The Blackmailed Bride (5 page)

‘In fact…'

‘It got you where you are today—which I'd say was looking at a kidnapping charge, at the very least.'

‘Does that mean if I let you go you'll run straight to the police?'

Kate's face fell as she realised her smart tongue had got her into even more trouble. ‘I'm in no position to go to the police without incriminating myself.' She waited, fingers crossed, for his response.

‘You being such a hardened criminal…'

Kate unable to interpret the odd inflection in his tone frowned. ‘Not
hardened,
exactly… You went to school in England—does that mean you're
not
Spanish?'

‘A man could be forgiven for thinking you're trying to change the subject.'

‘I'm curious, that's all…'

‘About my ancestry?'

‘About your eyes…' She cleared her throat and blushed hotly as the dangerous glint in his eyes intensified. ‘I just happened to notice they're blue,' she explained carelessly. ‘It's unusual for someone with your colouring,' she added defensively.

‘Yes, it is. I have a Scottish grandmother.'

‘It's never too late, you know…' she heard herself blurt out suddenly.

Much to her dismay, he eased himself farther onto the bed and folded his arms comfortably across his chest. Kate had his full, undivided attention and she didn't want it!

‘For what is it never too late?'

Feeling deeply embarrassed by her earnest outburst Kate rubbed her nose against the duvet and surreptitiously shuffled as far across the big bed as she could without falling off. Why can't I leave well enough alone? she wondered in exasperation. Why do I always have to try and rehabilitate hopeless cases?

‘Kate's problem is she doesn't know a lost cause when she sees it,' friends had frequently observed affectionately.

‘To do something else,' she muttered awkwardly. ‘Something…
legal…
'

‘Are you trying to reform me?' An expression of amazement, tinged by something she couldn't interpret, chased across his sternly proud face.

‘It's nothing to me if you end up rotting in prison!' she countered crossly. ‘Now, if you give me back my clothes, I'll just be going…'

‘Just out of curiosity, what would you do if I said you couldn't go?'

Kate's expression froze. The ambivalence of her response to this taunt was deeply troubling. A person who found anything attractive or exciting about being held captive by someone like him was a candidate for the funny farm! She gulped and her throat muscles locked down tight as her eyes welded with his shimmering blue gaze. It took her a few moments before the obstruction in her throat cleared.

‘If I told you, I'd lose the element of surprise.' The truth, she reasoned, could not make matters much worse at this point. ‘And, from where I'm lying, that's about the only thing I have going for me,' she added with feeling.

To her amazement he threw back his dark head and laughed; it was a warm uninhibited and incredibly attractive sound.

‘You have a lot more going for you than that, K. M. Anderson,' he announced caressingly.

‘What's with the charm offensive?' she asked suspiciously. And if I was a weaker, more gullible girl, it might just work—because a smile like that, she reflected bitterly, ought to carry health warnings.

‘Do you think all men have a hidden agenda?'

‘No, just you,' she declared without thinking.

He didn't appear offended by her reply. ‘I've never met a woman with your brand of candour; it is most disarming.'

He didn't look disarmed, he looked worryingly thoughtful. ‘Are you going to get me my clothes?'

‘If the doctor says you can get dressed, yes.'

‘Doctor? What doctor…?'

On cue, there was the sound of voices just outside the bedroom door.

‘This doctor.'

A man entered the room but it wasn't a doctor, it was the heavy from earlier, looking a lot less sinister—unlike his partner in crime—in proper light. He smiled at Kate and she found herself smiling back, confused by this polite, totally unthreatening individual, a million miles away from her hazy mental image of him.

She turned back to the man ensconced beside her on the bed. ‘You expect me to believe you've called a doctor?' she hissed in a contemptuous undertone.

His blue eyes swept over her flushed face. ‘You will naturally believe what you think,' he returned haughtily. ‘However, I have arranged medical assistance.'

‘I suppose a dead body would be inconvenient, even for someone like you,' she spat back.

One brow lifted at her venomous tone but didn't respond as he rose to greet his friend. It didn't occur to Javier to ask whether Serge had managed to procure the services of a doctor; Serge wasn't the sort of man who didn't complete tasks.

‘That was quick, Serge.'

