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‘We’re going to be seen in a lot of very exclusive places and I can’t have you wandering around in that.’ He’d broken off his typing only to gesture to her roughly with one hand in a sweeping circular motion.
‘But I—’
‘I told you to burn that T-shirt.’
It had been perverse of her to insist on wearing it today, she’d known that. But she hadn’t been able to help herself. It was an act of defiance. An act of revenge that for some reason had given her just a little of the strength she’d needed to get onto the plane in the first place.
Until the moment she saw herself through his eyes. Standing in his exquisite Athenian estate where sophistication practically dripped from the modern glass chandelier, beautiful swathes of cream and grey adding a surprising warmth to the impersonal wealth she found herself surrounded by, she felt...uncouth.
But more than that she felt hurt. That familiar sting that she had been found wanting. That once again, she wasn’t living up to the perfection people wanted from her. People like her father, Marc, and now Loukis. She knew that Loukis wasn’t being personal, but practical. And it shouldn’t hurt, but it did. Now the T-shirt just felt petty. All her pride and defiance melted away and she gripped her jaw against the swelling tide of emotion she desperately wanted to put down to jet lag.
She cast about for a distraction. Anything that would remove the microscope from her and onto something new.
‘Is Annabelle here?’
‘She is in Texas.’ His clipped tones as harsh as the sounds of his fingers bashing against the keypad of his laptop.
‘Really?’ she replied, half fearful and half disappointed that there wouldn’t be a natural buffer between her and her new fiancé.
‘The visit with Meredith was court appointed. And trust me, I tried to fight it.’
‘Is she okay? You’ve spoken to her?’
Loukis didn’t miss the concern in her voice and it touched him. He might not have set out on this path wanting a fiancée, but the fact that Célia, who by unhappy circumstances had unwittingly entered into that role, clearly valued his sister’s happiness was a gift.
He just wished that he had more time. More time to get to know Célia, to have vetted her, to have...thought it through a little more? He hadn’t invited a woman back to his estate ever. His affairs had been conducted far away from here. And that wasbeforeAnnabelle.
Whatever the press might think, it had been three years since he’d lived up to his playboy reputation. A reputation he’d indulged and enjoyed greatly—as had the women who had graced his bed—until the moment he realised the damage it had done to his future.
But it was the damage from his past that had designed his present. All he had known of marriage had been harshly shouted arguments heard from his hiding place on the staircase. His nights were consumed with them. They would start almost immediately after his bedtime. He would be in that lovely hazy moment of near sleep when they would begin. His father complaining about his mother’s drinking, which would escalate to her blaming him for the demise of her modelling career—and by extension Loukis. Then his father would retaliate by raging about her less than private affairs, her extended absence from the family home. On and on, through the nights and years they would go. Throwing verbal barbs and opening wounds, apparently careless of whether their son might be listening.
Marriage, to Loukis, had seemed a battleground. Relationships had become something that he’d never wanted to willingly entertain. Oh, he knew there were instances of couples that seemed to have found their joy in each other. But they were few and far between and dissipated beneath the pain and ferocity of his parents’ own relationship.
But, as Célia peered at him from her stance taken up in the doorway as if ready to bolt at any moment, he reminded himself that he wasn’t getting married. That this was a fake engagement to ensure that his sister never bore witness to such a thing. Was never tainted by that same feeling that he had been.
Meredith’s abandonment of her three years before had already done enough damage. His sole focus, now, was to ensure that no more harm could be done to his sister.
‘I’m due to speak to her later tonight. But she has arrived and is...well. With them.’
‘Them?’
‘Meredith has apparently found herself a rich Texan oil baron as her latest victim. I can only imagine that the man has strong family values, otherwise Meredith would never have returned for Annabelle. Children—according to my mother—have an aging affect that is deplorable to her.’
He recited the line by rote. One of the many accusations she had hurled at his father.
‘I’m sorry, Loukis.’
He must have given himself away. Perhaps his mask had slipped to reveal emotions that were far too close to the surface for his liking.
‘My housekeeper will show you to our room. Your bags should already—’
‘Our?’
He frowned, wondering what had been unclear about his statement. ‘Yes, “our” room.’
He could have laughed at the shocked look on her face, widening her beautiful amber eyes with something akin to horror. That was new. He’d never had that reaction to the suggestion he share a bed with a woman before.
‘I’m not sharing a...room with you,’ she replied, clearly stumbling over the moment she might have said bed.
