Читать книгу The Greek's Ultimate Revenge - Julia James - Страница 9

JANINE eased herself over onto her stomach and sighed languorously, giving her body to the sun. In front of her the sunlight danced dazzlingly off the azure swimming pool. Beyond, slender cypresses pierced the cerulean sky.

The sound of children splashing and calling in the pool was the only noise. She felt the warmth of the sun like a blessing on her naked back.

The hotel was a haven of peace and luxury, brand-new, and Stephanos had shown it off to her with pride—the latest addition to his hotel empire.

A smile played around her lips.

Stephanos. It had been amazing, encountering him like that at Heathrow. He’d stopped dead, transfixed by her looks—and that had been it! He’d simply swept her off and taken her with him back to Greece. Her life would never be the same again.

A shadow flickered in her face. She just wished he could spend more time with her! Oh, he’d been completely honest with her, and she understood—of course she understood—that it was impossible for him to formally acknowledge her existence. All she could have of him would be snatched moments, all too brief. That was why he’d installed her here.

‘Even if I cannot be with you, my darling girl, I want you to have the very best I can give you!’ he had said to her.

She smiled fondly at the memory. Then the smile faded. His phone call last night, brief and hurried, as all his calls had to be, had not been good news. But she’d done her best to reassure him.

‘I shall be fine,’ she’d told him. ‘You mustn’t worry about me while you are in America.’

The trouble was, she thought ruefully, that Stephanos obviously did worry about her. His protectiveness was touching—he seemed so fearful that she would disappear from his life as unexpectedly as she had entered it. She smiled to herself again. He need have no fears. None at all. Nothing could part her from him now—she wanted to be part of his life for ever, however much of a secret it had to be.

She closed her eyes, letting the heat of the afternoon feed her drowsiness. For once she would enjoy this luxury beneath the golden sun.

So totally different from the life she usually led…

Nikos stood on the terrace, looking down over the pool. His eyes beneath the dark glasses were hard. So that was the girl, splayed out on a lounger. The girl who was wrecking his sister’s marriage.

He paused a moment in the dappled shade, where the grapes were already ripening to a rich purple, and gazed down at her.

Emotions warred within him. The first was bitter anger—anger that the creature down there had the power to make Demetria weep in his arms, filled with despair.

The second was quite different.

She was, quite simply, delectable.

He had a vast experience of women, but this one was, he could see, in the very top rank. Her face was turned sideways, eyes closed, lashes lying long against her cheek as she lay relaxed on the lounger, but he could see that it was breath-catchingly lovely. A long, sun-bleached mane of pale hair swept across the pillow of the lounger, gently wisping across her smooth forehead. As for her body—

His eyes swept on, down the exposed length of her. She was naked apart from a tiny bikini bottom that barely covered her softly rounded cheeks. Her bikini top had been unfastened so that its ties would not mar the tanned perfection of her back. She did not look to be particularly tall, but she was very slender, with the kind of natural grace that girls of her age and type had in abundance.

She was sun-kissed, soft-limbed and sexy.

Oh, yes. Very, very sexy.

He could see immediately why Stephanos had not been able to resist her.

But Stephanos was married and should have made himself resist her. He, Nikos, was hampered no such impediment. Indeed, quite the opposite. He had given his betrayed sister his word on that.

His mission was very clear. He would quite deliberately, quite calculatingly, seduce Janine Fareham away from Demetria’s husband.

Relief—no, more than relief eased through him. Satisfaction. Carrying out his mission would be no ordeal at all. In fact, he felt his body stir, and indulged it for a moment. It would be a positive pleasure.

For a brief while he let himself luxuriate in surveying her in all her enticing blonde beauty. Then, as he let his eyes feast on the nymph-like, softly rounded curves of her near naked body, as if a knife had come slicing down another image imposed itself, vivid and painful. His sister’s gaunt, strained face as she begged him to help her sprang in front of his eyes.

His eyes hardened and he began to walk forward.

In her half-dozing state it took a moment for Janine to register that she could hear footsteps. A second later a shadow fell over her. Her eyes flew open and she looked up.

A man was standing there, looking down at her. He was very tall and dark. A generation younger than Stephanos. Was it one of the hotel staff? What did he want?

