The Blackmailed Bride (12 page)

When he lifted his mouth from hers, Kate's fingers were tangled in the dark hair on his nape and she was panting frantically. It was several sweaty seconds before she could prise her eyelids, which felt as though they were weighed down with lead, apart.

The combustible heat from his blue-eyed gaze, besides
making the sensitive muscles of her stomach cramp viciously alerted her to the way her body was pressed closely to his virile torso—second skin wouldn't have been pressing the point!

She drew back with a sharp gasp and fell back, her head against the padded restraint as she panted for Britain. She was vaguely aware that his actions had roughly followed the same pattern.

Almost in unison they turned their heads. Where Kate had expected smugness, perhaps a hint of gloating, she saw a look that on anyone else she'd have described as disconcerted.

‘Good practice session,' she managed, between gasps. ‘But quite honestly I don't think you need it.'

Credit where credit was due. Whatever else Javier Montero was he was a quite spectacularly good kisser—this didn't automatically mean he was a spectacular lover too, but the odds were definitely stacked in his favour!

Not that she was ever likely to put the theory to the test.

His eyes dropped to her lush lips. ‘Neither do you.'

Kate shifted in her seat; perhaps some explanation for her enthusiastic response was called for. Obviously this was what happened when you became a slave to your work and ignored your more
basic
needs. She could hardly tell him this without making herself sound like a sad, sexually deprived loser.

‘Well, I think we might be able to muddle through at the ceremony now,' she heard herself claim brightly.

‘I think a modified version might be appropriate for that occasion.'

Dots of feverish colour appeared on her smooth cheeks. ‘I think I might be able to restrain myself from ripping off your clothes.' Though it won't be easy, she thought, averting her covetous gaze from his arresting profile. ‘About the wedding…' she began tentatively.

‘You are nervous?'

‘Would that be so surprising?' she charged, resenting his careless attitude. ‘I've never been married before, and I'm not as practised at deception as you obviously are. I'd feel slightly more comfortable…if that is the right word,' she mused wryly, ‘if there weren't too many surprises.'

‘There will be no surprises, just the padre and Sarah and her husband as witnesses.'

‘What's Sarah like?' Kate blushed as the impetuous words escaped, but rather to her surprise he didn't comment on her tasteless display of curiosity.

‘She is gentle and sweet, and not nearly as robust, emotionally speaking, as you.'

Kate was less than flattered to discover that he clearly thought of her as some emotional Amazon.

She gritted her teeth. ‘Sensitive qualities can be such a handicap.' Not that he was ever likely to suffer on that count, he had the sensitivity of a brick.

‘I have offended you.'

‘Not in the least, we emotionally robust types are by definition pretty tough.'

‘It was not intended as an insult, quite the opposite. You are resourceful and independent; not all women have your confidence and natural resources. Sarah is a…
fragile
person, who is less well equipped than yourself to cope with the demands of modern life.'

‘You mean if you'd accused her of being in cahoots with some sleazy drug-dealer she'd—'

‘There was no way I would have made that mistake…' Javier interposed quickly.

‘I should recognise her straight off, then; she's the one
without
the natural criminal tendencies I exude.'

‘There is no need to be facetious.'

Kate, who thought there was every need, maintained a restrained silence.

‘I met Sarah when my sister was in a drug rehabilitation programme in England; she was a fellow patient being treated for an eating disorder.'

Kate's cynical expression faded, as did her detachment; despite his opinion she had a soft, vulnerable heart. ‘Your sister was…?'

‘Addicted to drugs. Yes, she was.' Despite his remote expression, Kate could sense that his sister's dependence had deeply affected him. She took him to be the type of man who shouldered the mantle of responsibility for all those close to him. Kate sighed; his sister's sad history explained away the puzzle of his personal involvement when he had discovered someone was dealing drugs at the hotel.

‘She became friends with Sarah during their stay and late that year my sister invited her to join us on the island.'

‘And you fell in love with her?'

He stiffened. ‘That was something I mentioned in confidence…'

‘As if I'm going to blab about it.'

‘I've offended you again.' He seemed intrigued by this discovery.

‘Forget it; it's like water off a duck's back with us emotionally robust types. You're not hoping to make this Sarah of yours jealous with me, are you?'

‘She is not my Sarah,' he retorted with frigid disapproval.

