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‘I can’t believe that you think it’s okay to do something like this,’ she told him tightly, threading her arms into the sleeves of his shirt, because she now felt foolish naked. ‘I may not own any fancy clothes, but that doesn’t mean I want you to buy them for me!’
‘My only motivation was to please you.’
‘Did you pick them out personally?’ she asked abruptly.
In the act of pulling out a pair of jeans from the other side of the dressing room, Giannis tensed, recalling another débâcle when he had sent Nemos to her door to organise lunch. ‘No.’
‘Did you describe what you wanted?’
‘I may have mentioned a favourite colour or two.’
‘Mine or yours?’
‘I don’t know yours,’ he was forced to admit, his handsome mouth taut with impatience. He zipped the jeans. What was her problem? Why couldn’t she be grateful, as so many other women had been before her? Why was she so outrageously difficult to please?
‘Which really says it all, doesn’t it?’ Maddie snapped. ‘You don’t know my favourite colours and you don’t really care either. You want to dress me up like a fashion doll for your benefit, not mine.’
His dark golden eyes simmered. ‘That is untrue.’
‘If you don’t like me as I am, tough!’ Maddie flung at him, her generous mouth curling with pained defiance. ‘And at least have the sensitivity to appreciate that spending thousands and thousands of pounds on someone like me, just because you’ve slept with them, gives a very insulting message!’
That concluding crack made Giannis furious. Slashing his hands through the air in a striking gesture of exasperation, he strode back into the bedroom. ‘So we’re back to the missing sensitivity gene?’
‘I do not need to be reminded that you’re richer than sin.’
‘Stop talking as though my wealth is a serious flaw,’ Giannis sliced back with sardonic bite.
‘But it is…can’t you see that? It’s a barrier between us. I’m not a hooker you need to pay—but that’s how you’re making me feel! ‘
‘Theos mou… You’re such a diva!’ Giannis condemned, colder than ice. ‘A gift is not an insult, and it should be accepted with grace. I’m a generous man and your attitude is offensive. You have no idea of how to behave. And, by the way, no hooker would make as little effort to please as you do!’
His censure cut deep. Tears prickled and stung the backs of her eyes, for she was not in the habit of staging violent arguments—nor had she ever been told before that she lacked manners. She shrank inside his shirt. But she still felt it would be wrong to accept that vast collection of shockingly expensive clothes. She wasn’t a hired entertainer. Wearing garments purchased by him would only serve to increase her sense of inequality. But maybe if she wore his gifts to mask that big financial difference he would feel more comfortable with her? a little inner voice suggested. So who was right…and who was wrong?
Her head buzzing with conflicting thoughts, she walked out on to the roof terrace. Chilled by the night air, she curled up in a heap on a couch. A few minutes later a maid came out, to offer her an opulent cashmere rug.
Giannis watched from the bedroom while Maddie wrapped herself up in the rug he’d had sent out to her. His strong jawline clenched. Nobody else argued with him—and never, ever a woman. What made her so feisty? So critical of him? She was annoying the hell out of him.
In one of the lightning-fast decisions that made him so formidable an opponent in the business world, Giannis rammed the French windows back from his path and went outside. In the light from the coloured glass lanterns her green eyes shone with the clarity of jewels. Without hesitation—for he was determined to overcome any objections—Giannis bent down, scooped her up, complete with rug, and went back indoors with her again.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Maddie squealed in disconcertion.
Settling her back on the bed, Giannis followed her down in one lithe movement. Bare-chested, long powerful legs clad only in well-worn faded jeans, he stared down at her in mocking challenge. ‘What do you think?’
‘You said I’d no manners—’
Long brown fingers shaped her high cheekbones. Fierce dark golden eyes assailed hers. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled with a new wardrobe.’
Her soft mouth down-curved; her long brown lashes dipped. ‘I’m sorry…I didn’t think of it from your point of view.’
‘Or I from yours. You’re different from other women. But that’s why I want you so much. ‘ Giannis let his wide sensual mouth drift down on hers like a caress.
