Bridal Bargains: The Tycoon's Bride / The Purchased Wife / The Price Of A Bride

‘Oh,’ she gasped, coming to a surprised standstill at his side as she focused at last on her new surroundings.

Set in vast formal gardens, the house stood like a statement to all that was right in grace and architectural posture. No one feature had been allowed to dominate. The walls were painted in the softest cream, the woodwork glossy white, and the roof was constructed in flat grey slate rather than the terracotta she would have expected. A first-floor veranda ran right across the front of the house, casting gentle shade onto the terrace below, where the palest blue-cushioned wooden garden furniture waited invitingly.

Over to one side of the house, she could see a large swimming pool shimmering in the afternoon sunshine, and even spied a second pool under a high domed glass roof attached to the house itself. If there was a road nearby, she could neither see nor hear any evidence of it, but a long straight driveway led off into the distance, lined on either side by tall cypress trees.

‘But this is lovely,’ she murmured.

‘Praise indeed,’ he drawled with cutting sarcasm. ‘I was beginning to think that nothing was going to please you.’

With that he turned his back on her again to walk off towards the house. With a small grimace, Claire followed, half allowing him his right to have lost his grasp on all of that quiet patience he had been doling out to her all day.

He had stepped beneath the shaded end of the terrace before pausing to allow her to catch up with him, his long, lean body making a half turn so he could watch her approach through slightly hooded eyes.

Glancing up and noticing his scrutiny, Claire felt a self-conscious flush of heat wash through her system and quickly looked away again. What was he seeing when he looked at her like that? she wondered. A very big mistake walking towards him?

While she saw a tall, dark, very handsome man with cold black eyes, an unsmiling mouth, and a proud tilt to his chiselled chin that seemed to be trying to tell her something.

Though what that something was, she couldn’t have said. The man was a complete enigma.

Hot-cold. Soothe-cut. Approach and retreat. She listed these characteristics of his behaviour with a rueful tilt to her unhappy mouth that seemed to further annoy him. He shifted slightly, looking stiffly tense. The baby woke up with a start and gave a small cry. Claire covered the final few yards in a couple of light dancing steps, her mothering instincts alerted without her even being aware of it.

In the end she wasn’t needed. When he glanced down at the baby to find her eyes were open, all the hardness simply melted clean out of him as he lifted a finger to gently touch the baby’s small, pointed chin.

But what really took Claire’s breath away was the way Melanie’s sweet little smile appeared. She knows him already! she realised with a shock.

‘Hey,’ she complained, peering over his arm so she could look at her sister. ‘Those smiles are supposed to belong to me!’ she scolded.

As she heard her voice, Melanie’s eyes found her face and stuck firmly to it. ‘That’s better,’ Claire grinned, so engrossed in the baby that, far from being disturbed by his closeness, she didn’t even notice the way she was leaning against Andreas so she could monopolise the baby’s attention.

If she had, she would have realised how still he had gone. How his hooded eyes had become even more hooded as he settled them on the top of her golden head.

‘What a seductive picture,’ a beautifully cultured but coldly sarcastic voice intruded. ‘I wish I had my camera,’ it drawled. ‘Then I could capture the image for posterity and you could hang it on the wall as an example of perfect family harmony …’

Two heads came up, one dark, one fair, both faces revealing different expressions. Claire’s was startled by this totally unexpected attack; Andreas’s was—resigned.

‘Desmona …’ he greeted smoothly. ‘How—nice to see you.’

But it wasn’t nice. Desmona wasn’t nice and Andreas wasn’t being nice. The warm Greek air had suddenly turned chilly and Claire shivered accordingly as she watched the other woman begin walking towards them along the shaded terrace.

She was outstandingly beautiful. A tall and willowy silver-blonde in her early thirties, at a guess, whose silver-blue-silk-encased body glided gracefully as she moved. Money, class and a lifetime of believing herself to be special were reflected in that walk, Claire noted.

Though it was Desmona’s eyes that held her thoroughly captivated. If Andreas’s eyes could remind her of black ice sometimes, then the silver-grey ones looking at her now could have been set in permafrost, and they intimidated enough to have Claire inching backwards in wary retreat.

