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The Hostage Bride
Kate Walker


Fliss's father has been embezzling from Argentine billionaire Ricardo Valeron! She knows Rico is ruthless in his business dealings and will stop at nothing to ruin her father if he should uncover the truth. To save her father, Fliss agrees to marry an old friend and in return he'll pay her father's debt.But before the ceremony takes place, Rico arrives and whisks Fliss away. Has he discovered the missing money? Is he out for revenge? Just what are Rico's intentions toward his hostage bride…?









“Do you want me, gatita?”


Did she want him? Ridiculous question! Impossible, preposterous, unnecessary question. Of course she wanted him! She yearned for him, ached for him. But…

And then suddenly she knew what was wrong. “Do I want you?” Felicity managed, a thread of near laughter running through her words. “But who are you? I don’t even know your name. All I know is Rico—if in fact that is the truth.”

“The truth, gatita?” He laughed. “Sí. Oh, yes, I told you the truth. My name really is Rico—short for Ricardo. Ricardo Juan Carlos Valeron at your service, señorita.”

The words pounded into her senses like cruel blows, making her heart stop. Ricardo Valeron. The one man who had the power to make an appalling situation even worse.







The Hostage Bride

by

Kate Walker

There are times in a man’s life…

when only seduction will settle old scores!

Pick up our exciting series of revenge-filled

romances—they’re recommended and red-hot!




The Hostage Bride

Kate Walker










CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN




CHAPTER ONE


RICO VALERON brought the long, powerful car to a smoothly purring halt outside the house and drew on the handbrake. Checking his watch briefly, he turned the key in the ignition, silencing the idling engine. He had plenty of time, he told himself, and settled back in his seat, waiting.

From her bedroom, Felicity heard the sound of the vehicle’s arrival just seconds before she heard her father hurry from the dining room into the hallway.

‘Your car’s here!’ he called up the staircase, the sound of his voice echoing slightly. ‘Are you ready?’

Am I ready? she asked herself, looking into the grey eyes of her own reflection in the dressing-table mirror, then immediately away again. She didn’t like what she saw in those eyes. They gave too much away.

‘Fliss!’ Joe Hamilton was getting impatient now. ‘Did you hear me? The car’s here—we should be going.’

‘Just a moment!’

Felicity had trouble forcing her voice to work, making it strong enough to carry from her bedroom to the ground floor. In spite of all her efforts it didn’t sound right. It had no strength, no conviction. It didn’t sound at all believable.

Not at all the way a bride should sound in the moments just before she set out on her way to her wedding.

But then this wasn’t the sort of wedding she had ever planned. Not the one she had dreamed of as a young girl. The wedding she had created in her fantasies, lying awake in her bed in the throes of her first adolescent crush. Then, she had imagined herself as Cinderella or Queen Guinevere, with her groom as a mixture of Prince Charming and one of the knights of the round table coming towards her astride a white charger, ready to sweep her off her feet and carry her off into the perfect ‘happily ever after’.

Not like this.

Not like this travesty of a marriage that she had been forced into by fear and desperation and had tried every possible way she could imagine to get out of. But without success.

‘Felicity!’

Her father was getting impatient now. He only ever used the full version of her name when he was annoyed with her and she could sense the exasperation behind the word, could picture him pushing back his shirt cuff to glance at his watch in irritation.

‘I’m coming!’

What else could she say? She had no alternative. There was no knight on a white horse galloping to her rescue. She hadn’t even been able to confide in her own mother. That would have meant revealing just what an appalling mess her father had made of things, the hole he had dug himself into, so deep that there was no hope of ever finding his way out.

Unless she went through with this.

‘Just a minute!’

Drawing in a deep, sighing breath, she turned to the mirror once more, checking her appearance.

The white silk dress Edward had insisted on fitted her perfectly, its softly flowing lines enhancing her slender height, the sleeveless, off the shoulder style revealing slim arms and smooth skin touched by the golden tint of the sun. Her pale blonde hair was pulled away from her face, and coiled at the back of her head, under the fall of the veil that cascaded down from the delicate tracery of a small tiara. The severe style emphasised the fine bones of her face, the high, slanting cheekbones and the wide, soft grey eyes.

But there was no colour in her skin under the carefully applied cosmetics; no light in the shadowed depths of her eyes.

Instead she looked like someone about to set out on the walk to the scaffold.

‘No one’s going to believe this for a second,’ she told her reflection fiercely. ‘Can’t you at least manage a smile?’

But no—that was much, much worse. The smile she switched on was so blatantly false it was almost a grimace and hastily she let it slide again, lifting her long skirts and heading for the door.

‘At last!’ Joe exclaimed as he saw her descending the stairs towards him. ‘We’re going to be late!’

‘Isn’t that a bride’s prerogative?’ Felicity returned, hiding her apprehension under a mask of insouciance. ‘And Edward will wait.’

Oh, yes, Edward would wait. He stood to gain so much from this travesty of a marriage. Much, much more than he had ever promised Felicity for her agreement.

Catching the blurred signs of movement through the frosted glass of the front door, Rico abandoned his apparently indolent pose and straightened up. Narrowed dark eyes took in his surroundings in a swift, appraising survey, and he nodded in grim satisfaction.

There was no one around. Everyone had been invited to the wedding of the year and even the staff had been given the day off to stand outside the cathedral and watch the guests arrive. If his luck held he should be able to manage this totally unobserved. As the door opened he slid out of the driver’s seat, one hand slipping unobtrusively into his pocket.

‘We’re just coming!’ Joe shouted to the waiting chauffeur as he waved his daughter out of the house. ‘Come on, come on, Fliss! You’ll have Sir Lionel thinking… Oh, what’s that now?’

Felicity turned her head in the direction of the phone which had started to ring back inside the house, suddenly a prey to a renewed rush of nerve-twisting uncertainty.

‘Leave it,’ she said. Now that they were on their way she wanted this over and done with.

But her father was incapable of ignoring the insistent summons.

‘You go on, darling,’ he said, already turning back. ‘I’ll just deal with this and then…’

Left alone, Felicity found herself unable to move. Her feet seemed frozen to the spot, her mind refusing to function. The intense wave of inexplicable fear was like a cold shadow chasing over her skin, making her shiver in spite of the heat of the July sun. She could see nothing, sense nothing that might have sparked it off, and yet…

‘Miss Hamilton?’

It was the chauffeur who had spoken, bringing her eyes to focus on him properly for the first time. Images bombarded her already sensitive nerves, giving her a confused impression of a very tall, impressive figure, not at all what she had expected of a professional driver.

He stood straight and proud by the gleaming silver-grey Rolls, an almost military discipline about his bearing. Straight shoulders under the black uniform jacket, a strong chest tapering to a narrow waist and long, long legs. Highly polished shoes, so elegant they looked almost hand-made, were set squarely on the ground, and one black leather-gloved hand held the rear door of the car open invitingly.

But his face was hidden underneath the peaked cap and, even squinting hard against the brightness of the sun, she couldn’t make out a single one of his features.

‘It is Miss Felicity Hamilton?’

He sounded almost surprised, as if she was not quite what he had expected, and the faint hint of an accent—Spanish, perhaps?—that she had caught as he first spoke was stronger now. Rich and husky, it turned the syllables of her name into a murmured enticement, one that curled seductively around her senses.

Fayleeseetay, he had said, and suddenly the shiver of apprehension she had felt earlier was transformed into a very different response. The tingle of pure excitement that zigzagged down her spine was totally inappropriate in a bride setting out to her wedding to another man. Or it would be, Felicity told herself, if she was marrying someone she truly cared about.

