by Various
‘I’m OK,’ she shivered out, fighting to slow the pounding pump of her heartbeat. She managed to let out a small shrill laugh. ‘I don’t know how that h-happened but I will not be offended if you believe I am drunk!’
An appreciative ripple of laughter ran around the terrace. After that, people began to relax and talk again, giving her a chance to try and take stock of what she must look like. Staring down she saw that her dress was ruined, her bare toes curling into the cold white tiling in between the solid plant of Nikos’s black shoes.
‘Let me take care of her, Nikos,’ their hostess said quietly. ‘She needs to get out of those wet clothes.’
It was only then that Mia became aware of the way he was still holding her and of the fierce tension gripping him. Lifting her face up to look at him she discovered that without her shoes she had a long way to look up. Tall, dark, heart-shakingly gorgeous, it was like looking at the gladiator she’d first seen on the driveway of Balfour Manor, the flashing eyes, the fiercely clenched angular jaw, the tightly flattened mouth.
Feeling her looking at him, his black eyelashes flickering, he tilted his dark head to look down at her with a simmering shot of barely suppressed fury that made her suck in an unsteady breath.
‘I’m—OK,’ she said again, feeling the strangest need to reassure him. ‘It was just such a sh-shock to hit the water like that.’
‘Were you pushed?’ Quiet though his voice sounded Mia still recognised the danger it attempted to suppress.
A careful glance to her left and to her right told her that some people were still standing around staring at them. The odd flashbulb reminded her that the whole incident had probably been caught on camera a hundred times over. Nina and Santino D’Lassio stood close by, and like Nikos they too were waiting to hear her response.
Moistening her trembling lips, she lowered her eyes while she tried to decide how to answer. Did she lie and say she did not know how it happened, or did she tell the truth and admit she suspected that Anton Brunel had pushed her into the pool?
‘Perhaps I slipped.’ She went for the least sensational option, then frowned in confusion as Nikos increased the tension in the grip he still held her in.
‘Come on, Mia.’ Nina D’Lassio sounded relieved though, as her arm came to rest across her shivering shoulders. ‘Let’s get you dry and find you something to wear…’
‘I’ll call for the helicopter,’ Nikos said.
‘No, you will not!’ Mia reacted hotly. ‘I have no wish for people to think that I am a wimp as well as Oscar’s guilty mistake! Madre di Dio,’ she breathed fiercely, unaware that their host and hostess were staring in surprise at her hot, hushed flare of temper. ‘I am wet and bedraggled and I saw the camera bulbs flashing. Tomorrow I will be plastered all over the papers looking like this, and you wish to turn me into a bigger joke by hauling me away?’
‘Santino will deal with the press, Mia,’ Nina assured her quickly. ‘Oh, do let go of her, Nikos, she is not going to fall apart if you do!’
The fact that both Mia and Nina had snapped at him seemed to wake Nikos up from wherever he had gone off to since he’d pulled her out of the pool. With a final flexing of impressive clenched muscles he dropped his arms away and took a step back, allowing Nina to lead her away.
‘My security people are checking film footage to find out what happened,’ Santino D’Lassio informed him quietly. ‘Fortunately we have a five-minute delay on what’s transmitted on television, so the incident will not go up on the screens.’
‘So you think she was pushed,’ Nikos said grimly.
‘You saw the way she went in there, Nikos,’ Santino responded. ‘She either jumped or she was pushed. Which do you think it was?’
Santino moved away, then began ushering his guests down to the marquee, leaving Nikos to mull over his sardonic question with his angry eyes shuttered while he replayed the moment in his head. The crush around the pool had been heavy but he’d picked Mia out of the crowd the moment he stepped outside. She’d been looking at him; he could see the way her anxious blue eyes lit up the moment they connected with his. He could feel them doing it, followed by the sudden jerk of her body and the look of horror and shock before she began to topple over into the pool.
