Page 30 of A Diamond Deal
‘Do what,glikia mou?’ he asked, as if it was already decided.
‘I’ll play whatever game you want to play to mess with the press,’ she said, because they deserved to be duped. ‘I’ll help you change whatever narrative the paparazzi have imposed on your life about our separation.’
‘And what do you want in return?’
‘Your signature on our divorce papers,’ she demanded, ‘and I want Léon’s debt signed over to me.’
‘To do what with it?’
‘To rip it up,’ she said honestly.
His gaze narrowed. ‘Why did you go to him?’
She squared her shoulders. Looked him dead in the eyes and told him the truth. ‘He understood the grief of losing a son.’
And she waited for it. For words he’d never given her. Words she’d needed. An acknowledgement he’d lost Isaak, too.
The thump in his throat quickened. His angled chin jutted forward, only a fraction.
He said nothing.
Her heart hiccuped.
She couldn’t force him to say words he didn’t mean. Words her heart longed for.
‘It’s a good offer,’ she said. She hated the tightness in her throat. ‘It’s a fair offer.Reasonable. Everyone gets what they want—what they need,’ she said thickly. ‘I’ll be your adoring wife in public in exchange—’
‘And in private?’ he interjected, his voice a low husk of temptation that arrowed straight to her pelvis.
He stepped aside.
Her eyes flicked to the four-poster bed behind him.
It was magnificent. Bare oak, carved in intricate spirals.
Her insides twisted into knots of hate and desire.
Oh, how easy it would be to offer her traitorous body to his treacherous plum lips.
She shook her hair behind her back and straightened her spine. ‘Nothing happens,’ she proclaimed.
Thick brows rose. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, but his eyes, they spoke to her flesh. To her lips. To the body that yearned to be his one last time.
Her eyes locked on to the bed. The big white pillows, the crisp cotton…
Loneliness.It was the worst hurt. It was visceral. A war inside her that demanded she surrender to it. Crawl into bed with him. And let him—what?
He’d never offered his arms when she’d needed them most.
She wouldn’t need him now.
Her throat dried. ‘I’m sure,’ she said, but words were easy to say, and easier to forget. ‘If we do this, I want it in writing, Konstantinos. I want a contract.’
‘A contract?’
‘Legal documentation.’
The pulse in his jaw throbbed. ‘My word isn’t enough?’
