From Dirt to Diamonds

by Julia James

  It’s my own fault! He warned me, but I still couldn’t keep my mouth shut. That’s why he’s pulled me from the shoot! That’s why! But I don’t understand. Why did they say I was on it yesterday and then pull me? How come one minute I’m on, the next I’m off! How could he change his mind like that? I don’t get it—I just don’t get it!

  Confusion, dismay, and sick, gutting fear writhed within her. In her mind she saw Mike’s knife glint in the light, heard Katya’s terrified warning. Desperation scythed through her. She could do a runner—head out of London. But that would be to run from everything she’d achieved so far, to start all over again. And where? London was where the big modelling contracts were. Like the one she’d just lost.

  I’ve got to get it back! I’ve got to try, at least! If I go to him—beg, crawl—maybe he’ll change his mind back again. I’ll be as meek and docile as he wants! Whatever it takes!

  It was all she could do, and she knew it. Rage, fury, anger—all were useless now. Useless! Fear churned in her stomach. She had to batten it down. Keep it under control. Tight, tight control.

  She went to the hotel first. It was the only place she knew to go. She walked up to the swanky receptionist and asked for him. The woman looked at her coolly.

  ‘Mr Petrakos is not in his suite,’ she told her. ‘Try his office.’

  ‘But I don’t know—’

  Kat stopped, and walked away. She found a library. Looked up ‘Petrakos Marine’, and the name of the boat company. It was all she could remember. She tracked down a London office for Petrakos International U.K. Phoned the number. Got passed around. Then, finally, ‘Mr Petrakos is in Dublin today. He’ll be back tonight and in the office tomorrow.’

  Relief washed through her. For all she’d known Angelos Petrakos could be back in Greece now—or on the other side of the world. But he was coming back to London. He hadn’t checked out of his suite. He’d be there tonight.

  And so would she.

  To prostrate herself before the almighty Angelos Petrakos and beg him to hire her after all.

  Angelos rolled his shoulders and massaged the nape of his neck. His jacket was draped over the back of a chair, his tie likewise. It had been a long day. But tomorrow he’d set an easier pace—with a highly enjoyable evening to look forward to.

  Courtesy of Kat Jones.

  He’d made the right decision, he knew. He wasn’t about to question it any further. It would be, he knew, electric. Kat Jones was so utterly different from his usual choice of woman. True, that meant that his affair with her would be highly restricted—but, however brief, it would be enjoyable. He looked forward to seeing her wary antagonism towards him change to something very different …

  For a moment he considered getting in touch with her now, but decided against it. He had things to go through from his Dublin meeting that he wanted to be shot of first. He strolled to the sideboard, slipping his cufflinks and dropping them on to its surface, following suit with his watch, turning up his shirt-cuffs. He picked up the first report and lowered himself down on the sofa to read it. A minute later the doorbell sounded. That would be the suite butler, bringing his coffee. Absently he pressed the console to open the door for him, his eyes swiftly perusing the words in front of him.

  He heard the door open, but paid no attention. The man knew his business, and knew not to disturb hotel guests. Then something—instinct, or the faint catch of body scent—made him whip his head round.

  Kat Jones had walked into his suite.

  She stood very still. Her heart was pounding. Adrenaline surging in her body. Crackling through her like overloaded static.

  Mike was outside in the street—he’d been dogging her footsteps all day, trailing her on his motorbike. Keeping the sick fear churning inside her. Now he was waiting outside the hotel. Not close enough to draw the attention of the doorman. Close enough to make sure she saw him. Saw him lift a finger to his own cheek and draw it down, slowly, deliberately. Smiling at her.

  She got the message. Right in her terror centre.

  Now, as she walked into Angelos Petrakos’s suite, she felt as if a garrotte were strangling her.

  I’ve got to get that job back.

  Angelos Petrakos got to his feet. She saw him, but it was as if he was underwater, or behind glass, very far away.

  ‘Kat.’

