Читать книгу No Mistress But Love - Kate Proctor - Страница 6

THE very first time Lindy Hall had seen Niko Leandros her breathing mechanism had all but seized up on her; and on subsequent meetings, despite decided reservations as to his character, she had found her fingers itching to reach out and ascertain for themselves whether or not that vision of male perfection comprised actual flesh and blood.

‘Where is your husband?’

And that was another thing about him, reflected Lindy, lack of sleep dulling her normally alert mind—his voice: its unmistakably English, and markedly upperclass drawl would unexpectedly soften with the slightest of Greek accents on the odd word, rendering it one of the sexiest voices she had ever heard.

‘Am I to take it you don’t wish to tell me where your husband is?’ enquired Niko, his tall, statuesque form gliding past Lindy’s desk and to the window behind her.

‘I really do wish you’d call me Lindy.’ She sighed involuntarily, and was immediately cursing both herself, for inviting yet another glacial rebuff, and Tim Russell for never being around when he was needed.

And where on earth was Tim? she wondered irritably. He had sloped off early yesterday afternoon and, as far as she knew, hadn’t set foot inside the hotel since—a fact which, coupled with last night’s abnormally oppressive heat, had guaranteed her a virtually sleepless night.

‘Yes, I suppose I should—under the circumstances,’ murmured Niko in that soft, drawling voice of his as he parted the slats of the blind to peer out into the dazzle beyond, where sea and skies merged into a single shimmering blue.

‘I beg your pardon?’ croaked Lindy, scarcely able to believe her ears.

She swivelled round her chair in order to see him, a small frown creasing her brow as her eyes caught sight of the still-livid scar running from within the gleaming black of his hairline right down to the elegant arch of his right eyebrow. Though admitting it brought her a decided pang of guilt, she realised that she found something almost comforting in the sight of that one blemish on the otherwise chiselled perfection of his features—no one had any right to look as good as this man did.

‘Perhaps it is best if I start calling you by your first name,’ he reiterated, his gaze still on the view beyond the window.

Lindy’s eyes rolled heavenwards. What was she supposed to do—get down on her knees and thank him for the favour he was bestowing on her? He might be the most gorgeous-looking man she had ever clapped eyes on, but his downright arrogance more than cancelled that out! From the moment he had arrived he had treated both herself and Tim to a brand of polite disdain that left neither of them in any doubt as to who was the master and who the servants.

‘And you may call me Niko.’

Had the chair not been of the solid, figure-hugging variety Lindy felt sure she would have fallen from it in shock.

‘You’ve obviously misunderstood me,’ she managed coolly. ‘I wasn’t implying I wanted to be on first-name terms with you…it’s just that…well, to be honest, it makes me feel ancient when people refer to me as Mrs Russell.’ And nine times out of ten she failed to respond to that bogus name, she added miserably to herself—there having been nothing in the least honest in her stammered excuse.

‘Under the circumstances,’ murmured Niko, turning from the window to face her, ‘it would be rather ludicrous for us to be on anything other than first-name terms.’

Lindy leaned back against the chair, willing herself not to react to the taunting tone of those words and willing her eyes to keep their appreciation to themselves as they surveyed the broad-shouldered muscularity of the body beneath the heavy white silk of the shirt encasing it.

‘You keep saying ‘under the circumstances",’ she muttered, hastily removing her unreliable eyes from the muscled tautness of the well-shaped thighs they were now graphically envisaging beneath close-fitting, immaculately tailored black trousers.

‘True—I keep saying ‘under the circumstances",’ he concurred, taking a couple of unexpected strides towards her and hauling her to her feet. ‘And almost every time you look at me your eyes begin eating me,’ he added inconsequentially, his fingers biting painfully into her flesh.

Momentarily stunned by the complete unexpectedness of both his actions and words, Lindy gazed up blankly into the face now scant inches from her own, her widespaced blue eyes widening in shock as they discovered just how cold brown eyes could be, even brown ones flecked with gold, as she now discovered his to be, and which should rightly have been the embodiment of nothing but warmth.

