Zoe glared at his back as he reached to pull the door open. ‘Gold-digger,’ she muttered.
It froze him where he stood. She hadn’t a clue why she’d just blurted that insulting label out, but she felt her pulses pick up pace as he turned around.
The all-powerful Greek tycoon was back, she noticed. She felt tingly and breathless, the one she’d met on her doorstep this morning when he’d stood there looking as if he ruled the world. Every angle of his face was hard, cold and disturbingly immobile—and those eyes had turned back into polished jet.
‘You came to my house,’ she rushed on with defiance. ‘You sweet-talked me into letting you kidnap us. You—you scared me.’ As he was doing again now, though she was determined not to show him that. ‘For all I know you deliberately agitated the situation with the press because you knew it would work in your favour.’
A spark of self-preservation made her place her brother safely aside then scramble up off the bed. ‘What was it your henchman said in my kitchen? I hope you do know what you’re doing, Mr Pallis.’ Zoe quoted word for Greek word. ‘Well, you did know, didn’t you? Theo wants his grandson and you are going to deliver him even if it means hauling me along too.’
‘So how does all of this make me a gold-digger?’ He spoke at last, so softly Zoe felt the danger in him like a living thing reaching out towards her with long fingers coming for her throat.
Clenching her hands into fists at her sides, she tried not to be intimidated. ‘Everyone knows that until three weeks ago you were Theo’s undisputed heir. Then up we pop—Toby and me. Two previously unheard-of grandchildren of the great man himself. You’re the lawyer—you tell me how inheritance laws work in Greece. Or, better yet, explain to me again why you’ve gone to all of this trouble to get us on to this plane going to Greece?’
He was listening with a narrow-eyed intensity that caused a sudden rush of those tremors she’d been trying to hold back. She envied him his self-control in the way he continued to stand there refusing to speak.
‘Say something!’ she launched at him tautly.
‘I am waiting to hear your own conclusions before I comment,’ he responded, smooth as silk.
Zoe folded her arms across her front. The way his eyes flickered down to view this piece of screamingly defensive body language made her unfold her arms again and stick them back down at her sides.
‘You told me that Theo Kanellis is ill—so ill he can’t travel. You told me that he wants my brother and I’m only really along for the ride.’
‘I do not recall saying the latter.’
‘Yes you did. And, let’s face it, causing a huge scandal by walking off with my brother without me would not have done your reputation much good. So why have you gone to all of this trouble? Just to keep your credit sweet with my grandfather?’
She pushed on despite the shrill voice in her head telling her to stop. The man was so still he was dangerous. ‘Or do you have more far-reaching plans to do with death, inheritance and baby-boy heirs who will need a mentor? Are you planning to offer my grandfather a deal, whereby you do for Toby what Theo did for you so that you can hang on to control of his fortune and power?’
For a minute she thought he was going to throw back his handsome dark head and laugh at her. In fact there was a quivering part of her that wanted him to do that and turn her ‘gold-digger’ accusation into a complete joke—but he didn’t. Instead he held her pinned to the spot with the hard gleam in his eyes.
‘And that is your definition of a gold-digger?’ he murmured.
Pressing the tremor out of her lips, Zoe nodded.
‘Then you have missed one very salient point—there is a much less tacky way for me to keep control of Theo’s fortune, and that is through you, Miss Kanellis.’
She didn’t like the way that he’d said her name like that. ‘I—I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘I know you don’t.’ He started walking towards her. ‘Actually I feel rather sad for you that you undervalue your own importance so much.’
‘I h-have no importance.’ Twenty-two years with no word from her own grandfather had told her that.
‘You have a lot of importance,’ he insisted. ‘You see, I can achieve every one of my gold-digging ambitions by simply making you my wife and taking your brother as my son. Two for the price of one.’ He smiled, though it wasn’t a nice smile. ‘The financier in me loves the sound of that scenario. Why are you staring at me like that?’ he questioned ever so curiously. ‘You think my sense of honour won’t allow me to do it? As we have already established I have no honour. I lie and cheat and kidnap innocents.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Zoe shot out jerkily.
The gleam in his eyes became a glint like a challenge and he just kept on coming, stalking her backwards like a long, lean hunting-cat.
‘But I think your grandfather will be delighted with this marriage plan,’ he continued, talking as he stalked. ‘Greek men love such sensible business arrangements. They appeal to our macho need to be in control. A merging of our two names would be a formidable coup for me and will send Theo to his grave a very happy man. Now your eyes are flashing a very derisive electric-blue colour as you back away from me,’ he observed silkily. ‘What is it you fear the most, Miss Kanellis—me, your grandfather … or yourself?’
The final comment made her aware that her heart was racing, that she was breathing fast yet feeling strangled of breath at the same time; that her cheeks had flushed and her lips felt tingly because she could not stop staring at the crazily seductive movement of his mouth as he spoke.
‘Perhaps you are thinking that you will not agree to such a deal,’ he offered up as an answer for her, his eyes gleaming with mocking humour when her spine hit the bulkhead, leaving her nowhere else to go.
‘I have this contingency covered, of course. I will send you to Theo, and he will lock you up until you decide to change your mind. We Greek men are so ruthlessly unscrupulous I might even …’
Reaching up with a hand, he placed the tips of his fingers on the wall right beside her head. ‘Kiss you again,’ he murmured. ‘Bed you,’ he added, bringing the lean length of his body closer and closer with each silkily punctuated threat. ‘Make you my woman before we even step on to Greek soil and turn you into my—’
Zoe slapped him. She lifted her arm up and crashed the flat of her hand against the side of his face. Her palm stung because his bones were so hard but she didn’t care. She’d enjoyed slapping him!
‘Get out of my face,’ she hissed.
HE DID. It actually stunned her when he did exactly that by straightening up and taking a tense step back.
For an endless space of time afterwards, they just stared at each other. The whole ugly scene they’d just enacted hovered between them in a hyperbolic spin of emotions—not all of them of the hostile variety. And that really worried Zoe. Hadn’t someone once said that a person in a captive situation can suffer a dangerous attraction for their captor? Well, she was feeling like that