‘Felicity,’ she corrected crisply, hiding the pang of regret that twisted inside her behind the careful control of the English form of her name. ‘That’s right.’

She must look like a dithering fool, standing here in the middle of the drive, as if she couldn’t make up her mind where to go. And the way that the chauffeur was watching her only aggravated that feeling of discomfort, making her feel uncomfortably like something not too pleasant that he had dissected and examined under a microscope.

‘Felicity Jane Hamilton—soon to be Felicity Jane Venables.’

Gathering her distracted thoughts hastily, she caught up her skirts in a grip that was far too tight, crushing the beautiful silk impossibly, as she marched down the path towards him.

‘But you knew that, didn’t you? After all, that’s why you’re here.’

His silence was just a heartbeat too long, tugging at already tightly drawn nerves, stretching them out to the point of discomfort.

‘Yes, Miss Hamilton,’ he said softly. ‘That is exactly why I am here.’

His eyes were dark, such a deep, ebony brown that they were almost black, and his skin had a smooth olive tone that made her fingers itch to reach out and touch it. A straight slash of a nose combined with a squared, determined jaw to speak of a strength that bordered on ruthlessness, but the mouth told a very different story. Beautifully shaped and surprisingly soft, it made her long to see him smile, to feel the caress of those lips on her skin, to…

‘Won’t you get into the car, Miss Hamilton?’

‘I—oh—yes…’

Distracted from the wantonly sensual path her thoughts had been drifting along, Felicity could only blink in confusion and embarrassment, a wave of hot colour flooding her cheeks. That intent, probing gaze was so powerful, so unwavering, she almost felt that he could see into her mind, read the fantasies she wanted to keep hidden from him.

The fantasies she shouldn’t have been allowing herself to have! She might not love Edward, but she had promised to behave as his wife, and there was to be no hint that the marriage was anything other than a real one. That promise was going to be impossible to keep if she was already fantasising about other men and she hadn’t even got the ring on her finger!

‘Get into the car…’

Something had changed. Suddenly, subtly his tone had altered. A new note in it scraped uncomfortably over Felicity’s unsettled nerves.

‘I’m waiting for my father…’

‘You can wait for him in the car.’

The note that had disturbed her was stronger now, worryingly so. In an attempt to disguise the way it had made her feel, to ignore the slow creeping of cold pins and needles over her skin, she lifted her chin and met that ebony gaze head on.

‘I prefer to stay out here. I don’t want to crush my dress.’

The flashing glance of those dark eyes downwards over the dress in question was a look of pure scorn, and the shrug that lifted those broad shoulders dismissed her comment as purely feminine trivia.

‘We’re running late. Please get into the car, Miss Hamilton.’

It was that ‘please’ that did it. Something in the way it was enunciated, a dark edge that crept into his voice, moved it light years away from the common courtesy and turned it into a sound that sent something cold and unpleasant slithering down her spine.

But from inside the hall she could hear her father struggling to end the call.

‘I really have to go—can we talk about this later…?’

He would be with her any moment and that knowledge restored something of the confidence that the chauffeur’s disturbing attitude had chipped away at. She would get into the car, but because she wanted to, not because of his insistence.

She hadn’t realised just how difficult it would be. Hadn’t anticipated the problems of getting onto the high, soft leather seat while managing her long skirts, the enveloping veil, the silk train. She had one foot in the car when the struggle to avoid crumpling the dress resulted in an awkward loss of balance that drove a cry of shock from her lips.

‘Oh!’

He was there at her side in a second. One gloved hand came out, caught the fingers that waved in panic, searching for assistance. Caught and held them, the powerful muscles in his hand and arm tensing iron-hard to support her full weight.

Within a moment she was upright again, sliding safely into the car, her dress unharmed, her position secure, and nothing but another wave of colour to give any indication of the near disaster that had just been avoided.

‘Th-thank you,’ she managed, shockingly aware of the fact that it was his closeness, the feel of that strength under her clutching fingertips that had put the breathless, uneven note into her voice and not any thought of the fall she had almost had.

‘De nada.’

Strong hands arranged the folds of her skirt so that they were well away from the door, smoothed down her veil, his touch cool and totally impersonal. With the harsh force of those searching eyes turned away from her, his gaze fixed on what he was doing, Felicity found that some of the disturbing tension was seeping from her body.

She had to have been overreacting, she told herself. Had to be jumping to conclusions that were totally unjustified. She had been letting her imagination run away with her and had ended up creating a situation where none had existed.

‘Thank you,’ she said again, more confidently this time and when the chauffeur lifted his head again she managed to switch on a smile, directing it straight into the deep pools of his eyes.

There was no response. Nothing but the blankest, coldest stare she had ever encountered, one that turned her blood to ice in her veins and had her sinking back against the seat in sheer horror.

Her thoughts were still reeling as if that glare had been an actual physical blow so that she barely noticed the way he moved sharply, closing the door on her with a firm, decisive thud. It was only when he moved smoothly and unhurriedly round to the front of the car that she registered that all was not as she had anticipated.

Her father was still in the house, and…

‘Just a minute…’

He ignored her, swinging long legs into the car and turning the key in the ignition in almost the same moment that he slammed the door to. With the Rolls in gear, he set it in motion, steering one-handed as he pulled something from his pocket and held it up. Her stomach clenching on sudden panic, Felicity realised that what he held was a mobile phone.

‘Okay,’ he snapped into it, his eyes on the drive ahead of him. ‘Mission accomplished. You can stop now.’

‘I said, just a minute!’

She was twisting in her seat, looking back to the house, watching it recede as the car picked up speed.

‘Did you hear me? We can’t leave yet—my father…’

The words died on her lips as the full realisation of what he had said hit home like a blow to her heart.

Mission accomplished. You can stop now.

Leaning forward, she banged hard on the glass panel that separated her from the driver.

‘What are you doing? Where are we going? You can’t…’

He ignored her. Thumbing off the mobile, he dropped it back into his pocket and put his hand on the steering wheel instead. With a faint roar of the engine he changed up a gear, pressed his foot on the accelerator.

‘You have to stop! My father…’

Some tiny movement of his eyes, a swift glance in the rear-view mirror, alerted her. Twisting once more in her seat, she could only watch in despair as behind her she saw her father, alerted by the sound of the engine, running to the door of the house. Coming to an abrupt halt he could only stand and stare after them, shock, disbelief and total bemusement in every line of his body.

But already they were too far away for her to read his face. She saw him raise an arm, gesticulating wildly, knew that he had opened his mouth to shout but his cries were inaudible.

And then she knew. Realised just what had happened. The phone call that had distracted her father as they had left the house had been deliberately planned. It had been organised by this man to coincide exactly with their appearance, to keep her father occupied just long enough to get her into the car…

Dad!

The word formed in her brain but she was too shocked, too stunned to be able to voice it. Instead she could only watch in despair as the car accelerated again, the distance between them increasing even more. Then with one last twist of the wheel they rounded a bend in the drive and the house and her father disappeared from sight.

She was on her own, she realised fearfully. Completely on her own with this unnerving, frightening stranger.

And it was when they turned left at the bottom of the drive, in the opposite direction to the way they should have headed for the church and her wedding that she really began to worry.




CHAPTER TWO


‘JUST what do you think you’re doing?’

