Expectant Bride (8 page)

‘How?' she prompted.

‘That conversation you overheard,' Dio reminded her wryly. ‘That company I plan to buy out in a few hours' time.
My father lost it a long time ago. The reacquisition was to have been a subtle olive branch.'

‘Oh, Dio,' Ellie sighed in sympathy. ‘So that's why it was so important to you.'

‘I'll toast his memory instead. He was a strong, vital man who lived life to the full. He would not want me to remember him with sadness.'

‘Explain to me the significance of what I overheard in that office,' Ellie invited, to drive away the vulnerable darkness in his eyes and distract him.

‘Let's say we have company A and company B,' Dio responded. ‘You buy company A stock, and start a rumour that you're interested in acquiring it. The stock price rises. You resell that stock at a major profit. Then, without warning, you pounce on company B, where the stock price has not risen, and you stage a company buy-out at a good price.'

Ellie shook her head. ‘Pretty devious.'

Dio was anything but insulted by that assessment. ‘I have that reputation in business. If word of my true intentions were to escape, the stock price of company B would rocket and I wouldn't buy.'

Innately tidy, Ellie couldn't relax until she had removed all the dishes from round the bed. When she returned to the bedroom, Dio had fallen asleep. Her heart, which felt as soft as melted caramel, lurched all over again at the sight of him. He looked exhausted, but rather more at peace than he had looked at the outset of the day when she had woken him up on board the jet. Just for once in her life she was going to go with the flow, she told herself. As a rule she was very, very cautious, preferring to see everything etched in clear black and white before she risked herself. But it was too late for that
now
…

 

Ellie didn't open her eyes until eight the following morning. Dio was still sound asleep. He even looked gorgeous asleep,
she decided, rather glad he wasn't awake, because she was sure she herself looked a mess. But Dio was a long, lithe version of sheer masculine perfection. Even his bronzed skin glowed against the pale bedding.

She crept out of bed, feeling considerably less brave than she had the night before. The intimate ache of her body rather embarrassed her. In the clear light of a beautiful Greek morning Ellie was painfully aware that she had taken a plunge from which there was no turning back. Her emotions were involved up to the hilt, and the level of her absorption in Dio felt frankly scary.

When she put on the candy-pink shorts outfit, she was amused to discover that it wasn't one bit undersized on her. But then she didn't have four-foot-long legs like the store mannequin. She poured herself a glass of iced water from the fridge and pinched an orange and an apple from the bowl on the dining table. In need of fresh air and some temporary physical distance from the male in the bedroom, she went for a walk along the beach.

There was definitely something reassuring about a guy who mentioned having plans for you right from the word go, Ellie told herself urgently, stamping down hard on her anxious misgivings. Dio seemed so honest and open. All right, so she wasn't happy that she had fallen into his bed so quickly, but she was glad that he had been her first lover. At least Dio couldn't get the idea that she made a habit of that sort of thing.

Furthermore, it was a sort of inverted snobbery to imagine that she couldn't possibly have a relationship with Dio just because she was a part-time cleaner in his wretched monolith of a building, wasn't it? It didn't seem to bother him, did it? And she managed the bookshop for Mr Barry. She had a responsible position even if she didn't earn very much. She decided that as soon as she got home she would approach
the bank about a loan to buy the bookshop. Only fear of refusal had made her hang back so long.

When she checked her watch, she was surprised to realise that she had been out for a couple of hours. She walked back towards the beach house. From a distance, she saw Dio poised on the verandah, apparently waiting for her. Her mouth ran dry. The closer she got, the more she drank him in. He looked sensational. The unstructured beige jacket he wore over a black tee shirt simply shrieked cool designer elegance. Tailored black chinos hugged his long, powerful thighs. She wished he wasn't wearing sunglasses which masked his eyes.

‘I got a call on my mobile,' Dio drawled when she was still several feet away.

