The Stephanides Pregnancy
Autore
Lynne Graham
Letto da
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Capitoli
10
CHAPTER ONE
CHRISTOS STEPHANIDES had never been into women in uniform. Had he been, the world would certainly have known about it for the tabloid press reported his every move. A startlingly handsome Greek tycoon with a legendary appetite for super fast cars, luxury homes and dazzlingly beautiful women, Cristos was hotter than hot in the gossip columns.
The young woman who had caught his attention, however, was not in his usual style. Nor was she even aware of his scrutiny because the tinted windows on his limousine shielded him from view. Tall and slender, she wore a dark green fitted jacket and tailored skirt that accentuated her tiny waist and delicate curves just as her plain shoes showed off her award-worthy legs.
‘That woman in the peaked cap. Is that an army uniform?’ Cristos enquired idly of his second cousin, Spyros Zolottas.
The portly older man peered out. ‘She looks more like a flight attendant.’
At the exact moment that Cristos was about to look away, a gust of wind dislodged the woman’s cap and sent it careening along the ground. Vibrant streamers of Titian hair flew out in an arc behind her as she sprinted off in pursuit. She caught up with the cap only a few feet from his car. Spring sunshine flamed over the glorious hair she was struggling to coil back into concealment. Surprised by the vivid beauty of her oval face, Cristos stared. Luminous eyes and a luscious cherry-pink mouth highlighted skin as fine and smooth as alabaster: she was knock-down stunning.
Timon, his PA, said quietly, ‘I think she might be a chauffeur.’
Disconcertion pleated Cristos’ ebony brows, for to his mind a chauffeur fell into the same prohibited category as a servant. Watching the redhead climb into the driving seat of a Bentley that bore the discreet but unmistakable logo of a hire company on the rear bumper, he quirked an ebony brow. ‘A strange choice of career for a woman.’
Predictably, Spyros loosed a sleazy snigger. ‘With a body like that she may well find it very lucrative.’
Distaste filled Cristos. Spyros had always given him the creeps but he was family and Cristos had been raised to rate blood ties higher than other more instinctive responses.
‘Are you thinking of your betrothed?’ Having mistaken the reason for the younger man’s silence, Spyros released another suggestive laugh. ‘Petrina is a well-brought-up girl who knows her place, and if she doesn’t know it yet you’re just the man to tell her!’
‘We will not discuss my engagement,’ Cristos murmured, his dark, deep drawl sounding a cool note of warning, which in no way reflected the level of his exasperation.
Cristos was a Stephanides and Petrina was a Rhodias. Their families had long been linked in business and marriage would forge even closer ties. Matrimony was for the preservation of wealth and power and the raising of the next generation. Nobody expected Cristos to be faithful but it would be tasteless to acknowledge that fact out loud. His cousin’s vulgarity offended him.
In truth, Cristos had no time for the other man’s laboured efforts to flatter and amuse him because he was already waiting for the usual punchline to come. After all, Spyros only ever approached him when he wanted money. Once Spyros had concocted elaborate tales of investments gone wrong and sure-fire business ventures that required capital. If those failed to impress, he would then turn the sob story screws by talking about how his family would suffer for his ‘misfortunes’. A gambler and a waster, Spyros had once revelled in his reputation of never having had to work a day in his forty-odd years of life.
Six months ago, Cristos had destroyed the legend by putting Spyros to work in the London office of a freight company, one of the many subsidiary businesses that made up the vast Stephanides empire. He had hoped that, separated from familiar haunts and cronies, Spyros would make a fresh start. To aid that objective, Cristos had paid off all his cousin’s debts. His own grandfather, Patras, had laughed like a hyena. In fact, when Cristos had given Spyros a job Patras had laughed so hard he had almost needed resuscitation.
‘Spyros is a leech and a loser. There’s one in every family and we’re too rich to let his nearest and dearest starve. Pay him to keep him out of our hair. You won’t change him.’ Patras had laid a bet that within months Spyros would have reverted to his old habits.
