Bridal Bargains: The Tycoon's Bride / The Purchased Wife / The Price Of A Bride

‘Like an angel,’ he drawled. ‘So Lefka informs me. She is smitten,’ he confided—then said more softly, ‘And I cannot blame her.’

He really meant it, too, Claire realised as she briefly flicked her eyes back to his face to find it softening as he glanced at the baby.

‘She is awake. Would you like to hold her?’

‘Oh, yes, please …’ No one—unless they’d experienced it—could know what it felt like to be separated from the baby she had taken care of single-handedly since their mother had died.

‘Perhaps if you sit down on one of the comfortable chairs then you can cradle her in your lap,’ he suggested.

Claire didn’t need telling twice; walking over to one of the champagne-coloured easy chairs, she sank carefully into its comfort-soft cushions then eagerly accepted the baby.

The moment that Melanie saw Claire’s face smiling down on her, her tiny mouth broke into a welcoming smile.

‘She knows you,’ he said, sounding surprised.

‘Of course,’ Claire answered. ‘I’m her surrogate mother—aren’t I, my darling?’

After that she completely forgot about Andreas Markopoulou, who, after a moment or two, lowered himself into the chair opposite them then sat looking on as Claire immersed herself in the sheer pleasure of her mother’s baby, talking softly to her while Melanie looked and listened with rapt attention.

Dinner was pleasant. Nothing fancy, just simple but tasty vegetable soup followed by boiled rice and thin slivers of pan-fried chicken that she could easily manage to eat by only using her fork.

Refusing the deep red full-blooded wine he was drinking with his meal, she asked for water instead. And they talked quietly. Well, she talked—Claire made the wry distinction—while he encouraged her with strategically placed questions that resulted in her whole life to date getting aired at that dinner table.

When she eventually sat back, talked-out and replete, having refused any dessert to finish her meal, she made herself ask the question that had been troubling her on and off throughout the whole day.

Only one day? She paused to consider this with a small start of surprise. It was beginning to feel as if she’d spent a whole lifetime here with this strangely attentive, very intriguing and enigmatic man.

‘Why did you send my aunt away?’ she asked him.

He sat back in his own chair to idly finger his wineglass while he studied her face through faintly narrowed eyes.

‘She was never very close to you or your mother, was she?’ he said, frustratingly blocking the question with a question.

Still, Claire answered it. ‘They never got on,’ she admitted with a shrug. ‘My mother was …’ She stopped, her soft mouth twisting slightly because what she was going to say sounded as if she was being critical of a mother she’d adored—when in actual fact it wasn’t a criticism but a flat statement of fact. ‘A bit frivolous.’ She made herself say it. ‘Aunt Laura was the older sister. Much tougher and … less pretty,’ she added with wry honesty.

‘People liked to spoil my mother.’ Even I did, she thought, glancing at those slightly narrowed, intent black eyes then away again quickly. ‘Aunt Laura would have bitten their heads off for trying the same thing with her,’ she went on. ‘She’s a staunch feminist with a good business brain and she likes to use it.’

He nodded in agreement and once again Claire felt herself being subtly encouraged to continue. ‘She has no time for—sentimentality.’ Claire thought that described her aunt best. ‘Her philosophy is that if something goes wrong you either fix it or throw it away and start from scratch again,’ she explained sadly.

‘And which category do you and Melanie come under?’

‘She wants me to have Melanie adopted,’ she replied, her expression turning cynical. ‘So you tell me because I still haven’t decided whether that particular solution is supposed to be fixing us or throwing us out.’

‘Which means,’ he concluded, ‘that you also have not decided whether to take her advice or not.’

Shrewd devil, Claire thought bitterly, and rose tensely to her feet as the rotten truth in that statement hit sharply home. ‘Why don’t you try answering my question for a change?’ she flashed back in sheer bloody reaction. ‘And tell me why you sent her away when it has to be obvious that we needed her here right now!’

