Читать книгу Expectant Bride - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 7

‘WHAT on earth are you wearing on your head?’ Meg Bucknall demanded as she pressed the button for the service lift.

Ellie raised a self-conscious hand to the floral scarf which covered her hair. ‘It’ll keep the dust off.’

‘Since when have you been so fussy?’

Ellie heaved a sigh and decided to be honest with the older woman. ‘There’s this guy who often works late on my floor…and, well, he’s—’

‘Making a nuisance of himself, is he?’ Meg’s round face tightened with disapproval but she wasn’t surprised by the news. Even in an overall Ellie would attract keen male attention. Fashioned on petite but shapely lines, the young woman had hair so naturally fair it gleamed like silver, and clear green eyes enhanced by unexpectedly dark brows and lashes. ‘I bet he thinks he’s onto a sure thing with a humble cleaner. Old or young?’

‘Young.’ Ellie stood back to let Meg enter the lift first. ‘He’s really getting on my nerves. I’ve been thinking about mentioning him to the supervisor.’

Meg grimaced. ‘No, whatever you do, don’t make it official, Ellie. If this lech works late, he must be quite important. Let’s face it, you’re more expendable than some business whizzkid!’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Ellie sighed. ‘It’s still a man’s world.’

‘He must be pretty persistent if he’s getting you down…’ Meg frowned, thinking of how feisty Ellie could be, although nobody would ever think it to look at her. ‘Look, you do my floor tonight and I’ll do yours. That’ll give you a break. Then maybe one of the other cleaners will consider doing a permanent switch with you.’

‘But I haven’t got security clearance to clean the top floor,’ Ellie reminded the older woman reluctantly.

‘Oh, never mind that!’ Meg dismissed impatiently. ‘Why should anyone need special permission just to polish floors and empty bins? But if the security guard does a round while you’re up there, take yourself off out of sight if you can. Some of those blokes would report us. And don’t go through those big double doors at the front. That’s Mr Alexiakis’s office suite and I’m not allowed in there…OK?’

As the older woman pushed her trolley out onto the floor that was usually Ellie’s responsibility, Ellie gave her a grateful smile. ‘I really appreciate this, Meg.’

Ellie had never been on the top floor of the Alexiakis International building before. When she emerged from the service lift, she realised that the layout was different from the floors below. Rounding a corner, she saw a large, luxurious reception area to her right. Beyond it, all the lights had been turned off, but she could dimly see an impressive set of double doors in the gloom.

But when she looked to her left, another set of plainer double doors also greeted her at the far end of the corridor. She raised her eyebrows, but assumed the unlit passage closer to Reception housed the office suite that was off-limits. Deciding to start at the opposite end and work her way back along the corridor, Ellie relaxed. She was delighted by the prospect of any evening shift uninterrupted by Ricky Bolton and his suggestive remarks.

Her canvas-shod feet making little sound, Ellie opened one of the heavy double doors and had crossed the room to reach for the overflowing wastepaper basket before she registered that the interconnecting office beyond was still occupied. The door stood slightly ajar, spilling out the unmistakable sound of male voices.

Usually she would have announced her presence, but, having taken Meg’s advice on board, she decided it would be wiser just to beat a quick, quiet retreat. The very last thing she wanted to do was get the older woman into trouble. Just as she was about to step back out again she heard male footsteps coming down the corridor, and practically had a heart attack on the spot.

Without even thinking about what she was doing, she shot behind the door to conceal herself, her heart hammering like a piston. The steps got closer and closer, and then stopped right on the other side of the open door. At that point Ellie just stopped breathing altogether.

In the rushing silence she could now hear every word of the dialogue carrying through from the office next door.

‘…so as long as I continue to appear to be interested in acquiring Danson Components, Palco Technic will remain a sitting duck,’ a dark-accented male drawl was murmuring with satisfaction. ‘I’ll make my move the minute the market opens on Wednesday.’

Ellie heard whoever else was on the other side of the door catch their breath audibly. She felt like a total idiot. What the heck had she been thinking of? The maintenance trolley parked outside supplied visible proof of her presence somewhere nearby.

