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‘Come along with me, my dear,’ Mrs Hall invited in what must surely be a local accent. ‘Work, work, work,’ she shook her head. ‘These men seem to think of nothing else. Working in the office on a Sunday morning,’ she mumbled. ‘It wouldn't do for me, I'm sure.’
‘I suppose Mr Western is kept pretty busy,’ Regan said noncommittally, mentally thinking that Clive Western's time when he arrived would have been better spent saying hello to his young daughter.
‘He is that,’ the housekeeper chuckled. ‘Kept on his toes, he is. Here we are,’ and she opened a door, ushering Regan inside. She stood with her arms crossed over her bosom, looking with satisfaction about the scrupulously clean room. ‘I hope this is to your liking.’
It was a beautiful room, the decor a range of different shades of mauve, from pale lilac to deep purple. Scatter cushions adorned the huge double bed, making it a comfortable place to rest during the day too. Deep purple carpet, pale lilac bedspread, wallpaper comprising all the mauve shades imaginable—it was a lovely room, decorated with a woman's comfort in mind. There was even a range of perfumes on the dressing-table, also an expensive-looking brush and comb set.
‘Bathroom's through here,’ Mrs Hall opened another door. ‘A private bathroom, of course,’ she added proudly, just as if she felt the house were really her own.
‘It's lovely,’ and so much more than Regan had expected! But then with wealth like Clive Western's she didn't suppose there was a less luxurious room that could be allocated to her.
‘Good,’ the housekeeper beamed her pleasure. ‘Lunch will be in half an hour, but I'm sure you'll see the master before then. In the meantime, I'll get a refreshing pot of tea sent up.’
‘Thank you,’ Regan smiled shyly, feeling completely welcome—by the staff at least. ‘I'd like that.’
She sat down on the bed once she was alone, hardly able to believe her good fortune, looking about her in a dazed fashion. Her room and bathroom were truly beautiful, much too beautiful for a mere companion.
She only hoped Helena Western wouldn't prove too difficult. What little Clive Western had revealed of his daughter made Regan aware that she would have to be firm from the start. Any sign of weakness and she had no doubt her charge would take advantage of it.
Regan slipped off her shoes, taking off the jacket that matched the pretty sundress she was wearing and putting it over a chair before she moved to open the window, breathing deeply of the fresh sea air.
She jumped nervously at the sound of a tray crashing down on to a surface, and turned slowly to face Helena Western. She knew it had to be her, sure that no maid under Mrs Hall's authority would dare to behave in such a manner.
‘I apprehended the maid bringing you this,’ the young girl with flashing green eyes informed her coldly. ‘She shouldn't be waiting on you, you're not wanted here,’ she said insultingly.
Yes, this was definitely Helena Western, although she must take after her dead mother in looks; she had none of her father's fair colouring. Thick dark hair, almost black, cascaded in wild disorder halfway down her back, those flashing green eyes, darkly olive skin, and a body that seemed to be growing too fast for her years, all made up the unruly adolescent Helena Western undoubtedly was. She would be a beautiful girl when she was older and more able to accept her femininity.
‘I suppose you consider yourself above poor Mary,’ she continued resentfully. ‘Well, as far as I'm concerned you rate far below the lowest servant here.’
‘Helena!’ a harsh voice rasped the girl's name in harsh disapproval, a husky male voice, the owner of which Regan couldn't yet see, as he was still out in the corridor. ‘You'll go to your room,’ he ordered. ‘Now!’
‘But Papa,’ Helena protested, ‘I don't want this woman here, you know I don't!’ The defiance seemed to have gone out of her now.
Papa? Regan frowned. That voice, slightly accented, didn't belong to Clive Western. But then when had he ever said Helena was his daughter? Hadn't she just assumed that was the case? She waited apprehensively for her first sight of Helena's father: he didn't sound at all like the pleasant man Clive Western had proved to be on the journey down here.
‘You will go to your room immediately,’ that harsh voice repeated the order. ‘I will not tell you again.’
