is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and

bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant

success with readers worldwide. Since her first

book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a

chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare

treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may

have missed. In every case, seduction and passion

with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Expectant Bride
Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT on earth are you wearing on your head?’ Meg Bucknall demanded as she pressed the button for the service lift.

Ellie raised a self-conscious hand to the floral scarf which covered her hair. ‘It’ll keep the dust off.’

‘Since when have you been so fussy?’

Ellie heaved a sigh and decided to be honest with the older woman. ‘There’s this guy who often works late on my floor…and, well, he’s—’

‘Making a nuisance of himself, is he?’ Meg’s round face tightened with disapproval but she wasn’t surprised by the news. Even in an overall Ellie would attract keen male attention. Fashioned on petite but shapely lines, the young woman had hair so naturally fair it gleamed like silver, and clear green eyes enhanced by unexpectedly dark brows and lashes. ‘I bet he thinks he’s onto a sure thing with a humble cleaner. Old or young?’

‘Young.’ Ellie stood back to let Meg enter the lift first. ‘He’s really getting on my nerves. I’ve been thinking about mentioning him to the supervisor.’

Meg grimaced. ‘No, whatever you do, don’t make it official, Ellie. If this lech works late, he must be quite important. Let’s face it, you’re more expendable than some business whizzkid!’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Ellie sighed. ‘It’s still a man’s world.’

‘He must be pretty persistent if he’s getting you down…’ Meg frowned, thinking of how feisty Ellie could be, although nobody would ever think it to look at her. ‘Look, you do my floor tonight and I’ll do yours. That’ll give you a break. Then maybe one of the other cleaners will consider doing a permanent switch with you.’

‘But I haven’t got security clearance to clean the top floor,’ Ellie reminded the older woman reluctantly.

‘Oh, never mind that!’ Meg dismissed impatiently. ‘Why should anyone need special permission just to polish floors and empty bins? But if the security guard does a round while you’re up there, take yourself off out of sight if you can. Some of those blokes would report us. And don’t go through those big double doors at the front. That’s Mr Alexiakis’s office suite and I’m not allowed in there…OK?’

As the older woman pushed her trolley out onto the floor that was usually Ellie’s responsibility, Ellie gave her a grateful smile. ‘I really appreciate this, Meg.’

Ellie had never been on the top floor of the Alexiakis International building before. When she emerged from the service lift, she realised that the layout was different from the floors below. Rounding a corner, she saw a large, luxurious reception area to her right. Beyond it, all the lights had been turned off, but she could dimly see an impressive set of double doors in the gloom.

But when she looked to her left, another set of plainer double doors also greeted her at the far end of the corridor. She raised her eyebrows, but assumed the unlit passage closer to Reception housed the office suite that was off-limits. Deciding to start at the opposite end and work her way back along the corridor, Ellie relaxed. She was delighted by the prospect of any evening shift uninterrupted by Ricky Bolton and his suggestive remarks.

Her canvas-shod feet making little sound, Ellie opened one of the heavy double doors and had crossed the room to reach for the overflowing wastepaper basket before she registered that the interconnecting office beyond was still occupied. The door stood slightly ajar, spilling out the unmistakable sound of male voices.

Usually she would have announced her presence, but, having taken Meg’s advice on board, she decided it would be wiser just to beat a quick, quiet retreat. The very last thing she wanted to do was get the older woman into trouble. Just as she was about to step back out again she heard male footsteps coming down the corridor, and practically had a heart attack on the spot.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she shot behind the door to conceal herself, her heart hammering like a piston. The steps got closer and closer, and then stopped right on the other side of the open door. At that point Ellie just stopped breathing altogether.

In the rushing silence she could now hear every word of the dialogue carrying through from the office next door.

‘…so as long as I continue to appear to be interested in acquiring Danson Components, Palco Technic will remain a sitting duck,’ a dark-accented male drawl was murmuring with satisfaction. ‘I’ll make my move the minute the market opens on Wednesday.’

Ellie heard whoever else was on the other side of the door catch their breath audibly. She felt like a total idiot. What the heck had she been thinking of? The maintenance trolley parked outside supplied visible proof of her presence somewhere nearby.

However, the man in the doorway advanced no deeper into the room. To her surprise and relief, she heard him start back down the corridor much more quietly than he had walked up it. Ellie slowly sucked in much-needed air. She was creeping out from concealment on literal tiptoe when the door of the interconnecting office suddenly shot wide to frame an intimidating male, who seemed at that moment to be as tall as a skyscraper. She froze, green eyes huge in her flushed and discomfited face.

Eyes as black as pitch raked over her in a challenging appraisal as aggressive as a loaded gun.

‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ he shot at her in angry disbelief.

‘I was just leaving—’

‘You were hiding behind the door listening!’ he contradicted in pure outrage.

‘No, I wasn’t listening.’ Ellie was genuinely shocked by the level of his annoyance, and then, as she recognised him, her own tension rocketed right off the scale.

No, they hadn’t met before, but there was a dirty great enormous portrait of the guy in the ground-floor foyer. That portrait was the target of much teasing and admiring female comment. Why? Dionysios Alexiakis was drop-dead gorgeous. Dionysios Alexiakis, popularly known as Dio, the ruthless, asset-stripping Greek billionaire who ran Alexiakis International. Oh, dear heaven, she registered sickly, she’d picked the wrong set of double doors to intrude behind. Now both her job and Meg’s had to be on the line!

A grey-haired older man appeared from behind Dio Alexiakis. Frowning at her in dismay, he dug out a mobile phone. ‘She’s not the regular cleaner, Dio. I’ll get onto security straight away.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Ellie protested through teeth that were starting to chatter. ‘I’m just covering for the usual cleaner tonight…that’s all. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you…I was just about to step back outside—’

‘But you had no business being here in the first place,’ the older man condemned.

Dio Alexiakis studied her broodingly, eyes so dark they glittered like reflective mirrors and unnerved her. ‘She was hiding behind the door, Millar.’

‘Look, it may have looked like I was hiding behind the door,’ Ellie argued in growing desperation. ‘But why would I be hiding? Does that make sense? I’m just a cleaner. I can see I made a mistake coming in here, and I’m really sorry. I’ll get out right now—’

Without warning, a large brown hand stretched out to close round her narrow wrist and halt her backward drift towards the door. ‘You’re not going anywhere. What’s your name?’

‘Ellie…I mean, Eleanor Morgan…what are you doing?’ she gasped.

But it was too late. Dio Alexiakis had already tugged loose the scarf she had tied round her head. Her silvery pale hair fell round her shoulders in tumbled disarray. He towered over her, easily six foot three. Feeling menaced by his sheer size, Ellie gazed up at him, green eyes locking into fathomless black.

Her tummy clenched as if she had dropped from a height, the oddest sensation of dizziness making her head swim and her knees tremble. His frowning appraisal had become an outright smouldering stare of sexual assessment.

‘You don’t look like any cleaner I’ve ever met,’ he finally breathed in a roughened, accented undertone.

‘You meet a lot?’ Ellie heard herself ask foolishly, but then she had been thrown way off balance by what she had seen in his eyes. That age-old oversexed male to female reaction she despised.

‘Ellie…there is an Eleanor Morgan on the maintenance roster,’ the older man he had referred to as Millar cut in flatly. ‘But she’s supposed to be working on level eight, and Security haven’t cleared her for this floor. I’ll have her supervisor sent up to identify her.’

As the other man relayed that information, the Greek tycoon’s hard, dark features tautened. ‘No. Get off that phone now. The fewer people who know about this intrusion the better.’ Releasing her wrist, he stepped back to swing out a swivel chair. ‘Take a seat, Ellie.’

‘But I—’

‘Sit!’ he emphasised, as if he was dealing with a puppy in dire need of basic training.

Her teeth locking together at that style of address, Ellie dropped down, her slim back rigid but her heartbeat still racing. So she had walked in where she shouldn’t have. She had apologised. In fact she had all but grovelled, she reflected resentfully. So why the continuing fuss?

‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what you’re doing on this floor? Why you came into this particular office and why you chose to stay and eavesdrop behind a door?’ Dio Alexiakis spelt out with harsh exactitude.

The silence simmered. Momentarily, Ellie wondered if bursting into tears would get her off the hook. She met those hard black eyes and her heart skipped a startled beat. With Dio Alexiakis already behaving as if she had committed a criminal offence, honesty now seemed the wisest and safest course.

‘I’ve been having a bit of a problem with this bloke who works late on level eight,’ Ellie admitted with fierce reluctance.

‘What sort of problem?’ Millar prompted.

Dio Alexiakis let his intense dark gaze roam with bold intimacy over Ellie’s small tense figure, lingering at length on the tilted thrust of her breasts defined by the overall and the slender perfection of her legs. As mortified colour ran up beneath her fair skin his wide, sensual mouth quirked. ‘Look at her, Millar. Then tell me you still need an answer to that question,’ he advised drily.

Still reeling resentfully from that shameless clothes-stripping appraisal, Ellie breathed jerkily. ‘I mentioned the situation to the woman who normally works up here and asked if I could switch floors with her for a night. After a lot of persuasion, she agreed, and she did warn me not to clean the office behind the double doors…but unfortunately there are two sets of double doors—’

‘So there are,’ Dio Alexiakis conceded, his agreement smooth.

‘I made a simple mistake, and I was about to slip out again when I heard somebody coming,’ Ellie confided tautly. ‘I was scared it was a security guard. He might’ve asked what I was doing up here, and that could have got Meg into trouble. I dived behind the door so that I wouldn’t be seen. It was a stupid thing to do—’

‘Security haven’t been up here since six,’ the older man interposed, unimpressed. ‘And when Mr Alexiakis arrived just ten minutes ago this entire floor was empty.’

‘Well, I don’t know who it was. He stood in the doorway for about twenty seconds and then went away again…’ Wondering why her reasonable explanation was being challenged, Ellie found her voice trailing away.

Expelling his breath in a slow, measured hiss, Dio Alexiakis lounged back against the edge of a nearby desk and glanced at the anxious older man. ‘Go on home, Millar. I can deal with this.’

‘I should stay and sort this out for you—’

‘You have a dinner date to keep,’ Dio reminded him drily. ‘I’ve made you late enough as it is.’

Millar looked as if he was about to protest, and then, meeting his employer’s expectant scrutiny, he nodded. Just before he took his leave, he paused to remark gruffly, ‘My thoughts will be with you tomorrow, Dio.’

Dio Alexiakis tensed, his eyes veiling. ‘Thank you.’

He closed the door in the older man’s wake and swung back to survey Ellie.

‘I’m afraid I can’t trust your word on this, Ellie,’ he drawled in a tone of daunting finality. ‘You listened to a very confidential dialogue—’

‘I wasn’t listening…I wasn’t interested!’ Ellie told him frantically, intimidated much against her own will.

‘I’ve got two questions for you,’ Dio Alexiakis advanced softly. ‘Do you want to keep your job?’

Ellie stiffened even more, despising him for using such bullying tactics. ‘Of course I do—’

‘And do you want the other lady who allowed you to come up here and work in her place to keep her job?’

Ellie sagged as if he had punched her, and turned very pale. ‘Please don’t involve Meg in this,’ she argued strickenly. ‘This was my mistake, not hers!’

‘No, she chose to break the rules,’ Dio Alexiakis contradicted with lethal cool. ‘She’s as much involved in this as you are. And if you are some kind of spy, in the pay of one of my competitors, you must’ve made it well worth her while to agree to tonight’s switch.’

‘A spy? What on earth…?’ Ellie whispered unevenly, her whole attention focused on that strong, dark face.

‘Right at this moment, I find your reference to another unseen and unidentifiable individual’s presence rather too convenient,’ Dio Alexiakis admitted bluntly. ‘If there is an information leak, you have already supplied yourself with the excuse of a third party to take the heat.’

‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He had her so much on edge that for the first time in her life Ellie couldn’t think straight.

‘For your sake, I hope you don’t,’ Dio Alexiakis conceded, with every appearance of grim sincerity. ‘But you must understand that to just let you walk back out of here is too big a risk for me to take. If you shared what you heard with the wrong person it could seriously damage my plans.’

‘But I wouldn’t dream of repeating what I heard!’

‘So you do remember what you overheard. And yet only a minute ago you swore that you weren’t even interested enough to listen!’

At that silken reminder, a frank look of dismay leapt into Ellie’s eyes. She stared back at him with a sinking heart. She did have perfect recall of what he had said, but had intended to play dumb and keep that news to herself. However, he had tied her in verbal knots and tripped her up. He had a mind like a steel trap, she conceded furiously. Keen, suspicious, quick and deadly in its accuracy.

Dio Alexiakis glanced at the slim gold watch on his wrist and then back at her. ‘Allow me to show you the bigger picture here, Ellie. As long as this deal goes down on Wednesday, you and your foolish friend will still be gainfully employed in this building. But until Wednesday comes, you’re not moving out of my sight!’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’

‘Naturally, I’ll pay you well for the inconvenience—’

‘Inconvenience?’ Ellie interrupted in a hopelessly squeaky voice.

‘I assume you have a passport?’

‘A passport? Why are you asking me that?’ she gasped.

‘I have to fly to Greece tonight. Keeping you under surveillance to ensure that you make no phone calls will require you to fly to Greece with me,’ he delivered with perceptible impatience.

‘Are you absolutely mad?’ Ellie mumbled shakily.

‘Do you live alone or with your family?’ he questioned.

Transfixed by her own bewilderment, Ellie muttered, ‘Alone, but—’

‘A winged ebony brow rose at that news, black eyes briefly welding to her beautiful face. ‘You surprise me. Where do you keep your passport at home?’

‘In my bedside cabinet, but why—?’

Dio Alexiakis punched out a number on his mobile phone. ‘I don’t see any alternative to a trip to Greece,’ he informed her in a sardonic aside. ‘I could lock you up without a phone, but I think you’d be even less happy with that option. And I can hardly ask my household staff here in London to keep you imprisoned while I’m out of the country! You have to accompany me of your own free will.’

Free will? What free will? Ellie’s lower lip finally dropped away from her upper as she appreciated that he was deadly serious. In the simmering silence she listened to him talk at some length on the phone in what she assumed to be Greek, his tone brusque, commanding. She heard her own name mentioned and tensed up even more.

‘But I…I swear I won’t tell anyone a word of what I heard!’ she protested feverishly as he came off the phone again.

‘Not good enough. By the way, I’ve just instructed one of my staff to open your staff locker in the maintenance department and extract your keys.’

‘You’ve what?’ Ellie flew upright, angry colour lighting her cheeks.

‘Your address is in your personnel file. Demitrios will pick up your passport and bring it to the airport.’

Eyes wide with incredulity, Ellie snapped, ‘I don’t think so…I’m going home right now!’

‘Are you? It really is do or die time, Ellie,’ Dio Alexiakis advanced with a measuring look of challenge. ‘You can walk out through that door. I can’t stop you. But I can sack both you and your friend, and believe me, if you walk out, I will!’

Halfway to the door, Ellie stilled with a jerk.

‘I think it would be much more sensible for you to accept the inevitable and come along quietly. That is, assuming you’re the innocent party you say you are,’ he completed softly, studying her with brilliant black questioning eyes.

‘This is crazy! Why would I risk my job by telling anyone what I overheard?’ Ellie demanded starkly.

‘That information could sell for a great deal of money. I think that would supply sufficient motivation.’ Dio Alexiakis strode to the threshold of the inner office he had emerged from earlier. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Coming where?’ Ellie muttered.

‘I have a helicopter waiting on the roof. It’ll take us to the airport.’

‘Oh…’ He might as well have admitted to having a dinosaur waiting on the roof. She could not have been more taken aback. ‘A helicopter?’ she repeated weakly.

