Bridal Bargains

Spying a long white terry-towelling robe hanging behind the bathroom door made her mind up for her. And with a sudden determination that eventually turned into a panting frustration she struggled out of her dirty clothes.

She only hoped that Althea wasn’t long, because there was no way she was putting those clothes back on her body, she decided as she stood there, naked, giving the small pile in the corner of the bathroom a distasteful glare before turning away from it.

Which was when she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror that was fixed to one of the tiled walls, and all normal thought processes stalled for the moment as dismay completely froze her.

She looked as if someone had given her a good beating. The cut at her temple was pretty minor but the lump that had formed beneath it was distorting the shape of her face! And the bruising on the left-hand side of her lower ribcage had already begun to turn an ugly back and blue.

But that wasn’t all of it, she noted woefully. Not nearly all of it. Though the rest was purely personal. A painfully personal view of herself as the man downstairs must have been seeing her each time those dark eyes had settled on her, she realised with a small shudder.

How much weight had she actually lost? she asked herself as she stood there feeling the shock of self-awareness ricochet through her for the first time since her mother had died.

Two months ago she’d had a nice figure—even if she did say so herself! Slender and sleek, not thin and bony! Even her breasts … these small, pointed breasts had absolutely no fullness left in them!

And her hair … Her good hand went up to touch her lank, lifeless hair where it hung around her pale and sadly hollowed-out face.

What had she been doing to herself? Where had she gone? She used to be happy, bright, always smiling, with hair and skin that glowed with health, and a well cared for, athletic body. Not this thin, lank, dull-eyed person who looked as if she’d been kicked black and blue.

She was suddenly filled with an almost overwhelming urge to toss herself in the corner of the bathroom where her ruined clothes lay discarded!

Yet, surprisingly, seeing a vivid picture of herself, sitting there slumped in the corner along with her torn shirt and dirty jeans, was so comical that she laughed.

By the time she had managed to have a shower and shampoo her hair whilst keeping her plaster-cast dry by winding her arm around the outside of the cubical wall whilst the other hand did all the work, she emerged from the steamy confines refreshed, smelling sweet, and feeling generally a whole lot better all round. Mainly, she suspected, because she’d managed to do it all for herself without having to ask for any help.

Encouraged by her own success and thinking on her feet now, she decided to let the terry bathrobe do the job of soaking up the excess moisture from her skin so she didn’t have to jar her bruises by attempting to dry herself with a towel. In fact, the only task that defeated her was knotting the robe belt around her middle. And that was such a minor thing after all the other obstacles she had so successfully negotiated that she thought nothing more about it as she walked back into the bedroom, dabbing a towel at her damp hair—only to stop dead in her tracks.

‘Oh!’ The stifled exclamation of surprise left her throat like a sigh, yet he heard it, and it brought him twisting on his heel to face her. Then, for a few short, thickening moments, neither of them moved again.

It’s like having time stand still, Claire thought as she stared at his lean, dark face and felt the strangest sensation wash over her—like a sharp implement being drawn down her backbone, setting off a sensory chain reaction that had her whole system tingling.

Then he spoke. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ he bit out. ‘Do you have to look so disturbed that you find me here? I have not come to ravish you—though it may be prudent for you to—do something about the robe,’ he suggested, with a grim flick of the hand that sent her wide eyes jerking downwards.

In an agony of dismay she dropped the towel so she could whip the two sides of the robe together across her naked front, then clamped them there with her plastered wrist.

‘Have you never heard of knocking?’ she choked, almost suffocating in her own embarrassment.

‘I did knock,’ he replied. ‘But when I received no answer I let myself in, believing you may well be sleeping.’

‘Which makes it all right, does it?’ She flashed him a hot, resentful glance. ‘You see nothing wrong in coming into a guest’s bedroom while she sleeps in blissful ignorance of your presence?’

If she said all of that to hit back at him for embarrassing her, it didn’t work. All he did was throw up his arrogant head and glare at her as if he was waiting for her to apologise for his intrusion!

