Black Widow Bride

Black Widow Bride

Tessa Radley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Dedications in first books are special. I’ve so many people to thank, so many people helped me along the way to selling that first book.

To writers and teachers—

To Daphne Clair and Robin Donald for running the Kara School of Writing, without which I would never have plucked up the courage to write

And to Barbara Samuel for touching my heart and Emma Darcy for encouragement when I needed it most

To the editors who have helped me on my way—

Karin Stoecker for making me believe

Dianne Moggy for graceful advice and enthusiasm Briony Green for her time and patience and excellent advice, which I will never forget

To my dream team—

Karen Solem and Melissa Jeglinski, who brought my dreams to life

To my writing group—

Karina Bliss, Abby Gaines and Sandra Hyde, friends and writers who fill my day with laughter

To my family—

Tony, Alex and Andrew, thank you for always believing and being there every day. You guys make each day special!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Coming Next Month

One

How had it all gone so horribly wrong?

Rebecca Grainger wrapped her arms around her stomach, nausea welling up. If she could only stop thinking about it, then maybe the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach would subside. The wedding was her priority, Rebecca told herself. Focus on that. She’d already been paid for arranging it—in full—the cheque flung at her last night.

Last night. That kiss. No, don’t think about last night.

Concentrate on the wedding. An Asteriades event. A desperate glance swept the tables laden with glittering silver cutlery and Baccarat glasses, the slim crystal vases each bearing six glorious long-stemmed white roses on the tables.

Naturally she’d had unlimited resources at her disposal, and no expense had been spared for Damon Asteriades’s wedding. The vaulted ballroom ceiling of Auckland’s San Lorenzo Hotel had been draped in soft white folds of fabric to give the dreamy, romantic mood of a bower. Garlands of ivy and hothouse white roses festooned the walls, filling the ballroom with heady scent. Brass wall-mounted sconces held torches that added an intimate glow, while the vast room had been heated to allow women to show off an astonishing array of flimsy designer gowns even though the winter air blew cold outside.

In the centre of the otherwise empty dance floor, Damon Asteriades performed a graceful manoeuvre, twirling his new bride to the melodious strains of the “Blue Danube” waltz, his dark head close to her pale blond hair. He was one hundred per cent gorgeous Greek male from the top of his overlong jet-black hair to the tips of his tanned fingers, with a Greek male’s hotheaded certainty that he was always right. And right now Rebecca wished he were a million light-years away.

“My son is a fool.”

At the voice of Soula Asteriades—Damon’s mother and widow of the powerful Ari Asteriades—Rebecca smiled and said, “Damon wouldn’t care for that description.”

“And look at you, Rebecca! My dear, did you have to wear scarlet? Like a red flag to a bull?” Soula sighed. “That wicked dress will only fuel the tales that grow in each retelling.”

Rebecca laughed and glanced down at the extravagant Vera Wang dress she wore. “Let them gossip. I don’t care. At least I’m not stealing the bride’s thunder and wearing white.”

“But you should’ve been. You would’ve made a beautiful bride. If only Ari had been here—he might have knocked some sense into the boy’s head.”

Shocked, Rebecca stared at the older woman. “Soula?”

“This wedding is a mistake, but now it’s too late. My son has made his choice and he must live with it. That’s my last word.” Soula disappeared into the throng surrounding them.

Disconcerted, Rebecca turned her attention to the dance floor. Damon chose that moment for an uncharacteristic display of public affection—brushing a kiss across the top of his bride’s head. The bride tilted her face up, revealing astonishment but none of the sparkling joy expected. Rebecca couldn’t help wishing that Damon was where she was right now—in hell.

She couldn’t bear to watch. She closed her eyes. Her head ached with a combination of inner tension, the strain of the day and the residue of last night’s wine. She wanted the wedding over. Done. So that she could rid her mouth of the bitter taste of betrayal.

“Come. Time for us to join them.”

Rebecca’s painful thoughts were jogged by a touch on her cold, clammy arm, and she became abruptly aware that the music from the stylish ensemble on the raised dais was fading. Savvas, the bridegroom’s brother and best man, stared at her expectantly.

