Bought: The Greek's Bride
LUCY MONROE
Bought: The Greek's Bride
Lucy Monroe
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
HIS BIG, WARM HAND against the small of her back, Ellie allowed Sandor to guide her into the exclusive Boston restaurant. It felt good to walk into the air-conditioning. Boston in the summer was muggy and hot, but the instant cold sent shivers chasing along her arms and made her nipples bead behind the black silk bodice of her dress.
Rather than discomfort, her body reacted with a sensual pleasure that was her constant companion in this man’s company.
It had marked their first meeting and had not abated since, leaving her with a need to explore a side to her character that she usually ignored. Her feminine sexuality. She found herself dressing more sexily around him than she ever had in the past and reveling in the small, possessive touches he peppered their dates with.
Tonight, she’d worn a dress by Armani that she loved because it was both elegant and sexy. Its sleeveless design and scooped neck left her arms, a good portion of her chest and her back exposed, but the hem swirled modestly below her knees. The black silk clung to her understated curves and the thin fabric offered no real barrier between his hand and the sensitive skin of her back. And that single point of contact was enough to send her nerve endings rioting.
She had to concentrate on maintaining a bland façade for him and the other restaurant patrons, but she couldn’t help wishing they were someplace private. Someplace she might actually get the nerve up to ask why he’d never pressed for deeper intimacy when his good-night kisses were powered by a wealth of barely leashed passion. Passion she’d decided she wanted to explore.
She recognized several faces as the maître d’ led them to their table and wished she didn’t. She would like to go out, just once, to a restaurant that was not one of the accepted watering holes for their kind. But Sandor Christofides demanded the best. In everything.
Sometimes, it made her wonder what he was doing with her.
She had been born to the world he had worked so hard to enter, but as far as she could see, that was all she had to offer him. At five foot nine, with small curves, average features, and rather boring dark blond hair, she was not particularly beautiful; she did little to cultivate the contacts others would kill to obtain; she abhorred the standards set by money and frequently refused to uphold them. Her job as an employment counselor for the state was as unglamorous as it got. Her clients wouldn’t make it on to the “Who’s Who” list of anything, for that matter…neither would she. Not anymore.
Her dad considered her career a complete waste of her Ivy League education, but she didn’t care. She considered his overwhelming preoccupation with his business a waste, too. Not that she dismissed his company as unimportant, but she hated the fact that it always had and always would come before her, anyone or anything else.
Interrupting Ellie’s thoughts, the maître d’ stopped beside the same table they always had when Sandor brought her here. Its placement was an indication of Sandor’s importance, something her father would take for granted, but she didn’t think Sandor did. His dark brown eyes would glow with satisfaction for a brief moment at small things like this, as if they really mattered to him.
Which was another reason they weren’t exactly well suited. Stuff like that just did not impress her. Maybe she was jaded by growing up around it, but she got a lot bigger thrill out of one of her clients getting a job, or a certification necessary to do so, or additional education.
She knew why she said yes to every one of Sandor’s invitations. Because she was quite literally enthralled with the man. But she didn’t understand why he kept extending them. Especially if he didn’t want to sleep with her. He just didn’t seem like the celibate type, but that might be her own libido talking.
Sandor seated her though typically the maître d’ would have done so. She took it as a mark of his Greekness…or his possessiveness. She wasn’t sure which, but for as little as she understood what Sandor saw in her, she knew she would not be the one to end their relationship. Because the little actions like him seating her personally made her feel special.
They also exhibited a side to his nature she found enticing. He didn’t bow to the dictates of the world he inhabited, but insisted it take him on his terms. And when she was with him, she felt truly alive for the first time in her twenty-four years.
She couldn’t help watching with a hungry intensity she tried to hide as he folded his six-foot-four frame into the chair across from hers. His dark, wavy hair, cut just a little long framed chiseled features she could stare at all night. His superbly muscled frame filled out his dinner jacket in a way few businessmen did.
His hands were well groomed, his nails buffed from a masculine manicure, but they were big and marked with tiny scars from a background very different to hers.
After placing their napkins in their laps, the maître d’left without giving them menus, but Sandor did not remark on it.
He was too busy looking at her, his knowing gaze acknowledging the desire she tried so hard to hide.
His even, white teeth slashed in a smile. “I am not on the menu, pethi mou.” He paused and his smile turned to a predator’s grin. “But I could be.”
“Promises, promises…” she boldly teased back even as she felt the blush burning her cheeks.
Her body wasn’t feeling any embarrassment, however. It was too busy reacting to his teasing as if to a caress. Unrepentant heat pooled low in her belly while her breasts tingled with the need to be touched. Her already hardened nipples felt like they increased in size, aching for his attention.
She wasn’t precisely a virgin, but she’d never responded to anyone the way she responded to him.
He laughed, but didn’t deny that he had no real plans to follow through on his taunt. The truth was, though they had been dating for three months, he had never pushed for the ultimate intimacy and he’d ignored her subtle hints in that direction.
She stifled a pang of disappointment and asked, “How did the negotiations go with the department store chain?”
He and her father had combined forces to try to lure one of the biggest worldwide retailers into using their combined shipping companies’ resources and Sandor’s import/export network.
“It is in the bag.”
She loved the way he often talked American slang in his slight Greek accent. Unlike others of different nationalities that she’d met through her father, Sandor did not speak with the flawless accent of an Englishman, trained by exacting teachers. He’d told her he’d learned most of his English after coming to live in the United States when he was a child. His mother still spoke with a heavy accent that required a lot of concentration to understand sometimes. Luckily it was something Ellie was good at.
“I’m glad and I’m sure Dad is pleased.”
“Yes, but we are not here tonight to discuss business.”
“We aren’t?”
“You know we are not.”
She laughed softly. “I won’t argue. I know more about my father’s business since we started dating than I ever knew before and everything I do know, I’ve learned from you. I’m not exactly the best choice for a partner in that kind of discussion.”
“But I think you are the ideal partner for other things.”
