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‘Whatever point it is you are attempting to make it is irrelevant to me.’
She sucked in an indignant breath but he continued. ‘I have not been pining for you. But I am an opportunist.’ His smile was almost cruel—at least it looked it to Marnie. ‘Your father’s situation presented me with an opportunity I felt I couldn’t resist.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ she snapped, trying desperately to think of a way out. A way to make him realise how foolhardy this was!
‘You will spend every day of our marriage faced with the reality of just how wrong you were.’
Speechless, she fidgeted with her ring, her mind unable to grasp exactly what was going on.
Seemingly he took her silence as a form of agreement. ‘A licence can be arranged within fifteen days. I have engaged a wedding planner to oversee the details. Her card is on my desk; take it when you leave.’
She shook her head as the words he was saying tumbled over her. She needed to process what was going on. ‘Wait a second. It’s too sudden. Too soon.’
He arched a single thick brow. ‘Any delay will make it impossible for me to help your father in time.’
‘You’re saying we have to actually be married before you’ll help him?’
His lip twisted in a smile of cynical derision. ‘It would hardly make sense to prop him up before the pleasure of having you... As my wife.’
To Marnie, his slight pause implied that he meant something else altogether. That he wanted to sleep with her before money changed hands. It made her feel instantly dirty, and she shifted away from the window, crossing her arms in an attempt to stem the pain that was perforating her heart.
‘Do you think I’d renege on our deal?’ she asked, realising only after posing the question that it showed her acquiescence when she hadn’t actually intended to agree...yet.
‘I think you will do whatever pleases you—as you always have done.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Forgive me—what is the expression? Having been bitten, I am...?’
‘Once bitten, twice shy.’ She sucked in an unsteady breath, waiting for relief to calm her lungs. But still they burned painfully. She tried to salvage her pride. ‘If I agree to do this, I will go through with it.’
‘I’m not sure I can put much stock in your assurances,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I credit you and your father for my scepticism. Were it not for you, perhaps I would have continued to take promises at face value. Now I live and die by contracts.’
‘That’s fine in business. I’m sure it’s wise, in fact. But marriage is different, surely.’
‘A real marriage,’ he conceded, with a tight nod.
‘You’re saying you don’t want ours to be a real marriage?’
His laugh sent a shiver down her spine. ‘Oh, in the most important ways it will be.’
‘Meaning...?’ she challenged—though how could she not understand his intention?
‘Meaning, Marnie, that I have no interest in paying a hundred million pounds and tying myself to a woman purely for revenge.’
His smile curled her toes.
‘There will be other benefits to our marriage.’
Her heart slammed hard in her chest. ‘I...’ She clamped her mouth shut.
What had she been about to say? That she was still a virgin? That after being so madly in love with him and letting him go she’d found she couldn’t feel that same desire for another man? Especially not the men her parents approved of her dating.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you just because you appear out of the blue...’
‘That is not why you’ll sleep with me,’ he said.
He spoke with a confidence that infuriated her. But he was right! Despite the passage of time, and the insufferable situation she found herself in, she couldn’t deny that the same need was rioting through her now, just as it had in their past.
‘This is a deal-breaker,’ he said with a shrug. ‘These are my terms. Accept them or don’t.’
‘Wait.’ She shook her head and lifted a hand to make him pause for a moment. But she was drowning. Possibilities, questions, wants, needs, doubts were churning around inside her—it was background noise but it was going to suck her under. ‘There’s so much more to discuss.’
‘Such as?’ he prompted, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
She tried not to notice the way the fabric strained to reveal his impressive pectoral definition.
‘Well, such as...’ She darted her tongue out and licked her lower lip. ‘Say I went along with this absolutely crazy idea—and I’m not saying I will, because clearly it’s madness—where would you see us living?’
‘That is also non-negotiable. Greece.’
‘Greece?’ She was in free fall again. ‘Greece, as in... You mean Greece?’
He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes mocking her. ‘Athens. My home.’
‘But I’ve always lived here. I can’t move.’
Their eyes locked; it was a battle of wills and yet when he spoke it was with an easy nonchalance she admired.