  She heard her name. Heard the deep, accented voice. Heard it and felt it do things to her. Things that didn’t matter. Not now, when all that mattered was why she was here.

  ‘I was not expecting you,’ he said. His tone was even, but his expression was veiled.

  ‘I—I wanted to see you.’ How she got the words out she didn’t know. They came out as a low husk. It was all she could manage through her stricken throat.

  A hollow was opening up in her stomach. Her eyes had gone to him immediately as he’d stood up, taking in his jacketless state, seeing the white shirt taut across his lean chest, the strong column of his throat framed by his open collar, the muscled sinews of his bare forearms and his turned-back cuffs. Then her eyes had shifted upwards to the strong-featured face, the sable hair, the narrowed, night-dark eyes. Something shifted in them as her eyes went to him, but their expression was still veiled.

  ‘Indeed?’ It was all he said. His face was a mask, but behind it she was having the same impact on him now as she’d had that first evening—those extraordinary luminous eyes, the high cheekbones, the mobile mouth, and that incredible wand-slim body. Even though, he registered, there was far less of it on show this time. Her outfit was not an evening dress. Instead, he registered, it was some kind of day-dress, grey, and buttoned all the way down to her knees, with long sleeves and white cuffs.

  It should have looked demure, as it was designed to. Instead …

  He snapped his mind away. What was Kat Jones doing here? Even as he framed the question he supplied the answer. One that told him when a woman showed up at this time of night there was only one reason why …

  Emotion knifed through him, but he put it on hold. Waiting. Watching.

  The sound of the door chime made her jump, but Angelos simply pressed the console again. This time it was, indeed, the suite butler. He batted not an impassive eyelid to see a woman present, merely fetched another cup and saucer from the sideboard and added it to the tray. Kat was grateful for his presence—it bought her precious time in which to try and compose herself, dissipate the appalling tension stringing her out. She set her clutch bag down on the sideboard, flexing her stiff, clenched fingers. She tried to steady her breathing, loosen the garrotte around her throat, drain out the hideous sick feeling permeating her.

  There was silence while the butler did his business, then departed.

  ‘Coffee, Kat?’ said Angelos.

  His voice was smooth. There was something in it she did not recognise. She shook her head, watching while Angelos Petrakos poured his own black coffee.

  ‘Perhaps you’d prefer something stronger? A liqueur, perhaps?’ He indicated a tray on the sideboard, with a variety of bottles on it. ‘I may,’ he said ruminatively, ‘take a cognac myself.’

  Again she shook her head jerkily, watching, heart slugging heavily, while he set down his coffee cup beside the tray and poured himself a measure of brandy, swirling it contemplatively in the rounded glass as his eyes rested on her.

  They were completely shuttered. She couldn’t tell anything about how he was thinking. What he was thinking. She stared at him, eyes distended. Do it! Say it! You’ve got to!

  ‘Mr Petrakos …’ Her voice was breathy. Husky. ‘I—I wanted … wanted … to—to apologise to you …’

  She had taken him by surprise. He had not been expecting this. Apologies and Kat Jones were not things he would associate together. His eyes narrowed infinitesimally. The emotion he had first experienced on seeing her in his suite like this intensified.

  She stumbled on, words halting, her voice still with that husky breathiness. ‘Over dinner the other night, I was … I was
… out of order. It was because … because I’m not used to places like this.’ She gestured jerkily with her hand around the suite. ‘Flash places. Fancy restaurants. It made me … nervous. Maybe I came across as … rude …’

  He made no reply, just went on resting his eyes on her. She had no option but to go on.

  ‘So I wanted to … to ask you … if … if I promise I won’t behave like that again—because I won’t—I really won’t—if … if … you would give me another chance and … and reconsider your decision about the Monte Carlo shoot. My agency told me—’ She swallowed, biting back the emotion that cracked in her throat. ‘Told me that you’d changed your mind about me after all. I want to change it back again,’ she husked. ‘Persuade you to take me back on. I really, really want to do that! And if you did I would be so, so grateful …’

  Her voice trailed off. Her mouth was dry. She could feel every high-pressure pump of her heart, every racked muscle of her body. She’d done it—done what she’d come to do. Crawled and begged and pleaded. Abased herself before him. Because downstairs—waiting in the shadows, waiting for her to come out of the hotel—was a madman with a razor, waiting for a chance to use it on her …

  ‘So very grateful,’ she breathed.

