Читать книгу The Kalliakis Crown - Мишель Смарт, Michelle Smart - Страница 14
ОглавлениеDESPITE THE LATENESS of the evening, the café upstairs was busy. Amalie had found a small table against the wall, where she could wait for Talos. Aware of the curious glances being thrown her way she pretended to examine the menu.
Testosterone abounded in the café. The vast majority of the patrons were male, all of them muscular, a fair few displaying broken noses and scarred faces. But their muscular physiques were dwarfed when Talos entered the room.
He spotted her immediately, and as he made his way over people stopped him to shake hands or bump fists.
She was glad his attention was taken, if only for a few moments. She pressed a hand to her chest and inhaled as much air into her tight lungs as she could get. The green sports pants and matching T-shirt she’d taken from the gym’s sports clothing outlet suddenly felt very close against her skin. Constricting.
He’d changed into a pair of tight-fitting black jeans and a navy blue T-shirt, and had his sports bag slung over his shoulder.
He was a mountain man, and whatever he wore only emphasised his muscularity. Whether he was in a business suit, workout gear or something casual, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he would be equally at home with nothing but a loin cloth wrapped around his waist.
‘I thought subjects were supposed to kneel before royalty,’ she said when he finally joined her.
A smirk appeared on his lips. ‘If you want to get on your knees before me, I won’t complain.’
She glared at him.
He settled his huge frame onto the chair opposite her. ‘You have to admit your comment was an open invitation.’
‘Only to someone with a dirty mind...’ she said, but her voice trailed into a mumble as the imagery his comment provoked, startling and vivid, sent a pulse searing through her blood strong enough to make her entire face burn.
The fresh scent of his shower gel and the woody musk of his aftershave played under her nose, filling her senses. He still hadn’t shaved, his stubble thick and covering his jawline in its entirety.
Certain she’d handed him another gold-plated open invitation, she cast her eyes down before he had a chance to read what was in them.
Instead of the expected quip, he asked in an amused tone, ‘What would you like to order?’
As he spoke, he folded his arms onto the table, his biceps bulging with the motion. She should have stayed looking at his face.
Since when did blatant machismo testosterone do it for her?
The male musicians she worked with—especially her fellow violinists—were, on the whole, sensitive creatures physically and emotionally. There were always exceptions to the rule, such as Philippe, one of the Orchestre National de Paris’s trombone players. Philippe was blond, buff and handsome, and he flirted openly with any woman who caught his eye. He was rumoured to have bedded half the female musicians in the orchestra.
But not Amalie, who found his overt masculinity a complete turn-off. The few boyfriends she’d had had been slight, unthreatening men, with gentle natures and a deep appreciation of music. Their evenings together had been spent discussing all things to do with music and the arts in general, with the bedroom not even an afterthought.
So why did Talos, whose physique and masculinity were ten times as potent as anything Philippe could even dream of having, make her feel all hot and squidgy just to look at him? None of her boyfriends had made her feel like he did—as if she wanted nothing more than to rip his clothes off.
‘I don’t read Greek,’ she answered, dragging her vocal cords into working order. ‘I wouldn’t know what to choose.’
‘We don’t serve traditional Greek fare here,’ he said. ‘It’s mostly high-carb and high-protein foods like pasta and steak.’
‘Do they have burgers?’
He grinned.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘After a hard workout I go for a burger every time.’
‘With cheese?’
‘It’s not right without the cheese.’
‘And chips?’
‘It wouldn’t be a complete meal without them.’
‘Cheeseburger and chips for me, then, please.’
‘Drink?’
‘Coke?’
His sensuous lips widened into a full-blown grin that was as sinful as the food she wanted. ‘Two cheeseburgers and chips, and two Cokes coming up.’
He got up from his seat, walked to the counter, fist-bumped the teenage boy working there and gave their order.
‘It won’t take long,’ he said when he sat back at the table.
‘Good. I am starving.’
‘I’m not surprised after that workout you did.’
‘It doesn’t help that I forgot to have any dinner before we left.’
‘How can you forget a meal?’ He looked at her as if she’d confessed to forgetting to put her underwear on.
She shrugged. ‘It happens. If I’m concentrating and lost in the music it is easy for me to forget.’
