Bridal Bargains (27 page)

That she’d stepped into a war zone took Nell about two seconds to register. Xander was lounging in one of the chairs, looking for the world like the king of all he surveyed even with bare feet—while he shot angry sparks at his mother.

Gabriela was sitting opposite him, giving the cool appearance that she did not notice the sparks. Heaven had left nothing out when they made this beautiful woman, Nell thought enviously. The sleek black hair, the sensational dark eyes, the long, slender figure which could pull off any fashion statement with panache.

As he turned his head to look at her, Nell felt a blush coming on as Xander let his eyes narrow then linger on her shining hair with its still damp, spiralling ends touching the hollow of her back. She’d tugged the dress up onto her shoulders as far
as it would let her but it still looked low-cut at the front and slinky—as those too expressive eyes had already assessed.

‘Ah, Helen, there you are.’ Her mother-in-law’s smooth voice brought her eyes swinging in her direction as Gabriela rose gracefully to her feet. ‘You look delightful,
cara
,’ she smiled as she came towards her, her expression revealing nothing as she swung her eyes down over Nell’s dress, but the criticism was there, Nell was sure that it was. ‘Enchantingly clean and fresh as you always look,’ Gabriela added, then they air-kissed while Nell tried not to cringe at the ‘clean and fresh’ bit. ‘And such hair! I am sure it grows two inches longer each time I see you. You know,’ she eyed Nell shrewdly, ‘with the touch of a gifted stylist I know in Milan it could be the most—’

‘You will leave Nell’s hair alone,’ Gabriela’s son interrupted as he rose to his feet. ‘I like it exactly the way it is.’

‘Don’t be snappy,
caro
,’ his mother scolded. ‘I was only going to suggest that if you gave me a week with Helen in Milan I could truly turn her into—’

‘I will extend on that,’ Xander put in. ‘You will leave Nell alone altogether. I like
all
of her exactly the way that she is.’

‘Well, of course you do,’ his mother agreed. ‘But—’

‘Exquisito, mi amore.’
Placing his mouth to Nell’s cheek, Xander spoke right over whatever Gabriela’s but was going to be. ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he advised. ‘I do not need another fashion slave in this family.’

‘I am not a slave to fashion!’ his mother protested.

‘The couture houses of Europe wipe their feet on you, Madre, and you know what makes it so crazy?’ He looked down on her from his superior height. ‘You would look amazing in whatever you chose to wear, be it sackcloth. They should be paying you to wear their clothes.’

‘They do,’ Gabriela informed him stiffly. Then because, like Nell, Gabriela clearly did not know if he was teasing or being cruel, ‘Oh, go away and put some dry clothes on,’ she snapped, wafting a slender white hand at him. ‘You make a compliment sound like an insult and confuse me.’

Xander made no attempt to enlighten her as to which had
been his intention. He was angry, Nell noticed, so she had to assume the insult was what he’d meant.

He went obediently enough though, pausing long enough to assure Nell that he would be back before Thea Sophia arrived with refreshment for them all. The door closing behind him left Nell and Gabriela alone with a small silence to fill.

Gabriela did it. ‘We were arguing when you came in, as I am sure you noticed. Alexander likes to have things all his own way but cannot always have it.’

The way her eyes slid away from Nell made her wonder if the argument had been about her.

Or the ugly rumours about their marriage seemed likely.

‘Strong men are like that,’ Nell found herself saying—as if she knew much about them.

‘You think him strong?’ Gabriela quizzed thoughtfully. ‘I think him arrogant to believe that I should sacrifice my … Ah, but let us not talk about it.’ She cut herself off from saying what she had been about to say right at the intriguing point, as far as Nell was concerned. ‘Tell me about your accident and how you are recovering,’ she invited. ‘A much more interesting subject …’

By the time they’d done to death the scant details Nell was prepared to give about her accident and her ensuing recovery, which she suspected by the far-away expression Gabriela barely heard, Thea Sophia arrived and the odd mood lightened as Gabriela found a true smile as she went to take the heavy tray from the older woman.

There was a small tussle, which Thea won, as Nell knew from experience that she would.

‘Leave me be, Gabriela,’ she said. ‘I must feel useful or I may as well take to my bed and wait for God to come and get me.’

