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Marriage Made In Blackmail
Michelle Smart
The tycoon’s demand:‘You have to marry me first…’Luis Casillas’s reputation needs restoring after a scandalous business feud. Chloe Guillem will pay for her part in it—by marrying him! He’ll keep her captive on his Caribbean island until she agrees. Their explosive chemistry can only sweeten the deal, but Luis requires more than blackmail to make fiery Chloe his bride… And he’s not above using seduction to secure her surrender!


The tycoon’s demand:
“You have to marry me first...”
Luis Casillas’s reputation needs restoring after a scandalous business feud. Chloe Guillem will pay for her part in it—by marrying him! He’ll keep her captive on his Caribbean island until she agrees. Their explosive chemistry can only sweeten the deal, but Luis requires more than blackmail to make fiery Chloe his bride... And he’s not above using seduction to secure her surrender!
MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby and would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading them—and writing them—ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.
Also by Michelle Smart (#ub13f7c78-3983-5e82-ba0a-fbdbc8f07f54)
Married for the Greek’s Convenience
Once a Moretti Wife
A Bride at His Bidding
Bound to a Billionaire miniseries
Protecting His Defiant Innocent
Claiming His One-Night Baby
Buying His Bride of Convenience
Rings of Vengeance miniseries
Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge
Marriage Made in Blackmail
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Marriage Made in Blackmail
Michelle Smart


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07236-6
MARRIAGE MADE IN BLACKMAIL
© 2018 Michelle Smart
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#ue8742df7-49ae-59be-89e0-7da09def6fff)
Back Cover Text (#u76d464ef-0d8d-5329-a395-b6d8af3cd81c)
About the Author (#u916def62-92f2-5b4f-ae5f-7c9ffbf4d9e4)
Booklist (#u2656d39b-6a0e-571b-8e91-326b322b255f)
Title Page (#ua5600313-3e54-5e66-9eb9-efd2b65e61e9)
Copyright (#ue381d46b-257e-561f-8d58-8a086a0cfbb7)
CHAPTER ONE (#u6753c244-6135-546a-9834-4eb831ad600f)
CHAPTER TWO (#u415ce2cd-c243-540a-afc9-119019bb85bf)
CHAPTER THREE (#u2015e361-be1d-53bf-8c72-a10476440374)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ub13f7c78-3983-5e82-ba0a-fbdbc8f07f54)
LUIS CASILLAS SNATCHED his ringing phone off the table and put it to his ear. ‘Sí?’
‘Luis?’
‘Sí.’
‘It’s Chloe.’
That brought him up short. ‘Chloe... Chloe Guillem.’
The woman who had spent the past two months treating him as if he were a carrier for a deadly plague?
‘Oui. I need your help. My car has broken down on a road on the Sierra de Guadarrama...’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Driving. Was driving.’
‘Have you called for recovery?’
‘They can’t get to me for two hours. My phone is running out of battery. Please, can you come and rescue me? Please? I don’t feel safe.’
Luis looked at his watch and swore under his breath. He was due at the gala he and his twin brother Javier were hosting in half an hour.
‘Is there no one else you can call?’ Chloe worked for his ballet company in Madrid. In the year the gregarious Frenchwoman had lived in his home city she had made plenty of friends.
‘You are the closest. Please, Luis, come and get me.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I’m scared.’
He took a long breath as he did some mental maths. This gala was incredibly important.
Ten years ago Luis and his twin had bought the provincial ballet company their prima ballerina mother had spent her childhood training at. Their aim had been to elevate it into a world-renowned, formidable ballet company. First they had renamed it Compania de Ballet de Casillas, in their mother’s memory, then set about attracting the very best dancers and choreographers. Three years ago they had drawn up the plans to move the company out of the crumbling theatre it had called home for decades and into a purpose-built state-of-the art theatre with world-class training facilities and its own ballet school. Those plans had almost reached fruition.
Now they wanted patrons for it, members of the elite to sponsor the ballet school and put it even more firmly on the world’s ballet map. Europe’s elite and dozens of its press were already gathering at the hotel. Luis had to be there.
‘Where exactly are you?’
‘You will come?’
It was the hope in her voice that did for him. Chloe had the sweetest voice he had ever had the pleasure of listening to. It wasn’t girlishly sweet, more melodic, a voice that sang.
He couldn’t leave her alone on the mountains.
‘Sí, I will come and get you, but I need to know where you are.’
‘I will send you the co-ordinates but then I will have to turn my phone off to save what is left of my battery.’
‘Keep it on,’ he ordered. ‘Have you got anything to hand you can use as a weapon if you need it?’
‘I’m not sure...’
‘Find something heavy or sharp. Be vigilant. Send me the co-ordinates now. I’m on my way.’
‘Merci, Luis. Merci beaucoup.’
‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Hurrying to his underground garage, he selected the quickest of his fleet of cars, inputted Chloe’s co-ordinates into its satnav, then drove it up the ramp. The moment he was clear, he put his foot down, tearing down his long driveway, past the stretched Mercedes with his waiting driver in it.
His clever console, which had calculated the quickest route for him, said he was an hour’s drive to her position from his home in the north of Madrid, if he kept to the speed limit.
Provided traffic wasn’t too heavy this Saturday evening, Luis estimated he could make it in forty, possibly even thirty minutes.
He always kept to the speed limit in built-up areas. The temptation to burn rubber was often irresistible but he always controlled the impulse until on the open road. Today, with thoughts of Chloe stranded in the mountains on his mind, he wove in and out of the traffic ignoring the blast of horns hailing furiously in his wake.
Chloe Guillem. A funny, attention-seeking, pretty child who had grown into a witty, fun-loving, beautiful woman. Truly beautiful.
It had taken him a long time to notice it.
An old family friend, he hadn’t seen her for four or five years when she had called him out of the blue.
‘Bonjour, Luis,’ she had said in a sing-song tone that had immediately suggested familiarity. ‘It is Chloe Guillem, little sister of your oldest friend, calling to ask you to put friendship ahead of business and give me a job.’
He had burst into laughter. After a short conversation where Chloe had explained that she’d completed her apprenticeship in the costume department of an English ballet company, spent the past two years working for a Parisian ballet company and was now seeking a fresh challenge, he’d given her the name and number of his Head of Costume. Recruitment, he’d explained, was nothing to do with him.
‘But you own the company,’ she had countered.
‘I own it with my brother. We are experts in the construction business. We know nothing of ballet or how to make the costumes our dancers wear. That’s what we employ people for.’
‘I have references that say I’m very good,’ she had cajoled.
‘That is good because we only hire the best.’
‘Will you put in a good word for me?’
‘No, but if you mention that your mother was Clara Casillas’s personal costume maker, I am sure that will work in your favour. Provided you are as good as your references say you are.’
‘I am!’
‘Then you will have no trouble convincing Maria to hire you,’ he had laughed.
