'You have the wild, waving hair of a fantasy mermaid, the face of an angel and the body of a natural sensualist!' he ripped out as if in contempt. 'Your sensational legs are so slender and long there isn't a man alive that would not have hot dreams about them wrapped around him. Other women look at you and wish they possessed a small fraction of what you've got! I wish I'd never set eyes on you, then I would not be sitting here feeling hard and hot and bloody frustratingly impotent to do anything about it!'
'Trust you to drag it all down to your lower-body level,' Nell responded, too shaken by what he'd thrown at her to care that her voice quivered with the onset of fresh tears. '[ wish you'd never set eyes on me too, then I would not have spent the last year being shipped from one luxury prison to another by a money-motivated brute with sex on the brain!'
'So what would you rather have been doing?' he questioned curiously.
'Getting on with my life!'
'Life with the Frenchman perhaps?'
Turning a tight-lipped profile to him, she refused to answer.
Let him think what he liked about Marcel, she thought mutinously-especially if it annoyed the hell out of him!
'Tell me, Nell, because I'm genuinely curious. Did the elusive pimpernel have the fifty million to bail your father out?'
'Marcel is not motivated by money,' she stated haughtily.
'Ah, so he's dirt poor with a sensitive heart but no balls,' he said crudely.
Nell flashed him a disgusted look. 'You know nothing about him so don't pretend that you do.'
'Are you so sure about that?'
'Yes!' she insisted. 'Or you would have had him beaten up by your mob and be throwing it at me by now.'
'Clever girl,' he drawled.
'Shut up.' She hated him.
'Are you going to tell me where he is?' he persisted.
'You must be joking,' she scoffed.
'No,' he denied. 'In fact I have never been more serious. Where is he, Nell?' he repeated levelly. 'And before you answer me with some whipping comment I think I should warn you that your freedom will continue to be restricted until you do tell me...'
Nell sizzled on a seething breath of air. 'I wish I'd never married you.'
'As if your choices were crowding at your father's begging door,' he mocked. 'As far as I am aware, it was either me or some short, ugly guy in his forties with fat lips and three pairs of hands.'
Stung, she flicked him a sharp glance. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Nothing-forget I said it.' Frowning, he leant forward to press a button, which brought a miniature drinks bar shooting out of the car's central bulkhead.
Feeling a bit as though she was about to be slaughtered where she sat, Nell watched him select a bottle of whisky then pour himself a measure into a squat crystal glass. He relaxed back into the seat, downing some of the whisky as he went, his lean face turned to stone again with just the merest hint of self-contempt.
Nell's upper lip trembled as she parted it from her stiff lower. 'Xander, y-you-'
'Don't ask,' he clipped out.
But it was too late. He had not pulled that nasty remark out a bag at random just to get at her. There had been hard meaning behind every deriding word.
‘I n-need to know what you meant.'
'You married me, therefore it meant nothing.' He stared grimly into his glass.
'Tell me!' she cried.
A burning blast of annoyance racked his face. 'Your father had overstretched his resources. He was sinking very fast. He needed bailing out but there are not many people out there with fifty million pounds sterling to spare on a very bad risk. I was one such person willing to take the risk-for a price.'
Julian Garrett's daughter and his risky investment protected as much as it could be with the production of a son and heir from the union who would claim the daughter's inheritance! 'You already know all of this, so why drag it all out again?' Xander flicked harshly into the strumming tension holding Nell pale and still.
Because he was still missing out one vital detail-the man with the fat lips. The weekend before Xander came to stay at her father's house, Clive Benson had come to stay-short, overweight, constantly smiling. At first she'd suffered his overfriendly attitude towards her out of good manners and because she thought he was just doing it in a fatherly way-until he'd become just a bit too friendly, and dared to touch her thigh. She'd taken refuge by spending as much time as she could outside with the dogs, aware that her father had some heavy business going with the man-aware that she could not afford to offend.
'You're trying to imply that my father put me up for auction,' she whispered.
'You will please make note that I am trying hard not to say those ugly words, agape mou,' he returned.
But they were there-they were there!
