Bridal Bargains (35 page)

Her fury hit boiling point. ‘Would you like to explain to me where the heck you get the stone-cold arrogance to believe that you own my life?’ she shrilled.

Without so much as a flicker in response from those long dark eyelashes, he murmured some very sexy Italian into the phone’s mouthpiece, then gently replaced it on its rest.

‘If you have a yen to argue the finer points of ownership then by all means do so,’ he invited. ‘But before you begin you will explain to me please why you needed to spend thirty minutes in the ladies’ room in Selfridges. Were you feeling ill again?’

Oh, so casually asked. Nell felt a sudden trickle of ice run right down her spine. ‘How many men did you have following me?’ she gasped.

‘Seven,’ he supplied. ‘Including Jake Mather, whom I presume you spotted quite quickly—mainly because he was not instructed to hide,’ he seemed compelled to add.

‘He tried to stop me using a public telephone,’ she said tightly.

With the calmness of a coiled snake, he reached out and
picked up the phone then offered it to her. ‘Try this one. All calls are free.’

The green eyes sent him a withering look. ‘Don’t be so obnoxious,’ she condemned. ‘You have no right to have me tagged, tailed and guarded like some—’

‘Animal in a zoo?’ he suggested when words failed her. ‘Or, more appropriately in this case,’ he then added thinly, ‘like an untrustworthy wife!’

‘
I
can’t be trusted?’ Nell launched back at him. ‘That’s rich coming from the most twisted and devious—
Machiavellian
swine it was ever my misfortune to meet!’

‘Oh, you met a worse one,
cara
,’ Xander drawled.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Without any warning he lost his relaxed posture to shoot to his feet. ‘You were leaving me for him—again!’

With the backcloth of grey Nell could not see his face but she could feel the anger bouncing off him.

‘On the first opportunity you were presented with you rang
him
!’ he all but snarled.

‘You traced that call?’ she gasped out in disbelief.

‘You make me sick,’ Xander announced, then gave a contemptuous flick of a long-fingered hand when Nell just gaped. ‘I don’t even want to look at you.’

On that damning indictment he swung away to the window, leaving Nell standing there shaking and quivering—not with hurt but in disbelief!

‘How dare you speak like that to me?’ she shook out furiously.

‘Easily.’ Twisting back, he picked up a manila file from his desk, brandished it at her then dropped it again. ‘The police report on your accident,’ he incised. ‘You may read it if you wish.’

But Nell did not wish. Nell was already striding across the office and pushing open the doors to his apartment.

‘You were not driving that car!’ he flung after her. ‘The angle of your seat belt burns proves it! You were sitting in the left seat, not the right—and if I drove myself more frequently
in England I would have realised that as soon as I clapped eyes on your bruises and you would have been dead!’

Her face white, her lips clamped together in a flat line of disgust that was ripping her apart inside, without a pause in her stride she threw open the next set of doors, aware that Xander was tracking right behind her. Aware that in one small, satisfied way she had taken him by surprise by walking away.

‘You are so in love with the guy that you told nobody that salient fact!’ he rasped out from the bedroom doorway. ‘You have been protecting him from taking any blame even though the lily-livered coward slunk away from the scene, leaving you lying there badly injured and in need of help!’

All the time he was tossing his accusations at her Nell was throwing the doors open wide on his wardrobe and dragging open his sweater drawer. The soft cashmere garments landed in a discarded scatter. If Xander had been in a more sensible state of mind he might have been forewarned as to what was about to hit him.

As it was he strode forward, gripping the manila file as if it was some kind of weapon. Now she spun on him and it was so
nice
to watch his breathing still when he saw the expression of icy distaste on her face.

‘He did not slink away. I sent him away,’ she corrected. ‘As you say, I protected him from you and your lynch mob and what you might do to him.’

‘Because you love him.’ He sounded hoarse.

Nell nodded. Why deny it? ‘In the same way you have been protecting your family—because you love them?’

The sarcastic tilt in her questioning tone floated right by him. ‘You are my family,’ he ground out.

‘No—here is your family, Xander,’ Nell said quietly, and placed the framed photograph down on the bed. ‘Goodness knows why you didn’t marry Vanessa and give her and that—little boy who looks like he loves you very m-much the right to use your name.’ She sucked in a dreadful, choked breath. ‘But don’t ever dare refer to me as your family again because
I’m not—they are. I think it’s time that you got your priorities right and owned up to that.’

