didn’t want him standing on the other side of a curtain while she tried to cram her awkward-looking body into suitable clothes. She didn’t want to see the disbelieving faces of the sales assistants as they wondered what someone like him was doing with someone like her. Shopping for clothes was a nightmare experience at the best of times, but throwing the arrogant Alek into the mix would make it a million times worse. ‘Hang around outside the changing room,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
She shrugged. Why not tell him the truth? ‘I’m self-conscious about my body.’
He poured himself a cup of coffee. ‘Why?’
‘Because I am, that’s why.’ She glared at him. ‘Most women are—especially when they’re pregnant.’
His gaze slid over her navel, his expression suggesting he wasn’t used to looking at a woman in a way which wasn’t sexual. ‘I should have thought that my own reaction to your body would have been enough to reassure you that I find it very attractive indeed.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ she said, unwilling to point out that lately he hadn’t shown the slightest interest in her body, because wouldn’t that make her seem vulnerable? ‘I’m not willing to do a Cinderella transformation scene with you as an audience.’
He opened his mouth and then, shutting it again, he sighed. ‘Okay. So what if I act as your chauffeur for the day? I’ll drive you to a department store and park up somewhere and wait. And you can text me when you’re done. How does that sound?’
It sounded so reasonable that Ellie couldn’t come up with a single objection and soon she was seated beside him in the car as he negotiated the morning traffic. She was slightly terrified when he dropped her off outside the store, but she’d read enough magazines to know that she was perfectly entitled to request the services of a personal shopper. And it didn’t seem to matter that she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt or that her untrimmed fringe was flopping into her eyes like a sheepdog—because the elegant woman assigned to her made no judgements. She delicately enquired what Ellie’s upper price limit was. And although Ellie’s instinct was to go for the cheapest option, she knew Alek wouldn’t thank her for shopping on a budget. He’d once drawlingly told her that it was the dream of every woman to get her hands on his credit card, so why disappoint him? Why not try to become the woman that he and his fancy friends would obviously expect her to be?
She quickly discovered how easy shopping was when you had money. You could buy the best. You could complement your outfits with soft leather shoes and pick up a delicate twist of a silk scarf which echoed the detail in a fabric. And expensive clothes really could transform, she decided. The luscious fabrics seemed to flatter her shape, rather than highlight her defects.
The shopper persuaded her into the dresses she usually rejected on the grounds that jeans were more practical, and Ellie found she liked the swish of the delicate fabrics brushing against her skin. She bought all the basic clothes she needed and then picked out a silvery-white wedding gown which did amazing things for her eyes as well as her figure. On impulse, the personal shopper draped a scarlet pashmina around her shoulders—a stole so fine it was almost transparent, and it was that addition which brought glowing life to her skin. Ellie stared at herself in the long mirror.
‘It’s perfect,’ she said slowly.
By the time she emerged from the store wearing some of her purchases, she felt like a new woman.
She saw Alek’s face change as she approached the car, accompanied by two doormen who were weighed down with armfuls of packages. His arm brushed over her back with proprietary courtesy as he held open the car door for her and she stiffened, because just that brief touch felt as if he’d branded her with the heat of his flesh. Was that why he stiffened, too? Why his eyes narrowed and a nerve began to work at his temple? She thought he might be about to touch her again—and wasn’t she longing for him to do just that?—but some car had begun sounding its horn and the noise seemed to snap him out of his uncharacteristic hesitation.
He didn’t say much as they drove to Bond Street, not until they were standing in front of a jeweller’s window which was ablaze with the glitter of a thousand gems. And suddenly he turned to her and his face had that expression she’d seen once before, when all the cool arrogance which defined him had been replaced by a raw and naked hunger.
His finger wasn’t quite steady as it drifted a slow path down over her cheek and he must have felt her shiver in response, because his eyes narrowed.
‘You look...different,’ he said.
‘I thought that was the whole point of the exercise?’ she said, more archly than she had intended. ‘I have to look credible, don’t I, as the future Mrs Sarantos?’
‘But you don’t, Ellie—that’s the thing.’ He gave her an odd kind of smile. ‘You don’t look credible at all. Not with that uptight expression on your face. It’s not the look one might expect from a woman who is just about to marry one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. There’s no real joy or pleasure there, and I think we might have to remedy that. Shall we make a statement to the world about our relationship, poulaki mou? To show them we really do mean business?’
And before Ellie realised what was happening, he was kissing her. Kissing her in full view of the traffic and the security guard and all the upmarket shoppers who were passing them on the pavement. He had wrapped his arms tightly around her and was making her feel as if he owned her. The man who was so famously private was making a very public declaration. And even though her heart was pounding with joy, suddenly she felt like a possession. A woman he was putting his stamp on. His woman; his property.
She tried keeping her lips clamped shut to prevent his tongue from entering her mouth—to let him know that she was not a possession. That he couldn’t just pick her up and put her down when he felt like it. But there was only so much resistance she could put up when he was this determined. When he was splaying his fingers over the bare skin of her back and making it tingle. His hard body was so close that a cigarette paper couldn’t have come between them, and, beneath her delicate new bra, her breasts were growing heavy.
His lips were still brushing against hers and her eyelids fluttered to a close. She thought how crazy it was that so many emotions could be stimulated by a single kiss. Did he realise that she found being in his arms satisfying in all kinds of ways? Ways which were about so much more than sex? She felt safe and secure. Like nothing could ever hurt her while Alek was around. And it was his strength rather than his sensuality which finally melted the last of her reservations. She kissed him back with fervour and passion and, in the process, completely forgot where she was. Her hands reached up to frame his head and she moaned softly as she circled her hips against him, so that in the end it was Alek who pulled back—his eyes smouldering with blue fire.
‘Oh, my,’ he said softly, and a distinctive twang of North Atlantic entered his gravelly Greek accent. ‘Maybe I should have kissed you back at the apartment, if I’d known that this was the reaction I was going to get.’
His words broke the spell and Ellie jerked away with a bitter feeling of self-recrimination. She had allowed herself to be seduced again when this was nothing but a game to him. A stupid, meaningless game. He had kissed her to make a point and she wasn’t sure if it had been a demonstration of power, or just payback time for her expensive new wardrobe. But either way, she was going to get hurt if she wasn’t careful. Badly hurt. She rose up on tiptoe in her new leather pumps, placing her lips to his ear.
‘What was that all about?’
