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Trina’s mouth twitched. ‘Not if it’s my Frew, you’d better not,’ she warned. ‘Or it will be your first and last experience.’
‘Oh, go to hell, Tri,’ Jemma sighed, deflated by her flatmate’s unfailing sense of humour.
‘Don’t you see what’s happened to you today, Jemma?’ Trina appealed on a more serious note. ‘You’ve been so determined to keep your emotions under a tight lid that when a man like Leon Stephanades came along your senses boiled up and the lid flew off so they all came shooting out like steam under pressure! That’s why you made such a damned fool of yourself with him!’
‘Thanks for the analysis,’ Jemma grunted, and sat down again. ‘You’ve made me feel so much better!’
‘I was not attempting to make you feel better,’ Trina sighed. ‘Only understand why you responded to him as you did! The man is a god among men. You’ve ambled along quite nicely while only confronted with mere mortals, but when it came to a godlike being you blew your emotional top!’
‘Josh would not take kindly to being classed as mere mortal,’ Jemma pointed out.
‘Josh Tanner,’ Trina stated deridingly, ‘does not even get a look-in compared to your Leon.’
‘Tell that to Cassie,’ Jemma grimaced. And she told Trina the rest of what had happened today.
‘Oh, my,’ her friend drawled when she finished. ‘Now I see what your Leon means when he writes about nasty tastes and smells. The whole thing stinks and tastes bad.’
‘He is not my Leon!’ Jemma angrily pointed out.
‘No?’ Trina quizzed. ‘Then what are you going to do about him?’
‘Nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘Just ignore him until he goes away.’
But that was not as easy as it sounded. Mainly because Leon Stephanades refused to be ignored. Over the coming week, Jemma was barraged with reminders of his existence and his intentions.
First there was a long velvet case hand-delivered to her flat with the logo of a very exclusive jeweller embossed on its lid. It contained a fine gold bracelet, linked at its clasp by a single turquoise. ‘The colour of your eyes, don’t you agree?’ the accompanying note said. Jemma closed the lid and put it away, determined to give it back to him at the first opportunity she got. The next day came the matching earrings. On Thursday the matching necklace. ‘Wear them for me on our first night together,’ the accompanying note said.
Her mouth tightened, the idea that he thought he could buy her like this filling her with an icy anger, and she discarded the necklace into her dressing-table drawer with the same contempt with which she had discarded the bracelet and earrings. On Friday there was nothing. No special delivery to come home to, no note, nothing. Trina studied her face sagely, and Jemma lifted her chin in a defiant refusal to utter a single word.
That night she accepted a date with a man who had just moved into the flat below. He was an architect, just finding his feet in the big London company he had recently joined. He was good-looking, pleasant and companionable, and by the time the evening was drawing to a close Jemma was beginning to feel at peace with herself for the first time in a week.
If it hadn’t been bad enough having Leon obsess her every waking thought, then trying to work with Josh in the mood he was in had been just as bad. Not that she blamed him for it—he had every right to behave like a bear with a sore head. But Cassie’s constant phone calls, pleading to speak with him, had taken their toll on Jemma’s nerves. And when his persistent refusal to speak to her had only had Cassie pouring out her heart on Jemma’s ears instead, the tension inside her had begun to hit an all-time high.
So she was quite happy to give herself up to the light, congenial company of Tom MacDonald. As his name suggested, he was a Scot, and eager to make new friends. They talked about anything and everything over a quiet dinner in a small Italian restaurant a short walk away from their flats. He told her about his life in a small Scottish village just outside Edinburgh where his rector father and forbearing mother had reared a family of six boisterous children in the big, rambling vicarage home, and where he had sometimes been willing to sell his soul for a bit of privacy. And she told him about her life as an only child who’d spent her childhood worrying which of her parents was going to walk out next—or, worse, whether they both would at the same time. It surprised her that she told him all of this since the only other person she had ever discussed her lonely uncertain childhood with had been Trina—or maybe, she decided later, it was because of what Trina had said to her the other night that had made her open up to Tom. Whatever. By the time they walked back home, she was feeling comfortable enough to make another date with him for the next night.
They parted at his flat door since it was on a lower landing than her own, and she let him kiss her, half relieved, half disappointed that fireworks had not gone off in her head as they had done when Leon had kissed her.
Trina was still up when she got in, reclining across Frew, who was stretched out on the sofa watching the end of a cops and robbers film.
‘Guess who’s been calling you all night?’ Trina taunted lazily.
Jemma went cold inside. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, hoping to God that she was right, and she didn’t know.
