The Millionaires' Cinderellas: Playing the Greek's Game / The Forbidden Innocent / Too Proud to be Bought
She clicked on the machine, turned down the air conditioning and then sat down on the huge bed where giant, squashy pillows were jostling for space. What was the collective term for pillows? she wondered dreamily. A pile of pillows, or a heap of pillows? Laying her head down on one of them, she heard the hypnotic gurgle of the coffee machine as her eyelashes drifted to an irresistible close.
Odd sounds began to penetrate her dream. She heard the rattle of a trolley, which made her think she was still on the aircraft, and then some sort of muffled thumping. And the next thing she knew was a hand on her arms, pushing against the fluffy towelling robe, and she fluttered open her eyes to see Zak standing over her, his face dark with an odd kind of tension.
For a moment neither of them spoke—their gazes locking and holding as if time and place had been suspended, leaving them shut in their own private universe. Her heart thundering, she stared up at him with a sudden longing—aware of his proximity and the mesmerising tang of sandalwood. Aware too that she was completely naked beneath the robe and that her breasts had started to tingle in response to his narrow-eyed scrutiny.
‘What is it?’ she mumbled from between dry lips.
Zak watched as a tiny pink tongue flicked out to moisten her lips. God, she was beautiful, he thought. Unbelievably beautiful. ‘I couldn’t wake you,’ he accused thickly.
It occurred to her that he could have phoned her—but she didn’t say so because his hand was still on her arm and, shamefully, she didn’t want him to remove it. Was that because she was still half asleep and therefore disorientated—or was the real reason that she liked him touching her? That she was enjoying the sensation of his fingers pressing through the robe and into her skin.
‘Well, you’ve woken me now,’ she said, stifling a yawn.
Reluctantly pulling his hand away, he walked over to the window. Staring hard at a view he usually took for granted, he tried to focus on the brilliant gleam of the skyscrapers’ lights instead of the soft accessibility of her body beneath the voluminous robe. But it was damned near impossible. All he could think of was the translucent quality of her skin and the vulnerability she’d exuded when she’d been asleep. And then she had woken and those pale green eyes had slitted open at him in lazy question, just like in his forbidden fantasy—and he cursed himself for forgetting two vital facts.
She was not his kind of woman!
More important still, she was his brother’s woman!
There was no way he could deny the powerful sexual chemistry which had sizzled between them right from the start—and Zak was far too experienced to pretend it hadn’t happened. That it wasn’t happening how. And didn’t that justify what he was doing by bringing her here to New York? If she could put out like this for her lover’s brother—then wasn’t Nat better off without her?
‘I’ll be waiting downstairs in the restaurant,’ he gritted out. ‘Be there in fifteen minutes.’
Emma sat up as he walked straight past the bed without another look in her direction but she could feel the sudden disapproval radiating from his powerful body. What was his problem? Was he angry because he’d just been looking at her as if he’d like to eat her?
And wasn’t her problem that she’d wanted him to?
Getting off a bed which now felt contaminated, Emma scrambled to find some underwear, guilt washing over her as she clipped on a lacy black bra—acknowledging the heavy aching in her tender breasts. Because wasn’t the pitiful truth of it that she had wanted Zak Constantinides in a way she’d never wanted anyone else? She bit her lip in horrified remorse. Not even her own husband!
He must have felt the powerful vibes which had shimmered between them—because you’d need to be made of stone to ignore them. He already thought that she was a sexually voracious gold-digger—so wouldn’t her behaviour only reinforce his poor opinion of her?
She needed to pull herself together and she needed to grow a little backbone. She wasn’t just some puppet which he could manipulate at will. Hadn’t she worked hard at the Granchester—hard enough to establish herself as an interior designer who was respected by others in the business? She’d done all that with determination, hard work and very little in the way of formal training. So was she prepared to let all that crumble away, simply because her body was reacting in a way she didn’t want towards a man she didn’t like?
No, she was not.
And she would start by sending out the subliminal but very clear message that she was not out to entice him.