Giving into panic was quite the wrong approach, Felicity told herself. Okay, so she had been badly thrown for a minute there, but really there was no need for that. This wasn’t the nightmare it seemed. No, there was simply some mistake, that was all.

‘I said… Oh, can’t you just slow down a bit?’

Had he even heard her? The solid, square set of his back seemed impervious as a brick wall and, with his face turned firmly in the direction they were travelling, his eyes on the road ahead, there was no way she could even read his expression or judge if she was getting through to him.

‘You’re going the wrong way!’

No response. Not even a flicker of a glance in her direction, not a turn of his head. If anything, his grip seemed to tighten on the steering wheel and the car engine roared again as the speedometer needle crept up.

Scrabbling frantically, Felicity managed to inch the glass panel open just a little bit and lean forward with her face close against it, her mouth in the open space.

‘I said, you’re going the wrong way.’

She tried to make the words sound as clear and definite as possible. After all, she was forgetting that he wasn’t English—what was he? Spanish? Perhaps he just didn’t understand what she was saying. Perhaps the few sentences he had spoken had been the full extent of his English, for all that they had been spoken with such apparent ease.

‘Listen to me! You’re…’

Frantically she scrabbled about in her memory for the scattered remnants of the minimal Spanish she had picked up during a holiday there a couple of years ago.

‘V-vaya—el camino malo,’ she managed, knowing it was far from grammatically correct but at least it expressed what she meant.

Unbelievably, that beautifully shaped mouth twitched, twisting into a faint smile of mockery at her stumbling attempt at translation.

‘Voy el camino correcto,’ he shot back at her. Then, confounding her foolish belief that he hadn’t understood a word she had been saying, he added sardonically, ‘I am on precisely the right road. It’s just not the direction you expected to be travelling in today.’

And while she was still gaping in stunned disbelief he added curtly, ‘But wherever we’re going, if you’re sensible you’ll sit back and fasten your safety belt. Right now the way that you’re behaving is not only dangerous, it’s against the law and—’

‘Against the law?’

Felicity couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Against the law? You—you’re—abducting me—and you’re worried about breaking the law on seat belts? Why, you…!’

With a desperate effort she managed to push the dividing window open just a little bit more and get her hand through, banging her fingers down hard on his shoulder.

‘Stop this car at once! Stop it, I say!’

When he made no response but simply focused his dark-eyed gaze on the road ahead, she resorted to the only thing she could think of to get his attention. Driven past caring for her own safety, she reached up and caught hold of a strand of jet black hair that she could see underneath the uniform cap and pulled hard.

‘Madre de Dios!’

For one frantic, terrifying moment the car swerved violently but a second later he had both himself and the powerful vehicle back under control.

‘Stop that!’ he snarled through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t be so damn stupid, woman! Do you want to kill us both?’

‘Where you’re concerned, don’t tempt me,’ Felicity muttered but already she was having second—and third—thoughts about the wisdom of her actions. The wild movement of the car had thrown her to one side, bruising her arm, and the few seconds of sheer panic she had felt at just the thought of what might have happened if there had been any other traffic on the road was enough to have her hastily rethinking.

She sank back onto her seat, struggling to appear outwardly calm while inside her thoughts were whirling frantically, trying to come up with some possible explanation for what was happening.

Had the chauffeur gone completely mad? What could he possibly hope for as a result of his actions?

‘Look—you…’ she tried again, struggling to force her voice to sound firm and full of a confidence she was far from feeling.

Those dark eyes flicked up swiftly, meeting hers in the rear-view mirror and holding her gaze for the space of a heartbeat before returning to their concentration on the road.

‘My name is Rico,’ he said unexpectedly.

Rico? She’d be a fool to believe that—because he’d be all sorts of an idiot to give her his real name. And one thing she didn’t believe that this Rico was, was a fool. There was too much intelligence in that face, too much natural cunning in the black coffee-coloured gaze he turned on her to merit any such description.

But Rico suited him. It was a rogue’s name, an outlaw’s name. She could just imagine him playing the role of a brigand or a bandit in some wild adventure film.

But this was no film; nor was it, in her opinion at least, any sort of an adventure.

‘Then—Rico—I think you’ve got this all wrong. You’ve made a terrible mistake.’

‘No mistake.’

The flat comment was accompanied by a brusque shake of his head.

‘I know exactly what I’m doing.’

‘But—I think you must have the wrong person.’ It was the only explanation she could come up with.

‘You’re not Felicity Hamilton?’

His sarcasm scraped brutally on already raw nerves.

‘Well, yes, I said I was—but you’ve still got it wrong. I—I’m not rich, you know, and nor is my father.’ She wouldn’t have been forced into marrying Edward if that had been the case.

‘I’m not interested in money.’

‘But then—why…?’

Her voice failed completely, drying to a painful croak as she thought of the only other possible reason there might be for this man to abduct her in this way. Nightmare thoughts filled her head so that she could almost feel the colour leaching from her cheeks, her heart clenching in panic.

‘Stop this car! Stop it at once!’

She had no hope that he would obey her but still it twisted every nerve to see how determinedly he ignored her, the total lack of response he made.

‘I said, stop!’

But even as she spoke a sudden hope flared. They were approaching a particularly tricky bend. The car would have to slow down to manoeuvre round it. If she could just get the door open… Carefully she edged forward, inching her fingers onto the handle.

‘It’s locked.’

The words scythed through her hopes in an instant, cutting them off completely. Once more her gaze went to the mirror, meeting that knowing look with a sense of appalled horror.

‘Central locking,’ he supplied helpfully.

With a gesture he indicated a button on the door at his side.

‘You can’t get out until I let you out.’

It was foolish she knew but just for a second she ignored him. She had to. She couldn’t just give in without a fight.

But no matter how hard she tugged and twisted, the door handle remained stubbornly unmoveable and at last she had to abandon the futile struggle and sit back again.

‘You might as well give up and make it easy on yourself.’

Disturbingly, his voice sounded almost gentle, and he had actually managed to inject into it a faint note of concern—one that she had no doubt at all was in no way sincere.

‘We have a long journey ahead of us and you’ll only cause yourself more distress if you keep this up.’

‘A long journey? Where are we going?’

But her attempt to sound artless and innocent didn’t slip past his defences as she had hoped. Instead it earned her another of those slanting glances, half sardonically amused, half reproachful of the fact that she might think he would believe her.

‘You’ll find out when we get there,’ he tossed over his shoulder. ‘So why don’t you sit back and enjoy the ride?’

‘Enjoying myself is the furthest thing from my mind!’

‘Well, yes…’

He moved his broad shoulders in a shrug that revealed his total indifference to her retort.

‘But you’ll be a lot more comfortable—and safer—if you sit back, fasten your seatbelt and try to relax.’

He was negotiating a roundabout as he spoke and, reading the road signs, Felicity saw that they were heading for the motorway that led away from her hometown and directly to London.

‘You’re taking a risk, aren’t you?’ she said sharply. ‘I can read—and I can see where we’re heading.’

Another indifferent shrug was his only response. Was he really so confident that he didn’t care if she guessed at the route he was taking?

‘Doesn’t that worry you?’

‘Should it?’ he drawled and, as if to emphasise how little he cared, he finally pulled off the peaked chauffeur’s cap and tossed it onto the seat beside him, raking one tanned hand through the sleek darkness of the hair he had revealed. Then glancing up into the mirror again, he grinned widely and wickedly just once, straight into her watchful grey eyes.

