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‘But we do have a choice,’ Lysander Metaxis pronounced at the precise moment that he put his foot through a rotten floorboard. With a sibilant Greek curse, he pulled free of the splintering wood and stepped back.
‘I did warn you. I do wish you’d be more careful!’ Opheliagroaned. ‘There are loads of holes on the floor above but until now I’ve been able to keep this floor pretty much intact.’
Recognising criticism rather than concern and apology in those comments, Lysander was torn between anger and astonishment. ‘I could’ve been hurt.’
‘I doubt that you’re that fragile, but below this room is an irreplaceable ceiling that is almost five hundred years old,’ Ophelia told him waspishly.
She showed him a selection of panelled bedrooms and the shabby main reception rooms on the ground floor. Lysander disliked everything he saw: the disrepair and dinginess, the ponderous Victorian furniture and the faded tatters of long-departed grandeur. When she suggested taking him outdoors to show him the grounds, he demurred and directed her back into the drawing room instead.
‘We have to discuss the will.’ Lysander had one goal: to win her immediate agreement to meet the terms and get back to London without any further expenditure of his valuable time and energy. ‘I want this house and, although it is not my way to surrender to virtual blackmail, I’m prepared to marry you to get it.’
Ophelia was stunned by that admission and stared back at him with wide eyes. It had not once occurred to her that a male as wealthy and influential as Lysander Metaxis would be prepared to marry a stranger to get his hands on a property. After all, a simple wait of five years would allow him to acquire it by purchase. ‘You can’t possibly want Madrigal Court that much … you can’t be serious!’
‘Of course I am serious,’ Lysander responded drily.
Ophelia shook her head in bewilderment. The movement was too much for her loose topknot and as her hair began to fall down round her in earnest she yanked out the clip andfinger-combed it impatiently back from her smooth brow. ‘But that doesn’t make sense at all.’
Lysander watched with male sensual intensity as the heavy gold strands of her hair tumbled down and slid in silky loops across her narrow shoulders. ‘It makes sense to me.’
Conscious of his appraisal but carefully avoiding it, Ophelia walked over to the window and spun restively round again. Nothing he had so far said made sense to her. ‘But you could wait for Cedric to sell it to you, or maybe work out some compromise with the lawyers. If you’re rich aren’t there always ways and means? Why are you in such a hurry? I know that your mother’s family owned this place for centuries but you’ve shown no real interest in the history of the house. Does the family connection really mean that much to you?’
With hauteur, Lysander elevated a sleek ebony brow. ‘I have my reasons and they are private.’
Royally snubbed, Ophelia reddened. ‘Yes, but to suggest that we marry as if it means nothing—’
‘Essentially, it would mean nothing. All that would be required of us would be a quiet civil ceremony,’ Lysander interposed. ‘It’s the easiest and most practical way for me to obtain Madrigal Court. The building is already in poor condition. Do you think it can wait five years for attention? I would immediately engage a team of architects and craftsmen to restore it.’
Ophelia was struggling to suppress a growing sense of indignation that he could dare to suggest that she marry him so that he could get his hands on the house sooner. Didn’t he have any sensitivity at all? Ophelia had been raised with the sad story of how her mother had felt on the day that Aristide Metaxis stood her up at the altar. When Cathy had had a drinkor two, she had talked endlessly about her broken heart. Ophelia’s mother might have married another man but Aristide Metaxis had been the love of her life. Her parent’s inability to overcome her feelings for Aristide and resist the temptation he offered had ultimately destroyed her and every relationship that had followed.
‘There’s no point talking about this because I’m not prepared to consider any form of marriage, civil or otherwise,’ Ophelia declared in a flat tone of finality.
Lysander looked steadily back at her, lush black lashes semi-screening cool metallic eyes of enquiry. ‘Why not?’
‘It would be inappropriate.’ Ophelia was determined to retain her dignity rather than descend into the kind of emotionalism that she knew would only rouse his contempt. Shame wasn’t fashionable. No doubt he saw no reason why he should feel the slightest bit guilty about his father’s mistreatment of her mother. ‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘I’m sure you could.’ His dark imperious features had a sardonic cast. ‘The financial rewards for doing as I ask will be handsome.’
All Ophelia’s natural colour drained from her complexion. The wad of banknotes in her back pocket felt as if it were burning into her flesh. ‘I suppose it’s my own fault that I’m getting that offer.’ She hauled out the cash he had given her and settled it down with a decisive slap on the table beside her. ‘Take your money back, keep it. If I hadn’t been trying to outface you earlier I wouldn’t have accepted it. I may be broke but I still know the difference between right and wrong.’