Seeming finally to appreciate that she was paralysed by sheer disbelief at what he was calmly demanding of her, Dio Alexiakis strode back across the room, closed a powerful hand over hers and urged her in the direction he wanted her to go. Pausing only to lift a heavy dark overcoat off a chair-arm, he hurried her across a palatial office with huge corner windows and pressed her through a door on the far side of the room.

‘This can’t be happening to me,’ Ellie whispered dazedly as she stumbled up a flight of steps.

‘That wish cuts both ways,’ he drawled curtly from behind her. ‘I have no desire for company on this particular trip.’

As he reached a long arm past her to open the steel door at the top, a blast of cold spring air blew her hair back from her face and plastered her thin overall to her slight body. She shivered violently. Having already donned his overcoat, Dio Alexiakis side-stepped her to stride towards the silver helicopter and the pilot stationed by its nose.

‘Hurry up!’ he shot at her over a broad shoulder.

‘I haven’t even got my coat!’ Ellie heard herself shriek at him, losing her temper with a suddenness that shook her.

He stopped dead and wheeled round. With an air of grim exasperation and quite unnecessary male drama, he began to shrug back out of his coat.

‘Don’t waste your time!’ Ellie snapped, temper leaping even higher at that display of grudging gallantry. ‘I wouldn’t wear your stupid coat if I had pneumonia!’

‘So freeze in silence!’ Dio Alexiakis launched back at her at full throttle, black eyes flashing like forked lightning.

Ellie squared her slight shoulders. Only the frank fascination of the watching pilot persuaded her to put a lid on her anger. Quite untouched by a slashing response that would have intimidated ninety per cent of the population, and keeping her wind-stung face stiff as concrete, Ellie stalked past Dio Alexiakis and climbed gracefully into the rear seat of the helicopter.

‘I’ll buy you some clothes at the airport,’ the abrasive Greek slung at her as he swung in beside the pilot. He turned his head towards her, putting his hard, classic profile into stark view, adding thinly, ‘We’ll have plenty of time to kill. Waiting for your passport to arrive will probably cost the jet its take-off slot!’

‘You are so gracious,’ Ellie framed in an unmistakable tone of sarcasm, and his brows drew together in disconcertion a split second before the deafening whine of the rotor blades shattered the tense silence and she turned away again.

This is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me, Ellie told herself all over again as the helicopter first rose in the air and then went into a stomach-churning dip and turn to head out across London. Having employed the equivalent of blackmail, Dio Alexiakis was now set on practically kidnapping her! What choice had he given her? No choice! How could she possibly run the risk of getting Meg fired? The older woman didn’t have the luxury of a second salary to fall back on, and her husband was disabled.

But was she herself really any more independent? Ellie asked herself tautly. If it had simply been a question of survival, she could have managed without her earnings as a cleaner. After all, she had a day-job as well, and a healthy savings account. In fact, Ellie lived like a church mouse, squirrelling away every penny she could, willing to make just about any sacrifice if it meant she could attain her ultimate goal.

And that goal was buying the bookshop where she had worked since she was sixteen. However, if the steady flow of savings into her bank account ceased just when she was on the brink of asking for a large business loan, her bank manager would be most unimpressed, and her ambition to own the shop she loved would suffer a serious, indeed potentially fatal setback. Right now, with her elderly boss becoming increasingly eager to sell and retire, time was of the essence.

Dio Alexiakis was paranoid, absolutely paranoid, she decided helplessly. A spy? Did he read a lot of thrillers? So a cleaner had accidentally entered his precious inner sanctum and overheard him discussing confidential business plans. A cleaner who didn’t have permission to work on the top floor, a little voice reminded her. A cleaner who shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t even have entered that office, caught sneaking out from behind a door looking guilty as hell…

OK, Ellie conceded grudgingly, so she must have looked a bit suspicious in those circumstances. But that still didn’t justify his outrageous insistence that he couldn’t trust her out of his sight for the next thirty-six hours. And to demand that she travel abroad with him into the bargain was, in her opinion, proof of sheer insanity!

That wasn’t his only problem either. The way Dio Alexiakis had looked at her a couple of times had infuriated her. Even in the midst of what he had clearly seen as a very serious situation, Dio had still been eying her up like a piece of female merchandise on offer. Compressing her generous mouth into a most ungenerous line, Ellie ruminated on that fact.

Ricky Bolton had been hard enough to tolerate, refusing to take no for an answer and convinced that he only had to persist to wear her down. That she had experienced that strange sense of disorientation when Dio Alexiakis had looked down at her didn’t surprise Ellie in the slightest. This arrogant Greek had merely incited a stronger sense of revulsion than even his subordinate did. But then he was one of those very earthy guys, she decided grimly, the sort who couldn’t look at any reasonably attractive woman without wondering what she might be like in bed!

Quite impervious to Ellie’s growing antipathy, which she expressed in frigid silence, Dio Alexiakis marched her through the airport to a busy shopping area. Striding straight into an exclusive boutique, he headed for a rack of lightweight black skirt suits. Dumping the smallest size available into Ellie’s startled arms, he snatched a hat, purse and long black gloves down from the display shelf above and added them.

The remainder of the tastefully concocted display fell flat on the stand. Flushing to the roots of her hair beneath the aghast scrutiny of the saleswoman surging forward, Ellie whispered in a mortified undertone, ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘Shopping,’ Dio Alexiakis delivered succinctly, quite indifferent to the staff eyes now trained on their every move. Like a steamroller, he headed for another rack, to pull a blue cotton shift dress from a hanger and stuff it with equal unconcern into her dismayed grasp. A long black coat was thrust at her in the same careless fashion. Then he paused by a severely undersized candy-pink shorts outfit on a dummy. With an imperious inclination of his dark head, he hailed the frozen-faced older woman already moving their way. ‘We’ll have this as well.’

‘I’m afraid that item is sold out, sir,’ he was told acidly.

‘Take it off the dummy, then,’ Dio instructed the woman, whose badge proclaimed her managerial status.

‘Mr Alexiakis!’ Ellie hissed, cringing with embarrassment.

On the clear brink of making a deflating retort, the older woman’s mouth fell open when she heard that name and took a better look at the tall black-haired male towering over Ellie. ‘M-Mr Alexiakis?’ she stammered in incredulously.

‘Yes, the owner of this chain of shops,’ Dio confirmed, surveying the unfortunate woman with menacing disapproval. ‘Tell me, do your staff usually stand around chatting when there are customers requiring attention? And since when has a display been more important than making a sale?’

‘You’re quite right, sir. Please allow me to assist you,’ the manageress muttered unevenly, her discomfiture unconcealed.

‘This lady needs lingerie. Pick some out for us.’ His attention falling on the shoe racks, he dragged Ellie across to them. ‘What size are you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life.’ Ellie was trembling with rage and chagrin. ‘Is this the way you normally behave in public?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded with ringing impatience. ‘We don’t have time to waste. Choose some shoes.’

In the background the manageress was struggling to strip the shorts outfit from the mannequin with hands that were visibly trembling.

In a sudden move of desperation, Ellie stretched up and heaped all the garments into his arms instead. ‘Why don’t you just go over to the checkout and wait for me there?’

‘I’ll stay here to expedite matters—’

‘You are not standing around while I choose undergarments!’ Ellie hissed up at him, like a viper ready to strike, infuriated green eyes flaming bright as jewels. ‘I don’t need so much stuff either.’

Black eyes scorched down into hers. ‘I’m paying you to do as you’re told—’

‘If I have to put up with you, it’ll need to be plenty!’

His brilliant gaze literally shimmered, a dark flush of colour accentuating the savage slant of his sculpted cheekbones. Incredulity emanated from him in waves. Nobody speaks to me like that—’

‘Oh, stop throwing your weight around,’ Ellie told him witheringly.

‘I—’

‘You’ve behaved atrociously from the moment we walked in here,’ Ellie condemned fiercely. ‘Go over to the checkout and keep quiet, and try not to terrify the life out of anybody else!’

