Bought for the Billionaire's Revenge

by Clare Connelly

  She was tall and wiry and she moved fast, propping the mop against the side of the house before lifting the lid of a cane basket. ‘I always keep towels in here. Mr Kyriazis likes his swim after work.’

  Dangerous images of Nikos—bare-chested, water trickling over his muscled chest and honed arms—made her insides squeeze with remembered desire. ‘Does he?’

  ‘So the towels always are fresh. I can get you one.’

  True to her word, she lifted one from the box and placed it on the edge of the pool, beside Marnie’s dress. Her hand ran to the item of clothing, lifting it as if on autopilot and draping it over a chair instead.

  Marnie was a little shamefaced at the uncharacteristic way she’d discarded it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her tone stiff. ‘Nikos didn’t mention your name,’ she fibbed.

  ‘I’m Mrs Adona.’ She grinned. ‘You can call me Eléni, though, like Mr Kyriazis does.’

  ‘Eléni.’ Marnie nodded crisply. That was it. Curious, she tilted her head to one side, watching as the older woman returned to fetch the mop. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’

  Eléni cackled quietly in response.

  ‘That’s funny?’ Marnie prompted with a small smile on her face.

  Later, she would be mortified to realise that she had big black circles of smudged mascara beneath each eye.

  ‘Oh, it is nice for me to meet you, I was thinking. Nice for him to settle down. In my day men didn’t work as hard as him. They had one woman and a simple job. You’ll be good for him,’ Eléni said, with an optimism that Marnie was loath to dispel.

  So she nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

  Something occurred to her and, spontaneously, she called the woman nearer to the pool.

  ‘Eléni? Nikos is worried that I’ll step on your toes if I do the odd bit of grocery shopping or cooking.’

  She watched the other woman carefully for any sign of mortification or offence, and instead saw a broad grin.

  Spurred on, she continued, ‘The thing is, I quite like to cook. And I don’t have a lot to do here yet, and shopping kills time. So...well... I hope you won’t be upset if you see that happening?’

  ‘Upset?’

  Her laugh was contagious and alarming in equal measure. Loud—so loud it seemed almost amplified—it pealed across the courtyard and out towards the sea. Marnie found herself chuckling in response.

  Eléni said something in her own language, then rubbed her angled chin as if searching for the words in English. ‘I don’t know he can like a woman who cooks.’

  The sentence was a little disjointed, and the accent was thick, but the meaning came to Marnie loud and clear.

  Nikos didn’t bring women who cooked to his home.

  They had other talents.

  And wasn’t that just an unpalatable thought?

  Well, Marnie would show him.

  * * *

  By the time he returned that night Marnie and Eléni had moved a table onto the tiled terrace and Eléni had set it beautifully. A crisp white cloth fell to the floor, and in its centre she’d placed orange blossoms and red geraniums to create an artful and fragrant arrangement of blooms.

  Marnie was just pulling the scallops Mornay from the grill when he arrived. It was difficult to say who was more surprised. Nikos, by the sight of his wife in a black-and-white apron, kitchen glove on one hand, feet bare but for the red toenail polish that was strangely seductive, or Marnie, who took one look at her husband and felt such a surge of emotions that she had to prop her hip on the bench behind her for support.

  He placed a black leather bag on the kitchen floor, then crossed his arms. ‘I thought we discussed this,’ he said finally.

  So much for new beginnings.

  ‘You discussed it, as I remember.’ Her smile was overly saccharine. ‘I listened while you told me that I shouldn’t get comfortable in your home.’

  Her acerbic remark had caught him unawares—that much was obvious.

  Choosing not to tackle the bigger issue of her statement, he said thickly, ‘I told you—I don’t want you upsetting Eléni .’

  ‘Yes, yes...’ She moved to the fridge and pulled a bottle of ice-cold champagne from the door. She placed it in his hand and paused right in front of him. ‘You also told me that I should save my energy for other wifely duties.’

