Читать книгу Bridal Bargains - Michelle Reid - Страница 9

CLAIRE released a gasp in stunned disbelief. ‘You want to marry me?’ she repeated.

Then, almost instantly, she decided, No, I’ve heard him wrong, and laughed—or rather emitted a nervous little giggle that she regretted as soon as it left her lips because the effect it had on him made her feel cruel, as his lean face closed up as tight as a drum.

He’s actually serious! she realised. She felt her legs threaten to collapse beneath her and had to move over to one of the dark red recliners and lower herself carefully into it.

‘Please do not misunderstand me,’ he said, suddenly standing high on his mountain of dignity again. ‘I am not suggesting an intimate relationship. Just a—marriage of convenience if you like. Where we will maintain an appearance of intimacy. But that is all …’

No intimacy, she repeated to herself, and as quickly as that her eyes went blank as her imagination shot off to a place where she’d stared into this man’s eyes while his mouth had been fused very intimately with her own.

‘I will, of course, ensure that the—arrangement is a beneficial one for you,’ he coldly continued. ‘The advantages in being the wife of a very wealthy man do, I think, speak for themselves. And it need not be a lifetime thing—although I will have to insist that I become Melanie’s legal father or it will not work.’

‘What won’t work?’ she questioned helplessly.

But he gave a shake of his dark head. ‘I can only reveal that if I gain your agreement,’ he said. ‘But in her becoming my legal daughter,’ he went on as if she hadn’t made the interruption, ‘I will be assuring Melanie’s future—which can only be a good thing for her, since she will also become my sole heir. And if and when you decide that it is time for you to leave me so you can get on with your own life you will not go empty-handed.’

Claire’s mind was starting to scramble. She was sure that what he was actually saying here, in a carefully veiled way, was that he wanted Melanie, but if Claire had to come along with her, then he was prepared to agree to that.

‘I think you’re crazy,’ she told him.

He grimaced, but didn’t argue the point.

‘You don’t even know me!’

This time it was a shrug. ‘I am a man who has always relied on my first impression of people—and I like you, Claire,’ he said, as if that should mean something special to her. ‘I even admire you for the way you have been coping on your own with a child and little to no help from anyone.’

‘I do have help!’ she cried, her hackles rising at his too accurate reading of her.

‘Do you mean—this kind of help?’ he asked, and from his trouser pocket he withdrew a wad of bank notes.

As she stared at them as if she had never so much as laid eyes on paper money before, it took a few moments for it to sink in what he was actually showing her.

Her eyes shot to his. ‘Is that the money Aunt Laura left for me today?’

‘You dropped it on the floor in your flat when you fainted,’ he explained. ‘I picked it up and placed it in my pocket for safekeeping. I counted it earlier; there is exactly one hundred pounds here,’ he informed her grimly. ‘Knowing the dire straits of your circumstances, that you owe at least four times that amount on your rent and being fully aware that you also have to exist somehow, your aunt condescended to leave you a paltry one hundred pounds.’

To Claire, who had nothing, one hundred pounds was an absolute fortune! But it obviously wasn’t to this man. For the way he tossed the money aside made his disgust more than clear.

‘In effect, what she was doing,’ he went on, remorseless in his determination to get his own point across, ‘was wearing you down so that you would begin to look on her proposal more favourably. I got that much out of her while you were half comatose,’ he inserted tightly. ‘And she was trying her best to explain to me why her only relatives were living in that kind of squalor.’

Claire closed her eyes, the word ‘squalor’ cutting right to the heart of her.

‘You already knew about her suggestion before I told you,’ she breathed, feeling the sharp sting of one that had been well and truly tricked by his quiet interest in her during dinner.

Maybe he saw it. ‘I am sorry if that offends you,’ he said. ‘But it is important here that you keep your mind focused on what is best for you and Melanie. And if it has come down to a choice between having the child adopted and my offer, then I think mine is your better option.’