Felicity’s heart kicked wildly, banging hard against her ribs and she bit down sharply on her lower lip, trying to hold back the cry of shock that almost escaped her.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair! A man like this Rico—a man who had abducted her for who knew what reasons, who had invaded her life and turned it upside down—should at least look on the outside in some way that revealed the darkness of his inner heart. But in his case it was quite the opposite.

She could only see just one small part of his face reflected in the mirror but even like that, foreshortened and distorted, he had the sort of potent good looks that hit home like a punch right in her stomach.

The smooth olive skin, dark eyes and shining jet black silk of his hair all combined with strongly carved cheekbones, impossibly lush curling eyelashes and that sweetly sensual mouth to create the most forceful blueprint of purely masculine beauty she had ever seen.

She couldn’t drag her eyes away but stared, transfixed, until Rico glanced in her direction once more and caught her stunned gaze. Ashamed at being caught watching him, she looked away sharply, staring down at her hands in pained embarrassment.

‘You really should fasten that seatbelt.’ This time his tone made it plain that she’d do better to obey. ‘We’ll be hitting the motorway traffic soon and, while you might be prepared to put your life on the line by flouting the law, I would prefer that you were sensible.’

I would prefer that you were sensible. Did that mean that whatever his plans for her were they didn’t include actually harming her? She couldn’t tell…but rather than risk any further argument she reached for the seatbelt as instructed and pushed it firmly into the holder, relieved to find that her hands were as steady as she could have wished, betraying nothing of her inner turmoil.

‘Rico what?’ she asked as he turned the car onto the feed road to the motorway, the powerful vehicle increasing speed effortlessly at the slightest touch on the accelerator. ‘I take it you do have a surname?’

‘Just Rico will do.’ His attention was on the road as he indicated, steered skilfully out into the traffic.

‘I can find out, you know. Edward will tell me.’

A sign on the side of the road flashed past as she spoke, barely giving her time to register what was written on it. But, as realisation dawned, sudden inspiration struck, giving her an idea.

‘In fact, I’m surprised you ever thought you’d get away with this,’ she went on, talking to fill the silence, to distract him while she thought back over the scheme that had just occurred to her, considering her options, trying to decide if it would work. ‘You must know I’d report you. That I’d tell Mr Venables.’

She didn’t even know if he’d heard her. Not by so much as a blink of an eyelid did he betray any reaction but remained as silent and stony faced as a statue carved from marble.

‘Even if this is just some sort of practical joke, he won’t stand for this behaviour in one of his employees. You’ll lose your job.’

Something gave him away that time. Some small, sideways slanting look, a flicker of those unbelievable eyelashes. Suddenly the truth dawned on her with an appalling sinking feeling deep in her stomach as if she had just swallowed a heavy, leaden weight.

‘It isn’t a job, is it?’ she asked hollowly. ‘I mean, not your job. You don’t work for Edward Venables, do you?’

‘I’d sooner crawl down this motorway on my hands and knees,’ Rico declared and the brutal vehemence of his tone left her in no doubt that he meant what he said. A cold shiver slithered down her spine at the realisation that what lay behind that forceful declaration was a powerful antipathy that she would have to describe as nothing less than hatred.

‘So this is about Edward, not me?’

And not, it seemed, about her father. Which was a relief because, after all the trouble Joe Hamilton had got himself into lately, at least he hadn’t got himself entangled with this brigand of a man.

‘Does that mean you’re not going to…?’

She couldn’t complete the sentence as another realisation rushed into her head, erasing her earlier train of thought.

‘I have no intention of hurting you, if that’s what you mean,’ Rico put in, misunderstanding the reasons for her silence.

No, but he could ruin her life just as easily without even touching her, Felicity reflected unhappily. If she didn’t turn up at the cathedral or at the very least let Edward know that it wasn’t through her own choice that she wasn’t there, he would wreak his vengeance on her father. Joe’s crimes would be exposed, and she would have put herself through all this for nothing.

And the effect on her mother was one she couldn’t even bear to think about.

The appearance of another roadside sign announcing the approach of the motorway services reminded her of her plan of a few moments earlier. It was now or never.

‘I’m thirsty!’ she announced and the way that her voice cracked on the words gave a conviction to her words. ‘It’s so hot—I really could do with a drink.’

‘If you look in front of you, there’s a cupboard—it’s a small bar, actually. There are some plastic bottles of mineral water in there.’

‘Oh, but—’

This wasn’t at all what she’d had in mind. What she’d wanted was…

‘You didn’t really think I was going to pull in to the services and let you out, did you?’ Infuriatingly, Rico seemed to have been able to read her mind. ‘It’s the water or nothing, sweetheart.’

‘I’m not your sweetheart!’ Felicity growled ungraciously, furious at having been caught out so easily. ‘And I have no intention of drinking anything you’ve provided.’

‘Then you’ll have to stay thirsty,’ Rico returned with cool callousness. ‘I told you I had no intention of harming you.’

‘And I’m supposed to believe that?’

Perversely, her pretence of being thirsty had now become a fact. The sun was beating down on the car and she was uncomfortably aware of the way that for most of the morning her tightly knotted nerves had prevented her from eating or drinking anything but the barest minimum. Just the thought of the cooled water was a temptation she found hard to resist.

‘You could have laced it with anything!’

His sigh was a masterpiece of resigned patience, threaded through with exasperation.

‘I give you my word—’

‘The word of a kidnapper? A brute—a thug?’

In the mirror she saw him roll his eyes, just for a second.

‘How about if I drank some of it myself?’

It was tempting. She really was very thirsty.

He must have seen the doubt in her face, how close she was to weakening, because suddenly he flicked the indicator and moved onto the hard shoulder, slowing the car briefly.

‘Give me the water.’

She could use the bottle as a weapon, Felicity told herself as she opened the bar. She could hit this Rico on the head with it—or shake it hard until the sparkling water was fizzing so wildly that it would explode in his face as soon as he opened it.

But even as the thoughts crossed her mind, she reconsidered them hastily. If she disabled Rico, however briefly, he was still that side of the glass partition and she on the other. The control for the central locking was on his side, and she very much doubted that, even if she opened it to its fullest, she could squeeze through the gap into the front of the car.

And she didn’t dare risk the possible repercussions if she angered him without incapacitating him. He might have given his word not to harm her, but that didn’t mean she was prepared to risk pushing him too far.

‘The water, Felicity.’

Rico had swivelled round in his seat so that he was facing her and a dark strand of warning threaded through his tone.

‘Did I say you could use my Christian name?’ Felicity demanded, knowing she was only being petty, using the complaint as something to hide behind, to disguise the frustration she felt at not being able to get at him in any other way.

‘Señorita Hamilton,’ Rico amended with an elaborate courtesy that only aggravated her already bad mood.

‘Oh, here, take your damn water!’

She thrust the bottle at him ungraciously, trying to avoid the mockery in his dark eyes as she did so.

But not looking into his eyes meant she had to look somewhere and she was horrified by the way that, in spite of her struggle against it, her downbent gaze would keep sliding to the long, tanned line of his throat above the immaculate white collar of his shirt. The movement of his muscles as he tipped back his head, swallowing deeply, held her transfixed and she couldn’t force herself to look away no matter how she tried.

A heat that had nothing to do with the sun outside dried her mouth and throat until they felt like parched sand, her whole body in the grip of a fire that would take so much more than some sips of water to extinguish.

Stop it! she told herself furiously, forcing her eyes shut and screwing them tight. She had to stop thinking this way.

‘Here.’