‘I’m afraid you suffer from a seriously over-inflated ego, Mr Leandros,’ Lindy informed him with all the coolness she could muster, given that her pulses seemed intent on breaking the sound barrier. ‘Because what you’ve seen in my eyes and misread is pity—pure and simple! Though I’m sure that, given time, the terrible disfigurement on your head will fade to little more than a barely noticeable scar.’

Had her own common sense not already told her how utterly pathetic that spur of the moment excuse had been the expression of amused disbelief flickering across Niko Leandros’s handsome features would have quickly brought it home to her.

‘My, my—so you’re compassionate as well as beautiful,’ he drawled, his words husky with laughter as he sank his fingers none too gently into the shoulder-length thickness of her sun-streaked dark blonde hair and tilted back her head. ‘Perhaps I’m a far luckier man than I’d realised.’

‘Would you mind letting go of me, Mr Leandros?’ demanded Lindy frigidly, his taunting reference to her looks touching a raw nerve in her that put a merciful break on her racing pulses.

‘Why? Surely you don’t object to a man—even one as grossly disfigured as I am—telling you that you’re beautiful?’ he enquired silkily, an openly predatory gleam in his eyes as he tugged her body against his.

‘I’m not beautiful—and we both know it!’ she exclaimed in a strangled voice, tearing her body free from its electrifying contact with his and racing round to the other side of the desk.

‘Well, that’s a novel line, I must admit,’ he muttered, his eyes narrowing to watchful slits as Lindy, her cheeks burning with humiliation, gazed sightlessly down at the papers strewn across the desk.

This was it, she told herself furiously; Tim Russell could rant and rave and make all the threats he liked—she had had enough and was taking the first boat she could get off this damned island!

‘Unfortunately for you, I don’t find it in the least intriguing when women start playing silly games and fishing for compliments—so you can dispense with both,’ he informed her coldly, then added with mocking amusement, ‘Under the circumstances, it would pay you to do both with alacrity.’

Lindy’s eyes flew to his, anger darkening their blue to navy.

‘It seems your husband hasn’t had the guts to put you in the picture,’ he continued, his eyes taking almost insultingly candid stock of the slim, golden-skinned figure across the desk from him and lingering openly on the softly rounded curves that even the shapeless T-shirt dress she was wearing couldn’t disguise. ‘Though I can’t say I’m surprised—one can’t really expect honour in such a man, now, can one?’

‘One hasn’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ snapped Lindy, wondering what on earth it was that Tim had been up to this time, and wondering even more at her own perverseness in finding this loathsomely arrogant specimen of a man so unspeakably attractive.

‘Really? Not only does he play cards badly and way beyond his means—but he also cheats.’

Lindy only just managed to stifle a groan of complete exasperation. She had had more than enough of Tim Russell and his ghastly ways—even though she had no one to blame but herself for that unpleasant fact.

‘Perhaps you will find it a little ironic that, even cheating unchallenged, he still managed to lose you to me last night.’

‘What Tim does…’ Lindy froze suddenly. ‘What did you say?’ she just about managed to croak.

‘I’ve just told you that I won you in a poker game last night,’ he informed her indifferently, turning and strolling to the door. He paused as he reached it. ‘By the way, when your husband turns up—tell him he’s fired. I did mention it to him last night, but he was probably too worse the wear for drink to remember… I dare say the fact that his wife is now mine to enjoy has also slipped his memory, so perhaps you’d be good enough to remind him of that too. And, by the way—I’ve had your things moved into my suite.’

Lindy leaned back against the desk as the door closed behind him, her mind reeling in a daze of confusion. Unconsciously she raised a hand to rub against her upper arm where the imprint of Niko’s fingers still tingled against her flesh, while the thought crept accusingly into her head that it was the inexplicable potency of the attraction she felt towards Niko that had somehow prevented her having a show-down with Tim.

