reported her progress towards the apartment block. The next call would be to inform his employer that she had gone inside the lobby was heading for the lift.
Logging off, he closed the laptop lid with a snap, sliding it into its leather monogrammed carrier case and picking it up as he got to his feet. His car, he knew, was already hovering at the kerb.
He would have to get the timing exactly right. He headed for the front door, holding his mobile, waiting for the ring tone. He paused by the unopened door. Two minutes later the phone rang. The terse, disembodied voice spoke briefly.
‘The target has just entered the building and the lift doors are opening. Ascent to her floor will be complete in nineteen seconds.’
Athan gave his acknowledgement of the message and hung up, counting down the seconds. At zero, he opened his apartment door. Exactly as he did so, the lift doors at the far end of the landing slid open.
Ian Randall’s intended mistress walked out.
Involuntarily, Athan felt his stomach clench. Damn—in the flesh she was even more lovely than she’d looked in the covert photos. Slender, graceful, luminous skin, beautiful eyes, hair like silk—a breathtaking vision.
No wonder Ian can’t resist her!
No man could.
Even as the thought formed in his head he felt its corollary shaping itself—ineluctable, inescapable.
And I don’t have to. In fact not resisting her is exactly what I am here to do … ?.
He could feel masculine reaction creaming through him. Up to now he’d had repeated slivers of doubt as to whether he should actually go through with the course he’d planned—his swift, ruthless method of cutting the Gordian knot of Ian’s disastrous dalliance. Oh, his head might tell him it was the most effective, time-efficient and all round painless way of separating her from Ian, but what was the rest of his body telling him? Could he really go through with what he was planning?
But now, seeing her in the flesh, he felt relief flood through him. Yes, he could do this—there was no reason not to, and every reason to do so.
More than reason …
No—that was something he needed to block right now. He had a task in hand—essential, critical—and that was what he had to focus on. Most definitely not on what his own desires might be. His desires—whatever they were—must be the servant of his purpose. That was what he must not allow himself to forget.
He walked forward, his pace businesslike and decisive, simply heading towards the lift. She’d stopped right there, in front of the doors which were now closing behind her. She seemed momentarily transfixed, and Athan could swear he saw her eyes widen as she watched him walking towards her.
She was reacting to him … reacting just the way he’d hoped she would. Without vanity, he knew it was the reaction he’d expected. The reaction he usually got from women. It would be hypocritical of him not to acknowledge it—not to accept that what women saw was six foot of lean male, with sable hair, and features which, as an accident of genetics—nothing more, and certainly no credit to him—got a resounding female thumbs up. Oh, he didn’t have the kind of blond, boyish looks that Ian Randall had, with his blue eyes and ready smile, but he knew that his own strong, darkly planed features had an impact on women that got him the kind of reaction he was getting now. Just as he wanted …
OK, time to stop assessing the situation and make his next move.
‘Could you hold the lift for me?’
His voice carried the short distance to where she was still standing, apparently immobilised. As he spoke she seemed to come to, and automatically her hand lifted as she half turned to press the call button. Athan continued to close the distance to her, and as the lift doors obediently slid open again he dropped her a slanting smile of appreciation for her courtesy.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured, letting his eyes wash swiftly over her.
Not that there was much ‘letting’ about it. He’d have done it automatically, he knew. Any man would. This close, she was even more stunning. Her wide-set eyes were gazing at him, and her lips were parted as though she were slightly breathless. A light, heady scent of perfume wafted from her, just as enticing as she was …
He stepped through into the lift, pressing the ground floor button. A moment later the doors had closed, shutting her from his field of vision. He felt the lift descend, and just for an instant he experienced a sense of regret.
Regret that he was heading in the opposite direction from her.
Or was it regret for something quite different? The thought flickered through his mind, as he stepped out of the lift and strode across the lobby to his car waiting at the kerb.
Why does she have to be mixed up with Ian Randall …?
The question, just like the image of her standing there so tantalisingly lovely, hovered like an unwelcome intruder. Ruthlessly he banished it, bestowing on his driver, holding open the passenger door of the sleek black saloon car, a brief nod and sliding himself into the leather seat, setting his laptop case down beside him. Such thoughts were pointless and irrelevant. The girl had to be removed from Ian’s orbit, and the threat she presented to his sister liquidated. As swiftly as possible. That was all.
His mouth tightening, he extracted his laptop and resumed his work. He was a busy man—a very busy man. The multinational company he’d inherited from his father, which was one of the major plutocratic mercantile dynasties in Greece, allowed precious little time for R&R. Especially in the current economic climate.
But for all that, he knew he would have to make adequate time to accomplish his mission to save his sister’s marriage—at least for the moment.
For just a moment, no more, he felt that repeated flicker of doubt skitter across his mind. It was one thing to plan such a cold-blooded strategy when gazing at a photograph. Another to execute it.
Impatiently, he banished his doubts. It had to be done, and that was that. Marisa Milburne would come to no harm by his seduction of her. She would have an enjoyable interlude in her life, as luxurious as the one Ian Randall was offering her, and she would be none the worse at the end of it. He had nothing at all to reproach himself with.
Besides, playing around with men who were married was always a dangerous business. If she learnt nothing else from the experience she was about to have, that would be enough. She should never have let herself get as deep as she had with Ian—even if nothing had happened between them yet.
I’ll be doing her a favour, getting her away from Ian—and in a way she can enjoy …
And now that he had seen her in the flesh, knew that she was as lovely as her photo had told him, he knew he would too …
Again burning onto his retinas came the image of the way she’d stood there by the elevator doors, a vision of fair-haired, feature-perfect beauty. For a moment longer he held the image in his mind’s eye, savouring it. Then, as the words of the document he’d loaded came up on the screen, he sliced it from his mind and got to work again.
Marisa let herself into her flat, her mind a daze. It had taken only moments—sliding open the lift
