The Greek's Ultimate Conquest
KIM LAWRENCE
They shared a night of mindless passion……now he’ll take her once again!Reeling from his best friend’s death, Greek shipping magnate Nik Latsis found oblivion in the arms of a stunning stranger. Since then, her innocence has haunted his dreams. And now Nik knows only another taste will rid him of his burning desire. But Nik will need more than seductive charm if he’s to entice feisty Chloe back into his bed…
They shared a night of mindless passion...
Now he’ll take her once again!
Reeling from his best friend’s death, Greek shipping magnate Nik Latsis found oblivion in the arms of a stunning stranger. Since then, her innocence has haunted his dreams. And now Nik knows only another taste will rid him of his burning desire. But Nik will need more than seductive charm if he’s to entice feisty Chloe back into his bed...
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in Anglesey with her university lecturer husband, assorted pets who arrived as strays and never left, and sometimes one or both of her boomerang sons. When she’s not writing she loves to be outdoors gardening, or walking on one of the beaches for which the island is famous—along with being the place where Prince William and Catherine made their first home!
Also by Kim Lawrence
Maid for Montero
Captivated by Her Innocence
A Secret Until Now
The Heartbreaker Prince
One Night with Morelli
The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe
Her Nine Month Confession
One Night to Wedding Vows
Surrendering to the Italian’s Command
A Ring to Secure His Crown
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Greek’s Ultimate Conquest
Kim Lawrence
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07171-0
THE GREEK’S ULTIMATE CONQUEST
© 2018 Kim Lawrence
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover (#ubba165e7-0da1-5f18-97df-7a0565d969ec)
Back Cover Text (#u3181a7ec-3656-5b3c-960e-079364e72e48)
About the Author (#u768b91c4-cbf7-5e22-b1e7-5af8897abd2b)
Booklist (#uedfd02cb-a3c0-5513-9118-7f86755dcda9)
Title Page (#u74e4d8ac-ecc8-5c08-9d73-621b248055bd)
Copyright (#u5ee7b146-8345-513c-8de2-809938783c11)
CHAPTER ONE (#udc7d382f-db4d-5037-8993-de6db1b33b9f)
CHAPTER TWO (#u154881e1-4238-5c40-b26c-5319b1e9c41a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ufc276109-0851-511c-a78d-06c8093ef9ea)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u2a767321-2d48-580f-981b-fb53d9f5d335)
WHEN HAD HE actually last slept...?
The medication that the medic had administered to him in the field hospital had only taken the edge off his agony and since he’d got on the military air transport to Germany it hadn’t even done that, despite the copious amounts of alcohol he’d downed in an attempt to self-medicate.
But now he was finally about to fall sleep, the moment was delayed as a half-burnt log in the open grate disintegrated, sending a star burst of sparks outwards and pulling him back from the brink. He watched through heavy half-closed eyes as the flames flared briefly before fading, leaving dark specks on the sheepskin stretched over the wood floor.
The woman lying across his arm stirred gently before burrowing into his shoulder. He flexed his fingers to relieve the numbness that was creeping into his hand, and with his free hand pushed back a hank of hair tinged silver by the moonlight shining through the open window. He glanced down, the soft light caressing her face revealing the smooth curve of her cheek.
She was, simply, beautiful. It wasn’t just the bone structure and the incredible body, but she had something else about her...a glow, he decided, smiling at the uncharacteristically sentimental thought as he rubbed a strand of her hair between his fingertips. She was the sort of woman that at any other time in his life he would have gravitated towards. But even though he’d picked her out immediately when she had entered the bar earlier—with a noisy, youthful après-ski group oozing the confidence that came with privilege and intent on having fun and spending money—he had not reacted. Instead shutting out the sound of upper-class voices, he’d turned back to the drink he’d been nursing as he’d sunk once again into his black thoughts.
Then she’d come over to him. Up close she was even more spectacular, and she clearly had the self confidence that went with knowing it as she approached him. A real golden girl complete with golden glow, long gorgeous legs, her lithe body lovingly outlined in tight-fitting ski gear that was suited to her sinuous, athletic body. Her fine-boned face had perfect symmetry, the full lips and the deep blue of her wide-spaced eyes made him think of an angel, a sexy angel with a halo of lint-pale hair that glittered in the reflection of the beaten copper light shade suspended over his table.
‘Hello.’
Her voice was low, accentless, and had a slight attractive husk.
A flicker of uncertainty appeared in her eyes when he didn’t respond, then after a moment she repeated the greeting, first in French and then Italian.
‘English is fine.’
She took the comment as encouragement and slid onto a stool beside him. ‘I saw you from...’ Without taking her eyes from his face—they really were the most spectacular eyes—she nodded towards the group she had arrived with, who seemed to be involved in a noisy shot-downing game. The sight of the bunch of spoiled socialites giving the bar staff a hard time twitched his lips into a contemptuous sneer.
‘You’re missing the fun,’ he drawled.
She glanced back at her friends, giving what appeared to be a wince before training eyes that were a shocking shade of blue on him. ‘It stopped being fun about two bars ago.’ Her soft lips still smiled but a quizzical groove appeared between her brows and her head tilted a little to one side as she continued to stare at him. ‘You look...alone.’
He gave her a look then, the one that made ninety-nine out of a hundred people back off. The hundredth was generally drunk, although it was obvious this woman wasn’t; her blue stare was clear and candid, unnervingly so. Or maybe what unnerved him was the electric charge he could feel in the air between them, a low-level thrum but undeniably present.
‘I’m Chloe—’
He cut her off before she could introduce herself fully.
‘Sorry, agape mou, I’m not good company tonight.’ He wanted her to go away, he wanted to be left alone to slide back into the darkness, but when she didn’t, he wasn’t really sorry.
‘Are you Greek?’
‘Among other things.’
‘So what do I call you?’
Nothing worse than he’d called himself. ‘Nik.’
‘Just Nik?’
He nodded and after a moment she gave a little shrug of assent. ‘Fair enough.’
When her friends had left she had stayed.
This was her room, an apartment in an upmarket chalet—not that they’d made it as far as the bedroom. A trail of their clothing traced their stumbling path from the door to the leather sofa where they lay.
He had always enjoyed the physical, sexual side of his nature but last night... Nik still couldn’t quite believe how raw it had been, a true sanity-sapping explosion of need, and for a few moments he had felt free, free of grief, guilt and the oily taint left by the things he had witnessed.
He trailed a hand down her back, letting his fingers rest on the curve of her smooth bottom. As he breathed in her scent he desperately wanted to close his eyes, but for some reason every time he thought about it his glance was drawn across the room to where, he knew, even though the light was too dim to see properly, his phone lay after it had fallen from his pocket.
How did he know it was about to vibrate?
Then it did.
