Conveniently His Omnibus (24 page)

‘I have to know what?’ Andreas began to frown.

‘Athena is here,’ his mother told him unhappily. ‘She arrived earlier and she...’

‘She what?’

‘She said that your grandfather had invited her,’ his mother continued.

‘You know what that means, don’t you Andreas?’ Olympia interrupted angrily. ‘It means that she’s bullied Grandfather into saying she could stay. And that’s not all...’

‘Pia...’ her mother began unhappily, but Olympia refused to be silenced.

‘She’s brought that revolting creep Aristotle with her. She claims that she is right in the middle of an important business deal and that she needs him with her because he’s her accountant. If it’s so important, how come she had time to be here?’ Olympia demanded. ‘Oh, but I hate her so. This morning she went on and on about how concerned Grandfather is about the business and how he’s been asking her advice because he’s worried that you...’

‘Pia!’ her mother protested again, and this time Andreas’s sister did fall silent, but only for a few seconds.

‘What I can’t understand is why Gramps is so taken in by her,’ she burst out, as though unable to contain herself. ‘It’s obvious what she’s doing. She’s just trying to get at you, Andreas, because you won’t marry her.’

‘I’m sorry about this,’ Helena Latimer was apologising gently to Saskia. ‘It can’t be pleasant for you. You haven’t met Athena yet, I know—’

‘Yes, she has,’ Andreas interrupted his mother, explaining when both she and Pia looked at him questioningly, ‘Somehow or other she managed to get a key for the London apartment.’

‘She’s the worst, isn’t she?’ Pia told Saskia. ‘The black widow spider I call her.’

‘Pia!’ Andreas chided her sharply.

‘Mama hasn’t told you everything yet,’ Pia countered, looking protectively at her mother before continuing, ‘Athena has insisted on having the room that Mama had arranged to be prepared for Saskia. It’s the one next to your suite—’

‘I tried to stop her, Andreas,’ Helena interrupted her daughter unhappily. ‘But you know what she’s like.’

‘She said that Saskia could have the room right down at the end of the corridor. You know, the one we only use as an overspill when absolutely everyone is here. It hasn’t even got a proper bed.’

‘You’ll have to say something to Athena, Andreas. Make her understand that she can’t...that she can’t have that room because Saskia will be using it.’

‘No, she won’t,’ Andreas contradicted his mother flatly, sliding his arm very firmly around Saskia, imprisoningly almost, drawing her right into his body so that her face was concealed from view as he told his mother and sister, ‘Saskia will be sharing
my
room...and
my
bed...’

Saskia could sense their shock, even though she could not see their faces.
Now
she knew why he was holding her so tightly, preventing anyone else from seeing her expression or hearing the panicky denial she was trying to make but which was muffled against the fine cotton of his shirt.

There was just no way that she was prepared for anything like this. No way that she could ever be prepared for it. But her attempts to tell Andreas were bringing her into even more intimate contact with him as she tried to look up into his face.

His response to her efforts to attract his attention made the situation even worse, because when he bent his head, as though anxious to listen to what she was saying, her lips inadvertently brushed against his jaw.

It must be a combination of heat and shock that was sending that melting liquid sensation of weakness swooshing through her, Saskia decided dizzily. It certainly couldn’t be the feel of Andreas’s skin against her lips, nor the dangerous gleam she could see in his narrowed eyes as they glittered down into hers. The arm he had around her moved fractionally, so that the hand that had been resting on her waist was now somehow just beneath the curve of her breast, his fingertips splaying against its soft curve and making her...making her...

‘Saskia will be sharing your room!’ Pia was breathing, verbalising the shock that Saskia herself felt and that she suspected his mother was too embarrassed to voice.

‘We
are
engaged...and soon to be married...’ Andreas told his sister smoothly, adding in a much rougher, rawer, spine-tinglingly possessive voice, ‘Saskia is mine and I intend to make sure that everyone knows it.’

‘Especially Aristotle,’ Pia guessed. ‘I don’t know how Athena can endure him,’ she continued shuddering. ‘He’s like a snake, Saskia. All cold and slimy, with horrid little eyes and clammy hands...’

‘Athena endures him because of his skill at “creative” accounting,’ Andreas informed his sister dryly.

‘You mean he’s dishonest,’ Pia translated pithily.

‘You didn’t hear that from me,’ Andreas warned her as he started to shepherd all three of them towards the waiting Land Rover.

