“You don’t mind if I steal Mlle. Brewster for an hour, do you, mon ami?” the Frenchman had said over morning coffee.
Mind? Demetrios thought, mind?
There was a soft peal of feminine laughter behind him. He turned around. Samantha had left her chair. She was standing with the Italian. And with the Frenchman. The damned Frenchman, who’d breezed off with her at lunchtime as if she did not have a first, hell, a sole obligation to the man who was her employer…
“Miss Brewster,” Demetrios said. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what it is that you find so amusing?”
The room fell silent. He’d meant to sound lighthearted, as if he wanted to join in the fun, but from the way everyone was looking at him he knew he hadn’t pulled it off. Carefully, deliberately, he drew his lips back from his teeth.
“I hate to miss a good joke.”
No. Definitely not. He hadn’t fooled anybody. The Frenchman cleared his throat. “It was nothing, Demetrios. I merely asked your charming Miss Brewster a question in English and she explained that I had misused a phrase and thus given my question an entirely different meaning. Isn’t that right, mademoiselle?”
“Oh, but your English is generally excellent, monsieur.”
Sam’s voice was warm and low-pitched. She never speaks to me that way, Demetrios thought. She never looked at him that way, either, with a little smile. She never looked at him at all.
“You are too kind,” the Frenchman said pleasantly, “but I know that my English leaves something to be desired.”
It was the man himself who left something to be desired, Demetrios thought coldly. He had a translator of his own. Why did he need to talk to Samantha at all? And even if he did, she didn’t have to reply.
He would tell her that, later. Miss Brewster, he would say, from now on, you are to speak only to me…
Demetrios took a deep breath. Thee mou, he thought, I am losing my mind!
He was deep in negotiations it had taken months to set up, verging on a deal that was worth a huge sum of money. More than that, he was about to take his company in a direction he’d dreamed of for years. He should have been hanging on every word that was uttered in this room, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t. His concentration was close to nonexistent.
The rain, he thought desperately, it had to be the rain.
Sam returned to her place at the conference table and sat down. He followed and told himself to forget everything but the meeting. The Italian began speaking. Demetrios could catch the meaning of some of the words but, of course, he would rely on his translator’s expertise. He turned towards her. He’d learned to watch her face as she listened, to read her expression for subtle changes.
She was leaning forward, her brilliant emerald eyes fixed on the Italian as if he were the only man who’d ever interested her. Why didn’t she ever look at him that way?
Because she’s not trying to translate your words, his brain told him calmly.
His battered ego wasn’t listening.
How could she do that? Smile at one man, go to lunch with another, and treat the one who employed her as if he didn’t exist.
Because, his brain said patiently, that’s what she’s paid to do. That was her job; it was what they’d agreed, that morning in her apartment. He was pleased because she’d turned out to be an excellent translator. So what if she was also a beautiful woman? The world was filled with beautiful women. This one was nothing special. She was nothing to him at all. Hadn’t he proved that by never referring to what had almost happened in Brazil? By not letting her absence at his dinner table annoy him?
How could it annoy him, when he hardly ever spent the evening at home?
He sent her back to Astra in his helicopter each night. He stayed in Athens, dining out, getting home late, knowing she had to hear the roar of the ’copter as it made the return trip…not that she ever mentioned it. She didn’t give a damn what he did or who he did it with, not that he was doing anything but eating dinner in his club and then burying his nose in the day’s papers because his friends and acquaintances had taken to avoiding him.
“Trouble with a woman?” one had asked him the other night, and he knew he’d damn near snarled when he said no, why would he have trouble with a woman? Especially with this one, who he didn’t want despite a face that surely would have put Helen of Troy to shame and a body Aphrodite would have envied.
“…not quite what it seems,” Samantha whispered, her breath warm against his ear.
Demetrios snapped back to reality.