‘Yes, Papa.’ Helena turned to give Regan one last resentful glare before disappearing out of the room.
Regan's eyes widened as a man stepped into the open doorway, a tall man who seemed to block out most of the daylight in the room. He stepped forward and she was able to distinguish his features properly. What she saw made her face pale and then turn grey, her legs no longer feeling as if they would support her. He was the avenging angel from all of her childhood nightmares, the man she had wished never to meet.
She would know that face anywhere—hadn't it haunted her for years, day and night? ‘Andreas Vatis …’ she said faintly.
He gave a cruel smile. ‘Right first time, Miss—Matthews.’
She sat down before she fell down, looking at Andreas Vatis like a mouse must look at a particularly cruel cat—before it ate it. That cruel hard face, with the pencil-thin scar that ran from the bridge of his hawk-like nose over his right eye and disappeared into the thick hair at his temple, black hair going grey over his ears. Green eyes looked at her contemptuously, with nothing to show that the scar and its internal injuries had rendered this man blind in his right eye, temporarily completely blind but now having regained the sight of his left eye. The firm mouth was bared in a smile of taunting humour, his teeth very white against his naturally dark skin.
Regan had never met this man before, and yet she knew so much about him. A Greek to his fingertips, he had been a rakish hell-raiser when the accident that had blinded him had taken place, an accident on the racing track that her father had also been involved in. It was after this accident that her father had lived openly with this man's estranged wife.
‘My—my name is Thomas now,’ she told him tonelessly. ‘My aunt and uncle adopted me.’
He nodded. ‘To save you the pain of your father's sins,’ he grated. ‘But a simple change of name cannot save you from me.’
If anything she went even greyer; this man's expression frightened her. ‘Save me …?’
‘Yes,’ Andreas Vatis rasped. ‘I am a Greek, Regan Matthews, and a Greek never forgets an insult or wrong done to him. It may take years to attain retribution for that wrong, but you can be sure we will always be avenged on our sworn enemies.’
Regan backed away from the glittering dislike in those green eyes, still finding it difficult to believe he was half blind. He didn't appear to be a man who would have patience with any imperfection, although his harsh good looks would never be forgotten by man or woman. How had her father dared to take this man's wife from him? By seeing him rendered blind first, that was how.
God, it still sickened her after all these years. Her aunt and uncle had tried to keep the truth from her, but they couldn't hide the fact that her father had taken this man's wife from him when he was in no position to stop him. Regan had learnt of her father's behaviour by listening to her aunt and uncle talking when they weren't aware she could hear.
A racing car driver, like Andreas Vatis, her father had seen Andreas Vatis’ wife and wanted her for himself. Of course Gina Vatis must have been a very shallow woman to have turned to the other man when it appeared her husband was going to be blind for life, but as far as Regan was concerned her father had been the biggest offender against the man. And now it appeared that Andreas Vatis wanted revenge in some way.
She gulped. ‘I—I have nothing, no money, nothing,’ she told him desperately, although what this man would want with more money when he must be a millionaire time and time again she had no idea.
The Vatis family, of which Andreas was now the head, had always been in shipping, although Andreas had chosen to enjoy himself racing cars until the accident had made that impossible. In time he had taken over the family business, and according to Clive Western, they had now expanded into hotels and holiday accommodation.
Andreas Vatis threw back his head in a harsh laugh, the column of his thickly corded throat deeply brown, the cream silk shirt and cream trousers he wore emphasising the slenderness of his waist and hips and the breadth of his muscular shoulders. He was a man in the peak of physical condition, much fitter than men half his thirty-five years. ‘I do not want money, Regan,’ he told her with a hard smile. ‘But you are right, I do want something. I want that which is mine by right.’
She frowned. ‘But I don't have anything.’ She shook her head in puzzlement, feeling as if one of her nightmares were becoming a reality.
