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‘Yes, he was. He was interested in buying this place then.’
‘You knew that? You’ve seen him before?’ Julie exclaimed in consternation. ‘Why didn’t you mention it?’
‘With all that’s been going on, it didn’t seem important,’ Lilah muttered, sitting down at her desk and closing her ears while Julie lamented her lack of interest in the new owner of Moore Components.
A young man with a neatly clipped beard entered their office an hour later. ‘Miss Moore?’ he asked, stopping in front of Lilah’s desk. ‘I’m one of Mr Zikos’ team—Andreas Theodakis. Mr Zikos would like to see you in his office.’
Lilah lost colour and tried and failed to swallow, scolding herself for the instantaneous fear that washed through her. Of course Bastien wasn’t going to harm her in any way. Why did even the thought of him charge her with near panic?
As she mounted the stairs she breathed slow and deep to compose herself. Bastien would want to crow, wouldn’t he? He had got the business at a knockdown price and the Moore family had lost it, exactly as he had predicted. Rich, powerful men probably liked to boast whenever they got the opportunity, she reasoned uncertainly. For, really, her brain cried, what did she know about rich, powerful men? After all, Bastien was the only rich and powerful man she had ever met.
He was using her father’s office, and it felt exceedingly strange to Lilah to be entering such a familiar space and find her father absent. Her eyes flickered super-fast over Bastien without pausing, as she registered that no other person was to be present for their meeting. Was that a good sign or a bad one?
‘Mr Zikos,’ she framed tightly.
‘Oh. I think you can still call me Bastien,’ he derided, studying her while wondering how on earth she could look so good in a plain black skirt of indeterminate length and a shapeless camel sweater.
Curly black hair lay in tumbled skeins across her shoulders. It was still the same length. He would have been vexed had she had it cut shorter. But, no, it was unchanged, and there was still something strangely fascinating about that long, long black hair that had ensnared his attention the instant he first saw it. And something equally memorable about the striking contrast between her bright blue eyes and her pale porcelain-fine skin.
Forced to look at him properly for the first time, Lilah froze, willing her rigid facial muscles to relax, ensuring that she betrayed no reaction to him. It was an exercise she had become adept at using in self-defence two years earlier. Her breath rattled in her throat, as if she had been dropped unexpectedly into a dark and haunted house where she was surrounded by unseen threats.
Bastien stood about six foot four inches tall, a clear twelve inches bigger than she was, which meant she could easily get away with focusing on his blue silk tie. But the glance she had got at him as she’d entered the office was still etched on her brain—as if it had been burned there in lines of fire with a red-hot poker.
Whether she liked it or not, Julie had hit it right on the nail: Bastien did have a supermodel look, from his sculpted high cheekbones, classically arrogant nose and strong jawline to his full, incredibly kissable lips. Uncomfortable warmth washed up over her skin and she reddened, gritting her teeth, because she knew that she was blushing and that he would notice. Why would he notice? Because Bastien never missed a trick.
‘Take a seat, Delilah...’ Bastien indicated one of the armchairs beside the coffee table in one corner of the spacious panelled room.
‘It’s Lilah,’ she corrected, and not for the first time.
He had always insisted on calling her by her full name—that name with its biblical connotations, which had caused her so much embarrassment from primary right up through to secondary school.
‘I prefer De-lilah,’ Bastien purred, with all the satisfaction of a jungle cat who had been lapping cream.
Lilah sank down in the chair, her slender spine too rigid to curve into the support of the seat. Her entire attention was locked on to Bastien and she clashed unwarily with his truly spectacular eyes. Tawny brown, golden in sunshine, literally mesmerising and surrounded by the most fabulous velvety black lashes, she reflected dizzily, plunged into one of the terrifying time-out-of-time lapses of concentration and discipline which Bastien had frequently inflicted on her two years earlier.
‘I can’t think why you would want to see me,’ Lilah told him quietly, just as the door opened and Maggie bustled in with a tray of coffee and biscuits.
Lilah jumped up and immediately removed the tray from the older woman’s grasp. Maggie had chosen to work well beyond retirement and, although she would never have admitted the fact, Maggie now found it difficult to carry heavy trays.
