“You don’t mind if I steal Mlle. Brewster for an hour, do you, mon ami?” the Frenchman had said over morning coffee.
Mind? Demetrios thought, mind?
There was a soft peal of feminine laughter behind him. He turned around. Samantha had left her chair. She was standing with the Italian. And with the Frenchman. The damned Frenchman, who’d breezed off with her at lunchtime as if she did not have a first, hell, a sole obligation to the man who was her employer…
“Miss Brewster,” Demetrios said. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what it is that you find so amusing?”
The room fell silent. He’d meant to sound lighthearted, as if he wanted to join in the fun, but from the way everyone was looking at him he knew he hadn’t pulled it off. Carefully, deliberately, he drew his lips back from his teeth.
“I hate to miss a good joke.”
No. Definitely not. He hadn’t fooled anybody. The Frenchman cleared his throat. “It was nothing, Demetrios. I merely asked your charming Miss Brewster a question in English and she explained that I had misused a phrase and thus given my question an entirely different meaning. Isn’t that right, mademoiselle?”
“Oh, but your English is generally excellent, monsieur.”
Sam’s voice was warm and low-pitched. She never speaks to me that way, Demetrios thought. She never looked at him that way, either, with a little smile. She never looked at him at all.
“You are too kind,” the Frenchman said pleasantly, “but I know that my English leaves something to be desired.”
It was the man himself who left something to be desired, Demetrios thought coldly. He had a translator of his own. Why did he need to talk to Samantha at all? And even if he did, she didn’t have to reply.
He would tell her that, later. Miss Brewster, he would say, from now on, you are to speak only to me…
Demetrios took a deep breath. Thee mou, he thought, I am losing my mind!
He was deep in negotiations it had taken months to set up, verging on a deal that was worth a huge sum of money. More than that, he was about to take his company in a direction he’d dreamed of for years. He should have been hanging on every word that was uttered in this room, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t. His concentration was close to nonexistent.
The rain, he thought desperately, it had to be the rain.
Sam returned to her place at the conference table and sat down. He followed and told himself to forget everything but the meeting. The Italian began speaking. Demetrios could catch the meaning of some of the words but, of course, he would rely on his translator’s expertise. He turned towards her. He’d learned to watch her face as she listened, to read her expression for subtle changes.
She was leaning forward, her brilliant emerald eyes fixed on the Italian as if he were the only man who’d ever interested her. Why didn’t she ever look at him that way?
Because she’s not trying to translate your words, his brain told him calmly.
His battered ego wasn’t listening.
How could she do that? Smile at one man, go to lunch with another, and treat the one who employed her as if he didn’t exist.
Because, his brain said patiently, that’s what she’s paid to do. That was her job; it was what they’d agreed, that morning in her apartment. He was pleased because she’d turned out to be an excellent translator. So what if she was also a beautiful woman? The world was filled with beautiful women. This one was nothing special. She was nothing to him at all. Hadn’t he proved that by never referring to what had almost happened in Brazil? By not letting her absence at his dinner table annoy him?
How could it annoy him, when he hardly ever spent the evening at home?
He sent her back to Astra in his helicopter each night. He stayed in Athens, dining out, getting home late, knowing she had to hear the roar of the ’copter as it made the return trip…not that she ever mentioned it. She didn’t give a damn what he did or who he did it with, not that he was doing anything but eating dinner in his club and then burying his nose in the day’s papers because his friends and acquaintances had taken to avoiding him.
“Trouble with a woman?” one had asked him the other night, and he knew he’d damn near snarled when he said no, why would he have trouble with a woman? Especially with this one, who he didn’t want despite a face that surely would have put Helen of Troy to shame and a body Aphrodite would have envied.
“…not quite what it seems,” Samantha whispered, her breath warm against his ear.
Demetrios snapped back to reality.
She was leaning towards him, speaking softly as if they were lovers lying in each other’s arms. It was only an illusion. She spoke of dollars and gross tonnage, not of passion and heat, and her language was formal, Mr. Karas this, Mr. Karas that, and the occasional “sir,” which she always managed to make sound like an insult.
Did she think addressing him as Mr. Karas would make him forget he’d almost taken her to bed the very first night they’d met?
His vision blurred. He held his breath, reminded himself that he was not the least bit angry—and exploded.
“A sto dialolo!” he growled, and shot to his feet so quickly that his chair fell over.
The silence beat against his eardrums. They were all staring at him, as if he’d changed into a dangerous animal.
Maybe he had.
He bent down, picked up the chair and righted it. Then he faced the little assemblage.
“My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I seem to—to have developed a sudden headache.”
He waited, but no one spoke.
“I suggest we adjourn for the day. We’ve made progress.” They’d made none, but what was the harm of one more lie? “But it is getting late.” That was true enough. It was dark outside. “And the rain will make the roads slick.” Another bit of truth, if not a vital one. “So, what I suggest…” What? What did he suggest, that would erase the bewildered expressions from the faces turned towards him? “What I suggest, since this is Friday, is that we meet tomorrow morning at, say, nine o’clock at my home. My driver will be at your hotel at eight. He will take you to the airport, where my helicopter will be waiting.” He managed to smile. “Perhaps we can discuss some of our concerns more easily in a less formal setting.”
