Tycoon's Ring of Convenience

by Julia James

  I have to talk to him—stop him being like this. Try to make it like it was originally between us—civil, friendly...

  The words mocked her. Agitation and worse, much worse, churned inside her.

  Joining him in the drawing room, changed into the gown he wanted her to wear, steeling herself, she felt them mock her again. He was wearing evening dress, tall and dark and devastating, and as her eyes lit on him a ravening hunger went through her, blood leaping in her veins. She almost ran towards him, to throw herself into his arms, to hold him tight.

  Memories exploded in her head of herself in his arms, he in hers...

  She thrust them from her.

  I cannot let myself desire him.

  Desperately she schooled herself to quench that perilous leaping of her blood, the flood of memories in her head. Too dangerous.

  He turned his head at her entry, and for just a second she thought she saw the briefest flaring of his eyes as they alighted on her. Then the light was extinguished. He let his gaze rest on her.

  ‘Very suitable,’ he said.

  His voice was flat, his face closed. She made herself walk towards him, his chill gaze still upon her, feeling the swish of her silken gown around her legs, the low coil of the chignon at her nape, the cool of her pearl necklace around her throat. On the little finger of her left hand her signet ring glinted in the lamp light—the St Clair family crest outlined. A perpetual reminder of why she had become his wife—to keep the house that went with this armorial crest.

  She fancied she saw Nikos’s shuttered gaze flicker to it, then away.

  ‘Nikos...’ She made herself speak, lifting her chin to give her courage—courage she did not feel, feeling only a hollow space inside her. ‘Nikos, we have to talk.’

  He cast her a crushing look. ‘Do we? Have you yet more to tell me, Diana?’

  There was a harshness in his voice she had never heard before. An indifference. Absently he busied himself adjusting his cufflinks, not looking at her.

  She swallowed again, her throat tight. ‘Look, Nikos, our marriage was a mistake. A misunderstanding. I’m sorry—so very sorry—that I got it so wrong in understanding what you...’ She swallowed again. ‘What you expected of it.’

  She couldn’t look him in the eyes. It was impossible. He wasn’t saying anything, so she went on. Making herself continue. Say the next thing she had to say.

  ‘I’ve stopped the work on Greymont.’

  She said it in a rush, her eyes flying to him, but he gave no indication that he had heard, only went on inspecting his cuff. If she’d thought she saw a nerve work in his taut cheek she must have been mistaken.

  She took another breath.

  ‘I’ve made a tally of all that has been done so far, and anything I’m contracted for. But everything else has been halted. As for what has already been done—the total sum it amounts to...’ She faltered, then made herself go on. ‘I will do my best to repay you. It will take time—a lot of time, because if I had been able to raise the capital myself I would have done so. And if I realise all my capital, sell my stocks and shares, I’ll lose the income from them that I need for maintenance. That’s always been the problem—trying to find money both for the restoration and simply keeping Greymont going. The maintenance costs are high—from local taxes to utilities, to just keeping everything ticking over. The place has to be heated in winter or damp gets in, and rot. And I can’t throw the Hudsons out on to the street...’

  She was rambling, trying to make him understand. He simply went on not looking at her.

  ‘But I will repay you, Nikos. However long it takes me.’

  He looked at her then. Finally spoke. ‘Yes, you will repay me, Diana, of that I am certain.’

  She paled. There was something in his voice that felt like a blow. Her lips were dry, but she made herself speak. Tried to reach him.

  ‘Nikos, I’m sorry! I’m sorry this has gone so wrong. I blame myself—I was naïve, stupid. I really thought you wanted a marriage in name only—’

  ‘What I want, Diana—’ his voice cut across hers like a guillotine ‘—is for you to honour your agreement with me. To make your repayment in the only way you can. The only way I want you to.’

  The blood drained from her face and she seemed to sway. He saw it and wanted to laugh. A savage, baiting laugh. Emotions were scything through him, slicing and slicing. She was standing so close. A single step would take him to her. Crush her to him.

