Ally Blake - Bargaining with the Billionaire - The Blackmail Bargain / The Billion-Dollar Bride / How To Marry a Billionaire

‘Well, at least he got a big strong child,’ Anna said dismissively, before gazing up at Curt with a confiding smile. ‘How was your sojourn in the wilds of Northland? Too boring, I imagine.’

‘On the contrary,’ he returned, a thread of steel in the clipped words. ‘I found it fascinating.’

Anna’s pout emphasised her lush mouth. ‘Amazing,’ she murmured, lengthening the middle syllable. ‘I didn’t think gumboots and peasants were your thing.’ She turned to Peta and ladled insolence into her smile. ‘What do you think of the modern trends in New Zealand abstract art?’

Peta said tranquilly, ‘I’m afraid I’m an unashamed traditionalist.’

Anna gave a tinkling little laugh. ‘Somehow I’m not surprised. Such a pity—you won’t find many pretty flowers here.’

‘Well, no,’ Peta said every bit as sweetly. ‘Some are a little too derivative of Braque and the Dadaists, but all in all it’s not a bad exhibition.’

‘Oh, you’ve been researching,’ Anna cooed, but chagrin darkened her large eyes. She waved at someone past Peta’s vision and stepped back. ‘I’d better circulate. Lovely to see you again, Curt. Ms Grey.’

Curt waited until she’d left before murmuring, ‘All right?’

Peta turned glittering green eyes on him. ‘You should have warned me that I was being used to break off an affair.’

‘It was already over.’ His voice warned her not to trespass any further.

‘It didn’t look like it to me!’

‘Stop frowning,’ Curt ordered. Behind the narrowed, intimate smile he bestowed on her was an implicit threat.

Although Peta obeyed, she was furious and oddly grieved. Humiliation, she thought stringently, had to be walking into an event where you expected to shine and seeing your ex-lover with another woman, one who was nowhere near so beautiful as you were!

She despised Curt for his effortless handling of the situation. There was something heartless in his self-possession, a dangerous indifference that cut like a knife. Yet his smile sent her blood singing through her veins in a swift rise of desire, darkly intoxicating and perilous.

Being in Curt’s power chafed her unbearably, because it meant they weren’t equals.

For the next hour she circulated with him, meeting people she recognised from newspaper photographs, people whose faces were familiar from television, several she’d even seen on the big screen. In a tense way she enjoyed it; Curt kept his promise to stay with her, and although everyone seemed curious, they were interesting.

And some of the art was magnificent; she found it intensely stimulating to discuss the pictures with people who understood them.

Eventually Curt said, ‘Time to go.’

Outside, she was startled to find that although the sun had set it was still light—the precious few minutes of northern twilight before darkness came down onto the city. As they turned into his drive the first street lamp flicked orange, and the scent of gardenias saturated the sultry air.

‘You did well,’ Curt said, switching off the car engine as the door of the garage came down behind them.

‘Thank you,’ she said tonelessly.

She got out before he had time to open the passenger door for her, and waited for him to disarm the security.

Once inside the house he said, ‘Dinner will be waiting.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not hungry. I’ll skip it and go straight up to my room.’

His expression hardened. ‘You’ve eaten nothing.’

The thought of forcing food past her lips nauseated her. ‘I don’t want anything,’ she said abruptly, and ran up the staircase.

Although he didn’t answer she fancied she could feel him watch her. Safely in her lovely room she stripped the sleek silk clothes from her body and hung them up, creamed the expensive cosmetics from her face, and showered the last bit of Curt’s money off her skin.

Only then, wrapped in her elderly dressing-gown, did she accept that her fury was rooted in jealousy.

Not just jealousy, although that would be bad enough. Disgusted by Curt’s action in producing her as the woman in possession—ha! How bitterly ironic that was!—she was more hurt by the aura of connection that still clung around him and Anna Lee.

Restlessly she paced the floor, arms folded across her waist as though to hold herself together.

You’ve fallen in love with him.

No. To love someone you had to respect him, and she didn’t respect Curt. He’d seen her as someone he could use, and he was deliberately, cold-bloodedly using her.

When had he broken up with Anna?

It could only have been during the three days before she’d come down from Tanekaha, because Nadine had seen them together just before Granny Wai’s party.

Even if he had broken off his affair with Anna, taking another woman to the opening tonight was ruthlessness carried to cruel extremes.

On the other hand, he was doing it for his sister.

And perhaps he’d seen a way of killing two birds with one stone—showing Anna that her affair with him was well and truly over, while scotching Ian’s guilty affection.

Stop looking for excuses for him, Peta told herself sternly, walking across to the window. Anna might not be the kindest or nicest person in the world, but she didn’t deserve humiliation. Nobody did.

A knock on the door startled her. Breath locking in her throat, she froze.

Curt’s voice was coldly forceful. ‘If you don’t open the door, Peta, I’ll break it down.’

‘Come in, then,’ she said, infuriated when her voice quivered in the middle of the defiant challenge.

He’d changed into a T-shirt that showed off his broad shoulders and muscled torso. To her astonishment, he carried a tray. ‘Food,’ he said. ‘Eat it.’

‘Or you’ll force-feed me?’

‘Something like that,’ he agreed.

She could imagine him doing just that. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said dully.

‘Possibly not, but you’re upset, and going to bed on an empty stomach won’t get you a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’re going out on a friend’s yacht so you’ll need to be alert.’

She bit her lip, but her stomach betrayed her, reacting to the delectable scent of food with a beseeching rumble. ‘I’ll eat it when you’ve gone.’

‘I don’t trust you,’ he told her.

She stared at him, met implacable blue-grey eyes, and knew she was beaten. With a ramrod spine, and shoulders held so stiffly they ached, she walked across to the small table in the window where he’d set the tray down.

Clearly it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d hold out. Well, how could she?

Peta lifted the cover from the plate and stared at a dish of scrambled eggs, smooth and creamy and delicate. ‘Did you get your poor housekeeper to do this specially for me?’

‘No.’ He sounded amused. ‘I cooked them.’

‘Pull the other leg,’ she said without thinking.

He grinned and leaned against the wall. ‘I can cook three things,’ he said calmly. ‘Scrambled eggs is one of them.’

The eggs were as delicious as they looked. After the first mouthful had gone down she asked, ‘What are the others?’

‘Steak and chips, and Thai red curry,’ he told her.

She swallowed another mouthful. ‘Why those three in particular?’

‘Because I like them.’

Well, yes, of course. Oddly enough the turmoil in her stomach had eased with the arrival of food. Anna’s reference to her as a peasant popped into her head; she grimaced.

‘Did I get a piece of eggshell in there?’ Curt asked.

‘No,’ she said shortly, glad to be reminded of his perfidy. It astonished her how the simple act of scrambling eggs for her had mellowed her attitude. Clearly she was a pushover.