welcome to kip down on their sofa. I’ve got the spare room.’
‘Say thanks to them from me, but actually I can’t face the journey back.’ The hospital was a fifteen-mile trip from the village and she was ready to drop; in fact, remaining upright was difficult. ‘I’m just going to get a taxi to the nearest hotel and sleep for a week.’
‘Fair enough, see you tomorrow?’
‘Definitely,’ Katie agreed. ‘Sadie…I’m really sorry,’ she added in a rush.
‘God, we don’t even know if it was your fault and I’m the one that didn’t get around to refitting the fire alarms after the painters finished last month. Besides, nobody was hurt, that’s the main thing, and I’m extremely well-insured,’ she added cheerfully. ‘So don’t beat yourself up about it.’
It wasn’t until she’d hung up that Katie realised she had no money for a taxi, hotel room or, for that matter, any more for the phone. Don’t panic, think about this calmly and logically, she told herself.
So logically she had no money, and calmly she had no transport, her head hurt and she was dressed in revealing rags—Katie reckoned she was entitled to panic a little and to feel mildly despondent.
Maybe I should have taken up the offer of a hospital bed, she thought as she stepped into the reception area, a big densely carpeted open space that was divided by banks of greenery and seats—obviously meant to give a welcoming impression. The place, a hive of activity during the daytime, was, barring a few porters and sundry members of staff who were on their way somewhere in a hurry, almost completely deserted at this time of night.
Katie wasn’t on her way anywhere. She wrapped her arms across her chest feeling incredibly conspicuous and rather lonely. Her adrenalin levels had dropped and the events of the evening were beginning to catch up on her with a vengeance.
‘Here, take this.’
Startled out of her gloomy thoughts by the deep voice, Katie looked at the jacket being offered to her and then warily at the man himself.
He was as dishevelled as she was, his skin and clothes streaked with black, but unlike her he appeared supremely indifferent to the fact. It struck her as deeply unfair that, whereas torn clothes and messy hair made her look like a scarecrow, they lent him an indefinable edge of mystery and danger…mean, moody and macho…nobody was going to overlook him in a crowd!
She was inclined to think that if you stripped this man of his wealth, status and even his clothes he wouldn’t lose his infuriating imperious air of command.
Katie raised her eyes with a jerk to his face feeling, and probably looking, as guilty as any nicely brought-up girl would caught in the act of mentally stripping a man—make a note for future reference: do not think naked around Nikos—but then no matter how things turned out she wouldn’t be around him for very much longer.
This reflection ought to have made her feel upbeat—but somehow a heavy feeling had settled over her.
‘You are shivering,’ he observed with a frown.
Katie looked again at the jacket; she thought of refusing it and then decided this would be an empty gesture and, besides, she didn’t want to risk being arrested for indecent exposure!
‘Yes, I am. Thank you.’ She slid the jacket over her hunched shoulders, and drew it around herself. It still held the warmth of his body; she found this second-hand warmth disturbingly intimate. ‘My dress has a little more ventilation than was intended.’
‘I could say I hadn’t noticed, but I’d be lying.’
Katie shot him a wary glance but his enigmatic expression was unrevealing—maybe that was just as well.
‘Sit?’ he suggested, nodding towards a seated area.
Katie shook her head. ‘Hospitals at night are strange, don’t you think?’ Her restless glance took in the big empty area. ‘Almost spooky,’ she heard herself babble.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
Katie didn’t tell him that that had been her plan.
‘Have you contacted Tom?’
She shook her head. ‘I tried to.’ Not so very hard, a voice in her head suggested drily. ‘He’s not picking up, but it sounded as if he was in for an all-night session, didn’t it? He could very well be in the middle of sensitive negotiations,’ she elaborated, ‘so it’s probably better I don’t bother him.’
‘I don’t think many men would consider it a bother to drop whatever they were doing if their woman had just escaped death.’ The contemptuous curl of his upper lip seemed to be a reflection of Nikos’s opinion of any man who wouldn’t rush to the side of their woman.
Katie was annoyed that she felt impelled to defend her absent fiancé.
‘And Tom would!’ she began. ‘Escaped death…’ she added, frowning. ‘Isn’t that a tad over-dramatic?’ Her light laughter trailed away as she tried to imagine Tom calling her his woman in that way, and if he had she would probably have laughed.
When Nikos used the term it didn’t sound funny. It must be the accent—men with exotic, sexy accents could get away with saying things that a native speaker could not. It went without saying that she didn’t want anyone to call her his woman; it was sort of dated, sexist stuff—the sort of things the man that her grandfather had picked out for her mother would have used.
She concluded that his accent must be responsible for the shivery sensations she experienced every time he was around.
‘Possibly.’ He conceded her words with a careless shrug of his broad shoulders. The flimsy nature of his shirt made it difficult not to notice how his taut muscles flexed and bulged through the fine material. ‘But nevertheless I think you should let Tom decide that for himself.’
Katie’s lips tightened; his persistence, not to mention his perfect musculature, was beginning to annoy her.
‘Can’t you wait until the morning to tell him what an awful creature he’s got mixed up with?’ she taunted.
‘Actually I was thinking of how I would feel in his place.’
Katie flushed, not enjoying the sensation of being quietly put in her place. ‘I suppose that must have taken quite a stretch of your no doubt limited imagination.’
‘Theos!’ Anger lent his dark, taut features a menacing cast.
‘And I suppose you would walk away from an important business negotiation if your girlfriend needed you. That’s really likely.’ This was the sort of man who put personal relationships way down his list of priorities.
A wave of weakness suddenly hit her; it was so strong she swayed. Nikos, whose simmering anger had left him the moment he’d taken in the white-faced exhaustion in her face, took her by the arm.
‘Sit!’ he urged strongly. The woman was clearly unfit to take care of herself. He wondered why Tom let her out alone!
Katie complied, reasoning it would