Then he let out an impatient sigh. ‘This is all so unnecessarily foolish,’ he muttered, and began striding towards her with the kind of purpose that had Claire backing warily.

‘Stop it!’ he hissed, reaching down to grab hold of the two ends of the robe belt that were hanging at either side of her. With a firm yank he brought her to a standstill, then proceeded to tower over her like some avenging dark angel.

He was angry, she could see that. But there was something else going on behind that hard, tight expression that seriously disturbed her—though at that moment she wasn’t sure why.

Then he bent towards her. He’s going to kiss me! she thought wildly, and gasped out some kind of shaky little protest as her heart gave a painful thump against her ribs then began palpitating madly when panic erupted in a roaring mad rush that set her brain spinning.

What he actually did do was knot her robe belt around her middle. It was like being on a helter-skelter ride of out-of-control emotion. Instead of feeling high as a kite on panic, she suddenly felt dizzy with the effects of a sinking relief.

Then he kissed her.

And after everything else that had gone before it she had nothing—nothing left to fight him with. The sense of relief had relaxed all the tension out of her, so he caught her undefended, his mouth crushing hers with a ruthless precision that literally shocked her breathless.

Warm, smooth, very knowledgeable lips fused warmly with hers. Blue eyes wide open with shock and staring, she found herself looking straight down into the black abyss of his. The rest of her followed, free-falling into that terrible darkness without the means to stop herself.

Then he was gone. As abruptly as he had made the contact, he withdrew it.

‘Now be afraid,’ he grimly invited, and while she stood there just staring at him with huge blank blue eyes he turned on his heel and strode off to the other side of the room.

In the sizzling taut silence which followed she could have heard a pin drop on the thick carpet beneath her bare feet. She was too stunned to speak and he was obviously still too angry.

For anger it had been that had made him kiss her like that; she wasn’t so punch-drunk as not to have recognised that. It had been a kiss to punish, not a kiss to frighten. He had already warned her several times today that he reacted badly to challenge.

Well, she had just received personal experience of that bad reaction, Claire acknowledged. ‘If you ever do that again, I will scratch your eyes out,’ she informed him shakily.

‘Before or after you expose your body to me?’

He was such a merciless devil! If her legs hadn’t felt so shaky she would have gone over there and scratched his eyes out anyway!

Then she remembered what it had felt like to fall into them, and shivered, the will to fight shrivelling out of her because she never wanted to risk looking into those eyes like that again.

So instead she began looking around her in a rather dazed effort to remember what she had been doing when she’d discovered him here.

She saw the white towel lying on the deep blue carpet and remembered she had been using it to dry the excess water off her wet hair. Knowing that bending to pick it up again was completely beyond her physical abilities at the moment, she ignored the towel and went over to the dressing table where, earlier, she had spied a hairbrush.

He was standing with his back to her, in front of a polished wood tallboy inside which, Althea had shown her, were housed a television set and a very expensive-looking music system.

The room with everything, she thought sarcastically, and grimaced as she picked up the hairbrush and began drawing it through her damp hair.

‘What are you here for anyway?’ she asked, needing to break through the silence. ‘I presume you did have a reason to come in here?’

He turned, stiff, tense, and supremely remote—like a man sitting alone on the top of a mountain, she thought, and felt a return of her earlier sense of humour at the absurd image.

No apology forthcoming this time, she noted, and the smile actually reached her eyes.

He saw it, didn’t like it and frowned, something interestingly like the pompous male equivalent to a blush streaking a hint of colour across his dark cheekbones. Fascinated by that, Claire turned more fully to face him so she could see how he was going to deal with this momentary loss of his precious composure.

Recognising exactly what she was doing and why, he released a heavy sigh. ‘How are the ribs?’

Ah, a diversion, she noted. ‘Sore,’ she replied, telling the blunt truth of it.

‘And the wrist?’

‘Agony,’ she grimaced.

‘Then maybe I did the right thing coming in here to bring you—these …’ He was holding up a small bottle of what had to be tablets. ‘Pain-killers,’ he explained. ‘Issued by the hospital. I forgot I had them.’

