The Price Of A Bride. Michelle Reid

at all,’ Mia said. ‘You will have all the rights any man would expect over his own son—so long as we stay married. But once the marriage is over I get full custody.’

      ‘Why?’

      Now there was a good question, Mia mused whimsically.

      ‘I mean,’ he qualified when she didn’t answer him immediately, ‘since you are making it damned obvious to me that you are no more enthusiastic about all of this than I am, why should you demand full custody of a child you don’t really want in the first place?’

      ‘I will love it,’ she declared, ‘no matter what his beginnings. I will love this child, Mr Doumas, not resent him, not look at him and despise him for who and what he means to me.’

      ‘And you think I will?’

      ‘I know you will,’ she said with an absolute certainty. ‘Men like you don’t like to be constantly faced with their past failures.’ She’d had experience of men of his calibre, after all—plenty of it. ‘And agreeing to this deal most definitely represents a failure to you. So I get full custody,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Once the marriage is dissolved you will receive all the visitation rights legally allowed to you—if you still want them by then, of course,’ she added, although her tone did not hold any optimism.

      His eyes began to Sash—the only warning she got that she had ignited something potentially dangerous inside him before he was suddenly standing right in front of her.

      Her spine became erect, her eyelashes flickering warily as he pushed his angry face close to hers. ‘You stand here with your chin held high and your beautiful eyes filled with a cold contempt for me, and dare to believe that you know exactly what kind of man I am—when you do not know me at all!’ he rasped. ‘For my son...’ His hands came up to grip her shoulders. ‘My son,’ he repeated passionately, ‘will be my heir also!’

      And it was a shock. Oh, not just the power of that possessiveness for something which was, after all, only a means to an end to him, but the effect his touch was having on her. It seemed to strike directly at the very heart of her, contracting muscles so violently that it actually squeezed the air from her tightened chest on a short, shaken gasp.

      ‘My son will remain under my wing, no matter who—or what—his mother is!’ he vowed. ‘And if that means trapping us both into a lifelong loveless marriage, then so be it!’

      ‘Are we?’ Despite his anger, his biting grip, the bitter hatred he was making no effort to hide, Mia’s beautiful, defiant eyes held his. ’Are we going to many?’

      His teeth showed, gleaming white and sharp and disturbingly predatorial between the angry stretch of his lips, his eyes like hard black pebbles that displayed a grinding distaste for both herself and the answer he was about to give her.

      ‘Yes,’ he hissed with unmasked loathing. ‘We will marry. We will do everything expected of us to meet your father’s filthy terms! But don’t,’ he warned, ‘let yourself think for a moment that it is going to be a pleasure!’

      ‘Then get your hands off me.’ Coldly, she swiped his hands away. ‘And don’t touch me again until it is absolutely necessary for us to touch!’

      With that she turned and walked back to the window where she stood, glaring outside at the lashing rain, while she tried to get a hold on what was straining to erupt inside her.

      It didn’t work. She could no more stop the words from flowing than she could stop the rain outside from falling. ‘You seem to think you have the divine right to stand there and be superior to me. But you do not,’ she muttered. ‘You have your price, just like the rest of us! Which makes you no better than my father—no better than myself!’

      ‘And what exactly is your price?’ he challenged grimly. ’Give me one good reason why you are agreeing to all of this and I might at least try to respect you for it!’

      It was an appeal. An appeal that caught at her heart because, even through his anger, Mia could hear his genuine desire for her to give him just cause for her own part in this.

      Her green eyes flashed then filmed over, as for a moment—for a tiny breathless space in time—the sheer wretched truth to that question danced on the very edge of her tongue.

      But she managed to smother the feeling, bite that awful truth down and keep it back, then spun to face him with her eyes made opaque by tears that had turned to ice.

      ‘Money, of course,’ she replied. ‘What other price could there be?’

      ‘Money...’ he repeated, as though she had just confirmed every avaricious suspicion he’d held about her.

      ‘On the day I present my father with a grandson I receive five million pounds as payment,’ she went on. ‘No better reason to agree to this—no worse than a man who can sell himself for a piece of land and a pile of ancient stone.’

      He wasn’t slow—he got her meaning. She was drawing a neat parallel between the two of them—or three people if she counted her father’s willingness to give away a Greek island to get what he wanted out of this rotten deal.

      ‘So make this a marriage for life if it suits you,’ she defied him. ‘I don’t care. I will be wealthy in my own right and therefore independent of you no matter how long the marriage lasts! But we will soon know how strong your resolve is,’ she added derisively, ‘once the marriage is real and your sense of entrapment begins to eat away at you!’

      ‘Entrapment?’ he picked up on the word and shot it scornfully back at her. ‘You naively believe I will feel trapped by this marriage? That I am prepared to change a single facet of my life to accommodate you or the vows we will make to each other?’

      It was his turn to discharge a disdainful laugh, and Mia’s turn to stiffen as his meaning began to sink in. ‘I will change nothing!’ he vowed. ‘Not my way of life or my freedom to enjoy it wherever the mood takes me!’

      His eyes were ablaze, anger and contempt for her lancing into her defiant face.

      ‘I have a mistress in Athens with whom I am very happy,’ he announced, using words like ice picks that he thrust into her. ‘She will remain my mistress no matter what I have to do to fulfil my side of this filthy bargain! I will not be discreet.’ he warned. ‘I will not make any concessions to your pride while you live with me as my so-called wife! I will hate and despise you—and bed you with alacrity at regular intervals until this child of the devil is conceived, after which I will never touch you again!

      ‘But,’ he added harshly, ‘if you truly believe I will also let you walk away with that child then you are living in a dream world because I will not!’

      ‘Then the deal is off,’ Mia instantly retaliated, using her father’s tactics to make her own point.

      After all, he hadn’t given in to the big one—namely, agreeing to marry her and produce Jack Frazier’s grandchild in what amounted to cold blood—without being desperate! And she would have her way in this if only because she had to glimpse some light at the end of this long dark tunnel or she knew she would not survive.

      ‘Try telling your father that,’ he derided, his eyes narrowing as her cheeks went white. ‘You are afraid of him. I saw that from the first moment I set eyes on you.’

      ‘And you want what only he can give you more than you want a child!’ Mia countered. ‘So I am telling you that you agree to my having full custody or the deal is off! This may also be a good moment for me to remind you of the shortlist of other names waiting to be called upon at a moment’s notice,’ she added, playing what she saw as her trump card.

      To her immense satisfaction, his handsome face fell into harsh lines of raw frustration. ‘You are as cold-blooded about this as your damned father!’ he spat at her in disgust.

      Mia said nothing, her chin up and eyes cool, her defiance in the face of his disdain so palpable it could almost be tasted in the air between them. Air that