A Breathless Bride (3 page)

Constantine had been too busy walking out the door to listen to the painful details of her family’s financial struggle.

“As you heard from the reporters, there is very definitely ‘something else going on.’ If you’ll recall, that was the reason our engagement ended.”

“My father proposed a business deal that your father wanted.”

“Reestablishing a pearl facility on Medinos was a proposal based on opportunism and nostalgia, not profit.”

Her anger flared at the opportunism crack. “And the bottom line is so much more important to you than honoring the past or creating something beautiful.”

“Farming pretty baubles in a prime coastal location slated for development as a resort didn’t make business sense then and it makes no sense now. The Atraeus Group has more lucrative business options than restoring Medinos’s pearl industry.”

“Options that don’t require any kind of history or sentiment. Like mining gold and building luxury hotels.”

His gaze briefly captured hers. “I don’t recall that you ever had any problem with the concept of making money. As I remember it, two years ago money came before ‘sentiment.’”

Sienna controlled the rush of guilty heat to her cheeks. “I refuse to apologize for a business deal I didn’t instigate.” Or for being weak enough to have felt an overwhelming relief that, finally, there could be an answer to her family’s crippling financial problems. “My only sin was not having the courage to tell you about the deal.”

She stared out of the passenger-side window as Constantine turned into the parking lot of a shopping mall. It was too late now to admit that she had been afraid the impending disgrace of her father’s gambling and financial problems would harm their engagement.

As it turned out, the very thing she had feared had happened. Constantine believed she had broken his trust, that her primary interest in him had always been monetary. “I apologized for not discussing the deal with you,” she said, hating the husky note in her voice, “but, quite frankly, that was something I would have assumed your father would have done.”

Constantine slotted the Audi into a space. She heard the snick as he released his seat belt. He turned in his seat and rested an arm along the back of hers, making her even more suffocatingly aware of his presence.

“Even knowing that my father’s lack of transparency indicated he was keeping the deal under wraps?”

A dark sedan slid into a space beside the Audi. One of Constantine’s bodyguards, with Lucas in the passenger seat and Zane in the rear. A flash of cream informed her that her sports car, driven by the second bodyguard, had just been parked in an adjacent space.

Feeling hemmed in by overlarge Medinian males, Sienna released her seat belt and reached for her purse. “I didn’t understand that you were so against the idea of reestablishing a pearl industry on Medinos.”

Stupidly, when she hadn’t been frightened that she would lose Constantine and burying her head in the sand, she had been too busy coping with the hectic media pressure their engagement had instigated.

Life in a fish tank hadn’t been fun.

“Just as I couldn’t understand why you failed to discuss the agreement, which just happened to have been drawn up the day following our engagement announcement.”

Her gaze snapped to his. “How many times do I have to say it? I had nothing to do with the loan. Think about it, Constantine. If I was that grasping and devious I would have waited until after we were married.”

A tense silence stretched, thickened. Now she really couldn’t breathe. Fumbling at the car door, she pushed it wide.

Constantine leaned across and hauled the door shut, pinning Sienna in place before she could scramble out. The uncharacteristic surge of temper that flowed through him at the deliberate taunt was fueled by the physical frustration that had been eating at him ever since he had decided he had to see her again.

The question of just why he had taken one look at Sienna two years ago and fallen in instant lust, he decided, no longer existed. It had ceased to be the instant he had glimpsed her silky blond head at the funeral. Even wet and bedraggled, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, Sienna was gorgeous in a fragile, exotic way that hooked into every male instinct he possessed.

The combination of delicacy paired with sensuality, in Anglo-Saxon terms, was crazy-making. He was at once caught between the desire to protect and cushion her from the slightest upset and the desire to take her to bed and make love to her until she surrendered utterly.

It was an unsettling fact that he would rather argue with Sienna than spend time with any other woman, no matter how gorgeous or focused on pleasing him she might be.

“Now that’s interesting. I assumed that the reason you stayed quiet about the loan was that your father needed the money too badly to wait.”

Her face went bone-white and he knew in that instant that he had gone too far.

Then, hot color burned along her cheekbones and the aura of haunted fragility evaporated. “Or maybe I was simply following orders?”

His gaze shifted to her pale mouth, the line of her throat as she swallowed. “No,” he said flatly.

