Bridal Bargains

But she had to admire the way the other woman coped with the small silence that fell on her entrance.

The rejected one, that silence was shouting. Yet not by a flicker of her silver-grey eyes did she reveal any response to that.

She kissed Andreas on both cheeks and exchanged softly spoken words with him in Greek that had him smiling sardonically as he answered. Then she was turning to Claire, and for the next few minutes really impressed her as she smiled pleasantly and asked after Melanie.

As Desmona eventually moved away, it suddenly occurred to Claire that her being here to meet them on their arrival in Greece could have been pre-planned with this awkward moment in mind.

‘A very classy lady, don’t you think?’ Andreas remarked.

‘I feel sorry for her,’ she confessed, watching the other woman join a group of people and begin talking lightly as if this were just any old social affair.

‘Then don’t,’ was his rather curt rejoinder. ‘For she is the sleeping panther in our midst whose teeth are none the less still sharp even though she is not baring them at present.’

As a clear warning to beware—though of what Claire wasn’t sure—it certainly sent a cold shiver chasing down her spine.

She found that out later when Desmona decided to sink those teeth into Claire’s shaky self-confidence.

Feeling flushed and breathless after having been danced around the large hallway by a rather enthusiastic old gentleman called Grigoris who was apparently to give her away at her wedding, Claire stood on the sidelines, alone for the first time since the whole extravaganza had begun.

She was watching Andreas dance with a rather lovely dark-haired creature whose name she could not recall. He was relaxed, smiling, and looked a completely different man from the one she was used to seeing. More the urbane man of sophistication, enjoying being with his own kind, she thought.

Then a smooth-as-silk voice drawled lightly beside her, ‘Have you worked out yet which one is his mistress?’

Mistress? Claire struggled to keep her expression from altering, but the sickening squirm that suddenly hit her stomach sent some of the warmth draining from her cheeks.

Desmona saw it happen. ‘You didn’t know,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, how tragic for you—and on your betrothal night, too. I am so sorry …’

No, you’re not, you’re enjoying yourself, Claire silently contended, aware that she was being baited by a woman who—as Andreas had warned her—was out for her blood.

‘He doesn’t have a mistress.’ She coldly dismissed the suggestion, but in reality she found herself suddenly having to face the fact that he most probably did have one somewhere. A man like Andreas would not put himself in a marriage of convenience without having that side of his needs adequately covered—surely!

‘All Greek men of class have mistresses, darling,’ Desmona drawled deridingly. ‘You could almost say it is expected of them. So, which one do you think?’ she prompted. ‘The lovely thing he is dancing with? Or the other one over there who can’t take her eyes off him—or maybe the one standing in the corner, who looks too besotted with her husband to even notice Andreas.’

Without wanting them to, Claire’s eyes flicked from woman to woman as Desmona pointed them out to her. And all of them—all of them were so beautiful that she wouldn’t have blamed him for wanting any of them.

‘I would go for the besotted one if I were you,’ Desmona advised, not missing a single telling flicker of Claire’s blue eyes. ‘For the way she is clinging to her husband smacks of desperation to me …’

‘I think you’re lying,’ Claire responded, refusing to let the other woman get to her.

‘Then you are a fool,’ Desmona replied. ‘And maybe you deserve all you are about to receive from Andreas Markopoulou. For he may have good reason to want your child, but I cannot believe that he truly wants you—though he is cold-blooded and ruthless enough to take you if that is the only way he can achieve his aim. There,’ she concluded. ‘I have said what I needed to say. So now I will leave you to enjoy the rest of your betrothal party. Good luck, Miss Stenson.’ She smiled as she turned away. ‘I think you may well need it very soon …’

But why had she said it? Claire wondered as she watched Desmona walk smoothly away. To hurt her—Claire—or to hurt Andreas because he had rejected her?

In the end it didn’t matter, because now the seed had been planted Claire could feel herself looking at every female face with new suspicious eyes.

Andreas was no longer dancing but talking to the woman Desmona had described as besotted with her husband. Well, she observed, there was no sign of the husband now as she laughed with Andreas, with her big eyes shining up into his.

Was she his mistress?

It’s none of your business! she told herself furiously.

But knowing that didn’t stop her from studying their body language as Andreas touched a light finger to the woman’s shoulder, to her cheek, laughed softly at something she said to him and kissed the hand she used to teasingly cover his mouth when he gave what must have been a wicked reply.

The woman spoke again, only this time her expression turned very serious. With her hand still resting in his, Andreas sobered also, then began glancing furtively around them before giving a grim nod of his head. Then, turning, they moved off into one of the other rooms.

