Читать книгу Bought: The Greek's Bride - Люси Монро, Lucy Monroe, Люси Монро - Страница 5

“AND WHAT HAS made you draw this brilliant conclusion?” she demanded in a tone her dad would have recognized with trepidation.

Ellie didn’t get mad easily, but once she was angry…she didn’t back down.

“Look at the way you blush when we discuss sex.”

“Married women blush. If that’s your full supporting argument, you need to hone your deductive reasoning skills.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do not play games with me about this. I know what I know.”

“What you think you know.”

“Stop this foolish claim. I am sorry if my observation has piqued your feminine pride, but I will never allow you to lie to me.”

“Have issues with honesty do you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s surprising. Most businessmen at your level can be very inventive with the truth.”

“But I will not tolerate untruth from those in my personal life. Ever.”

“And will you give the same level of integrity to a relationship?”

“Count on it.”

“In that case, let me repeat…I am not a virgin.”

His jaw tautened and white lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. He was getting seriously upset by her adamant claim to sexual experience. “You have never had a serious relationship.”

“Is that what my father told you?”

He didn’t even look uncomfortable at being accused of talking about her in very private terms with her father. “Yes.”

“Well, he obviously doesn’t know everything about me, which should hardly come as a surprise.” He had to have seen ample evidence during the time they’d been dating how far from close she was with George Wentworth.

“He has reason to know certain things.”

“You mean the bodyguards I supposedly no longer have?”

Sandor managed to look slightly chagrined. “You know about the security service?”

“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “Please. Just because I told my dad I didn’t want a bodyguard any longer doesn’t mean he listened to me, but at least with them as silent and distant watchers, I have a little more privacy than I did when my bodyguards remained within touching distance.”

“Not that much privacy.”

He meant not enough for her father not to know if she had a man stay the night or had done so with one. “I don’t have to sleep over with a man to have sex with one.”

“But you would have to have had a relationship that went beyond a few casual dates because you are not the type of woman to sleep with a man on a whim.”

“You’re so sure about that?”

“Yes.”

She couldn’t deny it because he was right. And she did not lie. Like him, she hated lies. Like the lie when a person told you they loved you but didn’t. Not really.

“So…I have had more than one relationship that lasted a few months. I’m twenty-four years old, after all.”

“But none of those relationships were deep.”

“How do you know? My father said so,” she guessed. “You can’t trust the judgment of a man who thinks that balance sheets are more comprehensible than people. He doesn’t know me.”

“Like I do not know you?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

Sandor shook his head with an impatient jerk. “You are wrong.”

But she wasn’t. Sandor did not know her any better than her father did, which meant he couldn’t care for her any more deeply than her dad. While the knowledge hurt, it also really begged the question why Sandor wanted to marry her.

He was looking at her as if he expected another argument, but she didn’t have to convince Sandor of her point of view. In this instance, it was her opinion that mattered and his confident insistence wasn’t going to change it.

“I am not relying on his word alone,” Sandor said. “I had you investigated.” His expression showed not even a hint of remorse at the claim.

“What? Why?”

“When I first started considering you as a potential wife, I thought it prudent.”

“You are kidding.”

“No.”

“I would have thought you too arrogant to believe you needed anything besides your own reading of a person in a situation like this.”

“You have called me arrogant before.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, the time I told you who would win the Super Bowl.”

“You were so sure you were right and you aren’t even a football fan.”

He shrugged. “And yet I was right.”

“Well, you’re wrong about me being a virgin.” And as much as the memories of the reason for her lack of innocence hurt, she felt a certain grim satisfaction in catching him in the wrong.

Maybe she should be offended he’d had her investigated, but she wasn’t. She was, however, bothered. If Sandor wanted a relationship with her, why hadn’t he made the effort to get to know her better rather than having her investigated? Maybe it wouldn’t be so worrisome if he’d done it in addition to the investigation, but he hadn’t.

