by Penny Jordan
‘I’m afraid in this instance you should perhaps blame my English father rather than my Greek mother,’ he told her icily. ‘The English public school he insisted I was sent to believed in what is now considered to be an outdated code of good manners for its pupils.’ He gave her a thin, unfriendly look. ‘One word of warning to you. My grandfather is inclined to be old-fashioned about such things. He will not understand your modern insistence on politically correct behaviour, and whilst you are on the island...’
‘I have to do as you tell me,’ Saskia finished bitterly for him.
If this was a taste of what the next few weeks were going to be like she didn’t know how she was going to survive them. Still, at least there would be one benefit of their obvious hostility to one another. No one who would be observing them together would be surprised when they decided to end their ‘engagement’.
‘Our flight leaves Heathrow at nine tomorrow morning, so we will need to leave the apartment early,’ Andreas informed Saskia once they were in the car.
‘The apartment?’ Saskia questioned him warily immediately.
‘Yes,’ Andreas confirmed. ‘I have an apartment in London. We shall be staying there tonight. This afternoon we shall spend shopping.’
‘Shopping...?’ Saskia began to interrupt, but Andreas overruled her.
‘Yes, shopping,’ he told her cautiously. ‘You will need an engagement ring, and...’ He paused and gave her a brief skimming look of assessment and dismissal that made her itch to demand that he stop the car immediately. Oh, how she would love to be able to tell him that she had changed her mind...that there was no way she was going to give in to his blackmail. But she knew there was no way she could.
‘You will need more suitable clothes.’
‘If you mean holiday clothes,’ Saskia began, ‘they are in my case, and...’
‘No, I do not mean “holiday” clothes.’ Andreas stopped her grimly. ‘I am an independently wealthy man, Saskia; you don’t need me to tell you that. Your department’s investigations prior to our takeover must have informed you to the nearest hundred thousand pounds what my asset value is. My grandfather is a millionaire many times over, and my mother and my sisters are used to buying their clothes from the world’s top designers, even though none of them are what could be considered to be fashion victims or shopaholics. Naturally, as my fiancée...’
Without allowing him to finish Saskia took a deep, angry breath and told him dangerously, ‘If you think that I am going to let you buy my clothes...’
With only the briefest of pauses Andreas took control of the situation from her by asking smoothly, ‘Why not? After all, you were prepared to let me buy your body. Me or indeed any other man who was prepared to pay for it.’
‘No! That’s not true,’ Saskia denied with a shocked gasp.
‘Very good,’ Andreas mocked her. ‘But you can save the special effects for my family. I know exactly what you are—remember. Think of these clothes as a perk of your job.’ He gave her a thin, unkind smile. ‘However, having said that, I have to add that I shall want to vet whatever you wish to purchase. The image I want you to convey to my family as my fiancée is one of elegance and good taste.’
‘What are you trying to suggest?’ Saskia hissed furiously at him. ‘That left to my own devices I might choose something more suited to a...?’ She stopped, unable to bring herself to voice the words burning a painful brand in her thoughts.
To her bemusement, instead of saying them for her Andreas said coolly, ‘You are obviously not used to buying expensive clothes and there is no way I want you indulging in some kind of idiotic unnecessary economy which would negate the whole purpose of the exercise. I don’t want you buying clothes more suitable for a young woman on a modest salary than the fiancée of an extremely wealthy man,’ he informed her bluntly, in case she had not understood him the first time.
For once Saskia could think of nothing to say, but inside she was a bundle of fury and shame. There was no way she could stop Andreas from carrying out his plans, she knew that, but she fully intended to keep a mental record of everything he spent so that ultimately she could repay him, even if doing so totally depleted the small nest egg she had been carefully saving.
‘No more objections?’ Andreas enquired smoothly. ‘Good, because I promise you, Saskia, I mean to have my way—even if that entails dressing you and undressing you myself to get it. Make no mistake, when we arrive on Aphrodite you will be arriving as my fiancée.’
As he drove down the slipway onto the motorway and the powerful car picked up speed Saskia decided diplomatically that quarrelling with him whilst he was driving at such a speed would be very foolish indeed. It was over half an hour later before she recognised that, in her anxiety to reject Andreas’s claimed right to decide what she should wear, she had neglected to deal with the more important issue of her discomfort at the idea of spending the night with him.
But what did she really have to fear? Certainly not any sexual advances from Andreas. He had, after all, made it shamingly plain what he thought of her sexual morals.
She had far too much pride to admit to him that she felt daunted and apprehensive at the thought of sharing the intimacy of an apartment with him. On the island it would be different. There they would be with his family and the staff who ran the large villa complex he said his grandfather had had built on it.
No, she would be wise to grit her teeth and say nothing rather than risk exposing herself to his disbelief and mocking contempt by expressing her anxieties.
* * *
AS SHE WAITED for the chauffeur to load her luggage into the boot of her hired limousine Athena tapped one slender expensively shod foot impatiently.
The moment she had heard the news that Andreas was engaged and about to bring his fiancée to Aphrodite on an official visit to meet his family she had sprung into action. Fortunately an engagement was not a marriage, and she certainly intended to make sure that this engagement never made it as far as a wedding.
