Bridal Bargains

Hedging her bets? Using him as a substitute for her new love? Had that bastard woken her up to her own sexual desires and after three weeks without him she was hungry enough to let any man have her—even the one she believed was having an affair with another woman?

Anger bit its sharp teeth into him at the

mere idea of another man taking what belonged to him. He threw open the salon door and stepped inside to the smell of his mother’s perfume and to see an aunt who was all beaming smiles because her favourite person had come for a visit.

Shame that the son did not feel the same way. ‘OK, Madre, let us make this brief. I have more important things to do than listen to your business troubles today.’

‘I think you have already been dealing with your—business, caro,’ his mother drawled with a swift up-and-down glance of his dishevelled state despite the attempt to tidy up. ‘And there was I, thinking as I flew here that at last Alexander will know what it feels like when a marriage flounders on the rocks …’

‘Your marriage did not flounder; you scuppered it,’ he incised.

‘If you two are going to fight I will leave you,’ Thea Sophia put in and headed for the door, her beaming smile lost. ‘You might also like to embrace each other before you tear each other to pieces,’ she added sternly before she walked out.

Fifteen minutes later and Nell was coming down the stairs again after the quickest shower on record and with her freshly washed hair rough-dried by an urgent towel then left to do its own thing while she scrambled around for something suitable to wear. The fact that whoever had packed for her in England had chosen almost all of the clothes she’d bought for her nonexistent honeymoon did not make the choice a simple one. One, the clothes had been bought with Xander and romance in mind. Two, they were now a full season out of date. So to have to put on one of the slinky off-the-shoulder short dresses in last season’s rich jade colour did not give her confidence a major boost as she hovered outside the salon door, running nervous fingers down a mid-thigh-length dress that might do good things for her eyes and her figure but was going to look out-of-date to her super-elegant, fashion-guru mother-in-law.

That she’d stepped into a war zone took Nell about two seconds to register. Xander was lounging in one of the chairs, looking for the world like the king of all he surveyed even with bare feet—while he shot angry sparks at his mother.

Gabriela was sitting opposite him, giving the cool appearance that she did not notice the sparks. Heaven had left nothing out when they made this beautiful woman, Nell thought enviously. The sleek black hair, the sensational dark eyes, the long, slender figure which could pull off any fashion statement with panache.

As he turned his head to look at her, Nell felt a blush coming on as Xander let his eyes narrow then linger on her shining hair with its still damp, spiralling ends touching the hollow of her back. She’d tugged the dress up onto her shoulders as far as it would let her but it still looked low-cut at the front and slinky—as those too expressive eyes had already assessed.

‘Ah, Helen, there you are.’ Her mother-in-law’s smooth voice brought her eyes swinging in her direction as Gabriela rose gracefully to her feet. ‘You look delightful, cara,’ she smiled as she came towards her, her expression revealing nothing as she swung her eyes down over Nell’s dress, but the criticism was there, Nell was sure that it was. ‘Enchantingly clean and fresh as you always look,’ Gabriela added, then they air-kissed while Nell tried not to cringe at the ‘clean and fresh’ bit. ‘And such hair! I am sure it grows two inches longer each time I see you. You know,’ she eyed Nell shrewdly, ‘with the touch of a gifted stylist I know in Milan it could be the most—’

‘You will leave Nell’s hair alone,’ Gabriela’s son interrupted as he rose to his feet. ‘I like it exactly the way it is.’

‘Don’t be snappy, caro,’ his mother scolded. ‘I was only going to suggest that if you gave me a week with Helen in Milan I could truly turn her into—’

‘I will extend on that,’ Xander put in. ‘You will leave Nell alone altogether. I like all of her exactly the way that she is.’

‘Well, of course you do,’ his mother agreed. ‘But—’

‘Exquisito, mi amore.’ Placing his mouth to Nell’s cheek, Xander spoke right over whatever Gabriela’s but was going to be. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he advised. ‘I do not need another fashion slave in this family.’

‘I am not a slave to fashion!’ his mother protested.

‘The couture houses of Europe wipe their feet on you, Madre, and you know what makes it so crazy?’ He looked down on her from his superior height. ‘You would look amazing in whatever you chose to wear, be it sackcloth. They should be paying you to wear their clothes.’

‘They do,’ Gabriela informed him stiffly. Then because, like Nell, Gabriela clearly did not know if he was teasing or being cruel, ‘Oh, go away and put some dry clothes on,’ she snapped, wafting a slender white hand at him. ‘You make a compliment sound like an insult and confuse me.’

Xander made no attempt to enlighten her as to which had been his intention. He was angry, Nell noticed, so she had to assume the insult was what he’d meant.

He went obediently enough though, pausing long enough to assure Nell that he would be back before Thea Sophia arrived with refreshment for them all. The door closing behind him left Nell and Gabriela alone with a small silence to fill.

Gabriela did it. ‘We were arguing when you came in, as I am sure you noticed. Alexander likes to have things all his own way but cannot always have it.’

The way her eyes slid away from Nell made her wonder if the argument had been about her.

Or the ugly rumours about their marriage seemed likely.

‘Strong men are like that,’ Nell found herself saying—as if she knew much about them.

‘You think him strong?’ Gabriela quizzed thoughtfully. ‘I think him arrogant to believe that I should sacrifice my … Ah, but let us not talk about it.’ She cut herself off from saying what she had been about to say right at the intriguing point, as far as Nell was concerned. ‘Tell me about your accident and how you are recovering,’ she invited. ‘A much more interesting subject …’

By the time they’d done to death the scant details Nell was prepared to give about her accident and her ensuing recovery, which she suspected by the far-away expression Gabriela barely heard, Thea Sophia arrived and the odd mood lightened as Gabriela found a true smile as she went to take the heavy tray from the older woman.

There was a small tussle, which Thea won, as Nell knew from experience that she would.

‘Leave me be, Gabriela,’ she said. ‘I must feel useful or I may as well take to my bed and wait for God to come and get me.’