Читать книгу At The Greek Tycoon's Bidding - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 6

BECAUSE there was no convenient underground car park for the office, most of the employees who chose to drive in—willing to pay the Congestion Charge because it gave them flexibility to leave London at the drop of the hat to attend meetings elsewhere—parked at the nearest multi-storey car park.

Theo, however, had a chauffeur permanently on call. Within minutes of speaking into his mobile phone, a long, sleek Mercedes had pulled up outside the building, engine gently throbbing as it waited for them to get in.

Heather had moved on from protesting about the need to be dropped home to protesting about his invitation to dinner, which was unnecessary considering she had just eaten sandwiches courtesy of the Savoy.

She found herself ushered into the back seat of the car and slid across to make space for him.

‘It’s very good of you, Mr Miquel…’

‘Considering you fainted on my doorstep, so to speak, I think you can call me by my first name—Theo.’

‘Well, all right. But I still don’t need taking anywhere. You don’t have to feel responsible for me, although I’m very grateful for your help…’

Theo turned to look at her, his massive body lounging indolently against the car door.

‘I can’t remember the last time I was so comprehensively turned down for dinner by a woman.’

Heather squirmed, and wondered how she could temper her protests in case he thought that she was being offensive and ungrateful after all he had done for her. And she had to admit that the thought of having dinner with him was disconcerting but also exciting.

‘I’m not exactly dressed for dinner,’ she said, staring down at her workmanlike shoes and the thick black coat which did its job very efficiently but which also made her look a little like a ship in full sail.

‘No, you’re not,’ Theo agreed, ‘but I’m sure Henri won’t mind.’

‘Henri?’ So he agreed she looked a complete mess. Well, her success rate with the opposite sex had never been that sparkling. At least not when it came to the sexual side of things. She had grown up in the shadow of her beautiful sister and from an early age had resigned herself to the inevitability of always taking second place. Boys had been her best mates, but they had been enthralled by Claire. That was simply life, and she had never let it get her down.

Right now it was getting her down.

‘The proprietor at a little French bistro I go to quite often,’ Theo was explaining. ‘We go back a long way.’

‘Oh, yes? How’s that?’ She wondered whether she might be able to sneak into the bathroom at the ‘little French bistro’ and do something with her hair, somehow glue it into submission.

‘I helped him out a long time ago—financed him for the restaurant he wanted to open.’

‘I knew you had a soft side!’ Heather exclaimed impulsively, smiling at him.

Good Lord, Theo thought, the woman needed protecting from her own good nature!

‘It was a sensible business arrangement,’ Theo corrected, not much liking the image of him as having a soft side. If he had, he’d certainly never seen evidence of it, nor had any of those kings of finance who deferred to him the minute he opened his mouth. ‘To dispel the myth, I made money out of the deal.’

‘But I’m sure you would have invested in him even if you hadn’t thought that you were going to. I guess that’s what friendship’s all about, isn’t it?’

‘I really have not given it much thought,’ Theo said deflatingly. ‘We are here.’ He nodded as the car slowed down, and Heather glanced around to see that the little bistro was more of a chic restaurant—the sort of place that gathered trendy people who all sat around with glasses of white wine looking at everybody else.

She groaned aloud and shot him a frantic look.

‘I can’t go in there.’

‘Why not?’ Theo asked with a trace of irritation. He was beginning to wonder what demonic urge had impelled him into taking this dippy woman out. Yes, sure he was concerned by her ominous remarks about her future job—but, really, what business was it of his? Adults chose to do what they wanted to do with their lives. He decided right there and then that this would be his one truly good deed for the year.

‘Look at me!’ Heather squeaked, her face flushed with panic.

Theo looked. ‘No one will pay you the slightest bit of attention.’ That was the best he could do at consoling her without resort to outright lying.

‘Everyone is going to look!’ Heather contradicted in a high voice. ‘I mean, just look at the people in there.’ The wide goldfish-bowl-style restaurant offered an obliging view of a crowd of people smartly dressed and relaxing in an atmosphere of self-congratulation. They seemed to be making the statement that they were all beautiful, and thank goodness for that.

