Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife

‘No, of course not.’ Katie smiled with all her might, but there was a hollow sensation inside her.

Well, she had asked and she had been told, she thought numbly, wandering round the exhibits in Damon and Eugena’s wake and scarcely knowing what she said when pressed for an opinion on the various works of art. All Katie could think about was that Ianthe had been a genuinely wonderful wife, and Alexandros had been very happy with her. For the first time Katie was forced to confront the demon of her own jealousy. She was desperately ashamed of those feelings, but she still could not shake free of them. She was horribly jealous of what Alexandros had had with Ianthe, and knowing that she had no right to feel that way made little difference. Even so, she was disturbed by the awareness that bitter jealousy and injured pride had prevented her from giving serious consideration to his marriage proposal. On the other hand, was she really so desperate that she had to consider marrying a guy who had openly said that sex was all she had to offer him?

Alexandros had loved his wife. He had been grieving for Ianthe when he’d met Katie, and he had used Katie like a sticking plaster on the wound—easily discarded once he was on the road to recovery. In comparison to Ianthe she had been a casual fling, a temporary deviation from his sophisticated norm, and only the birth of Toby and Connor had given Katie a passport back into Alexandros’s life. She saw that those painful truths had savaged her self-esteem and made her deny the fact that she was still hopelessly in love with the twins’ father. But she also saw that she really did need to get over her less than presentable emotions about his late wife and his perfect marriage. The very fact that Alexandros regarded the subject of Ianthe as too private and personal ever to be discussed only reminded Katie that she was still very much on the outside looking in.

When the gallery opening was drawing to a close, Katie faked a yawn and turned down an invite to travel on to a party. Damon offered to take her home.

‘There’s a car waiting for me…’

Damon raised a brow. ‘I’ll see you out. So, you’re not free after all?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Your children aren’t here, but you’re still running about in a chauffeur-driven limo. It’s an ownership statement. Christakis is posting very large “Keep off the Grass” signs all round you,’ the young Greek quipped.

‘Not necessarily,’ Katie muttered uncomfortably as they emerged onto the dark street. ‘I usually take the boys everywhere with me, and Alexandros insists that I use the car.’

‘Anyway, don’t worry about your nanny’s fatal attraction,’ Damon told her smugly. ‘If she’s available, I intend to keep her fully occupied!’

As that expression of interest in Maribel sank in, a flash of light from a camera almost blinded Katie, and she blinked in surprise like a myopic owl. The photographer sped off, and Damon urged her into the limo. ‘I’m surprised Christakis didn’t give you a bodyguard as well.’

‘He did…I told him I didn’t need him tonight,’ Katie sighed.

After a night spent pretty much tossing and turning, she got up to feed and dress Toby and Connor the next morning and went back to bed when Maribel arrived. It felt like only five minutes later when an urgent knock woke her again, and the door opened a crack.

‘Mr Christakis is here, asking for you…’

Katie threw herself out of bed, glanced in the mirror, and almost loosed a shriek of anguish. Her hair was an explosive tangle of ringlets. Why did he have to come calling on her without warning at this unearthly hour of the day? A belated glance at the alarm clock informed her that it was actually mid-morning, for she had slept longer than she’d appreciated. In a frantic rush, she cleaned her teeth, splashed her face and hurriedly pulled on some clothes, emerging from her room breathless, to hurry into the sitting room.

But Alexandros wasn’t there. He was in the nursery, with the twins and Maribel. Katie hovered unnoticed in the doorway, finger-combing her copper ringlets to make them flatter and smoothing down her black T-shirt and denim skirt. She wished she had taken the time to put on make-up and shoes. Alexandros was asking questions and Maribel was answering, her pink-cheeked smiles and flickering upward glances the response of a susceptible woman in the presence of a very fanciable and smoulderingly sexy guy.

‘Alexandros…’

He swung round and focussed incisive golden eyes on her. There was no smile on his lean, extravagantly handsome face. As he accompanied her to the sitting room, she found herself wondering if her interruption had been an unwelcome one.

‘Do you find Maribel attractive?’ Suddenly what Katie was worrying about, what she was trying not to think about, spilled from her lips in an unstoppable rush.

The most ghastly silence fell. It seemed to eddy out round her, as if she was trapped in the centre of a whirlpool. In the long stretch of quiet that followed she did feel as if she was drowning, as intense mortification crawled through her. Nothing would have persuaded her to look at him.