He seemed to be having difficulty taking it all in. Nell stared up at his blank, taut face and waited for some kind of response. But all she did see was his eyes shifting from her white face to the sweaters scattered on the floor before slowly, almost unseeingly moving to the bed. As understanding did begin to dawn she watched his face slowly leech of its rich golden colour then his eyes turned black.

‘I can explain this—’

‘No.’ Nell shook her head. ‘Explain to
them
why you dared to marry
me
!’

‘But this is crazy!’ He suddenly exploded back to life again. ‘I
can
explain this—!’ he insisted.

‘But I don’t want to hear!’ she all but screamed at him.

His eyes flashing black with rage now, he stepped round the bed, slamming the manila file down as he came towards her. The file landed right on top of the framed photograph, Nell saw in dismay.

‘You did that on purpose,’ she shook out accusingly.

He didn’t even bother to deny it. ‘I would love to know,’ he gritted, ‘how you’ve managed to turn this into a fight about them instead of one about your bloody lover!’

‘I h-hate you for that.’ Nell wasn’t listening. ‘How could you do that to that poor little boy?’

Taking hold of her shoulders, he gave them a small shake then pulled her hard up against his chest. ‘Listen to me when I speak,’ he ground out. ‘They are not important. You—your Frenchman is!’

‘He isn’t French, he’s Canadian,’ Nell mumbled, still staring at the way he’d covered the photograph as if he’d committed some mortal sin. ‘He’s also my—’

‘Canadian …’ Xander repeated as if a whole load of pennies had just dropped into place. ‘You stupid fool, Pascalis,’ he growled furiously at himself. Then those expressive black eyes flared Nell a look of blistering contempt. ‘What did the two of
you do—make love on a mountain while your mother lay dying in her bed—?’

The crack of her hand landing against the side of his face made a whiplashing echo around the room. Nell stood locked within his iron-hard grip, panting, breasts heaving as she watched her finger marks rise on his cheek. There was a horrible moment while she stared into those black eyes when she thought he was going to retaliate.

Then he let go, his fingers unclipping from her shoulders before he took a step back. The moment he did Nell began to shiver. Pale as death now and still shocked by her own act of violence, a cold chill shook her, bringing her arms up to hug her body, tense fingers clutching at the soft suede sleeves of her jacket.

She took in a slow breath. ‘As I was about to say before you said w-what you said, Marcel is not my—’

‘Well, I know he did not taste the main treat,
yenika
,’ he drawled insolently. ‘But there is more to sex than a—’

‘He’s my
brother
, you filthy-minded beast!’ Nell flung at him.

It was as if someone had plugged him into an electric socket, the whole of his posture racked up with a jerk.
‘Theos,’
he husked. ‘That was a joke—yes?’ Then as he stared into her angry face,
‘Theos,’
he breathed again. ‘You are serious.’

‘H-half-brother,’ she extended in a trembling voice.

Violently, he twisted his back to her, lifted up a long-fingered hand and grabbed the back of his neck. Blistering tension was scored into every bone and sinew.

‘You should have told me.’

‘Why?’ Nell quavered.

‘Why …?’
He swung round to spear her with a piercing glare. ‘I did not know you even had a brother! Don’t you think such a thing warranted a mention some time in the last year?’

‘If you’d cared enough about me to want to
know
about me you would have found it out!’ she shrilled. ‘And anyway …’ she pulled in a deep breath ‘… I enjoyed watching you squirm. It made a pleasant change from squirming myself.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ he demanded stiffly.

Nell felt the sudden threat of wounded tears. ‘I was in love with you when you asked me to marry you. I don’t think you even noticed or cared!’

‘I cared,’ he grunted.

‘So much that you were with your mistress a week before you married me! Now I find out that she has your child!’

White-faced now, ‘No,’ he said. ‘Listen to me …’ He took a step towards her, one hand reaching out, but Nell backed away.

‘I w-was going to leave you today.’ She shook out the confession. ‘If it hadn’t been for your men dogging my every step I would have disappeared and you would not have found me.’

The way his jawline gave a tense twitch made her wonder if he was biting back the desire to argue with her about that.

