“All you need to do is say yes.”

Revenge comes with a ring...

Nothing gives Max Montigny more satisfaction than hearing heiress Margot Duvernay say “I do.” Rejected by her family once before, this time Max holds all the cards—to protect their champagne business, Margot agrees to be his bride! But their passionate wedding night tempts Max to forget his vengeful plans and enjoy every sensual moment of their reunion...

Feel the heat and tension in this marriage-of-convenience romance!

LOUISE FULLER was a tomboy who hated pink and always wanted to be the Prince—not the Princess! Now she enjoys creating heroines who aren’t pretty push-overs but are strong, believable women. Before writing for Mills & Boon she studied literature and philosophy at university, and then worked as a reporter on her local newspaper. She lives in Tunbridge Wells, with her impossibly handsome husband, Patrick, and their six children.

Also by Louise Fuller

A Deal Sealed by Passion

Claiming His Wedding Night

Blackmailed Down the Aisle

Kidnapped for the Tycoon’s Baby

Surrender to the Ruthless Billionaire

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Revenge at the Altar

Louise Fuller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07275-5

REVENGE AT THE ALTAR

© 2018 Louise Fuller

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the Nell, for holding my hand on the plane

and not cutting your hair!

All my love.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

AS THE WHEELS of her private jet hit the runway Margot Duvernay looked up from her laptop and gazed pensively out of the window, her fingers twisting at the ‘Team Bride’ wristband on her arm.

As CEO of the legendary House of Duvernay champagne business, she worked hard. The last five years had been particularly challenging, both emotionally and financially—so much so that, incredibly, Gisele’s bachelorette week in Monte Carlo was the first time off she’d had in months.

But her father Emile’s unexpected message had abruptly cut short her stay.

Walking purposefully across the T tarmac, she climbed into the waiting air-conditioned limousine and pulled out her phone. She replayed his message, frowning at the giggling and the Bossa Nova music she could hear in the background. If only she had picked it up sooner, she thought regretfully, her soft brown eyes creasing. Emile was just so unreliable, and so easily distracted...

But on the plus side he had definitely mentioned selling his shares, and that was a first.

Leaning back against the seat, she watched as the beautiful mansard-roofed headquarters of her family’s two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old business came into view, feeling a familiar mix of pride and responsibility. She loved everything about the building—the cool, quiet interior, the sense of history in the wood-panelled boardroom and the symmetry of the façade. To her, it was more than just bricks and plaster. It was a legacy—and also a burden.

Just like the position of CEO.

Margot breathed out slowly.

Growing up, she had never imagined being in charge of Duvernay—never once wanted the power or the responsibility. By nature, she loathed being in the spotlight, and after graduating she’d been happy to head up the company’s newly created environmental department.

However, her older brother Yves’s tragic death on the ski slopes of Verbier had left her with no alternative but to take over the family business. Of course, Emile would have liked the status of running a global brand. But even if he hadn’t been cold-shouldered by his in-laws, he preferred topping up his tan to analyzing market trends. Her brother Louis might have been taller than her, but at just sixteen he had been far too young to step up, and her grandfather had been too old, too devastated by grief. It had been hard enough for him to deal with his daughter’s accidental drug overdose, but the shock of losing his grandson too had caused a series of strokes from which he had still not fully recovered.

And so it had been left to Margot to do what she had always done—pick up the pieces—and that was why she was hurrying back to Epernay this morning.

Inside the brightly lit foyer, the reassuring familiarity of everything calmed her slightly, but as she stepped into the lift her phone began to vibrate in her hand and she felt her composure wobble. Glancing down at the screen, she drew in a quick, shaky breath and her heart began to pound with a mixture of hope and relief.

Thank goodness! Finally it was her father.

‘Emile. I was just about to call you—’

‘Really? I thought you might be sulking.’

Gritting her teeth, Margot felt a spasm of irritation. Honestly, her father was so exasperating, and so monumentally thoughtless sometimes. When he hadn’t returned her messages she had started to panic, to worry that maybe he’d changed his mind. Clearly, though, he’d just been playing hard to get.

But now she could hear the elation in his voice and suddenly she didn’t care about his stupid games. What mattered was that she knew he’d been telling the truth. Finally he was ready to sell the shares.

Her heart began to beat faster.

The timing couldn’t be better.

Not only would it mean that the business would be whole again in time for her brother Louis’s wedding, it would also give her grandfather a much-needed boost. Since his last stroke he hadn’t been himself, but this would be the perfect tonic. For this wedding was more than just a romantic ceremony—it was about continuing the family name and ensuring the future of Duvernay.

She felt her chest tighten. And, of course, for her, buying back her father’s shares would have an additional and thankfully undisclosed benefit of sending a strong message to the bank.

‘Oh, Papa.’ Her father was such a child, but today of all days she was prepared to indulge him, and so, despite her annoyance, she spoke placatingly. ‘You know I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I must have rung you at least a dozen times.’

She felt a rush of excitement as she played back her father’s rambling message inside her head. He’d mentioned something about flying up to Reims, but that had been hours ago. She glanced at her watch. Surely he must be here by now?

Her mouth was suddenly almost too dry to get words out. ‘Where are you staying? I can come to you, or I can send a car to pick you up.’

Her pulse accelerated. She couldn’t believe it. Finally it was happening. The moment she’d been waiting for almost her whole life.

Buying back the ‘lost’ shares, as her grandfather referred to them, was a goal that had preoccupied her since she’d taken over the reins of the business. In doing so, she would not only make Duvernay whole again, she would also bring closure to the whole sorry complex mess of her parents’ marriage and the repercussions that had followed her mother’s tragic death.

She felt her pulse tremble.

Her father and her grandparents had always had a fraught relationship. Emile might look like a film star, but to them he was just a horse trainer—eloping with their nineteen-year-old daughter had not endeared him to her straitlaced and image-conscious family. His decision to live off Colette’s trust fund had merely deepened the rift.

But after her death, it had been his refusal to turn over her shares to his children that had turned a difficult relationship into a bitter stand-off.

Emile had always claimed it was an act of self-preservation. Her grandparents had seen it as an act of spite. Either way, the facts were undeniable. Her father had threatened to take her and her brothers to Switzerland if he wasn’t allowed to hold on to the shares, and her grandfather had agreed to his demands on two conditions: that he give up custody of his children to his in-laws and that they keep their mother’s name.

Margot shivered. Once she had thought that grief might bring the two sides of her family closer. In fact the reverse had happened. There was still such bad blood between Emile and his in-laws that even now they both took every opportunity to point-score.

But maybe now that might finally change.

The thought made her heart leap upwards. It would just be so wonderful to put all of this behind them before Louis’s wedding. Her first task, though, was to pin Emile down...

‘Papa?’ she repeated, trying to sound casual. ‘Just tell me where you’d like to meet.’

‘That’s why I’m calling—’

His voice had changed. He sounded a little uneasy—defiant, almost—and briefly she wondered why. But before she had a chance to give it any more thought he started talking again.

