The Blackmailed Bride

The Blackmailed Bride

Kim Lawrence

All about the author…

Kim Lawrence

KIM LAWRENCE was born and raised in north Wales. She returned there when she married, and her sons were both born on Anglesey, an island off the coast. Though not isolated, Anglesey is a little off the beaten track, but lively Dublin, which Kim loves, is only a short ferry ride away.

Today they live on the farm her husband grew up on. Welsh is the first language of many people in this area, and Kim’s husband and sons are all bilingual—she is having a lot of fun, not to mention a few headaches, trying to learn the language!

With small children, the unsocial hours of nursing didn’t look attractive, so encouraged by a husband who thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to, Kim tried her hand at writing. Always a keen Harlequin reader, it seemed natural for her to write a romance novel—now she can’t imagine doing anything else.

She is an avid gardener, loves to cook and enjoys running—often on the beach, as living on an island, the sea is never very far away. She is usually accompanied by her Jack Russell, Sprout—don’t ask, it’s a long story!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

JAVIER drove through the large ornate gates and up the long winding driveway lined with olive trees towards the distinctive Moorish tower that stood against the backdrop of the mountains. He pulled the Mercedes he was driving in a space beside a battered Beetle which stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other expensive models.

So, Serge still hadn’t persuaded Sarah to part with her old car. An easy-going young woman who would, as a rule, do anything for her husband, Sarah did have a few blind spots.

Javier himself was unmarried, but did not lack female companionship. It had never required much, if any, effort on his part to have attractive women hanging on his every word, but no special woman had ever materialised from these adoring masses. The possibility that if and when he discovered her she wouldn’t be interested had simply not crossed his mind!

Then he’d met Sarah.

Now he was thirty-two, didn’t take anything for granted, and was, he liked to think, more discerning about women—too damned discerning, according to his grandfather, who wanted his chosen heir safely married.

Javier could have taken the easy option and chosen a suitable consort, a woman from a background similar to his own that would enable her to cope with the pressures of being a member of one of the wealthiest families in Europe, just as his father before him had. That was the problem, everytime he was tempted to take the easy way out Javier was confronted by the spectre of his parents’ disastrous union.

Before he’d left the family estate in Andalucia to make the journey to Majorca the old man had finally issued an ultimatum.

‘Marry before I die or I’ll leave everything to Raul or one of the others!’ Felipe Montero had warned his favourite grandson dramatically.

Javier’s immediate reaction to this not very subtle blackmail had been anger; did his grandfather know him so little that he imagined he could be bought…?

He turned to Felipe with much of the pride and hauteur his grandfather was famed for etched on his own chiselled features. What he saw in the old man’s lined face made him bite back the caustic response hovering on his tongue.

Javier had no illusions about what his grandfather was capable of. Felipe Montero was devious, he frequently bullied and connived, he routinely plotted and schemed—in short, when it came to getting his own way he was capable of acts of great ruthlessness. However he was never crude in his manipulations and, even more significantly, Javier had never seen his grandfather look frightened before!

‘You’ll live a long time yet…?’

Felipe smiled; Javier had never needed things spelled out. He was a sharp judge of character who read people almost as well as he read the financial markets.

‘No, as a matter of fact I won’t. The doctors give me six months at the outside.’

Javier didn’t tell Felipe that this wasn’t possible, he didn’t scream, as people often did when they were confronted with the mortality of someone they couldn’t imagine life without, that the doctors must be able to do something.

He wanted to, but he didn’t.

Instead after a short pause he nodded, not insulting his grandfather by questioning the grim prognosis.

‘What is it?’

‘Cancer. The damned thing’s spread from my lungs. So there’s not much point packing these things in,’ Felipe observed with a deep throaty chuckle as he inhaled deeply on his cheroot. ‘And don’t tell anyone else yet—nobody. If the news gets out millions will be wiped off the value of the company…’ A flicker of revulsion appeared in the older man’s eyes. ‘And I don’t doubt they’ll all start treating me as if I’m in my dotage,’ he added, a tremor in his deep voice. It wasn’t dying but the manner of it that scared Felipe Montero.