She forced a smile. “Sorry, Savvas. I was miles away.” He gave her a wide grin. “Stop worrying, everything’s magnificent. The flowers, the menu, the cake, the dress. Women will be queuing for you to organise their perfect day.”

Rebecca blinked at Savvas’s enthusiasm. Organising yet another Auckland high-society wedding was the last thing she wanted; yet she was thankful that he’d put her distraction down to anxiety about the success of the function. No one—not Savvas, nor anyone else—knew why she had fretted all day. Or why the memory of these particular nuptials would cast a pall over every wedding for years to come.

Oh, God, how could she have been so stupid last night!

“Come.” Savvas tugged her hand insistently.

She dug her sandal-clad toes in, not budging. “I don’t dance at weddings I’ve organised.” Over Savvas’s shoulder she met the bridegroom’s narrow-eyed gaze, read the disdain.

It hurt.

More fool her. She dragged her attention back to Savvas.

He chuckled, oblivious to the tension that strung her tighter than the violinist’s bowstring, his blue eyes lighting up with merriment, eyes so like his brother’s that her heart jolted. No, she reprimanded herself, don’t go there!

“No excuses. You’re not working tonight, you must dance. Come. It’s traditional, the maid of honor and best man join in next. Look, everyone’s waiting.”

A rapid glance around told Rebecca he was right. Hordes of exquisitely dressed couples had flocked to the edge of the dance floor and stood waiting for them. Even Damon’s mother was there, her eyes sympathetic. Rebecca raised her chin. Instinctively she touched the opal pendant that rested just above her breasts.

And then her gaze collided with blue. A cold, icy blue. Damon Asteriades was glaring now, disapproval evident in the hard slash of his mouth, his bride clamped in his arms.

His bride.

Fliss.

Her best friend.

Rebecca tossed her head, slid her chilled hand into the crook of the arm Savvas offered and, forcing a parody of a smile onto her lips, allowed him to lead her onto the floor, the flouncy skirt of her scarlet dress swirling around her legs.

She would dance. Damn Damon Asteriades! She would laugh, too, wouldn’t let Damon glimpse the misery in her heart, the emptiness in her soul. Damon would never know what it had cost her to organise his wedding to Fliss, to help Fliss with the myriad choices of music, flowers, fabrics, or how sick and despondent she had felt trudging up the aisle behind the pair of them.

Nor would he ever know of her quiet desperation when the white-and-gold-robed priest had pronounced them man and wife. Of the ache that had sharpened as the bridal couple had turned to face the congregation. Fliss had been pale, but she’d managed to give Damon a flirtatious glance from under her lashes. And Damon had sought Rebecca’s gaze, his eyes blazing with triumph, as if to say, Nothing you can do now.

Oh, yes, she’d dance. She’d be as outrageous as ever, and not a soul would guess at the agony hidden beneath the brittle facade. They’d see what they always saw: brazen, independent Rebecca.

Never again would she allow herself to become vulnerable to this raw, consuming emotion. It hurt too much.

She smiled determinedly up at Savvas as he put an arm around her shoulder and ignored the glower from the midst of the dance floor.

“Hey, brother, my turn to dance with the bride.”

Startled by Savvas’s words, Rebecca surfaced from the numb place to which she’d retreated, a place where she felt nothing. No pain, no emotion. The sudden stop brought her back to the present, back to the ballroom. Savvas stepped away as the romantic melody faded.

In front of her stood her nemesis, the man she knew she would never escape.

Even in this dim light his blue gaze glittered. Only the bent blade of a nose that had clearly been broken more than once saved his face from the classic beauty his full mouth and impossibly high cheekbones promised. Instead it created a face filled with danger, utterly compelling and ruthlessly sensual. A modern-day pirate.

Hastily she looked away, grabbing for her departing dance partner.

“Savvas?”

But Savvas was gone, spinning Fliss away, Fliss’s wedding dress fanning out against his legs. Feeling utterly alone, Rebecca waited, heart thudding with apprehension, refusing to look at Damon.

