Expectant Bride

As Ellie rose jerkily upright, looking everywhere but at Dio Alexiakis, the female flight attendant appeared. Ellie was shown into a sleeping compartment. She sank down on the edge of the surprisingly large bed, powerfully disconcerted by the lingering ache in her swollen breasts and the still urgent tautness of her nipples. Never before had a man simply looked at Ellie and made her feel a hunger so powerful it hurt. But Dio Alexiakis had.

Ellie was shattered by that discovery, and ashamed of a physical reaction she had been quite unable to control. Had he realised what was happening to her? Had he recognised the effect he was having on her? She shut her eyes tight. She was appalled by the suspicion that Dio had not only recognised her helpless sexual response to him but banished her from his sight because of it.

A couple of hours later, a quiet but insistent voice roused Ellie from her uneasy doze. ‘Miss Morgan…?’

Ellie came up slowly on one elbow. The flight attendant was hovering with a tray and a look of uncertainty. Ellie reached up with a grateful smile to accept the food finally being offered to her. ‘Thanks…yes?’

‘We…well, the cabin staff wondered if perhaps you would like to wake Mr Alexiakis,’ she confided tautly. ‘We’ll be landing in fifty minutes, and naturally we’re all anxious not to intrude any more than we have to—’

‘Intrude?’ Ellie queried, all at sea and wondering why on earth such a strange request should be made of her. Was Dio a grizzly bear when he was woken up? Had she qualified for the short straw? Did she look like cannon fodder?

The other woman sighed. ‘Someone has to wake Mr Alexiakis up now so that he can dress for the funeral.’

‘The funeral…’ Ellie echoed, her voice just fading out altogether.

‘I’m afraid this flight is very late, Miss Morgan. The delay back in London and the further delay in landing means that you’ll have to travel to the funeral direct. I hope you won’t think I’m being too personal, but we all think it’s wonderful that Mr Alexiakis has brought someone with him for support,’ she shared, and slipped out again.

Fully awakened now by sheer horror, Ellie stared into space. Oh, dear heaven, Dio Alexiakis was flying out to Greece to attend a funeral! That was why he had bought her all that black clothing! And the cabin staff had decided that she had to be somebody important in Dio’s life because she was accompanying him. She remembered him saying that he hadn’t wanted company on this particular trip, and groaned out loud at the memory while wondering whose funeral it was. Obviously somebody close. A relative? A dear friend?

After hurriedly choking down the breakfast on the tray, Ellie got up and rushed into the compact bathroom. She would have loved to take advantage of the shower but there wasn’t time. She took out the black suit and put it on.

Her appearance in that suit astonished her. The light jacket fitted like a glove, nipping in at her tiny waist, hugging her slim shoulders, the deep vee-neck moulding her full breasts. The narrow skirt outlined the all-female curve of her hips and then tightened to outline her slender thighs. She looked sensational, she registered in amazement. Then, reddening at a vanity that seemed inappropriate, she turned from the mirror, irritated with herself for being so superficial.

Returning to the cabin, she saw Dio’s impossibly long and powerful length sprawled at a most uncomfortable angle across one of the fancy leather seats. Her now tenderised and conscience-stricken heart smote her.

Shorn of his formal jacket and tie, his silk shirt open at his strong brown throat and his jawline darkly shadowed by stubble, he looked so much younger and less intimidating. He also looked absolutely exhausted, and if it hadn’t been for her presence he would naturally have enjoyed the comfort of his own bed.

Ellie tensed even more. To think the cabin staff had clearly been nervous of intruding on his grief! She herself had done nothing but intrude! Recalling every angry combative word she had slung at the airport, Ellie cringed with guilt and shame. So the poor guy had been in a rough mood. In the circumstances, that was hardly a surprise, and his preoccupation had been equally understandable.

With a gentle hand on his shoulder, she shook him awake. His incredibly long lashes lifted off his flushed cheekbones, and with a soft sigh, he lifted his tousled head to check his watch. With a stifled expletive, he then plunged forcefully upright and headed for the sleeping compartment.

