Expectant Bride

'You are so gracious,' Ellie framed hi an unmistakable tone of sarcasm, and his brows drew together in disconcertion a split second before the deafening whine of the rotor blades shattered the tense silence and she turned away again.

This is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me, Ellie told herself all over again as the helicopter first rose in the air and then went into a stomach-churning dip and turn to head out across London. Having employed the equivalent of blackmail, Dio Alexiakis was now set on practically kid¬napping her! What choice had he given her? No choice! How could she possibly run the risk of getting Meg fired? The older woman didn't have the luxury of a second salary to fall back on, and her husband was disabled.

But was she herself really any more independent? Ellie asked herself tautly. If it had simply been a question of sur¬vival, she could have managed without her earnings as a cleaner. After all, she had a day-job as well, and a healthy savings account. In fact, Ellie lived like a church mouse, squirrelling away every penny she could, willing to make just about any sacrifice if it meant she could attain her ultimate goal.

And that goal was buying the bookshop where she had worked since she was sixteen. However, if the steady flow of savings into her bank account ceased just when she was on the brink of asking for a large business loan, her bank manager would be most unimpressed, and her ambition to own the shop she loved would suffer a serious, indeed po¬tentially fatal setback. Right now, with her elderly boss be¬coming increasingly eager to sell and retire, time was of the essence.

Dio Alexiakis was paranoid, absolutely paranoid, she de¬cided helplessly. A spy? Did he read a lot of thrillers? So a cleaner had accidentally entered his precious inner sanctum and overheard him discussing confidential business plans. A cleaner who didn't have permission to work on the top floor, a little voice reminded her. A cleaner who shouldn't have been there, shouldn't even have entered that office, caught sneaking out from behind a door looking guilty as hell...

OK, Ellie conceded grudgingly, so she must have looked a bit suspicious in those circumstances. But that still didn't justify his outrageous insistence that he couldn't trust her out of his sight for the next thirty-six hours. And to demand that she travel abroad with him into the bargain was, in her opin¬ion, proof of sheer insanity!

That wasn't his only problem either. The way Dio Alex¬iakis had looked at her a couple of times had infuriated her. Even in the midst of what he had clearly seen as a very serious situation, Dio had still been eying her up like a piece of female merchandise on offer. Compressing her generous mouth into a most ungenerous line, Ellie ruminated on that fact.

Ricky Bolton had been hard enough to tolerate, refusing to take no for an answer and convinced that he only had to persist to wear her down. That she had experienced that strange sense of disorientation when Dio Alexiakis had looked down at her didn't surprise Ellie in the slightest. This arrogant Greek had merely incited a stronger sense of revul¬sion than even his subordinate did. But then he was one of those very earthy guys, she decided grimly, the sort who couldn't look at any reasonably attractive woman without wondering what she might be like in bed!

*   *   *

Quite impervious to Ellie's growing antipathy, which she ex¬pressed in frigid silence, Dio Alexiakis marched her through the airport to a busy shopping area. Striding straight into an exclusive boutique, he headed for a rack of lightweight black skirt suits. Dumping the smallest size available into Ellie's startled arms, he snatched a hat, purse and long black gloves down from the display shelf above and added them.

The remainder of the tastefully concocted display fell flat on the stand. Flushing to the roots of her hair beneath the aghast scrutiny of the saleswoman surging forward, Ellie whispered in a mortified undertone, 'What on earth do you think you're doing?'

'Shopping,' Dio Alexiakis delivered succinctly, quite in¬different to the staff eyes now trained on their every move. Like a steamroller, he headed for another rack, to pull a blue cotton shift dress from a hanger and stuff it with equal un¬concern into her dismayed grasp. A long black coat was thrust at her in the same careless fashion. Then he paused by a severely undersized candy-pink shorts outfit on a dummy. With an imperious inclination of his dark head, he hailed the frozen-faced older woman already moving their way. 'We'll have this as well.'

'I'm afraid that item is sold out, sir,' he was told acidly.

'Take it off the dummy, then,' Dio instructed the woman, whose badge proclaimed her managerial status.

'Mr Alexiakis!' Ellie hissed, cringing with embarrassment.