by Lynne Graham
Not having noticed the other woman, Dio swung back an imperious head. ‘Ellie!’ he gritted impatiently.
Her colour rising as every watching eye swivelled to examine her with keen interest, Ellie quickened her step. Just as Dio clamped a large imprisoning hand over hers, the sophisticated brunette strolled forward. She looked to be in her late twenties. She had short, glossy black hair, exotic dark eyes and creamy skin. Her designer dress and her jewellery were simply breathtaking.
‘Helena…’ Dio drawled, his long fingers suddenly closing so tightly over Ellie’s smaller hand that she almost yelped with discomfort.
Helena planted a cool kiss on his cheek and then addressed him in Greek. She ignored Ellie. But Ellie was grateful to be ignored because she was embarrassed by Dio’s stubborn determination to keep her by his side. Still conversing with Helena, whom Ellie now assumed to be a close relative, Dio walked them both into a vast reception room.
Other people began to arrive. Helena took up position like a seasoned hostess. Dio’s grip on Ellie’s fingers had mercifully loosened, and she tried to pull away, hoping to retire to a dark corner. But not only did Dio retain his hold on her, he also swept her forward and introduced her, although nobody got the chance to engage her in any actual conversation. Many curious eyes lingered on her, but Dio kept both of them on the move. He exchanged a word here, a sentence there, his bleak, brooding tension forestalling any more intimate dialogue.
‘Cristos…I hate this!’ he bit out rawly under his breath at one stage.
Some minutes later, an exuberant older man grasped him in a bear hug, forcing him to release Ellie. Ellie backed away and then walked out onto the balcony that appeared to stretch the entire length of the house. She breathed in deep in the hot still air. The view out over the bay was really incredible. An endless blue sky arched over the lush, forested pine slopes sprinkled with wild flowers and the majestic rock formations that jutted out into the sparkling turquoise sea far below. It was so beautiful it almost hurt.
She stood there for a long time before she turned away again, becoming conscious of how very tired she still was. A couple of catnaps hadn’t made up for the stress of a long trip and the loss of a decent night’s sleep.
As she glanced back into the crowded room, she immediately noticed Dio. He was so tall he couldn’t be missed. He had a dark frown on his starkly handsome features as he glanced restively around himself, only paying part attention to what was being said to him. Then his keen gaze lit like a falling star on Ellie, where she stood outside in the sun, her silver hair gleaming like precious metal. The marked strain on his lean, strong face instantly eased.
Across the distance that separated them, Ellie collided with glittering black eyes. Her heart gave a sudden violent lurch and her mouth ran dry. She watched Dio plough through the crush surrounding him. She could focus on nothing but him, and was as blind as he was to the buzz of speculation his abrupt departure had created.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he breathed in a driven undertone.
But a couple of feet from her Dio ground to an equally sudden halt, an almost bemused frown pleating his winged ebony brows. Emanating megawatt tension in abundance again, he studied Ellie with ferociously intent black eyes that questioned even before he demanded, ‘Why do I want to be with you right now?’
As tense now as he, Ellie jerked a slight shoulder in an awkward movement. ‘Keeping tabs on me to ensure I don’t get near a phone has b-become a real bad habit?’ she stammered in a strained and breathless rush.
At that moment, Helena Teriakos strolled unhurriedly out to join them. Beneath her coolly enquiring scrutiny, Ellie found herself reddening with fierce discomfiture, although she could not have explained why.
‘Miss Morgan looks quite exhausted, Dio,’ the other woman commented. ‘I believe she might appreciate the opportunity to retire to her room.’
‘Yes…yes, I would,’ Ellie agreed tautly.
The beautiful brunette awarded her a faint but dismissive smile of approval. His strong jawline clenching, Dio summoned a maid with an imperious snap of his fingers, his habit of command so ingrained in that gesture it caught Ellie’s attention and made her look away.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he informed Ellie flatly, and strode back indoors.