The car had now stopped and Theo’s chauffeur had smoothly moved round to the passenger door, which he was opening for her.

Next to Theo, Heather felt even more of an embarrassment. She raised imploring eyes to him and he shook his head impatiently.

‘You’re too self-conscious about your appearance.’

‘That’s all right for you to say,’ she informed him. ‘You happen to be blessed with amazing good looks.’

‘Do you always say what’s on your mind?’ Theo asked, a little taken aback by her blunt statement.

Heather ignored that. She was too busy hovering. He had to propel her through the door, and he might not notice a thing, but she certainly did. All those faces turned in their direction. The women sniggered, she was certain of it, before feasting their eyes on the man by her side.

The men shot her quick disparaging looks, and then they, too, looked at Theo, wondering whether they should recognise him. Heather felt worse than invisible. Indeed, invisible would have been a much more acceptable option. As it was, she stared down at the shiny wooden floor which made the most of highlighting her practical line in footwear.

‘We’re over there,’ Theo murmured, bending down. ‘Would you like me to lead you or are you prepared to look up and make your way to the table unaided?’

‘Very funny,’ Heather whispered back at him. ‘Do you notice how everyone’s staring at me, wondering what on earth I’m doing here?’

‘No one’s staring at you.’

‘Well, they were,’ Heather informed him, reaching her chair with deep relief and sinking into it.

‘Your mother has a lot to blame herself for in letting whatever complexes you have about your sister get out of hand.’ He picked up the menu on the table but gave it only a scant perusal, obviously knowing in advance what he intended to order.

Heather leaned forward and looked at him earnestly. ‘It wasn’t Mum’s fault that she happened to give birth to a swan and an ugly duckling.’

‘Point proved. Is she aware that you constantly make comparisons between yourself and your sister?’

‘Mum died seven years ago.’ She waited for the meaningless expressions of regret but none were forthcoming. Instead, Theo held her gaze thoughtfully before giving her a quick nod. ‘She was ill for about two years before she finally passed away. That’s why I never finished my education. I needed to get working.’

‘And what was your sister doing at the time?’

‘Claire was in London, doing an acting course and some waitressing.’

‘And you were left no assets that would have helped you with your own ambitions?’ Against his will, he was curious about the dynamics of her family. Without looking away from her, he ordered a bottle of wine and the fish of the day, which she ordered as well.

Heather flushed. ‘Claire needed what little there was far more than I did at the time. She promised that when she made it big she would pay me back—not that the money ever mattered. Mum was gone and I didn’t really care about dividing what she’d left us, which wasn’t very much anyway.’

‘And has she made it big?’ Theo asked casually, knowing what answer he would receive. Sure enough, it was no surprise to discover that dreams of stardom were languishing across the Atlantic. No surprise either to discover that the money had never managed to wing its way back to its original owner, who seemed stunningly content with the situation.

‘So you are happy to compare yourself unfavourably to someone whose only claim to fame apparently lies in her looks?’ Theo mused over a glass of wine.

‘She also happens to be a very warm person,’ Heather defended hotly. Mostly, she conceded to herself, when she was getting her own way. Her selfishness had always been a combination of infuriating and endearing. It had been hard to lose her temper with Claire, and the few times that she had she had met with a brick wall of plaintive incomprehension. ‘Anyway, I don’t compare myself to Claire. I just admire her looks. Don’t you have brothers you sometimes compare yourself to?’ It was such a ridiculous notion that she couldn’t help but grin. ‘No. I can’t picture you comparing yourself unfavourably to anybody. You’re way too self-confident for that. I guess you’d expect people to compare themselves to you.’

‘No siblings,’ Theo informed her flatly, his tone of voice warning her away from any further probing into his personal life, but Heather was gazing at him thoughtfully.

‘That’s very sad for you. I know that Claire doesn’t live here, but it’s just good knowing that she’s with me in spirit, so to speak. What about your parents? Where do they live? Over here? They must be very proud of you, what with you being so successful in your job…’

Women didn’t make a habit of probing into Theo’s personal life. In fact, women knew when to back off without having to be told. Something in his expression had always been very good at warning them about the boundaries he laid down. He wined them and dined them and treated them with extravagant gestures that were wildly out of most people’s orbit. In return he asked only for relationships without complications. His life was hectic enough without having to deal with demands from the opposite sex.

