by Various
Sitting up with a jolt, her sleepy eyes opened wide as saucers. ‘Hampshire?’ Mia echoed. ‘W-what is in Hampshire—?’
‘Work,’ came the sardonic answer. ‘Of the socialising kind.’
Still trying to cast off the heavy mists of sleep, Mia pushed the tumble of ebony curls off her face. ‘But it’s Saturday,’ she remembered. ‘I am supposed to be meeting—’
‘I don’t recall promising you would get your weekends free when you came to work for me,’ Nikos rode roughshod over what she had been about to say. ‘So whatever it is you have planned get out of it. I have to go out for a few hours but when I get back I will expect you to be ready to leave. You will need a dress—something formal.’
‘Formal,’ Mia repeated, stunned by the way he had just discarded her plans. ‘H-how formal?’
‘Bella-at-her-red-carpet-best formal,’ he delivered dryly, referring to her wildly beautiful and glamorous supermodel half-sister. ‘Do you have something like that to wear?’ he then thought to ask.
Dragging herself to the edge of the bed and standing, Mia sent her mind’s eye sweeping down the packed dress rail in the other bedroom. ‘Sí, I think so,’ she mumbled. ‘But—Nikos, I am not very good at these formal occasions,’ she threw in anxiously. ‘I don’t think—’
‘This is at Oscar’s command, not mine,’ he informed her with the cool thrust of a murderer plunging a knife into her chest. ‘He wants you there to represent the family because no one else is available to attend. Do you want to call and tell him you’re not up to taking on the responsibility—?’
Dio. ‘No,’ Mia surrendered heavily. ‘I will come.’
‘Good,’ he approved. ‘Pack an overnight bag because we will be staying. See you at one o’clock.’
He cut the connection before she could find the necessary brain cells to ask any questions. Sinking heavily back onto the bed, her fuzzy brain listed: Hampshire, a formal evening dress, an overnight bag. Be ready to go by one o’clock…
Then she was suddenly lurching into panic mode and using her mobile phone to ring her half-sister Sophie.
‘What is happening this evening in Hampshire?’ she wrung out urgently.
‘Hampshire?’ Sophie Balfour repeated. ‘Oh, my…’
‘What does this oh my mean?’ Mia demanded, already feeling the chill of alarm skate down her spine.
‘Is Nikos taking you there?’
‘Sí.’
‘Then take a brave pill before you go, sweetie,’ her half-sister advised her. ‘If you thought attending the Balfour Charity Ball was major-nervous-breakdown stuff, then you’re in for a shock because Hampshire is huge.’
‘Huge…’ Mia whispered, grappling with the complicated idiosyncrasies of the English language when spoken with sarcasm like this. ‘You will have to explain this huge to me too,’ she begged.
‘Ever heard of the D’Lassio brothers?’
‘No.’ Mia frowned. ‘Should I have heard of them?’
‘What kind of Italian are you that you’ve never heard of the two sexiest Italian tycoons out there?’ Sophie sounded shocked. ‘Santino D’Lassio is married to the absolutely gorgeous Nina Francis and works out of London. Alessandro D’Lassio is so single it’s mind-boggling and works out of Milan. Each year they stage a cross-continent charity event to top all charity events. One takes place on their fabulous country estate in Hampshire, the other at their magnificent ancestry pile situated on the banks of Lake Como. The two events will be linked by satellite. Television stations and the paparazzi will be out in force. Pop stars, royalty, the megarich and the superfamous will be attending—you’re going to love it like a bullet in the head,’ Sophie predicted. ‘And I bet Lois Mansell is pretty miffed that Nikos is taking you instead of her,’ Sophie said.
As if someone had thrust an icy rod down her backbone, Mia tensed up. ‘Who—who is Lois Mansell?’
‘Check out this morning’s paper,’ her half-sister advised. ‘She’s the fabulous blonde captured wrapped around Nikos as they left a nightclub together last night.’
