Книга - Billionaire’s Bride For Revenge

Billionaire's Bride For Revenge
Michelle Smart


A billionaire seeking retribution…A bride stolen for revenge!Billionaire Benjamin has the ultimate plan for vengeance on those who betrayed him: steal his enemy’s fiancée, Freya, and marry her himself. It’s meant to be a convenient arrangement, yet the cool, collected prima ballerina ignites a passion in his blood! There’s nothing remotely convenient about the red-hot pleasures of their wedding night—and Benjamin is tempted to make Freya his for more than revenge…







A billionaire seeking retribution...

A bride stolen for revenge!

Billionaire Benjamin has the ultimate plan for vengeance on those who betrayed him: steal his enemy’s fiancée, Freya, and marry her himself. It’s meant to be a convenient arrangement, yet the cool, collected prima ballerina ignites a passion in his blood! There’s nothing remotely convenient about the red-hot pleasures of their wedding night—and Benjamin is tempted to make Freya his for more than revenge...


MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby and she would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading them—and writing them—ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.


Also by Michelle Smart (#uf6fee3b9-f9f1-5218-93ec-3e1ec1ca04e7)

Married for the Greek’s Convenience

Once a Moretti Wife

A Bride at His Bidding

Bound to a Billionaire miniseries

Protecting His Defiant Innocent

Claiming His One-Night Baby

Buying His Bride of Convenience

Rings of Vengeance miniseries

Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).


Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

Michelle Smart






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


ISBN: 978-1-474-07215-1

BILLIONAIRE’S BRIDE FOR REVENGE

© 2018 Michelle Smart

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


This is for Tilly & Eliza.

Follow your dreams. xxx


Contents

Cover (#u356b0596-0845-5c2d-8207-d8dc384558ca)

Back Cover Text (#u3e32ea08-e2ac-5ea7-9d34-307793a10727)

About the Author (#u554d00e2-7c1c-570c-b2d8-6197232422a7)

Booklist (#u4366ad76-8113-5fc6-8fb9-27984c4142ac)

Title Page (#u08057903-586f-546d-94b0-c12076b5eba8)

Copyright (#u0c52fa7d-3dc3-5652-979b-524312eea8ec)

Dedication (#u907b1366-9e8a-5e9c-b02e-f63b3dfdec6a)

CHAPTER ONE (#u3dfed76b-3314-598b-8038-176de7efe295)

CHAPTER TWO (#uf74bb090-4fc2-55dd-b4fd-5509d669c556)

CHAPTER THREE (#ud532225f-892d-5128-ab99-1838af863edc)

CHAPTER FOUR (#u92376a09-ad38-59e5-a6c7-763a20148697)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#uf6fee3b9-f9f1-5218-93ec-3e1ec1ca04e7)

BENJAMIN GUILLEM CAST his eye over the heads of the people scattered around the landscaped garden of the Tuscan-style villa in the heart of Madrid, an easy feat considering he was a head taller than most. The only guest there without a plus-one, he was also the only guest in attendance with no intention of celebrating Javier Casillas’s engagement.

He snatched a flute of champagne from a passing waitress and drank it in one swallow. The bubbles felt like jagged barbs down his throat, magnifying the hot, knotted feeling that twisted inside him.

Javier and Luis had betrayed him. The Casillas brothers had taken advantage of their lifelong friendship and ripped him off. All the documentary evidence pointed to that inescapable conclusion.

He hoped the evidence was wrong. He hoped his instincts were wrong. They had to be. The alternative was too sickening to contemplate.

He would not leave this party until he knew the truth.

Benjamin took another champagne and stepped over to the elaborate fountain for a better view. He spotted Luis at the far end of the garden surrounded by his usual entourage of sycophants. Javier, Luis’s non-identical twin brother and host of the party, was proving far more elusive.

Javier would be hating every minute of this party. He was the most antisocial person Benjamin knew. He’d always been that way, even before their father killed their mother over two decades ago.

Thoughts of the Casillas brothers swiftly evaporated when a dark-haired woman walked out of the summer room, capturing his attention with one graceful step onto the flourishing green lawn. She raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes, holding the pose as if trying to catch the sun’s rays on her skin. There was an elegance about her, a poise, a way of holding herself that immediately made him think she was a dancer.

There were a lot of dancers there. Javier’s new fiancée was the Principal Dancer at the ballet company the brothers had bought in their mother’s memory. Benjamin wondered if the fiancée knew or cared that she was only a trophy to him.

Benjamin had never cared for the ballet or the people who inhabited its world. This dancer though...

The sun caught the red undertones of her hair, which hung in a thick, wavy mass over glimmering pale shoulders. Her features were interesting rather than classically pretty, a strong, determined jaw softened by a wide, generous mouth...

Her eyes suddenly found his, as if she sensed his gaze upon her, two black orbs ringing at him.

A slight frown appeared on her brow as she stared, an unanswerable question in it, a frown that then lessened as her generous mouth curved hesitantly.

His knotted stomach made a most peculiar twisting motion.

No, not classically pretty but striking. Mesmerising.

He couldn’t look away.

And she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from him either, a moment in time existing only for them, two eye-locked strangers.

And then a shadow appeared behind her and she blinked, the sun-bound spell woven around them dissolving as quickly as it had formed.

The shadow was Javier emerging from the sunroom to join his own party.

He spotted Benjamin and nodded a greeting while his right hand settled proprietorially on the dancer’s waist.

It came to him in an instant that this woman, the slowly forming smile on her face now frozen, was Javier’s fiancée.

By the time Javier had steered the dancer to stand before him by the fountain, Benjamin had swallowed the bite of disappointment, shaken off the last of that strange spell and straightened his spine.

He wasn’t here to party or for romance. He was here for business.

‘Benjamin, it’s good to see you,’ Javier said. ‘I don’t think you’ve met my fiancée, Freya, have you?’

‘No.’ He looked straight at her. A hint of colour slashed her high cheekbones. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’

Under different circumstances it would have been a pleasure but now the spell had broken all that remained was a faint distaste that she should have stared so beguilingly at him when engaged to another man.

But that was all the introduction Javier deemed necessary between his oldest friend and new fiancée, saying, ‘Have you seen Luis yet?’

‘Not yet but I am hoping to rectify that now.’ Then, dismissing the striking vision from his consideration, Benjamin added evenly, ‘We need to talk. You, me and Luis. In private.’

There was a momentary silence as Javier stared at him, eyes narrowing before he nodded slowly and caught the attention of a passing waiter. ‘Find my brother and tell him to meet me and Senor Guillem in my study.’ Dropping his hold on his fiancée’s waist, he turned and strode back into the summer room without another word.

Two months later...

Smile, Freya, it’s a party and all for a worthy cause.

Smile for the cameras. Smile for your fiancé, still not here but expecting you to turn on the charm even in his absence.

Smile for the gathered strangers, pretend you know them intimately, let them brush their cheek against yours as you greet each other with the fake air kisses that make your stomach curdle.

Smile, there’s another camera. Smile as you nurse your glass of champagne.

Smile at the waiting staff circling the great ballroom with silver trays of delicious-smelling canapés but do not—not—be so gauche as to eat one.

Just. Smile.

