The Hostage Bride (6 page)

‘Your mother's fine.'

Once again, Joe's easy voice was like a shock to her system.

‘But then, of course, she never wanted you to marry Edward in the first place.'

No, Felicity reflected. Her mother had been the one person she hadn't been able to deceive. Claire Hamilton had seen through the careful part her daughter had been acting for the past few weeks and picked up the anxiety and panic behind it. Felicity had tried to assure her that her only problem was pre-wedding nerves but she knew she hadn't been entirely convincing.

‘She just hopes you know what you're doing.'

Doing?

‘Dad…' Drawing a deep breath, Felicity decided that taking a risk was the only way. ‘Dad—I'm with Valeron.'

Her eyes flew to where Rico stood silently against the wall, ebony eyes alert and watching every move, every flicker of emotion across her face. Tensing fearfully, she nerved herself for what she thought would be his inevitable reaction, anticipating that he would launch himself angrily towards her, snatching away the phone in fury at what she had revealed.

Surprisingly, it didn't come. Instead he seemed quite content to simply wait and watch.

‘I—Ricardo—'

‘Yes, we know.'

To her consternation, once again her father failed to react to what she thought would send him into a fit of panic. Instead, amazingly, he actually laughed.

‘Edward was furious at first, but now he has other things to occupy his mind.'

‘
How
do you know?'

What had they received? A ransom demand? Some other sort of a threat? But if that was the case, then surely her father wouldn't appear quite so calm and relaxed.

‘Dad—what's going on?'

‘Going on, sweetheart? Well, I would have thought that you'd be the one to tell us that. After all, you're the one who's snared Valeron.'

‘Snared…'

Felicity actually took the phone away from her ear and stared at it in total disbelief. Her father couldn't have said what she thought she'd heard. It was impossible! But he had sounded so ridiculously good-humoured. A new, worrying suspicion slid into her mind.

‘Dad—are you drunk? Look—can I speak to Edward?'

But it was as if the sound of the other man's name was like a goad to Rico, pushing him into sudden action.

‘That's enough,' he snapped, taking two swift strides forward, his hand coming out to take the phone from her.

Pausing only long enough to speak the four crisp words, ‘I'll be in touch,' into the mouthpiece, he switched it off, clicking the cover shut and pushing it deep into the inner pocket of his jacket.

‘I was using that!' Felicity protested, her hand going out to retrieve the phone, only to find herself blocked as Rico's hard bronzed fingers clamped firmly around her wrist holding her still. ‘I still had things to say.'

‘You had said quite enough,' Rico returned imperturbably, deep eyes flat and emotionless. ‘If you behave yourself, I'll let you ring again later.'

‘If I behave.'

Bitterly she echoed his use of the word, wishing she dared rebel but knowing that she would be risking retribution if she tried any such foolishness.

‘And I suppose that by “behaving”, you mean doing exactly as you say?'

Those impressive shoulders under the fine tailoring lifted in a shrug of supreme indifference.

‘You can try doing otherwise,' he declared flatly. ‘And see where it gets you. But, frankly, I would advise against it.'

It was his calmness that got to her. The cold, obsidian darkness of his eyes, the totally emotionless tone in which he had spoken, the complete lack of expression in the words he had used, all added up to an appearance of total carelessness. But a creeping sensation running down her spine warned her that she would be a fool to believe it in any way.

Ricardo Valeron was in complete charge of this situation, and what he said went. His hands were on the reins, controlling every movement, every development, and she could kick and scream as hard as she liked; it would be to no avail. She had about as much power over her own future as a marionette that moves only according to the whim of the puppeteer who pulls the strings.

But that didn't mean she was about to lie down and let him walk all over her.

‘I don't know what you think you're going to gain by all this! From where I stand you're hardly making a very good job of this kidnapping business.'

‘And, as we've already established, you are the expert in such things.'

The way that beautiful mouth twitched faintly at one corner as Rico fought against the impulse to give into his amusement was almost her undoing. She couldn't bear the thought that he was laughing at her; that he wasn't even taking her seriously.

