His for a Price

But that would come later.

“Sit,” he ordered her, jerking his chin in the direction of two deep, dark brown leather armchairs before the nearest fireplace. “I’ll tell you how this will work.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very promising start to the marriage you’ve been threatening me with for years,” she said in her usual flippant, disrespectful way that he really shouldn’t find as amusing as he did. Like it was foreplay. “In fact, if you ask me, it sounds like the kind of marriage that will lead to a very big, very public divorce in approximately eighteen months, or as soon as I can escape and file.”

“You won’t escape,” he said, nodding toward the chairs again, and less politely. “Though you’re welcome to try. I’d be happy to chase you down and haul you back.”

He was rewarded with that dark blue glare of hers that had been making him ache with a driving need for almost as long as he’d known her. He smiled and was rewarded with the faintest hint of a shiver that she tried to hide.

She settled herself in the far chair with that wholly unearned grace of hers that he’d found nothing short of marvelous since the day they’d met. Mattie Whitaker had never suffered through any awkward phase as far as Nicodemus could tell. She’d been a gleaming bright beacon at sixteen, with her half-American, half-posh-British accent she’d wielded like a sword, even then. At eighteen, she’d been magnificent, pure and simple. From her glossy blue-black hair to her rich, dark blue eyes, to that wide mouth that should have been outlawed. She’d had poise and elegance far beyond her years, a consequence, he’d decided long ago, of having had to play hostess for her father after her mother had died when she was only eight.

He’d walked into that silly ball, that leftover nod to some gilded-age American fantasy he couldn’t begin to understand, and had been struck dumb. Like she’d been a lightning bolt instead of what she was, what he knew she was: one more pretty little rich girl in a sparkling dress.

But God help him, it was how she’d sparkled.

She’d been so careless—thoughtless and spoiled as only wealthy heiresses could be. He’d suffered through that once already back in Greece, with self-centered, deceitful Arista, who’d nearly taken him to his knees and to the cleaners when he’d been twenty-two and a trusting, stupid fool. He’d vowed he’d never trust so easily nor be so deeply foolish again.

But there was something about Mattie that had drawn him in despite that. He’d watched her careen through all her blessings as if she hardly noticed them. He’d studied the way she’d shrugged off her expensive schools and the featherweight jobs she’d taken afterward, in publishing companies or art galleries or the like that paid so little only heiresses could afford to work at them. Or only occasionally work at them, in her case.

Nicodemus watched her now as she leveled that frank gaze of hers at him, her dark eyes serious, though they were the precise color of after-dinner chocolates with that intriguing shimmer of darker blue. She could be flighty and reckless and sometimes attention-seeking, but she was also intelligent. He’d long suspected she liked to pretend otherwise, for her own murky reasons. Another mystery he looked forward to solving.

“I think it’s time you told me what this is really about,” she said, and she reminded him of her father then, with that matter-of-fact tone and her direct gaze. Nicodemus pulled in a breath. “I mean it,” she said as if that had been an argument. “I don’t believe for one second that there aren’t parades of more suitable heiresses if an heiress is what you want. Prettier ones, if that’s your thing. Richer ones, certainly. Far more notorious ones and one or two who might as well have spent their lives in a convent. You’ve always struck me as being particularly annoying—” and there was the faintest hint of that dent beside her mouth that he knew was a dimple, that he’d spent many a lazy hour longing to taste “—but there’s no denying the fact that you’d be a nice catch. You’re disgustingly wealthy. You’re very powerful. You’re not exactly Quasimodo.”

“What a resounding recommendation,” he said, torn between laughter and incredulity that she dared speak to him the way she did. She always had. Only Mattie, in all the world. Maybe that was why she haunted him. “Who wouldn’t marry me?”

She eyed him for a moment that bordered on the uncomfortable. “Why me?”

And what could he tell her? That he’d been hit by something he still didn’t understand? He didn’t believe that himself. Nicodemus got what he wanted, no matter what it took. It was how he’d clawed his way to where he was today. It was how he’d first claimed Arista, then rid himself of her and her sharp claws. It was how he’d survived learning the truth about his stern, rigidly moralistic father and what his exposing that truth had done to his mother. It was what he did. Why should this woman be any different? He told himself that was all there was to it.

He’d been telling himself that for years.

He forced a smile. “I like you. That’s why.”

“If you do,” she said drily, “then I suspect you might be mentally ill.”

“Perhaps I am.” He shrugged. “Does that make me less of a catch? A little more Quasimodo than you thought?”

He’d meant to simply outline what would happen from here now that she’d finally come to him. Lay down the law with the supreme pleasure of knowing that this time, she’d do as she was told. Because this time, she had to do it.

And he hadn’t lied to her. He never lied. He didn’t care how she came to him. Angry or on her knees, whatever worked. Nicodemus didn’t waste much time worrying about the cost of Pyrrhic victories. It was the victory itself that mattered.

It was the only thing that mattered.

