Читать книгу The Mistresses Collection - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 12

EMMIE NIBBLED WITHOUT appetite at a piece of toast, no criticism of the truly sumptuous breakfast that had been delivered to her in bed: she simply wasn’t very hungry, and when a knock sounded on the door that led onto the corridor, she froze and paled.

‘Come in!’ she called, stiff as a stick of rock.

Bastian’s sister, clad in a dressing gown with her upswept bridal hairdo gleaming with pearl pins, erupted through the door, her eyes anxious. ‘I can’t believe you’re still in bed, Emmie!’ she exclaimed.

‘Sorry, I slept in. Do you need help with anything?’ Emmie asked guiltily, wondering what had happened to etch that worried look on the other young woman’s face.

‘Lilah arrived first thing this morning and she won’t leave Bastian alone!’ Nessa relayed with unconcealed resentment. ‘You should be down there protecting him!’

‘I think Bastian’s well able to protect himself,’ Emmie replied gently, but she couldn’t prevent her facial muscles from tightening at the prospect of meeting Bastian’s ex, the day after she herself had slept with him.

Nessa frowned and stared back at Emmie. ‘Do you really not care?’

Emmie belatedly recalled the role she was supposed to be playing and registered that she wasn’t acting as a concerned girlfriend might. Or at least the sort of girlfriend who let all her feelings hang out in conversation with his sister. ‘I’ll be downstairs as soon as I’m dressed,’ she promised ruefully. ‘But stop worrying. I honestly don’t think he wants Lilah back.’

‘I’ve known men as clever as my brother trapped by gold-diggers before…not least our father,’ Nessa countered with surprising cynicism. ‘Lilah will do and say anything to get Bastian back. She’s a barracuda and he took her by surprise—she didn’t expect him to just let her go when she broke off the engagement!’

Wide-eyed at that information, Emmie gazed back at Nessa. ‘Is it wrong of me to admit that she sounds a bit much for me to handle?’

Nessa laughed and sighed. ‘Don’t let Lilah intimidate you. You’re the woman Bastian brought to my wedding.’

The bride’s phone buzzed and she pulled it out, muttered something about a make-up session and fled. Emmie pushed away the tray and got out of bed. It was time to do what she had been paid to do…what her mother had been paid for Emmie to do, she adjusted wryly, while recalling Bastian’s attitude to what Odette had done. Maybe she should have stood her ground and ignored Odette’s efforts to guilt her daughter into doing something so much against her own principles. And if it was true that her weakness had brought down the roof on herself, well, she was paying the price, she acknowledged unhappily, for the prospect of acting like Bastian’s girlfriend around the barracuda was not an inviting one. Emmie would have been much happier had she never had to lay eyes on Bastian again but sadly that escape route wasn’t open to her, and if she was uncomfortable now, it was also her fault for having allowed their relationship to become embarrassingly intimate, she reflected unhappily.

Bastian watched Emmie descend the stairs in a flowing blue maxi dress that matched her beautiful eyes. Five seconds later he was imagining a necklace of sapphires round her unadorned throat and five seconds after that he was meeting her eyes and registering that she might look like a goddess but she was a goddess of the iceberg variety, not the warm, chatty type. Frustration growled through Bastian, who was not in a good mood. So, he had got it wrong, so he had hurt her feelings, been less than tactful, but did she have to continue to hold that against him? He had apologised, hadn’t he? As a male who rarely apologised he attached a great deal of significance to that apology. He watched Emmie’s face light up with a sudden warm smile when the parents of the teenager who had knocked her flying into the pool the day before approached her and he noted the effort she was making to put his uncle and aunt at ease. Lilah would still have been complaining and nursing her bruises and making everyone around her feel bad about the accident, but then Emmie, whatever else she was, didn’t revel in being the centre of attention. As Bastian sprang upright to go and greet his supposed partner he saw Lilah’s face tighten. No, even Lilah hadn’t counted on a beauty of Emmie’s calibre coming along to distract him, he conceded with a shot of unexpected amusement. And that was all this weird way he was feeling was, all the irrational thinking he had been doing and dwelling on mistakes, which was so not his style, Bastian thought impatiently, gritting his teeth. Emmie was simply a distraction, a very pleasant, very sexy distraction in the wake of the weeks of media drama that Lilah had enjoyed whipping up.

