by Lynne Graham
‘She’s not infectious any more,’ the woman had said carelessly.
Lower lip wobbling, Maxie surveyed the possible proof of that misapprehension. A dry cough racked her chest, leaving her gasping for breath. Whatever she had, she was feeling foul. Getting herself a glass of water, she went back to bed. The phone went. She had to get out of bed again to answer it.
‘What?’ she demanded hoarsely after another bout of coughing in the cold hall.
‘Angelos here, what’s wrong with you?’
‘I have…I have a cold,’ she lied. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to see you—’
‘No way!’ Maxie plonked down the phone at speed.
The phone rang again. She disconnected it from its wall-point. A couple of hours later the doorbell went. Maxie ignored it. Getting out of bed yet again felt like too much trouble.
She dozed for the rest of the day, finally waking up shivering with cold and conscious of an odd noise in the dim room. Slowly it dawned on her that the rasping wheeze was the sound of her own lungs straining to function. Her brain felt befogged, but she thought that possibly she might need a doctor. So she lay thinking about that while the doorbell rang and rang and finally fell silent.
Fear got a healthy grip on her when she stumbled dizzily out of bed and her legs just folded beneath her. She hit the polished wooden floor with a crash. Tears welled up in her sore eyes. The room was too dark for her to get her bearings. She started to crawl, trying to recall where the phone was. She heard a distant smash. It sounded like glass breaking, and then voices. Had she left the television on? Trying to summon up more strength, she rested her perspiring brow down on the boards beneath her.
And then the floor lit up…or so it seemed.
CHAPTER FOUR
A DISTURBINGLY familiar male voice bit out something raw in a foreign language and a pair of male feet appeared in Maxie’s limited view. Strong hands turned her over and began to lift her.
‘You’re all…spotty…’ Angelos glowered down at her with unblinking black eyes, full of disbelief.
‘Go away…’ she mumbled.
‘It just looks a little…strange,’ Angelos commented tautly, and after a lengthy pause, while Maxie squeezed shut her eyes against the painful intrusion of that overhead light and him, he added almost accusingly, ‘I thought only children got chickenpox.’
‘Leave me alone…’ Maxie succumbed weakly to another coughing fit.
Instead, he lifted her back onto the bed and rolled the bulky duvet unceremoniously round her prone body.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, struggling to concentrate, finding it impossible.
‘I was on my way down to my country house for the weekend. Now it looks like I’ll be staying in town and you’ll be coming home with me,’ Angelos delivered, with no visible enthusiasm on his strong, hard face as he bent down to sweep her up into his powerful arms.
Maxie couldn’t think straight, but the concept of having nothing whatsoever to do with Angelos Petronides was now so deeply engrained, his appearance had set all her alarm bells shrieking. ‘No…I have to stay here to look after the house—’
‘I wish you could…but you can’t.’
‘I promised Liz…she’s away and she might be burgled again… put me down.’
‘I can’t leave you alone here like this.’ Angelo stared down at her moodily, as if he was wishing she would make his day with a sudden miraculous recovery but secretly knew he didn’t have much hope.
Maxie struggled to conceal her spotty face against his shoulder, mortified and weak, and too ill to fight but not too ill to hate. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you.’ Gulping, she sniffed.
‘I don’t see any caring queue outside that door ready to take my place…and what have you got to snivel about?’ Angelos demanded with stark impatience as he strode down the hall. Then he stopped dead, meshing long fingers into her hair to tug her face round and gaze accusingly down into her bemused eyes. ‘I smashed my way in only because I was aware that you were ill. Decency demanded that I check that you were all right.’
‘I do not snivel,’ Maxie told him chokily.
‘But the only reason I came here tonight was to return your “something on account” and to assure you that it would be a cold day in hell before I ever darkened your door again—’
‘So what’s keeping you?’
But Angelos was still talking like a male with an ever-mounting sense of injustice. ‘And there you are, lying on the floor in a pathetic shivering heap with more spots than a Dalmatian! What’s fair about that? But I’m not snivelling, am I?’
