Читать книгу Michelle Reid Collection - Michelle Reid - Страница 57

STANDING unnoticed in the doorway, Xander watched Nell’s trembling fingers grapple with the intricacies of fastening the tiny pearl buttons on the silky white blouse he’d had delivered to her along with a blue linen suit that did amazing things for her slender shape.

Someone had fixed her hair for her and it lay in a thick, shining, sandstorm braid to halfway down her back. She looked very pale, though the bruising on her face had almost disappeared. But it was clear to him that even the simplest of tasks still came as an effort.

She was not recovered, though the doctors had assured him that she was fit to travel and for now that was all he cared about: getting her away from here and to a place void of tabloid gossip—and the temptation to contact her lover the first opportunity she was handed.

His blood began to boil when he thought about the elusive Marcel Dubois. The Frenchman had disappeared into the ether like the scarlet pimpernel, and maybe showed some sense in doing so—sense being something he had not shown when he’d decided to make his play for the wife of Alexander Pascalis.

Wife…He could almost laugh at the title but laughing was not what was lurking inside him. His hooded eyes took on a murderous glitter as he watched Nell struggle with those tiny pearl buttons. Had his wife in name only lain with her Frenchman and allowed him to touch what Xander had not touched? Had Dubois seen power in her soft, willing body and those little confidences a woman like the love-vulnerable Nell would reveal to a lover about the emptiness of her marriage?

She turned then and noticed him standing there. His libido instantly kicked in to join the murderous feelings as her eyes began to make their rise up from his shoes to the casual black brushed-cotton chinos covering his legs and the plain white T-shirt moulding his chest. No other woman had ever looked at him the way Nell looked at him, with a slow, verdant absorption that drenched him in hellishly erotic self-awareness. She could not help herself, he knew that, which made the idea of her giving those looks to another man all the more potent. When she reached his shoulders, covered by the casual black linen jacket he was wearing, he could not halt the small recognising shift of muscle that sent a shower of pleasurable static rushing through his blood.

One day soon he was going to give this awareness true substance, he promised. He was going to wipe out all memory of her other man and introduce her to his power with all its naked, hot passion.

He was no neanderthal; he did not need a woman to be a virgin to enjoy her. But this one, this beautiful freak of modern living with her innocence steeped in womanly desire for him that she still did not have the tools to hide whatever the Frenchman had taught her, was going to open up like a chrysalis under his guidance and fly with him into ecstasy. She owed him that much.

She’d reached his face at last and Xander lost the murderous look to give her the benefit of a slow, easy smile, which she dealt with by flicking her eyes away. Nell was no fool. The last time he was here he had thrown down the sexual gauntlet and the smile was to remind her of it.

‘Ready to come with me?’ he enquired with the kind of soft challenge that had her breath feathering a quiver across the thrust of her breasts.

‘I have no make-up,’ she complained. ‘You forgot to send it.’

‘You don’t need make-up. Your beautiful skin does not need it.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’ Her chin lifted, eyes pinning him with an arctic green look. ‘I’ve seen the waiting Press out there,’ she said with a flick of a hand towards the window. ‘Witnessing me leaving here looking black and blue won’t help your cause, Xander.’

‘And what cause is that?’ The sexy smile was beginning to fade, Nell noticed.

‘Damage control,’ she replied. ‘I presumed you would want me to look utterly love-blind and radiant for the cameras.’

‘Your tongue is developing an aspish tone that does not suit it,’ he drawled, moving further into the room with his graceful stride. ‘Can you manage that last button on your blouse or do you need assistance?’

‘I can manage.’ Her chin dipped, her fingers moving to quickly close the button. ‘The fact that I’m unhinged and suicidal does not make me totally useless.’

Xander hooked up her jacket from where it lay on the bed. ‘You must admit, Nell, it made hilarious reading.’

‘You think it’s a big joke?’

‘You clearly don’t.’

Neither did he by the look on his grim face. The jacket arrived around her slender shoulders, held out absolutely perfectly for her to slide her arms into the sleeves without needing to strain herself.

‘They presented me as a spiritless fool.’

‘And me as the ruthless womaniser.’

‘Better that than a man that cannot keep his wife happy—hmm?’

Nell turned to face him with that aspish challenge, but it was the first time she’d actually stood in front of him in goodness knew how long and it came as a shock to be reminded of his overpowering six feet two inches of pure masculinity compared to her own five feet five inches’ more diminutive build.

