Bad Influence. SUSANNE MCCARTHY

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘MARRY you? Don’t be ridiculous!’ Georgia Geldard’s blue eyes had more than once been likened to polar ice, and they had never been more frosty than at this moment. ‘And if you think I’m going to consent to spending one single night on this yacht, you can just think again,’ she added on a note of withering scorn.

      Unfortunately her sharp words served only to provoke her captor into a display of pure Latin machismo. ‘But, querida, you have no choice.’ He swaggered with overstated arrogance. ‘I can see that you have no weapons concealed about your person…’

      Georgia felt a faint blush of pink rise to her cheeks. She was acutely conscious that the brief blue silk bikini concealed very little; if only she had at least paused to slip on a shirt or something before accepting César’s seemingly innocent invitation. The trouble was, she had known César Nunez de Perez since he was a lanky adolescent whose only interest was American baseball, and she still thought of him as a mere boy, so when he had zoomed up beside her yacht on his latest toy—a jet-ski—she had quite readily agreed to lay aside the very dull report on world coffee production she had been studying and go for a ride with him. And when he had suggested that they step aboard his yacht for a cool drink she had thought nothing of it. She would never have trusted a grown man in such circumstances.

      But though he was now an extremely spoiled and self-important young man of twenty-two, she had no intention of letting him intimidate her. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, César, stop playing silly games,’ she rapped impatiently. ‘Tell your captain to take us back to Mangrove Bay at once.’

      César’s handsome young face took on a sulky pout. ‘But, Georgia, you know how I feel about you,’ he pleaded. ‘I adore you—I worship at your feet.’

      ‘I have no desire at all to be worshipped,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, don’t you think you’re a little too old for that sort of adolescent infatuation?’

      ‘Infatuation?’ Oh, dear—she had affronted his fragile dignity again. ‘You call it that? I offer to marry you—no less! You cannot think me a fortune-hunter—my father is an extremely wealthy man, as you well know. As my wife, you would enjoy the highest status and privilege…’

      ‘I’m quite happy with the status I have, thank you. And being chief executive of one of the most successful companies in Europe is privilege enough for anyone.’

      ‘But is no life for a woman!’ he protested heatedly. ‘It is not good that you should be all the time concerning yourself with business affairs—it is not natural. I do not know what your grandfather could have been thinking of, to leave such a responsibility to you.’

      ‘He was thinking very wisely, as he always did,’ she countered, with brusque disregard for his sensibilities. ‘I was trained to run the Geldard Corporation from my cradle. I enjoy it, and I’m damned good at it. And I intend to go on doing it for the next fifty years, if I live that long! And, what’s more, I have no intention of marrying anyone—least of all you. That you could stoop to kidnapping me…!’

      The handsome boy lifted his magnificently developed shoulders in a dismissive shrug, though two betraying spots of colour darkened his cheeks. ‘A little trick…’

      ‘A little trick? Is that what you call it?’ Those blue eyes flashed with cold fire. ‘You lure me aboard your yacht by the most underhand means; you lock me in…’

      ‘It was…how you say? An impulse,’ he argued fervently. ‘I had not planned. But I saw you there on your boat, so beautiful, like a golden goddess shimmering in the sunlight. It brought to my head a fever…’

      ‘Well, you should have taken an aspirin,’ she retorted dampeningly. ‘Now, will you please take me back to Mangrove Bay?’

      He shook his head. ‘I cannot do that, mi querida,’ he insisted, his voice throbbingly low. ‘I would treat you with all honour, I swear it. If you would but be sensible, I would make you at once my bride. But if you will persist in this obstinacy, you leave me no choice. Once I have you in my bed, I will make love to you until you have no more will to resist me…’

      Georgia decided on a strategic retreat behind a large onyx coffee-table—the yacht was furnished with somewhat flamboyant taste. ‘Listen, César,’ she coaxed, trying