She looked a little crazed, in an engaging way. His heated reaction to a mass of glossy hair and a blush made him furious with himself. He didn’t like this woman. She might be attractive but she was flighty and couldn’t be trusted to keep important promises. This flaw in her character had caused him no end of embarrassment. He hadn’t been able to go anywhere in the city without being ribbed that he’d been “left at the altar,” not to mention all the pointing and staring from strangers.
“Well,” she demanded, aiming that lethal little chin at his heart. “Are you planning to be here?”
With a studied nonchalance he didn’t feel, Niko shrugged his hands into his jeans pockets. “If you’ll recall, I’m on vacation.”
“Don’t you have a place in town?” Her voice had gone high-pitched and shrill. She was truly alarmed about this turn of events. That knowledge sent a rush of malevolent pleasure through him. “My place in town needs repair work,” he said. “I’ll be staying here for the duration.”
“Duration?” she squeaked.
“Three weeks.”
Her horrified expression almost made him smile.
“But—but that’s how long…” Her voice broke and she didn’t finish. They both knew she needed to be there that long. He watched her swallow several times, obviously trying to get her voice under control. “You lied to me,” she whispered at last.
“Did I?” He challenged her with his most innocent expression.
“Yes!” She glared, clearly attempting to kill him with that look. “When you said you wouldn’t be here. You lied!”
“Charles told you he wouldn’t be here.”
“But he—you—allowed me to assume—”
“What you assume, Miss Angelis, is hardly my fault.”
She blinked, then her stare grew wider, as though she’d had a distasteful thought. “Do you think you need to keep an eye on me? Is that why you’re staying? You don’t trust me to get the job done?”
That wasn’t the reason, but the idea had merit. “Why would I need to do that?” he asked. “When have I ever known you to break your word?”
She opened her lips, but plainly shaken by his direct shot, couldn’t seem to form words. Niko gave her no time to recoup and dropped a bomb. “The fact is, this is a beautiful piece of property. I own it, so why shouldn’t I stay? After all, this was supposed to be my honeymoon.”
He heard her guttural moan and knew he’d drawn blood. “This is—this is bad!” She rubbed her temples as though trying to ward off a headache. “I can’t take your insults for three weeks. I can’t even take them for three minutes.” The butler came down the steps. At the sound of his approach, she whirled. “Excuse me, sir.” She waved frantically. “Please, get my bags. I’m leaving.”
“I thought you’d bail out, again,” Niko said, baiting her.
“Bail out?” She whirled, giving him another direct shot with that lethal chin. “How dare you say I’m bailing out! It’s nothing of the sort! I simply won’t subject myself to your mocking and insulting, and if you even thought I might, you’re—you’re demented!”
“I never thought you would,” he lied. He knew damn well what she would do, and stared her down as she blustered and stammered, trying to convince herself she wasn’t a quitter. She might have been able to bail out on him and their marriage, but she had never met him. Her job was another thing entirely. She knew her job, and was passionate about her work. He’d done enough research on her to be sure of that. She would stay, or Niko Varos wasn’t the hotshot international financial consultant people thought he was.
“N-nothing—” she stammered, “not this house, not any house—is worth—” she indicated the faded grandeur of an entry hall, decorated in retro-fifties camp “—worth putting up with your—with your…”
Her glance trailed her broad gesture. Before she completed her sweep, she stilled. Her lips sagged and her distressed expression changed into one of abject horror, as though she only now absorbed the scandalous violation done to this mansion and its proud Victorian roots.
The fine old wood floor had been painted in a green-and-yellow checkerboard pattern. The wallpaper bore a splashy, modern art look Niko assumed were supposed to be untidy piles of pipe. The dangling light fixture consisted of three beach-ball-size yellow, plastic orbs. Beneath them sat a sprawling amoeba-shaped table with a marbled mirror top, supported by spindly metal legs.
She covered her mouth with both hands and strangled a gasp as she staggered around in a circle. Niko watched as her glance fell to a side wall. A round, molded plywood table stood between two doors. Atop its indented surface squatted a funky lamp made to resemble a big lightbulb. Kalli bit her lip, her glance skidding to another wall where a yellow, rectangular clock, the size of a breakfast tray dominated.
The clock’s hands were disconcertingly off-center. An oversize, red secondhand tick-tick-ticked as she stared, wide-eyed. Niko had the sense each jerk of that red, mechanical arm boomed in her head as she suffered, second by painful second. He had to fight a knowing grin as he observed her sluggish, stumbling body language. Only seeing her scream and collapse in a traumatized heap would have made it more obvious she was experiencing a gut-wrenching ache to rescue the place from its gross defilement.
“Cute, isn’t it?” he taunted, well aware he was being cruel. “I especially like the lead-pipe motif in the wallpaper.”
“Oh—dear heaven…” she whimpered, shaking her head. “It’s so—so wrong. It’s dreadful.”
“But is it dreadful enough to endure a brief captivity in a hell-on-earth?”
She stood with her back to him, her shoulders slightly drooped. He sensed her turmoil and gave her a moment to agonize over the knowledge that beneath layers of wrong-headed embellishments a masterpiece cried out to be liberated. He could almost hear her thinking, I could save this house. I must save it! He pursed his lips to suppress a shrewd grin.
The thud of his butler’s footsteps drew his gaze once again to the central staircase. The liveried man descended, carrying a suitcase and shoulder tote.
Niko’s attention slid to his angsting ex. She, too, had heard the butler and looked up. Niko waited, silent. At the moment, it would be unwise to remind her of his unwelcome presence. In order for her to make the decision that fit with his ploy, she needed to think of the house and only the house.
“I—uh…”
Niko watched her straighten her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” She moved toward the stairs, addressing the butler. “I’m staying, after all.” She rushed up the steps and took the bags. “Please show me to my room.”
Belkin glanced at his employer, his expression pinched with confusion.
Niko nodded, experiencing a rush of satisfaction. He allowed himself a crafty grin as he watched her trudge, stiff-backed and squeamish, into the lion’s den.
Kalli unpacked her bag in a bizarre trancelike state. She walked back and forth from her suitcase to the chartreuse dresser with its aluminum top and side trim and cane inset drawers.
As she put her belongings away her brain screamed, Three weeks? You’ve agreed to stay under the same roof with a man who obviously hates you for three whole weeks? What are you using your brain for, Kalli? To keep your skull from imploding?
After a sound tongue-lashing from the logical section of her cranium, the artistic quarter leaped into the fray and lashed back.