style="font-size:15px;"> She narrowed her eyes. ‘How?’
‘I don’t want to hurt Sofia or tarnish her reputation by telling her I don’t want her. If I do that there’s no way her father will sell back the island, even if I offer him double what it’s worth by today’s values.’ Cobalt eyes bored into her. ‘But an acceptable way of breaking off the engagement is to explain that I’ve fallen in love with someone else and am planning to marry her instead. Which will allow Sofia the chance to walk away with her pride intact.’
‘You mean a fake marriage?’ Tamsyn frowned. ‘Like fake news?’
‘A temporary marriage,’ he amended drily. ‘With a very generous divorce settlement at the end of it. Sofia gets a dignified let-out clause. I get to buy the island and you end up with a hefty pay-out. This could make you a very wealthy woman, Tamsyn. You could have the kind of lifestyle most people only dream of.’
Tamsyn stared at him, trying not to be swayed by the thought of all that money—but for someone who’d always lived hand-to-mouth, that was easier said than done. She thought about not having to watch every single penny. About being able to buy clothes which didn’t come from the local market, or thrift store. She thought about having food in the fridge which wasn’t past its sell-by date. Being able to take buses instead of walking all the time. Yes, it was tempting—but not tempting enough. Didn’t Xan’s arrogant certainty that there was no problem money couldn’t solve make her want to reject his offer? Because she wasn’t some commodity. She shook her curls. ‘Go and ask someone else,’ she said coldly. ‘There must be loads more suitable candidates who would happily masquerade as your wife.’
‘Oh, there are,’ he agreed benignly. ‘But that’s the whole point. You are so eminently unsuitable that everyone will believe it’s true love.’
His words hurt. Of course they did. Tamsyn might have always thought of herself as someone who didn’t conform. Who swam against the tide. But considering yourself a bit of a rebel was very different to the man who’d been your first lover, saying you were the most unsuitable person he could think of to marry. Her heart clenched with pain and this time she really did want to get up from that pristine white table. In a parallel universe—she might have upended it, letting the crystal and the silver cutlery cascade to the floor in a satisfying cacophony of sound. But she’d tried that kind of approach with him once before and all it had done was made her look stupid.
And something was keeping her rooted to her seat. She tried telling herself she should wait to see how much he was offering in return for accepting his extraordinary proposal, but deep down Tamsyn knew it was more than that. He was right. She was curious.
‘So why didn’t you fancy her?’ she questioned, like someone determined to rub salt into an already raw wound. As if by hurting herself, it meant nobody else would be able to. ‘If she’s so beautiful?”
Xan stared at his lobster which had already congealed on his plate. There was no need to explain that somehow, Tamsyn Wilson made every other woman look almost tame in comparison. That he hadn’t been able to shift the stubborn memory of how her skin had tasted or how it had felt to have her legs wrapped around his thrusting hips. Why flatter her with the knowledge that she was the fire which made every other woman seem like a mere flicker? He swallowed. That kind of information was irrelevant.
‘Chemistry is intangible,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s not like a shopping list you just tick off as you go along.’
For the first time during the entire conversation, she smiled. ‘You do a lot of shopping do you Xan?’ she questioned. ‘Somehow I can’t really imagine you pushing a trolley round the supermarket,. I’ve certainly never see anyone like you when I’m stacking the shelves.’
Xan was unable to stop the brief curving of his lips in response. ‘I buy cars and planes and works of art. The purchase of food I leave to my housekeeper. But you’re trying to change the subject, Tamsyn. Is that because you find my suggestion unpalatable?’ he said softly.
Tamsyn shrugged. She wasn’t sure how she felt. About anything. Something told her to walk away while she still could, but she couldn’t deny that the delicious food had lulled her into a state of sluggishness. And wasn’t Xan’s powerful presence only adding to her languor? Wasn’t she stupidly reluctant to turn her back and never see him again? ‘It’s a crazy idea,’ she said weakly.
He leaned forward as if sensing a window of opportunity and suddenly she could see why he was such a successful businessman.
‘Imagine no longer having to work unless you wanted to. You could go back to school—you are an intelligent woman,’ he said, his Greek accent dipping into a sultry caress. ‘Imagine being able to live somewhere which isn’t a...
Tamsyn’s shoulders stiffened as tactfully, his words faded away. ‘Isn’t a what?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
Somehow his careful diplomacy was more insulting than if he’d come right out and told her she lived in a slum. ‘Of course it does! It matters to me. How the hell do you know where I live anyway?’
He gave her an odd kind of look. ‘I had you checked out, of course.’
‘You had me checked out,’ she repeated slowly. ‘By who?’
‘There are people on my payroll who can find out almost anything. How else do you think I knew where you worked, Tamsyn?’
‘I just assumed... I thought you might have asked the Sheikh.’
‘No.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Kulal and Hannah know nothing about this.’
It was the mention of her sister’s name which startled Tamsyn out of her lazy stupor. She had been about to tell Xan exactly what he could do with his offer—without letting him know how much he’d managed to hurt her. She would have told him that she mightn’t have a job right now, but she would find one soon enough. She always did. Because one of the advantages of casual labour meant there were always vacancies for women like her. Women who had slipped through the net at school and at home. Who’d never had the comfort of regular meals or someone gently nagging at them to do their homework. She would get by because although she might not have any formal qualifications to her name, she was a graduate from the School of Survival. You didn’t sleep in a room with winter frost inside the windows listening to sounds of arguments bouncing off the thin walls next door, without developing a tough exterior.
But what about Hannah? Her sister was in an entirely different situation. She might now be the wife of the world’s richest men but that didn’t necessarily mean she was safe. When she’d been in Zahristan for the wedding, Tamsyn had sensed all was not well in the new marriage. How could it be—when it had taken place between a powerful sheikh and someone as humble as Hannah? They had married because Hannah had been pregnant with the Sheikh’s baby—but what if Kulal had only married her sister to get some kind of legal hold over his offspring? The Sheikh had all the power now that he had married her, didn’t he? While Hannah had none. Not really. She might be the new Queen of a powerful desert region but she couldn’t even speak the language of her adopted home.
Tamsyn folded up her napkin and placed it neatly on the table beside her empty plate. What if she agreed to Xan’s crazy proposal, but on her terms? What if she demanded a whole load of money—more even than he’d probably contemplated giving her? Enough to bail out her sister, should the need ever arise. Wouldn’t it be beyond fabulous to have enough cash to