Heather didn’t appear to have the correct instincts warning her to drop the subject. In fact, she was looking at him with the keen enthusiasm of a puppy dog waiting for a treat.

Just as well she was of no interest to him sexually. Theo was convinced that if you fed women with too much personal information, it engendered illusions of permanence. They thought that they had somehow crawled under your skin and were therefore in the right position to stage a complete takeover.

Since this woman was not in the category of a fisherman trawling a net in the hope of netting the fish, he didn’t immediately succumb to the automatic instinct to shut down. Instead, he returned her gaze and shrugged.

‘My father died when I was a boy and my mother does not live over here. She lives in Greece.’

‘Which, of course, is where you’re from…’

Theo permitted himself a faint smile. ‘Why of course…?’

‘Oh, all those stereotypes of Greek men being tall, dark and handsome.’ Heather grinned at the bemused expression on his face. She was just teasing, but she wondered how many times in his life he had ever been teased. ‘Does your mother come and visit you often?’

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

Their food arrived and was placed in front of them; their glasses were refilled with wine which Heather felt quite free to drink considering she was now out of a job.

‘People have interesting stories. How else do you find out who they are if you don’t ask questions?’ Her appetite, which should have been sated after the sandwiches, stirred into life. Naturally she wasn’t going to guzzle the lot, but it wasn’t often that she found herself sitting in a restaurant of this calibre. Somehow it would have seemed rude to be dismissive of the food.

‘So does she?’ Heather persisted.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your mother. Does she come over and visit?’

Theo shook his head in pure exasperation. ‘Occasionally,’ he finally conceded. ‘She visits my country house, and when she does I commute to London. She hates the city. In fact, she has never been here. There—satisfied?’

Heather nodded. For the moment, she wanted to say, before remembering that there would be no more moments, that in fact she was only here because he felt duty-bound to send her on her way with a bit more concern than he would probably otherwise have shown because he had effectively cost her her cleaning job. Which suddenly brought her back down to earth and the reality of losing an income, small though it was, which was necessary to her. She closed her knife and fork on the half-eaten plate of food and cupped her chin in one hand.

‘You’re finished?’ Theo asked in amazement.

Heather felt a little jab of hurt coil deep inside her. Through the shield of her naturally sunny disposition she suddenly had a bleak vision of an alternative reality. The reality that was coldly pointing out that while she had nurtured pleasant fantasies about this tall, aggressively handsome man, while she had always made sure to clean his floor when she knew that he was going to be around, he had never once glanced in her direction—would not have recognised her if she had landed opposite him on a desert island. And while she luxuriated in the thrill of being in his company now, unexpected as it was, the thrill was not mutual. To him she was nothing but an overweight woman whose company he was probably itching to get away from.

‘Did you think that I would carry on eating till I exploded?’ Heather said, far more sharply than she had intended. She softened her uncharacteristically sarcastic reply with a rueful smile. ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about what I shall do now that I no longer have a job to go to in the evenings.’

‘I can’t believe that you really have to hold down two jobs to survive. Surely you can cut back on one or two luxuries…make ends meet that way…?’

Heather laughed. Rich, warm laughter that had a few heads turning in her direction.

‘You don’t live in the real world, Mr Miquel…’

‘Theo…’

‘Well, you don’t. I don’t have any luxuries to cut back on. Friends come over for meals and we watch television and maybe drink a couple of bottles of wine on a Saturday night, and in summer we go on picnics in the park. I don’t do theatres or restaurants or even cinemas very often. Actually, I don’t have an awful lot of free time anyway, which is probably a good thing when it comes to balancing my finances…’ The look of horror on his face was growing by the second, but Heather was unfazed by that. Of course he wouldn’t understand the world she lived in. Why should he? She probably only had a vague inkling of his. ‘I prefer to save up for my course rather than blow money on clothes and entertainment.’

‘And I thought being young was all about being reckless,’ Theo drawled. With a spurt of surprise, he realised that he was having fun. Not quite the same fun that he normally had in the company of a woman, but he felt invigorated. Maybe his jaded palette needed novelty more often.