Turning her back on him, unperturbed by the rasp of Greek invective Dio Alexiakis was audibly struggling to restrain, Ellie chose a pair of high-heeled black sandals and tried them on. They fitted. She passed them to him without a backward glance before joining the ashen-pale manageress at the lingerie section and hurriedly selecting a nightdress and some sets of bras and briefs. Argument, she sensed with a shudder, might well lead to further public mortification. She would leave the clothes behind when she was finally free of the dreadful man. And already the mere thought of another thirty-six hours in Dio Alexiakis’s domineering and boorish radius daunted her.

He handed the blue dress and the shoes back to her. ‘Put them on,’ he commanded with studied insolence.

Cheeks adorned with flags of outraged scarlet, Ellie stalked into a cubicle. He had no manners. He was incredibly confrontational, unnervingly uninhibited and outspoken. As for the way he reacted when he got a taste of his own medicine back—well, he went up in flames like a rocket! When she emerged again, the entire staff were engaged in wrapping the rest of the purchases. Never had Ellie been more grateful to leave a shop.

‘I suppose you want to go in there,’ Dio condemned with unconcealed exasperation as he surveyed a busy outlet which sold cosmetics and toiletries.

‘No…no, I’ll manage fine!’ Ellie swore in haste. ‘Prehistoric man cleaned his teeth with a twig. Maybe I’ll pick one up somewhere on the way.’

Dio dealt her an arrested glance. And then he really shocked her. He flung back his imperious dark head and laughed with spontaneous amusement. Ellie simply gaped, heart-rate speeding up, pulses jumping. His even white teeth flashed against bronzed skin, dark, deep-set eyes gleaming with appreciation. Humour drove all brooding darkness from his lean, powerful face, leaving her bemusedly conscious of just how stunning he was in the looks department.

‘I’m not into shopping,’ he confided huskily, as if she might not already be aware of that reality. ‘Other people usually do it for me.’

Her complexion uncomfortably warm, Ellie dragged her attention from him and studied the floor, but that Mediterranean dark and devastating face was still imprinted in her mind’s eye. He really was spectacular. That stark acknowledgement, that very thought, seriously unsettled Ellie. Dio Alexiakis wasn’t making the tiniest effort to impress or please her. Yet somehow he still made her effortlessly aware of his high-voltage male sexuality. She didn’t like that sensation, didn’t like the unease and tension he provoked inside her.

She might be only twenty-one, but it was over a year since Ellie had gone out on a date. Men, she had decided, were a waste of precious time and effort, and she hadn’t once regretted that decision. She didn’t consider herself a man-hater, but she did get a secret kick out of jokes that suggested the male sex was useless and increasingly surplus to female requirements. After all, by and large, that had been Ellie’s experience from childhood.

As Dio urged Ellie at speed through the crowded terminal, he rested a lean hand lightly on her taut spine to keep her moving. She stiffened defensively. ‘Excuse me,’ she heard herself say stiltedly, stepping back, suddenly determined to escape him, even if it could only be for a little while.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.

‘The ladies’ cloakroom,’ Ellie framed with frigid emphasis. ‘Are you planning to come with me?’

His aggressive jawline squared. ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’

Pointedly dumping the carrier bags she was loaded down with at his feet, she began to walk away.

‘Ellie…’ He extended a comb to her with a sardonic look. ‘Maybe you should do something with your hair while you’re in there.’

Gritting her teeth at the realisation that she hadn’t taken the time to check her appearance in the shop, and strongly resisting an unusually feminine urge to start smoothing her hair down, Ellie vanished into the cloakroom.

It was the work of a moment to tame her bright hair back into a straight heavy fall just below her shoulders. She frowned at her reflection, noticing the animated pink in her cheeks, the surprising sparkle in her eyes. The dress had a cool simplicity she liked, but it wasn’t her style.

Her full pink mouth tightening, Ellie studied the expensive silver comb he had given her and recalled the ease with which he had accurately assessed her dress size. But then that had not been a surprise to her. At twenty-nine years of age, Dio Alexiakis was an unrepentant, totally unreconstructed womaniser. Naturally he was, Ellie reflected cynically. Men with money and power lived in a buyers’ market of all too willing women. Dio was a real babe magnet, and he knew it. He had undoubtedly never had to worry too much about honing the rough edges from his less than presentable manners.

But, even so, she was to get a free trip to Greece. Private jet, five-star luxury all the way. The drawback? Dio Alexiakis breathing down her neck. An adventure, she told herself staunchly. Even with him around it ought to be more fun than polishing endless floors.

Heavens, she realised abruptly, she’d have to ring Mr Barry. Tomorrow morning her boss would be expecting her to open up as usual. He never turned in until noon, and when he found the shop still locked up he’d go straight upstairs to her bedsit and hammer on the door, thinking she had fallen ill. Regardless of Dio’s embargo, she had to phone Mr Barry, and as she could hardly tell the older man the truth, she would have to lie to excuse her absence.

Carefully concealing herself behind a pair of large, gossiping women, Ellie slipped out of the cloakroom and lunged breathlessly at the public phone only a few yards away. Dio Alexiakis was now standing in the centre of the busy concourse, talking on his mobile phone, his attention conveniently distracted.

Ellie dialled the operator. Since she had no cash on her at all, she would have to request a reverse-charge call. But just as the operator answered, Dio turned his dark, arrogant head. She crashed the receiver back on the hook, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dio saw her before she could put some space between herself and the phone.

Ellie froze like a criminal as glittering black eyes locked to her in instantaneous judgement, his lean, strong face darkening as he strode towards her. And Ellie, who knew all too well what it felt like to be irritated or bored by a member of the male sex, discovered for the first time in her life what it felt like to be scared…

CHAPTER TWO

EYES as dangerous as black ice scanned Ellie’s pale face. ‘The instant I allowed you out of my sight, you rushed to the phone to pass on the information you overheard. You have betrayed my trust!’ Dio Alexiakis condemned with scantily suppressed savagery.

Even trembling, and with her stomach knotted light with apprehension, Ellie was fascinated by the volatile charge of that explosive Mediterranean temperament and that innate sense of drama. Both were so utterly foreign to her.

‘Mr. Alexiakis—’ she began, keen to disabuse him of his eagerness to assume the worst.

‘You have made your choice. So be it.’ Dio surveyed her with cold, lethal menace. ‘I will destroy you for this.’

Ellie’s tummy performed an unpleasant somersault. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she protested feverishly. ‘I only got as far as dialling the operator!’

With a look of thunderous derision, Dio swung on his heel and strode away, outrage etched in every line of his lean, tight, powerful body.

For an instant, disconcertion froze Ellie to the spot. Oh, yeah, just drag me out to the airport on your stupid helicopter and then dump me with no money and a very nasty threat! Only unfreezing as fear for her co-worker Meg’s future job security assailed her, Ellie raced after Dio Alexiakis, hating him like poison.

‘Get out of my way,’ he growled when she got in front of him.

‘That call I was trying to make wasn’t what you thought it was either!’ Ellie argued hotly.

He simply side-stepped her.

‘You are so stubborn!’ Ellie flung wrathfully in his wake. ‘All I did was try to make a reverse-charge call to my boss at the bookshop…all right?’

Stilling, Dio swung back with stormy reluctance. ‘What bookshop?’ he ground out.

Ellie stared at him with a frown, sensing something missing, and then she exclaimed, ‘What the heck have you done with the bags? For goodness’ sake, you just walked off and left them lying on the floor, didn’t you?’

Ellie went into automatic reverse, spinning round to retrace his steps. Her attention settled on the abandoned carrier bags with relief. Hurrying back, she grabbed them up.

‘What bookshop?’ Dio repeated stonily when she’d made it back to his side, laden like a packhorse.

‘I work in one during the day. I also live above the shop…’ Ellie paused to get her breath back. ‘I have to contact Mr Barry to warn him that I’ll be taking time off. He’ll call the police if I suddenly vanish—’

‘Rubbish! He’ll assume that you’ve taken off with some boyfriend. Staff of your age are often unreliable,’ Dio Alexiakis asserted, unimpressed.

Affronted by the response, Ellie breathed in very deep to control her temper, but it didn’t work.

