The Price Of A Bride. Michelle ReidЧитать онлайн книгу.
was why neither Jack Frazier nor Alexander Doumas would ever have any control over her son. They could lay legal claims as mere blood relatives—she didn’t mind that. They could even leave him every penny they possessed when they both decided to make this world a better place by leaving it.
But they would not have any control over who and what her son grew into. She already had in her possession her father’s written agreement to that. And when tomorrow came she would be getting the same written agreement from Mr Doumas.
And how could she feel so sure about that? Because she had his measure. She had watched her father carefully mark it when he got the arrogant Greek to agree to any of this in the first place. If Alexander Doumas was prepared to wed and bed a woman just to get his hands on his old family pile then he would give away his first-born child also.
‘If he surprises us both and doesn’t give in to your terms,’ her father posed quietly, ‘what will you do then?’
‘Wait until you come up with someone who will agree.’
His eyes began to gleam. ‘The next on the list is Marcus Sidcup,’ he reminded her silkily. ‘Can you honestly bring yourself to let him touch you, Mia?’
Marcus Sidcup was a grotesque little man several years older than her father who turned her stomach every time she set eyes on him. ‘I’m a whore,’ she replied. ‘Whores can’t be too picky. I’ll close my eyes and think nice thoughts, like what to wear at your funeral.’
He laughed. Her opinion of him had never mattered simply because she didn’t matter to him, the main reason being that she reminded him too much of his dead wife’s many infidelities. Her brother Tony’s conception had been just as suspect as her own, but because he had been male her father bad been willing to accept him as his own. Mia being female, though, her paternity was an entirely different matter.
‘If all goes well with Mr Doumas tomorrow,’ she tossed in as a mere aside, ‘I intend to go and visit Suzanna at school. She will need to know why I won’t be around much for the next year or so’.
‘You will tell her only what she needs to be told.’ her father commanded sharply.
‘I’m not a complete fool,’ Mia replied. ‘I have no wish to raise her hopes, but neither do I want her to think that I’ve deserted her.’
‘She will be making no trips to visit you in Greece, either,’ Jack Frazier warned her, ‘so don’t go all soft and try to placate her with promises that I might agree to it because I will not.’
Mia never for one moment thought that he would. Her eyes bleak and her heart aching for that small scrap of a seven-year-old who had seen even less of this man’s love than she herself had, she walked out of the room before she was tempted to say something really nasty.
She couldn’t afford to be nasty. She couldn’t afford to get her father’s back up, not when she was this close to achieving her own precious dream.
And she couldn’t afford to lose Alexander Doumas either, she admitted heavily to herself, because no matter how much she despised him for being what he was he was her best option in this deal she had made with her father.
Pray to God he was as hungry as her father claimed he was, was the final thought she allowed herself to have that day on the subject.
The call came early the next morning just as Mia was emerging from her usual twenty laps of their indoor swimming pool. Mrs Leyton came to inform her that a Mr Doumas was waiting to speak to her on the phone. Wringing the water out of her hair as she walked across the white tiles, she went to the pool phone extension and picked up the receiver.
‘Yes?’ she said coolly.
‘Yes,’ he threw right back with a grim economy of words that showed every bit of his angry distaste. ‘Be here at my offices at noon,’ he commanded. ‘My lawyers will have something ready for you to sign by then.’
Click. The phone went dead. Mia stood and grimaced at the inert piece of plastic, then ruefully replaced it on its wall rest
At noon exactly she presented herself in the foyer of the very luxurious Doumas Corporation. Dressed in a severely tailored black pin-striped wool suit and plain white blouse, she looked the epitome of cool business elegance with her long, silky, copper hair neatly contained, as usual, in a knot high on her head and her make-up as understated as everything always was about her.
But, then, Mia Frazier did not need to make dress statements to look absolutely stunning. She was tall and incredibly slender, with legs so long that even a conservative knee-length skirt couldn’t diminish their sensational impact.
Her skin was wonderful, so clear and smooth and white that it made the ocean greenness of her eyes stand out in startling contrast and the natural redness of her small heart-shaped mouth look lush and inviting and unwittingly sensual.
Add to all of that the kind of feminine curves that promised perfection beneath the severe clothing, and men stopped and stared when she walked into a room—as if they could recognise by instinct that beneath the cloak of cool reserve hid an excitingly sensual woman.
Alexander Doumas had been one man who had looked and instinctively seen her like that. One evening, a month ago, he had been standing with a group of people at a charity function when Mia had walked into the room on her father’s arm.
He had been aware of who she was, of course, and who her father was, and how important Jack Frazier was to his reasons for being in London at all. But, still, he had taken one look at Jack’s beautiful daughter and had made the most colossal tactical error of his life, by deciding he would like to mix business with a bit of pleasure.
It had been his downfall, which was how Mia liked to remember that moment. He had seen, he had desired and had done nothing whatsoever to hide that desire from either herself or her watching father. Maybe he had even seen his own actions as a way to ingratiate himself with Jack Frazier. Flatter the daughter to impress the father—that kind of thing—she had never really been sure.
Whatever, he had signed his own death warrant that very same evening when he had detached himself from his friends so he could come and introduce himself to Jack Frazier. His words might have been directed at her father but his eyes had all but consumed Mia.
In her own defence, Mia had tried to head him off before he had sunk himself too deeply into her father’s clutches. She’d remained cool, aloof, indifferent to every soft-voiced compliment he had paid her—had tried to freeze him out when he wouldn’t be frozen out.
For her own reasons. Alexander Doumas was one of the most attractive men she had ever laid eyes on, but for what she already knew her father was planning for her the Greek was just too much of everything. Too young, too dynamic, too sensually charismatic. Too obviously used to handling power, and just too confident in his own ability to win—both in the boardroom and the bedroom.
She needed a weaker man, a man with less of an aura of strength about him—a man with whom she could carry out her father’s wishes and then walk away, spiritually unscathed, once the dastardly deal was done.
She certainly did not need a man who could make her heart race just by settling his lazily admiring dark eyes on her, or one whose lightest touch on her arm could make her flesh come alive with all kinds of unwanted sexual murmurings. A man whose voice made her toes curl and whose smile rendered her breathless. In other words, a man with all the right weapons to hurt her. She had been hurt enough in her life by men of Alexander Doumas’s calibre.
She’d tried very hard to freeze him out during the last few weeks when her father made sure they were thrown together at every opportunity, but the stupid, stubborn man refused to be pushed away.
Now he was paying the consequences—or was about to pay them, Mia amended as she paused just inside the foyer.
The Doumas name had once been connected exclusively with oil and shipping, but since Alexander Doumas had taken over the company had diversified into the far more lucrative