‘You play with people, Xander. You like to be in control and when you’re not you react as if we have no right to pull on your strings! I’ve seen you do it with your mother. You did it with those ten men last night. You’re
always
doing it with me. You did it today when you set your hounds on me—’

‘You said it yourself you were going to disappear—’

‘That was my choice!’
she launched at him, felt the tears start to come and had to tug her fingers up to cover her quivering mouth. At the same time her other hand went to her stomach because it was beginning to feel strange, kind of achy and quivery and anxious.

‘Nell …’

One hand covering her mouth, the other her stomach, Nell was already spinning away. She made a dash for the bathroom with no idea that Xander was right behind her, so he took the full force of the door slamming shut in his face.

F
OR
a few blinded seconds Xander just stood there with that solid wall of wood a mere hair’s breadth from his face and the whole of his front vibrating from the force with which the door had shut.

Still reeling from the stuff that Nell had thrown at him, he spun to face the other way.

Her half-brother.

‘Hell,’ he muttered thickly.

His eyes went to the bed and the manila file and he went over there and snatched it up with some deep-ridden desire to toss that damn thing across the room—only he saw the photo frame he’d uncovered and he froze as he stared down at the lovely smiling Vanessa and a laughing Alex.

‘To Papa Xander, love from your Alex’, he read and the oddest kind of laugh broke from his throat.

Then the sound of retching filtered out through the bathroom door and he was dropping the file again to stride back the way he had come. Even as he pushed open the bathroom door and saw her hanging over the toilet bowl guilt was dealing him a well-deserved punch to his gut because he had allowed himself to forget her delicate condition while they’d been fighting like cat and dog.

Nell heard him arrive just as she was shuddering into stillness. ‘Go away,’ she whimpered, only to discover that talking was enough to set the whole thing off again.

Two seconds later he was taking control of the situation with the same grim, silent efficiency he had used on the motorway the day before. When eventually it was over and she’d rinsed her mouth out with a mouthwash, he lifted her limp, wasted
and hot body into his arms and she discovered she had no strength left to fight him off.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered instead.

‘Ne,’
he agreed, carrying her into the bedroom.

‘I wish you’d never set eyes on me.’

‘Ne,’
he agreed again, reaching down to toss back the covers before bringing her gently down on the edge of the bed.

‘My feeling like this is your fault.’

‘Entirely,’ he admitted. ‘Relax your arms from my neck so I can remove your jacket …’

It was the most humiliating part of it all to realise how she was clinging to him. Her arms dropped heavily to her sides. He removed the jacket while she watched his totally expressionless face. No man should be that good-looking, she thought bitterly. It gave him unfair advantage in the jaws of a fight because she wanted so desperately to reach out and kiss him that she felt dizzy all over again.

Her new flat shoes came next, landing with a clunk on the floor. His sensual mouth set straight, eyes hooded by those glossy black eyelashes, he then laid her back against the pillows with extreme care before shifting down her body to unzip her new jeans; a second later and the denim was sliding off her legs with a deft expertise. As the cool air hit her clammy flesh she began to shiver and, with his lips now pinched back against his set teeth, he covered her with the duvet then stepped back and proceeded to yank off his jacket followed by his tie.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she gasped in quivering horror.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he growled back. ‘I might be a control freak but I am not a sadist.’

The next thing his shoes had been heeled off and he was stretching out beside her and tugging both Nell and the duvet into his arms. She curled herself right into him then burst into tears. It was like throwing open a floodgate; she just couldn’t control it. With the top of her head pressed into his chest she sobbed her heart out while he lay there and held her and said absolutely nothing.

It was as if every hurtful thing he’d ever done to her came
out for an airing in those tears. The way he’d made her fall in love with him then asked her to marry him in that cool, grim tone she only noticed much later when it was too late. The way he’d stood over her while she signed his rotten pre-nuptial without batting an eyelid because she loved him and trusted him then discovered the painful way that love
was
blind! If Marcel hadn’t emailed her urgently with a link to the gossip pages of an American tabloid, she would have sailed down the church aisle to him in a besotted haze.

‘I h-had to marry you,’ she sobbed into his shirt front, unaware that he hadn’t been in on her first wave of grievances. ‘I was scared you’d pull out of the deal with my father.’

‘Shh,’ he said, tangling his fingers in her hair and pressing her closer.

‘I f-felt like a child-bride in a regency m-melodrama—s-sold to the unprincipled rake then dropped like a hot potato w-when he got more than he bargained f-for.’

