Bridal Bargains

Her half-brother.

‘Hell,’ he muttered thickly.

His eyes went to the bed and the manila file and he went over there and snatched it up with some deep-ridden desire to toss that damn thing across the room—only he saw the photo frame he’d uncovered and he froze as he stared down at the lovely smiling Vanessa and a laughing Alex.

‘To Papa Xander, love from your Alex’, he read and the oddest kind of laugh broke from his throat.

Then the sound of retching filtered out through the bathroom door and he was dropping the file again to stride back the way he had come. Even as he pushed open the bathroom door and saw her hanging over the toilet bowl guilt was dealing him a well-deserved punch to his gut because he had allowed himself to forget her delicate condition while they’d been fighting like cat and dog.

Nell heard him arrive just as she was shuddering into stillness. ‘Go away,’ she whimpered, only to discover that talking was enough to set the whole thing off again.

Two seconds later he was taking control of the situation with the same grim, silent efficiency he had used on the motorway the day before. When eventually it was over and she’d rinsed her mouth out with a mouthwash, he lifted her limp, wasted and hot body into his arms and she discovered she had no strength left to fight him off.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered instead.

‘Ne,’ he agreed, carrying her into the bedroom.

‘I wish you’d never set eyes on me.’

‘Ne,’ he agreed again, reaching down to toss back the covers before bringing her gently down on the edge of the bed.

‘My feeling like this is your fault.’

‘Entirely,’ he admitted. ‘Relax your arms from my neck so I can remove your jacket …’

It was the most humiliating part of it all to realise how she was clinging to him. Her arms dropped heavily to her sides. He removed the jacket while she watched his totally expressionless face. No man should be that good-looking, she thought bitterly. It gave him unfair advantage in the jaws of a fight because she wanted so desperately to reach out and kiss him that she felt dizzy all over again.

Her new flat shoes

came next, landing with a clunk on the floor. His sensual mouth set straight, eyes hooded by those glossy black eyelashes, he then laid her back against the pillows with extreme care before shifting down her body to unzip her new jeans; a second later and the denim was sliding off her legs with a deft expertise. As the cool air hit her clammy flesh she began to shiver and, with his lips now pinched back against his set teeth, he covered her with the duvet then stepped back and proceeded to yank off his jacket followed by his tie.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she gasped in quivering horror.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he growled back. ‘I might be a control freak but I am not a sadist.’

The next thing his shoes had been heeled off and he was stretching out beside her and tugging both Nell and the duvet into his arms. She curled herself right into him then burst into tears. It was like throwing open a floodgate; she just couldn’t control it. With the top of her head pressed into his chest she sobbed her heart out while he lay there and held her and said absolutely nothing.

It was as if every hurtful thing he’d ever done to her came out for an airing in those tears. The way he’d made her fall in love with him then asked her to marry him in that cool, grim tone she only noticed much later when it was too late. The way he’d stood over her while she signed his rotten pre-nuptial without batting an eyelid because she loved him and trusted him then discovered the painful way that love was blind! If Marcel hadn’t emailed her urgently with a link to the gossip pages of an American tabloid, she would have sailed down the church aisle to him in a besotted haze.

‘I h-had to marry you,’ she sobbed into his shirt front, unaware that he hadn’t been in on her first wave of grievances. ‘I was scared you’d pull out of the deal with my father.’

‘Shh,’ he said, tangling his fingers in her hair and pressing her closer.

‘I f-felt like a child-bride in a regency m-melodrama—s-sold to the unprincipled rake then dropped like a hot potato w-when he got more than he bargained f-for.’

She’d spent the next year pining for what might have been and wishing she’d stayed blind.

‘Marcel wanted to come and get me then but I wouldn’t let him. I played the child-bride in a regency melodrama, h-hoping you were going to turn up one day and realise you were head over heels in love with me but you didn’t.’

‘You saw me as a self-obsessed rat and I probably was then but you were so innocent and naïve you didn’t have a clue what was happening around you. I was trying to protect you until you—’

‘Enter the hero stage left,’ she mocked thickly, rolling away from him and reaching out for the box of tissues that sat on the table by the bed. Fingers trembling, she plucked a tissue free and sniffed into it. ‘Right in the knick of time he saves the innocent twit of a girl from the ugly guy with the f-fat lips.’

There was a shimmer of movement behind her that made her twist sharply to look at him. But if he was laughing at her it wasn’t showing on his face. The tears clogged in her throat because it wasn’t fair that he should have such liquid, dark, serious eyes that seemed to be trying to tug her right inside him.

‘Nothing to say?’ she challenged.

‘I will not answer these charges while you’re so distressed,’ he said flatly, then on a sigh when fresh tears welled he moved to pull her back to him again. ‘Tell me about your half-brother,’ he prompted huskily.