Cristos had accepted the bet. He saw no reason why the Stephanides clan should fund the dissolute lifestyle that shamed and distressed Spyros’ wife and daughters. Although he had every respect for his grandfather, it was his firm belief that someone should have made Spyros toe the line a long time ago. Now Cristos believed that he had lost that bet, for his keenly intelligent gaze had already noted that his late mother’s cousin was betraying all the visible stress of a man striving to rise to the challenge of an awkward occasion.
‘I know you have to be wondering why I came to meet you off your plane.’ Spyros paused and breathed in deep. ‘I wanted to thank you personally for the opportunity you gave me last year to turn my life around.’
Lean, strong face expressionless, Cristos stared steadily back at the older man, his surprise that his cousin should speak so freely in front of Timon concealed. ‘If that has been the result, I am happy for you,’ he murmured with his slow, devastating smile.
Cristos was enough of a cynic to be disconcerted but he was also genuinely pleased.
‘You will join us for dinner this evening before you leave?’ Spyros pressed with enthusiasm.
Cristos had had other plans. His current mistress would be waiting at the apartment. The perfect end to a long day of business meetings was sex on silk sheets with a woman who would meet his every expectation with unquestioning zeal. With regret he shelved that sensual image and cursed his powerful libido. His principles had spoken: the very least that Spyros deserved was recognition of his achievement.
Before she had even arrived at Gemma and Rory’s apartment in the leafy city suburbs, Betsy had promised herself that she would not be over-sensitive to anything her sister said.
So when Gemma widened her china-blue eyes and tossed her pale blonde head and said, ‘I think being very skinny is aging,’ Betsy, who stuffed herself with biscuits in the forlorn hope that she would develop a larger bosom, just smiled and said nothing.
When Gemma exclaimed in horror over the nails that Betsy had broken tinkering with a temperamental car engine, Betsy said nothing and hid her hands below the table as much as she could. In the same way, she withstood the suggestion that her casual jeans and shirt made her look like a boy and even a later reference to her lack of material success in the world. Indeed she was proud of herself for not rising to the bait.
Rory shared the same table, both with them and not with them, his discomfiture at the atmosphere between his girlfriend and her older sister pronounced. Every so often he made a clumsy attempt to bring in a new conversational subject but no matter what it was it always seemed to provide Gemma with more grist for her mill. Betsy studied Rory in a quick stolen glance. He looked grim, tense and embarrassed. Like Betsy, he was in the dark as to why Gemma seemed to have a need to verbally attack Betsy in every way she could.
After all, on the face of things, Betsy rather than Gemma should have been the sister with the axe to grind and the chip on her shoulder. Three years earlier, Betsy and Rory had been on the brink of getting engaged when Gemma had announced that she was pregnant and that Rory was the father of the baby she was carrying. Their parents had urged Betsy to take the news on the chin. She had done so. She had been far too proud to show any sign of wanting to hang onto a man who had gone behind her back to sleep with her very much prettier sister. She had also cared too much for both Rory and Gemma to have made a truly ghastly situation worse than it already had been and tear her whole family apart. And unhappily for her, Betsy reflected ruefully, she had never yet learned how not to love Rory.
‘Every other single girl I know is out partying seven nights a week…I can’t believe that you still haven’t found a bloke of your own!’ Gemma commented tartly.
For a split second angry pain gripped Betsy and she pushed restive fingers through the feathery fringe of dark red hair on her pale brow. She almost blurted out that she had had a bloke of her own until Gemma had stolen him and she only bit back that crack with difficulty. The cost of restraint made hot pink flare over her cheekbones and she let her pride do her talking for her and she lied. ‘There’s a guy at work…I’m seeing him.’
In open disconcertion, her younger sister stared at her. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Joe…’ Betsy compressed her lips and looked down at her meal without appetite. The same instant as the untruth had left her lips she’d regretted it, for she realised that that one lie would only lead to further lies. But Joe did exist, she reminded herself, and, while she might not be actually dating him, he had at least asked her out. ‘He’s new…he started at Imperial two weeks ago—’
‘What age is he? What does he look like?’ Interested questions flooded from Gemma.
‘Late twenties. Tall, broad, fair.’ Betsy shrugged, thinking that if she did go out with Joe even once it would magically transform her lie into the truth.
