‘Do you mean…you want us to have dinner tonight?’ She padded down the hall after him, a frown forming on her brow. ‘But I’m still recovering from the race. I’m too tired!’
‘It’s only dinner, pedhaki mou, unless you were planning something a little more energetic?’
‘Slapping you is the only thing that springs to mind,’ she said grittily, her cheeks on fire. ‘Tonight will be fine. At least it gets it out of the way.’ With that she gripped her towel tightly round her and stormed out of the room, her temper not improved by the sound of his mocking laughter following her along the hall.
CHAPTER SIX
IN AN effort to disguise her nervousness, Anna selected a midnight-blue couture dress for her dinner date with Damon. The stark simplicity of the style conveyed the impression of cool sophistication, especially when teamed with a few discreet pieces of jewellery—sapphire and diamond earrings and a matching bracelet on her wrist.
With her hair swept into an elegant chignon and the addition of killer heels, she looked every inch the confident career woman. She could only pray that nobody would notice the slight tremor of her hands when she followed Damon across the foyer of his hotel.
‘Where are we going?’ she queried with a frown when he ushered her into the lift. ‘I assumed the dining room is on the ground floor.’
‘It is, but we’re not eating there,’ he replied with a smile that did nothing to allay her apprehension.
Anna surveyed him suspiciously as the lift whisked them towards the upper floors. She had already made her feelings clear when he’d informed her that they would be dining at his hotel rather than a restaurant. Now what? Perhaps the hotel had a dining area in the roof garden, she pondered, but she didn’t relish the prospect of sitting in the rain.
‘I need to shower and change, and then I thought we’d dine in the privacy of my suite,’ he explained cheerfully as he led the way along a corridor and threw open the door leading to a large, luxuriously appointed room.
Anna glanced around warily, noting the elegant furnishings and the small dining table set for two. At the far end of the room was a door, which she guessed led to Damon’s bedroom. It was that last thought that caused her to stop dead.
Damon glanced at her, his smile fading as he noticed her icy expression. ‘Do you have any objections?’
‘Dozens, the main one being that you tricked me.’
‘In what way?’ he demanded forcefully. ‘You agreed to have dinner with me of your own free will.’
‘I assumed we would be spending the evening in a busy restaurant, not in your room.’
‘It’s the penthouse suite, not the broom cupboard. What’s the real issue, here Anna?’ he demanded, his eyes narrowing when she shied away from him. ‘Do you honestly think I brought you here with the intention of seducing you?’
‘Didn’t you?’
He was silent for so long that she lifted her eyes to stare at him, wondering what he was thinking. Too late she realised that the rigid set of his jaw gave a clue to the level of his anger. He was furious, his nostrils flaring as he sought to control his temper, and Anna realised with growing unease that she had insulted him unforgivably.
‘Damon, I—’ She broke off and extended her hand in a helpless gesture of contrition.
‘Why don’t you go back down and wait for me in the main lounge?’ he suggested, his clipped tone indicating that he couldn’t care less if she caught the next bus home. ‘I’ll meet you in twenty minutes and we’ll have a drink while you’re deciding whether you’re willing to risk sitting in a public restaurant with me.’
He swung round and strode away from her, pausing briefly in the doorway leading to his room. ‘Tell me, Anna, what are you so afraid of?’
There was no simple answer to that and she shook her head in silence, utterly beyond speech. How could she possibly begin to explain the mental damage her stepfather had inflicted? The misery of every school holiday spent trying to evade a man who had delighted in taunting her with revolting suggestions of what he would like to do to her.
She had moved out as soon as possible, before Phil had had a chance to carry out the abuses he’d threatened. But, as she’d been an impressionable teenager, her imagination had proved her worst enemy and the nightmares had haunted her for years.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ His voice was so gruff that she could almost believe she had hurt him.
