is the only way I will help your father. It’s not a negotiation.’
Backed against a wall, she wondered why she didn’t feel more angry.
She looked down at the thick pile of papers. ‘If you expect me to sign this today then you’re going to have to explain it to me.’
‘Fine.’ He flicked a glance at his gold wristwatch.
‘Sorry if I’m taking up too much of your time,’ she snapped sarcastically, and for the briefest moment he felt the full force of her emotions—emotions she was so good at guarding. Fear, worry, stress, uncertainty.
But he had no intention of softening towards his fiancée. He nodded curtly, his expression rock-hard. ‘The first section deals with our assets. Any assets you bring to the marriage will be quarantined against becoming communal.’
‘So I get to keep what’s mine?’ she interpreted.
‘Yes. I have no interest in your money.’
The way he said it, with such vile distaste, made Marnie shiver.
‘Fine. Just as I have no interest in yours.’
He arched a brow, his face filled with sardonic amusement. ‘You mean, I presume, beyond the hundred million pounds I will be giving your father?’
Her cheeks flamed. ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t meet his eyes because she felt the sting of tears in her own.
‘Irrespective of that, you will be entitled to a sum for each year we remain married.’
‘I don’t want it,’ she said through clenched teeth.
‘Fine. Give it away. It’s not my concern.’ He reached forward impatiently and turned several pages until he arrived at the end of that section. ‘Sign here.’
Pressing her lips together, she scrawled her name, blinking her eyes furiously.
They were still suspiciously moist when she lifted her face to his. ‘Next?’
He appeared not to notice how close her emotions were to the surface. ‘The next section deals with the moral obligations of our union. Any infidelity will lead to an immediate termination of the marriage. It will also invalidate the financial agreement, and will necessitate your father returning half of the money I have given him to that date.’
She blinked in confusion. ‘You think I’m going to cheat on you?’
His lips compressed with a dark emotion, one she couldn’t fathom. ‘I could not say with certainty.’ His smile was wolfish. ‘Though I imagine this makes it considerably less likely.’
She ground her teeth together. ‘And what if you cheat?’
‘Me?’ He laughed again, this time with real humour.
‘Yeah. You’re the one who seems to be constantly auditioning lovers. What happens if you get bored in our marriage and end up in another woman’s bed?’
‘You will just have to make sure I don’t get bored.’
Her breath snagged in her throat. The threat weakened her. Her pulse throbbed painfully in her body. ‘When did you get so cynical?’
He narrowed his eyes, stunning her with the heat she felt emanating from him. ‘When do you think, agape mou?’
She shook her head, hating the implication that she’d somehow caused his character transformation. ‘Nikos...’
What did she want to say? She’d already tried to explain about Libby, and the burden she’d felt to please her parents—a burden that had increased monumentally after Libby’s death. He didn’t care. He’d said as much. She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. It was futile.
‘I have a meeting after this.’
She swallowed, shaking her head to clear the tangle of thoughts. ‘Fine.’
‘The third section deals with children.’
Her eyes startled to his face. ‘Children?’ Her heart was jackhammering inside her chest.
He turned several pages but Marnie was too shocked to bother trying to read them. He fixed her with a direct stare. ‘It stipulates that we won’t have a child for at least five years.’
Fire and ice were flashing within her, making speech difficult. She blinked her enormous caramel eyes, then shook her head, but still it didn’t make sense. ‘You want children?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. One day. It’s hard to imagine right now—and with you.’
‘Oh, gee, thanks.’ She rolled her eyes in an attempt to hide the way his words had wounded her. ‘As if I’m just lining up to be your baby-baker.’
‘My...baby-baker?’ Despite himself, he felt a smile tickle the corner of his lips.
‘I can’t believe you’re actually contracting hypothetical children.’
He arched a brow. ‘It makes sense.’
‘A baby isn’t...’ She dropped her gaze. ‘A baby isn’t Section Three, Subsection Eleven A. A baby is a little person. A new life! You have no right to...to...make such arbitrary decisions about something that should be magical and wonderful.’
‘A baby between us would never be magical and wonderful,’ he responded, with such ease that she genuinely believed he hadn’t intended to be unkind. ‘It is the very last thing I would want. As for it being arbitrary...’ He shrugged his broad shoulders with an air of unconcern. ‘You seemed perfectly fine making such decisions in the past.’
‘Not about a child!’
‘You just said you don’t want to be my...baby-baker. Have you changed your mind suddenly?’ he asked cynically, his eyes drifting over her features with genuine interest.
‘No.’ She bit down on her lip. The lie—and she recognised it as such—hurt. Images of what their children might look like were hard to shake. Instantly she could see a tiny chubby version of Nikos, with his imperious expression and dark eyes, and her heart seemed to soar at the prospect.
‘Our marriage is not one of love. I can think of nothing worse than bringing a child into that situation.’
‘But in five years?’ she heard herself ask, as if from a long way away.
He shrugged insolently. ‘In five years we will either have found a way to live together with a degree of harmony, or we will hate one another and have long since divorced. It gives us time to see what’s what. No?’
She nodded jerkily. He was right. She knew he was. But as she signed her name on the bottom of the page she felt as if she was strangling a large part of herself.
‘Next?’ She forced a tight smile to her lips; her tone was cool.
‘A simple confidentiality agreement. Our business is our own. The press has a fascination with you, and I have often thought, despite what you say, that you court their interest.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ she interrupted sharply. ‘I go out of my way to stay off their radar.’
‘Which in and of itself only heightens their attention and speculation.’
‘So I flirt with the press by hiding from them?’ She crossed her legs beneath the table. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘You are “Lady Heiress”. They call you that because of your behaviour—’
‘They call me that,’ she interrupted testily, ‘because I refuse to engage with them. After Libby died they were everywhere. I was only seventeen, and they followed me around for sport.’
She didn’t add how horrible their comparisons to the beautiful Libby had made her feel. How Marnie’s far less stunning looks had drawn the press’s derision. She had