Bridal Bargains

den impatience sharpening his tongue. ‘I merely asked if there was any way it could be put back a week.’

No chance. He’d known it even before he suggested it. Wishful thinking was a useless occupation out there in the real world. And that was his biggest problem. Nell and this incredible harmony they had come to share did not belong in the real world. Nell, he’d come to realise, never did. Not in his world anyway. For the last year he’d kept her safely locked up inside a pair of iron gates, waiting, he’d told himself, for her to grow up before he attempted to redress the mess their marriage had become. In his arrogant self-confidence, he had not seen that she’d done the growing seething inside with resentment at the way he treated her. If she had not crashed her car, she would have been long gone with her Frenchman before he’d known anything.

And the way the guy had disappeared so completely turned his blood cold when he thought of Nell disappearing with him like that.

‘What of that other business?’ he clipped into the telephone.

His frown deepened when an unsatisfactory reply came back.

‘A man cannot drop from the face of the earth without leaving some trace, Luke,’ he rasped out in frustration. ‘I need you to find him. I need you to interrogate him. I need to know what his true intentions had been towards my wife!’

‘And if it was a subtle form of kidnap?’ he lanced back at whatever Luke Morell said. ‘I will continue to think of her as in danger until I have answers … No, I will not leave her safety to the hands of bodyguards again. What use was Hugo Vance? Helen is my wife, my responsibility … Then let an empire crumble.’

Grimly he slammed down the phone, knowing he was being unfair, unwise—irrational. But how the hell else could he behave around a woman as unpredictable as Nell?

He’d spent three weeks in her constant company—had sunk himself into her more times than he cared to count! But did he know what made her tick? No more than he did a year ago when he’d wrongly believed he had her tagged and labelled—my beautiful, besotted wife.

She’d turned the tables on him that time. Then she’d done it yet again when she’d tried to leave him for her elusive Frenchman. OK, so this time he had managed to breach the damn citadel of her physical defences, but with Nell he could not afford to let the sex count for anything. He did not trust her, or that strange, glinting look he’d glimpsed in her eyes now and then. The little witch still had her own agenda, he was damn sure of it. She might love what he could make her feel, but did she love him …?

When you’ve had your fingers burned by complacency not once but twice, unless you are a complete fool you do not take chances on it happening again.

And what was she doing with that piece of driftwood? he questioned suddenly. The way she was caressing it was almost erotic. Was she imagining it was him—or someone else?

Jealousy. Uncertainty. He did not like feeling like this! With a grim clenching of every bone in him he spun away from the window, wondering what the hell he was going to do. He had to go to London. He did not want to take Nell with him. But was she going to accept that?

Not a chance in hell, he thought as he began gathering together papers that littered the top of his desk. Papers that were important to running an empire—yet all he wanted to do was hide away here with his wife!

A black scowl darkened his face as he strode into the hallway. Seeing Nell stashing the piece of driftwood by the open door, he pulled to a stop as he made one of those clean-cut, uncompromising decisions that usually made him feel better about himself.

‘We need to talk,’ he announced brusquely.

‘We do?’ Surprise lit her tone as she walked towards him, a sensational, wand-slender, Titian-haired woman wearing a halo of sunlight all around her. ‘Well that makes a change,’ she drawled teasingly.

He was wearing white, Nell noted. Xander liked to wear white, white, loose, fine muslin shirts that allowed the gorgeously tight, bronzed shape of his body show through, and white linen trousers that fastened with a tie cord low on his lean waist. One tug at the cord and she would reveal the real man, she thought temptingly, felt the hot secretion of desire sting her senses and wished she had more control over herself.

But she didn’t and her mouth quirked into a rueful smile that acknowledged her weakness as she came to a halt in front of him and lifted her face for a kiss.

It didn’t arrive. She focused her eyes on his hard, handsome face. He was cross, she realised. Her smile died.

‘What was the smile for?’ he demanded suspiciously.

‘Well, it was for you but I’ve taken it back. What’s the scowl for?’ she countered.

He made an impatient flick with a long-fingered hand. ‘I have to go to London today,’ he told her abruptly.

London. Her eyes lit up. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So you don’t have to sound so cross about it. I’ll go and pack and we can—’

‘No.’ Xander used the refusal as if it were a landmine he was setting down in the small space between them. ‘You will stay here.’

Nell’s chin shot up again, green eyes making full contact with grimly uncompromising brown, then for the space of ten taut seconds she gave no response. Not with her steady gaze or her closed, perfectly formed mouth—or any other part of her, yet some inner body language had to be speaking to him because Xander tensed every muscle he had.

‘It’s business,’ he clipped out as if that justified everything. ‘I can be back here in two days. No need for both of us to uproot.’

‘Do you want sex before you leave?’

It was not an invitation. In fact it was more like a cold slap in the face. The provocative witch, Xander thought heavily. ‘Not if you are going to turn it into a punishment,’ he returned drily, then grimaced because he was aware by the tingling of his flesh that he’d take the punishment if it was all that he was going to get.

‘Goodbye, then,’ she said and abruptly turned about.