The similarities to her dad were piling up and not in a good way. She’d been raised by a man who would have done the exact same thing in such a situation, who even now kept her under constant surveillance—ostensibly for her safety’s sake. After all, she was the daughter of a very wealthy and influential man. However, he wasn’t above using that so-called security to monitor more than her safety. She didn’t know what her father thought his knowledge was going to do for him.

If he wanted a better relationship with her, he wasn’t going to have it via a silent security detail. Only maybe that was just the way he liked it. He felt like he was doing his fatherly duty without getting emotionally involved.

“My investigator is very thorough,” Sandor said, breaking into her derailed thoughts.

“Even the best investigators make mistakes.”

“Perhaps.” But she could tell he didn’t believe her.

Instead of annoying her, it made her laugh. “We could go back to my apartment and I could prove it to you.”

He looked far from amused. His dark eyes glinted with a warning she had no intention of heeding. “Are you trying to shock me, pethi mou?”

“Challenging you, I think.” Recklessness filled her to bursting.

She didn’t know if it came from the unexpected proposal that had mentioned not one word of love, from memories she’d prefer to forget, or from the renewed evidence that her father wanted no emotional connection to her, but the strictures of a lifetime were falling like dominos around her.

No, she wasn’t the type of woman to view sex casually, but she wasn’t a virgin and she was darned if she would marry a man who could turn himself off from her so easily. She didn’t want Sandor to be like her father. She couldn’t stand for their relationship to be as cold and distant.

“Why do you feel the need to challenge me?” he asked, sounding baffled.

It was almost cute, in an arrogant, macho reaction to what should have been a straightforward topic kind of way.

“Why don’t you want me enough to have seduced me?” Or even accepted her sometimes not too subtle invitations?

“I told you.”

“You believe I’m a virgin, so that puts me off-limits until the wedding night.”

“Essentially…yes. Perhaps not until the wedding night, but definitely until the wedding is a date on the calendar.”

“This is not the Dark Ages.”

“Integrity has no time limit.”

“Is that one of your grandfather’s sayings?”

For a second his eyes burned with a pain that could not be mistaken. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

“I don’t understand why you want to marry me. You don’t love me.”

“And your friends have all married for the sake of some ephemeral emotion that cannot even be counted on to last past the cooling of the sheets in most cases?”

“No.” She wouldn’t pretend that all her acquaintances had married because they were in love. “But they aren’t me and I happen to believe in that ephemeral emotion. I want more from marriage than a businesslike merging of two people’s lives.” She wanted more from life than that, period…but had no idea how to get it.

Other people found love so easily, but not her. But that didn’t mean she had given up hoping to find it.

“And you will have more. We are compatible, in every way. We will have a family. You even enjoy my mother’s company.”

“She’s easy to like, but you say that like it’s a major consideration.”

“Since I choose to have my mother live near me like a good Greek son, it is.”

“I wouldn’t mind living with your mother, but I’m not so sure about her son.”

“So, you are considering my proposal?”

Was she? Her heart beat too fast, the pain of uncertainty squeezing her chest tight. She was. No matter what he believed about love, she was afraid she was already irrevocably in love with him—or headed there fast. What a hopelessly terrifying thought. “Yes, but I can’t give you an answer right now.”

“Surely you were expecting this.”

“Funnily enough…I wasn’t. I told you that.”

He sighed. “Yes, but I would have thought you would have at least considered the possibility.”

She just shrugged, not knowing what to say. They’d already been over the whole sex thing and their views were polar opposites. She’d been sure he wasn’t ready for a deeper relationship because he hadn’t pursued that angle and he’d assumed she’d realize he wouldn’t pursue it until she was committed to him.

“And you cannot make the decision now, knowing what you know of me, of yourself?”

“No.” Because if she did, it would have to be no. And her heart both demanded and rejected that answer.

“Is it my background?”

She stared at him. “I don’t know enough of your background for it even to be a consideration and I hope you aren’t implying I’m some sort of snob who would only marry someone born to the same world of privilege I was.”