‘Kyria Fareham?’ The voice was deep and accented. There was something about the tone that told her instinctively that this man was not a member of the hotel staff. This was a man who gave orders, not took them.

And he certainly didn’t look like a guest either. Guests were all casually dressed—but this man was wearing an immaculately cut lightweight business suit and looked as if he had just walked out of a board meeting. Her eyes travelled on up to his face.

She felt her heartbeat lurch.

Eyes veiled by dark glasses bored down on her, surveying her as she lay there displayed for him. Suddenly she was acutely conscious that she was almost naked—and he was dressed in a formal suit. The disparity made her feel vulnerable, exposed.

Instinctively she pushed herself up to a sitting position, taking the sarong she’d been lying on with her, swinging her feet down to the warm paving. Even then she felt at a disadvantage. He still towered over her. For a Greek—and his looks and accent told her he had to be—he was very tall: easily six feet.

She stood up, knotting her sarong hurriedly around her in a fluid movement.

As her eyes focused on him properly she felt her breath catch. Her lips parted soundlessly, eyes widening.

She was looking at the most devastating male she had ever seen in her life.

What nature had bestowed on him his obvious wealth had accentuated. The superbly tailored suit fitted him like a glove, and she could see it had most definitely not been an off-the-peg purchase. But the man wearing it did not look off-the-peg either. He looked, she assessed instantly, expensive. His dark hair was expertly cut, feathering very slightly across his wide brow, and the dark glasses he wore did not need to have the discreet designer logo on them for her to know they had not been purchased from a market stall.

His nose was strong, and straight, with deep lines curving from it to the edges of his mouth.

His mouth—

Sculpted. That was the only word for it. With a sensuous lower lip she had to drag her eyes from, forcing herself to gaze into the blankness of his shaded regard.

There was something about this man that was making her heart race—and it was not just because he’d all but woken her out of a sun-beaten slumber. She felt the world shift around her and resettle.

As if something had changed for ever.

Then a different emotion surfaced. She’d been too busy gaping at this fantastic-looking man to take on board that he seemed to know who she was.

‘Who wants to know?’ She countered his enquiry warily. If he wasn’t from the hotel who else knew she was here, except for Stephanos?

She pushed her hair back over her shoulders, feeling it tumbling warm and heavy down her back, and gazed at him, lips parted slightly.

Theos, thought Nikos, absorbing the sensuous gesture, she was perfect. Just perfect. The dream image of a sexy blonde.

But she wasn’t cheap or tarty. Nothing so resistible! She was beautiful—head-turningly so. In an instant Nikos’s expert eye took in the fact that she had one of those faces where every feature complemented every other, from her chestnut eyes, set in a heart-shaped face, to her generous mouth below a delicate nose. A golden tan gilded her flawless skin and her hair hung like pale spun gold down to her slender waist, faintly visible through the gauze of the turquoise sarong.

Desire flashed through him. Instant and insistent.

For a moment he felt consumed by it, overwhelmed. Then, with deliberate control, he subdued his reaction.

It was good that he desired her, it would make his task so much easier, but that was the only reason he should feel desire for her. It was a means to an end, that was all, and the end was the removal—permanently—of this girl from his brother-in-law’s marriage.

And to that end it was also necessary that this girl should be sexually vulnerable to him, Nikos. His eyes flickered over her again.

She was sexually aware of him all right. He knew the signs. Knew them well.

Beneath his regard Janine felt colour stealing out along her cheekbones. Heat flushing into her blood.

She could feel herself reacting to this man. She couldn’t stop herself. There was something about him that was more than his devastating looks, more than that potent aura of wealth, or even the potent frisson of the power that a man like this must surely wield in the world he moved in. There was a raw sexuality beneath that tailored suit, hidden in those veiled eyes. She felt it licking at her.

Making her want him.

The realisation shocked her.

How could she be responding so strongly to a man she’d just set eyes on—whose eyes she couldn’t even see yet? But she was, and she couldn’t stop it. She felt her breasts tighten, her pupils flare, the colour flood to her cheeks.

Nikos watched her responding to him. That was good, very good. He wanted her responsive, wanted her physically aware of him—wanted her vulnerable to him.

There would be no problem seducing her, he knew.

