Wife in Public by Emma Darcy Page B

let her stew in her own juices this time, make her count the cost for once, but blackmail was a dirty criminal act, and he couldn’t allow anyone to stick his sister with it. Nevertheless, some lessons had to be hammered home right now.
    ‘Okay, you want something from me, Olivia. I want something from you,’ he said in a hard relentless tone,totally unsympathetic to her blubbering tears in the face of the insults she had flung at Ivy—a woman she didn’t know and didn’t care about knowing—putting his win at risk.
    ‘What?’ Olivia asked sulkily.
    ‘Firstly you will apologise to Ivy for your ignorant remarks about her. Take a deep breath now and do it with some grace, please, or you can take your trouble to the cemetery and tell it to Dad’s tombstone.’
    Her jaw dropped in shock. She goggled at him and then at Ivy who hadn’t said a word, despite the nastiness that had been directed at her. God only knew what she was thinking! Probably that any connection with him was fast losing its desire-power!
    ‘Sorry,’ Olivia finally mumbled at Ivy in a woebegone fashion. ‘I’m just so upset. I wanted you to go so I could have Jordan to myself. I…I shouldn’t have said those things.’ She dashed the tears from her eyes with her hand, lifted her chin and looked belligerently at Jordan. ‘Is that enough?’
    ‘No, but it will do for the present. The next time you meet Ivy, you’d better take the trouble to make her acquaintance in a decent fashion. You could learn good manners from her for a start.’
    ‘All right! All right!’ She snapped, throwing up her free hand, then dropping it into a plea for him to stop browbeating her. ‘I’m sorry. Okay?’
    ‘None of this is okay, Olivia. Go back into the lounge and wait for me. Don’t drink another drop of alcohol. If you have a serious problem we need to talk about it seriously. Soberly. Without any more theatrics. I’ll take Ivy to Margaret, who I’m sure will make her feel more comfortable, and I’ll bring you some strong black coffee.’
    She flounced off into the lounge, slamming the door behind her in protest at being treated to some discipline instead of oodles of indulgence. Jordan reined in the angry resentment stirred by the whole scene with Olivia and turned quickly to draw Ivy into his embrace, searching her eyes for reactions to it, anxious to erase any damage done.
    ‘I apologise for my sister’s behaviour. It’s beyond my control, Ivy. She just lashes out indiscriminately when she’s upset. Not that that’s any excuse…’
    To his intense relief she gave him an ironic little smile. ‘I thought you did a fairly impressive job of taking control.’
    He heaved a rueful sigh. ‘My parents spoiled Olivia rotten. All she had to do was throw a tantrum and she was given anything she wanted. It used to drive me around the bend. Still does. But she could be in real trouble with this blackmail business. I’ll have to deal with it.’
    ‘Of course you do,’ she said sympathetically, reaching up to smooth the frown from his brow. ‘What your sister said to me doesn’t matter, Jordan. I know I’m not a Cinderella and I’ve never been poisonous to anyone. It seems to me it’s your family wealth that’s the poison.’
    True, but…he needed to find out how profitable Ivy’s rose farm was, whether it was on shaky ground, check that she wasn’t a Cinderella in hiding as Biancha had been, because he knew only too well that it was the Cinderellas of both sexes who brought poison to his family’s wealth.
    ‘It does attract con-artists and fortune-hunters and Olivia invariably falls for them,’ he replied with an unguarded touch of bitterness.
    ‘That must be really nasty for her when she finds out she’s been fooled.’
    Being fooled was always nasty. Only once had he fallen into that trap, and not even the promise of fantastic sex forever would blinker his eyes to it again.
    ‘It’s about time she exercised some judgement,’ he said