To her relief he gave her a wry smile. ‘It was a perfectly justified accusation on your part.’ He grimaced. ‘I behaved badly.’
‘You made up for it by being charming to Sam during the interval,’ she said.
Drakon came to a halt as he looked down at her quizzically. ‘Are you always so ready to forgive?’
She shrugged. ‘Life’s really too short to do anything else, don’t you think?’
His mouth thinned. ‘Some people are beyond forgiveness.’
‘Well…yes.’ Gemini didn’t need to ask which person he was referring to! ‘But in those circumstances surely the best thing to do is simply cut them out of your life rather than reduce yourself to their level?’
Drakon looked down at her in open admiration. ‘Enjoyable as the opera undoubtedly was, you are what I have found amazing this evening, Gemini.’
She gave him a startled look. ‘I am?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Despite the Neanderthal remark?’ she teased.
He laughed softly. ‘In spite of it.’
‘Oh…’
Drakon tilted his head as he looked down at her quizzically for several long seconds. ‘You really have no idea how unusual a woman you are, do you?’ he finally said warmly.
Gemini wasn’t quite sure what to make of Drakon in his current mood. His cynicism she had learnt to cope with. His arrogance, too. Even his mockery was easily deflected if she didn’t allow it to get to her. What Gemini had no idea how to deal with was this admiring, almost gentle Drakon…
‘I’m just me, Drakon,’ she protested.
‘Exactly.’
Gemini frowned up at him in the lamplight, her heart starting to beat loudly in her chest. She saw the warmth in his obsidian eyes as he gazed steadily back at her, a nerve pulsing in his jaw, those chiselled lips softened and slightly parted.
Oh, good Lord!
Physically innocent she might be, but she would have to be a moron not to recognise the look in his eyes for the desire that it was. Ditto the parted invitation of his lips. It was a desire the nerve pulsing in his jaw would seem to indicate he was holding firmly under his control. Unless Gemini were to indicate she wished it otherwise.
The question was, did she want to do that?
When she had come to Verona six years ago it had been as a beloved daughter being given a special birthday treat by her parents. Being here now with Drakon was absolutely nothing like that.
Their slight disagreement apart, she had been absolutely, totally aware of him all evening—despite the magical opera. That awareness had been humming beneath the surface of her skin all evening, with a tingling that made her sensitive nipples ache and heat pool between her thighs. It was an ache that she knew Drakon was more than capable of satisfying.
She looked up at him in the golden glow of the lamplight. The strong angles of his face were thrown into shadows, his dark eyes were looking down at her, and she knew that she wanted him to make love with her more than she had ever wanted anything in her life before.
She moistened her lips before speaking, her cheeks feeling warm as she saw the hungry way his gaze followed the tip of her tongue as it swept over that pouting softness. ‘So you booked separate rooms for us at the hotel, did you?’ she asked.
It was only as Drakon breathed in deeply that he realised he had not been breathing at all for the last minute or so. ‘I requested a suite with two bedrooms.’
Gemini chuckled. ‘Hedging your bets, Drakon?’
Had he been? Had he hoped that the evening would be so successful, so enjoyable, that he and Gemini would spend the night together?
Certainly not consciously. ‘I doubt that there will be a four-poster bed in either of them,’ he told her apologetically.
‘Probably not, no,’ she agreed quietly.
‘Or rose petals to perfume the room,’ he added gruffly.
‘I’m sure I won’t notice with the light off,’ Gemini murmured.
The fact that Drakon had bothered to remember her romantic fantasies was enough for now. More than enough to sustain her tingling awareness as they walked the short distance to an exclusive hotel.
That awareness had been elevated to an almost overwhelming swell of anticipation by the time they had booked in and Drakon had used a keycard to allow them to enter the sitting room of a suite on the top floor.
‘No.’ Gemini moved to stop his hand as he would have reached out and turned on the light. The moonlight streaming into the room through the two floor-to-ceiling windows provided the necessary illumination as she stepped into his arms. ‘Make love to me, Drakon,’ she whispered, her face lifting invitingly to his as her arms moved about his waist.