Frowning, she shook her head. It was completely irrational of her to feel even a single twinge of guilt. A platonic relationship was what she and Tim had agreed on while they were here—Tim because he was still nursing wounds from a particularly hurtful relationship, and she because…Her thoughts stalled uncertainly. Because, to be perfectly frank, she seemed to have a problem where men were concerned, she told herself bluntly. At fifteen she had lost her heart to the local Romeo, whose callous remarks about her adolescent podginess—which had clung to her with relentless tenacity until she was almost twenty—had left her with a cripplingly negative self-consciousness towards her appearance. Despite the claims of her beautiful mother and her equally stunningly beautiful sister, Joanna, seven years her senior, that such a period of fatness was no more than an unfortunate family trait, she had protected herself so assiduously from the potentially hurtful attentions of males that, when they had eventually begun determinedly seeking her out, her total lack of even the most basic of experience had brought complications she had never even dreamed of to her life. Which was why, she reasoned ruefully, she had welcomed the allegedly broken-hearted Tim so wholeheartedly into her chaotic life. Tim hadn’t drooled with what she considered to be the blatant insincerity of other men, she remembered, and—until he had shown his true colours here—neither had he tried to lure her into his bed, the sole aim, she had become convinced, of just about every man with whom she had been coming into contact.

‘A year or so out of the London rat race—that’s what I need, and what I honestly think you could do with too,’ was how Tim had first introduced the subject. ‘There’s a job going on one of the Greek Islands, managing a super de luxe hotel, which I thought I’d try for… Interested?’

‘Very,’ Lindy had laughed, ‘except that I know absolutely nothing about hotel management.’

‘No problem—I know enough for the two of us.’

She realised now that she hadn’t really taken his suggestion that she should join him seriously, because her first thought had been how she would miss his availability as an escort whenever she needed one—an escort she could trust not to start making physical overtures as the evening progressed. But she had encouraged him in seeking the job, she reminded herself, her face clouding as she remembered to what extent…even then, the signs were there, she thought angrily—if only she had had the sense to read them. But it was her own pig-headed stubbornness that had been her downfall and led her to all this, she reminded herself harshly. The more sceptical her friends had become, the more protective she had felt towards Tim.

‘Lindy, don’t be so naïve!’ they had chorused. ‘He has to be expecting a darn sight more than friendship from you, carting you off to some remote Greek island for a year—especially when he’s told them all you’re his wife!’

‘How many times do I have to explain that was a misunderstanding?’ she had protested—and one she hadn’t been in the least happy to hear of. ‘It wasn’t until he’d got the job that Tim realised it was for a married couple.’

‘Yet he was the only one traipsing back and forth to Greece for interviews,’ it had been pointed out to her with such open scepticism that she hadn’t dared admit even to her closest friends that it had been her money—her entire savings, in fact—that had financed those trips.

His excuse for borrowing from her had, at the time, been plausible enough, but nothing could alter the fact that he had made no attempt to repay her to date.

Lindy moved from the desk to the window, half closing her eyes against the glare of the sun as she opened the blind. She had closed her ears to the advice of good friends because she had felt sorry for Tim and because she had always yearned for travel and adventure, and this job on Skivos had promised both.

But the gentle—and, to be ruthlessly honest, slightly pathetic—Tim with whom she had arrived had gradually disappeared. In his place had appeared an unpredictably moody, unrecognisably different person against whom she had, soon after their arrival, had to lock her bedroom door of the suite they shared. And she was now beginning to wonder if his tale of a broken heart had been simply that—a tale calculated to breach the defences she had erected against men.

