Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks

‘It’s always good to face your fears.’

‘Oh, so you are doing me a favour, in other words.’

‘And I notice you aren’t suitably grateful.’

Rose downed the remainder of her wine and snorted in an appropriately unfeminine way. She picked up the champagne that he had left on the table and swallowed a mouthful, drawing in her breath as the bubbles went down. The little glittery black bag that she had borrowed from Lily, and which she was clutching in her left hand, seemed a ridiculous accessory. Her skin crawled at the thought that he was laughing at her, finding her awkward and gauche. The champagne seemed to be finished and she seriously contemplated another drink.

‘I’m going to have to circulate now.’

‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’

‘Oh, but you are,’ Nick drawled smoothly. Two glasses on the trot had brought a pink flush to her cheeks. ‘I’m running this show and it’s my duty to make sure that no one is left standing next to the wall on their own, quietly drinking themselves into a stupor.’

Rose felt the colour crawl into her face as her role loomed before her in all its unmistakable hideousness. She was Lily’s chaperone and her host’s burden. He would fob her off on one of his guests or else deliver her back to her sister because he thought that if he didn’t, she would end up making a fool of herself. Mortification replaced the light headed sensation induced by the wine and champagne and brought her crashing back down to the reality crowding around her.

‘I’m not going to drink myself into a stupor,’ she snapped. ‘You needn’t worry that I’m going to embarrass you in front of your glittering guests.’

‘Embarrass me?’

‘By drinking too much and falling into a heap on the floor.’

‘Why would I be embarrassed if you make a spectacle of yourself?’ He sighed impatiently and led her to one of the bar stools at the table closest to them. The woman was difficult and tactless and of course he shouldn’t concern himself with her, but he felt an irrational need to take her under his wing. Because, he told himself, she was Lily’s sister and while he might not be embarrassed if Rose got drunk and made a fool of herself, her sister almost certainly would. So, gentleman that he was, he would forgo his duty to circulate and spend a little time with her instead. No hardship. The crowd seemed to be doing splendidly without his input. The wonders of limitless alcohol, he thought. And of course the seduction of preening and strutting in front of people who counted. He had been keeping a watchful eye on Lily. Next to some of the more seasoned networkers, she was holding her own and drinking, he noticed, remarkably little. A wise head on young shoulders.

‘I thought you were going to mingle with your guests,’ Rose said, then, as if giving things a second thought, she sighed into the glass of orange juice that had mysteriously appeared in front of her. ‘I’m not being a particularly nice person, am I?’

Nick shook his head, relaxing and slinging one arm over the slatted back of his bar stool.

‘Well, nor are you!’

He smiled and raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s the worst apology I’ve ever heard.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be an apology.’

‘Oh. You mean you were just making an observation about yourself.’

Rose decided to change the subject altogether. When he looked at her she felt simultaneously incredibly self-conscious, which was maddening, and resentful of him for making her feel that way.

‘It’s a very nice place you have here.’

‘Oh, don’t tell me you’re going to go all polite on me now.’ This happening party of his seemed to be a long way away.

‘How on earth did you make so much money?’

‘Ah. That’s more like it. Crashing through those flimsy barriers called tact and really speaking your mind without bothering to gift-wrap anything.’

‘You did tell me not to be polite.’ Rose, who was not accustomed to flirting, was uneasily aware of a certain undercurrent between them that was thrilling and frightening at the same time. As were those amazing eyes of his, resting thoughtfully on her face. She knew that she was just being stupid but her heart was thudding inside her like a hammer and everything, all her senses, seemed heightened, stretched taut like a piece of elastic.

‘So…?’ she persisted.

‘Worked my way up.’ Nick nodded to one of the waiters who were invisibly collecting empty glasses and asked him for a whisky and soda.

‘Up from where?’

‘This is really a very boring story.’

‘You mean you don’t like other people observing you under their microscope even though you enjoy observing them under yours.’