‘I will be spending a considerable fortune to save your father’s reputation. You do not think it’s fair that you should make some concessions?’
‘Marrying you is not a c-concession,’ she stammered in disbelief. ‘It’s so much more than that. And the same can be said of moving to a different country.’
‘You are so sheltered,’ he murmured. ‘What would you suggest? That we live in London? Within arm’s reach of your father? A man I will always despise? No.’
‘How can I marry you knowing you feel that way about him?’
His expression was rock-hard. ‘You will find a way.’ He shrugged. ‘While it might be difficult for you, it is the only way to spare him—and your mother—from a considerable fall from grace.’
‘So this is how it would be? You’d dictate terms and I’d be expected to fall in with them?’
The air was thick between them. He studied her for a long moment and she wondered if he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, though, he sighed.
‘I have no intention of being unreasonable. When you make a fair request I will hear you out. But this is not one of those instances. I live in Greece. My business is primarily controlled from Athens. You still live with your parents, who hate me as much as I do them. You have no business to speak of. It is obvious that we should move.’
‘Just like that?’ she murmured, shaking her head at his high-handed dictatorial manner even when a small part of her brain could see that he was raising a decent rationale for the suggestion.
‘These are my terms,’ he said again.
‘You’re unbelievable,’ she replied softly, worrying at her fingers.
She spun her ring some more, trying to think of a way to appease him that didn’t involve anything so drastic as this ridiculous marriage. But there was nothing. He had the money. And there was no way he’d help unless she made it worth his while.
‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘So?’
‘I wouldn’t want a big wedding.’ She was thinking aloud, really, though to her ears it sounded as though she was going along with his proposal. ‘If I had my way it would just be us. No fanfare. No fuss.’
‘Hmm...’ he murmured with a shake of his head. ‘And no one need ever know? No. I want the world to see that you are my wife. You—a woman who once felt I was far beneath her. A woman who declared she’d never marry someone like me. I want your father to have to stand beside us, smiling as though I am all his dreams come true, when we three will know that I am the last man on earth he wants his daughter to marry.’
The way he’d been treated by her and her parents was a nauseating truth. She wished—not for the first time—that she’d been able to stand up to them. That she’d been wise enough to fight for the relationship that had mattered so much to her.
‘Nikos...’ She furrowed her brows, searching for words. ‘You have to understand why I...why I couldn’t be with you. You know how my parents were after Libby...after...’
He studied her face, torn between listening and shutting down this hollow explanation.
‘I know I never explained it properly at the time. The way I was always in her shadow. The certainty that I was a poor comparison to her. The absolute blinding fact that they wished again and again that I could be more like her.’ She swallowed, an image of her sister clouding her eyes and making her heart ring with nostalgic affection. ‘They wanted me to marry someone like Anderson—her fiancé. And I wanted their approval so badly I would have done anything they asked.’
He compressed his lips. ‘Yes. I presumed as much at the time.’
He brought his face closer to hers, so she could feel the waves of his resentment.
‘You walked away from me and what we were to each other as though I was nothing to you. You can blame your sister, or you can blame your parents, but the only one who made the decision was you.’
‘I’m trying to explain why...’
‘And I’m telling you that it does not matter to me.’ His eyes flared. ‘You were wrong.’
She had been. In the six years since she’d watched Nikos leave for the last time, his shoulders set, his head held high, she’d never met anyone who excited in her even a tenth of the emotions he had. He alone had been her true love. And she’d burned him in a way that he’d apparently never forgive.
He brought the conversation back to the wedding. ‘The guest list will be extensive and the press coverage—’
‘Nikos!’ Marnie interrupted, her voice strained.
Something in the pale set of her features communicated her distress and he was quiet, watchful.
‘Please.’ Her throat worked overtime as she tried to relieve her aching mouth. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘You do agree to marry me?’
She nodded. ‘But not like that. I... You know how I feel about the media. And, more to the point, how they feel about me.’ She flashed a look at him from beneath thick dark lashes. ‘I’ll marry you. I will. But without all the fuss. Please.’
