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‘The kind that would be solved with a cash injection of a few million euros.’
Kallie tried not to let shock show on her face. She had a sudden very acute fear that they could be vulnerable to Alexandros, who was clearly out for some kind of revenge now.
‘You don’t even have your shares, do you?’
How did he know that?
She shook her head warily.
‘Apparently you couldn’t even wait until your parents were cold in the grave before you cashed them in…’
She gasped at the cruelty of his words. It had been nothing like that. She’d handed them over to Alexei and he’d cashed them in, giving her the small amount she’d needed to set up her business. She hadn’t wanted anything else to do with them and her uncle had needed them.
She leant forward, unaware of how it gave Alexandros a tantalising view of her cleavage beneath her shirt. She quivered with rage and injustice.
‘What I did or didn’t do with my shares is none of your business, Alexandros.’
He shrugged like he didn’t much care and Kallie felt impotent, wanted to walk around and slap the look of smug superiority off his face. It held all the arrogance of his forebears.
‘The fact of the matter is that your uncle has come to me for help…for a loan, if you will.’
Kallie sagged back against her chair. Oh, Alexei, what have you done? Her uncle had never been the brains behind Demarchis Shipping. That had been her father, until…Her mind slammed down on painful memories.
‘Look, Alexandros, what do you want? Surely…surely this can’t be because of what happened all those years ago?’
‘Why not, Kallie? Do you think that what you did wasn’t so bad after all? That time might have diminished it? You tried to seduce me and when it didn’t go your way, in a fit of spoilt pique you lashed out. You singlehandedly stopped a marriage from taking place—’
‘But, Alexandros.’ Panic was making her insides liquefy. ‘Surely Pia would have given you the benefit of the doubt, let you explain? I’m sure you could have convinced her that it meant nothing, was nothing…’ she had to stop for a second when her heart clenched in remembered pain ‘…if she loved you…’
Her remark caught him on the raw, caught him in a place he’d shut off long ago.
‘You’re priceless. Love? It was never about love, Kallie, it was a business arrangement. A merger between two families. Needless to say the merger never happened as soon as they lost faith in my ability to do the job. Thanks to your revealing titbits…’ The rage rose up again. ‘Theos, Kallie…’
She was speechless. She’d always assumed that he had loved Pia. And even though she hadn’t leaked the kiss-and-tell story to the paper, and had had nothing to do with the damning photo, she’d always felt guilty for trying to seduce Alexandros when he’d only wanted to be friends.
Her vulnerability and pathetic weakness for this man still made her blood boil. She opened her mouth, about to proclaim her innocence, and stopped. Eleni. And it wasn’t just Eleni. Even if he knew, Kallie was still in her own way responsible, too. She couldn’t say a thing…angrily impotent at the way she was trapped, she put down her napkin and went to stand but he reached across the table and caught her hand.
The feel of her smooth warm skin, the frantic pulse beating like a trapped bird, called to Alexandros, scrambled his brain for a second. He had to fight for control and remember what he was there to do.
‘I’m not finished with you, Kallie. In fact, we haven’t even started.’
She pulled her hand away, uncaring if people were looking. ‘There’s nothing starting here, Alexandros. I’m leaving.’
His voice was low and lethal. ‘No. You’re not. If you stand up, so help me, I will pick you up and carry you out of here over my shoulder. Don’t think that I won’t. So we can do this here and now, or we can cause a furore of interest, give the paparazzi outside something to photograph and do it back in my apartment.’
She had been in the act of standing and sat down again slowly. She knew without a doubt that she didn’t want to be alone with him and that he wouldn’t hesitate to do exactly what he’d said.
When she had sat back down he continued agreeably, as though discussing the weather. ‘As I was saying, your uncle is in need of a substantial loan. A loan to keep Demarchis Shipping afloat…literally. This puts me in an interesting position, wouldn’t you say?’ He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘I was quite prepared to do business with Alexei, as it suits my needs, too, but now things are intriguingly different. Needless to say, it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to me should I choose not to help him. But it would make all the difference in the world to him…and your family.’