And she did. Freya smiled so much her face ached, and then she smiled some more.

Being promoted to Principal Dancer at Compania de Ballet de Casillascame with responsibilities that involved more than pure dance. Freya was now the official face of the ballet company and at this, its most exciting time. The new state-of-the-art theatre the Casillas brothers were building for the company opened in a couple of months and it was her face on all the billboards and advertisements for it. She was the lead in the opening production.

Her, Freya Clements, an East London girl from a family so poor that winters were often a choice between heating and food, a Principal Dancer. It was a dream. She was living her dream. Marriage to Javier Casillas, joint owner of the ballet company, would be the...she almost thought icing on the cake but realised it was the wrong metaphor. Or was it the wrong simile? She couldn’t remember, had always struggled to differentiate between them. Either way, she couldn’t think of an appropriate metaphor or simile to describe her feelings about marrying Javier.

Javier was rich. Very, very rich. No one knew how much he and his twin Luis were worth but it was rare for their names to be mentioned in the press without the prefix billionaire. He was also handsome. He had chosen her to be, as he had put it, his life partner. When she looked at him she imagined him as her Prince Charming but without the title. Or the charm.

It didn’t matter that he was morose and generally unavailable. It was better that way. Marrying him gave her deteriorating mother a fighting chance.

In exactly one week he would be her husband.

The entire ballet company was, as of that day, on a two-week shutdown so the new state-of-the-art training facilities and ballet school that went hand in hand with the new theatre could be completed. Javier had decreed they would fit their nuptials in then so as not to disturb her training routine.

Where was he? He should have been here an hour ago. She’d snuck away to the Ladies to call him but found her phone not working. She couldn’t think what was wrong with it but she had no signal and no Internet connection. She would try again as soon as she had a minute to herself.

The media were out in force tonight, ready for their first public glimpse of the couple, beside themselves that Javier, son of the ballet dancers Clara Casillas and Yuri Abramova, a union that had ended in tragedy and infamy, was to marry ‘a ballerina with the potential for a career as stratospheric as his mother’s had been’. That had been an actual quote in a highbrow Spanish magazine, translated by her best friend, fellow ballerina and flatmate, Sophie, who had mastered the Spanish language with an ease that made Freya ashamed of her own inadequacies. In the two years she had lived and worked in Madrid she had hardly picked up the basics of the language.

Many of the company’s corps de ballet were in attendance that night, window dressing for the attending patrons of the arts whose money and patronage were wanted. Sophie had begged off with a migraine, something she’d been suffering with more frequently in recent weeks. Freya wished she were there. Just having Sophie in the same room soothed the nauseous panic nibbling in her stomach.

Just smile.

So she stretched her lips as wide and as high as she could and accepted yet another fake air kiss from another of Europe’s richest women and tried not to choke on the cloud of perfume she inhaled with it.

A tall figure stepped into the ballroom of the hotel the fundraiser was being held in.

Her stomach swooped.

It was him. The man from her engagement party.

Benjamin Guillem.

The name floated in her head before she could stamp it out.

It was a name that she had thought of far too often since the party two months ago. His face had found itself floating into her daydreams too many times for comfort too. And in her night dreams...

Suddenly aware of the danger she was placing herself in, she shifted her stance so he was no longer in her eyeline and smiled at an approaching elderly man.

She must not stare at him again. If he came over to speak to her she would smile gracefully exactly as she had to the other guests and this time she would find her tongue to speak in the clear voice she had cultivated through the years; chiselling the East London accent out of herself so no one in this moneyed world ever doubted she belonged.

She’d never been so tongue-tied before as she had the first time she’d seen him. She had literally been unable to say a word, just stared at him like some kind of goofball.

Her senses were on red alert, though, and as hard as she tried to concentrate on what the elderly man was saying—something about his granddaughter being a keen dancer—her skin prickled with electricity.

And then he was there, a step behind the old man, waiting his turn to speak to her.

She didn’t look directly at him as she laughed politely at a joke the old man said. She hoped it was a joke. She could barely hear her own words let alone his. Blood pounded hot and hard in her head, a burning where Benjamin’s gaze rested on her.

He was well mannered enough to wait for a natural pause in the conversation before stepping forward. ‘Mademoiselle Clements?’

To her horror she found her vocal cords frozen again and could only nod her acknowledgement at the simple question.

‘We met at your engagement party. I am Benjamin Guillem, an old friend of your fiancé.’

He had the thickest, richest French accent she had ever heard. It felt like set honey to her senses.

Unlike the other guests she’d met that evening he made no effort to pull her into an embrace, just stared at her with the eyes she’d found so unnervingly beautiful at her engagement party. Olive skinned, he had messy thick black hair and thick black eyebrows, a rough scar above the top lip of his firm mouth and a sloping nose. He reminded her of a film noir star, his dark handsome features carrying a disturbingly dangerous air. Where the other guests wore traditional tuxedos, Benjamin wore a black suit and black shirt with a skinny silver tie. If he were to produce a black fedora it wouldn’t look out of place.

The only spot of colour on him were his eyes. Those devastating eyes. A clear, vivid green, they pierced through the skin. They were eyes that didn’t miss a thing.

‘I remember,’ she said in as light a tone as she could muster, fighting through the thumping beats of her heart. ‘You stole him away from me.’ She’d been thankful for it. Javier had put his hand to her waist. His touch, a touch any other woman would no doubt delight in, had left her cold.

She prayed fervently that by the time they exchanged their vows in exactly seven days her feelings for her fiancé would have thawed enough for her to be receptive to his touch. Javier had yet to make a physical move on her but she knew that would change soon.

They both knew what they were getting into, she reminded herself for the hundredth time. Theirs would be a loveless marriage, the only kind of marriage either of them could accept. She would continue to dance and enjoy her flourishing career for as long as she wanted and then, when she felt the time was right, give him babies.

She would be Javier’s trophy, she accepted that too, but was hopeful that once they got to know each other properly, friendship would blossom.

And even if friendship didn’t blossom, marriage to Javier would be worth it. Anything had to be better than the pain of watching helplessly while her mother withered away. Marrying Javier gave her the chance to extend her mother’s life and ensure it was a life worth living.

Benjamin inclined his head, those eyes never losing their hold on hers. ‘Unfortunate but necessary. We had business that could not wait.’

‘Javier said the same.’ That was all he’d said when she had tentatively probed him on it when he’d returned to her an hour later. The tone in his voice had implicitly told her to ask no more.

Her fiancé was a book that wasn’t merely closed but thickly bound too, impossible to open never mind read.

His disappearance with his brother and friend had only piqued her interest because of the friend. This friend. Benjamin. She’d had to hold herself back from peppering Javier with questions about him, something she’d found disturbing in itself.

It occurred to her that she was lucky she felt nothing for Javier. If her heart beat as rapidly for him as it did for this Frenchman she would have thought twice about accepting his proposal. She knew Javier would have thought twice about proposing if she’d displayed any sort of feelings for him too.

The Frenchman showed no sign of filling her in on their meeting either, raising a shoulder in what she assumed to be an apology.

‘I’m sorry if you’re looking for Javier but I’m afraid he hasn’t arrived yet,’ she said when the silence that fell between them stretched like charged elastic. She had to remind herself that people were watching her. ‘I don’t think Luis is here yet either.’

