Relief flooded through Katie, who slumped back in her seat. ‘That’s marvellous,’ she breathed happily. She supposed with his looks and money there must be any number of women out there willing and eager to overlook his overbearing and egotistical character. ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’
‘You wouldn’t know her.’
In other words, we don’t move in the same circles…what a prize snob he is, she thought contemptuously.
‘Why didn’t you tell Tom that you were married?’
Now that was something Katie had asked herself quite a lot recently. None of the answers she’d come up with showed her in a very favourable light. ‘It slipped my mind,’ she responded flippantly.
He threw her a wry look.
She sighed and lifted her slender shoulders in a gesture of defeat. ‘Well, I didn’t feel married,’ she told him crossly. ‘And if you must know it’s not an incident in my life I feel particularly proud of.’
And if she had told him, she’d have had to tell him why she’d done it, and would do again, and that wasn’t an option. Nobody but Harvey knew the truth and she intended for Peter’s sake it would stay that way. Her brother had paid the ultimate price for his mistake—with his life.
‘I needed that money. It was a means to an end, no more, no less,’ she told him coldly. ‘And I had hoped that Harvey could organise things so that Tom would never have to know.’
‘So your marriage is to be based on lies…excellent foundation.’
Katie flushed angrily at his sarcasm. ‘I never lied to Tom. If he had asked me if I was married I would have told him.’
‘So, a marriage based on half truths…I congratulate you, a massive improvement!’
Katie inhaled sharply. ‘God, you’re so sharp I’m amazed you don’t cut yourself.’ I should be so lucky, she thought viciously. ‘I take it your girlfriend knows you’re already married?’ she added innocently.
Katie had the pleasure of seeing what appeared in the subdued light to be a faint flush highlight his high cheekbones as his jaw tightened with annoyance.
She folded her arms and smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a no, shall I?’
‘It isn’t the same thing at all.’
‘Gosh!’ she gasped, widening her eyes. ‘That’s so spooky. I must be psychic—I had the strangest feeling you were going to say that.’
His long, lean fingers tightened on the steering wheel. ‘Theos!’ he thundered…the flush of anger was no longer in doubt. ‘You will not speak to me in this fashion.’
‘Do people always do as you say?’ Katie wondered, crossing one ankle elegantly over the other.
‘Yes!’ he bit back.
‘That must be boring.’
‘Why are you marrying Tom?’
‘For the usual reasons people get married.’
‘You mean you’re pregnant?’ He shrugged as Katie gave an outraged gasp. ‘So you’re not pregnant.’
‘Even if I was there is no shame in having a baby outside marriage.’
‘My father might not agree with you there,’ Nikos inserted drily as he imagined the uproar that would occur if he produced an heir but no wife. ‘And,’ he continued, his brows drawing together over the bridge of his nose, ‘you’re not in love with him. That leaves—’
‘Who says I’m not in love with Tom?’
His low-pitched, mocking laugh made her prickle with antagonism.
‘I can only conclude,’ he added, with the air of someone who had cut through the crap and was adding two and two, ‘that your nest egg has run out? Mind you, if you have many designer outfits like that one, it’s hardly surprising,’ he observed, allowing his eyes to briefly skim the silky blue dress and the pleasing contours it covered. ‘It is a CJ Malone, isn’t it?’ Caitlin, he reflected, would have appreciated seeing one of her creations worn by someone who possessed the sort of unlikely proportions designers had in mind when they created outfits.
‘Probably.’ Katie, who wouldn’t have recognised a CJ Malone if she fell over it, replied vaguely. She wasn’t about to admit to him that she was wearing a hand-me-down.
‘I know a lot of women with expensive tastes, but none of them who wouldn’t know if they were wearing a CJ Malone.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m bad on names.’
‘But good at signing cheques. I suppose once you’ve married for money once it’s easier the second time?’ he mused, slowing at an unsigned crossroads.
‘Left,’ she replied tersely. ‘You’re pretty handy with the lofty disdain for someone who married for money himself, but then I suppose arranged marriages are in your blood.’
Katie was pleased to see his taut jaw tighten, presumably with anger—she hoped with anger. She wasn’t quite sure why she wanted to make him angry and, anyway, it was hard to be sure from this angle if she’d succeeded, because his eyes were screened by the sweep of his luxuriant lashes, which cast a shadow across the high plane of his cheekbones. He had the sort of face that was aesthetically pleasing from any angle.
She arranged her own features in an expression of mock sympathy. ‘What’s wrong, Nikos? Did the idea of getting your hands dirty like the rest of us seem too sordid when Daddy withdrew his support?’
He slid her a look of smouldering dislike before taking the road she had indicated. ‘I’m not about to explain myself to you.’
‘Ditto,’ she added nastily. Of all the men in the world for Harvey to produce for her to marry, why, oh, why had it been this one? Sometimes fate had a very poor sense of humour.
‘Theos!’ he ejaculated raggedly. ‘You are the most poisonous female I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter!’ he gritted. ‘It will be well worth the inconvenience to myself to prevent you ruining my friend’s life.’
Katie stiffened as an icy shiver slid up her spine. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I think you know exactly what I mean.’
‘Pretend just for a moment that I’m not a mind-reader.’ She was unable to conceal the fearful quiver in her voice.
‘If I thought for one moment you would make Tom happy I would give you this divorce.’
‘I will make Tom happy. I love him…’ she declared loudly.
A scornful sound vibrated in Nikos’s brown throat. ‘I watched you together; you do not love Tom,’ he announced calmly.
‘And you’d know, I suppose?’
‘I know how a woman in love acts, and you were not that woman. There was no passion in your eyes when they touched his; you act as if he’s your brother,’ he sneered scornfully.
‘We don’t all wear our hearts on our sleeves and there is a lot more to marriage than sex!’
‘Both these things are true and I agree that many successful marriages are based on more pragmatic reasons; I have no problem with that, so long as both parties enter into the arrangement with their eyes open.’
‘Like us.’
‘Unless you are planning on not sharing Tom’s bed there are some very obvious differences, but, yes, on your part there are very obviously similarities. However, unlike Tom, I was not madly in love with you,’ he ground out sarcastically. ‘It is your hypocrisy in pretending you are marrying for some pure and elevated reasons that I despise. The