Bridal Bargains (36 page)

His own clothes disappeared by degrees, she didn’t even notice until the manoeuvre was over and she was being overwhelmed by the fully naked male. He made love to her breasts, so acutely receptive that she stretched into a lithe, sensual arch, toes and fingers curling in drowning pleasure that earned her yet another deep kiss to her mouth. And he was trembling, she liked that. Her restless hands crowded each muscular flex and quiver until, ‘Touch me,’ he groaned and she did, closing her fingers around smooth silk on steel and felt him throb and thicken then lost touch with her breathing when his long fingers tested the wetness between her thighs.

Bright rainbows of colour began to dance on her senses, and he answered them with a thick, hoarse growl. His heart was pounding, hers was pounding, as he eased his weight between her spread thighs then made that smooth drive into her, and
she opened her eyes to look at his harsh look of hungry passion etched on his face.

‘I don’t want to love you this badly,’ she confided on a sad little whisper.

He lost control. She’d never known him do it so thoroughly before so the difference between smooth, slick, sophisticated lover and a man lost in the wild, throbbing beat of his desire was startling. All she could do was hang on for dear life as he drove the two of them to the edge then over it in a wild, hot charge that threw him into a paroxysm of gasps and shudders that just seemed to go on and on.

Afterwards, exhausted, she thought she might have actually lost consciousness. She certainly didn’t remember another thing until she awoke much later to find herself alone in the bed with the cringe-making knowledge that once again she had allowed him to whittle away at what bit of pride she had left by letting him make love to her.

And not only make love—which was bad enough—but she’d also let him twist her into such knots by getting her to confess her crimes to him while he got away without confessing a thing about his mistress and his son!

His son. The tears began to sting. Throwing herself onto her back, she stared fiercely at the ceiling in an effort to stem the threatening flood. How could she let him do this to her? How could she
go on
letting him do this to her? She had to get away from him, she knew that now, because she couldn’t fight this sexual empowerment he had over her and each time she gave in to it she lost a bit more of herself.

She brought an arm up with the intention of covering her stupid watery eyes—but as she moved the backs of her fingers touched something and, turning, she saw a folded slip of paper lying on the empty pillow beside her head. With her heart lodged in her aching throat, she lifted the piece of paper up then lay there just staring at it.

She was afraid to read it. Really scared because he had never done anything like this before and all she could think was it had to have something to do with Vanessa and that little boy.

Mouth—fingers trembling, she made herself open it out.

‘I love you’, it said. That was all, nothing fancy, no hearts and flowers, or trumpeting fanfares, just those three words scrawled in bold black pen.

She curled into a tight ball beneath the duvet and cried her eyes out with the note pressed against her breasts.

Getting showered and dressed was an effort. She throbbed and ached and trembled too much to be efficient at anything. Back in the jeans and the cream top and her hair brushed, she pushed open the bedroom door with the intention of going to the kitchen and making herself a fortifying drink before she had to face him again—but it wasn’t to be.

One of the doors through to his office had been left spread wide open and the first thing to hit her was the sound of Xander’s voice tearing into someone in cut-throat Italian. As her feet drew her unwillingly towards that open door the next thing to hit her was Xander himself wearing one of his dark business suits and looking as razor-sharp as the sound of his voice.

The sun had come out since she’d last seen him standing behind his desk like this, and sunrays were playing across his jet silk hair and the deep bronze sheen of his skin. Angry as he was, he looked magnificent, all-powerful, all-masculine, all hard, dark lines of lean musculature. Animal, sexual, so utterly magnetic that her breathing feathered in her chest and brought her feet to a halt as a wave of helpless, hopeless love swept through her on a shimmering wave of anguished defeat.

Why him? she asked herself painfully. Why did I have to fall for a man like him? Why did he have to leave a note on her pillow spelling out words he had never once said to her face? Guilt? Remorse? Damage control? She couldn’t believe those words. How could she believe them when Vanessa and that poor little boy stood in the way?

She went to turn, needing to slip out of sight before he saw her because she just wasn’t ready to face him, but as she went to move another voice spoke angrily and her heart sank.

She’d thought he was talking on the telephone. He was
always
on the telephone! Maybe she uttered the strained little laugh she could feel clogging up her throat because Xander’s dark head whipped round.

‘Nell …’ the hard, husky rasp of his voice scored a shudder right down her spine as still she tried to escape from this.

