Читать книгу Married To A Mistress - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 6
ОглавлениеCHAPTER ONE
‘AND since Leland has given me power of attorney over his affairs, I shall trail that little tramp through the courts and ruin her!’ Jennifer Coulter announced with vindictive satisfaction.
Angelos Petronides surveyed his late mother’s English stepsister with no more than polite attention, his distaste concealed, his brilliant black eyes expressionless. Nobody would ever have guessed that within the last sixty seconds Jennifer had made his day by putting him in possession of information he would’ve paid a considerable amount to gain. Maxie Kendall, the model dubbed the Ice Queen by the press, the one and only woman who had ever given Angelos a sleepless night, was in debt...
‘Leland spent a fortune on her too!’ As she stalked his vast and impressive London office, Jennifer exuded seething resentment. ‘You should see the bills I’ve uncovered... you wouldn’t believe what it cost to keep that little trollop in designer clothes!’
‘A mistress expects a decent wardrobe...and Maxie Kendall is ambitious. I imagine she took Leland for everything she could get.’ Angelos stoked the flames of his visitor’s outrage without a flicker of conscience.
Unlike most who had witnessed the breakup of the Coulter marriage three years earlier, he had never suffered from the misapprehension that Leland had deserted a whiter than white wife. Nor was he impressed by Jennifer’s pleas of penury. The middle-aged blonde had been born wealthy and would die even wealthier, and her miserly habits were a frequent source of malicious amusement in London society.
‘All that money gone for good,’ Jennifer recounted tight-mouthed. ‘And now I find out that the little tart got this huge loan off Leland as well—’
Imperceptibly, Angelos had tensed again. Trollop, tart? Jennifer had no class, no discretion. A mistress was a necessity to a red-blooded male, but a whore wasn’t. However, Leland had broken the rules. An intelligent man did not leave his wife to set up home with his mistress. No Greek male would ever have been that stupid, Angelos reflected with innate superiority. Leland Coulter had made a fool of himself and he had embarrassed his entire family.
‘But you have regained what you said you wanted most,’ he slotted into the flood of Jennifer’s financial recriminations. ‘You have your husband back.’
The dry reminder made the older woman flush and then her mouth twisted again. ‘Oh, yes, I got him back after his heart attack, so weak he’s going to be recuperating for months! That bitch deserted him at the hospital...did I tell you that? Simply told the doctor to contact his wife and walked back out again, cool as a cucumber. Well, I need that money now, and whatever it takes I intend to get it off her. I’ve already had a lawyer’s letter sent to her—’
‘Jennifer...with Leland laid low, you have many more important concerns. And I assure you that Leland would not be impressed by the spectacle of his wife driving his former mistress into the bankruptcy court.’ From below lush black lashes, Angelos watched the blonde stiffen as she belatedly considered that angle. ‘Allow me to deal with this matter. I will assume responsibility for the loan and reimburse you.’
Jennifer’s jaw slackened in shock. ‘You...you will?’
‘Are we not family?’ Angelos chided in his deep, dark, accented drawl.
Slowly, very slowly, Jennifer nodded, fascinated against her will. Those incredible black eyes looked almost warm, and since warmth was not a character trait she had ever associated with Angelos Petronides before she was thrown off balance.
The head of the Petronides clan, and regarded with immense respect by every member, Angelos was ruthless, remorseless and coldly self-sufficient. He was also fabulously wealthy, flamboyantly unpredictable and frighteningly powerful. He scared people; he scared people just by strolling into a room. When Leland had walked out on his marriage, Angelos had silenced Jennifer’s martyred sobs with one sardonic and deeply unsympathetic glance. Somehow Angelos had discovered that her infidelity had come first. Chagrined by that galling awareness, Jennifer had avoided him ever since...
Only the greater fear of what might happen to Leland’s international chain of highly profitable casinos under her own inexpert guidance had driven her to approach Angelos for practical advice and assistance. Indeed, just at the moment Jennifer could not quite comprehend how she had been led into revealing her plans to destroy Maxie Kendall.