The back of her head hit a firmly cushioned shoulder at the same time as an arm curved around her, angling across her rigid back so long, lean brown fingers could rest on her narrow waist. Claire never even considered the idea of moving away from him—not while those silvery eyes were fixed on her anyway.

Was she family? Did she live here? she wondered curiously.

I hope not, she prayed, with a small shudder.

‘This, Claire,’ Andreas informed her levelly, ‘is my sister-in-law Desmona Markopoulou …’

Sister-in-law? With a small start, she flashed him a frowning glance. She was sure he had told her that he was the only grandson.

‘Widowed sister-in-law.’ It was Desmona herself who unwittingly cleared the puzzle as she came to a smooth stop just in front of them. But Claire didn’t even like the way she said that.

‘May I be the first to welcome you to your new home?’ Desmona murmured graciously.

‘Thank you,’ Claire politely replied.

She was offered a long-fingered, very slender white hand. Claire’s own palm began to tingle in anticipation of having to brush against the other woman’s satin-smooth skin.

Then the need to touch each other at all was suddenly saved when Claire remembered belatedly that her right hand was in a sling—at about the same moment that Desmona noticed it.

‘Oh, you are injured,’ she remarked. Her English was superb, spoken with an accent that was barely noticeable.

Claire smiled nervously. ‘An accident.’ She didn’t bother to elaborate. ‘So I am afraid I can’t …’ She gave a jerky gesture towards Desmona’s outstretched hand; the hand fluttered a little then dropped.

Clearly picking up on the tension suddenly surrounding them all, Melanie let out another protesting cry. Desmona’s eyes flicked from Claire to the baby, and in the sudden taut silence which followed something in her expression subtly altered.

‘She is like you, Andreas,’ she remarked casually enough, though.

‘She is my daughter,’ he answered just as casually. ‘What else would you expect?’

No reply was forthcoming, but the silence lashed to and fro with the kind of bitter words Claire could sense but not follow.

Then the silver eyes were shifting back to Claire, and the cold mask, which had slipped slightly, was suddenly back in place as Desmona politely excused herself before walking gracefully away along a formally set pathway that took her around the side of the house.

‘Good grief,’ Claire breathed as the air left her body in a single relieved whoosh. ‘What was all that about?’

For a moment Andreas didn’t answer, his attention thoughtfully fixed on Desmona’s steadily receding figure. Then he surprised Claire with a short, sardonic laugh. ‘You have just met the family choice for my bride,’ he said dryly.

‘Your late brother’s wife?’ she gasped, tipping her head back to stare at him in shocked disbelief.

He was already looking down at her, so their eyes clashed. The surface of her skin began to tingle, her insides along with it. She could feel herself beginning to fall into those devilish black eyes again and couldn’t seem to do a single thing to stop it.

‘Timo was a lot older than me,’ Andreas was explaining, seemingly unaware of the strange sensations Claire was beginning to experience every single time she looked into those eyes now. ‘They think I owe his widow something for inheriting on his death.’

‘But that’s archaic,’ she denounced, having to struggle to keep her mind locked on the conversation and not on the man she was having the conversation with. ‘When did your brother die?’

The bleak, pained look that came into his eyes occasionally was beginning to make more sense now, she realised as she watched it appear again. ‘Just over a year ago,’ he replied.

So, he had lost a wife he loved six years before, and a brother only recently. ‘I’m sorry,’ Claire murmured.

‘So am I.’ He smiled that brief grim smile. ‘I miss him.’

‘I know.’ She nodded in understanding. ‘You catch yourself looking round to speak to them only to feel that dreadful clutch of emptiness when you find they’re not there and you remember …’

His dark lashes gave a flicker. Claire’s breath caught on a softly inhaled little gasp when she saw the usual knock-back on its way. So she was totally unprepared for it when instead he bent his head and kissed her fully on her mouth.

If this was another punishing kiss for encroaching where he didn’t want her to, then it didn’t quite work out like that. Caught so off guard with her lips parted and her body relaxed, she was powerless to stop what happened next as she fell headlong into that kiss.

