Rakanti's Indecent Proposition

by Clare Connelly

  He reached for some salami and ate it to buy for time. “It doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “It’s not relevant.”

  She looked as though she was about to say something but she closed her mouth and nodded slowly. They sat in silence, and it was anything but companionable. The tension buzzed around them despite the perfect surrounds and glorious night.

  “These olives are very nice,” she said finally, for something to say. The lack of noise was beginning to stretch her nerves to breaking point.

  He nodded in agreement. “They’re from my family’s property.”

  Bitterness on behalf of her brother filled Elle. “Where is it?”

  “Why do you ask, agape mou? So you can go and break the news to my mother’s face?”

  She startled, the horrible suspicion completely unfounded. “No.” She dipped her head forward and focussed her eyes on her knees. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. “I was just making conversation.”

  “There’s no need,” he said coldly, though staring at the pathetic picture she made caused some unknown emotion to tear through his conscience.

  “Fine.” She scraped the chair back and glared at him hopelessly. “I’ll just go and wait for you in bed, shall I?”

  He watched her go with a thoroughly deserved sense of shame. He was treating her terribly and even if she deserved his contempt, he wasn’t sure the behaviour did him any credit. He had her where he wanted her. Why couldn’t he at least be polite?

  Because she’s going to ruin your mother’s life, he reminded himself forcefully. If he showed her pity and kindness, she would take it and use it to her advantage. She was just that kind of woman. He sat on the terrace until the blanket of stars sparkled richly overhead, his eyes focussed far in the distance.

  Hours later, when he was himself ready for bed, he thought of her. Desire lurched through his system. If he went to her, she would answer. If he touched her, she would touch back. They were dancing in circles, both filled with loathing, but their bodies hadn’t got the memo.

  If he went to her, they’d sleep together, and he’d find relief for the throbbing ache of need that had been chasing him all day.

  But he’d hate himself.

  He went to the bedroom they’d shared the night before purely to tell her that he was going to give her time to adjust to their new circumstances. He needn’t have bothered. She was fast asleep. With a small groan, he entered the room, flicked the light off and then went back downstairs to his own room.

  He’d have a clearer idea of what to do the next morning.

  Only morning broke with an unfamiliar sound.

  Music.

  With a frown, he moved downstairs and bee-lined for the kitchen. For of course he knew what to expect.

  Elle, her long blonde hair tumbled over one shoulder, her eyes downcast, her fingers possessed. He had a few seconds to observe her before she noticed him and abruptly stopped playing. “Did I wake you?”

  “Yes.” Now there was no mistaking his need for her. Did she feel it too? For all he had bullied her into staying, he was reluctant to make her feel that she was in any way sexually obliged to him. The very notion was anathema to him. His possession of her only worked if she felt the same answering ache inside of her.

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Couldn’t you?” He pressed his thumb beneath her chin, lifting her face upwards. “You should have come to find me.”

  Her eyes were enormous and so grey they were almost like steel. “I thought about it.” Her expression was one of defiance. “I suppose you’re going to use that against me. But I don’t care. Lying doesn’t come naturally to me, despite what you might think.”

  He stared at her without showing any emotion. “I want you.”

  A simple admission that was so much more, for it was also a question. And Elle’s heart lifted at the tiny, miniscule sign of respect. How far she’d fallen to be gratified by such an insignificant sign of deference.

  “I want you too,” she said softly, hating herself for the weakness but standing greedily, hungrily.

  He crushed her to him, kissing her as though they were lovers who had been separated for years, not hours. His hands pushed at the cotton of her shirt, grazing her bare skin with a deep sense of gladness. There was no time to move upstairs. The sofa was closer and again they moved towards it.

  Their bodies were in unison. They made love as though they were performing the steps of a dance to a song that had been written to them, and only they knew. They were perfectly in synch as they moved: touching, tasting, feeling, pleasuring. Her hands were light as they caressed his body and she lost the ability to think.

  Her movements were automatic; she was powerless to control a single thing.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist as she felt herself begin to explode, and he chased after her, pushing them high into the heavens on a wave of ecstatic release.

  The flame of their passion had burned brightly, but it left in its wake a cold dawning of understanding.

  This is how it would be for Elle.

  Egg-shells and ecstasy, she thought with a frown. Until he told her to leave.

  And he would. She had to accept the terms of what he was offering and deal with it. Hoping for more, wanting more, these emotions would only lead to heartache.

  “Tonight, we share a bed,” he said, half-joking. But Elle didn’t hear the humorous self-deprecation in his words. She garnered only the command and she nodded jerkily beneath him. Suddenly his weight was suffocating her and she pushed at his chest.

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” she said, pushing to a sitting position and straightening her pajama top to cover her breasts.

  “Don’t be.” He studied her but the shift in her mood was an enigma. “I usually get up early anyway.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. I go jogging. Want to join me?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” He stood, and as an afterthought, reached down and cupped her cheek.

  She stood, shaking away from him, her heart groaning under the weight of acting as though everything was fine.

