Читать книгу Irresistible Greeks: Dark and Determined: The Kanellis Scandal / The Greek's Acquisition / Along Came Twins… - Шантель Шоу, Rebecca Winters - Страница 10

CONFUSED and trying not to let the tiny nub of alarm she could feel inside her start to balloon, Zoe murmured, ‘You said a helicopter.’

‘A slight change of plan,’ Anton countered with the smoothness of balm.

‘So we are flying in—that—to your house?’

He watched as his chauffeur climbed out of the car. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

His eyes wore a polished jet look to them that Zoe couldn’t read. Having to moisten her lips, she found that they were trembling. ‘And wh-where is this house?’

Perhaps she should have asked that question a long time ago. In fact she was angry with herself that she hadn’t, because there was something about Anton Pallis now that put her senses on stinging alert. He was still reclining in the corner of the car but she was picking up danger signals that made her reach out with a hand and close it around the handle on Toby’s seat.

And he had not answered her question. A new kind of tension sizzled in the air. The chauffeur appeared outside Anton’s door and went to open it for him, but with a tap from the back of his fingers on the glass he waved him away without removing his attention from her.

‘We are going to Greece, Zoe,’ he told her.

‘Greece?’ She said it as if she had never heard of the place. ‘But—but I don’t want to go to Greece. And—and you said …’

‘I never actually said that my house was here in England,’ he pointed out as if she was supposed say, Oh, that’s all right, then. My mistake!

But Zoe wasn’t going to say that. Zoe wasn’t going to Greece. ‘Not me, Mr Pallis, and not my brother,’ she told him on a sudden spurt of movement, and started releasing Toby’s seat from its safety restraints.

‘So where are you intending to go?’ he questioned curiously.

‘Back home, where I belong.’

‘And how are you going to get there?’

‘I will walk if I have to! All the way down that road we’ve just driven along and straight to the police still hanging around the gate. Or the press,’ she added, tight lipped and shaking in her determination to get out of this car as fast as she could. ‘Why the heck should I not go to the papers and let them decide if this makes you a lying, cheating, kidnapping rat?’

At last he showed some emotion with an impatient hiss from between his even white teeth. ‘I may have lied by omission but I am not a cheat and I am not kidnapping you.’

She fumbled in her efforts to release the car seat. ‘What do you call this then—a holiday?’

‘Yes!’ he snapped, sitting up out of his corner.

‘And who is waiting at the other end of this plane journey, Mr Pallis. Theo Kanellis, by any chance?’

The way she scythed out both names as if they poisoned her to say them set Anton’s teeth on edge. ‘No,’ he denied, then sighed and reached over to clamp a hand on the side of Toby’s seat when she tried to pick it up. ‘Will you just stop doing that and listen to me?’

‘Listen to more of your lies? Do you think I’m an idiot?’ She closed both hands over the baby-seat handle. ‘You told me to trust you and I did!’ she acknowledged bitterly. ‘Now look where it’s got me!’

‘You can trust me,’ Anton insisted. ‘We are not going to Theo! On my honour, Zoe, the promise of a sanctuary in my home was the truth.’

And pigs might fly, thought Zoe scornfully. She was forced to let go of Toby’s seat with one hand so she could feel behind in search of the door catch so that she could escape. ‘I should have known your nice behaviour was fishy,’ she said shakily. ‘You are his loyal representative, after all. No wonder my father steered well clear of you lot, people like you would have eaten a gentle man like him for breakfast and thrown away the bits.’

‘This isn’t about Leander.’

‘Don’t you dare call him that!’ She flared up with spectacular force. ‘He is Mr Ellis to you. Ellis, because he couldn’t stand to use the Kanellis name and now I know why—he knew what you were like!’

‘I am not a Kanellis, Zoe,’ Anton said heavily. ‘And this is not what you think. I accept I did not tell you the full truth about where we are going but—’

He ripped out a curse as she began to shiver, all of her shaking like a slender volcano about to erupt, and she’d gone as white as the proverbial sheet.

‘Zoe, listen to me— Damn,’ he muttered when her door flew open and she began scrambling out of the car.

Anton threw open his door, strode around to her side of the car at speed and reached her side as she turned to bend and collect her brother. Teeth seared together behind his tight lips, he looped an arm around her and hauled her backwards before she could get a firm grip on the baby seat. She wriggled and kicked out at him, he dumped her on the tarmac then spun her around to face him.

‘Just listen,’ he insisted, half-angry, half-pleading. ‘I am sorry I’ve upset you this badly.’

