The Hostage Bride

Within a moment she was upright again, sliding safely into the car, her dress unharmed, her position secure, and nothing but another wave of colour to give any indication of the near disaster that had just been avoided.

‘Th-thank you,’ she managed, shockingly aware of the fact that it was his closeness, the feel of that strength under her clutching fingertips that had put the breathless, uneven note into her voice and not any thought of the fall she had almost had.

‘De nada.’

Strong hands arranged the folds of her skirt so that they were well away from the door, smoothed down her veil, his touch cool and totally impersonal. With the harsh force of those searching eyes turned away from her, his gaze fixed on what he was doing, Felicity found that some of the disturbing tension was seeping from her body.

She had to have been overreacting, she told herself. Had to be jumping to conclusions that were totally unjustified. She had been letting her imagination run away with her and had ended up creating a situation where none had existed.

‘Thank you,’ she said again, more confidently this time and when the chauffeur lifted his head again she managed to switch on a smile, directing it straight into the deep pools of his eyes.

There was no response. Nothing but the blankest, coldest stare she had ever encountered, one that turned her blood to ice in her veins and had her sinking back against the seat in sheer horror.

Her thoughts were still reeling as if that glare had been an actual physical blow so that she barely noticed the way he moved sharply, closing the door on her with a firm, decisive thud. It was only when he moved smoothly and unhurriedly round to the front of the car that she registered that all was not as she had anticipated.

Her father was still in the house, and…

‘Just a minute…’

He ignored her, swinging long legs into the car and turning the key in the ignition in almost the same moment that he slammed the door to. With the Rolls in gear, he set it in motion, steering one-handed as he pulled something from his pocket and held it up. Her stomach clenching on sudden panic, Felicity realised that what he held was a mobile phone.

‘Okay,’ he snapped into it, his eyes on the drive ahead of him. ‘Mission accomplished. You can stop now.’

‘I said, just a minute!’

She was twisting in her seat, looking back to the house, watching it recede as the car picked up speed.

‘Did you hear me? We can’t leave yet—my father…’

The words died on her lips as the full realisation of what he had said hit home like a blow to her heart.

Mission accomplished. You can stop now.

Leaning forward, she banged hard on the glass panel that separated her from the driver.

‘What are you doing? Where are we going? You can’t…’

He ignored her. Thumbing off the mobile, he dropped it back into his pocket and put his hand on the steering wheel instead. With a faint roar of the engine he changed up a gear, pressed his foot on the accelerator.

‘You have to stop! My father…’

Some tiny movement of his eyes, a swift glance in the rear-view mirror, alerted her. Twisting once more in her seat, she could only watch in despair as behind her she saw her father, alerted by the sound of the engine, running to the door of the house. Coming to an abrupt halt he could only stand and stare after them, shock, disbelief and total bemusement in every line of his body.

But already they were too far away for her to read his face. She saw him raise an arm, gesticulating wildly, knew that he had opened his mouth to shout but his cries were inaudible.

And then she knew. Realised just what had happened. The phone call that had distracted her father as they had left the house had been deliberately planned. It had been organised by this man to coincide exactly with their appearance, to keep her father occupied just long enough to get her into the car…

Dad!

The word formed in her brain but she was too shocked, too stunned to be able to voice it. Instead she could only watch in despair as the car accelerated again, the distance between them increasing even more. Then with one last twist of the wheel they rounded a bend in the drive and the house and her father disappeared from sight.

She was on her own, she realised fearfully. Completely on her own with this unnerving, frightening stranger.

And it was when they turned left at the bottom of the drive, in the opposite direction to the way they should have headed for the church and her wedding that she really began to worry.

CHAPTER TWO

‘JUST what do you think you’re doing?’

Giving into panic was quite the wrong approach, Felicity told herself. Okay, so she had been badly thrown for a minute there, but really there was no need for that. This wasn’t the nightmare it seemed. No, there was simply some mistake, that was all.

‘I said… Oh, can’t you just slow down a bit?’

Had he even heard her? The solid, square set of his back seemed impervious as a brick wall and, with his face turned firmly in the direction they were travelling, his eyes on the road ahead, there was no way she could even read his expression or judge if she was getting through to him.

‘You’re going the wrong way!’

No response. Not even a flicker of a glance in her direction, not a turn of his head. If anything, his grip seemed to tighten on the steering wheel and the car engine roared again as the speedometer needle crept up.

Scrabbling frantically, Felicity managed to inch the glass panel open just a little bit and lean forward with her face close against it, her mouth in the open space.

‘I said, you’re going the wrong way.’

She tried to make the words sound as clear and definite as possible. After all, she was forgetting that he wasn’t English—what was he? Spanish? Perhaps he just didn’t understand what she was saying. Perhaps the few sentences he had spoken had been the full extent of his English, for all that they had been spoken with such apparent ease.

‘Listen to me! You’re…’

Frantically she scrabbled about in her memory for the scattered remnants of the minimal Spanish she had picked up during a holiday there a couple of years ago.

‘V-vaya—el camino malo,’ she managed, knowing it was far from grammatically correct but at least it expressed what she meant.

Unbelievably, that beautifully shaped mouth twitched, twisting into a faint smile of mockery at her stumbling attempt at translation.

‘Voy el camino correcto,’ he shot back at her. Then, confounding her foolish belief that he hadn’t understood a word she had been saying, he added sardonically, ‘I am on precisely the right road. It’s just not the direction you expected to be travelling in today.’

And while she was still gaping in stunned disbelief he added curtly, ‘But wherever we’re going, if you’re sensible you’ll sit back and fasten your safety belt. Right now the way that you’re behaving is not only dangerous, it’s against the law and—’

‘Against the law?’

Felicity couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Against the law? You—you’re—abducting me—and you’re worried about breaking the law on seat belts? Why, you…!’

With a desperate effort she managed to push the dividing window open just a little bit more and get her hand through, banging her fingers down hard on his shoulder.

‘Stop this car at once! Stop it, I say!’

When he made no response but simply focused his dark-eyed gaze on the road ahead, she resorted to the only thing she could think of to get his attention. Driven past caring for her own safety, she reached up and caught hold of a strand of jet black hair that she could see underneath the uniform cap and pulled hard.