“It was nice to meet your friends at the party,” she said, doing her best impersonation of small talk. “How did you and Nico meet? Did you go to school together?”
“Actually, we grew up together.” He leaned back in his chair. From this angle, the early evening cast golden light over his skin, making him look even more tanned. His hair was a mess of waves and kinks, like he’d run his hands through it too many times. “At the orphanage.”
“Oh.” She blinked. Well, that was unexpected. Sure, she’d read something about him coming from humble origins to build an empire with his best friend, but she’d had no idea he was an orphan. “And you’ve been friends ever since?”
He bobbed his head. “Since the day he punched a bully in the face for me when I was four years old.”
“So he was your protector?” She reached for a glass of wine that had materialized on the table while she’d been wrapped up in her discovery of Dion.
“We protected each other,” he replied. There was something cryptic about the response that had her wanting to ask more, wanting to know him. Which was a very, very bad idea. “What about you? Do you still keep in touch with people from your childhood?”
The question was innocent enough, and she’d been asked it before. But the memories reared up like an ugly monster coming out from under her bed. She’d had a great group of friends in elementary school—a tight-knit gaggle of girls with important shared interests like posters of Zac Efron and shimmery lip gloss. The day she’d moved to middle school, it’d all changed, however, because her dad had plucked her out of her humble local school and stuck her into some elite place where nobody wanted to talk to her.
The other students seemed to know she didn’t belong, and nobody invited her to their birthday parties or sleepovers. She’d been a social pariah.
“Not really,” she replied noncommittally. “It took me a while to find my feet.”
These days, she kept her friendship group small. The fewer people she let in, the less chance there was for her to be shunned. But now they were at an age where everyone was falling in love and getting married, meaning girlie hangouts were becoming less and less frequent. They were forgetting her. Moving on with their lives, while she continued to rebel against her father like she was stuck in her teenage years.
“Nothing wrong with that.” Dion looked up as one of the kitchen staff brought out a platter of meats, cheese, and fruit, along with some smaller bite-sized food items. He eagerly reached for a meatball with a toothpick sticking out of it. “I was a late bloomer.”
Sophia raised a brow. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. I was that skinny beanpole of a kid with acne and patchy facial hair until well after it was fair.” He grinned, and his endearing, full-lipped smile made her roll her eyes. The guy looked like he’d stepped off the cover of a movie poster. And if the smile was any more perfect, it would have been accompanied by a ping sound effect. “You could say I was an ugly duckling.”
She smirked at his choice of words. “I definitely don’t believe it.”
“Girls wouldn’t touch me.”
“That’s changed, hasn’t it?” The quip came out before she could stop it.
Unfortunately for her, those four little words lit a fire of truth inside her. She was attracted to Dion.
How could she not be? The man was physical perfection. Even in a business shirt and dress pants—which had never been her thing—he looked at ease and comfortable in his own skin. The pale blue shirt sat open at the collar, revealing the tanned column of his neck. His jaw was strong and angled, highlighted by a slight shadow. But it was his mouth that got her. He had full lips, wickedly curved like the lines on a sports car, the kind of lips that were almost too sensual to belong on a man. But somehow, against the backdrop of unabashed masculinity, they were the cherry on top of a perfectly decorated sundae.
They were the kind of lips made for kissing…and she didn’t mean only the French kind.
Swallowing, Sophia clamped her legs together, shocked by the sudden pulsing there. This was so not the time to start indulging in fantasies.
Dion cocked his head. “You don’t have to worry about that with me.”
“Worry about what?”
“About me fooling around.”
Sophia shook her head and held up a hand. “I wasn’t worrying. I don’t worry.”
Suddenly, a flustered kind of heat washed over her. The absolute denial made her sound defensive, on the back foot. And that was never a place to be.
“I don’t care who you sleep with.”
Dion frowned. “I’m not sure what your father has communicated to you—”
“Nothing, other than to send me here.” It came out more bitter than she’d wanted it to. The truth of her feelings was too close to the surface, too at risk of bubbling over. “He only told me that it was part of your deal.”
Dion’s frown deepened, creating a crease between his brows. “And you were happy to go along with it?”
God, she wanted to tell the truth so badly. She wanted to scream that she was only here because she was terrified her father would break her mother’s fragile psyche if she wasn’t there to intervene. That she was worn down by her father’s ability to get exactly what he wanted. Frightened that she might not ever realize her dream of a peaceful, independent life.
But those fears were what kept her grip on the last vestige of control. She couldn’t trust that Dion wouldn’t report back anything she said. What if he called her father and repeated it back to him?
No. It was too risky.
“Of course,” she said, wrestling her voice into a smooth, even tone. “My father is very traditional, and he wants nothing more than to see me married to someone with a high standing. And I want to do everything to keep my parents happy.”
Her statement didn’t appear to ease Dion’s concerns. “So, you’re on board with this?”
No. I will never be on board with this.
She opened her mouth and then snapped it shut again. The only way this would work was if he called off the wedding. Her father would be angry, but he’d have somewhere external to direct his anger. Somewhere away from Sophia and her mother.