She had the kind of looks which she could dress up or down—and tonight was definitely a night for fading into the background. She picked out a pair of black velvet trousers and teamed them with a floaty white shirt. Her hair had acquired a slight kink from where she’d slept on it while it was still damp—so she brushed it and then wove it into a loose bun, which sat on the back of her neck. Make-up she deliberately resisted and a dangly pair of shell earrings was her only adornment. After all—wasn’t ‘casual’ the new black?
But the moment she walked into the restaurant she realised that she was woefully underdressed. Or rather, overdressed. She’d never seen so much flesh on show and every other woman in the room was all buffed and honed and highlighted with the sparkle of jewels.
Emma kept her head high as she gave Zak’s name to a rather bemused-looking waiter and as he led her towards the Greek’s table she was acutely aware of being watched. She’d forgotten what it was like to be judged by your companion. To have people look you up and down and form an opinion about you when they didn’t even know you.
Her stomach was in knots as Zak rose to greet her and she saw that his gaze was hooded. She thought she sensed disapproval as he looked at her—and, although she’d chosen her outfit with just that result in mind, there was a very feminine part of her which cringed beneath his critical scrutiny.
‘You look like you’re just off to a rock festival,’ he commented acidly.
She surveyed the pristine elegance of his dark suit. ‘And you look like you’re about to perform some hostile boardroom bid.’
For a moment his lips almost curved into a smile, until he reminded himself that he was not here to be amused by her. Maybe it was a good thing that she looked as if she was about to start lighting incense, or sit cross-legged on the floor before starting to meditate. He sat back as the waiter handed her a glossy menu. ‘How about I order to save time? The steak here is very good.’
Emma gave a polite smile. ‘I’m sure it is, but I don’t eat meat.’
‘You don’t eat meat?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Which part of my original statement needed clarification, Mr Constantinides?’
He stared at her critically. ‘No wonder you’re so damned pale.’
‘You should try it some time—less meat in the diet is supposed to mean less aggression.’
At this he did laugh. ‘A real man eats meat, Emma.’
There was something about his primitive boast which made her feel quite peculiar and Emma quickly looked down at the very limited vegetarian section of the menu. Did he really think he could come out with all that macho ‘real men eat meat’ stuff and get away with it? Yes, he did—and the horrifying reality was that he could. She suspected he could do pretty well anything he put his mind to, especially where women were concerned. She remembered the way she’d found him looking at her when he’d shaken her awake. That compelling hunger she’d surprised in his eyes. And hadn’t that look made her feel a corresponding rush of desire, which had made her feel as if she were melting beneath his gaze?
Suddenly, Emma felt a trickle of fear sliding down her spine because she suspected that Zak Constantinides knew perfectly well the extent of his power over women. And the very last thing she needed was for him to discover that he had awoken a strange and nebulous need in her.
‘And you’re really going to have to lose the “Mr Constantinides” tag,’ he mused.
‘I would have thought that my constant reinforcement of your superior status would have bolstered your ego.’
‘I don’t need anything to bolster my ego,’ he said softly. ‘So do you think you could try saying “Zak”?’
She snapped the menu shut and looked up. ‘I’ll have the aubergine lasagne and side salad, please…. Zak.’
‘And I’ll have the rib-eye.’ He handed the menus to the waiter, thinking that her soft English accent managed to do erotic things with the single syllable of his name. He fixed her with a questioning look. ‘Wine?’
She thought she probably shouldn’t. In fact, she definitely shouldn’t. Wine might make the meal seem like a pleasure, rather than the necessity it clearly was. But Emma was strung out—and the idea of having to endure an evening facing Zak Constantinides without something to help relax her was more than she was prepared to tolerate.
‘A glass would be lovely.’
He nodded and the sommelier was dispatched, returning with two glasses of red wine so rich that Emma could smell it from five paces away. She took an eager sip and put the glass down with a little sigh, looking up to meet the curiosity lancing through his grey eyes. ‘The wine’s very good,’ she said politely.
‘Of course it’s good—do you really think I’d drink anything but the best?’
‘Silly of me not to realise that everything you do is a testimony to how wonderful you are.’
‘Very silly. But I haven’t brought you here to talk about the wine, Emma. Or about me.’
