The Scandalous Warehams

Lizzie tried to imagine how she would feel if she didn’t have her sisters, and then warned herself that sympathy was the last thing Ilios Manos wanted. He was a man who stood alone because he wanted to stand alone. He had as good as told her that himself.

The lift soared upwards at speed, flattening her stomach to her spine. She’d never really liked lifts, and this one was all glass, on the inside of the cathedral-like space of the building. Even though it was now in darkness, it made her feel distinctly nervous.

The lift stopped swiftly and silently, its doors opening onto an impressive rectangular hallway. The walls and floors were covered in limestone, and concealed lighting illuminated the space, highlighting the pair of matching limestone tables either side of a pair of double doors, cleverly looking almost as though they had been carved out of the wall instead of standing next to it. Two marble busts—one on either table—were also illuminated by concealed lighting.

When he saw her looking at them, Ilios told her, ‘They are supposed to have been brought back from Italy by Alexandros Manos at the same time as he returned with copies of Palladio’s plans for the villa. If you know Villa Emo and anything of its history then you will know that the Emo family were said to be of Greek descent—hence the classical Greek appearance of the villa.’

‘As a trading port, Venice was something of a melting pot for various nations back then,’ Lizzie agreed.

Ilios nodded his head, then opened the doors and waited for her to precede him.

A corridor lined with black marble on one side and mirrors on the other, to expand the space, opened out into a large living area with floor-to-ceiling glass walls virtually all along its length. Through them Lizzie could see the night sky, studded with stars.

White sofas stood on a black-tiled floor, focussed on a modern fireplace in the centre of the room. Picking up a remote control, Ilios pressed a button and a wall of the black glass rectangular chimney surrounding the fire slid back, to reveal a large television screen.

Everything in the room was state of the art and a future collector’s piece, Lizzie recognised. She could immediately put a name to the prestigious interior design partnership that was responsible for the interior, and even to the designer within that concern who had headed up the team.

‘Walt Eickehoven.’ Without thinking, she said his name out loud.

Ilios swung round. ‘You know him?’

‘No, but I know his style,’ Lizzie answered. ‘Those sofas and that unit are unmistakably his. I’ve heard that he’s got a queuing list of clients that goes into months, if not years.’

Ilios shrugged. ‘Queues can be jumped. I’ll show you the guest suite, and then you’ll need something to eat. I’ll order something in—do you like moussaka? If so, we can eat in half an hour.’

Lizzie nodded her head. She was hungry, but she was also tired.

‘This way,’ Ilios instructed her.

‘This way’ led down another windowless corridor of marble and mirrors, this one with inset niches, each one containing a carefully lit piece of stone artwork.

The apartment was a work of art in itself, Lizzie recognized, but her heart ached over a private question. How would the two motherless sons Ilios Manos intended to bring up fit into such an environment? She didn’t think she would actually want to live in such a polished and sterile atmosphere herself, even though as a designer she could appreciate its stunning design.

Ilios had stopped outside a door in the corridor and was indicating to her. ‘I think you will find everything you need inside.’

Nodding again, Lizzie opened the door. By the time she had closed it she knew that Ilios had gone—not because she had seen him go, but because somehow she had sensed it. The air around her and her own body’s reaction told her that he was no longer there. She frowned. Finding Ilios Manos sexually attractive was understandable, and she tried to tell herself to quell her growing panic about how she was going to cope living so closely with him. Obviously such a stupendously male man was bound to have that effect on most women. But she was not most women, and she was desperately afraid of her vulnerability. Discovering that he had made such an impact on her senses that even her skin could register his presence or the lack of it was frighteningly dangerous territory—dangerous and not to be risked territory, in fact.

Instead of thinking about the effect Ilios had on her, Lizzie told herself to try and focus instead on her surroundings. As a designer she could possibly learn something that she could take with her into her life, when her present enforced ordeal was finally over.

