The Pleasure King's Bride (11 page)

He frowned. “I wouldn’t expect you to. Though I’d be happy to adopt her and share the responsibility of parenthood with you. I would do everything in my power to protect her and give her a good home.”

Marriage...adoption...legal ties Rafael Santiso would undoubtedly see as possible threats to his trusteeship. And Jared was no pushover. He was demonstrating right now his will to fight for what he believed in, and he had the proven ability to run a multimillion-dollar business. Given a fair playing ground, he might even win against Santiso, but she was certain the Argentinian wouldn’t play fair and Jared had too much integrity to play dirty.

“Alicia does like me, you know,” he said persuasively. “I’m sure I can win her acceptance to my being her dad.”

Being Alicia’s
father
could very well lead to his death.

She sucked in a deep breath to calm the fearful flutter that thought evoked, men reached up to trace his lips with feather-light fingertips, desperate to recall the sensuality they had been wrapped in before. “I think you’d make a wonderful father,” she readily conceded.

“Then say you’ll marry me, Christabel.”

“Please...let me think about it, Jared.” She moved her hand to his ear, caressing the inner coils. “Give me tonight to...”

“No.” He shook his head, dislodging her touch. His voice hardened. “This time I won’t let you slip away from me as you did on Sunday night, leaving me with nothing but the memory of how it had been between us.” His eyes blazed down at her. “Tell me what’s wrong with my proposition.”

The mood had changed. Irrevocably. Christabel recognised there would be no more lovemaking tonight unless he got his own way, and she couldn’t agree to a marriage with him.

“I’m cold, Jared.” It was true enough. Her heart felt like a block of ice. “I want to get dressed. Let me up.”

He hesitated, hating the evasion, wanting to maintain his dominant position over her, yet force was not his style. It never had been in all the time she’d known him. Persuasion, persistence, determination, yes...but not force. Even today he had not forced her into his plane. He had simply taken charge of flying it to a destination of his choice, doing what he believed would work best for all of them.

He rose to his feet, a proud magnificent man bristling with barely leashed aggression. He offered her his hand to help her up but she didn’t take it, sensing he meant to lift her into his embrace and press her into the surrender he wanted. She rolled aside and lifted herself, springing to her feet at a safe distance from him.

“You won’t trust my hand?” he challenged harshly.

“It’s not a question of trust,” she flashed back at him, then realising his hurt—all the hurt she had inflicted on him with her silence—she laid out the truth he refused to see. “I’m poison to you, Jared. I’m like a black widow spider. Bad enough that I’ve taken what I have from you. If you married me, I’d consume your life.”

“I’m prepared to take that risk, Christabel.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why put off saying so until tomorrow?’’

“Because I’m selfish and greedy, and I wanted more of you before tomorrow came.”

Tears welled into her eyes and she tore her gaze from his, overwhelmed by a hopeless sense of defeat. She saw a piece of her clothing and snatched it off the ground, pulling it on in swift, jerky movements.

“Nothing is going to change tomorrow,” he stated, puzzled by her time limit.

“Wait and see,” she threw at him bitterly, hunting around for the rest of her clothes.

“I’ve done too much of that, Christabel,” he retorted fiercely. “Tell me what you expect to happen.”

“They’ll come,” she grated out, hating the inevitability that hung over her, dressing herself with a sense of savage protection against it as she told Jared what she anticipated. “Your mother will bring them. Santiso will persuade her. One way or another, he’ll persuade all of you that, it’s better to let him take Alicia and me back into his custody.”

“I’ll never be persuaded of that,” he declared vehemently.

Fully dressed again and feeling more armoured to face his arguments, Christabel squared her shoulders and looked straight at him. He was still carelessly naked, his entire being so focused on fighting her conviction, she was instantly caught in the tension emanating from him, her own nerves snapping at the intensity of the conflict he would not stand back from.

“It won’t be your choice, Jared,” she said quietly. “It will be mine.”

“You’d deny me the right to choose the life I want?
With you,
Christabel, whatever it takes and wherever it takes me. It’s what I want above everything else.”