“I am not saying that, no. In fact, your refreshing refusal to judge others based on where they come from appeals to me greatly.”

“I’m glad, because I don’t want to change that part of me.”

“But you are willing to change in other ways?”

“People grow…change is inevitable, but that’s with me to stay.”

“I am glad.”

“But you are annoyed I won’t accept your proposal right now.”

“Not annoyed…disappointed. I would think you could see the advantages to a marriage between us.”

He was disappointed, but not hurt. Which meant his emotions were not involved at all. That did not bode well. She bit her lip, realizing she must have done so before because it felt tender. It was a bad habit, but she had enough to think about without trying to break it at the moment.

“I’m sorry. I’m not like you and my father. I don’t make personal decisions based on business logic.”

“What do you base them on?”

“Emotion.”

His lips twisted with distaste just as she knew they would. He and her father had a lot in common. Maybe too much. She suspected he would be no more impressed with an emotional commitment from her than her father was.

She took a fortifying sip of water. “I know. That’s a dirty word to you and men like my father, but it’s how I live my life. You’ll have to give me some time to think.”

Silence pulsed between them until he pushed the ring box across the table. “Put it in your bag. We’ll discuss the proposal again later.”

She wasn’t sure why he wanted her to take possession of the ring. Maybe he thought that since possession was nine-tenth’s of the law, if she took the ring, she might have a harder time saying no and giving it back. The man was wily enough to have considered every angle.

“Please keep it until I give you my answer.”

“I’d rather you kept it.”

“Even if I say no?”

“I had the ring made for you. Whatever your answer, it is meant to be yours.”

Unable to hold back from looking after such a statement, she opened the box. It was a square-cut precious stone exactly the color of her eyes. Aquamarine-blue. To either side was a perfectly cut square diamond of crystal clarity, only slightly smaller than the center stone.

Emotion that had no place in their discussion welled inside her and she husked, “It’s beautiful.”

“Like you.”

She shook her head, dislodging the empty words. “I’m hardly that.”

“After all we have said about honesty tonight, you think I lie about this?”

“I think you want to flatter me, but I have a mirror. I’m passable, but I am not beautiful. You should see pictures of my mother. She was beautiful.” And she’d taken what existed of George Wentworth’s heart to the grave with her.

“You know the saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

She barely kept from rolling her eyes. “Yes.”

“You are beautiful to me, Eleanor.”

“False flattery isn’t going to get me to agree to marry you.”

“It is not false.” His voice was a low rumbling growl. She’d managed to make him mad again.

“If you say so.”

“I say so. Your beauty is timeless and very alluring to a man with my background.”

“I don’t understand.” What did his background have to do with it?

“You are kind. Truly compassionate. You seek to make life better for those born without your advantages. Your care for others is ingrained to the depths of your soul. In that, you remind me much of my mother. Physically you are perfect to me. Your features are soft and feminine, your body a delight to my senses, but particularly that of sight. Yet, as much as you spark my desire, you are elegant and refined, even in jeans and a T-shirt. These things are beautiful to me.”

She didn’t know what to say. She could tell he meant the words and that did something to her insides, tipping over a heart that had teetered on the precipice of love straight into its warm, sweet depths. Because as much as she’d learned he did not know about her, he had just proven he did know something about the woman she was under the skin and behind the image of a wealthy man’s daughter.

“Private schooling and deportment training can do wonders,” she said, trying to laugh it off while her heart contracted and expanded with her newly acknowledged feelings until she was dizzy with it.

“You were born with these traits, they are not something a person can learn.”

She didn’t agree. “You learned.”

“I am far from compassionate and kind.”

She’d seen the way he treated his mother. “I don’t agree, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What then?”

“How to fit the society we move in.” She indicated the rest of the restaurant with a wave of her hand.

“But I do not fit.”

“You do.”