Even with that quick glance around to check that their withdrawal would not be observed, he didn’t even notice me, Claire noted painfully. Then she saw Desmona’s gaze fixed mockingly on her, and humiliation swept over her in a sickening wave.

It was one thing to deceive but quite another to be deceived, she realised, hurt, so very hurt that she didn’t quite know what to do with herself as she stood there alone and feeling utterly unable to pretend it hadn’t happened.

So when several of the younger guests approached her to say they had set up a disco outside on the pool terrace, then warily asked if she would like to join them, she was so relieved at the diversion from her own hectic thoughts that she accepted eagerly.

Half an hour later she was a different person. A person her mother would have recognised if she’d been there to see the old laughing, teasing, fun-loving Claire who danced disco with enthusiasm rather than stuffy waltzes with reluctance.

If there was something rather desperate about the way she threw herself into the fun, then no one seemed to notice that. They were just pleased to discover that Andreas Markopoulou’s newly betrothed was nothing like the hard-crusted English floozy they had all been led to believe she would be.

Someone appeared with a case of champagne they’d pinched from somewhere. And for the next few minutes the small group threw themselves into the fun of making corks explode from bottles then quickly supping at the frothy wine as it spilled over the bottle rim.

After that the wine flowed like water, and as the intoxicating bubbles entered her bloodstream Claire began to let go of what was left of her inhibitions. The music was throbbing—and she danced like a dream. There wasn’t one person there who didn’t pause to take note of that as her long, slender body swayed and gyrated inside the slinky dress, with the kind of innate sensuality that made the other girls envious and the young men throb to an entirely different beat.

One young man who was bolder than the rest stepped up behind her to slide his hands around her silk-tulle-lined stomach and began gyrating with her. Claire laughed and didn’t push him away; instead she began exaggerating her movements to which he had to follow.

‘You are wasted on Andreas,’ he whispered against her ear. ‘He is too cold and stuffy for a wonderful creature like you.’

‘I adore him,’ Claire lied glibly, when really at that moment she was hating him so badly that she could barely cope with it. ‘He’s absolute dynamite.’

Not so big a lie, she acknowledged bleakly from some darker place inside her that she refused to go off to. Instead she turned her head against her shoulder and smiled a stunning smile into her new consort’s captivated face.

That was how Andreas came upon her. He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’ his deep voice harshly intruded, and effectively silenced the whole group in the blink of an eyelid as heads came up, twisted round, then simply froze to stare at him like guilty thieves caught red-handed.

He was standing in a circle of light being thrown from the open French window that led to the indoor pool just behind him. And even with his dark face cast in shadows there wasn’t one of them present who didn’t know that he was furiously angry.

Someone had the presence of mind to switch off the throbbing music. Then the silence that followed was truly stunning as he began striding forward.

His hard eyes were on Claire—and specifically fixed on the place where her companion’s hands were splayed across her slender body.

Andreas didn’t so much as glance at him, but with a sharp click of his fingers he had the young man snatching his hands away from her waist then stepping right back as if he was letting go of some stolen hot property.

Coming to an abrupt halt in front of Claire, Andreas reached out to take the champagne bottle she hadn’t even been aware of holding out of her fingers. Then he stood there, impressively daunting, as he held the bottle out to the side in a grimly silent command for someone to take it from him.

Some very brave person did that, for the angry vibrations Andreas was giving off were frighteningly awesome. ‘Now you may all return to the party,’ he said flatly. And not once—not once had he so much as acknowledged a single one of them by eye contact!

Not even Claire, who was standing there rather like a puppet that had had its strings removed while the group responded to his command without a single murmur, disappearing en masse through the pool-house doors and effectively leaving her to face the angry wolf alone.

Thanks a bunch, she thought ruefully as she listened to their retreating footsteps fade away.

‘Well, that was very sociable of you,’ she drawled in an effort to mock her own tingling sense of trepidation at his continuing grim silence.

He didn’t even bother to retaliate. All he did do was reach down to snatch up her only good wrist then turned and began pulling her towards the house.

‘What do you think you are doing?’ Claire demanded, trying to tug free of a grip that wouldn’t budge.

‘You are drunk,’ he answered scathingly. ‘I have no tolerance with that, so if you value your life you will be silent.’

‘I am not drunk!’ She hotly denied the charge—though she had a vague feeling he could well be right. ‘Where are we going?’ she then queried frowningly when, as they entered the indoor pool-room, instead of making for the door which would lead back to the main part of the house, he headed for the private staircase that connected the pool-room to the upper floor.

He didn’t answer, but his body language did as he pulled her behind him up the stairs. He was blisteringly, furiously angry.