Luis had thought nothing more of the conversation until around six months later when he’d attended a directors meeting at the old theatre to discuss preparations for the company’s move. A galloping gazelle had bounded up to him out of nowhere with a beaming smile and thrown her arms around him.
It had been Chloe, bright and joyous and, she had delightedly told him, loving her time in Madrid. Luis had been pleased to see this face from his past but he’d been too busy to take much notice of his old friend’s little sister.
When Luis and Javier had pooled their meagre inheritance to form Casillas Ventures almost two decades ago, they had decided from the start that one of them would always be the ‘point man’ on each project. This would simplify matters for contractors and suppliers. Luis had taken the role of point man for the construction of the new theatre and facilities. In this venture he had been far more hands on than he would normally be but this was a special project. This was for their mother, a way for the world to see the Casillas name without automatically thinking of Clara Casillas’s tragic end at the hands of her husband.
The closer it got to completion, the more hours he needed to put in, overseeing the construction and ensuring Compania de Ballet de Casillas was prepared for the wholesale move to its new premises.
From that embrace on though, whenever Luis visited the old crumbling theatre he somehow always managed to see Chloe.
She always acknowledged his presence, with either a quick wave if working on an intricate costume or a few words exchanged if on a break, her cheeks turning the colour of crimson whatever reception she gave, a little quirk he’d found intriguing but never given much thought to...not until he’d walked past a coffee shop a few months later and caught a glimpse of a raven haired beauty talking animatedly to a group of her peers. Spring had arrived in his home city and she’d been wearing a thin dress that exposed bare, milky-white arms, her thick raven hair loose and spilling over her shoulders.
He would have stopped and stared even if he hadn’t recognised her.
How had he not seen it before?
Chloe Guillem radiated. Sunlight shone out of her pores, sexiness oozed from her skin. Her smile dazzled.
She must have felt his stare for she had looked up and seen him at the window and the full power of her smile had been unleashed on him and this time it had hit him straight in his loins. He had never in all his thirty-five years experienced a bolt of pure, undiluted, unfiltered lust as he had at that moment.
He’d taken her out to dinner that very night. It had been the most fun and invigorating evening he could remember. Chloe was funny, full of self-deprecating wit, a raucous laugh never far from her voluminous lips. And she was sexy.
Dios, was she sexy. He had been unable to tear his eyes away, greedily soaking up everything about her, all the glorious parts he’d been oblivious to. It was incredible to think he’d been blind to it for so long.
And the desire was mutual. Luis knew when a woman wanted him and Chloe’s body language had needed little interpretation.
But when they had left the restaurant she had rebuffed his offer of a nightcap by hailing a taxi.
He had never been rejected before. It had intrigued rather than discouraged him.
‘If not a nightcap how about a goodnight kiss?’ he’d asked before she could escape into the cab, taking her face into his hands and gently rubbing his nose to hers. Her scent had filled his senses, reminding him of English strawberries and cream.
Her eyes had been stark on his, the flirtatious glimmer that had been prevalent the whole evening suddenly gone, her beautiful plump lips drawing together.
‘Next time, bonita,’ he had whispered, inhaling her scent again.
All the confusion on her face had broken into a smile that had shone straight into his chest. She had stepped back and nodded. ‘Yes. Next time.’
‘You will let me kiss you?’
The smile had widened, baby-blue eyes glittering with promise. ‘Yes, I will let you kiss me.’
But there had been no next time and no kiss. Two days later everything had gone to hell with her brother. Chloe had cancelled their planned date and stopped accepting his calls. When he visited the ballet company she kept her head down and pretended not to see him.
They hadn’t exchanged two words in almost as many months.
Why the hell he was tearing down roads at an average speed of a hundred miles an hour to rescue a woman who had dropped him like a hot brick he could not fathom, and especially on this night of all nights.
A curse flew from his lips when, thirty-four minutes after leaving his home, he reached the co-ordinates Chloe had given him.
It was a passing place on the winding road, with a flat grassy area for day-trippers to enjoy the spectacular view over a picnic. There was no one there. And no broken-down car.
He brought the car to a stop and grabbed his phone from the passenger seat. In his haste to get to her he’d forgotten to turn the ringtone up and only now did he see he had three missed calls from his brother.
He called Chloe. It went straight to voicemail.
Getting out of the car to search for her, he called Javier back.
‘Where are you?’ his brother snapped, picking up on the first ring.
‘Don’t ask. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘I’m grounded in Florence.’
‘What?’ Javier was supposed to be at the gala already. In Madrid. Not Florence.
‘My plane’s been grounded on a technicality. It passed all the safety checks this morning. Not a single issue of concern. Something’s not right.’
Luis disconnected the call, a real sense of disquiet racing through him. The sun was descending over Madrid in the far distance but the orange glow it emitted did nothing to stave off the chill that had settled in his bones.
His brother was grounded in Florence and suspected sabotage.
Luis had been lured to the middle of nowhere in the Sierra de Guadarrama in his dinner jacket, on a rescue mission where the damsel in distress had disappeared.
He checked the co-ordinates again.
This was definitely the right place.
So where the hell was she? And why was his sense of disquiet growing by the second?
* * *
Chloe Guillem took a seat in the first-class lounge at Madrid-Barajas airport and removed her phone from her carry-on bag.
She had six missed calls and seven text messages, all from the same number. She deleted the messages without reading them and fired off a message to her brother.
Mission accomplished. Waiting to board flight. x.
The glass of champagne she’d asked for when entering the lounge was brought to her table and she took a large sip of it at the moment her phone rang.
Cursing to herself, she switched it to silent and threw it down.
Two minutes later it vibrated in a dance over the table.
She had a new voicemail.
Her gut told her in the strongest possible terms not to listen to it.
She pressed play.
Luis Casillas’s deep, playful voice echoed into her ear. ‘Good evening, Chloe. I hope you are safe wherever you are and have not been kidnapped by a gang of marauding youths. You might wish you had been though because I will find you. And when I do...’ Here, he chuckled malevolently. ‘You will wish you had never crossed me. Sleep well, bonita.’
It was the emphasis on his final word rather than the implied threat that lifted the hairs on her arms.
Bonita.
The first time he had called her that she had thought she would never stop smiling.
Now she was overcome with the urge to cry.
He was not worth her tears, the two-faced, treacherous, conniving, evil bastard.
Thank goodness she’d had the sense to resist his offer of a nightcap...
Chloe downed the rest of her champagne and grimaced.
It hadn’t been sense that had stopped her accepting his offer or his goodnight kiss. It had been fear.
Her date with Luis had given her a sense of joy she hadn’t felt since her early childhood where she had spent innocent, happy days climbing trees and running around with friends, cocooned with love, blissfully unaware life could be anything other than wonderful. Luis was tied up in those memories.
Once upon a time she had been smitten with him.
