Читать книгу: «Bought For Marriage»

“Was that good for you, agapi mou?”

It had been more than good. It had been out of this world. But did Dione want to admit that? What would she be letting herself in for?

“I never knew that making love could be so enervating,” she confessed with a wry smile.

Theo’s skin glistened in the light from one of the floor lamps, and even in repose he looked imposing. Naked or dressed, aroused or relaxed, he was one hell of an exciting male. She had never thought that when she’d agreed to marry him—had never expected that within a few short days she would be begging him to make love to her.

She had thought that the next twelve months were going to be hell; instead it looked as though she was going to enjoy them!

MARGARET MAYO is a hopeless romantic who loves writing and falls in love with every one of her heroes. It was never her ambition to become an author, although she always loved reading, even to the extent of reading comics out loud to her twin brother when she was eight years old.

She was born in Staffordshire, England, and has lived in the same part of the country ever since. She left school to become a secretary, taking a break to have her two children, Adrian and Tina. Once they were at school she started back to work and planned to further her career by becoming a bilingual secretary. Unfortunately she couldn’t speak any languages other than her native English, so she began evening classes. It was at this time that she got the idea for a romantic short story. Margaret, and her mother before her, had always read romances, and to actually be writing one excited her beyond measure. She forgot the languages and now has more than seventy novels to her credit.

Before she became a successful author, Margaret was extremely shy and found it difficult to talk to strangers. For research purposes she forced herself to speak to people from all walks of life, and now says her shyness has gone forever—to a certain degree. She is still happier pouring her thoughts out on paper.

Bought for Marriage

~ FORCED TO MARRY ~

Margaret Mayo

MILLS & BOON

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Bought for Marriage

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

‘THEO TSARDIKOS? You expect me to go and beg him for money?’ Dione stared at her father in disbelief. ‘I can’t do it.’

Theodossus Tsardikos was a man to be reckoned with. His name was revered throughout the whole of Greece, and maybe the world for all she knew. He was her father’s sworn enemy. He ran a very successful and very luxurious worldwide hotel chain; only the rich and famous could afford to stay there.

Yannis had once tried to persuade Theo to let him franchise his restaurants inside the hotels—the suggestion had been received with raw contempt. Theo made no secret of his dislike of Yannis Keristari. And Dione couldn’t blame him.

Yannis slumped back against his pillow. ‘Then this will be the end of me.’

‘I think,’ said Phrosini, with a worried glance at her husband before looking pleadingly at her stepdaughter, ‘that your father meant you to think about it. Let’s go home. We’ll come back later and talk about this.’

As they left his hospital room Dione glanced over her shoulder at the man who had been such a big controlling influence on her life and found it hard to believe that he was asking her to do this. She’d done most things; she’d been the best daughter she could under the circumstances, but begging for money? From his archenemy? How insulting could he be?

Her mind flew back twenty-four hours to when she’d received the phone call from a distraught Phrosini saying he was ill and was asking for her.

‘Of course I’ll come. I’ll be on the next available flight.’

Dione turned to her mother, an anxious expression on her lovely face. ‘I need to return home. Father’s in hospital; he’s had a heart attack.’

Jeannie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, dear! Naturally you must go. I’ll tell Chris for you. I do hope Yannis will be OK.’

A magnanimous thought after the way he had treated her, decided Dione. But that was her mother; she rarely thought ill of anyone. She was quiet and undemanding and Dione privately thought that she let people walk all over her. Not that she would ever tell her parent that; she loved her too dearly.

To her dismay there were no available seats on flights to Athens until the next day, but at least it gave her the opportunity to tell Chris herself.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said at once when he saw her that evening. ‘I can’t let my fiancée go through this alone.’

He’d said it so proudly that Dione felt guilty. She had been planning to take Chris to Greece to meet her father, to get his approval for their wedding, but not under these circumstances. The shock of discovering that she was going to marry an Englishman would probably kill her father altogether.

Yannis was Greek through and through. Very proud, very traditional, and it was his ambition that Dione should marry one of his own kind. Dione, though, had other ideas. She wanted to escape her father’s domineering nature and the only way she could do it, as far as she could see, was to marry and settle in England.

