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‘I told you to stay put.’
Becca looked at the long brown fingers curled around her upper arm. Until he touched her she had been feeling a lot better. Now her sensitive stomach was quivering violently. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she said.
Considering the advice she had dished out on the subject to her sister, she couldn’t go down the road of reacting to arbitrary and dangerous sexual attraction without being a total hypocrite!
‘More to the point, what are you doing?’ he queried suspiciously.
‘Is that any of your business?’ she countered frostily. ‘And, thank you, but I can find my own way.’ Her eyes slid to the hand on her arm, but he didn’t react. ‘I don’t need an escort.’
‘The head of security might have other ideas,’ he retorted drily.
‘That’s not you?’ Her frowning regard travelled the length of his tall lean person. No reason, of course, that he had to be the boss. He wasn’t wearing a badge or anything. But he didn’t act like a man who was used to obeying orders.
On the other hand it was easy to picture him issuing them, and having people fall over themselves to obey. An accusing frown settled on her upturned face.
‘You act as if you are.’ No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t she see him slotting into any hierarchy of command. This man didn’t look like a team player to her.
‘I’m new to the game,’ he admitted glibly.
‘Which probably explains why you’re taking your duties too zealously,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve not committed a crime or anything. You’ve got no right to restrain me against my will. In fact,’ she added, ‘That—’ her nod indicated the hand on her arm ‘—is probably assault. Actually, I don’t think there’s any probably about it.’
He smiled, and Becca lowered her eyes as she experienced a spasm of sexual awareness that made her knees quiver. What is it with me? You’d think I’d never seen an attractive man before!
‘Perhaps we should let the police decide?’
The silky suggestion brought her horrified gaze back to his face. ‘You’re joking?’
He shrugged and looked infuriatingly enigmatic.
Becca couldn’t stop the quiver of doubt entering her voice as she added, ‘I’ve told you, I’ve not committed a crime or anything.’
‘You don’t think so?’
He made no attempt to prevent her as she pulled her arm free of his grasp and folded it across her heaving chest, glaring up at him defiantly.
‘I don’t think. I know.’
Despite her confident assertion Becca couldn’t prevent a shade of worry entering her voice as she reviewed her gate-crashing.
‘Unless this is a question of one law for the rich and another for the rest of us.’
His dark eyes narrowed on her scornful face. ‘You have a problem with people being wealthy?’
She lifted a hand to her aching head. ‘No, I have a problem with spoilt parasites like the Carides.’
Aware of an expression in her captor’s dark eyes that made her uneasy, she bit her lip to cut short this flow of bitter confidences.
‘It’s a little late to be discreet.’
‘I really don’t want to debate this with you. I just want—’ She broke off and winced as the bells overhead broke into a triumphal peal. Face pale and composed, she lifted her eyes to his face. ‘I just want to go home.’
‘An excellent plan,’ he said, falling into step beside her.
Becca tilted her face and studied the hard angles and intriguing hollows of his dark, lean and exasperatingly sexy features. ‘What,’ she demanded, expelling a gusty sigh, ‘do you think you’re doing now?’
‘Making sure you go home.
‘Are you going to escort me all the way to Yorkshire?’
‘I’m going to stick to you until I’m sure you can’t double back and wreak the destructive vengeance your soul craves.’ His eyes locked with hers. ‘I take it that is what this is about?’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me revenge wouldn’t make me feel better?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say that,’ Christos responded, thinking of the groom with his bloody nose.
There were times in life when a man had to stop being cerebral and get physical—though he imagined there were a few people inside who might disagree with him at that moment. It would be a long time before he was forgiven for ruining the wedding. But it would be interesting to hear how they explained away the groom’s face…
Becca pursed her lips and looked at him with mute dislike. She saw he was smiling. ‘You have my word that I won’t crash the reception or spoil the wedding photos.’
‘Your word…’ he mused, dragging a brown hand through his dark collar-length hair. ‘You do see my problem there?’
Becca planted her hands on her slim hips and inhaled wrathfully. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’
‘Not as such. But,’ he qualified, ‘I do think you’re not thinking straight right now.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’ She gritted her teeth as she reflected on his comment. ‘Not a liar, but mentally unbalanced. Gosh,’ she observed bitterly, ‘I feel better already.’
