Mia’s Scandal (10 page)

In no mood for Diana’s Fischer’s twisted kind of humour Nikos intoned flatly, ‘You lead a sad life, Diana,’ then walked away, over to the almost deserted pool bar and ordered a drink while he awaited Mia’s return.

By the time the two women walked out of the house again he was the only person left on the terrace. As a foil for each other Mia’s darkness next to Nina’s flame was pretty much as good
as it could get, Nikos observed. Then his full attention had welded on Mia’s transformation from wet and bedraggled to long and curvaceous, a seriously slinky siren which almost blew his edgy control to bits.

She was wearing a figure-hugging strapless black tube of a dress that was nothing short of mind-stopping. For a few seconds he was thrown back to the moment he’d first seen her on the Balfour Manor driveway.

Heat poured into his body. Desire so fierce he did not know how he kept it from showing on his face. Her wet hair had been slicked back and her make-up barely there except for a fresh touch of gloss to her soft full mouth. Her natural beauty just shone out of her, warm, dark—exotic—exquisite.

But as they came closer he saw she looked deathly pale and he knew somehow—instinct—that she was more shaken up by the incident than she was trying to let on. Then he noticed the way she was holding her right wrist in the palm of her other hand and his raging libido altered to raging anger that stung like a blister trying to burn a hole in his gut.

Mia was responding with a smile to something Nina was saying when she saw Nikos slowly straighten his leaning posture from the bar. Her footsteps faltered and her eyes just clung.

‘See, delivered back to you all in one piece,’ Nina said teasingly. ‘All you have to do, Nikos, is stop glaring like an angry bear and perhaps we can join the others and get something to eat!’

And he was glaring, Mia noticed—glaring directly at her! If he said one small word, offered up one single criticism about how she looked, she thought fiercely, then
he
would be the next one to land in the pool!

‘Why are you holding your wrist like that—?’ he launched at her.

G
LANCING
down, Mia was surprised to discover that she was indeed cupping her wrist in the palm of her other hand, ‘I—I think I hurt it as I fell into the water,’ she lied.

Nina let out a surprised gasp. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Too many other things to think about,’ Mia said ruefully. ‘And it does not hurt as much as I am obviously making it look!’

She dropped the wrist to her side to prove her claim. Nina did not look convinced and neither did Nikos. He was still glowering at her, the tension in his jaw enough to crush rocks in his teeth. Mia frowned at him, transmitting a message that had his lush black eyelashes veiling his anger and his lips pressing together over whatever he had been about to say.

‘I’m starving,’ Mia said brightly in an attempt to divert attention. In truth she knew she was going to struggle to eat a single thing, and her
wrist was really throbbing where it hung limp fingered at her side.

The three of them walked together down the path and into the marquee. People clapped when they saw them arrive, making Mia blush as she offered up a shy smile.

A quick murmured thanks to her hostess and Nina was rushing off to join her husband. Nikos’s hand arriving against her lower back made her arch it slightly at the electric shock contact. If he noticed her reaction he said nothing, guiding her between a series of large round tables towards their allotted table. And he maintained that disturbing contact with her back right up until he had seen her into her seat.

Tension zipped back and forth between them, though Mia did not quite follow why it did. Whatever the reason, it made her respond over-brightly to the curiosity and interest which flipped backwards and forwards across the table because people were eager to know what had happened to her. She made light of their questions while Nikos lounged in the chair beside her with a polite smile strapped to his lips and his dark eyes hidden beneath his lowered eyelids.

When she could not contain a wince as she picked up her wine glass he did not know how he stopped himself from reaching out and
taking the glass from her. A curse rattled around inside him because he recognised that his self-control where she was concerned was on a hair trigger. He wanted to catch hold of her injured wrist so he could inspect the damage. He wanted to brush that stray lock of damp hair from her pale cheek. He remembered what she’d said about him always touching her and the stinging tension of grim acceptance to that charge held him trapped like a prisoner, because he was becoming more and more aware of just how much and how often he wanted to touch her.

Giving his restless fingers something to do he picked up his own glass and gulped down a large slug of the rich ruby wine. She was driving him to drink, he mused bleakly.

She was driving him to many places, he extended on that, not even hearing that someone had just spoken to him. It was Mia who brought his attention back to where it should be by lightly touching his jacket sleeve. A tight sting of awareness shot up his arm and, lifting his eyelids, he looked directly into her eyes. For a second—a finely split millisecond—he visualised leaning forward to lay claim to her mouth with a soft, hot kiss.

