looked at him warily. ‘Or...what?’
DIO SMILED SLOWLY and relaxed back.
Sooner or later, this weird impasse between them would have had to find a resolution; he had known that. Always one to dominate the situations around him, he had allowed it to continue for far longer than acceptable.
Why?
Had he thought that she would have thawed slowly? She’d certainly shown no signs of doing anything of the sort as the months had progressed. In fact, they had achieved the unthinkable—a functioning, working relationship devoid of sex, a business arrangement that was hugely successful. She complemented him in ways he could never have imagined. She had been the perfect foil for his hard-nosed, aggressive, seize-and-conquer approach to business and, frankly, life in general. He hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had had to haul himself up by his boot straps, and the challenges of the journey to success had made him brutally tough.
He was the king of the concrete jungle and he was sharp enough to know that pretenders to the throne were never far behind. He was feared and respected in equal measure and his wife’s ingrained elegance counterbalanced his more high-voltage, thrusting personality beautifully.
Together they worked.
Maybe that was why he had not broached the subject of all those underlying problems between them. He was a practical man and maybe he had chosen not to rock the boat because they had a successful partnership.
Or maybe he had just been downright lazy. Or—and this was a less welcome thought—vain enough to imagine that the woman he still stupidly fancied would end up coming to him of her own accord.
The one thing he hadn’t expected was talk of a divorce.
He poured himself another drink and returned to the chair, in no great hurry to break the silence stretching between them.
‘When we got married,’ Dio said slowly, ‘it didn’t occur to me that I would end up with a wife who slept in a separate wing of the house when we happened to be under the same roof. It has to be said that that’s not every man’s dream of a happy marriage.’
‘I didn’t think you had dreams of happy marriages, Dio. I never got the impression that you were the sort of guy who had fantasies of coming home to the wife and the two-point-two kids and the dog and the big back garden.’
‘Why would you say that?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘Just an impression I got.’ But that hadn’t stopped her from falling for him. She had got lost in those amazing eyes, had been seduced by that deep, dark drawl and had been willing to ignore what her head had been telling her because her heart had been talking a lot louder.
‘I may not have spent my life gearing up for a walk down the aisle but that doesn’t mean that I wanted to end up with a woman who didn’t share my bed.’
Lucy reddened. ‘Well, both of us has ended up disappointed with what we got,’ she said calmly.
Dio waved his hand dismissively. ‘There’s no point trying to analyse our marriage,’ he said. ‘That’s a pointless exercise. I was going to talk to you about options...’ He sipped his drink and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘And I’m going to give you a very good one. You want a divorce? Fine. I can’t stop you heading for the nearest lawyer and getting divorce papers drawn up. Course, like I said, that would involve you leaving with nothing. A daunting prospect for someone who has spent the last year and a half never having to think about money.’
‘Money isn’t the be all and end all of everything.’
‘Do you know what? It’s been my experience that the people who are fond of saying things like that are the people who have money at their disposal. People who have no money are usually inclined to take a more pragmatic approach.’ Having grown up with nothing, Dio knew very well that money actually was the be all and end all of everything. It gave you freedom like nothing else could. Freedom to do exactly what you wanted to do and to be accountable to no one.
‘I’m saying that it doesn’t always bring happiness.’ She thought of her own unhappy, lavish childhood. From the outside, they had looked like a happy, privileged family. Behind closed doors, it had been just the opposite. No amount of money had been able to whitewash that.
‘But a lack of it can bring, well, frustration? Misery? Despair? Imagine yourself leaving all of this so that you can take up residence in a one-bedroom flat where you’ll live a life battling rising damp and mould on the walls.’
Lucy gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Aren’t you being a bit dramatic, Dio?’
‘London is an expensive place. Naturally, you would have some money at your disposal, but nothing like enough to find anywhere halfway decent to live.’
‘Then I’d move out of London.’
‘Into the countryside? You’ve lived in London all your life. You’re accustomed to having the theatre and the opera and all those art exhibitions you enjoy going to on tap... But don’t worry. You can still enjoy all of that but, sadly, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You want your divorce? You can have it. But only after you’ve given me what I expected to get when I married you.’
It took a few seconds for Lucy’s brain to make the right connections and catch up with what he was telling her but, even so, she heard herself ask, falteringly, ‘What are you talking about?’
Dio raised his eyebrows and smiled slowly. ‘Don’t tell me that someone with a maths degree can’t figure out what two and two makes? I want my honeymoon, Lucy.’
‘I... I don’t know what you mean...’ Lucy stammered, unable to tear her eyes away from the harsh lines of his beautiful face.
‘Of course you do! I didn’t think I was signing up for a sexless marriage when I slipped that wedding band on your finger. You want out now? Well, you can have out just as soon as we put an end to the unfinished business between us.’
‘That’s blackmail!’ She sprang to her feet and began restively pacing the room. Her nerves were all over the place. She had looked forward to that wretched honeymoon night so much...and now here he was, offering it to her, but at a price.
‘That’s the offer on the table. We sleep together, be man and wife in more than just name only, and you get to leave with an allowance generous enough to ensure that you spend the rest of your life in comfort.’
‘Why would you want that? You’re not even attracted to me!’
‘Come a little closer and I can easily prove you wrong on that point.’
Heart thudding, Lucy kept a healthy distance, but she was looking at him again, noting the dark intent in his eyes. The desire she had shoved away, out of sight, began to uncurl inside her.
She’d been foolish enough to think that he had been interested in her, attracted to her, and had discovered that it had all been a lie. He had strung her along because he had decided that she would be a useful addition to his life.
There
