The moment the words left her lips, Sienna flushed pink with mortification. Heavens, did she need to make herself sound even dumber than she most undoubtedly looked?
‘If you are agreeable.’ The grey eyes darkened an unmistakable message in their depths, leaving her more flustered than she had been before. Her pulse started to thud heavily under her skin, her fingers automatically lifting to the hollow at the base of her throat, toying with the gold chain she always wore, the breath leaving her lungs on a stifled gasp as lean brown fingers reached out, touching the chain, examining the gold medallion suspended from it. Just for a second his fingers brushed against her skin and the whole world seemed to tremble. ‘Apollo, the sun god. Did you buy this in Greece?’
It was an idle, almost absent question, and perfectly feasible, because the medallion was exactly the sort of thing a discerning tourist might bring back from a Greek holiday, but as he let the gold drop back against her skin, still warm from his touch, Sienna shook her head, too bemused by the feelings surging up inside her to concentrate properly on what she was saying.
‘It was a gift,’ she managed, wondering if her tongue really had swollen so much that it made it difficult for her totalk, or if there was some other reason for the husky uncertainty of her voice. ‘My brother brought it back for me last year.’
He took a step back and she wondered why she should suddenly feel such a chill, as though the warmth of the sun had suddenly been removed from her body. She glanced out of the window, half expecting to see that the cool April sunshine had given way to cloud and was faintly bemused to see that it hadn’t.
‘Sienna, Mr Stefanides would like you to go with him now,’ Gill was saying, but his smooth, accentless voice cut into her words, his ‘Alexis, please,’ bringing a delicate pink to Gillian’s cheeks as well as her own. ‘My car is on a meter,’ he added, glancing at his watch, the wafer-fine broad gold strap catching Sienna’s eye, and her stomach muscles clenched down against the sudden surge of desire to see more of his body than the few inches of muscles and dark tanned skin exposed beneath the immaculate cuff of his shirt. What on earth had happened to her?
Through her bewilderment she managed to retain enough of a hold on sanity to be wryly amused at her own reaction. Heavens, she hadn’t thought it was possible for her to experience this… this intensely physical desire for a man that went far beyond merely looking at him and finding him attractive. It was all she could do to prevent herself from reaching out and touching him, from telling him her most intimate thoughts and desires. She found herself mentally stripping him as she listened to the arrangements he was making, her scrutiny of him in no way lustful, but a silent adoration of the male beauty she knew with some deep-seated instinct his clothes cloaked. When he left she managed to croak something; some response which she hoped didn’t betray the disorder of her senses, and when he had gone she sank back down into her chair, her brown eyes wide and dazed, her whole body strangely weak.
‘Phew!’ Gillian rolled her eyes and grinned, ‘That’s what I call a man! You know who he is, don’t you?’ she demanded, suddenly practical, too excited to notice Sienna’s lack of response. ‘He’s only Hellas Holidays! Do this job well, Sienna, and the agency could be made! You heard him say we were recommended to him—now if we can get him to recommend us to his millionaire friends. Just think, working on board someone’s huge yacht, flying over to Athens to take half an hour’s dictation…. Hey, dreamer,’ she chided gently, ‘wake up! Where were you?’
Sienna flushed vividly, wondering what on earth her friend and employer would say if she admitted exactly where she had been, which was in bed with Alexis Stefanides. She was still totally bemused by the whole thing. She had never, ever met a man who generated such a reaction inside her. Oh, she had had boy-friends, but none of them had ever been serious and never in a thousand lifetimes had she ever imagined or wanted to imagine the sort of intimacies with them that her body seemed to crave to share with the tall Greek.
‘Pull yourself together, he’ll be back in five minutes. He wants you to go straight to the Savoy with him—he’s got a suite there, apparently. And he’s paying well. Just at the right time too. I haven’t got anything else for you for the rest of the week. Just pray that his business keeps him in London for at least a few days,’ Gill told her. ‘We could do with the money.’
A few days! Sienna shivered, suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of her reactions. She felt hot and cold, shivery and excited, her brown eyes glittered feverishly in the triangular piquancy of her face, her blonde hair—the only thing she had inherited from her Scandinavian mother—curled softly on to her shoulders, her slender, five-foot-five frame trembling visibly as she tried to control her rioting emotions. It had happened, something she had never dreamed would ever happen. She had fallen in love at first sight.
She shivered again, trying to tell herself she was being stupid; that her reactions were totally ridiculous, reminding herself that she wasn’t a teenager but a woman, but it was no good. Something elemental and deep-rooted inside her had sprung to life and she knew with an instinct that overrode caution and common sense that this feeling which had suddenly overwhelmed her was what she had been born for; pre-ordained in her fate, unavoidable; Nemesis, and on that thought she surrendered herself to it, trying and failing to banish from her mind tantalising thoughts of Alexis Stefanides kissing her, touching her, her flesh quivering deliciously as she remembered the brush of his fingers against her skin. And she was the girl several of her dates had dismissed as cold and frigid! It almost made her want to laugh aloud, but then hadn’t she too half agreed with them, thinking that physical desire and passion were emotions she was incapable of feeling. And now this torrent of feeling and need; this hunger and total abandonment of pride that would take her to his side at the slightest indication that that was where he wanted her to be.
A sudden thought struck her, her lips forming the words almost before she was ready. ‘Is he married?’
Gillian frowned. ‘Where have you been? Don’t you read your papers? No, he isn’t,’ she relented, seeing her face. ‘But, honey, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking—forget it. I know he looks like the archetypal Greek god, but he’s all too human. He also has a reputation for being cruel and arrogant. He’s notorious for his women, Sienna, but when he marries I suspect it will be to a girl of his own race; a dutiful Greek virgin.’ She held up her hand. ‘Okay, I know, or at least I suspect, you qualify on one count, and I can see the effect he’s had on you. I don’t blame you, honey, he is pretty overwhelming, but you’re Rob’s sister, and in many ways a little innocent still….’
‘I’m twenty-four,’ Sienna reminded her dryly, ‘two years younger than you.’ She broke off as she saw Alexis Stefanides returning, picking up her handbag and taking her coat off the stand by the door, hoping she looked more composed than she felt, ready to match his social smile with one of her own, but when he opened the door, he simply stared at her, and there was such hunger and open desire in the unsmiling look he gave her that her insides turned to jelly. It was as though his body spoke to hers and hers replied in a language that was beyond words. ‘I want you,’ he said, and hers replied, ‘I know, and your wanting is mine.’
‘Ready?’ Now he smiled, but at Gill, not her. ‘I’m not sure how long this will take, but you can invoice me at this address when I return Sienna to you.’ He handed her a piece of paper with an address written on it and then held open the door so that Sienna could precede him through it. His hand on the small of her back seemed to burn right through the thin wool suit she was wearing. Rob had insisted on her buying an entire new outfit when she came to London, and this just off-white neat, collarless jacket, cropped short at the waist with its complementary softly pleated skirt had been one of her first buys. It was by Alexon, and although Gillian had directed her towards the Separates Section of the large London stores, Sienna had soon discovered that she had a natural sense of taste and flair for clothes, although she had been careful to bear in mind that hers was the wardrobe of an executive secretary and must reflect that image. At home she had nearly always worn pleated skirts and toning jumpers from Country Casuals, the same sort of clothes her mother had always chosen when she had been a university lecturer’s wife.
Kristal