She gave a sudden shrug of dismissal—it didn’t really matter because, whatever way she looked at it, she had been well and truly deceived and it was her own stupid fault. The real Tim Russell was bad-tempered, drank far too much and was a womaniser. She paused for an instant before adding gambler and cheat to her list of his attributes, then rolled her eyes in exasperated disbelief. And now he had lost her in a game of poker, she added further to that list before beginning to chuckle weakly as her irrepressible sense of humour belatedly sprang to life and got the better of her.

She reached up and closed the blind, her amusement faltering as a picture of the man to whom she had been lost leapt to her mind…a man who had stirred such strangely primitive feelings within her that they had distracted her from giving her problems with Tim the attention they most certainly warranted; powerful and conflicting feelings of excitement and apprehension that had been laying siege to her right from the very first moment she had caught sight of him.

Without even pausing to knock, Lindy flung open the door to the palatial suite of rooms Niko Leandros occupied on the top floor of the building.

‘Where are you?’ she demanded, marching straight into the centre of the almost spartan elegance of the drawing-room.

‘If it’s me you’re looking for—I’m here,’ drawled Niko’s voice from behind her.

Lindy spun round, the angry words she had been about to hurl at him dying on her lips as she caught sight of him.

He was standing in an archway leading off the large room, aggressive masculinity managing to ooze from his every pore, despite the expression of mild boredom adorning his handsome features. His hair was tousled and damp, threatening almost to curl against his head, and the whiteness of the walls and the short towelling robe encasing his tall, athletic body served only to accentuate the golden sheen of his skin and the hirsute darkness of his long, perfectly proportioned legs.

The sight of him, even fully clad, was usually enough to knock the breath from her, Lindy admitted to herself with fatalistic candour, but it was the sight of his legs that now froze the anger in her—or, to be precise, the sight of his right leg, down the outer side of which, from as much of its thigh as was visible right down almost to his calf, ran livid, knotted scar tissue.

‘There’s more, if you’re interested,’ he murmured mockingly, his hands moving to the belt of his robe as his eyes noted the path of hers. ‘Though I feel it only fair to warn you that this is all I’m wearing.’

‘I’m perfectly aware that convalescence can be a very boring time for some people, especially those used to active lives, Mr Leandros——’

‘Niko—I thought we’d agreed.’

‘All right—Niko,’ ground out Lindy from between clenched teeth, the anger stifled in her by the sight of that terrible scar swiftly rekindling. ‘But I’d be grateful if you’d stop trying to amuse yourself at my expense. And you can start by moving my things back into my room—I mean, Tim’s and my suite.’

She stood her ground as he began walking across the mottled marble of the floor towards her, determined to conceal the feeling of intimidation now joining the morass of other sensations assailing her. He drew to a halt scarcely a foot from her at the moment when her nerve was about to desert her completely.

‘No, your things will not be moved,’ he informed her, the sudden darkening in his eyes as they met hers creating a jangling mixture of fear and excitement within her that held her rooted to the spot. ‘But yes, I shall be amusing myself at your expense. You see, my goldenhaired Lindy, it’s quite some time since I’ve had a woman,’ he declared, his eyes boldly proprietorial as they swept the contours of her body.

‘Had?’ she squeaked, fear all but wiping excitement out of existence in her. This certainly wasn’t the type of adventure she had been seeking in coming to this island!

‘Had the pleasure of a beautiful woman’s company,’ he amended with blatant insincerity.

‘I know for a fact that’s a lie!’ retorted Lindy incautiously. ‘Women have been coming to this island in their droves ever since you arrived—and every single one of them stunning!’

‘Yes, but they’re too easy,’ he countered lightly. ‘They’re not as discerning as you are—they all see me as just as beautiful as they are…whereas you see me as disfigured and worthy only of your pity.’

‘Niko, honestly, I——’ She felt her teeth jar with the sudden force with which she clamped her mouth shut. This was a subject over which she was far too sensitive, she warned herself angrily; she knew perfectly well he was merely amusing himself at her expense, yet she had just been on the verge of trying to console him with the fact that she found his looks little short of perfect!

