Did the idea of getting your hands dirty like the rest of us seem too sordid when Daddy withdrew his support?’
He slid her a look of smouldering dislike before taking the road she had indicated. ‘I’m not about to explain myself to you.’
‘Ditto,’ she added nastily. Of all the men in the world for Harvey to produce for her to marry, why, oh, why had it been this one? Sometimes fate had a very poor sense of humour.
‘Theos!’ he ejaculated raggedly. ‘You are the most poisonous female I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter!’ he gritted. ‘It will be well worth the inconvenience to myself to prevent you ruining my friend’s life.’
Katie stiffened as an icy shiver slid up her spine. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I think you know exactly what I mean.’
‘Pretend just for a moment that I’m not a mind-reader.’ She was unable to conceal the fearful quiver in her voice.
‘If I thought for one moment you would make Tom happy I would give you this divorce.’
‘I will make Tom happy. I love him…’ she declared loudly.
A scornful sound vibrated in Nikos’s brown throat. ‘I watched you together; you do not love Tom,’ he announced calmly.
‘And you’d know, I suppose?’
‘I know how a woman in love acts, and you were not that woman. There was no passion in your eyes when they touched his; you act as if he’s your brother,’ he sneered scornfully.
‘We don’t all wear our hearts on our sleeves and there is a lot more to marriage than sex!’
‘Both these things are true and I agree that many successful marriages are based on more pragmatic reasons; I have no problem with that, so long as both parties enter into the arrangement with their eyes open.’
‘Like us.’
‘Unless you are planning on not sharing Tom’s bed there are some very obvious differences, but, yes, on your part there are very obviously similarities. However, unlike Tom, I was not madly in love with you,’ he ground out sarcastically. ‘It is your hypocrisy in pretending you are marrying for some pure and elevated reasons that I despise. The thing you love is the idea of being married to someone who can buy you diamonds and keep you in your expensive clothes.’
‘How dare you act as if you know me? You may have married me, but you don’t know me at all!’
‘But we are married and, while we are, Tom is safe from making the worst mistake of his life…’
‘And you can’t marry your girlfriend.’ Surely that consideration had to carry weight with him.
‘She will wait.’ His faintly startled tone suggested no other possibility had even occurred to him.
For a brief moment Katie allowed herself the indulgence of imagining Nikos Lakis left at the altar, a shattered man. The bride leaving him in this happy vision bore a startling resemblance to herself. As pleasant as this fantasy was, Katie had to think of some way of dealing with Nikos in the real world, and denying him her favours was hardly going to do it…what would?
It was so obvious she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it earlier.
‘So maybe you’ve got a girlfriend who will let you walk over her and wait for you until doomsday, but the press are a different kettle of fish—they don’t have so much tolerance for rich playboys.’
Katie sensed his big body tense behind the wheel. ‘Meaning…?’
Katie refused to be put off by the menace in his silky voice. ‘Meaning that some sections of the press would have a field day if they found out a member of the Lakis family had gone through a fake wedding ceremony so he could get the money to maintain his lavish lifestyle.’
Greek billionaire, young and more beautiful than any man had a right to be… Katie didn’t know much about such things, but she was betting the press would have files several feet thick on Nikos Lakis and more than a passing interest in his wedding plans past, present or future! Of course she would never actually go to the press, but he didn’t have to know that. On this occasion, him thinking she were some avaricious cow definitely worked in her favour. She flickered a cautious glance at his profile…and swallowed; she had definitely made her point.
‘I can just see the headlines now…’ she breathed airily. Even though she was staring fixedly out the window she was aware of the explosive tension in the tall figure beside her. The silence between them lengthened until Katie could no longer bear it; she swivelled in her seat and shot a look at him.
If Nikos’s expression was any indication, he was seeing those headlines she’d spoken of too. Katie salved her troubled conscience by reminding herself she would not have had to resort to these sort of tactics if he hadn’t played dirty first.
‘You are threatening me?’ he finally asked incredulously.
Kate found his silky shark’s smile and soft voice a million times more menacing than a lot of shouting and swearing.
In fact it was so unnerving that had she had any alternative or been any less stubborn she might have retracted there and then.
‘Think very carefully before you do that, yineka mou.’
Now who was threatening…? ‘I am not your yineka mou,’ she gritted automatically, before adding, ‘it’s the third house on the left after the telephone kiosk.’ She took some comfort from the fact that the street lights in this tree-lined avenue of solid Edwardian houses were fairly bright, and even in subdued light the car Nikos drove was likely to be noticed. He struck her as the practical type of man who would wait until there weren’t any witnesses before he strangled her.
The fact that he wanted to strangle her was not in doubt!
‘You speak Greek?’ Nikos sounded startled.
Katie froze; her response to his sarcastic endearment had been unconscious. ‘Just a few words,’ she mumbled, thinking of the lullaby her mother had sung to her when she’d been unable to sleep. That and a few endearments were the limit of her vocabulary, though she wished right now that she had a better grasp of her mother tongue.
‘When I visit a country,’ she told him blandly, ‘I make it a rule to know how to ask directions to the loo, order a drink and understand what a man is saying when he makes love to me.’
That’s me, the sophisticated woman of the world, well travelled and even more well versed in other things. My God, would he laugh if he knew how far from the truth this was; the only time her passport had come out of mothballs was on a day trip to Calais and as for the other! There could be few twenty-five-year-olds less experienced!
All regretful thoughts of bilingualism and the blank page that was her sex life left her head as they rounded the next tight corner.
‘Oh, my goodness…! Stop the car!’ she suddenly shrieked urgently.
‘There is no need for theatrics, or threats. Be reasonable. I would be a bad enemy