‘I didn't need to chase up the on-call doctor. Luckily they mentioned at reception that Dr Latimer was staying overnight after a party. I woke him up.'

‘He did indeed, so I hope you'll excuse my appearance.'

Kate's confusion increased as a tall, grey-haired individual panting slightly and carrying a black case followed the
younger man into the room. Despite his words, he looked casually but impeccably turned out to her.

‘Javier!' The older man grasped the hand extended to him, his expression warm.

‘Conrad!'

Kate's initial worry that an innocent doctor had been coerced into attending under threat of violence by her unscrupulous captor was fading fast, this respectable looking individual appeared to be no stranger.

‘How good to see you,' the doctor continued warmly. The subtle degree of deference in his manner added to Kate's bewilderment. ‘How is your grandfather? Thinking of retiring, I hear…'

Javier just smiled noncommittally.

‘Hard for a man like that to take a back seat,' the doctor observed, blind to the air of tension which Kate had immediately detected in the younger man. ‘Is he doing any of the things I suggested on our last meeting?'

‘You mean, has he cut back on the cigars and brandy…is he taking regular exercise and watching his diet? Did you really expect him to?'

The respected medic, who was living in semi-retirement on the island, grinned ruefully. ‘My wife tells me that I'm an eternal optimist.' He caught sight of Kate, who was lying there watching the proceedings, a frown on her face as she tried to make sense of their conversation—could she have got mixed up with a member of some notorious criminal family…? And why was this Javier uncomfortable discussing his grandparent? ‘Is this my patient?'

‘Yes this is Miss Anderson.' Taller than the other men, his every movement lithe and co-ordinated, the dark-clad figure walked back over to the bed and touched her shoulder. Somehow his body language and tone managed an easy intimacy which she wanted immediately to deny. ‘Kate
took a nasty knock on the head…didn't you, sweetheart?'

If Kate blinked at this casual use of her name—she was pretty sure she hadn't revealed this detail—she almost choked over the endearment that followed.

‘She lost consciousness?'

‘She was out for several minutes,' he stated with the confidence of a man who didn't deal approximations. ‘I don't know whether this is relevant, Conrad—' his magnificent shoulders lifted in an elegant, economic gesture—Kate, her eyes drawn against her will to the lean vital frame of the man beside her, shivered; she couldn't recall meeting anyone with such expressive body language. ‘But she appears to have a temperature.'

‘No, I haven't,' Kate intervened, hurriedly removing her glazed stare from the hard contours of his long, well-developed thighs. She judged it was about time she stopped lying there, meekly ogling, while they discussed her as if she wasn't there. ‘And if anyone wants to know how I am, they can ask me,' she added pugnaciously.

The two men exchanged understanding glances that made Kate want to scream.

‘Quite right, too,' the doctor agreed jovially, with that jarringly patronising manner his profession had perfected. He fished a pair of half-moon glasses to peer at her over from the breast pocket of his pristine shirt and she was almost amused to note that the picture of professional condescension was complete!

At least his irritating bedside manner reassured her of his authenticity; up to that point Kate had been harbouring suspicions about his identity. After all, she only had this Javier's word for it he was a doctor at all—and his word didn't inspire her trust.

‘This is ludicrous. I don't need a doctor, I need—' she began, only to be smoothly interrupted.

‘Don't get excited, Kate…'

Kate dragged herself higher in the bed, pinning the duvet under her chin. Under the circumstances, her restraint was nothing short of miraculous!

‘You think this is excited…?' She gave a dry laugh. ‘I think I've got a right to be
excited!
' she squeaked indignantly. ‘And don't look at me like that,' she added shrilly.

Their eyes clashed combatively and Kate's chin went up; she considered it a matter of principle not to be the first to look away. ‘I don't know what sort of women you're used to dealing with,' she began scornfully, ‘but…'

The doctor cleared his throat tactfully and looked indulgently from one warring party to the other. ‘Perhaps it would be better, Javier, if you left us to it?' he suggested tentatively.

The amused competitive blue eyes finally broke contact with hers.

‘If you want anything, just call. We'll be…' The inclination of Javier's dark imperious head indicated the door.

Kate was suspicious of this unexpected capitulation; her frown was fielded by an improbably innocent smile.

