The Price Of A Bride

He would have watched Alexander Doumas begin to rebuild the family fortunes. He would have known that the proud Greek would one day want his island back, and he had simply waited until the price was right for him to offer it back.

‘I am here to see Mr Doumas,’ Mia informed the young woman behind the reception desk. ‘My name is Mia Frazier.’

‘Oh, yes, Miss Frazier.’ The girl didn’t even need to glance down at the large appointment book she had open in front of her. ‘You’ll need to take the lift to the top floor, where someone will meet you.’

With a murmured word of thanks, Mia moved off as gracefully as always, and so well controlled that no one would have known how badly her insides were shaking or that her throat was tight with a mixture of dread and horror at what she was allowing herself to walk into. Yet, abhor herself as she undoubtedly did, her footsteps did not falter nor did her resolve. The stakes were too high and the rewards at the end of it too great to allow any room for doubt.

She walked into a waiting lift and pressed the button for the top floor without a pause. She kept her chin firm and her teeth set behind steady lips as she took that journey upwards, her clear green eyes fixing themselves on the framed water-colour adorning the back wall of the lift.

It was a painting of the most beautiful villa, set on the side of a hill and surrounded by trees. The walls were white, the roof terra-cotta and the garden a series of flowerstrewn terraces sweeping down to a tiny bay where a primitively constructed old wooden jetty protruded into deeper, darker waters and a simple fishing boat stood tied alongside it.

What really caught her interest was the tiny horseshoeshaped clearing in a cluster of trees to the left of the house. It seemed to be a graveyard. She could just make out the shapes of simple crosses amongst a blaze of colourful flowers.

A strange detail to put in such a pretty picture, she mused frowningly. Vision it was simply titled. Whose vision? she wondered. That of the man she was here to see or the artist who had painted it?

‘Miss Frazier?’

The slightly accented cool male voice brought her swinging round to discover in surprise that not only had the lift come to a stop without her realising it, but the doors had opened and she was now being spoken to by a tall, dark, olive-skinned stranger. A stranger who was eyeing her so coldly that she had to assume he knew exactly why she was here today.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, with a tilt of her chin that defied his right to judge her.

Something flashed in his eyes—surprise at her clear challenge? Or maybe it was more basic than that, she suggested to herself as she watched his dark eyes dip in a very male assessment of her whole body, as if he had some kind of right to check her out like a prime piece of saleable merchandise!

Which is exactly what you are, Mia reminded herself with her usual brutal honesty.

‘And you are?’ she countered in her crispest, coldest upper-class English, bringing those roving eyes flicking back up to clash with the clear green challenge reflected in her own.

His ears darkened. It was such a boyish response to being caught, blatantly staring, that she almost found it in her to laugh. Only... It suddenly hit her that there was something very familiar about this young man’s features.

‘I am Leonadis Doumas,’ he informed her. ‘My brother is this way, if you would follow me...’

Ah, the brother. She smiled a rueful smile. No wonder he looked familiar. The same eyes, the same physique—though without the same dynamic impact as his brother. Perhaps he was more handsome in a purely aesthetic way but, by the way his colour remained heightened as she followed him towards a pair of closed doors, she judged he lacked his brother’s cool sophistication.

Leonadis Doumas paused, then knocked lightly on one of the closed doors, before pushing it open, and Mia used that moment to take a deep breath to prepare herself for what was to come next.

It didn’t help much, and a fresh attack of nerves almost had her turning to run in the opposite direction before this thing was taken right out of her hands.

But, as she had told Alexander Doumas only yesterday, her father did not deal in uncertainties. He knew she would go ahead with this, just as he had known that Alexander Doumas would go ahead with it, no matter how much it made him despise himself.

Leonadis Doumas was murmuring something in Greek. Mia heard the now-familiar deep tones of his brother in reply before the younger man stepped aside to let her pass him.

She did so reluctantly, half expecting to find herself walking into a room full of grey-suited lawyers. Instead, she found herself facing the only other person present in the room. Alexander was sitting at his desk, with the light from the window catching the raven blackness of his neatly styled hair.

