Irresistible Greeks: Dark and Determined

Having left Martha contentedly reading, Zoe wandered down the stairs. She still had ten minutes to kill before it was time for dinner so she used a few of those minutes up taking a look around. Each room she peeped into had a quietly understated style about it which belied the impression she had of Anton Pallis as a sharply modern, outgoing man.

She found the dining room—there were actually two of them—a large, rather grand formal-looking one and this smaller, more intimate room with the circular table already set for its lone diner. Not the most appealing prospect, Zoe mused as she walked along the room towards the pair of long windows she saw standing open at the other end.

Outside on the terrace she paused to glance around. It was so quiet she felt as if she was the only person left in the world. The darkness folded around everything beyond the soft light coming from the house, and the air felt like warm silk each time she breathed it into her lungs. In all of her life she had never experienced quiet like this; it held the true definition of hush.

At home she’d been used to the sound of London’s never-ending traffic, planes flying into Heathrow, trains rattling past on the track not far away. Even inside the house, quiet was something filled with knocks and bangs and the muffled voices of her neighbours leaking in through the walls either side.

Restless suddenly, she rubbed at her arms with her fingers as she tracked a short way down the terrace, passing beautiful cream-upholstered rattan sofas and chairs set like outside rooms around glass-topped tables. Even out here Anton’s home had a quiet elegance about it, she saw. Feeling a sudden breeze pick up, she lifted up her chin to catch hold of its mildly cooling effect.

It was then that she saw them. A fizz, fizz, fizz of glorious excitement caught hold of her and she let out a soft gasp of delight. Like someone being invited into fairyland, she ran out into the garden, felt the soft crush of grass beneath her shoes and did not stop until she was standing surrounded by complete darkness. Then and only then did she allow herself to tilt her head again and look up at the wondrous star-studded night sky.

On his way up the path through the trees which led up from the beach, Anton was in no hurry to reach home. This whole day had been one long link of aggravating problems and he was tired and fed up, though watching the boat-load of reporters sail off into the sunset had momentarily cheered him. Hopefully the word would get around to others who fancied trying their luck here that if they so much as stuck a toe over the tidal line they would not enjoy spending hours in the stuffy confines of Thalia’s tiny customs office trying to convince a stubbornly deaf officer that they were not a boatful of illegal immigrants attempting to sneak onto the island.

A grim smile touched his lips as he drew towards the end of the path which would give him access onto his front lawn. Milos Loukas could be infuriatingly thorough when he wanted to be. Every passport had to be checked by telephone for its authenticity. Even his own Greek patriots were treated with suspicion and forced to endure the same checks. By the time Anton had arrived on the scene, all six reporters had been more than ready to beg him to get the customs officer off their backs. But it was a case of allowing the official his hour of importance and just taking a back seat until Milos was ready to release them into Anton’s care.

Perhaps he should have joined them on their departing boat, he mused, because he’d missed his chance to fly away, which left him with little choice but to come home for the night.

But he did not want to be here. He did not want to suffer the aggravation of another fight with Zoe Kanellis, or worse risk feeding his growing desire.

The sound of a woman’s delighted laughter ringing out into the darkness brought his head up and he pulled to a stop. He had decided to delay his arrival here by walking the two miles home from the village via the beach; his eyes had adjusted to the darkness but still he found himself questioning what it was he was staring at.

She looked like the nymph Thalia come out to play while no one was about, a shimmering vision of golden hair and pale, pearlescent skin. The bright white of her dress glowed in the sultry darkness and she stood in the middle of his garden with her face lifted up to the heavens, her beautiful hair spilling down her back.

She was turning slowly as she counted—counted—the damn stars up above. Had she gone mad? She was naming them too. He could not hear what names she was saying because her voice was just a breathlessly enchanting whisper, but every couple of seconds another laugh would break from her when she spotted something that truly delighted her.