‘You’ll make her pay...?’ Jennifer prompted dry-mouthed.
‘My methods are my own,’ Angelos murmured without apology, making it clear that the matter of the loan was no longer her province.
That hard, strikingly handsome face wore an expression that now chilled Jennifer. But she was triumphant. Clearly family ties, even distant ones, meant more to Angelos than she had ever dreamt. That little trollop would suffer; that was all Jennifer wanted.
When he was alone again, Angelos did something he had never been known to do before. He shattered his secretary by telling her to hold all his calls. He lounged indolently back in his leather chair in apparent contemplation of the panoramic view of the City of London. But his eyes were distant. No more cold showers. A sensual smile slowly formed on his well-shaped mouth. No more lonely nights. His smile flashed to unholy brilliance. The Ice Queen was his. After a three-year-long waiting game, she was finally to become his.
Mercenary and outwardly cold as she was...exquisite, though, indeed so breathtakingly beautiful that even Angelos, jaded and often bored connoisseur that he considered himself to be, had been stunned the first time he saw Maxie Kendall in the flesh. She looked like the Sleeping Beauty of popular fable. Untouchable, untouched... A grim laugh escaped Angelos. What nonsensical imagery the mind could serve up! She had been the mistress of a man old enough to be her grandfather for the past three years. There was nothing remotely innocent about the lady.
But for all that he would not use the loan like a battering ram. He would be a gentleman. He would be subtle. He would rescue her from her monetary embarrassments, earn her gratitude and ultimately inspire her loyalty as Leland had never contrived to do. She would not be cold with him. And, in reward, he would cocoon her in luxury, set the jewel of her perfection to a fitting frame and fulfil her every want and need. She would never have to work again. What more could any rational woman want?
Blissfully unaware of the detailed plans being formed on her behalf, Maxie climbed out of the cab she had caught from the train station. Every movement fluid with long-limbed natural grace, her spectacular trademark mane of golden hair blowing in the breeze, she straightened to her full five feet eleven inches and stared at her late godmother’s home. Gilbourne was an elegant Georgian house set in wonderful grounds.
As she approached the front door her heart ached and she blinked back tears. The day she had made her first public appearance in Leland’s company, her godmother, Nancy Leeward, had written to tell her that she would no longer be a welcome visitor here. But four months ago her godmother had come to see her in London. There had been a reconciliation of sorts, only Nancy hadn’t said she was ill, hadn’t given so much as a hint—nor had Maxie received word of her death until after the funeral.
So somehow it seemed all wrong to be showing up now for a reading of Nancy’s last will and testament...and, worst of all, to be nourishing desperate prayers that at the last her godmother had somehow found it within her heart to forgive her for a lifestyle she had deemed scandalous.
In her slim envelope bag Maxie already carried a letter which had blown her every hope of future freedom to smithereens. It had arrived only that morning. And it had reminded her of a debt she had naively assumed would be written off when Leland severed their relationship and let her go. He had already taken three irreplaceable years of her life, and she had poured every penny she earned as a model into repaying what she could of that loan.
Hadn’t that been enough to satisfy him? Right now she was homeless and broke and lurid publicity had severely curtailed her employment prospects. Leland had been vain and monumentally self-centred but he had never been cruel and he was certainly not poor. Why was he doing this to her? Couldn’t he even have given her time to get back on her feet again before pressing her for payment?
The housekeeper answered the door before Maxie could reach for the bellpush. Her plump face was stiff with disapproval. ‘Miss Kendall.’ It was the coldest of welcomes. ‘Miss Johnson and Miss Fielding are waiting in the drawing-room. Mrs Leeward’s solicitor, Mr Hartley, should be here soon.’
‘Thank you...no, there’s no need to show me the way; I remember it well.’