Rico held the bottle out to her again and she almost snatched it from him. But the realisation of the way that he was observing her, made her pause again and wipe the top of the bottle with over-elaborate care that brought a scowl to his dark face.

Without thinking she gulped down all that was left in the bottle, grateful for the way that it eased the painful dryness that was tormenting her. And as she drank Rico put the car back into gear and rejoined the motorway smoothly, glancing back at her briefly as she sighed her relief.

‘Better?’

‘Much better, thank you.’

It was amazing how much difference just a drink could make. She felt completely refreshed, much more relaxed. The few moments’ pause had given her time to collect herself, gather her thoughts. In fact if she could just work out where they were heading, maybe she could outsmart this man yet.

Buoyed up by the feeling of exhilaration, she lounged back in her seat, concentrating on looking relaxed in the hope of distracting him, making him think she had switched off. Certainly, the terrible feeling of gripping panic seemed to have ebbed just a bit.

‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’ she asked airily. ‘I guess you’ve never done it before.’

‘And you, I take it, are an expert,’ Rico returned dryly, indicating again and moving out into the overtaking lane.

‘Oh, you don’t have to be an expert to know you’ve made a couple of basic mistakes. For one…’

She held up her left hand, checking the points off on her fingers as she made them.

‘You’ve let me find out too much—your name, for example. If in fact that is your real name.’

‘Perhaps I wanted you to know exactly who I am.’

That was something that hadn’t even crossed Felicity’s mind but now that it had, she was forced to consider it, to wonder just why he might want her to know who he was. It didn’t seem at all logical.

‘And you’ve let me see your face,’ she ticked off another point, trying not to let him see how much he had confused her.

‘What did you expect? That I would wear a mask and sweep you off your feet and carry you away over my shoulder? I would think that your so efficient British police might just have noticed if that had happened.’

That, Felicity had to concede, was distinctly possible. What she was having trouble with was the disturbing images flooding into her mind at the thought of being swept off her feet and into Rico’s arms. A swift, shivering glance at the strong, tanned fingers steering the powerful car with skilful ease made her shudder in uncontrollable response. Her body seemed to be growing soft and unexpectedly pliant, lolling against the soft leather almost as if she was melting in the wanton heat of her thoughts.

‘So what else have you decided I’ve done wrong?’ Rico asked. ‘What other mistakes have I made?’

Apart from the most obvious one of finding the woman he had kidnapped—a woman who was promised to someone else—shockingly attractive? he asked himself. If he had known that she was the Felicity Hamilton he had to hold hostage, wouldn’t he have had severe second thoughts about this whole thing?

‘When I think of more, I’ll let you know.’

She had no intention of telling him the latest, major mistake he had made. That of letting her sit up, wide awake and clear-eyed, in the back of the car, watching every road sign that appeared, noting every indication of the route they were taking. They must stop sometime and then, some way, no matter how, she would find a way of getting in touch with her family and letting them know just where she was.

On their right a car sped past, a young woman in the back seat glancing into the Rolls as they did so, and something about the obvious double-take she made, the expression on her face, made Felicity giggle uncontrollably.

‘What is it now?’

‘I’ve just realised what people are seeing…’

The idea seemed crazily amusing, verging on the hilarious and she hastily put up her hands to hold back another fit of the giggles.

‘I mean—what must it look like?’

She shook her head in bemusement, still grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

‘There’s you—driving off down the motorway—not a church or a chapel anywhere in sight—and me—me—here in the back, all done up in my bridal finery…’

Something about his stillness, the swift glance of those dark eyes up to the mirror to study her closely, made her heart clench on a sudden wave of panic.

What was wrong with her? This man had kidnapped her—abducted her! There was nothing to laugh at, nothing even remotely amusing, about her situation. She should be scared. She was nervous—and yet…

Another attack of the giggles threatened.

‘Thass another mishtake you’ve made. Which is one, two…

Her eyes seemed to have blurred and the finger she tried to count with kept missing the other hand completely.

‘I mean…fancy kidnapping a bride!’

The laughter stopped suddenly, changing to a wide, jaw-cracking yawn. Her eyelids felt heavy and, try as she might, she really couldn’t focus at all. The world was sliding out of balance in the most peculiar way.

‘Lie down, Felicity!’ It was a sharp command from the man in the front of the car. ‘Lie down at once—believe me, you’ll feel much better like that.’

‘Lie…’

Her eyes slid closed; her head drooped like a wilting flower, then abruptly jerked up again. Wide, dazed eyes, their pupils heavy and vastly dark, were turned on him in bitter reproach.

‘What have you done to me?’

‘Go with it, gatita. Don’t try to fight it. It will be easier for you that way.’

Don’t fight it!

Her heart was fluttering frantically like a small, trapped bird beating its wings against a cage. She tried to force her eyes open, managed it just a little but her lids were too heavy.

‘Sleep, little one.’

The low, husky voice was all that she could concentrate on. Blending in with the purr of the car’s engine, it wove a soft smoky spell around her senses.

‘Duerme…’

But she couldn’t sleep. She had to stay awake. She had to…

The effort was too much. With a faint sigh she stopped struggling, slumped back against the seat and slept.

Watching her, Rico clenched his big hands tight over the steering wheel until the knuckles showed white and cursed savagely in his native language.

If there had been any other way… But he had been forced into this—she had forced him into this. She and that fiancé of hers, Edward Venables.

The dark eyes blazed with fury, every muscle clenched taut and he slammed his fist hard against the wheel. Damn Edward Venables! Damn him to hell. Rico already owed that louse for the way he’d treated Maria—and now he owed him for this too. Big time.




CHAPTER THREE


‘MISS Hamilton…Felicity…’

She’d heard that voice before, in her dreams, Felicity thought as she stirred reluctantly. It was the sort of voice that belonged in a dream, low and soft and sexily accented, with a way of turning her name from a simple four-syllable word into a string of poetry just by saying it.

In her dream it had belonged to a fantasy man, too. The sort of man she had never encountered in real life and never would now. Because now she had to wake up. Now she had to face reality, and reality was that today she was obliged to marry Edward Venables. It was either that or see her father go to prison for a long time.

But perhaps she could manage a few moments more in the dream world, she thought, trying to snuggle back down in the bed.

‘Felicity…gatita…wake up.’

She looked like the kitten he had called her, lying there, curled up, soft and sleepy, her head pillowed on her hands, Rico thought unwillingly. She looked delicate and vulnerable in a way that stabbed a knife into his conscience and twisted it hard.

And he couldn’t afford a conscience. Not where she was concerned. Maria’s future, and that of her unborn child, depended on him being strong and dealing with this as he had promised.

‘You can do this for me, can’t you, Rico?’

His half-sister’s voice sounded in the back of his head so clearly that he could almost see her tearstained face before his eyes, feel her hands clutching at his as she pleaded with him.

‘You can see Eddie, tell him he can’t go through with this wedding. That he can’t marry this woman, this Felicity Hamilton…’

She had made it sound so easy, so straightforward. Because to Maria it was straightforward. She wanted this and what she wanted she usually got. But, this time, what Maria wanted had proved unexpectedly difficult to obtain.

Which was why he was here, now, with a half-conscious woman on his hands and a situation that was rapidly running right out of control.

‘Felicity…’

In the back of the car, Felicity Hamilton stirred slightly, frowning faintly, and muttered something in her sleep. The white, soft veil had fallen forward over her face and instinctively he reached forward to move it aside. Then immediately wished he hadn’t.

