“Are we going to marry?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“Are we going to marry?”

“Yes, we will marry. We will do everything expected of us to meet your father’s filthy terms! But don’t,” he warned, “let yourself think for a moment that it is going to be a pleasure.”

“You seem to think you have the divine right to stand there and be superior to me. But you do not,” she muttered. “You have your price, just like the rest of us! Which makes you no better than my father—no better than myself!”

“And what exactly is your price?” he challenged grimly. “Give me one good reason why you are agreeing to all of this and I might at least try to respect you for it!”

MICHELLE REID grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, England, the youngest in a family of five lively children. But now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire with her busy executive husband and has two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking and cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without, and she produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

The Price Of A Bride

Michelle Reid

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

JANUARY had arrived with an absolute vengeance. Standing in the window behind her father’s desk, Mia watched the way the wind was hurling the rain against the glass in fiercely gusting squalls—while behind her a different kind of storm was raging, one where two very powerful men pitched angry insults at each other.

Not that she was taking much notice of what they were actually fighting about. She knew it all already, so her presence here was really quite incidental.

Merely a silent prop to use as leverage.

‘Look, that’s the deal, Doumas!’ she heard her father state with a brittle grasp on what was left of his patience. ‘I’m not into haggling so either take what’s on offer or damn well leave it!’

‘But what you are proposing is positively barbaric!’ the other man hit back furiously. ‘I am a businessman, not a trader in white slavery! If you have difficulty finding a husband for your daughter try a marriage agency,’ he scathingly suggested, ‘for I am not for sale!’

No? Way beyond the point of being insulted by remarks like that one, Mia’s startlingly feminine mouth twitched in a cross between bitter appreciation for the clever answer Alexander Doumas had tossed back at her father and a grimace of scorn. Did he truly believe he would be standing here at all if Jack Frazier thought he couldn’t be bought?

Jack Frazier dealt only in absolute certainties. He was a rough, tough, self-made man who, having spent most of his life clawing his way up from nothing to become the corporate giant he was today, had learned very early on that attention to fine detail before he went in for the kill was the key to success.

He left nothing whatsoever to chance.

Alexander Doumas, on the other hand, was the complete antithesis of Jack. He was smooth, sleek and beautifully polished by a top-drawer Greek pedigree which could be traced back so far into history it made the average mind boggle, only, while the Frazier fortunes had been rising like some brand new star in the galaxy during the last thirty odd years, the Doumas fortunes had been steadily sinking—until this man had come on the scene.

To be fair, Alexander Doumas had not only stopped the rot in his great family’s financial affairs but had spent the last ten years of his life repairing that rot, and so successfully that he had almost completely reversed the deterioration—except for one final goal.

And he was having the rank misfortune of coming up against Jack Frazier in his efforts to achieve that one goal.

Poor devil, Mia thought with a grim kind of sympathy, because, ruthless and unswerving though he was in his own way, Alexander Doumas didn’t stand a chance of getting what he wanted from her father, without paying the price Jack Frazier was demanding for it.

‘Is that your final answer?’ Jack Frazier grimly challenged, as if to confirm his daughter’s prediction. ‘If so, then you can get out for I have nothing left to say to you.’

‘But I am willing to pay double the market price here!’

‘The door, Mr Doumas, is over there...’

Mia’s spine began to tingle, the fine muscles lining its long, slender length tensing as she waited to discover what Alexander Doumas was going to do next.

He had a straight choice, the way she saw it. He could walk out of here with his arrogant head held high and his monumental pride still firmly intact, but put aside for ever the one special dream that had brought him to this point in the first place, or he could relinquish his pride, let his own principles sink to Jack Frazier’s appalling level and pay the price being asked for that dream.

‘There has to be some other way we can resolve this,’ he muttered.

No there isn’t, Mia countered silently. For the simple reason that her father did not need another way. The Greek had called Jack Frazier barbaric, but barbarism only half covered what her father really was. As she, of all people, should know.

Jack Frazier didn’t even bother to answer. He just sat there behind his desk and waited for the other man to give in to him or leave as suggested.

‘Damn you to hell for bringing me down to this,’ Alexander Doumas grated roughly. It was the driven sound of a grudging surrender.

The next sound Mia heard was the creak of old leather as her father came to his feet. It was a familiar sound, one she had grown to recognise with dread when she was younger, and even now, at the reasonably mature age of twenty-five, she was still able to experience the same stomach-clutching response as she had in childhood.

Jack Frazier was a brute and a bully. He always had been and always would be. Man or woman. Friend or foe. Adult or child. His need to dominate made no exceptions.

‘Then I’ll leave you to discuss the finer details with my daughter,’ he concluded. ‘Get in touch with my lawyer tomorrow. He will iron out any questions you may have, then get a contract drawn up.’

With that, and sounding insultingly perfunctory now that he had the answer he wanted from the other man, Jack Frazier, cold, cruel, ruthless man that he was, walked out of the room and left them to it.

And with the closing of the study door came quite a different silence. Bitter was the only word Mia could come up with to describe it—a silence so bitter it was attacking the back of her neck like acid.

I should have left my hair down, she mused in the same dry, mockingly fatalistic way she had dealt with all of this.

It was the only way, really. She couldn’t fight it so she mocked it. It was either that or weep, and she’d done enough weeping during her twenty-five years to know very well that tears did nothing but make you feel worse.

‘Drink?’

The sound of glass chinking against fine crystal had her turning to face the room for the first time since the interview had begun. Alexander Doumas was helping himself to some of her father’s best whisky.

‘No, thank you,’ she said, and stayed where she was, with her arms lightly folded beneath the gentle thrust of her breasts, while she watched him toss back a rather large measure.

Poor devil, she thought again. Men of his ilk just weren’t used to surrendering anything to anyone—never mind to a nasty piece of work like her father.

Alexander Doumas had arrived here this afternoon, looking supremely confident in his ability to strike a fair agreement with Jack Frazier. Now he was having to deal with the very unpalatable fact that he had been well and truly scuppered—caught hook, line and sinker by a man who always knew exactly what bait to use to catch his prey. And even the fine flavour of her father’s best malt whisky. wasn’t masking the nasty taste that capture had placed in his mouth.

He glanced at her, his deep-set, dark brown Mediterranean eyes flicking her a whiplashing look of contempt from beneath the glowering dip of his frowning black eyebrows. ‘You had a lot to say for yourself,’ he commented in a clipped voice.

Mia gave an empty little shrug. ‘Better men than me have taken him on and failed,’ she countered.

She was referring to him, of course, and the way he grimaced into his glass acknowledged the point.

‘So you are quite happy to agree to all of this, I must presume.’

Happy? Mia picked up the word and tasted it for a few moments, before deciding ruefully, mat—yes—she was, she supposed, happy to do whatever it would take to fulfil her side of this filthy bargain.

‘Let me explain something to you,’ she offered in a tone gauged to soothe not aggravate. ‘My father never puts any plan into action unless he is absolutely sure that all participants are going to agree to whatever it is he wants from them. It’s the way he works. The way he has always worked,’ she tagged on pointedly. ‘So, if you are hoping to find your redemption through me, I’m sorry to disappoint you.’ .

‘In other words—’ His burning gaze was back on her again ‘—you are willing to sleep with anyone if Daddy commands it.’

‘Yes.’ Despite the deliberate insult, her coolly composed face showed absolutely nothing—no hint of offence, no distaste, not even anger.

His did, though, showing all of those things plus a few others all meant to label her nothing better man a trollop.

Maybe she was nothing better than a trollop, allowing her father to do this to her, Mia conceded. Certainly, past history had marked her as a trollop.

‘Did you do the choosing yourself?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Is that what this is really all about?’