And, that quickly, Ellie realised that something was badly wrong. His tone was ice-cold, and so empty of emotion it ran a real chill down her spine.

She came to a halt, green eyes betraying her anxious uncertainty. ‘What's wrong?' she asked tautly.

‘The minute the market opened, the price of stock in Palco Technic started heading for outer space,' Dio informed her with lethal quietness.

Ellie stared back at him in bewilderment, too shaken by the change in him to immediately understand what he was telling her.

‘You said you didn't manage to make that phone call from the airport. But evidently you
did
,' Dio continued with the same lack of emotion. ‘You passed on that confidential information you overheard and naturally it's been used. I hope the tip-off paid handsome dividends.'

Ellie unfroze and started forward. ‘The
only
call I made from the airport was made on your phone! For goodness' sake, Dio…' she protested feelingly. ‘If something's gone wrong, it's got nothing to do with me. I haven't passed on any information…I wouldn't even know where to pass it
to
!'

‘One too many coincidences, Ellie. Like where were you when I woke up this morning?'

She blinked in disconcertion. ‘I—'

‘Tell me, were you afraid of how I might react when the bad news broke and the balloon went up?' Dio enquired flatly. ‘You knew that I'd find out what you'd done before you got off this island, but you were too greedy to stop and think about that, weren't you?'

The sun was beating down on Ellie. Perspiration was dampening her skin. But inside herself the coldness of shock was spreading like a glacier. Now that she had finally grasped what she was being accused of—selling the content of that wretched conversation in some covert phone call—if anything, she felt even more bemused.

‘Dio, you've got this all wrong,' Ellie protested. ‘If that information has got out somehow, I'm sorry, but I don't like being accused of something I didn't do. I did warn you that there was someone else listening at that doorway—'

Savage derision curled Dio's expressive mouth. ‘Don't insult my intelligence—'

‘What intelligence?' Ellie demanded thinly, an unstable combination of anger and piercing fear beginning to rise out of her shock. ‘If you had any, it
should
be telling you that it's highly unlikely to be me responsible for any information leak!'

‘You blew my deal. And then you crawled into bed with me and practically prostituted yourself in the hope of placating me,' Dio spelt out with menacing softness.

That savage judgement hung there in the hot, still air. Ellie shivered, white as death, her beautiful face a frozen oval.

Dio whipped off his sunglasses and surveyed her with eyes that glittered black as night over her. ‘No…looking at you now, I
do
believe it was a little more personal than that,' he drawled with silken insolence, his accent licking around every vowel sound in the stillness.

‘You bastard,' Ellie whispered, reacting to that calculated cruelty with instinctive recoil.

‘So I went slumming for one night,' Dio derided. ‘It was an experience, but not one I ever intend to repeat.'

Ellie threw back her bright head, eyes burning like emerald daggers. ‘No,
I
was the one slumming, Dio. All you've got is a bottomless bank account. You have as much class as an illiterate goat-herd!'

Dio jerked and froze to the spot. Ellie stalked up onto the verandah, brushing past him to gain entry to the beach house. All that was guiding her was a somewhat formless desire to get some shoes on and escape. She sped into the bedroom, where her clothing was.

As she crossed the threshold, a powerful hand suddenly closed round her forearm. ‘Say that again,' Dio invited in a raw undertone of pure menace.

‘You have as much class as an illiterate goat-herd,' Ellie framed woodenly, staring blindly into space. ‘And, in making that comparison, I have no doubt that I am insulting the goat-herd. He might well be poor and decent, and if he's poor and mean, well, at least he's got some excuse—'

‘Whereas I?' Dio slotted in, a whole octave louder in volume.

Ellie's heart was hammering like a storm warning. She could feel his rage like a hurricane, churning up the atmosphere, but she couldn't suppress her overwhelming need to hit back. ‘You are rich and privileged and pig-ignorant. Now get your hands off me!'