  But she was beyond him now. Beyond him for ever.

  His expression changed. Became mocking. Savagely mocking. Mocking himself.

  ‘It’s what you signed up for, Diana. To be—what did you call yourself? Ah, yes. My “society wife”. At my side, graceful and poised, beautiful and elegant—the envy of other men, a trophy on my arm, with your impeccable background, your absolute self-assurance in how to conduct yourself, whether in palaces or in stately homes, or anywhere else I take you. Opening a door for me into your upper-class world. And that’s what you will do, Diana, my chaste and beautiful bride.’

  His face was set, grim now.

  ‘It will be your full-time job. If you’ve halted restoration work on Greymont, so much the better. It will give you all the time you require to do your work here, at my side. Starting...’ he glanced at his watch ‘...right now.’

  He crossed to the door and opened it, pointedly waiting for her to walk through. As she did so she strained away from him, and he saw that she did. Saw that she was as tense as a board, her features taut. He didn’t care. Would not care. Would do nothing at all but steer her to the front door.

  As he opened it he turned to her. ‘I’ll brief you in the car about where we are going, who our hosts are and why they are important to me.’

  His tone was businesslike, crisp. And as remote as a frozen planet.

  She could not look at him. Could only feel a stone forming in her throat, like a canker growing inside her. Melding to her flesh. Choking her.

  * * *

  The house in Regent’s Park was lit up like a Christmas tree, but for Diana it was dark and cheerless. She stood, wine glass in hand, her drink untouched and a stiff smile on her face, and forced herself through the ritual of polite chit-chat that the occasion required.

  Nikos was standing beside her. Occasionally his arm would brush against hers, and she had to try not to flinch visibly.

  He was no longer the person she’d thought she had come to know. He’d become a stranger—a stranger who spoke to her with chilly impersonality, looking at her but not meeting her eyes, withdrawing behind an expressionless mask. She’d had no option but to do likewise and play the part he wanted her to play—Mrs Nikos Tramontes, the oh-so-elegant, oh-so-well-bred, oh-so-well-connected society wife, with her impeccable background and her magnificent stately home—the home her husband’s vast wealth had saved for her.

  Exactly the marriage she had wanted.

  Take what you want...take it and pay for it.

  The words mocked her with a cruelty that she had never thought they could possess.

  I brought this on myself! I did it to myself! Fool that I am!

  A memory as blazing as the desert stars sought entry, but she held it at bay with all her remaining strength. To remember... No, no, she could not bear it! Could not bear to think of what she should never have permitted herself to have.

  It had left her here, now, in this hollow shell of a marriage she should never have made, mocking her with bitter gall. Demanding a price from her that was anguish in every way. And she must go on paying, go on enduring...

  * * *

  Over the weeks that followed—weeks that were spent at Nikos’s side, at his direction, on his requirement, she played her part. Performing her social role as Mrs Nikos Tramontes, immaculately dressed whatever the occasion, behaving just as the situation demanded, whether it was luncheon parties at Thames-side mansions, cocktail parties in Mayfair, dinners in top restaurants in London or attending the theatre or opera at Niko
s’s side. Always she was there, always perfect, always smiling. The perfect wife.

  Trapped in a marriage that had become a torment and an agony.

  Nikos was angry. He was angry all the time now. With the same dark, cold anger that had possessed him when he’d sent Diana—his beautiful, enticing wife, his beautiful, untouchable wife—back to what she loved most of all in her privileged world. Her grand house and the gracious lifestyle that went with it, all that was important to her.

  As the weeks passed a kind of pall settled over him. Outwardly he went through the motions of life, but it was only for show. Deadness was filling him. Numbing him. With part of his mind he knew he should let Diana go, that it was achieving nothing but torment keeping her in their impossible marriage, and yet letting her go seemed even worse.

  He could not face it.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this!