Was he teasing her again…about the sex thing that she was fairly certain he had no plans to act on? Or did he mean something else? She looked at him in confusion, but though the corner of his mouth tilted enigmatically, he said nothing.
The waiter arrived at their table and poured them each a glass of Sandor’s favorite wine. She liked it, too, and had never balked at his standing order for this particular predinner drink. But she was surprised when he confirmed their food order without asking her preference. He had never done that before. But then, both he and the waiter acted as if he’d ordered before even arriving at the restaurant.
That impression was further enforced when the waiter returned to their table seconds later with appetizers.
She sniffed appreciatively at the garlic baked shrimp dripping with melted butter and topped with a grated medley of three cheeses. “My favorite.”
“I know.” He put a piece of shrimp on a slice of baguette, carefully drizzling the garlicy butter over it and making sure there was just the right amount of melted cheese on top before handing it to her. “I know you very well, Eleanor.”
“Do you?”
“After three months, do you doubt it?”
“That depends on what you mean. I think you do know a lot about me, but I am not sure you know me.” Her dad would have known to order this appetizer, too, but that didn’t mean he knew what made her tick. As far as she could tell, Ellie’s dad had no desire to know her on any level but the surface.
She couldn’t stifle the hope that Sandor would be different.
“Is there a distinction between the two?”
“Yes.”
“If tonight goes as I plan, I will have a great deal of time to learn what you mean.”
“And how do you plan for tonight to go?” Was he finally going to make love to her? Was she ready for it?
She almost laughed aloud at her inner voice. Ready? She was desperate for him. She’d already decided she wanted him, but the possibility of actually having him was throwing her into mental chaos. Which was silly. She wanted this man and while she had no intention of telling him that at this very moment, she would not lie to herself and pretend differently. She refused to indulge in those kinds of games.
“Allow me to reveal my plans in sequence.”
She should have guessed he had an agenda of some sort. It was so like him. It was one of the more disconcerting ways he reminded her of her father. She didn’t dislike it exactly, but it worried her a little. Were his agendas as coldly determined as her father’s?
“By all means, I wouldn’t think of attempting to divert your schedule.”
He took a sip of wine, his dark eyes filled with mock menace. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Maybe, a little. Spontaneity is not your thing.”
“You know me well.”
“As well as can be expected after dating three months.”
“Well enough.” There was meaning behind his words, but she wasn’t sure what it was.
“Aren’t you going to have any of the shrimp?” she asked.
“I suppose, but the real pleasure comes from watching you eat them.”
She had just taken a bite and her eyes closed in bliss. Divine. “To each their own.”
He laughed. “I assure you, I am very happy with my own appetizer.”
They were sharing the shrimp and he wasn’t eating any, so it took her a second to understand his meaning. When she did, her eyes flew open. He was looking at her with a distinctly predatory light in eyes that had grown dangerously dark.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm the rapid pulse that was making her light-headed. Oh, my. When this man went for it, he held nothing back. She could not wait for later. Tonight, he would not leave her with a good-night kiss that made her toes curl and her body feel hollow with wanting. Not with that look in his eyes.
The appetizer was followed by butternut squash soup. She’d never had it at this particular restaurant before. “The chef must be trying something new.”
“At my request.”
“You did preorder the meal.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Tonight is special, I want every aspect to be right.”
“Special?”
“Yes.”
“I like the sound of that.” She smiled and took a bite of the soup he’d had one of the most temperamental chefs in Boston make just for her. “It’s delicious.”
“I would expect no less.”
“I’m surprised you talked the chef into trying something new for your benefit alone.”
“Money speaks most languages.”
“Even that of a temperamental chef?”
“As you see.” He indicated their twin bowls of the golden-orange soup. “But he did not make the soup for my benefit.”
“No?”
“No. He made it for yours.”
“At your request.”
“Yes.”
“Because tonight is special.”
“Very.”
She didn’t know what else she would have said because at that moment, two things happened that derailed any thoughts of talking on her part. The first was that a trio of violinists took up residence in a spot near them that had on the last occasion they’d eaten there held a table of other diners. The musicians began to play a piece she had always found emotionally evocative and soothing at the same time.
The second occurrence was that she was presented with two dozen long-stemmed red roses by the maître d’. She took them and inhaled the scent of the perfect blooms. The heady fragrance bathed her senses.
She looked at Sandor. “They’re beautiful.”
“You are so certain they are from me?”
She laughed, her voice surprisingly husky. “Of course.”
But she picked up the card to read anyway. It was small and white and read, “Sandor.” Nothing else. He’d signed it himself, however. She recognized the black slashing writing.
“Thank you,” she said, her face still buried in the roses. For some reason, she needed to hide there for a moment.
This was definitely more romance than she’d expected from him for the advent of the physical side of their relationship and it made her wonder if he had feelings for her she had not detected. The prospect sent a swarm of butterflies fluttering through her insides.
“It is my pleasure.”
The maître d’took the flowers, returning moments later with them in a gorgeous crystal vase that he set at the side of their table.
She snuck peeks at them throughout the soup course, her mind spinning with what all this meant. Hope swirling through her along with a desire she gave herself permission to feel fully. Tonight, she would not go to sleep wishing for the moon, or Sandor’s caresses. She was sure of it.
But when the main course was cleared—again a dish he knew she enjoyed—a small black ring box appeared on the table and her breath ran out.
She stared at it. That couldn’t be what she thought it was. The roses…the violinists…Suddenly her mind snapped with shattering clarity to a conclusion she had not even considered. The romance had been prelude to a proposal?
She couldn’t believe it and yet, no other reason for the ring box could penetrate her racing mind. A man did not give a woman a ring simply to embark on an affair.
He reached across the table and took her hand. Feeling strangely numb, she could feel him looking at her and willing her to meet his gaze. She forced herself to do so, her eyes moving up the strong chin with its adorable cleft, past the long straight nose to a gaze as penetrating as a laser beam.
“Eleanor Wentworth, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
Even expecting the question, her usual aplomb deserted her and she gasped and stared, her mouth opening, but no sound emerging. He’d asked her to marry him, but she had no idea how he felt about her. If he loved her, wouldn’t he have said it? Wouldn’t she have sensed it?
