by Julia James
What had been the wife’s name? Marcia? Marilyn? Something like that...
And the daughter?
He felt that ice water fill his veins, heard her faltering voice echo in his pounding head, forced the connection through his brain. Natasha, she had said.
Logic clicked. Natasha. Wasn’t that a diminutive of Natalia? Talia...?
Talia!
Savage emotion seared through him, but he quenched it with the ice-cold water in his veins. His eyes rested on hers but they were masked, letting nothing show in them. He saw her nod and lick her lips. Those full, passionate lips that had caressed his body in ecstasy.
And all along she had been the daughter of the man he had spent his adult life seeking to destroy...
The irony, as savage as the emotion shredding his brain right now, was unbearable. How could the woman who had burned across his life so incandescently, so briefly, turn out to be the daughter of Gerald Grantham?
He tore his mind away. Focussed only on the present. Ruthlessly he slammed control over himself, refused to let any part of the emotion tearing across him show. There was no expression in his eyes and his body was taut and tense.
‘And you have come here wanting to keep the villa in Marbella?’ He echoed her words, his voice as impassive as his face.
He saw her nod again, as if her neck were stiff.
For one long, endless moment he just looked at her, fighting for control as the shock of her identity rampaged through his consciousness. He studied her as she stood in front of him, her stance rigid, clearly as shocked as he, and hiding it a lot less well.
Deliberately he let himself take in everything about her. She was wearing a suit in dark aubergine, a designer number, though too fussily styled to show her to her best advantage. Her glorious hair was confined to a plait, her make-up was subdued, and he thought she looked thinner than when he had seen her at that party.
He considered what had caused that: the sudden poverty she’d been plunged into...the complete reversal of her circumstances... What a blow that must have been to her.
Talia Grantham.
The name was like a dead weight around his neck. Gerald Grantham’s daughter—the gilded, pampered daughter of his enemy.
She was that all along and I didn’t know.
The realisation, coming as it had out of the blue, was like a savage blow to his guts, doubling him up with the force of it.
And now she was here, in a designer outfit Gerald Grantham’s money had bought for her, wanting to go on living in a palatial villa on an exclusive gated estate in the rich man’s playground of Marbella. As if she had every right to do so. Every expectation that of course she could go on living there.
Gerald Grantham’s daughter—taking the world for granted. Taking what she wanted just as her father had. Splashing his money on herself—money that had been bled from her father’s victims.
He could feel another emotion beginning to mount in him. It was an emotion he knew well, that had fuelled the last ten years of his life: slow, low-burning, inexorable anger.
But he would not let it show. Instead he went back to his desk and threw himself into his chair, swinging to look directly at her. As he gazed at her, taking in her presence a bare few metres from him, yet another emotion rose in him, just as powerful as his anger.
It was the emotion that had first kicked through every vein in his body as his eyes had rested on her at that fateful party. And it was instant, immediate, and impossible to deny. Impossible then and impossible now.
Thee mou, how beautiful she is!
It turned out nothing could change that—nothing! Not even the hideous discovery of who she really was and why she had come here.
Not to find me again—not to seek me out after abandoning me that morning, after that unforgettable night together. No, not for that—
Anger rose within him, cutting across the sudden overwhelming longing that was flooding through him as she stood before him, so incredibly, savagely beautiful. She was having exactly the same effect on him that she had had from his very first moment of seeing her, desiring her...
Turbid emotion filled him, mingling anger and desire, and it was a toxic, dangerous mix. It was impossible to subdue. It steered him now, formed the thoughts that swirled wildly in his head—thoughts he should not be having.
I should send her packing. I should tell her to get out of my office and get out of this villa she wants to keep for herself. I should have nothing more to do with her. She is my enemy’s daughter and she walked out on me as if I were nothing to her.
He could hear the words in his head and knew what they were telling him. It was the only sane thing to do.
But the words that came out of his mouth were not those words. He lifted his hands, as if making an accommodating gesture. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why not.’
Even as he spoke the words he regretted them. But he could not call them back—would not. Something was starting to burn within him—a slow fire he knew he should extinguish to prevent it rekindling the passion he felt for her.
At his words he saw her expression lighten. He smiled and went on. ‘I am prepared to offer you a short-term lease—say three months—while you make alternative arrangements for your accommodation.’
He spoke briskly, in a businesslike fashion, watching her all the time.
He could see her eyes lighting up, see the visible relaxation of her stance at his reassuring agreement to what she’d come here wanting. She was getting what she wanted, despite what she had done to him.
His expression changed, becoming bland—deliberately, calculatingly so. ‘I’ll have a lease drawn up and rent set. I would think, given the size and location of the villa, something like thirty thousand euros a month should cover it.’
He watched her face whiten. Her reaction—such obvious outrage at his reply—made the anger inside him spear him again. But he would not let it show. Instead he smiled again, though it did not reach his eyes.
