Louise Fuller - Revenge At The Altar

His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘How about circumstances in which I agree to save your business?’

She stared at him, the sheer unexpectedness of his words making the edges of her vision watery. ‘Save my business...?’ she repeated slowly.

He nodded. ‘If you agree to become my wife.’ He paused, studying her face. ‘It’s up to you, of course.’

He was speaking with a mock courtesy that made her want to hurl her bag at his head.

‘I can just leave. The choice is yours.’

Her skin was prickling and her heart was beating so loudly that it was getting in the way of her thoughts. ‘That’s not a choice,’ she said hoarsely. ‘That’s blackmail.’

For what felt like a lifetime he stared at her thoughtfully, and then finally he gave a casual shrug.

‘Yes, I suppose it is. But on some levels all business is blackmail.’ His face was impassive, his eyes steady on hers. ‘And that’s what this is, Margot. It’s just business.’

The truth, of course, was that he wanted to prove her and her family wrong. To demonstrate irrefutably that he was good enough to marry her. That his name was equal to hers. But his instincts warned him against revealing the truth, for surely it would show weakness to admit that their low opinion— her low opinion—still tormented him?

Besides, there was no need to reveal anything. Not when he already had a ready-made reason at his fingertips. Widening his stance, he focused his attention on the woman in front of him.

‘Unlike yourself, I’m not in the habit of throwing good money after bad, and your father’s shares are useless to me if Duvernay goes bankrupt.’

She took a breath, bracing herself as though for a blow. ‘What has that got to do with marrying me?’ she asked stiffly.

Tuning out the apprehension in her voice, he let her words echo around the room. ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’ll marry you, and in return you’ll give me your shares. That will make me the majority stakeholder in Duvernay and allow me to run the business as I see fit.’ His mouth curled into a goading smile. ‘By that I mean profitably.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re so arrogant.’ Seething inwardly, Margot watched him gaze dismissively around the boardroom.

‘It shouldn’t be too hard. Frankly, I could turn this company around in a heartbeat.’

She gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Wouldn’t that require you to have a heart , though, Max?’ she said sweetly.

He smiled. ‘Oh, I have a heart, Margot—and more importantly, unlike your brother, I also have a head for business.’

Her brown eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t want to know what you think about my brother any more than I want your money,’ she spat.

He gazed down at her, unperturbed by her outburst. ‘No, I’m sure you don’t,’ he conceded.

His eyes gleamed, the centres darkening so that suddenly it felt as though she was being dragged bodily into his pupils.

‘But whether you want my money or not is largely irrelevant. The fact is, you need it.’

‘I don’t—’ she began.

He waved her words away as though they were some kind of irritating insect. ‘You do. And, frankly, the sooner the better. I’ll give you free rein with the wedding arrangements...’ he was watching her lazily, as though her consent was a foregone conclusion ‘...although I draw the line at wearing any kind of patterned waistcoat. So marry me, give me control over our destinies, and I’ll make all your problems go away.’

‘I doubt that. From where I’m standing, you are the biggest problem. You’re conceited and selfish and utterly lacking in sensitivity.’

His smile widened. ‘Presumably that’s why I now own a quarter share of your business?’

Stifling an impulse to slap his smug, handsome face, Margot fixed her gaze on the gardens outside. How long was he going to carry on with this game? For surely that was all this talk of marriage was to him. A game designed to humiliate her further.

So stop playing it, then , she told herself irritably. You’re the CEO of a global business, not some dopey nineteen-year-old student.

With a strength that surprised her, she turned and met his gaze head-on. ‘I’m not going to give you my shares, Max,’ she said flatly. ‘And I’m definitely not going to marry you.’

His expression didn’t change, but somehow she found that less reassuring rather than more, and moments later she realised why. She might have thought she was simply stating the obvious, but Max clearly thought she was calling his bluff.

‘Is that right?’

She glared at him, her skin prickling with resentment—not just at his arrogance but at the beat of desire pulsing through her veins, and the knowledge that only Max had ever done this to her. Got under her skin and made her feel so off-balance. And the fact that he could still make her feel this way, that he still had this power over her, threatened her as much as his words.

She took a step back. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said quickly. ‘You and I were a mistake I’m not planning on repeating. We’re certainly not marriage material.’

‘Why not? I’m a man...you’re a woman. There are no obstacles preventing us from tying the knot.’

Jamming her hands into the pockets of her dress, she looked up at him, disbelief giving way to exasperation, then fury. ‘Aside from mutual loathing, you mean?’

Glancing around the boardroom, he shook his head slowly. ‘You see? This is why your business is struggling, baby. You’re just too resistant to change, to new ideas.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise blackmail was so on-trend!’