However, the man in the doorway advanced no deeper into the room. To her surprise and relief, she heard him start back down the corridor much more quietly than he had walked up it. Ellie slowly sucked in much-needed air. She was creeping out from concealment on literal tiptoe when the door of the interconnecting office suddenly shot wide to frame an intimidating male, who seemed at that moment to be as tall as a skyscraper. She froze, green eyes huge in her flushed and discomfited face.

Eyes as black as pitch raked over her in a challenging appraisal as aggressive as a loaded gun.

‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ he shot at her in angry disbelief.

‘I was just leaving—’

‘You were hiding behind the door listening!’ he contradicted in pure outrage.

‘No, I wasn’t listening.’ Ellie was genuinely shocked by the level of his annoyance, and then, as she recognised him, her own tension rocketed right off the scale.

No, they hadn’t met before, but there was a dirty great enormous portrait of the guy in the ground-floor foyer. That portrait was the target of much teasing and admiring female comment. Why? Dionysios Alexiakis was drop-dead gorgeous. Dionysios Alexiakis, popularly known as Dio, the ruthless, asset-stripping Greek billionaire who ran Alexiakis International. Oh, dear heaven, she registered sickly, she’d picked the wrong set of double doors to intrude behind. Now both her job and Meg’s had to be on the line!

A grey-haired older man appeared from behind Dio Alexiakis. Frowning at her in dismay, he dug out a mobile phone. ‘She’s not the regular cleaner, Dio. I’ll get onto security straight away.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Ellie protested through teeth that were starting to chatter. ‘I’m just covering for the usual cleaner tonight…that’s all. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you…I was just about to step back outside—’

‘But you had no business being here in the first place,’ the older man condemned.

Dio Alexiakis studied her broodingly, eyes so dark they glittered like reflective mirrors and unnerved her. ‘She was hiding behind the door, Millar.’

‘Look, it may have looked like I was hiding behind the door,’ Ellie argued in growing desperation. ‘But why would I be hiding? Does that make sense? I’m just a cleaner. I can see I made a mistake coming in here, and I’m really sorry. I’ll get out right now—’

Without warning, a large brown hand stretched out to close round her narrow wrist and halt her backward drift towards the door. ‘You’re not going anywhere. What’s your name?’

‘Ellie…I mean, Eleanor Morgan…what are you doing?’ she gasped.

But it was too late. Dio Alexiakis had already tugged loose the scarf she had tied round her head. Her silvery pale hair fell round her shoulders in tumbled disarray. He towered over her, easily six foot three. Feeling menaced by his sheer size, Ellie gazed up at him, green eyes locking into fathomless black.

Her tummy clenched as if she had dropped from a height, the oddest sensation of dizziness making her head swim and her knees tremble. His frowning appraisal had become an outright smouldering stare of sexual assessment.

‘You don’t look like any cleaner I’ve ever met,’ he finally breathed in a roughened, accented undertone.

‘You meet a lot?’ Ellie heard herself ask foolishly, but then she had been thrown way off balance by what she had seen in his eyes. That age-old oversexed male to female reaction she despised.

‘Ellie…there is an Eleanor Morgan on the maintenance roster,’ the older man he had referred to as Millar cut in flatly. ‘But she’s supposed to be working on level eight, and Security haven’t cleared her for this floor. I’ll have her supervisor sent up to identify her.’

As the other man relayed that information, the Greek tycoon’s hard, dark features tautened. ‘No. Get off that phone now. The fewer people who know about this intrusion the better.’ Releasing her wrist, he stepped back to swing out a swivel chair. ‘Take a seat, Ellie.’

‘But I—’

‘Sit!’ he emphasised, as if he was dealing with a puppy in dire need of basic training.

Her teeth locking together at that style of address, Ellie dropped down, her slim back rigid but her heartbeat still racing. So she had walked in where she shouldn’t have. She had apologised. In fact she had all but grovelled, she reflected resentfully. So why the continuing fuss?

‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what you’re doing on this floor? Why you came into this particular office and why you chose to stay and eavesdrop behind a door?’ Dio Alexiakis spelt out with harsh exactitude.

The silence simmered. Momentarily, Ellie wondered if bursting into tears would get her off the hook. She met those hard black eyes and her heart skipped a startled beat. With Dio Alexiakis already behaving as if she had committed a criminal offence, honesty now seemed the wisest and safest course.

‘I’ve been having a bit of a problem with this bloke who works late on level eight,’ Ellie admitted with fierce reluctance.

