Bridal Bargains (51 page)

‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘I n-need to ring my father next, that’s all.’

‘Ah,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Would you prefer me to make that particular call for you?’ he offered.

Instantly her chin lifted and her eyes met his with their usual defiance to give him his answer. He smiled wryly. ‘You trust me about as much as you trust him, don’t you?’

Mia didn’t answer—didn’t need to. He knew exactly how little she trusted him.

The housekeeper answered her call. The moment she heard Mia’s voice she went off on a harried burst of speech that showed just how anxious she had been about Suzanna.

Mia listened with her eyes lowered and her fingers clenched. Her knuckles were white around the receiver as she strove to contain the black anger that was building inside her.

For three days Suzanna had been complaining of pain—and for three long, wretched days her father had cruelly dismissed the child’s distress as a ploy to bring her precious Mia back.

Her eyes began to flash and her heart to pump on an adrenaline rush. Beside her, Alex shifted his position a little, catching her attention and bringing those green eyes flashing upwards to pierce him with enough burning venom to make his own blink.

‘No—no, Cissy,’ she murmured smoothly, in reply to whatever the housekeeper had said to her. ‘I’m right here in London. I visited Suzanna last night, and I’m going back to the hospital this morning so you don’t have to worry about her now.’

Another volley of words hit her burning eardrums and
Mia had difficulty containing what was screaming to be released inside her.

Alex brought a hand up to grab her chin, then tugged it around in his direction. His eyes were black, boring into hers with stunned fascination. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘You’re cracking up! The ice is beginning to melt at last!’

‘Is my father there?’ she asked the housekeeper in a voice as cool and calm as a mill pond on a winter’s day, while her eyes spat murder into those probing black ones. ‘Can I speak to him, please?’

Cissy told her that her father had meetings all day and that he had left the house very early, without even bothering to ask after Suzanna. Why? Because the child held no great importance in the real plan of things! She was simply a very small pawn he used to make Mia jump to his bidding.

Another loss leader.

It was cruel, it was sick and it was downright criminal. By the time Mia replaced the telephone she was shaking like a leaf and ready to hit out at the nearest person.

Alex.

Angrily she turned away from him, her slender arms wrapping around her own body in an effort to contain what was desperately clamouring to burst free.

‘Mia—’

‘Say one more word,’ she bit out, ‘and I am likely to spoil your handsome features!’

There was a choked gasp from behind her. ‘What did she say to you?’ he demanded roughly.

‘Nothing you would find unacceptable,’ she retorted. Then, because she knew she needed to calm down because she could feel the usual dizziness surging up to pay her back for allowing herself to get this agitated, she took a jerky step towards the door. ‘I need to—’

‘No!’ The hand that closed around her wrist stopped her from going anywhere. ‘I want to know what she said to make you so angry,’ Alex insisted grimly.

Mia rounded on him like a virago. Her teeth bared and her eyes spitting green fire, she hit out at him with her free fist. It missed its target because he ducked out of its way—which in turn sent her off balance so she stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her to him.

‘What the hell was that for?’

‘Three days!’ she choked out. ‘She was ill for three whole days before my father condescended to let Cissy bring in a doctor!’

‘And you think I could be that callous?’ He looked white suddenly—white with anger. ‘I am
not
your damned father!’ he railed at her furiously.

No, she thought, you are just the man who is breaking my heart in two! ‘Oh, God,’ she said brokenly when she realised just what she was telling herself. ‘Let go of me,’ she whispered, feeling the all too ready tears beginning to build inside.

Maybe he sensed them threatening—certainly he could feel the way her body was trembling as he was holding her so close—because, on a driven sigh, he let go of her. ‘You should not let yourself get upset like this,’ he muttered. ‘In your present condition it cannot be good for you.’

Ah, her present condition. Mia allowed herself a tight smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she said grimly, pulling herself together. ‘It’s my sister’s health that worries me, not my own.’

‘Your
daughter
,’ he corrected.

‘Sister,’ she repeated. ‘She will not be my daughter again until I have safely delivered this child I am carrying now.’

Alex came with her to the hospital that morning, though Mia wished he could have shown a bit of sensitivity and let her have this first very painful meeting with Suzanna alone.

As it was, the child took one look at her as she walked in the room and dissolved into a flood of tears. Mia just
gathered her gently into her arms and held her there, struggling hard not to weep herself.

‘Daddy said you wouldn’t come,’ the child sobbed as she clung to her. ‘He said you didn’t want me any more because I’m a nuisance.’