The lines in his face were unbearably harsh and Kallie quailed at how time and circumstances had turned this man into such a lethal combination of sheer ruthlessness and icy cool. And at the part she had unwittingly played.
He continued unflinchingly, ‘He’s a tough old dog, but he’s exhausted every other avenue and, as he told me himself, I’m his last hope…’
Kallie was stung with guilt that she hadn’t known, that her uncle hadn’t confided in her. That she could somehow be instrumental in potentially doing damage to her family hurt her unbearably. Yet still, even through this, she was so aware of Alexandros across the table that she felt dizzy with his presence.
‘How have they not told me—I mean, how is this possible?’
She suddenly looked very young and lost and alone to Alexandros. Her eyes were huge, shimmering, blue and green. And he felt something twist in his chest before he ruthlessly quashed it back down.
‘Who knows? By selling your shares so promptly, by coming here to Paris, moving away from the UK—your mother’s own home, and your father’s adopted home—perhaps Alexei and your family thought you were taking a stand away from them, weren’t interested in their problems.’
It killed her that he could deduce this, but she hadn’t. And the familiar wave of grief washed through her. She lifted pain-filled eyes to his, speaking without thinking. ‘It wasn’t like that. It just became too much. After the funeral, the business was all they could talk about. All they ever talked about. My father had as good as taken his own life, and my mother’s with him and no one wanted to talk about that. It was Demarchis Shipping this, Demarchis Shipping that…’ She broke off when her voice caught and she desperately blinked back the sting of tears, hating that he might see any hint of vulnerability.
She strenuously fought to hide the brightness from his narrowed gaze and only looked back when she felt more under control. He had an intense look on his face. And then it was gone. Replaced with that implacability again. She hardened her own jaw.
The emotion that had softened her features could have been a figment of Alexandros’s imagination and he felt himself flounder slightly. This wasn’t going exactly how he’d imagined it. He wanted to reach over and run the pad of his thumb across her cheeks, down to her lips…cup her delicate jaw. He was fast losing the thread of why they were there. All he wanted was to stop talking and take her to bed. Spread her underneath him. The speed with which this woman had taken over his senses shocked him.
Kallie felt anger boil up at the unfairness of it all. All she had done had been to bare her heart and soul to this man. And he had crushed that into the dust. Before the story had even erupted. She jabbed a finger towards him. ‘Look, Alexandros, I can’t undo the past any more than you can, with all your money. And I wasn’t alone out there that night. I may have…initiated things. I tried to tell my parents, to explain…but they wouldn’t listen.’
He held up a hand, derision on his face. ‘Please. It’s a bit late to try and tell me that you defended my honour when you cold-bloodedly arranged for the photo and the breathless story in the papers—that shows a level of premeditation on a par with the most corrupt politician. But…’ he silenced her protest with a look ‘…there is one way that Alexei need never know about this, one way that I will give him his loan, help him out of this situation he’s become embroiled in.’
She flushed at yet another indication of how much he knew and focused on how she could avert a disaster within her family. ‘How’s that?’
‘You, Kallie.’
And then before his words could sink into her head, which felt like it might explode, he asked her abruptly, ‘Do you remember my uncle Dimitri?’
She nodded, her brain still scrambled, trying to make sense of everything.
‘He died a month ago.’
‘I didn’t hear that he was unwell. I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly, wondering where this was going.
He shrugged, his face closed, belying the fact that he had loved Dimitri like a father. Something he would have credited Kallie with knowing…once.
‘It was sudden.’ His black gaze fixed on Kallie. ‘It’s part of the reason I’ve asked you here.’
Along with the burning desire that holds you in a grip so tight you have to shift in your seat every two seconds.
A pulse beat at his temple.
Kallie’s face felt rigid. She couldn’t help the sarcastic response. ‘Well, I was wondering…You were hardly calling to reminisce about old times.’
Shut up, Kallie!
He didn’t seem to notice her self-flagellating turmoil. The waiter appeared, removing their plates. Kallie refused dessert, ordering a coffee, Alexandros asked for a liqueur. He waited until his drink arrived before fixing her with that intense gaze again. He wasn’t going to make this easy. Kallie’s full armour was erected against him.
