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That blunt comment silenced Katie, because she was embarrassed by the fact that he’d noticed that all she owned was jeans and casual tops.
‘I’ll see that you’re taken out shopping tomorrow. The children require clothing as well.’
When Alexandros entered the nursery, Toby and Connor displayed instant interest at his appearance. Indeed, Toby hauled himself up to stand on wobbling legs using the cot bars, his little face lighting up with a huge smile as he raised his arms to be lifted. When, without the support of the cot rail, he then fell over on his bottom the affront to his expectations was too great, and he burst into angry tears of frustration.
Katie was disconcerted when Alexandros strode straight over and scooped Toby up into his arms, voicing what sounded like a sympathetic phrase of Greek. In the space of a minute Toby went from tears to delighted chortles. Equally confused by his own behaviour, Alexandros gazed down at his son, marvelling that some hitherto unknown instinct should have prompted him to immediately offer comfort to the distressed child.
In search of an equal share of the attention, Connor loosed a plaintive yell. Katie lifted him, but Connor was much more interested in Alexandros. The twins were used to women, and a man was an infinitely greater source of fascination. Her face tightened and she stifled an ignoble spark of hurt when Connor stretched out eager hands in his father’s direction.
‘They’re very friendly babies.’ Alexandros, gloriously unaware of the compliment he was being paid, was amused. ‘But I’ll have to sit down to handle the two of them.’
When Alexandros sank down with lithe grace on to the carpet, Katie set Connor down beside him. The little boy hauled himself upright on a hard male thigh and chuckled with satisfaction. Katie watched in wonderment while the twins swarmed over their father with increasing confidence and pleasure. They tried to use his tie as a climbing rope. They clutched at his hair, explored his face with highly familiar fingers, and were overjoyed when he responded with more excitingly physical and challenging moves than their mother ever did.
For the first time since the twins’ birth Katie was ignored by her children. As Toby and Connor crawled round, staging frantic sneak attacks on Alexandros, and the minutes ticked past while the audible sounds of their enjoyment rang round the room, Katie felt that she might as well have been the invisible woman. It had never occurred to her that Alexandros would or even could unbend from his reserve and his dignity to such an extent.
Cyrus came to remind Alexandros that he would soon have to leave for the airport. His craggy features betrayed his surprise at finding his sophisticated employer engaging in a baby wrestling match, and his beaming approval of the scene was equally obvious.
‘Your suit is going to look like you slept in it,’ Katie told Alexandros waspishly.
He raked long brown fingers through his tousled black hair and shot her a sudden charismatic grin, his amusement unhidden. ‘I don’t think I’ve had this much fun since I left my own nursery…all boys together, rough and tumble.’
Striving to remain impervious to that lethally attractive smile, Katie folded her arms. ‘Toby and Connor can be quite difficult to handle.’
Alexandros vaulted easily upright and shrugged, dismissing her negative comment. ‘They like me. That’s a good beginning.’
‘Yes.’ Feeling small and mean and jealous, she tried to inject more enthusiasm into her voice.
The twins cried bitterly when the games stopped and their father departed. Settling them again took time.
That afternoon, Katie was invited to sit in on the nanny interviews. Invited to give her opinion afterwards, she gave her vote to a French girl called Maribel, who was the youngest applicant and whom Katie had found the least intimidating.
The next day, Cyrus and another security man accompanied Katie to Harrods. Assisted by a personal shopper, she bought new clothes for her sons. Not having to worry about the price tags was a wonderfully liberating experience. Then she tried on a variety of outfits for herself, and chose the accessories that went with them. By the time she reached the stage of selecting underwear and nightwear, she felt like an overexcited child let loose in a toy shop.
When the chauffeur went to stow the bags and boxes in the vast boot of the limo, she asked if they could be placed in the back seat with her. She spent the entire drive home carefully examining every purchase and soaking up every last possible thrill from the experience. It was only fair that Alexandros should contribute to the cost of keeping the twins clothed, but she was determined that this would be the only time when she allowed him to include her in that responsibility. In the future she planned to be working and earning and fully self-sufficient.
Walking back into the house, Katie glimpsed her reflection in a mirror and fingered her undisciplined mop of curls in dismay. ‘I should’ve got my hair done…I forgot about it.’
‘I’ll organise it,’ Cyrus told her.
