by Lynne Graham
Free will? What free will? Ellie’s lower lip finally dropped away from her upper as she appreciated that he was deadly serious. In the simmering silence she listened to him talk at some length on the phone in what she assumed to be Greek, his tone brusque, commanding. She heard her own name mentioned and tensed up even more.
‘But I…I swear I won’t tell anyone a word of what I heard!’ she protested feverishly as he came off the phone again.
‘Not good enough. By the way, I’ve just instructed one of my staff to open your staff locker in the maintenance department and extract your keys.’
‘You’ve what?’ Ellie flew upright, angry colour lighting her cheeks.
‘Your address is in your personnel file. Demitrios will pick up your passport and bring it to the airport.’
Eyes wide with incredulity, Ellie snapped, ‘I don’t think so…I’m going home right now!’
‘Are you? It really is do or die time, Ellie,’ Dio Alexiakis advanced with a measuring look of challenge. ‘You can walk out through that door. I can’t stop you. But I can sack both you and your friend, and believe me, if you walk out, I will!’
Halfway to the door, Ellie stilled with a jerk.
‘I think it would be much more sensible for you to accept the inevitable and come along quietly. That is, assuming you’re the innocent party you say you are,’ he completed softly, studying her with brilliant black questioning eyes.
‘This is crazy! Why would I risk my job by telling anyone what I overheard?’ Ellie demanded starkly.
‘That information could sell for a great deal of money. I think that would supply sufficient motivation.’ Dio Alexiakis strode to the threshold of the inner office he had emerged from earlier. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Coming where?’ Ellie muttered.
‘I have a helicopter waiting on the roof. It’ll take us to the airport.’
‘Oh…’ He might as well have admitted to having a dinosaur waiting on the roof. She could not have been more taken aback. ‘A helicopter?’ she repeated weakly.
Seeming finally to appreciate that she was paralysed by sheer disbelief at what he was calmly demanding of her, Dio Alexiakis strode back across the room, closed a powerful hand over hers and urged her in the direction he wanted her to go. Pausing only to lift a heavy dark overcoat off a chair-arm, he hurried her across a palatial office with huge corner windows and pressed her through a door on the far side of the room.
‘This can’t be happening to me,’ Ellie whispered dazedly as she stumbled up a flight of steps.
‘That wish cuts both ways,’ he drawled curtly from behind her. ‘I have no desire for company on this particular trip.’
As he reached a long arm past her to open the steel door at the top, a blast of cold spring air blew her hair back from her face and plastered her thin overall to her slight body. She shivered violently. Having already donned his overcoat, Dio Alexiakis sidestepped her to stride towards the silver helicopter and the pilot stationed by its nose.
‘Hurry up!’ he shot at her over a broad shoulder.
‘I haven’t even got my coat!’ Ellie heard herself shriek at him, losing her temper with a suddenness that shook her.
He stopped dead and wheeled round. With an air of grim exasperation and quite unnecessary male drama, he began to shrug back out of his coat.
‘Don’t waste your time!’ Ellie snapped, temper leaping even higher at that display of grudging gallantry. ‘I wouldn’t wear your stupid coat if I had pneumonia!’
‘So freeze in silence!’ Dio Alexiakis launched back at her at full throttle, black eyes flashing like forked lightning.
Ellie squared her slight shoulders. Only the frank fascination of the watching pilot persuaded her to put a lid on her anger. Quite untouched by a slashing response that would have intimidated ninety per cent of the population, and keeping her wind-stung face stiff as concrete, Ellie stalked past Dio Alexiakis and climbed gracefully into the rear seat of the helicopter.
‘I’ll buy you some clothes at the airport,’ the abrasive Greek slung at her as he swung in beside the pilot. He turned his head towards her, putting his hard, classic profile into stark view, adding thinly, ‘We’ll have plenty of time to kill. Waiting for your passport to arrive will probably cost the jet its take-off slot!’
‘You are so gracious,’ Ellie framed in an unmistakable tone of sarcasm, and his brows drew together in disconcertion a split second before the deafening whine of the rotor blades shattered the tense silence and she turned away again.