‘It’s no wonder you’re a slip of thing.’
‘I make up for it,’ she said defensively. ‘I might not eat at regular times, but I always eat.’
He eyed her, his look contemplative. Before he could say whatever was on his mind their food was brought over by yet another teenager.
‘That was quick,’ Amalie marvelled. Her famished belly rumbled loudly as she looked at the heaped plate. She didn’t think she’d ever seen so many chips on a plate, or a burger of such epic proportions.
‘We run a tight ship here.’
‘That’s not the first time you’ve said “we”,’ she said, picking up a thick golden chip that was so hot she dropped it back onto the plate. ‘Are you involved in this place somehow?’
‘This is my gym.’
She gazed at him, trying to stop her face wrinkling in puzzlement. ‘But you have a gym in your villa.’
‘And there’s one at the palace too.’ He picked up his burger and bit into it, devouring almost a quarter in one huge mouthful.
She shook her head. ‘So why this place too?’
He swallowed, his light brown eyes on hers. ‘This is a boxing gym. Sparring is no fun when you’re on your own.’
‘So you bought a gym so you could have some company?’
‘There were a lot of reasons.’
‘Do you run it?’
‘I employ a manager. Enough questions—eat before your food gets cold.’
‘Okay, but do me a favour and never tell my mother what I’m about to eat.’
His brow furrowed. ‘Why? Would she disapprove?’
Amalie had already bitten into a chip, possibly the crispest and yet fluffiest chip she had ever tasted. She chewed, then swallowed it down with some Coke before answering. ‘My mother is a gastronomy snob. She considers any food with English or American origin to be tantamount to eating out of a rubbish bin.’
‘Yet she married an Englishman.’
‘That’s true,’ she agreed, casting her eyes down. Her parents had been divorced for half her lifetime, yet the guilt still had the power to catch her unawares.
Talos picked up on an inflection in her tone. ‘Was it a bad divorce?’
‘Not at all. It was very civilised.’
‘But traumatic for you?’
‘It wasn’t the easiest of experiences,’ she conceded, before picking up her burger and taking a small bite.
It was with some satisfaction that he saw her eyes widen and her nod of approval.
‘That is good,’ she enthused when her mouth was clear.
‘Maybe not the gastronomical heights your mother would approve of, but still high-quality,’ he agreed.
‘I think this might be the best burger I’ve ever had.’
‘You mean you’ve eaten a burger before?’ he asked, feigning surprise. ‘Your mother will be shocked.’
‘I hide all my convenience food when I know she’s coming over.’
He grinned and took another bite of his burger. The workout had clearly done Amalie the world of good; most of her primness had been sweated out of her. She almost looked relaxed.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. It gratified him to see her eat so heartily; he had imagined from her slender frame and self-confessed lack of exercise that she would eat like a sparrow.
He tried to imagine eating with another woman here and came up blank.
In normal life this gym was his sanctuary—not somewhere he would bring a date, even if his date liked to work out. For the same reason he refused to make overtures to any of the women who worked here. Regardless of the fact that most of his female staff were, like the majority of his employees, teenagers, and so automatically off limits, he didn’t want the messiness that inevitably came about when he ended a relationship to spill into his sanctuary.
Melina, his kickboxing instructor, had blatantly flirted with him when she’d first started work here and—despite her being in her mid-twenties, and attractive to boot—he’d frozen out all her innuendoes until she’d got the message.
The endorphins released during a vigorous workout always made him crave sex, but he disciplined himself with the iron will Kalliakis men were famed for. Except for his father. The Kalliakis iron will had skipped a generation with Lelantos... Lelantos had been weak and venal—a man who had allowed his strong libido and equally great temper to control him.
It killed Talos to know that of the three Kalliakis Princes, he was the most like their father.
The difference was that he had learned to control his appetites and the volatile temperament that came with it. Boxing had taught him to harness it.
Tonight, though, the endorphins seemed to have exploded within him, and the primal urge to sate himself in a willing woman’s arms was stronger than ever. And not just any woman. This woman.
Theos, just watching Amalie eat made him feel like throwing her over his shoulder, carrying her to the nearest empty room and taking her wildly.
