Freed from the burden of those awful debts and Joy’s extravagance, her father would finally be in a position to make a reasonable living again. Although he had lost the furniture shop, he remained a qualified accountant and the ability to work again would give him his self-respect back.
Yet while Ella might want to help her family, Nikolai Drakos had put her in an impossible situation. Her father would never accept such a sacrifice on her part. So, how could she get around that obvious stumbling block?
Well, one possibility would be offering Nikolai the intimate night she suspected he felt cheated out of. She shuddered at the prospect of having sex with anyone in such circumstances but just as quickly told herself off for being a drama queen. Why make a three-act tragedy out of a perfectly normal feature of life? If possessing her body meant that much to the man, he was welcome to it.
It was not as though she were still a virgin because she had actively chosen to embrace that state. She had waited for Paul, for the miraculous day when he would be ‘well enough’, only that opportunity had failed to arrive. Now and not for the first time she wished Paul had not been so exacting in his wishes, so determined that everything be right and perfect before they became intimate, because going to bed with Nikolai would have been much less intimidating had Ella already acquired some sexual experience. One night, she told herself bleakly, yes, she could do one night if it saved her family. Were there any other options?
Well, instead of making her a mistress, Nikolai could marry her, lending their entire arrangement the sort of respectable patina that would allow her father to accept his debts being paid off, because a son-in-law was a family member while a lover who was a stranger was something else entirely. Somehow she didn’t think Nikolai would want to go for the wedding-ring option. In fact a reluctant giggle was forced from between Ella’s tense lips at even the idea of making such a suggestion. The man who didn’t date and only had sex was unlikely to warm to the prospect of holy matrimony...
At the end of her working day, Ella called the number on the business card Nikolai had left her and before he could even speak said, ‘I want to come and see you this evening.’
Taken aback by that bold declaration, Nikolai frowned. ‘You’ve changed your mind?’
‘I want to talk...’
Nikolai was dubious. He had already wondered how sure she was of Cyrus’s support if she was willing to turn his offer down without hesitation. Had his old enemy already proposed to her? Yet wouldn’t she have thrown that information at him?
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he countered.
‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ Ella quoted Gramma in her desperation to get him to listen.
Ten minutes later, Ella walked into the exclusive Wrother Links Hotel. Rather belatedly she became conscious of her shabby work clothing, which consisted of a tee and worn skinny jeans thrust into sensible ankle boots. Perhaps she should have gone home first and changed and used some make-up, she reflected uneasily. But then Nikolai had outlined his outrageous proposal at the start of her working day when she was looking far from glamorous. Her smooth brow indented.
What did the wretched man want from her?
The obvious, she told herself irritably as the receptionist directed her into the lift with a curious appraisal. Just because she had never viewed her body as a means of negotiation didn’t mean Nikolai felt the same. He had to want her for something and her body was the most likely explanation, Ella reasoned uncomfortably. Over the years she had listened to friends insist that men saw sex as being of crucial importance, which had left her confused, dealing with Paul’s rigid self-discipline.
Even so, it was an enormous challenge for Ella to credit that suave, sophisticated Nikolai Drakos could possibly see a woman like her in some irresistible had-to-possess-her light. When she had first gone to uni to study, she had been bombarded by sexual approaches. In many ways that was why meeting Paul, initially only a friend, had been such a relief. Paul had valued her for the person she was, not for her body or the physical pleasure he assumed she could give him. Paul, however, had been a very special case, she reminded herself with regret.
A young man who introduced himself as Nikolai’s employee opened the door of the suite and ushered her in. The desk in the room was scattered with papers, a laptop sitting open on it. She got a glance at the columns of figures on the screen before the employee closed it down and gathered the papers into a file to take his leave.
‘Mr Drakos will be with you shortly,’ he assured her as he departed.
Ella stared out of the window at the renowned golf course and, in an effort to steady her leaping nerves when she heard a sound somewhere behind her, she said, ‘Do you play golf?’
‘No. Not my game,’ Nikolai proclaimed as he shook out his shirt. ‘Why are you here, Ella?’
Ella spun round and focused in consternation on Nikolai’s incredibly well-defined muscular abs and stomach as he pulled on a shirt. Clearly he was fresh from the shower with his black hair still curling damply and his hard-boned jaw clean-shaven, but the bronzed expanse of naked male flesh on show above the belt encircling his lean hips sharply disconcerted her. Cheeks warming, she glanced away. ‘Is it inconvenient?’
‘Let’s call it unexpected,’ he replied, his brilliant dark eyes resting on her.
Well, there was nothing of the seductress in her appearance, Nikolai acknowledged wryly. He had assumed she would dress up but she hadn’t made the effort, which for some strange reason irritated him. Wasn’t he worth that much effort? In the shower he had reminded himself that approaching Ella Palmer had always been a long shot. After all, if she had already had one rich man in the palm of her hand why would she accept another dictating terms to her? And yet the fact remained that, astonishingly, Cyrus was evidently not coming to his supposed future wife’s rescue and had taken himself off on a long trip to China. Maybe the tip-off Nikolai had received about Cyrus’s marital plans was rubbish, maybe Cyrus was simply playing with Ella...as he did in the initial stages of his games with such women, when he played the honourable respectful male to perfection to lull any suspicion of his true intentions.
‘The unexpected doesn’t always have to be bad,’ Ella fenced while he buttoned his shirt. Her cheeks were hot because the little peepshow he had unthinkingly subjected her to had made perspiration break out on her skin below clothes that suddenly felt too tight and constricting.
‘I believe you’re acquainted with Cyrus Makris,’ he remarked.
Startled, Ella glanced at him. ‘Yes. He’s a family friend. I was engaged to his nephew, Paul, until he died,’ she told him, wondering how he had known about her acquaintance with Cyrus before a vague association occurred to her. ‘Your name... I should’ve guessed. You’re Greek as well, aren’t you?’
‘I am. Would you like a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’ Ella simply wanted to get what she had to say said and then run. ‘Can’t stay long anyway. I left my dog outside in the van.’
‘So...?’ Nikolai prompted, watching a strand of bronze hair fan out across her white throat as she lifted her head high, her pale skin accentuating the luminous green of her eyes and the succulent pink of her lips. He tensed, fighting the incipient throb at his groin with annoyance.
‘Would...?’ Ella breathed in deep and straightened her spine. ‘I’m here to ask if one night would do.’
‘One night of what?’