Meaning that personal confidences were not part of his routine when it came to women. However, his history was no secret. Anyone could access its bare bones from the thousands of entries to be found on him on the Internet. Where was the harm in saving her the bother of looking him up, if her curiosity got the better of her?

‘A simple tale of a Greek immigrant who fell in love with an English beauty,’ he said casually. Did anyone know how his parents had sustained him? Had faith in him? ‘They worked all the hours God made to make ends meet and to put me through private school.’ Well, that was no big confidence. It was there in his profile somewhere.

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is.’ She rather thought that he would have done just fine whatever school he had attended, but, compared to her background, it must have been marvellous to have had parents who would have been willing to do whatever it took for their child to pursue a proper education.

‘Where are they now?’

‘No more. They both died a long time ago.’ He looked away, annoyed because this was all in the past and why the hell was he talking about it anyway?

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And I do need to actually mingle with the people I have invited here.’ He stood up and looked down at her. ‘I can introduce you or I can leave you here on your own. Take your pick.’

So that brief truce between them was over. Rose was quietly relieved. Just then, she had felt something sneak up on her, something unwanted that had made her feel giddy and out of control.

‘I’m fine,’ she told him with a distant smile. ‘You go mix. I’ll have a hunt around for Lily. Sorry for having taken up too much of your valuable time.’ When it came to sarcasm, she was as good as him any day.

Anyway, it was much easier now. Nearly everyone there was mellower by a fair few glasses of champagne. They barely noticed her skirting through them. In fact, Rose felt virtually invisible.

She found Lily in the middle of a small group of men, not saying much but paying a lot of attention, and very sober. That was good. For Rose, she would leave this evening behind and return to her normal life. For Lily, this was a chance to meet people, to get her face known and, for her sake, Rose hoped that the evening would turn out to be a success.

She hovered briefly on the fringe, then wandered through the crowd and, after a couple more glasses of wine, found that chatting to them wasn’t the nightmare she had predicted. Somewhere Nick was lurking, although she couldn’t actually see him anywhere.

Like Cinderella, she was ready to leave by the stroke of midnight. She seemed to be in a minority of one. The drink was still flowing, her sister was absorbed talking to a couple of guys, her face fresh and animated, and Rose had had enough. She had listened to people talk about other people, had eavesdropped boring conversations about scripts that had never got off the ground and arguments with directors who didn’t know what they were talking about and lottery grants that should have gone to art projects but had ended up going to crazy organisations that wasted the money and went bankrupt within two years. She had eaten the most amazing finger food she had ever tasted, served by the most attentive staff she had ever seen, and refused enough glasses of wine or champagne to fill a cellar.

After fifteen minutes of trying to attract Lily’s attention, Rose gave up and headed out of the room in search of a breath of fresh air.

Outside was a corridor that circled the club area and off which, like little nodules from a main stem, were rooms behind which were probably offices, although Rose couldn’t tell because the doors were all shut. The floors were pale cream marble, merging into the pale cream marble of the walls, along which hung abstract paintings that looked particularly unappealing in the subdued lighting.

She drifted along, deciding to give her sister precisely half an hour more networking time before dragging her out of the place, and was about to head back when she spotted the light from under the door. It was just a narrow strip, but in the relative darkness of the corridor as bright as a beacon and she didn’t hesitate. She walked right towards it and pushed open the door. She hadn’t known what to expect but she certainly hadn’t expected to find Nick there, installed in front of his computer and surrounded by all the paraphernalia of a home office.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, backing out, but he had already pushed his chair away from the desk and was pinning her in her tracks just by looking at her. A further, more elaborate apology formed somewhere in her mind but didn’t quite manage to connect with her vocal cords, which seemed to have seized up.

In the intervening silence, he propped his feet up on his desk and relaxed back, hands folded behind his head.

‘Looking for something?’ His dark eyebrows rose in amused enquiry and Rose cleared her throat.

‘No. I just happened to be…’

‘Escaping all the fun and laughter? Come in and close the door behind you.’ He paused. ‘Well? I don’t bite. At least, not unless I’m invited to.’

