Exotic Nights

Leo had taken Angel to a private clinic the day after it had happened and they’d ruled out a fracture; it was just a very severe bruise. Since that night Leo had been amazingly attentive, eschewing all public engagements to stay at home with Angel despite her protestations. From going out practically every night, now they ate in, and Leo had surprised her one night by dismissing Calista and serving up a delicious home-cooked dinner. He was doing absolutely nothing to help her stop falling deeper and deeper in love with him, and she knew that he would not welcome it.

Clearly Leo was feeling guilty at having misjudged her, despite her assurances that she had been as much to blame by coming here in the first place. He’d insisted that Angel sleep with him every night, but he’d been careful not to touch her. Last night Angel had turned to him in the bed, frustration clawing through her body. She knew Leo was aroused, she felt it every night, but he was making the same protestations. Treating her as if she was made out of china and might break.

Angel had put her hand around him intimately and said, ‘I’m better, Leo, please …’ She cringed now to think of it, of how ardently she’d responded when he’d finally groaned deep in his throat and drawn her on top of him, lifting her vest away, helping her out of her pants. She’d felt as if she’d been starved of water in the desert for a month. But she’d been the one to initiate it, not Leo.

Angel shook her head, and then started violently when she heard a noise come from the door. Leo stood there, nonchalantly leaning against the frame. Her heart turned over as it always did. She smiled shyly. ‘Hi.’

Leo smiled too and, slightly mesmerised, Angel thought again that when he smiled he looked a million

miles away from the tough tycoon. From the man who had coldly blackmailed her.

He strolled in and looked at Angel’s handiwork; she took in his expression nervously, valuing his opinion. He picked up the bracelet and then the earrings, turning them this way and that. Finally he put them down and said, ‘You’re really good—you do know that?’

Angel half shrugged, embarrassed. ‘It’s what I love to do, so if I can make a living out of it then I’ll be happy.’

Leo put out a hand and trailed a finger gently down her injured jaw. ‘It’s almost healed.’

Angel nodded. ‘I can put some make-up on it for tomorrow night, when we go to Lucy and Ari’s for dinner.’

He nodded and then backed away, but for a second Angel could have sworn he’d wanted to say something. She forgot about it, though, when they settled down to eat dinner, after which Leo went into his study to work for a while, and Angel went to her workshop to do some last-minute checks on the jewellery for Lucy. Tomorrow she’d go into town and buy some boxes to package them before they went for dinner.

The following day Leo stood at the window of his office in Athens, looking out at the view, but not registering it. He was consumed with one thing, one person: Angel. She was turning him upside down and inside out. For someone who broke out in a rash at the thought of waking up in a bed with a woman, now he couldn’t relax properly unless he knew Angel was going to be the first thing he saw every morning.

The guilt of how his behaviour had put her in danger still made him feel nauseous, and yet she’d begged him not to do anything to her father, reminding him that her father would capitalise on the slightest hint of enmity to fuel their feud. The best form of revenge was ignoring Tito, even though it killed Leo to do so.

In the days after she’d been hit it had been easy to restrain himself from touching her sexually. His concern had overridden his desire, and he had also felt something else more disturbing: the knowledge that his making love to Angel had become imbued with something much more ambiguous than revenge. Something that came with silken ties binding around him tightly. Silken ties that reminded him of a time when he’d vowed never to allow someone to get close enough to arouse this awful welling of emotion and feeling.

He shook his head. He hated being introspective, so when his thoughts were cut abruptly short by a soft knock he welcomed it, saying, ‘Come in.’

His PA opened the door. ‘Ari Levakis is here to see you.’

‘Thanks, Thalia, send him in.’

He smiled when he saw Ari walk in, and greeted him heartily. They sat down to discuss the business at hand, neither one needing to stand on ceremony, both trusting each other as only men of a similar standing could.

After an hour of intense discussion Ari sat back with a coffee cup in hand and looked at Leo. Unaccountably Leo felt the hair tighten on the back of his neck.

‘I spoke to Angel yesterday. She says she’ll have the jewellery ready for this evening when you come to dinner. I hope she hasn’t been under too much pressure to get it done.’ Ari frowned. ‘We haven’t seen either of you out lately, so I hope you haven’t been slave-driving her.’

Leo smiled tightly and fought the image of coming home every evening that week and finding Angel immersed in her task, covered in the fine dust of the precious metals and stones she’d been working with, dressed in the ubiquitous vest tops and battered dungarees, which always had an instantaneous effect on his arousal levels.

Leo realised he still hadn’t answered Ari; he’d got so caught up in his own memory. He flushed, and probably sounded harsher than he’d intended. ‘Not at all … We’ve both been happy to take a break from the social scene. She has been working hard at it, but she’s enjoyed doing it.’

That was true. She’d been oblivious to him several evenings, until he’d come in and taken the headphones of her iPod out of her ears, and then she’d turned to him and smiled …

‘When I first heard you were seeing her I had my doubts. After all … she is who she is, and she’d turned up like that at your father’s house.’

Leo looked at Ari, and something must have shown on his face because Ari spread his hands in a gesture and said, ‘What? You can’t blame me, Leo. Everyone was thinking the same thing. Athens is full of beautiful women and you went for the most unlikely one—some would have said the most unsuitable one. No one would have blamed you if you’d ignored that whole family in the street.’

Ari only knew the half of it. What would he say if Leo told him what else had happened? Would Ari have jumped to the same conclusion, damning Angel before she’d had a chance to defend herself? Would he have used his knowledge to blackmail her into becoming his mistress? Leo got up, suddenly feeling agitated. Would Angel have ever become his mistress of her own volition?

Leo struggled to articulate some platitude, feeling like a fraud, and not liking his defensiveness. ‘Our shared history is our business … there is a certain … synchronicity to how we came together.’

When he said those words Leo had a disturbingly vivid memory of how Angel had felt that first time he’d taken her, how she’d arched beneath him and entreated him to keep going, and how it had taken all of his skill and restraint not to hurt her. Sweat broke out on his brow. He was feeling seriously cornered.

Angel knocked on the outer door of Leo’s office. His PA Thalia looked up and smiled warmly. The two had met when Thalia had come to the villa one night to work late with Leo.

‘Hi, Angel. He’s with Ari Levakis, but they should be done soon. I’m going out for lunch now.’ The other woman started to get up from behind her desk, ‘He knows I’m going out, but just in case he’s forgotten could you remind him I’ll be back at two?’