‘Mr Alexiakis…?’

He stilled, but he didn’t turn round.

‘I didn’t know you were attending a funeral,’ Ellie said awkwardly. ‘I wish somebody had mentioned it.’

He swung back, frowning at her in genuine surprise. ‘Don’t you read newspapers?’

‘I don’t get time to read them.’

‘It’s my father’s funeral,’ he responded curtly, and strode away.

Ellie slowly breathed in deep, but it didn’t make her feel any better. His father! What could be worse? Of course he hadn’t wanted to be lumbered with a total stranger over the next couple of days. So why on earth had he insisted that she had to accompany him?

Those extremely confidential business plans he was so fired up about, this pretending to be interested in one company while really being interested in another, she recalled in exasperation. She wished she understood how that information could be as hugely important as he seemed to think it was. A spy, she thought afresh, shaking her head in wonderment. Cops and robbers. Thriller territory. Way beyond anything she could even imagine.

But then Dio Alexiakis lived in a gilded world of immense wealth and privilege. He wheeled and dealed in incredibly high-powered circles. Even the night before his own father’s funeral he had still been talking business. Had it been a very sudden death? Whatever, on reflection, Ellie was surprised that he hadn’t already been in Greece. Even before she had entered the equation and complicated matters, hadn’t he been cutting things a bit fine?

It was after seven in the morning and a bright and beautiful day when Dio Alexiakis and Ellie finally walked into Athens airport.

Wearing the suit combined with the long dramatic gloves, the extravagant-brimmed hat and the designer sunglasses which Dio had given her, Ellie felt as if she was taking part in a fancy dress parade. They were waved on by grave-faced officials. But as they passed through the barriers a wave of shouting men with cameras surged forward, held at bay only by a squad of equally determined security guards.

Ellie just froze in the glare of flashing cameras. Dio closed a powerful arm round her and carried her on through the crush as if it wasn’t there, impervious to the questions being thrown in several different languages.

‘Who’s the woman?’ she heard a man roar loudly in English.

Ellie was unnerved by the aggressive behaviour of the paparazzi. Dio was coming home to his father’s funeral. What had happened to privacy? The giving of a little respectful space? For goodness’ sake, was Dio hounded like this everywhere he went? Ellie hadn’t the slightest idea.

But during breaks in evening shifts she had frequently heard her co-workers discussing Dio’s private life in the most lurid of terms. He lived in the fast lane. He featured in glossy magazines and made endless gossip column headlines. Having enjoyed affairs with a string of gorgeous, high-profile women, he was a real sex god to the cleaning staff. But Ellie had always felt rather superior during those sessions. She hadn’t had the slightest interest in the exploits of a male she neither knew nor ever expected to meet. So she hadn’t listened any further.

They changed terminals and ended up in a small, plainly furnished waiting room. Ellie was still trembling. ‘Is it always like that for you?’

Dio shrugged a broad shoulder. Dark, deep-set awesomely beautiful eyes briefly touched her. ‘Yes…but I’m afraid I overlooked the more extreme interest your presence would excite.’

‘I hope to heaven I’m not going to be recognisable in any of those photos,’ Ellie confided tautly.

Dio said nothing.

‘What are we waiting for now?’

‘A flight out to the island where the burial will take place.’

Another flight. She suppressed a groan. The journey seemed endless. ‘The island?’ she queried.

‘Chindos. You really do know nothing about me,’ Dio remarked with a slight frown. ‘I’m not used to that.’

‘But I bet it’s good for you…puts a dent in your belief that you are the sun around which the entire world must turn,’ Ellie muttered, and then froze in dismay. She grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud!’

‘That disastrous lack of tact must get you into trouble.’ Dio surveyed her with a shadowy suspicion of a smile momentarily softening the hard line of his expressive mouth.

Ellie swallowed hard, grateful he hadn’t exploded. ‘It’s been known.’

