Bridal Bargains (52 page)

‘So it is done,’ he said with unmasked satisfaction. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ The accusing words were flashed at Mia. ‘When is it due?’ He laughed, and turned to Alex, who was rising slowly to his feet. ‘I can’t damn well believe it! Well done, man. Well done!’

Not seeing or completely ignoring Alex’s grim expression, Jack Frazier walked forward to grab his hand and began to pump it up and down.

‘When do we close the deal, then?’ he asked eagerly.

On the other side of the bed Mia was reaching for Suzanna’s hand as the child’s hand searched for hers. Neither smiled. Neither spoke. As far as Jack Frazier was concerned, they might as well not have been there for all they mattered. Mia only mattered as a vessel required to make him his so-called grandson and Suzanna didn’t matter at all.

‘We will let you know at the appropriate time,’ Alex said coldly. ‘As it is, Suzanna’s health is the main concern in this room.’

As a pointed reminder of his duty, Jack took the hint and at last condescended to notice Suzanna. ‘Got your Mia back, then?’ he taunted drily. ‘The lengths children will go to get their own way.’

‘She didn’t stage-manage appendicitis,’ Mia said tightly, as the poor child lowered her head so she didn’t have to look into those coldly indifferent eyes.

‘No?’ He sounded dubious. ‘Well, never mind about that. I want to know about my grandson. Were you going to bother to tell me at all, or was I supposed to wait until the damned thing was over and done with before I found out anything?’

She didn’t answer—she refused to. She had nothing whatsoever to say to him that he didn’t already know.

‘Like that, is it?’ He grimaced. ‘Well, at least you carried through. I did wonder with this long silence whether you’d chickened out at the last hurdle. But …’ he glanced at Suzanna’s lowered head again ‘… we all have our price, don’t we, Mia? And your price almost became a non-runner. I wonder what you would have done then?’

It was such a cruel thing to suggest that Mia actually swayed in horror. Luckily, the child didn’t understand what he was talking about—but Alex did. In one step he had hold of Jack Frazier’s arm.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he suggested grimly. ‘We have a few things to say to each other, I think …’

He had them both out of the door before Mia could react. The dire threat in his words filled her with such a dark sense of impending horror that her legs went from beneath her. She slumped down beside Suzanna and pulled the little girl close to her breast.

He couldn’t mean what she feared he’d meant, she told herself desperately. Alex wouldn’t break a confidence and tell her father that he knew about Suzanna, would he?

Oh, please, she prayed as she held the little girl even closer. Please don’t let him say anything stupid!

‘Daddy hates me,’ Suzanna whispered painfully.

‘No, he doesn’t, darling,’ Mia said soothingly. ‘He just doesn’t know how to love anyone, that’s all.’

It was the truth. Her father was incapable of loving anyone. The man was a single-minded egotist who measured his own strength in his ability to close his heart to others. He had done it with her mother, with his children and with all his competitors when he’d squeezed them dry without conscience. He saw himself as omnipotent, his only regret in life being the loss of his son to carry on his name even if he hadn’t been his blood heir. To Jack Frazier that hadn’t mattered so long as Tony bore his name.

Now he had to accept second best in a child who would bear the name of its father and not its grandfather, but it was written into the contract he had drawn up with Alex that the child Mia carried would be given the second name of Frazier. For Jack Frazier, that was going to be good enough for him to bequeath his millions.

He made her sick. The whole filthy situation made her sick! The sooner it was over the sooner she could begin to wash her life clean again.

Alex didn’t come back. Mia spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about what he’d said to her father. By the time Carol arrived, with Leon in tow, she felt so tired and wretched she was more than ready to leave.

But Suzanna was still feeling the effects of Jack Frazier’s visit, and at least Carol’s bright chatter helped to lift the child’s mood again. Leon was quiet but, then, he always was. He glanced often at Mia who had removed herself to the window and stood there, gazing out with a bleakness that isolated her from the rest of those present.

While Carol was sitting on the bed, drawing a bold picture in Suzanna’s sketch book, Leon came over to stand beside Mia.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked quietly.

