The Blackmailed Bridegroom Read online

  Conrad had lived and breathed his work, and had had no intention of getting married. But then, in his mid-forties, Conrad had made the mistake of giving his then housekeeper carte blanche to hire and fire staff, and she’d taken on Paige’s mother to serve at table. During a misguided interlude after a rather lengthy and boozy dinner party, Paige had been conceived.

  Once presented with the reality of a child-to-be, Conrad had done the right thing and married the woman. He’d been hoping for a son and heir to take over the business. Instead, Paige had been born.

  It had not been a happy union, and when his wife of one year had run off to America with a salesman, Conrad hadn’t been shattered. Antonio imagined that his boss also hadn’t lost much sleep over the news, a few years later, that his errant wife had been found dead in a New York hotel room of a drug overdose.

  He was not a sentimental man.

  ‘I’m planning on retiring at the end of the year,’ Conrad went on now, snapping Antonio back to the matter at hand. ‘I’ll be moving permanently to my home in the Bahamas. When I do, the position of CEO of Fortune Productions will become vacant. I intend to promote you, Antonio,’ he said, and Antonio sucked in a sharp breath. ‘But only if you’re my son-in-law at the time,’ Conrad finished.

  Antonio exhaled with a rush. ‘Damn and blast it, Conrad, that’s blackmail!’

  ‘No. That’s good business. Who better to look after one’s interests but family? You, as a born and bred Italian, should appreciate that.’

  Antonio kept his temper with difficulty. ‘And if I refuse?’ he bit out.

  ‘I’ll make the same offer to Brock Masters. I imagine he could handle both jobs almost as well.’

  Antonio gritted his teeth. Brock Masters was head of the North American Division. Publicly, he was all capped teeth and false charm, in Antonio’s opinion. Handsome as Satan, but privately he had the morals of the Marquis de Sade.

  ‘He’ll ruin the company,’ Antonio warned. ‘And he’ll destroy your daughter,’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘If you think that, Antonio,’ Conrad said smoothly, ‘you know what to do.’

  ‘You’re a ruthless devil, do you know that?’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  ‘Yet you want me to marry your daughter!’

  ‘She needs a real man for a change. One who will keep her on her toes in order to keep him. And one who can give her what she keeps looking for.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘What all women want. Love, of course.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Conrad, you know darned well I don’t love her.’

  Conrad shrugged. ‘What’s love but an illusion anyway? Just tell Paige you love her. The silly little fool won’t know the difference, as long as the sex is good. And the sex will be good, I’m sure. The way the ladies chase after you—even after one short evening in your bed—speaks volumes for your abilities in that department.’

  Antonio stared at the man. He almost felt sorry for Paige, having such a cold-blooded bastard for a parent. He could not understand how a father could do such a thing to his daughter.

  Still, Antonio was not a fool. He knew if he knocked Conrad back on this he was finished at Fortune Productions. Brock Masters hated his guts. Antonio supposed he could quit and find another job with a rival company, settle back and watch the rot set in at Fortune Productions. It would serve Conrad right if he did just that.

  But pride in a job well done—and in the company—would not let him seriously consider such an action. And then there was the added image of Paige, being seduced, corrupted and destroyed by an amoral, cocaine-snorting pervert.

  Antonio’s stomach turned over. A silly little fool she might be, but she didn’t deserve that.

  ‘Under the circumstances,’ he said, in that coolly ruthless voice which emerged when he was cornered, ‘I will expect something in writing.’

  Conrad beamed. ‘But of course, Antonio. I’ll have it ready for you when you come to dinner here tonight.’

  Antonio frowned. ‘Tonight?’

  ‘I thought the sooner you got started the better. After all, you have to be back in London in a fortnight. A whirlwind romance is just what the doctor ordered. I see no reason why Paige shouldn’t travel back with you, once she’s wearing your engagement ring.’

  ‘You expect her to agree to marry me in two short weeks?’

  ‘You’ve negotiated more difficult contracts in much faster time, Antonio. Speaking of contracts, the day you marry Paige you will have your contract as CEO of Fortune Productions, plus I will give you the deeds to this house as a wedding present.’

  ‘No, thank you, Conrad. The contract will do. I wouldn’t want to live here.’ Even if he could tolerate the space, he didn’t want to be surrounded by Conrad’s extra ears.

  Conrad smiled. ‘I had a feeling you’d say that. Shall we expect you around seven-thirty, then?’

  ‘Are you sure Paige will still be here?’ Antonio commented caustically.

  ‘I should think so. Her latest boyfriend gave her quite a scare.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He hit her.’

  Antonio was surprised at how angry this news made him. There again, violence against women had always pushed savage buttons in him. ‘I gather you know this charmer’s name and address?’ he ground out.

  ‘Actually, no, I don’t.’

  ‘But you always know where Paige is living and who with!’

  Conrad sighed. ‘I stopped putting Lew on the job this past year. I just couldn’t take it any more. I have no idea what she’s been up to since January. Paige rang me out of the blue last night around one, and asked if Jim could come and pick her up at Central Station. She sounded scared, which, as you know, isn’t like Paige at all. But the penny dropped once I saw the big bruise on her face. She wouldn’t tell me anything when I asked her last night. But maybe she’ll tell you.’

