Bedded by the Greek Billionaire

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Bedded By the Greek Billionaire Greek Tycoons (2008) by Kate Walker Synopsis: As a naive teenager, Jessica Marshall fell in love with gorgeous Greek Angelos Rousakis. But her clumsy attempt to attract him cost Angelos everything. Seven years later, Angelos is back and intends to claim what's his including Jessica! As Jessica falls for the sexy tycoon all over again, she can't be sure if he's back for pleasure.or retribution..

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Welcome to the November 2008 collection of Harlequin Presents! What better way to warm up in the coming winter months than with a hot novel from your favorite Presents author—and this month we have plenty instore to keep you cozy! Don’t missRuthlessly Bedded by the Italian Billionaire by Emma Darcy, in which a case of mistaken identity leads Jenny Kent to a billionaire’s bed. Plus, be sure to look out forThe Sheikh’s Wayward Wife, the second installment of Sandra Marton’s fantastic trilogy THE SHEIKH TYCOONS, and Robyn Donald’s final story in her brilliant MEDITERRANEAN PRINCES duet,The Mediterranean Prince’s Captive Virgin.

Also this month, read the story of sexy Italian Joe Mendez and single mom Rachel inMendez’s Mistress by favorite author Anne Mather. And in Kate Walker’sBedded by the Greek Billionaire, a gorgeous Greek seeks revenge on an English rose—by making her his mistress! Vincenzo is intent on claiming his son from estranged wife Emma inSicilian Husband, Unexpected Baby by Sharon Kendrick, while Susan Napier brings youPublic Scandal, Private Mistress, in which unsuspecting Veronica becomes involved with billionaire Luc. Finally, in Ally Blake’sA Night with the Society Playboy, Caleb wants just one more night with the woman who walked out on him ten years ago….

We’d love to hear what you think about Presents. E-mail us at [email protected] or join in the discussions at www.iheartpresents.com and www.sensationalromance.blogspot.com, where you’ll also find more information about books and authors!

Harlequin Presents®

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They’re the men who have everything— except brides…

Wealth, power, charm— what else could a heart-stoppingly handsome tycoon need? In the GREEK TYCOONS miniseries, you have already been introduced to some gorgeous Greek multimillionaires who are in need of wives.

Now it’s the turn of favorite Presents author Kate Walker, with her sexy romance Bedded by the Greek Billionaire

This tycoon has met his match, and he’s decided hehas to have her…whateverit takes!

Kate Walker

BEDDED BY THE GREEK BILLIONAIRE image

image TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

All about the author… Kate Walker

KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, England, and grew up in a home where books were vitally important. Even before she could write she was making up stories. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t scribbling away at something.

But everyone told her that she would never make a living as a writer, so instead she became a librarian. It was at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, that she met her husband, who was also studying at the college. They married and eventually moved to Lincolnshire, where she worked as a children’s librarian until her son was born.

After three years of being a full-time housewife and mother, she was ready for a new challenge, so she turned to her old love of writing. The first two novels she sent off to Harlequin were rejected, but the third attempt was successful. She can still remember the moment a letter of acceptance arrived instead of the rejection slip she had been dreading. But the moment she really realized that she was a published writer was when copies of her first book,The Chalk Line, arrived just in time to be one of her best Christmas presents ever.

Kate is often asked if she’s a romantic person because she writes romances. Her answer is that if being romantic means caring about other people enough to make that extra-special effort for them, then, yes, she is.

Kate loves to hear from her fans. You can contact her through her Web site at www.kate-walker.com, or e-mail her at [email protected].

CHAPTER ONE

THE driving rain lashed against the windscreen of the car, obscuring the road and blurring the sign fixed to the low stone wall, but Angelos Rousakis needed no help or guidance in finding his way to the place he was looking for. The country lane that led to the Manor House hadn’t changed at all in the years since he had last seen it, and his hands were already moving on the steering wheel, ready for the turn, even before he glimpsed the gateway.

The savage downpour meant that he could only take the steep, curving driveway in low gear and at a crawling speed but that wasn’t something that troubled him. He had waited for this moment, planned for it, for so long that a few more moments didn’t matter. The truth was that he was enjoying the anticipation almost as much as he expected to enjoy putting his planning into operation, and as the big sandy-coloured house came into view the sense of grim satisfaction that had been with him ever since he had left Athens deepened and darkened at the thought of what was to come.

Inside that house Jessica Marshall was acting out her part as lady of the manor, unaware of the fact that her days in that role were strictly numbered—had, in fact, already come to an end. In a very short space of time the reality of her situation would hit home to her and he would be there to see her reaction as her world fell apart around her. The thought of that moment was something that made the long, tedious journey from the airport bearable, even in this appalling weather.

‘I think we’re ready now.’

Jessica spoke softly, stopping her stepfather’s butler just as he was about to leave the room after ushering in the latest black-coated, sombre-faced arrival.

‘Would you ask them to bring the cars around to the front of the house? Is there a problem?’ she added, blue eyes frowning slightly as Peters hesitated, looked a little concerned.

‘No problem, miss,’ the elderly man explained. ‘It’s just that I think it might be best to wait a little while yet—until everyone has arrived.’

‘Wait?’

Jessica pushed a hand through the soft fall of her chestnut hair as she looked round the room, struggling to remember just who had been invited today. She couldn’t think who, if anyone, was missing.

‘But everyone is here—aren’t they?’

Again there was that flash of a disturbing expression—one that crossed Peters’s face and was gone in a moment. But Jessica had seen it and the feeling that it left in its wake was one of unease, a niggling sense of something she didn’t know about—but felt that she should. Something that unnerved and worried her, setting her on edge like a nervous cat.

‘Not quite everyone, miss.’

‘But who…?’

Jessica glanced around the room, frowning as she completed another survey of the guests. Everyone there was elderly, like most of her stepfather’s friends, and she couldn’t think if someone was obviously missing from the list of people who should have been invited to Marty’s funeral.

‘I can’t think of anyone…’

‘There is one last…’ Peters hesitated over the right way to describe the person he meant. ‘A person I was told to expect,’ he finished awkwardly

‘Told by who?’

‘Mr Hilton—Mr Simeon Hilton.’

Her stepfather’s solicitor. So this person, whoever they might be, was known to Simeon Hilton. But why hadn’t Simeon told her about him—or her—when they had had their last discussion about the preparations?

‘I’ll ask…’ she began when the sound of a powerful car’s engine outside cut through her words, making her break off. The next moment the rich, purring sound had been silenced too as the car drew to a halt beyond the big bay window, just out of sight.

‘It looks as if our missing guest is here,’ she told Peters, whose attention had been caught as well. ‘I suggest you go and let them in now and we can get on our way to the church.’

And she could find out who the missing person was, she told herself as she smoothed back a wayward lock of her gleaming hair that had fallen loosely around her face once more, tucking it behind her ear in an attempt to secure it. She’d fastened most of it back for today, but it seemed that one bright lock was determined to escape.

The new arrival must be someone important, she reflected. Important enough for Simeon to have told Peters not to start without them. But if that was the case, then why hadn’t he mentioned this expected arrival to her when they had been going over the details of Marty’s funeral? She’d asked him to let her know if there was anyone she ought to take particular notice of.

Out in the hall she heard the big, heavy oak door creak open and the murmur of voices.

Male voices. So the mysterious arrival was a he after all. One small part of the problem solved.

There was something about the tone of the voice that responded to Peters’s greeting that grated on her, searing over nerves that were suddenly and unexpectedly drawn tight. Something unnervingly familiar that tugged on her senses and reminded her of…

Of what?

Of something just out of reach that she couldn’t focus on or grasp at. The thundering sound of the driving rain out beyond the open door had blurred the words and made them totally incomprehensible so that, try as she might, she couldn’t make them out. But they had stirred a memory

she had thought was hidden deep. One that set her heart racing, brought her breath into her lungs in a sudden gasp, as she struggled with the clenching of her stomach in irrational response.

There was no way this visitor could behim , she reproved herself. And there was no reason to panic over nothing. The strain of the past week was getting to her. The shock of Marty’s sudden, devastating heart attack. The long, anxious night while he had lain in a coma. At least he hadn’t suffered, and he hadn’t lived long after that first attack, but all the same it had been a distressing, exhausting time. She wasn’t surprised that it was starting to catch up on her. But it had to be just that which was playing tricks on her mind.

Peters was coming back. As so many times before this afternoon, he paused in the doorway, clearing his throat slightly.

‘Mr Angelos Rousakis…’ he announced formally and the sound of the name she hadn’t even allowed herself to think of hit home like a blow to Jessica’s face, making her mind reel in shock.

Angelos Rousakis.

No!

It couldn’t be—it just couldn’t! She really had to be dreaming. Either that or the confusion of her thoughts had scrambled her brain so that she had got it wrong, hearing the name that was in her mind instead of…

The sight of the man who stepped into the doorway, taking Peters’s place as the older man moved aside, froze the thoughts in her head, wiping

away her ability to think. She could only stand and stare, struggling to reject what she was seeing.

There was no reason at all why he should be here. No reason why he should return to the estate that he had left under such a cloud almost seven years before, just about shaking the dirt of the land from his feet as he’d vowed that he would never ever return.

But there was no denying the evidence of her eyes. The tall, powerful frame was too strong, too solid to be a figment of her imagination, the black-haired head held arrogantly high, the burning black eyes that swept round the room as if he was looking for something.

Or someone.

The sting of guilt and anxiety was so sharp that instinctively she shrank away a little, not daring to take a step back in case the movement drew attention to her, but unable still to control the instinctive response. But it seemed that the tiny movement was enough to catch his eye and that searching gaze focused sharply, his dark head turning in her direction as he took in her shaken face, the sudden loss of the colour that she could feel draining from her cheeks.

In that moment she felt like nothing so much as a small, cowering field mouse that had been spotted by a circling hawk and was now frozen to the spot, simply waiting for it to pounce.

It was as if the seven years since she had last seen him had been stripped away. She was eighteen all over again, burning with the deepest, hottest embarrassment of her life, and hearing a sneering, thickly accented voice saying, cold and clear, ‘Don’t delude yourself, child. I have

no interest in you in that way at all. I don’t play with little girls.’

After that appalling last night, she had been so glad to know that he had gone, and she’d hoped never to see him again. So what sort of malign fate had brought the man she had once named the Black Angel back into her life at this terrible moment?

But there was no way she could ignore the new arrival. He was looking straight at her, that arrogant dark head slightly tilted to one side as if he was waiting for her to make the first move. As was everyone else in the room, she realised, suddenly becoming conscious of the eyes that were turned in her direction. Of course, as Marty’s only surviving family member, even if only by marriage, she was the one who had to greet every new arrival, as she had been doing for the past hour or so.

Somehow she made herself move forward, stiffening her back, her neck, so that the threatening weakness in her legs didn’t show. She was sure that the result was to make her look as if she was marching stiffly like a wooden toy as she crossed the worn gold-and burgundy-coloured carpet, the gathered crowd of friends and neighbours parting like the Red Sea as she moved towards the man in the doorway.

And all the way across the room he watched her come. Those dark, dangerous eyes were fixed on her face as she walked towards him, the burning gaze never flickering, the dark concentration so fierce that she almost felt it sear her skin where it landed.

What was he doing here? And why would he turn up now—at the worst possible moment?

‘Don’t come back!’ In the darkness of her mind she heard her own voice in

an echo of the words that she had flung at him. ‘Don’t ever come back! I never ever want to see you again.’

And, ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ he’d said, the tone of the words turning the endearment into the exact opposite. ‘One taste of hell is enough for any man in his lifetime. I will not be fool enough to risk that again.’

And yet now here he was, big and dark and large as life. Larger than life when compared with the younger man he had been when she had last seen him. Those years had filled out his lean, rangy frame, giving him an image of solid power that seemed to fill the doorway in which he stood, blocking out the light from the hallway behind him.

For one sudden, terrifying moment she had a sense that he was blocking her way out too. Closing off her way of escape, making sure that she stayed trapped in the room. Her heart seemed to rise up into her throat, beating frantically so that she found it difficult to breathe, and for a moment the sight of his hard-boned, strongly carved face blurred before her eyes, fading into a hissing, whirling mist.

Not for the first time that morning she ardently wished that Chris had been able to be with her today. But her fiancé had an important business meeting in London, one that couldn’t be cancelled for anything, and so she had been denied the comfort and support of having him at her side through today’s ordeal. If she had known—or even dreamed—that Angelos Rousakis was going to reappear from whatever dark place he had crawled into seven years ago then she would have begged Chris to stay, no matter what. But then how could she ever have imagined that her shameful past would come back to haunt her in this way, in the form of this man?

What had he come for? Why was he here? She had always feared that

one day he would turn up, dark and dangerous, seeking vengeance for the way he believed she’d treated him. The image of those gleaming black jet eyes, the expression in them promising burning retribution as he’d flung one last viciously contemptuous look in her direction had haunted her dreams for months afterwards. It had been a long time before the memory had faded and even now it could still come back to haunt her when she was tired or feeling low.

But then reality surfaced and she shook her head slightly, feeling the haze clear, the panic ebb away. Peters had announced Angelos Rousakis as he had every other person who was attending the funeral. The butler had been expecting him because Simeon Hilton had said that he was coming— even if he was the last person on earth thatshe had been thinking to meet. And that meant that he should be treated as any other guest today. Surely she could manage that even if she would not truly be able to breathe easily until he left the house—left England—and she knew he was out of her life again.

So—‘Mr Rousakis…’ She made herself say it, forced her voice to sound at least calm and indifferent so that if one hadn’t known that they had met in the past and the savage hostility that now burned between them, at least it couldn’t be guessed from her tone. ‘Thank you for coming.’

She forced herself to put out her hand too. Every last bit of training that her mother had instilled into her made her do it. Courtesy to guests was something Andrea had always insisted on and even now she couldn’t go against the rules that had been instilled into her. But it was all she could do not to flinch when the burn of his skin against her own actually scorched her palm, sending stinging sensations shooting along every nerve.

‘Miss Marshall…’

Seen up this close, he was even more imposing, more devastating than he had been in the moment that he had walked into the room. Even in the elegant heels she wore, she was still several inches below him in height, needing to tilt her head back to meet him eye to eye. His tanned olive skin seemed almost impossibly vibrant and alive in contrast to the early spring pallor of the rest of the guests. He was wearing black, like everyone else in the room, but he wore it like no one else in the room.

His clothes were of a far better quality than anything the newly employed stable hand she had known would ever have been able to afford all those years ago. The long black overcoat worn loose over a black shirt and beautifully tailored black suit hung from the width of his powerful shoulders with the dramatic effect of a cloak or a greatcoat worn by some swashbuckling Regency highwayman. The thunderous downpour outside had soaked into the fine material, making it even darker, even sleeker in patches. Raindrops from the same storm were scattered through the black silk of his hair, sparkling like diamonds against the polished jet strands that they clung to, and the moisture had even spiked the impossibly lush, thick lashes that fringed the ebony darkness of his eyes.

‘My sympathy on your loss.’

It sounded like the most polite of responses, at least on the surface, but there was a controlled savagery underlying his tone that caught on the tightness of her nerves and tugged hard, making her stomach muscles clench on a wave of panic. It sounded almost as if he was having to force himself to speak at all. But when she looked into his face all she saw was a calm civility, the smooth veneer of a public mask that hid whatever truth was in his mind.

He couldn’t hide it in his eyes though, and what she saw in their darkness

made her shiver inwardly. Her own guilty memories added an extra uneasy layer to the tension that claimed her.

‘I believe that Mr Hilton let you know of my stepfather’s death…’

‘He did. He telephoned me as soon as he knew. I was away on business at the time or I would have been here sooner.’

The dark eyes still clashed with hers as he answered, their total lack of expression giving away nothing at all. He knew what she was doing; the faint half smile that curled the corners of the beautifully shaped mouth told her that. He knew that she was trying to probe into his reasons for being here, hunt out the hidden explanation for his sudden and unexpected appearance. Because there had to be one. He hadn’t just appeared out of the blue to pay his respects at her stepfather’s funeral.

Respect had been the last thing that this man had felt for Marty. A bitter hatred had been the only emotion that had flared between the two men. A hatred that her own foolish behaviour and unthinking actions had fed till breaking-point had been reached and the explosions that had resulted had almost destroyed them all.

No. Hastily she corrected herself. It hadn’t damaged Angelos at all. At least not emotionally, which was how it had devastated her. Emotionally, he had walked out of here scot-free, not even a mark on him. And he had left her to pick up the pieces of the life she had known.

Financially, it had been a very different matter. In that case, he had every reason to hate her as much as he had her stepfather—more— because she was the reason he had lost his job; the reason he had had to leave in the first place.

So now, ‘I don’t understand…’ she began, but at that precise moment Peters stepped forward again, clearing his throat in the way that he always did to draw attention to the fact that he had something to say.

‘The funeral director is ready, Miss Marshall. If you’d like to lead the way…’

‘But I…’

She couldn’t help herself. Her eyes went to Angelos Rousakis, still standing, dark and watchful, in the doorway. She had been thrown completely off balance by his sudden and unexpected arrival and she was unsure of how to proceed. It was as if the ground had suddenly shaken violently beneath her feet so that when it was still again nothing was in quite the same place as before and her sense of equilibrium had vanished with it. Instead, in its place was a terrible sense of unease and apprehension, all of it centred in the man before her.

‘You…’ she tried again but, even as she spoke, he was moving, standing aside with a controlled grace and leaving the doorway open before her.

‘You have things to attend to,’ he said softly, that note of control still keeping his voice low and smooth. The voice of perfect courtesy, perfect concern, if she didn’t look into his face, into the cold burn of his eyes. ‘We will talk later.’

Was she imagining things? Was it her uneasy conscience, her unhappy memories that made her hear his words as a dark promise, almost a threat, instead of a polite reassurance? Could no one else hear that

ominous undertone that shaded the words, turned the effect of them into something like the trail of small, icy footprints across her skin, raising every tiny hair in a sense of desperate apprehension? And the cold, assessing glance from those deep set eyes that flashed just once at her face told her he was watching her every move, seeing the play of emotions across her face and understanding the reasons for it.

He knew that she would do anything rather than risk any sort of public scene here and now, in front of the upper class county set who had been Marty’s friends. That her need to make sure that this last thing she could do for her late stepfather was carried out with dignity and restraint would put a control on her tongue that she would rather die than break. And he was playing on that fact, coldly and deliberately.

‘Talk…!’

Just for a moment defiance flared and she flung him an angry glare, her tongue itching to tell him to leave, go now, and never come back again.

But almost immediately the remembrance of the fact that he had been invited—and invited by Marty’s lawyer—stilled the angry words. That control slammed back into place, her teeth snapping closed over what she had been about to say, and instead she gave a cold, disdainful nod, her eyes looking straight past him, out beyond the open door to where the undertaker’s hearse and cars now waited.

‘Later,’ was all she said as she moved forward, head high, her mouth set in a firm, determined line.

‘Later,’ Angelos Rousakis echoed softly as she swept past him, knowing it was a promise as much to himself as to her. His mouth twisted slightly as

he watched her walk away from him, the slim back held stiffly straight like her gleaming head. ‘Oh, yes, we’ll talk later, Miss Marshall.’

Let her have her moment of triumph, her belief that she had got the upper hand in the situation—for now. He was quite content to stand back and watch, stand back and let her act out the role of lady of the manor, queen of all she surveyed, for a little while longer. After all, what was that English saying about the harder they fall…? And little Miss Marshall had a very hard fall coming soon.

Not so little, the most masculine part of his nature added in wry acknowledgement. Jessica Marshall had done a lot of growing up in the years since he had last seen her, and she’d done it in all the right ways— physically at least. The delicious promise of a lovely young girl had turned into the fully sensual beauty of a woman. She was taller, slimmer, but her body had rounded in all the right places, adding gentle curves at breasts and hips that raised his pulse to beat stronger, heavier, at the thought of what lay beneath the stark black tailored suit, the neat white blouse that was buttoned right up to the base of her delicate neck, concealing all but the fine skin of her throat.

Her face had lost the faint roundness of youth, the high cheekbones becoming stronger, more sharply defined in the pale oval of her face and the blue-grey of her eyes seemed lighter than ever before in contrast to the rich fall of the burnished chestnut hair and the deep rose tint of the softly curved mouth.

Just for a second the memory of what it had felt like to know the taste of that mouth, have those lips open under his, stabbed at him with erotic sharpness. But the recollection of what had happened afterwards was enough to throw the mental equivalent of a bucket of icy water over any suggestion of the flames that might have flared in his mind, hardening his resolve before it had a second’s chance to waver.

One thing that hadn’t changed about Jessica Marshall was the cold-eyed, disdainful, totally dismissive look she could turn on anyone she considered beneath her contempt. The ‘what is this piece of dirt under my feet?’ expression that she had just used on him was exactly as it had been before, only this time given extra power as a result of seven years’ more maturity, seven years more of having everything her own way.

Well, not any longer. She would find out soon enough why he was here and then the ice queen would struggle to retain that icy calm when everything around her became hotter than hell. Let her see if she could manage to hold on to her hauteur then.

But the other people in the room had started to move forward, following in Jessica’s wake. Outside, where the rain had finally started to ease, the first of a line of sleek black cars had drawn up by the open door. For now, Lady Jessica would have to wait; he had a funeral to go to.

The funeral of the father he had never known.

The father that Jessica Marshall had stolen away from him.

CHAPTER TWO

‘JESSICA,I need to talk to you.’

Simeon Hilton touched Jessica’s elbow to draw her attention away from the elderly lady she was helping into her coat.

‘It is important.’

‘But does it have to be now?’

Jessica cast a quick glance around the room that was now almost empty and gave a small sigh of relief. The ordeal of the day was almost over. Another few minutes and she had hoped to be able to kick off the elegant shoes that had been crippling her for hours, put her feet up and maybe actually enjoy a cup of tea instead of constantly having to snatch a sip here or there, putting it down and forgetting about it or simply holding it in her hand while the liquid inside grew cold as she struggled to make conversation with yet another person she barely knew.

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘I’m afraid not. It’s about Marty’s will.’

The solicitor was obviously on edge. His eyes wouldn’t quite meet hers and he shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other as he spoke, twisting something sharply in her nerves.

‘Is there something wrong? Simeon—what is it?’

‘I’d prefer to do this properly…In private.’

A wave of Simeon’s hand took in the room, indicating the last few remaining stragglers who were finally making their way towards the door. Angelos Rousakis was not amongst them, Jessica was irritated to see.

