It was Theo Theakis.
‘I would like you to join me for lunch,’ he informed her with minimal preamble, and told her the name of the restaurant and the time he wanted her to be there. Then he hung up. Vicky stared at the phone resentfully, wishing the man to perdition.
All the same, she presented herself at the designated location at the appointed hour, and slid into her seat as Theo Theakis got to his feet at her approach. Instinctively, she avoided anything but the briefest eye contact with him, and self-consciously ignored the various speculative glances that were obviously coming their way.
Her lunch partner wasted little time in getting to the point.
‘I do not wish to harass you, but a decision from you on the matter under consideration is needed without delay,’ he began, as soon as the waiter had taken their orders. ‘The marauding company has just acquired another tranche of shares. Other shareholders are clearly wavering. Unless a very clear signal is sent to them imminently to say that I am aligning myself with Aristides they will start to sell out in critical numbers. So…’ His dark eyes rested on her without expression. ‘Once again I must ask you whether you are prepared to accept the recommendation I made to you yesterday.’
She could feel her hands tensing in her lap.
‘There has to be another way of—’ she began tightly.
‘There isn’t.’ Theo Theakis’s voice was brusque. ‘If there were, I would take it. However, if you are still of the same mind as you were yesterday afternoon—’ again Vicky could hear the note of critical condemnation in his voice, and it raised her hackles automatically ‘—then allow me to mention something that was omitted from our exchange then.’
He paused a moment, and Vicky made herself meet his eyes. They were quite opaque, but there was something in them that was even more disturbing than usual. She wanted to look away, but grimly she held on.
He started to speak agai
n.
‘Because of your upbringing in England I appreciate that the concept of a dynastic marriage such as your uncle hopes for is very alien to you. However…’ He paused again minutely, as if deciding whether to say what he went on to say. ‘There is another aspect of such arrangements which your lack of familiarity with them might require me to make plain to you. It is the matter of the marriage settlement. Although the issue is complicated by the matter of the threat to your uncle’s company, nevertheless in simplistic terms the outcome for yourself would be a sum of money set aside—in the form, if you like, of a dowry. No, do not interrupt me, if you please—I appreciate you find the term archaic, but that is irrelevant.’
He broke off while the sommelier approached with the wine he had chosen for lunch, and went through the ritual of tasting it, approving it with a curt assent. Then he continued. There was a slightly different tone to his voice as he spoke now. A smooth note had entered it, and Vicky felt it like a rich, dark emollient over her nerve-endings.
‘It must be hard for you,’ Theo Theakis said, as he contemplatively took a mouthful of the wine, setting back the glass on the table but never taking his eyes from her. ‘Staying with your uncle and appreciating, perhaps for the first time, just how very different your life would have been had your father not been of the philanthropic disposition that he so abundantly was. In the light of that, therefore, and in respect of the sum of money I alluded to, which in the event of a normal marriage would remain with me, I am prepared, since I am proposing a highly limited marriage, to release this sum to you on the dissolution of the marriage.’ His veiled gaze rested on her. ‘Additionally, I am willing to make you an advance on this sum at the outset of our temporary marriage. The figure I have in mind is this.’
He named a sum of money that made Vicky swallow. It was about three times the amount of the grant that Jem had just failed to apply for.
Her mind raced. With that money they could…
She dragged her thoughts away from all the things that Freshstart could spend that kind of money on, and back to the man sitting opposite her, in his superbly tailored business suit, with his dark, sable hair and his opaque, unreadable eyes that nevertheless seemed to send a frisson through her that went right down to her bones.
‘Well?’
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
‘The final sum released to you when our marriage ends would be twice as much again,’ he said, into the silence.
Twice as much?
What we could do with such a sum!
She stared, unseeing for a moment, ahead of her, oblivious even of the disturbing figure opposite her. What would her father have done? She could not remember him, but her mother had told her so much about him.
‘He gave away his inheritance to those who needed it. He didn’t think twice about it.’
Her mother’s well-recalled words echoed in her head. She felt her throat tighten. What should she do? If she went ahead with this insane idea she could not only save her uncle’s company, but inject into her father’s charity a sum of money that would help so many children blighted by poverty and wrecked families…
But I’d have to marry Theo Theakis…
Slowly her eyes refocussed on the man sitting at the far side of the table. The familiar frisson went through her.
If he were just an ordinary person I could do it…
But he wasn’t—that was the problem. He was a man like no other she had ever encountered, and to whom she reacted as she had never done in her life before.
It’s too dangerous…