‘I studied fine arts,’ she hissed. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You surprise me, given you have such a flair for the dramatic.’
‘And you have such a flair for the insane! How could you possibly imagine I would marry you? What were you thinking? That you could marry your way into Sydney society? It won’t work. People aren’t going to forget how you rode roughshod over everyone in your path to get to where you are today.’
He surveyed her through half-hooded eyes that failed to hide those dark simmering depths. ‘You resent me for building my own fortune, instead of having it bestowed on me through some accident of birth like you and your kind?’
‘I resent you because you’ve built your fortune by pulling others down, my father included.’
‘Is that so? And yet now I’m offering your father a chance to get re-established. He can see the sense in the offer. And yet still you resent me.’
‘I will always resent you.’
She turned in frustration to her father. ‘Please, tell me this is all a joke. You can’t really expect me to marry this arrogant Spanish import. This is twenty-first century Sydney, after all. We don’t do arranged marriages!’
Her father shook his head sadly. ‘Briar…’ His voice choked off as he sank down into an armchair, dropping his head into his hands. ‘Oh God, I’ve been such a fool.’
She rushed to him and knelt at his side, latching both hands on to his forearm, willing him some of her strength and hope. ‘Dad, listen to me. We don’t need Diablo’s money. I’ve got it all worked out. We can survive just like we planned—with my job and by auctioning the good furniture periodically. We don’t need to go crawling to people like him. We don’t need his money.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ her father murmured, shaking his head from side to side.
‘It is that easy,’ she assured him. ‘We don’t have to make this deal. I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet—because we can survive without it. So what that we won’t have servants?—We can cope. We’ve been coping. And I’ll have a job soon.’
‘We’re not coping! Look at the state of the house—it’s killing your mother that she can’t keep up with everything.’
‘Who cares if the floors don’t get cleaned every day? Things will get better, you’ll see.’
Her father grabbed her by the shoulders, his desperate fingers clawing into her flesh so hard it hurt. With his hurt, she knew. ‘No, it’s not that easy,’ he reiterated. ‘You have to listen. We have no money left. No credit. Nothing.’
‘We do,’ she argued, wanting to stop his pain. ‘Or we will, and enough to keep us going and to get us through these times. We don’t need anyone else’s money, let alone his. Let me go and get the schedule I’ve been working on. I’ll prove it to you. I’ve worked it all out.’
‘Briar,’ was all he said as he dropped his grip to her hands, holding on to them for all he was worth, not letting her rise. ‘Thank you. You’re such a good child. I’m so proud of you.’
She looked into her father’s eyes and saw his approval beaming out at her. She relished the moment as he pulled her close, wrapping her securely in his arms, and for a moment they were the only two people in the room. Nobody else counted. Nobody else mattered. Her father thought he had been carrying the entire burden of their debt on his shoulders. Now he knew that Briar had also been searching for solutions. And everything would look different when he’d seen her calculations. She’d soon show him they didn’t need to resort to people like Diablo for the funds to ensure their future.
‘So when are you going to tell her?’ jarred a voice from outside her perfect understanding. And she stilled within the circle of her father’s arms as dread turned her blood to ice.
‘Tell me what?’ she asked huskily, drawing back to search her father’s face. What the hell else could there be?
He looked down at her with his empty eyes and it was impossible not to feel his despair drape around her, damp and pungent. ‘There’s nothing left.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, willing life into his eyes, searching for the merest flicker of hope. ‘“Nothing left”?’
‘It’s all gone. All of it.’
‘But we’ve still got the house and the furniture! I told you…’
But, even as she was speaking, his head was shaking from side to side.
‘Gone,’ her father said. ‘All that was left is gone. It’s Diablo’s now. Everything. The house, the furniture. Everything.’
Fury took charge of her senses. She rose up and wheeled around. ‘You bastard!’ She moved closer. Never before had she had an urge to tear someone limb from limb but tonight was becoming a night for firsts. Her first arranged marriage. Her first fiancé. Why not her first homicide? She lifted one hand, resisting the desire to lash out at his smug face, instead curling it into a fist between them.
‘You scheming bastard. Not content to obliterate four generations of work, you couldn’t let up until you had taken every last thing, even our family home, and consigned us to the gutter. What a hero. Do you feel proud of yourself now?’
In the space of a blink he’d ensnared her wrist, the heat from his grip like a brand on her arm.
‘I’m offering a way to keep you all out of that gutter. I’ve told your father—he can keep the house and everything in it along with a sizeable lump of cash every year. All you have to do is be that good daughter your father seems to think you are. All you have to do is marry me and all your family’s unfortunate financial problems will be a thing of the past.’
The grip around her wrist tightened, forcing her towards him, closer to his dark eyes and his tight body and his masculine heat. If his gaze at the door had been sizzling hot, his hold and his closeness was like an incendiary device set to slow burn. Already her skin sizzled into life; how long would it take to get to flash-point?
‘Put like that, it seems you leave me no choice,’ she said through gritted teeth, watching his eyes flare with an anticipated victory.
‘I’m glad you’re willing to see reason at last,’ he said, loosening his grip.
‘Oh, yes, I see reason. I’ll take the gutter over you any day!’
She took advantage of his shock by wrenching her arm free, massaging the burning skin as she wheeled away.
‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for!’ Diablo countered. ‘You have no idea what it’s like to live in poverty, always desperate to find your next meal, never able to make ends meet, and with your pampered upbringing you won’t survive ten minutes out in the real world.’
She spun on her heel, lifted her chin determinedly. ‘Oh, we’ll survive.’
He scoffed. ‘What—you see yourself as the noble poor? Allow me to let you in on a secret—there are no noble poor. There are only the poor, the hungry and the desperate. There’s no place for nobility in that line-up. The gutter is no fairy tale romantic notion.’
She regarded him levelly. ‘What a coincidence,’ she mustered. ‘Neither, it seems, is marrying you.’ She turned to where her father still sat, looking like an empty shell of a man, a fallen ruler, vanquished and heartsick for what he’d lost, and pain for what he was feeling now encompassed her like a tide rolling in.
‘I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t do it. I just can’t marry him.’
Her father nodded his head and she knew that it was not in agreement but in resignation. He seemed to shrink before her eyes. ‘I understand,’