by Abby Green
Maggie’s skin prickled uncomfortably. There was a mocking tone to his voice, but also something almost bleak.
She said, ‘You’re right—that’s not fair. It’s just...you turned up here, on your first visit to a house you bought sight unseen—’
‘Which is really none of your business.’
Maggie clamped her mouth shut, afraid of what might come out next.
Nikos moved closer. The chilly atmosphere warmed slightly.
‘The truth is that even if you’d told me you were innocent I’m not sure if I could have resisted the temptation. Are you really saying you’re stronger than that? That if you’d had a moment to think about it you would have changed your mind?’
Maggie couldn’t look away from those leonine eyes. Who was she kidding? She had had a moment to think about it and she’d chosen him.
She shook her head jerkily.
‘Neither of us were prepared for this chemistry,’ he said. ‘What happened was mutual, and I for one do not regret one moment. Regrets are for losers. Own what you want, Maggie. You can’t go back—only forward.’
‘Forward...’ she repeated.
He nodded, and as he did so he reached for her, putting his hands on her robe, tugging her towards him. Treacherously, she didn’t resist. So much for her brave declaration.
‘What I propose is that we live for the moment and enjoy this very potent mutual desire. Or do you want your initiation to end here?’
Maggie’s insides tightened and her skin prickled. Heat licked at her core, making her feel needy and greedy again. Would it be so bad to indulge? One more time? Did she want her initiation to end here? Even if it was with the kind of man she’d always sworn she would steer well clear of?
She gave him the only answer she could. ‘No...’
Nikos’s hands went to Maggie’s belt and he slowly undid it, looking at her as if to make sure she really wanted this. Now that she was being honest with herself she felt almost impatient. She wanted to seize every moment of this...whatever it was. One-night stand. Interlude.
Nikos pulled the robe apart and looked at her. The heat at her core spread outwards and enflamed every nerve-ending and cell. She reached for Nikos’s trousers, pulling down the zip. She tugged them down, over his hips and they fell to the floor, revealing his naked potency.
He pushed the robe from her body. They were both naked, and in that moment Maggie felt something emotional wash through her. No matter how conflicted he made her feel, she wouldn’t have wanted to share this deepest intimacy with anyone else. She was glad it was him. He was a man she barely knew, and yet she felt she knew him in a way she couldn’t really understand.
He pulled her down onto the bed and they landed in a tangle of limbs, hard against soft. Her breasts were pressed against his hard chest.
He put a hand in her hair and tugged her head back. He smiled wickedly and said, ‘Don’t give yourself a hard time, Maggie. I’m quite irresistible.’
She might have huffed at that assertion—but then his mouth was on hers, and his other hand was on her breast, and she could only agree.
Hours later, when dawn was breaking outside, Maggie lay in a half-slumber, sated beyond anything she’d ever felt before. Her bones felt as if they had liquefied. Nikos’s heart beat a steady strong rhythm under her cheek, where she rested on his chest.
That emotion she’d felt earlier was still there, and she knew how dangerous it was to be feeling anything for this man. But she couldn’t help wondering about him. Where would he go from here? What was his life like?
A thought chilled her—he could have a mistress, a girlfriend? Although girlfriend sounded far too pedestrian for a man like Nikos Marchetti.
As if he could hear her thoughts, he lifted her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the palm. Which did not help her rogue emotions.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
Maggie’s heart thumped. He was just being solicitous. Again, not something she would have expected.
She lifted her head and looked at him, nodded.
He flipped them so that Maggie was under him. He twined her fingers with his and held her hand above her head.
She couldn’t help blurting out, ‘Are you seeing anyone at the moment? I mean, is there a girl—woman—somewhere? Because I wouldn’t like to think that we...’ She trailed off, feeling self-conscious.
Nikos went still. ‘No. I’m not. I can be accused of many things, Maggie, but I don’t sleep around on women.’ Then he frowned as he looked down at her. ‘But you need to know this doesn’t go beyond this room...tonight. Now. I don’t do relationships, Maggie. I’m not interested in settling down, or romance, or happy-ever-afters. They don’t exist—or they certainly don’t exist with me.’
His words sank into her like cold little stones. She longed to ask him why, but she caught herself. He was telling her what she needed to hear—Nikos Marchetti wasn’t the type of man she should want anything more with. Not in a million years.
And yet she’d been drawn to him like a moth to a flame. What did that say about her and her standards? That she was as susceptible as the next woman to his particular potent brand of masculinity?
That she was like her mother, dazzled by the charisma of a powerful man.
A need to protect herself from that too incisive gaze made her say, as lightly as she could, ‘Don’t worry, I’m under no illusions as to what this is. Anyway, you’re not the kind of guy I see myself with long term.’
Nikos was surprised as a little dart of something pierced him. It couldn’t possibly be hurt.
He moved over her, using his body to push her thighs apart. He heard her indrawn breath, felt the way she arched against him.
‘I’m not?’ he asked.
She shook her head, her eyes turning a darker blue. ‘No way.’