Black eyes glinted narrowly down at her. ‘Are you deliberately goading me into proving you wrong?’

Remembering the kiss of a few days ago, she felt her stomach muscles give a hectic quiver. ‘No,’ she denied and lowered her eyes in an attempt to block him out as his long fingers smoothed the jacket fabric into place.

‘Then take my advice and hold back on the barbs until we can achieve guaranteed privacy.’

As if on cue, the door swung open and the doctor who’d been overseeing her recovery strode into the room. He and Xander shook hands like old friends then proceeded to discuss her as if she wasn’t standing right beside them.

So what was new there? Nell asked herself as she stood with her eyes lowered and said not a word. From the moment he’d stepped into it, Xander had been arranging her life for her as if she wasn’t a part of it. Their very odd courtship, the contract he had discussed with her father but not with her that she didn’t bother to read. The marriage that had taken place in her local church but was put together by his efficient team with very little input from her. So why bother to make a fuss that he was discussing her health with the doctor he’d probably handpicked to go with the private hospital he’d moved her to without her approval?

The only time he’d ever really listened to her was on their wedding night, when she’d refused to make their marriage real. She might have been upset, angry—hysterical enough to be a turn-off for any man, but she also knew that when he agreed to leave her alone, the final decision had been his. He could have changed her mind. He could have seduced her into weakening to him.

But no, what Xander had done was walk away—easily. Nell cringed inside as she thought it. He’d gone back to his life as if she was not in it, other than for those few token visits aimed to keep up appearances.

As the discussion about her needs went on around her Nell began to feel just a little light-headed because she’d been standing up for longer than she’d done since the accident. Her legs felt shaky and the solid prospect of the nearby chair was almost too tempting to resist. But if she showed signs of weakness now they might decide to keep her here and the risk of being incarcerated for another single hour was enough to keep her stubbornly on her feet.

By the time the doctor turned to say his farewell to her, her fixed smile was wavering though. Xander reached out to take her arm, had to feel the fine tremors shaking her and abruptly cut the goodbyes short.

Two minutes later she was walking down the corridor with his grip like a vice and his grim silence ominous. They entered a lift, the doors closed behind them. Xander propped her up against the wall then remained standing over her as they shot downwards, his grim face strapped by tension. The moment the doors slid open again, he was taking her arm and guiding her out of the lift.

Nell showed a brief start of surprise when she realised they had not arrived in the hospital foyer but in a basement car park and she had never felt so relieved about anything. Not only had Xander pre-empted the Press pack but his black Bentley stood parked right there in front of them with Jake Mather standing to attention by the open rear door.

Nell sank with trembling relief into soft leather. The door closed as another opened. Xander arrived at her side and within seconds they were on the move.

So what came next? she wondered wearily when, a short minute later, Xander was on his mobile phone, lean dark profile wearing its power mask as he talked in smooth, liquid Italian then switched to rich, sensual Greek for the second call he made.

Uttering a small sigh, she closed her eyes and just let the sound of his voice wash over her—only to open them again with a start when her door came open and she found herself blinking owlishly at Xander, who was leaning into the car and unlocking her seat belt.

She must have fallen asleep. As she was too disoriented to do more than let him help her out of the car, it took a few more seconds for her brain to register that she was not standing outside Rosemere.

‘What’s going on?’ she questioned.

‘Nothing.’ With a coolness that belied the alarm that was beginning to erupt inside her, he turned her round so she could see the sleek white private jet standing on tarmac a few yards away. ‘We are going home, that’s all.’

‘By air?’ She blinked again as he drew her across those few yards towards the waiting flight steps. ‘But it’s only an hour by car back to Rose—’

‘Greece,’ he corrected. ‘I need to be in Athens on Monday morning, and if you think I am leaving you alone at Rosemere to plot assignations with your Frenchman then think again.’

Greece, Nell repeated and stopped dead at the entrance to the plane. Her heart gave a punch against her sore ribs. ‘No,’ she refused. ‘I don’t want to go—’

‘Don’t make a fuss, agapita.’ The flat of his hand at the base of her spine gave her a gentle push forward. Before she knew it, she’d been hustled inside the plane and the door was being closed.

Staring bemusedly at her luxury surroundings, she turned suddenly to make a protest and cannoned right into Xander’s chest. The breath left her body on a tense little whoosh and she tried to take a defensive step back, but his arms came around her, strong and supportive. It was like being surrounded by the enemy, frightening and suffocating.

She breathed in anxious protest. ‘Please…’

‘Please what?’

