by Various
‘Anywhere nice?’ he enquired casually.
Keeping her eyes glued to her own reflection, Mia nodded and watched her hair move against the black satin jacket. ‘Dinner,’ she said, watching her lightly glossed lips part to form the response.
When she looked into her eyes she had no choice but to acknowledge the lurking darkness of deep uncertainty at her impulsive decision to go out like this. Was she mad? Was she stupid? What did she know about surviving in this huge metropolis? She didn’t even know whether to turn to the left or to the right when she reached the street. The left led downtown where the more refined restaurants were situated. The right led to the local high street with its trendy bistros and café bars she passed on the occasions she caught the tube home and walked the rest of the way back here.
Left or right? Refined or trendy?
‘You?’ she asked because she felt she should do.
‘Same.’
She looked up—not wanting to—and wished she had not when she found him checking out the set of his black bow tie in one of the mirrors, chin thrust upwards, beautifully black-framed eyes as dark as night. Sensation sprinkled like static between fine layers of her skin and she looked away again quickly, back to the stranger she saw herself as, dressed in a dusky-lilac shift dress and a black satin jacket, with a lot of long leg showing and her ankles elevated by the four-inch heels on her shoes.
Irritating and juvenile…
Was he on his way to meet the new replacement for Lucy Clayton as Fiona had predicted? Was she tall and blonde and heart-stoppingly beautiful and screamingly intelligent and sophisticated? Was he planning to bring her back here to his apartment to make wildly passionate love with her while Mia lay alone in her bed next door and—
‘Where—?’
Her small chin jerked up and their eyes clashed in a mirror; tiny prickles of attraction attacked her flesh. ‘Scusi?’ she murmured blankly.
‘I was asking where you are going for dinner,’ Nikos enlightened dryly—in English.
‘Oh. I don’t know,’ Mia let slip before she could think about it, watched his eyebrows arch, felt a deep inner niggle at the slip, then thankfully her pride came to her rescue with what she thought was a truly inspirational lie. ‘I am meeting someone,’ she claimed. ‘I don’t know where he is taking me to eat.’
Fortunately the lift stopped and the doors slid open then, giving her the opportunity to escape. Her shiny black heels tapped on cream marble as she crossed the ground-floor lobby in her urgency to get away as fast as she could.
Nikos still reached the door in time to open it for her, then offered a cool nod in acknowledgement of her muffled murmur of thanks.
It must have been raining. Outside the ground was covered in a shiny layer of wet. Striding out across the private car park, Mia was aware that he had diverted over to where his silver car was parked.
What she did not know was the way Nikos stood watching her pause uncertainly once she’d hit the street, as if she was unsure which way to go next.
Dinner with a man…
Something hard gave him a kick in his gut.
Was she meeting the tall blond clean-cut guy from accounts he had seen her with today?
If she was, the damn jerk needed to learn some manners. What kind of man let a young and beautiful stranger to this city find her own way to their chosen venue?
She looked lost already. And the weirdest kind of tingling sensation was skittering down his torso and legs.
She struck off to the right, disappearing out of his sight in seconds. Nikos held his stance for a few seconds longer, then he muttered, ‘Damn it,’ giving in to what the tingling represented and slid his hand into his pocket to exchange his car keys for his mobile phone.
Ten minutes later, Mia was hovering outside one of the bistros. She was pretending to read the menu list stuck on the window but really she was checking out the busy interior, and the bravado that had brought her this far was now lying dead at her feet.
She could not go in there. She did not know why she had ever come up with the crazy idea that she could! And the evening was chilly, the black satin jacket doing nothing to keep the chill at bay and—
‘Been stood up…?’
Hearing that deeply accented, mildly sardonic and crushingly familiar voice arrive from somewhere behind her caused a sudden burn of weak tears to flood her eyes. It took every bit of self-control she had to blink the tears away again, then lift up her chin and turn to look at him.
He was standing across the busy pavement, leaning against the side of his silver supercar with his hands resting inside his trouser pockets, his jacket pushed back from his bright white shirt. Tall, dark and so very sexily sophisticated, Mia observed helplessly. The overhead lights shining amber onto the wet pavement also honeyed the skin of his too-perfect face. It was no wonder most of the women passing across the gap between them stared at him, Mia thought as a whole clutch of them went by with their eyes glued to his long, lean, supremely elegant stance.
If he noticed he did not show it. He did not take his eyes from her face. His mouth was wearing a kind of half-mocking smile that stung her pride and made her wish that some other tall, dark, handsome man would just walk up to her and pull her into his embrace.
Irritating and juvenile…
‘No,’ she answered his question. ‘He’s just a few minutes late.’
With the ease of a man used to doing everything with grace, she watched him tilt his dark head down and, without removing his hand from his pocket, twist his wrist, shrug back his shirt cuff and somehow manage to display his watch.
‘This is not the kind of place a man keeps a woman waiting out on the pavement, cara,’ he said when he looked back at her again.
‘Well, you should know since you seem to be doing the same thing to your date,’ Mia fired back.
‘I pick my dates up at their door.’
‘Then please go and do so,’ she invited and turned back to the bistro window.
