The Blackmailed Bride

She could hardly believe her luck when the door opened at the first try. Relieved she wouldn’t have to put her admittedly hazy knowledge of lock picking—second hand, naturally—to the test, Kate slid the credit card she’d brought for the purpose into the back pocket of her dark jeans and adjusted the dark hood on her head so that it covered all her pale hair.

Shining her torch around the darkened room, she picked her way stealthily through the discarded garments littering the carpet. Her skin crawled and she stifled a scream as her foot got entangled in a shirt. This whole enterprise was making her feel grubby. After this is over I’ll need a stiff drink and a bath, not necessarily in that order she thought as she carefully balanced the torch on top of the chest of drawers.

Her hands were shaking so much, it took her two goes to slide the top drawer open. Concentrate, Kate she told herself, taking a deep fortifying breath. It’s my lucky day she decided as her fingers closed around an envelope—the shape of which felt very promising…

Her newly fortified wits fled gibbering in panic as the room was suddenly flooded with strong light from a powerful flashlight that dwarfed her own feeble beam. Before she even had a chance to turn around, a pair of strong arms snaked around her, pinning one arm to her chest as, arched backwards by the tight embrace, her feet were lifted off the ground.

Her rudimentary Spanish could not cope with the staccato burst of furious-sounding words which hissed like bullets in her ear. With Susie’s warnings about this blackmailer and his shady friends ringing in her ears, she began to struggle wildly. With her free arm she flailed backwards, trying to inflict as much damage as possible, enough at least to make her captor loosen his grip. A chair and several sundry items, including her glasses, were casualties of her frenzied efforts to free herself.

Only this captor wasn’t letting her go, not even when she brought her trainer-shod heel—stilettos would have produced much more satisfactory results—down viciously onto his instep, the way they’d taught her in self-defence class. She took small comfort from the fact it must have hurt like hell because he cursed—at least it sounded like a curse.

Kate wasn’t a short woman and, though slim, she wasn’t delicate—she kept herself fit, she ran and enjoyed playing sports—but it soon became clear to her that she was vastly outclassed. It was obvious that restraining her was not overly exerting her captor, who wasn’t even breathing heavily. A pragmatist, she quickly accepted she couldn’t fight her way out of this situation—that left talking her way out, and she was good at that…

‘Please…let me go!’ she panted, forcing her body to go limp.

‘English?’

The startled exclamation across the room was the first indication to her that she wasn’t only outclassed but outnumbered too.

‘You’re English?’ The low, cultured voice close to her ear had only the faintest husky tinge of an attractive accent.

This must be one of the waiter’s sinister friends, she reasoned, recalling Susie’s comments on Luis’s charming broken English—unless that too had been part of his scam.

‘Of course I’m English!’ she exclaimed at her most haughty.

‘A woman…?’ The voice from across the room exclaimed.

‘I had noticed,’ her captor replied drily before switching to rapid Spanish.

Probably issuing instructions about where to dispose of my body, Kate thought, as she struggled in vain to catch the gist of what was being said. Her mind was working furiously. How long will it be before anyone misses me…? Not until morning at the earliest, she realised with dismay.

She’d excused herself early from dinner with her parents, pleading a headache, and if Susie had carried on drinking wine at the rate she had been when Kate had left she would now either be dead to the world or dancing the night away in the nearest night-club.

‘I’m going to put you down now. Do not try to escape.’

Kate nodded her head compliantly whilst privately vowing to do just the opposite should the opportunity arise.

Released from the iron grip and with her feet back on the ground, Kate’s knees displayed the consistency of cotton wool. Fortunately her spirit was more resilient. Chin up—not too much: she didn’t want to come across as bolshy, more an innocent victim of circumstance—she turned to face her aggressors.

‘Will you take that thing out of my eyes?’ she appealed, lifting a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the torch.

After a moment someone responded to her request.

She could now see, though the loss of her specs meant the one standing some way away was nothing but a blurred outline suggestive of threatening bulk. The one who had held her was another matter! He was close enough for her to see quite well. Like herself, he was clad from head to toe in black. There the similarity ended!

The hard, lean, muscle-packed torso Kate already knew about from her struggles; the rest of the package reduced her to a stunned silence. She blinked several times as she assimilated the attributes of her assailant, who ironically turned out to be the most physically perfect specimen of manhood she’d ever come across. These numerous attributes included ridiculously broad shoulders, snaky slim hips and long legs, and then there was his face…!

