‘So.’ She sipped some of the coffee and tried to remain blithely underwhelmed by the surroundings. ‘You have an apartment here…’
‘I have…’
She could sense his dark eyes fixed on her as she slowly looked all around and had never felt more self-conscious in her life before. Jeans, a sweatshirt and trainers were not at home in a place like this, although, in all fairness, he hardly seemed to notice her attire.
She noticed, though, and weakly reminded herself that her duty was to carry on pointing out all the differences between them, as she had started to do in the hotel bar.
‘So…you live in London, full-time. Do you?’
‘I live primarily in London, but I travel a lot.’
‘Oh, yes. Of course. To visit your parents in Greece, I expect.’
‘Among other things.’
‘What other things?’
‘Work, usually. New York, Paris. Just recently, the Middle East.’
‘Leading eventually to what? A global takeover?’ She laughed a little nervously and sipped some more of the coffee. ‘It all sounds very high-powered. And what do you do when you want to relax? Nightclubs?’
‘When I want to relax, I usually go to the Cotswolds. I have a house there. If you perch any closer on the edge of that chair, you’re going to fall off.’
Mattie wriggled into a more comfortable position. ‘You have a house in the Cotswolds. A country retreat.’
‘Something like that.’ The look he gave her was one of gleaming, devilish amusement. ‘Now, aren’t you going to attack me for the luxury?’
She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t attacking you earlier on, if that’s what you’re implying.’
‘No? What were you doing, in that case?’
‘I was reminding you why you don’t stand a chance in hell of getting me into your bed, never mind your big-headed notion that whatever you want in life you get.’
‘Why don’t you come and sit here next to me on this sofa and tell me that again?’
It was like being shot through with a volt of electricity that ran from the tips of her toes to the hair on her scalp, but she made herself look at him with incredulity.
‘Is that how you would address the women you go out with?’ she fired scornfully.
‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’
‘I know that. Because I happen to work in a nightclub, you think that you can speak to me just as you want to and poor, awestruck little me would have no choice but to immediately fall to my feet!’
‘Because the women I go out with would already have taken the decision to sit right here next to me. If, of course, we were here in the first place.’
The implication in his lazy statement rushed at her and reddened her face.
No, he wouldn’t be sitting in the foyer here when his apartment was only an elevator ride away.
‘Would you be as defensive as you are if we hadn’t met in a nightclub?’ he asked curiously. ‘If I didn’t know what you did for a living?’
‘We wouldn’t have met.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘I’m not defensive,’ Mattie lied and prevaricated at the same time. ‘I’m a realist. We come from opposite sides of the tracks. Look at the way you’re dressed, for heaven’s sake! I would bet my life that that suit of yours wasn’t sitting on a peg in a department store on Oxford Street. Was it?’
‘This line of conversation isn’t going to get us anywhere.’
‘I don’t want to get anywhere with you!’
‘Then why are you here?’
Mattie flushed. ‘Because I was manipulated into coming,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Now you’re pretending to be a passive victim of circumstance. Is that how you feel? About being here? With me? About yourself?’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘I want to go home now.’
‘No, you don’t. Come upstairs to my apartment. It’s more comfortable than being down here.’
‘More dangerous, you mean.’
‘Do you think I’m dangerous?’
‘A girl can’t be too careful.’
‘Do you?’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Mr Drecos.’
‘Stop calling me that. The name is Dominic. And you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘You’ve already told me what your intentions are.’
‘I’ve never gone near a woman who didn’t want me to be near her. Let’s go upstairs.’
‘I’ll stay half an hour then I’m off. And this time, I don’t want you coming back to the nightclub to see me! OK?’
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stood up, waiting for her, giving her time to consider what she had done. Going upstairs with him to his apartment! Another step towards the edge of a cliff, or that was how she felt.
Although, she told herself sternly, hadn’t she made sure to tell him that, after tonight, no more?
She walked with him to the lift and concentrated hard on the control panel as they were whirred up and the doors opened to a lushly carpeted corridor.
She knew that his apartment was going to be luxurious. But she wasn’t prepared for exactly how luxurious.
Rich wooden floors peppered with silky Persian rugs, an open-plan layout that exaggerated the space and allowed the eye to roam freely over the beautiful spread of low, clean-lined furniture, glass-topped dining-table with a thick band of wood framing the glass, white walls interrupted with large, dramatic paintings. And the kitchen, to which he was now heading, was simply separated from the rest of the open space by a large semi-circular, granite-topped counter.
Mattie watched him, the way he dominated every inch of his surroundings, and felt another shiver of alarm that he had managed to get her this far.
‘Like it?’ he asked, fiddling with a high-tech coffee machine, and she licked her lips nervously and then sat on one of the chrome and wooden high stools at the kitchen counter.
‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘Where do you live?’ He slid a plain, squat, white china mug over to her and then perched on a similar stool to face her across the counter.
