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‘I just can’t,’ Lucy breathed into the silence. ‘I... I’m happy to leave with a small loan, until I find my feet.’
‘Find your feet doing what?’ Dio asked curiously.
‘I... I have one or two things up my sleeve...’
Dio’s eyes narrowed as hers shifted away. He was picking up the whiff of a secret and he wondered, again, what was going on behind his back. What had been going on behind his back? Had the mouse been playing while the cat had been away?
‘What things?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said evasively. ‘It’s just that... I think we’d both be happier if we brought this marriage to an end, and if I could borrow some money from you...’
‘Lucy, you would need a great deal of money to begin to have any life at all in London.’
‘Money which you are not at all prepared to lend me, even though you have my word that you would be repaid.’
‘Unless you’re planning a big job in the corporate world or have a rich backer,’ he said dryly, ‘then I can guarantee that any loan I make to you would not be paid back. At least, not while I have my own teeth and hair.’
‘How do you think it would look if your wife was caught with a begging bowl, looking for scraps from strangers?’
‘Now who’s being dramatic?’ When he had met her all those months ago, she had been blushing and shy but he had had glimpses of the humour and sharp intelligence behind the shyness. Over the past year and a half, as she had been called on to play the role of perfect wife and accomplished hostess, her self-confidence had grown in leaps and bounds.
He also knew that, whatever she felt for him, she wasn’t intimidated by him. Maybe that, too, was down to the strange configuration of their lives together. How could you be intimidated by someone you weren’t that interested in pleasing in the first place?
‘You will, naturally, walk away with slightly more than the clothes on your back,’ Dio admitted. ‘However, you would still find it a challenge to have a lifestyle that in any way could be labelled comfortable. Unless, of course, there’s a rich patron in the background. Is there?’
Asking the question was a sign of weakness but Dio couldn’t help himself.
She shrugged. ‘I’m not into rich men,’ she told him. ‘I’ve always known that and having been married to you has confirmed all my suspicions.’
‘How’s that?’ Frankly, he had never heard anything so hypocritical in his life before, but he decided to let it pass.
‘Like you said, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I know you say that it’s the most important thing in life...’
‘I can’t remember saying that.’
‘More or less. You said it more or less. And I know you think that I wouldn’t be able to last a week unless I have more money than I can shake a stick at but—’
‘But you’re suddenly overcome with a desperate urge to prove me wrong...’ His gaze dropped to her full mouth. Something about the arrangement of her features had always turned him on. She wasn’t overtly sexy, just as she wasn’t overtly beautiful, but there was a whisper of something other-worldly about her that kept tugging his eyes back to her time and time again.
She had screwed up his clear-cut plans to buy her father’s company at a fire sale price before chucking him to his fate, which would undoubtedly have involved wolves tearing him to pieces. He had been charmed by that other-worldly something, had allowed it somehow to get to him, and he had tempered all his plans to accommodate the feeling.
She had, over time, become the itch he couldn’t scratch. He might have had her signed up to a water-tight pre-nup but, even so, he would never have seen her hit the streets without any financial wherewithal.
In this instance, though, he was determined to have that itch scratched and, if it meant holding her to ransom, then he was pretty happy to go down that road.
Especially now that he knew that the attraction was returned in full.
‘I’m just trying to tell you that there’s no rich anyone in the background.’ Did he imagine that she fooled around the way he did? ‘And there never will be anyone rich in my life again.’
‘How virtuous. Is it because of those free lunches not coming for free? Do you honestly think that hitching your life to a pauper would be fertile ground for happily united bliss? If so then you really need to drag your head out of the clouds and get back down to Planet Earth.’ He abandoned the decision to go back to work, not that he would have been able to concentrate. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. If we’re going to continue this conversation, then I need to eat.’
‘You were about to leave,’ Lucy reminded him.
‘That was before I became intrigued with your radical new outlook on life.’
He began heading towards the kitchen and she followed helplessly in his wake.
This felt like a proper conversation and it was unsettling. There were no crowds of people around jostling for his attention. No important clients demanding polite small talk. And they weren’t exchanging pleasantries before heading off in opposite directions in any one of their grand houses.
She knew the layout of the kitchen well. On those occasions when they had entertained at home, she had had to supervise caterers and familiarise them with the ins and outs of the vast kitchen. When he was out of the country, as he often was, this was where she had her meals on her own, with the little telly on, or else the radio.
However, it was a bit different to see him here, in it.
For a few seconds, he stared around him, a man at sea trying to get his bearings.
‘Okay. Suggestions?’ He finally turned to her.
‘Suggestions about what?’
‘Thoughts on what I can eat.’