Her eyelashes trembled and she looked away from him. She knew what he had been thinking,
and the tension inside him mushroomed while he forced himself to take note of the people sharing their table. Forced himself to join in.

She was playing this out a hell of a lot better than he was, he conceded as the infernal meal dragged on and on. She only picked at the dishes set in front of her. So did he. Eventually Santino stood to give a witty speech of thanks to everyone for attending, but Nikos found it difficult to raise a smile.

And he watched Mia dip her head a little, exposing the vulnerable length of her slender nape. Tension gripped him, sexual tension. When she lifted a hand to rub at her brow, he watched her fingers tremble, saw as she lowered the hand again that her pallor seemed ten times more pronounced.

And he’d had enough. The decision came to him that quickly. People were starting to stand and move around the room now, so he used the moment to rise to his feet.

Mia was startled when he cupped her elbow and drew her to her feet but she did not protest when he just turned with her and headed out of the marquee without saying a word to anyone. There was a charity auction to follow the banquet, then music and dancing and a cabaret show put on by attending celebrities, which was to be transmitted to the Lake Como party by satellite link.

He did not seem to give a damn. He ignored the clicking rush of camera shutters and the TV cameras recording their departure, his long loose stride tempered to suit her smaller steps in Nina’s borrowed shoes, and his hand was in possession of the curving indent of her waist.

They walked the path up to the house in taut trammelling silence. As they passed by the pool Mia could not control a small shiver and he reacted to it by drawing her in closer to his side. He was using his mobile to speak to his pilot as they stepped into the house. By the time they stepped out of it again by the front door she could see the helicopter coming in to settle on the same patch of lawn it had dropped them off on when they arrived.

A few minutes later and she subsided gratefully into her seat. Her wrist was aching and a tension headache was tugging at the backs of her eyes.

‘OK,’ he said the moment they were airborne. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Casting a glance in his direction, Mia saw that his mood did not look good at all. He was sitting with his long legs stretched out in front of him and a black-suited elbow rested on the window’s narrow ledge. A set of long fingers supported the golden jut of his jaw while one finger lay across the thin stretch of his mouth.

And his dark eyes glittered.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ she answered, keeping to her decision to play the whole incident down.

‘If you’re lying to me I will find out,’ he warned her quietly. ‘Santino’s staff is checking film footage as we speak. I saw you fall, and I believe you were pushed. I want to know who you think did that to you and why you believe that they did.’

‘It could just have been an accident,’ Mia sighed out. ‘I don’t understand why you are obsessing on it.’

For an answer he dipped his hand into his pocket and drew out his mobile. She knew without having to ask that he was going to call Santino and get the information he wanted from him.

‘You are such a bully—put your phone away,’ she snapped, adding another sigh of weary surrender this time when he continued to hold the phone at the ready, eyes fixed like stubborn black lasers on her pale face.

‘I think it was Anton Brunel that pushed me,’ she admitted.

‘Brunel?’ Nikos fired a sharp frown at her. ‘He was there tonight?’

Moistening her taut lips Mia nodded. ‘He—approached me as I was about to go outside…’ Her eyes darkened with anger when she
recalled the way he had grabbed her and hustled her into that corner. ‘He caught hold of me and began throwing all kinds of wild accusations at me. He—he claimed I had lied to you. That I had been flirting with him.’ She just could not bring herself to use Anton Brunel’s shameful term.

‘And were you—flirting with him?’

‘How dare you say that? How dare you
ask
me that?’ Mia turned on him furiously. ‘We have had this conversation before and I was not pleased with your attitude then!’ she heaved out in an offended rush.

‘You used him to pull my strings with that dossier and your description of what happened between the two of you that day.’ Nikos tossed out a broad-shouldered shrug. ‘How do I know you did not start your string-pulling campaign with a bit of flirtation across the lunch table with him?’

‘So I am a dreadful flirt and a cunning manipulator—is that what you’re saying?’ Mia was stunned by the level of
both
men’s conceit! But most of all she was horrified that they might be right! ‘I suppose you also think I deserved all I got when I landed in the pool!’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘But you implied it!’ So upset now, she pushed up her chin and looked away from him,
fighting the tears trying to burn in her eyes. ‘He bruised my wrist too but I suppose I should apologise for not allowing him to throttle me at the same time!’ she shook out thickly. ‘Perhaps you could—W-what are you doing—?’ she broke off to choke out.

He’d undone his seat belt and arrived across the gap separating them with the speed of an attacking snake! Now he was picking up her bruised wrist and inspecting it, the curses that flooded from him in several different languages should have turned the dark night air bright blue.