‘I don’t need to answer the question,’ he replied, super-calm in the face of her sudden hostility. ‘For you have just answered it for yourself.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded frowningly, not understanding what he was getting at.

He didn’t seem inclined to explain it either, she observed as he sat there, eyes hooded, face grim while he stared fixedly at his wineglass as if he was weighing up his options.

But—what options? Claire wondered in despairing confusion. She didn’t even know why she knew what he was doing! Yet the suggestion stuck while she stood there simmering with frustration and anger, waiting for him to make up his mind.

Then he announced, ‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ and got to his feet, obviously having made that decision! ‘But we will go through to my study before I say any more. For we require privacy and it cannot be guaranteed here when Lefka or Althea could walk in at any moment.’

With that he turned and strode off, obviously expecting Claire to follow him. She did so, frowning and tense again—very tense as every suspicious thought she’d had about this man and his motives came rushing back.

By the time Claire arrived at the study door he was already standing across the room where a tray of bottles stood on an antique oak sideboard.

‘Please shut the door behind you,’ he instructed without turning.

Doing as he said, she watched in silence as he selected, uncapped and poured a rather large measure of a dark golden spirit into a squat crystal tumbler.

Clearly, he needed something more fortifying than wine before he put his proposition to her! she noted, and felt her wary tension move up another couple of notches as she waited for him to speak.

‘I sent your aunt out of the country on business today,’ he began quite suddenly, ‘because I decided to get her about as far away from you as I could possibly manage.’

Claire gave a surprised start. ‘But—why?’ she gasped. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

He didn’t answer immediately; instead the glass went to his mouth so he could sip at the spirit, gathering tension all around them as it did so.

It was odd—that tension—full of a tingling sense of dark foreboding that even he seemed affected by. As Claire stood there by the door with her wary eyes fixed on his hard, lean face, she gained the strong impression that, despite the decision he seemed to have come to in the dining room, he was still heavily involved in a rather uncharacteristic struggle with himself.

‘I have a—personal problem that is threatening to cause me a certain amount of—embarrassment,’ he said suddenly. ‘I do have a workable solution, however,’ he added, glancing back at his glass and tipping it slightly so the golden liquid clung to the sides. ‘But it requires a wife and a child to succeed. Meeting you today,’ he went on levelly, ‘seeing where you live and, more importantly, how you live—it occurred to me that you may well be the ideal candidate for the position …’

‘What position?’ Claire asked, utterly lost as to what he was getting at.

He grimaced into his glass—she presumed because she was forcing him into being more explicit about what he was talking about.

‘As my wife,’ he enlightened her. Then, when she still continued to stand there blank-faced and frowning in bewilderment, he lifted his eyes until they fixed sardonically on hers and said, ‘I am asking you to marry me, Claire …’

CHAPTER FOUR

CLAIRE released a gasp in stunned disbelief. ‘You want to marry me?’ she repeated.

Then, almost instantly, she decided, No, I’ve heard him wrong, and laughed—or rather emitted a nervous little giggle that she regretted as soon as it left her lips because the effect it had on him made her feel cruel, as his lean face closed up as tight as a drum.

He’s actually serious! she realised. She felt her legs threaten to collapse beneath her and had to move over to one of the dark red recliners and lower herself carefully into it.

‘Please do not misunderstand me,’ he said, suddenly standing high on his mountain of dignity again. ‘I am not suggesting an intimate relationship. Just a—marriage of convenience if you like. Where we will maintain an appearance of intimacy. But that is all …’

No intimacy, she repeated to herself, and as quickly as that her eyes went blank as her imagination shot off to a place where she’d stared into this man’s eyes while his mouth had been fused very intimately with her own.

‘I will, of course, ensure that the—arrangement is a beneficial one for you,’ he coldly continued. ‘The advantages in being the wife of a very wealthy man do, I think, speak for themselves. And it need not be a lifetime thing—although I will have to insist that I become Melanie’s legal father or it will not work.’

‘What won’t work?’ she questioned helplessly.