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‘What?’ he demanded.
Her face was set. Absently Nikos noted how looking angry actually made her even more stunning. Her cerulean eyes flashed like sapphires.
‘Don’t give me that,’ she snapped. ‘Now, take your change, and your damn sandwich, and go!’
It was Nikos’s turn to experience anger. His face hardened. ‘Your rudeness to a customer,’ he said freezingly, ‘is totally unacceptable. Were you one of my employees you would be dismissed instantly for taking such an attitude to those whose custom pays your wages.’
For answer, she put the palms of her hands on the counter—Nikos found himself noting how well shaped they were—and braced herself.
‘And if I worked for you—which, thank God, I don’t—I would be suing you for sexual harassment!’ she bit back. Her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘That’s what I meant by wanting “meat”, sunshine!’
Nikos’s expression changed. The hardness was still in his eyes, but there was something else, too. A glint that, had the stunning but inexplicably bolshie female facing him been one of his acquaintances, she would have known sent a crystal-clear message.
‘Since when is it illegal to admire a woman’s beauty?’ he riposted silkily.
To prove his point he let his gaze wash over her again. Inside him, the visceral reaction she’d aroused so powerfully warred with the irritation he’d felt ever since his hunger had hit him—an irritation that her hostility and rudeness had elevated to outright anger. He wasn’t sure which emotion was predominant. What he was sure of, though, was that right now his overpowering desire was to rattle her cage...
‘If you want to go round ogling women like meat, then you should damn well wear sunglasses and spare us the ordeal,’ she shot back.
Nikos felt yet another emotion spark through him. Almost unconsciously, he found himself starting to enjoy himself.
One arched eyebrow quirked tauntingly. ‘Ordeal?’ he asked limpidly.
And then, quite deliberately, he let his gaze soften. No longer assessing. More...caressing. Letting her see clearly that women who received his approbation most definitely did not regard it as an ordeal...
And before his eyes, to his intense satisfaction, he saw a wave of colour suffuse her clear, translucent skin. Her cheeks grew stained and her gaze dropped.
‘Go away,’ she said. Her voice was tight. ‘Just...go away!’
He gave a low laugh. Game, set and match—thank you very much. He didn’t need any further confirmation to know that he’d just effortlessly breached her defences...got right past that bolshie anger barrier and hit home, sweet home.
With a sweeping gesture he scooped the pile of coins into his pocket, together with the solitary twenty-pound note, then picked up his ham sandwich and the bottle of water.
‘Have a nice day,’ he said flippantly, and strolled out of the sandwich shop.
His irritation was gone completely.
As he emerged he saw the down-and-out, Joe, leaning against a nearby lamppost, wolfing down the sandwich he had been given. On impulse, Nikos reached into his jacket pocket, jingling with all the pound coins she’d landed him with.
He scooped up a handful and proffered them. ‘You asked about spare change,’ he said to the man, who was eyeing him.
‘Ta, guv,’ said the man, and took the handful eagerly, his bloodshot eyes gleaming.
His grimy hands were shaking, and Nikos felt a pang of pity go through him.
‘She’s right, you know,’ he heard himself telling the man. ‘The booze is killing you.’
The bloodshot eyes met his. They were not gleaming now. There was desolation in them.
‘I know, mate...’
He pulled his gaze away and then he was off again, shuffling down the street, pocketing the money, shoulders hunched in defeat. For a moment Nikos’s eyes stayed on him. Then he saw a taxi cab approaching along the High Street, with its ‘For Hire’ sign illuminated. He flagged it down and flung himself into the back seat, starting to wolf down his ham sandwich.
His own words to the down-and-out echoed in his head. ‘She’s right, you know...’
His jaw tightened. Damn—she was, too. And not just about that wretched alcoholic.
Finishing his sandwich, he lifted his mobile phone from his inside pocket and pressed the speed-dial key for his London PA. She answered immediately, and Nikos gave her his instructions.
‘Janine, I need to have some flowers delivered...’
* * *
Mel stood, palms still pressed into the surface of the counter, and glared after the tall retreating figure. She was mad—totally hopping mad. She hadn’t been this angry since she couldn’t remember when.
Damn the arrogance of the man!
She could feel her jaw still clenching. She hadn’t liked him the moment he’d walked into the shop. The way he’d spoken—not even waiting for her to turn around to him, just making his demands as if she was some kind of servant. Underling. Minion. Lackey. The insulting words marched through her head.
She’d tried for her customary politeness while she was finishing Joe’s sandwich, but then she’d caught the way the damn man had looked at Joe—as if he was a bad smell. Well, yes, he was—but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Joe was in a bad way, and for heaven’s sake anyone would have felt pity for the guy, surely? Especially—and now her jaw clenched even more—especially a man whom life had so obviously not treated anything like as grimly as it had poor old Joe.