‘You know, I’ve had it up to here with you!’ she told him bluntly, tipping back her silvery fair head to survey him with angry resentment. ‘I do not have a boyfriend and I am not unreliable. Don’t underestimate me and don’t talk down to me, Mr Alexiakis. I always turn in for work. I’ve been in the same job for five years, and for the past two I’ve virtually been running the business—’

‘So what are you doing slogging as a cleaner five nights a week?’ he incised drily.

‘I need the money…OK?’ she flared. ‘Is that really any of your business?’

‘Your insolence outrages me.’ Shimmering dark, deep-set eyes raked over her, the lean, bronzed features hard as steel.

‘So I don’t like you…what do you expect? I haven’t done anything wrong. I made a silly mistake, but it’s being treated like a major crime!’ Ellie recounted in an accusing undertone. ‘You’re blackmailing me into doing what I don’t want to do…and I don’t appreciate your conviction that because I’m poor I’m more likely to be dishonest!’

‘Are you quite finished?’

Feeling as if she had run smash-bang into a brick wall and bruised herself all over, Ellie reddened and compressed her lips.

‘Today of all days,’ he breathed with harsh emphasis, ‘I am not in the mood for this nonsense. Come on. We have wasted enough time.’

‘You believe me, then…?’ Ellie prompted a minute or two later as she struggled to keep up with his long, powerful stride.

‘All I believe is that I caught you before you contrived to disobey my explicit warning not to telephone anyone,’ Dio contradicted with succinct bite. ‘You’re little and sneaky. Why does that not surprise me?’

‘I am not sneaky!’

‘You could have explained that you had another employer. I’m not an unreasonable man,’ Dio stated grimly. ‘But you chose to sneak instead of being open and honest.’

If he said ‘sneak’ again, she swore she would slap him. Her cheeks flamed, but the threat of thirty lashes at dawn wouldn’t have dragged an apology from her. Asking him permission to do anything would have choked her. And, whether he liked it or not, that call to Mr Barry still had to be made. Unfortunately the prospect of telling little white lies to Mr Barry in Dio Alexiakis’s presence made her squirm.

Ellie didn’t make a habit of lying. If anything, she tended to be too honest, too blunt. She knew her own failing well, but some of her failings were also her strengths. She was fiercely independent and had never been a team player. She loved having the freedom to make her own decisions. As a result, both her jobs suited her perfectly. She preferred to work alone and without interference.

Almost an hour later, when Dio’s brooding silence was fraying her nerves, her passport and her keys were handed over at a prearranged meeting point by an older man in a dark suit, whom Dio called Demitrios. Both men totally ignored her, and talked for what felt like a very long time in Greek.

‘I hope you didn’t leave my place in a mess,’ Ellie finally remarked, rather loudly.

When she spoke, Demitrios frowned in complete surprise, much as if a suitcase had suddenly opened its mouth and tried to chat.

‘And I hope you locked up properly again.’ At that point a strangled groan erupted from Ellie. ‘For goodness’ sake, how the heck did you get past the alarm system in the first place? And did you reset the—?’

‘My security staff are not stupid,’ Dio interposed crushingly, openly aggravated by her interruptions. ‘The premises will have been left in order.’

Ellie tilted her chin. ‘It must be comforting to know that you have staff who can trespass as efficiently as burglars.’

Dio dealt her a thunderous glance from brilliant black eyes.

‘It’s rude to ignore people,’ she told him stubbornly, and spun away.

But then you’re just a cleaner, she reminded herself in exasperation. The lowest of the low in any staff hierarchy. Even worse, she was stuck with a guy used to being waited on hand and foot by servants. Behaving as if she was the invisible woman didn’t tax Dio in the slightest. He expected her to maintain a respectful silence unless first invited to speak. But she had never been that good at keeping her tongue between her teeth, she acknowledged ruefully.

Feeling cold now that she was no longer being kept warm by carting heavy bags around, not to mention the need to walk at about five times her natural speed, Ellie took out the black coat, ripped off the sale label and put it on. The hem hit the floor. If she pulled up the collar she would look like a small moving blanket.

‘Here…’ Dio Alexiakis extended his mobile phone to her.

Ellie blinked in complete disconcertion.

‘Your story checks out. Demitrios confirms it. You may call the owner of the bookshop.’

Ellie punched out the number. As soon as he heard her voice, Mr Barry asked anxiously if something had happened at the shop. Reassuring him, but resentfully conscious of Dio listening to every word, she explained that she would be off work for a couple of days, and apologised for the lack of warning she was giving him. She said a close friend was ill.

Ending the call with relief, she returned the phone to Dio Alexiakis.

He shot her a grim, measuring look. ‘You’re a very convincing liar.’

Several hours later, Ellie was appreciatively conceding that the interior of the Alexiakis private jet was something else.

Her eyes roved with keen curiosity in every direction. Opulent cream leather seating, plush carpet and elegant dcor. The cabin was far more like a luxurious reception room than mere passenger space. And did Dio Alexiakis realise how lucky he was? Did he heck!

Ellie surveyed her reluctant host. While they had waited endlessly at the airport for a fresh take-off slot for the jet he had paced the VIP lounge, exuding frustration and wrathful impatience in enervating waves. Now they were finally airborne, but from what she could see he was in no better a mood.

Even so, she still found herself studying him. The dense blue-black hair so perfectly styled to his well-shaped head. The spectacular eyes enhanced by luxuriant ebony lashes. Eyes the colour of midnight that could glint like diamond stars. The hard planes and hollows of his fabulous bone structure. Strong cheekbones added character. His arrogant nose gave warning. And that wide, perfect mouth? Passion and sensuality. She pondered on the mystery of how a particular set of features could add up to such a devastating whole.

And by the time she surprised herself at that stage, she’d got distinctly hot and bothered, and acknowledged a truth she would sooner have denied. She fancied the socks off Dio Alexiakis! Who had she been trying to kid when she’d told herself he revolted her? But it had been such a very long time since Ellie had been physically attracted to a man that she was sincerely stunned by the revelation. Just hormones playing a trick on her to remind her that she could be as foolish and fallible as any other woman, she told herself. Urgently.

But even in a filthy mood, Dio Alexiakis was incredibly sexy. If she had noticed, he had to be! Possessed of that rare fluidity of a male totally in touch with his own body, he moved like a big cat prowling on velvet paws. And he was beautifully built. Broad shoulders, taut, flat stomach, slim hips, long, lean powerful thighs, she assessed, taking individual note of each attribute. Fantasy man…well, until he opened his mouth, she conceded, or left her carting the bags, or looked through her with supreme disdain while never once enquiring if she was hungry or thirsty. Not a feeling guy. Tough, selfish, single-minded and utterly ruthless in attaining his own ends…

Caught staring, Ellie clashed in shock with Dio’s narrowed intent gaze. Eyes that could turn to the glowing gold of topaz in sunlight, she registered, suddenly running alarmingly short of breath. But it was a kind of alarm new to Ellie’s experience. Edge-of-the-seat excitement, she labelled in disbelief, finding it impossible to break free of that smouldering golden appraisal. Feverish tension held her fast, the thunder of her accelerated heartbeat pounding in her ears like surf as her mouth ran dry. An arrow of twisting heat coiled up through her and warm colour stained her face.

‘It’s three in the morning Greek time. You should lie down for a while and try and get some sleep,’ Dio murmured thickly.

The very sound of that deep, dark drawl was like honey drenching her every straining sense, sending a delicious little shiver through her taut frame.

Ellie blinked like a sleepwalker waking up. ‘Lie down?’ she mumbled.

A dark line of blood now accentuated the hard arc of his cheekbones. He reached out and pressed a service button. His astonishing eyes were semi-veiled by his lush lashes. The raw tension churning up the atmosphere turned her stomach over. Complete bewilderment assailed her, followed by a sudden stark flood of intense embarrassment.

As Ellie rose jerkily upright, looking everywhere but at Dio Alexiakis, the female flight attendant appeared. Ellie was shown into a sleeping compartment. She sank down on the edge of the surprisingly large bed, powerfully disconcerted by the lingering ache in her swollen breasts and the still urgent tautness of her nipples. Never before had a man simply looked at Ellie and made her feel a hunger so powerful it hurt. But Dio Alexiakis had.