‘I have to admit that bumping into you was a shock…but also perfect timing, a certain kind of serendipity, if you will.’
She looked at him warily. ‘Timing, for what exactly?’
He looked at her across the table. He clenched his jaw and refused to let his gaze drop to that shadowy line of her cleavage, the gem on the end of that same pendant swaying back and forth, kissing her skin. Skin that looked soft and…He clenched his jaw even harder and focused with effort.
Think of what you need. Focus on business. This is business. And revenge…Nothing else.
Alexandros valiantly concentrated on that and not on Kallie’s all too grown-up charms. There’d be time for that later, he vowed.
‘I need a convenient wife, and you, Kallie, I’ve decided, are going to oblige me.’
Kallie looked at him dumbly, shock washing through her body.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘I’M SORRY?’
‘You should be, Kallie. It’s time to start atoning for what you did seven years ago. I bet you never thought it would catch up with you. I have to admit, I hadn’t planned on doing anything, I was quite happy to settle for never crossing your path again, but bumping into you the other night, together with a slightly…’ His mouth twisted as he looked for words. ‘Unfortunate set of circumstances that I’m in, has all been very fortuitous.’
A nightmare. She had to be stuck in some kind of nightmare. This couldn’t be real. Kallie’s mind disengaged from everything. She looked around dumbly and could see couples dining. Lovers holding hands. Men having business dinners. They looked real. And then everything seemed to rush back into focus. Someone was calling her name.
‘Here, drink this.’
Alexandros was reaching across the table with dark amber liquid in a glass. His after-dinner drink. She shook her head violently and pushed his hand back, snatching hers away abruptly when she felt the strong bones of his wrist.
He looked at her, his voice unbearably harsh. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
She shook her head, ignoring his question. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry me, Alexandros?’ She waved a jerky hand that still tingled from the contact with his. ‘Why would you want to do that?’
He put down his glass, smiled grimly. ‘Don’t worry, Kallie, I don’t want to marry you. When my uncle Dimitri died, he left me his share of Kouros Shipping. It’s the last piece not in my control.’
She looked at him blankly. Still in shock.
‘It was expected. He’d always made it clear where his inheritance would go.’
She nodded vaguely, incapable of speech.
‘But there was a surprise in his will. Dimitri had a sense of humour. He knew how I felt about marriage.’
He answered the look that Kallie hadn’t even been aware of giving. His face was carved from stone as he said the words, ‘I’ll never willingly marry. The woman doesn’t exist who I would marry.’
A knife seemed to enter Kallie’s heart, stunning her with pain and surprise. She felt herself pulling inwards as if to avoid a blow. Alexandros was oblivious to the havoc he was wreaking within her. The havoc she couldn’t even begin to understand. She had done this to him?
He cut through her thoughts. ‘He made it a condition of his will that I marry within six months of him dying or I won’t receive his share of Kouros Shipping.’ His mouth twisted. ‘It’s as if he knew it was the only way I might ever give in to his foolish romantic notions for me.’
Kallie dumbly seized on words to try and avoid feeling the emotions swirling in her head and body.
‘But how could you lose everything? Surely his share isn’t that big?’
‘It’s not, but he controlled a key part. As you know, on my father’s death, I took full control of the business.’
She felt an unbidden surge of sympathy, remembering the chaos of that time. But Alexandros wouldn’t appreciate her concern or interest, certainly not her sympathy. And how could she even be feeling sympathetic?
‘Dimitri’s will states that if I don’t marry within the time frame, his share will go to Stakis Shipping.’
Kallie gasped audibly. Stakis Shipping was the mortal enemy. Even she knew that. Underhand deals, rumours of links to drug rings, sex trafficking. They were the black sheep of the shipping world and the only conglomerate powerful enough to possibly take over Kouros Shipping. If what Alexandros said was true, and if he didn’t marry, they would be handed an invitation on a silver platter to take a sizeable potshot at his company.
Alexandros couldn’t stop the unbidden dart of pleasure seeing the expressions cross her face, at her immediate understanding of the world he came from. He quickly schooled his features again, slightly shocked at how easily the accord had crept in.
‘My uncle, in an effort to see me happily wed, has set me up for professional suicide if I don’t.’
