‘Are you forgetting why I suggested this marriage,agape?’ he asked, almost conversationally. ‘The whole point was to show your father, at every opportunity, that he lost, and I won. That he was wrong about me—about us.’
She felt like her heart was undergoing a series of electric shocks as she shook her head. It was the truth, and yet she wanted to argue against it, to deny it. That couldn’t really be at the heart of why he’d suggested this. Not after the last week and a half. Not after how everything had changed between them. Surely, that same angry hate didn’t still consume him?
‘It’s his birthday,’ she said, weakly, as her mind tried to keep up with this development.
‘And?’
She pressed a hand to his chest, eyes imploring. ‘Don’t do this, Theo.’
But his eyes were glittering with dark determination, and she barely recognised the man he’d become. ‘I will be ready soon. Knowing your father, I presume it’s black tie?’
She closed her eyes on a wave of despair. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t pick this fight.’
But when she blinked up at him, Theo was gone.
A stone seemed to drop, right through her body, landing hard in her gut.
She pressed her back against a wall, sucking in a deep breath that hardly seemed to touch her lungs.
All Theo could do was stick to the plan. It was, as he’d pointed out to Annie, the reason he’d proposed this marriage. The thought of throwing their relationship in the face of the man who’d once told Theo that he was‘pure scum and always would be’, was something he’d relished the thought of.
As for Annie, she’d just have to cope with that.
And yet, glancing across at her, as the car slid through the streets of Athens towards her family home, something gnawed at the edges of his gut, as awful as the pervasive hunger he’d known as a child. Tension radiated from every line of her slim body. It was evident in the way she clasped her hands in her lap, the way she refused to look at him. He ached to do something to stir feelings in her, so she’d appear more like the wild, passionate, beautiful woman he’d been lusting after nonstop.
But sex—no matter how good—was just sex, and Annie was a woman he’d married as a means to an end. He owed himself this. Nothing could trump that—not even their chemistry.
So he sat in stony silence beside her, not reaching for her, not even to hold her hand.
There was no comfort he could give anyway, and he wouldn’t pretend otherwise. For as long as his plan was to hurt her father, to make him eat crow, using Annie as a tool for that, he could hardly expect Annie not to mind.
As the car pulled to a halt in the busy driveway of their mansion, he did reach for her though, putting a hand on her knee and drawing her churning gaze to his face.
‘I want you to remember two things, Annie,’ he said, his voice heavy with loathing for the words he was about to speak. Hating himself then, even when he didn’t dare question his commitment to this plan.
She was almost unrecognizable, with her pretty face so pale and pinched. ‘Yes?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
He clenched his jaw, hesitating a moment, to draw strength.
‘At the end of this marriage, your father will be a very rich man again. That’s all you care about, remember? That’s why you came to me. You’re getting what you wanted. What you agreed to.’
She fidgeted with her fingers so violently he had to fight an urge to reach out and clamp his hand over them.
‘And the second?’
‘We have a deal. You play your part, just like we agreed, or the arrangement’s off.’
Her lips parted in surprise and whatever had been gnawing at his gut burst it apart completely. He put a hand on his door, opening it before he could take the words back, or at least apologise for what he was about to put her through.
Theodoros Leonidas didn’t do regret, or uncertainty or compassion. He was stronger than steel, determined and ruthless. Those things had stood him in good stead—he wouldn’t change now, not even for Annie.
Chapter Eleven
FROM THE MOMENTthey walked into the party, Annie could feel the whispers. The speculation. And yes, the jealousy, from all the women who looked at Theo, saw his beauty and his wealth and wanted a piece of it, wondering how she, Annie Langley, had secured the hottest bachelor in Athens. Though their wedding had been widely publicized, and was well-known in these circles, this was only their second time out and about, in public together, and she fully expected her family’s ‘friends’ to descend like hawks.
As for Theo, the change in his behaviour gave her whiplash. In the car, he’d been so calculated and businesslike, inflicting pain on her without appearing to care, so it had taken a monumental effort not to give in to the tears that she’d felt stinging behind her eyes.
Now, in the throng of the party, he was a study in attentive husbandry, one hand on the small of her back the whole time, his fingers stroking the base of her spine, his body so close to hers she could feel his warmth—even though it did little to thaw the ice in her heart.