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Джордан Пенни
The Scandalous Warehams
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CHAPTER FIVE
‘MARRIAGE?’ Lizzie repeated unsteadily, feeling that she must somehow have misunderstood him.
‘According to my solicitors I am in need of a wife,’ Ilios informed her curtly. ‘And since you claim you cannot repay me in cash, and since I have no appetite for the kind of woman who so easily shares her body with any man who has had the price to pay for it, I have decided that this is best way for me to recoup what I have lost and take payment from you.’
Lizzie felt as though glue had been poured into her brain, locking it together and jamming her ability to think.
The only words she could summon were the words, Ilios Manos, marriage, and danger—all written large in bright red ink.
‘No,’ she told Ilios shakily, before she could do the utterly reckless, dangerous and unthinkable and say yes. Whatever the reason Ilios might want her as a wife, it was absolutely not because he wanted her, and she had better hang on to that fact, Lizzie told herself, not start spinning crazily foolish fantasies and daydreams about Mr Right, Cinderella and happy ever after, filled with nights of sensual delight and days of blissful joy.
A categorical no was not the answer Ilios wanted, and nor was it the answer he had expected. He knew of a dozen women at least who would have been delirious with joy at the thought of becoming his wife, quite apart from the fact that Lizzie Wareham was in no position to dare to refuse him anything. She was certainly not going to be allowed to do so. Didn’t she realise the position she was in? A position in which he held all the aces and she held none. If not, then perhaps it was time he made that position completely clear to her.
‘No?’ he challenged her coldly. ‘So it is just as I thought. All that you have said to me about your desire to protect your sisters—your family—is nothing more than lies and total fiction.’ He paused. A man of action and powerful determination, Ilios did not waste time analysing his decisions once he had made them, or asking himself what might have motivated them—even when they involved the kind of turnaround that had taken place inside his head since that very morning. He had decided Lizzie would be his wife.
He also hated not winning; once he had decided upon a course of action he stuck to it, no matter what obstacles lay in his way. Obstacles could be crushed and then removed. It was simply a matter of finding the right method to do so, with speed and efficiency, and Ilios thought he knew exactly the right method to shift the obstacle to his plans that was Lizzie’s ‘no’.
‘I was about to say—before you were so quick to refuse me—that I am also prepared to pay you a bonus of one hundred thousand pounds, on the understanding that for your part you conduct yourself in public at all times during our enforced relationship as you would were that relationship real. In other words I expect you, in your role as my fiancée and then my wife, to behave.’
A bonus? What he meant was a bribe, Lizzie acknowledged, feeling sickened as much by her awareness of how little she could now afford to refuse as by her personal feelings swirling through her at the thought of being married to him.
‘To behave as though I’m in love with you?’ Lizzie supplied lightly, determined not to let him see how humiliated she felt. The thought of having to act as though she loved him filled her with an immediate and self-defensive need to refuse.
It was bad enough that he was humiliating her by offering her money, without her own painful awareness of her fear that the physical longing he aroused in her so easily might overwhelm her.
A truly brave person did not turn and flee from their own fear and danger, Lizzie reminded herself. A truly brave person stood their ground and fought to overcome it, to make themselves even stronger. And besides, how could she turn down the money he was prepared to offer her when she knew what it would mean at home. It would clear the mortgage, for one thing, and leave nearly ten thousand pounds’ much needed ‘rainy day money’.
It meant that she would be quite literally selling herself to him—a man she already knew affected her as no man ever had. But she had to accept his offer for the sake of her family. How could she live with herself if she didn’t, knowing the huge difference it would make to their lives?
‘To behave as though our relationship is genuine and desired by both of us,’ Ilios told her. ‘Very, well, then.’ he continued, when Lizzie remained silent. ‘If you prefer to have your family stripped of the roof over their heads—’
What kind of fool was she to dare to try and refuse him? What was she expecting? That he would turn into some kind of white knight in shining armour? Some kind of saviour who would generously let her off any kind of payment? It was time she grew up and learned as he had had to learn that saviours didn’t exist. The only way to escape from the burdens life presented you with was to dig your own way out from under them—with your bare hands, if necessary, as he had. No doubt she expected him to feel sorry for her, with her tale of how her family had suffered and how she believed it was her duty to protect them. Why should he? Who had ever protected him when he had needed protection? No one. Hardship made a person stronger, unless they were so weak in the first place that they went to the wall. She must know that herself, since she had strength.