No matter how much she wanted to answer Dion honestly, she…couldn’t.
“Yes, I’m on board.” She reached for a piece of melon, but it tasted of nothing. “Are you? You don’t seem like the type of guy who needs someone to find him a wife.”
“Truthfully?” He pushed the hair back from his forehead. “I never thought I would get married. It wasn’t something I saw being part of my life.”
“How come?” She shouldn’t be interested, but dammit, she was.
“My mother never married,” he said, his voice taking on a vague quality, as if he’d lost himself in his thoughts. “Because my father already had a wife. They were having an affair, and she got pregnant.”
But he’d grown up in an orphanage. So how—?
“My mother died after I was born, and my father didn’t want anything to do with me.” The vague quality had taken on a razor edge. This was the man behind the charming smile. This was the real Dion. “He was fine screwing young girls on the side, but he didn’t want to deal with the consequences. Apparently, he had an important reputation to uphold, or so the sisters at the orphanage told me one day. But I heard them whispering, it wasn’t the first time he’d cheated on his wife.”
He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he didn’t continue.
“Have you ever met him?”
“Once, and I immediately regretted it.” He cleared his throat. “But it’s water under the bridge. He’s dead now.”
She waited for more information, but nothing came. This explained a lot—how he was fine with a marriage that meant nothing just to secure a business deal.
“So, there won’t be any touching family moments at our wedding, I’m afraid.” For a moment, he looked almost…regretful. “But at least you won’t have any pesky in
-laws to deal with.”
“Fantastic,” she whispered. A sick feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.
Dion’s jaded view of marriage and family would be a hard thing to work against. If he had no expectation of a happy married life, then maybe he would do what was necessary to get his hands on her father’s company without any care to what happened after the I dos.
“I, uh… I think I’m going to head to bed.” Sophia pushed up from her chair so suddenly that the damn thing almost tipped over. But the need to get some space was clawing at her, panic settling into her muscles, making them twitchy. “Well, good night.”
She grabbed the fox and tucked it under her arm before dashing back into the house, her stomach swishing. But then it hit her. The solution was crystal clear, and he’d handed it to her on a silver platter.
An affair.
A fake one, of course. There was no way Sophia would sleep with someone for any reason besides mutual attraction and genuine feelings. To her, sex was never a means to an end. Never a weapon or a tool. It should be an experience shared between two people who care for each other.
But if she looked like the kind of wife who’d be unfaithful, then maybe that would be enough for him to pull the pin. After all, it was clear he hated his father and the fact that he’d had an affair.
Guilt stabbed her in the gut. It was a shitty thing to do. A really, really shitty thing. But she reasoned that she wasn’t actually going to be having an affair with Theo. And concocting a fake affair so Dion would pull the pin was doing them both a favor in the long run. Saving them from a marriage that wouldn’t be good for either of them. Her father was pulling the strings so he could have what he wanted, and that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
She was helping Dion as much as she was helping herself.
Sophia dug the cream-and-gold business card out of the drawer next to her bed and turned it over in her hands. Looked like it was time to give Theofanis Anastas a call.
Chapter Six
Dion had been making an effort to leave the office at a more reasonable hour than usual so he could try to spend time with Sophia—although he got the distinct impression she’d been avoiding him since their talk about his childhood. But time was ticking, and with his mentor being sick, he wanted to wrap things up as quickly as possible.
Would anything really change if he closed the deal and started dismantling his father’s company before something happened to Elias? Probably not. But maybe there was some childhood logic lurking in there that told Dion if he got it all done in time, then maybe God would see that Elias was effectively Dion’s father and spare him. At least for a little while longer.
Therefore, Dion couldn’t treat Sophia like she was a ghost in his house, even if that’s how she was acting.
He pulled his car into the driveway, the Corfu sun beating down relentlessly through the windshield. It was barely four p.m. and unheard of that he would leave the office at such an hour. But he wanted to catch Sophia off-guard in the hopes that he might convince her to come for a walk. Or perhaps a swim.
When he entered the house, it was quiet. No music or talking. No sounds of any kind. That was the very reason Dion’s gasp felt like a gunshot. Stuck to the wall in his foyer—looking wholly and utterly out of place among the white marble tile and pale walls—was a picture of a turkey.
A stuffed one…and not the kind he knew Americans ate on Thanksgiving, either.
Oh no. This was a taxidermied turkey, and it came all the way up to Dion’s thigh. Its eyes bored menacingly into his, tail fanned out majestically behind it. Dion gulped.
Above it, at eye-level, was another picture of a deer head. Walking as if in a stupor, he continued through the house toward the large, open-plan dining area, where he saw two more pictures taped to the wall with bright green painter’s tape. A fox, similar in color to the one Sophia had taken to leaving all over the house, and a cat.
In his study was a picture of a squirrel standing upright on his desk. It had been taped to his desk lamp. The beady black eyes stared at him, as if challenging him to go one step farther into the room. A sinking feeling settled in the pit of Dion’s stomach. He would bet all the money in his bank account that there were more animals lurking in his house. Well, print-outs of animals, anyway.