‘No, don’t go …’ He was already striding round the desk while she hovered reluctantly, several feet into the sitting room. The sound of his swift footsteps sounded in her head then his hand caught her arm just above her elbow. He tried to turn her but when she dug in her heels he stepped around her and reached for her other arm, holding her still in front of him. She could feel his tension, the hot simmer of his anger as his harsh breath scoured the top of her head.

‘Look at me,’ he husked.

But there was no way she was going to look at him. She stared at the knot in his silk tie instead.

His fingers flexed then began to slide upwards, they reached her shoulders and used them to tug her closer, then moved on to bury themselves in her hair at the defensive curve of her nape. It only took the light stroke of his thumbs beneath her chin to have it lifting.

Once again her breathing feathered as she found herself flickering a dancing glance over his face. Tension packed it, strain, the simmering anger glinting in his eyes. As she fluttered her eyes downwards again she was suddenly caught by the difference in his mouth. Held tight though it was, the fuller bottom lip still protruded more than it should. It looked darker—swollen; a hot tug deep inside her abdomen reminded her how urgently she’d sucked and bitten that swollen bottom lip—clung to it in the wild throes of—

A tense hiss of air left his throat. ‘I know what you’re thinking but I don’t want you to think,’ he said fiercely. ‘I want you to stay calm and for both our sakes trust me,
agape mou
. I can explain myself—’

‘With little notes left on pillows?’ It was out before she could stop it.

‘Little notes left on pillows can be read and reread,’ he
pointed out. ‘If I said those words out loud they would be swallowed up by too many conflicts rattling around in your head right now.’

Well, he was oh, so right about that. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she told his shirt front. ‘You play games with me, Xander. You make me feel like your stooge.’

‘You are not the stooge around here,
cara
. I am—someone else’s stooge. But it is going to stop.’ It sounded more like a threat than a promise. ‘All I need from you is your patience. I
can
explain this.’

‘Will you stop saying that? And don’t you dare kiss me!’ she protested when he started to lower his head. ‘You think you can just kiss away every objection I put up against you but you can’t. I—’

‘If you two are going to start that again I may as well leave you to it …’

As if in a daze, Nell looked around, saw her mother-in-law—dressed goddess-style in wine-red silk—appear in view. She blinked, stunned that she could have so easily forgotten that Gabriela was even there! Then she became aware of other things, like the way she and Xander were standing in the doorway, almost wedged there by his rock-solid, unyielding stance. Her hands were on his chest, palms flat, fingers splayed. His still curved her slender neck. But worst of all her hips were resting against his hips. They didn’t need to be pressing that close to him but they were as if they couldn’t help themselves.

A rush of colour burned into her cheeks. As if he knew why it did, Xander slid his hands down her tense back to her hips and crushed her even closer, then did what she’d told him not to do and kissed her on the mouth.

‘Don’t so much as move another foot near that door, Madre,’ he murmured with cool threat as he lifted his head again. ‘It is judgement day, and you will not get out of this building until you have paid your dues to my wife.’

Judgement day? Pay her dues? Nell stared up at him with a mind gone blank.

He ignored the look, and suddenly he was all sharp and businesslike again. ‘In here, I think.’

Looping an arm around Nell’s shoulders, he turned her into the apartment then led her over to a chair then pressed her down into it.

‘Don’t tremble so much,’ he scolded quietly.

‘I …’

He kissed her fiercely—again.

‘Oh, stop it,
caro
,’ his mother snapped out impatiently as she appeared on the threshold of the apartment. ‘Can’t you keep your hands off her for five minutes? Helen is not going anywhere, as apparently I am not.
Dio
, Helen,’ she added with a small shiver. ‘How can you stay in this soulless place? I always hated it. Demitri never managed to get me to stay here once.’

‘Did he ever get you to do anything you didn’t want to do?’ her son shot back at her.

‘Oh, that’s so unfair!’ Gabriela protested. ‘And so typical of you, Alexander, to always take your father’s side!’

‘You made him miserable—’

‘I made him happy!’ his mother angrily declared. ‘How dare you, with your own marriage hanging in the balance by what I choose to reveal here, stand there and judge mine?’

They were suddenly back to fighting across the width of the sitting room, and doing it in English this time so Nell could at least understand the words if not the reasons for them. Looking from one face to the other, she couldn’t decide which of them was going to catch light first. Xander was a proud Greek by birth but a hot-tempered Italian by nature, and she wondered if he had a clue as to how much like his mother he was?

‘I can judge because I had to live with it.’