What he could not see was who had been standing close enough to her to propel her into the damn pool because his full attention had been fixed exclusively on her.
‘So the cuckoo almost drowned and I missed it,’ a disappointed voice drawled beside him. ‘What a shame.’
In no mood for Diana’s Fischer’s twisted kind of humour Nikos intoned flatly, ‘You lead a sad life, Diana,’ then walked away, over to the almost deserted pool bar and ordered a drink while he awaited Mia’s return.
By the time the two women walked out of the house again he was the only person left on the terrace. As a foil for each other Mia’s darkness next to Nina’s flame was pretty much as good as it could get, Nikos observed. Then his full attention had welded on Mia’s transformation from wet and bedraggled to long and curvaceous, a seriously slinky siren which almost blew his edgy control to bits.
She was wearing a figure-hugging strapless black tube of a dress that was nothing short of mind-stopping. For a few seconds he was thrown back to the moment he’d first seen her on the Balfour Manor driveway.
Heat poured into his body. Desire so fierce he did not know how he kept it from showing on his face. Her wet hair had been slicked back and her makeup barely there except for a fresh touch of gloss to her soft full mouth. Her natural beauty just shone out of her, warm, dark—exotic—exquisite.
But as they came closer he saw she looked deathly pale and he knew somehow—instinct—that she was more shaken up by the incident than she was trying to let on. Then he noticed the way she was holding her right wrist in the palm of her other hand and his raging libido altered to raging anger that stung like a blister trying to burn a hole in his gut.
Mia was responding with a smile to something Nina was saying when she saw Nikos slowly straighten his leaning posture from the bar. Her footsteps faltered and her eyes just clung.
‘See, delivered back to you all in one piece,’ Nina said teasingly. ‘All you have to do, Nikos, is stop glaring like an angry bear and perhaps we can join the others and get something to eat!’
And he was glaring, Mia noticed—glaring directly at her! If he said one small word, offered up one single criticism about how she looked, she thought fiercely, then he would be the next one to land in the pool!
‘Why are you holding your wrist like that—?’ he launched at her.
Chapter Seven
SLANCING down, Mia was surprised to discover that she was indeed cupping her wrist in the palm of her other hand, ‘I—I think I hurt it as I fell into the water,’ she lied.
Nina let out a surprised gasp. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Too many other things to think about,’ Mia said ruefully. ‘And it does not hurt as much as I am obviously making it look!’
She dropped the wrist to her side to prove her claim. Nina did not look convinced and neither did Nikos. He was still glowering at her, the tension in his jaw enough to crush rocks in his teeth. Mia frowned at him, transmitting a message that had his lush black eyelashes veiling his anger and his lips pressing together over whatever he had been about to say.
‘I’m starving,’ Mia said brightly in an attempt to divert attention. In truth she knew she was going to struggle to eat a single thing, and her wrist was really throbbing where it hung limp fingered at her side.
The three of them walked together down the path and into the marquee. People clapped when they saw them arrive, making Mia blush as she offered up a shy smile.
A quick murmured thanks to her hostess and Nina was rushing off to join her husband. Nikos’s hand arriving against her lower back made her arch it slightly at the electric shock contact. If he noticed her reaction he said nothing, guiding her between a series of large round tables towards their all
otted table. And he maintained that disturbing contact with her back right up until he had seen her into her seat.
Tension zipped back and forth between them, though Mia did not quite follow why it did. Whatever the reason, it made her respond over-brightly to the curiosity and interest which flipped backwards and forwards across the table because people were eager to know what had happened to her. She made light of their questions while Nikos lounged in the chair beside her with a polite smile strapped to his lips and his dark eyes hidden beneath his lowered eyelids.
When she could not contain a wince as she picked up her wine glass he did not know how he stopped himself from reaching out and taking the glass from her. A curse rattled around inside him because he recognised that his self-control where she was concerned was on a hair trigger. He wanted to catch hold of her injured wrist so he could inspect the damage. He wanted to brush that stray lock of damp hair from her pale cheek. He remembered what she’d said about him always touching her and the stinging tension of grim acceptance to that charge held him trapped like a prisoner, because he was becoming more and more aware of just how much and how often he wanted to touch her.
