‘But—’
‘There’s no alternative, unless you happen to have the money sitting stashed away. That is, unless you want his pretty face altered out of all recognition?’ His eyelashes suddenly narrowed, so that his eyes looked like shards of blue ice. ‘These people can be dangerous, you know.’
Lexi knew about danger. She’d grown up surrounded by it. And hadn’t that been one of the best things about her sudden fame—that she’d been able to escape from the dark and seedy side of life? The last thing she wanted was for Jason to be catapulted back to that place, where nothing seemed safe. She looked at Xenon’s hard features, realising that he was offering to help. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me until you’ve heard what it entails,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay off his debt for him—but this time, he doesn’t go back to his old life and repeat the same old pattern. And neither does he go into some fancy clinic where he uses that abundance of Gibson charm to manipulate his counsellors.’
‘So what are you proposing he does?’ she questioned. ‘Apply for a personality transplant?’
‘Nothing quite so drastic. My solution is simple. He needs to change. To work his body like a man. To see the sun come up in the morning and put his head on the pillow at night, instead of spending it in the casino, like a zombie.’ His eyes bored into her. ‘And maybe he wants to change because he has agreed to go to work for one my cousins in Greece.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘On one of the family’s vineyards,’ he continued. ‘Your darling brother has agreed to do some hard, physical labour for the first time in his life.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘He’s agreed?’
‘I didn’t give him very much choice in the matter,’ he snapped. ‘It was my condition for bailing him out.’
Lexi felt a worrying see-saw of emotions as she took in what he’d just told her. He could be so hard and indomitable that it was all too easy to forget his streak of kindness.
But he hadn’t been kind when she’d most needed him to be, had he? He hadn’t been there for her at all when she’d reached out for him. He had pushed her away until there had been nothing but distance left between them any more.
‘So...why come here and tell me all this?’ she questioned.
He gave a cold, hard smile. ‘No ideas, Lex? You think I should bail out your brother just out of the goodness of my heart?’
She met the obdurate look in his eyes and a whisper of fear began to creep over her skin as she realised what lay behind his words. ‘You mean...there’s a price?’
‘There is always a price,’ he said softly. ‘I would have thought you’d have learned that by now. And the price is that I want you back as my wife.’
Lexi’s lips opened as if in slow motion, though no words emerged. She could feel the sudden thunder of her heart and a great rush of unexpected excitement because hadn’t some rogue part of her always dreamt of just this moment? That Xenon would come back and tell her he was willing to forgive her for walking out. Willing perhaps to try again.
But even as hope flared inside her with a bright, sharp heat, she forced herself to quash it. Because their marriage could never be saved. She knew that. The past held too much sorrow and there could be no future. They might go through the motions of reconciliation—but now a darkness lay at the heart of what they’d once had. And Xenon would never be able to tolerate it.
‘Your wife?’ she echoed.
His mouth hardened. ‘There’s no need to look so horrified,’ he said. ‘It’s purely a short-term measure.’
Lexi only just stopped herself from shuddering at her own foolishness, terrified that he would know the crazy thoughts she’d been entertaining. Did she really think that Xenon would be willing to try again? That a man that proud and powerful would be willing to forget the fact that she’d ‘humiliated’ him with her desertion.
Blankly, she stared at him. ‘But why? Why on earth would you want to resurrect our marriage?’
Xenon watched the way she lifted her shoulders in confusion and the gesture made the fabric of her shirt ride over the generous curve of her breasts. The eyes behind her glasses were the silver-green colour of eucalyptus leaves—only right now they were dark with bewilderment. And suddenly he felt a stab of lust so powerful that he could have pressed her down onto the carpet and made her come alive in his arms.