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‘Not necessarily; you gave a good description of your assailant.’ He glanced across at her. ‘Would you like a nightcap or do you want to turn in?’
The direct question made her heart thump uncomfortably against her ribs.
She wondered if she had made a fool of herself tonight, asking him outright if he were married! She cringed at the memory, and his arrogant rejoinder—Are you interested in applying for the position? Very funny, she thought dryly. Although if her father had heard the conversation he would have rubbed his hands together in glee. The thought flicked through her mind with brief amusement that threatened to turn to aching sadness—her father would probably marry her off to the lowest bidder if it meant he and Michael got what they wanted.
‘I think I’ll just turn in. I’m quite tired.’
He nodded and led her towards the door he had indicated earlier.
The room he showed her into was extremely stylish, dominated by a huge king-sized bed. ‘There is a bathroom through to your left.’ He indicated the en suite bathroom at the other side. ‘Make yourself at home.’
‘Thank you.’ She turned and looked at him. As their eyes met she felt again the fierce tug of attraction rise deep inside her. ‘Well, goodnight, then,’ she added firmly.
He smiled. ‘Goodnight, Cat.’
As Nicholas closed the door behind him he was aware that the evening hadn’t gone quite as smoothly as he’d thought, and it wasn’t just that she hadn’t capitulated and slept with him; it was more than that. It was a bit like hooking what you thought was a small fish on a line only to discover it could pull you off your feet.
He crossed to where he had left his drink and, picking it up, downed the contents in a single gulp. Then he stared sightlessly out at the glittering lights of the city.
For a second he remembered the softness of Cat’s skin beneath his fingertips, the way she had looked up at him with sweet fiery warmth. He’d wanted her with an urgency he couldn’t remember feeling in a long time, an urgency that hadn’t gone away despite the interruptions and her hasty departure to a separate bedroom.
With a frown he put his glass down and reminded himself whom he was dealing with. That episode in Crete last year had been particularly unpleasant. If she got her hands on that inheritance, God alone knew what strokes she and the McKenzie men would pull.
She was very sexy though, h
e acknowledged with a frown. Dangerously so, with the figure of a siren and those come-to-bed eyes.
But sex wasn’t his ultimate goal, he reminded himself firmly. What he wanted was total possession of her and, through her, total revenge on Carter McKenzie. Their inheritance would be sent to some worthy cause—he had one all lined up, an orphanage in Greece. Quite fitting, he thought with a smile.
So he would bide his time about bedding her, he told himself as he switched off the lights and headed for his own room. His intuition told him that if he tried to rush things with Cat she would pull away from his grasp. Nevertheless he was confident that before very long he would have this all wrapped up. She would soon be his for the taking—along with the McKenzie inheritance—and it would be a most satisfactory arrangement.
Cat lay in the large bed and stared up at the ceiling. She could hear Nicholas moving about, switching off lights. Although she felt exhausted, she couldn’t sleep; images from the evening were flicking through her mind.
Something wasn’t right.
She saw again the man who had tried to steal her handbag, then Nicholas Zentenas making his timely intervention. What had he been doing outside the hotel? she wondered suddenly.
She turned over and pummelled the pillow beneath her head, willing sleep to claim her. Did it matter why he’d been outside? He’d helped her and that was the main thing.
Cat closed her eyes again but this time she could see Nicholas’s face clearly. The dark glittering eyes, the sensual curve of his lips. He was very handsome but she couldn’t work out what it was about him that gave him that dangerous edge. Maybe it was just that she was scared of the attraction she felt for him. He wasn’t the type of man that she wanted.
When she fell for someone, she wanted him to be a nice uncomplicated kind of man. She wanted an ordinary life where she and her partner worked together to achieve their goals. That was her dream. She didn’t want wild excesses of money or to get involved with some power-hungry person who lived for his next deal. She had seen that kind of life up close with her father and she didn’t want it.
It was a strange coincidence that this man who had helped her and who she was so attracted to was from Crete, a place that held the key to so many emotions inside her.
You should go back, he had suggested lightly. She had returned to Crete to help Michael last year only because she had felt obliged to. It was a familiar scenario. Her father played the guilt card and she found herself dishing out money to Michael—money that had ostensibly been left for her education.
Her half-brother was trouble, Cat thought darkly. But still her father couldn’t see it. He adored his only son, blamed any problems he had on the terms of her grandfather’s will—on her—on anything except Michael. And, who knew, maybe it was the will that had caused Michael to stray into troubled waters. He had certainly been hurt by it and so had their father. Cat still felt guilty about the way her grandfather had left things, even though logically she knew it was not her fault.
Cat had been ten when she had discovered that she had a brother. Four months after her mother’s funeral, her father had announced he was getting married again to a woman called Julia. He had then coolly introduced Julia’s son Michael as his son. Cat had found she had a half-brother only six months younger than she was.
The revelations had shocked her. Julia had been her father’s mistress for eleven years, and yet she had never suspected that all had not been well in her parents’ marriage.
Her grandfather had been furious and had made it clear to his son that he disapproved of him marrying again so soon.
‘She’s a gold-digger.’ He had practically spat the words out in front of everyone and a heated argument had ensued. ‘She’s only hung on to you for all these years because you have wrapped her in the luxury of the McKenzie money and now she wants more. But if you marry her she won’t get anything more, I’ll make sure of that. I’ll change my will.’
The words had certainly stirred up a lot of unpleasant feeling. But her father had taken them as an empty threat; after all, he was an only child, how could his father not leave him his inheritance? His marriage to Julia had gone ahead.
