The Blackmailed Bride by Kim Lawrence Page B

ear.
    Javier’s nostrils flared as the clean scent of the shampoo she had just used drifted towards him, the scent subtly mingled with a warm female fragrance. He felt his body react to the stimulus. The strength of the response startled him.
    â€˜Negotiation…I want something, you want something, we come to a mutually beneficial arrangement, possibly involving an acceptable degree of compromise,’ he elucidated slowly in his rich dark chocolate drawl. ‘I would have thought as a lawyer you were au fait with the way it works.’
    Now, compromise worried her, but the idea of him wanting something she had worried her a lot more!
    â€˜What do I have that you want?’ Kate quavered, wrapping her arms protectively across her chest. Though the droop of his heavy lids concealed the expression in his eyes, she could detect a worrying gleam through the lush screen.
    â€˜I need to get married.’
    It was not a response she had expected.
    â€˜Congratulations,’ Kate responded uncertainly. Trained to observe such things, she automatically noted the slightemphasis on need and the significant absence of want, both verbally and non-verbally.
    â€˜You have not asked me in what manner this concerns you?’
    â€˜I thought you’d get around to telling me… eventually, ’ she observed with an exaggerated sigh.
    Her response made his lips quirk appreciatively.
    â€˜My grandfather is an old-fashioned man in many ways…’ he began heavily.
    â€˜This might be quicker if I tell you what I already know. You’re talking about Felipe Montero. The one with money, power and grasping relations all jockeying for position to replace him?’ The financial pages were not Kate’s choice of reading but she’d have needed to be living in a vacuum if she hadn’t known something of the circumstances.
    â€˜The one with terminal cancer,’ came the blunt response.
    Kate’s scornful smirk drooped. ‘Oh, God! I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, feeling a total, thoughtless cow. ‘I didn’t know.’
    â€˜That is not accidental; nobody does. If the financial markets learn of his illness, the bottom will drop out of Montero shares, wiping millions off the company’s value overnight. To the world, my grandfather is Montero,’ he outlined unemotionally. ‘The obvious solution is for the mantle to pass smoothly to his successor before it becomes public knowledge.’
    The cold-bloodedness of this analysis appalled Kate. Searching his face gave her no insight into his attitude towards his grandfather’s illness. Did it really mean no more to him than figures on a balance sheet? Was he really that callous?
    â€˜You want to be his successor.’
    â€˜I am the logical choice. My uncle and cousins, whilst all are capable in their own way, lack leadership qualities.’
    Kate marvelled at his astonishing arrogance. ‘But youhave those qualities…?’ She couldn’t tell if he’d recognised the irony in her tone as he calmly conceded her point.
    â€˜I do, and I see no reason to deny the fact. I would have thought that you of all people would appreciate candour, but I was forgetting the British consider self-deprecation a virtue,’ he drawled. ‘Does that make me an arrogant Spaniard?’
    His mockery made Kate flush angrily. ‘I don’t see your problem. Your grandfather needs an heir—you are it. What does it have to do with me?’
    â€˜My grandfather and I have not always seen eye to eye; he is not a flexible man…’
    This classic demonstration of the pot calling the kettle black brought a grim smile to her lips; as amusing as this was she couldn’t see where she came into it. ‘Will you get to the damned point?’ she pleaded tautly.
    â€˜He had let me know that I am his choice but—this is where his old-fashioned standards come into it—only if I am married. He has