‘Wait for God indeed,’ Gabriela mocked as she went to sit down and the older woman crossed the room to set down the tray. ‘What you need, Thea, is to be taken out of yourself. When was the last time you left this brown dot of an island?’

‘This brown dot is Pascalis land,’ the old lady responded. ‘And you might not have liked it here, but I love it.’

‘Which did not answer my question.’

‘I do not recall when I last left it.’

‘Then it is high time that you did. Since Alexander refuses to let me make-over his wife, I think I will take you to Milan, Thea, and we will give you a complete make-over then find you a passionate man who will stop you talking about waiting for God.’

To Nell’s surprise the old lady let out an amused chuckle. ‘He will be too old to fulfil my hidden passions.’

‘Not these days,
carisima
,’ Xander’s mother came back. ‘Today the old men have the Viagra to maintain their flagging passions and will be very useful indeed to you. No, don’t sit down right over there, Helen. Come and sit here beside me.’

‘Wicked creature.’ Sophia spoke over Gabriela’s command while Nell meekly did as she had been told. ‘If my nephew were still alive he would lock you in your room for speaking so disrespectfully to me.’

‘Ah, four years and I still miss Demitri,’ Gabriela sighed wistfully.

‘I was twenty-three when the war took my Gregoris and made me a widow but I still miss him every single day.’

It was news to Nell that Thea Sophia had been married!

‘You miss his
passions
, Sophia?’ Gabriela prodded teasingly.

‘Of course!’ the old lady declared. ‘He was a big, strong, handsome man—as with all the Pascalis men. My bed felt cold for years.’

‘I understand the feeling,’ Gabriela sighed. ‘Maybe we should go to Milan to find ourselves a new man each. A cold bed is no pleasure, Thea. You would have liked my husband,
cara
.’ She turned to include Nell in the conversation. ‘Alexander is just like him—hewn from rock on the outside and deliciously protective by nature, but so jealously possessive of me that he rarely let me out of his sight. Yet what did he do
but go and die in two short seconds while I was out of the room!’

‘What is this—a wake?’ Xander strode in on the conversation, wearing pale chinos and a fresh white shirt.

‘Your father was my one abiding love,’ his mother said sadly.

‘Maybe he was, but you …’

The rest of the ‘but’ was completed in some cutting Italian that literally froze the discussion and turned Gabriela pale.

Thea Sophia recovered first, bursting into a flurry of chatter as she handed out the small cups of strong black Greek coffee and Nell puzzled over what Xander could he have said this time to destroy his mother as effectively as that.

She cast him a hateful look, which he returned with a grimace that seemed to say he was already regretting whatever he’d said. But no apology was offered and after giving him as long as it took him to lower himself into the chair he had been occupying earlier, Nell flicked him another hard look then turned to Gabriela.

‘A trip to Milan sounds very exciting,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been there and I’ve had a yen to have my hair cut—short and spiky,’ she added for good measure while Gabriela’s eyes began to glow. She knew what Nell was doing and it was working. Xander shifted in his chair. ‘Perhaps I could come with you,’ she suggested. ‘It would be fun to spend lots of money on new clothes and things, try out a new image—’

‘Try for a full recovery before you make any plans,’ Xander grimly put in.

‘I am recovered,’ Nell insisted. He was eyeing her narrowly, warning sparks glinting at her now instead of his mother. ‘I’ve had two whole weeks under Thea Sophia’s tender care to aid my recovery.’

‘You were the good patient,’ Sophia put in, bending to pat Nell’s cheek fondly as she handed her a cup of coffee. ‘You should have seen the extent of her bruising, Gabriela,’ she declared in dismay. ‘No wonder Alexander could not bear to look at them. Where were his protective instincts when this poor girl
drove her flimsy car into a tree? She was bruised from here to here.’ A gnarled hand drew a slashing left-to-right diagonal line in the air across Nell’s chest then added the other line across her stomach.

Nell saw Xander’s brows shift into a sharp frown as he watched the vivid demonstration take place.

‘Car seat-belt burns, Helen called them,’ his aunt continued in disgust. ‘I call them criminal. Who would want to ever wear a seat belt again if they had suffered such damage?’

