No. She jerked her hand away. This man in his expensive charcoal Italian suit was not Nikos. Nikos was a lie. She had to remember that.
Somehow she found her voice. “Thank you, Mr. Santorini.”
“Please…call me Dominic.”
No, call me Nikos, he wanted to demand. Call me Nikos as I drag you beneath me and sheathe myself in your warm velvet body. Moan my name as I suckle your very sensitive nipples. Scream as I make love to you with my mouth.
Damn it, she felt it, too. She had to. They had to talk. He had to dig Lexie out from under this stranger. “Bradley, would you please excuse us?”
Lexie’s legs turned to spaghetti. He was staring at her like a predator contemplating a meal.
Before he could unnerve her completely, she turned away. “I’d like Mr. Stafford to look at these, too, if you don’t mind.” With unsteady hands, she began to spread her drawings out on the large table beside her.
Dominic wanted to jerk her around and demand answers.
Who was he kidding? He wanted to strip her naked and take her right where she stood. With a ferocity he hadn’t felt in years, he wanted to get beneath that trim suit to the body his hands itched to touch. He wanted to muss that hair and smear her lipstick with his kisses. Wanted to heat that damned cool voice and shatter the distance she’d placed between them. Wanted, more than anything, to laugh with her again—but the laughing tomboy had vanished.
When he hung back, Bradley looked at him oddly.
What had changed? Was she only hurt that he hadn’t returned or had he been that wrong about her? Dominic swore silently every ripe curse he could remember. Gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached, he nodded curtly at his aide. “Let’s see what you have.”
His secretary spoke from the doorway. “Mr. Santorini, there’s a conference call on one from Seattle. Do you want to take it?”
Lexie glanced at him quickly, and he wanted to order her to stay right where she was until he could clear the place out. Get rid of every damned person here. Lock the doors behind them and find his way back to the magic.
But people depended on him—many people. This call was earlier than expected, but it was absolutely crucial to Poseidon.
Bradley knew its importance. He spoke up. “It’s all right. We’ll move to my office. I’ll give you a report later.”
Dominic shot a quick look at Lexie, fiercely willing her to look at him.
But when she did, she was not Lexie. The tomboy with grease on her cheek had vanished. In her place stood a stranger whose posture screamed how much she wanted away from him.
Had he only imagined that magical Lexie?
It wouldn’t be his first experience with masks and betrayal. Obviously what he had felt that night had been a one-way experience.
Just as well. He had a company to save.
“Fine. Ask them to hold a minute, Mrs. Murray. I will be right there.” He started to offer his hand, but the stranger who looked just like Lexie had already gathered up her drawings and was halfway to the door.
Lexie couldn’t remember how she got out of the building and into her pickup. Her mind seethed and boiled, thoughts tumbling over one another in horror and confusion.
She didn’t want to think about what she’d just learned.
She wanted to take back the last—how long had she been driving around? However long it had been, she wanted an hour before that.
Back to the time when she could only think of Nikos as a man who broke a promise to come back.
She fought the urge to drop her head to the steering wheel and weep. How could she reconcile the man who caressed her body so tenderly, who elicited depths of passion from her that she’d never dreamed existed—how could she reconcile her pirate lover with the man who’d built that megalith of a company?
And how could she even begin to see him as a man who would steal Max’s dreams?
He couldn’t have…could he?
She should just ask him, flat-out—but how did you ask a question like that? Did you steal my friend’s creation?
She wasn’t even sure she could have asked such a question of the man she’d known as Nikos. But this man? This remote, forbidding stranger who hadn’t even acknowledged they’d met? This man who was almost as rich as Croesus and gaining daily?
History taught that successes as big as Poseidon took intense concentration and ruthlessness to build. Where was there room for the man who’d taken her breath away, inside the man who could build all of that?
“Dear God…” she whispered. What did she do? She pulled into her driveway and dropped her head back against the seat, feeling sick. How could she have let him touch her? How could she have been so blind?
To think that she’d cried over him, shed tears that he hadn’t shown up. Told him so blithely all the reasons she was sure she could trust him.
She’d been such easy pickings.
The old lesson reared its nasty little head.
Never let a man sweep you off your feet. Her mother’s voice rang out, clear as a bell. Look at what happened to me.
She’d been more right than she’d known when she’d compared him to a pirate. Pirates plundered, they didn’t trouble with something as inane as a conscience. She’d made it easy for him.
So easy. Too easy, Lexie.
He hadn’t felt the magic—only she had.
But the note… He’d called it special, their night.
Lexie laughed, but it rang hollow and hurt her chest. He’d come back to his real life and realized his mistake. It wasn’t as though he was the first to find her wanting. And he was rich, filthy rich. Moved in a jet-set crowd. Knew women all over the world more sophisticated and glamorous than she’d ever be.
How could she work with him? The gala was to be held at his house and from here on, though she had other jobs, it would be her main focus.
His house? His mansion. He lived in another world. Just another grease monkey, right, Lexie?
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t work on this contract, now that she knew. She couldn’t bear to face him.
Not the way she’d lost her mind in his arms. She couldn’t.