‘You must let me look at that wound on your hand afterwards, Javier. It looks as if it could do with dressing,' the doctor called after the departing men.

Kate's gaze shifted from Javier's provoking eyes to his hand at the same moment he raised it to his lips. She shifted uncomfortably and heat flooded her face as she recalled the moment she had bitten down hard. She chewed her lower lip in guilty agitation as their glances once more locked.

‘I had an encounter with an angry cat,' he replied with a dismissive shrug.

‘Perhaps,' Kate observed sourly, ‘you provoked her…'

The doctor, oblivious to the undercurrents, commented
on the number of feral animals roaming free. ‘I hope your tetanus shots are up to date, Javier,' he called as the other men began once more to withdraw.

A nod of confirmation and he was gone.

T
HE
sudden release of tension left Kate feeling limp; she couldn't believe her luck.

‘Conrad Latimer,' the doctor formally introduced himself.

Kate ignored the introduction and, pushing back the duvet she swung her feet purposefully to the floor. The room began to tilt crazily. She clutched her spinning head and sprawled weakly backwards.

‘I think perhaps I did that too quickly,' she murmured faintly.

‘I think perhaps the fact you did it at all is the problem.'

‘You don't understand I have to get out of here—
quickly!
' she fretted, frustrated that he wasn't appreciating the extreme urgency of the matter. Kate sighed. Whilst she would have preferred to appeal for help from a disinterested party, which this man obviously wasn't, she didn't have much choice. ‘You're English?' she asked, in a desperate attempt to find some common ground.

‘Yes. My wife and I spend most of the year in our villa on the island, since I retired; it's in a lovely spot just outside Pollensa. You must get Javier to fetch you to visit us, if he has time.'

Kate stared at him incredulously, presumably this depended on Javier having a gap in his busy schedule he could fit in this merry jaunt…somewhere between larceny and extortion, possibly? Just what sort of cosy relationship did he think she had with that wretched man? She'd never imagined herself as a gangster's moll before; it troubled her that she imagined it now.

‘But enough of that, let's take a look at you.' He gently probed the tender lump on the side of her skull, Kate winced. ‘I'm sorry. How did it happen?'

‘Apparently I ran into a wardrobe.'

‘An impetuous lady,' came the indulgent response.

‘It wasn't my fault,' she began indignantly.

‘No, these accidents happen—unlucky thing, certainly, but at least Javier was there—a good man in a crisis, Javier. None better…'

Kate almost choked at this unlikely description of her persecutor. ‘He's very competent, certainly,' she replied grimly.

‘The Monteros are all a pretty charismatic lot, but in my opinion Javier is the best of the bunch.' What bunch? Kate wanted to ask.
Javier Montero,
where had she heard that before? It definitely sounded familiar but her muzzy brain just wouldn't make the necessary connections. ‘Have you known him long?' he asked, shining a penlight into her eyes.

‘Not long,' she hedged. ‘This might sound a bit strange, Doctor…'

‘Any double vision, nausea?'

‘No, but, Doctor…?'

‘Yes, my dear?' He began to check her reflexes.

‘Where am I?'

The doctor replaced his patella hammer in his case; he was too professional to display any overt alarm.

‘Disorientation is not at all unusual after a knock like you've taken,' he soothed cautiously. ‘Just what do you remember about the accident?'

‘Too much,' she responded feelingly.

‘And before?'

‘There's nothing wrong with my memory. I just don't know where I am,' she gritted in frustration.

‘You're the same place you were before the accident, I expect, my dear. The honeymoon suite at the…'

‘The what?'
Kate squawked, struggling upright.

‘The honeymoon suite,' he repeated patiently. ‘I'm sure you'll remember if you give yourself time.'

‘I won't remember the honeymoon suite because I'm not staying in it. I'm not on my honeymoon… I'm in a nightmare!'

The doctor looked amused. ‘Honeymoon! Well, that would make the headlines, wouldn't it?' he chuckled.

‘It would…?'

Her bemused response made him laugh even more heartily, then abruptly the humour faded from his face. ‘Don't think for a second that I'm prying. Why, I know how much Javier values his privacy, and I can see you feel the same way. Listen, your relationship with him is none of my business; you're his guest and my patient…and I can promise you that nobody will hear from me that you are staying here.'