Rose, calm, efficient, always-in-control Rose, was beginning to feel very addled. Of course, she ought to graciously thank him for inviting her to his private function, politely turn down his offer to step inside, which had the vaguely dangerous undertones of what the spider had said to the fly, and hunt down Lily pronto.

She found herself obeying him, however, and shutting the door behind her, although once she had done so her legs refused to cooperate by propelling her towards the chair that he was now indicating.

‘Sit.’

‘I…I’m really on my way out, actually.’ Vocal cords found. Thank heavens! ‘I came outside to get a breath of fresh air and saw…well, the light under the door. What on earth are you doing?’ This was much better. Her brain was beginning to function. She made it to the chair and sat down.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

‘Isn’t it a bit rude for the host to be working at his own party?’

‘I think everyone can manage fine without me for half an hour.’ Nick shrugged and continued to look at her, his expression unreadable. She looked awkward in her dress, as if wearing dresses was not something that came naturally to her but having found herself cornered into buying one, she had opted for the least flattering. Every single woman at the party had made a very special effort to wear something that would make them stand out in the crowd. Rose, on the other hand, had worn something that shrieked background. Briefly, Nick wondered what she would look like underneath the shapeless black garment and drew his breath in sharply, surprised at the thought.

‘Besides, there was no choice. I had an urgent phone call from Australia requesting some information to be emailed to them.’

‘Do you ever stop working?’

‘Occasionally.’ He lowered his eyes. Something about the shape of her breasts, just discernible under the dress, was kick-starting his imagination. ‘Lily seems to be enjoying herself.’

‘Yes. Yes, she does.’

‘But I guess you probably found the whole thing a little…boring…’

She shrugged. ‘Not at all,’ she told him politely.

‘You looked bored every time I saw you.’

‘You were watching me?’

Nick didn’t like the intonation in her voice when she said that. ‘It’s my duty to make sure that my guests are having a good time.’

‘Then I’m surprised your keen sense of duty allowed you to sneak off to this office and work.’ Yet again, she had the nagging, unpleasant suspicion that she was a charity case. ‘Anyway, it was very interesting. It always is, meeting people from different walks of life.’

‘Now why do I get the feeling that you don’t really mean that?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, interested against his will, ‘What’s your walk of life?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I…I work in computers.’ God, that sounded dull, especially when she considered the flamboyant, beautiful people who cluttered his life. How on earth, as a businessman, was he so well connected with the media set? she wondered. Then the question was answered virtually before it was posed. He dated cover girls. Money and looks would always be attracted to money and looks.

‘That’s very interesting.’

‘There’s no need to patronise me.’

‘I’m not. What exactly do you do? In computers?’

‘Nothing very exciting.’

At this point, Nick knew that he should just give up. Getting anything out of this woman was about as rewarding and straightforward as pulling teeth, and if it was one thing he didn’t do, it was to work at making small talk with a woman. But her awkward response was like an invitation to press harder. In front of him, the screensaver came up on the computer and he switched it off.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Look—’ Rose looked at him steadily ‘—I know you probably feel sorry for me…’

‘Why should I feel sorry for you?’

‘Because I don’t slot into your category of an interesting woman.’

‘As you quite rightly pointed out, it’s always an eye opener meeting people from different walks of life.’

‘Well, if you really want to know, I pretty much do everything with computers. Programming, updating systems, designing websites…’ She heard herself rattling off a curriculum vitae that sounded deadly dull. ‘It’s actually very absorbing,’ she stressed.

‘I’m sure it is,’ Nick agreed. ‘Odd that you and your sister should have ended up in such completely different worlds. Computing and acting…’

Rose shrugged and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go and find Lily. It’s late. Time to head back.’

Nick met his fair share of clever, career-oriented women in his working life. He had frequently sat opposite top female lawyers in the early hours of the morning closing deals. Several of them had even tried to flirt with him, but he had never been interested in developing a relationship with any of them outside the boardroom. Put simply, nothing could compete with the archetypal brainless bimbo when it came to relaxation. Who needed to be mentally challenged twenty four seven? He had derived enough mental challenges in his working life.