Benjamin studied her closely, looking for signs that Freya knew about the enmity between him and the Casillas brothers but there were no vibes of suspicion. He hadn’t expected Javier to take her into his confidence. Javier did not do confidences.

But there were vibes emanating from her, as if her skin were alive with an electricity that sparked onto him, an intensity in her dark eyes he had to stop himself from being pulled into.

He had a job to do and could not afford the distraction of her striking sultriness to delay him at a moment when time was of the essence. He’d planned everything down to the minute.

Tonight, her dark hair had been pulled back into a tight bun circled with tiny round diamonds, her lithe figure draped in a sleeveless deep red crushed velvet dress that flared at the hip to fall mid-calf. Her pale bare shoulders glimmered under the ballroom lights just as they had done under the hot Madrid sun and there was an itch in the pads of his fingers to touch that silky looking skin.

He leaned in a little closer so only she could hear the words that would next spill from his tongue. The motion sent a little whirl of a sultry yet delicate fragrance darting into his senses. He resisted the urge to breathe it in greedily.

‘I already know Javier isn’t here. Forgive me, Mademoiselle Clements, but I have news that is only for your ears.’

A groove appeared in her forehead, the black eyes widening.

He turned his head pointedly to the huge swing doors that led out of the ballroom and held his elbow out. ‘May I?’

Her throat moved before she nodded, then slipped her hand through the crook of his arm.

Benjamin guided her through the guests socialising magnificently as they waited for their hosts, the Casillas brothers, to arrive and for the fundraising gala to begin in earnest. They would have a long wait. The wheels he’d set in motion should, if all went as planned, delay them both for another hour each. He felt numerous eyes fall upon them and bit back a smile.

When Javier did finally get there, he would learn his fiancée had disappeared with his newly sworn enemy.

He had never wanted it to come to this but Javier and Luis had forced his hand. He’d warned them. After their last acrimonious meeting, he had given them a deadline and warned them failure to pay what was owed would lead to consequences.

Freya was collateral damage in the ugly mess they had created, the deceitful, treacherous bastards.

When they were in the hotel’s lobby, Benjamin stopped beside a marble pillar to say, ‘I am sorry for the subterfuge but Javier has encountered a problem. He does not wish to alarm the other guests but has asked me to bring you to him.’

‘Is he hurt?’ She had a husky voice that perfectly matched the sultriness of her appearance.

‘No, it is not that. He is well. I only know that he has asked me to take you to him.’

He saw the hesitation in her eyes but gave her no chance to act on it, taking the hand still held in the crook of his arm and lacing his fingers through hers.

‘Come,’ he said, then began moving again, this time towards the exit doors.

Her much shorter, graceful legs kept pace easily.

A sharp pang of guilt punched his gut at her misplaced trust, a pang he dismissed.

This was Javier’s fiancée.

Benjamin’s sister, Chloe, worked as a seamstress at the ballet company and knew Freya. She had described her as nice if a little aloof. Intelligent. Too intelligent not to know exactly the kind of man she had chosen to marry.

Money and power in the world you inhabited were mighty aphrodisiacs, he thought scathingly.

What he found harder to dismiss were the evocative tingles seeping into his bloodstream from the feel of her hand in his and the movement of her lithe body sweeping along beside him.

His driver was waiting for them as arranged at the front of the hotel.

Benjamin waited until she was sitting in the car before following her in, staring straight into the security camera above the hotel’s door as he did so.

‘Do you really not know what kind of trouble Javier is in?’ she asked with steady composure as the driver pulled away from the hotel.

‘Mademoiselle Clements, I am merely your courier for this trip. All will be revealed when we reach our destination.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In Florence.’

‘Still?’

‘I understand there was some delay.’ An understanding brought about by his own sabotage. Benjamin had paid an aviation official to conduct a spot-check of Javier’s private plane with the promise of an extra ten thousand euros if he could delay him by two hours. He’d also paid a contact who worked for a mobile phone network to jam Freya’s phone.

As they drove into the remote airfield less than ten minutes later she suddenly straightened. ‘I haven’t got my passport on me.’

‘You don’t need it.’

Benjamin’s own private plane was ready to board, his crew in place, all ready to get the craft into the air the moment he and Freya were strapped in.

He ignored another wave of guilt as she climbed the metal steps onto his jet, as trusting as a spring lamb.

Within half an hour of leaving the hotel they were airborne.

He inhaled properly for what felt the first time in half an hour.

His plan had worked effortlessly.

Sitting on the reclining leather seat facing her, Benjamin watched Freya. Her features were calm, the only indication anything was worrying her the slight tapping of her fingers on her lap. He would put her out of her misery soon enough.

‘Drink?’ he asked.

Her eyes found his and held them for the longest time before blinking. ‘Do you have tea?’

‘I think something stronger.’

‘Do I need something stronger?’

Not yet she didn’t.

‘No, but a drink will help you relax, ma douce.’

Her throat moved, the generous lips pulling together. Then she loosened her tight shoulders and nodded.

Benjamin summoned a member of his cabin crew. ‘Get Mademoiselle Clements a drink, whatever she wants. I will have a glass of port.’

Soon their drinks had been served and Freya sipped at her gin and tonic. Her forehead was pressed to the window, her gaze fixed on the dark night sky. She covered her mouth and stifled a yawn.

‘You are tired?’ he asked politely.

A quick, soft shake of her head that turned into a nod that morphed into another yawn. When she met his gaze there was sheepish amusement in her eyes. ‘Flying makes me sleepy. I’m the same in cars. Are you sure Javier is okay?’

‘Very sure. Your seat reclines into a bed. Sleep if you need to.’

‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’ Another yawn. Another sip of her drink.

He observed her fight to keep her eyes open, the lids becoming heavier followed by a round of rapid blinking, then heavying again.

A few minutes later her eyes stayed closed, her chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm.

He leaned forward and carefully removed the glass from her slackening fingers.

Her eyes opened and stared straight into his.

A shot of something plunged into his heart and twisted.

Her lips curved in the tiniest of smiles before her eyes fluttered back shut.

Benjamin closed his eyes and took a long breath.

There was something about this woman he reacted to in a way he could not comprehend. It unnerved him.

Through all the legal battles he’d been going through these past two months and as the full extent of the Casillas brothers’ treachery had become sickeningly clearer, Freya’s face had kept hovering into his thoughts.

He stared at it now, watching her sleep through the dimmed cabin lights, absorbing the features that had played in his mind like a picture implanted into his brain.

It was fortuitous that she should sleep. It would make the difficult conversation they must have easier if they weren’t thirty-five thousand feet in the air.

Let her have a little longer of oblivion before she learned she had been effectively kidnapped.


CHAPTER TWO (#uf6fee3b9-f9f1-5218-93ec-3e1ec1ca04e7)

A BUSTLE OF movement in the cabin woke Freya from her light slumber to find Benjamin’s gaze still on her.

A warm flush crept through her veins.

For the first time since infancy, full sleep hadn’t taken her into its clutches.

He gave a tight smile. ‘I was about to wake you. We will be landing shortly.’