Gemma grinned. ‘Well, it’s about time—’
Rory was frowning. ‘How much do you know about this guy? There are a lot of creeps out there. Be careful,’ he urged Betsy.
Gemma’s grin fell off her pretty face as though she had been slapped and Betsy could have groaned out loud. Gemma took offence if Rory showed the slightest interest in or concern for her sister. Bowing her head, Betsy got through the awkward silence that followed that comment by scooping up the pyjama-clad toddler who had crept into the room while the adults were talking. Snatched up into a cuddle by her fond aunt, the little girl giggled and turned up an entrancing face. An adorable mix of her parents‘ genes, Sophie had Rory’s dark brown hair matched with Gemma’s big blue eyes. Soon after the diversion supplied by her niece’s entrance, Betsy announced that she ‘really had to fly’ because she had an early start in the morning.
She had only just got back to her cramped bedsit in Hounslow when her mother phoned her.
‘Gemma’s really upset…’ Corinne Mitchell began, and although a sense of absolute frustration engulfed Betsy at those familiar words she still sat down to dutifully listen.
‘I shouldn’t have gone over for dinner.’ Betsy sighed. ‘It just causes friction.’
‘There wouldn’t be a problem if Rory would just marry your poor sister,’ her mother lamented. ‘There she is, the mother of a two-year-old, and there’s still no sign of a wedding ring! Of course she’s unhappy. They’ve got their nice apartment and Rory is doing well as a lawyer. What’s he waiting for?’
Betsy drew in a slow, deep sustaining breathe. ‘This isn’t any of my business, Mum—’
‘But you know Rory Bartram better than anyone!’ Corinne protested vehemently. ‘He’s breaking Gemma’s heart—’
‘Lots of couples live together these days,’ Betsy interposed gently.
‘Rory wasn’t planning to make you live in sin, though, was he?’ Corinne snapped out that reminder with audible resentment on her younger daughter’s behalf. ‘Is it any wonder that Gemma feels terribly hurt when she sees the father of her child paying attention to you?’
‘He wasn’t paying attention to me,’ Betsy stressed wearily, but she knew that the older woman was barely listening. All worked up by the spur of a doubtless emotional phone tirade from her younger daughter, Corinne Mitchell was set on having her say about the deficiencies of Gemma’s relationship with Rory.
It was a familiar pattern and it hurt Betsy a lot that her mother should be so indifferent to her feelings. Why did she have to be upbraided with the tale of Gemma’s problems with Rory? Why was she expected to endure her sister’s shrewish comments in forgiving silence? Even less welcome was the wounding bitter note in her mother’s voice that implied that it was somehow Betsy’s fault that Gemma’s world was not as rosy and perfect as she thought it should be.
More and more Betsy was learning that when Gemma was annoyed with her she would be shunned by the rest of her family as well. It would be quite a few weeks before she heard from her mother again. Gemma was very like her mother in looks and personality and Corinne identified closely with Gemma’s interests. When she was a kid, Betsy had never questioned the reality that her sister two years her junior was the favoured child. As a baby, Gemma had had a heart murmur and everybody had fussed over her. By the time she’d received a clean bill of health, her parents had been so used to giving her the lion’s share of their attention that nothing had changed. Betsy’s parents simply idolised Gemma and Sophie was the jewel in her sister’s crown.
In comparison, Betsy had always been a bit of a misfit in the Mitchell family circle. Her preferences in clothes and her interests had never been feminine enough to meet with her mother’s approval. In fact her happiest childhood memories revolved round her late grandfather, who had restored classic cars in his spare time. As a teenager, she had been a sporty tomboy, obsessed with cars when other girls her age had been obsessed with the boys who drove them. On that front she had been a shy late developer and intimidated by the success of her kid sister in the same department. Boys had started chasing Gemma when she was only thirteen.
