Marriage Made in Blackmail

by Michelle Smart

  The tycoon’s demand:

  “You have to marry me first...”

  Luis Casillas’s reputation needs restoring after a scandalous business feud. Chloe Guillem will pay for her part in it—by marrying him! He’ll keep her captive on his Caribbean island until she agrees. Their explosive chemistry can only sweeten the deal, but Luis requires more than blackmail to make fiery Chloe his bride... And he’s not above using seduction to secure her surrender!

  “Are you going to behave yourself now, bonita?” Luis asked with a husky timbre Chloe had never heard before. A fresh pulse of heat ripped through her, filling her blood and her head with the fuzziest, dreamiest of sensations.

  She could not tear her eyes away...

  “Make me.” Her whispered words came unbidden from a voice that belonged to someone else.

  Their gazes stayed locked together until she found herself staring at the sensuous mouth she had so yearned to kiss...

  And then that mouth fitted against her own and claimed her in a hard, ruthless kiss that sent her head and her senses spinning.

  Rings of Vengeance

  Three vengeful billionaires, three scandalous weddings!

  Benjamin Guillem was once Luis and Javier Casillas’s closest friend. Until the day the brothers stole from him. Now they are enemies, and nothing and no one will stand in the way of their revenge!

  And if that means stealing, bartering or buying a bride, then so be it!

  But with the marriage vows spoken, can these new brides unravel their billionaires’ games of vengeance, and bring these three powerful tycoons to their knees?

  Find out more in:

  Benjamin and Freya’s story

  Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

  Luis and Chloe’s story

  Marriage Made in Blackmail

  And look out for Javier’s story

  Coming soon!

  Michelle Smart

  Marriage Made in Blackmail

  Michelle Smart’s love affair with books started when she was a baby, when she would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Harlequin book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading—and writing—them ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young smarties.

  Books by Michelle Smart

  Harlequin Presents

  Once a Moretti Wife

  A Bride at His Bidding

  One Night With Consequences

  Claiming His Christmas Consequence

  Wedlocked!

  Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed

  Bound to a Billionaire

  Protecting His Defiant Innocent

  Claiming His One-Night Baby

  Buying His Bride of Convenience

  Rings of Vengeance

  Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM THE ITALIAN'S ONE-NIGHT CONSEQUENCE BY CATHY WILLIAMS

  CHAPTER ONE

  LUIS CASILLAS SNATCHED his ringing phone off the table and put it to his ear. ‘Sí?’

  ‘Luis?’

  ‘Sí.’

  ‘It’s Chloe.’

  That brought him up short. ‘Chloe... Chloe Guillem.’

  The woman who had spent the past two months treating him as if he were a carrier for a deadly plague?

  ‘Oui. I need your help. My car has broken down on a road on the Sierra de Guadarrama...’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘Driving. Was driving.’

  ‘Have you called for recovery?’

  ‘They can’t get to me for two hours. My phone is running out of battery. Please, can you come and rescue me? Please? I don’t feel safe.’

  Luis looked at his watch and swore under his breath. He was due at the gala he and his twin brother Javier were hosting in half an hour.

  ‘Is there no one else you can call?’ Chloe worked for his ballet company in Madrid. In the year the gregarious Frenchwoman had lived in his home city she had made plenty of friends.

  ‘You are the closest. Please, Luis, come and get me.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I’m scared.’

  He took a long breath as he did some mental maths. This gala was incredibly important.

  Ten years ago Luis and his twin had bought the provincial ballet company their prima ballerina mother had spent her childhood training at. Their aim had been to elevate it into a world-renowned, formidable ballet company. First they had renamed it Compania de Ballet de Casillas, in their mother’s memory, then set about attracting the very best dancers and choreographers. Three years ago they had drawn up the plans to move the company out of the crumbling theatre it had called home for decades and into a purpose-built state-of-the art theatre with world-class training facilities and its own ballet school. Those plans had almost reached fruition.

  Now they wanted patrons for it, members of the elite to sponsor the ballet school and put it even more firmly on the world’s ballet map. Europe’s elite and dozens of its press were already gathering at the hotel. Luis had to be there.

  ‘Where exactly are you?’

  ‘You will come?’

  It was the hope in her voice that did for him. Chloe had the sweetest voice he had ever had the pleasure of listening to. It wasn’t girlishly sweet, more melodic, a voice that sang.

  He couldn’t leave her alone on the mountains.

  ‘Sí, I will come and get you, but I need to know where you are.’

  ‘I will send you the co-ordinates but then I will have to turn my phone off to save what is left of my battery.’

  ‘Keep it on,’ he ordered. ‘Have you got anything to hand you can use as a weapon if you need it?’

  ‘I’m not sure...’

