Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife

‘There are staff here at Dove Hall to take care of the little boys,’ Cyrus told her when she hovered, her green eyes huge as she studied the great sandstone historic pile in front of her. ‘Mr Christakis is waiting to see you.’

Rosy colour warmed Katie’s triangular face. She straightened her slender back and lifted her chin. ‘Good…’

A housekeeper was waiting in the wide elegant hall, and Katie was shown straight into a pale blue drawing room with a spectacular painted ceiling. The grandeur of her surroundings made her feel more nervous than ever.

A door at the other end of the big room swung back on its hinges beneath an impatient hand. Katie spun round. Alexandros was framed in the ornate doorway. He looked exceptionally tall and austere, and his darkly handsome features were set like granite in a blizzard.

‘So…’ Green eyes raw with angry pain, Katie was determined to get what she had to say in first. ‘Exactly when were you planning to tell me that you have a wife?’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘AS A red herring, that won’t cut it,’ Alexandros told her forbiddingly.

‘Evading the question won’t win you any points with me either,’ Katie fielded, squaring up to him, equally set on confrontation. ‘You know very well that you didn’t tell me that you were married, and that’s inexcusable—’

‘I’m not married,’ Alexandros cut in.

‘You’re divorced?’ Involuntarily Katie hesitated as she made that deduction. Some of her anger dissipated, curiosity sparking, so that it was an effort to fire the next phase of attack. ‘But you must still have been married when you came over to Ireland!’

‘No.’

Katie waited for him to add some form of explanation, but that one bald word seemed to be all that was coming her way. ‘I don’t think I can believe you…’

Alexandros shrugged a broad shoulder.

‘I have a right to know—’

‘You don’t have a right to know anything about my marriage,’ Alexandros delivered, regarding her with a punishing degree of disdain.

Katie went very pale.

‘You don’t have good reason to doubt my word either.’

Katie found her voice again. ‘Oh, yes, I do!’

Alexandros shifted a lean brown hand in a silencing motion. ‘I have no time for this. If you did not have those little boys, you would not be here in this house now.’

‘Did you imagine I might think otherwise?’ Katie was rigid with tension. ‘You didn’t exactly overwhelm me with a welcome at the bank, did you?’

‘You know what I’m saying to you. Last night you listened to my warning and you swore that you hadn’t talked to the press. I find it hard to credit that you had the nerve, but you lied to me—’

‘I didn’t!’

‘Keep quiet,’ Alexandros countered with icy emphasis. ‘I didn’t trust you fully last night, but I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I will not make that mistake again. How could you be so stupid as to alienate me when you’re dependent on me?’

Off-balanced by that attack, and with her pride smarting beyond belief, Katie sucked in a stark breath. ‘I am not and I never will be dependent on you! I’m a lot more independent than that—’

‘Is that how you describe selling tacky stories about me to a tabloid? Independence?’ Alexandros derided.

Her heart-shaped face flamed and her hands balled into fists.

‘Don’t you dare even think about throwing something at me,’ Alexandros told her softly.

Angry embarrassment consumed Katie, for she considered that taunt to be a very low blow. ‘I wasn’t going to.’

A level ebony brow climbed. ‘No? I was under the impression that you always throw things when you’re losing an argument.’

‘You’re not arguing with me, you’re sneering at me, and I can rise above it—’

‘You’ll need a hell of a long ladder to rise above the vulgarity of your current status,’ he slotted in with offensive cool.

Katie lifted a hand in a furious motion. ‘Of course it doesn’t occur to you that I might not have been the one to sell that story to the Globe!’

Alexandros vented a sardonic laugh. ‘Hey…is that a unicorn outside the window?’

‘Right now, you’re just reminding me of all the things I really hate about you!’ Katie launched.

Alexandros dealt her a look of burning contempt, and rage rose inside her with explosive ease. His bone-deep arrogance, his inbred conviction of his superiority, and that quality of insolence he exuded literally made her feel light-headed with temper. But she struggled to control her annoyance, because she knew how much he cherished his privacy and it had been violated by the Globe. Furthermore, she might not have been the one to profit, but she did feel responsible for what her friend had done.

‘When I spoke to you last night I was telling the truth when I said I hadn’t talked to that newspaper guy. I can understand that you are angry—’

‘Why would I be angry?’ Alexandros drawled silkily.

‘And I’m sorry about what’s happened—’

‘Sorry is a waste of your breath. It will be a very long time before I forget this episode.’

‘It wasn’t me who sold that story…it was my friend, Leanne,’ Katie told him heavily.

‘There’s a herd of unicorns out on the lawn,’ Alexandros murmured with biting clarity. ‘Why are you feeding me this nonsense?’

Katie gritted her teeth together. ‘I will say it just one more time. It wasn’t me.’

‘You took photos of me in Ireland without my knowledge,’ Alexandros condemned. ‘Their appearance today in the Globe confirms your guilt.’

‘Cameraphone…stupid.’ Her nose wrinkled, her throat muscles tightening as she thought of how desperately she had once wanted a picture of him.

‘Stolen photos—’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Rage and pain coalesced and mushroomed up inside Katie like a pressure cooker, venting steam without warning. ‘You’re the most incredible control freak! So I was infatuated with you, and I went sneaking around like a silly kid, so that I could snatch some idiotic photos of you with my phone…get over it!’

A faint hint of colour now scored his fabulous cheekbones. ‘And those photos appeared in that filthy article—’

‘Aren’t you lucky that I didn’t take any revealing ones? Your problem is that you don’t know what a real problem is, so you make a fuss over trivial things—’

‘Trivial?’ Alexandros dealt her a searing look of charged disbelief. ‘According to that tabloid rag, I pour vintage champagne over my women and then I shag them in hot tubs…that’s when I’m not making them dress up as French maids for a dirty thrill!’

‘You’re joking…’ For a moment, Katie studied him aghast, because she had not read the article in the Globe beyond that enervating first line relating to his marital status. But her horror was entirely on her own behalf as she imagined rumours of such shocking shenanigans reaching her mother and her stepfather in New Zealand. ‘What are you complaining about?’ she asked fiercely. ‘So all the guys think you’re a heck of a lad? But I get labelled as a slut who plays sex games for your benefit! That is just so typical of the world we live in—’