‘Sorry.’ She smothered a yawn and stretched her legs, flexing her feet before noticing her shoes had slipped off. ‘Travel has always had a sedative effect on me.’

It had been the case since she’d been a baby and her parents had taken turns walking her in the pram to get her to sleep. Once she had outgrown the pram the walks had continued with Freya in a buggy, sleeping happily along the same daily walk, which had taken them past a local ballet school. She had always woken up then. Her first concrete memory was pointing at the little girls in their pink tutus and squealing, ‘Freya dance too!’

Those early walks had given birth to two things: her love of dance and her unfailing ability to fall asleep in any mode of transport.

Planes, trains, cars, prams, they were all the same; within ten minutes of being in one she would be asleep regardless of any excitement for the destination.

That she had managed almost half an hour before the first signs of sleep grabbed her on Benjamin’s jet had more to do with him and the terrifying way her heart beat when she was in his presence than it had about any fears she might have for her fiancé.

She’d had to keep her gaze fixed out of the window to stop herself from staring at him as her eyes so longed to do. When her brain had started to shut down into sleep it was images of this man flickering behind her eyes that had stopped her brain switching off completely.

Her fingers still tingled from being held in his hand, her heart still to find a normal rhythm.

Rationally, she knew there couldn’t be anything too seriously wrong with Javier. Benjamin had told her Javier was unhurt and that there was nothing for her to worry about...

But there was a tension in the Frenchman now that hadn’t been there before.

A prickle of unease crawled up her spine and she looked back out of the window.

When she’d last looked out of the window they had been high above the clouds. Now the earth beckoned closer, dark shadows forming shapes that made her think of mountains and thick forests, beyond them twinkling lights, towns and cities bustling with late-evening life.

None of it looked familiar.

The unease deepened the closer to earth they flew and she kept her eyes peeled, searching for a familiar landmark, anything to counteract the tightening of her stomach and the coldness crawling over her skin.

She hardly noticed the smoothness of the landing, too busy straining through the darkness to find something familiar in the airfield they had landed in.

As she whispered words of thanks to the cabin crew and climbed down the metal stairs to the concrete ground, she inhaled deeply. Then she inhaled again.

She had been in Florence as part of her ballet company’s European tour only the week before. Florence did not smell like this. Florence did not smell of lavender.

Benjamin had reached the ground before her and stood at a waiting sleek black car, the back passenger door open.

‘Where are we?’ she asked hesitantly, not at all liking the train of her thoughts.

‘Provence.’

It took a beat for that to sink in. ‘Provence as in France?’

‘Oui.’

‘Did I misunderstand something? I thought you said Javier was still in Florence.’ Freya knew she hadn’t misheard him but told herself her ears were unused to Benjamin’s thick accent and therefore she must have misunderstood him.

Slowly, he shook his head. ‘You heard correctly.’

Through the panicking spread of her blood she forced herself to think, to keep calm and breathe.

She had only met Benjamin once before but knew he was Javier and Luis’s oldest friend. Their mothers had been best friends. They had grown up thinking themselves as family. She knew all this because of a costume fitting she’d had before Compania de Ballet de Casillashad gone on its most recent tour, the one that had taken her to the beautiful city of Florence. A new seamstress had been tasked with measuring Freya, a young, dazzlingly beautiful woman called Chloe Guillem. When Freya had casually asked if she were any relation to Benjamin, she’d learned Chloe was his sister. She should have been glad of the opportunity to speak to someone who knew Javier and taken the opportunity to learn more about her fiancé. It shamed her that she’d had to restrain herself from only asking about Chloe’s brother.

‘Where is he, then?’

Benjamin looked at his watch before meeting her eye again. The lights shining from his jet, which still had the engine running, made the green darker, made them flicker with a danger that clutched in her chest.

‘I think he must now be in Madrid. Very soon he is going to learn you have disappeared with me. He might have already.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered.

‘I regret to tell you, ma douce, that I have brought you here under false pretences. Javier did not ask me to bring you to him.’

She laughed. It was a reflex sound brought about by the absurdity of what he’d just said. ‘Is this a joke the pair of you have dreamt up together?’

But Javier didn’t joke. She had seen no sign whatsoever that her fiancé possessed any kind of sense of humour.

Benjamin’s unsmiling features showed he wasn’t jesting either. The dark shadows being cast over those same features sent fresh chills racing up her spine.

The chills increased as, pulling her phone out of her bag, she saw it still wasn’t working.

There was the slightest flicker in his eyes that made her say, ‘Have you got something to do with my phone not working?’

‘It will be reconnected tomorrow,’ he said steadily. He took a step towards her. ‘Get in the car, ma douce. I will explain everything.’

Her heart pounding painfully, she took a step back, taking in the darkness surrounding them. High trees edged the perimeter of the huge field they had landed in, the only sound the jet’s engine. The vibrant civilisation she’d glimpsed from the window could be anywhere or nowhere.

To the left of the runway sat a small concrete building, its lights on.

When Freya had exited the plane she had seen a couple of figures in high-visibility jackets walking away from them. She had to assume they’d gone into that building. She thought it safe to assume that building contained, at the very least, a working telephone.

‘I’m not going anywhere else with you until you tell me what is going on,’ she said in the steadiest voice she could manage while sliding her hand back into her small shoulder bag. She put her non-functioning phone back into it and groped for the can of pepper spray.

He must have seen her fear for he raised his hands, palms facing her. ‘I am taking you to my home. You have my assurance that you will come to no harm.’

‘No. I want to know what’s going on now. Here. No more riddles.’

‘We have much to talk about. It is better we talk in privacy and comfort.’

‘And I prefer to discuss things now, before I get back on that plane and tell the pilot to take me back to Madrid.’ To get to the plane, though, meant getting past him. A lifetime of dance had given her an agility and strength most other women didn’t possess but she didn’t kid herself that she had the strength to match this man, who had to be a foot taller than her own five foot five and twice her breadth.

She caught a glimmer of pity in those dangerous green eyes that made her blood chill to the same temperature as her spine.

Her fingers found the pepper spray.

She might not have the strength to match him but she would bet her life she was quicker than him.

She pulled the weapon out and aimed it at him, simultaneously stepping out of the heels that would hinder any escape. ‘I am going back to Madrid and you can’t stop me.’

Then, not giving him a chance to respond in any shape or form, Freya took off, racing barefoot over the runway and then over the dry grass to the safety that was the concrete building with its welcoming lights. Not once did she look over her shoulder, her focus solely on the door that would open and lead her to...

A locked door.

She tugged at it, she pushed it, she pulled it. It didn’t budge.

‘This airfield belongs to me.’ Benjamin’s voice carried through the still night air that was broken only by the running engine of his jet. ‘No one here will help you.’

She turned her head to look back at him, surprised to find herself more angry than fearful.

Surely this was a situation where terror rather than fury should be the primary emotion?

He had lied to her and deliberately taken her to the wrong country.

No one did that unless they had bad intentions.

She should be terrified.

Benjamin hadn’t moved. He stood by the car watching her impassively. For the first time she realised the car had a driver in it.

And for the first time she realised his jet’s engines were still running for a reason. Not only that but it was moving...