Upset me? Zoe threw her head back and looked at him. He actually blanched when he saw the electric-blue pools of her eyes spinning his wretched betrayal into the hard angles of his face.

‘I hate you,’ she choked. ‘You duped me all the way! We were safe in our little house. You made it impossible for us to stay there. You, and my grandfather playing your power games. And if you don’t let go of me right now, I’m going to start screaming my head off!’

Pulling in a deep breath, she opened her mouth to carry out the threat. Anton’s mouth landed on hers with enough power to plug the threatened scream back down her throat. Even he was shocked that he’d used such a method to stop her. Yet once it was done the idea of drawing back again did not enter his head. Her lips were already parted and trembling with tears; he felt their tongues touch and heat explode between them like some unknown, powerful force. She was still sobbing but she kissed him back with hungry urgency. Where it had all come from, he didn’t think even she understood.

Across the airfield by the closed gates a line of telescopic cameras lifted in unison to record the kiss. His team of people all stood watching their controlled, sophisticated employer ravish Theo Kanellis’s granddaughter, when every one of them knew they’d been embroiled in one hell of a row inside the car only seconds before. And still the passion pulsed between them like a wild, living thing. He held her pressed up against him and the hardening of his body made her choke out a groan in dismay.

Wrenching her lips free from his, she gasped out in quivering rejection, ‘That was just gross!’

Anton felt two strikes of heat score across his high cheeks. ‘But you still joined in,’ he grated back unsteadily—unsteadily because his breathing had gone haywire. He didn’t know himself like this.

‘You—you—’ Zoe ran out of words on a thickened stammer. Her lips felt swollen and hot. Things, senses, were crawling around inside her, aiming stinging strikes at certain intimate parts of her body, from the tightened tips of her crushed breasts to her achingly heavy pelvis where he still held her pressed against the hard evidence of his own response. Even her hair roots were tingling, the long loose strands lying like a splash of gold across one of his shoulders because of the way he had tilted her head.

And the way he was looking down at her, as if he was contemplating kissing her again, shot fear and excitement through Zoe in equal amounts.

‘Let go of me,’ she breathed into the burning passion stamped onto his handsome face.

No chance, thought Anton. As though he was being driven by some unknown influence, he bent and scooped her into his arms then started walking towards the plane. He felt taut, energised and downright macho. Theo’s granddaughter had fast turned into a passionate obsession for him—indefensibly so, he admitted, when those amazing, fascinating eyes flooded with fresh tears again.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Zoe sobbed up at him in wretched confusion and pained disbelief.

Then a sound reached her—only the briefest tiniest hint of a squeak—but it was enough to fling Zoe over the edge.

‘Toby,’ she whispered, and had to strain to look around Anton’s broad shoulder. She saw to her horror that the car with its doors still hanging open was already several yards away. ‘Anton … Toby. He’s still in the— Oh my God, what’s that man doing with my baby brother?’

A fresh wave of panic erupted in a swirling spin of dizzying terror. She stared up at the hard cast of his grimly determined face. ‘Please,’ she begged achingly. ‘Don’t take my brother away from me!’

Lips clipped tight now, Anton said something to her, but Zoe couldn’t hear him over the roaring rush of fear going on in her head. They’d already entered the plane and he was carrying her down the cabin. She knew that she was fighting him, wriggling and hitting out with her clenched fists. ‘Toby …’ She sobbed out her brother’s name over and over, heard it throbbing inside her head.

Lowering her into a seat, Anton came to squat down in front of her. ‘Listen to me, Zoe,’ he insisted—harshly, because it was only just occurring to him what was actually happening to her. Her eyes had turned black and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her kiss-crushed lips kept mouthing her brother’s name and she was trembling like a leaf.

The muscles in his face clenched tightly and he fixed his attention on fastening her in to her seat. ‘Get this plane in the air,’ he growled at someone; he didn’t give a damn who it was as long as they did what he said.

As if his words had filtered into her head, Zoe’s fingers closed around the lapels of his jacket, making him look up, making him feel like the worst person alive when she pleaded, ‘Toby, Anton. Please, I need my brother. Please, Anton, please …’

It was the agonised cry of a wounded creature. No one was immune to it. Everyone in the cabin froze in dismay, including Anton who had never felt so angry with himself—or so ashamed.

Kostas looked at him as he approached; he was ashamed of him too. ‘Your brother is right here, Miss Kanellis.’ The deep slightly thickened voice of Kostas Demitris made Zoe jerk in response. She stopped weeping, blinked her wretched eyes and looked at the seat still holding her baby brother all snug and safe.

‘Toby,’ she breathed in trembling relief.