Whilst they had been talking the driver had loaded their luggage, and as he held the door open for his mother, sister and Saskia to get in Saskia heard Andreas asking him about his family, listening interestedly whilst the driver told him with pride about his son who was at university.

‘Grandfather was not very pleased at all when Andreas said that he wanted to use the money our father had left him to help pay for the education of our personal household staff,’ Pia told Saskia.

‘Pia, you aren’t being very fair to your grandfather,’ her mother objected.

Andreas had done that? Stubbornly Saskia refused to acknowledge that she was impressed by his philanthropy.

Had he really meant what he had said about them sharing a room? He couldn’t have done—could he? Personally she didn’t care
where
she slept, even if it was a normally unused bedless room, just so long as she occupied it on her own.

‘We have both had a long day and I imagine that Saskia is going to want to have a rest before dinner,’ Andreas was saying as the Land Rover pulled up in a cool paved courtyard with a central fountain that sent a musical plume of water up into the air to shower back to earth in millions of tiny teardrops.

‘I’ll make sure everyone knows that you aren’t to be disturbed,’ his mother responded. ‘But perhaps Saskia would like something light to eat and drink...’

Before Saskia could say anything Andreas was answering for her, telling his mother, ‘I’ll see to that,’ before placing his hand beneath Saskia’s elbow and telling her in a soft voice in which she suspected only she could hear the underlying threat, ‘This way, Saskia...’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘I
CAN
’
T
SLEEP
in this room with you!’

Saskia had been able to feel herself trembling as Andreas had whisked her down a confusing maze of corridors. She had known that he must be able to feel her nervousness as well, but somehow she had managed to keep her feelings under control until they were both inside the huge elegant bedroom with the door firmly shut behind them.

Right now, though, she was in no mood to appreciate the cool elegance of her surroundings. Whirling round, she confronted Andreas determinedly. ‘No way was
that
part of the deal.’

‘The “deal” was that you would act as my fiancée, and that includes doing whatever has to be done to ensure that the act is believable,’ he told her angrily.

‘I won’t sleep here with you,’ Saskia protested wildly. ‘I don’t... I haven’t...’ She could hardly bear to look at the large king-sized bed as panic filled her, flooding out rationality. She had gone through so much, and now she was hot and tired and very, very afraid. Her emotions threatened to overwhelm her.

Quickly she turned away as she heard Andreas saying, almost mundanely, ‘I’m going to have a shower, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll do the same. Then, when we’re both feeling cooler and calmer, we can discuss this whole situation less emotively.’

A shower! With Andreas! Saskia stared at him in mute shocked disbelief. Did he really think that she would...that she could...?

‘You can use the bathroom first,’ he told her.

First! So he hadn’t meant... Relief sagged through her, quickly followed by a furious burst of toxic anger.

‘I don’t want to use the bathroom at all,’ she burst out. ‘What I
want
is to be at home. My
own
home, with my own bathroom and my own bedroom. What I want is to be free of this stupid...stupid charade... What I
want
...’ She had to stop as her feelings threatened to overwhelm her, but they refused to be contained, spilling out in a furious fierce torrent of angry words. ‘How could you let your mother and sister think that you...that we...?’ She shook her head, unable to put into words what she wanted to say.

Andreas had no such qualms.

‘That we are lovers?’ he supplied dramatically for her. ‘What else should they think? I’m a man, Saskia, and you and I are supposed to be engaged. And if in reality we were, do you think for one minute that I wouldn’t—’

‘Want to test the goods before you bought them?’ Saskia threw wildly at him. ‘Oh, of course, a man like you would be bound to want to do that...to make sure...’

She tensed as she saw the way he was looking at her and the bitter anger in his eyes.

‘That kind of comment is typical of a woman like you,’ he ground out. ‘Reducing everything to terms of money. Well, let me tell you—’

But Saskia wouldn’t let him finish, defending herself sharply instead as she insisted, ‘
You
were the one who said...’

But Andreas immediately checked her.

‘What I said, or rather what I was
trying
to say before you interrupted me,’ he told her grittily, ‘was that if I genuinely loved you there would be no way I would be able to deny myself—or you—the pleasure of showing that love in the most intimate physical way there is. There would be no way that I could bear to let you out of my sight or my arms, certainly not for the length of a whole night.’

Saskia discovered that she had started to tremble almost violently as his words struck sharply sensitive chords deep within her body that she had not even known existed. Chords that activated a deep core of feminine longing, that brought her dangerously close to the edge of tears she had no idea why she wanted to cry. Panic raced through her veins, flooding out common sense. She could feel her heart thumping frantically with anxiety.