  ‘Find something heavy or sharp. Be vigilant. Send me the co-ordinates now. I’m on my way.’

  ‘Merci, Luis. Merci beaucoup.’

  ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  Hurrying to his underground garage, he selected the quickest of his fleet of cars, inputted Chloe’s co-ordinates into its satnav, then drove it up the ramp. The moment he was clear, he put his foot down, tearing down his long driveway, past the stretched Mercedes with his waiting driver in it.

  His clever console, which had calculated the quickest route for him, said he was an hour’s drive to her position from his home in the north of Madrid, if he kept to the speed limit.

  Provided traffic wasn’t too heavy this Saturday evening, Luis estimated he could make it in forty, possibly even thirty minutes.

  He always kept to the speed limit in built-up areas. The temptation to burn rubber was often irresistible but he always controlled the impulse until on the open road. Today, with thoughts of Chloe stranded in the mountains on his mind,
he wove in and out of the traffic ignoring the blast of horns hailing furiously in his wake.

  Chloe Guillem. A funny, attention-seeking, pretty child who had grown into a witty, fun-loving, beautiful woman. Truly beautiful.

  It had taken him a long time to notice it.

  An old family friend, he hadn’t seen her for four or five years when she had called him out of the blue.

  ‘Bonjour, Luis,’ she had said in a sing-song tone that had immediately suggested familiarity. ‘It is Chloe Guillem, little sister of your oldest friend, calling to ask you to put friendship ahead of business and give me a job.’

  He had burst into laughter. After a short conversation where Chloe had explained that she’d completed her apprenticeship in the costume department of an English ballet company, spent the past two years working for a Parisian ballet company and was now seeking a fresh challenge, he’d given her the name and number of his Head of Costume. Recruitment, he’d explained, was nothing to do with him.

  ‘But you own the company,’ she had countered.

  ‘I own it with my brother. We are experts in the construction business. We know nothing of ballet or how to make the costumes our dancers wear. That’s what we employ people for.’

  ‘I have references that say I’m very good,’ she had cajoled.

  ‘That is good because we only hire the best.’

  ‘Will you put in a good word for me?’

  ‘No, but if you mention that your mother was Clara Casillas’s personal costume maker, I am sure that will work in your favour. Provided you are as good as your references say you are.’

  ‘I am!’

  ‘Then you will have no trouble convincing Maria to hire you,’ he had laughed.

  Luis had thought nothing more of the conversation until around six months later when he’d attended a directors meeting at the old theatre to discuss preparations for the company’s move. A galloping gazelle had bounded up to him out of nowhere with a beaming smile and thrown her arms around him.

  It had been Chloe, bright and joyous and, she had delightedly told him, loving her time in Madrid. Luis had been pleased to see this face from his past but he’d been too busy to take much notice of his old friend’s little sister.

  When Luis and Javier had pooled their meagre inheritance to form Casillas Ventures almost two decades ago, they had decided from the start that one of them would always be the ‘point man’ on each project. This would simplify matters for contractors and suppliers. Luis had taken the role of point man for the construction of the new theatre and facilities. In this venture he had been far more hands on than he would normally be but this was a special project. This was for their mother, a way for the world to see the Casillas name without automatically thinking of Clara Casillas’s tragic end at the hands of her husband.

  The closer it got to completion, the more hours he needed to put in, overseeing the construction and ensuring Compania de Ballet de Casillas was prepared for the wholesale move to its new premises.

  From that embrace on though, whenever Luis visited the old crumbling theatre he somehow always managed to see Chloe.

  She always acknowledged his presence, with either a quick wave if working on an intricate costume or a few words exchanged if on a break, her cheeks turning the colour of crimson whatever reception she gave, a little quirk he’d found intriguing but never given much thought to...not until he’d walked past a coffee shop a few months later and caught a glimpse of a raven haired beauty talking animatedly to a group of her peers. Spring had arrived in his home city and she’d been wearing a thin dress that exposed bare, milky-white arms, her thick raven hair loose and spilling over her shoulders.

  He would have stopped and stared even if he hadn’t recognised her.

  How had he not seen it before?

  Chloe Guillem radiated. Sunlight shone out of her pores, sexiness oozed from her skin. Her smile dazzled.

  She must have felt his stare for she had looked up and seen him at the window and the full power of her smile had been unleashed on him and this time it had hit him straight in his loins. He had never in all his thirty-five years experienced a bolt of pure, undiluted, unfiltered lust as he had at that moment.

  He’d taken her out to dinner that very night. It had been the most fun and invigorating evening he could remember. Chloe was funny, full of self-deprecating wit, a raucous laugh never far from her voluminous lips. And she was sexy.

