‘Where did you get it from? How did you get it here? Oh my God!’ she repeated with a squeal and took off running barefoot across the springy grass, leaving Anton standing on the terrace watching her through indulgently amused eyes as she danced around the yellow brass telescope glinting in the sun.
He ordered breakfast to be brought out onto the terrace then lounged back on a chair to watch while she tweaked and turned things, chanting out a commentary as to what she was doing which meant absolutely nothing to him. He did not care. His bride was happy. He was seeing the bright, sunny creature he’d always suspected hid behind all the grief and pain of recent weeks. She was glorious, spectacular mix of golden long-limbed beauty, childlike excitement and serious intelligence that quite frankly took his breath away.
By the time night fell on Thalia he was beginning to wonder if he’d made a tactical mistake. He’d taken second place to a damn telescope. For a man who had never been second to anything or anyone in his adult life, the blow to his ego was tough to take. In the end he went off to his study to catch up on some work while Zoe spent the whole day pouring over the heavy manuals and checking the internet for stargazing stuff that passed right over his head.
Even Toby barely got a look in. ‘You and I have been abandoned,’ Anton informed the boy who stayed awake longer now and listened with a fierce concentration when someone talked to him. ‘We have been sidelined by a tube of brass with a fancy glass lens.’
Diamonds might have been a better choice, he mused ruefully. Then discarded the idea of any diamond exciting Zoe like his wedding gift had done.
By nightfall Zoe was ready to remember Anton’s presence, and was beginning to feel guilty for the way she’d forgotten about him all day. She hadn’t even got round to saying thank you for giving her such a fabulous surprise.
For once all the drilling she’d suffered from Anthea came in useful; she decided to set right that omission. She had a roomful of rattan furniture hauled out onto the grass while Anton stayed shut away in his study. Then she arranged with Anthea for them to eat dinner out there by soft, romantic candlelight. She changed into the sexiest dress she could find on her rail of clothes—a skimpy, slinky blood-red silk thing which clung to her figure much like last night’s nightdress had done, only the dress finished high up her long slender thighs.
His eyes turned polished black when he saw her. Her hair shone as brightly as the lustrous smile on her lips. She took his hand, trailed him outside and fed him his favourite food—according to Anthea—and teased him terribly by assuring him he was going to love the surprises she had in store for him later. She was going to let him see what she saw when she looked through her lovely, wonderful new telescope.
And she did. She made him look through the lens at the coordinates she’d carefully set up. She gave him a lecture on that far-distant spot in the heavens as seen from his garden, and refused to notice that he was bored out of his handsome, dark head. When eventually she let him pop the cork on the champagne bottle, he looked so relieved she almost laughed.
‘Now,’ she said, pushing him down onto the rattan sofa. ‘Time for your wedding gift from me.’
Curiously, Anton watched her step back to the table and put down her glass. Even more curiously, he watched as she fed her hands up beneath her dress, wriggled out of a pair of flimsy red-lace panties and dropped them on the grass.
No longer needing to hide his boredom, he was suddenly riveted to what was about to take place. For he knew what was coming. He’d been seduced too many times not to recognise the build-up. However, this was different. This was his bride—his reluctant bride—and the heat already dancing around his loins caught fire as she walked over to him then slowly straddled his lap.
‘You’re supposed to be impressed,’ Zoe told him. ‘It’s the first time I’ve tried a full-on seduction.’
‘I am impressed,’ he assured her. ‘But we are outside, agape mou, where anyone can see us.’
‘Oh, you prude,’ she pouted in disappointment and lifted his glass to her lips.
Her eyes were twinkling at him brighter than the starlight sky he’d just been forced to admire. ‘You have this problem covered, don’t you?’ he murmured, raising a sleek black-satin eyebrow.
‘I am by nature a very organised kind of person,’ Zoe confirmed, deadpan.
Deadpan, because she was moving ever so slightly against him, so she knew exactly what was happening to him. ‘Do you want a sip?’ She offered the glass back to him. He took it and tossed it away into the night. Zoe watched the glass fly through the air until it landed on the grass. ‘Well, that was a very imaginative way of answering me,’ she murmured.
‘And you, wife, are a dreadful tease,’ he threw back.
She was not just a tease, she was a seductive tease. Without removing her eyes from his, she fed her hands down and began tugging his shirt free from his trousers.
‘You want me naked,’ he surmised. ‘Yes please.’ She nodded.
That he was already heeling his shoes off said he was ahead of her anyway. She unbuttoned his shirt and spread it wide then bent to taste the salty warmth of his skin. On a muttered curse, Anton dragged the shirt off altogether then wrapped his bare arms around her and demanded she lift her head. The first kiss was everything Zoe wanted. It spun them down into a darkened world of sultry heat and sensual caresses. Only when she needed to tell him that she wanted him inside her did she lift her hands up to frame his face.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘For my surprise.’
Then she raised up her hips and lowered them slowly, taking him deep, deep inside. The way he closed his eyes and breathed unsteadily, ‘Thee mou,’ made her feel like the happiest new bride on this earth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ZOE forgot to keep reminding herself that this was only temporary. That it was a straight business-deal with a lot of hot sex thrown in. She was happy. After weeks of feeling so unhappy it was like dragging a heavy weight around with her, she allowed herself to embrace her new life in Greece with Anton by pushing to the back of her head any small pangs of doubt that occasionally crept in.
Then, four weeks later, reality arrived with a painful thump. Her grandfather passed away quietly in his sleep. A lawyer came out from Athens to read them his last will and testament. Other than for the expected provisions made for those people Theo had cared about, and had cared about him, the bulk of the estate went to Zoe and Toby. Anton retaining control of all business interests until such time as if and when they divorced, at which point his granddaughter would be free to make her own arrangements. There was very little either she or Anton could say. It was exactly how Anton had always said it would be, and she’d stopped disbelieving him so long ago it was a distant memory.
She left him to deal with the lawyer while she made herself scarce, spending the next few hours with her brother, sending Melissa away so she could sink herself into the comforting routine of caring for the baby by herself.
When Anton eventually came looking for her it was late, way beyond the time they would normally sit down for dinner. He found her lying on one of the loungers in the garden, silently mapping stars while she tried to keep her thoughts at bay.
For this was it, the moment she had been putting off in some vague hope it would never happen. But it had happened and now she had to think about hers and Toby’s future away from this place. Away from Anton and their marriage of convenience, which had never felt to her like a business agreement even though that was exactly what it was.