Salzano's Captive Bride

Daphne Clair

Step into a world of sophistication and glamour, where sinfully seductive heroes await you in luxurious international locations.At the mercy of the Venezuelan billionaire!Marco Salzano is furious! One moment of passion in the sultry heat of carnaval has its price. Burning with suspicion and anger, the arrogant Venezuelan is going to track down his errant one-night stand and claim his love-child!But he’s accusing the wrong woman. Pretending to be her sister, fragile Amber convinces Marco that the baby in question is not his. But when Marco discovers the deception he vows to take Amber not as his mistress but as his bride!

?

“Hello, Amber,” he said, with dark,steely mockery in his tone.

“What are you doing here?” she gasped, her heart contracting into a shrivelled ball. “How did you find me?”

His expression changed slightly, as if she’d just satisfied him in some way. “We must talk.”

He took her arm but she shook off his hand. “I don’t need to talk to you,” she said, trying to sidestep him, but this time he caught her arm in an unshakeable grip, trying to walk her along with him.

“Come—we cannot discuss anything here.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Let go of me or I’ll scream.” She opened her mouth and he dropped his hand from her arm, looking grimly amused.

“And I will tell people you are attempting to deprive me of my legal rights by fraud and deception. I wish to talk about your sister.”

Her sister? Of course. He’d called her by her own name, which she’d automatically reacted to. Not Azure’s. How much did he know? “How did you find out where I work?”

“I hired an investigator,” he said calmly.

“You…?” For a second she was stunned as well as angry. The idea of a stranger prying into her life gave her the creeps. “How dare you?”

“How else could I discover the truth? You lied to me.”

Daphne Clair lives in subtropical New Zealand, with her Dutch-born husband. They have five children. At eight years old she embarked on her first novel, about taming a tiger. This epic never reached a publisher, but metamorphosed male tigers still prowl the pages of her romances, of which she has written over thirty for Harlequin Mills & Boon

, and over sixty all told. Her other writing includes non-fiction, poetry and short stories, and she has won literary prizes in New Zealand and America.

Readers are invited to visit Daphne Clair’s website at www.daphneclair.com

SALZANO’S

CAPTIVE BRIDE

BY

DAPHNE CLAIR

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

AMBER Odell had just washed up after her solitary evening meal when the doorbell sounded a long, imperative ring.

She closed a cupboard door with a click of the old-fashioned catch, hastily hung the tea towel on its rail and hurried along the short hallway.

The rimu floorboards beneath the faded carpet runner creaked under her bare feet. The old building in a once-fashionable Auckland suburb had endured a chequered career from grand home to orphanage to boarding house until, towards the end of the twentieth century, some crude renovations had converted it into flats. Amber was lucky to have leased one on the ground floor at a reasonable price, in return for some badly needed redecorating.

She switched on the porch light and hesitated at the sight of a large, dark shape behind the blue-and-red stained glass panes on the top part of the door. After a second or two the shape moved and raised a hand to rap on the wooden panel between the panes.

Cautiously she opened the door, braced to slam it shut again.

The porch light shone down on glossy waves of night-black hair combed back from an arresting olive-toned face with high cheekbones and a commanding nose. The forbidding features and uncompromising, beard-shadowed jaw were at odds with a sensuous male mouth, even though at the moment it was stubbornly set and unsmiling.

Vaguely she was conscious of broad shoulders, a pristine white T-shirt moulded over a toned chest, and long powerful legs encased in olive-green trousers. Casual clothes that somehow managed to c