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Bargaining with the Billionaire: The Blackmail Bargain / The Billion-Dollar Bride / How To Marry a Billionaire - Элли Блейк - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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Bargaining with the Billionaire: The Blackmail Bargain / The Billion-Dollar Bride / How To Marry a Billionaire
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CHAPTER FIVE
‘AND I’m delighted to see you too,’ Curt said sardonically.
Peta gave a crack of unwilling laughter. How did he do that—make her laugh when she was angry and worried and scared?
Without waiting for an answer, he took her arm and drew her out into the soft light of dusk. Her witless body registered his touch with acute pleasure, and every sense blazed into fierce life as they walked silently through the soft evening, the scent of the gardenias floating around them like a lazy invitation.
At the car he held the door open and said, ‘You look superb.’
Stunned, she sent him a swift glance.
Something deep and inscrutable glimmered in the blue depths of his eyes. ‘Surely that’s not the first time a man’s told you that?’
Actually, it was. ‘Your sister dresses superbly,’ she said with blunt honesty. ‘I made this top myself, and the trousers came from a local store.’
‘You rise above them,’ he said blandly. ‘And you know exactly what looks good on you. Forget about where anyone’s clothes were bought. You’ll fit in.’ He closed the door on her.
Flushing, she had to turn her head and pretend to examine the fruit trees down the drive so that he wouldn’t see how much pleasure his casual compliment had given her.
When Gillian met them at the door of the homestead, Peta felt a twinge of humiliation at the instantly concealed surprise in the other woman’s eyes. What on earth had Gillian expected—that she’d turn up in jeans and a T-shirt?
Worse was to come when she introduced Peta to her friends—Hunter Radcliffe and his wife, who lived some distance further north. Lucia Radcliffe just happened to have been born princess of a small Mediterranean island.
At least there was no sign of a tiara on her regal head.
It took Peta only one glance to realise that Curt and Hunter Radcliffe were two of a kind—elite, alpha males with more than their fair share of forceful authority.
Like her father…
The following half-hour revealed that the princess was about as different from Peta’s mother as anyone could be. Lucia Radcliffe knew her own mind and spoke it, a state of affairs her husband clearly enjoyed.
Strangely enough Peta found herself neither tongue-tied nor awkward. Gillian’s manners were perfect and the princess, who insisted on being called plain Lucia, was a charming, warmly interested guest. And while Ian’s avoidance of Peta was obvious to her, nobody else gave any indication of noticing.
In spite of the tension sawing at her nerves, she found herself taking part in the conversation as though she’d known them for some time. When she needed it Curt was always there with unobtrusive support. Slowly she relaxed, until a wail from not too far away startled her.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Lucia said, swiftly getting to her feet. She smiled at Peta. ‘That is our darling daughter, six months old and hungry! As I’m the source of sustenance I’ll deal with it.’
‘May I take a peek?’ Peta asked.
The princess laughed. ‘Of course! We think she’s adorable, but then we’re a bit biased.’
The baby stopped crying the moment she saw her mother, opening her eyes wide to stare solemnly at Peta before giving a swift, triangular smile.
‘Oh—she’s gorgeous,’ Peta said on a sigh.
The princess picked up the child and held her out. ‘Do you want a cuddle? It will have to be quick, because Natalia doesn’t like being kept waiting for her dinner.’
‘I don’t know how to hold babies,’ Peta confessed.
Lucia plonked the baby into her embrace, standing back to watch Peta’s arms automatically curve around the sweet- smelling bundle.
‘I think it’s instinctive,’ the princess said wisely as Peta smiled into the quizzical little face.
The baby’s brows met in a frown, but after a moment she gave a half-smile and turned her head to check out her mother’s whereabouts.
‘Oh, sweetheart, you are delectable,’ Peta breathed, her face lighting up when the baby looked back at her and lifted a chubby, starfish hand to pat her cheek.