At one o’clock to the absolute second, Mia presented herself in the top-floor oval lobby with her weekend bag as per instructions, and the dress she had decided to wear this evening draped over her arm in a cream silk dress bag. She was wearing faded designer denims, a thigh-hugging black Vive La Rock T-shirt and fiercely high black designer shoes. She’d confined her hair loosely to her nape with a big shiny black clip and her make-up was light.
For casual, cool and in strict control of her emotions were the absolute keys to her standing here at all. Indeed she’d been a breath away from using the flu bug excuse right up until the moment she’d stepped out of her apartment door.
His apartment door opened and her heart gave a single heavy little thump as Nikos stepped out. He was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, in pale chinos and a dove-grey V-neck sweater worn over a pale blue-and-grey-checked shirt. Big, lean, dark and classy, Mia listed, and had to bite back a bitter grimace when her head gave her another image of him, dressed in a black dinner suit leaving a famous nightclub with a leggy blonde clinging like a blood-sucking limpet to his side.
Their eyes met for a second. Her throat felt so thick Mia found she needed to swallow but wouldn’t allow herself the relief. Their murmured greetings crossed over each other. She was the one to break the eye contact, lowering her eyelashes and feeling like the ice woman inside.
‘Here, let me take your bag…’
As he stooped to lift her canvas holdall from where it sat at her feet, Mia found herself staring at the top of his head where the black silky thickness of his hair was glossed by the hint of curls.
Curls Lois Mansell had no doubt enjoyed running her long limpet fingers through last night, Mia tormented herself with the image she’d evoked.
‘Do you want me to take your dress bag…?’
‘No—thank you,’ she managed politely.
The lift arrived and, determined to maintain a professional detachment if it killed her to do it, Mia walked into it, then stood with her chin tilted down so she did not have to look at him as they travelled to the ground floor.
The tabloid newspaper which printed the photograph had headlined it with:
Is this the new blonde Greek billionaire Nikos Theakis has chosen to replace Lucy Clayton?
As for the rest of the article, which highlighted his penchant for leggy blondes and his low attention threshold, it had said it all as far as Mia was concerned. She’d finally acknowledged that it was time for her to learn to get over him, and if that meant not looking at him, then she was not going to look at him.
‘Something wrong?’ his deep voice drawled.
‘Nothing,’ she responded.
‘If you’re worrying about tonight, then—’
‘I am not worrying about anything.’ She walked out of the lift before he could say anything else.
It was only as he forged ahead of her to open the door that she noticed he carried no weekend bag for himself. Presuming he must have already put it in his car, Mia walked past him and out into the bright sunlight…only to go still when she saw a brand-new shiny red sports car—that only a total hermit would not recognise for what it was—waiting in the place of his silver Mattea.
Her icy cool started to falter. ‘Y-you’ve changed your car.’
‘I prefer not to put my passengers through mental torture,’ he relayed drily.
As Mia walked up to the door he was holding open for her she caught a gleam in his eyes which told her he was waiting for her to make some kind of positive response because he had gone to this much trouble exclusively for her.
When she said nothing, he grimaced. ‘You can thank me later,’ he murmured, ‘once you’ve recovered from your sulk because I spoiled your plans for today.’
It took Mia a minute to grasp that he was referring to her plans to meet with Sophie. They’d planned to go shopping and take in a movie but Nikos had not given her a chance to tell him
that during his phone call this morning. Opening her mouth to tell him, she snapped it shut again. Let him think what the heck he liked. What she did with her free time was none of his business—as his was not any of hers.
‘Seat belt,’ he issued as he climbed in next to her, and the pleasant tone had disappeared from his voice, Mia noticed.
A few minutes later they were driving across the river towards Battersea. Mia tried not to watch the way he controlled his new car as if he had been driving it for years. It must be in his blood to know instinctively what to do in any given situation. She’d seen him at work too often not to be impressed with the way he could control most things with an ease that was so breathtakingly natural even those he was controlling did not notice he was doing it.