Why do I feel like I’m abandoning him? Ellie asked herself in genuine bewilderment as she followed the maid. Where had this ridiculous sense of connection come from? She barely knew Dio Alexiakis. She didn’t even like the guy, did she? What on earth was the matter with her?
Jet lag, exhaustion, she told herself, but she knew it was more. Helpless sympathy had flared when Dio had admitted that he’d been at odds with his father before his death. She understood that he didn’t feel entitled to play the grieving role of a loving son for the benefit of an audience. Yet it was patently obvious to her that he had been a loving son. But right now, Dio was so tormented by his conscience he couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
The maid led her into a lift off the huge entrance hall. They travelled down and then traversed a corridor which took them straight back out into the open air again. Mystified, but intrigued, Ellie followed the girl down a short sloping path to a low building sited right on the edge of an endless dreamy stretch of golden sand.
The interior was wonderfully cool. It was some sort of self-contained guest suite, Ellie assumed, admiring the spacious lounge and adjoining dining area. The tall windows had elegant shutters to keep out the sun; inviting sofas adorned the marble floor. There was no kitchen, just a concealed fridge the size of a walk-in larder, packed with snacks and soft drinks. Two en suite bedrooms completed the accommodation. Her assorted carrier bags already sat in a rather pathetic huddle on one of the beds.
With alacrity, Ellie took the opportunity to strip off every stitch she wore and head straight for the shower. Smothering yawns, she washed, but she was conscious of the weirdest sense of dislocation. Dio drifted back into her mind, and his lean, dark, devastating image wedged there, refusing to be driven out again. She frowned in confusion.
Suddenly she remembered the way Dio had stridden towards her, and she shivered then, reluctant to examine her own response. ‘Why do I want to be with you right now?’ he had demanded, his incredulity unconcealed. Why, she should have asked herself, had she stood there waiting for him, strung out on such a high of anticipation she could hardly breathe?
That was not how Ellie acted around the opposite sex. In fact, Dio Alexiakis should already have sunk like a stone under the weight of her prejudices. Ellie thoroughly distrusted good-looking men, and was all too well aware that rich men saw women as mere trophies with which to embellish their all-important image. Her own father had been just such a man.
Only now, all of a sudden, Ellie was being forced to accept that even her most cherished convictions didn’t necessarily influence how she actually behaved. Dio had spellbinding physical magnetism, but that didn’t excuse her for acting like a silly little schoolgirl. In real life, Cinderella would have watched her prince waltz over the horizon and out of reach with a real princess, Ellie reflected cynically. No, she didn’t see Dio Alexiakis as an essentially superior being, but in terms of cold, hard cash and status, he was as far removed from someone like her as a royal prince.
She was attracted to him, that was all, she told herself uneasily. Unfortunately that didn’t explain why only self-conscious embarrassment in Helena Teriakos’s presence had driven her into walking away from Dio. For after the way Dio had looked at her, exhausted or not, she had the horrendous urge to stick to him like superglue.
Donning the sheer, strappy midnight-blue nightdress because it was cool, blanking out her unproductive thoughts, Ellie padded out to the lounge again. The maid reappeared with a tray. Ellie tucked into the delicious buffet-style offerings with appetite and then curled up on a sofa, too sleepy to keep her eyes open any longer.
The arrival of yet another meal was what finally awakened Ellie, but she wasn’t
hungry enough to eat anything more. The sun was beginning to go down and she couldn’t believe that she had slept away the entire afternoon. She would never manage to sleep again later, and what a terrible waste it had been not to at least walk along that beautiful beach outside!
She rummaged through the eclectic mix of CDs stored in the state-of-the-art entertainment centre. Smiling to herself, she put on flamenco music, remembering the endless dance and drama classes which her mother had insisted she attend. Dancing was still her favourite method of working out. She performed a few exploratory movements, letting the rhythm flow until all her muscles had loosened up. Then, picking up on the faster tempo, she gave herself up to the passionate music.
Her breasts heaving with the rapidity of her breathing, the sheer strain clinging to her damp skin, Ellie came to a fluid halt as the CD moved to an end. She let her head slowly fall back, her slender spine arching into a perfect curve.
