Читать книгу The Greek's Bridal Bargain - Melanie Milburne - Страница 6

‘PLEASE don’t go in there, Bryony,’ Glenys Mercer told her daughter tremulously. ‘Your father has an important…er…visitor with him.’

Bryony’s hand fell away from the doorknob of the main study as she turned to look at her mother, standing in the great hulking shadow of the grandfather clock that had kept time at the Mercer country estate for six generations.

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

Her mother’s drawn features seemed to visibly age before Bryony’s clear blue gaze.

‘I’m not sure your father would like me to tell you.’ Glenys Mercer twisted her thin hands together. ‘You know how he is about those sorts of things.’

Bryony did know.

She moved closer to her mother, her light footsteps on the polished floorboards echoing throughout the huge foyer, reminding her yet again of the emptiness of the grand old house since her brother’s death.

Ever since Austin had died almost ten years ago the house had seemed to grieve along with the rest of the family. Every window, room, corner and shadowed doorway held a memory of a young man’s life cut short, even the creaking of the staircase every time she went up or down seemed to her to be crying out for the tread of his steps, not hers.

‘What’s going on, Mum?’ she asked, her voice dropping to an undertone.

Glenys couldn’t hold her daughter’s questioning gaze and turned away to inspect the intricately carved woodwork on the banister.

‘Mum?’

‘Please, Bryony, don’t make a fuss. My nerves will never stand it.’

Bryony suppressed a heartfelt sigh. Her mother’s nerves were something else she knew all about.

There was a sound behind her and she turned to see her father come out of the study, his usually florid face pale.

‘Bryony…I thought I heard you come in.’ He wiped his receding hairline with a scrunched-up handkerchief, the action of his hand jerky and uncoordinated.

‘Is something wrong?’ She took a step towards him but came up short when a tall figure appeared in the study doorway just behind him.

Cold dread leaked into every cell of her body as she met the dark unreadable gaze of Kane Kaproulias, her dead brother’s sworn enemy.

She opened and closed her mouth but couldn’t locate her voice. Her fingertips went numb, her legs trembled and her heart hammered behind the wall of her chest as her eyes took in his forbidding presence.

He was much taller than she remembered, but then, she thought, ten years was a long time.

His brown-black eyes even seemed darker than they had been before, the straight brows above them giving his arresting features a touch of haughtiness.

Her eyes automatically dipped to his mouth as they had done every time since the day she’d put that jagged scar on his top lip.

It was still there…

‘Hello, Bryony.’

His deep velvet voice shocked her out of her private reverie bringing her startled gaze up to meet his compelling one.

She cleared her throat and tested her voice, annoyed that it came out husky and tentative instead of clear and forthright. ‘Hello…Kane.’

Owen Mercer stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket and faced his daughter. ‘Kane has something he wishes to discuss with you. Your mother and I will be in the green sitting room if you should need us.’

Bryony frowned as her parents shuffled away down the great hall like insects trying to escape the final spurt of poison from someone holding a spray can above their heads. Her father’s words seemed to contain some sort of veiled warning, as if he didn’t trust the man standing silently just behind her not to do her some sort of injury while he had her all to himself.

She turned back to face Kane once more, her expression guarded, her tone clearly unwelcoming. ‘What brings you to Mercyfields, Kane?’

Kane held the study door open and indicated with a slight movement of his dark head for her to go in before him.

His silence unsettled her but she was determined not to show how much. Schooling her features into cool impassivity, she stepped through, trying not to notice the musky spiciness of his aftershave or the expensive cut of his business suit as she made her way past his imposing frame.

The Mercyfields housekeeper’s bastard son had certainly turned some sort of professional corner, she reflected. There was no trace of the gangling youth of her childhood now. He looked like a man well used to getting his own way, certainly not one who took orders from others.

She crossed what seemed an entire hectare of Persian carpet to take a seat on the wing chair near the window overlooking the lake. In an effort to maintain her composure she slung one long slim leg over the other and inspected the pointed toe of her shoe as she gave her ankle a twirl.

