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Meg was playing a part, Niklas got that, but as her lips met his cheek it did not matter that she was playing, for it was the first reprieve to his senses in months.
It was a kiss for others, and his mind tried to keep it at that—except her breath tasted of the outside. He drank it in, and the feel of her in his arms allowed temporary escape.
It was Meg who pulled back. Meg who stood with her cheeks burning red. There were tears of shame and hurt and anger in her eyes, and her lips pressed closed as one guard said something that made the other one laugh, and then a door opened and they walked into a small, simply furnished room. She couldn’t stand for very much longer, so she sat on a chair for a moment, honestly shaken.
Not just at the sight of him—not just at the shock of seeing Niklas with his hair cropped almost as short as the dark stubble on his chin, dressed in rough prison denim—but because he was still the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
‘Why would you come here?’ he demanded, and then she looked at him. He could see her green eyes flash with suppressed rage, and he heard the spit of her words when finally she answered him.
‘You’re entitled to me, apparently.’
About the Author
CAROL MARINELLI recently filled in a form where she was asked for her job title and was thrilled, after all these years, to be able to put down her answer as ‘writer’. Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation and, after chewing her pen for a moment, Carol put down the truth: ‘writing’. The third question asked, ‘What are your hobbies?’ Well, not wanting to look obsessed or, worse still, boring, she crossed the fingers on her free hand and answered ‘swimming and tennis’. But, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her highlights, and the closest she’s got to a tennis racket in the last couple of years is watching the Australian Open, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!
Recent titles by the same author:
BEHOLDEN TO THE THRONE* BANISHED TO THE HAREM* AN INDECENT PROPOSITION A SHAMEFUL CONSEQUENCE
(The Secrets of Xanos)
* linked titles
Carol also writes for Mills & Boon® Medical Romance™!
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Playing the
Dutiful Wife
Carol Marinelli
www.millsandboon.co.uk
CHAPTER ONE
‘I’M GOING TO have to go,’ Meg said to her mother. ‘They’ve finished boarding, so I’d better turn off my phone.’
‘You’ll be fine for a while yet.’ Ruth Hamilton persisted with their conversation. ‘Did you finish up the work for the Evans purchase?’
‘Yes.’ Meg tried to keep the edge from her voice. She really wanted just to turn off the phone and relax. Meg hated flying. Well, not all of it—just the take-off part. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and listen to music, take some nice calming breaths before the plane prepared for its departure from Sydney Airport—except, as usual, her mother wanted to talk about work. ‘Like I said,’ Meg said calmly, because if she so much as gave a hint that she was irritated her mum would want to know more, ‘everything is up-to-date.’
‘Good,’ Ruth said, but still she did not leave things there.
Meg coiled a length of her very straight red hair around and around one finger, as she always did when either tense or concentrating.
‘You need to make sure that you sleep on the plane, Meg, because you’ll be straight into it once you land. You wouldn’t believe how many people are here. There are so many opportunities …’
Meg closed her eyes and held on to a sigh of frustration as her mum chatted on about the conference and then moved to travel details. Meg already knew that a car would meet her at Los Angeles airport and take her straight to the hotel where the conference was being held. And, yes, she knew she would have about half an hour to wash and get changed.
Meg’s parents were prominent in Sydney’s real estate market and were now looking to branch into overseas investments for some of their clients. They had left for Los Angeles on Friday to network, while Meg caught up with the paperwork backlog at the office before joining them.
Meg knew that she should be far more excited at the prospect of a trip to Los Angeles. Usually she loved visiting new places, and deep down Meg knew that really she had nothing to complain about—she was flying business class and would be staying in the sumptuous hotel where the conference was being held. She would play the part of successful professional, as would her parents.
Even though, in truth, the family business wasn’t doing particularly well at the moment.