That evening she visited a beauty salon, where her hair was styled and her nails were manicured. She chose some cosmetics as well, and at midnight she was still experimenting with the eye make-up. In bed, she lay as still as a corpse, her mane of ringlets carefully spread in separate lengths across the pillow, her hands, with fuchsia-pink-tinted perfect nails, spread like starfish on top of the duvet. There was nothing wrong with taking pride in her appearance, she told herself, in conflict with the puritanical inner voice that suggested that she was being foolish. Just because Alexandros had been married to a woman with the face and body of a goddess did not mean that she herself had to give up entirely. In any case, she and Alexandros would meet as friends in Italy. It would be a new chapter in their relationship, a more mature and civilised phase, she reminded herself drowsily, wondering why being sensible should make her feel so unbearably sad…
As the car wended a slow path, first through an enchantingly pretty medieval village and then down a steep hill into a valley with a meandering river that glinted in the sunlight like a silver ribbon, Katie was delighted with her first impressions of Italy. It was hot and sunny, and the Umbrian countryside was glorious.
Beside her, Toby and Connor were mercifully quiet. The twins were teething, and after a restless night had been in no mood to embrace foreign travel. The disruption to their usual routine had been unwelcome, and the boys had complained vociferously during the flight. Katie hoped that an uninterrupted nap when they arrived at their destination would help her sons catch up on the sleep they had missed out on.
The limo purred up a formal avenue towards a vast villa that looked as if it had been around for centuries, and Katie could not resist a rueful grin. Alexandros had never seemed quite comfortable in the ultra-modern house in Ireland. Classical grandeur, however, provided him with a perfect backdrop. As she entered the villa, she was handed a phone.
‘Will you join me for lunch?’ Alexandros enquired.
An instant smile curved her generous mouth, for she had been disappointed that he wasn’t on the spot to greet them. ‘I’d love to…but I do have to get the twins settled first—’
Overhearing that declaration, the new nanny, Maribel, made frantic signs to indicate that there was no need whatsoever for Katie to join her in that endeavour.
‘Oh—no…no, it’s okay. I can come now.’ Katie returned her attention to the phone. ‘Where are you?’
‘The car will bring you to me.’
The limo moved off again, and turned slowly down a cobbled lane overhung by trees. Katie smoothed damp palms down over her summer dress, a simple but madly fashionable item composed of fine lilac-sprigged organza and shaped with ribbon below the bust. A few minutes later the car came to a halt, and she slid out.
Alexandros strolled out from below an ivy-clad arched gateway. He wore a slate-grey designer suit, casually cut and teamed with a striped black shirt. He exuded cool cutting-edge style. Katie tried not to be dazzled, and struggled to suppress her usual response to his sleek, dark good-looks. Friends, she repeated inwardly. Even so, her mouth still ran dry, and it was as steep a challenge as ever to dredge her attention from his lean bronzed features.
‘Today will mark a new beginning for us…’
Katie moistened her lower lip in a nervous gesture ‘Yes…’
Coal-black lashes low over his stunning golden eyes, Alexandros studied her luscious pink mouth with ferocious intensity. He could not understand how she should look so wildly sexy in a dress that concealed her slender curves and showed only a modest length of leg. He could not understand either how he had dismissed her attractions just a few days earlier and yet now burned to get her back into bed again by whatever stratagems necessary. Perhaps, he acknowledged, his strong reaction was magnified by the simple fact that he had never been so focussed on a woman before.
From the moment when it had occurred to Alexandros that his staying single meant Katie stayed single too—with all the freedom and all the choices that status entailed—he had seen the need for aggressive action. Unlike with most of the young women Alexandros met, the acquisition of a rich husband was definitely not the summit of Katie’s ambition. Katie didn’t want to marry him. That revelation had challenged him as never before, rousing hunting instincts that had stayed dormant because he had never had to chase a woman. So he had plotted Katie’s downfall with the same ruthless and resolute precision with which he made financial deals. Romance? Success came easily to Alexandros in every field, and he saw no reason why he should not be able to do romance as well as he did everything else. And he had baited the trap with care.
Katie was captivated by her first glimpse of the turreted stone folly through the trees. The winding woodland path petered out into a lush green glade. A glorious rose-entwined loggia rimmed the lower floor of the tower. She fell still under the shade of a chestnut tree, to better appreciate the sheer quality of the scene before her. On the terrace below the climbing roses sat elegant ironwork chairs, festooned with colourful floral quilts and silk cushions, and a white marble table which was a work of art: glittering crystal glasses, delicate silver and glass dishes, offering a mouthwatering selection of finger foods.
Kicking off her shoes, Katie let her toes flex in the springy grass and kept on staring. For perhaps the very first time she was truly appreciating how very rich Alexandros was. An al fresco lunch was being offered in an exquisite theatrical display worthy of a glossy magazine spread.
‘This is out of this world…’ Katie whispered. ‘But you don’t like eating outdoors—’