Open-mouthed, fighting back despair, Freya watched it increase in speed down the runway.

A moment later it was in the air.

It soared into the night sky, the roar of its engines decreasing the further it flew until it was nothing but a fleeing star.

And then there was silence.

‘Come with me.’ This time there was no other sound but Benjamin’s voice. ‘You will not be touched or harmed in any way. I give you my word.’

‘Why should I believe you?’ she called back.

He gave what she could only describe as a Gallic shrug. ‘When you get to know me, you will learn I am a man of my word.’

She shivered at words that sounded more like a threat than a promise and looked around the airfield for a route that could be her pathway to freedom. As far as she could tell they were in the middle of nowhere.

She could run. She had a good chance of making it to the perimeter before his car could catch her and then she could disappear. But where would she disappear to? She had no idea how far she was from civilisation, no money, a phone that didn’t work...she didn’t even have her shoes on.

She either took her chances and ran off into the unknown or she went with Benjamin into another unknown.

The question was which unknown held the least danger.

Benjamin watched Freya rub her arms as she stared back at him, could see her weighing up her options.

Then her spine straightened and she stepped slowly towards him, holding the spray can outwards, aimed at him.

When she was two metres from him she stopped. ‘If you come within arm’s reach of me I will spray this in your face. If you make any sudden movements I will spray this in your face.’

He believed her. The fear he had glimpsed before she had run had gone. Now there was nothing on her face but cool, hard resolve.

If he’d believed she was a woman to fall into a crying heap at the first sign of trouble he would never have taken this path.

Everything he had learned about her backed his instinct that Freya had grit. Seeing it first-hand pleased him. It made what had to be done easier.

‘I have given you my word that you will come to no harm.’

‘You have already proven yourself a liar. Your word means nothing to me.’

He turned to the open car door. ‘Are you getting in or do I leave you here?’ He didn’t like that he’d had to lie and had swallowed back the bile his lies had produced. That bile was a mere fraction of the sourness that had churned in his guts since he’d accepted the extent of the Casillas brothers’ betrayal.

She glared at him and backed into the car.

By the time Benjamin had folded himself into the back next to her, she had twisted herself against the far door, still aiming the spray can at his face.

‘Don’t come any closer.’

‘If I wanted to hurt you I would have done so already.’

Her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed in thought but she didn’t lower her arm or relax her hold on the can. He was quite certain that if she were to spray it at him it would temporarily blind him. It would probably be painful.

‘Do you always carry that thing with you?’ he asked after a few minutes of loaded silence had passed while his driver navigated the dark narrow roads that led to his chateau.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

She smiled tightly. ‘In case some creep tries to abduct me.’

‘Have you ever used it?’

‘Not in anger but there’s a first time for everything.’

‘Then I shall do my best not to provoke you to use it on me.’

‘You can do that by telling your driver to take me to the nearest airport.’

‘And how will you leave France on a commercial flight without your passport?’

Her lips clamped together at this reminder, the loathing firing from her eyes hot enough to scorch.

The car slowed over a cattle grid, the rattling motion created in the car one Benjamin never grew tired of. It was the motion of being home.

After driving a mile through his thick forest, they went over another cattle grid then stopped for the electric gates to open.

For the first time since they’d got into the car, Freya took her eyes off his face, looking over his shoulder at the view from his window.

Her eyes widened before she blinked and looked back at him.

‘You can put the spray down,’ he informed her nonchalantly. ‘We have arrived.’

His elderly butler greeted them in the courtyard, opening Freya’s door and extending a hand to help her out.

Benjamin got out of his door in time to hear her politely say, ‘Please, can you help me? I’ve been kidnapped. Can you call the police?’

Pierre smiled regretfully. ‘Je ne parle pas anglais, mademoiselle.’

‘Kidnapped! Taken!’ She put her wrists together, clearly trying to convey handcuffs, then when Pierre looked blankly at her, she sighed and put a hand to her ear to mimic a telephone. ‘Telephone? Police? Help!’

While this delightful mime was going on, Benjamin’s driver slowly drove the car out of the courtyard.

‘Pierre doesn’t speak English, ma douce,’ Benjamin said. He’d inherited Pierre when he bought the chateau and hadn’t had the heart to pension him off just because he spoke no other language as all other butlers seemed to do in this day and age.

She glared at him with baleful eyes. ‘I’ll find someone who does.’

‘Good luck with that.’ Only one member of his household staff spoke more than passable English and Freya had just proven she couldn’t speak a word of his own language. ‘Come, let us go in and get settled before we talk. You must be hungry.’

‘I don’t want your food.’

Turning his back to her, he walked up the terracotta steps and into the main entrance of his chateau.

‘Christabel,’ he called, knowing his head housekeeper wouldn’t be far.

No sooner had he finished saying her name than she appeared.

‘Good evening, sir,’ she said in their native tongue with a smile. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

‘I did, thank you. Is everything well here?’

‘Everything is fine and we have prepared the quarters for your guest as instructed.’ Christabel’s eyes flickered over his shoulder as she said this, which he guessed meant Freya had followed him inside, her bare feet muffling the usual clacking sound that could be heard when people entered the great room.

He had a sudden vision of her black high heels discarded on the runway of his airfield, a sharp pang in his chest accompanying it, which he shrugged off.

He would replace them for her.

‘Thank you, Christabel. You can finish for the evening now.’ Turning to Pierre, who had also followed him in, he said, ‘We require a light supper, anything Chef chooses. Bring me a White Russian and Miss Clements a gin and Slimline tonic.’

When his two members of staff had bustled off, he finally looked at his new houseguest and switched back to English. ‘Do you want to talk now or would you like to freshen up first?’

She glared at him. ‘I don’t want to talk but, if you insist, let’s get it over with because I want to go home.’

He held the mutinous black orbs in his. ‘Is it not already obvious to you that you will not be going home tonight, ma douce?’


CHAPTER THREE (#uf6fee3b9-f9f1-5218-93ec-3e1ec1ca04e7)

FREYA STARED INTO the green eyes that only a few hours before she had been afraid to stare too deeply at because of the strange heat gazing into them produced. Now, her only desire was to swing her small bag into his face. She’d put the pepper spray back into it and her fingers itched to take it back out and spray the entire contents at him.

‘When will I be going home?’ she demanded to know.

A single brow rose on his immobile face. ‘That will be determined shortly. Come with me.’

‘Come where?’

‘Somewhere we can talk in comfort.’

He walked off before she could argue. She scowled at his retreating figure but when he went through the huge double doors and disappeared, she quickly got her own legs moving. This chateau...

She had never seen the likes of it before other than on a television screen.

Walking past sculptures and exquisite paintings, she entered another room where the ceiling was at least three times the height of a normal room, with a frescoed ceiling and opulent furniture and more exquisite works of art. She caught sight of Benjamin going through a door to the left and hurried after him. It would be too easy to get lost in this chateau, a thought amplified when she followed him through a third enormous living area, catching sight of a library—a proper, humongous, filled with probably tens of thousands of books library—on the way.

Eventually she caught up with him in yet another living area. It was hard to determine if this living area was indoors or outdoors. What should have been an external wall was missing, the ceiling held up by ornate marble pillars, opening the space to the spectacular view outside.

