by Lynne Graham
Abruptly Angelos tensed and jerked up his dark head, frowning. ‘What’s that?’ he demanded.
‘W-what’s what?’ she stammered blankly.
‘Someone’s thumping on the front door.’
By then already engaged in gaping down at her own shamelessly bared breasts, the damp evidence of his carnal ministrations making the distended pink buds look even more wanton, Maxie gulped. With a low moan of distress she threw herself off the bed onto quaking legs.
‘You swine,’ she accused shakily, hauling down her T-shirt, crossing trembling arms and then rushing for the stairs.
She flung open the front door. Her nearest neighbour, Patrick Devenson, who had called in to introduce himself the day before, stared in at her. ‘Are you aware that you have a Ferrari upended in your stream?’
Dumbly, still trembling from the narrowness of her escape from Angelos and his seductive wiles, Maxie nodded like a wooden marionette.
The husky blond veterinary surgeon frowned down at her. ‘I was driving home and I saw this strange shape from the road, and, knowing you’re on your own here, I thought I’d better check it out. Are you OK?’
‘The driver’s upstairs, lying down,’ Maxie managed to say.
‘Want me to take a look?’
‘No need,’ she hastened to assert breathlessly.
‘Do you want me to ring a doctor?’
Maxie focused on the mobile in its holder at his waist. ‘I’d be terribly grateful if you’d let me use that to make a call.’
‘No problem…’ Patrick said easily, and passed the phone over. ‘Mind if I step in out of the rain?’
‘Sorry, not at all.’
Maxie walked upstairs rigid-backed, crossed the room and plonked the phone down on the bed beside Angelos. ‘Call for transport out of here or I’ll throw you out in the rain!’
His stunningly handsome features froze into impassivity, but not before she saw the wild burn of outrage flare in the depths of his brilliant eyes. He stabbed the buttons, loosed a flood of bitten-out Greek instructions and then, cutting the connection, sprang instantly out of bed. Maddeningly, he swayed slightly.
But Maxie was less affected by that than by her first intimidating look at a naked and very aroused male. Colouring hotly, she dragged her shaken scrutiny from him and fled downstairs again.
‘Thanks,’ she told Patrick.
‘Had a drink or two, had he? Wicked putting a machine like that in for a swim,’ Patrick remarked with typical male superiority as he moved very slowly back to the door. ‘Your boyfriend?’
‘No, he’s not.’
‘Dinner with me then, tomorrow night?’
Words of automatic refusal brimmed on Maxie’s lips, and then she hesitated. ‘Why not?’ she responded after that brief pause for thought. She was well aware that Angelos had to be hearing every word of the conversation.
‘Wonderful!’ Patrick breathed with unconcealed pleasure. ‘Eight suit you?’
‘Lovely.’
She watched him swing cheerfully back into his four-wheel drive and thought about how open and uncomplicated he was in comparison to Angelos, who was so devious and manipulative he would contrive to zigzag down a perfectly straight line. And she hated Angelos, she really did.
Hot tears stung her eyes then, and she blinked them back furiously. She hated him for showing her all over again how weak and foolish she could be. She hated that cool, clever brain he pitted against her, that brilliantly persuasive tongue that could make the unacceptable sound tempting, and that awesome and terrifying sexual heat he unleashed on her whenever she was vulnerable.
Barely five minutes later, Angelos strode fully dressed into the front room where she was waiting. He radiated black fury, stormy eyes glittering, sensual mouth compressed, rock-hard jawline at an aggressive angle. His hostile vibrations lanced through the already tense atmosphere, threatening to set it on fire.
‘You bitch…’ Angelos breathed, so hoarsely it sounded as if he could hardly get the words out. ‘One minute you’re in bed with me and the next you’re making a date with another man within my hearing!’
‘I wasn’t in bed with you, not the way you’re implying.’ Her slender hands knotted into taut fists of determination by her side, Maxie stood her ground, cringing with angry self-loathing only inside herself.
‘You don’t want any other man!’ Angelos launched at her with derisive and shocking candour. ‘You want me!’