She knew why Andreas had done it, of course. He was, after all, Greek to the very marrow of his bones—even if he chose to insist on everyone acknowledging his British blood—and like any Greek man, indeed any man he had an inborn need to be the one in control.
His claim to be in love with this other woman was simply his way of showing that control, rejecting the marriage to her which was so very dear to his grandfather’s heart and to her own.
As the limousine sped away from the kerb she leaned forward and gave the driver the address of a prestigious apartment block overlooking the river. She herself did not maintain a home in London; she preferred New York’s social life and the Paris shops.
Andreas might think he had outmanoeuvred her by announcing his engagement to this undoubtedly cold and sexless English fiancée. Well, she would soon bring an end to that, and make sure that he knew where his real interests lay. After all, how could he possibly resist her? She had everything he could want, and he certainly had everything she wanted.
It was a pity he had managed to prevent her from outbidding him for this latest acquisition. Ownership of the hotels themselves meant nothing to her per se, but it would have been an excellent bait to dangle in front of him since he obviously set a great deal of store by them. Why, she could not understand. But then in many ways there were a considerable number of things about Andreas that she did not understand. It was one of the things that made him so desirable to her. Athena had always coveted that which seemed to be out of reach.
The first time she had realised she wanted Andreas he had been fifteen and she had been on the verge of marrying her husband. She smiled wantonly to herself, licking her lips. At fifteen Andreas, although a boy, had been as tall as a man and as broad, with a superbly fit young body, and so indescribably good-looking that the sight of him had made her melt with lust.
She had d
one her best to seduce him but he had managed to resist her and then, within a month of deciding that she wanted him, she had been married.
At twenty-two she had not been a young bride by Greek standards, and she had been carefully stalking her husband-to-be for some time. Older than her by a decade, and immensely wealthy, he had played a cat and mouse game with her for well over a year before he had finally capitulated. There had certainly been no way she was going to give up the marriage she had worked so hard for for the passion she felt for Andreas, a mere boy.
But then fate had stepped in. Her husband had died unexpectedly and she had been left a widow. A very rich widow...a very rich and sexually hungry widow. And Andreas was now a man—and what a man!
The only thing that was keeping them apart was Andreas’s pride. It had to be. What other reason could he possibly have for resisting her advances?
As the limousine pulled up at the address she had given the driver Athena examined her reflection in the neat mirrors fitted into the Rolls’s interior. That discreet nip and tuck she had had last year had been well worth the prince’s ransom she had paid the American plastic surgeon. She could quite easily pass for a woman in her early thirties now.
Her jet-black hair had been cut and styled by one of the world’s top hairdressers, her skin glowed from the expensive creams lavished on it, her make-up was immaculate and emphasised the slanting darkness of her eyes, her toe and fingernails gleamed richly with dark red polish.
A smile of satisfaction curved her mouth. No, there was no way Andreas’s dreary little fiancée—an office girl, someone he had supposedly fallen in love with during the negotiations to buy out the hotel chain—could compete with her. Athena’s eyes hardened. This girl, whoever she was, would soon learn what a mistake she had made in trying to lay claim on the man Athena wanted. What a very, very big mistake!
As she left the limousine the perfume she had especially blended for her in Paris moved with her, a heavy, musky cloud of sexuality.
Her teenage daughters loathed it, and were constantly begging her to change it, but she had no intention of doing so. It was her signature, the essence of herself as a woman. Andreas’s English fiancée no doubt wore something dull and insipid such as lavender water!
* * *
‘I’LL LEAVE THE CAR here,’ Andreas told Saskia as he swung the Mercedes into a multi-storey car park right in the centre of the city. Saskia’s eyes widened as she saw the tariff pinned up by the barrier. She would never have dreamed of paying so much to park a car, but the rich, as they said, were different.
Just how different she came to realise during the course of the afternoon, as Andreas guided her into a series of shops the like of which Saskia had never imagined existed. And in each one the very aura of his presence seemed to draw from the sales assistants the kind of reverential reaction that made Saskia tighten her lips. She could see the female admiration and speculation in their eyes as a series of outfits was produced for his inspection. For his inspection—not hers, Saskia recognised and her sense of helpless frustration and resentment grew with each shop they visited.
‘I’m not a doll or a child,’ she exploded outside one of them, when she had flatly refused to even try on the cream trouser suit the salesgirl had gushingly declared would be perfect for her.
‘No? Well, you’re certainly giving a wonderful imitation of behaving like one,’ Andreas responded grimly. ‘That suit was—’
‘That suit was over one thousand pounds,’ Saskia interrupted him grittily. ‘There’s no way I would ever pay that kind of money for an outfit...not even my wedding dress!’
When Andreas started to laugh she glared furiously at him, demanding, ‘What’s so funny?’
‘You are,’ he told her uncompromisingly. ‘My dear Saskia, have you really any idea of the kind of wedding dress you would get for under a thousand pounds?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Saskia admitted. ‘But I do know that I’d never feel comfortable wearing clothes the cost of which would feed a small country, and neither is an expensive wedding dress any guarantee of a good marriage.’
