Rebecca heard the warning in her employer’s voice—although she didn’t need one. She knew it was forbidden to date any of the customers. ‘What’s he like?’ she checked politely, because as crew they were supposed to know about the passengers’ likes and dislikes.
There was a pause. ‘He’s difficult,’ admitted Vanessa softly. ‘Very difficult.’ And then her eyes sparkled in a way that Rebecca had never seen them do before as her voice dropped into a kind of ecstatic whisper. ‘And absolutely bloody gorgeous.’
If difficult was an understatement, then so was gorgeous, Rebecca decided when she met him later that day. She found herself startled by the man’s overwhelming charisma as well as his astonishing good looks.
If someone had said, ‘Bring me the most delectable man in the world,’ then Alexandros Pavlidis would have been the list-topper. If you wanted tall, dark, ruggedly handsome—with a coldly irresistible air about him—then Pavlidis ticked all the right boxes.
The Greek was terse to the point of rudeness, and he operated at the speed of light—the retinue who were following his tall, black-clad figure into the small departure lounge almost having to run to keep up with his long-legged stride.
And it didn’t escape her notice that every woman who worked in the building found some kind of pretext to try to catch a glimpse of him.
But it wasn’t her job to swoon over customers. Her manner had to remain benignly courteous and respectful. Whatever he asked for, she brought. She did not attempt to engage him in any kind of conversation and her entire dialogue with him was confined to politely answering his requests.
He began to use Evolo regularly for his European trips, since apparently he had sold his own private jet fleet for environmental reasons, and his work took him all over the globe. Rebecca tried not to be so heart-poundingly aware of him, but it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t quash the excitement she always experienced when she saw his name on the passenger list.
And even though she did her best to disguise it a kind of unspoken awareness began to sizzle between the two of them—because nothing could disguise chemistry, no matter how hard you tried. His black eyes would narrow thoughtfully when he saw her, and her heart would leap whenever he dealt her his rare, slow smile.
But she remembered Vanessa’s words about discretion and boundaries and quickly turned away from it. Even if it wasn’t forbidden to date the clients—was she really considering herself the kind of woman that someone like Xandros would date?
Yet her apparent lack of interest seemed to inflame him. He went out of his way to engage her in conversation and surely it would have been discourteous not to have joined in?
‘What are you doing once we land?’ he asked her one dark, starry night as the plane touched down in Madrid.
‘I’m having an early night,’ she answered.
‘Ah!’ His black eyes glittered with sudden understanding, for this would explain her inexplicable resolve not to flirt with him. He felt a slight pang of disappointment, but it was quickly followed by the inevitable rush of challenge—for there was no rival who could not be easily dispatched if Xandros wanted something. ‘And who is the lucky man?’
Rebecca felt colour tinge her cheeks. ‘Mr Pavlidis!’
‘Ne, agape mou, what is it?’
Why did he call her that? Didn’t it mean ‘darling’, or something? ‘Will that be all?’
‘Ochi,’ he said roughly, for he had seen her blush—something which was as rare as the rose-coloured Starlings which sometimes appeared on the Aegean islands. ‘It will not be all. I want you to have dinner with me. In fact, I demand it.’
Maybe if she had agreed to his request then it would have all been over before it began, but Rebecca did something that few women ever did. She said no.
When a man had everything—he wanted what he couldn’t have, and Xandros wanted Rebecca. He wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted a woman for years and he was forced to pursue her—something which was almost alien to him. Even when he’d first arrived in New York as an unsophisticated eighteen-year-old, women had fallen eagerly into his arms.
‘What harm is there in dinner?’ he mused, the next time they flew together. It was a late winter afternoon as the luxury jet began its descent towards Paris and the early-setting sun was lighting the sky with its fiery blaze. Coal-black eyes mocked her. ‘Do not worry.’ His voice was like silk, embroidered with sardonic thread. ‘You have turned me down enough times to impress me, agape mou. And now that we have established your fine reputation, you can see there is no reason for us not to enjoy one another’s company.’