He doubted if he would ever forget the sense of shock that had hit him straight in the chest when she had appeared outside the house just a few short hours earlier. Whatever else he had been expecting of the Felicity Hamilton described to him by both Maria and the private investigator he had put on the case, it had certainly not been this.

Not this slender, delicate creature whose gentle beauty had knocked him so far off balance that his thought processes had become scrambled. In the end he had only been able to function by forcing himself to concentrate on the plan he had worked out and nothing else.

The picture Maria had painted had been of someone far tougher; someone who knew exactly what she wanted in life and went for it, ignoring anyone who got in the way. Like father, like daughter, she had said. And the detective had been equally damning.

‘She goes straight from work to that nightclub, every night, Mr Valeron. Never home before near dawn.’

But this woman didn’t look anything like the picture he had built up in his mind. Of course, that picture might still be the truth internally; it was just the external appearance that was different. But if that was the case then she had no damn right to be so deceptively lovely—it complicated matters far too much.

‘Señorita…Felicity…’

The voice was back in her dreams, but as she stirred again Felicity found that her bed was nothing like as comfortable as usual. It felt hard and narrow and she was curled up uncomfortably. She was tangled up in something too, something that rustled and confined her, like yards of netting and…

Shock jolted her awake, making her heart slam hard against her ribcage.

This wasn’t a dream. She had fallen asleep and forgotten where she was, but now the reality came rushing back.

‘You!’

Her eyes flew open, wide and dark, the last remnants of the clinging sleep that had enveloped her clearing rapidly as she stared uncertainly up into his face.

‘What did you do to me?’

Crazily, foolishly she actually felt betrayed. He had promised not to harm her and even as the words had left his lying mouth he had been breaking that promise. But what should she have expected from a man who was prepared to commit the crime of kidnapping in order to get his revenge on someone?

‘You drugged me!’

‘The mildest of sedatives only.’

The handsome face revealed no sign of guilt or repentance and the dark chocolate eyes regarded her with cool indifference.

But what had she expected? Pity or concern? She would be all sorts of a blind, deluded fool even to hope for such a thing from this cold-hearted brute.

‘I thought it might help you relax. I had never anticipated that it would have the effect on you that it did.’

No, Felicity thought ruefully. There was no way he could have known that weeks of stress had meant that she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for an age. Even the weakest sedative would have knocked her for six, she was so tired.

‘I didn’t expect to end up with Sleeping Beauty on my hands.’

He was actually smiling—almost making a joke out of this! If she hadn’t known better, she might actually have thought that he was flirting with her. But she had learned her lesson fast. She would never trust the cold-hearted monster ever again. Even if those deep brown eyes did warm with an unexpectedly soft light, and the beautifully carved mouth looked so kissable when it curved into…

What was she thinking of? Hastily closing off the dangerous route her wayward thoughts had opened up, she switched on a ferocious glare instead.

‘I’m sure you had every move planned with a military precision. But you won’t get away with it, you know!’

‘No?’

One jet-black eyebrow quirked upwards, cynically questioning her furious assertion.

‘You think not?’

‘I know not!’

Felicity struggled up into a half-sitting position, feeling dangerously vulnerable lying down with him looming over her, his face in part shadow where he had blotted out the sun.

‘For one thing, there are laws against such behaviour. And, for another, by now my father will surely have informed the police. You didn’t exactly hide the number of your car and…’

Something about his face, some tiny flicker of response in the depths of those stunning eyes alerted her.

‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘What have you done?’

But even as the urgent question left her lips the haze of fear and confusion that had clouded her thoughts in the moments of wakening was slowly receding. Her eyes were starting to focus properly, her mind to take in more detailed impressions of her surroundings.

She was still in a car, it was true, still on the back seat of some large, luxurious vehicle. But, now that she looked more closely, she became aware of some very distinct differences between this car and the Rolls Royce in which she had originally fallen asleep.

Where the soft leather of the seat had once been a light fawn, now it was uncompromisingly black. There was no dividing glass panel between her and the seat where the driver—where Rico would have sat. And as she levered herself fully upright at last she saw not the silvery grey metalwork of the original Rolls but the sleek black lines of a very different car altogether.

‘This isn’t your car!’

‘Correction,’ Rico returned imperturbably. ‘This is very definitely my car—my personal property. The Rolls was not. It was the one that Venables hired for you, but it was easy enough to acquire it for my own use. Your original driver was only too pleased to be given the day off, especially when he earned a fat bonus at the same time.’

I just bet he was, Felicity thought, struggling against a swamping wave of misery. The memory of her own foolishness in telling him that his kidnapping hadn’t been the most efficient possible came back to haunt her in horrifying detail. How could she have been so reckless—so crazily stupid? She had even laughed at him, for heaven’s sake!

‘You…’

The black tide of horror made her voice shake and she shrank back against the far door of the car, getting as far away from him as was possible.

‘How—how did you get me from the Rolls into this…?’

The faint smile grew, curving into a wicked, malign grin.

‘Isn’t that obvious, gatita? I carried you.’

Her throat closed up at the thought, her stomach heaving nauseously. The image that her mind threw up of herself in his arms, her body limp and totally at his mercy, her eyes closed, all defences down, made her shudder in appalled distress.

‘How dare you?’

To her relief anger came to her aid, the hot, thick force of it driving her fear before it.

‘How dare you even touch me!’ Her voice rose high and tight and her grey eyes flashed fire in defiance. ‘You had no right! No right at all! If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you!’

To her fury, her reaction only seemed to amuse him, his smile incensing her further.

‘So the kitten has claws,’ he murmured with silky mockery. ‘I can see I shall have to be prepared to defend myself.’

If her rage had been merely an annoying fly, easily flicked away and dismissed, he couldn’t have made his contempt more obvious. The disdain with which he shrugged off her impotent threat had her clenching her hands tight against her thighs, struggling with the impulse to use them on that arrogantly handsome face.

‘Oh, go to hell!’ she spat furiously. ‘Just leave me alone!’

‘Willingly,’ he responded smoothly. ‘But I can’t help thinking that you would be much more comfortable inside. You can’t stay in this car all night. For one thing, I think the weather is about to change.’

A quick glance at the sky confirmed the truth of his words. The brilliant sun of earlier in the day had been eclipsed by gathering clouds, which were growing thicker and darker by the minute. But it was worse than that. Some of the intensity of the sun had also faded, leaving her in no doubt that the evening was drawing in. Just how long had she been unconscious while they were on the road? How far could they possibly have travelled in that time—and to where?

‘And I’m sure you must be getting hungry. If you just come into the house—’

‘No.’

Felicity shook her head firmly, her chin setting stubbornly.

‘I’m not going anywhere with you. You can’t make me.’

His sigh was a blend of exasperation and resignation.

‘Felicity, querida, you cannot stay out here.’

‘I can do whatever I want! And it’s Miss Hamilton to you!’

Damn him, he was laughing at her again, the soft sound of his amusement adding fuel to the fire of indignation blazing inside her.

‘Don’t be foolish, gatita. You must be stiff and uncomfortable, and in need of something to eat and drink. Come with me…’

The appalling thing was that she was tempted. That the strong, tanned hand he held out to her actually looked as if it was proffered in a gesture of friendship, of assistance. But she’d been caught that way once before and she didn’t intend to let it happen all over again.

‘Señorita.’ The edge to his voice revealed how much she was testing his patience. ‘You are not making this easy on either of us. If you would just come inside then we could handle this situation in a much more civilised manner.’