Lucia looked past them to the door, her lovely face breaking into a smile. ‘Curt, come in. Look, Natalia, here’s Curt to see you!’
The baby certainly knew him. Smile turning into a beam, she leaped in Peta’s arms, little hands working in excitement.
Curt’s gaze rested on Peta’s face with a kind of surprise. ‘Here,’ she said awkwardly, ‘you’d better take her.’
He handled the baby with the competence he showed in everything else, his expression softening as he looked down at her.
‘She is a born coquette,’ Lucia said fondly. ‘She even flirts with her father.’
Peta watched the tall man laughing at the baby, and for a couple of heartbeats she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Occasionally she’d fantasised about life with a kind, gentle man who respected her and listened to her, and in that shadowy dream there were children.
Now, with the impact of a bullet out of darkness, she realised that the only child she wanted was Curt’s.
Natalia began to wriggle, and Curt kissed the satiny cheek and handed the baby over to her mother.
Lucia said, ‘That’s probably the limit of her patience.’
‘You and your husband are right—she is adorable,’ Peta said, her voice uneven as she headed for the door.
Outside in the hall, something about Curt’s steady regard, watchful and deliberate, lifted every tiny hair on her skin.
But when he spoke it was to say, ‘You didn’t comment on which parent she most resembles.’
Peta steadied her voice before answering, ‘She looks like herself, and judging by the set of her chin she’s inherited both her father’s and mother’s share of determination.’
Laughing quietly, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. The warmth of his body sent hot shivers roiling across her skin. I’m in real trouble, she thought confusedly. What am I going to do?
Stop fantasising about babies, to start with!
‘Lucia can wax eloquent about her strong will,’ he said, and sent an enigmatic glance down at her as they walked towards the door of the sitting room. ‘Enjoying yourself?’
‘Mostly,’ she admitted honestly.
He nodded. ‘Just remember the whole purpose of this exercise.’
Not exactly a threat, yet his words reminded her brutally that to him she was a pawn, someone to be used for a particular purpose and then discarded. OK, so he liked babies; big deal. Tyrants and dictators liked babies too.
The pain that accompanied her thoughts was bitter medicine, but if it cured her of this feverish desire she’d endure it.
Just outside the door he stopped her with a light touch on her arm, and bent his head. Heart hammering, she looked up—and read cold calculation in his eyes.
He didn’t kiss her on the mouth. Instead his lips touched the angle of her jaw, and then his teeth closed for a second on the lobe of her ear, firing a bolt of delicious sensation into the centre of her being.
It was over almost instantly, but the aftermath stayed in her eyes and the delicate colour of her skin. When he opened the door for her and ushered her back into the room, a possessive hand in the small of her back, she saw Ian’s face clamp into rigidity.
A needle of pain worked its way through her. It hurt to see Ian suffer, even though she could never return his feelings. Why did things—people—have to change?
When the evening was over she thanked Gillian and Ian civilly and said goodbye to the Radcliffes.
‘I hope it’s not goodbye,’ Lucia said promptly. ‘We don’t live that far away.’
Not in distance perhaps…
Peta smiled and said something casual and inoffensive.
Halfway home Curt asked, ‘Why did you brush off Lucia’s invitation?’ In spite of his matter-of-fact tone he wanted an answer.
Her face set. ‘Because I was there on false pretences,’ she returned on a hard note. ‘Besides, the princess was only being polite—we won’t meet again.’
‘Her manners are exquisite,’ he agreed, ‘but she’s learned to protect herself from people she doesn’t like. If she hadn’t wanted to get to know you better she wouldn’t have suggested it.’
‘We have nothing in common. Once this charade is over I’ll never see her again.’
‘You’re an inverted snob,’ he said coolly.
‘I am not.’ Furious, she flared, ‘Except for a relationship with you—a relationship based on blackmail!—what common ground could there possibly be between me and a princess who’s married to a millionaire?’