She was leaning towards him, speaking softly as if they were lovers lying in each other’s arms. It was only an illusion. She spoke of dollars and gross tonnage, not of passion and heat, and her language was formal, Mr. Karas this, Mr. Karas that, and the occasional “sir,” which she always managed to make sound like an insult.
Did she think addressing him as Mr. Karas would make him forget he’d almost taken her to bed the very first night they’d met?
His vision blurred. He held his breath, reminded himself that he was not the least bit angry—and exploded.
“A sto dialolo!” he growled, and shot to his feet so quickly that his chair fell over.
The silence beat against his eardrums. They were all staring at him, as if he’d changed into a dangerous animal.
Maybe he had.
He bent down, picked up the chair and righted it. Then he faced the little assemblage.
“My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I seem to—to have developed a sudden headache.”
He waited, but no one spoke.
“I suggest we adjourn for the day. We’ve made progress.” They’d made none, but what was the harm of one more lie? “But it is getting late.” That was true enough. It was dark outside. “And the rain will make the roads slick.” Another bit of truth, if not a vital one. “So, what I suggest…” What? What did he suggest, that would erase the bewildered expressions from the faces turned towards him? “What I suggest, since this is Friday, is that we meet tomorrow morning at, say, nine o’clock at my home. My driver will be at your hotel at eight. He will take you to the airport, where my helicopter will be waiting.” He managed to smile. “Perhaps we can discuss some of our concerns more easily in a less formal setting.”
Chairs were pushed back. Hands were shaken. Coats were put on, umbrellas gathered. People hurried to the door. Demetrios followed after them…and clamped a hand on Samantha’s shoulder before she could leave.
“You will stay.”
The look she gave him would have turned any normal man to stone but he was not a normal man. Not right now. He was a man filled with an anger he didn’t fully understand and that only helped convince him that his rage was her fault.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, you are to stay.”
“Am I really?” Her eyes flashed. “Perhaps you’d like to amend that to an order to heel, sit and stay.”
Demetrios shot a look past her. “Lower your voice,” he growled.
“I am not a dog in need of training.” Her voice quivered with anger. “I do not sit or stay or do anything else on command, and I have nothing further to say to you. Good night, Mr. Karas.”
“You will not speak to me like that!”
“And you,” she said, shaking off his hand, “will not embarrass me in front of anyone, ever again!”
The look on his face was wonderful. Anger? Disbelief? No. Better than that. It was shock. Sam figured that nobody had ever told off the Greek God, nobody had ever dared to, not in his entire life.
“Goodbye, Mr. Karas,” she said, and strode away.
“Come back here,” he shouted.
Sam quickened her pace. She heard him pounding after her, then heard the murmur of his secretary’s voice and his harsh response, but his footsteps stopped.
“Samantha? Samantha! You will wait for me!”
Like hell she would. She burst from the building, waved away Demetrios’s driver, ran up the street, took the c
orner at top speed and didn’t slow down until she’d taken another half dozen turns. Then she slowed to a walk while her breath made steamy plumes in the chill darkness and an icy, wind-driven rain beat into her face.
She paused to get her bearings. Where was she? She’d walked these fascinating, ancient streets until Demetrios had put a stop to it, but never at night. Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except seeing to it that she never saw Demetrios Karas again.
How dare he? How dare he speak to her that way?
You will stay.
Sam shivered and pulled up her collar.
The no-good, self-centered, domineering son of a bitch! Ignoring her, day after day, except when it suited him to boss her around. Announcing she would take her meals with him, as if he owned her. Forcing her to have lunch in his company for no good reason. All that nonsense about her being his responsibility…
She’d never been any man’s responsibility. She never would. Her mother had gone that route and look where it had taken her. First she’d been a doormat for a weak man; now, she was the possession of a powerful one. Her stepfather treated Marta like a cherished piece of crystal kept safe on a shelf. And yes, Amanda and Carin were headed for that same kind of existence.
Sam quickened her steps.