‘What sort of problem?’ Millar prompted.

Dio Alexiakis let his intense dark gaze roam with bold intimacy over Ellie’s small tense figure, lingering at length on the tilted thrust of her breasts defined by the overall and the slender perfection of her legs. As mortified colour ran up beneath her fair skin his wide, sensual mouth quirked. ‘Look at her, Millar. Then tell me you still need an answer to that question,’ he advised drily.

Still reeling resentfully from that shameless clothes-stripping appraisal, Ellie breathed jerkily. ‘I mentioned the situation to the woman who normally works up here and asked if I could switch floors with her for a night. After a lot of persuasion, she agreed, and she did warn me not to clean the office behind the double doors…but unfortunately there are two sets of double doors—’

‘So there are,’ Dio Alexiakis conceded, his agreement smooth.

‘I made a simple mistake, and I was about to slip out again when I heard somebody coming,’ Ellie confided tautly. ‘I was scared it was a security guard. He might’ve asked what I was doing up here, and that could have got Meg into trouble. I dived behind the door so that I wouldn’t be seen. It was a stupid thing to do—’

‘Security haven’t been up here since six,’ the older man interposed, unimpressed. ‘And when Mr Alexiakis arrived just ten minutes ago this entire floor was empty.’

‘Well, I don’t know who it was. He stood in the doorway for about twenty seconds and then went away again…’ Wondering why her reasonable explanation was being challenged, Ellie found her voice trailing away.

Expelling his breath in a slow, measured hiss, Dio Alexiakis lounged back against the edge of a nearby desk and glanced at the anxious older man. ‘Go on home, Millar. I can deal with this.’

‘I should stay and sort this out for you—’

‘You have a dinner date to keep,’ Dio reminded him drily. ‘I’ve made you late enough as it is.’

Millar looked as if he was about to protest, and then, meeting his employer’s expectant scrutiny, he nodded. Just before he took his leave, he paused to remark gruffly, ‘My thoughts will be with you tomorrow, Dio.’

Dio Alexiakis tensed, his eyes veiling. ‘Thank you.’

He closed the door in the older man’s wake and swung back to survey Ellie.

‘I’m afraid I can’t trust your word on this, Ellie,’ he drawled in a tone of daunting finality. ‘You listened to a very confidential dialogue—’

‘I wasn’t listening…I wasn’t interested!’ Ellie told him frantically, intimidated much against her own will.

‘I’ve got two questions for you,’ Dio Alexiakis advanced softly. ‘Do you want to keep your job?’

Ellie stiffened even more, despising him for using such bullying tactics. ‘Of course I do—’

‘And do you want the other lady who allowed you to come up here and work in her place to keep her job?’

Ellie sagged as if he had punched her, and turned very pale. ‘Please don’t involve Meg in this,’ she argued strickenly. ‘This was my mistake, not hers!’

‘No, she chose to break the rules,’ Dio Alexiakis contradicted with lethal cool. ‘She’s as much involved in this as you are. And if you are some kind of spy, in the pay of one of my competitors, you must’ve made it well worth her while to agree to tonight’s switch.’

‘A spy? What on earth…?’ Ellie whispered unevenly, her whole attention focused on that strong, dark face.

‘Right at this moment, I find your reference to another unseen and unidentifiable individual’s presence rather too convenient,’ Dio Alexiakis admitted bluntly. ‘If there is an information leak, you have already supplied yourself with the excuse of a third party to take the heat.’

‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He had her so much on edge that for the first time in her life Ellie couldn’t think straight.

‘For your sake, I hope you don’t,’ Dio Alexiakis conceded, with every appearance of grim sincerity. ‘But you must understand that to just let you walk back out of here is too big a risk for me to take. If you shared what you heard with the wrong person it could seriously damage my plans.’

‘But I wouldn’t dream of repeating what I heard!’

‘So you do remember what you overheard. And yet only a minute ago you swore that you weren’t even interested enough to listen!’

At that silken reminder, a frank look of dismay leapt into Ellie’s eyes. She stared back at him with a sinking heart. She did have perfect recall of what he had said, but had intended to play dumb and keep that news to herself. However, he had tied her in verbal knots and tripped her up. He had a mind like a steel trap, she conceded furiously. Keen, suspicious, quick and deadly in its accuracy.

