Michelle Reid Collection. Michelle Reid
Читать онлайн книгу.
of his eyes and the promise of his kiss, and the touch of his fingers on her—
She glanced down and had to blink several times before she could focus on the ring he was carefully sliding onto her finger. Made of gold and platinum, it was an intricate twist of finely worked metals forming the clasp for a diamond. And not just any old diamond, she realised, as she watched its flawless quality sparkle with a deep yellow lustre which told her instinctively that this was a very rare diamond indeed.
‘What do you think?’ Deep, dark, disturbingly husky, his voice made her senses sparkle like the diamond.
‘It’s—beautiful,’ she breathed.
‘At the risk of sounding really corny, it reminded me of your eyes,’ he drily confessed. ‘But it comes with a price-tag attached to it,’ he then added.
‘Another one of those also?’ she murmured in an attempt to mock. But it didn’t come off, for she was just too filled with the wonder in what he was creating for her.
It was pure romance tied up in bows of spicy sensation. The kind of thing you remembered for ever and relayed to your children and your grandchildren.
‘Mmm,’ he murmured, and it was one of the really sexy murmurs that she loved so much. ‘Because with this ring, mi amore, I am about to commit you to a solemn promise that you will trust me to love you for the rest of your life…’
It was too much. Without a care for who was watching, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him. Not shy and light, or tender and sweet, but with every ounce of love she had in her.
A camera bulb flashed. They were caught for posterity locked in a heated embrace with two oil paintings framing why they were kissing like that…
The villa in Portofino was the ideal setting for their honeymoon, Marco thought with a sense of warm satisfaction. They’d flown in by helicopter direct from their wedding reception at his family estate in Tuscany. And though it was dark outside the air was fresher here, so close to the ocean, so Marco had no problem leaning against the balcony rail while he watched his bride come towards him.
She was naked, of course. But then so was he—if you didn’t count the rich cream-satin waistcoat she had made him put back on before she would allow him to make love to her. It was meant to make a statement, like the fine tulle veil she still had pinned to her beautiful hair, that floated around her exquisite face and shoulders as she moved towards him.
Sexy. Very sexy. He allowed himself a lecherous grin. ‘When are you going to take it off?’ he asked lazily.
‘When I feel married,’ she replied. He arched a brow. ‘And you don’t feel married yet?’
‘No.’ The pout was very spoiled and sumptuously kissable. And, since they’d already made love several times since they’d arrived here, it was also a slight on his virility.
‘Watch it,’ he warned.
She had the audacity to look down. He laughed—what else could he do when he was being bewitched by a teasing little temptress with only one thing on her mind.
Dio, she made him feel good. She made him feel like the only worthy man on this earth.
Her fingers came out, stroked the cream satin lapel up to his shoulders, then made their way back down again. When she reached the open buttons she began to slowly close them. The cutaway edges of the waistcoat suddenly put a whole new meaning on erotic fantasy.
‘If you’re looking so intent because you’re thinking of painting me like this, then take my advice, cara, and change your mind,’ he advised.
Lightly said, lazily delivered, but still he meant every word of it. Her chin came up. The pout had gone; the seductress had switched back on. Stepping that tiny bit closer to him, she held his eyes for a long moment and caught his mouth with a kiss aimed to take the legs from under him—while her hands went in search of other weaknesses.
His eyes drew shut, his breath escaped on a thickened sigh as she unleashed her magic upon him. If he died right now, at least he would go taking this image with him.
Man and wife, belonging to each other. ‘You have no inhibition,’ he censured darkly. ‘I love you,’ she answered simply. ‘It is uninhibited.’
She was right, and it was. The warm, red, kiss-swollen mouth he claimed with his own mouth. The woman he claimed in other ways.
Bridal Bargains
The Tycoon’s Bride
The Purchased Wife
The Price of a Bride
Michelle Reid
The Tycoon’s Bride
Michelle Reid
CHAPTER ONE
‘ADOPTION?’ Claire repeated in dismay. ‘You want me to give Melanie away to strangers?’
Standing there, white-faced and shaking in the shabby sitting room of her equally shabby little flat, Claire stared at her aunt as if she had just turned into a real live she-devil. In truth, she was having trouble believing that any of this was really happening. In the last few tragic weeks it felt as if her whole life had been wrenched out from under her.
Now this, she thought wretchedly. ‘I am going to pretend you never said that, Aunt Laura,’ she said, cuddling the sleeping baby just that little bit closer as if trying to shield her from what was being proposed here.
‘No, you’re not,’ her aunt countered sternly. ‘You’re going to listen to me. Do you honestly think I would be suggesting this if I believed you were coping?’
‘I am coping!’ Claire angrily insisted.
Wearing a pin-neat chic little two-piece grey suit and with her perfectly made up face and elegantly groomed blonde hair, Laura Cavell only needed to send her coldly fastidious eyes on a brief scan of their surroundings to completely denounce that declaration.
The place was in a mess, every available space cluttered with all the usual baby paraphernalia—the floor, the chairs, the unit tops in the attached tiny kitchen. It was only October but the notoriously unpredictable British weather was already wintry. Yet what small amount of heat there was coming from the electric fire was being blocked off behind a clothes-horse laden with wet baby clothes. The washing had to be dried somehow and Claire had no other way of doing it now she could no longer afford to use the laundrette in the high street. So the windows were steamed up, the air inside the chilly little room damp with hanging condensation.
Claire herself looked no better, her once outstandingly pretty face ravaged by too much grief, by too much worry, and by too many disturbed nights caused by a baby who only seemed to sleep when she was holding her.
‘I only asked you for help with my rent, for goodness’ sake,’ she mumbled defensively, feeling like a stray cat that had dared to beg at a queen’s front door.
‘And sometimes people have to be cruel to be kind,’ her aunt replied with a cold little shrug of her elegant shoulders. ‘If that means I have to use ruthless methods to make you see the error in what you’re trying to do here, then so be it.’
Which, Claire presumed, was her way of saying that she wasn’t going to part with a single penny. But then, Aunt Laura had never been known for her charity.
‘Melanie isn’t even your child, Claire!’
‘But she is my sister!’ Claire angrily flashed back. ‘How can you want to have her taken away from me?’ It was a cry from the heart—a copiously bleeding heart that had known too much pain and grief over the last half year.
Her aunt winced—but her stance didn’t alter. ‘Your half- sister,’ she corrected her. ‘You don’t even know who her father is,’ she added, her red-painted mouth pursing with