Her hair spilled over one shoulder as she did so, a shimmering flow of the purest gold he had ever seen. Her hands were nice, he noticed, slender-boned with long, delicately formed fingers and elegant fingernails filed in smooth crescents, unpolished yet shining, not too long, not too short.
‘Who is the man in your life?’ he asked, curious suddenly because his own attraction to her told him that she must attract them in droves.
Easing back into her own seat, Zoe used one of her hands to smooth her hair back from her cheek before she looked at him. ‘Who said there was one?’
‘You were locking the back gate after someone’s swift exit this morning,’ he reminded her. ‘I was just curious as to what kind of guy scarpers fast instead of hanging around to offer you support.’
The idea of a heavily pregnant Susie staying around to defend her against this man brought a smile to Zoe’s lips. She’d had her share of boyfriends, of course—she was reasonable to look at and popular—but in truth there had never been anyone special in her life, at least not anyone she had felt passionate enough about to lose her head over.
Not that she was about to tell Anton Pallis that. ‘I don’t think my personal life is any of your business,’ she murmured.
‘It is if he’s willing to sell the inside story about your personal life.’
He was referring to pillow talk, Zoe realised, and how much information she would have confided to a lover about her family skeletons—namely Theo Kanellis.
‘What about the woman in your life?’ She threw the question back at him. ‘Is she likely to sell her kiss and tell story?’
As a counter response, it earned her a slow smile. ‘I don’t confide intimate family secrets, and anyway I asked first.’
‘Well.’ She did not like the way her insides responded to that smile. ‘Neither do I. And if there was a man in my life before I climbed into this car with you, then I should imagine he’s decided he’s been pushed out of the running.’
‘Because he knows he can’t compete with my fabulous good looks and overall sexy charm?’
He was teasing her, goading her to shoot him down. The problem was that he did have fabulous good looks and loads of sexy charm. ‘I was thinking more on the lines of your wealth—and Theo Kanellis’s, of course—money giving you both way too much clout for most men to want to try and compete with. However,’ she added, ‘I will give it to you that you’re physical attributes make you a daunting competitor all on your own.’
He laughed out loud this time, low and husky, because he was relaxed so it came from deep within the walls of his chest. Zoe found herself laughing too, softly and ruefully, her eyes connecting with his.
Her first burst of laughter in three long, horrible weeks, she realised suddenly, and then felt guilty because she could still laugh.
‘So, your turn.’ She shifted the attention onto him. ‘What about the current woman in your life?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘That isn’t what your press says.’
‘The press likes to exaggerate.’
‘There was the model in New York three weeks ago,’ Zoe recalled. ‘She intimated you were both in it for the long haul.’
Anton affected a sigh. ‘The problem with women in high-profile careers is they see any kind of press as better than none at all. I broke the relationship off after that interview appeared in the papers.’
‘As you mentioned before, you are high profile.’
‘I am not hankering after a wealthy wife.’
Fair comment, Zoe conceded. ‘My father always says—’
She stopped, her lips coming together with a tremulous snap. Turning her face away, she stared blindly at the back of the chauffeur’s head and tried to swallow down the new lump in her throat.
‘Your father used to say—what?’ he prompted very gently.
But Zoe shook her head. The subtle change he’d made to her words didn’t stop her from feeling deeply that she’d mentioned her father in the present tense. She did it a lot. She still turned to speak to her mother only to find she wasn’t there. She had been going to say that her father had always said material wealth did not matter. Love mattered.
‘I met him a few times,’ Anton said quietly, bringing her face slowly back around so she could look at him. Her eyes looked huge again, and so damned vulnerable. ‘I was quite small and he appeared very much a grown-up to me, though he could have been only eighteen. He took me out on the lawn to play football. No one had ever done that with me before.’
Needing to swallow before she could speak, Zoe prompted, ‘Your own father?’
