KIM LAWRENCE - The Blackmailed Bride

www.millsandboon.co.uk

All about the author…

Kim Lawrence

KIM LAWRENCE was born and raised in north Wales. She returned there when she married, and her sons were both born on Anglesey, an island off the coast. Though not isolated, Anglesey is a little off the beaten track, but lively Dublin, which Kim loves, is only a short ferry ride away.

Today they live on the farm her husband grew up on. Welsh is the first language of many people in this area, and Kim’s husband and sons are all bilingual—she is having a lot of fun, not to mention a few headaches, trying to learn the language!

With small children, the unsocial hours of nursing didn’t look attractive, so encouraged by a husband who thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to, Kim tried her hand at writing. Always a keen Harlequin reader, it seemed natural for her to write a romance novel—now she can’t imagine doing anything else.

She is an avid gardener, loves to cook and enjoys running—often on the beach, as living on an island, the sea is never very far away. She is usually accompanied by her Jack Russell, Sprout—don’t ask, it’s a long story!

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JAVIER drove through the large ornate gates and up the long winding driveway lined with olive trees towards the distinctive Moorish tower that stood against the backdrop of the mountains. He pulled the Mercedes he was driving in a space beside a battered Beetle which stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other expensive models.

So, Serge still hadn’t persuaded Sarah to part with her old car. An easy-going young woman who would, as a rule, do anything for her husband, Sarah did have a few blind spots.

Javier himself was unmarried, but did not lack female companionship. It had never required much, if any, effort on his part to have attractive women hanging on his every word, but no special woman had ever materialised from these adoring masses. The possibility that if and when he discovered her she wouldn’t be interested had simply not crossed his mind!

Then he’d met Sarah.

Now he was thirty-two, didn’t take anything for granted, and was, he liked to think, more discerning about women—too damned discerning, according to his grandfather, who wanted his chosen heir safely married.

Javier could have taken the easy option and chosen a suitable consort, a woman from a background similar to his own that would enable her to cope with the pressures of being a member of one of the wealthiest families in Europe, just as his father before him had. That was the problem, everytime he was tempted to take the easy way out Javier was confronted by the spectre of his parents’ disastrous union.

Before he’d left the family estate in Andalucia to make the journey to Majorca the old man had finally issued an ultimatum.

‘Marry before I die or I’ll leave everything to Raul or one of the others!’ Felipe Montero had warned his favourite grandson dramatically.

Javier’s immediate reaction to this not very subtle blackmail had been anger; did his grandfather know him so little that he imagined he could be bought…?

He turned to Felipe with much of the pride and hauteur his grandfather was famed for etched on his own chiselled features. What he saw in the old man’s lined face made him bite back the caustic response hovering on his tongue.

Javier had no illusions about what his grandfather was capable of. Felipe Montero was devious, he frequently bullied and connived, he routinely plotted and schemed—in short, when it came to getting his own way he was capable of acts of great ruthlessness. However he was never crude in his manipulations and, even more significantly, Javier had never seen his grandfather look frightened before!

‘You’ll live a long time yet…?’

Felipe smiled; Javier had never needed things spelled out. He was a sharp judge of character who read people almost as well as he read the financial markets.

‘No, as a matter of fact I won’t. The doctors give me six months at the outside.’

Javier didn’t tell Felipe that this wasn’t possible, he didn’t scream, as people often did when they were confronted with the mortality of someone they couldn’t imagine life without, that the doctors must be able to do something.

He wanted to, but he didn’t.

Instead after a short pause he nodded, not insulting his grandfather by questioning the grim prognosis.

‘What is it?’

‘Cancer. The damned thing’s spread from my lungs. So there’s not much point packing these things in,’ Felipe observed with a deep throaty chuckle as he inhaled deeply on his cheroot. ‘And don’t tell anyone else yet—nobody. If the news gets out millions will be wiped off the value of the company…’ A flicker of revulsion appeared in the older man’s eyes. ‘And I don’t doubt they’ll all start treating me as if I’m in my dotage,’ he added, a tremor in his deep voice. It wasn’t dying but the manner of it that scared Felipe Montero.

‘No one will do that.’

A silent promise was exchanged in the look that passed between the two men.

Felipe sighed, satisfied. ‘Unfortunately this couldn’t come at a worst time, of course, with the Brussels deal…’

An extremely disciplined man, it wasn’t often that Javier’s emotions got the better of him, but as he listened to his grandfather fret about the fate of the financial empire he’d expanded up over his lifetime something snapped.

‘There is such a thing as a good time to die?’ he gritted. ‘To hell with the company!’ His deep voice cracked. ‘You’re going to die, Grandfather.’

‘We’re all going to die,’ came the careless response. ‘If you really care,’ Felipe goaded slyly, ‘show it. Marry Aria…she loves you.’

A wry laugh was wrenched from Javier. ‘You never give up, do you?’

If and when he did marry, Javier knew it wouldn’t be to someone who loved him, someone he might hurt as his father had his mother. A fragile creature, his mother had never grasped the fact she was meant to turn a blind eye to her husband’s mistresses; she was meant to look attractive, bring up their son and be the perfect hostess.

‘This is no laughing matter, Javier,’ the old man reproached sternly. ‘Continuity, blood lines are important; you need sons.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

The idea of losing his inheritance didn’t frighten Javier.

He immediately recognised that there was part of him that might actually welcome the situation. A man who needed the constant buzz of physical and mental challenges, he could think of few things more exciting than the challenge of starting from scratch, and few things more satisfying than knowing at the end of the day that everything you’d achieved was down to your own efforts, nothing to do with being born into a wealthy dynasty.

Wealth brought its privileges, but Javier had been raised to believe it also carried responsibilities. His deeply ingrained sense of family duty would never allow him to do anything more than occasionally dream about the luxury of being a free agent.

Deep down, however, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t come to that, his grandfather would never disinherit him for standing his ground. Nothing in his manner even hinted at this belief. He couldn’t do much for his grandfather but he could at least let Felipe play the heartless tyrant he liked the world to see him as.