She was still clutching his lapels and he did not try to ease her fingers free. He just lay down beside her, flipped the duvet over the two of them then drew her into his embrace. He let her weep those awful sobs against him and felt every single one of them like a blow to his own cruel, thoughtless arrogance. When eventually she exhausted herself and drifted into a restive sleep, he remained where he was, aware with every fibre of his being that he had never held another human being this close to him, and that included during sex.
When slowly her fingers finally relaxed from their grip on him, he eased himself sideways and rolled out of the bed then turned to walk like a drunk into the adjoining bathroom, closed the door and slumped back against it, eyes closed, conscience riven by deserved self-contempt.
Zoe came awake to the slow, slow memory that something calamitous had happened. Shattered images of her shouting at Anton, kissing Anton, begging and pleading then weeping on Anton, floated around in her head. She stirred ever so slightly, frowning as she did so because she knew she’d totally embarrassed herself and completely lost her head. Now she was lying in a bed somewhere covered by a duvet and she still had all her clothes on, even her shoes and her jacket.
Unwilling as yet to open her eyes and check out her surroundings, she continued to lie there, using her other senses instead. It was all very quiet. She could feel the finest hint of a vibration from the plane’s engines.
Oh dear God, she thought then. She’d had a fight with Anton Pallis about going to Greece then she’d gone to pieces because she’d thought he was separating her from Toby.
‘You are awake, then,’ a smooth voice said.
With a start, Zoe flipped onto her back then flicked her eyes open as full and detailed recall rushed like a charging bull through her head. She remembered everything—all of it—from her flare of wild panic to …
‘I thought you were going to sleep through the whole flight and force me to carry you off it.’
Twisting her head on the pillow, her eyes collided with a pair of dark ones coloured by lazy mockery. Her heart started to hammer. She didn’t know why. He was stretched out beside her on top of the duvet with his head supported by the heel of his hand and everything about him screamed sartorial elegance from the grey silk trousers he was wearing now to the crispness of a pale-blue shirt.
‘Toby,’ she whispered tautly.
‘Right here.’ Arching an eyebrow as if to question where else her brother could be, he glanced down at the space between them.
And he was. Following the downward movement of Anton’s eyes, Zoe discovered her brother lying there fast asleep. He looked relaxed and angelic, his tiny face pink with contentment.
‘He drank a full bottle of that awful stuff he seems to find delicious,’ Anton informed her. ‘Then I tackled a job no man of my superior breeding should ever have to undertake.’
‘You fed and changed him?’ Turning onto her side, Zoe gathered the baby close to her and dropped a kiss on his silky dark head.
‘He suffered my first few fumbling attempts remarkably well. My suit received a—dousing,’ he drawled lazily. ‘However, since you had already drenched the jacket with your tears earlier, it was no hardship to me to remove it and change into something else.’
He did not add that he had refused plenty of offers from people out there who’d offered to take over the job for him. It had been his punishment to care for the baby, as it was his punishment to endure the frost his staff had been treating him to since he’d walked out of this room over an hour ago.
‘I—I don’t know what to say,’ Zoe mumbled. ‘A simple “thank you” will be adequate.’ Not while she still lived and breathed, thought Zoe. ‘You don’t warrant the waste of good manners. You kidnapped us.’
‘Back to hostilities already?’ Sighing heavily, he slid off the bed, rising to his full height with fluid grace.
‘You lied and you conned me and scared me out of my wits.’
‘Well, something made you lose your wits,’ Anton agreed, moving across the compact cabin to open a narrow cupboard. ‘I did wonder for a while if it was the kiss.’
The moment he mentioned the kiss, Zoe refused to look at him. Her hostility towards him only half-covered what she really felt. ‘I suppose I should have expected it from a man reared under Theo Kanellis’s influence.’ Sitting up in the bed, she lifted her brother into her arms. ‘Ruthless, heartless and a calculating bully, as well as a conscience-free rake.’
‘You summed me up quite nicely there, Zoe,’ Anton agreed again as he slid a jacket off a hanger then closed the cupboard door again. ‘Would you like me to apologise for frightening you so badly?’
‘Will you turn this plane around to take us back to England?’
In the process of shrugging into his jacket, he paused.
‘No.’
She looked up at him when she’d been determined not to. A tight little stabbing feeling skittered down her front. He looked a million dollars again, she saw, and hated him for it because he made her suddenly aware of her own limp, dishevelled state.
‘Then your apology has about as much substance as you do as a man of honour.’ As soon as she’d said that last word it rang a fuzzy kind of bell in her head.
Frowning, she looked away from him again. But when his steady walk took him across the end of the bed then down along her side of it, she had to flick him a wary glance from beneath her eyelashes to check what he was about to do next.
Anton stopped beside her. She looked like an earth mother sitting there in a mound of feathery bedding with the boy cradled to her breasts. Only he had never heard of an earth mother with electric-blue eyes, tumbling, golden hair and a soft, pink, pouting mouth that just begged to be—
‘If I had been up front and honest with you about bringing you to Greece, would you have agreed to come?’