‘Mr Macho Stephanades himself, no less.’ Frew dashed Jemma’s hopes in one sardonically uttered sentence. ‘I answered the last time,’ he told her drily. ‘And received the kind of reply that had me running to the mirror to see if my throat had been cut.’
‘Ha-ha, very funny,’ Jemma jeered and turned a cool face on Trina. ‘I hope you told him to get lost,’ she said.
‘Me?’ her flatmate squeaked. ‘Why should I tell him to get lost? He’s not my problem! Although...’ she added with a teasing glance at Frew ‘...hearing that gorgeous sexy voice purring down the line at me had me thinking it would be quite something to have him as a problem.’
‘He’d eat you for breakfast and not even notice,’ Frew scoffed, refusing to rise to the bait.
‘If he could eat me, what do you think he could do to Jemma?’
‘Excuse me if I leave you to discuss me while I go to bed,’ Jemma put in sarcastically. ‘But please do continue none the less.’
‘He’s back in London!’ Trina called as Jemma turned to leave the room. Her spine began to tingle, as though just knowing he was in the same city was enough to make her flesh respond to him. ‘And he was not happy when I told him you were out on a date!’
‘When I answered the phone on his last call,’ Frew tagged on, ‘he mistook me for your date and actually threatened to come around here and eject me!’
‘I do hope you put him right,’ Jemma drawled, turning to send Frew a deriding look. ‘Only I would hate him to have the wrong impression about my taste!’
‘Whoa there, tiger!’ Trina warned. ‘That’s the love of my life you’re insulting!’
‘Well, tell the love of your damned life to keep his nose out of my business!’ Jemma snapped, wondering helplessly where all that lovely relaxed contentment she had rediscovered tonight had gone.
The phone began to ring. She stiffened up like a board. So did the other two, watching her with curious eyes.
‘Want me to answer it?’ Trina offered gently.
Oh, yes! Jemma thought frantically. Please yes! Anyone but me! I just can’t let myself be— ‘No,’ she heard herself mumble gruffly. ‘I’ll do it.’
She walked into the kitchen and stared at the wall set for all of ten seconds before slowly lifting off the receiver.
‘Jemma?’
She closed her eyes, swallowing thickly because just the sound of her name on his lips sent her mouth dry. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
There was a short, very telling silence, and it didn’t take much to sense the anger simmering within it. ‘I want to see you,’ he said tightly.
‘Well, I don’t—’
‘Now.’ Arrogantly, he cut right through her attempted refusal. ‘I shall be around to collect you in half an hour.’
‘But it’s eleven-thirty!’ she protested. ‘I don’t—!’
‘I will sound my car horn when I arrive,’ he interrupted yet again. ‘You have three minutes from that moment to get in the car or I shall come up—do you understand me, Jemma?’ he persisted. ‘I am a man who does not play games—any kind of game.’
The line went dead. Jemma stared at it. He had just threatened her. He had actually had the gall to threaten her!
CHAPTER THREE
LEON didn’t need to sound his car horn. Jemma was already waiting outside, huddled in her pale blue wool duffel-coat and simmering with resentment when the sleek silver-grey Mercedes drew up beside her.
She had a brief glimpse of his dark, chiselled features when the lamplight caught his face as he leaned across the luxurious interior to open the door for her.
He was angry, tight with it.
Well, she thought indignantly, so am I! And refused to so much as look at him as she climbed into the car and stared coldly at the windscreen.
‘Seatbelt,’ he snapped.
She opened her mouth to tell him to get lost, then shut it again on an inward gasp as the car shot forward on an angry burst of power. Fumbling, she fastened the belt around her, having to drop her purse and the small plastic carrier bag she had brought with her on to the car floor to do it.
Pausing at the next junction, he turned his dark head to slash her with an icy look; she gave it back defiantly, but just allowing her eyes to clash with his was enough to set her trembling, and it was he who broke the hostile contact. She had not been able to, he affected her so badly.
This is crazy, she told herself as they joined the late rush of traffic crowding the London streets. How could she be so acutely aware of a man she barely knew?
Perhaps Trina was right after all, and she had been heading for this kind of emotional fall-out for years, bottling it all up, refusing to acknowledge that she had the ability to feel this way.
Trying to smother a helpless sigh, she obviously wasn’t very successful, because the black eyes raked her again. She felt their touch all the way down to her toes. Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t look at me—don’t do this to me! But she pressed her trembling lips together and stared fixedly ahead, and after a moment he returned his attention to the road while the tension surrounding them grew so tight she could barely breathe.