The guest suite, for instance, was exactly that—a luxurious, streamlined boutique-hotel-style open space, with a sleeping area at one end that contained a bed, and a living space at the other furnished with sofas, tables and a desk.

Like the living room, the guest suite also had a glass wall that ran its full length, but this one looked inward onto what she imagined must be an enclosed garden, since it was virtually on the roof of the building. Carefully placed soft lighting revealed a perspective view of the ruins of a small elevated Greek temple, which looked down into the garden with steps leading from it into a swimming pool. Along the far length of the pool ran a colonnade, planted with vines, which led to a grotto of the sort favoured by designers of the Italian Renaissance opposite the temple. Parterred greenery in intricate formal patterns separated the pool area from the space outside the glass wall, so that that space formed an almost private outdoor sitting area, with double doors from the living space opening out onto it.

Lizzie didn’t like to think of the millions just the apartment and its garden must have cost. Professionally, she was in awe. This kind of commission was so far outside her level of operation that the only time she would normally get to view one would be in the pages of a magazine. But, as a woman who shared her own living space with two sisters and twin five-year-old boys, she was almost repelled by the cool, sleek hauteur of living space. It made her feel that as a human being her presence within it spoiled its sterile perfection.

Ilios had handed her trolley case before leaving her, and of course it looked ludicrously out of place.

Half an hour, he’d said. That meant she had the choice of showering and tidying herself up, or texting her sisters.

That choice was no choice, really. Lizzie smiled ruefully to herself as she headed for the double doors to one side of the enormous low-level bed, dressed in immaculate grey and white linen to tone with the slate-grey tiled floor.

Beyond the double doors was a dressing room-cum-wardrobe space—enough space to house the entire wardrobes of her whole family with room to spare—and beyond that, through another set of doors, was the bathroom, containing both a shower and a bath, and a separate lavatory. For the first time since she had entered the apartment Lizzie realised she was in a room that combined both modern artistic design and sybaritic sensuality. For a start, the glass wall continued the full length of the bathroom, making it possible to stand in the wetroom-style shower or lie in the huge stone bath and look out into the garden. Limestone tiles covered floor and walls; thick fluffy grey, white and beige towels were stacked on the inbuilt limestone shelving unit next to the double basins.

After a regretful look at the shower, Lizzie washed her hands and face and then returned to the bedroom, sinking into the white sofa as she quickly texted her family to tell them the good news about her new commission from the owner of Manos Construction.

That done, she only just had enough time to comb her hair and renew her lipstick before a quick glance at her watch told her that her time was up.

When she had made her way back to the living area, she suspected, from the quick frowning glance that Ilios gave her, that he had expected her to have changed clothes. No doubt he was used to women making an all-out effort to impress him, but even if she’d had time to change, Lizzie acknowledged, since all she had to change into was a different top she was hardly likely to have impressed him.

While he might not exhibit the tendencies one somehow expected to see in a man who had ‘come from nothing’—for instance, whilst she had no doubt that both his clothes and the watch he was wearing were expensive, they were the opposite of ostentatious—she suspected that designer-clad females were his normal choice of arm candy. Which was perhaps why he considered her sex to be so rapacious.

Their food, delivered whilst she had been in the guest suite, was a simple moussaka-type dish. It was, Lizzie admitted as they sat opposite one another at the polished black glass table, absolutely delicious—as was the wine Ilios had poured to go with it.

It was merely necessity that had prompted him to decide that Lizzie could pay off her debt to him by becoming his wife. He had no personal interest in her whatsoever, Ilios reminded himself as he watched her enjoying her food, plainly not in the least bit concerned about the fact that she was still dressed in workmanlike clothes that did nothing to accentuate her figure and were obviously neither designed nor worn with the idea of arousing male desire. So why did it irk him so irrationally to recognise that she had not made the slightest attempt to attract his attention? Was he really such a stereotypical male? Or was it because, despite the fact that she was not making any attempt to attract him, he was very much aware of her?