She’d wanted to be sure his feelings for her were genuine and that he wasn’t looking at her only as a potential conquest. As hard as it was, she’d wanted to trust him. She’d wanted his respect.
At the end of their date when his nose had rubbed against hers and every ounce of her being had strained on an invisible leash to escape her brain and kiss him, she had almost given in. She’d spent their entire date imagining him naked, something she’d blamed on the erotic dream she’d had of him the night before but which she’d known, deep down, was her own hidden sexuality breaking free for this man who’d stolen into her teenage heart and now demanded to be heard.
What had she been thinking?
Luis had no respect.
He had made a mockery of her brother’s trust in him and by extension made a mockery of her and her dead mother. He was as bad, no, worse, than her pathetic father.
She knew his brother was equally culpable for ripping her brother off but Javier hadn’t been the one to embrace her tightly at her mother’s funeral and promise that one day the pain would get better. That had been Luis. Witty, sexy, fun-loving Luis, the only man who had ever captured her feminine attention. The only man in her twenty-five years she had ever dreamed of.
Whatever Benjamin had planned for him could not come soon enough.
The board on the wall with the constantly updated list of all departures and arrivals showed her own flight was now boarding.
Hurrying to her feet, Chloe made her way to the departure gate.
Now she knew what Luis Casillas was capable of she had to take his threat to hunt her down seriously.
Only when she looked out of the window of her first-class seat on the flight paid for by her brother and watched Madrid shrink from view did her lungs loosen enough to breathe easily.
Luis thought he’d be able to find her? Well, good luck to him. She would be the needle to his haystack.
* * *
The Grand Bahaman suburb of Lucaya was, Chloe could not stop thinking, a paradise. Her brother had set her up in a villa in an exclusive complex where all her needs and whims were taken care of and all she had to worry about was keeping her sun lotion topped up.
She had spent her first six days there doing nothing but lazing by the swimming pool and refreshing her social media feeds, her worries slowly evaporating under the blazing sun. As far as boltholes went, this was the best. It had exclusivity but also, should Luis carry out his threat to hunt her down, the comfort of safety in numbers.
She doubted he was sparing her a moment of his thoughts. The fallout in Madrid and the rest of Europe was growing in intensity. Chloe read all the news and gossip torn between glee and heartbreak.
It should never have come to this. Luis and Javier should have done the right thing and paid her brother the money they owed him, all two hundred and twenty-five million euros of it.
Seven years ago, on the day Chloe and her brother were told their mother’s cancer was terminal, Luis had called Benjamin for his help, dressing it up as an investment opportunity.
The Casillas brothers had paid a large deposit on some prime real-estate in Paris that they intended to build a skyscraper on that would eclipse all others. The owner of the land had suddenly demanded they pay the balance immediately or he would sell to another interested party. He’d given them until midnight. The Casillas brothers did not have the money. Benjamin did.
He gave them the cash, which amounted to twenty per cent of the total asking price. It was an eye-watering sum.
Tour Mont Blanc, as the skyscraper became known, took seven years to complete. Two months ago, Benjamin had received his copy of the final accounts. That was when he realised he’d been duped. The contract he’d signed, which he’d believed stated his profit share to be twenty per cent as had been verbally agreed between him and the Casillas brothers, had, unbeknown to him, been altered before he signed. He was entitled to only five per cent of the profit.
His oldest, closest friends had ripped him off. They’d taken advantage of him at his lowest point. They’d abused his trust.
When they’d refused to accept any wrongdoing Benjamin had taken them to court. Not only had he lost but the brothers had rubbed salt in the wound by hitting him with an injunction that forbade him from speaking out about any aspect of it.
Chloe would never have believed Luis could be so cold. Javier, absolutely, the man was colder than an ice sculpture, but Luis had always been warm.
Now the press was alive with speculation. Benjamin whisking Javier’s prima ballerina fiancée away from the Casillas brothers’ gala and marrying her days later had the rumour mill circling like an amphetamine-fed hamster on a wheel. An intrepid American journalist had discovered the existence of the injunction and now that injunction was backfiring. So far only the injunction itself was known about but a frenzy of speculation had broken out about the cause of it, none of it casting the Casillas brothers in a favourable light.
Let them be the ones to deal with it, Chloe thought defiantly, shoving her beach bag over her shoulder and slipping on her sparkly flip-flops. She was safe here in the Bahamas and her brother was safely cocooned with Freya in his chateau.
Leaving the tranquillity of the complex for only the third time since her arrival a week ago, she spent an enjoyable fifteen minutes strolling in the early-morning sun to Port Lucaya, very much looking forward to a day of island hopping on the complex owner’s yacht.
The invitation had been hand delivered by the manager the evening before, the man explaining it was an excursion the owner provided for favoured guests whenever she visited. A guest had been taken ill so the invitation was Chloe’s if she wanted it. Thinking she couldn’t come to much harm if it was a woman hosting the event—she’d read too many horror stories about young women and rich men on yachts to have been comfortable with it being run by a rich male stranger—she had been delighted to accept. She couldn’t spend a fortnight in the Bahamas hiding away.
Chloe liked to keep busy. She liked to be with people. Being alone with only her thoughts for company meant too much time to think. Better to let the past stay where it was by always looking forward and keeping her mind busy and her life full.
She found the port easily, the pristine yachts lined up in the small bay an excellent giveaway. Opposite it was the Port Lucaya Marketplace she’d heard so much about and which she had promised herself a visit to. Looking at the quaint colourful tourist trap bustling with life and exotic scents brought a big smile to her face. She would go there tomorrow.
Turning her attention back to the yachts, Chloe scanned them carefully, looking for the one named Marietta. Her excitement rose when she finally located it. At least four decks high, the Marietta was the biggest and most luxurious-looking of the lot. Not quite cruise-ship size, it looked big enough to accommodate dozens of guests with room to spare.
But where was everyone? The metal walkway for passengers to board had been lowered but she saw and heard none of the sounds and sights you would expect of a large party going off on an all-inclusive day trip.
As she hesitated over whether to step onto the walkway, a figure wearing what she assumed was captain attire appeared on deck.
‘Good morning,’ he said, approaching her with a welcoming smile. ‘Miss Guillem?’
She nodded.
‘I am Captain Andrew Brand. Let me show you in. I’ll give you the mandatory safety talk as we go.’
Chloe joined him on the gleaming yacht with a grin that only got wider as he showed off the magnificent vessel, pointing out the bar, swimming pool and hot tub on the next deck up, then taking her inside.
This yacht had everything, she thought in awe as she tried her hardest to pay attention to what she was being shown and told.
After showing her the Finnish sauna that had a window looking straight out to sea, he took her to the top deck to what was appropriately named ‘the sky lounge’ and left her with a young woman with tightly curled hair who made her a cocktail of coconut blended with mango and rum and served it in the coconut shell with a straw. This stretched Chloe’s smile so wide her mouth must have reached her ears. She enjoyed it so much she readily accepted a second, then took a seat on one of the plentiful cappuccino-coloured leather seats encircling the lounge.