‘Why are you always in search of a fight?’ Dio scanned her with penetrating eyes that tightened her very skin over her bones and made her shift uneasily on her seat. ‘You look so wonderfully feminine and delicate—’

Ellie winced. ‘Not delicate…please!’

‘Cute?’

‘Worse,’ she censured without hesitation. ‘Men refuse to take me seriously. It’s a big drawback being small and blonde—’

‘But you’re not blonde. Your hair is the colour of platinum. It’s extremely eye-catching,’ Dio informed her with definitive derision and the distinct air of a male unimpressed by her protest. ‘If you genuinely don’t want to invite that type of male attitude, you shouldn’t dye it that shade.’

Ellie dealt him the weary glance of a woman who had heard it all before. ‘My hair’s natural. My grandmother was Dutch, and very fair.’

‘Natural? I don’t believe you. Take your hat off,’ he urged, startling her.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ellie did so, and flung back her head as if she was challenging him. Her bright hair shone like heavy silver silk against the darkness of her jacket. ‘You see, not fake.’

His black eyes flared gold and lingered on that shimmering fall. The silence set in then, thick as a sheet of solid steel. She watched him covertly from beneath her lashes. So very tall, so exotically dark, so still and silent. Sheathed in a sensationally well-cut black double-breasted suit, he looked truly amazing. Stop it, stop it. What’s the matter with you? a shaken voice screamed inside her bemused head.

Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Ellie quivered, agonised by the awful reality that her own brain seemed to be romping out of control. In directions it had never gone in before. Even in the depths of infatuation at nineteen, with the latest and last of the users and abusers she’d seemed to attract, she hadn’t felt overwhelmed and taken over, her very thoughts no longer her own. And there hadn’t been this ghastly, utterly desperate sexual craving which flooded her every time she looked at Dio Alexiakis. She just could not cope with feeling like that around a man. It was so weak, so irrational, so humiliating…

‘What’s it like being a cleaner?’ Dio enquired with quite staggering abruptness.

‘Look, you don’t have to make conversation with me.’

‘It was a sincere question.’

‘OK…it’s very boring, repetitive and poorly paid,’ Ellie told him with a touch of defiance. ‘So if you’re expecting me to say I’m some weirdo who gets a real high out of dusting and polishing—well, sorry to disappoint you!’

‘So why are you doing it?’

‘The hours suit me and I’ve got nobody on my back. I don’t like being ordered around.’

‘I noticed. You should deal with that problem and then consider the possibility of more challenging employment. But perhaps you have no training for any other sphere.’

‘I’ve got plans of my own. I’m an ambitious woman in my own small way. I won’t be polishing your floors for much longer,’ Ellie told him with open mockery.

Dio studied her with hard black eyes. ‘In the situation you’re in, it’s not a good idea to drop hints of that variety. I never joke about business, Ellie.’

‘Neither do I. Business comes first and last in my life—’

‘Really?’

‘And you’re running up quite a bill already,’ Ellie informed him gently. ‘You do realise that I expect you to pay me for every hour of the last twelve?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Double time too,’ Ellie specified, tilting up her chin and ready to fight her corner. ‘I take a dim view of being starved, deprived of breaks and kept up until three in the morning.’

Grudging amusement stirred in his brilliant eyes. ‘You’re your own worst enemy,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I’d have paid one hell of a lot more if you had just kept quiet.’

‘I’m not greedy, and by the way, when I said I wouldn’t be working in the maintenance department for much longer, I wasn’t thinking about that stupid conversation I overheard,’ Ellie told him impatiently. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

‘How could you have forgotten about it?’ Dio growled in disbelief.

‘Even if I did understand the importance of what you said in that office—which I don’t—I’m an honest person and I wouldn’t take advantage.’

‘Those who stress how honest they are, are almost always lying in their teeth,’ Dio countered crushingly.