Behind her the door closed. She glanced back to find that Leonadis had gone. Mia’s stomach muscles clenched into a tight knot of tension as she turned back to face the man with whom—soon—she was going to have to lie and share the deepest intimacy.

‘Very businesslike,’ he drawled. ‘I believe it’s called power dressing. But I feel I should warn you that it’s lost on me.’

Startled by the unexpected choice of his first attack, Mia glanced down at her severely tailored suit, with its modestlength skirt and prim white blouse, and only then realised that he had completely misinterpreted why she was dressed like this.

Not that it mattered, she decided as her chin came back up and she levelled her cool green eyes on him. She had dressed like this because she was going on to Suzanna’s very strict boarding school directly from here, where straitlaced conservatism was insisted upon from family and pupils alike.

‘When you marry me,’ he went on, ‘I will expect something more ... womanly. I find females in masculine attire a real turn-off.’

‘If I marry you,’ Mia corrected, and made herself walk forward until only the width of his desk was separating them. ‘Your brother looks like you,’ she observed as a mere aside.

For some reason, the remark seemed to annoy him. ‘Wondering if your father tapped the wrong brother?’ he asked. ‘Leon is nine years younger than me, which places him just about in your own age group, I suppose. But he is also very much off-limits, as far as you are concerned,’ he added with a snap that made his words into a threat

‘I have no inclination to so much as touch him,’ she countered, smiling slightly because she knew then that big brother must have noticed and correctly interpreted the reason his younger brother was looking so warm about the ears. ‘Though, you never know,’ she couldn’t resist adding, ‘it may be worth my while to look into whether he would be a better bet than you before I commit myself.’

Again there was the hint of anger. ‘Leon is already very much married to a wonderful creature he adores,’ he said abruptly. ‘Which makes him of absolutely no use to you.’

‘Ah, married.’ She sighed. ‘Shame. Then it looks as if you will have to do.’

With that little ego-deflater, she lowered herself into a chair and waited for his next move.

To her surprise, his mouth twitched, appreciation for her riposte suddenly glinting in his eyes. He was no one’s fool. He knew without vanity that he was a better, more attractive, more sensually appealing man than his younger, less dynamic brother.

‘A contract my lawyers have drawn up this morning,’ he announced, reaching out with a long fingered hand for a document of several pages which he slid across the desk towards her. ‘I suggest you read that thoroughly before you sign it.’

‘I have every intention of doing so,’ she said, picking up the contract. She proceeded to ignore him while she immersed herself in its detail.

It was a comprehensive document, which set out point by point the guidelines by which this so-called marriage of theirs would proceed. In a way, Mia supposed the first part read more like a prenuptial agreement than a business contract, with its declarations on how small an allowance he would be giving her on a monthly basis and what little she could expect from him if the marriage came to an end—which was a pittance, though she wasn’t surprised by that.

The man believed she would be a wealthy woman in her own right once all this was over. It suited her to continue to let him go on thinking that way so she didn’t care that he was offering her nothing.

It was only on the third page that things began to get nasty. She would live where he wanted her to live, it stipulated. She would sleep where he wanted her to sleep. If she went out at all she would never do so without one of his designated people as a companion.

She would be available at all times for sex on his demand...

Mia felt his eyes on her, following, she was sure, line by line as she read. Her cheeks wanted to redden, but she refused to allow them to, her lips drawing in on themselves because it seemed so distasteful to add such a clause when, after all, they were only marrying because of the sex, which was necessary to make babies.

She would conduct herself at all times in a way which made her actions as his wife above reproach, she grimly read on. She would not remark on his own personal life outside their marriage, and she accepted totally that he intended to maintain a mistress...

The fact that several slick lawyers were privy to all of this, as well as the person who had typed it, made her want to cringe in horror.

In anticipation of her falling pregnant, she would not step off Greek soil without his permission during her pregnancy. The child must be born in Greece and registered as Greek. In the event of the marriage irretrievably breaking down, yes, she would get full custody of their child, she was relieved to read.

