Greek Affairs in his Bed: Sleeping with a Stranger\Blackmailed into the Greek Tycoon’s Bed\Bedded by the Greek Billionaire (33 page)

He had his back to her as he was spooning ground coffee into the glass pot, so she couldn’t see the expression on his face or have any guess at what was going through his mind. His tone was no help. It was flat and emotionless, giving nothing at all away.

‘I remember so much about you. The way you’d call “good morning” to all the horses when you came into the stables, then steal one of their carrots for yourself. That cool, slightly breathy voice, the way you toss your hair back over your shoulder. Your beauty.’

Now Jessica knew that she was mishearing him. He couldn’t have said …

‘Beauty!’ She laughed. ‘Oh, come on! You know you don’t mean that.’

‘Why not?’

He turned as he spoke and the direct, burning intensity of his gaze seared her face, seeming to scour off a top layer of cells so that she felt raw and desperately exposed underneath.

‘Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?’

‘But you said …’

She could hear the words inside her head now, and the hateful, scornful tone in which they had been spoken.
‘Don’t delude yourself, child. I have no interest in you … I don’t play with little girls.’
And in the background the condescending giggle of Lucille, the girl he
did
have an interest in. The girl he had flaunted in front of her, letting her entwine her limbs with his as she pressed a long, lingering kiss on his lips. The girl he had taken up to his flat at night.

‘I know what I said, Jessica, but it does not mean that I am either blind or a fool. You always had the looks, and you were just waiting to grow into them. Which you have done—very nicely.’

‘Spare me the flattery!’

Once she might have … Might have—who was she kidding? Once she had openly dreamed of this. She had longed for him even to turn his handsome head in her direction, to notice her. If he had spoken, she’d replayed the words over and over again in her head. If he had smiled at her, she’d held it close to her heart. But it had all meant nothing.

Less than nothing. He had just been being polite. Making sure that he never put a foot wrong around his employer’s daughter. He had had no interest at all in her as a woman.

So why should he suddenly start being any different now?

‘No flattery,’ Angelos stated flatly, placing the pot of coffee on the big central kitchen table with a large china mug beside it.

Reaching across, he took hold of the mug that Jessica still held as she stared at him in confusion. The tiny brush of his hand against hers, warm skin against skin, made her shiver as an electric shock fizzed along her nerves in response. And the small movement towards her brought a waft of the intensely personal scent of his body to tantalise her nostrils. It was a blend of some soap or the shampoo in his hair, like the sun on lemons, and the clean, fresh scent of his skin that made her senses quiver in sudden reaction.

‘Why should I flatter?’ he continued, easing the mug from her suddenly nerveless fingers as she struggled with the force of her response to him. ‘You’ve grown up nicely, Jessica—you’ve flowered. You were a lovely girl but now you’re a stunning woman.’

Jessica floundered over finding a way to respond to the compliment, one that wouldn’t put her into any more danger than she already felt surrounded her, fencing her in. She wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t felt a rush of delight at the complimentary words, particularly when they came from a man of such incandescent sexual appeal himself. But she strongly suspected that she was meant to feel just that way and the thought made her
worry that she was being deliberately manipulated. That she was being driven to go exactly the way he wanted, think the things he wanted her to think.

She had the uncomfortable, disconcerting image of herself as a mindless little puppet dancing in the way that Angelos directed while all the while he held her strings in his strong, purposeful grip. After all, wasn’t that the way that he had moved in on Marty, manipulating the older man until he had got exactly what he wanted from him?

‘How did you know that Marty needed bailing out financially—that he was gambling so much?’

She flung the question at him as much to defend herself from the worrying path down which her thoughts were going as for the need to say anything. And the worst part of the uncomfortable feeling was the suspicion that Angelos knew that too. The steady regard of those deep-set dark eyes had a gleam that made her suspect that he was laughing at her inside. Something that was confirmed by the faint curl to the corners of his beautifully shaped mouth, a curve that made her move impetuously to snatch her hand back, away from him, only just controlling the impulse to cradle it against her as if she had been burned or stung.

‘It was easy to find out what I wanted to know. I’ve observed what’s been happening at Manorfield ever since I went away.’