Within several feet of the drawing-room, however, not yet ready to face the other two women and frankly nervous of the reception she might receive from one of them, Maxie paused at the window which overlooked the rose garden that had been Nancy Leeward’s pride and joy. Her memory slid back to hazily recalled summer afternoon tea parties for three little girls. Maxine, Darcy and Polly, each of them on their very best behaviour for Nancy, who had never had a child of her own, had had pre-war values and expectations of her goddaughters.
Of the three, Maxie had always been the odd one out. Both Darcy and Polly came from comfortable backgrounds. They had always been smartly dressed when they came to stay at Gilbourne but Maxie had never had anything decent to wear, and every year, without fail, Nancy had taken Maxie shopping for clothes. How shocked her godmother would’ve been had she ever learned that Maxie’s father had usually sold those expensive garments the minute his daughter got home again...
Her late mother, Gwen, had once been Nancy’s companion—a paid employee but for all that Nancy had always talked of her as a friend. Her godmother, however, had thoroughly disliked the man her companion and friend had chosen to marry.
Weak, selfish, unreliable... Russ Kendall was, unfortunately, all of those things, but he was also the only parent Maxie had ever known and Maxie was loyal. Her father had brought her up alone, loving her to the best of his ability. That she had never been able to trust him to behave himself around a woman as wealthy as Nancy Leeward had just been a cross Maxie had had to bear.
Every time Russ Kendall had brought his daughter to Gilbourne to visit he had overstayed his welcome, striving to butter her godmother up with compliments before trying to borrow money from her, impervious to the chill of the older woman’s distaste. Maxie had always been filled with guilty relief when her father departed again. Only then had she been able to relax and enjoy herself.
‘I thought I heard a car but I must’ve been mistaken. I wish Maxie would come...I’m looking forward to seeing her again,’ a female voice said quite clearly.
Maxie twisted in surprise to survey the drawing-room door, only now registering that it was ajar. That had been Polly’s voice, soft and gentle, just like Polly herself.
‘That’s one thrill I could live without,’ a second female voice responded tartly. ‘Maxie, the living doll—’
‘She can’t help being beautiful, Darcy.’
Outside the door, Maxie had frozen, unnerved by the biting hostility she had heard in Darcy’s cuttingly well-bred voice. So Darcy still hadn’t managed to forgive her, and yet what had destroyed their friendship three years earlier had been in no way Maxie’s fault. Darcy had been jilted at the altar. Her bridegroom had waited until the eleventh hour to confess that he had fallen in love with one of her bridesmaids. That bridesmaid, entirely innocent of the smallest instant of flirtation with or indeed interest in the bridegroom, had unfortunately been Maxie.
‘Does that somehow excuse her for stealing someone else’s husband?’
‘I don’t think any of us get to choose who we fall in love with,’ Polly stressed with a surprising amount of emotion. ‘And Maxie must be devastated now that he’s gone back to his wife.’
‘If Maxie ever falls in love, it won’t be with an ancient old bloke like that,’ Darcy scorned. ‘She wouldn’t have looked twice at Leland Coulter if he hadn’t been loaded! Surely you haven’t forgotten what her father was like? Greed is in Maxie’s bloodstream. Don’t you remember the way Russ was always trying to touch poor Nancy for a loan?’
‘I remember how much his behaviour embarrassed and upset Maxie,’ Polly responded tautly, her dismay at the other woman’s attitude audible.
In the awful pool of silence that followed Maxie wrapped her arms round herself. She felt gutted, totally gutted. So nothing had changed. Darcy was stubborn and never admitted herself in the wrong. Maxie had, however, hoped that time would’ve lessened the other woman’s antagonism to the point where they could at least make peace.
‘She is stunningly beautiful. Who can really blame her for taking advantage of that?’ Darcy breathed in a grudging effort at placation. ‘But then what else has Maxie got? I never did think she had much in the way of brains—’
‘How can you say that, Darcy? Maxie is severely dyslexic,’ Polly reminded her companion reproachfully.
