nightmare. She had to be stuck in some kind of nightmare. This couldn’t be real. Kallie’s mind disengaged from everything. She looked around dumbly and could see couples dining. Lovers holding hands. Men having business dinners. They looked real. And then everything seemed to rush back into focus. Someone was calling her name.
‘Here, drink this.’
Alexandros was reaching across the table with dark amber liquid in a glass. His after-dinner drink. She shook her head violently and pushed his hand back, snatching hers away abruptly when she felt the strong bones of his wrist.
He looked at her, his voice unbearably harsh. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
She shook her head, ignoring his question. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry me, Alexandros?’ She waved a jerky hand that still tingled from the contact with his. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
He put down his glass, smiled grimly. ‘Don’t worry, Kallie, I don’t want to marry you. When my uncle Dimitri died, he left me his share of Kouros Shipping. It’s the last piece not in my control.’
She looked at him blankly. Still in shock.
‘It was expected. He’d always made it clear where his inheritance would go.’
She nodded vaguely, incapable of speech.
‘But there was a surprise in his will. Dimitri had a sense of humour. He knew how I felt about marriage.’
He answered the look that Kallie hadn’t even been aware of giving. His face was carved from stone as he said the words, ‘I’ll never willingly marry. The woman doesn’t exist who I would marry.’
A knife seemed to enter Kallie’s heart, stunning her with pain and surprise. She felt herself pulling inwards as if to avoid a blow. Alexandros was oblivious to the havoc he was wreaking within her. The havoc she couldn’t even begin to understand. She had done this to him?
He cut through her thoughts. ‘He made it a condition of his will that I marry within six months of him dying or I won’t receive his share of Kouros Shipping.’ His mouth twisted. ‘It’s as if he knew it was the only way I might ever give in to his foolish romantic notions for me.’
Kallie dumbly seized on words to try and avoid feeling the emotions swirling in her head and body.
‘But how could you lose everything? Surely his share isn’t that big?’
‘It’s not, but he controlled a key part. As you know, on my father’s death, I took full control of the business.’
She felt an unbidden surge of sympathy, remembering the chaos of that time. But Alexandros wouldn’t appreciate her concern or interest, certainly not her sympathy. And how could she even be feeling sympathetic?
‘Dimitri’s will states that if I don’t marry within the time frame, his share will go to Stakis Shipping.’
Kallie gasped audibly. Stakis Shipping was the mortal enemy. Even she knew that. Underhand deals, rumours of links to drug rings, sex trafficking. They were the black sheep of the shipping world and the only conglomerate powerful enough to possibly take over Kouros Shipping. If what Alexandros said was true, and if he didn’t marry, they would be handed an invitation on a silver platter to take a sizeable potshot at his company.
Alexandros couldn’t stop the unbidden dart of pleasure seeing the expressions cross her face, at her immediate understanding of the world he came from. He quickly schooled his features again, slightly shocked at how easily the accord had crept in.
‘My uncle, in an effort to see me happily wed, has set me up for professional suicide if I don’t.’
‘I know this is bad but can it really be that bad?’
He nodded. ‘The share he controlled has strategic importance in the stock markets. It’s the link that holds everything else together. That gets weakened and it could all crumble. And he knew how abhorrent I find the practices of Constantine Stakis. He’s been waiting for an opportunity like this for years. A marriage seems like a small price to pay to keep my family’s legacy intact and Stakis out of harm’s way.’
That word again. Marriage. It crashed into her brain. Kallie shook her head. ‘Impossible. I couldn’t. I can’t.’
Alexandros felt a surge of irritation and anger. Why was he even telling her all this? He slashed a hand through the air.
‘This is all beside the point. You don’t even deserve an explanation. All you need to know is that I hold the fate of your family in my hands. And the only way you can influence that for the better is by marrying me. If you don’t, your family can kiss their fortune goodbye.’
‘But that’s…ridiculous…archaic. You don’t want to tie yourself to me—you hate me.’
He leant forward again. ‘Hate is the other side of love, Kallie. I certainly don’t hate you.’ He swept a look up and down that was so hot she felt it on her skin, ‘But I do desire you.’
Little fires of shock raced all over Kallie’s body. His eyes had darkened, eyelids lowered slightly so that they looked slumberous.
He desired her?
Why did that make a treacherous curl of excitement lick through her body…and not pain, or disgust?
Her back was so stiff it hurt. Her voice sounded stilted, desperate and glaringly insincere to her ears. ‘Well, I certainly don’t desire you, Alexandros, so it would be a little one-sided.’
Before she could move out of danger, he had reached across and taken her hand again. Engulfing it with his own. She felt a traitorous pulse start up between her legs and clamped them together. His eyes made a thorough study all the way from her face, the rapid pulse at her neck, down to her chest, where shallow breaths did little to hide her agitation. She could feel her breasts tingle, her nipples hardening, and prayed that he wouldn’t see the reaction.
His eyes came back to hers, smug. ‘You did once, Kallie, and you still do. If I were to stand up, walk around this table and kiss you right now, you’d be begging for it within seconds.’
The very thought of him doing that made her mouth go dry.
‘You flatter yourself…’ she said faintly, knowing her words would have no effect. He was coming at her like a two-tonne lorry and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She seized on something, her hand still trapped by his. ‘Isabelle Zolanz! You’re hardly going to marry me if you’re seeing her. Why don’t you just marry her? You two are lovers after all…’ Something twisted in her gut when she said that and she had to hide her reaction.
He let her hand go and flicked his dismissively in a very Greek gesture. ‘Isabelle is no longer a part of my life.’
Kallie had to suck in a shocked breath at the coldness of his tone. ‘It didn’t look to me the other night as though she was aware of that.’
‘She is now.’ His tone brooked no further comment on the subject. Kallie felt a twinge for the other woman and could only imagine how brutal he’d been.
She had to face it. If she hadn’t already. The young man she had known, the young man who had once been her friend,
