‘You would say that. You wanted me to feel guilty enough that I agreed to your nefarious plan. Well, it hasn’t worked. I don’t believe you ever intended to give him any of the profit you denied him and I regret nothing. I will never marry you.’
The last of Luis’s patience snapped.
He’d only been prepared to make up the profit shortfall because Benjamin was his oldest friend. In truth, despite his bulging contact book, Benjamin was his only real friend.
But Benjamin had not just crossed a line, he’d hacked at it with a chainsaw and the damage caused by his actions had the potential to destroy both Casillas brothers. Reputations could be broken by the smallest means and businesses ruined. Luis had not been exaggerating when he’d spoken of the financial troubles he and Javier had got into seven years ago. There had been an eighteen-month period when they had struggled to find the cash to put petrol in their cars but then three projects were completed within months of each other and suddenly the money had started rolling in. Almost a decade of complete focus and hard work and suddenly they were richer than they had ever dreamed possible. Their fortune had only grown since.
He would not be poor again. He would not have his or his brother’s reputation battered any more. Chloe could put a stop to all of it with two simple words: I do.
‘I have explained the facts of the situation,’ he said tightly. ‘If you choose not to believe them then so be it but this ends now. Too much damage has been caused. Marry me and no one else need be hurt.’
‘Apart from me.’
‘How will marriage hurt you? You’re a single woman—’
‘We went on one date two months ago,’ she interrupted hotly. ‘You’ve no idea who I’ve seen since then.’
He mustered a smile. ‘You said only an hour ago that you were on a holiday that involved hot men. That implies you are either single or a cheat. Which is it?’
Her cheeks had turned red enough to warm his hands on them. ‘I’m a grown woman. How I conduct my personal life is my business.’
He shrugged. ‘Lover or not, you’re an unmarried woman. Your career is in tatters... What will you be giving up to marry me and rectify the mess you helped create? It wouldn’t be a permanent marriage, only one that lasts long enough to shut the wolves up and restore my and my brother’s reputations. In return, I would give you everything your heart desires.’
‘My heart does not desire you.’
‘Your body does.’ At the outraged widening of her eyes, his smile broadened. ‘I do not forget the kiss you owe me or the way your hungry eyes looked at me.’
Somehow her cheeks managed to turn a shade darker but she tossed her hair over her shoulders defiantly. ‘That was the wine talking.’
His laugh at her barefaced lie was genuine. Even now, with all the acrimony and anger between them, that undercurrent remained, thick enough to taste. ‘Do you want to prove that?’
‘I don’t have to prove anything. I don’t want to marry anyone, not even for a short time, and if I did you would be the last man on the list. I won’t do it. Promise what you want, make all the threats you like, I’m not going to marry you. The end.’ Her hand grabbed the handle of the door that led outside. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages. Women are not chattels to be bought or traded. As fun as this conversation has been, I’m going.’
Turning her back to him, Chloe stepped out onto the deck. After the air conditioning of the sky lounge it was like stepping into a furnace, the sun high above them and beaming its rays onto her skin.
She would find a way off this yacht even if she had to row her way back to shore. She’d just have to wear a life-jacket.
All she could see to the horizon was the Caribbean Sea, shining brilliantly blue under the azure sky.
She shivered to think what creatures lay beneath the still surface.
She spotted the stairs that led to the deck below and hurried down them.
‘Where are you going to go?’
Heart pounding, she paused to look up.
Luis’s arms were hanging over the balustrade at the top of the stairs, his handsome, sexy face smirking down on her but that hardness still glinting in his eyes.
‘I’m going to find the captain and tell him to take us back to shore,’ she told him with all the defiance in her veins.
‘I bought the Marietta from her namesake three days ago. The captain answers to me.’
‘But the manager said it belonged to the owner...’
‘I bribed him,’ he said matter-of-factly, without an ounce of shame. ‘Marietta doesn’t own the complex in Lucaya.’
She stared up at him as she processed what he’d said. ‘You bought a yacht to trap me on?’
‘I have often considered the idea of a yacht and now I have one.’
‘Just like that?’
‘I had a spare two hundred million sitting in a bank account. I was going to use that money to settle with your brother...that money enabled me to make Marietta an offer she couldn’t refuse.’
Her stomach cramped to imagine what other factors he had brought to the negotiating table with Marietta. If his reputation was anything to go by it was more likely to have been a negotiating bed.
Wherever he’d done his negotiations for it, knowing he’d bought this yacht with the primary purpose of trapping her almost had her struck dumb.
Seven years ago it would have thrilled her.
From the age of seventeen she’d developed an intricate fantasy in her head where Luis waited for her to become a fully mature woman then declared his undying love for her and whisked her down the aisle.
That memory, not thought of in years, lanced her.
Once upon a time she had dreamed of marrying him.
How idyllic she had been. And how starved for affection.
She’d woven the fantasy while living under her father’s roof for the first time in her life, mourning the mother she had loved with all her heart and coping with her remaining parent’s indifference. His indifference shouldn’t have hurt, not after a life spent where he’d been nothing but a name, but he was her father. His blood ran in her veins. They shared the same nose and ears.
Once she had moved out of that awful, unloving home the fantasies about Luis had petered away. She’d had a career to embark on and she’d been determined to put the past behind her and get out there and live her life to the fullest.
It had been the biggest shock to her system to re-enter Luis’s orbit and discover her old craving for him hadn’t withered into nothing, just been pushed into dormancy.
It felt like poison in her veins to imagine the debauched parties he would host on this beautiful yacht.
He moved from the balustrade and put his hand on the rail as he made the slow walk down the steps. That dangerous glint remained in his eyes but there was amusement within the hazel swirl too. ‘Have you not yet realised I am a man who plans everything down to the last detail?’
Her throat closed at his approach. She stepped back, off the bottom step and onto the safety of the deck.
His smile grew with every step he took closer to her. ‘Your brother is good with details too. I have thought about how he was able to steal Freya and keep her under lock and key. Seclusion with only trusted employees was how he achieved it. He even got her to marry him, the clever man. I thought if such a ploy is good enough for Benjamin then it is good enough for me. All I had to do was work the details. The yacht is mine and the crew are in my employ. They obey