Maxie was bone-white, her knees wobbling. In a rage, Angelos was pure intimidation; there was nothing he would not say. ‘I won’t be your mistress. I made that clear that from the start,’ she countered in a ragged rush. ‘And even if I had slept with you just now, I would still have asked you to leave. I will not be cajoled, manipulated or seduced into a relationship that I would find degrading—’
‘Only an innocent can be seduced.’ His accent harshened with incredulity over that particular choice of word. ‘Degrading?’ Outrage clenched his vibrant dark features hard. ‘Fool that I am, I would have treated you like a precious jewel!’
Locked up tight somewhere, to be enjoyed only in the strictest privacy, Maxie translated, deeply unimpressed.
‘I know you don’t believe me, but I was never Leland’s mistress—’
‘Did you call yourself his lover instead?’ Angelos derided.
Maxie swallowed convulsively. ‘No, I—’
Grim black eyes clashed with hers in near physical assault. ‘Theos…how blind I have been! All along you’ve been scheming to extract a better offer from me. One step forward, two steps back. You run and I chase. You tease and I pursue,’ he enumerated in harsh condemnation. ‘And now you’re trying to turn the screw by playing me off against another man—’
‘No!’ Maxie gasped, unnerved by the twisted light he saw her in.
Angelos growled, ‘If you think for one second that you can force me to offer a wedding ring for the right to enjoy that beautiful body, you are certifiably insane!’
His look of unconcealed contempt sent scorching anger tearing through Maxie. ‘Really…? Well, isn’t that just a shame, when it’s the only offer I would ever settle for,’ she stated, ready to use any weapon to hold him at bay.
Evidently somewhat stunned to have his worst suspicions so baldly confirmed, Angelos jerked as if he had run into a brick wall. He snatched in a shuddering breath, his nostrils flaring. ‘If I ever marry, my wife will be a lady with breeding, background and a decent reputation.’
Maxie flinched, stomach turning over sickly. She had given him a knife and he had plunged it in without compunction. But ferocious pride as great as his own, and hot, violent loathing enabled her to treat him to a scornful appraisal. ‘But you’ll still have a mistress, won’t you?’
‘Naturally I would choose a wife with my brain, not my libido,’ Angelos returned drily, but he had ducked the question and a dark, angry rise of blood had scoured his blunt cheekbones.
Maxie gave an exaggerated little shiver of revulsion. The atmosphere was explosive. She could feel his struggle to maintain control over that volatile temperament so much at war with that essentially cool intellect of his. It was etched in every restive, powerfully physical movement he made with his expressive hands and she rejoiced at the awareness, ramming down the stark bitterness and sense of pained inadequacy he had filled her with. ‘You belong in the Natural History Museum alongside the dinosaur bones.’
‘When I walk through that door I will never come back…how will you like that?’
‘Would you like to start walking now?’
‘What I would like is to take you on that bed upstairs and teach you just once exactly what you’re missing!’
Wildly unprepared for that roughened admission, Maxie collided with golden eyes ablaze with frustration. It was like being dragged into a fire and burned by her own hunger. She shivered convulsively. ‘Dream on,’ she advised fiercely, but her voice shook in self-betrayal.
The noise of a car drawing up outside
broke the taut silence.
Angelos inclined his arrogant dark head in a gesture of grim dismissal that made her squirm, and then he walked.
CHAPTER SIX
MAXIE drifted like a sleepwalker through the following five days. The Ferrari was retrieved by a tow-truck and two men who laughed like drains throughout the operation. She contacted a builder to have the roof inspected and the news was as bad as she had feared. The cottage needed to be reroofed, and the quote was way beyond her slender resources.
She dined out with Patrick Devenson. No woman had ever tried harder to be attracted to a man He was good-looking and easy company. Desperate to feel a spark, she let him kiss her at the end of the evening, but it wasn’t like failing on an electric fence, it was like putting on a pair of slippers. Seriously depressed, Maxie made an excuse when he asked when he could see her again.
She didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep. She dreamt of fighting with Angelos. She dreamt of making wild, passionate love for the first time in her life. And, most grotesque of all, she dreamt of drifting down a church aisle towards a scowling, struggling Greek in handcuffs. She felt like an alien inside her own head and body.
