Chapter Nine #2
‘This is a disaster,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I should never have let this happen. You should never have come here.’
‘I had no way of knowing you had entered into this deal with your ex-husband.’
‘No, but…’ She tapered off, struck by the fairness of his words. She moved back to the edge of the bed and sat down again, dropping her head into her hands. ‘He’s going to be so angry.’
‘Yes,’ Nikos said, moving to stand in front of her. ‘He sounds like the kind of prick whose tiny ego would be wounded by this.’
She almost smiled at the description but, in truth, her insides were in too much turmoil.
‘Nikos,’ she groaned. ‘You need to leave. If any of the hotel staff saw you come in here and decide to make a quick buck, it’s just going to go from bad to worse. I might be able to explain away the lunch…’
‘But not the lobby,’ he reminded her grimly.
She closed her eyes, remembering the way they’d seemingly embraced for minutes, bodies melded together in an undeniably intimate fashion.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Then you can’t cross your fingers and hope he won’t find out. He’ll see the photos.’
She worried her lower lip between her teeth, anxiety spiralling through her.
‘The world will see the photos, and your name will be linked to his. It’s impossible to avoid, I’m afraid.’
Her gut rolled, because he was right.
‘You have two options, Genevieve.’
‘Really? I feel like I have zero options.’
He crouched down in front of her. ‘Don’t do that.’
She blinked at him.
‘Don’t give up. You survived being capsized during a brutal storm then hiked for miles in the pouring rain, scaling cliff faces in a dark, unfamiliar forest. Not to mention two nights in a cabin with me. You are a fighter. Don’t let that piece of shit make you forget it.’
Her heart twisted at that. His words, and his vision of her. It was so warming, so uplifting, she found herself almost forgetting the nightmare of her situation, simply so she could revel in the way he saw her.
‘The cabin with you was really no hardship,’ she felt compelled to say.
He squeezed her legs. ‘Either you face up to him, and suffer the consequences. On your own, if you insist,’ he said, before she could argue. ‘Or you let me help you.’
Her heart twisted as she shook her head. ‘I can’t, Nikos. We barely know each other.’
His expression darkened. ‘That is not how I would characterise our relationship.’
‘That’s because you’re a hermit,’ she muttered. ‘And help me how? I don’t want your money.’
‘I will loan you the money,’ he said. ‘And you can pay me back whenever you’re ready. I cannot see it’s any worse than owing him.’
She shook her head. How could she make him understand? She didn’t want to owe anyone anything. ‘Even if you did, he’d still go to the press about Dad. Don’t you get it? He’s got me over a barrel. He always did.’
A muscle ticced in his jaw. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a beat. ‘Which is why we’ll get engaged.’
If she’d been drinking, she would have spat it out. She spluttered her surprise, coughing because then she lost her breath.
‘I am not marrying you. Or anyone. Ever. No way.’
‘I have no intention of getting married either.’
She blinked at him through the tears her shortness of breath had produced. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Being engaged is not the same thing as getting married. We’ll enter into a fake engagement, so your husband knows that if he messes with you, he gets me, too.’
She stared at him with total shock. It was not, in fact, the worst plan she’d heard.
Knowing James, the misogynistic jackass, as she did, only the presence of someone bigger, stronger and richer would ever have a chance in hell of cowering him.
While she absolutely despised the reality of that, she knew it to be the case.
If she took option A, and confronted him alone, she had no doubt James would let all hell break loose.
Including humiliating her father’s memory, for the sake of it.
But with Nikos apparently in her life and by her side, she doubted James would be stupid enough to do anything.
‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ she said, shaking her head, even as the possibility spread through her.
‘You are not asking. I am suggesting it. If I thought it appropriate, I would insist upon it, but it would be better for both of us if you came to the decision yourself.’
She narrowed her eyes at that, ignoring the feeling she might be getting out of the frying pan and into the fire, moving from one dictatorial man to another. Nikos was not like James. He was commanding and in control, but he was also respectful and fair.
Hadn’t she thought the same thing about James though, at first? Hadn’t she believed him to be all that was good and decent?
What if she was wrong about Nikos? She needed an insurance policy, something to protect her. ‘This could be a very bad idea.’
‘Why?’
‘Honestly? Because I’m scared. I’m scared of letting my guard down, especially with someone like you.’
‘That makes sense. You don’t want to get hurt again.’
She nodded.
‘Will it placate you if I promise that, from this point on, I will do everything in my power to ensure that doesn’t happen?’
She pulled her lips to the side. ‘I don’t know.’
‘This does not need to last long. A few weeks of being photographed together, and, at some point, the inevitable confrontation with your ex, and then we can quietly go back to our normal lives. If he approaches you, you can contact me through my business manager, Theo, and I will reappear, to make sure he doesn’t step out of line. ’
It was tempting. Tempting because the idea of having someone like Nikos to throw in James’s face made her battered and bruised heart lift with pleasure.
But this was Nikos’s life. ‘Surely this is your worst nightmare.’
He stood then, looking down at her with a set jaw. ‘I could not help my mother. I didn’t help my wife. Let me at least help you.’
Her heart then, already ripped to shreds by everything she’d been through, felt newly damaged by Nikos’s admission, and how he viewed himself.
‘Oh, Nikos,’ she murmured, shaking her head. ‘I can’t use your guilt like that.’
‘I will feel it, no matter what. At least this way, I have an option to make amends. Let me help, Genevieve. I’m begging you.’
As the words had formed on his lips, and he’d heard them in the room, he’d wanted to suck them right back in again.
A fake engagement? And everything that meant?
The idea of reappearing on the Athens society circuit, engaged to someone else?
So Isabella would be relegated to a figment of his past. Worse, willingly creating the impression that he’d moved on from Isabella?
But the more he looked at Genevieve, and saw her desperate, stressed features, and thought of the man responsible for that, he knew he had to act as a shield for her. To protect her in a way he desperately wished someone had protected Isabella, or his mother.
More than that, he knew Isabella would want him to do this. She would be the first to counsel him to care for someone in need, to give of himself.
So when Genevieve looked up at him and nodded her agreement, albeit with a look of swirling doubt in her eyes, he knew for certain this was the right choice.
Which was not the same thing as looking forward to it.
All he wanted was to turn tail and run back to his island, to his solitude and cabin, to the life he’d had before Genevieve.
And yet, strangely, he wanted to drag Genevieve back there with him, too.