“So, you are now trying to seduce my brother? Another crack at the Asteriades fortune, hmm?” Her head shot back at the cynical words. There was something dark and tumultuous in his eyes.

He was angry?

What about her?

What gave him the right to judge her? He didn’t even know her—hadn’t had the slightest inclination to get to know her.

“Go to hell,” she muttered through grimly smiling teeth and swung away.

“Oh, no, Rebecca.” A hard hand caught her elbow. “It’s not going to be that easy. I’m not going to allow you to cause a scene and leave me standing alone on the dance floor. You’re not making a fool of me.”

Rebecca tried to wrench free. The grip tightened. Big. Strong. Powerful. She didn’t have a hope of escaping Damon Asteriades. But the last thing in the world she wanted today was to be held in his arms, to dance with him.

No.

She must have said it aloud, because his mouth flattened as he twirled her around to face him.

“Yes,” he hissed. His eyes had turned to flat, unforgiving cobalt chips. “You will dance with me.” His right hand moved to rest on her waist as the joyous bars of the next waltz struck up. “For once in your selfish life you will do something for someone else. I will not allow you to destroy Felicity’s day.”

As he’d already destroyed her.

Rebecca wanted to laugh hysterically. Damon had no idea…no idea that he would destroy Fliss, too. Dear, beloved Fliss, the closest thing she had to a sister. Her best friend. Her business partner. Or at least she had been until last night when, after the final wedding rehearsal, Fliss had signed her share in Dream Occasions over to Rebecca.

And why? Because Damon had demanded it.

The lord and master had made it clear he wanted all ties to Rebecca severed, and Fliss had obeyed. Rebecca had been hotly, impulsively furious. Yet under the fury there had simmered the unspeakable pain of betrayal. Rebecca knew why Fliss had capitulated. Hell, she even understood why her friend was so desperate to marry a man to whom she was so totally unsuited.

But Fliss should’ve known better, should never have agreed to marry him. Yet how could Fliss refuse? Because Fliss craved security—as Rebecca once had. Unlike a heroine tied to the train tracks in one of those ancient black-and-white movies, Fliss didn’t see the danger. She saw only Damon’s solid strength. His power and wealth.

Damon was too strong. He’d dominate her. Fliss would never stand up to him. Rebecca feared Fliss would wither and die. So last night Rebecca had decided to take matters into her own hands.

A cold line of goose bumps swept her spine. Rebecca gave a convulsive shiver at the memory of what had happened next.

And afterward…

God! She would never forget the thrust of Damon’s anger, his contempt…or his furious passion…as long as she lived. Not even the gallons of red wine she’d consumed later had dimmed the pain, the knowledge of what that one last desperate shot had cost.

“Fliss,” she said gently as Damon’s hand enfolded hers—trapping her—as he led her into the waltz.

Damon glared down at her, uncomprehending.

“She likes to be called Fliss. Or hasn’t she told you that yet?”

His black eyebrows drew together, and she was terribly aware of the heat of his hand on her waist, of the intimate pressure of his palm against hers, of his hot, sexy scent.

“Her name is Felicity,” he said repressively. “It’s beautiful. A happy name. The other sounds insubstantial, like fairy floss.”

“But she hates it. Or don’t her wishes matter to you?”

The name reminded Fliss of less happy times, of a childhood where she’d been shy, small for her age—of the bullying she’d endured at school as the child of a foster home, of the stark discipline meted out by foster parents who had their own two daughters to love. Rebecca knew because she’d been there, raised by the same distant but well-meaning couple. How could she explain it to Damon? She couldn’t! Rebecca reminded herself she was no longer the rock in Fliss’s life. It was up to Fliss to tell her husband what she chose.

Momentarily Damon looked taken aback, but already his face was hardening. “It has nothing to do with you what I call my wife. All I ask is that you refrain from ruining this day.”

My wife.

Again the agonising sharpness pierced her heart. Rebecca pushed the pain away. She’d deal with it later, much later, when this appalling day was over and she was alone.

