‘Then why did you ensure that we would sit together?’
She bit her lip again and Giannis was irritated with himself for staring at her mouth. ‘I... I was hoping to have a chance to talk to you.’
Her pretty face was flushed rose-pink but her intelligent grey eyes were honest—Giannis did not know why he was so convinced of that. The faint desperation in her unguarded expression sparked his curiosity.
‘So, talk,’ he said curtly.
* * *
‘Not here.’ Ava tore her gaze from Giannis Gekas and took a deep breath, hoping to steady the frantic thud of her pulse. She had recognised him instantly when he had walked over to the dining table where Becky, bless her, had allocated her a place. But her seat had been on the other side of the table—too far away from Giannis to be able to have a private conversation with him.
She had taken a gamble that no one would notice her swapping the name cards around. But she had to talk to Giannis about her brother. She’d forked out a fortune for a ticket to the charity dinner and bought an expensive evening dress that she’d probably never have the chance to wear again. The only way she could keep Sam from being sent to a young offender institution was if she could persuade Giannis Gekas to drop the charges against him.
Ava took a sip of her wine. It was important that she kept a clear head and she hadn’t intended to drink any alcohol tonight, but she had not expected Giannis to be so devastatingly attractive. The photos she’d seen of him on the Internet when she’d researched the man dubbed Greece’s most eligible bachelor had not prepared her for the way her heart had crashed into her ribs when he’d smiled. Handsome did not come close to describing his lethal good looks. His face was a work of art—the sculpted cheekbones and chiselled jaw softened by a blatantly sensual mouth that frequently curved into a lazy smile.
Dark, almost black eyes gleamed beneath heavy brows, and he constantly shoved a hand through his thick, dark brown hair that fell forwards onto his brow. But even more enticing than his model-perfect features and tall, muscle-packed body was Giannis’s rampant sexuality. He oozed charisma and he promised danger and excitement—the very things that Ava avoided. She gave herself a mental shake. It did not matter that Giannis was a bronzed Greek god. All she cared about was saving her idiot of a kid brother from prison and the very real possibility that Sam would be drawn into a life of crime like their father.
Sam wasn’t bad; he had just gone off the rails because he lacked guidance. Ava knew that her mother had struggled to cope when Sam had hit puberty and he’d got in with a rough crowd of teenagers who hung around on the streets near the family home in East London. Even worse, Sam had become fascinated with their father and had even reverted to using the name McKay rather than their mother’s maiden name, Sheridan. Ava had been glad to move away from the East End and all its associations with her father, but she felt guilty that she had not been around to keep her brother out of trouble.
She took another sip of wine and her eyes were drawn once more to the man sitting next to her. Sam’s future rested in Giannis Gekas’s hands. A waiter appeared and removed her goat’s cheese salad starter that she had barely touched and replaced it with the Dover sole that she had chosen for the main course. Across the table, one of the other guests was trying to catch Giannis’s attention. The chance to have a meaningful conversation with him during dinner seemed hopeless.
‘I can’t talk to you here.’ She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and a quiver ran through her when his eyes focused on her mouth. She wondered why he suddenly seemed tense. ‘Would it be possible for me to speak to you in private after dinner?’
His dark eyes trapped her gaze but his expression was unreadable. Afraid that he was about to refuse her request, she acted instinctively and placed her hand over his where it rested on the tablecloth. ‘Please.’
The warmth of his olive-gold skin beneath her fingertips sent heat racing up her arm. She attempted to snatch her hand away but Giannis captured her fingers in his.
‘That depends on whether you are an entertaining dinner companion,’ he murmured. He smiled at her confused expression and stroked his thumb lightly over the pulse in her wrist that was going crazy. ‘Relax, glykiá mou. I think there is every possibility that we can have a private discussion later.’
‘Thank you.’ Relief flooded through her. But she could not relax as concern for her brother changed to a different kind of tension that had everything to do with the glitter in Giannis’s eyes. She couldn’t look away from his sensual mouth. His jaw was shadowed with black stubble and she wondered if it would feel abrasive against her cheek if he kissed her. If she kissed him back.
She took another sip of wine before she remembered that she hadn’t had any lunch. Alcohol had a more potent effect on an empty stomach, she reminded herself. Her appetite had disappeared but she forced herself to eat a couple of forkfuls of Dover sole.
‘So tell me, Ava—you have a beautiful name, by the way.’ Giannis’s husky accent felt like rough velvet stroking across Ava’s skin, and the way he said her name in his lazy, sexy drawl, elongating the vowels—Aaavaaa—sent a quiver of reaction through her. ‘You said that you are not a journalist, so what do you do for a living?’
Explaining about her work as a victim care officer might be awkward when Giannis was himself the victim of a crime which had been committed by her brother, Ava thought ruefully. Sam deeply regretted the extensive damage that he and his so-called ‘friends’ had caused to Giannis’s luxurious yacht. She needed to convince Giannis that her brother had made a mistake and deserved another chance.
She reached for her wine glass, but then changed her mind. Her head felt swimmy—although that might be because she had inhaled the spicy, explicitly sensual scent of Giannis’s aftershave.
‘Actually I’m between jobs at the moment.’ She was pleased that her voice was steady, unlike her see-sawing emotions. ‘I recently moved from Scotland back to London to be closer to my mother...and brother.’
Giannis ate some of his beef Wellington before he spoke. ‘I have travelled widely, but Scotland is one place that I have never visited. I’ve heard that it is very beautiful.’
Ava thought of the deprived areas of Glasgow where she had been involved with a victim support charity, first as a volunteer, and after graduating from university she had been offered a job with the victim support team. In the past few years some of the city’s grim, grey tower blocks had been knocked down and replaced with new houses, but high levels of unemployment still remained, as did the incidence of drug-taking, violence and crime.
She had felt that her job as a VCO—helping people who were victims or witnesses of crime—made amends in some small way for the terrible crimes her father had committed. But living far away in Scotland meant she had missed the signs that her brother had been drawn into the gang culture in East London. Her father’s old haunts.
‘Why do you care what I get up to?’ Sam had demanded when she had tried to talk to him about his behaviour. ‘You moved away and you don’t care about me.’ Ava felt a familiar stab of guilt that she hadn’t been around for Sam or her mother when they had both needed her.
She dragged her thoughts back to the present and realised that Giannis was waiting for her to reply. ‘The Highlands have some spectacular scenery,’ she told him. ‘If you are thinking of making a trip to Scotland I can recommend a few places for you to visit.’
‘It would be better if you came with me and gave me a guided tour of the places you think would interest me.’
Ava’s heart gave a jolt. Was he being serious? She stared into his dark-as-night eyes and saw amusement and something else that evoked a coiling sensation low in her belly. ‘We...we don’t know each other.’
‘Not yet, but the night is still young and full of endless possibilities,’ he murmured in his husky Mediterranean accent that made her toes curl. He gave a faint shrug of his shoulders, drawing her attention to his powerful