Heather lifted one shoulder dismissively. ‘Maybe it is, if you can support a reckless lifestyle. Anyway, I’m not a reckless kind of person.’

‘Then perhaps you should reconsider your job with this man…’

‘Tom?’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘What’s so reckless about working behind a bar a few nights every week? Just so long as I laugh a lot and chat to the punters, Tom will be more than happy with me.’

Theo looked down and did a rapid rethink on his original assumption, which seemed ridiculous now that he thought about it. ‘Long hours?’ was all he said, and she nodded.

‘Very long and very tiring, which was why I turned down his offer all those months ago. But needs must. There aren’t that many jobs a girl can do at night, and I can’t fit anything else into my days.’ She sighed. How helpful it would have been if Claire had been true to her word and sent back some of that money she had borrowed all that time ago. But it had been two months since she had spoken to her sister, and a lot longer since they had physically met up. It would be crazy when contact was so limited and precious, to start asking for her loan back.

‘Anyway, no point moaning about all of that.’ She smiled. ‘The food was delicious. Thank you. I’m glad I came.’

‘Even though you couldn’t bear the thought of everyone staring at you?’ He poured her another glass of wine, finishing the bottle, and wondered whether he should order another. If novelty had been what he was after, then he had certainly found it in this woman who was prepared to eat and drink without fear of the consequences. He also realised that it would be no hardship to prolong the evening a bit. After all, his current girlfriend was no longer around, and issues of work would wait until the morning, when he would return to his office to complete what he had started.

‘More wine?’ he asked, signalling to the waiter as he waited for her response.

Heather’s face felt flushed. In fact, she felt quite warm, and would have removed her jumper but for the fact that the old tee shirt she was wearing underneath was even more of an eyesore than the thick grey sweater she had hurriedly stuck on when she had left the house earlier in the evening.

‘Aren’t I keeping you from something?’ She looked at him earnestly.

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Don’t you have somewhere to go? A date or something?’

‘My date cancelled on me when I told her that I was running late.’

So that had been the urgent phone call which she had glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. Heather felt a rush of guilt and she reddened.

‘That’s awful!’ She half stood up but he waved her back down, nodding at the waiter to pour the wine he had ordered. ‘I can’t be the cause of a row between you and your girlfriend. I’m sorry.’

‘Sit back down,’ Theo ordered, amused at her attack of conscience. ‘You simply helped along the inevitable, if it’s any consolation. Sit! People will stare. You don’t want that, do you?’

Heather grudgingly took her seat, but her eyes were still anxiously focused on his face. ‘What do you mean?’ She gulped a mouthful of wine and then pushed the glass away from her.

‘I mean—’ he leant towards her ‘—I can see the group of people behind you, and they’re just waiting to see if you’re about to commit social suicide by causing a scene…’

‘That’s not what I meant!’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘Oh!’ She pushed some flyaway hair out of her face. ‘Then what did you mean? About me helping along the inevitable? Were you going to dump her?’

‘Sooner or later.’ He sprawled back into his chair, folded his arms and stared at her transparently distraught face. Who would have imagined that the girl cleaning his office would have proved such a refreshing companion for the evening? He could hardly believe it himself.

‘Oh.’ Heather fell back on the single word. ‘Why would she break up with you just because you were running late?’ She frowned, puzzled. Yes, relationships could be transitory, but wasn’t that taking it too far? She herself had only been in one long-standing relationship and even when they had both reached the point of recognising that things weren’t going anywhere between them they had still taken many long evenings to finally cut the ties. ‘And why would you have dumped her sooner or later? Weren’t you serious about her?’

That, as far as Theo was concerned, was one question too far. He called for the bill and then leant forward, resting his elbows on the table.

‘I think we’ve reached the point where you’re asking about things that are none of your business.’

For a few charged moments Heather glimpsed the man everyone tiptoed around. The man with the steel hand in the velvet glove. She shrugged. ‘Okay. I apologise. Sometimes I talk too much.’

‘Sometimes you do,’ Theo agreed unsmilingly. He settled the bill and, eager to return their last snatches of conversation to a less tense footing, Heather smiled brightly.