Maxie opened one eye and saw one of his security men watching in apparent fascination. ‘I do not snivel…’ she protested afresh.
Angelos strode out into the night air. He ducked down into the waiting limousine and propped Maxie up in the farthest corner of the seat like a giant papoose that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Only then did Maxie register that the limousine was already occupied by a gorgeous redhead, wearing diamonds and a spectacular green satin evening dress which would’ve been at home on the set of a movie about the Deep South of nineteenth-century America. The other woman gazed back at Maxie, equally nonplussed.
‘Have you had chickenpox, Natalie?’ Angelos enquired almost chattily.
Natalie Cibaud. She was an actress, a well-known French actress, who had recently won rave reviews for her role in a Hollywood movie. It had not taken Angelos long to find other more entertaining company, Maxie reflected dully while a heated conversation in fast and furious French took place. Maxie didn’t speak French, but the other woman sounded choked with temper while Angelos merely got colder and colder. Maxie curled up in an awkward heap, conscious she was the subject under dispute and wishing in despair that she could perform a vanishing act.
‘Take me home!’ she cried once, without lifting her sore head.
‘Stay out of this…what’s it got to do with you?’ Angelos shot back at her with positive savagery. ‘No woman owns me…no woman ever has and no woman ever will!’
But Angelos was fighting a losing battle. Natalie appeared to have other ideas. Denied an appropriately humble response, her voice developed a sulky, shrill edge. Angelos became freezingly unresponsive. Strained silence finally fell. A little while later, the limousine came to a halt. The passenger door opened. Natalie swept out with her rustling skirts, saying something acid in her own language. The door slammed again.
‘I suppose you thoroughly enjoyed all that,’ Angelos breathed in a tone of icy restraint as the limousine moved off again.
Opening her aching eyes a crack, Maxie skimmed a dulled glance at the space Natalie had occupied and recently vacated. She closed her eyes again. ‘I don’t understand French…’
Angelos grated something raw half under his breath and got on the phone. He had been ditched twice in as many days. And, wretched as she was, Maxie was tickled pink by that idea. Angelos, who got chased up hill and down dale by ninety-nine out of a hundred foolish women, had in the space of forty-eight hours met two members of the outstanding and more intelligent one per cent minority. And it was good for him—really, really good for him, she decided. Then she dozed, only to groggily resurface every time she coughed. Within a very short time after that, however, she didn’t know where she was any more and felt too ill to care.
‘Feeling a bit better, Miss Kendall?’
Maxie peered up at the thin female face above hers. The face was familiar, and yet unfamiliar too. The woman wore a neat white overall and she was taking Maxie’s pulse. Seemingly she was a nurse.
‘What happened to me?’ Maxie mumbled, only vaguely recalling snatches of endless tossing and turning, the pain in her chest, the difficulty in breathing.
‘You developed pneumonia. It’s a rare but potentially serious complication,’ the blonde nurse explained. ‘You’ve been out of it for almost five days—’
‘Five…days?’ Maxie’s sh
aken scrutiny wandered over the incredibly spacious bedroom, with its stark contemporary furniture and coldly elegant decor. She was in Angelos’s apartment. She knew it in her bones. Nowhere was there a single piece of clutter or feminine warmth and homeliness. His idea of housing heaven, she reflected absently, would probably be the wide open spaces of an under-furnished aircraft hangar.
‘You’re very lucky Mr Petronides found you in time,’ her companion continued earnestly, dragging Maxie back from her abstracted thoughts. ‘By recognising the seriousness of your condition and ensuring that you got immediate medical attention, Mr Petronides probably saved your life—’
‘No…I don’t want to owe him anything…never mind my life!’ Maxie gasped in unconcealed horror.
The slim blonde studied her in disbelief. ‘You’ve been treated by one of the top consultants in the UK…Mr Petronides has provided you with the very best of round-the-clock private nursing care, and you say—?’
‘While Miss Kendall is ill, she can say whatever she likes,’ Angelos’s dark drawl slotted in grimly from the far side of the room. ‘You can take a break, Nurse. I’ll stay with your patient.’