Dio Alexiakis glanced at the slim gold watch on his wrist and then back at her. ‘Allow me to show you the bigger picture here, Ellie. As long as this deal goes down on Wednesday, you and your foolish friend will still be gainfully employed in this building. But until Wednesday comes, you’re not moving out of my sight!’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’

‘Naturally, I’ll pay you well for the inconvenience—’

‘Inconvenience?’ Ellie interrupted in a hopelessly squeaky voice.

‘I assume you have a passport?’

‘A passport? Why are you asking me that?’ she gasped.

‘I have to fly to Greece tonight. Keeping you under surveillance to ensure that you make no phone calls will require you to fly to Greece with me,’ he delivered with perceptible impatience.

‘Are you absolutely mad?’ Ellie mumbled shakily.

‘Do you live alone or with your family?’ he questioned.

Transfixed by her own bewilderment, Ellie muttered, ‘Alone, but—’

‘A winged ebony brow rose at that news, black eyes briefly welding to her beautiful face. ‘You surprise me. Where do you keep your passport at home?’

‘In my bedside cabinet, but why—?’

Dio Alexiakis punched out a number on his mobile phone. ‘I don’t see any alternative to a trip to Greece,’ he informed her in a sardonic aside. ‘I could lock you up without a phone, but I think you’d be even less happy with that option. And I can hardly ask my household staff here in London to keep you imprisoned while I’m out of the country! You have to accompany me of your own free will.’

Free will? What free will? Ellie’s lower lip finally dropped away from her upper as she appreciated that he was deadly serious. In the simmering silence she listened to him talk at some length on the phone in what she assumed to be Greek, his tone brusque, commanding. She heard her own name mentioned and tensed up even more.

‘But I…I swear I won’t tell anyone a word of what I heard!’ she protested feverishly as he came off the phone again.

‘Not good enough. By the way, I’ve just instructed one of my staff to open your staff locker in the maintenance department and extract your keys.’

‘You’ve what?’ Ellie flew upright, angry colour lighting her cheeks.

‘Your address is in your personnel file. Demitrios will pick up your passport and bring it to the airport.’

Eyes wide with incredulity, Ellie snapped, ‘I don’t think so…I’m going home right now!’

‘Are you? It really is do or die time, Ellie,’ Dio Alexiakis advanced with a measuring look of challenge. ‘You can walk out through that door. I can’t stop you. But I can sack both you and your friend, and believe me, if you walk out, I will!’

Halfway to the door, Ellie stilled with a jerk.

‘I think it would be much more sensible for you to accept the inevitable and come along quietly. That is, assuming you’re the innocent party you say you are,’ he completed softly, studying her with brilliant black questioning eyes.

‘This is crazy! Why would I risk my job by telling anyone what I overheard?’ Ellie demanded starkly.

‘That information could sell for a great deal of money. I think that would supply sufficient motivation.’ Dio Alexiakis strode to the threshold of the inner office he had emerged from earlier. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Coming where?’ Ellie muttered.

‘I have a helicopter waiting on the roof. It’ll take us to the airport.’

‘Oh…’ He might as well have admitted to having a dinosaur waiting on the roof. She could not have been more taken aback. ‘A helicopter?’ she repeated weakly.

Seeming finally to appreciate that she was paralysed by sheer disbelief at what he was calmly demanding of her, Dio Alexiakis strode back across the room, closed a powerful hand over hers and urged her in the direction he wanted her to go. Pausing only to lift a heavy dark overcoat off a chair-arm, he hurried her across a palatial office with huge corner windows and pressed her through a door on the far side of the room.

‘This can’t be happening to me,’ Ellie whispered dazedly as she stumbled up a flight of steps.

‘That wish cuts both ways,’ he drawled curtly from behind her. ‘I have no desire for company on this particular trip.’

As he reached a long arm past her to open the steel door at the top, a blast of cold spring air blew her hair back from her face and plastered her thin overall to her slight body. She shivered violently. Having already donned his overcoat, Dio Alexiakis side-stepped her to stride towards the silver helicopter and the pilot stationed by its nose.

‘Hurry up!’ he shot at her over a broad shoulder.

‘I haven’t even got my coat!’ Ellie heard herself shriek at him, losing her temper with a suddenness that shook her.