‘That’s not true, darling,’ Mia murmured reassuringly. ‘You will never be a nuisance to me and I will always come if you need me. Always. Didn’t I promise you that the last time I saw you?’

‘But he said you’d gone away to start your own family!’ the child sobbed out accusingly. ‘S-so I’d better get used to you not being around! But I missed you, Mia!’

It was a cry from the heart that cut so deep even Alex, a silent witness to this tragic overload of emotion, could not stay silent any longer.

‘Hello,’ he said, stopping Suzanna’s tears as if he’d thrown a switch.

Her face came out of Mia’s shoulder so she could look towards that deep, smooth, very male voice, first in surprise because she hadn’t noticed him come in with her precious Mia and then with all the natural wariness of a child towards any total stranger.

A very tall, very dark, very handsome stranger, who was smiling the kind of smile that made Mia’s heart flip because she recognised it as the same smile he had once used on her—before her father’s bargain had effectively killed it.

‘My name is Alex,’ he introduced himself. ‘Mia is my wife.’

Wife. Her heart flipped a second time. He had formally acknowledged her as his wife for the first time ever, and the word seemed to echo strangely inside her head.

Like a lie that wasn’t quite a lie but still sounded like one nonetheless.

‘And you are Suzanna …’ With each gently spoken word he came closer, holding Suzanna’s attention like a hovering hawk mesmerising a wary rabbit. He came down on his
haunches beside the bed where Mia was holding the child against her. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’

He offered Suzanna his hand in greeting. Her tear-spiked lashes flickered to the hand, then uncertainly back to his face again—before finally looking to Mia in search of some hint as to how she should respond.

Don’t ask me, Mia thought drily. I still haven’t worked that one out and I’ve been living with him for months. She smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s OK. You can like him. He’s nice.’

‘Thank you,’ Alex murmured in a dry undertone that said he’d caught the mocking intonation behind the remark.

By then Suzanna was cautiously placing her little hand in his, and Alex’s full attention was back on the child.

It was a revelation, simply because Mia had never known he had it in him, but within minutes Suzanna had forgotten her tears, forgotten her woes. In fact, she seemed to have forgotten everything as, with amazing intuition, Alex breached the little girl’s natural shyness with men in general by encouraging her to describe—in lurid detail—every stage of her emergency dash to the hospital in an ambulance and the ensuing course of events that had led to her waking up here in this bed with stitches in her tummy.

‘They’re horrid,’ she confided. ‘They hurt when I move.’

‘Then try not to move too much,’ advised the man, whose simple logic seemed to appeal to the child.

‘Thank you,’ Mia murmured gratefully an hour or so later, when Suzanna had drifted into a contented sleep.

‘For diverting her mind from the horrors your father has fed into her?’ He got up from the bed where somehow he had managed to swap places with Mia so she had ended up seated more comfortably on the bedside chair. ‘That does not require thanks,’ he stated grimly. ‘It requires defending.’

He was right. It did. Mia didn’t even take offence at the comment. ‘He is not a nice man.’ She sighed. ‘He likes to
control people. You, me, Suzanna—anyone he can gain power over.’

‘Which does not justify her being treated to that kind of mental torture,’ Alex countered harshly.

Mia went pale, but she nodded in agreement. ‘Maybe now you can understand why I had to marry you. I had to do what was necessary so I can remove her from his influence.’

‘An influence she should never have been exposed to in the first place!’

They had been talking in low voices by necessity in such close proximity to the sleeping Suzanna, but those words cut so deep into Mia’s bones that she could not sit still and take them on the chin as she really knew she should do.

She got to her feet and walked right out of the room on legs that were shaking so badly they could barely support her.

When Alex eventually came looking for her he found her standing in the corridor, staring out of one of the windows that overlooked the hospital car park.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said heavily as he came up behind her. ‘I did not mean to sound so critical of you. It was your father I was condemning.’

She didn’t believe him. ‘You think I am the lowest of the low for handing my child over to him,’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘And don’t think that I don’t know it!’

‘That is your own guilty conscience talking,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I only wish you could have told me from the beginning why you had been forced to agree to this marriage!’

‘What was I supposed to say?’ she said cynically. ‘Oh, by the way, I’m doing this because I had another child but I gave her away and this is the only way I can get her back again?’ Her eyes flashed, her cheeks blooming with anger. ‘That would really have made you respect me, wouldn’t it?’

‘And you want my respect?’ he asked huskily.

Her heart hurt with the truthful answer to that question. ‘I just want to get through these next few months without falling apart,’ she answered shakily.

Silence greeted that, a grim kind of silence that held them both very still in that hospital corridor. Alex stood behind her, a dominating force as he stared over her shoulder at the car park beyond.