Her parents were always very eager to jump on the latest get-rich-quick scheme. Meg, who could always be relied on for sensible advice, had suggested that rather than all of them flying over maybe just one of them should go, or perhaps they should give it a miss entirely and concentrate on the properties they already had on their books.
Of course her parents hadn’t wanted to hear that. This, they had insisted, was the next big thing.
Meg doubted it.
It wasn’t that, though, which caused her disquiet.
Really, when she had suggested that only one of them go—given that she dealt with the legal side of things—Meg had rather hoped they might have considered sending only her.
A week away wasn’t just a luxury she required—it was fast becoming a necessity. And it wasn’t about the nice hotel—she’d stay in a tent if she had to, just for the break, just for a pause so that she could think properly. Meg felt as if she were suffocating—that wherever she turned her parents were there, simply not giving her room to think. It had been like that for as long as she could remember, and sometimes she felt as if her whole life had been planned out in advance by her parents.
In truth, it probably had.
Meg had little to complain about. She had her own nice flat in Bondi—but, given that she worked twelve-hour days, she never really got to enjoy it, and there was always something at work that needed her attention at weekends: a signature to chase up, a contract to read through. It just never seemed to end.
‘We’re actually going to look at a couple of properties this afternoon …’ Her mum carried on talking as there was a flurry of activity in the aisle beside Meg.
‘Well, don’t go agreeing to anything until I get there,’ Meg warned. ‘I mean it, Mum.’
She glanced over and saw that two flight attendants were assisting a gentleman. His face was blocked from Meg’s vision by the overhead lockers, but certainly from his physique this man didn’t look as if he required assistance.
He was clearly tall and extremely fit-looking, and from what Meg could see he appeared more than capable of putting his own laptop into the overhead locker, yet the attendants danced around him, taking his jacket and offering their apologies as he went to take the seat beside Meg.
As his face came into view Meg, who was already struggling, completely lost her place in the conversation with her mother. The man was absolutely stunning, with very thick, beautifully cut black hair worn just a little too long, so that it flopped over his forehead. He had a very straight Roman nose and high cheekbones. Really, he had all the markings of a very good-looking man, but it was his mouth that held her attention—perfectly shaped, like a dark bruise of red in the black of his unshaven jaw, and even though it was a scowling mouth, it was quite simply beautiful.
He threw a brief nod in Meg’s direction as he took the seat beside her.
Clearly somebody wasn’t very happy!
As he sat down Meg caught his scent—a mixture of expensive cologne and man—and, though she was trying to focus on what her mother was saying, Meg’s mind kept wandering to the rather terse conversation that was taking place beside her as the flight attendants did their best to appease a man whom, it would seem, wasn’t particularly easy to appease.
‘No,’ he said to the attendant. ‘This will be sorted to my satisfaction as soon as we have taken off.’
He had a deep, low voice that was rich with an accent Meg couldn’t quite place. Perhaps Spanish, she thought, but wasn’t quite sure.
What she was sure of, though, was that he demanded too much of her attention.
Not consciously, of course—she just about carried on talking to her mother, her finger still twirling in her hair—but she could not stop listening to the conversation that was none of her business.
‘Once again,’ the flight attendant said to him, ‘we apologise for any inconvenience, Mr Dos Santos.’ Then she turned her attention to Meg, and although friendly and polite, the flight attendant was not quite so gushing as she had so recently been to Meg’s fellow passenger. ‘You need to turn off your phone, Ms Hamilton. We are about to prepare for take-off.’
‘I really do have to go, Mum,’ Meg said. ‘I’ll see you there.’ With a sigh of relief she turned off her phone. ‘The best part of flying,’ she said as she did so—not necessarily to him.
‘There is nothing good about flying’ came his brusque response as the plane started to taxi towards the runway. Seeing her raised eyebrows, he tempered his words a little. ‘At least not today.’
She gave him a small smile and offered a quick ‘Sorry,’ then looked ahead rather than out of the window. After all he could be in the middle of a family emergency and racing to get somewhere. There could be many reasons for his bad mood and it was none of her business after all.