It sounded unbearably tempting. Rebecca tugged unnecessarily at the neat jacket of her Evolo uniform. ‘But I’m not supposed to mix with the customers, Mr Pavlidis,’ she said.
‘Says who?’
‘Says my boss.’
‘This would be Vanessa?’ he queried, his eyes narrowing.
‘That’s right.’
He nodded, as if satisfying himself of something. Or someone. ‘Vanessa has her own agenda,’ he drawled softly. ‘And I’m not proposing that we ride off into the sunset together,’ he added sarcastically. ‘I just think Paris is not a city to be alone in and that it would be agreeable to have a little company. Mmm? What could be wrong with that?’
His black eyes glittered with enticing question. In her heart, Rebecca knew that he wasn’t being straightforward with her; she suspected he had an address book crammed with the numbers of beautiful and willing women no matter how many cities he visited. But she had held out for so long against her feelings for him and in that moment she felt defenceless against the full onslaught of his charm.
‘Just dinner?’ she verified breathlessly.
‘If that is what you want,’ Xandros returned, his smile careless.
It hadn’t been ‘just’ dinner, of course. For how could you not let a man like Xandros kiss you at the end of it when you had been longing for him to kiss you since the first time you’d set eyes on him? And then? Her battle had been with herself rather than with him. Her sense of what was right and proper vying with her heart and her body’s desires.
She had lost the battle. Of course she had ended up in bed with him. He was a powerful, virile man who would not be satisfied with a chaste kiss at the end of a first date—and for the first time in her life, neither was she.
Rebecca had never felt so physically vulnerable beneath a man’s caresses as she was to Xandros. She hated herself for her easy capitulation that night and yet she couldn’t stop herself. Her hungry body’s need overrode everything else—ruthlessly quelling the voice in her head which demanded to know whether he would respect her after this.
And to Xandros, her only spoken objection was a practical one. ‘No one from work must know,’ she told him urgently as his hand began its inevitable and longed-for journey up her inner thigh.
‘Why should they?’ he breathed, peeling off her panties with a low moan of delight.
‘Because…oh…oh…Xandros! Because people…’ She closed her eyes, and swallowed. ‘They talk,’ she whispered eventually.
‘Then we won’t give them anything to talk about,’ he assured her silkily, his fingers working ruthlessly against her hotly aroused flesh, feeling it yield to him. ‘No one will know a thing. We will keep it secret, ne? Our little secret…’
But weren’t secrets wrong? Wasn’t that making it sound as if he wanted to keep her hidden away—like something furtive, to be ashamed of? Rebecca tried to pull away, but the lure of his embrace was too strong to resist, the gentle caress of his fingertips too tremblingly intense. ‘Xandros?’ she tried, one last time.
‘Ochi,’ he negated fiercely. ‘Say nothing! Do nothing but stay here in my arms when you know that this is what we both want!’ And he kissed her into willing submission.
Yet even at the height of her very first orgasm, Rebecca was aware of a sharp twist of pain in her heart. That her surrender could be her emotional undoing, and that she risked losing every
thing—the most important thing being her heart. Her life and her future was one in which a man like Xandros would have no place—and yet, having tasted all the pleasures that he gave her, the thought of any future without him already seemed bleak and empty.
If she had known all that right from the beginning, then why hadn’t she stopped? Why give into something which you knew instinctively was doomed on so many levels?
Because human nature wasn’t like that. It made you reach out and grab at the unreachable.
The mists of memory cleared as Rebecca blinked around at her luxurious surroundings. She bent down to pick up one of the shoes she had discarded while she had been stripping off for her hard-bodied Greek lover and sighed. It was pointless going back over what had happened. She could do nothing to change the past—what she could work on was the present.
But the present brought her scant comfort.
She was here, in Xandros’s penthouse suite—about to go out for a meal which she knew that neither of them really wanted. And after that he was off to New York, and she didn’t know when she was going to see him again. So how was she going to play it? Did she have enough acting ability to convince him that she didn’t really care, either way—or would he see right through her?