Standing there on the edge of the path in the shadows, Anton was entranced. He should go; he knew that he should. If anyone was guaranteed to rob all that childlike delight from Zoe Kanellis then it was him. He should just turn around and creep away again like a thief in the night. Go and bunk down on the sofa in Kostas’s house in the village. Perhaps the two of them could get drunk on a bottle of ouzo and Kostas could vent his spleen with all the disapproving remarks about Anton’s behaviour he had been storing up.

Where had he got the idea that she was too thin?

That dress didn’t say thin, it said delicately formed curves in all the right places, the teasing shape of her neat behind and her nipped in little waist. His gaze drifted higher as she completed a full circle, giving him a full-on view of two firmly rounded globes filling the shape of her tie-neck top. The inner growl of his sexual animal brought a soft curse hissing from his lips as his body responded with a flood of fierce heat directly to his pelvis, and he twisted round to face in the opposite direction, intending to make good his escape while he still had the strength.

But he stood on a twig and made it snap. Behind him he heard a sharp little gasp.

‘Who is there?’ Zoe Kanellis called out uncertainly.

Anton shut his eyes and ground his teeth together. The ensuing silence behind him played across his tense shoulder-muscles and the fine hairs on the back of his neck. If he moved she would see him. If he stayed where he was it was like accepting that he was a scared wimp.

Be a man, Pallis, he told himself, and made himself turn round again.

‘I said, who’s there?’ Zoe repeated, already balancing on the balls of her shoes ready to run. It was so dark over by the trees her eyes were stinging as she tried to pierce through it.

‘It’s OK,’ a familiar voice answered very dryly. ‘It is only me.’ Her heart gave a giant leap when she saw the tall, lean figure of Anton Pallis emerge from out of the darkness.

‘Oh.’ She put a hand up to cover the pounding beat of her heart. ‘You scared me.’

She caught sight of the way his mouth drew down at the corners in a grimace. He was still wearing the grey suit he’d changed into on the flight over here, only the jacket was no longer on his back put slung over a wide shoulder and held there by a long finger hooked into the loop. His tie had gone, the top few buttons on his shirt dragged open at his taut brown throat. A five o’clock shadow gave his jaw a roguish look and as he came closer she saw how that grimace seemed to mock himself.

‘Stargazing, Zoe?’ he quizzed.

‘I’ve never seen a sky like it.’ She actually smiled at him as she said it, then looked up again as he came to stop a couple of steps away from her. ‘It’s just glorious.’

‘So, how many did you count?’

‘I got to two billion before you interrupted.’

‘My apologies,’ he murmured.

‘Accepted,’ she returned, softly, because as far as Anton could tell she was busy counting stars again. ‘I wish I had my telescope.’

‘You have your own telescope?’

‘Mmm. If you look just up there—’ she raised a pale, slender arm to point towards the night sky ‘—you can see the dense-star field around the Antares. It’s an M4 cluster and looks spectacular here because there’s no air pollution to cloud it out.’

Anton looked up and just saw stars. ‘Where is this telescope you wish you had with you?’

‘I sold it when I left uni … Oh, Anton, look; there’s Perseus. How fitting to find him flying over Greece. I could …’

Her excitement faded into nothing when Zoe realised she was talking to a lost audience. He wasn’t looking up at the sky, he was watching her with a brooding intensity that flooded a blush into her cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, her voice turning husky with embarrassment as she added, ‘The night sky is my—passion.’

‘I can tell,’ he said softly.

She was determined not to react to his soft, taunting tone. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you flew off before the sun set.’

‘The sun went down and your stars were out before I could get away.’

‘The reporters,’ Zoe remembered. ‘Anthea told me about them. Did you send them packing?’

‘Like Zeus, with a single blow of my breath.’

Now he really was mocking her; Zoe stuck up her chin. ‘Zeus doesn’t have a place up there in the heavens. Up there he’s called Jupiter. The Greek gods did not get everything their own way.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he drawled sardonically.

Meaning she had stopped him getting all his own way? Well, she could argue with that, since she was the one standing here in his garden, on his island, simply because he had decided that this was where she should be.

‘So, how did you get here?’ She hadn’t heard a car while she’d been out here.

‘I walked from the village along the beach. I like the dress,’ he tagged on casually.

