‘Yes. I have no interest in your money.’
The way he said it, with such vile distaste, made Marnie shiver.
‘Fine. Just as I have no interest in yours.’
He arched a brow, his face filled with sardonic amusement. ‘You mean, I presume, beyond the hundred million pounds I will be giving your father?’
Her cheeks flamed. ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t meet his eyes because she felt the sting of tears in her own.
‘Irrespective of that, you will be entitled to a sum for each year we remain married.’
‘I don’t want it,’ she said through clenched teeth.
‘Fine. Give it away. It’s not my concern.’ He reached forward impatiently and turned several pages until he arrived at the end of that section. ‘Sign here.’
Pressing her lips together, she scrawled her name, blinking her eyes furiously.
They were still suspiciously moist when she lifted her face to his. ‘Next?’
He appeared not to notice how close her emotions were to the surface. ‘The next section deals with the moral obligations of our union . Any infidelity will lead to an immediate termination of the marriage. It will also invalidate the financial agreement, and will necessitate your father returning half of the money I have given him to that date.’
She blinked in confusion. ‘You think I’m going to cheat on you?’
His lips compressed with a dark emotion, one she couldn’t fathom. ‘I could not say with certainty.’ His smile was wolfish. ‘Though I imagine this makes it considerably less likely.’
She ground her teeth together. ‘And what if you cheat?’
‘Me?’ He laughed again, this time with real humour.
‘Yeah. You’re the one who seems to be constantly auditioning lovers. What happens if you get bored in our marriage and end up in another woman’s bed?’
‘You will just have to make sure I don’t get bored.’
Her breath snagged in her throat. The threat weakened her. Her pulse throbbed painfully in her body. ‘When did you get so cynical?’
He narrowed his eyes, stunning her with the heat she felt emanating from him. ‘When do you think, agape mou?’
She shook her head, hating the implication that she’d somehow caused his character transformation. ‘Nikos...’
What did she want to say? She’d already tried to explain about Libby, and the burden she’d felt to please her parents—a burden that had increased monumentally after Libby’s death. He didn’t care. He’d said as much. She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. It was futile.
‘I have a meeting after this.’
She swallowed, shaking her head to clear the tangle of thoughts. ‘Fine.’
‘The third section deals with children.’
Her eyes startled to his face. ‘Children?’ Her heart was jackhammering inside her chest.
He turned several pages but Marnie was too shocked to bother trying to read them. He fixed her with a direct stare. ‘It stipulates that we won’t have a child for at least five years.’
Fire and ice were flashing within her, making speech difficult. She blinked her enormous caramel eyes, then shook her head, but still it didn’t make sense. ‘You want children?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. One day. It’s hard to imagine right now—and with you.’
‘Oh, gee, thanks.’ She rolled her eyes in an attempt to hide the way his words had wounded her. ‘As if I’m just lining up to be your baby-baker.’
‘My...baby-baker?’ Despite himself, he felt a smile tickle the corner of his lips.
‘I can’t believe you’re actually contracting hypothetical children.’
He arched a brow. ‘It makes sense.’
‘A baby isn’t...’ She dropped her gaze. ‘A baby isn’t Section Three, Subsection Eleven A. A baby is a little person. A new life! You have no right to...to...make such arbitrary decisions about something that should be magical and wonderful.’
‘A baby between us would never be magical and wonderful,’ he responded, with such ease that she genuinely believed he hadn’t intended to be unkind. ‘It is the very last thing I would want. As for it being arbitrary...’ He shrugged his broad shoulders with an air of unconcern. ‘You seemed perfectly fine making such decisions in the past.’
‘Not about a child!’
‘You just said you don’t want to be my...baby-baker. Have you changed your mind suddenly?’ he asked cynically, his eyes drifting over her features with genuine interest.