‘But then you would, wouldn’t you?’ Claire pointed out, and came stiffly to her feet. ‘Now I want my baby and I want to go home,’ she informed him with enough ice-cold intent to match any he could dish out.

It made his face snap with irritation. ‘Don’t be foolish!’ he rasped. ‘That is no solution and only promises you more misery!’

I’m miserable now, Claire thought unhappily. ‘I thought you were kind!’ she burst out, blue eyes bright with a pained disillusionment. ‘I thought you genuinely cared about what had happened to me! When all the time while you’ve been shadowing me around today you’ve been plotting this!’

Her voice rose on a clutch of hurt. He winced at the sound of it. ‘I am kind!’ he growled, looking faintly uncomfortable with his own role here.

Claire’s thick huff of scorn made his eyes flash warningly, then, with a grimace, he seemed to be allowing her the right to be scornful.

‘I can be kind,’ he amended huskily, scraped an impatient set of long fingers through his hair, then even amended the amendment. ‘I will be kind,’ he declared in a voice that made it a promise.

Still, it held no sway with Claire. ‘Thank you for the offer but no, thank you,’ she refused, moving stiffly towards the door.

‘Before you walk through that door, Miss Stenson, don’t you think you should take a moment to consider what your decision is going to mean to your sister …?’

Smooth as silk, his voice barely revealing an inflection, his words still had her steps faltering and growing still, the fine quiver touching her soft mouth sign enough that, just like her aunt, he had managed to find the right button to press without having to look very hard for it.

‘But—why?’ she cried, lifting perplexed blue eyes to his deadly ruthless face. ‘If you feel such a strong need to will your possessions to someone, then why not get a family of your own?’

It didn’t make sense—none of it did. Neither did the way he suddenly stiffened up as if he’d been shot. ‘I will never marry again,’ he said. ‘Not in the way you are suggesting anyway.’

‘You’ve been married before?’

‘Yes. Sofia—died six years ago.’ The confirmation was coldly blunt.

‘Oh … I’m so sorry,’ Claire murmured, her expression immediately softening into sympathy.

His did the opposite. ‘I have no wish to discuss it,’ he clipped, and the way he said it was enough to stop Claire from daring to ask any more questions.

But she was curious. Suddenly very curious about the woman he had lost whom he must have loved very deeply if he never wanted to marry again. Not for real, anyway, she dryly tagged onto that.

‘There are other ways these days to get children without having to commit yourself to marriage, you know,’ she pointed out gently. ‘Medical science has become quite clever in that respect.’

‘I am Greek,’ he replied as if that explained everything. And he didn’t elaborate. Instead he pulled everything back to the main issue. ‘I want you to consider very carefully what you will be gaining if you agree to marry me. For you will get to bring up your mother’s child in the kind of luxury most people only dream of.’

Humility is not one of his strongest points, Claire made wry note.

‘Think of it,’ he urged. ‘No more living from hand to mouth. No more having to go without so you can ensure that the child is clothed and fed. No worrying where the next week’s rent is coming from. Instead,’ he concluded, listing the advantages of his so-called proposal in much the same way her aunt had done when talking about Melanie’s adoption, ‘you will receive a generous monthly allowance to do with what you will. And since all our homes will have more than enough paid staff to relieve you of the less enjoyable chores involved in caring for a baby you will have the time and the leisure to enjoy life rather than sacrificing it to your baby sister.’

‘I don’t see it as a sacrifice.’ Her chin came up, blue eyes glittering with indignation. ‘And I resent the implication that I may do.’

‘My apologies,’ he retracted instantly. ‘It was not my intention to offend.’

No, Claire could see it wasn’t. This was just too important to him to want to risk offending her—which immediately brought about her next question. ‘Why does it mean so much to you to get me? To get Melanie?’ she asked. ‘You could walk out of here right now and simply pick up a dozen women with children who could fill this role just as well as we can!’

‘But I want you both,’ he stated simply. ‘Why don’t you ask yourself why it is that you are so afraid of what I am offering you?’