  Angelos stilled. Every muscle in his body stilled. The brandy swirling slowly in his glass stilled. Then slowly, very slowly, he started to set it in motion again.

  She was gazing at him—eyes wide, distended. Lips parted. Her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. He took it all in, eyes resting on her. There was no expression in them. But inside emotion knifed, its stroke slicing through him. Then he spoke.

  ‘How grateful, Kat?’

  The smoothness in his voice was gone. Instead there was something that, just for a moment, seemed to slither over her skin.

  ‘How grateful, Kat?’ he said again.

  The words fell into the air. She stared at him. Words forming in her mind that she could never say. There’s a psycho down on the street who wants to slash my face open if I don’t pay him what I’ll earn from that shoot—that’s how grateful I’d be! But that wasn’t what she could say. All she could say was, her voice still husky with tension, ‘Very grateful.’

  It galled her. Every fibre in her being rebelled at what she was doing—begging, pleading with this man, humbling herself to the man who could save her with a single word, or send her back out on to the street to where Mike waited for her with his razor.

  He did it to Katya—he’ll do it to me!

  Fear gutted her again—fear laced with a stabbing urge just to yell at this man she was crawling to, yell at him to give her the job back, just give her the job back because she needed it—needed it desperately …

  He had set down his brandy glass on the sideboard. His eyes were still resting on her. Veiled, unreadable. She could feel her heart slugging in her chest as she waited for the answer that would save her … or doom her. Desperate hope fused with churning terror …

  Angelos watched her. Watched her through the mask of control that had iced over him. But underneath the nameless emotion knifing through him had revealed itself.

  Cold, black anger.

  Memory bit through him. Her sitting on that very sofa, making that crude, forceful riposte she’d made when he’d baited her about sexual favours in the line of her work. For all its crudity, it had been that that had told him what he needed to know to make the decision about her that he had, knowing that—however hungry she was to obtain modelling work on the marina shoot—she possessed enough raw integrity to reject using her body to advance her career.

  And now—

  So much for her parade of virtue! Now she was ready to offer anything he wanted to get what she wanted … to show her ‘gratitude’ …

  His anger intensified.

  He’d wanted her. Made a decision to follow through on what he felt about her that had, against all expectation, piqued his interest. And now he was being balked of it. Balked at this very moment now, at this late hour of the night, in his private suite, when she was standing there, her raw physicality impacting on every nerve ending, that demure, white-collared dress of hers signalling an erotic appeal that was making him compellingly aware of the body beneath, with its small, high breasts, slight hips and long, slender legs. Even the unstyled hair, pushed behind her ears, only framed her face more—that extraordinary face …

  He wanted her. And now he could not have her. Because he never, ever indulged a woman who wanted him to advance her career for her … To do so would be to compromise his principles, to give in to a temptation to indulge himself that he would not allow himself. He had too much self-respect, instilled into him all his life, to do as Kat Jones now wanted him to. Anger knifed again. It needed a target.

  He walked towards her, stopping dead in front of her. Then lifted his hand. Cupping her cheek with his palm.

  Kat froze. Every muscle in her body froze. What was happening? What was he doing? Why—? She could only stare at him, eyes huge, distended. He was too close—far too close. How had he got so close? Why …?

