Bargaining with the Billionaire: The Blackmail Bargain / The Billion-Dollar Bride / How To Marry a Billionaire. Элли Блейк

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СКАЧАТЬ Peta glanced over her shoulder. He was looking at the woman beside her.

      ‘Of course not,’ Liz said with a frown. ‘It would be a wicked sin. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’

      Curt transferred his gaze to Peta. ‘Have fun.’

      Peta’s eyes focused somewhere beyond and above his broad shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said on a note of irony, and she and the other woman went out into the summer sunlight.

      ‘Tell me about yourself,’ Liz invited as she drove through Auckland’s crazy traffic.

      ‘I’m twenty-three,’ Peta said, wondering why she needed to do this. ‘I work my own farm and I lead a pure and wholesome life.’

      Liz laughed. ‘Not if you stick with Curt for long,’ she warned. ‘He’s a course in sophistication all on his own. Who’s your favourite author?’

      ‘Only one?’

      ‘Run through them, then.’

      Peta began with Jane Austen and finished with her latest discovery from the library, adding, ‘And I love reading whodunnits and romances.’

      ‘Who doesn’t?’ Liz said cheerfully. ‘OK, so you’re a romantic. What do you do for a hobby? What flowers do you have in your garden? Or is it only vegetables?’

      The vegetable garden had been her father’s domain, one she kept up for economy’s sake. Flower gardens, he’d said, were a waste of precious time. ‘I have three hibiscus bushes and a gardenia in a pot by the front door. As for hobbies, I sew. Every so often I knit.’ When she’d saved enough money to buy the wool.

      Liz’s brows shot up. ‘Interesting. You could be a casual or a romantic, but my guess is that you’re one of the rare people who can wear several looks. We’ll see.’

      Expertly negotiating a crowded, narrow street, she pulled up outside a shop that had one outrageous dress in the window. ‘Let’s go,’ she said cheerfully.

      CHAPTER SIX

      WHAT followed was one of the most exhausting afternoons Peta had ever endured. ‘And that includes haymaking,’ she said wearily over a restorative cup of tea in a small, unfashionable café that made, Liz assured her, the best latte south of the equator. The tea was excellent too.

      Liz laughed. ‘Admit that you thought all Aucklanders—especially shopaholics—were effete weaklings.’

      ‘I’m not that much of a hayseed,’ Peta told her loftily, ‘but I had no idea you were going to drag me around a couple of hundred stores and boutiques.’

      ‘Seven,’ her companion corrected. ‘And now that you’ve stocked up on caffeine and tannin again, let’s get your hair done.’

      The stylist took them into a private room. Watching him in the mirror, Peta felt he spent an inordinately long time just letting her hair ripple through his fingers while he frowned at her reflection.

      ‘Good bone structure,’ he finally pronounced. ‘And I’m not going to mess about with colour—it’s perfect as it is. I’ll cut it a little shorter and show you a couple of ways to put it up.’ He glanced at her hands and shuddered. ‘One of the girls will give you a manicure.’

      He was a genius with the scissors, but the manicure turned out to be an exercise in sensuous pleasure. On the way home Peta was very aware of the soft gloss of sheen on her nails, and wondered if Curt would like the way they seemed to make her fingers even longer.

      No, she thought desperately, what the hell are you thinking?

      It couldn’t be allowed to matter. Unfortunately, it did, and the next few days stretched out before her like an ordeal, one with an infinite possibility of consequences.

      All of them bad.

      Remember what happened to your mother, she ordered. Unless you’re a princess, loving a dominant man leads to misery. The intense, reluctant attraction she felt for Curt was only the first step on the perilous road that had led to her mother sacrificing her individuality, her talent and her freedom to the jealous god of love.

      But her mother’s tragedy seemed thin and insubstantial, as though Curt’s vitality drained life from her memories.

      Halfway home, her eye caught the parcels and boxes in the back of Liz’s hatchback. While Peta’s hair and hands were being groomed, the other woman had collected a range of accessories.

      Assailed by an empty feeling of disconnection, Peta stared out at the busy streets.

      I don’t belong here, she thought sombrely.

      Like a girl in a fairytale, carried off across some perilous border between reality and fantasy, she was lost in a world she didn’t understand and prey to dangers she barely recognised.

      The greatest of which, she thought with a flare of worrying anticipation, was waiting for her in that gracious old house.

      Curt had snapped his fingers and people had obeyed, whisking her out of her familiar world and transporting her wherever he ordered them to. She’d obeyed too, because she was afraid of what he could do to her life if she didn’t.

      And because you don’t want Ian to fall in love with you, she reminded herself.

      It was too easy to forget that.

      ‘A good afternoon,’ Liz said with satisfaction. She drew up on the gravel drive and switched off the engine.

      Curt wasn’t at home. Peta knew as soon as she walked through the front door; some invisible, intangible force had vanished. Repressing a sinister disappointment, she went with Liz up to her bedroom.

      The next hour was spent trying on the carefully chosen clothes, matching them to the accessories Liz had collected. Peta meant to stay aloof and let Liz choose for her, but somehow she found herself offering opinions, falling in love with various garments, wrinkling her nose at others.

      ‘OK, that’s fine,’ Liz said when the final choices had been packed away in the wardrobe. ‘And if I say so myself, we’ve done a good job. Those clothes not only highlight your good points, they’ll take you from breakfast to midnight. It’s a pity I can’t tell everyone I dressed you—you look stunning. But in my job I have to be the soul of discretion; Curt wouldn’t have contacted me if I hadn’t been.’

      ‘I know that,’ Peta said drily.

      Liz nodded. ‘You made it a lot easier for me—you’ve got excellent taste and an inherent understanding of what suits you and doesn’t. Now, forget about all this, and just have fun!’

      The faintest hint of envy in her tone made Peta wonder just how well she knew Curt, and whether there was perhaps a past attachment between them.

      Smiling hard to cover a pang—no, not jealousy—Peta waved goodbye, then turned back to the house, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. After her parents had died she’d at least been in familiar surroundings. Here she knew no one; even Nadine had left her firm of inner-city solicitors for a holiday in Fiji.

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