Half turning, he placed the bottle on the top of the tallboy. Then he turned back to Claire. ‘Where is your sling?’

Glancing down to where her plastered wrist was hanging heavily at her side, ‘I must have left it in the bathroom,’ she replied, putting down the hairbrush so she could use her hand to lift the cast into a more comfortable position resting against her middle.

Without another word he strode off, his composure intact now, and his arrogance along with it, she observed as she watched him disappear into the bathroom then come out again carrying the modern version of a sling in his hand.

About to approach her, he paused, thought twice about it, then—sardonically—requested, ‘May I?’

Her wry half nod gave her permission and he came forward. By then she had moved to ease herself into a sitting position on the edge of the dressing table, so he really towered over her this time as he coolly looped the sling-belt over her head then gently took hold of her plastered wrist.

‘You didn’t even get it wet,’ he remarked.

‘I’m a very clever girl,’ she answered lightly.

‘And sometimes,’ he drawled, ‘you are very reckless and naïve.’

‘How you can make such a sweeping remark about me when you’ve barely known me for a day is beyond me,’ she threw right back. Then she broke the banter to issue a wince and a groan as he gently eased the weighty plaster-cast into its support.

Instantly his eyes flicked upwards to her face, wondrously lustrous curling black lashes coiling away from those dangerous black holes to reveal—not anger, but genuine concern.

‘How much pain are you actually in?’ he demanded huskily.

A lot, she wanted to say, but tempered the reply to a rueful, ‘Some,’ that was supposed to have sounded careless but ended up quivering as it left her.

The anger came back then. ‘How much and where?’ He grimly insisted on a truthful answer.

‘All over,’ she confessed as all hint of flippancy drained right out of her and her throat began to thicken with pathetic, weak tears.

On a soft curse, he moved away from her again, going back into the bathroom to return carrying a glass of water. Not even glancing her way, he strode across the room to pick up the pill bottle. Coming back, he handed her the glass of water then shook two small pills into his palm. In grim silence he offered them to her. And in tearful silence she took them and washed them down with the water.

A tear trickled down her cheek. She went to wipe it away with the glass—but he got there before her, his long fingers gently splaying across her damp hair while he smoothed his thumb pad across her cheek.

And the worst of it was, she wanted to lean right into those splayed fingers. She wanted to bury her face in his big hard chest and sob her wretched heart out!

‘I can’t even stand up!’ she confessed despairingly. ‘My hip’s gone all stiff—and my thigh and my ribs!’

A moment later she was being lifted into his arms and it hurt like blazes but she didn’t care.

‘I am such a pathetic baby!’ she sobbed as he carried her across the room towards the bed.

‘You are hurt. You are shocked. You are exhausted,’ he responded sternly. ‘Which means you are allowed to be pathetic.’

A joke! She laughed, and the tears stopped.

Laying her carefully on the bed, he reached across her and flipped the other side of the king-size duvet over her. His face was still stern, but she found she liked looking at it now.

‘How old are you?’ she asked curiously.

He paused as he was about to straighten. Looked into pool-deep blue eyes—and offered her a cold little grimace. ‘As old as the hills,’ he drawled—and stood back. ‘Now rest,’ he ordered. ‘And let the pain-killers do their job. We eat in …’ he took a quick glance at the paper-thin gold watch he had wrapped around his hair-peppered wrist ‘… two hours. By then Althea should be back with your things. So you may get up and join me for dinner downstairs, or you can eat up here. The choice is yours.’

With that he turned and was gone. It was like having the fire go out suddenly, Claire decided with a shiver, then frowned, wondering why she was comparing him to a fire when he was more like a freezer most of the time …

She went downstairs for dinner. Mainly because she didn’t want to be a bigger nuisance to these people than she was already being—and because she was desperate to see Melanie, who was being bathed and fed by Lefka while Althea unpacked Claire’s clothes then helped her to dress in a fresh pair of jeans and a simple black tee shirt that was loose enough and baggy enough to pull on and off without causing her too much trouble.

Althea showed her into a large drawing room that was nicely decorated in champagne golds and soft greens. Another fire was burning in the grate and the soft sounds of classical music floated soothingly in the air.