He cocked his head to one side, one brow rising in an obvious prompt for a response.
“I don’t know,” she blurted out past a constriction of emotion in her throat.
The words sounded unnaturally loud to her ears. She couldn’t believe she’d said it…like that. And from the look on his face, he couldn’t, either. He had been expecting a very different response.
“Come, you must have been expecting this.”
“Um…no, I wasn’t. Honestly.” She bit her lip, thinking maybe she’d been naïve, but it had never occurred to her that a man as dynamic and sensual as he was would ask a woman to marry him that he had never slept with. “This has come as a complete surprise.”
And she sounded more gauche than she ever had in her life. She’d been handling difficult social situations with grace since deportment classes when she was a mere six years old, but she’d never been proposed to…by a man she wanted, but was not at all sure wanted her. She hoped, had an inkling he might…but no certainty.
“An unpleasant surprise?” He didn’t sound in the least vulnerable when asking that question. Not like she would have. Instead he sounded demanding, as if he wanted answers and he wanted them now.
“Not unpleasant.” She shook her head, trying to clear it. “Just very unexpected.”
“We have been dating for three months.”
“Yes.” They had already established that.
“Exclusively?”
“Yes…I mean I assumed…”
“For me, it has been exclusive.”
Something inside her that she had not even realized had gone tense, relaxed a little. “For me, too.”
“Where did you think this relationship of ours was going, if not marriage?”
“I thought maybe first…to bed,” she answered honestly. Did they even have a relationship?
Casual dating yes…but a relationship?
He cursed in Greek. She recognized the word from a summer she had spent studying ancient civilizations in his former homeland. It was a very nasty curse. “I don’t believe you just said that.”
That caught her up short. “Why?” To her, it was a perfectly natural conclusion to make.
“It is unlike you.”
“Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” It might not be considered appropriate to discuss such matters in a public place, but she didn’t give as much credence to proper behavior as everyone seemed to think she did. Or as her father thought she should.
Honesty was far more important to her.
And the fact was, he clearly did not know her all that well if he was shocked she’d had the temerity to mention sex. Marriage to a man who was that ignorant of her inner person was not a wholly appealing proposition. If it had not been him doing the proposing, it would hold no appeal at all.
“I do know you,” he insisted.
Exasperated, she shook her head. “Not that way.”
“I know enough to be certain of our compatibility.”
“Because we’ve shared a few kisses?”
“We have shared more than kisses.” His now molten gaze reminded her just how much more.
But as far as they’d gone, he always pulled back. Except once. The first time they’d kissed, it had almost gotten out of hand very quickly. Frightened by a wealth of emotion she wasn’t used to experiencing, she’d pulled back. Since then, he had done more than kiss her, but he’d never let the passion flare so hot and he’d certainly never made love to her completely.
“Yes, we have, but it’s the very fact that we’ve shared just so much that makes me wonder if we are as compatible in that way as you seem to think.”
“Why should you wonder this? It is obvious that you want me.” His Greek accent got thicker when he was upset. She’d noticed that during a heated business phone call she’d overheard once, but it had never happened between them before.
She couldn’t feel badly that it was happening now. She was glad to know she could make him angry. She needed the assurance that she could impact his emotions because he certainly impacted hers. Though she would much prefer evidence of another sort of emotion and she didn’t appreciate his sentiment at all.
“Yes,” she said between gritted teeth, “I do want you, but I’m not so sure you want me. And I’m not going to spend my life married to a man who is going to look for his passion outside of our marriage bed.”
“Who said I would do this?” he demanded, his voice guttural and so thick with accent she had to concentrate to understand the words.
“Who said you wouldn’t?”
“I say.”
“I want to believe you, but—”
“There is no but. My honor is not in question here.”
“I wasn’t talking about your honor. I was talking about making love.”
“You brought up the possibility I would violate the bonds of our marriage…that is a matter of personal honor and one I do not take lightly.”
She was glad to hear that, but it didn’t answer the real problem gnawing at her. He was business associates with her father, how much did that have to do with this marriage proposal? She simply couldn’t convince herself that Sandor was suffering from shyness in admitting undying love. The man was far too confident…if he felt something for her, he would have said so. Yet, how did a woman ask if the man proposing was doing so as part of a business arrangement or if he wanted her personally? The blunt approach would probably be best.
Sandor wasn’t the type to respond well to subtlety.
“Do you want me…I mean for my own sake, not simply because I’m my father’s daughter?”
He frowned. “I would think that is obvious.”
Maybe it was. To him. But it wasn’t to her. When he kissed her, he made no effort to hide the barely leashed passion coursing through him, but he never acted on it. It confused the heck out of her.
“If it was obvious, I wouldn’t be asking.”
“I do want you.” His voice dropped an octave, to a sexual purr. “Very much.”
She licked her lips. “That’s…that’s good.”
“But for me, the commitment comes first…then we make love.”
She doubted he was a virgin, but apparently he ascribed to the standard some men still maintained about the women they intended to marry. “You’ve got some very old-fashioned views.”
“Yes. I am not ashamed this is so. I was born in a traditional Greek village. My grandfather’s beliefs may not find wholesale acceptance in me, but his influence is there.”
“Sandor,” she said, latching onto a topic less volatile to her emotions. “You never talk about your past. I don’t know if your dad is dead, if your parents are divorced or why it is that you never mention your father, but your grandfather pops up in conversation on occasion. I know he’s gone…at least I know that much,” she muttered under her breath, “but I don’t know why you and your mother live here in America. I don’t know so much about you.”
“Chief being the way I screw.”
“Sandor,” she hissed while her entire body blushed.
He glared. “I can be crude. Yes. It comes from the background you know so little about. But another thing comes from that past…the belief that a man does not take a virgin to his bed unless he is engaged to, but preferably married to her.”
“Is that something your grandfather taught you?”
“He drilled it into me every day of my life while he lived. Only a man totally lacking in honor would do so.”