Emmie saw Bastian first, breathtakingly handsome in his pearl grey morning suit. Her heart skipped a beat and her mouth ran dry and she really didn’t want to meet his eyes and was grateful when his uncle and aunt engaged her in conversation. Over their shoulders, she glimpsed Bastian’s ex, Lilah, staring at her fixedly. Lilah was wearing a black and white frothy bridesmaid dress that made her tiny figure look more than ever like a delicate fairy’s. Her heart-shaped face and almond brown eyes glowed between the wings of her waterfall-straight dark hair. she was quite exquisite in a dainty doll-like way and suddenly Emmie felt like a great hulking giantess, standing as she did comfortably six feet tall in her heels.

‘Emmie…’ Bastian murmured, leaning close so that his breath warmed her cheek and the scent of his cologne brought back a shattering memory of how it had felt to be in his arms the night before when such a recollection was least welcome. He rested a light hand against her spine, a contact that made her bristle like a Rottweiler ready to attack. ‘I’m relieved you’re here. I’m having a trying morning.’

‘Misery loves company,’ Emmie remarked, noting the petulant expression Lilah was now sporting. Nessa thought her brother’s ex was a gold-digger but right then, her own ego bruised as it was by Bastian’s rough treatment, Emmie thought he deserved to fall victim to a gold-digger.

‘Never a rose without a thorn,’ Bastian quipped in the same style, disconcerting Emmie with the comeback.

‘You actually have a sense of humour,’ Emmie noted, pleased by her tone of indifference, for he would have had to torture her to get a warmer reaction out of her.

‘No, Lilah killed it. She arrived an hour ago and upset Nessa within the first five minutes,’ Bastian told her wryly.

‘Nessa will be fine. Your sister is worried about you.’ Although goodness knows why that would be, said Emmie’s inflection.

‘All you have to do is act as though we’re inseparable,’ Bastian informed her half under his breath.

‘That’s quite a challenge, Bastian.’

A hand closed over her slim shoulder as Bastian turned her round, forcing her to collide with his glittering dark eyes. ‘It wasn’t a challenge for you last night, glyka mou.’

Last night? The discovery that he fought dirty did not surprise Emmie and mortified colour leapt into her cheeks, her brittle composure splintering at that full-on reminder of her weakness. ‘Yes, but then I had drunk a little too much,’ she countered in a forced whisper while smiling with determination at a couple walking past them. ‘And even a frog could contrive to look like Prince Charming in the condition I was in.’

Bastian flipped her round to face him again. ‘You were not drunk,’ he ground out in an aggressive undertone.

‘I don’t see why it should bother you so much…you weren’t the virgin who ended up with the frog!’ Emmie snapped back at him vitriolically.

Smouldering black-lashed golden eyes assailed her, a line of dark colour suddenly accentuating his high cheekbones. His beautiful mouth compressed with iron control. ‘I suggest we drop the subject.’

‘You mentioned it first,’ Emmie reminded him with spirit.

Bastian muttered something in Greek that sounded nasty.

‘I’m sorry but I really do hate you,’ Emmie confided shakily.

It was dawning on Bastian that the apology had not been worth its weight in gold or indeed in any currency, and he was genuinely quite shocked that he had not been able to charm Emmie into forgiving him. A fleet of limousines pulled up to take the bridal party and her relatives to the village church, and with difficulty Bastian suppressed his roaring sense of annoyance with the world in general to appreciate the pretty picture his kid sister made as she came down the stairs in her wedding dress.

Emmie sat silent in the limo driving them at a stately pace along the picturesque road, which was bounded by sandy beach on one side and olive groves and hills on the other. She wished she had not voiced that final outburst and longed even for better control over emotions that seemed to be operating on a terrifyingly high-powered level unfamiliar to her. But she had told Bastian the truth, the absolute truth: she hated him for even briefly thinking that she might be the kind of woman who sold her body for profit, but she hated herself for having succumbed to his dubious charms even more. Nor did she need a brain transplant to appreciate that Bastian Christou was not accustomed to being handed the frozen mitt—his expectation that his blue-blooded birth, power, influence and great wealth entitled him to more flattering treatment fairly shone from the tension in his bold bronzed profile.