If he was, then it was probably due to the fact that it was some time since he had shared his bed with a woman. He had ended his last relationship after his lover had started trying to pressure him into marriage—over a year ago now, in fact.

If Lizzie’s manner irked him then it was surely because, even though his current contact with the female sex was via a variety of social and business-related events, and not on any personal level, he took it for granted that the women he met would be well groomed, dressed in such a way that pleasing the male of the species would be their clear intention.

Ilios looked at her and frowned.

‘You will need a new wardrobe before you can appear in public as either my fiancée or my wife,’ he informed Lizzie.

‘I have plenty of clothes at home. I can ask my sisters to send me some.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? Right now you are dressed as though you were a suburban matron whose sole concern is looking after her family. Jeans and a blazer, loafers … A woman who does not seek to attract the attention of a man, and who perhaps would even prefer to repel male attention.’ He made a dismissive gesture which stung Lizzie’s female pride.

‘Not all women are so insecure that they want to advertise their sensuality to the world at large. Some of us prefer to keep that aspect of ourselves private. In fact we take a pride in it,’ she told him fiercely.

‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Ilios demanded. ‘Wearing dull clothes and so-called sexy underwear beneath them?’

Lizzie could feel her colour rising and bent her head over her wine glass, hoping that the soft fall of her hair would cloak her blush, as she absentmindedly ran her fingertip round the edge of the glass. The fact was that as her sisters often teased her because she was a silk, satin and lace undies fan, the more feminine the better.

Ilios observed her behaviour, knowing immediately the cause of her flushed face and her reluctance to meet his gaze. What was a matter of far more concern and disbelief to him was the effect knowing that beneath her sensible clothes Lizzie Wareham deliberately chose to wear sensual underwear was having on him physically. It might be over a year since he had last had a lover, but that was no excuse for the images that were filling his mind now, and the reaction they were causing within his own body.

Ilios couldn’t remember previously being so glad that he was seated at a table, and was thus able to conceal from a woman’s view his body’s reaction to her. To have such a painfully hard erection was territory that belonged to young men not yet able to fully master their sexuality—not men in their mid-thirties, and certainly not him. The mind could play tricks on a person, he reminded himself, and his reaction was probably not to Lizzie Wareham but to images he himself had created. He did not desire her. He was, to put it bluntly, simply aroused. He could have put any attractive female body into those images and felt the same effect. Desiring Lizzie Wareham was not part of his plan, and therefore must not be allowed to happen.

‘I have work to do, so I suggest that you take the opportunity to go to bed have an early night,’ he informed Lizzie.

He didn’t want her out of the way because her presence was disturbing him on an intensely personal and sensual level that he didn’t like. Not for one minute.

Lizzie’s head lifted, her face burning even more hotly as her body immediately responded to the word bed—and not in a way that had anything to do with going to sleep. Somehow her senses refused to accept that anything as mundane as sleeping could take place in a bed that was in any way connected to Ilios Manos. Which was, of course, totally ridiculous. She was reacting like some hormone-flooded pubescent teenager, quivering with embarrassingly super-strength lust.

‘Yes, I am tired,’ she managed to respond. She was doing the mental equivalent of running past something dangerous without risking looking at it, determinedly avoiding re-using the word ‘bed’, Lizzie derided herself. But what else could she do, with her body signalling with increasing intensity the excited pleasure with which it viewed the prospect of going to bed with Ilios Manos? Not that that was going to happen. He had told her so already. Theirs was purely a business arrangement, that was all, and that was the way it was going to stay. Somehow she would find the strength to make sure that it did.

CHAPTER SIX

‘I HAVE a meeting in half an hour.’ Ilios stood up to finish the cup of coffee he was drinking whilst Lizzie remained seated, seeing him glance at his watch before continuing.

‘I’ve ordered suitable clothes for you via an online concierge service. They should arrive within the hour. Have a look through them. If there’s anything that doesn’t fit, let me know. There’s no need to thank me.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Lizzie assured him grimly.

