said drily, ‘Allow me to introduce my housekeeper, Miss Stanford. Isla, this is my son, Andreas.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she murmured.
Her voice made Andreas think of a cool mountain stream and at that precise moment he would have gladly jumped into an ice bath to put out the fire raging inside him.
‘The pleasure is mine, Miss Stanford.’ He had intended to sound sardonic, but the word pleasure hovered in the air, infusing his greeting with sensual heat and something that sounded to his own ears like a challenge. He noticed the faint flush of rose pink that stained her cheeks like the sweep of an artist’s brush over a white canvas. Her eyes widened a fraction and Andreas glimpsed his confusion mirrored in those grey depths.
There was another emotion too. He recognised a flash of awareness, before her long eyelashes that were a few shades darker than her hair swept down and shut him out. Time juddered to a standstill. In the silence Andreas heard the harsh rasp of his breath and the unevenness of hers, but when she met his gaze again her expression was unreadable.
She turned to Stelios. ‘I’ll go and make tea.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’ A look passed between the old man and his housekeeper that Andreas could not decipher. Irritation swept through him. When the hell had his father, a lifelong coffee addict, started drinking tea?
‘I prefer coffee,’ he said abruptly, earning a frown from Stelios.
‘Of course.’ Isla Stanford gave a perfunctory smile that made Andreas long to ruffle her composure. He wanted, badly, to discover if there was heat beneath her ice and if her lips would fit the shape of his as perfectly as he imagined.
She stepped past him and her elusive perfume teased his senses. He watched the sway of her hips as she walked across the room and heard himself blurt out, ‘Would you like some help?’
‘I can manage, thank you.’ She sounded amused. Pausing in the doorway, she glanced back at him and her brows arched as she gave him a speculative look that made him feel like a wet-behind-the-ears schoolboy. ‘Or don’t you trust that I can make Greek coffee, Andreas?’
The way she spoke his name in her soft English accent had made him want to growl like a predatory beast. Andreas hadn’t trusted her, and every time he had met Isla on subsequent visits to his father in London his instincts warned him that she was trouble. Now the news of Stelios’s engagement to the woman his sister had christened the Ice Queen proved that those instincts had been right.
He followed Nefeli into the house, where the marble-lined entrance hall was blessedly cool after the heat outside. Andreas had left California sixteen hours ago. Admittedly, travelling by private jet was not arduous but he was looking forward to a leisurely shower and a drink. He was about to ask the butler Dinos to bring a whisky and soda to his room when his sister turned to him.
‘You had better hurry up and get changed. You’re later than expected. Papa has arranged a formal dinner party this evening to celebrate his engagement to Isla.’ She grimaced. ‘I can’t believe he is planning to marry her. He’s making a fool of himself. Can’t you think of anything that might make Papa see sense?’
Nefeli’s plea stayed in Andreas’s mind when he entered his private suite of rooms and quickly showered, before he donned black suit trousers, a snowy white shirt and a black dinner jacket. He would have preferred to pull on a pair of old denim shorts and a T-shirt and stroll down to the beach, but instead he had to sit through a dinner party to mark his father’s betrothal. Theos! He glowered at his reflection in the mirror and raked his fingers through his unruly dark hair that moments ago he’d attempted to tame with a comb.
He could in fact think of something that might make his father question his relationship with his erstwhile housekeeper who was now his fiancée. What if he were to reveal how Isla had come apart in his arms when he’d kissed her in London a month ago? Would Stelios be so keen to marry her?
Andreas’s jaw clenched at the memory of Isla’s wild response to him—the way she had opened her mouth beneath his and made a husky moan when he’d thrust his tongue between her lips. With a frown he acknowledged that he had kissed Isla to satisfy his curiosity, but she had tested his control in a way he hadn’t expected. So much so that he had cut his trip to England short and flown back to California the next day.
Had Isla set her sights on a bigger prize? Stelios was the head of Karelis Corp—the family-owned business which operated the largest oil refinery in Europe. The company also ran the biggest chain of fuel stations in Greece and had interests in shipping and banking. Andreas was the heir to the Karelis business empire but he was in no rush to take over from his father. He had carved out a career as a champion rider in the World Superbike league until a serious accident had forced him to retire from motorbike racing.
Forcing his thoughts back to the present, Andreas muttered a curse and strode out of his suite. He paused in the corridor outside his father’s private apartment and knocked on the door. If he could have a conversation with Stelios and his new fiancée before dinner, he might have a clearer understanding of the reason for their surprise engagement. There was no reply, and after waiting for a few seconds he opened the door and glanced around the sitting room. The door leading to the bedroom was closed and the idea that Stelios was in there with Isla evoked a corrosive feeling in the pit of Andreas’s stomach.
The bedroom door opened and, before he had time to retreat, the butler walked through to the sitting room. ‘I thought that my father and Miss Stanford might be here,’ Andreas explained.
‘Kyrios Stelios is downstairs in the salon. He asked me to fetch his glasses.’ Dinos lifted his hand, in which he held a spectacles case. ‘Miss Stanford’s room is next door but she is down in the salon with your father.’
So Stelios and Isla were not sharing a bedroom at the villa, Andreas mused as he descended the marble staircase. It struck him as unusual behaviour for a couple who had announced their intention to marry. The whole situation of the sudden engagement was odd, especially as his father hadn’t mentioned his marriage plans at their last meeting a month ago.
It was not his concern if Stelios made a fool of himself over his pretty young housekeeper, Andreas told himself. If he admitted that passion had flared between him and Isla, his father might not believe him, or might accuse him of trying to make trouble. Their relationship had never been close, especially after Stelios had been forced to choose between his wife and family, and his mistress.
Andreas had been twelve when his father had admitted that he’d been seeing another woman in England and intended to leave his marriage for her. Andreas’s mother had been devastated, and Andreas had vowed that he would never speak to his father again unless he dumped his mistress and returned to his wife and children. He’d hoped that by taking his mother’s side he would win her love, but she had continued to treat him with the same disinterest that she’d always shown him. His father had remained married but from then on he had been cool towards Andreas.
Helia Karelis had died two years ago from an overdose of her sleeping pills. A tragic accident, the coroner had recorded, but Andreas was sure his mother had known what she was doing when she’d swallowed a handful of pills, just as he was sure she had never got over her husband’s affair, even though it had happened many years ago. Her unhappiness with her marriage had proved to Andreas the folly of falling in love. He avoided emotional dramas in the same way that any sane person would take precautionary measures against coming into contact with the Ebola virus.
As for Isla, Andreas shrugged his shoulders. He couldn’t explain why he had come on to
