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‘Okay,’ she said, speaking as quietly as possible in order to eliminate any telltale tremble of nerves. ‘In that case—why not?’
‘Not the most rapturous reaction I might have hoped for,’ he observed drily. ‘But I suppose it will have to do. Come on. Let’s eat.’
The maître d’ greeted him with easy familiarity as he showed them to a table which offered a perfect view of the winter garden, with its icy fountain and dark red branches of dogwood.
‘Are we celebrating anything in particular today, Mr Konstantinou?’
‘We certainly are. Ask the sommelier to bring my fiancée a glass of Dom Perignon rosé, would you, please, Carlos?’
There was a split-second pause and, when he spoke, Carlos’s voice sounded faintly strangulated. ‘Certainly, sir. And for yourself?’
‘Just water, thanks.’
Lucy waited until they were alone before she spoke. ‘That man looked as if he’d just been hit by a sledgehammer when you described me as your fiancée.’
‘He was probably surprised, neh. I have a reputation which precedes me.’
‘What kind of reputation?’
He gave a wolfish smile. ‘As a man who has never wanted to settle down. A man who was fundamentally opposed to marriage. Maybe I was unconsciously drawing a line in the sand, to demonstrate that, from now on, things are going to be very different.’
Were they? Lucy wondered distractedly. But how different? A glass of champagne was placed in front of her but she stared uninterestedly at the fizzing pink bubbles before lifting her eyes to Drakon. ‘I suppose you’ve brought loads of women to this hotel in the past? Probably to have lunch in this very restaurant before taking them to bed?’
His black gaze was very steady. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Lucy. I was never promiscuous or indiscriminate but I’m thirty-one, single and, yes, of course I’ve slept with women during that time. Why wouldn’t I? The evidence is everywhere if you care to look for it—because you can find out pretty much anything online.’ He leaned forward, across the starched linen of the tablecloth. ‘But I’m hoping you won’t bother because I’m being perfectly transparent with you. I see no point in pretending to you, or rewriting history. You may have been a virgin when we hooked up, but I most certainly was not.’
‘So why announce our engagement to someone you don’t really know? Was that really necessary?’
‘I think so. Carlos is perfectly aware how these things work.’ He gave a flicker of a smile. ‘He’ll mention it to someone, who’ll mention it to someone else. The press will get to hear about it and there will be a diary piece—only by then it will be old news.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Like I said, it draws a line in the sand and discourages any hopeful overtures from ex-lovers.’
His statement was more matter-of-fact than arrogant and Lucy told herself it shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did, and she was taken aback by the hot flash of jealousy which pulsed through her. But of course he would have plenty of exes eager to return into his life. Hadn’t she been pretty keen to see him herself when she’d returned from Prasinisos, forever glancing at her mobile phone and wondering if he would ring? Which, of course, he hadn’t.
And that was what she needed to remember. The one fact which should never be far from her mind. That she wou
ld never have seen Drakon Konstantinou again if his brother and sister-in-law hadn’t decided to go on a narcotic-fuelled bender and leave their baby son with no parents.
‘Did Xander have any other relatives?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Apart from his mother?’
He shook his head. ‘I put an investigator on the case. Niko’s wife was adopted as a baby, but had been estranged from her family for many years. There were no living blood relatives, so Xander will have no connection with the past.’ His expression grew shuttered. ‘And it will be better for him in the long run. Much better.’
‘In your opinion.’
‘It’s my opinion which counts,’ he said cuttingly. ‘And what I say goes. And I’d rather my adoptive son wasn’t in the grip of people I don’t know. People who might influence him to follow the same sorry path as his parents.’
Feeling faint, Lucy gripped the stem of her champagne flute, but she didn’t lift it to her lips. She was afraid that her hands would tremble too much and she would spill it all over the perfectly starched tablecloth. Because it wasn’t just the things Drakon had said which freaked her out, but the way he’d said them. He’d sounded so... ruthless. As if you could take the parts of somebody’s life which you didn’t like and simply wipe them out—like airbrushing a photo or altering something on your camera phone. But if he’d sounded ruthless it was because he was, she reminded herself. She should forget that at her peril. Suddenly she was glad that she was going to be there for baby Xander. Glad she would be able to fight his corner, because surely he needed someone there for him when Drakon started being even more high-handed than usual.
Eventually she felt calm enough to take a sip of wine, which eased some of her tension, and beneath the table she stretched out her legs, her new pointy shoes touching what she thought was the leg of the table, but Drakon’s mocking eyes informed her that she’d made direct contact with his calf. Hastily, she jerked her foot away and his gaze grew more thoughtful.
‘So why don’t you like surprises?’ he asked suddenly.
It was a question she hadn’t been expecting, and if she hadn’t been so blindsided by everything which had happened in the last twenty-four hours Lucy might have glossed over it—because why revisit pain when you didn’t have to? But Drakon seemed to have an uncanny knack of getting her to open up. He’d done it on the night of the school reunion and he was doing it again now. She wondered if it was because he’d known her so long ago, in those days when she’d had a mother and a brother and hadn’t been such a lost soul. And surely if they were planning on spending the rest of their lives together, he needed to know some of the things which made her tick. Only some of them, mind. A twist of guilt seared her heart and she stared down at her fingernails before looking up to meet the searching gleam of his eyes. ‘I guess I just associate surprises with unpleasant things.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, you know.’ She shrugged her shoulders restlessly. ‘All the stuff which comes with having family in the military. The heavy knock at the door, or the ring of the telephone late at night. The men in uniform who stand on your doorstep with grim faces as they prepare to give you the news.’ News which rocked the foundations of your world and made you realise nothing was ever going to be the same again. Yet hadn’t it been those experiences that had provided the lessons which had enabled Lucy to ring-fence her emotions and keep herself safe from pain? Which had forced her to build barriers around her heart so she could never be hurt like that again? She folded her lips together. Wasn’t that one of the good things about agreeing to marry a man like Drakon—that he had spelt out he didn’t do love either? He had his own emotional barriers in place and that made them equal in a totally unexpected way. He could never hurt her because she would never let him get that close.
And the bottom line was that he didn’t want to get close.
‘That must have been tough,’ he observed.
