Daphne Clair - Salzano's Captive Bride



“Hello, Amber ,” he said, with dark, steely mockery in his tone.

“What are you doing here?” she gasped, her heart contracting into a shrivelled ball. “How did you find me?”

His expression changed slightly, as if she’d just satisfied him in some way. “We must talk.”

He took her arm but she shook off his hand. “I don’t need to talk to you,” she said, trying to sidestep him, but this time he caught her arm in an unshakeable grip, trying to walk her along with him.

“Come—we cannot discuss anything here.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Let go of me or I’ll scream.” She opened her mouth and he dropped his hand from her arm, looking grimly amused.

“And I will tell people you are attempting to deprive me of my legal rights by fraud and deception. I wish to talk about your sister.”

Her sister ? Of course. He’d called her by her own name, which she’d automatically reacted to. Not Azure’s. How much did he know? “How did you find out where I work?”

“I hired an investigator,” he said calmly.

“You…?” For a second she was stunned as well as angry. The idea of a stranger prying into her life gave her the creeps. “How dare you?”

“How else could I discover the truth? You lied to me.”

Daphne Clairlives in subtropical New Zealand, with her Dutch-born husband. They have five children. At eight years old she embarked on her first novel, about taming a tiger. This epic never reached a publisher, but metamorphosed male tigers still prowl the pages of her romances, of which she has written over thirty for Harlequin Mills & Boon ®, and over sixty all told. Her other writing includes non-fiction, poetry and short stories, and she has won literary prizes in New Zealand and America.

Readers are invited to visit Daphne Clair’s website at www.daphneclair.com

BY

DAPHNE CLAIR

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

AMBER Odell had just washed up after her solitary evening meal when the doorbell sounded a long, imperative ring.

She closed a cupboard door with a click of the old-fashioned catch, hastily hung the tea towel on its rail and hurried along the short hallway.

The rimu floorboards beneath the faded carpet runner creaked under her bare feet. The old building in a once-fashionable Auckland suburb had endured a chequered career from grand home to orphanage to boarding house until, towards the end of the twentieth century, some crude renovations had converted it into flats. Amber was lucky to have leased one on the ground floor at a reasonable price, in return for some badly needed redecorating.

She switched on the porch light and hesitated at the sight of a large, dark shape behind the blue-and-red stained glass panes on the top part of the door. After a second or two the shape moved and raised a hand to rap on the wooden panel between the panes.

Cautiously she opened the door, braced to slam it shut again.

The porch light shone down on glossy waves of night-black hair combed back from an arresting olive-toned face with high cheekbones and a commanding nose. The forbidding features and uncompromising, beard-shadowed jaw were at odds with a sensuous male mouth, even though at the moment it was stubbornly set and unsmiling.

Vaguely she was conscious of broad shoulders, a pristine white T-shirt moulded over a toned chest, and long powerful legs encased in olive-green trousers. Casual clothes that somehow managed to convey a sense of style and expense.

But most of her attention was riveted by a nearly coal-dark gaze, burning with what looked like anger.

Which didn’t make sense. She’d never laid eyes on the man in her life.

Not that he wasn’t worth laying eyes on. She was perturbed by a stirring of unbidden female response to the potent aura of masculinity that invisibly cloaked him.

Pushing back a strand of fine, fair hair that flowed over shoulders bared by her brief tube top, she opened her mouth to ask what he wanted.

Before she could say anything, a comprehensive, searing gaze traversed downward over the wide strip of ribbed cotton hugging her breasts, and lingered on the pale flesh between the top and her blue shorts before quickly taking in the length of her legs and then returning to her face.

Amber went hot all over with anger of her own—and shock at the way her pulse points had leapt to life under the bold inspection. Lifting her chin—as she needed to anyway to look the man in the eye—she was about to ask again what he wanted when he forestalled her with the abrupt query “Where is he?” issued in a low, grating voice.

She blinked, startled. “I think you’ve—” Made a mistake , she’d been going to say, but she was cut off.

“I said, Where is he? ” the man rasped. “Where is my son?”

“Well, certainly not here!” Amber told him. Maybe he was looking for one of the other tenants. “You’ve got the wrong place. Sorry.”

She began to close the door, but the man reached out and with apparent ease pushed it back again and stepped into the hallway.

Amber instinctively retreated, then realised that was the worst thing to do as the intimidating stranger kicked the door shut behind him, and when she turned to flee along the passageway—not that it would do her much good—a hard hand clamped about her arm and swung her to face him.

She opened her mouth to scream, hoping the two students next door or the journalist in the flat directly above hers would hear and investigate.

