Marriage Made In Blackmail. Michelle Smart

where had the barwoman gone?

      Unease crawling through her, Chloe opened her beach bag to search for her phone.

      Just as her fingers closed on it, a tall figure stepped into the lounge.

      Although the figure was only in the periphery of her vision, it was enough for her stomach to roil and ice to plunge into her veins.

      Feeling very much like a teenager watching a horror movie and wishing she could cover her eyes to hide from the scary bit, she slowly turned her head.

      And there he stood, filling the space around him like a dark, menacing shadow, a grim smile on his face.

      Luis.

      ‘Hello, bonita. It is a pleasure to see you again.’

       CHAPTER TWO

      LUIS FELT IMMENSE satisfaction to read the horror in Chloe’s baby-blue eyes.

      ‘Nothing to say?’ he taunted. ‘I have travelled a long way to see you, bonita. I would have thought that deserved an enthusiastic welcome.’

      Those wonderful pillowy lips he’d fantasised about kissing parted then snapped shut as she swallowed, shock clearly rendering her dumb.

      ‘You’re not normally this shy.’ He folded his arms across his chest and stroked his jaw. ‘Is it delight at seeing me that has struck you mute?’

      Her wonderfully graceful throat moved, colour creeping over her cheeks. ‘What...? How...?’

      ‘Is that the best you can come up with?’ He shook his head with mock incredulity.

      She blinked rapidly and blew in and out. ‘I’ve been set up.’

      ‘The sun hasn’t damaged your observation skills, I see.’

      The baby-blue eyes stared straight into his. ‘You bastard.’

      ‘If we are moving straight to the name-calling, I have a select number of insults I can apply to you. Which shall I start with?’

      ‘Forget it.’ Hooking her large bag over her shoulder, she got to her feet. ‘Let’s not waste time. Say what you need to say. I have a holiday to enjoy.’

      He gazed at the long legs now fully on display, only the top half of her supple thighs covered by the tight blue denim shorts she wore. Dios, for a She-Devil she had the most amazing body. Beauty, heavy breasts covered in a red T-shirt, a slim waist and a pert bottom...he defied any red-blooded heterosexual man out there not to fantasise about bedding her.

      ‘My apologies,’ he said sardonically. ‘I didn’t realise you were on a holiday. I thought you had run away.’

      ‘No, it’s definitely a holiday. Sun, sea, pina coladas and hot men.’ She smiled as she listed the latter, a jibe he knew perfectly well was intended to cut at him. ‘Getting far away from you was an added incentive but not the main consideration.’

      ‘Would your brother have paid for you to holiday in the Bahamas if you hadn’t agreed to do his dirty work?’ The booking for her flights and villa had been paid for personally by Benjamin.

      ‘Au contraire,’ she said, switching from English to her native French. Between them they spoke each other’s languages and English fluently. ‘I didn’t agree to do his dirty work. I insisted on it.’ The smile she now cast him was pure beatific. ‘Your gallantry at rescuing a damsel in distress does you credit. Knowing you were on those mountain roads searching for me is a thought I will cherish for ever.’

      The rage that had simmered in his veins since he and Javier had pieced all the parts of the jigsaw together flashed through his skin.

      Luis hadn’t expected contrition from her but her triumph was something else.

      Chloe had sent him on a wild goose chase so he would be late for the gala. Her brother had conspired to ground Javier’s flight to Madrid so he too would be late for the gala. With both Casillas brothers out of the way and the world’s media present, Benjamin had pounced, stealing Javier’s fiancée away and taking her to his secure chateau in Provence. And then he had proceeded to blackmail them: Javier’s fiancée in exchange for the money he claimed they owed him. If the money wasn’t forthcoming he would marry her himself.

      Luis could not remember the last time his brother had been so coldly furious. Javier had dug his heels in and refused to pay. For Javier it was a matter of principle. They had done nothing illegal and a court of law agreed with them. They didn’t owe Benjamin a cent.

      For Luis, Benjamin’s actions were a declaration of war. All the guilt he’d felt and his plans to put things right between them had been discarded in an instant.

      The press photographs of Freya leaving the gala hand in hand with Benjamin had captured a certain something between the pair of them that had made Luis wince for his brother. Whether Javier’s fiancée was an unwitting tool in the plot or a willing supplicant was irrelevant. Those pictures had shown his brother’s fiancée gazing into his enemy’s eyes with a look of rapture on her face. Javier would rather starve than take her back.

      His brother had been right not to take her back. Their enemy had married Freya two days ago, barely five days after stealing her away. The fallout against the Casillas brothers had accelerated.

      Chloe had willingly played her part in this. She would find herself playing a role to end it and whether that was willingly, he could not care less.

      ‘Cherish those memories, bonita,’ he said, hiding his anger with a beatific smile of his own. ‘You earned them. You have proven yourself to be a fabulous actress.’

      She fluttered her long black eyelashes at him. ‘Were you worried about me? How touching.’

      Remembering the burst of raw panic that had grabbed him to find her car missing from the place he had expected it to be... Worried, Luis concluded grimly, did not begin to cover it.

      It was only because he had known her since she was in her mother’s stomach, he told himself. For the first three years of Chloe’s life he, Javier and Benjamin, all ten years older, had been her chief babysitters. None of them had been enthusiastic about the job, especially when she’d entered toddlerhood and turned into a pint-sized She-Devil.

      More fool him for being so blown away by her adult beauty that he’d failed to see behind the fun-loving façade to the fully grown She-Devil beneath the milky skin.

      ‘I would not be human if I hadn’t been concerned,’ he said blithely.

      ‘I think it’s debatable whether you and your brother are human at all.’

      He spread his arms out and winked. ‘Oh, I am very human, bonita, as I am more than happy for you to discover for yourself.’

      A tinge of colour slashed her pretty rounded cheeks. She scowled at him and pulled her bag even closer into her side. ‘Are we done yet? Have you finished with your fun?’

      ‘Finished? Bonita, my fun with you has only just begun.’

      Indeed, this was already much more fun than he had envisaged. Chloe’s belligerent discomfort and outrage were things of beauty, acting like salve to his rabid anger.

      ‘Yes, well, my fun is over. I’m going.’

      ‘Going where?’ he asked as she stomped to the door, giving him an extremely wide berth as she moved.

      ‘Back to my villa.’

      ‘How?’

      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.