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And yet, the idea of marriage was anathema to him. It always had been.
‘It would never be real,’ he heard himself say, the acquiescence close to agreement, so her eyes widened with triumph.
‘I don’t want real.’
He swore under his breath, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘I mean it, Theresa. If we were to do this, you would be nothing to me. The kid sister of a dear friend. Nothing more.’
Her eyes glinted with an emotion he didn’t recognise, determination clamping her features into a mask of resolve. ‘As always,’ she said with a terse nod. ‘So tell me what you need? What can I offer to get you to say yes?’
He was alone. Utterly and completely. His best friend had died—Stavros had been more like a brother to Alex, anyway. He was the only son of an only son. There were no siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins. There was no other Zacharidis in his life. That hadn’t bothered him until his father’s death, and then, the idea of being an island on his own, all his life, had made something shift in his gut. The pledge he’d made, decades earlier, to stay single and childless, to do whatever he could to avoid the hell of his parents’ marriage and his own childhood, no longer seemed as important as a physical need to procreate, a biological urge to see a part of himself in the world, to know that he wasn’t completely alone.
No one could have been more surprised by this urge than Alex, and perhaps he might have quelled it, or fought it, over time. But here was Tessa, offering him a marriage, asking him what he would want out of that marriage... Ever the opportunist—how else did a person build an empire like Alex’s?—he saw a way to turn this to his advantage, and he shamelessly prepared to take it, even as regret was already promising to expand through him, even when he knew Stavros would hate him for this.
He straightened, crossing his arms over his broad chest, aware of the way her eyes soaked up the gesture, landing and remaining on his mid-section before she reluctantly lifted them back to his face.
‘You might not like the conditions I’d have, if I were to agree to this.’