Pushing her hair away from her face, she shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Then my honour is intact,’ he said. ‘You could not stay where you were, and I could not place you anywhere you would have been free from the media circus except in Greece, on my private estate.’
‘On Theo Kanellis’s private island, by any chance?’
‘No, and your sarcasm is starting to wear a bit thin on me, Zoe, so be careful. I will accept that my methods were—brutal. And I will acknowledge that you have a right to feel angry and betrayed by me. But that child you cradle in your arms is half-Greek. As are you. He has a right to know his Greek family even if you don’t want to know them. Or were you planning on extending the family feud into the next Kanellis generation? If so, then you are no better than the man you refuse to call grandfather. Think about it,’ he advised as he turned to stride to the door. ‘We land in an hour. Your bag is in the bathroom; I suggest you tidy yourself before you come out of here.’
Zoe glared at his back as he reached to pull the door open. ‘Gold-digger,’ she muttered.
It froze him where he stood. She hadn’t a clue why she’d just blurted that insulting label out, but she felt her pulses pick up pace as he turned around.
The all-powerful Greek tycoon was back, she noticed. She felt tingly and breathless, the one she’d met on her doorstep this morning when he’d stood there looking as if he ruled the world. Every angle of his face was hard, cold and disturbingly immobile—and those eyes had turned back into polished jet.
‘You came to my house,’ she rushed on with defiance. ‘You sweet-talked me into letting you kidnap us. You—you scared me.’ As he was doing again now, though she was determined not to show him that. ‘For all I know you deliberately agitated the situation with the press because you knew it would work in your favour.’
A spark of self-preservation made her place her brother safely aside then scramble up off the bed. ‘What was it your henchman said in my kitchen? I hope you do know what you’re doing, Mr Pallis.’ Zoe quoted word for Greek word. ‘Well, you did know, didn’t you? Theo wants his grandson and you are going to deliver him even if it
means hauling me along too.’
‘So how does all of this make me a gold-digger?’ He spoke at last, so softly Zoe felt the danger in him like a living thing reaching out towards her with long fingers coming for her throat.
Clenching her hands into fists at her sides, she tried not to be intimidated. ‘Everyone knows that until three weeks ago you were Theo’s undisputed heir. Then up we pop—Toby and me. Two previously unheard-of grandchildren of the great man himself. You’re the lawyer—you tell me how inheritance laws work in Greece. Or, better yet, explain to me again why you’ve gone to all of this trouble to get us on to this plane going to Greece?’
He was listening with a narrow-eyed intensity that caused a sudden rush of those tremors she’d been trying to hold back. She envied him his self-control in the way he continued to stand there refusing to speak.
‘Say something!’ she launched at him tautly.
‘I am waiting to hear your own conclusions before I comment,’ he responded, smooth as silk.
Zoe folded her arms across her front. The way his eyes flickered down to view this piece of screamingly defensive body language made her unfold her arms again and stick them back down at her sides.
‘You told me that Theo Kanellis is ill—so ill he can’t travel. You told me that he wants my brother and I’m only really along for the ride.’
‘I do not recall saying the latter.’
‘Yes you did. And, let’s face it, causing a huge scandal by walking off with my brother without me would not have done your reputation much good. So why have you gone to all of this trouble? Just to keep your credit sweet with my grandfather?’
She pushed on despite the shrill voice in her head telling her to stop. The man was so still he was dangerous. ‘Or do you have more far-reaching plans to do with death, inheritance and baby-boy heirs who will need a mentor? Are you planning to offer my grandfather a deal, whereby you do for Toby what Theo did for you so that you can hang on to control of his fortune and power?’
For a minute she thought he was going to throw back his handsome dark head and laugh at her. In fact there was a quivering part of her that wanted him to do that and turn her ‘gold-digger’ accusation into a complete joke—but he didn’t. Instead he held her pinned to the spot with the hard gleam in his eyes.
‘And that is your definition of a gold-digger?’ he murmured.
Pressing the tremor out of her lips, Zoe nodded.
‘Then you have missed one very salient point—there is a much less tacky way for me to keep control of Theo’s fortune, and that is through you, Miss Kanellis.’
She didn’t like the way that he’d said her name like that. ‘I—I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘I know you don’t.’ He started walking towards her. ‘Actually I feel rather sad for you that you undervalue your own importance so much.’
‘I h-have no importance.’ Twenty-two years with no word from her own grandfather had told her that.
‘You have a lot of importance,’ he insisted. ‘You see, I can achieve every one of my gold-digging ambitions by simply making you my wife and taking your brother as my son. Two for the price of one.’ He smiled, though it wasn’t a nice smile. ‘The financier in me loves the sound of that scenario. Why are you staring at me like that?’ he questioned ever so curiously. ‘You think my sense of honour won’t allow me to do it? As we have already established I have no honour. I lie and cheat and kidnap innocents.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Zoe shot out jerkily.
The gleam in his eyes became a glint like a challenge and he just kept on coming, stalking her backwards like a long, lean hunting-cat.
