"Is there a problem with the Paris apartment?" Nikhil asked politely. "Can I get you a drink? Something to celebrate the one-off occasion of us being in the same room alone without prior arrangement? I can't think of the last time that happened, can you?" But, at a push, he would have said before they'd got married, when she had been studiously courting him, even though at the time he had thought it to be the other way round.

He had set his sights on Mahesh Solanki and his company a long, long time ago. He had covertly kept tabs on it, had seen the way it had slid further and further into a morass of debt and, like any predator worth his salt, he had bided his time.

Revenge was always a dish best eaten cold.

He just hadn't banked on the daughter.  One glimpse of Meeta and her innocent, ethereal beauty and he had altered his plans on the spot. He had wanted her. She had touched something in him with her innocence and, cynic that he was, he had fallen hook, line and sinker.

He hadn't banked on that complication, had thought that she would hop into bed with him, allowing him to get her out of his system before he concluded business with her father. But, after a few weeks of playing a courting game that wasn't  his thing at all, he had concluded that he wanted more than just a slice of her.

Only thing was...nearly a year and a half later and their marriage was as dry as dust. He still hadn't touched that glorious body, leaving him with the certainty that, whilst he had thought he had the upper hand, she and her conniving father had actually played him for a fool. Instead of swinging the wrecking ball to the company and setting the police on Mahesh Solanki----- who had been embezzling for years--- he had ended up saving the company because he had wanted Meeta. He had wanted her at his side and in his bed and, if saving the company came as part of the deal, then so be it. Course, he had saved it and made money from it, ensuring that Mahesh Solanki was firmly locked out with just enough pocket money to teach him the toys of frugality, but still.....

He had been unwittingly charmedby her open, shy, disingenuous personality. When she had looked at him with those big, grave brown eyes, her face propped in the palm of her hand, her expression enraptured, he had felt as though he had found the secret of eternal life and it had gone to his head like a drug.

She'd led him on. God knew if her slime of a father had kick-started the idea but that didn't matter.

What mattered was that they had got what they wanted while he had certainly missed out on what he had banked on getting.

She was shaking her head at the offer of a drink and he ignored her, fetching himself a glass of whisky and a glass of wine for her.

'Relax', he said, pressing the glass on her and then retreating to the bay window where he sipped his drink and watched her in absolute silence. She had made it crystal clear on their wedding night that theirs was not a real marriage. No sex, no chit-chat, no getting to know one another. So he'd taken over her father's company but that didn't mean that she came as part of the package deal and, if he thought he'd been short-changed, then that was too bad.

He hadn't asked how she knew, what her father had said or what she had been told. He'd been duped and that was the end of the story.

The thought of having any kind of soul-searching conversation about the quality of their marriage had never crossed Nikhil's mind. He had made no effort to talk things through. And no one could ever accuse her of not being the 'perfect wife'. She certainly looked the part. Perfectly toned, with a devastating prettiness that conveyed an air of peculiar innocence underneath the polished exterior. It was a quality that no model or socialist could replicate. She looked like someone waiting for life to happen and people fell for it. She was the greatest business asset a man could have. The woman, Nikhil had often thought, had missed her career as an Oscar-winning actress.