His voice had deepened and roughened. Glancing up, Nell saw the dark, simmering spark in his eyes and tried one final breathless, ‘No…’

But his mouth found hers anyway, moulding her lips and prising them apart to allow his tongue to make that slow, sensual slide against moist inner tissue that made her breath quiver as her senses tingled with pleasure. She wanted to pull away but instead her mouth crushed in closer. She wanted to deny this was happening at all but once again her mind was not in control. He murmured something, she didn’t know what. But his tongue when it delved deeper sent her hands up to clutch at his chest and, as strong male muscle rippled beneath her fingers, he eased her even closer to him.

His thighs pressed against her thighs, the solid evidence of his desire pushing against the tense flatness of her lower stomach. Damp heat sprang out all over her and on a very masculine growl he deepened the kiss some more. Dizzily she clung to him, her breathing coming faster as the intensity of the kiss increased. Her head tilted backwards, arching her breasts into the solid wall of his chest. Her nipples sharpened like stinging arrows against him and she could feel the uneven thump of his heart and the fine tremor attacking him as he used long fingers to draw her more tightly against the sensual movements he was making with his hips. It was all so sexual, so overwhelmingly physical and exciting. A shimmering, quivering shower of desire dragged at inner muscles that seemed to scoop out the strength from her legs.

Then the plane’s engines gave a sudden roar, breaking them apart with an abruptness that left Nell staring dizzily up at his face. She saw the tension there, heat streaking across his cheekbones, the flaring nostrils, the predatory burn in his eyes, and quivered out a constricted gasp.

He dipped his dark head and caught the sound, burnt this kiss onto her pulsing lips—then without warning took hold of her shoulders, turned and dumped her unceremoniously into the nearest seat then spun away in an odd jerky movement that kept her eyes fixed on him in giddy fascination.

He really wanted her. Badly. Now. The knowledge ploughed a deep furrow of heat down her front and held her utterly, breathlessly entrapped. When he suddenly twisted back round to look at her his eyes were so black she didn’t even try to look for the brown. That one glance at her expression and he was growling out some kind of harsh self-aimed curse and coming down on his haunches to grimly belt her in. Her eyes clung to his taut features as he did so. She didn’t even breathe when he moved away to take a seat on the other side of the aisle and strapped himself into it.

Nothing going on inside was making any sense to her any more; everything was just too new. The plane engines gave another roar then they were shooting forward with rocket propulsion that only helped to heighten the awareness pulsing back and forth.

‘If you ever let another man touch you again I will kill you,’ he rasped into the charged atmosphere.

Kill her—kill Marcel. The primitive man in him was beginning to take on a life of his own. Is this what untrammelled lust did to men—turned them all into angry, murderous, primeval beasts?

‘Speak!’ Xander lashed out, stopping her thought processes stone dead as he seared a blistering look across the aisle.

He wanted her to retaliate. To spit something back at him about Vanessa so he could shoot her down with some cruel remark. It was all to do with a need to finding an alternative release for all of this tension, but she turned her face away and refused to respond.

Couldn’t respond; she was too locked up inside with what she was feeling herself.

They were already in the air and still shooting higher; the pressure in the cabin hummed in her head. Lifting a set of trembling fingers, she touched the place above her nose where the last and worst bruise on her face still lingered. She thought it would be throbbing, it felt as if it was but it was all over that was throbbing.

A click followed by an angry hissing sound came at her from across the aisle and she dropped the fingers back to her lap—only to find that Xander had moved with the speed of light, unfastening his belt to come to squat down in front of her again, his own long, cool fingers coming up to cover where her own had just covered.

‘You are hot and in pain,’ he muttered angrily. ‘I apologise for my—thoughtlessness.’

Sounding stiff and very foreign to her now, ‘I’m all right,’ she managed on a shaken breath.

‘You are not.’ His fingers moved to one of her burning cheeks. ‘Don’t give me that stiff upper-lip stuff, Nell. I treated you roughly. You now think I am crass and uncivilised,’ he brusquely pronounced. ‘Did I hurt you anywhere—your injured ribs?’

Nell reached up to curl her fingers around his wrist to pull it away from her cheek so she could give a negating shake of her head and was instantly assailed by the sensation of strong bone and warm skin peppered with crisp dark hair. This was mad, she tried to swallow, found her eyes lifting to clash with his. Darkened emerald-green showing a complete helplessness as to what was happening to her. She’d spent so many months blocking out what she used to feel for him; now it was all pounding about inside her and she didn’t like it.

