“I don’t want to be your opponent,” she snapped. “But nor do I want to be your prisoner.”
“My prisoner,” he repeated thoughtfully. “What an interesting idea.”
She rolled her eyes, but it was an act of bravado. Inside, she was trembling. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” His dark eyes glittered like black gemstones when they met hers. They were full of mockery. “Perhaps I should simply lock you up at Barnwell for the next four years and throw away the key.”
Claudia’s breath caught in her throat and deep down, something like excitement flared in her gut at the very idea.
“And then what, Stavros? Do you unleash me on the world, a reformed woman? An image of pious modesty and boring focus?”
His lips twisted in dismissal of that. “I’m a business man, not a magician. You will never be either of those things.”
The observation stung on so many levels but she didn’t visibly react. She was, after all, used to such throwaway comments from almost everyone she met. You’re Christopher La Roche’s daughter? Are you a writer as well? No? I’ll bet you love to read? No? What do you do then? Oh.
“But in four years, you will no longer be my problem,” he said with cold detachment. “You can party away your fortune and cover the papers every day for a year, for all I care. When you are twenty-five, I’ll wash my hands of you.”
She froze, his words so much more cutting than she’d expected. They revealed the depth of his true feelings for her – feelings that he had managed to conceal for the most part.
He hated her.
A shiver ran down her spine, a frisson that was ice cold. She was alone. Completely alone in the world. And despite the fact she only saw her guardian a handful of times a year, and never for very long, she had still thought of him as someone close to her.
Someone meaningful.
Someone who was an anchor to her existence.
He was none of those things.
He was tolerating her existence but he didn’t relish his role in her life. He felt nothing for her except impatience and apparently distaste.
“I’m sorry you’ve found the role of my guardian to be so unpleasant. You can wash your hands of me now, Stavros. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Believe me, I would if I could. But I made a promise to your father and I have no intention of breaking it.”
“I don’t think dad would have expected you to kidnap me and imprison me in the middle of nowhere.”
“Barnwell is just outside Bath,” he said with a derisive curl of his lips. “It’s hardly the middle of nowhere. And your father would have wanted me to do whatever I saw fit to save you from becoming a national laughing stock.”
Her mouth dropped. “How can you actually say that?”
“For two weeks I have woken to reports about your love triangle. The man you stole from your best friend. The fact he now lives with you. The papers have been full of the s
alacious details.”
“They’ve been full of fiction,” she disputed heatedly, despite not having read any of the pieces for herself. “I told you, Artie is just a friend.”
“The fiancé of your best friend. And you’re living with him.”
“Yes, because they broke up and one of them had to move out of their home, and it couldn’t be Marianne because she has an enormous art studio on the first floor.”
He sent Claudia a droll look. “And no one else could have taken him in? He couldn’t have rented somewhere? Stayed in a hotel?”
Claudia’s caramel coloured eyes were huge and flecked with hurt. “Maybe. I don’t know. He didn’t need to, because I was there and I offered for him to stay with me.”
“How … kind of you,” Stavros drawled, in a way that made it obvious he didn’t believe a word of what she’d said.
“Look,” Claudia seethed. “You can think what you want. I don’t care. But I’m not going to stay with you. It’s absurdly stupid.”