‘Think of the damage without the belt, Thea,’ her great-nephew pointed out. ‘Nell lost her appendix, cracked her ribs and got off lightly into the bargain, if you want the truth.’

‘While you were on the other side of the world getting your name in the newspapers and—’

‘That is enough, Sophia …’

It was Gabriela’s quiet command that brought a halt to it, her dark eyes flickering from Nell’s suddenly pale face to her son’s cold, closed one. The old lady resorted to mumbled Greek as she bustled back to her coffee tray, leaving a tense silence in her wake.

It screeched in Nell’s head like chalk across a blackboard—a white chalk that had scraped itself across her cheeks. She wanted to jump up and run out of the room but she didn’t think her trembling limbs would make it. So she stared down at the brimming cup of strong black coffee she balanced on its saucer and tried to swallow the lump of humiliation that was blocking her throat.

She’d known that her useless marriage was public property so why should she feel so upset that Thea Sophia was so willing to remark on it?

Xander shifted in his chair and she flinched a look at him from beneath her eyelashes. His eyes were fixed on her, narrowed and intense.

The lump in her throat changed into a burn as tears decided to take its place. In desperation she turned to Gabriela.

‘How—how long do you plan on staying?’ she asked in a polite voice that came out too husky.

Her mother-in-law was looking at her in dark sympathy, which hurt almost as much as Thea’s thoughtless words had done. As Gabriela opened her mouth to answer, Xander got there before her.

‘She will not be staying.’ It was blunt to the point of rude.

Nell ignored him. ‘It w-would be nice if you could stay a few days,’ she invited. ‘W-we could get to know each other better—’

‘My mother does not do getting-to-know-you,
agape mou
,’ Xander’s hateful voice intruded yet again. ‘She lives a much too rarefied life, hmm, Madre?’

Gabriela’s lips snapped together then opened again. Like Nell, she was grimly ignoring her sarcastic son. ‘I am afraid I cannot stay,’ she murmured apologetically. ‘I came because I need to discuss some business with my son.’

‘Just business?’ he mocked.

Nell couldn’t take any more, ridding herself of the coffee-cup, she jumped to her feet. ‘What is it with you?’ she flashed at the sarcastic devil. ‘Trying to have a polite conversation with you around is like living inside a tabloid newspaper—full of sarcasm and innuendo!’

‘That just about covers it,’ Xander agreed.

‘Oh, why don’t you just shut up?’ she cried, making Thea Sophia jerk to attention, and Gabriela’s eyes opened wide. ‘You know what your problem is, Xander? You are still that resentful little boy who swam alone in the sea. You forgot to grow up!’

‘
I
forgot to grow up?’ Xander climbed to his feet. ‘Where the hell have you been for the last year?’

‘Right where you put me until I decided I’d had enough of it,’ Nell answered fiercely. Cheeks hot now, green eyes alight with rage.

‘So you decided it would be fun to drive you car into a tree?’

Fun? He thought she had done it for
fun
? ‘Well, we all know what you were doing because you featured in the newspapers so prominently,’ she tossed back. ‘Would you like me to tell
them what I was doing while I was having
fun
crashing my car?’

‘Watch it, Nell.’

Now he was deadly serious. You could cut the tension with a knife. Nell’s chin shot up. Xander towered over her by several intimidating inches but she faced up to his threatening stance.

Shall I tell them? her angry eyes challenged him while their audience sat riveted and the desire to unlock her aching throat and shatter his impossible pride to smithereens set the blood pounding in her head.

His face did not move, not even by an eyelash, hard, handsome and utterly unyielding like a perfectly sculptured mask. The cold eyes, the flat lips, the flaring nostrils—he was warning her not to do it—
daring
her to do it.

The pounding changed to a violent tingling. Taking Xander on was becoming a drug that sang like a craving she just had to feed. Her lips parted, quivering, and that stone-like expression still did not alter even though he knew it was coming—he
knew
!

Then another voice dropped cool, calm, curiously into the thrumming tension, ‘Helen, darling, did you know you are bleeding from the base of your foot …?’