“It makes you much more likely to find yourself committed to a mental institution by your devoted wife one day,” Mattie was saying. She smiled that fake smile of hers. “Depending on the fine print of our prenuptial agreement, of course.”

She was eyeing him with a certain mild arrogance, as if she was the one with all the power here. When he could tell—from the way she sat with her legs crossed tight and her arms over her middle, from the telltale fluttering of her pulse at her neck and that faint flush high on her cheeks—that she knew she was on precarious ground.

But then, so many things about this woman were an act. Smoke and mirrors. And he vowed he would find the truth beneath it all no matter how long it took him. He would take her apart and put her back together the way he wanted her.

He’d been waiting for this—for her—for years.

“We marry in two weeks,” he said, watching her face as he said it. Something flashed through her dark eyes, but then he saw nothing but that polite mask of hers that he’d always known better than to believe. “It will be a very small ceremony in Greece. You, me, a priest and a photographer. We will honeymoon for two weeks at my villa there. Then we will return to Manhattan, where your brother and I will finally merge our companies, as was the wish of both your father and me.” He smiled and let her see the edge in it. “See? Simple. Hardly worth all this commotion for so many years.”

“And what is my part of this?” she asked as if she couldn’t care less either way.

“During the wedding I expect you to obediently recite your vows,” he said silkily. “Perhaps even with a touch of enthusiasm. During the honeymoon? I have a few ideas. And ten years of a very vivid imagination to bring to life, at last.”

There was no denying the flush that moved over her face then, or that look of something like panic that she blinked away in an instant. Not touching her then very nearly hurt—though wanting Mattie was second nature to him now. What was waiting a little bit longer after a decade?

Besides, he suspected that his feigned laziness drove her crazy, and he wanted any weapon he could find with this woman he still couldn’t read. Not the way he wanted to read her.

“I meant when we return in all our marital splendor to New York City,” she said, and it occurred to him to wonder if it was difficult for her to render her voice so loftily indifferent. If it was a skill she’d acquired once and could put on whenever she liked or if she had to work at it every time. “I have my own apartment there. A life, a job. Of course, I’m happy to live separately—”

“I’m not.”

She blinked. Then smiled. “I doubt very much you’d enjoy moving into my tiny little two-bedroom. It’s very girlie and I don’t think you’d look good in all that pink.”

She reached into one of the pockets he hadn’t realized she had in that dress of hers to pull out a cigarette and a lighter, then lit the cigarette, watching him blandly as she blew out a stream of smoke.

“Enjoy that cigarette, Mattie,” he told her mildly. “It will be your last.”

She let out another stream of smoke. “Will it?”

“I have very specific ideas about how my wife will behave,” he said, and smiled when that coolly unbothered front of hers slipped slightly. “That she will live in my house and that she will not work, if that’s what you call it, at that laughable excuse for a public relations firm in all those see-through clothes.”

“I see. This will be a medieval marriage, to go along with the Stone Age courtship rituals we’ve been enjoying thus far. What a thrill.”

He ignored her. “I have certain expectations regarding her behavior. Her style of dress, her comportment. The lack of cigarettes sticking from her mouth, making her smell and taste like an ashtray.” He shrugged. “The usual.”

She held the cigarette in one hand, not looking the least bit worried, though that faint tremor in the hand that held that cigarette told a different story, and stared at him. “I understand that this is all a big chess game to you, Nicodemus, with me playing the role of the most convenient pawn—”

“More the queen than a pawn. Unpredictable and hard to pin down, but once that’s sorted, the game is over.” He smiled when she frowned.

“I hate chess.”

“Then perhaps you should choose a better metaphor.”

“I’m a person,” she told him, and he thought that was temper that made each word like a blade. Her dark eyes blazed with heat. And fear. And yet her voice was cool, and he wanted her with that desperate edge that made him loathe himself. The wanting was fine. The desperation was not. He’d thought he’d outgrown that kind of thing when he’d shaken Arista off. “And this is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, the twelfth century—”

“Then why are you marrying me?” he asked, making no attempt to keep that lash from his voice. “You don’t have to do it, as you’ve pointed out. There’s no gun to your head.”

“A merger between our two companies will strengthen both, and bolster Chase’s position as CEO,” she replied after a moment, something shrewd and sad in her gaze. “It changes the conversation he’s been having with the board and the shareholders, anyway. And of course, you’d become the COO, and you’ve proved you’re very good at operating companies and making piles of money. But you don’t have to marry me to make that happen.”

“I don’t.” He shrugged. “I’m not the one crafting objections to this marriage and looking for explanations. You are.”

“But you won’t hold up your end of your business arrangement with Chase if I don’t agree to do this.” Her eyes darkened. “I want to be a hundred percent certain we’re both clear about who’s pressuring who in this.”

“I’m perfectly clear about it.” And practically cheerful, as he smiled at her obvious flash of temper. “But this is all more of these games you like to play, Mattie. We both know you’re going to marry me. You’ve known it since we met.”