Michelle Reid - The Price Of A Bride

And with the closing of the study door came quite a different silence. Bitter was the only word Mia could come up with to describe it—a silence so bitter it was attacking the back of her neck like acid.

I should have left my hair down, she mused in the same dry, mockingly fatalistic way she had dealt with all of this.

It was the only way, really. She couldn’t fight it so she mocked it. It was either that or weep, and she’d done enough weeping during her twenty-five years to know very well that tears did nothing but make you feel worse.

‘Drink?’

The sound of glass chinking against fine crystal had her turning to face the room for the first time since the interview had begun. Alexander Doumas was helping himself to some of her father’s best whisky.

‘No, thank you,’ she said, and stayed where she was, with her arms lightly folded beneath the gentle thrust of her breasts, while she watched him toss back a rather large measure.

Poor devil, she thought again. Men of his ilk just weren’t used to surrendering anything to anyone—never mind to a nasty piece of work like her father.

Alexander Doumas had arrived here this afternoon, looking supremely confident in his ability to strike a fair agreement with Jack Frazier. Now he was having to deal with the very unpalatable fact that he had been well and truly scuppered—caught hook, line and sinker by a man who always knew exactly what bait to use to catch his prey. And even the fine flavour of her father’s best malt whisky. wasn’t masking the nasty taste that capture had placed in his mouth.

He glanced at her, his deep-set, dark brown Mediterranean eyes flicking her a whiplashing look of contempt from beneath the glowering dip of his frowning black eyebrows. ‘You had a lot to say for yourself,’ he commented in a clipped voice.

Mia gave an empty little shrug. ‘Better men than me have taken him on and failed,’ she countered.

She was referring to him, of course, and the way he grimaced into his glass acknowledged the point.

‘So you are quite happy to agree to all of this, I must presume.’

Happy? Mia picked up the word and tasted it for a few moments, before deciding ruefully, mat—yes—she was, she supposed, happy to do whatever it would take to fulfil her side of this filthy bargain.

‘Let me explain something to you,’ she offered in a tone gauged to soothe not aggravate. ‘My father never puts any plan into action unless he is absolutely sure that all participants are going to agree to whatever it is he wants from them. It’s the way he works. The way he has always worked,’ she tagged on pointedly. ‘So, if you are hoping to find your redemption through me, I’m sorry to disappoint you.’ .

‘In other words—’ His burning gaze was back on her again ‘—you are willing to sleep with anyone if Daddy commands it.’

‘Yes.’ Despite the deliberate insult, her coolly composed face showed absolutely nothing—no hint of offence, no distaste, not even anger.

His did, though, showing all of those things plus a few others all meant to label her nothing better man a trollop.

Maybe she was nothing better than a trollop, allowing her father to do this to her, Mia conceded. Certainly, past history had marked her as a trollop.

‘Did you do the choosing yourself?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Is that what this is really all about?’

Taken by surprise by the suggestion, her eyes widened. Then she laughed—a surprisingly pleasant sound amidst all the bitterness and tension. ‘Oh. no,’ she said. ‘You said yourself that my father is a barbarian. It would go totally against his character to allow me to choose anything for myself. But how conceited of you to suggest it...’ she added softly.

‘It had to be asked,’ he said, stiffening slightly at the gentle censure.

‘Did it?’ Mia was not so sure about that. ‘It seems to me that you’re seeing yourself as the only victim here, Mr Doumas,’ she said more soberly. ‘And at this juncture it may well help if I remind you that there tend to be different kinds of victims in most disasters.’

‘And you are a victim of your own father’s tyranny—is that what you are trying to tell me?’

His scepticism was clear. Her green eyes darkened. If Alexander Doumas came to know her better he would take careful note of that. She was Jack Frazier’s daughter after all.

‘I am not trying to tell you anything,’ Mia coolly countered. ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, you see.’

After all, she thought, why should she defend herself when his own reasons for agreeing to this were not that defensible?

Not that he was seeing it like that, she wryly acknowledged. Alexander Doumas was looking for a scapegoat on which to blame his own shortcomings.

‘No,’ he murmured cynically. ‘You merely have to go to bed with me.’

And she, Mia noted, was going to be his scapegoat.

‘Of course, I do understand that my lot is the much easier one,’ she conceded, with that same dangerously deceptive mildness. ‘Being a woman, all I need to do is lie down, close my eyes and mentally switch off, whereas you have to bring yourself to...er...perform. But God help us both,’ she added drily, ‘if you find me so repulsive that you can’t manage it because we will really have a problem then.’

She had managed to actually shock him, Mia was gratified to note—bad managed to make him look at her and see her, instead of just concentrating on showing her his contempt.

With a wry smile of satisfaction she deserted her post by the window at last to come around her father’s desk and walk across the room towards the two high wing-backed leather armchairs that flanked the polished mahogany fireplace.

A log fire was burning in the grate, the leaping flames trying their best to add some warmth to a room that did not know the meaning of the word—not in Jack Frazier’s house, anyway.

But the flames did manage to highlight the rich, burnished copper of Mia’s hair as she walked towards them. Although she didn’t look at Alexander Doumas as she moved, she felt his narrowed gaze following her.

Eyeing up the merchandise, she thought, cynically mocking that scrutiny.

Well, let him, she thought defiantly as she felt his gaze sweep over the smooth lines of her face, which she had been told was beautiful although she did not see any beauty in it herself.

But, then, she didn’t like herself very much and they did say that beauty was in the eyes of the beholder.

Therefore, it followed that neither would this man be seeing any beauty in her right now, she supposed, as he was so actively despising her at this moment.

Oh, she was no hound-dog. Mia wasn’t so eaten up with self-hate that she couldn’t see that her hair, face, body and legs combined to present a reasonably attractive picture.

Whatever this man was feeling about her right now, she knew that he had looked at her before today and had wanted her so his expression of distaste simply failed to impress her.

Reaching the two chairs, she turned, felt his gaze dip over the slender curves of her figure—so carefully muted by the simple coffee-coloured pure wool dress she was wearing—and chose the chair which would place him directly in her sight so she could watch those eyes draw down the long length of her silk-stockinged legs as she sat and smoothly crossed one knee over the other.

Alexander Doumas was no hound-dog himself, Mia had to acknowledge. In fact, she supposed he was what most fanciful females would have seen as ideal husband material—tall, tanned and undeniably handsome, with the kind of tightly contoured Greek-god body on which top designers liked to hang their very exclusive clothes.

Indeed, that iron grey silk suit looked very definitely top designer wear. He wore his straight black hair short at the back and neat at the front, and the rich smoothness of his olive-toned skin covered superb bone structure that perhaps said more about his high-born lineage than anything else about him.