Marriage Made In Blackmail

Luis had thought nothing more of the conversation until around six months later when he’d attended a directors meeting at the old theatre to discuss preparations for the company’s move. A galloping gazelle had bounded up to him out of nowhere with a beaming smile and thrown her arms around him.

It had been Chloe, bright and joyous and, she had delightedly told him, loving her time in Madrid. Luis had been pleased to see this face from his past but he’d been too busy to take much notice of his old friend’s little sister.

When Luis and Javier had pooled their meagre inheritance to form Casillas Ventures almost two decades ago, they had decided from the start that one of them would always be the ‘point man’ on each project. This would simplify matters for contractors and suppliers. Luis had taken the role of point man for the construction of the new theatre and facilities. In this venture he had been far more hands on than he would normally be but this was a special project. This was for their mother, a way for the world to see the Casillas name without automatically thinking of Clara Casillas’s tragic end at the hands of her husband.

The closer it got to completion, the more hours he needed to put in, overseeing the construction and ensuring Compania de Ballet de Casillas was prepared for the wholesale move to its new premises.

From that embrace on though, whenever Luis visited the old crumbling theatre he somehow always managed to see Chloe.

She always acknowledged his presence, with either a quick wave if working on an intricate costume or a few words exchanged if on a break, her cheeks turning the colour of crimson whatever reception she gave, a little quirk he’d found intriguing but never given much thought to...not until he’d walked past a coffee shop a few months later and caught a glimpse of a raven haired beauty talking animatedly to a group of her peers. Spring had arrived in his home city and she’d been wearing a thin dress that exposed bare, milky-white arms, her thick raven hair loose and spilling over her shoulders.

He would have stopped and stared even if he hadn’t recognised her.

How had he not seen it before?

Chloe Guillem radiated. Sunlight shone out of her pores, sexiness oozed from her skin. Her smile dazzled.

She must have felt his stare for she had looked up and seen him at the window and the full power of her smile had been unleashed on him and this time it had hit him straight in his loins. He had never in all his thirty-five years experienced a bolt of pure, undiluted, unfiltered lust as he had at that moment.

He’d taken her out to dinner that very night. It had been the most fun and invigorating evening he could remember. Chloe was funny, full of self-deprecating wit, a raucous laugh never far from her voluminous lips. And she was sexy.

Dios, was she sexy. He had been unable to tear his eyes away, greedily soaking up everything about her, all the glorious parts he’d been oblivious to. It was incredible to think he’d been blind to it for so long.

And the desire was mutual. Luis knew when a woman wanted him and Chloe’s body language had needed little interpretation.

But when they had left the restaurant she had rebuffed his offer of a nightcap by hailing a taxi.

He had never been rejected before. It had intrigued rather than discouraged him.

‘If not a nightcap how about a goodnight kiss?’ he’d asked before she could escape into the cab, taking her face into his hands and gently rubbing his nose to hers. Her scent had filled his senses, reminding him of English strawberries and cream.

Her eyes had been stark on his, the flirtatious glimmer that had been prevalent the whole evening suddenly gone, her beautiful plump lips drawing together.

‘Next time, bonita,’ he had whispered, inhaling her scent again.

All the confusion on her face had broken into a smile that had shone straight into his chest. She had stepped back and nodded. ‘Yes. Next time.’

‘You will let me kiss you?’

The smile had widened, baby-blue eyes glittering with promise. ‘Yes, I will let you kiss me.’

But there had been no next time and no kiss. Two days later everything had gone to hell with her brother. Chloe had cancelled their planned date and stopped accepting his calls. When he visited the ballet company she kept her head down and pretended not to see him.

They hadn’t exchanged two words in almost as many months.

Why the hell he was tearing down roads at an average speed of a hundred miles an hour to rescue a woman who had dropped him like a hot brick he could not fathom, and especially on this night of all nights.

A curse flew from his lips when, thirty-four minutes after leaving his home, he reached the co-ordinates Chloe had given him.

It was a passing place on the winding road, with a flat grassy area for day-trippers to enjoy the spectacular view over a picnic. There was no one there. And no broken-down car.

He brought the car to a stop and grabbed his phone from the passenger seat. In his haste to get to her he’d forgotten to turn the ringtone up and only now did he see he had three missed calls from his brother.

He called Chloe. It went straight to voicemail.

Getting out of the car to search for her, he called Javier back.

‘Where are you?’ his brother snapped, picking up on the first ring.

‘Don’t ask. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘I’m grounded in Florence.’

‘What?’ Javier was supposed to be at the gala already. In Madrid. Not Florence.

‘My plane’s been grounded on a technicality. It passed all the safety checks this morning. Not a single issue of concern. Something’s not right.’

Luis disconnected the call, a real sense of disquiet racing through him. The sun was descending over Madrid in the far distance but the orange glow it emitted did nothing to stave off the chill that had settled in his bones.

His brother was grounded in Florence and suspected sabotage.

Luis had been lured to the middle of nowhere in the Sierra de Guadarrama in his dinner jacket, on a rescue mission where the damsel in distress had disappeared.

He checked the co-ordinates again.

This was definitely the right place.

So where the hell was she? And why was his sense of disquiet growing by the second?

* * *

Chloe Guillem took a seat in the first-class lounge at Madrid-Barajas airport and removed her phone from her carry-on bag.

She had six missed calls and seven text messages, all from the same number. She deleted the messages without reading them and fired off a message to her brother.

Mission accomplished. Waiting to board flight. x.

The glass of champagne she’d asked for when entering the lounge was brought to her table and she took a large sip of it at the moment her phone rang.

Cursing to herself, she switched it to silent and threw it down.

Two minutes later it vibrated in a dance over the table.

She had a new voicemail.

Her gut told her in the strongest possible terms not to listen to it.

She pressed play.