He glanced down to see if the sound had disturbed the sleeping woman and every muscle in his body clenched violently in icy horror and shock, trapping the cry of visceral terror in his throat. He was staring down, not at a warm, beautiful woman, but at the pale, still face of his best friend. The body he held was not warm and breathing but cold and still, the eyes not closed but open and staring up at him, blankly empty!
* * *
When he suddenly awoke, gasping, he was not in his bed but beside it on the floor on his knees, shaking like someone in a fever, sweat dripping from his body as he gulped for air. The effort of drawing oxygen into his lungs defined each individual sinew and muscle in his powerful back as he rammed his clenched fists against his rock-hard thighs. The scream that clawed at the edge of his mind remained locked in his raw throat as he struggled to reclaim reality from the lingering wisps of his dreams.
It finally came, and when it did he felt...well, he felt no better or worse than he had on any other of the countless times previously he’d woken out of exactly the same nightmare.
Slowly Nik got to his feet, the normal fluidity of his actions stiff, the athletically honed body so many envied, and even more lusted after, responding sluggishly to commands as he lurched across the room to the bathroom, where he turned on the cold tap of the washbasin full blast and put his head under the stream of cold water.
Fingers curled over the edge of the basin hid the fact he refused to acknowledge, that his hands were shaking, but as he straightened up he was unable to avoid a brief view of his own reflection in the mirror before he turned away, knowing that although the blinding visceral fear was temporarily back in its box, the shadow of it remained in his eyes.
The shower did not entirely banish the shadow either, but it did revive him. He checked the time; four hours’ sleep was two hours too little but the idea of returning to bed, probably only to relive the nightmare yet again, held little appeal.
Five minutes later Security buzzed him out of the building, the concierge dipping his head and wishing him a good run when he exited, while privately probably thinking that the guy from the penthouse who regularly took a pre-dawn run was insane. Maybe, Nik reflected grimly as he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt against the rain, he had a point.
The exercise did the usual trick of clearing his head so by the time, shaved, suited and booted, he skimmed through his emails the night horrors had been banished, or at least unacknowledged. He had other things to focus on, things that were nothing to do with the message on his phone. After noting the caller identity with a grimace, he slid it into his pocket.
He knew without looking at the content that it would be a reminder about the dinner party his sister was hosting that evening, the one he had agreed to attend in a moment of weakness. With Ana it was easier to say yes, because no was not a word she understood, neither was single or unattached, at least where her younger brother was concerned.
He slowed as he reached another set of traffic lights that had sprung up overnight, and smothered a sigh as he struggled to push aside the thoughts of his evening entertainment and the inevitable candidate for the position of wife, or at least serious girlfriend material, who would be seated beside him.
He loved his sister, admiring her talent and the fact she juggled a career as a designer with being a single parent. He was ready to admit she had many good traits but unfortunately conceding defeat was not one of them!
Part of his mind on the increasingly heavy traffic he was negotiating, he tried to put the evening ahead out of his mind, but maybe due to his disturbed night the prospect of being polite to one of the perfectly charming women his sister produced on a regular basis to audition for the role of potential mate weighed more heavily on his mind.
He knew that as far as Ana was concerned all his problems would be solved the moment he found a soul mate. He still couldn’t decide if she really believed it and though there were occasions when he found her rosy optimism sweet, usually after a bottle of wine, mostly it was intensely irritating.
Hell, if he’d thought love was a cure-all he’d be out looking for it now, but as far as Nik was concerned the search would be in vain. It was a stretch but he was prepared to suspend disbelief and concede that it was possible that there was such a thing as true love, but if this was the case, the way some people were born colour-blind, he was love-blind.
It was a disability he was prepared to bear. At least he was never going to be in the position of having to experience the falling out of love process. It would be hard to find two people more civilised, more genuinely nice than his sister and her ex, but he had watched their break-up and eventual divorce and it had been toxic! The worst aspect of the split had been the child stuck in the middle. It didn’t really matter how hard you tried to protect them from the worst, and they had tried, a kid had to be affected by it.
Give him plain and simple lust any day of the week, and as for growing old alone, surely it was better by far than growing old next to someone you couldn’t stand the sight of!
He was prepared to concede that there were happy marriages around but they were the exception rather than the rule.
The car moved five yards before he came to another halt, and someone farther down the line of stationary cars sounded their horn in frustration. Nik raised his eyes heavenwards, the frown lines in his brow smoothing out as his glance landed on the neon-lit face on the advertising billboard across the road.
The advertising agency had clearly gone old school. There was nothing subtle about the message they were sending, just a straightforward fantasy for men to buy into. Use the brand of male face product clutched to the generous bosom of the woman in the bikini and you too would have similarly scantily clad and gorgeous women throwing themselves at you.
Not this one... His mobile mouth twitched into a sardonic smile; he was probably one of a handful of people who knew that this particular object of male fantasy was in a secret same-sex relationship. Secret, not because Lucy was concerned about any negative impact on her career, but because of a deal the couple had struck with her partner Clare’s soon to be ex-husband. The guy wouldn’t contest the divorce if the women waited to go public with their relationship until after he had landed the contract worth multi millions he was in the middle of negotiating with a firm who had built their brand on family values and a squeaky-clean image.
Maybe, Nik mused, if the guy had spent as much time on his marriage as he did on nurturing business deals he might still be married...? After all, if you believed everything you read, maintaining a good relationship took time, energy and hard work. Well, he definitely didn’t have the time. As for energy, he was quite prepared to be energetic, but not if the sex seemed like hard work... No, marriage really was not for him.
He was jolted from his reverie by another blast on a horn, from behind him this time. It had a knock-on effect...not quite a eureka moment but pretty damn close and, like all good ideas, it was perfectly simple. Actually he couldn’t quite figure out why it had not previously occurred to him to counter his sister’s relentless matchmaking by turning up with a date of his own choosing and acting like a man in love.
He smiled up at the inspiration for the idea looking down at him...was Lucy Cavendish in town? And if she was, he wondered if the idea would appeal to her sense of humour; failing that he’d appeal to her conscience. After all, she did owe him one as he was the person who’d introduced her to Clare.
* * *
The caterers were carrying boxes through the open front door when Chloe arrived. Tatiana had asked her to be early but maybe this was too early?
‘Go through to the office. Mum’s in there.’
Chloe did a double take and realised that one of the caterers holding a box was Eugenie, Tatiana’s teenage daughter.
The girl saw her expression and nodded. ‘Yeah, I know...not a good look, but Mum insisted I work at least half the holiday to reduce the danger of me being a rich spoilt brat who thinks money grows on trees. You look great!’ she added, her eyes widening as she took in the full effect of the sleeveless silk jumpsuit Chloe wore. ‘Of course, you have to have legs that go on for ever to get away with it.’
Chloe laughed as the girl whisked away.
The door of the study was open and after a brief tap Chloe went inside. The room was empty except for the dog that was curled up on top of a designer silk jacket that had been flung over a chair. Even crushed and underneath a Labrador the distinctive style of the design made the label it bore unnecessary. Tatiana had become famous for her use of bold, brilliant colours and simple wearable designs.
