Unwillingly, Lizzie took the boxes from him. Don’t you dare cry, she warned herself as she went into the living area. She didn’t dare, with the amount of mascara she had on.
Would it really have been so difficult for him to tell her that she looked good, even if he didn’t really think so? He must know how anxious she was feeling. How much she needed the confidence his support would have given her.
Dropping her coat onto one of the sofas, Lizzie opened the first of the boxes, her eyes widening in disbelief as she looked at the contents. The necklace sparkling on the velvet couldn’t possibly be real, could it? All those diamonds—and a matching bangle. She closed the box quickly. Her dress might look vaguely Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but she certainly wasn’t going to risk wearing something that might be worth a king’s ransom just to reinforce that image.
She was about to open the other boxes when Ilios returned.
He’d obviously showered, because his hair was still damp—and not just on his head. Lizzie had to fight to drag her gaze away from the damp, dark silky body hair she could just see as he finished fastening his shirt. His unexpected request for help as he opened his palm to reveal a pair of cufflinks startled her as she refocused her gaze. Her mouth instantly went dry as a slow ache uncurled inside her body—like woodsmoke, and just as dangerously pervasive.
Somehow she managed to scramble to her feet and go to him, taking the links from him. Rose-gold and plain, they felt soft and warm in her palm. The initials on them were slightly faded, although she could still make out the interlaced A and M. Almost absently she rubbed her fingertip over them.
‘They were my father’s.’ She heard Ilios’s voice somewhere above her head. ‘The design is Venetian. It is a tradition in our family that when a boy reaches the age of maturity he is given a pair of such cufflinks by his father—a sign of his manhood. Since my father was not able to do that for me, I wear his instead.’
For the second time in less than half an hour Lizzie had to remind herself of the damage tears would do to her eye make-up.
Watching Lizzie’s head, bent towards his wrist, the nape of her neck exposed to his gaze, Ilios had to resist the temptation to reach out and curl one of the small escaping fronds of hair round his finger. He could quite easily have fastened the cufflinks himself—far more easily than Lizzie, in fact—but for some reason he had decided to ask her to do it for him. As a test of her suitability to be his wife? he taunted himself. Or as a test to himself, to prove he was not as susceptible to her as his body insisted on repeatedly telling him he was?
She really wished she wasn’t having to do this, Lizzie admitted. Her fingers were stiff with nervousness and yet at the same time they were trembling. She could smell the scent of Ilios’s freshly showered body, mixed with some kind of discreet male cologne, and whilst she wouldn’t have said that the effect it was having on her senses was making her want to rip open his shirt and bury her face against his torso, it wasn’t far short of that.
It was a relief to finally complete her task and be able to step from him, draw in a gulp of hopefully steadying and non-Ilios-smelling air.
‘You aren’t wearing your jewellery.’
‘I … I thought it might be a bit too much.’
The dark eyebrows rose. ‘I disagree. You should wear it.’
Because if she didn’t she’d look out of place. That was the unspoken message he was giving her, Lizzie recognised as she picked up the two smaller boxes and opened them. She had to blink at the magnificence of the diamond earstuds in front of her. They had to be at least a carat each, and so brilliant they dazzled her.
Quickly Lizzie slipped them into her ears. With her hair up she did need something, she acknowledged. But merely ‘something’—not these dazzling and no doubt very expensive earrings.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ilios demanded.
‘I was just thinking how many families the price of these would feed. It seems wrong to wear something like this when so many people are going through such a hard time. It makes me feel uncomfortable.’
‘So if I were to offer them as a gift you would rather I gave their value in money to a charity? Is that what you’re saying?’ Ilios taunted her.
‘Yes,’ Lizzie responded—truthfully and without hesitation.
‘Put on the watch, and then we had better leave,’ was all Ilios said in response.
She was lying, of course; she had to be. He wasn’t deceived or taken in by her, nor would he ever be—by her or by any other woman.
The watch was discreetly expensive: a plain black leather band and a white-gold face was studded with small diamonds.
Since Ilios was already shrugging on his suit jacket, Lizzie fastened the watch quickly and went to pick up her coat—just as Ilios too was reaching for it. Their fingertips met and touched, his over her own, warm and strong, filling Lizzie with a need to simply curl her fingers into his in a silent plea for acceptance and comfort.
Frantically she pulled back, grabbing hold of her coat with her other hand and telling Ilios quickly, ‘It’s all right. I don’t need to put it on. I’ll just carry it until we get out of the car.’
She really didn’t think she was up to any more physical contact right now, with a man whose mere presence seemed to have the ability to send her body’s awareness of him to stratospheric levels.
The gallery, when they reached it, was ablaze with lights, and with the shine reflected from the stunning amount of diamond jewellery being worn. Ilios’s hand was on Lizzie’s arm as he guided her through the mass of paparazzi, waiting to snap photographs of the rich and famous as they made their way from the kerb to the door.
‘I can see now why you aren’t keen on my outfit. Obviously to be considered anything like worthy of you I’d have to have dressed very differently,’ Lizzie was forced to admit reluctantly once they had stepped inside. She had seen how many of the other women were wearing tiny little dresses, bandaged—or so it seemed—to their equally tiny bodies. The dresses revealed lengths of lean bronzed leg and the swell of quite often implausibly taut and rounded breasts.
No wonder he had derided her choice of clothes if this was what he considered normal clothing for the female body.
‘The women you are looking at are high-price tarts up for sale—on the hunt for the richest husband they can snare,’ Ilios told Lizzie grimly. ‘The clothes they are wearing denote their profession, as does their desire to be photographed. It’s their version of newspaper advertising. Come with me.’
As though by magic the mass of bronzed flesh parted to let them through—although not without some very predatory and inviting looks being thrown in Ilios’s direction, Lizzie noticed.
Beyond the call girls and the men hanging round them, in the interior of the gallery were several groups of people: men in business suits, and elegant, confident-looking women in beautiful designer clothes.
One of the men came forward, extending his hand.
‘Ilios, my friend. It is good to see you.’
‘You only say that, Stefanos, because you hope to persuade me to buy something,’ Ilios responded, turning to Lizzie
