His words seemed to startle her but not nearly as much as they startled him because making pleas wasn’t something he did very often. Had he thought she would be instantly malleable? So impressed by this introduction to a very different and glamorous kind of world, that she would leap at whatever he asked of her? Yes, he probably had thought exactly that. His lips flattened. How wrong he had been.
‘What’s there to hear?’ she demanded.
‘You said I was born wealthy but that certainly wasn’t the case.’
‘You mean you were born poor?’ she questioned disbelievingly.
‘Not poor but something in between. What is it they say? Asset rich, cash poor.’ He met the question in her eyes and shrugged. ‘My father inherited an island, a very beautiful island, called Prassakri. He was born there. Grew up there. Generations of his family lived and died there.’ His voice tailed off as he recalled the story of how fortunes could wax, then wane without warning. ‘Once many people inhabited that place, with enough work for all but gradually the work dried up and the young men began to leave, my father among them. Fortunately he had enough money to buy agricultural land on the mainland in Thessaly and for a while he was successful. But then came the drought, the worst drought the region had ever seen...’
His paused for a moment and she sat forward, genuine interest lighting up her freckled face. ‘Go on,’ she urged.
He grimaced. ‘My father lost everything. And more. What the drought and resultant fires didn’t take, bad investments soon took care of the rest. From being affluent, suddenly there wasn’t enough food on the table. My mother took it badly.’
‘How badly?’ she questioned, her eyes narrowing.
‘Badly enough.’ He shut down her question sharply. Because he’d never talked about this with anyone. There hadn’t really been the need to resurrect the pain and the discontent. Until now. ‘The atmosphere of blame and recrimination in the house was unbearable,’ he remembered suddenly, as he recalled walking into the house and seeing his mother’s cold face and icy demeanour. ‘My father was forced to sell the island to a neighbour and although it broke his heart to do so, he vowed that one day he would buy it back, because the bones of his ancestors are buried on that island and that means a great deal to a Greek.’
He took another mouthful of wine. ‘Soon after that, land prices began rocketing and the purchase of Greek islands became beyond of the reach of most people. I could see my father’s increasing powerlessness as he sensed the opportunity to buy back Prassakri slipping away from him. But his neighbour had a daughter—an only daughter—who just happened to be very beautiful. And I had just won a scholarship to an American college. It was a pretty big deal at the time and I was seen as someone who would one day make good. And that was when the neighbour made my father the offer.’
‘What offer?’ she breathed, her green eyes huge, her expression rapt.
‘That if I were to marry Sofia, then he would allow my father to buy back the island at the original price.’
‘And you agreed?’ she breathed.
The facts when recounted now sounded like an extreme reaction but Xan recalled vividly that the offer had made perfect sense at the time. Hadn’t he agreed in an attempt to bring about some sort of peace to his damaged family? To stop his mother haranguing his father with her bitter lament? ‘I didn’t marry you in order to end up a pauper.’
‘I was nineteen,’ he said harshly. ‘And it didn’t seem real at the time. Sofia was a sweet young girl who would make any man a good wife, and if it meant the end to my father’s heartache, then why wouldn’t I agree? With one stroke I could restore the pride which was so important to him and maybe stop my mother from withdrawing more and more.’
‘Yes, I know—but even so.’ Sitting back in her chair with her hair looking like living flame in the candlelight, she threw him a perplexed look. ‘It seems very extreme.’
‘To be honest, I thought that Sofia would back out of the offer before I did,’ he said, he said with a shrug. ‘That she would fall in love and want to marry someone else.’
‘But that didn’t happen?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It didn’t happen. I tried to convince myself that arranged marriages work in many countries. That we share a common language and upbringing. And as time went on I found it a useful deterrent to the ambitions of other women, knowing I had an arranged marriage bubbling quietly away in the background and therefore was not in a position to offer them anything.’
‘But you’re a modern Greek! This sounds positively archaic.’
‘I am not so modern as I might appear on the surface, Tamsyn.’ His voice grew silky as he corrected her. ‘At heart I have many values which some might consider old-fashioned.’
At this she screwed up her face, but not before he had seen the brief shiver rippling over her skin. Was she remembering how it had been between them in bed that night? When he’d experienced an almost primitive pleasure as he had broken through the tight barrier of her hymen and given an exultant shout of joy? No, he had been anything but modern that night.
‘And what about love?’ she challenged. ‘Isn’t that supposed to lie at the foundation of every marriage?’
His laugh was bitter but at least now he was on familiar territory. ‘Not for me, Tamsyn. Only fools buy into romantic love.’
For the first time since they’d started this extraordinary conversation Tamsyn experienced a moment of real connection as she recognised a sentiment which was all too familiar. She thought about her feckless mother and the way she’d hocked up with all those different men. Hadn’t that been why she and Hannah had been left abandoned and taken in by a pair of dysfunctional foster parents—because their mother had fallen in love for the umpteenth time? ‘Well, that’s one thing we do have in common,’ she said. ‘Since I feel exactly the same.’
He gave a cynical laugh. ‘You actually say that like you mean it.’
‘Why, do people normally say things just to please you?’’