‘He’d died the year before. I barely remember him. He was always going off somewhere on a business trip and was much too busy being powerful to play football with me. We are here,’ he said, sounding as if he was glad of the excuse to call a halt to that line of conversation.
Zoe turned her head in time to watch the front police-car peeling away. The next second the car they were travelling in was slowing down to make a left turn and they were driving through a pair of big gates. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the two police cars had pulled across the gap into which the gates were in the process of closing behind them. Beyond the police cars the chasing pack had all pulled to a stop in a long line. She could feel their frustration as they climbed out of their vehicles and stared helplessly at their disappearing car. There was even the promised big fence cordoning off the area. Relief skittered down her spine as she turned to look forwards again.
And that feeling of relief died immediately. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded jerkily.
‘Our next mode of transport,’ Anton replied.
‘But—but that’s a plane!’
Taking a look out of the car window at the sleek lines of the Pallis private jet, Anton drawled, ‘So it is.’
CHAPTER FOUR
CONFUSED and trying not to let the tiny nub of alarm she could feel inside her start to balloon, Zoe murmured, ‘You said a helicopter.’
‘A slight change of plan,’ Anton countered with the smoothness of balm.
‘So we are flying in—that—to your house?’
He watched as his chauffeur climbed out of the car. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
His eyes wore a polished jet look to them that Zoe couldn’t read. Having to moisten her lips, she found that they were trembling. ‘And wh-where is this house?’
Perhaps she should have asked that question a long time ago. In fact she was angry with herself that she hadn’t, because there was something about Anton Pallis now that put her senses on stinging alert. He was still reclining in the corner of the car but she was picking up danger signals that made her reach out with a hand and close it around the handle on Toby’s seat.
And he had not answered her question. A new kind of tension sizzled in the air. The chauffeur appeared outside Anton’s door and went to open it for him, but with a tap from the back of his fingers on the glass he waved him away without removing his attention from her.
‘We are going to Greece, Zoe,’ he told her.
‘Greece?’ She said it as if she had never heard of the place. ‘But—but I don’t want to go to Greece. And—and you said …’
‘I never actually said that my house was here in England,’ he pointed out as if she was supposed say, Oh, that’s all right, then. My mistake!
But Zoe wasn’t going to say that. Zoe wasn’t going to Greece. ‘Not me, Mr Pallis, and not my brother,’ she told him on a sudden spurt of movement, and started releasing Toby’s seat from its safety restraints.
‘So where are you intending to go?’ he questioned curiously.
‘Back home, where I belong.’
‘And how are you going to get there?’
‘I will walk if I have to! All the way down that road we’ve just driven along and straight to the police still hanging around the gate. Or the press,’ she added, tight lipped and shaking in her determination to get out of this car as fast as she could. ‘Why
the heck should I not go to the papers and let them decide if this makes you a lying, cheating, kidnapping rat?’
At last he showed some emotion with an impatient hiss from between his even white teeth. ‘I may have lied by omission but I am not a cheat and I am not kidnapping you.’
She fumbled in her efforts to release the car seat. ‘What do you call this then—a holiday?’
‘Yes!’ he snapped, sitting up out of his corner.
‘And who is waiting at the other end of this plane journey, Mr Pallis. Theo Kanellis, by any chance?’
The way she scythed out both names as if they poisoned her to say them set Anton’s teeth on edge. ‘No,’ he denied, then sighed and reached over to clamp a hand on the side of Toby’s seat when she tried to pick it up. ‘Will you just stop doing that and listen to me?’
‘Listen to more of your lies? Do you think I’m an idiot?’ She closed both hands over the baby-seat handle. ‘You told me to trust you and I did!’ she acknowledged bitterly. ‘Now look where it’s got me!’
‘You can trust me,’ Anton insisted. ‘We are not going to Theo! On my honour, Zoe, the promise of a sanctuary in my home was the truth.’