‘Poor little rich boy, so badly treated,’ his mother mocked. ‘Helen, what is that top you are wearing?’ Gabriela turned her attention away from her angry son to toss some derision her daughter-in-law’s way instead.

‘Leave Nell out of this,’ her son hissed as Nell cringed into the chair feeling like a rag doll suddenly.

‘I think she’s already very much
in
it.’

The fact that her dry point hit home showed in the way Xander stiffened his elegant shoulders.

‘Maybe you’re right.’ He took in a deep breath, then next thing Nell knew he had moved to stand behind her chair and his hands were settling on her shoulders in a possessive act no one could mistake. ‘Congratulate us, Madre,’ he then murmured dulcetly. ‘Nell and I are going to have a baby, which means that you are going to be a grandmother …’

G
ABRIELA
went so white that Nell thought she was going to faint on them and tried to rise to her feet to go to her.

‘Remain where you are.’ Xander’s hands kept her seated. ‘She will recover in a moment.’

‘How can you be so heartless?’ she gasped.

‘I find it remarkably easy,’ he answered coolly.

‘But she’s in shock—’

Gabriela gave a slow—slow blink of her beautiful eyes.

‘I am all right.’ Her pale mouth even managed to stretch into a wry little smile though her usual grace was missing as she walked to the nearest chair and slowly, carefully sat herself down. ‘A
bambino
…’ she whispered dazedly. ‘Now, that,
mia caro
, was quite a blow even from you,’ she admitted.

‘As you can tell, my mother is not very enamoured with babies,
agape mou
,’ Xander drawled lethally to Nell.

‘It is not the
bambino
part that repels me but the
nonna
part,’ Gabriela inserted surprisingly. ‘Now I understand your desire to have me explain about Vanessa and her—son.’

Nell immediately began to stiffen. ‘The desire for you to explain has always been there.’ Xander’s hands tightened on her shoulders in a gentle but determined squeeze. ‘You simply chose to ignore it.’

‘Until now …’

‘Until now,’ he agreed. ‘So start talking or so help me, Madre, I will publicly denounce you as my mother and acknowledge them!’

Nell was beginning to feel sick, very sick. A hand went up to press against her mouth. Gabriela saw it and a look of what could have been remorse crossed her beautiful face.

‘Our apologies, Helen,’ she sighed. ‘You have no idea what
we are talking about and therefore are thinking the very worst. Alexander, Helen needs a glass of water,’ she concluded quietly.

With a soft curse he took his hands from her shoulders, his angry steps took him into the kitchen then seconds later brought him back again, then the man himself appeared in Nell’s vision, squatting down in front of her to offer her a glass of cool water at the same time that he touched a concerned hand to her warm brow then was lifting her fingers from her mouth and carrying them to his lips.

‘Sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘This was not supposed to turn into a battle in front of you. I hoped that you would sleep a little longer so we could get this part out of the way before you needed to hear.’

‘Hear what?’ Nell tugged her hand free. ‘That you have another family out there that is more important to you than your own mother—or me, come to that?’

‘That just is not true.’

‘You know about Vanessa and the boy?’ Gabriela murmured in surprise.

Stupid fresh tears sprang into Nell’s eyes as she sipped at the water. Robbed of her hand, Xander brought his to rest against one of her pale cheeks.

‘Start talking, Madre,’ he rasped out.

Gabriela flinched at the serrated edge to his voice. ‘I had an affair with a man half my age,’ she confessed in a reluctant rush.

‘And broke my father’s heart—’

‘He broke mine too! Vanessa is only a few years older than Helen! He should have been shot for taking such a child to his bed!’

Vanessa? Nell’s attention picked up. She glanced at Xander to find his gaze fixed on her, narrowed and intent.

‘Both you and your father had an affair with Vanessa?’ she breathed in stricken horror.

Anger reshaped his mouth. ‘No, we did not,’ he denied and
sprang up and spun away, angry tension racked across his shoulders.

Gabriela sighed. ‘You are such a fool, Alexander,’ she informed him. ‘Have you never learned how to get your priorities right?’

‘Like my father did?’ he lashed back.

‘Sì!’
Gabriela cried. ‘As we both did!’ she impressed. ‘You cannot pick between the two of us when you look for faults, Alexander. It just is not fair!’

‘You took another lover before he did,’ her son dismissed that line of defence.

‘And he had his revenge.’ Gabriela took in a deep breath and returned her attention to Nell. ‘You cannot begin to know about middle age until you reach it, Helen. No one can—not even the great Alexander, who apparently has never put a foot wrong in his life!’

