Читать книгу The Petrakos Bride - Линн Грэхем, LYNNE GRAHAM - Страница 7

EMERGING from the CEO’s office suite into the corridor, Maddie was relieved to discover that the majority of the staff had already gone home. At a fast trot she collected her bag and her jacket, and was about to get into the lift when she was intercepted by Nemos.

‘Mr Petrakos asked me to ensure that you get home safely,’ the Greek security man informed her. ‘A car is waiting downstairs at the side entrance.’

Startled by his appearance, because in spite of his size he moved with remarkable stealth, Maddie was still more dismayed at the unexpected offer of a lift home. An agonised flush blossomed in a betraying burst of scarlet beneath her fair skin. She could not bear to think that anyone else might have guessed what she had so lately been engaged in.

‘No, thank you,’ she gasped in an agitated undertone, and, as Nemos gazed down at her in frank surprise, she hurriedly slid past him and into the lift before the doors could close again and leave her marooned.

Maddie didn’t breathe again until she had left the building. She knew that she would never willingly set foot in Petrakos Industries again. All the way home on the bus she was tormented by the aftermath of shock—regret and self-loathing.

What on earth had possessed her to behave in such a way? To give her body to a guy who was almost a stranger?

Yet Giannis hadn’t felt like a stranger, and it seemed to her that foolish false sense of familiarity had stifled all her wit and common sense. She had behaved like a starstruck groupie, she thought painfully. Nine years had passed since she first laid wondering eyes on Giannis Petrakos. She had been just fourteen years old when he’d visited her sister Suzy in hospital. At the age of twenty-two, when—ironically—he’d been getting loads of bad press for being a wild and womanising hell-raiser, he had been quietly giving considerable time and cash to the cause of terminally sick children.

Born though Giannis had been, into a world of unimaginable wealth and privilege, he had sat down to chat to Suzy as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. When he’d discovered that Suzy idolised the lead vocalist in a famous boy band, he had brought the singer to the hospice where Suzy had spent her final weeks. He’d made her sister’s wildest dreams come true. Suzy had been so thrilled that she had still been talking about that momentous day right up until a few minutes before she died.

Maddie had never forgotten how happy Giannis Petrakos had made her twin. Now she recognised how she had idealised him and begun imagining that she knew him when she did not. She felt she had been too quick to seize on Annabel’s concerns as an excuse to approach Giannis and talk to him alone. Why hadn’t she immediately backed off when she’d realised that he was only semi-clothed? His apparent interest in her had gone to her head like strong spirits. She had not had the strength of will to withstand temptation. And he had been unutterably, wildly tempting. The dulled throb between her slender thighs lingered to remind her of her weakness and her sense of shame increased. Passion had made her betray her values.

Only as Maddie reached her bedsit did she remember the accident with the contraception, and her skin turned clammy with instinctive fear. She could only hope that Giannis would be proved right in his belief that there would be no repercussions in that field. She was appalled at the idea of conceiving after the equivalent of a one-night stand with a male who would regard the development as a calamity. Any child forced to deal with such wounding knowledge of its beginnings would have a right to be disgusted with her. How the mighty have fallen, she reflected, with painful new self-knowledge.

The days passed for Maddie at a painfully slow pace. She was restless, worried and unhappy. The sense of peace she had taken for granted had been replaced by inner turmoil. Nothing that she was feeling was quite what she felt it ought to be, either. Every time her phone sounded she jumped and snatched it up. Either it was a call from the temping agency or from the supermarket where she did weekend shifts. When she finally grasped the fact that she had been waiting to see if Giannis would phone, she was even angrier with herself. It was already painfully clear: she had been bedded and discarded as if she had no more worth than an old newspaper.

The following Saturday morning, however, someone rapped on her door. Looping her tumbling hair back from her face as she answered it, she stilled in astonishment when she recognised that her caller was Giannis’s security chief.

‘Mr Petrakos wants you to join him for lunch,’ Nemos announced with precision. ‘He’ll pick you up in an hour.’

Her delicate brows pleating, Maddie stared up at the big man. It took her a few seconds to absorb that most unexpected message. Not so much a message as a royal summons, she registered, watching Nemos clatter back down the stairs again without even waiting for her response. Evidently there was a strong assumption that nobody ever said no to an invitation from Giannis Petrakos.