‘You have? ’

It gave her a cold, creeping sensation, like the feel of a thousand tiny footsteps moving over her skin.

‘You’ve been watching us? Or sent someone to spy …’

‘I didn’t need to spy.’

To her relief, Angelos had turned his attention to pouring the coffee, that penetrating black gaze concentrated on the action instead of burning into her face. She couldn’t stop herself from watching his hands, strong, bronzed fingers gripping the handle, the others resting so lightly on the cafetière lid. Just the memory
of the one brief contact with those fingers made her mouth go dry in sudden response.

Angelos finished pouring, added milk, reached for a spoon to stir …

‘I never lost contact with Marty from the moment I left.’

‘You were in touch with him?’ She frowned her disbelief.

‘Not in touch.’

There was a strange, disturbing undertone to Angelos’s response. One that Jessica couldn’t begin to interpret or understand but it snagged on something raw in her mind and tugged, adding a new unease to the uncomfortable tangle of emotions she was already struggling with.

‘Not until the last couple of years. But I always knew what Marty was doing—and you.’

He was holding the mug of coffee out to her as he spoke and the abrupt addition of those last two words froze her movement to take it, her hand still outstretched, partly between them.

‘Your spying included me?’

Something nasty crawled over her skin at the thought but Angelos appeared totally unconcerned by her anger and disgust.

‘How do you think I knew you were engaged?’

It had been the last straw, Angelos admitted to himself. The thought that she would marry and that someone else, as her husband, would be in possession of Manorfield was what had pushed him into action. That was when he had first contacted Marty direct again, trying to arrange a meeting with the old man. But Marty, of course, had proved unyielding, refusing any suggestion of contact. Stubborn to the last, the old man had returned every letter, refused any phone call …

‘I—I thought you saw my ring.’

‘Oh, no. I knew long before that.’

It had been the thought that had been uppermost in his mind. Along with wanting to see for himself what the mature Jessica
Marshall of twenty-five looked like in comparison with the barely out of school, young girl of eighteen. He had also wanted to come face to face with her fiancé and see what sort of a man this Chris Atkinson was.

‘There’s a word for what you’ve been doing …’

Jessica’s voice had changed again, sharpening, tightening. It was that oh-so English voice that he had always detested because it expressed so much of the way she thought—especially the way she thought about him.

She had stepped back into the role of lady of the manor, addressing the peasant who dared question her orders. And, hearing it, he felt the hot bite of anger in his veins, hazing his thoughts.

‘We call it stalking. And, in England, stalking is a crime! One that could earn you a prison sentence.’

‘Stalking from several thousand miles away in Greece?’ he scorned icily. ‘When you were not even aware of the fact? I think not. I cannot see any lawyer trying to make that accusation stick—or any police force letting him try.’

The wordless glare she turned on him almost made him laugh. Almost. But just the momentary flash of amusement eased some of the clouding rage and brought his mood back under his control.

Anger was not the way to handle this. Not if he was to bring his plan to the completion he had intended for it. Anger would only drive Lady Jessica further and further away when the truth was that he wanted her closer than ever to him. Physically, at least.

Because that was the second version of the plan that had formed in his mind. The one that he had changed, adapted slightly on his arrival here.

At first his aim had been solely to stake his claim to Manorfield and all the estate that she had thought would be hers. To stake his claim and enjoy his revenge as he watched her face
the loss of the wealth, the position she had thought was her inheritance. But in the space between one heartbeat and the next that plan had changed, widened.

Because, in the moment that he had first set eyes on Jessica Marshall after seven long years and had seen the woman she had become since he had last seen her, he had known at once that Manorfield would not be enough. He wanted the woman too.

He’d always wanted her, even in the untried, undeveloped beauty of her youth. But then she had been forbidden fruit, too hot to touch even for him. But he had never forgotten the one moment he had held her, felt her mouth on his, her slender form pressed up against his body. He had wanted to take it further then—and he wanted it more so now.

The ice maiden who had greeted him with cool disdain had stirred his libido in a way that no more wanton, willing woman had ever done in all those intervening years. And now, when she stood before him in a patch of weak spring sunlight that made the coppery strands in her hair gleam bright, blue eyes flashing in indignation, looking down her smooth, straight nose at him, he knew a raging need to wipe that cold, distant look from her face and replace it with another, very different one.