I don’t need to be looking into those eyes to feel like this, she realised as her whole mouth softened and drew him deeper, touching tongues—tongues that caused a sharp, hot electric charge to go racing through her blood. It was devastating, the most passionate encounter she had ever experienced. And if he wasn’t feeling it with her, then he was certainly feeling something that made a muffled groan break in his throat and his chest heave against her resting head before he completely caved in and threw himself passionately into that kiss.

If he hadn’t been holding Melanie, Claire had a horrible feeling he would have fallen on her like a ravenous wolf. As it was his stance shifted slightly and the hand resting at her waist became a clamp to wedge her back hard up against the full length of his side with a need to increase and compound upon what was suddenly running rife between them.

It was crazy—totally crazy, she kept on telling herself over and over. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was a business arrangement. No intimacy.

No intimacy. But if this wasn’t being intimate then she didn’t know what was. And she could smell the clean spicy smell of him—was being enveloped by it—stormed by it! Even her bruised ribs weren’t bothering to put up any protest at being clamped so tightly against him—they were too busy being under attack from the other side where her heart was pounding wildly in response to the whole mad, hot onslaught.

Then he groaned again, and in the next moment she was abruptly set free. In a dizzy haze of complete and utter disorientation, she reeled away. Legs like lead, eyes in a fog, she stumbled from beneath the terrace overhang and out into the sunshine.

‘Where are you going?’ His voice sounded hoarse and husky. But it brought her to a stop.

‘I—don’t know,’ she answered honestly, too confused to care how stupid she must sound.

Or stupefied, she then thought numbly, and wished the grass beneath her feet would open up and swallow her whole so she didn’t have to make herself turn around and face him.

Not that she needed to look to know exactly what she would see—a dark devil who had the kiss of hell in his repertoire, she thought fancifully.

A dark devil no less, who was cradling a sweet little baby on his arm, she added, and let out a strangled laugh that seemed to echo plaintively in the somnolent warmth of the afternoon quietness.

Yet he didn’t sound like a devil when he said, ‘Come back, Claire,’ very gently. ‘You’re quite safe here; please believe me …’

Safe, she repeated to herself. Tears sprang. Wretchedly she blinked them away. Then, on a small, tight, thickened suck of air, she attempted to pull herself together before turning round again.

She didn’t look at him—refused to do so as she made her shaking limbs carry her back into the shade. Coming to her side, he paused for a moment, and her senses began to sting in an agony of need for him to say not another word!

He must have sensed it and held his silence, which was something else she was realising about him—he picked up her feelings very easily.

Which made her what? Claire wondered dizzily as they both began walking in silence along the terrace towards the door. Pathetically transparent? ‘I …’ Desperately she searched her foggy brain for something casual to say so she could pretend the kiss just hadn’t happened. And found it when the sound of a car engine powering into life reminded her of Desmona. ‘Does Desmona live here in this house?’

‘She has her own apartment in Athens,’ he replied. ‘But she comes to visit my grandmother quite regularly. Claire, listen to me,’ he then urged huskily.

‘Oh, good,’ she cut in, agitatedly aware he was going to say something about that wretched kiss, and equally sure she did not want to hear it. ‘Then I won’t have to watch my back for flying knives,’ she joked, and managed to gain some reassurance from the fact that she could joke while she was feeling like this.

They turned together into a vast hallway with a white ceramic floor, cream walls and a white-painted staircase that swept gracefully upwards to a galleried landing above. It was all very grand. Very—

At which point her brain ground to a stop when she found herself confronted by a long line of shyly smiling and expectant faces.

Oh, what now? she groaned inwardly, eyeing the long row of what could only be the staff needed to run this big house, looking at the uniform neat pale pink dresses and white aprons the females were wearing, while it was white shirts and dark trousers for the men.

Then, on a sudden flashback to a few minutes ago, her face suffused with mortified colour. ‘Do you think they saw us outside?’ she breathed for his ears alone, while having a sudden horrendous vision of them all crowding at the windows to watch Andreas kissing her.