‘I will kill him,’ he rasped, going pale with fury when he saw the livid purple fingerprints marking her delicate skin.

Mia snatched her wrist back, hurting it in the bargain, but she just did not care. ‘You…men—you are all the same, ready to parade your macho strength when you feel like it,’ she shook out in burning contempt. ‘Yet you are quick to play the victims when a woman so much as looks at you! No, don’t touch me.’ She jerked away when he tried to capture her bruised wrist again. ‘I am angry with you!’

‘I can see that,’ Nikos said quietly.

Her face flushed, the tears daring to press against the muscles in her throat now. ‘I behaved myself tonight—for your benefit! I did
not do anything to earn your contempt! It was not my f-fault that a nasty p-person like Anton Brunel wished to push me in the pool—and you are not my hero just because you happened to pull me out of it!’

The helicopter had come to a standstill without either of them noticing. Mia undid her seat belt and stepped over Nikos, just needing to get out of there before she did something really stupid like bursting into a flood of hot tears!

She was already halfway to the house by the time Nikos had stepped onto the darkened lawn. With a growl of frustration he strode after her and entered the house in time to watch her fly up the stairs. And even in flight the sensual flow of her lush black-clad figure reacted on him with all the gut-grinding promise of a—

‘Theos,’
he breathed.

He wanted her.

His hand snaked up to grab hold of the back of his neck.

He was not her hero, but he had this angry desire to charge up those damn stairs after her and at least be her lover!

He remained standing like that for the next thirty control-clutching seconds—until he heard her bedroom door close with a thud. Then with a violent swing of his body he strode off towards the back of the house, discarding his
clothes as he went. By the time he reached the door which led into his all-purpose gym he was almost naked but for a pair of black cotton undergarments that moulded his fiercest problem with no conscience at all.

He used the gym as if it was his own personal war zone, pounding his body through a series of physical drills that did nothing to ease what was really driving him. Giving up on that form of torture he slammed through another door and dived into the glistening blue waters of his indoor swimming pool. Fifty hard laps later and he was climbing out again and heading back through the house, grimly gathering up his discarded clothes as he went.

The moment he reached his bedroom he headed for the bathroom. The heat of the shower made his glistening skin sweat and his chest was heaving from his recent exertions, but one part of him still dominated everything else. Cursing he switched the shower to cold and punished himself by letting the icy water dowse his entire frame. By the time he came out of the bathroom covered by a white towelling robe he thought he was finally beginning to get a grip.

Then a soft knock sounded on his bedroom door and he knew, even as he walked barefoot across the room, that no matter how hard he’d
worked at it, he’d controlled nothing at all. For there was only one person in this house who could be knocking on his door and she was naive enough and blind enough not to know what she was tempting by doing it.

And there she stood in a short ivory silk robe with her recently shampooed hair a pagan swathe of glossy damp waves around her beautiful face. Her blue eyes looked anxious. A set of even white teeth were pressing into her full bottom lip.

‘I’m s-sorry to disturb you,’ she stammered out, ‘but In-need…’

The stammer did it; the big blue eyes staring up at him did it, the pearly white teeth worrying her lip. She’d been disturbing him for too many frustrating hours and days and weeks, and he just reached for her and pulled her into his arms, then drove his hungry mouth down onto hers.

And the hell of it was, she let him. Next thing he knew he was stepping back with her trapped against him and kicking the door shut so he could press her back against it to indulge in the kind of hot sensual embrace that said goodbye to his self-control.

Mia fell into the kiss like a starving woman. It was so much what she wanted there wasn’t a single second when she thought to pull free. Her arms had already wrapped around his neck
to fasten tightly and she was kissing him back so deep and hotly she did not recognise herself. The feel of his strong hard masculine body pressing against her felt glorious, the flood tide of pleasure that went rushing through her made her gasp and groan and quiver feverishly as he explored her mouth with a deep hot knowing intimacy which had her lips open wider in search for more.

Her reward was a lusty masculine growl that excited her dreadfully. Tightening his arms around her he lifted her up against him and fed her legs around his waist, then just stood there with her clamped against him, their parted mouths fused together and the intimacy taking place with their tongues a shattering mimic of something else he was doing to her.

His hands were splayed across her silk-covered buttocks, the fiercely bold evidence of how he was feeling shocked and excited her in equal amounts. When she moved voluptuously against him she felt his shudder that blew the last of his common sense to bits.

Turning to walk with her over to the bed, as they landed on the mattress in a tangle of clinging limbs, he pulled his head back. ‘What did you come here for?’ he rasped out.