She’d spent the next year pining for what might have been and wishing she’d stayed blind.

‘Marcel wanted to come and get me then but I wouldn’t let him. I
played
the child-bride in a regency melodrama, h-hoping you were going to turn up one day and realise you were head over heels in love with me but you didn’t.’

‘You saw me as a self-obsessed rat and I probably was then but you were so innocent and naïve you didn’t have a clue what was happening around you. I was trying to protect you until you—’

‘Enter the hero stage left,’ she mocked thickly, rolling away from him and reaching out for the box of tissues that sat on the table by the bed. Fingers trembling, she plucked a tissue free and sniffed into it. ‘Right in the knick of time he saves the innocent twit of a girl from the ugly guy with the f-fat lips.’

There was a shimmer of movement behind her that made her twist sharply to look at him. But if he was laughing at her it wasn’t showing on his face. The tears clogged in her throat because it wasn’t fair that he should have such liquid, dark,
serious eyes that seemed to be trying to tug her right inside him.

‘Nothing to say?’ she challenged.

‘I will not answer these charges while you’re so distressed,’ he said flatly, then on a sigh when fresh tears welled he moved to pull her back to him again. ‘Tell me about your half-brother,’ he prompted huskily.

‘He’s the son my father wanted from my mother but never got.’

‘So he’s younger than you?’

She nodded. ‘Nineteen. My mother was already pregnant with him when she left us. He lives with his father in Banff.’

‘You were miserable being married to me. You needed a shoulder to cry on so you rang him up.’

‘Someone I knew loved me.’ She gave another nod, thereby missing Xander’s infinitesimal wince. ‘I didn’t expect him to climb on the next plane to England to come and sort you out. He had no idea who he was dealing with. It was almost a relief when Hugo Vance refused him access to the house.’

‘Why did he do that? If he’s your brother of course he’s welcome in our home!’

‘Marcel wasn’t on your very short accepted list.’ Nell sat up and used the crumpled tissue to dab her eyes again. ‘And he might only be nineteen but looks a lot older because he’s big—six feet three already and built to suit—a heck of a sportsman; can white-water raft like you would not believe.’

‘You’re proud of him.’

‘Mmm.’ It was that simple and neat. ‘I think Hugo Vance felt threatened by him.’

‘How is it that you or your father have never so much as spoken his name to me?’

‘My father refuses to have his name mentioned because he blames Marcel for stealing his wife away. He’s still hurting. I’ve just got used to never mentioning him because that’s the way it’s always been. And anyway, you and I didn’t have the kind of relationship that encouraged sharing secrets.’

A small silence followed while Nell dabbed at her eyes and
Xander lost himself in deep thought. Then he hissed out a sigh. ‘The irony of it,’ he muttered.

Nell didn’t find anything ironical in what had been said.

‘Why was he driving your car?’ he asked suddenly.

She gave a small shift with her hunched shoulders. ‘Because I let him,’ seemed excuse enough because the hell if she was going to admit that once she’d escaped Rosemere she then had a stupid change of heart and got so upset about it, Marcel had to drive because she wasn’t fit to.

‘OK …’ said with such slow patience Nell knew that he knew she was fobbing him off. ‘Explain to me, then, if he’s so into playing your hero, why he ran away from the accident scene.’

‘He didn’t—and don’t you
dare
speak of Marcel in that nasty tone!’ She swung on him angrily.

‘Now I know why I’m jealous,’ Xander said bluntly.

Nell looked away again, refusing point blank to take up that comment. ‘He wasn’t licensed to drive here,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘He wasn’t used to our narrow, winding lanes,’ and he wasn’t used to driving such a small but very powerful car. ‘When he lost control on the bend I thought we were both going to die …’

A hand arrived at the base of her spine, long fingers rubbing in a strangely painful, comforting stroke. ‘But you didn’t …’ he said gruffly.