A split second later, her feet left the marble floor and a strangled screech escaped her. Dio brought her down on the bed in a startlingly fast landing that left her breathless and pinned her there. He was ashen pale beneath his bronzed skin, dark, deep-set eyes now a blaze of flashing gold intimidation. ‘If you were a man, I'd kill you for such insults!'

‘You're f-frightening me…' Ellie mumbled truthfully.

An expression of extreme distaste flashed across Dio's darkly handsome features. He straightened up and backed off instantaneously. ‘The helicopter's waiting up at the villa for you,' he delivered between clenched teeth, with openly challenged restraint. ‘Pack and get out! Don't set foot in the Alexiakis International building again.

Pale as the pristine white sheet spread beneath her, Ellie swung her legs off the side of the bed and sat there. ‘I thought I could love you, and now I hate you,' she muttered sickly.

With a contemptuous gesture of one lean brown hand, Dio sent a handful of banknotes fluttering down onto the soft deep carpet at her feet.

Ellie stared speechless at all those fifty pound notes.

‘As you said, business comes first and last in your life. If it's any consolation, you gave me a great night.'

Ellie's innate survival skills rose above the devastating sense of betrayal that momentarily threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Is this my plane fare home from Athens?'

‘
Cristos
…what's that supposed to mean?' Dio raked at her.

‘That little people like me have to think of practical stuff like that. I don't know how much a flight home would cost,' she extended doggedly, refusing to look at him, refusing to let herself
feel
anything at all.

‘You collect your ticket at the terminal.'

‘Then all I need is transport home once I get back to London.' Ellie picked up one note, resolving to send him the change, and then she stiffened. ‘What about Meg?'

‘The other cleaner? What do you think?'

‘That if you sack Meg too, you will live to regret it.' Slowly, very slowly, Ellie raised her head, eyes as cold as his own now as she made the worst threat she could imagine. ‘I'll go to the newspapers, Dio. Since they seem so interested in you, I'll give them chapter and verse on this whole sleazy little episode and then compensate Meg with the proceeds…'

Dio studied her with a quality of incredulous disgust that was unmistakable. Inwardly, Ellie cringed from that look and, terrified of betraying any further weakness, she got up on cotton wool legs. Turning her back to him, she tipped her old canvas shoes out of the relevant carrier bag and slid her feet into them. With a nerveless grip on the bag that contained the rest of what she had been wearing that first evening, she walked past him, her head as high as she could hold it.

It seemed to take for ever to reach the lift in the villa, for ever to walk the length of that opulent endless hall, shoulders and spine aching with the rigidity of unnatural control. The helicopter was parked on the heli-pad a hundred yards from the entrance. She climbed in and closed her eyes tight, shallowly breathing in and out, struggling to maintain control and, most of all, not to actually
think
about what she had foolishly brought on herself.

But the first stab of self-loathing still escaped and pierced deep long before she reached Athens. Ellie wasn't used to making mistakes. In fact, Ellie was very cautious, particularly with men. So when the events of the previous thirty-six hours flashed before her, she could not begin to credit her own foolish wanton behaviour. Before long she decided that she had got exactly what she deserved. She had invited all that pain and humiliation.

When had she contrived to forget that she was with the same modest guy who had announced earlier in the day that he could ‘persuade' her to belong to him? She shivered beneath the sting of that memory. It was even more of a hard lesson to acknowledge that she had actually felt
close
to a male capable of misjudging her to such an extent. He hadn't even listened to her attempt to defend herself.

What did she want with somebody that stupid and prejudiced anyway? The trouble was, nothing had ever hurt Ellie so much in five long years…

E
LLIE
rearranged the book display in the window for the second time that day.

‘Cup of tea, Ellie?' Horace Barry suggested.

It was a lashing wet day and there wasn't a customer in the shop. Ellie focused on her elderly employer, the kindly concern visible in his lined features, and forced a strained smile. ‘Lovely…thanks.'

