“Parakalo! Don’t mention it,” he returned.
Assuming she’d seen the last of him, she leaned forward to give the uniformed chauffeur the name of her hotel, then realized that Mikos had also climbed into the car with every sign of remaining there.
Rattled, she gasped, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Putting an end to this nonsense,” he replied, then switched to Greek in a brief conversation with the driver, at the conclusion of which the man nodded compliantly, raised the smoked-glass panel between him and his passengers and eased the car into the traffic still clogging the road.
Gina wasn’t familiar with the layout of Athens, but one glance out of the dark-tinted side window was enough to tell her they weren’t headed toward her hotel. “In case you’re not aware, your driver’s going the wrong way,” she informed Mikos.
“He’s going precisely the right way,” he drawled, unbuttoning his dinner jacket and stretching out his long legs. “I suggest you relax and enjoy the ride.”
For a moment, she was tempted. What woman wouldn’t be, especially one who’d been deprived of the so-called “finer things in life” for far too long? She was ensconced in black leather upholstery as plush and soft as polished marshmallows, in a limousine that purred like a well-bred cat and traveled over the surface of the road as smoothly as a sleek length of satin floating on air.
The neck of a bottle of champagne—Bollinger, she noticed—poked out of a silver ice bucket in the built-in bar. Crystal flutes sparkled in the subdued glow of the rear interior lights. The man seated next to her was sexy and gorgeous. Tall, dark and handsome. Worldly, sophisticated and charming.
Then it occurred to her that she was headed toward an unknown destination, in a car with a comparative stranger, and could be in very serious trouble. Women traveling alone in foreign lands had been known to disappear without trace, never to be seen again, precisely because they’d behaved as rashly as she just had.
“If you’re thinking of kidnapping me,” she said, sounding distressingly terrified, “you should know that you won’t be able to raise a ransom worth spit. I have no value, monetary or otherwise, to a living soul.” Except, she added silently, to my mother who hasn’t a clue where I am, or what sort of trouble I might be facing. And if even if she had, she couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
“Kidnap you?” He stifled a grin, though not quite soon enough for it to pass unnoticed. Teeth like his, she thought sourly, were a dentist’s worst nightmare. Straight, white and flawless, they’d push the poor man to the brink of bankruptcy before he’d find reason to tamper with them. “The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but now that you mention it, it might not be such a bad idea.”
“I’m glad one of us finds this amusing!” she spat.
He angled a long, assessing glance her way. “I find you many things. Amusing, certainly, agapiti mou, but also intriguing, ingenuous—”
“I find you insufferable!”
This time, he laughed out loud, an eruption of sound rumbling rich and low as an earthquake from deep inside his chest. “At least I’ve made some sort of impression,” he said dryly, removing the champagne from the ice bucket.
His hands, darkly tanned against the white cuffs of his dress shirt, were well-shaped, with long, capable fingers. Spellbound, she watched as they stripped the foil from the neck of the bottle and removed the cork with the kind of negligent ease that suggested he was no stranger to the task. The wine foamed in the flutes, tiny volcanoes of bubbles exploding to the surface in effervescent glee.
“What shall we drink to, Gina?” he asked, offering a glass to her.
Exercising a mind of their own that was completely at odds with how common sense dictated they should respond, her fingers reached out and circled the slender stem. “You decide.”
“How about, to getting to know more about one another?”
“When I suggested that, little more than an hour ago, you claimed you had more pressing matters to attend to.”
“I’ve changed my mind since then.”
“You’re not the only one! I now know more than I care to about the kind of man you are,” she replied, “and if you think that by getting me in the back seat of this…this sexmobile, I’m going to lie down and let you have your way with me, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
At first, he seemed bereft of speech. He covered his mouth with his hand, and from the way his champagne trembled in its glass, it was plain enough that he was convulsed with more laughter, albeit silent this time. Finally making an effort to control himself—and not very well at that, judging by the amusement quivering in his voice—he said, “I assure you, I have far too much respect for you to entertain any such notion.”
“Oh.” She digested that for a second, then turned to him, puzzled. “Well then, what do you want?”
“To explain myself to you.”
“You didn’t have to go to such extreme lengths to do that.”
“Really? Are you saying that if I’d tried to speak my mind as you left the hotel, you’d have stopped in midflight and listened?”
“Probably not,” she had to admit. “I was pretty ticked off with you.”
“Exactly! And that’s what encouraged me to spirit you away like this. If you hadn’t cared that our rendezvous on the hotel roof came to such an abrupt end, I wouldn’t have bothered wasting any more of your time, or mine. But…” He fixed her in his gaze and shrugged his broad, beautiful shoulders. “You did care, didn’t you? You felt it, too—that spark of attraction between us, so powerful it defies all reason?”
Mesmerized, she nodded, such a maelstrom of emotion rushing through her at the message she read in his eyes that it took her a moment to pose the question that had gnawed at her for hours. “But in that case, why did you suddenly—?”
“Put an end to things, before they went too far?”
She nodded again.
“Because,” he said, removing her glass before she dropped it, and placing it beside his on the built-in shelf at his side, “I pride myself on being a civilized man who is long past the age where hasty fumbling in a public place is an acceptable way to treat a lady. But you, Gina, you aroused such a hunger in me that I wasn’t sure I could control myself if I remained alone with you any longer.”
At that, a lovely warmth spread through her. “I thought it might be because you’re married.”
“I am not, nor have I ever been married.”
“Oh,” she said, those same bubbles which had streamed so exuberantly in her champagne flute chasing now through her blood.
“Nor,” he continued, “do I plan to seduce you in the back seat of this car. If we are to make love—and that is by no means certain—it will be at a place and time of both our choosing.” His teeth gleamed in another smile. “But if you’ll permit it, I’d very much like to kiss you again.”
Heart stammering with pleasure, she whispered, “I think that can be arranged.”
He took her face between his hands and very slowly let his breath feather over her closed eyes, and her lashes, and down her face to her jaw, before making his deliberate way to her mouth.