The silence nibbled at her nerves and conscience reminded her that she had promised to deliver the companionship he had paid for. ‘Where did Nessa meet Leonides?’

‘She’s known him all her life. His father is the island doctor. Nessa and Leonides started school together, went to uni in tandem and have been a couple virtually ever since.’

‘That’s so romantic,’ Emmie commented. ‘They must know each other so well.’

‘But they’re very young to be getting married,’ Bastian remarked in a tone of disapproval. ‘Nessa’s already talking about starting a family.’

‘Sometimes people know what they want at an early age. What age is she?’

‘The same age as you. Have you similar dreams?’ Bastian enquired a shade drily.

‘Good grief, no!’ Emmie declared with a grimace at the idea. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with a husband or children. I’m a career girl.’

The pretty little church by the harbour was packed with well-wishers. Bastian settled Emmie into a front pew and left her there because he was standing as Leonides’ best man. Emmie settled back to enjoy the unfamiliar Greek wedding ceremony, which seemed rather more colourful than the English version as the bearded priest swung his incense burner and chanted. Nessa looked ravishingly happy and, seeing the way bride and groom looked at each other, Emmie found that she was smiling until Lilah cast her a chilling glance over a bony shoulder that was pure malice. After posing for photos outside the church in the sunshine with Lilah moving closer to Bastian at every opportunity while giggling girlishly and clinging to his arm, Emmie could only think what bad taste in women Bastian had. Lilah was so horribly fake and gushy. Bastian might be extremely clever in business but he couldn’t be the sharpest tool in the box when he had decided to marry a woman as artificial as Lilah.

The reception back at the house followed, caterers moving around with trays of champagne while Emmie stuck masochistically to water and simmered when Bastian raised a fine ebony brow as though mocking her abstinence. That man, she would surely have killed him outright for his audacity had he meant anything to her, which he didn’t, she assured herself soothingly, taking a seat at the top table while Lilah watched Bastian fan out Emmie’s napkin for her with sullen dark eyes.

‘To forgive is divine,’ Bastian teased.

‘Men hate those they have hurt,’ Emmie shot back at him thinly.

‘But I don’t hate you. You know, if you would try to be logical about this instead of emotional—’

‘I am not being emotional,’ Emmie seethed back at him, rage sparkling in her lovely eyes. He infuriated her. That she still thought he was gorgeous, found her gaze absently lingering on his spectacular bone structure or compelling eyes, only added fuel to her furious resentment.

‘I think you’re a very emotional individual,’ Bastian returned with a derisive edge to his dark drawl.

‘Better than having about as much feeling in me as a block of wood!’

Bastian watched his sister take to the floor with her new husband. Nessa was wreathed in smiles. The job was done and his sister was content, he told himself grimly. Why was he bothering to even try mending fences with the most challenging woman he had ever met? He had always avoided difficult, demanding personalities. His sister caught his eye and swivelled her gaze towards Lilah, and Bastian stood up to lead the chief bridesmaid onto the floor.

Emmie watched in consternation as Bastian led the tiny brunette onto the dance floor. Lilah behaved like a light that had been switched on full beam, all animation, smiles and chatter. Emmie’s mouth folded down at the corners. Maybe he was going to end up back with his ex. They had been together a long time and ties that close weren’t easy to break. Maybe Emmie had simply been a face-saving piece of arm candy on Bastian’s terms, retaliation because Lilah had broken off their engagement. And Lilah was exquisite, there was no denying that. Emmie watched the tiny brunette nestle intimately into Bastian’s tall powerful frame and her hands knotted into fists below the table and her teeth ground together. Typical guy, he had told her to stick to him like glue to keep Lilah at bay and now he was encouraging the other woman. Feeling hot moisture sting her eyes, Emmie was dismayed enough to slide out of her chair and head for the powder room off the main hall.

