessa Marlowe had curves in all the right places. Curves that his hands itched to explore.
He lowered her onto a nearby sofa, his movements abrupt. Immediately he straightened and stepped back, furious at the way her scent lingered in his nostrils, feeding the edgy awareness deep inside him. His temperature had climbed a couple of degrees too, a reaction to holding her feminine form so intimately close.
Damnation!
He turned away, picked up the internal phone and snapped out an order for coffee, food and ouzo.
This would take time to sort out. Time he didn’t have. Damn it all, he had his engagement party to attend!
A hot tide of fury roared through him.
How dared she put him in this position?
He swung round to confront her, his lips already forming a stinging rebuke. But the words jammed in his throat.
She was silently weeping, her face angled away from him and her head pressed back against the cushioned seat. There were no tears on her cheeks, but her eyes brimmed with them, glittering crystalline-bright in the lamp-light.
She looked distraught.
Guilt rippled through him but he crushed it instantly.
She was simply a superlative actress, playing the sympathy card. His mind knew it. Even so, the ploy worked.
Unwillingly he recalled the first time he’d seen her. The echo of gunfire in the distance had been a stark contrast to the waiting silence of the tiny, evil-smelling cell. Fear had hung in the air, and despair. She’d had tears in her eyes then too, but she’d blinked them away and scrambled to her feet, adopting a defensive stance that told him all he needed to know about the way she’d been treated.
She’d been desperate, expecting the worst, but ready to fight.
And he’d responded immediately. Not only to the need to rescue her from a dire situation, but more: to her gorgeous face, her tempting body.
No! He refused to go there.
Whatever had happened four years ago, he knew exactly why she was here now. To milk him for all she could get.
He was no gullible fool, to be sucked in by a show of female emotion. She’d underestimated him if she thought he’d dance to her tune just because she shed a few tears.
‘I’m listening,’ he growled, planting his fists on his hips and ignoring the way she flinched at his threatening tone. ‘What is your asking price?’
Tessa blinked back the burning film of tears, berating herself for getting so emotional. The last thing she wanted was to display weakness before this man.
His temper vibrated, almost out of control, between them.
‘There is no price.’ She looked across the room at a bright abstract painting, avoiding his hard stare.
‘My patience is at an end,’ he barked. ‘You will get no more by delaying. In fact, for every minute you keep me waiting, the final settlement will be cut.’
Tessa frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
A flurry of outraged Greek singed her ears and in the next instant a large body invaded her space, crowding her back against the corner of the sofa.
Large hands grabbed hers, yanking her around so that she faced him as he sat beside her. Searing heat surged into her, from his touch, his body, his glittering eyes.
He was furious, grim, dangerous.
And he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.
Her throat closed in panic.
‘Tell me now,’ he whispered, and the softly menacing tone scared her more than his earlier outrage. ‘Exactly how much will it cost me to be free of you?’
‘I…Nothing,’ she croaked, wondering suddenly if he meant to harm her.
His hands tightened round her wrists. His jaw clenched in a spasm of tension. His eyes burned into hers.
‘I will be free of you, either by annulment or divorce, whatever is faster. And I will pay a reasonable amount to purchase your silence, with a watertight, legally binding agreement.’
Tessa’s eyes widened as she watched his lips move, heard his words. Yet they didn’t make sense. This was crazy!
‘But there’s no need. We were never married!’
‘Sto Diavolo! Of course we were married. Why else would you have my ring? Why else would you be here, angling for my money?’
She shook her head and the room swirled round her. She was almost glad of his tight grip holding her steady.
‘But the man who performed the ceremony—he wasn’t a priest. The ceremony was a sham, a ploy to help me escape.’
His eyes bored into hers and something twisted in the pit of her stomach. For an instant she thought she saw a flicker of doubt in his expression.
But then he was speaking again, slowly, clearly, almost brutally. She fought to catch her breath as his words pounded into her brain.
‘He wasn’t a priest. He was from the local town hall and he was legally empowered to marry us.’ His words were slow, deliberate and unavoidable. ‘Everything was done legally, even the witnesses for the official record.’
Tessa opened her mouth to gasp in some oxygen, to protest. But his words continued: remorseless, fantastic.