‘Because it feels wrong,’ she replied, then added honestly, ‘And I’m too young for this role.’

‘Or is it me who is too old?’

He’s the type who will never be old. ‘How old is that exactly? And don’t give me the flippant answer I got the last time I asked you that question,’ she warned. ‘Because I’m serious. If you want me to consider your proposition I need to know.’

‘Thirty-six,’ he replied, and grimaced at her astonished expression.

She gave a small sigh, then turned to lean back against the closed door. ‘This is crazy,’ she muttered, thinking out loud. But what was even crazier was the knowledge that she was beginning to waver.

No more worries, she told herself. No more living from day to day in a place she hated with no prospect of ever getting something better—if you didn’t count what was being offered here. Then there was Melanie to consider. Melanie, who would want for nothing for the rest of her life, if his sincerity was to be believed.

It was all very seductive, she mused, lifting her hand to gently rub at the bump on her temple as her head began to ache.

He saw the gesture and was instantly all concern. ‘It is clear that you have had enough for one day,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Let us leave this for now, and come back to it tomorrow when you are feeling more rested.’

He was right—and she had taken enough, Claire acknowledged wearily. But she said, ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I won’t sleep for worrying about all of this unless we resolve it now.’

She lifted tired, bruised, anxious eyes to his. ‘Will you please tell me why you need a ready-made wife and baby?’ she begged.

There was a pause, then he asked smoothly, ‘Are you telling me you are going to accept my proposition?’

He isn’t going to give a single inch to me, she noted. ‘I’m thinking about it,’ she replied.

‘Then while you think I will think about telling you why I want you to marry me.’

Cat and mouse. Cut and thrust. ‘Then goodnight,’ she said, and turned back to the door.

‘I like the hair, by the way …’

Her hair? Her hand went up, self-conscious fingertips lightly touching the ends of a fine silk tendril.

‘It is such a wonderful colour …’

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, blushing slightly at the unexpected compliment.

‘Neither blonde nor red,’ he softly observed. ‘But a rather fascinating mixture of the two … I wonder what colour it will go with a Greek sunset pouring all over it?’

‘I’ve never been to Greece,’ Claire sighed, heard the wistful note in her voice and knew that he must be able to hear it too.

‘You’ll love it,’ he promised as he walked towards her. ‘Sizzling hot days and delightfully warm nights. Though you will have to protect your fine white skin from the sun,’ he warned. ‘But Melanie’s skin will love it. Whatever nationality her father was, he gifted her with the rich olive skin of a true Mediterranean.’

‘Spanish,’ Claire inserted. ‘Her father was Spanish.’ Then a sudden thought had her glancing sharply at him. ‘Is that why you want her?’ she asked. ‘Because she has the right skin tone to be passed off as your daughter?’

But he shook his dark head. He was standing so close to her now that she could actually see the wry humour hovering in his dark eyes. ‘With a golden-haired, pale-skinned English wife, my child could have been blessed with her colouring,’ he pointed out.

Looking away again, Claire frowned, the conundrum behind his reason for wanting them beginning to irritate her like an itch she couldn’t quite reach. ‘Well …’ She gave a small shrug of one narrow shoulder as if the itch were situated there, and turned away from him yet again. ‘I’ll …’

‘My family is trying to make me marry again, and produce an heir to my fortune.’

He caved in so suddenly and produced the information that for a moment Claire couldn’t believe that he’d actually done it! It went so against what she’d believed she’d already learned about his calculating nature!

‘They have my proposed bride already picked out for me,’ he went on. ‘And the pressure is mounting because my grandmother is ill. She wants to hold her great-grandchild before she dies. And since I am the only grandson she has it is up to me to grant her that wish.’

‘How ill?’ Claire asked gently.

‘Very.’ The shadowy outline of his mouth flicked out that grim brief smile again. ‘She is ninety-two years old and has just suffered her second stroke. She does not have long left on this earth.’

And he loves her and is going to miss her dreadfully, Claire realised as she saw a darkness come down over those unfathomable eyes, and felt her heart give a pinch of well understood sympathy.