‘If they did,’ he drawled, ‘then we will have no need to labour the game-plan.’

It hit her then just what had been going on outside. That kiss had been part of this deception! No impulse, she realised. But merely part of his precious game-plan to make their liaison appear genuine.

She felt oddly cheated. No, worse than that. She felt used.

‘Shall we get this over with?’ he suggested, while she was still struggling with the appalling proof of just how ruthless this man could be!

With a light touch to the rigid line of her spine he prompted her into motion. For the next five minutes, face after face went by in a blur of smiles and curiously craning necks as his staff tried to get a peep at the sleeping baby lying in the crook of their employer’s arm.

In fact the only face that registered was that of a young girl on the end of the row who reminded her of Althea. She stepped forward and shyly offered to take Melanie from Andreas. While Claire stood by, intensely conscious of everyone’s eyes on her, Andreas exchanged a few words in Greek with the young girl before he handed over Melanie.

‘I don’t believe you put me through that,’ she hissed when eventually he began leading the way up the staircase to the landing above, giving the staff the chance to crowd around the young girl holding Melanie.

‘It was not set up for your benefit but for theirs,’ he came back crushingly. ‘They need to know who it is they are going to be dealing with since you will in effect be the lady of the house.’

Lady of the house? Claire almost tripped over the next stair in trembling dismay! His hand came out to steady her—she didn’t even notice! ‘But I can’t order those people around, Andreas!’ she protested, not noticing either that she had used his name for the first time in her urgency to get her point across. ‘I just wouldn’t know how!’

‘You will get used to it,’ he murmured indifferently.

‘But I don’t want to get used to it!’ she snapped, and at last realised he was touching her again and angrily tugged her arm free.

‘Fine,’ he concurred, letting her go—but only, she suspected, because they had reached the top of the stairs anyway, so she wasn’t likely to trip over again. ‘Then let Lefka do it when she arrives,’ he suggested carelessly.

She had forgotten all about Lefka, who, she had learned in London, presided over whichever household Andreas was staying in. So—yes, she thought in relief, let Lefka do it. And felt her pounding heart settle down to a steadier pace. She was used to dealing with Lefka …

She followed Andreas along a galleried upper landing to a glossy white-painted door that led, she discovered, to a suite of rooms very similar to the suite she had been allocated in his London home, only this suite was decorated in neutral shades of the palest gardenia and grey.

While Claire walked over to the window to check out the view, Andreas walked across the thick carpet to another door and pushed it open.

‘My rooms,’ he announced, bringing her swinging abruptly to face him. ‘But no key,’ he dryly pointed out. ‘So you will just have to trust me to behave myself.’

Was he really insensitive enough to joke about it after that kiss? Claire wondered furiously, and turned her back on him to walk over to the other side of the room where she opened another door, hoping to find a bedroom where Melanie would sleep. But a bathroom done in colours to match the bedroom gleamed cleanly back at her.

‘Where is Melanie going to sleep?’ she turned to ask.

‘In the nursery on the other side of the house,’ he said. ‘I will show you later …’

He was already striding towards the only other door left in the room to open. Claire watched him, wondering what could be left to uncover. She remembered the huge dressing room in the London house and once again was ruefully envisaging her sad wardrobe inside it.

The door came open at his touch, and he turned to Claire. ‘Come and look,’ he invited.

Not a dressing room, then, she assumed, walking curiously forward—only to go still in a state of breathless surprise when she realised that she was not only right and that this was indeed a dressing room, but also that her wardrobe of clothes certainly would be lost inside it—amongst the racks and rails and shelves already filled to bursting with the most exquisite things she had ever seen.

Expensive clothes. Designer clothes. Some of them very formal evening clothes. Yet still the kind of modern clothes any fashion-conscious twenty-one-year-old would die to possess.

‘For me?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Yes,’ he replied, and watched grimly the way her fingers trembled as she lifted them to cover equally tremulous lips.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.

‘Your response says it for you,’ he responded quietly.

‘I will never be able to wear this much!’ she cried, her eyes beginning to shine with unshed tears of excitement as those same trembling fingers reached out to touch a fine georgette top in smoky mauve with a matching shantung silk skirt to go with it.

