he prompted.
‘I need time,’ she said weakly. ‘I can’t just—’ She broke off, unable to say more, feeling as if a tornado had just scooped her up and whirled her about.
‘Of course,’ Nikos conceded smoothly.
He got to his feet. His six-foot-plus height seemed to overpower her.
‘Think it over. I’m flying to Zurich tomorrow, but I will be back in the UK at the end of next week. You can give me your answer then. In the meantime, if you have any further questions feel free to text or email me.’
She watched him extract a business card and lay it on her father’s desk before turning back to her.
Suddenly, he smiled. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Diana. It could work perfectly for both of us. A marriage of convenience—people made them all the time in the past. They still do, even if they don’t admit it.’
He turned on his heel, leaving her sitting staring after him as he left the room. She heard his swift footsteps, the front door opening and closing again. The sound of a car starting. Her heart was pounding like a hammer inside her. And it wasn’t just because of the bombshell he’d dropped in her lap.
When he smiles and calls me by my name...
She felt her pulse give a quiver, and deep inside her she felt danger roil. For reasons she could not understand Nikos Tramontes, of all the men she had ever known, seemed to possess an ability to...to disturb her. To make her hyper-aware of his masculinity. Of her own femininity. She didn’t know where it was coming from, or why—she only knew it was dangerous.
I don’t want to react to him like that—I don’t want to!
Her features contorted. Nikos Tramontes had walked into her life out of nowhere and put down in front of her what could be the best hope she had of getting exactly what she wanted—the means to save Greymont. As easily and as painlessly as it was possible to do so outside of a lottery win.
Yes, he was a complete stranger—but, as he’d said, they could get to know each other during their engagement. Yes, his announcement had initially shocked her. But, as he’d also said, such marriages for mutual advantage had been perfectly unexceptional to her ancestors. And theirs would be brief—a year or two at most. Not the life-long commitment that Toby would have required...
And yet for all that she heard a voice wail in her head.
Why can’t he look like Toby? Overweight and pug-faced! That would be so, so much better! So much safer.
So much safer than the dangerous quickening of her blood that came whenever she thought of Nikos Tramontes.
Deliberately, she silenced her fear. Dismissing it. There was no need for such anxieties. None! That quickening of her blood was irrelevant—completely irrelevant. It had nothing to do with what Nikos Tramontes was offering her.
The formality of a marriage of convenience, for outward show only—a dispassionate, temporary union to provide him with an assured entrée into her world and her with the means to preserve her inheritance. Nothing else—nothing that had anything to do with that quickening of her pulse.
It was because she owned Greymont and came with the social position and connections he wanted to acquire that he was interested in her. Nothing more than that. Oh, he would want her to grace his arm, be an ornament for him—that was understandable. But that would be in public. In private their relationship would be cordial, but fundamentally, she reassured herself, it would be little more than a business arrangement at heart. He got a society wife—she got Greymont restored. Mutually beneficial.
We would be associates. That’s a good word for it.
With a little start she realised she was giving his extraordinary proposition serious consideration.
Her mind reeled again.
Could she really do this? Accept his offer—use it to save Greymont?
It was all she could think about as the days went by. Days spent in visits from the architect, and from the specialist companies that would undertake the careful restoration and conservation work on Greymont that would have to be carried out in accordance to the strict building regulations for historic listed buildings, adding to the complexity—and the cost.
With every passing day she could feel the temptation to accept what Nikos was offering her coiling itself like a serpent around her. Tightening its grip with every coil.
* * *
Nikos settled himself into a seat in first class. His mood was good—very good. His decision to select Diana St Clair as the means of achieving his life’s second imperative goal might have been made impulsively, but he’d always trusted his instincts. They’d never failed him in business yet, enabling his rise to riches to be as meteoric as it had been steep.
A faint frown furrowed his brow as he accepted a glass of champagne from the attentive stewardess.
But marriage is not a business decision...
He shook the thought from him. His liaison with Nadya hadn’t been a business decision, but it had proved highly beneficial to both of them while it had lasted, with each of them gaining substantially from it. There was no reason why his time with Diana St Clair should not do likewise. As well as gaining the restoration of her home, she would gain an attentive husband and a very attentive lover.
What more could she—or he—want?
Certainly not love.
His mouth twisted. Love was of no interest to him. He’d never known it, did not want it. And nor, clearly, did Diana St Clair, or she would have sent him packing when he’d set out his proposal in front of her. But she hadn’t—and she would accept it, he knew, his expression changing to one of confident assurance.
What he was offering suited her perfectly. And not just as the means to save her home. On a much more personal level too. Oh, she might not yet realise that her inner ice maiden had finally met a challenge it could not freeze off, but when the time came—and come it would!—she would accept from him all the exquisite sensual pleasure that he would ensure she experienced, all the pleasure that he was so hotly anticipating for himself.
It would be his gift to her—opening the door for her to accept the admiration and desire of men at last. Frozen as she was within, he would ignite within her that flare of sensual awareness he’d seen so briefly, so revealingly in her eyes when he’d first looked upon her.
He would not hurry her—he would give her time to get used to him—but in the end... His smile deepened and he took a mouthful of champagne, easing his shoulders as an image of her pale, exquisite beauty formed in his mind’s eye, lingering over the fine-boned features, the silken line of her mouth.
In the end she would thaw.
And melt into his waiting arms.
* * *
Diana stared at the vast bouquet of exotic, highly scented lilies that sat on the Boule table in the hall, fragrancing the air. Then she stared down at the cheque she was holding in her slightly shaking hands, and the
