Chapter One #2
The old man’s gaze narrowed, and he stared at Archimedes for a good minute. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I was going to keep it for emergency purposes, but I have plenty of evidence on others that I can use should the need arise.’
Archimedes allowed himself a thin smile, since it was, after all, very satisfying out-manipulating the manipulative Banks. ‘I will have my lawyers draw up a contract.’
‘Oh, really?’ Banks looked disapproving. ‘Surely we can settle this like gentlemen? With a handshake?’
Archimedes’s smile turned savage. ‘I’m not a gentleman, Banks. You made sure of that.’
Banks opened his mouth to reply, then the church doors opened, and he smiled instead. ‘Ah,’ he said with genuine pleasure. ‘It appears that your bride has arrived at last.’
* * *
Zoe Hargreaves did not want to be here. She had to be here. Banks, her foster father, had been very clear when he’d told her what he wanted from her.
Marriage to a man of his choice, whom Zoe would have to live with for a year and conceive a child with. A child who would then be turned over to Banks to bring up. In return she would get all the money she needed to start her own company, so she could finally stop working for him.
It had sounded ludicrous when he’d first told her about it, and now, as she pushed open the church door, preparing to marry a man she’d never met, it didn’t seem any less ludicrous.
Especially when she saw who was standing next to Banks at the altar.
Zoe froze in the doorway, feeling as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Hard.
Archimedes. What the hell was he doing here?
He’d been the boy she’d grown up with in Banks’s house.
The boy who’d looked out for her, protected her, kept her from the loneliness that had always threatened to pull her down.
The boy whom she’d developed a huge crush on from the time she was eleven, but because he was three years older than her, he’d never even noticed.
He was also the boy who’d abandoned her the moment he’d turned eighteen, leaving her alone in that house with Banks.
She’d never forgiven him for that. Never.
He’d only contacted her once in the fifteen years since he’d been gone, and that was to offer her a position in his new company, but she’d refused. Of course she’d refused. It was too little, too late, and anyway, she wouldn’t ever work for him. No, she wasn’t ever working for anyone again.
The money Banks was offering her would set her up to be her own boss and maybe if Archimedes was very lucky, she might offer him a position in her wildly successful company.
She’d followed his career with some reluctance, telling herself it was good to learn all about the competition and not because she wanted to see what he was doing and how he was doing and just to see him.
She knew his reputation and that of his company—rigorous, meticulous, their online security systems impregnable and continuously tested to remain that way.
He was brilliant and he always had been, even as a boy, but now…
He was something more.
She took a breath, trying to ignore the cold shock threading through her.
At eighteen he’d been tall and rangy, only a promise of the man he was now. A man who seemed taller, was definitely broader, and who had a presence, a charisma that took up space, filling the tiny church and stealing the breath from her lungs.
He was in a dark suit with a deep blue shirt, his silk tie in a contrasting charcoal, and his blue stare—the stare she used to dream about at night when she was a lonely teenager—was fixed on her.
He was so different. Even the photos she’d seen online didn’t do him justice.
He used to be a pretty boy, but the man standing by the altar wasn’t pretty.
His features were hard, tempered like a blade, his black, winged brows giving him a demonic look.
Demon, that was what his handle had been years ago, and that was what he looked like now.
A beautiful demon sent from the past to taunt her.
Next to him was Banks, whom she’d once thought of as tall, but in comparison with Archimedes, he looked like a child.
‘Your bride’, that was what Banks had said as she’d pushed open the door. That did not mean what she thought it did, right? It did not mean that she was going to marry Archimedes. It could not mean that she was going to marry Archimedes.
Archimedes himself said nothing, his blue gaze utterly expressionless.
She’d once been able to tell what he was thinking. Now, Egyptian hieroglyphics were more readable.
Rearranging her face to show the same absence of expression, she let the door bang shut behind her and walked slowly down the aisle towards the two men.
Banks opened his mouth to speak, but it was Archimedes who said, ‘You’re late.’ His voice was hard, flat, and much deeper than she remembered.
Zoe stopped dead, looking first at him, then at Banks. ‘Please tell me that I’m not marrying—’
‘Me?’ Archimedes finished, raising one of those demonic brows. ‘Yes. Apparently, you are.’
Banks started towards her, an apologetic smile on his face. ‘Dear girl, I know I should have been clear with you about who you were to marry, but I thought you wouldn’t agree to it if I told you it was Archie.’
‘Yes,’ Zoe said flatly, folding her arms and giving her foster father a stare just as hard as the one Archimedes was giving her. ‘You should have. And no, I most certainly wouldn’t have agreed.’
Archimedes muttered something under his breath. ‘I don’t have time for this nonsense,’ he said. ‘Come here, Zoe, and let’s get this over and done with.’
She gave him an incredulous look. ‘You haven’t seen me for fifteen years and that’s the first thing you say?’
Banks held his hands up in a peace gesture. ‘Zoe, dear girl, I know this is a shock but—’
‘You’re damn right it’s a shock,’ she snapped, turning her fury onto Banks. ‘I’m not doing it.’
Banks looked apologetic. ‘And if you don’t, you don’t get the money you need. Quid pro quo, dear girl. You know the drill. You want something, you have to give something.’
Oh, she knew the drill. She knew all too well.
Archimedes only stood there, glancing down at his watch every so often as if he was in the middle of the most boring meeting imaginable and was merely waiting for the moment when he could leave.
She remembered that about him too. Always impatient, could never sit still, wanting to go onto the next thing and then the next.
She’d once adored that about him. She’d found being with him like holding a live wire, all sharp, bright shocks of energy that made her feel as if she was as exciting and dangerous and interesting as he was.
And when he’d left, he’d taken all that electricity with him, leaving her inert, cold and dead.
‘Did Banks tell you?’ she demanded. ‘That you’d be marrying me?’
‘No,’ Archimedes said. ‘But I don’t care who I’m marrying. I have meetings I have to get to this afternoon and I only allowed an hour out of my schedule for this.’
Zoe blinked. ‘But you know what Banks has asked—’
‘Yes, I do know,’ he said, interrupting yet again, another habit she remembered from years ago, because he was always too impatient to wait for people’s answers, his brain already firing onto the next thing. ‘I don’t care about that either.’
‘You might not care,’ she shot back, unable to help the anger fuelled by shock that flooded through her. ‘But I do. I don’t want to marry you, or live with you, still less have a kid with you.’
Archimedes lifted one broad shoulder. ‘Leave then. It doesn’t matter to me.’
Deep inside her, the child she’d once been, the kid who’d been devastated by his abandonment, wanted to shout, Did I ever matter to you? But she shoved that kid to the back of her mind.
She wasn’t going down that route again. She’d left her childhood crush behind her, along with the rest of her crappy childhood. Archimedes didn’t matter to her now.
So why are you making such a fuss? If he doesn’t care, then why should you?
A good point. Arguing and being angry made this seem like more of a big deal than it actually was, and she’d spent most of her adulthood making everything less of a big deal than it actually was, so why start now?
‘Ah,’ Banks said, his gaze going to the doors behind her. ‘And here is Father Percy.’ He walked past her to greet the priest, who’d just come in.
Zoe stared at Archimedes. ‘What did he offer you?’ she asked.
‘That doesn’t matter either,’ he said, his tone as expressionless as his face.
‘What about the child he wants?’ she persisted, because surely he had some thoughts about that.
‘What about the child?’ That brow rose again. ‘We give it to Banks to look after, end of story.’