The Price Of A Bride. Michelle Reid

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER TWO

      MIA was staring out of the study window again when her father entered the room. She had just watched Alexander Doumas take off down the driveway with enough angry force to forge a vacuum through the storm still raging outside. There were tears in her eyes, though she didn’t know why—unless those tears had something to do with the awful person she had been forced to play here today who bore no resemblance to the real Mia Frazier.

      ‘Well, how did it go?’

      ‘He has until tomorrow to agree to my terms or the deal is off,’ she replied, without bothering to turn.

      In the small silence that followed she sensed her father’s frown of irritation. ‘Don’t spoil this for me, Mia,’ he warned her very grimly, ‘or you will be spoiling it for yourself.’

      ‘I was taught by an expert.’ Mia’s smile was bleak. ‘He will come around to my way of thinking simply because he has no choice.’

      ‘Neither do you.’

      ‘He doesn’t know that, though.’

      ‘Ah.’ Jack Frazier lowered himself into the chair behind his desk with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘You didn’t tell him.’

      ‘You warned me not to.’

      ‘So, what does he think I am holding up as your incentive to agree to all of this?’

      ‘I get five million pounds from you on the day I produce your grandson,’ she informed him.

      ‘Five million?’ he grimaced. ‘A nice round figure.’

      ‘I thought so, too,’ Mia agreed. ‘It makes me a really expensive whore, don’t you think?’

      ‘You’ve always been a whore, darling,’ Jack Frazier murmured insultingly. ‘Expensive or cheap, a whore is still a whore. Tell Mrs Leyton I’m ready for some coffee now that the Greek has gone.’

      Just like that. His low opinion of her stated, he was now calmly changing the subject.

      Moving over to the desk, Mia lifted the internal phone which would connect her to the kitchen and held tightly locked inside herself the few choice replies that rattled around her brain regarding this man whom she was so ashamed to have to call her father.

      Which was why neither Jack Frazier nor Alexander Doumas would ever have any control over her son. They could lay legal claims as mere blood relatives—she didn’t mind that. They could even leave him every penny they possessed when they both decided to make this world a better place by leaving it.

      But they would not have any control over who and what her son grew into. She already had in her possession her father’s written agreement to that. And when tomorrow came she would be getting the same written agreement from Mr Doumas.

      And how could she feel so sure about that? Because she had his measure. She had watched her father carefully mark it when he got the arrogant Greek to agree to any of this in the first place. If Alexander Doumas was prepared to wed and bed a woman just to get his hands on his old family pile then he would give away his first-born child also.

      ‘If he surprises us both and doesn’t give in to your terms,’ her father posed quietly, ‘what will you do then?’

      ‘Wait until you come up with someone who will agree.’

      His eyes began to gleam. ‘The next on the list is Marcus Sidcup,’ he reminded her silkily. ‘Can you honestly bring yourself to let him touch you, Mia?’

      Marcus Sidcup was a grotesque little man several years older than her father who turned her stomach every time she set eyes on him. ‘I’m a whore,’ she replied. ‘Whores can’t be too picky. I’ll close my eyes and think nice thoughts, like what to wear at your funeral.’

      He laughed. Her opinion of him had never mattered simply because she didn’t matter to him, the main reason being that she reminded him too much of his dead wife’s many infidelities. Her brother Tony’s conception had been just as suspect as her own, but because he had been male her father bad been willing to accept him as his own. Mia being female, though, her paternity was an entirely different matter.

      ‘If all goes well with Mr Doumas tomorrow,’ she tossed in as a mere aside, ‘I intend to go and visit Suzanna at school. She will need to know why I won’t be around much for the next year or so’.

      ‘You will tell her only what she needs to be told.’ her father commanded sharply.

      ‘I’m not a complete fool,’ Mia replied. ‘I have no wish to raise her hopes, but neither do I want her to think that I’ve deserted her.’

      ‘She will be making no trips to visit you in Greece, either,’ Jack Frazier warned her, ‘so don’t go all soft and try to placate her with promises that I might agree to it because I will not.’

      Mia never for one moment thought that he would. Her eyes bleak and her heart aching for that small scrap of a seven-year-old who had seen even less of this man’s love than she herself had, she walked out of the room before she was tempted to say something really nasty.

      She couldn’t afford to be nasty. She couldn’t afford to get her father’s back up, not when she was this close to achieving her own precious dream.

      And she couldn’t afford to lose Alexander Doumas either, she admitted heavily to herself, because no matter how much she despised him for being what he was he was her best option in this deal she had made with her father.

      Pray to God he was as hungry as her father claimed he was, was the final thought she allowed herself to have that day on the subject.

      The call came early the next morning just as Mia was emerging from her usual twenty laps of their indoor swimming pool. Mrs Leyton came to inform her that a Mr Doumas was waiting to speak to her on the phone. Wringing the water out of her hair as she walked across the white tiles, she went to the pool phone extension and picked СКАЧАТЬ