She opened her mouth to tell Andreas that she had changed her mind, that she wanted to go home, that she was not prepared to stay a minute longer, no matter how much he tried to blackmail her into doing so. But her panic didn’t stem from any fear of him. No. It was herself she feared now, and the way she was beginning to feel, the thoughts she was beginning to have. She
couldn’t
allow herself to feel that way about him. She
couldn’t
be attracted to him. He wasn’t her type of man at all. She abhorred the way he had treated her, the way he had misjudged her. But the shocking shaft of self-awareness, of longing she had felt as he’d described his desire for the woman he would love wasn’t going to be dismissed.

‘I can’t...’ she began, stopping as Andreas held up his hand warningly, silencing her as someone knocked on the door.

Dry-mouthed, Saskia waited whilst he went to open it, watching as their cases were brought in—not by the driver of the Land Rover but by another smaller, older man to whom Andreas was talking in Greek, smiling warmly at him as he did so, and then laughing good-humouredly as the older man looked past him at Saskia herself, before clapping him on the shoulders with a wide, beaming smile.

‘What was that all about?’ Saskia demanded curiously once he had gone and they were on their own again.

‘Stavros was saying that it is high time I had a wife...and that I must lose no time in getting myself a fine boy child,’ he added mercilessly.

Saskia could feel herself colouring to the roots of her hair as she looked everywhere but at the king-sized bed in the centre of the room.

Despite the room’s air conditioning she felt stifled, unable to breathe...hunted and desperate to escape.

‘I’m going to have that shower,’ Andreas told her, mundanely breaking into her thoughts, turning away from her as he did so and heading for one of the three doors that opened off the bedroom.

Once he had disappeared Saskia looked at the door to the corridor, longing to have the courage to walk through it and demand that she be flown back immediately to Athens. But if she did she would lose her job—Andreas would make sure of that!

Fiercely Saskia tried to concentrate on something else,
anything
else but the appalling situation she was in. She hated what Andreas was doing to her...what he was making her do. And she hated Andreas himself too...didn’t she?

Unable to answer her own question honestly, Saskia studied the view beyond the large patio doors that opened out onto an enclosed courtyard, which itself surrounded a tantalisingly tempting swimming pool complete with its own bubbling spa pool.

Small oases of green plants broke up the paving and the brilliant harshness of the sunlight. Comfortable-looking sun loungers complete with umbrellas offered a lazy way to enjoy the sunshine. The whole scene looked like something out of an exclusive holiday brochure, the kind Saskia had only been able to glance at enviously, knowing such a holiday was way beyond her means. But right now the only place she wanted to be was safe in her own home.

Andreas couldn’t really expect her to share a room—never mind a bed—with him. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t...she was so...

‘The bathroom’s free...’

Saskia froze. She had been so engrossed in her thoughts she hadn’t realised that Andreas was in the bedroom with her...standing right behind her, she recognised as she picked up the clean, warm scent of his newly showered body.

‘I’ll go and sort out something light for you to eat. Dinner won’t be for a few hours yet, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll try to rest for a while. Greeks eat late and go to bed even later.’

‘But I thought that we’d be having separate rooms,’ Saskia burst out, unable to control her panic any longer. ‘I would never have agreed to come here if I’d thought that I’d— No! Don’t you dare touch me,’ she protested as she felt him moving closer to her, reaching out to her. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he touched her, if he...

Frantically she turned and ran towards the door, but somehow Andreas managed to get there before her, blocking her access to it, taking hold of her, his fingers biting into the soft flesh of her arms.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he ground out savagely. ‘What exactly is it you’re pretending to be so afraid of? This? A woman like you!’

Saskia gasped and shook from head to foot as his arms closed imprisioningly around her and his mouth came down on hers. He was wearing a robe, but as she struggled to break free it was his bare skin she could feel beneath her flaying hands. Warm, damp...hard, his chest roughened by dark hairs. Her hands skittered wildly over his torso, shocked by the intimate unexpected contact with his bare skin, seeking some kind of purchase to thrust him away and finding none.

He was kissing her with an angry passion that made her feel weak, the blood roaring in her head as her brain recognised her inability to deal with the searing experience of so much furiously male arrogant sensuality.