She was actually quite surprised when he answered her, and when she turned she realised that he was still looking at her. ‘Usually I do like flying—I do an awful lot of it—but today there are no seats in first class.’
Niklas Dos Santos watched as she blinked at his explanation. She had very green eyes that were staring right at him. He expected her to give a murmur of sympathy or a small tut tut as to the airline’s inefficiency; those were the responses that he was used to, so he was somewhat taken aback at hers.
‘Poor you!’ She smiled. ‘Having to slum it back here in business class.’
‘As I said, I fly a lot, and as well as working while flying I need to sleep on the plane—something that is now going to be hard to do. Admittedly I only changed my plans this morning, but even so …’ He didn’t continue. Niklas thought that was the end of the conversation, that he had explained his dark mood well enough. He hoped that now they could sit in mutual silence, but before he could look away the woman in the seat next to him spoke again.
‘Yes, it’s terribly inconsiderate of them—not to keep a spare seat for you just in case your plans happen to change.’
She smiled as she said it and he understood that she was joking—sort of. She was nothing like anyone he usually dealt with. Normally people revered him, or in the case of a good-looking woman—which she possibly was—they came on to him.
He was used to dark-haired, immaculately groomed women from his home town. Now and then he liked blondes—which she was, sort of. Her hair was a reddish blonde. But, unlike the women he usually went for, there was a complete lack of effort on her part. She was very neatly dressed, in three-quarter-length navy trousers and a cream blouse that was delicate and attractive. Yet the blouse was buttoned rather high and she wore absolutely no make-up. He glanced down to nails that were neat but neither painted nor manicured and, yes, he did check for a ring.
Had the engines not revved then she might have noticed that glance. Had she not looked away at that moment she might have been granted the pleasure of one of his very rare smiles. For she seemed refreshingly unimpressed by him, and Niklas had decided she was not a possibly good-looking woman in the least …
But she spoke too much.
He would set the tone now, Niklas decided. Just ignore her if she spoke again. He had a lot of work to get through during this flight and did not want to be interrupted every five minutes with one of her random thoughts.
Niklas was not the most talkative person—at least he did not waste words speaking about nothing—and he certainly wasn’t interested in her assumptions. He just wanted to get to Los Angeles with as much work and sleep behind him as possible. He closed his eyes as the plane hurtled down the runway, yawned, and decided that he would doze till he could turn on his laptop.
And then he heard her breathing.
Loudly.
And it only got louder.
He gritted his teeth at her slight moan as the plane lifted off the runway and turned to shoot her an irritated look—but, given that her eyes were closed, instead he stared. She was actually fascinating to look at: her nose was snubbed, her lips were wide and her eyelashes were a reddish blonde too. But she was incredibly tense, and she was taking huge long breaths that made her possibly the most annoying woman in the world. He could not take it for the next twelve hours, and Niklas decided he would be speaking again to the flight attendant—someone would have to move out of first class.
Simply, this would not do.
Meg breathed in through her nose and then out through her mouth as she concentrated on using her stomach muscles to control her breathing as her ‘fear of flying’ exercises had told her to do. She twisted her hair over and over, and when that wasn’t helping she gripped onto the handrests, worried by the terrible rattling noise above her as the plane continued its less than smooth climb. It really was an incredibly bumpy take-off, and she loathed this part more than anything—could not relax until the flight stewards stood up and the seatbelt signs went off.
As the plane tilted a little to the left Meg’s eyes screwed more tightly closed. She moaned again and Niklas, who had been watching her strange actions the whole time, noted not just that her skin had turned white but that there was no colour in her lips.
The minute the signs went off he would speak with the flight attendant. He didn’t care if it was a royal family they had tucked in first class; someone was going to have to make room for him! Knowing that he always got his way, and that soon he would be moving, Niklas decided that for a moment or two he could afford to be nice.
She was clearly terrified after all.