Ilios frowned. When and how had he decided, without knowing more about her, that Lizzie Wareham had strength? Strength was something he admired and respected, after all. Especially when that strength was hard-won.
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Lizzie told Ilios fiercely, immediately tormented by the horrific images his callous words had conjured up. ‘I just don’t understand why you should want to marry me.’
It was the wrong thing to have said.
‘I don’t,’ Ilios assured her, and the look he gave her sliced her pride to the bone. ‘It is my lawyers who believe that the best way for me to protect what is rightfully mine from my cousin’s greedy machinations is for me to marry. Tino needs money. He thinks he can blackmail me into giving him that money by threatening to challenge my right of inheritance under our grandfather’s will. He knows that I will never give up what is in effect a sacred charge on me, a duty to both the history of our name and its future, so he thinks I will give in to him. But I shall not. He claims that the fact that I am known to have sworn never to marry and do not have a wife means I have broken an unwritten article of faith—namely that Villa Manos must be passed down through the male line of our family. Villa Manos and its lands are a sacred trust. They have been in our family for over five hundred years. They are the essence of what we are. Manos blood, my father’s blood, was sacrificed for them. There is nothing I will not do to hold my duty and to meet it. Nothing!’
His fury, and the pride that went with it, filled the air around her so that she could almost feel and taste them, Lizzie recognized.
‘Tino believes that he has backed me into a corner,’ he continued angrily. ‘That I will be prepared to buy him off in order to keep Villa Manos. My solicitors advise me that the best and only guaranteed way to block Tino’s plans is for me to marry. After all, with blackmail one payment is never the end, it is merely the beginning. If I were to give in to him now—which I have no intention of doing—Tino would think that he has me in his power.’
Privately Lizzie found it impossible to imagine that anyone, male or female, would be foolish enough to think they could control a man like Ilios Manos.
‘Why don’t you simply find someone you genuinely want to marry?’ she suggested. ‘After all, a man with your—’
‘With my what?’ Ilios stopped her. ‘With my wealth? That is exactly why I am not married and why I never intend to marry. Only a fool voluntarily puts himself in a position where a woman can enjoy a rich man’s money both in marriage and then out of it, after they both discover that they no longer want one another. The curse of wealth is that it has the same attraction for sharks as fresh blood. My marriage to you will be different. You will already have been paid to wear my name and my ring. My cousin does not have the temperament for a long fight. Once he sees that I am married he will lose interest and the marriage can be annulled.’
Lizzie shivered as she heard the implacable merciless coldness in Ilios’s voice. It reminded her all too well of what the reality of her situation was.
Once, before their parents’ death, she might have been an impulsive eager young woman who believed that one day the sensuality of her nature would find joyous fulfilment with a man who was her soul mate. But that had been a long time ago. Since then she had believed that sensuality and its satisfaction were things she had put to one side without regret. Now, though—albeit against her will—she suspected that Ilios Manos had reignited her female desire. That made her vulnerable to him in a way that could not be countenanced.
For her own sake she should protect herself by returning to England and never thinking about him or seeing him again. For her own sake. But what about her family? For them, for their sake to protect them, she needed to stay here and accept the terms that Ilios was forcing on her. How could she possibly put herself first?
As though he had access to her private thoughts, Ilios told her unkindly, ‘You have two choices. Either you agree to marry me, and in doing so give your sisters the financial protection you claim is all-important to you, or you refuse and face the consequences. Because I will pursue you for repayment of your debt to me, with all the power at my command. And I warn you—do not make the mistake of thinking I do not mean what I say or that I will not carry out my retribution.’