It surprised her enough to glance at him. ‘Tired, that’s all.’ She tried a smile and almost made it happen before she was turning to stare out of the window again.

‘Alex was coming back to get you himself, but something came up only he could deal with. He asked me to ask you if you would mind waiting until he gets in tonight before you retire because he has something important he wishes to discuss with you.’

Something to do with her father? Mia wondered fretfully, and gave a nod of acquiescence.

‘Thank you.’ Politely Leon moved away from her again. He didn’t like her, Mia knew. He resented the pressure her
father had used on his brother. He resented her presence in his brother’s life.

Back at the house, Mia found enough energy from somewhere to help Carol prepare dinner, then sat and ate with them in the dining room, though she felt like an intruder. But it was either eat with them or go to her room and eat alone, which would have been rude in the extreme. By the time they had cleared away after the meal, and Alex still hadn’t put in an appearance, Mia couldn’t take the tension any longer and excused herself with an apology.

‘I just can’t keep awake any longer,’ she explained. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She had just climbed wearily into bed when the bedroom door opened.
Alex looks less than his usually immaculate self
was the first anxious thought to hit her. He needed a shave and his clothes looked decidedly the worse for wear. His hair was rumpled, as if he had been raking impatient fingers through it.

‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ he said, when he saw she was awake, ‘but this could not wait until the morning.’

He closed the door and continued to stand there for a few moments, his tired face brooding as he studied the pensive way she was sitting in bed, banked by snowy white pillows, waiting for him to say what he had to say.

Then he sighed—heavily. ‘Look, do you mind if I take a quick shower before we talk?’ he asked tiredly.

‘N-no, of course not,’ she replied, but she would have preferred him just to get on and say what he had to because she didn’t like the grim mood he was in, and she needed to know what he had discussed with her father. But he had already walked off into the bathroom, leaving her sitting there trapped in an electric state of tension.

True to his word, though, he was back in minutes. He had showered and shaved and looked marginally less weary, though no less grim, wrapped in a blue towelling bathrobe that left too much naked golden flesh on show for
her comfort because her imagination was suddenly conjuring up images that set her over-sensitive breasts tingling and made that place between her thighs begin to throb.

Her knees came up, her arms loosely wrapping around them in an instinctive act of defensive protection for those susceptible parts of her body. But her eyes never left him as he came over to the bed and sat down on it beside her, the tension seeming to sing loud in the quietness of the softly lit bedroom.

‘What’s wrong, Alex?’ Mia asked anxiously, unable to hold the question back any longer.

His dark eyes flicked up and clashed with hers, then he smiled a rather rueful smile at her that did nothing for her equilibrium. ‘Nothing,’ he assured her, then went silent, those deceptively languid eyes of his studying her worried face for a few moments before he eventually went on, ‘Nothing that you need worry about, anyway …’

He did a strange thing then. He reached up to touch her hair, gently combing it away from her cheek and one creamy shoulder. The electricity in the air sharpened, sprinkling that well-remembered static all around her. Her heart began to race, those two over-active parts of her body sending her another jolt that reminded her just how irresistible she found this man.

‘I have to return to Greece,’ he announced, making her blink and forcing her to come back from wherever she had flown off to—bringing reality tumbling back into perspective. ‘I expect to be gone for about three weeks.’

His hand dropped away. She wanted to shiver, as if she’d just been shut out in the cold, and hated herself for being this vulnerable to him.

‘I accept that you cannot leave Suzanna yet,’ he continued while she struggled with her foolish emotions, ‘so I have arranged with Carol and Leon for you to stay here for now.’

At least he wasn’t making her return to Greece with him,
Mia noted with relief, although remaining under this roof with his brother so clearly resenting her presence didn’t exactly fill her with joy. Still, she’d lived with worse, she told herself bracingly. And she could spend most of her time with Suzanna—keep herself as scarce around here as possible.

‘The other problem is Suzanna,’ he went on, as if his own train of thought was following the same lines as her own. ‘She is due to be discharged from hospital in a couple of days.’

‘I’ll go with her to my father’s house,’ Mia offered instantly. ‘It seems the best thing all round. I won’t be putting anyone here out.’