‘You do know that this is the safest mode of transport, don’t you?’
‘Logically, yes,’ she answered with her eyes still closed. ‘It just doesn’t feel very safe right now.’
‘Well, it is,’ he said.
‘You said that you fly a lot?’ She wanted him to tell her that he flew every single day, that the noise overhead was completely normal and nothing to worry about, preferably that he was in fact a pilot—then she might possibly believe that everything was okay.
‘All the time,’ came his relaxed response, and it soothed her.
‘And that noise?’
‘What noise?’ He listened for a second or two. ‘That’s the wheels coming up.’
‘No, that one.’
It all sounded completely normal to him, yet Niklas realised she probably wasn’t quite normal, so he continued to speak to her. ‘Today I am flying to Los Angeles, as are you, and in two days’ time I will be heading to New York …’
‘Then?’ Meg asked, because his voice was certainly preferable to her thoughts right now.
‘Then I will be flying home to Brazil, where I am hoping to take a couple of weeks off.’
‘You’re from Brazil?’ Her eyes were open now, and as she turned to face him she met his properly for the first time. He had very black eyes that were, right now, simply heaven to look into. ‘So you speak …?’ Her mind was all scrambled; she could still hear that noise overhead …
‘Portuguese,’ he said and, as if he was there for her amusement—which for a moment or two longer he guessed he was—he smiled as he offered her a choice. ‘Or I can speak French. Or Spanish too, if you prefer …’
‘English is fine.’
There was no need to talk any more. He could see the colour coming back to her cheeks and saw her tongue run over pinkening lips. ‘We’re up,’ Niklas said, and at the same time the bell pinged and the flight attendants stood. Meg’s internal panic was thankfully over, and he watched as she let out a long breath.
‘Sorry about that.’ She gave him a rather embarrassed smile. ‘I’m not usually that bad, but that really was bumpy.’
It hadn’t been bumpy in the least, but he was not going to argue with her, nor get drawn into further conversation. And yet she offered her name.
‘I’m Meg, by the way.’
He didn’t really want to know her name.
‘Meg Hamilton.’
‘Niklas.’ He gave up that detail reluctantly.
‘I really am sorry about that. I’ll be fine now. I don’t have a problem with flying—it’s just take-off that I absolutely loathe.’
‘What about landing?’
‘Oh, I’m fine with that.’
‘Then you have never flown into São Paulo,’ Niklas said.
‘Is that where you are from?’
He nodded, and then pulled out the menu and started to read it—before remembering that he was going to be moving seats. He pushed his bell to summon the stewardess.
‘Is it a busy airport, then?’
He looked over to where Meg sat as if he had forgotten that she was even there, let alone the conversation they had been having.
‘Very.’ He nodded, and then saw that the flight attendant was approaching with a bottle of champagne. Clearly she must have thought he had rung for a drink—after all, they knew his preferences—but as he opened his mouth to voice his complaint Niklas conceded that it might be a little rude to ask to be moved in front of Meg.
He would have this drink, Niklas decided, and then he would get up and go and have a quiet word with the attendant. Or an angry one if that did not work. He watched as his champagne was poured and then, perhaps aware that her eyes were trained on him, he turned, irritated.
‘Did you want a drink as well?’
‘Please.’ She smiled.
‘That is what your bell is for,’ he retorted. She didn’t seem to realise that he was being sarcastic, so he gave in and, rolling his eyes, ordered another glass. Meg was soon sipping on her beverage.
It tasted delicious, bubbly and icy-cold, and would hopefully halt her nervous chatter—except it didn’t. It seemed that a mixture of nerves about flying and the fact that she had never been around someone so drop-dead gorgeous before resulted in her mouth simply not being able to stop.
‘It seems wrong to be drinking at ten a.m.’ She heard her own voice again and could happily have kicked herself—except then he would perhaps have her certified. Meg simply didn’t know what was wrong with her.
