To Catch A Bride

“I’ll get your bags, miss.”

This new male voice came from behind and slightly above her. She jerked around. A trim, white-haired man in black stood midway down the brick staircase that led to the arched entry. The servant wore white gloves and a reserved, yet welcoming, smile. Kalli heard a click as the car trunk popped open.

Without waiting for further evidence of permission to retrieve her bags, the man descended the steps and headed to the rear of the car. Kalli pushed open her door and got out, only partly in a desire to help with her bags. One unruly portion of her brain had an urge to turn and gaze just once more at—well, it was a stupid urge, and she fought it by leaping from the convertible.

As she shut the car door, another man emerged from the shadows of the wide, covered porch. This new arrival was tall and thin, wore a dark suit, green-and-navy striped tie, and carried a black leather briefcase. His long, pale face and receding hairline seemed familiar. Kalli paused to scrutinize him, digging into her memory. When his glance shifted to meet hers, he came to a dead stop, his eyes going wide. That was it! That startled doe look told her exactly were she’d seen him before. She gasped, wagging an accusing finger at him. “But you said you wouldn’t be here!”

She didn’t like the panic in her voice. She’d meant to sound stern, all business. She noticed her finger, still wagging in his direction. It looked so moronic, she dropped her hand to her side, struggling to keep her lower lip from trembling. She felt rotten about what she’d done to Mr. Varos, and she was still acting badly. Working to regain her poise, she made herself breathe evenly.

“I—I’m just leaving.” The man she’d jilted walked down the remainder of the steps to the brick driveway.

Kalli felt wretched. How could she have shouted, especially considering he’d offered her this wonderful job? She hurried over to him and took his free hand in both of hers. “Oh, Mr. Varos, you must think I’m an ungrateful shrew.” She pumped his cool, limp fingers. “Thank you so much for this chance. I’ll do my very, very utmost to make your home the showpiece it deserves to be. I’m thrilled to be here. You’re too kind, and I’ll never, ever forget—”

“Miss Angelis,” Pal cut in. “If you’ll kindly release my assistant, he’s on a tight schedule.”

Kalli stopped pumping and opened her mouth to ask Pal what he was babbling about, but he’d turned to the pale man whose hand she clutched. “Charles, I left the Magnason contracts on my desk. Express mail them this afternoon. Then drive the Boxster to the garage. It needs to be detailed.”

“Yes, sir.” The pale man’s gaze darted from Kalli to Pal and back to Kalli.

Pal held out the car keys but when they weren’t immediately retrieved, he frowned, pointedly staring down at the pallid hand Kalli gripped with all her strength. “Don’t cut off his circulation, Miss Angelis. Charles needs those fingers. He types one hundred words a minute.”

Pal lifted away his sunglasses to reveal darkly fringed eyes the color of smoke. Those eyes captured her gaze and her breath. Without looking away, he signaled the butler. “Take Miss Angelis’ bags inside, Belkin. She’s thrilled to be here.”

Those lips Kalli had found disturbingly sensuous curled in a wicked grin and he winked, the most brazen, most calculated act she’d ever seen. Her reaction was just short of apoplexy.

“What—what’s going on here?” she asked in a fragile whisper. “Isn’t this…” She jerked to stare accusingly at the pale man whose hand she held. “But—aren’t you…?”

“No, ma’am. I’m Charles Early.” He made a sickly effort to smile. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

“But—but…” Horrified, she gaped at Pal. The truth trying to seep into her brain was too terrible to contemplate. “But you can’t be…”

He bowed his head slightly, as though being introduced at a formal gathering. “Nikolos Varos, at your service.” Slipping the convertible’s keys into Charles’s coat pocket, Niko kept her gaze locked with his, his grin crooked. “It’s my pleasure to meet you—at last.”

Even in her dazed stupor, Kalli was hit between the eyes with his brazen insolence. He’d made a fool of her and he loved it. As far as Nikolos Varos was concerned, their alliance was so completely opposite from a pleasure, she could feel the antagonism pulsating through her as surely and painfully as if she were standing on a downed electric cable. He didn’t like her, didn’t want to be in the same state with her. So why…

He took her arm, short-circuiting her thought processes. “Allow me to show you to your room.”

Groping around in her brain for balance and sanity, she belatedly managed to yank from his hold. “You promised you wouldn’t be here!”

Niko stood a step below her, but she still had to look up to scan his expression. “Actually,” he corrected, “Charles said he wouldn’t be here.” One dark brow rose as he observed her, his smile gone. “More to the point, you promised to marry me. Why are you still Miss Angelis?”