‘No one will do that.’

A silent promise was exchanged in the look that passed between the two men.

Felipe sighed, satisfied. ‘Unfortunately this couldn’t come at a worst time, of course, with the Brussels deal…’

An extremely disciplined man, it wasn’t often that Javier’s emotions got the better of him, but as he listened to his grandfather fret about the fate of the financial empire he’d expanded up over his lifetime something snapped.

‘There is such a thing as a good time to die?’ he gritted. ‘To hell with the company!’ His deep voice cracked. ‘You’re going to die, Grandfather.’

‘We’re all going to die,’ came the careless response. ‘If you really care,’ Felipe goaded slyly, ‘show it. Marry Aria…she loves you.’

A wry laugh was wrenched from Javier. ‘You never give up, do you?’

If and when he did marry, Javier knew it wouldn’t be to someone who loved him, someone he might hurt as his father had his mother. A fragile creature, his mother had never grasped the fact she was meant to turn a blind eye to her husband’s mistresses; she was meant to look attractive, bring up their son and be the perfect hostess.

‘This is no laughing matter, Javier,’ the old man reproached sternly. ‘Continuity, blood lines are important; you need sons.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

The idea of losing his inheritance didn’t frighten Javier.

He immediately recognised that there was part of him that might actually welcome the situation. A man who needed the constant buzz of physical and mental challenges, he could think of few things more exciting than the challenge of starting from scratch, and few things more satisfying than knowing at the end of the day that everything you’d achieved was down to your own efforts, nothing to do with being born into a wealthy dynasty.

Wealth brought its privileges, but Javier had been raised to believe it also carried responsibilities. His deeply ingrained sense of family duty would never allow him to do anything more than occasionally dream about the luxury of being a free agent.

Deep down, however, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t come to that, his grandfather would never disinherit him for standing his ground. Nothing in his manner even hinted at this belief. He couldn’t do much for his grandfather but he could at least let Felipe play the heartless tyrant he liked the world to see him as.

Felipe searched his grandson’s unyielding face with growing frustration. ‘This is about that silly blonde you let Serge snatch right from under your nose, I suppose… Don’t look so stunned, boy.’ He laughed. ‘Do you think I’m blind? If you want my opinion, she’d have been a disastrous match for you…’

Javier swallowed his anger with difficulty.

‘…Far too sweet and malleable. You need someone with a bit more fire…’

‘Like Aria,’ Javier cut in drily.

Felipe conceded this point with a grunt. ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be her…but if you want to be my heir you’ll marry someone and soon…’

‘We shouldn’t be arguing…not now…’

‘Why change the habit of a lifetime? If you start agreeing with me the family will know something’s wrong straight away, and I won’t be able to move for everyone being nice to me,’ he observed with a shudder.

When two people who were congenitally incapable of compromise worked together there were bound to be some sparks. Javier’s combustible relationship with his grandfather was not without its moments of conflict, often vocal conflict, at least on Felipe’s side—Javier was more inclined to smouldering silences. Javier knew his rivals within the family frequently crossed their fingers and hoped he’d over-step the mark one day and alienate the old man totally. What they failed to understand was the deep mutual respect the warring parties felt for each other.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re a stubborn idiot!’ the old man railed at his tall grandson’s retreating back.

A man with extraordinary self-discipline, Javier pushed aside the personal issues that filled his mind as he stepped out of the air-conditioned luxury of his Mercedes. He barely registered the blast of baking heat which immediately hit him; Majorca had been experiencing one of its hottest Julys on record.

He consulted the discreet but expensive metallic banded watch on his wrist and nodded; he had a few minutes to spare. He couldn’t abide poor time-keeping in others and always made a point of never abusing his position of power by keeping others waiting himself. To his mind punctuality was a matter of simple good manners.

As he made his way towards the rear entrance of the large mellow stone building even his well-known critical eye for detail could find no fault in the delightful terraced gardens and wide, well-tended sweeps of green tree-dotted parkland. The pool area, when he reached it, was almost deserted but for a few stalwart—or was it foolish?—tourists sunning themselves in the fiery Majorcan midday sun.