‘Try,’ he invited.

Then she suddenly thought just what she was doing. ‘You must think me very mercenary,’ she groaned, turning to find him leaning lazily against the open door, his dark eyes fixed on her expressive face.

‘I think you are exquisite,’ he answered deeply, reaching out to touch his cool fingertips to the satin-smooth heat in one of her cheeks, his expression so unimaginably sombre that it trapped the air inside her chest.

Then he was turning away from her in that now familiarly abrupt way of his. ‘Enjoy,’ he invited with a careless wave of his hand. ‘Enjoy.’

And he was gone, disappearing through the connecting door to his own room, leaving Claire standing there with her own palm now pressed where his fingertips had been. Her thoughts locked on that terrible—terrible expression she had glimpsed on his face before he’d walked away from her.

It hurt so much to see it that she had a sudden urge to run after him, throw her arms around his neck and tell him not to be so sad, for she loved him; surely that had to count for something—?

Is that what I’m doing? Claire asked herself starkly. Am I falling in love with him?

He picks you up off the road, dusts you off, takes you home and feeds you. He then sweeps all your troubles away by replacing them with a whole new set of troubles—and you decide he’s the man to fall in love with?

Sold, she grimly mocked herself. For the price of a big house and a load of designer clothes, to the ruthlessly calculating man in the corner with the attitude problem worth falling in love with!

Well … Her chin came up, the light of a battle entering her eyes, though she knew the battle was now with herself. Marching forward, she firmly knocked on his door then swung it open.

‘I want to talk to my aunt Laura,’ she announced forcefully.

And thereby learned just how he must have felt when she’d walked out of the bathroom in his London home, with her robe hanging open down her naked front!

OK, she allowed as her senses roared into an overdrive she had never, ever before had to contend with. So he wasn’t quite naked. But there was only one piece of clothing left on his big, sleek, muscle-rippling dark golden body for him to take off—and those black silk briefs were not hiding very much!

Certainly not the powerful build of his legs or the kind of muscular torso Atlas himself would envy! Wonderful wide shoulders, she listed bemusedly. Lean, powerful hips, and the dynamic evidence of a—

‘Get the hell out of here!’ he snarled.

Claire almost left her skin behind as she jumped in response. Her eyes flickered then focused too late—much too late—to save her own dignity, never mind his. For it was only then that she realised just where she had been staring!

She whipped out of that room as fast as her shaking legs could take her. Pulling the door shut behind her, she wilted weakly against the wall beside it, squeezing her eyes tight shut so she could beg whoever it was who could make these things happen that they take back the last thirty dreadful seconds!

No chance. She wasn’t even allowed a few minutes to recover her composure before that damn door was shooting open again.

Pausing to scan the room for her, Andreas found her standing there cringing like an idiot against the wall with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Swinging himself around, he slapped his hands on the wall at either side of her head so he could push his face up close to hers like the dark avenger in search of a victim.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing barging into my room like that?’ he raked at her furiously.

‘I’m sorry,’ she choked, feeling his angry breath warm on her face, but keeping her eyes shut because she still wasn’t ready to take on board how she had been so crass as to stare at his body like that. ‘I didn’t think. I just—’

‘Didn’t think?’ he interrupted. ‘Have you any idea how close you came to completely embarrassing both of us?’

Oh, yes, she thought, with a telling little shudder, she had a very vivid idea how close she had come. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I’m sorry—I’m sorry!’

Small white teeth appeared, biting hard into her bottom lip, her only good hand clenching into a fierce fist while she tried very hard to dismiss the image that was still cruelly filling her head.

Another sigh rasped her face. ‘You idiot,’ he murmured, and the anger seemed to be easing out of him. ‘Next time knock and wait until you are invited before opening that door, and save both our blushes.’

‘Ditto,’ she found the presence of mind to counter.

It took him a moment, then he huffed out a laugh. ‘I suppose you do have a point,’ he conceded. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked then. ‘You have gone a really strange shade of puce. Never actually seen a man naked before, hmm?’