Now there was the slightest of curves in the full heart-shaped lips to accompany her shaking head.
He laughed. ‘Tell me about yourself.’
The faint amusement he’d detected vanished. She looked away from him, her lips pulling in together. ‘What do you want to know?’
Everything.
‘Let us start with how old you are.’
‘Twenty-two.’
That surprised him. The features he could see beneath the mask covering her face indicated youth but the way she carried herself suggested someone older.
‘Have you graduated from university yet or did you take a gap year?’
‘I didn’t go to university.’
That surprised him too. University was a rite of passage in his circle whether the person was academic or not. ‘What do you do?’
He waited for the stock answer of ‘charity work’.
There was a momentary hesitation and her face flushed with colour. ‘I’m in hospitality.’
He could have laughed. After charity work, hospitality was a great favourite for the idle rich wanting to make a point of their usefulness.
No wonder she blushed at the admission.
It surprised him, though. Tabitha struck him as being from a different mould to the usual socialites who filled his world.
What a waste of a good brain and a life, being content to spend days shopping and holidaying. It was a mindset he’d never understood. Giannis had been fortunate to be raised within one of Europe’s wealthiest families and, like his sisters, had inherited thirty million euros on his twenty-first birthday, but it was not in the Basinas nature to be idle. Undoubtedly wealth was something to be enjoyed but it was also a tool to create more wealth, not just for him but for others.
Giannis’s inheritance had been used to build a diverse portfolio of businesses which collectively employed over five thousand people. He had exacting standards, and demanded the best from every person he employed, no matter their position, but he rewarded them well for it both in pay and perks. The staff here in his palace hotel, for example, were considered the best paid hotel staff in the whole of Europe.
He did not understand how people could sleep if their wealth was generated by the unrewarded sweat of others.
He did not understand how people could actively seek to be freeloaders.
His wife had been a freeloader. She’d been many things. A liar. A gold-digger. A cheat. Even now, five years after the fact, five years since she and her unborn child had died, the anger and bitterness still lived, muted but still there.
He’d buried his wife and her child, and while the other mourners had mourned he’d had to bite his tongue to stop himself from ripping into their grief.
He would never allow himself to lose his anger entirely. If he forgot what it felt like he would lay himself open to making the same mistake again and Giannis never made the same mistake twice.
He’d been blinded by his wife’s beautiful façade to the lies beneath it.
What lay beneath this woman’s façade?
His fingers itched to pull the mask off Tabitha’s face and see if it was as beautiful as he suspected.
Her own fingers lifted her champagne flute to her lips.
A tiny drop of gold liquid spilled out of the corner of her mouth. A pink tongue darted out to capture it.
Veins heating at the less than chaste images that tiny action produced, Giannis drank some more of his champagne and swallowed it slowly.
Theos, he could not remember when he’d last been so physically aware of a woman.
He could not remember ever being so captivated by one.
Whatever lay beneath her façade, he could enjoy their time together and enjoy the heady feelings that erupted through him to hold her in his arms.
He rose to his feet and held out a hand to her. ‘Ready for another dance?’
Cornflower-blue eyes met his. A shy smile formed on her lips.
When her fingers wrapped around his he felt a shock of electricity dart through his skin.
* * *
Time slipped away from her.
Tabitha knew she was a fool for saying yes to another dance. She was a fool for not having made her excuses and left.
She could make all the excuses she wanted but the simple truth was she wanted to stay. She wanted this feeling to last as long as it could because she would never feel it again.
She would never have this night again.
Once the ball was over she would never dance with Giannis again.
Come the morning she would revert back to being a chambermaid and this night would be nothing but a memory.
She was in the midst of the most wonderful of dreams and she didn’t want to wake up.
They danced. They drank more champagne. They danced again.
The hands that held as they danced clasped tightly, their forearms pressing together.
The hand that had rested just above the small of her back moved up so it palmed her bare skin. She had never imagined the thrills that could race through her veins at a mere touch of flesh upon flesh.
Their eyes stayed locked. The guests surrounding them were nothing but blocks of colour in the periphery of her vision.
When the next group dance started there were no words to communicate their unspoken agreement to leave the dance floor.
More champagne was consumed.
Time slipped even faster. She tried her hardest to hold on to it but the great clock on the wall ticked on.
As midnight approached the dances slowed in tempo but Tabitha felt giddy. The champagne she’d drunk, the setting, the arms holding her so closely, the undiminished attention from the clear blue eyes holding hers...
She felt as if she were coming to life. Never before had she been so aware of the blood pumping through her body, of the beats of her heart, of the sensitivity of her skin.
And never before had she been so aware of another. Giannis. The olive skin, the strong throat, the strong jaw, the rise and fall of his chest...the sensuous mouth.
