JACQUELINE BAIRD - The Billionaire's Blackmailed Bride

‘What the hell do you think you are playing at, woman?’ a deep voice roared. And Emily spun round to see Anton striding towards her.

‘I am not playing. I am leaving… The game is over,’ she said, standing tall and proud.

‘Over my dead body.’

‘That would be my preference,’ Emily tossed back.

‘It appears I must watch my back where you are concerned, my sweet, loving wife, because I have no intention of letting you leave. Not now. Not ever.’

‘You have no choice.’ She tilted up her chin and drew on every ounce of her pride to face him. ‘As far as I am concerned the marriage is finished.’

Anton’s dark eyes studied her. He was furious at her defiance, but he did not let it show. Hell, he could still hear her cries of love ringing in his ears as he took possession of her exquisite body. And he would again, he thought confidently. She just needed time to adjust to the reality of life as his wife.

‘We always have a choice, Emily,’ he murmured silkily, and, snaking an arm around her waist, he pulled her into the strength of his powerful body. ‘Your choice is quite simple. You stay with me, your husband .’

Jacqueline Bairdbegan writing as a hobby, when her family objected to the smell of her oil painting, and immediately became hooked on the romantic genre. She loves travelling, and worked her way around the world from Europe to the Americas and Australia, returning to marry her teenage sweetheart. She lives in Ponteland, Northumbria, the county of her birth, and has two sons.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE ITALIAN BILLIONAIRE’S RUTHLESS REVENGE

ARISTIDES’ CONVENIENT WIFE

THE ITALIAN’S BLACKMAILED MISTRESS

BOUGHT BY THE GREEK TYCOON

PREGNANCY OF REVENGE

BY

JACQUELINE BAIRD

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘I STILL can’t believe you chose this for me,’ Emily Fairfax said with a shake of her head as she sat down opposite her older brother Tom and his wife Helen at their table in the vast ballroom of the deluxe London hotel. ‘I feel terribly conspicuous.’ Embarrassment coloured her face almost as red as the outfit she was wearing.

‘Oh, lighten up, Emily. You look great.’ Tom grinned at her. ‘This is a costume ball for Dad’s favourite charity, The Children of Africa’s Guardian Angel Project; he would have appreciated the Devil and Angels theme. Dad had a great sense of humour. Remember Mum’s fortieth when he insisted everyone dress as Knights and Squires? I think he would have seen the funny side…’

‘All too well. Most of the women ended up looking like young boys, dressed in doublet and hose. I wondered at the time if Dad had secret gay tendencies,’ she quipped and then turned her sparkling blue gaze on her sister-in-law, a petite gamine-faced brunette. ‘But this is different, Helen. There is nothing funny about being squeezed into a red latex suit that is a couple of sizes too small. What on earth were you thinking of when you ordered it?’ she demanded, and saw the mischief dancing in Helen’s brown eyes and her lips twisted in a wry smile.

Tom and Helen had met at university and had married two years ago at the age of twenty-three. They were now the proud parents of a one-year-old daughter, who had been born the week before Tom and Emily’s father had died suddenly of a massive heart attack. The child was named Sara after their mother, who had died three years earlier after a long battle with cancer.

‘I don’t know what you are complaining about. You look fine, and I went to a lot of trouble to get that costume in the right size. At four and a half months pregnant I am actually the same bust measurement as you and I tried it on to make sure it would fit,’ Helen said with a grin.

‘Did it never occur to you that you’re five feet nothing and I am five nine—that it would have to go a little further on me?’ Emily groaned. ‘You damn near broke my neck pulling the hood over my head. It is still aching.’ She slipped a hand beneath the heavy fall of her hair and rubbed the nape of her neck to emphasize the point.

‘Don’t blame me. If you had come back to London yesterday as you were supposed to, you would have had time to get your own costume. But instead you spent another day on site and only arrived a couple of hours before the event. Plus it is April Fool’s Day,’ she said with an impish grin. ‘And be fair—I did cut the hood off and twist it into a braid so you could wear the horns as a head band.’ She burst out laughing.

Emily bit her lip to fight down the answering grin that threatened. She had totally forgotten it was the first of April, and Helen was right—she should have returned from Santorini yesterday instead of flying into London this evening. She really had no one to blame but herself, but she wasn’t going to let her beloved sister-in-law off too easy.

‘Anyone with a grain of common sense would have ordered an angel costume for me. The same as yours, I might add. It is only logical that the women dress as angels and the men as devils. Like my idiot brother T—’

‘Excuse me.’ A deep, slightly accented voice cut into Emily’s good-natured tirade. ‘Hello, Tom, nice to see you again.’

‘Anton, glad you and your friends could make it.’

Emily looked over at her brother as he greeted the new arrivals he had invited to make up their table of eight.

She glanced up at the man who had so rudely interrupted her. His back was turned to her and he was pulling out a chair for his companion, a stunning brunette who naturally was dressed like an angel in a diaphanous gold and white fabric that seemed to reveal a lot more flesh than Emily imagined any self-respecting angel would reveal.