Women came easily to him. They always had. Despite Demetria’s bewailing, in his twenties he had indulged himself to the hilt. Now, in his thirties, he was more selective, preferring to choose women who could move in his world, who were sophisticated and discreet. Who understood what he wanted—and then moved on when he gave them the indication, as he always did.

Such women would neither know nor care that he was about to make a temporary diversion, in a call of duty, to seduce away this female who threatened his sister’s marriage, who was making a fool of a man who, up till now, he had always held in the greatest respect.

Now he let the female he was about to seduce, deliberately and calculatedly, respond to him, heighten her awareness of him, begin to make herself vulnerable to him.

He smiled.

Janine felt a kick go through her, powerful and shocking. The sculpted mouth parted, lines indenting around it, showing strong white teeth. It was an easy smile, yet it sent a frisson through her.

‘We have a mutual—acquaintance,’ he said, pausing minutely over the word. ‘Stephanos Ephandrou.’ He could see her stiffen fractionally as he dropped the name into the space between them.

‘Oh?’ responded Janine. Out of the blue he had mentioned Stephanos—what should she say? She knew Stephanos wanted her to be discreet about their relationship—yet here was a complete stranger who seemed to know there was a connection.

Her concern showed in her eyes. Nikos saw it and felt a stab of anger. Any lingering doubts he might have had that Demetria had somehow imagined her husband was having an affair vanished. The girl was carrying on with Stephanos. No doubt about it. His name had registered with her as loudly as if he’d rung a bell in her ear!

He forced his natural anger down. To display it now would ruin his strategy. Janine Fareham must have no idea of his hostility to her—indeed, she must think quite the opposite.

He bestowed another smile on her, and knew without vanity that it had distracted her attention from wondering why he seemed to know that she was connected to Stephanos Ephandrou.

He had been in two minds as to which approach to take with her. He could, indeed, have simply engineered her acquaintance and set out to seduce her as a complete stranger. That approach had its advantages—it would have been simple and straightforward. But a female who made her living from the protection of rich, besotted older men might well be worldly enough to be wary of quick seductions that would jeopardise her lucrative relationship with her current protector. Instead, Nikos planned to use his acknowledged ‘acquaintance’ with Stephanos as a lever with which to gain the girl’s confidence as swiftly as possible.

‘Perhaps you will take a coffee with me and I can explain?’ he went on, in that same smooth tone. He glanced towards the little poolside bar set back under the shade of some olive trees.

Still wary, but feeling she was being effortlessly manipulated by an expert, Janine let herself be ushered towards the seating area of the bar. It was a breath cooler under the trees, but she still felt her skin was flushed. The heat that was filling it, however, did not come from the sun.

She sat down on one of the canvas-backed chairs and the man did likewise, pausing only to beckon to the barman, who was already hurrying forward. Whatever it was that this man had, thought Janine, he had a lot of it! He wasn’t the type to get ignored by a barman—or anyone else.

And certainly not women. Janine watched as a couple of female guests with small children in tow, seated at a table further off drinking fizzy drinks, immediately turned their heads in their direction. Their eyes were not for Janine. One of them said something to the other in Greek, and they laughed before turning their attention back to their children.

Janine didn’t blame them for looking. The man sitting opposite her in his hand-tailored suit, would turn female heads wherever he went! Sexual magnetism radiated from him like a forcefield, pulling at everything in sight with a double X chromosome!

The barman was hovering, ready to take their orders.

‘A frappe, please, no sugar,’ requested Janine abstractedly. She had already discovered that iced frappes were the ideal way to take coffee in the heat of the day, and were delicious and cooling. Her companion ordered coffee—Greek, she assumed.

The barman nodded acquiescently and hurried off.

Nikos turned his attention back to the girl. She was still wary, he could see—but still radiating sexual awareness. Not that she was flaunting her reaction to him. If anything, judging by the way she was sitting—pulled back in her chair, legs slanted neatly out of the way, her hand resting on the knot of her sarong, shielding her breasts—she was trying to conceal it.

Her lack of immediate sexual forwardness—despite his blatant appreciation of her charms—confirmed that he had been right to acknowledge Stephanos’s presence in her life. The girl had landed herself a very soft number indeed—and she clearly realised it would be folly for her to risk her position as Stephanos’s mistress, with all the guaranteed cashflow that it promised, for the sake of a brief interlude with a passing stranger. However much sexual pleasure she might gain from the encounter.