He met her angry eyes and released a low, husky laugh. Becca regarded him with growing frustration, but could see that it might be hard to remain angry with a man who possessed a laugh that warm and attractive. Fortunately she wasn’t going to be within laughing distance long enough for it to become a real problem!
‘Go ahead—enjoy the joke.’ She gave a bleak wintry smile. ‘I can see your point. What’s a ruined life…? So long,’ she added on a bitter quaver, ‘as it isn’t your life!’
‘I know it feels like it to you now, but your life isn’t ruined.’
She looked different, but she obviously wasn’t. She was like any number of women who were willing to overlook the fact that his cousin was a total bastard.
Becca’s electric blue eyes narrowed. She had never had the sort of fiery temper that was meant to accompany auburn hair, but his confident assertion had made her see red. As she swallowed hard, trying to contain her feelings, an image of her sister’s shadowed eyes flashed into her head.
‘What would you know about it?’
Jaw taut, she allowed her hostile eyes to linger on his lean face. Actually, it wasn’t a conscious decision. The truth was that once she started looking she found it disturbingly hard to stop.
‘You have to put this behind you.’ And I have to stop talking in platitudes.
‘I’d settle for putting you behind me. A long way behind me,’ she muttered.
‘Not going to happen,’ he said, planting a hand lightly on her shoulder and directing her to the other side of an ancient gnarled yew tree that grew beside the six-feet-high wall. ‘There’s a side gate.’
There was. It was covered in ivy and easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. On the other side of the gate, Becca found herself in a narrow cobbled side street with expensive-looking cars parked down one side.
The dark-suited figure patrolling up and down with a walkie-talkie in his pocket spotted her immediately. He advanced, his intention clearly to intercept her—until he saw the man beside her. He nodded in a manner that could only be described as deferential, and walked on to meet them.
As the two men began to speak, Becca, staring straight ahead, walked past them. The narrow lane led to the main road, where people were waiting behind barriers for a glimpse of the bride. She had not quite lost herself in the crowd when she heard a distinctive footfall beside her.
‘Look!’ she snapped, swinging back. ‘I’m not going to crash the reception, or scream abuse at the bride, so will you just back off?’ No, I’m going to sneak back home with my tail between my legs and tell my little sister I did nothing! ‘This has all been a massive waste of time and energy,’ she admitted, her shoulders slumping with weary defeat.
‘Well, most women in your situation would have contented themselves with a kiss-and-tell story in the tabloids. Though that lucrative option is still open to you,’ he admitted.
When she didn’t respond to this blatant provocation he tried another tack.
‘Have you considered what would have happened if you had stood up and done your piece—dramatically stalled the wedding?’
Becca, about to walk away, swung back and blinked in owl-like confusion up at his face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We are talking stalled, not stopped. The wedding would have gone ahead,’ he elaborated brutally.
Becca shrugged. ‘She’s welcome to him.’
‘Yes, every time I look at you I feel great waves of indifference.’ In his experience a woman didn’t travel halfway across the country because she was indifferent.
Stung by his blatant sarcasm, Becca had opened her mouth to deliver a biting retort when involuntarily her eyes dropped over the length of his lean, striking person. Indifference, she reflected, aware of the telling leap in her pulse-rate, would not be the most predictable response this man normally excited in the opposite sex.
‘Or maybe this isn’t about revenge?’ he suggested softly.
His comment diverted Becca from the direction her own troubled thoughts had taken. The awful part was, he was right. She hadn’t thought this thing through. And now he had forced her to do so she could see that she had almost set into motion a chain of events that would have ended up with the tabloid press camped on her sister’s doorstep!
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, feeling sick when she thought of how close she’d come to making things ten times worse for Erica.
‘Maybe you thought he’d take one look at you and realise that he’d made a terrible mistake—that you were the one he wanted all along.’ As he watched her shake her head in angry denial he experienced a rush of anger. ‘It wouldn’t have happened,’ he informed her harshly. Because I wouldn’t have let it happen.
