Greek Affairs in his Bed: Sleeping with a Stranger\Blackmailed into the Greek Tycoon’s Bed\Bedded by the Greek Billionaire (41 page)

Now all that heat had evaporated and what it left behind was something that made her blood run cold, until she shivered in miserable reaction. But the ice that had entered her heart was the ice of freezing anger, bitter betrayal. And that was what she held on to to give her strength.

It kept her upright, made her put out a hand to take the glass he offered. It even let her manage a small, taut smile. One that any fool could see was not in the least sincere, the faint curl of her lips not in the least reflected in the chill of her eyes.

‘Thank you.’

She took the glass carefully, making every effort to ensure that she only touched the glass and no part of his hand. With her nerves still jangling in a combination of frustration and cold anger, just the brush of his fingers against hers would be more than she could take. Another rush of physical hunger like the one she had just endured would reduce her to a quivering wreck. And she was determined that Angelo would never see her in that state. She sipped on the water gratefully, feeling the cool liquid slide welcomingly down her constricted throat, easing the discomfort there.

‘So now have you made up your mind?’ Angelos asked. ‘What do you say to my proposal?’

‘Yes, I’ve made up my mind.’

Jessica was delighted to find that her voice was every bit as calm and controlled as she wished. She even managed to sound quite relaxed, even pleasant, and that was obviously what Angelos thought too because she saw the way the faint tension in the broad shoulders eased and a tautness in the muscles of his strong jaw lessened perceptibly.

‘I know exactly what I want to say to your proposal.’

She took a couple of careful steps towards him as she spoke. She needed to get this just right, with no room for a mistake. She would only get one chance to make her point.

He was looking into her face with dark intent eyes so he had no idea what was coming. She could almost see the glint of triumph in their depths, see the beginnings of a smile of victory.

She let him enjoy it for a couple of heartbeats longer as she paused, drew in a breath and slowly turned the glass in her hand as she did so. When she had it positioned just right she smiled sweetly, straight into those watchful black eyes.

‘This is my answer …’

With a quick, neat movement she lifted the glass and tossed the contents right into his arrogant, knowing face, feeling a glorious sense of delight as she watched him blink hard in shock as the cold water showered over him, drenching his face and hair, soaking into the white shirt where it was open at his throat.

‘That’s what I think of you and your proposal!’ she declared, the vehemence of her tone leaving him in no doubt at all that she meant exactly what she said. ‘I’ll never be your mistress—I’d rather take the stable job any day.’

For a second the flare of cold anger in his eyes terrified her so that she moved on to her toes, poised ready for flight if he so much as took a step towards her. But Angelos simply blinked hard to clear the moisture from his eyes. Then he wiped the back of his hand across his face to clear even more of the wetness away.

And then, suddenly, shockingly, he smiled.

A cold-hearted, cold-blooded, darkly ruthless smile.

‘I rather thought you might,’ he drawled cynically, taking her breath away with the total lack of emotion in his response. ‘Somehow I thought that would be your answer. And that’s fine by me.’

And while she was still struggling to cope with the reaction that was the exact opposite of the one she had been expecting,
while her mouth was still opening and closing, opening and closing, without ever managing to make a sound, he turned on his heel and took several long, swift strides away from her, heading for the doorway. He was almost into the hall when he suddenly paused and looked back at her over his wet shoulder.

‘The job’s yours—you can start tomorrow.’

J
ESSICA
dropped the last bundle of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow and laid the big fork on top of it. Straightening wearily, she rubbed her hands across her face and sighed.

‘That’s you done, Saracen.’

She patted the big bay stallion on the side of the neck before picking up the wheelbarrow again.

‘All nice and clean again.’

Once out in the main stable again, she carefully bolted the door to Saracen’s stall and stretched carefully, easing muscles that were tired from unaccustomed physical work. She was worn out.

Well, at least that meant she might sleep tonight, she told herself. And that had to be a blessing. It had only been three days since she had started working in the stables, but three nights without sleep had started to really tell on her. And she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Angelos had come back into her life. And that was in spite of being in the comfort of her own bed in her own room in the Manor House.

‘In Angelos’s room, in Angelos’s bed, in Angelos’s Manor House, damn it!’ she muttered to herself as she wheeled the barrow to the far end of the stables and out through the open door into the stable yard. Nothing in Manorfield was hers except for her clothes and the personal possessions in the drawers in her—
in the room she slept in
, she amended fiercely.

When he’d given her the job, she had fully expected that Angelos would insist that she also lived in the flat over the stables as well. That, she was sure, would have been his perfect revenge. A total turning of the tables on her as he forced her to live in the tiny apartment that was little more than a bedsitter with a bathroom—the place where he had lived seven years before when he had come to work at Manorfield in exactly the job she had now. She had resigned herself to taking on his position while he had hers—in charge of Manorfield and living in the big house. And she had little hope that things would be any other way, especially after she had refused his suggestion that she become his mistress and flung both it and the glass of water in his face.