She no longer cared that he had the power to make her homeless with nothing but a single word. Maybe it was the champagne doing her thinking for her but these were feelings she had never known before. Tomorrow was tomorrow. Right now it didn’t exist.
‘The fireworks start soon,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Watch them with me.’
She shivered at the sensation of his breath against her skin. Her fingers reflexively tightened on his. They were pressed so tightly together her breasts were crushed through the fabric of her dress and his suit against his chest.
She smiled her answer.
His lips curved.
The orchestra was reaching the end of its piece.
Giannis put his nose to her ear and breathed in the soft, floral scent.
He ached to take this ravishing creature somewhere private and feel those heart-shaped lips against his own.
When he had imagined this night he had seen himself dancing with a parade of women, making bored small talk in the vain hope one might capture his attention.
He’d never imagined he would find someone before the dancing had even started and be greedy to keep her in his arms. Ballroom dancing was a chore he’d endured at his boarding school but there was nothing chore-like about dancing with this enigmatic woman with whom small talk had proven itself unnecessary. He could dance with her all night. He would dance with her all night.
But the dancing was about to finish for a short period while the orchestra took a break and the firework display took place.
He knew the best spot to watch it with her.
Drifting his hand further up her back, marvelling at the soft texture of her skin, he found the spot where her spine formed at the base of her neck and circled a finger around it. Then he pressed his cheek against he
rs, a last contact of their bodies before he pulled away and guided her out of the ballroom.
Hands clasped tightly together, they walked past the champagne fountain. He picked a glass up and handed it to her then took one for himself.
The corridor they stepped into was deserted but the rooms they passed were full of revellers wanting a break from the dancing for food or to rest their feet.
Outside in the gardens, the scent of roses in bloom filled the warm air.
Giannis loved the palace hotel gardens at night. Beautiful though it was by day, the night brought a new dimension to it, imagery from childhood books coming to life amongst the carved statues, water fountains and, further back, in the thick hedges that formed the famed maze.
The spot he took Tabitha to was in a white gazebo in a secluded part of the garden. She stared at the vast structure perfectly suited to such lavish grounds and imagined aristocracy from centuries ago treading this same path.
Flutes of champagne in hand, they stood at the balustrade, arms pressed together, and watched the guests spill out onto the vast lawn, but they were blurs in Tabitha’s eyes, her senses too attuned to the man beside her for anything else to sink in with any substance.
‘How long are you in Vienna for?’ he asked casually, a question to make her stomach turn.
Before she could think of an answer, the moonlight caught one of the figures on the lawn, mask removed. Tabitha’s blood turned cold in an instant as recognition flashed at her.
It was her stepsister, Fiona.
She hadn’t had any communication with her in well over four years, not since Tabitha had been forced to leave the family home.
So many emotions rushed through her to see Fiona there, dressed in a beautiful gown that no doubt had been paid for by money intended to be Tabitha’s inheritance, but the primary emotion that shot through her like an echo was fear.
Fiona had made her life a living hell.
Tabitha’s fingers tightened around the now empty champagne flute, but she must have exerted too much subconscious pressure for the glass shattered in her hand.
She jumped back as shards of glass fell to the ground, too shocked at seeing her stepsister—how had she not noticed her before?—to realise her hand was bleeding until she caught Giannis’s concerned stare.
He snatched at her hand and peered closely at it. ‘Are you okay?’
She inhaled deeply through the shock and stinging pain and managed to nod.
‘We should get a doctor to look at this. I’ll make a call and see if we have one here.’ Still holding her hand, he used his free hand to tug off the black cravat around his neck.
‘I don’t need a doctor.’ A drop of blood rolled off the palm of her hand. She took another deep breath. ‘It’s superficial. Just a cut.’
She would have argued against a doctor even if she’d severed half her hand. The last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself. The mask and the dress gave her anonymity amongst her colleagues but if anyone who knew her were to look too closely the game would be over. Now she knew Fiona was here—and maybe Saffron too—she dared not risk it. It wasn’t just that her identity would be blown. The thought of seeing either of them without any preparation was an ordeal she was in no way ready to put herself through.
She remembered the day she’d first met them and how excited she’d been at the thought of having two big sisters, along with a new mother, and her heart clenched at the trusting innocence of her ten-year-old self.
The cravat freed, Giannis gave it a sharp flick then wrapped it gently around her bleeding hand. ‘That’s a lot of blood for a superficial cut.’
‘That’s the body doing what it’s designed to do. I’ll find a bathroom and clean it out.’
He kept his hand on the cravat wrapped around her cut. ‘My apartment is right behind us. We can clean it there and assess for damage.’
She was quite sure the flow of blood seeping from her wound increased at the casual way he said ‘we’.
When her gaze drifted back up to meet his eyes there was a lurch in both her heart and stomach.
If the choice was to dart across the garden and risk facing her stepsister, or to go to the apartment of this man who, despite his being a virtual stranger, she felt a strange sense of safety being with...
