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

Her eyes swept helplessly over him, the bold attractive face, the strong tanned throat revealed by the open neck of his polo shirt, the khaki shorts that hugged his lean hips ending mid-thigh and his long legs. Her heart squeezed as vivid images of his naked body flashed in her mind, the body she had worshipped last night. Anton, the man she loved, and had been certain loved her. But not any more …

ANTON had shaken her world on its axis and Emily was no longer certain of anything. She could not bear to look at him.

Her mind spinning, she let her gaze roam over the view of the tiny principality. The sea as smooth as glass, the spectacular marina, the gleaming buildings were picture-postcard perfect, but wasted on her. She needed to think …

The sun was still shining but the warmth no longer seemed to touch her. Yesterday she had been a blushing bride confident in the love of her husband, but now … She let her mind wander back over the first time they had met, the sequence of events, the conversations, his proposal of marriage that had led to this moment, and belatedly she realized he had never actually said he loved her …

Not even last night in the heat of passion had the word love passed his lips.

Emily shivered as cold fingers seemed to grip her heart, the icy tendrils spreading slowly through every part of her. She was an intelligent woman, and suddenly her whirlwind courtship and fairy-tale marriage were falling apart before her eyes. Slowly she turned her head and allowed her gaze to rest on her husband’s hard, expressionless face.

‘Why did you marry me, Anton?’

‘I decided it was time I took a wife and produced an heir. I chose you because I thought you were a beautiful, sensuous woman who would fit me perfectly.’ He reached out a hand to her. ‘And I was right,’ he stated.

Emily batted his hand away. ‘And the rest.’ She stared up at him ashen-faced, horrified at the cynical practicality of his reasoning, but instinctively knowing there was more he was not telling her.

‘I might be dumb. But I am not that dumb. You only came into contact with my family after the death of your mother, and I don’t believe in coincidences. You might as well tell me the whole truth.’ And, though her heart was shattering into a million pieces, bravely she added, ‘Because it is becoming increasingly obvious you did not marry me for love.’ She prayed he would contradict her, declare he loved her and it was all a horrible mistake.

‘Why not?’ Anton said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘You are now my wife—Mrs Emily Diaz, a name your father refused to acknowledge or be associated with, and it satisfies my sense of justice to know you have my name for the rest of your life.’

His dark eyes, a gleam of mocking triumph in their inky depths, clashed with her pained blue. ‘As for love, I don’t believe in it myself. Though women seem to have a desperate need to. What we shared last night and will continue to share is great sexual chemistry, not love.’

Tears blurred Emily’s vision and fiercely she blinked them away. So this was what it felt like to crash and burn. All her hopes and dreams ground to dust in a few short minutes. For a short while, a very brief two months, Anton had been the man she loved. For an even briefer twenty-four hours she had been his wife. He had made love to her, and it had been the most amazing experience of her life and she had thought she was the luckiest woman in the world to be loved by him.

But it had not been love … He freely admitted it was simply sex, nothing more.

For Anton yesterday had been about sex and some misguided notion of retribution, not love, never love …

How could she have been such a blind idiot? She had known the first time she set eyes on him, he was dangerous. She had avoided going out with him for a week. She should have trusted her gut instinct about the man.

Her shimmering blue eyes swept over him, noted the arrogant certainty in his gaze. The Anton he had been when they had first got together, the man she had thought had refrained from making love to her because he respected her, bore no relationship to the Anton before her now. Cold and cynical, he was not the man she had fallen in love with.

She shook her head in disgust, nausea clawing at her stomach as she was forced to accept the man she thought she loved did not exist …’I need the bathroom.’

‘Wait.’ He grasped her upper arm, halting her retreat. ‘This does not change anything, Emily.’

‘It does for me.’ She looked at him. ‘Let me go.’ And she meant it in every sense of the word. ‘I really do need the bathroom.’

Anton’s mouth twisted. ‘Of course.’ He removed his hand from her arm, wondering why the hell he had told Emily about her father when not long ago he had been thanking his lucky stars he had kept his mouth shut.

But then from the minute he had watched her walk down the aisle he had not been his rational self. The woman had that effect on him. Last night he had lost control in bed, a first for him, and this afternoon he had lost his temper at the mention of her father. He was going weak in the head and it had to stop.

Honesty was supposed to be good for a marriage; he’d been honest, he reasoned arrogantly. It was Emily who was unreasonable.

‘Arguing on the deck is not a great idea. We can talk later. After all, neither of us is going anywhere,’ he said dismissively.

He would catch up on some work—he had let things slide a little in his pursuit of Emily and it would give her time to cool down. She said she loved him, and she certainly wanted him. Given his experience of her sex, she’d soon get over the shock of realizing her father had feet of clay after a few days in his bed.

Emily heard the threat in his words and glanced at him in disgust and walked away. Was he really so cold, so insensitive to believe for a second they could carry on as husband and wife now she knew why he had really married her?

Emily walked into the cabin and locked the door behind her. Blindly she headed for the bathroom, and was violently sick. She began to shake uncontrollably and, ripping off her clothes, she stepped into the shower. She turned the water on full, and only then did she give way to the tears. She cried until she could cry no more. Then slowly she straightened and, picking up the shampoo provided, she washed her hair, and then scrubbed every inch of her body, trying to scrub away the scent, the memory of Anton’s touch from every pore of her skin. Trying to scrub away the pain, she had a hollow feeling that would be with her for the rest of her life …

She did not know the man she had married, had never known him. It was Nigel all over again, but worse, because she had been foolish enough to marry Anton. Nigel had wanted her for her supposed fortune and connections, and Anton—he had married her simply because her name was Fairfax. He had seduced her into marriage because he believed her father had seduced his sister. To fulfil a primitive need for revenge … no more or less … and she could not pretend otherwise.

The pain, the sense of betrayal were excruciating, but slowly as she finished washing, turned off the shower and wrapped a large towel around her naked body the pain was overtaken by a cold, numbing anger.

She thought of her parents, and, no matter what the arrogant Anton Diaz thought, she knew her father was incapable of doing what he had said. Her parents had loved each other, they had married in their twenties, and when her mother had died it had broken her father’s heart. She firmly believed it was the stress of losing his wife that had helped cause the heart attack that had killed him far too young.

It was her mother who, when she was terminally ill, had constantly told Emily to embrace life to the full, and not to waste time dwelling on past failures or grudges—life was much too short. A theory her uncle Clive had first taught her when as a child of twelve she had had to accept she was never going to be a ballet dancer.