As a dig at his marriage to Nell, it hit the mark.

‘Middle age eats away at your heart and your belief in yourself. You see lines where only smoothness had once been and a sagging figure where once everything had been tight. You see younger women receiving the admiring looks you used to receive.’

‘You break my heart.’

‘Be quiet!’ his mother responded. ‘You’re a man,’ she said in disgust. ‘You do not fade like an ageing rose, you improve year by year! Your father did this! He improved and improved in his physical stature
and
he admired these younger women while assuring me I looked
nice
. Have you any conception at all how badly
nice
can hurt?’ She swung on Nell again. ‘If my son ever uses that word on you,
cara
, then take my lead and find yourself another man, preferably one a lot younger than he is—’

‘You’re careering from the point,’ Xander incised.

‘Feeling the vulnerability of your age difference to Helen’s,
caro
?’ Gabriela incised back. ‘When you hit your fifties she will still be in her thirties—the absolute prime of a woman’s life!’

‘Get to the point!’ The tension in him was close to snapping. Nell blinked at the sight of darkness scoring the rigid line of his cheeks.

‘At least you chose the child for your wife, not your mistress,’ his mother continued with the same cutting scorn. ‘I am the same age as your father. I
felt
it deeply when his interest began to stray. You are built in his image—a true Pascalis male who will not lose his good looks and his sex appeal as he grows older.’

‘So you jumped on the first man that showed you some admiration.’

‘I did not jump, I
dived
,’ his mother declared without conscience. ‘I lost myself completely in the glorious flood!’

‘You have no shame.’

Nell stood up. ‘I think I should leave you two to finish this on your—’

‘Sit down again!’ Xander thundered.

Her chin came up. ‘Don’t speak to me like that.’

With a flare of rage he stepped up to her and forcibly made her sit. She’d never seen him like this, so controlled by his emotions that he was almost fizzing. She opened her mouth to protest. He covered it—hard. Yet even though it began as an angry way to subdue her, the kiss did not conclude that way and she could feel the effort it took for him to drag his mouth from hers.

‘Listen to what she has yet to say—please,’ he begged, and when she could only nod, he claimed her mouth again, soft with gratitude—then moved away.

Having watched the little interplay with interest, oddly, Gabriela went quite pale. ‘My son loves you—’

‘The point, Madre,’ Xander curtly prompted.

‘He made me come here because he said you would not believe a word he says about this—thing with Vanessa DeFriess.’

‘Liars lose the right to be believed,’ Xander inserted.

‘I still don’t understand why you felt you needed to lie!’ his mother cried. ‘What man with a beautiful wife to love would
want to lay claim to that—
puttana
? Unless, of course, you were … Ah,’ she said when he all but threw himself over to the window.

‘Stop trying to outguess me and spit it out,’ Xander gritted.

‘Well, he was lying.’ She turned back to Nell again, and then took in a deep breath. ‘It was
my
husband who had the affair with Vanessa,’ she spelled it out at last. ‘Demitri took that woman to his bed to get his revenge on me. When the madness was over for both of us and we decided we could not live without each other, we made a promise that neither affair would ever be spoken about again.’ She paused to take in a breath. ‘All was well for several months. Indeed, we enjoyed the bliss of a second honeymoon.’ Her beautiful dark eyes took on a wistful glaze. ‘Then Vanessa came to Demitri and told him she was pregnant with his child. Everything fell apart in that moment. After Alexander was born and I discovered I was unable have more children Demitri had assured me that it did not matter …’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Xander murmured gruffly.

‘No.’ His mother looked at him. ‘You believed I was a fashion plate with a thin figure to protect. And you are now thinking of your own lonely childhood when I was not a very good mother to the one child I did have,’ she tagged on to his hard expression. ‘Which I suppose does give you every right to look upon me with such cynicism. I
admit
that I am not the maternal kind.’

It was like listening to some bizarre rehash of her and Marcel’s story, Nell thought as she listened, while her mind stung her with disbelief. Coincidences like this just didn’t happen. It was reality gone berserk. She looked up at Xander to find his fierce gaze was fixed on her.

‘I know,’ he said tensely, reading what she was thinking. ‘This is why I knew you would not believe me if I told you this myself.’

His mother looked from one to the other. ‘What are you talking about?’ She frowned.

‘Nothing,’ Xander said. ‘Please continue.’

