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‘Are you ill?’ Giannis demanded.
‘No, of course I’m not!’ Maddie spun away, turning her back on him while she struggled to rescue her composure.
In her mind’s eye she could still see him, and her heart was racing and pounding as if she had run up a hill. One glimpse of his lean, darkly handsome face, one scorching encounter with his gilded bronze eyes, and she wanted to throw herself at him. For a split second, a wicked moment in time, it didn’t matter what he had done. She just wanted to forgive him so that she could be with him again. The coiled knot of heat in her pelvis was radiating a wanton physical awareness that shook her. Her breasts were heavy, the rosy tips swollen.
Affronted by her weakness, she forced herself to concentrate, and turned back to him. ‘What are you doing here? How did you manage to walk into this office?’ she asked in an accusing rush. ‘How did you even know where I was?’
‘I own this company.’ Giannis spread long brown fingers in a stylish gesture of dismissal. ‘I wanted a meeting, and it was arranged with discretion.’
‘You actually own this business?’ Maddie prompted, half an octave higher. ‘Is that why I was offered the chance to work here this week?’
‘If you must work—and I would prefer that you did not,’ Giannis murmured with silken stress, ‘why not work for me?’
‘Why? Does it give you a kick, pushing people around? Like I’m some piece on a chessboard and this is a game?’
His keen gaze narrowed and glittered. ‘I want you back, pedhi mou. I very much regret the distress I have caused. This is definitely not a game for either of us.’
‘And would you still feel the same way if I was pregnant?’ Maddie heard herself throwing that provocative challenge, and was startled by her daring. She was toying with the truth that she was not yet ready to voice, testing the water. But the instant she finished speaking she realised that now she would have to tell him she had conceived.
The answering silence yawned like a frightening abyss. Her fingers clenched into her palms and etched little purple crescents. She wanted—no, needed a positive response. All her hopes were laid out in a pathetic line in front of her, vulnerable and defenceless.
His lean, strong face had shuttered. His beautiful smart dark eyes, semi-screened by his dense black lashes, narrowed to grim points of light. ‘Are you pregnant?’
That single demand came with the telling speed and precision of a bullet to the heart. The chill factor in the air turned her to pure ice, and pain threatened to crack her down the middle. ‘No,’ she heard herself say cheerfully, hiding her true feelings behind all the pride she could muster.
Only ferocious self-discipline prevented Giannis from swearing out loud. What a question to throw at him! His perfect white teeth were gritted. The fall-out from such a development would rock the foundations of his world. Why the hell had she asked him that? What a stupid, tasteless question! As if a pregnancy could be anything other than a major catastrophe that would require handling. Babies and mistresses didn’t go together.
Maddie hated him at that moment. She wanted to wrap her arms protectively round her still-flat stomach. She wanted to shout that her baby would do just fine with her, and would never, ever need a selfish and heartless rat like him as an uninterested father. Instead she said flatly, ‘I’d like to go back to work. Please don’t approach me again.’
‘How long are you planning to keep this up?’ Giannis growled with furious impatience and growing frustration. Once again she was behaving differently from all the other women who had preceded her. ‘I won’t be back in London for at least two weeks.’
A humourless little laugh escaped Maddie. ‘Why are you telling me that? Didn’t you hear me? I’m asking you to leave me alone.’
Before she would work out his intention, Giannis strode forward, closed his hands over hers and claimed her luscious mouth with a devouring, driving heat that left her giddy and breathless. ‘Let’s not talk,’ he breathed in a heartfelt plea. ‘Let’s go back to my apartment.’
Maddie peeled herself off him again. It was quite an operation: she was leaning into him, with her fingers clenched on his shoulder, her other hand splayed across his shirt-front, her palm warmed by his body heat and the steady thump of his heartbeat. Another few seconds and she knew she would have been inside his jacket with him. No wonder he was inviting her back to his apartment. She was a slut—a total slut, she told herself in disgust. That one passionate kiss had set up a chain reaction of craving that made her entire body melt and quiver.