‘Fair enough. Your sister, is she all right now…?'

Javier searched her face and instead of the prurient curiosity he'd expected he discovered a genuine concern. ‘Thank you, yes, she is. She is studying modern history at Oxford.'

Kate beamed with disingenuous pleasure.

‘That's good. You know,' she told him, reaching across and squeezing his hand lightly, ‘you shouldn't blame your
self. These thing happen. The important thing is you were there for your sister when she needed you.' Seeing the direction of his disconcerted gaze, Kate removed her hand and, blushing deeply, sat on it.

‘How do you know I was there for her?' With an expression she found impossible to interpret, his interest focused on her hot face.

‘Well, I just assumed…' She stopped and gave an exasperated sigh—what was the point in beating about the bush? ‘Well, if you must know,' she informed him frankly, ‘you come across as the sort of person who would be there…' This admission surprised her as much as it seemed to him. ‘But then,' she admitted with a wry grin, ‘I always was a terrible judge of character!'

There was a short, tense silence before he began to smile, the transformation of his grim features was nothing short of miraculous.

Wow! she thought exhaling gustily as he fired the engine into life. It might not be such a good idea to laugh too often!

‘T
HERE'S
very little space to park beside the church,' Javier explained as he slowed the car to let an elderly woman dressed from head to toe in black cross the narrow street. ‘We'll park the car here and walk up if that's all right with you?'

‘Fine,' she replied, surprised to be consulted on the minor detail. Her agreement might not have been quite so swift if she'd realised that the village was literally cut into the side of a mountain.

Actually, as far as she was concerned there was very little space here too, so little in fact that she held her breath as he reversed the big car with what seemed like impetuous haste to her into the small space between two stone houses. Like most of those in this quaint village, they both had attractive wrought-iron balconies and so many flowers crammed in window boxes that you hardly noticed the peeling paintwork.

‘Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea,' Javier observed a few minutes later as he paused once more to let her catch up with him.

‘You should have left me at base camp,' she puffed.

‘There is a step there; be careful…'

Kate ignored his guiding hand. ‘It's all right, I can see, I'm wearing my contact lenses. I didn't bring a spare pair of glasses.'

‘You have beautiful eyes.'

Kate tripped.

‘It's not that far now.'

Kate decided it was preferable to shift the blame for her
stumble on her footwear than let him suspect that a casual compliment from him could make her fall flat on her face. Balancing on one leg, she extended her ankle towards him. ‘If you were wearing these you wouldn't say that.'

‘What possessed you to wear anything so impractical for a wedding?'

‘How was I to know marriage meant a two-mile hike?' she asked indignantly. Her frivolous shoes with the pretty jewelled clip and the high spindly heels were ornamental and not suited to climbing mountains, even cobbled ones. ‘If I'd known, I'd have brought my trainers.'

‘You're going to injure yourself in those things,' he observed showing scant appreciation of the delicate footwear. ‘Perhaps I should carry you.'

She wasn't small, but she knew his arms were more than capable of coping with the task of carrying her. Her stomach flipped over as she thought of those hard, muscular arms; it flipped some more when she thought of them holding her. She ruthlessly smothered the hot flames of excitement before they could take hold.

Taking control of herself, Kate swallowed past the constriction in her throat. ‘I've got a much better idea,' she trilled brightly.

‘Which is…?'

‘This,' she said stepping out of the shoes. Always conscious of his superior height, suddenly slipping down to his shoulder level intensified the dramatic height differential.

He looked down at narrow feet on the dusty ground. ‘You can't walk barefoot to your wedding.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because it's inappropriate.'

Kate laughed. ‘It's a bit late for a man who'd bought a bride to start worrying about convention.'

His dark brows drew together in a disapproving line. ‘I haven't bought you!' he denied harshly.

‘No, just a short-term lease; I keep the freehold.'

‘And no doubt you would place a very hefty price on that.'

Her eyes slewed evasively from his. ‘No, actually I'd give it away free to the right man.'

Embarrassed by her own contribution to this strange exchange, Kate bent over abruptly to pick up her shoes, one in each hand, and ran a little ahead of him. ‘Don't be such a stick in the mud. Go on, live a little!' she urged as she twirled around and waved the shoes at him.

