Expectant Bride

Dio Alexiakis was paranoid, absolutely paranoid, she decided helplessly. A spy? Did he read a lot of thrillers? So a cleaner had accidentally entered his precious inner sanctum and overheard him discussing confidential business plans. A cleaner who didn’t have permission to work on the top floor, a little voice reminded her. A cleaner who shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t even have entered that office, caught sneaking out from behind a door looking guilty as hell…

OK, Ellie conceded grudgingly, so she must have looked a bit suspicious in those circumstances. But that still didn’t justify his outrageous insistence that he couldn’t trust her out of his sight for the next thirty-six hours. And to demand that she travel abroad with him into the bargain was, in her opinion, proof of sheer insanity!

That wasn’t his only problem either. The way Dio Alexiakis had looked at her a couple of times had infuriated her. Even in the midst of what he had clearly seen as a very serious situation, Dio had still been eying her up like a piece of female merchandise on offer. Compressing her generous mouth into a most ungenerous line, Ellie ruminated on that fact.

Ricky Bolton had been hard enough to tolerate, refusing to take no for an answer and convinced that he only had to persist to wear her down. That she had experienced that strange sense of disorientation when Dio Alexiakis had looked down at her didn’t surprise Ellie in the slightest. This arrogant Greek had merely incited a stronger sense of revulsion than even his subordinate did. But then he was one of those very earthy guys, she decided grimly, the sort who couldn’t look at any reasonably attractive woman without wondering what she might be like in bed!

Quite impervious to Ellie’s growing antipathy, which she expressed in frigid silence, Dio Alexiakis marched her through the airport to a busy shopping area. Striding straight into an exclusive boutique, he headed for a rack of lightweight black skirt suits. Dumping the smallest size available into Ellie’s startled arms, he snatched a hat, purse and long black gloves down from the display shelf above and added them.

The remainder of the tastefully concocted display fell flat on the stand. Flushing to the roots of her hair beneath the aghast scrutiny of the saleswoman surging forward, Ellie whispered in a mortified undertone, ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘Shopping,’ Dio Alexiakis delivered succinctly, quite indifferent to the staff eyes now trained on their every move. Like a steamroller, he headed for another rack, to pull a blue cotton shift dress from a hanger and stuff it with equal unconcern into her dismayed grasp. A long black coat was thrust at her in the same careless fashion. Then he paused by a severely undersized candy-pink shorts outfit on a dummy. With an imperious inclination of his dark head, he hailed the frozen-faced older woman already moving their way. ‘We’ll have this as well.’

‘I’m afraid that item is sold out, sir,’ he was told acidly.

‘Take it off the dummy, then,’ Dio instructed the woman, whose badge proclaimed her managerial status.

‘Mr Alexiakis!’ Ellie hissed, cringing with embarrassment.

On the clear brink of making a deflating retort, the older woman’s mouth fell open when she heard that name and took a better look at the tall black-haired male towering over Ellie. ‘M-Mr Alexiakis?’ she stammered in incredulously.

‘Yes, the owner of this chain of shops,’ Dio confirmed, surveying the unfortunate woman with menacing disapproval. ‘Tell me, do your staff usually stand around chatting when there are customers requiring attention? And since when has a display been more important than making a sale?’

‘You’re quite right, sir. Please allow me to assist you,’ the manageress muttered unevenly, her discomfiture unconcealed.

‘This lady needs lingerie. Pick some out for us.’ His attention falling on the shoe racks, he dragged Ellie across to them. ‘What size are you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life.’ Ellie was trembling with rage and chagrin. ‘Is this the way you normally behave in public?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded with ringing impatience. ‘We don’t have time to waste. Choose some shoes.’

In the background the manageress was struggling to strip the shorts outfit from the mannequin with hands that were visibly trembling.

In a sudden move of desperation, Ellie stretched up and heaped all the garments into his arms instead. ‘Why don’t you just go over to the checkout and wait for me there?’

‘I’ll stay here to expedite matters—’

‘You are not standing around while I choose undergarments!’ Ellie hissed up at him, like a viper ready to strike, infuriated green eyes flaming bright as jewels. ‘I don’t need so much stuff either.’

Black eyes scorched down into hers. ‘I’m paying you to do as you’re told—’

‘If I have to put up with you, it’ll need to be plenty!’