‘I must secure him in a safety harness while the plane takes off,’ continued Kostas in the gentlest voice Anton had ever heard him use, and he’d known the other man for most of his life. ‘We will be just up here a couple of seats away. He is safe with me, thespinis, I promise you.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, then turned to look at Anton. ‘I thought you—’

‘I know what you thought,’ he cut in grimly. ‘For all my faults, Zoe, I promise you I will never hand your brother over to anyone other than to yourself, OK?’

OK? Zoe nodded even though she was asking herself why she was allowing herself to believe a single word that he said. Yet she did.

‘He’s my whole life now.’ Pressing her wobbling lips together, she dropped her gaze to where her fingers still clutched at his jacket lapels. ‘He’s all I have left of them and …’

Zoe felt the tears well up inside her again, the rolling wave of an overwhelming sadness and grief. For three whole weeks she had kept herself together. She’d stayed calm and strong and kept her feelings all locked up inside because she’d had to if she’d wanted to appear a fit mother for her brother in front of all those people who’d lined up to check her out. Then along came this man—this one person she had actually let her guard down for—and now look at her: stuck on the plane in a middle of a field, waiting to take off for Greece!

Anton watched as the tears started flowing again—a different kind of tears. His lips clamped together and his expression turning tautly blank, he closed his arms around her and used the flat of his hand to ease her face into his chest. He did not offer comforting strokes with his fingers. He did not encourage the tears. He stared at the back of her cream leather seat and just held her as the deep well of her grief opened up and came pouring out. She let go of it all in near silence, in long, soul-wrenching sobs with words, barely distinguishable as words, winding through them. Mummy he recognised; Daddy …

His flight steward approached him cautiously. ‘You need to choose a seat and fasten in, sir,’ he said.

Anton shook his head. The plane could fall from the sky but he wasn’t moving. After a second or two the steward moved away. The engines fired into life. He felt their vibration through the balls of his balancing feet. The moment they were in the air and free to move around, he unfastened Zoe’s belt then stood up with her in his arms and headed for the bedroom at the rear of the plane. Shouldering the door shut behind them, he heeled off his shoes then used a foot to flip away the duvet so he could lay her down on the bed.

She was still clutching his lapels and he did not try to ease her fingers free. He just lay down beside her, flipped the duvet over the two of them then drew her into his embrace. He let her weep those awful sobs against him and felt every single one of them like a blow to his own cruel, thoughtless arrogance. When eventually she exhausted herself and drifted into a restive sleep, he remained where he was, aware with every fibre of his being that he had never held another human being this close to him, and that included during sex.

When slowly her fingers finally relaxed from their grip on him, he eased himself sideways and rolled out of the bed then turned to walk like a drunk into the adjoining bathroom, closed the door and slumped back against it, eyes closed, conscience riven by deserved self-contempt.

Zoe came awake to the slow, slow memory that something calamitous had happened. Shattered images of her shouting at Anton, kissing Anton, begging and pleading then weeping on Anton, floated around in her head. She stirred ever so slightly, frowning as she did so because she knew she’d totally embarrassed herself and completely lost her head. Now she was lying in a bed somewhere covered by a duvet and she still had all her clothes on, even her shoes and her jacket.

Unwilling as yet to open her eyes and check out her surroundings, she continued to lie there, using her other senses instead. It was all very quiet. She could feel the finest hint of a vibration from the plane’s engines.

Oh dear God, she thought then. She’d had a fight with Anton Pallis about going to Greece then she’d gone to pieces because she’d thought he was separating her from Toby.

‘You are awake, then,’ a smooth voice said.

With a start, Zoe flipped onto her back then flicked her eyes open as full and detailed recall rushed like a charging bull through her head. She remembered everything—all of it—from her flare of wild panic to …

‘I thought you were going to sleep through the whole flight and force me to carry you off it.’

Twisting her head on the pillow, her eyes collided with a pair of dark ones coloured by lazy mockery. Her heart started to hammer. She didn’t know why. He was stretched out beside her on top of the duvet with his head supported by the heel of his hand and everything about him screamed sartorial elegance from the grey silk trousers he was wearing now to the crispness of a pale-blue shirt.

‘Toby,’ she whispered tautly.

‘Right here.’ Arching an eyebrow as if to question where else her brother could be, he glanced down at the space between them.

And he was. Following the downward movement of Anton’s eyes, Zoe discovered her brother lying there fast asleep. He looked relaxed and angelic, his tiny face pink with contentment.

‘He drank a full bottle of that awful stuff he seems to find delicious,’ Anton informed her. ‘Then I tackled a job no man of my superior breeding should ever have to undertake.’