This was what she had dreaded. The intimacy of being somewhere private with him, and it couldn’t get more private than this, but his remark about her seeing herself as a passive victim had rankled and had been one of the reasons she had agreed to come up here with him. She could take control.
‘Privileged information, I’m afraid.’ They were both leaning on the counter, holding their mugs to their lips, and their eyes met.
She had a face, he thought, looking at her, that he quite simply enjoyed watching. It wasn’t just the beauty of the features or the luminosity of her green eyes or the way her silver-blonde hair cascaded down her back. It was the humour and intelligence he could see there which she tried so hard to conceal underneath an aggressive hostility that seemed at odds with the physical look she presented.
She had a mind that he enjoyed tussling with.
And she had thrown him a gauntlet that he couldn’t resist taking up.
‘Now, I wonder why I shouldn’t have guessed that,’ he drawled, sipping his coffee and looking at her over the rim of his cup. ‘What do you do when you’re not working?’
‘Why?’
‘Because, generally speaking, these are the sorts of things two people might ask one another in the course of conversation.’
Mattie considered the question and tried to work out why she was finding this man so disconcerting. However, since she wasn’t going to be seeing him again after tonight, what was the point in concealing what she had no reason to hide?
‘I try and grab some sleep whenever I can.’
‘How long have you been there?’
‘Oh, about seven or eight months.’
She was still looking at him cautiously with those amazing eyes, as if she expected him to make some sudden move and was braced to defend herself.
/> She had relaxed enough to take her jacket off, though, and had shoved up the sleeves of her jumper so that her slender arms were exposed, lightly dusted with golden hair. Her watch was a cheap plastic affair with a thick pink strap.
She was right when she said that they came from opposite sides of the tracks. Rosalind, for starters, would never have been seen dead without her delicate gold Rolex.
He caught himself and remembered that this was not intended to be a relationship, but an affair in the making. He was, he reminded himself, through with relationships.
‘And before that?’
Mattie shrugged. ‘Oh, I worked in a restaurant.’
‘So you sleep by day and work by night. A vampire’s existence.’
‘I don’t just spend all day in bed,’ she flared. ‘I…I do other things as well.’
‘Such as?’
‘I wish you’d stop pretending to be interested in what I do and don’t do.’
‘And I wish you’d stop thinking that you can read me like a book. A trashy erotic novel with very big type.’ He gave her a crooked smile and she couldn’t help herself. She smiled back. ‘Now tell me what you do during the day.’
‘I…well, actually, I’m taking a course at the moment.’ Mattie lowered her eyes and wondered what had possessed her to divulge this personal piece of information.
She thought of Frankie, realised with an unpleasant little start that he had not crossed her mind all night.
‘What kind of course?’
‘Marketing,’ she said abruptly.
’Marketing?’
‘That’s right! Marketing!’ She glared at him and in her head she could hear Frankie’s scathing criticisms of her desire to better herself, could hear him telling her over and over again that she just wasn’t good enough to make the grade, that she had left school before getting any qualifications to speak of.
‘Yes, I left school when I was sixteen! Yes, I’m not exactly what most people might see as ideal marketing material! But I can do this! Because I work nights in a nightclub and dress in skimpy little outfits doesn’t mean that I don’t have a perfectly good, functioning brain in my head! You might think that I’m a blonde bimbo but you’re wrong!’
‘I think it’s a brilliant idea.’
‘What…?’
‘I said I think it’s a brilliant idea.’
They looked at one another. Mattie’s eyes drifted from his fathomless black ones down to his mouth, that sweetly sexy mouth of his, and she quickly looked away.
‘Why did you leave school at sixteen?’
‘I…everyone I knew was doing it…it seemed exciting at the time…getting out of school, becoming an adult, earning money…’ She fiddled with the handle of the mug and stared down into the dregs of coffee at the bottom.
‘And that was…how long ago?’
‘Seven years.’ Mattie dared him to share any caustic reflections on her academic non-achievements.
‘And you never thought earlier about resuming your education?’
‘It’s not as easy as you make it sound!’
‘Oh, where there’s a will there’s a way,’ Dominic murmured. He watched the way her breasts rested lightly on the counter-top and hot blood surged through him. ‘So, when does this marketing course finish?’
‘I hand in my last project next week.’
‘Then you quit the nightclub and get a job?’
‘Then I hang on to my nightclub job because I still need the money and start the rounds of employment agencies. Sometimes the course supervisor can recommend someone for a job, but they have to be very good.’ She stuck out her chin and remembered to scowl. ‘So there’s my potted life history. Not very exciting, is it? And now that we’ve had our little chat, I think it’s time I made my way back.’
‘Where does sleep figure in all of this?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Sleep? You must be running on adrenaline and nervous energy. Let me make you another coffee.’
‘I try and get at least six hours in the course of twenty-four.’
