Why can’t he look like Toby? Overweight and pug-faced! That would be so, so much better! So much safer.
So much safer than the dangerous quickening of her blood that came whenever she thought of Nikos Tramontes.
Deliberately, she silenced her fear. Dismissing it. There was no need for such anxieties. None! That quickening of her blood was irrelevant—completely irrelevant. It had nothing to do with what Nikos Tramontes was offering her.
The formality of a marriage of convenience, for outward show only—a dispassionate, temporary union to provide him with an assured entrée into her world and her with the means to preserve her inheritance. Nothing else—nothing that had anything to do with that quickening of her pulse.
It was because she owned Greymont and came
with the social position and connections he wanted to acquire that he was interested in her. Nothing more than that. Oh, he would want her to grace his arm, be an ornament for him—that was understandable. But that would be in public. In private their relationship would be cordial, but fundamentally, she reassured herself, it would be little more than a business arrangement at heart. He got a society wife—she got Greymont restored. Mutually beneficial.
We would be associates. That’s a good word for it.
With a little start she realised she was giving his extraordinary proposition serious consideration.
Her mind reeled again.
Could she really do this? Accept his offer—use it to save Greymont?
It was all she could think about as the days went by. Days spent in visits from the architect, and from the specialist companies that would undertake the careful restoration and conservation work on Greymont that would have to be carried out in accordance to the strict building regulations for historic listed buildings, adding to the complexity—and the cost.
With every passing day she could feel the temptation to accept what Nikos was offering her coiling itself like a serpent around her. Tightening its grip with every coil.
* * *
Nikos settled himself into a seat in first class. His mood was good—very good. His decision to select Diana St Clair as the means of achieving his life’s second imperative goal might have been made impulsively, but he’d always trusted his instincts. They’d never failed him in business yet, enabling his rise to riches to be as meteoric as it had been steep.
A faint frown furrowed his brow as he accepted a glass of champagne from the attentive stewardess.
But marriage is not a business decision...
He shook the thought from him. His liaison with Nadya hadn’t been a business decision, but it had proved highly beneficial to both of them while it had lasted, with each of them gaining substantially from it. There was no reason why his time with Diana St Clair should not do likewise. As well as gaining the restoration of her home, she would gain an attentive husband and a very attentive lover.
What more could she—or he—want?
Certainly not love.
His mouth twisted. Love was of no interest to him. He’d never known it, did not want it. And nor, clearly, did Diana St Clair, or she would have sent him packing when he’d set out his proposal in front of her. But she hadn’t—and she would accept it, he knew, his expression changing to one of confident assurance.
What he was offering suited her perfectly. And not just as the means to save her home. On a much more personal level too. Oh, she might not yet realise that her inner ice maiden had finally met a challenge it could not freeze off, but when the time came—and come it would!—she would accept from him all the exquisite sensual pleasure that he would ensure she experienced, all the pleasure that he was so hotly anticipating for himself.
It would be his gift to her—opening the door for her to accept the admiration and desire of men at last. Frozen as she was within, he would ignite within her that flare of sensual awareness he’d seen so briefly, so revealingly in her eyes when he’d first looked upon her.
He would not hurry her—he would give her time to get used to him—but in the end... His smile deepened and he took a mouthful of champagne, easing his shoulders as an image of her pale, exquisite beauty formed in his mind’s eye, lingering over the fine-boned features, the silken line of her mouth.
In the end she would thaw.
And melt into his waiting arms.
* * *
Diana stared at the vast bouquet of exotic, highly scented lilies that sat on the Boule table in the hall, fragrancing the air. Then she stared down at the cheque she was holding in her slightly shaking hands, and the note accompanying it.
An advance, sent in good faith.
She stared at the numbers on the cheque. A quarter of a million pounds. She felt her lungs tighten. So much money—
With a stifled noise in her throat she marched back into her office. But the scent of the lilies was in her nostrils still. Beguiling. Enticing.