‘Did you see who that was?’ a female guest hissed excitedly as she clambered wetly out of the pool.

Her sleepy husband opened his eyes reluctantly as wet hands urgently grabbed his shoulder. ‘Who…what…?’

‘There, it’s Javier Montero!’ she hissed as the tall man in the exquisitely cut suit shook hands in a friendly manner with the elderly gardener before moving away.

‘Sure, Javier Montero is on first name terms with all the casual labourers on the island…’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I tell you, it was him. I mean, there can’t be two men who look like him.’

‘Don’t drool, Jean. And think, woman, what would Javier be doing here?’

‘Why wouldn’t he be here?’ she responded, with a gesture that encompassed the extensive grounds of the thirteenth-century Majorcan manor house with its distinctive Moorish tower. ‘He owns the place.’

An army of local craftsmen had returned the once neglected building to its original splendour. Tucked away in the Sierra de Tramuntana the exclusive hotel now provided a hideaway for those people who liked their retreats to combine the most up to date modern conveniences with historic ambience, top-class Mediterranean cuisine and personal attention from helpful staff.

Naturally this combination was very costly, but no more so than the other two hotels the Monteros owned on the island. Each establishment was aimed to appeal to specific clientele. People who wanted the cosmopolitan sophistication of Palma would find everything they could want in the elegant surroundings of the hotel situated right in the middle of the medieval old town; and those who liked a resort that offered them the choice of six top-class restaurants on site, a spa and every sporting facility known to man, with top-class tuition thrown in, would adore the resort hotel on the beautiful undeveloped northern coast of the island.

‘Sure, this hotel and God knows how many others around the world, and then there’s the airline, the racehorses and the interests in property development. Is there any pie the Monteros don’t have a finger in…?’ he wondered enviously. ‘I really doubt someone like Javier Montero involves himself in the day-to-day running of hotels,’ he announced, settling himself back down to sleep.

‘It was him.’

‘If you say so,’ her husband agreed, reapplying sunscreen to his peeling nose—it was too hot to fight.

He had been right on one count; though Javier was known to occasionally subject individual hotels to gruelling spot inspections, it wasn’t part of his remit to involve himself in the day-to-day running of individual establishments. Javier’s talents lay elsewhere.

Early on in his career he had displayed a remarkable ability for spotting untapped niches in the markets. This talent had been recognised and exploited, but he wasn’t just an ideas man; when a project was beset by difficulties, be it labour disputes or legal wranglings, Javier was the person who could be relied upon to get things running.

The information that had brought him hot-foot to the island hardened the naturally severe cast of Javier’s staggeringly handsome features as he knocked on the heavy oak-studded door of Serge’s office.

Though of average height, due to his massively broad shoulders and deep barrel chest, the swarthy-skinned man behind the desk gave the impression of being much taller.

‘Javier!’ Serge rose to his feet with a welcoming smile and the two men clasped hands and hugged. ‘It’s been too long.’

‘It has.’ Javier responded with the sort of smile that would have shocked rigid those members of the press who had dubbed him Mr Deep Freeze. ‘How are little Raul and…Sarah?’ Nobody seeing him smile would have guessed that he experienced any difficulty saying this name. ‘Where is she? I saw the car…’

‘It broke down the last time she was here,’ his friend admitted ruefully. ‘You can laugh, Javier, but it isn’t you that ends up pushing the cursed thing. Other than a stubborn, irrational affection for that old tin can on wheels, Sarah is fine—though your godson is keeping us both up nights.’

‘Then I expect you could have done without me asking you to do some discreet digging for me…?’

Serge shook his head. ‘Anything I can do, any time—you know this, Javier. I know you don’t like me saying this, but if we live to be a hundred there still won’t be enough time to pay you back what we owe you.’

‘You owe me nothing, Serge.’ Abruptly Javier changed the subject. ‘About the other thing…’ His dark angled eyebrows lifted and his eyes, startling blue in a face that was an even, deep gold, narrowed. ‘You’re sure about this, Serge?’