Chairs were pushed back. Hands were shaken. Coats were put on, umbrellas gathered. People hurried to the door. Demetrios followed after them…and clamped a hand on Samantha’s shoulder before she could leave.
“You will stay.”
The look she gave him would have turned any normal man to stone but he was not a normal man. Not right now. He was a man filled with an anger he didn’t fully understand and that only helped convince him that his rage was her fault.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, you are to stay.”
“Am I really?” Her eyes flashed. “Perhaps you’d like to amend that to an order to heel, sit and stay.”
Demetrios shot a look past her. “Lower your voice,” he growled.
“I am not a dog in need of training.” Her voice quivered with anger. “I do not sit or stay or do anything else on command, and I have nothing further to say to you. Good night, Mr. Karas.”
“You will not speak to me like that!”
“And you,” she said, shaking off his hand, “will not embarrass me in front of anyone, ever again!”
The look on his face was wonderful. Anger? Disbelief? No. Better than that. It was shock. Sam figured that nobody had ever told off the Greek God, nobody had ever dared to, not in his entire life.
“Goodbye, Mr. Karas,” she said, and strode away.
“Come back here,” he shouted.
Sam quickened her pace. She heard him pounding after her, then heard the murmur of his secretary’s voice and his harsh response, but his footsteps stopped.
“Samantha? Samantha! You will wait for me!”
Like hell she would. She burst from the building, waved away Demetrios’s driver, ran up the street, took the c
orner at top speed and didn’t slow down until she’d taken another half dozen turns. Then she slowed to a walk while her breath made steamy plumes in the chill darkness and an icy, wind-driven rain beat into her face.
She paused to get her bearings. Where was she? She’d walked these fascinating, ancient streets until Demetrios had put a stop to it, but never at night. Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except seeing to it that she never saw Demetrios Karas again.
How dare he? How dare he speak to her that way?
You will stay.
Sam shivered and pulled up her collar.
The no-good, self-centered, domineering son of a bitch! Ignoring her, day after day, except when it suited him to boss her around. Announcing she would take her meals with him, as if he owned her. Forcing her to have lunch in his company for no good reason. All that nonsense about her being his responsibility…
She’d never been any man’s responsibility. She never would. Her mother had gone that route and look where it had taken her. First she’d been a doormat for a weak man; now, she was the possession of a powerful one. Her stepfather treated Marta like a cherished piece of crystal kept safe on a shelf. And yes, Amanda and Carin were headed for that same kind of existence.
Sam quickened her steps.
No, thank you. Not only wasn’t she interested in marriage, she wasn’t interested in getting involved, even temporarily, with a man who thought of women as responsibilities. That was just a polite way men had of saying they had the right to dictate what women did with their lives.
Demetrios wasn’t her husband, he wasn’t her lover, he wasn’t anything but her boss and he’d already tried caging her. He’d tried to install her inside his house; he’d put a stop to her going off on her own at lunchtime. He wanted to watch her every move.
Did he actually think she’d let him do that? Treat her as if she were his property, except for the times he treated her as if she were invisible? Nothing but a grunt when she boarded his stupid helicopter each morning. Another grunt at night. Not that they returned to his island together all that often. He was too busy at night in Athens, doing whatever it was he did with whomever he did it. His secretary, maybe, and never mind all that stuff about not mixing business with pleasure.
The woman looked at him as if he was the most desirable man on the planet.
He wasn’t.
He was a walking ego. A self-important ruler of his own little kingdom. He was a man who thought he was irresistible to women.
Well, he wasn’t. Not to her.
Sam burrowed deeper into her coat and bent her head against the wind.
She’d seen right through him from day one. It was a damned good thing she hadn’t fallen into the trap and gone to bed with him. The nerve of him, to speak to her as he had just now. To look at her the way he’d been looking at her all afternoon, as if he’d finally remembered she was a woman, as if he were weighing the possibility of throwing everybody out, locking the door, backing her into a corner and doing things…
Hot, delicious things.
Sam shuddered again. She didn’t want any of that. Not from him.
A horn blared as she stepped off the curb. A car flew past and she jumped back but not in time to prevent a wall of cold, dirty water from drenching her from head to foot. She glared after the car and muttered a phrase that described exactly what she thought of the driver in the Greek she’d learned on the streets.
Mr. I-Am-The-Law Karas would have been surprised at how much Greek she’d picked up since she’d come here. She listened; she learned. That was what linguists did. Now she knew lots of polite words—and lots of impolite idioms. That had been one benefit of those lunchtime walks, until Demetrios had decided to leash her. So she’d known what to call the idiot driver who’d just soaked her to the bone.
More to the point, she knew what Demetrios said just before he’d overturned his chair.
A sto dialolo, he’d snarled. To hell with it.
If he meant, to hell with their arrangement, she agreed. Completely. She had no business here. Saying she’d work for him had been stupid. She should have stuck to Plan A, told him to take his job and stuff it, just as she’d intended.
