by Lynne Graham
It had been immediately evident that her reference to paranoia had gone down like a brick thrown through his front window, since he’d pushed back his big wide shoulders and, his aggressive jawline clenched, fixed his dark-as-treacle eyes on her. ‘Who tipped you off about my presence here today?’
Her very blue eyes had widened. ‘Nobody, I swear. I’m just an ordinary trespasser in the woods—one of your tenants, actually—and I would like to get out of the river and go home now.’
‘You’re a tenant?’ Atreus had queried harshly. ‘So, you’re trespassing in spite of the estate office’s request that you respect my privacy?’
‘I live at The Lodge. If I’d known you were at home I’d never have dared,’ she’d admitted truthfully, trying and failing to suppress a shiver, because she had only been able to bear the cold water while she was free to move around and jump up and down to keep warm. ‘Now, please be a gentleman and return to your…er…walk.’
‘The creed of the gentleman is long dead.’ He’d produced a mobile phone. ‘I’m calling Security to deal with you.’
And that was when Lindy had really lost her head with him. ‘How much of a bastard do you have to be? I’ve said sorry. What more can I do or say? I’m a woman standing naked in freezing water and you’re threatening to muster more men to see me like this?’ she’d shouted at him in horror. ‘I’m very cold, and I want my clothes!’
Hard, dark and unrepentant eyes had rested on her hot, angry face. ’I’m not preventing you from retrieving them.’
And she hadn’t been able to wait any longer. By that stage her feet had been so cold she’d been in pain, and she hadn’t been able to bear to stand there at his mercy any more. Utterly mortified, and inflamed by his intransigence, she’d waded out without looking anywhere near him. He’d not turned his back as any half-decent man would have done either. He’d stayed where he was and he hadn’t apologised. The very fact that no man had ever seen her naked before had made the ordeal that much more painful for her. Unbearably conscious of her bare breasts, and the all too great expanse of the rest of her, almost sick with embarrassment, she’d had to struggle with the difficulty of dragging her jeans and T-shirt over her wet skin. Naturally she hadn’t extended the time of her exposure by trying either to dry herself or put on her bra and knickers first.
She’d run all the way back to The Lodge, where she’d sat shell-shocked and tearful over the indignity of the ordeal he had put her through. Forty-eight hours later Atreus Dionides had sent her a superb bouquet of expensive flowers with a card that had contained an apology and the suggestion that she call him to arrange a dinner date. She had not been able to credit his nerve. His insolent invitation had simply sent her into paroxysms of frustrated rage.
Lindy was, after all, quite friendly with his housekeeper, Phoebe Carstairs, and as such was already reasonably well acquainted with his reputation as a womaniser. Phoebe had yet to see her wealthy employer with the same woman twice. According to Phoebe, Atreus liked dainty blondes in very high heels, and they all fawned over him like groupies and slept with him the first night they arrived. Lindy had read between the lines: Atreus was accustomed to a diet of flattery, awe and easy sex, with women capable of amusing him only for a single weekend.
Lindy was not and never would be that kind of a woman. Furthermore, how dared he even suggest that she would want to lay eyes on him again after the brutal, callous way he had treated her? He had shown the true colours of his character by the river. On the surface he might well be everything the newspaper had suggested—a phenomenally brilliant businessman who had taken a failing family company and transformed it into a contemporary Goliath which dominated the world shipping markets. And he was breathtakingly handsome and extraordinarily rich and privileged. But below that lustrous, classically beautiful surface he was a hatefully cold and unfeeling guy, with no manners and a considerable contempt for women. If Lindy had to wait a lifetime to see Atreus Dionides again it would be too soon.
But in fact she was to see Atreus again much sooner than she expected—and in circumstances that would prevent her from expressing her antipathy in the manner she would have liked.