Drakon’s hands moved up to cradle each side of her face as he gazed down at her hungrily. The softness of her creamy cheeks felt like velvet against his palms as he committed the perfection of her face to memory, to be taken out at some later date to please or torment him.
‘You are so overwhelmingly beautiful, Gemini, inside as well as out,’ he muttered, and the rasp of their breath was the only sound in the room as his head lowered and his lips at last laid claim to hers.
Their passion, their need for each other, was like a dam bursting, and the kiss that had started so gently quickly became something else as they took eagerly, hungrily, from each other, and gave back just as much in return. Lips devoured, teeth gently bit, and tongues duelled in devouring demand.
Drakon groaned as he felt himself spiralling quickly out of control. Gemini’s fingers became entangled in the hair at his nape as they continued to kiss hungrily. His skin felt hot and feverish, his shaft a hard and pulsing ache as he pressed into the heated softness between her thighs, wanting—oh, God, how he wanted her. It was suddenly all too much…
‘Drakon?’ Gemini’s eyes were huge bewildered pools of dark green as he suddenly wrenched his mouth away from hers and put her firmly away from him.
He breathed in raggedly before looking down at her from between lowered lids. ‘As I pointed out earlier, we do not have the four-poster bed or the perfume of rose petals that you said were required for your seduction,’ he reminded her distantly.
‘My seduction?’ she repeated painfully.
Drakon’s mouth compressed but he didn’t reply.
She clasped shaking hands in an attempt to steady them. ‘I don’t understand…’ Minutes ago, seconds ago, he had seemed on the point of devouring her—and goodness knew she had been more than willing. The passion between them had been so intense they had seemed in danger of going up in flames.
He dropped his gaze. ‘For us to go to bed together now would be wrong on levels I cannot begin to explain.’
‘For whom?’ Gemini prompted shrewdly. ‘Is it that you don’t want the so-called responsibility of taking my innocence? That you maybe even think, in my naivety, I might imagine myself to be in love with you?’ she pressed.
Drakon stood unmoving as her words rained down like daggers entering his flesh. ‘It is a possibility, is it not?’
‘No!’ she gave a shocked gasp. ‘No, Drakon, it isn’t a possibility!’ She stepped back, her gaze anguished as the heat of tears drenched those sea-green depths. ‘You—’ She broke off as the sound of his mobile phone intruded into the tension. ‘You should answer that. It might be one of the women from the opera earlier, wanting to meet up with you. An experienced woman!’ she spat.
‘Possibly,’ he said coolly.
Gemini gave him one last fulminating glare before turning on her heel and hurrying across the room to enter one of the two bedrooms and slam the door behind her.
Leaving Drakon alone in the moonlight as each and every one of those daggers pierced deeply into a part of him he had believed until tonight to be invincible…
CHAPTER TWELVE
GEMINI felt emotionally exhausted by the time the chauffeur-driven limousine drew to a halt beside the pavement outside her shop at twelve o’clock the following day. She hadn’t slept at all the pre
vious night, listening as Drakon talked briefly on the telephone before she heard the sound of the other bedroom door softly closing—evidence that he obviously wasn’t taking her up on her suggestion that he go out again.
Neither of them had had any appetite for the breakfast Drakon had ordered to be delivered to their suite at eight o’clock this morning, and the drive to the airport and their flight back to England had been made in tense silence.
She could have sat down and cried for the awful way their evening together in Verona had ended. Apart from that brief awkwardness with Sam it had been such a magical time: the delicious dinner on the plane, the beautiful sights and smells of Verona, the pageantry of the opera, the romantic walk along the cobbled streets to their hotel with the warmth of Drakon’s arm draped possessively about her waist, the wild heat of passion once they were finally alone together in their suite.
And then the icy coldness of Drakon’s rejection.
Even now, after hours of thinking of virtually nothing else, Gemini didn’t understand it, let alone accept it. He had known from the outset that she’d had no other lovers, and it certainly hadn’t seemed to bother him during the walk back to the hotel, or when they had kissed so passionately.