‘There are laws against such things in this country!' she declared furiously. ‘You can be prosecuted—imprisoned! I believe there's even a possible life sentence if you're found guilty.'

That hint of a smile grew, putting a devilishly taunting gleam into the depths of those black coffee eyes.

‘Ah, but you see, Felicity,
querida
, no court in the world would possibly convict me on this.'

‘Of course they will! They'll have to!'

Her temper ran away with her, blinding her to the possible dangers of her impulsive words.

‘I'll give evidence against you—I—I'll even bring a private prosecution, if I have to. I'll make sure you pay for this!'

‘You can try,
gatita
, but I doubt if you'd succeed. After all, why should any court want to hand out a life sentence to a man who has already taken on such a thing quite willingly?'

‘A man who has
what
?'

Felicity could only shake her head in confusion, her grey eyes clouded with incomprehension.

‘You're not making any sense! Just what are you talking about?'

‘It's quite simple,
gatita
.'

Rico's voice was a rich purr of triumph, the gleam in his eyes brightening as verbally he moved in for the kill.

‘What is it you say? For better for worse, for richer for poorer…until death do us part.'

‘You've really lost me now.'

Was the man totally off his head? She had thought things couldn't get any worse but now it seemed that she was involved with a complete maniac.

‘Just what have the words of the marriage service to do with anything?'

‘They have everything to do with this,
mi ángel
. There are some who would say that marriage itself is a life sentence, and certainly no court on earth would condemn a man for wanting to run away with his promised bride.'

‘His…'

Felicity's head was swimming, her stomach twisting in panic. Her throat was painfully dry and she had to swallow hard to relieve the constriction in it before she could even try to speak.

‘I'm not going to marry you! No one would ever believe that!' she croaked unevenly.

‘Oh, but they already do believe it,' Rico assured her, the conviction in his eyes and his voice turning her blood to ice and leaching all the colour from her face. ‘Why do you think your father was so pleased with life?'

‘No!'

Her mind was just one wild scream of protest but still the only sound that she could force from her throat was a raw, husky whisper.

‘Yes,' Rico insisted with soft menace. ‘Oh, yes. Everyone, all your family and friends who gathered in the cathedral think that you left poor Edward standing at the altar because you had fallen madly in love with someone else and wanted to be with him.'

‘And that someone else is
you
?'

She couldn't smooth the horror from her voice, a horror that doubled, trebled in strength as Rico inclined his proud dark head in nonchalant agreement.

‘But why should they think that? What on earth would make them believe—?'

‘They believe it because you told them. Because that was what was in the message you sent—'

‘The message
you
sent!' Felicity broke in on him, her voice shaking with horror. ‘You said that! You told the lie! I never…'

He didn't even have the grace to look shamefaced. Instead he simply regarded her with that cool, unmoving stare, those luxurious lashes looking impossibly long around the darkness of his eyes.

‘It doesn't matter who said what,
querida
,' he drawled
with slow insolence. ‘What matters is what everyone believes, and they all believe what they've been told. No one will be setting the police on our trail. No one will be coming after us now, or at any other time in the future. Why should they when they think that all we want is to be alone together?'

Shock and consternation froze her tongue in her mouth. She couldn't force herself to form a single word, her brain too numb to collect together any rational thoughts. She longed to be able to scream at him, to yell defiance straight into his watchful face, to tell him she didn't believe…

But everything about him told her that he had spoken nothing but the truth. That calm frighteningly relaxed demeanour, the controlled delivery of his words revealed an unshakeable conviction of everything he had said.

And so she could only stand frozen to the spot and watch transfixed as he slid one long-fingered hand into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a jingling keying.

The faint rasp of metal on metal as he pushed a key into the lock on the door, the click as he turned it, making it secure, scraped over the tightly drawn nerves that were too close to the surface of her skin, making her shiver miserably.

‘So you see, sweet Felicity, we might as well make ourselves comfortable, because it looks as if there will only be the two of us here for the rest of the night.'

