The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife by Penny Jordan Page B

the door into the corridor.
    Maria had obviously been in, Lizzie noted, because the bed was made up immaculately, as though for a new guest.
    She went into the dressing room and opened one of the wardrobe doors, intending to undress and hang up her clothes, only the wardrobe was empty. Quickly Lizzie checked the others, and then the drawers. They were empty too. And her case had gone. Along with her toiletries and her toothbrush.
    She began to panic. What was going on? She’d have to tell Ilios.
    She found him in the living room, standing in front of the glass wall in his suit trousers and his shirt, a glass of wine in his hand. When he turned round as she approached him the shirt pulled across the muscles in his back, causing an aching sensation to slide through her lower body.
    ‘I can’t find any of my things,’ she told him helplessly. ‘They’ve all disappeared—everything, including my case and even my toothbrush. The maid’s been in, because the bed is made up.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You know?’ Lizzie looked at him uncertainly. What was going on? Had he decided he didn’t like her new clothes after all and sent them back?
    ‘They’re in my room.’
    ‘What?’
    Ilios shrugged irritably. It had been as much of an unwanted discovery for him to find Lizzie’s things in the master bedroom as it had obviously been for her to discover that they were missing from the guest room. The main source of Ilios’s irritation, though, was his own slipup in not realising that this might happen.
    ‘Maria obviously took it upon herself to move them. She’ll have heard that we are to marry, and it seems she has decided that since we are probably already sharinga bed, she might as well make life easier for herself by moving our things into my room.’
    ‘But we aren’t. I mean we can’t.’ Lizzie was aghast. ‘Everything will have to be moved back. I’ll do it myself—tomorrow—when you aren’t here—but you’ll have to tell her.’
    ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because the last thing we want is for her to start gossiping that we’re sleeping in separate beds.’
    ‘But you said our marriage would be…that it wouldn’t be…that we wouldn’t be sharing a bed.’
    ‘I hadn’t thought things through properly then,’ Ilios was forced to admit.
    He was actually admitting that he had got something wrong? Lizzie could scarcely believe it.
    ‘If you’re concerned about what Maria might say, then why don’t you tell her not to come? I can do her work whilst I’m here,’ she suggested helpfully.
    Ilios was already shaking his head.
    ‘And deprive Maria of her the money she earns? No. Maria’s family are dependent on her wages, and Maria enjoys a certain status in her community because she works for me. It wouldn’t be right or fair to deprive her of those things.’
    Lizzie had to gulp back the chagrin she felt at being reproved by Ilios for her lack of awareness of the needs of others—chagrin that was all the more intense because previously she had seen the one to point out that lack of awareness to him.
    ‘But I don’t want to share a…a bed,’ she protested. How ridiculous that she had to struggle to force herself to say the word bed . She, an interior designer, who in thecourse of her work was perfectly familiar with those three small letters. Familiar with the letters, but not familiar at all with the way the word bed made her feel when she was in the presence of Ilios Manos.
    ‘Do you think I do?’ Ilios challenged her, immediately making her feel humiliated. ‘We don’t have any choice. Fortunately it is a very large bed,’ he told her grimly.
    She should, of course, be delighted and relieved that her presence in his bed was so unwelcome, Lizzie told herself. She wanted and needed him not to want her—if only to protect her from her own feelings after all. But instead she was filled with an explosive mix of emotions and sensations—heady