by Sara Wood
‘Olivia—’ Paul began uncomfortably.
‘Let me have my say!’ she snapped, whirling on him so abruptly that he was forced to take a step back.
Paul put up his hands in surrender, shocked by her vehemence.
Dimitri knew at that moment that this man would never satisfy a woman like her, not for a second. She liked tough men with big passions. A man who could tame her fiery nature and bring calm and serenity to her life. Paul might look at her as if she were the nearest thing to the goddess Aphrodite, the Greek Venus, but he’d bore her to tears in no time at all.
With his mind working like quicksilver, he began to think, to plot and scheme. There was much he needed to know—and that would take time. First he’d get rid of the lawyer. Then he’d inform her that she’d have to stay in Greece while the case was being processed.
He smiled. He’d turn Olivia inside out and get the answers he wanted to all those unasked questions that had plagued him for the past three years. After that he’d find a way—whatever that might be—to prevent her from using her predatory claws on another unsuspecting man. A threat, perhaps. A clause in the divorce settlement preventing her from marrying for some years… He’d come up with something. He always did.
His shoulders squared with resolve. Olivia wouldn’t know what had hit her. She’d be putty in his hands.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU want a divorce, I understand,’ he said amiably enough, motioning them to the sun loungers with an authoritative hand.
In a graceful movement of her supple body Olivia slid onto the thick cushion before she realised she and Paul were now at a disadvantage in the low recliners. Dimitri towered over them both, dominating them and smirking with self-congratulation at his cleverness.
She wanted to slap him. ‘As fast as we can arrange it,’ she agreed instead with a smile that dripped honey. ‘And,’ she said, adding the vinegar, ‘with as little contact with you as humanly possible.’
Filled with a reckless and rebellious need to unnerve him, she kicked off her high-heeled sandals and wriggled her bare toes, making the pink varnish gleam in the sunshine. Then she leant back and unbuttoned her jacket before languidly lifting her arms behind her head to revel luxuriously in the warm sunshine.
Dimitri allowed himself a moment to devour her. She had elegantly arranged her slender, endless legs so that he could admire their length from her small arched feet to mid-thigh. With the raising of her arms, the swelling mounds of her breasts had lifted to gleam provocatively above her simple scoop-necked white top. Delectable. His senses stirred. She was playing her little game to the hilt and beyond.
Crouching close to her, and with his back to Paul, he slowly raked her body with his gaze, watching her respond, knowing the tell-tale tightening of her thighs and contemplating with drowsy sensuality the peaks of her breasts which betrayed the effectiveness of his hungry glance. Or her avid sexual greed. It didn’t matter which, only that she should want him—and be denied.
Aching for her more fiercely than he could remember, he let his eyes meet hers. For a moment he forgot where he was and what he was doing. She dragged him in, her soft blue eyes telling him everything he needed to know.
His heart raced with dangerous thoughts. She claimed she wanted a quick ending to their marriage and the minimum of contact. He was tempted to make her suffer the exact opposite. A kick of excitement jerked at his solar plexus.
Fighting his way clear of the thickened atmosphere around them, he flung her a dazzling grin and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘What are you prepared to do to encourage me to do what you want?’ he murmured, resisting the urge to slide his fingers somewhere more interesting. Though he stared at the tantalising curves of her breasts, imagining the feel of them as he weighed them in his hands.
‘Whatever it t-takes,’ she stammered, and he was delighted to see how dry her mouth was and that her voice was husky. Though the slick of her tongue over her lips almost incited him to moistening her mouth in his own inimitable way.
‘You always did put your body and soul into your projects, didn’t you?’ he said in husky contemplation.
‘Look,’ the lawyer interrupted petulantly from somewhere behind his back, ‘can we get on with this somewhere more suitable? We will want a list of your assets—’
‘Oh,’ Dimitri said with a low chuckle, his eyes riveted to Olivia’s softly parted lips. He remembered their taste. The soft plumpness between his teeth. His voice grew thick with desire. ‘I think Olivia knows all about my assets.’