Maxie lost all her natural colour, cringing at even this whispered reference to her biggest secret.
The tense silence in the drawing-room lingered.
‘And in spite of that she’s so wonderfully famous now,’ Polly sighed.
‘Well, if your idea of fame is playing Goldilocks in shampoo commercials, I suppose she is,’ Darcy shot back crushingly.
Unfreezing, Maxie tiptoed back down the corridor and then walked with brisk, firm steps back again. She pushed wide the door with a light smile pasted to her unwittingly pale face.
‘Maxie!’ Polly carolled, and rose rather awkwardly to her feet.
Halfway towards her, Maxie stopped dead. Tiny dark-haired Polly was pregnant.
‘When did you get married?’ Maxie demanded with a grin.
Polly turned brick-red. ‘I didn’t...I mean, I’m not...’
Maxie was stunned. Polly had been raised by a fire-breathing puritanical father. The teenager Maxie recalled had been wonderfully kind and caring, but also extremely prim and proper as a result. Horribly aware that she had embarrassed Polly, she forced a laugh. ‘So what?’ she said lightly.
‘I’m afraid the event of a child without a husband is not something as easily shrugged off in Polly’s world as in yours.’ Darcy stood by the window, her boyishly short auburn hair catching fire from the light behind her, aggressive green eyes challenging on the point.
Maxie stiffened at the reminder that Darcy had a child of her own but she refused to rise to that bait. Poor Polly looked trained enough as it was. ‘Polly knows what I meant—’
‘Does she—?’ Darcy began.
‘I feel dizzy!’ Polly announced with startling abruptness.
Instantly Darcy stopped glaring at Maxie and both women anxiously converged on the tiny brunette. Maxie was the more efficient helper. Gently easing Polly down into the nearest armchair, she fetched a footstool because the smaller woman’s ankles looked painfully swollen. Then, noting the untouched tea trolley nearby, she poured Polly a cup of tea and urged her to eat a digestive biscuit.
‘Do you think you should see a doctor?’ Darcy asked ruefully. ‘I suppose I was lucky. I was never ill when I was expecting Zia.’
‘What do you think, Polly?’ Maxie prompted.
‘I’m fine...saw one yesterday,’ Polly muttered. ‘I’m just tired.
At that point, a middle-aged man in a dark suit was shown in with great ceremony by the housekeeper. Introducing himself as Edward Hartley, their godmother’s solicitor, he took a seat, politely turned down the offer of refreshment and briskly extracted a document from his briefcase.
‘Before I commence the reading of the will, I feel that I should warn you all beforehand that the respective monies will only be advanced if the strict conditions laid down by my late client are met—’
‘Put that in English,’ Darcy interrupted impatiently.
Mr Hartley removed his spectacles with a faint sigh. ‘I assume that you are all aware that Mrs Leeward enjoyed a very happy but tragically brief marriage when she was in her twenties, and that the premature death of her husband was a lifelong source of sorrow and regret to her.’
‘Yes,’ Polly confirmed warmly. ‘Our godmother often talked to us about Robbie.’
‘He died in a car crash six months after they married,’ Maxie continued ruefully. ‘As time went on he became pretty much a saint in her memory. She used to talk to us about marriage as if it was some kind of Holy Grail and a woman’s only hope of happiness.’
‘Before her death, Mrs Leeward made it her business to visit each one of you. After completing those visits, she altered her will,’ Edward Hartley informed them in a tone of wry regret. ‘I advised her that the conditions of inheritance she chose to include might be very difficult, if not impossible for any one of you to fulfil. However, Mrs Leeward was a lady who knew her own mind, and she had made her decision.’
Maxie was holding her breath, her bemused gaze skimming over the faces of her companions. Polly wore an expression of blank exhaustion but Darcy, never able to hide her feelings, now looked worried sick.
