Lynne Graham - Expectant Bride

Ellie just froze in the glare of flashing cameras. Dio closed a powerful arm round her and carried her on through the crush as if it wasn’t there, impervious to the questions being thrown in several different languages.

‘Who’s the woman?’ she heard a man roar loudly in English.

Ellie was unnerved by the aggressive behaviour of the paparazzi. Dio was coming home to his father’s funeral. What had happened to privacy? The giving of a little respectful space? For goodness’ sake, was Dio hounded like this everywhere he went? Ellie hadn’t the slightest idea.

But during breaks in evening shifts she had frequently heard her co-workers discussing Dio’s private life in the most lurid of terms. He lived in the fast lane. He featured in glossy magazines and made endless gossip column headlines. Having enjoyed affairs with a string of gorgeous, high-profile women, he was a real sex god to the cleaning staff. But Ellie had always felt rather superior during those sessions. She hadn’t had the slightest interest in the exploits of a male she neither knew nor ever expected to meet. So she hadn’t listened any further.

They changed terminals and ended up in a small, plainly furnished waiting room. Ellie was still trembling. ‘Is it always like that for you?’

Dio shrugged a broad shoulder. Dark, deep-set awesomely beautiful eyes briefly touched her. ‘Yes…but I’m afraid I overlooked the more extreme interest your presence would excite.’

‘I hope to heaven I’m not going to be recognisable in any of those photos,’ Ellie confided tautly.

Dio said nothing.

‘What are we waiting for now?’

‘A flight out to the island where the burial will take place.’

Another flight. She suppressed a groan. The journey seemed endless. ‘The island?’ she queried.

‘Chindos. You really do know nothing about me,’ Dio remarked with a slight frown. ‘I’m not used to that.’

‘But I bet it’s good for you…puts a dent in your belief that you are the sun around which the entire world must turn,’ Ellie muttered, and then froze in dismay. She grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud!’

‘That disastrous lack of tact must get you into trouble.’ Dio surveyed her with a shadowy suspicion of a smile momentarily softening the hard line of his expressive mouth.

Ellie swallowed hard, grateful he hadn’t exploded. ‘It’s been known.’

‘Why are you always in search of a fight?’ Dio scanned her with penetrating eyes that tightened her very skin over her bones and made her shift uneasily on her seat. ‘You look so wonderfully feminine and delicate—’

Ellie winced. ‘Not delicate…please!’

‘Cute?’

‘Worse,’ she censured without hesitation. ‘Men refuse to take me seriously. It’s a big drawback being small and blonde—’

‘But you’re not blonde. Your hair is the colour of platinum. It’s extremely eye-catching,’ Dio informed her with definitive derision and the distinct air of a male unimpressed by her protest. ‘If you genuinely don’t want to invite that type of male attitude, you shouldn’t dye it that shade.’

Ellie dealt him the weary glance of a woman who had heard it all before. ‘My hair’s natural. My grandmother was Dutch, and very fair.’

‘Natural? I don’t believe you. Take your hat off,’ he urged, startling her.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ellie did so, and flung back her head as if she was challenging him. Her bright hair shone like heavy silver silk against the darkness of her jacket. ‘You see, not fake.’

His black eyes flared gold and lingered on that shimmering fall. The silence set in then, thick as a sheet of solid steel. She watched him covertly from beneath her lashes. So very tall, so exotically dark, so still and silent. Sheathed in a sensationally well-cut black double-breasted suit, he looked truly amazing. Stop it, stop it. What’s the matter with you? a shaken voice screamed inside her bemused head.

Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Ellie quivered, agonised by the awful reality that her own brain seemed to be romping out of control. In directions it had never gone in before. Even in the depths of infatuation at nineteen, with the latest and last of the users and abusers she’d seemed to attract, she hadn’t felt overwhelmed and taken over, her very thoughts no longer her own. And there hadn’t been this ghastly, utterly desperate sexual craving which flooded her every time she looked at Dio Alexiakis. She just could not cope with feeling like that around a man. It was so weak, so irrational, so humiliating…

‘What’s it like being a cleaner?’ Dio enquired with quite staggering abruptness.

‘Look, you don’t have to make conversation with me.’

‘It was a sincere question.’

‘OK…it’s very boring, repetitive and poorly paid,’ Ellie told him with a touch of defiance. ‘So if you’re expecting me to say I’m some weirdo who gets a real high out of dusting and polishing—well, sorry to disappoint you!’

‘So why are you doing it?’

‘The hours suit me and I’ve got nobody on my back. I don’t like being ordered around.’

‘I noticed. You should deal with that problem and then consider the possibility of more challenging employment. But perhaps you have no training for any other sphere.’

‘I’ve got plans of my own. I’m an ambitious woman in my own small way. I won’t be polishing your floors for much longer,’ Ellie told him with open mockery.

Dio studied her with hard black eyes. ‘In the situation you’re in, it’s not a good idea to drop hints of that variety. I never joke about business, Ellie.’

‘Neither do I. Business comes first and last in my life—’

‘Really?’

‘And you’re running up quite a bill already,’ Ellie informed him gently. ‘You do realise that I expect you to pay me for every hour of the last twelve?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Double time too,’ Ellie specified, tilting up her chin and ready to fight her corner. ‘I take a dim view of being starved, deprived of breaks and kept up until three in the morning.’

Grudging amusement stirred in his brilliant eyes. ‘You’re your own worst enemy,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I’d have paid one hell of a lot more if you had just kept quiet.’

‘I’m not greedy, and by the way, when I said I wouldn’t be working in the maintenance department for much longer, I wasn’t thinking about that stupid conversation I overheard,’ Ellie told him impatiently. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

‘How could you have forgotten about it?’ Dio growled in disbelief.

‘Even if I did understand the importance of what you said in that office—which I don’t—I’m an honest person and I wouldn’t take advantage.’

‘Those who stress how honest they are, are almost always lying in their teeth,’ Dio countered crushingly.

Feeling oddly hurt that his barriers had gone up again, Ellie felt her beautiful face stiffen and flush. ‘Obviously you’re going to believe what you want to believe. Suit yourself!’

‘You can’t blame me for taking every possible precaution.’

That confident assertion filled Ellie with furious resentment. Who did he think he was kidding? Without hesitation, he had used his infinitely superior power like the weapon it was! The fact that she was endeavouring to make the best of a bad situation didn’t alter that brutal reality. ‘Don’t you dare try to justify yourself!’ she warned him. ‘Tell it like it is. If you weren’t who you are and I wasn’t who I am, I wouldn’t be here! If Meg and I didn’t need our jobs, I would have told you exactly where to go—’

‘I can imagine,’ Dio slotted in silkily.

‘And, you know, dragging me along on a trip like this…well, it’s not exactly a dream treat, is it? No offence or disrespect intended, but I’m not heavily into funerals,’ Ellie confided.