The woman had jerked in dismay at Angelos’s silent entrance and intervention. Face pink, she moved away from the bed. ‘Yes, Mr Petronides.’
In a sudden burst of energy, Maxie yanked the sheet up over her head.
‘And the patient is remarkably lively all of a sudden,’ Angelos remarked as soon as the door closed on the nurse’s exit. ‘And ungrateful as hell. Now, why am I not surprised? ’
‘Go away,’ Maxie mumbled, suddenly intensely conscious of lank sweaty hair and spots which had probably multiplied.
‘I’m in my own apartment,’ Angelos told her drily. ‘And I am not going away. Do you seriously think that I haven’t been looking in on you to see how you were progressing over the past few days?’
‘I don’t care…I’m properly conscious now. If I was so ill, why didn’t you just take me to hospital?’ Maxie demanded from beneath the sheet.
‘The top consultant is a personal friend. Since you responded well to antibiotics, he saw no good reason to move you.’
‘Nobody consulted me,’ Maxie complained, and shifted to scratch an itchy place on her hip.
Without warning, the sheet was wrenched back.
‘No scratching,’ Angelos gritted down at her with raking impatience. ‘You’ll have scars all over you if you do that. If I catch you at that again, I might well be tempted to tie your hands to the bed!’
Aghast at both the unveiling and the mortifying tone of that insultingly familiar threat, Maxie gazed up at him with outraged blue eyes bright as jewels. ‘You pig,’ she breathed shakily, registering that he was getting a kick out of her embarrassment. ‘You had no right to bring me here—’
‘You’re in no fit state to tell me what to do,’ Angelos reminded her with brutal candour. ‘And even I draw the line at arguing with an invalid. If it’s of any comfort to your wounded vanity, I’ve discovered that once I got used to the effect the spotty look could be surprisingly appealing.’
‘Shut up!’ Maxie slung at him, and fell back against the pillows, completely winded by the effort it had taken to answer back.
While she struggled to even out her breathing, she studied him with bitter blue eyes. Angelos looked soul-destroyingly spectacular. He wore a beige designer suit with a tie the shade of rich caramel and a toning silk shirt. The lighter colours threw his exotic darkness into prominence. He exuded sophistication and exquisite cool, and at a moment when Maxie felt more grotty than she had ever felt in her life, she loathed him for it! Rolling over, she presented him with her back.
Maddeningly, Angelos strolled round the bed to treat her to an amused appraisal. ‘I’m flying over to Athens for the next ten days. I suspect you’ll recover far more happily in my absence.’
‘I won’t be here when you get back…oh, no, Liz’s house has been left empty!’ Maxie moaned in sudden guilty dismay.
‘I had a professional housesitter brought in.’
Maxie couldn’t even feel grateful. Her heart sank even further. He had settled Leland’s loan. He had paid for expensive private medical care within his own home. And now he had shelled out for a housesitter as well. If it took her the rest of her life, she would still be paying off what she now had to owe him in total!
‘Thanks,’ she muttered ungraciously, for her friend’s sake.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Angelos said with considerable irony. ‘And you will be here when I return. If you’re not, I’ll come looking for you in a very bad mood—’
‘Don’t talk like you own me!’ she warned him in feverish, frantic denial. ‘You were with that actress only a few days ago…you were never going to darken my door again—’
‘You darkened mine. Oh…yes, before I forget…’ Angelos withdrew something small and gold from his pocket and tossed it carelessly on the bed beside her.
Stunned, Maxie focused on the bracelet which she had pawned.
‘ “Ice Queen in pawnshop penury” ran the headline in the gossip column,’ Angelos recounted with a sardonic elevation of one ebony brow as he watched Maxie turn brick-red with chagrin. ‘The proprietor must’ve tipped off the press. I found the ticket in your bag and had the bracelet retrieved.’
Wide-eyed and stricken, Maxie just gaped at him.
Angelos dealt her a scorching smile of reassurance. ‘You won’t have to endure intrusive publicity like that while you are with me. I will protect you. You will never have to enter a pawnshop again. Nor will you ever have to shake your tresses over a misty green Alpine meadow full of wild-flowers… unless you want to do it for my benefit, of course.’
