Bridal Bargains

Kill herself? Where had they dragged up that big lie from?

Had Xander himself put it out there?

She hated him. Oh, God, she hated him. No wonder she was being so thoroughly isolated. He didn’t want her retaliating with the truth!

Leaving him for another man … Oh, how she wished she’d managed to go through with it. She would have written her own headline. ‘Wife of philandering Greek tycoon leaves him for Frenchman!’

CHAPTER THREE

STANDING unnoticed in the doorway, Xander watched Nell’s trembling fingers grapple with the intricacies of fastening the tiny pearl buttons on the silky white blouse he’d had delivered to her along with a blue linen suit that did amazing things for her slender shape.

Someone had fixed her hair for her and it lay in a thick, shining, sandstorm braid to halfway down her back. She looked very pale, though the bruising on her face had almost disappeared. But it was clear to him that even the simplest of tasks still came as an effort.

She was not recovered, though the doctors had assured him that she was fit to travel and for now that was all he cared about: getting her away from here and to a place void of tabloid gossip—and the temptation to contact her lover the first opportunity she was handed.

His blood began to boil when he thought about the elusive Marcel Dubois. The Frenchman had disappeared into the ether like the scarlet pimpernel, and maybe showed some sense in doing so—sense being something he had not shown when he’d decided to make his play for the wife of Alexander Pascalis.

Wife … He could almost laugh at the title but laughing was not what was lurking inside him. His hooded eyes took on a murderous glitter as he watched Nell struggle with those tiny pearl buttons. Had his wife in name only lain with her Frenchman and allowed him to touch what Xander had not touched? Had Dubois seen power in her soft, willing body and those little confidences a woman like the love-vulnerable Nell would reveal to a lover about the emptiness of her marriage?

She turned then and noticed him standing there. His libido instantly kicked in to join the murderous feelings as her eyes began to make their rise up from his shoes to the casual black brushed-cotton chinos covering his legs and the plain white T-shirt moulding his chest. No other woman had ever looked at him the way Nell looked at him, with a slow, verdant absorption that drenched him in hellishly erotic self-awareness. She could not help herself, he knew that, which made the idea of her giving those looks to another man all the more potent. When she reached his shoulders, covered by the casual black linen jacket he was wearing, he could not halt the small recognising shift of muscle that sent a shower of pleasurable static rushing through his blood.

One day soon he was going to give this awareness true substance, he promised. He was going to wipe out all memory of her other man and introduce her to his power with all its naked, hot passion.

He was no neanderthal; he did not need a woman to be a virgin to enjoy her. But this one, this beautiful freak of modern living with her innocence steeped in womanly desire for him that she still did not have the tools to hide whatever the Frenchman had taught her, was going to open up like a chrysalis under his guidance and fly with him into ecstasy. She owed him that much.

She’d reached his face at last and Xander lost the murderous look to give her the benefit of a slow, easy smile, which she dealt with by flicking her eyes away. Nell was no fool. The last time he was here he had thrown down the sexual gauntlet and the smile was to remind her of it.

‘Ready to come with me?’ he enquired with the kind of soft challenge that had her breath feathering a quiver across the thrust of her breasts.

‘I have no make-up,’ she complained. ‘You forgot to send it.’

‘You don’t need make-up. Your beautiful skin does not need it.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Her chin lifted, eyes pinning him with an arctic green look. ‘I’ve seen the waiting Press out there,’ she said with a flick of a hand towards the window. ‘Witnessing me leaving here looking black and blue won’t help your cause, Xander.’

‘And what cause is that?’ The sexy smile was beginning to fade, Nell noticed.

‘Damage control,’ she replied. ‘I presumed you would want me to look utterly love-blind and radiant for the cameras.’

‘Your tongue is developing an aspish tone that does not suit it,’ he drawled, moving further into the room with his graceful stride. ‘Can you manage that last button on your blouse or do you need assistance?’

‘I can manage.’ Her chin dipped, her fingers moving to quickly close the button. ‘The fact that I’m unhinged and suicidal does not make me totally useless.’

Xander hooked up her jacket from where it lay on the bed. ‘You must admit, Nell, it made hilarious reading.’

‘You think it’s a big joke?’

‘You clearly don’t.’

Neither did he by the look on his grim face. The jacket arrived around her slender shoulders, held out absolutely perfectly for her to slide her arms into the sleeves without needing to strain herself.

‘They presented me as a spiritless fool.’

‘And me as the ruthless womaniser.’

‘Better that than a man that cannot keep his wife happy—hmm?’

Nell turned to face him with that aspish challenge, but it was the first time she’d actually stood in front of him in goodness knew how long and it came as a shock to be reminded of his overpowering six feet two inches of pure masculinity compared to her own five feet five inches’ more diminutive build.