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‘You’re annoyed that I didn’t phone you,’ he murmured with silken derision. ‘I’m a busy guy, and I make no apology for the fact.’
His very intonation was like a red rag to a bull for Maddie. Every syllable he spoke seemed to touch a raw nerve inside her and she bristled, green eyes brightening to emerald chips above her flushed cheekbones. ‘I suspect that you don’t apologise for very much in life. Obviously people let you get away with being rude and offensive and arrogant—’
‘Don’t forget insensitive,’ Giannis Petrakos purred in helpful addition, while his scorching golden eyes rested on her with raw incredulity. No woman had ever dared to criticise or insult him in such a way. Outraged though he was, he still could not quite believe that she was addressing him with such disrespect.
‘Yes—and that too!’ Maddie gasped, letting anger become the vent for her emotional turmoil. ‘Out of the blue you send an employee to tell me I’m going to have lunch with you…you don’t even bother asking…and then you send him back to pick me up. You act and you talk like you’re doing me a big favour. Are you so used to women falling over themselves to please you that you just assume I’m the same?’
It was exactly what Giannis was accustomed to. But torture would not have persuaded him to own up to the fact. In a graceful movement he shifted closer, invading her personal space with alacrity. He was seething with anger. He curled a purposeful hand to her chin and tipped up her face. His smouldering gaze clashed head-on with her startled upward glance. ‘You gave me good cause, glikia mou,’ he told her, his Greek accent roughening the delivery of every word.
Her nostrils flared at the faint exotic aroma of the designer cologne he used. Locked to his fierce appraisal, she was shocked to feel a pronounced prickle of sexual awareness travelling through her like a contained electric shock. Her nipples pouted and pushed against the lacy cups of her bra and she tensed in dismay. ‘I—’
‘And the invitation is still there in every look you give me—because the sex was fantastic,’ Giannis intoned thickly.
Her memory flung up an explicit image of his lean, powerful body engulfing hers, and the pain of initiation which had been followed by the waves of hot, piercing pleasure. But even as she helplessly responded, as though he had programmed her, she was shocked by his earthy candour. The sex was fantastic. Not exactly a solid base on which to build romantic girlie dreams, she thought painfully.
‘And that’s all you want.’
Giannis anchored a hand briefly in the luxuriant fall of her rippling curls and intoned steadily, ‘I want you. Whatever that entails.’
With a valiant effort Maddie detached herself and pulled back from him, snatching in a gulp of oxygen. She was trembling. ‘For how long?’
Giannis shifted graceful lean brown hands in a speaking gesture that asked how he could possibly answer such a question. Watching him, Maddie felt almost mesmerised by his cool sophistication. He was gorgeous, a powerful and masculine work of art. He was out of her league, though—way out. She had already had a taste of how he would treat her. If this was what he was like when he was keen, what would he be like when her attraction had faded? Pride and her usual common sense began to reassert its sway.
‘It wouldn’t work…it didn’t start out right,’ she muttered tightly
Sardonic amusement lightened his lean bronzed features. ‘Is that the problem? You imagine I might think less of you for matching my passion?’
Maddie shot him an unconvinced glance. ‘You don’t? You mean, you treat all women this way?’
Stung on the raw, Giannis dealt her a fulminating appraisal
But it was wasted on Maddie, who had just realised what time it was and groaned in dismay. ‘Oh, my goodness. I’m going to be late for work!’
‘Work?’ Giannis repeated. ‘You work at the weekend as well?’
‘Yes.’ Snatching up her bag and her overall, Maddie hauled open the door. ‘I have to go,’ she told him feverishly.
Giannis strode out on to the landing and watched her lock up. ‘Where do you work?’
‘In the supermarket down the road.’ Maddie hurried down the stairs at a rattling pace.
‘When do you finish?’
Out on the street, Maddie focused wide-eyed on the opulent black limousine with its tinted windows, and on the number of well-dressed men wearing sunglasses hovering watchfully in its vicinity. The instant Giannis appeared behind her all the men went on visible alert. He was protected everywhere he went. He did not live anything like a normal life. They might as well have been creatures from a different planet, she acknowledged painfully.
‘Madeleine?’ Giannis prompted drily.
‘Six—but what’s that got to do with anything?’ A rueful laugh fell from her lips. ‘Guys like you don’t date shopgirls!’
An hour after she started work the flowers arrived. A glorious bouquet of old-fashioned buttery yellow and cream roses was brought to her. Nobody had ever sent her flowers before, and at first she thought there had been a mistake. The sight of her own name on the gift envelope convinced her, however, and she opened the card.
Personally selected and delivered. See you at six, Giannis.
She laughed at that first assurance, and then her face fell. Even had she been tempted she wasn’t free this evening. But he didn’t quit, and she had always admired that in a man. She thought of what he had done for her dying sister and reminded herself that Giannis Petrakos was very far from being all bad. And she was as much to blame as him for their sexual encounter. Was he right? Was she just angry with him because he hadn’t got in touch sooner? She was being torn in two by conflicting promptings, and she felt horribly confused and out of her depth. His arrogance still infuriated her, and she could not shake free of her guilt at having slept with him. Furthermore he was not trying to conceal the fact that only sexual desire drove his continued interest. That was no basis for a relationship—at least not the kind she wanted and needed. So why was she still tempted by him? Why did the gesture of the roses delight her so much?
Half an hour after she got home, Giannis called back for her.
‘I never even asked you how you got my address,’ she muttered awkwardly, drinking in the sight of his lean bronzed features with strained green eyes.
‘Such information is always available for a favour or a price.’
To Maddie, that was yet another unsavoury glimpse of a world and a way of thought foreign to her principles. ‘Look, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t see you tonight,’ she told him hurriedly, keen to bring the conversation to a swift conclusion.
‘How so?’ he incised, level dark golden eyes pinned to her with questioning force.
There was no apology in Maddie’s quiet voice as she explained that she had agreed to sit with her elderly neighbour so that the lady’s daughter, who looked after her mother full-time, could enjoy a rare evening out.
‘How praiseworthy, glikia mou.’ A wry smile of approval curved his wide stubborn mouth. ‘Naturally I’ll organise a qualified carer to stand in for you.’
‘No, you can’t do that. I never said I would see you tonight, and even if I did want to—which I don’t—I wouldn’t consider letting my friends down at the last minute,’ Maddie declared, her chin coming up at a pugnacious angle because she was indignant at his assumption that she would rearrange her life and her responsibilities to suit him.
But she was even more appalled by her spasm of disappointment that it was not possible for her to consider his offer of providing another companion for her neighbour. She no longer knew what she wanted any more.