Two choices? He was wrong about that, Lizzie admitted bleakly to herself. She had no choice at all.
Even so, she managed to keep her head held high as she told him, ‘Very well, then. I shall marry you—although there seems to be something you have overlooked in your calculations,’ she couldn’t resist adding.
‘Which is?’ he demanded.
‘You said that Villa Manos and its lands must be passed from father to son,’ Lizzie pointed out to him.
‘And so it shall be,’ Ilios agreed. ‘We are living in the twenty-first century now,’ he told her matter-of-factly. ‘A child can be created without its parents having to meet, never mind get married.’
‘But what about love?’ Lizzie couldn’t stop herself from asking. ‘You may fall in love, and then—’
‘That will never happen. I don’t believe in what you call “love”, and I don’t want to. I would never trust any woman to have my children and not at some stage use them as pawns for her own benefit.’
The harshness in his voice warned Lizzie that this was a dangerous subject, one which raised strong emotions in him, even though she suspected that Ilios himself would refuse to accept that. But not to believe in love—of any kind … Lizzie shivered at the thought of such a cold and barren existence. Love could hurt the human heart—badly—but surely it was also woven into the weft and warp of human life in a way that made it as essential as air and water.
‘When the time comes,’ Ilios continued, ‘I shall ensure that I become the father of one or possibly two sons. They will carry my DNA along with that of a woman who will provide the eggs before being carried by a surrogate. Neither women will know who I am, because it will not be any of their business. My sons will grow up with me, knowing that I am their father.’
‘But they will never know their mother.’ Lizzie’s shock couldn’t be hidden. ‘Aren’t you concerned about how that might affect them?’
‘No. Because they will grow up knowing that they were planned and wanted—by me—and why. They will know too that I have protected them from exploitation by any woman using them for her own financial advantage. They will be far too busy learning what it means to be a Manos to worry about the absence from their lives of a woman they can call “Mother”. Unlike many other children they will never be in the position of believing that their mother loves them above all else only to find that she does not …’
Was this the reason he refused to believe in love?
‘Is that what happened to you?’ she asked softly, driven again to feel pity for the child he must have been, despite the way he had behaved towards her. The words were spoken before she could check them.
The softness of Lizzie’s voice touched a previously unrecognised area of raw pain within him that immediately had Ilios fighting to deny its existence—furious with himself for having such a vulnerability, and even more furious with Lizzie for so accurately finding it.
‘Don’t waste your time or your pity trying to psychoanalyse me. All I want from you is payment of your debt to me. Nothing less and nothing more,’ he told her coldly.
It was all too much for her to take in, Lizzie admitted numbly. Physical and emotional exhaustion claimed her as the miles flew by, and her eyes ached to be closed just as her mind ached for the panacea of sleep, so that it could escape for a little while from the daunting prospect ahead of her. If it was cowardly to allow herself to find that escape in sleep, then she would just have to be a coward, Lizzie told herself, and she allowed her eyes to close.
He had got what he wanted, so why wasn’t he feeling a greater sense of triumph? Ilios wondered. Why wasn’t he filled with a sense of righteous satisfaction in having forced Lizzie to make reparation? He had the right and the justification for feeling both of those things, after all.
Some sense he hadn’t known he possessed alerted him to the fact that Lizzie had fallen asleep again. He glanced at her. At least she would make a convincing wife—which, of course, was exactly why he had hit on this method of making her pay what she owed him. It was a perfectly logical and sensible decision for him to have made, and one which would leave him with the balance sheet of his pride healthily in credit. That was why he had been able to offer her the additional inducement of a cash payment. There was no other reason. No question of him actually having felt some sort of ridiculous compassion for the plight of her family. He simply wasn’t that kind of man and never would be. If Lizzie Wareham was the victim of circumstance rather than her own greed, as she insisted to him she was, then what was that to him? Nothing.
He had no duty to take the woes of others onto his own shoulders. His duty was solely to himself alone. Because there was only himself. Alone. That was what he was—alone. And that was the way he preferred it, and it always would be.