Betsy had met Rory at a sports club when she was eighteen. He had been a friend first, but she had known how she’d felt about him long before he’d got around to asking her out. At that point, Betsy killed her forbidden thoughts stone dead. That was the past, she reminded herself sharply. Nobody needed to tell her that no man could be ‘stolen’ by another woman against his will. Nor, she reflected, should she even have been surprised when Rory had fallen for Gemma, who was much livelier and sexier. That mental slap administered, Betsy got into bed.
The next morning when she arrived at work, Joe Tyler was already putting a gleaming polish to the bonnet of the car he drove. He was a hard worker, she acknowledged grudgingly, and she questioned her own almost instinctive recoil from him. So he struck her as being a little arrogant and conceited, but he was young, attractive and single and she had met men smug about a great deal less. It was only two weeks since he had joined the staff at Imperial Limousines and he didn’t join in with the usual grousing about the awkward hours, the low pay and the demanding and unappreciative customers. In fact, rather like herself, Joe was a loner and a man of few words. How long had it been since she had dated someone? Too long, she decided, strolling rather self-consciously closer to the blond man.
‘You said you would get tickets for the racing at Silverstone…is the offer still open?’
Joe kept on polishing. ‘Maybe…’
Her ready temper sparked her into embarrassed defensiveness. ‘Well, when you’ve made your mind up, tell me. But then maybe I’ll need—’
‘No, you took me up wrong,’ Joe protested, planting a large hand on her arm to prevent her walking away again. ‘Offer’s still open.’
He was built like a rock face and the unease that he had awakened in her before almost surfaced again. Mastering the urge to go into retreat, she managed to smile instead and told herself not to take offence at the smug satisfaction he could barely hide. If Joe Tyler thought she would be a pushover for his muscular charm, he would soon find out how wrong he was…
Six weeks after his previous visit, Cristos flew into London from the South of France.
Timon met him off his flight and handed him a sealed envelope.
Cristos raised a questioning brow. ‘What’s this?’
‘Spyros Zolottas asked me to give it to you before you left the airport.’
Cristos pulled out a brash greetings card signed by his cousin. ‘But it’s not my birthday,’ he said in bewilderment.
Timon looked tense and said nothing. Some minutes later, Cristos came to a halt twenty feet away from the limousine that his PA had indicated across the car park. His mystification came to a sudden end and was replaced by a raw leap of anticipation. He had a photographic memory. It was the same car that had been driven by the beautiful redhead he had admired while in his cousin’s company more than a month earlier. He could not initially credit that Spyros could have come up with such a classy surprise.
Timon broke into an urgent explanation, ‘Your cousin was determined to surprise you. He said that he would take responsibility for hiring this particular limo company for the weekend but I didn’t feel—’
‘No need to hyperventilate,’ His employer advised in a husky undertone, his bold dark eyes glittering over the female figure already emerging from the driver’s seat.
Not even the chauffeur’s uniform could conceal her essential perfection. Slender as a reed with a waist that could not be larger than the span of his two hands, she moved with the liquid grace of a dancer. He pictured her in silk. Silk that would slide across her fine skin and feel smooth as satin beneath his hands. It did not cross his mind for even a moment that he might not be able to have her. Whenever he wanted a woman, she came to him. Whichever woman he wanted, he got. Once or twice the strength of his own magnetic pull with her sex had been a curse when the wives and partners of his friends had given him willing and eager signals. But he had never met with failure.
‘I should warn you that your security team are very concerned by this last-minute change in your travel arrangements,’ Timon continued anxiously. ‘There has not even been time to check out this new company.’
‘I am entirely content,’ Cristos drawled, his whole attention on the young woman pacing round the limo in a last-minute inspection. He sensed her innate pride in the angle of her small head, the straightness of her spine and the upward tilt of her delicate jaw line. Would she be a challenge? He loved a challenge but he was practical too: he only had a weekend to spare.
‘It is a much smaller firm…standards of service may not be what you are accustomed to—’
The beginnings of a wicked smile tugged at Cristos’ wide, sensual mouth. ‘On the other hand, standards of service might be beyond any I have previously received.’
At that point, Timon took the hint and surrendered to the inevitable.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to find your own way back to the office today,’ Cristos added without hesitation.
An involuntary grin chased the earnest aspect from the younger man’s face.