‘I did try, so you can’t blame me—Not now, chérie, put it over there. I waited as long as I could...’

Hearing a soft but unmistakably feminine murmur, Margot frowned. Even now her father couldn’t manage to give her his full and undivided attention. Her mouth thinned. No doubt he was already celebrating the upcoming sale of his shares with his current batch of hangers-on.

And then her heartbeat froze, and she felt her fingers tighten involuntarily around the phone as his words bumped into one another inside her head like dodgems at the funfair. ‘Blame you for what?’

‘I waited as long as I could, poussin, but it was such a good offer—’

His use of her childhood nickname as much as his wheedling tone sent a ripple of alarm over her skin. Her father only ever called her poussin—little chick—when he wanted something or when he wanted to be forgiven.

‘What offer?’ she said slowly.

The lift doors opened and she stepped out into the glass-ceilinged atrium. Straight ahead, she noticed her PA hovering nervously in front of her office door, and her heart gave a sickening thump.

‘What have you done, Papa?

‘I’ve done what I should have done a long time ago.’ The wheedling tone had shifted, become defensive. ‘So I hope you’re not going to make a fuss, Margot. I mean, it’s what you’ve been telling me to do for years—sell my shares. And now I have. And I have to say I got a damn good price for them too.’

It was as if a bomb had exploded inside her head. Blood was roaring in her ears and the floor seemed to ripple beneath her feet.

‘You said that if you were going to sell your shares you’d come to me first.’ Margot felt panic, hot and slippery, run down her spine.

‘And I did.’ There was a burst of laughter in the background and she felt her father’s attention shift and divert away from her. ‘But you didn’t pick up.’

‘I couldn’t. I was having a massage.’ She let out a breath. ‘Look, Papa, we can sort this out. Just don’t sign anything, okay? Just stay where you are and I will come to you.’

‘It’s too late now. I signed the paperwork first thing this morning. And I mean first thing. He got me out of bed,’ he grumbled. ‘Anyway, there’s no point in getting out of shape with me—just talk to him. He should be there by now.’

‘Who—?’ she began, but even without the tell-tale clink of ice against glass she could tell her father was no longer listening.

She heard the click of his lighter, then the slow expulsion of smoke. ‘Apparently that’s why it all had to be done so early. He wanted to get up to Epernay...take a look around headquarters.’

Margot gazed dazedly across the honey-coloured parquet floor. No wonder her staff were looking so confused. Clearly the newest Duvernay shareholder was already on site. But who was he—and what had he told them?

Her pulse stuttered in time with her footsteps. There were already enough rumours circulating around the company as it was—and what would the bank think if they heard that Emile had suddenly decided to sell his shares?

Silently she cursed herself for not picking up her messages—and her father for being so utterly, irredeemably selfish.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Emile was saying briskly.

Now that the worst was over he was clearly itching to be gone.

‘You’re so rational and practical, poussin.’

She could almost see him shuddering even at the concept of such qualities.

‘Just talk to him. Maybe you can persuade him to sell them back to you.’

He was desperate to be off. If Margot had been the sort to scream or hurl abuse she would have unleashed the tide of invective churning in her throat. But she wasn’t. A lifetime of watching the soap opera that had been her parents’ marriage had cured her of any desire for a scene. For a moment, though, she considered telling Emile in the most irrational, impractical terms exactly what she thought of him.

Only, really, what was the point? Her father’s ‘me first’ morality was precisely why he’d kept the shares in the first place.

‘Although somehow I doubt it...’

Her father exhaled again, and she pictured him stubbing out his cigarette with the same careless force with which he had upended her dreams of taking back control of Duvernay.

‘He seemed absolutely set on having them. But, truthfully, I think I might have done you a favour. I mean, he is the man of the moment, right?’

The man of the moment.

Margot blinked. Her brain was whirling, her thoughts flying in a hundred directions. She had read that headline. Not the article, for that would have been too painful. But, walking through the centre of Paris last month, she had found it impossible to tear her gaze away from the newsstands. Or more particularly the head-and-shoulders shot that had accompanied the article, and those eyes—one blue, one green—staring down the Champs-Élysées as if he owned it.

‘Man of the moment?’

Her voice sounded blurred, shapeless—like a candle flame that had burnt the whole wick and was floundering in wax.

‘Yeah—Max Montigny. They say he can turn water into wine, so I guess he’ll give those stuffy vignerons a run for their money—Yeah, I’ll be right there.’

Margot tried to speak, but her breath was thick and tangled in her throat. ‘Papa—’ she began, but it was too late. He was talking over her.

‘Look, call me later—well, maybe not later, but whenever. I love you, but I have to go—’

The phone went dead.

But not as dead as she felt.

Max Montigny.

It had been almost ten years since she’d last seen him. Ten years of trying to pretend their relationship, his lies, her heartbreak, that none of it had happened. And she’d done a pretty good job, she thought dully.

Of course it had helped that only Yves had ever known the full story. To everyone else Max had been at first a trusted employee, and later a favoured friend of the family.

To her, though, he had been a fantasy made flesh. With smooth dark hair, a profile so pure it looked as though it had been cut with a knife, and a lean, muscular body that hummed with energy, he had been like a dark star that seemed to tug at all her five senses whenever she was within his orbit.

Only as far as he was concerned Margot had been invisible. No, maybe not invisible. He had noticed her, but only in the same jokey way that her own brother had—smiling at her off-handedly as he joined the family for dinner, or casually offering to drive her into town when it was raining.

And then one day, instead of looking through her, he had stared at her so intently she had forgotten to breathe, forgotten to look away.

Remembering that moment, the impossibility of not holding his gaze, her cheeks felt suddenly as though they were on fire.

She had been captivated by him, enthralled and enchanted. She would have followed him blindly into darkness, and in a way she had—for she had gone into his arms and to his bed, given herself to him willingly, eagerly.

From then on he had been everything to her. Her man of the moment. Her man for ever.

Until the day he’d broken her heart and walked out of her life without so much as a flicker of remorse in those haunting eyes.

Afterwards, the pain had been unbearable. Feigning illness, she’d stayed in bed for days, curled up small and still beneath her duvet, chest aching with anguish, throat tight with tears she hadn’t allowed herself to weep for fear that her grandfather would notice.

But now was not the time for tears either and, swallowing the hard shard of misery in her throat, Margot greeted her PA with what she hoped was a reasonable approximation of her usual composure.

‘Good morning, Simone.’

‘Good morning, madame.’ Simone hesitated. Colour was creeping over her cheekbones and she seemed flustered. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were coming in today. But he—Mr Montigny, I mean—he said you were expecting him.’

Smiling, Margot nodded. So it was true. Just for a moment she had hoped—wanted to believe that she had somehow misunderstood Emile. But this was confirmation. Max was here.

‘I hope that’s okay...?’

Her PA’s voice trailed off and Margot felt her own cheekbones start to ache with the effort of smiling. Poor Simone! Her normally poised PA looked flushed and jumpy. But then no doubt she’d been a recent recipient of the famous but sadly superficial Montigny charm.