He stopped dead and wheeled round. With an air of grim exasperation and quite unnecessary male drama, he began to shrug back out of his coat.

‘Don’t waste your time!’ Ellie snapped, temper leaping even higher at that display of grudging gallantry. ‘I wouldn’t wear your stupid coat if I had pneumonia!’

‘So freeze in silence!’ Dio Alexiakis launched back at her at full throttle, black eyes flashing like forked lightning.

Ellie squared her slight shoulders. Only the frank fascination of the watching pilot persuaded her to put a lid on her anger. Quite untouched by a slashing response that would have intimidated ninety per cent of the population, and keeping her wind-stung face stiff as concrete, Ellie stalked past Dio Alexiakis and climbed gracefully into the rear seat of the helicopter.

‘I’ll buy you some clothes at the airport,’ the abrasive Greek slung at her as he swung in beside the pilot. He turned his head towards her, putting his hard, classic profile into stark view, adding thinly, ‘We’ll have plenty of time to kill. Waiting for your passport to arrive will probably cost the jet its take-off slot!’

‘You are so gracious,’ Ellie framed in an unmistakable tone of sarcasm, and his brows drew together in disconcertion a split second before the deafening whine of the rotor blades shattered the tense silence and she turned away again.

This is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me, Ellie told herself all over again as the helicopter first rose in the air and then went into a stomach-churning dip and turn to head out across London. Having employed the equivalent of blackmail, Dio Alexiakis was now set on practically kidnapping her! What choice had he given her? No choice! How could she possibly run the risk of getting Meg fired? The older woman didn’t have the luxury of a second salary to fall back on, and her husband was disabled.

But was she herself really any more independent? Ellie asked herself tautly. If it had simply been a question of survival, she could have managed without her earnings as a cleaner. After all, she had a day-job as well, and a healthy savings account. In fact, Ellie lived like a church mouse, squirrelling away every penny she could, willing to make just about any sacrifice if it meant she could attain her ultimate goal.

And that goal was buying the bookshop where she had worked since she was sixteen. However, if the steady flow of savings into her bank account ceased just when she was on the brink of asking for a large business loan, her bank manager would be most unimpressed, and her ambition to own the shop she loved would suffer a serious, indeed potentially fatal setback. Right now, with her elderly boss becoming increasingly eager to sell and retire, time was of the essence.

Dio Alexiakis was paranoid, absolutely paranoid, she decided helplessly. A spy? Did he read a lot of thrillers? So a cleaner had accidentally entered his precious inner sanctum and overheard him discussing confidential business plans. A cleaner who didn’t have permission to work on the top floor, a little voice reminded her. A cleaner who shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t even have entered that office, caught sneaking out from behind a door looking guilty as hell…

OK, Ellie conceded grudgingly, so she must have looked a bit suspicious in those circumstances. But that still didn’t justify his outrageous insistence that he couldn’t trust her out of his sight for the next thirty-six hours. And to demand that she travel abroad with him into the bargain was, in her opinion, proof of sheer insanity!

That wasn’t his only problem either. The way Dio Alexiakis had looked at her a couple of times had infuriated her. Even in the midst of what he had clearly seen as a very serious situation, Dio had still been eying her up like a piece of female merchandise on offer. Compressing her generous mouth into a most ungenerous line, Ellie ruminated on that fact.

Ricky Bolton had been hard enough to tolerate, refusing to take no for an answer and convinced that he only had to persist to wear her down. That she had experienced that strange sense of disorientation when Dio Alexiakis had looked down at her didn’t surprise Ellie in the slightest. This arrogant Greek had merely incited a stronger sense of revulsion than even his subordinate did. But then he was one of those very earthy guys, she decided grimly, the sort who couldn’t look at any reasonably attractive woman without wondering what she might be like in bed!

Quite impervious to Ellie’s growing antipathy, which she expressed in frigid silence, Dio Alexiakis marched her through the airport to a busy shopping area. Striding straight into an exclusive boutique, he headed for a rack of lightweight black skirt suits. Dumping the smallest size available into Ellie’s startled arms, he snatched a hat, purse and long black gloves down from the display shelf above and added them.