‘The marriage was legitimate,’ said Stavros Denakis. There was a bitter twist to his lips, utter distaste in his eyes.
‘We are husband and wife.’
CHAPTER THREE
TESSA’S pulse galloped, loud in the raw silence that echoed with his words. Her hollow stomach cramped.
‘You’re not joking, are you?’ she whispered at last when she found her voice.
The mocking slant of his eyebrows betrayed scorn. That expression of disdain on his hard, aristocratic face made him look like some superior pagan god.
‘I do not joke about such things.’ He leaned back against the leather sofa and crossed his arms over his deep chest. Scepticism and impatience radiated from him.
And still she felt the sizzle of heat where his hands had encircled her skin.
‘Are you sure?’ she was desperate enough to ask. ‘Absolutely sure?’ That day had been so chaotic after all.
‘Your show of astonishment is truly touching,’ he murmured. ‘But don’t keep up the act on my account.’
She winced as his sarcasm flayed her fragile self-possession. The man’s tongue was pure poison.
‘You really believe I would make a mistake about something like that?’ He paused, his eyes narrowing as he scanned her features. ‘I even have the wedding certificate to prove it. Signed, witnessed and legally binding.’
Tessa sank back into the embrace of soft leather, her mind racing.
She was married? Had been married for four years?
She pressed a hand to her chest where a sharp knot of shock bruised her. She was married to him?
‘But why did you use a justice of the peace? It didn’t have to be a real marriage. Just something to…’
‘To get you out of prison?’ No mistaking the sneer in his tone. It matched his frosty eyes and the curl of his lip. His expression was judgemental, dismissive.
‘Any stranger would have done.’ Tessa refused to be cowed. If this was true, this ridiculous situation was his fault, not hers! ‘There was no need actually to marry me!’
‘Believe me,’ he leaned close and the wrath simmering in his eyes forced her back away from him, ‘if there’d been an alternative, any alternative, I would have taken it.’
His gaze held her in a grip so powerful she could barely breathe. She felt as if her ribs were in a vice, constricting the flow of air to her lungs.
‘It may have escaped your notice,’ he said, ‘but a little town the size of San Miguel can be remarkably short of helpful strangers willing to perjure themselves in order to rescue a foreigner from the local gaol.
‘Time was short and I’d already had enough trouble persuading your gaolers to let me see you, let alone permit a wedding on the premises.’
Her head swam and she shut her eyes. She’d walked into a nightmare. If only she hadn’t given in to the compulsion to see him again, the man she’d believed for years had given his life to save hers.
‘It was a real marriage or nothing,’ he continued, his voice like rough velvet against her abraded nerves. ‘As you very well knew.’
Her eyes snapped open. They were back to that again. He was a man of such persistent suspicion. For a fleeting moment Tessa wondered what had made him so distrustful.
‘I knew none of this. Nothing at all until just now.’
She watched the shimmer of disbelief glaze his eyes and his jaw harden impatiently. There was no way she’d ever convince him. He was determined to believe she’d somehow deliberately trapped him into marriage.
If the idea weren’t so fantastic, and so appalling, she’d be laughing her head off. Her snaring some uppity billionaire with an ego the size of South America! As if!
‘Why didn’t you say something at the time?’
‘What?’ He shook his head. ‘You wished me to apologise within earshot of the celebrant and the prison guards that our hasty plans had changed? That we’d have to make do with a real wedding and worry about dissolving the marriage later? You really think they’d have let us proceed?’ His dark brows arched in mock-surprise.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the spinning sensation that accelerated when she met his glare. If she could just sit here alone. Get her breath. In time she’d work something out. She was a survivor. She had years of practice keeping herself alive. A furious Greek tycoon with an ego problem and a marriage certificate were nothing after what she’d been through. Right?
Tessa clenched her fists, trying to dredge up some energy to deal with this situation. But she was exhausted.
‘Here, drink this!’
She opened her eyes to find him leaning over her, filling her vision with his wide shoulders and massive chest. His accusing eyes.
A skitter of sensation scudded down her spine. Trepidation? Anger?
Or something else?
‘No, thank you. I don’t need—’ she spluttered as he pressed a small glass against her lips and a rocket of aniseed fire blasted into her mouth and down her throat.
