spark of defiance. ‘Don’t do it,’ he urged in a gruff entreaty as he rose to his feet, some measure of his fighting spirit renewed. ‘This is my fault—all of it. You shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes. We’ll make it through somehow.’
She smiled and mouthed a silent thank you.
‘Well?’ demanded the Spanish devil, drawing closer, obviously impatient to seal the deal. ‘What have you decided?’
‘That I hate you,’ she snapped. ‘With all my heart and soul.’
He lifted a hand to her face quickly and she recoiled, but his touch, when it came, was surprisingly gentle as he ran the backs of his fingers along the line of her jaw. She shuddered at the sizzle of flesh against flesh as his eyes bored into hers, rendering her breathless, unable to move. ‘Hate is such a useless waste of passion.’ He sighed and turned away and she dragged in air hungrily.
‘But so be it. Under the circumstances,’ he stated coldly, ‘I want you all packed and out of here by the end of the week.’
‘No!’
He spun around. ‘What do you mean, “no”? My terms were clear.’
‘It means we won’t be leaving.’
‘Briar,’ her father implored, ‘don’t do it. You can’t—’
Diablo held up one hand that silenced her father in a heartbeat as he scrutinised her face, the barest hint of a smile returning as the dark vacuum of his bottomless eyes sucked in hers. ‘Tell me,’ he insisted.
She took a deep breath and prayed for strength. Because she needed strength if she was going to do this. And she had no choice but to do this.
For my mother, she told herself, for my family.
‘I’ll do it,’ she whispered, feeling like a swimmer out of her depth, going down for the third and final time.
‘I’ll marry you.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHAT’S taking you so long?’ asked Carolyn Davenport, bustling with excitement as she swept into Briar’s room, holding her turquoise gown’s ample skirts up high and trailing a silky layered train in her wake. ‘It’s just fabulous downstairs,’ she announced. ‘Everyone’s here. Even with the short notice, I think the whole of Sydney society has turned out.’
Only out of morbid curiosity, thought Briar cynically as she applied the finishing touches to her make-up. No matter what story Diablo’s spin doctors had concocted to release to the press, there wasn’t a chance anyone believed theirs was a love match.
Anyone, that was, apart from her mother.
Carolyn Davenport had taken the news of the impending nuptials like the true society doyenne she was, swinging into mother-of-the-bride mode as if she was born to it. Any hint that she’d known about a link between her daughter’s rushed marriage and the fact that now suddenly they had servants again, with the funds to pay for them and much more besides, like her brand new Lisa Ho gown, for example, seemed to have been conveniently deleted from her memory. Her mother seemed all too ready to believe in the whole sorry fairy tale.
‘Fairy tale romance’, my eye, Briar thought, reflecting on the latest headline as she snapped the blusher compact closed. But even the business pages hadn’t been immune to the press bombardment.
‘Marriage Merger’ had been their angle—‘a blending of new money with old, the brash success of the young entrepreneur merged with the proven track record of the establishment’.
How the papers would lap it up if she came clean with her own version of the headline—‘Blackmail Bride—sold to save her family from financial ruin’. But that story would never come out, no matter how true.
‘You could do with more colour than that,’ her mother protested, as Briar dropped the blusher back into a drawer. ‘You look so pale tonight—I knew we should have got your make-up done professionally. Are you feeling nervous?’
‘Not really.’ Feeling sick, more like it. Briar looked briefly back in the mirror to check—even against the white silk of her simple toga-inspired gown she looked pale—but then, what make-up was going to be a match for her mood? There was only so much you could do with powder and paint.
‘Never mind,’ her mother said, when it was clear her daughter was going to make no attempt to redress the issue. ‘I’m sure a glass of champagne will soon put some colour in your cheeks.’
Briar’s stomach clamped down in rebellion. Champagne was the last thing she needed. After all, tonight was hardly a celebration.
‘Come on, then,’ her mother urged. ‘Diablo’s waiting for you downstairs. Just wait till you see him; he looks so dashing tonight.’
‘That’s nice,’ she responded absently, slipping her feet into heels. Who cared what he looked like? He could be the most handsome man in the world, but it would still be the devil in disguise waiting for her. And frankly, he could just keep on waiting. Just because she’d agreed to marry him didn’t mean that she’d be dancing to his tune any time soon.
She’d done a lot of thinking over the last two weeks and she’d worked out her own musical score for this marriage. Diablo craved respectability and an entrée to Sydney society. He didn’t care about her and he almost certainly didn’t even like her. Given that the feeling was mutual, it shouldn’t take much to convince him that the best way to make this marriage work was for them both to lead separate lives. At least until he tired of her and agreed to a divorce. That way life might be bearable. She could put up with a year or two of inconvenience if she knew that at the other side of it she’d be free.
‘Oh, hasn’t Carlos done such a wonderful job with your hair?’ her mother exclaimed with delight. ‘It suits that gown perfectly. Although I still don’t understand why you wanted to wear that old thing. It is a special occasion, after all.’
Not that special. And this ‘old thing’ was barely twelve months old and only worn once as it was. But still, she turned and smiled at her mother’s never-ending enthusiasm. Someone had to be enthusiastic about this wedding and who better than her mother? Already she looked so much better than she had just two short weeks ago when this crazy marriage plan had been unleashed, her features less drawn, her frown vanquished. It wasn’t just that their financial situation had taken a turn for the better, she knew, but because her mother genuinely seemed to want this marriage to work out.
‘I’m just saving my splurge for the big event,’ she told her, with a passion she didn’t feel, taking her mother’s arm and pulling her in close. ‘Come on, let’s go meet these guests.’
The champagne flowed so freely it seemed the huge ballroom was awash with it. Champagne, old money and the celebrity A-List blended together in the Blaxlea ballroom, which fairly gleamed since the team of cleaners Diablo had organised to go over the place had done their bit. Huge arrangements of flowers were doubled in the enormous mirrors, their colours reflected in the crystal chandeliers, while a full wall of feature windows welcomed in the diamond lights of Sydney Harbour at night.
It was some place all right and it could have been his outright—indeed it had been, for just one night. But he was happy with his deal—they could keep the title to the