N
ELL
broke vital eye contact with Xander to glance dazedly down at her foot, where, sure enough, blood was oozing onto the base of her strappy mule. The sharp stone on the hillside, she remembered, and was about to explain when Xander struck, seizing the opportunity to scoop her up off the ground!

‘Get off me, you great brute!’ she shot out in surprised anger.

‘Shut up!’ he hissed as he carried her from the room.

‘I have never seen such fire,’ Thea Sophia gasped into the stunned space they left in the tension behind them. ‘The child has been as quiet and as sweet as a mountain stream all the time she has been here.’

‘She’s certainly found her voice now,’ Gabriela drily responded.

‘She’s found more than her voice,’ Xander bit down at her as the salon door swung shut behind them and he strode across the foyer, heading straight for the stairs. ‘She’s found a compelling desire for a death wish!’

‘Not feeling so sarcastic now?’ Nell hit right back, still fizzing and popping inside with fury.

He stopped on the stairs, blazing black eyes capturing sparking green. His wide, sensual mouth was tight with fury, nostrils flaring like warning flags. The cold mask had broken, she saw, and felt the hectic sting of a dangerous excitement vibrate just about every skin pore.

‘You are goading me for some reason,’ he ripped down at her. ‘I want to know why!’

‘Death wish?’ Nell answered in defiance, only to bury her top teeth in her bottom lip when his glittering eyes narrowed for a moment, widened—then flared.

He caught that bottom lip with his own teeth and robbed it
from her. As she drew in a startled gasp he held on and sucked, turning the whole crazy thing into a very erotic kiss.

Downstairs in the salon Thea Sophia made a jerky move to follow them. ‘They will need—’

‘Stay where you are, Thea,’ Gabriela murmured quietly. ‘I don’t think they will appreciate the intrusion right now.’

‘Oh.’ Thea stopped.

‘Mmm,’ Gabriela agreed with the older woman’s dawning expression. ‘Your calm mountain spring is about to turn into a raging torrent,
cara
,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘And our angry, high-principled boy is about to learn what it is like to be caught up in such an uncontrolled flood.’

‘You sound pleased about that.’

‘Pleased?’ Gabriela considered. ‘I suppose I am. He never forgave me my raging torrent. Let him learn and understand how I felt.’

‘Those two are man and wife. Your torrent took place out of wedlock and devastated more people than you care to recall,’ Thea said curtly.

The sighed-out ‘Yes,’ took place as Gabriela came to her feet then walked restlessly over to the window, where she stood staring out at the glinting swimming pool, beyond which lay a crescent beach and an ocean of glistening blue.

‘I’ve had enough of this place,’ she decided suddenly and, turning back to the room, went to collect her purse. ‘Tell Alexander we will deal with our business some other time—’

‘Oh, I did not mean to chase you away, Gabriela,’ Sophia said anxiously.

‘I know.’ Gabriela kissed the old woman’s worried cheek. ‘But I should not have come. Alexander did warn me he had no time for my problems and now I know why.’

‘They’ve been apart for two weeks, Gabriela.’

‘They’ve been apart for much longer than that, Thea.’ Gabriela smiled ruefully at the older woman’s rose-tinted view of life. ‘Those two might be married, my sweet darling,’ she broke the news gently, ‘but they are not yet man and wife …’

The kiss lasted all the way up the stairs and into the bedroom.
Nell only thought to pull back from it when she heard the door slam behind them with the help of a foot. Xander watched the liquid bewilderment darken her beautiful eyes as she stared up at him. He could feel her heart racing beneath the flat of his palm.

‘I’m going to ravish you senseless until you tell me what it is you are up to,’ he bit out thinly.

The heart rate speeded up. ‘I’m not up to anything!’ she denied.

But her cheeks began to heat—a sure sign that she was lying, the little witch. ‘You have been playing me hot and cold since I arrived here! Do you think I cannot tell when someone has a hidden agenda? And don’t blink those innocent eyes at me,’ he rasped. ‘I know when my strings are being pulled!’

‘
Your
strings are being pulled?’ Nell tried to wriggle free of his arms but he was having none of it, strong muscles flexed in a show of pure male strength. ‘You’ve been threatening to ravish me since you turned up at my sick-bed!’