  And then, as if her sensory system were working in slow-motion, she felt the tips of his fingers feathering along the line of her hair. A thousand nerve endings shimmered and she gave a tiny strangled gasp in her throat. His thumb moved leisurely, exploringly over the tender lobe of her ear. Faintness drummed at her. Heat flushed up the column of her throat, beating like a wing. Sensation was thrumming through her like fire licking along her flesh …

  Nothing else existed. Nothing except what he was doing to her. Touching her, stroking her. He was looking down at her, holding her, enclosing her. Forming her whole world so that nothing else existed at all. Nothing other than this could ever exist …

  He was blanking out everything—all consciousness, all memory, all awareness other than this moment, now. Weakness flushed through her, leaving nothing behind. No memory of why she was here, no memory of what had brought her here …

  Only this exquisite, unbearable sensation.

  He was saying something. She could hardly hear it, but then it penetrated—penetrated through the mesh of sensation he was engendering.

  ‘How grateful, Kat? This grateful?’ There was darkness in the eyes looking down at her, looking right into her. ‘Or this?’

  His hand grazed down the line of her jaw. He eased the tips of his fingers across her throat, settled on the button at her collar. He slipped it loose, then moved with the lightest, most lethal touch to the next button. He slipped that too, feathering at the skin beneath.

  His other hand slid around the nape of her neck and drew her to him.

  She could not stop him. Could no more stop him than she could have stopped the ocean. Her body slackened against him. She had no strength, no will, no conscious thought.

  His mouth closed over hers.

  It was a deep, sensual kiss. He did not intend it to be otherwise. It was, after all, all he would have of her …

  Kat was drowning. Drowning in the sea of sensation that had closed over her head, her mind—every particle of her being. The drowning went on and on and on, dissolving her, so that there was nothing left of her, only the incredible sensation exploding in her. From away, words formed …

  So this is a kiss …

  She had never been kissed before. Never allowed a man near her. Never.

  And now …

  Now she was being taken—her mouth by his—her senses overwhelmed, and she had never known that it was possible to feel like this, to feel such sensation … such incredible, intoxicating arousal, such melting of the flesh …

  There was no more reality—only this. This endless, intoxicating sensuality.

  And then his mouth was lifting from hers. She could only gaze mindlessly, dazed, into his eyes—those night-dark eyes. They flickered over her and she felt heat deep inside her. His hand still held her nape, and without its grip she would have swayed, collapsed, for there were no bones left in her body, no thoughts in her mind, n
o consciousness of anything other than this—this obliterating, consuming now that had taken her into a world she had never known existed.

  He was looking down at her. His eyes were still veiled, unreadable.

  Then he spoke.

  ‘That was good, Kat,’ he said. ‘Very—grateful…’ His voice was a drawl, like talons over hardest stone.

  He dropped his hands from her and stepped back. She swayed, but he made no move to steady her. There was incomprehension in her face—more than incomprehension—and something about it fed his anger. She was trying to speak, he could see, but there was nothing he wanted to hear. Nothing he wanted from her—except what he could not have. What she had made impossible.

  His eyes steeled. Time to finish this.

  ‘But, despite your spectacular body, Kat, and your eagerness to bestow it upon me in gratitude for advancing your career—’ his gaze washed over her like acid ‘—I must disappoint your ambitions.’

  She stared. She had been drowning—drowning deep, deep in an ocean of sensuality that she had never known existed, never dreamt existed. And now suddenly she had been beached, was gasping for air, cold sucking at her.

  Oh, God, what had happened? What had happened? What did I let him do to me? How could I have—? How could I?

  Her thoughts were rags, torn and shredded. What was he saying to her? She had crawled to him—abased herself to ask, beg for the job she had to have … But what had he done? What had she let him do? What was he saying …?

  She fought for comprehension.

  It came—like a killing blow.

  ‘I have no interest, Kat—’ his voice razored ‘—in bedding whores. And what else is a “grateful” woman offering her body than a whore?’

  Time stopped. Rushed up from the past, searing across her brain. Words were spearing into her—bald, typed notes, impinging themselves on her retinas.

  … known to work as a prostitute …

  The pit beneath her feet opened. Yawned like the mouth of hell to swallow her up, take her to that place of damnation which had swallowed up her mother, and her mother’s mother.

  But it would never, never swallow her!