your father put you up to it, Kallie? See his ticket out of debt? Or did you just do it for the hell of it, to see if you could turn my head yourself? I told you that day I didn’t go in for seventeen-year-olds.’ His mouth twisted mockingly. ‘But if you’d come to me as you are now…’
He flicked an openly appraising look up and down her body. It should have disgusted her. It should have made her angry. But it didn’t. It made her feel hot and bothered and confused and out of her depth.
But he wasn’t finished. ‘To tell the truth, seven years on I’m not much interested in why…’ He shook his head. ‘You changed, Kallie. The girl I knew would never have tried to seduce me and get someone to photograph the evidence.’
Her insides stung with acute hurt and the humiliation rose up again so sharply she felt sick. To think that he would have believed that of her.
Kallie bit her lip hard and could feel blood. As if his rejection hadn’t hurt enough that night, he had to reiterate just how unwelcome her advances had been and how futile it was to try and get him to listen to anything, any explanation.
‘I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’
‘It’s a bit late now.’
His words flayed her like a whip, cutting so deeply that she winced inwardly. ‘But really it wasn’t like that. I didn’t—’
‘Give me a break.’ Derision and disbelief stamped his features, his mouth a bitter slash. ‘There were three people there that night, you, me and whoever your loyal photographer was. Pity they were so amateur…but they got enough.’
She slumped back again, defeated and diminished by his derision and cruelty. And now that she knew what he wanted, all avenues of escape were closed off. She couldn’t assert her innocence any further, and she couldn’t explain what had happened as that would involve someone who wouldn’t be able to handle this much more dangerous Alexandros. Eleni had come up to Kallie at her parents’ funeral, nearly hysterical with remorse and guilt. She’d told her everything—how she’d followed Kallie out to the patio, taken the picture, hacked into her e-mail and sent in the story.
For one blissful moment, unaware of him across the table, Kallie’s mind was fixed on that awful day of such tragedy. The added pain when Eleni had revealed the truth. Kallie had always had her suspicions but, still, to hear it explained…She’d been shocked and angry. Dismayed, hurt. About to lash back, already filled with grief and now anger. But Eleni’s husband had stepped in. He’d explained everything, exactly why Eleni had been acting so on the edge. Which was the reason why Kallie couldn’t defend herself now.
She’d discovered that her cousin had had a nervous breakdown, and had been undergoing intense therapy after suffering numerous miscarriages. Kallie had seen the pain on Eleni’s husband’s face. Her fight had left her. It had only been after that incident and with the benefit of maturity and hindsight that Kallie could see just how Eleni had also been captivated by him. And how highly strung and manipulative her cousin had always been. Especially with regard to Alexandros.
The man who sat opposite her now, looking so calm and so devastatingly at ease as he toyed with her life. He had been on a mission ever since he’d seen her again. It was as if she’d awakened the sleeping dragon. And she had to take it, had no choice.
She didn’t need to remind herself that, despite Eleni’s involvement, if she hadn’t pursued Alexandros that night, there wouldn’t have been an excuse for a story in the first place. She had no one to blame for this except herself. No matter what the consequences had been, or how unwittingly she’d played a part. And now he held the future of Demarchis Shipping in his hands.
She lifted dull eyes that were mute with an appeal she was unaware of. Weary beyond belief.
‘I have no choice, do I?’
He answered slowly, ‘Of course you do, Kallie, we always have a choice. Yours is very simple. If you walk away now, your uncle will not receive one euro from me, and as he’s been turned down by every bank, and no other shipping company will touch him, he and, consequently, the family, will be ruined. If you agree to marry me, he’ll be fine.’
Some choice…
She asked the fateful question. ‘How long would we…?’
He shrugged one broad shoulder. ‘For as long as I want, Kallie. The day you start to bore me, the day I lose interest, is the day we’ll divorce and you can consider this marriage over.’
AND just like that, from the moment she’d fatefully bumped into Alexandros Kouros again, he’d come back into her life with the force of an atom bomb and turned everything upside down and inside out. And all because he needed a convenient wife. Someone who wouldn’t expect a happy ever after when he discarded them by the wayside of his fast-paced life that had no room for a real marriage.
Kallie moved through the next three weeks as though in some kind of a fog. Where once Alexandros had been blissfully absent, now he was everywhere she turned. In her office, at the door of her flat, on the phone, barking terse instructions. The paparazzi had snapped them coming out of the Hotel de Crillon that night after dinner. Kallie had been so shell-shocked coming out that she’d barely noticed the flashing, popping bulbs. And only the next day when she’d opened the papers had she seen the pictures. Headlines screamed of a possible romance…which was promptly confirmed by Alexandros’s PR people. Before she even had time to draw breath, the net was being drawn tighter and tighter around her. And no doubt, she thought bitterly, he saw the justice in dragging her name through the papers now, too.
She drew the line, however, when he sent over a credit card one day close to the wedding with an order to kit herself out, and called him angrily on the phone.
‘I will not be paraded like some gilded lily. And I will not go and buy clothes with your money, to your specifications. You may be as good as blackmailing me to buy yourself a convenient wife but I will not be your chattel, Alexandros. I’ve been dressing myself successfully with no complaints for some time now and I intend to keep doing so.’
‘Well, believe me, you’re going to need a little gilding to be my wife. Your look is far too casually natural—’
Kallie gasped in consternation, seething. ‘Weren’t you the one who implied that I might have had work done? Make up your mind!’
He was quite unconcerned, drawling, ‘That was before I saw you again properly. I’m quite sure now that you’ve had no…surgical enhancements and, believe me, I’m looking forward to finding out for sure.’
That was when Kallie slammed the phone down. She cut up the credit card and sent it back to Alexandros with a courier. Which he received with a wry smile. The first woman, ever, to refuse his money. He wondered what game Kallie might be playing but couldn’t deny that he was growing more and more intrigued by the day. Having to take a convenient wife was turning out to be far more entertaining than he’d first anticipated.
The day before the civil marriage was to take place at the office of the mairie on the Place Du Panthéon, Kallie was meeting her uncle for lunch near his office on the Champs Elysées. The Arc de Triomphe was a mere shape in the distance as she steeled herself and went into the restaurant.
He stood as she approached and they kissed on both cheeks in a warm greeting. She hadn’t seen him since that night at the Ritz. They’d spoken on the phone when she’d delivered her news of the wedding and now she couldn’t put off the inevitable any more. Finally, after she’d prevaricated for as long as possible, he got to the point. Taking her hand across the table, he said gently, ‘Kallie, darling, you know how important to me you are, you’re like another daughter.’
‘I know…’ She tried to keep the emotion out of her voice, aching to be able to confide in someone, anyone.