‘Oh, spare me the right-on lectures,’ Andreas broke in in exasperation. ‘Have you ever thought of how many people would be without jobs if everyone went around wearing sackcloth and ashes, as you obviously would have them do?’
‘That’s not fair,’ Saskia defended herself. She was, after all, feminine enough to like good clothes and to want to look her best, and in that trouser suit she would undeniably have looked good, she admitted inwardly. But she was acutely conscious of the fact that every penny Andreas spent on her she would have to repay.
‘I don’t know why you’re insisting on doing this,’ she told Andreas rebelliously. ‘I don’t need any clothes; I’ve already told you that. And there’s certainly no need for you to throw your money around to impress me.’
‘You or anyone else,’ Andreas cut in sharply, dark bands of colour burning across his cheekbones in a visual warning to her that she had angered him.
‘I am a businessman, Saskia. Throwing money around for any reason is not something I do, least of all in an attempt to impress a woman who could easily be bought for less than half the price of that trouser suit. Oh, no, you don’t,’ he cautioned her softly, reaching out to catch hold of the hand she had automatically lifted.
He was holding her wrist in such a tight grip that Saskia could actually see her fingers going white, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to tell him that he was hurting her. It also wouldn’t allow her to acknowledge that she had momentarily let her feelings get out of control, and it was only when she suddenly started to sway, white-faced with pain and shock, that Andreas realised what was happening. He released her wrist with a muffled curse and then started to chafe life back into her hand.
‘Why didn’t you tell me I was hurting you so much?’ he grated. ‘You have bones as fragile as a bird’s.’
Even now, with his dark head bent over her tingling hand whilst he massaged it expertly to bring the blood stinging back into her veins, Saskia couldn’t allow herself to weaken and claim his compassion.
‘I didn’t want to spoil your fun,’ she told him sharply. ‘You were obviously enjoying hurting me.’
She tensed when she heard the oath he gave as he released her completely, and tensed again at the sternness in his voice, one look of grim determination in his eyes as he said, ‘This has gone far enough. You are behaving like a child. First a harlot and now a child. There is only one role I want to see you play from now on, Saskia, and that is the one we have already agreed upon. I’ll warn you now. If you do or say anything to make my family suspect that ours is not a true love match I shall make you very sorry for it. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, I understand you,’ Saskia agreed woodenly.
‘I mean what I say,’ Andreas warned her. ‘And it won’t just be the Demetrios chain you won’t be able to work for. If you flout me, Saskia, I’ll see to it that you will never be able to work anywhere again. An accountant who can’t be trusted and who has been dismissed on suspicion of stealing is not one that anyone will want to employ.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Saskia whispered, white-faced, but she knew all too well that he could.
She hated him now...really hated him, and when in the next shop he marched her into she saw the salesgirl’s eyes widening in breathless sexual interest, she reflected mentally that the other girl was welcome to him...more than welcome!
* * *
IT WAS LATE IN THE afternoon before Andreas finally decided that Saskia had a wardrobe suitable for his fiancée.
At their last port of call he had called upon the services of the store’s personal shopper who, with relentless efficiency, had provided Saskia with the kind of clothes that she had previously only ever seen in glossy magazines.
She had tried to reject everything the
shopper had produced, but on each occasion apart from one Andreas had overruled her. The only time they had been in accord had been when the shopper had brought out a bikini which she had announced was perfect for Saskia’s colouring and destination. The minuteness of the triangles which were supposed to cover her modesty had made Saskia’s eyes widen in disbelief—and they had widened even more when she had discreetly managed to study the price tag.
‘I couldn’t possibly swim in that,’ she had blurt-ed out.
‘Swim in it?’ The other woman had looked stunned. ‘Good heavens, no, of course not. This isn’t for swimming in. And, look, this is the wrap that goes with it. Isn’t it divine?’ she had purred, producing a length of silky fragile fabric embellished with sequins.
As she’d seen the four-figure price on the wrap Saskia had thought she might actually faint with disbelief, but to her relief and surprise Andreas had also shaken his head.
‘That is not the kind of outfit I would wish my fiancée to wear,’ he had told the shopper bluntly, adding, just in case she had not fully understood him, ‘Saskia’s body is eye-catching enough without her needing to embellish it with an outfit more suitable for a call girl.’
The shopper diplomatically had not pressed the issue, but instead had gone away, returning with several swimsuits.
Saskia had picked the cheapest of them, unwillingly allowing Andreas to add a matching wrap.
Whilst he’d been settling the bill and making arrangements for everything to be delivered to his riverside apartment Saskia had drunk the coffee the personal shopper had organised for her.
Perhaps it was because she hadn’t really eaten anything all day that she was feeling so lightheaded and anxious, she decided. It couldn’t surely be because she and Andreas were now going to go to his apartment, where they would be alone—could it?
‘There’s an excellent restaurant close to the apartment block,’ Andreas informed Saskia, once they were in the car and he was driving her towards the dockland area where his apartment was situated. ‘I’ll arrange to have a meal sent in and...’