His brilliant gaze literally shimmered, a dark flush of colour accentuating the savage slant of his sculpted cheekbones. Incredulity emanated from him in waves. Nobody speaks to me like that—’

‘Oh, stop throwing your weight around,’ Ellie told him witheringly.

‘I—’

‘You’ve behaved atrociously from the moment we walked in here,’ Ellie condemned fiercely. ‘Go over to the checkout and keep quiet, and try not to terrify the life out of anybody else!’

Turning her back on him, unperturbed by the rasp of Greek invective Dio Alexiakis was audibly struggling to restrain, Ellie chose a pair of high-heeled black sandals and tried them on. They fitted. She passed them to him without a backward glance before joining the ashen-pale manageress at the lingerie section and hurriedly selecting a nightdress and some sets of bras and briefs. Argument, she sensed with a shudder, might well lead to further public mortification. She would leave the clothes behind when she was finally free of the dreadful man. And already the mere thought of another thirty-six hours in Dio Alexiakis’s domineering and boorish radius daunted her.

He handed the blue dress and the shoes back to her. ‘Put them on,’ he commanded with studied insolence.

Cheeks adorned with flags of outraged scarlet, Ellie stalked into a cubicle. He had no manners. He was incredibly confrontational, unnervingly uninhibited and outspoken. As for the way he reacted when he got a taste of his own medicine back—well, he went up in flames like a rocket! When she emerged again, the entire staff were engaged in wrapping the rest of the purchases. Never had Ellie been more grateful to leave a shop.

‘I suppose you want to go in there,’ Dio condemned with unconcealed exasperation as he surveyed a busy outlet which sold cosmetics and toiletries.

‘No…no, I’ll manage fine!’ Ellie swore in haste. ‘Prehistoric man cleaned his teeth with a twig. Maybe I’ll pick one up somewhere on the way.’

Dio dealt her an arrested glance. And then he really shocked her. He flung back his imperious dark head and laughed with spontaneous amusement. Ellie simply gaped, heart-rate speeding up, pulses jumping. His even white teeth flashed against bronzed skin, dark, deep-set eyes gleaming with appreciation. Humour drove all brooding darkness from his lean, powerful face, leaving her bemusedly conscious of just how stunning he was in the looks department.

‘I’m not into shopping,’ he confided huskily, as if she might not already be aware of that reality. ‘Other people usually do it for me.’

Her complexion uncomfortably warm, Ellie dragged her attention from him and studied the floor, but that Mediterranean dark and devastating face was still imprinted in her mind’s eye. He really was spectacular. That stark acknowledgement, that very thought, seriously unsettled Ellie. Dio Alexiakis wasn’t making the tiniest effort to impress or please her. Yet somehow he still made her effortlessly aware of his high-voltage male sexuality. She didn’t like that sensation, didn’t like the unease and tension he provoked inside her.

She might be only twenty-one, but it was over a year since Ellie had gone out on a date. Men, she had decided, were a waste of precious time and effort, and she hadn’t once regretted that decision. She didn’t consider herself a man-hater, but she did get a secret kick out of jokes that suggested the male sex was useless and increasingly surplus to female requirements. After all, by and large, that had been Ellie’s experience from childhood.

As Dio urged Ellie at speed through the crowded terminal, he rested a lean hand lightly on her taut spine to keep her moving. She stiffened defensively. ‘Excuse me,’ she heard herself say stiltedly, stepping back, suddenly determined to escape him, even if it could only be for a little while.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.

‘The ladies’ cloakroom,’ Ellie framed with frigid emphasis. ‘Are you planning to come with me?’

His aggressive jawline squared. ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’

Pointedly dumping the carrier bags she was loaded down with at his feet, she began to walk away.

‘Ellie…’ He extended a comb to her with a sardonic look. ‘Maybe you should do something with your hair while you’re in there.’

Gritting her teeth at the realisation that she hadn’t taken the time to check her appearance in the shop, and strongly resisting an unusually feminine urge to start smoothing her hair down, Ellie vanished into the cloakroom.

It was the work of a moment to tame her bright hair back into a straight heavy fall just below her shoulders. She frowned at her reflection, noticing the animated pink in her cheeks, the surprising sparkle in her eyes. The dress had a cool simplicity she liked, but it wasn’t her style.