Feeling oddly hurt that his barriers had gone up again, Ellie felt her beautiful face stiffen and flush. ‘Obviously you’re going to believe what you want to believe. Suit yourself!’

‘You can’t blame me for taking every possible precaution.’

That confident assertion filled Ellie with furious resentment. Who did he think he was kidding? Without hesitation, he had used his infinitely superior power like the weapon it was! The fact that she was endeavouring to make the best of a bad situation didn’t alter that brutal reality. ‘Don’t you dare try to justify yourself!’ she warned him. ‘Tell it like it is. If you weren’t who you are and I wasn’t who I am, I wouldn’t be here! If Meg and I didn’t need our jobs, I would have told you exactly where to go—’

‘I can imagine,’ Dio slotted in silkily.

‘And, you know, dragging me along on a trip like this…well, it’s not exactly a dream treat, is it? No offence or disrespect intended, but I’m not heavily into funerals,’ Ellie confided.

A disconcerting flare of amusement lit Dio’s steady scrutiny. ‘My father would have adored your irreverence!’

Her full mouth softened. ‘Was he one of the good guys?’

All his tension returned, his amusement fading as quickly as it had come. In silence, he slowly nodded, bronzed features setting hard. He swung away and she wished she had kept her stupid, clumsy mouth closed. Just for a little while he had emerged from his brooding reserve and contrived to forget what lay ahead of him.

A knock sounded on the door. It was time to move on again. Under the growing heat of the sun they walked out across the tarmac to board a small plane. A dream treat? Ellie cringed at the recollection. How could she have been that tactless? Now he was wishing she would vanish again! So why should it bother her that he felt like that? After all, how did she expect him to feel?

The plane flew out over the gleaming waters of the Aegean. In a silence filled only with monotonous engine noise, Ellie’s eyes grew heavier and heavier. She sank down lower in her seat and slid into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Feeling incredibly languid, Ellie took her time about waking up again. But she frowned in sleepy disorientation when she finally focused on her surroundings. She was lying on the capacious back seat of an enormous limousine with tinted windows.

With a thick, expensive metal clunk, the passenger door opened. A black-haired young man backed by bright golden sunlight gaze down at her with patronising amusement. ‘So you’re Dio’s latest woman… I’ve got to hand it to my cousin. He’s got taste. No wonder he kept you out of the church. Some of his late mother’s relatives are pretty narrow-minded. I’m Lukas Varios.’

Tensing with annoyance under the earthy glide of the eyes trailing over the slender length of her exposed legs, Ellie pulled herself hurriedly upright and tugged down the skirt which had ridden up while she slept. ‘I am not Dio’s woman!’ she snapped.

‘Nice to have a piece of good news today.’ With a cocky grin on his handsome face, Lukas Varios slid in beside her and closed the door. ‘So, if you don’t belong to Dio, what are you doing waiting outside the cemetery for him?’

Ellie compressed her ripe pink mouth into a rigid line. ‘I just work for him…OK?’

‘Oh, it’s very much OK with me…’ Impervious to her frozen expression, Lukas stretched out a confident hand to finger the silvery fall of hair lying against her flushed cheekbone and murmured, ‘You are a real babe—’

The passenger door opened again, this time framing Dio. He took one look at the apparently intimate scene he had interrupted and smouldering fury blazed in his spectacular eyes. He reached in a powerful hand, closed it over the younger man’s shoulder and hauled him out of the limo to shoot a raw flood of guttural Greek down at him.

Lukas Varios backed off, struggling to reassert his cool by smoothing down his jacket, but his shaken face was red as fire. As Ellie sat there, immobilised by sheer shock at Dio’s extraordinary behaviour, Lukas sent her a fiercely accusing glance. ‘She said she wasn’t yours…do you think I’d have come on to her if she’d told me the truth?’

Lean, strong face cold and hard as bronze, Dio swung into the limo and slammed the door without another word. Black contemptuous eyes flamed over Ellie. ‘I didn’t bring you here to behave like a tramp!’ he told her with splintering derision.

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