‘What were you planning to eat if you hadn’t found me here?’ Lucy asked jerkily, moving from doorway to kitchen table and then sitting awkwardly on one of the chairs while he continued to look at her in a way that made her blood sizzle, because she just had to see that mouth of his to recall his very passionate kiss. Her lips still felt stung and swollen.
‘I have two top chefs on speed dial,’ he drawled, amused when her mouth fell open. ‘They’re usually good at solving the “what to eat?” dilemma for me. Not that it’s a dilemma that occurs very often. If I’m on my own, I eat out. Saves hassle.’
‘Go ahead and order what you want from your two top chefs,’ Lucy told him. ‘Never mind me. I...er...’
‘Ate already?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘And I don’t believe you. Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you feel uncomfortable being in a kitchen with me and breaking bread? We’re a married couple, after all.’
‘I don’t feel uncomfortable,’ Lucy lied. ‘Not in the slightest!’
‘Then where are your suggestions?’
‘Do you even know where to find anything in this kitchen?’ she asked impatiently.
Dio appeared to give that question a bit of thought then he shook his head. ‘I admit the contents of the cupboards are something of a mystery, although I do know that there’s some very fine white wine in the fridge...’
‘Are you asking me to cook something for you?’
‘If you’re offering, then who am I to refuse?’ He made for a chair and sat down. ‘It doesn’t offend your feminist instincts to cook for me, does it? Because, if it does, then I’m more than happy to try and hunt down one or two ingredients and put my cooking skills to the test.’
‘You don’t have cooking skills.’ From some past remembered conversation, when she had still had faith in him, she recalled one of his throwaway remarks that had made her laugh.
‘You’re right. So I don’t.’
This wasn’t how Lucy had imagined the evening going. She had more figured on dealing with shock at her announcement followed by anger because she knew that, even if he heartily wanted to get rid of her, he would have been furious that she had pre-empted him. Then she had imagined disappearing off to bed, leaving him to mull over her decision, at which point she would have been directed to a lawyer who would take over the handling of the nitty-gritty.
Instead she felt trapped in the eye of a hurricane...
She knew where everything was and she was a reasonably good cook. It was something she quite enjoyed doing when she was on her own, freed from the pressure of having to entertain. She expertly found the things she needed for a simple pasta meal and it would have been relaxing if she hadn’t been so acutely aware of his eyes following her every movement.
‘Need a hand?’ he asked as she clanged a saucepan onto the stove and she turned to him with a snappy, disbelieving frown.
‘What can you do?’
‘I feel I could be quite good at chopping things.’ He rose smoothly to join her by the kitchen counter, invading her space and making her skin tingle with sexual awareness.
Stupid, she thought crossly. But he had thrown down that gauntlet, brought sex into the equation, and now it was on her mind. And she didn’t want it to be. She had spent the past months telling herself that she hated him and hating him had made it easy for her to ignore the way he made her feel. It had been easy to ignore the slight tremble whenever he got too close, the tingling of her breasts and the squirmy feeling she got in the pit of her stomach.
He’d never been attracted to her, she had thought. He’d just seen her as part of a deal. He’d used her.
But now...
He wanted her; she had felt it in his kiss, had felt his erection pressing against her like a shaft of steel. Just thinking about it brought her out in a fine film of perspiration.
She shoved an onion and some tomatoes at him and told him where to find a chopping board and a knife.
‘Most women would love the kind of lifestyle you have,’ Dio murmured as he began doing something and nothing with the tomatoes.
‘You mean flitting from grand house to grand house, making sure everything is ticking over, because Lord help us if an important client spots some dust on a skirting board?’
‘Since when have you been so sarcastic?’
‘I’m not being sarcastic.’
‘Don’t stop. I find it intriguing.’
‘You told me that most women would envy what I have and I told you that they wouldn’t.’
‘You’d be surprised what women would put up with if the price was right.’
‘I’m not one of those women.’ She edged away, because he was just a little too close for comfort, and began busying herself by the stove, flinging things into the saucepan, all the ingredients for a tomato-and-aubergine dish, which was a stalwart in her repertoire because it was quick and easy.
Dio thought that maybe he should have tried to find out what sort of woman she was before remembering that he knew exactly what sort of woman she was. The sort who had conspired with her father to get him where they had both wanted him—married to her and thereby providing protection for her father from the due processes of law.
If she wanted to toss out hints that there were hidden depths there somewhere, though, then he was happy enough to go along for the ride. Why not? Right now he was actually enjoying himself, against all odds.
And the bottom line was that he wanted her body. He wanted that itch to be scratched and then he would be quite happy to dispose of her.