Casually he tossed the bunch of keys up into the air, catching them one-handed as they fell back down, and Felicity was so painfully on edge that when he did so she actually flinched back sharply as if afraid of something lurking in the shadows.

‘As a matter of fact,' Rico continued still in that lazily drawling tone, ‘it's obvious it will be just you and me for the foreseeable future. And that is exactly the way I want it to be.'

T
HE
sun was high in a bright, cloudless sky before Felicity even stirred, the brilliance of the day almost blinding her as she reluctantly opened her heavy eyes and peered around her. It had taken her a long, long time to fall asleep last night, and now the clinging, heavy strands of drowsiness still lingered like sticky spiders' webs, adhering to her thoughts and dulling them painfully.

For a few long, welcome seconds she actually didn't recall where she was and stared in blank incomprehension at a room she didn't recognise. It certainly wasn't the bedroom at Highson House where she had been expecting to find herself in on the morning after her wedding.

But then her memory returned and with it a stream of appalling, unwelcome images that flooded into her mind, swamping her thoughts and making her head drop back against the pillow again with a groan of rejection and despair.

‘Ricardo Valeron!'

The sound of his name was like an imprecation on her lips, driven from them by a sense of impotent fury and dejection.

‘Rico the louse Valeron! Rico damn-him-to-hell's-horrors rotten Valeron!'

There was a whole new sense of satisfaction to be gained from creating abusive titles for the man who had brought her here. Stringing them together in a litany of hatred, while it actually achieved nothing positive at least it made her feel a little better for venting the force of her feelings.

‘Rico the—'

‘Yes?'

The response came so suddenly that Felicity actually started up in bed, her wild-eyed gaze going to the doorway and focussing apprehensively on Rico's tall, strong form, trying to gauge his mood.

But it was impossible to read anything from the inscrutable set of his hard features, the way the brilliant dark eyes were hooded and unrevealing. Seeing him, Felicity couldn't hold back a groan of disappointment.

‘I had thought that you were just a dream.'

A slow smile curled Rico's beautiful mouth, making her heart kick sharply in her chest.

‘I dreamed of you too,
querida
,' he drawled softly, ebony eyes sweeping over her from the top of her ruffled blonde head and down her sleep-warmed face, lingering briefly, sensually on her wide, cloudy grey eyes before dropping to the fullness of her mouth.

Oh, yes, he'd dreamed of her, Rico remembered, fighting the erotic kick his body gave him. He'd dreamed of that rose-coloured mouth and the pleasure it could bring, the soft caress of it on his flesh, until his body had overheated and he'd woken, aching, throbbing, his pulse racing and his skin slick with sweat.

After that it had proved almost impossible to get back to sleep for the rest of the night. He had lain awake for hours imagining her here in this bed, in the room next to his, his ears sensitive to even the slightest sound she made.

But his imaginings hadn't even come close to the delights of reality.

‘I never said I dreamed
of
you!' Felicity protested indignantly, struggling to sit back against the pillows and sweeping a silken swathe of soft blonde hair back out of her eyes. ‘And if I had, believe me, it would have been such a nightmare that it would have had me screaming in a panic.'

Had she sounded too vehement? Would those observant
bitter chocolate eyes see past the shield she had tried to put up between his probing gaze and her feelings and realise that she was struggling to convince herself almost as much as—if not more than—him?

‘I would have woken up the whole house.'

‘But as there is no one here but the two of us, that would hardly have mattered.'

Rico strolled into the room and came to sit on the end of the bed, making Felicity curl her legs up rapidly to avoid any contact with his lean body, even through the softness of the luxurious duvet that covered her.

‘And I would have been only too happy to come and rescue you from your nightmares and soothe you back to sleep in my arms.'

‘Oh, I'll bet you would!' Felicity growled ungraciously, fighting the unwanted direction of her thoughts.

It was impossible not to let her eyes follow the long, lean lines of muscle in the smoothly olive-skinned arms exposed by the short sleeves of his navy polo shirt and imagine them being wrapped around her, their strength holding her close. The neck of the shirt was unbuttoned, opening to reveal just enough honeyed golden skin to tease and tantalise her sexually awakened senses. Heat licked along her veins, drying her mouth and making her pulse thud heavily.

