was shattering. ‘It is the truth. Would you prefer I’d said nothing?’
When she spoke her voice was hoarse, momentarily weakened by the strength of her feelings. ‘Does this bring you pleasure? Did you bring me here to gloat?’
‘To gloat?’ His smile was like a wolf’s. ‘No.’
‘Well? Then what do you want? Why are you telling me any of this?’
A muscle jerked in his cheek. ‘I could alleviate all of your father’s problems, you know.’
Hope, a fragile bird, fluttered in her gut. ‘Yes?’
‘It would not be difficult for me to fix this,’ he said with a shrug.
Marnie’s head spun at the ease of his declaration. ‘Even a hundred million pounds?’
‘I am a wealthy man. Do you not read the papers?’
‘God, Nikos.’ Relief was so palpable that she didn’t even acknowledge the insult. Hope loomed. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Delay your gratitude until you have considered the terms.’
‘The terms?’ Her brows drew together in confusion.
‘I have the means to help your father, but not yet the inducement.’
Aware she was parroting, she murmured, ‘What inducement?’
The breath burned in her lungs. Her heart was hammering so hard in her chest that she thought it might break free and make a bid for freedom. Tension was a rope, twisting around them. She waited on tenterhooks that seemed to have sharp gnashing teeth.
‘You, Marnie.’ His dark voice was at its arrogant best. ‘As my wife. Marry me and I will help him.’
SHE’D NEVER UNDERSTOOD how silence could vibrate until that moment. The very air they breathed seemed as if it was alive, crackling and humming around them. His words were little daggers, floating through the atmosphere, jabbing at her heart, her soul, her brain, her mind.
‘Marry me and I will help him.’
Only the sound of her heavy breathing perforated the air. For support, she pressed back against the glass window. It was warmed by the sun.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said finally, squeezing her eyes shut. Every fibre of her being instantly rejected the idea.
Or did it?
Briefly, childish fantasies bubbled inside her, spreading the kind of pleasure she’d once revelled in freely.
When she blinked a moment later, Nikos was holding a glass of water just in front of her. She took it and drank gratefully, her throat parched.
‘It is not a difficult equation. Marriage to me in exchange for a sum of money that will answer your father’s debts.’
‘That makes no sense,’ she contradicted flatly.
‘No?’
‘No!’
It seemed like the right reaction. It was an absurd proposal, after all. Wasn’t it? She should have felt panicked by the very idea. And perhaps a part of her did. This was the man who had disappeared from her life but never fully from her heart.
But panic and wariness were only tiny components of her emotional tangle. Hope and an intense flare of passionate resonance also filled her.
‘Marriage...’ Her heart squeezed. Her words were a whisper. ‘Marriage...is for people in love. That’s not us. How can you be so cavalier about it?’
He took a step closer, curling his fingers around the glass. Instead of taking it from her he kept his hand over hers. Electricity sparked along the length of her arm, shooting blue fire through her body.
‘Call it...righting a wrong,’ he said darkly, his eyes scanning her face with hard emotion. ‘Or repaying a debt.’
Her stomach rolled.
‘Your father paid me a considerable sum to get out of your life six years ago.’
Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ and she gasped in surprise. He gathered she hadn’t known that little piece of information. It didn’t make him proud, but he enjoyed seeing her sense of betrayal and outrage before she schooled her features once more. Her mask was excellent, though the more tightly she held on to it the more he wanted to force her to drop it. To shock her, surprise her, make her feel so strongly that she could no longer remain impassive.
He put his thumb-pad over her lower lip, remembering how soft they were to kiss.
‘I didn’t know.’ Her eyes were earnest and it didn’t enter his mind to doubt her.
‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t necessary, in any event. He obviously didn’t realise that you had already conclusively ended things.’
Marnie’s heart squeezed. ‘I had no choice.’
‘Of course you had a damned choice.’ He controlled his temper with effort. ‘You could have told him that you’d fallen in love with me. That no amount of comment about the fact that I didn’t live up to his exalted expectations would change how you felt about me. You could have told him to shove his snobbery and his stupidity. You could have fought for what we were—as I would have.’
She sucked in a deep breath. The pain was as fresh in that instant as if it was six years ago. She ached all over. ‘You know what we’d been through.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘What my family had lost. I couldn’t hurt him. I had to choose between him and...what I felt for you.’
‘And you chose him.’ His stare was filled with a startling wave of resentment. ‘You switched something in here—’ he lifted a finger to her chest, pointing at her heart ‘—and that was it. It was over.’
She swallowed convulsively. It had been nothing like that. He made it sound easy. As if she’d simply decided to forget Nikos and move on. But she hadn’t. She’d agonised over the decision.
She’d tried to explain to her parents that she didn’t care that Nikos didn’t have money or come from one of the established families they approved of. But arguments had led to the unsupportable—her mother in tears, her father furious and not speaking to Marnie, and the certainty that they just wanted Libby back—perfect Libby—to make good choices and be the daughter they were proud of.
‘In any event, the financial...compensation for leaving you helped to soften the blow. At first I swore I wouldn’t take it. But then...’
He spoke with gravelled inflection, sucking Marnie back to the present.
‘I was so angry with you, with him. I took it and I told myself I’d double it—just to prove him wrong. To prove a point.’
Marnie’s cheeks were flushed. His hand moved to cup her face. She could have pulled away, but she didn’t. ‘I think you did more than that.’
His smile was grim. ‘Yes.’
So Arthur had given her boyfriend money to get out of her life? A chill ran the length of her spine. It seemed like a step too far. Pressuring her to end it was one thing, but actually forcing Nikos out?
‘I’m sorry he got involved like that. It wasn’t his place to...to pay you off.’
‘Not when you’d already done his bidding,’ Nikos responded with a lift of his shoulders. ‘Your father forbade you from seeing me and, like a good little Lady Heiress, you jumped when he clicked his fingers.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said distractedly, hating the tabloid press’s moniker for her.
It wasn’t that it was cruelly