Lysander gave her a wolfish smile of dark amusement. ‘You sound like a little girl.’
Crystalline blue eyes flaring, Ophelia lifted her chin. ‘Look, it may sound stupid and simplistic to you but that’show I try to live my life. All right, I don’t always live up to my own ideals, but when I make a mistake I’m not ashamed to admit it!’
‘Ideals are wonderful when you can afford them.’ Striking bronze eyes mocked her stance in a way that only whipped her antagonism higher. ‘But if I walk away, you won’t get a share of the house and you’ll be in debt. Agree to my conditions and money won’t be a problem for you ever again. I am generous towards those who please me.’
Her change of tune from greed to idealism left Lysander cold. He was convinced that her show of reluctance was squarely aimed at driving his price for her compliance higher. After all, she had taken the money for the water charges without hesitation: she had wanted the money and had seen no reason why she should not accept it. That had told Lysander all he needed to know.
His refusal to accept a negative response sent temper roaring up inside Ophelia like a geyser. ‘Unfortunately for you, I haven’t got the smallest desire to please you!’
His veiled gaze gleaming, Lysander vented a husky laugh of disagreement. ‘I think we both know that I could persuade you otherwise with very little effort.’
Although Ophelia was furious with him and mortified that he had noticed her reaction to him, that low-pitched sonorous laugh still made her backbone tingle. Even his insolence had a curious sexual power, but it also stung her ferocious pride like acid and intensified her anger. ‘No, you couldn’t, and the number one reason why not is that I don’t like what you are! In any case marriage is not something I could ever take lightly or use for my own ends—’
‘Whether you like what I am or not should have no bearing on your decision,’ Lysander countered very drily. ‘Use yourintelligence. At its most basic the marriage would be a convenient business arrangement of mutual benefit. You need money and I want this house sooner rather than later.’
‘But I don’t want to play my grandmother’s games, or yours, and I genuinely don’t want your money!’ Ophelia retorted with an angry distaste that she couldn’t hide. ‘You can’t bribe me into doing what you want. All right, so I’ll spend a long time paying off those bills, but at the end of it I’ll still be able to hold my head high because, unlike you, I have principles.’
Lysander had not moved a muscle. His lean bronzed features were unrevealing but the temperature in the atmosphere was steadily dropping to freezing point. ‘I don’t accept insults.’
‘I’m not insulting you. I’m only pointing out that you appear to have no scruples,’ Ophelia argued vehemently. ‘What you want will always come first with you. Then you’re a Metaxis, so I shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘I am proud of that heritage. That appears to offend you.’ Granite-hard bronze eyes challenged her.
The chill in the air and the stillness of his stance were intimidating. Her heart gave a heavy thud inside her. He was tough and immovable, not at all like his lightweight charmer of a father. That stray thought roused other dim and unsettling memories and stiffened Ophelia’s backbone. Why should she allow herself to be manipulated by her grandmother’s will, or by Lysander Metaxis? She had been a loyal granddaughter but now it was time to reclaim her life and liberty.
‘We’ve got nothing more to say to each other,’ she pronounced, walking to the door and pulling it open in an invitation for him to leave.
‘I don’t like being messed around,’ Lysander murmured with chilling bite.
‘You just don’t like the word no,’ Ophelia contradicted, for she was pretty much convinced that he didn’t hear that word half as much as he needed to hear it.
‘You are also prejudiced against my family.’
His perception made Ophelia turn pink with chagrin. ‘A
little … sorry, I can’t help it.’
‘How can you allow something that occurred thirty years ago to influence us in the present? What took place then is not our concern.’
Furious that she had allowed him an opening to talk down to her as though he alone were the sane voice of reason, Ophelia sealed her lips on a fiery flood of disagreement. Perhaps he preferred to pretend that his father had had no further contact with her mother after he had jilted her. Or perhaps he genuinely did not know that her mother had been his father’s occasional mistress for more years than Ophelia cared to recall. Whatever, Ophelia had no desire to discuss that shameful reality.
Lysander lifted a lean brown hand and tucked a business card into the breast pocket of her shirt with a sardonic cool that made her tummy muscles clench. ‘My private number. But I warn you now—you’ve wasted my time and I won’t offer you as good a deal.’
‘I’m not going to phone you!’ Ophelia launched up at him. ‘Why can’t you take no for an answer?’
Stunning bronzed eyes glittering, Lysander stared down at her with brooding mesmeric force. ‘You’ll come to me,’ he forecast soft and low.
