He grimaced into his glass—she presumed because she was forcing him into being more explicit about what he was talking about.
‘As my wife,’ he enlightened her. Then, when she still continued to stand there blank-faced and frowning in bewilderment, he lifted his eyes until they fixed sardonically on hers and said, ‘I am asking you to marry me, Claire …’
CHAPTER FOUR
CLAIRE released a gasp in stunned disbelief. ‘You want to marry me?’ she repeated.
Then, almost instantly, she decided, No, I’ve heard him wrong, and laughed—or rather emitted a nervous little giggle that she regretted as soon as it left her lips because the effect it had on him made her feel cruel, as his lean face closed up as tight as a drum.
He’s actually serious! she realised. She felt her legs threaten to collapse beneath her and had to move over to one of the dark red recliners and lower herself carefully into it.
‘Please do not misunderstand me,’ he said, suddenly standing high on his mountain of dignity again. ‘I am not suggesting an intimate relationship. Just a—marriage of convenience if you like. Where we will maintain an appearance of intimacy. But that is all …’
No intimacy, she repeated to herself, and as quickly as that her eyes went blank as her imagination shot off to a place where she’d stared into this man’s eyes while his mouth had been fused very intimately with her own.
‘I will, of course, ensure that the—arrangement is a beneficial one for you,’ he coldly continued. ‘The advantages in being the wife of a very wealthy man do, I think, speak for themselves. And it need not be a lifetime thing—although I will have to insist that I become Melanie’s legal father or it will not work.’
‘What won’t work?’ she questioned helplessly.
But he gave a shake of his dark head. ‘I can only reveal that if I gain your agreement,’ he said. ‘But in her becoming my legal daughter,’ he went on as if she hadn’t made the interruption, ‘I will be assuring Melanie’s future—which can only be a good thing for her, since she will also become my sole heir. And if and when you decide that it is time for you to leave me so you can get on with your own life you will not go empty-handed.’
Claire’s mind was starting to scramble. She was sure that what he was actually saying here, in a carefully veiled way, was that he wanted Melanie, but if Claire had to come along with her, then he was prepared to agree to that.
‘I think you’re crazy,’ she told him.
He grimaced, but didn’t argue the point.
‘You don’t even know me!’
This time it was a shrug. ‘I am a man who has always relied on my first impression of people—and I like you, Claire,’ he said, as if that should mean something special to her. ‘I even admire you for the way you have been coping on your own with a child and little to no help from anyone.’
‘I do have help!’ she cried, her hackles rising at his too accurate reading of her.
‘Do you mean—this kind of help?’ he asked, and from his trouser pocket he withdrew a wad of bank notes.
As she stared at them as if she had never so much as laid eyes on paper money before, it took a few moments for it to sink in what he was actually showing her.
Her eyes shot to his. ‘Is that the money Aunt Laura left for me today?’
‘You dropped it on the floor in your flat when you fainted,’ he explained. ‘I picked it up and placed it in my pocket for safekeeping. I counted it earlier; there is exactly one hundred pounds here,’ he informed her grimly. ‘Knowing the dire straits of your circumstances, that you owe at least four times that amount on your rent and being fully aware that you also have to exist somehow, your aunt condescended to leave you a paltry one hundred pounds.’
To Claire, who had nothing, one hundred pounds was an absolute fortune! But it obviously wasn’t to this man. For the way he tossed the money aside made his disgust more than clear.
‘In effect, what she was doing,’ he went on, remorseless in his determination to get his own point across, ‘was wearing you down so that you would begin to look on her proposal more favourably. I got that much out of her while you were half comatose,’ he inserted tightly. ‘And she was trying her best to explain to me why her only relatives were living in that kind of squalor.’
Claire closed her eyes, the word ‘squalor’ cutting right to the heart of her.
‘You already knew about her suggestion before I told you,’ she breathed, feeling the sharp sting of one that had been well and truly tricked by his quiet interest in her during dinner.
Maybe he saw it. ‘I am sorry if that offends you,’ he said. ‘But it is important here that you keep your mind focused on what is best for you and Melanie. And if it has come down to a choice between having the child adopted and my offer, then I think mine is your better option.’
‘But then you would, wouldn’t you?’ Claire pointed out, and came stiffly to her feet. ‘Now I want my baby and I want to go home,’ she informed him with enough ice-cold intent to match any he could dish out.
It made his face snap with irritation. ‘Don’t be foolish!’ he rasped. ‘That is no solution and only promises you more misery!’
I’m miserable now, Claire thought unhappily. ‘I thought you were kind!’ she burst out, blue eyes bright with a pained disillusionment. ‘I thought you genuinely cared about what had happened to me! When all the time while you’ve been shadowing me around today you’ve been plotting this!’
Her voice rose on a clutch of hurt. He winced at the sound of it. ‘I am kind!’ he growled, looking faintly uncomfortable with his own role here.
Claire’s thick huff of scorn made his eyes flash warningly, then, with a grimace, he seemed to be allowing her the right to be scornful.
‘I can be kind,’ he amended huskily, scraped an impatient set of long fingers through his hair, then even amended the amendment. ‘I will be kind,’ he declared in a voice that made it a promise.
Still, it held no sway with Claire. ‘Thank you for the offer but no, thank you,’ she refused, moving stiffly towards the door.
‘Before you walk through that door, Miss Stenson, don’t you think you should take a moment to consider what your decision is going to mean to your sister …?’
Smooth as silk, his voice barely revealing an inflection, his words still had her steps faltering and growing still, the fine quiver touching her soft mouth sign enough that, just like her aunt, he had managed to find the right button to press without having to look very hard for it.
‘But—why?’ she cried, lifting perplexed blue eyes to his deadly ruthless face. ‘If you feel such a strong need to will your possessions to someone, then why not get a family of your own?’
It didn’t make sense—none of it did. Neither did the way he suddenly stiffened up as if he’d been shot. ‘I will never marry again,’ he said. ‘Not in the way you are suggesting anyway.’
‘You’ve been married before?’
‘Yes. Sofia—died six years ago.’ The confirmation was coldly blunt.
‘Oh … I’m so sorry,’ Claire murmured, her expression immediately softening into sympathy.
His did the opposite. ‘I have no wish to discuss it,’ he clipped, and the way he said it was enough to stop Claire from daring to ask any more questions.
But she was curious. Suddenly very curious about the woman he had lost whom he must have loved very deeply if he never wanted to marry again. Not for real, anyway, she dryly tagged onto that.
‘There