His Penniless Beauty

For a moment she felt dismay fill her, knowing the distance between them was too great.

Then his eyes flicked back up to meet hers again.

The veil was gone. And in its place—

Sophie’s breath stilled in her body. Completely. As if oxygen were no longer necessary to her survival.

Because it wasn’t. The only thing necessary to her survival at this moment was the look that Nikos Kazandros was pouring into her eyes.

She had heard the expression ‘the world stopped turning’—now she and knew what it meant. For one incredible, timeless moment she just gazed back at him. Feeling everything stop.

Then, from a long way away, she heard her father’s voice.

‘Sophie?’

She blinked. The world started again. Her father was there, holding out her sweet martini to her. She took it and dipped her head, wanting only to take a large gulp of the drink.

There was heat in her throat, and not from the alcohol. From a different source of intoxication. Far, far more powerful.

Powerful enough to sweep her away, for ever, into a different world, from which she knew, with a strange, vague sense of fatality, she might never, never return.

And from which she knew she would never want to.

Slowly, she raised the glass to her lips, as if toasting that fate. Her eyes went back to his. They were veiled again, but she knew why now. Didn’t mind. She smiled, lips parting over pearled teeth.

Nikos took a mouthful of his own dry martini. He could do with it. Self-control was slamming down hard over him and he needed to regain it, urgently.

Hell, if he’d thought Sophie Granton a peach when he’d first seen her, with her hair flying and almond blossom drifting on her gypsy clothes, now he couldn’t even begin to find the right description for her.

Except—knockout.

But not in the way the women in his world usually earned that soubriquet. Not from wearing the kind of gown that stunned male libidos a kilometre wide. Sophie Granton’s impact as she’d stood in the doorway a few minutes ago had been quite different. Hitting him in a quite different place. One where he’d never been hit before.

And in one he had, as well.

That dress she was wearing and the sleek, groomed fall of hair had hit a spot that was very, very familiar to him. The spot that had, right over the top of it, a great big D for Desire.

He knew he shouldn’t even begin to indulge it, but that was easier said than done. Hell, it was impossible to do! The way she stood there, with her perfect figure, perfect face, perfect hair. Now, with make-up on, she looked older, he realised, and realised too that he was glad of it.

Because maybe this peach of a girl wasn’t out of bounds, after all?

A reality check crashed through his brain. He wasn’t here to run around with Edward Granton’s knockout daughter, he was here to find out whether Granton plc would be worth the trouble and risk rescuing it entailed. That was all.

And yet—

Well, he was here for dinner and he would make the most of it. Make the most of appreciating this beautiful golden girl.

The discussion with Edward Granton had not been easy. The numbers did not look as if they were going to crunch well—the only question was, did it put the company out of play or not? It would be a tricky call to make.

Granton himself was looking strained. That in itself was a bad sign, a revealing one. He knew that his financial survival depended on a rescue. Of course Granton might have other white knights in the offing, but any intimation that he had could also be a bluff and a gamble. Nikos’s father had taught him about the business world well, and that any mistake could cost him dearly. His father had raised him never to be a rich man’s son, thinking money came easily. No matter how large and financially sound Kazandros Corp was now, it could always be lost… No, whatever happened, he would make the right call about Granton plc—his father was trusting him to do that.

And he certainly trusted him enough not to get diverted by anything other than the task he’d been sent to London to do.

Including this girl he couldn’t take his eyes from. For a moment he toyed with coming up with some excuse to get out of dinner. Maybe he should. It would be safer.

Safer?

The word repeated itself in his head. Why had it come to him? He frowned mentally. It made it sound as if there was some sort of danger ahead. He brushed it aside impatiently. He was overreacting. All he was going to do was have dinner with Edward Granton and his daughter.

Did she know how precarious her father’s position was? How shaky the financial edifice that kept her in designer clothes and living in this house in one of London’s most expensive districts? Not to mention paid her student fees and bought her the grand piano he could see in the room behind this one?