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‘I signed what I signed and it did get Dad off the hook,’ Maxie reminded her.
‘Some thanks you got for your sacrifice.’
‘Dad’s never asked me for money since—’
‘Maxie...you haven’t seen him for three years,’ Liz pointed out grimly.
Maxie tensed. ‘Because he’s ashamed, Liz. He feels guilty around me now.’
Liz frowned as her guide dog, Bounce, a glossy black Labrador, sprang up and nudged his head against her knee. ‘I wonder who that is coming to the door. I’m not expecting anyone...and nobody outside the mail redirection service and that modelling agency of yours is supposed to know you’re here!’
By the time the doorbell actually went, Liz was already in the hall moving to answer it. A couple of minutes later she reappeared in the doorway. ‘You have a visitor... foreign, male, very tall, very attractive voice. He also says he’s a very good friend of yours—’
‘Of mine?’ Maxie queried with a perplexed frown.
Liz shook her head. ‘He has to be a good friend to have worked out where you’re hiding out. And Bounce gave him the all-over suspicious sniff routine and passed him with honours so I put him in the lounge. Look, I’ll be in the studio, Maxie. I need to finish off that order before I leave tomorrow.’
Maxie wondered who on earth had managed to find her. The press? Oh, dear heaven, had Liz trustingly invited some sneaky journalist in? Taut with tension, she hurried down the hall into the lounge.
One step into that small cosy room, she stopped dead as if she had run into a brick wall without warning. Smash, crash, her mind screamed as she took a sudden instinctive backward step, shock engulfing her in rolling waves of disorientation.
‘Maxie...how are you?’ Angelos Petronides purred as he calmly extended a lean brown hand in conventional greeting.
Maxie gaped as if a boa constrictor had risen in front of her, her heart thumping at manic speed and banging in her eardrums. A very good friend. Had Liz misheard him?
‘Mr Petronides—?’
‘Angelos, please,’ he countered with a very slight smile.
Maxie blinked. She had never seen him smile before. She had been in this arrogant male’s company half a dozen times over the past three years and this was the very first time he had deigned to verbally acknowledge that she lived and breathed. In her presence he had talked around her as if she wasn’t there, switching to Greek if she made any attempt to enter the conversation, and on three separate occasions, evidently responding to his request, Leland had sent her home early in a taxi.
With rock-solid assurance, Angelos let his hand drop again. Amusement at her stupefied state flashed openly in his brilliant black eyes.
Maxie stiffened. ‘I’m afraid I can’t imagine what could bring you here...or indeed how you found me—’
‘Were you ever lost?’ Angelos enquired with husky innuendo while he ran heavily lidded heated dark eyes over her lithe, slender frame with extraordinarily insulting thoroughness. ‘I suspect that you know very well why I am here.’
Her fair skin burning, Maxie’s sapphire blue eyes shuttered. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea—’
‘You are now a free woman.’
This is not happening to me, a little voice screeched in the back of Maxie’s mind. She folded her arms, saw those terrifyingly shrewd eyes read her defensive body language and lowered her arms again, fighting not to coil her straining fingers into fists.
One unguarded moment almost six months ago... Was that all it had taken to encourage him? He had caught her watching him and instantaneously, as if that momentary abstraction of hers had been a blatant invitation, he had reacted with a lightning flash look of primitive male sexual hunger. A split second later he had turned away again, but that shatteringly unexpected response of his had shaken Maxie inside out.
She had told herself she had imagined it. She had almost cherished this arrogant Greek tycoon’s indifference to her as a woman. OK, so possibly, once or twice, his ability to behave as if she was invisible had irritated and humiliated her, but then she had seen some excuse for his behaviour. Unlike Leland, Angelos Petronides would never be guilty of a need to show off a woman like a prize poodle at what was supposed to be a business meeting.
‘And now that you are free, I want you in my life,’ Angelos informed her with the supreme confident cool of a male who had never been refused anything he wanted by a woman. Not a male primed for rejection, not a male who had even contemplated that as a remote possibility. His attitude spoke volumes for his opinion of her morals.