‘But I think your grandfather will be delighted with this marriage plan,’ he continued, talking as he stalked. ‘Greek men love such sensible business arrangements. They appeal to our macho need to be in control. A merging of our two names would be a formidable coup for me and will send Theo to his grave a very happy man. Now your eyes are flashing a very derisive electric-blue colour as you back away from me,’ he observed silkily. ‘What is it you fear the most, Miss Kanellis—me, your grandfather … or yourself?’
The final comment made her aware that her heart was racing, that she was breathing fast yet feeling strangled of breath at the same time; that her cheeks had flushed and her lips felt tingly because she could not stop staring at the crazily seductive movement of his mouth as he spoke.
‘Perhaps you are thinking that you will not agree to such a deal,’ he offered up as an answer for her, his eyes gleaming with mocking humour when her spine hit the bulkhead, leaving her nowhere else to go.
‘I have this contingency covered, of course. I will send you to Theo, and he will lock you up until you decide to change your mind. We Greek men are so ruthlessly unscrupulous I might even …’
Reaching up with a hand, he placed the tips of his fingers on the wall right beside her head. ‘Kiss you again,’ he murmured. ‘Bed you,’ he added, bringing the lean length of his body closer and closer with each silkily punctuated threat. ‘Make you my woman before we even step on to Greek soil and turn you into my—’
Zoe slapped him. She lifted her arm up and crashed the flat of her hand against the side of his face. Her palm stung because his bones were so hard but she didn’t care. She’d enjoyed slapping him!
‘Get out of my face,’ she hissed.
CHAPTER FIVE
HE DID. It actually stunned her when he did exactly that by straightening up and taking a tense step back.
For an endless space of time afterwards, they just stared at each other. The whole ugly scene they’d just enacted hovered between them in a hyperbolic spin of emotions—not all of them of the hostile variety. And that really worried Zoe. Hadn’t someone once said that a person in a captive situation can suffer a dangerous attraction for their captor? Well, she was feeling like that right now as she stood with her back flattened to the bulkhead and her legs feeling as if they were about to give way. She was sure that she hated him, but she’d also wanted him to kiss her, and that was the reason why she’d slapped his face—to smash through the frightening allure of her own feelings.
His eyes were like jet again, but burning at their centres with something so terribly intense she knew he could feel the confusion too. He’d gone pale beneath his tanned complexion, a white ring of tension circling the tense compression of his mouth. Her finger marks stood out red on his cheek like a brand and she watched with a trembling mix of defiance and fascination as they slowly faded to white.
When he moved she jumped, wrenching her wary eyes back to his, but all he was doing was releasing a low, grating breath. ‘It seems I have succeeded in behaving badly twice in one day,’ he acknowledged. ‘Please accept my apologies—again.’
Zoe couldn’t say anything because her tongue had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. After a shockingly taut few seconds of silence, with a twist of his lips he turned away from her and walked back to the door. It was only after the door closed behind him that Zoe peeled away from the wall and sank weakly down on the bed.
Phew, she thought as she released the pent up breath from her body. She felt like she’d just done ten rounds in a boxing ring—shattered, in other words, limp like a rag. And, what was worse, she was aware that she’d been the one to start that confrontation, goading him on with her ‘gold-digger’ accusations until he’d reacted.
Why had she done that? Did she really believe that he was a calculating, gold-digging monster prepared to sink to any low depth just to get his hands on her grandfather’s power and wealth? Somehow she just did not believe it yet she couldn’t work out why she did not believe it.
But then, she didn’t feel as if she knew anything for a certainty any more. When she’d got up this morning and found the letter from her grandfather lying on the doormat she’d been angry and bitter that he’d dared to write to her at all. When she’d opened her front door to find Anton Pallis standing there, she had been more than ready to take him on. Y
et the more they had talked—or sparred, she amended with a quivering grimace—the more she’d begun to like him, instinctively sensing he was someone she could trust.
Did anyone with an ounce of good sense inside them trust a liar? No. So why was she sitting here wanting to believe that everything he had just said was just his angry retaliation to her ‘gold-digger’ charge?
Toby let out a yelp, reminding her that he was there.
Turning to look at him, she smiled when he hiccupped. ‘Someone didn’t wind you properly,’ she told him.
Then she remembered who that someone was: the exotic dark prince who had messed up his Italian-cut suit in his attempts care for her brother while she’d been asleep. She frowned at the pale-blue sleepsuit Toby was wearing, with its studs only half-fastened because the complicated order in which to fasten them had clearly defeated the famously intelligent Anton Pallis.
The dratted man was a disorientating mix of hard and soft, ruthless and sweet. For she did not doubt that he had taken up the task of caring for Toby as an act of penance for the way he’d scared her into a fit of blind, grief-stricken hysterics.
Stretching out across the bed, she rearranged her brother’s clothing into order then lifted him onto her shoulder to coax away the hiccups. ‘So what do we do, Toby?’ she asked him. ‘Give in to Mr Hard And Soft and agree to this trip to Greece to meet dear old grandpa? Or do we take the fight with us into the next generation?’
The baby hiccupped again, which was no help, but at least he rid himself of the problem causing them. She laid him back down on the bed. ‘Since we are almost in Greece, I suppose for now we have to put up and shut up,’ she decided heavily.
The Kanellis Scandal Page 6