In the pin-dropping silence, the solicitor began to read the will. Nancy Leeward had left her entire and extremely substantial estate evenly divided between her three goddaughters on condition that each of them married within a year and remained married for a minimum of six months. Only then would they qualify to inherit a portion of the estate. In the event of any one of them failing to meet the terms of the will, that person’s share would revert to the Crown.
By the time the older man had finished speaking, Maxie was in shock. Every scrap of colour had drained from her face. She had hoped, she had prayed that she might be released from the burden of debt that had almost destroyed her life. And now she had learnt that, like everything else over the past twenty-two years, from the death of her mother when she was a toddler to her father’s compulsive gambling addiction, nothing was going to be that easy.
A jagged laugh broke from Darcy. ‘You’ve just got to be kidding,’ she said incredulously.
‘There’s no chance of me fulfilling those conditions,’ Polly confided chokily, glancing at her swollen stomach and looking away again with open embarrassment.
‘Nor I...’ Maxie admitted flatly, her attention resting on Polly and her heart sinking for her. She should have guessed there would be no supportive male in the picture. Trusting, sweet-natured Polly had obviously been seduced and dumped.
Darcy shot Maxie an exasperated look. ‘They’ll be queuing up for you, Maxie—
‘With my colourful reputation?’
Darcy flushed. ‘All any one of us requires is a man and a wedding ring. Personally speaking, I’ll only attract either by advertising and offering a share of the proceeds as a bribe!’
‘While I am sure that that is a purely facetious comment, made, as it were, in the heat of the moment, I must point out that the discovery of any such artificial arrangement would automatically disqualify you from inheriting any part of your godmother’s estate,’ Edward Hartley asserted with extreme gravity.
‘You may say our godmother knew her own mind...but I think...well, I’d better not say what I think,’ Darcy gritted, respect for a much loved godmother evidently haltering her abrasive tongue.
Simultaneously, a shaken little laugh of reluctant appreciation was dredged from Maxie. She was not in the dark. The reasoning behind Nancy Leeward’s will was as clear as daylight to her. Within recent months their godmother had visited each one of them...and what a severe disappointment they must all have been.
She had found Maxie apparently living in sin with an older married man. She had discovered that Polly was well on the road to becoming an unmarried mother. And Darcy? Maxie’s stomach twisted with guilt. Some months after that day of cruel humiliation in the church, Darcy had given birth to a baby. Was it any wonder that the redhead had been a vehement man-hater ever since?
‘It’s such a shame that your godmother tied her estate up like that,’ Maxie’s friend, Liz, lamented the following afternoon as the two women discussed the solicitor’s letter which had bluntly demanded the immediate settlement of Leland Coulter’s loan. ‘If she hadn’t, all your problems would’ve been solved.’
‘Maybe I should have told Nancy the real reason why I was living in Leland’s house...but I couldn’t have stood her thinking that I was expecting her to buy me out of trouble. It wouldn’t have been fair to put her in that position either. She really did detest my father.’ Maxie gave a fatalistic shrug. She had suffered too many disappointments in life to waste time crying over spilt milk.
‘Well, what you need now is some good legal advice. You were only nineteen when you signed that loan agreement and you were under tremendous pressure. You were genuinely afraid for your father’s life.’ Liz’s freckled face below her mop of greying sandy hair looked hopeful. ‘Surely that has to make a difference?’
From the other side of the kitchen table, casually clad in faded jeans and a loose shirt, Maxie studied the friend who had without question taken her in off the street and freely offered her a bed for as long as she needed it. Liz Blake was the only person she trusted with her secrets. Liz, bless her heart, had never been influenced by the looks that so often made other women hostile or uneasy in Maxie’s company. Blind from birth and fiercely independent, Liz made a comfortable living as a potter and enjoyed a wide and varied social circle.
‘I signed what I signed and it did get Dad off the hook,’ Maxie reminded her.
‘Some thanks you got for your sacrifice.’
‘Dad’s never asked me for money since—’
‘Maxie...you haven’t seen him for three years,’ Liz pointed out grimly.