  He had. And he’d enjoyed, in some small part, seeing the way he’d shocked her. But having her say the words back to him switched everything around. A hint of shame whispered across his features.

  ‘Eléni’s very happy that you’ve married someone who enjoys cooking,’ she said, with an exaggerated batting of her long, silky lashes. ‘I think she finds me surprisingly traditional compared to your usual...companions.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘Yes. So you don’t need to worry that I’ve sent her off to cry into her pillows.’

  He curled his fingers around the neck of the bottle and unfurled the foiled top, his eyes lingering on his wife’s face. Her honey-brown hair was plaited and little tendrils had escaped, curling around her eyes. Her make-up was impeccable, and beneath the apron he could see that she was wearing a simple dress that he was growing impatient to remove.

  ‘You have a smudge on your cheek,’ he lied, lifting his thumb to his mouth to wet it before wiping it across her skin. He was rewarded with the sight of her eyes fluttering closed and her full lips parting as she exhaled softly. The same knot of desire that had sat in his gut all day was inside her, too, then.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said softly, her eyes bouncing open and clashing with his. As if consciously slicing through the web that was thick around them, she stepped backwards. ‘You open that—thank you.’

  A grudging smile lifted half his mouth. ‘Yes, Mrs Kyriazis.’

  She turned away before he could see the way the name brought an answering smile to her own features.

  He popped the top off the bottle, placed the cork on the bench. He reached for two glasses at the same time she did. Their hands connected and she stepped aside quickly. ‘You do it. I’ll get our starter.’

  ‘Starter?’ he murmured, watching as a pink like the sunset dusted her cheekbones.

  ‘Uh-huh. I told you—I like to cook.’

  That was new. ‘Since when?’

  She began to place the scallops in their fan-like shells on a plate, forming a spiral of sorts. ‘Some time after we broke up—’ she skidded over the words a little awkwardly ‘—I discovered it as a hobby. It turns out I love cooking. I’ve always loved food.’

  She reached for a spoon and ran it around the edge of a shell, coating it in the Mornay sauce. She lifted it to his lips and he widened his mouth to taste the sauce. It was as delicious as it smelled.

  ‘Apparently you excel at it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The compliment was a gift. A beautiful gift to cherish in the midst of the turbulent ocean they were stranded in. She lifted the plate and smiled. ‘Shall we?’

  He turned, two champagne flute stems trapped between the fingers of one hand, the bottle in his other. He began to retreat from the kitchen, but Marnie stalled him.

  ‘Not the dining room,’ she said over her shoulder, weaving through the kitchen towards the patio. It was then that Nikos saw that against the backdrop of the setting sun, and the evening sky that sparkled with tiny little diamonds of stardust, a table glowed with candlelight.

  Emotions, warm and fierce, surged in his chest. ‘You did this?’

  ‘Eléni helped,’ she said honestly, nudging the door with her shoulder.

  The night was blissfully warm. She placed the scallops on the table and then stretched behind her back for the ties of the apron.

  ‘Allow me,’ he said throatily, settling the drinks onto the table an
d reaching for her. His fingers worked deftly at the strings but, once they were untied, he kept his hands on her hips. He spun her in the circle of his arms so that he could stare down at her face. In the softness of dusk she was breathtakingly beautiful. But the fragility he sensed in her terrified him.

  He wasn’t prepared for Marnie’s vulnerability. He had no protection against it.

  He dropped his hands to his sides and moved to a chair instead. He pulled it from the table, waiting for her to settle herself in the seat. She pushed the apron over her head, not minding that it roughened her hair. She draped it over the timber back of the chair, keeping her eyes on the spectacular view as she sat down.

  He glided the chair inwards a little way, his hands resting on her bare shoulders for a moment before he moved to the other side of the table.

  At another time, or for another pair, the moment would have been singing with romance. But Marnie knew they didn’t qualify for that. And yet the setting was so magical that for a moment she let herself forget the tension and the blackmail, the resentments and regrets.