‘You seemed to have enough to talk about,’ he said neutrally. ‘You certainly didn’t hold back when it came to discussing the state of the world. And you share a certain forthrightness. Because she spent years having to watch every word she said, Lucia rather enjoys stating her opinions.’
Peta shrugged, but his words echoed in her mind after she’d given him a cup of coffee and tensely waited out the forty-five minutes he insisted on staying.
‘More camouflage,’ he said laconically.
By the time he finally left her nerves had shredded to rags, but this time he didn’t kiss her, although the glitter in his eyes told her that he too felt the swift uprush of hunger, hot and sweet and fiery.
Whenever she smelt the scent of gardenia, she thought wearily as she closed the door behind him, she’d remember his addictive kisses. And wondered if he was deliberately holding back, making her more hungry with each fugitive caress.
No. He might be trying to manipulate her, but not into his bed; he wanted her flushed and eager so that Ian was convinced.
She went back into the sitting room, looking around it with clouded eyes. The contrast between its elderly furnishings, chosen for economy and hard wear, and Gillian’s house couldn’t have been greater.
About as much contrast as there was between her life and Curt’s.
‘So stop the sneaky little wish-fulfilment fantasies,’ she told herself harshly. ‘Curt’s baby indeed! You must be mad.’
‘First ride in a chopper?’ the helicopter pilot enquired, stowing her pack away.
‘Yes.’
He grinned and said confidently, ‘You’ll love it. It’s a great day and all Northland’s going to be spread out like a map under us.’ He took an envelope from his pocket. ‘A note from the boss,’ he explained, handing it over.
Peta opened it with trembling fingers. It was the first time she’d seen Curt’s writing, and for some reason the occasion assumed ridiculous importance.
Like him, his writing breathed bold, aggressive power. He wasn’t able to meet her in Auckland; his personal assistant would pick her up.
He signed it simply, ‘C’.
Curt by name and curt by nature, she thought, chilled. He was probably making sure he didn’t sign any documentation she might be able to use against him.
Well, he didn’t need to worry. She knew exactly why she was there. She’d keep her side of the bargain.
The pilot was right; the trip down was fantastic. Peta exclaimed with pleasure as Northland’s long peninsula, barely a hundred miles across at its widest part, unrolled beneath them in a glory of gold and green, hemmed by the blue of the Pacific Ocean on the left and the dangerous green waters of the Tasman Sea on the right; estuaries gleamed in the opalescent blues and greens of a paua shell.
‘We need rain,’ she said, looking down at toast-coloured countryside as they neared Auckland.
‘Rain? Have a heart, it’s summer,’ the pilot expostulated. ‘Nobody wants rain in summer.’
And there in a nutshell was the difference between city people and those from the country. She thought of the bag she’d packed so carefully that morning, choosing and discarding clothes, getting more and more stressed until she’d realised that no matter what she took, she couldn’t match the exquisite simplicity of the clothes worn by Gillian and Lucia Radcliffe.
With as little taste for humiliation as anyone, she hoped Curt had remembered his promise to hire clothes.
He’d remember. She relaxed as the helicopter began its descent. Overbearing blackmailer he might be, but she’d put down good money on nothing escaping that formidable mind.
Besides, he had an image to sustain, one that home-sewn clothes would wreck. An ironic smile tilted her lips; try as she did, she just couldn’t see Curt worrying about his image!
His personal assistant turned out to be a middle-aged woman, elegant and somewhat distant, who nevertheless greeted Peta with a smile and a ready fund of conversation as she drove her to a large house overlooking the harbour in Herne Bay, one of Auckland’s marine suburbs.
‘Mr McIntosh will be here as soon as he can,’ she said, turning into a gateway. ‘He’s really sorry—an important colleague arrived in Auckland unexpectedly this morning.’
‘It’s all right,’ Peta said easily, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t gripped by aching disappointment.
Perhaps some of her feelings showed in her tone, for his assistant gave her a sideways glance. When the engine had died she said, ‘In the meantime, he told me that you need additions to your wardrobe. I’ve organised a woman who dresses people to come along to see you; I think you’ll like her.’ Her smile relaxed. ‘Of course, that might be because she’s my daughter.’