Maxie tensed. ‘Because he’s ashamed, Liz. He feels guilty around me now.’
Liz frowned as her guide dog, Bounce, a glossy black Labrador, sprang up and nudged his head against her knee. ‘I wonder who that is coming to the door. I’m not expecting anyone...and nobody outside the mail redirection service and that modelling agency of yours is supposed to know you’re here!’
By the time the doorbell actually went, Liz was already in the hall moving to answer it. A couple of minutes later she reappeared in the doorway. ‘You have a visitor... foreign, male, very tall, very attractive voice. He also says he’s a very good friend of yours—’
‘Of mine?’ Maxie queried with a perplexed frown.
Liz shook her head. ‘He has to be a good friend to have worked out where you’re hiding out. And Bounce gave him the all-over suspicious sniff routine and passed him with honours so I put him in the lounge. Look, I’ll be in the studio, Maxie. I need to finish off that order before I leave tomorrow.’
Maxie wondered who on earth had managed to find her. The press? Oh, dear heaven, had Liz trustingly invited some sneaky journalist in? Taut with tension, she hurried down the hall into the lounge.
One step into that small cosy room, she stopped dead as if she had run into a brick wall without warning. Smash, crash, her mind screamed as she took a sudden instinctive backward step, shock engulfing her in rolling waves of disorientation.
‘Maxie...how are you?’ Angelos Petronides purred as he calmly extended a lean brown hand in conventional greeting.
Maxie gaped as if a boa constrictor had risen in front of her, her heart thumping at manic speed and banging in her eardrums. A very good friend. Had Liz misheard him?
‘Mr Petronides—?’
‘Angelos, please,’ he countered with a very slight smile.
Maxie blinked. She had never seen him smile before. She had been in this arrogant male’s company half a dozen times over the past three years and this was the very first time he had deigned to verbally acknowledge that she lived and breathed. In her presence he had talked around her as if she wasn’t there, switching to Greek if she made any attempt to enter the conversation, and on three separate occasions, evidently responding to his request, Leland had sent her home early in a taxi.
With rock-solid assurance, Angelos let his hand drop again. Amusement at her stupefied state flashed openly in his brilliant black eyes.
Maxie stiffened. ‘I’m afraid I can’t imagine what could bring you here...or indeed how you found me—’
‘Were you ever lost?’ Angelos enquired with husky innuendo while he ran heavily lidded heated dark eyes over her lithe, slender frame with extraordinarily insulting thoroughness. ‘I suspect that you know very well why I am here.’
Her fair skin burning, Maxie’s sapphire blue eyes shuttered. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea—’
‘You are now a free woman.’
This is not happening to me, a little voice screeched in the back of Maxie’s mind. She folded her arms, saw those terrifyingly shrewd eyes read her defensive body language and lowered her arms again, fighting not to coil her straining fingers into fists.
One unguarded moment almost six months ago... Was that all it had taken to encourage him? He had caught her watching him and instantaneously, as if that momentary abstraction of hers had been a blatant invitation, he had reacted with a lightning flash look of primitive male sexual hunger. A split second later he had turned away again, but that shatteringly unexpected response of his had shaken Maxie inside out.
She had told herself she had imagined it. She had almost cherished this arrogant Greek tycoon’s indifference to her as a woman. OK, so possibly, once or twice, his ability to behave as if she was invisible had irritated and humiliated her, but then she had seen some excuse for his behaviour. Unlike Leland, Angelos Petronides would never be guilty of a need to show off a woman like a prize poodle at what was supposed to be a business meeting.
‘And now that you are free, I want you in my life,’ Angelos informed her with the supreme confident cool of a male who had never been refused anything he wanted by a woman. Not a male primed for rejection, not a male who had even contemplated that as a remote possibility. His attitude spoke volumes for his opinion of her morals.
