She jerked, as if an electric shock had gone through her. Nikos smiled. That was good. Responsive.
Just the way he wanted her.
Then, as if his touch had thrown a switch, she spoke.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’ Her voice was half a croak, half a whisper.
He gave a low laugh. ‘Don’t panic. I’ve been very discreet, the way I told you we would need to be.’
‘Discreet.’ She said the word as if it were an expletive.
He gave a shrug. ‘It’s inconvenient, yes, but there it is. My mother has certain codes of behaviour, and I would not wish to breach them openly.’
Even as he spoke he was conscious of a sense of discomfort. He did not relish this aspect of the business—but it was for his mother’s sake in the long run that he made Ann Turner his mistress and got her greedy claws out of the Theakis family by putting her beyond the pale of his mother’s misplaced forbearance of her.
‘Inconvenient—’ Her voice was hollow now, and she was staring at him with a peculiar expression in her face.
‘Ann,’ he said, making his tone temporising, ‘for the time being it’s unavoidable. But as soon as Tina’s wedding is over I’ll take you to Athens and—’
‘Take me to Athens?’ Her voice had changed to incomprehension.
It started to irritate Nikos. Why did she have to repeat everything he said to her?
‘Well, Athens first, and then wherever you’d like to go—though of course I’d have to fit any vacation around my obligations to business, alas. But all the same—’
He never finished his sentence.
Her face snapped shut. Like a door closing. Shutting him out. Very decidedly out.
‘I,’ she bit out, and her eyes were hard suddenly—like stones, ‘am not going anywhere with you. I am not—’ she made the emphasis as if it was a razor slicing down ‘—going to have some hole and corner affair with you! Get out—get out of my room, right now!’
His eyes flashed impatiently. ‘Ann—enough. We’ve been through this little farce once already today. I don’t appreciate games—especially when they’ve already been played out. It’s going to be difficult enough as it is, finding time together, without you doing your pointless denial routine. So—’
He didn’t get any further. She was scrambling out of bed, the other side from him. Immediately Nikos’s eyes went to her body, its slender form outlined beneath the diaphanous nightgown by the lamp from her bedside, to the tender mounds of her breasts, the slender wand of her waist and the graceful swell of her hips with the darkened vee between the perfect column of her thighs, all barely veiled by the translucent fabric. He felt himself respond—Theos, she was so beautiful! Desire surged through him. He wanted her—was hungry for her, could not wait for her.
‘Ann—’ Her name came, husked, raw. He started to move, levering off the bed, heading round its foot towards her, to reach her, touch her, to fold her to him, feel that beautiful, arousing body in his arms, that sweet, honeyed mouth opening to his …
And then, to his disbelief, even as his eyes devoured her she gave a little cry and hurled herself into the en suite bathroom. Nikos heard the frantic turning of the key in the lock, and then there was silence. For a long, incredulous moment he could only stare at the locked door.
Anger surged through him. Anger, disbelief—and intense, obliterating frustration.
Then, like a zombie, he walked out of the room.
Still not believing what had just happened.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘OH, ARI, THAT’S very good. Well done!’
Ann was on the terrace outside the nursery, shaded from the sun by an awning. Ari was colouring a drawing of his beloved trains.
‘Why not write their names under the picture?’ said Ann. She started to write a dotted outline that Ari could use to trace the shapes of the letters. Tina looked up from where she was checking off ‘Things to do’ for her wedding.
‘You know about children, don’t you? Using dots for letters?’ she observed.
Ann smiled. ‘It’s a good way to get them to control the shape, I think.’ She watched attentively as Ari started to write. It was good to be here with him. Good to be with the lively little boy who was the whole purpose of her presence here at the Theakis villa. The sole purpose.
A purpose which did not include providing on-tap sex for Nikos Theakis whenever he felt like waltzing into her bedroom! No, she mustn’t remember that—and she mustn’t let in, not even by a hair’s breadth, the emotions that went with the memory. She must just shut it out. Ruthlessly. With an impermeable seal.
Nikos had used the term ‘denial’ and she clung to it. Yes, denial was exactly what she had to do. Deny everything. Deny she had ever felt such insane weakness for the man. Deny she could still, if for a moment she allowed it, feel the haunting echo of his touch, his caresses, his intoxicating invasion … possession.
Her eyes hardened. Possession. Yes, that was a good word. As in helping himself to her. Just because she was convenient—handy. Deliberately she let her hackles bristle. Nikos Theakis was a man so arrogant that he actually thought he could just help himself to sex with her! It didn’t even bother him that he held her in total contempt for having taken his money from him! A chilling thought went through her. Was it because of what he thought of her that he also thought he could just help himself to her body? Was it because he held her in such contempt that he saw no problem with casually seducing her?
A shadow seemed to fall across her, making her shiver inwardly. To be held in such contempt that he thought he could use her sexually for his fleeting convenience …
‘Kyria Ann?’
She surfaced from her dark cogitations to find one of the maids hovering.
‘Please come …’ said the girl in hesitant English.
Wondering why, but getting to her feet all the same, nodding to Tina and murmuring to Ari that she would be back soon, Ann followed the maid back indoors. Did Mrs Theakis want to see her? But the room she was shown into was not Sophia Theakis’ sitting room.
It was Nikos Theakis’s office. And seated at the desk, the flickering computer screen to his side, his planed face illuminated through the half-closed slats of the Venetian blinds at the window, was Nikos.
Too late she made the realisation as she stepped inside. The maid closed the door behind her. Too late she instantly turned to leave.
‘Don’t bolt, Ann. I have something to say to you. Sit down.’
The voice was clipped and impersonal.
She looked across at him. He was formally dressed in a business suit. She hadn’t seen him so formal since they had arrived. And she had forgotten just how formidable he could look—every inch the captain of industry, born to give orders and have them obeyed by a host of minions doing his bidding.
Well, she wasn’t one of them! Automatically she felt her hackles rise, and she stiffened.
‘There’s nothing I want to hear from you,’ she said tersely.
Something flickered in his darkly veiled eyes, and she felt a shimmer go through her.
He did not reply, instead sliding open a drawer in the desk and removing an object. It was long and slim. He placed it at the front of the desk, facing her.
‘This, Ann,’ he said, and his eyes did not change expression, ‘is yours.’
Warily,