Alexa marched over to the mug, snatched it up and, twisting round, emptied the contents sharply into the sink, watching with a mixture of satisfaction and regret as the brown liquid whirled around the plughole and then disappeared down the drainpipe. She would have loved a nice, reviving mug of coffee—in fact, there was nothing she would have liked better—but she felt that a gesture needed to be made and besides, there was the suspicion that the drink would choke her if she so much as attempted to swallow.
Santos watched her actions with narrowed eyes, just one eyebrow slightly raised to question her response.
‘Something wrong with that?’ he drawled lazily, but the gaze that he fixed on her face was anything but indolent. Behind those thick black lashes, the pale eyes gleamed so intently that she almost felt the burn of them on her skin.
‘This isn’t going to work, Santos!’ she declared, deciding to jump straight into confrontation rather than dance around the topic for a moment.
‘What isn’t going to work?’
‘This scheme you’ve come up with to get yourself a wife by blackmail.’
‘You’ve talked to your father.’ It was cold and flat and hard.
‘Yes, I’ve talked to my father—that is what you advised yesterday if you recall …’
Just why had he done that? Why had he not come right out and explained the situation, enjoying the power game, as she might have expected? Because she wouldn’t have believed him? Or could there be some other possible reason?
‘So now I know what you’ve been up to.’
‘What your father has been up to,’ Santos corrected, cold and stiff and totally impassive. The atmosphere in the room had iced over as if the temperature had dropped a hundred degrees or more so that she almost expected to see her breath steam in the air as it did outdoors.
‘Well, yes, what he did was very wrong, and of course he can’t just get away with that. But I know why he did it. He did it for Petra. He always was a fool where she was concerned and he could never refuse her anything. She never understood about the burden of death duties when Grandpa died, and she just went on spending and spending. The money will have to be paid back.’
‘You say that so very glibly.’ Santos put his own mug down on the table and leaned forward, watching her intently. ‘Did your father happen to mention just how much money was involved?’
‘It was obviously a lot.’
‘You could say that,’ Santos drawled and named an amount that had her mouth dropping open in horror as she grabbed at a nearby chair for support. ‘You really didn’t know?’
‘I …’
‘Do you really think that I would concern myself with anything less?’
‘I …’ Alexa tried again but her mind was spinning in shock and dismay. She felt as if the ground she was standing on had suddenly started to crumble beneath her and large cracks were opening up, threatening to send her flying into some dreadful great cavern.
Of course, she should have known—or at least suspected. It was no wonder that her father had been looking ill and grey. The evidence was there in the hysteria that had gripped Petra, the pallor of Stanley’s drawn, worried face on the wedding day. And before that it had been in the impossibly extravagant lifestyle her father, stepmother and half-sister had been living over the past couple a years. A lifestyle she hadn’t thought to enquire into. But then, deep down, she knew that if she had asked no one would have told her anything. Just as they hadn’t told her anything about the circumstances of the wedding. Not until now, when they thought that she could do something to help.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed at last. ‘I never realised it was as bad as that. But do you really think that any amount of money justifies playing with people’s lives? Manipulating them into marrying you whether they want to or not?’
Santos sighed and pushed his hands through his hair, flexing his shoulders as if to ease some intolerable tension there.
‘When I said that you should talk to your father, I had thought that you would get confirmation of the truth. I did not manipulate your sister into marrying me. She made it plain that she was attracted to me, and that my wealth was no small part of that attraction. She was the one who suggested marriage.’
If he’d told her this on the day of the wedding, she would have refuted it angrily, Alexa acknowledged. Now she no longer had the luxury of doubting it.
And that forced her to look back at the things that Natalie had said that had pushed her into action.
‘I thought I could do this, Lexa,’ her sister had said. ‘I really wanted to—but it just isn’t going to work now. If John hadn’t come into my life I would have gone ahead … but he did … and meeting him has changed everything.’