‘I would offer to pay my way, but my finances…’

‘Can barely run to a cinema show. I know.’ He stood up and wondered again why such an ungainly girl would wear clothes that deliberately emphasised her girth.

Heather stood up quickly, too quickly, because suddenly the effects of having drunk too much of the very cold, very good white wine took their toll and she teetered slightly on her feet.

The ground had definitely felt more stable when she was sitting down.

And now she had to make her way across the even more crowded room.

‘That’s the problem with good wine,’ Theo said lazily. ‘Too easy to drink.’ He moved over to where she was standing in panicked indecision and slipped his arm around her waist.

That contact seemed to electrify every inch of her body. She was aware of the heated racing of her pulses and a deep, steady throb that began somewhere in the pit of her stomach and flooded outwards, obliterating every ounce of common sense in its path.

A vague girlish crush…one night talking, the briefest of touches that meant absolutely zero to him…and she felt her head spinning like a woman in love.

She barely heard him talking to her as he ushered her through the room and out towards the exit, pausing en route to exchange a few pleasantries with Henri, who had materialised out of thin air and found time for banter even though he clearly had plenty of work to do.

Lord, but she wanted to curve her body into his! Had she ever felt this way with Johnny? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t think so.

As soon as they were outside he released her, and she took a couple of steps back, just to recover from that giddy sensation. The cold air was good. As was the safe, comforting bulk of her coat, which he had somehow managed to get her into.

His chauffeur was parked a few metres up, but before he started walking her towards the car Heather looked at him and gave a watery smile.

‘I’ll be fine to make my way back from here,’ she said, enunciating every word very carefully. She stuck her hands firmly into the deep pockets of her coat and clenched her fists.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Where do you live?’

‘Honestly. I’m fine. You’ve done too much already.’ She was aware that there was just the smallest hint of her words being slurred. When he placed his hand on her elbow she knew that she would capitulate.

‘You’ve gone very quiet…’

‘I feel a bit wobbly…tired…’ As soon as she was in the car she rested her head back and closed her eyes. She was dimly aware of giving Theo her address, and the next time she opened her eyes it was to find that they had arrived at the house which she shared with four other girls, all of whom were out. For the first time she realised that she must be the only person under the age of twenty-five, single and in London, who wasn’t out doing something on a Friday night. Except she had done something!

He walked her to the door, took her bag from her when she couldn’t locate her keys and managed to find them. This after pulling out everything bar the kitchen sink from her voluminous sack. When he stepped inside the house Heather didn’t protest. Yes, he had done his duty, and he was keen to be off, but, no, she didn’t want him to leave. Not just yet. Not when she wouldn’t be seeing him again.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ Heather asked awkwardly.

‘How many of you share this place?’

‘Four.’ She hiccupped, and covered her mouth with her hand.

‘I think you probably need the coffee more than I do. Go and sit down and I’ll make you some.’

Well, Theo reasoned, his evening had gone wildly wrong starting from the moment he’d heard that crash outside his office, so why not wrap it up doing something he rarely did? Waiting on a woman who was the worse for wear and had probably collapsed into a snoring heap on her sofa?

Theo wasn’t a brutish male chauvinist. However, he had been spoilt by the attention lavished on him by members of the opposite sex. His looks, his charisma and his vast wealth had always been a powerful magnetic pull for women who heeded his slightest whim. He had never particularly had to put himself out. In fact, he couldn’t recall the last time he had taken care of a woman in the manner in which he was now taking care of the one who had fallen asleep beside him in the car when he had been in the middle of a sentence.

He made his way to the back of the house, observing the chaos in which four people apparently lived with no pressing desire to tidy up behind themselves. The kitchen sported the detritus of breakfast eaten on the run and not cleared away. Jumpers were slung in odd places and shoes were randomly scattered. On the window ledge a row of cards suggested a birthday had come and gone.

Coffee made, he reached the sitting room to find that Heather had fallen asleep. She had stripped off her jumper and was sprawled on the sofa with one arm raised, half covering her face and dipping over the arm of the chair.

She had kicked off her shoes, revealing thick grey socks.