The animal opened one eye and Chloe went over, drawn by a silent canine command. As she stroked his soft ears she looked curiously at the drawings set up on the massive draftsman table that took centre stage in the room.
‘Oh, don’t look at those. I was having a bad day,’ Tatiana exclaimed, walking into the room. In one of her own designs, the petite brunette projected an air of effortless elegance. ‘Down, Ulysses!’ She gave a little sigh when the dog responded by wagging his tail and staying put. ‘Nik says a dog needs to know who’s master, but that’s the trouble—you already do, don’t you, you bad boy?’ she crooned.
Chloe gave a smile that she hoped hid the fact that her first thought whenever she heard the name of Tatiana’s younger brother was, Oh, God, not brother Nik again!
Nothing Tatiana said about her brother challenged Chloe’s growing conviction that the man thought he was an expert on everything—and was not shy about sharing his expert opinion.
But then, being reticent and self-effacing were probably not the most obvious characteristics for someone who was the head of a Greek shipping line, and though Chloe knew that Nik Latsis had only stepped into his father’s shoes relatively recently, it sounded to her as though they fitted him very well indeed!
Tatiana didn’t seem to question or resent the fact that her younger brother had inherited the company simply because he was male, so why should Chloe?
Maybe because she wasn’t Greek.
And there was no doubt the Latsis family considered themselves Greek even though they had been London based for thirty years. They were part of a large, well-heeled Greek community that had settled in the British capital. Rich or nouveau riche, they all had the rich part in common, that and being Greek, which seemed to be enough to make them a very tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone and traditions were important.
As she gave the dog one last pat she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror that made the generously sized room appear even larger, and made a conscious effort to iron out the frown lines that the thought of Tatiana’s invisible brother had etched in her forehead.
The invisible part was no accident. It was eighteen months since his father’s stroke had brought forward the younger brother’s ascension to the ‘throne’ of Latsis Shipping and he had kept a very low profile, something you couldn’t do unless you had loyal family and friends, limitless resources and, she supposed, an inside working knowledge of how the media worked that being an ex-journalist would bring.
The point being, Chloe, she told herself sternly, is that he is invisible. You’ve never met the guy, and yet here you are making all these judgements on the basis of a few comments and gut instinct. Something that she’d have been the very first to condemn in anyone else.
‘You’re being a hypocrite, Chloe.’
The softly voiced self-condemnation caused Tatiana, whose eyes had drifted with a distracted expression to the fabrics pinned on one of the boards, to look up. She directed an enquiring look at Chloe, who shook her head.
‘Those colours are beautiful,’ Chloe said, nodding to the fabrics, and lifted a finger to touch one piece of silk that was a shade or two deeper than the blue wide-legged jumpsuit she was wearing.
‘It would suit you, but I’m not sure...’ Tatiana stopped and shook her head. ‘Sorry, I just struggle to switch off sometimes.’
She smiled ruefully as she moved to kiss Chloe warmly on her cheek.
‘The trials of being artistic,’ Chloe teased.
‘I don’t know about that, but I do know that I am a bit of a workaholic...the work-life, home-life balance always did elude me.’ A wistful expression crossed her face. ‘Maybe that’s why I got divorced...’ She shook her dark sleek head slightly and smiled. ‘But never mind about that tonight...just look at you!’
Hands resting lightly on Chloe’s slim upper arms, she pushed the taller woman back a little. The sombreness of earlier drifted across her face when her glance stilled momentarily on Chloe’s legs covered in loose folds of sky-blue silk, but it was gone by the time her eyes reached Chloe’s face.
‘You look stunning, as usual. I’m not saying it’s all about a pretty face, but it definitely helps when you’re trying to get men to open their wallets for a good cause...and before you ask you have my permission to put the hard sell on everyone here tonight.’
‘People are usually very kind,’ Chloe said.
‘Especially when they are being guilted into it by the sister of a future queen. But why not use your connections? That’s what I always say, and, while I might not have the right sort, your sister certainly does.’ She sketched a curtsy and Chloe laughed. Her sister might be a princess and one day destined to be the Queen of Vela Main, but Chloe could not imagine anyone less royal. Both sisters had been brought up to believe that what a person did was more important than their title.
‘I’ll do my very best for the charity,’ Tatiana continued in earnest now. ‘In my book, I owe you.’ She walked across to the mantel where the marble surface was covered with framed photos. She selected one and held it up in invitation for Chloe to see it. ‘For what you did for Mel,’ she finished, looking fondly at the photo she held.
Chloe shook her head, uncomfortable with the praise. As far as Chloe was concerned, the young Greek girl was her inspiration. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ She took the frame that Tatiana offered and looked at the photo it held. It was a snap taken the previous month in a pavement café on a girls’ trip to Barcelona. ‘She’s a brave girl.’
Chloe had known Tatiana by sight and reputation before the other woman had boosted Chloe’s career by mentioning her blog in an interview she’d given covering London fashion week, two years ago now, Chloe realised, though it seemed more like a lifetime. Back then the interview was pretty much responsible for her blog becoming a profitable overnight success.
Chloe had contacted Tatiana to thank her for the plug and they had exchanged the odd email but they had never met in person.
That had happened in a very different context a year ago, after the designer’s god-daughter was moved into the room next to Chloe’s own in the specialist burns unit. Chloe had already been in there for three months; she’d known every crack in the ceiling and had been living vicariously through the love lives of the young nurses designated to her care.
Though the burns Chloe herself had received in a road traffic accident had been severe and painful and the healing process long, her own scars were easy to hide from view under her clothes. But the young woman in the next room had not been able to hide the damage done to her face by the fire caused by a gas explosion. Then, as if life hadn’t already thrown enough rubbish at her, the day after she had arrived at the burns unit her boyfriend had dumped her, at which point Mel had turned her face to the wall and announced she didn’t want to live.
As she’d listened through the partition wall Chloe’s heart had ached for the other girl. Their first conversation later that night shouted through the wall had been a one-sided affair, but it had been the first of many.
‘You got her through it, Chloe,’ Tatiana choked. ‘I’ll never forget that day I arrived and heard her laugh—you did that.’
‘Mel helped me as much as I did her. Did you see the information sheet she put together for me on make-up techniques?’ she asked, placing the photo back on the shelf. In doing so she accidentally nudged the one next to it and straightened it, admiring the frame; it was an antique one, the ebony wood delicately carved and rather beautiful.
Chloe was admiring the craftsmanship, running her fingers across the smooth indentations, when her glance drifted across the photo it held. Her mouth tugged into a smile; with a white-knuckle ride in the background, a younger Eugenie smiled back at her, complete with braces, from under the peak of a baseball cap with the logo of an adventure park emblazoned on it.