Maxie simply closed her eyes on him. She didn’t have the energy to fight. He was like a tank in the heat and fury of battle. Nothing short of a direct hit by a very big gun would stop his remorseless progress.
‘Silence feels good,’ Angelos remarked with silken satisfaction.
‘I hate you,’ Maxie mumbled, with a good deal of very real feeling.
‘You hate wanting me,’ Angelos contradicted with measured emphasis. ‘It’s poetic justice and don’t expect sympathy. When I had to think of you lying like a block of ice beneath Leland, I did not enjoy wanting you either!’
Maxie buried her burning face in the pillow with a hoarse little moan of self-pity. He left her nothing to hide behind. And any minute now she expected to be hauled out of concealment. Angelos preferred eye-to-eye contact at all times.
‘Get some sleep and eat plenty,’ Angelos instructed from somewhere alarmingly close at hand, making her stiffen in apprehension. ‘You should be well on the road to recovery by the time I get back from Greece.’
Maxie’s teeth bit into the pillow. Her blood boiled. For an instant she would have sacrificed the rest of her life for the ability to punch him in the mouth just once. She thought he had gone, and lifted her head. But Angelos, who never, ever, it seemed, did anything she expected, was still studying her from the door, stunning dark features grave. ‘By the way, I also expect you to be extremely discreet about this relationship—’
‘We don’t have a relationship!’ Maxie bawled at him. ‘And I wouldn’t admit to having been here in your apartment if the paparazzi put thumbscrews on me!’
Angelos absorbed that last promise with unhidden satisfaction. And then, with a casual inclination of his dark, arrogant head, he was gone, and she slumped, weak and shaken as a mouse who had been unexpectedly released from certain death by a cat.
Maxie finished packing her cases. While she had been ill, Angelos had had all her clothes brought over from Liz’s. The discovery had infuriated her. A few necessities would have been sensible, but everything she possessed? Had he really thought she would be willing to stay on after she recovered?
For the first thirty-six hours after his departure she had fretted and fumed, struggling to push herself too far too fast in her eagerness to vacate his unwelcome hospitality.<
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The suave consultant had made a final visit to advise her to take things slowly, and the shift of nursing staff had departed, but Maxie had had to face that she was still in no fit state to look after herself. So she had been sensible. She had taken advantage of the opportunity to convalesce and recharge her batteries while she was waited on hand and foot by the Greek domestic staff…but now she was leaving before Angelos returned In any case, Liz was coming home at lunchtime.
Two of Angelos’s security men were hovering in the vast echoing entrance hall. Taut with anxiety, they watched her stagger towards them with her suitcases. Neither offered an ounce of assistance.
‘Mr Petronides is not expecting—’ the bigger, older one finally began stiffly.
‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of this!’ Maxie thumped the lift button with a clenched fist of warning.
‘Mr Petronides doesn’t want you to leave, Miss Kendall. He’s going to be annoyed.’
Maxie opened dark blue eyes very, very wide. ‘So?’
‘We’ll be forced to follow you, Miss Kendall—’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, boys,’ Maxie murmured gently. ‘I would hate to call in the police because I was being harassed by stalkers. It would be sure to get into the papers too, and I doubt that your boss would enjoy that kind of publicity!’
In the act of stepping forward as the lift doors folded back, both men froze into frustrated stillness. Maxie dragged her luggage into the lift.
‘A word of advice,’ the older one breathed heavily. ‘He makes a relentless enemy.’
Maxie tossed her head in a dismissive movement. Then the doors shut and she sagged. No wonder Angelos threw his weight around so continually. Everybody was terrified of him. Unlimited wealth and power had made him what he was. His ruthless reputation chilled, his lethal influence threatened. The world had taught him that he could have whatever he wanted. Only not her…never ever her, she swore vehemently. Her mind was her own. Her body was her own. She was inviolate. Angelos couldn’t touch her, she reminded herself bracingly.