The Wedding Night Debt. Cathy Williams

we should both now look to the future.’

      ‘The future being divorce.’

      ‘I’m not going to get into bed with you for money, Dio,’ Lucy told him flatly. For a whisper of a second, she had a vivid image of what it would be like to make love to him—but then, it wouldn’t be love, would it? And what was the point of sex without love?

      ‘So you’re choosing the poverty option.’ He pushed his bowl to one side and relaxed back in the chair, angling his big body so that he could extend his legs to the side.

      ‘If I have to. I can make do. I...’

      ‘You...what?’ His ears pricked up as he detected the hesitancy in her voice.

      ‘I have plans,’ Lucy said evasively. And she wasn’t going to share them with him, wasn’t going to let her fledgling ambitions be put to the test by him.

      ‘What plans?’

      ‘Nothing very big. Or important. I just obviously need to think about the direction my life is going in.’ She stood up and briskly began clearing the table. She made sure not to catch his eye.

      Dio watched her jerky movements as she busied herself around the kitchen, tidying, wiping the counters, doing everything she could to make sure the conversation was terminated.

      So she wanted out and she had plans.

      To Dio’s way of thinking, that could only mean one thing. A man. Maybe not a rich one, but a man. Lurking in the background. Waiting to get her into bed if he hadn’t already done so.

      The fake marriage was going to be replaced by a relationship she had probably been cultivating behind his back for months. Maybe—and the red mist descended when he considered this option—she had been cultivating this relationship from way back when. Maybe it had been right there on the back burner, set to one side while she’d married him and had done what she had to do for the sake of her father.

      It might have come as a shock that she would face walking away empty handed but clearly, whatever her so-called plans were, they were powerful enough to override common sense.

      Faced with this, Dio understood that first and foremost he would find out what those plans were.

      Simple.

      He could either follow her himself or he could employ someone to do it. He preferred the former option. Why allow someone else to do something you were perfectly capable of handling yourself?

      The past year or so of their sterile non-relationship faded under the impetus of an urgent need that obliterated everything else.

      ‘I’m going to be in New York for the next few days,’ Dio said abruptly, standing up and moving towards the kitchen door where he stood for a few seconds, hand on the door knob, his dark face cool and unreadable. ‘While you’re still wearing a wedding ring on your finger, I could insist that you accompany me, because I will be attending some high level social events. But, under these very special circumstances, you’ll be pleased to hear that I won’t.’

      ‘New—New York?’ Lucy faltered. ‘I can’t remember New York being in the diary until next month...’

      ‘Change of plan.’ Dio shrugged. He stared at her, working out what he planned to do the following day and how. ‘You can stay here and spend the time thinking about the proposition I’ve put to you.’

      ‘I’ve already thought about it. I don’t need to do any more thinking.’

      Over his dead body. ‘Then,’ he said smoothly, ‘you can stay here and spend the time contemplating the consequences...’