She tugged her hand down again. ‘Let me go home to Rosemere,’ she whispered unsteadily.

‘No.’ It came out hard and gruff. ‘Where I go you go from now on. I want you with me.’ Eyes no longer black with passion but dark—dark brown and swirling with feelings that shattered the breath she tried to take.

‘So you can protect your investment?’ she hit out. ‘Your bodyguards can do that just as well in England.’

‘So I believed. You proved me wrong.’ He sprang to his feet. ‘We will not discuss this again.’

She only had herself to blame for what was happening to her now, in other words. She looked away from him, and had never felt so trapped in her life.

They landed in Athens to a blistering heatwave that almost sucked her of her remaining strength as they transferred to a waiting helicopter and immediately took off again. Three and a half hours on a plane, too much tension and stress, and she was beginning to feel so wiped out she could barely sit up straight.

‘Where to now?’ she asked as they swung out over a glistening blue ocean with this now daunting man at the controls.

‘To my private island.’

Spoken like a true Greek billionaire, with an indifference that suggested that all Greeks owned their own island. Nell was too tired to do more than grimace at his arrogance.

But she couldn’t stop the tip of her tongue from running an exploratory track across her still warm and swollen full bottom lip, unaware that Xander witnessed the revealing little gesture and the way he had to clench hard on a certain part of his anatomy to stop the hot response from gaining in strength.

The island turned out to be a tiny baked brown circle of land floating alone in a crystal blue ocean. Nell caught sight of two white crescents of sand, a fir-covered hill in the middle, and a beautiful two-storeyed whitewashed villa with a swimming pool nestling in between the two sandy beaches.

They landed in an area close to the pool. Jumping out, Xander had to stoop as he strode round to the other side of the machine to open her door, then held out his hand to help her alight. She stumbled as he hurried her from beneath the rotors. A sharp frowning glance at the exhaustion wrenching at her pale face and he was scooping her off the ground.

‘I can walk—’

‘If you had to,’ he agreed tersely. ‘Which you don’t.’

With a sigh, Nell gave in because she didn’t have the energy to argue with him never mind the strength to put up a physical fight. Her head lolled onto his shoulder, his warm breath brushed her face as he carried her past the glinting blue pool and up a set of wide, shallow steps towards the house. A wall of plate-glass stood open ready for them and a tiny woman dressed in black waited to welcome them with a warm, crinkly smile.

She said something in Greek. Xander answered in the same language, his tone short and clipped. The old woman lost her smile and turned to hurry inside ahead of them, tossing long sentences over her shoulder that sounded to Nell as if Xander was being thoroughly scolded, like a child. He seemed to take it without objection, allowing the woman to lead the way across a cool hallway and up a flight of stairs.

They entered a beautiful room with pale blue walls and white drapes billowing at the floor-length windows covered by blue slatted shutters that helped to keep out the worst of the afternoon heat. Setting Nell down on the edge of a pale blue covered soft, springy bed, Xander clipped out an order and the woman hurried away, leaving him squatting down in front of Nell, whose head was just too heavy to lift off his shoulder.

‘The journey was too much,’ he hissed. ‘I apologise.’

Again? Nell thought. ‘I just want to go to bed.’

At any other time Xander would have jumped on such an appealing statement. But not right now, when it was clear she was totally wasted and he was worried and feeling as guilty as hell for putting her through such a journey before she had recovered her strength.

Reaching between them, he unbuttoned the lightweight blue summer jacket and slid it carefully from her shoulders then tossed it aside. The white blouse was silky, the tiny pearl buttons more difficult to negotiate from this position and he frowned as his fingers worked, the frown due more to her silent acquiescence. It was a good ten seconds before he realised that she’d actually fallen asleep.

The blouse came free and landed on top of the jacket, working by stealth, he gently laid her down against the pillows then shifted his attention to removing her shoes then the slippery silk-lined skirt and lace-edged stockings that covered her slender legs. Leaving her dignity intact with her lacy bra and panties, he was just grimacing to himself because this was as naked as he had ever seen his wife of a year—when he saw what he had missed while he’d been busy undressing her and it straightened his spine with a stark, rigid jerk.

She was so badly bruised he could not believe the doctor had dared to say that she was fit to travel! One whole side of her ribcage was a mass of fading purple and yellow, and he just stared in blistering horror at the two thick seat-belt lines, one that ran from her left shoulder diagonally across her body to her waist, where the other took over, strapping straight across her hips.