That had put her back up straight away. And from then on it had just got worse.
The whole monosyllabic exchange about what kind of sandwich he’d wanted replayed itself in her head, followed by—oh yes—his dropping a fifty-pound note down in payment. Mel’s mouth tightened in satisfaction. Well, it had given her particular pleasure to dump all those pound coins on him by way of change.
Boy, it had riled him—she had seen that immediately. Trouble was...and now her expression changed yet again, to a mix of anger and something else quite entirely...he had had that comeback on her...
Right through her body she could feel the heat flush. It was running right through her—through every vein, right out to the tips of her fingers—as though someone has tipped hot water into her. And to her own mortification she even felt glorious heat pooling in her core, felt her breasts start to tingle with traitorous reaction.
Oh, damn! Damn, damn, damn!
Yet she couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t stop the memory—instant, vivid and overpowering—of the way he’d looked at her. Looked right at her. Looked her over...
Meat, she said desperately to herself. As if you were a piece of meat—that’s how he looked at you. Just as you told him.
She fought to call back the burst of satisfaction she’d felt when she’d rapped that out at him, but it was impossible. All that was possible now was to go on feeling the wonderful flush of heat coursing through her. She fought it down as best she could, willing it to leave her—to leave her alone—just as she’d told him to go, just go away...
She shut her eyes, sighing heavily—hopelessly. OK—OK, she reasoned, so face it. However rude, arrogant and obnoxious he was, he was also—yup, she had to admit it—absolutely, totally and completely drop-dead devastating.
She’d registered it instantly—it would have been impossible not to—the minute she’d turned round with Joe’s sandwich to see just who it was who’d spoken to her in such a brusque, demanding fashion. Registered it, but had promptly busied herself in making Joe’s tea, pinning her eyes on pouring it out and ladling sugar into it the way Joe needed it.
But she’d been conscious of that first glimpse of Mr Drop-dead Devastating burning a hole in her retina—burning its way into her brain—so that all she’d wanted to do was lift her gaze and let it do what it had been trying to do with an urgency she still bewailed and berated.
Which was simply to stare and stare and stare...
At everything about him.
His height...his lean, fit body, sheathed in that hand-tailored suit that had fitted him like a glove, reaching across wide shoulders and moulding his broad chest just as the expanse of pristine white shirt had.
But it wasn’t his designer suit or even his lean physique that was dominating her senses now.
It was his eyes. Eyes that were night-dark and like tempered steel in a face that was constructed in some particular way that outdid every male she’d ever seen—on-screen or off. Chiselled jaw, strong nose, tough-looking cheekbones, winged brows and always, always, those ludicrously long-lashed, gold-flecked eyes that were lethal weapons entirely on their own.
That was what she’d wanted to gaze at, and that was what had been searing through her head all through their snarling exchange.
And then, as if a switch had been thrown, he’d suddenly changed the subject...
More heat coursed through her as the physical memory of how he’d looked at her hit her again. Turning the blatant focus of his male reaction on her like a laser beam. One that had burned right through her.
The slow wash of his gaze had poured over her like warm, molten honey—like a silken touch to her skin. It had felt as though he were caressing her, as if she could actually feel his hands shaping her body, his mouth lowering to hers to taste, to tease...to arouse.
All that in a single sensual glance...
And then, when she’d been helpless—pathetically, abjectly helpless—to do anything other than tell him—beg him—to leave, what had he done? He’d laughed! Laughed at her—knowing perfectly well how he’d got the better of her, how he’d made a cringing mockery of her defiance.
The colour in her cheeks turned to hectic spots as anger burned out that shaming blush he’d conjured in her.
Damn him!
Fuming, she went on staring blindly out through the shop door. She could no longer see him. With a final damning adjuration to herself to stop thinking of him, and everything about him, she whirled around to get on with her work.
Washing up had never been so noisy, nor slicing bread so vicious.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9c2e34b1-f36d-5bc0-a8ee-df6e3b4d5d41)
‘DID YOU HAVE those flowers delivered?’
It was the first question Nikos found himself asking as he returned to his London office after his meeting that afternoon. He did not doubt that his PA had complied, for she was efficiency itself—and she was used to despatching flowers to the numerous assorted females that featured in his life when he was in the UK.
But not usually to females who worked in sandwich bars...
Mouthy, contrary females who gave him a hard time...
Possessed of looks so stunning he still could not get them out of his head...