‘But of course sleep would not be the first thing on my mind.'

‘No?'

Felicity's attempt at sarcastic disbelief was ruined by the way that the dryness of her throat turned the word into an embarrassing croak that revealed so much about her mental state, it sent hot colour flooding into her cheeks.

‘You do surprise me!'

‘And it would not be on your mind either,' he continued imperturbably, ignoring the cynicism of her comment. ‘Oh,
you might fight the idea at first—just a little—just for form's sake. But it would all be nothing but a pretence.'

‘You egotistical pig!'

Fiery rejection of his words flared in her grey eyes, her chin coming up sharply as she glared into his arrogant dark face.

‘You really think that all you'd have to do is click your fingers and any woman would come running like some panting little lap dog just waiting for the touch of its master's hand?'

‘Oh, no,
gatita
…'

Something in Rico's smile scraped a protective layer away from Felicity's skin, leaving it raw and vulnerable.

‘For one thing, when you are around, I do not want
any
woman. I just want one—and only one. And I'm sure I don't need to tell you who she is.'

He didn't have to say a word. It was there in the darkness of his eyes, in the way they were fixed on her face. Everything about him declared without words just what was in his mind. The heady atmosphere of desire seemed to permeate the air of the room.

And the problem was that she felt it too. Even just sitting here like this, her skin was prickling with awareness, her thoughts whirling. She inhaled the warm, clean scent of his body with every breath she took in and her wanton senses clamoured for something more than just the small pleasures of simply observing, which was all she dared allow them.

‘When you are in the room I am only aware of you. There could be a hundred other women present and I would see none of them. There would only be you…'

‘And am I supposed to be flattered by that?'

Desperately she used aggression as a self-defence mechanism. She didn't want to listen to his seductive tone, was terrified of being swayed by his cajolery, but in spite of
herself the extravagant compliments had made her heart flutter betrayingly.

‘Not flattered, no.'

Rico shook his dark head, his smile fading, leaving behind a seriousness she didn't dare even think to doubt.

‘Believe me, I do not flatter.'

His accent had deepened on the words, turning them into a tigerishly sensual purr that stroked over the mental feathers his earlier comments had ruffled.

‘I simply state a fact—and that fact is that you are a beautiful woman—the most beautiful woman it has ever been my experience to know. I only have to look at you to want you. And you feel the same about me.'

‘No…'

In her turn Felicity shook her head, willing herself to look away, to break the hold he had on her. But even as her mind screamed instructions her body refused to obey. Her eyes lingered on the handsome, intensely male figure before her.

‘No,' she tried again, more successfully this time.

‘Si!'
Rico insisted forcefully, dismissing her protest with a flick of his hand. ‘You know it's the truth. With you I would not even need to click my fingers. With you I can just sit back and wait…'

Suiting actions to the words, he relaxed back against the end of the bed, lounging with indolent elegance on the downy quilt, long, long legs in tight denim jeans coming dangerously close to her own. A light in his eyes challenged her to deny his arrogant assertion, a provocation she was determined to take up.

‘Then you'll have a very long wait indeed,' she declared furiously. ‘Hell would freeze over before I'd let you touch me again!'

‘Really, my sweet Felicity…'

Rico shook his head in mock reproach, black coffee eyes gleaming through thick, lushly curling lashes.

‘You really must stop throwing out these threats that you can't make good. Last night you said you would kill me if I so much as touched you; this morning you are like a little wild cat, spitting and hissing in a pretence of fury…'

‘It's not a
pretence
!' she spluttered, her fury increasing a hundredfold as she saw one dark straight brow lift in cynical questioning. ‘I am
not joking
!'

‘And neither am I,
mi ángel
,' he assured her, the soft murmur of the words threaded through with a darker, deeper undertone that made her shiver involuntarily, her toes curling nervously under the pale blue cotton. ‘I have never been more deadly serious in my life.'