Ophelia had stopped breathing. Her entire skin surface felt cold and then hot. As he strode down the passageway she folded her arms in a jerky motion. No way, she wanted to scream in his wake, no way will I ever come to you! But thedisturbing unfamiliarity of her suppressed rage shook her so much that she didn’t trust herself to make any response. In the aftermath, listening to the helicopter take off noisily, she discovered that she was so tense that her muscles were literally hurting her. She had never been so angry, hadn’t even known that she could get that angry. Until Lysander Metaxis came along she had always considered herself to be a quite laid-back and tolerant sort of a person.
An hour later, she drove down the long drive to the gatehouse that Pamela rented from the Metaxis estate. Her friend was in the kitchen cooking up a storm as befitted a private caterer, much in demand for her dinner-party prowess. Her nerves still jangling like piano wires that had been brutally yanked, Ophelia told the redhead what had happened.
Pamela hung on Ophelia’s every word, while her brown eyes grew rounder and rounder with amazement. ‘My word, why would a billionaire be that desperate to get his hands on Madrigal Court?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
‘Maybe he’s had a geological survey done and there’s a vein of gold or oil or something under the grounds. Well, why not?’ Pamela demanded when Ophelia shot her a look of disbelief. ‘I mean, I saw a couple of guys doing some sort of a survey in the field next door to the walled garden last month and I think they went in—’
‘You saw surveyors in the walled garden and you didn’t tell me?’ Ophelia gasped in horror.
‘I assumed they were working for the Metaxis estate and were probably just being nosy—I didn’t think you needed the aggravation just then,’ her friend protested.
‘Sorry.’ Ophelia sighed. ‘I’m all strung up.’
‘Of course, you’re absolutely right about standing up foryour principles,’ Pamela remarked gingerly. ‘A shame, though, because you could have settled the bills from your share of the house sale. The money would have been so useful. You could have hired a private investigator to track down your sister. I bet there’d have been enough to get your business up and running in the walled garden as well.’
Halfway through her friend’s speech, Ophelia had begun deflating like a pricked balloon. Molly! Why on earth hadn’t it occurred to her that her sister was also entitled to a share of Madrigal Court? That any decision she made now would impact on her sister’s prospects as well? Sadly, Gladys Stewart had always had a different attitude to Molly, who had been born illegitimate.
When Ophelia had been sixteen years old, her mother had died in a train crash and Gladys had flown up to the girls’ home in Scotland to take charge. Two days after the older woman had brought her granddaughters home to Madrigal Court, Ophelia had returned from her new school to discover that her little sister and her belongings were gone. Ophelia had been distraught but her grandmother had been unsympathetic.
‘Molly’s father came to collect her. He’ll be looking after her from now on,’ Gladys declared. ‘That’s how it should be.’
Stunned by that announcement, Ophelia gasped. ‘But how did her father find her here? I don’t even know who Molly’s father is! Mum would never talk about him—’
‘Molly doesn’t belong here with us and you’ll have to accept that. She’s not your responsibility any more, she’s her father’s.’
Ophelia would never forget the pain of that sudden cruel separation from the little girl she had adored from birth. At first she had assumed that she would be able to stay in touch with Molly through letters and visits. When there had beenno contact her grandmother had simply shrugged and insisted that she had no further information to offer. Ophelia, however, had long been convinced that there was more to the story than she was being told.
But now Ophelia had to deal with the reality that if she turned her back on her inheritance, Molly would lose out as well. When she finally found her sister, how would Molly feel about that decision? Molly was only seventeen years old. Would Molly forgive Ophelia for putting family pride and principles ahead of the chance of a substantial legacy?
‘Possibly I’ve been a little hasty in turning down Lysander’s offer,’ Ophelia muttered heavily. ‘But that’s his fault—he made me so angry I couldn’t think straight!’
Pride made Ophelia baulk at an immediate climb-down, which she felt would make her seem like the sort of woman who couldn’t make up her mind and keep it for five minutes. The prospect of agreeing to a marriage of convenience with a guy she totally loathed, hated and despised also disturbed her sleep that night. It was frustrating to discover, then, that the phone number he had given her only led to a super-protective aide and not, as she had naively assumed, to the man himself. She learned that Lysander was abroad and was offered an appointment in London the following week.
Left to stew in her own juice, Ophelia became increasingly curious about the contents of the letter her grandmother had set aside for delivery on her wedding day. That mysterious letter seemed as peculiar a piece of work as the will for the unsentimental older woman. What could possibly be in it? Ophelia tried to recall her late grandparent’s cryptic remarks about the house and her sister.