Peta tensed, torn between relief and hurt pride. ‘I see,’ she said woodenly.
‘She’ll make it as painless as she can. I know how you feel; I hate shopping with a passion and so does my husband. Liz always says that because someone had to do the shopping in our household she was forced to develop a taste for it! Shall we go in?’
Far from resembling the Tanekaha homestead, Curt’s house was a gracious relic from the early twentieth century. On the path to the front door, Peta’s nostrils quivered at a familiar perfume—a gardenia bush spread its white velvety flowers across the path, their scent filling the air.
Another woman opened the door. How the heck many people did Curt employ?
‘Mrs Stable, the housekeeper,’ his personal assistant told her quietly.
The housekeeper, a wiry woman in her mid-forties with improbably red hair, showed her to a room that overlooked the harbour. Peta eyed the huge bed, the exquisite furnishings, and the magnificent painting on one wall—and wished herself back home. Damn Curt. How dared he go ahead and organise a shopping spree when she’d specifically told him she wouldn’t accept any money from him?
Well, why was she surprised? That was what men like him did—ploughed their way through life, trampling anyone who got in their way.
But she was nothing like her mother. Although she found Curt dangerously desirable, she certainly wasn’t in love with him. And even if she had been, pride wouldn’t let her follow like a dog at his heel.
And to be fair, the assistant’s daughter might have selected clothes from a hire firm…
Peta washed her face, and had just finished storing her pathetically few clothes in the huge wardrobe when someone knocked on the door.
Curt?
Consuming eagerness drove her across the room; she had to take several steadying breaths before she opened the door to a woman whose discreet chicness and resemblance to Curt’s PA gave away her identity.
‘You must be Liz,’ Peta said, masking searing disappointment with a fixed smile.
‘I am, indeed. Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’ She stood back, somewhat startled when the other woman surveyed her with impersonal intensity. ‘No offence, but I’m not too happy about this shopping idea,’ Peta said, hiding her awkwardness with a brisk overtone.
‘It’s Curt McIntosh’s idea, so we do it.’ Liz seemed to come to some decision. ‘OK, I can see which designers will be on your wavelength, but can I check the clothes you’ve brought? Curt said you’d be going to the opening night at a gallery and a dinner party, and spending a day on a yacht. He also said that although the clothes need to be good, they should be useful too, so no wildly impractical stuff. And he said that you’ve got great colour sense, which is perfectly obvious now I’ve seen you.’
Pleasure tingled through Peta, temporarily shutting down her indecision.
Liz glanced around, spied clothes through the open door of the walk-in wardrobe, and set off towards them like an elegant bulldozer. Peta opened her mouth.
And then closed it. Feeling alien and abandoned, she stood irresolute.
Liz took down a shirt. ‘Did you make this?’
‘I—yes.’
‘Good finishing.’ She directed a quizzical glance at Peta. ‘Curt warned me you’d probably object.’
‘Did he?’ Peta said through gritted teeth. Liz was probably wondering why on earth Curt had allied himself to a country hick. ‘Then you can tell him that I didn’t, can’t you?’
Liz gave a swift, sympathetic grin. ‘I’ve known Curt since Mum went to work for him, and one thing I’ve learned—well, me and the rest of the world!—is that if you’re stupid enough to go hand to hand with him, you’ll lose. He fights fair, but he’s ruthless and he’s utterly determined. How do you think he turned his father’s bankrupt business into a worldwide success?’
‘I believe he had to dump his father to do it,’ Peta said with cutting accusation.
‘True, because his father was the problem.’ Liz looked at her and seemed to come to some decision. ‘I’m not telling you anything everyone doesn’t know, so I can say that Mr McIntosh treated the firm like his own personal cash cow. When Curt took it over he turned it on its head and paid off the creditors in an astonishingly short time; he saved the firm and most of the employees’ jobs.’