Taken by surprise by the suggestion, her eyes widened. Then she laughed—a surprisingly pleasant sound amidst all the bitterness and tension. ‘Oh. no,’ she said. ‘You said yourself that my father is a barbarian. It would go totally against his character to allow me to choose anything for myself. But how conceited of you to suggest it...’ she added softly.

‘It had to be asked,’ he said, stiffening slightly at the gentle censure.

‘Did it?’ Mia was not so sure about that. ‘It seems to me that you’re seeing yourself as the only victim here, Mr Doumas,’ she said more soberly. ‘And at this juncture it may well help if I remind you that there tend to be different kinds of victims in most disasters.’

‘And you are a victim of your own father’s tyranny—is that what you are trying to tell me?’

His scepticism was clear. Her green eyes darkened. If Alexander Doumas came to know her better he would take careful note of that. She was Jack Frazier’s daughter after all.

‘I am not trying to tell you anything,’ Mia coolly countered. ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, you see.’

After all, she thought, why should she defend herself when his own reasons for agreeing to this were not that defensible?

Not that he was seeing it like that, she wryly acknowledged. Alexander Doumas was looking for a scapegoat on which to blame his own shortcomings.

‘No,’ he murmured cynically. ‘You merely have to go to bed with me.’

And she, Mia noted, was going to be his scapegoat.

‘Of course, I do understand that my lot is the much easier one,’ she conceded, with that same dangerously deceptive mildness. ‘Being a woman, all I need to do is lie down, close my eyes and mentally switch off, whereas you have to bring yourself to...er...perform. But God help us both,’ she added drily, ‘if you find me so repulsive that you can’t manage it because we will really have a problem then.’

She had managed to actually shock him, Mia was gratified to note—bad managed to make him look at her and see her, instead of just concentrating on showing her his contempt.

With a wry smile of satisfaction she deserted her post by the window at last to come around her father’s desk and walk across the room towards the two high wing-backed leather armchairs that flanked the polished mahogany fireplace.

A log fire was burning in the grate, the leaping flames trying their best to add some warmth to a room that did not know the meaning of the word—not in Jack Frazier’s house, anyway.

But the flames did manage to highlight the rich, burnished copper of Mia’s hair as she walked towards them. Although she didn’t look at Alexander Doumas as she moved, she felt his narrowed gaze following her.

Eyeing up the merchandise, she thought, cynically mocking that scrutiny.

Well, let him, she thought defiantly as she felt his gaze sweep over the smooth lines of her face, which she had been told was beautiful although she did not see any beauty in it herself.

But, then, she didn’t like herself very much and they did say that beauty was in the eyes of the beholder.

Therefore, it followed that neither would this man be seeing any beauty in her right now, she supposed, as he was so actively despising her at this moment.

Oh, she was no hound-dog. Mia wasn’t so eaten up with self-hate that she couldn’t see that her hair, face, body and legs combined to present a reasonably attractive picture.

Whatever this man was feeling about her right now, she knew that he had looked at her before today and had wanted her so his expression of distaste simply failed to impress her.

Reaching the two chairs, she turned, felt his gaze dip over the slender curves of her figure—so carefully muted by the simple coffee-coloured pure wool dress she was wearing—and chose the chair which would place him directly in her sight so she could watch those eyes draw down the long length of her silk-stockinged legs as she sat and smoothly crossed one knee over the other.

Alexander Doumas was no hound-dog himself, Mia had to acknowledge. In fact, she supposed he was what most fanciful females would have seen as ideal husband material—tall, tanned and undeniably handsome, with the kind of tightly contoured Greek-god body on which top designers liked to hang their very exclusive clothes.

Indeed, that iron grey silk suit looked very definitely top designer wear. He wore his straight black hair short at the back and neat at the front, and the rich smoothness of his olive-toned skin covered superb bone structure that perhaps said more about his high-born lineage than anything else about him.

He had a good mouth, too—even if it was being spoiled by anger and disgust at the moment—and his long, rather thin nose balanced well with the rest of his cleanly chiselled features.

But it was his eyes that made him special—deep-set, dark brown, lushly fringed, deceptively languid eyes that, even when they were showing disdain, could still stir the senses.

Her senses, she noted as she watched those eyes settle on the point where her slender legs disappeared under the hem of her dress and felt a warm, tingling sensation skitter along her inner thighs in response.

‘Well,’ she prompted, unable to resist the dig, ‘do you have a problem there?’

He stiffened, the finely corded muscles along his strong jawbone clenching when he realised he had been caught staring. ‘No,’ he admitted on a rasping mutter.

At least he’s being honest about it, Mia reflected ruefully. And so he should be, having spent the last month trying to get her into his bed!

‘Then your only problem,’ she went on coolly, ‘is having to decide whether you want your lost island of Atlanta—or whatever it is called,’ she mocked flippantly, ‘badly enough to relinquish your single status to get it.’

‘But it isn’t just my single status I’m being tapped for, is it?’ he threw back sourly.

‘No,’ she agreed, with another wry smile of appreciation at his wit, even in the face of all this horror. ‘And you are going to have to...er...produce pretty potently, too, if you want this arrangement kept short-term.’

That had his gaze narrowing sharply on her studiedly impassive green eyes. He didn’t like the tone of voice she had used but she didn’t care that he didn’t like it. She didn’t like Alexander Doumas.

However, she would go to bed with him, if that was what it would take to get what she needed to gain from this dastardly deal.

‘And what is the incentive that makes you agree to all of this?’

Mia didn’t answer, wondering bleakly what his reaction would be if she told him the truth.

He was still standing by her father’s drinks cabinet, his body tense and his expression tight with anger and contempt—tor her, for himself, or even for both of them, she wasn’t sure. And it really didn’t matter because there was a whole lot more at stake here than his personal contempt—or even her own self-contempt, come to that.

Her father wanted a grandson to replace the son who had foolishly got himself killed in a car accident several months ago. Alexander Doumas had been chosen to father that grandson—Mia to be the vessel in which the poor child would be seeded.

This man’s reasons for agreeing to any of this were based on his own personal ambitions. He wanted to get back the family island that lay somewhere off the Greek mainland, which his father had been forced to sell during the downfall of the family fortunes. Jack Frazier was the only person who could return it to him since he now owned the deeds to the island.

Mia, on the other hand, stood to gain far more than what amounted to a pile of ancient Greek rock. What was more, she was quite prepared to do anything to complete her side of the bargain she had made with her father.

‘Like you, I get back something that once belonged to me,’ she murmured eventually.

‘Am I to be told what?’

Her eyes clouded over, her mind shooting off to some dark, dark place inside her that made her look so bleak and saddened it actually threatened to breach his bristling contempt.

Then her lashes flickered. bringing her eyes back into focus, and the bleak look was gone. ‘No,’ she replied, and rose to her feet. ‘That, I’m afraid, is none of your business.’

‘It is if we are going to be man and wife,’ he claimed.

‘And are we?’ Mia raised her sleek brows in counterchallenge. ‘Going to be man and wife?’

‘Why me?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Why, if you did not make the selection yourself, did your father set me up for this?’

‘Are you serious?’ she gasped, her green eyes widening in scathing incredulity. ‘Last week you virtually undressed me with your eyes right in front of him! The week before that you invited me to spend the weekend in Paris with you in front of a room full of people—including my father! And there wasn’t a person present who misunderstood what your intentions were, Mr Doumas,’ she informed him. ‘You certainly were not offering to show the city sights to me!’

From the moment they’d met, he’d not even attempted to hide the attraction he felt for her!

‘You set yourself up for it!’ she told him. ‘I tried to head you off, freeze you out as best as I could do in front of my father. I even told you outright at one point that you were playing with fire, coming anywhere near me! Did you take any notice?’ Her green eyes flashed. ‘Did you hell!’ she snapped, ignoring the way his expression was growing darker the more she threw at him. ‘You just smiled an amused little smile that told me you had the damned conceit to think I was playing hard to get with you—and kept on coming on to me!

