My fingers tightened around my glass. ‘You deliberately let me to think she was...unremarkable.’

She was quite the opposite. Hers was the confounding kind of beauty one couldn’t place a finger on. The kind that made you stare for much longer than was polite.

Neo shrugged. ‘No, I didn’t. And don’t blame me for the dire state of your mind, brother,’ he answered.

The low heat burning through my blood intensified. And while I wanted to attribute it to this conversation, I knew I couldn’t. Ever since I’d pulled that hideous veil off her face and uncovered the woman I’d agreed to marry a different irritation had lodged itself deep inside me. One I wasn’t quite ready to examine.

But that wasn’t to say I was ready to let Neo off the hook for...

For what?

Making obfuscating observations about Calypso Petras that had made me dismiss her from my mind, only to be knocked off-kilter by her appearance?

Granted, she still wasn’t my type. Her eyes were too large...much too distracting. They were the type of turquoise-blue that made you question their authenticity. Framed with long eyelashes that begged the same question. And then there were her lips. Full and sensual, with a natural bruised rose hue, and deeply alluring despite the absence of gloss.

The dichotomy of fully made-up eyes and bare lips had absorbed my attention for much too long at that altar. And it had irritated me even further that since our arrival at the reception those lips had been buried beneath a hideous layer of frosty peach.

But it hadn’t stopped me puzzling over why the two aspects of her initial appearance had been so at odds with each other. Or why she’d seemed...startled by our very brief kiss on the altar.

False innocence wrapped around her true character? A character that contained more than a little fire.

My mind flicked to other hints I’d glimpsed over the last few hours. While I was yet to discover what lay beneath the layers of the wedding gown, there were more than enough hints to authenticate her voluptuousness.

Yet to discover...

The peculiar buzz that had been ignited during that fleeting kiss notched up a fraction, the fact that the brief contact still lingered on my lips drawing another frown.

‘Your new wife is looking a little...unhappy. Perhaps you should see about fixing that?’

About to state that I had nothing to fix, that her happiness was none of my concern, I found my gaze flicked to the table. Despite the picture of poise she was trying to project she looked pale, her eyes flitting nervously. A quick scrutiny of our guests showed she was the object of several stares and blatant whispers.

A helpless prey in a jungle of predators.

My feet moved almost of their own accord, the niggling urge to reverse that look on her face irritating me even as I moved towards her, effectively silencing the whispers with quelling stares.

Regardless of how this union had come about, rumours couldn’t be allowed to run rife. This was how undermining started.