  Dios, was she sexy. He had been unable to tear his eyes away, greedily soaking up everything about her, all the glorious parts he’d been oblivious to. It was incredible to think he’d been blind to it for so long.

  And the desire was mutual. Luis knew when a woman wanted him and Chloe’s body language had needed little interpretation.

  But when they had left the restaurant she had rebuffed his offer of a nightcap by hailing a taxi.

  He had never been rejected before. It had intrigued rather than discouraged him.

  ‘If not a nightcap how about a goodnight kiss?’ he’d asked before she could escape into the cab, taking her face into his hands and gently rubbing his nose to hers. Her scent had filled his senses, reminding him of English strawberries and cream.

  Her eyes had been stark on his, the flirtatious glimmer that had been prevalent the whole evening suddenly gone, her beautiful plump lips drawing together.

  ‘Next time, bonita,’ he had whispered, inhaling her scent again.

  All the confusion on her face had broken into a smile that had shone straight into his chest. She had stepped back and nodded. ‘Yes. Next time.’

  ‘You will let me kiss you?’

  The smile had widened, baby-blue eyes glittering with promise. ‘Yes, I will let you kiss me.’

  But there had been no next time and no kiss. Two days later everything had gone to hell with her brother. Chloe had cancelled their planned date and stopped accepting his calls. When he visited the ballet company she kept her head down and pretended not to see him.

  They hadn’t exchanged two words in almost as many months.

  Why the hell he was tearing down roads at an average speed of a hundred miles an hour to rescue a woman who had dropped him like a hot brick he could not fathom, and especially on this night of all nights.

  A curse flew from his lips when, thirty-four minutes after leaving his home, he reached the co-ordinates Chloe had given him.

  It was a passing place on the winding road, with a flat grassy area for day-trippers to enjoy the spectacular view over a picnic. There was no one there. And no broken-down car.

  He brought the car to a stop and grabbed his phone from the passenger seat. In his haste to get to her he’d forgotten to turn the ringtone up and only now did he see he had three missed calls from his brother.

  He called Chloe. It went straight to voicemail.

  Getting out of the car to search for her, he called Javier back.

  ‘Where are you?’ his brother snapped, picking up on the first ring.

  ‘Don’t ask. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘I’m grounded in Florence.’

  ‘What?’ Javier was supposed to be at the gala already. In Madrid. Not Florence.

  ‘My plane’s been grounded on a technicality. It passed all the safety checks this morning. Not a single issue of concern. Something’s not right.’

  Luis disconnected the call, a real sense of disquiet racing through him. The sun was descending over Madrid in the far distance but the orange glow it emitted did nothing to stave off the chill that had settled in his bones.

  His brother was grounded in Florence and suspected sabotage.

  Luis had been lured to the middle of nowhere in the Sierra de Guadarrama in his dinner jacket, on a rescue mission where the damsel in distress had disappeared.

  He checked the co-ordinates again.

  This was definit
ely the right place.

  So where the hell was she? And why was his sense of disquiet growing by the second?

  * * *

  Chloe Guillem took a seat in the first-class lounge at Madrid-Barajas airport and removed her phone from her carry-on bag.

  She had six missed calls and seven text messages, all from the same number. She deleted the messages without reading them and fired off a message to her brother.

  Mission accomplished. Waiting to board flight. x.

  The glass of champagne she’d asked for when entering the lounge was brought to her table and she took a large sip of it at the moment her phone rang.

  Cursing to herself, she switched it to silent and threw it down.

  Two minutes later it vibrated in a dance over the table.

  She had a new voicemail.

  Her gut told her in the strongest possible terms not to listen to it.

  She pressed play.

  Luis Casillas’s deep, playful voice echoed into her ear. ‘Good evening, Chloe. I hope you are safe wherever you are and have not been kidnapped by a gang of marauding youths. You might wish you had been though because I will find you. And when I do...’ Here, he chuckled malevolently. ‘You will wish you had never crossed me. Sleep well, bonita.’

  It was the emphasis on his final word rather than the implied threat that lifted the hairs on her arms.

  Bonita.

  The first time he had called her that she had thought she would never stop smiling.

  Now she was overcome with the urge to cry.

  He was not worth her tears, the two-faced, treacherous, conniving, evil bastard.

  Thank goodness she’d had the sense to resist his offer of a nightcap...

  Chloe downed the rest of her champagne and grimaced.

  It hadn’t been sense that had stopped her accepting his offer or his goodnight kiss. It had been fear.

  Her date with Luis had given her a sense of joy she hadn’t felt since her early childhood where she had spent innocent, happy days climbing trees and running around with friends, cocooned with love, blissfully unaware life could be anything other than wonderful. Luis was tied up in those memories.

 
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