Irresistible Bargain with the Greek

by Julia James

  As the words left his lips he cursed himself. The last thing he needed to do was remind himself of that night.

  But Talia was only dipping her head again, saying in a pinched voice, ‘My father liked this kind of style. He said it was very feminine. It was the way he liked me to look.’

  Luke’s expression tightened. So she’d dressed to please her doting father? That shouldn’t surprise him—after all, it was Gerald Grantham who’d bankrolled her luxury lifestyle.

  Abruptly, he changed the subject. He shouldn’t give a damn what her dress was like—the less flattering to her the better, as far as he was concerned!

  ‘So, what progress have you made on your design ideas?’ he put to her as their first course arrived.

  She lifted her head again and took a steadying breath. ‘I’m working on a colour palette at the moment. You told me to come up with my own ideas, but if you want me to run them past you, in case you don’t like them—’ she started.

  He cut across her. ‘When I hire professionals I don’t expect to have to do their job for them,’ he said brusquely.

  She flushed, yet again, and said falteringly, ‘That isn’t what I meant. I just thought that if I’m coming up with some ideas you dislike from the off you might as well tell me now, so I can make it how you want.’

  He took a draught from his wine glass. ‘If I don’t like them I won’t use them,’ he said. He set his glass back on the table. ‘Tell me, what kind of commercial experience do you have? Anything I might have come across?’

  She took a breath. ‘I did all the interiors of my father’s properties, but—’

  She was going to say, But please don’t judge me on that work. I had to stick to my father’s exacting brief, not use my own ideas.

  She never got a chance to finish. A frown had flashed across Luke’s face, drawing his brows together darkly.

  ‘You never told me that.’

  He made it sound like an accusation, and Talia felt herself flushing. ‘You’ve never asked me anything about what I’ve done,’ she started to protest in her own defence, wanting to let him know that the work she’d done for her father did not represent her creative skills.

  But Luke was already speaking again, his frown deepening. ‘What have you done for other clients?’ he demanded.

  She felt herself hesitating, but answered truthfully. ‘Um...nothing. But—’

  She tried to get out the fact that her father had not permitted her to work for anyone else but, as before, Luke cut right across her, his frown deeper again.

  ‘Are you telling me that all your work has been for your father?’

  The scathing note in his voice was unmistakable and Talia winced inwardly, knowing that if he’d seen any of the garish interiors she’d done for her father he would judge her by them—critically.

  ‘Well?’ Luke demanded, clearly wanting an answer.

  She swallowed, nodding, and again tried to explain just why that was, and that the work did not represent what she was capable of stylistically. But Luke gave her no chance.

  She heard him mutter something under his breath in Greek. It sounded disparaging, even though she hadn’t a clue what it meant. Then he was eyeballing her again, his jaw set. Pointedly, he threw another question at her.

  ‘So, what do you make of this place, then? From a professional point of view,’ he asked her. His voice was sharp suddenly, his gaze pinning her. Challenging her.

  She glanced around the opulent dining room, trying to gather her thoughts in what was becoming his blatant interrogation—and a hostile one at that. She felt wrong-footed, and tried to recover her composure.

  ‘It’s very...impressive,’ she said.

  She chose the word carefully. Personally, she thought the opulent gilded furnishings and décor out of place on a tropical island, but she did not wish to insult the famous designer whose hallmark was evident here.

  Luke’s eyes narrowed. ‘And will you be attempting to emulate this style yourself?’

  She looked at him uncertainly. His question had sounded sardonic, and she wasn’t sure why.

  ‘I would do my best, if that was what you wanted,’ she replied neutrally.

  It was the last thing she would choose herself—to impose this kind of overblown style on that devastated, hurricane-blasted hotel. It would be totally wrong for it.

  She never got the chance to say so. He was nodding, his expression hardening. ‘Ah, yes—just as you “did your best” typing up those letters so atrociously!’

  She flushed at the derision in his voice. To her dismay, as when he’d been correcting her hopeless typing, pushing her harder and harder, she felt tears haze her eyes. She felt her throat tightening and tried to fight it in vain, blinking rapidly to try and clear the treacherous mist that was forming.

  Unhappiness twisted inside her. Why was he getting at her over this? Why was he jabbing at her with everything he said? She dipped her head, taking another mouthful of her food, though it suddenly tasted like ashes in her mouth.

  * * *

  Luke’s expression tightened. The revelation she’d made that the only design experience she actually had was courtesy of her father was damning. Totally damning! She obviously wasn’t a professional interior designer in the least. She was nothing but a dabbling amateur—a rich man’s daughter who’d clearly fancied the idea of interior design as something to while away the time between shopping and socialising.

  Her doting father had indulged her and she had amused herself by producing interiors that were, without exception, in every property belonging to Grantham Land that he had seen since his acquisition, uniformly hideous! Flashy, ostentatious, and tasteless.

  Luke’s expression tightened even more. There wasn’t a chance in hell she could come up with something that was of the slightest use to him.

  But do I actually want to use anything she might produce anyway?

  Would he really want anything to remind himself of her in his new hotel?