And yet, in a way he was right. He wore his suit, which was by a top designer and handmade, like he’d been born to it, but there was an aura of power around him that came from hard work and determination, not being born to wealth. His slight Greek accent. His direct way of speaking. They all spoke of a man not born to their world, but made.

But then she didn’t fit her world perfectly, either. All her little idiosyncrasies stemmed from the inside and only showed themselves on close inspection. In that they were alike.

“Tell me about your childhood.”

His eyes widened. “Why?”

“I want to know.”

His jaw hardened. “And if I do not want to tell you?”

“I’ll have you investigated.” She grinned at his shocked expression.

And then he laughed and she fell just a little harder as she laughed with him.

“I was born in Greece.”

“I knew that,” she teased.

“We lived there, with my grandfather, until I was ten.”

“We?”

“My mother, she was his only child, and I.”

“Where was your father?”

“Gone.”

A day ago, she would have respected the boundaries she sensed he’d erected, but a day ago, he had not asked her to marry him. “What do you mean, gone?”

“He was an American tourist. On the island for only a couple of days. By the time my mother realized she was pregnant, he was long gone. She did not even know his last name.” Sandor did not sound condemning…of his mother at least.

“That must have been very difficult for her.”

“Yes. But it could have been worse. My grandfather did not kick her out of the family home despite the shame her condition brought him. He supported her and me in the years that followed.”

At what cost though? Definitely Sandor had not come out of that home unscathed.

“What about your grandmother?”

“She had died the year before. Grandfather often said that it was a lucky thing, for the shame would have killed her.”

“He sounds like he was a harsh man.”

“He was. In some ways. But he loved my mother and he took care of her even though what had happened went against his entire belief system.”

“She was young.” Hera Christofides had to have been a teenager when she had Sandor because she barely looked forty now. She had to be older than that, but Ellie was guessing it wasn’t by much.

“She was sixteen. Grandfather forgave her, but he never forgave the man who made her pregnant.”

“The only a man without honor would take the virginity of a woman he’s not married to, thing?”

“Yes. And that man’s blood runs in my veins.”

She wondered if that was something else his grandfather had maintained, but she didn’t ask. She merely said, “You can’t know he wouldn’t have stood by her, if he’d known about you, I mean.”

“He knew she was a virgin, but he left her. He never returned to check on her. He did not care.”

“Maybe. He probably wasn’t much older than she was. There might have been reasons for why he didn’t come back.”

“Yes. Those reasons were that he was an irresponsible teenager himself who should have kept his pants zipped if he wasn’t prepared to deal with the aftermath.”

“Like you said, he was a teenager. It probably never occurred to him that there even was an aftermath.”

“Ignorance does not change the outcome.”

“No, it doesn’t, but I have a hard time believing that any man who fathered you could have been totally without a sense of responsibility.”

“I get my sense in that direction from my grandfather and mother.”

“You can’t know you got nothing from your father…since you didn’t know him.” She didn’t know why she argued, only that is seemed important to make him realize life was not as black and white as his grandfather had obviously taught him it was.

“What is this about? Are you worried bad blood will tell?”

She sighed. “I hate that saying. It’s just so wrong. Even if he was an all out jerk without a bit of good in him, that has no bearing on who you are today.”

“Not everyone sees things that way.”

“I know, but I’m the one who is right.”

“And perhaps I am not the only arrogant one at this dinner table.”

“Knowing when I am right is not arrogance,” she teased.

“I will have to remember that defense.”

“You do that, but somehow I don’t think it’s a new concept for you.”

He just smiled.

“For the record, I for one am glad your dad didn’t keep his pants zipped and I bet your mom doesn’t regret it, either.”

The smile disappeared and his expression looked hewn from granite. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because, if he had, you wouldn’t be here.”

“And you think that is a good thing?”

“Yes, and I’m sure your mom agrees.”

“But you hesitate to marry me.”

The man was tenacious. “My reasons have nothing to do with you not being a pretty amazing person I’m glad is alive.”

He raised his brows at that. “Then what are your reasons?”

“More to the point, what are yours?”