Bridal Bargains

She was just coming down the stairs when Alex walked out of one of the rooms off the hallway. He saw her and paused to watch her descent through those impenetrable brown eyes of his.

‘You still look tired,’ he observed huskily.

Still stinging from last night’s humiliating rejection, she dropped her eyes from his and concentrated fiercely on the stairs in front of her. ‘It’s worry, not tiredness,’ she contended. ‘I would like to ring the hospital,’ she went on coolly. ‘Is there a telephone I could use?’

‘Of course.’

Stepping back to the room he had just walked out of, he opened the door and gestured her through it. She found herself standing in a study that was very male in style—a lot of polished wood, walls lined with books and the more modern state-of-the-art communications hardware.

There was a desk by the window, with a telephone sitting on it. Mia thanked him quietly and walked over to pick up the receiver.

Her thanks had been a polite way of dismissing him but, to her annoyance, he didn’t leave her to her privacy but came to lean on the desk beside her so he could watch her face while she spoke to the hospital.

Suzanna had spent a comfortable night, she was assured. She also knew that Mia had been in to see her late last night, and the fact that she was actually here in London had cheered the child up remarkably. ‘She keeps on asking when you are coming in again,’ the nurse told her.

‘Later this morning,’ Mia replied. ‘Tell her I will be with her just as soon as I can be.’

‘OK?’ Alex asked quietly as she lowered the receiver.

Mia nodded, her lips pressed together to stop them from trembling, but it still hurt to think of that little girl spending the whole of yesterday sick and in pain and probably very frightened of what was happening to her.

‘Then what is the matter?’ he asked. ‘You look almost—hunted.’

‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I n-need to ring my father next, that’s all.’

‘Ah,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Would you prefer me to make that particular call for you?’ he offered.

Instantly her chin lifted and her eyes met his with their usual defiance to give him his answer. He smiled wryly. ‘You trust me about as much as you trust him, don’t you?’

Mia didn’t answer—didn’t need to. He knew exactly how little she trusted him.

The housekeeper answered her call. The moment she heard Mia’s voice she went off on a harried burst of speech that showed just how anxious she had been about Suzanna.

Mia listened with her eyes lowered and her fingers clenched. Her knuckles were white around the receiver as she strove to contain the black anger that was building inside her.

For three days Suzanna had been complaining of pain—and for three long, wretched days her father had cruelly dismissed the child’s distress as a ploy to bring her precious Mia back.

Her eyes began to flash and her heart to pump on an adrenaline rush. Beside her, Alex shifted his position a little, catching her attention and bringing those green eyes flashing upwards to pierce him with enough burning venom to make his own blink.

‘No—no, Cissy,’ she murmured smoothly, in reply to whatever the housekeeper had said to her. ‘I’m right here in London. I visited Suzanna last night, and I’m going back to the hospital this morning so you don’t have to worry about her now.’

Another volley of words hit her burning eardrums and Mia had difficulty containing what was screaming to be released inside her.

Alex brought a hand up to grab her chin, then tugged it around in his direction. His eyes were black, boring into hers with stunned fascination. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘You’re cracking up! The ice is beginning to melt at last!’

‘Is my father there?’ she asked the housekeeper in a voice as cool and calm as a mill pond on a winter’s day, while her eyes spat murder into those probing black ones. ‘Can I speak to him, please?’

Cissy told her that her father had meetings all day and that he had left the house very early, without even bothering to ask after Suzanna. Why? Because the child held no great importance in the real plan of things! She was simply a very small pawn he used to make Mia jump to his bidding.

Another loss leader.

It was cruel, it was sick and it was downright criminal. By the time Mia replaced the telephone she was shaking like a leaf and ready to hit out at the nearest person.

Alex.

Angrily she turned away from him, her slender arms wrapping around her own body in an effort to contain what was desperately clamouring to burst free.

‘Mia—’