Ilios put his foot down on the accelerator. His need to focus on the increased speed with which he was driving might be giving him an excuse not to focus on the woman sleeping at his side, but it was not an excuse he needed, he assured himself. Nor was it anything to do with him if the angle at which she was sleeping was likely to give her a stiff neck. But his foot was covering the brake in the minute gap between him recognising her discomfort and refuting his need to become involved in it.
Some instinct told Lizzie that something had changed and that she needed to wake up. A scent—alien and pulse-quickening, and yet also familiar and desired—caught at her senses, like the warmth of the heat from another body close to her own, the touch of a hand on her skin. Slowly Lizzie opened her eyes, her heart banging into her chest wall as she realised that she was practically lying flat in the front seat of the Bentley, with Ilios leaning over her. The soft light illuminated the interior of the car, and with it the carved perfection of his features.
Inside her head a tape played, trapping her when she was too vulnerable to stop it, tormenting her with images of herself reaching up to touch his face with her fingertips, exploring its chiselled features. Surely it should be impossible for a real live man to have such classically perfect male features?
She wanted to touch him, to run her fingertips over his face as though he were indeed a marvellous sculpture, created by hands so skilled that one could not help but yearn to touch the masterpiece they had created.
She could almost feel the hard-cut shape of his mouth—the lower lip full and sensual, the groove from the centre of his top lip to his nose clearly marked. A sign of great sensuality, so she had once read. His skin would feel warm and dry, and as she explored the pattern of his lips he would reach out and take hold of her wrist, kissing her fingers.
Frantically Lizzie struggled to sit upright, panicked by Ilios’s proximity and the unwanted images inside her head to which it was giving rise.
His sharp, ‘Be still’, was harshly commanding, his eyes a deep dark gold in the soft light of the interior of the car. Hadn’t it been the Greek King Midas whose touch had turned everything before him to gold, thus depriving him of life-giving water and food? Even his son had been turned into a golden statue by his touch, leaving him unable to return his love. Was that what had happened to Ilios? Had the circumstances of his birth and the burden of his inheritance deprived him of the ability to feel love? What if it had? Why should that matter to her?
‘There is no cause for you to act like a nervous virgin. I was simply adjusting your seat so that you could sleep in it safety.’
Lizzie’s ‘Thank you’, was self-conscious and stilted.
As he moved back from her to his own seat Ilios told her in a clipped, rejecting voice, ‘There’s no need to thank me. After all, had you fallen across me my safety would have been compromised as much as yours.’
Lizzie could have kicked herself. Of course he hadn’t been thinking about her personal safety. Why should he?
Ilios had noticed her recoil from him—obviously instinctive and unplanned. But he was certainly not affected by it. Far from it. The last thing he wanted was a sexual relationship between them to add complications to the situation. Ilios looked out into the darkness beyond the car. He should perhaps make that clear to her. Not because of his own pride, of course. No. It was simply the sensible thing to do.
Restarting the car, he informed Lizzie dispassionately, ‘I should have made it clear earlier that our marriage will merely be a business arrangement. If you were thinking of adding to your bonus payment by offering a sexual inducement, then let me warn you not to do so.’
As Lizzie exhaled in angry humiliation, Ilios continued bluntly, ‘I do not want either your body or your desire. Should you be tempted to offer me either one of them, or both, then you must resist that temptation.’
There—that should have made the position clear to her, Ilios decided. It would certainly remove any future risk of his body reacting to her unwanted proximity.
He had obviously realised the effect he was having on her, Lizzie thought miserably.
Annoyingly, now that her seat was reclined and she could have slept comfortably, she felt too self-conscious to do so. So she found the buttons Ilios had used and brought her seat upright again, informing him in as businesslike a voice as she could, ‘My sisters will be expecting to hear from me. I think it will be best if I simply tell them I shall be working for you as an interior designer, rather than trying to explain about our … the marriage.’
‘I agree. However, where my friends and acquaintances are concerned the marriage will obviously become a public reality, and for that reason I think we should agree a suitable history of our relationship. I suggest we say simply that we met when I was on business in England and that our relationship has progressed from there. I kept it and you under wraps, so to speak, until I decided that I wanted to marry you.’