‘In life, Ms Grantham,’ he said, his voice silken, ‘we cannot have what we cannot pay for.’
He pushed his chair back, the movement abrupt. He stood and gave a shrug of deliberate indifference.
‘If you can’t pay the rent you must vacate the villa,’ he spelt out bluntly.
His eyes never left her, never showed any expression. Even though they wanted to sweep over her glorious body, concealed as it was beneath that fussy over-styled outfit she was wearing. It didn’t suit her—however expensive it had been.
Absently, he wondered at its difference in style from the simple yet stunning dress she’d worn at that party. He wrenched his thoughts away from where they must not go. His eyes from where they must not go either...
He saw her expression change, as if her own self-control was very near the edge. It must be a shock to her, he found himself thinking, bitterness infusing his every thought and his mouth thinning. Daddy’s darling daughter, realising her pampered lifestyle was over, that her doting father was no longer there to grant her every whim and wish.
‘No!’
He heard her cry out in protest at his brutal spelling out of the harsh truths of life, saw her face working.
‘Everything else has gone—but not that...not the villa too!’
For a moment so fleeting that Luke thought he must have misheard there seemed to be real fear in her voice, real despair...real desolation. She was staring at him, her expression pinched, and he thought he caught something vulnerable in the way she stood there, as if life had dropped a weight on her that she could not shoulder.
He felt a different emotion rise within him—one that made him suddenly want to blurt out that of course she could stay in the damn villa, that he didn’t give a damn about any rent. It made him want to surge to his feet, close the distance between them, take her into his arms and hold her close, t
o tell her he would make everything all right for her, all right for them both, that he never wanted to lose her again.
But then it was gone. She was only repeating what she’d said before, just more insistently. As if she was assuming, taking it for granted.
Of course she was Gerald Grantham’s daughter, was she not? She had never had to think of paying for anything at all. A rich man’s princess of a daughter, who got everything she wanted handed to her on a plate by an indulgent father.
‘I absolutely cannot lose the villa! I just can’t!’ Her eyes flared suddenly, widening as her long lashes swept down.
His mouth tightened again at the declaration of entitlement in her words. Her protest should have been like a match to his anger, and yet it gave rise to a quite different emotion. It was an emotion he should not let himself be feeling, but his eyes, his senses, were hungry to revisit it.
Memory flooded over him. The last time his eyes had held her she had been lying naked in his arms, sated from passion, her skin like silk against his body, her hair a glorious swathe across his shoulders, her mouth pressed against the wall of his bare chest, her exhausted limbs tangled with his...
And yet when he’d awoken from the overpowering sleep that had claimed him she had been gone, vanished into thin air.
Only to reappear now, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.
I can’t let her walk out on me again...
The words were inside his head and he knew he should wipe them away. He knew he should send her packing. He knew exactly what he should say to Gerald Grantham’s daughter.
He knew it. But he could not say it. Not for all the will in his body and in mind.
Instead, as if he were possessed by a force he could not resist, he felt his muscles start to loosen, his shoulders ease back, and then he heard the words that came from his mouth. Words he knew with every rational part of his mind he should not be saying, but which were coming from a place inside him where reason held no sway. There was only an instinct as old as time itself and just as powerful.
Not to let her walk out on him again...
‘Then perhaps,’ he heard himself saying, ‘we can come to an alternative arrangement...’
* * *
Talia stared at him. Her senses were reeling. She was floored...in shock...mesmerised.
She had thrust her way into this inner sanctum to which that snooty PA had been determined to bar her entry, and then, as she’d stared at the man jolting to his feet at her entry, she had realised just who it was who stood before her. It was impossible to recover from this truly unexpected outcome.
She could barely countenance the brutal demand he’d made of her to pay rent in order to stay on in their own home, though she did understand on a rational level that the villa was part of the spoils of his acquisition of what was left of her father’s once mighty business empire.
She had tried to ignore the leap in her senses as her eyes had clung to him in the custom-tailored suit that sheathed his lean body, the dark tie with the discreet gold tie pin, the gold links at his cuffs, the leather strap of that exorbitantly expensive watch she’d noticed the night they’d met. Still, his long-limbed pose was lithe and it radiated power—the kind of power that came from wealth, the way her father’s had.
Yet Luke—Luke Xenakis, she reminded herself forcibly, of XL Holdings—had pursued her father’s ailing company with a power that had nothing to do with his wealth. A power that he could exert over her with a mere flick of those dark lidded eyes, a twist of that sensual mouth...
She felt herself almost swaying as memories assaulted her: his arms tightening around her, his mouth opening hers to his, his hands gliding over her body that had trembled at his silken touch...