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ she continued, while he stood there, stiff-backed and riveted to the spot by what she was tossing at him. ‘Until you started pursuing me, you weren’t even up for consideration for this deal! But as soon as my father saw the way you looked at me you went right to the top of his carefully collected shoat-list of men fit to father his precious grandson! So, if you need to blame someone for this predicament you now find yourself in, blame yourself,’ she suggested. ‘You looked at me, you wanted me, you were offered me—on my father’s terms.’

‘In other words, your father is really your pimp,’ he hit back.

Oh, very good, Mia grimly acknowledged. She’d cut into him, and he had cut right back.

‘If you prefer to think of your future wife as a whore, then fine,’ she parried. ‘Though what that makes you doesn’t really bear thinking about.’

He jerked as if she’d stabbed him—and so he damn well should! He might not like what he was being dealt here, but it didn’t mean he could ride roughshod over her feelings!

‘As it happens,’ she tagged on, simply to twist the knife, ‘you also had to pass several other tests before you qualified. You were younger than the other candidates on my father’s list, as well as being more physically attractive—which was an important factor when my father was creating his grandson and heir,’ she explained. ‘But, most important of all, your family has a reputation for conceiving male children.’ There hadn’t been a female born to the Doumas line this century.

‘And, of course, you were hungrier than the rest, not only for me,’ she emphasized, ‘but for your precious island.’ And, therefore, so much easier to capture than the rest, was the bit she kept to herself.

But he took it as said. She saw that confirmed as his mouth took on a wryly understanding twist

‘And what happens to this—grandson and heir once he arrives in this world?’ he asked next. ‘Does your father come and snatch him from your breast an hour after his birth and expect me to forget I ever sired him?’

‘Good heavens, no.’ To his annoyance, she laughed again. ‘My father has a real abhorrence of children in any shape or form.’ Despite the laugh, her own bitter experience showed gratingly through. ‘He simply desires a male heir to leave all his millions to. A legitimate male heir,’ she added succinctly. ‘I am afraid I can’t go out and just get one from anywhere, if that’s what you were going to suggest next...’

It had been a half-question, which his shrug completely dismissed. ‘I’m not a complete fool,’ he drawled. ‘I would not suggest anything of the kind to you when it would mean my losing what I aim to gain from this.’

‘And the child would lose a whole lot more, when you think about it,’ Mia pointed out, referring to the size of Jack Frazier’s well-known fortune. ‘But I get full custody,’ she announced with a lift of her chin that said she expected some kind of argument about it. ‘That is not up for negotiation, Mr Doumas. It is my own condition before I will agree to any of this, and will be written into that contract my father mentioned to you.’

‘Are you saying that I will have no control at all over this child?’ he questioned sharply.

‘Not at all,’ Mia said. ‘You will have all the rights any man would expect over his own son—so long as we stay married. But once the marriage is over I get full custody.’

‘Why?’

Now there was a good question, Mia mused whimsically.

‘I mean,’ he qualified when she didn’t answer him immediately, ‘since you are making it damned obvious to me that you are no more enthusiastic about all of this than I am, why should you demand full custody of a child you don’t really want in the first place?’

‘I will love it,’ she declared, ‘no matter what his beginnings. I will love this child, Mr Doumas, not resent him, not look at him and despise him for who and what he means to me.’

‘And you think I will?’

‘I know you will,’ she said with an absolute certainty. ‘Men like you don’t like to be constantly faced with their past failures.’ She’d had experience of men of his calibre, after all—plenty of it. ‘And agreeing to this deal most definitely represents a failure to you. So I get full custody,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Once the marriage is dissolved you will receive all the visitation rights legally allowed to you—if you still want them by then, of course,’ she added, although her tone did not hold any optimism.

His eyes began to Sash—the only warning she got that she had ignited something potentially dangerous inside him before he was suddenly standing right in front of her.

Her spine became erect, her eyelashes flickering warily as he pushed his angry face close to hers. ‘You stand here with your chin held high and your beautiful eyes filled with a cold contempt for me, and dare to believe that you know exactly what kind of man I am—when you do not know me at all!’ he rasped. ‘For my son...’ His hands came up to grip her shoulders. ‘My son,’ he repeated passionately, ‘will be my heir also!’

And it was a shock. Oh, not just the power of that possessiveness for something which was, after all, only a means to an end to him, but the effect his touch was having on her. It seemed to strike directly at the very heart of her, contracting muscles so violently that it actually squeezed the air from her tightened chest on a short, shaken gasp.

‘My son will remain under my wing, no matter who—or what—his mother is!’ he vowed. ‘And if that means trapping us both into a lifelong loveless marriage, then so be it!’

‘Are we?’ Despite his anger, his biting grip, the bitter hatred he was making no effort to hide, Mia’s beautiful, defiant eyes held his. ’Are we going to many?’

His teeth showed, gleaming white and sharp and disturbingly predatorial between the angry stretch of his lips, his eyes like hard black pebbles that displayed a grinding distaste for both herself and the answer he was about to give her.

‘Yes,’ he hissed with unmasked loathing. ‘We will marry. We will do everything expected of us to meet your father’s filthy terms! But don’t,’ he warned, ‘let yourself think for a moment that it is going to be a pleasure!’

‘Then get your hands off me.’ Coldly, she swiped his hands away. ‘And don’t touch me again until it is absolutely necessary for us to touch!’

With that she turned and walked back to the window where she stood, glaring outside at the lashing rain, while she tried to get a hold on what was straining to erupt inside her.

It didn’t work. She could no more stop the words from flowing than she could stop the rain outside from falling. ‘You seem to think you have the divine right to stand there and be superior to me. But you do not,’ she muttered. ‘You have your price, just like the rest of us! Which makes you no better than my father—no better than myself!’

‘And what exactly is your price?’ he challenged grimly. ’Give me one good reason why you are agreeing to all of this and I might at least try to respect you for it!’

It was an appeal. An appeal that caught at her heart because, even through his anger, Mia could hear his genuine desire for her to give him just cause for her own part in this.

Her green eyes flashed then filmed over, as for a moment—for a tiny breathless space in time—the sheer wretched truth to that question danced on the very edge of her tongue.

But she managed to smother the feeling, bite that awful truth down and keep it back, then spun to face him with her eyes made opaque by tears that had turned to ice.

‘Money, of course,’ she replied. ‘What other price could there be?’

‘Money...’ he repeated, as though she had just confirmed every avaricious suspicion he’d held about her.

‘On the day I present my father with a grandson I receive five million pounds as payment,’ she went on. ‘No better reason to agree to this—no worse than a man who can sell himself for a piece of land and a pile of ancient stone.’

He wasn’t slow—he got her meaning. She was drawing a neat parallel between the two of them—or three people if she counted her father’s willingness to give away a Greek island to get what he wanted out of this rotten deal.

‘So make this a marriage for life if it suits you,’ she defied him. ‘I don’t care. I will be wealthy in my own right and therefore independent of you no matter how long the marriage lasts! But we will soon know how strong your resolve is,’ she added derisively, ‘once the marriage is real and your sense of entrapment begins to eat away at you!’

‘Entrapment?’ he picked up on the word and shot it scornfully back at her. ‘You naively believe I will feel trapped by this marriage? That I am prepared to change a single facet of my life to accommodate you or the vows we will make to each other?’

It was his turn to discharge a disdainful laugh, and Mia’s turn to stiffen as his meaning began to sink in. ‘I will change nothing!’ he vowed. ‘Not my way of life or my freedom to enjoy it wherever the mood takes me!’

His eyes were ablaze, anger and contempt for her lancing into her defiant face.