“And how would I do that?” She raised a brow, pretending an insouciance she was far from feeling, here, trapped within the heat of his arms, mindless of the other dancing couples surrounding them. “Savvas told me that everything is stunning—the flowers…the wedding dress…the wedding cake—that it’s a Dream Occasion. How could I possibly ruin it?” Each word she uttered was another blow to her already battered heart.

But he didn’t smile at her intentional pun on her business’s name. Instead his glower darkened. “Don’t be obtuse. I’m not doubting your professional ability, it’s your penchant for stirring up trouble that has me worried.”

If only she could hate him.

Damon despised her. And, at this moment, she didn’t like him much either. To be quite honest, more than anything in the world she wanted to kill Damon Asteriades, business tycoon, billionaire…and the blindest, most stubborn, most controlling man she’d ever met. If he’d been more attuned to her, he would’ve known that Fliss would be safe, that there’d be no catfight on the dance floor tonight. Rebellion stirred within Rebecca. Perhaps she should give him cause to worry. Punish him a little.

She gave her slowest, most sultry smile. “Trouble? People say that’s my middle name.”

“You are trouble.” His lips barely moved. His eyes were harder than the diamonds that graced Fliss’s neck. “I don’t want you talking to Savvas. Leave him alone. You’re not getting your talons into my brother.”

Her defiance wavered. Damon’s brutal reaction was predictable. Before she’d met him, she’d heard tales about him. Of his business successes, his clever, decisive mind, his devastating good looks. But she’d never expected the raw, primal emotion he’d aroused in her. They’d met at a wedding she and Fliss had organised for a business colleague of his. She’d taken one look at the gorgeous guy with the dark, brooding magnetism and fallen. Hard.

He’d been charming, attentive, interested—she’d thought. Until he’d learned her name, figured out that she was Aaron Grainger’s scandalous widow. In an instant he’d changed. Withdrawn. Become distant and, worse, disinterested. She’d watched his eyes narrow, and with one raking glance he’d stripped her to the soul, then he’d dismissed her and stepped past her to congratulate the groom. But it had been far too late for caution. She’d been lost.

Caught up in her thoughts, Rebecca let her hips move fluidly to the rhythm of the music. For a moment his body responded and they moved as one, dipping and swaying. But an instant later he tensed and moved away.

Always it had been so.

After that first encounter, she’d searched him out shamelessly, using business acquaintances and her connections as Aaron Grainger’s widow to secure invitations to places he frequented, inexorably driven by a raw attraction that had gone to the heart of her. How hard she’d tried to recapture that magical moment. Always she imagined a moment of softening, a flash of heat, then it was gone—and the man of steel returned. Until finally she’d realised the overwhelming attraction existed only in her own mind.

Damon hadn’t seemed to feel anything.

The discovery crushed her.

Even now, as they danced, his body was rigid, unbending, his gaze fixed on something over her shoulder. Totally removed from her. Her mouth twisted. So much for fate. Nothing in her life had ever been easy, so why should falling in love be any different?

But she’d never expected fate’s final cruel twist: that Damon would take one look at Fliss’s sweet blond gentleness and want it for himself. Or how much that would devastate her.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

Last night had proved that.

Oh, God, last night…

She stared at his mouth pressed into a hard line, remembered the hard, seeking pressure against her lips, remembered how…

No, no, don’t think about it!

So Rebecca said the first thing that came into her head. “Both you and Savvas dance well. Did you attend lessons?”

“Forget about how well Savvas dances, you little troublemaker,” he ground out. “I want you to stay away from him, he’s too young.”

Troublemaker?

Why the hell not. What did she have to lose? Rebecca blocked out his disparaging voice and, humming the refrain of the waltz, let her body brush his, heard his breath catch and repeated the fleeting brush of body against body.

“Theos. Stop it!” The hand on her waist moved to her shoulder, a manacle, holding her at bay.