‘Until we decided that we wanted to marry one another,’ Lizzie corrected him firmly, refusing to give way and break eye contact with him when he flashed her a look of arrogant disbelief that said quite plainly that in his book he made the decisions.
‘We shall soon be back in the city,’ he continued, breaking the challenging silence. ‘Which hotel are you in?’
‘I had intended to stay in one of the apartments,’ Lizzie was forced to admit.
‘You mean you haven’t booked anywhere?’ His tone was critical and irritated, making Lizzie feel foolish and unprofessional. She had so much else on her mind to worry about that she’d completely overlooked the fact that she now didn’t have anywhere to stay.
‘Like I said, I was expecting to stay in one of the apartments,’ she defended herself, telling him, ‘Just drop me off somewhere central and I’ll find somewhere.’
The last thing she wanted was for him to take her to some five-star hotel she couldn’t afford.
Ilios fought back his irritation whilst mentally calculating the risk of how likely it was that someone he knew would see Lizzie and remember her later if he booked her into a hotel. He decided the odds were too high for him to take. It wasn’t that he particularly cared about the fact that his wife-to-be wasn’t wearing designer clothes, full make-up and expensive jewellery, but local society liked to gossip, and he didn’t want anyone asking awkward questions.
They were travelling down a wide thoroughfare, passing a spectacularly well-designed tall glass and marble building, but before she could comment on it Ilios had turned into a side street and driven down a dark ramp, activating a door in the black marble of a side wall that opened to allow him to drive inside.
‘Where are we?’ Lizzie asked uncertainly.
‘The Manos Construction building,’ Manos told her. Under the circumstances I think it will be best if you stay in my apartment. There are certain formalities that will need to be dealt with—and quickly, if my cousin’s suspicions are not to be alerted. Since you don’t already have a hotel booking, it makes sense for you to stay with me.’
Stay with him? Lizzie’s mouth had gone dry with tension and anxiety.
‘Nothing to say?’
‘What am I supposed to say? Thank you?’ Lizzie’s voice was filled with despair, and her emotions overwhelmed her as she demanded, ‘Have you any idea what it’s like to be in my position? Not to know whether or not you can pay your bills, or even where your next meal is going to come from? Not having anyone to turn to who can help?’
‘Yes. I have known all those things and more—far more than you can ever imagine.’
His answer silenced Lizzie in mid-sentence, leaving her with her mouth half open.
Ilios hadn’t intended to allow himself to speak about his most deeply buried memories, but now that he had begun to do so he discovered that it was impossible for him to stop. Emotions—anger, bitterness, resentment—fought with one another to tell their story, bursting from their imprisonment in a torrent of furiously savage words.
‘World War Two and everything that followed it destroyed our family fortunes. What it didn’t take the Junta did. I left home when I was sixteen, intent on making my fortune as I had promised my grandfather I would. Instead I ended up in Athens, begging from rich tourists. That was how I learned to speak English. From there I got work on construction sites, building hotels. That was how I learned to make money.’
‘And you worked your way up until you owned your own business?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Only the way I worked myself up was via a spell in prison and a few good hands of cards. I was falsely accused of stealing materials from a site on which I was working. In prison I found that I could make money playing cards. I saved that money, and then I went back to the construction trade and started to put to use what I’d learned.’
He would make a very bad enemy, Lizzie decided, shivering a little as she heard in his voice the implacability that had made him what he was.
What was happening to him? Ilios wondered. Why was he suddenly talking about things he had vowed never to discuss with anyone? It must be because he wanted to ensure that Lizzie Wareham didn’t get away with thinking that she was the only one to have had hardship in her life. Satisfied with his answer, Ilios got out of the car and went round to the passenger door to open it for Lizzie.
He looked immaculate, Lizzie noticed, whilst she felt sure that she must look travel-creased and grubby. Whilst she smoothed her jeans, and then tried to do the same to her hair, Ilios went to the boot of the car and removed her case from it. Hastily Lizzie went to take it from him, but he shook his head, carrying it as easily as though it was a sheaf of papers. She had no need to wonder where his muscles came from. All that work on building sites, no doubt.
