The Blackmailed Bridegroom

‘Why? She was in love with you once, whether you like it or not. And that was before you developed into the man you are today. Do you think I haven’t noticed the way women react to you? You could make any woman fall in love with you. A girl like Paige should be a cinch.’

‘But I don’t want Paige to fall in love with me,’ he pointed out icily. ‘And I don’t want to marry her.’ Her, least of all, he thought angrily.

‘Why?’

Antonio did not feel like explaining that he’d been in love very deeply once, with the daughter of his previous boss. He’d thought Lauren had loved him as much as he’d loved her. But when push had come to shove she hadn’t been prepared to actually marry an Italian migrant with a questionable background and nothing to his name but his modest salary as a wine salesman. She’d just been slumming for a while, before moving on from her cosy, cushy life as a rich man’s daughter to the cosy, cushy life of a rich’s man’s wife.

He’d stupidly turned up at her house on the night of her engagement party and made a big scene. Naturally, he’d been given the sack, with no references. It had been several months before he’d been able to get another job, during which he’d practically had to eat the paint off the walls. When Conrad had hired him to be his assistant and interpreter he’d been eternally grateful, even though he suspected he’d been the only applicant who could speak the five languages Conrad required during his business trips overseas.

Antonio had worked his guts out to get where he was today. He had no intention of giving it up for anyone, or of sharing his life with the same sort of silly, selfish, shallow creature who’d once almost destroyed him.

‘When and if I marry, Conrad,’ he said with cold fury, ‘it will be because I’m so much in love that I couldn’t bear not to.’ Which was about as likely as Conrad himself breasting the altar once more.

When his boss said nothing to this, Antonio’s black eyes narrowed. ‘If I don’t agree with this plan of yours, is it going to cost me my job?’

‘No, of course not!’ Conrad denied expansively. ‘What kind of man do you take me for?’

Antonio hesitated to say. But you didn’t get to be one of the richest men in Australia by being full of the milk of human kindness. Over the six years in Conrad’s employ, Antonio had gleaned a lot of information about his boss.

Conrad had started out with nothing, as the son of penniless Polish migrants, changing his name from Fortuneski to Fortune and getting in on the ground floor with television in Australia when it had started, in the fifties, working behind the camera at first before forming his own production company and buying the Australian rights to a successful American game show. It had made him his first million. More game shows had followed, and more millions. Then, in the late sixties, he’d tried one of the first soaps made in Australia, an outrageously sexy series which had made its name with scandalous storylines. Serious millions had begun to roll in, and Fortune Productions had never looked back. Neither had its ambitious bachelor owner.

Conrad had lived and breathed his work, and had had no intention of getting married. But then, in his mid-forties, Conrad had made the mistake of giving his then housekeeper carte blanche to hire and fire staff, and she’d taken on Paige’s mother to serve at table. During a misguided interlude after a rather lengthy and boozy dinner party, Paige had been conceived.

Once presented with the reality of a child-to-be, Conrad had done the right thing and married the woman. He’d been hoping for a son and heir to take over the business. Instead, Paige had been born.

It had not been a happy union, and when his wife of one year had run off to America with a salesman, Conrad hadn’t been shattered. Antonio imagined that his boss also hadn’t lost much sleep over the news, a few years later, that his errant wife had been found dead in a New York hotel room of a drug overdose.

He was not a sentimental man.

‘I’m planning on retiring at the end of the year,’ Conrad went on now, snapping Antonio back to the matter at hand. ‘I’ll be moving permanently to my home in the Bahamas. When I do, the position of CEO of Fortune Productions will become vacant. I intend to promote you, Antonio,’ he said, and Antonio sucked in a sharp breath. ‘But only if you’re my son-in-law at the time,’ Conrad finished.

Antonio exhaled with a rush. ‘Damn and blast it, Conrad, that’s blackmail!’

‘No. That’s good business. Who better to look after one’s interests but family? You, as a born and bred Italian, should appreciate that.’

Antonio kept his temper with difficulty. ‘And if I refuse?’ he bit out.

‘I’ll make the same offer to Brock Masters. I imagine he could handle both jobs almost as well.’

Antonio gritted his teeth. Brock Masters was head of the North American Division. Publicly, he was all capped teeth and false charm, in Antonio’s opinion. Handsome as Satan, but privately he had the morals of the Marquis de Sade.

‘He’ll ruin the company,’ Antonio warned. ‘And he’ll destroy your daughter,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘If you think that, Antonio,’ Conrad said smoothly, ‘you know what to do.’

‘You’re a ruthless devil, do you know that?’

‘Takes one to know one.’

‘Yet you want me to marry your daughter!’

‘She needs a real man for a change. One who will keep her on her toes in order to keep him. And one who can give her what she keeps looking for.’

‘Which is?’

‘What all women want. Love, of course.’

‘For pity’s sake, Conrad, you know darned well I don’t love her.’

Conrad shrugged. ‘What’s love but an illusion anyway? Just tell Paige you love her. The silly little fool won’t know the difference, as long as the sex is good. And the sex will be good, I’m sure. The way the ladies chase after you—even after one short evening in your bed—speaks volumes for your abilities in that department.’

Antonio stared at the man. He almost felt sorry for Paige, having such a cold-blooded bastard for a parent. He could not understand how a father could do such a thing to his daughter.

Still, Antonio was not a fool. He knew if he knocked Conrad back on this he was finished at Fortune Productions. Brock Masters hated his guts. Antonio supposed he could quit and find another job with a rival company, settle back and watch the rot set in at Fortune Productions. It would serve Conrad right if he did just that.

But pride in a job well done—and in the company—would not let him seriously consider such an action. And then there was the added image of Paige, being seduced, corrupted and destroyed by an amoral, cocaine-snorting pervert.

Antonio’s stomach turned over. A silly little fool she might be, but she didn’t deserve that.

‘Under the circumstances,’ he said, in that coolly ruthless voice which emerged when he was cornered, ‘I will expect something in writing.’

Conrad beamed. ‘But of course, Antonio. I’ll have it ready for you when you come to dinner here tonight.’

Antonio frowned. ‘Tonight?’

‘I thought the sooner you got started the better. After all, you have to be back in London in a fortnight. A whirlwind romance is just what the doctor ordered. I see no reason why Paige shouldn’t travel back with you, once she’s wearing your engagement ring.’

‘You expect her to agree to marry me in two short weeks?’

‘You’ve negotiated more difficult contracts in much faster time, Antonio. Speaking of contracts, the day you marry Paige you will have your contract as CEO of Fortune Productions, plus I will give you the deeds to this house as a wedding present.’

‘No, thank you, Conrad. The contract will do. I wouldn’t want to live here.’ Even if he could tolerate the space, he didn’t want to be surrounded by Conrad’s extra ears.

Conrad smiled. ‘I had a feeling you’d say that. Shall we expect you around seven-thirty, then?’

‘Are you sure Paige will still be here?’ Antonio commented caustically.

‘I should think so. Her latest boyfriend gave her quite a scare.’

‘Oh?’

‘He hit her.’

Antonio was surprised at how angry this news made him. There again, violence against women had always pushed savage buttons in him. ‘I gather you know this charmer’s name and address?’ he ground out.

‘Actually, no, I don’t.’

‘But you always know where Paige is living and who with!’