Bridal Bargains

A nerve ticked in his jaw as she glanced warily up at him. He quickly flicked his eyes away. ‘We will be landing at Heathrow in twenty minutes,’ he informed her then strode away, his body language still speaking loud and clear.

The walk through Heathrow was like being placed beneath a microscope. As had happened in Athens, people stopped in their droves and stared. Nell wanted to curl into a tight chrysalis and just—disappear. With a trio of tough-faced bodyguards hustling around them, they must look like one of those celebrity couples you saw splashed across the tabloids. She hated it and kept her eyes lowered and was actually grateful for the protective arm Xander placed around her as he paced beside her like a sleek, prowling cat that wanted to leap off and savage a couple of those staring faces—keeping up appearances, she thought again with a tiny grimace. And wondered curiously why she hadn’t been treated to this kind of walk down the concourse when they’d left London for Greece. But didn’t ask; neither the man nor the moment nor the throat-clutching pump of her heartbeat encouraged speech.

Rico was waiting outside with the Bentley, its rear door held open wide. She was hustled inside the car’s luxury interior, Xander followed, the door shut, silence clattered around them with the same ear-twisting quality of a full string orchestra tuning their instruments.

They sped away with all the smooth efficiency Xander clearly took for granted. Nell would have smiled if she’d had the will to but she didn’t. She had never felt as cold and unhappy or as isolated—and that was saying something, she mused as she stared out of the car window.

‘Do you actually like living like this?’ The words were out before she could stop them.

‘I beg your pardon?’ That she had surprised him with real speech showed in the huskiness of his voice.

‘Like you’re a beast living in a zoo,’ she enlightened and watched him stiffen. ‘Or maybe you’re the star in the quintessential TV reality show,’ she went on, wishing she’d kept quiet, but unable to stop herself from going on. ‘Everything you do, wherever you are in the world, is watched and discussed and pored over. The Press love you. Those people back there love you. Paths appear in thick crowds so you can pass through unhindered while they stand and goggle and gasp.’

She dared to flick a look at him then wished she hadn’t. He was sitting like a block of rock, no reaction whatsoever. It infuriated her; she didn’t know why but it did.

‘Is there a weekly vote on who gets kicked out of your life next?’ she prodded recklessly. ‘Do big companies fall to a million or two phone calls? Mistresses get dumped—bodyguards that don’t fit the tough-guy bill?’

‘Shut up, Nell,’ he advised very quietly.

She wished she could but she was on a roll here. ‘If I don’t please the masses, do I get to go too? Vote out the nagging little wife so our wonderful hero does not have to listen to her any more!’

She saw his hands curl into two fists on his lap. ‘You are going nowhere, so don’t build your hopes up.’

‘Because I might be pregnant?’ she flashed at him with acid bite. ‘Well, that event should boost the ratings. Do we produce your son and heir in front of a blaze of cameras and maybe have your mistress watching from the sidelines just to add a bit of spice?’

The snakelike twist of his body came without warning. For such a big man he struck with stunning, lithe grace. Before she even knew what was happening he had her trapped in the corner of the seat with a hand at her nape and the other clamped across her reckless mouth.

‘Now listen …’ he hissed out in thin warning.

Nell stared at him over the top of his clamping hand—really stared, and for the first time took in his pallor, the tension cutting deep grooves around his wide, sensual mouth. But it was his eyes that held her, eyes like black crystal that pierced her so sharply they hurt.

‘I give you the right to mock me and my lifestyle,’ he bit out tautly. ‘I will even admit that I probably deserve to feel the acid whip of your tongue. But you will not mock yourself in the same manner and you will not degrade our unborn child!’

Is that what she’d done? Oh, yes, that was what she had done, Nell acknowledged. Her lips trembled beneath his hand.

‘And don’t cry,’ he added on a driven mutter. ‘I have enough torment to contend with without you adding your tears!’

Her breasts heaved on a tightly suppressed and tremulous shudder. Some of that torment he’d admitted to flashed across his eyes. He bit out a couple of thick foreign curses then, with the same unpredicted lithe movement, let go of her and snaked back into his own seat.

‘You have no idea what you do to me,’ he said then in rough-toned fury while Nell just sat there and trembled. ‘You have no idea of your own damn power to draw breathless gasps from the masses!’

Shocked by that, she blinked at him in bewilderment. Turning his dark head, he caught the surprised blink and his lean face hardened into cynicism.

‘You have the wild, waving hair of a fantasy mermaid, the face of an angel and the body of a natural sensualist!’ he ripped out as if in contempt. ‘Your sensational legs are so slender and long there isn’t a man alive that would not have hot dreams about them wrapped around him. Other women look at you and wish they possessed a small fraction of what you’ve got! I wish I’d never set eyes on you, then I would not be sitting here feeling hard and hot and bloody frustratingly impotent to do anything about it!’

‘Trust you to drag it all down to your lower-body level,’ Nell responded, too shaken by what he’d thrown at her to care that her voice quivered with the onset of fresh tears. ‘I wish you’d never set eyes on me too, then I would not have spent the last year being shipped from one luxury prison to another by a money-motivated brute with sex on the brain!’

‘So what would you rather have been doing?’ he questioned curiously.

‘Getting on with my life!’

‘Life with the Frenchman perhaps?’

Turning a tight-lipped profile to him, she refused to answer. Let him think what he liked about Marcel, she thought mutinously—especially if it annoyed the hell out of him!

‘Tell me, Nell, because I’m genuinely curious. Did the elusive pimpernel have the fifty million to bail your father out?’

‘Marcel is not motivated by money,’ she stated haughtily.