Ignoring her comment, Ilios continued, ‘We shall be attending a gallery opening this evening, so you’ll need to wear an engagement ring. I’m having a selection couriered over to my office. Maria should arrive at some stage to do the cleaning.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and removed his wallet, opening it and removing what looked to Lizzie like an obscene amount of one-hundred-euro notes.

‘You’ll need this, I dare say. And I’ve put my mobile number into your mobile’s address book. I should have thought that in view of the fact that you’re an interior designer you would have had a more stylish one. Appearances count, after all.’

‘I agree, but paying for luxury gizmos costs money,’ Lizzie defended, Her out-of-fashion mobile was nonetheless perfectly effective.

Five minutes later, left to her own devices in a space in which the smell of rich coffee and maleness lingered dangerously to torment her senses, Lizzie decided to explore her new surroundings—starting with the garden.

She could see now in daylight that the living space did not overlook the city, as she had expected, but instead had views towards the mountains.

The intercom buzzing had her heading for the entrance of the apartment, mindful of what Ilios had told her. When she opened the door there was no sign of a delivery person, but there were several large boxes stacked next to the door.

Nearly two hours later, standing in the guest bedroom surrounded by the clothes she had unpacked, Lizzie wished more than anything else that her sisters were here with her, to stare in awe at the beautiful garments now covering the bed.

The clothes were beautiful, and in exactly the kind of style she had always secretly coveted.

Out of the corner of her eye Lizzie caught sight of the deliciously pretty and feminine underwear she had hastily pushed out of sight under some of the day clothes, her face warming. Obviously he had noticed her reaction to his observation the night before. Stunningly sensual undies in soft cream silk and satin, trimmed with lace—or rather laces, she amended ruefully, remembering the boned corset that laced up at the back which had been in one of the boxes. That was something that would quite definitely be going back! After all, she had no one to fasten her into it, even if she had wanted to wear something so constricting. Neither was she entirely sure about the French knickers that were little more than a satin gusset-cum-G-string attached to fluted sheer lace panels. On the other hand the pure silk-satin low-rise boxer shorts and matching bras were so delicious they had made her mouth water.

And as for everything else—how was she supposed to resist the allure of silk cashmere cut into the most flattering skirt and trousers she had ever seen, in her favourite shade of warm beige? The trench coat, in a sort of off-white—not grey, and not beige either—carrying a very famous label, was the exactly the kind of coat she had secretly lusted after ever since she had realised what good clothes were, and it fitted her perfectly.

There were sweaters and shirts, tops, beach clothes, evening clothes, new jeans by an über-fashionable designer, and shoes so plain and yet so beautiful that Lizzie had simply wanted to hug them tightly to her. These were clothes that spoke an international language—and that language was the language of discreet style and elegance and an awful lot of money.

Lizzie stroked the silk tweed of a three-quarter-length Chanel coat in black and white, with the trademark Chanel camelia attached to an equally trademark Chanel chain fastening. How could she accept all of this? She couldn’t. It was too much. She needed clothes, yes—but far less than this.

With a small sigh she began to repack what she thought were the more expensive items, retaining only what she felt she would genuinely need. Packing away the silk cashmere skirt and trousers and the Chanel coat and skirt and blouse wasn’t easy, but it had to be done, Lizzie told herself firmly.

She had just finished, and was about to carry the boxes to the front door, when she heard a firm knock on the bedroom door.

Maria, the cleaner, must have arrived, Lizzie guessed—but when she went to open the door it was Ilios, who was standing in the corridor, looking impatient.

‘I’m sending these back,’ Lizzie told him, indicating the boxes she had just packed.

Ilios surveyed them, noting that there were far more by the door than there were on the floor beside the bed.

‘They didn’t fit? You didn’t like the style?’ His voice sharpened slightly. He still didn’t know why he had changed his mind at the last minute and told the concierge service to select clothes for a woman who preferred discreet stylishness to clothes that were sexy.