“I see.” She had a feeling there was a lot more to this topic she planned to explore, but first she was going to set the record straight on something else. “However, between us…the point is moot because I’m not a virgin.”
“Of course you are.”
CHAPTER TWO
“AND WHAT HAS made you draw this brilliant conclusion?” she demanded in a tone her dad would have recognized with trepidation.
Ellie didn’t get mad easily, but once she was angry…she didn’t back down.
“Look at the way you blush when we discuss sex.”
“Married women blush. If that’s your full supporting argument, you need to hone your deductive reasoning skills.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do not play games with me about this. I know what I know.”
“What you think you know.”
“Stop this foolish claim. I am sorry if my observation has piqued your feminine pride, but I will never allow you to lie to me.”
“Have issues with honesty do you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s surprising. Most businessmen at your level can be very inventive with the truth.”
“But I will not tolerate untruth from those in my personal life. Ever.”
“And will you give the same level of integrity to a relationship?”
“Count on it.”
“In that case, let me repeat…I am not a virgin.”
His jaw tautened and white lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. He was getting seriously upset by her adamant claim to sexual experience. “You have never had a serious relationship.”
“Is that what my father told you?”
He didn’t even look uncomfortable at being accused of talking about her in very private terms with her father. “Yes.”
“Well, he obviously doesn’t know everything about me, which should hardly come as a surprise.” He had to have seen ample evidence during the time they’d been dating how far from close she was with George Wentworth.
“He has reason to know certain things.”
“You mean the bodyguards I supposedly no longer have?”
Sandor managed to look slightly chagrined. “You know about the security service?”
“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “Please. Just because I told my dad I didn’t want a bodyguard any longer doesn’t mean he listened to me, but at least with them as silent and distant watchers, I have a little more privacy than I did when my bodyguards remained within touching distance.”
“Not that much privacy.”
He meant not enough for her father not to know if she had a man stay the night or had done so with one. “I don’t have to sleep over with a man to have sex with one.”
“But you would have to have had a relationship that went beyond a few casual dates because you are not the type of woman to sleep with a man on a whim.”
“You’re so sure about that?”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t deny it because he was right. And she did not lie. Like him, she hated lies. Like the lie when a person told you they loved you but didn’t. Not really.
“So…I have had more than one relationship that lasted a few months. I’m twenty-four years old, after all.”
“But none of those relationships were deep.”
“How do you know? My father said so,” she guessed. “You can’t trust the judgment of a man who thinks that balance sheets are more comprehensible than people. He doesn’t know me.”
“Like I do not know you?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
Sandor shook his head with an impatient jerk. “You are wrong.”
But she wasn’t. Sandor did not know her any better than her father did, which meant he couldn’t care for her any more deeply than her dad. While the knowledge hurt, it also really begged the question why Sandor wanted to marry her.
He was looking at her as if he expected another argument, but she didn’t have to convince Sandor of her point of view. In this instance, it was her opinion that mattered and his confident insistence wasn’t going to change it.
“I am not relying on his word alone,” Sandor said. “I had you investigated.” His expression showed not even a hint of remorse at the claim.
“What? Why?”
“When I first started considering you as a potential wife, I thought it prudent.”
“You are kidding.”
“No.”
“I would have thought you too arrogant to believe you needed anything besides your own reading of a person in a situation like this.”
“You have called me arrogant before.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, the time I told you who would win the Super Bowl.”
“You were so sure you were right and you aren’t even a football fan.”
He shrugged. “And yet I was right.”
“Well, you’re wrong about me being a virgin.” And as much as the memories of the reason for her lack of innocence hurt, she felt a certain grim satisfaction in catching him in the wrong.
Maybe she should be offended he’d had her investigated, but she wasn’t. She was, however, bothered. If Sandor wanted a relationship with her, why hadn’t he made the effort to get to know her better rather than having her investigated? Maybe it wouldn’t be so worrisome if he’d done it in addition to the investigation, but he hadn’t.
The similarities to her dad were piling up and not in a good way. She’d been raised by a man who would have done the exact same thing in such a situation, who even now kept her under constant surveillance—ostensibly for her safety’s sake. After all, she was the daughter of a very wealthy and influential man. However, he wasn’t above using that so-called security to monitor more than her safety. She didn’t know what her father thought his knowledge was going to do for him.
If he wanted a better relationship with her, he wasn’t going to have it via a silent security detail. Only maybe that was just the way he liked it. He felt like he was doing his fatherly duty without getting emotionally involved.
“My investigator is very thorough,” Sandor said, breaking into her derailed thoughts.
“Even the best investigators make mistakes.”
“Perhaps.” But she could tell he didn’t believe her.
Instead of annoying her, it made her laugh. “We could go back to my apartment and I could prove it to you.”
He looked far from amused. His dark eyes glinted with a warning she had no intention of heeding. “Are you trying to shock me, pethi mou?”
“Challenging you, I think.” Recklessness filled her to bursting.
She didn’t know if it came from the unexpected proposal that had mentioned not one word of love, from memories she’d prefer to forget, or from the renewed evidence that her father wanted no emotional connection to her, but the strictures of a lifetime were falling like dominos around her.
No, she wasn’t the type of woman to view sex casually, but she wasn’t a virgin and she was darned if she would marry a man who could turn himself off from her so easily. She didn’t want Sandor to be like her father. She couldn’t stand for their relationship to be as cold and distant.
“Why do you feel the need to challenge me?” he asked, sounding baffled.
It was almost cute, in an arrogant, macho reaction to what should have been a straightforward topic kind of way.
“Why don’t you want me enough to have seduced me?” Or even accepted her sometimes not too subtle invitations?
“I told you.”
“You believe I’m a virgin, so that puts me off-limits until the wedding night.”
“Essentially…yes. Perhaps not until the wedding night, but definitely until the wedding is a date on the calendar.”
“This is not the Dark Ages.”
“Integrity has no time limit.”
“Is that one of your grandfather’s sayings?”
For a second his eyes burned with a pain that could not be mistaken. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“I don’t understand why you want to marry me. You don’t love me.”