At least her outfit covered her from neck to toe, she consoled herself, though she had been forced to undo the front zip a few inches to prevent the damn thing crushing her chest so tightly she could barely breathe. It wasn’t her usual style, that was for sure, but it didn’t really faze her. She knew she had a decent enough body, she just wasn’t used to displaying it quite so dramatically.

‘Allow me to introduce my friend Eloise,’ the deep voice continued as the brunette sent a social smile around the table, ‘and my right-hand man, Max.’

Emily glanced at the middle-aged burly man and smiled in welcome as he took his seat at the table next to Helen. Then the stranger turned to her.

‘Emily, isn’t it? Tom has told me a lot about you. It is a real pleasure to finally meet you. I am Anton Diaz.’ A large strong hand was held out and she politely put her hand in his, while her mind busily wondered how Tom knew the man, and why her brother would have mentioned her to him.

Then suddenly her mind went blank as a bizarre sensation a bit like an electric eel snaking up her arm had her skin breaking out in goose-bumps under the latex. Hastily she pulled her hand free and slowly looked up.

Emily had a long way to go… He had to be at least six feet four, she reckoned, and then her curious blue gaze collided with deep brown eyes and she simply stared…

The man was like a sleek black panther: poised, powerful and predatory.

She grimaced inwardly at the fanciful notion, really not her usual style.

The introductions moved on and Emily supposed she had made the right response, though she could not be sure. Her mouth felt dry and she had trouble tearing her fascinated gaze away from the tall, striking man.

He was dressed all in black. A black silk-knit roll-necked sweater outlined the impressive musculature of his broad chest. A short black cloak covered his wide shoulders and flowed down like bats’ wings to broad cuffs around strong wrists, set off by tailored black trousers. He should have looked ridiculous in costume like the majority of the people present. Instead, if ever a man looked like a devil it was this one…

Dark and dangerous, she thought, her heart inexplicably tightening in her chest, and for a moment she had difficulty breathing that had nothing to do with the latex suit she wore.

His straight black hair worn slightly longer than was fashionable was swept casually back off his broad forehead. Distinctive arched brows framed deep-set almost black eyes, high cheekbones, a large hawklike nose and a wide sensuous mouth completed the picture. As she stared his lips parted to reveal even white teeth. He was smiling down at her. She lifted her eyes to his and even in her stunned state she recognized the humour did not entirely mask the cool remoteness of his dark gaze.

The man was not conventionally handsome, his features too large and harshly chiselled for classic male beauty.

Brutally handsome…was a better description.

There was something insulting about the way his dark eyes slid casually down to her cleavage and lingered for a long moment. But even as she recognized his insolent masculine appraisal for what it was her skin prickled with shocking awareness. The breath caught in her throat and she gave a shaky inward sigh of relief when he casually pulled out the chair next to hers, and lowered his long length into it.

It could be worse, Emily told herself, at least with Anton Diaz seated at her side, she did not have to face him.

Instinctively she recognized he was a man who was supremely confident in his masculinity and totally aware of his effect on the opposite sex, and discreetly she crossed her arms over her suddenly hardening nipples. A sophisticated charmer with an aura of ruthless power about him that would intimidate anybody, man or woman, she concluded. Not her type at all…

Even so, there was no escaping the fact he was an incredibly sexy man, as her body’s unexpected response confirmed.

‘I could not help overhearing your comment, Emily. Shame on you, your chauvinism is showing.’ The devil spoke in a deep, dark, mocking voice that made her hackles rise.

‘What do you mean, Mr Diaz?’ she asked him with cool politeness, flicking him a sidelong glance, and was once again captured by the intensity of his dark eyes.

‘In today’s world of equality between the sexes isn’t it rather politically incorrect to assume all the women should dress as angels and the men as devils? And, given the very striking outfit you are wearing, just a little hypocritical,’ he drawled mockingly.

‘He has got you there,’ Helen piped up and everyone laughed.

Everyone but Emily.

‘My costume was my sister-in-law’s choice, not mine. She has a warped sense of humour,’ she explained, forcing a smile to her lips. ‘And I see you are dressed as a devil, rather upholding my theory. Though you do seem to have forgotten the horns,’ she prompted smoothly.

‘No, I didn’t forget. I never forget anything,’ he asserted, his dark eyes holding hers with an intimacy that made her pulse race and she could do nothing about the pink that tinged her cheeks. ‘I am supposed to be an angel, admittedly a dark angel, but an angel nevertheless.’

Emily saw what he meant, her blue eyes sweeping over him. It was the perfect costume for him. Unrelenting black and somehow threatening… She glimpsed a darkening in his deep-set eyes and something more. Anger… Why? She had no idea, and in an attempt to control her overheated imagination and body she looked somewhere past his left shoulder. She took a deep steadying breath, but for a long moment was incapable of making a response. No man had ever had such a startling effect on her in her life, and she had met plenty, and been attracted to a few, but never quite like this.