She sat down and painstakingly made a list of every flaw that Angelos possessed. It covered two pages. In a rage with herself, she wept over that list. She loathed him. Yet that utterly mindless craving for his enlivening, domineering Neanderthal man presence persisted, killing her appetite and depriving her of all peace of mind.
How could she miss him, how could she possibly? How could simple sexual attraction be so devastating a leveller? she asked herself in furious despair and shame. And, since she could only be suffering from the fallout of having repressed her own physical needs for so long, why on earth hadn’t she fancied Patrick?
At lunchtime on the fifth day, she heard a car coming up the lane and went to the window. A silver Porsche pulled up. When Catriona Ferguson emerged, Maxie was startled. She had never in her life qualified for a personal visit from the owner of the Star modelling agency and couldn’t begin to imagine what could’ve brought the spiky, city-loving redhead all the way from town.
On the doorstep, Catriona dealt her a wide, appreciative smile. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Maxie…you have to be the Comeback Queen of the Century.’
‘You’ve got some work for me?’ Maxie ushered her visitor into the front room.
‘Since the rumour mill got busy, you’re really hot,’ Catriona announced with satisfaction. ‘The day after tomorrow, there’s a Di Venci fashion show being staged in London…a big splashy charity do, and your chance to finally make your debut on the couture circuit.’
‘The rumour mill?’ Maxie was stunned by what the older woman was telling her. One minute she was yesterday’s news and the next she was being offered the biggest break of her career to date? That didn’t make sense.
Having sat down to open a tiny electronic notepad, Catriona flashed her an amused glance. ‘The gossip columns are rumbling like mad…don’t you read your own publicity?’
Maxie stiffened. ‘I don’t buy newspapers.’
‘I’m very discreet. Your private life is your own.’ However, Catriona still searched Maxie’s face with avid curiosity. ‘But what a coup for a lady down on her luck, scandalously maligned and dropped into social obscurity… Only one of the richest men in the world—’
Maxie jerked. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Catriona raised pencilled brows. ‘I’m only talking about the guy who has just single-handedly relaunched your career without knowing it! The paparazzo who had his film exposed howled all over the tabloids about who he had seen you with—’
‘You’re talking about Angelos…’
‘And when I received a cautious visit from a tight-mouthed gentleman I know to be close to the Greek tycoon himself, I was just totally amazed, not to mention impressed to death,’ Catriona trilled, her excitement unconcealed. ‘So I handed over your address. They say Angelos Petronides never forgets a favour…or, for that matter, a slight.’
Maxie had turned very pale. ‘I…’
‘So why are you up here vegetating next door to a field of sheep?’ Catriona angled a questioning glance at her. ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ‘em keen? Popular report has it that this very week he dumped Natalie Cibaud for you. Whatever you’re doing would appear to be working well. And he’s an awesome catch, twenty-two-carat gorgeous, and as for that delicious scary reputation of his—’
‘There’s nothing between Angelos and me,’ Maxie cut in with flat finality, but her head buzzed with the information that Angelos had evidently still been seeing the glamorous French film actress.
The silence that fell was sharp.
‘If it’s already over, keep it to yourself.’ Catriona’s disappointment was blatant. ‘The sudden clamour for your services relates very much to him. The story that you’ve captured his interest is enough to raise you to celebrity status right now. So keep the people guessing for as long as you can…’
When Maxie recalled how appalled she had been at the threat of being captured in newsprint with Angelos and being subjected to more lurid publicity, she very nearly choked at that cynical advice. And when she considered how outraged Angelos must be at the existence of such rumours, when he had demanded her discretion, she sucked in a sustaining breath.
Catriona checked her watch. ‘Look, why don’t I give you a lift back to town? I suggest you stay with that friend in the suburbs again. The paparazzi are scouring the pavements for you. You don’t want to be found yet. You need to make the biggest possible impact when you appear on that catwalk.’
