‘I have your phone. Your bag’s being unpacked together with all your other possessions, which the removal company delivered this morning.’
Yet again she hadn’t been consulted. Choking bile rose in her throat. There was nothing at her father’s she wanted. Her life was meant to be starting elsewhere. Fresh, clean. Something she could create for herself, not borrow from others.
‘How efficient. And unnecessary. I won’t be here long.’
‘You’ll be here as long as I need you.’
His voice was all quiet intent. They were deep in the house now. Away from everyone—especially prying eyes.
‘That’s something we need to discuss,’ she said.
He looked down upon her. Cold. Unreachable. Her heart slammed into her ribs.
‘And we will.’
‘Where?’ she asked as they stopped before a set of double doors.
Christo turned the handles and thrust them open. ‘In the bedroom, koukla mou.’
* * *
‘I’m not sleeping with you!’
Her words were a breathy gasp as she stopped, rocking back on her feet.
Christo ignored her and strode inside, a hot burst of irritation running through him. What was she thinking? He’d never force himself on her.
Her presumption that he would made him reckless.
‘Really, Thea? It is our wedding night. That’s what newly married couples do.’
He turned. Thea was frozen like a statue on the threshold of his room. Eyes wide. Surveying him up and down.
‘This isn’t a real marriage. It was arranged.’
‘Marriages are “arranged” for people like us all the time. This could be a real marriage.’ Or as real as possible for someone in their position.
He’d anticipated a relationship with no passion. A performance of duty for them both. But a lack of passion was not something he could imagine now. This new Thea intrigued him. His heart throbbed with a curious rhythm, as if charged with a fresh energy.
What he’d been promised by Tito Lambros, when Christo had realised the position his father had forced him into, was a sweet, obedient, chaste girl. He didn’t hold much value in chastity. Better a woman who knew what she was doing, in his opinion. So he’d steeled himself for a wedding night of tutelage. The sweet and obedient type didn’t thrill him either, but she would make a trouble-free sort of wife.
The woman in front of him was another creature altogether. One he didn’t recognise from the quiet investigations he’d asked Raul to conduct, to ensure there was at least a modicum of trut
h behind her father’s words.
He needed to check the work Raul had been asked to do.
‘This can’t be a real marriage. It’ll never be consummated.’
Christo reached for a phone in the corner of the room and called the kitchens. ‘Cognac. Two glasses, please.’
He shrugged off his jacket, cast it onto the chair next to him and tugged at his bow tie, letting it hang loose.
Thea hadn’t moved, still standing in the doorway.
He undid the shirt button at his throat. Her gaze lowered, watching the flick of his fingers.
He undid the next. And the next. Then he stopped.