Shuddering inside the sheet at her own crazed imagination, she hugged the pillow all the tighter. ‘I am not about to confess to him that I let you do this to me,’ she assured him icily. ‘I mean, why would I want to? You were right, by the way. I am now very ashamed of myself.’
‘You are deliberately not following me.’ He sounded oddly strained suddenly. Glancing up, Zoe tracked where he was looking and realised the sheet was not covering a creamy hip and a long thigh.
Yanking the sheet into place, she decided to say nothing. It was useless to try anyway because she could feel hot tears beginning to build in her eyes and her throat burn.
‘In all honour, I will have to tell him. So you’ve won, Miss Kanellis. You have damned me in your grandfather’s eyes and protected your inheritance!’
‘In all honour?’ Zoe forced past the tears. ‘How dare you talk to me about your honour? You don’t have any honour!’ Hanging on to the pillow she scrambled off the bed because she could no longer sit there while he spilled his disgust out all over her.
‘Twenty-four hours ago you were a stranger to me—just the the substitute son standing in place of my father with your lofty head stuck into Theo’s billions, while Toby and I hid away like sewer rats from your sleazy press! I have just lost both of m-my parents.’ Her voice thickened and wavered as the tears momentarily won out. She pulled in a strained, unsteady lungful of air.
‘Did you care about that when you turned up on our doorstep? No. You just doubled the press hype without a care because it was more important that you jumped and danced to m-my grandfather’s tune in an effort to protect your own position in his life!’
‘Zoe …’
‘Shut up!’ she whipped out thickly, too upset now to see the pallor currently robbing his face of its tan. ‘You’ve had your say, now it’s my turn! I will repeat this very clearly and will even have it written down and sign it in triplicate if you like: I do not want my grandfather’s money! So you’re safe, Mr Pallis—safe from me, from marriage and from any other rotten thing you feel like throwing at me!’
It was only when she felt his fingers tremble slightly as he brushed a tear from her cheek that she realised he’d moved in that close. She stepped back, raising up the pillow to swipe the tears away for herself.
‘I thought that we had both just lost control tonight, but …’ she mumbled.
‘We did.’
She turned her back on that one, having forgotten that she was wearing nothing but the pillow, unaware that Anton was clenching his teeth, his jaw and his fists in an effort not to reach for the sheet to cover her up. It felt so wrong to further embarrass her. He had done enough. He wished he knew what had been driving him to say all of those things because, now that sanity had returned to him, he knew he had been spouting a load of rubbish.
‘I thought it was kind of inevitable—the way we’ve been sparking off each other all day.’
‘It was,’ Anton husked, then gave in to the need to protect her dignity and reached for the sheet, carefully dropping it across her trembling shoulders. ‘You’re so cold you’re shivering,’ he used for an excuse.
Zoe grabbed the flowing edges of the white cotton and hugged them to her, then spun around.
Her eyes glistened vivid blue in the pale oval of her face and he didn’t know what to say to her to put right what he’d just done. ‘I am sorry I reacted so—badly,’ seemed totally inadequate when he thought back over what he had accused her of. ‘It was just that—’
‘You’re worried because you’ve just had sex with Theo’s granddaughter,’ she finished for him.
‘I don’t give a damn about who you are!’ He sighed impatiently. ‘I don’t even know why I said it. But if you had only told me you were a—’
‘Get out,’ Zoe said because she didn’t want to listen to him using that word again. ‘If I have one small say in this horrible situation you’ve placed me in, then it’s the right to my own privacy in this room, so please, just get out!’
Spinning away again, she stood trembling inside the tight wrap of the sheet, aware that she was about to lose complete control and fall into a flood of weeping the likes of which would beat the one she’d fallen into on his stupid plane.
‘We both lost our heads.’ Still he persisted doggedly. ‘I did not expect … I feel so guilty!’ he said roughly. ‘I could have made the experience less uncomfortable for you but instead we went into it like …’
At last he ran out of words and Zoe was glad that he did. She did not need a running commentary on what they had done, or the way that they had done it. ‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘Will you just get out?’
‘We will talk tomorrow,’ he said finally, turning towards the door.
‘You’re flying off in the morning to—somewhere,’ she reminded him and hoped to goodness it was far, far away.
‘I don’t think so,’ he returned. ‘We need to—’
‘You are flying off tomorrow,’ Zoe repeated. ‘Because you promised me you would leave me alone in peace here for two weeks then allow me to go home—and I am insisting you keep those promises at least.’
Maybe he nodded in agreement. She had her back to him so she would not know. Yet somehow she knew that his lengthening silence was an agreement to her wishes. In all honour he could do little else.
Anton’s plane took off at sunrise. He had not been to bed. If he’d ever wanted to know how Leander Kanellis had felt when he’d been expelled from his home and family, then he knew now.
Two weeks … He had promised Zoe a two-week sanctuary and hell would have to freeze over before he would allow himself to break that promise now. Leaning back in his seat, he closed his weary eyes. Sleep deprivation was not a malady he usually suffered from but he was feeling the dragging pinch of it right now.
Or maybe it was the fault of the amount of brandy he had consumed while he’d sat in a chair in his bedroom with his feet up on the windowsill, drowning his restless sorrows while playing back gut-grinding snatches of what had turned out to be the most mind-blowing experience of his long sexual history.
Great sex, lousy aftermath. He shifted his shoulders against the cream leather back of his seat. He did not need to replay the way he’d laid into her in an effort to salve his own guilty conscience.
Women … He blamed all those other women who’d drifted in and out of his bed with their third eye focused on the vague chance that they might—just might—be the one he would decide to marry. And not merely for his handsome self; he mocked the good looks he was not too modest to acknowledge he had been blessed with. Or even his famous prowess between the sheets. No, money was the drug they fell in love with, the scintillating lure of becoming Mrs Anton Pallis with all the wealth, power and position the title would bring along with it.
So he’d become cynical about women before he’d reached the age of twenty. So he’d taken what they’d invited him to take, enjoyed their company and their bodies for as long as his interest lasted and never thought much about how it must feel to be in their shoes.
Well, he was feeling it now: rejection. In this case, a well-deserved rejection. The low ache of knowing he had been pushed out into the cold when, for the first time in his life, he’d wanted to stay in the warm. Somehow yesterday
Zoe Kanellis had wriggled her way past his usual guard. He even liked the baby. He’d got up from his chair at four-thirty this morning and rushed to pick the boy up when he’d cried. That Zoe had not come running into the boy’s room as well had surprised him,