Her cheeks were pink with indignation, the same indignation that made her breasts rise and fall so rapidly under the pale silk of her shirt, the rapid uneven movement arousing a hot desire that clutched at his lower body, hardening him in an instant. It was almost enough to make him reach for her, grab her arms, haul her up against him and kiss her until they were both so drunk with desire they didn’t care who or what they were. Only that one was male and one was female and that was all they needed.

But that would not be enough. He wanted more. He wanted to see those blazing eyes turn smoky with need, hear her catch her
breath in desire. And if he was to achieve that then he had to wait. To act in cool blood, not grab and snatch in hot-blooded anger.

Manorfield was his, and that was one hunger satisfied.

But he would not be satisfied until Jessica Marshall was his as well.

‘S
O DO
you want this coffee or not?’

The words seemed to come to Jessica from far away, making her blink hard in shock as she realised that for the last—what?—second?—longer?—she’d been lost in her thoughts. Just for an instant the world seemed to have shifted, then stopped, time hanging frozen.

One moment she had been angry, defensive, appalled at the thought that Angelos had openly stated that he had been watching her. That he’d had Manorfield—and her—under observation for God knew how long. The next she had simply been
aware
. Aware that something had changed. That a new and very different mood seemed to have reached out to enclose them, folding round her like warm scented smoke that clouded her vision. Her skin prickled and her breathing snagged, and through the haze that swirled around her the only thing she could see were the eyes of the man before her. The deep, dark, intent gaze that was focused on her and held her as if hypnotised, unable to move or look away.

The flashing anger, the cold contempt that had been there just moments before had evaporated and in its place was something deeper and darker; something that reached out and took her heart in a cruel hand and squeezed—and she didn’t know if what she felt was jolting panic or burning excitement.

‘Or will making it be considered a crime too? Harassment, perhaps? It’s not poisoned,’ he added with an extra bite of acid when she looked down at the mug that he still held out to her. ‘Or drugged. I won’t be able to talk to you if you’re dead or out cold.’

Had that been a smile? She couldn’t quite tell if it had been there or not. It had barely registered on his mouth, just the tiniest flicker of a curl to those sensual lips, but she would have sworn that there had been a faint lightening of the darkness in his eyes, like heavy storm clouds being touched by the sun, lifting slightly to let a touch of warmth come through.

‘Do we have something to talk about?’

‘We have plenty to talk about, and you know it.’

‘Like what?’

Reluctantly, she reached out and took the mug of coffee from him. Reluctant, not because she didn’t want the coffee—the feeling that it would choke her had ebbed away again—but because she feared the touch of his fingers against hers, the shivering reaction that made her legs unsteady beneath her. To her relief, he let it go easily so that there was only the faintest contact before he was reaching for his own cup, taking a sip from it.

‘Wouldn’t we find this easier if we went somewhere more comfortable—the sitting room or the conservatory?’

The quiet words set all the tiny hairs at the back of Jessica’s neck tingling in nervous apprehension. This sounded too much like last night when, he had suggested that she would be more comfortable sitting down, just before he had announced the news that had taken her dreams, the future she had believed she had, and smashed them into tiny, jagged splinters.

‘I don’t think we need comfort,’ she said coldly. ‘In fact, I don’t think there’s hope of any sort of ease with this. And I’m not going anywhere—I’m not moving until you tell me what we have to talk about.’

The look he turned on her was resigned rather than annoyed
or impatient. You should know, that look said. You should be well aware of exactly what’s coming.

And the problem was that she had a coldly sneaking suspicion that she did know.

‘Your future. We have to discuss what happens now.’

Of course, she should have known. She should have expected it—she
had
expected it—but all the same she felt the sudden realisation of the inevitable like the stab of a knife right to her heart. He owned Manorfield and everything in it—especially the Manor House. He would want to live here now, make this place his home, stamp his presence on it as he had already started to do by taking over Marty’s study after less than twenty-four hours in the place. And, with him in residence, there was no place for her.

No home for her here any longer.

