‘As I said, it’s a simple matter of us rekindling our marriage. I appreciate it’s asking a lot of you...’
‘A lot?’ she exclaimed, blinking furiously. ‘My business will be finished. Everything I’ve worked for...gone. It works on discretion, remember? And what about the rest of my life?’
‘What life, Elizabeth? All you do is work.’
At the darkening of her features, he figured he might as well get everything out in the open and deal with it all in one go. ‘I had you investigated. There’s no significant other in your life. You have some friends you socialise with occasionally and you take yoga classes when time allows, but there is nothing else. So tell me, what will you be giving up to help me?’
Now her face was ablaze with outraged colour. ‘You went digging into my life? Well, that explains how you discovered Leviathan Solutions.’
He was unrepentant. ‘I learned about your business when searching for our annulment. I had a deeper search made to be sure you had nothing in your past that could be used to paint you as an unsuitable guardian for Loukas.’
As it was, his investigations hadn’t revealed anything. If she had skeletons in her closet, they were tucked too far out of reach for discovery. If she’d dated anyone unsavoury, that was hidden away too. Indeed, he hadn’t found evidence of a link with anyone, not even a fling, never mind anything approaching a committed relationship. Whatever relationships she’d had in the past decade, they’d been conducted discreetly and that was all that mattered.
‘I don’t care what excuses you make, that’s a gross invasion of my privacy,’ she raged. ‘It’s inexcusable.’
‘If you were in my position you would have done the same.’
‘If I were in your position I wouldn’t need to—your private life is splattered on the front page of every red top for the whole world to see.’
‘I can assure you the vast majority of it is highly exaggerated, the rest of it lies,’ he said icily.
‘Of course it is.’ Her sarcasm was delivered with extra bitterness.
His temper rising, Xander finished his coffee and carefully set the cup on the table before pointing to the beach. ‘Do you see the man with the camera round his neck?’
She followed his gaze.
‘That man is a paparazzo, tipped off by my assistant that we’re here.’
Her face contorted into such anger she looked ready to explode.
‘He has your name. He knows about Leviathan Solutions and the service you provide. He knows we’re married. What the story that accompanies his pictures tells is for you to decide.’
Elizabeth listened to Xander’s words and knew her world was crumbling around her.
He’d set her up.
Whatever happened between them, pictures of one of the Casanovas from the Celebrity Spy! scandal pictured in a Caribbean paradise with a woman purported to be his wife would beam around the world. It would be headline news.
‘I can’t believe you would do this.’ She was so angry she could hardly breathe. ‘You say your parents have stooped low...you are exactly like them.’
He was unrepentant. ‘I regret I’ve had to take these steps but everything I’m doing is for my nephew. If you say no to my proposal I have nothing left to play. I have nothing left to lose. My reputation can’t be damaged any more than it already has been. Say yes and you’ll be financially set for life. Thirty million dollars for you, and I’ll pay off your staff too.’
Elizabeth listened with the feeling of talons being dragged over her skin and her head swimming in cold sludge.
Her business was finished. Her life—everything she’d built for herself—was over.
Once the world learned she was married to this Casanova and her face graced the front pages of all the glossies and all the major Internet search engines, no one would be able to risk using her discreet services any more.
As if on cue, the photographer put the camera to his eye and fired off a ream of shots of them.
She took a long breath and rose from the table, pulling herself to her full height. ‘I would have agreed to do it without the threats and blackmail.’
‘I couldn’t take the risk you would say no. I haven’t seen you in ten years. For all I knew you were holding a grudge against me. I had to consider if you’d deliberately withheld the failure of our annulment as a weapon to use against me when a time came that suited you.’
‘What? How could you think such a thing?’ She shook her head, trying to comprehend it. Ten years ago she’d laid herself bare to him, in all senses, and he thought her capable of something like that?
‘Manipulation is a common thing in my world. I can count the number of people I trust on two fingers.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly mastered the art of manipulation yourself,’ she said bitterly. Where was the man she’d married? That man had been nothing like this.
A pulse throbbed in his jaw. ‘I am trying to protect my nephew.’
‘When adults go to war it’s always the child who suffers the most.’ She knew that better than anyone. ‘I would never stand by and let it happen if there was something I could do about it. You didn’t need to go to such grotesque lengths for my help. You didn’t need to make me hate you more than I already do.’
‘I’m sure the thirty million I’m offering will sweeten the pill.’
‘No amount of money will recompense for the loss of my business and the invasion of my privacy.’
‘You want more money?’
She caught the sneer on his lips, which only fuelled her fury further. ‘Don’t try and make me out to be a money-grabber,’ she snapped. ‘If you hadn’t given Celebrity Spy! so much gossip to shout about, you wouldn’t be in this mess and you wouldn’t need me to get you out of it—your moral fibre wouldn’t even be a matter of discussion. Your parents wouldn’t be able to paint you as an unfit guardian.’
Another flash of anger resonated from his eyes but his lips formed into a taut smile. ‘Your opinion of my character means nothing to me. All I want is your agreement. Do I have it?’