This wasn’t the kind of man who liked being proved wrong—about anything, Lizzie acknowledged, even when it was the dress size of a woman he had only just met. Because he felt that he was being judged and found wanting? Because it was important to him to prove himself as a success in every aspect of his life? Because inside there was still a part of him that had grown up knowing that his father had been sacrificed for a building, with all the fear for his own safety and security that must have caused? Stop feeling sympathetic towards him, she warned herself. It will only make things worse.

‘No, they were perfect—both in fit and style,’ she assured him.

‘So why are you sending them back?’

‘I don’t need them, and … Well, they were far too expensive. The kind of clothes I could never afford. I would have preferred it if the clothes had been less expensive.’

It took Ilios several seconds to adjust his own thinking and judgement to her words. A woman who genuinely did not want a man to spend money on her? Who did she think she was kidding? Ilios didn’t believe that such a woman existed.

‘You will not be living the kind of life you normally live. As my fiancée and then my wife I expect you to dress and behave as the kind of woman those who know me would expect me to marry. You must think of yourself as an actress and these clothes as your props. You will not feel confident amongst my friends if you are not dressed appropriately.’

‘Clothes are only window dressing. True confidence comes from a person’s belief in themselves as someone of value,’ Lizzie felt bound to point out gently.

‘I agree,’ Ilios told her unexpectedly. ‘But we live in a society in which we are judged by those who do not know us on our outward appearance. For my wife to be seen in chainstore clothes could cause the kind of gossip that might well ultimately lead to speculation in the press that Manos Cosntruction is in financial difficulty. It isn’t just my own wealth that depends on the continued success of my business. It is the jobs of all those who work for me. In business, a good reputation can be ninety per cent of one’s success—lose that and you stand to lose everything. You must know that.’

There was enough truth in what he was saying for Lizzie to nod her head.

‘I have brought a selection of rings in different styles and sizes for you to look at. Whichever one you choose can be sized properly for you.’

Recognising that Ilios was waiting for her to precede him out of the room, Lizzie edged her way past the end of the bed, so desperate to avoid accidentally coming into physical contact with him that she bumped into the bed itself and half stumbled, provoking exactly what she had feared. Ilios reached out to steady her, his hand resting firmly against her waist. His attention, though, was focussed on the floor. Following his gaze, Lizzie’s heart sank. There, lying on the floor at his feet, was the corset she had been looking at earlier, which she must have dislodged as she stumbled. Still holding her waist, Ilios bent down and picked it up. He looked at it.

‘It’s going back,’ Lizzie told him immediately. ‘I couldn’t possibly wear it.’

Ilios looked at her. ‘Why not?’

‘Well, for one thing it’s not the type of thing I would wear, and for another I’d need someone to fasten it for me—it laces up at the back,’ she explained. ‘And that means that I’d need …’

‘A man?’ Ilios supplied for her.

‘Another pair of hands,’ Lizzie corrected him. The warmth of his hand on her waist was causing havoc inside her body. An entire quiverful of tiny, fiery darts of sensual pleasure seemed to have been discharged into her body, unleashing a thousand pinpoints of sensory reaction—rivulets of female need that were speedily flowing into one another to form a dangerously fast-flowing flood of physical desire.

Inside her head that desire was painting dangerous images. As though by magic what she was wearing had been removed and she was reclothed in the satin underwear she had been admiring before Ilios had arrived. At the same time, equally magically, Ilios’s hand was stroking from her hip up to her breast, whilst his lips caressed the equally eager curve where her shoulder met her neck and his free hand slid into the silk-satin to cup the rounded flesh of her bottom.

Frantically Lizzie wrenched her attention away from what was going on inside her head. Ilios was a very attractive man, and it had been a very long time since she had … Well, it had been a very long time. But that did not give her imagination carte blanche to indulge itself with those kind of totally impossible scenarios—especially in view of what he had said to her about what he did and didn’t want from their relationship.