She knew he was watching her.

She could feel the pressure of his dark gaze on her body as if he had reached out and touched her. She was well used to male appraisals, but somehow whenever Kane Kaproulias looked at her she felt as if every layer of her clothing was slipping away from her, leaving her vulnerable and exposed to his all-encompassing dark eyes.

She sat back in the chair and regarded him with a cool impersonal stare.

He held her look without speaking. She knew it was some sort of test to see who would be the first to look away, but as much as she wanted to escape that brooding mysterious gaze she held on, not even allowing herself to blink.

His eyes went to her mouth and lingered there.

Bryony felt an almost irresistible urge to run her tongue over the parchment of her lips but fought against the impulse with every fibre of her being. So great was the effort to appear unaffected by his disturbing presence she began to feel the hammer-blows of a tension headache gathering at her temples, and her resentment towards him went up another notch.

Finally she could stand it no longer.

She got agitatedly to her feet and, crossing her arms over her chest, faced him determinedly.

‘OK. Let’s skip the weather and the current cricket score and get right down to why you are here.’

He held her defiant glare for another pulsing pause. ‘I thought it was time I paid the Mercer family a visit.’

‘I can’t imagine why. You’re not exactly on the Christmas card list any more.’

His mouth thinned in what she recalled was his version of a smile. ‘No, I imagine not.’

She forced her eyes away from the jagged edge of his scar, surprised at how it still affected her to see it after all this time.

He looked fit and strong, as if he was no stranger to hard physical exercise, and his skin was tanned, but then, she reminded herself, his maternal Greek heritage had always given him somewhat of an advantage in the summer sun. Standing before him now, her creamy skin seemed so pale in spite of the intolerably hot weather they’d been having since Christmas four weeks ago.

‘How is your mother?’ she felt compelled to ask out of common politeness.

‘She’s dead.’

Bryony blinked at his bluntness. ‘I…I’m sorry…I hadn’t heard…’

His eyes glittered with hard cynicism. ‘No, I expect the passing of a long-term servant wouldn’t quite make it to the Mercer breakfast table, let alone as a topic for discussion over lunch or dinner.’

The bitterness of his words stung her as he clearly intended it to. As much as she hated admitting it, he was very probably right. Her parents would never discuss servants as if they were real people. She’d grown up with their attitudes, had even demonstrated similar ones herself, but as she had grown older had shied away from maintaining such outdated snobbery.

Not that she was going to let him know that.

No, let him think her the spoilt brat heiress of the Mercer millions.

She sent him an imperious look over one shoulder as she wandered back to her chair, taking her time to arrange her skirt over her knees.

‘So—’ she inspected her neatly French-manicured nails before lifting her blue gaze back to his ‘—what do you do these days, Kane? I don’t suppose you’ve followed in your mother’s footsteps and clean up other people’s messes for a living?’

She knew she sounded exactly like the shallow socialite he’d always considered her to be; she could even see the slight curl of his damaged lip as if he was satisfied his opinion had been justified by her crass words.

‘You suppose right.’ He leant back against her father’s antique desk with the sort of indolence she’d come to always associate with him. ‘You could say I’m in shipping.’

‘How very Greek of you,’ she observed with undisguised sarcasm.

His dark eyes challenged hers, a flicker of anger lighting them from behind. ‘I am just as much an Australian citizen as you are, Bryony. I’ve never even been to Greece, nor do I speak any more than a few words of the language.’

‘How can you be sure of your true heritage?’ she asked. ‘I thought you didn’t know who your father was?’

It was a nasty taunt, and one she wasn’t proud of, but his manner had increasingly unnerved her to the point of reckless rudeness.

She watched as he reined in his anger, the white edge of his scar standing out as his mouth tightened.

‘I can see you still like to play dirty,’ he said.

She shifted her gaze back to the unfathomable depths of his. ‘When pressed to do so, yes.’

‘Let’s hope you can cope with the consequences if such a need arises in the very near future.’

