‘We?’
‘My people.’
‘Your people.’
‘Accountants, lawyers, whoever happens to be needed. Sometimes, I come here on my own to have a late meal and finish business without the distraction of telephones and fax machines.’ No point telling her that he had been responsible for buying and renovating this particular building and, as a stipulation, had a penthouse suite on the top floor which he sometimes used if he simply couldn’t be bothered to get George to drive him back to his own apartment. That little titbit would have her running for cover.
And he was discovering that the last thing he wanted was to have her running for cover.
For someone who had always had total control over every aspect of his life, this in itself puzzled the hell out of him. It also energised him in equal measure.
‘And what about your wife? Does she enjoy your late suppers at expensive hotels when you’re working late with your people?’ Whether he was married or not was immaterial to her. She had no intention of doing anything with him. But she still found that she was curious.
Was he married?
‘If I were married, I wouldn’t be here.’ There was a flat coolness to his voice that made her want to retract the question. ‘Don’t you find it impossible to work somewhere where your opinion of your customers is so low?’
She was spared the difficulty of finding an answer to that one by the taxi slowing down in front of an elegant building sandwiched between an expensive men’s clothing shop and a furniture shop that sported chic, very modern, unpriced handmade furniture.
But somehow she got the feeling that the question would be repeated the minute they were on their own.
In the meantime, she would take some time to get her thoughts together and try to still the fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach that definitely should not be there.
‘Not the sort of place for a girl in jeans,’ she whispered with a nervous laugh as they walked into the foyer. Stark colours, one or two abstract paintings on the walls, plants that seemed to make a statement.
And he had been right. There were people even in the foyer, even at this hour of the night. Expensive, sophisticated, arty-looking people.
The man behind the desk smiled at him, which just made Mattie feel even more nervous. She clenched her fists in the pockets of her jacket and trudged alongside him as he strode towards some stairs and down into the basement bar.
What was she doing here? she wondered a little wildly.
‘People come here dressed in anything they choose,’ Dominic murmured down to her. ‘No need to feel out of place.’
‘I wasn’t feeling out of place.’
‘No?’ He paused to raise one eyebrow at her, and she smiled reluctantly.
‘Well, a little.’
It was the smile, he thought. Something about it gave the lie to her air of cynicism, revealed a wealth of vulnerability and spoke volumes about the wit, the humour, the intelligence lying there just below the surface. Waiting.
Waiting, he thought, for me to unearth it.
‘Grab a table,’ he said. ‘I’ll get drinks. What will you have?’
‘Not champagne. I see enough of that at work to be immune to its charm. Not that I’ve ever been a champagne girl anyway,’ she added quickly, just in case he thought that she was going to take advantage of his wealth to order herself the most expensive drink on the menu. ‘I’ll have some coffee, please. Decaffeinated, if they do it.’
‘They do everything here.’
Mattie took a seat at one of the smooth circular granite tables. The chairs were oddly shaped, very comfortable even though they didn’t look it, and, as in the foyer, there were people here. A whole world of night birds, exotic, young night birds, drinking and having a good time.
‘So,’ he deposited her cup on the table and sat down, ‘feeling a little less…rattled?’
‘I wasn’t rattled,’ Mattie returned with vigour. ‘I was angry because you manipulated me into leaving with you.’
‘You could have said no and walked away. No one forced you to get into the taxi and come here.’ He crossed his legs and proceeded to look at her with such thoroughness that she felt a steady blush invade her face until she was taking refuge in the cup of coffee and wishing she had ordered something a little more substantial.
‘And you never answered my question. Why do you work in a place where the customers obviously repulse you?’
‘They don’t repulse me. Some of them are really quite nice. Or at least they seem to be.’
‘You just dislike the sort of men you think frequent those places.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Mattie shrugged, determined not to let him see how nervously aware of him he made her feel.
‘Funnily enough, I feel exactly the same as you do. I just happened to find myself there at the request of my clients.’
‘Oh, and you weren’t enjoying…having a look around?’
‘Not particularly. Until, that is, I saw you.’
There was something shockingly direct about the statement, something that made her body stir slickly into life. She couldn’t think of a thing to say and nor did he seem in any hurry to break the silence that thickened around them.
‘I…I… As I said, I work there because the money is very good… I…’
Dominic watched as she lowered her eyes and busied herself with the cup, staring at it for a few seconds, toying with the handle before raising it to her lips. She was probably as experienced as they came, but she was making him feel like a big, bad wolf all of a sudden and he didn’t like the feeling.
‘Why don’t you get a day job?’ he asked, allowing the change of subject even though he wanted to ask her how she could possibly do what she did and still shy away like a frightened rabbit when a man paid her a compliment. He hadn’t even tried to touch her, for heaven’s sake!
‘Why is it that you aren’t married?’ She tilted her chin up and looked him squarely in the face, leaving him in no doubt as to her intention. If he felt at liberty to quiz her about her private life then she felt at liberty to do the same to him.
