by Julia James
She tightened her mouth. Yes, well, Hayley had made it clear she was more than eager to give Joel what he wanted from his girlfriends! What he’d wanted from her, too, but hadn’t got. Hence the split.
Her mouth pressed tighter. No way would she ever have dreamt of wasting the occasion on Joel who, with hindsight, had obviously only gone out with her to try and get her into bed. Nothing special—just one more conquest for him.
Well, it’s not going to be like that! It’s going to be something really, really special—someone really, really special!
Without volition, the imprint of her father’s business guest formed in her head again. Immediately she blinked, telling herself it was to test her mascara was not running. But she knew it was to counter the sudden quiver that ran through her as she put the two thoughts together.
Someone special.
And Nikos Kazandros.
She pulled back from the mirror. No—that was absurd! She’d only just set eyes on the man, spent a bare few minutes in his company. And now here she was thinking—
She felt herself colour, and stood up from her dressing stool. She was being ridiculous. She took a step backwards, moving to inspect her whole appearance, focussing only on that.
She had, she knew, pulled out all the stops.
But for Nikos Kazandros a woman would have to!
With looks like his—not to mention the flash car and his obviously wealthy background!—Nikos Kazandros wouldn’t even have to crook his little finger to get girls flocking around him! They’d all be as breathless as she’d been.
Again she felt her heart-rate quicken, felt her lungs take in a swift, shallow breath. Felt that gorgeous little shivery feeling flutter through her. Excitement caught at her. She took one last look at her reflection. If she couldn’t make Nikos Kazandros look twice at her now, she never would!
What if he does? The voice sounded in her head. Yes, Nikos Kazandros was gorgeous—two hundred percent, twenty-two carat gorgeous—but he was their dinner guest, that was all.
Then you’d better make the most of him, hadn’t you? The voice sounded again, but it was a different one this time. One that made her glance at the slim gold watch around her wrist, and then, flicking her hair back off her shoulders, trot to the door and set off downstairs.
She could hear her father’s voice from the drawing room. The doors were open this time, and yet for a moment, breath catching, she paused in the threshold. She didn’t do it deliberately. It was because she was suddenly breathless.
Nervous.
Maybe he’s not as gorgeous as I thought. Maybe when I see him again I’ll be disappointed. Think his nose too big, his eyes too close-set. See flaws in him. Change my mind over him.
But that wasn’t the only reason she was nervous, she knew. There was another reason—one to do with a sudden deep sense that she was standing on the threshold of something significant.
Deliberately, quite deliberately as she walked into the room, she did not do what every instinct was trying to compel her to do and let her eyes go to the tall, dark figure standing across the room. She could see him at the periphery of her vision, but she wouldn’t let her eyes fly to him.
Her father was greeting her warmly. Almost as if he were relieved at her arrival. The disquieting thought distracted her. She went up and kissed him on the cheek, then turned to their guest.
‘Mr Kazandros.’ She smiled.
For a moment he didn’t answer her smile. For a moment his face was expressionless. Sophie found herself wondering at it. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, he was greeting her in return.
‘Miss Granton.’ He gave a small bow of his head, very foreign. It reminded her of Vienna, where everyone had seemed so formal all the time. She gave a light laugh.
‘Oh, please, do call me Sophie. Miss Granton makes me sound like someone in Jane Austen! Probably a maiden aunt.’
Something moved in his eyes. ‘Unlikely,’ he said, his voice very dry.
But she wasn’t paying a great deal of attention. As she’d let her gaze go to him, to greet him, exhilaration had swept through her. She hadn’t been imagining it! He really was as drop-dead, gulpingly gorgeous as she’d first thought! How could she even have thought there might be any flaws? There were none—absolutely none! He really, really was just shiveringly fantastic!
And he definitely was no boy. This was a man—a man who moved through the world, doing business, driving incredible cars, sophisticated, assured, skilled, experienced.
Experienced.
The word repeated itself in her head. With connotations that made her breath tighter. She found her eyes moving to his mouth.
Sculpted, mobile.
Experienced.
She felt heat beat up in her throat. He’d know how to kiss fantastically…
Her father was saying something, and she forced herself to listen.
‘Your usual orange juice, pet?’
He was crossing over to the drinks cabinet against the other wall. She took a little breath.
‘Oh, I think I’ll have a Bellini tonight, please, Daddy.’ Immediately she wished she hadn’t said ‘Daddy’ like that.
It makes me sound like a little girl.
She didn’t look at Nikos Kazandros in case she saw the thought in his eyes. She didn’t want him to think of her as a little girl.
Her father paused by the cabinet. ‘Sophie, pet, there’s no champagne open. I don’t want to waste a bottle on a single drink. Have something else.’
She was momentarily stymied. Then she recovered. She looked back at Nikos Kazandros. He had that veiled look on his face again.
‘What are you drinking, Mr Kazandros?’ she asked, eyeing his shallow glass, which he was holding with long, squaretipped fingers. Her voice had a breathless touch to it.
She could see the switch being thrown again. The veiled look was gone.