What on earth was the matter with her? She wasn’t jealous, had never been jealous of a man in her life. No, all that was wrong with her was that she felt foolish and ashamed and humiliated that she had had sex with Bastian. Satisfied with that explanation, Emmie returned to the hall and found Lilah squarely planted in her path.

‘You’re Emmie,’ Lilah remarked with her cut-glass laugh.

And Emmie cringed, thinking, Good grief, he’s told her he was with me last night! There was something so knowing and nasty about Lilah’s scornful smile. ‘And you’re Lilah,’ Emmie responded flatly.

‘Bastian picked you up at the office, I believe—how sweet but how lazy of him. Men can be such bastards,’ Lilah trilled like the evil fairy as Emmie stared down at the brunette feeling sick with embarrassment, guilt and discomfiture. ‘He’s using you to get at me. Don’t you have any pride?’

‘Don’t you?’ Emmie dared. ‘We’re not having this conversation.’

And Emmie swept on past, with her head held high, pale and trembling a little and grateful to have escaped Bastian’s shrewish former fiancée. If the brunette had really cared for him would she ever have risked losing him in the first place? As Emmie crossed the room to Bastian’s side she was seethingly conscious of his stunning dark golden gaze clinging to her. She mightn’t like him but she adored his eyes. Suddenly it was hard to drag oxygen into her lungs and a flock of butterflies were dive-bombing her tummy. He reached out and closed a hand over hers to draw her close with an ease she resented. He seemed to feel no discomfiture at all over what had happened between them the night before. Colour crawled up Emmie’s cheeks, her nostrils flaring on the hot evocative scent of him that close to her, memory dragging her down and down so deep and fast she was lost within seconds. Her heartbeat quickened as she recalled the driving intensity of his body over and inside hers and an instant surge of heat snapped her nipples painfully tight and mushroomed in her pelvis.

‘We need to talk, glyka mou,’ Bastian breathed in a roughened undertone, but it was the very last thing he wanted to do. Her slender body was trembling infinitesimally beneath his arm and that close to the warmth of her he had an instant erection. Hunger was raging through him like a bush fire and all he wanted to do was drag her back to his bed and keep her there fully occupied until he felt normal again, cool again, himself again. Instead he thrust open the door into the conservatory and walked her in there.

‘What are you doing?’ Emmie demanded thinly. ‘I don’t want to be alone with you. The show of togetherness is only for public viewing!’

Smouldering golden eyes fringed by lush black lashes zeroed in on her. ‘Stop fighting with me. It’s childish. I apologised—’

‘The man apologised!’ Emmie scorned. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘You really do know how to press my buttons,’ Bastian growled, golden eyes bright with anger as he hauled her into his arms. ‘We start again afresh now—’

‘No,’ Emmie cut in, face uncertain and hectically pink as she looked up at him, fiercely resisting temptation. He had made a fool of her once; she wouldn’t let him do it to her twice.

‘I want you to be the same way you were with me last night,’ Bastian admitted darkly.

‘A tipsy stupid pushover?’ Emmie snapped. ‘Not a chance!’

He brought his hot devouring lips down on hers and it was like a lethal rocket attack on her treacherous body, sending a wave of melting heat to her feminine core with a kiss so boldly sexual and exciting that it left her head swimming and her knees weak. Her hands clutched at his shoulders to keep her upright, a drowning, quivering, overwhelming awareness engulfing her like a tide as her every skin cell lit up like a traffic light. He kept on kissing her, his tongue delving hungrily, one lean hand massaging the pouting curve of her breasts, releasing a whimper of sound from her throat as he rubbed her straining nipples through the fabric. His fingers reached down to yank up the skirt of her dress, trailed along her thigh and she froze, dragging her mouth free in desperation.

‘No, Bastian.’

‘Maybe some guys get off on rejection—I don’t!’ he bit out angrily.

The ache between her slender thighs hurt along with the knowledge that she could not satisfy her outrageous craving for him. ‘Monday I’ll be back at work for two short weeks and we pretend none of this ever happened…OK?’ she pressed in desperation.

‘If that’s what you want,’ Bastian framed between gritted teeth.