He nudged her thighs further apart and notched the head of his erection against where she was hot and wet. He knew he had to slow the tempo or he would lose it even before he entered her.
‘So...who is this paragon who will serve you for the long term?’
She moved under him restlessly, but that dart of emotion he hadn’t welcomed made him torture her a little.
She said breathlessly, ‘I don’t know...someone kind. Respectful. Considerate. Dependable.’
Nikos made a face. ‘Sounds boring.’
Maggie reached up with her free hand and traced the muscles in Nikos’s chest. ‘Boring is good for long-term happiness.’
Nikos caught her thigh and hitched it up, bringing Maggie’s body into closer contact with his. He looked down at her and forced himself to hold back, even though he could feel the sweat breaking out on his brow.
‘Just so we know where we stand... Later you can have as boring as you like, but right now...in the short term...you have me.’
He surged deep inside her and Maggie’s whole body arched up to his, heightening the mind-melting sensation of joining their bodies.
Nikos let the physical momentum clear his mind of the fact that his encounter with this woman was way out of his usual comfort zone. And every coherent thought dissolved as they raced once again to the shattering peak of pleasure.
Nikos stood looking down at the sleeping Maggie for a long moment. Not the kind of behaviour he usually indulged in. A prickle of unease lay under his skin. He was reluctant to leave. When he never stayed. He always moved on.
He didn’t like this. At all. He felt out of control. At the mercy of a force outside of himself. Exposed.
He blamed the uncharacteristic sense of restlessness that had been plaguing him recently.
He reminded himself that, as erotic as this encounter had been, and as surprising as Maggie had been, she wasn’t any different from other women. She’d just been a virgin. That was it. That had to be the element that had elevated this experience ab
ove all others, distracting him when he knew he should have left already.
She was just a woman, and she’d piqued his interest briefly. Within a few days he’d have moved on and she would have become a dim memory.
The sense he’d had here of coming home was an illusion, and she’d been part of that illusion. A moment of craziness. But just a moment. Which would not be repeated.
Nikos injected ice into his veins and turned and walked out, already thinking ahead to the things he should be thinking of, and not lingering on a virgin Viking Queen who had given up her innocence with such artless passion.
When Maggie woke up the sun was streaming into the bedroom. She was disorientated—and then it all came back. She was in the master suite. Because she’d slept with the master.
She looked around. No sign of Nikos Marchetti. Everything felt very silent and still. The sheet was over her breasts, as if someone had pulled it up.
She came up on one elbow, her hair falling over one shoulder. She felt hollowed out from an overload of sensation, her body aching in places she hadn’t known she had muscles.
She saw the robe at the end of the bed and reached for it, pulling it on and getting out of the bed. She noticed that Nikos’s clothes weren’t scattered on the floor as they had been before.
The nape of her neck prickled.
The bathroom was empty.
She went out of the bedroom and down the corridor. She checked the kitchen. But even before she checked the study and the main living room she knew that she was alone.
He’d gone. Left.
Maggie went into the hall, and it was there that she saw the card propped up on the table, addressed to her with a slashing line in dark ink: Maggie.
She opened it.
Thank you for last night, I enjoyed it.
I apologise for the lack of notice. It won’t happen again.
Remember, no regrets.
If you need anything, contact my team.
Nikos
It took a long moment for the full impact of the note to hit her. It was like a slow punch to her belly, spreading outwards and making her feel cold. He hadn’t even left her his personal number.
Contact my team.
He couldn’t have made it any clearer that what had happened had been a very transitory moment.
But isn’t that what you signed up to? asked a small voice.
Maggie put the note down. Yes, it was exactly what she’d signed up to—so she shouldn’t be feeling this...this wrench.
She just hadn’t expected him to be so tender. Generous. Passionate. She hadn’t expected sex to be such a transformative, transcendental experience. She hadn’t expected to...to like him. She hadn’t expected to want to know more about him. To sense that his very charming exterior hid a far more steely interior.
Maggie’s history had taught her to be wary, but Nikos had turned her preconceptions and her fears on their head.
Before she knew what she was doing she found herself in the study, turning on the main computer.
She put Nikos’s name into the computer search engine. Hundreds of hits came up straight away. Business deals... A new casino recently acquired in Monte Carlo... Lurid headlines alluding to his playboy reputation.
There were other headlines too: speculation about him and his two half-brothers, about who really held the reins of power in the family business.
She barely glanced over the few pictures of him with his half-brothers, who looked equally physically impressive. Her eye was drawn treacherously to the pictures of him with dozens of different women on his arm at various events. They were all beautiful—stunning—and well out of Maggie’s league. Not one woman appeared twice.
She felt a little nauseous now when she thought of how easily he’d seduced her. Had he just been intrigued because she wasn’t as polished as the women he usually hung out with?
Clearly he was a renowned playboy—as if she hadn’t deduced that for herself when he’d left her the way he had. When he’d seduced her with such ease. The fact that he was known for this kind of behaviour only took the sting away slightly.