Sienna had been Roberto’s precocious second-in-command for the past four years. She had run the family’s pearl house with consummate skill and focused ambition while her father had steadily gambled the profits away at various casinos. The last time she had taken an order from Roberto, she had been in the cradle. If she had a weakness, it was that she needed money.

His money.

And she still did.

She pulled in a jerky breath. He felt the rise and fall of her breasts against his arm, the feathery warmth along his jaw as she exhaled. The light, evocative scent she wore teased his nostrils as flash after flash of memory turned the air molten.

A tap on the passenger-side window broke the tension. One of his security guards.

Constantine released his hold on the door handle, his temper tightly controlled as he watched Sienna climb out and collect her car keys.

Levering himself out of the Audi into the now blistering heat of early afternoon, Constantine gave the guard his instructions. For the past four days he had seldom been without an escort but for the next hour he required absolute privacy.

Peeling out of his damp jacket, he tossed it behind the driver’s seat. He frowned as he noticed Lucas speaking with Sienna. From the brevity of the exchange he was aware that his brother had simply offered his condolences, but Sienna’s smile evoked an unsettling response.

The fact that Lucas was every inch a dangerous Atraeus male shouldn’t register, but after the charged few moments in the Audi, the knowledge of just how successful his brother was with women was distinctly unpalatable.

Constantine strolled toward Sienna as she slid her cell phone out of her purse and answered a call.

Lucas waylaid him with a brief jerk of his chin. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Positive.”

“It didn’t look like a business discussion back at the cemetery, and it sure as hell didn’t look like a business discussion just then.”

Constantine knew his gaze was cold enough to freeze. “Just as long as you remember that Sienna Ambrosi is my business.”

Lucas lifted a brow. “Message received.”

Jaw tight, Constantine watched as Lucas climbed into the passenger-side seat of the dark sedan. He lifted a hand as the car cruised out of the parking lot. Maybe he hadn’t needed to warn Lucas off, but the instinct to do so had been knee-jerk and primitive. In that moment he had acknowledged one clear fact: for the foreseeable future, until he had gotten her out of his system, Sienna Ambrosi was his.

While he waited for Sienna to terminate her call, he grimly considered that fact, sifting through every nuance of the past hour. The tension that had gripped him from the moment he had laid eyes on Sienna at the funeral tightened another notch.

Constantine knew his own nature. He was focused, single-minded. When he fixed on a goal he achieved it. His absolute commitment to running the family business was both a necessity and a passion and he had never flinched from making hard choices. Two years ago, severing all connection with Sienna and the once pampered and aristocratic Ambrosi family had been one of those choices.

Sliding dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose, Constantine crossed his arms over his chest and studied the pure line of Sienna’s profile, the luscious combination of creamy skin and dark eyes, her soft pale mouth.

Until he had been handed an investigative report he had commissioned on Ambrosi Pearls and had discovered that Sienna had been linked on at least three occasions with Alex Panopoulos, a wealthy retailer.

He still remembered the moment of disorientation, the grim fury when he’d considered that Panopoulos could be Sienna’s lover.

He had soon eliminated that scenario.

According to the very efficient private eye employed by the security firm, Panopoulos was actively hunting but the Greek hadn’t yet managed to snare either of the Ambrosi girls.

Sienna registered Constantine’s impatience as she ended her conversation with Carla, who had been concerned that she had been caught up in the media frenzy in the parking lot.

Constantine lifted a brow. “Where do we talk? Your place or mine?”

Sienna dropped her phone back into her purse. After the tense moments in the car and the sensual shock of Constantine invading her space, she couldn’t hide her dismay at the thought of Constantine’s apartment. Two years ago they had spent a lot of time there. It had also been the scene of their breakup.

The thought of Constantine in the sanctuary of her own small place was equally unacceptable. “Not the apartments.”

“I don’t have the apartment anymore. I own a house along the coast.”

“I thought you liked living in town.”

“I changed my mind.”

Just like he had about her. Instantly and unequivocally.

He opened the door of her small soft-top convertible. Feeling as edgy as a cat, her stomach tight with nerves, she slipped into the driver’s seat, carefully avoiding any physical contact. “Carla’s taken Mom to a family lunch at Aunt Via’s apartment, so they’ll be occupied for the next couple of hours. I can meet you at my parent’s beach house at Pier Point. That’s where I’ve been staying since Dad died.”