‘You fed and changed him?’ Turning onto her side, Zoe gathered the baby close to her and dropped a kiss on his silky dark head.

‘He suffered my first few fumbling attempts remarkably well. My suit received a—dousing,’ he drawled lazily. ‘However, since you had already drenched the jacket with your tears earlier, it was no hardship to me to remove it and change into something else.’

He did not add that he had refused plenty of offers from people out there who’d offered to take over the job for him. It had been his punishment to care for the baby, as it was his punishment to endure the frost his staff had been treating him to since he’d walked out of this room over an hour ago.

‘I—I don’t know what to say,’ Zoe mumbled. ‘A simple “thank you” will be adequate.’ Not while she still lived and breathed, thought Zoe. ‘You don’t warrant the waste of good manners. You kidnapped us.’

‘Back to hostilities already?’ Sighing heavily, he slid off the bed, rising to his full height with fluid grace.

‘You lied and you conned me and scared me out of my wits.’

‘Well, something made you lose your wits,’ Anton agreed, moving across the compact cabin to open a narrow cupboard. ‘I did wonder for a while if it was the kiss.’

The moment he mentioned the kiss, Zoe refused to look at him. Her hostility towards him only half-covered what she really felt. ‘I suppose I should have expected it from a man reared under Theo Kanellis’s influence.’ Sitting up in the bed, she lifted her brother into her arms. ‘Ruthless, heartless and a calculating bully, as well as a conscience-free rake.’

‘You summed me up quite nicely there, Zoe,’ Anton agreed again as he slid a jacket off a hanger then closed the cupboard door again. ‘Would you like me to apologise for frightening you so badly?’

‘Will you turn this plane around to take us back to England?’

In the process of shrugging into his jacket, he paused.

‘No.’

She looked up at him when she’d been determined not to. A tight little stabbing feeling skittered down her front. He looked a million dollars again, she saw, and hated him for it because he made her suddenly aware of her own limp, dishevelled state.

‘Then your apology has about as much substance as you do as a man of honour.’ As soon as she’d said that last word it rang a fuzzy kind of bell in her head.

Frowning, she looked away from him again. But when his steady walk took him across the end of the bed then down along her side of it, she had to flick him a wary glance from beneath her eyelashes to check what he was about to do next.

Anton stopped beside her. She looked like an earth mother sitting there in a mound of feathery bedding with the boy cradled to her breasts. Only he had never heard of an earth mother with electric-blue eyes, tumbling, golden hair and a soft, pink, pouting mouth that just begged to be—

‘If I had been up front and honest with you about bringing you to Greece, would you have agreed to come?’

Pushing her hair away from her face, she shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Then my honour is intact,’ he said. ‘You could not stay where you were, and I could not place you anywhere you would have been free from the media circus except in Greece, on my private estate.’

‘On Theo Kanellis’s private island, by any chance?’

‘No, and your sarcasm is starting to wear a bit thin on me, Zoe, so be careful. I will accept that my methods were—brutal. And I will acknowledge that you have a right to feel angry and betrayed by me. But that child you cradle in your arms is half-Greek. As are you. He has a right to know his Greek family even if you don’t want to know them. Or were you planning on extending the family feud into the next Kanellis generation? If so, then you are no better than the man you refuse to call grandfather. Think about it,’ he advised as he turned to stride to the door. ‘We land in an hour. Your bag is in the bathroom; I suggest you tidy yourself before you come out of here.’

Zoe glared at his back as he reached to pull the door open. ‘Gold-digger,’ she muttered.

It froze him where he stood. She hadn’t a clue why she’d just blurted that insulting label out, but she felt her pulses pick up pace as he turned around.

The all-powerful Greek tycoon was back, she noticed. She felt tingly and breathless, the one she’d met on her doorstep this morning when he’d stood there looking as if he ruled the world. Every angle of his face was hard, cold and disturbingly immobile—and those eyes had turned back into polished jet.

‘You came to my house,’ she rushed on with defiance. ‘You sweet-talked me into letting you kidnap us. You—you scared me.’ As he was doing again now, though she was determined not to show him that. ‘For all I know you deliberately agitated the situation with the press because you knew it would work in your favour.’

A spark of self-preservation made her place her brother safely aside then scramble up off the bed. ‘What was it your henchman said in my kitchen? I hope you do know what you’re doing, Mr Pallis.’ Zoe quoted word for Greek word. ‘Well, you did know, didn’t you? Theo wants his grandson and you are going to deliver him even if it means hauling me along too.’

‘So how does all of this make me a gold-digger?’ He spoke at last, so softly Zoe felt the danger in him like a living thing reaching out towards her with long fingers coming for her throat.

