I should send her packing. I should tell her to get out of my office and get out of this villa she wants to keep for herself. I should have nothing more to do with her. She is my enemy’s daughter and she walked out on me as if I were nothing to her.
He could hear the words in his head and knew what they were telling him. It was the only sane thing to do.
But the words that came out of his mouth were not those words. He lifted his hands, as if making an accommodating gesture. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why not.’
Even as he spoke the words he regretted them. But he could not call them back—would not. Something was starting to burn within him—a slow fire he knew he should extinguish to prevent it rekindling the passion he felt for her.
At his words he saw her expression lighten. He smiled and went on. ‘I am prepared to offer you a short-term lease—say three months—while you make alternative arrangements for your accommodation.’
He spoke briskly, in a businesslike fashion, watching her all the time.
He could see her eyes lighting up, see the visible relaxation of her stance at his reassuring agreement to what she’d come here wanting. She was getting what she wanted, despite what she had done to him.
His expression changed, becoming bland—deliberately, calculatingly so. ‘I’ll have a lease drawn up and rent set. I would think, given the size and location of the villa, something like thirty thousand euros a month should cover it.’
He watched her face whiten. Her reaction—such obvious outrage at his reply—made the anger inside him spear him again. But he would not let it show. Instead he smiled again, though it did not reach his eyes.
‘In life, Ms Grantham,’ he said, his voice silken, ‘we cannot have what we cannot pay for.’
He pushed his chair back, the movement abrupt. He stood and gave a shrug of deliberate indifference.
‘If you can’t pay the rent you must vacate the villa,’ he spelt out bluntly.
His eyes never left her, never showed any expression. Even though they wanted to sweep over her glorious body, concealed as it was beneath that fussy over-styled outfit she was wearing. It didn’t suit her—however expensive it had been.
Absently, he wondered at its difference in style from the simple yet stunning dress she’d worn at that party. He wrenched his thoughts away from where they must not go. His eyes from where they must not go either…
He saw her expression change, as if her own self-control was very near the edge. It must be a shock to her, he found himself thinking, bitterness infusing his every thought and his mouth thinning. Daddy’s darling daughter, realising her pampered lifestyle was over, that her doting father was no longer there to grant her every whim and wish.
‘No!’
He heard her cry out in protest at his brutal spelling out of the harsh truths of life, saw her face working.
‘Everything else has gone—but not that…not the villa too!’
For a moment so fleeting that Luke thought he must have misheard there seemed to be real fear in her voice, real despair…real desolation. She was staring at him, her expression pinched, and he thought he caught something vulnerable in the way she stood there, as if life had dropped a weight on her that she could not shoulder.
He felt a different emotion rise within him—one that made him suddenly want to blurt out that of course she could stay in the damn villa, that he didn’t give a damn about any rent. It made him want to surge to his feet, close the distance between them, take her into his arms and hold her close, to tell her he would make everything all right for her, all right for them both, that he never wanted to lose her again.
But then it was gone. She was only repeating what she’d said before, just more insistently. As if she was assuming, taking it for granted.
Of course she was Gerald Grantham’s daughter, was she not? She had never had to think of paying for anything at all. A rich man’s princess of a daughter, who got everything she wanted handed to her on a plate by an indulgent father.
‘I absolutely cannot lose the villa! I just can’t!’ Her eyes flared suddenly, widening as her long lashes swept down.
His mouth tightened again at the declaration of entitlement in her words. Her protest should have been like a match to his anger, and yet it gave rise to a quite different emotion. It was an emotion he should not let himself be feeling, but his eyes, his senses, were hungry to revisit it.
Memory flooded over him. The last time his eyes had held her she had been lying naked in his arms, sated from passion, her skin like silk against his body, her hair a glorious swathe across his shoulders, her mouth pressed against the wall of his bare chest, her exhausted limbs tangled with his…
And yet when he’d awoken from the overpowering sleep that had claimed him she had been gone, vanished into thin air.
Only to reappear now, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.
I can’t let her walk out on me again…
The words were inside his head and he knew he should wipe them away. He knew he should send her packing. He knew exactly what he should say to Gerald Grantham’s daughter.
He knew it. But he could not say it. Not for all the will in his body and in mind.
Instead, as if he were possessed by a force he could not resist, he felt his muscles start to loosen, his shoulders ease back, and then he heard the words that came from his mouth. Words he knew with every rational part of his mind he should not be saying, but which were coming from a place inside him where reason held no sway. There was only an instinct as old as time itself and just as powerful.
Not to let her walk out on him again…
‘Then perhaps,’ he heard himself saying, ‘we can come to an alternative arrangement…’
Talia stared at him. Her senses were reeling. She was floored…in shock…mesmerised.
She had thrust her way into this inner sanctum to which that snooty PA had been determined to bar her entry, and then, as she’d stared at the man jolting to his feet at her entry, she had realised just who it was who stood before her. It was impossible to recover from this truly unexpected outcome.
She could barely countenance the brutal demand he’d made of her to pay rent in order to stay on in their own home, though she did understand on a rational level that the villa was part of the spoils of his acquisition of what was left of her father’s once mighty business empire.
She had tried to ignore the leap in her senses as her eyes had clung to him in the custom-tailored suit that sheathed his lean body, the dark tie with the discreet gold tie pin, the gold links at his cuffs, the leather strap of that exorbitantly expensive watch she’d noticed the night they’d met. Still, his long-limbed pose was lithe and it radiated power—the kind of power that came from wealth, the way her father’s had.
Yet Luke—Luke Xenakis, she reminded herself forcibly, of XL Holdings—had pursued her father’s ailing company with a power that had nothing to do with his wealth. A power that he could exert over her with a mere flick of those dark lidded eyes, a twist of that sensual mouth…
She felt herself almost swaying as memories assaulted her: his arms tightening around her, his mouth opening hers to his, his hands gliding over her body that had trembled at his silken touch…
With a silent groan she tore her mind away. What use were those memories here, in this austere office, with its views out over the glacial alpine lake and the jagged, snow-capped mountains soaring all around, as icy as the coldness