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He was staring down at her, eyes narrowed, his forehead creasing as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying. Which was understandable, as she couldn’t quite believe it either.
There was a tense, electric pause and then he said softly, ‘I didn’t ask your opinion of me, Ms Price.’
‘And I didn’t ask for this, Mr Kane.’ She gestured around the SUV’s luxurious interior. ‘You just took me along for the ride.’
He leaned forward now, his blue eyes darkening like the sea before a storm. ‘Along for the ride?’ he repeated slowly. ‘You heard Ivanov. I was doing you a favour,’ he said, with all the sensitivity and self-awareness of a man unaccustomed to being either. ‘What would you rather? That I’d left you there?’
She swallowed, her throat suddenly scratchy. No. And not because she had felt the warmth of his muscle-hard body next to hers or breathed in the to-die-for scent of his skin.
Her stomach flipped over and she remembered her appointment with the bank manager. She thought about all the beds she’d stripped. The bins she had emptied and the toilets she’d scrubbed. Then she pictured the empty chair where she should be sitting. She clenched her teeth.
‘Yes, I would have preferred that. I was supposed to be meeting someone at the bank. It was important.’
His face hardened. It was like watching molten bronze cool.
‘You have an important meeting?’
She felt her cheeks flush.
‘Had an important meeting.’ She pressed her hand against the door to steady herself. It wasn’t strictly true, but it would be by the time she got back to the hotel and retrieved her phone. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve missed it.’
He made a gesture of impatience. ‘If it was so important, why didn’t you mention it before?’
‘I did mention it,’ she protested, the unfairness of his remark making her breath judder against her ribs. ‘I told you I had to be somewhere, but you didn’t listen to me.’
His face was hard. ‘You’re a grown woman, Ms Price. If you want to be listened to then maybe you should make more of an effort to be heard.’
‘In that case,’ she said, squaring her shoulders, ‘I’d like you to take me back to the hotel. No—on second thoughts, you can just drop me here. That way you won’t have to worry about running into Mr Ivanov.’
He straightened then, and as his gaze narrowed on her face she saw the flame in his eyes, the smouldering male pride.
‘As you wish,’ he said, staring down at her, suddenly ferociously cold and hard and hostile.
She felt the hair on her nape rise as he snapped out something in Greek, and within seconds the huge car slid to a stop.
As the bodyguard in the passenger seat got out to open her door, she picked up her bag.
‘Take care, Ms Price.’
His deep voice pulled her back into the cool interior, and she turned, her eyes locking with his.
‘I’m not the one hiding, Mr Kane,’ she said quietly.
His face changed. He looked startled—no, actually, what he looked was winded, as if instead of speaking she had landed a punch to his gut.
But then the door opened, and she was on the pavement, walking and then running, pushing through the lunchtime shoppers, moving as fast and as far as she could from his furious sapphire gaze.
I’m not the one hiding.
Jaw clenching, Achileas lifted the glass of whisky—his second—and threw back the contents, a pulse of anger beating erratically across his skin. Tension was part of his life. His work both generated and required it. But he had never been this tense—ever.
After Effie had got out of the car, he had been so incensed that he hadn’t been able to speak. When finally, his voice had returned, he had curtly told his driver to take him to his apartment—one of the four homes he owned at strategic points around the globe.
His lip curled. Properties, not homes.
He didn’t have a home. Not now, not ever.
His stepfather, Richard Kane, had been in the US military, and as a consequence the family had moved around a lot. Until the marriage had ended. And then shortly afterwards he’d been sent to boarding school in England.