‘I would’ve been fine,’ Maggie scolded.
Lilah settled the tray of fancy silverware and fine china which her father’s secretary had kept for VIPs down on the table. Maggie departed. Lilah poured the coffee and sugared Bastien’s before she had even thought about what she was doing.
‘You can’t think why I would want to see you?’ Bastien queried, unimpressed by the claim. ‘How very modest you are...’
Suspecting him of mockery, Lilah flushed and extended his coffee to him. He reached for the cup and took a sip of the black, heavily sweetened coffee, smiling when he discovered that she had got it right.
Striving to play it cool and composed, Lilah lifted her own cup and saucer—but that smile...oh, that smile...was flipping up the corners of his beautiful mouth, transforming his lean, dark forbidding features with an almost boyish grin. Helplessly she stared, sapphire-blue eyes widening.
‘Today,’ Bastien drawled lazily, ‘you are a very influential young woman, because it is in your power to decide what happens next to Moore Components.’
Lilah kept on staring at him, literally locked into immobility by that astonishing assurance. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
CHAPTER TWO
BASTIEN STUDIED HER, inordinate satisfaction glittering in his dark deep-set eyes. He had waited a long time for this particular moment and it was giving him even more of a kick than he had hoped.
‘I have a few options to put before you. The fate of Moore Components is now entirely in your hands.’
Lilah set her coffee down with a jarring rattle of china and leapt upright. ‘Why the heck would you say something like that to me?’ she demanded.
‘Because it’s the truth. I don’t lie and nor do I backtrack on promises,’ Bastien asserted levelly. ‘I assure you that what ultimately happens to this business will be solely your responsibility.’
Still frozen in place, Lilah blinked rapidly while she battled to concentrate. ‘I don’t understand. How can that be?’
‘You’re not that naïve,’ Bastien drawled with a curled lip. ‘You know I want you.’
‘Still?’ Lilah gasped in astonishment at that declaration, because after all two years had passed since their last meeting, and even six months on she would have expected Bastien barely to recall her name, never mind her face.
The faintest scoring of colour had flared across Bastien’s high cheekbones and he parted his lips, even white teeth flashing. ‘Still,’ he confirmed, with forbidding emphasis.
Lilah didn’t understand how that was possible. How could he still find her attractive after all the other women he had been with in the intervening months? It didn’t make sense to Lilah at all.
It was not as if she was some staggeringly beautiful woman who regularly stopped men dead in the street. Admittedly she had never had a problem attracting men, but retaining their interest when she wasn’t prepared to slide casually into bed with them had proved much more of a challenge. In fact, most men walked away fast sooner than test her boundaries, choosing to assume that she was either devoutly religious or desirous of a wedding-ring-sized commitment before she would share her body.
Lilah dropped back into the seat she had vacated, her brain buzzing with bewildered thoughts. How could Bastien’s continuing physical desire for her have anything to do with the business and its prospects? And how could he still find her attractive when he had so many other more sophisticated women in his life? Was it simply the fact that Lilah had once said no to him? Could a male as clever as Bastien be that outrageously basic?
‘I don’t want to keep you all morning, so I’ll run through the three options.’
‘Three...options...?’ Lilah queried even more uneasily.
‘Option one—you choose to walk away from me,’ Bastien extended grimly, shooting her a glance of warning that made her pale. ‘In that event I sell the machinery in the factory and sell the site to a developer. I already have a good offer for the land and it would turn an immediate healthy profit...’
Lilah dropped her head, appalled at that suggestion. The town needed this factory for employment. The closure of Moore Components had already damaged the small town’s economy. Shops and entertainment venues were suffering from a downturn. People were struggling to find work because there were few other local jobs, and many had already had to put their houses up for sale because they could no longer afford their mortgages.
Lilah was well-acquainted with the human cost of unemployment and had done what little she could in her HR capacity to offer her father’s former workers guidance and advise them on suitable retraining schemes.