‘Should I be?’ Dominic hedged. Personal confidences had never figured high on his conversational agenda. Had never figured at all, in point of fact. He felt his face darken slightly and he knocked back the remainder of his drink in one long swallow.
‘Well, you’re not too old, you’re…you’re…’ Her vantage point was quickly relinquished as Mattie saw the road she was heading down. A list of all his credentials, and when she looked at him there was a wicked gleam in his eyes that did something else to her wall of cynicism that had been so carefully erected over the years.
‘I’m all ears,’ he encouraged.
‘Obviously rich. Being something big in the City, as you are.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. Arrogant. Manipulative. Oh, not forgetting, with an ego as big as a tanker.’
‘Mmm. Doesn’t sound a list of qualities any woman would positively search for.’
Their eyes tangled and Mattie was the first to look away. The conversation was getting dangerous. Some little voice was telling her that.
‘Which just shows that you probably haven’t met the right one,’ she said quickly. ‘So how did you discover this place?’ she asked, making no attempt to hide the change of subject.
‘Oh, I bought the building, renovated it and then sold it on.’ He watched her digest this information whilst his mind began to drift off into images of that exotically beautiful face glowing with the film of passion, her body unclothed, writhing in a lover’s embrace. His embrace.
He cleared his throat, sat up straighter. ‘As I mentioned, that’s a part of what I do.’
She found she wanted to hear more. Wanted to find out more about him. It wouldn’t do. Time to rectify a situation before it became too dangerous.
‘Sounds very important. So…how did you manage to just land up doing that? It must cost an absolute fortune to go into
the property business. Mustn’t it? Especially in London.’
‘I studied economics at university,’ Dominic said abruptly. ‘Went into finance before I got into the property side.’
‘You must have made a great deal of money in finance in that case. To enable you to have the capital to play with.’ Mattie pretended to muse on the conundrum of this.
Dominic gave her a long, narrowed look which she met with widely innocent eyes. ‘I’ve always had a fair amount of money at my disposal.’
‘Ah.’ Of course he would have. He was a man born into money. It sat on his shoulders like an invisible cloak. And she had wanted him to say it. Out loud. So that she could remind herself of yet another reason why she should get out of this place and fast, before his sexy face and ability to listen and smooth-talking charm got the better of her caution.
‘So…what did your parents do?’
‘Is this really relevant?’
‘It is to me.’
‘My father is in shipping.’
‘Builds them, you mean?’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
‘My mum was a cleaner. She died ten years ago. My dad was a carpenter, except not many people seem to want handmade things these days. He lives in Bournemouth now. He still makes bits and pieces for himself, but his full-time job is supervisor at a furniture factory.’ Mattie stood up and smiled politely.
She felt disproportionately hurt at the fact that she would never see him again, but she had had to do it. Had to make him see the one difference between them that would always be there.
‘Well, thanks for the coffee. No, please, I can get a taxi home myself.’ She just couldn’t face the underground just now. And before he could say another word she was hurrying out of the door, up the stairs and through the chic foyer that looked as though it had stepped straight out of a magazine.
CHAPTER THREE
‘OH, NO, you don’t.’
Mattie heard the rapid footsteps behind her at the same time as she heard his voice, which was just as he gripped her arm and swung her around to face him.
‘You are not going to sling this in my face and then run away before I have time to refute it.’
‘I’m not running away from anything. I’m going home, if it’s all the same to you!’
‘No, well, as a matter of fact, it’s not.’
Her heart was beating a mile a minute, racing inside her like a roller coaster that had gone wildly out of control, and his hand on her arm was like a vice grip, but one that was doing crazy things to her stomach, just the sort of crazy things she didn’t want to happen.
‘Well, tough!’
‘Not good enough, Mattie.’ He reached out one hand to hail a taxi and kept the other one firmly on her arm. ‘Where do you live? I’ll drop you home. We can talk on the way.’
‘No!’
Drop her home? And what if Frankie just happened to be up and moving around? Unlikely, but not a possibility she could rule out. Frankie, after a few bottles of beer, couldn’t be relied on to behave in a predictable manner and go to sleep. And the thought of him storming out of the house and confronting Dominic Drecos was enough to make her blood curdle. She knew who would be the loser and it wouldn’t be the man opening the door of the taxi now for her to step past him.
‘Why not?’ Dominic demanded, leaning forward, invading her space and noticing that she was leaning forward too, not shrinking away from him like a scared rabbit.
‘Because…’
‘Because what?’
‘Because…’ Because she didn’t want Frankie, if he happened to be up, to see her with him? To get the wrong idea? Because even after all they had been through, she still didn’t have it in her to hurt him like that? Or was it, she wondered uneasily, because she didn’t want this man to know that a boyfriend existed?
‘Because I don’t reveal my address to strangers, especially when those strangers happen to have been a customer in the nightclub where I work!’
Dominic grimaced, seeing her point of view but knowing that the last thing he would do would be to take advantage of her. He had covered some distance, he thought with another grimace to himself, since he had first set eyes on her and concluded that he wanted her. Now, along with those signals that she sent out, that had every masculine pore in his body rearing into full-blooded life, were other, more complex ones. He wanted to get to know her, against all his better judgement, and in order to do that he would have to take his time.
