heart sank, for, just as she was quite sure that he did not want to marry her, she was no more eager to become his unwanted wife.
‘What a very fortunate young woman you are! Don’t keep your bridegroom waiting.’ Smirking with derisive amusement, Theo Demakis urged his reluctant granddaughter across the hall towards the drawing room. ‘Now we’ve caught him, don’t let your prize slip the net!’
The instant Prudence entered the large, over-furnished room, she collided with shimmering golden eyes and knew beyond doubt that Nikolos had heard her grandfather’s scornful taunt. Even while she tried to make herself look away, another less sensible part of her wanted to savour every aspect of his appearance. Alas, the well-cut dark suit he wore teamed with a white shirt made him look distinctly intimidating. She had never seen him in such formal clothing: he might have been dressed to attend a funeral, she thought dismally, scanning the stony impassivity of his demeanour. Nerves made her stumble over the corner of a rug and bump her hip on a small table. She felt hideously like a baby elephant penned up in a confined space.
‘Oh, my goodness…sorry,’ she muttered, righting the rocking table with a frantic hand.
Nikolos had noticed that before; she said sorry even when she didn’t do anything wrong. He surveyed her from the floor up with rigorous thoroughness. In true Demakis style, she had not grown up but out and she barely reached the top of his chest; she was small and dumpy. She wore drab layers like an old lady: a brown skirt that almost reached her ankles, a long, loose white over-shirt, a black knee-length wrap cardigan. It was impossible to tell what lay beneath all that cloaking fabric. He imagined telling her to take it all off so that he could see exactly what he was getting. Her grandfather wouldn’t object. Demakis was a vicious bastard. Even so, the older man had spelt out the grim reality that his granddaughter was in love and eager to marry the object of her affections.
‘Do you have to stare at me?’ Prudence breathed tautly.
‘I never took the time to look at you before.’ Nikolos continued to study her with unapologetic intensity. She was going to be his wife. She might as well get the message now that he would do exactly as he liked and that baklava was off the menu for the foreseeable future. She was not fat, he told himself, just a little rounded and solid. He continued to mentally score her attributes. Lots and lots of long, shiny chestnut-brown hair the colour of an English autumn. OK, a positive at last. Skin with the flush of a peach and perfect-another plus. Eyes that were the soft blue of a winter sky and full of unhappiness.
‘Please…’ she gasped urgently.
Nikolos saw the glimmer of tears in her strained gaze and removed his attention from her again. He had seen more than he wanted to see and he was angry with her for having so little
Prudence was trembling. She felt horribly like some slave girl on the sale block and was vaguely surprised Nikolos hadn’t checked her teeth. His hard self-assurance took her equally aback for she had assumed that the situation would bring down the barriers of polite reserve between them. In the face of such odds, his forbidding cool was daunting. ‘I didn’t want this…if there was any other way…’ Her nervous, apologetic voice ran quickly out of steam.
His handsome mouth took on a sardonic edge, for he was not impressed by her claim. ‘But there isn’t. We should talk about terms.’
Her long brown lashes lifted. ‘Terms?’ she said blankly.
‘This is an arranged marriage and we’re almost strangers. It will work better if we are honest with each other now.’
Prudence breathed in deeply. ‘Can’t we just behave like friends?’
Against the backdrop of the family lawyers still battling to hammer out a financial agreement with his mother distraught and his father wretched with guilt, that question struck Nikolos as utterly naive. He could only think that she was as thick as a brick. ‘Friends don’t marry and have children. I need to know what you expect from me as a husband.’
Discomfiture at that reference to children tensed Prudence’s small, taut frame. ‘I know that I’m not the wife you’d have picked for yourself. I suppose we’ll just learn to manage as we go along.’
‘That’s a recipe for chaos.’
‘But you wouldn’t like rules.’
His keen amber scrutiny flared in surprise at that level of perception and arrowed back to her. No, not thick as a brick, he registered, a frown of disconcertion momentarily pleating his winged ebony brows.
He reached for her hand. ‘I have a ring…it belonged to my grandmother. Of course, if you don’t like it, you can-’
‘No…no, it’s lovely; really, really lovely.’ Rosy colour warmed her cheeks and rare pleasure enfolded her. The ruby and diamond ring slid onto her finger as though it belonged there. His gift of a family heirloom surprised and moved her. ‘I wasn’t expecting this…’
‘It would be fair to say that life is currently full of the unexpected.’ When Nikolos had flatly refused to buy an engagement ring, his father had persuaded him to bring the ruby. Symeon had, however, forecast that Prudence would be offended by the presentation of an unfashionable, if valuable, piece of jewellery that had belonged to someone else first.
‘Thank you…’ Prudence’s voice was husky with emotion. She studied the ring from all angles, admiring the deep scarlet glow of the ruby and the glitter of the diamonds. That it fitted as though it had been made for her struck her as a good omen.
Discomfited by the level of her enthusiasm, Nikolos shrugged in a very masculine way and stayed silent. It was dawning on him that, apart from a shabby plastic watch, he had never seen her wear a single piece of jewellery and that it was perfectly possibly she did not own any. Suddenly he wished he had bought a proper ring for her. ‘Pudding…’ he breathed with uncharacteristic awkwardness. ‘Do you mind if I call you that?’
‘No, of course not…I’ve always hated the name I was born with.’ The nickname that had embarrassed her suddenly acquired acceptability on his lips and seemed more in the nature of an endearing pet name. ‘I’ll be the best wife I can be…’
Nikolos almost groaned out loud. He knew she was dying to hear him say the same thing back on his own behalf but he would not lie to her. He was a long way from achieving an accepting state of grace, if he ever could. He didn’t want to marry her. He didn’t want to be married, full stop. Nor did he want a baby, he conceded with corrosive bitterness. Nothing was likely to alter those irrefutable facts.
Three short weeks later, almost lost in a frothy sea of handmade lace and expensive silken fabric, Prudence walked down the aisle on her grandfather’s arm to become a wife. Although she took small, sensible steps, she was mentally floating on air and overjoyed to be marrying the man she loved. Not a single doubt clouded her optimistic outlook.
As the day moved on, however, harsh reality was destined to deliver a series of knockout blows to her rosy hopes for the future Within hours, her happiness would be destroyed and her trust shattered. When her bridegroom drank himself unconscious at the reception and had to be carried into the marital bedroom, only Theo Demakis was tactless enough to laugh. Hurt and humiliated beyond all bearing, Prudence suppressed all recollection of ever having thought that they might have had a real marriage because she was mortified by her naivety. In spite of that common-sense attitude, the wedding night that never happened would still be the longest night of her life…
CHAPTER ONE
‘I CAN’T MAKE it to your party,’ Nikolos told the woman reclining on the bed, pulling on the jacket of his suit with the fluid grace that distinguished all his movements.
‘Please…pretty please…’ Naked but for a turquoise silk wrap, Tania Benson leapt up and curled her arms round his neck, deploying her long, rangy, supermodel body like a lethal weapon of persuasion. ‘I want you to be there.’
‘No strings,’ Nikolos reminded her, irritated by her persistence. Their relationship was basic and not exclusive,