‘What a good idea,’ he gritted out with a teeth-clenching smile and headed for the bed.

Oh, my God, Nell thought and started to tremble. ‘My foot!’ she jerked out in the wild hope it would pull him up short.

It did. He stopped in the middle of the bedroom, cleft chin flexing, tiny explosions of angry frustration taking place in his eyes. Without a word he changed direction, carrying her into the bathroom, where he slotted her down on the marble top between the his-and-hers washbasins.

Her hair stroked Xander’s face as she straightened away from him, her fingers trailing a reluctant withdrawal from around his neck. Her heart was still racing, the fine tremors attacking her slender frame, making his teeth grit together because he couldn’t decide if they were tremors of anger or desire.

It was novel; he didn’t think he’d ever been in this kind of situation before in which he was having to out-guess the confusing signals he was being sent. Women usually fell on him—wholesale. Having this beautiful, contrary creature try her best
to tie him in knots was stinging to life senses he’d had no idea he possessed.

A taste for the fight. A deeply grudging willingness to play the game for a while just to see where she thought she was going with it. He knew where it was going. Hell, he was already there. She might have earned herself some respite with the injured foot but that was all it was—a brief time-out while the rest of it throbbed and pulsed in the quickened heat of his blood.

Reaching above her head, he opened a cupboard and fished around for a clean cloth and some other bits and pieces he kept up there. He was standing between her legs, her thighs touching his thighs and she wasn’t moving a muscle. Yet another surge dragged on his senses as he dropped his arms and saw the way she was staring at the flexing muscles beneath his shirt. Narrowing his eyes, he watched as the tip of her tongue sneaked out to moisten her upper lip as he ran his fingers lightly down her thighs to go in search of the offending foot.

Mine, he thought as he watched that nervy pink tongue-tip, and let his hands pause so his fingers could draw some light, experimental circles across the soft skin behind her knees. She jolted as if he’d shot her. Her chin came up, their eyes clashed, his carefully unfathomable, hers as dark and disturbed as hell.

‘Foot,’ he said.

Her teeth replaced the tongue-tip, burying into the full bottom lip as she lifted her knee so he could grasp her ankle and remove her shoe. One glance down and he realised she’d offered him the wrong foot.

‘The left not the right,’ he said then began to frown. Something was niggling him about the left and the right side of this aggravating woman. What could aggravate him when they both looked more or less the same?

Beautiful, perfect, ripe for seduction.

She offered him the other foot. Removing the shoe, he dipped his head and used the cloth to wipe away the blood so he could check out the cut.

‘You did this on the hill,’ he recalled and she nodded.

‘It didn’t bleed then. The hot shower I took must have aggravated it—ouch,’ she added when he pressed the pad of her foot around the small cut in search of foreign bodies.

Her toes wriggled, small, pink, slender toes with a shading of gold across their tops from the sun.

Xander’s tongue moistened. ‘Feel anything in there?’

‘No. It’s just stinging a bit.’

‘Clean cuts do.’

‘Speaks the voice of experience,’ she mocked huskily.

Swapping the cloth for a packet of antiseptic pads, he ripped a sachet open with his teeth.

‘I wet-shave,’ he answered, bringing those incredible eyes flickering curiously up to stare at his lean, smooth chin. That pink tip of a tongue returned to replace the teeth as she studied him with a fascination that set the skin all over his body tingling. If this wasn’t the most intimate she’d ever been with a man—not counting the interlude in the cove—then he did not know women as he thought he did.

‘I cut myself sometimes. Usually when I’m—distracted.’

The colour bloomed in her cheeks as she caught his meaning. ‘Hence the antiseptic pads.’ She sounded breathless.

‘And wound strips.’ He ripped the protective cover off a small plaster next and bent to press it over the cleaned cut.

But he didn’t let go, his gaze recapturing hers as his thumb began lightly stoking the smooth, padded flesh at the base of her foot in the same circling action he had used on the backs of her knees. Silence followed. He didn’t think she was even breathing. No two people had ever been more aware as to where this was leading and any second now she was going to disappear in a shower of her own prickling static.

‘Xander …’ His name feathered helplessly from her.

He responded by releasing the foot so he could run his hands back up the length of her legs—only this time he slid them beneath the clingy little dress.