Constantine closed her door. Bracing his hands on the window frame, he leaned down, maintaining eye contact. “That explains why you haven’t been at your apartment, although not why you haven’t been returning my calls at work.”

“If you wanted to get hold of me that badly you should have rung my mother.”

“I got through twice,” he said grimly. “Both times I got Carla.”

Sienna could feel her cheeks heating. After Sienna’s breakup with Constantine, Carla had become fiercely protective. Constantine hadn’t gotten through, because Carla would have made it her mission to stop him.

“Sorry about that,” she said, without any trace of sympathy in her voice. “Carla said there had been a couple of crank calls, then the press started bothering Mom in the evenings, so we went to stay at the beach house.”

Constantine had also left a number of messages at work, which, when she had been in the office at all, Sienna had ignored. She had been feverishly trying to unravel her father’s twisted affairs. Calling Constantine had ranked right up there with chatting to disgruntled creditors or having a cozy discussion with IRD about the payments Ambrosi Pearls had failed to make.

“If Pier Point is hostile territory, maybe we should meet on neutral ground?”

Was that a hint of amusement in his voice?

No, whatever it was Constantine was feeling, it wasn’t amusement. There had been a definite predatory edge to him. She had seen a liquid silver flash of it at the gravesite, then been burned by it again in the parking lot.

The foreboding that had gripped her at the cemetery returned, playing havoc with her pulse again.

Suddenly shaky with a combination of exhaustion and nerves, she started the car and busied herself with fastening her seat belt. “The beach house is far enough out of town that the press isn’t likely to be staking it out. If this conversation is taking the direction I think it is, we’d better meet there.”

“Tell me,” he said curtly. “What direction, exactly, do you think this conversation will take?”

“A conversation with Constantine Atraeus?” Her smile was as tightly strung as her nerves. “Now let me see… Two options—sex or money. Since it can’t possibly be sex, my vote’s on the money.”

Three

M
oney was the burning agenda, but as Sienna drove into Pier Point, with Constantine following close enough behind to make her feel herded, she wasn’t entirely sure about the sex.

Earlier, in the Audi, Constantine’s muscular heat engulfing her, she had been sharply aware of his sexual intent. He had wanted her and he hadn’t been shy about letting her know. The moment had been underscored by an unnerving flash of déjà vu.

The first time Constantine had kissed her had been in his car. He had cupped her chin and lowered his mouth to hers, and despite her determination to keep her distance, she had wound her arms around his neck, angled her jaw and leaned into the kiss. Even though she had only known him for a few hours she had been swept off her feet. She hadn’t been able to resist him, and he had known it.

Shaking off the too-vivid recollection, she signaled and turned her small sports car into her mother’s driveway. Barely an hour after the unpleasant clash across her father’s grave, those kinds of memories shouldn’t register. The fact that Constantine wanted her meant little more than that he was a man with a normal, healthy libido. In the past two years he had been linked with a number of wealthy, beautiful women, each one a serious contender for the position of Mrs. Constantine Atraeus.

He turned into the driveway directly behind her. As Sienna accelerated up the small, steep curve, the sense of being pursued increased. She used her remote to close the electronic gates at the bottom of the drive, just in case the press had followed. After parking, she grabbed her handbag and walked across the paved courtyard that fronted the old cliff-top house.

Constantine was already out of his car. She noticed that in the interim he’d rolled his sleeves up, baring tanned, muscled forearms. She unlocked the front door and as he loomed over her in the bare, sun-washed hall, her stomach, already tense, did another annoying little flip.

He indicated she precede him. She couldn’t fault his manners, but that didn’t change the fact that with Constantine padding behind her like a large, hunting cat, she felt like prey.

“What happened to the furniture?”

The foreign intonation in his deep voice set her on edge all over again. Suddenly, business agenda or not, it seemed unbearably intimate to be alone with him in the quiet stillness of the almost empty house.

Sienna skimmed blank walls that had once held a collection of paintings, including an exquisitely rendered Degas. “Sold, along with all the valuable artwork my grandfather collected.”

