Who would recognise her? Who was she? Someone’s wife?
There was something vaguely familiar about her face. His mind coming up blank, he tried to imagine her without her clothes to see if he could place her, but mentally stripping a nun proved a stretch even for him. ‘I don’t sleep with married women so that can’t be the reason for the elaborate subterfuge. Do we know each other? If so, you’re going to have to remind me.’ He raised an eyebrow as a prompt. ‘Where? When? I admit to being hopeless with names.’
She dragged her gaze from the view, those green eyes direct. ‘When and where what?’
Stefan, who hated mysteries and considered tact a quality devoid of reward, was blunt. ‘Where and when did we have sex? I’m sure it was amazing but you’re going to have to remind me of the details.’
She made a sound in her throat. ‘I haven’t had sex with you!’
‘Are you sure?’
Green eyes stared back at him. ‘If rumour is correct, Mr Ziakas, sex with you is a memorable experience. Is it something I’m likely to have forgotten?’
More intrigued than he would have been willing to admit, Stefan sat back in his chair. ‘You clearly know a great deal more about me than I do about you. Which brings me to the obvious question—what are you doing here?’
‘You told me to come and see you in five years. Five years is up. It was up last week, actually. You were kind to me. The only person who was.’
There was a wistful note in her voice that sparked all the alarm bells in his head. Trained to detect vulnerability from a hundred paces so that he could give it a wide berth, Stefan cooled his voice.
‘Then this is clearly a case of mistaken identity because I’m never kind to women. I work really hard not to be or they start to expect it and the next thing you know they’re dropping hints about rings, wedding planners and a house in the country. Not my style.’
She smiled at that. ‘You were definitely kind to me. Without you I think I would have thrown myself overboard at that party. You talked to me for the whole night. You gave me hope.’
Stefan, all too aware that he was widely regarded as the executioner of women’s hopes, raised his eyebrows. He stared at that glorious hair and filed through his memory bank. ‘Definitely a case of mistaken identity. If I’d met you, we definitely wouldn’t have wasted a night talking. I would have taken you to bed.’
‘You told me to come back in five years.’
That news caught his attention and Stefan narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m impressed by my own restraint.’
‘My father would have killed you.’
My father would have killed you.
Stefan stared at her, his eyes sweeping her face for clues, and suddenly he stilled. Those beautiful washed-green eyes were a rare colour he’d only seen once before, hidden behind a pair of unflattering glasses. ‘Selene? Selene Antaxos.’
‘You do recognise me.’
‘Barely. Theé mou—’ His eyes swept her frame. ‘You’ve—grown.’ He remembered her as a gangly blonde who still had to grow into her lean body. An awkward teenager completely dominated by her overprotective father. A pampered princess never allowed out of her heavily guarded palace.
Stay away from my daughter, Ziakas.
It was the unspoken threat that had made him determined to talk to her.
Just thinking of the name Antaxos was enough to ruin his day and now here was the daughter, standing in his office.
Dark emotion rippled through him, unwelcome and unwanted.
He reminded himself that the daughter wasn’t responsible for the sins of the father.
‘Why are you dressed as a nun?’
‘I had to sneak past my father’s security.’
‘I can’t imagine that was easy. Of course if your father didn’t make so many enemies he wouldn’t need an entire army to protect him.’ Blocking the feelings that rose inside him, he stood up and strolled round his desk. ‘What are you doing here?’
The one thing he did remember from that night was feeling sorry for her and the reason he remembered it was because he so rarely felt sorry for anyone. He bel
ieved that people made their own choices in life, but he’d taken one look at her in all her leggy, uncomfortable misery and decided that being the daughter of Stavros Antaxos must be the shortest straw anyone could ever draw.