Presumably her mother was one of those employees. ‘But to shaft your own father…’
Liz nodded. ‘I know. As I said, he’s ruthless.’
Peta walked across to the window and stared down past a green lawn, a swimming pool and a fringe of ancient pohutukawa trees. Between their branches the water of the harbour sparkled like gemstone chips.
From behind her Liz said, ‘But you know, I’d trust Curt with my life.’
A sound at the door made them both swing around. ‘Thank you for that tribute, Liz,’ Curt said smoothly. ‘Would you like to wait downstairs?’
She’d clapped one hand over her mouth, but she removed it to grin at him. ‘Certainly.’
Peta watched with tense awareness as he closed the door. Her heart had kicked into double time and the sensation running riot through her body was undiluted excitement. Three days had only served to hone her involuntary response to his potent male magnetism.
‘We made a bargain, you and I,’ Curt said pleasantly, but his eyes were grey and cold.
Her jaw angled in defiance. ‘I told you I wouldn’t let you pay for my clothes. You agreed to hire them.’
‘It’s not possible.’ He lifted his brows when she made an impatient gesture. ‘But if it means so much to you, you can pay for them.’
‘I can’t afford—’
She stopped because he came towards her, and something about his lithe, remorseless advance dried her mouth and stopped her heart.
‘If you mean what I think you mean,’ she said hoarsely, ‘that’s disgusting.’
‘Disgusting?’ He smiled and her blood ran cold. ‘What’s disgusting about this?’ he murmured, and bent his head.
Peta froze as his mouth drifted across one cheekbone. The elusive male scent that was his alone acted like an aphrodisiac on her, switching off her brain to leave her with no protection from the clamouring demands of desire except a basic instinct of self-preservation.
‘I am not a prostitute,’ she said thickly.
The ugly word hung between them. He laughed softly and said against her ear, ‘If you were I wouldn’t be doing this…’ His mouth moved to the lobe of her ear and he bit gently.
An erotic charge zinged through her, firing every cell into urgent craving.
‘…or this,’ he finished, and his mouth reached the frantic pulse in the hollow of her throat. He kissed it, and then lifted his mouth a fraction so that his breath blew warm on her sensitised skin. ‘And your heart wouldn’t be jumping so wildly.’
Tormented delight clamoured through her like a storm. Peta couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him to stop using mock tenderness in his subtle, knowledgeable seduction.
She quivered, lost in a rush of desire that burned away the last coherent thought in her brain. Sighing against his lips, she opened her mouth to his.
The other kisses they’d exchanged faded into insignificance; she sensed a difference in him, a darker, deeper hunger beyond the simple desire of man for woman. It fuelled her anticipation into a raging inferno. She shuddered when his hand smoothed up from her waist, coming to rest over the soft mound of her breast. Hot, primeval pleasure burst into life inside her, aching through her body, softening internal pathways, melting her bones…
His touch felt so right, she thought recklessly, linking her arms around his neck and offering him her mouth. She’d been born for this dangerous magic, spent the empty years of her adult life waiting for it.
Eagerly expectant, she held her breath while tension spun between them in the taut, humming silence. Ravished by the pressure of his big, hard body against hers, the powerful strength of his arms, she at last surrendered to her own needs.
His heart thudded against hers, his chest rose and fell, and his arms were hard and demanding around her. Yet he didn’t move.
With immense reluctance she forced her heavy lids upwards.
Curt’s face was clamped into an expression she didn’t recognise; his eyes glittered and a streak of colour outlined the high, sweeping cheekbones.
Her stomach dropped in endless freefall, and she knew what he was going to say. Humiliated, she tried to turn her face away.
He said something under his breath and his mouth took hers again, hard and fierce and angry, only breaking the kiss to say harshly, ‘Not now. Not while Liz is waiting.’
Oh, God, no! She whispered, ‘Then what was that about?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, understanding the real question behind the words. He released her and stood with a face like stone, withdrawn to some inner place she could never reach.
