A Bride At His Bidding. Michelle Smart

with that?’

      ‘No problem.’ She hurried to stand. The job was hers and she wouldn’t give him reason to change his mind. She would practise smiling as soon as she found a mirror. ‘It’s just that I have no change of clothes with me.’

      ‘You will be provided with everything you need when we get there. Give Debbie your dress size as we leave.’

      ‘Where are we going?’

      ‘To one of my homes where it isn’t raining.’ And with that he opened his office door and ushered her through it.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ANDREAS SAT AT his desk on his private jet with his laptop open before him. Barely ten feet away, Carrie was at the dining table reading through the thick folder that contained the working details of all his properties. He had no doubt she would find it excruciatingly tedious to read through.

      All his properties were listed except one—the one they were flying to.

      ‘Which one should I concentrate on?’ she’d asked when he’d given it to her, subtly letting him know he hadn’t given her their final destination.

      ‘All of them.’ He’d smiled. ‘I’ll give you a test when we arrive.’

      ‘Which will be when?’

      He’d looked at his watch. ‘In approximately eleven hours.’

      Her eyes had flickered but she’d made no further comment. He’d seen her thoughts racing and had enjoyed watching her bite the questions back.

      He’d enjoyed himself enormously throughout their meeting too, far more than he’d expected. The knowledge that he’d rumbled her before she’d even set foot in his office had bubbled away inside him, satisfying enough to smother the anger that had fought for an outlet.

      Anger clouded logical thinking and he needed to keep his mind clear if he was to continue outwitting this viper.

      He’d determined that getting her out of England and as far from her home and true employment as he could and as quickly as he could was the best way to proceed. Disorientate her. Put her at the disadvantage without her even realising it and then, when he had her in his private home, unable to escape or communicate with the outside world, he would demand answers. He wanted to know everything—why she was investigating him, what she expected to find and who had put her up to it. He’d made his own discreet enquiries amongst his media contacts but had come up blank. No one was aware of even a hint of a brewing scandal about him.

      Instinct told him that Carrie’s reasons for being here were at least partly personal. The coincidence was too great to be explained any other way.

      He would discover her reasons in due course but rather than question her immediately, he decided he’d have some fun with her first. Let her suffer a little. It was the least she deserved.

      Did Carrie really think him such a useless human being that he required someone to live by his side pouring his drinks and mopping his brow? Andreas liked his creature comforts but he was no man-child and he’d seen the flicker of surprise in her eyes when he’d outlined the duties expected of her, duties he’d made up on the spur of the moment just to see what her reaction would be.

      For the next few days he would embrace the man-child role and make her wait on him hand and foot. She would hate every minute of it.

      Excellent.

      He would enjoy every minute of it.

      He watched her put aside the notepad she’d been scribbling on as she’d read through the folder and remove her phone from her handbag. She angled her body away from him and switched it on. A few moments later her shoulders rose and she tugged at her hair.

      Andreas grinned, enjoying her silent frustration to find it not working. He dealt with highly sensitive information. To get onto his jet’s network required a password. He wondered how long it would be before she cracked and asked for it.

      It took her three hours, an impressive length of time he thought, before she lifted her head, cleared her throat, and said, ‘Would it be possible for me to have the Wi-Fi password?’

      ‘I didn’t think you had anybody to check in with,’ he commented idly, enjoying the flush of colour that crawled up her slender neck.

      ‘I don’t,’ she said with only the smallest of hesitation. ‘I just wanted to check my emails.’

      ‘Expecting anything important?’

      She shook her head, her whole neck now aflame. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll check them later.’

      Carrie Rivers, Caroline Dunwoody, whatever her real name was, had a beautiful neck. He’d seen by her photograph that she was pretty but in the flesh she was so much more, her features softer, her skin dewy and golden. She was beautiful.

      He thought back to the slightly plump woman he’d caught that momentary glimpse of three years back. Her eyes had been striking enough for him to remember but at the time he’d been too angry to think properly let alone remember any other detail about her. He’d been angrier than he’d ever been. The previous evening, he’d come home early from a rare evening out to find his niece and her best friend off their heads on drink and drugs. What had followed later that night had been almost as bad.

      Taking guardianship of an orphaned teenage girl had never been easy but that weekend had been the hardest of his life, harder even than the night he’d received the call telling him his sister and brother-in-law had been found dead or the day he’d learned his parents faced financial ruin.

      Where was the manual that gave step-by-step guidance on how to handle the discovery that your niece, your responsibility, was creeping towards drug addiction, or how to handle waking to find your niece’s sixteen-year-old best friend naked in your bedroom intent on seducing you? Where had Violet learned that kind of behaviour? From her older sister? Was the seemingly prim and proper woman sitting just feet away from him as wanton and reckless as her sister had been?

      Despite his best attempts, he’d been unable to discover anything significant about Carrie. Her page on the Daily Times website listed her awards and achievements but nothing of a personal nature. He only knew her age because of their old personal links. Twenty-six. An incredibly young age to have achieved so much in her career. That took real commitment and dedication, something he would have admired had those traits not now been aimed at him. But unlike the men—and they had all been men—she’d brought down before him, Andreas had nothing to hide. His business was clean. So why had she set her sights on him? Why was the award-winning investigative journalist Carrie Rivers after him? Was this personal?

      Whatever the reasons, he would learn them and nip whatever trouble was brewing in the bud. The old maxim of keep your friends close but your enemies closer stood the test of time.

      Until he learned the truth, he would keep Carrie very close to him and then...

      And then, unless he could think of a better plan than the one formulating in his head, Carrie would be kept close by his side for the foreseeable future.

      * * *

      It was dark when they landed. The early spring storms London had been dealing with were but a distant memory as Carrie disembarked Andreas’s jet and found herself engulfed in a heat the like of which she had only ever read about. She removed her jacket and looked up to find a cloudless black sky glittering with stars.

      ‘Where are we?’ She’d diligently read the folder Andreas had given her, pored over the location of all his homes and, as time had extended on their flight, convinced herself they were going to Tokyo.

      ‘The Seychelles.’ Andreas stood beside her. ‘Welcome to Mahe, the largest island of the Seychelles Granitic Archipelago.’

      Her mind turned frantically. How could she have missed a home in the Seychelles? She’d