Mia felt like crying. Why, she didn’t know—except maybe it had something to do with the need pounding away inside her breast that wanted her just to turn around and throw herself against the big, hard chest behind her.

‘Do you have copies of the adoption documents?’ Alex asked suddenly.

She steadied her lips and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Where are they?’

Mia frowned at the question and turned to face him. ‘I keep them with my other papers in my vanity case back at the villa in Skiathos,’ she told him. ‘Why?’

‘Because I would like to see them, if you have no objection.’

No objection? Of course she had objections as a sudden fear drained her face of its colour. ‘You want to use them against me, don’t you?’ she accused him shakily. ‘You think that if I gave my child away once then a court of law would not give me custody of a second child! You—’

‘You,’ he cut in angrily, ‘have a nasty, suspicious, insulting mind!’ He was so very right!

‘And that makes you feel very superior to me, doesn’t it?’ she flashed back hotly. ‘Well, let me tell you something, Alex. I won’t ever think you superior to me while you go on believing that a lump of rock somewhere in the Aegean is more important to you than your own DNA!’

A
LEX
rocked back on his heels as if Mia had struck him. He looked frighteningly angry and Mia couldn’t breathe—she didn’t dare to in case she released whatever it was she could see threatening to explode inside him. Her heart began to hammer, the world beyond his stone-like stance blurring at the edges. Then he moved, and so did she, sucking air into her starved lungs on a tension-packed gasp.

What she’d thought he’d been about to do to her she had no idea, but when he turned on his heel and strode away she stared after him with horror that verged on remorse.

Because it hit her—really hit her as she watched him go—that she had just inadvertently struck at the very heart of him, though she did not know how or with what!

When she was ready to leave Suzanna, after eating her tea with the little girl, it was Carol who appeared in the doorway to the little room.

‘Oh, you have to be Mia’s sister because you are like two peas from the same pod!’ she declared, making Mia jump nervously and scan the empty space around Carol in the flesh-tingling fear that Alex would be there.

He wasn’t. For the next ten minutes Carol talked Suzanna into a blank daze as she produced, during her mindless chatter, little presents from the capacious black canvas bag she’d had slung over her shoulder when she arrived.

A pocket computer game. ‘From Alex,’ she explained to Suzanna. ‘He thought it may help to fill the time in when Mia has to rest. She’s making a baby—did you know she’s making a baby?’

Suzanna gave a nod about the baby, whispered a thank-you
for the computer game and stared at the beautiful Carol with something close to star-struck idolisation as the other woman chatted on as if they’d known each other all their lives.

‘Now, I’ve been ordered by Uncle Alex to take Mia home and make her rest,’ Carol informed her latest conquest, ‘so she can be fresh as a daisy when she comes back here tomorrow.’

‘Will you come, too?’

Mia felt the wall around her heart crack, oozing a warm, sticky liquid called heartache for this child of hers who was so hungry for this kind of warm affection.

‘I’ll be coming to collect Mia after I’ve finished work.’ Carol nodded.

When Mia bent down to receive her goodnight kiss the little girl clung to her neck. ‘You will come back again, won’t you?’ she whispered anxiously.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Mia promised.

‘What did you say to put Alex in such a bad mood?’ Carol asked the moment they were inside her car. ‘He’s been stomping around the hotel like a demolition man all afternoon.’

‘You work there, too?’ Mia asked in surprise.

‘You think I’m a real blonde bimbo, don’t you?’ She grinned. ‘I’m not, you know. I am an interior designer. I work on all the Doumas projects.’

She changed gear with a flourish and changed lanes with the deftness of someone who was used to taking on London rush-hour traffic.

‘It’s called keeping it in the family,’ she explained. ‘Leon is the construction expert, Alex the one who makes every new project pay. We are in a rush to get this one in London completed so we can start on the island project once you’ve had this baby. Only the island will be a private renovation,’ she explained, oblivious or just completely indifferent to
the way Mia had stiffened up at the fact Carol knew exactly why Alex had married her.

‘The house has been left to decay while your father has been in possession. The land around it has turned back to scrubland that only goats find idyllic. Once it was a beautiful place …’ she sighed wistfully ‘… and we intend to return it to its former glory. Now you know that I know exactly what goes on between you and Alex, will you tell me what you said to upset him?’

‘None of your damned business,’ Mia said abruptly, feeling angry, bitter and utterly, cruelly betrayed. And, worse than all that, feeling as if every rotten word she had thrown at Alex earlier had just been well and truly justified!