If holding her to ransom was going to prove a problem then what was the big deal in getting her into his bed using other methods?
‘So, we’re back to the money not being the be all and end all,’ he murmured encouragingly. ‘Smells good, whatever you’re making.’
‘I like cooking when I’m on my own,’ she said with a flush of pleasure.
‘You cook even though you know you could have anything you wanted to eat delivered to your doorstep?’ Dio asked with astonishment and Lucy laughed.
He remembered that laugh from way back when. Soft and infectious, with a little catch that made it seem as though she felt guilty laughing at all. He had found that laugh strangely seductive, fool that he had been.
‘So...’ he drawled once they were sitting at the kitchen table with bowls of steaming hot pasta in front of them. ‘Shall we raise our glasses to this rare event? I don’t believe I’ve sat in this kitchen and had a meal with you since we got married.’
Lucy nervously sipped some of the wine. The situation was slipping away from her. How many women had he sat and drank with in the time during which they had been supposedly happily married? She hadn’t slept with him but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t aware that he had a healthy libido. One look at that dark, handsome face was enough to cement the impression.
She had never, not once, asked him about what he did behind her back on all those many trips when he was abroad, but she could feel the questions eating away at her, as though they had suddenly been released from a locked box. She hated it. And she hated the way that fleeting moment of being the object of his flirting attention had got to her, overriding all the reasons she had formulated in her head for breaking away from him. She didn’t want to give house room to any squirmy feelings. He had turned on the charm when they had first met and she knew from experience that it didn’t mean anything.
‘That’s because this isn’t really a marriage, is it?’ she said politely. ‘So why would we sit in a kitchen and have a meal together? That’s what real married couples do.’
Dio’s mouth tightened. ‘And of course you would know a lot about what real married couples do, considering you entered this contract with no intention of being half of a real married couple.’
‘I don’t think it’s going to get either of us anywhere if we keep harping back to the past. I think we should both now look to the future.’
‘The future being divorce.’
‘I’m not going to get into bed with you for money, Dio,’ Lucy told him flatly. For a whisper of a second, she had a vivid image of what it would be like to make love to him—but then, it wouldn’t be love, would it? And what was the point of sex without love?
‘So you’re choosing the poverty option.’ He pushed his bowl to one side and relaxed back in the chair, angling his big body so that he could extend his legs to the side.
‘If I have to. I can make do. I...’
‘You...what?’ His ears pricked up as he detected the hesitancy in her voice.
‘I have plans,’ Lucy said evasively. And she wasn’t going to share them with him, wasn’t going to let her fledgling ambitions be put to the test by him.
‘What plans?’
‘Nothing very big. Or important. I just obviously need to think about the direction my life is going in.’ She stood up and briskly began clearing the table. She made sure not to catch his eye.
Dio watched her jerky movements as she busied herself around the kitchen, tidying, wiping the counters, doing everything she could to make sure the conversation was terminated.
So she wanted out and she had plans.
To Dio’s way of thinking, that could only mean one thing. A man. Maybe not a rich one, but a man. Lurking in the background. Waiting to get her into bed if he hadn’t already done so.
The fake marriage was going to be replaced by a relationship she had probably been cultivating behind his back for months. Maybe—and the red mist descended when he considered this option—she had been cultivating this relationship from way back when. Maybe it had been right there on the back burner, set to one side while she’d married him and had done what she had to do for the sake of her father.
It might have come as a shock that she would face walking away empty handed but clearly, whatever her so-called plans were, they were powerful enough to override common sense.
Faced with this, Dio understood that first and foremost he would find out what those plans were.
Simple.
He could either follow her himself or he could employ someone to do it. He preferred the former option. Why allow someone else to do something you were perfectly capable of handling yourself?
The past year or so of their sterile non-relationship faded under the impetus of an urgent need that obliterated everything else.
‘I’m going to be in New York for the next few days,’ Dio said abruptly, standing up and moving towards the kitchen door where he stood for a few seconds, hand on the door knob, his dark face cool and unreadable. ‘While you’re still wearing a wedding ring on your finger, I could insist that you accompany me, because I will be attending some high level social events. But, under these very special circumstances, you’ll be pleased to hear that I won’t.’
‘New—New York?’ Lucy faltered. ‘I can’t remember New York being in the diary until next month...’
‘Change of plan.’ Dio shrugged. He stared at her, working out what he planned to do the following day and how. ‘You can stay here and spend the time thinking about the proposition I’ve put to you.’
‘I’ve already thought about it. I don’t need to do any more thinking.’
Over his dead body. ‘Then,’ he said smoothly, ‘you can stay here and spend the time contemplating the consequences...’
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