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.
Memories, visceral and sharp, twisted his gut. How familiar that tiny gesture was! Flashes of her studying for exams, writing lists, pausing midsentence to capture the next, flashed into his mind. When she’d had a particularly large problem to solve she’d chewed on the end of the pen, waiting for clarity to flood to her from its inky heart.
‘Nikos...’ She lifted her gaze to him. ‘Doesn’t this all seem a bit crazy?’
He didn’t react.
She huffed out a sigh. ‘I don’t know you any more. And you definitely don’t know me.’
He narrowed his eyes almost imperceptibly. ‘I know you perhaps as well as ever.’
She bit on the pen again and shook her head. ‘I just don’t see why we have to rush this.’
‘It is your father’s financial situation that puts a time limit on matters.’
‘But—’
‘No.’
He leaned across the table, pressing his hand on hers. Sparks shimmered in her heart. Angered by her body’s ongoing betrayal to his proximity, she worked overtime to conceal the explosive desire. Her glare was dripping with ice.
‘This is the only way I will help your father. It’s not a negotiation.’
Backed against a wall, she wondered why she didn’t feel more angry.
She looked down at the thick pile of papers. ‘If you expect me to sign this today then you’re going to have to explain it to me.’
‘Fine.’ He flicked a glance at his gold wristwatch.
‘Sorry if I’m taking up too much of your time,’ she snapped sarcastically, and for the briefest moment he felt the full force of her emotions—emotions she was so good at guarding. Fear, worry, stress, uncertainty.
But he had no intention of softening towards his fiancée. He nodded curtly, his expression rock-hard. ‘The first section deals with our assets. Any assets you bring to the marriage will be quarantined against becoming communal.’
‘So I get to keep what’s mine?’ she interpreted.
‘Yes. I have no interest in your money.’
The way he said it, with such vile distaste, made Marnie shiver.
‘Fine. Just as I have no interest in yours.’
He arched a brow, his face filled with sardonic amusement. ‘You mean, I presume, beyond the hundred million pounds I will be giving your father?’
Her cheeks flamed. ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t meet his eyes because she felt the sting of tears in her own.
‘Irrespective of that, you will be entitled to a sum for each year we remain married.’
‘I don’t want it,’ she said through clenched teeth.
‘Fine. Give it away. It’s not my concern.’ He reached forward impatiently and turned several pages until he arrived at the end of that section. ‘Sign here.’
Pressing her lips together, she scrawled her name, blinking her eyes furiously.
They were still suspiciously moist when she lifted her face to his. ‘Next?’
He appeared not to notice how close her emotions were to the surface. ‘The next section deals with the moral obligations of our union. Any infidelity will lead to an immediate termination of the marriage. It will also invalidate the financial agreement, and will necessitate your father returning half of the money I have given him to that date.’
She blinked in confusion. ‘You think I’m going to cheat on you?’
His lips compressed with a dark emotion, one she couldn’t fathom. ‘I could not say with certainty.’ His smile was wolfish. ‘Though I imagine this makes it considerably less likely.’
She ground her teeth together. ‘And what if you cheat?’
‘Me?’ He laughed again, this time with real humour.
‘Yeah. You’re the one who seems to be constantly auditioning lovers. What happens if you get bored in our marriage and end up in another woman’s bed?’
‘You will just have to make sure I don’t get bored.’
Her breath snagged in her throat. The threat weakened her. Her pulse throbbed painfully in her body. ‘When did you get so cynical?’
He narrowed his eyes, stunning her with the heat she felt emanating from him. ‘When do you think, agape mou?’
She shook her head, hating the implication that she’d somehow caused his character transformation. ‘Nikos...’
What did she want to say? She’d already tried to explain about Libby, and the burden she’d felt to please her parents—a burden that had increased monumentally after Libby’s death. He didn’t care. He’d said as much. She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. It was futile.
‘I have a meeting after this.’
She swallowed, shaking her head to clear the tangle of thoughts. ‘Fine.’
‘The third section deals with children.’
Her eyes startled to his face. ‘Children?’ Her heart was jackhammering inside her chest.
He turned several pages but Marnie was too shocked to bother trying to read them. He fixed her with a direct stare. ‘It stipulates that we won’t have a child for at least five years.’
Fire and ice were flashing within her, making speech difficult. She blinked her enormous caramel eyes, then shook her head, but still it didn’t make sense. ‘You want children?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. One day. It’s hard to imagine right now—and with you.’
‘Oh, gee, thanks.’ She rolled her eyes in an attempt to hide the way his words had wounded her. ‘As if I’m just lining up to be your baby-baker.’
‘My...baby-baker?’ Despite himself, he felt a smile tickle the corner of his lips.
‘I can’t believe you’re actually contracting hypothetical children.’
He arched a brow. ‘It makes sense.’
‘A baby isn’t...’ She dropped her gaze. ‘A baby isn’t Section Three, Subsection Eleven A. A baby is a little person. A new life! You have no right to...to...make such arbitrary decisions about something that should be magical and wonderful.’
‘A baby between us would never be magical and wonderful,’ he responded, with such ease that she genuinely believed he hadn’t intended to be unkind. ‘It is the very last thing I would want. As for it being arbitrary...’ He shrugged his broad shoulders with an air of unconcern. ‘You seemed perfectly fine making such decisions in the past.’
‘Not about a child!’
‘You just said you don’t want to be my...baby-baker. Have you changed your mind suddenly?’ he asked cynically, his eyes drifting over her features with genuine interest.
‘No.’ She bit down on her lip. The lie—and she recognised it as such—hurt. Images of what their children might look like were hard to shake. Instantly she could see a tiny chubby version of Nikos, with his imperious expression and dark eyes, and her heart seemed to soar at the prospect.
