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‘And I’m not looking for a woman... I’m looking for one night,’ Nikolai admitted silkily, lean brown fingers reaching up to curl into the fall of her hair and urge her closer than she would have chosen to be, had she been in her right mind.
As for that, what happened next proved to her that she was not in her right mind when Nikolai was around her because he closed his other hand to her spine and tilted her forward into sudden searing contact with his long, hard body. Within seconds he was kissing her as she had never been kissed before, forcing apart her lips with the hard pressure of his, sliding in his tongue, and sending such a jolt of wild excitement through her that her head swam and her knees buckled. He was passionate and demanding and all-male hungry, every sinuously sexual movement of his lean hips and powerful thighs against her warning her that a kiss could be almost as sizzlingly intimate as a naked embrace.
He lifted his handsome dark head and the chill of the night air on her back contrasted with the heat of his powerfully aroused body against hers. Immediately, Ella remembered who she was and where she was and the chill on her skin slivered inside right down to her stomach, and sickened her.
‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said tartly, pulling free and starting to walk away.
‘You can’t be serious,’ he breathed, his surprise audible because he knew she had been fired up just as much as he.
But what he didn’t know was that Ella had never been that aroused...ever. And mere weeks after she had watched the love of her life being laid in the ground at twenty-four years of age, that truth hurt so bad that she almost sobbed over it. She had believed she truly wanted Paul but Paul had never made her feel like that and the pain of that acknowledgement tore into her grief and ate her alive with guilt.
‘Watch me go,’ she told Nikolai thinly, walking towards the back entrance of the country house where she would wait for her lift...regardless of how long because it would be infinitely safer than going any place with the male who had just kissed her. Kissed her until there was no yesterday and no Paul in her mind. Kissed her for now, for the moment, for a cheap pickup and one-night stand. She knew she was in a big enough emotional mess without making that mistake and doing something she would undoubtedly regret...
* * *
As she filed paperwork to tidy Rosie’s desk, Ella drifted back from that powerful memory and shivered. She had blown him off. Even though it hadn’t been intentional, she had given him the impression that she was with him every step of the way during that kiss and then she had changed her mind. But a woman was entitled to change her mind and she had exercised that right. Yet had she become that much more desirable after she walked away? How many women had said no to Nikolai? Ella reckoned that score would be low because he was very handsome and evidently wealthy into the bargain. Nikolai was a hard hitter, an achiever. Had she challenged his male ego?
Was it really pure coincidence that he now owned her father’s debts? He hadn’t answered her questions. He had said he was giving her a choice she hadn’t had before he arrived, and, although she didn’t like to see it that way, she saw that it was the unwelcome truth. The father and grandmother she adored were on the brink of losing everything they had left. How could she stand back and let them suffer when she had been given an alternative?
Throughout the day her mind seethed with wild ideas. She was willing to do just about anything to save the roof over her family’s head. Freed from the burden of those awful debts and Joy’s extravagance, her father would finally be in a position to make a reasonable living again. Although he had lost the furniture shop, he remained a qualified accountant and the ability to work again would give him his self-respect back.
Yet while Ella might want to help her family, Nikolai Drakos had put her in an impossible situation. Her father would never accept such a sacrifice on her part. So, how could she get around that obvious stumbling block?
Well, one possibility would be offering Nikolai the intimate night she suspected he felt cheated out of. She shuddered at the prospect of having sex with anyone in such circumstances but just as quickly told herself off for being a drama queen. Why make a three-act tragedy out of a perfectly normal feature of life? If possessing her body meant that much to the man, he was welcome to it.
It was not as though she were still a virgin because she had actively chosen to embrace that state. She had waited for Paul, for the miraculous day when he would be ‘well enough’, only that opportunity had failed to arrive. Now and not for the first time she wished Paul had not been so exacting in his wishes, so determined that everything be right and perfect before they became intimate, because going to bed with Nikolai would have been much less intimidating had Ella already acquired some sexual experience. One night, she told herself bleakly, yes, she could do one night if it saved her family. Were there any other options?
Well, instead of making her a mistress, Nikolai could marry her, lending their entire arrangement the sort of respectable patina that would allow her father to accept his debts being paid off, because a son-in-law was a family member while a lover who was a stranger was something else entirely. Somehow she didn’t think Nikolai would want to go for the wedding-ring option. In fact a reluctant giggle was forced from between Ella’s tense lips at even the idea of making such a suggestion. The man who didn’t date and only had sex was unlikely to warm to the prospect of holy matrimony...
At the end of her working day, Ella called the number on the business card Nikolai had left her and before he could even speak said, ‘I want to come and see you this evening.’
Taken aback by that bold declaration, Nikolai frowned. ‘You’ve changed your mind?’
‘I want to talk...’
Nikolai was dubious. He had already wondered how sure she was of Cyrus’s support if she was willing to turn his offer down without hesitation. Had his old enemy already proposed to her? Yet wouldn’t she have thrown that information at him?
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he countered.
‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ Ella quoted Gramma in her desperation to get him to listen.
Ten minutes later, Ella walked into the exclusive Wrother Links Hotel. Rather belatedly she became conscious of her shabby work clothing, which consisted of a tee and worn skinny jeans thrust into sensible ankle boots. Perhaps she should have gone home first and changed and used some make-up, she reflected uneasily. But then Nikolai had outlined his outrageous proposal at the start of her working day when she was looking far from glamorous. Her smooth brow indented.
What did the wretched man want from her?
The obvious, she told herself irritably as the receptionist directed her into the lift with a curious appraisal. Just because she had never viewed her body as a means of negotiation didn’t mean Nikolai felt the same. He had to want her for something and her body was the most likely explanation, Ella reasoned uncomfortably. Over the years she had listened to friends insist that men saw sex as being of crucial importance, which had left her confused, dealing with Paul’s rigid self-discipline.
