Carole Mortimer - The Balfour Legacy

Hearing that deeply accented, mildly sardonic and crushingly familiar voice arrive from somewhere behind her caused a sudden burn of weak tears to flood her eyes. It took every bit of self-control she had to blink the tears away again, then lift up her chin and turn to look at him.

He was standing across the busy pavement, leaning against the side of his silver supercar with his hands resting inside his trouser pockets, his jacket pushed back from his bright white shirt. Tall, dark and so very sexily sophisticated, Mia observed helplessly. The overhead lights shining amber onto the wet pavement also honeyed the skin of his too-perfect face. It was no wonder most of the women passing across the gap between them stared at him, Mia thought as a whole clutch of them went by with their eyes glued to his long, lean, supremely elegant stance.

If he noticed he did not show it. He did not take his eyes from her face. His mouth was wearing a kind of half-mocking smile that stung her pride and made her wish that some other tall, dark, handsome man would just walk up to her and pull her into his embrace.

Irritating and juvenile…

‘No,’ she answered his question. ‘He’s just a few minutes late.’

With the ease of a man used to doing everything with grace, she watched him tilt his dark head down and, without removing his hand from his pocket, twist his wrist, shrug back his shirt cuff and somehow manage to display his watch.

‘This is not the kind of place a man keeps a woman waiting out on the pavement, cara ,’ he said when he looked back at her again.

‘Well, you should know since you seem to be doing the same thing to your date,’ Mia fired back.

‘I pick my dates up at their door.’

‘Then please go and do so,’ she invited and turned back to the bistro window.

The seconds ticked by. Her ears pricked and her senses went on the alert for the sound of his car driving away. She found the space around her suddenly swamped by a group of people who wanted to check out the menu too. By the time they’d moved on she was wishing she’d had the foresight to tag on to them.

Because he was still there. She could feel his silent presence like some dark force trying to drag her back round to face him. After another second or two she heard him sigh, then the sound of his footsteps bringing him close. Tension zinged down her backbone and remained there stinging like an electric charge. A second later he was standing right behind her—she could feel his body heat along her back.

‘Will you go away,’ she snapped. ‘You are making me feel stupid!’

‘Once your date arrives,’ he agreed. ‘Who is he anyway?’

Keeping her eyes fixed rigidly on the bistro window, she said, ‘That is none of your business.’

‘No?’ A hand moved against her spine like a finely brushed admonishment. ‘I’m the guy who’s been placed in charge of your care, so that makes it my business.’

‘I do not need a babysitter.’

‘Nor do you need a man who plans to sit you down to dine in a place like this. It’s a bog standard pizza place, Mia, with a cheap and fast turnaround.’

Was it—? Mia stared at the menu, still none the wiser having never eaten at such an establishment. Until Nikos had taken her with him to his working lunches she had never eaten in a restaurant at all!

‘You will be outside again before you know you’ve eaten,’ he predicted. ‘What happens, then? An hour or so in one of the pubs dotted down the street to soften you up with a couple of glasses of cheap wine, or will he be expecting to go straight back to your place to finish off the evening in the comfort of your bed?’

‘Well, you should know since you are fabled for your fast turnaround,’ she swung round to fling at him and was very pleased to see that likening his dating skills to a fast pizza restaurant made his chiselled jaw clench.

‘That was not what I—’

‘Grazie , for your wise advice,’ Mia cut him off midsentence. ‘When my date arrives I will be certain to ask him what his intentions are.’

‘Or I will’.

Sparking up like a firework she gasped out, ‘No you will not!’

‘And he’s not only unforgivably late he’s unfit to date a Balfour.’

Half unwilling to believe they were even having this conversation, Mia stared up at him. ‘And you believe you have the right to make that judgement?’

‘In your father’s place—yes.’

In other words she was a duty he felt compelled to oversee! ‘Well, you are not my father—or my idea of what a father figure should be! And in case you have forgotten,’ she added stiffly. ‘You went out of your way to tell me to back off from irritating you, so now I am telling you to do the same thing for me, Nikos, and just go away!’

With that she turned to walk off down the high street. His long fingers curling around one of her shoulders held her still.

‘Mia, this is stupid,’ he sighed out heavily.

Or irritating and juvenile… Why was that cutting remark still stinging her as badly as this? Mia asked herself.

She did not know. She did not understand what she was feeling or even what she was doing any more.

‘Please let go of me…’ She tried to move away from him.

His fingers tightened gently. ‘No,’ he refused. ‘Look…’ he said, ‘I’m—sorry if I sounded…insensitive to your feelings but—’

‘Sounded it?’ she threw out.

‘Was insensitive, then,’ he altered, the chiselled line of his jaw clenching. ‘But it does not change the fact that your so-called date has either stood you up or is only too happy to leave you to stand around here like a fool!’

‘And that is your sensitive side talking?’ So close to tears now, she had to push a hand up between them so she could cover her trembling mouth.

A soft curse rattled from him. I will take you to dinner,’ he offered, sounding so driven to say it that Mia almost snapped the hand up higher to slap his face!

But she didn’t because it would be irritating and juvenile of her to do it! ‘I can provide my own dinner,’ she told him stiffly. ‘And you already have a date.’

‘I did have a date until—’ Nikos stopped, compressing his lips, then dealt her a glinting glimmer of a look ‘—until I was stood up too,’ he finished dryly.

‘You—?’ It was like discovering he had a chink in his impenetrable armour. Mia was so intrigued by the phenomenon she stopped fighting his grip to stare up at him instead.

‘It happens to the best of us,’ Nikos compounded on his quick-thinking masterpiece of deception. ‘So shall we find somewhere quieter than this to—commiserate with each other while we eat?’

Like a lamb to the slaughter, he mocked, feeling his conscience pinch him when his beautiful PA dealt him a sympathetic look.

But at least the deal was done.

TWENTY minutes later they were being shown to a table in a very exclusive restaurant and the waiter was taking away her jacket while Mia glanced around.

If this was the kind of place Nikos tended to frequent, then she was willing to be impressed by its softly lit ambience.

‘Have I been here before?’ she asked.

‘Not to my knowledge.’

Surprising him with a sudden grin she told him, ‘If you have not brought me here for one of your business lunches, Nikos, then I have not been here. These kinds of places all have a similar look to them, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’ He glanced around their plush, hushed award-winning surroundings. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

Mia nodded. ‘They probably look different in the daylight when they are filled with sharp-suited men and women looking serious and intelligent instead of…’ Her voice trailed off, even white teeth pressing down into her lower lip to halt the potentially provocative word she had been going to use.