“And your friends have all married for the sake of some ephemeral emotion that cannot even be counted on to last past the cooling of the sheets in most cases?”
“No.” She wouldn’t pretend that all her acquaintances had married because they were in love. “But they aren’t me and I happen to believe in that ephemeral emotion. I want more from marriage than a businesslike merging of two people’s lives.” She wanted more from life than that, period…but had no idea how to get it.
Other people found love so easily, but not her. But that didn’t mean she had given up hoping to find it.
“And you will have more. We are compatible, in every way. We will have a family. You even enjoy my mother’s company.”
“She’s easy to like, but you say that like it’s a major consideration.”
“Since I choose to have my mother live near me like a good Greek son, it is.”
“I wouldn’t mind living with your mother, but I’m not so sure about her son.”
“So, you are considering my proposal?”
Was she? Her heart beat too fast, the pain of uncertainty squeezing her chest tight. She was. No matter what he believed about love, she was afraid she was already irrevocably in love with him—or headed there fast. What a hopelessly terrifying thought. “Yes, but I can’t give you an answer right now.”
“Surely you were expecting this.”
“Funnily enough…I wasn’t. I told you that.”
He sighed. “Yes, but I would have thought you would have at least considered the possibility.”
She just shrugged, not knowing what to say. They’d already been over the whole sex thing and their views were polar opposites. She’d been sure he wasn’t ready for a deeper relationship because he hadn’t pursued that angle and he’d assumed she’d realize he wouldn’t pursue it until she was committed to him.
“And you cannot make the decision now, knowing what you know of me, of yourself?”
“No.” Because if she did, it would have to be no. And her heart both demanded and rejected that answer.
“Is it my background?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know enough of your background for it even to be a consideration and I hope you aren’t implying I’m some sort of snob who would only marry someone born to the same world of privilege I was.”
“I am not saying that, no. In fact, your refreshing refusal to judge others based on where they come from appeals to me greatly.”
“I’m glad, because I don’t want to change that part of me.”
“But you are willing to change in other ways?”
“People grow…change is inevitable, but that’s with me to stay.”
“I am glad.”
“But you are annoyed I won’t accept your proposal right now.”
“Not annoyed…disappointed. I would think you could see the advantages to a marriage between us.”
He was disappointed, but not hurt. Which meant his emotions were not involved at all. That did not bode well. She bit her lip, realizing she must have done so before because it felt tender. It was a bad habit, but she had enough to think about without trying to break it at the moment.
“I’m sorry. I’m not like you and my father. I don’t make personal decisions based on business logic.”
“What do you base them on?”
“Emotion.”
His lips twisted with distaste just as she knew they would. He and her father had a lot in common. Maybe too much. She suspected he would be no more impressed with an emotional commitment from her than her father was.
She took a fortifying sip of water. “I know. That’s a dirty word to you and men like my father, but it’s how I live my life. You’ll have to give me some time to think.”
Silence pulsed between them until he pushed the ring box across the table. “Put it in your bag. We’ll discuss the proposal again later.”
She wasn’t sure why he wanted her to take possession of the ring. Maybe he thought that since possession was nine-tenth’s of the law, if she took the ring, she might have a harder time saying no and giving it back. The man was wily enough to have considered every angle.
“Please keep it until I give you my answer.”
“I’d rather you kept it.”
“Even if I say no?”
“I had the ring made for you. Whatever your answer, it is meant to be yours.”
Unable to hold back from looking after such a statement, she opened the box. It was a square-cut precious stone exactly the color of her eyes. Aquamarine-blue. To either side was a perfectly cut square diamond of crystal clarity, only slightly smaller than the center stone.
Emotion that had no place in their discussion welled inside her and she husked, “It’s beautiful.”
“Like you.”
She shook her head, dislodging the empty words. “I’m hardly that.”
“After all we have said about honesty tonight, you think I lie about this?”
“I think you want to flatter me, but I have a mirror. I’m passable, but I am not beautiful. You should see pictures of my mother. She was beautiful.” And she’d taken what existed of George Wentworth’s heart to the grave with her.
“You know the saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
She barely kept from rolling her eyes. “Yes.”
“You are beautiful to me, Eleanor.”
“False flattery isn’t going to get me to agree to marry you.”
“It is not false.” His voice was a low rumbling growl. She’d managed to make him mad again.
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Your beauty is timeless and very alluring to a man with my background.”
“I don’t understand.” What did his background have to do with it?
“You are kind. Truly compassionate. You seek to make life better for those born without your advantages. Your care for others is ingrained to the depths of your soul. In that, you remind me much of my mother. Physically you are perfect to me. Your features are soft and feminine, your body a delight to my senses, but particularly that of sight. Yet, as much as you spark my desire, you are elegant and refined, even in jeans and a T-shirt. These things are beautiful to me.”
She didn’t know what to say. She could tell he meant the words and that did something to her insides, tipping over a heart that had teetered on the precipice of love straight into its warm, sweet depths. Because as much as she’d learned he did not know about her, he had just proven he did know something about the woman she was under the skin and behind the image of a wealthy man’s daughter.
“Private schooling and deportment training can do wonders,” she said, trying to laugh it off while her heart contracted and expanded with her newly acknowledged feelings until she was dizzy with it.
“You were born with these traits, they are not something a person can learn.”
She didn’t agree. “You learned.”
“I am far from compassionate and kind.”
She’d seen the way he treated his mother. “I don’t agree, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What then?”
“How to fit the society we move in.” She indicated the rest of the restaurant with a wave of her hand.
“But I do not fit.”
“You do.”
And yet, in a way he was right. He wore his suit, which was by a top designer and handmade, like he’d been born to it, but there was an aura of power around him that came from hard work and determination, not being born to wealth. His slight Greek accent. His direct way of speaking. They all spoke of a man not born to their world, but made.
But then she didn’t fit her world perfectly, either. All her little idiosyncrasies stemmed from the inside and only showed themselves on close inspection. In that they were alike.
“Tell me about your childhood.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
“I want to know.”
