Black Widow Bride

“Don’t talk like that!”

“It’s the reality.” Damon could almost see his brother crossing himself superstitiously at his words.

“You know, Damon, sometimes I wish I’d never asked Demetra to marry me. This damn wedding—”

“This from the man who preaches true love?” Damon cut in mockingly, disturbed more than he cared to admit by the idea that Savvas might be having second thoughts.

“No, no. I don’t mean that I would forgo having met Demetra or falling in love with her. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I meant I should have moved her in with me.”

“Vre, the family would never have stood for it. Thea Iphegenia would’ve fainted in horror.”

“Yet they turn a blind eye to the women you escort, Damon. They don’t accuse you of sinning.” Savvas’s complaint filled the car’s interior.

“That’s different. I’m a widower. And anyway, I choose women of the world, not maidens with marriage written all over them, like your Demetra,” he told his brother, his mouth twisting. He stared unseeingly through the windscreen into the golden glow of the late Northland afternoon. Felicity had been his last foray into respectability. It would be a cold day in hell before he tried it again.

“Maybe it would’ve been better to marry in court, present Mama and the family with a fait accompli. But now it’s too late—the big Greek wedding is already in production. Damon, I fear it might kill Mama.”

“Savvas, Mama wants this wedding. Desperately. Can you deprive her of it?”

His mother asked for so little. And gave them so much. Instead of retreating into tears and grief after his father’s unexpected and devastating death, she had battled beside him as he’d wrestled for control of Stellar International. She deserved happiness, contentment.

Stupidly he’d thought his marriage would secure that.

He twisted the key. The Mercedes roared to life.

“Mama says she wants to hold a grandchild in her arms before she dies,” Savvas was saying. “Demetra wants to start trying for a family as soon as the honeymoon’s over. But first we need to arrange the wedding.”

His mother lived for her family. Family looked out for family. That was his mother’s creed. Cold, bitter rage twisted inside Damon’s heart. All his mother wanted was to see Savvas wed. Rebecca could pull it off. Easily.

But Rebecca had already refused his mother’s direct request—and now she’d refused him. He wasn’t a man accustomed to refusal. Rebecca would help his mother and organise his brother’s wedding. He’d make sure of it.

With slow deliberation he put the gear into reverse.

“It cannot be easy asking her for help. You hate her. I mean, not that I blame you or anything.” Savvas faltered, then sighed. “Look, there’s something I must tell you. After the wedding I saw her a couple of times and she seemed…quiet. I didn’t see anything of the wild, wicked woman people talk about—”

“Hang on, are you telling me you dated Rebecca while I was on my honeymoon?” The car idled. Damon felt an almost forgotten red tide of rage boil up within him. Hell. He’d told her to stay away from Savvas.

“She’s a very beautiful woman.” His brother sounded sheepish.

“Beautiful?” Damon snorted. “If you like black widows. She’s as dangerous as sin to the unwary.”

“But, Damon, she wasn’t like that!” Then, after a taut pause, Savvas amended hastily, “At least I could’ve sworn she wasn’t like that. She was kind to me. We had some good times.”

Good times? He didn’t like that one little bit. Damon found he didn’t even want to contemplate the implications. Reversing the car out of the parking bay in one smooth manoeuvre, he swung the steering wheel and headed smoothly for the exit. “No, of course she wasn’t like that,” Damon said bitingly. “That’s her game. She spins her web, and the victim steps in.”

There was a long silence. “Well, it’s past.” Savvas sighed more heavily this time. “After what she did, I didn’t contact her again. You’re my brother—how could I?”

Inside the suddenly silent Mercedes, Damon was fiercely glad that Savvas had proved loyal to him and hoped it had cut Rebecca to the quick when Savvas had failed to call her again.

Savvas was speaking again and Damon forced himself to concentrate. “To see her, it must be hard for you. If she comes back to Auckland, it’s going to cost—”

Damon cut him short. “Whatever the cost, I will do it. For Mama.”

He clicked off the phone and swung the Mercedes into the main street of Tohunga. This time he’d do what he should’ve done from the outset: use charm. Rebecca had never made any bones about the attraction he’d held for her in the past. A little flirting, add a couple of handsome cheques and she’d be putty in his hands.

The empty parking space right outside Chocolatique gave him considerable satisfaction. It was all working out. As he entered Rebecca’s shop, Damon straightened his tie, squared his shoulders and pasted a breathtaking smile to his face—one that guaranteed women would fall at his feet.

But Rebecca was not there. Gone for the day, he was advised by her blushing assistant, who kept sneaking him little looks from under her lashes.

Five minutes later, his smile gone, seething with impatience, Damon gunned his Mercedes down the road to Rebecca’s home, determined to be out of this parochial town within an hour. And equally determined that when he left, Rebecca would be sitting beside him—whether she liked it or not.

Whatever the cost.

Three

Rebecca nosed the little yellow hatchback into the drive of the neat compact unit that had been her home since she’d sold Dream Occasions almost four years ago and relocated north.

In the small front garden the cheerful daffodils had finished flowering. The petunias and calendulas she and T.J. had planted were starting to bud. Soon the garden would be awash with colour and summer would be here in full swing. A large pohutukawa tree shaded the grassy spot where she and T.J. often played during the day. By the time Christmas came the massive tree would be covered with showers of flame-red flowers.

She switched the engine off and, turning, saw that T.J. had fallen asleep cradled in the car seat in the rear. His dark curly head drooped sideways and his mouth parted in an O.

Tenderness expanded inside her until she felt she would explode with emotion.

How dearly she loved him.

They were a family. No, more than family. In a relatively short time he’d become her whole world. All her reservations about what a poor mother she’d make given her lack of loving example had long since evaporated. She loved T.J. with all the fierce adoration of a lioness. He was hers. All hers. For once in her life she had someone that nothing and no one could take from her. Today she’d kept her silent promise and had rushed through her tasks at Chocolatique to spend some quality time with T.J. this afternoon. Except for dark shadows beneath his eyes, little sign remained of yesterday’s illness.

With a still-sleeping T.J. bundled in her arms, Rebecca made for the unit, her stride quickening under his leaden weight. As she stepped onto the deck, a tall man straightened from where he’d been leaning against the wisteria-covered pergola that shaded the deck. Rebecca froze.

“You have a child!” Damon’s voice was accusing, his face blank with shock.

Her grip on T.J. tightened. “Yes,” she bit out and, radiating defiance, she faced him down over T.J.’s head.

A muscle worked in Damon’s jaw. He looked odd, shaken. She frowned. If he suspected…

No. It wasn’t possible. She’d taken such care.

She swivelled away, keeping T.J. screened from his line of sight.

Damon stepped out of the shadows formed by the tangle of ivy and wisteria. “I didn’t know.”

“And why should you? I don’t count you among my intimates.”

His head snapped back as she parroted his response from this morning back at him, and Rebecca watched over her shoulder with feline satisfaction as his pupils flared at her sharp tone.

Good! Let him know what rejection felt like.

Her gaze swept the street. “I don’t see your car.” The sleek silver Mercedes would’ve been difficult to miss in the empty street.