‘I have a mistress in Athens with whom I am very happy,’ he announced, using words like ice picks that he thrust into her. ‘She will remain my mistress no matter what I have to do to fulfil my side of this filthy bargain! I will not be discreet.’ he warned. ‘I will not make any concessions to your pride while you live with me as my so-called wife! I will hate and despise you—and bed you with alacrity at regular intervals until this child of the devil is conceived, after which I will never touch you again!

‘But,’ he added harshly, ‘if you truly believe I will also let you walk away with that child then you are living in a dream world because I will not!’

‘Then the deal is off,’ Mia instantly retaliated, using her father’s tactics to make her own point.

After all, he hadn’t given in to the big one—namely, agreeing to marry her and produce Jack Frazier’s grandchild in what amounted to cold blood—without being desperate! And she would have her way in this if only because she had to glimpse some light at the end of this long dark tunnel or she knew she would not survive.

‘Try telling your father that,’ he derided, his eyes narrowing as her cheeks went white. ‘You are afraid of him. I saw that from the first moment I set eyes on you.’

‘And you want what only he can give you more than you want a child!’ Mia countered. ‘So I am telling you that you agree to my having full custody or the deal is off! This may also be a good moment for me to remind you of the shortlist of other names waiting to be called upon at a moment’s notice,’ she added, playing what she saw as her trump card.

To her immense satisfaction, his handsome face fell into harsh lines of raw frustration. ‘You are as cold-blooded about this as your damned father!’ he spat at her in disgust.

Mia said nothing, her chin up and eyes cool, her defiance in the face of his disdain so palpable it could almost be tasted in the air between them. Air that seemed to sing with enmity, picking at her flesh and tightening her throat as she watched him turn and stride angrily for the door.

‘I will speak to my lawyers,’ he said in a clipped voice as he reached it, ‘and let you know tomorrow what I decide.’

‘F-fine,’ Mia said, not quite managing to hide the sudden tremor of anxiety in her voice.

He heard it, and read it for exactly what it was. ‘Your father is going to be bloody furious with you for not clinching this here and now, isn’t he?’ he taunted.

She merely shrugged one finely sculptured shoulder. ‘My father knew my requirements before you arrived here. Why else do you think he left us alone like this when he actually had you so nicely caught in the bag?’

Take that, you nasty swine, she thought, her eyes gleaming with her own contempt.

One set of long, brown, lean fingers was gripping the brass doorhandle in preparation to open the door, but that final taunt had them sliding away again, and on a quiver of real alarm, which made her spine warily straighten, Mia watched him turn and begin to walk slowly towards her. Her heart began to hammer, her tongue cleaving to the dry roof of her mouth as he came to a halt mere inches away.

He was tall—taller than herself by several daunting inches. It meant she had to tilt her chin to maintain that most necessary eye-to-eye contact bitter adversaries always used as a weapon on each other.

His eyes were black, hard and narrowed, the finger he used to stroke a feather-light caress down the arched column of her throat an electric provocation that had her teeth gritting behind the firm set of her lips as she fought to stop herself from flinching away from him.

‘You know...’ he murmured, super-light, super-soft, ‘you are in real danger of provoking me one step too far. I wonder why that is?’

‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said tremulously, feeling that trailing finger make its electrifying journey back up her throat again.

‘No?’ he said quizzically.

Then he showed her exactly what he meant as that taunting finger suddenly became a hand that cupped her jaw then tilted her head as his mouth came down to capture hers.

It was not a passionate kiss or even a punishing one. He simply crushed her slightly parted lips against his own, tasted her, using his tongue to lick a lazy passage along the vulnerable curve of her mouth, then straightened, his eyes still like dark glass as they gazed into her own rather startled ones.

‘W-why did you do that?’ she gasped.

‘Why do you think?’ he replied mockingly. ‘I wanted to know if I would taste the acid that drips constantly from your lips. It wasn’t there,’ he softly confided. ‘In fact, you tasted so sweet I think I will have to taste you again...’

And he did, that warning all she had before he was crushing her lips again, only this time his exploring tongue was sliding sinuously along the edge of her own, and as she released a protesting gasp his free hand snaked round her waist and pulled her against the long lean length of his body—a body she could feel already tightening with an arousal that actually shocked her.

But what shocked her more was the way her own senses went absolutely haywire, slinging out all kinds of demands that had her simmering from head to toe. The static-packed build-up of sensual excitement set her quivering all over and it was an effort not to give in.

What was the matter with her? she wondered deliriously. She didn’t even like this man!

Yet she was on fire already, and she had to admit he was good. He seduced her mouth with an expertise that had her groaning, the splay of his hands across her body holding her trapped so he could move against her in a blatant demonstration of what the friction between their two bodies was doing to him.

To her horror, her own inner thighs began to pulse in hungry answer, her mouth quivered, her breathing quickened and her hands came up to cling to his shoulders as, on another helpless groan, her defences finally collapsed, and she was kissing him back with a passion that held her totally captivated.

It was raw and it was hot and it was so utterly basic that his deep-throated laugh of triumph against her clinging mouth had to be the worst humiliation she had ever experienced.

‘Now this is a surprise,’ he murmured silkily as he drew away. ‘I knew our sparring was arousing me, but I did not realise it was having the same effect upon you. That adds a little spice to my final decision, does it not?’

Mia took a shaky step backwards, her trembling fingers falling from his shoulders and her cheeks blooming with shock and a dreadful consternation.

‘Lie back and mentally switch off?’ He mocked her earlier remark. ‘I think you will be doing a whole lot more than that, Mia Frazier.’

‘I never said I was frigid,’ she shot back stiffly.

‘But your father must think you are or why else does he believe he has to pay to get a man to bed you?’

‘Not just any man, but the man of his own choice!’ Her chin was up again and, despite the quivers still shaking her body, her eyes still managed to spit out defiance. ‘Please remember that while you make your decision—you are not my personal choice. I am simply willing to do anything for that five millions pounds.’

Which was about as good as a slap in the face for him. He stepped right away from her, his expression so utterly disgusted that she almost—almost—wished the words unsaid.

‘I will call you with my decision tomorrow,’ he said abruptly as he moved back to the door.

‘It’s my father you will be dealing with, not me.’

‘You,’ he repeated. ‘I will deal personally with you. Your father will be dealt with through my lawyers.’

CHAPTER TWO

MIA was staring out of the study window again when her father entered the room. She had just watched Alexander Doumas take off down the driveway with enough angry force to forge a vacuum through the storm still raging outside. There were tears in her eyes, though she didn’t know why—unless those tears had something to do with the awful person she had been forced to play here today who bore no resemblance to the real Mia Frazier.

‘Well, how did it go?’

‘He has until tomorrow to agree to my terms or the deal is off,’ she replied, without bothering to turn.

In the small silence that followed she sensed her father’s frown of irritation. ‘Don’t spoil this for me, Mia,’ he warned her very grimly, ‘or you will be spoiling it for yourself.’

‘I was taught by an expert.’ Mia’s smile was bleak. ‘He will come around to my way of thinking simply because he has no choice.’

‘Neither do you.’

‘He doesn’t know that, though.’

‘Ah.’ Jack Frazier lowered himself into the chair behind his desk with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘You didn’t tell him.’

‘You warned me not to.’

‘So, what does he think I am holding up as your incentive to agree to all of this?’

‘I get five million pounds from you on the day I produce your grandson,’ she informed him.

‘Five million?’ he grimaced. ‘A nice round figure.’

‘I thought so, too,’ Mia agreed. ‘It makes me a really expensive whore, don’t you think?’

‘You’ve always been a whore, darling,’ Jack Frazier murmured insultingly. ‘Expensive or cheap, a whore is still a whore. Tell Mrs Leyton I’m ready for some coffee now that the Greek has gone.’

Just like that. His low opinion of her stated, he was now calmly changing the subject.

Moving over to the desk, Mia lifted the internal phone which would connect her to the kitchen and held tightly locked inside herself the few choice replies that rattled around her brain regarding this man whom she was so ashamed to have to call her father.