Emmie simply nodded. It had to be what she wanted. After all, no relationship between her and Bastian could go anywhere but the bedroom. He was a billionaire businessman, for goodness’ sake, way out of her league and right now he was at a loose end and probably frustrated because he had a high-voltage libido and he was just out of a long relationship. All he could possibly want from her was sex and she refused to lower herself to that level. A typical shag, she reminded herself doggedly of his comment about his expectations of her the night before, which represented all too clearly how he saw her: as an escort for hire, an easy little office girl, surprising only in her lack of experience and currently the only available sexual option below his roof because most of his guests were his relatives.

He freed her and Emmie returned to the ballroom, shaken but determined to stay in control. She followed everyone else out to the big hall where Nessa stood on the upper landing of the stairs, posing for the hovering photographer to throw her bouquet. Twenty seconds later, the bouquet pitched down into Emmie’s startled arms and Nessa whooped with satisfaction.

‘I don’t think so,’ Lilah Siannas derided, treating Emmie to a contemptuous appraisal.

Emmie ignored the brunette and was literally watching the clock to calculate how soon she could excuse herself and retire to her room for the night. After all, once the bride and groom had departed, her role was surely at an end.

His simmering gaze pinned to Emmie’s retreat up the stairs, Bastian knocked back a brandy without respecting the vintage and gritted his teeth: Emmie had thrown in the towel while Lilah was behaving like a demented stalker. Suddenly, Bastian was out of all patience with the entire female sex and he crossed the room to join his grandfather and make a suggestion about how they could best spend what remained of the night. Theron’s lean weathered face lit up in surprise and pleasure.

‘No, I don’t want to talk about it,’ he told the old man grimly.

Emmie wakened when a maid brought her breakfast. She had slept like a log, exhausted by the strain of keeping up a front on Nessa’s wedding day. In the warmth of the sunlight now filling the room, she felt stronger and brighter, and she took a quick shower to freshen up before sitting down at the table out on the balcony where her breakfast awaited her. The view of the empty beach and the turquoise sea arched over by a clear blue sky was fantastic. A text beeped on her cell phone and she lifted it.

‘Be ready to leave at nine. I will not be travelling with you. Thank you for your assistance.’

It was from Bastian, no x at the end, nothing personal. A sharp sense of disappointment pierced Emmie and she questioned her response. After all, her role was at an end and as she had refused Bastian the night before he naturally saw no point in further contact with her. She was once again the woman he had hired to do a job and the job was done, she reminded herself painfully, disconcerted that her eyes were filling with stinging tears. What the heck was wrong with her? This was how the cookie crumbled when he was a billionaire and she was an office worker…unless she fell pregnant, a little voice whispered in the back of her mind, sending a cooling shiver of consternation through her. With that possibility in mind it might be more sensible to be a little less aggressive in her attitude to him, she reasoned unhappily, and she stood up, wondering if Bastian was still in his room. Not even sure of what she planned to say, she went to the door between their rooms on impulse and knocked. She was shocked when the door jerked open to reveal Lilah.

‘Oh…’ Emmie breathed, losing colour and falling back a step.

A complacent smile on her lips, Lilah preened in the doorway, making the most of Emmie’s surprise at her being in Bastian’s bedroom.

‘You’re being sent straight back to London,’ Lilah pointed out as though her presence in Bastian’s room and Emmie’s travel itinerary were connected, which very probably they were, Emmie reflected with a sinking heart and a despondent sense of humiliation. If Bastian was back with his ex, Emmie was too much of an embarrassing extra to keep below the same roof.

‘Yes,’ Emmie agreed with no expression at all, too proud to betray her mortification to the other woman but feeling vindicated in her decision not to take Bastian’s apparent interest in her seriously the night before. Evidently he was back in the arms of his ex. That hadn’t taken long. Bastian had been on the rebound; that was the only reason he had come after her but, clearly and understandably, it was Lilah whom he had really wanted. For no reason that she could comprehend, Emmie felt gutted, absolutely gutted by that obvious fact.

The door closed. Dry-eyed, facial muscles locked tight, Emmie packed her case. She had better hope she wasn’t pregnant for, in this situation, what a disaster such an unwelcome development would be!