‘The lift’s this way,’ he told her, directing her towards a marble and glass area several yards away. He activated it with a code he punched into the lock, standing back to allow her to go into the lift first.
If he hadn’t told her himself about his childhood she would never have guessed, Lizzie acknowledged. He had the polished manners and self-assurance she associated with someone born into comfortable circumstances, not someone who had come up the hard way. But then his background was obviously moneyed, in the sense that his family had possessed it at one time. Had that made things harder for him? Set him apart from those he’d worked with? Had he ever felt alienated and alone?
Lizzie tried to imagine how she would feel if she didn’t have her sisters, and then warned herself that sympathy was the last thing Ilios Manos wanted. He was a man who stood alone because he wanted to stand alone. He had as good as told her that himself.
The lift soared upwards at speed, flattening her stomach to her spine. She’d never really liked lifts, and this one was all glass, on the inside of the cathedral-like space of the building. Even though it was now in darkness, it made her feel distinctly nervous.
The lift stopped swiftly and silently, its doors opening onto an impressive rectangular hallway. The walls and floors were covered in limestone, and concealed lighting illuminated the space, highlighting the pair of matching limestone tables either side of a pair of double doors, cleverly looking almost as though they had been carved out of the wall instead of standing next to it. Two marble busts—one on either table—were also illuminated by concealed lighting.
When he saw her looking at them, Ilios told her, ‘They are supposed to have been brought back from Italy by Alexandros Manos at the same time as he returned with copies of Palladio’s plans for the villa. If you know Villa Emo and anything of its history then you will know that the Emo family were said to be of Greek descent—hence the classical Greek appearance of the villa.’
‘As a trading port, Venice was something of a melting pot for various nations back then,’ Lizzie agreed.
Ilios nodded his head, then opened the doors and waited for her to precede him.
A corridor lined with black marble on one side and mirrors on the other, to expand the space, opened out into a large living area with floor-to-ceiling glass walls virtually all along its length. Through them Lizzie could see the night sky, studded with stars.
White sofas stood on a black-tiled floor, focussed on a modern fireplace in the centre of the room. Picking up a remote control, Ilios pressed a button and a wall of the black glass rectangular chimney surrounding the fire slid back, to reveal a large television screen.
Everything in the room was state of the art and a future collector’s piece, Lizzie recognised. She could immediately put a name to the prestigious interior design partnership that was responsible for the interior, and even to the designer within that concern who had headed up the team.
‘Walt Eickehoven.’ Without thinking, she said his name out loud.
Ilios swung round. ‘You know him?’
‘No, but I know his style,’ Lizzie answered. ‘Those sofas and that unit are unmistakably his. I’ve heard that he’s got a queuing list of clients that goes into months, if not years.’
Ilios shrugged. ‘Queues can be jumped. I’ll show you the guest suite, and then you’ll need something to eat. I’ll order something in—do you like moussaka? If so, we can eat in half an hour.’
Lizzie nodded her head. She was hungry, but she was also tired.
‘This way,’ Ilios instructed her.
‘This way’ led down another windowless corridor of marble and mirrors, this one with inset niches, each one containing a carefully lit piece of stone artwork.
The apartment was a work of art in itself, Lizzie recognized, but her heart ached over a private question. How would the two motherless sons Ilios Manos intended to bring up fit into such an environment? She didn’t think she would actually want to live in such a polished and sterile atmosphere herself, even though as a designer she could appreciate its stunning design.
Ilios had stopped outside a door in the corridor and was indicating to her. ‘I think you will find everything you need inside.’