The jeans-clad man crouched down beside her in the shot was wearing the same cap, and he was... Chloe’s smile vanished like smoke as brutal stinging reality hit her like a slap across the face. Pale as paper now, she stared at the male in the picture, wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and a teasing, carefree expression on his handsome face, a face that bore no signs of a tortured soul. There were no shadows that she felt the need to banish; he was just a regular guy...well, only if the regular guy in question was more handsome than any man had a right to be with a body that an Olympic swimmer might dream of possessing.
She stood like a statue staring at the photo she held in a hand that quickly developed a visible tremor—the tremor penetrating past the skin level and moving deep inside her.
By sheer force of will she released the breath she was holding in her lungs, but not the avalanche of questions whirring in dizzying succession through her brain. She felt as though a dozen people were inside her shouting so loudly she couldn’t make out the individual questions.
Obviously it couldn’t be him but, equally obviously, it was! The man in the photos was the same man who she had spent a never-to-be-forgotten night of lust with. If all learning experiences were as brutal as that one had been, it would not be worth getting out of bed in the morning—happily they weren’t and she had moved on.
But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten any of it. Forgotten the feelings of emotional hurt and humiliation that had made her physically sick the next morning when she’d realised he’d slipped away during the night. And the worst part was, she had no one to blame but herself. Because she had been the one who had followed her instincts when she’d approached him in that bar, telling herself that what she was doing was somehow meant to be... If they had been handing out awards for naivety and general stupidity that night, she would have walked away with an armful of prizes!
She’d wondered if his name really was Nik. It seemed utterly incredible to her now that she’d ever thought it part of the romantic fantasy element of their night together that she hadn’t even known his full name! Time had stripped away the romantic gloss and revealed it for what it truly was—a cheap and tacky one-night stand, even if the sex had been utterly incredible.
Keeping her voice carefully casual, she half turned to Tatiana, as yet unable to tear her eyes from the snapshot. ‘How old was Eugenie in this one?’
Tatiana came across and looked at the photo of her daughter and she gave a nostalgic sigh. ‘Oh, that was taken on her tenth birthday, although just five minutes afterwards she was throwing up. Nik let her eat a bag of doughnuts then took her on some white-knuckle ride.’
Chloe’s own knuckles were bone white where her hand was pressed to her chest. Her poor heart was vibrating against her ribcage, her insides were quivering as she told herself sternly to get a grip, not to mention a sense of proportion. It was only a photo after all, and he was old history.
Note to self, she castigated herself, the next time you decide to make love, don’t do it with a complete stranger! No, Chloe, let’s be grown up and honest here—it wasn’t making love, it was having sex.
It hadn’t been until she’d accepted that particular fact and realised that what they had shared that night had had absolutely nothing to do with a spiritual connection but everything to do with blind lust that she had been able to move on.
Move on—really? So why was she shaking?
She put the photo down carefully and smoothed her hands down over the fabric of her jumpsuit. She would not let that man do this to her again; she was not that silly naive girl any longer.
It had been a painful learning experience, but once her pride had stopped stinging and she had stopped feeling basically stupid she’d understood that while empty sex with anonymous strangers could obviously be physically satisfying, it probably wasn’t for her. She wasn’t exactly holding out for the love of her life, but she did think maybe a bit of mutual respect might be nice.
‘So that’s your brother Nik,’ she said flatly. Sometimes it seemed as if fate had a very warped sense of humour.
Her eyes skimmed the mantel. The same man, she recognised now, was in several of the photos. It wasn’t just the time difference that made him look younger, it was the absence of the cynicism and dangerous darkness she had sensed in him that night they’d had sex. What had happened to the man in these photos to turn him into the one she’d met only a few years later?
She dug her teeth into her plump lower lip as she squared her shoulders. Nik Latsis, her Nik—it was so weird to finally be able to put a full name to the man who had introduced her to sex and the fact it really was the only thing that some men were interested in. Well, his name was actually pretty irrelevant and she couldn’t care less what had happened to turn him into such a cold bastard.
Not that she wasn’t totally prepared to take her fair share of the blame. After all, ‘naive closet romantic meets utter bastard’—it was never going to end well, was it? But she was not that person any more.
‘I forgot, you haven’t met Nik...have you?’ Tatiana asked.
The truth or a lie?
Chloe settled for somewhere in the middle. ‘He does look a little familiar...’
It’s the clothes that threw me.
She brought her lashes down in a concealing sooty curtain and fanned her hot cheeks with a hand, causing the bangles she wore around her wrist to jingle. ‘I think summer might finally have arrived,’ she commented, ignoring the house’s perfect air-conditioning system.
‘You might have seen him on the television, perhaps?’
‘Television?’ A puzzled frown drew Chloe’s brows together above her small straight nose. ‘I don’t think so...’ Then it clicked; Tatiana wasn’t talking about the present day but her brother’s previous life. ‘Oh, when you said he was a journalist I thought you meant he was in print...’
His sister nodded. ‘He started out in print journalism but Nik was a war correspondent, and he was on the telly quite a lot actually. He won awards.’ Tatiana’s pride in her brother’s achievements was as obvious as her distress as she enlarged. ‘He spent the last two years of his journalistic career embedded with the military, in the worst war zones you can imagine. Nik has always been the sort of person who doesn’t do half measures.’
He had certainly been no half-measure lover or, for that matter, halfway callous!
‘On his last assignment his cameraman, his best friend, was shot.’
Chloe blanched in shock. ‘Did he...?’
Tatiana nodded. ‘He died in Nik’s arms, but the worst part—at least for the families—was that for three days we knew that there had been a fatality. There were about ten journalists, all from different media outlets pinned down, but we didn’t know their identities or who had died.’
Chloe gave an empathetic murmur of sympathy and touched her friend’s hand as the older woman closed her eyes and shuddered. ‘We all loved Charlie, he had just got engaged...but at the same time we were all so incredibly relieved that it wasn’t Nik. It made everyone feel so guilty.’
‘Survivor’s guilt,’ Chloe said, thinking of her sister who, after the accident from which she had escaped unscathed while Chloe had not, had been helped by a therapist. Well, Nik Latsis could afford the best help money could buy.
‘You’ve probably seen him, although professionally he used Mum’s maiden name, because he didn’t want to be accused of using the family name. Does Kyriakis ring a bell...? Nik Kyriakis?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘I’ve never watched much TV. There was a rule when we were growing up, half an hour’s television a day, and then when I could decide for myself I suppose it had become a habit I never really broke. Even now I listen to the radio rather than switch on the box. It must have been hard for your brother going back to work after what had happened...?’
She had gone back to the spot where the accident had happened—had it been therapeutic? Only in the sense that she had proved to herself that she could do it?
That had been how she had privately charted her recovery: the things she was able to do, the things she could move past—looking at her scars, showing them to her family, getting into a car, driving a car...going back to the winding mountain road where the accident had happened.
‘He didn’t go back. A day after he returned, our dad had his stroke and couldn’t run the company any more; the plan had always been for Nik to step up when the time came.’ She stopped, an expression of consternation crossing her face. ‘Nik doesn’t ever talk about what happened to Charlie, so don’t mention it tonight, will you?’ she finished anxiously.