As the kiss deepened the hot, hungry taste of his urgency intoxicated her. The feverish thoughts tugging her in different directions subsided. Liquid warmth uncoiled in her belly. His long, powerful body came down on hers, acquainting her with the deliciously aggressive thrust of his erection. A helpless frisson of response rippled through her and centred on the ache stirring in her pelvis. Suddenly she wanted him again, with the most shocking ferocity…
The following day, Maddie stirred drowsily and sent a seeking hand across the bed for Giannis. Finding only empty space, she opened her eyes. The bathroom door wasn’t quite closed, and she could hear the thump of water on tiles: he was in the shower. She peered at her watch with a softened smile. It was four in the afternoon.
Earlier that day Giannis had flown her to Marrakech, for breakfast in a fabulous old hotel, before taking her for a visit to the souks. Momentarily her face clouded. She’d had to struggle to hide the fact that the strong, aromatic scents of the spice market had made her feel nauseous. She suppressed the lingering stab of concern, since she could not help but be influenced by Giannis’s sublime conviction that their contraceptive mishap would have no consequences. They had returned to his mountain hideaway for lunch on the almond terrace, where they had sat beneath trees weighed down with exquisite clouds of spring blossom. Long before the final course arrived they had left the table to make love again.
His mobile phone buzzed on the bedside cabinet. She had noticed that he never missed a call. After a moment’s hesitation she reached out and answered it. A flood of words in another language made her appreciate the pointlessness of her attempt to be helpful.
‘I’m sorry…can I help you?’ she asked in apologetic English.
‘Who are you? Some little secretary bird?’ the female demanded haughtily. ‘Put me on to my fiancé.’
Maddie frowned in confusion. ‘Your fiancé? Who do I say is calling?’
‘Krista. Who else?’ the woman responded with withering scorn. ‘Hurry up…I haven’t got all day!’
Maddie set the phone down with a weak hand. She discovered that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She was as winded as though she had been punched in the gut. It had to be some misunderstanding. Or perhaps the woman had been joking, or lying for some reason best known to her? What the heck was she imagining? That Giannis would deceive her to that extent? That she could be so foolish? She realised with a sinking heart that she had never actually asked him if there was anyone else in his life. But he knew that she believed he was single, she reminded herself frantically, thinking back to their conversation the night before.
Sliding out of bed, she reached for the turquoise kaftan she had been using as a dressing gown. As she pulled it on with clumsy hands she heard an angry burst of speech from the phone she had laid down.
Giannis appeared with a towel twisted round his lean brown hips. She pointed at the receiver. ‘Krista’s on the phone.’
He was still only for a fraction of a second, and his lean, darkly handsome features betrayed nothing. Yet Maddie knew in that same instant that there was no misunderstanding, no joke, and no lie: the guy she had allowed herself to fall madly in love with was engaged to another woman. Her skin felt cold and clammy. Shock was setting like pointed shards of ice in her stomach. He was speaking Greek on the phone, but somehow his dark-timbred drawl sounded to her as though it was coming from the other end of a long dark tunnel. Through him she had learned to recognise the sound of his language. Did Krista speak Greek as well? Hastily she tried to shut out that thought. Because she wasn’t ready to think about the unfortunate woman whom she had inadvertently wronged.
Giannis raked a keen-eyed glance at Maddie. She was as pale as death, her Titian hair like a burning firebrand against the pallor of her alabaster skin. He could not concentrate on the conversation with Krista, which related, as usual, to her latest selection of extravagantly inappropriate wedding themes. His lean, powerful face set with purpose, he brought the call to a swift close and swung back to Maddie.
‘This is not the way you should have found out about Krista,’ Giannis conceded. ‘But until you came to Morocco I believed that you already knew of her existence. My engagement is common knowledge.’
‘But you should have told me.’ Her voice almost failed her, because with every word he spoke the nightmare became more real, and more agonising for her to bear.
‘I intended to tell you when you got back to London.’
Maddie parted near bloodless lips. ‘After you’d had your fun?’ she slotted in tightly, a deep sense of humiliation creeping over her. ‘How long have you been engaged?’
‘A couple of months. I see no reason why it should come between us.’
