JACQUELINE BAIRD - Mediterranean Men Unleashed - The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride

For a long moment Emily simply stared at her very new husband. He was standing, his long body taut, apparently unconcerned. But she caught a glimmer of uncertainty in the depths of his dark eyes, probably a first for him, and she hid a smile. Anton had it all. Wealth, power, and as a one-hundred-per-cent-virile male he was accustomed to doing exactly what he wanted to do without ever having to consider anyone else. Women had been falling over themselves to please him all his adult life, if rumours were to be believed. But he obviously had a lot to learn about marriage—they both did.

‘Let me get this straight—you have invited guests on our honeymoon to watch motor racing. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ he said with a negligent shrug of his broad shoulder.

‘A novel honeymoon.’ Emily placed a slender hand on his chest. ‘But, hey, I am all for tradition, and if this is a tradition of yours, why not? In fact it will be nice to meet some of your friends. So far I have only met business acquaintances—and Max, of course. He made a very good best man, and where is he, by the way?’ she asked. ‘He came on board with us last night.’

‘He has gone ashore in the launch,’ he said, avoiding her eyes. ‘The guests are arriving this evening.’

Anton was obviously embarrassed, Emily thought, and, while she wasn’t delighted at the idea of spending the weekend with strangers, she allowed her smile to break free.

‘Don’t look so serious, Anton. It’s okay. We have only known each other a couple of months, but we have a lifetime together to get on the same wavelength.’ Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek.

‘My mum told me she and my dad fell in love at first sight. They got engaged after four months and married two months after that. They had only ever lived with their parents until they married and it took time to adjust, especially as they were both virgins when they met. At least I have started off with a great lover even if you are dumb when it comes to arranging a honeymoon.’

Anton’s eyes narrowed incredulously on her smiling face and he was not in the least amused, the mention of her father hitting a raw nerve.

‘Dumb,’ he repeated. She had the cheek to call him dumb. Was she for real?

He scowled down at her and noted the shimmering sensuality in her sparkling eyes, and he did not know if he wanted to shake her or kiss her … For a man who prided himself on his control, he did not like the ambivalent way she made him feel. She looked about seventeen dressed in white shorts and a blue tee shirt the colour of her eyes, and her hair pulled back in a slide, and her youthful appearance simply increased his unwelcome sense of guilt and anger.

‘For God’s sake, Emily, you are the only dumb one around here. You can’t possibly believe that rubbish you are spouting. Your mother might have been a virgin, but your father certainly wasn’t. Trust me, I know,’ he declared with biting cynicism.

Emily’s euphoric mood took a huge knock. She stumbled back a step, her blue eyes widening at the icy expression on his brutally handsome face. The lover of a few hours ago had gone and in his place was the man with the cold, remote eyes that she had seen on the night they first met.

‘You knew my father?’ she asked, feeling her way through an atmosphere that was suddenly fraught with tension. ‘You met him?’

‘No, I never met him, but I didn’t need to to know what a womanizer he was.’

Emily could not let his slur on her father pass.

‘As you never met my father you can’t possibly know that. But I do know that my mother never lied,’ she argued in defence of her parents. She loved Anton, she had married him, but she was not going to let him walk all over her. It was bad enough she was going to share the first few days of her honeymoon with a group of strangers. ‘You’re not infallible, you know, and in this case you are wrong.’

Anton heard the belligerence in her voice, saw the defiance in her glittering blue eyes and was outraged that she was daring to argue with him. Very few people argued with him and nobody doubted his word. He could not quite believe his very new wife had the nerve to say he was wrong.

‘Your mother must have been as naive as you,’ he opined scathingly, ‘if she believed Charles Fairfax was anything other than a womanizing swine and a snob to boot.’ He was seething with anger and it made him say more than he intended. ‘He probably only married her for her aristocratic connection.’

Without her giving it a second thought Emily’s hand scythed through the air, but Anton’s strong hand caught her wrist before she could make contact with his arrogant face.

‘You little hellcat.’ He twisted her hand behind her back and hauled her hard against his long body. ‘You dare to lash out at me, because I have told you a few home truths about your sainted family.’

‘At least I have one,’ Emily spat, and was immediately disgusted with herself for what was a low blow. But somehow the passion Anton aroused in her sexually seemed to just as easily arouse her anger. She who was normally the most placid of women, and it shocked her.

She glanced up at him. He was looking at her with eyes as cold as the Arctic waste. Then abruptly he let go of her wrist and moved back as though he could not bear to touch her.

‘And do you know why I have not, Emily?’ he said with a sardonic arch of one black brow, and, not waiting for her to answer, he added, ‘Because of your lech of a father.’

‘You never knew my father, and yet you seem to dislike him,’ she murmured. She knew it from the animosity in his tone, the tension in his body, and suddenly she was afraid.

His handsome face hardened. ‘Dislike is too tame a word. I hate and despise the man, and I have every right to.’

Emily shook her head, trying to make sense of what was happening. She was too shocked to speak. How had they gone from a simmering sensual awareness to a senseless argument in minutes?

‘Once I had an older sister, Suki, a beautiful gentle girl. She was eighteen, barely more than a child herself, when she met Charles Fairfax. He seduced her and left her pregnant with his child. Five months later, after learning Fairfax had married your mother, she committed suicide. Obviously he was seeing both of them at the same time.’

All the colour leached from Emily’s face. This was no senseless argument, but deadly serious. She had never even known Anton had a sister. But there was no mistaking the absolute conviction in Anton’s voice, and for him to have apparently held a grudge against her father for over a quarter of a century she found totally appalling. She could not believe what she was hearing, didn’t want to.

‘No, that cannot be true.’ She murmured a denial. ‘My father would never have betrayed my mother.’

‘Believe me, it is,’ he said harshly. ‘Women who foolishly imagine they are in love are dangerous to themselves as well as to others. My mother never fully recovered from the loss of her daughter and I was kept in ignorance of the full facts for decades. As a boy of eleven I was told Suki had died in a tragic car accident. It was only when my mother was dying I discovered the real truth.’

Her blue eyes widened in horror as she recognized the latent anger in his black eyes, the brooding expression on his face, and knew he totally believed what he had just told her. And with the knowledge came pain, a pain that built and built as the full import of his words sank into her brain.

‘When did your mother die?’

He frowned down at her. ‘Does it matter? Last December.’

Oh, my God! Only six months ago. No wonder Anton was so angry, with the death of his mother, the pain of losing his sister must have hit him all over again. From that thought came another, deeply disturbing. Shortly after his mother’s death Anton had made the acquaintance of her brother and uncle, and taken an interest in the Fairfax family and then in her. Coincidence—or something much worse, and a cold dread enveloped her.