If he wanted to bottle things up in a stupid manly way, that was fine by her; she definitely wouldn’t be getting him to unburden himself to her. In fact, the idea of seeing him, let alone passing the time of day with him, made the panic gathered like a tight icy ball in her stomach expand uncomfortably.
Ironically there had been a time when she would have paid good money to confront her runaway lover, but that time was long gone; she had no intention of having any sort of conversation with Nik Latsis.
He was history, a mistake, but not one she was going to beat herself up over any more, and one she really didn’t want to come face to face with, but, if she absolutely had to, she was going to do it with pride and dignity.
Well, that was the plan anyway.
‘I won’t,’ she promised as the voice in her head reminded her once again that her plans often had a habit of going wrong...
CHAPTER TWO (#u2a767321-2d48-580f-981b-fb53d9f5d335)
‘YOU’RE LATE.’ TATIANA kissed her brother’s lean cheek, grimacing a little as the sprinkling of designer stubble grazed her smooth cheek before one eyebrow rose. She struggled to hide her surprise as she shifted her gaze from her impeccably turned-out brother to the woman who stood with one hand possessively on his dark-suited arm.
‘You know Lucy Cavendish?’ Placing a hand across her shoulders, he drew the model, her famous dazzling smile firmly in place, close into his side. The redhead tilted her head. Unusually for a woman, in her heels she topped his shoulder.
‘I did Tatiana’s last catwalk show in Paris. What a lovely home you have.’ Lucy’s expertly made-up green eyes moved admiringly around the entrance hall with its chandeliers and dramatic staircase.
Tatiana inclined her dark head and delivered an air kiss. ‘Thank you. You’re looking well, Lucy...’ Tatiana looked up at her brother. ‘You growing a beard, Nik?’
‘With your views on facial hair, Ana, would I dare?’
‘Oh, I just lurve the moody, broody look.’ Lucy’s eyes sparkled with teasing amusement as she stroked his cheek, letting her red fingernails slide familiarly over the stubble.
Nik removed the hand firmly from his cheek where it had lingered and whispered so only she could hear him, ‘Don’t overdo it, angel.’
As they moved across the hall the sound of voices and laughter drifted out through the open double doors of the drawing room.
‘Anyone I know here?’ Lucy asked.
‘Just a small gathering of friends.’
Letting Lucy go ahead of them, Nik fell into step beside his sister. ‘Hope you didn’t mind me bringing Lucy.’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘I thought you might have had me paired off with some good breeding stock...?’
‘I don’t—’ Tatiana stopped and gave a shake of her head, admitting ruefully, ‘I suppose I do, but I just want you to be happy and...like you used to be...before...’
Impelled by an inconvenient spasm of guilt, Nik stepped in to hug his sister as suddenly the charade with Lucy seemed less of a good idea. ‘I am happy.’
‘I like Lucy. Are you two together?’
Nik’s glance slid away. She looked so hopeful that, although this had been the idea, he felt reluctant to raise her hopes, knowing full well they were false ones. ‘Early days,’ he prevaricated slickly.
‘I just hope Lucy won’t be bored silly,’ Tatiana fretted, glancing towards the model who was walking through the double doors. ‘It so happens that there is a woman here who might interest you—’
‘Just when I thought I might have misjudged you,’ he began sardonically.
‘Not in that way!’ Tatiana cut back. ‘She’s a good friend of mine.’
‘And you wouldn’t wish me on a friend?’
She slung him an irritated look. ‘I just want you to set a good example when you meet her, and give a really generous donation to the charity—set a good example for the others.’
‘Another of your worthy causes, Ana?’
‘This is important to me, Nik.’
‘Fine, I’ll be generous.’
* * *
Chloe glanced at the clock...maybe he was a no show? Annoyed with herself for caring one way or the other, she turned her back on the doorway and focused her attention fully on the man beside her, a middle-aged Greek man who ran a property development company and seemed genuinely interested in the charity.
‘I admire your enthusiasm but, and I don’t want to be negative, aren’t you being a little overambitious? Have you costed it up properly? The premises alone would—’
‘Yes suitable premises, especially here in London, will be difficult.’
‘Which is where I come in?’
Her smile glimmered. ‘Your specialist knowledge and advice would be much appreciated.’
‘And my money?’ he added shrewdly.
Chloe’s dimples appeared. ‘I know that Tatiana has already spoken to you about...sorry, I really can’t do this.’
The recipient of her half-empty glass of champagne looked startled and then amused as Chloe popped the finger food she had been holding into her mouth, swallowed, then smiled. ‘That’s better!’ she said as she held out her hand for her glass.
Tipping his head, her companion replaced the crystal wine cup in it.
‘Mostly I can multitask,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘I can do food or drink but not both at the same time. You wouldn’t believe how many outfits I’ve emptied glasses of wine down, which makes it sound as though I always wander round with a glass of pinot in my hand, which I don’t.’ She delivered another smile. ‘I can assure you that your donation will be in sober and sensible hands.’
The older man gave an appreciative chuckle at her tactics. ‘Nice try, but I don’t recall saying yes.’
Chloe conceded his point with a nod. ‘But you didn’t say no either and I’m an optimist.’
This time the man’s chuckle was loud enough to divert some of the attention currently being given to the model who was making her entrance. ‘So let me get this right, you’d like me to let you have the lease on several buildings for a fraction of what they are worth, and what do I get?’
‘A warm glow knowing you’ve done the right thing? Or, failing that, the sort of publicity that money can’t buy? The sort of publicity that comes from having your company represent the caring face of capitalism,’ Chloe said, thinking wryly that she was getting quite good at this.
The man gave her an approving look tinged for the first time with respect. ‘I think we should schedule a meeting, Lady—’
‘Call me Chloe,’ she cut in quickly.
He tipped his head in acknowledgment of her request. ‘Right, Chloe, how about...?’
As the man’s eyes moved over her head and his voice trailed away Chloe turned to see what had snatched his attention. The answer was immediately obvious in the shape of a glamorous redhead in a glittering gown more suited to a red carpet event than a dinner party.
Immediately tolerant of her companion’s distraction, she turned to study the new arrival with some curiosity. In her experience people you had only previously seen beautifully lit on the screen or airbrushed in magazines rarely lived up to expectations, but Lucy Cavendish did and then some.
She looked beyond her hostess and the model to see if Lucy had come with someone. The woman’s past boyfriends had included not one but two Hollywood A-listers, a Russian oligarch and the heir to a banking fortune, so Chloe was expecting a handsome face or serious money, someone who might be interested in donating to a good cause, perhaps?
She got neither...or rather actually what she got was both!
What she also got when she saw that Lucy’s date was Nik was a jolt similar to the occasion her hairdryer had given her an electric shock, times a hundred. A home-made and dangerously uncontrolled defibrillation that felt as if a hammer had landed on her chest and made her limbs feel weak.