‘I don’t want to make anything easy for you! And, quite frankly, “civilised” in the last word I could ever use to describe you! Nothing on earth could ever induce me to set foot inside that house—’

‘Not even if I promise to let you phone your family?’ Rico inserted smoothly, interrupting the flow of her tirade.

‘Phone?’

Abruptly all the fight left her with the speed of the air being expelled from a punctured balloon, leaving her limp and weak.

‘You’d let me do that?’

The arrogant dark head moved in a swift nod of acquiescence.

‘But only if you come inside.’

His tone was huskily seductive, pure enticement in a silky murmur. It was the voice that the serpent must have used to tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden and Felicity found herself weakening dangerously.

The longing to speak to her parents, to hear a friendly voice in the middle of this nightmare was overwhelming. She had never felt so alone, so lost and anxious—not even on the day that she had discovered precisely how much of a mess her father had made of his life, the dangers he had created for his family.

‘The first thing you can do as soon as you are inside is ring your parents, reassure them that you are well. I’m sure they would be glad to hear from you.’

They would be going out of their minds with worry. Hot tears rushed into Felicity’s eyes at just the thought.

‘You wouldn’t deceive me about this?’

The sheen of moisture in those dove-grey eyes was Rico’s undoing. If there was one thing he had never been able to cope with, it was a woman in tears. Maria had wept all over him when she had found out about Edward Venables’ forthcoming marriage and that was why he was here, now, seeing this woman’s tears threaten and knowing that he was the cause of it.

‘Trust me on this,’ he said huskily.

Once more that big, strong hand was held out to her, and this time, after a moment’s hesitation, she tentatively put her own into it. The way that her fingers disappeared when he folded his around them was almost shocking; the paler skin swallowed up by the tanned power of his grasp.

‘Come, belleza,’ he encouraged. ‘Come with me.’

And slowly, cautiously, she let herself be drawn with him, sliding over the soft leather of the seat. She was almost out of the car when a new idea came to her, flashing into her mind with a force like lightning so that for a second she paused, one foot just reaching out to the ground, wondering if she could possibly risk it.

She had no idea at all where she was. The car was parked at the top of some wide, winding drive, thickly lined with trees. Just a few yards away stood a large, elegant house, the heavy wooden door already open onto a wide, spacious hall. Clearly, Rico had unlocked the door before he had come back to the car to waken her.

The house or the drive? Felicity asked herself, mentally veering backwards and forwards between the two options.

The drive must lead to a road—but how far away—and what was beyond that? And if she ran for the drive, then Rico could simply get into the car and come after her. Hampered as she was by the long skirts of her dress, the delicate satin shoes with their fine, high heels, she doubted if she could manage to run very far or very fast for very long.

But if she could make it to the house then she could slam the door to and hopefully bolt it against him. He had already said that there was a phone in the hall. Even if she only managed to win herself a few free seconds, then surely it would be long enough to ring the police and scream for help? The house was her best bet.

But first she had to disable Rico, at least for a moment or two.

‘Felicity?’

Her hesitation had caught his attention, which gave her the cue she wanted.

‘I—I’m sorry…’ she managed to sound convincingly hesitant. ‘I don’t feel…’

The pretence of faintness, of still feeling the after-effects of the sedative, gave her an excuse to free her hands from his, pressing them to her forehead, hiding her eyes.

‘Are you not well?’

He actually sounded concerned so that she allowed herself a small, secret grin of triumph behind her concealing fingers.

‘Just a little unsteady. If I could just…’

She needed to keep her hands free so, instead of taking his again, she let them rest lightly on his arm, using his strength to support her as she got to her feet.

It was a mistake that almost distracted her from her purpose. In the moment that her fingers closed over the taut, powerful muscle, the hard bone underneath the fine material of his jacket she felt her heart jolt, her breath catching sharply in her throat. An electrical sense of awareness sizzled along every nerve, making her head spin, but this time for real. Rico was so close that the unique scent of him filled her nostrils, warm, potent, musky, totally alien and yet strangely, disturbingly familiar in a way that set her pulse racing hotly.

This time her unsteadiness wasn’t totally feigned as she slid out of the car and slowly stood upright, using his strength as her support. She didn’t dare to look up at him, fearful that those dark, probing eyes might be able to read her feelings in her face and recognise her response for the lightning bolt of white-hot sexual awareness that it was.

‘Lean on me, if you like.’

Lean on him? Felicity thought on a wave of near hysteria. If only he knew just how she longed to do just that! How her hot, throbbing, dangerously aroused body yearned to throw itself towards him, to rest against the hard wall of his chest, feel those powerful arms come round her.

No! She couldn’t afford even to let herself think of such things or she would waver in her purpose, forget what she had planned. She had to act now or it would be too late.

‘I…’ she began, her voice convincingly low and weak.

‘Si?’

As she had hoped, he bent his dark head towards her, in order to hear better. It was now or never.

White teeth digging into her lower lip in concentrated determination, she brought her right arm up and out, elbow bent sharply, aimed straight at that square, determined jaw. In the same moment that it connected with the hard strength of bone, jerking his head back, she launched a wild kick at his nearest ankle, allowing herself a faint smile of pleasure as she heard his muffled grunt of pain. For just a split second she was free and she took full advantage of the moment, hitching up her white silk skirts and sprinting for the door.

She only managed to get a few feet before a hard hand closed over her shoulder, pulling her back. An arm snaked round her waist, clamping tight around her slender frame, and, kicking and struggling, she was lifted bodily from the ground.

‘Oh, no you don’t, señorita!’

Rico had been anticipating the escape attempt. It was quite shocking to realise just how well he had come to know her, even on such a short acquaintance. But just the brief exchanges—he could hardly call them conversations—as they had had on the journey here, had taught him so much about the way her mind worked. He hadn’t expected that she would have so much spirit. That she would be prepared to take him on quite as openly as she had. But he’d observed and learned and as a result he had had a good idea of what was coming.

It was that tiny grin that had given her away. A smile that she had thought he couldn’t see but which had put a light into her eyes that warned him she was up to something. So he had been ready for the moment she attacked, anticipating the movement of her arm, ready to dodge the full force of it. The vicious little kick to his ankle was more of a surprise, but he soon recovered from that.

‘You don’t get away from me that easily!’

‘Let me go!’

She tried to fight; tried to kick out at him again but the long skirts of her dress hampered her and the whirling veil covered her face, half-blinding her.

‘Careful, belleza…’ It came out unevenly as he fought to adjust his grip on her, trying to hold her more securely. ‘You’ll have us both on the ground.’

‘Do you think I care?’

Furiously she writhed against his restraining hands until the only thing he could do was lift her higher, his arm going round her waist, the other supporting her legs, her head against his shoulder.

‘Now perhaps you’ll do as you’re told!’ he flung at her, clamping down hard on the sudden blaze of anger that had flared inside him, making him want to shake her roughly, drive some sense into her.

But even as he spoke Felicity moved, her arms coming out in an automatic, instinctive movement to close around his neck in order to make herself more secure. Her action brought a faint rush of perfume to tantalise his senses.

The fragrance of rose and lily was fresh and sweet, but it was what came with it that delivered the real kick, awakening everything that was truly male and sexual within him. The clean, delicate, and yet potently erotic scent of this woman’s skin and hair, the feel of her warm, soft curves in his arms made his body tighten in hunger and respond with fierce arousal all between one blink and another.

And as Felicity’s head went back against his shoulder and eyes the colour of an autumn mist met his own sensually darkened gaze, Rico knew that he had just made one of the worst mistakes of his life.




