was nowhere to be seen and she was surrounded by well-wishers.
A little of the color was back in her cheeks as her gaze swept through the hall, looking for him.
She had more than surprised him, true. But she couldn’t be allowed to indulge in it again, couldn’t be allowed to warrant this much emotion from him—whether surprise or fury or this want for her that was becoming a force he couldn’t fight.
If she wanted him to marry her, there was only one way that he could do it.
WHEN CLIO HAD moved a decade ago to study at Columbia, New York, the young, handsome playboys she had become friends with had captivated her. Even through the hardest times over the past decade, she had never once considered returning home to England. She had had such spectacular plans for when she would marry, where she would live for the rest of her life.
But she had never meant to make her dream come true this way. Catching back the sigh that wanted to escape, she looked up at Stefan, streetlights and huge ads bathing his face in strips of light.
The hardest New York winter held less frost than Stefan’s gaze in the interior of the limo. For the rest of the evening and the drive back to Manhattan, they hadn’t exchanged a single word.
Gazing out through the windows, he kept his phone glued to his ear the entire length of the drive. And judging from his conversation, Clio realized he was handling a crisis with his holdings in Asia.
It was a small comfort that he wasn’t freezing her out intentionally as she waited on tenterhooks for his reaction.
If he had snarled at her, if he had called her a hundred names, if he had let that fiery temper explode and lashed out at her, Clio would have had some estimate of his reaction.
But this silent chill that he seemed to radiate from every pore, for the first time since she had seen him standing on the terrace of the Empire State Building, arrogance and power emanating from him, left Clio afraid.
Even the ruthless stranger she had come to know this past week would have been welcome.
Feeling a lead weight in her chest, Clio followed him through the gleaming entryway into the soaring luxury hotel steeped in tradition. Every inch of the plush interior screamed over-the-top opulence and extravagance.
Nothing but the best for Stefan Bianco.
But every time she walked in through the doors of the Chatsfield, saw the eager staff greet Stefan, Clio was reminded of the fact that Stefan didn’t own a home. Anywhere in the world. He lived aboard his private jet, flying across the globe as his business dictated, without any connection to the world.
And here in New York, of all places, he hadn’t even intended to stay past the week.
They had decided they would just leave it as an open-ended engagement. Scary prospect as it had been, she had even started looking for a new job.
The walls felt like they would cave in on them and trap them in the tension forever as the steel doors of the elevator closed and they were carried to the penthouse suite.
The unobstructed panoramic views of Manhattan from the suite’s glass balconies didn’t fascinate her as they usually did. The glittering diamond skylights, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the unique artwork alongside stunning artifacts...nothing held her interest tonight.
It was the silent man who did.
Without taking his gaze off of her, he undid his cuffs. Next came the buttons on his dress shirt. Clio held his gaze, even as the shadow of his olive skin under the shirt beckoned.
The column of his throat was a visual feast as were the chiseled angles of his face.
“Damn it, Stefan. Say something.”
Not even Jackson’s ugly name-calling shredded her composure as Stefan’s silence did.
His olive green gaze was hard, flinty even. “I have never been maneuvered into a corner so publicly and so irrevocably, bella. I think I have been rendered mute.”
Maneuvered? Her stomach tying in knots, Clio blinked. There was no anger in his words, no resentment in his tone. Something else lingered there on a razor’s edge, waiting to strike.
“Stefan, I don’t know what came over me. I have never lost my temper like that.”
His posture screamed careless lounging but Clio knew he noticed every breath she took, every nuance that crossed her face.
“I know it’s not something you ask a friend over dinner, but I would owe you...” Shaking her head, Clio caught the words in her mouth. In her wildest dreams, she had never thought she would beg a man to marry her, to ask someone to turn such a big lie into reality.
She reconsidered it in her own head.
If she didn’t value herself, no one else would. Not Jackson, not the world and definitely not Stefan.
And she needed Stefan to value her, to respect her. Suddenly, it felt like the most important thing in the world that he did, that she become at least half the person he had known a decade ago.
“I’ll bring you everything I can on him, Stefan. This is my city, and my life. I will not let him steal any more from me.”
“Think carefully, Clio. You might only be exchanging one awful man for another. Because I’ll not change anything in my life for a woman, cara. Not even a surprise wife.”
Now there was no taunting smile, there was no lazy charm, only utter seriousness in his gaze. Urgency pounding through her, she reached him and grabbed the lapels of his shirt. Thrust her face so close to his that the masculine heat of him swathed her, pinging across her skin, infiltrating every cell and pore. “What do you mean?”
The rhythmic whir of the fax machine in the open study as it cranked out documents filled the cavernous lounge. The sound chafed against her skin as Clio waited for an answer, her breath suspended in her throat.
Grasping her wrists, he pushed her back. Prowled to the fax machine and returned with a sheaf of papers.
He produced a gold-tipped fountain pen from somewhere and nodded toward the sheaf of papers.
“It means the marriage will be only in name, Clio, a contractual agreement that we will both sign. It means all you will get from me is a peanut allowance. It means you’ll sign a prenuptial contract and a nondisclosure agreement that you won’t reveal any of this to another soul or sell the story or write a memoir of our life together at a later time.
“It means you won’t dictate who occupies my bed after we’re both through with Jackson, and you’ll not throw allegations of love at me.
“If you accept and then violate any of the above, the consequences will be far-reaching.”
Clio gasped for breath, as if someone had kicked her in the gut, as if something icy and vicious had been stuck in her chest. Tears pricked behind her eyelids, her lungs struggling