Instead, he was standing at the far end of the room, staring out of the window at the garden where the rain was once more lashing down.

Just the sight of him sent a nervous thrill down her spine, one that she had grown accustomed to all through the church ceremony and again at the graveside, when she had fought with her tears as the coffin had been lowered into the ground. It was a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, sneaking wind that had replaced the rain showers for a while. It had everything to do with the terrible sense of apprehension that shuddered over her skin every time she looked at him. She still had no idea at all why he was here, and he clearly was in no sort of a hurry to explain.

It was like waiting for a tiger to pounce. Like being stalked silently and intently by a big, powerful, dangerous predator and never ever knowing just when the beast would leap and she would feel the rake of its claws, the tear of its teeth.

She’d tried to convince herself that she was being over-imaginative. That for some reason, a reason she couldn’t manage to come up with herself right now, Angelos had felt obliged to come and pay his last respects to the man who had once, very briefly, been his employer seven years ago. But no matter how she tried, that line of reasoning just didn’t convince. For one thing, Angelos had never been the sort of man who felt obliged to do anything. Even as a much younger man, he had clearly been in control of his life and bowed to no one when it came to making decisions about it. And now, at thirty, he had so obviously made his way in the world and come so far from the man he had been that she couldn’t imagine him conceding anything to anyone.

Which meant that he was here for his own reasons and he was determined not to let her know what those were until he was good and ready.

Well, they’d have to wait until she’d spoken to Simeon now.

‘Just give me five minutes then…’

Another round of the room, shaking hands, saying goodbyes, filled in the time she’d asked for and soon everyone had left. Everyone except for Simeon, who was busy with some call on his mobile phone, and Angelos, who was still standing exactly where he had been before, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his superbly tailored trousers, his long legs slightly apart, feet in highly polished hand stitched boots planted firmly on the wooden floor, his attention fixed on the view beyond the window.

Seeing him like this, anyone would think thathe was the owner of the Manor House, Jessica told herself irritably. He stood there like the lord of all he surveyed when really he was…

He was what?

The question stopped her dead. Her already reluctant steps towards the man at the window faltered to a halt as she remembered just how little she actually knew about Angelos Rousakis. And about the Angelos who had appeared here this afternoon she knew nothing at all. Wherever he had lived, whatever he had done, he had prospered, there was no doubt about that, but she knew nothing of his story, of his way of life.

Had he gone back to his native Greece when he had left here…?

The thought died in her head as, his attention caught by her presence,

Angelos turned his head slowly and she met his black-eyed gaze head on.

She had managed to avoid doing this all day and now she knew why. Being fixed by that polished jet stare made her feel like a butterfly, trapped and pinned to a board, unable to move. His expression was calm, even bland, but behind the heavy, hooded lids burned something she couldn’t understand or explain—she only knew that she didn’t trust it for a moment.

‘Miss Marshall…’

His tone was calm too, the inclination of his dark head in acknowledgement of her just enough to be polite, but his expression still gave nothing away.

‘You have a spectacular view,’ she heard him continue with a strong sense of disbelief. Did he really think that she had approached him to chat casually, make light conversation?

‘I don’t believe I ever saw it the last time I was here.’

‘Things were…very different then…’ Jessica managed, her tongue tangling over the words. Because she had the feeling that, coming close to him like this, she had made a terrible mistake. And suddenly she knew just what she had been avoiding all day.

By dodging any contact with him all through the afternoon she had also managed to avoid looking at him—really looking at him. Looking at him up close. And, by doing so, she knew she had been trying to deny the potent impact that he had on her senses. He had a raw, masculine appeal that

had reached out and grabbed her years before, when she had been only eighteen, fresh out of school and naïve as anything. And that appeal was still there, intensified, concentrated, enhanced by seven years of maturity, seven years of success, it seemed. If Angelos had once been her Black Angel, then now he was all that and more—a Black Archangel. The epitome of male power and strength and pure, distilled, masculine sex appeal.

It was the recognition of that that had had her on the run all afternoon, dodging any contact with him that might have forced her to face up to the truth sooner. The bitter memories of the past, the sense of apprehension about his reasons for being here, even the fact that she was engaged to be married—nothing could come between her and the fact that Angelos Rousakis was the most devastatingly sexy man she had ever encountered in her life.

‘We were different people.’

She flung the words at him, using the snappish tone as a defence, hoping to hide her inner confusion. He might show every sign of having prospered since she had last seen him, but it didn’t alter the fact that she had once cost him his employment, his only home. Honour demanded that she should acknowledge that but the words tangled up on her tongue as Angelos lifted a sardonically enquiring eyebrow.

‘Were we?’

‘Yes. Totally different.’

Suddenly Jessica had had more than enough of this mystery—more than enough of his unsettling presence with no explanation for it.

‘So perhaps you’ll explain just what you’re doing here. What is it you want?’

‘What do I want?’

Angelos made a pretence of actually considering the question, looking around him with a thoughtful, assessing expression on his stunning face.

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind a house like this for a start. I always thought it was amazing when I worked here—and that was before I’d ever seen inside.’

‘It’s not for sale!’

This time, tormented by unease, she’d spoken too quickly, snapped too hard. She’d given too much away and she knew by the way that those brilliant black eyes narrowed sharply that he’d caught every trace of the discomfort she was trying to hide from him. He’d caught it and, she was beginning to suspect, had a strong suspicion of just what was firing it.

‘Not to the likes of me, hmm?’ he questioned softly, the words coming low and deadly like a striking snake. ‘Is that it, Jessica? Is that what you mean? That the Manor House can only belong to some purebred Englishman with aristocratic blood in his veins? Not some former Athens street urchin who’s fit only to groom your thoroughbred mare, to clean the mud from her coat when you come back from a ride around the estate and then to polish the tack ready for your next ride?’

‘I never said…’ Jessica blustered, horrified that he should even believe her capable of any such thought. ‘I…’

But Angelos hadn’t finished with her.

‘Or was that disappointment in your tone?’

‘Disappointment?’

‘Did you think that I was going to say that I wanted you? That that was why I’d come back—because I couldn’t get you out of my mind? That from the moment I kissed you all those years ago, I have always wanted you, always dreamed of you, always determined to have you? And now that I’ve made my fortune, now that your stepfather can no longer come between us, I’ve come back to claim you, to take you as my bride?’

‘No! Never! No way!’

Her voice was high and shrill—toohigh and shrill, she read in his face— and with every note it rose higher, with every violent shake of her head in emphasis, she was betraying the way that he had got to her. The way that, just for a terrible, weak, unguarded moment, she had actually felt a small, shivering thrill at contemplating the possibility he had laid before her.

‘I can’t think of anything I’d want less!’

His swift smile caught her on the raw. It was cold, mirthless, icy—a flashing gesture of triumph, without a trace of warmth in it anywhere,

and not the tiniest gleam of light in the dark depths in his eyes. Somehow she knew she’d fallen right into the trap that he’d set for her—a trap she hadn’t even noticed he’d been laying.

‘Don’t you think that would sound more valid if you’d pointed out that you’re engaged to be married?’

For a moment the cold question stole away any words from her mind. How had he…?

Of course—he’d spotted her ring. But the way he made her feel—the way he obviously intended to make her feel—was that he believed her fiancé should have been uppermost in her thoughts. Which he should, she acknowledged, a terrible sense of embarrassment and guilt running through her.

She should have refuted Angelos’s suggestion with a furious,I’m not interested in any man other than my fiancé! Chris’s name should have been the first on her lips.

And that, she felt, was the trap that Angelos had planned—hadexpected her to fall into. Just the thought made something icy-cold slither nastily down her spine.

‘So tell me, where is your fiancé today? I would have thought that he would want to be here to support you at this time.’

Jessica bridled at the note of condemnation in his voice. Once again she wished that Chris had been here to refute the other man’s obviously critical opinion of him, just as she had wished that Marty would see what

she saw in her fiancé rather than always being suspicious of his motives.

‘He had urgent business that called him away. Otherwise he’d have been here like a shot. And he wouldn’t have left my side for a moment.’

‘To protect you from the unwanted attentions of former servants who don’t know their place?’ Angelos drawled cynically, every word riddled with disbelief. ‘Then it’s just as well that that’s not why I’m here.’

This, Jessica suspected, was her cue to ask him just why he was here, but it was a cue she had no intention of taking up. Quite frankly, by now she didn’t care what had brought him here today and she didn’t want to find out. All she wanted was for him to go, to take with him the desperate, uneasy, guilty, uncomfortable feelings he’d roused in her simply by walking back into her life, and leave her in peace.

And she hoped and prayed that she would never, ever see him again.

With an effort she switched back to the icy politeness she’d adopted in the first moments she’d seen him—was it really only a couple of hours ago?

‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Everyone’s gone home…’ She indicated the empty room with a wave of her hand, taking a step back and half turning, so that his path to the door was completely free, totally unobstructed. ‘And so should you.’

Once more those narrowed eyes seared over her face, then flicked away to look at the open door, before coming back to lock coldly with her uneasy blue gaze.

‘I think not,’ he said firmly, his tone making it plain that he was not prepared to tolerate any argument. ‘There’s no way I’m going anywhere.’

‘But…’

Jessica glanced swiftly round, looking for Peters, but the butler had disappeared. And she had to wonder whether the older man would be able to manage to eject the powerful Greek whose imposing shoulders spoke of an impressive strength. The way that Angelos’s powerful legs and feet were planted so firmly made her think of a commanding tree that would never be easily uprooted.

Her head felt as if it were spinning, but whether from panic or anger she had no way of knowing.

‘Mr Rousakis, I have to tell you to leave!’

‘Miss Marshall, you are not in a position to tell me to do anything,’ he tossed back, the bite of cold anger making her breath catch in her throat. ‘Not any more.’

‘I—’ Jessica began when she heard a soft step behind her.

‘Mr Rousakis…’ It was Simeon Hilton’s voice and when she spun round it was to find the lawyer standing close behind her. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I trust you had a comfortable journey.’

To Jessica’s total consternation, Simeon was holding out his hand towards the Greek, a smile on his face.

‘Mr Rousakis was just leaving…’ she managed but much of the strength had gone out of her voice as her confidence started to seep away. She had forgotten that Simeon had told Peters to wait for Angelos. That he had been expecting him.

Beyond the window, the rain had stopped but the slow, ominous passage of a dark cloud across the face of the weak, struggling sun made her tremble in sudden uncertainty. There was something going on. There were undertones here that she didn’t understand.

‘Shall we get started?’

To her horror, Simeon was addressing Angelos, not her, and there was something in that that was more than just a bond between the two men in the room. Simeon’s approach was—respectful—professional.

‘I have all the papers in the library.’

‘But…’ Somehow Jessica found the strength to speak even though a growing sense of fear and apprehension was threatening to close off her throat. ‘But this is a private matter between you and me, Simeon.’

She’d got that wrong, she knew as soon as the words were out. She could read her mistake in Simeon’s face, in the coolly knowing expression in Angelos’s eyes. This was not just between herself and Simeon. Angelos was somehow involved, though she had no idea how and why.

‘Just what is going on?’

It was Angelos who answered her.

‘I suggest you join us in the library,’ he declared with cool arrogance. ‘You’ll find out everything there.’