With a silent groan she tore her mind away. What use were those memories here, in this austere office, with its views out over the glacial alpine lake and the jagged, snow-capped mountains soaring all around, as icy as the coldness in the eyes that had once burned with heat for her?
She felt something wither inside her under the cold indifference of his gaze, and knew she must banish from her memory the night she had spent with him, with this man she had given herself to so gloriously and so freely—the man who had thrown open the gate of her prison, offering her a beguiling glimpse of the freedom and bliss that could be hers.
As always, her prison doors had closed on her and were still shut. For now, as then, her first responsibility must be to her mother, to protect her from the catastrophe that had engulfed them with her father’s ruin. She must protect her from blows she could not cope with yet, and soften the final blow of losing her last refuge from the bleak poverty she was going to have to face.
She knew she must not run from Luke in an effort to try to end the torment of seeing him again and feeling his coldness towards her, and nor should she throw herself at him to beg him to listen to why she’d had to leave him as she had, though she desperately wanted to do both. She must accept whatever he offered her if it helped protect her mother just a little longer.
She forced herself to focus on what he was saying, to try to make sense of it. ‘What...what do you mean?’
She saw a veil come down over his eyes—another layer of inscrutable protection. He was so close to her and yet so infinitely far away. Something ached inside her at the distance between them now. With every instinct in her being she knew that he had not forgiven her for walking out on him that morning, leaving him after such a night as they had shared.
For a moment she wanted to cry out, to tell him why she had left like that, to try and make him understand that her life had never been hers to live as she wanted.
That it still wasn’t.
Whatever ‘alternative arrangement’ Luke had in mind, she’d have to go along with it—if it was the only way to let her mother go on living at the villa she had no choice. She had to buy the time that she so desperately needed to get her mother to face the brutal truth of how they had to live now—time to find a cheap place to move to, to get herself a job and earn money for the food they were going to eat from now on...
Her tired mind fogged as she made herself listen to what he was saying.
‘I may have a job for you.’
She frowned.
‘You told me you were an interior designer,’ he went on. ‘Are you only residential or do you have commercial experience?’
She blinked, remembering instantly the conversation they’d had, brief though it had been, as they’d introduced themselves to each other.
But we left out the most important information.
She gave a slight nod, swallowing with a dry throat.
‘Very well. In that case, I’m embarking on a new business venture—a potential refurbishment project—your skills might come in useful to me. If so...’ he was watching her speculatively through those veiled lashes of his ‘...I would accept your work in lieu of rent—if that is agreeable to you.’
Talia stared. The hope that had flared so pathetically briefly when he had first said there would be no problem in her staying on at the villa—before naming his price for that—sparked into life again.
‘Yes! Yes, of course—’
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. The fact she would be working for the man who had brought down her father, who now owned everything that he had once possessed, was irrelevant.
She saw him sit back, cross one leg over the other and steeple his long fingers—fingers that had once trailed through her loosened hair and skimmed the contours of her naked body...
She dragged her mind away and stifled the inner voice that was telling her she was insane even to think of working for a man she had spent such a night with and who was now regarding her as nothing more than an employee.
But I have no choice in the matter. If he is offering me a job I have to take it—I have to! If it lets Mum stay on in
the villa... If it buys me time...
She swallowed again. ‘When...when do I start?’
She watched him smooth a hand over his thigh in a controlled, leisurely fashion, his eyes never leaving her, revealing nothing of what might be behind that leaden gaze.
‘I’m flying out at the end of the week. Meet me at Heathrow,’ he informed her.
Consternation filled Talia’s face. ‘Flying out? Where?’
‘The Caribbean. I’ll be there a fortnight—so will you.’
Violently, she shook her head. A fortnight? ‘I couldn’t! Impossible!’
It would be impossible to spend two weeks with Luke—and in the very place they had fantasised about that night together. About running away to a sun-drenched tropical island, a palm-fringed beach, with no cares or responsibilities or prison doors to stop her...
The cruelty of it mocked her. Mocked her with the torment of the prospect of having to be with him again as he was now—so cold, so distant...
She saw him shrug again—a gesture of indifference. And that was all he felt for her now, she knew.
‘In which case be out of the Marbella villa next week.’
Talia shut her eyes as if she could shut out the reality of this situation. How could she turn down this offer he was making her? She couldn’t. She had no choice.
Luke was speaking again. ‘You can have twenty-four hours to make your decision. Phone my PA when you’ve made it.’
He uncrossed his legs, extending them under the wide mahogany desk, and reached for his keypad. Talia swallowed. It was a signal that she was being dismissed.
Numbly, she walked from the office.
* * *
Behind her, Luke lifted his gaze as she walked out. She could not have spelt out more clearly how repugnant she found the notion of spending time with him.
Memory stabbed at him again of how they had talked on that amazing, unforgettable night together, sated with passion, wound in each other’s arms. Talked of taking off to the Caribbean together...