Page 48 of 2 Books in One Bundle

‘That...’ she said stupidly. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘It’s true, though.’ There was a note of certainty in his voice. As if he knew her feelings better than she did herself. ‘You’re marrying him because David wanted you to.’

Anger stirred inside her, threatening her grip on her detachment. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know nothing about me or Gianni.’ She snatched her bouquet from him and straightened, trying to inject some steel into her spine, projecting ‘future CEO’ and not ‘angry orphan’. ‘I don’t care what you paid him or why. You need to bring him back this instant.’

Orion simply looked at her, the glitter of the wolf in his eyes. ‘No,’ he said in the same calm tone. ‘I will not.’

Her fingers felt cold, and she could hear the buzz of conversation from the assembled guests. It was louder now.

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be happening. Surely Gianni was already at the altar, waiting for her. Surely he was.

He would have sent someone to see what the delay was about by now.

True. Yet no one had come except that employee of Orion’s.

Ice crept through her as reality began to assert itself. Gianni didn’t appear and neither did her father, and all she could hear was the conversation of the guests, getting even louder.

While Orion merely stood there looking at her, dressed in his exquisite grey morning suit.

The roaring was back in her ears, the floor feeling as if it had shifted beneath her feet and then unexpectedly, a large, warm hand was beneath her elbow.

Orion. His grip was firm and strong, the solidity of mountains keeping her upright, and for a split second, she almost leaned into his hold, because her knees felt weak.

‘I know this is a shock,’ he continued in that same steady, implacable tone. ‘But I’m not here to hurt you.’

‘I don’t understand.’ She hated how uncertain and weak she sounded. ‘Why are you here then?’

His palm beneath her elbow was warm, in stark contrast to the cool of his voice. Yet his amber eyes gleamed with a sudden, dark fire. ‘Why do you think? I’m here to marry you instead, Isla.’

Orion watched Isla’s pretty blue eyes widen in shock.

He wasn’t surprised. It was, after all, a very shocking proposal.

Yet that had been the plan he’d been formulating for the past month, ever since he’d found out that Isla Kendrick was going to marry one of her father’s protégés. Orion simply couldn’t allow that to happen.

He’d been playing the long game for months now, deciding initially that he’d take the slow, careful approach with her. Then her engagement had been announced, which he hadn’t been expecting, and he’d had to rethink his plans.

He wasn’t in love with her—love wasn’t possible for him these days—but he’d admit to being in the grip of a singular...fascination with her.

It had all started at a business gala held at the National Gallery, where he’d found her standing in a small gallery away from the crowd, in front of a painting, and there had been a rapt look on her face.

He hadn’t known who she was, but she’d seemed illuminated, lit from within by something he didn’t understand and his interest had been caught. He’d checked the painting to see what it was that held her attention so completely. But it was only Van Gogh’s painting of a night sky.

Orion didn’t like it when he didn’t understand something. His instinct was always to make sense of it, so he’d gone over and asked her what was so interesting about the painting.

She’d smiled, like the sun rising on a midwinter morning, and started talking about the brushstrokes, the layers of the paint, the flowing motion of the painted sky and how they came together to form a beautiful, luminous whole. Her hands had moved as she spoke, as eloquent and graceful as her words, and he’d been...transfixed.

He’d never much appreciated art and the creative impulse was a mystery to him. He was a man who took things apart. He didn’t create. He’d tried once, long ago, to build something, but that had left him broken, so now he didn’t bother. Satisfaction came from looking at a system that wasn’t performing, at identifying why it wasn’t and what was broken, and then deciding what to do about it. Rather like a mechanic taking apart an old car and selling some parts for scrap, while reconditioning other parts to make it go better.

He was good at it.

So it was all very mysterious why he’d found looking at this woman while she talked about a bit of paint on a board so fascinating. There was something about her. About the way she came alive that consumed his interest so completely he hadn’t been able to do anything but stare.

That was the night he’d decided that he simply had to know more about her.

It hadn’t taken him long to discover that she was David Kendrick’s adopted daughter, Isla, the apparent heir to Kendrick’s underperforming Christmas company. Her adoption thirteen years earlier, at the age of twelve, had been a media sensation—‘Childless Christmas company magnate adopts orphan girl at Christmas time!’—and Kendrick had made much of her potential. Having been an orphan himself, Orion was further intrigued to see what kind of businesswoman she’d grown into. Perhaps she came alive when talking about sales projections as well as paintings?

However, that turned out to be not the case which at first he’d found underwhelming. She was quiet, barely saying a word even when asked, and she seemed uncertain of herself. Not at all the hungry go-getter Kendrick had always portrayed her to be and not at all that luminous woman he’d seen in the gallery that night.

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