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A document she hadn’t been able to glance at since the single time she’d held it in her hand, wondering if she’d made the right decision or was still caught in the ninety seconds of madness that had made her agree to her boss’s preposterous proposition.
A three-year deal struck—after that brief moment of insanity had passed—when she’d believed she could fully control every outcome with the same cool, unflappable efficiency as she ran his office.
For a while, it had worked. Heck, in the beginning she’d managed to forget, for several hours at a time at least, her marital ties to the formidable man who ran his international law firm with an iron fist. Forget that underneath the marriage certificate lay a box containing a five-carat princess-cut diamond set in platinum, alongside a matching wedding ring, which he’d presented to her with firm-jawed, emotionless expediency at the sterile registrar’s office in Marylebone a year ago.
Because the agreement was that she would need the rings for only two-week stretches, twice a year, when they visited Costas Drakakis in Greece, his ageing, reclusive grandfather whose demands on his grandson had compelled Christos’s proposition to her.
It had all seemed so clear-cut back then—bar those ninety seconds when she’d experienced a depth of terrifying possessiveness and increasing desire to remain in the intoxicating orbit of Christos Drakakis’s success. To know she was a small but key component that made his professional life revolve with oiled smoothness.
In that moment, she’d felt...needed, not an unwanted object to be thrown away as her mother had so effortlessly done mere hours after giving birth to her. Alexis knew deep down that need was what prompted her to agree to the highly irregular proposition. That and the painful but necessary decision she’d made after her one devastating relationship.
She might have accepted that intimacy and marriage weren’t on the cards for her, but that damning need to be wanted, to be needed, the craving to be moored to something stable and solid had never relented.
Once she’d got over those ninety seconds it had been a simple decision. With occasional bouts—deep in the night when she tossed and turned with curious restlessness—of mild astonishment at what she’d done. Thankfully, those moments always took their rightful place at the back of her mind come morning.
‘Alexis, did you hear me?’ came the deep, firm demand.
As if she could dismiss him that easily. As if her every sense weren’t greedily attuned to his every word. As if she didn’t spend every moment of every working hour steeling herself against any betrayal of what his face, his voice, his six-foot-three frame did to her equilibrium.
She’d succeeded. For the most part. Until that night two months ago. When everything had tilted and never quite righted itself again.
She cleared her throat. ‘Of course I heard you. I’m still waiting for an explanation as to the change of plans though.’
A hot flame flickered through his eyes. A temperamental flash that warned her about stepping out of line, while at the same time signalling his respect for standing up to him.
It was a curious expression, that one. It made her daring. It kept her spine straight and her senses alert. It certainly didn’t make things boring around here.
Not that at thirty-three, and as one of the youngest managing partners of an international law firm, Christos Drakakis had ever attracted a label like boring.
From the tips of his close-cropped, so-dark-it-almost-seemed-black hair to the heels of his custom-made Italian shoes, he possessed a bristling energy that encompassed anyone in his vicinity. It was an intensely magnetic force field that commanded attention, which he then held with his steel grey eyes. With that slash of hard but sensual mouth that could cut his opponent to pieces in the courtroom without raising his deep, faintly accented baritone.
Watching him strike ruthless deals across a conference table or walking in a deceptively calm but predatory stride across a courtroom had evoked near hero worship amongst lawyers and staff alike. In Alexis it had evoked a curious mix of awe and mild terror. Of quiet pride. Of an electric hum deep in her belly that she refused to acknowledge or analyse.
She tried to slow her pulse with deep, controlled breaths as he stared at her now, his nostrils flaring ever so briefly before he shoved his hands into his pockets.
‘I haven’t been fully apprised of the reasons. Only that my presence is required in Greece. Which means yours is too, as my wife,’ he drawled.
Wife.
A term she only allowed herself to think about twice a year. A term that fired up tectonic bolts through her system. ‘If you don’t know for sure, then my presence may not be required—’
His headshake cut her off. ‘Our deal was that you wou
ld accompany me whenever I visited Drakonisos in return for keeping and maintaining your precious little project.’
Yes, the flip—and more important—side of her deal with Christos. Another desire to feel needed that had kept her tied to the only home she’d ever known.
Hope House.
Her need to keep it from being razed to the ground.
Christos’s agreement to keep the children’s home going in perpetuity in return for her agreement to act as his wife for a minimum of three years. In those restless moments deep in the night, she clung to this reason more than anything else. Because in this, she knew she’d made the right choice. Knew that she hadn’t acted completely rashly when Christos had invited her for a drink in his office and confessed his need for a wife in order to secure his birthright. Hope House, she told herself, was far more important than the intimacy and marriage hopes she’d had to abandon after the emotional wringer she’d been through in her one and only relationship.
Hope House had been her single constant, a solid signpost she could cling to in a life whose beginnings had been murky.
Fresh from a phone call with the distressed director of the children’s home who had taken Alexis in when she’d been abandoned in front of their high-street charity outlet, she’d blurted out her own request.
Curiously, that quid pro quo transaction had pleased Christos. As if her wanting something in return had established the true parameters of their agreement. She’d felt a peculiar sting deep in her chest that she attributed to the extreme relief she’d saved Hope House. That the spread-thin staff who manned the children’s home just outside London would shelter other children, if not from the ever-present abandonment-induced heartache and fear of future rejection, then at least with a roof over their heads.