And, without even a second glance at her face, he turned and walked from the room, Simeon at his side, their long strides taking them across the room, away from her, while she stood and stared in blank bewilderment. It was almost, Jessica thought anxiously, as if Angelos was the owner of the Manor House, when everyone knew that she was the nearest thing that Marty had had to living family. Forcing her legs to move, she hurried after them, the sound of her heels tapping on the polished floorboards beating out the same sort of staccato tattoo as the uneven, jerky beat of her heart.

‘I thought you wanted to talk to me about my—about Marty’s will!’ she declared as she burst through the door into the library after them. Her noisy arrival made Angelos glance up from the tray on a table set in the wide bay window where he was pouring himself a drink from the jug of water that stood there too. ‘That is surely none of Mr Rousakis’s business.’

‘It is now.’

Angelos’s tone was quiet but so definite it was almost like a slap in the face, making Jessica’s head go back sharply as he watched her.

She was definitely rattled now, he noted with grim satisfaction, seeing how her blue eyes had widened in her pale face. They were huge, dark pools above suddenly ashen cheeks and, though she tried to cover up her concern, he could see the anxiety that clouded her eyes. Even the sleek chestnut hair had tumbled from the clips that she had used to hold it back and was now falling loose around her neck, a stray strand catching on her cheek.

She looked so much more like a real woman than the ice queen who had greeted him on his arrival and who had just tried none too subtly to eject him from the house. But he knew that the image was nothing but an illusion. The lady of the manor mask might have deserted her at the moment but as soon as she gathered breath it would be back in place— temporarily at least. But he had news for her that would soon shatter her belief in the way her life was going to work out, the role she was destined to play. The plans she had.

He was going to enjoy stripping them from her once and for all.

‘Mr Rousakis needs to be here for this,’ the lawyer put in carefully, grimacing as he saw the glare that Jessica directed at him.

‘And are you going to explain why?’

‘Would you like a drink?’ Angelos inserted smoothly, lifting a bottle of wine from the tray.

The look she turned on him should have shrivelled him into dust where he stood—or, at least, he knew that was what she wished for. He took a particular satisfaction in not shrivelling at all but meeting her blazing eyes head-on.

‘Do I need one?’ she shot at him and he felt his mouth curl into a smile in response to her angry question. She looked like nothing so much as a small, elegant cat hissing and spitting at an unwelcome intruder into her territory.

The smile incensed her further, he noted as her teeth actually snapped together in an attempt to hold back the fury she wanted to let loose.

‘You might find it easier to relax.’

And, to emphasise the point, he flung himself down into one of the big, squashy tan leather chairs and leaned back, stretching out his legs in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. Taking a long swallow of the water he had poured, he allowed himself another small smile behind the glass.

She caught it of course. He heard her breath hiss in between her teeth in response as he nodded to the waiting lawyer, indicating that Hilton should go ahead.

‘Would you like to…?’ the other man began but Angelos shook his head firmly.

He knew that there was no likelihood that Lady Jessica would believe anything he told her. She would need the legal facts spelled out to her by someone she trusted, someone she had to believe. And that had to be Simeon Hilton.

Besides, he wanted his attention free to see exactly what happened to her face when the truth hit home.

‘You have the papers…’

With a wave of his hand he indicated the folders that Simeon had placed on the big leather-topped desk.

‘You’d better explain everything. Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in.’

Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in…

Jessica had no idea just why those words hit home to her as hard as they did. There was nothing in Angelos’s tone to upset her. The way he spoke was as casual and conversational as if he was simply passing the time of day with a couple of friends. Nothing to worry her in that.

No—it was the fact that there seemed to be nothing to worry her in his tone that set all her mental alarm bells ringing, bringing her warning nerves to red alert in the space of a single heartbeat. From being an intruder—a stranger who had turned up unannounced and uninvited to her stepfather’s funeral—he had slowly but surely morphed into someone who was far too much at ease, far too much in control for her peace of mind. From the moment that he had walked into the house he had gone his own way, no matter what she said or did. He had been a dark, watchful presence at the graveside, a silent, black-eyed observer at the reception afterwards. He looked almost…

The word slithered away from her as Simeon seated himself at the desk and shuffled through the files, picking one up and tapping it straight on

the desktop, then clearing his throat carefully.

‘About Marty—your stepfather’s will…’ he said.

‘There can’t be any problem with that.’

In spite of her determination not to, Jessica found herself a chair and sank down into it. Something in the way that Simeon spoke, the way he looked at her over his reading glasses, suddenly took the strength from her legs. It was either sit down—fast—or risk them giving way beneath her and with Angelos’s cold dark eyes fixed so closely on her face, she was determined not to let that happen. At a time like this dignity was important, and if keeping her dignity meant conceding just a little then she was fine with that.

‘Marty had everything sorted out. He arranged everything just as he wanted it.’

Why wasn’t Simeon nodding? He should be nodding, surely? Smiling and nodding and saying that yes, that was right.

‘We came to see you two years ago—when I turned twenty-three—and he said that he wanted to leave everything to me. Wasn’t that legal, then?’

The shock in her voice was as much from the memory of how she had felt that day, made worse now by the worry and uncertainty about just what was going on.

She had never actually believed that Marty would leave hereverything .

They had always been close—her mother’s second husband, the only father she had ever known—and the warmth between them had grown as they’d clung together after Andrea’s death in a train crash. And of course he’d been there for her seven years ago, moving in to take action, rescuing her from the repercussions of her foolishness, dealing with things…Jessica’s eyes slid to the dark, silent man in the other chair and she shivered, just remembering when she’d come up against Angelos Rousakis all those years ago.

But she had always believed that there must be someone else who had a far better right to, a far greater demand on the Robbins estate—distant relatives, friends, charities—to whom he would bequeath his fortune rather than to her.

Marty had assured her there was no one else. He had been an only child of only children; any cousins, once twice or even three times removed, had died long ago and he had no descendants of his own.

‘Marie could never have children,’ he’d told her in a sorrowful recollection of his first marriage to a woman who had died of cancer at the early age of thirty-five. ‘And by the time I met your mother we were both past that. But you’ve been the daughter I always wanted. The only family I need.’

He had known how much she loved the house, and the land that went with it, he’d said. And he knew that she would care for it, look after it in just the way he’d wanted. She would keep the farms running, be a fair landlady to the tenants, and of course she had always adored the horses.

‘I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather leave it to.’

She’d been overwhelmed, overjoyed, and, knowing she could never thank him, she had set herself instead to learn everything she could about the estate, working with Marty so that she would know how to handle everything when the time came. She had hoped to have so much longer to do so. Jessica had dreamed of maybe taking over the estate when Marty retired, and neither of them had ever thought that the end would come so soon.

The thought that she would be able to carry things on as her stepfather had wished had been the only consolation she had had when the sudden heart attack had taken him when she had least expected it.

‘Yes, that was quite legal,’ Simeon assured her. ‘Then.’

‘Then?’

The single word, hastily added, snagged on a raw nerve and tugged. It made her sit up straighter, a frown drawing her brows together, all her attention focused on the man at the desk.

‘Did something happen? Did Marty change his will?’

Simeon shook his head. ‘He left everything just as it was. That was the problem.’

‘The problem…Simeon, you’re going to have to explain this to me—it’s not making any sense. Marty left everything to me—so what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is that by the time he died Marty didn’t have anything to

leave—to you or to anyone else.’

‘He didn’t?’

Jessica was having to struggle to try to understand just what Simeon actually meant. His words sounded as if they were coming to her down a long, echoing tunnel so that they rang distortedly in her head. And the problem was desperately aggravated by her painful awareness of the way that Angelos was sitting silently still, observing everything.

It was as if he had a sharp wire attached to her, one that kept up a constant, steady tug on every nerve, drawing her attention to him. It was a tug she fought to resist. She was having a hard enough time coping with just what Simeon was telling her. If she looked into Angelos’s face, read what he was thinking there, then she would go to pieces at once. She just knew it.

And so she forced herself to keep her face turned towards the lawyer, praying that Angelos could read nothing of her mood, or her fears, from the profile she presented to him.

‘Just what are you saying?’

‘That over the last year—eighteen months—Marty started to gamble.’

‘He always liked a flutter on the horses!’ Jessica exclaimed. ‘It was the only hobby he had. He…’

Her voice failed her as she met Simeon’s eyes, saw the expression on his

face.

‘This wasn’t any sort of hobby, Jessica,’ the lawyer told her sombrely and a cold hand squeezed her heart, stilling her completely. ‘And it wasn’t anything like the way he’d been betting before. He started betting more money than he’d ever done—more than was wise. At first he won, so I suppose that made him bet more and more. But then apparently he started losing—and he’d bet more to try to win back his losses.’

Oh, Marty! Jessica had known that something was troubling her stepfather. He’d changed, lost weight, started smoking again when he’d given up years before as a promise to Andrea. Jessica had tried to get him to talk but he’d always dismissed her concerns. Told her she was worrying unnecessarily. And she had to admit that, caught up with her romance with Chris and the excitement of his proposal, just lately she’d been preoccupied and hadn’t seen as much as she should have done.

‘How bad did it get?’

Did she have to ask? Didn’t she know the answer from the gravity of Simeon’s tone, the look in his eyes?

‘The worst. He lost everything—he would have had to move out, leave Manorfield for good, if someone hadn’t stepped in and bailed him out.’

‘Who?’

Jessica winced as she heard the way her voice croaked, the break in the middle of the short word. Again, did she have to ask? The cruel hand that had been squeezing her heart suddenly gave it a vicious, painful wrench as

she felt rather than saw the sudden change in the attitude of the other man in the room and glimpsed out of the corner of her eye the way he straightened in his chair, uncrossed his legs.

‘Who bailed him out?’

‘I did.’

The answer came from Angelos as she had known it must. The terrible dark sense of inevitability that had reached out and enfolded her ever since Simeon had begun the story had deepened and tightened around her neck, it seemed, threatening to strangle her as it closed off all the air from her lungs. There could be no other possible answer really. No other reason why he was here and why Simeon had treated him with such courtesy, such respect.

It took an effort to turn her head and face him, to look straight at him when she had spent the last minutes desperately trying to do the exact opposite. She dreaded what she would see in his face, the triumph there must be in his eyes.

But in fact all she could see was a dark, opaque shadow, no features, no details visible at all. The late afternoon sun had actually come out so that Angelos was just a black figure silhouetted against the huge bay window with its leaded panes.

‘What did you do?’

‘I bought him out.’

Stark and flat, the statement still had the power to stab like a brutal sword, slashing through everything she had believed—everything she’d hoped was going to come true.

‘I bought him out—paid off all his debts, got the creditors off his back and gave him a breathing space.’

‘Youbought him out? But you couldn’t—there’s no way…how…’

‘You shouldn’t live in the past, Princess,’ Angelos drawled softly, getting to his feet and crossing to the table to refill his glass. ‘People change. I am no longer the stable boy you thought you could have a sordid little fling with. In fact I never was.’

‘What…?’ Jessica began, but he ignored her interjection, cutting straight across her attempt to say something, ask just what he meant.

‘I am more than capable of buying out your stepfather and saving him from ruin three times over if I wanted to.’

‘You make it sound as if you did him a favour, but I can’t believe that. You’re not that sort of a philanthropist. You don’t do things out of generosity—selfless charity. There had to be something you got out of it too.’

‘Oh, there was. I can assure you that I got everything I wanted— everything and more.’

Now at last she could see his face in the light from the window and what she read there made her heart quail inside her chest. Her breathing snagged again as she met his cold eyed, harsh-faced expression and saw the way that his eyes burned with icy anger, with the darkest searing contempt she had ever seen.