He turned into a quiet, salubrious square that she recognised instantly, and a wry smile touched her mouth. Big-league wasn’t in it; this man existed on a higher plane altogether than she could ever aspire to.
Good, she thought. It only helped to shore up her resolve to get out of this situation before it became impossible. She didn’t want this—it—him. She did not need it, nor could she cope with it.
The car stopped, the engine dying. Leon unclipped both seatbelts then opened his car door. She watched balefully as he climbed out and came around to open her door. When she hesitated, he said coolly, ‘Don’t make the mistake of challenging me, Jemma. I am tired and my temper is worn thin. I could get nasty.’
Could? If he thought he was making this a pleasure then she did not want to be around when he did get ‘nasty’! Bending, she scooped up her purse and the small plastic carrier bag, then slid out of the car, scorning the outstretched hand he offered her in assistance.
He closed the car door, pressed a sensor pad on his keyring which activated the car central-locking system and the alarm at the same time, then turned without sparing her another glance to climb the steps to a black-painted front door.
By the time she had joined him, he was standing inside an elegant hallway. The plain grey-carpeted floor and pale peach-painted walls blended superbly with the rich mahogany woodwork.
He glanced at a silver tray on the hall table where a stack of envelopes lay unopened. Long fingers flicked idly at them then dismissed them as unimportant. It was only then that it hit her that he must not have been here since his return to London.
So, where had he been? Working in his office? Eating dinner at some exclusive restaurant? With another woman?
Jealousy swirled up from the pit of her stomach and burned its way into her brain. Shocked and appalled by her own reaction, she stumbled as she tried to turn and walk out of the house again before he saw what was happening to her.
But Leon was too quick, and in one stride was at her side, his hand like a clamp around her arm as he turned her back again.
‘Going somewhere?’ he enquired silkily.
‘I don’t want to come in here with you,’ she objected, having now to fight her response to his heated touch as well the crazy jealousy.
For an answer, he reached over her shoulder and gave the door a shove. Jemma quivered as she heard it click shut behind her. Without a single word, he took her purse and the silly plastic carrier bag from her, unbuttoned her coat and drew it off her shoulders while she just stood there in front of him, cheeks hot, eyes lowered, trembling from head to toe at his domineering closeness.
Then he just turned and walked off down the hall, arrogantly taking her possessions with him.
It’s getting worse, she noted tremulously as she meekly followed. Ten minutes in his company last time and her senses had been so responsive to him that she could barely breathe or think. Another ten minutes and she was now so acutely conscious of him that she was actually afraid.
She paused on the threshold of a beautiful pale lemon and white sitting-room, seeing her coat casually discarded on the back of a chair. Leon was standing across the room, pouring a drink into a fine crystal glass, his dark business suit moulding his muscled body with little attempt at hiding the power beneath.
Her stillness had him glancing around at her. ‘Come in,’ he drawled. ‘I am in no mood to jump on you if that is what is making you hover like a frightened bird.’
She still didn’t move, her eyes too big in her face as she continued to stand there staring helplessly at him, her loose hair flowing like liquid toffee around her face and shoulders. His thick lashes lowered, half hiding his eyes while he let them travel slowly over her, lighting candles inside her wherever his gaze touched. She was still wearing the cool blue slinky stretch Lycra dress she had worn for her date with Tom. It lay off the shoulder and moulded her figure to halfway down her slender thighs. It wasn’t a cheap dress, but neither was it of the expensive designer kind he was probably used to seeing his women in. And where with Tom she had only felt pretty, with Leon’s eyes on her she felt vulnerable and self-conscious beneath his connoisseur’s gaze.
‘You dressed for him like this tonight?’
The question startled her, putting a wary light into her eyes, but it also served to remind her of why she was here at all, and Jemma lifted her chin, her mouth firming as she looked back at him.
‘Yes,’ she said, adding defiantly, ‘not that it’s any of your business.’
‘No?’ The smile on his lips held no humour, nor did the mocking tone. ‘You have a lot to learn, if you truly believe what you say.’
He turned, gathering up another glass and bringing it with him as he walked towards her. Jemma held her ground, but only on the outside. Inside she was a broiling mass of panic. If he touched her—if he so much as laid a finger on her—she had a fear she would go up in flames.
‘Here.’ He held out the glass. ‘Drink this.’
She looked down at the dark golden liquid gleaming in the glass. ‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘The national drink of Greece,’ he replied. ‘Come—’ He gestured with the glass. ‘I drink the same, so you can be assured it is not drugged. Try it. It is called metaxa—a carefully matured brandy that is kind to the palate.’
