Wedding Night with a Stranger. Anna Cleary

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      It was tempting to just cut all communication with Sebastian Nikosto and his accomplices in the crime right now. That was what the man deserved. What they all deserved, she thought fiercely. She should just vanish into thin air. Trouble was, if she did that he might raise some sort of alarm. She shuddered to think of how it would be if she were pursued by the Australian police. She could imagine the sneering headlines back in Greece.

      Ariadne of Naxos goes missing in Australia. Has Ariadne been eaten by crocodiles?

       Ariadne, lost in the outback.

      And one that made her wince. The runaway bride runs again.

      No, disappearing without saying goodbye could not be an option. And there was no one else who could fix her dilemma for her. She was on her own, in a strange country, and for the first time in her life there was no one else to rely on except herself and her own ingenuity.

      She needed to go downstairs in that lift, face Sebastian Nikosto squarely, and tell him eye to eye that she would never marry him, under any circumstances, and that she never wanted to see him again.

      A surge of nervous excitement flooded her veins. What if he was furious? She almost hoped he was. It would do her heart good to see him lose his cool control and spit with rage.

      She highlighted her cheekbones with liberal application of blush, at the same time boosting her mental courage with some strong, healthy anger. Whatever he said to her this time, however cold and hostile he was, whatever bitter insults he fired at her in that silky voice, there was no way her pride could ever let him think she was afraid of him.

      Let the barracuda do his worst. Make-up would be her shield.

      She painted a generous swathe of eyeshadow across her lids. Even without it her eyes had appeared dark and stormy after the adrenaline-wired past thirty-six hours. Now they looked enormous, and with more adrenaline pumping into her bloodstream every second there was no disguising their feverish glitter. She smoothed some kohl underneath with her fingertip. Somehow the blue of her irises deepened.

      The effect was atmospheric, almost gothic, and intensely satisfying. She felt as if she were in disguise. What to wear was more of a worry.

      She hardly wanted to inflame the man’s desires. A burkha would have been her choice if she’d had one to hand, but pride wouldn’t allow her to appear like a woman in a state of panic, anyway. In the end she chose a black, heavily embroidered lace dress that glittered with the occasional sequin when she moved. Since the dress had only thin straps she added a feathery bolero to cover her shoulders. The lining ended a few inches short of the hem, revealing a see-through glimpse of thigh in certain lights, but with the feathers added she looked modest enough.

      At last, dressed and ready for battle, her breathing nearly as fast as her galloping pulse rate, she surveyed her reflection.

      Red lipstick, the only touch of colour. Black dress, feathers, purse. The sheerest of dusk-coloured silk stockings, and black, very high heels to lend her some much-needed height.

      All black.

      Well, he wanted his Greek woman, didn’t he?

      Sebastian shaved with care, keeping an eye on the clock. Not that he felt any guilt over failing to meet the plane from Athens. Not exactly.

      He was a busy guy. If he didn’t keep an eye on Celestrial, who knew how much of a tangle things could get into? He could hardly place himself at the beck and call of every heiress with a whim to make him her husband.

      Still, manners dictated that tonight he should make the effort to be punctual. It didn’t have to be a late evening. He could buy her a decent dinner, smooth over the jagged hostilities of the first meeting, and be away by nine to get in some work.

      He hoped Miss Giorgias was in a better frame of mind. She’d have been jet-lagged, of course, which would explain her waspish behaviour.

      He splashed his face with water and reached for a towel, avoiding meeting his gaze in the mirror. He hadn’t really been so hard on her, had he? There was a lot more he could have said. Anyway, hadn’t she thanked him at the end for being kind?

      He felt that uncomfortable twinge again and brushed it aside. For God’s sake, did he have to be a nursemaid simply because he’d agreed—under duress—to meet the woman and check out the possibilities?

      He dried off his chest, dropped the towel into the hamper, then slapped on a little of the aftershave his sisters had given him. Lemon, sage and sandalwood, the label read. Guaranteed.

      He made a rueful grimace. Guaranteed to soothe a princess?

      As rarely happened to a man with his gaze fixed firmly on the stars, his eye fell on a green, moss-like growth around the base of the tap. How long had that been there? It was robust enough to have established quite a hold. Agnes must have missed it. More than once, by the look.

      He supposed he could attend to it himself without threatening his gonads. He cast about for something to wipe it away with, and used the only thing readily available: one of yesterday’s socks. The sock made no appreciable difference, so he gave up.

      With grander things to attend to, how could a guy be expected to attend to the demeaning sludge of housework?

      He frowned into his wardrobe, then surrendered to necessity and chose an evening suit. Was the shirt clean? He checked that it had a recent laundry ticket attached. Lucky he’d remembered at some stage to remind Agnes to empty the washing hamper. It was only to be expected she’d forget things when he was hardly ever here.

      Scrubbed, dressed and polished, he gave his overall appearance a cursory check. Looked at from a certain point of view, he supposed, the Giorgias woman had flown across the globe to nail him. Meet him, in her words. Might as well grit his teeth and make an effort to show her a little respect.

      He was, after all, he supposed, an eligible guy. A single guy. Widower. He flinched inwardly as the loathsome word surfaced from the deep to strike him down with all its connotations of dust and ashes, funerals and long black days and nights that rang with emptiness.

      He wiped those horrors from his mind and walked downstairs, a single man free and unencumbered.

      At the hotel he tossed the car keys to the parking valet, then strolled into the lobby, conscious, despite everything, of a certain buzz of anticipation in his veins.

      It was the hush of the evening, the city poised to leap into its nightlife, with neon lighting its every billboard and high-rise. Wherever he looked people were hurrying off to their evening engagements: guys with their girlfriends, couples holding hands. For once he felt like a man with somewhere to go other than the office.

      Ms Ariadne Giorgias would’ve had an hour or two to rest, so hopefully she might be less prickly. He wondered what she’d be wearing. Something slinky? Some little designer number from one of the couture houses, exhibiting more skin than fabric?

      The lobby was busy, but there was no sign of her. After his lapse this morning he would hardly be surprised if she kept him waiting as a punishment.

      He strolled over to Reception and asked one of the clerks to phone up to her room.

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