‘You are gorgeous, you know that?’ he murmured softly.

‘You don’t have to say—’

‘Gorgeous eyes, gorgeous hair, smooth, satin skin …’ His
hands moved higher in a slow, sensual glide. ‘You have the heart-shaped face of an angel and the mouth of a siren, the blush of a virgin and the teasing skills of a whore.’

‘That isn’t—’

With a controlled tug he slid her towards him across cold marble until she fitted neatly to his front. Her eyes widened when she felt the hardening thickness at his crotch. He felt her revealing little quiver, watched her breasts shift on a stifled little gasp. Then her thighs tightened against him, narrowing his eyes on her very—very expressive face.

‘You like this, don’t you?’ he taunted lazily.

Nell dragged her eyes away. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sex,
agape mou
,’ he named it. ‘You are quivering with delight because you love to know you can affect me like this.’

‘For all I know you’re like this with any woman you come into contact with,’ she tossed at him, making a jerky shift in an effort to move back.

His hands held her clamped to him. His hips gave a slow, smooth, sensual thrust. She quivered like a trapped little bird as damp heat spread across the exposed and vulnerable centre of her sex.

‘Do I apply the same reasoning to your response?’

He knew what was happening to her, Nell realised. How could he not when she was so burning hot? A stifled gasp shot from her when he bent his head, his lips moulding hers and taking control of them, his tongue darting into her mouth. Each time they did this it got worse, she thought dizzily as she fell into it with a hopeless groan and let her slender arms snake up and around his neck.

She felt strong muscles flex in his shoulders as he lifted her up from the marble, felt the hard and pulsing sexual promise in his body as he flattened her to his chest. Her legs had wrapped themselves tightly around him and they might as well have been back in the ocean with no clothes on because she could feel everything that was happening to him.

It was only when he tipped her down onto the bed that she
realised where they were now. With a gasping drag on her unwilling lips she broke the kiss to look around her. With a swimming sense of disorientation noticed for the first time that since she’d taken her shower earlier someone had been in here and closed the shutters over the windows to keep out the fierce heat of the afternoon sun. The room had a warm, soft, sultry feel to it as if it had been deliberately set for making love.

Even the bedcovers had been drawn back, she realised. Her gaze flicked back to the man lying in a languid stretch beside her on the bed, lazily reading each expression as it passed across her face. He offered her a mocking smile. The air went perfectly still in her lungs. He’d done it. When he’d come up to take his own shower he’d come in here and made this room ready for seduction as if it had always been a forgone conclusion that it was going to happen this afternoon.

‘No,’ she pushed out across taut throat muscles.

He merely held on to the smile and brushed a stray lock of Titian silk from her suddenly pale cheek. ‘I’ve spent a whole year imagining you lying here with your beautiful hair splayed out around you and your beautiful mouth warmed and pulsing as it awaits the pleasure of mine.’

Sensation trickled right down the front of her. ‘We are not going to do this,’ she insisted shakily.

For an answer he began to unbutton his shirt. Nell stared as warm, bronzed skin roughened by dark hair began to make its appearance. Everything about him said man on a course he would not be moved from. Real alarm struck her with a frightening clarity.

She drew in a taut breath. ‘Y-your m-mother,’ she reminded him. ‘W-we—’

‘I don’t need her permission to do this,
agape mou
,’ he drawled.

‘But she—’

He moved, long fingers leaving the shirt to come and frame her heart-shaped face from pale cheek to trembling chin. Pinpricks leapt across the surface of her skin as he bent to brush his mouth across hers. ‘No more reprieves,’ he murmured very
softy. ‘This is it, my beautiful Helen. It is time to face your fate because it is here …’

Her fate. Nell stared at him. He was deadly serious. To her horror he began to stroke the hand down her throat and across her shoulder, fingertips pushing stretchy jade fabric out of his way.

‘Stop it!’ she choked out and at last found the sense to put up a fight.

Dark eyes lit with a kind of cold amusement that chilled her as he captured her flailing fists and flattened them to the bed above her head. ‘The little game you’ve been playing with me is over,’ he said grimly. ‘Accept it, for you are about to get your just desserts.’