‘I know this is bad but can it really be that bad?’
He nodded. ‘The share he controlled has strategic importance in the stock markets. It’s the link that holds everything else together. That gets weakened and it could all crumble. And he knew how abhorrent I find the practices of Constantine Stakis. He’s been waiting for an opportunity like this for years. A marriage seems like a small price to pay to keep my family’s legacy intact and Stakis out of harm’s way.’
That word again. Marriage. It crashed into her brain. Kallie shook her head. ‘Impossible. I couldn’t. I can’t.’
Alexandros felt a surge of irritation and anger. Why was he even telling her all this? He slashed a hand through the air.
‘This is all beside the point. You don’t even deserve an explanation. All you need to know is that I hold the fate of your family in my hands. And the only way you can influence that for the better is by marrying me. If you don’t, your family can kiss their fortune goodbye.’
‘But that’s…ridiculous…archaic. You don’t want to tie yourself to me—you hate me.’
He leant forward again. ‘Hate is the other side of love, Kallie. I certainly don’t hate you.’ He swept a look up and down that was so hot she felt it on her skin, ‘But I do desire you.’
Little fires of shock raced all over Kallie’s body. His eyes had darkened, eyelids lowered slightly so that they looked slumberous.
He desired her?
Why did that make a treacherous curl of excitement lick through her body…and not pain, or disgust?
Her back was so stiff it hurt. Her voice sounded stilted, desperate and glaringly insincere to her ears. ‘Well, I certainly don’t desire you, Alexandros, so it would be a little one-sided.’
Before she could move out of danger, he had reached across and taken her hand again. Engulfing it with his own. She felt a traitorous pulse start up between her legs and clamped them together. His eyes made a thorough study all the way from her face, the rapid pulse at her neck, down to her chest, where shallow breaths did little to hide her agitation. She could feel her breasts tingle, her nipples hardening, and prayed that he wouldn’t see the reaction.
His eyes came back to hers, smug. ‘You did once, Kallie, and you still do. If I were to stand up, walk around this table and kiss you right now, you’d be begging for it within seconds.’
The very thought of him doing that made her mouth go dry.
‘You flatter yourself…’ she said faintly, knowing her words would have no effect. He was coming at her like a two-tonne lorry and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She seized on something, her hand still trapped by his. ‘Isabelle Zolanz! You’re hardly going to marry me if you’re seeing her. Why don’t you just marry her? You two are lovers after all…’ Something twisted in her gut when she said that and she had to hide her reaction.
He let her hand go and flicked his dismissively in a very Greek gesture. ‘Isabelle is no longer a part of my life.’
Kallie had to suck in a shocked breath at the coldness of his tone. ‘It didn’t look to me the other night as though she was aware of that.’
‘She is now.’ His tone brooked no further comment on the subject. Kallie felt a twinge for the other woman and could only imagine how brutal he’d been.
She had to face it. If she hadn’t already. The young man she had known, the young man who had once been her friend, her confidant, was gone. In his place was a ruthless man of the world. A truly alpha male. And she had played her part in creating him. She should never have gone to him that night. Regret and recrimination burnt its way through her. But it was too late for all that. Far too late.
She tried to reason with him. ‘I won’t do it, Alexandros. It’s crazy. I’m sorry for what happened. Truly I am. I never meant for anything to happen.’
Liar…You went in search of him that night…
She swallowed and cut off her painful thoughts. ‘You can’t punish me for something that happened when I was seventeen.’
‘Seventeen?’ He laughed harshly. ‘You were no ingénue, Kallie. I remember the way you were with Giorgio…you had the poor guy panting after you like a dog. You were almost eighteen, about to go to college, on the brink of adulthood—you knew exactly what you were doing.’ He waved an impatient hand. ‘This isn’t about the past any more. In fact, that whole episode just bores me. It’s about the present. All the past is doing now is serving to give me a little leverage where you’re concerned. A little retribution, sweetened by very strong desire.’