‘Do you consider yourself French or English?’ he asked, wrenching his mind away from matters carnal. He needed to concentrate on getting her mentally fit to play at his grandfather’s gala, not be imagining ripping her clothes off with his teeth.
‘Both. Why?’
‘You speak English with a slight accent. It made me curious.’
‘I suppose French is my first language. I grew up bilingual, but I’ve never lived full-time in England. My father’s always kept a home there, but when I was a child we used it more for holidays and parties than anything else.’
‘Was that because of your mother’s influence?’
‘I assume so. My mother definitely wore the trousers in that marriage.’ A slight smile, almost sad, played at the corners of her lips.
‘I have heard that she’s a forceful woman.’
He’d heard many stories about Colette Barthez, not many of them complimentary. It was strange to think that the woman before him—a woman who tried desperately to fade into the background—was a child from the loins of the biggest diva on the planet. He had to assume she took after her father who, he’d learned, was regarded as a quintessential Englishman, with a dry humour and calm manner.
Amalie chewed on a chip, disliking the implication in his words and the way he’d delivered them. She, better than anyone, knew just how ‘forceful’ her mother could be in getting her own way, but that didn’t stop her loving her and despising the people who would put her down.
‘You don’t become the most successful and famous mezzo-soprano in the world without having a strong will and a thick hide. If she were a man she would be celebrated.’
The scarred eyebrow rose in question.
She shook her head and pushed her plate to the side. ‘She sold out Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall three nights in a row last year, but every article written about those concerts just had to mention her three ex-husbands, numerous lovers and so-called diva demands.’
The black scarred brow drew forward. ‘That must be very hurtful for her to read,’ he said, his tone careful.
‘If it was the French media it would devastate her, but in France she’s revered and treated as a national icon. With the rest of the world’s press, so long as they aren’t criticising her voice or performance, she doesn’t care—she truly does have the hide of a rhinoceros.’
But not when it came to love. When it came to affairs of the heart, her mother felt things deeply. Bored lovers had the power to shatter her.
‘But they upset you?’ he said, a shrewdness in his eyes.
‘No one wants to read salacious stories about their mother,’ she muttered, reaching for one more chip and popping it in her mouth before she could unloosen her tongue any further.
Her family and personal life were none of his concern, but she felt so protective when it came to her mother, who was passionate, funny, loving, predatory, egotistical and a complete one-off. She drove her up the wall, but Amalie adored her.
‘That is true,’ Talos agreed. ‘My family also live under the spotlight. There are occasions when it can burn.’
She leaned back in her chair and stared at him through narrowed eyes. ‘If you know how much the spotlight can burn, why would you push me back under it when you know it hurts me so much?’
‘Because you were born to play under it,’ he replied, his deep bass voice no-nonsense.
And yet she detected a whisper of warmth in those light brown eyes she hadn’t seen before.
‘It is my job to put you back under it without you gaining any new scars.’
‘But the scars I already have haven’t healed.’
There was no point in shying away from it. She’d seen enough psychologists in her early teens to know that she’d been scarred, and that it was those scars still preventing her from stepping onto a stage and performing with eyes upon her.
‘Then I will heal them for you.’
A shiver ran through her as an image of his mouth drifting across her skin skittered into her mind, shockingly vivid... Talos healing her in the most erotic manner. It sent a pulse of heat deep into her abdomen.
She blinked rapidly, to dispel the unbidden image, and was grateful when another member of the gym chose that moment to come over to their table and chat with him.
Passion was something she’d always avoided. After her parents’ divorce she’d spent her weekend and holiday visitations watching her mother bounce from lover to lover, marrying two of them for good measure, engulfed in desire’s heady flames, trying to recapture the magic of her first marriage. Watching her get burned so many times had been pain itself. The guilt of knowing she was responsible for her mother’s heartache—and her father’s—had only added to it.
Her father had never brought another woman home, let alone remarried. Though he would always deny it with a sad smile, the torch he carried for her mother was too bright to extinguish.
If it hadn’t been for that horrendous incident in front of her parents and their friends and its aftermath, when their child prodigy could no longer perform like the dancing seal she’d become, her parents would still be together today—she was certain of it. On the occasions when they were forced together, Amalie would watch them skirt around each other; her mother showing off her latest lover with something close to flamboyant desperation, her father accepting this behaviour with a wistful stoicism.