‘Yes, it’s fine, Simone. And it’s my fault—I should have called ahead. Is he in my office?’

She felt a stab of anger. Max had only been back in her life for a matter of minutes and already she was lying for him.

Simone shook her head, her confusion giving way to obvious relief. ‘No, he said that he would like to see the boardroom. I didn’t think it would be a problem...’

Margot kept smiling but she felt a sudden savage urge to cry, to rage against the injustice and cruelty of it all. If only she could be like any other normal young woman, like Gisele and her friends, drinking cocktails and flirting with waiters.

But crying and raging was not the Duvernay way—or at least, not in public—and instead she merely nodded again. ‘It’s not. In fact, I’ll go and give him the full guided tour myself.’

Straight out the door and out of my life, she thought savagely.

Turning, she walked towards the boardroom, her eyes fixed on the polished brass door handle. If only she could just keep on walking. Only what would be the point? Max Montigny wasn’t here by chance. Nor was he just going to give up and disappear. Like it or not, the only way she was going to turn him back into being nothing more than a painful memory was by confronting him.

And, lifting her chin, she turned the door handle and stepped into the boardroom.

She saw him immediately, and although she had expected to feel something, nothing could have prepared her for the rush of despair and regret that swept over her.

It was nearly ten years since he had walked out of her life. Ten years was a long time, and everyone said that time was a great healer. But if that was true why, then, was her body trembling? And why did her heart feel like a lead weight?

Surely he shouldn’t matter to her any more? But, seeing him again, she felt the same reaction she had that first time, aged just nineteen. That he couldn’t be real. That no actual living man could be so unutterably beautiful. It wasn’t possible or fair.

He was facing away from her, slumped in one of the leather armchairs that were arranged around the long oval table, his long legs sprawled negligently in front of him, seemingly admiring the view from the window.

Her heart was racing, but her legs and arms seemed to have stopped working. Gazing at the back of his head, at the smooth dark hair that she had so loved to caress, she thought she might throw up.

How could this be happening? she thought dully. But that was the wrong question. What she needed to ask—and answer—was how could she stop it happening? How could she get him out of her boardroom and out of her life?

Letting out a breath, she closed the door and watched, mesmerised, as slowly he swung round in the chair to face her. She stared at him in silence. This was the man who had not only broken her heart, but shattered her pride and her romantic ideals. Once she had loved him. And afterwards she had hated him.

Only clearly her feelings weren’t that simple—or maybe she had just forgotten how effortlessly Max could throw her off balance. For although heat was rising up inside her, she knew that it wasn’t the arid heat of loathing but something that felt a lot like desire.

Her mouth was suddenly dry, and her heart was beating so fast and so loud that it sounded like a drumroll—as though Max was the winner in some game show. She breathed in sharply. But what was his prize?

Gazing into his eyes—those incredible heterochromatic eyes—she saw herself reflected in the blue and green, no longer nineteen, but still dazzled and dazed.

All those years ago he had been model-handsome, turning heads as easily as he now turned grapes into wine and wine into profit. His straight, patrician jaw and high cheekbones had hinted at a breathtaking adult beauty to come, and that promise had been more than met. A shiver ran through her body. Met, and enhanced by a dark grey suit that seemed purposely designed to draw her gaze to the spectacular body that she knew lay beneath.

Her breath caught in her chest and, petrified that the expression on her face might reveal her thoughts, she pushed aside the unsettling image of a naked Max and forced herself to meet his gaze.

He smiled, and the line of his mouth arrowed through her skin.

‘Margot...it’s been a long time.’

As he spoke she felt a tingling shock. His voice hadn’t changed, and that wasn’t fair, for—like his eyes—it was utterly distinctive, and made even the dullest of words sound like spring water. It was just so soft, sexy...

And utterly untrustworthy, she reminded herself irritably. Having been on the receiving end of it, she knew from first-hand experience that the softness was like spun sugar—a clever trick designed to seduce, and to gift-wrap the parcel of lies that came out of his mouth.

‘Not long enough,’ she said coolly.

Ignoring the heat snaking over her skin, she stalked to the opposite end of the room and dropped her bag on the table. ‘Why don’t you give it another decade—or two, even?’

He seemed unmoved by her rudeness—or maybe, judging by the slight up-curve to his mouth, a little amused. ‘I’m sorry you feel like that. Given the change in our relationship—’

‘We don’t have a relationship,’ she snapped.

They never had. It was one of the facts that she’d forced herself to accept over the years—that, no matter how physically close they’d been, Max was a cipher to her. In love, and blindsided by how beautiful, how alive he’d made her feel in bed, she hadn’t noticed that there had been none of the prerequisites for a happy, healthy relationship—honesty, openness, trust...

The truth was that she’d never really known him at all. He, though, had clearly found her embarrassingly easy to read. Unsurprisingly! She’d been that most clichéd of adolescents: a clueless teenager infatuated with her brother’s best friend. And, of course, her family was not just famous but infamous.

Even now, the thought of her being so transparently smitten made her cringe.

‘We don’t have a relationship,’ she repeated. ‘And a signature on a piece of paper isn’t about to change that.’

His gaze held hers, and a mocking smile tugged at his mouth as he rotated the chair back and forth.

‘Really?’ He spoke mildly, as though they were discussing the possibility of rain. ‘Why don’t we call my lawyer? Or yours? See if they agree with that statement.’

Her head snapped up. It was a bonus that Max hadn’t spoken to Pierre yet, but the very fact that he was hinting at the possibility of doing so made her throat tighten.

‘That won’t be necessary. This matter is between you and me.’

‘But I thought you said we didn’t have any relationship?’

She glared at him, hearing and hating the goading note in his voice.

‘We don’t. And we won’t. I meant that this matter is private, and I intend to keep it that way.’

Max stared coldly across the table. Did she really think that he was going to let that happen? That she was in control of this situation.

Nearly a decade ago he had been, if not happy, then willing to keep their relationship under wraps. She had told him she needed time. That she needed to find the right moment to tell her family the truth. And he had let her beauty and her desirability blind him to the real truth—that he was a secret she would never be willing to share.

But he wasn’t about to let history repeat itself.

‘Are you sure about that? I mean, you know what they say about good intentions, Margot,’ he said softly. ‘Do you really want to head down that particular road?’

There was a taut, quivering silence, and Margot felt her face drain of colour, felt her body, her heart, shrinking away from his threat.

There’s no need! she wanted to shout into his handsome face. You’ve already cast me out of heaven and into a hell of your making.

But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how raw her wounds still were and how much he had mattered to her.

She returned his gaze coldly. ‘Are you threatening me?’

Watching the flush of colour spread over her collarbone, Max tilted his head backwards, savouring her fury. He had never seen her angry before—in fact he’d never seen her express any strong emotion.

At least not outside the bedroom.

His pulse twitched and a memory stole into his head of that first time in his room—how the directness of her gaze had held him captive as she had pressed her body against his, her fingers cutting into his back, her breath warm against his mouth.