‘I didn’t think you had,’ she said, her heart suddenly beginning to race, because suddenly she suspected what was coming next.
‘I want to know what it’s like being back in New York,’ he questioned—and now his voice took on a harsh tone. ‘You lived here when you were married, didn’t you?’
So he hadn’t forgotten that she’d lived here—and he hadn’t cared that she might be upset by that fact. Of course he hadn’t—for he had made his hostility towards her very clear, right from the start. He didn’t care how much she hurt—because he saw her simply as an obstacle to be removed from his brother’s life.
She wanted to tell him that her past was none of his business and yet a feeling of resignation made the words die in her throat. Because in a way, hadn’t this conversation been inevitable from the moment she’d first walked into his office? He was determined to know more about her and she couldn’t keep stonewalling questions which were bound to keep coming, could she? It all boiled down to whether she was ashamed of her past. Maybe a little—but she was proud of the way she’d risen from the ashes of it to start all over again.
‘What is it you want to know?’ she questioned.
‘I want to know how a small-town English girl managed to meet and marry someone like Louis Patterson. And whether the price you paid for your ten minutes of fame was worth it.’
CHAPTER FIVE
EMMA’S fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass as she met the accusation which glittered from Zak’s grey eyes. ‘I’m surprised you need to ask me anything about my past—I thought you’d already had me investigated thoroughly by some sleuth you’d hired.’
He took a sip of his own wine. ‘I know the facts. What I’m interested in are the reasons behind those facts. And let’s face it, Emma—if your relationship with my brother does survive this separation …’ He paused, not wanting to acknowledge the dark thoughts which flashed into his mind as he tried to envisage this particular scenario. ‘If you really were to become my sister-in-law—then surely you owe it to me to tell me more about your background.’
‘I don’t owe you anything!’
‘No? Then what’s the big mystery? Are you ashamed of what you’ve done? Maybe dabbled in a few things which aren’t strictly legal?’ he speculated.
‘No, I have not!’
‘And does Nat know about your past?’
‘Of course he does.’
‘So why not tell me, too?’
Emma drank down an angry mouthful of wine. Because Nat hadn’t judged her as she suspected this man would judge her. Because she didn’t fancy being dissected by those cold grey eyes and made to feel like some animal in a laboratory, which was vulnerable to the cruel scalpel of the scientist.
Yet she wasn’t supposed to be ashamed of her upbringing, was she? Not any more. Not when she had coped with it as well as she could. Was it her fault that she’d been given a vacuous and man-hungry mother who had always put her little girl second? Who had taught her daughter all the wrong lessons in life, which had taken a while to unlearn.
‘You know I’m illegitimate?’ she questioned bluntly.
Her candour took him by surprise and, to his astonishment, something in the darkening of her eyes made him want to offer an unlikely chunk of reassurance. ‘That’s no longer the stigma it was.’
‘In theory it isn’t,’ she contradicted. ‘In practice it isn’t so good if everyone knows that you’ve never even seen your father—or that you don’t have a clue who he is. Or that your mother seeks the comfort of strangers to warm her bed at night.’
Zak’s mouth tightened, all sympathy now fled. ‘Your mother was a—’
Emma shook her head. ‘Oh, she wasn’t a prostitute—if that’s what you’re thinking. She was just very …’ she swallowed ‘… fond of men. And not very good at choosing men. Something she seems to have passed on to me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Really?’
‘Oh, I’m not talking about Nat,’ she amended hastily, remembering a little too late that she was supposed to be masquerading as the lovelorn girlfriend of his brother. ‘Nat has been the best thing that ever happened to me.’
‘I’m not here to talk about my brother,’ he bit back, his blood growing heated with what he suspected was more than a feeling of sibling protectiveness. ‘I asked you about Patterson. How did you meet him?’
For a moment Emma said nothing, because it was still painful to relive it. To remember her naivety—a naivety which had been almost laughable in view of the bizarre nature of her upbringing.
‘How did I meet Louis?’ she repeated. ‘Circumstance, I guess.’
‘Circumstance?’ he echoed.
‘That’s right. You could never have planned for what happened.’
