The Wedding Night Debt

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 moreorless. 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?’