‘It’s all right,’ she managed stiffly, through lips that felt as hard and unfeeling as wood as she struggled to keep them from quivering revealingly while her fingers tightened on the handle of the mug until her knuckles showed white. ‘I’ll make this easy for you. I know you want me out.’

‘I do?’

‘Well, obviously … this is your … your home now—you won’t want me living here. But if you could just give me a day or so—just long enough to find somewhere else …’

Her voice failed her, fading away to a croak as she saw him shake his dark head in adamant rejection of her stumbling request.

‘No.’

‘No? You won’t—not even twenty-four hours?’

Her head was spinning with panic at just the thought. Where would she go? What would she do? But what else had she expected? After all, hadn’t she been responsible for making him homeless all those years before?

‘What …?’ she began but Angelos brought up his free hand in a gesture that commanded her silence.

‘Whatever you think of me, I’m not so callous that I’d throw you out on the morning after your stepfather’s funeral …’ He took another swallow of his coffee, grimacing as he tasted it. ‘I told you, we need to talk about this, and if you don’t want to sit somewhere else then I do. This coffee is getting cold fast and I’d like to be able to relax and enjoy it.’

No chance of her relaxing, with her future hanging in the balance, Jessica told herself but, as he had already started walking from the room, she had no option but to follow him. He led her across the hall, through the big sitting room and out into the huge Victorian conservatory. In contrast to the downpours of the previous day, the large glass-framed room was flooded with soft sunlight, making the view from the windows even more spectacular than usual. Wide green lawns sloped away from the house, down past the shrubberies and away to where the quiet waters of the lake gleamed in the sunlight. It was Jessica’s favourite view from the house and one she would never tire of.

It was one she was going to miss so badly, she acknowledged with a painful twist of her heart. When she left Manorfield she would probably never see it again.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

Angelos had come to stand behind her; she could almost feel the heat of his body reaching to hers. That clean lemony scent she had sensed before tantalised her nostrils and she had to fight against the need to inhale deeply, take in more of it.

‘I’m fine as I am, thanks.’

With fierce concentration she kept her eyes fixed on the view, staring so hard that it blurred before her gaze, all the shades of green blending into each other.

‘And I am not fine talking to your back.’ There was the snap of real anger in his voice and with a sudden swift movement he came round from behind her to stand between her and the
window, the hard bulk of his body blocking off the view. ‘I don’t have to do this, Jessica. I am trying to be fair.’

‘Fair—you call it fair when you have taken my home, my …’ Painfully aware of the way that her voice was rising, becoming too sharp, she hastily caught her words back, swallowing hard. ‘Look, let’s cut to the chase on this—start talking straight. When do you want me out?’

‘Who said I did?’

That question was clearly deliberately provocative and she didn’t trouble to answer it, sparing him only an exasperated glance at the way he was teasing her.

‘How long have I got?’

‘How long do you need?’

And that was just too much.

‘Will you just stop tormenting me? We both know you don’t mean it—that you …’

‘Why the hell do you think I don’t mean it?’ Angelos slammed his coffee mug down on to the wide window sill, careless of the way that some of the brown liquid slopped over the side and on to the worn white paint. ‘What would I have to gain by behaving that way?’

The ringing note of sincerity in his voice shocked her into looking straight into his eyes, her blue gaze locking with his black. What was happening here? Was it really possible that he was being kind?

‘I—can
stay
?’

‘Until you find somewhere to go—somewhere to live.’

‘You really mean that?’ Shock and disbelief meant that she could hardly get the words out

‘It’s a big house, Princess. A great big house. You could live in one wing and I could be in another and we probably wouldn’t even see each other from one week to the next. I reckon I can put up with your presence for a while at least. Unless …’

‘Unless what?’

She didn’t know whether it was his use of that derisive nickname,
Princess
, or the dark, triumphant, possessive thread through his voice that caught her on the raw, breathing new life into the flames of anger that his surprise concession had briefly allowed to die down. But something stung her, warning her not to be deceived, that it couldn’t possibly be this easy. This was the Black Angel she was talking to. The man who had once vowed that he would make her live to regret the way she had behaved and who now was back, intent on doing just that.

‘Do you have a job?’ Angelos asked abruptly, totally disconcerting her with the abrupt change of subject, the apparent lack of logic in the sudden
non sequitur
.