‘Oh?’
There was a moment of silence. ‘My mother was a brilliant dancer,’ she said at last. ‘In another life, she might have done it professionally, but that was almost impossible as a single mother with very little in the way of regular income. Her life was one of constant frustration. Domesticity bored her—she saw it as drudgery—and so did motherhood. So she didn’t play board games or read me any bedtime stories, or any of the normal stuff that children get—but she did have a great sense of style, and colour, which I did inherit. And, as I say—she was a great dancer.’
Zak nodded as her incredible posture suddenly made sense. The way she had seemed almost to float out of his office. ‘She taught you to dance?’ he guessed.
‘Yes,’ said Emma simply, leaning back as the waiter deposited elegant layers of aubergine and pasta before her and trying not to shudder at the sight of Zak’s bloody rib-eye steak. ‘They were the best times I ever had with her. She’d put the music on really high—sometimes the neighbours would bang on the ceiling with a broom—and we’d wrap ourselves up in floaty shawls, and just dance.’
‘And Patterson saw you dancing?’ he guessed.
Unwillingly, she gave a nod to his perception. ‘Yes, he did. I was exactly eighteen when I met him and had gone to the most fashionable nightclub in London. It was my birthday present from Mum—she’d been saving up for it for ages. She said that every girl on the brink of womanhood should get a glimpse of what the world could offer—that there was glamour out there if only you looked for it. I’d never been anywhere like it before.’
‘Never?’
She shook her head. ‘It was dark with flashing lights, and the music was thumping out. I didn’t really like it. It felt false … unreal. There was a big podium at the front—all silver and sparkling—and my favourite song came on. I was feeling a bit out of my depth but that was something familiar. One of my friends egged me on, so I got up and danced my heart out and Louis was sitting in a corner, watching. He said afterwards that—’
‘Don’t tell me. It was love at first sight?’ he questioned cynically, imagining the tawdry chat-up lines which must have ensued.
She shrugged. ‘That’s what he said.’
Hearing the defensiveness in her voice, Zak pushed his plate away. He could imagine just what an arresting sight she must have been. Young. Blonde. Presumably virginal. He felt the jerk of some dark emotion he didn’t want to analyse. ‘You inspired him?’ he asked slowly.
‘I guess so. He wrote “Fairy Dancer” that same night. When it hit the top of the charts, he decided that I was his number-one muse and he couldn’t live without me. That kind of thing can easily go to a young girl’s head.’ Especially when your mother was egging you on and telling you that you’d never get another chance quite like this one.
Louis had showered her with gifts and attention—and, more importantly, he hadn’t leapt on her. He told her he respected her virginal status and that he would gladly wait until after they were married. And Emma had agreed, carried along on that unreal wave she was riding—as well as her mother’s excitement. By the time her doubts had set in on the night before the wedding, it was too late. Her mother told her it was nothing but ‘nerves’ and to pull herself together.
‘So I married him. And the rest of the story is well documented. I found him dead a year later from a combination of drink and drugs. It’s not something I care to dwell on. Anything else you want to know, Mr Constantinides?’
Unexpectedly, he said, ‘I thought I told you to call me Zak.’
She stared at him, shaken by the emotional catharsis of recounting a story which she’d buried deeply, wanting to tell him that calling him by his first name seemed ridiculously intimate. That she wanted to keep as much distance between them as possible. Because something about him was making her feel stuff. The sort of stuff she was scared to feel because it was what had made her mother’s life such a mess. Desire and lust and a yearning to be kissed. A longing to be loved and cherished and made to feel the centre of someone’s world. And yet, if she told him that—wouldn’t she look hopelessly vulnerable as well as a hopeless judge of men?
‘I’m very tired, Zak. How’s that?’
‘Better.’
‘And I think I want to go to bed now.’
‘But you haven’t touched your meal.’
‘Neither have you.’
‘No.’ Once again, Zak stared at his plate. Never had a steak seemed more unappetizing, but then he’d never found himself in a situation such as this. Parts of her story had aroused in him an unwilling empathy and yet that didn’t change the fundamental problem. It didn’t matter that she had turned her life around—she had done that mainly because she aroused fierce passions in very rich men. Bottom line was that she was still the wrong kind of woman for Nat and she always would be.
