The Blackmailed Bridegroom

Still being in love with Antonio was insane. She could see that. But recognising the stupidity of her feelings seemed to make no difference.

Brad had talked her out of her ‘infatuation’ for a while, had made her temporarily believe it was nothing but a schoolgirl crush, a romantic obsession which had nothing to do with reality.

‘You don’t even know the man,’ he’d reasoned with her during the dark days after Antonio’s visit to the beach-house. ‘Your love’s a figment of your romantic teenage imagination, conjured up because you need someone to love, and to love you back. But it’s not real, Paige. It’s a destructive self-indulgence to keep harbouring such a one-sided obsession. Let it go, love. Let him go.’

So she had, for a while, and eventually she’d settled for a different sort of love with Brad than the one she’d dreamt of in Antonio’s arms.

Still, looking back, she did not regret it. Brad had been kind to her. Kind and understanding and undemanding. He’d taught her a lot about the sort of person she was, made her see that she was very intelligent, despite not having done too well at school. He’d even encouraged her to go to the local tech and finish her schooling, which she had. She might still have been with him if one stormy afternoon and an unforgiving sea hadn’t ended their carefree and easygoing co-existence.

She’d stayed on at the beach-house for a few weeks. Brad had always paid the rent ahead in three-month lots. But in the end loneliness—and curiosity, perhaps—had sent her back home to Sydney, to Fortune Hall, her father, and Antonio.

A big mistake.

For nothing had changed.

Nothing.

She hadn’t been able to get out of the place fast enough, answering an ad in the paper to share a flat with two other girls and taking the first job she could get, waitressing in a coffee house on Circular Quay.

Another big mistake. Not the job. She’d rather liked waitressing, enjoying the contact with tourists and people always on the go. Paige had soon found, however, that sharing accommodation with other girls was hazardous in the extreme, unless you looked like the back of a bus. Unfortunately, Paige’s long blond hair, pretty face and striking figure had caused all sorts of troubles with the other girls’ boyfriends, who hadn’t been able to keep their eyes and hands off. After one extremely unpleasant encounter—and a disbelieving flatmate—Paige had found herself out on the street with nowhere to go except home once more.

This time Antonio had no longer been in residence, thanks to a promotion and a new apartment of his own somewhere.

Perversely, Paige had been disappointed. Had she become addicted to the emotional turmoil the sight of her unrequited love caused?

Possibly, because after leaving home again, to live with two male flatmates who had been closet gays and had caused her no trouble at all, she’d still deliberately returned at Christmas—and every Christmas after that—for no other reason than that was the season her father entertained a lot, with dinner parties and other larger parties, to which Antonio was always invited.

She had seen him a few times, but he’d invariably ignored her, or just said a few polite words before turning his attention elsewhere, usually to some woman. Paige knew he had lots of women—she’d made a point of questioning a few of the staff at home about his dating activities. Not Evelyn, of course. But the cook, the maids, and Jim, the chauffeur.

Paige consoled herself with the thought that there never seemed to be anyone special, anyone who lasted. On top of that, she’d never experienced the agony of actually seeing him in action with a woman…till last year’s big Christmas Eve party.

Paige had turned twenty-two the previous October, and believed she’d never looked better. Her skin had been lightly tanned, and her long honey-blond hair fell halfway down her back in one smooth shiny curtain. She’d come downstairs, dressed in a very sexy strapless red dress, hoping against hope that this time Antonio might see that she was at last a woman, not a silly little girl.

Antonio had just arrived with a date, a striking and sophisticated creature of thirty-something who had still made Paige feel like a little girl by comparison. His gaze had skated over her—and her revealing dress—with nothing but barely held irritation.

Never had the futility of her feelings been hammered home so strongly as that evening, when she’d watched him turn from her to dance attendance on his date, never once giving Paige a second glance. Each touch of his hand on the woman’s arm had been like a dagger in Paige’s heart. Each drink he’d given her. Each dance.

But the coup de gr

ce had come when Paige came across them kissing on the terrace—if ‘kissing’ was the appropriate word to describe what they’d been doing. For it hadn’t just been their mouths which were locked, but their whole bodies. Moulded and melded together in the most erotic fashion, one of Antonio’s legs jammed hard between the woman’s, one of hers lifting to run sinuously up and down his thigh.

Paige was sure she’d cried out in pain, but nothing short of an atomic bomb exploding would have disturbed their passionate clinch. No one but the most naive could not imagine how their evening would end, or that Antonio wouldn’t be the most unforgettable of lovers.

But then, Paige had already known he would be.

It was that same intense, all-consuming passion she’d thought she’d found in Jed. Only this time it had been directed at her, not some other woman. She’d been so flattered by Jed’s pursuit of her. Flattered, yet disastrously deluded.

Paige winced as she touched the bruise once more.

She was about to go into the bathroom and inspect the damage more closely when there was a knock on her bedroom door.

‘Who is it?’ she asked agitatedly. Not her father again. Oh, please not him. He’d harangued her for ages last night, wanting to know what had happened, who had done this to her, what was his name, and his address? Had she been living with him? Was he her boyfriend, her lover? What had she done to make him hit her? She must have done something!

