‘Where is your luggage? All the clothes you bought?’
Rosalie’s face hardened as she got into her seat and he did likewise, gunning the powerful engine.
‘I left them,’ she said. ‘And I wish to God I didn’t have to wear this outfit either! I’ll be sending it back to him from London.’
She heard Alexandros Lakaris say something in Greek. She thought he must be swearing, so perhaps that was just as well.
‘I’ll have them fetched for you,’ he said, his face grim with displeasure as he moved off into the roadway. He turned to her. ‘Would it persuade you to keep them if you knew that in fact it was me who paid for them? I was going to charge them to your father, but in the circumstances...’
‘I can’t accept them from you either!’ Rosalie exclaimed hotly. ‘How could you think I would?’
‘If you accept my proposal, then of course you can,’ he replied. ‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘you’ll need many more.’ He glanced across at her and there was that glint in his eye again. It did things to her that it shouldn’t. ‘As my wife,’ he said, ‘you would be superbly dressed...’
She made a face, trying not to see herself let loose in yet more gorgeous designer departments. ‘Is that supposed to persuade me?’ she posed.
‘Will it?’ he countered.
She shook her head. ‘I mustn’t let it,’ she answered in a low voice, looking down at her lap. She gave a sigh, then looked at him straight, took a breath. ‘Mr Lakaris, if—’
He cut her off with a frown. ‘I think we have gone long beyond the stage of formal address,’ he said wryly. ‘My friends,’ he went on, ‘call me Xandros.’
‘Well, whatever I call you,’ she persisted, ‘I have to be absolutely sure that I’m not...not...letting you buy me things. Expensive clothes. Expensive hotel rooms. Expensive meals, come to that...’
He frowned. ‘You were happy enough to buy clothes when you thought your father was paying.’
‘That’s different—he’s my father. But you’d be—’
‘Your husband,’ he supplied. ‘And you, as I set out at lunchtime, would be my wife,’ he went on, and there was a crispness in his voice that she could hear clearly. ‘A wife who is enabling me to make a lot of money, thanks to this merger!’ He glanced at her briefly. ‘Does that reassure you at all?’
‘I suppose so,’ she said uneasily.
‘Good,’ he replied decisively. ‘And now...’ he changed gear and the powerful car shot forward, before settling into a fast cruising speed along the highway ‘...let’s put all that aside for the time being. Tell me—how do you fancy driving out to Sounion? There’s an ancient temple there, and a dramatic headland. Let me show you something of Greece. If a couture wardrobe can’t tempt you to marry me, maybe Greece will!’
She heard humour in his voice, and he threw her a slanting smile.
His eyes went back to the road ahead, but Rosalie’s did not do likewise. That brief smile, crinkling his eyes and curving his sculpted mouth, had made her stomach flip.
Her gaze focussed on his strong, perfectly carved profile, the fine blade of his nose, the chiselled jaw, the faint furrow of concentration on his broad brow as he overtook a lorry and then eased his square long-fingered hands on the steering wheel again. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the long, lean length of him—the whole incredible package of honed masculinity that was Alexandros Lakaris—and she was unable to tear her gaze away.
She was helpless to stop her father’s jibing words echoing in her head.
‘You’d be the envy of every woman in Athens!’
Galling though it was, how could she deny the truth of that jibing taunt her father had lanced at her? For she knew, with a burning consciousness, that when it came to temptation Alexandros Lakaris, all six feet of drop-dead gorgeousness, was in a league of his own...
She dragged her thoughts away, her eyes away.
If they married on the terms he’d set out—if!—then that factor, above all, was not a good reason.
In her head his words hovered again—his promise to her.
‘You will never know poverty again...’
Temptation like an overpowering wave swept over her. She could marry this incredible-looking man, enjoy his wealth, revel in the lifestyle that would have been hers had her father not been as callous, as heartless, as despicable as he was. And she could walk away at the end of it all with a passport to a better life for herself.
I could do it! I really could do it!
But would she? That was the question she must answer.
And it hung in her head like a burning brand.
Xandros glanced expectantly towards the entrance to the hotel’s rooftop restaurant. He’d phoned through to Rosalie’s room and she was on her way. He was glad she had accepted his suggestion that they have dinner together tonight, glad she’d let him book her into this hotel in central Athens, and glad that she hadn’t insisted, after all, on him driving her to the airport so she could fly back to London.
And he was glad, above all, that at least she hadn’t blown his proposal out of the water.
Because the more he considered it, the more ideal it became. In his head he ran through all the reasons why one more time as he took a sip from the gin-based cocktail he’d been served as he waited for Rosalie.
Just as he’d told her that afternoon, all the financial reasons stacked up irrefutably. And so did his own personal reasons. Reasons that, as he caught sight of her hovering a little hesitantly at the restaurant entrance, seared across his retinas.
His gaze was riveted on her as she walked towards him, guided by the maître d’.
A swift phone call to the Coustakis mansion as they’d headed back from Sounion at the end of the afternoon had resulted in her two new suitcases full of designer clothes being delivered to the hotel by the time they reached it. And clearly, in the hours since she’d checked in, she’d taken her pick of the contents.
To very good effect.
His eyes swept over her, warming with rich appreciation. An LBD—classic style—skimmed her tall, slender body flawlessly. She wore it with an evening jacket lightly embroidered in silver thread, adorned with a long silver necklace and matching bracelets. Her hair was upswept, which lengthened her graceful neck, enhancing an elegance that was rounded off by high heels that gave her an amazing sashaying walk as she approached.
Thee mou, but she was beautiful! To think she had clutched that damnable bucket and mop and scrubbed filthy floors!
Even as he thought about it, another thought gelled in his mind.