Dammit, the puddles were ankle deep. There had to be a taxi around here. If only she knew where she was but everything looked different at night. Everything felt different, too.
The back of her neck prickled and she picked up her pace.
No, she didn’t belong here, not just in Piraeus but in Greece. She should never have let Demetrios turn his job offer into a challenge. Even that kiss…
Okay. So the kiss hadn’t been his idea, it had been hers. And it had been stupid, just as it had been stupid to let him touch her, but the temptation to give him a taste of what he’d never have, had been too strong to ignore. He’d deserved that little lesson. He was too sure of himself, accustomed to taking what he wanted though, dammit, there was something incredibly sexy about all that macho ego…
And that was crazy.
Hadn’t she always made it a point to avoid men who thought they owned the world and all the women who inhabited it? Hadn’t she always known what such a man would be like as a lover? That he’d be dominating, and possessive, and jealous?
And incredible.
Sam’s pulse beat quickened. She couldn’t forget that morning, when he’d put his hands under her robe as if he had the right to do whatever he wanted to her. With her. It was wrong. The way he’d made her feel was wrong, but she’d relived the moment a hundred times. A thousand times. All she had to do was close her eyes and she felt him touching her, the sensual roughness of his fingertips, the drugging heat of his hands and his mouth…
A horn screamed into the silence of the night as she stepped off the curb. Not again, she thought…
Tires shrieked as they clawed for purchase on the rain-darkened road. Sam looked up, blinded by headlights. A car was bearing down on her. She cried out, stumbled back. The car fishtailed, spun; she tripped over the cobblestones.
The car came to a stop just as she sank down, shaking, on the curb.
A door slammed. Footsteps pounded towards her. A dark shape bent over her and hard, angry hands closed on her shoulders. A stream of Greek words blistered her ears.
She had almost killed herself, the man was saying.
Sam looked up. His face was masked in shadow. “Seenghnómi,” she whispered, “I’m sorry…”
It wasn’t enough. She could feel the heat coming off him, the unbridled male fury. His hands tightened on her and he drew her to her feet.
A different kind of fear kicked in, a fear born not of her brush with death but of this enraged stranger.
“No,” she said, struggling against him. “Don’t! I’ll scream!”
“Scream all you like,” Demetrios said grimly, and he swept her into his arms, carried her to his car, and dumped her inside.
CHAPTER SIX
DRIVING a car, especially one with four hundred and eighty-something horses under the hood damned near begging you to let them run free on the twisted streets of an ancient city, was not a good idea when your gut was churning with anger.
Demetrios knew that. He also knew that it was better to let out his emotions this way than to pull to the curb, turn to Samantha and confront her. She had done something so stupid that it had nearly cost her life. No, it would not be wise to stop the car. If he did, he’d shake her until her teeth rattled…
Or pull her into his arms and unleash his bottled-up rage in a kiss that would make it clear she’d had no right to run away from him, that he would not permit her to do such a thing again.
At least he could still think clearly enough to know that taking either action would be a mistake, so he slammed the car into gear and stepped hard on the gas.
“I could have run you over,” he said as they sped through the darkness. She didn’t answer. That only made him angry enough to drive a little faster. “What did you think you were doing, huh? Stepping off that curb w
ithout so much as looking? Did you think you were in a jungle in Borneo?” He drew a deep, ragged breath. “You should not have been walking these streets to begin with. I told you they were not safe, told you and told you…” He clamped his lips together, tightened his hands on the wheel, fought for self-control. “Are you all right?”
She was soaked. She was shivering. And her ankle hurt. “Yes,” she lied, “I’m fine.”
“Anything could have happened to you. Why did you do something so foolish? Why did you run away?”
“You wanted to argue. I didn’t.”
“I did not want to argue,” he said grimly. “I wanted to talk to you, that’s all.”
“We had nothing to talk about.”
Nothing to talk about? She’d spent the day flirting with another man and they had nothing to talk about? Demetrios’s jaw tightened.
“I am your employer. If I wish to discuss something with you, I will do so.”
Hell. He sounded like an idiot. Samantha had to think so, too, but she said nothing. That only egged him on.
“Do you hear me? Do you understand what I’m telling you? If I wish to talk to you, if I wish you to remain behind after the others leave…” He paused, frowned. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
But she had said something in a papery whisper. An apology? She’d done that already—had she really offered it in Greek? At least, he thought coldly, she understood how close she’d come to being seriously hurt.
Samantha, hurt.
A hand fastened around his heart. He considered pulling over, taking her in his arms, telling her that she’d had no right to scare him…
“It’s too late to show contrition,” he said coldly.
Only the purr of the engine and the rumble of the tires on the cobbled streets broke the silence.
“What you did was stupid.”
Still, she remained silent. His frown became a scowl. Why didn’t she respond? Was she just going to let him call her stupid, give her orders? No. That wasn’t Samantha.
Something was wrong. For the first time, he looked at her. Thee mou! His mouth went dry. She was huddled in her seat, head back, eyes shut. He could hear the labored hiss of her breath.
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