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“But the details, the press, the glamour.” She leaned closer. “The guest list! I have counted four actors and six rock stars.” Margaret, in her sixties, lifted a gloved hand and waved it in front of her face. “Speaking of which,” she drawled in her aristocratic way. “I recognize you.”
Claudia lifted her gaze to Stavros’s face, and it was as though she was seeing him for the first time. Of course Margaret knew who Stavros was. He wasn’t just the thorn in her side, the guardian she’d never wanted. He was a renowned businessman, CEO of Aresteides Holdings, at the helm of an empire that spanned media interests, transportation, textiles. Everything.
“Stavros,” Claudia couldn’t keep her impatience from her tone. “This is my friend, Lady FitzHerbert. Margaret, my …” she floundered, losing her concentration for the moment as she struggled to find a way to describe Stavros.
“Claudia and I are old family friends,” he offered smoothly, but his fingers on Claudia’s hip ranged up and down, sending little arrows of awareness through her that were most definitely unwelcome.
“Oh! I never knew that,” Margaret said with obvious surprise. “You’ve never mentioned a connection to the Aresteides family before.”
“Haven’t I?” Claudia asked, knowing very well she hadn’t. One look at Stavros showed that he knew the exact same thing. His lips were curled with mocking amusement and a frisson danced down her spine. Beneath the expensive fabric of her dress, her nipples strained in expectation.
“No, dear. Anyway,” Margaret laughed, and the diamond choker she wore shifted with the movements, sending a raindrop of lights through the room. “You’re on.”
“Right.” Claudia sipped her champagne and then pasted a bright smile on her face, handing the flute to Stavros. “I have to go.”
“I’ll see you afterwards,” he murmured, and there was nothing in the simple statement to indicate that he meant it as anything other than an innocuous comment. Yet her heart throbbed and her abdomen squeezed.
“Fine,” she snapped, then moved through the crowd, keeping her attention locked to the front of the room so as to avoid having to stop and speak to anyone. A microphone with Swarovski crystals stood on top of a table and she lifted it up, catching the singer’s eye and nodded.
The singer eased to a stop, leaving only a din in the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, her eyes sweeping the room and landing squarely on Stavros’s face. The way he was looking at her made her skin prickle. He was staring at her with the kind of intensity that could burn her blood. He looked at her as though she was the only woman he’d ever wanted. She dragged her eyes away, trying not to be distracted by the fact he was there.
It didn’t work.
She delivered her speech, laughing at the moment she knew to be funny, smiling at the assembled guests, but her eyes kept colliding with Stavros’s as though pulled by magnetic force, and by the end, there was a screeching noise in her brain, begging her to go and kiss him.
Need was a physical response running through her.
The crowd broke into impassioned applause as she finished.
Stavros didn’t. He simply stared, his expression impossible to read, his body stiff as a board.
She had no idea what he was thinking, and she hated that it was all she cared about in that moment.
It was not so easy to avoid speaking to people after the speech. She had dozens of guests come to her, and she made a point of speaking to them properly, of at least appearing to give them her full attention, even as she was aware of Stavros the whole time. She was aware of him when a glamorous blonde went to speak to him, her hand curled in the crook of his arm, her eyes practically eating him up. She was aware of him when he was alone, watching her, his eyes on her back as strong and as powerful as if he were touching her.
And finally, she was aware of him when he prowled towards her, something like determination firing in his eyes.
“Miss La Roche,” he murmured. “Nice speech.”
“Thank you.” It was a stiff response that made no sense given the way she’d been mentally undressing him for the last half hour. “I trust you can see why this charity means so much to me.”
“Oh, I do.”
She frowned, not sure she understood the tone of his words. His accent was thicker than usual. She blinked up at him, a slight frown smudged across her face.
“In fact,”
he surprised her then by putting his hands on her hips. “I have a donation to make.”
“Well,” Claudia said, willing her body not to react to his proximity. “You can see one of the bursars about that.”
“Oh, it’s not so simple.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
He laughed, a sound that sent shards of desire scraping along her spine. “Because you know me?” The husky question filled her blood with glue. It seemed to stick inside of her so she was conscious of its weight as it drummed through her body.