The blunt rebuke broadsided Kalli. She felt dizzy and she couldn’t catch her breath. This wouldn’t work. She couldn’t be here, couldn’t stay. Suddenly ice-cold, she hugged herself. “This is impossible, Mr. Varos,” she whispered. Her ex-fiancé might not have a broken heart because of her rejection, but his bloodthirsty streak was all too real. “Under the circumstances, I—I can’t stay.”

Niko’s brow furrowed for an instant, then his features became unreadable. “It’s your decision, of course,” he said in that rough-sexy drawl. “Most people in your profession would endure hell on earth to get a prestigious opportunity like this.” He indicated the house. “Look at it again, Miss Angelis. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She didn’t have to look. She knew he was right. In all her experience she’d never seen a more spectacular example of the American Victorian style. With proper refurbishing, the grand edifice could be a masterpiece of the period. How many people got the chance to help create a masterpiece?

Her sense of loss was like a molten steel weight in her belly and she had to fight to keep from bursting into tears. She shook her head, befuddled and stupid. She wished she could be anywhere else, but she knew her cowardly behavior toward Mr. Varos had to end. Choking back a sob, she resolutely met his gaze. “Since you obviously detest me, why would you offer such a five-star job —to me? It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s very simple, Miss Angelis.” A knife-edged chill clung to his words. “Because I keep my promises.”

CHAPTER THREE

THAT stinging insult hadn’t been Niko’s most shining hour. He watched his ex-fiancée wince. Odd, he didn’t feel quite the surge of satisfaction he’d thought he would.

She opened her mouth, but before she could respond, he grasped her elbow and steered her up the steps into the mansion’s foyer.

“But, Mr. Var—”

“By the way,” he cut in, uncompromising in his plan to teach his fickle ex-fiancée a lesson about breaking pledges. “Regarding your gushing thanks earlier—you’re quite welcome. It’s my pleasure.” He knew his forbidding expression would underscore the lie.

She startled him when she yanked from his hold and spun to confront him. “Will you be here the whole time?” Her eyes, a captivating lavender-gray, sparked with animosity and distress. Though her face was the perfect oval he’d admired in her picture, he was becoming acquainted with her chin of iron determination. At the moment, it jutted accusingly. Her jet-black hair flowed out in soft waves from a center part. Disheveled from the convertible ride, the thick mane gleamed, a dusky aura around her flushed face.

She looked a little crazed, in an engaging way. His heated reaction to a mass of glossy hair and a blush made him furious with himself. He didn’t like this woman. She might be attractive but she was flighty and couldn’t be trusted to keep important promises. This flaw in her character had caused him no end of embarrassment. He hadn’t been able to go anywhere in the city without being ribbed that he’d been “left at the altar,” not to mention all the pointing and staring from strangers.

“Well,” she demanded, aiming that lethal little chin at his heart. “Are you planning to be here?”

With a studied nonchalance he didn’t feel, Niko shrugged his hands into his jeans pockets. “If you’ll recall, I’m on vacation.”

“Don’t you have a place in town?” Her voice had gone high-pitched and shrill. She was truly alarmed about this turn of events. That knowledge sent a rush of malevolent pleasure through him. “My place in town needs repair work,” he said. “I’ll be staying here for the duration.”

“Duration?” she squeaked.

“Three weeks.”

Her horrified expression almost made him smile.

“But—but that’s how long…” Her voice broke and she didn’t finish. They both knew she needed to be there that long. He watched her swallow several times, obviously trying to get her voice under control. “You lied to me,” she whispered at last.

“Did I?” He challenged her with his most innocent expression.

“Yes!” She glared, clearly attempting to kill him with that look. “When you said you wouldn’t be here. You lied!”

“Charles told you he wouldn’t be here.”

“But he—you—allowed me to assume—”

“What you assume, Miss Angelis, is hardly my fault.”

She blinked, then her stare grew wider, as though she’d had a distasteful thought. “Do you think you need to keep an eye on me? Is that why you’re staying? You don’t trust me to get the job done?”

That wasn’t the reason, but the idea had merit. “Why would I need to do that?” he asked. “When have I ever known you to break your word?”

She opened her lips, but plainly shaken by his direct shot, couldn’t seem to form words. Niko gave her no time to recoup and dropped a bomb. “The fact is, this is a beautiful piece of property. I own it, so why shouldn’t I stay? After all, this was supposed to be my honeymoon.”

He heard her guttural moan and knew he’d drawn blood. “This is—this is bad!” She rubbed her temples as though trying to ward off a headache. “I can’t take your insults for three weeks. I can’t even take them for three minutes.” The butler came down the steps. At the sound of his approach, she whirled. “Excuse me, sir.” She waved frantically. “Please, get my bags. I’m leaving.”