Her throat caught as she looked out, half in delight at the beauty of it all and half in anguish.

The chateau was high in the hills, surrounded by forests and fields that swept down before them. Far in the distance were the twinkling lights she had seen on the plane. Civilisation. Miles and miles away.

‘Are you going to sit?’

She took a long breath before looking at Benjamin.

He’d sat himself on a huge L-shaped soft white sofa with a square glass coffee table in front of him.

Staring at her unsmilingly, he removed his silver tie then undid the top two buttons of his shirt.

The wrinkled old man who’d greeted them on arrival appeared as if from nowhere with two tall drinks. He placed them on the coffee table and indicated one of them to her. Then he left as unobtrusively as he had come.

Benjamin mussed his hair with a grimace then took his glass and had a long drink from it. ‘What do you know about my history with the Casillas brothers?’

Surprised at his question, she eyed him warily before answering. ‘I know you’re old family friends.’

His jaw clenched as he nodded slowly. ‘Our mothers were extremely close. They had us only three months apart. We were playmates from the cradle and it’s a bond we have shared for thirty-five years. I was raised to think of Javier and Luis as cousins and I did. We have been there for each other our entire lives. You understand?’

‘I guess.’ She shrugged. ‘Is there a point to this story?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘The point to this story is the key to it.’

‘You’re talking in riddles again.’

‘Not riddles if you would bother to listen to what I am saying to you.’

She caught the faint scent of juniper. Although only a moderate drinker—very moderate—Freya loved the refreshing coolness of a gin and tonic. Usually she limited herself to only the one. But usually she hadn’t been practically abducted. And she’d fallen asleep before she could finish the one on his jet.

And she really needed something to calm the ripples crashing in her stomach.

Giving in, she picked it up then sat on the opposite side of the sofa to him, at the furthest point she could find, using all the training that had been drilled into her from the age of three to hold her core and enable herself to be still.

Never would she betray how greatly this man unnerved her but beneath her outward stillness her pulses soared, her heart completely unable to find its usual rhythm. She wished she could put it down to fear and it unnerved her more than anything to know the only fear she was currently experiencing was of her own terrifying erratic feelings for this man rather than the situation he’d thrown her into.

She took a small sip then forced herself to look at him. ‘Okay, so you grew up like cousins.’

Before he could answer the butler reappeared with a tray of food.

The tray was placed on the table and she saw a wooden board with more varieties of cheese than she’d known existed, fresh baguettes, a bowl of fruit and a smaller bowl of nuts.

‘Merci, Pierre,’ Benjamin said with a quick smile.

Pierre nodded and, just as before, disappeared.

Benjamin held a plate out to her.

‘No, thank you,’ she said stiffly. She would choke if she had to eat her captor’s food.

He shrugged and cut himself a wedge of camembert.

‘It’s not good to eat cheese so late,’ she said caustically.

He raised a brow, took a liberal amount of butter and spread it on the opened baguette. ‘You must be hungry. I took you from the gala before the food was served. You do not have to eat the cheeses.’

‘I don’t have to eat anything.’ She truly didn’t think she could swallow anything solid, doubted her stomach would unclench enough for food until she was far from this beautiful prison.

Staring back out over the thick trees and hills casting such ominous shadows around the chateau, she resigned herself to staying under his roof for the night. As soon as the sun rose she would find something to put on her feet and leave. Sooner or later she would find civilisation and help.

He took a large bite of his baguette and chewed slowly. His impenetrable green eyes didn’t move from her face.

‘If you will not eat then let us continue. I was telling you about my relationship with Javier and Luis.’

Freya pushed her fears and schemes aside and concentrated. Maybe Benjamin really had gone to all this trouble to bring her here only to talk. Maybe, come the morning, his driver would take her to the airport without any fuss.

And maybe pigs could fly.

If Benjamin wanted nothing more than to talk he would have conducted this chat in Madrid.

Either way, she needed to pay attention and listen hard.

‘Like cousins,’ she clarified. ‘A modern-day tale like TheThree Musketeers, always there for each other.’

‘Exactemente. Do you know the Tour Mont Blanc building in Paris?’ He took a bite of creamy cheese.

‘The skyscraper?’ she asked uncertainly. World news was not her forte. Actually, any form of news that wasn’t related to the arts passed her by. She had no interest in any of it. She only knew of Tour Mont Blanc because Sophie had been fascinated with it, saying more than once that she would love to live in one of its exclusive apartments and dine in one of its many restaurants run by Michelin-starred chefs and shop in the exclusive shopping arcade.

He swallowed as he nodded. ‘You know Javier and Luis built it?’

‘Yes, I knew it was theirs.’

‘Did you know I invested in it?’

‘No.’

‘They came to me seven years ago when they were buying the land. They had a cash-flow problem and asked me to go in with them on the project as a sleeping partner. I invested twenty per cent of the asking price. When I made that first investment I was told total profits would be around half a billion euros.’

She blinked. Half a billion?

‘It took four years for the building work to start—there was a lot of bureaucracy to get through—and a further three years to complete it. Have you been there?’

‘No.’

‘It is a magnificent building and a credit to the Casillas brothers’ vision. Eighty per cent of the apartments were sold off-plan and we had eleven multinational companies signed up to move into the business part before the roof had been put on.’

‘So it’s a moneymaking factory then,’ she said flatly. ‘I take it there’s a reason you’re boring me with all this?’

The piercing look he gave her sent fresh shivers racing up her spine.

‘We all knew the initial profit projections were conservative but none of us knew quite how conservative. Total profit so far is closer to one and a half billion euros.’

Freya didn’t even know how many zeros one and a half billion was. And that was their profit? Her bank account barely touched three figures.

‘Congratulations,’ she said in the same flat tone. It was a lot of money—more than she could ever comprehend—but it was nothing to do with her and she couldn’t see why he thought it relevant to discuss it with her. She assumed he was showing off and letting her know that his wealth rivalled Javier’s.

As if this chateau didn’t do a good enough job flaunting his wealth!

Did he think she would be impressed?

Money was nothing to brag about. Having an enormous bank account didn’t make you a better person than anyone else or mean you were granted automatic reverence by lesser mortals.

Freya had been raised by parents who were permanently on the breadline. They were the kindest, most loving parents a child could wish for and if she could live her childhood again she wouldn’t swap them for anyone. Money was no substitute for love.

It was only now, as that awful disease decimated her mother’s body, that she wished they’d had the means to build a nest egg for themselves. She wouldn’t have felt compelled to marry Javier if they had.

But they had never had the means. They had worked their fingers to the bone to allow their only child to follow her dreams.

‘I invested twenty per cent of the land fee,’ Benjamin continued, ignoring her sarcasm. ‘I have since invested around twenty per cent of the building costs. How much profit would you think that entitles me to?’

‘How would I know?’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m not an accountant.’

‘Take a guess.’

‘Twenty per cent?’

‘Oui. Twenty per cent. Twenty per cent investment for a twenty per cent profit. Twenty per cent of one and a half billion equals three hundred million, do you agree?’

‘I’m not an accountant,’ she repeated, looking away from him, her lips tightening mutinously.

‘You do not need to be an accountant to agree that three hundred million euros is a lot of money.’