Her bedroom was the only room in her compact gatehouse which provided her with a view of Chantry House. All she could actually see was the west wing of the extensive property, and at present that was not a pretty view because for many weeks that part of the building had been shrouded in unsightly scaffolding while it was being converted into staff accommodation. It was a clear night, without clouds, and when Lindy was closing the curtains shortly before midnight she immediately noticed a puff of smoke issuing from the roof. A frown line dividing her brow, she stared until she saw another, floating up slowly into the night sky. There was no chimney, and nobody living there yet either. She snatched in a dismayed breath, her fingers biting into the curtain as she peered out at the house. She was striving to crush back the bone-deep terror of fire that was already bringing her out in a cold sweat. Could it really be a fire? A suspicion of an orange glow behind a formerly blank window unfroze her from her position. She immediately reached for the phone to call the emergency services.
Then, in a frantic rush, she raced downstairs and snatched up her mobile phone to ring Phoebe Carstairs, who lived in the village and was the sister of Emma, who ran the animal sanctuary.
Phoebe ran out into her garden to take a look at Chantry House from across the fields.
‘Oh, my goodness, I can see the smoke from here! We’ll have to try and get the house cleared—it’s full of priceless furniture and paintings!’ Phoebe exclaimed in consternation.
‘Phoebe…’ Lindy interrupted as the other woman outlined her plan to call in the neighbours to help. ‘Is there anyone staying in the house at present?’
‘Mr Dionides arrived this afternoon…Oh, yes, and the cat—Dolly. I borrowed her from Emma to catch mice. I’m trying to call Mr Dionides…on the landline right now…but he’s not answering. Oh, no, maybe he’s been overcome by smoke! Look, you’re much closer than I am. You’d better go and knock him up before he gets incinerated in his bed!’
Wincing in reaction at that unfortunate turn of phrase, and suppressing the panic and reluctance awakened by Phoebe’s instruction, Lindy fled outside and jumped on her bike. She knew she had no choice but to get involved, and she was determined not to let her fear of fire prevent her from doing what she had to do. She pedalled frantically down the drive. There were no lights on. The mansion looked dead. Letting the bike fall to the gravel, she took the steps to the front door two at a time and hammered as noisily as she could on the giant knocker. Breathless and fiercely concerned, she kept on thumping the knocker until her arm ached and she had to change hands. By the time the big door finally opened, she could hear cars coming up the drive.
‘What the hell—? It’s after midnight.’ Atreus Dionides stared out at her with a frown of incomprehension. He was still fully dressed in an elegant pinstriped suit. With his luxuriant black hair dishevelled and a blue-black shadow of stubble roughening his strong jawline, he was no longer immaculate in appearance, but he looked startlingly masculine and…sexy, Lindy conceded—in some shock at this awareness occurring to her. Her tummy flipped, and perspiration dampened her short upper lip. She was embarrassed for herself.
‘The west wing is on fire!’ she gasped.
Atreus dealt her a look of frank incredulity. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Look, your house is on fire…don’t be pig-headed!’ Lindy yelled at him, sensing that being obstinate and independent of thought ran through his every fibre, like a name stamped indelibly into a stick of seaside rock.
Atreus strode down the steps. ‘On…fire?’
‘West wing. Top floor!’
His long, powerful legs cut the distance to the corner of the house at a rate she could not keep up with. Once there, he stilled at the sight of the glow lighting the darkness, while Lindy’s tummy gave a sickening lurch and cold fear chilled her to the
marrow. A biting phrase of guttural Greek escaped him before he was galvanised into action.
Several powerfully built men had already jumped out of a big four-wheel-drive to race across the gravel towards him. Lindy recognised the musclebound males who seemed to travel everywhere with him as his bodyguards. He rapped out instructions to them and they walked straight into the house.
‘Is it safe to let them go inside?’ Lindy queried worriedly.
‘If it were not I would not send them. The seat of the fire is a considerable distance from the library,’ Atreus responded loftily, his irritation at that suggestion of censure unconcealed. ‘My laptop and sensitive papers must be retrieved.’
Lindy could not credit that he could still be concentrating solely on business when the superb paintings she could see decorating the hall walls were under threat. Didn’t he appreciate how terrifyingly fast a fire could move through a building? A terrifying shiver of remembrance that was a powerful hangover from her childhood experiences ran through her. Clenching her hands into fists of restraint, she turned away to approach Phoebe, who was surrounded by a cluster of locals. All of them were frozen into inactivity in the weird fascination of spectators watching a potential disaster develop.