And at that mortifying awareness Maxie trembled, her usual deadpan, wonderful and absolute control beginning to fray round the edges. ‘You really believe that you can just walk in here and tell me—?’
‘Yes,’ Angelos cut in with measured impatience. ‘Don’t be coy. You have no need to play such games with me. I have not been unaware of your interest in me.’
Her very knees wobbled with rage, a rage such as Maxie had never known before. He had the subtlety of a sledgehammer, the blazing self-image of a sun god. The very first time she had seen Angelos Petronides she had had a struggle to stop staring. Lethally attractive men were few and far between; fiercely intelligent and lethally attractive men were even fewer. And the natural brute power Angelos radiated like an aura of intimidation executed its own fatal fascination.
He had filled her with intense curiosity but that was all. Maxie had never learnt what it was like to actually want a man. She didn’t like most men; she didn’t trust them. What man had ever seen her as an individual with emotions and thoughts that might be worth a moment’s attention? What man had ever seen her as anything more than a glamorous one-dimensional trophy to hang on his arm and boast about?
As a teenager, Maxie had always been disillusioned, angered or frankly repelled long before she could reach the stage of reciprocating male interest. And now Angelos Petronides had just proved himself the same as the rest of the common herd. What she couldn’t understand was why she should be feeling a fierce, embittered stab of stark disappointment.
‘You’re trembling...why don’t you sit down?’ Angelos switched into full domineering mode with the polished ease of a duck taking to water and drew up an armchair for her occupancy. When she failed to move, the black eyes beneath those utterly enviable long inky lashes rested on her in irritated reproof. ‘You have shadows under your eyes. You have lost weight. You should be taking better care of yourself.’
She would not lose her temper; she would tie herself in knots before she exposed her outrage and he recognised her humiliation. How dared he...how dared he land on Liz’s doorstep and announce his lustful intentions and behave as if he was awaiting a round of applause? If she spread herself across the carpet at his feet in gratitude, he would no doubt happily take it in his stride.
‘Your interest in my wellbeing is unwelcome and unnecessary, Mr Petronides,’ Maxie countered not quite levelly, and she sat down because she was honestly afraid that if she didn’t she might give way to temptation and slap him across that insolent mouth so hard she would bruise her fingers.
He sank down opposite her, which was an instant relief because even when she was standing he towered over her. That was an unusual sensation for a woman as tall as Maxie, and one that with him in the starring role she found irrationally belittling.
For such a big, powerfully built man, however, he moved with the lightness and ease of an athlete. He was as dark as she was fair...quite staggeringly good-looking. Spectacular cheekbones, a strong, thin-bladed nose, the wide mouth of a sensualist. But it was those extraordinary eyes which held and compelled and lent such blazing definition to his fantastic bone structure. And there was not a soupçon of softness or real emotion in that hard, assessing gaze.
‘Leland’s wife was planning to take you to court over that loan,’ Angelos Petronides delivered smoothly into the thumping silence.
Maxie’s spine jerked rigid, eyes flying wide in shock as she gasped, ‘How did you find out about the loan?’
Angelos angled a broad, muscular shoulder in a light, dismissive shrug, as if they were enjoying a light and casual conversation. ‘It’s not important. Jennifer will not take you to court. I have settled the loan on your behalf.’
Slowly, her muscles strangely unwilling to do her bidding, Maxie leant forward. ‘Say that again,’ she invited shakily, because she couldn’t believe he had said what he had just said.
Angelos Petronides regarded her with glittering black unfathomable eyes. ‘I will not hold that debt over you, Maxie. My intervention was a gesture of good faith alone.’
‘G-good faith...?’ Maxie stammered helplessly, her voice rising to shrillness in spite of her every effort to control it.
‘What else could it be?’ Angelos shifted a graceful hand in eloquent emphasis, his brilliant gaze absorbing the raw incredulity and shock which had blown a giant smoking crater in the Ice Queen’s famed façade of cool. ‘What man worthy of the name would seek to blackmail a woman into his bed?’