His voice was furred with the passionate emotion he was pouring out to her and she felt it curling around her heart, squeezing it. “I can’t live with that sacrifice,” she pleaded. “Don’t ask me to.”

“Even if you go with Santiso, I’ll follow you. I won’t give up.”

“You may kill us all if you don’t, Jared,” she cried, deeply agitated by his resolve.

“Kill?’’ he echoed incredulously.

“The man I married, Alicia’s father, stood in the way of Rafael Santiso’s ambitions. He was blown up in a boat.”

It jolted the powerful flow of his will. “You said it was an accident.”

“It was officially declared an accident. I don’t believe it. I have no proof but I don’t believe it. Don’t get in Santiso’s way, Jared. I’ll never forgive myself if you do.”

While he was still distracted by the shock of her claim, she turned and started up the slope to the homestead, forcing her legs to move away from him and keep moving.

He had to let her go.

That was the ultimate truth.

And fighting it was fatal.

Jared
let her go.

The spectre of murder held him still, its ramifications swirling through his mind as he watched her walk away from him, trudging steadily up the slope to the homestead, a lonely figure bearing a dark knowledge, moving back into a darkness there was no escape from. Not for her.

He wanted to pluck her out of it, to promise her a different life with him, but he knew they would be empty words to her. Empty words to him, as well, until he could see a way past this final fatal barrier. As it was, he realised his continual pressing of the attraction between them must have been a torment to her all these months. It would be a gross act now to subject her to more pressure. He had no ready answers to ease her pain.

He’d forgotten her husband, dismissed him as irrelevant once he knew he’d died before Alicia was born. Five years—ancient history, he’d thought, while it had been five years of living hell for Christabel. And there was no end to it. No end to the Kruger fortune and the power behind it. That was a truth he couldn’t dismiss.

He watched her until she was swallowed up by the darkness of the night. For several moments he was gripped by a haunting sense of loss, and a cold, cold loneliness pressed in on him. He looked up at the stars and felt the distance of them, unreachable yet there, twinkling their invitation to those who would dare cross space to get to them, dare anything to conquer the void.

A strong surge of determination burned through him. He would not accept that he and Christabel were ships passing in the night. He had taken it upon himself to bring her and her daughter to Ring’s Eden, to stop her running. He would not let Santiso win. If there had been murder done, as Christabel believed, then any further threat of it had to be lifted and dealt with.

At least now he understood—why she ran; why she had tried to deny the attraction between them; why she’d given in to it, if only for a limited time; why the time—to her mind—had to be limited; the wretched weight she’d been carrying on her conscience about involving him in her life, a weight she’d wanted to put aside while having this one last night with him.

He understood that, too...the compelling need to feel all there was to feel between them while she still could. It wasn’t selfish or greedy. It was as natural as breathing, the wish to extend the life of something beautiful, something he knew would never come his way again.

He believed she knew it, too, that what they shared went too deep to ever find with anyone else. It wasn’t wrong to take what she could of it. She’d given him as much as she took. But Jared had no intention of letting it end here. He set about picking up his clothes and putting them on. Christabel had her own brand of integrity. Not hurting others was high on her list. Perhaps that was a woman’s way, doing her utmost to save those she loved from being harmed. But letting a predator win only put off other evil hours. The harm would come anyway. It had to be stopped.

Fully dressed again, he walked slowly up to the homestead, planning what he would do if Christabel was right in her reading of the situation. Fear might have distorted her view but he was not about to discount anything she believed. She’d acted on that belief with a determination that was stronger than her own personal desires. That said a lot to Jared.

The lights were on in the living room, Nathan and Miranda waiting in case they were needed. Jared glanced at the illumined numbers on his watch—21: 43. His mobile telephone was still in his shirt pocket. He paused by the bougainvillea hedge that surrounded the majestic old house and its immediate grounds, took out the telephone and hit the computerised code for the Picard home in Broome. He wanted to talk to his mother before he spoke to Nathan.

But it wasn’t his mother who answered the call.

It was Vikki Chan.

“It’s Jared, Vikki.”

“She is not home yet, and she did not give me a time to be home,” came the reply, cutting straight to the point of his call.

Jared frowned, impatient for another report. “Where can she be reached?’’