Her slim shoulders rose but other than a flash of colour on her high cheekbones, the mutinous expression on her face didn’t change.

‘I have received all of my investment back but only seventy-five million euros of the profit. The equivalent of five per cent.’

Her eyes found his stare again. ‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?’

‘You are not expected to feel anything.’ Benjamin stifled his growing anger at her cold indifference. He hadn’t expected anything less from the woman engaged to the coldest man in Europe. ‘I am laying out the facts of the situation. Javier and Luis have ripped me off. They owe me two hundred and twenty-five million euros.’

He had earmarked that money for a charity that helped traumatised children.

The irony of why he had chosen that charity would be funny if the situation were not so damn serious. The memories of Javier and Luis’s traumatisation at the death of their mother at the hands of their father had haunted him for years.

Benjamin had almost bankrupted himself investing in the Tour Mont Blanc project. He’d spent seven years clawing his way back, going higher than he had ever climbed before, investing and expanding his fine food business across the globe until he had reached the point where he didn’t owe a cent to anyone. All his assets, his business and subsidiaries were his alone and could never be taken from him. Now he could do some good with the great wealth he had built for himself and Javier and Luis had stolen his first significant act from him, just as they had stolen his money, his trust and all the memories he’d held dear.

‘Take it up with your lawyers.’

‘I have.’ Benjamin remembered the green colour Andre had turned when he’d had to tell his most lucrative client that the Casillas brothers were correct in their assertion that he was only owed five per cent of the profits.

It had been there in black and white on the contract he’d signed seven years ago, hidden in the small print. It could have been written in the largest font available and he doubted he would have noticed it back then. He had signed the contract without getting his lawyer to read it first. That was his own fault, he accepted that. It was the only contract he’d ever signed without poring over every word first. The brothers had been given until midnight to come up with the full asking price or the land would have been sold to another interested party and they would have lost the substantial deposit they’d already paid at that point.

They had come to him for help on the same day Benjamin’s mother had been told there was nothing more the medical team could do to stave off the cancer ravaging her body. Although not a shock—she had not responded well to any of the treatment she’d been given—it had been the single biggest blow in his life.

Benjamin had signed with only a cursory glance at the document and transferred the money there and then. If it had been anyone else he would have refused to even contemplate the investment but it had been Javier and Luis asking. Men he regarded as kin. Men his mother had regarded as kin. Men he’d trusted unconditionally. At the time he hadn’t cared that it would eat into his own cash-flow and that the chateau he’d intended to buy outright for his mother to pass the last of her days in would need him to take a hefty mortgage. It was that knock-on effect that had almost bankrupted him.

‘From a legal point of view there is nothing more I can do about it.’ The words felt like needles in his throat.

He’d refused to accept Andre’s judgement and had fast-tracked the matter to a courtroom. The judge had reluctantly agreed with Andre.

Benjamin’s rage at the situation had been enflamed when Javier and Luis successfully applied for an injunction on the reporting of the court case. They didn’t want the business world to know their word was worthless or the levels to which they would stoop in the name of profit.

‘Have you brought me here to tell me this thinking I will speak to Javier on your behalf?’ she asked, her disbelief obvious despite the composed way she held herself.

He laughed mirthlessly and took a paring knife off the tray. He doubted very much that Javier cared for Freya’s opinion. She was his beautiful prima ballerina trophy not his partner. Benjamin’s hope was that her value as a trophy was greater than two hundred and twenty-five million euros.

Cutting into the peel of a fat, ripe orange, he said, ‘I am afraid the situation has gone far past the point where it can be resolved by words alone.’

‘Then what do you want from me? Why am I here?’

‘Every action has a consequence. Javier and Luis have stolen from me and I am out of legal options.’ He cut the last of the peel off the orange and dropped it into a bowl. ‘In reality, the money is not important...’

She let out a delicate, disbelieving cough.

He cut into the flesh of his peeled orange. ‘I am a very wealthy man, ma douce...’

‘Well done.’

‘And if it was just the money I would write it off,’ he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him, cutting the orange into segments. ‘But this is about much more than money, more than you could understand. I am not willing to let it go or let them get away with it. You are my last bargaining chip.’

‘Me?’ For the first time since she had entered his home, her composure made an almost imperceptible slip. ‘But I had nothing to do with it. I was still in ballet school when you signed that contract.’

‘Oui. You.’ He looked at his watch and smiled. ‘In three minutes it will be midnight. In three minutes Javier will receive a message giving him exactly twenty-four hours to pay the money owed.’

She swallowed. ‘Or...?’

‘If the Casillas brothers refuse to pay what they have taken from me then by the laws of natural justice I shall take from them, starting with you. If they do not pay then, ma douce, the message Javier will receive any moment tells him his engagement to you will be over and that you will marry me instead.’


CHAPTER FOUR (#uf6fee3b9-f9f1-5218-93ec-3e1ec1ca04e7)

THE BURN THAT had enflamed Freya’s brain earlier returned with a vengeance. She gazed into the resolute green eyes that gave nothing away and felt her stomach clench into a pinpoint.

Freya had no illusions about her lack of intellect. Ballet had been her all-consuming passion since she could walk. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she hadn’t breathed dance and her education had suffered for it. She had one traditional educational qualification and that was in art.

But this didn’t mean she was stupid and she would have to be the dimmest person to walk the earth not to look into those green eyes and recognise that Benjamin was deadly serious.

This was revenge in its purest form and she was his weapon of choice to gain it.

She was his hostage.

Her kidnapper stared at her without an ounce of pity, waiting for her response to his bombshell.

She responded by using the only means she had at her disposal, her only weapon. Her body.

Jumping up from the sofa, she swept an arm over the coffee table, scattering the crockery and glasses on it, but didn’t hang around to see the damage, already racing through the non-existent wall and out into the warm grounds. Benjamin’s surprised curse echoed behind her.

Security lights came on, putting a spotlight on her but she didn’t care. She would outrun them. She dived into the thick, high shrubbery that she hoped surrounded the perimeter of the chateau and hoped gave adequate camouflage until she found the driveway they had travelled to reach the chateau and which she would follow until she found the road.

She had run from Benjamin earlier. She had reluctantly gone back to him because she had thought he was the unknown that posed the least danger.

She had made the wrong choice. Her heated responses to his physicality, the strange chemical responses that set off inside her every time she looked into his green eyes had stopped her recognising the very real danger she was in.

How big was this chateau and its grounds? she wondered desperately as she cut her way through the trees and hedges, trusting her sense of direction that she was headed the right way.

It seemed to take for ever before she peered through the shrubbery to find the courtyard Benjamin’s driver had dropped them off at. The night was dark but there were enough ground lights for her to see the electric gates they had driven through.

Quickly she looked around it and saw the gate, a high wrought-iron contraption with spikes at the top that linked the high stone wall she would have to scale if she were to get away.

Keeping to the shadows, Freya treaded her way to the wall, her heart sinking the closer she got.

It was at least twice her height.

She stepped cautiously from the high tree she’d hidden behind for a better look. The wall was old. It had plenty of grooves and nooks for her to use to lever herself up. If she kept to the shadows she’d be able to scale it away from the estate lights...but then she wouldn’t be able to see what was on the other side if she were in the dark.

