Penniless and Purchased

Her father was saying something, and she forced herself to listen.

‘Your usual orange juice, pet?’

He was crossing over to the drinks cabinet against the other wall. She took a little breath.

‘Oh, I think I’ll have a Bellini tonight, please, Daddy.’ Immediately she wished she hadn’t said ‘Daddy’ like that.

It makes me sound like a little girl.

She didn’t look at Nikos Kazandros in case she saw the thought in his eyes. She didn’t want him to think of her as a little girl.

Her father paused by the cabinet. ‘Sophie, pet, there’s no champagne open. I don’t want to waste a bottle on a single drink. Have something else.’

She was momentarily stymied. Then she recovered. She looked back at Nikos Kazandros. He had that veiled look on his face again.

‘What are you drinking, Mr Kazandros?’ she asked, eyeing his shallow glass, which he was holding with long, squaretipped fingers. Her voice had a breathless touch to it.

She could see the switch being thrown again. The veiled look was gone.

‘Nikos,’ he said softly, as if he were speaking only to her. ‘If I am to call you Sophie.’ A smile, tantalisingly brief, as was the quiver that it engendered in her, hovered at the corner of one mouth. ‘And I am having a martini—very dry. It is an…acquired taste.’

‘Sophie, you’d hate it, believe me,’ said her father from the drinks cabinet.

‘A sweet martini can be very palatable,’ suggested Nikos.

She smiled. ‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘There you go, Daddy. A sweet martini for me, please!’

Oh, damn, she’d said ‘Daddy’ again, and again her gaze flicked to Nikos Kazandros—no, Nikos, she amended, and felt a little thrill, as if of triumph—to see whether he thought her childish. But the veiled look was back on his face. She wondered at it, but at the same time realised she was glad of it, too, because it seemed to give her the opportunity to look at him, as she wanted to, without actually falling headfirst into his gaze, because his eyes were not quite meeting hers.

But they were on her face, though. And more than her face.

They’d flicked downwards, she could see—only for an instant, but it was enough. Enough to tell her, again with a little thrill of triumph, that she had not pulled out all the stops in vain.

The peach-coloured cocktail dress she wore was one of her very favourites. There was something about the colour that just absolutely suited her skin tone and her hair. The material was so light it skimmed her body, but outlined it, as well. It wasn’t at all overtly revealing—but somehow it seemed to indicate an awful lot. The hem was a little way above her knees, yet it lengthened the line of her legs incredibly. The bodice was not tight, but she knew it gave her a very flattering bust, and made her waist look even more slender than it was.

It had been incredibly expensive, even for her budget, but because she loved it so she got good value from it, wearing it over and over again.

But never so gratefully as now.

Now, as Nikos Kazandros’s experienced eyes flicked over her—how many women had he looked over to judge whether they were good enough to interest him?—she knew, with every in

grained feminine instinct, that what he saw he liked.

Liked a lot.

Her lips parted, and her smile was one of mingled gladness—and relief.

I want him to like me.

He was a world away from her. Not just because she was still a student, and he was a man old enough to be doing business with her father, but because, for all her more-than-comfortable existence, it was obvious just from looking at him that Nikos Kazandros’s stalking ground was the kind of glamorous watering holes that littered the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the Alps and the Indian Ocean islands. Fashionable clubs in fashionable cities, with the kind of exclusive membership that filtered out anyone not sufficiently rich, sufficiently sophisticated. The world of serious money and serious spending. That was the world Nikos Kazandros belonged to.

For a moment she felt dismay fill her, knowing the distance between them was too great.

Then his eyes flicked back up to meet hers again.

The veil was gone. And in its place—

Sophie’s breath stilled in her body. Completely. As if oxygen were no longer necessary to her survival.