‘You can see Eddie, tell him he can’t go through with this wedding. That he can’t marry this woman, this Felicity Hamilton…’
She had made it sound so easy, so straightforward. Because to Maria it was straightforward. She wanted this and what she wanted she usually got. But, this time, what Maria wanted had proved unexpectedly difficult to obtain.
Which was why he was here, now, with a half-conscious woman on his hands and a situation that was rapidly running right out of control.
‘Felicity…’
In the back of the car, Felicity Hamilton stirred slightly, frowning faintly, and muttered something in her sleep. The white, soft veil had fallen forward over her face and instinctively he reached forward to move it aside. Then immediately wished he hadn’t.
He doubted if he would ever forget the sense of shock that had hit him straight in the chest when she had appeared outside the house just a few short hours earlier. Whatever else he had been expecting of the Felicity Hamilton described to him by both Maria and the private investigator he had put on the case, it had certainly not been this.
Not this slender, delicate creature whose gentle beauty had knocked him so far off balance that his thought processes had become scrambled. In the end he had only been able to function by forcing himself to concentrate on the plan he had worked out and nothing else.
The picture Maria had painted had been of someone far tougher; someone who knew exactly what she wanted in life and went for it, ignoring anyone who got in the way. Like father, like daughter, she had said. And the detective had been equally damning.
‘She goes straight from work to that nightclub, every night, Mr Valeron. Never home before near dawn.’
But this woman didn’t look anything like the picture he had built up in his mind. Of course, that picture might still be the truth internally; it was just the external appearance that was different. But if that was the case then she had no damn right to be so deceptively lovely—it complicated matters far too much.
‘Señorita…Felicity…’
The voice was back in her dreams, but as she stirred again Felicity found that her bed was nothing like as comfortable as usual. It felt hard and narrow and she was curled up uncomfortably. She was tangled up in something too, something that rustled and confined her, like yards of netting and…
Shock jolted her awake, making her heart slam hard against her ribcage.
This wasn’t a dream. She had fallen asleep and forgotten where she was, but now the reality came rushing back.
‘You!’
Her eyes flew open, wide and dark, the last remnants of the clinging sleep that had enveloped her clearing rapidly as she stared uncertainly up into his face.
‘What did you do to me?’
Crazily, foolishly she actually felt betrayed. He had promised not to harm her and even as the words had left his lying mouth he had been breaking that promise. But what should she have expected from a man who was prepared to commit the crime of kidnapping in order to get his revenge on someone?
‘You drugged me!’
‘The mildest of sedatives only.’
The handsome face revealed no sign of guilt or repentance and the dark chocolate eyes regarded her with cool indifference.
But what had she expected? Pity or concern? She would be all sorts of a blind, deluded fool even to hope for such a thing from this cold-hearted brute.
‘I thought it might help you relax. I had never anticipated that it would have the effect on you that it did.’
No, Felicity thought ruefully. There was no way he could have known that weeks of stress had meant that she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for an age. Even the weakest sedative would have knocked her for six, she was so tired.
‘I didn’t expect to end up with Sleeping Beauty on my hands.’
He was actually smiling—almost making a joke out of this! If she hadn’t known better, she might actually have thought that he was flirting with her. But she had learned her lesson fast. She would never trust the cold-hearted monster ever again. Even if those deep brown eyes did warm with an unexpectedly soft light, and the beautifully carved mouth looked so kissable when it curved into…
What was she thinking of? Hastily closing off the dangerous route her wayward thoughts had opened up, she switched on a ferocious glare instead.
‘I’m sure you had every move planned with a military precision. But you won’t get away with it, you know!’
‘No?’
One jet-black eyebrow quirked upwards, cynically questioning her furious assertion.
‘You think not?’
‘I know not!’
Felicity struggled up into a half-sitting position, feeling dangerously vulnerable lying down with him looming over her, his face in part shadow where he had blotted out the sun.
‘For one thing, there are laws against such behaviour. And, for another, by now my father will surely have informed the police. You didn’t exactly hide the number of your car and…’
Something about his face, some tiny flicker of response in the depths of those stunning eyes alerted her.
‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘What have you done?’
But even as the urgent question left her lips the haze of fear and confusion that had clouded her thoughts in the moments of wakening was slowly receding. Her eyes were starting to focus properly, her mind to take in more detailed impressions of her surroundings.
She was still in a car, it was true, still on the back seat of some large, luxurious vehicle. But, now that she looked more closely, she became aware of some very distinct differences between this car and the Rolls Royce in which she had originally fallen asleep.
Where the soft leather of the seat had once been a light fawn, now it was uncompromisingly black. There was no dividing glass panel between her and the seat where the driver—where Rico would have sat. And as she levered herself fully upright at last she saw not the silvery grey metalwork of the original Rolls but the sleek black lines of a very different car altogether.
‘This isn’t your car!’
‘Correction,’ Rico returned imperturbably. ‘This is very definitely my car—my personal property. The Rolls was not. It was the one that Venables hired for you, but it was easy enough to acquire it for my own use. Your original driver was only too pleased to be given the day off, especially when he earned a fat bonus at the same time.’
I just bet he was, Felicity thought, struggling against a swamping wave of misery. The memory of her own foolishness in telling him that his kidnapping hadn’t been the most efficient possible came back to haunt her in horrifying detail. How could she have been so reckless—so crazily stupid? She had even laughed at him, for heaven’s sake!
‘You…’
The black tide of horror made her voice shake and she shrank back against the far door of the car, getting as far away from him as was possible.
‘How—how did you get me from the Rolls into this…?’
The faint smile grew, curving into a wicked, malign grin.
‘Isn’t that obvious, gatita? I carried you.’
Her throat closed up at the thought, her stomach heaving nauseously. The image that her mind threw up of herself in his arms, her body limp and totally at his mercy, her eyes closed, all defences down, made her shudder in appalled distress.
‘How dare you?’
To her relief anger came to her aid, the hot, thick force of it driving her fear