Kate laughed at the irony of this reassurance. It was beyond her why he felt the need to make it, but then just about everything was beyond her at that moment.

‘I do not have a relationship with this Javier Montero—why, I don't even—'

‘Is she in there? Katie!' The sound of a familiar lilting voice stopped Kate mid-flow.

‘Mother?'
she gasped incredulously. Oh, my God, that knock on the head must have been worse than I thought, she decided as she frantically tried to come up with a reason for hearing her mother's voice beside insanity.

Not too keen to reveal she was hearing things, Kate broached the subject cautiously. ‘Do you hear anyone?' she asked not particularly hopefully.

Her eyes widened as the door was pushed open and the
unmistakable figure of Elizabeth Anderson rushed in—if this was an hallucination, it was a very realistic one!

‘My dearest child!'

Kate, enfolded in a fragrant maternal embrace, wouldn't have dreamt of contradicting her mother, but she knew her emotional statement was not strictly accurate. Whilst Elizabeth Anderson was undoubtedly fond of both her daughters, Susie, always the more demonstrably affectionate of the girls, was the indisputable apple of her eye.

‘How did you know I was here, Mother?' she croaked bemusedly when the pressure on her ribs eased enough for her to breathe.

‘Why, Javier came to get us, of course; what a lovely man he is. You naughty girl,' she remonstrated, wagging her finger with a playfulness that Kate couldn't make head nor tail of. ‘Why didn't you tell us you were a…' She shot Kate a sly, knowing look from under her eyelashes that reminded Kate how similar physically Susie and their mother were. ‘
Friend
of Javier Montero. Why, I didn't even know you knew him!' she exclaimed with another girlish giggle that grated on Kate's frayed nerve-endings. ‘I suppose that's why you left dinner early, to meet him…' She clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Though why you should think all the subterfuge was necessary is beyond me… It's not as if we'd object, is it?' She laughed heartily at the notion. ‘Not that you've ever worried about my feelings before.' A note of misuse entered in her voice.

‘You're
pleased
I know him?' Kate echoed in a strangled voice.

‘Katherine Mary Anderson, I wonder about you sometimes, child. The Monteros must be one of the wealthiest families in Europe!' she exclaimed in a scandalised tone.

‘Oh, my God!' Kate breathed faintly as enlightenment dawned in blinding splendour. The mental leap required to transfer Javier from her mental file marked ‘member of the
shady underworld' to one marked ‘member of a rich and powerful dynasty that could trace its origins back centuries' left her reeling.

‘You always were a sly, secretive child.' She heard Elizabeth reflect in a long-suffering manner. ‘You and your father, always so serious about something or other, but he swears he didn't know either… Is it true? Haven't you told him?'

‘Told him what?'

Ignoring her daughter's shaky query, Elizabeth looked admiringly around the room. ‘The
honeymoon suite,
' her mother exclaimed, in a voice loaded with significance.

Honeymoon suite
—oh, God! Being familiar with the way her mother's mind worked, Kate could see where she was going. Marriage was the only career any woman needed, in her mother's eyes, and a woman who hadn't snagged her man by thirty was a failure. Much to Kate's relief, her frustrated parent had written her off before she'd reached that milestone and concentrated her efforts instead on her more malleable sibling.

‘Mum, please don't read anything into that!' Kate pleaded. ‘I had an accident; this was the most convenient place…'

With a display of selective deafness that was her forte, Elizabeth continued to examine the décor. ‘Very impressive and extremely tasteful,' came her final verdict. ‘And that Jacuzzi in the deck overlooking the sea, it's just like the one your father and I had when we were in Jamaica last year. Isn't it marvellous to lie there and listen to the waves?'

At that moment Kate could think of worse things than her hot, sticky body being immersed in cool water. She dwelt dreamily for a moment on an image of her naked body being caressed by the soft water, no sounds—especially not her mother's voice—but that of the sea. It was
very soothing, until her fertile and wayward imagination added a disruptive element to the picture in the shape of… Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to think about shapes, she decided, as images of long, glistening, lean limbs and taut masculine muscles floated around suggestively in her head. Suffice it to say, she wasn't alone in the tub! Her heart began to thud frantically against her ribcage as she shook her head to blank out the depraved activities her illusionary couple were indulging in.