  His marriage should have given him everything that he wanted! Everything. Diana, his trophy wife, would grant him the place in the world his mother’s rejection of him had denied him. Diana, so elegantly beautiful, so perfect a wife, would show him off to the world.

  And Diana, his ice maiden, would melt for him and him alone...

  And now she had brutally, callously rejected him—refused him.

  He felt that perpetual anger bite again. Oh, he had his trophy wife, all right, chained to his side, but it was like dust and ashes in his mouth.

  She melted in my arms, burned in my embrace under the desert stars! I thought that it was me that she wanted! How could I not have thought that after what we were to each other those precious days? Those days that seemed to bring us so close together—in body and in even more than that.

  Into his head came the memory of what he’d felt that day he’d rushed back to her from that disastrous meeting with the Minister for Development, and the question that had formed in his head of what Diana might be to him...more than he had ever envisaged. What she might yet be to him...

  He had not answered the question. But now he knew the answer for the savage mockery that it was.

  A silent snarl convulsed in his throat. Fool—arrant fool that he’d been! Fool to think he’d melted her. There was nothing in her to melt—not at the core of her. Nothing at all. At the core of her being was only one thing, the only thing she wanted and the only thing she valued.

  And it was not him.

  All she wanted was to preserve her precious lifestyle, her grand ancestral home—that was all that was important to her!

  It’s all she values.

  Just as it was all his mother had valued.

  Not me.

  And his wife—his glitteringly beautiful, icily cold, frozen-to-the-core trophy wife Diana—was the same. The same as the woman who had thrust him from her chateau, ordering him away. Rejecting him.

  Just as Diana had.

  That was the truth slamming into him day after punishing day. It burned in him like acid in his throat, in his guts. Eating him alive.

  He could feel it now, biting invisibly as it always did, by day and by night, as he stood, an untouched glass of champagne in his hand, at this reception at the headquarters of a French investment bank in Paris by whom he was being wooed as a prospective client.

  The valuable business he might potentially bring guaranteed that he had the full attention of one of the top directors, but as they talked about business opportunities his mind had scarcely been on the conversation.

  He tore his thoughts away. Forced himself to focus on what the director was saying to him.

  With a flicker in his eyeline he became aware of someone else coming up to them. A man older than himself by a few years, obviously French, and... Nikos felt his eyes narrow suddenly. He looked vaguely familiar. Did he know him?

  The man came up to him, politely but pointedly waiting while the bank’s director finished speaking. Then he interjected.

  ‘Monsieur Tramontes, I wonder if I might have a word with you?’

  He must be someone notable, for immediately the bank director made a murmuring conclusion and took his leave.

  Nikos turned his attention to the man who had addressed him, trying to place him. ‘Have we met?’ he asked, with an enquiring look and a slight civil smile.

  The man did not smile in return. ‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head.

  Nikos frowned. ‘Forgive me, you seem familiar...’

  The man nodded, acknowledging the comment. He reached inside his jacket pocket, took out a silver card case and extracted a card. He proffered it to Nikos.

  ‘This may account for it,’ he said.

  Nikos took the card, glanced down at it.

  And froze.

  All thoughts of Diana, his cold, frozen trophy wife, vanished.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DIANA WAS IN the rose garden, cutting blooms. Summer sun slanted through the trees that sheltered Greymont from the world beyond, birdsong twittered overhead, and a woodpigeon pecked hopefully nearby. Warmth enveloped her—and peace.

  But not in her heart. Not in her soul. Only torment filled her.

  How long can I bear this?

  Two years, Nikos had told her, holding her to the damning contract she had made—made when she had not known the price she would have to pay, when she had not realised the danger in which she stood, deluding herself, never dreaming she would not be able to bear to pay, but must. Two endless years to endure this hideous, bitter existence. Chained to a husband she had once thought a gift from heaven, who was now keeping her in this hell.

  Her only respite was the time she could spend here, at Greymont, when Nikos went abroad and did not want her at his side. Then and only then was she allowed to flee back here, take consolation in the refuge it offered her.