Grateful that the older man would never dream of asking prying questions, Ellie stood behind the counter sipping her tea and watching the rain stream down the window and the door. She had been back home for two days, but what had happened on the island of Chindos haunted her more with every passing hour. How could she have been such an idiot?

Sex was a dangerous fire to play with; she had always known that. She had always believed that physical intimacy belonged in stable relationships. It was humiliating to accept that she had recklessly gone to bed with a man she had known for little more than a day. She had had a choice and, relying on feelings rather than intelligence, she had made the wrong choice. She should have kept Dio Alexiakis at arm's length. And if that little accident with contraception which Dio had mentioned with such supreme cool had consequences, she would have nobody to blame but herself, she reflected fearfully.

Mr Barry went home early. Just before closing time, a delivery man arrived with a large bouquet. ‘Miss Eleanor Morgan?'

‘I don't think I'm the Eleanor Morgan you're looking for,'
Ellie told him drily, never having received flowers in her life, and certainly not an enormous bunch of costly white roses.

‘This is the address.'

Her heart beating very fast as she thought of the only person she knew who could afford such a gesture, Ellie signed for the bouquet and tore the accompanying card out of the envelope. Three words. ‘From the goat-herd.'

Ellie turned white, and then furious pink. She tore the card into pieces as small as confetti and tossed them in the bin below the counter.

Evidently the roses were Dio's idea of an apology. Her soft full mouth compressed. Had he somehow established that she wasn't the source of the information leak? Someone else must have rammed that reality down his arrogant throat, Ellie decided bleakly. Certainly Dio himself hadn't cherished the slightest doubt of her guilt. No, Dio had had no trouble whatsoever believing that the sneaky little cleaner had lied to him, deceived him and finally betrayed his precious plans. She hoped he's lost a mint of money on the deal going wrong. He deserved to.

The phone rang. She answered it.

‘I'd like to speak to Ellie…'

Ellie froze at the startling familiarity of Dio's rich, dark drawl.

Silence filled with static buzzed on the line.

‘What do you want?' she enquired curtly.

‘I'll be back in London by nine this evening. I want to see you.'

‘Nothing doing,' Ellie said after a truly staggered pause in which to absorb that smooth announcement of intent.

‘Ellie…' Dio breathed, and the way he said her name made her clench the phone so tight that her fingers ached.

‘Is Meg still employed?' she demanded brittly.

‘Yes.'

‘Fine…' Ellie released her pent-up breath in a jerky ex
halation of relief. ‘I presume that means that I can have my job back too?'

‘We'll discuss that later—'

‘Dio, we are never going to meet again in this lifetime,' Ellie asserted, her temper steadily climbing. ‘All I've got to say to you I can say now. You
owe
me my job back!'

‘I can find you alternative employment—'

‘Look, what's it to you if I'm working on level eight?' Ellie raked down the line at him with furious resentment. ‘You think I'm going to gossip about you with the women I work with? You've just got to be joking! Electric shock treatment wouldn't drag a confession from me!'

‘We'll talk about it this evening.'

‘I'm not seeing you again. I don't
want
to see you again! You're trying to bully me and I'm not having it. If you don't let me go back to work, I'll go to an employment tribunal with a complaint of unfair dismissal. I know my rights, Dio.'

‘Ellie, you just said that electric shock treatment wouldn't drag a confession from you,' Dio reminded her in a maddeningly lazy drawl. ‘It wouldn't work to be that sensitive with a tribunal.'

‘Surely you don't believe I'd tell the whole truth? A convincingly
sneaky
little liar like me?' Ellie hissed in a sizzling undertone. ‘Naturally, I'd lie!'

The silence full of static returned.

‘If you want to return to work next week, I won't stand in your way.' Dio ground out that concession with audible exasperation.

‘I'm going in tonight. Just forget we ever collided, Dio.
I
certainly have,' Ellie told him, and slammed down the phone.