If Frankie allowed her. Usually, if he was in a particularly foul mood, he would think nothing of waking her up simply to commence an argument of sorts, even though he always backed off before he could push her to the absolute limit. Backed off and usually left the house.
‘Here. Drink this. Then I’ll drop you home. Or you could stay the night here. I have three bedrooms.’
‘Stay the night?’ Mattie looked at him incredulously. ‘Are you completely mad?’ She scrambled off the stool and reached for her jacket, which she had tossed on the counter.
Well, who could blame him?
The last thing she wanted to do was spend the night in this apartment, even if she locked herself in a spare bedroom and then stuck a chair under the door handle for safe measure! Just knowing that he was sleeping not far away would guarantee a restless night. Because…because…
Because he was dangerous, she thought. Things were dangerous between them. He was just too much of everything that was bad for a girl’s health. And she had enjoyed talking to him too much for her own good.
She feverishly began walking towards the door and he sprang from his stool and followed her, overtook her, leaned against the door so that she was compelled to halt her frantic escape and look at him.
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ Dominic asked softly. And then he couldn’t help himself. He reached and stroked some strands of hair away from her face and then left his hand there, tangled in her hair. It felt good. Better than good.
‘Don’t do what you’re doing,’ Mattie whispered unevenly, although she couldn’t seem to find the strength to pull away from him.
‘I’m not doing anything. Yet.’
She whimpered and made a half-hearted attempt to draw back, but the light pressure of his hand against the side of her head was clogging up her thought processes.
‘I said I’d talk and I’ve talked.’
‘Maybe it’s not enough.’
‘You promised…’
‘Did I? I don’t think so. I never make promises I know I won’t be able to keep.’
His hand had moved to cup her face and one finger traced the outline of her trembling mouth.
‘I want to see you again,’ he told her huskily. ‘And again. And again.’
‘I’ve told you, there’s no point.’
‘You’ve told me that we come from different sides of the tracks and that you’re not for sale because you happen to work in a nightclub. Well, I’m not interested in buying my women and I don’t give a damn about what side of the tracks you do or don’t come from.’
He moved around, just an easy, graceful shift of position, so that now she was leaning against the door and he was in front of her. Then he propped himself against the door with the flat of one hand, and with the other he began to do the unthinkable.
He began to trail his fingers along the circular rim of her jumper.
Mattie had her hands pressed against the door, wanting to run but longing to stay just where she was and let her body carry on responding the way it was doing right now.
It had been a long time.
Even before she and Frankie had ceased all form of physical contact, apart from the very occasional hug when they both found themselves helpless victims of nostalgia, regret and awareness of the chasm between them, Mattie had found it impossible to respond to him. His touch had left her cold, made her want to curl up into a ball and hide away. For a long time, she had put it down to sheer exhaustion at the hectic hours she kept and the demands on her time. Then she had seen it for what it was—she no longer enjoyed being with him and that had simply extended to all areas of her life.
‘Please, Dominic…’
His name left her lips like a breathless caress. She should have called him Mr Drecos. That would have established some distance between them.
‘Look, Mattie, I know you think I’ve pursued you for no better reason t
han to get you into bed…’
‘And haven’t you?’
‘I want to enjoy you.’
‘I told you…’ Mattie could hardly recognise her own voice. It was shaky and husky, probably because she felt as if she was gasping for air.
‘And you want to enjoy me too.’ His kiss as he lowered his head was as light and as unthreatening as a feather brushing against her mouth, but it still managed to turn her legs to jelly. They matched her brain.
‘Is it a crime to give in to mutual attraction?’
This time his kiss was a little less unthreatening and far, far more shockingly potent, because he was doing things with his tongue, invading her mouth, exploring her until she could barely support herself against the door.
‘Well, is it?’ he murmured unsteadily, drawing back from her so that she felt the absence of his touch like a sudden, yawning hole inside her.
‘You’re confusing me.’
‘Good. I want to confuse you. Just as you confuse me. I want you to shiver every time I cross your thoughts and I want to send every nerve in your body into disarray whenever I touch you.’
He was virtually making love to her with his words, something she had never experienced in her life before. But then, her only lover had been Frankie and words had never been his strong point. Looks, yes. The Irish blood in him had given him those all right, but that was as far as it went.
She was up against a different species here and she knew it. And, knowing it, she struggled to get her own thought processes into working order.
She could hardly dredge up Frankie’s face under the onslaught of emotion flooding through her like a tidal wave!
His hand, that damned hand of his, slithered to caress her bare skin under the jumper. Just the flat, hard lines of her stomach, not venturing anywhere higher up, but it was sufficient to make her catch her breath. In surprise. And, she thought chaotically, pleasure. No, pleasure was too mediocre a word. Excitement.
‘So…will you spend the night here? With me? In my bed?’
‘No…please…’ Mattie clung on to what coherent common sense was still in play. ‘This is…is ridiculous…’ The hand crept fractionally higher.
The Greek Tycoon's Secret Child Page 5