Gladys had brought Lysander Metaxis to Madrigal Court by naming him in her will, knowing how keen he was toregain the house. Her grandmother had also declared that Madrigal Court could make Ophelia’s every hope come true. Could that mean that if Ophelia did as she was told in the will and married Lysander Metaxis, might some information about Molly’s whereabouts be delivered in that letter as a reward? All of a sudden, Ophelia had a much stronger motivation for agreeing to the marriage.
What would it cost her? A meaningless link with a man she despised which would soon be severed again. She refused to think of it in terms of actual marriage, for it would not be a marriage in any real sense. Moreover, she had no doubt that Lysander would continue to exercise his evidently overactive libido below the roof of Madrigal Court. She grimaced at the prospect of a parade of predatory beauties wandering about her home at all hours of the day and night. They would no doubt all cling brainlessly to Lysander like burrs and behave in sexually provocative ways that embarrassed her. She winced in distaste and reminded herself that her bedroom was in the rear wing and she could doubtless stay outdoors or out of sight most of the time that he was around.
That same day Ophelia’s gloomy ruminations were interrupted by an unexpected phone call from the solicitor, Donald Morton, who asked her to come and see him at his office. There he explained that he had received a visit from one of Lysander Metaxis’s lawyers, along with a formal request for her to cease her use of the walled garden.
Ophelia studied the older man in utter bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand …’
‘It has been brought to my attention that twelve years ago your grandfather sold the walled garden and the three fields beside it to a local farmer. Your grandmother appears not to have appreciated that the walled garden was included in the sale.’
Twelve years earlier, Ophelia hadn’t even been living at Madrigal Court because her mother had still been alive. ‘Of course, I knew that those fields were sold off ages ago … but the walled garden can’t have been sold with them.’
‘I didn’t handle the sale, but I have copies of the documents here and I can assure you that it was part of the parcel.’ The solicitor explained that the farmer’s son had intended to open a market-gardening business, but when he had died unexpectedly the walled garden had been left undisturbed because his father had had no use for it.
Ophelia listened in mounting consternation. The Metaxis estate had bought out the farmer four years earlier and had somehow overlooked the fact that the walled garden formed part of the acquisition.
She honestly felt as though she had had a giant rock dropped on her from on high. ‘You’re telling me that I’ve been trespassing on someone else’s land for almost five years? That Lysander Metaxis legally owns my garden?’
‘And anything you have built within those walls.’
Pale as milk, Ophelia nodded like a marionette, while the solicitor expressed his sympathy for her position while advising her that there was nothing whatsoever she could do about it.
In a daze Ophelia drove straight to the walled garden, or at least she tried. The Metaxis estate installed swanky green farm gates at all the entrances onto their land. Such a gate was already in the process of being erected at the foot of the lane that led up to the walled garden. She drove past the workmen and leapt out of her vehicle outside the mellow brick walls that surrounded the nursery. She was shocked to see that the tall wrought-iron gates were now padlocked shut, barring her from the garden that was the living result of years of her dreams and her work.
As she boiled with rage Ophelia thought darkly, If I marry Lysander Metaxis, I will surely kill him for doing to this to me! Because not for a moment did she doubt the identity of the culprit responsible for dividing her from her beloved plants …
CHAPTER THREE
THE same day that Ophelia refused to entertain his marriage proposition, Lysander began assembling a line-up of professionals to take charge of the speedy restoration of Madrigal Court.
He had no doubt that, given sufficient incentive and reward, Ophelia would cave in to his demands. Having her advised that she was trespassing on his property in utilising the walled garden was in the nature of a gentle warning shot across her bow. He wanted her to appreciate that, without his support, life could get very difficult and he was fully convinced that once he started picking up her bills she would never dirty her hands in a garden again.
Not a man to stand still or waste time, he instructed his legal team to draw up a pre-nuptial agreement and investigate ways and means of holding the ultimate in discreet weddings. When he was informed that Ophelia had requested an appointment with him, it was not a surprise. But, by then, he was in Athens and he had rather more pressing priorities to deal with.
Even in Greece, however, Lysander devoted every spare moment to business. Work and lots of it had always been his solution to problems or worries. The instant a negative thoughthit him or, indeed, anything threatened to demand an emotional response, Lysander buried himself in even more work and exhausted his staff. When his employees in London had begun falling asleep on him a month earlier, he had drafted in more from Greece and suggested they work shifts to keep up with him. The day he returned to London, he pulled off a mega-million-pound deal that made headlines in all the financial pages of the newspapers, but he chose to party alone and had a diamond necklace delivered to Anichka as a goodbye gift.