She turned to look at him now as he sat so distant and unmoving beside her in the back of the limousine. ‘Drakon—’
‘We should go up to your apartment now,’ he cut in as the chauffeur got out of the car and opened Gemini’s door for her.
‘We?’ Gemini had assumed from his aloofness the past twelve hours that once they were back in England Drakon would be anxious to get rid of the responsibility of her before returning to New York.
‘Max has arrived.’ He nodded to where the black Range Rover had just parked in front of the limousine. His grim-faced Head of Security was getting out from behind the wheel. ‘The two of us need to talk to you privately,’ Drakon added before opening the door beside him and striding over to greet the older man.
Gemini got slowly out of the car, vaguely smiling her thanks at the chauffeur at the same time trying, and failing, to hear what Drakon and Max were saying to each other. Their voices too soft for her to make out any of their conversation, although their expressions didn’t look reassuring.
She frowned as the men walked briskly back to join her. ‘Drakon, what—?’
‘We will go inside, where we cannot be overheard.’ He took a firm grasp of her arm.
Considering it was lunchtime on a Sunday—a time when most people were either at home or in the local pub eating lunch—the area was virtually deserted, with only two uninterested joggers passing by on the other side of the road—which was probably as well, when Gemini and Drakon were both so obviously wearing the clothes they had worn the evening before.
‘Aren’t you being a bit cloak-and-dagger?’ she protested.
‘Privacy would be best.’ Max was the one to answer her gruffly.
‘I don’t think so.’ Gemini stubbornly dug her heels in as she glared at first one man and then the other. ‘In fact I’m not going anywhere until one of you tells me what’s going on.’
A grudging amusement entered Max’s steely blue eyes before he turned to raise questioning brows at his employer.
Drakon’s jaw clenched. ‘You are the most stubborn woman!’ He sighed impatiently. ‘Bartholomew House was broken into last night,’ he revealed economically.
Gemini recoiled slightly in shock. ‘I—is Angela all right?’ she gasped breathlessly.
Drakon’s impatience turned to incredulity at her concern for a woman who had been nothing but vicious and cruel towards her. A woman who had tried to do everything in her power, since Miles’s death, to make Gemini miserable in every way possible. A woman, in fact, who deserved no one’s sympathy—least of all Gemini’s.
‘Your stepmother was not at home at the time,’ Drakon assured her coolly.
‘Thank goodness!’ She looked relieved. ‘Was anything taken?’
‘That is what we need to talk to you about,’ he answered pointedly.
Gemini continued to look at him dazedly for several long seconds, a frown between her eyes. ‘I don’t understand…’ She shook her head. ‘How do you even know about the break-in if it only happened last night?’ she finally said slowly. ‘Let alone that Angela wasn’t at home at the time?’
He raised dark brows. ‘That is the reason that Max and I would prefer this conversation took place in private.’
Sea-green eyes widened as Gemini obviously took in the full import of what he had said. She glanced at the stoic Max and then back at Drakon. ‘Perhaps it might be better if we did go up to my apartment, after all.’
‘A canny lass; I knew there was a reason I liked you!’ Max nodded approval.
‘That’s a pity—because I’m still reserving judgement on you!’ Gemini threw back as she unlocked the door leading up to her apartment.
Max gave a throaty chuckle—the first that Drakon could remember hearing from him in the five years Max had worked for him. ‘Give it time, lass, maybe I’ll grow on you.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Gemini muttered as she led the way upstairs, still feeling slightly stunned about the break-in at Bartholomew House and the unspoken implications of Drakon’s knowledge of it. Let alone what Max’s presence here might indicate.
‘Okay!’ She threw her wrap and bag down on the coffee table in her sitting room before turning to face the two men. ‘One of you tell me exactly what’s going on. And I sincerely hope your explanation doesn’t include telling me that Max, for reasons as yet unknown, was the one who broke into Bartholomew House last night! Drakon?’ she prompted.
Max was now avoiding her gaze as he took a thick envelope from the breast pocket of his leather jacket and handed it to Drakon, before turning his back on the room to stare out of the window onto the street down below.