Which was why neither Jack Frazier nor Alexander Doumas would ever have any control over her son. They could lay legal claims as mere blood relatives—she didn’t mind that. They could even leave him every penny they possessed when they both decided to make this world a better place by leaving it.

But they would not have any control over who and what her son grew into. She already had in her possession her father’s written agreement to that. And when tomorrow came she would be getting the same written agreement from Mr Doumas.

And how could she feel so sure about that? Because she had his measure. She had watched her father carefully mark it when he got the arrogant Greek to agree to any of this in the first place. If Alexander Doumas was prepared to wed and bed a woman just to get his hands on his old family pile then he would give away his first-born child also.

‘If he surprises us both and doesn’t give in to your terms,’ her father posed quietly, ‘what will you do then?’

‘Wait until you come up with someone who will agree.’

His eyes began to gleam. ‘The next on the list is Marcus Sidcup,’ he reminded her silkily. ‘Can you honestly bring yourself to let him touch you, Mia?’

Marcus Sidcup was a grotesque little man several years older than her father who turned her stomach every time she set eyes on him. ‘I’m a whore,’ she replied. ‘Whores can’t be too picky. I’ll close my eyes and think nice thoughts, like what to wear at your funeral.’

He laughed. Her opinion of him had never mattered simply because she didn’t matter to him, the main reason being that she reminded him too much of his dead wife’s many infidelities. Her brother Tony’s conception had been just as suspect as her own, but because he had been male her father bad been willing to accept him as his own. Mia being female, though, her paternity was an entirely different matter.

‘If all goes well with Mr Doumas tomorrow,’ she tossed in as a mere aside, ‘I intend to go and visit Suzanna at school. She will need to know why I won’t be around much for the next year or so’.

‘You will tell her only what she needs to be told.’ her father commanded sharply.

‘I’m not a complete fool,’ Mia replied. ‘I have no wish to raise her hopes, but neither do I want her to think that I’ve deserted her.’

‘She will be making no trips to visit you in Greece, either,’ Jack Frazier warned her, ‘so don’t go all soft and try to placate her with promises that I might agree to it because I will not.’

Mia never for one moment thought that he would. Her eyes bleak and her heart aching for that small scrap of a seven-year-old who had seen even less of this man’s love than she herself had, she walked out of the room before she was tempted to say something really nasty.

She couldn’t afford to be nasty. She couldn’t afford to get her father’s back up, not when she was this close to achieving her own precious dream.

And she couldn’t afford to lose Alexander Doumas either, she admitted heavily to herself, because no matter how much she despised him for being what he was he was her best option in this deal she had made with her father.

Pray to God he was as hungry as her father claimed he was, was the final thought she allowed herself to have that day on the subject.

The call came early the next morning just as Mia was emerging from her usual twenty laps of their indoor swimming pool. Mrs Leyton came to inform her that a Mr Doumas was waiting to speak to her on the phone. Wringing the water out of her hair as she walked across the white tiles, she went to the pool phone extension and picked up the receiver.

‘Yes?’ she said coolly.

‘Yes,’ he threw right back with a grim economy of words that showed every bit of his angry distaste. ‘Be here at my offices at noon,’ he commanded. ‘My lawyers will have something ready for you to sign by then.’

Click. The phone went dead. Mia stood and grimaced at the inert piece of plastic, then ruefully replaced it on its wall rest

At noon exactly she presented herself in the foyer of the very luxurious Doumas Corporation. Dressed in a severely tailored black pin-striped wool suit and plain white blouse, she looked the epitome of cool business elegance with her long, silky, copper hair neatly contained, as usual, in a knot high on her head and her make-up as understated as everything always was about her.

But, then, Mia Frazier did not need to make dress statements to look absolutely stunning. She was tall and incredibly slender, with legs so long that even a conservative knee-length skirt couldn’t diminish their sensational impact.

Her skin was wonderful, so clear and smooth and white that it made the ocean greenness of her eyes stand out in startling contrast and the natural redness of her small heart-shaped mouth look lush and inviting and unwittingly sensual.

Add to all of that the kind of feminine curves that promised perfection beneath the severe clothing, and men stopped and stared when she walked into a room—as if they could recognise by instinct that beneath the cloak of cool reserve hid an excitingly sensual woman.

Alexander Doumas had been one man who had looked and instinctively seen her like that. One evening, a month ago, he had been standing with a group of people at a charity function when Mia had walked into the room on her father’s arm.

He had been aware of who she was, of course, and who her father was, and how important Jack Frazier was to his reasons for being in London at all. But, still, he had taken one look at Jack’s beautiful daughter and had made the most colossal tactical error of his life, by deciding he would like to mix business with a bit of pleasure.

It had been his downfall, which was how Mia liked to remember that moment. He had seen, he had desired and had done nothing whatsoever to hide that desire from either herself or her watching father. Maybe he had even seen his own actions as a way to ingratiate himself with Jack Frazier. Flatter the daughter to impress the father—that kind of thing—she had never really been sure.

Whatever, he had signed his own death warrant that very same evening when he had detached himself from his friends so he could come and introduce himself to Jack Frazier. His words might have been directed at her father but his eyes had all but consumed Mia.

In her own defence, Mia had tried to head him off before he had sunk himself too deeply into her father’s clutches. She’d remained cool, aloof, indifferent to every soft-voiced compliment he had paid her—had tried to freeze him out when he wouldn’t be frozen out.

For her own reasons. Alexander Doumas was one of the most attractive men she had ever laid eyes on, but for what she already knew her father was planning for her the Greek was just too much of everything. Too young, too dynamic, too sensually charismatic. Too obviously used to handling power, and just too confident in his own ability to win—both in the boardroom and the bedroom.

She needed a weaker man, a man with less of an aura of strength about him—a man with whom she could carry out her father’s wishes and then walk away, spiritually unscathed, once the dastardly deal was done.

She certainly did not need a man who could make her heart race just by settling his lazily admiring dark eyes on her, or one whose lightest touch on her arm could make her flesh come alive with all kinds of unwanted sexual murmurings. A man whose voice made her toes curl and whose smile rendered her breathless. In other words, a man with all the right weapons to hurt her. She had been hurt enough in her life by men of Alexander Doumas’s calibre.

She’d tried very hard to freeze him out during the last few weeks when her father made sure they were thrown together at every opportunity, but the stupid, stubborn man refused to be pushed away.

Now he was paying the consequences—or was about to pay them, Mia amended as she paused just inside the foyer.

The Doumas name had once been connected exclusively with oil and shipping, but since Alexander Doumas had taken over the company had diversified into the far more lucrative business of holidays and leisure. Now the name was synonymous with all that was the best and most luxurious in accommodation across the world. Their hotel chain and fleet of holiday cruise liners were renowned for their taste and splendour.

And all in ten years, Mia mused appreciatively as she set herself moving across the marble floor towards the reception desk. Before that the Doumas family had been facing bankruptcy and, from what her father had told her, had only just managed to stave it off by selling virtually everything they possessed.

Alexander Doumas had managed to hang on to one cruise liner and a small hotel in Athens, which no one had actually known the family owned until he had begun to delve into their assets.

But that one cruise liner and hotel had been all that had been needed for the man to begin the rebuilding of an empire. Now he had by far outstripped what the family had once had, and the only goal left in his corporate life was regaining the family island.

Quite how her father had come by the island Mia had no idea. It was his way, though, to pick the bones clean of those in dire straits. He bought at rock-bottom prices from the absolutely desperate then moved in his team of business experts, who would pull the ailing company back into good health before he sold it on for the kind of profit that made one’s hair curl.

Some things he didn’t bother to sell on—like the house they lived in now, which he’d acquired for a snip from a man who’d lost everything in the last stockmarket crash. Jack Frazier had simply moved into it himself as it was in one of the most prestigious areas of London. The yacht and the plane had been acquired the same way, and of course the tiny Greek island that he’d held onto because—whatever else her father was that she hated and despised—he was astute.

