The Demetrios Virgin

Her face burned even more hotly, which made it disconcerting for her when he suddenly said abruptly, ‘I’ve got a proposition I want to put to you.’

As she made a strangled sound of shock in her throat he steepled his fingers together and looked at her over them, like a sleek, well-fed predator watching a small piece of prey it was enjoying tormenting.

‘What kind of proposition?’ she asked him warily, but the heavy sledgehammer strokes of her heart against her ribs warned her that she probably already knew the answer—just as she knew why she was filled with such a shocking mixture of excitement and revulsion.

‘Oh, not the kind you are probably most familiar with,’ Andreas was telling her softly. ‘I’ve read that some professional young women get a kick out of acting the part of harlots…’

‘I was doing no such thing,’ Saskia began heatedly, but he stopped her.

‘I was there—remember?’ he said sharply. ‘If my grandfather knew how you had behaved he would demand your instant dismissal.’ His grandfather might have ceded most of the control of the business to Andreas, but Andreas could see from Saskia’s expression that she still believed him.

‘You don’t have to tell him.’ He could see the effort it cost her to swallow her pride and add a reluctant tremulous, ‘Please…’

‘I don’t have to,’ he agreed ‘But whether or not I do depends on your response to my proposition.’

‘That’s blackmail,’ Saskia protested.

‘Almost as old a profession as the one you were engaging in last night,’ Andreas agreed silkily.

Saskia began to panic. Against all the odds there was only one thing he could possibly want from her, unlikely though that was. After all, last night she had given him every reason to assume…to believe…But that had been when she had thought he was Mark, and if he would just allow her to explain…

Fear kicked through her, fuelling a panic that rushed her headlong into telling him aggressively, ‘I’m surprised that a man like you needs to blackmail a woman into having sex with him. And there’s no way that I…’

‘Sex?’ he questioned, completely astounding her by throwing back his head and laughing out loud. When he had stopped, he repeated, ‘Sex?’ adding disparagingly, ‘With you? No way! It isn’t sex I want from you,’ he told her coolly.

‘Not sex? Then…then what is it?’ Saskia demanded shakily.

‘What I want from you,’ Andreas informed her calmly, ‘is your time and your agreement to pose as my fiancée.’

‘What?’ Saskia stared at him. ‘You’re mad,’ she told him in disbelief.

‘No, not mad,’ Andreas corrected her sternly. ‘But I am very determined not to be coerced into the marriage my grandfather wants to arrange for me. And, as my dear mother has so rightly reminded me, the best way to do that is to convince him that I am in love with someone else. That is the only way I can stop this ridiculous campaign of his.’

‘You want me…to pose…as your…fiancée?’ Saskia spaced the words out carefully, as though she wasn’t sure she had heard them correctly, and then, when she saw the confirmation in his face, she denied fiercely, ‘No. No way. No way at all!’

‘No?’ Andreas questioned with remarkable amiability. ‘Then I’m afraid you leave me with no alternative but to inform you that there is a strong—a very strong possibility that we shall have to let you go as part of our regrettable but necessary cutbacks. I hope I make myself clear.’

‘No! You can’t do that…’ Saskia began, and then stopped as she saw the cynical way he was looking at her.

She was wasting her time. There was no way he was even going to listen to her, never mind believe her. He didn’t want to believe her. It didn’t suit his plans to believe her…she could see that. And if she refused to accede to his commands then she knew that he was fully capable of carrying out his threat against her. Saskia swallowed. She was well and truly trapped, with no way whatsoever of escaping.

‘Well?’ Andreas mocked her. ‘You still haven’t given me your reply. Do you agree to my proposition, or…?’

Saskia swallowed the bitter taste of bile and defeat lodged in her throat. Her voice sounded raw, rasping…it hurt her to speak but she tried to hold up her head as she told him miserably, ‘I agree.’