Kate Proctor - No Mistress But Love

‘If I happened to be you I suspect I’d be thanking my lucky stars I’d been won by a man with whom I’m so obviously sexually compatible.’

Lindy was stunned into stupefied silence…she couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly!

‘And I’d be shuddering at the thought of all the other men who could have won me—none of them, admittedly, as grossly disfigured as I am, but several of them old enough to be your grandfather.’

‘You liar! You——’ She bit back the words with a ferocity that could have amputated her tongue. She had just been about to let slip she knew it had been a game between himself and Tim alone!

‘You were saying?’ he drawled, the anger blazing in his eyes a startling contrast to the total lack of expression on his face.

‘I was saying you were a liar,’ croaked Lindy, suddenly very frightened. ‘You…you wouldn’t be thinking any of those things if you were me, you’d just be terrified and…and nervously exhausted,’ she finished off lamely.

‘I’d say you were the liar,’ he informed her in chillingly quiet tones, ‘because you’re not in the least terrified of me…something that could turn out to be a dangerous error of judgement on your part.’ He turned and walked to the door. ‘There are some matters I should like to discuss with you later, so I’ll have food brought up for us in half an hour and I shall expect you to join me then. There’s a bathroom leading off the dressing-room—and, if there’s anything you find you need, just ask and it will be provided.’

His head dropped in the most minimal of bows before he closed the door behind him.

That bow was typical of him, thought Lindy dazedly, taking leaden steps towards the bed; it was the sort of gesture that only the super-confident—and usually abundantly wealthy—could afford to make. In the lowly, a bow was an act of obeisance—in men such as Niko Leandros it was a none too subtle statement of their feelings of total superiority.

She gazed down at the bed, on which she had been about to sit, and decided its coverings were far too grand for such treatment; instead she made her way over to the dainty gondola chair in front of the dressing-table and sat down.

The sight of her own possessions neatly arranged before her sent a small frisson of alarmed awareness winging through her. She opened a couple of the drawers and again found her own possessions neatly stacked inside.

With a groaned sigh she propped her elbows on the dressing-table top, cupping her chin in her hands and gazing despondently at her reflection. Her hair was a mess, she noted half-heartedly—but the streaks of sun in it and the tan she had acquired definitely suited her, she realised with a twinge of surprise. She straightened, picking up a hairbrush and trying to bring some order to her hair.

Suddenly she flung down the hairbrush—was she completely out of her mind? She must be, to be sitting here, twittering away to herself about her appearance and behaving like some sort of concubine in a gilded cage. She shook her head furiously, as though trying to dispel the confusing mixture of emotions the very thought was evoking in her, then glanced down at her watch and leapt to her feet.

Niko Leandros might have a few matters to discuss with her—but so had she one or two she intended discussing with him!

She made a rapid examination of her surroundings and found her rather meagre wardrobe hung neatly away in a spacious dressing-room. What summer clothes she had were several years old and looking decidedly shapeless, but, having lent Tim all her money, she had had no option but to make do with them. She had actually had hopes of a shopping spree in Athens once he had paid her back, she reminded herself resentfully—a resentment that somehow struck her as peculiarly mild, given the mind-boggling thoroughness with which he had deceived her. Probably because she now had so much else to occupy her mind, she decided somewhat irrationally as she entered the bathroom.

Ruthlessly closing her mind to the breathtaking opulence of her surroundings as she took her bath, she concentrated on what she would say to Niko. It was pointless going over the top and frightening herself with thoughts of concubines, she told herself firmly. Moving her into his apartment like this obviously had to be some sort of warped joke on his part, she reasoned calmly—a joke directed at Tim, who was no longer around to respond to it.

‘…you’re not in the least terrified of me…something that could turn out to be a dangerous error of judgement on your part.’

With those words ringing in her ears, she leapt from the bath and began drying herself vigorously. And, despite the glow of warmth burnishing her skin, she felt herself shiver as she remembered Tim’s claim that Niko would be quite likely to have the pair of them slapped in gaol.

‘Damn you, Tim Russell!’ she groaned frustratedly into a huge, fluffy white towel.

The chances were that Tim had only said that to frighten her…and he had succeeded. And there was no getting away from the fact that Niko Leandros too had frightened her—something for which she should be thankful, because now there was no way she would be tempted to risk telling him the truth.

She entered the dressing-room, a luxury she had heard of but never before experienced, and began riffling through her clothes, vague plans beginning to form in her mind. She would simply suggest that, as Tim was gone…

‘For heaven’s sake, Lindy, you’re not supposed to know he’s gone!’ she groaned aloud. What she would simply suggest was that if he was right, and Tim had gone, she would work whatever notice was required of her and then return to England.

It was only when she had finished dressing that she became aware of the almost obsessive care she had taken over it—and it was an awareness that had an acutely depressing effect on her already flagging spirits.

She might as well accept the fact that she was attracted to Niko Leandros in a way she had never been attracted to any other man, she told herself despondently. And another fact she might as well face, she informed herself ruthlessly, was that, even had they met under the most ideal of circumstances, he wouldn’t have given her even so much as a passing glance.

Having notched the belt of her sea-blue dress as far as it would go, she then dragged her fingers angrily through her hair and undid all the painstaking taming to which she had so assiduously subjected it.

Niko was nowhere to be seen when she reached the drawing-room, and she was gazing anxiously around, wondering if the apartment included a dining-room, when he stepped through the gently billowing curtains now drawn across the balcony doors.

‘I usually eat outside,’ he announced, his eyes flickering over her in a manner Lindy found deflatingly noncommittal.

And obviously he had no intention of making any concession to her preferences, she thought, having to force her legs to do the necessary to propel her across the room. Because her preference would have been to eat under the stars anyway she began dredging her mind for some other aspect of him with which to find fault…and came up with nothing. It was just that he was the most disgustingly attractive man imaginable, she admitted defeatedly, giving up refusing to acknowledge the painfully breathtaking surge of excitement that had started up in her at the mere sight of him and which seemed to be getting worse the nearer she drew to him.

‘I had no idea what you like to eat,’ he said, holding aside the curtain for her as she stepped out on to the balcony. ‘So I asked for a selection of dishes you’ve shown a preference for to be sent up.’

He drew out a chair, on which Lindy seated herself with all the aplomb she could muster—which was precious little, given that her every instinct was to cry out in childlike wonderment at the perfection of her surroundings.