Then came his own proviso to that concession, and it made her heart sink. It had to be his decision that the marriage must end. If Mia walked out on the marriage of her own volition then she did so knowing she would be forfeiting full custody...

‘I can’t agree to that,’ she protested.

‘You are not being given a choice,’ he replied, leaning back in his chair yet reading with her word for word of the contract. ‘I did warn you that I would not relinquish control of my own son and heir. I have the right to safeguard myself against that contingency, just as you have the right to safeguard yourself against my walking out on you. So it is covered both ways by that particular clause.

‘If I decide I cannot bear having you as my wife any longer, then I get rid of you, knowing I will be relinquishing all rights to our child. If you decide the same thing then you, too, will relinquish all rights over him. I think that is fair, don’t you?’

Did she? She had a horrible feeling she was being scuppered here, though the logic of his argument gave her no clue as to where. And, in the end, did it matter? she then asked herself. She had no intention of marrying any man ever again after this. If Alexander Doumas wanted to tie himself to this wife for life, let him.

‘Is there anything else you want to add to this?’ he asked, once she’d read the contract to the end without further comment.

Mia shook her head. Whatever she felt she needed to safeguard for herself would be done privately with her own lawyer in the form of a last will and testament.

Getting to her feet, she picked up her handbag. ‘I’ll let my father look at this then get back to you,’ she informed him coolly.

‘No.’

In the act of turning towards the door Mia paused, her neat head twisting to let her eyes clash with his for the first time since this interview had begun. Her heart stopped beating for a moment and her porcelain-like skin chilled at the uncompromising grimness she saw in those dark eyes.

‘This is between you and me,’ he insisted. ‘Whatever is agreed between your father and myself—or even your father and yourself—will be kept completely separate from this contract. But you decide now and sign now or—to use your own words—the deal is off.’

‘I would have to be a complete fool if I didn’t get this checked out by someone professional before I put my signature to it,’ she protested.

‘You want a professional here? Give me the name of your lawyer and I will have him here in half an hour,’ he said. ‘But I think it only fair to warn you first that I refuse to alter one single word on that contract, no matter what advice he offers you. So...’ A shrug threw the ball back into her court.

Well, Mia, what are you going to do? she asked herself as she stood, gazing at this man with his intractable expression that so reminded her of her father.

She shivered. He was contemptuous of who she was and what she was, indifferent to what she felt or even if she felt. He was ready, she was sure, to make her pay in every way he could, for bringing him down to this.

Oh, yes, she thought grimly. Just like her father. Every bit the same kind of man. Which made her wonder suddenly if that was why Jack Frazier had chosen Alexander Doumas in the first place. Was it because he saw in this man a more than adequate successor to himself as her tormentor?

‘Are you at last beginning to wonder if five million pounds is worth the kind of purgatory you are about to embark upon if you marry me?’ this particular tormentor prodded silkily.

‘No,’ she said, dropping both the contract and her handbag back onto the desk. ‘I was merely trying to decide whether it was worthwhile calling your bluff,’ she explained, ‘but, since I have another pressing engagement, I’ve decided not to bother haggling with you. So...’ Her chin came up, her green eyes as cool and as indifferent as they had ever been. ‘Where do I sign?’

It took the whole of the long drive into Bedfordshire to pull her utterly ragged senses back into some semblance of calm because from the moment she’d agreed to sign his rotten contract the meeting had sunk to an all-time low in the humiliation stakes.

He hadn’t liked her consigning him to second place behind whatever engagement she had, she knew that. It had been exactly why she had said it, hadn’t it?

But what had come afterwards had made her wish she’d kept her reckless mouth shut. Punishment was the word that came to mind. He’d punished her by introducing her to the two lawyers he’d called in to witness their signatures as ‘the woman who is this desperate to bear my child’ as he’d tossed the contract towards them to sign.

It had been cruel and unnecessary but he hadn’t cared. The way his hard eyes had mocked the hot colour that swept up her cheeks had shown he’d even enjoyed seeing her so discomfited.