“I thought you’d bail out, again,” Niko said, baiting her.

“Bail out?” She whirled, giving him another direct shot with that lethal chin. “How dare you say I’m bailing out! It’s nothing of the sort! I simply won’t subject myself to your mocking and insulting, and if you even thought I might, you’re—you’re demented!”

“I never thought you would,” he lied. He knew damn well what she would do, and stared her down as she blustered and stammered, trying to convince herself she wasn’t a quitter. She might have been able to bail out on him and their marriage, but she had never met him. Her job was another thing entirely. She knew her job, and was passionate about her work. He’d done enough research on her to be sure of that. She would stay, or Niko Varos wasn’t the hotshot international financial consultant people thought he was.

“N-nothing—” she stammered, “not this house, not any house—is worth—” she indicated the faded grandeur of an entry hall, decorated in retro-fifties camp “—worth putting up with your—with your…”

Her glance trailed her broad gesture. Before she completed her sweep, she stilled. Her lips sagged and her distressed expression changed into one of abject horror, as though she only now absorbed the scandalous violation done to this mansion and its proud Victorian roots.

The fine old wood floor had been painted in a green-and-yellow checkerboard pattern. The wallpaper bore a splashy, modern art look Niko assumed were supposed to be untidy piles of pipe. The dangling light fixture consisted of three beach-ball-size yellow, plastic orbs. Beneath them sat a sprawling amoeba-shaped table with a marbled mirror top, supported by spindly metal legs.

She covered her mouth with both hands and strangled a gasp as she staggered around in a circle. Niko watched as her glance fell to a side wall. A round, molded plywood table stood between two doors. Atop its indented surface squatted a funky lamp made to resemble a big lightbulb. Kalli bit her lip, her glance skidding to another wall where a yellow, rectangular clock, the size of a breakfast tray dominated.

The clock’s hands were disconcertingly off-center. An oversize, red secondhand tick-tick-ticked as she stared, wide-eyed. Niko had the sense each jerk of that red, mechanical arm boomed in her head as she suffered, second by painful second. He had to fight a knowing grin as he observed her sluggish, stumbling body language. Only seeing her scream and collapse in a traumatized heap would have made it more obvious she was experiencing a gut-wrenching ache to rescue the place from its gross defilement.

“Cute, isn’t it?” he taunted, well aware he was being cruel. “I especially like the lead-pipe motif in the wallpaper.”

“Oh—dear heaven…” she whimpered, shaking her head. “It’s so—so wrong. It’s dreadful.”

“But is it dreadful enough to endure a brief captivity in a hell-on-earth?”

She stood with her back to him, her shoulders slightly drooped. He sensed her turmoil and gave her a moment to agonize over the knowledge that beneath layers of wrong-headed embellishments a masterpiece cried out to be liberated. He could almost hear her thinking, I could save this house. I must save it! He pursed his lips to suppress a shrewd grin.

The thud of his butler’s footsteps drew his gaze once again to the central staircase. The liveried man descended, carrying a suitcase and shoulder tote.

Niko’s attention slid to his angsting ex. She, too, had heard the butler and looked up. Niko waited, silent. At the moment, it would be unwise to remind her of his unwelcome presence. In order for her to make the decision that fit with his ploy, she needed to think of the house and only the house.

“I—uh…”

Niko watched her straighten her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” She moved toward the stairs, addressing the butler. “I’m staying, after all.” She rushed up the steps and took the bags. “Please show me to my room.”

Belkin glanced at his employer, his expression pinched with confusion.

Niko nodded, experiencing a rush of satisfaction. He allowed himself a crafty grin as he watched her trudge, stiff-backed and squeamish, into the lion’s den.

Kalli unpacked her bag in a bizarre trancelike state. She walked back and forth from her suitcase to the chartreuse dresser with its aluminum top and side trim and cane inset drawers.

As she put her belongings away her brain screamed, Three weeks? You’ve agreed to stay under the same roof with a man who obviously hates you for three whole weeks? What are you using your brain for, Kalli? To keep your skull from imploding?

After a sound tongue-lashing from the logical section of her cranium, the artistic quarter leaped into the fray and lashed back. But he was right when he said three weeks in a hell-on-earth would be worth the opportunity to transform this abused Victorian treasure into the monument to American history it should be.

Reality check, Kalli! The man hates you, and intends to make your life miserable. Are you ready for that?