‘Let me get this straight…’ Alexandros was framing English words with the greatest difficulty because he was outraged by the question. ‘You’re asking me if I want to shag the nanny?’

Hot colour spread across her cheeks. ‘That’s not what I meant—’

‘Of course it is. The answer is no. I don’t ever hit on my staff, and I sack them if they try it on with me. You’re the single exception—the only employee who has ever ended up in my bed—’

‘And taking the fallout of that into consideration, I’m sure it’s not a risk you’d choose to take again.’

Alexandros surveyed her with brooding force. With the sexual pull she exerted over him, he was wondering what choice had to do with it. He hadn’t liked the way she made him feel then, and he really liked it little better now. But he knew that given the same situation he would repeat the exact same behaviour pattern. In the outfit she was wearing, with her little pink unpainted toes curling into the rug, she looked absurdly young and naive—until she glanced up from below those feathery lashes with witch-green iridescent eyes that had the most sinful effect on his libido.

‘You were with Damon Bourikas last night…explain,’ Alexandros invited coolly, the lust on his mind steadily spreading to even more responsive areas.

Her head came up, chin angling. ‘Excuse me…?’

‘He’s not fit company for you.’

‘I’m an adult. I can’t believe you’re saying that to me—’

‘I don’t want you associating with him.’

‘Nobody tells me who I socialise with—’

Disturbingly calm golden eyes assailed hers. ‘I do…and if you don’t listen Bourikas certainly will. Because I’m too influential for him to ignore.’

‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Katie told him shakily, her temper sparking with incredulity at that threat.

‘Oh, I think we both know that I would, and with pleasure, yineka mou,’ Alexandros responded with provocative silkiness. He had been incensed when he saw that photo in the morning paper. Damon bloody Bourikas! Rumour linked Bourikas to some very wild parties—but Alexandros had no intention of telling Katie that, in case a bad-boy image increased Damon’s sleazy appeal. He was already grimly conscious that, at barely twenty-five years old, the other man was much closer to her age than he was.

Of course the sensible thing to do would be to tell Alexandros that Damon was interested in their gorgeous French nanny, Katie reflected grudgingly. But her pride revolted against that course. And if Alexandros should think that another man was interested in her, it might make her seem more exciting and desirable in his eyes. Alexandros was very competitive in business. Mightn’t he prove equally competitive when it came to a woman? It was not the moment to tell him that Damon was too flash and smugly assured of his own charms to attract her.

‘You seem to be forgetting that I met Damon in your grandparents’ home,’ she reminded him.

‘They keep an open house. You are not in a position to be careless of appearances,’ Alexandros delivered.

Katie breathed in so deep she was afraid that her lungs would burst. Being told that by the guy responsible for turning her into an unmarried mother galled her. ‘And why would that be?’

Brilliant dark golden eyes enhanced by inky black lashes rested on her. ‘One Greek tycoon…?’ He shifted a graceful lean brown hand in an accepting motion. ‘But being seen around town with a second rich Greek could suggest that you’re making a lucrative lifestyle choice.’

Katie went bright pink with bristling fury at that insult. ‘How…dare…you?’

‘I dare because your reputation matters to me, and to our children.’

Her hands knotted into fists, but that very first reference to the twins as something they shared did not pass her by. ‘I make my friends where I choose!’

‘No,’ Alexandros murmured with lethal finality, strolling closer and taking her hands in his to slowly, intently, unwind her angrily knotted fingers and curl them into his own. ‘You’re not on your own any more.’

‘Hands off! You’re the one who warned me not to touch!’ Katie reminded him breathlessly.

Lush black lashes screened his gaze to a sliver of gold as hot as sunlight on the animated triangle of her flushed and furious face. He could feel the passion vibrating in her tiny frame, and it drew him like a starving man to life-giving food. ‘I like an element of risk. It adds an edge,’ he murmured thickly.

The silence hummed with energy, and she snatched in a breath, holding her slight body very taut. But the stirring heaviness of her breasts and the little twist of heat at the heart of her were too pressing to ignore, and bewilderment flashed through her eyes. ‘But we’re having a fight…’

‘I don’t want to fight with you,’ Alexandros imparted very softly, deciding then and there that when playing it cool sentenced him to celibacy, he had played it cool for long enough.

‘I have to take Toby and Connor out for a walk,’ she told him hurriedly, struggling to suppress and sidestep the physical awareness that was threatening her self-control.