He would have watched Alexander Doumas begin to rebuild the family fortunes. He would have known that the proud Greek would one day want his island back, and he had simply waited until the price was right for him to offer it back.

‘I am here to see Mr Doumas,’ Mia informed the young woman behind the reception desk. ‘My name is Mia Frazier.’

‘Oh, yes, Miss Frazier.’ The girl didn’t even need to glance down at the large appointment book she had open in front of her. ‘You’ll need to take the lift to the top floor, where someone will meet you.’

With a murmured word of thanks, Mia moved off as gracefully as always, and so well controlled that no one would have known how badly her insides were shaking or that her throat was tight with a mixture of dread and horror at what she was allowing herself to walk into. Yet, abhor herself as she undoubtedly did, her footsteps did not falter nor did her resolve. The stakes were too high and the rewards at the end of it too great to allow any room for doubt.

She walked into a waiting lift and pressed the button for the top floor without a pause. She kept her chin firm and her teeth set behind steady lips as she took that journey upwards, her clear green eyes fixing themselves on the framed water-colour adorning the back wall of the lift.

It was a painting of the most beautiful villa, set on the side of a hill and surrounded by trees. The walls were white, the roof terra-cotta and the garden a series of flowerstrewn terraces sweeping down to a tiny bay where a primitively constructed old wooden jetty protruded into deeper, darker waters and a simple fishing boat stood tied alongside it.

What really caught her interest was the tiny horseshoeshaped clearing in a cluster of trees to the left of the house. It seemed to be a graveyard. She could just make out the shapes of simple crosses amongst a blaze of colourful flowers.

A strange detail to put in such a pretty picture, she mused frowningly. Vision it was simply titled. Whose vision? she wondered. That of the man she was here to see or the artist who had painted it?

‘Miss Frazier?’

The slightly accented cool male voice brought her swinging round to discover in surprise that not only had the lift come to a stop without her realising it, but the doors had opened and she was now being spoken to by a tall, dark, olive-skinned stranger. A stranger who was eyeing her so coldly that she had to assume he knew exactly why she was here today.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, with a tilt of her chin that defied his right to judge her.

Something flashed in his eyes—surprise at her clear challenge? Or maybe it was more basic than that, she suggested to herself as she watched his dark eyes dip in a very male assessment of her whole body, as if he had some kind of right to check her out like a prime piece of saleable merchandise!

Which is exactly what you are, Mia reminded herself with her usual brutal honesty.

‘And you are?’ she countered in her crispest, coldest upper-class English, bringing those roving eyes flicking back up to clash with the clear green challenge reflected in her own.

His ears darkened. It was such a boyish response to being caught, blatantly staring, that she almost found it in her to laugh. Only... It suddenly hit her that there was something very familiar about this young man’s features.

‘I am Leonadis Doumas,’ he informed her. ‘My brother is this way, if you would follow me...’

Ah, the brother. She smiled a rueful smile. No wonder he looked familiar. The same eyes, the same physique—though without the same dynamic impact as his brother. Perhaps he was more handsome in a purely aesthetic way but, by the way his colour remained heightened as she followed him towards a pair of closed doors, she judged he lacked his brother’s cool sophistication.

Leonadis Doumas paused, then knocked lightly on one of the closed doors, before pushing it open, and Mia used that moment to take a deep breath to prepare herself for what was to come next.

It didn’t help much, and a fresh attack of nerves almost had her turning to run in the opposite direction before this thing was taken right out of her hands.

But, as she had told Alexander Doumas only yesterday, her father did not deal in uncertainties. He knew she would go ahead with this, just as he had known that Alexander Doumas would go ahead with it, no matter how much it made him despise himself.

Leonadis Doumas was murmuring something in Greek. Mia heard the now-familiar deep tones of his brother in reply before the younger man stepped aside to let her pass him.

She did so reluctantly, half expecting to find herself walking into a room full of grey-suited lawyers. Instead, she found herself facing the only other person present in the room. Alexander was sitting at his desk, with the light from the window catching the raven blackness of his neatly styled hair.

Behind her the door closed. She glanced back to find that Leonadis had gone. Mia’s stomach muscles clenched into a tight knot of tension as she turned back to face the man with whom—soon—she was going to have to lie and share the deepest intimacy.

‘Very businesslike,’ he drawled. ‘I believe it’s called power dressing. But I feel I should warn you that it’s lost on me.’

Startled by the unexpected choice of his first attack, Mia glanced down at her severely tailored suit, with its modestlength skirt and prim white blouse, and only then realised that he had completely misinterpreted why she was dressed like this.

Not that it mattered, she decided as her chin came back up and she levelled her cool green eyes on him. She had dressed like this because she was going on to Suzanna’s very strict boarding school directly from here, where straitlaced conservatism was insisted upon from family and pupils alike.

‘When you marry me,’ he went on, ‘I will expect something more ... womanly. I find females in masculine attire a real turn-off.’

‘If I marry you,’ Mia corrected, and made herself walk forward until only the width of his desk was separating them. ‘Your brother looks like you,’ she observed as a mere aside.

For some reason, the remark seemed to annoy him. ‘Wondering if your father tapped the wrong brother?’ he asked. ‘Leon is nine years younger than me, which places him just about in your own age group, I suppose. But he is also very much off-limits, as far as you are concerned,’ he added with a snap that made his words into a threat

‘I have no inclination to so much as touch him,’ she countered, smiling slightly because she knew then that big brother must have noticed and correctly interpreted the reason his younger brother was looking so warm about the ears. ‘Though, you never know,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘it may be worth my while to look into whether he would be a better bet than you before I commit myself.’

Again there was the hint of anger. ‘Leon is already very much married to a wonderful creature he adores,’ he said abruptly. ‘Which makes him of absolutely no use to you.’

‘Ah, married.’ She sighed. ‘Shame. Then it looks as if you will have to do.’

With that little ego-deflater, she lowered herself into a chair and waited for his next move.

To her surprise, his mouth twitched, appreciation for her riposte suddenly glinting in his eyes. He was no one’s fool. He knew without vanity that he was a better, more attractive, more sensually appealing man than his younger, less dynamic brother.

‘A contract my lawyers have drawn up this morning,’ he announced, reaching out with a long fingered hand for a document of several pages which he slid across the desk towards her. ‘I suggest you read that thoroughly before you sign it.’

‘I have every intention of doing so,’ she said, picking up the contract. She proceeded to ignore him while she immersed herself in its detail.

It was a comprehensive document, which set out point by point the guidelines by which this so-called marriage of theirs would proceed. In a way, Mia supposed the first part read more like a prenuptial agreement than a business contract, with its declarations on how small an allowance he would be giving her on a monthly basis and what little she could expect from him if the marriage came to an end—which was a pittance, though she wasn’t surprised by that.

The man believed she would be a wealthy woman in her own right once all this was over. It suited her to continue to let him go on thinking that way so she didn’t care that he was offering her nothing.

It was only on the third page that things began to get nasty. She would live where he wanted her to live, it stipulated. She would sleep where he wanted her to sleep. If she went out at all she would never do so without one of his designated people as a companion.

She would be available at all times for sex on his demand...

Mia felt his eyes on her, following, she was sure, line by line as she read. Her cheeks wanted to redden, but she refused to allow them to, her lips drawing in on themselves because it seemed so distasteful to add such a clause when, after all, they were only marrying because of the sex, which was necessary to make babies.

She would conduct herself at all times in a way which made her actions as his wife above reproach, she grimly read on. She would not remark on his own personal life outside their marriage, and she accepted totally that he intended to maintain a mistress...

The fact that several slick lawyers were privy to all of this, as well as the person who had typed it, made her want to cringe in horror.