Her full pink mouth tightening, Ellie studied the expensive silver comb he had given her and recalled the ease with which he had accurately assessed her dress size. But then that had not been a surprise to her. At twenty-nine years of age, Dio Alexiakis was an unrepentant, totally unreconstructed womaniser. Naturally he was, Ellie reflected cynically. Men with money and power lived in a buyers’ market of all too willing women. Dio was a real babe magnet, and he knew it. He had undoubtedly never had to worry too much about honing the rough edges from his less than presentable manners.

But, even so, she was to get a free trip to Greece. Private jet, five-star luxury all the way. The drawback? Dio Alexiakis breathing down her neck. An adventure, she told herself staunchly. Even with him around it ought to be more fun than polishing endless floors.

Heavens, she realised abruptly, she’d have to ring Mr Barry. Tomorrow morning her boss would be expecting her to open up as usual. He never turned in until noon, and when he found the shop still locked up he’d go straight upstairs to her bedsit and hammer on the door, thinking she had fallen ill. Regardless of Dio’s embargo, she had to phone Mr Barry, and as she could hardly tell the older man the truth, she would have to lie to excuse her absence.

Carefully concealing herself behind a pair of large, gossiping women, Ellie slipped out of the cloakroom and lunged breathlessly at the public phone only a few yards away. Dio Alexiakis was now standing in the centre of the busy concourse, talking on his mobile phone, his attention conveniently distracted.

Ellie dialled the operator. Since she had no cash on her at all, she would have to request a reverse-charge call. But just as the operator answered, Dio turned his dark, arrogant head. She crashed the receiver back on the hook, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dio saw her before she could put some space between herself and the phone.

Ellie froze like a criminal as glittering black eyes locked to her in instantaneous judgement, his lean, strong face darkening as he strode towards her. And Ellie, who knew all too well what it felt like to be irritated or bored by a member of the male sex, discovered for the first time in her life what it felt like to be scared…

CHAPTER TWO

EYES as dangerous as black ice scanned Ellie’s pale face. ‘The instant I allowed you out of my sight, you rushed to the phone to pass on the information you overheard. You have betrayed my trust!’ Dio Alexiakis condemned with scantily suppressed savagery.

Even trembling, and with her stomach knotted light with apprehension, Ellie was fascinated by the volatile charge of that explosive Mediterranean temperament and that innate sense of drama. Both were so utterly foreign to her.

‘Mr. Alexiakis—’ she began, keen to disabuse him of his eagerness to assume the worst.

‘You have made your choice. So be it.’ Dio surveyed her with cold, lethal menace. ‘I will destroy you for this.’

Ellie’s tummy performed an unpleasant somersault. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she protested feverishly. ‘I only got as far as dialling the operator!’

With a look of thunderous derision, Dio swung on his heel and strode away, outrage etched in every line of his lean, tight, powerful body.

For an instant, disconcertion froze Ellie to the spot. Oh, yeah, just drag me out to the airport on your stupid helicopter and then dump me with no money and a very nasty threat! Only unfreezing as fear for her co-worker Meg’s future job security assailed her, Ellie raced after Dio Alexiakis, hating him like poison.

‘Get out of my way,’ he growled when she got in front of him.

‘That call I was trying to make wasn’t what you thought it was either!’ Ellie argued hotly.

He simply side-stepped her.

‘You are so stubborn!’ Ellie flung wrathfully in his wake. ‘All I did was try to make a reverse-charge call to my boss at the bookshop…all right?’

Stilling, Dio swung back with stormy reluctance. ‘What bookshop?’ he ground out.

Ellie stared at him with a frown, sensing something missing, and then she exclaimed, ‘What the heck have you done with the bags? For goodness’ sake, you just walked off and left them lying on the floor, didn’t you?’

Ellie went into automatic reverse, spinning round to retrace his steps. Her attention settled on the abandoned carrier bags with relief. Hurrying back, she grabbed them up.

‘What bookshop?’ Dio repeated stonily when she’d made it back to his side, laden like a packhorse.

‘I work in one during the day. I also live above the shop…’ Ellie paused to get her breath back. ‘I have to contact Mr Barry to warn him that I’ll be taking time off. He’ll call the police if I suddenly vanish—’

‘Rubbish! He’ll assume that you’ve taken off with some boyfriend. Staff of your age are often unreliable,’ Dio Alexiakis asserted, unimpressed.