The seconds ticked by. Her ears pricked and her senses went on the alert for the sound of his car driving away. She found the space around her suddenly swamped by a group of people who wanted to check out the menu too. By the time they’d moved on she was wishing she’d had the foresight to tag on to them.
Because he was still there. She could feel his silent presence like some dark force trying to drag her back round to face him. After another second or two she heard him sigh, then the sound of his footsteps bringing him close. Tension zinged down her backbone and remained there stinging like an electric charge. A second later he was standing right behind her—she could feel his body heat along her back.
‘Will you go away,’ she snapped. ‘You are making me feel stupid!’
‘Once your date arrives,’ he agreed. ‘Who is he anyway?’
Keeping her eyes fixed rigidly on the bistro window, she said, ‘That is none of your business.’
‘No?’ A hand moved against her spine like a finely brushed admonishment. ‘I’m the guy who’s been placed in charge of your care, so that makes it my business.’
‘I do not need a babysitter.’
‘Nor do you need a man who plans to sit you down to dine in a place like this. It’s a bog standard pizza place, Mia, with a cheap and fast turnaround.’
Was it—? Mia stared at the menu, still none the wiser having never eaten at such an establishment. Until Nikos had taken her with him to his working lunches she had never eaten in a restaurant at all!
‘You will be outside again before you know you’ve eaten,’ he predicted. ‘What happens, then? An hour or so in one of the pubs dotted down the street to soften you up with a couple of glasses of cheap wine, or will he be expecting to go straight back to your place to finish off the evening in the comfort of your bed?’
‘Well, you should know since you are fabled for your fast turnaround,’ she swung round to fling at him and was very pleased to see that likening his dating skills to a fast pizza restaurant made h
is chiselled jaw clench.
‘That was not what I—’
‘Grazie, for your wise advice,’ Mia cut him off midsentence. ‘When my date arrives I will be certain to ask him what his intentions are.’
‘Or I will’.
Sparking up like a firework she gasped out, ‘No you will not!’
‘And he’s not only unforgivably late he’s unfit to date a Balfour.’
Half unwilling to believe they were even having this conversation, Mia stared up at him. ‘And you believe you have the right to make that judgement?’
‘In your father’s place—yes.’
In other words she was a duty he felt compelled to oversee! ‘Well, you are not my father—or my idea of what a father figure should be! And in case you have forgotten,’ she added stiffly. ‘You went out of your way to tell me to back off from irritating you, so now I am telling you to do the same thing for me, Nikos, and just go away!’
With that she turned to walk off down the high street. His long fingers curling around one of her shoulders held her still.
‘Mia, this is stupid,’ he sighed out heavily.
Or irritating and juvenile…Why was that cutting remark still stinging her as badly as this? Mia asked herself.
She did not know. She did not understand what she was feeling or even what she was doing any more.
‘Please let go of me…’ She tried to move away from him.
His fingers tightened gently. ‘No,’ he refused. ‘Look…’ he said, ‘I’m—sorry if I sounded…insensitive to your feelings but—’
‘Sounded it?’ she threw out.
‘Was insensitive, then,’ he altered, the chiselled line of his jaw clenching. ‘But it does not change the fact that your so-called date has either stood you up or is only too happy to leave you to stand around here like a fool!’
‘And that is your sensitive side talking?’ So close to tears now, she had to push a hand up between them so she could cover her trembling mouth.
A soft curse rattled from him. I will take you to dinner,’ he offered, sounding so driven to say it that Mia almost snapped the hand up higher to slap his face!
But she didn’t because it would be irritating and juvenile of her to do it! ‘I can provide my own dinner,’ she told him stiffly. ‘And you already have a date.’
‘I did have a date until—’ Nikos stopped, compressing his lips, then dealt her a glinting glimmer of a look ‘—until I was stood up too,’ he finished dryly.
‘You—?’ It was like discovering he had a chink in his impenetrable armour. Mia was so intrigued by the phenomenon she stopped fighting his grip to stare up at him instead.
‘It happens to the best of us,’ Nikos compounded on his quick-thinking masterpiece of deception. ‘So shall we find somewhere quieter than this to—commiserate with each other while we eat?’
Like a lamb to the slaughter, he mocked, feeling his conscience pinch him when his beautiful PA dealt him a sympathetic look.
But at least the deal was done.
Chapter Four
TWENTY minutes later they were being shown to a table in a very exclusive restaurant and the waiter was taking away her jacket while Mia glanced around.
If this was the kind of place Nikos tended to frequent, then she was willing to be impressed by its softly lit ambience.
‘Have I been here before?’ she asked.
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Surprising him with a sudden grin she told him, ‘If you have not brought me here for one of your business lunches, Nikos, then I have not been here. These kinds of places all have a similar look to them, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’ He glanced around their plush, hushed award-winning surroundings. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’
Mia nodded. ‘They probably look different in the daylight when they are filled with sharp-suited men and women looking serious and intelligent instead of…’ Her voice trailed off, even white teeth pressing down into her lower lip to halt the potentially provocative word she had been going to use.
