you play…?’
He smiled slightly as he saw she was looking across at the piano.
‘A little.’
‘And do you play well?’
‘Passably.’ He shrugged.
‘I’m sure that if you play even a little you do it very well indeed,’ she chided teasingly.
Drakon crossed the room to stand beside her. The softness of her perfume was an enticing mixture of flowers and beautiful woman. ‘Why do you say that?’ he prompted.
She smiled widely. ‘I don’t know you very well, but I already know enough about you to realise you’re the type of man who, if he chooses to do something, will never do it “passably” well!’ Once again that smile faltered and then disappeared as she seemed to realise exactly what she’d just said. And its obvious sexual implications…
Drakon chuckled huskily as that becoming blush once again coloured the ivory smoothness of her cheeks. ‘I will take that as a compliment…’
Gemini wasn’t at all comfortable with the sudden intimacy between them—an intimacy she knew she was completely responsible for creating with her thoughtless comment!
Was it because she hadn’t completely dispelled those earlier images of a naked Drakon Lyonedes emerging from the shower from her mind? Probably. She found it a little difficult to think of him in the abstract at all when he was standing beside her. So hot and immediate. As well as dark and dangerously attractive!
She moistened her lips. ‘Perhaps we should just concentrate on our business discussion?’
Those dark eyes narrowed, and his mouth was once again a thin and uncompromising line. ‘In that case I believe we must first dispense with your mistaken belief that I am currently involved in a personal relationship with your stepmother.’
Gemini turned, her eyes wide. ‘Mistaken…?’
‘Certainly.’ Drakon frowned. ‘I have always made a point of never mixing business with pleasure.’
‘But—’ She gave a slightly dazed shake of her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is simple enough, surely?’ He raised those arrogant dark brows. ‘I have no idea why you should have drawn such a conclusion, but I assure you my only connection to your stepmother is one of business. In the form of my purchase of Bartholomew House,’ he added, so that there should be absolutely no doubt as to his meaning.
Gemini stared up at him wordlessly. He looked sincere enough. In fact he looked more than sincere—his handsome face was now visibly showing an expression of extreme distaste at the mere suggestion that he might be involved in an affair with Angela…
But her stepmother had told her—
A lie…?
What possible reason could Angela have had to lie about being involved in an intimate relationship with Drakon?
Knowing the other woman as well as Gemini had come to know Angela since her father had died, she found the answer was suddenly all too obvious.
Gemini had tried so hard to like Angela when her father had first introduced her as the woman he intended to marry. Despite the vast age difference between Angela and Miles. Despite the fact that Gemini had believed her father was rushing too hastily into a second marriage. And in spite of the fact that Angela had given every appearance of being nothing more than a voluptuous blonde beauty attracted to Miles’s money rather than the man himself.
Yes, despite all those things Gemini had still tried to like and get along with the older woman. For her father’s sake, if for no other reason, because she’d known how much he had wanted his second wife and his daughter to be friends.
Whenever the two women had been in Miles’s company that had always appeared to be the case. It had only been when Gemini found herself alone with the other woman that Angela’s hostility had become so blatantly obvious, in the form of cutting remarks or long, uncomfortable silences.
It had quickly become obvious to Gemini that, other than Miles, the two women had absolutely nothing in common, and that even that common interest differed greatly in its intent. Angela had wanted and demanded all of Miles’s attention for herself. The existence of his twenty-something daughter had been more of an embarrassment than anything else. Whereas Gemini had just wanted to see her father happy again.
Angela asking her to move out of the house once she’d married Miles had certainly been no hardship to Gemini. She had only moved back into Bartholomew House after her mother died so that her father wouldn’t be left alone there with only his memories. It had been perfectly natural for her to move out again in order to leave the newly married couple to their privacy.
It was the fact that Angela had made the request without Miles’s knowledge and knowing full well that Gemini would never tell him what she had done that had been hard to bear. Angela had made it obvious to Gemini that she resented any time father and daughter spent together—to the point that she’d ensured it rarely happened. It had been an attitude that was never visible whenever Miles was present. Angela’s behaviour then had been sickeningly kittenish as she’d continued to wrap her much older and totally smitten husband about her manicured, sexy little finger.
In the circumstances, was it any wonder that Angela had enjoyed implying to Gemini that she had managed to capture the interest of someone like Drakon Lyonedes—a man half Miles’s age and probably a dozen times richer?
Knowing Angela as well as she did, Gemini thought the other woman believed it was only a matter of time, anyway, until she made the fabricated affair into a reality. So what did it matter if she’d exaggerated the situation to Gemini now? And if it didn’t happen who was ever going to contradict Angela’s claims when the man himself was so utterly elusive?
Except Gemini had now met Drakon, and she felt extremely foolish for having believed the other woman’s boast about his being infatuated with her. Gemini had no doubt Angela was lying to her; Drakon Lyonedes wasn’t the type of man to be infatuated with any woman. Besides, being so arrogantly self-assured he obviously never felt the need to lie about any of his actions—least of all his involvement with a woman!
‘Am I right in assuming this information was given to you by your stepmother?’ he prompted harshly.
Gemini flinched at the disgust underlying his tone. ‘Perhaps I misunderstood her.’ She gave an uncomfortable lift of her shoulders. ‘I—She mentioned how…nice you were.’ Sexily gorgeous had been her exact words, actually, but Gemini really couldn’t bring herself to tell him that! ‘Maybe I just let my imagination take that a step further than Angela actually intended—’
‘I believe you assured me earlier that you do not lie?’ Drakon cut in.
She winced. ‘I try not to, no…’
‘Then do not do so now,’ he advised her coldly.
‘I believe I said I might have been mistaken,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘And do you really believe that?’
‘What I believe is that Angela was trying to
