by Julia James
Oh, damn! Damn, damn, damn!
Yet she couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t stop the memory—instant, vivid and overpowering—of the way he’d looked at her. Looked right at her. Looked her over...
Meat, she said desperately to herself. As if you were a piece of meat—that’s how he looked at you. Just as you told him.
She fought to call back the burst of satisfaction she’d felt when she’d rapped that out at him, but it was impossible. All that was possible now was to go on feeling the wonderful flush of heat coursing through her. She fought it down as best she could, willing it to leave her—to leave her alone—just as she’d told him to go, just go away...
She shut her eyes, sighing heavily—hopelessly. OK—OK, she reasoned, so face it. However rude, arrogant and obnoxious he was, he was also—yup, she had to admit it—absolutely, totally and completely drop-dead devastating.
She’d registered it instantly—it would have been impossible not to—the minute she’d turned round with Joe’s sandwich to see just who it was who’d spoken to her in such a brusque, demanding fashion. Registered it, but had promptly busied herself in making Joe’s tea, pinning her eyes on pouring it out and ladling sugar into it the way Joe needed it.
But she’d been conscious of that first glimpse of Mr Drop-dead Devastating burning a hole in her retina—burning its way into her brain—so that all she’d wanted to do was lift her gaze and let it do what it had been trying to do with an urgency she still bewailed and berated.
Which was simply to stare and stare and stare...
At everything about him.
His height...his lean, fit body, sheathed in that hand-tailored suit that had fitted him like a glove, reaching across wide shoulders and moulding his broad chest just as the expanse of pristine white shirt had.
But it wasn’t his designer suit or even his lean physique that was dominating her senses now.
It was his eyes. Eyes that were night-dark and like tempered steel in a face that was constructed in some particular way that outdid every male she’d ever seen—on-screen or off. Chiselled jaw, strong nose, tough-looking cheekbones, winged brows and always, always, those ludicrously long-lashed, gold-flecked eyes that were lethal weapons entirely on their own.
That was what she’d wanted to gaze at, and that was what had been searing through her head all through their snarling exchange.
And then, as if a switch had been thrown, he’d suddenly changed the subject...
More heat coursed through her as the physical memory of how he’d looked at her hit her again. Turning the blatant focus of his male reaction on her like a laser beam. One that had burned right through her.
The slow wash of his gaze had poured over her like warm, molten honey—like a silken touch to her skin. It had felt as though he were caressing her, as if she could actually feel his hands shaping her body, his mouth lowering to hers to taste, to tease...to arouse.
All that in a single sensual glance...
And then, when she’d been helpless—pathetically, abjectly helpless—to do anything other than tell him—beg him—to leave, what had he done? He’d laughed! Laughed at her—knowing perfectly well how he’d got the better of her, how he’d made a cringing mockery of her defiance.
The colour in her cheeks turned to hectic spots as anger burned out that shaming blush he’d conjured in her.
Damn him!
Fuming, she went on staring blindly out through the shop door. She could no longer see him. With a final damning adjuration to herself to stop thinking of him, and everything about him, she whirled around to get on with her work.
Washing up had never been so noisy, nor slicing bread so vicious.
CHAPTER TWO
‘DID YOU HAVE those flowers delivered?’
It was the first question Nikos found himself asking as he returned to his London office after his meeting that afternoon. He did not doubt that his PA had complied, for she was efficiency itself—and she was used to despatching flowers to the numerous assorted females that featured in his life when he was in the UK.
But not usually to females who worked in sandwich bars...
Mouthy, contrary females who gave him a hard time...
Possessed of looks so stunning he still could not get them out of his head...
He gave a shake of his head, clearing the memory and settling himself down at his desk. There really was no point thinking about the blonde any more. Let alone speculating, as he found himself wanting to do, on just what she might look like if she were dressed in an outfit that adorned her extraordinary beauty.
How much more beautiful could she look?
The question rippled through his mind, and in its wake came a ripple of something that was not idle speculation but desire...
With her hair loosened, a gown draping her slender yet rounded figure, her sapphire eyes luminous and long-lashed...
He cut the image. She’d been a fleeting fiery encounter and nothing more.
No, he thought decisively, switching on his PC, he’d sent flowers to atone for his rudeness—provoking though she’d been—and he would leave it at that. He had women enough to choose from—no need to add another one.
He flicked open his diary to see what was coming up in the remainder of his sojourn in London. His father, chairman of the family-run Athens-based investment bank, left that city reluctantly these days, and Nikos found himself doing nearly all the foreign travel that running the bank required.
A frown moved fleetingly across his brow. At least here in London he was spared his father’s wandering into the office to make one of his habitual complaints about Nikos’s mother. The moment Nikos got back to Athens, though, he knew there would be a litany of complaints awaiting him, while his father indulged himself and offloaded. Then—predictably—the next time he saw his mother a reciprocal litany would be pressed upon him...
