Urgently she made her eyes cling to Toby. Familiar, amiable Toby, with his pudgy face and portly figure. In comparison with the man who’d been looking at her, poor Toby seemed pudgier and portlier than ever. Her eyes slid away, her heart sinking. She was feeling bad about what she was contemplating. Could she really be considering marrying him just because he was rich?
Guilt smote her that she should feel that way about him, but there it was. Had seeing that darkly disturbingly good-looking man just now made her realise how impossible it would be for her to marry a man like Toby? But if not Toby then who? Who could save Greymont for her?
Where can I find him? And how soon?
It was proving harder than she’d so desperately hoped, and time was running out...
* * *
Speeches finally over, the atmosphere in the banqueting hall lightened, and there was a sense of general movement amongst the tables as diners started to mingle. Nikos was talking to his host, a City acquaintance, and casually bringing the subject around to the woman who had so piqued his interest. The ice maiden...
He nodded in her direction. ‘Who’s the blonde?’ he asked laconically.
‘I don’t know her myself,’ came the reply, ‘but the man she’s with is Toby Masterson—Masterson Dubrett, merchant bankers. Want an introduction?’
‘Why not?’ said Nikos.
There had been nothing in his brief perusal to indicate that the blonde’s dinner partner was anything more to her—an impression confirmed as he was introduced.
‘Toby Masterson—Nikos Tramontes of Tramontes Financials. Fingers in many pies—some of them might interest you and vice versa,’ his host said briefly, and left them to it, heading off to talk elsewhere.
For a few minutes Nikos exchanged the kind of anodyne business talk that would interest a London merchant banker, and then he glanced at Toby Masterson’s guest.
The ice maiden was not looking at him. Quite deliberately not looking at him. He was glad of it. Women who came on to him bored him. Nadya had played hard to get—she knew her own value as one of the world’s most beautiful women, and was courted by many men. But he did not think the ice maiden was playing any such game—her reserve was genuine.
It made him all the more interested in her.
Expectantly he glanced at Toby Masterson, who dutifully performed the required introduction.
‘Diana,’ he said genially, ‘this is Nikos Tramontes.’
She was forced to look at him, though her grey eyes were expressionless. Carefully expressionless.
‘How do you do, Mr Tramontes?’ she intoned in a cool voice. She spoke with the familiar tones of the English upper class, and only the briefest smile of courtesy indented her mouth.
Nikos gave her an equally brief courtesy smile. ‘How do you do, Ms...?’ He glanced at Masterson for her surname.
‘St Clair,’ Masterson supplied.
‘Ms St Clair,’ he said, his glance going back to the ice maiden.
Her face was still expressionless, but in the depths of her clear grey eyes he was sure he saw a sudden veiling, as if she were guarding herself from his perusal of her. That was good—it showed him that despite her glacial expression she was responsive to him.
Satisfied, he turned his attention back to Toby Masterson, moving their conversation on to the EU, the latest manoeuvres from Brussels, and thence on to the current state of the Greek economy.
‘Does it impact you?’ Toby Masterson was asking.
Nikos shook his head. ‘Despite my name, I’m based in Monaco. I’ve a villa on Cap Pierre.’ He glanced at Diana St Clair. ‘What of you, Ms St Clair? Do you care for the South of France?’
It was a direct question, and she had to answer it. Had to look at him, engage eye contact.
‘I seldom go abroad,’ she replied.
Her tone still held that persistent note of not wanting to converse, and he watched her reach for her liqueur glass, raise it to her lips as if to give her something to do—something to enable her not to answer more fully. Yet her hand trembled very, very slightly as she replaced her glass, and satisfaction again bit in Nikos. The permafrost was not as deep as she wanted to convey.
‘That’s not surprising,’ Masterson supplied jovially. ‘The St Clairs have a spectacular place in the country to enjoy—Hampshire, isn’t it? Greymont?’ he checked. ‘Eighteenth-century stately pile,’ he elaborated.
Do they, indeed? thought Nikos. He looked at her with sudden deeper interest.
‘Do you know Hampshire?’ Toby Masterson was asking now.
‘Not at all,’ said Nikos, keeping his eyes on Diana St Clair. ‘Greymont? Is that right?’
For the first time he saw an expression in her eyes. A flash that seemed to spear him with the intensity of the emotion behind it. It made him certain that behind the ice was a very, very different woman. A woman capable of passion.
Then it was gone, and the frost was back in her eyes. But it had left a residue. A residue that just for a moment he thought was bleakness.
‘Yes,’ she murmured.
He made a mental note. He would have a full dossier on her by tomorrow—Ms Diana St Clair of Greymont, Hampshire. What kind of place was it? What kind of family were the St Clairs? And just what further interest might Ms Diana St Clair have for him other than presenting him with so delectable a challenge to his seductive powers to melt an ice maiden?
His eyes flickered over her consideringly. Exquisitely beautiful and waiting to be melted into his arms, his bed... But could there be yet more to his interest in her? Could she be a candidate for something more than a fleeting affair?
Well, his investigations would reveal that.
For now, however, he had whetted his appetite—and he knew with absolute certainty that he had made the impact on her that he had intended, though she was striving not to let it show.
He turned his attention back to Masterson, taking his leave with a casual suggestion of some potential mutual business interest at an indeterminate future date.
As he strolled away his mood was good—very good indeed. With or without any deeper interest in her, the ice maiden was on the way to becoming his. But on what terms he had yet to decide.
He let his thoughts turn to how he might make his next move on her...
DIANA THREW HERSELF back in the taxi and heaved a sigh of pent-up relief. Safe at last.
Safe from Nikos Tramontes. From his powerfully unsettling impact on her. An impact she was not used to experiencing.
It had disturbed her profoundly. She had done her best to freeze him out, but a man that good-looking would not be accustomed to rebuff—would be used to getting his own way with women.
Well, not with me! Because I have no intention of having anything to do with him.
She shook her head, as if to clear his so disturbing image from her mind’s eye. She had far more to worry about. She knew now, resignedly, that she could not face marrying Toby—but what other solution could save her beloved home?
Anxiety pressed at her—and over the next two days in London it worsened. Her bank declined to advance the level of loan required, the auction houses confirmed there was nothing left to sell to raise such a