Daphne Clair - Salzano's Captive Bride

To her surprise, a look of chagrin crossed his face. Stiffly, his accent stronger, he said, “If that is so, I apologise. I was…not thinking.”

Not hard to guess he wasn’t accustomed to apologising.

The change in him was at least marginally reassuring. Encouraged, Amber tried again, even more forcefully. “You’re not listening to me, are you? I don’t know —”

“Why should I listen to lies?”

“I’m not lying. You’ve got it all wrong!”

The sound he made in his throat was akin to an animal growl, alarming her again. He reached out, and long fingers closed about her wrist. “Then show me he is not here.”

She wanted to snap at him again, but perhaps it would be safer to humour the man, persuade him he’d made a mistake, and he might leave. Or to distract him so she’d have a shot at escaping. “All right,” she said finally. It wouldn’t take long—the flat had only three small rooms besides the kitchen and bathroom. “Feel free to look around.”

His gaze suspicious, he tugged at her imprisoned wrist. “Show me.”

She wasn’t going to be given a chance to flee outside and call for help.

Amber shrugged, hiding the fact that her heart was thumping, and led him to the doorway of her cosy sitting room, reaching aside to switch on the light.

A soft, cushioned olive-green sofa faced the fireplace, in front of which she’d placed a Chinese jar filled with white plumes of native toe-toe.

Two armchairs with calico slip-covers hiding their shabby upholstery were set at right-angles to the sofa, a couple of bright-red wooden boxes serving as end tables. Her TV and sound system sat in the chimney corners, and on the mantel a row of books was held by the South Island jade bookends she’d inherited from her grandmother.

The man glanced over the room without entering, and Amber took him across the hallway to her bedroom.

The bed was covered in white broderie-anglaise , and thick sheepskin rugs lay on the varnished floor. This time the man walked into the room as she tugged her wrist from his grip and stepped to one side, leaning with folded arms against the curve of the second-hand Queen Anne style dressing table.

The man threw her a glance that gave a silent warning and strode to the mirror-doored wardrobe, briefly looked at the clothes hanging there and closed it again. When his gaze went to the dressing table drawers she looked back at him defiantly and said, “You are not going through my underwear drawers. Are you some kind of pervert?”

For an instant fury flared in his eyes, then she thought he almost laughed, and she could see he was weighing whether he should ignore her ban before he headed for the door. Amber breathed a little more easily.

“Sure you don’t want to look under the bed?” she inquired as he snagged her wrist again.

He didn’t respond to the sarcasm, merely striding down the hall to the door opening into the minuscule bathroom.

Obviously no one was lurking in the shower cubicle behind its clear plastic curtain printed with coloured fish, or hiding in the cupboard beneath the washbasin.

Next was her office-cum-spare room, hardly large enough for the single guest bed, her filing cabinet, a compact desk that held her laptop computer, and the crowded shelves of reference books along one wall.

That left the narrow kitchen with a small dining area at one end. The man opened the back door onto the little walled and paved patio, saw the potted plants and the wrought-iron table and chairs for two, and on closing the door allowed her to free herself of his grasp and retreat against the sink counter.

He turned to the bank of cupboards on the opposite wall, and the counter below that held her toaster and bread-bin. Amber noticed how the glossy black hair was allowed to flow past his nape and curl at the neckline of his T-shirt.

Wondering if she could make a dash along the passageway to the front door, she saw his shoulders stiffen, his entire body go utterly still. Had he stopped breathing?

He reached for something, making a hissing sound between his teeth, and turned abruptly to face her. “If you have no child, what is this?”

Oh, Lord! she prayed, staring at the baby’s pacifier in his broad palm. How do I get out of this? “My…my friend must have left it when she brought her baby to visit.”

His hand closed over the small object, then he dropped it onto the counter and began opening cupboard doors, shifting jars and bottles and tins, cups and plates, until in a lower cupboard he found a basket filled with small stuffed toys, a board book, rattles, a toy xylophone and a jumble of plastic blocks.

“For visiting children,” she said. “Some of my friends have babies or toddlers. You won’t find anything else. I keep telling you, you’ve made a mistake!”

He whirled then, fixing her with a glittering, hostile stare. “My mistake was almost two years ago, when I was estúpido enough to let cheap wine and a pretty tourist send my good sense and disciplina to the winds.”

Bristling at his dismissal of the “pretty tourist” as on a par with “cheap wine,” Amber said, “Whatever your problem is—”

“It is our problem,” he argued, “if what was in that letter is true. No matter how often you deny it, or how distasteful I find it.”

Distasteful? If that was how he thought of his supposed offspring, what sort of a father would he be?

The thought validated her caution. “Look,” she said, making her denial as authoritative as she could, “it wasn’t me. And I don’t feel well.” Brushing another strand of hair from her cheek, she realised her hand was trembling. Her stomach was battling nausea and her knees felt watery.