‘Nikos,’ he said softly, as if he were speaking only to her. ‘If I am to call you Sophie.’ A smile, tantalisingly brief, as was the quiver that it engendered in her, hovered at the corner of one mouth. ‘And I am having a martini—very dry. It is an…acquired taste.’
‘Sophie, you’d hate it, believe me,’ said her father from the drinks cabinet.
‘A sweet martini can be very palatable,’ suggested Nikos.
She smiled. ‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘There you go, Daddy. A sweet martini for me, please!’
Oh, damn, she’d said ‘Daddy’ again, and again her gaze flicked to Nikos Kazandros—no, Nikos, she amended, and felt a little thrill, as if of triumph—to see whether he thought her childish. But the veiled look was back on his face. She wondered at it, but at the same time realised she was glad of it, too, because it seemed to give her the opportunity to look at him, as she wanted to, without actually falling headfirst into his gaze, because his eyes were not quite meeting hers.
But they were on her face, though. And more than her face.
They’d flicked downwards, she could see—only for an instant, but it was enough. Enough to tell her, again with a little thrill of triumph, that she had not pulled out all the stops in vain.
The peach-coloured cocktail dress she wore was one of her very favourites. There was something about the colour that just absolutely suited her skin tone and her hair. The material was so light it skimmed her body, but outlined it, as well. It wasn’t at all overtly revealing—but somehow it seemed to indicate an awful lot. The hem was a little way above her knees, yet it lengthened the line of her legs incredibly. The bodice was not tight, but she knew it gave her a very flattering bust, and made her waist look even more slender than it was.
It had been incredibly expensive, even for her budget, but because she loved it so she got good value from it, wearing it over and over again.
But never so gratefully as now.
Now, as Nikos Kazandros’s experienced eyes flicked over her—how many women had he looked over to judge whether they were good enough to interest him?—she knew, with every in
grained feminine instinct, that what he saw he liked.
Liked a lot.
Her lips parted, and her smile was one of mingled gladness—and relief.
I want him to like me.
He was a world away from her. Not just because she was still a student, and he was a man old enough to be doing business with her father, but because, for all her more-than-comfortable existence, it was obvious just from looking at him that Nikos Kazandros’s stalking ground was the kind of glamorous watering holes that littered the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the Alps and the Indian Ocean islands. Fashionable clubs in fashionable cities, with the kind of exclusive membership that filtered out anyone not sufficiently rich, sufficiently sophisticated. The world of serious money and serious spending. That was the world Nikos Kazandros belonged to.
For a moment she felt dismay fill her, knowing the distance between them was too great.
Then his eyes flicked back up to meet hers again.
The veil was gone. And in its place—
Sophie’s breath stilled in her body. Completely. As if oxygen were no longer necessary to her survival.
Because it wasn’t. The only thing necessary to her survival at this moment was the look that Nikos Kazandros was pouring into her eyes.
She had heard the expression ‘the world stopped turning’—now she and knew what it meant. For one incredible, timeless moment she just gazed back at him. Feeling everything stop.
Then, from a long way away, she heard her father’s voice.
‘Sophie?’
She blinked. The world started again. Her father was there, holding out her sweet martini to her. She took it and dipped her head, wanting only to take a large gulp of the drink.
There was heat in her throat, and not from the alcohol. From a different source of intoxication. Far, far more powerful.
Powerful enough to sweep her away, for ever, into a different world, from which she knew, with a strange, vague sense of fatality, she might never, never return.
And from which she knew she would never want to.
Slowly, she raised the glass to her lips, as if toasting that fate. Her eyes went back to his. They were veiled again, but she knew why now. Didn’t mind. She smiled, lips parting over pearled teeth.
Nikos took a mouthful of his own dry martini. He could do with it. Self-control was slamming down hard over him and he needed to regain it, urgently.
Hell, if he’d thought Sophie Granton a peach when he’d first seen her, with her hair flying and almond blossom drifting on her gypsy clothes, now he couldn’t even begin to find the right description for her.
Except—knockout.
But not in the way the women in his world usually earned that soubriquet. Not from wearing the kind of gown that stunned male libidos a kilometre wide. Sophie Granton’s impact as she’d stood in the doorway a few minutes ago had been quite different. Hitting him in a quite different place. One where he’d never been hit before.
And in one he had, as well.
That dress she was wearing and the sleek, groomed fall of hair had hit a spot that was very, very familiar to him. The spot that had, right over the top of it, a great big D for Desire.
He knew he shouldn’t even begin to indulge it, but that was easier said than done. Hell, it was impossible to do! The way she stood there, with her perfect figure, perfect face, perfect hair. Now, with make-up on, she looked older, he realised, and realised too that he was glad of it.
Because maybe this peach of a girl wasn’t out of bounds, after all?
A reality check crashed through his brain. He wasn’t here to run around with Edward Granton’s knockout daughter, he was here to find out whether Granton plc would be worth the trouble and risk rescuing it entailed. That was all.
And yet—
Well, he was here for dinner and he would make the most of it. Make the most of appreciating this beautiful golden girl.
The discussion with Edward Granton had not been easy. The numbers did not look as if they were going to crunch well—the only question was, did it put the company out of play or not? It would be a tricky call to make.
