The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife

He was still holding her, and his touch burned her flesh like a small electrical shock. Her chest lifted with her protesting intake of air. Immediately his gaze dropped to her body with predatory swiftness—as though somehow he knew that when he had touched her, her flesh had responded to his touch in a way that had flung her headlong into a place she didn’t know, brought her face to face with a Lizzie she didn’t know. Her heart was thumping jerkily, her senses intensely aware of him, and her gaze was drawn to him as though he was a magnet, clinging to his torso, his throat, his mouth.

She swung dizzily and helplessly between disbelief and a craving to move closer to him. Beneath her clothes her breasts swelled and ached, in response to a mastery she was powerless to resist. How could this be happening to her? How could her body be reacting to Ilios Manos as though…as though it wanted him? It must be some weird form of shock, Lizzie decided shakily as he released her, almost thrusting her away from him.

‘I’m not calling you a liar,’ Lizzie denied, feeling obliged to backtrack, if only to remind herself of the reality of her situation. ‘I’m just saying that I think you’ve got some of your facts wrong. And besides—why aren’t you demanding recompense from your cousin, instead of threatening and bullying me?’ she demanded, quickly going on the attack.

Attack was, after all, the best form of defence, so they said, and she certainly needed to defend herself against what she had felt when he had held her. How could that have happened? She simply wasn’t like that. She couldn’t be. She had her family to think of. Being sexually aroused by a man she had only just met, a man who despised and disliked her, just wasn’t the kind of thing she had ever imagined being. Not ever, and certainly not now.

Determinedly she martialled her scattered thoughts and pointed out, ‘After all, I only owned twenty per cent of the apartment block. Your cousin, from what the Rainhills told me, owned the land, most of the apartments and was responsible for the building work. I never even met him, never mind discussed his business plan with him. I was given the apartments and made a partner in lieu of payment for the work I’d done. That’s all.’

Ilios knew that that was true, but right now it didn’t suit his mood to allow her any escape route—especially now that his cousin had increased his fury by continuing to plot against him. Ilios wanted repayment, he wanted retribution, he wanted vengeance—and he would have them. Ilios hated cheats, and he hated even more being forced to let them get away with cheating.

‘My cousin has no assets and is heavily in debt. The Rainhills, as I am sure you have discovered yourself, have disappeared. And, whilst you might only own twenty per cent of the apartment block’s value, the partnership agreement you signed contains what is called a joint and several guarantee—which means that each partner is both jointly and severally liable for the debts of the whole partnership. That means that I can claim from you recompense for the entire amount owing.’

‘No, that can’t be true,’ Lizzie protested, horrified.

Ilios looked at her. There was real panic in her voice now. He could see that she was trembling.

An act, he told himself grimly. That was all it was. Just an act.

‘I assure you that it is,’ he told her, ignoring her obvious distress.

‘But I can’t possibly find that kind of money.’ She couldn’t find any kind of money.

‘No? Well, I have to tell you that I intend to be fully rec-ompensed—not just for the money I am owed, but also for the potential damage that could have been done to my business. A business for which I have worked far harder than someone like you, who lives off the naïveté of others, can ever imagine. You own your own business?’

‘Yes,’ Lizzie acknowledged. ‘But it is almost bankrupt.’

Why had she told him that when she hadn’t even told her sisters just how bad things were? That every spare penny she had had been placed into their shared joint account to ensure that the mortgage was paid, the household bills met, and food put on the table at home.

She looked really distraught now, Ilios could see, but he refused to feel any sympathy. Showing sympathy was a sign of weakness, and Ilios never allowed himself to be weak.

‘You have a property? A home, I assume?’ he pressed

‘Yes, but it is mortgaged, and anyway I share it with my sisters, one of whom has two small children and is dependent on me.’

Lizzie didn’t know why she was admitting all of this to him, other than because she was in such a state of shock and panic. She wasn’t going to let herself think about the last few months of long nights, when she had lain awake worrying about how she would manage to protect her family and continue to provide for them financially. They knew that things were bad, she hadn’t been able to hide that from them, but they did not know yet just how bad.

‘Your sister does not have a husband to support her and her children? You do not have parents?’

‘The answer to both those questions is no. Not that it is any of your business, or relevant to our discussion. There is no way I can find the money to repay you. The only thing I own that is my own is my body…’

‘And you wish to offer that to me in payment?’

Lizzie was horrified.

‘No! Never!’

Her immediate recoil, coupled with her vehemence, inflamed Ilios even further. Was she daring to suggest that she was too good for him? Morally superior to him? Well, he would soon make her change her tune, Ilios promised himself savagely.

‘You deny it now, but the offer was implicit in your declaration that your body is the only thing you have.’

He was determined to humiliate her. Lizzie could see that. Because he had somehow sensed her sexual reaction to him?

‘No. That is, yes—but I didn’t mean it the way you are trying to suggest. I only meant that I do not own anything via which I could raise the money to pay you.’

‘Except your body.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Lizzie repeated, mortified. ‘I just meant that…’ She lifted her hand to her head, which was now pounding with a mixture of anxiety and despair. ‘I can’t pay you.’

Ilios had had enough. His temper was at breaking point. He would have what he was owed—one way or another.

‘Very well, then,’ he began, causing Lizzie to go weak with relief at the thought that he was finally going to accept that there was no point in him continuing to press her for money.

‘If your body is all you have with which to repay me, then that is what I will have to take—because I promise you this: I will have repayment.’

Chapter Three

LIZZIE’S head jerked back on the slender stem of her neck as she looked up at Ilios in shocked disbelief.

‘You—you can’t mean that!’ she protested. But even as she protested, something fierce and elemental was flaring up inside her—a desire, an excitement, a wild surge of female longing that shook her body with its force and shamed her pride with what it said about her. She couldn’t want him—and most especially she could not want him under circumstances that should have been making her recoil with revulsion.

‘I do mean it,’ Ilios assured her.

‘I can’t believe that anyone could be so…cruel and inhuman, so lacking in compassion or understanding.’

The sudden explosion of sound from Lizzie’s mobile phone, announcing the arrival of a text message, momentarily distracted them both.

Watching the way Lizzie reached frantically for her mobile to read it, Ilios gave her a look of cold contempt.

‘You are obviously eager to read your lover’s message, but—’

‘It’s from my sisters,’ Lizzie interrupted him abstractedly, without lifting her gaze from the small screen. ‘Wanting to know if everything is all right.’

‘And you, of course, are going to reply and tell them all about the my so called cruelty and inhumanity.’

‘No,’ Lizzie told him. ‘If I did they’d worry about me, and that’s the last thing I want. I’m the eldest. It’s my job to look after them and protect them. Not the other way around.’

Ilios digested her response in silence. An eldest sister determined to protect her younger siblings wasn’t the way he wanted to think about this woman.

‘The light’s fading,’ he told her, gesturing towards the horizon where the winter sun, half obscured by clouds, was starting to dip below the horizon. ‘Soon it will be dark. I have to return to Thessaloniki. We can continue our discussion there.’

Over her dead body, Lizzie thought rebelliously, suddenly seeing an opportunity to put some much needed distance between them. She hated the thought of running away instead of staying to fight and prove her innocence, but with a man like this one, hell-bent on extracting payment from her—in kind if he could not have cash—the normal rules of engagement didn’t seem the best course of action.

‘Very well,’ she agreed, reaching for her mobile again.

‘What are you doing?’ Ilios demanded.

‘Telephoning for a taxi,’ Lizzie answered.