Max, she reminded herself. She might be needed to help Max prove the theft. He was her best friend and she couldn’t let him down.
She wasn’t a coward. She had to find some way to close herself up tight and go through with this contract. How, she didn’t know, but she had no choice. And while she was at it, she had to wipe away every memory of a night that was burned into her brain. She could do it; she had practice. After all, if she knew anything, she knew about letting go of girlish dreams.
Wiping at her wet cheeks with the edge of one palm, Lexie opened the door and got out of the pickup, straightening her shoulders as she walked to her door.
She wouldn’t be a fool again. She would stay out of Santorini’s path, get the job done, get on with her life.
The red light on her answering machine was blinking. Weary to the bone, she reached over and punched the play button.
A strange woman’s crisp voice spoke. “Ms. Grayson, this is Evelyn Murray, Dominic Santorini’s secretary. Mr. Santorini wishes you to meet with him tomorrow at his home at 2:00 p.m. to discuss your plans for erecting the sets for the gala. If two o’clock is not suitable, please call me at your earliest convenience to discuss an alternate time.”
Meet with him. At his home. Alone. Her earlier resolve wavered. Shivered like aspen leaves in the chill mountain wind. When would be a good time?
Lexie sank into a chair, rubbing the heel of her hand over her breastbone to soothe away the ache and confusion at the very thought of being alone with Dominic Santorini.
How about never, Mrs. Murray?
Chapter Three
“You look whipped. What’s up?” Bradley asked later that day.
Dominic shrugged. “The usual.” Taking in a deep breath, he nodded at the computer screen. “Have you seen it?”
“Yeah.” Bradley began to pace. “You we
re right. Somebody’s making a move on our stock. Still in little bits and pieces, but the signs are all there. And with our ready cash short—” He exhaled sharply. “The timing stinks.”
“We could dip into reserves. We have the money.”
“But then the stock will drop.”
“Not for a little while. Not until the next report.” Dominic swore softly. “If only Legend Quest was ready to roll today.” The new game they were about to launch would solve all their cash problems. Its cutting-edge graphics would bring their competitors to their knees.
“Maybe we should cancel plans for the gala. That’s a chunk of change we don’t have to spend.”
Dominic shook his head. “No. We need this to debut with a splash now more than ever.” He wanted some good news for a change. Something to make him forget how badly he wanted to be back in that geodesic dome that seemed light-years away. “Tell me how the final tests are going.”
“That’s one thing that couldn’t be better. We’ll be ready to ship on schedule. The new graphics will have everyone’s tongues hanging out.” Bradley smiled. “Legend is going to leave the whole industry eating our dust.”
Dominic frowned, contemplating. “I wish we could launch now.” He swore ripely. “I should not have tied up so much of my own money in this project. I could have bought more stock and protected us.”
Bradley’s face went sober. “As long as word doesn’t get out prematurely, we’ll be all right.”
Dominic sat up straighter, the cold gleam of determination on his mind. “Peter Kassaros will never get control. Poseidon is mine. It will remain mine.” He looked up. “Ours,” he corrected. He wished they’d never gone public. “Since Ariana and I together own fifty-one percent and you have ten percent more, we will be all right.”
“We don’t know that it’s Kassaros,” Bradley pointed out.
“I feel it—” Dominic tapped his chest. “In here. I know it is him.”
“Look, Dominic, I know you never wanted to trade stock publicly. That was my idea, a way to get the capital to expand back then.” He lowered his chin, looking down at the floor. He sighed, then raised his gaze to meet Dominic’s. “I shouldn’t have badgered you into it. We’re vulnerable until Legend Quest starts paying off.”
“It’s done.” Dominic waved the statement away.
“We will deal with it. It’s hardly the first rough spot we have survived.” He’d built Poseidon from nothing. Hard work and nerve-racking tension were nothing new to him.
“Things have been pretty intense around here.” His friend paused for a minute. “You look tired. Head home, why don’t you?”
Though he craved the oblivion of sleep, Dominic shook his head. “Not yet. Too much to do.”
Much later, Dominic turned into the long driveway to his hilltop mansion, suddenly struck by the comparison. His place was huge, luxurious. Worth a fortune and guarded by a high iron fence and an elaborate security system.
It looked like a prison. He’d thought this place important once. Now it only seemed sterile.
He wanted to drive straight back to Lexie’s dome, to watch the clouds on the ceiling, to swing on her porch.
To try out the sultan’s bed. And the tub.
He wanted to hear Lexie laugh, wanted to bury himself in her body again. The memories had drifted through his brain every hour since he’d left her.
But that Lexie was gone, if she ever existed. The real Lexie was no different than any other woman, after all. Able to change masks with ease.
It would be awkward, working with her on the gala. There was not time to replace her—the date was too close. And she did wonderful work, he had to admit. When he had looked at the drawings after she’d left, he’d seen the same color and imagination he’d seen in her home.
No, she could not be replaced, even if there was time. What she had designed was exactly what they would need to launch Legend in an unforgettable manner. That had to be his only concern now, not some night he had taken for more than it was.