Margot might have been serious and serene on the surface, but the first time he had kissed her properly had been a revelation. She’d been so passionate and unfettered. In fact, it had been not so much a revelation as a revolution—all heat and hunger and urgency.

Suddenly he was vibrating with a hunger of his own, and he felt heat break out on his skin. Slowly, he slid his hands over the armrests of the chair to stop himself from reaching out and pulling her against him. The muscles in his jaw tensed and he gritted his teeth.

‘Only the weak and the incompetent resort to threats. I’m merely making conversation.’ He looked straight into her flushed face. ‘You remember conversation, don’t you, Margot? It’s the thing you used to interrupt by dragging me to bed.’

Margot stared at him, her body pulsing with equal parts longing and loathing. If only she could throw his words back in his face. But it was true. Her desire for him had been frantic and inexorable.

She lifted her chin. So what if it had? Enjoying sex wasn’t a crime. And it certainly wasn’t sneaky or dishonest—like, say, deliberately setting out to seduce someone for their money.

Eyes narrowing, she yanked out one of the chairs with uncharacteristic roughness and sat down on it. Pulling her bag closer, she reached inside.

Max watched in silence as she pulled out a fountain pen and a leather-bound case. Ignoring him, she flipped it open and began writing with swift, sure strokes. Then, laying the pen down, she tore the paper she’d been writing on free and pushed it across the table towards him.

It was a cheque.

A cheque!

His breathing jerked and his jaw felt suddenly as though it was hewn from basalt. He didn’t move, didn’t even lower his gaze, just kept his eyes locked on her face as with effort he held on to the fast-fraying threads of his temper.

‘What’s that?’ he asked softly.

Her mouth thinned. ‘I don’t know how your mind works, Max, and I don’t want to, but I know why you’re here. It’s the same reason you were here ten years ago. Money.’ Margot gestured towards the cheque. ‘So why don’t you just take it and go?’

He was watching her thoughtfully, his expression somewhere between incredulous and mocking. But there was a tension in him that hadn’t been there before.

‘That’s amazing,’ he said finally. ‘I didn’t know people actually did this kind of thing in real life. I thought it was just in films—’

‘If only this was a film,’ she said coldly. ‘Then I could just leave you on the cutting room floor.’

Max gazed across the room, anger shrinking his focus so that all he could see was the small rectangular piece of paper lying on the tabletop. Of course it would come down to money. That was all their relationship had ever been about. Or, more precisely, his complete and utter lack of it.

Margot was a Duvernay, and Duvernays didn’t marry poor outsiders. His breath seemed to harden in his lungs. Not even when they had claimed them as family, welcomed them into their home and their lives.

Briefly he let the pain and anger of his memories seep through his veins. Officially he might have been just on the payroll, but for nearly three years he had been treated like a member of the clan—and, stupid idiot that he was, he had actually come to believe in the fiction that although blood made you related, it was loyalty that made you family.

Later, when his perception hadn’t been blunted by desire and emotion, it had been easy to see that any invitation into the inner sanctum had been on their terms, and it had never extended to marrying the daughter of the house.

Only by then he had lost his job, his home and his pride. He had been left penniless and powerless.

But times had changed. Leaning back, he smiled coldly. ‘It’s not enough.’

Margot clenched her jaw, her brown eyes glowing with anger like peat on a fire. ‘Oh, believe me, it is.’

Even if she had written a row of zeros it would be more than he deserved. He had already cost her enough—no, too much—in pain and regret.

‘So take it and go.’

He shifted in his seat, and she felt another stab of anger that he should be able to do this to her. That after everything he’d already taken he could just swan back into her life, into her boardroom, and demand more.

Controlling her emotions, she closed her chequebook with exaggerated care and looked up at him. ‘Why are you here, Max?’

He shrugged. ‘Isn’t that obvious? I’m a shareholder and a director now, so I thought we should talk.’

‘You could have just telephoned,’ she snapped.

‘What?’ His mouth curved up at one corner. ‘And miss all the fun.’ He let his eyes home in on the pulse beating at the base of her throat. ‘Besides, I wanted to choose my office.’

She watched almost hypnotised as he gestured lazily around the room. ‘Pick out a desk...wallpaper maybe...’

Folding her arms to stop her hands shaking, she glowered at him. The shock of everything—her father’s phone message, Max buying the shares, his sudden and unwelcome reappearance in her life—was suddenly too much to endure a moment longer.

‘Just stop it, okay? Stop it. This is insane. You can’t seriously expect to work here. Or want to.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there a problem?’

She looked at him in disbelief. ‘Yes, of course there’s a problem. You and me...our history—’

Breaking off, she fought to control the sudden jab of pain at the memory of just how cruelly one-sided that history had been.

‘I don’t care how many shares you buy, you are not stepping foot in this boardroom again. So how much is it?’ She forced a business-like tone into her voice. ‘How much do you want?’

She waited for his reply but it didn’t come. And then, as the silence seemed to stretch beyond all normal limits, she felt her spine stiffen with horror as slowly he shook his head.

‘I don’t want and I certainly don’t need your money.’

Watching the doubt and confusion in her eyes, he felt suddenly immensely satisfied. Buying the shares had been an act of insanity on so many levels, but now, having Margot in front of him, knowing that his mere presence had dragged her here, it all felt worth it.

Colour was spreading slowly over her cheeks.

‘Take the cheque or don’t—I don’t care.’ She lifted her chin. ‘But either way this conversation is over. And now I suggest you leave before I have you removed—’

‘That’s not going to happen.’ His voice sounded normal—pleasant, even—but she felt a shiver of apprehension, for there was a strand of steel running through every syllable that matched the combative glint in his eyes.

‘I’m not just the hired help now, baby. I’m CEO of a global wine business. More importantly, as of today, I’m a bona fide director of this company.’

He paused, and she felt as if the air was being sucked out of the room as he let his gaze linger on her face. Pulse racing, she realised that only a very foolish woman would underestimate a man like Max Montigny.

‘Your company.’

He lounged back, and suddenly her heart was thumping against her ribs.

‘Although that may be about to change.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was like a whisper. She cleared her throat. ‘What are you talking about?’

He shrugged. ‘Right now you might live in the big chateau, have a private jet and a chauffeur-driven limousine, but I’ve seen your accounts.’

She frowned, started to object, but he simply smiled and she fell silent, for there was something knowing in the gaze that was making her skin start to prickle with fear and apprehension.

‘Your father showed them to me. And they make pretty bleak reading. Desperate, in fact. Oh, it all looks good on the outside, but you’re haemorrhaging money.’

Margot could feel the colour draining from her face. His words were detonating inside her head like grenades. Suddenly she was deaf, dazed, reeling blindly through the dust and rubble of the mess she had sought so hard to contain, struggling to breathe.

‘That’s not true,’ she said hoarsely. Her lungs felt as though they were being squeezed in a vice. ‘We’ve just had a difficult few months—

‘More like five years.’ He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze impassive. ‘You asked me why I’m here. Well, that’s it. That’s why. Your family is about to be ruined and I want to be here to see it.’