‘I don’t have any damn choice.’
‘I’m pleased you can see that.’
‘But let’s get one thing straight. Our marriage will be as short as possible and strictly platonic.’
The pulse in his jawline throbbed harder. ‘Married couples in my family share adjoining rooms. It’s an arrangement that will suit us.’
‘Good. And any adjoining door will have a lock.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes glinted through the darkness, impossible to read. He got to his feet and pulled some notes from his wallet. ‘It’s time to go—we have a hotel to check into.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, kardia mou,’ he said with a mocking smile. ‘We are setting the seeds for the rekindling of our marriage. We have been pictured dining together. That photographer has been given the name of our hotel. I guarantee you he has a scooter in easy reach for him to rush there and meet us. Come the morning, the world will know we have spent the night together. All that will be left for us to do is make a statement, which I have already prepared.’
‘My God, you’ve planned everything.’
‘You don’t get to my position without forward thinking.’
‘Really? I could have sworn you’d got to your position through a fate of birth.’
It gave fleeting satisfaction to see his face darken at that comment.
‘But really, Xander, is this necessary? Do you really think your parents are going to be fooled by us getting back together when they didn’t even know I existed? Don’t you think they’ll find it convenient?’
When he replied his voice was tightly controlled. ‘It’s not my parents we need to convince, it’s the judge, and, unless you want to forfeit the money, I suggest you make it very convincing.’
* * *
‘You have got to be kidding me.’ Elizabeth’s voice was flat but her amber eyes blasted incredulity and fury right at him.
Xander br
ought the car to a stop at the front of La Maison Blanc Hotel. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Why here?’
‘Because it’s fitting. This is where we married and now it’s where we’re rekindling our marriage.’
‘And to hell with my feelings, eh?’ She shook her head with loathing. ‘Just when I didn’t think it was possible to hate you more...’
‘Hate me as much as you want in private, but in public...’ He nodded at the scooter that had come to a screech at the hotel’s entrance.
She sucked in her cheeks and contemplated the photographer, whose camera was still around his neck. ‘This is pointless. No one’s going to believe we’re for real, especially not a judge. I hate you. And you never even mentioned me to your family or...’
‘I never mentioned you to anyone because the topic was too painful,’ he cut in smoothly. ‘We never wanted to part but we were too young at the time and we knew it would never work. You called me when the scandal first erupted to offer your support. My world was falling apart around me and you were there for me.’
He stretched out a hand to touch her face. The soft, almost translucent skin still felt like satin to his touch. Before she could flinch away he wound his fingers round the back of her head and gathered a large mass of her thick hair into his fist. He wondered what had happened to her curls. He’d adored the shaggy mop of hair she’d sported a decade ago.
‘It was in the course of one of our discussions that we realised our annulment had never gone through and we were still married.’ He leaned closer and studied the soft kissable lips that were pressed tightly together sucking in the rounded cheekbones.
Did those lips still taste the same? Would they still fit to his as if they’d been moulded specially?
She’d stopped breathing. Her eyes had widened, her face a frozen mask.
Still gazing at her mouth, resisting the urge to run a finger over it, he continued, ‘It was also through the course of our talks on the phone that I remembered how special you were to me and all my old feelings for you came back. I convinced you to meet me here because I wanted to see if the old magic was still alive. We realised how much we still loved each other and decided that we’d both matured enough to make our marriage work.’
He released his hold on her hair and let his fingers drift down the slender neck he had once kissed every part of, and felt the tiniest of shivers under his fingers.
Her eyes were wide and stark on his.
A long-forgotten memory sluiced him; their first time together, her dreamy pleasure, her soft moans...
The flash of the photographer’s camera cut through the moment and pulled him back to the present.
He removed his hand from her neck.
Elizabeth might have an allure that sang to his senses but this was one relationship he had no intention of taking to the bedroom. Things were going to be difficult enough between them without throwing sex into the mix.
It gave him no pleasure to threaten and blackmail her but he couldn’t afford to give her a way out. Loukas was all he cared about and he would do whatever it took to keep his nephew out of his parents’ clutches, even if it meant destroying the woman he had once thought himself in love with.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘OH, THAT IS very clever,’ Elizabeth whispered after a long pause during which her breathing deepened. ‘Machiavelli would be proud.’
Xander didn’t say a word. What could he say?
It wasn’t for ever, he told himself in mitigation. A few months of her life at the most, and he would pay her handsomely for it.
‘Just tell me how you plan to explain Ana.’
His stomach lurched. ‘You know about her?’
Throughout the years, whenever an unguarded moment found him thinking of Elizabeth, he would wonder if she’d learned of Ana. He’d never spoken of Ana to the press but occasionally an article would appear that mentioned his tragic fiancée.
When Xander had ended his engagement, he hadn’t hung around to deal with the fallout. He’d been sick of everything: his family, her family... He’d needed a break from it all. And so he’d found himself in St Francis, where he’d met Elizabeth.