Drakon smiled ruefully as he recognised the light of challenge in Gemini’s eyes. ‘I have no intention of telling you that Max was anywhere near Bartholomew House last night.’
She eyed him reprovingly. ‘The wording of that statement isn’t exactly reassuring.’
‘It wasn’t intended to be,’ Drakon said dryly. ‘I believe you should look at this before you say anything else,’ he continued firmly as Gemini would have spoken, and reached into the envelope. He took out what looked to be a legal document of some kind before holding it out to her.
Gemini made no effort to take the document but eyed it as if it were a snake about to uncoil and sink its fangs into her. Her mouth had gone dry. ‘Tell me what it is first…’
Drakon drew in a sharp breath before answering her. ‘It was locked away in the safe at Bartholomew House, and it is the last will and testament of Miles Gifford Bartholomew, signed and witnessed by two members of his household staff two weeks before his death. In it he bequeaths an apartment in Paris and a villa in Spain, plus a yearly sum for the rest of her life, to his wife, Angela Gail Bartholomew, and Bartholomew House, plus the remainder of his estate, to his only daughter—namely Gemini Bartholomew.’
All the colour bleached from her cheeks, and a loud buzzing noise sounded in her head. The room began to dip and sway, before—thankfully—complete darkness descended.
Gemini didn’t believe she had ever fainted in her life before, but as she roused herself groggily, and found herself lying on the sofa in her sitting room, Drakon crouched beside her, a concerned expression on his face, she knew that was exactly what had happened.
Because Drakon had told her of the existence of a more recent will than the one which had previously been presented by her father’s lawyers…
Gemini blinked up at him. ‘Is it really true? There was a newer will all the time?’ She pushed the hair back from her face as he helped her to sit up.
‘There was a newer will,’ Drakon confirmed as he straightened, his hands clasped tightly behind his back in an effort to contain the rage he felt towards Angela Bartholomew. A rage which had been steadily growing
since learning the truth from Max during the other man’s telephone call to him late the previous evening. ‘A legal will which, for obvious reasons, your stepmother decided it was in her best interests to repress,’ he added harshly.
Gemini looked up at him with tear-wet eyes. ‘Daddy kept his promise after all…’
Drakon’s hands tightened painfully. ‘Yes, he did.’
Those tears overflowed to fall softly down the paleness of her cheeks. ‘Bartholomew House is really mine?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s—I can’t tell you how—Oh!’ She raised startled sea-green eyes. ‘But that must also mean, if Angela is no longer the legal owner of Bartholomew House, that the contract Lyonedes Enterprises has with her to buy the house and land is no longer valid?’
Drakon’s smile was humourless. ‘No, it is not.’
Gemini caught her bottom lip between her teeth. ‘I’m so sorry, Drakon.’
‘You’re sorry?’ he exploded incredulously. ‘That woman attempted to deny you your true heritage, that which is legally and morally yours, taking great delight in doing so, and you are apologising to me? Unbelievable!’
‘Not just a canny lass but a generous-hearted one too,’ Max murmured admiringly from where he still stood beside the window.
‘A woman like no other,’ Drakon acknowledged huskily as he turned to look at the other man. A wealth of understanding passed between them in that single brief glance. ‘This is a time for rejoicing in your good fortune, Gemini.’ Drakon turned back to her. ‘Not a time for you to concern yourself with any legal ramifications for Lyonedes Enterprises.’
A frown appeared on the creaminess of her brow. ‘But how could you possibly have known where the will was?’
‘You can thank Max for that,’ Drakon said. ‘I merely voiced my suspicions. He was the one who made discreet enquiries of some of your father’s present and ex-employees.’
‘I struck gold with a young woman—Jackie—who was your father’s personal assistant and stayed on for several months to assist your stepmother after he died,’ Max said dourly. ‘She doesn’t work for Mrs Bartholomew any longer, but once I explained who I was, and the reason for my interest in the possibility of a newer will, she was only too happy to supply the combination number to the safe in your father’s study. I gather she has her own reasons for disliking your stepmother.’
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