His jaw hardened. “And if I do not want to tell you?”
“I’ll have you investigated.” She grinned at his shocked expression.
And then he laughed and she fell just a little harder as she laughed with him.
“I was born in Greece.”
“I knew that,” she teased.
“We lived there, with my grandfather, until I was ten.”
“We?”
“My mother, she was his only child, and I.”
“Where was your father?”
“Gone.”
A day ago, she would have respected the boundaries she sensed he’d erected, but a day ago, he had not asked her to marry him. “What do you mean, gone?”
“He was an American tourist. On the island for only a couple of days. By the time my mother realized she was pregnant, he was long gone. She did not even know his last name.” Sandor did not sound condemning…of his mother at least.
“That must have been very difficult for her.”
“Yes. But it could have been worse. My grandfather did not kick her out of the family home despite the shame her condition brought him. He supported her and me in the years that followed.”
At what cost though? Definitely Sandor had not come out of that home unscathed.
“What about your grandmother?”
“She had died the year before. Grandfather often said that it was a lucky thing, for the shame would have killed her.”
“He sounds like he was a harsh man.”
“He was. In some ways. But he loved my mother and he took care of her even though what had happened went against his entire belief system.”
“She was young.” Hera Christofides had to have been a teenager when she had Sandor because she barely looked forty now. She had to be older than that, but Ellie was guessing it wasn’t by much.
“She was sixteen. Grandfather forgave her, but he never forgave the man who made her pregnant.”
“The only a man without honor would take the virginity of a woman he’s not married to, thing?”
“Yes. And that man’s blood runs in my veins.”
She wondered if that was something else his grandfather had maintained, but she didn’t ask. She merely said, “You can’t know he wouldn’t have stood by her, if he’d known about you, I mean.”
“He knew she was a virgin, but he left her. He never returned to check on her. He did not care.”
“Maybe. He probably wasn’t much older than she was. There might have been reasons for why he didn’t come back.”
“Yes. Those reasons were that he was an irresponsible teenager himself who should have kept his pants zipped if he wasn’t prepared to deal with the aftermath.”
“Like you said, he was a teenager. It probably never occurred to him that there even was an aftermath.”
“Ignorance does not change the outcome.”
“No, it doesn’t, but I have a hard time believing that any man who fathered you could have been totally without a sense of responsibility.”
“I get my sense in that direction from my grandfather and mother.”
“You can’t know you got nothing from your father…since you didn’t know him.” She didn’t know why she argued, only that is seemed important to make him realize life was not as black and white as his grandfather had obviously taught him it was.
“What is this about? Are you worried bad blood will tell?”
She sighed. “I hate that saying. It’s just so wrong. Even if he was an all out jerk without a bit of good in him, that has no bearing on who you are today.”
“Not everyone sees things that way.”
“I know, but I’m the one who is right.”
“And perhaps I am not the only arrogant one at this dinner table.”
“Knowing when I am right is not arrogance,” she teased.
“I will have to remember that defense.”
“You do that, but somehow I don’t think it’s a new concept for you.”
He just smiled.
“For the record, I for one am glad your dad didn’t keep his pants zipped and I bet your mom doesn’t regret it, either.”
The smile disappeared and his expression looked hewn from granite. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because, if he had, you wouldn’t be here.”
“And you think that is a good thing?”
“Yes, and I’m sure your mom agrees.”
“But you hesitate to marry me.”
The man was tenacious. “My reasons have nothing to do with you not being a pretty amazing person I’m glad is alive.”
He raised his brows at that. “Then what are your reasons?”
“More to the point, what are yours?”
CHAPTER THREE
“I HAVE EXPLAINED…I find you beautiful inside and out. I am ready to marry and have a family. I want to do that with you.” Sandor knew instinctively that if he mentioned the business deal with her father, it would make Eleanor balk.
It was not the overriding reason for him choosing her to be his wife, but it had played a role. That did not bother him, but he suspected she would react very differently to that knowledge. As she had said, she did not make her decisions based on the same considerations that swayed men like him and her father.
She wanted an emotional reason for marrying him. She wanted to be loved. He had gleaned that much, but that was not something he could give her. It was not something he wanted to give her. Love was an overrated emotion he preferred to steer clear of. He had loved his grandfather and he loved his mother, and that love had come with a price. He had paid in vulnerability when nothing else and no one else got to him.
His mother’s unhappiness hurt when he let nothing else touch him. His grandfather’s disapproval left wounds he swore no one else would ever get the chance to emulate. He would have to convince Eleanor there was enough going for them without the love he wanted no part of.
“My mother said she fell in love with my father at first sight.” He didn’t know why he’d mentioned that, but it supported the argument he was about to make, so he did not regret it. “The emotion you think such a panacea for pain is in fact one of the biggest instigators of it that I know. Her love led her into his bed. My grandfather’s love kept her with him even though he could never overlook her indiscretion completely. His love for me drove him to push me harder, to demand more of me than he would have his own son. He would not allow me to become like the man who had sired me. Irresponsible and without honor. But his lessons were often painful and I knew they were born of love.”
“Love does not always lead to pain.”
“Yes, it does, and I do not want the pain that is inevitably born of love in my marriage.”
She gasped and he grimaced. He had said more than he intended, but if it helped to convince her, he would not begrudge her the truth.
“What do you want?” Her sea-blue eyes were filled with a softness that called to something deep in his soul.
It had from the first moment he’d seen her across a crowded charity ball. She’d been with her father and Sandor had been instantly intrigued by this woman who was so clearly of the world he wanted to conquer, but not like it.
“I want children, a legacy—a legitimate legacy, to inherit what I have built, to build onto it. I want to please the woman who sacrificed so much to give me life and keep me with her. Even in Greece thirty years ago, a woman could find ways to end an unwanted pregnancy, but she never even considered it.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked.”
The compassion he liked so much sparked in Eleanor’s eyes. She was exactly the kind of woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. A woman who could help to calm the demons that raged in his soul.
“Your mom wants you to marry?”
“You know she does.”