Giving his restless fingers something to do he picked up his own glass and gulped down a large slug of the rich ruby wine. She was driving him to drink, he mused bleakly.
She was driving him to many places, he extended on that, not even hearing that someone had just spoken to him. It was Mia who brought his attention back to where it should be by lightly touching his jacket sleeve. A tight sting of awareness shot up his arm and, lifting his eyelids, he looked directly into her eyes. For a second—a finely split millisecond—he visualised leaning forward to lay claim to her mouth with a soft, hot kiss.
Her eyelashes trembled and she looked away from him. She knew what he had been thinking, and the tension inside him mushroomed while he forced himself to take note of the people sharing their table. Forced himself to join in.
She was playing this out a hell of a lot better than he was, he conceded as the infernal meal dragged on and on. She only picked at the dishes set in front of her. So did he. Eventually Santino stood to give a witty speech of thanks to everyone for attending, but Nikos found it difficult to raise a smile.
And he watched Mia dip her head a little, exposing the vulnerable length of her slender nape. Tension gripped him, sexual tension. When she lifted a hand to rub at her brow, he watched her fingers tremble, saw as she lowered the hand again that her pallor seemed ten times more pronounced.
And he’d had enough. The decision came to him that quickly. People were starting to stand and move around the room now, so he used the moment to rise to his feet.
Mia was startled when he cupped her elbow and drew her to her feet but she did not protest when he just turned with her and headed out of the marquee without saying a word to anyone. There was a charity auction to follow the banquet, then music and dancing and a cabaret show put on by attending celebrities, which was to be transmitted to the Lake Como party by satellite link.
He did not seem to give a damn. He ignored the clicking rush of camera shutters and the TV cameras recording their departure, his long loose stride tempered to suit her smaller steps in Nina’s borrowed shoes, and his hand was in possession of the curving indent of her waist.
They walked the path up to the house in taut trammelling silence. As they passed by the pool Mia could not control a small shiver and he reacted to it by drawing her in closer to his side. He was using his mobile to speak to his pilot as they stepped into the house. By the time they stepped out of it again by the front door she could see the helicopter coming in to settle on the same patch of lawn it had dropped them off on when they arrived.
A few minutes later and she subsided gratefully into her seat. Her wrist was aching and a tension headache was tugging at the backs of her eyes.
‘OK,’ he said the moment they were airborne. ‘Tell me what happened.’
Casting a glance in his direction, Mia saw that his mood did not look good at all. He was sitting with his long legs stretched out in front of him and a black-suited elbow rested on the window’s narrow ledge. A set of long fingers supported the golden jut of his jaw while one finger lay across the thin stretch of his mouth.
And his dark eyes glittered.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ she answered, keeping to her decision to play the whole incident down.
‘If you’re lying to me I will find out,’ he warned her quietly. ‘Santino’s staff is checking film footage as we speak. I saw you fall, and I believe you were pushed. I want to know who you think did that to you and why you believe that they did.’
‘It could just have been an accident,’ Mia sighed out. ‘I don’t understand why you are obsessing on it.’
For an answer he dipped his hand into his pocket and drew out his mobile. She knew without having to ask that he was going to call Santino and get the information he wanted from him.
‘You are such a bully—put your phone away,’ she snapped, adding another sigh of weary surrender this time when he continued to hold the phone at the ready, eyes fixed like stubborn black lasers on her pale face.
‘I think it was Anton Brunel that pushed me,’ she admitted.
‘Brunel?’ Nikos fired a sharp frown at her. ‘He was there tonight?’