She had met Christopher Donovan on one of her frequent visits to the UK and when he proposed she had thought about it long and hard before finally accepting. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Chris, she did, but it was his love for her that she wasn’t so sure about.

He had gone out with her on the rebound from a previous relationship and assured her that it was all over. But she had heard from a third party only the other day that the girl still hankered after him and that he had been seen with her. She had tackled Chris and he had looked startled at first, and then said that there was no truth in it.

‘I think it would be best if I went alone,’ she said to him now. ‘My father’s too ill to meet strangers.’

‘You’re probably right,’ he agreed. ‘You will phone me?’

‘Naturally.’

The plane landed at Athens Airport and Dione strode through the arrivals lounge, a stunningly attractive woman in a cream trouser suit teamed with a chocolate-coloured top. Her long blue-black hair brushed her shoulders sensuously with each step that she took in her high-heeled sandals, causing many a male head to turn.

Dione was oblivious. She headed for the taxi rank, not expecting anyone to meet her, but surprised and pleased to see her stepmother.

‘Phrosini, how nice of you! I didn’t anticipate this.’ She hugged the woman warmly, easily falling into her second language. ‘Shouldn’t you be with Father? How is he? Is he any better?’

Phrosini was short and plump but extremely beautiful, and it was easy to see why her father had fallen in love with her. She was as different from Dione’s mother as it was possible for two people to be. His first marriage had been a definite mistake. They had probably loved each other to begin with, surmised Dione, but her mother had been too weak to stand up to his bossy nature. Phrosini could handle him beautifully without him even realising it.

‘There’s no change,’ answered Phrosini. ‘Except that he’s excited you’re coming. He really is ill, Dione. I’m worried to death.’

‘Why didn’t you let me know sooner?’

Phrosini grimaced apologetically. ‘I didn’t want to spoil your holiday. I know how much you enjoy being in England with your mother. At first I thought he’d recover quickly, but he didn’t and he started asking for you. I couldn’t reason with him.’

They drove straight to the hospital. ‘I’m sorry, I know you’ll want to freshen up, but your father’s anxious to see you,’ explained Phrosini.

And when Dione walked into Yannis’ room she was shocked by his appearance. He wasn’t a tall man, had always been slim and dapper, but he’d lost so much weight that he looked gaunt to the point of danger, his skin grey and drawn, and he was hooked up to a host of machines that monitored his every function.

‘Dione!’ he croaked. ‘You’re here!’

She crossed the room and hugged him. ‘Yes, Father. How are you feeling? It’s so naughty of you not to let me know you were ill.’

He stroked her hand. ‘Didn’t want to worry you, child.’

‘So what brought on your heart attack?’ she wanted to know. ‘I thought you had the constitution of an ox.’

‘Not any more.’ Yannis glanced at Phrosini. ‘You tell her,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

‘Tell me what?’

Phrosini closed her eyes, and when she opened them again Dione saw a wealth of worry. ‘Your father’s business is failing—badly.’

‘What?’ Dione frowned. How could that be? Yannis had inherited a restaurant from his father and turned it into a successful chain. There had been no talk of it losing money.

‘Trade’s been dropping off considerably,’ Phrosini informed her, her voice quiet and desperate. ‘It needs a big injection of money for a facelift and your father hasn’t got it. He’s paying out more than he gets in. We’re almost bankrupt, Dione.’

Dione was shocked but not truly surprised. She had trained in England as an interior designer, hoping to move there permanently and get a job, but Yannis had insisted she work for him. She spent her time travelling between the different restaurants, renovating where necessary—but always under Yannis’ eagle eye.

He was a pure traditionalist, so old-fashioned that he would never let her impose any of her modern ideas. He said traditional values gave the restaurants atmosphere and would not be shifted. Dione had privately had her doubts. People wanted modern and lively these days. They didn’t want to live in the past.

‘This is awful,’ she said. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Nor did I,’ confessed Phrosini. ‘Your father kept it from me—and as a result he’s in here.’ She put her hand over her husband’s and squeezed gently. ‘You’re a very stubborn man, you know that.’