‘Continue.’ Gabriela laughed stiffly. ‘What is there left to say? There was your father, about to become a father again and he could not disguise his delight. I was going to lose him again and I was so terrified I—took an overdose and had to be flown to hospital. By the time I was out of danger Demitri was a different man. I begged him to never see Vanessa and her baby and, to his word, they were never mentioned again.’

‘How much more proof could he offer that he loved you?’ her son put in. ‘He handed responsibility for Vanessa and his unborn child to me with the instruction that I never speak of them because he would not have you distressed like that again.’

‘And you never forgave me for being so spineless.’

‘The child has rights,’ Xander said. ‘You gave him none. The mother had the right to be treated with respect if nothing else. You denied her that right. She was gagged so quickly by my father’s lawyers that she was left without a single leg to stand upon.’

‘For money,’ Gabriela pointed out. ‘Don’t forget the millions you take care of for her. Or the huge trust set up in the boy’s name.’

‘Or the hours of emotional support both Vanessa and her son required once Alex was born. I became a father without taking part in the act of conception and I do not recall you ever feeling sorry for my plight.’

‘You didn’t have to take duty to such extremes—’

‘He’s my half-brother!’ Xander expelled in hoarse-voiced fury. ‘Half my own flesh and blood!’

‘I know I am a very selfish woman,’ his mother said shakenly. ‘I know you see me as a spoiled, vain, useless waste of space. But it is happening again, isn’t it?’ She looked helpless suddenly. ‘You are willing to sacrifice me for them just as your father was willing to do the same thing.’

‘No,’ Xander uttered gruffly.

‘You already threatened it, Alexander,’ she wearily reminded him. ‘Your father did the same.’

‘Hence the dramatic overdose aimed to pull him back into line again?’ Xander said hardly. ‘If that isn’t extreme then I
don’t know what is, Madre. Now I’ve made you talk about this, am I to wait with bated breath for you to use the same emotional blackmail on me?’

His mother went white. On a gasp of horror at his cruelty Nell shot to her feet. ‘Xan—’

But Gabriela got in first. ‘I have my regrets, Alexander,’ she told him stiffly. ‘And I can now feel the cutting pangs of remorse for denying your father the right to know his other son. But if you believe I have not been punished very adequately for my sins then you’re wrong. When Demitri died I lost a major part of myself. I still miss him so much …’

‘You know,’ Xander drawled, ‘I would respond kindly to that blatant attempt to play on my sympathies if it was not for the fact that only minutes before Nell came in you were still refusing to sacrifice your ego for the sake of our marriage.’

Gabriela accepted this final indictment with a wry little smile. ‘Ah, that sin called ego,’ she drily mocked herself then turned to go.

‘No—don’t go,’ Nell begged huskily. ‘You both need to resolve this …’

Gabriela looked into her daughter-in-law’s anxious face then at Xander’s rock-like stance and offered up a grimace. ‘You are a sweet person, Helen. You will make a good mother to my grandchild. Let us hope that my son will be a good father, for I think he forgets that I was not the only parent to leave him for another love.’

Then she walked away, leaving Nell staring helplessly after her while Xander continued to stand there like a cold, hard,
stubborn
fool!

‘Go after her.’ She swung on him urgently. ‘She’s your mother, for goodness’ sake. You love her, you know you do—faults and sins alike!’ When he still didn’t move from his stiff stance, ‘If you let her go now you will never see her again because the
both
of you are too stuffed full of pride to give a solitary inch! I thought you were bigger than this! Xander, please …!’ she begged painfully.

But she didn’t need to add the last part because with a tight,
angry growl of blistering frustration he spun and strode after her, leaving Nell staring after him feeling very much as if she’d just been run over by a pair of trucks.

She watched his hands reach out to grasp Gabriela’s narrow shoulders, watched through a deepening glaze of tears as he turned her into his chest. She caught the tones of thick, gruff, husky Italian, felt her heart quiver as the proud Gabriela broke her control on a muffled sob.

Then she turned away and began to shake like a leaf, still too befuddled by what she had been told to even attempt to sort it out in her head.

She made for the kitchen, leaving mother and son alone to mend their differences while she attempted to do something really normal like setting about making coffee but feeling so at odds with herself and with Xander that she didn’t hear him arrive at the door.

‘OK?’ The husky question came from behind her.

Stiffening her spine, she pressed her lips together and nodded, not sure she wanted to look at him until she’d made up her mind if she hated him for putting his mother through that ordeal, or loved him for doing it for her.