This is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me, Ellie told herself all over again as the helicopter first rose in the air and then went into a stomach-churning dip and turn to head out across London. Having employed the equivalent of blackmail, Dio Alexiakis was now set on practically kidnapping her! What choice had he given her? No choice! How could she possibly run the risk of getting Meg fired? The older woman didn’t have the luxury of a second salary to fall back on, and her husband was disabled.
But was she herself really any more independent? Ellie asked herself tautly. If it had simply been a question of survival, she could have managed without her earnings as a cleaner. After all, she had a day-job as well, and a healthy savings account. In fact, Ellie lived like a church mouse, squirrelling away every penny she could, willing to make just about any sacrifice if it meant she could attain her ultimate goal.
And that goal was buying the bookshop where she had worked since she was sixteen. However, if the steady flow of savings into her bank account ceased just when she was on the brink of asking for a large business loan, her bank manager would be most unimpressed, and her ambition to own the shop she loved would suffer a serious, indeed potentially fatal setback. Right now, with her elderly boss becoming increasingly eager to sell and retire, time was of the essence.
Dio Alexiakis was paranoid, absolutely paranoid, she decided helplessly. A spy? Did he read a lot of thrillers? So a cleaner had accidentally entered his precious inner sanctum and overheard him discussing confidential business plans. A cleaner who didn’t have permission to work on the top floor, a little voice reminded her. A cleaner who shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t even have entered that office, caught sneaking out from behind a door looking guilty as hell…
OK, Ellie conceded grudgingly, so she must have looked a bit suspicious in those circumstances. But that still didn’t justify his outrageous insistence that he couldn’t trust her out of his sight for the next thirty-six hours. And to demand that she travel abroad with him into the bargain was, in her opinion, proof of sheer insanity!
That wasn’t his only problem either. The way Dio Alexiakis had looked at her a couple of times had infuriated her. Even in the midst of what he had clearly seen as a very serious situation, Dio had still been eying her up like a piece of female merchandise on offer. Compressing her generous mouth into a most ungenerous line, Ellie ruminated on that fact.
Ricky Bolton had been hard enough to tolerate, refusing to take no for an answer and convinced that he only had to persist to wear her down. That she had experienced that strange sense of disorientation when Dio Alexiakis had looked down at her didn’t surprise Ellie in the slightest. This arrogant Greek had merely incited a stronger sense of revulsion than even his subordinate did. But then he was one of those very earthy guys, she decided grimly, the sort who couldn’t look at any reasonably attractive woman without wondering what she might be like in bed!
Quite impervious to Ellie’s growing antipathy, which she expressed in frigid silence, Dio Alexiakis marched her through the airport to a busy shopping area. Striding straight into an exclusive boutique, he headed for a rack of lightweight black skirt suits. Dumping the smallest size available into Ellie’s startled arms, he snatched a hat, purse and long black gloves down from the display shelf above and added them.
The remainder of the tastefully concocted display fell flat on the stand. Flushing to the roots of her hair beneath the aghast scrutiny of the salesw
oman surging forward, Ellie whispered in a mortified undertone, ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘Shopping,’ Dio Alexiakis delivered succinctly, quite indifferent to the staff eyes now trained on their every move. Like a steamroller, he headed for another rack, to pull a blue cotton shift dress from a hanger and stuff it with equal unconcern into her dismayed grasp. A long black coat was thrust at her in the same careless fashion. Then he paused by a severely undersized candy-pink shorts outfit on a dummy. With an imperious inclination of his dark head, he hailed the frozen-faced older woman already moving their way. ‘We’ll have this as well.’
‘I’m afraid that item is sold out, sir,’ he was told acidly.
‘Take it off the dummy, then,’ Dio instructed the woman, whose badge proclaimed her managerial status.
‘Mr Alexiakis!’ Ellie hissed, cringing with embarrassment.
On the clear brink of making a deflating retort, the older woman’s mouth fell open when she heard that name and took a better look at the tall black-haired male towering over Ellie. ‘M-Mr Alexiakis?’ she stammered in incredulously.