All she got out was a choked sound before the intruder put his other hand over her mouth and crowded her against the wall. She felt the warmth of his lean, hard body almost touching hers, and smelled a faint whiff of leather with a hint of newly cut grass. Aftershave? Although he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days.

He said, moderating his voice with its slight foreign accent in an apparent effort to reassure her, “Don’t be foolish. You have no need to fear me.”

Now he looked exasperated rather than angry. Amber contemplated kneeing him, weighing her chances of disabling him and escaping, but suddenly he let her go and said, “Now let us be sensible.”

Yes, let’s! Amber thought grimly. “The sensible thing is for you to leave before I call the police!”

A frown appeared between his dark brows, and a flash of temper lit his eyes again. He said flatly, “All I ask is to see my son. You have—”

“ I told you —” Amber raised her voice “—your son is not here! I don’t know why you should think—”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Look—” she edged towards the door and kept talking “—you’ve made a mistake. I can’t help you, and I’m asking you to leave.”

“Leave?” He seemed affronted. “After flying from Venezuela to New Zealand? I have not slept since—”

“That’s not my problem,” she informed him.

She reached out to open the door again but he put a hand on it, holding it shut and looking down at her through narrowed eyes. “If he is not here,” he said quietly, as though struggling to control himself, “what have you done with him?”

A new expression had appeared in his eyes—surely not fear? Or at least genuine anxiety.

“ Nothing! ”

Again the black brows drew together. Lucifer must have had that same terrible, ferocious male beauty.

She shivered, and he said, the harsh note back in his voice, “What are you up to?” His eyes made another hostile survey of her. “If you ever had a child it certainly does not show.”

Amber gaped. “I’ve never had a child!” She reminded herself that most mentally ill people weren’t dangerous.

Then he grabbed her upper arms and she thought, But a few are! and forced herself not to kick and hit. That might trigger him into real violence. If she kept calm maybe she could talk him into leaving. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like swearing in Spanish. White teeth showed as his lips curled back in a near-snarl. “What devil’s game are you playing?” he demanded. “Why did you write to me?”

“ Write to you?” Amber’s voice rose in disbelief. “I don’t even know you!”

His hands tightened until she winced, and he dropped them, his tawny skin darkening. “In a sense that is true,” he said with an air of hauteur, his eyes almost hidden by lowered lids that had the longest, thickest lashes she’d ever seen on a man. “But for a short time we knew each other intimately. That you cannot deny.”

About to do so in no uncertain terms, she hesitated as a fantastic suspicion slithered into her mind. Venezuela . South America.

No . She shook her head to dislodge the shameful notion. The guy was raving.

“Very well,” he said, impatient again and misinterpreting her action. “It is a matter of semantics. It was not…an emotional intimacy. But whatever you call it, you have not forgotten. What did you expect when you wrote that letter? That I would send money and put it out of my mind?”

“Wh-which letter?” Was it possible…? No!

“Were there others?” he asked, the lift of those almost satanic brows expressing cynical doubt. “The one,” he continued with exaggerated patience, “that asked for a contribution towards the welfare of the child you had borne, apparently to me.”

For a moment Amber felt dizzy, sick, and her hand involuntarily flew to her mouth to stop an exclamation escaping. Her voice shaking, she said, “I never sent you any letter, I swear.”

Maybe she’d got through to him at last. He appeared briefly disconcerted, then his expression hardened again. “You were desperate, it said. Was it simply an attempt at extortion and there truly is no child?”

She breathed in, thinking, and slowly said, “Would you believe me if I told you that you have the wrong woman?”

His brows shot up again and he laughed. Not pleasantly. “I know I had far more wine that night than was wise, but I was not so drunk that I don’t remember the face of the woman I shared a bed with.”

Feeling sicker still, her heart pounding erratically, Amber couldn’t speak.

Not that she’d have had a chance. His lips curling in a sneer, he asked, “Do you make a habit of asking men to pay you off after…I believe you would call it a one-night stand.”

“I don’t do one-night stands,” she flashed, “and neither—” caution intervened “—neither do I try to blackmail…anybody.”

“I’m the only one so privileged?” he asked, the harsh, accusative tone turning dark and silken, which paradoxically made her feel even more threatened. “And if it was not a one-night stand I’m not sure what you think it was. You yourself have denied any real connection between us, and we have had no contact since—until you claimed to have borne me a son.”

“I haven’t claimed anything of the sort!” Amber snapped. And as he made a move towards her, fright and anger sharpened her voice. “Don’t you dare come near me!”

He stopped dead, as if she’d shot him. “I will not hurt you,” he said.

“Oh, really?” She hoped her derisive tone didn’t set him off, but she couldn’t help adding acidly, “I expect I’ll have bruises on my arms tomorrow.”