Eleanor smiled. “Well, she’s not very subtle…but I figured she hinted that way to all your dates.”
“Actually, no.”
“You mean I’m special?” she asked facetiously.
“Yes. She has hinted at me enough, but never to one of the women I dated. Until you.”
“She wants grandchildren. A lot.”
“Yes. What about you?”
“I’m too young to be a grandmother.”
That was one of the things he really enjoyed about his little Eleanor. She teased him. She made him smile and she was always ready to do so herself.
“I meant do you want children?” He did not doubt her answer, she was too perfectly suited to motherhood not to want to be one, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“Yes. Very much.”
“I thought as much.”
It was her turn to grimace. “You think you know everything.”
“Apparently I do not. I thought you would accept my proposal without a lot of fuss.”
“Fuss?” she asked delicately and suddenly he knew he was treading on very shaky ground.
“I did not think it would be a difficult decision for you to make,” he amended.
“It would have been easier if you had said you loved me.”
He could only respect her courage and her honesty. “Do you want me to say it?”
“A lie of expediency designed to get you the outcome you want? What of your insistence on truth from me? I told you I won’t accept any less.”
Yet, he had a sneaking suspicion that they defined honesty differently. He dismissed the niggling worry and said, “I will give all the loyalty and dedication to your happiness a man who professes such feelings would do. There would be no lie in my saying the words if you need them to feel more comfortable about our marriage.”
“Except that you don’t feel the emotion and neither do you want to feel it. They’d still be a lie, Sandor.”
“But the intent behind them, my dedication to your well-being, is not a lie.”
“I understand that we see things very differently. Not only do you not want love, but I’m not sure you believe in romantic love at all or you could not blithely talk about saying the words as if that’s all they were. Mere words.”
“Romantic love is not something I have any personal experience with.”
Pain flashed in her pretty blue eyes, but was gone so quickly, he could not be sure he had seen it.
“Will it help if I promise I will never say those words to another woman?”
“Can you promise that? What if you fall in love? Just because you don’t love me doesn’t mean you are incapable of loving someone else.”
“I do not want to love anyone else.”
“It doesn’t always come with a choice.”
He did not agree. “I keep my promises. It is up to you to decide if you trust me to do so.”
“I do trust you.”
A flare of triumph coursed through him.
She saw it and frowned. “I’m not saying I’m going to agree to marriage, but I think I’m beginning to understand why you asked me at least.”
“I would have thought that was obvious.”
“There you go being wrong again. This can’t be good for your ego, but your reasons for picking me to share the rest of your life with are far from obvious.”
“You will tease me one time too many,” he warned on a mock growl.
“And you’ll do what?”
“Perhaps I will make love to you and slay that dragon of doubt at least.”
“Do you think a planned seduction will decimate my concerns about the fact that you find it so easy to control your libido around me?”
“I think, little one, that there are depths to you that I have yet to plumb.” It startled him to have her take him to task for such a thing, but it also aroused him. “Trust me, I do not find it easy to control my desire around you, merely necessary.”
“Because you don’t want to be like your father.”
“That is one reason.”
“Tell me another.”
“If you do not want to marry me, I do not want to spend my life addicted to a body I have no access to.”
She burst out laughing as he’d meant her to, but there was a grain of truth to what he said. If he made love to her, he did not think he would ever want to let her go.
On the other hand, making love might be the very solution to their impasse. He would prove his passion to her and regardless of what she wanted him to believe, he knew she would only accept him into her body if she was making a major commitment to him.
He had already made his commitment to her and while he’d rather they were officially engaged with a wedding date set before he took her to bed, he had no doubts about the ultimate outcome. He was not taking advantage of her. They would marry. He was not a man who allowed anyone or anything to thwart him when it came to getting something he wanted.
And he wanted Eleanor Wentworth as his wife.
When they arrived at Ellie’s apartment, Sandor requested her key card to park in the visitor’s area of the secure garage under her building.
“Are you planning to come up for a while?” she asked as he pulled into a parking slot.
He waited until she looked at him to ask, “Are you planning to invite me?”
She usually did, but tonight she’d hoped to have some time to think.
He reached out and cupped her nape. “Invite me up, pethi mou. I am not ready for the evening to be over.”
Just as it did every other time, his slightest touch impacted her senses with the power of a Level 10 earthquake.
“Even though it didn’t have the outcome you wanted?” she asked breathlessly, knowing she would not turn him away if he was intent on staying.
“You did not refuse me. It is enough.”
“Is it?”
“I learned early to be patient when going after something I wanted. Rushing the outcome can sour it faster than facing opposition.”
Why did the unabashed business-speak liquify her insides? She shouldn’t be reacting to corporatese as if he’d said something intoxicatingly alluring, but the problem was that he’d said it in that low, sexy voice that had been shaking up her equilibrium since the first time she heard it. And, in effect, his sentiment was sensual. He was talking about convincing her to marry him, which would land her in his bed. Even if unbridled passion had not.
“I see. So, I’m a corporate merger you’d like to make?” she asked, trying to keep it light…trying to temper her own reaction to what shouldn’t be nearly so much temptation.
“You are the woman I would like to marry, not a company I plan to buy—but the similarities exist, yes.”
She couldn’t help smiling wryly. Of course he would see most of his life in business terms. It was all he knew, that and the lessons on integrity he’d learned at his grandfather’s knee. She shivered when she thought what it must have been like to be raised by a man who loved him, but not enough to see past his illegitimate birth. A man intent on making sure that what he considered bad blood would not show itself in his grandson.
If the older Christofides were alive today, Ellie would have a few choice words for him. But then if he were alive, Hera probably would never have left Greece and taken her son with her. Ellie and Sandor would never have met. Coming on the heels of her inner revelation regarding her feelings for him, the thought chilled her.
“Come up,” she said on a defeated sigh.
Sandor had not conquered her desire to be alone and think; her own conflicting needs undermined it. She wanted to spend time with him. She craved his presence like a drug and was just glad he wasn’t one. She’d always thought she had a strong sense of self-control, but when it came to Sandor, she lost touch with it and her sense of self-preservation as well.
