LITMIR.BIZ

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of Madrigal Court in over thirty years.

      A baffling collection of people were waiting in the Great Hall: three men and one woman in business suits. The second woman was an incredibly lovely blonde in a brief lime-green dress. She was engaged in displaying her extremely long legs and basking like a queen in the drooling admiration of the men present.

      ‘Good afternoon,’ Ophelia said as she walked past.

      Outside the drawing room door, Ophelia breathed in deep.

      A nervous pulse had started beating horribly fast at the foot of her throat.

      Donald Morton, the family solicitor, had a harassed air and he rushed to perform introductions. ‘Mr Metaxis … this is Ophelia Carter.’

      ‘Mr Metaxis …’ Ophelia’s response was stilted. She froze beneath the onslaught of stunning dark eyes that had the rich shimmer of bronze. Although she had seen photos of him in newspapers she had not realised how tall he would be. He towered over her easily at six feet two inches and bore little resemblance to his short, stockily built father. Her breath caught in her tight throat, as Lysander was an astonishingly handsome man with black cropped hair and lean strong features dominated by the penetrating power of his deep-set dark gaze. The perfection of his sculpted masculine mouth was accentuated by a faint dark blue rough shadow. Even she was immediately aware of his raw sexual appeal and that shook her, for in general men left her pretty much untouched.

      ‘Miss Carter.’ Lysander had narrowed his intense gaze, for he was ensnared by something he couldn’t quite define. She was tiny with a mass of blonde hair as golden as sunlight anchored to the top of her head. Her eyes were a clear crystalline blue, set in a beautiful heart-shaped face. At first he barely noticed that she was dressed like a tramp in a worn waxed jacket with her jeans tucked into muddy boots because, when she shed that jacket, her shirt revealed surprisingly full curves above and below her small waist. He decided she was hot seriously hot, and his sexual response was instant and painfully strong. The immediacy of that reaction startled him.

      Registering that Lysander Metaxis’s gaze was welded to the swell of her full breasts, Ophelia flushed pink and she lifted her chin and whispered angrily, ‘What do you think you’re looking at?’

      Lysander could not recall a single incident when a woman had reacted with hostility to his attention, especially not one the tiny size of her, he reflected with rare amusement, reckoning that he could probably pick her up with one hand. He wondered if the impudence was deliberate and designed to enhance his interest. ‘Maybe it’s the boots …’ he murmured, slow and soft.

      An indefinable undertone in his rich dark drawl made Ophelia’s entire skin surface prickle with awareness. She connected with heavily lashed bronze eyes that had the seismic effect of an earthquake on her composure. Her mouth ran dry, her heartbeat racing like a trapped bird fluttering within her ribcage.

      ‘I like boots,’ Lysander purred in lazy addition while the solicitor looked between them in growing bewilderment. ‘With heels. I’m not into mud or rubber though.’

      That wicked combination of mockery and suggestiveness outraged and discomfited Ophelia, who didn’t know how to handle it. Her face hot enough to fry eggs on, she finally tore her eyes from him and sank down rigid-backed into an armchair, refusing to look back at him or respond.

      ‘Let’s get started,’ Lysander urged the solicitor.

      Ophelia discovered that she was hoping that whatever was in the will that related to Lysander Metaxis would hammer a huge dent in his boundless self-assurance. How dared he poke fun at her appearance? He was a barefaced womaniser with a notorious reputation. Why was she allowing him to annoy her? Since when had she cared how she looked? She recalled her late mother’s obsession with her appearance! Money needed for food and rent had often been squandered. All Ophelia’s clothes were extremely practical.

      ‘There are certain points I should make clear in advance,’ Donald Morton said tautly. ‘The will was drawn up four months ago when Mrs Stewart realised that her illness was terminal. She was determined that there should be no grounds for having the terms of the will set aside by a court. To that end she underwent a medical and psychiatric evaluation, which pronounced her fully mentally fit and able.’

      Ophelia’s tension grew, as it seemed obvious to her that the will was a peculiar one. She hoped she wasn’t about to be embarrassed although she could imagine no circumstances in which she would apologise to a Metaxis for anything to do with her family.

      ‘“I leave Madrigal Court and its contents in equal shares to my granddaughter, Ophelia Carter, and to Lysander Metaxis, provided that they marry—”’

      ‘Marry?’ Lysander Metaxis cut in in an abrasive tone of disbelief.

      Shock welded Ophelia’s slim hands to the arms of the seat. Her pale blue eyes had flown wide. ‘But that’s absolutely ridiculous!’

      ‘I’m afraid that the terms of the will are unusual and challenging. Some effort was made to dissuade Mrs Stewart but the lady knew her own mind. If a marriage takes place certain conditions will have to be met for the bequest to be fulfilled. The marriage must last for a year or more and this property must also be occupied by both of you on a regular basis.’

      It was the craziest list of demands that Ophelia had ever heard. Marriage! With their combined family history the very suggestion mortified her pride. But while the rest of the world had long since moved on, Gladys Stewart had remained stuck in the bitterness of the distant past. Evidently the will was her grandmother’s last desperate attempt to gain her revenge thirty-odd years after the day that Aristide Metaxis had jilted Ophelia’s mother, Cathy, at the altar.

      The big society wedding of which Gladys Stewart had been so proud had turned into an instrument of family humiliation. When she’d been on the very brink of achieving her snobbish ambition of marrying her daughter off to a rich, well-connected man, it had all blown up in her face. The bridegroom had defected at the eleventh hour with the aristocratic and impoverished Virginia Waveney, who had then lived in the gatehouse at the foot of Madrigal Court’s drive. Unhappily all too many people had gloried in Gladys’s discomfiture, for she had never been popular, and the older woman’s raging resentment had turned inward like a canker.

      ‘Marriage is naturally not an option.’ The insane suggestion that it could be gave Lysander’s voice a sardonic edge of disdain.

      Ophelia bridled at the soft note of silken derision that laced his accented drawl and threw her head high. ‘Not if I was dragged kicking and screaming to the altar—he’s a Metaxis!’ she vented.

      The solicitor gaped at her.

      ‘Try to restrain your taste for melodrama until the legal niceties have been dealt with,’ Lysander advised with lethal scorn.

      Ophelia honestly didn’t know how she managed not to stand up and thump him. Her eyes blazing as blue as a flame in the heart of a fire, she looked at him. ‘I didn’t like your tone of voice—’

      ‘I’m a Metaxis and proud of it.’ Shimmering bronze eyes struck sparks off hers in cold challenge. ‘Keep quiet and let the grown-ups deal with business.’

      Ophelia plunged upright like a jack-in-the-box on a spring.

      His unapologetic insolence outraged her. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ she launched at him.

      Lysander was entertained by the ease with which she rose to the bait.

      ‘Ophelia … Mr Metaxis … please let me finish,’ Donald Morton interposed in a pained plea.

      CHAPTER TWO

      WITH colour burnishing her cheeks and silky golden strands of hair descending from her wobbly topknot, Ophelia was trembling with a rage unlike any she had ever experienced. Slowly, grudgingly, she forced herself to sit down again in the seething silence.

      ‘If no marriage takes place, Madrigal Court will go to Ophelia’s third cousin, Cedric Gilbert,’

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