‘No—don’t try to salve my pride, Lindy,’ he murmured with mocking innocence. ‘You can’t imagine how intriguing I find it to come across a woman repulsed by my marred looks.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t mean to imply I found you repulsive!’ she blurted out spontaneously, and immediately regretted her outraged forcefulness. ‘Well, not really,’ she added, desperately seeking a face-saving balance, but all too aware that she had not succeeded.

‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured, reaching out with both hands to clasp her head, his fingers twining into her hair. ‘The challenge you present excites me more than you can imagine.’

With his fingers now playing in blatant sensuality in her hair, and with the fresh after-shower aroma of him bombarding her senses, Lindy was having more than a little difficulty concentrating on his words. She was having considerable difficulty concentrating on anything. She was as good as in his arms, she thought dazedly—all she had to do was raise her own, now hanging limply at her sides, and she would be in the embrace of the most exciting, most desirable…

‘I’ve always been a firm believer in the saying ‘beauty is only skin deep",’ he continued, his words cutting off the torrid meandering of her thoughts.

‘So have I,’ she agreed in strangled tones—the ugly duckling in a family as good-looking as hers tended to set great store by such sayings.

‘And, as you’ve only seen me in my present unfortunate state, you’ll just have to take my word for it that women used to find my looks irresistible before my accident.’

Lindy’s eyes flew to his, filled with suspicion. He had to be joking—hadn’t he?

‘I see what difficulty you’re having in believing how incredibly beautiful I once was,’ he murmured, his facial expression and his tone equally deadpan.

It was the infinitesimal chance that he actually might be serious that made her pause to take stock before verbally tearing into him. He was Greek, she reminded herself, and from what she had heard Greek men were a pretty macho lot…but one thing she had never heard of was a macho man describing himself as beautiful! Ah—but she had heard something of his having an English mother…or was it grandmother? She let out an involuntary groan of pure exasperation with herself. Since when were Englishmen given to extolling their own physical attributes so extravagantly? Any fool would have accepted immediately that he was joking at her expense!

‘And that’s what I find so exhilaratingly novel about all this,’ he murmured, the now open caress of his fingers in her hair and the huskiness entering his tone scattering her angry indignation and reawakening the throb of excitement in her with a heady vengeance. ‘Knowing that, when you decide to give yourself to me, it won’t be because you’re dazzled by my pretty face, but because——’

‘When I what?’ shrieked Lindy, her sudden and violent attempt to escape curtailed as his hands slid from her hair to her shoulders and clamped her into immobility.

‘Lindy, I realise that the mere idea of your making love with a man as grossly disfigured as I am——’

‘You’re not disfigured and you damn well know it!’ she accused angrily. ‘And you also know damn well that you can probably have any woman who takes your fancy!’

‘Including you?’

‘That’s not what I meant!’ she groaned in exasperation. ‘Damn it——’

‘That’s the third time in succession you’ve just sworn,’ he snapped, suddenly jerking her body closer to his. ‘And I don’t like my women swearing.’

‘I’m not one of your women, and, anyway, “damn” isn’t swearing!’

‘Yes, you are, and yes, it is, as far as I’m concerned. And, believe you me, you’re more mine than any other woman I can think of—you’re the first I’ve owned outright, thanks to the turn of a card.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, you can’t own a person!’ she exclaimed witheringly. ‘Slavery was abolished some time back—or hadn’t you heard?’

‘Well, I’ve just reinstated it on this island, which I happen to own—or hadn’t you heard?’

He was laughing as he spoke, displaying strong white and, needless to say, perfect teeth as he did so. And his hands had begun sliding slowly down from her shoulders and were now caressing her back in a way that was affecting both her mind and body quite disastrously.

‘But all that’s completely irrelevant,’ he whispered seductively, drawing her body another fraction closer while stopping short of actual contact. ‘You see, I’m not the sort of man who would ever dream of forcing his attentions on a woman.’