Did he think she was prepared to see him just to hear some explanation about who had really blabbed about his confidential plans? Did he really think she was interested? Did he fondly imagine an apology was likely to change anything? Were all rich men that arrogant? Fizzing with turbulent emo
tion, Ellie locked up the shop and mounted the stairs to her bedsit behind the storeroom on the first floor.

The very last thing she needed was to
see
Dio Alexiakis again. Who would wish to be faced with the reminder of their lowest moment? Throwing together a sandwich with trembling hands, Ellie took two bites of it and then dumped it. Twenty minutes later, she set out for work at the Alexiakis International building. Why couldn't he just leave her alone? Couldn't he appreciate that he was just embarrassing and annoying her?

When Ellie walked into the building, the big portrait of Dio in the ground-floor foyer really offended her. On canvas, Dio just emanated cool, sophisticated charm. Fresh flowers always adorned the side table below the painting. It looked remarkably like a shrine to her embittered and unimpressed gaze.

The supervisor, a thin, sour woman, frowned when Ellie signed in. ‘You took off on Monday night without a word to anyone,' she censured. ‘You didn't even phone in sick. I had to put in a report to Personnel.'

‘Yes. I expect you did. I'm sorry.' Ellie added another pound of flesh to Dio's mounting tally of sins and fumed all the way up to level eight.

Midway through her shift, she went down to the basement restroom for her usual cup of coffee. Meg dropped into the vacant seat beside her. ‘Where on earth did you go on Monday evening?' she demanded. ‘I was so worried when you didn't come down for your break. I was scared there'd been a row, because that bloke you told me about—'

‘What bloke?'

‘You know, the one that was annoying you.' Meg frowned at her. ‘Big blond bloke called Bolton. He walked right up to me the minute I began work on your floor and demanded to know where you were.'

Ellie paled. ‘Sorry.'

‘I
had
to tell him, love. Did he come upstairs looking for you?'

Ellie stilled. ‘I don't know…I didn't see him,' she muttered, suddenly wondering if it was Ricky Bolton who had overheard Dio's wretched profiteering plans.

The conversation of two other women nearby attracted her attention.

‘I bet she's just a secretary or something…'

‘Not the way she was done up, with the hat and all,' the other argued vehemently. ‘Anyway, why would he take a secretary to his dad's funeral?'

Ellie cleared her dry throat. ‘Who are they talking about?'

‘The mystery blonde Mr Alexiakis arrived in Athens with. A secretary!' Meg chuckled. ‘Not in
those
clothes!'

‘Some secretaries are very highly qualified and earn top salaries,' Ellie hastened to point out.

One of the other women leant across the gap separating them and said, ‘That blonde piece was a dead ringer for you, Ellie.' She gave an outrageous wink. ‘And you did go AWOL that night. Anything you'd like to confess?'

‘Me…
me
?' Ellie repeated, sharply disconcerted and striving for more convincing vigour.

‘Ellie would be too busy lecturing our Dio about sexism in the workplace to get off with him!' someone else mocked.

‘I'm rather behind tonight. I'd better get back to work,' Ellie told Meg breathlessly as the dialogue roamed away from her again, leaving her limp.

She caught the bus home at the end of her shift, feeling both tired and stressed out. As she walked down the street where she lived, she could not help but notice the long silver limousine parked outside the shop. Fierce tension tautened her slim figure and her heart raced so fast it was a challenge to breathe. As she approached, Dio Alexiakis got out of the car, the movement fluid and controlled, without any suggestion of haste.

As usual, he looked spectacular. Charcoal-grey suit, crisp shadow stripe shirt, elegant silk tie in muted shades. Ellie's heart went from racing to sinking. Dio looked every inch what he was, she acknowledged dully. A very rich and powerful businessman, highly sophisticated and exquisitely well groomed. How she had
ever
for one second imagined that she could have a relationship with someone like him?

Ellie removed her keys from her bag with an unsteady hand. ‘You're not playing fair, Dio. I told you I didn't want this,' she reminded him.

