that was possible now was to go on feeling the wonderful flush of heat coursing through her. She fought it down as best she could, willing it to leave her—to leave her alone—just as she’d told him to go, just go away...
She shut her eyes, sighing heavily—hopelessly. OK—OK, she reasoned, so face it. However rude, arrogant and obnoxious he was, he was also—yup, she had to admit it—absolutely, totally and completely drop-dead devastating.
She’d registered it instantly—it would have been impossible not to—the minute she’d turned round with Joe’s sandwich to see just who it was who’d spoken to her in such a brusque, demanding fashion. Registered it, but had promptly busied herself in making Joe’s tea, pinning her eyes on pouring it out and ladling sugar into it the way Joe needed it.
But she’d been conscious of that first glimpse of Mr Drop-dead Devastating burning a hole in her retina—burning its way into her brain—so that all she’d wanted to do was lift her gaze and let it do what it had been trying to do with an urgency she still bewailed and berated.
Which was simply to stare and stare and stare...
At everything about him.
His height...his lean, fit body, sheathed in that hand-tailored suit that had fitted him like a glove, reaching across wide shoulders and moulding his broad chest just as the expanse of pristine white shirt had.
But it wasn’t his designer suit or even his lean physique that was dominating her senses now.
It was his eyes. Eyes that were night-dark and like tempered steel in a face that was constructed in some particular way that outdid every male she’d ever seen—on-screen or off. Chiselled jaw, strong nose, tough-looking cheekbones, winged brows and always, always, those ludicrously long-lashed, gold-flecked eyes that were lethal weapons entirely on their own.
That was what she’d wanted to gaze at, and that was what had been searing through her head all through their snarling exchange.
And then, as if a switch had been thrown, he’d suddenly changed the subject...
More heat coursed through her as the physical memory of how he’d looked at her hit her again. Turning the blatant focus of his male reaction on her like a laser beam. One that had burned right through her.
The slow wash of his gaze had poured over her like warm, molten honey—like a silken touch to her skin. It had felt as though he were caressing her, as if she could actually feel his hands shaping her body, his mouth lowering to hers to taste, to tease...to arouse.
All that in a single sensual glance...
And then, when she’d been helpless—pathetically, abjectly helpless—to do anything other than tell him—beg him—to leave, what had he done? He’d laughed! Laughed at her—knowing perfectly well how he’d got the better of her, how he’d made a cringing mockery of her defiance.
The colour in her cheeks turned to hectic spots as anger burned out that shaming blush he’d conjured in her.
Damn him!
Fuming, she went on staring blindly out through the shop door. She could no longer see him. With a final damning adjuration to herself to stop thinking of him, and everything about him, she whirled around to get on with her work.
Washing up had never been so noisy, nor slicing bread so vicious.
‘DID YOU HAVE those flowers delivered?’
It was the first question Nikos found himself asking as he returned to his London office after his meeting that afternoon. He did not doubt that his PA had complied, for she was efficiency itself—and she was used to despatching flowers to the numerous assorted females that featured in his life when he was in the UK.
But not usually to females who worked in sandwich bars...
Mouthy, contrary females who gave him a hard time...
Possessed of looks so stunning he still could not get them out of his head...
He gave a shake of his head, clearing the memory and settling himself down at his desk. There really was no point thinking about the blonde any more. Let alone speculating, as he found himself wanting to do, on just what she might look like if she were dressed in an outfit that adorned her extraordinary beauty.
How much more beautiful could she look?
The question rippled through his mind, and in its wake came a ripple of something that was not idle speculation but desire...
With her hair loosened, a gown draping her slender yet rounded figure, her sapphire eyes luminous and long-lashed...
He cut the image. She’d been a fleeting fiery encounter and nothing more.
No, he thought decisively, switching on his PC, he’d sent flowers to atone for his rudeness—provoking though she’d been—and he would leave it at that. He had women enough to choose from—no need to add another one.
He flicked open his diary to see what was coming up in the remainder of his sojourn in London. His father, chairman of the family-run Athens-based investment bank, left that city reluctantly these days, and Nikos found himself doing nearly all the foreign travel that running the bank required.
A frown moved fleetingly across his brow. At least here in London he was spared his father’s wandering into the office to make one of his habitual complaints about Nikos’s mother. The moment Nikos got back to Athens, though, he knew there would be a litany of complaints awaiting him, while his father indulged himself and offloaded. Then—predictably—the next time he saw his mother a reciprocal litany would be pressed upon him...
With a sigh of exasperation he pushed his interminably warring parents out of his head space. There was never going to be an end to their virulent verbal attacks on each other, their incessant sniping and backbiting. It had gone on for as long as Nikos could remember, and he was more than fed up with it.
Briskly, he ran an eye down the diary page and then frowned again—for quite a different reason this time.
Damn.
His frown deepened. How had he got himself involved in that? A black-tie charity bash at the Viscari St James Hotel this coming Friday evening.
In itself, that would not have been a problem. What was a problem, though, was that he could see from the diary that the evening included Fiona Pellingham. Right now that woman was not someone he wanted to encounter.
A high-flying mergers-and-acquisitions expert at a leading business consultancy, Fiona had taken an obvious shine to Nikos during a business meeting on his last visit to London, and had made it strikingly clear to him that she’d very much like to make an acquisition of him for herself.
But for all her striking brunette looks and svelte figure she was, as Nikos had immediately realised, the possessive type, and she would want a great deal more from him than the passing affair that was all he ever indulged in when it came to