Andreas was there, dressed in a fresh pale blue shirt and a pair of steel-grey trousers that sat neatly on his lean waist. But what really surprised her was to find him holding Melanie comfortably at his shoulder.

‘You look better,’ he remarked, bringing her eyes up from the baby to find him running his gaze over her now shiny gold hair. It had dried on its own while she’d rested and really needed styling, but its own slight kink had saved it from looking a complete fly-away mess.

‘I feel it,’ she nodded, with a smile that brought his eyes into focus on hers. Whatever it was that was written in those dark depths, Claire suddenly found herself remembering that kiss earlier, and had to break the contact quickly before she embarrassed herself by blushing.

‘How has she been?’ she then asked anxiously, looking back at Melanie who looked so tiny against the broad expanse of his chest.

‘Like an angel,’ he drawled. ‘So Lefka informs me. She is smitten,’ he confided—then said more softly, ‘And I cannot blame her.’

He really meant it, too, Claire realised as she briefly flicked her eyes back to his face to find it softening as he glanced at the baby.

‘She is awake. Would you like to hold her?’

‘Oh, yes, please …’ No one—unless they’d experienced it—could know what it felt like to be separated from the baby she had taken care of single-handedly since their mother had died.

‘Perhaps if you sit down on one of the comfortable chairs then you can cradle her in your lap,’ he suggested.

Claire didn’t need telling twice; walking over to one of the champagne-coloured easy chairs, she sank carefully into its comfort-soft cushions then eagerly accepted the baby.

The moment that Melanie saw Claire’s face smiling down on her, her tiny mouth broke into a welcoming smile.

‘She knows you,’ he said, sounding surprised.

‘Of course,’ Claire answered. ‘I’m her surrogate mother—aren’t I, my darling?’

After that she completely forgot about Andreas Markopoulou, who, after a moment or two, lowered himself into the chair opposite them then sat looking on as Claire immersed herself in the sheer pleasure of her mother’s baby, talking softly to her while Melanie looked and listened with rapt attention.

Dinner was pleasant. Nothing fancy, just simple but tasty vegetable soup followed by boiled rice and thin slivers of pan-fried chicken that she could easily manage to eat by only using her fork.

Refusing the deep red full-blooded wine he was drinking with his meal, she asked for water instead. And they talked quietly. Well, she talked—Claire made the wry distinction—while he encouraged her with strategically placed questions that resulted in her whole life to date getting aired at that dinner table.

When she eventually sat back, talked-out and replete, having refused any dessert to finish her meal, she made herself ask the question that had been troubling her on and off throughout the whole day.

Only one day? She paused to consider this with a small start of surprise. It was beginning to feel as if she’d spent a whole lifetime here with this strangely attentive, very intriguing and enigmatic man.

‘Why did you send my aunt away?’ she asked him.

He sat back in his own chair to idly finger his wineglass while he studied her face through faintly narrowed eyes.

‘She was never very close to you or your mother, was she?’ he said, frustratingly blocking the question with a question.

Still, Claire answered it. ‘They never got on,’ she admitted with a shrug. ‘My mother was …’ She stopped, her soft mouth twisting slightly because what she was going to say sounded as if she was being critical of a mother she’d adored—when in actual fact it wasn’t a criticism but a flat statement of fact. ‘A bit frivolous.’ She made herself say it. ‘Aunt Laura was the older sister. Much tougher and … less pretty,’ she added with wry honesty.

‘People liked to spoil my mother.’ Even I did, she thought, glancing at those slightly narrowed, intent black eyes then away again quickly. ‘Aunt Laura would have bitten their heads off for trying the same thing with her,’ she went on. ‘She’s a staunch feminist with a good business brain and she likes to use it.’

He nodded in agreement and once again Claire felt herself being subtly encouraged to continue. ‘She has no time for—sentimentality.’ Claire thought that described her aunt best. ‘Her philosophy is that if something goes wrong you either fix it or throw it away and start from scratch again,’ she explained sadly.

‘And which category do you and Melanie come under?’