'My father wouldn't do such a h-horrible thing to me.' Silence. All Xander did was toss the rest of his whisky to the back of his throat. Nell felt the churning surge of nausea in her stomach.
'I w-wouldn't have Clive Benson touch me w-with a bargepole.'
'I am so relieved that I did not encourage such feelings of objection,' Xander drawled. 'But take a moment to consider what you would have done if I had not offered a rescue package. Without me or-someone else to bail him out, your father’s company, his employees and countless other subsidiaries would have gone under and sunk without a trace. He would have been in debt to his eye-teeth. His bullish pride would have been shattered. His home would have gone and his beautiful daughter would have found herself tossed out on the street. Suddenly wealthy men like Clive Benson don't look so bad, hmm?'
'Stop the car,' Nell breathed thickly.
He looked utterly incredulous. 'We are travelling on the motorway!' he laughed, then he saw her milky pallor and his voice roughened. 'For goodness' sake, Nell, it's too late for you to run away from-'
'Stop the car!' she all but shrieked at him just before her hand jerked up to cover her mouth.
To give him his due, when he realised what was about to happen he moved like lightning, wrenching forward to snatch up the internal telephone and snapping out the order to Rico. Nell all but fell out of the car, staggering on wobbly legs across the hard shoulder of the motorway before she was thoroughly and violently sick onto the grass verge.
The arms that came to take her weight and keep her hair back at the same time were a godsend. She didn't even care that he had to stand there watching her bring up the full contents of her heaving stomach. She'd never felt so wretched or so distressed. Everything he'd said and not said was pulsing and throbbing inside her.
When it was over she folded at the knees. In grim silence Xander picked her up and resettled her on the back seat of the Bentley with her feet still out on the tarmac. He began snapping out orders while Nell desperately wanted to gulp in some deep lungfuls of fresh air but didn't dare do it in case she set the nausea off again. She was shaking like crazy. Even when Xander squatted down in front of her and gently urged her to sip the cool water that had appeared from nowhere, she still couldn't stop shaking like a leaf.
'My bag,' she managed to push out thickly.
He didn't question the request, just reached inside and found her bag where she'd placed it on the car floor and silently laid it on her lap. Her trembling fingers fumbled with the catch as she tried to open it. She could feel Xander wanting to take it and do the clasp for her but he didn't give in to the urge. Maybe he knew that even a small thing like that was going to tip this awful situation right over the edge.
The clasp sprang open; fingers scrambling inside, she found the little plastic envelope of damp freshen-ups she always carried, and managed to peel one away from the rest. Her hair was hanging all over her face and she was glad to have it hide the ravages she knew were there. I will never look at him again, she vowed sickly as she used the damp tissue to wipe her face, then she took the cool glass of water from him and began sipping sparingly while he continued to squat there with his hands clenched in fists between his spread thighs.
'OK?' he questioned her huskily after a few more minutes. She nodded, offering the glass back to him, but didn't attempt to lift her head. Other things began to impinge on her consciousness, like the sound of other cars roaring past them on the motorway and the other car pulled up bumper to bumper with theirs. The three tough bodyguards had positioned themselves at a discreet but protective distance around the car. She couldn't even be spared the dignity of privacy while she was sick.
'Nell, I'm sorry. I didn't say all of that to' One of his hands was lifting towards her.
'Don't touch me.' She withdrew from him like a tortoise retracting into its shell.
Swivelling her legs into the car, she just sat motionless while he remained squatting there, the pull on the air so taut it felt as if it could wrench her in two.
He stayed like that for a few more seconds then rose to his full height. The car door closed, Nell used the few seconds it took him to stride around the car to comb her hair away from her face with trembling fingers. He arrived in the seat beside her, Nell turned her face to the side-window. The bodyguards dispersed. Car engines fired and the journey towards London continued in perfect-perfect-silence.
She must have dozed off, though she didn't remember doing it, but the next thing she knew the car had pulled to a stop outside a row of London townhouses sporting polished brass plates on the walls by the doors.
'Where are we?' she questioned. But Xander was already climbing out of the car. By the time he opened her door for her then stood there in grim silence waiting for her to get out, Nell had worked out exactly where they were.
'I don't need a doctor,' she protested.