Nikos Lakis managed to imbue the casual enquiry with amused incredulity.
Katie’s eyes narrowed as those black eyes broadcast useless ornament. It seemed as if the antipathy she felt was fully reciprocated.
‘When it doesn’t interfere with shopping or polishing my nails.’
Tom, who had never heard that particular tone in her soft, pleasing voice before, laughed uncomfortably as though she’d made a joke he didn’t quite understand. Nikos didn’t laugh; his merciless eyes continued to rake her angry face and then, much to her dismay, his long fingers curled over her left hand, which lay clenched on the table-top.
Without haste he unfurled her tapering fingers one by one. The tip of his thumb grazed the blue-veined inner aspect of her wrist as he turned her hand over, exposing the short, unpolished condition of her nails; his touch also exposed her nerve endings, which came to tingling life.
Katie would have liked to crawl out of her skin.
‘Not today,’ he remarked softly.
His soft voice did things almost as uncomfortable to her as the light touch. Dabbing her tongue to the tiny beads of sweat across her upper lip, she snatched her hand away.
Breathing hard through her flared nostrils, she lifted her chin. ‘I’m an events organiser.’ And a flipping good one too, she felt like adding to the patronising prat.
‘Impressive,’ he drawled, sounding anything but impressed. ‘And what does an events organiser do exactly?’ he added, making it sound as though as far as he was concerned it couldn’t be much.
Tom, sensing the atmosphere for the first time, looked slightly uneasy. ‘Katie works for a charity, but she’ll be giving up work after the wedding.’
‘Ah…the wedding—and when will that be?’
‘I can’t get Katie to set a date.’
Nikos’s lazy glance turned to Katie. ‘Really? You do surprise me.’
He reminded her of some sleek cat playing with a mouse, not because he was particularly hungry, just because it was in his nature to be cruel. The more she saw of this man, the more she saw to dislike. Kate’s nostrils flared as her teeth came together in a smile that was as brittle as it was brilliant.
Two could play at this, she thought grimly. If he was going to drop her in it there didn’t seem any point prolonging the agony or his pleasure.
It was a dangerous tactic, but Katie felt uncharacteristically reckless, and at least this way she’d know one way or the other.
‘And you, Mr Lakis—is there a Mrs Lakis?’ she enquired sweetly. ‘Or any little Lakises?’
Katie held her breath; the silence that followed her question seemed to last for ever. When her lowered gaze lifted she was surprised to see something that might have been admiration in Nikos Lakis’s dark, glittering eyes.
‘There is only one Mrs Lakis in my life, and she’s my stepmother, who’s very much an active force in my life.’ He smiled, not in a snide, snooty, I’ve-just-stepped-on-something-nasty way—anything but. Katie’s jaw dropped as she watched the stern lines of his proudly sculpted face soften as he produced a real, honest-to-goodness grin.
The transformation was nothing short of devastating. Katie only just stopped herself grinning fatuously back.
‘So you’re not married, then?’ she persisted doggedly.
‘If Nik had married, Katie, I think we’d have read about it.’ Tom laughed. ‘The media would have had a field day.’
You don’t know the half of it, Katie thought, feeling a tide of guilty colour seep up her neck. She pressed a hand to her hot cheek.
She was disgusted with herself that in her desire to score points against the detestable Nikos Lakis she’d lost track of what was most important. The public humiliation and scandal of having his fiancée revealed as being secretly married to Nikos Lakis would be devastating for Tom and her primary concern had to be protecting him from any fallout.
‘Marriage is inevitable if only for the procreation of…how did you put it?…little Lakises. We Greeks are a little old-fashioned about such things.’
‘I’d have said cold-blooded.’
Tom began to look seriously disturbed as he laid a warning hand on her shoulder; the pressure made Katie wince. Nikos’s eyes followed the other man’s gesture, and the permanent line over the bridge of his masterful nose deepened fractionally.
‘Shall we order?’ Tom said, patting her arm before his hand fell away.
‘I’m not hungry.’ Katie doubted she could have eaten a scrap even if her future had depended on it, which was no more an absurd scenario than the real one—having her future and Tom’s dependent upon the discretion of a man who seemed as capricious as he was overbearing.
‘Greeks are not renowned for their cold-bloodedness, Katerina.’
‘Oops, was that your ego I stepped on? Oh, but I’m sure they’re spectacular lovers.’ She turned the voltage of her insincere smile up by several watts before allowing it to fade away to grim contempt. ‘But pardon me if I happen to think that picking out some poor girl with good childbearing hips and the right blood lines to produce an heir is extremely cold-blooded.’
‘Katie!’
Nikos, a smile fixed on his sensual lips, lifted his hand in a soothing gesture to still the other man’s appalled protest. ‘You are marrying a romantic, my friend,’ he drawled. ‘Someone to whom arranged marriages are anathema.’ He scanned her face with derisive eyes. ‘Am I right, Katerina? You would never marry for anything but love? Certainly not for anything as base as…security.’ His long forefinger seemingly accidentally brushed the diamond nestling on her finger.
His mockery, as corrosive as battery acid, made her long to wipe the smirk off his face. Her hands curled into fists on the table-top.
‘In a perfect world everyone would marry for love,’ she told him stiffly.
Nikos’s mobile lips curled contemptuously. ‘So you are a pragmatist after all, which is of course infinitely preferable to a hypocrite.’
At his soft, sibilant words the last remnants of Katie’s trepidation were washed away on a violent tide of anger. It was one sneer too many. She lifted her furious sparkling eyes to his lean, dark face—just where did he get off looking down his superior nose at her?
Buying a husband might be a pretty pathetic thing to do, but at least she’d had a damned good excuse, whereas what excuse had Nikos Lakis had? A quick way to get money to fuel his extravagant lifestyle when he’d fallen out of favour with his rich daddy seemed the safest bet. If anyone is the hypocrite here, it isn’t me, Katie thought scornfully.
Tom, who had the suspicion he was missing something in this rapid exchange, seized on the mention of something he felt he was an expert on. ‘Oh, Katie is very practical.’
Nikos looked from the ring on her finger to the diamonds encircling her