‘Oh … thanks.’ Looking down at the dress, Zoe started frowning. ‘You bought it,’ she told him. ‘Which is something I need to talk to you about. You should not be spend ing—’

‘Do you like your room?’ he interrupted.

‘Yes, of course I like my room, it’s beautiful. Thank you,’ she said again with an added snap of impatience this time. ‘But about the clothes …’

‘And you found everything you needed to make your brother comfortable?’ he cut in on her yet again.

Zoe shifted from one foot to the other. ‘That’s another thing we need to talk about.’ She refused to drop the subject though she knew that what he was trying to make her do. ‘All those soft toys and—things—were not necessary. We will only be here for a couple of weeks and Toby is too young to—’

‘I believe my staff made you welcome.’

Zoe sucked in some air and clenched her hands into fists. ‘You’re not going to stop me from telling you what I think, you know!’

‘I noticed.’ It was his turn to alter his stance. ‘However, do you think you could hold back on our next argument until I’ve at least put a foot inside my house?’

It was the same as a slap on the wrist, Zoe noted, and accepted that she probably deserved it. ‘I was just …’

‘Shut up now, Zoe,’ he urged wearily. ‘The clothes were a gift. I will not miss the money. Same thing with the stuffed toys. When I walked out of the wood and first saw you standing here, I was bowled over by how extraordinarily beautiful you looked—until you started sniping at me, then you spoilt it. Now I think I will cut my losses and go inside.’

With that he swung to face the house.

‘OK,’ she said quickly. ‘I accept I should have been more gracious with my thanks.’

Though he didn’t walk off, his darkly handsome face with that wicked five o’clock shadow did not look very impressed with her small climb-down.

‘It was not my intention to start another fight with you.’ Zoe tried again. ‘The clothes were a very thoughtful gesture. And I am, truly, very grateful that you went to so much trouble on mine and Toby’s behalf and … Well, anyway, I’m sorry I am such an irritant to you and …’

‘You are not an irritant,’ he clipped out impatiently.

What was she then—warm solicitude?

It was her turn to twitch. ‘It really is no use trying to have a normal conversation with you, is it?’ She sighed, flicking out a hand in an empty gesture because she didn’t like it that her voice had developed a hurt shake. ‘I was trying to be nice, when you don’t deserve it. I must be stark staring mad. After all, even you must know that your behaviour today was pretty much borderline unforgivable.’

Still the stubborn devil held his grim silence. Zoe heaved in a breath.

‘However, I am also not stupid. I can see for myself that this place is paradise compared to a small terraced house in Islington laid under siege by the press. But if you believe that you are the only one to have had a horrible day, then—’

He moved so gracefully she didn’t see it coming. Next thing he had hold of her chin in the cup of his fingers and a long thumb, and the rest of what she had been about to say just drained from her head. His face was so close to hers now that she could see a brooding restlessness at work behind his darkness, felt a breathless tension spring up between them, made all the more potent by his continuing grim silence.

A slithery, slinky thread of tension began to crawl up her front. If she could she would look away from him because those eyes of his were downright mesmeric and there was something terribly alluring about the stern shape of his lips.

She parted her lips to say something but he gave an infinitesimal shake of his dark head. She knew he was going to kiss her. She could read the dark message of intent plucking at each tiny breath that she took. There was no point by which they were touching other than his light grip on her chin yet the full force of his formidably masculine sensuality still managed to beat over her in waves. The tips of her breasts were tingling, their small, rounded cups filling with the most excruciatingly tender flood of heat. She should move away from him, break the physical connection, but the alarming thing was that she was standing here waiting for him to kiss her.

He moved his thumb to run it gently over her bottom lip and the flesh there bloomed with heat. A wry kind of smile softened the grimness from his own mouth as if he knew about the heat and what it meant. Without knowing she was going to do it, she ran the tip of her tongue across the same place, tracking the trail of his thumb. Light flared in his eyes. The air seemed to still, the dome of bright, twinkling stars above them dimmed then darkened altogether. It was just the two of them standing here in the all-consuming darkness trapped by an energy that circled them like a ring.