It was no wonder he was arrogant sometimes, a bit of a bully when he felt he needed to be. Incisive, decisive, he was used to being right so why not expect other people to just fall in line to his bidding?
After attempting to kick-start several conversation subjects to which she replied in crushing monotones, he issued a driven sigh. ‘Quit the chilly sulk, Mia,’ he told her, ‘or I will turn this car around and take you back home again.’
Mia straightened in her seat. ‘I am not sulking.’
‘No?’ Stopping at a set of traffic lights he turned to look at her—deep brown eyes, feathered with flashes of glinting gold, spun nerve ends alive across her taut profile. ‘You remind me of a feral cat I once tried to befriend as a kid. One minute she was soft and coquettish and brushing her sleek body up against me, the next minute she had her claws in my neck and was spitting at me.’
‘I have never brushed up against you!’ she denied, then felt her cheeks flame when she recalled the way she’d moved towards him last night. ‘Nor have I drawn my claws,’ she added as a quick cover-up. ‘And if I remind you of your friend the feral cat, then you remind me of our donkey,’ she threw back, sparked into defending herself.
‘Your—what?’ he raked out.
‘Tulio, our donkey,’ she supplied. ‘One minute he is beautifully relaxed and amenable, the next he acts as if he does not occupy the same planet as everyone else.’
‘You’re accusing me of being moody?’ Nikos delivered across the gap separating them.
Mia fixed her gaze on the traffic lights. ‘I cannot predict how you are going to speak to me from one minute to another. Tulio is the same. Only he does not speak—he just gives me the evil eye to say I don’t feel like being nice to you any longer, and so he isn’t.’ She added a self-explanatory shrug. ‘The lights have changed colour,’ she pointed out.
‘A donkey,’ he breathed, steering the car into a right turn, then accelerating up the street. ‘Grazie, cara,’ he said with grim sarcasm, and swung the car off the street into a small car park by the banks of the river, killed the car engine and climbed out.
Mia hugged a pleased smile to herself as she watched him stride around the car bonnet with his golden good looks pronounced by the savage look on his face.
So she’d just insulted him and ruined his day.
Good, she thought, because he had ruined hers too with his nocturnal activities splashed all over the papers!
Did she have the right to be angry about that?
She did not care if she had no right—she just did!
She hated him. She hoped Lois Mansell was the worst lover he had ever bothered to bed. And she was not jealous! she told herself furiously, she was just—
He pulled open her door for her with more angry strength than the beautifully designed piece of equipment required. As she carefully manoeuvred her high-heeled shoes over the sill of the car, his grim impatience with her transferred to the long fingers he clamped around her arm to help straighten her up. Arriving in front of him with more impulse than was necessary, she ended up almost flattened against him, which shocked her enough into glancing up.
Their eyes clashed—his slightly narrowed and glinting golden warning shots for her to take care what she did or said next, hers sparking with bright blue defiance which dared him to make one of his cold, cutting comments gauged to knock her back down to size.
But he went for a different kind of attack. He relaxed the corners of his hard, clipped mouth, slid a hand around her exposed nape, then lowered his head and captured her mouth with a hard, hot, plundering kiss!
Astonishment thrilled through Mia. It was so shockingly unexpected and so shockingly intimate she was unable to do anything but just let him explore the contours of her mouth with a sensual fluency that glued her to the spot.
Knocked completely for six she staggered dizzily when he lifted his head again. Breathless and shaking and unable to focus on anything, she just stared up at him through a thick misty glaze.
‘Different mood, cara,’ he purred down at her like his very own feral cat. ‘I sincerely hope that Tulio is not so adventurous.’
His meaning shocked a gasp from Mia. As if he felt he deserved her reaction Nikos nodded his dark head, then let go of her and turned abruptly to glare at the young man who had approached them without her being aware of it.
‘Get the bags out of the boot and give them to my pilot, then take the car back,’ he instructed, tossing the keys at the other man.
Still much too stunned to take in the bit about his pilot, Mia slung a swift glance at whoever it was Nikos was talking to, saw it was the man from accounts she had lunched with yesterday and also saw that his eyes were standing out in shock.