Nell shook her head. ‘Marcel wasn’t wearing his seat belt.’ It was just another thing she’d felt guilty about. She’d been so stupidly upset she hadn’t noticed he hadn’t belted himself in. ‘If you want irony,’ she mumbled, ‘when he was thrown out of the car he suffered barely a scratch.’ She grimaced into the tissue. ‘When I realised how bad things were for me I was scared for him. I convinced him to lift me into the driver’s seat then begged him to leave. He wouldn’t go. He was upset, angry with himself, scared for me—and I’ve never seen him look so young and helpless …’ The hand at her spine rubbed again, she quivered on a sigh and swallowed fresh tears. ‘He used my mobile phone to call an ambulance then stayed beside me until we heard it arrive then he hid in the woods until I was safely
inside the ambulance. I was so worried about him, I got a nurse in A&E to call his mobile and reassure him I was absolutely fine.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ Nell flung out. ‘You might be the control freak around here but I know how to get my own way when I need to. I picked a young student nurse with her romantic ideals still intact. She thought she was calling up my lover—she adored being a part of my wicked tryst.’

‘You amaze me sometimes,’ he laughed though it wasn’t really a laugh. ‘I truly believed you were the most open and honest person I know but you can lie with the best of them!’

Her shrug told him she couldn’t care less what he thought or believed.

‘Where was he staying?’ he bit out next. ‘I had every hotel and pub for miles around carefully combed for him without getting back a single damn clue!’

‘He was backpacking. He camped out in a farmer’s field.’

‘Enterprising of him.’

‘He’s very self-sufficient.’

‘Matinée-idol material.’ His hand left her back.

He really was jealous. Nell smiled into the now crumpled tissue. Then he uttered another one of those sighs and tried to pull her back down to him but Nell refused to go.

‘I want to go to Rosemere,’ she announced.

‘I want you here with me.’

Just like that, quietly spoken but deadly serious. Nell turned to look at him and found those jet-glossed eyes roaming over her with blatant messages.

It wasn’t fair. She looked away again as a whole gamut of weak sensations went sweeping through her. ‘I’ll stay married to you until the baby comes.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘But afterwards we get a divorce.’

‘You need another tissue,
agape mou
. That one is just about done.’

‘I’m being serious!’

‘So am I. You are about to start weeping again and that tissue has mopped up too many tears as it is.’

And those tears just returned all the harder. ‘I can’t seem to switch them off,’ she sobbed.

‘Come here.’ This time he refused to take no for an answer so she landed in the crook of his arm. ‘You are just in need of some tender loving care right now.’

‘Not from you.’

‘Yes, from me. Who else have you got?’

It was so brutally frank that she winced.

‘Tell me why the call you made to Marcel today was traced to Paris.’

‘He’s been staying with the French side of his family. I knew he was flying back to Banff today so I wanted to catch him and doubly reassure him that I was OK before he left.’

‘Was he reassured?’

Nell nodded but kept her mouth clamped tightly shut as to how she had given that reassurance.

‘I would like to have listened in on that call,’ Xander drawled with lazy amusement.

He knew, the beast. He knew she’d convinced Marcel that she was gloriously, happily in love with her husband.

‘I thought you had meetings to attend,’ she prompted.

‘I am attending to you.’

‘Well, I can—’

‘Remain right where you are.’ Tightening the hold he had on her, he rose up until he had her pinned to the bed. ‘I am the control freak,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Be controlled or watch me get upset.’

Green eyes searched gently mocking dark ones. He was gorgeous—irresistible. He kissed her—lightly on both corners of her vulnerable mouth, on the warm, soft, tear-swollen bottom lip then tracked a whole line of soft kisses along her jaw until he reached that sensitive spot by her ear. Things she did not want to happen started to happen. Nell quivered out a sigh of discontent. He caught it, tasted it with his tongue and she felt the blunt jut of his desire thicken against her thigh.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want—’

To do this, she was going to say but the moment she opened her mouth to speak the gentle dart of his tongue stole the rest away. With the arrival of his fingers across her cheekbones he deepened that kiss, making love to her mouth with a slow tenderness that had her shifting restlessly beneath his weight. Each time he paused he looked deep into the conflict taking place in her eyes, if she tried to say anything he returned to the kiss until eventually she forgot what it was she wanted to protest about. Her fingers shifted, relaxing out of the tense fists she had them clenched in to begin a slow foray across the leanness of his taut hips to his waist and eventually with a slow, shuddering sigh over warm flesh covered by cool white shirting to his shoulders, his neck and with a final convulsive move buried them in his hair.

She was lost, his for the taking. The duvet was pushed aside. The only time he allowed her to think was those few too brief seconds he required to remove the rest of her clothes and even then the moment she showed signs of protesting he was back again, smothering out everything but him and what he was doing and how he was making her feel.