‘And…and that was…?’ she managed, snatching in her breath on a raw painful gasp.

‘You’re standing in it, Princess.’

The long-fingered hand that held the glass gestured in an arc that took in the whole room, the long, polished wooden floor, the huge marble fireplace with another set of leather armchairs and chesterfields standing before it, the range of bookcases on every wall, crammed to the edges with reading matter. And then, with his eyes fixed on her face so she knew he saw every tiny flicker of reaction, every tremor that crossed her features, the wide-eyed stare of blank disbelief and shock, he gestured again so that this time the movement widened enough to encapsulate the whole of the house, the grounds beyond—and the miles and miles of Manorfield estate as well.

‘I’ve wanted Manorfield since the time I first saw it when I came here seven years ago. I was determined never to give up until it was mine. Marty’s gambling, his debts, played right into my hands. I bailed him out to the price of the estate.’

‘I don’t believe you—I won’t believe you. If you’d owned Manorfield then you’d have been here like a shot. Marty still lived here—he was still running the estate.’

‘Because I let him. Because it suited me. Marty was an older man—I wasn’t going to throw him out on the streets, even if he had been happy to treat me that way. And, besides, he knew what was needed here—he knew how to handle things. That also suited me. So I let him stay on.’

Angelos paused, took a slow sip of his drink and swallowed it down, his eyes still holding her shocked blue ones over the rim of the fine crystal glass.

‘If he’d lived longer, I’d have let him stay on a while. But not any more, Jessica. That concession was for Marty only—it ended when he died. Once that happened, Manorfield was mine and all mine. The will your stepfather made has no validity—none at all. There’s nothing for you to inherit, you see. He couldn’t leave you anything because he didn’t own anything—barely even the clothes that he stood up in. All the rest was mine.’

He paused, took another swallow of his drink and, as he did so, Jessica felt the first terrible tremors of shock, the trembling of her limbs that made her grateful for the fact that she was sitting down.

Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in…

Tell Miss Marshall the position she’s in…

The words swung round and round in her head, gaining a terrible extra significance with each repetition. She knew now with a dreadful sense of inevitability just what was coming. And she knew that there was no way she could stop it.

She could only sit there and try to control her reactions as she waited for the axe to fall.

He took his time about it. And she knew that was because he was enjoying every moment of this.

‘The truth of the matter is, my dear Jessica, that you can’t inherit Manorfield or any part of it because I own it all—the house, the farms, every last single blade of grass. They are all mine. And you are left with precisely nothing. Not even a home. Because the Manor House is mine and I intend to live here from now on.’

‘No…’

Jessica could only sit and shake her head, struggling, wishing, hoping that by denying Angelos’s arrogant statement she could make it into a nightmare, make it unreal. This couldn’t be happening—it couldn’t…

But even when she looked at Simeon for help she knew that she was not going to get it. Marty’s solicitor was sitting at the desk, the papers in front of him, and the expression on his face, the way that he had done nothing to contradict Angelos’s cold-hearted declaration left her without a single hope in her heart.

Everything that he had said was the truth. Every last appalling fact. And now she knew just why his arrival had filled her with such a sense of creeping dread. Why she had known as soon as he’d walked into the room that he was here to do something dreadful, something that would destroy every trace of her peace of mind.

The man she had called the Black Angel was back in her life—and it seemed that he had taken it over and turned it upside down. And it would never be the same again.

CHAPTER THREE

JESSICAsighed deeply, turned over for what felt like the millionth time that night and buried her face in the pillows.

‘Oh, that was horrible!’ she said aloud as she struggled to surface from the dark, clinging sleep that had held her. ‘Horrible!’

She had dreamed that the Black Angel was back in her life and that he…

She came fully awake in a rush, the total recollection of what had happened hitting her hard.

It hadn’t been a dream—a nightmare of the darkest, most terrible kind. It had all been appallingly, dreadfully real.

Twisting over and sitting up in the bed, she pushed her tangled hair back from her face and stared unseeingly at the opposite wall as she forced her reluctant mind to review all that had happened yesterday afternoon. She had thought that the day was going to be hard enough when she would have to say goodbye to Marty, but she had barely got through the ordeal of the funeral when the emotional grenade of Angelos’s announcement had exploded right in her face.

Angelos.

The thought of his name reminded her that somewhere in this house Angelos had spent his first night as owner of Manorfield. She had no idea where he’d slept; she had gone to bed, exhausted and miserable, leaving him to select a room that would be his. No doubt Peters or Trish Henderson, the housekeeper, would have made sure that that new owner had clean sheets and towels and all the comforts he needed. Jessica had been beyond that.

Quite frankly, Angelos could have slept on the floor for all she cared. It seemed that whenever he appeared in her life he brought chaos and destruction with him and yesterday’s announcement meant that everything she had dreamed of for her future had been snatched away from her. Then, when she had believed it just couldn’t get any worse, it had turned out that it could.

Jessica’s eyes clouded as she recalled how Simeon had gone into long, complicated details about exactly how much debt Marty had managed to run up in the last two crazy years of his life. The size of his debts had appalled her, leaving her mind reeling at the thought that anyone could gamble those sorts of amounts on any one race, let alone do it again and again and again.

The end result was that she was left with nothing. Angelos had not been exaggerating when he had declared that he now owned everything, right down to every last blade of grass. Everything that Marty had talked about leaving to her had been swallowed up by his gambling. Jessica told herself that she ought to be grateful that she at least had her clothes, because there was little else she did own.

And now Angelos had moved in. He had had his case in the car and, as soon as Simeon had left, he had brought it into the house, obviously

meaning to set himself up as lord of the manor without a moment’s hesitation.

That was when Jessica had had enough. It had been the sight of that case that made her give into the need to escape and hide away in the sanctuary of her bedroom. There, at least, she was safe from the oppressive, intrusive presence of the Black Angel.

But for how long?

Throwing back the duvet, Jessica forced herself out of bed and went to the window. Usually the long smooth lawn that stretched away from the house towards the lake, with the shrubberies on either side, made her heart lift just to see it. Even in the dark days after Marty’s death she had still loved this view because it was something she felt she still shared with her stepfather and could go on remembering him by. But this morning everything was spoiled. The peaceful, beautiful scene no longer brought the accustomed sense of ease but instead added another twist of the knife in her already aching heart.

She had lost so much in the past years. First her mother, shockingly, then Marty, and now she had lost Manorfield—and with it her home. After today she would have nowhere to live. Angelos would surely want her out as soon as possible. He had planned on getting his hands on Manorfield. Now that he had, he wouldn’t want her around.

After all, hadn’t he made it plain that a large part of the cruel delight he’d taken in letting her know that he had acquired the estate was accentuated by the fact that he had taken it fromher ? And, by doing so, he had had his final revenge for the way she had treated him seven years before.

No, she was not going to dwell on the past. She would think of better things—more positive things. And there were those in her life. For one thing, Chris was coming back today. She was meeting him for lunch.

Just the thought lifted her heart, straightened her shoulders, made her feel she could face the day.

Face Angelos.

With Chris at her side she’d be able to face the future.

And part of that future was to get herself downstairs smartish. The last thing she wanted was for Angelos to think that she was hiding away in her room, sulking, or, even worse, afraid to come out and face him.

She’d face him all right. He might have walked back into her life and shattered it, taking so much that she had thought was in her future and grabbing it for himself. But it was only money, only property. She had other things to look forward to in her future. She was getting married in a month. And then she would be out of here—sooner if possible. Out of here and leaving the Black Angel far behind her.

So she was going to get dressed and go down and face him. Head on.

And she was going to look her best. She wasn’t going to let him see how much he had devastated her.

With her shoulders squared, jaw tight with resolve, Jessica headed for

the shower.

He was in the study—inMarty’s study. She spotted him through the open door as she marched down the long curving staircase that led into the hall. He was sitting at the big oak desk, a pile of papers in front of him and his head bent over one file. A terrible, sour taste rose into Jessica’s mouth at the sight of this—thisusurper —in the place where she had so often seen her stepfather. In Marty’s chair, at Marty’s desk.

The thought that perhaps in the last few months of the older man’s life he might have been sitting at that desk wrestling with the problems that his debts had forced on him, wondering how to cope—driven to accept Angelos’s help—made the bitter taste even worse so that it was almost like acid burning on her tongue.

And so, in spite of the fact that Angelos lifted his dark head as she walked past the door and tossed some sort of greeting her way, she carefully ignored him. Keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead, hands firmly in the pockets of the beige trousers she wore with a soft green shirt, she headed for the kitchen and a much wanted cup of coffee.

She would need a strong dose of caffeine in her system before she could face him. Without it, she knew she would hiss and spit if she had to speak to him face to face. So she headed straight for the old-fashioned whistling kettle, filling it and slamming it back down on to the stove as a way of expressing her feelings without speaking.

‘Coffee,’ she said aloud to herself, reaching for a mug from a hook.

‘I’ll have one of those.’

The voice from behind her made her jump, though deep down she knew she’d been expecting it. But, although every nerve in her body tightened and twisted at the knowledge of his presence, she clamped down hard on the jittery feeling that clutched at her stomach and forced her voice to stay calm as she responded.

‘You really shouldn’t sneak up on me like that when I’m in the kitchen.’ Damn it, her voice was calm—but it must be obvious that that was only achieved by the way she had clenched her teeth so tight that already her jaw was beginning to ache. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t drop this mug.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered.’

She couldn’t see but she could well imagine the careless shrug with which he dismissed the piece of china she held in her hand. Her fingers tightened round the handle as she fought with the need to swing round and fling it at his arrogant head.

Instead she made herself turn slowly, reluctantly. Her skin was already shivering with awareness of his presence and the knowledge of the fact that he was so very close behind her only made that burning sensitivity so much worse. He had the appalling knack of seeming to fill a room, even one as big as the old-fashioned Manor House kitchen. It was as if his presence expanded to fill the space, dominating it, sucking all the oxygen from the atmosphere and leaving her gasping for breath. Overnight she had told herself that her imagination had to have been working overtime, that there was no way he could be so big, so powerful, so dark. His eyes couldn’t be so deep and brilliant, his hair such a glossy black.

But, standing before her now, with the elegant business suit discarded in favour of a coffee-coloured long-sleeved T-shirt and darker brown trousers, he was all that and more. She had once thought him devastating, totally destructive to her peace of mind. She had known so little then! The man he had become was a hundred—a thousand—times more dangerous.

‘It’s only a mug.’

‘And you can afford so many other mugs, of course.’

The look Angelos turned on her was one of total exasperation.

‘I don’t happen to think that a mug is worth making a fuss about.’

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? Or were you perhaps thinking that you’d expect me to pay for a replacement, seeing as you now own Manorfield and everything that’s in it, lock stock and barrel and I’m just here under sufferance?’

This time the look that flashed from those black eyes was brilliant with cold anger and she actually heard his teeth snap together as he too bit back the first response that had sprung to his mouth.

‘Don’t be damn stupid, Jessica. And stop trying to provoke an argument. It’s too early in the morning.’

‘So do I need to make an appointment to speak to you now? Or to argue

with you at least? Well, perhaps you’ll tell me when it is the right time— because we have a lot to argue about.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It doesn’t have to be this way.’

‘It doesn’t?’ Jessica scorned. ‘From where I’m standing, this is exactly how it has to be. After all, you moved in and stole everything…’

‘Notstole !’ Angelos stated with vicious emphasis. ‘I stole nothing. I came by everything legally.’