So she had been stunned when in fact Angelos had told her that she could stay on in her room in the house, at least until the stable flat was renovated.

‘It’s not fit to house a dog,’ he told her when she had to talk to him in order to discuss just what the job involved and exactly what the conditions and pay were going to be. ‘The whole place wants ripping out and starting again.’

‘You’ve been up there?’

Jessica was frankly stunned. The idea of him going back to the cramped quarters he had lived in, the scene of her inept abortive attempt at seduction when she had still been a teenager sent a sudden shiver down her spine. What had been going through his mind as he’d prowled around the three small rooms? Had he remembered her standing there, dressed in nothing but white lacy underwear and a ridiculously high pair of heels? She had thought that she had looked so sophisticated, so sexy. Now, with hindsight, she knew that she had only looked ridiculous and gauche, a million miles away from the sort of woman he had wanted—probably still wanted.

‘I took a look up there the other day.’

Catching the expression on her face and seeing the way that
her teeth worried at the softness of her bottom lip, he laughed softly, cynically.

‘It was not a nostalgic visit for old times’ sake, if that’s what you were thinking. I checked the place out when I went on a tour of inspection of the whole estate. That was when I saw that it was in such a mess.’

‘You had to live there.’ She couldn’t hold the words back. ‘I thought you’d make me.’

‘But that was Marty’s decision. I can’t hold that against you.’ Not like so much else, his tone said. ‘It’s not fit for anyone to live there.’

‘No one has since you left here,’ Jessica managed, struggling not to remember the way that for so long she had had to fight with herself not to think about the dark, shabby rooms above the stables each time she had come to visit the horses or go out riding. In fact, there had been a long period when she had thought that she would never be able to walk past the door to the stables flat without recalling the brutal humiliation of Angelos’s rejection of her.

She should have told him she was sorry about that, her conscience reproved her. She really had behaved very badly, even allowing for the fact that she had panicked. But the Angelos who had come back here, trampling over everything, taking over everything, wasn’t someone she could apologise to, not after seven years. And now, with his outrageous demand that she should become his mistress …

And there was one of the reasons why she had been kept awake all night. The moment when he had asked—no, not asked, declared—that she should be his mistress played over and over in her thoughts every time that she lay down and closed her eyes. And in the darkness and the silence of the night the memory of that moment—and the ones that had followed it—had grown worse and worse each time she’d looked at it.

And each time she’d faced the truth.

Because the truth was that she had almost said yes.

No, Jessica, face facts. She
would have
said yes if he had left it a moment longer. If he had just held her, kissed her in that passionate way just a little longer. She had been in over her head, drowning, and if he hadn’t abandoned her, leaving her exposed to cold reality, then she very much feared that she would have given him the answer he had wanted.

And, as a result, she could now be living in luxury instead of worrying how she would ever be able to pay the bills that were coming in after her cancelled wedding to Chris.

‘No!’

Aiming a hard kick at a loose pebble, Jessica sent it bouncing over the stone flags to hit the opposite wall and ricochet back the way it had come.

‘No!’

Now, she shuddered at the thought of being in a sexual relationship with Angelos but seven years before, when she had been deep in the throes of a heady adolescent crush on the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, that would have been all that she could have dreamed of and more. But she wasn’t a teenager any more. She knew that there had to be more to a relationship than just fiercely blazing sex appeal. Though she had to admit that the pull that Angelos had on her senses was almost impossible to ignore.

Which was another reason why she had found it so hard to sleep.

Just being in the Manor House, in Angelos’s company, seeing him every day, watching him as he walked about the house or simply sat in the study going over every document relating to the place in his relentless determination to make Manorfield a successful concern again, was so disturbing to her peace of mind that she didn’t know how to handle it. It seemed that she couldn’t get away from him if she came to work either because then he was
in the grounds, or even the stables—she had been stunned by how many times he came to the stables. In the end, when she managed to escape to the sanctuary of her bedroom and even if she did fall asleep then her dreams were haunted by the dark, powerful, shockingly sensual image of the man she had privately named the Black Angel.

Behind her a horse whinnied and, turning, she saw a familiar big grey head hanging over the half door into one of the stalls. Immediately her expression softened and she stepped forward with a smile, holding out a hand to him.

‘Charlie …’

Softly she smoothed the arching neck, rubbed in just the right spot behind the pricked ears and heard the sound of his hooves on the stone as he moved to butt her lightly in response.

‘I know, Charlie—I know you’re really mine,’ she told him, fishing in her pocket for the pieces of apple she kept there just for him. ‘And so do you. You really don’t belong to Mr Angelos “I own it all” Rousakis—but how can I prove it? The terms of his agreement with Marty say all land, buildings and livestock …’

She’d checked it. She’d even asked Simeon Hilton to go through it with a fine tooth comb, to see if there was any way out. But of course there hadn’t been and her beloved stallion was the property of the Black Angel like everything else. Just as he had wanted to make her too.