Ellie was shattered by that discovery, and ashamed of a physical reaction she had been quite unable to control. Had he realised what was happening to her? Had he recognised the effect he was having on her? She shut her eyes tight. She was appalled by the suspicion that Dio had not only recognised her helpless sexual response to him but banished her from his sight because of it.

A couple of hours later, a quiet but insistent voice roused Ellie from her uneasy doze. ‘Miss Morgan…?’

Ellie came up slowly on one elbow. The flight attendant was hovering with a tray and a look of uncertainty. Ellie reached up with a grateful smile to accept the food finally being offered to her. ‘Thanks…yes?’

‘We…well, the cabin staff wondered if perhaps you would like to wake Mr Alexiakis,’ she confided tautly. ‘We’ll be landing in fifty minutes, and naturally we’re all anxious not to intrude any more than we have to—’

‘Intrude?’ Ellie queried, all at sea and wondering why on earth such a strange request should be made of her. Was Dio a grizzly bear when he was woken up? Had she qualified for the short straw? Did she look like cannon fodder?

The other woman sighed. ‘Someone has to wake Mr Alexiakis up now so that he can dress for the funeral.’

‘The funeral…’ Ellie echoed, her voice just fading out altogether.

‘I’m afraid this flight is very late, Miss Morgan. The delay back in London and the further delay in landing means that you’ll have to travel to the funeral direct. I hope you won’t think I’m being too personal, but we all think it’s wonderful that Mr Alexiakis has brought someone with him for support,’ she shared, and slipped out again.

Fully awakened now by sheer horror, Ellie stared into space. Oh, dear heaven, Dio Alexiakis was flying out to Greece to attend a funeral! That was why he had bought her all that black clothing! And the cabin staff had decided that she had to be somebody important in Dio’s life because she was accompanying him. She remembered him saying that he hadn’t wanted company on this particular trip, and groaned out loud at the memory while wondering whose funeral it was. Obviously somebody close. A relative? A dear friend?

After hurriedly choking down the breakfast on the tray, Ellie got up and rushed into the compact bathroom. She would have loved to take advantage of the shower but there wasn’t time. She took out the black suit and put it on.

Her appearance in that suit astonished her. The light jacket fitted like a glove, nipping in at her tiny waist, hugging her slim shoulders, the deep vee-neck moulding her full breasts. The narrow skirt outlined the all-female curve of her hips and then tightened to outline her slender thighs. She looked sensational, she registered in amazement. Then, reddening at a vanity that seemed inappropriate, she turned from the mirror, irritated with herself for being so superficial.

Returning to the cabin, she saw Dio’s impossibly long and powerful length sprawled at a most uncomfortable angle across one of the fancy leather seats. Her now tenderised and conscience-stricken heart smote her.

Shorn of his formal jacket and tie, his silk shirt open at his strong brown throat and his jawline darkly shadowed by stubble, he looked so much younger and less intimidating. He also looked absolutely exhausted, and if it hadn’t been for her presence he would naturally have enjoyed the comfort of his own bed.

Ellie tensed even more. To think the cabin staff had clearly been nervous of intruding on his grief! She herself had done nothing but intrude! Recalling every angry combative word she had slung at the airport, Ellie cringed with guilt and shame. So the poor guy had been in a rough mood. In the circumstances, that was hardly a surprise, and his preoccupation had been equally understandable.

With a gentle hand on his shoulder, she shook him awake. His incredibly long lashes lifted off his flushed cheekbones, and with a soft sigh, he lifted his tousled head to check his watch. With a stifled expletive, he then plunged forcefully upright and headed for the sleeping compartment.

‘Mr Alexiakis…?’

He stilled, but he didn’t turn round.

‘I didn’t know you were attending a funeral,’ Ellie said awkwardly. ‘I wish somebody had mentioned it.’

He swung back, frowning at her in genuine surprise. ‘Don’t you read newspapers?’

‘I don’t get time to read them.’

‘It’s my father’s funeral,’ he responded curtly, and strode away.

Ellie slowly breathed in deep, but it didn’t make her feel any better. His father! What could be worse? Of course he hadn’t wanted to be lumbered with a total stranger over the next couple of days. So why on earth had he insisted that she had to accompany him?

Those extremely confidential business plans he was so fired up about, this pretending to be interested in one company while really being interested in another, she recalled in exasperation. She wished she understood how that information could be as hugely important as he seemed to think it was. A spy, she thought afresh, shaking her head in wonderment. Cops and robbers. Thriller territory. Way beyond anything she could even imagine.

But then Dio Alexiakis lived in a gilded world of immense wealth and privilege. He wheeled and dealed in incredibly high-powered circles. Even the night before his own father’s funeral he had still been talking business. Had it been a very sudden death? Whatever, on reflection, Ellie was surprised that he hadn’t already been in Greece. Even before she had entered the equation and complicated matters, hadn’t he been cutting things a bit fine?

It was after seven in the morning and a bright and beautiful day when Dio Alexiakis and Ellie finally walked into Athens airport.

Wearing the suit combined with the long dramatic gloves, the extravagant-brimmed hat and the designer sunglasses which Dio had given her, Ellie felt as if she was taking part in a fancy dress parade. They were waved on by grave-faced officials. But as they passed through the barriers a wave of shouting men with cameras surged forward, held at bay only by a squad of equally determined security guards.

Ellie just froze in the glare of flashing cameras. Dio closed a powerful arm round her and carried her on through the crush as if it wasn’t there, impervious to the questions being thrown in several different languages.

‘Who’s the woman?’ she heard a man roar loudly in English.

Ellie was unnerved by the aggressive behaviour of the paparazzi. Dio was coming home to his father’s funeral. What had happened to privacy? The giving of a little respectful space? For goodness’ sake, was Dio hounded like this everywhere he went? Ellie hadn’t the slightest idea.

But during breaks in evening shifts she had frequently heard her co-workers discussing Dio’s private life in the most lurid of terms. He lived in the fast lane. He featured in glossy magazines and made endless gossip column headlines. Having enjoyed affairs with a string of gorgeous, high-profile women, he was a real sex god to the cleaning staff. But Ellie had always felt rather superior during those sessions. She hadn’t had the slightest interest in the exploits of a male she neither knew nor ever expected to meet. So she hadn’t listened any further.

They changed terminals and ended up in a small, plainly furnished waiting room. Ellie was still trembling. ‘Is it always like that for you?’

Dio shrugged a broad shoulder. Dark, deep-set awesomely beautiful eyes briefly touched her. ‘Yes…but I’m afraid I overlooked the more extreme interest your presence would excite.’

‘I hope to heaven I’m not going to be recognisable in any of those photos,’ Ellie confided tautly.

Dio said nothing.

‘What are we waiting for now?’

‘A flight out to the island where the burial will take place.’

Another flight. She suppressed a groan. The journey seemed endless. ‘The island?’ she queried.

‘Chindos. You really do know nothing about me,’ Dio remarked with a slight frown. ‘I’m not used to that.’

‘But I bet it’s good for you…puts a dent in your belief that you are the sun around which the entire world must turn,’ Ellie muttered, and then froze in dismay. She grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud!’

‘That disastrous lack of tact must get you into trouble.’ Dio surveyed her with a shadowy suspicion of a smile momentarily softening the hard line of his expressive mouth.

Ellie swallowed hard, grateful he hadn’t exploded. ‘It’s been known.’

‘Why are you always in search of a fight?’ Dio scanned her with penetrating eyes that tightened her very skin over her bones and made her shift uneasily on her seat. ‘You look so wonderfully feminine and delicate—’

Ellie winced. ‘Not delicate…please!’

‘Cute?’

‘Worse,’ she censured without hesitation. ‘Men refuse to take me seriously. It’s a big drawback being small and blonde—’

‘But you’re not blonde. Your hair is the colour of platinum. It’s extremely eye-catching,’ Dio informed her with definitive derision and the distinct air of a male unimpressed by her protest. ‘If you genuinely don’t want to invite that type of male attitude, you shouldn’t dye it that shade.’