She gazed out of one of the many windows, imagining the spectacular view of the stars at night from this wonderful vantage point, and hoped she would be lucky enough to experience it for herself. The estimated finish time of the day’s excursion had been vague.
Which reminded her that she still seemed to be the only guest.
And where had the barwoman gone?
Unease crawling through her, Chloe opened her beach bag to search for her phone.
Just as her fingers closed on it, a tall figure stepped into the lounge.
Although the figure was only in the periphery of her vision, it was enough for her stomach to roil and ice to plunge into her veins.
Feeling very much like a teenager watching a horror movie and wishing she could cover her eyes to hide from the scary bit, she slowly turned her head.
And there he stood, filling the space around him like a dark, menacing shadow, a grim smile on his face.
Luis.
‘Hello, bonita. It is a pleasure to see you again.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ub13f7c78-3983-5e82-ba0a-fbdbc8f07f54)
LUIS FELT IMMENSE satisfaction to read the horror in Chloe’s baby-blue eyes.
‘Nothing to say?’ he taunted. ‘I have travelled a long way to see you, bonita. I would have thought that deserved an enthusiastic welcome.’
Those wonderful pillowy lips he’d fantasised about kissing parted then snapped shut as she swallowed, shock clearly rendering her dumb.
‘You’re not normally this shy.’ He folded his arms across his chest and stroked his jaw. ‘Is it delight at seeing me that has struck you mute?’
Her wonderfully graceful throat moved, colour creeping over her cheeks. ‘What...? How...?’
‘Is that the best you can come up with?’ He shook his head with mock incredulity.
She blinked rapidly and blew in and out. ‘I’ve been set up.’
‘The sun hasn’t damaged your observation skills, I see.’
The baby-blue eyes stared straight into his. ‘You bastard.’
‘If we are moving straight to the name-calling, I have a select number of insults I can apply to you. Which shall I start with?’
‘Forget it.’ Hooking her large bag over her shoulder, she got to her feet. ‘Let’s not waste time. Say what you need to say. I have a holiday to enjoy.’
He gazed at the long legs now fully on display, only the top half of her supple thighs covered by the tight blue denim shorts she wore. Dios, for a She-Devil she had the most amazing body. Beauty, heavy breasts covered in a red T-shirt, a slim waist and a pert bottom...he defied any red-blooded heterosexual man out there not to fantasise about bedding her.
‘My apologies,’ he said sardonically. ‘I didn’t realise you were on a holiday. I thought you had run away.’
‘No, it’s definitely a holiday. Sun, sea, pina coladas and hot men.’ She smiled as she listed the latter, a jibe he knew perfectly well was intended to cut at him. ‘Getting far away from you was an added incentive but not the main consideration.’
‘Would your brother have paid for you to holiday in the Bahamas if you hadn’t agreed to do his dirty work?’ The booking for her flights and villa had been paid for personally by Benjamin.
‘Au contraire,’ she said, switching from English to her native French. Between them they spoke each other’s languages and English fluently. ‘I didn’t agree to do his dirty work. I insisted on it.’ The smile she now cast him was pure beatific. ‘Your gallantry at rescuing a damsel in distress does you credit. Knowing you were on those mountain roads searching for me is a thought I will cherish for ever.’
The rage that had simmered in his veins since he and Javier had pieced all the parts of the jigsaw together flashed through his skin.
Luis hadn’t expected contrition from her but her triumph was something else.
Chloe had sent him on a wild goose chase so he would be late for the gala. Her brother had conspired to ground Javier’s flight to Madrid so he too would be late for the gala. With both Casillas brothers out of the way and the world’s media present, Benjamin had pounced, stealing Javier’s fiancée away and taking her to his secure chateau in Provence. And then he had proceeded to blackmail them: Javier’s fiancée in exchange for the money he claimed they owed him. If the money wasn’t forthcoming he would marry her himself.
Luis could not remember the last time his brother had been so coldly furious. Javier had dug his heels in and refused to pay. For Javier it was a matter of principle. They had done nothing illegal and a court of law agreed with them. They didn’t owe Benjamin a cent.
For Luis, Benjamin’s actions were a declaration of war. All the guilt he’d felt and his plans to put things right between them had been discarded in an instant.
The press photographs of Freya leaving the gala hand in hand with Benjamin had captured a certain something between the pair of them that had made Luis wince for his brother. Whether Javier’s fiancée was an unwitting tool in the plot or a willing supplicant was irrelevant. Those pictures had shown his brother’s fiancée gazing into his enemy’s eyes with a look of rapture on her face. Javier would rather starve than take her back.
His brother had been right not to take her back. Their enemy had married Freya two days ago, barely five days after stealing her away. The fallout against the Casillas brothers had accelerated.
Chloe had willingly played her part in this. She would find herself playing a role to end it and whether that was willingly, he could not care less.
‘Cherish those memories, bonita,’ he said, hiding his anger with a beatific smile of his own. ‘You earned them. You have proven yourself to be a fabulous actress.’
She fluttered her long black eyelashes at him. ‘Were you worried about me? How touching.’
Remembering the burst of raw panic that had grabbed him to find her car missing from the place he had expected it to be... Worried, Luis concluded grimly, did not begin to cover it.
It was only because he had known her since she was in her mother’s stomach, he told himself. For the first three years of Chloe’s life he, Javier and Benjamin, all ten years older, had been her chief babysitters. None of them had been enthusiastic about the job, especially when she’d entered toddlerhood and turned into a pint-sized She-Devil.
More fool him for being so blown away by her adult beauty that he’d failed to see behind the fun-loving façade to the fully grown She-Devil beneath the milky skin.
‘I would not be human if I hadn’t been concerned,’ he said blithely.
‘I think it’s debatable whether you and your brother are human at all.’
He spread his arms out and winked. ‘Oh, I am very human, bonita, as I am more than happy for you to discover for yourself.’
A tinge of colour slashed her pretty rounded cheeks. She scowled at him and pulled her bag even closer into her side. ‘Are we done yet? Have you finished with your fun?’
‘Finished? Bonita, my fun with you has only just begun.’
Indeed, this was already much more fun than he had envisaged. Chloe’s belligerent discomfort and outrage were things of beauty, acting like salve to his rabid anger.
‘Yes, well, my fun is over. I’m going.’
‘Going where?’ he asked as she stomped to the door, giving him an extremely wide berth as she moved.
‘Back to my villa.’
‘How?’
It was the way he said that one word that made Chloe pause and her heart accelerate even faster and the sick feeling in her stomach swirl harder.
It didn’t matter that Luis had found her, she kept telling herself. It had been inevitable that their paths would cross again one day. At least it was done with and she could stop worrying about it.
‘Have you been so enraptured by my presence that you failed to notice we’re no longer at port?’ he mocked.