‘I don’t have time to play around with alternatives,’ he admitted. ‘So your arrival in my life was a piece of good fortune I could not afford to dismiss. As I have told you before, I respond to my instincts. And my instincts tell me that we three could make a good team.’ His eyes flicked up, clashed with her eyes and Claire suddenly felt as if she were falling again. ‘When my grandmother is no longer here to see it happen, you can leave whenever you are ready to …’

No hearts compromised, no feelings touched. ‘More like a temporary job, in fact.’

‘For you, yes,’ he agreed, with a small shrug. ‘But not for Melanie …’ he made firmly clear. ‘Melanie will be my daughter in every way I can make it so. I want her, Claire,’ he added huskily. ‘I need her.’

‘But will you love her?’ she challenged.

‘As my own and all my life,’ he vowed. And he meant it; Claire could see that in the fierce glow of a powerful intent that suddenly lit his eyes.

I wish somebody wanted me like that, she found herself thinking wistfully. ‘And when I decide to go—what happens to Melanie?’

‘She goes with you,’ he said—but only after a hesitation that hit a warning button inside her head. ‘So long as you will promise to respect my rights as her legal father, we will agree on an affable arrangement which will suit both of our needs where she is concerned. For Melanie’s sake alone, it has to be her best chance in life, don’t you think?’

For Melanie’s sake, Claire repeated silently, knowing exactly where she had heard those words before, and not liking the sensation that trickled down her spine at the connection.

But, despite that nasty sensation, one important thing she did know for sure was that, having once lived in privileged comfort herself—though not anywhere near the style he was offering Melanie here—and having gained tough experience at the poorer end of the scale, Claire knew which end of that scale she preferred to be.

‘I’ll do it,’ she heard herself say. ‘For Melanie’s sake.’

And only wondered as she did so whether this hadn’t been a case of him caving in first, but simply a very astute man knowing exactly when to play his final card.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured. ‘I will promise you, Claire, that you will never have cause to regret this decision.’

But she was already regretting it as early as the next morning when she came down the stairs ready to tell him that she had changed her mind.

At which point she discovered that Andreas Markopoulou had pulled yet another tactical move on her, by going abroad on business for the next frustratingly long week.

Melanie, in the meantime, was beginning to bloom with all the tender loving care both Lefka and Althea were ladling upon her. Claire didn’t hear her cry once!

Secretly she found it hurtful. For, under Claire’s exclusive care, the little girl had hardly ever stopped crying since their mother had died.

Then, most hurtful of all, was the way her aunt hadn’t once bothered to get in touch with her. Whether that was her aunt’s own indifference or Andreas Markopoulou’s doing she didn’t know. But, knowing Aunt Laura as well as she did, if she’d wanted to contact Claire then she would have done, no matter what her big tycoon boss might say.

But, as the week slid by, at least her body began to heal; the bump on her temple disappeared altogether and her bruises began to fade. Even her hurt feelings had given way to a dull acceptance—along with her acceptance that she could no more take Melanie away from what she was receiving here than sprout wings and fly.

So it was that she was sitting in the solarium at the back of the house, gently pushing Melanie’s pram to and fro to rock the baby to sleep, when a voice murmured to one side of her, ‘You look a lot better …’

She didn’t turn to look at him, but her hand stopped rocking the baby carriage. And her heart gave an excited leap that left her feeling tense and shaky.

Still, at least her voice was steady when she answered coolly, ‘A week is a long time.’

‘Ah …’ He came forward, his footsteps sounding on the quarry-tiled floor beneath his feet. ‘I thought it best to leave you alone to—come to terms with your decision.’

So he was admitting to a retreat, she noted, and was oddly pacified by that—then even more so when he paused at the pram to bend down and inspect Melanie.

‘She’s asleep,’ he whispered. But it was the way he stroked a gentle finger over the baby’s cheek in much the same way that Claire did that touched a warm spot inside her.