Ellie dealt him the weary glance of a woman who had heard it all before. ‘My hair’s natural. My grandmother was Dutch, and very fair.’

‘Natural? I don’t believe you. Take your hat off,’ he urged, startling her.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ellie did so, and flung back her head as if she was challenging him. Her bright hair shone like heavy silver silk against the darkness of her jacket. ‘You see, not fake.’

His black eyes flared gold and lingered on that shimmering fall. The silence set in then, thick as a sheet of solid steel. She watched him covertly from beneath her lashes. So very tall, so exotically dark, so still and silent. Sheathed in a sensationally well-cut black double-breasted suit, he looked truly amazing. Stop it, stop it. What’s the matter with you? a shaken voice screamed inside her bemused head.

Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Ellie quivered, agonised by the awful reality that her own brain seemed to be romping out of control. In directions it had never gone in before. Even in the depths of infatuation at nineteen, with the latest and last of the users and abusers she’d seemed to attract, she hadn’t felt overwhelmed and taken over, her very thoughts no longer her own. And there hadn’t been this ghastly, utterly desperate sexual craving which flooded her every time she looked at Dio Alexiakis. She just could not cope with feeling like that around a man. It was so weak, so irrational, so humiliating…

‘What’s it like being a cleaner?’ Dio enquired with quite staggering abruptness.

‘Look, you don’t have to make conversation with me.’

‘It was a sincere question.’

‘OK…it’s very boring, repetitive and poorly paid,’ Ellie told him with a touch of defiance. ‘So if you’re expecting me to say I’m some weirdo who gets a real high out of dusting and polishing—well, sorry to disappoint you!’

‘So why are you doing it?’

‘The hours suit me and I’ve got nobody on my back. I don’t like being ordered around.’

‘I noticed. You should deal with that problem and then consider the possibility of more challenging employment. But perhaps you have no training for any other sphere.’

‘I’ve got plans of my own. I’m an ambitious woman in my own small way. I won’t be polishing your floors for much longer,’ Ellie told him with open mockery.

Dio studied her with hard black eyes. ‘In the situation you’re in, it’s not a good idea to drop hints of that variety. I never joke about business, Ellie.’

‘Neither do I. Business comes first and last in my life—’

‘Really?’

‘And you’re running up quite a bill already,’ Ellie informed him gently. ‘You do realise that I expect you to pay me for every hour of the last twelve?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Double time too,’ Ellie specified, tilting up her chin and ready to fight her corner. ‘I take a dim view of being starved, deprived of breaks and kept up until three in the morning.’

Grudging amusement stirred in his brilliant eyes. ‘You’re your own worst enemy,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I’d have paid one hell of a lot more if you had just kept quiet.’

‘I’m not greedy, and by the way, when I said I wouldn’t be working in the maintenance department for much longer, I wasn’t thinking about that stupid conversation I overheard,’ Ellie told him impatiently. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

‘How could you have forgotten about it?’ Dio growled in disbelief.

‘Even if I did understand the importance of what you said in that office—which I don’t—I’m an honest person and I wouldn’t take advantage.’

‘Those who stress how honest they are, are almost always lying in their teeth,’ Dio countered crushingly.

Feeling oddly hurt that his barriers had gone up again, Ellie felt her beautiful face stiffen and flush. ‘Obviously you’re going to believe what you want to believe. Suit yourself!’

‘You can’t blame me for taking every possible precaution.’

That confident assertion filled Ellie with furious resentment. Who did he think he was kidding? Without hesitation, he had used his infinitely superior power like the weapon it was! The fact that she was endeavouring to make the best of a bad situation didn’t alter that brutal reality. ‘Don’t you dare try to justify yourself!’ she warned him. ‘Tell it like it is. If you weren’t who you are and I wasn’t who I am, I wouldn’t be here! If Meg and I didn’t need our jobs, I would have told you exactly where to go—’

‘I can imagine,’ Dio slotted in silkily.

‘And, you know, dragging me along on a trip like this…well, it’s not exactly a dream treat, is it? No offence or disrespect intended, but I’m not heavily into funerals,’ Ellie confided.

A disconcerting flare of amusement lit Dio’s steady scrutiny. ‘My father would have adored your irreverence!’

Her full mouth softened. ‘Was he one of the good guys?’

All his tension returned, his amusement fading as quickly as it had come. In silence, he slowly nodded, bronzed features setting hard. He swung away and she wished she had kept her stupid, clumsy mouth closed. Just for a little while he had emerged from his brooding reserve and contrived to forget what lay ahead of him.

A knock sounded on the door. It was time to move on again. Under the growing heat of the sun they walked out across the tarmac to board a small plane. A dream treat? Ellie cringed at the recollection. How could she have been that tactless? Now he was wishing she would vanish again! So why should it bother her that he felt like that? After all, how did she expect him to feel?

The plane flew out over the gleaming waters of the Aegean. In a silence filled only with monotonous engine noise, Ellie’s eyes grew heavier and heavier. She sank down lower in her seat and slid into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Feeling incredibly languid, Ellie took her time about waking up again. But she frowned in sleepy disorientation when she finally focused on her surroundings. She was lying on the capacious back seat of an enormous limousine with tinted windows.

With a thick, expensive metal clunk, the passenger door opened. A black-haired young man backed by bright golden sunlight gaze down at her with patronising amusement. ‘So you’re Dio’s latest woman… I’ve got to hand it to my cousin. He’s got taste. No wonder he kept you out of the church. Some of his late mother’s relatives are pretty narrow-minded. I’m Lukas Varios.’

Tensing with annoyance under the earthy glide of the eyes trailing over the slender length of her exposed legs, Ellie pulled herself hurriedly upright and tugged down the skirt which had ridden up while she slept. ‘I am not Dio’s woman!’ she snapped.

‘Nice to have a piece of good news today.’ With a cocky grin on his handsome face, Lukas Varios slid in beside her and closed the door. ‘So, if you don’t belong to Dio, what are you doing waiting outside the cemetery for him?’

Ellie compressed her ripe pink mouth into a rigid line. ‘I just work for him…OK?’

‘Oh, it’s very much OK with me…’ Impervious to her frozen expression, Lukas stretched out a confident hand to finger the silvery fall of hair lying against her flushed cheekbone and murmured, ‘You are a real babe—’

The passenger door opened again, this time framing Dio. He took one look at the apparently intimate scene he had interrupted and smouldering fury blazed in his spectacular eyes. He reached in a powerful hand, closed it over the younger man’s shoulder and hauled him out of the limo to shoot a raw flood of guttural Greek down at him.

Lukas Varios backed off, struggling to reassert his cool by smoothing down his jacket, but his shaken face was red as fire. As Ellie sat there, immobilised by sheer shock at Dio’s extraordinary behaviour, Lukas sent her a fiercely accusing glance. ‘She said she wasn’t yours…do you think I’d have come on to her if she’d told me the truth?’

Lean, strong face cold and hard as bronze, Dio swung into the limo and slammed the door without another word. Black contemptuous eyes flamed over Ellie. ‘I didn’t bring you here to behave like a tramp!’ he told her with splintering derision.

CHAPTER THREE

ELLIE’S quick temper, already taxed to its limits by Lukas’s offensive familiarity, simply erupted.

Reacting on instinct alone, her hand flew up and she slapped Dio Alexiakis so hard across one cheekbone her fingers stung like mad. ‘No man calls me a tramp!’ she bit out in furious condemnation.

As the livid marks of that slap sprang up across one slashing cheekbone, Dio stared back at her with truly stunned black eyes.

Even though Ellie instantly knew that she had gone too far, she was far too angry to acknowledge her mistake. ‘And your conceited mega-ego of a cousin deserves the same!’ she launched in defiant addition. ‘Who does that little squirt think he is? Calling me a babe, and smirking and pawing my hair like I’m some kind of toy to be played with! And how dare you behave in such a way as to give him the impression that I would stoop to be something as utterly disgusting as your woman?’