  The irony was biting—it was because of Greymont that she was trapped in her tormented mockery of a marriage to Nikos. A marriage she could not escape for it was the price she was paying to keep Greymont, to keep it safe.

  And safe it was. That was her only comfort. Yes, she had halted all the repairs, but the most critical work had already been completed. The structure of the house was secure, and that was her greatest relief. As for the rest of it—well, she could not even think that far...not yet, not now. Perhaps in the distant future, when she had finally freed herself from Nikos, she would be free...

  Free?

  The word mocked her, sliding a knife into her flesh.

  She could never be free of him.

  It was too late.

  With a smothered cry she went on cutting, placing the scented blooms—their petals so perfect, so fragrant, so beautiful—into the willow basket at her feet, then, sufficient gathered, she headed indoors. She would arrange them for the drawing room, a task she always found solace in.

  But as she left the rose garden and glanced down the long driveway curving far away along the rising ground towards the distant lodge gates she paused, frowning. Two cars were heading along the drive. She could just make them out through the lime trees bordering the avenue. Both cars were long and black, with tinted windows.

  Who on earth...? She wasn’t expecting anyone.

  She made her way indoors, through the garden room door, hastily depositing the blooms in water but not pausing to arrange them. Then she washed her hands and went out into the hallway to open the front door, not troubling to call for Hudson to do so.

  She stepped out on to the wide porch. As she did so the two cars drew up in front of the house and immediately the one behind disgorged a handful of dark-suited men, looking extremely businesslike. A moment of fear struck Diana, then astonishment. One of them came up to her, and as he spoke she realised they were all of Middle Eastern appearance.

  ‘Mrs Tramontes?’

  She nodded, and then, with another ripple of astonishment, saw that one of the men was opening the passenger door of the first car, and someone was emerging. A woman who was sailing up to her, imperiously dismissing the dark-suited men who backed away dutifully, still scannin
g the environment as if sharpshooters might be lurking on her roof.

  A gasp escaped Diana—she could not help it. ‘Your Highness!’ she heard herself exclaim, with open astonishment and incredulity in her voice.

  ‘My dear Mrs Tramontes!’

  Princess Fatima greeted Diana warmly. Then she turned to another woman, who had now emerged from the huge dark-windowed car, saying something to her in rapid Arabic. The other woman—chaperon, maid, lady-in-waiting? Diana wondered wildly—glided up to the front door, pressed it open, and then stood aside to admit the Princess.

  Helplessly Diana followed suit, wondering what the bodyguards—as she now realised these men must be—would do. Her attention was all on the Princess, who was now addressing her again.

  ‘I hope you will not mind my unexpected arrival, my dear Mrs Tramontes,’ Princess Fatima was saying, ‘but I could not resist paying you an afternoon call!’

  Diana gathered her manners. Seeing the Princess again was overwhelming—releasing a storm of memories and emotions. With an effort she made herself say what had to be said, while inside her head everything seemed to be falling into a million pieces.

  ‘I’m honoured and delighted, Your Highness,’ she said mechanically, forcing a welcoming smile to her lips. Then she shook her head. ‘But, alas, I am quite unprepared—you will find my hospitality very poor.’

  The Princess waved an airy hand, dismissing her apology. ‘The fault is mine for not giving you notice,’ she said.

  She was looking around, gazing up at the marble staircase, the walls lined with paintings, the cavernous hall fireplace.

  ‘Your house is as beautiful as you told me it was,’ she said, her voice warm. ‘I am eager to see it all.’

  ‘Of course, Your Highness,’ Diana assented faintly.

  ‘But first, would it be too much to hope that I might partake of afternoon tea with you?’

  Immediately calling on all her training to behave impeccably, whatever tumult was inside her, Diana assured her it would not be too much to hope at all, and ushered the Princess into the drawing room. Hudson was hovering in the doorway and Diana instructed that tea must to be served by Mrs Hudson, and, please, she was to bake fresh scones.