His expression was so sombre, his gaze so intense, and he towered over her, wide-shouldered, hard-muscled and breathtakingly male. She knew she should be breaking free from this but still she didn’t do it. It was appalling and shameful and pride-crushingly weak of her but she just stood there in front of him with her eyes drowning in his eyes and her lips parted, waiting for his kiss.

He murmured something about spellbinding nymphs, then it came, just the lightest touch of his tongue tip against the corner of her mouth and Zoe was startled by the force of pleasure that poured into her blood. Her fingers jerked up to grab hold of his shirt either side of his taut waist. The heat coming from him was stunning, as was the intimacy with which she absorbed his slight intake of breath.

‘Ah, Anton, you have arrived at last,’ a pleased voice said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE two of them sprang apart like guilty lovers caught out enjoying a clandestine tryst. Burning flames licked across Zoe’s fair skin as she turned her head and stared dizzily at Anthea, who was standing on the terrace, her rounded shape lit from by the soft light spilling out from the open windows behind her.

Anton sizzled out a curse beneath his breath, released Zoe’s chin then stepped around her with the cool swiftness of a man intent on honing the housekeeper’s attention onto him. ‘Good evening, Anthea,’ he greeted smoothly as he strode forward. ‘Am I too late for dinner?’

‘Of course not,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Kostas rang to tell me you were walking home along the beach.’ The older woman received an affectionate brush of his lips against her cheek. ‘How long do you need to shave that prickly beard off your face? Thespinis Kanellis must be starving, for she has not eaten since she arrived.’

‘Give me ten minutes to make myself presentable for the dinner table,’ she heard Anton say as the two of them walked into the house, leaving Zoe standing alone in the darkness struggling to cool the heat from her face.

I almost ate him, she thought in horror. What did she think she was playing at? What was he playing at?

Dragging a large gulp of warm, sultry air into her lungs, she let it all out again. Being around Anton Pallis was like balancing on a knife edge; she never knew which way she was going to fall off it or whether she was going to cut herself on his sharp edge.

There was nothing sharp about the pulsing throb currently in control of her body; Zoe mocked herself. Right now her lips felt soft and hot, pumped up and trembling with frustrated anticipation. She lifted a hand up to press her fingers against the throb. It just had to stop, she told herself. She had to climb off this crazy emotional swing she was riding on which thrust her from dislike to desire with the lowest point churning into a potent mixture of both.

Dinner turned into a strained affair, with Anton trying his best to make polite conversation and Zoe trying her best to find light responses while Anthea fussed around them like a mother hen.

He offered Zoe wine but she refused, preferring to stick to spring water because she was already feeling intoxicated enough—by him. And her stomach, which had been crying out for sustenance half an hour ago, was now in a state of flux, not wanting to accept the small amount of the delicious creations she did manage to swallow.

Complaining that Zoe did not eat enough to keep a bird alive, the housekeeper removed barely touched dishes and doggedly replaced them with new ones. As soon as the whole ordeal was over, Zoe escaped to bed as soon as she could.

She tried to sleep but she couldn’t. She was a churned up, overwrought mess. And it was too quiet. She was used to the sounds of the city serenading her to sleep. The bed was too big and too soft; she was used to being weighted down by a heavy duvet not a couple of starched-white sheets.

And she’d had to leave her bedroom door open, as with Toby’s door, because she was afraid she might not hear him when he awoke. What had become an ordinary routine in her own little house felt wrong in this house, as if leaving the door open was like offering an invitation.

Wishful thinking, Zoe? a horrible little voice inside her head taunted her.

‘Oh, just shut up,’ she told it crossly, tossing over in the bed.

She was actually glad when the first whimpering sounds of her brother wakening filtered over to her bed. Finger-combing her tangled hair as she walked, she padded across the landing and into her brother’s room just as his whimpers upped the volume into loud cries for attention.

‘OK, OK,’ she murmured soothingly, leaning over the cot to lift him out. ‘Hungry, hmm?’ She smiled down at him as she walked across to the fridge.