“I think you should trust your mother, Jared, and wait for her to call you.”

“Tell me, Vikki,” he commanded curtly. “Don’t come between us. This it too important to me.”

“It may be important to your mother, as well.”

“She is meeting with Santiso on my behalf,” he argued.

“I do not think entirely, Jared. Rafael Santiso is a very attractive man and you may not see it as her son, but your mother is still a woman with a lot of life to live.”

Jared’s mind reeled over this new element. Never having met the man he had to give Vikki’s judgment some credence on this point, but he found it extremely difficult to imagine his mother connecting to anyone after his father. He recoiled from the idea. Vikki had to be wrong. It might be a female pretence on his mother’s part to fool Santiso into relaxing his guard with her. On the other hand, Christabel’s conviction suddenly rang out loud and clear.

Santiso will persuade her. One way or another, he’ll persuade all of you...

“Where are they?” he demanded grimly.

Vikki sighed. “He invited your mother to dine with him in the Nolan Suite at the Cable Beach Resort.”

“She’s gone with him to a private suite?” Even he could hear the edge of outrage in his voice.

“You have no right to judge what is right for your mother,” came the terse reproof. “I remind you she respected your choice of Christabel, knowing very little about her.”

“But we do know about Santiso, don’t we?” he retorted angrily. “Christabel told us.”

“Trust your mother, Jared. She is not a fool.”

His own words to Christabel thrown back at him, yet his judgment of his mother was now severely shaken.
She does not know him as I do,
Christabel had replied, and those words burnt into his mind, building a belief that his mother
was
being fooled by a man who had no scruples in using anything to get what he wanted.

“I’ll see what happens tomorrow,” he said, ending the call, his mind already occupied with Christabel’s other predictions.

He activated Tommy’s telephone number, determined on building a safety net. “Jared here,” he announced the moment Tommy answered.

“No news of movement yet,” came the instant report.

“He’s with Mum. In the Nolan Suite at the Cable Beach Resort, no less. And get this, Tommy. She finds him attractive.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Vikki Chan’s judgment. Want to knock it?”

A shocked silence. Both of them were acutely aware of the old Chinese housekeeper’s closeness to their mother, and her astute summing up of any situation.

“Christabel called Santiso a master manipulator,” Jared went on. “She expects him to persuade Mum to bring all three of our European visitors to King’s Eden tomorrow. If that’s in the wind, Tommy, I want you in Broome tomorrow morning to fly them out yourself. No charter pilot. You. We keep this in the family. Okay?”

“Right you are. I won’t keep Sam out, though.”

“She’s family.” Tommy’s fiancée had been like a kid sister to Jared for most of his life. He’d trust her with anything. He was going to trust her with a vital part of his plan. “I have a job for Sam, too, Tommy,” he said, and outlined the responsibility he wanted her to take on.

“No problem,” his brother assured him. “Where do you expect this to end, Jared?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m hoping to sort out the truth tomorrow. But the final outcome—I will not have the woman I intend to marry living in fear.”

“I’m with you, Jared.” Hard resolve in his voice.

“Thanks, Tommy.”

Satisfied he had countered whatever persuasion Rafael Santiso was working on his mother, Jared moved forward, heading for the home that had sheltered the King family for over a hundred years. He paused at the front gate, feeling the spirit of those who had built this place and the legendary memories it embodied, the hospitality that had always been extended and the rules implicit in that hospitality.

Let Santiso come, he thought grimly. If the Kruger trustee and his cronies demonstrated any poisonous fangs, they would be cast out of Eden and left in a wilderness, the like of which they would never have experienced before.

It wouldn’t be the first time a transgressor learnt at first hand the rigours of survival in the outback, gradually acquiring a new respect for life and the lives of others. All the money in the world was futile and meaningless on that journey. Lachlan’s law had always delivered a punishment to fit the crime—justice not only done but seen to be done.

Jared decided he would like very much to give Rafael Santiso a taste of fear, a taste of feeling there was no way out
for him.
A couple of years of that might very well revolutionise his thinking, give him a true appreciation of what Christabel had been put through. Though he had to be certain such a course was warranted before carrying it out.