The remainder of the tastefully concocted display fell flat on the stand. Flushing to the roots of her hair beneath the aghast scrutiny of the saleswoman surging forward, Ellie whispered in a mortified undertone, ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘Shopping,’ Dio Alexiakis delivered succinctly, quite indifferent to the staff eyes now trained on their every move. Like a steamroller, he headed for another rack, to pull a blue cotton shift dress from a hanger and stuff it with equal unconcern into her dismayed grasp. A long black coat was thrust at her in the same careless fashion. Then he paused by a severely undersized candy-pink shorts outfit on a dummy. With an imperious inclination of his dark head, he hailed the frozen-faced older woman already moving their way. ‘We’ll have this as well.’

‘I’m afraid that item is sold out, sir,’ he was told acidly.

‘Take it off the dummy, then,’ Dio instructed the woman, whose badge proclaimed her managerial status.

‘Mr Alexiakis!’ Ellie hissed, cringing with embarrassment.

On the clear brink of making a deflating retort, the older woman’s mouth fell open when she heard that name and took a better look at the tall black-haired male towering over Ellie. ‘M-Mr Alexiakis?’ she stammered in incredulously.

‘Yes, the owner of this chain of shops,’ Dio confirmed, surveying the unfortunate woman with menacing disapproval. ‘Tell me, do your staff usually stand around chatting when there are customers requiring attention? And since when has a display been more important than making a sale?’

‘You’re quite right, sir. Please allow me to assist you,’ the manageress muttered unevenly, her discomfiture unconcealed.

‘This lady needs lingerie. Pick some out for us.’ His attention falling on the shoe racks, he dragged Ellie across to them. ‘What size are you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life.’ Ellie was trembling with rage and chagrin. ‘Is this the way you normally behave in public?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded with ringing impatience. ‘We don’t have time to waste. Choose some shoes.’

In the background the manageress was struggling to strip the shorts outfit from the mannequin with hands that were visibly trembling.

In a sudden move of desperation, Ellie stretched up and heaped all the garments into his arms instead. ‘Why don’t you just go over to the checkout and wait for me there?’

‘I’ll stay here to expedite matters—’

‘You are not standing around while I choose undergarments!’ Ellie hissed up at him, like a viper ready to strike, infuriated green eyes flaming bright as jewels. ‘I don’t need so much stuff either.’

Black eyes scorched down into hers. ‘I’m paying you to do as you’re told—’

‘If I have to put up with you, it’ll need to be plenty!’

His brilliant gaze literally shimmered, a dark flush of colour accentuating the savage slant of his sculpted cheekbones. Incredulity emanated from him in waves. Nobody speaks to me like that—’

‘Oh, stop throwing your weight around,’ Ellie told him witheringly.

‘I—’

‘You’ve behaved atrociously from the moment we walked in here,’ Ellie condemned fiercely. ‘Go over to the checkout and keep quiet, and try not to terrify the life out of anybody else!’

Turning her back on him, unperturbed by the rasp of Greek invective Dio Alexiakis was audibly struggling to restrain, Ellie chose a pair of high-heeled black sandals and tried them on. They fitted. She passed them to him without a backward glance before joining the ashen-pale manageress at the lingerie section and hurriedly selecting a nightdress and some sets of bras and briefs. Argument, she sensed with a shudder, might well lead to further public mortification. She would leave the clothes behind when she was finally free of the dreadful man. And already the mere thought of another thirty-six hours in Dio Alexiakis’s domineering and boorish radius daunted her.

He handed the blue dress and the shoes back to her. ‘Put them on,’ he commanded with studied insolence.

Cheeks adorned with flags of outraged scarlet, Ellie stalked into a cubicle. He had no manners. He was incredibly confrontational, unnervingly uninhibited and outspoken. As for the way he reacted when he got a taste of his own medicine back—well, he went up in flames like a rocket! When she emerged again, the entire staff were engaged in wrapping the rest of the purchases. Never had Ellie been more grateful to leave a shop.

‘I suppose you want to go in there,’ Dio condemned with unconcealed exasperation as he surveyed a busy outlet which sold cosmetics and toiletries.

‘No…no, I’ll manage fine!’ Ellie swore in haste. ‘Prehistoric man cleaned his teeth with a twig. Maybe I’ll pick one up somewhere on the way.’

