Mia's Scandal

The three of them walked together down the path and into the marquee. People clapped when they saw them arrive, making Mia blush as she offered up a shy smile.

A quick murmured thanks to her hostess and Nina was rushing off to join her husband. Nikos’s hand arriving against her lower back made her arch it slightly at the electric shock contact. If he noticed her reaction he said nothing, guiding her between a series of large round tables towards their allotted table. And he maintained that disturbing contact with her back right up until he had seen her into her seat.

Tension zipped back and forth between them, though Mia did not quite follow why it did. Whatever the reason, it made her respond over-brightly to the curiosity and interest which flipped backwards and forwards across the table because people were eager to know what had happened to her. She made light of their questions while Nikos lounged in the chair beside her with a polite smile strapped to his lips and his dark eyes hidden beneath his lowered eyelids.

When she could not contain a wince as she picked up her wine glass he did not know how he stopped himself from reaching out and taking the glass from her. A curse rattled around inside him because he recognised that his self-control where she was concerned was on a hair trigger. He wanted to catch hold of her injured wrist so he could inspect the damage. He wanted to brush that stray lock of damp hair from her pale cheek. He remembered what she’d said about him always touching her and the stinging tension of grim acceptance to that charge held him trapped like a prisoner, because he was becoming more and more aware of just how much and how often he wanted to touch her.

Giving his restless fingers something to do he picked up his own glass and gulped down a large slug of the rich ruby wine. She was driving him to drink, he mused bleakly.

She was driving him to many places, he extended on that, not even hearing that someone had just spoken to him. It was Mia who brought his attention back to where it should be by lightly touching his jacket sleeve. A tight sting of awareness shot up his arm and, lifting his eyelids, he looked directly into her eyes. For a second—a finely split millisecond—he visualised leaning forward to lay claim to her mouth with a soft, hot kiss.

Her eyelashes trembled and she looked away from him. She knew what he had been thinking, and the tension inside him mushroomed while he forced himself to take note of the people sharing their table. Forced himself to join in.

She was playing this out a hell of a lot better than he was, he conceded as the infernal meal dragged on and on. She only picked at the dishes set in front of her. So did he. Eventually Santino stood to give a witty speech of thanks to everyone for attending, but Nikos found it difficult to raise a smile.

And he watched Mia dip her head a little, exposing the vulnerable length of her slender nape. Tension gripped him, sexual tension. When she lifted a hand to rub at her brow, he watched her fingers tremble, saw as she lowered the hand again that her pallor seemed ten times more pronounced.

And he’d had enough. The decision came to him that quickly. People were starting to stand and move around the room now, so he used the moment to rise to his feet.

Mia was startled when he cupped her elbow and drew her to her feet but she did not protest when he just turned with her and headed out of the marquee without saying a word to anyone. There was a charity auction to follow the banquet, then music and dancing and a cabaret show put on by attending celebrities, which was to be transmitted to the Lake Como party by satellite link.

He did not seem to give a damn. He ignored the clicking rush of camera shutters and the TV cameras recording their departure, his long loose stride tempered to suit her smaller steps in Nina’s borrowed shoes, and his hand was in possession of the curving indent of her waist.

They walked the path up to the house in taut trammelling silence. As they passed by the pool Mia could not control a small shiver and he reacted to it by drawing her in closer to his side. He was using his mobile to speak to his pilot as they stepped into the house. By the time they stepped out of it again by the front door she could see the helicopter coming in to settle on the same patch of lawn it had dropped them off on when they arrived.

A few minutes later and she subsided gratefully into her seat. Her wrist was aching and a tension headache was tugging at the backs of her eyes.

‘OK,’ he said the moment they were airborne. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Casting a glance in his direction, Mia saw that his mood did not look good at all. He was sitting with his long legs stretched out in front of him and a black-suited elbow rested on the window’s narrow ledge. A set of long fingers supported the golden jut of his jaw while one finger lay across the thin stretch of his mouth.

And his dark eyes glittered.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ she answered, keeping to her decision to play the whole incident down.

‘If you’re lying to me I will find out,’ he warned her quietly. ‘Santino’s staff is checking film footage as we speak. I saw you fall, and I believe you were pushed. I want to know who you think did that to you and why you believe that they did.’

‘It could just have been an accident,’ Mia sighed out. ‘I don’t understand why you are obsessing on it.’

For an answer he dipped his hand into his pocket and drew out his mobile. She knew without having to ask that he was going to call Santino and get the information he wanted from him.

‘You are such a bully—put your phone away,’ she snapped, adding another sigh of weary surrender this time when he continued to hold the phone at the ready, eyes fixed like stubborn black lasers on her pale face.

‘I think it was Anton Brunel that pushed me,’ she admitted.

‘Brunel?’ Nikos fired a sharp frown at her. ‘He was there tonight?’

Moistening her taut lips Mia nodded. ‘He—approached me as I was about to go outside…’ Her eyes darkened with anger when she recalled the way he had grabbed her and hustled her into that corner. ‘He caught hold of me and began throwing all kinds of wild accusations at me. He—he claimed I had lied to you. That I had been flirting with him.’ She just could not bring herself to use Anton Brunel’s shameful term.

‘And were you—flirting with him?’

‘How dare you say that? How dare you ask me that?’ Mia turned on him furiously. ‘We have had this conversation before and I was not pleased with your attitude then!’ she heaved out in an offended rush.

‘You used him to pull my strings with that dossier and your description of what happened between the two of you that day.’ Nikos tossed out a broad-shouldered shrug. ‘How do I know you did not start your string-pulling campaign with a bit of flirtation across the lunch table with him?’

‘So I am a dreadful flirt and a cunning manipulator—is that what you’re saying?’ Mia was stunned by the level of both men’s conceit! But most of all she was horrified that they might be right! ‘I suppose you also think I deserved all I got when I landed in the pool!’

‘I didn’t say that.’