But this was fine; she could totally deal with it...
Not dealing with it, Chloe!
Ignoring the mocking voice in her head, she took a deep breath, straightened her slender square shoulders, cleared her throat and readjusted the chunky necklace of raw amethyst slices that hid the pulse pounding at the base of her throat.
Breathe...she told herself, so she did, and for good measure she focused on the positive.
The worst was over and, as worsts went, seeing the man you’d made the mistake of sleeping with without knowing his full name was, on the scale of things, pretty low-key. A couple of minutes and her nervous system would catch up with the message and by tomorrow she’d be laughing—all right, maybe smiling about it.
But that was tomorrow; being realistic today, as in the next sixty seconds, she was aiming for a less ambitious goal. Her legs stopping shaking would be a good start.
She stifled a stab of impatience; her nervous system was getting this situation way out of proportion. After all, what was the worst that could happen?
And what was the worst anyway: him remembering her or him not?
Her mobile lips quirked into a smile as she considered the alternatives. An awkward reunion or a hit to her ego?
Did it really matter?
The fact that she could even ask herself the question was a sign of how much she’d changed in a little over a year. There had been a time when, despite the outward confidence she projected, what people thought about her had mattered, and she wanted the right people to like her...she wanted to fit in.
The journey to where she was today had not been easy, but everything had changed. Well, maybe not everything, she conceded, watching the new arrival above the rim of the glass she raised to her lips. Still, even at a distance, he had the ability to make the muscles deep in her pelvis quiver...so it was lucky she could consider this phenomenon in an objective way, wasn’t it?
She might not be able to achieve total physical indifference to the male magnetism he oozed, but she was more than a bundle of hormones...despite the fact that he was, she thought, studying him through the protective sweep of her lashes, just as incredible-looking as she remembered.
They said you always remembered your first and it turned out they were right. The self-mocking glint in her wide-spaced sky-blue eyes faded and a tiny pucker appeared between her darkly defined feathery brows as she realised how intact her memory of him was, not just the way he looked, or moved, but the texture of his skin...the smell of his... She took a shaky breath and straightened her shoulders, slamming the door on that particular memory. It was just a lapse of judgement, ancient history, Chloe, she told herself. Do not revisit.
‘What a stunning woman!’
Chloe started slightly at her companion’s comment and tore her eyes from the tall figure whose dominant presence had made her forget about the woman he’d brought with him, although they made a pretty magnificent couple. ‘Yes, she is.’ Stunning was probably an understatement.
‘But I’d say she’s high maintenance, and I can’t see her climbing Kilimanjaro.
The comment startled a laugh from Chloe. ‘It sounds to me like you measure all women by some pretty high standards.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘My wife is an extraordinary woman.’
Chloe stood and listened as the man launched into what was clearly his favourite subject. An emotional lump settled in her throat as he talked about his wife. What would it feel like to be the centre of a man’s universe? she wondered wistfully.
* * *
Nik walked past his sister and moved to where Lucy stood.
‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ he muttered.
‘I was the one who told you that,’ the model reminded him. ‘But you’ve been my beard on more than one occasion, darling, so I kind of owe you. Do you realise how much money is in this room tonight?’
His eyes moved over the heads of the fellow guests assembled; most were members of the Greek expat community, and all of them would have considered not having a private yacht as being poverty-stricken. ‘That figures. Ana is raising money for one of her causes again.’
‘So you’re not in danger of meeting Ms Right here. Does that mean you’re dumping me already, darling?’
‘Funny... God, I need a drink.’
He placed a guiding hand under Lucy’s elbow, and she immediately exclaimed mockingly, ‘Ooh, darling, I do so love it when you’re masterful. Ah!’
She staggered a little as Nik suddenly released her arm without warning.
It was an automatic response to a soft peal of laughter that made Nik turn his head. Although it hadn’t been loud, there was something attractively infectious about the sound that tugged his lips into a smile.
As his eyes surfed across the heads of the other guests to the source of the sound, his smile snuffed out as recognition crashed through his nervous system like a tsunami, and for several seconds his mind went a total blank, the effect of sheer shock colliding with serendipity.
He took a deep breath and decided he’d call it something more mundane—convenient. Or he would once he got his rampant, raging libido under control. It took another few deep breaths to think beyond the heat that had streaked down his body and settled painfully in his groin.
His cognitive powers were clearly working on the reserve battery. He had no idea how long he stood there paralyzed, it could have been a second or an hour, before, like a man waking from a trance, he finally shook his head.
The air trapped in his lungs hissed out as in a single urgent sweep his dark, penetrating stare took in every single detail of her. The soft shiny blonde hair falling from a slight widow’s peak down her back and cut shorter at the sides to frame a vivid beautiful face, the sinuous curves of her lush body outlined by the flowing lines of blue silk.
She was stunning.
He’d sometimes wondered, generally around two a.m., if he exorcised the woman, would he finally exorcise the nightmare? The two seemed so intrinsically linked, maybe they were interdependent? It had been an intellectual exercise he’d never really taken seriously as he hadn’t expected their paths to cross again.
Well, it was no longer intellectual, and neither was the roar in his blood, and he knew that not to explore the theory now that he had the opportunity would be insane!
* * *
Chloe knew Nik was standing there even before Spiros’s glance moved past her, alerted by the fine invisible downy hairs on her body rising in reaction to his invisible presence.
She emptied her glass carefully, wiped her expression of anything that could be interpreted as a desire to dig a big hole and jump in it and mentally circled the wagons against attack.
If she refused to be defined by the scars she wore, she was definitely not going to be defined by a past mistake, even if he was six foot three and sinfully gorgeous!
Her defensive stance wasn’t against anything he might say or do, as there was a very strong possibility that he wouldn’t even remember the night they had spent together, but against her own indiscriminate hormones, which still, it seemed, responded independently of her intellect to his rampant animal magnetism.
Oh, for God’s sake, Chloe, you need to get a life!
While she was silently chastising herself Nik had moved level with her. ‘Spiros.’
His voice had the same rough velvet, almost tactile quality she remembered...but this time she was only shivering because she was standing in a draft, she told herself stubbornly.
They were actually standing level, side by side as he stretched out a hand to the older man, but Chloe didn’t turn her head. She didn’t need to, because she could already feel the sheer physical power of his tall, muscled frame.
‘No Petra tonight?’
‘No, she’s resting up. She sprained an ankle during training.’
Nik made a sympathetic noise in his throat. ‘For another marathon?’
The older man gave a rueful nod. ‘I think it’s addictive.’
‘You not going to join her?’
‘I know my limitations.’ Chloe, who felt as though her casual social expression could do with some work but needed all her focus to control her too rapid breathing, took encouragement from the fact that Spiros didn’t seem to notice anything amiss as he touched her arm and looked at Nik. She was still working her way up to it. ‘Do you know Chloe?’