His mother’s apparent vulnerability to the man was another issue. It nagged at his sense of rightness as he proceeded past the gate and on to the house. Surely her sharply honed instincts wouldn’t play her false. He had never once felt out of tune with his mother. Never. Could she be so deeply deceived by Santiso?

As he’d anticipated, Nathan and Miranda were waiting for him, sitting in the big room that housed generations of choices in furniture—antiques, Asian influences, modern comfort, exotic collector pieces. Somehow they all melded together into a fascinating blend of people’s pleasure.

His mother always sat in the armchair upholstered in scarlet silk brocade. He wished it wasn’t empty tonight. Nathan occupied the huge black leather armchair that accommodated the length and breadth of his formidable physique. Miranda, whom Jared had walked down the aisle to his brother because she had no known father or family, eyed him worriedly from the sofa she favoured.

Was Christabel bereft of any family, as Miranda had been before marrying Nathan? There was so much he still didn’t know. What of her life in Brazil, before she’d met and married Laurens Kruger?

“Christabel came back alone,” Miranda remarked questioningly. “She asked about Alicia then took her leave of us for the night. She looked as though she’d been crying, Jared.”

He winced at the grief he’d unwittingly caused her in cutting short the comfort of loving by demanding answers to his need. Still, better that he had a fuller picture of what had to be fought. He turned to Nathan who waited patiently to be informed, his sharp blue eyes trained on his youngest brother, aware of the complexities of the situation and what Jared wanted from it.

“There’s more,” Jared stated bluntly, and filled Nathan in on the latest developments, delivering a sharp summary as he paced around the room, too wrought up to sit down. “So how do you stand with this?” he finished, more belligerent in his demand than he meant to be.

“With you,” Nathan answered calmly, pushing up from the leather chair, his height and solidity automatically emanating authority as he moved to clasp Jared’s shoulder in a gesture of unison. “We’ll take whatever action is called for.”

Absolute support. Jared saw it in his eyes and felt his inner angst ease. They were one in this—all three brothers—as he had assumed they would be—their father’s sons—but his strong sense of family unity had been rattled by his mother’s apparent leaning towards the other side.

“What about Elizabeth?” Miranda asked anxiously, echoing Jared’s own concern.

Nathan swung to answer her, his face expressing no inner conflict whatsoever. “We protect our own,” he stated decisively. “That means Mum, too. If her judgment is...awry, what happiness do you think she’d find with him?”

Miranda shook her head. “It’s so hard to believe. Your mother is...”

“Lonely,” Nathan supplied. “Rafael Santiso heads and holds together a financial empire. It takes a certain type of character to achieve that.”

He turned back to Jared, an ironic gleam in his eyes as he added, “Whether she feels an echo of our father in him...or something else...who knows? There has been an empty place in her life for many years.”

For the first time an attraction made some sense to Jared...a man of unshakeable willpower, a man who challenged his mother...and he well understood
empty places.
He was grateful to Nathan for his perception. Human frailty he could accept.

“We tread carefully there, Jared,” his big brother asserted quietly but firmly. “Hold back any sense of humiliation if Mum has been deceived. We must leave her dignity intact. Did you make that clear to Tommy?”

“No. I was angry,” Jared had to confess. His eyes ironically acknowledged his own human frailty as he added, “I felt... betrayed.’’

Nathan nodded his understanding. “You’ve been closest to her. In the end, she’ll put you first. I have no doubt about that. I’ll call Tommy and talk it over with him. Okay?”

Jared was reminded of all the times in his boyhood when Nathan had
fixed
things for his little brother. He smiled in wry appreciation. “I am grown up now.”

Nathan laughed, his eyes twinkling appreciation and acknowledgment of the fact. “Just saving you time, Jared.” He sobered and gestured to his wife. “Miranda’s right. Christabel had been crying on her way back from her walk with you...”

“I had to take care of business, but I would be obliged if you’ll talk to Tommy. And thanks, Nathan.” He reached up and clasped his brother’s shoulder, a lump of deep emotion welling into his throat. “You never have let me down and it’s good to know you’re still here for me.”