Or so he had always maintained.

Right now, he was beginning to feel inordinately curious about what the computer whiz kid did in her spare time.

‘Is this a late night for you?’ he asked blandly.

Rose was suitably riled by the question. ‘Not particularly,’ she lied. ‘But there’s a limit to how long I can carry on chatting to people I don’t know about things I’m not particularly interested in.’

‘What would you rather be doing?’

‘Going to bed, as a matter of fact.’

‘With anyone in particular?’

Rose’s mouth dropped open at the sheer audacity of the question, which had sprung from nothing but, once voiced, seemed to fill the room with thick, electric tension.

‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she finally managed to stutter, red-faced. She turned and began walking towards the door, head held high. He might be a millionaire many times over, but that didn’t give him the right to say whatever he wanted to say and ask whatever he wanted to ask, without reserve.

She was aware of him behind her before she had even reached the door and when he stood in front of her, blocking her exit, she had to clench her hands at her sides to steady her nerves.

‘I like things that aren’t my business,’ Nick murmured lazily. ‘So tell me what you do in your spare time. When you go out until the early hours of the morning.’

He towered over her and she felt as if she were suffocating. Was he laughing at her? She rather imagined that he was because he certainly wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He was bored with his own party and had decided to have a little fun at her expense. She was sure of it.

Having worked all that out, it still left her with the little problem of how to get out of the room when he was standing in front of the door like a prison warden with a taste for sadism.

The man was loathsome. Yes, he was sinfully good-looking and, yes, she could see those flashes of charm that turned women into mindless robots ready to do whatever he asked them to do, but to her he was someone who was happy to play with other people, in much the same way as a cat played with a mouse. No serious harm intended, just a spot of good fun.

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Rose told him coolly. ‘Lily’s always been the clubber.’

‘And you’ve always been…what?’ Hand it to her, he thought, she wasn’t going to let herself be daunted by him, even though her mounting colour signalled her discomfort. Nor was she flattered by his interest. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to think of any woman less flattered by his undivided attention. That in itself was an interesting concept.

‘I talk when I go out with my friends,’ Rose said quietly. ‘And I don’t need to drink to excess or have loud music blaring in the background to feel as though I’m having a good time.’

Nick could hear the implicit sarcasm in her voice and was amused by it.

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘And what do you do afterwards?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you’ve had fun setting the world to rights?’

‘I don’t set the world to rights.’ Rose gritted her teeth together and reminded herself that he was just goading her and that the last thing she should do was play into his hands by reacting. ‘And even if we did sit around setting the world to rights, it would still be a heck of a lot more fun than slowly getting drunk and bitching about everyone and everything.’

‘Referring to anyone in particular?’

‘Several in general,’ she said waspishly, ‘and they’re all out there. I believe they’re called your friends.’

If she had hoped to insult him, then she had been mistaken, because instead of being suitably offended he just burst out laughing.

When he laughed, really laughed…

Rose’s skin prickled and she felt jumpy and weak at the same time, as if her bones were turning into hot liquid, no longer able to support her body.

‘I’m glad you find that funny,’ she said, and wondered if he, too, could detect the high-pitched panic in her voice. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she badly needed to leave the room.

‘Oh, I do…but you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘I didn’t realise you’d asked one.’ She gave a deep, exaggerated sigh, which she hoped would convey to him just how fed up she was with their conversation.

‘About what you do after you finish discussing deep and meaningful things with your friends. In quiet rooms. Over some invigorating glasses of mineral water.’ Nick grinned. In actual fact, he had headed to the office to have a break from the noise of the party, which was an event he had arranged solely for Lily’s benefit. What an altruist he was turning out to be.