Elizabeth turned, with a charming smile that could still dazzle, to the doctor. ‘How is she, doctor?' she asked casting a critical eye over her glassy-eyed eldest born. ‘She looks a bit strange to me…'

Strange!
If this indeed wasn't some strange and bizarre nightmare from which she would awaken any moment, then the man she'd taken for a sinister crime lord was actually a prominent member of the legendary family whose business interests spanned the globe! A family whose marriages to equally newsworthy individuals made front page in newspapers from New York to Istanbul.

Naturally this put his presence in the blackmailer's room in an entirely different light; unlike her, he'd obviously been there legitimately. On top of all that, her mind was filled with steamy images of herself doing things she'd never even imagined before, and despite the suffocating heat her burning nipples were brazenly protruding through the flimsy fabric of her bra!

‘It's awfully warm in here…' If she had ever felt this mortified or confused in her life before, Kate was pretty sure she'd have remembered!

‘Actually, I was just wondering why the air conditioning is working full blast in here?'

Kate cast a startled look in the doctor's direction and was worried when his nod confirmed her mother's assessment.

‘Miss Anderson has taken a nasty knock on the head,' he began to explain. ‘I think peace, quiet and rest are the best things I can prescribe for that…'

Wearily, Kate shot him a pathetically grateful look; as much as she loved her mother, even at the best of times a conversation with her could be an exhausting experience…and her head did ache so…

‘I'd like her to have an X-ray, just to be on the safe side. Javier will arrange that, no doubt. My main concern is the fever she's running…'

‘I have a fever!' Kate exclaimed.

‘You do indeed. Your throat is red and inflamed and your lymph nodes are enlarged, which is a sure sign of infection.'

Kate, who had been too occupied by foiling blackmailers and evading kidnappers to wonder about something as mundane as the feelings of general malaise afflicting her, felt beneath her jaw and encountered the tender area he was speaking of.

‘It's probably a virus,' he continued. ‘Maybe just the twenty-four hour variety…?'

Kate smiled back at him, approving his optimistic attitude.

‘Have you been in contact with anyone with flu or anything of that nature?'

Elizabeth Anderson got up hurriedly from the bedside, regarding her daughter with reproachful horror.

‘No, I don't think so…' Kate began; then she recalled the baby on the flight. ‘There was this child on the flight over, I had him on my knee and he was a bit grizzly…you know, hot and snuffly.'

The doctor nodded. ‘That could well be the explanation. The cramped conditions on planes make it a fertile breeding ground for bugs. On the other hand, it might be quite unrelated.'

‘Really, Kate, that's so like you,' her mother complained, delicately examining her own neck. ‘You never stop to think about how your actions affect others. This is your father's first break for months; how are you going to feel if he becomes ill because of your thoughtlessness?'

Kate accepted the strictures meekly. ‘Sorry…'

‘And I shall complain to the airline. You pay for a first class ticket—'

‘Well, actually,' Kate admitted guiltily, ‘I was travelling economy.'

Kate wasn't surprised when her mother looked appalled. Elizabeth was a terrible snob who went to great pains to disguise her own working-class roots.
‘Economy!'

‘I didn't think Dad would mind if I traded in my ticket and put the money towards the deposit for my new flat,' she added defensively.

Kate, tired of flat-sharing and determined to enter the property market, had been economising wherever possible during the last year. She didn't know how people in less well-paid jobs than herself managed in the scarily pricey London property market.

‘Are you decent? Can I come in?'

Kate welcomed the interruption as her father's round, cheery face peered cautiously around the door—Charles Anderson, with his cherubic countenance, did not look like most people's image of a sober judge. ‘
Dad!
Come in…
please!
' she added, with a harassed glance in her mother's direction.

After first assuring himself his daughter didn't look near death's door, Charles Anderson smiled. ‘Well, what have you been up to, pumpkin?' he began heartily as he approached Kate's bedside, his arms extended.

Kate blinked, embarrassed by the way her eyes filled weakly with tears at the casual endearment; Dad hadn't called her that for years.

‘Charles, don't go near her, she's infectious!' his wife shrieked in alarm.

‘Nonsense, Lizzie, since when was a knock on the head infectious?' Charles Anderson returned, dismissing his wife's appeal.