But she shouldn’t be feeling any sting. No doubt she was already just a blip in his memory as he flew high over the Irish Sea back to his jet-set lifestyle. A lifestyle that didn’t impress her or tempt her in any way.
If anything, she should be feeling lighter. She’d lost her virginity to a consummate master of the arts. The problem was she had a sick feeling that he’d ruined her for any other man.
Nikos’s words came back. ‘I don’t do relationships... I’m not interested in happy-ever-afters.’
She welcomed the reminder—because the last thing Maggie Taggart wanted was for history to repeat itself and for her to fall in love with a rich and powerful man. Or, worse, have his baby. Nikos Marchetti was a man in her father’s mould—avowedly anti-relationship and anti-family. The kind of man Maggie had promised herself she wouldn’t ever seek out.
So, if anything, she should be grateful that Nikos Marchetti had spelled it out so brutally—because he was the last man she would ever consider as a long-term partner or as a father for her children.
Literally the last man.
CHAPTER FOUR
A year later
THE CHAUFFEUR-DRIVEN CAR wound its way through the small country roads, tall hedges on either side. The sky was turning a dusky lavender as the sun set and the smell from the farming fields around them was pungent.
The sense of déjà vu was strong. As was the sense of anticipation that Nikos could not push down.
But she wasn’t there.
She’d given in her notice about two weeks after that night they’d spent together. Him and the Viking Queen...
In spite of his best efforts to forget her she’d haunted him all year. His memory of that night was so vivid and potent that she’d ruined him for any other woman. His shock and surprise that any lover could linger so effectively in his memory had turned to serious frustration—so much so that he’d even looked for her.
To no avail. She’d disappeared and she hadn’t given his staff any contact details or a forwarding address.
This was unprecedented for Nikos. The fact that he could still want a woman after one night and that she wasn’t pursuing him. He wasn’t so arrogant to think he was irresistible, but his wealth and fame made him a seductive package to most women.
But she’d been different. A virgin. Sparky. Not intimidated. Passionate. Responsive. Theos. So responsive.
In the back of the car Nikos’s body hardened at the memory. He cursed again, then said to the driver curtly, ‘How much further?’
The driver’s eyes met his in the mirror, ‘Almost there, Mr Marchetti.’
Nikos sat back, feeling on edge. His fingertips drummed impatiently on his thigh—a habit he hated and strived to hide around anyone but himself, fearing it showed some kind of weakness.
He was only here because he’d accepted an invitation to his friend’s end-of-summer party at a house nearby. It was the same friend who had encouraged him to buy Kildare House and invest in horse racing. An investment he’d never followed up.
As the car finally swept in through the gates of the house Nikos vowed to put the property up for sale as soon as he returned to Paris. It was ridiculous to keep it now. Ridiculous to have kept it for so long.
They pulled up at the bottom of the steps leading to the main door. Nikos took his compact weekend bag out of the boot before the driver could do it.
He knocked on the door, and in the few seconds before it opened he found himself holding his breath, wondering if just maybe...
The door opened. His sense of disappointment was a further mockery to his already jagged edges. This housekeeper couldn’t have been more different from Maggie Taggart. For a start he was a man. And somewhere in his fifties.
‘Mr Marchetti, how nice to welcome you to Kildare House.’
Nikos stepped inside, aware of how this welcome was so very different from last year’s, when he’d had to prove his identity. ‘Thank you—Mr Wilson, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Here, let me take your bag. I’ve prepared some coffee and snacks—they’re in the living room. I can show you the way—’
Nikos was already striding out of the reception hall, ‘I know where it is.’
He went inside and moved straight to the bookshelves. Maggie’s books were gone. For a moment something prickled at the back of Nikos’s neck. Had he dreamed it all? Dreamed her? Was he so jaded and burnt out from years of carousing and living down to the scandalous reputation he’d so painstakingly built that he’d conjured up a virgin to—
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’
Nikos turned around. Mr Wilson stood in the doorway. Not Maggie. The disappointment was as unwelcome as it was acute.
‘Just my tuxedo for this evening, please—and let the driver know we’ll be leaving in an hour.’
‘Of course.’
Nikos looked at the coffee on the tray on the table and made a face. He needed something stronger than coffee to burn away those memories. And what he needed was the taste of another woman to wash the memory of Maggie from his mind and body once and for all. Tonight at the Barbier party there was bound to be at least one woman who would stir Nikos’s libido back to life.
Maggie’s arms were aching, but she kept a smile fixed to her face as she walked through the crowd, holding the tray full of canapés that she’d helped to make earlier in the Barbier kitchen. Part of the reason she was serving was to gauge the reaction to the canapés.
The scene was magical—an end-of-summer garden party to celebrate the latest successes of the Barbier racing stables and stud. The garden was thronged with men in tuxedoes and women in glittering evening gowns, artfully lit by thousands of candles and fairy lights attached to an elaborate system of webbing that stretched over the garden from tree to tree, creating an intricate canopy of light above their heads.