‘Stop acting like a novice, an innocent,’ Saskia heard him demanding against her mouth. His tongue forced her lips to part for its entry and the hand that was imprisoning her urged her even deeper into the sensual heat of his parted thighs as he leaned back against the door, taking her with him. His free hand was on her body, arrogantly stroking its way up past her waist to the curve of her breast.

Saskia tensed in shock as it cupped her breast, his thumb-pad circling her nipple and somehow enticing it to peak into a shocking bud of delicious wanton pleasure.

She could feel the aroused heat of him like a brand, and beneath her anger she felt a sharp, spiralling stab of female curiosity and excitement...a dangerous surge to conspire with him, to allow her traitorous body to experience even more of the intimacy of their embrace.

Without knowing she had done so she opened her mouth, hesitantly allowing him access to its sweetness, shyly starting to return his kiss and even more shyly allowing her tongue to mesh seductively with his.

‘Andreas? Are you in there? It’s me, Athena...I need to talk to you.’

Saskia froze as she heard Athena’s voice from the other side of the door, but Andreas showed no sign whatsoever of any confusion or embarrassment. Still holding Saskia against him in a grip she could not break, he opened the door and told Athena flatly, ‘Not now, Athena. As you can see, Saskia and I are busy.’

‘She is with
you
,’ Athena snapped angrily, darting Saskia a look of icy venom. ‘Why isn’t she in her own room?’

‘She is,’ Andreas returned coolly. ‘My room is Saskia’s room. My bed...her bed. My body...her...’

‘Your grandfather will never allow you to marry her,’ Athena breathed, but Andreas was already closing the door, ignoring her insistence that he listen to her.

‘Andreas, let me go,’ Saskia demanded. She couldn’t bear to look at him. Couldn’t bear to do anything, least of all think about the way she had responded to him...the way she had encouraged him...

Derisively Andreas watched her.

‘Okay, Saskia, that’s enough,’ he told her. ‘I know I told you I wanted you to act like a faithful fiancée, but that does not mean you have to pretend to be an innocent virgin who has never—’ Abruptly he stopped, frowning as he mulled over the unwanted suspicions that were striking him as he looked at Saskia’s pale face and hunted eyes.

Even though he had let her go she was still shaking, trembling from head to foot, and he could have sworn just now, when he had held her in his arms and kissed her...touched her, that he was the first man to make her feel so...

For a moment he examined what he was thinking, and feeling, and then firmly dismissed his suspicions. There was no way she could be so inexperienced, no way at all. There was enough Greek in him for him to consider that the gift of her virginity, her purity, was one of the greatest gifts a woman could give to the man she loved, but his cultural heritage from his British father and schooling mocked and even deplored such archaic feelings.

Would a woman expect a man to keep himself pure until he met her? No. So why should it be any different for a woman? As a mature man he accepted and respected a woman’s right to choose how she dealt with her own sexuality. But he knew too that as a lover, a husband, there would be a deeply, darkly passionate and possessive part of him that yearned to be his beloved’s only partner, an ache within him to teach her, show her the delights of sensual love. And right now something about Saskia’s reaction to him was sparking off a reaction he was having to fight to control, a response that was pure primitive Greek male. A need!

‘I’m not sleeping in this room with you,’ Saskia reiterated numbly. ‘I’m...’

If she
was
acting then she deserved an Oscar, Andreas decided grimly. But a fiancée who looked terrified at the very thought of being with him was the last thing he needed. He had to calm her down, to calm them both down.

‘Come with me,’ he commanded, taking hold of her hand and drawing her towards one of the doors that opened off the bedroom.

When he opened it Saskia could see that the room that lay beyond it was furnished as an office, with all the latest technological equipment.

‘Will it make you feel any better if I tell you that I intend to sleep in there?’ Andreas demanded.

‘In there? But it’s an office. There’s no bed,’ Saskia whispered shakily.

‘I can bring in one of the sun loungers and sleep on that,’ Andreas told her impatiently.

‘You mean it...’ Saskia was wary, reluctant to trust or believe him.

Andreas nodded his head grimly, wondering why on earth he was allowing his overactive conscience to force him into such a ridiculous situation. He knew there was no way she could possibly be the naïve, frightened innocent she was behaving as though she was.

‘But surely someone would notice if you removed a sun bed?’ she was asking him uncertainly.

‘Only my room opens out onto this pool area. It’s my private territory. The main pool which everyone else uses is round the other side of the villa.’

His own private pool. Saskia fought not to be impressed, but obviously she had not fought hard enough, she recognised ruefully as Andreas gave her an impatient look.