Bridal Bargains

Someone had the presence of mind to switch off the throbbing music. Then the silence that followed was truly stunning as he began striding forward.

His hard eyes were on Claire—and specifically fixed on the place where her companion’s hands were splayed across her slender body.

Andreas didn’t so much as glance at him, but with a sharp click of his fingers he had the young man snatching his hands away from her waist then stepping right back as if he was letting go of some stolen hot property.

Coming to an abrupt halt in front of Claire, Andreas reached out to take the champagne bottle she hadn’t even been aware of holding out of her fingers. Then he stood there, impressively daunting, as he held the bottle out to the side in a grimly silent command for someone to take it from him.

Some very brave person did that, for the angry vibrations Andreas was giving off were frighteningly awesome. ‘Now you may all return to the party,’ he said flatly. And not once—not once had he so much as acknowledged a single one of them by eye contact!

Not even Claire, who was standing there rather like a puppet that had had its strings removed while the group responded to his command without a single murmur, disappearing en masse through the pool-house doors and effectively leaving her to face the angry wolf alone.

Thanks a bunch, she thought ruefully as she listened to their retreating footsteps fade away.

‘Well, that was very sociable of you,’ she drawled in an effort to mock her own tingling sense of trepidation at his continuing grim silence.

He didn’t even bother to retaliate. All he did do was reach down to snatch up her only good wrist then turned and began pulling her towards the house.

‘What do you think you are doing?’ Claire demanded, trying to tug free of a grip that wouldn’t budge.

‘You are drunk,’ he answered scathingly. ‘I have no tolerance with that, so if you value your life you will be silent.’

‘I am not drunk!’ She hotly denied the charge—though she had a vague feeling he could well be right. ‘Where are we going?’ she then queried frowningly when, as they entered the indoor pool-room, instead of making for the door which would lead back to the main part of the house, he headed for the private staircase that connected the pool-room to the upper floor.

He didn’t answer, but his body language did as he pulled her behind him up the stairs. He was blisteringly, furiously angry.

They emerged onto the upper landing. Below them the party was continuing in full swing. The hallway was crowded with people dancing, others spilling out from adjoining rooms. Peering over the gallery as they walked along it, the first person Claire’s eyes picked out was Desmona’s choice for Andreas’s mistress, dancing cheek to cheek with her husband to the slow, smoochy music drifting sensuously in the air.

Two-timer, she thought contemptuously. And flashed the man in front of her a lethal glance.

He opened the door to her bedroom and swung her inside. Only a single small table lamp burned in the corner, casting eerie dark shadows over the rest of the room.

‘Now,’ he said, shutting the door, ‘you are going to pull yourself together and make yourself fit to be seen with me when we return downstairs to our guests.’

‘I was with our guests,’ she threw back. ‘And we were enjoying ourselves until you came and spoiled it!’

‘You mean you enjoyed having that boy paw you?’

A sudden vision of his naked body wrapped around that adulterous woman downstairs had her chin coming up in hot defiance. ‘What’s it to you if I enjoyed it?’ she challenged insolently. ‘I don’t recall either of us making any vows of celibacy when we decided to deceive everyone!’

His eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Explain that remark.’

Go to hell, she wanted to say, but those narrowed eyes stopped her. ‘Let go of me,’ she said instead, and tried to pull her wrist away.

He wouldn’t let go. ‘I said explain,’ he repeated.

‘What do you think I meant?’ she flashed, hugging insolence around her like a protective shield. ‘If you think I am going to sit here through this marriage like the ever faithful Penelope while you go off doing your own thing—then you can think again!’

The atmosphere between them was suddenly electric. He wasn’t a fool; he knew exactly what she was saying here. If it were possible his eyes narrowed even more. Her blood began to fizz—not with champagne bubbles any more but with a far more volatile substance. Her heart began to pound, the muscles in her stomach coiling tensely as, in sheer self-preservation, she gave a hard yank at her imprisoned wrist and managed at last to break herself free then began edging backwards, attempting to put some much needed distance between them.

But he followed. ‘You are not taking a lover while you are married to me,’ he warned in the kind of deadly voice that put goose bumps on her flesh.

‘You can’t dictate to me like that,’ Claire protested as she fell back another step—then another, until the backs of her trembling knees hit the edge of the bed. ‘I can do whatever I want to do. You promised me that,’ she reminded him. ‘When I agreed to all of this.’

‘And you want to take a lover,’ he breathed in taut understanding.

‘Why—will you be jealous?’ she taunted him, with a sense of horror at her own crazy recklessness.

Something came alive on his lean, dark face that had her hand shooting up to press against his chest in a purely defensive action meant to keep him back.