‘Oh, yes, perfectly legally. By throwing outrageous sums of money at it— and at a man who couldn’t say no.’

‘Your stepfather was deeply grateful for my assistance.’

‘Oh, I’ll just bet he was! Considering you had him cornered, with no possible other way out. You saw a way to get what you’d always wanted, at a price you could afford to pay, and so you moved in for the kill. You didn’t give a damn about the people you’d trampled on—the people Marty really wanted his estate to go to.’

‘You?’

He inserted it, swift and sharp as a stiletto in the ribs, and with it came just the same sort of burning pain, so that she had to fight against the wince of distress that would betray her. Somehow she managed to transform the involuntary hand movement that came up between them in a nervous, defensive gesture, into one that dismissed his slashing

question, brushing it aside in angry impatience.

‘The people who mattered to Marty.’

What had she said now that had made his face change so much, turning the glittering jet ice of his eyes into a flame of pure savagery, with a burning hatred that made her take an involuntary step back, away from the danger zone?

‘You just used the wealth you had to snatch it away at the cheapest possible—’

‘You don’t know what it cost me,’ he snarled from between gritted teeth.

‘I have some idea of what the estate is worth.’

This time it was Angelos’s hand that came up between them in an expressive, angry gesture, long fingers spread wide, broad palm acting as a barrier between them.

‘I wasn’t talking about money.’

‘What else is there to talk about where this is concerned? What I’m wondering is where you got the money from.’

‘Where the hell a penniless stable boy got the cash to buy out your stepfather, hmm?’ Angelos questioned cynically, his beautiful mouth twisting in bitter scorn. ‘You clearly don’t think it could possibly have

been acquired legally.’

‘I never said that!’

She tried to meet his accusing eyes squarely but her gaze skittered away from his at the memory of just how the ‘penniless stable boy’ she had believed him to be had ended up out on the streets because of her.

‘You didn’t have tosay anything.’ Angelos gave the words a dangerous softness, one that made all the tiny hairs on her skin lift in a shivering response to some unseen but instinctively sensed peril. ‘It was there on your face, in your eyes. But you needn’t worry, my dear Jessica. Every euro I earned—every penny I paid for Manorfield—was worked for and earned legally. I wasn’t always a penniless stable hand—maybe the truth is that I was never a penniless one.’

‘What…?’

But at that moment the kettle boiled, the whistle sounding loud and shrill into the stunned silence that followed her shaken question. She had been so intent on the argument, on the man in front of her, that it brought her whirling round, snatching it up to silence the appalling sound before she quite realised what was happening.

‘You were making coffee,’ Angelos said pointedly when she simply stood, frozen to the spot.

The truth was that she no longer felt she could drink anything. So many feelings and emotions were knotted up in her throat that she felt sure she would choke. But even as she stood, her mind clouded with memories,

her whirling thoughts refusing to be pushed into any coherent order, he stepped forward, eased the kettle from her clutching fingers and took it over to the scrubbed wooden worktop.

‘Very little milk, no sugar,’ he said, the totally matter of fact way of speaking making her mind spin again.

‘What?’

‘The way you like your coffee.’ He had replaced the kettle on the stove, but off the heat this time, taken down a cafetière from a shelf and was opening cupboards, obviously in search of coffee. ‘That is right isn’t it?’

‘You remember?’

‘Of course I remember.’

He had his back to her as he was spooning ground coffee into the glass pot, so she couldn’t see the expression on his face or have any guess at what was going through his mind. His tone was no help. It was flat and emotionless, giving nothing at all away.

‘I remember so much about you. The way you’d call “good morning” to all the horses when you came into the stables, then steal one of their carrots for yourself. That cool, slightly breathy voice, the way you toss your hair back over your shoulder. Your beauty.’

Now Jessica knew that she was mishearing him. He couldn’t have said…

‘Beauty!’ She laughed. ‘Oh, come on! You know you don’t mean that.’

‘Why not?’

He turned as he spoke and the direct, burning intensity of his gaze seared her face, seeming to scour off a top layer of cells so that she felt raw and desperately exposed underneath.

‘Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?’

‘But you said…’

She could hear the words inside her head now, and the hateful, scornful tone in which they had been spoken.‘Don’t delude yourself, child. I have no interest in you…I don’t play with little girls.’ And in the background the condescending giggle of Lucille, the girl hedid have an interest in. The girl he had flaunted in front of her, letting her entwine her limbs with his as she pressed a long, lingering kiss on his lips. The girl he had taken up to his flat at night.

‘I know what I said, Jessica, but it does not mean that I am either blind or a fool. You always had the looks, and you were just waiting to grow into them. Which you have done—very nicely.’

‘Spare me the flattery!’

Once she might have…Might have—who was she kidding? Once she had openly dreamed of this. She had longed for him even to turn his

handsome head in her direction, to notice her. If he had spoken, she’d replayed the words over and over again in her head. If he had smiled at her, she’d held it close to her heart. But it had all meant nothing.

Less than nothing. He had just been being polite. Making sure that he never put a foot wrong around his employer’s daughter. He had had no interest at all in her as a woman.

So why should he suddenly start being any different now?

‘No flattery,’ Angelos stated flatly, placing the pot of coffee on the big central kitchen table with a large china mug beside it.

Reaching across, he took hold of the mug that Jessica still held as she stared at him in confusion. The tiny brush of his hand against hers, warm skin against skin, made her shiver as an electric shock fizzed along her nerves in response. And the small movement towards her brought a waft of the intensely personal scent of his body to tantalise her nostrils. It was a blend of some soap or the shampoo in his hair, like the sun on lemons, and the clean, fresh scent of his skin that made her senses quiver in sudden reaction.

‘Why should I flatter?’ he continued, easing the mug from her suddenly nerveless fingers as she struggled with the force of her response to him. ‘You’ve grown up nicely, Jessica—you’ve flowered. You were a lovely girl but now you’re a stunning woman.’

Jessica floundered over finding a way to respond to the compliment, one that wouldn’t put her into any more danger than she already felt surrounded her, fencing her in. She wouldn’t be human if she hadn’t felt a rush of delight at the complimentary words, particularly when they came

from a man of such incandescent sexual appeal himself. But she strongly suspected that she was meant to feel just that way and the thought made her worry that she was being deliberately manipulated. That she was being driven to go exactly the way he wanted, think the things he wanted her to think.

She had the uncomfortable, disconcerting image of herself as a mindless little puppet dancing in the way that Angelos directed while all the while he held her strings in his strong, purposeful grip. After all, wasn’t that the way that he had moved in on Marty, manipulating the older man until he had got exactly what he wanted from him?

‘How did you know that Marty needed bailing out financially—that he was gambling so much?’

She flung the question at him as much to defend herself from the worrying path down which her thoughts were going as for the need to say anything. And the worst part of the uncomfortable feeling was the suspicion that Angelos knew that too. The steady regard of those deepset dark eyes had a gleam that made her suspect that he was laughing at her inside. Something that was confirmed by the faint curl to the corners of his beautifully shaped mouth, a curve that made her move impetuously to snatch her hand back, away from him, only just controlling the impulse to cradle it against her as if she had been burned or stung.

‘It was easy to find out what I wanted to know. I’ve observed what’s been happening at Manorfield ever since I went away.’

‘You have? ‘

It gave her a cold, creeping sensation, like the feel of a thousand tiny

footsteps moving over her skin.

‘You’ve been watching us? Or sent someone to spy…’

‘I didn’t need to spy.’

To her relief, Angelos had turned his attention to pouring the coffee, that penetrating black gaze concentrated on the action instead of burning into her face. She couldn’t stop herself from watching his hands, strong, bronzed fingers gripping the handle, the others resting so lightly on the cafetière lid. Just the memory of the one brief contact with those fingers made her mouth go dry in sudden response.

Angelos finished pouring, added milk, reached for a spoon to stir…

‘I never lost contact with Marty from the moment I left.’

‘You were in touch with him?’ She frowned her disbelief.

‘Not in touch.’

There was a strange, disturbing undertone to Angelos’s response. One that Jessica couldn’t begin to interpret or understand but it snagged on something raw in her mind and tugged, adding a new unease to the uncomfortable tangle of emotions she was already struggling with.

‘Not until the last couple of years. But I always knew what Marty was doing—and you.’

He was holding the mug of coffee out to her as he spoke and the abrupt addition of those last two words froze her movement to take it, her hand still outstretched, partly between them.

‘Your spying included me?’

Something nasty crawled over her skin at the thought but Angelos appeared totally unconcerned by her anger and disgust.

‘How do you think I knew you were engaged?’

It had been the last straw, Angelos admitted to himself. The thought that she would marry and that someone else, as her husband, would be in possession of Manorfield was what had pushed him into action. That was when he had first contacted Marty direct again, trying to arrange a meeting with the old man. But Marty, of course, had proved unyielding, refusing any suggestion of contact. Stubborn to the last, the old man had returned every letter, refused any phone call…

‘I—I thought you saw my ring.’

‘Oh, no. I knew long before that.’

It had been the thought that had been uppermost in his mind. Along with wanting to see for himself what the mature Jessica Marshall of twentyfive looked like in comparison with the barely out of school, young girl of eighteen. He had also wanted to come face to face with her fiancé and see what sort of a man this Chris Atkinson was.

‘There’s a word for what you’ve been doing…’

Jessica’s voice had changed again, sharpening, tightening. It was that ohso English voice that he had always detested because it expressed so much of the way she thought—especially the way she thought about him.

She had stepped back into the role of lady of the manor, addressing the peasant who dared question her orders. And, hearing it, he felt the hot bite of anger in his veins, hazing his thoughts.

‘We call it stalking. And, in England, stalking is a crime! One that could earn you a prison sentence.’

‘Stalking from several thousand miles away in Greece?’ he scorned icily. ‘When you were not even aware of the fact? I think not. I cannot see any lawyer trying to make that accusation stick—or any police force letting him try.’

The wordless glare she turned on him almost made him laugh. Almost. But just the momentary flash of amusement eased some of the clouding rage and brought his mood back under his control.

Anger was not the way to handle this. Not if he was to bring his plan to the completion he had intended for it. Anger would only drive Lady Jessica further and further away when the truth was that he wanted her closer than ever to him. Physically, at least.

Because that was the second version of the plan that had formed in his

mind. The one that he had changed, adapted slightly on his arrival here.

At first his aim had been solely to stake his claim to Manorfield and all the estate that she had thought would be hers. To stake his claim and enjoy his revenge as he watched her face the loss of the wealth, the position she had thought was her inheritance. But in the space between one heartbeat and the next that plan had changed, widened.

Because, in the moment that he had first set eyes on Jessica Marshall after seven long years and had seen the woman she had become since he had last seen her, he had known at once that Manorfield would not be enough. He wanted the woman too.

He’d always wanted her, even in the untried, undeveloped beauty of her youth. But then she had been forbidden fruit, too hot to touch even for him. But he had never forgotten the one moment he had held her, felt her mouth on his, her slender form pressed up against his body. He had wanted to take it further then—and he wanted it more so now.

The ice maiden who had greeted him with cool disdain had stirred his libido in a way that no more wanton, willing woman had ever done in all those intervening years. And now, when she stood before him in a patch of weak spring sunlight that made the coppery strands in her hair gleam bright, blue eyes flashing in indignation, looking down her smooth, straight nose at him, he knew a raging need to wipe that cold, distant look from her face and replace it with another, very different one.