  His eyes rested on her again as he faced up to the realisation. She’d dipped her head again, was mechanically eating her food, yet he could see that her expression was pinched. It irritated him. He didn’t want her looking like that—looking as if he’d hurt her feelings by what he’d said to her. What he wanted, damn it, was to feel nothing about her at all!

  But he wasn’t succeeding, he wasn’t succeeding at all.

  ‘Talia—’ Was his voice harsh? He didn’t mean it to be, but it had come out that way.

  Her head shot up and he saw, with that same spike of emotion that had made him not want to see her looking upset, that the pinched look was more pronounced than ever, that her lower lip was trembling, that there was a liquid haze over her eyes...

  He dropped an oath in Greek. He was impatient. Angry. Angry at what he was fighting to crush back inside him.

  ‘Don’t try and make me feel sorry for you to get yourself an easier ride.’ He was proud that his voice had come out flat rather than cutting. ‘I offered you this job in good faith—and on extremely generous terms! The fact that you have financial woes is not my problem—so don’t ask for any sympathy from me on that score.’

  He wouldn’t forget the hell her father had put his family through, or how he had watched them suffer before they died. Talia had lived like a pampered princess, while his own father had—

  There was a sudden clatter as she dropped her knife and fork on her plate. He saw her expression change. Change totally. Suddenly she was angry, and her voice bit out as she cut across him.

  ‘I am not asking for sympathy!’ Her eyes flashed furiously. ‘I am extremely grateful for your commission, and I am more than willing to do any ancillary work for that you may require. But I am not going to apologise for my failings as a secretary when I simply do not have the skills or training!’

  She took a heaving breath, an audib
le intake, before plunging on, even more furiously.

  ‘Nor is there any justification for you biting my head off every time I speak! And as for my behaviour—’ her eyes flashed again ‘—I will not be subjected to your totally unwarranted accusations that I am flirting with anyone! You have absolutely no right to make any comments of that nature whatsoever. And if you can’t tell the difference between civility and sexual come-ons, then that is your problem, not mine!’

  * * *

  Talia pushed her chair back, getting to her feet. Emotion was ripping her apart and she didn’t care. She didn’t care what she was saying or what the consequences would be. She had had it with the man! She wasn’t going to take one more jibe, one more put-down! Not one!

  ‘It is not part of my professional engagement to spend my evenings with you—and this one is terminating right now!’

  Tossing her napkin onto her chair, she turned on her heel, striding across the wide dining room, a red mist in her vision. She had had it with the jibes, the accusations—the whole damn lot!

  Emotion raged within her as she strode out into the hotel lobby. Anger was uppermost—she had been pushed beyond what any person could endure—but there was so much more in her than anger.

  She felt her chest tighten like a drum and her throat constrict. There was a haze in front of her vision, as well as the red mist of rage. She wanted out—oh, dear God, she wanted out! And not just out of this overdone hotel that screamed Money! Money! Money! Money! in her face with every piece of over-decorated gilded furniture and cream satin fabric and every ludicrously over-the-top floral arrangement on every available marble surface.

  She wanted out of this unbearable situation. To be so close to Luke and yet as distant from him as the stars was torture. And for him to be doing nothing but taking pot-shots at her, criticising her and berating her so that she could do nothing right—nothing at all... It was as if he were a completely different person from the one she’d thought she’d known—as if that rapturous night she’d spent with him, when she’d had to tear herself away from him with all the strength in her body and soul, had never happened!

  To think she had so stupidly, so pathetically hoped that maybe she would have a second chance with him to make up for having had to run out on him the way she had. What a fool to think they could recover the bliss they had found so briefly.

  Misery consumed her, thick and choking in her lungs, as dense as the hot, humid air that hit her as she rushed out onto the forecourt. Blindly, she threw herself into the first taxi waiting there, summoned by a doorman who had hastened to open the door for her as she stumbled inside.

  The taxi pulled off and she slumped back, numb to everything except an all-consuming misery.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUKE JERKED HIS chair back, watching her rush from the dining room. For a moment he was simply frozen. Then, vaulting upright, he started after her.

  But suddenly the maître d’ was there, consternation on his face, expressing his concern, asking if everything was all right, if there was something wrong with the food, the wine, the service, the staff—

  ‘No, nothing!’ Luke exclaimed, wanting only to push past the man and catch up with Talia, who was disappearing across the lobby, heading for the huge glass doors beyond. ‘My apologies!’ he threw at the maître d’, finally getting past him.

  Then, in the lobby, he was delayed again, by a party arriving at the hotel who were filling up the entrance. By the time he emerged out onto the forecourt she was gone.

  ‘Get my car!’ he snapped at the doorman, who promptly got on his phone to the chauffeurs’ station.

  It seemed to take an age for the limo to appear. He couldn’t complain—his driver would hardly have thought he would be leaving so soon after arriving.

  He sank into the back of the car, cutting short the driver’s apologies for the delay. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just get me back to the villa ASAP!’

  Urgency possessed him. Urgency and a whole lot more.

  Never had a car journey seemed longer, or more tormenting.