‘I’ll see you up to your room,’ he said abruptly.
‘There’s no need.’
‘There’s every need,’ he argued. ‘You’re jet-lagged and probably feeling disorientated.’
She certainly was—but her disorientation wasn’t being helped by the fact that he was there. That the closeness of his powerful body was taunting her with the elusive promise of pleasure. And it was wrong for all kinds of reasons. Wrong because of Nat and wrong because it was Zak.
Weariness swept over her—a potent combination of not enough sleep or food, with a glass of rich red wine thrown in to further complicate it. Her body felt drained and her legs were shaky as they walked to the elevator, which was fortunately busy enough to preclude any kind of conversation. The lift doors opened on to the thirty-second floor and Zak followed her out, but as she reached her room and began to fumble in her bag for her key-card she felt herself stumble slightly. Felt Zak’s hand automatically reach out to steady her and Emma stiffened as he gripped her.
His fingers seemed to sizzle through the thin material of her floaty top—almost as if they were scorching the skin which lay beneath. She could feel the thready patter of her heart and her breathing suddenly became as laboured as if she’d been running.
For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes as time and place merged, the background of his fancy hotel blurring into insignificance so that all she could see was the darkened pewter of his burning gaze. And in that moment she wanted him. Wanted him in a way which wiped all reason from her sleep-deprived brain.
‘Zak,’ she whispered, although she didn’t know why she said it—and, in view of her reluctance to say it earlier, it now seemed like an intimacy too far.
Zak heard the soft temptation of her voice and a powerful desire washed over him. Let her go, he urged himself savagely—but his body stubbornly refused to obey. Still his hand gripped the slim column of her arm and he was loath to pull his fingers away from the softness of her flesh.
He looked down at her, mesmerised by her closeness and the way she was looking at him. Her green eyes had grown smoky and her lips had parted in unconscious invitation and he knew that if he were to dip his head, he could claim them in a kiss which would combust. He imagined pulling her hungrily into his arms. The jut of his hips against hers and the silent circling of his heavy erection against her feminine softness. The urgent journey to her room and then the discarding of clothes until he felt her naked against him.
He could hear the powerful beat of his heart as the idea became a tantalising possibility and he could almost taste the desire which hovered in the air around them. She would let him do it. He knew she would. She would part her thighs and urge him into her sweet, molten tightness. Sweet heaven. Should he take her? Should he?
The vivid images playing in his head were almost his undoing until he forced himself to picture the sordid aftermath of such a coupling. Of confessing to his brother what he had done. Of having to look into her cheating face the next morning. He let his hand fall to his side, self-disgust hardening his lips into a savage line of contempt, appalled at his own weakness.
Was this how she had lured Louis Patterson? And then Ciro D’Angelo? And after that his brother? Like an earth-bound siren who could captivate men with her pale eyes and hair and the promise of her soft, curvy body?
He took a step back. ‘You said you were tired,’ he said harshly. ‘In which case, I’ve always found it better to go to bed on your own.’
And with that, he turned on his heel—leaving Emma staring after him, her lips trembling as she registered his withering contempt. Aware that she had been chastised for something she hadn’t even realised she’d been doing.
CHAPTER SIX
THE next morning Emma found an envelope shoved underneath her door and knew who it was from, even before she’d opened it. The stark black words seemed to leap off the expensive cream paper as her trembling fingers ripped it open.
“We neglected to talk about your work last night. Meet me in the lobby at ten. Zak.”
And that was it. No endearment. No polite wishes expressed that he hoped she’d had a comfortable night. Which of course, she hadn’t. The long hours of travel hadn’t helped at all, and she’d woken at four thirty absolutely buzzing and unable to get back to sleep. She’d lain staring at the unfamiliar room and remembering those strange and provocative moments in the corridor, when she could have sworn that Zak was about to kiss her. When she’d wanted him to kiss her. And that had only been the beginning of what she’d wanted—she who had sworn off men and all the bitter fall-out of emotional attachment.