‘Intimate.’ Nikos was not so sensitive. ‘It’s called good business sense,’ he enlightened. ‘Not the people but the restaurants,’ he explained what he’d meant. ‘They change their mood with the mood of the city. By day they provide the sharp suits like me with a place to work while we eat.’ A dryness entered his voice. ‘By night they soften their appearance to provide a more relaxed ambience for their more sociable clientele. I love the dress…’
‘Oh.’ Startled by the sudden and totally unexpected compliment Mia blushed as she glanced down at the lilac silk dress. ‘It used to belong to my sister Bella.’ Critical fingers plucked at the dress’s dipping cleavage. ‘There used to be a strip of lace here but I unpicked it because I thought it looked less fussy without it.’
‘Oscar has not provided you with your own wardrobe?’
His eyes were slow to rise to catch her brief shrug. ‘He offered. But I did not see the need to buy more new clothes when the closets at Balfour were stuffed full of things no one else wanted to wear.’
A young waiter arrived to offer them menus then. Mia winged him a warm smile and when she realised he was Italian she fell into conversation with him. Veiling his eyes Nikos observed the change in her as she talked. Her voice had taken on a warm and earthy vibrancy Nikos had not heard before. The young waiter fell in love with her as Nikos watched. She had no idea of the power she was wielding, had not even noticed the waiter’s darkened eyes and the raised colour in his face. When her slender hands joined in the conversation the waiter was hooked, his eyes fixed on the creamy cleavage on show behind the expressive fingers.
And Nikos felt a sudden blistering urge to punch the young fool! Perhaps he moved, he wasn’t sure, but something made the waiter glance his way. The next second he was rushing out an apology and moving away at lightning speed.
‘He comes from San Marcello,’ Mia enlightened him as if his Italian was not good enough to follow their conversation, and with no clue at all what had made the waiter take flight as if someone had set fire to his heels.
Nikos knew. He could still feel the trails of it lingering behind his veiling eyelids. ‘A neighbour, then,’ he murmured.
‘Sí, by a hilltop or two.’ Settling back into her seat she shook the silky fall of her hair back from her face, then picked up her menu.
When he continued to sit there doing and saying nothing she glanced up at him and frowned, then followed it up with a sigh. ‘OK, what have I done to annoy you this time?’ she demanded. ‘Have I broken some very important rule of dining that is likely to earn me a plate of cold food?’
‘Brunel would call it breaking the rules anyway,’ he responded impassively.
‘Brunel…? What has he got to do with…’
Enlightenment dawned. Mia flicked a look across the restaurant to where the friendly waiter now stood to attention, striving to keep his eyes away from this corner of the room.
‘You are accusing me of flirting,’ she said in a hushed breath of stunned disbelief.
Nikos picked up his menu and opened it. ‘You tied him in knots. For a few interesting seconds I thought he was going to pull out a chair and join us.’
‘We were just talking about Italy!’ Mia impressed upon him in self-defence.
‘I got this really bad feeling that I was about to be sidelined. Not good for my ego at all.’ Nikos smiled. ‘Lesson one in the use of social skills, cara, concentrate solely on the man you are dining with.’
Not quite sure if she was supposed to laugh at the ridiculous image Nikos had constructed of the waiter muscling in on him, he diverted her with, ‘What would you like to eat?’
Mia dutifully buried her attention on the menu. A different waiter arrived to take their order. Nikos delivered it in the clipped cool tone that did not encourage the waiter to linger.
‘Talk to me,’ he said abruptly once they were alone again.
Lifting up her face she asked, ‘What about?’
‘Anything—the wine.’ He indicated to her glass.
Dutifully picking up her wine glass Mia sipped. ‘Nice,’ she said.
‘Is that it?’
‘Is this another lesson in social dining?’ she dared.
‘No.’ He almost let a smile catch hold of his mouth. ‘It is simply a request for you to extend your answer. You are Italian. I cannot believe you don’t have a better opinion about wine than just nice.’
Be interesting, in other words. Well, OK, she could try to do that, Mia decided, relaxing back into her seat. ‘Tia Giulia and I make our own wine from our own grapes,’ she announced. ‘It’s just a hobby really, but our wine tastes easily as good as this very expensive wine…’ she said with a wave of her glass. ‘We pick and tread the grapes in the traditional manner with our skirts held up like so—’ she gestured, unaware how entirely she had captured her audience ‘—and we laugh a lot—it is supposed to be good for the taste. If it is a good year, our neighbours will come to exchange other produce for bottles of our wine. Tia has some really wonderful old oak barrels in the cellar…’
Their first course arrived and Mia kept talking through it, taking a small forkful of sea bass laced with a delicious sauce she had never tasted before.
‘Your life in Tuscany was very different from the one you’re living now,’ Nikos observed when she paused for a breath.
Mia nodded, eyes shadowing as she sat forward to pick up her glass. ‘Do you miss Greece when you are away from it?’
‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘I fly in and out of Athens too often to miss it.’
‘Family, then,’ she probed.
‘None.’ The way he carefully veiled his eyes made Mia frown because she was almost certain she’d just hit a raw nerve. ‘Tell me why you left it so long to contact Oscar.’ As neatly as that he turned the conversation away from him and back on to her.