Heat poured into her face like a scorching flame. It was bright sunny daylight, and Nikos Theakis had just kissed her full on her mouth in front of another member of his staff!
‘You—you did that on purpose!’ she hissed at him shakenly.
Nikos claimed one of her hands and walked her away from the car. ‘He needed showing where he stands with you.’
‘Stands with me?’ Mia gasped out. ‘I don’t understand this stands with me,’ she told him, having to hurry to keep up with his long stride.
‘He was the date that stood you up last night.’
‘He was not my date!’
‘He was your date,’ he insisted. ‘And I have just made my point.’
‘Will you please explain what it is you are talking about?’ Tugging hard on her captured hand she pulled them both to a stubborn standstill in front of a white building with glass entrance doors. Hot, mortified, her kissed lips burning and feeling shockingly pumped up, still she made herself glare up at him.
He looked down at her, as cold and haughty-looking as she had ever seen him. And his lips were not burning! ‘I saw you talking with him in my foyer yesterday at lunch,’ Nikos confessed. ‘By the time he comes out of his shock far enough to read the message I’ve just given him, he will understand that you are out of bounds from now on if he wants to keep his job.’
Sent totally, utterly breathless by the ruthless steel trap his mind must be, Mia could not get another single word out. She twisted her head to look towards the red sports car where, sure enough, the man from accounts was still standing next to as if in shock.
Her insides shuddered. ‘You—you set me up for that kiss in front of him,’ she whispered, finally beginning to catch on as to why that particular employee of his had been roped in to deal with his car.
‘No, Tulio did that. Until Tulio put in an appearance I’d decided that merely seeing you going off to spend a weekend with me was going to be enough to put him off thinking he could try coming on to you again. Tulio upped the ante.’
Tugging her into motion again he sent the glass doors swinging open and walked them into the building, then kept her anchored to his side as he spoke to a receptionist standing behind the desk. Fizzing with fury Mia wanted so badly to deny what he’d assumed, but she knew that she could not do that without exposing the real reason why she had gone out last night, and nothing was ever going to make her admit the truth to him now!
So she stood simmering beside him with her eyes on a level with his wide muscular shoulde
r, and only began to take notice of her surroundings when she happened to focus through a window and saw the helicopter glinting in the bright sunlight on what looked like a concrete jetty jutting out into the Thames.
Her fingernails bit tense crescents into Nikos’s palm. She had never travelled in a helicopter before, and she was not sure she wanted to travel in one now.
Nikos tried not to wince as her fingernails bit into his flesh as he signed the necessary documents and felt alive for the first time in two long miserable weeks. A fire was burning deep down in his abdomen. He didn’t know how she had managed to do this to him, this black-haired, long-legged, curvy fiery witch, but she did do it to him. If he had been standing in the middle of a wilderness he would be howling now like a mating wolf.
He’d warned Oscar. He’d warned Mia. He’d even warned himself. But it had taken a donkey named Tulio to set his natural hunting instinct free from the restraints he had placed around them. Turning back to the glass doors he trailed his captive outside again. His new sports car was nowhere to be seen now. Grimacing at the delight he could imagine its young driver was enjoying—the young fool’s damn consolation prize—Nikos turned them towards the jetty on which his helicopter was awaiting them.
Mia was forced to endure his help as he helped her up the steps into the plush cream leather interior, with the bristling impatience of a man who believed he had the right to hustle her around.
The impression stung like acid through the layers of her skin as she chose a seat on the other side of the cabin and sat down. She refused to look at him as he folded his long frame into the seat farthest away from her. If two people wished to announce they were at war, then their seating choices flagged the battle line.
The door slid shut. Rotor blades began to move. The angry butterflies playing havoc with her insides altered to anxious tingles as she felt the contraption lift off the ground. As her heart dipped alarmingly she watched with wide eyes and, in what felt like only seconds, she found herself staring down at the river which looked like a silver ribbon glinting in the sun.