From Dirt to Diamonds

‘TV and film isn’t my investment area, Candice,’ said Angelos bluntly, cutting across her.

For a moment the actress’s expression faltered. ‘Oh, but surely since it’s me who’s involved you’d make an exception—’

‘Candice, I made it crystal clear during our time together that our relationship was personal, not professional. I don’t mix the two. Ever.’

The over-made-up eyes flashed. ‘Better make sure Little Miss Jilted knows that! She’ll be assuming she’s a dead cert for your next advertising campaign just because she’s warming your bed!’ she snapped, and flounced off back to her party.

Thea watched her go. Then she became aware that Angelos was watching her.

‘That’s a lesson you’ve already learned,’ he said softly. Then, abruptly, his expression changed. ‘Why didn’t you set Candice right about the assumption she made that Brooke never proposed to you? She’ll spill it to the first gossip columnist she sees.’

‘I know,’ said Thea. ‘That’s why I told her.’

Angelos’s brows drew together. ‘What are you plotting?’ he demanded.

Thea looked straight at him. ‘I’ve hurt Giles—you gave me no option but to do so—but I don’t want to humiliate him. I’d rather it looked like he didn’t want to marry me than that I ditched him for you.’

Her mouth twisted, and he felt a stab of something more than anger.

The arrival of their food distracted him, but as they started to eat he found himself watching her. She was filleting the fish, focussing on her task. Blanking him out.

He made himself recall how she had looked that first evening he had brought her here. How gauche she had been, how out of her depth. The woman sitting opposite him now was a million miles from the one she had been those years ago.

She’s still Kat Jones—thief, liar, and ready to offer her body for what she wants …

His mouth tightened. That was all he must remember.

By the time the meal was finally over and they were heading for the elevators Thea’s nerves were at breaking point. There were others in the lift when they stepped in, and Thea was grateful. Being alone with Angelos Petrakos, even for the briefest time, was hideous. Sitting at the same table as him—being so physically close to his lean, powerful body, sheathed in its charcoal bespoke suit, seeing that strong-featured face with its short-clipped raven hair, the dark, glinting eyes and the sensual, brutal mouth—had overwhelmed her. Even in the dining room she had felt dangerously isolated with him, despite the presence of other diners.

The elevator doors sliced opened to let some people out and others in. Too many. They hustled her backwards and suddenly, without realising what was about to happen, she felt herself crushed back against Angelos. Shock at his sudden closeness immobilised her. It raked through her as she felt instantly, consummately, the hardness of his chest, the muscle of his thigh.

Behind her, Angelos felt the contours of her body mould against him, slender and rounded. Immediately his hands lifted to her shoulders, steadying her. She tensed instantly. His palms were burning as he felt her straining away from him, pulling against his hands. Automatically, instinctively, his hold tightened, countering her attempt to free herself.

The lift stopped again and she wrenched free, pushing her way out, stalking rapidly to the door of his suite, body rigid. Her spine was like a ramrod. The contact had lasted only moments, but it had ignited her overwrought nerves, exploded the iron control she had held down all evening.

Inside, she rounded on him. Her face was contorted

, venom spitting from her eyes. ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!’

Into her head sliced the forbidden memory—the one she never let out! The one that for five long years she had never, ever let herself remember. But here in this place, this very spot where it had happened, here where she was standing, now it flooded through her.

I stood here—here! And he came up to me and … and …

Hot, humid memory drenched her. The glide of his fingertips touching her, the deep, deep drowning of his mouth as it moved on hers, sensual, possessing …

A shudder went through her—through every bone in her body, every cell. ‘I couldn’t bear it!’ she said. She took a ragged, broken breath. ‘This is a two-bedroom suite—I checked!’ She dived on her small holdall, snatching it up. Then—not looking at him again, not looking anywhere near him—she flung open the nearest door leading off the suite’s lounge.

It wasn’t his room. Unoccupied, empty. She plunged inside and slammed shut the door, leaning against it while the breath shook in her body.

Outside, Angelos stood immobile. Emotion was raging through his head. Emotion that he’d kept out by strength of will, by masking it with anger. Anger that he’d deliberately, determinedly fuelled since the moment he’d first set eyes on her again at that restaurant with the man she’d been inveigling to marry, slicing back through the years—anger that he’d used deliberately, determinedly, to allow him to do what he had done in summoning her here. Giving him a reason to force her back into his life—a reason to sever her from the man she’d wanted to marry. He’d been telling himself that he was doing so only because he was enraged by her attempt to lie about her past, to fool an innocent, hapless man about what she truly was.

But he’d been deceiving himself.

Anger was not the only driving force behind his determination to stop Kat Jones in her tracks. He’d been denying that truth all through dinner as he’d watched her across the table from him, seeing her graceful, elegant beauty drawing eyes as it always had—and his, too, he knew. Despite everything he felt about her he could not deny that—could not deny that his eyes wanted to rest on her, take in that extraordinary, luminous beauty of hers …

Then, in the lift, his hands closing over her shoulders, his palms feeling the warmth of her body, catching the scent of her, her body so close to his, it had blazed in him. He had known then, irrefutably, what her power was … what it had always been …

A power she herself was trying to deny.