Then, pulling up one of the other cane chairs, he sat down beside her. ‘How is the wrist?’ he enquired.

‘Better,’ she told him.

‘And the ribs?’

‘They don’t hurt when I laugh any more,’ she replied with a grin she turned to offer directly to him.

Then wished she hadn’t when her heart gave that funny leap again, making the tiny muscles deep in her stomach coil up in reaction. He looked lean and dark and sun-kissed, as if he’d just stepped off a plane from a place where the weather had been a lot pleasanter than it had been here in England.

She felt a tingling urge to reach out and touch his face just to feel if it was as warm as it appeared to be. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked instead, leaving the less tactile medium of words to assuage her curiosity.

‘You sound like a wife,’ he mocked, his dark eyes flickering slightly as he scanned her face where even Claire had noticed the stray-waif look was beginning to fade.

‘Not yet,’ she drawled in answer. ‘And for all you know I may have changed my mind.’

‘Have you?’

The urge to prolong his agony and lie almost got the better of her, but in the end she said, ‘No,’ and they were both silent for several minutes. The baby made a snuffling sound and she began rocking the pram again. It was all very—ordinary.

‘I’ve been in Greece,’ he announced, answering her earlier question. ‘With my grandmother,’ he added, and though his tone was level Claire knew instinctively that something was wrong.

‘She’s worse, isn’t she?’ she said.

‘Fading fast,’ he grimaced—then added briskly, ‘So I have set her a task to do to keep her mind occupied. She is planning our wedding as we speak.’

Startled, Claire straightened in the chair. ‘Our wedding?’ she repeated. ‘But I thought you wanted to present her with a fait accompli!’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That would not have worked quite so successfully as the story I have now fed her.’

‘Which is—what?’ she demanded, only managing to keep her angry voice down in respect of the sleeping Melanie.

‘That you are young and very beautiful …’

Beautiful? Claire stared directly ahead and wondered how he could lie so glibly, because the one thing she wasn’t was beautiful! Passably attractive when at her best, she conceded. But nothing more than that.

‘I told her that we had shared a—liaison some time last year,’ he went on. ‘But because of your youth I broke it off, not knowing I was leaving you carrying my child …’

Lie number two, she counted, and began to see for the first time what mire of deceit she was about to fall into.

‘But I could not get you out of my mind—which was why I found it so impossible to agree to marry another woman while I still wanted you. So I went to see you,’ he explained. ‘And as for the rest—’ he shrugged ‘—it tells itself.’

It certainly did, Claire agreed, seeing herself as this tragic young woman who’d fallen for the big handsome Greek tycoon who was, by the sound of it, not far off his dotage.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘the new slant I have put on our—story—’ he used the word dryly ‘—was done to serve a second purpose …’

Now what? Claire wondered, feeling the fine hairs on the back of her neck begin to prickle warningly.

‘For this way you don’t have to like the fact that you are marrying me,’ he explained. ‘Being the arrogant dictator that everyone seems to think I am—including you—no one is going to question the idea that you have been—coerced into becoming my wife for the sake of our child. Which also means you get your own bedroom without tongues wagging,’ he pointed out. ‘While I must—earn your affections again.’

‘And thereby ends the tale when I eventually turn my back on you and walk away,’ Claire finished for him. ‘Not quite the stuff of a romantic novel, is it?’ she mocked.

‘Life rarely is,’ he drawled, sounding suddenly so cold that Claire couldn’t believe her ears! With one lightly mocking comment she seemed to have turned him to stone!

Stiffly, he came to his feet. ‘We leave for Greece in the morning,’ he announced. ‘Now I have some work to do. So if you will excuse me …’ And, with a curt little bow, he was gone!

What was all that about? Claire found herself wondering in blank bewilderment. And spent the next half an hour trawling over every single word they’d said to each other without coming up with a single thing which could have caused that kind of reaction!

His grandmother: she finally decided to blame it on her. It had to be because he was worried about her.

But deep down inside she somehow knew that wasn’t true.