Clenching her hands into fists at her sides, she tried not to be intimidated. ‘Everyone knows that until three weeks ago you were Theo’s undisputed heir. Then up we pop—Toby and me. Two previously unheard-of grandchildren of the great man himself. You’re the lawyer—you tell me how inheritance laws work in Greece. Or, better yet, explain to me again why you’ve gone to all of this trouble to get us on to this plane going to Greece?’

He was listening with a narrow-eyed intensity that caused a sudden rush of those tremors she’d been trying to hold back. She envied him his self-control in the way he continued to stand there refusing to speak.

‘Say something!’ she launched at him tautly.

‘I am waiting to hear your own conclusions before I comment,’ he responded, smooth as silk.

Zoe folded her arms across her front. The way his eyes flickered down to view this piece of screamingly defensive body language made her unfold her arms again and stick them back down at her sides.

‘You told me that Theo Kanellis is ill—so ill he can’t travel. You told me that he wants my brother and I’m only really along for the ride.’

‘I do not recall saying the latter.’

‘Yes you did. And, let’s face it, causing a huge scandal by walking off with my brother without me would not have done your reputation much good. So why have you gone to all of this trouble? Just to keep your credit sweet with my grandfather?’

She pushed on despite the shrill voice in her head telling her to stop. The man was so still he was dangerous. ‘Or do you have more far-reaching plans to do with death, inheritance and baby-boy heirs who will need a mentor? Are you planning to offer my grandfather a deal, whereby you do for Toby what Theo did for you so that you can hang on to control of his fortune and power?’

For a minute she thought he was going to throw back his handsome dark head and laugh at her. In fact there was a quivering part of her that wanted him to do that and turn her ‘gold-digger’ accusation into a complete joke—but he didn’t. Instead he held her pinned to the spot with the hard gleam in his eyes.

‘And that is your definition of a gold-digger?’ he murmured.

Pressing the tremor out of her lips, Zoe nodded.

‘Then you have missed one very salient point—there is a much less tacky way for me to keep control of Theo’s fortune, and that is through you, Miss Kanellis.’

She didn’t like the way that he’d said her name like that. ‘I—I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘I know you don’t.’ He started walking towards her. ‘Actually I feel rather sad for you that you undervalue your own importance so much.’

‘I h-have no importance.’ Twenty-two years with no word from her own grandfather had told her that.

‘You have a lot of importance,’ he insisted. ‘You see, I can achieve every one of my gold-digging ambitions by simply making you my wife and taking your brother as my son. Two for the price of one.’ He smiled, though it wasn’t a nice smile. ‘The financier in me loves the sound of that scenario. Why are you staring at me like that?’ he questioned ever so curiously. ‘You think my sense of honour won’t allow me to do it? As we have already established I have no honour. I lie and cheat and kidnap innocents.’

‘Stay where you are,’ Zoe shot out jerkily.

The gleam in his eyes became a glint like a challenge and he just kept on coming, stalking her backwards like a long, lean hunting-cat.

‘But I think your grandfather will be delighted with this marriage plan,’ he continued, talking as he stalked. ‘Greek men love such sensible business arrangements. They appeal to our macho need to be in control. A merging of our two names would be a formidable coup for me and will send Theo to his grave a very happy man. Now your eyes are flashing a very derisive electric-blue colour as you back away from me,’ he observed silkily. ‘What is it you fear the most, Miss Kanellis—me, your grandfather … or yourself?’

The final comment made her aware that her heart was racing, that she was breathing fast yet feeling strangled of breath at the same time; that her cheeks had flushed and her lips felt tingly because she could not stop staring at the crazily seductive movement of his mouth as he spoke.

‘Perhaps you are thinking that you will not agree to such a deal,’ he offered up as an answer for her, his eyes gleaming with mocking humour when her spine hit the bulkhead, leaving her nowhere else to go.

‘I have this contingency covered, of course. I will send you to Theo, and he will lock you up until you decide to change your mind. We Greek men are so ruthlessly unscrupulous I might even …’

Reaching up with a hand, he placed the tips of his fingers on the wall right beside her head. ‘Kiss you again,’ he murmured. ‘Bed you,’ he added, bringing the lean length of his body closer and closer with each silkily punctuated threat. ‘Make you my woman before we even step on to Greek soil and turn you into my—’

Zoe slapped him. She lifted her arm up and crashed the flat of her hand against the side of his face. Her palm stung because his bones were so hard but she didn’t care. She’d enjoyed slapping him!

‘Get out of my face,’ she hissed.