Page 12 of The Tycoon's Diamond Demand

‘You’re not my type any more.’

He thought he saw hurt flicker across her face, but it was gone too soon for him to nail it down. But her derision and annoyance were easy to see. ‘Why are you acting like this, Jens?’

Because she and her father had forced him to. Because being robotic, and difficult, and emotionally detached were far less risky than opening up and letting yourself beseen, out of control and full of emotion. He couldn’t let her get under his skin.

‘You don’t like being treated the way you treated me, do you?’ he whipped back.

He stared at her, off balance. It had been a long time since he’d been challenged or made to work hard for anything he wanted. What he wanted was, usually, immediately granted. Nobody argued with him or pushed back.

And if he was tired, then she had to be as well. ‘Go back to your hotel, Maja,’ he told her, furious with himself for not keeping better control of this conversation and situation. ‘We’ll talk later.’

She lifted her head, and her green-gold eyes nailed him to the terrace.

He recognised the determination in her eyes and watched as she pulled in a deep breath, then another.

‘You’ve put me in a horrible, untenable situation, Jens, and I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she told him, her voice full of venom.

Forgiveness wasn’t something he expected.

‘I’ll marry you in six weeks on one condition,’ Maja stated.

‘You’re not in a position to make—’

‘Listen to me!’ Maja’s fierce interjection had him tipping his head to the side, surprised by her scalpel-sharp tone. ‘I wish I had the guts to call your bluff, to believe that the man I knew would never do this to someone he once professed to love, but I don’t recognise you any more. Or maybe I do. You’ve turned into my father, a ruthless, hard-hearted, selfish bastard. Merciless, iron-fisted and cold-blooded.’

They were only words, and he’d heard them before. But instead of rolling off his normally thick hide, they landed as red-hot acid drops on his skin.

‘If I agree to marry you, I need your assurance that you will not tell anyone I am M J Slater,’ she said, her voice croaking with fear. ‘Do I have it?’

‘I want the world to know you as Maja Hagen. I’m not interested in your pseudonym,’ Jens told her.

‘Do you,’ she asked through gritted teeth, ‘promise?’

He nodded. And after a beat, Maja nodded back. So she trusted him to keep his word. Interesting. Did she know, or simply sense, that he wouldn’t break his promise? He lied, and manipulated words and situations for his benefit, but he never broke a promise. His mother had made too many to him that she’d never kept, and breaking his own was a line he wouldn’t cross.

The only time he would ever do that would be when he jilted Maja. He was promising to marry her, with no intention of showing up. This one, never-to-be-repeated time, his need for revenge outstripped his desire to keep his word. And he refused to analyse how he felt about that.

She slowly nodded. ‘So, I’ll be Maja Hagen for this sham engagement. We’ll keep M J Slater out of this.’

That worked for him.

Maja cleared her throat and Jens knew there was more. ‘Then I have only one more thing to ask...’

‘What is it?’

‘The reviews for my exhibition come out a week today. I’d like you to delay the announcement of our engagement until after then.’

Why? What difference did it make? He lifted one eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation.

Maja ran her fingertips across her forehead, her eyes on the floor. ‘You’re asking for a lot, for me to upend my world, but I’m just asking for a week.’ She placed her hands on her hips and lifted her left foot and placed it behind her right calf. Her top teeth bit down into her bottom lip. ‘The exhibition is a big one, and my first truly major one. I worked hard to land it. It’s the culmination of years of hard work.’

He was aware of how difficult it was to break into the big leagues.

‘The exhibition is due to run for another month, but the art-critic reviews will be published a week today. Once they are out, my reputation will be...well, if not cemented, then a great deal more solid than it was before. It might even be able to withstand a bombshell exposé stating that M J Slater is Maja Hagen.’

‘I’ve already said that if you agree to marry me, your secret will be safe.’

She sent him a harsh, narrow-eyed glare. ‘Forgive me if I find it difficult to trust you,’ Maja shot back. ‘I’d like the reviews out before we get engaged. Just as a little extra insurance.’

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