‘Something like that,’ he agreed.
Tamsyn wondered what it must be like if everyone was tiptoeing around you all the time. Was that what made him so sure of himself? ‘So what’s the problem?’ she questioned. ‘It sounds like the perfect solution. You’ve played the field and now you’re settling down. A practical union between two people who know exactly where the boundaries lie.’
‘And that’s exactly what I thought—until the theory became reality and I realised there was no way I could marry Sofia.’ He met the question in her green eyes. ‘ Oh, she’s still a nice enough woman, but she is not my type Most of all, I do not desire her.’ His voice hardened. ‘And there can be no marriage without desire.’ There was a long pause. ‘Which is where you come in,’ he added, breaking into her unsettled contemplation.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘How?’
‘I don’t want to hurt Sofia or tarnish her reputation by telling her I don’t want her. If I do that there’s no way her father will sell back the island, even if I offer him double what it’s worth by today’s values.’ Cobalt eyes bored into her. ‘But an acceptable way of breaking off the engagement is to explain that I’ve fallen in love with someone else and am planning to marry her instead. Which will allow Sofia the chance to walk away with her pride intact.’
‘You mean a fake marriage?’ Tamsyn frowned. ‘Like fake news?’
‘A temporary marriage,’ he amended drily. ‘With a very generous divorce settlement at the end of it. Sofia gets a dignified let-out clause. I get to buy the island and you end up with a hefty pay-out. This could make you a very wealthy woman, Tamsyn. You could have the kind of lifestyle most people only dream of.’
Tamsyn stared at him, trying not to be swayed by the thought of all that money—but for someone who’d always lived hand-to-mouth, that was easier said than done. She thought about not having to watch every single penny.
About being able to buy clothes which didn’t come from the local market, or thrift store. She thought about having food in the fridge which wasn’t past its sell-by date. Being able to take buses instead of walking all the time. Yes, it was tempting—but not tempting enough. Didn’t Xan’s arrogant certainty that there was no problem money couldn’t solve make her want to reject his offer? Because she wasn’t some commodity. She shook her curls. ‘Go and ask someone else,’ she said coldly. ‘There must be loads more suitable candidates who would happily masquerade as your wife.’
‘Oh, there are,’ he agreed benignly. ‘But that’s the whole point. You are so eminently unsuitable that everyone will believe it’s true love.’
His words hurt. Of course they did. Tamsyn might have always thought of herself as someone who didn’t conform. Who swam against the tide. But considering yourself a bit of a rebel was very different to the man who’d been your first lover, saying you were the most unsuitable person he could think of to marry. Her heart clenched with pain and this time she really did want to get up from that pristine white table. In a parallel universe—she might have upended it, letting the crystal and the silver cutlery cascade to the floor in a satisfying cacophony of sound. But she’d tried that kind of approach with him once before and all it had done was made her look stupid.
And something was keeping her rooted to her seat. She tried telling herself she should wait to see how much he was offering in return for accepting his extraordinary proposal, but deep down Tamsyn knew it was more than that. He was right. She was curious.
‘So why didn’t you fancy her?’ she questioned, like someone determined to rub salt into an already raw wound. As if by hurting herself, it meant nobody else would be able to. ‘If she’s so beautiful?”
Xan stared at his lobster which had already congealed on his plate. There was no need to explain that somehow, Tamsyn Wilson made every other woman look almost tame in comparison. That he hadn’t been able to shift the stubborn memory of how her skin had tasted or how it had felt to have her legs wrapped around his thrusting hips. Why flatter her with the knowledge that she was the fire which made every other woman seem like a mere flicker? He swallowed. That kind of information was irrelevant.
‘Chemistry is intangible,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s not like a shopping list you just tick off as you go along.’
For the first time during the entire conversation, she smiled. ‘You do a lot of shopping do you Xan?’ she questioned. ‘Somehow I can’t really imagine you pushing a trolley round the supermarket,. I’ve certainly never see anyone like you when I’m stacking the shelves.’
Xan was unable to stop the brief curving of his lips in response. ‘I buy cars and planes and works of art. The purchase of food I leave to my housekeeper. But you’re trying to change the subject, Tamsyn. Is that because you find my suggestion unpalatable?’ he said softly.
Tamsyn shrugged. She wasn’t sure how she felt. About anything. Something told her to walk away while she still could, but she couldn’t deny that the delicious food had lulled her into a state of sluggishness. And wasn’t Xan’s powerful presence only adding to her languor? Wasn’t she stupidly reluctant to turn her back and never see him again? ‘It’s a crazy idea,’ she said weakly.
He leaned forward as if sensing a window of opportunity and suddenly she could see why he was such a successful businessman.
‘Imagine no longer having to work unless you wanted to. You could go back to school—you are an intelligent woman,’ he said, his Greek accent dipping into a sultry caress. ‘Imagine being able to live somewhere which isn’t a...
Tamsyn’s shoulders stiffened as tactfully, his words faded away. ‘Isn’t a what?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
Somehow his careful diplomacy was more insulting than if he’d come right out and told her she lived in a slum. ‘Of course it does! It matters to me. How the hell do you know where I live anyway?’