Her cheeks were pink with indignation, the same indignation that made her breasts rise and fall so rapidly under the pale silk of her shirt, the rapid uneven movement arousing a hot desire that clutched at his lower body, hardening him in an instant. It was almost enough to make him reach for her, grab her arms, haul her up against him and kiss her until

they were both so drunk with desire they didn’t care who or what they were. Only that one was male and one was female and that was all they needed.

But that would not be enough. He wanted more. He wanted to see those blazing eyes turn smoky with need, hear her catch her breath in desire. And if he was to achieve that then he had to wait. To act in cool blood, not grab and snatch in hot-blooded anger.

Manorfield was his, and that was one hunger satisfied.

But he would not be satisfied until Jessica Marshall was his as well.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘SO DOyou want this coffee or not?’

The words seemed to come to Jessica from far away, making her blink hard in shock as she realised that for the last—what?—second?—longer? —she’d been lost in her thoughts. Just for an instant the world seemed to have shifted, then stopped, time hanging frozen.

One moment she had been angry, defensive, appalled at the thought that Angelos had openly stated that he had been watching her. That he’d had Manorfield—and her—under observation for God knew how long. The next she had simply beenaware . Aware that something had changed. That a new and very different mood seemed to have reached out to enclose them, folding round her like warm scented smoke that clouded her vision. Her skin prickled and her breathing snagged, and through the haze that swirled around her the only thing she could see were the eyes of the man

before her. The deep, dark, intent gaze that was focused on her and held her as if hypnotised, unable to move or look away.

The flashing anger, the cold contempt that had been there just moments before had evaporated and in its place was something deeper and darker; something that reached out and took her heart in a cruel hand and squeezed—and she didn’t know if what she felt was jolting panic or burning excitement.

‘Or will making it be considered a crime too? Harassment, perhaps? It’s not poisoned,’ he added with an extra bite of acid when she looked down at the mug that he still held out to her. ‘Or drugged. I won’t be able to talk to you if you’re dead or out cold.’

Had that been a smile? She couldn’t quite tell if it had been there or not. It had barely registered on his mouth, just the tiniest flicker of a curl to those sensual lips, but she would have sworn that there had been a faint lightening of the darkness in his eyes, like heavy storm clouds being touched by the sun, lifting slightly to let a touch of warmth come through.

‘Do we have something to talk about?’

‘We have plenty to talk about, and you know it.’

‘Like what?’

Reluctantly, she reached out and took the mug of coffee from him. Reluctant, not because she didn’t want the coffee—the feeling that it would choke her had ebbed away again—but because she feared the

touch of his fingers against hers, the shivering reaction that made her legs unsteady beneath her. To her relief, he let it go easily so that there was only the faintest contact before he was reaching for his own cup, taking a sip from it.

‘Wouldn’t we find this easier if we went somewhere more comfortable— the sitting room or the conservatory?’

The quiet words set all the tiny hairs at the back of Jessica’s neck tingling in nervous apprehension. This sounded too much like last night when, he had suggested that she would be more comfortable sitting down, just before he had announced the news that had taken her dreams, the future she had believed she had, and smashed them into tiny, jagged splinters.

‘I don’t think we need comfort,’ she said coldly. ‘In fact, I don’t think there’s hope of any sort of ease with this. And I’m not going anywhere— I’m not moving until you tell me what we have to talk about.’

The look he turned on her was resigned rather than annoyed or impatient. You should know, that look said. You should be well aware of exactly what’s coming.

And the problem was that she had a coldly sneaking suspicion that she did know.

‘Your future. We have to discuss what happens now.’

Of course, she should have known. She should have expected it—shehad expected it—but all the same she felt the sudden realisation of the

inevitable like the stab of a knife right to her heart. He owned Manorfield and everything in it—especially the Manor House. He would want to live here now, make this place his home, stamp his presence on it as he had already started to do by taking over Marty’s study after less than twenty-four hours in the place. And, with him in residence, there was no place for her.

No home for her here any longer.

‘It’s all right,’ she managed stiffly, through lips that felt as hard and unfeeling as wood as she struggled to keep them from quivering revealingly while her fingers tightened on the handle of the mug until her knuckles showed white. ‘I’ll make this easy for you. I know you want me out.’

‘I do?’

‘Well, obviously…this is your…your home now—you won’t want me living here. But if you could just give me a day or so—just long enough to find somewhere else…’

Her voice failed her, fading away to a croak as she saw him shake his dark head in adamant rejection of her stumbling request. ‘No.’

‘No? You won’t—not even twenty-four hours?’

Her head was spinning with panic at just the thought. Where would she go? What would she do? But what else had she expected? After all, hadn’t she been responsible for making him homeless all those years before?

‘What…?’ she began but Angelos brought up his free hand in a gesture that commanded her silence.

‘Whatever you think of me, I’m not so callous that I’d throw you out on the morning after your stepfather’s funeral…’ He took another swallow of his coffee, grimacing as he tasted it. ‘I told you, we need to talk about this, and if you don’t want to sit somewhere else then I do. This coffee is getting cold fast and I’d like to be able to relax and enjoy it.’

No chance of her relaxing, with her future hanging in the balance, Jessica told herself but, as he had already started walking from the room, she had no option but to follow him. He led her across the hall, through the big sitting room and out into the huge Victorian conservatory. In contrast to the downpours of the previous day, the large glass-framed room was flooded with soft sunlight, making the view from the windows even more spectacular than usual. Wide green lawns sloped away from the house, down past the shrubberies and away to where the quiet waters of the lake gleamed in the sunlight. It was Jessica’s favourite view from the house and one she would never tire of.

It was one she was going to miss so badly, she acknowledged with a painful twist of her heart. When she left Manorfield she would probably never see it again.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

Angelos had come to stand behind her; she could almost feel the heat of his body reaching to hers. That clean lemony scent she had sensed before tantalised her nostrils and she had to fight against the need to inhale deeply, take in more of it.

‘I’m fine as I am, thanks.’

With fierce concentration she kept her eyes fixed on the view, staring so hard that it blurred before her gaze, all the shades of green blending into each other.

‘And I am not fine talking to your back.’ There was the snap of real anger in his voice and with a sudden swift movement he came round from behind her to stand between her and the window, the hard bulk of his body blocking off the view. ‘I don’t have to do this, Jessica. I am trying to be fair.’

‘Fair—you call it fair when you have taken my home, my…’ Painfully aware of the way that her voice was rising, becoming too sharp, she hastily caught her words back, swallowing hard. ‘Look, let’s cut to the chase on this—start talking straight. When do you want me out?’

‘Who said I did?’

That question was clearly deliberately provocative and she didn’t trouble to answer it, sparing him only an exasperated glance at the way he was teasing her.

‘How long have I got?’

‘How long do you need?’

And that was just too much.

‘Will you just stop tormenting me? We both know you don’t mean it—that you…’

‘Why the hell do you think I don’t mean it?’ Angelos slammed his coffee mug down on to the wide window sill, careless of the way that some of the brown liquid slopped over the side and on to the worn white paint. ‘What would I have to gain by behaving that way?’

The ringing note of sincerity in his voice shocked her into looking straight into his eyes, her blue gaze locking with his black. What was happening here? Was it really possible that he was being kind?

‘I—canstay ?’

‘Until you find somewhere to go—somewhere to live.’

‘You really mean that?’ Shock and disbelief meant that she could hardly get the words out

‘It’s a big house, Princess. A great big house. You could live in one wing and I could be in another and we probably wouldn’t even see each other from one week to the next. I reckon I can put up with your presence for a while at least. Unless…’

‘Unless what?’

She didn’t know whether it was his use of that derisive nickname,Princess , or the dark, triumphant, possessive thread through his voice that caught her on the raw, breathing new life into the flames of anger that his surprise concession had briefly allowed to die down. But something stung her, warning her not to be deceived, that it couldn’t possibly be this easy. This was the Black Angel she was talking to. The man who had once vowed that he would make her live to regret the way she had behaved and who now was back, intent on doing just that.

‘Do you have a job?’ Angelos asked abruptly, totally disconcerting her with the abrupt change of subject, the apparent lack of logic in the suddennon sequitur .

‘Not as such,’ she stammered, her thoughts scrambled as she tried to find a reason for his question. ‘I used to work with Marty on the estate— he was training me to…’

Her voice trembled and died, unable to complete the sentence. The memory of those years working with her stepfather, learning, planning, dreaming—dreaming of the day that she could prove herself to Marty, that she could take over the management of the estate and make as good a job of it as he had done himself.

As she had believed that he had done, she corrected herself miserably.

‘So what will you use to live on—pay for accommodation? Will your fiancé provide for you?’

He’d done it again, Jessica reproached herself, using the pretext of putting her own untouched coffee mug down on the window sill too as an excuse to drag her eyes away from the cold scrutiny of his and to hide

the painful lurch of embarrassment in her heart.

How did he manage to do that? How did he seem to be able to take control of her thoughts, making them focus only on him, only on the here and now, distracting her totally so that she seemed to lose all power to think of anything else?

Even Chris.

Even the man she was going to marry in a month’s time.

And then, when she had been completely sidetracked, her thoughts diverted down other paths completely,he was the one who came back at her with the pointed reminder of her fiancé. A stinging mental slap in the face that left her feeling terribly guilty and ashamed for needing the prompt at all.

‘Of course he will! We’re getting married!’

Her declaration was too high, too sharp. She couldn’t help recalling how pushed Chris was for money, how his small holiday caravan business was struggling, his overdraft limit already totally overreached. The last appalling summer, with drenching rain storms that had led to floods, had worsened his problems terribly. Bookings had been few and far between and they had lost at least a month and a half’s takings when the site had been just too waterlogged to be used.

‘So you don’t need me to offer you a job?’

‘A…’ Jessica shook her head dazedly, unable to believe what she was hearing. ‘Why would you offer me a job?’

‘Why do you think?’

He hadn’t moved any closer and yet somehow she felt as if he had invaded every inch of her personal space. His heat, his scent, his aura seemed to surround her, coiling around her body, hemming her in. His essence reached out to touch her skin, was inhaled with every uneven breath drying her throat, parching her lips so that she had to slick a shaking tongue over them to moisten them into comfort.

And it was when she saw those glittering black eyes drop to her mouth to follow the small betraying movement that she knew she was in real trouble.

‘I can’t be…’ she managed huskily, wanting to say that she couldn’t begin to imagine, but the words failed her, fading from her tongue and her mind as Angelos lifted his head once again and looked deep into her eyes.

‘I don’t want you to go.’

It was the fact that she believed him that took her breath away. The fact that she had a sudden, shocking, total faith that he meant what he said. And the fact that she recognised it so easily, understanding in the blink of an eye, warned her of the depth of the pit that now seemed to yawn beneath her.

‘Angelos…’

His name was just a whisper. One that she struggled to infuse with any sort of protest, no matter how much her mind screamed at her to do so.

‘No, Jessica…’

Angelos dismissed her attempt with the same ease and carelessness as he might have rid himself of a buzzing fly, batting it away with a flick of his hand.

‘Don’t try to pretend that you don’t know what I mean. We both know that there is unfinished business between us. Things that we never took to their full conclusion—a hunger that we never got out of our system.’