‘Disgusting…?’ Dio gritted, not quite levelly, eyes now as scorching a gold as the heart of a bonfire.

‘Yes, disgusting!’ Ellie repeated with a feeling shudder. ‘Women do not belong like objects to men—’

‘I could persuade you to belong to me,’ Dio declared in a wrathful growl.

Ellie breathed in so deep on that staggering claim she was vaguely surprised that she didn’t explode. She studied him with scornful green eyes. ‘What with? A Stone Age hammer? Because let me tell you, knocking me out and dragging me by force back to the family cave would be the only way!’

Without the slightest warning, Dio reached for her with powerful hands that brooked no refusal. He brought his mouth crashing down hard on hers. Shock paralysed Ellie. But a far deeper level of shock awaited her. When that wide, sensual mouth possessed hers with hungry force, it was as if the world came to a sudden screeching halt and sent her flying off into the sun.

The surge of heat Dio ignited could have burned up an entire planet. Ellie’s head swam, all rational thought suspended beneath that shattering shower of instant sensation. As he hauled her into a crushing and deeply satisfying embrace, her blood pounded madly through her pliant body.

He tasted like water after a long summer drought. He created a thirst she had never known she had. She was so hooked on that electrifying excitement that she clung like a vine to a tree, moaning low in her throat as his tongue invaded the moist sensitivity of her mouth in an erotic invasion that drove her wild.

Dio dragged her back from him, his breathing fractured, his eyes blazing over her with a primitive satisfaction he couldn’t hide. ‘I wouldn’t need to use force with you, Ellie. You’d come back to the family cave like a little lamb,’ he contended thickly.

As the haze of intoxicating passion evaporated, Ellie gazed up into his darkly handsome features, aghast. Simultaneously, Dio stiffened, veiled his eyes and set her back from him. A boiling wave of hot embarrassment enveloped Ellie. She couldn’t believe that what had happened had happened. She couldn’t believe that she could possibly have felt what he had made her feel when she hadn’t wanted to feel anything. And the silence lay there, thick and treacherous as a swamp that neither of them wanted to risk trying to cross.

‘I…I…’ Ellie began unevenly, suddenly eager to give both of them an acceptable excuse. ‘I shouldn’t have slapped you. I made you angry—’

‘Greek men don’t like having their masculinity challenged.’ Dio loosed a sardonic laugh and dealt her a bleak glance. ‘But I kissed you because I wanted to. As you said to me, tell it like it is.’

Taken aback by that blunt acknowledgement that the attraction playing havoc with her own self-discipline was not solely her problem, Ellie gazed at him in frank perplexity. Then she swiftly turned her head away.

‘Naturally we won’t be repeating the experiment,’ Dio completed with flat finality.

Ellie’s delicate profile tautened. Although he was only stating the obvious, only saying what she would have said herself, angry mortification still engulfed her. Conscious that she was being warned off, she felt humiliated. He had kissed her! Yet he still evidently saw a need to depress any foolish ideas she might be developing. Who the heck did he think he was?

Mr Totally Irresistible? Yes, she answered for herself. And that blazing confidence wasn’t vanity, she acknowledged with driven reluctance. He had it all. The looks, the money, the power. How often did Dio Alexiakis meet with rejection? How much more often must he meet with blatant encouragement?

But still Ellie felt the need to defend herself. ‘I lashed out because you were extremely ru—’

‘I don’t wish to discuss this any further,’ Dio interposed harshly. ‘I’m not myself today. My reactions are on a very short fuse.’

But in the space of a heartbeat he had blown Ellie’s belief that she wasn’t a very sexual person right out of the water. She could only cringe when she recalled the almost irresistible temptation to snatch him greedily back into her arms. She had never dreamt that any man could rouse her to that level of excitement, hunger and craving. That Dio Alexiakis had that power shook her to her very depths.

The limousine drove up the steep road at a stately crawl, other vehicles now falling in behind to follow in their wake. Above them, perched on the spectacular height of a cliff, the large domed roof of a pale building came into view. The higher they climbed, the bigger that building seemed to become. It couldn’t be called a villa, Ellie decided wide-eyed, it could only be called a palace.

‘Is this your home?’ she prompted tautly.

As the limo glided to a halt in front of the massive entrance, Dio gave a bleak nod of confirmation.

‘If you’re going to be socialising with friends and family now, just find me a room somewhere and lock the door. I don’t want to intrude—’

‘You’re staying with me,’ Dio countered steadily.

‘But what am I supposed to say if anyone speaks to me?’ Ellie’s dismay was unhidden. ‘I don’t even know what your father was called!’

‘His name was Spiros. He was seventy-one and I was his only child,’ Dio framed, his accent thickening to roughen his vowel sounds, his jawline squaring. ‘He was one of those good guys you mentioned. He may have passed away peacefully in his sleep, but his death was both sudden and unexpected.’

‘You had no chance to say goodbye. That’s very hard to bear.’ As she had listened Ellie had paled, briefly plunged into her own memories of the loss of a loved and loving parent.

Dio sent her a flashing glance of pure disdain. ‘Spare me the platitudes,’ he derided harshly. ‘My father and I had been estranged for some time before his death.’

‘It wasn’t a platitude. Whose fault was it that you were…estranged?’ she dared to ask.

‘Mine…’ She watched his lean brown hands slowly clench into powerful fists and then carefully unclench again the instant he realised she had noticed that betraying gesture.

‘You couldn’t have known—’

‘This is none of your business!’ Dio ground out thunderously.

They climbed out of the car. Ellie stole a troubled glance up at Dio’s rigid profile and suppressed a rueful sigh, recognising the stoic, all-male but unnatural control he was determined to maintain. Maybe it was easier for women to let go emotionally, talk it out, forgive themselves. It was certainly wiser, she reckoned. Right now Dio Alexiakis was like a big simmering volcano, struggling to swallow back a surging lava flow. Hanging back, she let him stride ahead of her,.

A large cluster of staff were waiting in the huge, opulent entrance hall. Dio spoke a few words. Ellie hovered awkwardly in the centre of the marble floor, her attention roaming over statues in alcoves and magnificent paintings and then centring on the gorgeous brunette who had unexpectedly appeared in a doorway.

Not having noticed the other woman, Dio swung back an imperious head. ‘Ellie!’ he gritted impatiently.

Her colour rising as every watching eye swivelled to examine her with keen interest, Ellie quickened her step. Just as Dio clamped a large imprisoning hand over hers, the sophisticated brunette strolled forward. She looked to be in her late twenties. She had short, glossy black hair, exotic dark eyes and creamy skin. Her designer dress and her jewellery were simply breathtaking.

‘Helena…’ Dio drawled, his long fingers suddenly closing so tightly over Ellie’s smaller hand that she almost yelped with discomfort.

Helena planted a cool kiss on his cheek and then addressed him in Greek. She ignored Ellie. But Ellie was grateful to be ignored because she was embarrassed by Dio’s stubborn determination to keep her by his side. Still conversing with Helena, whom Ellie now assumed to be a close relative, Dio walked them both into a vast reception room.

Other people began to arrive. Helena took up position like a seasoned hostess. Dio’s grip on Ellie’s fingers had mercifully loosened, and she tried to pull away, hoping to retire to a dark corner. But not only did Dio retain his hold on her, he also swept her forward and introduced her, although nobody got the chance to engage her in any actual conversation. Many curious eyes lingered on her, but Dio kept both of them on the move. He exchanged a word here, a sentence there, his bleak, brooding tension forestalling any more intimate dialogue.

‘Cristos…I hate this!’ he bit out rawly under his breath at one stage.

Some minutes later, an exuberant older man grasped him in a bear hug, forcing him to release Ellie. Ellie backed away and then walked out onto the balcony that appeared to stretch the entire length of the house. She breathed in deep in the hot still air. The view out over the bay was really incredible. An endless blue sky arched over the lush, forested pine slopes sprinkled with wild flowers and the majestic rock formations that jutted out into the sparkling turquoise sea far below. It was so beautiful it almost hurt.

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