LITMIR.BIZ

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only way that’s going to happen is if I pull out of this business merger.’

      ‘I don’t care about the merger.’

      ‘Maybe not, but you should. It rests solely on your compliance with the terms of the deal.’

      Terms? What terms?

      Allegra disguised her unease by shaking her loose hair back behind her shoulders in a gesture of indifference. But she was far from indifferent. Something about his unwavering gaze made her feel he was toying with her, like a cat with a mouse it had cleverly cornered. What on earth could he want her compliance over?

      Since that kiss years before, there had always been a climate of tension between them. A tug of war of wills. A power struggle that crackled the air when they were in the same room together. He was her enemy and she didn’t care who knew it. Hating him made it easier for her to forget how much she’d wanted him. Hating him kept her safe from her own traitorous hormones that were annoyingly, persistently, immune to every other man but him. ‘My father’s business affairs are of no concern to me. I am completely independent of him and have been for the last ten or so years.’

      ‘Independent financially, maybe, but you’re his only daughter. His only child. He paid for your stellar education. He gave you everything money could buy. Don’t you care he’s about to lose everything without my help?’ His deeply carved frown added to the grave delivery of his words.

      Allegra wished she didn’t care. But the trouble was, she did. It was her Achilles’ heel—her weak spot, the raw, vulnerable part of her personality—the need to feel loved and valued by her only living parent. She had sought it all her life to no avail. In spite of her father’s shortcomings, inside she was still that small child looking for his approval. Pathetic, but true. ‘I fail to see what any of this has to do with me. I simply don’t care what state my father’s business is in.’ She knew she sounded cold and unfeeling but why should she care what Draco thought of her?

      He studied her for a long moment. ‘I don’t believe you. You do care. Which is why you’ll agree to marry me to keep the business afloat.’

      Shock hit her in the chest like a punch. Marry him? Allegra widened her eyes. Not saucer-wide. Not dinner-dish-wide. Platter-dish-wide. Surely he hadn’t just said that? The M word? Him and her? Married? To each other? She blinked and then laughed but even to her ears it sounded on the verge of hysterical. ‘If you think for one second I would marry anyone, let alone you, then you are even more of an egomaniac than I thought.’

      Draco’s gaze continued to hold hers in an intractable lock that was a tantalising tickle to her girly bits. ‘You will do it, Allegra, or see your father’s business die a slow and painful death. It’s on life support as it is. I’ve been drip-feeding your father money for the last year. He hasn’t got the funds to repay me even if I waive the interest. No one will lend him anything now, not after the way things have panned out in our economy. I came up with this solution instead. This way everyone wins...in particular, you.’

      Allegra couldn’t believe his arrogance. Did he really think she would agree to such a preposterous deal? She hated him with a passion. She couldn’t think of a single person she would less like to marry. Well, she could, given her line of work, but that wasn’t the point. He was a playboy. A fast-living Lothario who churned through women like a speed-reader churned through cheap paperbacks. Marriage to Draco would be emotional suicide, even if she didn’t hate him. ‘You’re unbelievable. What planet are you on that you would think I would see this as a win for me? Marriage isn’t a win for any woman. It’s a one-way ticket to serfdom, that’s what it is, and I won’t have a bar of it.’

      ‘You’ve been hanging around divorce courts way too long,’ he said. ‘Plenty of marriages work well for both parties. It could work for us. We have a lot in common.’

      ‘The only thing we have in common is we both breathe oxygen,’ Allegra said. ‘I dislike everything about you. Even if I were on the hunt for a husband, I would never consider someone like you. You’re the sort of man who would expect his pipe and slippers brought to him when he gets home. You don’t want a wife, you want a servant.’

      His half-smile was back, making his impossibly black eyes twinkle. ‘I love you too, glykia mou.’

      Allegra thinned her gaze to hairpin slits. ‘Read my lips. I am not marrying you. Not to save my father’s business. Not for any reason. No. No. No. No.’

      Draco took a leisurely sip of his champagne and put the glass down on the coffee table with exacting precision. ‘Of course, you’ll have to commute between London and my home for work, but you can use my private jet—that is, if I’m not using it myself.’

      Allegra clenched her hands into fists. ‘Are you listening to me? I said I am not marrying you.’

      He sat on the sofa and leaned back with his hands behind his head, one ankle crossed over the other with indolent grace. ‘You haven’t got a choice. If you don’t marry me then your father will blame you for the collapse of his company. It’s a good company but it’s been badly run of late. That business manager your father appointed a couple of years ago when he had that health scare didn’t do him any favours. I can undo that damage and turn the business around so it’s profitable again. Your father will stay on the board and have a share of the profits I guarantee will be more than he has received in decades.’

      Allegra bit down on her lip. It had been a worrying time when her father had had a cancer scare. She had flown back and forth as much as she could to help him through his bout of chemo and radiation. Not that he’d shown any great appreciation, of course. But to marry Draco to save her father from financial ruin? It was as if she had suddenly stepped into the pages of a Regency novel.

      But her father needed her. Really needed her. There could have been worse men than Draco to offer for her, she had to admit. The sort of men she faced down in court. Mean men. Dangerous men. Men who had no respect for women and who used their children as weapons and pay-backs. Men who stalked, bullied, threatened and even killed to get their own way.

      Draco might be arrogant but he wasn’t mean. Dangerous? Well, maybe to her senses, yes. Her senses went into a dazzled and dizzying frenzy when he came close. Which was a very good reason why she couldn’t marry him.

      Wouldn’t marry him.

      ‘Why me?’ Allegra said. ‘Why would you possibly want me for a wife when you can have any woman you want?’

      His eyes did a lazy sweep of her from head to foot and back again, sending a frisson through every cell in her body. ‘I want you.’

      Those sexily drawled words should not have made her feminine core do a happy dance. She wasn’t vain but knew she was considered attractive in a classical sort of way. She had her mother’s English peaches-and-cream complexion, her dark blue eyes and slim build, but she had her father’s jet-black hair and drive to achieve.

      But Draco dated super-models, starlets and nubile nymphets. Why would he want to shackle himself to a hard-nosed career woman like her, especially when they fought at every chance they got?

      Over the years she had done her level best to hide her attraction to him. The Embarrassing Incident when she’d been sixteen was filed away in her mind in the drawer marked ‘Do Not Open’. These days she sneered instead of simpered. She derided instead of drooled. She flayed instead of flirted.

      Falling in love with Draco Papandreou would be asking for the sort of trouble she helped other women extricate themselves from on a daily basis. Love did weird things to women. They got blindsided, hoodwinked, charmed into looking at their men through rosy love-tinted glasses that failed to show up their faults until it was too late.

      Allegra wasn’t going to be one of those women—a victim of some man’s power game, leaving her as vulnerable as a rain-soaked kitten. ‘Listen, I appreciate the compliment, such as it is, but I’m not in the marriage market. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to—’

      ‘The offer is for today and today only. After that I start asking for

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