Then had come the final humiliation once the lawyers had been dismissed again.

The kiss.

Her whole body quivered in appalled reaction, her lips still throbbing in memory of the ruthless way he had devoured them. He’d done it so cavalierly, coming around his desk in what she’d foolishly believed had been an intention to escort her politely to the door. What he’d actually done had been to reach out and pull her into his arms then capture her mouth with the same grim precision he had achieved the day before.

Only this time he had taken that kiss a whole lot further, Staking his claim, she realised now. Staking his claim on a piece of property he had just bought, by deepening the kiss with all the casual expertise of a man who knew exactly how to make a woman’s senses catch fire at his will.

And she had caught fire—that was the truly humiliating part of it. She had just stood there in his arms and had gone up like a Roman candle! She’d quivered and groaned and clung to his mouth, as though her very survival had depended on it.

Where had her pride been? Her self-control? Her determination to remain aloof from him, no matter what he did to her?

What he did to you? her mind screamed jeeringly back at her. What about what you did to him?

‘No...’ The word escaped as a wretched groan from anguished lips, and she had to slow the car down because her vision was suddenly misted. Misted by terrible visions of her fingers clutching at him—at his nape, and his hair—holding him to her when she should have been pushing him away!

He’d muttered something—she could still hear that driven groan echoing inside her shell-shocked head. Could still feel the burning pressure of his body against hers, of buttons parting, of flesh preening to the pleasure of his touch and the sudden flare of a powerful male arousal, the crush of his arms as he’d pressed her even closer.

It had been awful. They’d devoured each other like hungry animals, so fevered by desire that when he’d suddenly let go of her she’d staggered backwards with flushed skin and dazed eyes, her pulsing mouth parted and gasping for air as she’d stood there, staring blankly at him as he’d swung away from her.

‘Cover yourself,’ he’d rasped.

A shudder of self-revulsion shot through her, making her foot slip on the accelerator when she saw in her mind’s eye what he must have seen as he’d stood there, glowering at her, with the desk once more between them.

Her jacket, her blouse—even her fine lacy bra—gaping wide to reveal the fullness of her breasts in tight, tingling distension!

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she whispered, turning her back to him while useless fingers fumbled in their attempts to put her clothing back in order.

‘Why not?’ he countered flatly. ‘It is what you signed up for.’

Humiliation almost suffocated her. ‘I hate you,’ she choked.

‘But I don’t think you’re going to find the sex a problem, do you?’

Recognising her own taunt from yesterday being flung right back at her, she shuddered again.

‘Not surprising, really,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘when rumour has it that you were a bit of a raver in your teens...’

Her teens? She went very still. The fact that he knew about her wild teenage rebellion was enough to keep her ready tongue locked inside her kiss-numbed mouth.

‘Well, let’s get one more thing straight before you leave this room,’ he continued very grimly. ‘You will behave like a lady while you belong to me. There will be no wild parties, no rave-ups. No sleeping around when the mood happens to take you.’

‘I’m not like that.’ She was constrained to defend herself.

‘Now? Who knows?’ he said derisively. ‘While you are married to me? No chance. I want to know that the child you will eventually carry is my child,’ he vowed, ‘or you will be wishing you’d never heard the name Doumas! Now, pull yourself together before you walk out of this room,’ he concluded dismissively. ‘We will marry in three days’ time.’

‘Three days?’ she gasped, spinning round to stare at him. ‘But—’

It was as far as she got. ‘Three days,’ he repeated. ‘I see no reason to delay—especially when I know what a receptive little thing you’re going to be in my bed,’ he added silkily at her white-faced shock. ‘The sooner we get this show on the road the sooner I get you pregnant, and you get your five million pounds and I get back what should be mine.’

He meant his island, of course. The stupid bit of Greek rock he was prepared to sell his soul for—or, at the very least, his DNA. The man had no concept of which was really more important. She could have told him, but she didn’t.

In fact, she wanted him to go right on believing that his island was worth more to him than his DNA. That way she could finally beat him, which was really all that mattered to her.