He could only hope these were “inspiration” pictures rather than planning pictures.
A few minutes later, Dion found Sophia in the room overlooking the garden, sitting on the floor and hunched over the coffee table. A jigsaw was spread out in front of her, and she worked, quiet as a mouse, tackling each piece as gently and methodically as an archaeologist might brush the dirt from a fossil.
“Are you turning my house into a menagerie?” he asked.
Sophia jumped, clapping a hand across her heart. “Dion! You frightened me.”
“I could say the same for you.”
Dion watched her from his vantage point, noting the tangle of dark hair sitting atop her head and the flowy pink dress with buttons all down the front. A pair of fuzzy bunny slippers capped her feet. She didn’t have a scrap of makeup on, and her shoulders were tinted pink from the sun. Freckles that hadn’t been there a few days ago had started to dust her nose like cinnamon powder, coaxed to life by hours reading and working beside the pool.
Attraction jolted him like a punch to the chest. Sure, the bunny slippers weren’t the sexiest things he’d ever seen, but there was something raw and beautiful about her. It was like he’d caught her unaware, before she’d had time to slip a mask on.
“You’re home early,” she said, her voice a little wary. “I wasn’t expecting you for a while.”
“I thought a break might do me good,” he said.
“And you normally sneak up on your guests?”
“I’m simply returning the favor, given your turkey startled me when I walked through the front door.”
“He’s majestic, right? I named him Tuttle.” Her lips curved, and there was a glint of wickedness. “I’ve been trying to settle on the perfect home for each piece in my collection. We had our house redesigned a few years back, and the interior designer taped out the measurements of each piece of furniture so she could get an idea of how it would look in the space. I thought I could use that trick with my darlings to see which ones worked best in each room.”
So they were planning pictures.
“How many do you have in your collection?” he asked, unsure if he actually wanted to know the answer.
“Twenty-three.” She cocked her head, frowning. “Well, maybe a few more than that. I count all the rodents as one, because…well, they’re small.”
“Rodents?” Dion blinked. “Plural?”
“Yes, I have a few rats and squirrels and a prairie dog. Oh, and a chinchilla.” She nodded as though she might be talking about her collection of handbags or lipsticks or an extensive library of books, each of which would have been vastly preferable to a zoo of dead animals. “I’m trying to figure out the best way to have them all shipped over.”
Whatever attraction he’d felt evaporated in a puff of smoke. The thought of all those eyes following him as he moved through his house gave him the creeps. He’d always hated the paintings in the orphanage where he’d grown up—it was bad enough being watched by all the nuns, but being watched by the paintings was worse.
“What are you working on?” he asked, nodding to the table, desperate to move the conversation on to something more palatable.
“A puzzle.”
“Yes, I got that from all the scattered pieces.” He walked into the room, looking over her progress. “What’s it of?”
“I have no idea.” She laughed when he looked at her strangely. “Seriously. I never really understood the point of a puzzle if I knew what the picture was going to be in the end. Where’s the fun in that?”
“Isn’t that how puzzles are supposed to be done?”
Sophia shrugged. “I was never very good at doing things the way they’re supposed to be
done.”
Her list of quirky habits seemed bottomless. But at least this one wouldn’t involve him having to explain to his friends why there was suddenly a turkey by the front door and a peacock in the bathroom.
Things you never thought you would have to say…
He could see she’d started to make progress on a few sections of the puzzle’s edge. The pieces looked to be green with hints of blue, but otherwise there was no real discernible image.
“Can I help?” he asked.
Sophia watched him for a moment, her eyes full of distrust. But in a flash, the expression was gone, and he wondered if he’d really seen anything at all. “Sure.”
“What’s the strategy?”
“It’s easiest to start with the edges and corners. I’ve put all the edge pieces to one side of the table, and then I start grouping them by color.” She indicated to one section of darker green pieces and one of lighter, along with a small pile of blue. “And then I try to fit them together.”
Dion’s hands drifted to two green pieces that looked like they would fit, and sure enough, they clicked together easily.
“Good job.” She grinned, and it felt like the first time Dion had seen a genuine smile from Sophia.
Not a smile she felt like she should be giving or one that was a mask for something else. But a real, sparkling, warm smile. It lit up her whole face, and for a moment Dion was certain this was who Sophia really was: bunny slippers and bare skin and blind puzzles and pretty smiles.
On some deep level, his intuition tingled. She’d seemed very startled that he’d come home early—was it simply that he’d unintentionally snuck up on her? Or was it something more? Was she different when he wasn’t around?
There’d been a hint of vulnerability during their dinner the other night. He sensed an intellect and earnestness lurking beneath her outlandish fashion and behind the taped-up pictures of stuffed turkeys and squirrels. Was it possible that it was all an act? She’d said she was on board with the idea of them being married, on board with her father’s wishes…but something was definitely off.
How to Lose a Fiance Page 6