She took the glass reluctantly, lifting it to her lips to take a wary sip. Like brandy, it heated the sensitive tissues of her mouth as it flowed across it, but, unlike brandy, it did not burn. She swallowed. ‘It’s nice,’ she allowed, sounding surprised.
He smiled, a brief smile that had gone as soon as it had arrived. Then he was staring at her again, the anger she had sensed simmering in him when he’d spoken on the phone still burning in his eyes.
‘You—care for him?’ he asked. ‘You want this man you went out with tonight?’
‘How can I say?’ she cried, objecting to his proprietorial tone. ‘It was our first date! Far too soon to make a decision like that!’
‘Yet you knew you wanted me at the first clash of our eyes,’ he pointed out.
She shrugged, unable to deny what had to be the biggest humiliation of her life. ‘Which doesn’t mean I have to jump right into bed with you,’ she snapped. ‘Wanting and having are two completely different things.’
‘I am here.’ He held out his arms, mocking her reply and inviting her at the same time. But she wasn’t fooled; the anger was still there in his eyes. ‘For the—having. Yet you decide to play this—little game with your fresh-faced young man with the winsome smile and thatch of light brown spiky hair.’
Shocked by his accurate description of Tom, she stared at him. ‘How do you know what Tom looks like?’ she gasped.
He took a sip at his drink, dark eyes thoughtful on her while he took his time swallowing. Her head began to spin, that awful track of uncontrollable attraction spiralling its way through her system. It was the eyes that did it, she acknowledged hazily, feeling her breath begin to shorten and her body begin to pulse to a rhythm that was strange to her yet unbearably exciting. Those deep, dark, beautiful eyes could hold her captive at a single look.
‘Thomas MacDonald,’ he said suddenly, bringing her sharply back into focus. ‘Aged twenty-nine. Recently employed by Driver and Lowe, architects.’ Jemma’s mouth fell open. ‘Moved into the flat below your own on Tuesday last week. Has a passion for Simply Red and never misses a concert if he can help it. His current bank account rests at one thousand and fifty-two pounds. He caught the bus to work with you on Wednesday. Borrowed teabags from your enchanting flatmate Trina Beaton on Thursday. Trina Beaton...’ He moved on while Jemma could only stand there gaping. ‘A delightfully enterprising creature with bright red hair and a—satirical disposition. You have shared a flat with her since you arrived in London four years ago. She runs an interesting little business called—Maids in Waiting.’ He actually smiled with amusement at that. ‘An idea which began during her college years in an effort to make some extra money to prop up her grant and grew into the flourishing business it is today because she had the courage and foresight to see its potential. Her accountant is also her lover—though they never use your flat for their—intimate activities—reputedly in respect of your...finer feelings. His name is Frew Landers and he’s clever and sharp. Upwardly mobile, I think is the popular term. His favourite pastime is teasing you. Jemma Davis,’ he continued levelly, never for one second taking his eyes from her stunned face. ‘Parents dead, killed in an automobile accident four years ago. Attended secretarial college for two yours and graduated with distinctions at the age of nineteen. Has worked for three companies, TDC being the last and current one. Josh Tanner employed you—not particularly for your exemplary secretarial skills, but because he wanted to take you to bed. But—and I compliment you on your good sense—you made him see the error of his—judgement. Since then you have become his right-hand man, though he does not realise it himself. And his complicated love-life has hit the doldrums—how is Cassie, by the way?’ he concluded lightly.
‘I n-need to sit d-down,’ Jemma said weakly.
‘Of course,’ he said, immediately the indulgent host and taking her arm to lead her over to one of the comfortable damask sofas set before the flower-filled grate of a beautiful mahogany fireplace.
She lowered herself carefully, aware that the slightest puff of wind was likely to toss her into a crumpled heap. He watched her sink into a corner, her face gone quite blank, then sat himself down beside her. She was still holding her glass, and he gently curled his own fingers around it and lifted it to her ice-cold lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, watching the colour take its time returning to her face. ‘But you made me very angry or I would not have said any of that.’
‘Why?’ she managed to enunciate, but only just. In truth, he had completely knocked the stuffing out of her.
‘I want you,’ he shrugged as if that explained everything. ‘By necessity I have to be a careful man. Power makes you dangerous, and your enemies do not always wear intentions on their sleeves. Danger can come in many guises—hostile take-overs, industrial espionage—’
‘And you suspect me of being some kind of Mata Hari trained to seduce you for all your powerful secrets?’ she gasped, disbelief and scorn warring in her anger-bright eyes.
He smiled, unrepentant. ‘Or just a lady,’ he suggested, ‘with the kind of past that could affect me?’