The rural life had never been to his taste, but the prospect of weekends in the country with Ophelia was steadily beginning to acquire an aura of darkly erotic, forbidden appeal. Although his intelligence continually pointed out that Ophelia wasn’t his type—she was too argumentative, too little and too scruffy—he had got bored with Anichka in only two weeks and suspected that his turnover rate in the bedroom was becoming excessive. A change in feminine style and tempo would revitalise him, Lysander reasoned with satisfaction. He pictured Ophelia transformed into a radiant beauty, polished to perfection and spread across a four-poster bed wearing only a welcoming smile, and his libido reacted like a Formula One car at the starting line.
When he remembered the decrepit bedstead with the tatty drapes he had seen at Madrigal Court, the fantasy almost crashed. He contacted his household team, who took care of all his properties, and voiced his first ever personal request with regard to furniture. He ordered a four-poster bed complete with hangings. It would make a terrific wedding present.
Ophelia hurried into the lift in the Metaxis building.
Getting to London in time for her appointment had necessitated a pre-dawn departure on the train. She was dressed inher best—a black wool jacket and a neat grey knee-length skirt—a stalwart outfit that she dutifully dragged out for church, funerals and all such serious occasions. She was thinking that she had never been very good at eating humble pie and she knew that Lysander Metaxis would make a three-course meal out of her capitulation. Unhappily her surrender was eating her alive from inside out, because he had dared to do the unthinkable—he had locked her out of her garden! All-out war would have felt much more natural to her.
Only Ophelia knew what her garden meant to her because she had laboured to create it from scratch. Each plant, shrub and tree had been watched over and lovingly nurtured by her. Gladys Stewart had been a cold guardian for a warm-hearted teenage girl grieving over her mother’s death and the loss of her sister. Ophelia had found solace working outdoors and watching the change of the seasons, while she’d reached the conclusion that plants could be more reliable and rewarding than people.
Ophelia felt like a fish out of water in the Metaxis building, which buzzed with rushing staff and big-business energy. The huge office block was full of metal surfaces, towering pillars and glass in unexpected places. The amount of attention she got at the mere mention of Lysander’s name amazed her. She was delivered straight into his large and imposing office like a parcel. He was talking on the phone in French, his bold profile silhouetted against the light. In a charcoal-grey pinstripe suit with the faultless cut of superb tailoring, he looked staggeringly handsome. The instant that thought assailed her she wanted to punish herself for having it.
Lysander tossed down the phone and focused on Ophelia with thickly lashed metallic-bronze eyes that went from an appreciative glow to the steady coolness of ice-water. Thebeauty of her shining golden hair, clear light blue gaze and glowing complexion was exceptional. But the dull, dated outfit she wore was a horror and he was annoyed that she had not made more effort on the grooming front.
‘Your intransigence has cost this venture a week,’ he drawled grimly, his lean, strong face hard.
Still at the far end of the large office, Ophelia strove to be level-headed and practise restraint in the face of that immediate rebuke. ‘It wasn’t intransigence … I needed time to think your proposition over.’
‘Right,’ Lysander retaliated with the kind of stinging disbelief that could only infuriate.
Colour winging an arc across her cheekbones, Ophelia sucked in a steadying gulp of sustaining oxygen. Unfortunately it only made her feel angrier than ever, particularly when he did not immediately offer her a seat. Striving for an air of composure, she approached some sofas that were arranged in a stylish semicircle by the tall windows and sat down without invitation. ‘I’ve decided that I’m willing to go through with the marriage plan,’ she announced with dignity.
‘So we are now in agreement?’
Her blue eyes glinted with the hidden fire of opals. ‘As much in agreement as we’re ever likely to be.’
‘If you’re not prepared to put your whole heart in this venture I won’t go through with it.’
Surprise and dismay attacked Ophelia at that unexpected response.
‘I have to be able to trust you,’ Lysander pointed out. ‘This won’t work otherwise.’
Although Ophelia had promised herself that she would not mention the garden until the very end of the interview, that statement broke through her self-control. ‘Considering thatyou’ve locked me out of my garden, trust would be quite a challenge!’
Level bronze eyes met her angry ones.
A rebellious little frisson of sexual awareness knotted low in her pelvis. Her breasts stirred, the tender pink tips tightening inside a bra that now felt uncomfortably tight. Her heart was beating very fast. She couldn’t credit how he could have that effect on her even when she was annoyed with him! Her colour heightened while she blamed her lack of experience with men on her embarrassing level of susceptibility.