CHAPTER TWO
MAXIE leapt upright, her beautiful face a flushed mask of fury. ‘Do you think I am a complete fool?’ she shouted at him so loudly her voice cracked.
Unhurriedly, Angelos Petronides shifted his incredibly long legs and fluidly unfolded to his full height again, his complete control mocking her loss of temper. ‘With regard to some of your past decisions in life...how frank am I allowed to be?’
Maxie sucked in oxygen as if she was drowning, clamped a hand to her already opening mouth and spun at speed away from him. She was shattered that he had smashed her self-discipline. As noise filtered through the open window she became dimly aware of the shouts of children playing football somewhere outside, but their voices were like sounds impinging from another world.
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ Angelos drawled in a mocking undertone. ‘I’ve seen your temper many times before. You go pale and you stiffen. Every time Leland put so much as a finger on you in public, I witnessed your struggle not to shrug him off. It must have been fun in the bedroom...’
Maxie’s slender backbone quivered. Her fingernails flexed like claws longing to make contact with human flesh. She wanted to kill him. But she couldn’t even trust herself to speak, and was all the more agitated by the simple fact that she had never felt such rage before and honestly didn’t know how to cope with it.
‘But then, it was always evident to me that Leland’s biggest thrill was trotting you out in public at every possible opportunity. “Look at me, I have a blonde twice as tall as me and a third of my age,”’ Angelos mused with earthy amusement. ‘I suspect he might not have demanded intimate entertainment that often. He wasn’t a young man...’
‘And you are...without doubt...the most offensive, objectionable man I have ever met!’ Maxie launched with her back still rigidly turned to him.
‘I am a taste you will acquire. After all, you need someone like me.’ A pair of strong hands settled without warning on her slim shoulders and exerted sufficient pressure to swivel her back round to face him.
‘I need someone like you like I need a hole in the head!’ Maxie railed back at him rawly as she tore herself free of that controlling hold. ‘And keep your hands off me...I don’t like being pawed!’
‘Why are you so angry? I had to tell you about the loan,’ Angelos pointed out calmly. ‘I was aware that the Coulters’ lawyer had already been in touch. Naturally, I wanted to set your mind at rest.’
The reminder of the debt that had simply been transferred acted like a drenching flood of cold water on Maxie’s overheated emotions. Her angry flush was replaced by waxen pallor. Her body turned cold and weak and shaky and she studied the worn carpet at his feet. ‘You’ve bought yourself a pup. I can’t settle that loan...and right now I haven’t even got enough to make a payment on it,’ she framed sickly.
‘Why do you get yourself so worked up about nothing?’ Angelos released an extravagant sigh. ‘Sit down before you fall down. Haven’t I already given you my assurance that I have no intention of holding that former debt over your head in any way? But, in passing, may I ask what you needed that loan for?’
‘I got into a real financial mess, that’s all,’ she muttered evasively, protecting her father as she always did, conscious of the derisive distaste such weakness roused in other, stronger men. And, drained by her outbursts and ashamed of them, she found herself settling back down into the chair again.
For the very first time she was genuinely scared of Angelos Petronides. He owned a piece of her, just as Leland once had, but he would be expecting infinitely more than a charade in return. She wasn’t taken in by his reassurances, or by that roughly gentle intonation she had never dreamt he might possess. In the space of ten minutes he had reduced her to a babbling, screeching wreck and, for now, he was merely content to have made his domineering presence felt.
‘Money is not a subject I discuss with women,’ Angelos told her quietly. ‘It is most definitely not a subject I ever wish to discuss with you again.’
Angelos Petronides, billionaire and benevolence personified? Maxie shuddered with disbelief. Did he ever read his own publicity? She had sat in on business meetings chaired by him, truly unforgettable experiences. The King and his terrified minions, who behaved as if at any moment he might snap and shout, ‘Off with their heads!’ Grown men perspired and stammered with nerves in his presence, cowered when he shot down their suggestions, went into cold panic if he frowned. He did not suffer fools gladly.