‘Since you seem to know
all
my business,’ she added angrily, ‘do you think I could have a bedroom of my own, please? Knowing it all must surely mean that you also know that Alex never sleeps in my bed! So let’s make life easier for him and give him his very own bed in his very own room so he doesn’t have to spend the night stretched out in the chair in my room!’

‘Oh my …’ Carol drawled after a long taut silence. ‘I think I’ve put my big mouth in it again! Did he really sleep in the chair?’ She had the cheek to giggle. ‘That’ll teach him not to play mind games with his next of kin!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mia said crossly.

‘I know,’ Carol laughed. ‘That’s what makes it all so amusing!’ The car pulled to a stop outside the white townhouse. ‘Are you sure you want a separate bedroom?’ she goaded teasingly. ‘He’s supposed to be a dynamic lover—so rumour has it. Won’t you miss him slipping between your sheets to have his evil way with you?’

Too angry to care any more, Mia retaliated spontaneously. ‘You have it all wrong,’ she snapped, grappling for the car door lock. ‘He will still slip between my sheets
when the mood takes him. He just does not approve of spending the whole damned night with a whore, that’s all!’

As an exit line it was perfect, except she had nowhere to exit to. She hurled herself out of the car, certainly, but she had to stand by the closed front door and wait until Carol opened it with her key before she could make her real exit.

‘I’m sorry,’ Carol murmured as she stepped up beside her, and for once the other girl sound genuinely subdued. ‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to offend you,’

No? Mia thought. Well, you could have fooled me!

‘I was, in actual fact, teasing you at Alex’s expense,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘He was the one who insisted that you share a bedroom, you see …’

Which meant—what? Mia wondered. That he was attempting to save face in front of his family? Well, if that was the case, he should have kept his mouth shut about the rest of their arrangements, shouldn’t he?

‘Do you have a key for this door or do we stand here until someone arrives who does?’

‘I have a key.’ Carol sighed, and fitted it into the lock, then pushed open the door. ‘Mia—’

But Mia was already stalking towards the stairs and so furious she was barely managing to contain it.

‘He’s going to kill me if I have to confess what I’ve said to you!’ Carol cried pleadingly after her.

‘Good,’ Mia said between gritted teeth. ‘Do me a favour and kill each other—it will solve all my problems for me if you do!’

‘This isn’t a joke!’ the other girl shouted.

Then Mia did explode, turning round at the base of the stairs to glare back down the hallway. ‘You’re right it’s no joke!’ she cried. ‘I am seriously having his baby! And he seriously impregnated me to get it! So don’t you dare make a mockery out of—Oh,’ she groaned as the hall began to swim around dizzily.

The next thing she knew she was huddled on the floor, with Carol leaning over her, her lovely face chalk-white with shock. ‘My God,’ Carol gasped. ‘What happened?’

‘It’s all right,’ Leaning against Carol’s shoulder, Mia closed her eyes and waited for the world to stop spinning. ‘It happens sometimes,’ she breathed. ‘Nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine in a moment or two.’

‘But you fainted!’ Carol gasped. ‘That can’t be normal, can it?’

‘It is for me,’ Mia said, a trifle ruefully. ‘If you could help me get to my feet, I think I would be better lying down in bed now.’

‘Of course.’ Eager to help, but feeling guilty for bringing on the faint, Carol helped Mia to her feet. Together they mounted the stairs.

In the bedroom Mia dropped weakly onto the bed and lay there with her eyes closed while Carol hovered anxiously, uncertain what to do next.

‘Can I get you a drink or something?’ she offered in the end.

‘Mmm.’ Mia nodded carefully. ‘That would be nice. Just a glass of water, please.’

Two minutes later Carol was back with the water and Mia was able to sit up and drink it, without feeling dizzy. ‘Mia …’ Carol began cautiously. ‘Please don’t let Alex know what I said before,’ she begged. ‘He’s always going on about my big mouth. If he finds out I’ve been baiting you with it my life isn’t going to be worth living around here …’

Thinking about it now the anger had subsided, along with the dizziness, Mia supposed the other woman was right. What was the use in causing yet more friction in a situation that was already too full of it?

‘If you don’t tell him that I fainted just now,’ she bargained. ‘He knows it happens,’ she quickly assured Carol at her immediate protest. ‘But he’ll stop me from visiting
Suzanna if he hears about it, and at the moment the little girl needs me.’

‘OK,’ Carol agreed, but she sounded reluctant, to say the least. ‘I’ll say nothing about you fainting if you’ll not chuck him out of this room so he knows my mouth’s been working overtime again. Deal?’