Betsy was in a very prickly mood. Her boss had warned her that the new client was a mega-rich foreign VIP to be treated like a god in the hope of attracting further business. While amazed that an employer who gave all the best opportunities to the men on his staff had selected her as driver, she had been pleased as well. However, before she’d even left for the airport Imperial Limousines had received a visit from Cristos Stephanides’ bodyguards. That had caused a stir. Their usual clients were not in the league that required hefty personal security. The bodyguards had not been impressed by the shabby premises that housed the limo firm. They had turned up their noses at the vehicle she was to use, queried her excellent driving credentials and warned her that they would be in close supervision at all times. A bunch of unredeemable sexist pigs, she thought bitterly, who had been busily engaged in patrolling the car park like the cast of a gangster movie ever since her arrival.
Sixth sense warned her that she was under scrutiny. Spinning round, she jerked still at the sight of the male striding towards her. It was as if someone somewhere turned the pace of time to slow motion. He was tall, lean and…and so beautiful that her chest went all tight and she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stop looking. But then her brain stepped into the breach and forced her to grab a hold of herself and break free of her own shocking paralysis.
‘Mr Stephanides…’ Mercifully her voice emerged a little breathless round the edges but calm and quiet in tone.
‘And you are…?’
‘Betsy Mitchell,’ she framed, holding open the door to the rear passenger seat.
‘Betsy…’ He said her name as if he were savouring something edible and he had a voice like no other she had ever heard before. His drawl had a dark, deep, masculine pitch, a sizzlingly sexy accented edge that sent a quiver down her taut spine. ‘So that’s what I call you.’
‘Mitchell will do, sir,’ she answered without expression, throwing up the barrier of their differing status with a strong sense of relief.
Unaccustomed to being contradicted, Cristos glanced down at her. She was not as tall as he had assumed she was from a distance: she was around five feet eight or nine. What was more, her façade of cool professionalism was a fake. He was a trained observer and he could see the almost undetectable tiny nervous tremors assailing her slight length.
‘I prefer Betsy,’ he murmured softly to make her look up at him.
Disconcerted, she tipped back her head to lift her gaze and met his brilliant dark eyes for the first time. Her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat took off at a sprint. His provocative appraisal dropped to linger on her soft full lips and then roamed on down to the pouting thrust of her breasts before flicking back up again to spell out a message of sexual interest as blatant as a speech.
Deeply shaken, she tore her gaze from his fiercely handsome features. He swung into the car and she closed the door on him. Her palms were damp on the steering wheel. How dared he look her over as if she were on offer to him? Perhaps he had noticed the way she looked at him, a snide little inner voice mocked and a wash of hot, guilty pink warmed her cheeks. What had come over her? He was the fanciable equivalent of a flying saucer. Of course she had stared. Any woman would have stared. Why was she beating herself up about a perfectly natural reaction? The guy was drop dead gorgeous. He was lucky she hadn’t stuck a pin in him to check he was real and not an illusion. Nervous laughter bubbling in her throat, she hit the communication button.
‘Everything in order, sir?’ she asked.
‘There’s no still water in the fridge,’ he informed her.
And there she had been thinking he would be dazzled by the array of soft drinks available to him! He was supposed to be very rich, she reminded herself, and the rich were reputed to be picky about little details. There was the proof. His refined taste buds could not tolerate sparkling in place of still water. She pulled off the road at the first garage and was in the act of climbing out when he buzzed down the glass partition dividing them. ‘Why have we stopped?’ he demanded.
Betsy spun back in surprise and leant back into the limo to address him. ‘You wanted still mineral water. My boss said your every wish should be my command…’
‘I wish…’ Cristos Stephanides murmured, smooth and soft as velvet.
Staring at him, she was entrapped by his sheer animal magnetism and exotic dark good looks. His luxuriant hair looked very dark against the pale backdrop of the leather head restraint. His bronzed skin was stretched taut over hard masculine cheekbones, an arrogant nose and a beautifully chiselled wide, sensual mouth. With an immense effort, she broke free of the scorching dark golden eyes that were making her tummy flip like a schoolgirl’s.
