‘And what makes you so sure of yourself, Mr Volakis?’
‘Your reasons for marrying me five years ago.’ His arms tightened around her. ‘If you were truly after my money, why didn’t you ever spend any?’
‘Because the only thing I really wanted wasn’t for sale.’ She hesitated, her eyes soft as she laid bare her heart. ‘I wanted you to let me close. I wanted you to let me love you. And I wanted you to love me back.’
‘I did. And if I wasn’t so stubborn, I might have realised it earlier,’ he confessed with a groan. ‘If you hadn’t kissed Farrer to make me jealous, if you’d flung accusations at me instead of trying to beat me at my ow
n game, we might never have reached the point we did. But I know now that I should have trusted you.’
‘You’re forgetting Marina,’ Lauranne pointed out. ‘She still would have found a way to break us up.’
He grimaced. ‘But I would have listened to you if I hadn’t been so enraged with jealousy.’
‘You fired me on the spot.’
He groaned and ran a hand over his face. ‘Don’t remind me. All I can say in my defence is that I was so shattered by the effect you had on me that I wanted to get you out of my life. You were the first woman who had ever made me believe in love and I was afraid of it.’
She reached up and touched his cheek with her fingers, her expression soft. ‘Your father was unlucky, Zander.’
‘I know.’ His eyes burned into hers. ‘Whereas I’m extremely lucky, agape mou—’
‘So what happens now?’ Her eyes were sparkling as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
His eyes dropped to her mouth, his expression uncertain. ‘How would you feel about having full and personal responsibility for my public image for the rest of our lives?’
Wanting to tease him just a little longer, she lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’re employing me full time?’
He gave a frustrated groan and lowered his mouth to hers. ‘I’m asking you to stay married to me,’ he murmured against her lips, ‘for ever. I want you. By my side. As my wife.’
She kissed him back, deeply touched by his uncharacteristically emotional words. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘yes, yes—’
He dragged his mouth away from hers long enough to mutter, ‘Farrer will kill me—’ and then kissed her again long and deep until she clutched at his shirt, breathless and dizzy.
‘I think he’s washed his hands of me,’ she confessed, ‘and he definitely thinks I have very bad taste in men.’
Zander gave an unsteady laugh. ‘You probably do. Why else would you want to stay married to me? Apart from the great sex and the credit card without a limit?’
She grinned. ‘I probably shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No. I deserved it. I gave you no reason to think the relationship was anything other than physical even though the evidence to the contrary was staring us both in the face. I didn’t recognise love then.’ He kissed her again. ‘But I do now. And I’m going to be uttering words of love until I lose my voice.’
Utterly enchanted by this new, demonstrative Zander, Lauranne pulled away from him wanting to hear more. ‘When did you finally realise you loved me?’
‘It crept up on me,’ he confessed, ‘but I had a fairly strong inkling when I found myself telling you all sorts of personal details that I never tell anyone and then being unable to leave you alone even for one moment. It may have escaped your notice but even when I was using the laptop I could have reached out and touched you.’
She smiled. It hadn’t escaped her notice.
‘You are a major distraction,’ he said ruefully, ‘and I think with you by my side the business may well crash and burn. Telling Kouropoulos that we were staying married was a wild impulse that startled me as much as it did you. I think subconsciously I was asking you in public because I was afraid that if I did it in private you might refuse me.’
‘I didn’t think you meant it.’ Lauranne tipped her head on one side, her smile teasing. ‘So why did you walk away earlier?’
‘Because I didn’t trust myself around Tom,’ he confessed ruefully. ‘And because I thought you might want to take his advice and go with him.’
‘But you came back for me—’
He gave a helpless shrug. ‘I decided that I’m not very good at self-sacrifice,’ he confessed. ‘You’re mine. I didn’t intend to give you up without a fight.’
‘If you’d stayed to fight then maybe Kouropoulos would have agreed to sell you the island,’ she said regretfully and a deep voice interrupted them both.