  ‘Do you remember when we had that picnic in Brighton?’

  His eyes skimmed her face, tracing the features he’d stared at that night. It had been only a few weeks before he’d told her he wanted to marry her one day—before she’d told him that would never happen.

  ‘Yes.’ He pressed back in his chair. The past was a sharp course he didn’t particularly like to contemplate. ‘I remember.’

  ‘The sun was a little like this,’ she said, obviously not sensing his tone, or perhaps willfully ignoring it.

  She watched the glow of the golden orb as its own weight seemed to catch up with it, making it impossible for day to remain any longer. As the sun dipped gratefully towards the sea the sky seemed to serenade it, whispering peach and purple against its outline.

  ‘This is my favourite thing to watch,’ she said softly, a self-conscious smile ghosting across her face as she returned her attention to the table.

  ‘Why?’

  She lifted a scallop and placed it on her plate, indicating that he should do likewise. But he was fully focussed on his bride.

  ‘I guess I find it somehow reassuring,’ she said with a small shrug of her slender shoulders. ‘That no matter what happens in a day there’ll always be this.’

  He arched a brow, finding the sentiment both beautiful and depressing. ‘I am more for mornings,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘I remember.’ She grinned, trying hard to inject their evening with the normality she’d longed for that morning. ‘You wake before the sun.’

  ‘I do not need a lot of sleep.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  Her cheeks flushed pink as she remembered the previous night—the way he had commanded her body’s full attention even when she had been exhausted. And she’d responded to his invitations willingly, rousing herself to join with him, needing him even from behind the veil of exhaustion.

  He ate a scallop, though he wasn’t particularly hungry. It was divine. A perfect combination of sweetness and salt. He didn’t say anything, though, so Marnie continued to wonder if he’d enjoyed it or was simply being polite when he reached for another.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked, after a moment of prickly silence had passed.

  He regarded her for a long moment. ‘I spoke with your father, if that is your concern.’

  Her face slashed with hurt before she concealed it expertly. ‘It wasn’t,’ she responded, shrugging as though he hadn’t scratched her with the sharp blade of recrimination. ‘I was simply making conversation.’

  His eyes glowed with the strength of his feelings. Marnie pressed back in her chair, her own appetite waning. She thought of the fish she was baking in a salt crust. What a waste it would be if they couldn’t even make it through a few scallops without breaking into war.

  ‘Let us not pretend, Marnie, when there is no one here to benefit from the performance.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  SHE PLACED HER fork down carefully beside the plate, using the distraction to rally her rioting emotions. His mood and manner were on a knife’s edge. She felt the shift in him and wanted to protest. She wanted to address it. But the implacable set of his features thwarted any thought of that.

  ‘I’m not pretending,’ she said instead, with a direct stare that cost her a great deal of effort.

  ‘Of course you are.’ He was bored now, or at least he seemed it.

  ‘Really? Why? Because I asked about your day?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Because you act as though your primary concern in this marriage is not your father.’

  Denying that assertion wasn’t an option—at least it wasn’t if she wanted to protect herself from seeming motivated by other more personal feelings. What would he say if she told him more than money had motivated her into marrying him? Would he run a mile? Or use her confused feelings to keep her exactly where he had her?

  ‘Well, Nikos,’ she said, impressed that she sounded almost condescending, ‘given that you used my father’s debts to blackmail me into this, are you really so surprised?’

  ‘I made no claim of surprise,’ he corrected. ‘I intended to point out the futility of your charade.’

  ‘Wow.’ She blinked and lifted her champagne, drinking several large gulps despite the pain of the bubbles erupting against her insides. ‘That’s spectacularly rude,’ she said when she’d settled the glass back on the table.

  ‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged insouciantly. ‘In any event, your father was both grateful and, I believe, resentful of my offer to help.’