Which was one very good reason for not giving him an answer to his proposal tonight.
He climbed out of the car and came around to open her door. Always the gentleman, even more so than a lot of men born to money, social elevation and manners. He helped her from the car, transferring his hand to the small of her back once she was standing. She realized he did that a lot, this guiding her where he wanted her to go with a possessive-protective hold.
He kept his hand on her even in the elevator. He did that a lot, too…simply touching her for the sake of doing so, not because he needed to. He touched her like she was already his. It was one of the reasons she had been so confused over him not pressing to make love.
She understood better now, but wasn’t sure that with understanding came acceptance.
Silence reigned in the elevator on the way to her fifth-floor apartment and no one else joined them to break it. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but she was lost in her own thoughts and she sensed that Sandor was content to leave her that way.
He waited patiently for her to open her apartment door and deactivate her alarm with the code and her thumbprint. The double locks on the solid steel door molded to look like a classic paneled wood door undid with a snick. She pushed the door open and led him inside.
“I like the security here.”
She laughed. Sometimes, she got the impression that, like her father, Sandor considered the security at the Denver Mint no more than routine. “I picked out the apartment in a secure building to help Dad make the transition to me no longer living at home. That wasn’t good enough for him. He gave me a security system installed by Vitale Security for a housewarming gift.”
“I have used that firm before myself. They are very good.”
“I’ll say and the installation expert was to-die-for gorgeous.”
“Was he?” Sandor asked in a rough voice.
“Totally delicious.” She licked her lips. “But too short for me. He came all the way from the head office in Sicily. Dad demanded the best.”
“I must then be grateful I inherited some tall genes somewhere, hmmm?”
She eyed his six-foot-four frame. “I bet that’s one good thing you got from your father.”
Sandor frowned, but he didn’t deny it. Considering the fact that his mother was barely over five feet, maybe he couldn’t.
“We all inherit things from our parents, and we hope they are the best things,” she said as she led him into the living room. “I got my dad’s stubbornness. Just ask him.”
Sandor waited until she sat down on the bright yellow leather retro sofa before settling right beside her. “I have no need, having seen ample evidence of it myself.”
She laughed again, loving just being there with Sandor at that moment in time. She kicked off her sandals and curled her feet under her, turning her body slightly so she faced him.
He wasn’t smiling in response to her laughter. Instead he was looking at her like he was trying to piece together what made her tick. “You’re very understanding of George’s need to protect you.”
“I love him.” She sighed. “And I understand that as the sole heir to a man as wealthy as he is that I’m a good candidate for a kidnapping.”
“Yet you insist on living alone.”
She barely stifled the urge to snort. “I don’t exactly live alone, do I? His security team has the next apartment over. They monitor me as well as my apartment while I am gone.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to simply live in your father’s home?”
“Maybe, but while it may not be perfect, I have a lot more independence than I would have if I had stayed at home.” It was also easier to convince herself that the reason she saw so little of her father was that they lived apart, not because he didn’t care enough to make any time for her. “Besides, I really don’t want my dad’s money dictating every aspect of my lifestyle.”
“You would prefer to be able to live without the security detail.”
“Yes.”
“But you make the concession to George’s feelings—to his fears for you.”
“And to practicality. But don’t you do the same, for your mother?”
He smiled, laying one arm along the back of the couch. “Touché.”
His scent enveloped her, the subtle fragrance of his spicy aftershave mixed with his own essence. She’d read that a woman’s sense of smell was more refined than a man’s but it was the first time she’d ever noticed the individual scent of another person. Maybe it was because to her senses, Sandor was infinitely unique. In every way.
His warmth and sexy masculinity called to her and she forced herself to speak instead of closing the distance between their bodies. “I bet you find it as difficult to carve time out of your work schedule to have the family dinners and the excursions Hera insists on as I do to allow my dad to keep a security detail watching over me.”
“I think you are right, though I never considered it in that light. I only know that since I was a small boy I was determined to give my mother the life my father should have.” Something in his expression said his words surprised him as much as her.
He was an intensely private person, that he had shared as much of himself as he had with her was incredibly special.
Allowing herself one tiny touch, she brushed his arm and smiled. “Well, I’d say you surpassed that goal and then some.”
“You think?”
She smiled with emotion shining in her eyes because it sounded like he really was asking the question. As if there could be any doubt. “I doubt your dad is a hugely wealthy tycoon and I’m certain he wasn’t as a teenager. You’ve surpassed anything he could have done for her, even if he had stuck around.”
“I think you may be right.” The wealth of satisfaction in his voice told Ellie something else about this enigmatic man who wanted to marry her.
He had things to prove to himself…to his grandfather…and to the father he’d never met.
Remembering her role as hostess, she asked, “Would you like coffee…or an after dinner drink?”
“Neither, thank you.”
Now, why did the way he said that make shivers dance along her nerve endings? “It was your idea to come up,” she reminded him.
“To settle one of your concerns in regard to marriage, not because I crave more liquid refreshment.”
“You plan to settle my fears?” How very noble of him. “In what way?” Though she thought she could guess.
He leaned forward, invading her personal space completely and his body heat called to her while his dark eyes mesmerized. “Guess.”
“What about the no sex before marriage integrity thing?” She’d meant to ask the question in a sarcastic tone, but her voice came out breathless and much too inviting. Darn it.
“I plan to marry you. It is up to you to set the date.” He might as well have shrugged, he sounded so casual in that pronouncement.
And right then she realized he really did plan to marry her. Not hope. Not want. But the man had a plan and was fully confident in his eventual success.
“So, it’s okay to seduce a virgin if you intend to marry her?” Again that breathless voice that was really starting to get on her nerves.
She sounded like she wanted his reassurance, but she didn’t. Did she? Not this way…not planned. But Sandor was a planner and he worked best with a schedule. She’d known that since the beginning. She just hadn’t expected it to dictate this part of their relationship.
“You have said you are not a virgin.” He didn’t sound like he was bothered either way.
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