He stared at her steadily, his eyes straight and unblinking, and Margot stared back at him, stilled, almost mesmerised by his words. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about retribution. You and your family ruined my life, and now I get to watch your world implode.’

Margot shook her head. Stiffening her shoulders, she forced herself to look him in the eye. ‘No, you seduced me, and then you asked me to marry you just so you could get your hands on my money.’

For a moment he didn’t reply, then he shrugged, and it was that offhand gesture—the casual dismissal of the way he’d broken her heart—that told her more clearly than any words that he was being serious.

Watching the light fade from Margot’s eyes, Max told himself he didn’t care. She deserved everything that was coming. They all did.

‘And I paid for that. You and your family made sure I lost everything. I couldn’t even get a reference. No vineyard would touch me.’

Remembering the shock and helplessness he’d felt in the hours and days following Margot’s rejection, he bit down hard, using the pain of the past to block out her pale, stunned face.

‘Now it’s your turn.’

He leaned back against the leather upholstery, his eyes never leaving hers.

‘I only bought shares in your company to get a ringside seat.’

CHAPTER TWO

MARGOT SAT FROZEN, mute with shock, her heart lurching inside her chest like a ship at sea in a storm.

‘How dare you?’ Blood was drumming in her ears, and her body vibrated with anger and disbelief. ‘How dare you stand here in my boardroom and—?’

‘Easily.’

She watched in mute horror as Max stood up and, raising his arms above his head, stretched his shoulders and neck. His apparent serenity only exacerbated the anxiety that was hammering against her ribcage.

‘And I’ll find it easier still to stand in your office and watch the administrators repossess that beautiful custom-made Parnian desk of yours.’

He was walking towards her now, and suddenly her breath was coming thick and fast.

‘That won’t happen.’ She stood up hastily, her gaze locking on his, trying to ignore both the intense maleness of his lean, muscular body and the way her pulse was jumping like a stranded fish in response to it.

‘Oh, it will.’

He stopped in front of her, his eyes—those beautiful hypnotic eyes—pinning her to the floor even as her head spun faster.

‘Your business is in a mess, baby—a bloated, unstable, debt-ridden mess. House of Duvernay?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘More like house of straw!’

‘And you’re the wolf, are you? Come to huff and puff?’ she sneered, her gaze colliding with his.

It was the wrong thing to say—not least because there was more than a hint of the wolf about his intense, hostile focus and the restrained power of body. For a moment, she held her breath. But then he smiled—only it felt more as if he was baring his teeth.

‘I won’t need to.’ He studied her face. ‘I won’t need to do anything except sit back and watch while everything you love and care about slips through your fingers.’

The air was vibrating between them. ‘You’re a monster,’ she whispered, inching backwards. ‘A cold-blooded barbarian. What kind of man would say something like that?’

He shrugged, his expression somewhere between a challenge and a taunt. ‘The kind that believes in karma.’

Margot was struggling to speak. She wanted to deny his claims. Prove him wrong. But the trouble was that she knew that he was right.

The business was a mess.

Her brother Yves might have resented his glamorous parents, but he had been more like Colette and Emile than he’d cared to admit, and five years after his death she was still trying to clear up the consequences of his impulsive and imprudent management style. Only nothing she did seemed to work.

Her heart began to beat faster. How could it? She didn’t have her great-grandfather’s vision, or her grandfather’s ruthless determination and drive. Nor was she full of Yves’s flamboyant self-assurance. In fact, if anything, the opposite was true. She’d found the responsibility of ensuring that the family legacy stayed intact increasingly overwhelming and as her self-doubts grew the profits continued to shrink. Finally—reluctantly—she’d decided to put up the chateau as security.

Her pulse began to beat faster.

Even just thinking about it made her feel physically sick. Not only had the chateau belonged to her family for sixteen generations, in less than two months it was supposed to be the setting for her brother Louis’s wedding.

It had been a last-ditch attempt to reassure the bank. Only it hadn’t worked. Max was right. The business was failing.

She shivered.

Or rather she had failed, and soon the whole world would know the truth that she had so desperately tried to hide.

Watching her in silence, Max breathed out slowly.

He’d waited nearly ten years for this. Ten long years of working so hard that he would often fall asleep eating his evening meal. Unlike Margot, he’d had to start at the bottom. His jaw tightened. His job at Duvernay should have opened doors to him throughout the industry but, thanks to her family, that ladder had become a snake with a venomous bite.

After being more or less banished from France, it had taken him years to claw back his reputation. Years spent working punishingly long hours at vineyards in Hungary, and studying at night school until finally he had got a break and a job on an estate in California.

But every backbreaking second had been worth it for this, and although the shares had been expensive he would have paid double for this moment of reckoning.

His chest tightened. Finally he’d proved the Duvernays wrong!

He was their equal—for he was here, in their precious boardroom, not as some low-paid employee but as a shareholder.

He wanted to savour it. But although Margot looked suitably stunned—crushed, in fact, by his words—strangely, he was finding it not nearly as satisfying as he’d imagined he would.

Confused, and unprepared for this unexpected development, he stared at her in silence. And then immediately wished he hadn’t, for with the light behind her, the delicate fabric of her white dress was almost transparent, and the silhouetted outline of her figure was clearly visible. It was almost as if she was naked.

A beat of desire pulsed through his veins.

Not that he needed a reminder. Margot’s body was imprinted in his brain. He could picture her now, as he’d seen her so many times in those snatched afternoons spent in the tiny bedroom of his estate cottage. Lying in his arms, the curve of her belly and breasts gleaming in the shafts of fading sunlight, a pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat. Each time, he’d felt as though he was dreaming. He’d been completely in her thrall—overwhelmed not just by desire but by an emotion he had, until meeting her, always dismissed as at best illusory and at worst treacherous.

At first he’d tried to deny his feelings, had avoided her, and then, when avoiding her had become untenable, had been offhand almost to the point of being brusque, willing her to brand him rude and unapproachable if it meant hanging on to some small remnant of self-control.

But it had been so hard, for his body had been on fire, his brain in turmoil, all five senses on permanent high alert. He’d wanted her so badly, and for a time he’d believed that she wanted him in the same way. Insistently. Relentlessly.

Unconditionally.

And so he’d proposed—wanting, needing to make permanent that passion, that sense of belonging to someone, and of her belonging to him. He’d had no words for how he’d felt. It had defied description. All he had known was that he had a place in her life, her world. He had believed that unquestioningly. Only of course he’d been wrong.

Margot had wanted him, but her desire had been rooted in the transitory and finite nature of an affair—and more specifically in the illicit thrill of ‘dating’ her older brother’s employee.

He felt anger spark inside him, and his eyes cut across the room to the line of portraits of Duvernays past and present.

Of course proposing to her had been his second mistake. His first had been to believe that his rapport with Yves was real, that it meant something. He had been lured not so much by the family’s wealth and glamour, but by their sense of contra mundum, and the chance to be admitted into their world had been irresistibly potent to someone with his past.