And what a face! God I’m thinking in superlatives, some objective corner of her mind observed as she drank in the details of his long, arrestingly attractive, angular features. His was a starkly uncompromising face—a high intelligent forehead, an almost hawkish nose reminiscent of the strong Moorish inheritance she’d seen reflected in many parts of Spain, his beautifully sculpted slashing cheekbones stretched his even golden-toned skin taut and his mouth was an intriguing combination of control and passion. The jutting angles and sculpted planes married sweetly, giving their owner a countenance that could never be overlooked in a crowd, but combined with his incongruously blue eyes, fringed with extravagant lush lashes and slanted ebony brows, the exceptional became the extraordinary.

The deep-set, startling blue eyes narrowed as he subjected her to a scrutiny just as thorough as her own of him—he didn’t appear overly impressed by what he saw. ‘Now, señorita, where is Gonzalez?’ he demanded impatiently.

CHAPTER TWO

MUTELY Kate shook her head.

He subjected her to another glare of biting derision before abruptly firing a quick sentence in Spanish at his companion who immediately extinguished the light.

For a moment there was total inky darkness. Kate, her brain working frantically, began to speculate on her chances of getting to the door before she was caught. It had to be evens or better? What did she have to lose? Quite a lot, actually, came the instant reply, and besides you haven’t got the photos yet.

‘Don’t even think about it.’

She jumped as the wry voice emerged from the inky blackness, slicing through her frantic thoughts of escape.

The owner’s powerful profile that matched the dark dangerous drawl was revealed as the second man pulled back the curtain, allowing the moonlight to filter into the room.

Kate blinked, dazzled, as the flashlight once more swept across her face; it moved past her and she saw the second man shake his head.

‘Are you expecting him tonight?’ The tall one, who had boss written all over him, recommenced his interrogation.

‘I’ve never met Gonzalez,’ she rebutted honestly.

Kate suspected she might be in the middle of a falling out between villains; she didn’t want to accidentally reveal anything that might make her position even more precarious.

Under the circumstances, playing dumb might not be so hard, she decided bitterly, because only someone spectacularly stupid would have blundered in here like this! They must, she reasoned—now I can reason!—have been lying in wait.

Her guileless response evoked no softening in the magnificently moody face of her sinister interrogator.

‘You just wandered in here by accident…?’ His eyes skimmed the outfit she’d chosen for her first foray into breaking and entering. ‘Dressed like that?’ A derisive snort emerged from between those fascinating lips—cruel lips, she thought, unable to control the fearful little shudder that chased along her spine.

‘You’re one to talk,’ she retorted, peering myopically from one man to the other; both their muscular bodies were sheathed in close-fitting black outfits. We must look like a convention of cat burglars; her full lips twitched at the mental image of a social gathering of black-clad thieves.

‘You find something funny about this?’ he grated incredulously.

The second man had faded into the shadows, apparently content to let his partner in crime do all the talking—perhaps he was the muscle. Not that this guy looked like he needed any help in that area, she mused, as her eyes slid over his impressive torso—not an ounce of spare flesh anywhere that she could see. In fact, in that close-fitting top, if she squinted she could just about make out the slabs of individual muscle across… Stop! The warning voice inside her head shrieked.

Kate took a deep breath and pushed her fear and lustful speculation aside as she tried to view the situation objectively—or at least without gibbering fearfully or drooling lustfully. If she was going to get out of this, he was the one she had to talk round, she decided, weighing up her opposition objectively. What she saw was not wildly encouraging. She’d seen rock faces with more give than that chiselled jawline.

‘Oh, yes, I’m just wild about being jumped on in the dark by some stupid big thug,’ she was frustrated into commenting bitterly. She prodded her aching ribs tentatively. ‘I’ll probably be black and blue tomorrow, which isn’t a good look in a bikini…’ she grumbled, even though she favoured one-piece bathing suits. Talking, even if she was talking rubbish, gave her time to think… At least, that was the theory…

‘If I’m such a vicious thug of limited intelligence, shouldn’t you be treating me with a little more respect…?’

The man had a point and, as for the intelligence part, if those alert eyes were any indication at all he had a brain like a steel trap.

‘Is that a threat?’

‘If I threaten you, you’ll know about it.’

‘I see not a threat, just a boast.’ With dismay, she saw a flicker of interest enter those laser-like eyes—she didn’t want his interest. Her release from this depended on him considering her harmless and an air of stupidity wouldn’t do her case any harm either. Despite this conviction, she couldn’t stop herself adding, ‘I’m normally prepared to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but in this instance I don’t think there’s any if about it. You are a vicious thug and yes, I probably should shut up, but when I’m nervous I babble…always have done…’