She threw him a tight smile. “Auctioned, along with every piece of real jewelry Mom, Carla and I owned— including the pearls. Now isn’t that a joke? We own a pearl house, but we can’t afford our own products.”

She pushed open the ornate double doors to her father’s study and stood aside as Constantine walked into the room, which held only a desk and a couple of chairs.

His gaze skimmed bare floorboards and the ranks of empty built-in mahogany bookshelves, which had once housed a rare book collection. She logged the moment he finally comprehended what a sham their lives had become. They sold pearls to the wealthy and projected sleek, rich-list prosperity for the sake of the company, but the struggle had emptied them out, leaving her mother, Carla and herself with nothing.

He surveyed the marks on the wall that indicated paintings had once hung there and the dangling ceiling fitting that had once held a chandelier. “What didn’t he sell to pay gambling debts?”

For a split second Sienna thought Constantine was taking a cheap shot, implying that both she and Carla had been up for auction, but she dismissed the notion. When he had broken their engagement his reasons had been clear-cut. After her father’s failed deal he had made it plain he could no longer trust her or the connection with her family. His stand had been tough and uncompromising, because he hadn’t allowed her a defense, but he had never at any time been malicious.

“We still have the house, and we’ve managed to keep the business running. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Ambrosi employs over one hundred people, some of whom have worked for us for decades. When it came down to keeping those people in work, selling possessions and family heirlooms wasn’t a difficult choice.”

Although she didn’t expect Constantine with his reputation for being coldly ruthless in business to agree. “Wait here,” she said stiffly, “I’ll get towels.”

Glad for a respite, she walked upstairs to her room. With swift movements she peeled off her ruined shoes, changed them for dry ones then checked her appearance in the dresser mirror. A small shock went through her when she noted the glitter of her eyes and the warm flush on her cheeks. With her creased dress and tousled hair, the look was disturbingly sensual.

Walking through to the bathroom, she towel-dried her hair, combed it and decided not to bother changing the dress, which was almost dry. She shouldn’t care whether Constantine thought she was attractive or not, and if she did, she needed to squash the notion. The sooner this conversation was over and he was gone, the better.

She collected a fresh towel from the linen closet and walked back downstairs.

Constantine turned from the breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean as she entered the study, his light gaze locking briefly with hers.

Breath hitching at the sudden pounding of her heart, Sienna handed him the towel, taking care not to let their fingers brush. She indicated the view. “One of the few assets we haven’t yet had to sell, but only because Mom sold the town house this week. Although this place is mortgaged to the hilt.”

It would go, too. It was only a matter of time.

He ran the towel briefly over his hair before tossing it over the arm of a chair. “I didn’t know things had gotten this bad.”

But, she realized, he had known her father’s gambling had gotten out of hand. “Why should you? Ambrosi Pearls has nothing to do with either Medinos or The Atraeus Group.”

His expression didn’t alter, but suddenly any trace of compassion was gone. Good. Relief unfolded inside her. If anything could kill the skittish knowledge that not only was she on edge, she was sexually on edge, a straightforward business discussion would do it.

She indicated that Constantine take a seat and walked around to stand behind her father’s desk, underlining her role as Ambrosi Pearls’ CEO. “Not many people know the company’s financial position, and I would appreciate if you wouldn’t spread it around. With the papers speculating about losses, I’m having a tough time convincing some of our customers that Ambrosi is solid.”

Constantine ignored the chair in favor of standing directly opposite her, arms crossed over his chest, neutralizing her attempt at dominance.

Sienna averted her gaze from the way the damp fabric of his shirt clung to his shoulders, the sleek aura of male power that swirled around Constantine Atraeus like a cloak.

“It must have been difficult, trying to run a business with a gambler at the helm.”

As abruptly as if an internal switch had been thrown, Sienna’s temper boiled over. Finally, the issue he hadn’t wanted to talk about two years ago. “I don’t think you can understand at all. Did your father gamble?”

Constantine’s gaze narrowed. “Only in a good way.”

“Of course.” Lorenzo Atraeus had been an excellent businessman. “With good information and solid investment backing so he could make money, then more money. Unlike my father who consistently found ways to lose it, both in business and at the blackjack table.” Her heart was pounding; her blood pressure was probably off the register. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose and keep on losing because you can’t control someone in your family.”