With hindsight, though, he could see that his presence had always been subject to the grace and favour of the Duvernay family. They might have tolerated him, but he had never really belonged—just as Margot had never really belonged to him.

He felt his heart start to beat faster.

As a suitor, he’d always known that he was an underdog, a wild card—but, stupid and naive fool that he’d been, he’d actually respected her for seeing beyond his bank account and his background. Admired her for choosing him, for taking that risk. Now, though, he knew that the risk had been all his.

His hands trembled and he felt a rush of irritation at his naivety. No wonder he wasn’t really feeling this moment. He might have created a business to rival theirs, but what had haunted him—and what still rankled and had made every relationship since Margot a short-lived and deliberately one-sided affair—was the fact that, just like his mother, he hadn’t been good enough to marry.

The Duvernays might have welcomed him into their home, but ultimately they had never considered him worthy of permanently joining their inner circle. Not even Margot. Especially not Margot.

His head was suddenly pounding.

For nearly a decade he’d told himself that watching the House of Duvernay implode would be enough. Enough to erase the sting of humiliation and the pain of being so summarily cast out and ostracised. Only now, here, standing in this boardroom, it was clear to him that there was another, more satisfying revenge to be had: namely, seizing control of the business from Margot.

It was the only possible way to exorcise this lingering hold she had on him. To punish her as she deserved to be punished. For she had wronged him the most. Her betrayal was the most personal and the deepest.

His pulse twitched as for the first time he noticed the band on her wrist, his brain swiftly and efficiently deciphering the cursive writing. He felt warmth spread across his skin. And it just so happened that he knew the perfect way to make his revenge exquisitely and fittingly personal.

Exhilaration hit him like a shot of pure alcohol and, resting his gaze on her profile, he steadied himself. ‘I know how you must be feeling...’

Her head jerked towards him, her long pale blonde hair catching the light as it flicked sideways.

‘I doubt that.’ Dark brown eyes wide with anger and outrage locked on to his. ‘Having feelings would make you human, and you clearly don’t have an ounce of humanity.’

Staring at the pulse beating in the base of her throat, Max gritted his teeth. He had plenty of feelings for Margot, unfortunately most of them seemed to be occurring somewhere in the region of his groin.

Fighting off the frustration that was circling like a caged dog inside his head, Max took a step towards her. ‘I do know. You might not have thought I had much to lose, but thanks to your brother I lost the little I had,’ he said coolly.

Margot blinked. At the mention of her brother’s name anger surged up inside her like a hot spring. ‘Yves was protecting me.’

‘Yes, by destroying me.’

She reeled back from the controlled fury in his voice. ‘That wasn’t his intention.’

‘You think?’

She glared at him, not knowing what she hated more: the coolness in his eyes or the mockery distorting his beautiful mouth. ‘Yes, I do. He just did what any brother would do. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that. I wouldn’t expect you to understand feelings like loyalty and lo—

She broke off, appalled at what she had so nearly spoken out loud—not just the fact that she had loved him but loved him rapturously, with her body, heart and soul. Only her love had been unreciprocated—humiliatingly unilateral. Worse, it had blinded her to what he was really thinking.

A sudden sharp spasm of pain twisted her stomach, and the words he’d spoken to her so long ago suddenly echoed inside her head.

‘It was all about the money. You and me. That’s why I proposed. I just wanted your money.’

She felt his clear-eyed gaze probing her face, and more than anything she wanted to raise her hands and shield her eyes, conceal the emotions that were rising up inside her. But she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing how badly he’d hurt her. Or that the pain of his betrayal felt as fresh today as it had ten years ago.

Ignoring the thudding of her heart, she glared at him. ‘Just because you don’t care about anything but money—’

‘You mean the money that you don’t currently have?’ he said softly. ‘Remind me, Margot. What is Duvernay’s net to EBITDA ratio these days?’

Their eyes clashed, and she flinched inwardly at the anger and resentment taking shape in the no-man’s land between them.

Forcing herself to stand her ground, she wrapped her fingers around her elbows. ‘Why do you care? Or do you just want to gloat about that too?’

His face was still, but his eyes were glittering in a way that made the air thump out of her lungs. For a moment they stared at one another in silence, and then finally he shrugged. ‘I wasn’t gloating,’ he said simply.

The mildness of his tone caught her off guard, for it was so at odds with the adversarial tension swirling around the room and inside her chest.

‘I just like to be in full command of the facts. That’s how I run my business.’

His eyes were fixed on hers, calm, appraising, unnerving, and she felt her breathing jerk, saw the muted colours of the walls slamming into focus.

‘Well, luckily for me, whatever you might like to believe, Duvernay isn’t your business,’ she said, lifting her chin and returning his gaze, her brown eyes sparking with resentment.

How dare he do this? Saunter back into her life with his newly acquired shares and his careless gaze, unlocking the past and upending the present.

For a second there was total silence, and then his mouth curved slowly upwards. Despite herself, she felt her pulse flutter, for his smile was still so difficult to resist, and even though she wanted to deny its power she could feel a trembling heat starting to creep over her skin.

And he hadn’t even touched her, she thought, her heart lurching against her ribcage.

‘Well, luckily for you—’ he paused, his eyes resting calmly on her face ‘—that could all be about to change.’

Abruptly his smile was forgotten, and she stared up at him in confusion, her skin tingling, mouth drying with fear and anticipation, trying and failing to make sense of his casual statement.

‘All you need to do is say yes.’

His words hung in the air between them and she felt panic spread through her. Suddenly she was having to work hard to breathe. Her pulse gave a leap of warning. Something was happening—something undefined but important.

‘Yes to what?’ She was aiming for the same tone of neutral formality, but instead her voice sounded oddly hollow and strained.

Max held her gaze. He wanted to see her reaction. To watch the moment of impact. ‘To marrying me.’

Margot gazed at him, rooted to the spot, her stomach clenching with shock. She knew her face had drained of colour, but she was too busy trying to quiet the chaos inside her head to care.

‘Marry you!’ Shaking her head, she gave a small, disbelieving laugh. ‘You’re crazy. Why would I want to marry you?’

‘Is that a no?’

His face was closed, expressionless, but she could feel the anger rippling beneath his skin. Only she didn’t care. Right now all she wanted to do was hurt him in the same way that he’d hurt her—was still hurting her. Or maybe not in the same way, for that would mean Max had a heart, and she knew from bitter, personal experience that wasn’t the case.

But she could certainly puncture the beating core of Max Montigny—his masculine pride.

‘A no? Of course not.’ She glared at him, her own rage shocking her. ‘Who could possibly resist a man like you, Max? I mean, it’s every woman’s dream to marry a lying, scheming hustler!’

Sarcasm did not come naturally to her any more than anger did, but coming so soon after her father’s betrayal and the shock of seeing Max again his proposal was just too cruel, too painful.