Bryony couldn’t hold back a small frown at his coolly delivered statement. There was something about his demeanour that alerted her to the strange undercurrents she’d felt swirling about her ever since she’d driven down from Sydney that morning.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘What possible reason could you have to be here?’

‘I have several reasons.’

‘Let’s start with number one.’ She set her chin at an imperious angle even though inside she was trembling with an unnamed fear.

He crossed one ankle over the other, his action drawing her eyes to his long muscled thighs.

She tore her gaze away and forced herself to hold his Sphinx-like stare.

‘Number one is—’ He paused for a mere fraction of a second, but it was long enough for another flutter of unease to feather along the lining of her stomach. ‘I now own Mercyfields.’

Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘W-what did you say?’

Kane ignored her question and continued with implacable calm, ‘Number two is I also own Mercer Freight Enterprises.’

She swallowed her rising panic with difficulty. ‘I-I don’t believe you.’

Again he ignored her strangled comment. ‘I also own the harbourside apartment and the yacht.’ He paused as he gave her an inscrutable look before adding, ‘However, I have decided to allow your father to keep his Mercedes and Jaguar; I have enough cars of my own.’

‘How very magnanimous of you,’ she managed to quip caustically. ‘Is there anything else in the Mercer household you think you now own?’

He smiled a hateful smile that chilled her already tingling flesh.

‘I don’t just think I own the Mercer package, Bryony—I do own it.’

He reached for a sheaf of papers that was lying on her father’s desk behind him and handed them to her. She took them with fingers that felt like wet cotton wool, her tortured gaze slipping to where her father’s signature should have been but very clearly wasn’t.

Each document was the same.

The new owner of everything to do with the Mercer millions was now Mr Kane Leonidas Kaproulias. The houses, the business, the investments, the yacht…

She let the papers flutter to the floor as she stood up on watery legs. ‘I don’t understand…how did this happen? My father would never let things get to this state! He’d rather die than see you take everything.’

The loathsome smile was back. ‘Actually, he was quite agreeable to it all in the end.’

‘I don’t believe you. You must be blackmailing him or something, for he would never allow you to—’ She stopped as she thought about her father’s recent behaviour. Always a stressed-out control freak, he’d definitely worsened of late. Christmas had been a tense affair, his constant harping on at her had seen her make up an excuse to leave a couple of days early, even though she’d felt guilty at leaving her mother.

Had Kane set him up to destroy him?

He certainly had all the motives one would need to implement such a plan, for even though her father had sponsored Kane’s private academy education as a goodwill gesture he’d still treated him appallingly during the time he’d lived on the estate, when his mother had been employed to do the cleaning.

And not just her father. Her brother, Austin, had been relentless in his bullying at times, not to mention her own reprehensible behaviour, which still made her cringe with shame whenever she allowed herself to think about it…

‘I wouldn’t exactly describe it as blackmail.’ He cut across her thoughts. ‘Suffice it to say I persuaded him to consider his somewhat limited options. And, as I expected him to, he took the easy way out.’

‘The easy way?’ She gave him an incredulous look. ‘You call handing over several million dollars worth of assets the easy way out?’

‘It is when you’re facing a lengthy term in prison.’

She stared at him speechlessly, her heart ramming against her sternum until she was sure it was going to jump out and land at his feet.

‘Prison?’

‘Jail, the slammer, penitentiary, crim-coop, calaboose…’

‘I know what a bloody prison is, for God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘What I don’t understand is why my father deserves to go there. What’s he supposedly done? Forgotten your birthday?’

‘Now that would indeed be a crime, considering my number five reason for being here.’

She mentally backtracked: one was the Mercyfields estate, two was the business, three was the yacht, four the city apartment…

‘What are you talking about? You’ve got it all; what more is there?’ she asked.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t guessed by now. It is, after all, the one thing I’ve wanted ever since the day my mother and I walked through the Mercyfields gate.’