With a sigh of exasperation he pushed his interminably warring parents out of his head space. There was never going to be an end to their virulent verbal attacks on each other, their incessant sniping and backbiting. It had gone on for as long as Nikos could remember, and he was more than fed up with it.
Briskly, he ran an eye down the diary page and then frowned again—for quite a different reason this time.
Damn.
His frown deepened. How had he got himself involved in that? A black-tie charity bash at the Viscari St James Hotel this coming Friday evening.
In itself, that would not have been a problem. What was a problem, though, was that he could see from the diary that the evening included Fiona Pellingham. Right now that woman was not someone he wanted to encounter.
A high-flying mergers-and-acquisitions expert at a leading business consultancy, Fiona had taken an obvious shine to Nikos during a business meeting on his last visit to London, and had made it strikingly clear to him that she’d very much like to make an acquisition of him for herself.
But for all her striking brunette looks and svelte figure she was, as Nikos had immediately realised, the possessive type, and she would want a great deal more from him than the passing affair that was all he ever indulged in when it came to women. And that meant that the last thing he wanted to do was to give her an opportunity to pursue her obvious interest in him.
He frowned again. The problem was, even if he didn’t go to this charity bash she’d somehow put into his diary, Fiona would probably find another way to pursue him. Plague him with yet more invitations and excuses to meet up with him. What he needed was to put her off completely. Convince her he was unavailable romantically.
What he needed was a handy, convenient female he could take along with him on Friday to keep Fiona at bay. But just who would fit that bill? For a moment his mind was totally, absolutely blank. Then, in the proverbial light-bulb moment, he knew exactly who he
wanted to take. And the knowledge made him sit back abruptly and hear the question shaping itself inside his head.
Well, after all, why not? You did want to know just how much more beautiful she could look if she were dressed for the evening...
This would be a chance to find out—why not take it?
A slow smile started to curve his mouth.
* * *
Mel was staring at the cluttered table in the back room behind the sandwich bar. She didn’t see the clutter—all she saw was the huge bouquet that sat in its own cellophane container of water, its opulent blooms as large as her fists. A bouquet that was so over-the-top it was ridiculous. Her eyes were stormy.
Who the hell did he think he was?
Except that she knew the answer to that, because his name came at the end of the message on the card in the envelope pinned to the cellophane.
Hope these make amends and improve your mood.
It was signed ‘Nikos Parakis.’
Her brows lowered. So he was Greek. It made sense, now she thought about it, because although his English accent had been perfect, his clipped public-school vowels a perfect match with the rest of his ‘Mr Rich’ look, nevertheless his complexion had a distinctly Mediterranean hue to it, and his hair was as dark as a raven’s wing.
Even as she thought about it his image sprang into her vision again—and with it the expression in those dark, long-lashed eyes that had looked her over, assessing her, clearly liking what he saw...
As if he was finding me worthy of his attentions!
She bristled all over again, fulminating as she glared at the hapless bouquet of lilies. Their heady scent filled the small space, obliterating the smell of food that always permeated the room from the sandwich bar beyond. The scent made her feel light-headed. Its strength was almost overpowering, sending coils of fragrance into her lungs. Exotic, perfumed...sensuous.
As sensuous as his gaze had been.
That betraying heat started to flush up inside her again, and with a growl of anger at her own imbecility she wheeled about. She had no idea where she was going to put the ridiculously over-the-top bouquet, but right now she had work to do.
She was manning the sandwich bar on her own because Sarrie himself was on holiday. She didn’t mind because he was paying her extra, and every penny was bankable.
As she returned to her post behind the counter, checking what was left of the day’s ingredients and lifting out a tub of sliced tomatoes from the fridge, she deliberately busied herself running over her mental accounts. It stopped her thinking about that ridiculous bouquet—and the infuriating man who’d sent it to her.
OK, so where was she in her savings? She ran the figures through her head, feeling a familiar sense of satisfaction and reassurance as she did so. She’d worked flat-out these last twelve months, and now she was almost, almost at the point of setting off on her dream.
To travel. To leave the UK and see the world! To make a reality of all the places she’d only ever read about. Europe, the Med, even the USA—and maybe even further...South America, the Far East and Australia.
She’d never been abroad in her life.
A sigh escaped her. She shouldn’t feel deprived because she hadn’t travelled abroad. Gramps hadn’t liked ‘abroad.’ He hadn’t liked foreign travel. The south coast had been about as far as he’d been prepared to go.
‘Nothing wrong with Bognor,’ he’d used to tell her. ‘Or Brighton. Or Bournemouth.’
So that was where they’d gone for their annual summer holiday every year until she was a teenager. And for many years it had been fine—she’d loved the beach, even on her own with no brothers or sisters to play with. She’d had her grandfather, who’d raised her ever since his daughter and son-in-law had been killed in the same motorway pile-up that had killed his wife.
Looking back with adult eyes, she knew that having his five-year-old granddaughter to care for after the wholesale slaughter of the rest of his family had been her grandfather’s salvation. And he, in return, had become her rock—the centre of her world, the only person in the entire universe who loved her.