Sadness filled her. He had it all so wrong. Giorgio. She hadn’t thought about him in years. Another friend of her cousins, she’d taken advantage of his dogged pursuit of her to try and make Alexandros jealous. To little effect and much to her shame. But it had been done with the innocence and disregard of a typical teenager. She didn’t doubt that Giorgio had been robust enough to accept her rejection and knew he hadn’t been too wounded as he had quickly sought the affections of another cousin. Was she to be punished for every little thing?
She shook her head desperately. ‘I won’t do it. You can’t make me.’ Please, she added silently. He had no idea how much of a punishment this would be.
‘Too late. I’ve made up my mind. If you don’t marry me, who would suffer most? I think possibly your uncle Alexei, as he has the most invested. Doesn’t he have three grown-up children at college in the States?’
‘Stop it…’ Fear and panic laced her voice. ‘You’re a bastard.’
He inclined his head. ‘No, Kallie, I’m not.’ He lifted a hand and ticked off long fingers. ‘I need to get married more or less immediately, you’ve fallen into my path like a ripe plum, you are available…and you’ve grown up into a very attractive young woman.’
‘So that’s it? You only want me now because I come up to your standards of physical perfection?’
He smiled and it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You’re no image of physical perfection, Kallie, don’t flatter yourself, but for some reason I find myself wanting you more than I’ve wanted any other woman in a long time…so I don’t anticipate that there’s going to be any hardship on our wedding night when you come to me…’
His insulting choice of words barely impinged her consciousness, she reacted purely to his assertion that she would ever choose willingly to sleep with him. ‘I’ll never—’
‘Yes. You will,’ he cut in ruthlessly. ‘And I am going to enjoy every moment of this sweet revenge, every step of the way, every piece of flesh that’s going to be uncovered as you give yourself to me, as you offer yourself up as you did seven years ago. In the place of the marriage that you made sure didn’t happen, don’t you think when I need a wife now that it’s only fair that you step into that role?’
She couldn’t control the shiver that shook her frame at his words. And she knew it wasn’t a shiver of fear. She hated this man. He had her backed into a corner with no way out.
‘How can I be sure you’ll still deliver on the loan?’
He shrugged. ‘I could watch your family flounder. Heaven knows, I have the right. But contrary to what you think, Kallie, I’m not that cruel. On our wedding day when I get my convenient wife, you can consider the loan approved.’
She had an overwhelming urge to jump up and run as fast as she could, as far away as she could. But he would find her if she did. She knew that without a doubt. She sank back against the chair, unable to sit up straight in the face of his condemnation.
She looked miserable. ‘I don’t want them to suffer, despite what you might think.’
And suddenly Kallie had to do something, had to try and make him listen. There had to be a human being in there somewhere. The old Alexandros. She appealed to him now, sitting up straight again.
‘Alexandros—’
He started to cut her off and she put up a hand. ‘Please. Just let me say something.’ Her eyes were an intense green on his. ‘I never went to the paper with that story. I would never have done something like that. You knew me…’ Better than nearly anyone.
He said nothing and Kallie searched her brain frantically. ‘Why would I have done it, Alexandros? Why?’
There was unmistakable tension in his huge frame, just inches away from her. He shrugged dismissively. ‘Because you were just one more in a long line of people who thought they could cash in on the Kouros money.’ Except that was a myth by then!
‘Did your father put you up to it, Kallie? See his ticket out of debt? Or did you just do it for the hell of it, to see if you could turn my head yourself? I told you that day I didn’t go in for seventeen-year-olds.’ His mouth twisted mockingly. ‘But if you’d come to me as you are now…’
He flicked an openly appraising look up and down her body. It should have disgusted her. It should have made her angry. But it didn’t. It made her feel hot and bothered and confused and out of her depth.
But he wasn’t finished. ‘To tell the truth, seven years on I’m not much interested in why…’ He shook his head. ‘You changed, Kallie. The girl I knew would never have tried to seduce me and get someone to photograph the evidence.’
Her insides stung with acute hurt and the humiliation rose up again so sharply she felt sick. To think that he would have believed that of her.
Kallie bit her lip hard and could feel blood. As if his rejection hadn’t hurt enough that night, he had to reiterate just how unwelcome her advances had been and how futile it was to try and get him to listen to anything, any explanation.