  Never had emotion burned him to the quick like this, crying out the lie he was trying to cling to—the lie that was impossible to fool himself into believing any longer.

  I can never be indifferent to her. I will never be immune to her.

  The very words mocked him pitilessly, rendering to ashes all he had felt, all he had believed, since the woman with whom he had shared a life-changing night had left him with barely a word.

  * * *

  Talia clattered up the wide staircase, ignoring Fernando’s stately greeting and his enquiry if there was anything she wanted.

  Yes, to get out of here! Just get out! To get to the airport and on the first flight home.

  But how could she? And where was ‘home’ now?

  If she wanted to keep her poor stricken mother, so utterly unable to cope with the catastrophe that had torn her life apart, somewhere familiar and comfortable while she built up her strength, then she must stick this out. She had to go on enduring the torment of Luke being so horrible, so different from the man she’d spent that night with.

  She was trapped here—hideously, unbearably trapped. Perhaps he would not even keep to their deal after her outburst in the restaurant.

  Tears were choking her as she reached her bedroom, leaning back against the door in anguish, features contorted, consumed by the misery that encompassed her. She kicked off her shoes, struggled out of her evening gown, her underwear, and enveloped herself in her kimono-style robe. Finally she collapsed down onto the dressing table stool and frantically unpinned her hair. She brushed it with harsh, painful strokes, as if she could brush out far more than the knots that tangled it.

  Emotions raged within her, hot and heavy and choking, and she batted away the pointless tears. This wasn’t Luke! Not the man she’d known—the man she’d found such incandescent, incredible bliss with. The man who had taken her to a paradise she had never known existed. The man who had wanted to whisk her away from the misery of her life, to sweep her off in his arms to a tropical island, to a place that could be theirs and theirs alone.

  The choking came in her throat again, suffocating her with anguish. A cry rose within her. Oh, dear God, the bitter irony of it. For she was here on a tropical island with him. One of the thousand islands in the Caribbean that they might have run away to...

  Her face contorted with anguish again. Oh, she was here on a beautiful, sun-kissed Caribbean island, all right—but not with Luke. Or at least not with the man she had thought he was. She was here with a hard-faced, cruel-voiced stranger who only found fault with her. A petty tyrant like her father, carping and dismissive.

  Not Luke. It wasn’t Luke at all.

  That man I knew so briefly, so wonderfully, is gone. Gone and never coming back. Or perhaps that was never the man he truly is in the first place. Perhaps this Luke is the real him.

  A sob broke from her, but she stifled it, filled with the misery that had possessed her ever since she had realised that he was the man who had brought her father to ruin and then helped himself to the remnants of his business.

  In any case, he was supremely indifferent to her now.

  It’s as though he hates me!

  Emotion blasted her once more.

  And I hate him. I hate him for the way he is now. I hate him for his indifference, for his coldness, his anger, for his cruelty.

  There was a sudden noise behind her. Her bedroom door was flung open and she saw the reason for her devastation reflected in the dressing table mirror.

  She whirled around. ‘Get out!’

  She yelled it with all her strength but Luke did not obey. He strode up to her, dark purpose in his face.

  With a smothered gasp of shock Talia lurched to her feet—and then he was in front of her. His eyes blazed with dark light while his hands reached for her, clamping a
round her upper arms. Heat burned through the thin silk of her sleeve. She reeled with the sensation of it—with his closeness. She could catch the scent of his aftershave, the scent of his body. Her senses were fully awake now, memories buffeting her like the wind on a tiny sailboat in the middle of a stormy sea.

  She could not bear it. Could not endure it.

  She yelled at him again. Her heart had started to pound, blood was surging in her veins. ‘Let go of me! You’ve got no right! No right to barge in here and manhandle me! So get out—get out!’

  There was fury in her voice. And desperation. How could he stride in here, looking the way he did? Tall, dark, and so, so dangerous.

  He did not let her go. His face twisted, that dark light still blazing in his eyes, and it made her reel with the force of it. She felt faint at the intensity, and suddenly weak with what she dared not face.

  She felt herself sway, and only the grip of his steel hands around her arms stayed her.

  ‘Throw me out if you want...’ The hoarseness in his voice made it low, like a growl, and it was filled with the same burning intensity that was in his eyes, pouring into hers. ‘But not yet. Not yet.’

  For one endless moment more his dark gaze burned into hers. And then he hauled her to him, his mouth swooping to hers.

  The room disappeared. The world disappeared. Everything disappeared. She drowned in his kiss. It was unbearable to kiss him and unthinkable not to. Her hands flashed to his shoulders, grasping them tightly. Then, as suddenly as he had seized her, he relinquished her. He stepped back and gave a harsh, brief laugh that had no humour in it.

  His eyes were still blazing down at her. She stared at him, breathless, heart pounding, mouth stung and pouting, stared at the naked passion in his kiss, lips parting helplessly, eyes aching.

  ‘Do you see now why I’ve been so cruel to you? I’ve been trying to hold you at bay. I had to push you away...’ The hoarseness was still in his voice. ‘Because it was the only way—the only way to stop myself kissing you like that. It was my only protection.’