‘There’s no time to waste. Let’s get the artworks out,’ Lindy urged.
A chain of willing helpers formed, and the first paintings were removed and passed out through the windows from hand to hand. Lindy, always a talented organiser, co-ordinated the effort, and once the Dionides bodyguards and estate workers joined them the salvage operation began to function with greater speed and efficiency. Two fire engines arrived and Atreus went into immediate consultation with the senior officer in charge. Ladders went up and hoses began to cover the ground. Chantry House sat on a hill, and water would have to be pumped up from the lake if the flames got a firm hold.
The task of clearing valuables from the vast mansion was eased by the fortunate fact that many of the rooms were awaiting redecoration and still empty. As the pressure on the salvage operation lessened Lindy watched in fierce trepidation as jets of water were directed into the burning building and billowing clouds of black smoke poured into the night sky. Even the smell of the smoke in the air made her feel queasy.
‘The fire’s travelling through the roof void,’ Atreus ground out.
‘Did the cat get out okay?’ Lindy asked, belatedly recalling Dolly, the animal the housekeeper had mentioned.
Atreus urged her back onto the lawn as the orange glare behind a sash window loudly cracked the glass. ‘What cat? I don’t have animals in the house.’
Lindy dealt him a look of consternation and raced over to Phoebe. A storage lorry was reversing in readiness to load the paintings stacked on the tarpaulins that had been spread on the grass.
‘Did Dolly get out?’ Lindy asked frantically.
‘Oh! I forgot about her!’ the older woman admitted guiltily. ‘I closed her in the kitchen for the night. I didn’t want to risk her getting out and wandering round the house.’
The fire team in the hallway told her she couldn’t enter the building. Tears of frustration in her eyes, Lindy pelted round to the back of the house. Would she really have the courage to go inside? she asked herself fiercely, doubting her strength of will in the face of such a challenge? The back door lay open. Her legs felt weak and woolly. She thought about the cat and, sucking in a deep jagged breath, conquered her paralysis and stumbled forward to race into the house. She sped down the flagged corridor and past innumerable closed doors. For a split second she froze in fear, for the smell of the smoke was rousing ever more frightening memories. But commonsense intervened and she snatched up a towel in the laundry room and held it to her face because the acrid smoke was catching horribly at her nose and her throat. Long before she reached the kitchen door, it had become a struggle to breathe.
She could hear a dull roaring sound behind the kitchen door and her courage almost failed to her, but she was powered by an image of Dolly’s terror and the sick memory of herself as a child, trapped in a burning house. Using the towel to turn the door handle, in case it was hot, she opened the door just as a man shouted at her from behind.
‘Don’t open the door…no!’ he roared, but she was on an adrenalin rush and she did not even turn her head.
She was shaken by the discovery that the ceiling was on fire. Although there was a scattering of small burning pieces of debris on the floor, the kitchen was still eerily intact within that unnatural orange glow of impending destruction. The heat, however, was intense. Dolly had taken shelter under the table. An elderly black and white cat, with big green eyes, she was clearly not her usual placid self. A smouldering piece of wood lay nearby and Dolly was snarling at it, with her hackles lifted and her fur standing on end.
Lindy surged forward and snatched up Dolly just as the most dreadful rending noise sounded from above her. Inadvertently she paused and obeyed a foolish compulsion to look up. Someone lifted her bodily off her feet and hauled her backwards. A burning beam fell on the table and rolled off again, showering sparks and choking dust only feet away from her. She had been right in its path, and the fear of what might have been hit her hard and left her limp.
Atreus carried Lindy and the struggling cat to safety and withstood a volley of reproof from the fireman who had followed his rescue bid. She was coughing and spluttering as Atreus lowered her to the cobbled yard outside, and she breathed in the clean air with feverish relief.
‘How could you be so stupid?’ Atreus yelled at her, full volume. ‘Why didn’t you stop when I shouted at you?’
‘I didn’t hear you shout!’