Damon was nothing like her stepfather, she acknowledged. He might have a reputation as a playboy, but she knew instinctively that he would never physically harm her. Emotionally it was a different matter, but she couldn’t bear the troubled look in his eyes and sought to reassure him.
‘No,’ she replied quietly.
He said no more, but she sensed a release in the fierce tension that gripped him. With a curt nod he entered his bedroom and closed the door firmly behind him.
Anna spent the next few minutes torn with indecision. Should she go downstairs and wait for him as he had suggested, or stay until he emerged from his room and try to seek his forgiveness? She had been unbelievably rude, she accepted grimly. This was a man who had just donated an astonishing amount of money to the children’s hospice and she’d treated him as if he were Jack the Ripper.
A discreet knock on the door made the decision for her.
‘I’ve come to clear away the table. Mr Kouvaris phoned down to say that it’s no longer required,’ the bellboy explained.
‘Wait. Actually there’s been another change of plan and we’d like to have dinner up here after all,’ Anna said. ‘Is that still possible?’
‘Anything’s possible for Mr Kouvaris,’ the bellboy replied seriously. ‘Will the order be the same as before?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ She didn’t know what dishes Damon had selected from the menu and, if she was honest, she didn’t care. She just prayed she was doing the right thing and that her actions wouldn’t further incite his anger.
She spent another ten minutes anxiously pacing the carpet while her tension increased to screaming pitch. A waiter arrived pushing a loaded trolley and she watched as he rearranged the cutlery and opened the wine, his precise attention to detail shredding her nerves. The faint snick of the door had her swinging round, her eyes wide with a mixture of uncertainty and bravado when Damon strolled through from his bedroom.
‘Would you like me to pour the wine?’ The waiter’s eyes moved from her to Damon and in the ensuing pause, which seemed to last a lifetime, she discovered that she was holding her breath.
‘I thought it would be nice to eat here after all,’ she said quickly, flushing beneath Damon’s quizzical stare.
‘Good,’ he murmured at last and nodded to the waiter to fill their glasses. He moved purposefully towards her, tall, dark and utterly devastating in superbly tailored black trousers and matching shirt. His hair was still damp from his shower and Anna noted the way it curled onto his collar. He exuded a simmering, sexual magnetism and she quivered when he came to stand in front of her, the scent of his cologne mixed with the fresh tang of soap, setting her senses on fire.
‘What made you change your mind?’
She couldn’t begin to tell him of the war that was waging inside her and shook her head helplessly.
‘I thought it was a woman’s prerogative?’ she whispered, unaware of the stark vulnerability in her eyes.
He waited a heartbeat, his eyes dark and unfathomable while he studied her tense expression, and then he nodded and smiled at her so that his teeth gleamed white against his olive gold skin.
‘Of course it is, pedhaki mou. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s eat.’
It quickly became apparent that Damon was not a man to hold a grudge. He had every right to be annoyed with her, Anna acknowledged, but from the moment they took their places at the table he seemed determined to help her relax.
Witty, amusing and fiercely intelligent, he could charm the birds from the trees, she thought wryly. Dinner had been out of
this world. She’d already eaten more than she should, but he tempted her to dessert—cheesecake with fresh raspberries and a summer berry coulis that tantalised her taste buds.
He kept their conversation deliberately light. They discussed the latest film release from a director they both admired and discovered a shared taste in modern authors. It was a long time since she had felt so at ease on a date, Anna mused as she finished her wine and shook her head when he offered to refill her glass.
She rarely drank alcohol and the glass of Chablis had left her feeling mellow and just the tiniest bit light-headed. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, but she was wary of losing the tight grip on her control, especially with Damon around. Not that she did not trust him, she acceded; it was herself and her wayward response to the undisguised hunger in his eyes that worried her.
‘Are you sure I can’t persuade you to indulge in another slice of cheesecake?’
