The Heiress Bride

Ione was startled by that speech. If wedding arrangements were to be discussed, then their marriage was already a foregone conclusion. As it seemed that Alexio must have agreed to marry her even before he’d arrived on Lexos, her attempts to make herself seem more attractive had been a ludicrous waste of time and energy. On Alexio’s terms, her true worth lay in her Gakis surname and her future dowry, not in her looks or her individuality. Her cheeks blossomed with chagrined colour. Once again she had been made to feel the sting of her own essential unimportance, but she realised that it would be unwise to suddenly abandon the act she had been putting on for his benefit.

‘Shall we go inside?’ Alexio drawled, taking charge with all-male decisiveness.

But for the reality that sitting out in the loggia was a punishment to her, Ione might have disagreed. Looking up at him to note how very, very tall he was from that angle, and filled with almost childish resentment by the intimidating nature of that fact, she got up with a nod.

Sudden angry suspicion gripped Alexio as he stood back to let Ione precede him indoors, his glinting appraisal resting on her undeniably sensual gliding walk across the terracotta tiles. How did he know that Ione Gakis wasn’t a raving nymphomaniac with a father desperate to marry her off before she engulfed the family in scandal? If that were the case, the Gakis billions would be equal to preventing the spread of damaging rumours, but not the most optimistic of men could hope to hide such a shame for ever. The constant references to Ione’s shyness and her protected upbringing added to her dowdy appearance might just be ploys to convince him that she was what her father said she was. But how could he know for sure? How did he know he wasn’t being suckered into marriage with a woman who might try to make the Christoulakis name a laughing stock?

‘Your father was a little premature in his reference to wedding arrangements,’ Alexio imparted, smooth as velvet. ‘I did tell him that you and I would have to talk before anything could be finalised.’

Ione stiffened, her nervous tension reawakening in a dismayed surge as she registered that she still had to win him over. Flustered, she muttered unwarily, ‘I should’ve guessed. Papa…Papa can be impatient. He makes assumptions.’

‘Which of us doesn’t?’ Alexio rested a light hand to her spine to guide her out of the bright sunlight into the vast salon and she was so ridiculously aware of his touch, his very proximity, that she imagined she felt his fingers burn through the dress fabric into the taut skin of her back. ‘But you intrigue me. I’m not sure what to make of you.’

Something akin to panic shrilled through Ione. What was that supposed to mean? Intrigue? Didn’t that suggest something covert? Did he suspect that her efforts to attract him were just one big empty pretence? How could he not? How could she possibly have believed that she could fool a guy who had slept with dozens of women into crediting that she would ever be a wow in bed?

‘You don’t know me,’ Ione pointed out tightly, an unsteady hand sliding down over her dress to smooth it as she braced herself to try and redress the damage by reassuring him. ‘But I can be anything you want me to be.’

The fall of silence that greeted that impulsive announcement was instant and it worked on her nerves like a chainsaw.

Taken aback by that startling assurance, Alexio frowned, dark golden eyes narrowing below winged ebony brows as he stared at her.

‘I just don’t know what you want from me yet,’ Ione stated, gathering steam from the sheer level of fear holding her rigid, for if she had blown any hope of him wanting to marry her with her silly play-acting, she had nothing left to lose. Not only would her father lose his head with her, but she would also be buried alive on Lexos for years to come.

‘What I want from you?’ Alexio prompted in fascination, having recognised the spark of panic in her wide green eyes before she’d veiled them and the extent of the tension keeping her so still.

‘I need to know what you want,’ Ione told him again. ‘Maybe you don’t want me interfering in your life if we get married. That’s fine. I won’t. You don’t need to worry about that. I’m a very practical person. Very quiet too. You’ll hardly know I’m there. Once I know what you like, everything will be as you expect it to be.’

