the proffered hand as she drew near, quickly assessing her baggy white coat and huge glasses. So this was Isobella Nolan? ‘We meet at last, Isobella.’
Alex bowed his head slightly, and Isobella was curiously charmed by the old-fashioned gesture. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly parched, and forced a polite smile to her lips, ignoring the warmth of the big hand enveloping hers. She felt a silly flutter in her stomach.
‘Nice to meet you, Dr Zaphirides,’ she murmured.
At five-eleven Isobella didn’t usually have to look up too far, but Alex had a good few inches on her. She blinked as she took in his features, her gaze zooming in on the splendour of his face. The man looked as if he really had just descended from Mount Olympus. His face was a work of art. Nobel and statuesque, with two indentations bracketing the chiselled perfection of his mouth.
He could have sat for Rodin. He certainly could have modelled for GQ. The planes of his face were sublime, his bone structure magnificent. His square jaw was dusted with dark stubble and his head was crowned with dark, lush locks styled into just-got-out-of-bed tousled glory, completing his god-like stature.
Alex dropped his hand. ‘I think it’s about time you called me Alex.’
His husky request brushed along her nerve-endings as his gaze captured hers. She was forced to concede that his eyes were almost as compelling as his voice. They were blue—a surprise, given his bronze colouring. A blue like she’d never seen before.
No, that wasn’t true. She had seen it before. On a photo shoot on the volcanic isle of Santorini in Greece. The exact blue of the Aegean had been difficult to label back then, but she knew she was seeing it replicated in the cerulean depths of Alex Zaphirides’s gaze.
She nodded. ‘Of course, Dr… I mean, Alex.’
He laughed at her stumble, a sexy rasping chuckle that deepened the indentations either side of his mouth into flirty dimples and flashed a glimpse of his perfect white teeth. She looked away, momentarily dazzled, her gaze drawn to the bob of his Adam’s apple in the bronzed column of his throat.
His open-necked shirt afforded her an unrestricted view, and her eyes widened at the large, L-shaped surgical scar that bisected half of his neck and ran up towards his right ear. It was white and faded, but still a noticeable mark. No wonder his voice was so gravelly. He’d obviously done some serious damage at some stage. But how? Which rumour was true?
Below it, a smaller but much more livid scar marred the centre of his throat. It was only a centimetre or so long, but it was raised, almost keloid in nature. She knew what it was without even having to ask, for she had a matching one of her own. At some stage in his life he’d had a tracheostomy. Were the two scars related?
She raised her hand nervously to her own throat, grateful to feel the familiar comforting presence of material covering her own unsightly blemish. She marvelled at how at ease with them Alex had to be to show his scars off to the world. Sixteen years later, she still reviled the marks that had disfigured her. She couldn’t imagine a time when she’d ever be at ease with them.
‘Where is everyone?’ Alex enquired.
‘They’re in the staffroom, having lunch,’ Isobella said, conscious of the thrum of blood through her head.
‘And you?’
She frowned. He was looking expectantly at her, but it seemed all her usual thought processes were scrambled by his sandpaper voice and the sexier-than-Zeus vibes he emitted. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You don’t eat lunch?’ He looked her up and down. Beneath her primly buttoned, baggy white coat he could just make out a lanky frame, and despite the distraction of her hideous too-big-for-her-face glasses her dainty bone structure was clearly evident. His mother would cluck her tongue in disapproval.
Isobella blushed under his scrutiny. He was looking at her as if she was a particularly uninteresting lab specimen. A first for her. Most men needed to fall prey to her sharp tongue and experience her specialised freezing-out routine before they looked at her with such complete uninterest.
She shrugged. ‘I usually just grab a bite at my desk. There’s always so much to do.’
Alex frowned. Just last week Reg had mentioned Isobella’s tendency to become completely absorbed in her work. Her dedication was impressive, but Isobella Nolan was a workplace health and safety nightmare. ‘You do understand the importance of regular breaks? It’s not good for you to be hunched over a microscope all day.’
Isobella blinked. She’d have thought Alexander Zaphirides would understand her drive. She’d bet good money he hadn’t got to where he was today, a pin-up boy for medical enterprise, by strict adherence to the rules. ‘Don’t worry. I mix it up.’
Alex frowned again. He suspected from what Reg said that she didn’t ‘mix it up’ as much as she should. ‘Good. I can’t afford to have one of my team leaders and best researchers off work because she isn’t following guidelines. The project must always be paramount.’
The intenseness of his Aegean gaze as it burrowed into hers was intimidating, and she nodded dumbly as his husky compliment was completely obliterated by his gravelly reprimand of her work practices. ‘Of course, Dr Zaphirides.’ She saw his full lips flatten. ‘I mean…Alex.’
He nodded. Her prim politeness bothered him for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’
Isobella could only stare after him. His long-legged, narrow-hipped, broad-shouldered retreat was fascinating, despite the slow burn of pique rising in her chest. The last thing she saw as he disappeared was the decadent brush of his hair against his collar.
She almost sagged to the ground in relief when he left, and stumbled back to her desk, sitting down with shaking knees. The whole atmosphere had seemed charged by his enigmatic presence, and she was pleased to be alone as reaction to his sheer masculine beauty took over.
Well, the rumours weren’t wrong. He was sexy and autocratic in spades, and his commanding Greek heritage gave him an edge—an extra dollop of authority that was impressive. Quite what he was doing locked away in a lab she wasn’t sure. Alexander Zaphirides should be gracing magazine covers, selling aftershave and whisky and expensive watches.
And Isobella knew what she was talking about. At the zenith of her international career she’d worked with some of the world’s top male models. She had no doubt that Alex could have moved easily amongst their number.
She groaned inwardly. Great! Not only did the man have a voice that could practically bring her to orgasm over the phone, but he had a body that was giving her the vapours after only a few minutes in his company. What the hell was the matter with her? The man had wrapped a thinly veiled criticism in a compliment. Questioned her commitment to the project. No one did that.
How dare he?
Two hours later, Alex watched Isobella surreptitiously as she peered through her microscope. The dreadful large dark-rimmed glasses that marred her face butted against the eyepieces of the scope. Her long platinum-blonde fringe had flopped forward from its side parting, and instead of sweeping elegantly across her forehead, as it had earlier, it obscured her face from him.
Her hair was cropped severely at the back, almost boyish in its brevity, shaped into the contours of her skull, exposing cute ears and feathered lightly at her nape. He caught