Yannis grimaced. ‘It’s all up to you now, daughter,’ he said quietly, looking at Dione. ‘You’re my only hope.’

‘Me?’ Dione touched her fingers to her chest. ‘How can I help? I don’t have that sort of money.’ She really didn’t have a lot of savings. Her father paid her the minimum wage he would have paid anyone else and it all went on her flights to England.

‘I want you to go and ask Theo Tsardikos for a loan,’ he explained in a hoarse, breathless whisper. It clearly cost him to even talk. ‘He’ll drive a hard bargain, I know that, but if anyone can do it you can.’

‘I know it’s a lot to ask of you,’ said Phrosini now as they sat and drank coffee back at home in their beautiful villa and talked about Yannis. ‘But you’re our only hope, your father’s only hope. If he doesn’t get this money his life will be over. He won’t have the will to live. He’s dying now. The doctors are doing all they can but…’ She let her voice fade away and even she looked pale and ill.

‘Surely there must be some other way?’ pondered Dione. She wasn’t afraid of Theo Tsardikos, even though he was a powerful man; it would be more embarrassing than anything else. ‘What about the banks?’

‘They’re closing in on him.’

And Dione knew that he didn’t have any friends who would help. There were not many people who liked her father; he was a tyrant of the highest order, and she had more reason than most to hate him after the way he had treated her mother. But he was her blood after all and though she found it hard to forgive him she loved him. She kept the peace mainly for her emotionally vulnerable mother’s sake, not knowing what he might say or do to her if she got on the wrong side of him.

Jeannie and Yannis had divorced sixteen years ago. When their marriage broke up he had moved back to his native Greece, taking Dione with him. Reluctantly he had let her visit her mother during school holidays. Now she spent as much time in England as she possibly could, and had been on the second week of a month’s visit when she had got the call.

‘It’s a lot to ask of me.’

‘I know,’ said Phrosini.

Dione had grown close to her stepmother and loved her dearly but at this moment in time she wished that she wasn’t asking the impossible of her. Phrosini had never had any children of her own, much to Yannis’ disappointment because he’d always wanted sons, and so she looked upon Dione as her own daughter.

Now Dione faced the little Greek woman with compassion in her eyes. ‘It looks as though I have no choice.’

And when they went back to the hospital to tell her father Dione was glad that she’d made the decision. He looked if possible even more sallow and ill than earlier. He lay in his bed, his breathing laboured, but as soon as he heard her news he smiled and a light appeared in his eyes.

‘Thank you, Dione. Thank you from the bottom of my rotten heart.’ And he took her hands and squeezed them.

Dione took a deep breath as she stood outside the door and prepared to face the legendary Theo Tsardikos.

Her father’s life depended on her succeeding.

But how easy would it be, when they were total enemies?

CHAPTER TWO

THEO looked with interest at the woman standing in front of him. He was aware that Yannis Keristari had a daughter but he had never met her and was pleasantly surprised.

She was tall and slender and very fine looking, somewhere in her twenties, he imagined. She wore a grey jacket with a matching pencil-slim skirt and high-heeled shoes. The jacket was fastened to just above her breasts and a gold pendant dangled enticingly close to her cleavage. He couldn’t help wondering why she had chosen to fasten it so demurely on such a warm day, and it amused him to assume that she wore nothing beneath.

Her eyes were dark and sloe-shaped with a fan of thick lashes, her nose straight and small, and her mouth—was delicious. He forced himself to look from it. She was nothing like her father, which came as something of a surprise. And totally unlike any other Greek woman he’d met. He was fascinated. Even more so than with the reason she was here.

Which had yet to be revealed.

Clearly Keristari had sent her. Theo had heard through the grapevine that Yannis Keristari’s business was in trouble. Had his daughter’s visit anything to do with it? Perhaps he was offering to sell him his restaurants?

He showed his visitor to a seat, not once taking his eyes off her, and waited for her to speak. She was graceful in her movements and smelled like a dream.

‘Mr Tsardikos.’

‘Please, call me Theo.’

