good looks and his casually presented charm. He handled people with a low-key edginess that made them work all the harder to earn themselves an impressed glance or an approving smile.
Smooth, Mia described as she soaked him in like the rest of them.
Then he ruined it for her when he turned to her and said, ‘OK, this is where I leave you on your own for a while.’
Like a kick in the gut she instantly turned as white as parchment. Nikos released a sigh, catching her by the shoulders and turning her to face him.
‘All you have to do is circulate and listen. If you know what they’re talking about, join in. If you don’t know what they’re talking about, then ask questions,’ he relayed as if it was really that simple. ‘People don’t mind being asked questions. In fact, they like to show off their knowledge. What they don’t like is someone pretending to know what they’re talking about when they don’t. OK?’
Pressing the tremor out of her lips Mia nodded.
‘And you’re a Balfour,’ he reminded her. ‘The people here know you are a Balfour and they’re going to just love to welcome you into their group on the strength of your name alone. In fact it’s going to be them hoping to impress you so you will remember them to Oscar.’
‘Not to you?’
‘To me too,’ Nikos agreed. ‘If they ask you anything too personal shoot them down the way you like to do to me,’ he went on. ‘You have spirit, Mia, use it to your advantage. Always be polite. Always be aware of how much you’re drinking. I will come and find you in, say, half an hour when we are due to go into dinner.’
Glancing down at the fine silver watch circling her wrist which Tia Giulia had bought her for her last birthday, she said, ‘OK,’ with only a tiny scared tremor showing in her voice.
Nikos heard it though and released a sigh.
‘It’s OK—really,’ she said and straightened her shoulders. ‘This is work—yes? I have to treat it that way.’
Still he hesitated, giving her the impression he wanted to say something else, and for some reason Mia found herself holding her breath.
Then he instructed, ‘Don’t bolt,’ and walked away.
For the next half-hour Mia braved the sharp jaws of socialising. Like Nikos had said, it was easier than she expected because people did recognise her instantly and it tended to be them drawing her into their conversation rather than her needing to butt in.
Nikos wished he’d found it easy to walk away from her but he hadn’t. He felt as if he’d abandoned a puppy on the fast lane of a motorway. But he needed to speak to some people about Lassiter-Brunel. During Mia’s research exercise she had—admittedly unwittingly—exposed some business issues that were bothering him. OK, he reasoned, so he had pulled out of the deal they were trying to broker, but he’d done that for personal reasons. It was only this morning when he had gone back to the office to look through Mia’s file that he had picked up on other things that troubled him.
She was good at ferreting, he acknowledged with an inner smile. But other colleagues in the same business might not have a ferret that looked so beautiful Brunel would let his professional guard slip to the point anyone would question whether he was as reputable as he made out.
Hearing himself using Mia’s choice of word made Nikos grimace at the same moment that a set of slender long fingers coiled around his arm. ‘So you’ve been landed with Oscar’s little cuckoo,’ a mocking voice purred.
Glancing down Nikos found a smile for the beautiful but dangerous socialite-cum-gossip-columnist Diana Fischer who’d sidled up against him.
‘Who would have believed Oscar could be such a deliciously secretive dark horse,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps it’s as well that the scandal broke after poor Lillian departed to the afterlife. Imagine her horror if she’d been here to discover that the man she had been married to for twenty years had still been busy sowing his wild oats right up to and beyond their marriage.’
She was fishing for knowledge, timing details, that Nikos was not going to reveal. Setting his teeth together behind the relaxed line of his mouth, he drawled, ‘Still enjoying playing the heartless bitch, Diana?’
‘I’m heartless?’ Her lovely green eyes opened wide. ‘Tell me, Nikos, how many hearts have you broken since you became sexually active?’
‘I was referring to your lack of respect for the dead.’
‘I adored Lillian,’ Diana declared. ‘Everybody did. I thought I was being sympathetic towards her.’ She pouted up at him. ‘After all, who would want to find out that her husband had been laying into another woman?’
‘Remind me,’ Nikos murmured, ‘why is Lance in the process of divorcing you?’
‘Oh.’ The luscious pout became pronounced. ‘That was so below the belt, Nikos.’
Nikos released a dry laugh. Diana was a bitch and a brazen one but at least she never pretended to be anything else. He liked that about her—so long as she kept her barbs out of Oscar and his daughters.
Or one particular daughter, he amended, unable to stop himself from glancing across the room to hunt her down. He caught sight of her dark head in amongst a group of younger people and wasn’t sure he liked the odd stinging sensation that ran down his front.
‘The cuckoo is different from the other seven, isn’t she,’ Diana prodded lightly, following his gaze. ‘She’s so shy and reserved—just look at the way she’s blushing at whatever Joel Symons is saying to her…’
Nikos was looking.
‘She doesn’t have a clue how to deal with people like us.’
‘Like us?’ Nikos was curious enough to pick up on the comment.
‘Well, we’ve already established that I’m a heartless bitch and you’re a ruthless heart-breaker. And there is a room full of both those types here tonight. Elegant, bored, social spinners,’ she extended candidly. ‘Men with their egos in their wallets and their pants, and women with theirs in the exact same two places—and I meant in the men’s,’ she made clear. ‘The cuckoo stares at us all as if we are aliens and I don’t really blame her. Think what it must have been like for her to be launched like a bomb into Balfour society after spending all of her life halfway up a mountain, growing plants.’
‘And perhaps she recognises that she’s sauce for tongues like yours,’ Nikos offered up.
And realised suddenly that he was right. Mia was not overwhelmed by the greatness of the elevated company her new life had thrown her into the midst of; she was overwhelmed by her own notoriety as Oscar Balfour’s shockingly exposed illegitimate child.
‘Do me a favour, Diana,’ he said quietly. ‘Keep your barbs out of Mia.’
‘And you will do what for me?’ she shot back.
Leaning down Nikos brushed a light kiss to one of her smooth cheeks. ‘Respect you,’ he murmured and walked away.
Mia saw the kiss and wondered what the name of that particular blonde was. He had beautiful blondes coming