‘Some of them lie below your belt and are virtually the public property of any good-looking woman who passes,’ she scathed.
He grinned and his black eyes seemed to dance wickedly, sending her into a haze of hunger. His fingers had tightened on her shoulder in a grip of possession.
‘I can’t help being virile. Our sex was extraordinary, wasn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘Entire continents moved. Flames scorched our—’
‘Look here—!’ began Paul, red-faced with disapproval.
‘Come.’ Dimitri catapulted himself to a standing position and had the lawyer off the lounger and across the deck before Paul or she knew what had hit them.
‘Dimitri!’ she called, angrily swinging her legs to the deck.
She’d blown it. For hour after hour she’d practised what she’d say, the carefully chosen invective and scorn, the icy analysis of his flawed character. All to no avail. He’d turned her into a helpless mass of fluttering hormones merely by looking at her. She ground her teeth and balled her fists in fury.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a moment,’ he flung over his shoulder, and she seethed silently at his blithe and carefree attitude.
‘Lemonade, madam?’
Still glaring, she jerked her head around and saw a man clad in immaculate whites bearing a silver salver with a crystal jug and two glasses.
Two glasses! Dimitri must have planned to get rid of Paul—
‘Madam?’
Innate politeness made her rearrange her scowling face. With an apologetic smile, she nodded.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
She could handle Dimitri. Her needs were small—just a few home truths, the divorce, thank you and goodbye. Olivia sipped gratefully at the cooling drink and felt her temperature settle down to something closer to normal.
Restlessly she wandered to the rail and stared at the glittering sea. A thousand islands lay out there, and all the beauties of Greece. Nostalgia slipped, uninvited, into her heart and soul. If only he hadn’t strayed. She would give everything to live in this lovely part of the world again.
Closing her eyes, she dreamed of the Olympos promontory which floated in the sapphire sea on the coast of the Peloponnese land mass—the large peninsula to the south of Athens. On Olympos, white and pastel-blue houses snuggled companionably in the hollows of gentle hills thick with olive trees and vines.
The dazzling light gave the sandy beaches and classical ruins a startling clarity. Nothing was mild or gentle. All was passion, laughter and high drama, and she, with her explosive passions, had felt at home. The people were friendly to a fault…
She scowled. Too friendly, and too many faults where Dimitri was concerned! And where the devil was he—?
‘Olivia. Forgive me for leaving you.’
She jerked her head around. Bursting with vital energy that took her breath away, he came striding towards her. Alone. Instantly suspicious, she turned around completely to glare at him, leaning back against the rail for support. Because she needed it, badly.
‘Where is Paul?’
Dimitri smiled to himself, poured himself a glass of lemonade and came to join her, his step ominously cheerful. He tilted his head to one side and listened. So did she, and after a moment she heard the sound of a car revving up. At that moment he beamed with pleasure and replied.
‘On his way to New York.’
Her eyes hardened. ‘New…York?’ she gasped. And, sure enough, when
she looked across at the quayside, she saw Dimitri’s car disappearing around a corner.
‘Mmm.’ He took a thoughtful sip, his mouth hypnotically glistening. Her tongue tipped her own lips before she could stop it and his gaze lingered there, making her skin tingle with excitement. ‘He seemed very keen.’
‘I bet. How much did you bribe him with?’ she asked sourly, hating him.
‘Not a lot,’ he admitted happily. His eyes crinkled, making her heart jerk as she remembered the laughter they’d shared, the happiness she’d imagined was theirs alone. ‘The price of a first-class plane ticket, accommodation, all expenses—’
‘Why?’ she asked, loathing him more every second that passed.
Dimitri’s eyes widened innocently. ‘My lawyer’s there.’
‘I see. Not, then, because you think you can bully me into agreeing to some underhand scheme you have in mind while he’s absent?’
