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Watching his dark brows snap together, she felt her pulse judder. Was that true? It was certainly true that she had never imagined getting married, but then she hadn’t even had a boyfriend yet.
Remembering how she’d let him think Sam had been an ex, she felt her skin burn beneath her pyjamas. The truth was that she only knew a handful of men, and out of those only one husband: her father. And, much as she couldn’t stop loving her dad, she would never want to be married to a man like Bill Price. A man who was so addicted to the high of winning that he ended up losing everything. His home. His family. His sanity.
Only that was a whole lot more truth that she was prepared to share with this man now sitting on her sofa. Achileas had bulldozed his way into her life, not once but twice today, and she was still reeling from their last encounter.
Glancing up, she found him looking at her in silence. From where she was standing, he looked relaxed, but she knew that if she got closer, she would see a muscle throbbing in the hard curve of his jaw.
‘A wise woman,’ he said softly. ‘Marriage is for monarchs and fools. It’s a plot device in a soap opera. But I’m not offering you a typical marriage, Effie. Our arrangement would be something more pragmatic. Think of it as a mutually beneficial merger of interests.’
A merger of interests.
She stared at him, panic beating in her belly as a cluster of feverishly inappropriate images chased through her head. Damp bodies moving together seamlessly on a tangle of sheets... Bodies peeled naked, hot skin rippling beneath a hand, a tongue—
No.
That wasn’t what he meant—and anyway that wasn’t who she was. She felt awkward and self-conscious about undressing in front of other women. The idea that she would ever be naked with a man like Achileas made her feel singed inside, and it took every ounce of strength she had not to turn and run to the door.
‘We don’t share any interests,’ she said quickly.
There was a long, uneven silence. Then, ‘You think?’ He raised one dark eyebrow, considering her.
Claiming her.
She breathed in sharply as every nerve-ending in her body exploded.
That was nonsense. Of course he wasn’t claiming her. He wanted to use her to pacify his father and in exchange he was offering her money.
It was a Faustian pact with a blue-eyed devil.
‘I thought you wanted to start a business, Effie. I thought it was important to you,’ he said now.
The dare in his voice danced over her skin, making her body twitch with fear and fascination.
Her hands clenched. ‘It is.’
He stared at her steadily, his blue gaze no longer a sapphire gleam but the glint of tempered steel. ‘How important? How badly do you want it? I mean, how far are you prepared to go? Because I can make it happen just like that.’
He snapped his fingers and she blinked.
He could. She glanced down to where he lounged on the sofa. His will was not like hers. It wasn’t just an intangible concept. It was a hungry, living thing with a fiercely beating heart.
‘Trust me, it will be a lot easier and less painful than dealing with a bank. If you even get that far. Banks are cautious about lending their money. Particularly to new businesses.’
Pulse jumping, she glanced down at his legs, noticing without intending to how the fabric pulled tight around the muscles of his thighs. Thighs that had been inches from hers just a few hours earlier...
‘I know that,’ she said quietly, hugging the folder protectively against her stomach.
She had read the statistics and they were daunting. Twenty percent of new businesses failed within a year. That went up to a terrifying fifty percent in five years.
‘Then you’ll also know that they’re going to hold your proposal up to the light, and that if they see anything they don’t like they will turn you down.’
Effie felt her stomach twist painfully. He was right. Banks weren’t charities. And even when she was writing her proposal she had been horribly aware of her lack of experience and security. All she had to offer was an unquantifiable passion and a dream.
What if that wasn’t enough?
At least if she agreed to what Achileas was suggesting she would have the money, no questions asked. Questions she might not be able to answer.
But marrying someone you barely knew even in the short term—whatever that meant—wasn’t just unorthodox, it was crazy. She would have to be crazy even to consider it.