‘Absolutely not!’ She had a feeling that he could persuade her to indulge in a number of things that she wouldn’t have dreamed of with any other man, but her slender figure was her fortune and she was grateful for her iron will-power. ‘I can see that I’m going to have to run another thirteen miles tomorrow as it is,’ she quipped lightly.
She left him pouring the coffee and wandered over to the window to stare out at the view of Marble Arch and Hyde Park beyond. The park was shrouded in black velvet but the surrounding streets were teeming with traffic, the car headlights winking like frenetic fireflies in the darkness. It was home, the sights and sounds comfortingly familiar, and Anna gave an unconscious sigh of pleasure.
‘Do you enjoy living in London?’
She turned to find that Damon had moved to stand beside her and her senses leapt when he placed his hand lightly on the small of her back. The gesture was in no way threatening and a quiver ran through her. To her astonishment she realised that she longed for him to slide his arm around her waist and draw her up against the hard length of his body.
‘I love it,’ she replied hastily. ‘Even during the bad times, after I’d left school and was struggling to find somewhere to live, I never considered moving away. It’s a wonderful city and I’m proud that it’s my home.’
‘So where did you spend your childhood?’ he asked, captivated by her enthusiasm.
‘When my parents were together we lived in a house in Notting Hill,’ she explained, wistfully recalling the past. ‘It was an incredibly happy time. I used to think that my dad was the cleverest, funniest, most wonderful person in the world; he was so charming and good-looking. Unfortunately I wasn’t the only female to think so,’ she added dryly. ‘After the divorce Mum couldn’t keep up with the mortgage repayments and the house had to be sold. She and I moved into a flat and Lars lived a few streets away with his new wife and her children.’
‘I suppose it at least meant you were able to see your father as often as you liked.’
‘The access agreement was once a month, but Marion, Dad’s second wife, didn’t like me going to their house,’ she told him flatly. ‘She said I unsettled her two little girls but what she really meant was that I unsettled her. She couldn’t stand the fact that I had a place in Dad’s life.
‘In my experience the whole step-parent, stepchild relationship is a minefield of resentment and jealousy,’ she burst out, surprising them both with her sudden bitterness. ‘If I’m sure of one thing, it’s that I will never get involved with a man who has baggage.’
‘Baggage?’
‘Children,’ she elaborated when Damon frowned. ‘My stepmother did her best to destroy my relationship with my father, although ultimately he was the one who decided to break off contact. But I never want to be in the position where someone I care about feels that he has to choose between me and any children he might have from a previous relationship.’
‘But surely there are thousands of couples in that situation for whom it works well?’ Damon argued. ‘Just because your own experiences were unhappy, it doesn’t mean that it can’t work with a little give and take on all sides.’
‘Perhaps,’ Anna said with a shrug, ‘but it can also be a breeding ground for misery and heartache. I’m sorry, but, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s a subject I feel strongly about,’ she murmured huskily when Damon stared at her. He had tensed, his face as hard as if it had been sculpted from marble, but she had no idea what had disturbed him so strongly.
‘Your childhood obviously left some serious scars—understandably when you lost your father and your home at such an impressionable age,’ he said quietly. ‘What about your mother—were you happy living with her? I imagine your financial circumstances were reduced.’
‘We were broke,’ Anna said with a harsh laugh. ‘Before her marriage, my mother had been a brilliant musician with a promising career ahead of her, but she gave it all up to support my father in his various, and mostly unsuccessful, business ventures.
‘She sacrificed everything for him,’ she added bitterly. ‘When he left us, she couldn’t cope. She had some sort of breakdown and that’s when I was sent away to school. Fortunately my grandmother had left an annuity to pay for my schooling.
‘I loved my time at Braebourne Ladies College. I felt safe there,’ she admitted, so quietly that he only just caught her words.
It was a strange thing to say and Damon frowned. Had there been times during her childhood when she hadn’t felt safe? And whom had she been afraid of? Not her father, surely? From the way she had spoken of him, he guessed that she had adored Lars Christiansen and been devastated by his cruel desertion.