‘No. I—’
Giannis curved long fingers round her wrist to halt her steady retreat towards the door. ‘What do you want me to do? Beg?’ he ground out.
With a mighty effort of will, Maddie yanked her fingers free and stepped back from him. ‘You’re engaged—’
‘That’s business…You’re very much in the pleasure category,’ Giannis murmured in a roughened undertone.
Her green eyes glinted pure emerald, and defiance was written in every rigid line of her shapely figure and stance. ‘But I don’t want to be with you now. You’re wrong for me.’
‘There aren’t many old-style heroes out there.’ His golden eyes challenged her.
Maddie was trembling. ‘Perhaps not…but I’m sure there are a few decent, trustworthy guys left. Maybe even one with principles, who doesn’t think his money entitles him to do as he likes. Some day I’ll meet someone I can respect—and, believe me, he’s not you!’
His face saturnine in cast, Giannis had fallen very still, for he was not accustomed to being insulted. A forbidding light had entered his piercing dark eyes. ‘Regardless of what it takes, you will learn to respect me. I can wait. I will be patient. In the end I always get what I want.’
‘But I won’t ever be with you again,’ Maddie vowed vehemently. ‘Now I’m going back to work.’
She returned to the filing room in the basement. For several minutes she stared into space and tried to still the inner trembling affecting her. She felt cold inside and out, and utterly bereft. Hating him and wanting him was threatening to tear her apart. But now there was a kernel of fear edging her responses. For how long would she be able to withstand the dangerous combination of his strength and determination pitted against her own longing?
Sensible people moved on from mistakes, and perhaps she needed to move on in a literal sense, she reasoned feverishly. She had no ties in London, and it was a very expensive place to live. If she moved away now she would be able to make a fresh start well in advance of her baby’s birth. If Giannis did not know where she was he would have to leave her alone, and she would not be tempted back into a relationship that would destroy her. While she might have little money in her bank account, she did have a post office savings nest-egg which contained the fifteen hundred pounds that her grandmother had left her. It would cover the expense of any move.
That evening, Maddie began going through her things and sorting out what could be recycled through a charity shop and what should have been dumped long ago. Travelling light would make relocating less of a challenge.
And would you still feel the same way if I was pregnant?
The ultimate high jump, Giannis conceded in vexation, an austere cast to his wide handsome mouth. It had been a test, however, and he had failed it. Until he had met Madeleine Conway, Giannis had believed that a luxurious lifestyle and extravagant gifts were sufficient to tempt any woman into pleasing him. But Maddie was complex, challenging, and yet in many ways more basic. What did Stone Age Woman want from Stone Age Man? Giannis asked himself grimly. Stone Age Woman expected her guy to supply protection, food and shelter. In much the same way, Maddie wanted a guy she could depend on to look after her in all circumstances. So she had thrown the pregnancy loop and he had bombed. Why? Like most very rich men, he was accustomed to dealing with avaricious scheming women and ceding nothing, calling in his lawyers to clean up and ensure that the press never got wind of it.
Maddie, however, had
been asking a simple question to establish the level of his commitment to her. What if? And, cynical, guarded and astute as he was, he had been too clever for his own good. She had expected an honest response, but he could not recall when he had ever answered a leading question from a woman with simple candour. He avoided relationship discussions. He dumped women prone to striking up such conversations. But Maddie occupied a class of her own, and she required more painstaking management and support. She had needed to hear that, whatever happened, he would take care of her. Regrettably, she had given him insufficient time to work out the reality that only forthright sincerity would win him a hearing.
‘Mr Petrakos…?’ one of the Greek board members murmured. For the silence had lasted and lasted, and everyone round the massive table was getting very nervous.
Giannis shot him a chilling glance. ‘Don’t interrupt me. I’m thinking.’
