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‘Then you assumed wrong,’ Jude told her without skipping a beat. ‘Neither your stepfather nor any of my legal team are aware of the personal terms I require for this to work. There was no need for them to have access to that knowledge because I had already reached agreement in private with the woman I believed I was going to marry.’
‘Your friend…who…er…let you down,’ Tansy mumbled, playing for time while she struggled to absorb what he was telling her. ‘Perhaps you should be sharing those personal terms with me now.’
‘That was always my intention…if you met the initial requirements,’ Jude responded calmly.
Tansy was shaken by the discovery that Calvin had not, actually, been privy to the finer details of the marriage of convenience he had told her about, although he had talked with his usual aplomb as though he knew everything. Of course, it had all sounded too good to be true, she reflected ruefully, all that money upfront just to pretend to be the wife of a very rich man.
‘Sex would feature,’ Jude informed her without a shade of discomfiture. ‘For as long as we would be together it would be a normal marriage.’
‘I’m afraid that would be a deal-breaker for me,’ Tansy responded stiffly. ‘I wasn’t aware that intimacy would be involved in this arrangement, nor do I understand why it should even have to be.’
‘This marriage may well need to last a couple of years. I’m not prepared to be celibate for that length of time. But if I satisfy my needs with another woman, my family will be immediately aware that the marriage is a fake because it is widely known that I believe in marital fidelity,’ Jude explained with the same cool that somehow made her want to slap him, trip him up, in some way jolt him, because his complete calm and control while she was embarrassed and flustered infuriated her.
Hebelieved in marital fidelity? Tansy wanted to scoff, and only with difficulty did she keep her tongue clamped in her mouth. No man who bedded as many different women as he did could possibly believe in marital fidelity! Who did he think he was kidding? Did she really look that credulous?
‘Look, I wasn’t aware of your…er…terms,’ Tansy framed awkwardly, rising with difficulty in her high heels from the sofa, clutching at the arm to steady herself. ‘There’s no point in you telling me any more as I couldn’t agree to what you’ve just suggested.’
Jude sprang upright as well. ‘Are you serious? You’re saying no, over something as trivial as sex?’
Her heart-shaped face reddened. ‘It’s not trivial to me.’
‘Is there someone else in your life? Some reason why you’re taking that attitude?’ Jude probed because, the more he looked at her, the more interested he became, and he could not credit that she would turn him down. No woman had ever turned him down and he had already felt the appreciative weight of her eyes on him, had recognised that spark of mutual attraction for what it was. That streak of individuality he had recognised in her at first glimpse further appealed to him.
‘I’d sooner not get into that,’ Tansy muttered, stepping back as the older woman swept in with a tray and laid it down on the coffee table. ‘But it wouldn’t work for me…’
As his housekeeper departed again, Jude recognised Tansy’s awkwardness and found it as oddly appealing a trait as the long coltish legs she didn’t seem to know what to do with. He gazed down at her, watching her worry at her full lower lip with the edge of her teeth in a nervous gesture and glance up at him from below curling lashes. It wasn’t staged and he found it incredibly sexy and he didn’t know why—didn’t know why it should send a current of primal lust to his groin that made him hard as stone within seconds.
‘We could make it work,’ he heard himself declare. ‘Sit down. We’ll talk about this.’
‘There’s really no point when I’d be wasting your time,’ Tansy mumbled, casting a longing look in the direction of the lift.
‘Tell me why it would be a deal-breaker for you. I’m curious,’ Jude admitted. ‘These days everyone is so casual about sex.’
‘Not everyone,’ Tansy argued, sitting down very stiffly, only staying because he had blocked her path of escape and she didn’t want to come across as childish and immature.
He spread fluid brown hands. ‘Explain,’ he pressed with genuine curiosity.
Tansy lifted her chin although she could feel heat gathering below her skin, but she refused to be intimidated by Jude Alexandris. He was gorgeous and he was rich but neither of those things made him any better than she was. ‘I’m a virgin. I didn’t plan it that way, but the right guy never came along,’ she framed curtly. ‘I do, however, know he’s not going to be you in some mockery of a marriage.’
His black brows drew together and he knew the very minute she spoke that he was going to be that guy, no matter what it cost him, no matter how hard he had to work to achieve it. He was an Alexandris: it was ingrained in his DNA to want what anyone told him he couldn’t have, and he had wanted her the minute he’d laid eyes on her. He didn’t understand why, because she was by no means perfect and he could see that she had a slight overbite and a nose that turned up a little at the tip, giving her a faintly impish expression. And he usually went for blondes and she wasn’t blonde, not properly blonde, and yet that streaky, unruly mane of hers kept on grabbing his attention as the light glimmered over the differing shades. A virgin, though. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to him with a woman of almost twenty-three, particularly one he had already deemed to be a gold-digger. When had he become so cynical that he expected all young women to be cookie-cutter copies of each other?
‘The marriage won’t be a mockery and no woman with me will ever be treated with less than respect,’ Jude countered levelly. ‘Obviously, I would give you time to get to know me. After all, once we’re married, neither one of us will be straying very far from the other in the first few months.’
Tansy reddened even more, unwarily connecting with those tawny golden eyes locked to her, feeling the butterflies leap and jump in her tummy, her nipples snap tight inside her bra, horrendously aware of that attraction she couldn’t deny or stop in its tracks. ‘It’s not possible, just not possible,’ she proclaimed uncomfortably, shifting a hand in denial when he offered her the coffee on the tray, his manners impeccable even in a tense moment. ‘I’m sorry for wasting your time.’
Jude was astonished by her determined departure. Firstly, people never walked out on him before he had finished with them. Secondly, people generally bent over backwards to please him. Thirdly, the female sex in particular were his biggest fans.
His long powerful stride caught him up with her before she could step into the waiting lift. He reached for her hand. ‘We could make this work,’ he told her levelly. ‘Give me your phone.’
‘Why?’
‘So that you can contact me when you change your mind,’ Jude responded.
‘Are you always this confident?’ Tansy unlocked her phone and gave it to him solely to be polite.
Brilliant dark golden eyes raked her troubled face as he punched in the number. ‘Always.’
As Tansy vanished into the lift, Jude was perplexed, striving to understand her behaviour, because it didn’t make the smallest sense that a woman willing to marry him for money would baulk at the inclusion of a little sex. A venal nature was rarely accompanied by much in the way of finer feelings. As a rule, Jude had discovered, gold-diggers were very single-minded, willing to do and say anything and deceive anyone to enrich themselves. Could she really be a virgin or was that some kind of ruse? His suspicious nature was honed by having been for years a prime target of female manipulative wiles.