  ‘Maybe.’ If she did, Antonio was going to teach the creep a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry!

  Still, it had only been a question of time before Paige became mixed up with a really unsavoury type. The girl never could see the risks she was taking in living with men she didn’t really know. She had no common sense, and no appreciation of the consequences of her actions. She’d be the perfect victim for the likes of Brock Masters!

  Possibly there were excuses for her many and potentially dangerous relationships—Antonio was beginning to appreciate there’d been little enough warmth and affection here at home—but one would have thought she’d have learned by now. Almost twenty-three, and she was still looking for love in all the wrong places!

  Well, she certainly won’t find it with you, either, came the coldly cynical thought.

  ‘You know, Conrad,’ he said with a sardonic twist of his mouth. ‘Has it occurred to you that Paige might say no to marriage, whether she falls in love with me or not?’

  ‘It did cross my mind. If needs be, I suggest you use a method as old as time.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Get her pregnant.’

  Antonio’s eyes widened.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t find such a task beyond you,’ his boss drawled. ‘I gather the Wilding girl had to have a little operation before she could become engaged to the Jansen millions. Which was understandable. She couldn’t risk a black-eyed baby born to a blond, blue-eyed father, could she?’

  Antonio momentarily went white. Lauren had been pregnant when she’d run home to Daddy? She’d aborted his child, just to marry money?

  ‘You really know how to strike below the belt, Conrad,’ he said bitterly. ‘How long have you known about my relationship with Lauren?’

  ‘From the start. Do you honestly think I would employ a man to be my personal assistant and to live in my home if I hadn’t had him thoroughly checked out? Forget the Wilding girl, Antonio. She was a fool, and so was her father. I know a good man when I see one. Marry my daughter, and you’ll never regret it.’

  No
w that, Antonio conceded ruefully, was a matter of opinion.

  Rising from his chair, he set a cool black gaze upon his future father-in-law and stretched out his hand. ‘It’s a deal.’

  Conrad took, then pumped his hand. ‘Splendid, my boy. Splendid. I knew you’d make the right decision. See you tonight, around seven-thirty. We’ll have a celebratory drink together before dinner.’

  Antonio said nothing to that, just spun on his heels and strode towards the doorway.

  Evelyn barely had time to retreat hastily from where she’d been listening to every single word.

  CHAPTER TWO

  PAIGE woke mid-afternoon and just lay there for a while, staring up at the bedroom ceiling, thinking.

  Home again.

  If you could call this wretched house a home, that was.

  The word home normally conjured up feelings of peace and warmth. It was where you could be yourself; where you were most relaxed; where you felt loved and accepted.

  But home had never been like that for Paige. Fortune Hall was a cold, heartless place which evoked nothing in her but feelings of failure and inadequacy, of being unwanted and unloved, of being unsure of who she was or what she wanted out of life.

  Only once had Paige momentarily been happy in this house: the year when Antonio Scarlatti had first come to Fortune Hall to live.

  The memory of their first meeting was indelibly imprinted on her brain. It had been her last year in high school, and she’d caught the train home for the Easter break, feeling miserable when her father had said he couldn’t possibly meet her at Central.

  ‘Just catch a taxi home, Paige,’ had been his offhand and impatient words on the telephone the night before. ‘It’s not as though it’s far. I can’t leave an important meeting for such a silly little thing.’

  Such a silly little thing! That was what she was to him. A silly little thing. It was what she’d always been to him. A nuisance. An inconvenience. He’d never loved her, or made time for her. Not once.

  Paige had stepped off the train at Central, no longer expecting to be met, so she’d been startled when a dark-haired, dashingly handsome young man had approached her and introduced himself as her father’s new personal assistant, Antonio Scarlatti. She vaguely remembered thinking he didn’t have an Italian accent at all, but that he had the most riveting eyes. Black and penetrating and incredibly sexy.

  ‘Your father mentioned your arrival by train today,’ he’d added, while those eyes held hers. ‘I didn’t think it right for you to make your way home all by yourself, so I told him it would be my pleasure to meet you. Come…’ And he’d cupped her elbow with a gallant hand.

  She’d been captivated from that moment.

  Captivated and completely infatuated.

  By the time he’d driven her through the gates of Fortune Hall, her racing heart had succumbed to a hero worship which had banished every other male idol whom her love-starved teenage heart had gathered over the previous few years. Her favourite music and movie stars were nothing compared to Antonio Scarlatti.

  By the end of the two-week break she’d centred a thousand romantic hopes and dreams around him, crying her devastation when the holiday had ended all too swiftly. During the next term at school she’d spent long hours every day, imagining and fantasising all sorts of exciting scenarios with her handsome Italian at centre stage, till she’d begun to believe her own fantasies, turning each simple smile he’d given her into evidence that he was as secretly enamoured with her as she was with him.

  Her schoolwork had suffered for her daydreaming, and the comments on her report card had been none too impressive to bring home at the end of term: Paige would do a lot better if only she would concentrate! Paige is an intelligent girl but her mind doesn’t seem to be on her work!