‘You risked my life and your own for an animal!’ Atreus launched at her in condemnation.
That verbal attack shocked her, and at the same moment she feverishly fought disturbing recollections of the household fire that had many years earlier taken her father’s life. The combination made her eyes prickle and overflow and she flung him a speaking glance of reproach. ‘I couldn’t just leave Dolly to die in there!’
The cat was now curled up in Lindy’s arms, with her furry head tucked well out of view. She was paying not the smallest heed to the crackling flames leaping through the roof of the west wing, or to the noise and activity of the human beings rushing around. Dolly had had enough excitement for one day and recognised a safe haven when she was offered one.
‘You could have been killed or at the very least seriously injured,’ Atreus admonished fiercely.
‘You were a hero,’ Lindy pronounced through clenched teeth of ingratitude. ‘Thank you very much for saving my life.’
Fighting to contain his anger with her, Atreus gazed down at her defiant oval face. She wasn’t beautiful but there was something about her, a heady je ne sais quoi that made him blatantly aware of her femininity. Was it those clear bright eyes? The luxuriant mane of long dark hair? Or the voluptuous figure that had infiltrated his dreams and caused him more disturbed nights that he cared to remember? She was full of emotion, a far cry from the reserved and controlled women he was used to dealing with. Her tear-filled eyes were as bright as amethysts, her lush, vulnerable mouth as ripe as a peach, and she continued to tremble as if the fire was still overhead. Anger lurched inexplicably into more complex responses that tensed his big powerful frame with surprise and electric sexuality. Hunger for her hit him as hard as a punch in the gut.
‘I know I don’t sound grateful,’ Lindy added gruffly, staring up at him, striving not to notice how beautifully his thick black lashes enhanced his stunning dark golden eyes. ‘But I am really. Dolly was so frightened—didn’t you see her?’
‘Nasi pari o Diavelos,’ Atreus swore raggedly under his breath. ‘I saw only you.’
His intensity slashed through her strained attempt to behave normally. Her mouth running dry in the tension-filled atmosphere, she collided with his smouldering gaze and her ability to breathe seized up. He swooped like the predator she sensed he was at heart. He did not ask, he simp
ly took, and his wide sensual mouth engulfed hers with a hot, driving energy that sizzled through her unprepared body like flame consuming tinder-dry wood. She moaned at the penetration of his tongue between her lips and the slow, sensual glide of it against hers, because her body was going haywire.
Sultry heat was tingling through her nerve-endings in a seductive wave. She tried to make herself pull back from him but could not find sufficient will-power to contrive that feat of mind over matter. Her nipples were lengthening into pointed pulsing buds constrained by the lace cups of her bra, and there was a treacherous yearning burn and an embarrassing dampness between her thighs. Together those sensations were winding her up as tight as a clock spring. As he pressed her against him, even through the barrier of their clothes, she was hopelessly aware of the hard, thrusting evidence of his arousal.
‘Full marks for surprising me,’ Atreus said huskily, surveying her with bold appreciation as he tilted back his handsome head. ‘You are hotter than that fire in there, mali mou.’
Lindy, who had never seen herself as being hot in any capacity, sucked oxygen into her depleted lungs and accidentally, in her eagerness to avoid Atreus’s scrutiny, caught the eye of the woman who had taken up a hesitant stance several feet away. It was Phoebe Carstairs.
‘I’m sorry for interrupting, Mr Dionides,’ the older woman said awkwardly. ‘But I thought I could take care of the cat for you.’
On wobbly lower limbs, Lindy detached herself from Atreus and moved away to hand over the cat, who had tolerated being crushed between their straining bodies without complaint. She could not meet Phoebe’s eyes; she was in shock…
CHAPTER TWO
‘WE CAN make tea, coffee and sandwiches at The Lodge,’ Lindy told Phoebe only minutes later, whipping herself straight back into her sensible self and suppressing all memory of that temporary slide into a persona and behaviour alien to her. ‘Everyone will need a break and my house is the most convenient. I have to get my bike. If you have nothing more pressing to do, follow me down in your car.’