‘That was incredible…’ Dio Alexiakis murmured with ragged emphasis.
Ellie whirled breathlessly round on her toes, the faraway look in her eyes banished by dismay and disconcertion.
Shorn of his jacket and tie, both of which trailed carelessly from one clenched hand, Dio stood in the shadows near the entrance door. He was still as a bronze statue. Then he suddenly moved an expressive hand and spread long brown fingers, the extent of his appreciation of the performance he had witnessed unconcealed.
Brilliant, dark deep-set eyes sought hers. ‘Quite extraordinary,’ he told her with husky intensity. ‘So much fire, so much pathos, every single movement, every tiny gesture telling a story.’
As slow-burning colour swept up from her extended throat Ellie trembled, outraged that he had not immediately announced his presence. ‘You should’ve told me you were here…you had no right to watch me!’
‘I didn’t want to interrupt you…’ A shimmer of gold as bright as a flame glimmered in Dio’s semi-screened gaze as it lingered on her ripe pink mouth.
Her lips parted, an alien ache stirring low in her belly as the silence stretched.
‘That’s not an excuse…’ she protested unevenly, her slight frame tautening in instinctive reaction to the growing tension in the atmosphere.
Dio Alexiakis threw his darkly handsome head back and surveyed her. ‘Cristos…is there a man alive who would have interrupted you?’ he demanded with roughened urgency.
Ellie was so still and so tense she could feel every beat of her heart—even, she was dimly convinced, the very pulse of her blood through her veins. She collided with Dio’s shimmering gaze and she felt intoxicated. Dizzy, disorientated, no longer able to get her brain to send a message to her tongue. Indeed, it was suddenly such a challenge to keep a grip on a single coherent thought that she simply stared at him in bewilderment. Her body was already responding far in advance of her brain, her breasts swelling heavily, tautened peaks pitching into almost painful prominence.
A feverish flush on his sculpted cheekbones, Dio let his stunning eyes roam hungrily over her beautiful face, and then at an incredibly slow pace over her slim figure. The fabric of the nightdress clung like a second skin to her surprisingly lush shape, moulding her straining nipples, the shapely curve of her hips and the slender line of thigh. The high-voltage charge of his powerful sexuality entrapped her, filling her with excitement and leaving her utterly without defence.
‘Watching you dance was the most erotic experience I have ever had outside the bedroom door,’ Dio confessed with driven urgency. ‘I have never known such an overpowering need to possess a woman. And right now I’m just revelling like a crazy teenager in the pleasure of feeling something this intense!’
Ellie quivered, shocked rigid by that bold speech and sufficiently jarred to begin reasoning again. A crazy teenager? Him? What sort of a line was that? Involuntarily, she glanced down at herself and froze. Belatedly appreciating how very little she was wearing, she was quite unable to comprehend how the need to cover herself up had not been her first thought when she’d seen him!
In a stumbling surge, shorn of her usual grace, her face hot as hellfire, Ellie snatched up a throw from the nearest sofa and hauled it round herself like a screening blanket. No blooming wonder he was coming on to her! Men were not very discriminating when a woman put on a provocative display. In fact it was her belief that most men lived on the constant edge of succumbing to illicit temptation.
Dio released a soft, ruefully amused laugh. His strong features were no longer hard with tension as he scanned Ellie standing there, green eyes huge, gripping the colourful throw tightly around herself. ‘Half-child, half-woman. What a confusing combination you are!’
‘Stop talking like that,’ Ellie urged him uncomfortably, evading his scrutiny. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear what you said. I know you can’t help being like that, so I’m not taking offence—’
‘Perhaps this is not the moment to tell you that you have supplied the only glimmer of light in an exceedingly dark day,’ Dio breathed grittily, switching mood at volatile speed as he swung with restive fluidity away from her.