It took guts, but Maxie nodded agreement. The old story, she thought bitterly. She needed the money. Not just for the roof but also to pay off Angelos as well. Yet the prospect of all those flashing cameras and the vitriolic pens of the gossip columnists made her sensitive stomach churn. Money might not buy happiness, but the lack of it could destroy all freedom of choice. And Maxie acknowledged then that the precious freedom to choose her own way of life was what she now craved most.
Scanning Maxie’s strained face, Catriona sighed. ‘Whatever has happened to the Ice Queen image?’
As she packed upstairs, Maxie knew the answer to that. Angelos had happened. He had chipped her out from behind the safety of her cool, unemotional façade by making her feel things she had never felt before…painful things, hurtful things. She wanted the ice back far more desperately than Catriona did.
Maxie came off the catwalk to a rousing bout of thunderous applause. Immediately she abandoned the strutting insolent carriage which was playing merry hell with her backbone. Finished, at last. The relief was so huge, she trembled. Never in her life had she felt so exposed.
Before she could reach the changing room, Manny Di Venci, a big bruiser of a man with a shaven head and sharp eyes, came backstage to intercept her. ‘You were brilliant! Standing room only out there, but now it’s time to beat a fast retreat. No, you don’t need to get changed,’ the designer laughed, urging her at a fast pace down a dimly lit corridor that disorientated her even more after the glaring spotlights of the show. ‘You’re the best PR my collection has ever had, and a special lunch-date demands a touch of Di Venci class.’
Presumably Catriona had set up lunch with some VIP she had to impress.
Thrust through a rear entrance onto a pavement drenched in sunlight, Maxie was dazzled again. Squinting at the open door of the waiting vehicle, she climbed in. The car had pulled back into the traffic before she registered that she was in a huge, opulent limo with shaded windows, but she relaxed when she saw the huge squashy bag of her possessions sitting on the floor. She checked the bag; her clothes were in it too. Somebody had been very efficient.
Off the catwalk, she was uncomfortable in the daring peacock-blue cocktail suit. She wore only skin below the fitted jacket with its plunging neckline, and the skirt was horrendously tight and short. She would have preferred not to meet a potential client in so reveal
ing an outfit, but she might as well make the best of being sought after while it lasted because it wouldn’t last long. The minute Angelos appeared in public with another woman, she would be as ‘hot’ as a cold potato. But oh, how infuriating it must be for Angelos to have played an accidental part in pushing her back into the limelight!
When the door of the limo swung open, Maxie stepped out into a cold, empty basement car park. She froze in astonishment, attacked by sudden mute terror, and then across the vast echoing space she recognised one of Angelos’s security men, and was insensibly relieved for all of ten seconds. But the nightmare image of kidnapping which had briefly gripped her was immediately replaced by a sensation of almost suffocating panic.
‘Where am I?’ she demanded of the older man standing by a lift with the doors wide in readiness.
‘Mr Petronides is waiting for you on the top floor, Miss Kendall.’
‘I didn’t realise that limo was his. I thought I was meeting up with my agent and a client for lunch…this is o-outrageous!’ Hearing the positively pathetic shake of rampant nerves in her own voice, Maxie bit her lip and stalked into the lift. She was furious with herself. She had been the one to make assumptions. She should have spoken to the chauffeur before she got into the car.
Like a protective wall in front of her, the security man stayed by the doors, standing back again only after they had opened. Her face taut with temper, Maxie walked out into a big octagonal hall with a cool tiled floor. It was not Angelos’s apartment and she frowned, wondering where on earth she was. Behind her the lift whirred downward again and she stiffened, feeling ludicrously cut off from escape.
Ahead of her, a door stood wide. She walked into a spacious, luxurious reception room. Strong sunlight was pouring through the windows. The far end of the room seemed to merge into a lush green bank of plants. Patio doors gave way into what appeared to be a conservatory. Was that where Angelos was waiting for her?
Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs. Utterly despising her own undeniable mix of apprehension and excitement, Maxie threw back her slim shoulders and stalked out into…fresh air. Too late did she appreciate that she was actually out on a roof garden. As she caught a dizzy glimpse of the horrific drop through a gap in the decorative stone screening to her right, her head reeled. Freezing to the spot, she uttered a sick moan of fear.