She held her breath.
‘Of course; we go way back,’ Nik said smoothly.
‘Royal connections—you kept that quiet, Nik.’
No longer able to delay the moment, Chloe turned her head, her features arranged in a smile that was intended to project polite indifference, although she had a horrible feeling that a touch of the hunted animal had crept in!
Her first hope had been that he wouldn’t remember her; the second was that up close he would have some flaw she had forgotten, but again her fairy godmother had not granted her wish.
So Plan B it was, then: be polite, be distant, be... Oh, God, on an intellectual level the dark, predatory, raw animal magnetism stuff did nothing for her, only it seemed the message hadn’t filtered through to the non-intellectual parts of her that were only listening to the hormonal clamour—but then it was pretty loud.
His male beauty, and beauty was no exaggeration, hit her at a purely visceral level. She had never experienced anything like it before—well, just the once.
His high knife-sharp cheekbones, strong aquiline nose, and angular jaw even dusted with stubble gave his face a patrician cast, though this was offset by the overtly sensual outline of his mobile mouth, twisted at that moment into a faintly cynical smile. The same emotion was reflected in his eyes, his quite simply spectacular eyes; deep set and heavy lidded, and fringed with dense, straight, spiky lashes, they were a stunning dark chocolate brown.
Pinned by those dark eyes, she experienced a ‘rabbit in the headlight’ moment and froze.
‘How are you... Chloe?’ He seemed to roll the word over his tongue as though he were tasting it.
As he’d tasted her... Chloe pushed the thought away but not before her body’s core temperature had raised a few uncomfortable degrees. She lifted a hand to her neck to feel the dull vibration of her heavy pulse, and she fingered the uncut gemstones that felt cold compared to her skin.
From somewhere she manufactured a smile but the effort made her cheek muscles ache while she silently struggled to keep the door locked against forbidden memories. It wasn’t about wanting to forget him, she thought, but more not wanting to remember and be reminded of the things she strongly suspected she might never experience again.
And maybe that was a good thing, she rationalised. Yes, head-banging, uninhibited sex was good—it was pretty excellent—but so was waking up with someone who actually cared for you, or for that matter was physically still there in the morning.
Refusing to acknowledge the sense of loss that still lay like a heavy weight in her chest, she reminded herself that she was looking, or she would be when the time came, for more in a man than his knowledge of the female anatomy... Hell, clumsy with feeling was infinitely preferable to the refined torture of a skilled touch with no emotion behind it.
‘How long has it been?’ he asked coolly.
‘I’m not sure,’ she lied, thinking, Eighteen months, eight days and thirty-one minutes...not that I’m counting.
She stiffened when without warning he bent his head and brushed her mouth lightly with his. His lips were warm, reminding her of when they had been even warmer, when he had tasted of her... The muscles low on her pelvis cramped as she stood as still as a statue, fighting with all her might the shameful urge to lean in and kiss him back.
The gasp she locked in her throat ached as she breathed in the warm male scent of him through flared nostrils.
It wasn’t until he lifted his head that she realised she was holding his sleeve, though she had no memory of grabbing it. Disturbing, but there was no point reading too much into it, she decided as she let it casually fall away, ignoring the tingling sensation in her fingertips.
Nik smiled. The quiver he’d felt run through her body as he’d kissed her reminded him of just how receptive she’d been that night...how giving she’d been. And he’d taken... He countered the irrational slug of guilt with a reminder that she was the one who had taken the initiative that night, she’d made all the running and she hadn’t acted like a woman who would take no for an answer.
His smile, the glimmer of dark danger glittering deep in his eyes, elicited an involuntary spasm of excitement in her belly that made Chloe feel ashamed.
‘You look well.’ She looked incredible, though up close there was less of the outdoorsy golden glow he remembered. Her skin was creamy, the faint touch of colour in her cheeks highlighting the smooth contours, the freckles along her cheekbones paler too, but she was, if anything, even more delicious than he remembered.
‘Thank you, and how are you—sorry, Nik, wasn’t it?’
The composed words aimed somewhere close to his left ear were prim, but the message shining in her deep cobalt-blue eyes as they glittered up at him was neither prim nor polite.
They said quite clearly, Go to hell!
Her reaction threw him off his stride, in the same way he realised he’d have been thrown if he’d reread a favourite book and found a main character had suddenly been given a different personality.
Except the woman in his dreams had never had a personality beyond being warm, giving, passionate and available when he had needed her, and he had not been curious about what lay beyond those qualities.
Realising that there was a beyond came with a sense of shock as Nik struggled to consider her negative reaction to him dispassionately, but got sidetracked by his own reaction to her.
The problem being there was very little room left for dispassion after the explosive blast of primal desire that obliterated everything else when he looked at her. It was like walking...no, running full pelt into a ten-foot wall of lust.
The time it took his stupefied brain to push past this fresh blast of raw hunger was only moments but it felt longer, and the mere fact that he had to make the effort deepened the frown lines in Nik’s broad forehead.
In his previous life, he had cultivated dispassion until it required no effort, and it was second nature. He’d seen men and women in his old line of work who hadn’t managed to do that, and the personal toll it had taken on them had not been good to see. You needed to be able to keep an emotional distance.
He had witnessed acts of bravery and self-sacrifice that were humbling, but for every one of those inspiring acts there were a hundred acts and images of suffering and inhumanity. You carried those nightmare images around with you and they ate you from the inside.
The sheer absurdity of comparing a war zone to a dinner party where people were toting glasses of wine instead of automatic weapons almost dredged up a smile. Almost.
CHAPTER THREE (#u2a767321-2d48-580f-981b-fb53d9f5d335)
‘I’M—’
‘With Lucy Cavendish...’ Chloe paused, head tilted in challenge, to let the reminder sink in and had the satisfaction of seeing an expression of shock chase across his handsome face.
‘Lucy...hell, I forgot about her!’ A quick glance located the model, who was deep in conversation with another guest. Nik dragged a hand across his hair-roughened jaw in annoyance; he must have left her standing there looking like... He gritted out a curse. ‘I’m never going to hear the end of this.’
The wrathful, choking gasp of sheer disbelief that escaped Chloe’s lips drew his attention back to her face.
If there had been even the faintest suggestion of guilt in his reaction, she thought it would have gone some way to redeeming him...actually, no, it wouldn’t!
Wanting to make excuses for him made her even angrier—as if there could be any excuse for a man who arrived with one woman and then came on to another with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer!
It made her wonder whose bed he had walked straight into after being in hers.
There had been a time when the thought would have hurt...now it simply made her stomach quiver queasily.
‘It’s so inconsiderate of a woman to expect you to remember that you came with her.’ She produced a saccharine-sweet sympathetic smile, waiting until he frowned slightly in response to her comment before slinging out sarcastically, ‘I suppose she even expects you to be there when she wakes up in the morning.’