Serge sighed and looked grim. ‘I’m afraid so. The reports you heard were right.’

‘And you know who it is?’

‘A waiter working at the resort, a Luis Gonzalez, youngish…about twenty five. He came to work there at the start of the season…’

Javier didn’t make a note of the name but Serge knew that he would not forget the name or forgive the guilty party for the crime he had foolishly committed. Javier made a friend in a million but he was an implacable enemy.

‘References?’ Javier enquired, controlling his impatience; control was one of the things Javier prided himself on.

‘Impeccable forgeries.’

‘Nobody else is involved, nobody higher…?’

Serge Simeone shook his head.

Javier shrugged and squinted against the midday sun through the window, his expression inscrutable. ‘Well, that’s something.’

When it had come to his attention that a member of staff in the large resort hotel they owned down on the coast was using his position to deal drugs to guests, Javier, unsure as to how deep the rot was, had not risked involving any of the staff there; instead, he had gone to someone whose integrity he trusted totally.

‘You haven’t contacted the police yet?’

‘You asked me to wait. What are you going to do, Javier?’ His friend turned and for a moment Serge experienced a spasm of pity for the culprit. Javier’s long, angular, aristocratic face had the texture of cold marble; his deep set eyes were equally chilling. Serge knew that Javier had precious little sympathy with recreational drug use and even less with those who peddled the stuff, after his younger sister had nearly lost her life to addiction.

‘We’re going to pay Luis a visit.’

Kate Anderson tried not to show her shock as she flicked through the pile of grainy, slightly out-of-focus photos her younger sister had silently handed her after she’d asked, ‘Surely they can’t be that bad…?’ Now she knew they weren’t talking a couple of topless shots on the beach which even their conservative parents could have laughed off.

‘It could be anyone…?’ she croaked, trying desperately to put a positive slant on a very negative situation as she handed them back to her sister, who tore the incriminating images into shreds and let them drop to the floor.

While the negatives were not in their possession, both sisters knew this defiance was just an empty gesture.

‘It’s not anyone, it’s me! You’ve got to help me, Kate! You have to do something,’ Susie added, her expression an accurate reflection of her total faith in her sister’s ability to extract her from this present dilemma. After all, she’d been doing it successfully for the past twenty years. ‘You can’t let mum and dad find out…I’d die…’

Kate thought it was much more likely she’d have her generous allowance cut off, but then as far as Susie was concerned that probably amounted to much the same thing!

‘That would be…awkward,’ Kate admitted thinking of her parents’ faces if confronted by semi-nude photos of their younger daughter. She didn’t want to think about the consequences if they actually got into the hands of the press. She could think of several tabloids that would love to print compromising shots of a high court judge’s daughter.

‘What if he sends those photos to Chris…? He’ll never believe I wasn’t sleeping with Luis.’

‘You weren’t?’

Susie’s wails got louder. ‘See? Even you thought I was. Luis was someone to hang around with and go clubbing, he was fun… You don’t believe me,’ she accused. ‘I can tell…’

‘I believe you. Now hush, Susie, I’m thinking…’ Kate pleaded as she concentrated on the problem facing them.

The frown line between her feathery brows, which like her lashes were dark in dramatic contrast to the silver-blonde hair colour both sisters had inherited from their mother, deepened as she caught her lower lip between her even white teeth.

Unlike her sister, Kate’s features weren’t strictly symmetrical; her mouth was too wide and full and her aquiline nose had never inspired men to poetry. Her almond-shaped brown eyes, without a doubt her best feature, were unfortunately more often than not concealed behind the round lenses of her wire-framed spectacles.

With or without specs, the first impression people received of Kate Anderson was that she was a young woman with a lively intelligence, sharp wit, and boundless reserves of energy.

‘Susie got my looks; Kate’s the sensible one.’ Kate had lost count of the number of times she’d heard her mother explain away her supposed deficiencies to people.

