He stared at her slack-jawed for a few beats before he burst out laughing.
Shoulders rigid, hands fisted, she stood with a patient look.
“Here I assumed you’d dressed up for the simple reason of impressing me. That you were hoping to make me lose my faculties.”
The tight purse of her lips said it had crossed her mind. “How I dress reflects on my brothers and the House of Drakos, so really, this—” she did a sweeping movement with her hand over her dress, and Gabriel smiled “—has nothing to do with you, Mr. Marquez. You have made the little squabble between us into a national matter. I...could give it no less importance.”
Gabriel felt a sting of irritation at the mention of her brothers. He held her elbow and nudged her toward the entrance of the restaurant.
“My daughter’s happiness is not a little squabble.”
“It isn’t.” She sighed, her shoulders dropping. “Which is the only reason I’m here to negotiate. Nikandros would rather you sink everything than let me come here, let me bargain with my life. But I can’t allow you to go on some macho rampage on Drakon just because you aren’t getting your way. Neither can I bear to ignore the fact that I miscalculated.”
“Miscalculated what?”
Such raw emotion flickered in her big eyes that Gabriel took a step back. Used to sophisticated, modern women, who, like him, thought emotions were weaknesses, who played games with his head and body, the Princess was a whiplash against his senses.
“How my departure might affect Angelina. I didn’t realize how attached she has grown to me, how she could see this also as abandonment.” Her mouth trembled, her eyes wide in her face. “The sounds of her tears won’t leave me alone.”
Gears turned in his head as he evaluated the situation.
There had to be something she wanted that he could provide. Everyone, especially women, wanted something from him. Even his friend Alyssa, who was full of integrity, had needed his backing when she’d first started out.
He was convinced that she would be the best thing for Angelina—she had proved it to him a hundred times over the past two weeks, even as he’d threatened everything she held dear.
A soft gasp from her lush mouth was her only sign that she’d noticed the empty restaurant. They followed the concierge to an intimately laid out dinner on the famed terrace that offered panoramic views of mountains that bracketed Drakon on one side.
The crystal flutes and the champagne bucket glittered in the orange light of the setting sun. He watched the open expressions on her face—awe, a flicker of joy when she saw the mountain peaks followed by dismay and then that practical, nothing-will-efface-me sensibility of hers.
Interesting was an understatement when it came to her.
He held the chair for her. Her usual grace fluttered when she almost slipped. Hand at her elbow, Gabriel straightened her. The slide of her lush curves against him startled an instant reaction from his body. “Thank you,” she murmured in a throaty whisper that brought images of her lush limbs beneath him.
Bathed in the setting sun’s light, she made a stunning figure. Anyone who saw her now would never call her plain.
Gritting his jaw, he willed his body to calm, his mind to focus on the moment. This was the most important meeting in his life and he didn’t intend to fail tonight.
“Champagne?” he asked after they settled down.
The pulse at her throat flickered madly, yet when she raised her gaze to him, it was quite steady. “I’m so stupid,” she scoffed, her mouth twisting into a bitter curve.
He frowned, not liking the shutters that fell over her eyes, hiding her from him. He hadn’t realized how much of a lure Eleni Drakos’s artless honesty was until she shut it away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She raised her arms and moved them over the empty restaurant, the gorgeous view of the sunset, the bucket of champagne. “Even after all your threats and insults, I didn’t regret...seeing you that night. I held on to the belief that until you ripped off my mask, it had been a genuine moment between us. But you just can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Princesa—”
“You will use everything I told you, everything I feel when I see you...to the last drop, to manipulate me to your will.”
Something in the curve of her mouth made Gabriel bristle. Guilt was not an emotion he had ever liked nor had any use for. “I do not see why it is such a hardship for you to spend some time with me and Angelina. Not when you claim to truly love her.”
“Because my life is not a stopgap measure for you.”