A shaken surge of angry compassion stirred in Alexio. Anger at her father for giving her the impression that such assurances would be necessary and compassion that she should feel driven to humble herself in such a way for his benefit. ‘I have only one question that needs an answer. Do you want to be my wife?’

Eyes lowering, Ione trembled, compressed her lips, parted them again. An obvious question, one she should have foreseen but harder to answer than she could ever have dreamt, for by nature she was not a liar. And when she lifted her lashes and collided with the dark golden intensity of his questioning gaze, her breath feathered in her throat and her breasts seemed to swell inside her cotton bra. Embarrassment scythed through her as her nipples tightened into straining buds and an arrow of heat speared low in her pelvis. Yet still she could not take her eyes from his lean, dark, devastating features.

‘Ione…I’m aware that your father has a forceful personality. If you feel in any way pressured into this—’

‘Oh, no!’ Ione broke in hurriedly, keen to make that denial for she could now see the direction in which the dialogue was going. ‘How could you think that?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Alexio said with the frankness that as a rule he only employed within his own family circle, his brilliant gaze pinned to her with penetrating force. ‘I’m getting mixed signals from you.’

Sentenced to stillness by the sheer mesmeric effect of those beautiful eyes, Ione murmured half under her breath and without really knowing where the words had come from. ‘I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.’

Darker colour accentuated Alexio’s fabulous cheekbones for he had not expected that emotive a declaration. ‘Why?’ he heard himself say as if what she had just said was still not enough, though it was.

‘I had a picture of you in my locker at boarding-school.’ Her fair skin drenched with pink as she forced out that statement. ‘Everybody had a pin-up. You were mine.’

Initially disconcerted at the news that he had been the focus of a schoolgirl crush, Alexio suddenly found himself smiling, and it was a smile full of so much natural charisma that it turned Ione’s knees to cotton wool beneath her.

Gotcha, Ione thought with intense satisfaction in spite of that smile. He had fallen for it. And why not? The target of admiring and awestruck women all his adult life, he was accustomed to flattery. Actually, it had been one of her classmates who had languished over him at fifteen. Ione had thought love from afar was childish and a waste of energy and had kept cute photos of her dog inside her locker.

‘I suppose we have to start somewhere,’ Alexio conceded with a husky laugh of amusement.

Losing every suspicion of her motives, he castigated himself for the wildness of his own suspicions about her morals in the loggia. Her honesty was refreshing but naive. But then, after the sheltered life she had led, her naivety was understandable. In times to come, though, she might look back and hate him for having listened to that gauche little declaration, for what did he have to offer her in return? In the material line, nothing, and he didn’t like that. Indeed, he had already decided how best to deal with that potential problem.

‘I believe that our marriage will work best if you settle your future inheritance on any children we might have and we live on my income,’ Alexio spelt out without hesitation.

Suddenly, Ione was grateful she had no plans to become a kept woman. He was so Greek: he wanted a dependant wife. How dared he suggest that she consent to that kind of an agreement merely to conserve his precious male pride? In her place, what man would agree to such an arrangement? It did not seem to occur to him that she might already be wealthy in her own right, yet Ione had inherited considerable funds from both her mother and her brother. As for having children with him, since the possibility was not going to arise, she didn’t even think about it.

‘Ione…I appreciate that that will be a very difficult decision for you to make, but I would like you to give serious consideration to the idea,’ Alexio continued with level cool.

‘I’ll think about it,’ Ione responded with castdown eyes. Love in a cottage Christoulakis-style? Had she been born of Gakis blood and truly intending to be his wife, at that point, all negotiations would have broken down. But money had no power over her, for immense wealth had brought her adoptive family nothing but misery.

His strong jawline clenched, dark golden eyes challenging. ‘Your father will disapprove but I won’t allow him to interfere in our marriage. You must accept that too.’

