Wedding Night with a Stranger. Anna Cleary

to it himself without threatening his gonads. He cast about for something to wipe it away with, and used the only thing readily available: one of yesterday’s socks. The sock made no appreciable difference, so he gave up.

      With grander things to attend to, how could a guy be expected to attend to the demeaning sludge of housework?

      He frowned into his wardrobe, then surrendered to necessity and chose an evening suit. Was the shirt clean? He checked that it had a recent laundry ticket attached. Lucky he’d remembered at some stage to remind Agnes to empty the washing hamper. It was only to be expected she’d forget things when he was hardly ever here.

      Scrubbed, dressed and polished, he gave his overall appearance a cursory check. Looked at from a certain point of view, he supposed, the Giorgias woman had flown across the globe to nail him. Meet him, in her words. Might as well grit his teeth and make an effort to show her a little respect.

      He was, after all, he supposed, an eligible guy. A single guy. Widower. He flinched inwardly as the loathsome word surfaced from the deep to strike him down with all its connotations of dust and ashes, funerals and long black days and nights that rang with emptiness.

      He wiped those horrors from his mind and walked downstairs, a single man free and unencumbered.

      At the hotel he tossed the car keys to the parking valet, then strolled into the lobby, conscious, despite everything, of a certain buzz of anticipation in his veins.

      It was the hush of the evening, the city poised to leap into its nightlife, with neon lighting its every billboard and high-rise. Wherever he looked people were hurrying off to their evening engagements: guys with their girlfriends, couples holding hands. For once he felt like a man with somewhere to go other than the office.

      Ms Ariadne Giorgias would’ve had an hour or two to rest, so hopefully she might be less prickly. He wondered what she’d be wearing. Something slinky? Some little designer number from one of the couture houses, exhibiting more skin than fabric?

      The lobby was busy, but there was no sign of her. After his lapse this morning he would hardly be surprised if she kept him waiting as a punishment.

      He strolled over to Reception and asked one of the clerks to phone up to her room.

      The clerk had scarcely lifted the phone before Sebastian saw her. She was emerging from the lift along with some other people, but he singled her out at once. Unaccountably his lungs seized. Even after one brief meeting, he recognised the characteristic way she held herself. She walked with her head high, as though to ensnare every available ray of light in her hair, her slender, shapely body graceful and erect. He must certainly have been too long without a woman, because he found his gaze riveted to the sway of her feminine hips, and felt stirred at some deeply visceral level.

      Whatever else she was, she was all woman.

      The rushing sensation in his blood heightened.

      She caught sight of him and her steps made an involuntary halt, then picked up again, and she advanced to meet him, her expression now cool and wary. That tiny, undeniable falter, though, resounded through him and struck his guilty heart like a blow.

      A man didn’t have to be an aeronautical design genius to see that underneath the fantastic black dress, slim shapely legs and silky gleaming hair, Ms Ariadne Giorgias was scared. He suffered a jolting moment of self-insight.

      Was this what he had become? A cold, angry man who frightened women?

      Conscious of her nervous pulse, Ariadne steeled herself to the challenge, then plunged onwards. Sebastian Nikosto looked more handsome, if possible, in an evening suit with a charcoal shirt and a bronze-hued silk tie that found golden glimmers in the depths of his dark eyes. She conceded reluctantly that his colours were again excellent, though the tie was slightly skewed as if he hadn’t given it a final check.

      Perhaps it was her imagination, but did his expression seem friendlier? Less—hostile?

      His dark gaze swept her, and again she felt that roaring sensation, almost like excitement. There was a look in his eyes that made her too aware of her curves and the shortness of the dress. A million wild thoughts assailed her at the same time. Why, oh, why hadn’t she worn trousers?

      While her fingers nearly succumbed to a mad itch to tweak that tie into place, her pulse was thudding in her ears so loudly she hardly took in what he said.

      ‘…Ariadne.’ The way he said her name made it sound as if it had been wrapped in dark chocolate. One of those liqueurs they gave you with coffee at the Litse in Athens.

      ‘Cheri Suisse.’ Her voice sounded overly husky. Oh, Theos, had she actually said that? Surely not. Where was the poise she so desperately needed?

      It was another of those awkward moments when he would expect to clasp her hand, but this time he went one better. Before she could forestall it, he leaned forward and brushed her cheek with his lips.

      It was so unexpected her heart nearly arrested. She felt the slight graze of his shadowed jaw on her skin, and the heady masculine scents, the powerful nearness of him swayed her senses.

      Flustered, her cheek burning as if she’d been brushed with a flame, she had one coherent thought swirling over and over in her brain. Here was a man whose interest in her was purely financial. This wild fluttering inside, these uncontrollable sensations, needed to be crushed into extinction. At once.

      ‘I’m thinking we won’t go too far afield tonight, since you’re probably jet-lagged,’ he said, as smoothly as if he hadn’t been insulting her only a few short hours previously. ‘I know a little place not far from here. Do you like Italian?’

      She drew a deep breath.

      ‘Listen, Sebastian…’ She raised her hands before her like a barricade. ‘I don’t want to marry you.’ He blinked, and before he could reply she added, a tremor in her voice, ‘So—so you might not wish to waste any more of your time. Thanks anyway for—for coming.’

      ‘What?’ He looked stunned.

      ‘Yep, that’s right.’ Wound up and swept by a massive charge of adrenaline, she gave him a cool smile. ‘As the song says, I’m holding out for the prince.’

      Without waiting to watch him crumble into a heap of masculine rubble, she turned on her heel and swept towards the lifts, rather pleased with her exit line. Unfortunately for her grand moment, before she’d gone more than a couple of steps the persistent man recovered himself and caught up.

      ‘Well, er—hang on there a second.’ He moved around to block her path. He was shaking his head, amusement seeming now to have replaced his astonishment.

      She had to wonder if he’d understood. Or was he so in need of the money, he felt driven to try some other way to talk her round?

      ‘That’s fine, Ariadne,’ he said. ‘That’s just fine. But whether we marry each other or not, we still have to eat dinner, don’t we?’

      His lean handsome face broke into a smile that was far more dangerous than his earlier sternness and hostility. Charming little lines appeared like rays of warmth at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and crept insidiously through her defences to assault her too soft heart. Here she was, all geared to be brave, to foil his cold, cutting words with icy hauteur, and now he’d changed tack.

      It was confusing. And unfair. She was so desperately in need of a friend, if she wasn’t careful, before she knew it she’d be forgiving him. Complying. The very word evoked a shudder.

      Thank goodness Demetri’s legacy had died hard. She reminded herself that a man’s smiles came easily, and this one could hardly wipe away the distress she’d gone through since she’d boarded that plane. She needed to be strong, and, after so much humiliation, true to herself.

      ‘I’m not very hungry,’ she asserted coolly. ‘I’ll be happy enough just to order room service. Anyway, it was—interesting, meeting you.’

      ‘Oh.’ Perhaps