‘Deal,’ Mia agreed, then lay back again as the front door slammed and the sound of two male voices drifted up the stairs.

‘I’ll go and head him off,’ Carol said, shifting quickly to the door. ‘If he sees you looking this washed-out he’ll know something’s wrong with you.’

Then she was gone. Mia could hear their voices through the half-open door. ‘Where’s Mia?’ Alex was demanding. ‘Why is your bag lying on the floor with its contents tipped all over the place?’

‘Mia is tired and has gone to bed,’ Mia heard Carol answer. ‘She said to tell you not to disturb her when you came up. And my bag is on the floor like that because I was so desperate for the loo when I got home that I just dropped it and ran. Any more questions?’

It was a challenge, and one issued with her usual flippancy that belied any hint of deceit. The voice changed and became the brother’s, whose tones were warmer as he greeted his wife the way loving husbands did.

After that, all went quiet as the three of them disappeared into the kitchen and Mia dragged herself up, got herself undressed and into her nightdress then fell between the sheets.

She slept very heavily and woke the next morning feeling thick-headed and lethargic. By the imprint on the pillow beside her, Alex had shared her bed last night, though whether he’d stayed there all night or had spent half of it stretched out in the chair she didn’t know or care.

She was still angry with him for discussing their private business with the rest of his family. It made her feel exposed,
more the outsider than ever, even though, on the face of it, he had allowed her closer to his family here in London than he had done while they were living in Greece.

When she went downstairs she found Carol alone in the kitchen. The men had apparently already left for work, and it was Carol who drove her to the hospital. Mia spent the morning entertaining Suzanna, who was allowed out of bed today and was walking around although she found it sore to do so.

They had just finished lunch, and Suzanna was resting on her bed while Mia read a story to her, when Alex walked in. He sent Mia a fleeting glance and then directed his attention at Suzanna.

‘You look much brighter today.’ He smiled.

The child smiled, too, her face lighting up like a puppy starved of affection who saw the chance of some coming its way in the shape of this man.

‘I’ve drawn you a picture,’ she told Alex shyly, and asked Mia to pass her a new sketch pad Carol had given her yesterday. ‘It’s to say thank you for my computer game …’

Inside were three pictures, although there was another one, which Mia had already been given for herself, of a church with a bride and bridegroom standing outside it and a child standing beside them, her hand tucked in the groom’s. It said such a lot about the child’s secret wishes that Mia had had to fight the urge to weep when Suzanna had handed the picture to her. Now she had it safely tucked away in the carrier bag in which she had brought Suzanna’s gift—the set of story books they had just started reading. One of the set,
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, was Suzanna’s favourite story.

Now the child was solemnly handing Alex his picture. It showed blue skies and a large sun, beaming down on a man, a woman, a little girl and a baby around a swimming pool with a pretty house in the background.

More secret wishes unwittingly portrayed for the discerning to read. Mia had told Suzanna all about Alex’s villa on Skiathos, and she had drawn herself there with them because that was where she most wanted to be.

No, thought Mia, Alex was not a fool. The way his eyes were hooded as he studied the picture meant he was reading all the right messages.

‘I have one for the other lady, too,’ Suzanna told Alex shyly.

‘Carol,’ Mia said.

‘Carol,’ Suzanna obediently repeated. ‘She brought me these felt tips and the sketch pad,’ she explained to Alex. ‘She wanted me to draw my operation so I have—do you think she’ll like it?’

This picture was gory in the extreme. When Alex finally managed to drag his attention away from his own offering to look at Carol’s picture, he couldn’t help the rueful smile that touched his mouth. ‘I should think she will love it.’ he murmured very drily. ‘Thank you for my picture.’

From being ready for a nap, Suzanna was suddenly so animated Mia felt something painful clutch at her heart as she watched the little girl hunt in the clutter on her bed to unearth her computer game, which she handed to Alex.

‘Would you like to have a go?’ she offered eagerly, switching it on for him. ‘You press this button here, then—’

It was like watching a light go out. One moment all three of them seemed to be basking in the brilliance of Suzanna’s excitement and in the next, darkness fell in the form of a metaphorical big black shadow. The child had glanced up, that was all—just glanced up distractedly—and, wham, she was a different person.

Mia was sitting on the side of the bed, with Alex seated in the chair on the other side. She looked up, too, and rose jerkily. Alex glanced up, saw who was standing in the doorway and frowned as his eyes flicked to the other two then back to the door again.

Jack Frazier was standing there, transfixed. His eyes were locked on Mia’s body, greed glinting in their cold grey depths as he absorbed the obvious evidence of her pregnancy.