The Cozakis Bride

‘I’m stripping matters back to their bones…OK?’

‘No, it is not OK. Get out,’ Nik said flatly.

‘No…no, I am not getting out!’ Olympia’s hands trembled and she clenched them into fierce fists. ‘You’ve had ten years of revenge already—’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he grated.

‘If you marry me, I’ll sign everything over to you…’ Olympia told him shakily.

She really had Nik’s attention now. His brilliant eyes rested on her with a quality of stunned stillness she had never seen etched there before.

‘Not a proper or normal marriage…just whatever would satisfy my grandfather—and he doesn’t give a damn about me either, so he really wouldn’t be looking for much!’ Olympia pointed out, frantically eager to state her case before Nik emerged from what had to be a rare state of paralysis. ‘I’d stay on here in England…all I’d need is an allowance to live on, and in return you’d have the Manoulis empire all to yourself and not even the annoyance or embarrassment of me being around…’

A dark flush of red had now risen to accentuate the prominence of Nik’s fabulous cheekbones. He grated something in guttural Greek.

‘Nik…try to understand that I’m desperate or I wouldn’t be suggesting this. I know you think—’

‘How dare you approach me with such an offer?’ Nik demanded thunderously.

‘I—’

Striding forward, Nik Cozakis fastened powerful hands to her slim forearms before she could back away. ‘Are you insane?’ he questioned rawly. ‘You must be out of your mind to come to me like this! How could you think for one moment that I would marry an avaricious, brazen little tramp like you?’

‘Think business contract, not marriage.’ Although Olympia was shaking like a leaf in his hold, she was determined not to be sidetracked by meaningless personal insults. After all, she didn’t give two hoots what he thought of her.

His outraged amber-gold gaze raked her pale oval face. ‘A woman who went out to a public car park to lift her skirt for one of my friends like a common prostitute picked up out of the street?’

Not having been prepared for Nik to get quite that graphic, Olympia jerked and lost every scrap of colour. She parted tremulous lips. ‘Not that it matters now…but that never happened, Nik.’

He thrust her away from him in unconcealed disgust. ‘It was witnessed. That you should offend me with such an offer—’

‘Why should it be an offence?’ Olympia demanded fiercely. ‘If you could just turn your back on the past, you would see that this is exactly what you wanted ten years ago and more…because I’m not expecting to be your wife or live with you or interfere with you in any way.’

‘Spyros would strike you dead where you stand for this…’

Olympia loosed a shaken laugh. ‘Oh, he would cringe at my methods, but not three days ago he told me that the only way I would ever win his forgiveness would be to marry you…so it’s not like I have a choice, is it?’

‘You made your choice ten years ago in the car park.’

Studying the carpet, Olympia felt drained. She saw the pointlessness of protesting her innocence now when she had failed to do so at the time—when, indeed, silence had been so much a part of her revenge.

Warily, she glanced up again, and noticed in some surprise that his attention was welded to her chest. Lowering her own gaze, she saw that a button had worked loose on her blouse and exposed the full swelling upper curves of her breasts. With unsteady hands, her cheeks hot and flushed, she hastily redid the button. Nik slowly lifted his eyes, inky black spiky lashes low on a glimmer of smouldering gold that entrapped her eyes and burned through her like a blowtorch.

‘I just wish I’d had you first…if I’d had you, you wouldn’t have been desperate enough to go out to that car park.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ she muttered, seriously disconcerted both by that statement and the offensive manner in which Nik was looking her over.

A hard curve to his wide, sensual mouth, he watched her fumbling efforts to tug her jacket closed over her blouse with derisive amusement. ‘I’ll talk whatever way I want to you. Did you think you’d cornered the market on forthright speech?’

‘No, but—’

Nik flung back his handsome head and laughed outright. ‘You thought you could come here and ask me to marry you and get respect?’

‘I thought you would respect what I could be worth to you in terms of financial profit,’ Olympia framed doggedly.

A tiny muscle jerked tight at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. ‘You play with fire and you don’t even know it. How desperate are you, Olympia?’

Her knees were wobbling. Something had changed in Nik. She sensed that, but she couldn’t see or understand what. The atmosphere was so tense, and yet he was now talking with smooth, calm control, and she couldn’t believe that he was still angry. Perhaps he had finally let go of that anger, seeing how irrational it was to still rage about something which had only briefly touched his ego. After all, it wasn’t as though he had cared one jot about her as a person.

‘My mother’s not been well—’

‘Oh, not the sob story, please,’ Nik cut in very drily. ‘What sort of idiot do you take me for?’

Olympia’s hands curled into tight, defensive fists by her sides. ‘Maybe I’m just sick of being poor…what does it matter to you?’

‘It doesn’t.’ Making that confirmation, Nik lounged back with innate poise and grace against the edge of his desk and surveyed her where she hovered tautly in the centre of his office carpet. ‘However, one fact I will acknowledge. You have more nerve than any woman I’ve ever met.’

A little natural colour eased back into Olympia’s drawn cheeks.

‘You must indeed be desperate to approach me with a marriage proposal. I’ll think it over,’ Nik drawled with soft, silken cool.

The rush of hope she experienced left her light-headed.

‘Giftwrapped with the Manoulis empire, you saw no reason why I shouldn’t consider your proposition?’ Nik questioned in smooth addition.

She frowned uncertainly. ‘You’re a businessman, like my grandfather. You would have nothing to lose by agreement, and so much to gain…’

‘So much,’ Nik Cozakis savoured, regarding her with veiled eyes that were nonetheless surprisingly intent on her.

But then he wasn’t really seeing her, Olympia reckoned. He was thinking of the power he stood to gain. Yet the sizzle of unbearable tension still licked at her senses. Her breath shortened in her throat, her heart-rate speeding up. She collided head-on with his steady gaze and the most disturbing sense of dizziness almost overwhelmed her. It vaguely reminded her of the way she’d used to feel around Nik, electrified in all sorts of deeply embarrassing ways by his mere proximity in the same room. But now she put the reaction down to hunger, stress and sheer mental exhaustion, because she wasn’t attracted by him any more. It had only been the initial shock of seeing him again which had discomfited her at the outset of their interview.

‘So where do I contact you?’ Nik enquired.

She stiffened. Her fierce pride was reasserting itself now. There had been nothing personal in the proposal she had made to him: that had been strictly business. But she really didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t even afford a telephone line. Indeed, she couldn’t bear the idea of him finding out just how deep she had sunk into the poverty trap because that felt like a very personal failure. ‘I’ll give you a number but it’s not my own…you can leave a message for me there.’

‘Why the secrecy?’

Olympia ignored the question. After a moment, he extended a notepad and pen to her. She scrawled down the number of the only neighbour she and her mother had become friendly with. Mrs Scott was the middle-aged widow who lived opposite them.

‘I’ll go now, then…’ she said, suddenly awkward again now that she had nothing more to say.

Nik shifted a careless shoulder, signifying his indifference.

And she thought then that he wouldn’t ever use that phone number. Her own shoulders downcurved. Without another word, she walked out of his big fancy office and closed the door with a quiet snap. Damianos was waiting outside, his broad features stiff and troubled.

‘He didn’t eat me alive,’ Olympia announced with a weak but reassuring smile, for she had always liked the older man.

‘He will…’ The bodyguard muttered heavily. ‘But that’s none of my business, Miss Manoulis.’