Niklas didn’t answer. His mind was already back to thinking about work, or rather thinking about all the things he needed to get finalised so that he could actually take some proper time off.
He was going to take some time off. He had not stopped for the last six months at the very least, and he was really looking forward to being back in Brazil, the country he loved, to the food he adored and the woman who adored him and who knew how it was …
He would take two or perhaps three weeks, and he was going to use every minute of them indulging in life’s simple but expensively prepared pleasures—beautiful women and amazing food and then more of the same.
He let out a long breath as he thought about it—a long breath that sounded a lot like a sigh. A bored sigh, even—except how could that be? Niklas asked himself. He had everything a man could want and had worked hard to get it—worked hard to ensure he would never go back to where he had come from.
And he had ensured it, Niklas told himself; he could stop for a little while now. A decent stretch in Brazil would sort this restless feeling out. He thought of the flight home, of the plane landing in São Paulo, and as he did he surprised himself. His champagne was finished. He could get up now and have that word with the flight attendant. But instead Niklas turned and spoke with her.
With Meg.
CHAPTER TWO
‘SãO PAULO IS very densely populated.’
They were well over the water now, and she was gazing out at it, but she turned to the sound of his voice and Niklas tried to explain the land that he loved, the mile after mile after mile of never-ending city.
‘It is something that is hard to explain unless you have seen it, but as the plane descends you fly over the city for very a long time. Congonhas Airport is located just a couple of miles from downtown …’
He told Meg about the short runway and the difficult approach and the physics of it as she looked at him slightly aghast.
‘If the weather is bad I would imagine the captain and crew and most paulistanos …’ He saw her frown and explained it a little differently. ‘If you come from Sao Paulo or know about the airport then you are holding your breath just a little as the plane comes into land.’ He smiled at her shocked expression. ‘There have been many near-misses—accidents too …’
What a horrible thing to tell her! What a completely inappropriate thing for him to say at this moment! And she had thought him so nice—well, nice-looking at least. ‘You’re not helping at all!’
‘But I am. I have flown in and out of Congonhas Airport more times than I can remember and I’m still here to tell the tale … You really have nothing to worry about.’
‘Except that I’m scared of landing now too.’
‘Don’t waste time in fear,’ Niklas said, and then stood to retrieve his computer. He did not usually indulge in idle chatter, and certainly not while flying, but she had been so visibly nervous during take-off, and it had been quite pleasant talking her around. Now she was sitting quietly, staring out of the window, and perhaps he did not have to think about moving seats after all.
The flight steward started to serve some appetizers, and Meg had an inkling that Mr Dos Santos was being treated with some tasty little selections from the first-class menu—because there were a few little treats that certainly weren’t on the business class one—and, given that she was sitting next to him, by default Meg was offered them too.
‘Wild Iranian caviar on buckwheat blinis, with sour cream and dill,’ the flight attendant purred to him, but Niklas was too busy to notice the selection placed in front of him. Instead he was setting up a workstation, and Meg heard his hiss of frustration as he had to move his computer to the side. Clearly he was missing his first-class desk!
‘There is no room—’ He stopped himself, realizing that he sounded like someone who complained all the time. He didn’t usually—because he didn’t have to. His PA, Carla, ensured that everything ran smoothly in his busy life. But Carla simply hadn’t been able to work her magic today, and the fact was between here and LA Niklas had a lot to get done. ‘I have a lot of work to do.’ He didn’t have to justify his dark mood, but he did. ‘I have a meeting scheduled an hour after landing. I was hoping to use this time to prepare. It really is inconvenient.’
‘You’ll have to get your own plane!’ Meg teased. ‘Keep it on standby …’
‘I did!’ he said. Meg blinked. ‘And for two months or so it was great. I really thought it was the best thing I had ever done. And then …’ He shrugged and got back to his laptop, one hand crunching numbers, the other picking all the little pieces of dill off the top of the blinis before eating them.