“Good to see the two of two getting along so well,” he remarked as they left the table.
Conor’s stare hardened, or had she imagined that?Had she misjudged Conor Murphy completely?Wanting Conor to be an ally didn’t mean he was.The irony of wanting to have Conor onside every bit as much as her father wanted to ensnare him, forced a short laugh to escape from her mouth.
“That’s better.I like to hear you laugh,” Conor encouraged.
She hummed as they walked on with Conor’s warm hand in the small of her back.He didn’t drive her like a slave master.Conor’s hand felt protective.
And she was far too keen to believe in him than she should be.
Maybe because dancing with Conor was so much better than dancing with ageing pimps with halitosis and wandering hands, the types her father expected Karolina to impress whenever a deal was pending.Heaven help them if they touched her inappropriately.They’d disappear, never to be seen again.
“Are we dancing or waiting for a bus?”he inquired as they stood facing each other across the dance floor.
“A bus?Really?”A grin broke through her tension.“I’m surprised you even know what a bus is.”
“You would be surprised at what I know.”
Why did that remark send heat to all her erotic zones?Did he mean to be suggestive?Conor’s quirked brow gave nothing away.
“I hope I come with a good dowry.”Good enough to persuade Conor to keep her as his wife long enough for Karolina to work out a plan to bring her father down.As the daughter of a discarded mistress, she never took anything for granted.
“I’m content with the deal I made with your father.”
She waited, hoping for more, but Conor had said all he was going to.
Surely evil couldn’t smell this good, she thought as Conor brought her into his arms to dance.She’d never experienced anything as electrifying as close contact with a man who made every other man pale into insignificance.He was so much bigger than she was, his strength like tungsten steel wound into the tightest of springs.Imagining that power at her disposal was a heady thought.
Her senses were full of him.Her body ached for him.Dancing to please her father would never be enough.She found herself wanting more than a marriage in name only.A lot more.
The ambassador stared at them narrow-eyed throughout the dance.He was always suspicious, even when everything appeared to be going his way.Avoiding his stare, she concentrated on Conor.“I’m not indulged, as you seem to think.Being raised in the lap of luxury by a doting father is an illusion.”
“That’s quite an admission, and a dangerous one too,” Conor remarked, frowning down.
“My father is a control freak who likes everything his own way.”
“As we all do.”
“Not like him.”
Conor swung her around so her back was to her father.“You’re taking too many chances, Karolina.”
“Maybe I’ve got nothing to lose.”
She had plenty to lose if this evening fell flat.The ambassador was a dangerous bully who loved to remind Karolina of her mother’s fate.Having refused to sleep with one of his competitors to help the ambassador win a deal, her mother had been taken on one last helicopter flight.While the aircraft hovered above the ocean, she’d been pushed out the door.
That was what happened to those who defied Kaspar Karolides, Karolina’s father had explained to ten-year-old Karolina, as if his actions were entirely reasonable, and she shouldn’t be sobbing her heart out at the loss of a mother she’d barely had a chance to know.
Plucked from the obscurity of the mass of captives in the cellar, Karolina’s mother had fared scarcely better than her companions.Used and abused by the ambassador, who discarded her as soon as he discovered she was pregnant, she’d been kept on as a special favor to help in the kitchens, where she worked her fingers to the bone.Her mother had very little energy left to spend time with their young daughter, and Karolina had survived only because the ambassador saw some value in her going forward.He was a dangerous psychopath, which was why she must survive long enough to bring him down.
“If I can see how you feel, your father can too.”Conor’s harsh whisper jolted her rudely back into the present.If he turned out to be one of her father’s cronies, she’d already sealed her fate.“How about we take another walk in the garden?”he suggested.
“I’m not sure.”She glanced at her father.
“As guest of honor, I can do anything I like, which includes getting married at the end of this week.I see no reason to wait,” Conor added when she gasped with surprise.
That might be safer, she quickly reasoned.She couldn’t help anyone from the grave, which was where she’d end up if she tried to rob her father of his planned rise in respectable society.Conor might turn out to be as bad as her father, but escape by marriage was her only chance of freedom, and for the sake of those women, she had to take it.