He had a brilliant mind, but that superior intellect had made him inherently devious and manipulative. He controlled the people around him. In comparison, Leland Coulter had been harmless. Maxie had coped with Leland. And Leland give him his due, had never tried to pose as her only friend in a hostile world. But over her now loomed a six-foot-four-inch giant threat without a conscience.
‘I know where you’re coming from,’ Maxie heard herself admit out loud as she lifted her beautiful head again.
Angelos gazed down at her with steady black eyes. ‘Then why all the histrionics?’
Maxie gulped, disconcerted to feel that awful surge of temper rise again. With that admission she had expected to make him wary, force him to ease back. About the last reaction she had expected was his cool acknowledgement that she was intelligent enough to recognise his tactics for what they were. The iron hand in the velvet glove.
‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ Angelos suggested smoothly. ‘We can talk then. You need some time to think things over.’
‘I need no time whatsoever.’ Maxie stared back up into those astonishingly dark and impenetrable eyes and suffered the oddest light-headed sensation, as if the floor had shifted beneath her. Her lashes fluttered, a slight bemused frown line drawing her fine brows together as she shook her head slightly, long golden hair thick as skein on skein of silk rippling round her shoulders. ‘I will not be your mistress.’
‘I haven’t asked yet.’
A cynical laugh was torn from Maxie as she rose restively to her feet again. ‘You don’t need to be that specific. I certainly didn’t imagine you were planning to offer me anything more respectable. And, no, I do not intend to discuss this any further,’ she asserted tightly, carefully focusing on a point to the left of him, the tip of her tongue stealing out to moisten her dry lower lip in a swift defensive motion. ‘So either you are a good loser or a bad loser, Mr Petronides...I imagined I’ll find out which soon enough—’
‘I do not lose,’ Angelos breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘I am also very persistent. If you make yourself a challenge, I will resent the waste of time demanded by pursuit but, like any red-blooded male, I will undoubtedly want you even more.’
Without even knowing why, Maxie shivered. There was the most curious buzz in the atmosphere, sending tiny little warning pulses of alarm through her tautening length. Her unsettled and bemused eyes swerved involuntarily back to him and locked into the ferocious hold of his compelling scrutiny.
‘I will also become angry with you,’ Angelos forecast, shifting soundlessly closer, his husky drawl thickening and lowering in pitch to a mesmeric level of intimacy. ‘You made Leland jump through no hoops...why should I? And I would treat you so much better than he did. I know what a woman likes. I know what makes a woman of your nature feel secure and appreciated, what makes her happy, content, satisfied...’
Like a child drawn too close to a blazing fire in spite of all warnings, Maxie was transfixed. She could feel her own heartbeat accelerating, the blood surging rich and vibrantly alive through her veins. A kind of craving, an almost terrifying upswell of excitement potently and powerfully new to her gripped her.
‘A-Angelos...?’ she whispered, feeling dizzy and disorientated.
He reached out and drew her to him without once breaking that spellbinding appraisal. ‘How easily you can say my name...’
And she said it again, like a supplicant eager to please.
Those stunning eyes of his blazed gold as a hot sun with satisfaction. She trembled, legs no longer dependable supports beneath her, and yet in all her life she had never been more shockingly aware of her own body. Her braless breasts were swelling beneath the denim shirt she wore, the tender nipples suddenly tightening to thrust with aching sensitivity against the rough grain of the fabric.
There was a sudden enormous jarring thud on the windowpane behind her. Startled, Maxie almost jumped a foot in the air, and even Angelos flinched.
‘Relax...a football hit the window,’ he groaned in apparent disbelief as he raised his dark, imperious head. ‘It is now being retrieved by two grubby little boys.’
But Maxie wasn’t listening. She had been plunged into sudden appalled confusion by the discovery that Angelos Petronides had both arms loosely linked round her and had come within treacherous inches of kissing her. Even worse, she realised, every fibre of her yearning body had been longing desperately for that kiss.
Jerking back abruptly from the proximity of his lean, muscular frame, Maxie pressed shaking hands against her hot, flushed cheeks. ‘Get out of here and don’t ever come back!’