It was tempting to push her out of her comfort zone. To say that it was a big wedding or none at all. She was staring at him with a look of icy aloofness that had no doubt helped earn her the nickname of Lady Heiress. That look of untouchable elegance bordering on disdain that he understood was her tightly held shield in moments of wrenching panic. That same look he was desperate to dislodge as soon as possible, shaking her into showing her real feelings.
‘You don’t like the press any more than I do,’ she said with measured persistence. ‘If you insist on a big wedding we’ll both know it’s simply to be spiteful to me. And you’re not that petty—are you, Nikos?’
He felt his resolve slipping and a grudging admiration for her reasoned argument spread through him. Still, he drawled, ‘I’m blackmailing you into my bed and you don’t think I’m petty?’
Heat flooded her system, warring with the ice that had coated her heart. ‘No, I don’t. I think you want me to marry you. What does it matter how we do it?’
She had an excellent point. Besides Marnie there was only one other person he really cared about having at the wedding.
‘Fine,’ he said, with a nonchalant lift of his shoulders. His eyes glittered with determination. ‘So long as your father is there the rest does not greatly matter.’
* * *
‘It’s enormous,’ she intoned flatly, rubbing her fingertip over the flattened edges of paper.
Nikos’s stare was loaded with emotion. ‘It needs to be.’ His accent seemed thicker, spicier than it had been the night before. Her gaze flicked to his face, then skidded away again immediately. His face was all angles and planes, unforgiving and unrelenting.
Harsh.
She had never comprehended the full extent of that hardness before. Not in the past, anyway. When she’d loved him as much as the ocean loved the shore. She had felt, then, just like that. As if she would spend the rest of her life rolling inexorably towards him, needing to touch him, to wash over him, to feel him beneath her and around her. She had believed them to be as organically dependent as those two bodies—sea and sand. That without him she would have nowhere to go.
Foolishly, she had thought he felt the same.
But Nikos had moved on quickly, despite his protestations of love, and his bed had been such a hot spot it might as well have had its own listing on TripAdvisor.
‘Mind if I have my lawyer check this out?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sígoura. Certainly. But that may cause a delay to proceedings.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you might not be able to help Dad in time?’
He sat back in his chair, his body taut, his face unreadable. ‘I will not apply for the marriage licence until you have signed the pre-nup.’
A frown formed a little line between her eyes. ‘Why not?’
His laugh was a sharp sound in the busy café. A woman at the table beside them angled her head curiously before going back to her book.
Marnie lowered her voice, not wanting to risk being overheard. She was obliged to lean a little closer. ‘Does it matter if I don’t sign it in the next week or two? So long as you have it before the wedding...?’
‘The minute I apply for our certificate there’s a high probability the press will pick up on it. Do you want the world to know we were hastily engaged and that the wedding was then cancelled?’
Her cheeks flamed. ‘As if the journalists of the world have nothing better to do than search the registry for your name, waiting with bated breath until such time as you see fit to hang up your well-worn bachelor belt,’ she muttered.
He arched a single brow, his expression making her feel instantly ridiculous. ‘If you believe our wedding won’t excite media interest then you’re more naive than I recall.’
Yes, she definitely felt childish now. She dragged her lower lip between her teeth, then caught the betraying gesture and mentally shook herself. She was Lady Marnie Kenington, and it was not for Nikos to berate and humiliate her.
‘Each of us on our own would create a stir of interest. Marrying one another guarantees press interest.’
‘I know.’ She nodded. There was no point, after all, in arguing the toss. He was absolutely right. ‘But we agreed on a quiet wedding.’
‘And I will do my best to arrange this,’ he promised.
‘Okay.’ She nodded again quickly.
His first instinct was to feel impressed by her ability to be reasonable in the face of an argument. But he quickly realised that she wasn’t reasonable so much as changeable. That she was deferring to him at the first sign of pressure. Was that how it had been with her parents?
His mouth was a grim line in his face. ‘There are four pages you need to sign.’
She expelled a heavy breath and tapped the pen against the side of the table.