He laughed, and before she could stop herself—before she even knew she was doing it—she was laughing too. How could she not when his mouth curled up so temptingly at the corners, wiping the mockery from his face so that he looked heartbreakingly like his younger self?

And, fool that she was, she felt her pulse lose speed, felt a sudden overwhelming urge to reach out and touch the curve of his lips, to feel again the hard, masculine pressure of his body against hers.

Heat burned in her cheeks and she breathed in sharply. Her reaction had been instinctive, involuntary, but she was already regretting it. How could she laugh with him after everything he’d done to her? And how could she let herself feel anything other than hatred and contempt for this man who was backing her into a corner, demanding something that was impossible for her to give?

She felt his gaze on the side of her face.

‘What was that you were saying about mutual loathing?’ he asked.

The mocking note was back, and she looked up defiantly, her whole body stiffening into fight mode. ‘Just because you can make me laugh once , it doesn’t mean anything.’

Dragging her gaze away from the indecently lush mouth, she stared past him.

Except that it did.

She winced inwardly. It was all there in her voice—everything that she didn’t want him to hear or to know about how she was feeling—and that was why this conversation had to stop now.

‘You might have a head for business, Max, but you have zero understanding of human nature. If —if —we were to get married, we wouldn’t just be talking in the boardroom.’ She felt a sudden prickle of ice run down her spine. ‘We’d have to live together. Share a home.’

Share a bed , she thought silently, her face suddenly hot as his eyes narrowed on hers and something moved across the irises that made her breathing quicken.

Cheeks burning, she began speaking again. ‘Share our lives. And how are we going to do that? We can’t even be in the same room together without—’

But she never finished her sentence. Instead she made the mistake of looking up at him, and instantly the words stalled in her throat.

She felt her body tense, almost painfully, and then her legs started to shake just as they had the first time she had ever seen him. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt that hugged the muscles of his arms, and wearing dark glasses, he had looked like a cocktail of one part glamour to two parts cool. And then he’d taken his glasses off, and it had been like a thunderclap bursting inside her head.

Over time she had, of course, grown used to how he looked. But at least once a day it had caught her off guard, and now apparently nothing had changed. The seemingly random arrangement of mouth, nose, cheekbones still had the same power to rob her of even basic impulses, such as breathing and speaking.

‘Without what?’

Her stomach tightened with awareness. The air felt suddenly charged with a different kind of tension, and his voice had grown softer. Too soft.

She could feel it slipping over her skin like a caress, so warm and tempting and—

Deceptive! Had she really learned nothing from what happened between them?

Ignoring his eyes, she crossed her arms in front of her body, shielding herself from the pull of the past. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but it does. You see, I need an answer,’ he said, and the smoothness of his voice in no way diluted his uncompromising statement.

‘Well, tough!’ Her eyes widened. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to give you one here and now?’

For a moment he didn’t reply, just continued to stare at her thoughtfully, as though he was working out something inside his head.

‘Actually, I can—and I am.’

Her pulse shifted up a gear as he glanced at the surprisingly understated watch on his wrist.

‘Deals have deadlines, and this one runs out when I walk back out through that door.’

She took a breath, fear drumming through her chest. ‘But that’s not fair. I need time—’

‘And I need an answer.’

The commanding note in his voice whipped at her senses so that suddenly her head was buzzing and the glare of the sunlight hurt her eyes.

‘And, to be fair, you have had ten years.’

Margot blinked. ‘You can’t compare what happened then with this.’ She felt suddenly sick. Surely he didn’t think that this ‘proposal’ somehow picked up where they’d left off?

‘This is nothing like before,’ she said shakily.

‘I agree. This is far better.’

She gaped at him speechlessly, uncertain of how to interpret his words, and then suddenly she shook her head, her eyes snapping upwards. ‘Better! What are you talking about?’

Her voice was too loud. So loud that someone in the corridor would be able to hear her. But for the first time in her life she didn’t care what other people might think.

‘How is this better? How could this ever be better?’

‘It’s simpler. More transparent.’ His gaze dropped to her throat, then lowered to the V of her dress. ‘What you see is what you get. And, despite all your talk of mutual loathing, I think we can agree that we both like what we see.’

Margot felt something dislodge inside her. His closeness was making her unravel. She wanted to disagree. To throw his remark back in his face. Only she didn’t trust herself to speak—not just to form the words inside her head but to say them out loud.

Her pulse hiccupped with panic, and his gaze cut to hers. Surely though he couldn’t sense the way he made her feel?

But of course he could—he always had. And, as though reading her mind, he reached out and gently stroked her long blonde hair, his touch pulling her not just closer, but back to a past that she had never quite relinquished.

‘I can’t give you time, Margot, but I can give you a reason to marry me.’