Angelos grated something guttural in Greek, stood his ground and dealt her a hard, challenging look. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
And what remained of Maxie’s self-respect drained away as she recognised his genuine bewilderment. Dear heaven, she had encouraged him. She had been straining up to him, mindlessly eager for his lovemaking, paralysed to the spot with excitement and longing, and he knew it too. And did his body feel as hers did now? Deprived, aching... As she registered such unfamiliar, intimate thoughts, Maxie realised just how out of control she was.
‘I don’t have to explain myself to you,’ she gabbled in near panic as she rushed past him out into the hall to pull open the front door. ‘I want you to leave and I don’t want you to come back. In fact I’ll put the dog on you if you ever come here again!’
In a demonstration of disturbing volatility, Angelos vented a sudden appreciative laugh, the sound rich and deep and earthy. His quality of dark implacability vanished under the onslaught of that amusement. Maxie stared. The sheer charisma of that wolfish grin took her by surprise.
‘The dog’s more likely to lick me to death...and you?’ An ebullient ebony brow elevated as he watched the hot colour climb in her perplexed face.
‘Leave!’ The word erupted from Maxie, so desperate was she to silence him.
‘And you?’ Angelos repeated with steady emphasis. ‘For some strange reason, what just happened between us, which on my level was nothing at all, unnerved you, scared you...embarrassed you...’
As he listed his impressions Maxie watched him with a sick, sinking sensation in her stomach, for never before had she been so easily read, and never before had a man made her feel like a specimen on a slide under a microscope.
‘Now why should honest hunger provoke shame?’ Angelos asked softly. ‘Why not pleasure?’
‘Pleasure?’
‘I do not presume to know your every thought...as yet,’ Angelos qualified with precision. His brilliant eyes intent, he strolled indolently back into the fresh air. ‘But surely when ambition and desire unite, you should be pleased?’
He left her with that offensive suggestion, striding down the path and out to the pavement where a uniformed chauffeur waited beside a long, dark limousine. The two wide-eyed and decidedly grubby little boys, one of whom was clutching the football, were trying without success to talk to the po-faced chauffeur. She watched as Angelos paused to exchange a laughing word with them, bending to their level with disconcerting ease. Disturbed by her own fascination, she slammed shut the door on her view.
He would be back; she knew that. She couldn’t explain how but she knew it as surely as she knew that dawn came around every morning. Feeling curiously like someone suffering from concussion, she wandered aimlessly back down into the kitchen and was surprised to find Liz sitting there, her kindly face anxious.
‘Bounce started whining behind the studio door. He must’ve heard you shouting. I came back into the house but naturally I didn’t intrude when I realised it was just an argument,’ Liz confided ruefully. ‘Unfortunately, before I retreated again, I heard rather more than I felt comfortable hearing. You’re a wretched dog, Bounce...your grovelling greeting to Angelos Petronides affected my judgement!’
‘So you realised who my visitor was—?’
‘Not initially, but my goodness I should’ve done!’ Liz exclaimed feelingly. ‘You’ve talked about Angelos Petronides so often—
‘Have I?’ Maxie breathed with shaken unease, her cheeks burning.
Liz smiled. ‘All the time you were criticising him and complaining about his behaviour, I could sense how attracted you were to him...’
A hoarse laugh erupted from Maxie’s dry throat ‘I wish you’d warned me. It hit me smack in the face when I wasn’t prepared for it. Stupid, wretched chemistry, and I never even realised... I feel such an idiot now!’ Eyes prickling with tears of reaction, she studied the table, struggling to reinstate her usual control. ‘And I’ve got the most banging headache s-starting up...’
‘Of course you have,’ Liz murmured soothingly. ‘I’ve never heard you yelling at the top of your voice before.’
‘But then I have never hated anyone so much in my life as I hate Angelos Petronides,’ Maxie confessed shakily. ‘I wanted to kill him, Liz...I really wanted to kill him! Now I’m in debt to him instead of Leland—’