Maddie was too shattered by what she had found out to do more than shake her head in incomprehension at that bold statement. The conversation had already knocked her off balance, since he was not reacting as she had assumed he would. He was not apologising, he was not making excuses. Indeed, he was not even owning up to his fault.
‘I want you to take the time to consider the fact that what I have with Krista is quite separate from what I have with you.’
A mortified laugh that carried no humour fell jarringly from Maddie’s dry lips. ‘I hardly need to be told that. I may not be very sophisticated, but even I can tell the difference between an engagement ring and the equivalent of a dirty weekend!’
His big powerful body tensed. ‘That is not how it has been between us.’
‘How would I know how it’s been when I’ve been in the dark ever since the first day?’ Maddie demanded feverishly. ‘Why did you involve me in this horrible situation? And why did you bother getting engaged if you don’t intend to be faithful?’
‘Perhaps fidelity is not as important to some people as it is to you,’ Giannis delivered. ‘I will only say that my conscience is clear as far as my engagement is concerned.’
‘Well, bully for you…so your fiancée was desperate enough to take you on those terms? Presumably she made that choice.’ Maddie watched his lean strong face tighten with hauteur and marvelled at his self-assurance, his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he had done wrong. ‘But I didn’t get that opportunity. You lied to me—’
‘I have told no lies,’ Giannis asserted.
‘You lied to me by omission.’ Angry patches of colour had blossomed in Maddie’s cheeks. ‘Last night you knew I didn’t know you were engaged when I said I wouldn’t be with you if you weren’t single. But you chose not to tell me the truth.’
‘We had already slept together. I didn’t see the point of upsetting you when you were away from home.’
That was the precise point at which Maddie lost her temper, for it seemed to her that he had the hide of a rhinoceros. ‘In other words, you put your own comfort first and decided that it was fine to leave me in ignorance. It didn’t matter to you that I was betraying my values in getting involved with a man who’s planning to marry another woman. Or that the knowledge that our relationship is not an exclusive one makes me feel physically sick!’
His lean, dark face hardened, his strong jawline squaring. ‘Of course it matters to me. But one cannot live one’s whole life by rigid rules—’
‘Particularly not when they conflict with what Giannis Petrakos wants?’ Maddie dared. ‘There are good reasons for the rules I live by.’
Giannis studied her with glittering golden eyes. ‘I want you more than I’ve wanted any woman for a very long time. Walking away wasn’t an option.’
‘Let’s not exaggerate my supposed attraction,’ Maddie cut in rawly, a pain as sharp as a knife twisting through her. ‘Obviously it’s only sex, because my personal appeal won’t prevent you from marrying someone else. Yet you talked about me not knowing how to behave? Don’t you think I had the right to know I was just a casual fling? A little bit on the side of the main event? If you had had any respect for me at all, you wouldn’t have treated me like this!’
‘You’re wrong about that. There was an explosive attraction. Nor do I think that self-denial makes anyone a better person.’ With that ringing rejoinder, Giannis went into the dressing room and pulled out fresh clothing. ‘We’ll discuss this when you’ve calmed down. I consider arguments a waste of valuable energy.’
‘And walking out the ultimate escape hatch,’ Maddie told him tightly.
That incendiary comment brought Giannis back into view, his tailored chinos still unbuttoned at his lean waist, his bronzed hair-roughened chest still bare. He refused to consider the rights and wrongs. What was done was done. But he was determined not to lose her. ‘I don’t do escape hatches.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Just arrange for me to get home as soon as possible.’ She tilted up her chin and drew on every ounce of her pride to hide her pain. ‘I don’t mind having to sit around the airport for hours and wait for a flight either.’
‘This is crazy. Why should you leave? It’s nonsense to say that what we have is casual,’ Giannis insisted forcefully. ‘I want you in my life—’
‘Well, I think I can safely say that this is one of those very rare occasions when you don’t get what you want.’ Green eyes glittering with furious condemnation, Maddie surveyed him.
‘I won’t let you leave.’
‘You have no choice.’ Maddie yanked out her overnight bag and devoted her attention to packing the few items she had brought from London. She hated him, but she was terrified that the agony of picturing him in another woman’s arms would still kill her by inches. She had to keep busy. Activity and the need to think of practicalities were the only things capable of keeping her sane.