He gave a shake of his head, clearing the memory and settling himself down at his desk. There really was no point thinking about the blonde any more. Let alone speculating, as he found himself wanting to do, on just what she might look like if she were dressed in an outfit that adorned her extraordinary beauty.
How much more beautiful could she look?
The question rippled through his mind, and in its wake came a ripple of something that was not idle speculation but desire...
With her hair loosened, a gown draping her slender yet rounded figure, her sapphire eyes luminous and long-lashed...
He cut the image. She’d been a fleeting fiery encounter and nothing more.
No, he thought decisively, switching on his PC, he’d sent flowers to atone for his rudeness—provoking though she’d been—and he would leave it at that. He had women enough to choose from—no need to add another one.
He flicked open his diary to see what was coming up in the remainder of his sojourn in London. His father, chairman of the family-run Athens-based investment bank, left that city reluctantly these days, and Nikos found himself doing nearly all the foreign travel that running the bank required.
A frown moved fleetingly across his brow. At least here in London he was spared his father’s wandering into the office to make one of his habitual complaints about Nikos’s mother. The moment Nikos got back to Athens, though, he knew there would be a litany of complaints awaiting him, while his father indulged himself and offloaded. Then—predictably—the next time he saw his mother a reciprocal litany would be pressed upon him...
With a sigh of exasperation he pushed his interminably warring parents out of his head space. There was never going to be an end to their virulent verbal attacks on each other, their incessant sniping and backbiting. It had gone on for as long as Nikos could remember, and he was more than fed up with it.
Briskly, he ran an eye down the diary page and then frowned again—for quite a different reason this time.
Damn.
His frown deepened. How had he got himself involved in that? A black-tie charity bash at the Viscari St James Hotel this coming Friday evening.
In itself, that would not have been a problem. What was a problem, though, was that he could see from the diary that the evening included Fiona Pellingham. Right now that woman was not someone he wanted to encounter.
A high-flying mergers-and-acquisitions expert at a leading business consultancy, Fiona had taken an obvious shine to Nikos during a business meeting on his last visit to London, and had made it strikingly clear to him that she’d very much like to make an acquisition of him for herself.
But for all her striking brunette looks and svelte figure she was, as Nikos had immediately realised, the possessive type, and she would want a great deal more from him than the passing affair that was all he ever indulged in when it came to women. And that meant that the last thing he wanted to do was to give her an opportunity to pursue her obvious interest in him.
He frowned again. The problem was, even if he didn’t go to this charity bash she’d somehow put into his diary, Fiona would probably find another way to pursue him. Plague him with yet more invitations and excuses to meet up with him. What he needed was to put her off completely. Convince her he was unavailable romantically.
What he needed was a handy, convenient female he could take along with him on Friday to keep Fiona at bay. But just who would fit that bill? For a moment his mind was totally, absolutely blank. Then, in the proverbial light-bulb moment, he knew exactly who he wanted to take. And the knowledge made him sit back abruptly and hear the question shaping itself inside his head.
Well, after all, why not? You did want to know just how much more beautiful she could look if she were dressed for the evening...
This would be a chance to find out—why not take it?
A slow smile started to curve his mouth.
* * *
Mel was staring at the cluttered table in the back room behind the sandwich bar. She didn’t see the clutter—all she saw was the huge bouquet that sat in its own cellophane container of water, its opulent blooms as large as her fists. A bouquet that was so over-the-top it was ridiculous. Her eyes were stormy.
Who the hell did he think he was?
Except that she knew the answer to that, because his name came at the end of the message on the card in the envelope pinned to the cellophane.
Hope these make amends and improve your mood.
It was signed ‘Nikos Parakis.’
Her brows lowered. So he was Greek. It made sense, now she thought about it, because although his English accent had been perfect, his clipped public-school vowels a perfect match with the rest of his ‘Mr Rich’ look, nevertheless his complexion had a distinctly Mediterranean hue to it, and his hair was as dark as a raven’s wing.
Even as she thought about it his image sprang into her vision again—and with it the expression in those dark, long-lashed eyes that had looked her over, assessing her, clearly liking what he saw...
As if he was finding me worthy of his attentions!
She bristled all over again, fulminating as she glared at the hapless bouquet of lilies. Their heady scent filled the small space, obliterating the smell of food that always permeated the room from the sandwich bar beyond. The scent made her feel light-headed. Its strength was almost overpowering, sending coils of fragrance into her lungs. Exotic, perfumed...sensuous.
As sensuous as his gaze had been.
That betraying heat started to flush up inside her again, and with a growl of anger at her own imbecility she wheeled about. She had no idea where she was going to put the ridiculously over-the-top bouquet, but right now she had work to do.