To see his expression, Olivia thought scornfully as he reacted with shock horror at her suggestion, you’d think there had never been such an honest and trustworthy man in the whole world.
‘What a suspicious mind you have!’ he objected. ‘I thought you’d be pleased I took such immediate action. The two of them can get on with making lists of my assets and come up with some figure agreeable to both sides—’
‘I just want the divorce,’ she told him with an impatient gesture. ‘Nothing else.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘You mean…no money? Property? Jewellery?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Please! Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you aren’t interested in a share of my wealth!’ he scoffed. ‘No woman would turn down the chance to be rich. And no court would allow me to leave you un-provided for.’ His lip curled in contempt. ‘After all, you’ve worked hard and waited a long time for your share of my fortune.’
She bristled. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘You spun your net and threw it out and caught me,’ he said, the low growl stiffened with steel. ‘You’re here to claim your reward. In order to get rid of you I’m prepared to play along and pay you off. I know you’d relish the independence it would give you—’
‘I have that in spades, with or without money,’ she retorted, boiling with the insult. ‘And I can support myself. I don’t need a man to provide for me.’
‘Is that the line you’re taking?’ he scorned. ‘You intend to impress the courts with your lack of greed—and they’ll reward you handsomely for your modest demands? Whereas you and I know that you are owed something for the almost professional pleasure you’ve given me in the bedroom, on the floor, against the—’
‘Professional? I’m not one of your whores, to be paid for her services!’ she shot back before he listed every single place where they had made love.
‘No?’ His insolent stare suggested that she might be. ‘That’s what it comes down to, Olivia. Dress it up any way you like, but marrying a man for his money is a kind of prostitution.’
‘I agree,’ she grated, so angry that her too-silky tresses were slipping from their confining chignon and she didn’t even care. Hauling in a hard breath, she snapped, ‘But for your information, I married you for—’
‘Sex,’ he said softly and the hairs rose on the back of her neck as her body sprang into life. ‘That’s all it was. Let’s not pretend it was anything else. We were great in bed. And everywhere else.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘Remember—’
‘I don’t want to remember anything!’ she flamed, hating him for the flood of erotic images that were churning up her body and mind. Hating him, too, for killing even the happy moments they’d spent together and reducing their relationship to one base urge.
Dimitri had never loved her. He’d admitted it at last. Sex. That was all it was. Well, now she knew, and the truth hurt her more than she could ever have imagined.
‘Nothing?’
His mouth had curved into a shape of such carnality that she felt a shudder of desire ripple through her before she managed to drag her wanton body under control again.
‘No! It was all a lie, wasn’t it? Those declarations of love. The flowers, the little gifts—and the notes you left lying around for me to find… All part of your seduction technique, honed to perfection on…how many women?’ she cried heatedly. ‘Oh, there must have been hundreds! It was so slick, so smooth! You’ve probably fathered bastards all over Greece. New York too, for all I know! You humiliated me with your cheating and lying and it gave me great pleasure to disappear off the face of the earth so that you couldn’t marry some other deluded female and cheat on her, too!’
Oh, help, she thought. Whatever had happened to her intended cool condemnation of him? Her speech had gone clean out of her head. He just made her mad, that was the trouble.
‘Me? Cheat?’ He frowned as though he didn’t know what she was talking about. And then his face tightened. ‘I see. You’ve realised that you are on shaky legal ground in saying there was no love in our marriage. You intend to claim in court that you walked out on me because I was unfaithful.’
‘Claim?’ she stormed. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence! If you’re going to pretend you’re as innocent as the driven snow then you’re more of a louse than I imagined!’
His scathing glance stabbed into her. ‘If you are prepared to malign my character for your own ends—’
‘Malign!’ she gasped, flinging her head up in outrage and scattering the remaining pins that had held her hair in place. ‘I couldn’t make your character any worse if I flung it into a sewer and stuffed it full of dead rats!’