She turned her head to look out of the window to her left. Then she turned it to the right.
Then she spun round to face the front, curses flying through her head.
The captain had set the Marietta to sail and she hadn’t even noticed.
‘Get this thing turned around right now!’ she demanded, eying him squarely.
He rubbed his chin. ‘No, I don’t think I will.’
‘The captain will turn it round.’ She took three quick paces to the door and pressed the green button beside it.
‘That won’t work,’ he commented idly. ‘The crew have been instructed to leave us alone until further notice.’
‘Take me back to port right now or I’m calling the police.’
He strode to the bar and laughed. It had a cruel, mocking tinge to it. ‘Why ruin this wonderful reunion with talk of the police?’
She could have easily stamped her feet. ‘Because you’re holding me here against my will.’
He turned his back on her to study the rows of spirits, liqueurs and mixers lined up on the bar. ‘Drink?’
‘What?’
‘I need a drink. Do you want one?’
‘I want you to take me back to port. This game has gone on long enough.’
‘This is no game, bonita.’
‘Stop calling me that.’
He looked at her and winked. ‘I remember when it made you blush.’
‘That was before I knew what kind of a man you really are, you unscrupulous jerk. And stop winking at me. If this isn’t a game, stop acting like it is.’
‘If I am acting like it’s a game, you conniving witch, it’s to stop myself from grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking you until your teeth fall out.’ He flashed his perfectly white and perfectly straight teeth at her. ‘Or from taking the kiss you owe me.’
She sucked in a sharp breath.
His threat didn’t bother her because she instinctively knew Luis would never lay a finger on her in anger.
But the mention of the kiss she owed him...
Chloe spent her days surrounded by dancers. The male ones had the most amazing physiques and they worked hard to maintain them, the look they strove for lean and strong. To her eyes they were beautiful sculptures but not sexy.
Luis was a hulk of a man, burly and rugged, a man for whom chest waxing would be considered a joke. If he had any vanity she’d never seen it. Even his dark hair, which he kept long on top and flopped either side of his forehead, never looked as if he did more to it than run his fingers through it when he remembered.
Square jawed, his hazel eyes surrounded with laughter lines, his nose broad, cheekbones high, lips full but firm, the outbreak of stubble never far beneath his skin.
In a world of metrosexual men, Luis was a man who drank testosterone for breakfast and made no apologies for it. He would be as comfortable chopping wood with an axe as he would holding a meeting in a boardroom and she found him very sexy.
She’d dreamed of kissing him when she was seventeen years old, dreams that had faded to a hazy memory over the years but then re-awoken with a vengeance when she had started work at Compania de Ballet de Casillas. Months after she’d joined the company Luis had turned up. She had been delighted to see him, had spontaneously thrown her arms around him and been completely unprepared for the surge of heat that had bathed her upon finding herself pressed against his hard bulk in that fleeting moment.
That heated feeling had been with her ever since. All she’d needed was one glimpse of him and her heart would pound. She would smile and try to act nonchalant but had been painfully aware of her face resembling a tomato.
That heat was there now too, vibrating inside her. Not even the knowledge of his treachery had dimmed it. She hated herself for that.
He looked up from the bottle of black vodka he was examining and smiled unpleasantly. ‘The insults hurt, don’t they?’
‘You deserve yours and more for what you did to my brother.’ And to me, she refrained from adding.
Learning how deeply he’d betrayed her brother had cut her like a knife. The more she and Benjamin had put the pieces together, the deeper the cut had gone, all the way back to her earliest memories.
Had Luis and Javier always had contempt for her family? Or had the damage done by their mother’s horrific murder at the hands of their father been the root cause of it?
Their mothers had been closer than sisters. As far back as Chloe could remember Luis and Javier had been a part of their lives. They would come and stay with them for weeks at a time in the school holidays then, when she had reached eight and them eighteen and they had snubbed university to set out on their own path, they would still drop in for visits whenever they were in Paris.
Their visits had always made her mother so happy. When she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer they had been there for all of them. Luis had visited her mother so many times in hospital the staff had assumed he was one of her children.
Had the supposed feelings he’d had for her family all been a lie? If not, then how could he have tricked her brother into signing that contract on the day their mother’s condition was diagnosed as terminal?
Luis replaced the bottle of vodka in his hand with a bottle of rum, twisted the cap off and sniffed it. ‘Whatever we did to your brother he has repaid with fire. He has gone too far and so have you. Thanks to you and your brother conspiring against me and my brother, our names are mud.’
‘Good. You deserve it.’ She hated the quiver in her voice. Hated that being so close to him evoked all those awful feelings again that should never have sprung to life in the first place.
Her heart shouldn’t beat so wildly for this man.
She swallowed before adding, ‘You took advantage of him when our mother was dying. I hope the journalist investigating the injunction unveils your treachery to the world and that everyone learns what lying, cheating scumbags the Casillas brothers are.’
Hazel eyes suddenly snapped onto hers, a nitrogen-cold stare that sent a snake of ice coiling up her spine. ‘We did not cheat your brother.’
‘Yes, you did. I don’t care what that court said. You ripped him off and you know it.’
His nostrils flared before he stretched out a hand to the row of cocktail mixers. ‘I am going to tell you something, bonita. I had sympathy for Benjamin’s position.’
‘Of course you did,’ she scorned with a shake of her hair.
‘The terms of profit were reduced from twenty per cent to five per cent under the advice of our lawyer. Your brother’s contribution to the project was a portion of the funding whereas Javier and I would be doing all the work.’
Luis remembered that conversation well. It was one of only a few clear recollections from a day that had flown by at warp speed as he and Javier had battled to salvage the deal they had put so much time and money into.
‘You agreed on twenty per cent. That was a verbal agreement.’
He added crushed ice to the concoction he’d put in the cocktail shaker. ‘Benjamin was sent a copy of the contract to read five hours before we all signed it. He didn’t read it.’
Javier had been the point man on the Tour Mont Blanc project and emailed the contract to Benjamin. Luis had been unaware of his twin’s failure to mention the change in the profit terms in that email. When they had gone to his apartment to sign it, the atmosphere had been heavy, the news of Benjamin’s mother overshadowing everything.
Luis had only discovered three months later, at Louise Guillem’s funeral of all days, that Benjamin still thought he would be receiving twenty per cent of the profit. It had been a passing comment during the wake, Benjamin nursing a bottle of Scotch and staring out of his chateau’s window saying he didn’t know how long he would have to keep the wolves from the door and ruefully adding that, if only the Tour Mont Blanc project could be speeded up and he had his twenty per cent profit now, all his money troubles would be over.
Luis had had many arguments with his brother through the years but that had been the closest they had ever come to physical blows. Javier had been immovable: Benjamin should have read the contract.
His twin was completely hard-nosed when it came to business. Luis was generally hard-hearted when it came to business too. They weren’t running a charity, they were in the business of making money and at the time their bank balance had been perilously close to zero.
