front of the desk, then folded his long body into the seat placed at an angle to her, those muscled shoulders flexed as he locked in his seat belt, then reached out to pull a large stack of papers towards him and sat back to read.
Dragging her eyes away from him, she hunted down her seat belt with the intention of fastening it, but she spied her discarded jacket lying on the seat opposite and on sheer impulse she snatched it up and put it back on, buttoning it shut all the way up to her throat, though she had no idea what, by doing it, she was hoping to prove.
Unless it had something to do with the tight bubble of anger she could feel simmering away inside at the way he was lounging there already steeped in paperwork and putting on a good impression that he had already forgotten she was here, which hit too closely at the way her family had behaved at the apartment.
Ten minutes later they were in the air and his laptop computer was open, his voice that same melodic drone in her ears. A gentle-voiced stewardess appeared at Natasha’s side to ask her if she would like something to eat and drink. She knew she wouldn’t be able to eat anything right now, but she asked if it was possible for her to have a cup of tea, and the stewardess smiled an, ‘of course,’ and went away to see to it.
Leo swivelled around in his chair.
He looked at her, narrowing his eyes on the buttoned-up jacket. A new rush of stinging awareness spun through the air.
‘It will have to stay off at some point,’ he murmured slowly.
Natasha pushed her chin up and just glared.
It was a challenge that made his dark eyes spark and sent Natasha breathless. Then he was forced to turn his attention back to his satellite link, leaving her feeling hot and skittish for a different reason.
For the next three hours he worked at the desk and she sat sipping her tea or reading one of the magazines the stewardess had kindly brought for her. Throughout the journey Leo kept on swinging his chair around to look at her, waiting until she felt compelled to look back at him, then holding her gaze with disturbing dark promises of what lay ahead. Once he even got up and came to lean over her, capturing her mouth with a deep, probing kiss. As he drew away again the top button to her jacket sprang open.
He did it to challenge her challenge, Natasha knew that, but her body still tightened and her breasts tingled and peaked. The next time he turned his chair to look at her the button was neatly fastened again and she refused point blank this time to lift her head up from the magazine.
They arrived in Athens to oven heat and humid darkness. It was a real culture shock to witness how their passage through the usual formalities was so carefully smoothed. And Leo felt different, like a remote tall, dark stranger walking at her side. His expression was so much harder and there was a clipped formality in the way he spoke to anyone. A quiet coolness if he was obliged to speak to her.
Natasha put his changed mood down to the way people constantly stopped to stare at them. When she saw the cavalcade of three heavy black limousines waiting to sweep them away from the airport, it really came down hard on her to realise just how much power and importance Leo Christakis carried here in his own capital city to warrant such an escort.
‘Quite a show,’ she murmured as she sat beside him in the rear of the car surrounded by plush dark leather while the other two cars crouched close to their front and rear bumpers. Seated in the front passenger seat of this car and shut away behind a plate of thick, tinted glass sat a man Leo had introduced to her as, ‘Rasmus, my security chief’. It was only as he made the introduction that Natasha realised how often she’d seen the other man lurking on the shadowy periphery of wherever Leo was.
‘Money and power make their own enemies,’ he responded as if all of this was an accepted part of his life.
‘You mean, you always have to live like this?’
‘Here in Athens, and in other major cities.’ He nodded.
It was no wonder then that he was so cynical about anyone he came into contact with, it dawned on her. He flies everywhere in his private jet aeroplane, he drives around in private limousines and he has the kind of bank balance most people could not conjure up even in their wildest dreams. And he has so much power at his fingertips he probably genuinely believes he exists on a higher plane than most other beings.
‘I never saw it in London,’ she said after a moment, remembering that while he’d been in London he had driven himself.
He turned his head to look at her, dark eyes glowing through the dimness of the car’s interior. ‘It was there. You just did not bother to look for it.’
Maybe she didn’t, but… ‘It can’t have been as obvious there,’ Natasha insisted. ‘I was used to some measure of security when Cindy was performing but never anything like this—and none at all with Rico.’ She then added with a frown, ‘Though that seems odd now when I think about who Rico is and—’
He moved, it was barely a shift of his body but it brought Natasha’s face around to catch the flash to hit his eyes.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Don’t ever compare me with him,’ he iced out.
Her blue eyes widened. ‘But I wasn’t—’
‘You were about to,’ he cut in. ‘I am Leo Christakis, and this is my life you are entering into with all its restrictions and privileges. Rico was nothing.’ He flicked a long-fingered hand as if swatting his stepbrother away. ‘Merely a freeloader who liked to ride on my coat-tails—’
Natasha went perfectly pale. ‘Don’t say that,’ she whispered.
‘Why not when it is the truth?’ he declared with no idea how he had just devastated her by using the same withering words to describe Rico as her sister had used to describe her. ‘His name is Rico Giannetti, though he prefers to think of himself as a Christakis, but he has no Christakis blood to back it up and no Christakis money to call his own,’ he laid out with contempt. ‘He held an office in every Christakis building because it was good for his image to appear as if he was worthy of his place there, but he never worked in it—not in the true meaning of the word anyway.’ The cynical bite to his voice sent Natasha even paler as his implication hit home. ‘He drew a salary he did little to earn and spent it on whatever took his fancy while robbing me blind behind my back as I picked up the real tabs on his extravagant tastes,’ he continued on. ‘He is a hard-drinking, hard-playing liar to himself and to everyone connected to him, including you, his betrayed, play-acting betrothed.’
Shaken by his contemptuous barrage, ‘Ex-betrothed,’ Natasha husked out unsteadily.
‘Ex-everything as far as you are concerned,’ he pronounced. ‘From this day on he is out of the picture and I am the only man that matters to you.’
He had demanded that she put her family out of her head, now he was insisting she put Rico out of her head. ‘Yes, sir,’ she snapped out impulsively, wishing she could put him out of her head, too!
A black frown scored his hard features at her mocking tone. ‘I thought a few home truths at this point will help to keep this relationship honest.’
‘Honest?’ Natasha almost hyperventilated on the breath she took. ‘What you’re really doing here is letting me know that you expect to control even my thoughts!’
Impatience hit