‘This isn’t a social visit,’ she declared with a delightful toss of her head that revealed a long, slender neck simply begging to be kissed. Theo sat down behind his desk to stop himself from advancing towards her. ‘Maybe,’ he growled. ‘But there’s no need for formalities, especially when you’re the daughter of an old…acquaintance of mine.’ He’d been about to say enemy, but realised that this could get her back up before she’d even given her reason for being here. ‘Would you like coffee? I can get someone to—’

‘No!’

It was an instant decision. She was clearly on a mission and wanted to get it over with. ‘So how can I help you?’ He folded his arms, allowing his eyes to half close as he studied her intently. He could feel a stirring in his groin that shocked him to the core. This was the daughter of a man he hadn’t the faintest admiration for. He should be totally indifferent to her. So why wasn’t he?

‘My father needs money.’

He felt quite sure she hadn’t intended to blurt it out like that because a tell-tale colouring to her skin belied her cool outer image. But he was glad that she had because he now knew where he stood. His mind had run to the fact that her father could be offering him first refusal on the business. But money! How much had it cost Keristari to send her here?

‘Is that so?’ he asked with cool indifference. He had no intention in the world of helping this man out.

Dione nodded. ‘He believes that you might be able to help him.’

Theo wanted to tell her straight away that he wouldn’t. Keristari was a bully of the highest order and most definitely not a man to do business with.

But he didn’t want to let Dione go yet. He was fascinated. She was quite the sexiest woman he had met in a long time. There was something refreshingly different about her. It was as though she had no idea of her own sexuality. How he would like to introduce her to it.

‘Why ask me?’ he asked, leaning back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head. ‘Why not his bank?’

‘I think he’s in too deep for that,’ admitted Dione. ‘He says you’re his only hope. He’s counting on it.’

Dione saw the disbelief on Theo Tsardikos’ face, the hint of anger quickly suppressed, and knew that her mission was doomed to failure. But she still needed to try. The image of her father lying helpless in hospital flashed in front of her mind’s eye. Much as she feared him, much as she sometimes despised him, she couldn’t bear to see him so ill and worried.

‘He’s counting on it!’ repeated Theo disbelievingly, dragging dark brows together over velvety brown eyes. ‘Why would he ask me, the man he probably hates more than anyone else in the world, for money? Unless, of course, he’s exhausted all his other options.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dione, her eyes steady on this tall, undeniably handsome man with a shock of dark hair that looked as though he constantly ran his fingers through it. ‘I didn’t know anything about it until yesterday. I’ve been visiting my mother in England.’

‘So Phrosini isn’t your birth mother?’ he enquired, sharp interest on his face.

Dione shook her head. She wished he wasn’t quite so good-looking. She wished his eyes wouldn’t rake over her as though he wanted to take her to bed.

‘That explains why you look nothing like either of your parents.’

‘Which has nothing to do with the reason I’m here,’ declared Dione heatedly. She certainly wasn’t here to discuss her parentage.

He allowed himself to smile and his very even white teeth looked predatory in her heightened state. Like a wolf about to pounce, she thought. This was a man she had to watch closely. He looked relaxed leaning back in his chair, his shirt collar undone, but his mind was as sharp as a razor.

‘Your father’s using you, you do know that?’ he pointed out. ‘Like he uses everyone he comes into contact with. The best thing you can do, Dione—do you mind if I call you Dione?—is to go right back and tell him the answer’s no.’

Dione drew in a pained breath. What a heartless brute the man was. ‘You haven’t even asked how much he wants,’ she retorted, her back stiff, her eyes sparking resentment.

‘It’s immaterial,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t lend your father one euro, let alone thousands of them, which I presume is the kind of amount he’d want. What’s happened?’

Dione shrugged. ‘All I know is that he’s nearly bankrupt.’

‘Bad management,’ drawled Theo uncaringly.

‘So that’s your final answer?’ she snapped, her heart dipping so low it almost touched her shoes.

Theo leaned back in his chair, a smile playing on well-shaped lips, and an unfathomable gleam in his eyes. ‘There could be another solution.’

Dione’s heart leapt with hope.

‘I could save your father’s business—on one condition.’

‘And that is?’ asked Dione eagerly.

There was a long pause before he answered, a space of time when his eyes raked insolently over her body, sending a shiver of unease through her limbs. But she didn’t let him see it; she sat still, her hands folded primly in her lap, and waited to hear what he had to say.