But Benjamin had been their oldest friend and Luis had been very much aware that Benjamin’s frame of mind on the day of the signing had been anywhere but on the contract.
With Javier digging his heels in, Luis had decided that it would only cause bad feeling and acrimony if he told Benjamin the truth. It had been better for everyone that Luis wait for Tour Mont Blanc, a project that would take years, to be completed and for all the money to be in the bank before speaking to Benjamin man-to-man about it and forging a private agreement on the matter.
‘He didn’t read it because he was cut up about our mother. He trusted you. He had no idea the terms had been changed. He signed that contract in good faith.’ Chloe’s eyes were fixed on his, ringed with loathing. ‘He gave you the last of his cash savings. That investment meant he couldn’t afford to buy the chateau outright and he had to get a huge mortgage to pay for it so our mother could end her days there. He almost lost everything in the aftermath. You took his money then watched him struggle to stop himself from drowning.’
‘We were not in a position to help him. It gives me no pleasure to admit this but we were in as dire a financial situation as Benjamin was. We’d grown too big too soon and over-extended massively. The difference between us and Benjamin was that Benjamin saw no shame in admitting it. We did, and I am only sharing this with you so you understand that I’m not the treacherous bastard you think I am. At that time we were all trying to save ourselves from drowning. I’d always had it in the back of my mind that when the Tour Mont Blanc project was complete I would come to a private agreement with Benjamin and pay him the extra profit he felt he was due...’
‘You didn’t do that though, did you? The first he knew of it was when he saw the final accounts!’
‘I’d been overseeing a project in Brazil. Javier sent the accounts before I had the chance to talk to Benjamin about it. I flew back for Javier’s engagement party and your brother came in all guns blazing firing libellous accusations at us. Call it human nature, call it bull-headedness but when someone threatens me my instinct is to fight back. I admit, ugly words were exchanged that day—we were all on the defensive, all of us, your brother included. He would not discuss things reasonably...’
‘Why should he have?’ She stared at him like a beautiful, proudly defiant elfin princess, arms folded belligerently across her ample chest, as sexy a creature as could be imagined.
Luis still struggled to comprehend how he’d been oblivious to her beauty for all those months or how he could be standing there with the woman who had conspired against him and his twin and find his blood still pumping wildly for her. He didn’t know which need he wanted to satisfy the most: the need to avenge himself or the need to throw her onto the nearest soft furnishing and take that delectable body as his own.
Soon he would do both. He would screw her over in more ways than one.
‘Humans respond better to reason. Fight or flight, bonita. Benjamin made threats, we dug our heels in, then he hit us with the lawsuit and we had no choice but to defend ourselves. But I still had sympathy for his position. In truth it is something that hadn’t sat well with me for many years. I’d hoped to speak to him privately and come to an agreement once the litigation was over with and tempers had cooled and we could speak as rational men. Legally, I had nothing to prove. Javier and I had done nothing wrong and that’s been vindicated in a court of law.’
‘If you really believed that, why take the injunction out on him?’
‘Because there has been enough rubbish in the past two decades about my family. Do you have any idea how hard it is being Yuri Abramova and Clara Casillas’s sons?’ Luis downed his cocktail and grimaced at the bitter taste that perfectly matched his mood.
He tipped the glass he’d filled for Chloe down the bar’s sink and reached for a fresh cocktail shaker.
‘We are the sons of a famous wife killer,’ he continued as he set about making a more palatable cocktail, one that would hopefully wash away the bile lodged in his throat. ‘It is one of the most infamous murders in the past century. There have been documentaries made about it, books and endless newspaper articles. A Hollywood studio wanted to make a movie about it. Can you imagine that? They wanted to turn my mother’s death at the hands of my father into entertainment.’
Chloe tried her hardest not to allow sympathy to creep through her but it was hard. Luis’s past was something that never failed to make her heart twist and tears burn her eyes. She blinked them back now as she imagined the vulnerable thirteen-year-old he would have been.
She had been only three when Luis’s mother had been murdered, far too young to have any memories of it.
But she had been there.
Clara had been performing in London on the night of her murder in a production of Romeo & Juliet. Yuri, a ballet dancer who had defected from the old USSR in the seventies and whose career had gone into freefall, had watched the performance convinced his wife was having a real-life affair with Romeo. When the performance had ended, Yuri had locked Clara in her dressing room, preventing dancers and backstage staff from entering when the screams and shouts had first rung out.
By the time they’d smashed the door open, Clara was dead, Yuri’s hands still around her throat.
Luis and Javier had been in the hotel across the road from the theatre babysitting Chloe with Benjamin.
Chloe and Benjamin’s mother, Louise, who had loved the twins fiercely, had been the one to break the terrible news to them.
He poured the fresh cocktail into two clean glasses. ‘Imagine what it has been like for us growing up with that as our marker. We are hugely successful and rich beyond our wildest dreams but still people look at us and their first thought is our parents. You see it in their eyes, curiosity and fear.’
He pushed one of the glasses towards her and put the other to his lips. He took a sip and pulled a musing face. ‘Not too bad. Better than the last one but I think I’ll stick to construction and property developing.’ He took another sip. ‘As I was saying. My parents. A legacy we have tried hard to escape from while still honouring our mother.’
‘Is that why you took her surname?’ The question came before she could hold it back. It was something she’d been intensely curious about for years.
‘We took it because neither of us could endure living with our father’s name. We have worked hard to disassociate ourselves from that man and to make our mother’s name synonymous with the beauty of her dance and not the horror of her death, but now everything has been dredged up again and you are partly responsible. Our lives are back under the media’s lens and again we find the world wondering how much of our father’s murderous blood lives in our veins.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘We took out the injunction to stop this very thing from happening because we knew Benjamin was an explosive primed to detonate. We are close to signing a deal to build a new shopping complex in Canada. Our partner in this venture has stopped returning our calls.’
‘Then he’s a smart man who knows he will be ripped off.’
The flash of anger that rippled from Luis’s eyes was enough to make her quail.
‘We did not rip him off and if anyone says otherwise we will sue the clothes off their back.’
‘You ripped my brother off,’ she said defiantly. ‘Feel free to sue me. I would love my day in court.’
‘I have a much better way of dealing with you, bonita, but as for your brother, I will not say this again—we did not rip him off. I was going to get the gala out of the way and then call him but, instead, Benjamin stole Freya and tried to blackmail us. All my sympathy left me then. As far as I’m concerned, your brother can go to hell. The press speculation his actions have wrought are untenable. My assistant found comments on a newspaper website querying whether Freya ran off with Benjamin because she feared she would end up like my mother.’
Chloe winced. She had many issues with Luis and Javier but they could no more help their parentage than she could help hers. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘I’m glad you think so because you are going to help put things right. If you hadn’t called with your tale of terror I would have been at the gala before Benjamin stepped foot inside it. None of this would have happened.’
