The Greek's Marriage Bargain

Lexi’s hand flew to her mouth. She could feel the hot rush of breath against her fingers as Xenon’s blue gaze iced into her. ‘What are we going to do?’

Xenon nodded as a grim feeling of satisfaction washed over him, because that was the first sensible thing she’d said. We. ‘It looks like I’m going to have to pay off his debt for him—’

‘But—’

‘There’s no alternative, unless you happen to have the money sitting stashed away. That is, unless you want his pretty face altered out of all recognition?’ His eyelashes suddenly narrowed, so that his eyes looked like shards of blue ice. ‘These people can be dangerous, you know.’

Lexi knew about danger. She’d grown up surrounded by it. And hadn’t that been one of the best things about her sudden fame—that she’d been able to escape from the dark and seedy side of life? The last thing she wanted was for Jason to be catapulted back to that place, where nothing seemed safe. She looked at Xenon’s hard features, realising that he was offering to help. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me until you’ve heard what it entails,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay off his debt for him—but this time, he doesn’t go back to his old life and repeat the same old pattern. And neither does he go into some fancy clinic where he uses that abundance of Gibson charm to manipulate his counsellors.’

‘So what are you proposing he does?’ she questioned. ‘Apply for a personality transplant?’

‘Nothing quite so drastic. My solution is simple. He needs to change. To work his body like a man. To see the sun come up in the morning and put his head on the pillow at night, instead of spending it in the casino, like a zombie.’ His eyes bored into her. ‘And maybe he wants to change because he has agreed to go to work for one my cousins in Greece.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘On one of the family’s vineyards,’ he continued. ‘Your darling brother has agreed to do some hard, physical labour for the first time in his life.’

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘He’s agreed?’

‘I didn’t give him very much choice in the matter,’ he snapped. ‘It was my condition for bailing him out.’

Lexi felt a worrying see-saw of emotions as she took in what he’d just told her. He could be so hard and indomitable that it was all too easy to forget his streak of kindness.

But he hadn’t been kind when she’d most needed him to be, had he? He hadn’t been there for her at all when she’d reached out for him. He had pushed her away until there had been nothing but distance left between them any more.

‘So...why come here and tell me all this?’ she questioned.

He gave a cold, hard smile. ‘No ideas, Lex? You think I should bail out your brother just out of the goodness of my heart?’

She met the obdurate look in his eyes and a whisper of fear began to creep over her skin as she realised what lay behind his words. ‘You mean...there’s a price?’

‘There is always a price,’ he said softly. ‘I would have thought you’d have learned that by now. And the price is that I want you back as my wife.’

Lexi’s lips opened as if in slow motion, though no words emerged. She could feel the sudden thunder of her heart and a great rush of unexpected excitement because hadn’t some rogue part of her always dreamt of just this moment? That Xenon would come back and tell her he was willing to forgive her for walking out. Willing perhaps to try again.

But even as hope flared inside her with a bright, sharp heat, she forced herself to quash it. Because their marriage could never be saved. She knew that. The past held too much sorrow and there could be no future. They might go through the motions of reconciliation—but now a darkness lay at the heart of what they’d once had. And Xenon would never be able to tolerate it.

‘Your wife?’ she echoed.

His mouth hardened. ‘There’s no need to look so horrified,’ he said. ‘It’s purely a short-term measure.’

Lexi only just stopped herself from shuddering at her own foolishness, terrified that he would know the crazy thoughts she’d been entertaining. Did she really think that Xenon would be willing to try again? That a man that proud and powerful would be willing to forget the fact that she’d ‘humiliated’ him with her desertion.

Blankly, she stared at him. ‘But why? Why on earth would you want to resurrect our marriage?’

Xenon watched the way she lifted her shoulders in confusion and the gesture made the fabric of her shirt ride over the generous curve of her breasts. The eyes behind her glasses were the silver-green colour of eucalyptus leaves—only right now they were dark with bewilderment. And suddenly he felt a stab of lust so powerful that he could have pressed her down onto the carpet and made her come alive in his arms.

‘My sister is having her baby daughter christened and I want you beside me.’

The impact of his words was like a series of small, sharp knives aimed straight at her heart. It hurt to think of his sister managing to produce the first of the next generation. It shouldn’t have done, but it did. For her to have succeeded where she herself had failed so badly somehow seemed to bring it all back again. ‘I...I’d heard Kyra was married, of course,’ she stumbled. ‘And that she was pregnant. It just all seems to have happened so quickly.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘It was a whirlwind romance, it’s true. But you’ve been gone two years now, Lex. Or did you imagine that the world would stop turning the moment you walked out of my door?’