Hardly something for him to be boasting about, thought Lindy fuzzily, her head swimming with the almost unbearable tension of the excitement gripping her—the problem was far more likely to be one of women forcing their attentions on him.

‘And, of course, you’ll have your own bedroom in this suite until such time as you start sharing my bed—a time which will come only when you choose.’

‘If that’s the case, that time will never come,’ retorted Lindy, trotting out the words in which she had little or no faith simply because she felt the occasion demanded them, and also because they afforded her a few seconds’ distraction from the overwhelming effect his nearness was having on her.

‘Perhaps I’ll remind you of those words when you come, eager and impatient, to my arms…or perhaps then I’ll be too distracted even to recall them.’

‘Stop it,’ she pleaded, the words coming out in a high-pitched squeak that dismayed her.

‘Of course I’ll stop,’ he placated her, while at the same time his head lowered to hers. ‘But first I should like to kiss you.’

‘Why?’ she squeaked inanely, and emitted an even stranger sound as she attempted to clear her throat.

‘Because I’d like to; perversely, perhaps, given that I know you’ll derive no pleasure whatever from it. But, as I say, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a challenge, and your lack of response now will make the passion I shall soon taste on your lips all the sweeter.’

It was then that he drew her fully into his arms, and then that her own rose instinctively to cling around him. Her immediate reaction was of disappointment, and one she instantly transformed into a more acceptable feeling of surprise. It was the unexpected chasteness of his kiss that she found so disconcerting and that made her realise just how terrified she had been of how she might respond. Almost light-headed with relief at finding her fears ungrounded, she felt her rigid muscles relax as the crippling tension that had gripped her for so long swiftly left her. And it was then that he made his move; his arms sliding down her body, his touch electrifying as he moulded her to him, his lips parting hers till his tongue gained entry to plunder and explore the melting guilelessness of her mouth.

And it was in that one fatal moment of relaxation that his body began dictating with impunity to hers; inflaming it into a violence of response far more powerful than anything she had feared. So totally attuned had her body instantly become to his that the urgent swiftness with which potent desire leapt in him neither shocked nor alarmed her. From the start there had been a primitive instinct within her, something that had tried to warn her of what this man was capable of awakening in her and which she was capable of comprehending only when it was too late. But now her body was singing out in reckless joy, marvelling in its magical ability to evoke so unbridled and powerful a response in his.

When, without so much as an instant of warning, he wrenched her from his arms and strode across the room to the huge plate-glass doors leading out to the balcony her reaction was one of such profound disorientation that the only thing she was even vaguely aware of was the sound of her own laboured breathing rasping in her ears.

‘Well, as I said,’ his disembodied and only marginally breathless voice came to her, ‘the next time you’ll enjoy it…perhaps a little more.’

The sarcasm oozing from his every syllable brought the stinging heat of humiliation crawling over her body. Never in her entire twenty-three years had she experienced anything like this…anything as utterly degrading as this! She had allowed herself to be manipulated by an experienced man of the world and had actually thought she was affecting him as devastatingly as he was her!

Anyone would have thought she had never been kissed before! But she had, and with some men had thoroughly enjoyed it…yet never once had she come close to losing control of herself, and nothing she had ever experienced could have prepared her for what had happened to her just now.

She raised her hands and pressed them against her burning cheeks as the sickening thought occurred to her that it wasn’t even a question of having allowed herself to be manipulated by him…she had been nothing more than putty in his hands.

‘My, my, don’t tell me you found kissing me so nauseating that you’re incapable of speech,’ he taunted. ‘Never mind, there’s always next time to look forward to.’

‘Don’t bank on it!’ she flung at him in childish despair, then, wishing she had had the sense to keep her mouth shut and simply leave, she turned and walked from the room, tears of rage and humiliation stinging her eyes as the sound of his mocking laughter floated softly to her ears.