The Blackmailed Bridegroom. Miranda Lee

till she’d begun to believe her own fantasies, turning each simple smile he’d given her into evidence that he was as secretly enamoured with her as she was with him.

      Her schoolwork had suffered for her daydreaming, and the comments on her report card had been none too impressive to bring home at the end of term: Paige would do a lot better if only she would concentrate! Paige is an intelligent girl but her mind doesn’t seem to be on her work!

      Which it hadn’t been. Yet what a wonderful term it had been! What secret pleasures she’d hugged to herself, thinking about her beautiful Antonio all the time, weaving all sorts of fanciful dreams around him.

      Her next holiday at home had seemed to cement all those dreams. The things he carefully hadn’t said. Those secretive but scorching glances he’d bestowed on her across the dinner table. The way he’d held her slightly longer than necessary the day they’d run into each other on the stairs. The inordinate time he’d taken to help her find a book in the library one evening.

      Paige had been sure he was just waiting till she finished school that year before he showed his hand. By then she would be eighteen, and a woman!

      In her mind, they would eventually get married and have half a dozen babies, beautiful, black-eyed children who adored their mother and father and were so very happy, wrapped in the type of warm cocoon of family love that she’d never experienced herself, but she’d vowed to give her children.

      By the time she’d come home again in September she’d become totally obsessed with him, her rather romantic feelings taking a more physical turn when she’d spotted him swimming in the pool the first morning of her holiday. She’d watched him from her bedroom window while he’d done lap after impressive lap, her eyes widening when he’d climbed out and just stood there as he towelled himself down, wearing only the briefest of black swimming costumes.

      There had been something decidedly animal in his powerful physique, with its deeply olive skin and light covering of dark body hair, plus the way he was drying himself, with rough, rubbing strokes. Paige had gobbled him up with her eyes while the sexuality simmering deep within her feelings surfaced, stark and startling in its raw and naked need. Suddenly, she’d craved more than his love. She’d craved the man, and that part of him which made him a man, her galloping heart seizing up with shock at the explicitness of her desire.

      When he’d looked up and spied her watching him at the window she’d nearly died, her face flushing wildly. He’d stared back at her for a few seconds, before whirling away and striding off inside the pool house.

      Paige hadn’t needed another sign.

      Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to finish school, or for him to say something. She had to speak up first. But when she’d gone in search of him after breakfast it had been to find her father and his assistant had left on a business trip. They would not be back for a week. It had been the longest week of Paige’s life, only made bearable by the heart to hearts she’d had with Brad, her oldest and closest friend.

      By the time Antonio had come back she’d been dying to talk to him, breathless and emboldened by the surety of his love.

      Oddly enough, Paige could no longer recall exactly what she’d said to him. Or what he’d said back. The only words which lived on in her memory were his calling her a silly little girl. They remained very clear, as did the overwhelming wave of humiliation which had accompanied them.

      Suffice to accept that it had been the most awful moment of her life.

      Paige found it ironic that she didn’t rate what had happened last night to be nearly as awful. Jed might have hurt her physically, and he’d frightened her enough into coming home, but he didn’t have the power to hurt her where the hurt never healed. How could he, when she didn’t love him?

      Her right hand lifted to push her hair back behind her ear before gingerly touching the tender swelling just below her temple. Pity the blow hadn’t knocked some sense into her, she thought bitterly.

      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