Nodding again, Lizzie opened the door. By the time she had closed it she knew that Ilios had gone—not because she had seen him go, but because somehow she had sensed it. The air around her and her own body’s reaction told her that he was no longer there. She frowned. Finding Ilios Manos sexually attractive was understandable, and she tried to tell herself to quell her growing panic about how she was going to cope living so closely with him. Obviously such a stupendously male man was bound to have that effect on most women. But she was not most women, and she was desperately afraid of her vulnerability. Discovering that he had made such an impact on her senses that even her skin could register his presence or the lack of it was frighteningly dangerous territory—dangerous and not to be risked territory, in fact.
Instead of thinking about the effect Ilios had on her, Lizzie told herself to try and focus instead on her surroundings. As a designer she could possibly learn something that she could take with her into her life, when her present enforced ordeal was finally over.
The guest suite, for instance, was exactly that—a luxurious, streamlined boutique-hotel-style open space, with a sleeping area at one end that contained a bed, and a living space at the other furnished with sofas, tables and a desk.
Like the living room, the guest suite also had a glass wall that ran its full length, but this one looked inward onto what she imagined must be an enclosed garden, since it was virtually on the roof of the building. Carefully placed soft lighting revealed a perspective view of the ruins of a small elevated Greek temple, which looked down into the garden with steps leading from it into a swimming pool. Along the far length of the pool ran a colonnade, planted with vines, which led to a grotto of the sort favoured by designers of the Italian Renaissance opposite the temple. Parterred greenery in intricate formal patterns separated the pool area from the space outside the glass wall, so that that space formed an almost private outdoor sitting area, with double doors from the living space opening out onto it.
Lizzie didn’t like to think of the millions just the apartment and its garden must have cost. Professionally, she was in awe. This kind of commission was so far outside her level of operation that the only time she would normally get to view one would be in the pages of a magazine. But, as a woman who shared her own living space with two sisters and twin five-year-old boys, she was almost repelled by the cool, sleek hauteur of living space. It made her feel that as a human being her presence within it spoiled its sterile perfection.
Ilios had handed her trolley case before leaving her, and of course it looked ludicrously out of place.
Half an hour, he’d said. That meant she had the choice of showering and tidying herself up, or texting her sisters.
That choice was no choice, really. Lizzie smiled ruefully to herself as she headed for the double doors to one side of the enormous low-level bed, dressed in immaculate grey and white linen to tone with the slate-grey tiled floor.
Beyond the double doors was a dressing room-cum-wardrobe space—enough space to house the entire wardrobes of her whole family with room to spare—and beyond that, through another set of doors, was the bathroom, containing both a shower and a bath, and a separate lavatory. For the first time since she had entered the apartment Lizzie realised she was in a room that combined both modern artistic design and sybaritic sensuality. For a start, the glass wall continued the full length of the bathroom, making it possible to stand in the wetroom-style shower or lie in the huge stone bath and look out into the garden. Limestone tiles covered floor and walls; thick fluffy grey, white and beige towels were stacked on the inbuilt limestone shelving unit next to the double basins.
After a regretful look at the shower, Lizzie washed her hands and face and then returned to the bedroom, sinking into the white sofa as she quickly texted her family to tell them the good news about her new commission from the owner of Manos Construction.
That done, she only just had enough time to comb her hair and renew her lipstick before a quick glance at her watch told her that her time was up.
When she had made her way back to the living area, she suspected, from the quick frowning glance that Ilios gave her, that he had expected her to have changed clothes. No doubt he was used to women making an all-out effort to impress him, but even if she’d had time to change, Lizzie acknowledged, since all she had to change into was a different top she was hardly likely to have impressed him.
While he might not exhibit the tendencies one somehow expected to see in a man who had ‘come from nothing’—for instance, whilst she had no doubt that both his clothes and the watch he was wearing were expensive, they were the opposite of ostentatious—she suspected that designer-clad females were his normal choice of arm candy. Which was perhaps why he considered her sex to be so rapacious.
Their food, delivered whilst she had been in the guest suite, was a simple moussaka-type dish. It was, Lizzie admitted as they sat opposite one another at the polished black glass table, absolutely delicious—as was the wine Ilios had poured to go with it.