‘Because I’m a stranger…don’t you realise that?’ Ellie prompted in a voice that shook with sudden strain. She was touched against her own volition by that roughened sincerity, but eager to tell him why she believed he was acting like somebody temporarily bereft of all sanity. ‘I have no expectations of you, no knowledge of your life. I don’t ask anything of you. I make no judgements.’
‘On the contrary, you never stop making arbitrary judgements,’ Dio contradicted grimly.
‘I’m going for a walk on the beach.’ Shaken by the warring emotional storm beginning to make its presence felt inside her, Ellie wrenched open the door and hurriedly walked outside.
Moonlight shimmered on the sea as the surf whispered onto the shore. It was a clear night, and the air was warm and still. She trudged barefoot through the soft silky sand, fighting the turmoil he had unleashed—because she understood all too well what Dio Alexiakis was going through.
And the way Dio looked at her might scare the hell out of her on one level, but on another it electrified her. Even without him in front of her she still felt drunk. It was as if some giant, crazy infatuation had mushroomed inside her and stolen all common sense. In the space of twenty-four hours Dio had turned her inside out, dissolving her defensive shell, luring out the soft, vulnerable feelings she usually kept under lock and key.
Now that she was being honest with herself, she knew that she couldn’t trust herself around him. She wanted Dio Alexiakis. She wanted him as she had never wanted any other man, and that alone was terrifying. But, far more dangerously, she ached to talk to him, listen to him, be with him…
Every alarm bell she possessed was clanging as loud as Big Ben. Dio couldn’t deal with his own emotions right now so he had focused on her instead. That was the cruel reality of his supposed desire, she told herself urgently. Standard male avoidance technique. Target the nearest reasonably attractive woman and try to blot out every painful feeling with the comforting familiarity of the physical. And right now Dio Alexiakis would dance on broken glass sooner than admit his desperate need to talk about his late father.
Reaching an impulsive decision, Ellie suddenly turned in her tracks and set off back in the direction she had come. Dio was staring out to sea, both hands dug in the pockets of his well-cut trousers, his pale shirt glimmering in the shadows of the overhanging roof that shaded the entrance to the beach house.
‘I bet nothing really bad has ever happened to you before,’ Ellie breathed.
He swung round. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Did you have a happy childhood?’
‘Yes!’ he gritted.
‘A close relationship with your father before you became estranged?’
‘Of course,’ Dio confirmed in a shuttered tone that would not have encouraged the wise or wary to continue.
‘So why can’t you just concent
rate on the good times you had?’ Ellie asked bluntly.
‘How could you understand how I feel now?’ he demanded with splintering aggression.
‘I understand. I just don’t think you appreciate how very lucky you are to have enjoyed so many years of love and support,’ Ellie admitted ruefully.
Dio turned to stare at her, speechless with disbelief, his whole stance shouting his blistering anger at such a contention.
‘I mean…I had a father who wouldn’t even let my mother put his name on my birth certificate, a father who once walked past me in the street and pretended not to know me,’ Ellie confided tightly. ‘And a mother who still worshipped the ground he walked on.’
Dragged with a vengeance from his own brooding self-absorption, Dio frowned at her with frank incredulity.
‘I had a major fight with my mother the day before she died,’ Ellie volunteered, her throat convulsing with the sickness of tears. ‘I was sixteen. I loved her so much and I was worried sick about her. I was trying to snap her out of her depression, persuade her that there was a life worth living without my worthless creep of a father…’
Dio had moved without her noticing. He closed two arms round her and pulled her slight, shaking body close. Dimly it occurred to her that nothing was working quite the way she had imagined it working. Then the warm, intimate scent of him drenched her senses and she breathed in deep, loving the heat and stability of his big, powerful frame.
Without the slightest hesitation, Dio was the one asking questions now. And Ellie told him about her mother. The only child of a prosperous widower, beautiful and sweet-natured Leigh Morgan had been cocooned from life’s tougher realities by a parent who had idolised her. At twenty-two she had fallen in love and got engaged to Ellie’s father, Tony. Then her own father had gone bankrupt and the happy days had come to an end.