HELEN BIANCHIN - The Marriage Arrangement

Hannah drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “I didn’t promise to obey.”

“I vividly recall your insistence the word should be deleted from our vows,” Miguel acknowledged.

“We made a deal,” she reminded him, all too aware of the circumstances that had initiated their marriage.

“So we did,” Miguel drawled.

HELEN BIANCHIN was born in New Zealand and traveled to Australia before marrying her Italian-born husband. After three years they moved, returned to New Zealand with their daughter, had two sons, then resettled in Australia. Encouraged by friends to recount anecdotes of her years as a tobacco sharefarmer’s wife living in an Italian community, Helen began setting words on paper, and her first novel was published in 1975. And animal lover, she says her terrier and new Persian kitten consider her study to be as much theirs as hers.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

THE grey skies held a heavy electric potency that threatened to unleash cacophonous fury at any moment.

Hannah turned on the car’s lights, and flinched as a fork of lightning rent the skyline, followed seconds later by a roll of thunder.

She could almost smell the imminent onset of rain, and seconds later huge drops hit the windscreen in a rapidly increasing deluge that soon made driving hazardous.

A muttered curse escaped her lips. Great. A summer storm during peak-hour traffic was just what she needed. As if she weren’t already late, with available time minimising by the second.

Miguel would be pleased at the delay, she decided grimly.

Almost on cue, her cell-phone rang, and she activated the speaker button.

‘Where in hell are you?’ a slightly accented male voice demanded with chilling softness.

Speak of the devil! ‘Your concern is overwhelming,’ she returned with silk-edged mockery.

‘Answer the question.’

Rain sheeted down, reducing visibility to a point where she felt cocooned in isolation. ‘Caught in traffic.’

There were a few seconds’ silence, and she had a mental image of him checking his watch. ‘Where, precisely?’

‘Does it matter?’ A resort to wicked humour prompted her to add, ‘I doubt even you can organise some way to get me out of here.’

Miguel Santanas was a law unto himself, with sufficient wealth and power to command anyone at will.

Andalusian-born, he’d been educated in Paris, and spent several years based in New York managing the North American arm of his father’s business empire.

‘You could have closed the boutique early, missed the worst of traffic, and been home by now,’ Miguel said drily, and she felt anger begin to stir.

The boutique was hers. She’d studied art and design, worked in fashion houses in Paris and Rome, only to walk out on a disastrous love affair three years ago and return home. Within months she’d leased premises, stocked the boutique with exclusive designer wear, and at the age of twenty-seven she had built up an exclusive clientele.

‘I doubt one of my best clients would have appreciated being shoved out the door,’ she returned with marked cynicism.

‘Whatever made me think you would assume the mantle of a docile wife?’ Miguel offered in a musing drawl.

She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. ‘I didn’t promise to obey.’

‘I vividly recall your insistence the word be deleted from our vows.’

‘We made a deal,’ she reminded, all too aware of the circumstances that had initiated their marriage.

Two equally prominent, independently wealthy families whose fortunes were interwoven in an international conglomerate. What better method of cementing it and taking it into the next generation than to have the son of one family marry the daughter of the other?

It had taken subtle manipulation to entice the son to relocate to Melbourne from New York, whereupon an intricate strategy had been put in place to ensure Miguel and Hannah were frequent guests at a variety of social functions.

The master parental plan had involved anonymous tips to the media, whose printed speculation had seeded the idea and waived the need for further familial interference.

Hannah, tiring of dealing with some of the city’s eligible and not-so-eligible bachelors bent on adding her wealth to their own, was not averse to the security marriage offered, with the proviso she continued to maintain her independence. Love wasn’t an issue, and it seemed sensible to choose a husband with her head, rather than her heart.

Despite the family business connection, ten years’ difference in age, his boarding-school education both in Australia and overseas ensured their paths had rarely met, and she had been only eleven when he’d transferred to New York.

‘So we did,’ Miguel drawled. ‘Have you reason to complain, amante?’

‘No,’ she responded evenly.

Miguel was an attractive man, whose strong masculine features and tall broad-shouldered frame portrayed a leashed strength emphasised by a dramatic mesh of latent sensuality and an animalistic sense of power.

At thirty-seven, he echoed his eminent success in the business arena in the bedroom. She hadn’t known his equal as a lover. And wouldn’t want to, she added mentally, for he satisfied needs she hadn’t been aware existed.

Even thinking about his lovemaking made her nerve-ends curl, and sent heat flaring through her veins.

A sudden horn-blast alerted her attention as the car in front inched forward, then came to a halt.

In the distance she heard the wail of a siren, soon joined by another, and her stomach twisted as she envisaged the probability of a car crash up ahead, the twisted metal, the resultant injuries.

‘I think there’s been an accident,’ Hannah revealed quietly. ‘It might take a while for me to get through.’

‘Where are you?’ Miguel demanded.

‘On Toorak Road, about a mile from home.’

‘Drive carefully. I’ll phone Graziella and tell her we’ll be late.’

‘Do that,’ she responded with dulcet charm. It wouldn’t create a drama if they arrived fifteen minutes after the specified time. Their hosts were known to allow up to an hour for their guests to mix and mingle before serving dinner.

The lights changed, and Hannah offered a silent prayer in thanks as the traffic began to move slowly forward.

The Deity, however, was not in a benevolent mood, and consequently it was almost six when she turned into the leafy avenue leading to the remote-controlled gates guarding entrance to Miguel’s spacious double-storeyed home.

Landscaped gardens and manicured lawns provided a perfect background for an imposing residence set back from the road. Spanish in design, with thick cream-plastered walls, high arched windows, and a terracotta-tiled roof.

Hannah urged the white Porsche up the curved driveway at speed, and brought the vehicle to a swift halt beneath the wide portico.

Heavy panelled double doors opened the instant she slid from behind the wheel, and she spared the housekeeper Miguel employed a warm smile as she entered the foyer.

‘Thanks, Sofia.’ It had saved her fumbling for her key and bypassing the security alarm system. ‘Would you mind asking Antonio to garage my car?’ Sofia’s husband took care of the grounds and the cars while Sofia tended to the meals and the house five days out of seven.