It was merely necessity that had prompted him to decide that Lizzie could pay off her debt to him by becoming his wife. He had no personal interest in her whatsoever, Ilios reminded himself as he watched her enjoying her food, plainly not in the least bit concerned about the fact that she was still dressed in workmanlike clothes that did nothing to accentuate her figure and were obviously neither designed nor worn with the idea of arousing male desire. So why did it irk him so irrationally to recognise that she had not made the slightest attempt to attract his attention? Was he really such a stereotypical male? Or was it because, despite the fact that she was not making any attempt to attract him, he was very much aware of her?
If he was, then it was probably due to the fact that it was some time since he had shared his bed with a woman. He had ended his last relationship after his lover had started trying to pressure him into marriage—over a year ago now, in fact.
If Lizzie’s manner irked him then it was surely because, even though his current contact with the female sex was via a variety of social and business-related events, and not on any personal level, he took it for granted that the women he met would be well groomed, dressed in such a way that pleasing the male of the species would be their clear intention.
Ilios looked at her and frowned.
‘You will need a new wardrobe before you can appear in public as either my fiancée or my wife,’ he informed Lizzie.
‘I have plenty of clothes at home. I can ask my sisters to send me some.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Right now you are dressed as though you were a suburban matron whose sole concern is looking after her family. Jeans and a blazer, loafers … A woman who does not seek to attract the attention of a man, and who perhaps would even prefer to repel male attention.’ He made a dismissive gesture which stung Lizzie’s female pride.
‘Not all women are so insecure that they want to advertise their sensuality to the world at large. Some of us prefer to keep that aspect of ourselves private. In fact we take a pride in it,’ she told him fiercely.
‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Ilios demanded. ‘Wearing dull clothes and so-called sexy underwear beneath them?’
Lizzie could feel her colour rising and bent her head over her wine glass, hoping that the soft fall of her hair would cloak her blush, as she absentmindedly ran her fingertip round the edge of the glass. The fact was that as her sisters often teased her because she was a silk, satin and lace undies fan, the more feminine the better.
Ilios observed her behaviour, knowing immediately the cause of her flushed face and her reluctance to meet his gaze. What was a matter of far more concern and disbelief to him was the effect knowing that beneath her sensible clothes Lizzie Wareham deliberately chose to wear sensual underwear was having on him physically. It might be over a year since he had last had a lover, but that was no excuse for the images that were filling his mind now, and the reaction they were causing within his own body.
Ilios couldn’t remember previously being so glad that he was seated at a table, and was thus able to conceal from a woman’s view his body’s reaction to her. To have such a painfully hard erection was territory that belonged to young men not yet able to fully master their sexuality—not men in their mid-thirties, and certainly not him. The mind could play tricks on a person, he reminded himself, and his reaction was probably not to Lizzie Wareham but to images he himself had created. He did not desire her. He was, to put it bluntly, simply aroused. He could have put any attractive female body into those images and felt the same effect. Desiring Lizzie Wareham was not part of his plan, and therefore must not be allowed to happen.
‘I have work to do, so I suggest that you take the opportunity to go to bed have an early night,’ he informed Lizzie.
He didn’t want her out of the way because her presence was disturbing him on an intensely personal and sensual level that he didn’t like. Not for one minute.
Lizzie’s head lifted, her face burning even more hotly as her body immediately responded to the word bed—and not in a way that had anything to do with going to sleep. Somehow her senses refused to accept that anything as mundane as sleeping could take place in a bed that was in any way connected to Ilios Manos. Which was, of course, totally ridiculous. She was reacting like some hormone-flooded pubescent teenager, quivering with embarrassingly super-strength lust.
‘Yes, I am tired,’ she managed to respond. She was doing the mental equivalent of running past something dangerous without risking looking at it, determinedly avoiding re-using the word ‘bed’, Lizzie derided herself. But what else could she do, with her body signalling with increasing intensity the excited pleasure with which it viewed the prospect of going to bed with Ilios Manos? Not that that was going to happen. He had told her so already. Theirs was purely a business arrangement, that was all, and that was the way it was going to stay. Somehow she would find the strength to make sure that it did.
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