The only thing she could do now was think ahead. A long way ahead to a time when—God willing—the awful man would grow tired of her and eventually let her go.

Suzanna was heart-achingly pleased to see her. But the seven-year-old broke down and wept her heart out when Mia told her gently that she was going away for a while.

Pulling her onto her lap, she let the little girl weep herself dry. Heaven knew, there were too few moments when she could give her emotions free rein like this.

‘It will only be for a year or two,’ she murmured soothingly, ‘and I will come and see you as often as I can.’

‘But not like you do now,’ the child protested, ‘because Greece is a long, long way away! And it’s going to mean that I will have to spend the school holidays alone with Daddy!’

The alarm that prospect caused the poor child cut deeply into Mia’s heart. ‘Mrs Leyton will be there for you,’ Mia reminded her. ‘You like her, don’t you?’

‘But I can’t bear not having you there, too, Mia!’ she sobbed. ‘He h-hates me! You know he does because he hates you too!’

Mia sighed and hugged the child closer because she knew she couldn’t even lie and deny the charge. Jack Frazier did hate them both. He had poured what bit of love he had ever had in him into their brother, Tony. With Tony gone, their father had just got more and more resentful of their very existence.

‘Look,’ she murmured suddenly out of sheer guilt and desperation, even though her father’s warning was ringing shrilly in her ears, ‘I promise to call you once a week so we can talk on the telephone.’

‘You promise?’ the child whispered.

‘I promise,’ Mia vowed.

She hugged the thin little body tightly to her because it wasn’t fair—not to herself, not to Suzanna. May God forgive me, she prayed silently, for deserting her like this.

‘I love you, my darling,’ she whispered thickly. ‘You are and always will be the most important thing in my life.’

She got back to the house after dark, feeling limp and empty.

‘Your father’s flown off to Geneva,’ Mrs Leyton informed her. ‘He said to tell you not to expect him back before you leave here. Why are you leaving here?’

The poor old lady looked so shocked that it took the very last dregs of Mia’s strength to drag up another set of explanations. ‘I’m going to be living in Greece for a year or two,’ she said.

‘With that Greek fellow that was here the other day?’

‘Yes.’ Her tired mouth tightened. ‘We are—getting married,’

‘And your father agrees?’ Mrs Layton sounded stunned.

‘He—arranged it,’ Mia said, with a smile that wasn’t a smile but more a grimace of irony. Then she added anxiously, ‘You’ll keep an eye on Suzanna for me, won’t you, while I’m away?’

‘You should be staying here to do that yourself,’ the housekeeper said sternly.

‘I can’t, Cissy.’ At last the tears threatened to fall. ‘Not for the next year or so, anyway. Please don’t quiz me about it—just promise me you’ll watch her and keep my father away from her as much as you can!’

‘Don’t I always?’ the housekeeper snapped, but her old eyes were shrewd. Mia had a suspicion that she knew exactly what was going on. ‘That Greek chap has been on the telephone, asking for you, umpteen times today. He didn’t sound very pleased that you weren’t here to take his calls.’

‘Well, that’s his hard luck.’ Mia dismissed Alexander Doumas and all he represented. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’

‘And if he rings again?’

‘Tell him to leave a message then go to hell,’ she said, walking away up the stairs and into her room where she stripped herself with the intention of having a shower. But it couldn’t even wait that long and the next moment she had thrown herself down on her bed and was sobbing brokenly into her pillow, just as Suzanna had sobbed in her arms this afternoon.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHERE the hell have you been for the last three days?’

Mia’s insides jumped, her eyes jerking sideways to skitter briefly over the dark-suited figure seated next to her in the car.

Alexander looked grim-faced and tense. She didn’t blame him. She felt very much the same way herself, hence her jumping insides, because he had actually spoken to her directly for the first time since that dreadful marriage ceremony had taken place.

‘I had things to do,’ she replied, her nervous fingers twisting the unfamiliar gold ring that now adorned her finger.

‘And I had things I needed to check with you,’ he bit back.