Determination filled her. If she didn’t climb this wall she would never escape.

She took one deep inhalation for luck then darted forward.

The moment she stepped off the thick, springy ground of the woods and onto the gravelled concrete, it seemed as if a thousand lights suddenly shone on her.

Not prepared to waste a second, she raced to the wall, found her first finger holes and began to climb.

She’d made it only two feet off the ground when she heard shouts. Aware of heavy footsteps nearing her, she sped up. The top of the wall was almost within reach when she stretched to grip a slightly protruding stone and, too late, realised it was loose.

With a terrified scream, she lost her hold entirely and fell back, would have crashed to the ground and almost certainly landed flat on her back had a pair of strong arms not been there to catch her as assuredly as any of her dance partners would have done.

Instinct had her throw her arms around Benjamin’s neck while he made one quick shift of position to hold her more securely.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried her hardest to open her airwaves.

She couldn’t breathe. The shock of the fall and the unexpected landing had pushed all the air from her lungs. But her terrified heart was racing at triple time, tremors raging through her body.

How had he reached her so quickly? He must have run at superhuman speed.

‘Do you have a death wish?’

His angry words cut through the shock and she opened her eyes to find his face inches from her own, furious green eyes boring into hers.

He was holding her as securely as a groom about to cross the threshold with his new bride but staring at her with all the tenderness of a lion about to bite into the neck of its prey.

Then he muttered something unintelligible under his breath and set off back to the chateau.

‘You can put me down now,’ she said, then immediately wished she hadn’t spoken as now that she could breathe again she could smell again too. Her face was so close to Benjamin’s neck she could smell the muskiness of his skin under the spicy cologne.

He shook his head grimly.

She struggled against him. ‘I’m quite capable of walking.’

His hold tightened. ‘And have you run away and put yourself in danger again?’

‘I won’t—’

‘What were you thinking?’ he demanded. His footsteps crunched over the gravel. ‘If I hadn’t been there to catch you...’

‘What did you expect?’ Her words came in short, ragged gasps. The feel of his muscular body pressed so tightly against her own made her wish he were made of steel on the outside as well as the inside. Damn him. If he were a robot or machine she could ignore that he was human and that her body was behaving in the opposite manner that it should to be held in his arms like this.

Her lips should not tingle and try to crane closer to the strained tendons on his neck, not to bite but to kiss...

‘I expected you to listen, not run into the night. The forests around the chateau are miles deep. You can spend days—weeks—lost in them and not meet a soul.’

‘I don’t care. You can’t kidnap me and hold me to ransom and think I’m going to just accept it.’ She squeezed her eyes shut to block his neck from her sight.

If only she could block the rest of him out too.

God, she could hardly breathe for fear and fury and that awful, awful awareness of him.

Pierre had the door open for them. As Benjamin carried Freya over the threshold, the butler saw her feet and winced.

Benjamin sighed inwardly before depositing her onto the nearest armchair and instructing Pierre, who really should have long gone to bed, to bring him a bowl of warm water and a first-aid kit.

‘Telling him to bring handcuffs so you can chain me in your horrible house?’ his unwilling guest asked snidely.

‘That’s a tempting idea, but no.’ Tempting for a whole host of reasons he refused to allow himself to think of.

Holding Freya in his arms like that had felt too damn good. The awareness he’d felt for her from that first look had become like an infection inside him.

He must not forget who she was. Javier’s fiancée. His only possible means of getting his money back and giving Javier a taste of the betrayal he himself was feeling.

Kneeling before her, he took her left foot in his hand. She made to kick out but his hold was too firm. ‘I am not going to hurt you.’

‘You said that before,’ she snapped.

‘The harm you have caused to your feet is self-inflicted. Keep still. I want to look for damage.’

The full lips pulled in on themselves, her black eyes staring at him maleficently before she turned her face to the wall. He took it as tacit agreement for him to examine her feet. The foot in his hands was filthy from walking bare through all the trees and shrubbery but there was no damage he could see. He placed it down more gently than she deserved and picked up her right foot. It hadn’t fared so well. Tiny droplets of blood oozed out where she’d trodden on something sharp.

Pierre came into the room with the equipment he’d requested, along with fresh towels.

‘Going to do a spot of waterboarding?’ she asked with a glare.

He returned it with a glare of his own. ‘Stop giving me ideas. I’m going to clean your feet...’

‘I can clean my own feet...’

‘And make sure you have no thorns or stones stuck in them.’

‘You’re a doctor?’

‘Only a man with a sister who could never remember to put shoes on when she was a child.’ And rarely as a teenager either. Chloe had moved out of the chateau a few years ago and he still missed her lively presence in his daily life.

His much younger sister was as furious with the Casillas brothers as he was and had insisted on helping that night. He’d given her the task of delaying Luis from the gala and she had risen to it with aplomb. Now she was safely tucked up in first class flying to the Caribbean to escape the fall-out.

‘I’m a dancer,’ Freya said obstinately. ‘My feet are tough.’

‘Tough enough to risk infection? Tough enough to risk your career?’

‘Being held hostage is a risk to my career.’

‘Stop being so melodramatic. You are not a hostage.’ He took a sterile cloth and dipped it in the water, squeezing it first before carefully rubbing it against the sole of her foot.

‘If I’m not allowed to leave that makes me a hostage. If I’m being held for ransom that makes me a hostage.’

‘Hardly. All I require is twenty-four hours of your time. One day.’ He rubbed an antiseptic wipe to the tiny wounds at the sole of her foot, then carefully placed it down on its heel.

‘And what happens then? What if Javier says no and refuses to pay?’

‘You have doubts?’ He lifted her other foot onto his lap. ‘Are you afraid his love for you is not worth such a large amount of money?’

She didn’t answer.

Raising his gaze from her feet to her face, he noted the strain of her clenched jaw.

‘You are the most exciting dancer to have emerged in Europe since his mother died. You have the potential to be the best and Javier is not a man who settles for second best in anything. You are not publicity hungry. You will give him beautiful babies. You tick every box he has made in his list of wants for a wife. Why would he let you go?’ As he spoke he cleaned her foot, taking great care in case there were any thorns hidden in the hard soles not visible to the naked eye.

Freya’s assessment of her feet being tough was correct, the soles hard and calloused, the big toe on her right foot blackened by bruising.

His heart made a strange tugging motion to imagine the agonies she must go through dancing night after night on toes that must be in perpetual pain. These were feet that had been abused by its owner in a never-ending quest for dance perfection. And what perfection it was...

Benjamin had been dragged across the world in his younger years by his mother, who had been Clara Casillas’s personal seamstress as well as her closest friend. His childhood home had been a virtual shrine to the ballet but he’d been oblivious to it all, his interest in ballet less than zero. He’d thought himself immune to any of the supposed beauty the dance had to offer. That had been until he’d watched a clip of Freya dancing as Sleeping Beauty on the Internet the other week.

There had been something in the way she moved when she danced that had made his throat tighten and the hairs on his arms lift. He’d watched only a minute of that clip before turning it off. He’d tried to rid his mind of the images that seemed to have etched themselves in his brain ever since.





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