A lazy smile appeared on his face as he watched her antics. Their eyes met and his smile faded, leaving a brooding, restless expression that made Kate's tummy muscles quiver. There was no knowing how long the silence that grew between them might have lasted, had not a small boy perched on a bicycle that looked way too large for him chosen that moment to race past them at a breakneck speed. Javier had to push Kate to one side to avoid a head-on collision.

He called out angrily in Spanish after the figure.

‘Are you all right?'

Kate looked up into his concerned eyes and nodded, very conscious of his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.

‘I'm fine, but your lovely suit is covered in dust,' she cried in dismay.

Javier glanced down at the damage. ‘No matter,' he said dusting half-heartedly at the sleeve of his jacket.

Kate clicked her tongue. ‘Stand still!' she instructed, examining the damage. ‘It should come off,' she announced.

‘Do not trouble yourself…' He stopped as Kate began to vigorously brush at the powdery layer of dust across his lapel.

Javier stood a curious smile playing about his lips. ‘
Lovely suit?
I thought my clothes were insipid and lacking
in individuality?' One dark brow lifted. ‘Have I got it right?'

Kate stopped and grimaced. ‘Pretty well,' she admitted. ‘If you must know, it's pretty tiresome being around someone that looks so damned perfect all the time!'

Javier looked amazed at the accusation. He looked down at himself. ‘Well, I am not perfect now. Does that make me a little less
tiresome…?
'

Kate pursed her lips as she considered the matter. ‘The jury's still out on that one.' Liking him could be a complication.

Javier took a second look at her pink-painted toenails and nodded. ‘Go barefoot if you must, but I want one thing understood—don't expect me to take off my shoes.'

Kate grinned. ‘Don't worry. Taking off your shoes is only for the advanced class. You need to start with loosening your tie…just a little.'

‘You like to show me how much?' Javier asked, touching the tasteful grey silk.

Shaking her head, Kate backed off. ‘No way!' If she got that close she didn't think she'd be able to resist the temptation to touch his lean jaw where already a faint shadow was just visible.

Javier accepted the rejection with a philosophical shrug; clearly he was never likely to lack candidates eager to loosen his tie. In fact, Kate found it extraordinarily easy to imagine his tie being ripped off by eager hands; in this imaginary scene his tie was closely followed by his shirt.

They walked along in silence and without Kate's heels to contend with it wasn't long before they reached the crest of the hill and the small church came into view.

‘How pretty!' she exclaimed.

Javier looked pleased by her appreciation. ‘Yes, isn't it? It's very old. My grandfather and grandmother were married here. They met in Madrid after the war; her parents
were diplomats and she was engaged to a junior consul. There was an enormous scandal when they ran away.'

‘And they ended up here?'

‘Yes, she always had a soft spot for the island after that.'

There was no particular reason why this information should make her feel even worse than she already did about what they were doing, but somehow it did. Kate had been uneasy from the beginning about a church ceremony but Javier had been firm, explaining that in his grandfather's eyes a civil ceremony was not worth the paper it was printed on.

‘That's why you brought me here, to impress him…?'

‘My grandfather is not a man easily impressed. I just thought that this would be a nice place to be married with little fuss, but now you mention it the continuity will please the old man.'

It sounded as though Javier's grandfather was big on tradition and continuity.

‘So you picked this place so that nobody you know would see us and ask awkward questions?' she concluded dully. A perfectly logical thing for him to do under the circumstances, so why did it bother her so much…?

Kate was taken by surprise when Javier caught her hands; she winced as his fingers closed tightly around her wrists, immediately he let her go.

‘Did I hurt you?'

Kate didn't know what he was talking about until she saw his eyes were fixed on her wrists. ‘I'll live,' she replied, rubbing her wrists.

‘I do not run away and hide,' he replied clearly outraged at the suggestion. ‘If anyone asks me questions I don't want to answer, I don't reply.'

‘I get the picture. If bullets were whistling past your head it would be beneath your dignity to get down in the dirt with everyone else.'

‘I think you'll find I have a pretty well-developed sense of self-preservation.'

‘But not common sense. I see now that the idea of you keeping a low profile was a pretty daft one. You're too pig-headed.'

‘If you've quite finished calling me names, come sit here.'

Kate could cope pretty well with his I'm-in-charge manner—he probably didn't even know he was doing it—but the sight of his long, tapering brown fingers curled, gently this time, around her smaller paler hands… That was another matter entirely. Kate's coping mechanisms were not built to deal with that! Such a silly thing, but she fell to pieces inside.

