of all the reasons she had privately given herself for yielding to his demands, she now acknowledged the only reason that really truly counted for anything.
It had nothing to do with the school, duty towards her students or, least of all, money.
She had yielded because she fancied him and because she knew, as he did, that to walk away from a dry marriage would be to wonder for ever what it might have been like to sleep with him.
Her head might not want to get into bed with Dio but her body certainly did and this was her window.
The fact that there were a lot of up sides and bonuses attached to her decision was just an added incentive.
‘I’d tell you what I’m feeling,’ he said roughly, ‘but I’m sitting in the lounge at JFK and I wouldn’t want anyone to start noticing the hefty bulge in my trousers...’
‘Dio! That’s...that’s...’
‘I know. Unfortunate, considering I’m going to have to wait a few more hours before I can be satisfied.’
‘That’s not what I meant!’
‘No?’
‘No,’ Lucy told him firmly. To add emphasis to her denial, she very firmly tightened the dressing gown so that she could cover up her treacherously over-heated, semi-naked body. ‘I... I’m happy to discuss the details of...er...our arrangement.’
‘Speak English,’ Dio said drily.
‘I’ll do this honeymoon business with you but only because I don’t have a choice.’
‘That’s not very enthusiastic,’ Dio admonished, hanging onto his temper. If he could put his feelings to one side, if he could forget her duplicitous take on their marriage, then he was damned if he was going to let her get away with dragging her feet and somehow blaming him for the fact that she wanted to sleep with him.
‘Everyone expects you to descend and start flinging money at the school.’
‘I find it doesn’t do to mould your life according to other people’s expectations.’
‘How do I know that once this so-called honeymoon of ours is over you’ll do what you say...?’
‘You don’t.’ Dio was affronted. He had always been a man of his word, which was saying something, in a world where very few men were. He might not have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth but he knew one thing for sure: in his business practices, and in fact in his whole approach to life, he was a damned sight more ethical than a lot of his counterparts whose climb up the ladder had been a great deal less precarious than his had been!
‘You’ll have to rely on that little thing called trust.’
Lucy didn’t say anything and Dio felt the significance of her silence like a disapproving slap on the face.
Rich, coming from the ice-maiden who had strung him along.
‘I’m not a man who breaks his word,’ he said coolly. ‘I know many who do.’
Lucy thought of her father, who had cheated so many people out of their pensions, and she flushed guiltily. Were Dio’s thoughts running along the same lines? He might have married her for all the wrong reasons but then he had never claimed to love her, had he? Even when they had been dating, he had never talked about love.
And something deep inside her knew that, if he had given his word, then he wasn’t going to break it.
‘Shall I book somewhere?’ she asked stiffly. ‘I expect you want to use one of the houses...’
‘I think you can climb out of “personal assistant” mode on this occasion,’ Dio said softly. ‘It somehow ruins the...sizzle.’
His husky voice was doing all sorts of peculiar things to her body and she squirmed on the chair, idly glancing round at all the top-notch, expensive equipment in the very expensive kitchen.
‘I surely need to book flights for us?’ Lucy intended to do her very best not to let either of them forget that their weird honeymoon was built on stuff that was very prosaic.
This wasn’t going to be one of those romantic affairs where they would spend their time whispering sweet nothings and staring longingly at one another over candlelit dinners before racing to their room so that they could rip the clothes off one another.
This was more getting something elemental out of their systems.
‘Don’t give it a thought,’ Dio said briskly. ‘I’ll get my secretary to do the necessary.’
‘But where will we be going? And when, exactly?’
‘I’m at JFK now. When I return to London, I’ll have a quick turnaround. Be prepared to be out of the country this time tomorrow.’
‘What? I can’t just leave here at a moment’s notice.’
‘Of course you can. My secretary will take care of everything. You just need to get ready for me...’
‘Get ready for you?’
Dio laughed at the outrage in her voice. He was so hard for her right now, he was finding it difficult to move.
Small, high breasts... He had glimpsed the shadow of her cleavage in some of the more daring dresses she had worn to social events over the course of the marriage. He wondered what colour her nipples were. She was a natural blonde and he imagined that they were rosy pink, kissable nipples. He wondered what she would taste like when he buried himself between her thighs.
He wondered who else she had shared her body with before she had met him.
It was a grimly unappealing thought and he ditched it before it had time to take root.
‘Use your imagination,’ he drawled. ‘Get into the head set...’
‘Yes, sir...’ Lucy muttered under her breath and she heard his soft laughter down the end of the line. Sexy laughter. The laughter of a man who’d got exactly what he wanted. She fidgeted a little more and forced herself to focus. ‘And what should I pack?’
‘Don’t. I’ll make sure that there are clothes waiting for you at the other end.’
‘I don’t want to be dressed up like a Barbie doll,’ she told him quickly. ‘That’s not part of this arrangement.’
‘I shall see you very soon, Lucy...’
‘But you still haven’t told me where we’ll be going!’
‘I know. Isn’t it exciting? I, for one, can’t wait.’
And he disconnected. Lucy was left holding a dead phone and feeling panicked because now there was no going back.
She tried to think of life after the next ten days but she found her mind getting stuck with images of Dio in bed with her. After she had discovered the truth behind their sham of a marriage, she had told