Even so, it was an enormous challenge for Ella to credit that suave, sophisticated Nikolai Drakos could possibly see a woman like her in some irresistible had-to-possess-her light. When she had first gone to uni to study, she had been bombarded by sexual approaches. In many ways that was why meeting Paul, initially only a friend, had been such a relief. Paul had valued her for the person she was, not for her body or the physical pleasure he assumed she could give him. Paul, however, had been a very special case, she reminded herself with regret.
A young man who introduced himself as Nikolai’s employee opened the door of the suite and ushered her in. The desk in the room was scattered with papers, a laptop sitting open on it. She got a glance at the columns of figures on the screen before the employee closed it down and gathered the papers into a file to take his leave.
‘Mr Drakos will be with you shortly,’ he assured her as he departed.
Ella stared out of the window at the renowned golf course and, in an effort to steady her leaping nerves when she heard a sound somewhere behind her, she said, ‘Do you play golf?’
‘No. Not my game,’ Nikolai proclaimed as he shook out his shirt. ‘Why are you here, Ella?’
Ella spun round and focused in consternation on Nikolai’s incredibly well-defined muscular abs and stomach as he pulled on a shirt. Clearly he was fresh from the shower with his black hair still curling damply and his hard-boned jaw clean-shaven, but the bronzed expanse of naked male flesh on show above the belt encircling his lean hips sharply disconcerted her. Cheeks warming, she glanced away. ‘Is it inconvenient?’
‘Let’s call it unexpected,’ he replied, his brilliant dark eyes resting on her.
Well, there was nothing of the seductress in her appearance, Nikolai acknowledged wryly. He had assumed she would dress up but she hadn’t made the effort, which for some strange reason irritated him. Wasn’t he worth that much effort? In the shower he had reminded himself that approaching Ella Palmer had always been a long shot. After all, if she had already had one rich man in the palm of her hand why would she accept another dictating terms to her? And yet the fact remained that, astonishingly, Cyrus was evidently not coming to his supposed future wife’s rescue and had taken himself off on a long trip to China. Maybe the tip-off Nikolai had received about Cyrus’s marital plans was rubbish, maybe Cyrus was simply playing with Ella...as he did in the initial stages of his games with such women, when he played the honourable respectful male to perfection to lull any suspicion of his true intentions.
‘The unexpected doesn’t always have to be bad,’ Ella fenced while he buttoned his shirt. Her cheeks were hot because the little peepshow he had unthinkingly subjected her to had made perspiration break out on her skin below clothes that suddenly felt too tight and constricting.
‘I believe you’re acquainted with Cyrus Makris,’ he remarked.
Startled, Ella glanced at him. ‘Yes. He’s a family friend. I was engaged to his nephew, Paul, until he died,’ she told him, wondering how he had known about her acquaintance with Cyrus before a vague association occurred to her. ‘Your name... I should’ve guessed. You’re Greek as well, aren’t you?’
‘I am. Would you like a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’ Ella simply wanted to get what she had to say said and then run. ‘Can’t stay long anyway. I left my dog outside in the van.’
‘So...?’ Nikolai prompted, watching a strand of bronze hair fan out across her white throat as she lifted her head high, her pale skin accentuating the luminous green of her eyes and the succulent pink of her lips. He tensed, fighting the incipient throb at his groin with annoyance.
‘Would...?’ Ella breathed in deep and straightened her spine. ‘I’m here to ask if one night would do.’
‘One night of what?’ Nikolai queried blankly.
‘You know, sex, for goodness’ sake!’ Ella launched back at him in furious embarrassment. ‘I mean, if that’s all you want, I hardly need to go to London and live with you for it!’
Nikolai surveyed her in shock and it took a great deal to shock him. ‘Let me get this straight...you’re offering me a night of sex instead?’
‘Don’t make it sound so sordid!’ Ella lashed back at him.
‘It wasn’t me who made the offer. No, the night of sex wouldn’t meet my...requirements.’ Nikolai selected the word and voiced it smooth as silk. ‘I also assume by that offer that you’re not a virgin?’
‘And why would you think I was at my age?’ But Ella thought better of lying because there was always the hope that the truth would be a total turn-off for him. ‘Actually, I am inexperienced but...’
Distaste at the entire conversation was filling Nikolai. Of course she had assumed he wanted her for sex. What else was she supposed to think? But he wasn’t a ball of sleaze like Cyrus, who treated women like toys he enjoyed breaking. And as it occurred to Nikolai what a challenge making that offer must have been for an innocent like her, he almost swore and had to fight back an angry sense of discomfiture. For the very first time he appreciated that he had recklessly plunged himself into a scenario that was not at all his style.
‘One night won’t work for me,’ Nikolai admitted in a driven undertone.
Ella’s heart was thumping at what felt like a mile a minute behind her breastbone. Relief and dismay assailed her in equal parts. Naturally she was very relieved not to be asked to immediately deliver on the shameless proposition she had just made, but she was taken aback by the speed and power of his repudiation as well. What did he really want? What on earth more could he possibly want or expect from her?
‘Then I only have one other...suggestion to make,’ she murmured tightly. ‘You marry me.’
‘Marry you?’ Nikolai exclaimed after an unnervingly protracted pause while he studied her with incredulous force. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
She had finally got an honest and true reaction out of Nikolai Drakos, Ella realised, and a curious feeling of triumph mingled with her mortification. The idea of getting married had shattered him, scoring colour along those amazing high cheekbones, widening his stunning dark-fringed golden eyes. Evidently he had not been prepared for that idea.
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