‘That you become my wife.’

The shock of his suggestion couldn’t have been greater. This man was a stranger to her, as she was to him, and yet he was talking about marriage! Was he out of his mind? Would he lend her father money just to get his hands on her? What sort of a monster was he? Dione shivered as rivers of ice raced down her spine.

She jumped to her feet and glared. ‘That is the most outrageous suggestion I’ve ever heard. What makes you think I’d marry a total stranger?’

A faint, insolent smile curved his mouth. ‘I thought you had your father’s best interests at heart. Otherwise why would you be here?’

‘I do,’ she admitted, ‘but that doesn’t include giving myself away to you.’ The man had no idea what he was asking. He was probably a fantastic lover with years of experience, but it meant nothing to her. She didn’t know the first thing about him. And nor did she want to if these were his tactics.

‘It’s your choice,’ he said, as simply as if they were discussing a normal business proposition. ‘If your answer’s no then we have nothing else to discuss.’

‘Of course my answer’s no,’ she spat at him. ‘What do you take me for?’ And with that she whirled on her heel and stormed out of the room.

His mocking voice called after her. ‘I’ll be waiting should you change your mind.’

‘Then you’ll wait a lifetime,’ she hissed beneath her breath.

Dione didn’t go straight to the hospital; she was far too wound up for that. She had taken a taxi to Theo’s office but now decided to walk. Even then she took a circuitous route and by the time she did reach the hospital she was almost able to laugh at Theo Tsardikos’ suggestion.

But her father didn’t laugh. ‘You could do worse,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted you to marry a proud Greek male and Tsardikos is as good as they come.’

Praise indeed coming from her father, thought Dione.

‘I’ve been so afraid that on one of your trips to England you’ll fall in love. It would break my heart.’

It was on the tip of Dione’s tongue to tell him about Chris, but at the last moment she decided against it. Yannis’ health was so bad that such an admission might finish him off altogether. In fact he looked even worse today that he had yesterday. His breathing was laboured and his skin a ghostly yellow and Phrosini hovered, not knowing what to do to help her beloved husband.

‘I can’t marry a complete stranger,’ Dione said miserably.

‘Not even for me?’ demanded Yannis in a rough, angry voice. ‘Not even though my life and my livelihood depend on it? What sort of a daughter are you?’

He made Dione feel guilty, but even so she stuck to her guns. ‘I’d be prostituting myself.’

‘With Tsardikos? He’s an exciting male. Half the female population of Greece are after him. You’ll be the envy of thousands.’ And then he slumped in his chair and hardly seemed to be breathing.

Phrosini beckoned her out of the room. ‘We must leave him for a while,’ she said.

‘Don’t you know he’s asking the impossible?’ asked Dione, as they made their way to the hospital restaurant. ‘I haven’t said anything to my father, and I don’t want you to either, but there’s a man in England I’ve promised to marry.’

‘Oh, Dione, why didn’t you say?’ Her stepmother was full of concern.

‘How could I when my father’s so ill, and more especially after what he’s just said?’

‘And this boy, you love him?’

‘Of course.’ But Dione’s face gave away the fact that it wasn’t exactly going to be a marriage made in heaven.

‘You’re doing it because you don’t want your father to arrange a marriage for you?’ she asked intuitively.

Dione nodded faintly, her lips clamped together. When it was put to her like that she realised it was probably true. The love she felt for Chris wasn’t like the stuff you read about, but she had been happy enough—until she heard that he’d been seen with his ex-girlfriend!

‘Oh, Dione, is that really the answer? I don’t want you to be unhappy like I was with my first husband, like your mother was.’

‘I’d be happier with Chris than Theo Tsardikos,’ said Dione quietly.

‘Theo’s a good man. His offer is a lifeline to your father. In fact it might save his life. The doctors are very fearful today.’ There were tears in Phrosini’s eyes. ‘And if he doesn’t recover…well, your father’s always wanted me to carry on the business if anything should happen to him.’

Meaning she would be letting them both down. Put like that, how could she refuse? Dione breathed in deeply, closed her eyes, then took the plunge, hating herself for it but knowing it was something she had to do.