“My family has some experience with loss.”

His expression was grim, his tone remote, reminding her that the Atraeus family had lived in poverty on Medinos for years, farming goats. Constantine’s grandfather had even worked for hers, until the Ambrosis had lost their original pearl business when it had been bombed during the war. But that had all been years ago. This was now.

She leaned forward, every muscle taut. “Running a business with a gambler at the helm hasn’t been easy.”

He spread his palms on the desk and suddenly they were nose to nose. “If it got that bad why didn’t you get out?”

And suddenly, the past was alive between them and she was taking a weird, giddy delight in fighting with Constantine. Maybe it was a reaction, a backlash to the grief and strain of the funeral, or the simple fact that she was sick of clamping down on her emotions and tired of hiding the truth. “And abandon my family and all the people who depend on our company for their livelihood?” She smiled tightly. “It was never an option, and I hope I never arrive at that point. Which brings us to the conversation you want so badly. How much do we owe?”

“Did you know that two months ago your father paid a visit to Medinos?”

Shock held her immobile. “No.”

“Are you aware that he had plans to start up a pearl industry there?”

“Not possible.” But blunt denial didn’t ease the cold dread forming in her stomach. “We barely have enough capital to operate in Sydney.” Her father had driven what had been a thriving business into the ground. “We’re in no position to expand.”

Something shifted in Constantine’s gaze, and for a fleeting second she had a sense that, like it or not, he had reached some kind of decision.

Constantine indicated a document he must have dropped on the desk while she’d been out of the room. Sienna studied the thick parchment. Her knees wobbled. A split second later she was sitting in her father’s old leather chair, fighting disbelief as she skimmed the text.

Not one loan but several. She had expected the first loan to date back to the first large deposit she had found in her father’s personal account several weeks ago, and she wasn’t disappointed.

She lifted her head to find Constantine still watching her. “Why did Lorenzo lend anything to my father? He knew he had a gambling problem.”

“My father was terminally ill and clearly not in his right mind. When he died a month ago, we knew there was a deficit. Unfortunately, the documents confirming the loans to your father weren’t located until five days ago.”

Her jaw clenched. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

“Believe me, if I had been there I would have, but I was out of the country at the time. To compound the issue, he bypassed the usual channels and retained an old friend, his retired legal counsel, to draw up the contracts.”

Constantine ran his fingers around his nape, his expression abruptly impatient. “I see you’re now beginning to understand the situation. Your father has been running Ambrosi Pearls and his gambling addiction on The Atraeus Group’s money. An amount he ‘borrowed’ from a dying man on the basis of a business he had no intention of setting up.”

Fraud.

Now the questions fired at her by the reporters made sense. “Is that what you told the press?”

“I think you know me better than that.”

She felt oddly relieved. It shouldn’t matter that Constantine hadn’t been the one who had leaked the story, but it did.

Someone, most likely an employee, would have sold the information to the press.

Sienna stared at the figure involved and felt her normal steely optimism and careful plans for Ambrosi Pearls dissolve.

Firming her chin, she stared out at the bright blue summer sky and the endless, hazy vista of the Pacific Ocean, and tried to regroup. There had to be a way out of this; she had wrangled the company out of plenty of tight spots before. All she had to do was think.

Small, disparate pieces of information clicked into place. Constantine not wanting to talk to her at the funeral or in the car, the way he had remained standing while she had read through the documents.

He had wanted to watch her reaction when she read the paperwork.

Her gaze snapped to his. “You thought I was part of this.”

Constantine’s expression didn’t alter.

Something in her plummeted. Sienna pushed to her feet. The loan documents cascaded to the floor; she barely noticed them. When Lorenzo Atraeus had died, he had left an enormous fortune based on a fabulously rich gold mine and a glittering retail and hotel empire to his three sons, Constantine, Lucas and Zane.

It shouldn’t be uppermost in her mind, but it suddenly struck her that if Ambrosi Pearls was in debt to The Atraeus Group, by definition—as majority shareholder—that meant Constantine.

Constantine’s gaze was oddly bleak. “Now you’re getting it. Unless you can come up with the money, I now own Ambrosi Pearls lock, stock and barrel.”