His eyes searched her face with patent distrust. “You are pale,” he allowed grudgingly. His mouth clamped for a moment before he said, “Tomorrow then. I will come back. And I warn you, if you are not here I will find you again.”

“How did you…?” Curious as to how he’d landed on her doorstep, she paused to reword the question. “You can’t have had my address.” She’d been too confused and alarmed to think about that.

A hint of that menacing sneer again distorted the firm male mouth. “It was not difficult. The post office box given as the return address was in Auckland, New Zealand. And you are the only A. Odell in the telephone book.”

“I don’t have a box,” she said. “And not everyone is in the phone book.” Which was lucky for them. It kept scary foreign men from pushing uninvited into their homes and flinging wild accusations.

She put a hand on the counter behind her. Her legs were still unsteady, and her voice lacked any kind of confidence when she said, “Please would you leave now? I…really can’t talk to you any more tonight.”

He took a step towards her, the Lucifer frown reappearing. “Are you ill? Do you need help?” One hand moved as if to touch her, but she shrank from it.

“All I need is for you to go!” And now she sounded shrill, dammit.

To her infinite relief he nodded curtly, but said, “You will be here tomorrow.” As if he could order it. “In the morning?”

He was trying to pin her down. “I have to work,” she said. “Some people do, you know.” While some could afford to fly across the world at the drop of a hat—or a letter. “Tomorrow evening,” she suggested randomly. “Eight o’clock.” It seemed the only way to get rid of him, and next time she’d make sure she wasn’t alone.

Another nod, and he turned to leave. Amber heard his footsteps recede down the passageway, and the door closing. Slumping against the counter, she felt as if she’d been picked up by a hurricane and dropped back to earth.

She straightened and made herself a cup of hot, black coffee, added a generous spoonful of sugar and took it to her bedroom. Sitting on the bed, she downed several steadying sips, before picking up the phone and keying in a number.

The ringing went on for a long time, but she didn’t hang up. When it finally stopped and a voice as familiar as her own answered, she said without preamble, “Azzie, what on earth have you done?”

CHAPTER TWO

MARCO Enrique Salvatore Costa Salzano wasn’t accustomed to being brushed off by women, much less being evicted from their homes.

But neither was he in the habit of forcibly invading those homes.

He’d spent the day brooding over last night’s debacle even while he made a time-killing exploration of Auckland city and its environs, ending with a stroll on the waterfront path that curved in and out along several bays overlooked by well-kept houses wherever steep cliffs didn’t border the road.

He’d found an underwater aquarium that featured such sea creatures as huge stingrays and even medium-size sharks swimming freely behind glass above and around the visitors. A short trolley ride in a fake Antarctic section allowed them to come eye to eye with king penguins. The animals were in every way a world apart from those he was accustomed to and to which he devoted a large part of his time. Yet they were sufficiently fascinating that for a short while he’d almost forgotten the mission that had brought him to the South Pacific.

Now the sun was inching downward and the eye-watering blue of the sky over the Waitemata Harbour had gradually softened to a paler shade while he paced the thick carpet of his hotel suite. The hands of his watch crawled towards seven-thirty so slowly that he wondered if the several thousand dollars he’d paid for its world-renowned brand reliability, expensive platinum casing and flawless design had been misspent. There was still more than half an hour to his appointment with the woman who last night had inexplicably denied knowing him.

When he’d finally arrived in New Zealand after a seemingly endless flight, perhaps he shouldn’t have left the hotel as soon as he’d had a hurried shower and pulled clean clothes randomly from his bag. Jet-lagged though he was, he hadn’t been able to tolerate another night of angry anticipation mingled with regret and self-castigation—and something he refused to name as confused hope.

After all that, and despite her having appealed for his help in a way that suggested she and his son were suffering imminent if not actual penury, the woman had tried to shut the door on him!

Unable to conceal his simmering rage, he knew he had made her nervous. Although she’d mounted a valiant effort to hide that, standing up to him and threatening to call the police.

He almost smiled, recalling the defiant flash of her eyes—he hadn’t remembered she had such striking eyes, truly jade green ringed with amber—and her determined efforts to oust him from that matchbox of a home. She’d deliberately goaded him with sarcasm and insults despite her slight though very feminine build and the fact that the top of her head barely reached his chin.

When he’d silenced her attempt to scream, and blocked her escape with his body, her hair had been soft and silky against his throat and smelled of apricots with a hint of fresh lemon.

That scent had unexpectedly aroused him, as had the tantalising way her breasts rose and fell with her frightened breathing, under the scanty piece of cloth that barely covered them. He’d quickly stepped back, not wanting to add fear of rape to her perplexing reactions. It was not in his nature to terrorise women.

Admittedly last night’s confrontation had been no ordinary visit. Perhaps he could have been less impetuous, but that letter had been a bombshell, coming long after he had written off the Carnaval incident as a lapse in judgement that, fortunately, had had no serious consequences.