The Blackmailed Bridegroom. Miranda Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ clamoured to photograph beyond the high-security walls which enclosed the property.

      Not Conrad’s television programmes, of course. They knew better.

      ‘You wouldn’t have any idea what he wants me for, Jim, would you?’ Antonio probed.

      ‘Nope.’ A man of few words, Jim.

      Antonio decided not to speculate. Time would tell, he supposed.

      Fifteen minutes later, the limousine slid to a smooth halt in front of the grand front steps, and this time Jim did the honours with the door.

      ‘You won’t be needing that,’ he advised when Antonio went to pick up his laptop.

      Antonio shot the chauffeur a sharp look. So he did have some idea of what was up. And clearly it wasn’t a business matter.

      Curiouser and curiouser.

      The housekeeper answered the door. Evelyn was in her late forties, and very homely, as were all of Conrad’s female employees. No fool, was Conrad. He’d been stung once, by an ambitious and beautiful maid, and had no intention of harbouring any females under his roof who might present him with unwise temptations. Although now rising seventy, Conrad was still very interested in the opposite sex, as evidenced by the three mistresses he kept. One here in Sydney, one in Paris and one in the Bahamas.

      Evelyn had been Conrad’s housekeeper now for over a decade. She was efficient and reliable. More importantly, she knew how to keep her mouth shut to the press.

      ‘Conrad’s expecting you,’ she told Antonio straight away. ‘He’s in the morning room.’

      The morning room overlooked the terrace, which overlooked the pool. The floor-to-ceiling windows faced north-east, and captured the sun all year round. On a winter morning, the room was a dream. In summer, the air-conditioning had a tough job preventing the place from turning into a hothouse. Spring found it coolish, especially since the sun was only just rising at six-thirty.

      Conrad was sitting at the huge glass oval table in the centre of the conservatory-style room, wrapped in a thick navy bathrobe. Despite his age, he still had a full head of hair—a magnificent silvery grey—and piercing blue eyes. They flicked up at Antonio’s entrance, and raked him from head to toe, disconcerting Antonio for a moment. Why on earth was Conrad looking him over like that, as though he’d come to audition for one of his soap operas? What was going on here?

      ‘Sit down, Antonio,’ Conrad ordered. ‘Take a load off your feet and have some decent coffee for a change.’ He picked up the coffee pot and poured an extra mugful of steaming brown liquid.

      ‘What’s the problem?’ Antonio asked as he sat down and pulled the coffee towards him.

      His employer gave him another long, considering look over the table, and Antonio’s gut tightened further. He knew, without being told, that he wasn’t going to like what Conrad had to say.

      ‘Paige has come home again,’ came the abrupt announcement.

      Antonio almost said, So? What’s new?

      Conrad’s wild and wilful daughter had been running away from home regularly since she was seventeen. She turned up again regularly too, every year or so. But no sooner had she returned than she’d be off again, saying she was going to share a flat with some girlfriends. But only once had this been the case. Usually, when the private investigator’s report came in several weeks later, her flatmate was male and good-looking, invariably an artist or a musician. Paige seemed to like creativeness. Not one of them had denied sharing more with Paige than the cooking.

      At first, Conrad had worried Paige might be exploited for her money. A whole family could have lived comfortably on his only child’s generous monthly allowance! But perversely, from the day she’d first left home, Paige had never touched a cent of the thousands deposited in her bank account every month. When Conrad had found out his money was being donated to the RSPCA, and that Paige was working to support herself, he’d stopped the allowance altogether.

      ‘Let her work, if that’s what she wants to do!’ he’d raged to Antonio, but would still cringe when he learnt that she was working as a waitress in some café, or behind the bar in a club or pub.

      His worst nightmare, however, was that Paige would fall pregnant to one of her live-in boyfriends and then bring the baby home with her. Conrad was not large on babies. Which gave Antonio an idea.

      ‘She’s not pregnant, is she?’ he asked.

      ‘No, but she’s going to come to a sticky end, that girl, unless I do something about it. Do you realise she turns twenty-three next week?’

      Antonio was surprised. How the years had flown!

      ‘I would imagine you’ve tried everything,’ he said sincerely. Most girls would give their eye-teeth for what Paige had once had. A lovely home. Designer clothes. An allowance fit for a princess, if she’d wanted to claim it. If none of that was enough to keep her happy, and at home, then Lord knows what was!

      ‘Not…everything,’ Conrad said slowly, and he set those penetrating blue eyes on Antonio again. ‘There’s one thing I haven’t tried.’

      ‘And what’s that?’

      ‘Marriage,’ he pronounced. ‘To a man who could control her.’

      Antonio couldn’t help it. He laughed. ‘You think Paige would marry a man of your choice?’

      ‘Of course not. I was thinking of a man of her choice. Namely, you, Antonio.’

      ‘Me?’ Antonio was floored.

      ‘Yes, you. Don’t pretend, Antonio. I know exactly what happened just before Paige ran away from home that first time. The first thing Lew did when I put him on the job of tracing her was to question all the staff here at Fortune Hall. Did you think that little incident by the pool between you and my daughter hadn’t been overheard?’

      When Antonio opened his mouth to explain, Conrad waved it shut.

      ‘Please don’t bother to defend your actions,’ he swept on. ‘You have nothing to answer for. You did exactly the right thing. How were you to know that the silly little fool would take your rejection so badly and run off with her broken heart?’

      ‘Her heart wasn’t broken,’ Antonio contested heatedly. ‘She took up with the next fellow soon enough!’

      ‘A girl rarely forgets her first love.’

      ‘I was never her love, first or otherwise!’

      Hell, he hadn’t even kissed the girl. He’d been polite to her when she’d been at home on holiday from boarding school, making small talk when their paths had crossed. Hard not to run into her when he’d been living at Fortune Hall in his position as Conrad’s personal assistant, his first job with the company. No one had been more surprised than him when she’d thrown herself into his arms that day by the pool and declared her undying love and devotion.

      Antonio hadn’t taken advantage of her schoolgirl crush, despite acknowledging she was a serious temptation to any man, especially dressed as she’d been that day, in a minute pink bikini. On top of that, Antonio was always physically attracted to СКАЧАТЬ