“I have never considered you all that malleable.” If anything, she was the one person who could check him, whom he would listen to criticism from.
She didn’t answer, just made a proceed motion with her hand, before clasping it with the other tightly around her curled legs once again. Oh, she might listen, but this wary Kayla was certainly in a different place than the friend he was used to.
“One of the reasons you were so upset about my hiring Genevieve was because you believed you would of necessity be pushed from my life. Is that correct?” Despite her actions of running off to New York to make some kind of subdeal with Sebastian Hawk, Andreas and Kayla’s friendship was important to her too.
Realization of that fact was very comforting to him.
Kayla’s lovely full lips twisted. “Yes.”
“You believe I should spend my off-hours with my wife.” If that wife was not his best friend, he still wasn’t sure he bought the premise, but it was clear Kayla did.
“Yes.” Definitely cranky again.
And why that should spark a renewal of his libido, he had no idea, but then Kayla had always affected him differently than other women. What he would normally have no patience for he found absolutely essential in her.
Kayla noticed, her eyes widening and then narrowing with a frown. “If we’re going to have this discussion of yours, could you put something on, please?”
“Of course.” He went to get one of the hotel’s lavish terry robes.
It did not bother him a bit that his nakedness was as distracting for her as hers would have been for him. It gave him hope.
Belting the robe, he said, “Even now you do not trust me not to allow you to be pushed aside.”
“You’ve got your plans.” Shrugging, Kayla looked away. “You’re on a schedule.”
“Plans that include marriage and a family.” Was she still not getting it?
“Yes.” This time the word sounded torn from her, not annoyed, but pained.
Again. Still. It did not matter which.
He wanted that pain gone. Now. “There is a simple solution to both our dilemmas.”
“You think so?” She was looking at him again, her eyes molten silver and blazing with anger.
Anger he did not understand, but was just as determined to extinguish as the pain. “I know it.”
“What is this simple solution?” Her concrete disbelief in him having any solution that would appease her was written into every lovely aspect of her face.
He would prove his problem-solving skills were up to the task. “Marry me.”
KAYLA’S LIMBS WENT KERSPLUNG, her arms flailing of their own accord, her legs shooting off the chair, nearly taking the rest of her body with them. Shock deprived her lungs of oxygen as the towel she was covered with fell away at her body’s jerky movements.
“What?” she demanded, absolutely sure she was hearing things.
Deep emerald eyes widened at her reaction, Andreas dropping to his knees beside her chair again. “It is the only thing that makes any sense.”
Even fully covered by the luxurious robe, he was still a risk to her equilibrium. If the topic of their conversation hadn’t been so shocking, she would have lost her train of thought with his nearness. Andreas Kostas as a friend was dangerous to her heart and sanity, but this close? This intimate? He was pure kryptonite.
“No... You don’t know what you’re saying.” She grabbed at the bath sheet, pulling it back around her, pulling her knees back up, curling into herself and staring at him with near hatred for making her hope when she knew he didn’t mean it. “You’re not being serious.”
“Believe me.” Warm, masculine hands covered her now-cold fingers and squeezed. “I have never been more so.”
“But, Andreas, Genevieve would never approve of me for you.”
“I fired Genevieve.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” His thumbs caressed her chilled hands, seducing her with warmth.
“You don’t want to marry me.” If he had, he would have done so six years ago. Right?
She’d finally come to terms with the truth of their relationship. He couldn’t turn everything on its head. Not now.
“But I do.” His smile was as close to self-deprecating as she’d ever seen on this arrogant Greek-American’s features. “I think you’ll realize if you consider it that you will find marriage to me a good thing.”
Was he kidding? He was the one person she’d always wanted to call family, but this made no sense. And she said so. Again.
“On the contrary, it makes all kinds of sense.”
“Oh, really?” she managed to snark past her very slowly dissipating shock. “How is that?”
His smile was devastating. “We are already family. This would simply make it official.”
Did he really believe that? The expression of sincerity in his emerald gaze said he did.
She shook her head. “But you wanted a bride pimp. For the perfect wife.”
“You fulfill every one of my requirements.”
“Requirements?” He had requirements? Wasn’t that kind of clinical? Did he think marriage was a business contract?
Clearly, the answer was yes.
“Preferences. However you want to put it.”
Yes, to Andreas, any preference he evinced, he would consider in reality to be a requirement. Kayla almost had it in her to pity Genevieve if she’d kept the position of matchmaker for such an exacting client.
“I don’t see how.”
“How what?”
“Focus, Andreas,” she said with some asperity. “That I could fulfill your requirements. I don’t have social position or family standing.”
She didn’t have any family at all, except him apparently.
He jumped up and crossed the room, coming back for the second time that day brandishing his phone. “It’s all right there.”
She looked down at the screen. It was opened to an interview intake form for Genevieve’s matchmaking service. He’d already scrolled to the question that asked Andreas to list his top-five preferences for his future partner.
He had made a neat, succinct list.
Practical, not given to emotional displays.
Must have own career.
Must have post-high-school education.
Not Greek.
Must want children.
Kayla shook her head. “Why not Greek?” was the first thing she thought to ask.
Andreas made a sound somewhere between disgust and anger, averting his gaze for a moment before meeting her eyes again, his a window into an old torment. “When I was in Greece, forced to live with my father, forced to take his name, forced to do so many things, I heard over and over again how one day I would marry a good Greek girl, someone who would do the Georgas name proud.”