‘Yes, the owner of this chain of shops,’ Dio confirmed, surveying the unfortunate woman with menacing disapproval. ‘Tell me, do your staff usually stand around chatting when there are customers requiring attention? And since when has a display been more important than making a sale?’
‘You’re quite right, sir. Please allow me to assist you,’ the manageress muttered unevenly, her discomfiture unconcealed.
‘This lady needs lingerie. Pick some out for us.’ His attention falling on the shoe racks, he dragged Ellie across to them. ‘What size are you?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life.’ Ellie was trembling with rage and chagrin. ‘Is this the way you normally behave in public?’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded with ringing impatience. ‘We don’t have time to waste. Choose some shoes.’
In the background the manageress was struggling to strip the shorts outfit from the mannequin with hands that were visibly trembling.
In a sudden move of desperation, Ellie stretched up and heaped all the garments into his arms instead. ‘Why don’t you just go over to the checkout and wait for me there?’
‘I’ll stay here to expedite matters—’
‘You are not standing around while I choose undergarments!’ Ellie hissed up at him, like a viper ready to strike, infuriated green eyes flaming bright as jewels. ‘I don’t need so much stuff either.’
Black eyes scorched down into hers. ‘I’m paying you to do as you’re told—’
‘If I have to put up with you, it’ll need to be plenty!’
His brilliant gaze literally shimmered, a dark flush of colour accentuating the savage slant of his sculpted cheekbones. Incredulity emanated from him in waves. Nobody speaks to me like that—’
‘Oh, stop throwing your weight around,’ Ellie told him witheringly.
‘I—’
‘You’ve behaved atrociously from the moment we walked in here,’ Ellie condemned fiercely. ‘Go over to the checkout and keep quiet, and try not to terrify the life out of anybody else!’
Turning her back on him, unperturbed by the rasp of Greek invective Dio Alexiakis was audibly struggling to restrain, Ellie chose a pair of high-heeled black sandals and tried them on. They fitted. She passed them to him without a backward glance before joining the ashen-pale manageress at the lingerie section and hurriedly selecting a nightdress and some sets of bras and briefs. Argument, she sensed with a shudder, might well lead to further public mortification. She would leave the clothes behind when she was finally free of the dreadful man. And already the mere thought of another thirty-six hours in Dio Alexiakis’s domineering and boorish radius daunted her.
He handed the blue dress and the shoes back to her. ‘Put them on,’ he commanded with studied insolence.
Cheeks adorned with flags of outraged scarlet, Ellie stalked into a cubicle. He had no manners. He was incredibly confrontational, unnervingly uninhibited and outspoken. As for the way he reacted when he got a taste of his own medicine back—well, he went up in flames like a rocket! When she emerged again, the entire staff were engaged in wrapping the rest of the purchases. Never had Ellie been more grateful to leave a shop.
‘I suppose you want to go in there,’ Dio condemned with unconcealed exasperation as he surveyed a busy outlet which sold cosmetics and toiletries.
‘No…no, I’ll manage fine!’ Ellie swore in haste. ‘Prehistoric man cleaned his teeth with a twig. Maybe I’ll pick one up somewhere on the way.’
Dio dealt her an arrested glance. And then he really shocked her. He flung back his imperious dark head and laughed with spontaneous amusement. Ellie simply gaped, heart-rate speeding up, pulses jumping. His even white teeth flashed against bronzed skin, dark, deep-set eyes gleaming with appreciation. Humour drove all brooding darkness from his lean, powerful face, leaving her bemusedly conscious of just how stunning he was in the looks department.
‘I’m not into shopping,’ he confided huskily, as if she might not already be aware of that reality. ‘Other people usually do it for me.’
Her complexion uncomfortably warm, Ellie dragged her attention from him and studied the floor, but that Mediterranean dark and devastating face was still imprinted in her mind’s eye. He really was spectacular. That stark acknowledgement, that very thought, seriously unsettled Ellie. Dio Alexiakis wasn’t making the tiniest effort to impress or please her. Yet somehow he still made her effortlessly aware of his high-voltage male sexuality. She didn’t like that sensation, didn’t like the unease and tension he provoked inside her.