And pigs might fly, thought Zoe scornfully. She was forced to let go of Toby’s seat with one hand so she could feel behind in search of the door catch so that she could escape. ‘I should have known your nice behaviour was fishy,’ she said shakily. ‘You are his loyal representative, after all. No wonder my father steered well clear of you lot, people like you would have eaten a gentle man like him for breakfast and thrown away the bits.’
‘This isn’t about Leander.’
‘Don’t you dare call him that!’ She flared up with spectacular force. ‘He is Mr Ellis to you. Ellis, because he couldn’t stand to use the Kanellis name and now I know why—he knew what you were like!’
‘I am not a Kanellis, Zoe,’ Anton said heavily. ‘And this is not what you think. I accept I did not tell you the full truth about where we are going but—’
He ripped out a curse as she began to shiver, all of her shaking like a slender volcano about to erupt, and she’d gone as white as the proverbial sheet.
‘Zoe, listen to me— Damn,’ he muttered when her door flew open and she began scrambling out of the car.
Anton threw open his door, strode around to her side of the car at speed and reached her side as she turned to bend and collect her brother. Teeth seared together behind his tight lips, he looped an arm around her and hauled her backwards before she could get a firm grip on the baby seat. She wriggled and kicked out at him, he dumped her on the tarmac then spun her around to face him.
‘Just listen,’ he insisted, half-angry, half-pleading. ‘I am sorry I’ve upset you this badly.’
Upset me? Zoe threw her head back and looked at him. He actually blanched when he saw the electric-blue pools of her eyes spinning his wretched betrayal into the hard angles of his face.
‘I hate you,’ she choked. ‘You duped me all the way! We were safe in our little house. You made it impossible for us to stay there. You, and my grandfather playing your power games. And if you don’t let go of me right now, I’m going to start screaming my head off!’
Pulling in a deep breath, she opened her mouth to carry out the threat. Anton’s mouth landed on hers with enough power to plug the threatened scream back down her throat. Even he was shocked that he’d used such a method to stop her. Yet once it was done the idea of drawing back again did not enter his head. Her lips were already parted and trembling with tears; he felt their tongues touch and heat explode between them like some unknown, powerful force. She was still sobbing but she kissed him back with hungry urgency. Where it had all come from, he didn’t think even she understood.
Across the airfield by the closed gates a line of telescopic cameras lifted in unison to record the kiss. His team of people all stood watching their controlled, sophisticated employer ravish Theo Kanellis’s granddaughter, when every one of them knew they’d been embroiled in one hell of a row inside the car only seconds before. And still the passion pulsed between them like a wild, living thing. He held her pressed up against him and the hardening of his body made her choke out a groan in dismay.
Wrenching her lips free from his, she gasped out in quivering rejection, ‘That was just gross!’
Anton felt two strikes of heat score across his high cheeks. ‘But you still joined in,’ he grated back unsteadily—unsteadily because his breathing had gone haywire. He didn’t know himself like this.
‘You—you—’ Zoe ran out of words on a thickened stammer. Her lips felt swollen and hot. Things, senses, were crawling around inside her, aiming stinging strikes at certain intimate parts of her body, from the tightened tips of her crushed breasts to her achingly heavy pelvis where he still held her pressed against the hard evidence of his own response. Even her hair roots were tingling, the long loose strands lying like a splash of gold across one of his shoulders because of the way he had tilted her head.
And the way he was looking down at her, as if he was contemplating kissing her again, shot fear and excitement through Zoe in equal amounts.
‘Let go of me,’ she breathed into the burning passion stamped onto his handsome face.
No chance, thought Anton. As though he was being driven by some unknown influence, he bent and scooped her into his arms then started walking towards the plane. He felt taut, energised and downright macho. Theo’s granddaughter had fast turned into a passionate obsession for him—indefensibly so, he admitted, when those amazing, fascinating eyes flooded with fresh tears again.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Zoe sobbed up at him in wretched confusion and pained disbelief.
Then a sound reached her—only the briefest tiniest hint of a squeak—but it was enough to fling Zoe over the edge.
