lightening his dark eyes, for he was rarely challenged, Xan slid back behind his desk and waited for her to sit down as he had told her to do.
Outmanoeuvred, Elvi took a seat and rested her bag on her lap to hide her trembling hands.
‘Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?’ Xan proffered politely.
‘Some water if it’s not too much trouble,’ Elvi framed, watching as he pressed a button and gave an order to some employee. Thirty seconds later, a moisture-beaded tumbler of water was clutched between her restive hands and she sipped, wetting her dry lips.
Xan studied her in fascination, because she was much more controlled than he had expected and possibly ten times more attractive close up than he had forecast. In reality he had been prepared for disappointment, having only seen her so fleetingly in the past. But there she was in front of him with skin that had the natural lustre of a pearl, eyes as blue as the Greek sky, dainty features and white-blonde hair falling like a cloak to her waist. And then there were the fabulous hourglass curves with that tiny waist, the amazing feminine bounty at breast and hip she had hidden beneath that awful coat. Not overweight, glorious, Xan decided hungrily, wondering if it would even occur to her that he had been forced to sit down because her body made him hot as hell. He thought not, for there was nothing even slightly flirtatious or inviting about either her clothing or her attitude, and he wasn’t accustomed to that lack of interest in the women he met. This one hadn’t even bothered to put on make-up, he registered in mounting surprise.
‘Why do you think I offered you this appointment?’ Xan enquired with innate ruthlessness, because he doubted his reading of her character from her appearance and behaviour. He didn’t trust women. He had learned not to trust women through the experience of growing up with several unpleasant stepmothers and the conviction had been rubber-stamped by his first love’s change of heart the instant she realised his family fortune was gone.
‘I don’t know, which is why I am here,’ Elvi said truthfully. ‘Obviously you read my letter—’
Xan lounged back in his chair and lightly shifted an eloquent brown hand as if in dismissal of the letter. ‘Why would I want to do anything for a woman who stole from me?’ he asked bluntly.
In receipt of that acerbic enquiry, Elvi lost colour. ‘Well, maybe not want—’
‘That’s the problem,’ Xan interposed before she could even finish speaking. ‘I don’t want to help her because I believe that those who break the law should be punished—’
‘Yes, but—’ Elvi began afresh, thrown on the back foot because before her mother had been charged with theft she would have agreed with him on that score.
‘There is no saving exception in my book,’ Xan Ziakis sliced in again. ‘I felt more sorry for you growing up with an alcoholic parent than I feel sorry for her.’
Elvi’s hands tightened around the glass cradled between her hands and she forced herself to sip again; she wanted to slap him and shut him up because he wasn’t allowing her to get in a word in her mother’s defence. ‘We don’t need your compassion!’ she heard herself snap back and then she bit her lip hard, knowing she shouldn’t have responded in that tone for there was truth in that old adage about catching more flies with honey than vinegar.
‘But you chose to ask for my compassion,’ Xan reminded her with dogged purpose. ‘And I have to wonder, what’s in it for me?’
‘You have your jade pot back?’ Elvi suggested shakily.
‘But I don’t. It’s police evidence at this moment in time,’ Xan told her gently.
Elvi breathed in deep and slow, battling to think straight while he sat there as cool as a block of untouchable ice, and then she clashed with eyes that flamed over her like a fire and realised that his apparently glacial outlook had given her a mistaken impression of him. For a split second as her chest swelled on that breath, his gaze had dropped revealingly below her chin and she was shaken that he could be quite as predictable as most of the men she met. Her boobs were playing more of a starring role than she was, she thought bitterly.
‘My mother has been punished,’ Elvi argued, taking another tack in her growing desperation. ‘She’s been arrested and that was frightening for her and more than enough to teach most people a hard lesson. She has also lost her job and her good name—’
‘Elvi...’ Xan leant across his desk to interrupt her again.
‘No, don’t cut me off this time!’ Elvi urged impatiently. ‘Tell me why you can’t drop the charges—’
‘I’ve already answered that question,’ Xan reminded her with finality.
Enormous blue eyes fixed on him hopefully. ‘But don’t you think that making a benevolent gesture would make you feel good?’
Xan could not believe how naïve she was and he almost laughed. ‘I don’t have a benevolent bone in my body,’ he admitted without embarrassment. ‘I’m a hard-hitter. That’s who I am.’
‘Well, I didn’t come here to repeat the sob story I already put in my letter,’ Elvi assured him with cringing dignity as she started rising from her seat. ‘So, if that’s your last word—’
‘It’s not. You don’t listen very well, do you?’ Xan shot back at her in exasperation. ‘I asked you what would be in this benevolent gesture for me and I do have an option to offer you—’
Taken aback at the very point where she had felt that she was getting nowhere with him, Elvi sank slowly back into the chair. ‘You...er...do?’ she queried dubiously, her eyes openly bemused by the concept.
‘It’s simple and unscrupulous,’ Xan warned her without hesitation. ‘I want you. Give yourself to me and I will drop the charges.’
Elvi’s lower lip parted company with the upper one as she stared back at him in complete astonishment, not quite willing to believe he had actually said those words to her. Give yourself to me. He meant sex. What else could he mean? I want you. The most enormous sense of shock engulfed her. It wasn’t simply unscrupulous, it was filthy, and she was shattered that he could sit there behind his rule-the-world desk and dare to offer her such an offensive escape clause on her mother’s behalf. What world did he live in? What kind of women was he accustomed to dealing with? It was a horrific suggestion no decent woman would accept.
‘I finally appear to have silenced you,’ Xan remarked with unhidden amusement.
And it was that glint of amusement in his extravagantly handsome face and the energy of it in his accented intonation that set free the tide of rage inside Elvi. She flew upright like a rocket and her hand jerked up and she flung the glass of water over him. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped at him furiously. ‘I’m not a slut!’
Xan shook his dark head, water droplets rolling down his lean, dark, dangerous face. Never had he been attacked in such a way, but it didn’t show because he did not move a single muscle. He gazed broodingly back at her, disturbed by her passionate nature but already wondering how that seeming flaw would play out between his sheets. Obviously he was bored with the identikit mistresses who had met his physical needs for years, but that rational, unemotional approach worked for him, he reminded himself, staving off the risks of more personal entanglements. ‘I didn’t suggest that you were, but there’s a vacancy in my bed at present and I