Affronted by the response, Ellie breathed in very deep to control her temper, but it didn’t work.

‘You know, I’ve had it up to here with you!’ she told him bluntly, tipping back her silvery fair head to survey him with angry resentment. ‘I do not have a boyfriend and I am not unreliable. Don’t underestimate me and don’t talk down to me, Mr Alexiakis. I always turn in for work. I’ve been in the same job for five years, and for the past two I’ve virtually been running the business—’

‘So what are you doing slogging as a cleaner five nights a week?’ he incised drily.

‘I need the money…OK?’ she flared. ‘Is that really any of your business?’

‘Your insolence outrages me.’ Shimmering dark, deep-set eyes raked over her, the lean, bronzed features hard as steel.

‘So I don’t like you…what do you expect? I haven’t done anything wrong. I made a silly mistake, but it’s being treated like a major crime!’ Ellie recounted in an accusing undertone. ‘You’re blackmailing me into doing what I don’t want to do…and I don’t appreciate your conviction that because I’m poor I’m more likely to be dishonest!’

‘Are you quite finished?’

Feeling as if she had run smash-bang into a brick wall and bruised herself all over, Ellie reddened and compressed her lips.

‘Today of all days,’ he breathed with harsh emphasis, ‘I am not in the mood for this nonsense. Come on. We have wasted enough time.’

‘You believe me, then…?’ Ellie prompted a minute or two later as she struggled to keep up with his long, powerful stride.

‘All I believe is that I caught you before you contrived to disobey my explicit warning not to telephone anyone,’ Dio contradicted with succinct bite. ‘You’re little and sneaky. Why does that not surprise me?’

‘I am not sneaky!’

‘You could have explained that you had another employer. I’m not an unreasonable man,’ Dio stated grimly. ‘But you chose to sneak instead of being open and honest.’

If he said ‘sneak’ again, she swore she would slap him. Her cheeks flamed, but the threat of thirty lashes at dawn wouldn’t have dragged an apology from her. Asking him permission to do anything would have choked her. And, whether he liked it or not, that call to Mr Barry still had to be made. Unfortunately the prospect of telling little white lies to Mr Barry in Dio Alexiakis’s presence made her squirm.

Ellie didn’t make a habit of lying. If anything, she tended to be too honest, too blunt. She knew her own failing well, but some of her failings were also her strengths. She was fiercely independent and had never been a team player. She loved having the freedom to make her own decisions. As a result, both her jobs suited her perfectly. She preferred to work alone and without interference.

Almost an hour later, when Dio’s brooding silence was fraying her nerves, her passport and her keys were handed over at a prearranged meeting point by an older man in a dark suit, whom Dio called Demitrios. Both men totally ignored her, and talked for what felt like a very long time in Greek.

‘I hope you didn’t leave my place in a mess,’ Ellie finally remarked, rather loudly.

When she spoke, Demitrios frowned in complete surprise, much as if a suitcase had suddenly opened its mouth and tried to chat.

‘And I hope you locked up properly again.’ At that point a strangled groan erupted from Ellie. ‘For goodness’ sake, how the heck did you get past the alarm system in the first place? And did you reset the—?’

‘My security staff are not stupid,’ Dio interposed crushingly, openly aggravated by her interruptions. ‘The premises will have been left in order.’

Ellie tilted her chin. ‘It must be comforting to know that you have staff who can trespass as efficiently as burglars.’

Dio dealt her a thunderous glance from brilliant black eyes.

‘It’s rude to ignore people,’ she told him stubbornly, and spun away.

But then you’re just a cleaner, she reminded herself in exasperation. The lowest of the low in any staff hierarchy. Even worse, she was stuck with a guy used to being waited on hand and foot by servants. Behaving as if she was the invisible woman didn’t tax Dio in the slightest. He expected her to maintain a respectful silence unless first invited to speak. But she had never been that good at keeping her tongue between her teeth, she acknowledged ruefully.

Feeling cold now that she was no longer being kept warm by carting heavy bags around, not to mention the need to walk at about five times her natural speed, Ellie took out the black coat, ripped off the sale label and put it on. The hem hit the floor. If she pulled up the collar she would look like a small moving blanket.