Moistening her taut lips Mia nodded. ‘He—approached me as I was about to go outside…’ Her eyes darkened with anger when she recalled the way he had grabbed her and hustled her into that corner. ‘He caught hold of me and began throwing all kinds of wild accusations at me. He—he claimed I had lied to you. That I had been flirting with him.’ She just could not bring herself to use Anton Brunel’s shameful term.
‘And were you—flirting with him?’
‘How dare you say that? How dare you ask me that?’ Mia turned on him furiously. ‘We have had this conversation before and I was not pleased with your attitude then!’ she heaved out in an offended rush.
‘You used him to pull my strings with that dossier and your description of what happened between the two of you that day.’ Nikos tossed out a broad-shouldered shrug. ‘How do I know you did not start your string-pulling campaign with a bit of flirtation across the lunch table with him?’
‘So I am a dreadful flirt and a cunning manipulator—is that what you’re saying?’ Mia was stunned by the level of both men’s conceit! But most of all she was horrified that they might be right! ‘I suppose you also think I deserved all I got when I landed in the pool!’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you implied it!’ So upset now, she pushed up her chin and looked away from him, fighting the tears trying to burn in her eyes. ‘He bruised my wrist too but I suppose I should apologise for not allowing him to throttle me at the same time!’ she shook out thickly. ‘Perhaps you could—W-what are you doing—?’ she broke off to choke out.
He’d undone his seat belt and arrived across the gap separating them with the speed of an attacking snake! Now he was picking up her bruised wrist and inspecting it, the curses that flooded from him in several different languages should have turned the dark night air bright blue.
‘I will kill him,’ he rasped, going pale with fury when he saw the livid purple fingerprints marking her delicate skin.
Mia snatched her wrist back, hurting it in the bargain, but she just did not care. ‘You…men—you are all the same, ready to parade your macho strength when you feel like it,’ she shook out in burning contempt. ‘Yet you are quick to play the victims when a woman so much as looks at you! No, don’t touch me.’ She jerked away when he tried to capture her bruised wrist again. ‘I am angry with you!’
‘I can see that,’ Nikos said quietly.
Her face flushed, the tears daring to press against the muscles in her throat now. ‘I behaved myself tonight—for your benefit! I did not do anything to earn your contempt! It was not my f-fault that a nasty p-person like Anton Brunel wished to push me in the pool—and you are not my hero j
ust because you happened to pull me out of it!’
The helicopter had come to a standstill without either of them noticing. Mia undid her seat belt and stepped over Nikos, just needing to get out of there before she did something really stupid like bursting into a flood of hot tears!
She was already halfway to the house by the time Nikos had stepped onto the darkened lawn. With a growl of frustration he strode after her and entered the house in time to watch her fly up the stairs. And even in flight the sensual flow of her lush black-clad figure reacted on him with all the gut-grinding promise of a—
‘Theos,’ he breathed.
He wanted her.
His hand snaked up to grab hold of the back of his neck.
He was not her hero, but he had this angry desire to charge up those damn stairs after her and at least be her lover!
He remained standing like that for the next thirty control-clutching seconds—until he heard her bedroom door close with a thud. Then with a violent swing of his body he strode off towards the back of the house, discarding his clothes as he went. By the time he reached the door which led into his all-purpose gym he was almost naked but for a pair of black cotton undergarments that moulded his fiercest problem with no conscience at all.
He used the gym as if it was his own personal war zone, pounding his body through a series of physical drills that did nothing to ease what was really driving him. Giving up on that form of torture he slammed through another door and dived into the glistening blue waters of his indoor swimming pool. Fifty hard laps later and he was climbing out again and heading back through the house, grimly gathering up his discarded clothes as he went.
The moment he reached his bedroom he headed for the bathroom. The heat of the shower made his glistening skin sweat and his chest was heaving from his recent exertions, but one part of him still dominated everything else. Cursing he switched the shower to cold and punished himself by letting the icy water dowse his entire frame. By the time he came out of the bathroom covered by a white towelling robe he thought he was finally beginning to get a grip.