‘On the contrary,’ he drawled. ‘You have everything that I want,’ he said softly, his gaze running over her appraisingly, almost insolent in its intensity. ‘I want only that which your father took from me.’
She swallowed hard. ‘And that is?’
‘A wife, Regan.’ His hard face was unyielding. ‘I am going to take you for my wife.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_cfd1c761-7904-5a33-896b-3b764fe48cbf)
‘NO!’ she gasped. ‘You can't mean that!’ She searched that cold hard face for some sign of mockery, but all she could see was his hatred and contempt of her.
‘But I do mean it,’ he told her calmly. ‘I have waited almost eleven years for this moment. I cannot tell you how much it pleases me.’
‘But I——What does it all mean?’ she demanded.
‘It means that I have brought you here to become my wife, the wife your father chose to deprive me of.’ Andreas Vatis’ voice tautened grimly. ‘I have never been particularly attracted to redheads,’ he added insultingly. ‘But then I will not be able to distinguish the colour of your hair in the dark.’
Regan gulped. ‘In the dark?’ she echoed.
He nodded his arrogant head. ‘When I take you to my bed. Only the sense of touch is important at such times, and you look as if your body might be quite—pleasant to touch.’
She blushed under his assessing gaze, feeling as if he stripped the clothes from her at a glance, saw each delectable curve beneath. ‘You're mad!’ her voice quivered in her fear. ‘I'm not going to marry you, and you certainly aren't going to touch me, in the dark or at any other time.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ He seemed unperturbed by her outburst, his calmness making Regan feel even more uneasy.
‘Very sure,’ but her voice quivered uncertainly.
‘Then I will keep you here until you change your mind. Of course I will visit your bed every night until you agree to marry me, which should not be long—Helena was born exactly nine months after the consummation of my first marriage,’ he added with grim humour.
‘You mean——’
‘I mean that unless you agree to marry me now you could find yourself in the even more unwelcome position, in your opinion, of being my mistress.’
‘But why?’ she cried. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Her anguish was obvious, her blue eyes shadowed.
‘I have already explained it to you,’ he told her haughtily. ‘I want from your father the wife he stole from me, and as both he and Gina are dead I intend taking his daughter instead. You will provide me with the sons I need to inherit the Vatis empire, the sons Gina would have given me if not enticed away by James Matthews, your father.’
‘But I——You got me here under false pretences, didn't you?’ she accused. ‘You knew I would never have come here if I'd known I was to be employed by Andreas Vatis. I'm only too aware of how you must hate me, and I wouldn't willingly come within a hundred miles of you. What I don't understand is how you arranged it all.’
He shrugged his broad shoulders, walking over to study the perfumes she had so admired earlier. ‘It was all too easy, Regan. I have always known of your existence, of your adoption by your uncle and aunt, but as a child you were no good to me. Now you are a woman, a very beautiful one——’
‘Except for the red hair,’ she cut in bitterly.
He looked at the waving tresses. ‘Perhaps I will come to like it in time. But as I said, it is not important that I do.’
‘Because you won't see it in the dark,’ she said dully, a terrible feeling of inevitability washing over her. It was as if she had known for the past ten years that something like this was going to happen, that she wasn't really surprised by anything Andreas Vatis was saying to her.
‘Exactly,’ he agreed cruelly. ‘But to get back to how I arranged this meeting.’ He picked up one of the bottles of perfume, smelling its fragrance. He grimaced, and replaced it to pick up one of the others. ‘I have known of your every move since you were nine years old. I knew of your school friends, of your chosen career, of the friends you have made in London.’
‘What if I'd become serious about one of these friends, had decided to marry one of them?’
‘You almost did, did you not?’ he enquired calmly. ‘A certain Rick Davidson. The romance,’ he sneered the word, ‘broke up when you found him at his flat with another girl.’
‘You've certainly done your homework,’ she snapped.
‘Not at all. I have always found Diana very—obliging.’
Regan's eyes widened. ‘You mean you arranged that too?’
