Penny Jordan - The Scandalous Warehams

The guest suite, for instance, was exactly that—a luxurious, streamlined boutique-hotel-style open space, with a sleeping area at one end that contained a bed, and a living space at the other furnished with sofas, tables and a desk.

Like the living room, the guest suite also had a glass wall that ran its full length, but this one looked inward onto what she imagined must be an enclosed garden, since it was virtually on the roof of the building. Carefully placed soft lighting revealed a perspective view of the ruins of a small elevated Greek temple, which looked down into the garden with steps leading from it into a swimming pool. Along the far length of the pool ran a colonnade, planted with vines, which led to a grotto of the sort favoured by designers of the Italian Renaissance opposite the temple. Parterred greenery in intricate formal patterns separated the pool area from the space outside the glass wall, so that that space formed an almost private outdoor sitting area, with double doors from the living space opening out onto it.

Lizzie didn’t like to think of the millions just the apartment and its garden must have cost. Professionally, she was in awe. This kind of commission was so far outside her level of operation that the only time she would normally get to view one would be in the pages of a magazine. But, as a woman who shared her own living space with two sisters and twin five-year-old boys, she was almost repelled by the cool, sleek hauteur of living space. It made her feel that as a human being her presence within it spoiled its sterile perfection.

Ilios had handed her trolley case before leaving her, and of course it looked ludicrously out of place.

Half an hour, he’d said. That meant she had the choice of showering and tidying herself up, or texting her sisters.

That choice was no choice, really. Lizzie smiled ruefully to herself as she headed for the double doors to one side of the enormous low-level bed, dressed in immaculate grey and white linen to tone with the slate-grey tiled floor.

Beyond the double doors was a dressing room-cum-wardrobe space—enough space to house the entire wardrobes of her whole family with room to spare—and beyond that, through another set of doors, was the bathroom, containing both a shower and a bath, and a separate lavatory. For the first time since she had entered the apartment Lizzie realised she was in a room that combined both modern artistic design and sybaritic sensuality. For a start, the glass wall continued the full length of the bathroom, making it possible to stand in the wetroom-style shower or lie in the huge stone bath and look out into the garden. Limestone tiles covered floor and walls; thick fluffy grey, white and beige towels were stacked on the inbuilt limestone shelving unit next to the double basins.

After a regretful look at the shower, Lizzie washed her hands and face and then returned to the bedroom, sinking into the white sofa as she quickly texted her family to tell them the good news about her new commission from the owner of Manos Construction.

That done, she only just had enough time to comb her hair and renew her lipstick before a quick glance at her watch told her that her time was up.

When she had made her way back to the living area, she suspected, from the quick frowning glance that Ilios gave her, that he had expected her to have changed clothes. No doubt he was used to women making an all-out effort to impress him, but even if she’d had time to change, Lizzie acknowledged, since all she had to change into was a different top she was hardly likely to have impressed him.

While he might not exhibit the tendencies one somehow expected to see in a man who had ‘come from nothing’—for instance, whilst she had no doubt that both his clothes and the watch he was wearing were expensive, they were the opposite of ostentatious—she suspected that designer-clad females were his normal choice of arm candy. Which was perhaps why he considered her sex to be so rapacious.

Their food, delivered whilst she had been in the guest suite, was a simple moussaka-type dish. It was, Lizzie admitted as they sat opposite one another at the polished black glass table, absolutely delicious—as was the wine Ilios had poured to go with it.

It was merely necessity that had prompted him to decide that Lizzie could pay off her debt to him by becoming his wife. He had no personal interest in her whatsoever, Ilios reminded himself as he watched her enjoying her food, plainly not in the least bit concerned about the fact that she was still dressed in workmanlike clothes that did nothing to accentuate her figure and were obviously neither designed nor worn with the idea of arousing male desire. So why did it irk him so irrationally to recognise that she had not made the slightest attempt to attract his attention? Was he really such a stereotypical male? Or was it because, despite the fact that she was not making any attempt to attract him, he was very much aware of her ?

If he was, then it was probably due to the fact that it was some time since he had shared his bed with a woman. He had ended his last relationship after his lover had started trying to pressure him into marriage—over a year ago now, in fact.

If Lizzie’s manner irked him then it was surely because, even though his current contact with the female sex was via a variety of social and business-related events, and not on any personal level, he took it for granted that the women he met would be well groomed, dressed in such a way that pleasing the male of the species would be their clear intention.

Ilios looked at her and frowned.

‘You will need a new wardrobe before you can appear in public as either my fiancée or my wife,’ he informed Lizzie.

‘I have plenty of clothes at home. I can ask my sisters to send me some.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? Right now you are dressed as though you were a suburban matron whose sole concern is looking after her family. Jeans and a blazer, loafers … A woman who does not seek to attract the attention of a man, and who perhaps would even prefer to repel male attention.’ He made a dismissive gesture which stung Lizzie’s female pride.

‘Not all women are so insecure that they want to advertise their sensuality to the world at large. Some of us prefer to keep that aspect of ourselves private. In fact we take a pride in it,’ she told him fiercely.

‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Ilios demanded. ‘Wearing dull clothes and so-called sexy underwear beneath them?’

Lizzie could feel her colour rising and bent her head over her wine glass, hoping that the soft fall of her hair would cloak her blush, as she absentmindedly ran her fingertip round the edge of the glass. The fact was that as her sisters often teased her because she was a silk, satin and lace undies fan, the more feminine the better.

Ilios observed her behaviour, knowing immediately the cause of her flushed face and her reluctance to meet his gaze. What was a matter of far more concern and disbelief to him was the effect knowing that beneath her sensible clothes Lizzie Wareham deliberately chose to wear sensual underwear was having on him physically. It might be over a year since he had last had a lover, but that was no excuse for the images that were filling his mind now, and the reaction they were causing within his own body.

Ilios couldn’t remember previously being so glad that he was seated at a table, and was thus able to conceal from a woman’s view his body’s reaction to her. To have such a painfully hard erection was territory that belonged to young men not yet able to fully master their sexuality—not men in their mid-thirties, and certainly not him. The mind could play tricks on a person, he reminded himself, and his reaction was probably not to Lizzie Wareham but to images he himself had created. He did not desire her. He was, to put it bluntly, simply aroused. He could have put any attractive female body into those images and felt the same effect. Desiring Lizzie Wareham was not part of his plan, and therefore must not be allowed to happen.