In anticipation of her falling pregnant, she would not step off Greek soil without his permission during her pregnancy. The child must be born in Greece and registered as Greek. In the event of the marriage irretrievably breaking down, yes, she would get full custody of their child, she was relieved to read.

Then came his own proviso to that concession, and it made her heart sink. It had to be his decision that the marriage must end. If Mia walked out on the marriage of her own volition then she did so knowing she would be forfeiting full custody...

‘I can’t agree to that,’ she protested.

‘You are not being given a choice,’ he replied, leaning back in his chair yet reading with her word for word of the contract. ‘I did warn you that I would not relinquish control of my own son and heir. I have the right to safeguard myself against that contingency, just as you have the right to safeguard yourself against my walking out on you. So it is covered both ways by that particular clause.

‘If I decide I cannot bear having you as my wife any longer, then I get rid of you, knowing I will be relinquishing all rights to our child. If you decide the same thing then you, too, will relinquish all rights over him. I think that is fair, don’t you?’

Did she? She had a horrible feeling she was being scuppered here, though the logic of his argument gave her no clue as to where. And, in the end, did it matter? she then asked herself. She had no intention of marrying any man ever again after this. If Alexander Doumas wanted to tie himself to this wife for life, let him.

‘Is there anything else you want to add to this?’ he asked, once she’d read the contract to the end without further comment.

Mia shook her head. Whatever she felt she needed to safeguard for herself would be done privately with her own lawyer in the form of a last will and testament.

Getting to her feet, she picked up her handbag. ‘I’ll let my father look at this then get back to you,’ she informed him coolly.

‘No.’

In the act of turning towards the door Mia paused, her neat head twisting to let her eyes clash with his for the first time since this interview had begun. Her heart stopped beating for a moment and her porcelain-like skin chilled at the uncompromising grimness she saw in those dark eyes.

‘This is between you and me,’ he insisted. ‘Whatever is agreed between your father and myself—or even your father and yourself—will be kept completely separate from this contract. But you decide now and sign now or—to use your own words—the deal is off.’

‘I would have to be a complete fool if I didn’t get this checked out by someone professional before I put my signature to it,’ she protested.

‘You want a professional here? Give me the name of your lawyer and I will have him here in half an hour,’ he said. ‘But I think it only fair to warn you first that I refuse to alter one single word on that contract, no matter what advice he offers you. So...’ A shrug threw the ball back into her court.

Well, Mia, what are you going to do? she asked herself as she stood, gazing at this man with his intractable expression that so reminded her of her father.

She shivered. He was contemptuous of who she was and what she was, indifferent to what she felt or even if she felt. He was ready, she was sure, to make her pay in every way he could, for bringing him down to this.

Oh, yes, she thought grimly. Just like her father. Every bit the same kind of man. Which made her wonder suddenly if that was why Jack Frazier had chosen Alexander Doumas in the first place. Was it because he saw in this man a more than adequate successor to himself as her tormentor?

‘Are you at last beginning to wonder if five million pounds is worth the kind of purgatory you are about to embark upon if you marry me?’ this particular tormentor prodded silkily.

‘No,’ she said, dropping both the contract and her handbag back onto the desk. ‘I was merely trying to decide whether it was worthwhile calling your bluff,’ she explained, ‘but, since I have another pressing engagement, I’ve decided not to bother haggling with you. So...’ Her chin came up, her green eyes as cool and as indifferent as they had ever been. ‘Where do I sign?’

It took the whole of the long drive into Bedfordshire to pull her utterly ragged senses back into some semblance of calm because from the moment she’d agreed to sign his rotten contract the meeting had sunk to an all-time low in the humiliation stakes.

He hadn’t liked her consigning him to second place behind whatever engagement she had, she knew that. It had been exactly why she had said it, hadn’t it?

But what had come afterwards had made her wish she’d kept her reckless mouth shut. Punishment was the word that came to mind. He’d punished her by introducing her to the two lawyers he’d called in to witness their signatures as ‘the woman who is this desperate to bear my child’ as he’d tossed the contract towards them to sign.

It had been cruel and unnecessary but he hadn’t cared. The way his hard eyes had mocked the hot colour that swept up her cheeks had shown he’d even enjoyed seeing her so discomfited.

Then had come the final humiliation once the lawyers had been dismissed again.

The kiss.

Her whole body quivered in appalled reaction, her lips still throbbing in memory of the ruthless way he had devoured them. He’d done it so cavalierly, coming around his desk in what she’d foolishly believed had been an intention to escort her politely to the door. What he’d actually done had been to reach out and pull her into his arms then capture her mouth with the same grim precision he had achieved the day before.

Only this time he had taken that kiss a whole lot further, Staking his claim, she realised now. Staking his claim on a piece of property he had just bought, by deepening the kiss with all the casual expertise of a man who knew exactly how to make a woman’s senses catch fire at his will.

And she had caught fire—that was the truly humiliating part of it. She had just stood there in his arms and had gone up like a Roman candle! She’d quivered and groaned and clung to his mouth, as though her very survival had depended on it.

Where had her pride been? Her self-control? Her determination to remain aloof from him, no matter what he did to her?

What he did to you? her mind screamed jeeringly back at her. What about what you did to him?

‘No...’ The word escaped as a wretched groan from anguished lips, and she had to slow the car down because her vision was suddenly misted. Misted by terrible visions of her fingers clutching at him—at his nape, and his hair—holding him to her when she should have been pushing him away!

He’d muttered something—she could still hear that driven groan echoing inside her shell-shocked head. Could still feel the burning pressure of his body against hers, of buttons parting, of flesh preening to the pleasure of his touch and the sudden flare of a powerful male arousal, the crush of his arms as he’d pressed her even closer.

It had been awful. They’d devoured each other like hungry animals, so fevered by desire that when he’d suddenly let go of her she’d staggered backwards with flushed skin and dazed eyes, her pulsing mouth parted and gasping for air as she’d stood there, staring blankly at him as he’d swung away from her.

‘Cover yourself,’ he’d rasped.

A shudder of self-revulsion shot through her, making her foot slip on the accelerator when she saw in her mind’s eye what he must have seen as he’d stood there, glowering at her, with the desk once more between them.

Her jacket, her blouse—even her fine lacy bra—gaping wide to reveal the fullness of her breasts in tight, tingling distension!

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she whispered, turning her back to him while useless fingers fumbled in their attempts to put her clothing back in order.

‘Why not?’ he countered flatly. ‘It is what you signed up for.’

Humiliation almost suffocated her. ‘I hate you,’ she choked.

‘But I don’t think you’re going to find the sex a problem, do you?’

Recognising her own taunt from yesterday being flung right back at her, she shuddered again.

‘Not surprising, really,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘when rumour has it that you were a bit of a raver in your teens...’

Her teens? She went very still. The fact that he knew about her wild teenage rebellion was enough to keep her ready tongue locked inside her kiss-numbed mouth.

‘Well, let’s get one more thing straight before you leave this room,’ he continued very grimly. ‘You will behave like a lady while you belong to me. There will be no wild parties, no rave-ups. No sleeping around when the mood happens to take you.’

‘I’m not like that.’ She was constrained to defend herself.

‘Now? Who knows?’ he said derisively. ‘While you are married to me? No chance. I want to know that the child you will eventually carry is my child,’ he vowed, ‘or you will be wishing you’d never heard the name Doumas! Now, pull yourself together before you walk out of this room,’ he concluded dismissively. ‘We will marry in three days’ time.’

‘Three days?’ she gasped, spinning round to stare at him. ‘But—’

It was as far as she got. ‘Three days,’ he repeated. ‘I see no reason to delay—especially when I know what a receptive little thing you’re going to be in my bed,’ he added silkily at her white-faced shock. ‘The sooner we get this show on the road the sooner I get you pregnant, and you get your five million pounds and I get back what should be mine.’