  She was startled, her enormous eyes flying to his face. ‘You’re not saying he turned you down?’

  ‘He has agreed to take the bare minimum from me to stave off foreclosure. That will buy him another month at the most.’ A frown crossed his features. ‘He is a stubborn man.’

  ‘Remind you of anyone?’ she snapped tartly, biting into another scallop.

  ‘I would not be so foolish as to turn away a lifeline if I were in his situation.’

  ‘He’s very proud,’ she said silkily, and though she’d meant it to be a subtle insult to Nikos it was ridiculous. She’d realised as soon as she’d uttered the words. For there was no man on earth with more pride than Nikos. She’d damaged it six years earlier and he’d moved heaven and earth to make her pay now.

  ‘To a fault.’

  ‘Thank you for speaking to him,’ she said quietly.

  She meant it. Were it not for Nikos, her father would have no hope. At least he knew now that there was an option. An alternative to bleak bankruptcy and failure.

  ‘It was our deal, remember?’

  The deal. The damned deal! She wanted to tear her hair out! But why? One day after their wedding, did she really think anything would have shifted? Just because they’d slept together, and her body had begun to vibrate at a frequency that only he could answer, it didn’t mean that it was the same for him.

  ‘Nonetheless, you didn’t have to do this. Any of it. You could have left him to suffer and watched from the sidelines.’

  He braced his elbows on the table, his eyes pinning her to the chair as though his fingers were curled around her shoulders. ‘Where would the fun be in that?’

  The air crackled and hummed with the intensity of his statement.

  ‘You find this fun?’

  His smile was pure sensual seduction. Like warmed chocolate being dripped over her flesh.

  ‘Last night was certainly pleasurable.’

  Memories seared her soul. She shifted a little in the chair as her insides slicked with pleasurable anticipation. ‘I’m glad you think so,’ she murmured, her heart racing like a butterfly trapped against a window.

  His smile was pure arrogance. It said that he knew she thought
so, too. ‘You disagree?’

  Damn it. The wedge between a rock and hard place was a little constricting. She dropped her gaze, unable and unwilling to duel with him in a battle she’d never win.

  But Nikos wasn’t going to let it go. ‘You seemed to enjoy yourself...’ he pushed, one hand flicking lazily across the tablecloth, trapping her fingers beneath his. He turned her palm skywards and began to trace an invisible circle across the soft pad of her hand.

  ‘Now who’s acting?’ Her question was breathy, infused with the hot air in her lungs.

  ‘When it comes to my desire for you there is no necessity to lie.’

  ‘Thank heavens for small mercies.’ The statement was lacking sass; it fell flat. She cleared her throat and pulled her hand away. ‘How much money?’

  The change in conversation, and the removal of her hand, confused him momentarily. But not for long. Nikos hadn’t built an empire from scratch by being slow on the uptake.

  ‘Why does it matter? Do you want to make sure you haven’t overpaid your end of our bargain?’

  She made a sound of surprise and shook her head.

  ‘You did offer your virginity. Perhaps you feel anything less than a hundred mill isn’t quite fair on you.’

  ‘How dare you?’ Her voice quivered with the force of her hurt. ‘How dare you equate what we did with an amount of money?’

  He had gone too far. He realised that, but it was out of Nikos’s character to apologise. Instead he came back to the original question, speaking as though he hadn’t just virtually equated their marriage with prostitution.

  ‘I have helped him enough for now,’ he said, his words soft to placate the rage he’d breathed into her. ‘He will not go broke, Marnie. I will not allow that to happen.’

  She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, her feelings jumping awkwardly from one extreme to the other. Hurt was making her body sag, and her throat was thick with tears that she damned well would not let fall. But there was relief and gratitude, too. Because she did trust Nikos. Despite all this, all that he’d done, she believed that he would keep her father from destitution.

  He lifted another scallop and ate it, then another, and Marnie watched, a frown unconsciously etched across her face.