‘Option two—you choose only to spend one night with me,’ Bastien framed, impervious to the slight sound Lilah made as her lips parted on a stricken gasp of disbelief. ‘I will then make the business function again for at least a year. It will cost me money and it will be a waste of time, because the factory requires sustained and serious investment to win and retain new contracts. But if that’s the best I can get from you I’m prepared to do it...’
Lilah lifted her head and focused on Bastien’s lean darkly handsome face in sheer wonderment. ‘Let me get this straight. You are using Moore Components as a means of bargaining with me for my body?’ she spelled out incredulously. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Be grateful. If I didn’t want you there would be nothing at all to put on the table. But for you I wouldn’t even have bothered coming up here. I simply would have sold the land,’ Bastien informed her with lethal cool.
Lilah had great difficulty hinging her jaw closed again, because she was stupefied by the options he was laying out before her. ‘You can’t possibly want me that much,’ she told him involuntarily. ‘That would be crazy.’
‘Obviously I’m crazy.’ Bastien dealt Lilah a slow, lingering appraisal that began at her lush pink lips, segued down to the small pert breasts outlined by her sweater and glossed over her delicately curved hipline to her shapely knees and ankles. ‘You have terrific legs,’ he mused, fighting the sting of awakening interest at his groin with fierce determination.
Two years back Delilah Moore had kept him in a state of virtually constant arousal that had given him sleepless nights and forced him into cold showers. He was damned if he was going to let her have that much of an effect on him again! He wanted her and that was that—but their affair would be on his terms only.
Option two was probably the wisest choice for him, because once he had bedded her, her fascination would surely wane fast and he would tire of her as he had tired of all her predecessors. But although he was convinced that one night should completely exorcise her from his fantasies, he still didn’t want to be forced to agree to that restriction.
Lilah yanked her skirt down over her knees, suddenly boiling up below her clothing, her whole skin surface prickling and reacting to his visual assessment with a rush of heat. He was such a very sexual male, she conceded in bewilderment. The atmosphere pulsed with astonishing tension and she hurriedly snatched her attention from him, recognising the swelling tautness of her nipples and the surge of ungovernable heat between her thighs as totally unacceptable reactions.
But she couldn’t prevent those reactions—couldn’t stop them happening around Bastien. On that level two years earlier Bastien had drawn her like a moth to a flame, because the wild, seething excitement he’d evoked in her had been incredibly seductive.
In a desperate attempt to regain control of her disordered thoughts, Lilah said with careful precision, ‘I refuse to believe you’re serious about this, Bastien. A man of your stature and wealth cannot possibly want a woman like me so much that he would make such a bargain.’
‘What would you know about it?’ Bastien cut in, whiplash-abrupt in that dismissal. ‘I haven’t reached option three yet.’
Outraged by his persistence, Lilah rose to her feet again. ‘I refuse to listen to any more of this nonsense!’
‘Then I sell this place today,’ Bastien fired at her with cold finality as she walked towards the door. ‘Your choice, your decision, Delilah. You’re lucky I’m giving you options.’
Lilah was still and then spun round again, black hair sliding in a glossy fall across her shoulders. ‘Lucky?’ she exclaimed in angry disbelief, her temper stirring as she thought about the contemptible offer he had made to her. Bottom line: Bastien Zikos was willing to do just about anything to get her into bed. Was she supposed to be pleased about that? Was it normal to feel as insulted as she did...as hurt? Why did she feel hurt?
‘With my backing you can wave a magic wand here and be a heroine if you want to be,’ Bastien imparted very drily. ‘Option three—I do almost anything you want, up to and including employing your father as consultant and manager.’
That startling suggestion not only stopped Lilah’s thoughts mid-track and froze her feet to the carpet, it also made everything else inside her head blur. For a split second she pictured her deeply troubled father restored to some semblance of his former confident, energetic self, able to earn again and provide for his family. What a huge difference that would make to Robert Moore!
‘So that’s what it takes to stop you walking out...you’re a real Daddy’s girl!’ Bastien remarked with galling amusement. ‘Are you ready to listen now, and stop flouncing around dramatically and asking me if I’m crazy? The answer to that is that I’m only crazy to have you in my bed...’