‘He believed you owed him two hundred and twenty-five million euros,’ she spat, her fleeting compassion overridden by anger. ‘Did you expect him to roll over and accept that? Did you expect me to? I was there with him at the hospital when you made that call begging for his help and his money.’
She’d been there, at the first turn of the wheel of the whole mess.
Chloe had been sitting on a bench in the hospital garden with her big brother, both of them dazed; her crying, he ashen, both struggling to comprehend the mother they loved so much was going to die. That was when Benjamin had received the call from Luis asking for his financial help.
‘If you felt Javier had been cheated would you sit there meekly and allow it to go unchallenged when there was something practical you could do to help?’
‘Probably not.’ He shrugged. ‘But would I have conspired to kidnap a woman and hold her to ransom...? No, I would not have gone that far if the first throw of the dice had not already been rolled.’
‘I did not conspire to kidnap Freya! I helped whisk her away from a potential marriage made in hell and...’
‘Is that how you justify it to yourself? I must remember to dress my actions up in a similar fashion when I tell you that you won’t be returning to port until you have married me.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ub13f7c78-3983-5e82-ba0a-fbdbc8f07f54)
FOR A MOMENT there was an intense buzzing in Chloe’s ears. She shook her head to clear it, being careful not to take her eyes from Luis, who was now leaning forward with his elbows on the bar.
‘What are you talking about?’
His eyes were intense on hers. ‘I’ve not kidnapped you, I’ve borrowed you. Would that be how it’s said? Is that how I can justify it?’
‘No, what was that rubbish about marrying me?’
‘That? That’s the next stage. If you want to go home you have to marry me first. But let us not call it blackmail. By your logic it will be...an incentive? How does that sound?’
‘It sounds like your cocktail has gone straight to your head.’
‘And you haven’t drunk yours yet. Try it. You might surprise yourself—and me—and like it.’
‘Not if it makes me as drunk as you clearly are.’
‘Regretfully, I am not drunk but I am serious.’
The hairs on her arms lifted, coldness creeping up her spine and into her veins. She hugged her bag closer to her. ‘Okay, this game stops now. I’m sorry for my part in the affair. Is that what you want to hear? Okay then, how about this? I was wrong, I apologise. I’m sorry...je suis desolée...lo siento...mi dispiace...’
Amusement flickered in his hazel eyes. ‘Can you apologise in Chinese too?’
‘If that’s what you want I’ll teach myself it and say it to you, just let me go.’
The spacious windowed walls of the lounge were closing in on her. Suddenly it felt imperative to get off this yacht. She needed dry land and space to run as far and as fast as she could. Luis’s defence of himself, his hulking presence, his magnetism...it was all too much.
It had always been too much but it had never scared her before, not like this.
She had such awareness for this man. She remembered all the visits he’d made to the theatre when she’d been working there, how she would sense his presence in the building long before she caught sight of him, almost as if she had an internal antenna tuned to his frequency. That antenna was as alert now as it had ever been and vibrating like the motor of a seismograph recording an earthquake.
She needed to find safety before the ground opened up and swallowed her whole.
He studied her silently, the brief amusement disappearing into seriousness. ‘I warned you in my message that I would find you and that you would live to regret crossing me,’ he told her slowly. ‘You have known me long enough to know I am not a man to make idle threats.’
‘Believe me, right now I am regretting it.’
‘You’re only regretting that I found you, not your actions.’
She opened her mouth to lie and deny it. His denials about not being party to Benjamin signing the contract under false pretences and that he’d wanted to put things right had sounded so sincere that there had been a few moments when she’d wondered if he might be speaking the truth.
His threats to marry her made her glad she hadn’t swallowed those lies.
It would never happen. He could go to hell first. Hell was where he belonged, him and his cold monster of a brother.
‘I can see the truth in your eyes, bonita,’ Luis said grimly before she could speak. ‘You don’t believe me and you don’t regret your actions. In many respects I commend you for your loyalty to your brother.’
It was a loyalty he understood.
Luis and Javier had always been loyal to each other. Though far removed from the other in looks and personality, they had grown and developed in the same womb and the bond that bound them together was unbreakable, tightened by the tragedy of their lives.
‘Benjamin’s own sister marrying me will kill the rumours and stop people believing that Javier and I are the devil’s spawn. It’s the only way to repair the damage.’
‘I would rather swim to shore than marry you,’ she spat, not caring at that moment that she’d never even mastered a basic doggy paddle.
‘It will be the only way you get home if you don’t agree to it.’ He placed his chin on his knuckles. ‘But have no worries, bonita. I am happy to wait for as long as is needed for you to come to the correct decision.’
‘Then we will sail these seas for ever because I will never, ever, marry you and there is nothing you can do to make me.’ She smiled tremulously. ‘You can’t threaten to fire me—I’ve already quit.’
It didn’t escape his attention that she was inching her way to the door. Any moment she would bolt on those long gazelle-like legs.
Let her run. Chloe would soon discover there was no escape.
He returned the smile. ‘You have not worked your notice period. I can sue you for that and I can sue you for breach of contract.’
‘What have I breached?’
‘You passed on confidential information about one of our dancers to your brother.’
‘Freya’s not an asset, she’s a person.’
‘She’s a company asset. You acted as a spy against our interests.’
‘You would have to prove it. Look at their wedding photo. It’s obvious they’re in love with each other.’ Her beautiful smile widened but there was a growing wildness in her eyes. ‘See? My instincts were right. Benjamin took her to punish Javier but he already wanted her for himself and she wanted him. You can sue me for whatever you want but if you won it wouldn’t matter; Benjamin would pay any fine.’
‘I could make sure you never work in the ballet world again.’
‘I’m sure you could and without much effort but I don’t care. I survived on an apprentice’s salary, I’ll cope. I don’t care what job I do. I’ll wait tables or clean bathrooms.’
‘You would throw your career away?’
Her heart-shaped chin lifted. ‘Some things are more important. I knew the risk I was taking when I made the call to you.’
‘Interesting,’ he mused. ‘You will be pleased to know I have no wish to destroy you. Your brother? Sí. I would gladly destroy him but the feud can end here and now—call it an additional incentive. All you have to do is marry me and all the bad blood will be over.’
‘You call that an incentive?’ she said disdainfully. ‘There is nothing more you can do to hurt him than you have already done.’
‘Any hurt caused was not deliberate,’ he asserted through gritted teeth.
‘You would say that. You wanted me to feel guilty enough that I agreed to your nefarious plan. Well, it hasn’t worked. I don’t believe you ever intended to give him any of the profit you denied him and I regret nothing. I will never marry you.’
The last of Luis’s patience snapped.
He’d only been prepared to make up the profit shortfall because Benjamin was his oldest friend. In truth, despite his bulging contact book, Benjamin was his only real friend.