I don’t know! I don’t know! Leave me alone! She plunked down on the bed and grabbed handfuls of hair. Closing her fingers into fists, she muttered, “I know he hates me and wants me to suffer for running out on the wedding. But…”

She scanned the bedroom with its sublime fourteen-foot ceiling. Once, long ago it had been lovely. The original casement windows still held their quaint bull’s-eye panes. And she’d seen a glimpse of the original parquet planking, visible in the closet. Green and burnt-umber carpeting, sporting a haphazard hoop-and-cube design, hid the wonderful old floor from view. The room’s deep, simply molded baseboards were classically Victorian. The ornate cornices were exemplary, too; but painted the same gray-green as the walls, their splendor was so camouflaged it was all but lost.

Kalli knew the fifties had been a decade of budding space exploration. America’s love affair with aeronautical technology brought with it decorating schemes of unornamental flatness, geometric forms and daring color combinations. Kalli had always considered the look airy, sleek, clean and bright. Unfortunately, in the case of this home, someone had heavy-handedly inflicted the retro-fifties veneer on beautiful old Victorian architecture. Rather than sleek and pleasing, the effect was not only criminally inappropriate but erratic and unnerving.

Could restoring this sleeping goddess to her virginal glory be worth three weeks of guaranteed hell, tormented and badgered by a vindictive male? She inhaled, her gaze roving over the bedchamber. Her heart swelled as she envisioned all it could be. It would be a sin to run away. The house needed her. On both an emotional level and a professional level, she would regret leaving for the rest of her life. “Yes,” she breathed, experiencing a renewed flow of courage. “Yes! It’s worth anything Mr. Varos might choose to put me through.”

She shoved off the bed, glaring toward the room’s chartreuse door. “If insulting me and making me squirm is your idea of a vacation, Mr. Varos, then do your worst. Go ahead and watch me like a hawk, but you won’t find my work wanting. And I won’t run away!” She threw back her head and placed her hands on her hips. “Because Kalli Angelis is made of sterner stuff than you know. I’ll turn this Bitterweed into an American Beauty Rose, no matter how much grief you pile on my head. And you can take that to your precious bank!”

Kalli didn’t want to waste a minute under Nikolos Varos’s roof, so that afternoon she got started, trekking from magnificent room to magnificent room snapping photographs and scribbling copious notes. With each new encounter, she was simultaneously awed and appalled. Obviously Mr. Varos had purchased the place with the furniture included. She couldn’t believe he would have recently acquired it, furnished it to match the misguided decor, only to immediately commission someone to have it completely redone. Not unless he had more money than sense. Which was a possibility, she supposed. Somebody had inflicted this travesty on the lovely old home.

Though she worked with dogged single-mindedness, she could always tell when Niko was near. So much for her reputed single-mindedness. Even his momentary loitering in a neighboring hallway short-circuited her ability to think, let alone be creative.

Every time she heard the distinctive rap of his step or sniffed his woodsy aftershave, her focus grew hazy. Architectural details became nondescript and peculiarly irrelevant. What was her problem? Why couldn’t she concentrate when he happened by? Was it anxiety? Was she waiting for the other shoe to drop and wondering exactly how deafening the explosion would be? Did she expect him to leap out at her and shout “boo”? Or douse her with a water hose?

Working to shut her mind to everything but her note-taking, she peeled away a corner of silvered wallpaper to discover the faded remnants of a stunning handmade woodblock design. Even as agitated as she was, Kalli managed an appreciative smile and jotted the information in her workbook. Once again the wondrous reality of her good luck gave her a fleeting reprieve from thoughts of Nikolos Varos and his lurking glower.

The afternoon passed without any shoes dropping or massive explosions. As a matter of fact, he’d said nothing at all to her. He didn’t even join her at dinner, so she ate alone in a room that could have housed a double-decker bus. In the overpowering silence she picked at something tasty, exotic and crab-meaty, but she hardly noticed it.

Her interest lay in scanning the dining room. Walls, paneled up to the dado rail, had once been stained a rich walnut, but were now painted a nasty orange. Coordinating wallpaper depicted a psychedelic skirmish of color and design that would have sent Kalli scurrying under the table if the structure hadn’t been such a scary, stainless-steel monstrosity. Its brushed serpentine surface was so cold to the touch, Kalli found herself holding her utensils by their extreme ends to keep from making contact.

Twenty molded fiberglass chairs, thinly upholstered in lemon vinyl with skinny metal legs, surrounded the table like half-starved munchkins attempting to hold the slithering beast at bay. She experienced an ironic giggle and mumbled, “Kalli, you’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re definitely in Oz.”

She glanced up. Where crystal chandeliers once sparkled in the lofty space between the paneled ceiling and table, tract lighting now dominated. Fuzzy fiberglass cones angled hither and yon, illuminated random snippets of space. Kalli shivered at the chilly severity the room generated. “If you want my opinion, Mr. Varos,” she muttered, “the decor suits you perfectly.”

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