She might be only twenty-one, but it was over a year since Ellie had gone out on a date. Men, she had decided, were a waste of precious time and effort, and she hadn’t once regretted that decision. She didn’t consider herself a man-hater, but she did get a secret kick out of jokes that suggested the male sex was useless and increasingly surplus to female requirements. After all, by and large, that had been Ellie’s experience from childhood.
As Dio urged Ellie at speed through the crowded terminal, he rested a lean hand lightly on her taut spine to keep her moving. She stiffened defensively. ‘Excuse me,’ she heard herself say stiltedly, stepping back, suddenly determined to escape him, even if it could only be for a little while.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.
‘The ladies’ cloakroom,’ Ellie framed with frigid emphasis. ‘Are you planning to come with me?’
His aggressive jawline squared. ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’
Pointedly dumping the carrier bags she was loaded down with at his feet, she began to walk away.
‘Ellie…’ He extended a comb to her with a sardonic look. ‘Maybe you should do something with your hair while you’re in there.’
Gritting her teeth at the realisation that she hadn’t taken the time to check her appearance in the shop, and strongly resisting an unusually feminine urge to start smoothing her hair down, Ellie vanished into the cloakroom.
It was the work of a moment to tame her bright hair back into a straight heavy fall just below her shoulders. She frowned at her reflection, noticing the animated pink in her cheeks, the surprising sparkle in her eyes. The dress had a cool simplicity she liked, but it wasn’t her style.
Her full pink mouth tightening, Ellie studied the expensive silver comb he had given her and recalled the ease with which he had accurately assessed her dress size. But then that had not been a surprise to her. At twenty-nine years of age, Dio Alexiakis was an unrepentant, totally unreconstructed womaniser. Naturally he was, Ellie reflected cynically. Men with money and power lived in a buyers’ market of all too willing women. Dio was a real babe magnet, and he knew it. He had undoubtedly never had to worry too much about honing the rough edges from his less than presentable manners.
But, even so, she was to get a free trip to Greece. Private jet, five
-star luxury all the way. The drawback? Dio Alexiakis breathing down her neck. An adventure, she told herself staunchly. Even with him around it ought to be more fun than polishing endless floors.
Heavens, she realised abruptly, she’d have to ring Mr Barry. Tomorrow morning her boss would be expecting her to open up as usual. He never turned in until noon, and when he found the shop still locked up he’d go straight upstairs to her bedsit and hammer on the door, thinking she had fallen ill. Regardless of Dio’s embargo, she had to phone Mr Barry, and as she could hardly tell the older man the truth, she would have to lie to excuse her absence.
Carefully concealing herself behind a pair of large, gossiping women, Ellie slipped out of the cloakroom and lunged breathlessly at the public phone only a few yards away. Dio Alexiakis was now standing in the centre of the busy concourse, talking on his mobile phone, his attention conveniently distracted.
Ellie dialled the operator. Since she had no cash on her at all, she would have to request a reverse-charge call. But just as the operator answered, Dio turned his dark, arrogant head. She crashed the receiver back on the hook, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dio saw her before she could put some space between herself and the phone.
Ellie froze like a criminal as glittering black eyes locked to her in instantaneous judgement, his lean, strong face darkening as he strode towards her. And Ellie, who knew all too well what it felt like to be irritated or bored by a member of the male sex, discovered for the first time in her life what it felt like to be scared…
CHAPTER TWO
EYES as dangerous as black ice scanned Ellie’s pale face. ‘The instant I allowed you out of my sight, you rushed to the phone to pass on the information you overheard. You have betrayed my trust!’ Dio Alexiakis condemned with scantily suppressed savagery.
Even trembling, and with her stomach knotted light with apprehension, Ellie was fascinated by the volatile charge of that explosive Mediterranean temperament and that innate sense of drama. Both were so utterly foreign to her.