‘She wants me to have Melanie adopted,’ she replied, her expression turning cynical. ‘So you tell me because I still haven’t decided whether that particular solution is supposed to be fixing us or throwing us out.’

‘Which means,’ he concluded, ‘that you also have not decided whether to take her advice or not.’

Shrewd devil, Claire thought bitterly, and rose tensely to her feet as the rotten truth in that statement hit sharply home. ‘Why don’t you try answering my question for a change?’ she flashed back in sheer bloody reaction. ‘And tell me why you sent her away when it has to be obvious that we needed her here right now!’

‘I don’t need to answer the question,’ he replied, super-calm in the face of her sudden hostility. ‘For you have just answered it for yourself.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded frowningly, not understanding what he was getting at.

He didn’t seem inclined to explain it either, she observed as he sat there, eyes hooded, face grim while he stared fixedly at his wineglass as if he was weighing up his options.

But—what options? Claire wondered in despairing confusion. She didn’t even know why she knew what he was doing! Yet the suggestion stuck while she stood there simmering with frustration and anger, waiting for him to make up his mind.

Then he announced, ‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ and got to his feet, obviously having made that decision! ‘But we will go through to my study before I say any more. For we require privacy and it cannot be guaranteed here when Lefka or Althea could walk in at any moment.’

With that he turned and strode off, obviously expecting Claire to follow him. She did so, frowning and tense again—very tense as every suspicious thought she’d had about this man and his motives came rushing back.

By the time Claire arrived at the study door he was already standing across the room where a tray of bottles stood on an antique oak sideboard.

‘Please shut the door behind you,’ he instructed without turning.

Doing as he said, she watched in silence as he selected, uncapped and poured a rather large measure of a dark golden spirit into a squat crystal tumbler.

Clearly, he needed something more fortifying than wine before he put his proposition to her! she noted, and felt her wary tension move up another couple of notches as she waited for him to speak.

‘I sent your aunt out of the country on business today,’ he began quite suddenly, ‘because I decided to get her about as far away from you as I could possibly manage.’

Claire gave a surprised start. ‘But—why?’ she gasped. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

He didn’t answer immediately; instead the glass went to his mouth so he could sip at the spirit, gathering tension all around them as it did so.

It was odd—that tension—full of a tingling sense of dark foreboding that even he seemed affected by. As Claire stood there by the door with her wary eyes fixed on his hard, lean face, she gained the strong impression that, despite the decision he seemed to have come to in the dining room, he was still heavily involved in a rather uncharacteristic struggle with himself.

‘I have a—personal problem that is threatening to cause me a certain amount of—embarrassment,’ he said suddenly. ‘I do have a workable solution, however,’ he added, glancing back at his glass and tipping it slightly so the golden liquid clung to the sides. ‘But it requires a wife and a child to succeed. Meeting you today,’ he went on levelly, ‘seeing where you live and, more importantly, how you live—it occurred to me that you may well be the ideal candidate for the position …’

‘What position?’ Claire asked, utterly lost as to what he was getting at.

He grimaced into his glass—she presumed because she was forcing him into being more explicit about what he was talking about.

‘As my wife,’ he enlightened her. Then, when she still continued to stand there blank-faced and frowning in bewilderment, he lifted his eyes until they fixed sardonically on hers and said, ‘I am asking you to marry me, Claire …’

CHAPTER FOUR

CLAIRE released a gasp in stunned disbelief. ‘You want to marry me?’ she repeated.

Then, almost instantly, she decided, No, I’ve heard him wrong, and laughed—or rather emitted a nervous little giggle that she regretted as soon as it left her lips because the effect it had on him made her feel cruel, as his lean face closed up as tight as a drum.

He’s actually serious! she realised. She felt her legs threaten to collapse beneath her and had to move over to one of the dark red recliners and lower herself carefully into it.

‘Please do not misunderstand me,’ he said, suddenly standing high on his mountain of dignity again. ‘I am not suggesting an intimate relationship. Just a—marriage of convenience if you like. Where we will maintain an appearance of intimacy. But that is all …’