He meant his island, of course. The stupid bit of Greek rock he was prepared to sell his soul for—or, at the very least, his DNA. The man had no concept of which was really more important. She could have told him, but she didn’t.

In fact, she wanted him to go right on believing that his island was worth more to him than his DNA. That way she could finally beat him, which was really all that mattered to her.

The only thing she could do now was think ahead. A long way ahead to a time when—God willing—the awful man would grow tired of her and eventually let her go.

Suzanna was heart-achingly pleased to see her. But the seven-year-old broke down and wept her heart out when Mia told her gently that she was going away for a while.

Pulling her onto her lap, she let the little girl weep herself dry. Heaven knew, there were too few moments when she could give her emotions free rein like this.

‘It will only be for a year or two,’ she murmured soothingly, ‘and I will come and see you as often as I can.’

‘But not like you do now,’ the child protested, ‘because Greece is a long, long way away! And it’s going to mean that I will have to spend the school holidays alone with Daddy!’

The alarm that prospect caused the poor child cut deeply into Mia’s heart. ‘Mrs Leyton will be there for you,’ Mia reminded her. ‘You like her, don’t you?’

‘But I can’t bear not having you there, too, Mia!’ she sobbed. ‘He h-hates me! You know he does because he hates you too!’

Mia sighed and hugged the child closer because she knew she couldn’t even lie and deny the charge. Jack Frazier did hate them both. He had poured what bit of love he had ever had in him into their brother, Tony. With Tony gone, their father had just got more and more resentful of their very existence.

‘Look,’ she murmured suddenly out of sheer guilt and desperation, even though her father’s warning was ringing shrilly in her ears, ‘I promise to call you once a week so we can talk on the telephone.’

‘You promise?’ the child whispered.

‘I promise,’ Mia vowed.

She hugged the thin little body tightly to her because it wasn’t fair—not to herself, not to Suzanna. May God forgive me, she prayed silently, for deserting her like this.

‘I love you, my darling,’ she whispered thickly. ‘You are and always will be the most important thing in my life.’

She got back to the house after dark, feeling limp and empty.

‘Your father’s flown off to Geneva,’ Mrs Leyton informed her. ‘He said to tell you not to expect him back before you leave here. Why are you leaving here?’

The poor old lady looked so shocked that it took the very last dregs of Mia’s strength to drag up another set of explanations. ‘I’m going to be living in Greece for a year or two,’ she said.

‘With that Greek fellow that was here the other day?’

‘Yes.’ Her tired mouth tightened. ‘We are—getting married,’

‘And your father agrees?’ Mrs Layton sounded stunned.

‘He—arranged it,’ Mia said, with a smile that wasn’t a smile but more a grimace of irony. Then she added anxiously, ‘You’ll keep an eye on Suzanna for me, won’t you, while I’m away?’

‘You should be staying here to do that yourself,’ the housekeeper said sternly.

‘I can’t, Cissy.’ At last the tears threatened to fall. ‘Not for the next year or so, anyway. Please don’t quiz me about it—just promise me you’ll watch her and keep my father away from her as much as you can!’

‘Don’t I always?’ the housekeeper snapped, but her old eyes were shrewd. Mia had a suspicion that she knew exactly what was going on. ‘That Greek chap has been on the telephone, asking for you, umpteen times today. He didn’t sound very pleased that you weren’t here to take his calls.’

‘Well, that’s his hard luck.’ Mia dismissed Alexander Doumas and all he represented. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’

‘And if he rings again?’

‘Tell him to leave a message then go to hell,’ she said, walking away up the stairs and into her room where she stripped herself with the intention of having a shower. But it couldn’t even wait that long and the next moment she had thrown herself down on her bed and was sobbing brokenly into her pillow, just as Suzanna had sobbed in her arms this afternoon.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHERE the hell have you been for the last three days?’

Mia’s insides jumped, her eyes jerking sideways to skitter briefly over the dark-suited figure seated next to her in the car.

Alexander looked grim-faced and tense. She didn’t blame him. She felt very much the same way herself, hence her jumping insides, because he had actually spoken to her directly for the first time since that dreadful marriage ceremony had taken place.

‘I had things to do,’ she replied, her nervous fingers twisting the unfamiliar gold ring that now adorned her finger.

‘And I had things I needed to check with you,’ he bit back.

‘Mrs Leyton answered all your questions,’ Mia parried coolly. Hadn’t it occurred to him that she was the one who was having to uproot her whole life for this? He’d given her three days to do it in—three damn days!

But that hadn’t been the real reason she had refused to accept any of his phone calls. She’d needed these last few days to get a hold on herself, to come to terms with what had erupted between them in his office.

It hadn’t worked. She was still horrified by it all, frightened by it all.

‘Well, fob me off like that again, and you won’t like the consequences,’ he muttered.

I already don’t like them, she thought heavily, but just shrugged a slender shoulder and kept her gaze fixed firmly on the slowly changing scenery beyond the limousine window.

And it was strange, really, she mused, but here she sat, married to this man. He had kissed her twice, ruthlessly violated her sexual privacy once, had insulted her and shown her his contempt and disgust in so many ways during their two short interviews that it really did not bear thinking about. Yet during all of that, including the brief civil ceremony which had taken place this morning with no family present on either side, not even his own brother, Leon—which had acted as a clear message in itself to Mia—their eyes had barely ever clashed.

Oh, they’d looked at each other, she conceded drily. But it had been a careful dance as to when he looked or she looked, but they had not allowed themselves to look at the same time.

Why? she asked herself. Because neither of them were really prepared to accept that they were actually doing this. It went so against the grain of civilised society that even the Greek in him must be appalled at the depths to which he had allowed himself to sink in the name of desire.

Not sexual desire but the desire for property.

‘Why the smile?’

Ah, she thought, his turn to look at me. ‘I was wondering if my father was enjoying a glass of champagne somewhere in Geneva,’ she lied. ‘Celebrating his success in getting us both this far.’

‘He isn’t in Geneva,’ he said, watching impassively as her slender spine straightened. ‘He has been staying with his mistress in Knightsbridge since I signed his bloody contract. I presume he wanted to keep out of your way in case you started asking awkward questions about what he actually got me to sign in the end.’

Her chin turned slowly, supported by a neck that was suddenly very tense, her wary eyes flickering over his face without really focusing before she lowered them again. There was something—something snake-like in the way he had imparted all that which made her feel slightly sick inside.

‘The two of you can’t possibly have agreed anything else to do with me without my say-so,’ she declared rather shakily.

‘True. We didn’t.’ He relieved her mind with his confirmation. ‘But we did discuss the fact that you have a younger sister...’

Oh, no. She closed her eyes, her heart sinking to her stomach. Her father would not have told this man about Suzanna, surely?

‘He wanted me to know what a bad influence you are on the child,’ that hateful voice continued, while Mia’s mind had shot off in another direction entirely. ‘Therefore, while you are with me you are to have no contact with—Suzanna, isn’t it? Apparently, you are very jealous of her and can, if allowed to, make her young life a misery...’

So that was how her father was playing it. Her eyes bleak and bitter behind her lowered lids, Mia pressed her lips together and said nothing. No contact with Suzanna would keep her striving to make the grandson her father wanted so badly. No contact with Suzanna was meant as a warning—do your job or forget all about her.

‘Is that why he married you off to the highest bidder?’ her new husband continued remorselessly. ‘To get you right out of your sister’s life?’

‘You didn’t bid for me—you were bought!’ She hit back at him. ‘For the specific purpose of producing my father’s precious grandson! So, if the reputation for making sons in your family lets you down,’ she finished shakily, ‘make sure you don’t blame me for the mistake!’

He should have been angry. Heavens, she’d said it all to make him angry! But all he did was huff a lazy laugh of pure male confidence.

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