‘OK—I’ll—marry him.’ Her words floated in the air like a storm cloud threatening to bear down and drown her in a black deluge of unhappiness.

Phrosini hugged her tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘My precious child.’

There was nothing precious about it, thought Dione, but she made up her mind there and then that Theo Tsardikos would not get it all his own way. This marriage would be on her terms.

He was savagely handsome, quite the best-looking man she’d ever seen—tall, with a perfectly honed body and long-fingered, well-manicured hands. It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him. But it didn’t mean that she would eagerly jump into his bed. Quite the opposite! She would be a good and dutiful wife in every other respect. She would cook for him, entertain for him, accompany him whenever necessary, but nothing more.

Maybe this was what he wanted her to be—a good hostess? A man in his position would need someone at his side on special occasions.

And who was she trying to kid?

She had seen the way he looked at her, the way his eyes had raked insolently over her body, and she had known what he was thinking, even though she’d done her very best to ignore it.

Already she was beginning to lament her decision but her father was overjoyed when they went back to tell him, his eyes brightening and becoming alert and interested. ‘My darling daughter! You won’t regret this, I promise you.’

Dione wasn’t so sure.

She spent a sleepless night worrying about it, telling herself there was still time to back out, but then recalling her father’s pleasure. How could she deny him his dying wish?

As Dione sat outside Theo Tsardikos’ office for the second time in the same number of days her heart leapt with alarming violence. This was going to be the hardest thing she had ever done. Giving herself to a man she didn’t know was crazy. She had to be insane to do it.

And the man in question was taking great delight in keeping her waiting!

And the longer Dione waited the more irritated she became, until at last she jumped to her feet and prepared to leave. She couldn’t do this, not even for her father’s sake. No one knew the courage it had taken her to come here this morning; courage that was fast deserting her.

‘Leaving, are we?’

Dione spun round at the sound of a deep, gravelly voice and looked into a pair of amused dark eyes. ‘I’d begun to think you didn’t want to see me. I’ve sat here for twenty minutes.’

‘I’m a busy man, Dione. And you did arrive without an appointment. But now I’m all yours. Do come in.’ And he touched a hand to her arm as he led her into his office.

It was a large, airy room with a wooden floor and pale grey walls hung with photographs of his various hotels. His desk was in front of the massive window with its views over Athens, and in one corner was a trio of armchairs. Against another wall was a series of bookcases. It was clean and clinical and efficient. Like the man himself.

She headed towards the desk, prepared to sit in the seat opposite him, as she had before, but instead he steered her towards the armchairs. ‘We’ll be more comfortable here.’

Dione did not want to be comfortable; she wanted to say what she had to say and get out quickly. Not the right sort of thought when Theo was her prospective husband—though actually she was hoping that he’d had a change of heart. A hope that was quickly dashed when he flashed his wolfish teeth.

‘Can I presume that the reason you’re here is to declare that you’ll marry me after all?’

Two pairs of brown eyes met and warred, and Dione was the first to look away. ‘I’d like to be able to say no,’ she snapped, ignoring the stammer of her heart. This man was lethal. Deadly attractive but a danger all the same.

‘You’re a free agent.’ The words were tossed lightly and dismissively into the air and Dione gained the impression that he couldn’t care less. That this was all some sort of game to him.

‘Meaning you’ve changed your mind?’ she enquired sharply, mentally crossing her fingers that this was so.

‘Not at all.’ It was a simple, matter-of-fact answer; he was giving her no help whatsoever. In fact he was enjoying her discomfort.

‘In that case,’ she said in a voice not much above a whisper, ‘I’ll do as you ask.’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.’

Damn the man! A satisfied smile played about his sculpted lips and his eyes were filled with amusement. She felt pretty sure that he had heard. He just wanted to hear her say it again. He liked seeing her squirm.

‘I said, I’ll do as you ask.’ There, was that loud enough for him? She’d projected the words as though she was throwing a missile, hoping they’d smash into his face and wipe some of the pleasure off it.

No such luck! His smile widened and deepened and he leaned forward and took her hands into his. ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’