‘Revenge…’ She almost whispered the word, so deep was her panic. ‘You’re after revenge…’

His dark eyes never once left her face. ‘Now, what form do you think that revenge might take, sweet Bryony?’

She injected her look with as much venom as she could. ‘I have no idea how the mind of a sociopath works; I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me.’

He laughed, a deep rumble of amusement that sent ice through her veins. ‘How ironic you see me in that way.’

‘How else could I see you?’ she asked. ‘You were sent from Mercyfields with a criminal record for damage to property and unspeakable cruelty to animals, or have you forgotten about Mrs Bromley’s spaniel?’

His eyes hardened as they burned down into hers. ‘I did not commit that particular crime. The property damage, however, was an unfortunate outburst of temper on my part and I took full responsibility for it.’

She gave a derisive snort. ‘So you’ve grown a halo over the last ten years, have you? What a pity I can’t see it.’

‘You only see what you want to see,’ he said with bitterness. ‘But there will come a time when you’ll have to face the brutal reality of the truth.’

‘I find it highly entertaining to hear you mention the word truth as if you and it are regular acquaintances,’ she tossed back. ‘So tell me, Kane. What instrument of torture do you have planned? I take it I’m the one who has to pay the price, otherwise why would I be summoned to appear?’

‘Your father has an unfortunate habit of ordering people about, but I hope that he will soon see the error of his ways. I thought it in your best interests for you to be here this afternoon. I did not ask him to summon you.’

‘Can we get straight to the point of this?’ she asked with increasing impatience. ‘I’m getting a little tired of all the word games.’

Kane drew in a breath as he studied her incensed features. She thought the worst of him and for now that suited him. He couldn’t afford to let her find out his real motives in coming here today.

He’d waited a long time for a chance to confront Owen Mercer. Ten years of working unspeakable hours to climb up from the depths he’d been tossed into. Rage had simmered in his blood for the last decade as he’d waited for the opportunity to strike back.

Austin Mercer had met his destiny and, as much as Kane knew the family still grieved their loss, he didn’t feel a microgram of regret that the only male Mercer heir was now dead and buried.

Kane’s mother, Sophia, on the other hand, had died before he could provide her with the things he’d so wanted to give her in return for all the sacrifices she’d made.

All the filthy sacrifices Owen Mercer had made her make.

He watched Bryony’s struggle to keep cool under pressure and privately admired her for it. Her father had caved in like the cowardly bully he was, but Bryony was a fighter and he still had the scar to prove it.

She was even more beautiful as a young woman than she’d been as a teenager. Her figure was slim and she moved with the easy grace of someone well trained in the art of classical ballet. Her silky blonde hair was long, drawn back into a single clip at the back of her neck, her eyes an azure, mesmerizing blue. Her mouth was full and tended towards a petulant sneer, but he knew that was probably because she considered him totally beneath her, not worthy of the million-dollar smile she flashed at other men.

But he was patient. He’d waited this long; he could wait a little longer…

Bryony found Kane’s scrutiny increasingly disturbing but stood her ground, waiting for him to speak. She reassured herself that he couldn’t possibly do any worse than he’d already done. If it were indeed true that he now owned everything she would have to move out of the city apartment, but there were plenty of other places she could rent instead.

Her work as a ballet teacher brought in a reasonable income, but she still had to be careful financially, mostly because she found it hard to charge the going rate when children from less fortunate backgrounds fell behind in their fees.

She knew she could always supplement her income some other way, although she had no intention of asking for her father’s help. She suppressed a tiny bubble of what threatened to be hysterical laughter as she even considered taking up house cleaning.

‘Would you care to share the joke?’ Kane asked.

She stared up at him, uncertain of what to make of his expression. ‘No, actually, it wasn’t even funny.’

‘Not much in life is, is it?’ he asked.

She compressed her lips by way of reply. He of all people knew how much she’d idolized her older brother—yes, life wasn’t all that much fun any more.

‘I have made a deal with your father,’ he announced after another one of his nerve-tightening pauses.