Theo stood for a few seconds, drawing in a sharp breath, because the shapeless figure wasn’t quite as shapeless as he had imagined. Her breasts were big, succulently generous, but there was proportion to her body and the sliver of skin he glimpsed where the tee shirt rose up was surprisingly firm.

He rubbed his eyes to dispel the uneasy sensation of staring at her, and the even more uneasy suspicion that he would have liked to move closer so that he could appreciate those curves a bit more.

Without waking her up, he deposited the coffee on the table by the sofa and, after a few seconds’ hesitation, pulled out his pen and hunted around for some paper. He wasn’t going to wake her, but walking away without saying goodbye somehow felt wrong. So he jotted down a couple of lines, wishing her luck in getting a new job, then he left, resisting the terrible urge to look back over his shoulder at her softly breathing body.

Once outside, he laughed at the insanity that had possessed him for a few fleeting seconds. He had looked at her and had been turned on! He almost called Claudia, knowing that some sweet talk would have her running back into his arms, but instead he switched off his mobile phone and forced his highly disciplined brain to concentrate on the work he had had to defer to the following morning.

Heather, surfacing the next day to the sounds of one of her room-mates clattering about in the kitchen, had a few seconds of blissful oblivion during which she imagined the sounds to be Theo, making her that cup of coffee.

The cup of coffee lying cold on the table by her. Next to a note which she now read. It said nothing at all. A few polite words scribbled down before he left the house, doubtless relieved that there was no need for him to continue the charade of entertaining her.

Heather sat up and buried her head in her hands. He hadn’t woken her up! She had fallen asleep and lost her opportunity to spend a few more minutes in his company.

The sun seemed to have gone out of her life. It was only when, after a week, one of her friends in the house mentioned it that Heather gave herself a stiff lecture. Moping around over a man she had known for roughly three hours was insane.

‘Am I insane?’ she asked her reflection. ‘No. Because you know,’ she added, wagging her finger censoriously at herself, ‘only a complete loony would lose sleep over a man like Theo!’

She pulled herself together and accepted the job at Tom’s pub. It was, as she had predicted, hard work but sociable, and was suited to her temperament. The hours might have been longer, and her exhaustion levels might have been higher, but she was at least eating regularly, and she took Fridays off. Theo’s remark about being young and enjoying life had stuck in her head.

Not, even after six weeks, that any of those fun-packed Friday evenings with her friends could compare to that one night that had sprung from nothing and disappeared before she could hold onto it.

And his image kept slipping into her head. She couldn’t seem to help it. One minute she would be laughing at something and the next minute there he was, released from the restraints she kept trying to put on him. She went to bed with him at night and woke up to him the following morning, and she just couldn’t help it. It was involuntary. The man haunted her.

Of course it would end. Time had a wonderful way of healing, and she cheerfully resigned herself to due process. She was so resigned, in fact, that when, two months after she had last laid eyes on him, she picked up her telephone to hear his voice on the other end, she almost didn’t recognise it.

Then she sat down, flapping her arm madly so that Beth would turn the television down, which she did, making sure she remained where she was to overhear the conversation. Heather could feel her heart start racing. He had managed to get her name from the firm of cleaners she had worked for, apparently. Heather assumed his influence must have unlocked her personnel file, since its contents were confidential. Not that she cared. She just wanted him to tell her why he had called.

‘I have a proposition to put to you,’ he finally said, when pleasantries had been exhausted.

‘Really?’ She tried to keep the stomach-turning curiosity out of her voice.

‘My housekeeper has gone. Her sister in Scotland has fallen ill and needs looking after. The job has become vacant and I thought of you.’ He briefly explained what it entailed. It could even, he informed her, be a live-in post. His apartment had a separate wing and he was rarely there anyway. He preferred to spend as many of his free weekends as he could in the country. He told her how much she would be earning and the figure made her gasp. It was far and away more than she was currently earning with both her jobs combined. She would be able to save and, if she decided to live in, would be able to afford her course within months, instead of the tortuous years she had anticipated.

Not that financial considerations played much of a part in her decision.

‘I accept,’ she told him promptly, making him smile at the other end of the line. ‘Just tell me when you want me to start…’