She didn't resist as he drew her to the side of the road, where he indicated she should sit down on a large, smooth rock. This weak capitulation was outweighed by her success in resisting the strong impulse to rub her cheek against his hand.

‘Look, someone's left flowers,' she said pointing at the pretty nosegay propped up beneath a crude but beautiful statue of the Madonna.

She watched puzzled as Javier went over to the place. Careful not to disturb the flowers, he squatted down beside a small bubble of water that gurgled out of the ground into a small pool. Her covetous gaze clung with helpless fascination to the supple lines of his back; it was turning out that there was barely any part of his anatomy her fertile imagination could not spin erotic fantasies around.

‘This spring is meant to have magical powers,' he explained as he cupped his hands and let them fill with the fresh water.

‘What sort of magical powers?' she asked as he walked towards her, shiny drops of water falling like bright jewels
from between his cupped fingers onto the parched ground below.

Javier knelt at her feet.

Finally seeing his intention, an astonished Kate drew back her feet. ‘You can't…' she protested.

‘I'm not marrying a woman with dirty feet.'

‘I didn't think Monteros performed menial tasks.' It wasn't the menial nature of the task that bothered her, it was the uncomfortable intimacy.

‘Don't provoke, Kate, just give me your damned foot.'

His tone was exasperated, nothing very lover-like about that, which ought to make her feel better…
ought!

Reluctantly, she extended her foot.

Javier looked so long at the her slim calf and slender ankle that Kate finally cleared her throat noisily.

When he lifted his head jerkily at the sound, there was an odd, unfocused expression on his face.

The water he trickled slowly over her hot, dusty extremity was so icily cold that she gasped.

He grinned at her reaction. ‘I forgot to warn you, it's cold.'

The eyes that rested on her face were not cold, they were warm. She looked hurriedly away as one of the little jolts of sexual awareness she was coming to recognise so well knifed through her body.

‘Now he tells me,' she grumbled, angling her arm as casually as she could across her chest to hide the brazen thrust of her nipples. This was sexual craving of a type she'd never experienced in her life before; having come to terms with her apparent low sex drive, this transformation was hard to get her head around.

She sat there passively while he repeated the process with the other foot; it seemed to take him an eternity. If anyone had suggested this morning that having a man pour
cold water over your hot feet could be a deeply erotic experience, she would have thought they were mildly deviant.

‘Those magical powers you were talking about,' she asked, more from a desperate need to distract herself from the dangerous frissons of pleasure his lightest touch evoked than any genuine desire for an explanation, ‘what are they?'

Javier shook his hands free of the moisture clinging to them and rose lithely to his feet, mockery danced in his eyes. ‘Fertility.'

‘Oh!'

The amused lines radiating from his eyes deepened as she blushed.

‘Local folklore has it that women wanting to conceive who drink from here will bear a son,' he explained solemnly.

Kate looked at the innocent trickle of water and laughed nervously. ‘Do people still believe things like that?' she joked.

Javier didn't smile back.

‘Well, I'd say from the floral offering that someone does…wouldn't you…?'

‘But you don't?' Kate flashed him an incredulous look at his lean, guarded features. ‘Do you…?' She shook her head unable to reconcile the notion of this sophisticated man believing in a superstitious myth.

He shrugged. ‘I'm not superstitious, but I respect other people's beliefs, and I do believe that we are in danger of losing many things of value by turning our backs on our roots.'

Kate was astonished; Javier was the last person in the world she would ever have imagined voicing such opinions.

‘Personally, I'm quite happy to leave the fear, bigotry and superstition in the past,' she told him with a shudder.

‘Are you sure it isn't your own fear that bothers
you…fear of things that you can't explain away with twenty-first century science…?' he challenged.

‘Rubbish!' she denied. ‘I'm just not going to campaign for a return of witch-burning.'

‘Maybe you have a personal interest there.'

‘Are you calling me a witch?' Kate demanded indignantly.

For a moment he stood there, looking down at the barefooted figure at his feet, hair spread like a bright nimbus around a delicately flushed face. ‘I can't think of any other explanation,' he replied sardonically. ‘Put your shoes on,' he added tersely, before Kate had time to puzzle over his cryptic response or even the peculiar expression on his saturnine features. ‘The wedding can't start without us.'