Hence her wariness.

Time to dispel it.

He slid his dark glasses off and slipped them into his jacket pocket. He relaxed back in his chair.

‘Perhaps I should explain that I am here at Stephanos’s suggestion,’ he told her smilingly. ‘Stephanos is a close friend and business associate, and when he heard I was coming to Skarios he suggested I stay at his hotel and asked me to seek you out,’ he went on, the lie coming smoothly and fluently. He felt no guilt about lying to her. He only had to remember Demetria’s tears and pleadings to absolve himself of all such guilt.

Janine made no answer. She was simply staring.

She felt her stomach clench. Dark, gold-flecked eyes flickered over her, long lashes sweeping down over his cheeks. Her lips parted in a silent exhalation.

If she had thought his mouth hard to tear her gaze from, those eyes made such an act totally impossible. They were eyes she could drown in…making her feel weak…

For one long, endless moment she let herself gaze into those gold-flecked orbs, and felt her stomach churning like a cement mixer.

What was happening to her?

She’d never reacted this strongly to a man! Never! But this man—this complete stranger, whose name she didn’t even know—was making the blood race in her veins, her face flush with heat…

Just by looking at her…

Their drinks arrived and she was grateful for the distraction. As the barman walked away she resisted the temptation to go back to gazing at the man opposite her, and instead forced herself to focus on what he had just said, not what he looked like.

‘Stephanos asked you to seek me out?’ she echoed dimly.

She sank back into gazing, riveted, into those magnetic, night-dark eyes.

They seemed to be looking into the heart of her. She felt herself go weak all over. All over again.

Nikos flashed another smile at her—and watched the girl’s pupils flare.

‘I hope you do not mind,’ he said softly, ‘that I have sought you out.’

His eyes rested on her and Janine felt her heart quicken. Oh, good grief, her bones were dissolving…. She just wanted to stare and stare.

Forcibly she dragged her mind back, fighting for composure. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.

‘Oh—no. Of course not,’ she managed to say. ‘It’s very good of you, Mr—er—?’

There was the slightest hesitation before Nikos spoke, but Janine did not notice it. Was quite incapable of noticing it.

‘Kiriakis,’ said Nikos smoothly. ‘Nikos Kiriakis.’

Through veiled eyes he studied her for a reaction but saw none. The name meant nothing to her. He’d gambled that it wouldn’t. Why should Stephanos talk about his brother-in-law to his mistress?

Nikos Kiriakis. Janine rolled the fluid syllables around in her head.

He was speaking again, and she brought her dazed attention back to what he was saying.

‘Stephanos also had another suggestion,’ Nikos went on, ‘which for my part I would be very happy to comply with.’ The lie rolled as smoothly as the first.

Janine stared. ‘What suggestion?’ Her voice still sounded totally abstracted.

Nikos was not offended. Usually he expected—and got—a hundred per cent attention from those he spoke to. But that Janine Fareham was incapable of bringing such focus to their conversation was only a good sign. A very good sign. He wanted her dazzled by him—lured by him.

‘As you know, Stephanos is currently en route to the States,’ began Nikos. He studied her reaction to this information—he calculated. Stephanos would have told her he was going to be abroad, although he doubted he would have told her that the reason for his sudden trip to New York was to take his wife to a fertility expert there.

‘He is concerned that you may not have anything to do while he is away,’ he continued. ‘So he asked me if I would look after you while I am here—stop you getting bored.’

Janine’s wandering thoughts snapped back. Suddenly the stomach-churning impact of Nikos Kiriakis’s physical presence vanished. There was something far more important to focus on.

What had he just said to her? What was all that about Stephanos telling him she might be bored? Telling him to look after her? Surely, considering Stephanos’s determination to keep her role in his life quiet, it was madness to send this Nikos Kiriakis to look her up?

Nikos saw the consternation in her face. It would not help his strategy.

‘Perhaps I should tell you,’ he said, his eyes resting on her, ‘that, as a close friend of Stephanos Ephandrou, I am aware of the relationship between you, Ms Fareham—’

Her eyes widened, her consternation deepening.

‘You are?’