‘It was not difficult, let me assure you. Diana liked Rick Davidson very much and your boy-friend was only too willing. They are married now, you know. Since that time you have been escorted by a Donny Paulos.’
‘Don't tell me,’ she scorned. ‘You arranged that too.’
‘It was necessary,’ Andreas Vatis told her coldly.
‘You mean you did arrange it?’ she gasped.
‘Certainly. I felt it safer to put you in the care of one of my employees rather than risk you becoming seriously involved again. Of course, he had no idea of my reason for wanting you watched.’
So this was the reason Donny refused to be shaken off! ‘That's disgusting!’
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded with a nod of his head. ‘But I do not want anything but a virgin in my bed. You are to know only my possession.’
Regan met his gaze challengingly. ‘And how can you be so sure that I haven't been to bed with Donny? He's very attractive,’ she added tauntingly.
‘But aware of his own vulnerability. If he has laid one finger on you that I would class as intimate I will break him. I will make sure he never works again, that all of his friends suddenly forget his existence, that his family——’
‘Okay, okay, I think you've made your point,’ she said miserably.
His eyes narrowed to icy green slits. ‘Did he touch you?’
‘Frequently,’ she answered flippantly.
‘Intimately?’ he demanded to know.
She shrugged. ‘It depends what you call intimate. We all have our own definition. And my idea of intimate may differ from yours.’
He took a threatening step towards her, his strong fingers biting painfully into her arm. ‘You will answer me!’ he ordered. ‘Did he touch you like this?’ His other hand came up to cup one of her breasts through the thin material of her blouse, caressing until he felt the nipple harden to full arousal. ‘Or like this?’ The hand moved to her thighs, moving exploringly over her silky skin. ‘Did he?’ he demanded grimly, his fingers digging into the tender flesh of her thighs.
It was so tempting to say yes, Donny had betrayed her after all. But she didn't doubt that Andreas Vatis would indeed break him, and she wasn't sure he deserved that, for all his deceit. Besides, when he had known of her plans he had tried to stop her. Perhaps he had realised her fate!
‘No, he never touched me like that.’ No man had. She was ashamed of her own response to this man's hands on her body, her breasts still tingling from his touch.
‘Nor any other man?’ he persisted harshly.
‘Nor any other man,’ she admitted dully. No one else had ever induced her to such sexual excitement!
He released her so suddenly she almost fell, but he was seemingly unmoved by the way he had just touched her, moving back to study the perfumes as if he had never deviated his attention from them. ‘When you finished your college course I contacted the employment agency you went to and asked for you to be sent for an interview.’
‘To Clive Western. Is he in on this, too?’ she asked disgustedly.
‘Clive employed you on my instructions, but he did not know the real reason I wanted you here. I think he perhaps imagined I had another relationship in mind.’
‘So Helena doesn't need a companion?’
‘As her stepmother I expect you to become just that. Your duties as my wife will not be too arduous—during the daytime hours.’
Regan glared at him. ‘I've already told you, I'm not going to marry you.’
Andreas Vatis shrugged. ‘That is your choice, of course. Here,’ he handed her one of the perfumes. ‘Wear this tonight when I come to your room.’
‘I won't be here tonight, I'm leaving.’
‘I think not.’ He removed the key to the room, placing it on the outside of the door, his intention clear. ‘And we are three floors up. I would not recommend you jumping,’ he mocked.
‘But you can't keep me here against my will,’ she told him desperately.
‘I am not doing that, you are. As my wife you will be perfectly free to go where you choose—within reason. As my mistress——’
‘Don't you mean sex-slave?’ she scorned.
‘I require sons from you. Unfortunately they cannot be obtained without the sexual act.’
‘You're inhuman!’
‘But you are not,’ he smiled tauntingly. ‘You liked my hands upon you just now. Do not deny it. I am not ignorant of the workings of a woman's body. I know pleasure when I see it, and you liked what I did to you. Tonight there will be more, much more,’ he promised mockingly.
‘No!’ Her voice came out shrill.