She hurried into the garage shop. Her legs felt like cotton-wool supports. She was in a daze. So he was flirting a little—so what was new? Some guys thought you expected it. Some guys flirted with every woman they met. I wish he had said. Why was she suddenly acting and thinking like a ditzy teenager? He made her feel like one. She blinked in bemusement as she turned away from the checkout.
His senior bodyguard, a giant with shoulders the size of tree trunks, barred her passage. ‘Who gave you permission to stop the limo without warning us?’ he asked in an angry hiss. ‘You have left Mr Stephanides in an unlocked vehicle without protection. How could you be so foolish?’
Betsy was astonished by the force of that verbal attack. ‘Nobody told me I needed permission or that I should warn you—’
‘How else can we do our job? Don’t deviate from the agreed route again,’ he admonished.
Pale with angry discomfiture, Betsy got back into the car. She passed the mineral water into the rear seat without turning her head and ignited the engine when she heard her passenger speak. She was annoyed at a telling off that she considered unjust. She drove people to functions like weddings and balls and had only once dealt with a minor celebrity. Imperial Limousines was a small firm that did not have a VIP client list. She was not accustomed to dealing with wealthy international businessmen and had not been trained to handle complex security requirements. The sooner she delivered him to his fancy country estate, the happier she would be.
‘What happened back there?’ Cristos enquired.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Betsy questioned in turn, face and voice deadpan.
‘One of my bodyguards approached you…’ Dolius, the head of his security team, whose abrasive personality would never fit him for a diplomatic career. Cristos had watched her green eyes flare with anger while her chin had tilted at a very feminine wounded but stubborn angle. He had been startled by his own urge to leap out of the car and tell Dolius to pick on someone his own size and sex if he wanted a fight.
‘Oh, that…yes, he was just wondering why I’d pulled off the road,’ she advanced with studied lightness.
Dolius had come down on her like a ton of bricks for that impulse, Cristos translated. ‘He upset you.’
‘No, of course he didn’t!’ No way was Betsy about to tell tales on another employee whom she had to deal with.
Cristos was furious that she was lying to him. That she was upset was painfully obvious. She was no good at hiding her feelings. She was also driving very, very slowly and making all kinds of restless, unnecessary adjustments to various switches and dials. He was even less pleased when she closed the partition.
Betsy was trying not to think about what a truly horrible week she had had. She had ignored her ESP when it came to Joe Tyler and she had paid the price. A cold shiver of remembrance ran through her. At the end of the first date he had parked the car down an entry and tried to treat her like some hooker he had picked up off the street. She had had to fight him off and he had been very abusive. It had been a seriously scary experience. In the light of that ordeal, she could only marvel at her own adolescent response to Cristos Stephanides. As she hadn’t been remotely attracted to Joe, she should never have encouraged him. Cristos Stephanides? He was as safe a fantasy as a poster on a bedroom wall, she decided, and she accelerated down the motorway.
Cristos had never been so comprehensively ignored by a woman. Having no intention of opening a conversation with the back of her head, he opted for the direct approach. He lifted the car phone to communicate with her. ‘Take the next turn off. There’s a hotel. We’ll stop there for a break.’
‘Is this a scheduled stop?’ Betsy enquired.
‘I don’t have a schedule this weekend. I’m not working,’ Cristos spelt out.
Betsy tried not to smile at the thought of the mayhem that had to be breaking out in the bodyguards’ car when the limo was seen to deviate yet again from the agreed route. But she resisted any urge to glance into the back seat and catch another glimpse of her passenger. At twenty-five years of age, she was too old to be daydreaming like a schoolgirl over a guy she knew nothing about.
Her footsteps crunching over the gravel outside the gracious country hotel, she pulled open the passenger door.
‘I hate being locked in a car for hours on end,’ Cristos imparted in his rich, dark drawl. ‘We’ll have coffee.’
She forgot her embargo on looking at him and tipped her head back to encounter brilliant dark golden eyes fringed by black spiky lashes. ‘Thank you, sir…but I’ll stay with the limo.’
His gaze narrowed. ‘That wasn’t a request…it was an order.’
