She hurried into the garage shop. Her legs felt like cotton-wool supports. She was in a daze. So he was flirting a little—so what was new? Some guys thought you expected it. Some guys flirted with every woman they met. I wish he had said. Why was she suddenly acting and thinking like a ditzy teenager? He made her feel like one. She blinked in bemusement as she turned away from the checkout.
His senior bodyguard, a giant with shoulders the size of tree trunks, barred her passage. ‘Who gave you permission to stop the limo without warning us?’ he asked in an angry hiss. ‘You have left Mr Stephanides in an unlocked vehicle without protection. How could you be so foolish?’
Betsy was astonished by the force of that verbal attack. ‘Nobody told me I needed permission or that I should warn you—’
‘How else can we do our job? Don’t deviate from the agreed route again,’ he admonished.
Pale with angry discomfiture, Betsy got back into the car. She passed the mineral water into the rear seat without turning her head and ignited the engine when she heard her passenger speak. She was annoyed at a telling off that she considered unjust. She drove people to functions like weddings and balls and had only once dealt with a minor celebrity. Imperial Limousines was a small firm that did not have a VIP client list. She was not accustomed to dealing with wealthy international businessmen and had not been trained to handle complex security requirements. The sooner she delivered him to his fancy country estate, the happier she would be.
‘What happened back there?’ Cristos enquired.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Betsy questioned in turn, face and voice deadpan.
‘One of my bodyguards approached you…’ Dolius, the head of his security team, whose abrasive personality would never fit him for a diplomatic career. Cristos had watched her green eyes flare with anger while her chin had tilted at a very feminine wounded but stubborn angle. He had been startled by his own urge to leap out of the car and tell Dolius to pick on someone his own size and sex if he wanted a fight.
‘Oh, that…yes, he was just wondering why I’d pulled off the road,’ she advanced with studied lightness.
Dolius had come down on her like a ton of bricks for that impulse, Cristos translated. ‘He upset you.’
‘No, of course he didn’t!’ No way was Betsy about to tell tales on another employee whom she had to deal with.
Cristos was furious that she was lying to him. That she was upset was painfully obvious. She was no good at hiding her feelings. She was also driving very, very slowly and making all kinds of restless, unnecessary adjustments to various switches and dials. He was even less pleased when she closed the partition.
Betsy was trying not to think about what a truly horrible week she had had. She had ignored her ESP when it came to Joe Tyler and she had paid the price. A cold shiver of remembrance ran through her. At the end of the first date he had parked the car down an entry and tried to treat her like some hooker he had picked up off the street. She had had to fight him off and he had been very abusive. It had been a seriously scary experience. In the light of that ordeal, she could only marvel at her own adolescent response to Cristos Stephanides. As she hadn’t been remotely attracted to Joe, she should never have encouraged him. Cristos Stephanides? He was as safe a fantasy as a poster on a bedroom wall, she decided, and she accelerated down the motorway.
Cristos had never been so comprehensively ignored by a woman. Having no intention of opening a conversation with the back of her head, he opted for the direct approach. He lifted the car phone to communicate with her. ‘Take the next turn off. There’s a hotel. We’ll stop there for a break.’
‘Is this a scheduled stop?’ Betsy enquired.
‘I don’t have a schedule this weekend. I’m not working,’ Cristos spelt out.
Betsy tried not to smile at the thought of the mayhem that had to be breaking out in the bodyguards’ car when the limo was seen to deviate yet again from the agreed route. But she resisted any urge to glance into the back seat and catch another glimpse of her passenger. At twenty-five years of age, she was too old to be daydreaming like a schoolgirl over a guy she knew nothing about.
Her footsteps crunching over the gravel outside the gracious country hotel, she pulled open the passenger door.
‘I hate being locked in a car for hours on end,’ Cristos imparted in his rich, dark drawl. ‘We’ll have coffee.’
She forgot her embargo on looking at him and tipped her head back to encounter brilliant dark golden eyes fringed by black spiky lashes. ‘Thank you, sir…but I’ll stay with the limo.’
His gaze narrowed. ‘That wasn’t a request…it was an order.’
Off-balanced by that unhesitating contradiction, she stared at him for a split second too long and then hurriedly dropped her head, her colour fluctuating. Maybe he was keen to ensure that his driver remained alert by taking an adequate break. Fair enough. She locked the car and followed in his arrogant wake. His head bodyguard strode towards them. Cristos Stephanides addressed him in what she assumed to be his own language. Just a handful of brief, softly spoken words and the security man turned pale and backed off with what might have been a hasty apology.
Indoors, engulfed in the ticking-clock silence of the kind of luxury establishment set up to create the atmosphere of a private country house, she was hugely uncomfortable. But it made no impression whatsoever on her companion. He addressed the receptionist with the calm expectancy of a male who had been waited on hand and foot from the day of his birth.
‘Sit with me…’ With a lean brown hand he indicated an armchair beside the magnificent marble fire-place.
Betsy stared fixedly into the burning embers of the welcoming fire. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate, sir.’
‘Allow me to decide what’s appropriate.’
‘But not what I do with my free time. If this is an official break,’ Betsy responded with flat clarity, ‘I’m entitled to choose how I spend it.’
‘Obviously the whip and chair approach is unwise with a woman of your strength of character,’ Cristos Stephanides conceded lazily. ‘I ask you in all humility…please join me for coffee.’
Involuntary amusement tugged at Betsy. In all humility? Was he serious? She almost laughed out loud. He had the extreme poise and arrogant assurance of a male who had never known what humility was. Why was he even making the invitation? What was in it for him?
‘Why?’ she asked baldly, tipping her head back, eyes as bright as emerald chips gleaming with suspicion.
Theos mou, why was she fighting him? Back at the car park in that very first visual exchange, Cristos had recognised her desire. She had not been able to hide the feverish longing that he had seen on so many female faces since he’d been a teenager. But he could not recall when he had last had to make so much effort. She was not encouraging him. She was making everything difficult. He had got lazy, he acknowledged. His women always did most of the running, but now he was dealing with a female who looked as if she would bolt at the first ill-chosen word or move.
‘I feel like company,’ he murmured with deliberate casualness, hitching back his powerful personality and swallowing the smarter comments hovering on the tip of his tongue.
Betsy was bemused. A client had never tried to cross the boundaries with her before. She saw no reason why he should be any different. Her uniform was old-fashioned and unflattering. In the course of her working day few men had given her a second glance.
‘Are you married?’ Cristos asked abruptly, belatedly wondering if there was a reason for her surprising hesitance. ‘Living with someone?’
‘No…but—’