The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife(12)

‘Walt Eickehoven.' Without thinking, she said his name out loud.

Ilios swung round. ‘You know him?'

‘No, but I know his style,' Lizzie answered. ‘Those sofas and that unit   are unmistakably his. I've heard that he's got a queuing list of  clients  that goes into months, if not years.'

Ilios shrugged. ‘Queues can be jumped. I'll show you the guest suite,   and then you'll need something to eat. I'll order something in-do you   like moussaka? If so, we can eat in half an hour.'

Lizzie nodded her head. She was hungry, but she was also tired.

‘This way,' Ilios instructed her.

‘This way' led down another windowless corridor of marble and mirrors,   this one with inset niches, each one containing a carefully lit piece of   stone artwork.

The apartment was a work of art in itself, Lizzie recognized, but her   heart ached over a private question. How would the two motherless sons   Ilios Manos intended to bring up fit into such an environment? She   didn't think she would actually want to live in such a polished and   sterile atmosphere herself, even though as a designer she could   appreciate its stunning design.

Ilios had stopped outside a door in the corridor and was indicating to her. ‘I think you will find everything you need inside.'

Nodding again, Lizzie opened the door. By the time she had closed it she   knew that Ilios had gone-not because she had seen him go, but because   somehow she had sensed it. The air around her and her own body's   reaction told her that he was no longer there. She frowned. Finding   Ilios Manos sexually attractive was understandable, and she tried to   tell herself to quell her growing panic about how she was going to cope   living so closely with him. Obviously such a stupendously male man was   bound to have that effect on most women. But she was not most women,  and  she was desperately afraid of her vulnerability. Discovering that  he  had made such an impact on her senses that even her skin could  register  his presence or the lack of it was frighteningly dangerous   territory-dangerous and not to be risked territory, in fact.

Instead of thinking about the effect Ilios had on her, Lizzie told   herself to try and focus instead on her surroundings. As a designer she   could possibly learn something that she could take with her into her   life, when her present enforced ordeal was finally over.

The guest suite, for instance, was exactly that-a luxurious, streamlined   boutique-hotel-style open space, with a sleeping area at one end that   contained a bed, and a living space at the other furnished with sofas,   tables and a desk.

Like the living room, the guest suite also had a glass wall that ran its   full length, but this one looked inward onto what she imagined must be   an enclosed garden, since it was virtually on the roof of the  building.  Carefully placed soft lighting revealed a perspective view of  the ruins  of a small elevated Greek temple, which looked down into the  garden with  steps leading from it into a swimming pool. Along the far  length of the  pool ran a colonnade, planted with vines, which led to a  grotto of the  sort favoured by designers of the Italian Renaissance  opposite the  temple. Parterred greenery in intricate formal patterns  separated the  pool area from the space outside the glass wall, so that  that space  formed an almost private outdoor sitting area, with double  doors from  the living space opening out onto it.

Lizzie didn't like to think of the millions just the apartment and its   garden must have cost. Professionally, she was in awe. This kind of   commission was so far outside her level of operation that the only time   she would normally get to view one would be in the pages of a magazine.   But, as a woman who shared her own living space with two sisters and   twin five-year-old boys, she was almost repelled by the cool, sleek   hauteur of living space. It made her feel that as a human being her   presence within it spoiled its sterile perfection.                       
       
           



       

Ilios had handed her trolley case before leaving her, and of course it looked ludicrously out of place.

Half an hour, he'd said. That meant she had the choice of showering and tidying herself up, or texting her sisters.

That choice was no choice, really. Lizzie smiled ruefully to herself as   she headed for the double doors to one side of the enormous low-level   bed, dressed in immaculate grey and white linen to tone with the   slate-grey tiled floor.

Beyond the double doors was a dressing room-cum-wardrobe space-enough   space to house the entire wardrobes of her whole family with room to   spare-and beyond that, through another set of doors, was the bathroom,   containing both a shower and a bath, and a separate lavatory. For the   first time since she had entered the apartment Lizzie realised she was   in a room that combined both modern artistic design and sybaritic   sensuality. For a start, the glass wall continued the full length of the   bathroom, making it possible to stand in the wet-room-style shower or   lie in the huge stone bath and look out into the garden. Limestone  tiles  covered floor and walls; thick fluffy grey, white and beige  towels were  stacked on the inbuilt limestone shelving unit next to the  double  basins.

After a regretful look at the shower, Lizzie washed her hands and face   and then returned to the bedroom, sinking into the white sofa as she   quickly texted her family to tell them the good news about her new   commission from the owner of Manos Construction.

That done, she only just had enough time to comb her hair and renew her   lipstick before a quick glance at her watch told her that her time was   up.

When she had made her way back to the living area, she suspected, from   the quick frowning glance that Ilios gave her, that he had expected her   to have changed clothes. No doubt he was used to women making an  all-out  effort to impress him, but even if she'd had time to change,  Lizzie  acknowledged, since all she had to change into was a different  top she  was hardly likely to have impressed him.

While he might not exhibit the tendencies one somehow expected to see in   a man who had ‘come from nothing'-for instance, whilst she had no  doubt  that both his clothes and the watch he was wearing were  expensive, they  were the opposite of ostentatious-she suspected that  designerclad  females were his normal choice of arm candy. Which was  perhaps why he  considered her sex to be so rapacious.

Their food, delivered whilst she had been in the guest suite, was a   simple moussaka-type dish. It was, Lizzie admitted as they sat opposite   one another at the polished black glass table, absolutely delicious-as   was the wine Ilios had poured to go with it.

It was merely necessity that had prompted him to decide that Lizzie   could pay off her debt to him by becoming his wife. He had no personal   interest in her whatsoever, Ilios reminded himself as he watched her   enjoying her food, plainly not in the least bit concerned about the fact   that she was still dressed in workmanlike clothes that did nothing to   accentuate her figure and were obviously neither designed nor worn with   the idea of arousing male desire. So why did it irk him so  irrationally  to recognise that she had not made the slightest attempt  to attract his  attention? Was he really such a stereotypical male? Or  was it because,  despite the fact that she was not making any attempt to  attract him, he  was very much aware of her?

If he was, then it was probably due to the fact that it was some time   since he had shared his bed with a woman. He had ended his last   relationship after his lover had started trying to pressure him into   marriage-over a year ago now, in fact.

If Lizzie's manner irked him then it was surely because, even though his   current contact with the female sex was via a variety of social and   business-related events, and not on any personal level, he took it for   granted that the women he met would be well groomed, dressed in such a   way that pleasing the male of the species would be their clear   intention.

Ilios looked at her and frowned.

‘You will need a new wardrobe before you can appear in public as either my fiancée or my wife,' he informed Lizzie.

‘I have plenty of clothes at home. I can ask my sisters to send me some.'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Why not? Right now you are dressed as though you were a suburban matron   whose sole concern is looking after her family. Jeans and a blazer,   loafers … A woman who does not seek to attract the attention of a man, and   who perhaps would even prefer to repel male attention.' He made a   dismissive gesture which stung Lizzie's female pride.