Giannis watched her piling her possessions into an untidy heap. He did not do emotional confrontations, he reminded himself doggedly. He did not do emotions, full-stop. He had never been into love and promises or, for that matter, stories of happily-ever-after. But he knew that she believed in all of those things, and that he had hurt her. He would give her the time and the space to quieten down. He did not believe that she would just walk away from him.
An hour later, Hamid informed him that Maddie was in the salon with her luggage. Giannis stared at the computer screen and realised that he had done no work during that time.
Clad in a simple white shirt and denim skirt, with her glorious hair confined by a band at the nape of her neck, she was standing by the window.
‘I realise that you’re upset, but there is such a thing as the art of compromise,’ Giannis drawled softly.
‘Giannis…’ Maddie whispered in jagged interruption. ‘Compromise would only be another word for you using me, and I’m not a glutton for punishment. But I have decided that everything that’s happened isn’t entirely your fault. I have to take a share of the blame too.’
His ebony brows pleated. ‘Meaning?’
Maddie wanted to tell him about Suzy, because she was convinced that this would be the last time she ever saw him. ‘For you to understand, I have to go back nine years in time to when I first saw you. I was fourteen years old.’
Giannis was intrigued. ‘The first time? How? Where?’
‘You visited my twin sister in a children’s hospice.’
Disconcertion made him frown. ‘A hospice?’
Her generous mouth compressed. ‘Her name was Suzy…and, no, you didn’t notice me on either visit. I was just one of the admiring crowd round the tea trolley. My sister had leukaemia and not much time left. A fortnight later you returned and brought her favourite pop pin-up to visit her. She was overjoyed. He was her hero, and that day you became mine for doing it for her.’
Giannis was astonished by what she was telling him. He too had lost a sibling as a teenager, but that was something he never discussed. Furthermore, what she said had cut through even his tough shell and drawn blood. He was her hero and that day you became mine. Ten words, and every one the equivalent of a spear in the guts, Giannis conceded grimly. ‘Your sister—Suzy—died?’
Her beautiful green eyes sad, Maddie nodded.
‘I’m sorry. Over the years I’ve visited hundreds of children. I’m afraid I don’t remember her,’ he admitted.
‘It’s long time ago. I didn’t expect you to. I just wanted you to know that, even though everything has gone wrong between us on a personal level, I’ll always be grateful for the fact that you made my sister so happy.’
‘I don’t want you to be grateful, pedhi mou,’ Giannis breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Gratitude in that field is the one thing I have never sought from anyone.’
‘But I hope it explains why I acted so stupidly when I finally got the chance to speak to you. I had this false picture of you—a silly, immature image. I’m sure I gave you the wrong impression.’
His gilded bronze eyes darkened and screened. ‘Theos mou…I don’t want to hear this.’
‘I must go.’ Maddie would not allow herself to look at him again. Hamid had already told her that the heli-pilot was waiting to fly her to the airport. She would not allow herself to drag out their final meeting. Giannis had made her weak, but she was determined to be strong and make a dignified exit.
‘You did not give me the wrong impression,’ Giannis asserted, his accent very thick. ‘I saw you and the deed was done. The hunter’s instinct is a powerful one, and the more you resisted me, the more I desired you. I am sorry that I hurt you. But think long and hard before you turn your back on what we share. That happiness is not easily found.’
‘But it was fool’s gold,’ she responded, with a bitterness she had to battle to conceal. ‘And it turned to dross in the light of day.’
Dark golden eyes bleak, Giannis watched the helicopter take off. His big, powerful frame taut with frustration, he tossed back a brandy. His stubborn jawline clenched. Her departure had unleashed uncomfortable reactions within him. His resistance to her climbed in direct proportion to that disturbing knowledge, because he disliked the sense that he was not fully in control. Perhaps it was fortunate that he would not see her for a while. After all, he was not a hero, and he had never suffered from the delusion that he might be. He thought it was just typical of Madeleine Conway that she only wanted a guy who was a bloody hero!