CHAPTER FOUR


IT HAD been bad enough when he had managed the change of cars a couple of hours earlier.

Then at least she had been deeply asleep, totally oblivious to what was going on. Her body had been limp and unresponsive, those soft grey eyes closed and hidden from him.

Now they were staring straight into his, the sparks of fury and rebellion still burning deep in them, making them shimmer in angry defiance. Her skin was flushed with the after-effects of their undignified tussle, her mouth slightly open as she tried to control her uneven breathing.

He didn’t want to think that it might not just be the physical exertion that had set her pulse racing. Didn’t even want to consider the possibility that she too might feel the sudden singing tension that had gripped him. Could she sense the abrupt, dangerous change in the mood of the moment, the shift in the sensual temperature that had turned it from winter chill to midsummer heatwave in the space of a heartbeat?

‘I’m going to take you inside,’ he growled, shocking himself with the way that his voice didn’t sound like his own but had suddenly become rough around the edges, thickening revealingly. ‘And if you’re wise you’ll not try any more crazy stunts.’

‘What did you think? That I was just going to sit there and let you do what you wanted with me?’

‘I’d given you my word.’

‘Oh, yes, and I know just how much that word is worth. You gave me your word that you wouldn’t harm me even while you were feeding me drugs to knock me out.’

‘I’ve already told you, I never planned for quite that effect.’

He was striding towards the door as he spoke; the ease with which he carried her weight a testimony to the true strength of the muscles beneath that superbly tailored jacket. And the terrible thing was that she had suddenly lost all the will to fight.

It was as if in that frantic dash towards the house she had drained what little strength she possessed, leaving herself limp and incapable of movement.

Oh, who was she trying to kid? Felicity reproached herself inwardly. Her sudden mental paralysis had nothing at all to do with her mind and everything to do with an injection of white-hot physical excitement that had set her body throbbing in urgent response. The sensations searing through her in reaction to the forceful, warm strength of Rico’s taut male body so close to hers, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, the iron-hard support of the arms that held her made her skin burn until she felt she was in the grip of some delirious fever…

‘And did you not think that maybe a mild sedative was perhaps a kinder way out than others I might have taken?’

‘So what do you expect from me? Thanks? Gratitude for the fact that you didn’t treat me any worse than you already have?’

‘Oh, no,’ Rico tossed back, caught on the raw by the sudden switch back to cold contempt.

For a second there she had seemed almost to treat him as a human being. But now the lady of the manor act was right back in place, those soft smoky eyes hardening to the grey of the sea on a winter’s day. Immediately he felt his own feelings change in response as anger put a sharper edge on the volatile cocktail of responses he was already prey to.

‘Gratitude would be the last thing I’d expect from you. After all, the woman who was going to marry Edward Venables…’

Something about her sudden stillness, the shocked, blank look in those misty eyes, brought him up short.

‘Oh, come now, querida,’ he derided sardonically. ‘Don’t tell me that you had actually forgotten. That it had somehow slipped your mind that today was to have been the happiest day of your life.’

She had forgotten, Felicity realised, her mind hazing over in shock. She could excuse herself by saying that the way Rico had exploded into her life with all the force of a whirling tornado had numbed her thoughts, making it impossible to think. But the truth was both deeper and less complicated than that.

Since the moment that she had first set eyes on this darkly devastating man, her mind hadn’t been her own. It was as if he had taken possession of it, filled her every thought with the stunning force of his presence, wiping away any memories of who she had been, how her life had been.

‘You didn’t remember.’ Rico’s voice was thick with contempt. ‘You…’

‘Put me down!’ Felicity inserted sharply, hating the scorn in his voice, hating the way he looked at her, dark eyes bleak and cold. ‘Put me down at once! I can walk—’

‘Oh, no, querida.’ The hateful mockery grew sharper, lacing his tongue with cynical acid. ‘How could I deny you the moment that every woman dreams of? The moment when all the fantasies of her childhood, the hopes of her adolescence come to fruition.’

The beautiful mouth had curled into a brutal sneer, the sexy accent heightening on each word. But the sound of his voice no longer made her toes curl, her skin tingle in delight. Instead it was like the lash of a cruel whip, flaying away a protective layer of skin so that she shivered at the feel of even the air against her flesh.

‘Don’t be cruel!’ It was a cry of protest.

‘Cruel, gatita? Cruel?’ he taunted. ‘I am not being cruel. I am simply ensuring that your day ends as you had hoped it would—with you in the arms of a very rich man indeed, being carried over the threshold of his house…’

As he spoke, he suited action to the words, mounting the steps to the front door, shouldering it open, carrying her over the threshold into the cool shadows of the hall.

After the light of the sun, Felicity fond that she was temporarily blinded, unable to see anything clearly. And what made matters worse were the weak tears that filmed her eyes; tears she was determined not to let fall. Rico’s words had stabbed straight to her heart and twisted in it, but the truth was that they had hurt so much because they were so very far from reality.

She doubted that Edward would ever have thought to follow any of the traditions of a real wedding, at least as far as she was concerned. Once the formal, public ceremony and the lavish reception was over, he would probably have dropped all pretence at being the loving bridegroom, the part he had acted so unexpectedly well over the past month or so. Instead he would have reverted to the role of cold, calculating schemer, the man who had manipulated both her life and that of her father in order to get just what he wanted.

Right now she didn’t know who was worse—Edward or Rico.

‘For such a beautiful bride as you are, it is the least I can do.’

Once inside, with the door kicked closed behind them, he paused, ebony eyes going towards a room on his left and just once, very briefly, glancing towards the stairs.

‘So now that I have carried you over the threshold, mi ángel, what next, I wonder?’

Rico had bent his arrogant dark head down to murmur in her ear, the warmth of his breath stirring the tendrils of her hair, brushing softly against her cheek.

‘If you were truly my bride—mi esposa—I know exactly what I would do…’

And his body knew it too. He knew he should set her down, put her on her feet and move well away. That was the sane, the only safe approach. But with her in his arms, with the scent of her skin all around him, the last thing on God’s earth he felt like was playing it safe. And he certainly didn’t feel sane. Instead he knew he was totally out of control—completely crazy and dangerously off balance.

His heart was pounding, his blood flowing hot in his veins. Every sense he possessed clamoured in hunger, insistently demanding appeasement, making him ache with need. And the feel of those soft arms around his neck, the yielding pressure of her feminine body against his chest and the brush of her hair against his neck were almost more than he could bear. He wanted to drop her straight to the floor in order to end the sweet torment and yet at the same time he wanted to hold on to her so as to prolong it for ever.

‘But I’m not your bride!’

Felicity knew she had to break the spell that that low, husky voice had been weaving around her weakened senses. Listening to it had been like sliding slowly but irresistibly into a bath filled with warm, golden honey. She could feel it flowing around her, enfolding her, threatening to close over her head at any moment.

‘I’m not your wife and I never will be! I’m just your prisoner, your captive—here under duress because you forced me into this! And whatever fantasies you might be harbouring, you can forget them right now! You lay one finger on me and I’ll—I’ll…’

‘You’ll do what, belleza?’ Rico enquired with silky menace when, suddenly realising just how hollow her threat was when he already had more than a hand on her, when she was held securely in his arms, her voice died away rapidly. ‘What was it you promised earlier? That you would kill me?’

The sound of his laughter was shocking. It was all the more terrifying because there was no trace of any real humour in it, only the sardonic dismissal of her impotently angry words.




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