Once, marrying Max had been her dream. When he and Yves had turned up for supper one evening she had looked up from her plate and just like that she had fallen in love. Actually, not fallen—it had been more like plummeting...like a star falling to earth.

His presence in her life had felt miraculous. The thrill of seeing him, talking to him, had been a new kind of bliss—both pleasure and pain—for he had been so smart and sexy, bewitchingly beautiful and impossibly laid back, and yet so unattainable. She had been desperate, hopeful, smitten—and then, unbelievably, it had happened.

Only she had never suspected why. Stupid, naive and crazily in love for the first time, she had never imagined the truth until that terrible afternoon when Yves had discovered them.

‘Feeling better? Or do you want to start throwing punches as well as insults?’

Max’s voice was as cold and toxic as nerve gas. Lifting her head, she cleared her throat, straightening her back, feeling the zip of her dress tingling against her spine.

‘Sorry,’ she said, without a hint of remorse. ‘But I just can’t imagine under what circumstances you think I’d ever, ever, even consider marrying you.’

His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘How about circumstances in which I agree to save your business?’

She stared at him, the sheer unexpectedness of his words making the edges of her vision watery. ‘Save my business...?’ she repeated slowly.

He nodded. ‘If you agree to become my wife.’ He paused, studying her face. ‘It’s up to you, of course.’

He was speaking with a mock courtesy that made her want to hurl her bag at his head.

‘I can just leave. The choice is yours.’

Her skin was prickling and her heart was beating so loudly that it was getting in the way of her thoughts. ‘That’s not a choice,’ she said hoarsely. ‘That’s blackmail.’

For what felt like a lifetime he stared at her thoughtfully, and then finally he gave a casual shrug.

‘Yes, I suppose it is. But on some levels all business is blackmail.’ His face was impassive, his eyes steady on hers. ‘And that’s what this is, Margot. It’s just business.’

The truth, of course, was that he wanted to prove her and her family wrong. To demonstrate irrefutably that he was good enough to marry her. That his name was equal to hers. But his instincts warned him against revealing the truth, for surely it would show weakness to admit that their low opinion—her low opinion—still tormented him?

Besides, there was no need to reveal anything. Not when he already had a ready-made reason at his fingertips. Widening his stance, he focused his attention on the woman in front of him.

‘Unlike yourself, I’m not in the habit of throwing good money after bad, and your father’s shares are useless to me if Duvernay goes bankrupt.’

She took a breath, bracing herself as though for a blow. ‘What has that got to do with marrying me?’ she asked stiffly.

Tuning out the apprehension in her voice, he let her words echo around the room. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’ll marry you, and in return you’ll give me your shares. That will make me the majority stakeholder in Duvernay and allow me to run the business as I see fit.’ His mouth curled into a goading smile. ‘By that I mean profitably.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re so arrogant.’ Seething inwardly, Margot watched him gaze dismissively around the boardroom.

‘It shouldn’t be too hard. Frankly, I could turn this company around in a heartbeat.’

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Wouldn’t that require you to have a heart, though, Max?’ she said sweetly.

He smiled. ‘Oh, I have a heart, Margot—and more importantly, unlike your brother, I also have a head for business.’

Her brown eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t want to know what you think about my brother any more than I want your money,’ she spat.

He gazed down at her, unperturbed by her outburst. ‘No, I’m sure you don’t,’ he conceded.

His eyes gleamed, the centres darkening so that suddenly it felt as though she was being dragged bodily into his pupils.

‘But whether you want my money or not is largely irrelevant. The fact is, you need it.’

‘I don’t—’ she began.

He waved her words away as though they were some kind of irritating insect. ‘You do. And, frankly, the sooner the better. I’ll give you free rein with the wedding arrangements...’ he was watching her lazily, as though her consent was a foregone conclusion ‘...although I draw the line at wearing any kind of patterned waistcoat. So marry me, give me control over our destinies, and I’ll make all your problems go away.’

‘I doubt that. From where I’m standing, you are the biggest problem. You’re conceited and selfish and utterly lacking in sensitivity.’

His smile widened. ‘Presumably that’s why I now own a quarter share of your business?’

Stifling an impulse to slap his smug, handsome face, Margot fixed her gaze on the gardens outside. How long was he going to carry on with this game? For surely that was all this talk of marriage was to him. A game designed to humiliate her further.

So stop playing it, then, she told herself irritably. You’re the CEO of a global business, not some dopey nineteen-year-old student.

With a strength that surprised her, she turned and met his gaze head-on. ‘I’m not going to give you my shares, Max,’ she said flatly. ‘And I’m definitely not going to marry you.’

His expression didn’t change, but somehow she found that less reassuring rather than more, and moments later she realised why. She might have thought she was simply stating the obvious, but Max clearly thought she was calling his bluff.

‘Is that right?’

She glared at him, her skin prickling with resentment—not just at his arrogance but at the beat of desire pulsing through her veins, and the knowledge that only Max had ever done this to her. Got under her skin and made her feel so off-balance. And the fact that he could still make her feel this way, that he still had this power over her, threatened her as much as his words.

She took a step back. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said quickly. ‘You and I were a mistake I’m not planning on repeating. We’re certainly not marriage material.’

‘Why not? I’m a man...you’re a woman. There are no obstacles preventing us from tying the knot.’

Jamming her hands into the pockets of her dress, she looked up at him, disbelief giving way to exasperation, then fury. ‘Aside from mutual loathing, you mean?’

Glancing around the boardroom, he shook his head slowly. ‘You see? This is why your business is struggling, baby. You’re just too resistant to change, to new ideas.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise blackmail was so on-trend!’

He laughed, and before she could stop herself—before she even knew she was doing it—she was laughing too. How could she not when his mouth curled up so temptingly at the corners, wiping the mockery from his face so that he looked heartbreakingly like his younger self?

And, fool that she was, she felt her pulse lose speed, felt a sudden overwhelming urge to reach out and touch the curve of his lips, to feel again the hard, masculine pressure of his body against hers.

Heat burned in her cheeks and she breathed in sharply. Her reaction had been instinctive, involuntary, but she was already regretting it. How could she laugh with him after everything he’d done to her? And how could she let herself feel anything other than hatred and contempt for this man who was backing her into a corner, demanding something that was impossible for her to give?

She felt his gaze on the side of her face.

‘What was that you were saying about mutual loathing?’ he asked.

The mocking note was back, and she looked up defiantly, her whole body stiffening into fight mode. ‘Just because you can make me laugh once, it doesn’t mean anything.’

Dragging her gaze away from the indecently lush mouth, she stared past him.

Except that it did.

She winced inwardly. It was all there in her voice—everything that she didn’t want him to hear or to know about how she was feeling—and that was why this conversation had to stop now.

‘You might have a head for business, Max, but you have zero understanding of human nature. If—if—we were to get married, we wouldn’t just be talking in the boardroom.’ She felt a sudden prickle of ice run down her spine. ‘We’d have to live together. Share a home.’

