Marriage Made In Blackmail

It was the way he said that one word that made Chloe pause and her heart accelerate even faster and the sick feeling in her stomach swirl harder.

It didn’t matter that Luis had found her, she kept telling herself. It had been inevitable that their paths would cross again one day. At least it was done with and she could stop worrying about it.

‘Have you been so enraptured by my presence that you failed to notice we’re no longer at port?’ he mocked.

She turned her head to look out of the window to her left. Then she turned it to the right.

Then she spun round to face the front, curses flying through her head.

The captain had set the Marietta to sail and she hadn’t even noticed.

‘Get this thing turned around right now!’ she demanded, eying him squarely.

He rubbed his chin. ‘No, I don’t think I will.’

‘The captain will turn it round.’ She took three quick paces to the door and pressed the green button beside it.

‘That won’t work,’ he commented idly. ‘The crew have been instructed to leave us alone until further notice.’

‘Take me back to port right now or I’m calling the police.’

He strode to the bar and laughed. It had a cruel, mocking tinge to it. ‘Why ruin this wonderful reunion with talk of the police?’

She could have easily stamped her feet. ‘Because you’re holding me here against my will.’

He turned his back on her to study the rows of spirits, liqueurs and mixers lined up on the bar. ‘Drink?’

‘What?’

‘I need a drink. Do you want one?’

‘I want you to take me back to port. This game has gone on long enough.’

‘This is no game, bonita.’

‘Stop calling me that.’

He looked at her and winked. ‘I remember when it made you blush.’

‘That was before I knew what kind of a man you really are, you unscrupulous jerk. And stop winking at me. If this isn’t a game, stop acting like it is.’

‘If I am acting like it’s a game, you conniving witch, it’s to stop myself from grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you until your teeth fall out.’ He flashed his perfectly white and perfectly straight teeth at her. ‘Or from taking the kiss you owe me.’

She sucked in a sharp breath.

His threat didn’t bother her because she instinctively knew Luis would never lay a finger on her in anger.

But the mention of the kiss she owed him...

Chloe spent her days surrounded by dancers. The male ones had the most amazing physiques and they worked hard to maintain them, the look they strove for lean and strong. To her eyes they were beautiful sculptures but not sexy.

Luis was a hulk of a man, burly and rugged, a man for whom chest waxing would be considered a joke. If he had any vanity she’d never seen it. Even his dark hair, which he kept long on top and flopped either side of his forehead, never looked as if he did more to it than run his fingers through it when he remembered.

Square jawed, his hazel eyes surrounded with laughter lines, his nose broad, cheekbones high, lips full but firm, the outbreak of stubble never far beneath his skin.

In a world of metrosexual men, Luis was a man who drank testosterone for breakfast and made no apologies for it. He would be as comfortable chopping wood with an axe as he would holding a meeting in a boardroom and she found him very sexy.

She’d dreamed of kissing him when she was seventeen years old, dreams that had faded to a hazy memory over the years but then re-awoken with a vengeance when she had started work at Compania de Ballet de Casillas. Months after she’d joined the company Luis had turned up. She had been delighted to see him, had spontaneously thrown her arms around him and been completely unprepared for the surge of heat that had bathed her upon finding herself pressed against his hard bulk in that fleeting moment.

That heated feeling had been with her ever since. All she’d needed was one glimpse of him and her heart would pound. She would smile and try to act nonchalant but had been painfully aware of her face resembling a tomato.

That heat was there now too, vibrating inside her. Not even the knowledge of his treachery had dimmed it. She hated herself for that.

He looked up from the bottle of black vodka he was examining and smiled unpleasantly. ‘The insults hurt, don’t they?’

‘You deserve yours and more for what you did to my brother.’ And to me, she refrained from adding.

Learning how deeply he’d betrayed her brother had cut her like a knife. The more she and Benjamin had put the pieces together, the deeper the cut had gone, all the way back to her earliest memories.

Had Luis and Javier always had contempt for her family? Or had the damage done by their mother’s horrific murder at the hands of their father been the root cause of it?

Their mothers had been closer than sisters. As far back as Chloe could remember Luis and Javier had been a part of their lives. They would come and stay with them for weeks at a time in the school holidays then, when she had reached eight and them eighteen and they had snubbed university to set out on their own path, they would still drop in for visits whenever they were in Paris.

Their visits had always made her mother so happy. When she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer they had been there for all of them. Luis had visited her mother so many times in hospital the staff had assumed he was one of her children.

Had the supposed feelings he’d had for her family all been a lie? If not, then how could he have tricked her brother into signing that contract on the day their mother’s condition was diagnosed as terminal?

Luis replaced the bottle of vodka in his hand with a bottle of rum, twisted the cap off and sniffed it. ‘Whatever we did to your brother he has repaid with fire. He has gone too far and so have you. Thanks to you and your brother conspiring against me and my brother, our names are mud.’

‘Good. You deserve it.’ She hated the quiver in her voice. Hated that being so close to him evoked all those awful feelings again that should never have sprung to life in the first place.

Her heart shouldn’t beat so wildly for this man.

She swallowed before adding, ‘You took advantage of him when our mother was dying. I hope the journalist investigating the injunction unveils your treachery to the world and that everyone learns what lying, cheating scumbags the Casillas brothers are.’

Hazel eyes suddenly snapped onto hers, a nitrogen-cold stare that sent a snake of ice coiling up her spine. ‘We did not cheat your brother.’

‘Yes, you did. I don’t care what that court said. You ripped him off and you know it.’

His nostrils flared before he stretched out a hand to the row of cocktail mixers. ‘I am going to tell you something, bonita. I had sympathy for Benjamin’s position.’

‘Of course you did,’ she scorned with a shake of her hair.

‘The terms of profit were reduced from twenty per cent to five per cent under the advice of our lawyer. Your brother’s contribution to the project was a portion of the funding whereas Javier and I would be doing all the work.’

Luis remembered that conversation well. It was one of only a few clear recollections from a day that had flown by at warp speed as he and Javier had battled to salvage the deal they had put so much time and money into.

‘You agreed on twenty per cent. That was a verbal agreement.’