  Her mood infuriated him. He ran for longer than normal, hoping that each mile he took in would lead to an easing of his state of mind. But the longer he ran the more he obsessed over the details of her appearance in his life.

  She was impossible to understand. When they’d first met, he’d sensed a duality in her that was difficult to comprehend. She was both sexy vixen and innocent angel. She’d taken risks that no unsophisticated, inexperienced woman would entertain – even going to his home – and yet she was incredibly naïve at times. And she seemed blind to the power she wielded. Her ability to punish him by withholding her gorgeous body, for example, was a tool at her fingertips. Yet she made no effort to hide her desire for him.

  But she was miserable. And could he blame her? He’d blackmailed her, as she’d said, into staying and he had nothing to offer but sex and scorn.

  Yet he couldn’t let her go.

  He swore loudly as he crossed the street. He was renowned for his swift judgments and laser-like certainty. But when he thought of Elle, all he felt was a mixed bag of doubt and that in and of itself infuriated him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Tell me about her.” The night was dark. He had been held up at work, and had, for hours, been physically craving her body. Yet he’d stopped to pick up sushi. He’d spoken to her with polite interest as he’d arranged it onto a platter, and he was looking at her now, wondering if his patience would be rewarded with a smile anytime soon.

  “About who?” She paused with her chopsticks poised just above an avocado maki.

  “Your mother.” He tried his hardest to keep the disapproval from his tone but how could he not feel the woman’s betrayal personally?

  Elle’s eyes widened and then she dropped her gaze to the plate. Her appetite had vanished. “She’s dead.”

  “Yes. You said that. When?
How?”

  “Four years ago. Drink driving.”

  “A drunk hit her?”

  Elle shook her head. “She was the drunk.” She lifted her water and sipped it. “Thank God she killed only herself.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, though it added another element to the already grim picture he had of this woman.

  “Me too. She was … she wasn’t … I never entirely approved of her choices, but she was still my mother.” Her lips twisted thoughtfully. “And I wish, every day, that she hadn’t died.”

  “I’m sure,” he agreed. “What decisions didn’t you approve of?”

  Elle blinked, knocked off-kilter by his perceptions. “Too many to enumerate.”

  “We have time.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head. “She was just … her lifestyle was just … it’s too hard to talk about. Do you mind?”

  He lifted his wine and sipped it thoughtfully. “If I did, would you feel a sense of obligation to confide in me?”

  “Aren’t you paying me to feel a sense of obligation?”

  “Touche.”

  She dipped her head forward, screening her expressive eyes from him. “My mother was an entirely, absolutely, unequivocally selfish being. I don’t mean selfish in the normal way. I mean a bonafide narcissist. As a child, I used to wonder what I could do to make her love me. How could I make her proud of me?”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “God, no. I don’t think she even realised I was there half the time. When I was young, I was an inconvenience. And then, somewhere around my twelfth birthday, I became a threat to her. Or at least she perceived me as one.”

  He lifted a brow and Elle laughed uneasily, casting a gaze down at her cleavage. “I was an early developer and my mother definitely hadn’t counted on her daughter becoming a woman.”

  His dislike of the dead woman was growing by the minute. “That must have been hard for you.”

  He was an excellent conversationalist and somehow Elle found herself relaxing as they spoke, despite the unpalatable subject matter. “My friend Hannah –,” her eyes met his guiltily, “The one who texted me?”

  He nodded curtly.

  “Her mum was screwed up too. In different ways. She used to drink herself into oblivion most nights of the week, leaving Chip – that’s Hannah’s twin – and Hannah to fend for themselves. They had all these checklists around the house. Make sure mom’s turned the stove off. Make sure mom’s not asleep in the bath. Make sure mom’s home and locked the doors. Make sure mom’s got money in her purse for a cab.” Her smile was uneasy. “You probably can’t imagine what that’s like, to grow up with those sorts of worries and fears. As an adult, I look back and I judge our mothers so harshly. But we still loved them silly and the thought of anything happening to them … Anyway. Hannah and I are like sisters. She gets me and I get her.”

  He nodded slowly. “So two women who were the byproducts of average parenting hatch a plan to blackmail a man they’ve never met? Are you using a psychological defence?”

  “No.” She swallowed. “I’m using a love for my brother as a defence.”

  He pushed aside the selfless explanation. “You must have been eighteen when your mother died?”

  “Not quite. I was seventeen.”

  “So young. Still a child, really,” he murmured, feeling a pang of pity. “Your father?”

  “Not in the picture.” Her cheeks flamed at the admission. “I told you, my mother had a thing for bad choices.”

  He wanted to reach across and place his hand over hers, but the gesture would be a lie. It would speak of intimacy and affection and those qualities were not on offer.

  “What do you know of him?”

  Her smile was wry. “He was a musician. So I guess that’s something I should be grateful for.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head. “It was a drunken one-night stand.” She clamped her lips together to stop from confiding the rest of the sordid mess to him. The way her mother had tried to get money from him; not simply child support but a fortune.