‘Here…’ Dio Alexiakis extended his mobile phone to her.

Ellie blinked in complete disconcertion.

‘Your story checks out. Demitrios confirms it. You may call the owner of the bookshop.’

Ellie punched out the number. As soon as he heard her voice, Mr Barry asked anxiously if something had happened at the shop. Reassuring him, but resentfully conscious of Dio listening to every word, she explained that she would be off work for a couple of days, and apologised for the lack of warning she was giving him. She said a close friend was ill.

Ending the call with relief, she returned the phone to Dio Alexiakis.

He shot her a grim, measuring look. ‘You’re a very convincing liar.’

Several hours later, Ellie was appreciatively conceding that the interior of the Alexiakis private jet was something else.

Her eyes roved with keen curiosity in every direction. Opulent cream leather seating, plush carpet and elegant dcor. The cabin was far more like a luxurious reception room than mere passenger space. And did Dio Alexiakis realise how lucky he was? Did he heck!

Ellie surveyed her reluctant host. While they had waited endlessly at the airport for a fresh take-off slot for the jet he had paced the VIP lounge, exuding frustration and wrathful impatience in enervating waves. Now they were finally airborne, but from what she could see he was in no better a mood.

Even so, she still found herself studying him. The dense blue-black hair so perfectly styled to his well-shaped head. The spectacular eyes enhanced by luxuriant ebony lashes. Eyes the colour of midnight that could glint like diamond stars. The hard planes and hollows of his fabulous bone structure. Strong cheekbones added character. His arrogant nose gave warning. And that wide, perfect mouth? Passion and sensuality. She pondered on the mystery of how a particular set of features could add up to such a devastating whole.

And by the time she surprised herself at that stage, she’d got distinctly hot and bothered, and acknowledged a truth she would sooner have denied. She fancied the socks off Dio Alexiakis! Who had she been trying to kid when she’d told herself he revolted her? But it had been such a very long time since Ellie had been physically attracted to a man that she was sincerely stunned by the revelation. Just hormones playing a trick on her to remind her that she could be as foolish and fallible as any other woman, she told herself. Urgently.

But even in a filthy mood, Dio Alexiakis was incredibly sexy. If she had noticed, he had to be! Possessed of that rare fluidity of a male totally in touch with his own body, he moved like a big cat prowling on velvet paws. And he was beautifully built. Broad shoulders, taut, flat stomach, slim hips, long, lean powerful thighs, she assessed, taking individual note of each attribute. Fantasy man…well, until he opened his mouth, she conceded, or left her carting the bags, or looked through her with supreme disdain while never once enquiring if she was hungry or thirsty. Not a feeling guy. Tough, selfish, single-minded and utterly ruthless in attaining his own ends…

Caught staring, Ellie clashed in shock with Dio’s narrowed intent gaze. Eyes that could turn to the glowing gold of topaz in sunlight, she registered, suddenly running alarmingly short of breath. But it was a kind of alarm new to Ellie’s experience. Edge-of-the-seat excitement, she labelled in disbelief, finding it impossible to break free of that smouldering golden appraisal. Feverish tension held her fast, the thunder of her accelerated heartbeat pounding in her ears like surf as her mouth ran dry. An arrow of twisting heat coiled up through her and warm colour stained her face.

‘It’s three in the morning Greek time. You should lie down for a while and try and get some sleep,’ Dio murmured thickly.

The very sound of that deep, dark drawl was like honey drenching her every straining sense, sending a delicious little shiver through her taut frame.

Ellie blinked like a sleepwalker waking up. ‘Lie down?’ she mumbled.

A dark line of blood now accentuated the hard arc of his cheekbones. He reached out and pressed a service button. His astonishing eyes were semi-veiled by his lush lashes. The raw tension churning up the atmosphere turned her stomach over. Complete bewilderment assailed her, followed by a sudden stark flood of intense embarrassment.

As Ellie rose jerkily upright, looking everywhere but at Dio Alexiakis, the female flight attendant appeared. Ellie was shown into a sleeping compartment. She sank down on the edge of the surprisingly large bed, powerfully disconcerted by the lingering ache in her swollen breasts and the still urgent tautness of her nipples. Never before had a man simply looked at Ellie and made her feel a hunger so powerful it hurt. But Dio Alexiakis had.