‘What she lacks in looks she makes up for in personality,’ was her father’s kinder assessment.

Kate knew these were essentially accurate assessments, and she hadn’t done so badly out of the deal. Sensible had given her a lifestyle she enjoyed; but just occasionally, especially when she saw the way men reacted when Susie entered a room, she wished that she’d been standing a bit closer to the front of the queue when they’d handed out the sex appeal factor.

A spasm of sulky annoyance passed over Susie’s pretty face at this impatient dismissal; her tears in general evoked a more sympathetic response.

Kate dropped down into the wicker chair and pulled her knees up to her chin; her irritation bubbled to the surface. ‘What on earth possessed you to get involved with the man in the first place…? You’re supposed to be engaged to Chris… Are things all right between you and him, or are you having second thoughts?’

‘Don’t start on about me being too young to settle down again, Kate!’ Susie scowled. ‘I’m not like you; I don’t want a career and being engaged doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun,’ she announced with a toss of her blonde head.

Kate didn’t swallow this hard-nosed attitude for one minute, Susie was wilful but she was a long way from being as callous as she liked to pretend.

‘Fun! Couldn’t you have stuck to beach volley-ball?’

This evoked a watery smile. ‘Well, if you had arrived last week, like you were meant to, I wouldn’t have been so bored…’ Susie stretched one long sun-tanned leg in front of her. The complacent contemplation of the smooth expanse of shapely golden flesh made the sulky line of her lips lift attractively.

Only Susie, Kate decided, could turn this thing around so that her sister had the ultimate responsibility—Susie really was totally impossible, Kate reflected with rueful affection.

‘I had to work, you know that.’

‘Work?’ Susie snorted in disgust. ‘It’s all you ever think about. No wonder Seb dumped you.’ She lifted her head, pushing a strand of long blonde hair from her eyes, and grimaced apologetically. ‘Sorry, that was a bitchy thing to say,’ she admitted. ‘But,’ she added swiftly in her own defence, ‘this was the holiday from hell, even before Luis turned out to be a low-life, what with Mum and Dad spending every day traipsing around boring churches and things, wanting me to come along.’ Her horrified expression was an accurate indicator that these pastimes weren’t Susie’s idea of pleasure. ‘I always said a family holiday at our age was asking for trouble…’

‘I thought you decided it wouldn’t be so bad when you realised Dad was footing the bill,’ Kate couldn’t resist observing.

‘I just thank God they didn’t book that awful place in the mountains you fancied so much. There wasn’t anything to do there but watch the grass grow.’

‘There also wasn’t a Luis.’

‘Actually, Katie,’ Susie began with an awkward rush, ‘the photos…I think he might have spiked my drink when we were by the pool. I mean, I’m not one hundred per cent positive,’ she added hurriedly, ‘but I know a girl who had her drink spiked…’

Kate’s horrified gasp went ignored as her sister, oblivious to the fact she’d said anything to send chills through Kate’s blood, continued, ‘Oh, she was all right. Fortunately a gang of us arrived as the stuff was kicking in and the guy in question made a quick exit. She collapsed in the loos and we had an awful job getting her back home,’ she recalled. ‘It’s just B—her symptoms—’ Susie corrected herself with a display of discretion that surprised Kate ‘—I felt a lot like that. I could hardly get back to my own room, I felt so woozy, and I’d only had a glass of white wine…’

‘What a total sleaze!’ Kate exclaimed in disgust. ‘We should call the police.’

‘Get serious, Kate!’ Susie responded scornfully. ‘I could kick myself. I’m normally really careful about things like that—I never leave my glass on a table, I carry it around with me. Of course, I never accept a drink from a man I don’t know…’

‘Of course,’ Kate responded faintly.

As she had listened to Susie casually outlining the list of precautions which were obviously second nature to her, Kate wondered if she was herself extraordinarily trusting or just plain reckless, because even though she’d heard of such things happening since the advent of the so-called date rape drugs, she had never dreamt of taking any of these measures… But then she had never dated a stranger; her boyfriends such as they were had always been friends of friends or work colleagues.