She’d been a ray of light that had beamed straight into his heart, a loving innocent when he’d only known indifference and manipulation. In the greedy haze of lust he’d been certain he was in love with her. He’d been unaware that his and Ana’s families had postponed the statement about the end of the engagement, both families convinced he was suffering from nothing more than cold feet and would realise the error of his ways on his return and marry Ana after all.
Ana had known he would never change his mind.
The call from his mother notifying him of Ana’s death had brought him crashing down to earth and he’d seen the truth right there in front of him: Elizabeth wouldn’t have lasted a week with his family. All the joy and sunshine she brought into a room would have been snuffed out with the poison his parents and those they mixed with breathed.
‘I know you were engaged to her,’ Elizabeth said in a whisper. ‘You were childhood sweethearts. And I know you never mentioned her to me. You told me...’ She swallowed. ‘You said you’d never been in love before. That was a lie.’ Then she shook her head, her voice regaining a brisk tone. ‘So how are you going to explain marrying me when you were engaged to someone else? How is that going to paint you in a respectable fashion?’
He didn’t blink. ‘I’d ended my engagement to Ana before I met you. She died while I was here with you. I didn’t cheat on anyone. When I met you I was single. I couldn’t have predicted what would happen to her.’
Xander knew he sounded cold. Thinking of Ana and what happened to her always made him feel cold. He would never know what had been going through her head the night she died but knew he would carry the guilt for ever.
For a long time Elizabeth did nothing but stare at him. And as he stared back, a pain settled in his chest as he recalled her devastation when he’d walked away.
‘Is that the truth or another clever statement you’ve concocted?’ she asked coldly.
‘It’s the truth. Ana and I were over when I met you.’
She inhaled deeply, then gave a sharp nod and, without uttering another word, opened her door. She took hold of her belongings, and got out of the car, handing her stuff to the porter who had rushed to meet them.
Alone in the car, Xander closed his eyes.
Elizabeth really had changed.
Ten years ago she’d been easy to read. Everything she thought or felt was there in those amber eyes. He couldn’t read them now. She’d built a wall around herself, a guard he suspected she rarely let anyone see beneath.
This wall would stand her in good stead. But it wasn’t just the wall she’d built; she’d developed a tough core.
The old sweet Elizabeth would have been destroyed to have his mother’s venom turned on her. This Elizabeth wouldn’t take crap from anyone. She would survive their short rekindling intact.
Filled with resolve that he was doing the right thing, he got out and threw the keys at the valet. With a camera flashing frantically in his face, he strode into the grand foyer.
It was time to play their romance to a wider audience.
Elizabeth was waiting at the reception desk. Reaching her side, he slipped an arm around her waist and gave his name to the receptionist, who wasn’t quick enough to hide the widening of her eyes.
Even the inhabitants of tiny St Francis had heard of his so-called debauchery.
He signed the forms, and the key cards were handed over to them.
Elizabeth looked at hers, read the name of the villa they were staying in, and nearly dropped it.
‘Enjoy your stay,’ the receptionist said with a coo.
All she could give was a rigid smile in return.
Xander took her hand and tugged at it to get her moving.
Just about ready to kill him but determined to affect nonchalance with an audience watching, she let him
lead her to the far door that would take her to the same private villa he’d upgraded them to after they’d married. The honeymoon suite.
They followed the same narrow rocky path they’d taken a decade ago, passed the same open-air restaurant with the same jazz music playing, the same sweet-smelling flowers as the path took them further from the main hotel, the same herbaceous borders, the same distant noise of crickets calling to each other...everything the same. Even her husband.
But Xander was no longer the irrepressible young hunk she’d fallen in love with. He was a hard-nosed, wildly successful businessman with a ruthlessness that made her mother look like an amateur.
And he’d never been in love with her. The most she’d been to him was a rebound fling that went too far.
The sights, scents and sounds opened up so many memories her head flooded with them. This first step to their villa was the place Xander had scooped her into his arms and carried her to their door. This villa door where he now swiped the key card was where he had put her down, pressed her against this very wall and kissed her so hard her lips had bruised. This threshold she now crossed was the same one he’d picked her back up to carry her over.
And this villa was the very same one they’d made love in so many times it had been impossible to keep count, right until he’d received one phone call and dropped her quicker than an outfielder letting an easy catch slip through his fingers.
She hadn’t known it then but that call had been the one telling him his fiancée had died.
Was he telling the truth that he’d ended the engagement before he’d met her? Or was it just another strategy to accompany their charade?
What did it matter anyway? It had all happened a decade ago. It meant nothing to her now. She only felt so raw and unhinged because...well, because her life had just been devastated all over again by the same man who’d almost broken her before.
Holding her breath, she walked into the villa. Her stuff had been placed on the floor of the spacious living area next to a suitcase she assumed was Xander’s, although she hadn’t seen any sight of it until then.
‘Where are the staff?’ she asked stiffly. The villa came with its own butler, maid and chef.
Married for the Greek's Convenience Page 4