‘No.’ She bit down on her lip. The lie—and she recognised it as such—hurt. Images of what their children might look like were hard to shake. Instantly she could see a tiny chubby version of Nikos, with his imperious expression and dark eyes, and her heart seemed to soar at the prospect.
‘Our marriage is not one of love. I can think of nothing worse than bringing a child into that situation.’
‘But in five years?’ she heard herself ask, as if from a long way away.
He shrugged insolently. ‘In five years we will either have found a way to live together with a degree of harmony, or we will hate one another and have long since divorced. It gives us time to see what’s what. No?’
She nodded jerkily. He was right. She knew he was. But as she signed her name on the bottom of the page she felt as if she was strangling a large part of herself.
‘Next?’ She forced a tight smile to her lips; her tone was cool.
‘A simple confidentiality agreement. Our business is our own. The press has a fascination with you, and I have often thought, despite what you say, that you court their interest.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ she interrupted sharply. ‘I go out of my way to stay off their radar.’
‘Which in and of itself only heightens their attention and speculation.’
‘So I flirt with the press by hiding from them?’ She crossed her legs beneath the table. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘You are “Lady Heiress”. They call you that because of your behaviour—’
‘They call me that,’ she interrupted testily, ‘because I refuse to engage with them. After Libby died they were everywhere. I was only seventeen, and they followed me around for sport.’
She didn’t add how horrible their comparisons to the beautiful Libby had made her feel. How Marnie’s far less stunning looks had drawn the press’s derision. She had refused to court them in order to create the impression that she didn’t care, but each article had eroded a piece of her confidence until only the ‘Lady Heiress’ construct had remained. Being cold and untouchable, a renowned ice queen, was better than being the less beautiful, less popular, less charismatic sister of Lady Elizabeth Kenington.
He shrugged. ‘You will not be of such interest in Greece. Here you are a society princess. There you will be only my wife.’
Why did that prospect make everything inside her sing? Not just the prospect of marrying him, but of escaping it all! The intrusions and invasions. Freedom was a gulf before her.
‘Your parents are included in this agreement. They are to believe our wedding is a real one.’
‘Oh? I would have thought you’d like to throw the terms of our deal in Dad’s face, just to see him suffer,’ she couldn’t help snapping.
‘Perhaps one day.’ His smile tilted her world off-balance. ‘But that is my decision. Not yours.’
She furrowed her brow. ‘This agreement doesn’t apply to you?’
‘No. It is a contract for you. So you understand what is expected of you.’
‘That definitely isn’t fair.’
He laughed. ‘Perhaps not. Do you want to walk away, Marnie?’
The sting of tears was back. She lowered her eyes in an attempt to hide them and shook her head. But when she put her signature to the bottom of the page she added something unexpected.
A single teardrop rolled down her cheek and splashed onto the white paper, unconsciously dotting the ‘i’. It was the perfect addition to the deal—almost like a blood promise.
She closed the contract and pushed it across the table.
It was done, then, and there was nothing left to do but marry the man. Except, of course, to break the news to her parents.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.’ Arthur Kenington’s face was a study in apoplexy, from the ruddy cheeks to bloodshot eyes and the spittle forming at the corner of his mouth.
Marnie studied him with a mix of detachment and sadness. Perhaps it was normal to emerge into adulthood with a confusing bundle of feelings towards one’s parents. Marnie loved them, of course, but as she sat across from Arthur and Anne in the picture-perfect sunroom of Kenington Hall she couldn’t help but feel frustration, too.
She lifted her hand, showing the enormous diamond solitaire that branded her as engaged. Anne’s eyes dropped to it; her lips fell at the corners. Just a little. Anne Kenington was far too disciplined with her emotions to react as she wished.
‘Since when?’ The words were flat. Compressed.
‘Be vague on the details.’ That had been Nikos’s directive when they’d spoken that morning. Had he been checking on her? Worrying she was going to balk at this final hurdle? Did he think the idea of breaking the news to her parents might be too difficult?