He gave her an odd kind of look. ‘I had you checked out, of course.’
‘You had me checked out,’ she repeated slowly. ‘By who?’
‘There are people on my payroll who can find out almost anything. How else do you think I knew where you worked, Tamsyn?’
‘I just assumed... I thought you might have asked the Sheikh.’
‘No.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Kulal and Hannah know nothing about this.’
It was the mention of her sister’s name which startled Tamsyn out of her lazy stupor. She had been about to tell Xan exactly what he could do with his offer—without letting him know how much he’d managed to hurt her. She would have told him that she mightn’t have a job right now, but she would find one soon enough. She always did. Because one of the advantages of casual labour meant there were always vacancies for women like her. Women who had slipped through the net at school and at home. Who’d never had the comfort of regular meals or someone gently nagging at them to do their homework. She would get by because although she might not have any formal qualifications to her name, she was a graduate from the School of Survival. You didn’t sleep in a room with winter frost inside the windows listening to sounds of arguments bouncing off the thin walls next door, without developing a tough exterior.
But what about Hannah? Her sister was in an entirely different situation. She might now be the wife of the world’s richest men but that didn’t necessarily mean she was safe. When she’d been in Zahristan for the wedding, Tamsyn had sensed all was not well in the new marriage. How could it be—when it had taken place between a powerful sheikh and someone as humble as Hannah? They had married because Hannah had been pregnant with the Sheikh’s baby—but what if Kulal had only married her sister to get some kind of legal hold over his offspring? The Sheikh had all the power now that he had married her, didn’t he? While Hannah had none. Not really. She might be the new Queen of a powerful desert region but she couldn’t even speak the language of her adopted home.
Tamsyn folded up her napkin and placed it neatly on the table beside her empty plate. What if she agreed to Xan’s crazy proposal, but on her terms? What if she demanded a whole load of money—more even than he’d probably contemplated giving her? Enough to bail out her sister, should the need ever arise. Wouldn’t it be beyond fabulous to have enough cash to buy Hannah and her baby airline tickets out of Zahristan, if marriage to Kulal should prove intolerable? To give her a wad of that same cash to purchase a bolthole somewhere? Wouldn’t it mean something to be able to do that—especially after everything her sister had done for her when they’d been growing up? To redress the balance a little. Even though...
Tamsyn swallowed down the suddenly acrid taste in her mouth.
Even though Hannah had been the reason Tamsyn had never met her father and it had taken her a long time to forgive her for that...
She looked up to find Xan watching her closely, the way she imagined a policeman might scrutinise a suspect from behind a piece of two-way glass. Well, he certainly wouldn’t be able to read very much from her expression! Hadn’t she spent all her formative years hiding her emotions behind the blasé mask she presented to the world?
‘How long would this marriage last?’
‘Not long. Three months should suffice. Any less than that and it will look like a stunt.’
She nodded. ‘And how much money are you prepared to offer me?’
She saw him flinch—but that didn’t surprise her either. Rich people never wanted to talk about money. They thought it was vulgar. Beneath them. Had Xan forgotten was it like to be poor, she wondered? Was that something else he’d blocked from his mind—like an agreement made by a teenage boy to marry a woman so his father could claw back an important piece of land?
‘How much did you have in mind?’ he questioned.
Her birth father had taught her everything she needed to know about desertion and rejection while her foster father’s life lessons had been abo
ut infidelity and gambling. No wonder she distrusted men so much. But some of those lessons had been useful. She’d overheard enough bluster around card games to realise that you had to start high and be prepared to be knocked down whenever you were bargaining for something. So she mentioned an outrageous sum of money, prepared for yet slightly shamed by the brief look of contempt which hardened Xan’s cobalt eyes. But it was gone almost immediately, because he nodded his head.
‘Okay,’ he said.
She blinked in disbelief. ‘Just like that?’
He shrugged. ‘You clearly want it. I can afford it. And obviously, the more I am prepared to pay—the more I get out of our brief union.’
The silky inference behind his drawled words made Tamsyn’s stomach clench with anger. And something else. Something far more potent than anger. Because at times during his story she had wanted to reach out to him. To comfort him? Or to kiss him? Or both. Maybe both. Especially when his face had grown hard and hurt when he’d mentioned his mother. She could feel her breasts pushing against the fine wool of the cashmere dress as she directed him a heated look, forcing herself to be bold enough to ask the question. ‘You think I’m going to have sex with you?’
‘That’s a pretty naive question, Tamsyn,’ he answered softly. ‘Why wouldn’t I? We’ve had sex before and it was good. Very, very good.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And isn’t it a very necessary part of the marriage contract?
There was a pause during which Tamsyn steeled herself against the shocking beauty of his face and her own even more shocking reaction to him...the heat of excitement in her blood and the soft throb of hunger between her legs. But somehow, using the kind of resilience which every abandoned child needed in order to survive, she managed to present to him a face devoid of expression. ‘Not in this case, because it’s only make-believe,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ll marry you because I want your money. But it’s nothing but a business arrangement and there’s no way I’m being intimate with you again, Xan. Because it wouldn’t be right. Not after everything that’s happened.’
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