Alex was already shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not have you exposed to your father in your condition so I have done a deal with him.’

Mia stiffened instantly. ‘You didn’t tell him you knew the truth about her, did you?’ she asked tensely.

‘Of course not!’ he snapped. ‘What do you take me for—a monster? You think I was blind to the way that child shrivelled up in his presence—the way you did the same thing yourself? You think I enjoy watching any child react to an adult like that?’

Mia lowered her lashes and said nothing—after all, it wasn’t that long ago that he’d enjoyed seeing her cringe from him.

The air grew thick, laden with anger, then he sighed heavily. ‘You cannot bring yourself to trust me even a small amount, can you?’ he muttered. ‘So, what do you suspect I am about to say to you now? That I have sold you into purdah for the duration of your pregnancy?’

‘Why not?’ she shot back. ‘I was in purdah before we came to London. Why not put me back there again?’

‘I have offered to take Suzanna off your father’s hands for the next three weeks until she returns to her school,’ he cut in tightly. ‘Your father has agreed, so long as you both
reside at this house and Suzanna is not taken out of the country!’

‘He’s agreed to that?’ Mia couldn’t believe it.

‘He almost bit my damned hand off!’ Alex rasped in disgust. ‘Apparently, his housekeeper is about to take her annual vacation, which meant him having to hunt around for someone who could temporarily take charge of the child. So you being here fitted in very well with his own situation!’

‘Oh,’ she said, disconcerted by the amount of thought he had put into all of this. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled belatedly.

‘That is not all,’ he continued, all that softness she had glimpsed in him a moment ago well and truly gone. ‘I have my own provisos to add to your father’s. The main one is that you promise me you will come back to Greece the day you take Suzanna back to school. The reason I demand this is because I will not be able to get back to London to collect you myself so I am going to have to take your word for it that you will come back to me.’

‘I’ll come back,’ she promised, frowning because she had never so much as considered doing anything else. They had made a deal, one where she had agreed to give birth to his son on Greek soil. ‘I will drive Suzanna back to school, then catch the next scheduled flight to—’

‘My plane will be waiting for you at an airfield close to Suzanna’s school,’ he interrupted. ‘And you will not drive yourself anywhere while you are here,’ he went on grimly. ‘One of my own drivers will be left at your disposal for the rest of your stay here.’

‘But I have a car!’ she protested. ‘It’s sitting, doing nothing, at my father’s house! It would be nice to drive myself again while I’m here in London!’

‘Not while you keep fainting,’ he said.

‘I do not keep fainting!’ She hotly denied that.

‘But those dizzy spells affect you too readily for you to
be safe behind the wheel of a car. I saw the way you barely managed to hold yourself upright in front of your father at lunchtime,’ he added tightly when she opened her mouth to protest yet again. ‘So you agree to my terms or I take you back to Greece with me now. The choice is yours.’

He was, after all, only protecting his investment! ‘Yes, oh, master,’ she said sarcastically.

He had been about to stand up when she’d said that, but now he stilled and Mia felt a frisson of warning shoot down her spine as he turned those dark eyes on her—she recognised the look, recognised it only too well.

‘You know …’ he said, super-light, super-soft, ‘you are in real danger of baiting me once too often,
agape mou
. And, despite the delicacy of your condition or the fragility of that protective shell you like to hide behind, I am going to retaliate,’ he warned her. ‘And you’re not going to like it because I know your secret.’

‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said warily.

‘No?’ he said quizzically—and his dark face was suddenly very close to her face. Her eyelashes began to quiver, and her fingers clutched nervously at the sheet. ‘Well, let us see, shall we?’ he suggested silkily, and his mouth covered her trembling one.

It was like being tossed into a burning furnace—she caught fire that quickly. Her mind caught fire, as well as her body, and she wasn’t even aware of how spectacularly she had done it until he was having to use force to prise her clinging fingers from his nape before he could separate his mouth from her greedily clinging one.

‘Now that …’ he drawled, touching a punctuating fingertip to the pulsing fullness of her lips, ‘is your secret. You may prefer to hate me, but you cannot damned well resist me!’