CHAPTER THREE
TABITHA DIDN’T THINK of the foolhardiness of going to Giannis’s one-storey apartment until he closed the front door behind them and even then it was more of a dim chiding in the back of her head. And it wasn’t about the foolishness of being alone with a man she hardly knew while fireworks exploded in the sky around them.
It was the foolishness of her own feelings.
Her every action that night had been foolhardy from the moment she had accepted Mrs Coulter’s wonderful generosity.
She held Giannis’s cravat tightly against her stinging wounded hand and tried to take in her surroundings.
Tabitha knew he’d converted the old staff quarters into a base for himself for the few days a month he was there—she currently lived in the new staff quarters—but none of the staff had been invited in before.
But as she followed Giannis down a wide hallway the huge living room they passed barely registered, her attention completely taken with the man before her.
He pushed open a door to the right and stepped over the threshold.
She did the same and came to an immediate stop.
This was Giannis’s bedroom.
He stopped walking and turned to face her. His features taut, his voice serious, he said, ‘The light in my bathroom is the best to see with but if you don’t feel comfortable coming in here we can clean the cut in the kitchen.’
How many foolish actions could a woman make in one evening?
She walked into the bedroom.
Her legs feeling as if they were walking on a cloud, she followed him past the largest bed she had ever seen in her life, vaguely noting the impersonal nature of the space and its lack of pictures or photos, her heart hammering, breaths shortening.
Tabitha had never been in a man’s bedroom before.
Trying desperately to affect nonchalance, but knowing she was failing, she followed him through another door into a bathroom that was as luxurious as the bedroom was sparse.
Heart in her throat, she went straight to the double sink. From the corner of her eye she saw Giannis open a tall cupboard door and pull out what looked like a black leather washbag.
Carefully unwinding the cravat from her hand, she placed it in the right-hand sink then turned the left sink’s tap on.
The bleeding had definitely lessened in flow.
‘Your cravat is ruined,’ she said in what she wanted to be a conversational tone but which sounded shaky even to her own ears. The cravat might be black but it was made of silk.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He placed the washbag beside the sink just as she put her hand under the running tap.
She clenched her teeth as the cold water hit.
‘It hurts?’ he asked.
‘Only a bit,’ she lied, feeling foolish to admit that a cut so minor smarted so much. There was soap in a dispenser above the sink and she squirted some onto the cut and rubbed it in, then held it back under the tap to let it clean out properly, all the while intensely aware that Giannis stood close enough that she could feel the heat emanating from him.
They had danced together for hours, their bodies almost flush, but her awareness of him had not been as heightened as it was now.
Every cell in her body had come to life and strained towards him.
‘May I have a towel, please?’ she asked when done.
‘Let me,’ he murmured, taking her injured hand back into his own.
Tabitha held her breath, suddenly aware of her heart hammering so hard its beats were thudding in her throat.
He’d removed his mask. The features she found so captivating were right there before her, the closest they had ever been, unadorned.
Head bowed in concentration, a lock of his dark brown hair fell over his eye. He dislodged it with a quick flick of his head. ‘You can move your hand without problem?’
She cleared her throat and whispered, ‘Yes.’
His movements unhurried, he wrapped a small grey hand-towel around her hand and gently pressed it to her palm.
Palm dry, he removed the towel. Fresh droplets of blood seeped from the cut, although noticeably less heavy than before. ‘I should have a bandage for that.’ He placed the towel back on the palm, took Tabitha’s other hand and pressed it on it. ‘Keep the pressure on.’
He unzipped what she’d assumed to be a washbag but was in fact stuffed with bandages and other first-aid equipment.
‘Are you a secret doctor?’ she asked, again striving for lightness of tone and failing dismally. His spicy scent was filling her senses again and she struggled to even open her vocal cords.
Clear blue eyes briefly met hers, creasing at the corners, before he pulled out a large padded plaster in a protective packet. ‘A habit from my university days. My mother insisted I take a medical kit with me.’
Using his teeth, he ripped the packaging, the tendons on his olive throat straining.
The blood running through her heated a little more and she had to fight the fog in her brain to think of something to say. ‘Was your mother over-protective?’
He gave a grunt-like laugh. ‘She was sensible. I was rather wild and reckless in my younger years. Hold your hand flat but curve your fingers a little for me.’
She complied then held her breath again as he carefully fixed the plaster to her hand, smoothing it down at the sides.
‘There,’ he said, lifting her hand to his mouth and placing a kiss to the plaster. ‘All done.’
Her belly flipped over so hard the effect rippled through the rest of her. ‘Thank you.’ But her vocal cords had now knotted themselves so tightly the words hardly formed.
He was so close. The cells in her body were no longer merely straining towards him; they were trying to fly out of her skin to him, abetted by the violent beats of her heart.
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