Granton himself was looking strained. That in itself was a bad sign, a revealing one. He knew that his financial survival depended on a rescue. Of course Granton might have other white knights in the offing, but any intimation that he had could also be a bluff and a gamble. Nikos’s father had taught him about the business world well, and that any mistake could cost him dearly. His father had raised him never to be a rich man’s son, thinking money came easily. No matter how large and financially sound Kazandros Corp was now, it could always be lost…No, whatever happened, he would make the right call about Granton plc—his father was trusting him to do that.
And he certainly trusted him enough not to get diverted by anything other than the task he’d been sent to London to do.
Including this girl he couldn’t take his eyes from. For a moment he toyed with coming up with some excuse to get out of dinner. Maybe he should. It would be safer.
Safer?
The word repeated itself in his head. Why had it come to him? He frowned mentally. It made it sound as if there was some sort of danger ahead. He brushed it aside impatiently. He was overreacting. All he was going to do was have dinner with Edward Granton and his daughter.
Did she know how precarious her father’s position was? How shaky the financial edifice that kept her in designer clothes and living in this house in one of London’s most expensive districts? Not to mention paid her student fees and bought her the grand piano he could see in the room behind this one?
No, she couldn’t possibly. Not only did Edward Granton strike him as very much the old-fashioned type of father—indulgent and protective—but she herself had an absolutely carefree air about her. The only thing on her mind—and Nikos noted it with a satisfaction that surprised him with its intensity—was himself.
It was completely obvious to him. Oh, she wasn’t making a play for him or giving him any kind of come-on—it wasn’t that at all. So what was it?
She was entirely natural in her reaction to him.
He could see it in her eyes, the way she gazed at him, meeting his gaze and revelling in it, lips slightly parted, the light, slightly breathless voice.
He couldn’t but respond to her.
‘The name Holland Park comes from Holland House, which used to stand in the park itself,’ she was saying. ‘Sadly, the house was bombed in the war, and there’s only fragments left, like the Orangery. But the park is beautiful, and I always walk through it on my way back from college if the weather is fine, like today.’
‘And arrive covered in almond blossom.’ He smiled.
‘It’s glorious this time of year, isn’t it?’ She smiled back.
He found himself stilling again, the way he’d done when he’d seen her posed, paused, in the doorway. Her smile was as breathtaking as she was—more than breathtaking. Enchanting.
Enchanting…
The word floated in his mind. Where had it come from? He didn’t know, but now that it was there he knew with a certainty he didn’t even think of questioning that it was the right word for her.
What is she doing to me?
The question flickered, unanswered. Unanswerable.
And anyway he didn’t care right now what she was doing to him—only that she was doing it.
And she went right on doing it all through the evening. Smiling her radiant smile at him, gazing wide-eyed at him, making no secret at all of what she was doing. And it didn’t repel him, or annoy him, or make him cynical, or any such thing. Instead he simply…reciprocated.
I’ve never met a girl like her.
The words took shape in his head and he knew they were true. He went on thinking them all through the meal, during which the conversation was predominantly between him and Sophie. When they went to the drawing room for coffee Nikos remembered what Edward Granton had said in the afternoon, and asked Sophie if she would play something for th
em on the piano. To the music he was largely indifferent—but to the pianist he was anything but. What he wanted was to watch her, poised at the instrument, her beautiful profile outlined for him against the glorious fall of her pale silken hair, her hands moving delicately, expertly over the ivory keys. He sat, coffee cup resting in his hand, eyes very slightly narrowed, focussed with absolute intensity on Sophie Granton’s exquisite face.
Knowing with complete certainty that whatever happened he had to see her again.
He showed his hand when the evening finally ended. As he took his leave, still feeling her starry gaze upon him, he smiled down at her.
‘Will you allow me to take you to a concert while I am in London?’ he murmured and then, throwing an appropriate glance at Edward Granton, ‘With your father’s permission, of course?’
For a moment it seemed to him the man hesitated. Then, as he looked at his daughter briefly, he nodded. Nikos could see that Sophie’s eyes were shining like stars.
‘That would be lovely!’ she exclaimed.
A thrill ran through her. He wanted to see her again! He’d asked her out! This gorgeous, incredible man who simply took her breath away was interested in her! He had to be—he wouldn’t have asked her to go to a concert with him otherwise. He’d just have said goodnight and gone, and that would have been that.
But he wants to see me again!
As her father showed her guest out, Sophie flung her arms around herself and gave herself a huge, disbelieving hug. A few moments later her father came back into the drawing room.
‘Oh, Daddy, isn’t he wonderful!’
There was a slightly strange expression on her father’s face. ‘He’s a very good-looking young man,’ he said.
She read his expression, and answered it with a wry one of her own. ‘That’s not a compliment—it’s a warning, isn’t it?’ she said.
He gave a reluctant nod, then took a breath. ‘Nikos Kazandros is very clearly the kind of privileged young man, with his looks and the lifestyle he leads, who will have good reason to expect that females will fall at his feet! And,’ he added, ‘to expect that they will do what he wants them to do!’ He looked straight at her. ‘Be careful, Sophie. I would hate you to get hurt. And especially now, when—’