Work was always an absorbing diversion, but right now he couldn’t care less about work because he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was also more curious than ever to find out just a little bit more about the woman in front of him who was, right at this moment, barely managing to restrain herself from hitting him as hard as she could. He imagined that she could probably throw a pretty good punch. None of the usual female face-slapping before bursting into tears. More a sock to the jaw and then, when he was rubbing his face, another for good measure.

‘I don’t know what you’re going on about and I think you should head back before they send out a search party.’

‘Hardly likely considering most of them are far too inebriated to have even missed me, and what I’m going on about is whether, when your crazy late nights are over, you head back to your place for wild sex…do you?’

‘I told you—that’s none of your business.’ Now she really needed to get out because something was happening and, while she didn’t quite know what, she did know that it was…dangerous for her. And thankfully he stepped aside. He even opened the door for her, but before she could make a break to the safety of the crowded club he was leaning down to her; she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear and it made her shiver.

‘I take it that means no?’

She wanted to run but she didn’t. She walked away, head held high, without bothering to dignify his smirking remark with an answer.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN Rose looked at the screen of her computer terminal she had the strangest sensation. Instead of seeing her programme run, she saw a face. His face. It was infuriating. Not only had the man got under her skin at the party nearly a week ago, but he was continuing to get under her skin when she should be concentrating on her work. She couldn’t figure it out because she had pointedly avoided mentioning him to Lily and out of sight should have meant out of mind.

Just as well her office wasn’t the sort of cosy little place where people might notice that she had been staring at the same code for the past fifteen minutes. In fact, the big pull about Fedco, when she had joined it five years previously, had been its size. Squatting like a giant patriarch on a retail site just outside London, it had been easily accessible by car, thereby enabling Rose to avoid the vagaries of the London transport system, and, once inside, she had been able to lose herself in the enormity of the building. Her friends all joked about leaving it behind, moving on to somewhere small, chic, designer and innovative where they could really exploit their talents, but in truth the thought of being at the cutting edge of technology in some small, upwardly mobile company terrified her. Small and cutting edge, in her head, spelt insecurity, whereas Fedco was as secure as they came, never mind that you were more a number than a face.

And where else could she sit scowling without someone telling her to get on with her work?

In between her scowls, she kept a sharp eye on the clock. She had never been one to clock-watch but she couldn’t wait to leave the building and get back home, where she could put her feet up and drag her thoughts away from her sister’s high-handed, arrogant boyfriend by watching a couple of hours of mindless television.

With fifteen minutes to go and just as she was finally beginning to get into her stride, an excited Maggie flew to her desk and announced, sotto voce, that there was a man waiting in Reception for her.

‘What man?’ Rose asked suspiciously, using the interruption as an excuse to switch off her computer and begin gathering her belongings.

‘A dishy one.’

‘I don’t know any dish…Hang on, what exactly does he look like?’ She could feel the colour crawling into her face.

‘Oh, you know, tall and dark and drop dead gorgeous.’

‘What the heck is he doing here?’

‘He who?’ Maggie looked as if swooning would become a real possibility within the next few minutes.

‘He my sister’s boyfriend.’ Rose slammed some files into her briefcase and banged it shut. ‘He the most arrogant man on the face of the earth…he the person with the manners of a wild boar…that he…’

‘Oh. Trust Lily to snap up another good one.’ Maggie visibly wilted. ‘Must be tough having a sister it’s impossible to compete with…not that I meant…not that I mean…’

‘I know what you meant, Mags, and you’re right—on the looks front she’s a hard act to follow…and she’s nice with it…’ Rose stood up, stuck on her coat and felt her stomach clench at the prospect of seeing Nick. ‘Although I’ve got to say that this is the sort of man that no woman in her right mind would dream of competing for. One of those “love ’em and leave ’em” types of guys who see women as notches on their bedpost, the more the merrier.’ The office was beginning to thin out as everybody began the exodus, off to enjoy the beginning of their weekend. ‘I mean—’ she leaned towards Maggie who gave a little yelp and stepped back ‘—the man is everything a woman should steer clear of—’