‘Toby,’ she whispered, and had to strain to look around Anton’s broad shoulder. She saw to her horror that the car with its doors still hanging open was already several yards away. ‘Anton … Toby. He’s still in the— Oh my God, what’s that man doing with my baby brother?’
A fresh wave of panic erupted in a swirling spin of dizzying terror. She stared up at the hard cast of his grimly determined face. ‘Please,’ she begged achingly. ‘Don’t take my brother away from me!’
Lips clipped tight now, Anton said something to her, but Zoe couldn’t hear him over the roaring rush of fear going on in her head. They’d already entered the plane and he was carrying her down the cabin. She knew that she was fighting him, wriggling and hitting out with her clenched fists. ‘Toby …’ She sobbed out her brother’s name over and over, heard it throbbing inside her head.
Lowering her into a seat, Anton came to squat down in front of her. ‘Listen to me, Zoe,’ he insisted—harshly, because it was only just occurring to him what was actually happening to her. Her eyes had turned black and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her kiss-crushed lips kept mouthing her brother’s name and she was trembling like a leaf.
The muscles in his face clenched tightly and he fixed his attention on fastening her in to her seat. ‘Get this plane in the air,’ he growled at someone; he didn’t give a damn who it was as long as they did what he said.
As if his words had filtered into her head, Zoe’s fingers closed around the lapels of his jacket, making him look up, making him feel like the worst person alive when she pleaded, ‘Toby, Anton. Please, I need my brother. Please, Anton, please …’
It was the agonised cry of a wounded creature. No one was immune to it. Everyone in the cabin froze in dismay, including Anton who had never felt so angry with himself—or so ashamed.
Kostas looked at him as he approached; he was ashamed of him too. ‘Your brother is right here, Miss Kanellis.’ The deep slightly thickened voice of Kostas Demitris made Zoe jerk in response. She stopped weeping, blinked her wretched eyes and looked at the seat still holding her baby brother all snug and safe.
‘Toby,’ she breathed in trembling relief.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, then turned to look at Anton. ‘I thought you—’
‘I know what you thought,’ he cut in grimly. ‘For all my faults, Zoe, I promise you I will never hand your brother over to anyone other than to yourself, OK?’
OK? Zoe nodded even though she was asking herself why she was allowing herself to believe a single word that he said. Yet she did.
‘He’s my whole life now.’ Pressing her wobbling lips together, she dropped her gaze to where her fingers still clutched at his jacket lapels. ‘He’s all I have left of them and …’
Zoe felt the tears well up inside her again, the rolling wave of an overwhelming sadness and grief. For three whole weeks she had kept herself together. She’d stayed calm and strong and kept her feelings all locked up inside because she’d had to if she’d wanted to appear a fit mother for her brother in front of all those people who’d lined up to check her out. Then along came this man—this one person she had actually let her guard down for—and now look at her: stuck on the plane in a middle of a field, waiting to take off for Greece!
Anton watched as the tears started flowing again—a different kind of tears. His lips clamped together and his expression turning tautly blank, he closed his arms around her and used the flat of his hand to ease her face into his chest. He did not offer comforting strokes with his fingers. He did not encourage the tears. He stared at the back of her cream leather seat and just held her as the deep well of her grief opened up and came pouring out. She let go of it all in near silence, in long, soul-wrenching sobs with words, barely distinguishable as words, winding through them. Mummy he recognised; Daddy …
His flight steward approached him cautiously. ‘You need to choose a seat and fasten in, sir,’ he said.
Anton shook his head. The plane could fall from the sky but he wasn’t moving. After a second or two the steward moved away. The engines fired into life. He felt their vibration through the balls of his balancing feet. The moment they were in the air and free to move around, he unfastened Zoe’s belt then stood up with her in his arms and headed for the bedroom at the rear of the plane. Shouldering the door shut behind them, he heeled off his shoes then used a foot to flip away the duvet so he could lay her down on the bed.
The Kanellis Scandal Page 5