Blackmailed Into The Marriage Bed. Melanie Milburne

you?’ Ailsa’s mouth dropped open so wide she could have parked one of her brother’s golf buggies inside. ‘He didn’t tell me that...’ She took a much-needed breath and, letting go of her bag, gripped the back of the chair opposite his desk instead and swallowed again. ‘He said you told him you would sponsor him but there were conditions on the deal. Conditions that involved me.’

      Vinn’s expression changed from mocking to masked. ‘Sit down and we’ll discuss them.’

      Ailsa sat, not because he told her but because her legs were threatening to go from under her like damp drinking straws. Why had Isaac led her to believe Vinn had approached him over sponsorship? Why had her brother been so...so insensitive to invite her soon-to-be ex-husband back into her orbit? Vinn’s involvement with her brother’s golfing career would mean she wouldn’t be able to avoid him the way she’d been doing for the last two years.

      She had to avoid him.

      She had to.

      She didn’t trust herself around him. She turned into someone else when she was with him. Someone who had all the hopes and dreams of a normal person—someone who didn’t have a horrible secret in her background. A secret not even her brother knew about.

      Her half-brother.

      Ailsa was fifteen years old when she stumbled upon the truth about her biological father. For all that time she’d believed, along with everyone else, that her stepfather Michael was her dad. For fifteen years that lie had kept her family knitted together...well, knitted together was maybe stretching it a bit, because there were a few dropped stitches here and there. Her parents, while individually decent and respectable people, hadn’t been happy in their relationship, but she had always blamed them for not trying hard enough to get on.

      She hadn’t thought it was her fault.

      That the lie about her was the thing that made their lives so wretchedly miserable. But after finding out the truth about her biological father and the circumstances surrounding her conception, she could understand why.

      Ailsa straightened her skirt over her thighs and took a calming breath, but then her gaze spied a silver photograph frame on Vinn’s desk and her heart stumbled like a foot missing a rung on a ladder. Why had he kept that? She had given him that frame after their wedding, with her favourite photo of them smiling at each other with the sun setting in the background. Giving him that photo had been her way of deluding herself she was in a real marriage and not one that was simply convenient for Vinn because he wanted a beautiful and accomplished wife to grace his home. She couldn’t see the photo from her side of the desk. Perhaps he had someone else’s image in there now. The thought of it churned her belly into a cauldron of caustic jealousy. She knew it was missish of her since she was the one to walk out on their marriage, but it hurt her pride to think he could so easily move on with his life.

      And not just her pride was hurt...

      Ailsa had always held a thread of hope that Vinn would fall in love with her. What bride didn’t want her handsome husband to love her? She had fooled herself it would be enough to be his bride, to be in his bed. To be in his life.

      But she had longed to be in his heart. To be the first person he thought of in the morning and the last he thought of at night. To be the person he valued over everyone else or anything else. But Vinn didn’t value her. He didn’t prioritise her. He didn’t love her. Never had. Never would. He was incapable of it.

      Vinn leaned back in his chair with one ankle crossed over his muscle-packed thigh, his dark unreadable gaze moving over her body like a minesweeper. ‘You’re looking good, cara.’

      Ailsa stiffened. ‘Don’t call me that.’

      His mouth curved upwards as if he found her anger amusing. ‘Still the same old bad attitude Ailsa.’

      ‘And why wouldn’t I have a bad attitude where you’re concerned?’ Ailsa said. ‘How do I know you didn’t plant the idea of sponsorship in Isaac’s mind? How often have you been in contact with him since we separated?’

      ‘My relationship with your brother has nothing to do with my relationship with you,’ Vinn said. ‘That is entirely separate.’

      ‘We don’t have a relationship any more, Vinn.’

      His eyes became obsidian-hard. ‘And whose fault is that, hmm?’

      Ailsa was trying to contain her temper but it was like trying to restrain a rabid Rottweiler on a Teacup Chihuahua’s leash. ‘We didn’t have a relationship in the first place. You married me for all the wrong reasons. You wanted a trophy wife. Someone to do little nineteen-fifties wifey things for you while you got on with your business as if my career meant nothing to me.’

      A tight line appeared around his mouth as if he too was having trouble reining in his temper. ‘I trust your aforementioned career is keeping you warm at night? Or have you found yourself a lover to do that?’

      She put up her chin. ‘My private life is no longer any of your business.’

      He made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort. ‘Isaac tells me you haven’t even been on a date.’

      Ailsa was going to kill her younger brother. She would chain him to the sofa and force him to watch animated Disney classics instead of the sports channel. She would take away his golf clubs and flush all his golf balls down the toilet. She would force-feed him junk food instead of the healthy organic stuff his sports dietician recommended.

      ‘Well—’ she gave Vinn a deliberately provocative look ‘—none that he knows about, that is.’

      A muscle in the lower quadrant of his jaw moved in and out like an erratic pulse. ‘Any lovers you’ve collected will have to move aside for the next three months as I have other plans for you.’

      Plans? What plans? Now it was Ailsa’s pulse that was erratic. So erratic it would have made any decent cardiologist reach for defibrillator paddles.

      ‘Excuse me?’ She injected derision into every word. ‘You don’t get to make plans for me, Vinn. Not any more. I’m in the driver’s seat of my life and you’re not even in the pit lane.’

      He made a steeple with his fingers and rested them against his mouth, watching her with an unwavering gaze that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle at the roots. But then she noticed the gold band of his wedding ring on his left hand and something in her stomach tilted. Why would he still be wearing that?

      ‘Isaac will never make the professional circuit without adequate sponsorship,’ he said after a long moment. ‘That nightclub incident he was involved in last year has scared off any potential sponsors. I’m his only chance. His last chance.’

      Ailsa mentally gulped. That nightclub incident could well have ended not just her brother’s career prospects but his or someone else’s life as well. The group of friends he’d been hanging around with since school attracted trouble and invariably Isaac got caught in the middle. It wasn’t that he was easily led, more that he was a little slow to see the potential for trouble until it was too late to do anything—his approaching Vinn for sponsorship being a case in point. But if he got on the professional circuit he would be away from those troublemaking friends.

      ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you involving me? If you want to sponsor him then do it. Leave me out of it.’

      Vinn slowly shook his head. ‘Not how it works, cara. You’re the reason I’m sponsoring him. The only reason.’

      Ailsa blinked. Could she have got it wrong about Vinn? Had he married her because he loved her, not just because he fancied having a glamorous wife to hang off his arm? Was that why he was still wearing his wedding ring? Had he meant every one of those promises he’d made on their wedding day?

      No. Of course he hadn’t loved her.

      He had never said those three little magical words. But then, nor had she. She had deliberately held back from saying them because she hadn’t liked the feeling of being