And at that mortifying awareness Maxie trembled, her usual deadpan, wonderful and absolute control beginning to fray round the edges. ‘You really believe that you can just walk in here and tell me—?’
‘Yes,’ Angelos cut in with measured impatience. ‘Don’t be coy. You have no need to play such games with me. I have not been unaware of your interest in me.’
Her very knees wobbled with rage, a rage such as Maxie had never known before. He had the subtlety of a sledgehammer, the blazing self-image of a sun god. The very first time she had seen Angelos Petronides she had had a struggle to stop staring. Lethally attractive men were few and far between; fiercely intelligent and lethally attractive men were even fewer. And the natural brute power Angelos radiated like an aura of intimidation executed its own fatal fascination.
He had filled her with intense curiosity but that was all. Maxie had never learnt what it was like to actually want a man. She didn’t like most men; she didn’t trust them. What man had ever seen her as an individual with emotions and thoughts that might be worth a moment’s attention? What man had ever seen her as anything more than a glamorous one-dimensional trophy to hang on his arm and boast about?
As a teenager, Maxie had always been disillusioned, angered or frankly repelled long before she could reach the stage of reciprocating male interest. And now Angelos Petronides had just proved himself the same as the rest of the common herd. What she couldn’t understand was why she should be feeling a fierce, embittered stab of stark disappointment.
‘You’re trembling...why don’t you sit down?’ Angelos switched into full domineering mode with the polished ease of a duck taking to water and drew up an armchair for her occupancy. When she failed to move, the black eyes beneath those utterly enviable long inky lashes rested on her in irritated reproof. ‘You have shadows under your eyes. You have lost weight. You should be taking better care of yourself.’
She would not lose her temper; she would tie herself in knots before she exposed her outrage and he recognised her humiliation. How dared he...how dared he land on Liz’s doorstep and announce his lustful intentions and behave as if he was awaiting a round of applause? If she spread herself across the carpet at his feet in gratitude, he would no doubt happily take it in his stride.
‘Your interest in my wellbeing is unwelcome and unnecessary, Mr Petronides,’ Maxie countered not quite levelly, and she sat down because she was honestly afraid that if she didn’t she might give way to temptation and slap him across that insolent mouth so hard she would bruise her fingers.
He sank down opposite her, which was an instant relief because even when she was standing he towered over her. That was an unusual sensation for a woman as tall as Maxie, and one that with him in the starring role she found irrationally belittling.
For such a big, powerfully built man, however, he moved with the lightness and ease of an athlete. He was as dark as she was fair...quite staggeringly good-looking. Spectacular cheekbones, a strong, thin-bladed nose, the wide mouth of a sensualist. But it was those extraordinary eyes which held and compelled and lent such blazing definition to his fantastic bone structure. And there was not a soupçon of softness or real emotion in that hard, assessing gaze.
‘Leland’s wife was planning to take you to court over that loan,’ Angelos Petronides delivered smoothly into the thumping silence.
Maxie’s spine jerked rigid, eyes flying wide in shock as she gasped, ‘How did you find out about the loan?’
Angelos angled a broad, muscular shoulder in a light, dismissive shrug, as if they were enjoying a light and casual conversation. ‘It’s not important. Jennifer will not take you to court. I have settled the loan on your behalf.’
Slowly, her muscles strangely unwilling to do her bidding, Maxie leant forward. ‘Say that again,’ she invited shakily, because she couldn’t believe he had said what he had just said.
Angelos Petronides regarded her with glittering black unfathomable eyes. ‘I will not hold that debt over you, Maxie. My intervention was a gesture of good faith alone.’
‘G-good faith...?’ Maxie stammered helplessly, her voice rising to shrillness in spite of her every effort to control it.
‘What else could it be?’ Angelos shifted a graceful hand in eloquent emphasis, his brilliant gaze absorbing the raw incredulity and shock which had blown a giant smoking crater in the Ice Queen’s famed façade of cool. ‘What man worthy of the name would seek to blackmail a woman into his bed?’