Cursing himself sharply, he entered his house.
“Señor Dominic,” greeted his housekeeper. Then she frowned. “You have not eaten. You are working too hard. Sit down right now and I will feed you.”
Dominic had to smile. Mrs. Garcia clucked over him like a mother hen. She’d been in heaven when he’d brought Ariana home two weeks ago to become her newest chick. “Do I have time for a shower?”
“Of course. But hurry now—I can see you growing thinner by the moment.”
He chuckled. “Where’s Ariana?”
“Out by the pool.” Worry crossed her forehead. “It has been one of her bad days.”
Guilt assailed him. He should have been there when her selfish, grasping mother had died, leaving her penniless. She’d been easy pickings for Peter Kassaros, feeling that she had nowhere else to turn. Kassaros had seduced her, then his obsession had turned her into a virtual prisoner. Ariana had finally escaped with the help of a sympathetic maid and contacted Dominic, but she was a shadow of the fearless girl he’d once known.
“I’ll stop to see her first.”
When he opened the door, Ariana looked up, then rose to greet him. Willowy and tall, fragile as an orchid, she glided across the deck in a long white sundress that accented her heartbreaking beauty. Her eyes were as dark as his, her hair as black but straight and long.
“You look tired,” she said.
He smiled and kissed her forehead. “I’m fine.” For a moment he wished he could tell her about Lexie, but she could not help. No one could. He had made a mistake, that was all. The guileless tomboy was only a pose. “How are you? Did you rest today?”
Her lips puckered in distaste. “Nikos, I can’t just lie around your house for months.”
The name danced across his hearing in a way it never had. He wanted to hear Lexie moan it again. With effort, he shoved thoughts of her to the back of his mind. “You have been through a difficult time. You are allowed some time to mend.”
He couldn’t bear the sorrow that robbed her of hope. He changed the subject. “Bradley sends his best.”
A faint smile crossed her lips. “He called me. He wants to take me to dinner.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know if it is.” She glanced up, her gaze troubled. “I don’t trust my judgment anymore.”
“You can trust Bradley. He won’t hurt you. I’d trust him with my life.”
Then, for just a second, the old, irrepressible Ariana twinkled in her gaze. “But would you let him drive your T-bird?”
Dominic chuckled. “My life, but not my T-bird.” And just that quickly, tousled auburn hair and mischievous green eyes leaped into his mind again.
He had to stop thinking of her. That Lexie did not exist.
“Come on,” he urged, needing the change in subject. “Mrs. Garcia wants to feed us.”
Ariana smiled faintly. “Heaven knows we might as well obey. It didn’t take me long to learn that even my big-shot brother does exactly as Mrs. Garcia says.”
Dominic chuckled, leading her inside. And tried not to look out across the violet hills and wonder what Lexie was looking at tonight.
The next afternoon, Lexie stared around her as she drove through the gate and up the winding, tree-lined road toward the most whispered-about mansion in Austin, Texas. The land through which she passed had been left in its native state, live oaks and cedars screening the house from those passing along the road below.
Her stomach jittered as if she’d swallowed jumping beans. Nonsense, Lexie. It’s a job, like any other.
She needed to treat it that way, but oh, that was easier said than done. Absently she chewed on a thumbnail.
Then she broke through the dense tree cover.
There it was. The home of one of the richest men in America, grounds exquisitely landscaped around a solid white-stone structure that could have perched on a sunwashed hilltop in his homeland of Greece. It looked as if it could survive for centuries, solid
as a rock, softened only by the wide terraces that spilled down like stone skirts, open to the view from glistening walls of windows, each shaded from the blistering Texas sun.
It was beautiful and cold and heartless. Just like the man who’d ordered her to meet him here.
Nothing at all like the man her prodigious imagination had conjured up on one magic-filled night. That man could not live in this merciless beauty.
She was early, on purpose. She wanted to walk the grounds where the gala would be held while she could still think straight, devoid of the confusion that had rendered her all but mute yesterday in Santorini’s office.
When she’d been buzzed through the gate, she’d asked the man on duty if Santorini were here and breathed a deep sigh of gratitude that she’d arrived first.
Lexie squared her shoulders, grabbed her portfolio and emerged from her pickup, striding toward the open meadow that she had signed a contract to turn into magic two weeks from now.
She’d been measuring and marking, feeling like a vandal with her can of spray paint to mark the rough edges of the layout for the crew that would show up next. But the work soothed her, engaged her mind in the one place she felt sure of herself—her work.
So engrossed was she that the flash of white in the corner of her vision jerked her up straight, heart pounding.
A woman watched her silently from the edge of the nearest terrace. Lexie’s first impression was of a doe ready to flee into the forest.
So Lexie smiled to reassure her. “Hello.”
The answering smile was very white and fleeting in a face that could stop traffic.
“I’m Lexie Grayson, the designer for the launch gala,” she said, holding out her hand.
She could tell they were related even before the woman spoke. “I’m Ariana Santorini, Nikos—Dominic’s sister.” The hand that clasped Lexie’s was slender, fragile despite Ariana’s height, and a little uncertain, just like her eyes.
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