‘Yes, of course.’ But at that aggressive announcement of intent, Ione almost released a shuddering sigh of relief over the escape she was planning on. What Alexio had just said was grounds for a battle royal. Minos Gakis was no fond parent, but he set great store on his own pride and he would be outraged if his daughter was seen to live in anything less than a palace. But then the situation would never develop, she reminded herself impatiently, for her relationship with Alexio would not last beyond their wedding day. Furthermore, Alexio was only dictating terms for what was essentially a business deal rather than a marriage.

‘I need you to voice your own opinions.’ Exasperation currented through Alexio as she stood there like a slender statue revealing nothing of her thoughts.

No, he didn’t. Since when had impervious demands required opinions? Ione regarded him from below curling brown lashes, green eyes cloaked, for every time she looked at him she was struck anew by his lethal dark attraction. ‘But I agree with everything you’ve said.’

‘You must have requests to make of me,’ Alexio informed her.

‘I would love to spend our honeymoon in Paris,’ Ione dared, her low-pitched voice a tad uneven for so much was riding on his response. ‘I believe you have a house there.’

‘I also have a very beautiful villa in the Caribbean.’

Even that one little thing, he had to argue about, Ione thought fiercely. He couldn’t help himself. An inability to give way gracefully to any will other than their own was the essential flaw in all ruthless, successful men. Well, whether he liked it or not, he was going to Paris. He had to take her to a city so that she could leave him. Staging a nifty vanishing act from a potentially remote Caribbean villa might well prove to be too great a challenge for her.

In some surprise, Alexio picked up on the antagonistic sparks in her silence. ‘We could go sailing.’

‘I get seasick,’ Ione lied in a wooden little voice that concealed her panic at what was an even worse suggestion.

Paris. Paris where he had spent so much time with Crystal, Alexio reflected in instinctive recoil, but then he looked at Ione and, seeing the anxious light in her upward glance, he felt like a selfish bastard for denying her what appeared to be her heart’s desire. ‘Paris it is, then…’

Her smile, the smile she had not let him see until that moment, lit up her whole face to a startling degree. While he gazed into her shining green eyes and experienced a tightening sensation in his groin that was becoming all too familiar in her vicinity, he decided that it would be healthier to make new memories of one of his favourite cities.

‘Let me show you round the picture gallery,’ Ione suggested, daring to take the lead now that her battle was won and her worst fears vanquished.

Instead and without warning, Alexio reached for her and drew her close, his lean hands linking with hers and then releasing them to glide with smooth expertise up to her slim shoulders. ‘First…’

No, no, no, no! Screamed through Ione’s brain. Touching was absolutely not allowed. She stiffened, froze from head to toe, putting out defensive signals that a blind man could have sensed.

‘You don’t need to be nervous,’ Alexio soothed in his dark velvet drawl, that roughened timbre setting up a chain-reaction echo down her rigid spine. But he knew he was lying. Every time she froze around him, he wanted to smash down her barriers, storm an attack through her defences and watch those beautiful eyes drown in him, cling to him, hunger for him.

She collided with smouldering golden eyes that made her head spin and her heart skip a beat in shock. She meant to step back out of reach but instead she found herself concentrating on just catching her breath. It shook her even more to feel her body wanting to push forward into the hard, all-male muscularity of his, for the rigorous control that had always been her saviour was nowhere to be found.

‘Alexio…’ Her own voice sounded strange to her, almost placatory.

He brought his wide, sensual mouth drifting down onto hers and then, with rueful amusement sounding deep in his throat, he pried her sealed lips apart with the tip of his tongue and explored the moist interior of her tender mouth. As the explosion of sensual sensation hit her she shuddered in its grip, her slim body alternately tensing and dissolving in the storm of physical feelings firing through her skincells. Crushed against the unyielding wall of his chest, her breasts pinched tight into throbbing peaks and the ache that stirred at the very heart of her almost hurt.

Alexio lifted his arrogant dark head to gaze down into her dreamy, bemused eyes with a sense of achievement entirely new to him. ‘Am I the first?’