It was typical that even at the height of his anger he was able to find her outburst amusing. Their brief, firebrand rows had always ended in laughter, usually prompted by some outrageous overstatement on her part. And after the laughter had come the making-up…
‘Always a colourful phrase on the tip of your tongue,’ he drawled, shutting his mind to their passionate reconciliations. The darkness returned to his eyes. ‘But I warn you not to make false accusations against me.’
‘I won’t,’ she said grimly, and he nodded as though he’d won a victory. She didn’t enlighten him. Her evidence of his infidelity might be needed to secure her the divorce. If so, she’d use it. ‘I don’t want to discuss your sordid life. I have no interest in it or the way you ran rings around me,’ she said coldly. ‘Now I’m calling the shots and I want rid of you. As soon as possible. Get that?’
‘Your eyes are almost violet with rage,’ he mused. ‘And you’re so flushed, I could almost imagine—’
‘Don’t try to flirt with me!’ she jerked, furious at his murmuring tones.
An innocent, piratical lift of his eyebrow sent a quiver through her. ‘I can’t help—’
‘No. Because you don’t value women as people in their own right,’ she said, scorn in every line of her uplifted face. Dimitri had never been helpless in the whole of his life. ‘You see them as potential conquests and you spin them a line, expecting them to lie down and beg. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction to you, isn’t it?’
‘Knee? Wrong place, Olivia,’ he murmured. ‘Try a little higher up.’
Impatiently she flicked her hair back from where it had tumbled seductively over one eye during her outburst. ‘Listen to me. Simple words. Simple solution. I want a divorce. You arrange it—fast.’
‘But there is so much to discuss!’ he protested. ‘Your lawyer’s talking of a fifty-fifty division which—’
‘He has no right to!’ she cried, quivering with indignation.
‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘Sorry, Olivia, but I can’t believe he’d take it on himself to decide what settlement you deserve. You’ll play the sweet, downtrodden and betrayed wife and tell the courts one thing whilst pushing my legal team for as much as you can get in your greedy little hands.’
Dimitri’s mouth had taken on a cynical sneer. She felt like thumping him—and Paul. Dimitri clearly didn’t believe her protests and thought she was here fo
r a hefty share of his money. Paul had reinforced that opinion.
Silently cursing the lawyer for launching his own agenda, she decided that Dimitri could wriggle for a while, fearing the ruination of his empire. Serve him right. He’d find out the truth for himself when the time came.
‘I just want to be free of you,’ she emphasised.
‘Come clean, Olivia, and then we can deal. I know that you won’t expect to go away empty-handed, not after all the effort you put into driving me so crazy with lust that in a weak moment I proposed marriage in order to keep you,’ he reasoned.
Olivia bristled. ‘Oh, you were incapable of rational thought, were you?’
‘As I said, bewitched. And as you well know.’ Their eyes met and she felt herself in danger of falling under his spell, as she had that first day she’d walked into his office and the world had spun around her. ‘I feel I owe you something though,’ he added. ‘You’ve taught me a lesson.’
‘Which is?’ she asked unsteadily.
‘That I’m not a good judge of women when my loins are on fire,’ he growled.
A silence fell between them. Olivia struggled to keep her head. Dimitri was weaving his old magic over her and yet she hated him as much as ever. The pressure of the atmosphere seemed to increase and she found herself fighting for breath. Infuriatingly, Dimitri wasn’t affected at all, because he broke the heavy silence and spoke quite casually.
‘Tell me. What will you do when you are a free woman again?’
‘Start a new life,’ she shot back, her entire demeanour daring him to obstruct her goal.
‘With Paul?’ he queried.
‘What’s it to you?’ she demanded.
Everything, he thought, raked with hatred for any man who might look desperately into those sultry blue eyes and slide into her hot little body. He managed a shrug, which gave him time to swallow away the harsh rage filling his throat.
‘I’d hate you to be frustrated.’
‘No chance,’ she assured him, and was surprised to see the flash of anger that lit his eyes.
‘So he excites you?’ he said, sounding faintly belligerent.