Mediterranean Men Unleashed: The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride. JACQUELINE BAIRD

he let go of her wrist and moved back as though he could not bear to touch her.

      ‘And do you know why I have not, Emily?’ he said with a sardonic arch of one black brow, and, not waiting for her to answer, he added, ‘Because of your lech of a father.’

      ‘You never knew my father, and yet you seem to dislike him,’ she murmured. She knew it from the animosity in his tone, the tension in his body, and suddenly she was afraid.

      His handsome face hardened. ‘Dislike is too tame a word. I hate and despise the man, and I have every right to.’

      Emily shook her head, trying to make sense of what was happening. She was too shocked to speak. How had they gone from a simmering sensual awareness to a senseless argument in minutes?

      ‘Once I had an older sister, Suki, a beautiful gentle girl. She was eighteen, barely more than a child herself, when she met Charles Fairfax. He seduced her and left her pregnant with his child. Five months later, after learning Fairfax had married your mother, she committed suicide. Obviously he was seeing both of them at the same time.’

      All the colour leached from Emily’s face. This was no senseless argument, but deadly serious. She had never even known Anton had a sister. But there was no mistaking the absolute conviction in Anton’s voice, and for him to have apparently held a grudge against her father for over a quarter of a century she found totally appalling. She could not believe what she was hearing, didn’t want to.

      ‘No, that cannot be true.’ She murmured a denial. ‘My father would never have betrayed my mother.’

      ‘Believe me, it is,’ he said harshly. ‘Women who foolishly imagine they are in love are dangerous to themselves as well as to others. My mother never fully recovered from the loss of her daughter and I was kept in ignorance of the full facts for decades. As a boy of eleven I was told Suki had died in a tragic car accident. It was only when my mother was dying I discovered the real truth.’

      Her blue eyes widened in horror as she recognized the latent anger in his black eyes, the brooding expression on his face, and knew he totally believed what he had just told her. And with the knowledge came pain, a pain that built and built as the full import of his words sank into her brain.

      ‘When did your mother die?’

      He frowned down at her. ‘Does it matter? Last December.’

      Oh, my God! Only six months ago. No wonder Anton was so angry, with the death of his mother, the pain of losing his sister must have hit him all over again. From that thought came another, deeply disturbing. Shortly after his mother’s death Anton had made the acquaintance of her brother and uncle, and taken an interest in the Fairfax family and then in her. Coincidence—or something much worse, and a cold dread enveloped her.

      Her eyes swept helplessly over him, the bold attractive face, the strong tanned throat revealed by the open neck of his polo shirt, the khaki shorts that hugged his lean hips ending mid-thigh and his long legs. Her heart squeezed as vivid images of his naked body flashed in her mind, the body she had worshipped last night. Anton, the man she loved, and had been certain loved her. But not any more …

      CHAPTER FIVE

      ANTON had shaken her world on its axis and Emily was no longer certain of anything. She could not bear to look at him.

      Her mind spinning, she let her gaze roam over the view of the tiny principality. The sea as smooth as glass, the spectacular marina, the gleaming buildings were picture-postcard perfect, but wasted on her. She needed to think …

      The sun was still shining but the warmth no longer seemed to touch her. Yesterday she had been a blushing bride confident in the love of her husband, but now … She let her mind wander back over the first time they had met, the sequence of events, the conversations, his proposal of marriage that had led to this moment, and belatedly she realized he had never actually said he loved her …

      Not even last night in the heat of passion had the word love passed his lips.

      Emily shivered as cold fingers seemed to grip her heart, the icy tendrils spreading slowly through every part of her. She was an intelligent woman, and suddenly her whirlwind courtship and fairy-tale marriage were falling apart before her eyes. Slowly she turned her head and allowed her gaze to rest on her husband’s hard, expressionless face.

      ‘Why did you marry me, Anton?’

      ‘I decided it was time I took a wife and produced an heir. I chose you because I thought you were a beautiful, sensuous woman who would fit me perfectly.’ He reached out a hand to her. ‘And I was right,’ he stated.

      Emily batted his hand away. ‘And the rest.’ She stared up at him ashen-faced, horrified at the cynical practicality of his reasoning, but instinctively knowing there was more he was not telling her.

      ‘I might be dumb. But I am not that dumb. You only came into contact with my family after the death of your mother, and I don’t believe in coincidences. You might as well tell me the whole truth.’ And, though her heart was shattering into a million pieces, bravely she added, ‘Because it is becoming increasingly obvious you did not marry me for love.’ She prayed he would contradict her, declare he loved her and it was all a horrible mistake.

      ‘Why not?’ Anton said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘You are now my wife—Mrs Emily Diaz, a name your father refused to acknowledge or be associated with, and it satisfies my sense of justice to know you have my name for the rest of your life.’

      His dark eyes, a gleam of mocking triumph in their inky depths, clashed with her pained blue. ‘As for love, I don’t believe in it myself. Though women seem to have a desperate need to. What we shared last night and will continue to share is great sexual chemistry, not love.’

      Tears blurred Emily’s vision and fiercely she blinked them away. So this was what it felt like to crash and burn. All her hopes and dreams ground to dust in a few short minutes. For a short while, a very brief two months, Anton had been the man she loved. For an even briefer twenty-four hours she had been his wife. He had made love to her, and it had been the most amazing experience of her life and she had thought she was the luckiest woman in the world to be loved by him.

      But it had not been love … He freely admitted it was simply sex, nothing more.

      For Anton yesterday had been about sex and some misguided notion of retribution, not love, never love …

      How could she have been such a blind idiot? She had known the first time she set eyes on him, he was dangerous. She had avoided going out with him for a week. She should have trusted her gut instinct about the man.

      Her shimmering blue eyes swept over him, noted the arrogant certainty in his gaze. The Anton he had been when they had first got together, the man she had thought had refrained from making love to her because he respected her, bore no relationship to the Anton before her now. Cold and cynical, he was not the man she had fallen in love with.

      She shook her head in disgust, nausea clawing at her stomach as she was forced to accept the man she thought she loved did not exist …’I need the bathroom.’

      ‘Wait.’ He grasped her upper arm, halting her retreat. ‘This does not change anything, Emily.’

      ‘It does for me.’ She looked at him. ‘Let me go.’ And she meant it in every sense of the word. ‘I really do need the bathroom.’

      Anton’s mouth twisted. ‘Of course.’ He removed his hand from her arm, wondering why the hell he had told Emily about her father when not long ago he had been thanking his lucky stars he had kept his mouth shut.

      But then from the minute he had watched her walk down the aisle he had not been his rational self. The woman had that effect on him. Last night he had lost control in bed, a first for him, and this afternoon he had lost his temper at the mention of her father. He was going weak in the head and it had to stop.

      Honesty was supposed to be good for a marriage; he’d been honest, he reasoned arrogantly. It was Emily who was