But Benjamin had not just crossed a line, he’d hacked at it with a chainsaw and the damage caused by his actions had the potential to destroy both Casillas brothers. Reputations could be broken by the smallest means and businesses ruined. Luis had not been exaggerating when he’d spoken of the financial troubles he and Javier had got into seven years ago. There had been an eighteen-month period when they had struggled to find the cash to put petrol in their cars but then three projects were completed within months of each other and suddenly the money had started rolling in. Almost a decade of complete focus and hard work and suddenly they were richer than they had ever dreamed possible. Their fortune had only grown since.
He would not be poor again. He would not have his or his brother’s reputation battered any more. Chloe could put a stop to all of it with two simple words: I do.
‘I have explained the facts of the situation,’ he said tightly. ‘If you choose not to believe them then so be it but this ends now. Too much damage has been caused. Marry me and no one else need be hurt.’
‘Apart from me.’
‘How will marriage hurt you? You’re a single woman—’
‘We went on one date two months ago,’ she interrupted hotly. ‘You’ve no idea who I’ve seen since then.’
He mustered a smile. ‘You said only an hour ago that you were on a holiday that involved hot men. That implies you are either single or a cheat. Which is it?’
Her cheeks had turned red enough to warm his hands on them. ‘I’m a grown woman. How I conduct my personal life is my business.’
He shrugged. ‘Lover or not, you’re an unmarried woman. Your career is in tatters... What will you be giving up to marry me and rectify the mess you helped create? It wouldn’t be a permanent marriage, only one that lasts long enough to shut the wolves up and restore my and my brother’s reputations. In return, I would give you everything your heart desires.’
‘My heart does not desire you.’
‘Your body does.’ At the outraged widening of her eyes, his smile broadened. ‘I do not forget the kiss you owe me or the way your hungry eyes looked at me.’
Somehow her cheeks managed to turn a shade darker but she tossed her hair over her shoulders defiantly. ‘That was the wine talking.’
His laugh at her barefaced lie was genuine. Even now, with all the acrimony and anger between them, that undercurrent remained, thick enough to taste. ‘Do you want to prove that?’
‘I don’t have to prove anything. I don’t want to marry anyone, not even for a short time, and if I did you would be the last man on the list. I won’t do it. Promise what you want, make all the threats you like, I’m not going to marry you. The end.’ Her hand grabbed the handle of the door that led outside. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages. Women are not chattels to be bought or traded. As fun as this conversation has been, I’m going.’
Turning her back to him, Chloe stepped out onto the deck. After the air conditioning of the sky lounge it was like stepping into a furnace, the sun high above them and beaming its rays onto her skin.
She would find a way off this yacht even if she had to row her way back to shore. She’d just have to wear a life-jacket.
All she could see to the horizon was the Caribbean Sea, shining brilliantly blue under the azure sky.
She shivered to think what creatures lay beneath the still surface.
She spotted the stairs that led to the deck below and hurried down them.
‘Where are you going to go?’
Heart pounding, she paused to look up.
Luis’s arms were hanging over the balustrade at the top of the stairs, his handsome, sexy face smirking down on her but that hardness still glinting in his eyes.
‘I’m going to find the captain and tell him to take us back to shore,’ she told him with all the defiance in her veins.
‘I bought the Marietta from her namesake three days ago. The captain answers to me.’
‘But the manager said it belonged to the owner...’
‘I bribed him,’ he said matter-of-factly, without an ounce of shame. ‘Marietta doesn’t own the complex in Lucaya.’
She stared up at him as she processed what he’d said. ‘You bought a yacht to trap me on?’
‘I have often considered the idea of a yacht and now I have one.’
‘Just like that?’
‘I had a spare two hundred million sitting in a bank account. I was going to use that money to settle with your brother...that money enabled me to make Marietta an offer she couldn’t refuse.’
Her stomach cramped to imagine what other factors he had brought to the negotiating table with Marietta. If his reputation was anything to go by it was more likely to have been a negotiating bed.
Wherever he’d done his negotiations for it, knowing he’d bought this yacht with the primary purpose of trapping her almost had her struck dumb.
Seven years ago it would have thrilled her.
From the age of seventeen she’d developed an intricate fantasy in her head where Luis waited for her to become a fully mature woman then declared his undying love for her and whisked her down the aisle.
That memory, not thought of in years, lanced her.
Once upon a time she had dreamed of marrying him.
How idyllic she had been. And how starved for affection.
She’d woven the fantasy while living under her father’s roof for the first time in her life, mourning the mother she had loved with all her heart and coping with her remaining parent’s indifference. His indifference shouldn’t have hurt, not after a life spent where he’d been nothing but a name, but he was her father. His blood ran in her veins. They shared the same nose and ears.
Once she had moved out of that awful, unloving home the fantasies about Luis had petered away. She’d had a career to embark on and she’d been determined to put the past behind her and get out there and live her life to the fullest.
It had been the biggest shock to her system to re-enter Luis’s orbit and discover her old craving for him hadn’t withered into nothing, just been pushed into dormancy.
It felt like poison in her veins to imagine the debauched parties he would host on this beautiful yacht.
He moved from the balustrade and put his hand on the rail as he made the slow walk down the steps. That dangerous glint remained in his eyes but there was amusement within the hazel swirl too. ‘Have you not yet realised I am a man who plans everything down to the last detail?’
Her throat closed at his approach. She stepped back, off the bottom step and onto the safety of the deck.
His smile grew with every step he took closer to her. ‘Your brother is good with details too. I have thought about how he was able to steal Freya and keep her under lock and key. Seclusion with only trusted employees was how he achieved it. He even got her to marry him, the clever man. I thought if such a ploy is good enough for Benjamin then it is good enough for me. All I had to do was work the details. The yacht is mine and the crew are in my employ. They obey orders directly from me and I am paying them enough to ensure their loyalty.’
She took another step back. ‘Not everyone’s loyalty can be bought. And don’t come any closer.’
The faint amusement that had lurked in his eyes faded away as he came to a stop barely two feet from her.
For a long moment neither of them spoke. Chloe, trapped in the sudden intensity of his stare, felt her heart clench into a fist then burst into an erratic beat that echoed up her throat.
Then a tight smile formed on those sensual lips and he spread his arms out. ‘Search wherever you like. Speak to whoever you like. When you are satisfied you have nowhere to escape, come and find me.’
And then he walked back up the steps, leaving her standing there, her nails digging into the palms of her hands.
She would find a way off this yacht. She would. And then she would bring the full force of the law down on him.
* * *
Luis disconnected the call from his brother and bowed his head to dig his fingers through his hair, doing his best to rub the forming headache out of his skull.
He had finally got hold of George, their Canadian partner in their venture to build the largest shopping complex in the northern hemisphere. George was one of the richest and most powerful men in North America. After much coaxing, he had agreed to a video conference. However, he had insisted it be held in the morning.
Just as they had suspected, George was seriously considering pulling out of the agreement. Without George as their partner, the permits needed would be revoked.

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