She resisted the urge to sag in his arms as despair overwhelmed her. Forced herself not to crumple, to stay tall and straight and move lightly, with grace, on feet that felt leaden. She gave him a mocking little smile. He glared back, more than angry now.

His disgust, his distrust, seared her.

What was she doing? She sagged against him, the struggle going out of her. His body tightened, then firm hands pushed her away, holding her at a distance. The ache inside intensified. What was she trying to prove? Damon was right. This was wrong. However much he’d hurt her, however much she felt he deserved her bad behaviour, Fliss’s wedding was not the place for it. Nor was it worth losing the only thing she had left—her self-respect.

But there was no reason she shouldn’t needle him just a teeny-weeny little bit.

Her spine stiffened. She shot him a swift upward glance. “Savvas told me he’s twenty-seven. That’s three years older than me. I’d say he’s the perfect age for me.”

“Listen to me!” Damon sounded at the end of his tether. “My brother is light-years younger in experience. No match for a woman like you.”

The words stung.

“A woman like me?”

Anger swirled through her at the injustice of it all.

Damon Asteriades didn’t even know what kind of woman she was. How could he be so blind? How dare he fail to recognise—refuse to recognise—what lay between them? He should not be marrying Fliss today—or any other woman for that matter. Damn him, there was only one woman on earth he should ever have contemplated marrying. Her.

There. She’d admitted it.

Admitted what lay at the heart of her pain. What he’d always refused to recognise. And now it was too late.

He was married.

To her best friend.

Yet still this thing…this force…burned with a life of its own, bigger than both of them. And sometimes, like now, she almost convinced herself he was aware of it—even feared it. Experimentally Rebecca let her fingers slide along the shoulder of his wedding suit, over the fine fabric of his white shirt collar, until she touched the bare skin of his neck. She thought—dreamed—she detected the smallest of shudders.

“Shame on you! You know nothing about me,” she whispered and blew gently into the soft hollow beside his clenched jaw. “You never chose to find out anything about me.”

He started. “For God’s sake! What’s to find out? I know more than I ever wanted.” Bitterness spilled from him. “You’re a black widow. You grasp and demand and devour and leave nothing behind.”

“That’s a—”

“Lie? Is it? But there’s nothing to disprove my words, is there? You married Aaron Grainger for his fortune, and when everything was gone you drove him to suicide.”

She gasped. “You know, no one has ever dared say that to my face before.” Helplessly she flapped the hand that a moment ago had stroked his neck. “I heard the rumors existed, but I never thought anyone of substance believed them. I certainly never thought you the type to believe gossip.”

The hand on her waist tightened. The tempo of the music quickened. The dancing speeded up, building to the finale.

“Yes, but I’ve got more than gossip to go on, haven’t I? Haven’t I?” His face was pressed up against hers now. She could see her reflection glittering in his eyes, could smell the heat of his fury. “I know exactly the kind of woman you are. The kind that kisses her best friend’s man, begs him to—”

“Shut up!”

He spun her around, pulled her close to avoid another couple. “You promise sin and desire and deliver nothing but carnal delight. I know the temptation you are. Only last night—”

She froze in his arms and came to a sudden jarring halt.

“I said shut up,” she huffed. “Or do you want me to cause that scene you’re so terrified of? Here, on Fliss’s big day?” Standing dead still on the dance floor, no longer able to move, she watched the realization dawn as he became aware of where they both stood, of what calamity had nearly befallen them, and watched the mantle of iron control drop into place as the next melody began.

“I must be mad,” he bit out, his voice full of self-disgust, and he reared back as though he feared she might contaminate him.

The sheer force of his words released Rebecca from the insanity that held her rooted to the ground. If he was mad, then she must be trapped in the same madness.

Damon was married. Untouchable. Better she remember that. Shrugging out of his arms, she spun around and stalked away. He let her go.

And she didn’t dare look back.

Two

Almost four years later

Tuesday morning started badly. Rebecca overslept, and by the time T.J. managed to wake her, his insistent little fingers squeezing her cheeks, the dazzling almost-summer sun was already well up in the cloudless Northland sky.