Dismay had kept her silent, and defiant, as usual. She’d speared her father with a coldly contemptuous gaze before finally escaping to her room, only to fall onto the bed and cry herself to sleep. But now she was conscious again, and the transitory peace of oblivion was no longer hers.

‘It’s Evelyn. I’ve brought you up a tray.’

The door swung open before Paige could say another word, and in swept Evelyn. She was dressed in the same sort of bleak black dress she practically always wore, as though it were required uniform for a housekeeper. Paige noticed that she’d put on more weight this past year. Her cheeks had become jowly, and her already small eyes looked smaller within her pudgy face.

‘Your father said you were not to be allowed to skip meals while you’re here this time,’ Evelyn pronounced haughtily as she placed the tray on the bedside table. ‘He expects to hear that you’ve eaten every bite. And he expects to see you downstairs for dinner tonight as well. Right on eight. In a dress,’ she added, throwing a derisive glance over Paige’s jeans.

‘I didn’t bring any dresses with me,’ Paige said, already regretting her decision to come home, despite not having any other real alternative this time. She needed the safety and security Fortune Hall provided, for she suspected Jed was not going to take her leaving him lightly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Paige,’ came the sneering retort. ‘You left a whole wardrobe full of clothes behind when you first left home. I moved them all into the guest room next door when I thought you weren’t coming back and this room needed a thorough spring clean. There’s plenty of dresses among them.’

‘For pity’s sake, Evelyn,’ Paige pointed out wearily, ‘you can’t expect me to wear the same clothes I wore at seventeen.’

‘Why not? I seem to recall you spent all that year buying and wearing clothes that were way too old for you. On top of that,’ Evelyn added drily, ‘if there’s one thing I’ve learned since working for the rich and famous, it’s that designer clothes don’t date all that much. I’m sure you’ll find something among them that’ll do. It’s not as though you’ve put on any weight. You’re as skinny as ever.’

Evelyn had always made comments about her weight and Paige hated it. She was a tall girl, and naturally slim. But one could hardly call her ‘skinny’.

‘Whatever you say, Evelyn.’ She was too tired of spirit to argue. And what did it really matter?

Evelyn went to leave, then stopped, peering closely at Paige’s face. ‘That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there, dear,’ she said, with a malicious glint in those beady eyes of hers. ‘Walk into a door?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You should watch where you’re going, or one day you might really get hurt.’ And, with an expression which implied such a prospect would please her no end, Evelyn exited the room, deliberately leaving the door open behind her.

Sighing, Paige rose and closed the door before returning to see what Evelyn had brought her to eat. Two huge club sandwiches, stuffed with mayonnaise. A piece of cream-filled cake big enough to feed an army, and a huge chocolate milkshake.

Paige knew she wouldn’t be able to consume that amount, let alone such rich food. But she didn’t dare leave any behind. Evelyn would report back to her father, who would lecture her on everything from anorexia to ingratitude. Defiance always had its price around Fortune Hall.

If only Blackie were still alive, she thought wistfully as she flushed half of the food down the toilet. That dog had been the perfect garbage disposal.

Paige’s heart turned over as she thought of her long-deceased pet. As dogs went, Blackie had been exceedingly ugly: a flea-bitten mongrel Paige had rescued from the pound after they’d put his photograph in the Sunday papers. Her father had been furious when she’d bought him and brought him home. Blackie had almost been as old as she was. Seven to her nine. Her father had declared him a health hazard because he was recovering from mange. He’d told her that if she returned him he would get her a proper pup, a poodle with a pedigree and papers.

But she’d dug her heels in—the forerunner of future rebellions—and said stubbornly that she wasn’t taking Blackie back to die and that she’d look after him herself, using her weekly allowance. He’d cost her a small fortune in vet bills, but she’d managed. Dog and girl had been inseparable till that dreadful day when she’d had to leave for boarding school. The housekeeper had promised to look after him, but when Paige had come back on her first home weekend, a month later, Evelyn had been installed as the new housekeeper and Blackie was declared dead, supposedly run over by a car. She’d never quite believed this story, but could never prove otherwise.

Paige had vowed to get herself another dog one day. But she never had. It was hard to risk one’s heart a second time after being so badly hurt, she’d found. Very hard.

With half the food flushed away, and the rest reluctantly stuffed down into her fragile-feeling stomach, Paige went along to the next room to review the dresses that had appealed to her seventeen-year-old taste.

She shook her head over most of them. If ever she needed evidence of her schoolgirl obsession with Antonio, it was in the collection of clothes before her. Never had she seen such an array of painfully provocative purchases: all designed to flaunt her body, and all, as Evelyn had pointed out, way too old for a seventeen-year-old.

No wonder Antonio had stared at her across the dinner table when she’d come down dressed in those. Any living, breathing man would have given her a second glance. Paige was not ignorant of her physical attractions. She’d had them thrown in her face often enough in the past few years.

Her hand ran along the hangers, searching for something—anything—which was suitable for a simple dinner with her father. She bypassed everything which was too short, too clingy, or too low-cut.