The words hung there, every syllable oozing with exactly the sort of subtext Chloe had wanted to avoid. She sounded just like what she hated most: a victim.
Someone to pity.
Her narrow-eyed glare dared him to show it, but, although her comment had surprised a flicker of reaction, it was something else she saw move at the backs of his eyes. Fine, she could deal with something else, actually anything else, but pity.
‘You were asleep.’ This was the reason he avoided one-night stands; there was the potential for the stranger you went to bed with assuming that one night of sex connected you in some deep and meaningful way.
‘I’m not talking about me.’ She lifted her feathery brows in an attitude of mild surprise that he should think otherwise, then, willing herself not to blush, she pronounced bluntly, ‘We had sex but we were not in a relationship. Although it would have been useful if you had woken me as I had somewhere I needed to be.’ She wrinkled her brow, giving the impression she was trying to recall the sequence of events—events that couldn’t have been more indelibly imprinted on her had someone branded them into her soul. ‘I’m pretty sure I was late.’ In her head she clutched the invisible award to her chest as a voice pronounced, And the award for most convincing liar goes to... Chloe Summerville!
The dream had once more become a nightmare before he’d ever reached the moment where he’d made the choice to leave her sleeping, not that waking her had ever really been an option. Good manners versus getting to his dying father’s bedside after receiving the call about his stroke had been a no brainer.
And yes, he’d been relieved not to have to speak to her again.
Relieved to avoid the potential morning-after awkwardness and recriminations. It hadn’t been his first one-night stand, but those other encounters had all been with fellow journalists, and there had been some mutual respect on a professional level between him and the smart, independent women who had shared his bunk. There had been no need to explain the desire he had felt to escape the sights and sounds of war for a few hours and let passion drown it all out. The connections had been brief, pleasurable, but nothing deeper remained.
He wouldn’t have cared if any of them had forgotten his name, or implied that the memory they’d walked away with after sleeping with him was that they’d had somewhere else to be but had overslept! His ego took a few startled seconds to recover from the blow while recognising the irrationality of his reaction. Chloe Summerville’s cool attitude was exactly what he looked for in women he gravitated towards. Women who had a male approach to sex; women who did not expect or even welcome sentiment in their liaisons, but enjoyed sex in an uncluttered and simple way.
‘Sorry, I had someplace I needed to be too...but unlike you I wasn’t too late.’
His father’s prognosis had been grim. The doctors had been all for calling time and letting nature take its inevitable and cruel course, but his mother had insisted they try a third lot of clot-busting drugs. When Nik had walked into the room, his father had been sitting up with nothing but a slight hesitation in his speech to show he’d even had a stroke and people had been talking about miracles.
‘Well, it’s...nice to see you again, lovely to catch up...’ Chloe said absently, adopting the tone you used when you bumped into someone whose name you kept forgetting. ‘But if you’ll excuse me, tonight is about work and I need to circulate.’ Giving her best impression of a woman with her priorities firmly sorted, she flashed him a generic smile and turned back towards where Spiros stood talking to a small group of guests.
Even if he’d taken everything else out of the equation the dismissal would have awoken his interest, if only for the fact that it was new territory for Nik. Women did not usually walk away from him. His curiosity overcame his irritation... So, all right, it was something a lot stronger than irritation, but he didn’t need to waste energy trying to identify it as it morphed seamlessly into the much easier to deal with lust and his eyes became riveted on her long, sinuous curves and the gentle sway of her hips.
If sleeping with her again was the way to finally lay his nightmares to rest, great. If not, the trying was going to be fun. Not trying at all had stopped being a possibility the second he’d set eyes on her.
The frustration raging through his veins made it hard for him to formulate a plan of action, as there had been no plan required in his dreams. On a conservative estimate he’d been making love to Chloe every other night for the past year...except this wasn’t a dream, it—she—was the real deal! And Chloe Summerville was more in every way than the woman he remembered. A halfwit could have worked that out in thirty seconds.
And Nik was accounted to be quite intelligent.
She had been pulled into a group several feet away from where he stood alone, and he watched like a hawk as she lowered her lashes over a smile in response to something Spiros had said. In profile he could see the little quiver of the fine muscles in her throat and along the delicate line of her jaw, and he wondered why he found it so fascinating.
Was he finally losing his mind?
* * *
Chloe’s legs were still shaking but, as there was no longer any imminent possibility they would give out beneath her, she let go of the image of herself lying on the floor and people staring down at her. Sad, they’d say, she used to be able to stand on her own two feet... She suddenly realised a moment too late to avoid awkwardness that the extended silence was one she was meant to fill. Chloe gave an apologetic smile.
‘Sorry. I wasn’t following; I was just trying to remember if I put an aspirin in my bag.’ She delved into the limited depths of her bag, her hair falling in a concealing curtain around her face.
Still she couldn’t quite escape the conversation replaying in her head... When he had asked her how long it had been since they’d met, she’d had a nasty shock. Up to that point she hadn’t known that she knew the answer even to the day and hour, but she clearly did... God, but it was terminally depressing.
What, she asked herself, had she ever seen in him?
Beyond of course the face, the body, the high-voltage charge of raw, scalp-tingling sensuality he had oozed... Beyond that, nothing at all!
Other than the dark brooding aura tinged with danger and a touch of vulnerability.
Well, he wasn’t vulnerable now and she was no longer the romantic little fool she had been, but, considering her reaction to Nik just now, it was lucky that she had decided celibacy was the way to go... Not for ever—just short term. Who knew what the future held?
But one of the advantages of celibacy was that she could stand here now and look at this incredibly...really incredibly sexy man, and remember, in a way that sort of felt as if it had happened to someone else, how it had felt to have his warm, no, hot flesh slide over hers and it wasn’t a problem.
God, you are such a liar, Chloe Summerville.
In fact, if she had truly believed she was cut out for celibacy long term, it would have simplified life in general, she concluded, studiedly ignoring the scornful voice in her head.
‘You have a headache?’ a woman whose name Chloe couldn’t recall, despite being normally good about that sort of thing, asked.
‘It’s not that bad.’
Then Nik touched her arm. She knew it was him without even looking at his long fingers brown against her skin, and suddenly it was extremely bad. The thump, thump in her temples was keeping time with her heartbeat as Chloe felt a primitive thrill run along her nerve endings. Deeply ashamed, she waited for the fluttering inside her to subside and, under cover of looking in her bag again, calmed her breathing.
‘Lost something?’ he asked.
‘Just an aspirin; I’m getting a headache.’ And I’m looking at it. But she wasn’t. She looked everywhere but at the tall dynamic figure towering over her, which was not something that happened often when you were five feet ten.
Eyes she had control over, but not her thoughts that drifted back to the moment she had first seen him, as if she were stuck in some sort of mind-destroying time loop. The last thing she had anticipated when they had crowded into the almost empty bar was that she would leave with a total stranger. She’d never been a person who was led by her hormones and, while she’d had any number of male friends, she’d not had a lover.
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