Amalie liked her quiet, orderly, passionless life. It was safe.
Talos Kalliakis made her feel anything but safe.
* * *
Talos rapped loudly on the cottage door for the second time, blowing out a breath of exasperated air. Just as he was about to try the handle and let himself in the door swung open and there Amalie stood, violin in hand and a look of startled apology on her face.
‘Is it that time already?’ she said, standing aside to let him through. ‘Sorry, I lost track of time.’
He followed her through to the cosy living room. The baby grand piano sat in the corner, covered with sheets of paper and an old-fashioned tape recorder. Next to it stood a music stand.
She looked what could only be described as lively—as if she had springs under her feet. In the four days she’d been in Agon he’d never seen her like this.
‘Would you mind if I give the workout a miss tonight?’ she asked, her green sapphire eyes vibrant and shining. ‘I’ve reached an understanding with the score and I want to solidify it in my mind before I lose the moment.’
‘You are making headway?’ It amused him to hear her discussing the score as if it were a living entity.
‘Something has clicked today. I’ve made a recording of the piano accompaniment—I am so grateful your grandmother wrote an accompaniment for the piano as well as for a full orchestra—and playing along to it is making all the pieces come together.’
‘Are you ready to play it for me?’
Her eyes rounded in horror. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘You’re going to have to play it for me soon,’ he reminded her. The countdown was on, the gala only three weeks and six days away.
‘Let me master the composition before we discuss that.’
He eyed her contemplatively. ‘You have until Friday.’
She’d accompanied him to his gym three nights in a row, her workouts intense and focused. Wanting her concentration to be used in figuring out the score, he’d deliberately steered any small talk between them away from the personal. Other than chauffeuring her to and from the gym, he’d left her to it.
A dart of panic shot from her eyes. ‘I won’t be ready by Friday.’
‘Friday will give us three weeks to get you performance-ready. I know nothing of music. It makes no difference to me if you make mistakes at this early stage; I won’t notice them. What concerns me is getting you used to playing solo in front of people again. We need to work on that as much as you need to work on the score itself.’
A mutinous expression flashed over her face before her features relaxed a touch and she nodded.
‘You can have tonight off, but tomorrow you go back to the gym.’
‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re a slave-driving ogre?’
‘No one has dared.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I want to get on—you can leave now.’
‘And no one has ever dared tell me when I should leave before.’
‘You must be getting old, because your memory is failing—I’ve told you to leave before, at my home in Paris when you barged your way in.’
‘Ah, yes. I distinctly remember you tried using physical force to expel me.’
His loins tightened as memories of her soft, lithe body splayed on his lap while he controlled the flare of fire and passion that had exploded out of her assailed him anew. He cast a long, appreciative look up and down her body, taking in the short black skirt over sheer black tights and the short-sleeved viridian-green shirt unbuttoned to display a hint of cleavage...
‘Would you like to use force to expel me now?’
She cuddled her violin to her chest as if for protection and took a step back.
‘Imagine how fit all those workouts will make you,’ he purred in a deliberately sensual tone, enjoying the colour heightening her cheekbones. ‘Next time you choose to fight me with your body you might have a chance of overpowering me.’
‘We both know I could train twenty-four hours a day, every day for a decade, and still not be strong enough to overpower you.’
‘If you would like to put that theory into practice you only have to say.’ He dropped his voice and stared straight into her almond eyes. Theos, she was temptation itself. ‘I’m not averse to a beautiful woman trying to dominate me. Something tells me the results would be explosive.’
Other than the colour on her face, she showed no reaction. For the briefest of moments Talos wondered if his assumption that the attraction he felt for her was mutual was wrong—then he saw her swallow and swipe a lock of hair from her forehead.
‘Enjoy your music,’ he said, stepping out of the room with one last grin.
As he shut the cottage front door behind him he ruefully conceded that trying to get a rise out of the beautiful musician living in his guest house had served no purpose other than to fuel the chemistry swirling between them.
He would need an extra-long workout to expel the energy fizzing in his veins.