Off-balanced by that unhesitating contradiction, she stared at him for a split second too long and then hurriedly dropped her head, her colour fluctuating. Maybe he was keen to ensure that his driver remained alert by taking an adequate break. Fair enough. She locked the car and followed in his arrogant wake. His head bodyguard strode towards them. Cristos Stephanides addressed him in what she assumed to be his own language. Just a handful of brief, softly spoken words and the security man turned pale and backed off with what might have been a hasty apology.
Indoors, engulfed in the ticking-clock silence of the kind of luxury establishment set up to create the atmosphere of a private country house, she was hugely uncomfortable. But it made no impression whatsoever on her companion. He addressed the receptionist with the calm expectancy of a male who had been waited on hand and foot from the day of his birth.
‘Sit with me…’ With a lean brown hand he indicated an armchair beside the magnificent marble fire-place.
Betsy stared fixedly into the burning embers of the welcoming fire. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate, sir.’
‘Allow me to decide what’s appropriate.’
‘But not what I do with my free time. If this is an official break,’ Betsy responded with flat clarity, ‘I’m entitled to choose how I spend it.’
‘Obviously the whip and chair approach is unwise with a woman of your strength of character,’ Cristos Stephanides conceded lazily. ‘I ask you in all humility…please join me for coffee.’
Involuntary amusement tugged at Betsy. In all humility? Was he serious? She almost laughed out loud. He had the extreme poise and arrogant assurance of a male who had never known what humility was. Why was he even making the invitation? What was in it for him?
‘Why?’ she asked baldly, tipping her head back, eyes as bright as emerald chips gleaming with suspicion.
Theos mou, why was she fighting him? Back at the car park in that very first visual exchange, Cristos had recognised her desire. She had not been able to hide the feverish longing that he had seen on so many female faces since he’d been a teenager. But he could not recall when he had last had to make so much effort. She was not encouraging him. She was making everything difficult. He had got lazy, he acknowledged. His women always did most of the running, but now he was dealing with a female who looked as if she would bolt at the first ill-chosen word or move.
‘I feel like company,’ he murmured with deliberate casualness, hitching back his powerful personality and swallowing the smarter comments hovering on the tip of his tongue.
Betsy was bemused. A client had never tried to cross the boundaries with her before. She saw no reason why he should be any different. Her uniform was old-fashioned and unflattering. In the course of her working day few men had given her a second glance.
‘Are you married?’ Cristos asked abruptly, belatedly wondering if there was a reason for her surprising hesitance. ‘Living with someone?’
‘No…but—’
Cristos curved a confident hand to her spine and urged her down onto the richly upholstered sofa. ‘Then join me.’
Unyielding as a stone pillar, she sank down. He took her taut silence in his stride and filled it with the story of a society wedding he had recently attended at the hotel. He was very amusing. She sat there enthralled, unable to take her eyes from his lean, devastating features. Indeed the excuse to watch him was a conscious pleasure and a release from the deprivation of not being able to look. Everything about him fascinated her.
She drank her coffee without tasting it. At his request she took her cap off and coloured at the intensity of his scrutiny. She answered his few questions. She was twenty-five, single, had worked at Imperial for three years, had always wanted to work with cars. That he was not that interested in her answers was not something she judged him on for she initially assumed he was merely making polite conversation. Slowly, very slowly, for she had always held a very modest opinion of her own looks, she realised that Cristos Stephanides actually appeared to be attracted to her and was seeking a response.
At the point where she could no longer mistake his motives and without any hesitation whatsoever, Betsy lifted her cap, replaced it on her head and rose to her feet. ‘I’m your driver,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m not interested in anything else.’
In fierce disconcertion at that sudden bold assurance, Cristos sprang upright, brilliant dark eyes cool as black ice. ‘That’s a lie.’