‘Our marriage is not one of love. I can think of nothing worse than bringing a child into that situation.’
‘But in five years?’ she heard herself ask, as if from a long way away.
He shrugged insolently. ‘In five years we will either have found a way to live together with a degree of harmony, or we will hate one another and have long since divorced. It gives us time to see what’s what. No?’
She nodded jerkily. He was right. She knew he was. But as she signed her name on the bottom of the page she felt as if she was strangling a large part of herself.
‘Next?’ She forced a tight smile to her lips; her tone was cool.
‘A simple confidentiality agreement. Our business is our own. The press has a fascination with you, and I have often thought, despite what you say, that you court their interest.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ she interrupted sharply. ‘I go out of my way to stay off their radar.’
‘Which in and of itself only heightens their attention and speculation.’
‘So I flirt with the press by hiding from them?’ She crossed her legs beneath the table. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘You are “Lady Heiress”. They call you that because of your behaviour—’
‘They call me that,’ she interrupted testily, ‘because I refuse to engage with them. After Libby died they were everywhere. I was only seventeen, and they followed me around for sport.’
She didn’t add how horrible their comparisons to the beautiful Libby had made her feel. How Marnie’s far less stunning looks had drawn the press’s derision. She had refused to court them in order to create the impression that she didn’t care, but each article had eroded a piece of her confidence until only the ‘Lady Heiress’ construct had remained. Being cold and untouchable, a renowned ice queen, was better than being the less beautiful, less popular, less charismatic sister of Lady Elizabeth Kenington.
He shrugged. ‘You will not be of such interest in Greece. Here you are a society princess. There you will be only my wife.’
Why did that prospect make everything inside her sing? Not just the prospect of marrying him, but of escaping it all! The intrusions and invasions. Freedom was a gulf before her.
‘Your parents are included in this agreement. They are to believe our wedding is a real one.’
‘Oh? I would have thought you’d like to throw the terms of our deal in Dad’s face, just to see him suffer,’ she couldn’t help snapping.
‘Perhaps one day.’ His smile tilted her world off-balance. ‘But that is my decision. Not yours.’
She furrowed her brow. ‘This agreement doesn’t apply to you?’
‘No. It is a contract for you. So you understand what is expected of you.’
‘That definitely isn’t fair.’
He laughed. ‘Perhaps not. Do you want to walk away, Marnie?’
The sting of tears was back. She lowered her eyes in an attempt to hide them and shook her head. But when she put her signature to the bottom of the page she added something unexpected.
A single teardrop rolled down her cheek and splashed onto the white paper, unconsciously dotting the ‘i’. It was the perfect addition to the deal—almost like a blood promise.
She closed the contract and pushed it across the table.
It was done, then, and there was nothing left to do but marry the man. Except, of course, to break the news to her parents.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.’ Arthur Kenington’s face was a study in apoplexy, from the ruddy cheeks to bloodshot eyes and the spittle forming at the corner of his mouth.
Marnie studied him with a mix of detachment and sadness. Perhaps it was normal to emerge into adulthood with a confusing bundle of feelings towards one’s parents. Marnie loved them, of course, but as she sat across from Arthur and Anne in the picture-perfect sunroom of Kenington Hall she couldn’t help but feel frustration, too.
She lifted her hand, showing the enormous diamond solitaire that branded her as engaged. Anne’s eyes dropped to it; her lips fell at the corners. Just a little. Anne Kenington was far too disciplined with her emotions to react as she wished.
‘Since when?’ The words were flat. Compressed.
‘Be vague on the details.’ That had been Nikos’s directive when they’d spoken that morning. Had he been checking on her? Worrying she was going to balk at this final hurdle? Did he think the idea of breaking the news to her parents might be too difficult?
‘We met up again recently. It all happened very fast.’
‘You can certainly say that.’ Anne’s eyes, so like Libby’s had been, except w
ithout the warmth and laughter, dropped to Marnie’s stomach. ‘Is it...?’
‘Of course not!’ Marnie read between the lines. ‘I’m not pregnant. That’s not why we’re getting married.’
Arthur expelled a loud breath and stood. Despite the fact it was just midday, he moved towards the dumb waiter and loudly removed the top from a decanter of sherry. He poured a stiff measure and cradled it in his long, slim fingers.
‘Then why the rush?’ Anne pushed, looking from her husband to her daughter and trying desperately to make sense of the announcement that was still hanging in the air.
‘Be vague on the details.’
‘Why not?’ she murmured. ‘Neither of us wants a big wedding.’ She shrugged her slender shoulders, striving to appear nonchalant even when her heart was pounding at the very idea of marriage to Nikos Kyriazis.
‘Darling, it’s not how things are done,’ Anne said with a shake of her head.
Marnie stiffened her spine imperceptibly, squaring her shoulders. ‘I appreciate that your preference might be for a big, fancy wedding, but the last thing I want is a couture gown and a photographer from OK! Magazine breathing down my back.’
Anne arched one perfectly shaped brow, clasped her hands neatly in her lap. At one time, not that long ago, Marnie might have taken Anne’s displeasure as reason enough to abandon her plans. But too much was at stake now. If only her parents knew that the wedding they were so quick to disapprove of was their only hope of avoiding financial ruination!
‘You don’t like the press. That’s fine. But our friends. Your family. Your godmother...!’
‘No.’ Marnie didn’t flinch; her eyes were tethered to her mother’s. ‘That’s not going to happen. Just you and Dad.’
‘And Nikos? Which of his family will be there?’ Anne couldn’t quite keep the sneer from her voice.
‘As you know, he has no family,’ Marnie responded with a quiet dignity. ‘Besides me.’
How strange it was to say that, knowing it was the literal truth if not a particularly honest representation of the situation.
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