Resting Toby in the cradle of one arm, she rocked him while she prepared his bottle, talking softly to him as she did, the routine second nature to her now.

A sound coming from the bedroom doorway made her glance around. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Anton was standing there wearing a pair of white boxers and a short grey robe he had not bothered to close around the hair-shadowed power in his muscled torso. The fact that she had not bothered to pull on a robe before leaving her bedroom plucked at her senses, making her acutely aware of how she must look.

‘He woke me up,’ he said, seemingly oblivious to his own state of undress, covering a yawn with the back of his hand. ‘Where is Martha? I arranged for her to be here to do the inconvenient stuff.’

‘I sent her to bed.’ Turning away, Zoe went back to what she had been doing. ‘She’s swatting for exams and needs her sleep. And taking care of my brother is not inconvenient,’ she added, keeping her voice even because Toby had stopped crying and was listening to her with his dark eyes fixed intently on her face. ‘I love caring for you.’ She smiled down at the baby.

One of those silences he was so good at developing filled the space between them. Zoe wished he would go away but he didn’t. He just remained where he was, leaning now against the doorframe watching her as she continued with what she was doing with one-handed efficiency.

He’d tied the belt on his robe by the time she turned to walk over to the settee. Studiously ignoring him, she curled up in a corner and settled the baby in her arms with his bottle. At last Anton broke the silence by heaving in a breath and shifting his stance.

‘I’m going to make a warm drink, do you want one?’

About to refuse, she realised that her throat felt parched. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured politely. ‘That would be nice.’

He went away and reappeared ten minutes later with a tray containing a china mug filled with what smelled like her favourite, hot chocolate, and another cup containing strong Greek coffee plus a plate with a few home-made cookies on it.

The link Zoe made between the tea and biscuits she’d offered him yesterday morning—was it only yesterday?—put a smile on her lips.

‘Enjoy your drink while it’s hot. I’ll take the baby,’ Anton announced, folding down on the other corner of the sofa then holding out an arm and looking at her expectantly.

Zoe wanted to tell him to leave them alone and take his drink with him back to his bed but she did not want to start another round of arguments. With a shrug, she uncoiled enough to hand Toby over then remained poised like that while she waited to see if he knew what he was doing.

He did, of course. The wretched man was a quick learner. He relaxed into his corner of the sofa with her brother comfortably cradled in a big arm and a pair of very tanned legs stretched out in front of him. What piqued Zoe for a second was that Toby made no show of objection. He just wanted his formula no matter who fed it to him, she acknowledged ruefully as she turned to pick up the china mug then filch a cookie before coiling back into her corner.

This was mad.

Who would have believed that she would be sitting here at one o’clock in the morning with Anton Pallis, eating cookies and sipping hot chocolate while he fed a bottle of formula to a small baby boy?

‘It’s kind of soothing,’ he remarked as if he’d been thinking along similar lines. ‘He’s so small and helpless, he brings out my softer side, the part that makes men want to nurture and protect.’

‘Not every man has it.’

‘I’m surprised that I have it,’ he admitted. ‘I had no idea I was a baby kind of man until I had to take care of him on the flight over here.’

‘Just think how it would ruin your image if this little scene ever got out.’

‘What image?’ Dark-brown eyes speared a look at her.

Zoe felt that look all the way down deep into intimate places. ‘The ruthless tycoon with his focus concentrated on money and power,’ she explained, dipping her eyes so she didn’t have to look at him.

Lifting her cup to her mouth, she decided not to mention his equally ruthless reputation with the women he took as lovers then discarded once the novelty had worn off. On paper, a man like that should run a mile in the opposition direction from a scenario like this one.

‘Having money and power means you have to be ruthless, or some other bright spark with his eye on both will strip you clean at the first glimpse of weakness.’

Zoe took a few seconds to think about that then decided that he was probably right. ‘Well, a helpless young baby—or a child of any size, for that matter—does not go with that kind of ambition. The desire to nurture and protect gets compromised long the way.’