‘But at least as long as I’m here—as long as I have a job in the stables—I can take care of you …’

‘So that’s why you agreed to the stable hand job—’

The voice—dark, rich, masculine and achingly familiar—came to her from the open door into the yard, making her start in shock, then instantly still again as Charlie shifted restlessly in the straw.

‘I didn’t see you were there, sir.’

She made a point of putting an edge on to the last word—a
satirical edge that twisted the single syllable and turned it into something that was the very opposite of the form of courtesy it was supposed to be.

‘No, you were too busy with your handsome friend here.’

He was right beside her now and she fought with the stinging sense of awareness that burned along every nerve as he reached out a hand and patted Charlie’s neck, strong, tanned, square-tipped fingers splayed against the soft grey hide.

‘Not that I’m surprised. He really is a very fine animal.’

Jessica could only nod silently, keeping her eyes forward and focused on Charlie. The sensual responsiveness she felt at seeing the hand that was on the horse’s neck was bad enough, but the fact that his arm brushed hers as he moved made those already sensitive nerves twist in sharp response. The formal businessman or the competent estate manager of the past few days had vanished and in his place was someone she had not seen since the days when their positions had been totally reversed and Angelos had worked here in the stables instead of her.

His plain white T-shirt was startlingly pale against the warm olive of his skin and the long, muscular, whipcord lean arms exposed by the short sleeves were lightly hazed with black hair that touched her skin as he moved. She could remember how she had loved to focus on those arms when she had watched him mucking out the stalls as she had just been doing. Hidden behind a stack of hay bales or from up the ladder in the loft, she had loved to observe the play of muscles along his forearms, the way that they had bunched and flexed at his shoulders as he had lifted heavy forkfuls of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow or strewn fresh bedding across the floor of the stables. To her then, Angelos had been raw, earthy, sex on legs and she could never have imagined that the powerful businessman, all immaculate, crisp shirt, silk tie and perfectly tailored suit could ever even have existed.

To her
then
…

Oh, who was she trying to kid?

There was no
then
about it at all. She had felt that way from the moment she had first seen Angelos and fallen under his sensual spell and she still felt that way now. Nothing that had happened had changed a thing and she doubted if anything ever would. The seven years that had passed might not have existed, and Angelos had the ability to reduce her to the level of a naïve adolescent simply by existing.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see that the loose-fitting T-shirt was teamed with worn denim jeans that sat low on his narrow hips and clung like a second skin to the long, powerful thighs. The scent of his skin tantalised her nostrils and she didn’t dare to look into his face, knowing that the dark, carved features that had haunted her dreams every night were already etched on to her memory in a way that could never be erased.

‘So he’s actually yours.’

That broke her resolve not to look at him, bringing her eyes round to him in a rush of shocked confusion.

‘You—you heard?’

‘I heard.’

Angelos kept his attention focused on Charlie as he spoke, smoothing his hands down the long neck, over the powerful shoulders. When the horse turned his head towards the newcomer he smiled and let the animal nuzzle his open palm.

That smile twisted something deep inside Jessica’s heart. Just for a moment he had reminded her of someone else, someone …

Her breath caught in her throat as she realised that the person she had been thinking of was Marty. With the evidence of her stepfather’s love for her in the beautiful animal before her, he had obviously been in her mind and that had brought her thoughts to make the connection, even though he and Angelos couldn’t have been physically more unlike. But, in the circumstances, the older man had come to mind.

‘But then, of course, I had already guessed.’

‘You had?’

Her thoughts were whirling now, confusion clouding her mind as she fought back the stinging tears that the memories of Marty had brought to her eyes. Through the blur she saw Angelos nod slowly, his eyes still on the big horse.

‘This guy is not your stepfather’s style—Saracen over there now, he was obviously Marty’s mount. Solid, dependable, strong. But this one here—what’s his name? Charlie? He’s just the sort of animal that Marty would buy for someone he loved for a very special occasion. What was it? A birthday?’

‘My twenty-first.’

Was that strangulated sound really her own voice? Jessica couldn’t believe how peculiar it sounded after she had forced it past the sudden constriction in a painfully dry throat. Where was he going with this? Was he going to use it as another weapon in his psychological war against her? Would he gloat over the fact that she had no documentation, no proof, or simply dismiss her claim with an arrogant wave of his hand and a curt declaration of,
Tough!

‘I’ll get Simeon on to it.’

‘What?’

The words didn’t make any sense. They had been talking about Charlie, her twenty-first, Marty …

‘Well, obviously your horse is not meant to be part of the estate. I’ll get Simeon to make sure that your ownership of him is recorded and made legal. Then you will know everything is in order.’

Jessica could hardly believe what she was hearing.

‘You—you believe me. You accept that Charlie is mine.’

‘Of course. Why would I not?’

Joy was bubbling up inside her, spilling out of her heart and flooding her thoughts. After the past few terrible days when it had seemed that everything was going wrong and that everything
she loved or valued had been taken from her, the unexpected reprieve brought a rush of delight to her head like a brilliant light, dazzling and blinding her.