Lexi’s breath was coming in shallow and rapid little bursts. For a minute she actually felt faint. Concentrate on the facts, she told herself. Try to talk him out of this insanity. ‘Why would you want me there when we’re divorcing? When my attendance there would only excite gossip and comment?’ She fixed him with a look of appeal, as if from one reasonable person to another. ‘Surely you don’t want that, Xenon?’

‘It’s not just the christening,’ he said and now his voice took on a dark and sombre note. ‘My grandmother is ill. In fact, she’s very ill and they’ve brought forward the christening, even if she’s not actually well enough to attend.’

Despite everything, Lexi’s heart turned over. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘I know how much you love your grandmother. But your family won’t want me there, Xenon—especially not at such an emotional time. Your mother always thought I was the worst possible wife you could have chosen. You know that. And that kind of feeling could spoil the atmosphere and ruin the day for Kyra. What’s it going to be like if I suddenly waltz back to Rhodes on your arm?’

‘My family will do what I want them to do,’ he stated flatly. ‘And I want you there.’

Lexi glared. How could she have forgotten his controlling nature? His desire to make everything in the world happen the way that he wanted it to? ‘You still haven’t answered my question, Xenon. Why me, after everything that’s happened? There must be hundreds of women who would make more suitable partners. Your little black book was certainly bursting at the seams before I came along.’

‘But you were the only woman I married. And my marriage is the only thing in my life which could be considered a failure.’ His eyes were steely now. They gleamed with a determination she recognised only too well. ‘I don’t like failure—perceived or otherwise—and it will make my grandmother happy to see us together again. She believes in marriage. At the end of her life it will please her to discover that her favourite grandson is back with his wife.’

‘But that’s...that’s dishonest.’

‘More dishonest than you promising to love and to cherish me, until death us do part? Were you remembering those vows when you walked out and broke them?’

To Lexi, this was nothing but a cold-blooded manipulation of the truth, but she bit back her objections. What was the point of trying to reason with him when he would tie her up in knots with his clever, educated arguments? She wouldn’t go to pieces in front of him. She couldn’t afford to. She needed to be strong. ‘I won’t do it, Xenon,’ she said quietly.

‘But you don’t have a choice. Not if you want to save your brother’s skin. I suggest you think about it.’ His coffee barely touched, he rose to his feet. ‘I’ll give you until tomorrow lunchtime to make up your mind.’

She watched him as he walked over to the door and Lexi felt like a person clinging to the edge of a cliff whose fingers were slowly slipping. Suddenly the once solid surface of her life was crumbling away and she was losing her grip.

‘And if I don’t?’

His smile was as cold as steel. ‘Then I throw your brother to the wolves.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u9476b05b-4908-5eca-b3aa-017cbb6e5822)

THE NIGHT SEEMED endless and Lexi spent most of it awake, shivering like someone with a fever although the July air was warm. Her nerves felt shot and when the first pale light of dawn began to appear, she gave up all attempts to sleep and pulled back the curtains to watch the sun rise.

But it was difficult to concentrate on anything—even the explosion of light outside her window, which normally filled her with pleasure. Seeing her estranged husband again had stirred up all kinds of feelings—feelings she’d done her best to suppress after the end to her marriage. She’d felt devastated and bereft when it had failed, even though people had done their best to reassure her. They’d said that was the way everyone felt when a marriage ended and she knew that to some extent that was true. But Lexi’s pain had been compounded by the loss of their baby.

The thought of that tiny lost scrap of life was still painful and so she got up and dressed before taking herself outside for a walk. Cutting across the fields at the back of the cottage, she walked towards the sea until she had reached the shoreline. The tide was out and it was early enough to still be deserted—with only a lone dog walker striding across the sands.

Her life had taken so many twists along the way. It hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected it to—but then, whose life ever did? She had settled in this beautiful part of Devon, an existence which some might have considered dull—but Lexi revelled in the peace and quiet she’d found here after the high-octane experiences of her past.

But she still had responsibilities, no matter how much she sometimes wished she could shrug them off. She’d been a quasi mother to her two siblings. Jake was in Australia now and seemed to be forging a successful career for himself. But Jason was a different story. She’d been at her wit’s end with his ongoing problems. She’d thought—hoped—that the reason she hadn’t been able to get hold of him had been because he was sorting himself out. Only it seemed that his problems were much worse than she’d thought.

She bent to pick up a shell as she thought about the possibility that her little brother could be in danger and the solution which Xenon was offering.

There is always a price, he had said in that very Greek way of his. And surely the price was too high. How could she bear to spend time pretending to be his wife when barely an hour in his company had left her wanting to climb the walls?

Yet could she deny her brother this chance because she didn’t have the guts to face the man she’d married? What was she so afraid of?