She took a jagged indrawn breath, but before she could say anything he spoke again, the raw note banished from his voice.
With a remote deliberation that slammed up impassable barriers, he said, ‘I have no excuse; I lost my head. It won’t happen again.’
It took all her willpower to step back, to look straight at him. ‘Do I have your word on that?’
‘Yes.’
Her skin tightened; a heavy weight of loss overwhelmed her. She had to search for a response, and in the end all she could find was a banal, ‘Good.’
Curt looked around the bedroom and said with formidable composure, ‘An essential part of this masquerade is wearing the right clothes. I’m prepared to pay for them. If you don’t agree to that our bargain is over.’
He didn’t threaten; he didn’t need to. That cold, ruthless tone, his implacable face told her that if she reneged on their deal she’d find herself with no farm, no way of earning her living—nothing.
‘Very well,’ she said stonily. ‘But when I leave here the clothes will stay.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s entirely up to you. I’ll go and tell Liz you’ll be ready in ten minutes.’
In the sanctuary of the bathroom, all marble and mirrors and glimmering glass, Peta eyed her reflection. Completely out of place in this cool, sleek sophistication, the woman in the glass blazed with a sensuous earthiness, her mouth kissed red and sultry eyes shooting gold sparks.
Even her hair was wild—she looked as though she’d been plugged into an electric socket.
After fumbling with the taps she ran cold water over her wrists and washed her face, then dragged a comb through her hair and with a vicious twist tightened the tie that dragged it off her face.
Another survey of her reflection convinced her that she’d managed to tone down the telltale sensuality and hunger. Now she just looked…charged, energised, as though she was hurrying eagerly forward to the future.
As though she was in control of her life, she thought hollowly.
At the top of the stairs she heard voices floating up from below; they fell silent when she started down. She swallowed and held her head high, taking each step carefully as Curt watched her with an expression that gave nothing away. Liz followed his gaze, her mobile face registering a moment of comprehension before it too went blank.
Acutely self-conscious, Peta reached the bottom and came towards them.
‘You’re ready?’ Liz said, then gave a short laugh. ‘Stupid question. So let’s roll.’
‘Be back here at five,’ Curt said, walking beside Peta towards the open front door. ‘Don’t let them hack into her hair.’
Shocked, Peta glanced over her shoulder. He was looking at the woman beside her.
‘Of course not,’ Liz said with a frown. ‘It would be a wicked sin. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’
Curt transferred his gaze to Peta. ‘Have fun.’
Peta’s eyes focused somewhere beyond and above his broad shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said on a note of irony, and she and the other woman went out into the summer sunlight.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ Liz invited as she drove through Auckland’s crazy traffic.
‘I’m twenty-three,’ Peta said, wondering why she needed to do this. ‘I work my own farm and I lead a pure and wholesome life.’
Liz laughed. ‘Not if you stick with Curt for long,’ she warned. ‘He’s a course in sophistication all on his own. Who’s your favourite author?’
‘Only one?’
‘Run through them, then.’
Peta began with Jane Austen and finished with her latest discovery from the library, adding, ‘And I love reading whodunnits and romances.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ Liz said cheerfully. ‘OK, so you’re a romantic. What do you do for a hobby? What flowers do you have in your garden? Or is it only vegetables?’
The vegetable garden had been her father’s domain, one she kept up for economy’s sake. Flower gardens, he’d said, were a waste of precious time. ‘I have three hibiscus bushes and a gardenia in a pot by the front door. As for hobbies, I sew. Every so often I knit.’ When she’d saved enough money to buy the wool.
Liz’s brows shot up. ‘Interesting. You could be a casual or a romantic, but my guess is that you’re one of the rare people who can wear several looks. We’ll see.’
Expertly negotiating a crowded, narrow street, she pulled up outside a shop that had one outrageous dress in the window. ‘Let’s go,’ she said cheerfully.
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