When she’d finished with school and started a Business Studies degree course at a nearby college, she’d opted to continue to live at home, in the familiar semi-detached house in the north London suburb she’d grown up in.
‘I’d be daft to move out, Gramps. Student accommodation costs a fortune, and most of the flats are complete dumps.’
Though she’d meant it, she’d also known that her grandfather had been relieved that she’d stayed at home with him.
It hadn’t cramped her social life to be living at home still, and she’d revelled in student life like any eighteen-year-old, enjoying her fair share of dating. It hadn’t been until she’d met Jak in her second year that things had become serious. He’d taken her seriously, too, seeing past her dazzling looks to the person within, and soon they’d become an item.
Had she been in love with him? She’d discovered the answer to that at the end of their studies. Not enough to dedicate her life to him the way he’d wanted her to.
‘I’ve got a job with the charity I applied for—out in Africa. I’m going to be teaching English, building schools, digging wells. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of.’ He’d paused, looking at Mel straight on. ‘Will you come with me? Support me in my work? Make your life with me?’
It had been the question she’d known was coming—the question she’d only been able to answer one way. Whether or not she’d wanted to join Jak in his life’s work, it had been impossible anyway.
‘I can’t,’ she’d said. ‘I can’t leave Gramps.’
Because by then that was what it had come down to. In the three years of her being a student her grandfather had aged—had crossed that invisible but irreversible boundary from being the person who had raised her and looked after her to being someone who now looked to her to look after him. The years had brought heart problems—angina and mini-strokes—but far worse than his growing physical frailty had been the mental frailty that had come with it. Mel had known with sadness and a sinking heart that he had become more and more dependent on her.
She hadn’t been able to leave him. How could she have deserted him, the grandfather she loved so much? How could she have abandoned him when he’d needed her? She had only been able to wait, putting her own life on hold and devoting herself to the one relative she’d possessed: the grandfather who loved her.
The months had turned into years—three whole years—until finally he’d left her in the only way that a frail, ill old man could leave his granddaughter.
She’d wept—but not only from grief. There had been relief, too—she knew that. Relief for him, that at last he was freed from his failing body, his faltering mind. And relief, too, for herself.
She hadn’t been able to deny, though it had hurt to think it, that now, after his death, she was freed of all responsibility. Her grandfather had escaped the travails of life and by doing so had given Mel her own life back—given back to her what she wanted most of all to claim.
Her freedom.
Freedom to do what she had long dreamt of doing. To travel! To travel as she’d never had the opportunity to do—to travel wherever the wind blew her, wherever took her fancy. See the world.
But to do that she needed money. Money she’d been unable to earn for herself when she’d become her grandfather’s carer. Yes, she had some money, because her grandfather had left her his savings—but that would be needed, as a safe nest egg, for when she finally returned to the UK to settle down and build a career for herself. So to fund her longed-for travels she was working all the hours she could—Sarrie’s Sarnies by day, and waitressing in a nearby restaurant by night.
And soon—oh, very soon—she’d be off and away. Picking up a cheap last-minute flight and heading wherever
the spirit took her until the money ran out, when she’d come back home to settle down.
If she ever did come back...
Maybe I’ll never come back. Maybe I’ll stay footloose all my life. Never be tied down again by anything or anyone! Free as a bird!
Devoted as she had been to her grandfather, after years of caring for him such freedom was a heady prospect.
So, too, was the looking forward to another element of youth that she had set aside till now.
Romance.
Since Jak had gone to Africa and she’d stayed behind to look after her grandfather romance had been impossible. In the early days she’d managed to go on a couple of dates, but as her grandfather’s health had worsened those moments had become less and less. But now... Oh, now romance could blossom again—and she’d welcome it with open arms.
She knew exactly what she wanted at this juncture of her life. Nothing intense or serious, as her relationship with Jak had been. Nothing long-term, as he had hoped things would be between them. No, for now all she craved was the heady buzz of eyes meeting across a crowded room, mutual desire acknowledged and fulfilled—frothy, carefree, self-indulgent fun. That was what she longed for now.
Her mouth curved in a cynical smile and her eyes sparked. Well, that attitude should make her popular. Men were habitually wary of women who wanted more from them—they were the ones who didn’t like clingy women, who didn’t want to be tied down. Who liked to enjoy their pick of women as and when they fancied.
The cynical smile deepened. She’d bet money that Nikos Parakis was a man like that. Looking her over the way he had...
As she started to serve a new customer who’d just walked in she shook her head clear of the memory. She had better things to do than speculate about the love life of Nikos Parakis—or speculate about anything to do with him at all.
Soon his extravagantly OTT flowers would fade, and so would her memory of the intemperate encounter between them today. And eventually so would the disturbingly vivid memory of the physical impact he’d made on her, with his dark, devastating looks. And that, she said to herself firmly, would be that.
