looking right up at her, trapping her. She watched as he took her wrist and brought it to his mouth. He pressed his lips against the sensitive skin on the underside. And then she felt his tongue flick out to taste her there, right against her pulse. With a strangled cry that spoke more of desire than disgust, she yanked her hand away and ran, aiming for the toilet at the back, his mocking chuckle following her all the way. Any complacency she’d felt in the past week was blown sky-high to smithereens. He’d just been biding his time.
She locked herself in with shaking hands and looked at herself in the small, unforgiving mirror. She had to fatally and finally accept the knowledge that she desired this man. It wasn’t just his indisputable charisma, it was him. And his effect on her. She wanted him with a hunger that she’d always intellectualised as something she’d never experience. Except now she was. And it was ten million times worse than anything she could have ever imagined.
This was nothing short of catastrophic when she’d happily devoted herself to a life that had promised to offer up only the sort of passion she could handle. Safe, staid, unexciting. She hadn’t committed herself to being celibate—she did hope to one day meet someone and settle down, perhaps even have children—but at no point had she ever hoped for the kind of fulfilment that was a deep throbbing ache within her right now.
She’d unconsciously left her hair loose, and now she bundled it up again, tight, digging out some hairpins from her pocket to hold it in place. Then she searched for and found the comforting frames of her glasses. She’d kept them close by but hadn’t worn them all week, as she’d been genuinely afraid of what Aristotle might do, but now she needed to send him a message once and for all. Lucy Proctor was not available and not interested. And never would be. If she told herself that enough, she might actually believe it.
Even though Aristotle might be laughing at Lucy’s reaction, his body most certainly wasn’t laughing. His body had never felt so serious and intent on one thing: carnal satisfaction, and with that woman. He burned from head to toe with it. The past week had been pure torture. They’d worked in such close proximity that it had taken all of his strength and will-power not to sweep aside the paperwork, throw her across his desk and take her there and then.
The only thing holding him back—apart from the very real need to prepare for the merger, and it irked him that that hadn’t been enough—had been Lucy’s own reaction. Any other woman, knowing that he desired her would have happily laid herself bare for his delectation. But not Lucy. She’d avoided his eye—she’d avoided him at all costs. She’d scurried out every night and been there quietly, studiously working every morning. Buttoned up and covered up to within an inch of her life in shapeless boxy suits.
It inflamed him and perplexed him. He’d genuinely never had to deal with this before. But what it was doing was raising the stakes, and raising his blood pressure. He was too proud to force her, even though he knew she wasn’t far from tipping over the edge, but damned if he’d do it.
No, she would come to him, just as he’d declared. When she was weak with longing and stir crazy with desire she’d come to him, and this build-up would finally explode in a blaze of mutual satisfaction. He heard the bathroom door click open behind him and shifted in his seat to ease the constriction of his trousers. He picked up some work papers resignedly and it chafed—because he was not a man used to resigning himself to things.
For now, though, he’d use work to drown out his clamouring pulse. He would not let her see the roiling waves of frustration that gripped him and tossed him like a tiny boat in a thundering storm. When she came and sat down opposite him, and that sensual womanly smell that was so at odds with her prim appearance teased his nostrils and made his arousal even more acute, he almost groaned.
He looked up for a second. Predictably, she was looking down, immersed in papers. He saw what she’d done to her hair and the firmly reinstated glasses. He felt a surge of adrenalin and thought to himself, Fine, if that’s the way you want it.
He pulled out his laptop and fired off a curt but informative e-mail to his assistant in Athens, instructing her to have everything ready by the time they landed in two hours. For someone with his wealth and resources, what he’d just asked for shouldn’t be hard to pull off, and as he sat back he realised with a jolt that once again he felt more alive than he’d done in months.
The fact that the merger was once again relegated to second place raised just the dimmest clanging bell in his consciousness.
CHAPTER FIVE
A fEW hours later, Lucy sat on the bed of a palatial suite in one of the most expensive hotels in Athens. She’d never seen such opulence and luxury in her life. Everyone here seemed to talk in hushed tones. She’d even found herself almost whispering thank you to the concierge who’d shown her to her room.
Her mouth quirked dryly. Needless to say, the manager himself had shown Aristotle to his room. She’d seen that they were more or less next door to each other, he in the Royal Suite and she in a smaller adjoining one, although she had no intention of using the interconnecting door that had been pointed out to her. She was already far too close to her boss for comfort.
Feeling antsy, she got up and wandered about the room for a bit, looking out of the window, taking in the view of Syntagma Square and its elegant lines and trees. She hadn’t expected Athens to be so … elegant. She’d seen the Acropolis in the distance and felt a lurch of joy; even though she’d travelled extensively due to her peripatetic childhood, she never tired of seeing famous monuments.
Her thoughts went inward. She hadn’t failed to notice that the closer they’d got to Athens, the more tense Aristotle had grown—until by the time they’d been walking through the airport, his hand tight on her elbow, he’d been positively radioactive. She knew it had nothing to do with her. She suspected it had something to do with the way that, whenever he had to deal with his stepmother or half-brother, he always seemed to go inwards and become monosyllabic. Clearly there was no love lost between him and his family or his ancestral home, and it made Lucy wonder about that—before she realised what she was doing and put a halt to her wayward thoughts.
She checked her watch. They were due to have informal drinks with Parnassus and his team in one hour and she had to wash and change, but there was still no sign of her luggage. Lucy called down to Reception, and what the girl said made her frown.
‘I’m sorry? You say my clothes are here? But I’m still waiting for my case.’
The hotel receptionist’s tone was smooth, as if she was used to dealing with recalcitrant hotel guests. ‘I think if you check your wardrobe, Miss Proctor you’ll find everything hanging up and ready for your use. The chest of drawers is also full.’
Lucy thanked her faintly and put the phone down. She knew that Aristotle’s wealth could just about do anything, but surely it couldn’t magically conjure up her suitcase, unpack and store all her clothes without her even noticing? With a snaking feeling of something slithering down her spine, Lucy threw open the ornate door of the wardrobe in the corner and gasped.
It was full, heaving with a myriad assortment of every piece of clothing any one woman could possibly hope for. Day-wear, casual wear, evening-wear. Lucy flicked past dresses and suits and trousers and shirts and wraps and capes, feeling more and more dizzy as she did so. All sorts of shoes were lined up below the hanging clothes.
She backed away from the wardrobe with something like horror in her chest, and went to open the drawers of the chest beside the wardrobe. She pulled out T-shirts, shorts, casual trousers, capri pants … They all fell from nerveless fingers. There was thousands of euros’ worth of clothes in front of her and not one stitch