They emerged onto the upper landing. Below them the party was continuing in full swing. The hallway was crowded with people dancing, others spilling out from adjoining rooms. Peering over the gallery as they walked along it, the first person Claire’s eyes picked out was Desmona’s choice for Andreas’s mistress, dancing cheek to cheek with her husband to the slow, smoochy music drifting sensuously in the air.

Two-timer, she thought contemptuously. And flashed the man in front of her a lethal glance.

He opened the door to her bedroom and swung her inside. Only a single small table lamp burned in the corner, casting eerie dark shadows over the rest of the room.

‘Now,’ he said, shutting the door, ‘you are going to pull yourself together and make yourself fit to be seen with me when we return downstairs to our guests.’

‘I was with our guests,’ she threw back. ‘And we were enjoying ourselves until you came and spoiled it!’

‘You mean you enjoyed having that boy paw you?’

A sudden vision of his naked body wrapped around that adulterous woman downstairs had her chin coming up in hot defiance. ‘What’s it to you if I enjoyed it?’ she challenged insolently. ‘I don’t recall either of us making any vows of celibacy when we decided to deceive everyone!’

His eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Explain that remark.’

Go to hell, she wanted to say, but those narrowed eyes stopped her. ‘Let go of me,’ she said instead, and tried to pull her wrist away.

He wouldn’t let go. ‘I said explain,’ he repeated.

‘What do you think I meant?’ she flashed, hugging insolence around her like a protective shield. ‘If you think I am going to sit here through this marriage like the ever faithful Penelope while you go off doing your own thing—then you can think again!’

The atmosphere between them was suddenly electric. He wasn’t a fool; he knew exactly what she was saying here. If it were possible his eyes narrowed even more. Her blood began to fizz—not with champagne bubbles any more but with a far more volatile substance. Her heart began to pound, the muscles in her stomach coiling tensely as, in sheer self-preservation, she gave a hard yank at her imprisoned wrist and managed at last to break herself free then began edging backwards, attempting to put some much needed distance between them.

But he followed. ‘You are not taking a lover while you are married to me,’ he warned in the kind of deadly voice that put goose bumps on her flesh.

‘You can’t dictate to me like that,’ Claire protested as she fell back another step—then another, until the backs of her trembling knees hit the edge of the bed. ‘I can do whatever I want to do. You promised me that,’ she reminded him. ‘When I agreed to all of this.’

‘And you want to take a lover,’ he breathed in taut understanding.

‘Why—will you be jealous?’ she taunted him, with a sense of horror at her own crazy recklessness.

Something came alive on his lean, dark face that had her hand shooting up to press against his chest in a purely defensive action meant to keep him back.

‘No,’ she murmured unsteadily. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

He said nothing, but his eyes were certainly talking to her. They were gazing down at the hectic heave of her breasts beneath the stretch-silk tulle as if he could actually see this so-called lover’s hands on her body. And at last the alarm bells began ringing inside her head, warning her that she had finally managed to awaken the sleeping devil she’d always known must live somewhere inside him.

She should leave, she knew that. She should get the hell out of this bedroom and hide away somewhere until he had got his temper back.

But she didn’t move another muscle. Instead she just stood there and trembled and shook.

A little whimper escaped her.

It was enough to bring his eyes flicking up to clash with her eyes—and their darkness was so blisteringly intense that her lungs suddenly stopped working altogether.

He was faring no better, she realised. His heart was pounding; she could feel it hammering against his ribs beneath the place where her hand lay flat against his chest in its puny effort to ward him off. He felt warm and tough, the masculine formation of well developed muscle so intensely exciting to her that she froze on a wave of horrified shock.

‘No,’ she breathed in shaken rejection—and went to jerk her hand away from him—only he stopped her by covering it with his own hand.

It was then that the heat went racing through her. The heat of fear, the heat of desire, the heat of a terrible temptation.

But what was worse was she could feel the self-same temptation thundering through him! He was still, he was tense, and he was vibrating with a desire so strong that there really was no denying it.

Anxious eyes flicked back to clash with his. ‘No,’ she repeated in breathless denial of what she saw written there. ‘You don’t want me,’ she whispered shakily.

To her surprise he laughed, the sound so harsh and tight and bitterly deriding that it managed to make her wince. Yet she received the disturbing impression that it was himself he was deriding.

‘You fool,’ he muttered then, and before she could even feed the words into her brain he had spread one set of long brown fingers across the satin-smooth skin between her shoulder blades, cupped the other to the back of her head. And, with a hard, rough, angrily masculine jerk, he tugged her up against him then took her startled mouth hotly and savagely.

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