Colour blossomed below Lilah’s skin and ran up to her hairline in a scalding surge. She could barely credit that he had said that without even a shade of discomfiture. But then she reckoned it would take something considerably more shocking than sex to embarrass a male as resolute and dominant as Bastien. ‘All right...for my father’s sake I’ll agree to hear you out,’ she conceded with flat reluctance.
‘Then sit!’ Bastien indicated the chair.
It occurred to Lilah that Bastien had spoken to her just then as she spoke to Skippy when the dog was playing up.
Raising a wry brow at his disrespectful mode of addressing her, she sat down again. ‘Option three?’ she reminded him succinctly.
‘You become my mistress and stay with me for as long as I want you.’
‘Keeping a mistress is an astonishingly old-fashioned concept,’ Lilah remarked, to mask the reality that inwardly she was knocked sideways by that proposition.
Bastien shifted a broad shoulder in a careless shrug. ‘In my world it’s the norm.’
‘I assumed sex slavery of that sort ended about a hundred years ago.’
‘But then you don’t have a clue what the role entails,’ Bastien said drily, watching her while picturing her slender body sheathed in decadent silk and lace and diamonds purely for his private enjoyment.
The image gave him both a high and a hard-on.
‘In return for your agreement to become my mistress I will set this business up and invest in it. As the owner of a network of companies I can easily provide contracts to keep the factory busy. I will instruct your father to rehire his former workforce. After all, skilled employees are difficult to replace. With my full financial support, virtually everything could go back to the way it was before Moore Components lost that crucial contract.’
Lilah was floored by those comprehensive assurances. Now she understood Bastien’s jibe about her having the opportunity to play the heroine and wave a magic wand. Everything back the way it was! How many times in recent months had she longed for that to happen and for everyone to be content again instead of stressed, broken and unhappy? Countless times.
Bastien was a very powerful, enormously wealthy male, and perhaps for the first time she fully appreciated that reality—because she knew it would take thousands and thousands of pounds to get the factory up and running again, never mind build the business up to survive in the long term. It would be a hugely expensive challenge, but it would turn around the lives of so many people, Lilah reflected with a sinking heart.
‘Like Tinker Bell, you’re quite taken with the offer of a magic wand?’ Bastien quipped with brooding amusement as he watched her expressive face intently. ‘I suppose your response will depend on how much of a do-gooder you are. So far you’re ranging fairly high in that list of good works now that you have your whole family living with you. You’re keeping them too, aren’t you?’
Lilah was furious that he should have access to such facts about her personal life, and the label of ‘do-gooder’ offended her. ‘I’m not a do-gooder.’
‘By my estimation you are,’ Bastien countered drily. ‘You’ve saved your wicked stepmother from living in emergency accommodation and you also raise funds for abandoned dogs and starving children.’
Lilah stood up again in a sudden motion. ‘How on earth do you know so much about me?’
‘Obviously I’ve kept an eye on developments here.’
‘My stepmother is not wicked,’ Lilah added uncomfortably. ‘How do you know my family are staying with me? How do you know about the volunteer work I’ve done for the dog sanctuary?’
‘I had to check you out before I came up here,’ Bastien pointed out impatiently. ‘If you’d got married or picked up a boyfriend since we last met there would have been little point in my approaching you. I don’t like to have my time wasted.’
Lilah’s chin lifted. ‘I did have a boyfriend!’ she bit out resentfully.
‘Not for very long. He dropped you the minute your father’s business went down.’
Angry words brimmed on Lilah’s tongue, but she swallowed them whole because she wasn’t going to sink to the level of arguing with Bastien over someone as unworthy of her defence as Steve, her ex-boyfriend.
Ironically, Bastien’s reading of Steve’s behaviour exactly matched her own. Steve had turned out to be very ambitious. He had started dating Lilah when Moore Components was thriving and had tried to persuade her father to take him on as a junior partner. It mortified her that Bastien should know about the revealing speed and timing of Steve’s defection.
Rigid with self-control, Lilah lifted her head high. ‘I can’t believe that you really mean those options you outlined. They’re immoral.’