‘Oh?’ She hoped she sounded uninterested.

‘I’m giving him the chance to escape the harrowing experience of the judicial system.’

‘Why would you do that?’ She frowned. ‘Especially since…’ She didn’t finish the sentence. She still remembered the shame and disgrace Sophia Kaproulias had gone through when her son had been charged with wilful damage. The local paper had got wind of it, calling Kane Kaproulias an ungrateful rebel who had turned on the benefactor who’d paid for his private education.

The hand of the law had fallen hard on him and she was glad it had. She’d heard he’d spent some time behind bars but had got out early due to good behaviour.

Somehow good behaviour and Kane Kaproulias didn’t sit all that well together in her opinion, especially now, with him watching like a hawk did before it made its final swoop.

‘Your father would not survive a month in prison,’ Kane said. ‘Your mother wouldn’t even make it past the first day.’

‘My mother?’ She looked up at him in sudden consternation. ‘What has my mother got to do with any of this?’

‘Your mother would be implicated in aiding and abetting a criminal,’ he informed her impersonally. ‘And, since I now own and control the family fortune, no decent lawyer would defend their case.’

‘You’re making this up…you have to be…’

‘I’m afraid not, Bryony. Your father has been doing some rather shady deals over the past few years. I got wind of it and decided it was time to make him face the music, so to speak.’

‘With you as principal conductor, I suppose?’ Her look was arctic.

‘But of course.’

She took a prickly breath. ‘So what is my role in all this? You can hardly implicate me. I don’t have anything to do with the family business; I never have.’

‘That’s true; however, you do have rather an important role to play now. For unless you play it both your parents will leave Mercyfields in the back of a police van as I did ten years ago.’

It was hard to maintain her composure as a vision of her fragile mother came to mind. She felt the drum beat of fear pounding deep in her stomach, sending shockwaves all the way to her brain as she tried to imagine what he had planned for her.

What sort of sick revenge would he require to appease his bitterness over the past?

There was only one thing she thought of that would truly rock her to the core of her being, but surely he wouldn’t be thinking along those lines…

He straightened from his leaning position against her father’s desk and strode with loose-limbed grace to where she was sitting on the edge of the wing chair, her crossed leg trembling just ever so slightly as he drew nearer.

She looked up at his face and for the first time realised she had seriously underestimated him. There was a hint of ruthlessness in his glittering eyes, as if he couldn’t wait to tell her of what he had in store for her but was deliberately making her wait to draw out the agony of her suspense for his own enjoyment.

She was close to losing her head and sensed he knew it. Her mouth was dry, her hands damp and her neck and shoulders so tense she could feel a muscle spasm begin in the middle of her back, beating in time with her increasing headache.

She got to her feet, then wished she hadn’t as it brought her far too close to the wall of his body, her thighs almost touching his.

She shrank back but one of his hands came out and held her by the elbow, making escape impossible.

‘Get your filthy hands off me.’ She hissed the words at him with aristocratic hauteur.

His nostrils flared and she felt the unmistakable tightening of his grasp for endless seconds before he finally let her arm go.

She fought to keep her breathing under some sort of control but the feel of his long fingers on her had set off a host of strange electric sensations throughout her body. She felt frightened of him but drawn to him all at the same time, making her feel confused and disoriented.

‘In time you will get used to having me touch you, Bryony,’ he said. ‘You may, in fact, eventually crave it.’

‘I wouldn’t have you touch me for all the money in the world,’ she told him with stiff pride.

‘What about for all the money in the Mercer family vault?’ he asked.

‘W-what are you talking about?’

He gave her an unfathomable look. ‘You see, that is my plan for you, Bryony. Your parents will maintain their freedom and, as I’m feeling generous, a certain level of financial support, but on one condition and one condition only.’

She gave one tiny nervous swallow before she could stop herself. ‘Which is?’ she asked, not really wanting to know the answer, somehow sensing it wasn’t going to be what she wanted to hear.

And she was right.

It wasn’t.

‘I want you to be my wife.’