  “I see. I spot a pattern.”

  She nodded. “Did you …” she hesitated and he nodded to encourage her. “Did you have any idea that your dad …”

  She let the question fade off into the air. It was a very sensitive issue, and she was conscious of being an instrument of pain to him.

  “No.” He leaned forward, his elbows pressed on the table. “He loved my mother. Adored her. And it was mutual. If she ever found out about your brother …”

  “I have no plans to tell her,” she said seriously. And now she was the one who reached over and pressed her hand over his. The gesture did everything it was intended to: he felt the comfort of her touch and it terrified him. He pulled away.

  Chastened and rejected, she spoke with a quiet dignity. “My brother and your mother, they are the innocents in this. They haven’t done anything wrong. Only a masochist would want to inflict pain on them.”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What if hurting my mother was the only way to help your brother?”

  “I would hate to make that choice,” she said honestly. “But if you knew my brother, you’d know that he’d make any sacrifice necessary to avoid paining anyone. He wouldn’t want to stay at Fjord Academy if he thought the only way he was there was because some woman was being made miserable. Your dad should have cleaned this up while he was alive to do so.” Her expression was gentle but the words rang with judgement. “But he didn’t have any intention of doing that.”

  He didn’t like hearing her condemnation of his father. “You spoke to him?” He urged, interested in the details of her meeting with his father.

  “Yes.” She pressed her lips together.

  “And?”

  “I’ve told you,” she shied away from throwing the truth at him, though she knew how satisfying it would be. “He made sure the same rules applied to me. Just as they had my mother.”

  “That’s not an answer and you know it.”

  Her discretion was an attempt to save him pain, though he couldn’t have known it. “What do you want me to say?”

  “What did he say to you? Did he indicate that he wished he had told my mother the truth?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. That’s exactly what I took it to mean when he basically stonewalled me into signing an updated confidentiality agreement.”

  Christos compressed his lips angrily. It wasn’t Elle’s fault. She was repeating facts he’d hounded out of her. But her stories cast neither his father nor her mother in flattering lights.

  “He would have done anything to spare my mother pain.”

  She knew it wasn’t wise, but she couldn’t help remarking tartly, “Except to refrain from cheating on her?”

  He didn’t react visibly. “If your mother looked anything like you, I imagine he found her irresistible.”

  “No, that’s not fair,” she said with a shake of her head. “I don’t condone my mother’s behaviour but she wasn’t the one who had a duty of fidelity to your mother. My mom didn’t cheat. Your dad did.”

  “Isos. Perhaps.” His smile was transitory.

  “Not perhaps. Definitely.” She sighed. “But I doubt we’ll ever agree.”

  “So your brother goes to one of the best academies in America. And you?”

  “Nothing so exceptional, I assure you.” Elle thought back to her high school days with a shudder. “We were more metal detectors at the gates than Olympic length swimming pools in the gym.”

  “This didn’t strike you as unfair?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “No.”

  “You didn’t resent your brother even a tiny bit.”

  “No.” She stood up, signalling that the conversation was at an end. “Do you mind if I go to bed?”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s eight o’clock.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t have to ask my permission,” he said darkly.

  “Good to kno
w.” She smiled in his general direction and then walked numbly through the downstairs living area, weaving through the expensive furniture. He caught her at the bottom of the stairs. And because Elle hadn’t been expecting him to follow, her expression showed her consternation. He read it easily before she masked her feelings behind a bland look of curiosity.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  And damn her traitorous heart; it began to shred in her chest as the prospect of the only thing that pushed thought and worry away loomed in front of her.

  “Sure.”

  And so a pattern emerged from the ruins of their agreement. When they were in bed, there was nothing to consider but how they craved one another. There was no enmity, no family hatred, no secretive contract, no confidentiality agreement and certainly no money being given in exchange for what they shared.

  In bed, they were equals.

  Two people as dominated by passion as each other.

  But when dawn pierced the magic of the night, there was such a monumental shift that Elle was left feeling winded for hours.

  When morning broke, he went for a run. Then, he had taken to showering downstairs. She tried not to be offended; the bedroom he usually used was on the first floor and his clothes were in the wardrobe there. It simply made sense. She tried not to see it as a rejection of intimacy.

  But when he emerged in his suits, looking immaculate and untouchable, she had to box away every instinct that ran through her. She could no longer touch. She could no longer kiss. She barely dared to smile. They were strangers sharing a space, that was all.

  While he was at work, she existed in a dream-like state, floating around the house in a haze of perpetual boredom and frustration, unless she was at the piano. Then, everything briefly shifted back into focus. She was herself again.

  One evening, a week after meeting Christos Rakanti, Elle was sitting at the piano, but not playing it. She heard him enter and stood, guilty somehow.

  He eyed her from the entrance to the kitchen, and said nothing. His look was intense; spikes of awareness hummed across her back.

  “Hi.” She swallowed. Butterflies were partying inside her belly.