Dio dealt her an arrested glance. And then he really shocked her. He flung back his imperious dark head and laughed with spontaneous amusement. Ellie simply gaped, heart-rate speeding up, pulses jumping. His even white teeth flashed against bronzed skin, dark, deep-set eyes gleaming with appreciation. Humour drove all brooding darkness from his lean, powerful face, leaving her bemusedly conscious of just how stunning he was in the looks department.

‘I’m not into shopping,’ he confided huskily, as if she might not already be aware of that reality. ‘Other people usually do it for me.’

Her complexion uncomfortably warm, Ellie dragged her attention from him and studied the floor, but that Mediterranean dark and devastating face was still imprinted in her mind’s eye. He really was spectacular. That stark acknowledgement, that very thought, seriously unsettled Ellie. Dio Alexiakis wasn’t making the tiniest effort to impress or please her. Yet somehow he still made her effortlessly aware of his high-voltage male sexuality. She didn’t like that sensation, didn’t like the unease and tension he provoked inside her.

She might be only twenty-one, but it was over a year since Ellie had gone out on a date. Men, she had decided, were a waste of precious time and effort, and she hadn’t once regretted that decision. She didn’t consider herself a man-hater, but she did get a secret kick out of jokes that suggested the male sex was useless and increasingly surplus to female requirements. After all, by and large, that had been Ellie’s experience from childhood.

As Dio urged Ellie at speed through the crowded terminal, he rested a lean hand lightly on her taut spine to keep her moving. She stiffened defensively. ‘Excuse me,’ she heard herself say stiltedly, stepping back, suddenly determined to escape him, even if it could only be for a little while.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.

‘The ladies’ cloakroom,’ Ellie framed with frigid emphasis. ‘Are you planning to come with me?’

His aggressive jawline squared. ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’

Pointedly dumping the carrier bags she was loaded down with at his feet, she began to walk away.

‘Ellie…’ He extended a comb to her with a sardonic look. ‘Maybe you should do something with your hair while you’re in there.’

Gritting her teeth at the realisation that she hadn’t taken the time to check her appearance in the shop, and strongly resisting an unusually feminine urge to start smoothing her hair down, Ellie vanished into the cloakroom.

It was the work of a moment to tame her bright hair back into a straight heavy fall just below her shoulders. She frowned at her reflection, noticing the animated pink in her cheeks, the surprising sparkle in her eyes. The dress had a cool simplicity she liked, but it wasn’t her style.

Her full pink mouth tightening, Ellie studied the expensive silver comb he had given her and recalled the ease with which he had accurately assessed her dress size. But then that had not been a surprise to her. At twenty-nine years of age, Dio Alexiakis was an unrepentant, totally unreconstructed womaniser. Naturally he was, Ellie reflected cynically. Men with money and power lived in a buyers’ market of all too willing women. Dio was a real babe magnet, and he knew it. He had undoubtedly never had to worry too much about honing the rough edges from his less than presentable manners.

But, even so, she was to get a free trip to Greece. Private jet, five-star luxury all the way. The drawback? Dio Alexiakis breathing down her neck. An adventure, she told herself staunchly. Even with him around it ought to be more fun than polishing endless floors.

Heavens, she realised abruptly, she’d have to ring Mr Barry. Tomorrow morning her boss would be expecting her to open up as usual. He never turned in until noon, and when he found the shop still locked up he’d go straight upstairs to her bedsit and hammer on the door, thinking she had fallen ill. Regardless of Dio’s embargo, she had to phone Mr Barry, and as she could hardly tell the older man the truth, she would have to lie to excuse her absence.

Carefully concealing herself behind a pair of large, gossiping women, Ellie slipped out of the cloakroom and lunged breathlessly at the public phone only a few yards away. Dio Alexiakis was now standing in the centre of the busy concourse, talking on his mobile phone, his attention conveniently distracted.

Ellie dialled the operator. Since she had no cash on her at all, she would have to request a reverse-charge call. But just as the operator answered, Dio turned his dark, arrogant head. She crashed the receiver back on the hook, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dio saw her before she could put some space between herself and the phone.

Ellie froze like a criminal as glittering black eyes locked to her in instantaneous judgement, his lean, strong face darkening as he strode towards her. And Ellie, who knew all too well what it felt like to be irritated or bored by a member of the male sex, discovered for the first time in her life what it felt like to be scared…