She was inclined to think that if you stripped this man of his wealth, status and even his clothes he wouldn’t lose his infuriating imperious air of command.
Katie raised her eyes with a jerk to his face feeling, and probably looking, as guilty as any nicely brought-up girl would caught in the act of mentally stripping a man—make a note for future reference: do not think naked around Nikos—but then no matter how things turned out she wouldn’t be around him for very much longer.
This reflection ought to have made her feel upbeat—but somehow a heavy feeling had settled over her.
‘You are shivering,’ he observed with a frown.
Katie looked again at the jacket; she thought of refusing it and then decided this would be an empty gesture and, besides, she didn’t want to risk being arrested for indecent exposure!
‘Yes, I am. Thank you.’ She slid the jacket over her hunched shoulders, and drew it around herself. It still held the warmth of his body; she found this second-hand warmth disturbingly intimate. ‘My dress has a little more ventilation than was intended.’
‘I could say I hadn’t noticed, but I’d be lying.’
Katie shot him a wary glance but his enigmatic expression was unrevealing—maybe that was just as well.
‘Sit?’ he suggested, nodding towards a seated area.
Katie shook her head. ‘Hospitals at night are strange, don’t you think?’ Her restless glance took in the big empty area. ‘Almost spooky,’ she heard herself babble.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
Katie didn’t tell him that that had been her plan.
‘Have you contacted Tom?’
She shook her head. ‘I tried to.’ Not so very hard, a voice in her head suggested drily. ‘He’s not picking up, but it sounded as if he was in for an all-night session, didn’t it? He could very well be in the middle of sensitive negotiations,’ she elaborated, ‘so it’s probably better I don’t bother him.’
‘I don’t think many men would consider it a bother to drop whatever they were doing if their woman had just escaped death.’ The contemptuous curl of his upper lip seemed to be a reflection of Nikos’s opinion of any man who wouldn’t rush to the side of their woman.
Katie was annoyed that she felt impelled to defend her absent fiancé.
‘And Tom would!’ she began. ‘Escaped death…’ she added, frowning. ‘Isn’t that a tad over-dramatic?’ Her light laughter trailed away as she tried to imagine Tom calling her his woman in that way, and if he had she would probably have laughed.
When Nikos used the term it didn’t sound funny. It must be the accent—men with exotic, sexy accents could get away with saying things that a native speaker could not. It went without saying that she didn’t want anyone to call her his woman; it was sort of dated, sexist stuff—the sort of things the man that her grandfather had picked out for her mother would have used.
She concluded that his accent must be responsible for the shivery sensations she experienced every time he was around.
‘Possibly.’ He conceded her words with a careless shrug of his broad shoulders. The flimsy nature of his shirt made it difficult not to notice how his taut muscles flexed and bulged through the fine material. ‘But nevertheless I think you should let Tom decide that for himself.’
Katie’s lips tightened; his persistence, not to mention his perfect musculature, was beginning to annoy her.
‘Can’t you wait until the morning to tell him what an awful creature he’s got mixed up with?’ she taunted.
‘Actually I was thinking of how I would feel in his place.’
Katie flushed, not enjoying the sensation of being quietly put in her place. ‘I suppose that must have taken quite a stretch of your no doubt limited imagination.’
‘Theos!’ Anger lent his dark, taut features a menacing cast.
‘And I suppose you would walk away from an important business negotiation if your girlfriend needed you. That’s really likely.’ This was the sort of man who put personal relationships way down his list of priorities.
A wave of weakness suddenly hit her; it was so strong she swayed. Nikos, whose simmering anger had left him the moment he’d taken in the white-faced exhaustion in her face, took her by the arm.
‘Sit!’ he urged strongly. The woman was clearly unfit to take care of herself. He wondered why Tom let her out alone!
Katie complied, reasoning it would be a lot more embarrassing to fall on her face than follow his direction. Pride had its place but you had to know when to swallow it. She sat for a moment with her eyes closed, waiting for the awful weakness to pass. To her relief Nikos let her be.
‘I’m a little tired.’
Nikos slanted her a veiled look through half-lowered lids. ‘I find it strange that you feel obliged to apologise for behaviour that needs no apology but not for insults you throw so indiscriminately at me.’ He shook his head when she opened her mouth to respond.
‘Hush!’ he urged, pressing a finger to her parted lips. ‘We will not squabble. I am not so unimaginative that I cannot see you are at the end of your tether. As for what I would do, we are not talking about me.’
Not talking, thinking or fantasising about, which was something she really ought to bear in mind! Unconsciously she ran the back of her hand across her lips where he had touched.
‘I just thought that Tom isn’t going to lose any sleep over what he doesn’t know about. Besides,’ she added brightly, ‘he knows I don’t need him to hold my hand every time something goes wrong.’
‘You are a tough, independent woman, then?’ Nikos asked, sounding amused.
Katie’s eyes narrowed. Her want-to-make-something-of-it? look was weak, but strong enough to make her opinion of his condescension known.
‘If you’re asking if I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, then,’ she told him proudly, ‘yes, I am. Do you have a problem with that?’
He would prefer his women clingy and needy; that went without saying. The sort that would tell him at frequent intervals how big, strong and marvellous he was, and never, ever disagree with him! In short, women who would not upset his theory that the world revolved around him, she concluded scornfully.
‘Does Tom?’ he fired back smoothly.
Katie waved her tastelessly large diamond ring at him. ‘Quite obviously not.’
‘Maybe you are more circumspect around him?’ he suggested drily.
‘Around Tom I can relax,’ she breathed, closing her eyes and imagining herself in his undemanding company. With Tom she never felt stressed or under pressure or…excited?
Her eyes shot wide open; where did that come from?
‘But not around me?’
Katie laughed; she couldn’t help herself. It was such a ludicrous idea: relax with Nikos! She could more readily imagine falling asleep on top of an active volcano! But then, she mused as her eyes moved over his tall, elegant figure, he did have something of a volcano’s explosive qualities…and he was liable to erupt for no apparent reason.
‘Do I look that stupid?’ If ever there was an invitation, this was it.
Katie