Andreas glared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m moving in with Angie,” she said, straightening her back to reinforce her determination. “She told me that Liz’s room has been empty for weeks and the rent’s all paid up to the end of the month, so my first few weeks will be free. Isn’t that lovely of her? Of course, I’ll show my appreciation in some other way once I’ve been paid. Cook a few meals, bring home the odd bottle of wine—”
“Stop right there.”
Andreas clenched a fist under the table as he battled against the very real but uncharacteristic urge to raise his voice and show how very angry he was feeling. Still smarting from the freshly resurrected and sour memories of his marriage, his failed marriage, he was now faced with the unpleasant situation of having control slipping from his fingers once more.
Women! Give them more than a few minutes together and they would be plotting and planning against you before you could do a thing to stop it.
Well, stop it he would—this was not how things should be happening and not part of his strategy for getting Kizzy Dean where he wanted her. And that was very firmly installed in his bed with the door closed to the outside world.
“I did not give you permission to start making clandestine arrangements behind my back.” His nostrils flared with irritation. “I will not permit it.”
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,” Kizzy replied, an uncomfortable dryness at the back of her throat. “I’ve already given Angie my word. And she’s turned down all the other offers she had in favor of mine.”
Andreas sliced a hand through the air as if trying to bat off an annoying insect. “Leave Angie to me. She will fully understand that an urgent change in circumstances means her new roommate won’t be moving in for a while.”
He leaned his elbows on the table, knotted his fingers tightly together, and glowered at her as his brain went into overdrive, revising his previous plans for a romantic dinner for two, a barefoot stroll in the moonlight, and a magnum of his favorite champagne.
“It’s Friday afternoon. There’s no way I can realistically speed up production of our contract and have it ready for signature today. I e-mailed the bare bones of it to my chief executive in Rhodes this morning while you were asleep, but these things take time to do properly.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” His eyes flashed dangerously. “I warned you at the start that I wasn’t letting you out of my sight until there were some cast-iron guarantees between us. Nothing has happened to alter that.”
“So I am a prisoner, after all,” Kizzy stated quietly. “I suppose I should be grateful you haven’t locked me up in that tower of yours.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic!”
Andreas pushed himself out of his seat and stood against the low wall of the restaurant terrace with his back to her, his fists thrust into his pockets as he stared out toward the open sea.
She was right, he was forced to admit inwardly. To all intents and purposes she was a prisoner in that he wasn’t prepared to allow her total freedom for a few days.
But he had to keep an eye on her, didn’t he? For the Antonideses’ sake.
Who was he trying to kid?
Kizzy Dean was not going to run off and call the Antonideses at the first opportunity and he damn well knew it. He also knew that the legal contract he had been insisting on was completely unnecessary to ensure Kizzy’s side of the deal. It had been an excuse—an excuse to keep her within his reach until he could seduce her into his bed and work her delectable body right out of his overheated system.
“You want guarantees too, don’t you?” he demanded nonetheless. “Without some form of legal contract, there’d be nothing to stop me from breaking my side of the bargain and abandoning you here with nothing.”
“But you wouldn’t.”
He turned to face her. “What makes you so confident of that?”
Kizzy wasn’t quite sure what had made her say such a thing, but her mind was instantly drawn back to his office staff, to Dorinda and Stephanos. Their instinctive reactions to Andreas were something no amount of stick-wielding could enforce or money could buy. They were loyal, respectful, and affectionate even.
“I trust you.”
“You trust me.” He shook his head skeptically. “I may have overestimated your intelligence. It’s not safe to trust anyone, Kizzy. Especially not men like me.”
Men as flawed and tarnished and warped as me. Men who would deceive and go against their own principles to get a woman like you into bed…
“But you’re young. You’ll learn. Sadly.”
“You’re absolutely right, Andreas. In fact, I imagine you’re rarely wrong about anything.”
“Never,” Andreas said.
He let her barbed remark pass without rebuke but that didn’t mean it hadn’t hit home. It had, and to his surprise, it hurt. Hurt more than it logically should.
Clearly he came across as arrogant and overbearing. And her cold reaction was no more than he deserved. But that little bit of fire she had just shown proved she had a tough inner core, a personality that could give free rein to her inferno of a libido.
“Getting back to practicalities,” he announced in a neutral tone. “Since you are so keen to spread your wings, I’ve decided we need to do some work on your career plans, so they can be properly built into the contract. I have a few possibilities in mind but I need to focus without external distraction. It’s just too busy here—too many demands. I need to attend personally to a number of other matters before an important UN meeting in Paris next week.”
“So we’re going away for a couple of days until the legal documents are ready. It’s the only sensible way forward at this point.” Slowly, his eyes followed a swallow’s black silhouette across the skyline. His voice was deliberately nonchalant. “Besides, you’re looking tired, so I’ve arranged a luxurious weekend on a private island. I’m hoping that should put the color back in your cheeks.”
Chapter Eight
The room Andreas had shown her to, her room was an exquisite, understated palette of ivory-painted floorboards, cream plasterwork, and the snowiest white linen she had ever seen. What she had encountered of his island retreat so far was breathtaking, but what exactly was she supposed to do in her own little piece of this heaven?
Their departure from Lindos had been rapid and ruthlessly efficient to the extent that her unwrapped boxes of new clothing had yet to be delivered. Andreas had insisted that they fly to the island by helicopter immediately before the light started to fade, having arranged for their luggage to follow on by sea, so she couldn’t even while away the time with unpacking.