Kate Proctor - No Mistress But Love

Had her own common sense not already told her how utterly pathetic that spur of the moment excuse had been the expression of amused disbelief flickering across Niko Leandros’s handsome features would have quickly brought it home to her.

‘My, my—so you’re compassionate as well as beautiful,’ he drawled, his words husky with laughter as he sank his fingers none too gently into the shoulder-length thickness of her sun-streaked dark blonde hair and tilted back her head. ‘Perhaps I’m a far luckier man than I’d realised.’

‘Would you mind letting go of me, Mr Leandros?’ demanded Lindy frigidly, his taunting reference to her looks touching a raw nerve in her that put a merciful break on her racing pulses.

‘Why? Surely you don’t object to a man—even one as grossly disfigured as I am—telling you that you’re beautiful?’ he enquired silkily, an openly predatory gleam in his eyes as he tugged her body against his.

‘I’m not beautiful—and we both know it!’ she exclaimed in a strangled voice, tearing her body free from its electrifying contact with his and racing round to the other side of the desk.

‘Well, that’s a novel line, I must admit,’ he muttered, his eyes narrowing to watchful slits as Lindy, her cheeks burning with humiliation, gazed sightlessly down at the papers strewn across the desk.

This was it, she told herself furiously; Tim Russell could rant and rave and make all the threats he liked—she had had enough and was taking the first boat she could get off this damned island!

‘Unfortunately for you, I don’t find it in the least intriguing when women start playing silly games and fishing for compliments—so you can dispense with both,’ he informed her coldly, then added with mocking amusement, ‘Under the circumstances, it would pay you to do both with alacrity.’

Lindy’s eyes flew to his, anger darkening their blue to navy.

‘It seems your husband hasn’t had the guts to put you in the picture,’ he continued, his eyes taking almost insultingly candid stock of the slim, golden-skinned figure across the desk from him and lingering openly on the softly rounded curves that even the shapeless T-shirt dress she was wearing couldn’t disguise. ‘Though I can’t say I’m surprised—one can’t really expect honour in such a man, now, can one?’

‘One hasn’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ snapped Lindy, wondering what on earth it was that Tim had been up to this time, and wondering even more at her own perverseness in finding this loathsomely arrogant specimen of a man so unspeakably attractive.

‘Really? Not only does he play cards badly and way beyond his means—but he also cheats.’

Lindy only just managed to stifle a groan of complete exasperation. She had had more than enough of Tim Russell and his ghastly ways—even though she had no one to blame but herself for that unpleasant fact.

‘Perhaps you will find it a little ironic that, even cheating unchallenged, he still managed to lose you to me last night.’

‘What Tim does…’ Lindy froze suddenly. ‘What did you say?’ she just about managed to croak.

‘I’ve just told you that I won you in a poker game last night,’ he informed her indifferently, turning and strolling to the door. He paused as he reached it. ‘By the way, when your husband turns up—tell him he’s fired. I did mention it to him last night, but he was probably too worse the wear for drink to remember… I dare say the fact that his wife is now mine to enjoy has also slipped his memory, so perhaps you’d be good enough to remind him of that too. And, by the way—I’ve had your things moved into my suite.’

Lindy leaned back against the desk as the door closed behind him, her mind reeling in a daze of confusion. Unconsciously she raised a hand to rub against her upper arm where the imprint of Niko’s fingers still tingled against her flesh, while the thought crept accusingly into her head that it was the inexplicable potency of the attraction she felt towards Niko that had somehow prevented her having a show-down with Tim.

Frowning, she shook her head. It was completely irrational of her to feel even a single twinge of guilt. A platonic relationship was what she and Tim had agreed on while they were here—Tim because he was still nursing wounds from a particularly hurtful relationship, and she because…Her thoughts stalled uncertainly. Because, to be perfectly frank, she seemed to have a problem where men were concerned, she told herself bluntly. At fifteen she had lost her heart to the local Romeo, whose callous remarks about her adolescent podginess—which had clung to her with relentless tenacity until she was almost twenty—had left her with a cripplingly negative self-consciousness towards her appearance. Despite the claims of her beautiful mother and her equally stunningly beautiful sister, Joanna, seven years her senior, that such a period of fatness was no more than an unfortunate family trait, she had protected herself so assiduously from the potentially hurtful attentions of males that, when they had eventually begun determinedly seeking her out, her total lack of even the most basic of experience had brought complications she had never even dreamed of to her life. Which was why, she reasoned ruefully, she had welcomed the allegedly broken-hearted Tim so wholeheartedly into her chaotic life. Tim hadn’t drooled with what she considered to be the blatant insincerity of other men, she remembered, and—until he had shown his true colours here—neither had he tried to lure her into his bed, the sole aim, she had become convinced, of just about every man with whom she had been coming into contact.

‘A year or so out of the London rat race—that’s what I need, and what I honestly think you could do with too,’ was how Tim had first introduced the subject. ‘There’s a job going on one of the Greek Islands, managing a super de luxe hotel, which I thought I’d try for… Interested?’

‘Very,’ Lindy had laughed, ‘except that I know absolutely nothing about hotel management.’

‘No problem—I know enough for the two of us.’

She realised now that she hadn’t really taken his suggestion that she should join him seriously, because her first thought had been how she would miss his availability as an escort whenever she needed one—an escort she could trust not to start making physical overtures as the evening progressed. But she had encouraged him in seeking the job, she reminded herself, her face clouding as she remembered to what extent…even then, the signs were there, she thought angrily—if only she had had the sense to read them. But it was her own pig-headed stubbornness that had been her downfall and led her to all this, she reminded herself harshly. The more sceptical her friends had become, the more protective she had felt towards Tim.

‘Lindy, don’t be so naïve!’ they had chorused. ‘He has to be expecting a darn sight more than friendship from you, carting you off to some remote Greek island for a year—especially when he’s told them all you’re his wife!’

‘How many times do I have to explain that was a misunderstanding?’ she had protested—and one she hadn’t been in the least happy to hear of. ‘It wasn’t until he’d got the job that Tim realised it was for a married couple.’

‘Yet he was the only one traipsing back and forth to Greece for interviews,’ it had been pointed out to her with such open scepticism that she hadn’t dared admit even to her closest friends that it had been her money—her entire savings, in fact—that had financed those trips.

His excuse for borrowing from her had, at the time, been plausible enough, but nothing could alter the fact that he had made no attempt to repay her to date.