‘Yes.’ Hope hammered in Grace’s chest, and she stumbled towards him. ‘I told you, I’ll do anything,’ she assured him eagerly.
The silence between them thrummed with tension until Javier finally spoke. ‘In that case I take it that you have no objection to being my wife?’
His unemotional statement knocked the world temporarily off its axis, and Grace dragged air into her lungs. ‘You’re joking, of course?’ she muttered bleakly when she could think straight. Tears stung her eyes. Since her father had been formally charged with fraud, she had clung to her wildly optimistic belief that she would succeed in persuading Javier to agree to settle out of court. The stark reality of defeat caused an agonising pain in her chest. Any minute now she would hear Javier’s mocking laughter, and she wished she could crawl away and die. But his next words brought her head up.
‘It’s not a joke. I’m in the unenviable position of having to find a wife before my next birthday—and remain married to her for a year,’ Javier informed her tersely.
‘And when is your birthday?’ Grace murmured dazedly.
‘Two months from now.’
‘So fairly urgent, then.’ The conversation, the whole situation, was verging on the surreal and Grace felt as though she had wandered into the pages of Alice in Wonderland.
Javier was watching her speculatively with his amazing golden eyes. Grace was aware of the frisson of sexual awareness that vibrated between them, and she licked her lips nervously. She seriously doubted she could handle the Duque de Herrera in any capacity and for a second she felt like fleeing. The note of command in his voice halted her.
‘Sit down, Miss Beresford—although now that we’re betrothed I suppose I’d better call you Grace.’
‘I haven’t said yes yet,’ she snapped, incensed by his authoritarian manner.
He gave her a bored glance. ‘I thought you were out of options?’
‘I am, but so it seems are you.’ Grace sank gratefully into a chair and fought to regain her composure. Some sixth sense told her that Javier’s expression of cool indifference belied his inner frustration. For some unexplained reason he had to find a wife and he was running out of time. It was possible that he needed her as much as she needed him, and that put her in a powerful bargaining position.
‘Why do you have to get married?’ she demanded.
For a moment she thought he was going to refuse to answer. His expression hardened so that his cheekbones were sharply visible beneath his skin, and his eyes glittered with sudden anger. ‘Under the terms of my grandfather’s will I must choose a wife, or lose control of El Banco de Herrera to my cousin,’ he told her in a voice laced with bitterness.
‘It sounds as if the bank is very important to you.’
‘It is my birthright, and the only thing that is important to me,’ Javier corrected her fiercely.
‘I see.’ Grace hesitated and then said, ‘From what I’ve heard, you have no shortage of women in your life. Why not ask one of them to marry you?’
‘Because there’d be hell to pay when the time came to get rid of them,’ he admitted in a blunt tone that made her wince. ‘The marriage will be a business proposition, nothing more, but mention the word “wedding” to most women and they seem to link it with the ridiculous notion of love.’
‘You’re afraid that if you choose one of your girlfriends they might fall in love with you?’ Grace said slowly as understanding dawned. ‘Your arrogance takes my breath away,’ she hissed, almost lost for words, ‘What makes you think you’re so damned special?’
‘A multi-million-pound fortune,’ Javier replied dryly. ‘I learned early on in life that, where women are concerned, money is their biggest turn-on—that and power. It’s the reason you’re here, after all, Grace,’ he murmured silkily. ‘You want me to drop charges against a common thief. A man who repaid my trust in him by betraying me and abusing the position I’d awarded him.’
Grace felt her cheeks flood with colour. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she insisted huskily. ‘I told you, my father was in a desperate situation and he had no choice.’
Javier pushed back his chair and strolled around his desk towards her. Instantly Grace felt overwhelmed by his sheer magnetism, and her heartrate accelerated when he rested his hip against the edge of the desk and leaned close, trapping her gaze. ‘We all have choices, Grace,’ he said, his gravelly accented voice mesmerising her with its hypnotic intensity. ‘You can choose to give me a year of your life, and in return I will ensure that your father is spared prosecution and a lengthy jail sentence.’