‘Rebecca?’
The silken, accented Greek voice filtered through the air. By concentrating on finishing fastening her shoes, Rebecca was able to compose herself before straightening up to look at him. His black eyes were set like dark jewels in the backdrop of his gleaming olive skin and her heart turned over with love and longing. If only he didn’t look so heartbreakingly gorgeous. Reaching into her handbag, she took out a hairbrush and began to make great sweeping strokes through hair all tousled from love-making. ‘Yes, Xandros?’ she questioned calmly.
He liked to watch her brush her hair. The first time she had loosened it for him he had told her that it was the colour of Greek honey—which was darker and richer than any honey in the world. ‘The car is waiting downstairs, agape mou.’ His eyes narrowed at her in question. ‘You still want to go and eat?’
What would he say if she told him the truth—that what she really wanted was to know how he felt about her? Whether he was tiring of her—or whether it was a figment of her over-active imagination. But some bone-deep instinct told her that a man like Xandros would ultimately despise a woman who wanted that kind of reassurance. To an independent man that might smack of neediness—and everyone knew how unattractive that was.
‘Eat? I thought you’d never ask,’ she said lightly, turning her head so that her newly brushed hair swung in a scented curtain around her still-flushed cheeks. She even managed to give him a faintly mocking look in return. ‘Somehow I’ve worked up quite an appetite—though can’t for the life of me work out why!’
Xandros gave a barely perceptible nod as he picked up her coat and held it open for her, watching the naturally sinuous movement of her body as she wriggled into it. Her response had held just the right amount of cool distance and yet her apparent composure was strong enough to fan the flames of his desire once more. He found himself wanting to pull her back into his arms again and a nerve flickered at his temple.
This was going to be harder to finish than he had anticipated.
CHAPTER THREE
NEXT morning Rebecca awoke to the sound of a shower splashing nearby and Xandros singing something rather tunelessly in Greek. He sounded happy, she thought wistfully—and why wouldn’t he be? She opened her eyes and stared at the chandelier which glittered above the vast bed like a canopy of diamonds.
Over dinner last night, he had described the elegant new apartment block he was building, which incorporated a ‘sky-garden’ at its summit which would bring lush grasses and fragrant shrubs to the defiantly urban part of the city in which it was set. He wanted it to be the first of many—to bring greenery to grey places. He wanted a world which did not push nature out. His deep voice had been passionate and dreamy and Rebecca had found herself swept up by it—torn between admiration and envy. It had been as if he was describing a paradise she would never be part of.
She heard the gushing of the water stop and after a few minutes he walked into the bedroom—completely naked—towelling at his ebony hair with a small towel.
His hard body glowed, the broad shoulders tapering down into narrow hips and then long, hair-roughened legs. He was a man utterly at ease with his nudity—but then who wouldn’t be with a physique like that? He swam every day, no matter where he was in the world. He had told her that it was one thing he had brought with him from his native Greece—the desire to feel the water on his skin and the delicious freedom which came with it.
He looked at her lying amidst the rumpled sheets and his mouth softened briefly into a smile. ‘Kherete,’ he said softly.
‘Hello,’ she murmured back, astonished at how she could still feel almost shy when he looked at her like that—despite the fact that he knew her body more thoroughly than any other man had ever done. ‘I feel so lazy I can’t move.’
‘Seeing you lying there like that makes me want to stay.’
Easy to say. ‘But you can’t.’
‘No.’ He slid on a pair of dark boxers which felt silky next to his skin. ‘Unfortunately I can’t. As soon as I get off the plane, stateside, I have a long list of meetings to attend.’ He looked up and shrugged but his black eyes gleamed with anticipation. ‘There is a big deal nearing completion, new plans to draw up.’
‘And no doubt a stack of invitations to glittering parties from just about every New York society hostess worth her salt.’ She hadn’t meant to say it, but somehow the words seemed to tumble out of their own accord.
