Harlequin Presents: October 2019, Box Set 1 of 2 by Carol Marinelli

Author:Carol Marinelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

‘I STILL DON’T understand why you want an annulment.’

Daisy Campbell—no, Daisy Dias—had surprised me a few too many times this evening, and this surprise was the most unwelcome one of all. I’d given her everything she could possibly want. Why would she want to hand it all back? It was the last thing I expected. The last thing I wanted.

I married Daisy Campbell both to satisfy and to spite my grandfather, and it was so very sweet to experience both when I tossed the marriage certificate on Bastian Arides’s desk and informed him of my new status.

‘You made a condition and it has now been met.’

‘And your wife?’ he asked, looking stunned by my bloodless coup.

I laughed as I told him the truth. ‘A dumpy nobody of a waitress I picked up from a diner in New York. She’s currently residing on Amanos, in case you feel the need to check.’

Bastian’s mouth dropped open; he’d expected me to marry some suitable socialite he could add to the family pedigree—some way, perhaps, to justify my place in his life, bastard grandson that I was. Little did he know me. Little did he realise how deep my need for vengeance, for justice ran.

‘I think you’ll find I’ve won, old man,’ I said as I strolled out of his office. ‘The condition you made to the board has been met in full.’

Bastian shook his head, his expression one of both defeat and fury. ‘That is not what I meant, Matteo, and you know it.’

‘Too bad you weren’t more specific, then.’

The clause in the agreement to transfer his shares to me had been clear—marry, and stay married, in order to get his shares and sixty percent of the stock in Arides Enterprises, and therefore complete control of the company. The board had agreed; everyone had signed. And I’d done what he asked.

I had what I wanted and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. I was now in control of Arides Enterprises—the company his father had built from scratch, the company he’d wanted to hand on to his legitimate grandson, Andreas.

But of course that was impossible. Instead he’d had to hand it to me, his only heir and the only person in the company capable of running a multimillion-dollar enterprise. The person who had taken the lagging sales and outdated practices and dragged them into the twenty-first century—and into the black.

Now, as I looked at my so-called dumpy waitress of a wife, I realised she was neither. She sparkled—and it wasn’t just the dress. Her eyes glittered like topaz, her cheeks were flushed and her chest heaved. Everything about her seemed alive and shockingly vibrant. Desirable. How extraordinary. How unexpected. It made me pause, my mind reviewing everything she’d said.

‘I told you—I want a chance at a real marriage,’ she insisted. ‘A family.’

‘A family? The biological clock is ticking, I suppose?’

She folded her arms, her expression turning mutinous. ‘Something like that.’

I could give her a baby.

It was a novel thought, and admittedly not entirely unwelcome.

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