‘In which case, I suggest we go back to my apartment.’
Mattie almost laughed at the suggestion, even though a treacherous part of her stirred at the thought of it.
‘Over my dead body.’
‘Where there is a very comfortable sitting area downstairs. We can finish our conversation.’ He gave his address to the taxi driver and was aware of her staring at him for having removed the decision from her hands.
‘You really have got a nerve! How dare you?’
‘Stop running from me,’ he drawled softly. ‘I always catch the things I want, Mattie.’
‘And you want me.’
‘And I want you.’
He wasn’t touching her, but God, she felt her body burn as if he were.
‘You want a good-looking waitress in a nightclub. You don’t want me. You don’t even know me.’
‘Is that a plea from the heart?’ he drawled.
‘It’s a matter-of-fact statement, actually,’ Mattie snapped in return. ‘You may have spent your life with women tripping behind you in your wake, wondering if they might be the lucky little thing to get the ring on her finger, but, buddy, where I come from I can see straight through men like you! You’re a taker, Mr Drecos.’
‘But you don’t even know me.’
Mattie uttered the strangled sound of someone whose impeccable reason has been neatly lobbed right back at them, and decided that she wouldn’t dignify his comment with a reply. Not that she could think of anything to say to his barbed piece of verbal cleverness.
But she didn’t like the fact that she was sitting in a taxi with him and being transported to wherever his apartment was, even though that gut feeling she had had three evenings before was back with her. A deep knowing that he was a man who didn’t lie. If he said that there would be somewhere downstairs where they could talk, then there would be.
The problem was that she didn’t want to talk.
No, she amended truthfully to herself, the problem was that she was a little too tempted to talk for her own good.
She felt as though her emotions had been put on hold forever, building up behind a dam which was beginning to strain at the weight put against it.
She wanted to talk, but why him? He had already told her what kind of interest he was feeling and it wasn’t the sort that wanted to get to know her, whatever he had to say on the subject. It was the sort that wanted to get her into his bed.
‘If I get there and I find that the only thing waiting downstairs is a lift to carry me up to your apartment, then you’re out of luck. I’ll walk straight back out of the door and into the nearest taxi I can find!’
‘Fair enough.’
He had deprived her of further argument, but he could still feel her simmering away next to him. Sexy as hell and as appealingly defensive as a cornered cat.
He watched her averted profile, the stubborn tilt of her head, and wondered if she had any idea how seductive her mutinous silence was.
By the time the taxi pulled up in front of his apartment block, he was almost willing to bet that she would have changed her mind about coming in.
But all she said to the driver was, ‘Would you mind waiting here for a few minutes? Just in case I need to get back to my house?’
‘No problem, love.’
‘Well? Does it pass muster?’ Dominic asked, the minute they were inside the building. ‘There’s the sitting area over there and, as you can see, there’s a security guy permanently on call by the desk. His name’s Charlie and I�
�m sure he’ll fly to your rescue if you decide to start shrieking.’
‘Very funny.’
‘So are you going to tell our taxi driver to disappear or are you going to climb into his taxi and run away again?’
It was his implication of cowardice that did it. Or so Mattie told herself. She walked out of the foyer without answering, leaving him to nurse the unsettling thought that she had decided to clear off, then returned almost immediately.
Dominic could hardly believe the surge of relief that washed over him.
They stood and stared at one another, across the expanse of expensively tiled foyer, with Charlie’s curious gaze flicking from one to the other, and Mattie was the first to move, walking towards him with the same wary expression on her face.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘Where from? I don’t see too many vending machines around here.’
‘No vending machines,’ Dominic agreed, standing perfectly still, waiting for her to approach him, to look up at him. ‘But a kitchen just off behind you. Charlie has all the necessary equipment to provide us with coffee or tea or whatever your preference is. At a pinch, he could probably rustle up something to eat, although I wouldn’t guarantee that it would go beyond a sandwich.’
‘Coffee would be fine.’
‘And you can take your jacket off,’ Dominic said drily. ‘Sit wherever you like.’
Unlike many London apartment blocks, this particular one was fairly unique in so far as there was always a porter manning a desk at the front, and the actual hall area was extensive. Large enough to accommodate the generous proportions of Charlie’s desk, as well as two separate sets of sitting areas and a fair number of plants that were cleaned and watered daily.
She was still standing uncertainly when he returned to her with two mugs of coffee and a plate of biscuits balanced precariously on the top of one of the mugs.
‘This is beautiful,’ Mattie said politely, following his lead and sitting down, though not on the two-seater sofa alongside him, but in the chair facing him.
He was at home here. He breathed power and wealth and these surroundings were tailor-made for men who were powerful and wealthy. The marble tiles on the floor gleamed, the brass details on the balustrade that wound up the flights of stairs were indecently shiny, the overhead chandeliers were solid and impressive.
The Greek Tycoon's Secret Child Page 4