There was the fraction of a pause, the faintest elevation of jet-dark brows. ‘That, too,’ he agreed.
Rebecca knew that she was stepping into unfamiliar territory. That Xandros, more than most men, compartmentalised his life—and she was firmly fixed in the English section. But surely showing interest wouldn’t necessarily be interpreted as possessive jealousy? Didn’t dating him give her the rights to know something about his life? ‘And do you go to them?’
‘To parties?’ He shrugged as he reached into the closet for a pure silk shirt in a buttery ivory colour and, slipping it on over his broad shoulders, began to button it. ‘Sometimes—like most people—when I’m not too busy. Why wouldn’t I?’ He pulled on a pair of dark trousers. ‘And what about you, Rebecca—what do you do when your Greek lover is not in town?’
Was it significant that he was asking her this now—when he had never really been interested before? Or was he simply being dutiful and turning the question back on her? Pride made her want to embellish a life which would surely sound very ordinary when judged by his standards. Imagine how he would react if she told him that she spent a lot of her free time thinking about him! Even the supermarket was an unsafe zone, for she often found herself scouring the shelves for the brand of olive oil she knew that his family firm produced back in Greece. Up until now, she’d never found it.
‘Oh, this and that.’ She pushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. ‘I go out to the cinema—sometimes the theatre—’
‘With your girlfriends, of course?’ he cut in, his fingers pausing in the act of zipping up his trousers.
Something in his dismissive tone offended her. Who did he think he was? He offered her nothing, nor promised her anything—did he think she just crawled into a dark box and stayed there when he was out of the country, like some caged animal eagerly panting for his return?
‘Not always. Obviously, I have friends of both sexes.’
Brilliant black eyes were fixed on her and he shot the word out as if it were a bullet. ‘Men?’
There was a pause. Did he imagine these were the Dark Ages? ‘Of course.’
‘Men that you go out with?’
Rebecca sat up in bed, her hair now tumbling down all over her bare breasts. ‘Not go out with!’ she protested. She wanted to say, Not like I go out with you—but
that would have sounded false. They didn’t exactly go out, did they? They just got together for some very agreeable sex whenever he happened to be in town. That he bought her dinner or occasionally took her to a show was neither here nor there. ‘Just men whose company I occasionally enjoy. You know.’
His eyes narrowed, fiercely intelligent, hard and, in that one moment, displaying a flash of something which looked almost like cruelty.
‘No, I don’t know. You are not making any sense to me, agape mou. In my experience men and women who go out together have only one real item on their agenda. For that is how nature intended it.’
His silky voice sounded almost…threatening. And primitive. Rebecca frowned, taken aback by the hot storm of accusation which blazed from his eyes. ‘What are you suggesting, Xandros?’ she queried unsteadily. ‘That I have sex with other men while you aren’t here?’
‘Do you?’
First she felt faint, then hurt—and then angry. But it was difficult to maintain your dignity while you were completely naked and Rebecca yanked the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around herself. As she got out of bed she realised that her hands were shaking and she turned on him.
‘I can’t believe you would even ask a question like that! Implying I’m some kind of…some kind of…tramp!’ Her breath was coming hot and rapid and he regarded her with a narrow-eyed scrutiny before crossing the room, but she waved him away. ‘Just what kind of woman do you normally associate with to make you think something like that?’ she demanded.
None that had as much fire in their eyes as she did at that precise moment, he thought with a mixture of sexual hunger and something much darker which had not reared its ugly head for a long time. With an effort he forced himself back from its brink. For a man who rarely considered himself to be in the wrong, apology did not come easy. ‘It was a clumsy question—I should never have asked it.’
‘No, you shouldn’t.’
He reached out for her and he could see the struggle taking place within her, telling herself not to forgive him too quickly. Until, with a reluctant sigh, she let him lift her hand to his lips and he managed to coax a reluctant softening of her mouth as he kissed each fingertip in turn.
The Greek Tycoon's Baby Bargain Page 3