‘I’m not a very moral man,’ Bastien told her without hesitation. ‘I don’t apologise for what I want and I always get what I want...and I want you. You should be flattered.’
‘I’m not flattered. I’m shocked and disgusted at your lack of scruple!’ Lilah told him angrily, her blue eyes bright with condemnation. ‘You’re trying to take advantage of this situation and play on my affection for my family.’
‘I will use any advantage I have and do whatever I have to do to win you. Of course whether or not you choose to accept one of my two preferred options is entirely your decision,’ Bastien pointed out, his wide, beautifully shaped mouth firming as he stalked fluidly closer to tower over her. ‘You’re the glittering prize here, Delilah. Doesn’t that thrill you?’
Lilah stiffened even more. ‘No, of course it doesn’t.’
‘It would thrill most women,’ Bastien told her drily, staring down at her with burnished dark golden eyes that sent an intoxicating fizz of awareness and frightening tension shooting through her every limb. ‘Most women like to be wanted above all others.’
‘I very much doubt that you’re capable of wanting one woman above all others,’ Lilah retorted with sharp emphasis. ‘Women seem to be very much interchangeable commodities to you, so I really can’t understand why you should have a fixation about me.’
‘It’s not a fixation,’ Bastien growled, dark eyes hard, strong jawline squared.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—call a spade a spade, Bastien!’ Lilah countered in exasperation. ‘At least look at the lengths you’re willing to go to to make me do what you want...does that strike you as normal?’
‘Sexual satisfaction is extremely important to me,’ Bastien parried, studying her with cool gravity. ‘I don’t feel any need to explain that or to apologise for it.’
Lilah felt like someone beating her head up against a brick wall. Bastien didn’t listen to what he didn’t want to hear. He went full steam ahead, like an express train racing down a track. He saw what he wanted and he went for it, regardless of reason and the damage he might do.
‘Delilah... I would treat you well...’ Bastien murmured huskily.
‘What you’ve suggested...it’s out of the question—impossible!’ she exclaimed in a furious outburst of frustration. ‘Not to mention downright sleazy!’
Bastien lifted a lean tanned hand and scored a reproving fingertip along the strained line of her lush lower lip. ‘I am never, ever sleazy...’ He positively purred. ‘You have a lot to learn about me.’
Subjected to even that minor physical contact, she felt her whole skin surface break out in enervated goose bumps and jerked back a hasty step.
‘What I’ve learnt today, just listening to you, is more than enough,’ she stressed in biting rejection. ‘You talk as if you’re playing some amusing game with me, but what you’re proposing is offensive and unthinkable. And nothing you could hope to offer would persuade my father to accept a job that would literally sell me to the highest bidder as part of the deal!’
Bastien scanned her flushed and furious face and the sapphire-blue eyes shooting defiant sparks at him. ‘Only an idiot would suggest that you tell your father the truth and nothing but the truth,’ he derided. ‘All you would need to tell your family is that I have offered you your dream job, which will entail a lot of foreign travel and an enviable lifestyle.’
With a reflexive little shudder at that Machiavellian suggestion, Lilah snapped, ‘My goodness, you have absolutely everything worked out!’
‘But will you take the bait?’ Bastien breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘You have until ten tomorrow morning to make your decision and choose an option.’
‘You haven’t given me even one reasonable or fair option,’ Lilah condemned bitterly.
‘If you don’t give me your answer tomorrow I will sell,’ Bastien warned her with chilling bite.
Her narrow spine went poker-straight with the force of her resentment and her slender hands knotted into fists. It was far from being the first time she had been in Bastien’s company and had longed to knock his teeth down his throat.
In the smouldering silence, Bastien released his breath in a hiss of impatience. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this between us, Delilah. We could discuss this over dinner tonight.’
Lilah flung him a shaken and furious look over her shoulder as her perspiring hand worked frantically at the doorknob. ‘Dinner? You’ve got to be joking! Anyway, I’m already booked,’ she fibbed, refusing to give him the idea that she sat in every night.
‘To see who?’ Bastien demanded, pressing a hand against the door to prevent her from opening it.