just assumed... I thought you might have asked the Sheikh.’
‘No.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Kulal and Hannah know nothing about this.’
It was the mention of her sister’s name which startled Tamsyn out of her lazy stupor. She had been about to tell Xan exactly what he could do with his offer—without letting him know how much he’d managed to hurt her. She would have told him that she mightn’t have a job right now, but she would find one soon enough. She always did. Because one of the advantages of casual labour meant there were always vacancies for women like her. Women who had slipped through the net at school and at home. Who’d never had the comfort of regular meals or someone gently nagging at them to do their homework. She would get by because although she might not have any formal qualifications to her name, she was a graduate from the School of Survival. You didn’t sleep in a room with winter frost inside the windows listening to sounds of arguments bouncing off the thin walls next door, without developing a tough exterior.
But what about Hannah? Her sister was in an entirely different situation. She might now be the wife of the world’s richest men but that didn’t necessarily mean she was safe. When she’d been in Zahristan for the wedding, Tamsyn had sensed all was not well in the new marriage. How could it be—when it had taken place between a powerful sheikh and someone as humble as Hannah? They had married because Hannah had been pregnant with the Sheikh’s baby—but what if Kulal had only married her sister to get some kind of legal hold over his offspring? The Sheikh had all the power now that he had married her, didn’t he? While Hannah had none. Not really. She might be the new Queen of a powerful desert region but she couldn’t even speak the language of her adopted home.
Tamsyn folded up her napkin and placed it neatly on the table beside her empty plate. What if she agreed to Xan’s crazy proposal, but on her terms? What if she demanded a whole load of money—more even than he’d probably contemplated giving her? Enough to bail out her sister, should the need ever arise. Wouldn’t it be beyond fabulous to have enough cash to buy Hannah and her baby airline tickets out of Zahristan, if marriage to Kulal should prove intolerable? To give her a wad of that same cash to purchase a bolthole somewhere? Wouldn’t it mean something to be able to do that—especially after everything her sister had done for her when they’d been growing up? To redress the balance a little. Even though...
Tamsyn swallowed down the suddenly acrid taste in her mouth.
Even though Hannah had been the reason Tamsyn had never met her father and it had taken her a long time to forgive her for that...
She looked up to find Xan watching her closely, the way she imagined a policeman might scrutinise a suspect from behind a piece of two-way glass. Well, he certainly wouldn’t be able to read very much from her expression! Hadn’t she spent all her formative years hiding her emotions behind the blasé mask she presented to the world?
‘How long would this marriage last?’
‘Not long. Three months should suffice. Any less than that and it will look like a stunt.’
She nodded. ‘And how much money are you prepared to offer me?’
She saw him flinch—but that didn’t surprise her either. Rich people never wanted to talk about money. They thought it was vulgar. Beneath them. Had Xan forgotten was it like to be poor, she wondered? Was that something else he’d blocked from his mind—like an agreement made by a teenage boy to marry a woman so his father could claw back an important piece of land?
‘How much did you have in mind?’ he questioned.
Her birth father had taught her everything she needed to know about desertion and rejection while her foster father’s life lessons had been about infidelity and gambling. No wonder she distrusted men so much. But some of those lessons had been useful. She’d overheard enough bluster around card games to realise that you had to start high and be prepared to be knocked down whenever you were bargaining for something. So she mentioned an outrageous sum of money, prepared for yet slightly shamed by the brief look of contempt which hardened Xan’s cobalt eyes. But it was gone almost immediately, because he nodded his head.
‘Okay,’ he said.
She blinked in disbelief. ‘Just like that?’
He shrugged. ‘You clearly want it. I can afford it. And obviously, the more I am prepared to pay—the more I get out of our brief union.’
The silky inference behind his drawled words made Tamsyn’s stomach clench with anger. And something else. Something far more potent than anger. Because at times during his story she had wanted to reach out to him. To comfort him? Or to kiss him? Or both. Maybe both. Especially when his face had grown hard and hurt when he’d mentioned his mother. She could feel her breasts pushing against the fine wool of the cashmere dress as she directed him a heated look, forcing herself to be bold enough to ask the question. ‘You think I’m going to have sex with you?’
‘That’s a pretty naive question, Tamsyn,’ he answered softly. ‘Why wouldn’t I? We’ve had sex before and it was good. Very, very good.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And isn’t it a very necessary part of the marriage contract?
There was a pause during which Tamsyn steeled herself against the shocking beauty of his face and her own even more shocking reaction to him...the heat of excitement in her blood and the soft throb of hunger between her legs. But somehow, using the kind of resilience which every abandoned child needed in order to survive, she managed to present to him a face devoid of expression. ‘Not in this case, because it’s only make-believe,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ll marry you because I want your money. But it’s nothing but a business arrangement and there’s no way I’m being intimate with you again, Xan. Because it wouldn’t be right. Not after everything that’s happened.’
SOMEHOW THE FLOWERS woven into her hair stayed in place, even though the sea breeze was whipping wildly all around her. Tamsyn guessed that was one of the benefits of marrying a billionaire—that he could afford to pay a top hairdresser to tame his prospective wife’s unruly curls into an elaborate style which had miraculously stayed put all day. She clutched the railings of Xan’s luxury yacht as it skimmed through the sapphire waters, trying to get her head around the fact that she was now the Greek tycoon’s wife, and that the shiny golden ring which glinted on her finger was for real.
Well, as real as a fake wedding would allow.
Determined not to let herself be led like a lamb to the slaughter on her wedding day, she’d stated her terms before the ceremony, insisting she didn’t want a big fuss—opting instead for something low-key and pared down. She thought it would have felt cheap to put on a big public show which meant nothing, and there was no way she could have made hollow vows in a place of worship. Most important of all, she didn’t want Hannah hearing about the marriage until it was over, just in case she decided to do something dramatic like arriving in a flurry of royal pomp to try and talk her out of it.
But keeping their nuptials quiet seemed to have appealed to Xan as well and in a quiet moment he’d admitted that he had no stomach for weddings in general and his own in particular.
‘The details will be posted in the local town hall which is a requirement by law,’ he said. ‘But since the mayor is a friend, our privacy will be respected and there’s no way word will get out to the press. At least, not until I am ready to issue a statement.’ A hard glimmer of a smile had followed. ‘And it adds a little passionate authenticity to our whirlwind romance if we keep it all very hush-hush don’t you think, agape mou?
What Tamsyn thought wasn’t really here nor there. It bothered her that Xan seemed to be almost relishing the clandestine nature of the wedding, until she forced herself to remember that most men enjoyed secrecy. This was nothing but an elaborate game to Xan, she reminded herself, and since they weren’t planning to be married for very long, what