His eyes flashed. ‘You’d better be sure you know what you’ve bargained for, Ms Giorgias. Tell me, once you have me shackled to your side, what do you hope to do with me then?’
She met his smouldering dark gaze, and tried to repress visions of lying naked beside him on some wide bed. Of being held in his arms, pressed against his lean, hard body, his dark eyes…But, she wouldn’t…And he couldn’t want to…She’d never…
She quickly thrust the images away. What could her uncle have promised on her behalf? With a helpless sense of shame, she scrambled to find some gloss to minimise the outrage Thio Peri had committed against her autonomy.
‘My uncle arranged this holiday simply so we could meet. That was all. Just so we could—meet. To see if we…To see if there would be any…’ She felt the hot tide of embarrassment rise through her chest and neck and all the way to her ears, and, furious at her weakness, added hoarsely, ‘There is no requirement for—for anything further. I’m a free woman. This is the modern world.’
His chiselled, sexy mouth made a faint disbelieving curl, then he said very politely, ‘Oh, right. Sure it is. But try to understand this, Miss Giorgias, I’m a serious guy. I’m not some racing-car celebrity or a prince with time on his hands between yacht races. I have a company to run. Some people choose to work, in case you haven’t heard. I won’t be able to devote myself to your entertainment twenty-four seven.’
He was so cold and unfriendly, all her hurt and tension, the fear and helplessness of the plane trip, the shock of the betrayal, wound her up to an emotional explosion. The fiery blood rushed to her head and she snapped, ‘I’d rather you didn’t devote yourself to me at all, Mr Nikosto.’
She felt the shock impact of her words, then all at once had a burning consciousness of his gaze on her clasped, trembling hands, and tried to shift them from view. Her loss of control had generated something, though, because she sensed a change in the air.
Sebastian stared, for the first time seeing the shadows under her fierce blue eyes, the rapid, vulnerable pulse in her tender throat. With a sudden lurch in his chest he had a flash of himself as a brute holding some delicate, threatened creature at bay.
A creature with sensitivities, nerves and anxieties. With soft silky breasts under her stiff little jacket. He couldn’t control the overpowering thought. A creature—a woman who might soon be his to undress.
If he signed that contract.
Her sulky mouth made a tremor, and against his will, against all the odds, his blood stirred. Hell, but she had a kissable mouth. An intensely kissable mouth.
Poised on an emotional tightrope, her defensive instincts up in arms, Ariadne sensed the tension emanating from him rock into a different sort of beat.
He drew in closer, bringing her the faintest trace of some pleasant masculine cologne, and her sexual receptors suddenly roared into awareness of his big, vibrant body. Behind that blue shirt there was a beating heart, flesh, blood and raw, muscled power.
‘Sebastian,’ he stated. ‘Look, er, Ariadne…It’s all right if I call you Ariadne?’
She gave a jerky shrug.
‘Whatever you choose to call your presence here, I’ve agreed to play my part in it. Unless you’d rather pass on the whole thing?’ His expression was suddenly grim, his eyes hard and challenging.
It was an ultimatum. Her heart skipped an alarmed beat. What if he phoned her uncle and told him she was being uncooperative? After the plane trick, she wouldn’t put it past Thio to refuse to help sort out the accommodation mix-up. It occurred to her then that the bungled hotel booking mightn’t even be a mistake.
With limited money, and no way of paying for thirty nights at Sydney prices, she might very well be forced to beg for this man’s generosity.
With a sinking heart she realised this could be exactly what they’d planned. Her uncle’s words came back to her with a chilling significance.
‘The Nikostos are good people,’ Peri Giorgios had asserted before she’d woken up to his ploy. ‘They’ll look after you. I’m guessing they’ll have you out of that hotel and into the Nikosto family villa in no time.’
The Nikosto family villa. Except it wasn’t the Nikosto family. It was one member of it. One angry, ice-cold member.
Until she could talk to her uncle and aunt again, get a clearer idea of where she stood money-wise, perhaps her best option was to pretend to play along.
She met Sebastian Nikosto’s dark eyes and crushed down her pride. ‘No. No, look.’ The words were as ashes on her tongue. ‘I’m—really very grateful for your kindness.’ Her voice cracked on the last one.
His heavy black lashes lowered. The faintest flush tinged his cheek as he said brusquely, ‘All right, then. So—dinner this evening? I’ll pick you up here at seven.’ His eyes flickered to her mouth. ‘Might as well—make a start.
CHAPTER TWO
ARIADNE walked fast, up and down the hotel suite’s sitting room until she’d nearly worn a furrow in the carpet. Then she strode furiously around straightening the pictures, shifting lamps to more pleasing positions, realigning the chairs.
Her uncle’s scheme had placed her in an impossible situation with that icy, smouldering man. What had he been offered to marry her? No wonder he had such a low opinion of her, but why, oh, why had he agreed if it enraged him so much?
Maybe, if she could have despised him more, she wouldn’t feel so ashamed. Ashamed of her uncle. Ashamed of herself and the mess she’d fallen into by thinking she was in love with that smooth-talking liar, Demetri Spiros.
Imagine if Sebastian Nikosto heard about the wedding scandal. Her uncle’s words on the subject had rung in her ears all the way to Sydney. ‘There isn’t a man in Greece who would touch you now with a very long pole.’
Surely her uncle must know that if she did ever marry someone, even someone ‘bought’—she flushed again in memory of Sebastian’s stinging words—the man would have to be told about the scandal.
Other things Sebastian had said returned to her now with scathing significance. Some people choose to work, in case you haven’t heard. As if he’d assumed she had no professional qualifications of her own. Did she look as if she’d spent her life as a useless ornament?
She kept rephrasing the things she’d said to him and turning them into what she should have said. Next time she saw him…Tonight, if she could bear to face him tonight, she’d set him straight about what sort of woman she was. And if he thought for a second, for an instant, that she would ever be available to him…
When the storm had calmed a little, she sat on the bed and forced herself to reason. In Athens it would be morning. Her uncle would be on his way to his office, her aunt engaged in either her beauty routine or instructing the housekeeper. Thea Leni was always affectionate and easy to deal with, though her compliance in the subterfuge to trick Ariadne onto the plane had been a painful shock. The hurt felt more savage every time she thought of it. Her loving aunt must have believed in her husband’s solution to the ‘Ariadne problem’, at least a bit.
She put her head in her hands, still unable to believe all that had happened. Had they intended it as a punishment? She’d believed in their kindness absolutely, ever since, after the accident, they’d brought her as a seven-year-old to her uncle’s house on Naxos. Though quite a lot older than her parents, they’d done all they could to replace them. In their old-fashioned way they’d loved her, protected her, even to the point of making her feel quite suffocated by the time she reached eighteen.
Why hadn’t she woken up sooner to this holiday idea? When had Thio Peri ever wanted her to leave Greece without them in the past? Everything she’d done, every step she’d taken from the time she was seven, had been