The dark-eyed gaze held her smoky grey eyes with a magnetic intensity, keeping her transfixed so that no matter how she longed to tear her eyes away, to look anywhere but into the depths of his, she couldn't manage it. She could only sit there, mesmerised by the magnetic force of his presence and the low, husky sound of his voice as it coiled round her like the scent of incense, weaving a hypnotic spell to hold her prisoner without any effort.

‘You know this is there between us, so why try to deny it? Why try to fight something we both want?'

The light covering of the quilt was becoming far too hot for Felicity to bear, her skin burning and sensitive even to the slightest touch of Rico's scorching gaze. She longed to toss aside the bedcovers in an attempt to cool her racing pulse but the recollection that she was only wearing a loose white tee-shirt, provided by Rico in the place of sleepwear the previous night, made her determined to grit her teeth and endure the discomfort that was more mental than physical.

‘I don't want it!'

‘No,
querida
?'

Rico's tone was frankly sceptical.

‘I think in this case I know you better than you know yourself. Remember, I held you in my arms last night. I kissed you and caressed you and felt your response to those kisses—the way you went wild for my touch.'

Felicity tried once more to deny what he was saying but he froze her shake of her head with one flashing glance from those deep brown eyes.

‘I know that you want more—that you are still as hungry for me as I am for you. But I also know that you are a coward. That you do not dare to admit your need…'

‘A coward? How dare you? I'll show you who's a coward!'

Incensed by his goading tone, the gleam of contempt in the brilliant dark eyes, she threw caution to the wind, flinging back the quilt as she launched herself at him in a physical expression of her mental fury.

‘How
dare
…?'

Too late she realised just what she had done, the danger in which her unthinking reaction had placed her.

She was lying half across the hard male body, the firm wall of his chest against her breasts, the powerful length of his legs beneath hers. And the already barely adequate covering of the white tee-shirt had rucked up around her waist, exposing embarrassing amounts of her own slim pale legs, the soft curves of her buttocks.

As Felicity froze in horror, shock depriving her of the power of speech or movement, Rico tilted his dark head to look down into her wide, appalled grey eyes.

‘Do you know,
gatita
, I really think you should keep that shirt. It looks so much more appealing on you than it ever did on me.'

If the truth was told, the combination of the soft, clinging material and the slim, curving lines of her body beneath it had lit a fire in his senses that had heated his blood, making
his heart thud in a heavy languorous pulse all the time they had been talking.

But then she had moved and that warmth had flared from sensuous smoulder to raging conflagration in the space of a heartbeat. Every inch of him had tightened in hungry craving, his body growing hard and yearning in a second, totally beyond his control. And as if that wasn't bad enough he now had to endure having the soft weight of her lying across him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her legs tangled with his. At his sides his hands clenched over the blue quilt, fighting against the impulse—the
need
—to reach out and touch the soft flesh she had so recklessly exposed to his darkened gaze.

‘Felicity…' was all he could manage, his voice roughened and husky as if his throat had dried in the heat that had spread through every cell in his body.

There it was again, Felicity thought hazily. That sensuous, tantalisingly accented drawl that turned her name into an exotic alien sound.

Fayleeseetay.

The four syllables swirled round her head like an enchanter's incantation.
Fayleeseetay
was her, and yet someone else entirely. Someone unknown and alluring, with a lifestyle that was much more colourful and glamorous than her own matter of fact existence. Someone suited to be the partner of this wicked, dangerous, but nevertheless disturbingly enthralling brigand of a man. A bandit with dark eyes and…

No! Looking into his eyes was dangerous. It was taking a risk that she couldn't afford. It meant seeing how those already dark eyes had become even more heavy-lidded and impenetrable behind the lush curtain of jet-black lashes.

It meant remembering… Remembering how last night he had looked into her face in just this way. And how then the pupils of those stunning eyes had expanded until there
was no trace of any coffee-brown, other than the tiny rim at the outermost edge of the iris, faintly outlining the black. And that darkness had told its own story, sending a shiver down her spine with its revelation of deep, fierce desire, its promise of passion to come.