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His lean, dark face hardened, his strong jawline squaring. ‘Of course it matters to me. But one cannot live one’s whole life by rigid rules—’
‘Particularly not when they conflict with what Giannis Petrakos wants?’ Maddie dared. ‘There are good reasons for the rules I live by.’
Giannis studied her with glittering golden eyes. ‘I want you more than I’ve wanted any woman for a very long time. Walking away wasn’t an option.’
‘Let’s not exaggerate my supposed attraction,’ Maddie cut in rawly, a pain as sharp as a knife twisting through her. ‘Obviously it’s only sex, because my personal appeal won’t prevent you from marrying someone else. Yet you talked about me not knowing how to behave? Don’t you think I had the right to know I was just a casual fling? A little bit on the side of the main event? If you had had any respect for me at all, you wouldn’t have treated me like this!’
‘You’re wrong about that. There was an explosive attraction. Nor do I think that self-denial makes anyone a better person.’ With that ringing rejoinder, Giannis went into the dressing room and pulled out fresh clothing. ‘We’ll discuss this when you’ve calmed down. I consider arguments a waste of valuable energy.’
‘And walking out the ultimate escape hatch,’ Maddie told him tightly.
That incendiary comment brought Giannis back into view, his tailored chinos still unbuttoned at his lean waist, his bronzed hair-roughened chest still bare. He refused to consider the rights and wrongs. What was done was done. But he was determined not to lose her. ‘I don’t do escape hatches.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Just arrange for me to get home as soon as possible.’ She tilted up her chin and drew on every ounce of her pride to hide her pain. ‘I don’t mind having to sit around the airport for hours and wait for a flight either.’
‘This is crazy. Why should you leave? It’s nonsense to say that what we have is casual,’ Giannis insisted forcefully. ‘I want you in my life—’
‘Well, I think I can safely say that this is one of those very rare occasions when you don’t get what you want.’ Green eyes glittering with furious condemnation, Maddie surveyed him.
‘I won’t let you leave.’
‘You have no choice.’ Maddie yanked out her overnight bag and devoted her attention to packing the few items she had brought from London. She hated him, but she was terrified that the agony of picturing him in another woman’s arms would still kill her by inches. She had to keep busy. Activity and the need to think of practicalities were the only things capable of keeping her sane.
Giannis watched her piling her possessions into an untidy heap. He did not do emotional confrontations, he reminded himself doggedly. He did not do emotions, full-stop. He had never been into love and promises or, for that matter, stories of happily-ever-after. But he knew that she believed in all of those things, and that he had hurt her. He would give her the time and the space to quieten down. He did not believe that she would just walk away from him.
An hour later, Hamid informed him that Maddie was in the salon with her luggage. Giannis stared at the computer screen and realised that he had done no work during that time.
Clad in a simple white shirt and denim skirt, with her glorious hair confined by a band at the nape of her neck, she was standing by the window.
‘I realise that you’re upset, but there is such a thing as the art of compromise,’ Giannis drawled softly.
‘Giannis…’ Maddie whispered in jagged interruption. ‘Compromise would only be another word for you using me, and I’m not a glutton for punishment. But I have decided that everything that’s happened isn’t entirely your fault. I have to take a share of the blame too.’
His ebony brows pleated. ‘Meaning?’
Maddie wanted to tell him about Suzy, because she was convinced that this would be the last time she ever saw him. ‘For you to understand, I have to go back nine years in time to when I first saw you. I was fourteen years old.’
Giannis was intrigued. ‘The first time? How? Where?’
‘You visited my twin sister in a children’s hospice.’
Disconcertion made him frown. ‘A hospice?’
Her generous mouth compressed. ‘Her name was Suzy…and, no, you didn’t notice me on either visit. I was just one of the admiring crowd round the tea trolley. My sister had leukaemia and not much time left. A fortnight later you returned and brought her favourite pop pin-up to visit her. She was overjoyed. He was her hero, and that day you became mine for doing it for her.’
Giannis was astonished by what she was telling him. He too had lost a sibling as a teenager, but that was something he never discussed. Furthermore, what she said had cut through even his tough shell and drawn blood. He was her hero and that day you became mine. Ten words, and every one the equivalent of a spear in the guts, Giannis conceded grimly. ‘Your sister—Suzy—died?’
Her beautiful green eyes sad, Maddie nodded.
‘I’m sorry. Over the years I’ve visited hundreds of children. I’m afraid I don’t remember her,’ he admitted.
‘It’s long time ago. I didn’t expect you to. I just wanted you to know that, even though everything has gone wrong between us on a personal level, I’ll always be grateful for the fact that you made my sister so happy.’
‘I don’t want you to be grateful, pedhi mou,’ Giannis breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Gratitude in that field is the one thing I have never sought from anyone.’
‘But I hope it explains why I acted so stupidly when I finally got the chance to speak to you. I had this false picture of you—a silly, immature image. I’m sure I gave you the wrong impression.’
His gilded bronze eyes darkened and screened. ‘Theos mou…I don’t want to hear this.’
‘I must go.’ Maddie would not allow herself to look at him again. Hamid had already told her that the heli-pilot was waiting to fly her to the airport. She would not allow herself to drag out their final meeting. Giannis had made her weak, but she was determined to be strong and make a dignified exit.
‘You did not give me the wrong impression,’ Giannis asserted, his accent very thick. ‘I saw you and the deed was done. The hunter’s instinct is a powerful one, and the more you resisted me, the more I desired you. I am sorry that I hurt you. But think long and hard before you turn your back on what we share. That happiness is not easily found.’
‘But it was fool’s gold,’ she responded, with a bitterness she had to battle to conceal. ‘And it turned to dross in the light of day.’
Dark golden eyes bleak, Giannis watched the helicopter take off. His big, powerful frame taut with frustration, he tossed back a brandy. His stubborn jawline clenched. Her departure had unleashed uncomfortable reactions within him. His resistance to her climbed in direct proportion to that disturbing knowledge, because he disliked the sense that he was not fully in control. Perhaps it was fortunate that he would not see her for a while. After all, he was not a hero, and he had never suffered from the delusion that he might be. He thought it was just typical of Madeleine Conway that she only wanted a guy who was a bloody hero!
She had storybook ideals—fantasy expectations. His conscience, never the most active part of his psyche, creaked into action to remind him that she had believed he was single and unattached. He remembered how gutted she had been. He had behaved like a bastard, he acknowledged unwillingly. He had taken sexual advantage of a starry-eyed virgin who had evidently seen him in much the same light as an infatuated teenager. He recalled the shine in Maddie’s eyes when she’d looked at him that first day in his office. He wondered exactly what he would have to do to bring that shine back, and he did not doubt his ability to achieve that end. How was it his fault that other women had asked so little from him that he had become spoilt? Even a little lazy and arrogant?