‘I hurt you and I'm sorry,' Dio murmured steadily.

Unprepared for a blunt assertion of that ego-battering truth, Ellie twisted her head away. Her strained eyes stung with tears as she fumbled blindly to get the key into the lock and get the shop door safely shut behind her again.

Dio plucked the key from her nerveless grip, opened the door and stood back.

Ellie stepped inside and adjusted the alarm so that it wouldn't go off. ‘I just don't want to speak to you…OK?' she said stiltedly.

‘No. It's not OK. I want to talk to you.'

Ellie swallowed hard. All he probably wanted to do was explain and go away again. With as much dignity as she could muster, she simply shrugged as if she didn't really care either way. Dio followed her up the steep narrow staircase behind the counter. She unlocked the door of her bedsit and switched on the lamp by her bed.

It was a spacious room and she was proud of it. She had painted the walls a sunny yellow, put up posters, and covered the armchair with a colourful throw. Tossing her keys on the gate-leg table by the window, she turned back to him with pronounced reluctance.

Dio studied her with an intensity she could feel right through to her bones. She flushed and folded her arms, suddenly horribly conscious of her serviceable rain jacket, faded
jeans and sweater. In the act of tilting her chin, she connected with glittering black eyes. She quivered, treacherous heat pooling between her thighs, a strength of craving that appalled her instantly awakened.

‘Come home with me' Dio demanded thickly.

‘No!'
Ellie gasped, reeling in bemusement from that invitation.

Dark colour scored his hard cheekbones. His dense lashes swept down low over his stunning gaze and he breathed in deep, his tension as strong as her own. ‘You're right. We have to talk this out first,' he conceded with gritty reluctance.

First?
Ellie spun away on legs that trembled, shattered that he could reduce her to such a level with just one smouldering glance.

‘I went off on a tangent with you on the island,' Dio admitted without hesitation. ‘When my chief accountant called me with the bad news, I cut him short. I didn't want to discuss it any further. I'm afraid I just assumed that you had made that phone call from the airport. I was outraged.'

‘Yes,' Ellie conceded stiffly.

‘But this morning I learnt that you had been telling the truth all along. There
was
someone else there that night. His arrival and his departure were recorded by the security camera in the corridor,' Dio revealed ruefully. ‘If I had been in a more focused frame of mind at the time, I would've recalled the presence of that camera and I would have been able to check out your story immediately.'

Ellie nodded in silence without looking back at him, her delicate profile taut.

‘I have a hot temper. But I don't usually rush into making instant judgements on the basis of circumstantial evidence,' Dio continued.

‘Well, it didn't look good for me, did it?' Ellie responded with determined lightness, keen to bring his visit to a speedy
conclusion. ‘You didn't know me, so how could you know that I wouldn't do something like that?'

‘You're being very generous, but that's not an excuse I need to hide behind. We had spent enough time together. I
should
have known,' Dio contradicted levelly. ‘I very much regret the way I treated you on Chindos. I was…brutal.'

Ellie didn't argue that point. She stared at her own feet, eager to focus on anything that helped her to resist the temptation to look at him again. He was making resistance difficult. He hadn't leapt on the excuse she had offered him, as most men would have done. He wasn't trying to lessen his own offence. He wasn't trying to deny that he had cruelly humiliated her.

The silence stretched and stretched. She knew he was waiting for her to say something, but she had nothing to say.

Dio exhaled in a soft hiss. ‘The employee who tipped off one of my competitors was an accounts manager called—'

‘Ricky Bolton?' Ellie interrupted before she could think better of it.

His dark eyes narrowed. ‘How did you know who it was? I thought you didn't see the man.'

‘I didn't, but during my break this evening Meg told me that he'd asked where I was that night, and he is an accounts manager—'

‘Why would Bolton have been asking where you were?'

Ellie grimaced. ‘He was the guy who was always trying to chat me up on level eight.'