What the hell kind of speed had she been doing when she hit that tree to cause such bruising?

Had it been deliberate?

His blood ran cold at an idea he dismissed instantly. But the cold shock of the thought lingered much longer than that. And the guilt he had been feeling at the rough way he’d handled her on the plane grew like a balloon in his chest.

Someone tutted beside him. ‘Oh, poor wounded child,’ Thea Sophia murmured. ‘What kind of man have you become, Alexander, that you bring her this far in this state?’

It was not a question he cared to answer. He was struggling enough with it for himself. Setting his mouth, he bent down to gather Nell into his arms again with as much care as he could manage.

‘Pull back the covers, Thea,’ he instructed gruffly. Ten seconds later he was resettling his wounded bride against the cool sheets of their marriage bed.

Did she but know it, he thought as he straightened a second time and stepped back to allow Thea to gently fold the covers back over Nell’s limp frame. Her hair lay in a thick braid beside one of her cheeks and she had never looked so pale—or so vulnerable.

God give me strength, he thought grimly, glad that only he knew what plans he’d made for the beautiful Helen involving this island, some serious seduction, this room and this bed.

Shelved plans. He turned away, grim face mask-like as he watched Thea fuss around picking up Nell’s discarded clothes and folding them neatly on a chair.

He made a decision. One of those quick-thinking, businessminded decisions he was more familiar with. It was called a tactical retreat.

Nell slept on through the sound of rotor blades stirring up again, slept through the whooshing din the helicopter made as it took off. She had no idea at all that while she slept Thea Sophia sat in the chair beside the bed, quietly working her lace with gnarled, nimble fingers while a maid just as quietly unpacked and put away Nell’s clothes. The afternoon sun slowly turned the room golden. She only stirred when the sound of rattling crockery made her dry throat and her empty stomach demand she take note.

Opening her eyes, she took several long seconds to remember where she was, and a few more seconds’ sleepily watching the old lady in black as she fussed around a table by the window across the room. Then the old lady turned.

‘Ah, you are awake at last!’ she exclaimed and came across the room with her crinkly face full of olive-toned smiles. ‘My name is Sophia Theodora Pascalis,’ she introduced herself. ‘I am Alexander’s great-aunt. You may call me Thea Sophia and I will call you Helen—such a proud Greek name.’

Was it? Nell had never given much thought to her name’s origin.

‘Of course, if Alexander were here he would have made the formal introductions,’ Thea Sophia continued. ‘But welcome—welcome to our beautiful island and our beautiful home, Helen.’ Nell found her face being clasped between two hands in a warm, affectionate gesture, and released again.

‘Th-thank you. I’m very happy to meet you, Thea Sophia,’ Nell returned politely and it was impossible not to smile back in response.

‘Ah, it is I who is happy to see you here at last.’ The old lady stood back to beam a very satisfied smile then turned to walk back to the table by the window. ‘We will become very good friends, you and I, ne? You will like it here,’ she promised. ‘When that stupid boy Alexander decides to get his priorities right and come back here you will makes lots of babies between you in that bed as is Pascalis tradition and we shall be a very happy family, ne?’

The baby part floated right by Nell, pushed out by the much more disturbing part of Thea Sophia’s chatty speech. ‘Xan—Alexander has…gone?’ she prompted unsteadily.

‘He took one look at your poor bruised body and took to his heels,’ his aunt informed her in disgust. ‘You would not believe that such a big strong man could be so squeamish, but there you go.’ She added a very Mediterranean shrug. ‘It will be his guilty conscience taunting him, of course. He was brought up to protect his loved ones. In this, with you, he failed. He will come back when he has come to terms with his…’

Nell had stopped listening. She was pushing the covers away from her body and staring down at her near-naked flesh. Hot colour poured into her cheeks then paled away again when she saw what Xander had seen.

‘W-who undressed me?’ ‘Alexander, of course.’ ‘Then he left…’ ‘Ne.’ China chinked against china.

Nell sat up with a jerk and drew her knees up to her chin so that she could hug herself. Tears were burning, hurt tears, angry tears.

Xander had brought her to this island to seduce her—he’d left Nell in no doubt whatsoever about that. One glance at her miserable body and he’d seen his plans thwarted so he’d done what he always did.

He’d walked away. Left her. Marooned her on this tiny island with this sweet but old, old lady, while he returned to his busy, important life, the seduction of his wife shelved—again.

‘You ready for a nice cup of English tea now…?’