Becca took a startled step back when, without warning, he reached across and ran a long finger down the curve of her cheek. After making a moment’s startled contact with his dark, strangely compelling gaze she swept her lashes down against her cheek and stayed that way until she had taken several deep, restorative breaths.
‘You sound very sure,’ she said, feeling normal again bar the strong urge to reach up and press her own fingers to the tingling area on her cheek.
Christos was drawn by the intense china blue of her wide eyes. It occurred to him that being forced to compare this face with that of his prospective bride might have caused even his avaricious cousin to experience a stab of regret.
A muscle in his lean cheek clenched. ‘Look, maybe you were special.’
To Becca his shrug suggested he had lost interest in the subject. ‘Are you trying to make me feel better?’ she joked, her eyes hostile as she sketched a grim smile. ‘Because I have to tell you you’re not very good at it.’
Her observation made his lips quiver slightly. ‘You’re certainly not Alex’s usual type.’
‘Really? What do they have that I don’t?’
Other than no personality? Christos thought as he grimly ticked off the attributes that normally attracted his cousin on his fingers. ‘His usual types are young, low-maintenance blondes, with long legs, a lot of ambition, and virtually no talent for anything but wearing and buying clothes and spending his money.’
This cynical analysis made her eyes flash angrily. ‘It sounds like you know the boss pretty well.’ And don’t like him much, she thought, but didn’t add.
‘Boss?’
Becca looked his curling lip and couldn’t help but think he must be awfully good at what he did for any employer to put up with his disdainful manner.
‘Well, isn’t that what he is?’ she challenged. ‘Or does it hurt your macho pride to admit you’re a lackey, like the rest of us?’
‘And who are you in servitude to?’
‘I’m a primary schoolteacher.
‘I never had a teacher that looked like you.’
There was an insolent sexual quality to his appraisal that ought to have repelled her. Instead she felt a shiver of excitement slide down her spine.
‘Actually,’ he added, before she could respond, ‘Christos Carides is the head of the company which paid for the wedding security today.’
Becca shrugged. The technicality changed nothing as far as she was concerned. ‘He’s a Carides.’
His dark brows lifted. ‘So you tar everyone of that name with the same brush? Is that fair?’
‘Don’t lecture me on fairness,’ she snapped back, tired of being the voice of impartial reason.
‘Are you always this forthright?’
‘Say what you mean—you think I’m mouthy?’
The retort drew a reluctant grin from Christos. ‘You know, Alex is even more of a fool than I thought he was.’
‘If that is meant to be a compliment, save it.’ It was not good to start wondering how someone who looked like a sleek predator would kiss. ‘I have no taste for insincerity.’ Or beautiful but predatory men, she reminded herself.
His expression hardened. ‘That sounds an odd thing for someone who has been Alex’s lover to say. Insincerity is his speciality.’
The inflection in his deep voice as he said lover sent an odd, disturbing surge through Becca’s body. ‘Do you always bad-mouth your employers?’
‘I thought you put no value on insincerity?’
‘I do put value on good manners, however.’
‘Now,’ he said, ‘you do sound like a teacher. I can see you in the classroom.’ Not strictly the truth. Christos was seeing her in the bedroom!
The classroom was somewhere she really wished she had never left, Becca reflected. Perhaps she just didn’t have the right genes for revenge and retribution? She had certainly made a total mess of this!
CHAPTER FIVE
TO BECCA’S horror she felt her lip quiver as her eyes filled with weak tears. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ she cursed under her breath, as she caught her wobbling lip between her teeth and sniffed.
‘Come on,’ he urged, taking her arm and pulling her into the doorway of a shop.
The edge of rough concern in his deep voice was tinged with impatience, and one or the other—she wasn’t sure which—made Becca’s eyes weakly fill all over again.
‘I’m not coming anywhere with you,’ she contended huskily. ‘I’m going back home.’ The thought of home did nothing to stem the flow of tears. ‘I wish,’ she added, burying her nose in a tissue, ‘that I’d never left!’ Before she lifted her head the hand he had extended towards her had fallen back to his side.