It was small wonder that she had such an issue with trust, he thought grimly. She was prickly and defensive but her father’s seeming rejection of her in favour of his new wife and children had seeded the expectation that all men would let her down. Already she was edging away from him, clearly regretting the impulse that had led her to confide in him.
He wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her close, Damon acknowledged. He wanted to reassure her that he would never knowingly hurt her in any way.
The realisation caused him to frown. What was he thinking? His whole reason for coming to England and seeking her out had been to persuade her into his bed and keep her there until his hunger for her had been satiated. And how could he possibly hope to win her trust now, when there were issues in his life that he had deliberately kept from her?
It wasn’t that he had set out to deceive her, he brooded when he joined her on the sofa and took a gulp of his coffee. But in the years since Eleni’s death he had made a conscious decision to keep his private life separate from his family situation. He had never found the need to explain his commitments to his various mistresses; his life was neatly compartmentalised and he liked it that way.
He didn’t even understand why he had told Anna about his marriage. Perhaps it was because he wanted to prove that there was more to him than his reputation as a wealthy playboy portrayed? But if that was the reason, it hadn’t worked. He was no nearer to winning her trust and if he was scrupulously honest, he didn’t deserve it when his motives had been triggered solely by lust.
Stifling an impatient sigh, he leaned back against the cushions and felt her stiffen. He could feel her watching him; surreptitious little glances when she thought he wasn’t looking. But he was aware of the way her gaze focused on his mouth, aware of how her small, pink tongue suddenly darted out to moisten her lips. Desire pierced him, so savage that every muscle in his body clenched, and he strove to control the urge to plunder those soft lips with his own.
Walking away while he still had the chance no longer seemed to be an option, he acknowledged heavily. He’d never felt like this before; it was new and faintly terrifying, which was another alien emotion to him. He had never been afraid in his life, but as he recalled her fierce avowal that she would never become involved with a man with baggage his gut twisted and he tore his gaze from her to stare moodily at the blank television screen.
Anna drained her coffee
and shifted edgily on the sofa. Damon seemed to be lost in his thoughts and, from the strained silence that had fallen, she could only assume that those thoughts were not happy ones. She was relieved when he activated the remote to switch on the television. At least forcing her brain to concentrate on the late evening news programme prevented her from dwelling on the intoxicating warmth of his thigh pressing lightly against hers.
The final part of the bulletin was devoted to coverage of the charity marathon and the work of the charity she had raised money for and she leaned forward slightly, her heart leaping when the presenter explained that the children’s hospice was set to open ahead of target, thanks to the huge amount of funds raised from the race. The film then showed the vast crowd that had congregated in Hyde Park for the race the day before and she grimaced when her image flashed onto the screen.
‘Oh, God, I hadn’t realised that my running shorts were so, well…short,’ she groaned, hectic colour flooding her cheeks. ‘Over a thousand competitors took part, yet the cameraman seems to have spent the entire race fixated with my derrière.’
Beside her she felt Damon relax and she watched in fascination as his mouth curved into a slow smile.
‘I have a certain amount of sympathy with him; he’s only human, after all,’ he said dulcetly, ‘and it is a particularly delightful derrière, Anna mou.’
At his words, she snapped her head round, indignation warring with a strong desire to burst out laughing. He was the most outrageous flirt she had ever met, but the urge to slap him was lost before the lambent warmth of his gaze.
The tension between them returned with a vengeance, but now it was laced with a degree of sexual awareness that she could neither ignore nor deny. Her breath caught in her throat and she could feel the erratic jerk of her pulse when he trailed a finger lightly down her cheek.
‘Exquisite,’ he breathed softly, suddenly sounding very Greek. He lowered his head, almost as if he had no control over his movements, and Anna watched, wide-eyed, as his mouth descended to claim her lips in a sweetly evocative caress.
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