Blackmailed Down The Aisle. Louise Fuller

laid plans had been for nothing. Suddenly she was struggling to hold it together.

      ‘Please—’

      Her voice sounded all wrong, high and breathless, not at all like her voice. But maybe that was because she was no longer Daisy Maddox but some anonymous criminal. The thought made fear crystallise on her skin like ice.

      ‘Please don’t do this. I know it looks bad. But if you’ll just give me five minutes—’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘I think you’ve wasted more than enough of my time already.’

      ‘But you don’t know the full story,’ she protested.

      ‘Story? More like fantasy!’ He shook his head. ‘Save it for your lawyers. They’ll be paid to listen to your lies. I’m not.’

      His derisive words punched through her panic. The man was a monster! Didn’t he understand what breaking into his office had cost her?

      Suddenly her whole body was rigid and vibrating with anger. ‘I might have known someone like you would bring it all back to money,’ she snapped.

      ‘Someone like me?’ His voice was chillingly cold. ‘You mean a law-abiding citizen?’

      She glowered at him. ‘I mean someone without a heart.’

      His eyes glinted threateningly beneath the lights. ‘I don’t need a heart to recognise a thief.’

      ‘David’s not a thief.’ Her head jerked up.

      ‘So he didn’t steal my watch?’

      ‘No—I mean yes. But it was a mistake—’

      ‘I’m sure the prisons are littered with people all saying the same.’

      ‘No, you don’t understand—’

      ‘And I don’t want to.’ He frowned at her impatiently. ‘Your brother’s motives are of no interest to me. I’m only concerned with his guilt.’ His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘And yours.’

      Daisy stared at him open-mouthed.

      ‘My guilt!’

      His lip curled up impatiently.

      ‘Look, I may not have a heart, but I do have a brain and I’m not stupid. You didn’t come up here by accident, or to look at the view. You came to see what else you could steal—’

      ‘No.’ Her voice echoed around the empty office. ‘I did not.’

      ‘Yes, you did.’ The finality in his voice sent a warning chill through her. ‘As whatever you’ve got stashed in those pockets will no doubt demonstrate when we get downstairs.’

      She gazed at him dumbly. Something had just hit her. A way to corroborate her story. Desperately she fumbled inside her apron and pulled out the watch.

      ‘I didn’t break in here to steal from you,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I came to bring this back.’

      If she’d been expecting flags and a parade, she would have been disappointed. Rollo barely glanced at the watch. Instead his eyes were fixed on her face.

      ‘That proves nothing. Or rather, given that it contradicts everything you’ve just said, it merely confirms that you’re a liar as well as a thief!’

      Her hands were trembling. She felt almost giddy with anger. ‘I’m not a thief.’

      He shrugged. ‘Unlike some people, I prefer to tell and hear the truth.’

      ‘In that case you’re a bully.’

      ‘Is that right?’ His shoulders rose and tensed.

      ‘Yes, it is. Ever since you walked through that door you’ve done nothing but make threats and try to intimidate me.’

      A muscle flickered in his cheek, and then slowly he held out his phone.

      ‘So call the police,’ he said softly. ‘Go on. Call them.’

      Her pulse gave a jerk. She had effectively backed herself into a corner, and he knew it. But watching his green eyes gleam triumphantly, his smug assumption that she would back down, flipped a switch inside her head. Stepping forward, she snatched the phone from his hand.

      ‘Fine. I will,’ she snarled. ‘At least that way I won’t have to spend any more time with you.’

      ‘Don’t be so bloody childish.’

      There was a tension in his voice she hadn’t heard before.

      ‘I’m not being childish,’ she snapped. ‘You’re going to call them anyhow, so what does it matter?’

      Their eyes locked—hers furiously defiant, his cool, opaque, dispassionate—and then her mouth curved scornfully.

      ‘Oh, I get it. You wanted to do it. So who’s being childish now?’

      There was a small, tight silence.

      Rollo took a slow, deep breath. His chest felt hot and taut. Her stubbornness was infuriating, and yet part of him couldn’t help admiring her. She was just so determined to keep fighting him—even to the point of making this crazy kamikaze gesture.

      Glancing from her face to her tightly curled hands, he sighed. ‘You don’t want to do that, Daisy,’ he said at last.

      ‘You don’t know what I want. You don’t know anything about me or David.’

      He met her gaze. ‘So tell me.’

      Daisy stared at him in silence. Why was he offering her a chance to talk now? More than anything she wanted to hurl it back in his face. But already her anger was fading and picturing her brother waiting, wordless with terror downstairs, she took a shallow breath and lowered the phone.

      ‘Why?’ she said sulkily. ‘So you can use it against him.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘That depends on what you tell me. To date, all I know about your brother—aside from his penchant for expensive watches—is that he works in Acquisition and Development. And he’s tall and twitchy—’

      ‘He’s not twitchy. He’s just a bit nervous.’ She spoke defensively and instantly wished she hadn’t as he turned his penetrating, unsettling green gaze on her face.

      ‘Guilty people often are.’

      There was no short or easy way to refute that statement, so instead she satisfied herself with giving him an icy glare.

      ‘He’s not some criminal mastermind. He’s shy, and he finds it difficult to make friends with people.’

      ‘He might find it easier if he didn’t steal from them,’ he said smoothly.

      ‘It was a mistake.’ Her voice rose with exasperation.

      ‘So you keep saying. But a mistake is when you forget to charge your phone. Not when you purposely steal something that doesn’t belong to you. That’s called theft.’

      ‘Not always.’ She looked him straight in the eye, her shoulders set high and pushed back as though for battle. ‘Sometimes it’s called “charging market rent.”’

      Rollo gritted his teeth. Not in response to her confrontational remark but because he knew that this time she was telling the truth. David Maddox was clearly not a criminal mastermind. Which was why he’d requested a background check instead of just firing him.

      It had taken less than half a day for a file to land on his desk, and the research had been thorough—health records, academic results and employment history. And one line noting the existence of a twin sister who also happened to work for the Fleming Organisation’s hospitality team.

      Glancing across at her face, he felt his breath suddenly light and loose in his chest; he felt weightless, off balance, as though he’d been drinking. That was all she’d been. A line in a