Mortified colour stained her fair skin at that direct contradiction but Betsy still lifted her chin. ‘I can admire a painting without wanting to buy it—’
‘This situation may be unconventional—’
‘There isn’t a situation and if there were, it would be tacky.’ Betsy was infuriated by his attempt to excuse his behaviour. ‘This isn’t a social occasion and I wouldn’t risk my job for you. I drive limos for a living and you do whatever you do to afford to hire people like me…and that’s it—’
‘I’m not a snob—’
‘No?’ A delicate auburn brow rose, questioning that assertion, green eyes scornful and furious. ‘But then you don’t need to be. You weren’t asking me out on a date, were you? The only invite I was going to get was a sleazy sexual one. Well, no, thank you!’
Cristos wanted to rip the cap off her again and…? His lean brown hands coiled into savage fists. And then do all the sleazy sexual stuff until she was on her knees with gratitude that he had honoured her with his interest. Her attack on him was out of all proportion to anything he had said or done and he was outraged that she had chosen to spring such a scene on him in a public place where he could not freely respond. Across the room, Dolius and his second-in-command were studiously avoiding looking anywhere near him, which told Cristos that they had not missed a single second of the drama. Seething with injured pride and a fierce sense of injustice, Cristos Stephanides watched Betsy Mitchell stalk out of the hotel.
What a smooth, calculating, utterly ruthless bastard, Betsy thought tempestuously, slamming her way into the driver’s seat of the limo and still shaking with fury. Had he really believed that he could sweet-talk her into going upstairs to a hotel room with him? For when he’d insisted she join him for coffee that had surely been his intent! Did she look stupid enough to make a mistake of that magnitude? Or so cheap and easy he had assumed she would be a pushover? Had he planned to reward her with an extra large tip? Or his magnificent body? When she saw him approaching in the wing mirror, she sat tight.
Hard jaw line at a stubborn angle, Cristos refused to open the door for himself. He stood there challenging her and, had it been necessary, he would have continued to stand there through thunder, lightning and a force-ten gale to make his point. Clumsy with resentful haste, Betsy finally scrambled out and wrenched open the passenger door for him.
‘Thank you,’ Cristos breathed, smooth as glass.
She did not believe that she had ever hated another human being so much as she did him at that instant. She drove for an hour with a fierce concentration that shut out every thought. The limo left the motorway for quiet country roads and speed was no longer possible. With scant warning a tractor pulled out of a lane. As the slow vehicle forced a passage out in front of the bodyguards’ car Betsy almost smiled at the thought of the annoyance it would cause.
The partition between driver and passenger buzzed down. ‘For the record,’ Cristos Stephanides breathed with sardonic bite, ‘I’m not into sleazy sex.’
‘If you want an argument, come back and see me when I’m no longer working for you and forced to be polite,’ Betsy snapped.
‘Back at the hotel…that was you being polite?’ Cristos stressed in a derisive tone of wonderment that made her want to stop the limo, leap into the back seat and beat him up.
‘You were out of line,’ Betsy snapped at him furiously. ‘What sort of a guy tries to pull his chauffeur?’
‘One who has just become a convert to total snobbery,’ Cristos spelt out with maddening assurance.
It was at that point that Betsy saw a male figure crouched down by the side of the road just ahead. That was the only warning she had before something that gleamed metallic and grey in the sunlight was thrown at the car. The wheels ran over it. A tyre blew out and then another, sending the powerful vehicle out of her control into a dangerous swerve. The limo hit the ditch with a thunderous jolt that rattled every bone in her body. Almost simultaneously the door beside her was yanked noisily open.
In disbelief, Betsy saw Joe Tyler peering in at her and momentarily wondered if she was coming round after having been knocked out, for she could not understand how otherwise he could have been there on the spot. ‘Joe…?’ she framed uncertainly, still reeling from the impact of the crash.
‘Have a nice sleep, Betsy.’
Too late she noticed that he had what looked like a gun clutched in his hand. She did not even have time to panic. A tingling pain hit her midriff and she gasped because without warning her limbs seemed to turn to jelly. Joe thrust her aside with no more care than he would have accorded a sack. Just before she passed out she heard him speak again, but what he said made little sense to her.
‘Imagine a bloke like you fancying my girlfriend…well, you both deserve a surprise!’
The black claustrophobic cloud of oblivion rolled in over Betsy and her body slumped down on the seat. Within seconds her passenger was in the same condition.