Share a bed, she thought silently, her face suddenly hot as his eyes narrowed on hers and something moved across the irises that made her breathing quicken.

Cheeks burning, she began speaking again. ‘Share our lives. And how are we going to do that? We can’t even be in the same room together without—’

But she never finished her sentence. Instead she made the mistake of looking up at him, and instantly the words stalled in her throat.

She felt her body tense, almost painfully, and then her legs started to shake just as they had the first time she had ever seen him. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt that hugged the muscles of his arms, and wearing dark glasses, he had looked like a cocktail of one part glamour to two parts cool. And then he’d taken his glasses off, and it had been like a thunderclap bursting inside her head.

Over time she had, of course, grown used to how he looked. But at least once a day it had caught her off guard, and now apparently nothing had changed. The seemingly random arrangement of mouth, nose, cheekbones still had the same power to rob her of even basic impulses, such as breathing and speaking.

‘Without what?’

Her stomach tightened with awareness. The air felt suddenly charged with a different kind of tension, and his voice had grown softer. Too soft.

She could feel it slipping over her skin like a caress, so warm and tempting and—

Deceptive! Had she really learned nothing from what happened between them?

Ignoring his eyes, she crossed her arms in front of her body, shielding herself from the pull of the past. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does. You see, I need an answer,’ he said, and the smoothness of his voice in no way diluted his uncompromising statement.

‘Well, tough!’ Her eyes widened. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to give you one here and now?’

For a moment he didn’t reply, just continued to stare at her thoughtfully, as though he was working out something inside his head.

‘Actually, I can—and I am.’

Her pulse shifted up a gear as he glanced at the surprisingly understated watch on his wrist.

‘Deals have deadlines, and this one runs out when I walk back out through that door.’

She took a breath, fear drumming through her chest. ‘But that’s not fair. I need time—’

‘And I need an answer.’

The commanding note in his voice whipped at her senses so that suddenly her head was buzzing and the glare of the sunlight hurt her eyes.

‘And, to be fair, you have had ten years.’

Margot blinked. ‘You can’t compare what happened then with this.’ She felt suddenly sick. Surely he didn’t think that this ‘proposal’ somehow picked up where they’d left off?

‘This is nothing like before,’ she said shakily.

‘I agree. This is far better.’

She gaped at him speechlessly, uncertain of how to interpret his words, and then suddenly she shook her head, her eyes snapping upwards. ‘Better! What are you talking about?’

Her voice was too loud. So loud that someone in the corridor would be able to hear her. But for the first time in her life she didn’t care what other people might think.

‘How is this better? How could this ever be better?’

‘It’s simpler. More transparent.’ His gaze dropped to her throat, then lowered to the V of her dress. ‘What you see is what you get. And, despite all your talk of mutual loathing, I think we can agree that we both like what we see.’

Margot felt something dislodge inside her. His closeness was making her unravel. She wanted to disagree. To throw his remark back in his face. Only she didn’t trust herself to speak—not just to form the words inside her head but to say them out loud.

Her pulse hiccupped with panic, and his gaze cut to hers. Surely though he couldn’t sense the way he made her feel?

But of course he could—he always had. And, as though reading her mind, he reached out and gently stroked her long blonde hair, his touch pulling her not just closer, but back to a past that she had never quite relinquished.

‘I can’t give you time, Margot, but I can give you a reason to marry me.’

His gaze rested on her face, his eyes drawing her in, and she felt her nerves quiver helplessly in response to the message in the darkening irises.

‘You have given me a reason, Max,’ she said shakily. ‘It’s called blackmail.’

There was a moment of silence, and then his gaze shifted from her eyes, dropping and pressing onto her mouth. Suddenly her skin felt too hot and too tight, and she had a slip-sliding sense of déjà-vu as he took another step closer, the intensity of his eyes tangling her breathing.

‘Actually, I have a better reason.’

For perhaps a fraction of a second her brain was screaming at her to turn, to move, to run. And then his lips closed on hers and heat surged through her body as his arm curved around her waist. Her hands rose instinctively, palms pressing into the rigid muscles of his chest—but not to push him away. Instead her fingers curled into the front of his shirt and she was pulling him closer, even as his hand curled around her wrist.

The touch of his mouth, his hands, his body, was so familiar, so intoxicating, that she would have had to be inhuman not to respond. He was warm and solid and real—more real than anything else in the room, in the world.

It was impossible to deny, and he was impossible to resist...like drowning. The pain and the misery of the last ten years was fading into a pleasure that she had never expected to feel again, a pleasure she had only ever felt in Max’s arms.

Something stirred in her head and she felt a kick of resistance.

Only it was all a lie, a cold-blooded seduction. He hadn’t felt anything. Not then, and definitely not now.

And just like that the spell was broken. Heart still racing, she jerked her mouth free and pushed him away.

Resurfacing into the cool, sedate daylight of the boardroom, she felt heat burning her face. Only now it was the heat of humiliation. How had she let that happen? Why had she given herself to this man? A man who felt nothing for her and used her feelings as a weapon against herself.

Oh, he wanted her—but certainly not because he was powerless to do otherwise...

Skin burning, she took a step back and pressed her hand against her mouth, trying to blot out the imprint of his lips, wishing there was a way she could erase him as quickly and permanently from her life and her memory.

But the truth was that even when she’d had every reason to do so she hadn’t managed to wipe Max from her mind. And now she actually had a reason for him to be in her life.

Her pulse fluttered and she felt a momentary swirling panic rise up inside her chest like storm water. And then just as swiftly it drained away. This was not a time for feelings to get in the way of facts. And the facts were bleak.

The business was not just failing, it was heading for bankruptcy. And it wasn’t just Duvernay the business that was facing ruin. If—no, when the business collapsed, her family would be thrown into the spotlight, humbled and humiliated. Worse, they would be homeless.

She didn’t want to marry Max, but without his money her life and that of her family—the life they all took for granted—would not just be difficult, it would cease to exist. And how would she—how would they?—cope living like ordinary people?

Her heart contracted. They wouldn’t. And she couldn’t expect them to do so.

Briefly, she felt the weight of her responsibilities. For if this was to work then once again she would have to put her family before herself. To lie and keep secrets. But what choice did she have?

Right now, Max was her only option. Without him all would be lost.

Heat burned in her cheeks. But wasn’t there just a tiny part of herself that was relieved to have Max there, going into battle alongside her? And, really, was marriage such a big sacrifice to make for the sake of your family and a two hundred year legacy?

She stilled her breathing, like a diver preparing to jump, and then, before she could change her mind, she said quickly, ‘Okay, I’ll marry you. But it has to look and feel real, like a traditional wedding. We’ll need to talk about it properly.’

As an attempt to reassert her power it was pretty meaningless. She was in no position to demand anything—she knew it, and he knew it too—and yet she also knew instinctively that she couldn’t allow herself to be a push-over.

She’d half expected him to rise to her challenge. Only he didn’t. Instead he merely nodded, as though she’d asked him to email her an invoice rather than discuss the conditions of their marriage of convenience.

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