‘Not as such,’ she stammered, her thoughts scrambled as she tried to find a reason for his question. ‘I used to work with Marty on the estate—he was training me to …’

Her voice trembled and died, unable to complete the sentence. The memory of those years working with her stepfather, learning, planning, dreaming—dreaming of the day that she could prove herself to Marty, that she could take over the management of the estate and make as good a job of it as he had done himself.

As she had believed that he had done, she corrected herself miserably.

‘So what will you use to live on—pay for accommodation? Will your fiancé provide for you?’

He’d done it again, Jessica reproached herself, using the pretext of putting her own untouched coffee mug down on the window sill too as an excuse to drag her eyes away from the cold scrutiny of his and to hide the painful lurch of embarrassment in her heart.

How did he manage to do that? How did he seem to be able to take control of her thoughts, making them focus only on him,
only on the here and now, distracting her totally so that she seemed to lose all power to think of anything else?

Even Chris.

Even the man she was going to marry in a month’s time.

And then, when she had been completely sidetracked, her thoughts diverted down other paths completely,
he
was the one who came back at her with the pointed reminder of her fiancé. A stinging mental slap in the face that left her feeling terribly guilty and ashamed for needing the prompt at all.

‘Of course he will! We’re getting married!’

Her declaration was too high, too sharp. She couldn’t help recalling how pushed Chris was for money, how his small holiday caravan business was struggling, his overdraft limit already totally overreached. The last appalling summer, with drenching rain storms that had led to floods, had worsened his problems terribly. Bookings had been few and far between and they had lost at least a month and a half’s takings when the site had been just too waterlogged to be used.

‘So you don’t need me to offer you a job?’

‘A …’ Jessica shook her head dazedly, unable to believe what she was hearing. ‘Why would you offer me a job?’

‘Why do you think?’

He hadn’t moved any closer and yet somehow she felt as if he had invaded every inch of her personal space. His heat, his scent, his aura seemed to surround her, coiling around her body, hemming her in. His essence reached out to touch her skin, was inhaled with every uneven breath drying her throat, parching her lips so that she had to slick a shaking tongue over them to moisten them into comfort.

And it was when she saw those glittering black eyes drop to her mouth to follow the small betraying movement that she knew she was in real trouble.

‘I can’t be …’ she managed huskily, wanting to say that she
couldn’t begin to imagine, but the words failed her, fading from her tongue and her mind as Angelos lifted his head once again and looked deep into her eyes.

‘I don’t want you to go.’

It was the fact that she believed him that took her breath away. The fact that she had a sudden, shocking, total faith that he meant what he said. And the fact that she recognised it so easily, understanding in the blink of an eye, warned her of the depth of the pit that now seemed to yawn beneath her.

‘Angelos …’

His name was just a whisper. One that she struggled to infuse with any sort of protest, no matter how much her mind screamed at her to do so.

‘No, Jessica …’

Angelos dismissed her attempt with the same ease and carelessness as he might have rid himself of a buzzing fly, batting it away with a flick of his hand.

‘Don’t try to pretend that you don’t know what I mean. We both know that there is unfinished business between us. Things that we never took to their full conclusion—a hunger that we never got out of our system.’

‘But …’

The word cracked painfully in the middle as she had to swallow hard again to ease her aching throat. He wasn’t touching her and yet her nerves were singing as if he was holding her close, as if his hands were caressing every inch of her skin. He wasn’t kissing her and yet her mouth felt the touch of his lips, the warmth of his breath. She could almost taste him on her tongue.

They had shared just one kiss—long ago—and yet now, here, in this moment, it was as if it might have been yesterday—an hour—a second ago. Her throat was so tight she could scarcely breathe and her heart was thudding painfully against her ribcage.
It took another fight to swallow hard before she felt she could force her vocal cords to work.

‘I thought you didn’t play with little girls,’ she croaked and saw a slow, wicked light dawn in his eyes.

One long hand reached out and touched her cheek, just the tip of a finger resting on the bone below her eye. The contact was so tiny, so light and unmoving, and yet it sizzled all the way down from her face, right to where her toes curled inside the soft velvet slippers she wore.