As the car finally swept in through the gates of the house Nikos vowed to put the property up for sale as soon as he returned to Paris. It was ridiculous to keep it now. Ridiculous to have kept it for so long.
They pulled up at the bottom of the steps leading to the main door. Nikos took his compact weekend bag out of the boot before the driver could do it.
He knocked on the door, and in the few seconds before it opened he found himself holding his breath, wondering if just maybe...
The door opened. His sense of disappointment was a further mockery to his already jagged edges. This housekeeper couldn’t have been more different from Maggie Taggart. For a start he was a man. And somewhere in his fifties.
‘Mr Marchetti, how nice to welcome you to Kildare House.’
Nikos stepped inside, aware of how this welcome was so very different from last year’s, when he’d had to prove his identity. ‘Thank you—Mr Wilson, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Here, let me take your bag. I’ve prepared some coffee and snacks—they’re in the living room. I can show you the way—’
Nikos was already striding out of the reception hall, ‘I know where it is.’
He went inside and moved straight to the bookshelves. Maggie’s books were gone. For a moment something prickled at the back of Nikos’s neck. Had he dreamed it all? Dreamed her? Was he so jaded and burnt out from years of carousing and living down to the scandalous reputation he’d so painstakingly built that he’d conjured up a virgin to—
‘Will there be anything else, sir?’
Nikos turned around. Mr Wilson stood in the doorway. Not Maggie. The disappointment was as unwelcome as it was acute.
‘Just my tuxedo for this evening, please—and let the driver know we’ll be leaving in an hour.’
‘Of course.’
Nikos looked at the coffee on the tray on the table and made a face. He needed something stronger than coffee to burn away those memories. And what he needed was the taste of another woman to wash the memory of Maggie from his mind and body once and for all. Tonight at the Barbier party there was bound to be at least one woman who would stir Nikos’s libido back to life.
Maggie’s arms were aching, but she kept a smile fixed to her face as she walked through the crowd, holding the tray full of canapés that she’d helped to make earlier in the Barbier kitchen. Part of the reason she was serving was to gauge the reaction to the canapés.
The scene was magical—an end-of-summer garden party to celebrate the latest successes of the Barbier racing stables and stud. The garden was thronged with men in tuxedoes and women in glittering evening gowns, artfully lit by thousands of candles and fairy lights attached to an elaborate system of webbing that stretched over the garden from tree to tree, creating an intricate canopy of light above their heads.
Maggie saw the hosts in the distance—Luc Barbier and his wife Nessa, who had been a champion jockey until she’d had children. A rush of emotion caught Maggie unawares. They had been so good to her, offering her a job, and then, when she’d—
Her thoughts scattered as she saw a new guest arrive, walking down the steps to be greeted by Luc and Nessa. He was tall and dark. Almost as tall and dark as Luc. Familiar. Ice prickled over her skin.
It couldn’t be.
She stopped walking so suddenly that another waiter almost crashed into her.
‘Maggie, watch it, will you?’
She didn’t even notice someone helping themselves to a canapé. She had to be imagining it—him. Her all too frequent dreams had turned into a hallucination. She blinked. Opened her eyes. He was still there, head thrown back now as he laughed at something Luc Barbier was saying.
Women were turning and looking. Whispering. Openly admiring. Lustful. And no wonder. The two men were tall, dark and easily the most gorgeous men in the vicinity—but all Maggie could see was one man. Nikos Marchetti. And all she could remember were those cataclysmic hours when he had transformed her from inexperienced naive virgin into a woman. More than a woman.
Her hands tightened on the tray so much that it shook.
There was a voice near her ear, soft and concerned. ‘Maggie? Are you okay? Here, let me take that for you.’
The tray was taken from her hands and Maggie tore her gaze from the man who had moved closer and was now just a few feet away. Nessa Barbier was putting the tray down on a nearby table. Maggie hadn’t even noticed her approach.
Nessa’s hand was on her arm. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost—are you okay?’
Maggie tried to speak, but nothing would come out. This was too huge. Too potentially devastating.
Nessa frowned. ‘Maggie, what is it?’
‘I... I have to go inside. I need to...’ She was babbling, making no sense.