  Which it hadn’t been. Yet what a wonderful term it had been! What secret pleasures she’d hugged to herself, thinking about her beautiful Antonio all the time, weaving all sorts of fanciful dreams around him.

  Her next holiday at home had seemed to cement all those dreams. The things he carefully hadn’t said. Those secretive but scorching glances he’d bestowed on her across the dinner table. The way he’d held her slightly longer than necessary the day they’d run into each other on the stairs. The inordinate time he’d taken to help her find a book in the library one evening.

  Paige had been sure he was just waiting till she finished school that year before he showed his hand. By then she would be eighteen, and a woman!

  In her mind, they would eventually get married and have half a dozen babies, beautiful, black-eyed children who adored their mother and father and were so very happy, wrapped in the type of warm cocoon of family love that she’d never experienced herself, but she’d vowed to give her children.

  By the time she’d come home again in September she’d become totally obsessed with him, her rather romantic feelings taking a more physical turn when she’d spotted him swimming in the pool the first morning of her holiday. She’d watched him from her bedroom window while he’d done lap after impressive lap, her eyes widening when he’d climbed out and just stood there as he towelled himself down, wearing only the briefest of black swimming costumes.

  There had been something decidedly animal in his powerful physique, with its deeply olive skin and light covering of dark body hair, plus the way he was drying himself, with rough, rubbing strokes. Paige had gobbled him up with her eyes while the sexuality simmering deep within her feelings surfaced, stark and startling in its raw and naked need. Suddenly, she’d craved more than his love. She’d craved the man, and that part of him which made him a man, her galloping heart seizing up with shock at the explicitness of her desire.

  When he’d looked up and spied her watching him at the window she’d nearly died, her face flushing wildly. He’d stared back at her for a few seconds, before whirling away and striding off inside the pool house.

  Paige hadn’t needed another sign.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to finish school, or for him to say something. She had to speak up first. But when she’d gone in search of him after breakfast it had been to find her father and his assistant had left on a business trip. They would not be back for a week. It had been the longest week of Paige’s life, only made bearable by the heart to hearts she’d had with Brad, her oldest and closest friend.

  By the time Antonio had come back she’d been dying to talk to him, breathless and emboldened by the surety of his love.

  Oddly enough, Paige could no longer recall exactly what she’d said to him. Or what he’d said back. The only words which lived on in her memory were his calling her a silly little girl. They remained very clear, as did the overwhelming wave of humiliation which had accompanied them.

  Suffice to accept that it had been the most awful moment of her life.

  Paige found it ironic that she didn’t rate what had happened last night to be nearly as awful. Jed might have hurt her physically, and he’d frightened her enough into coming home, but he didn’t have the power to hurt her where the hurt never healed. How could he, when she didn’t love him?

  Her right hand lifted to push her hair back behind her ear before gingerly touching the tender swelling just below her temple. Pity the blow hadn’t knocked some sense into her, she thought bitterly.

  Still being in love with Antonio was insane. She could see that. But recognising the stupidity of her feelings seemed to make no difference.

  Brad had talked her out of her ‘infatuation’ for a while, had made her temporarily believe it was nothing but a schoolgirl crush, a romantic obsession which had nothing to do with reality.

  ‘You don’t even know the man,’ he’d reasoned with her during the dark days after Antonio’s visit to the beach-house. ‘Your love’s a figment of your romantic teenage imagination, conjured up because you need someone to love, and to love you back. But it’s not real, Paige. It’s a destructive self-indulgence to keep harbouring such a one-sided obsession. Let it go, love. Let him go.’ />
  So she had, for a while, and eventually she’d settled for a different sort of love with Brad than the one she’d dreamt of in Antonio’s arms.

  Still, looking back, she did not regret it. Brad had been kind to her. Kind and understanding and undemanding. He’d taught her a lot about the sort of person she was, made her see that she was very intelligent, despite not having done too well at school. He’d even encouraged her to go to the local tech and finish her schooling, which she had. She might still have been with him if one stormy afternoon and an unforgiving sea hadn’t ended their carefree and easygoing co-existence.

  She’d stayed on at the beach-house for a few weeks. Brad had always paid the rent ahead in three-month lots. But in the end loneliness—and curiosity, perhaps—had sent her back home to Sydney, to Fortune Hall, her father, and Antonio.

  A big mistake.

  For nothing had changed.

  Nothing.

  She hadn’t been able to get out of the place fast enough, answering an ad in the paper to share a flat with two other girls and taking the first job she could get, waitressing in a coffee house on Circular Quay.

  Another big mistake. Not the job. She’d rather liked waitressing, enjoying the contact with tourists and people always on the go. Paige had soon found, however, that sharing accommodation with other girls was hazardous in the extreme, unless you looked like the back of a bus. Unfortunately, Paige’s long blond hair, pretty face and striking figure had caused all sorts of troubles with the other girls’ boyfriends, who hadn’t been able to keep their eyes and hands off. After one extremely unpleasant encounter—and a disbelieving flatmate—Paige had found herself out on the street with nowhere to go except home once more.