She had storybook ideals—fantasy expectations. His conscience, never the most active part of his psyche, creaked into action to remind him that she had believed he was single and unattached. He remembered how gutted she had been. He had behaved like a bastard, he acknowledged unwillingly. He had taken sexual advantage of a starry-eyed virgin who had evidently seen him in much the same light as an infatuated teenager. He recalled the shine in Maddie’s eyes when she’d looked at him that first day in his office. He wondered exactly what he would have to do to bring that shine back, and he did not doubt his ability to achieve that end. How was it his fault that other women had asked so little from him that he had become spoilt? Even a little lazy and arrogant?
While Maddie had values that he admired—even if living with them was a distinct challenge for him—she also had a lot to learn. Krista was not a negotiable element in his life, he reasoned. He had chosen Krista to be his wife, and he was not a changeable man. The only vacancy available was that of mistress. There were strict boundaries between his public life and that which he led in private. Maddie would have to understand and accept it. He would give her the chance to adjust to the concept of compromise. He refused to consider what he would do if she proved stubborn.
After a lengthy delay at the airport, Maddie returned to London and a grey wet morning. She felt the loss of bright sunlight almost as much as the loss of Giannis. He’d had her flown back to London on a Petrakos jet and, mindful of the crew, she had felt obliged to stay dry-eyed. Nemos had carried her bag right to the door of her bedsit, and even put the key in the lock for her. When the door had shut behind her she’d thought how hopelessly dark and drab her rented room seemed.
She was quick to remind herself that this was her real world. Had she resisted temptation, as all her instincts had urged, she would not be feeling as though someone had forcibly torn her in two.
But at least she now understood why her time in Morocco had felt unreal. How could it have felt like anything more serious or durable? Her love affair had just been a casual sexual intrigue to a Greek billionaire for whom one woman was clearly never going to be enough. He had picked her because she had been so amazingly free with her favours in his office. Had she paused to ask him then if he was a single man? No, she had not. So it would be hypocritical to blame him for the entire débâcle. Having torn up the rulebook of how she lived her life, it seemed she was now paying the price for being free and easy.
The next day she was wakened by the delivery of a magnificent bouquet. She would not allow herself to read the card and, although the waste of such beauty brought tears to her eyes, she dumped the flowers.
Feed a cold and starve a fever, her grandmother had often said, and Maddie knew she had a fever that required brutal discouragement. She refused to wallow in the belief that she loved Giannis. How could she have loved someone she hardly knew? She had to get over him and do it quickly. But the craving for him nagged at her like a constant pain. She did not know how to kill the terrible bone-deep longing just to see his lean, dark face one more time. Her peace of mind was gone as well. How would she ever forgive herself for the mistakes she had made? The mistakes she had then excused so that she could go on making them with him? Her self-esteem was at rock bottom.
Keen to get back to work, and even more eager to earn some money, she had already let the employment agency know that she was available again. Luckily she had to work at the supermarket that night. At the end of her shift she emerged wearily for the walk home.
A limo pulled in ahead of her, the chauffeur stepping out to open the passenger door for her. ‘Please go away!’ she hissed, praying that none of her co-workers were behind her.
But the limo followed her home, and she was on the stairs when Nemos appeared, carrying a large wicker hamper. ‘Nemos…please,’ she muttered tiredly. ‘I don’t want this.’
He set the hamper down at her door. ‘Mr Petrakos sent us to pick you up from the store and deliver this.’
‘Is he still in Morocco?’ she heard herself ask.
‘Athens…on business.’
Maddie went red, because she knew she wasn’t practising what she had preached to Giannis or herself. She shouldn’t have asked; where Giannis was and what he might be doing was nothing to do with her any more. At her urging, Nemos took the hamper away again.
She slept badly that night, and woke up at dawn. The smell of someone frying food had drifted into her room and curdled her tummy. Her period was due today, and she was desperate to have her fears set to rest. Might stress and a guilty conscience have made her imagine that she felt dizzy and sick? She was pleased when the agency phoned and told her that she would be temping for the week in a big insurance company. And then her neighbour, Mrs Evans’s daughter, asked if Maddie could spend a couple of hours with her mother while she went out. Glad of a distraction from her worries, Maddie went downstairs to sit with the old lady.