“Yet it is for your father, your brothers and even Drakon, is it not? What do I have to do to buy that same loyalty toward Angelina? What is it that I have to do to ensure that you stay in Angelina’s life for as long as she needs you, for as long as she and I need to make a connection?”
Her heart fluttered like the wings of a trapped bird. Her fingers shook around the stem and Eleni hid them in her lap. “You might regret making that offer.”
“There is no condition of yours that I would not meet, Princesa. The world will be at your feet if you agree.”
She licked her pink lips, and his body tightened. Gabriel swallowed a curse. Really, his attraction to her was becoming a problem. For he knew now that his desire to give her what she’d wanted that night hadn’t come solely so that he could bend her to his will. It had come because he’d wanted to explore it with her. And still did. He wanted to taste that lush mouth, he wanted to run his hands and his mouth all over her curves, he wanted to possess her until all the prim propriety that she used as a mask was unraveled, until that self-sufficiency she wielded as a weapon against the world was undone.
Until she was the woman who had kissed him with such hunger that night.
“I want a signed agreement from you that you’ll never again put Drakon’s economy in jeopardy, ever.”
He sat back and took stock of her. Mouth tight with resolve. Eyes glittering with temper. He smiled and took a sip of water just to make her wait for his answer. She fidgeted in her seat, glancing away from him. The woman was good.
“Done,” he said finally. “As long as you meet with all my conditions.”
“I’m not finished yet.”
“Go on.”
“I want that agreement as part of a prenuptial contract. I want Drakon and your company bound tightly so that you can’t threaten us like this again.”
He jerked his gaze from her lovely mouth to her eyes, shock flooding him. “What did you say?”
She pulled her tightly clasped hands out of her lap onto the table, then brought them down again. When she looked at him, resolve filled her features. “I’ve been over what you want of me a thousand times in my head. Of the number of ways you could hold the threat of Drakon over my head. Of how easily you...you would use what I told you about my life, about me that night for your own advantage. Of how fragile Angelina has been since she heard of my plans.”
A soft gasp escaped her mouth, as if this pained her.
“The last thing I want is for her to hate you or blame you when she loses me. The last thing I need is for you to do this to Nikandros all over again because I didn’t make her love you in four months. Or whatever ridiculous time frame you think this needs to happen in. I just can’t take that chance.
“So I’ve found a solution that works for all parties and that will not permanently damage the innocent in all of this. I... I want you to marry me. You will use Drakon to ensure Angelina’s well-being, and I’m hoping you would think twice about destroying it when it becomes as much her life as it is my own. I want...a chance to do right by myself too.”
This time, when he laughed, it was full of sarcasm. Anger fueled him at her outrageous suggestion. “Let me enlighten you, Princess. You will not do right by yourself by hitching your cart to me. I’m incapable of developing romantic feelings for a woman. You’ll only be—”
“It will not be a true marriage. I know what I’m bringing to this arrangement and I know what I’ll be getting.” Eleni would not tie herself to another relationship with yet another man and end up wondering what she lacked all over again. “You would be ensuring that Angelina has a mother who loves her.”
“And you would do all this for your precious Drakon? Expect nothing else from me?” Even as he challenged her, her willingness to martyr herself bothered him. Did neither Nikandros nor Andreas care about her future? Was there no one to look after the damned female?
“No, I do want something...”
“Come now, Princesa. You had the nerve to propose marriage to me. Don’t shy away now.”
“I... I do not ask for your fidelity or your love, Gabriel. I...do not need such delusions in my life. I only ask that you give me...” Such color filled her cheeks that Gabriel stared transfixed. Her lips trembled and she dug her teeth into the lower one.
Lust punched him like an invisible blow, and it was all he could do not to tug that lower lip and taste her himself. “Eleni,” he prompted in a harsh voice set on edge by the delectable temptation she made.
“I want a baby. A child of my own. I...was in the process of going through adoption agencies when you...you threatened to pull your company out of Drakon. It’s not something I’m willing to give up on, for anyone.”