‘Now that,’ she whispered thickly, ‘Was emotional black mail.’
A white handkerchief arrived on her lap. ‘It is a very emotional time.’
‘There’s not much emotional input in a marriage of convenience,’ she said, picking up the handkerchief and using it to dab the corners of her eyes. ‘But, as the article said, business is business after all.’
Anton took a few moments to rerun that last remark a couple of times before he spoke again. ‘Is that a yes?’ he asked for confirmation. ‘You will marry me?’
Well, it wasn’t a no, Zoe thought with a sniff. ‘You’re going to appear a real money-grabbing monster.’
‘I am Greek,’ he countered. ‘We make business deals of this nature all the time.’
Did she detect a note of rueful satire in his voice just then? Glancing up at him, she saw he just looked relaxed as if they’d been chatting about the weather. When had he suddenly become indifferent to being labelled a gold-digger?
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‘Of course, I will attempt to redeem my character,’ he murmured thoughtfully then. ‘I will have it put about that I leaked the information about who your father was, in an effort to bring the family feud to an end.’
‘No way will you do that!’ Zoe shot back to her feet. ‘Don’t you dare bring my father into this!’
‘Because he deserved to be recognised as Theo’s son,’
he continued as if she hadn’t interrupted. ‘I will let it be known that I feel guilty that I had not brought the situation to a head a lot sooner, then maybe father and son could have had a chance to reconcile before—’
‘But you didn’t know before!’ Zoe jumped in quickly before he could finish what he had been about to say. She didn’t want to hear it. She never wanted to hear that word in relation to either of her parents. She even shut her eyes tightly in an effort to shut the whole painfully wretched thought out of her head.
‘You cannot know that for certain.’ He was relentless in the face of her obvious distress. ‘Nobody knows what I knew about Leander Kanellis before—the accident,’ he changed the last part when she sucked in a painful breath.
No, Zoe accepted, she didn’t know that. While he had been playing Theo’s adopted son, he could easily have been keeping a covert eye on Theo’s real son and family, just in case they became a problem for him.
He could read her like an open book, Anton observed grimly. She was now seeing him as the heartlessly manipulating, lying cheat with the seduction of Theo’s granddaughter in mind long before the two of them had even met up.
‘It may be a good idea if we agree that you and I met months ago—somewhere away from London. We will fill in the details later,’ he persisted, nailing her to the rug beneath her feet with the depths to which she now perceived he was willing to deceive. ‘It will be a classic case of love at first sight. When we discovered we were—otherwise connected—things became complicated.’
‘So you decided to shoot off to New York to indulge in an affair with your modelling friend?’
Anton pulled a face at the quick sarcastic putdown. She might be down, but her brain was still functioning OK.
‘We had a trial separation.’ He covered that problem. ‘You were very busy with your university studies, and concerned how your father was going to react to our—romance. So we decided to go our separate ways for a time to see if what we felt for each other was just—’
‘Lust, not Romeo and Juliet.’
He dared to send her a grin that plucked at Zoe’s heart strings for some unfathomable reason. ‘You are catching on.’
Folding her arms across her front to crush the sensation, Zoe faced him squarely. ‘So let me see if I can have this right. You are the— How old are you?’ she paused to ask.
‘Thirty-one,’ he provided.
Zoe nodded. ‘So, you are the thirty-one-year-old lovelorn tycoon who flies off to find solace in another woman’s bed, while I remain the untouched virgin waiting for you to come back to me and claim your—gift?’
‘It was a fabulous gift, agape mou,’ he murmured softly. ‘I will treasure it for the rest of our lives.’
‘Don’t overstretch your ability to hold to a promise,’ snapped Zoe. ‘We both know you’re lousy at keeping them.’
‘I will keep this one.’ Suddenly he was deadly serious. ‘Bring to our marriage bed the passionate woman I met last night and I will endeavour to keep her happy and content.’
He was talking sex. A light bulb of alarm lit up in Zoe’s head. ‘We are not going to share a bed! Where the heck do you get the nerve to turn a cold business-arrangement into a promise of good sex?’
‘Easy, I have been thinking of little else since you walked in here.’