‘But…’

The word cracked painfully in the middle as she had to swallow hard again to ease her aching throat. He wasn’t touching her and yet her nerves were singing as if he was holding her close, as if his hands were caressing every inch of her skin. He wasn’t kissing her and yet her mouth felt the touch of his lips, the warmth of his breath. She could almost taste him on her tongue.

They had shared just one kiss—long ago—and yet now, here, in this moment, it was as if it might have been yesterday—an hour—a second ago. Her throat was so tight she could scarcely breathe and her heart was thudding painfully against her ribcage. It took another fight to swallow hard before she felt she could force her vocal cords to work.

‘I thought you didn’t play with little girls,’ she croaked and saw a slow,

wicked light dawn in his eyes.

One long hand reached out and touched her cheek, just the tip of a finger resting on the bone below her eye. The contact was so tiny, so light and unmoving, and yet it sizzled all the way down from her face, right to where her toes curled inside the soft velvet slippers she wore.

‘Two things,’ he said, very softly, very intently. ‘One, you’re not a little girl any more—we both know that. And two, I am very definitely not playing.’

‘Then…then I need to remind you that I am engaged to be married.’

‘And I need to tell you that I don’t give a damn. The question is—do you?’

No woman who looked at a man the way she looked at him was thinking about her fiancé at the same time, Angelos told himself. No woman who followed him with her eyes the way that clear blue gaze tracked every movement, every gesture, lit up at any smile, was thinking of herfiancé as the only man in the world for her—the only man she wanted sexually. He knew she was just too damn scared to admit it.

And now he knew why he had caught himself up when he had been tempted to kiss her earlier. Why he had known that the urge to react in anger—when they were both angry—would have been a mistake. What he wanted was for her to know just who was kissing her. He needed her to know thathe was the man holding her, the man kissing her, the man shewanted to kiss her…

And she did want it. No matter how much she protested, how much she

scorned, it was there in her eyes, in her face, in every inch of her body language towards him, just as he was certain that it was in his towards her.

‘Of course I give a damn!’ Jessica’s response was a splutter of furious indignation. ‘I amengaged …’

Lifting her left hand, she waved it wildly in his face, fingers splayed so that the ring on her third finger showed openly. A cheap ring with only a tiny diamond in it, Angelos noted. A paltry, insignificant stone, and not at all the sort of ring that he would give the woman he loved and wanted to marry.

If he ever met a woman he could imagine spending the rest of his life with. Right now, there were too many women, too many beautiful, sexy, beddable women in the world for him to want to tie himself down. Women like the one in front of him. Women he could enjoy while the passion burned and then walk away, heart and fancy free.

‘Engaged to be married…’ Jessica repeated with pointed emphasis. ‘And that means something to me, even if it doesn’t to you!’

Looking down into her face, Angelos saw the indignation burning bright in her eyes and the determinedly defiant lift to her chin that told of the story she was trying to convey. But he also noted the faint quiver to her soft, full lips, the way that her not-quite-certain gaze would occasionally flicker and slide away from his, having to be forced back again to keep giving the impression she wanted.

‘But does it?’ he questioned softly. ‘Does it really mean so very much to you?’

‘Of course…’ she began furiously but the words shrivelled and died as he caught the hand she had been waving wildly between them.

‘Of course,’he echoed, putting the scepticism he felt into the words. ‘We know that you are engaged to this Chris here…’

Lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss on the finger that wore the ring, watching her response intently as he did so, so that he saw the way she shivered so very faintly, and her eyes flickered once again.

‘And perhaps you are engaged here…’

This time his mouth was on her forehead, drifting over the smooth skin, touching briefly, caressing, tasting her. The flavour of her flesh made his tongue tingle and the heat of need sear through him, hot and fast. He felt the kick of lust hard in his lower body as he saw the way her eyes drifted shut just for a moment so that she had to force them open again. The effort of will she was making made her slender body tremble and he could feel the way she was swaying faintly on her feet, drifting imperceptibly closer, then back again as she fought for control.

‘But are you engaged here…?’

This time his free hand moved to touch her chest, just above her heart, and he felt the shudder of response she couldn’t hold back even though his fingers were only resting on the fine green silk of her shirt, not really making contact with her at all.

‘Truly engaged?’

He fully expected her to fight still harder, to slap his hand away, slap his face. It would be worth it, he told himself. He was almost disappointed when he simply heard the breath hiss in sharply between her clenched teeth and she clamped her mouth tight shut against whatever she had been about to say.

‘Nothing to say, Princess?’

His mouth twitched against the smile that almost surfaced as she turned a fulminating glare on him, her cheeks washed with rose-pink at the struggle she was having with herself. Furiously she tugged against his grip on her wrist, trying to free herself, but her actions were impotent against his careless strength.

‘Let’s test this…’ he murmured, lowering his head, careful and slow, black eyes locking with blue as she glowered at him in mute rebellion.

She could slap his hand away, Jessica told herself. She wasso tempted to slap his hand away. Her fingers itched with the need for the satisfaction of it—and maybe with a quick whack across his arrogant, triumphant face for good measure.

But she knew that was just what Angelos expected and so she was determined that it was what she wouldnot do.

He expected her to panic—expected her to fight. And if she did, then she would reveal how much he was getting to her. The nerve-twisting, mouth-drying effect he was having on her. And right now she would

rather die than admit to any of that.

So she was going to let him kiss her—because that was obviously his plan. She would stand quite still—quite stillshe warned the muscles that were threatening to give her away by trembling—and she would let him do just what he wanted. And she would stay totally still, totally unresponsive all the way through it.

And then, when he’d finished, she would wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, smile at him and say quite coolly and calmly, You see, that’s why I’m engaged to Chris. Because there is no other man for me.

And so she stood there, still and in control. She forced her legs to stay put and not back away towards the door, away from him. He would only come after her if she did that. She could end up against the wall with his hard, powerful body pressed against her, trapping her.

The shiver that ran through every nerve at just the thought should have warned her. But she was determined not to let anything that might weaken her resolve into her mind and so she pushed it away, forcing herself to concentrate instead on how she would show the Black Angel just how little this all meant. Planning her revenge distracted her.

She might even manage an extra retort, an extra dig at him. She could get her personal revenge for the callous slight he had tossed at her all those years ago. Don’t delude yourself, Angelos…she would say. I don’t play with older men…

But then Angelos’s warm mouth touched hers and immediately the words she planned, the voice in which she would say them, the hauteur she would assume, all evaporated in a whirling haze as her rational mind

stopped working and the purely sensual, purely feminine part of her brain took over.

His gentleness was unexpected, as was the slow, soft way he touched her mouth. She had anticipated that he would use this kiss to stamp his possession on her, to show her how a ‘real man’ might kiss—the sort of man she would get in him and did not have, apparently, in Chris. But this was a man who wastaking nothing. Instead, he was giving, teasing, enticing. He was drawing her out, awakening her senses, creating a need in her that she had never known she possessed.

‘Jessica…’

Her name was just a murmur against her mouth, with his accent thickening and his distinctive pronunciation that turned it almost into the drawn-out soundYessica as his lips covered hers.

The last time she had kissed Angelos, when she had almost thrown herself at him, into his arms, demanding his attention, wanting him to hold her so desperately, she had been only a teenager, barely a stage or two away from a child. She had known few kisses, very few men—and none of them intimately. She had behaved like a child, kissed like a child, snatching awkwardly at his mouth, trying to press her lips against his.

This time it was so very different. This time his caress was slow and seductive, his mouth smoothing over hers, his tongue sliding over her lips, teasing its way into the cleft between them, enticing her to open to him. He tasted of the coffee he had drunk and the deeply personal flavour of his own skin that held an essence she couldn’t get enough of. One taste and she was addicted.

And this time she felt herself respond in a deeply physical way. This time she responded to his kiss as a woman. A fully grown, sexually mature adult woman. It was the only thing she could do because of the way that his mature male sexuality called to her.

Her heart was thudding heavily, the sound of her pulse throbbing inside her head like thunder in her ears and deep inside her something was flowering, something she had never known before. It was hot and it was hungry and it was so powerfully needy that there was no way she could hold it back.

‘Angelos…’

As she sighed his name she took an instinctive step forward, moving blindly because her eyes had drifted closed at the first touch of his mouth on hers and she kept them shut, the better to enjoy the heated sensations swirling through her. She had to move closer to experience more of them, to know the heat of his body against hers, to feel his arms close around her as they had never done on that other long ago night, when she had been the one kissing him. Then he had held her for a moment, stiffly, as if wanting to restrain rather than encourage. And when his hands had closed about her arms it had been to move her back, away from him, rather than to draw her close.

There was no such hesitation or restraint this time. This time, as she stepped forward, powerful muscular arms came round her, enfolding her and hauling her up against him. Her breasts were crushed against the hard wall of his chest, her hips against his pelvis so that she could feel the heat and hardness of his erection pressing against the softness of her stomach. Last time that had petrified as much as it had thrilled her. She had known then that he had been lying when he had said that he didn’t play with little girls, but in the same moment, naïve and innocent of what it really meant to be wanted by a mature, predatory male, she had

had to struggle not to panic and pull away. This time, she pressed closer, enjoying the heated sensations that seared through her.

‘Angelos…’

His hands were on her back, smoothing downwards from her shoulders to her waist, splaying out over the curve of her hips and buttocks, drawing her even tighter into his hold. And at the same time he deepened the intimacy of the kiss, plundering the soft, moist interior of her mouth, tongues tangling, breath blending. But the hunger that he’d woken in her, the heated throbbing low down in her body, demanded more. So much more.

Her arms snaked up around his neck, pulling his head down even closer to her, and her fingers threaded through the black silk of his hair, twisting and tugging, a smile growing under the pressure of his lips as she heard the raw moan that escaped him, felt the hot pressure of his hands grow stronger.

But still she wanted more, needed more. She wanted…

Any train of thought was shattered, splintering into tiny pieces as the sound of the doorbell rang out into the silence of the morning.

Her heart jerked hard, her mind jolting into shocked awareness, and just for a moment she knew from Angelos’s indrawn breath, his sudden total stillness, that he too was aware of the sound and the way that it had abruptly changed his mood.

But only for a moment. A second later he had shrugged the brief

distraction away, dismissing the unwanted interruption with a flick of his head. Carefully, deliberately, he pressed his mouth to hers again, cajoling a willing response from her.

‘Ignore it,’ he muttered against her lips. ‘We have more important things to consider…’

And he kissed her again, harder than ever this time.

Jessica wanted to do as he said. She wanted to kiss him and keep him kissing her. She longed to follow him back into the heated oblivion that made her blind and deaf and heedless of anything else, wanting only his mouth on her, his hands caressing her body, his strength enveloping her. But, having been dragged back to reality even for a split second, something was nagging at her thoughts—a tiny warning voice that something was wrong. There was something she should be thinking about —something important.

But when Angelos’s tongue teased at her lips again and his hand traced burning erotic patterns over her body, she couldn’t remember what. The truth was that she didn’t want to remember, she only wanted to…

But then the doorbell rang again, more insistently this time, and cold reality sliced into the sensual haze that clouded her thoughts.

Stiffening in Angelos’s embrace, she pulled away from him, pushing hard at his chest when he didn’t release her but tightened his grip on her punishingly.

‘Let me go. I said let me go—I have to…’

‘Leave it…’ he commanded but already her frantic struggle was having an effect and his grip on her was loosening a little.

‘I can’t…I have…Angelos—no!’

One last push and she was free, stumbling a little in the sudden shock of her release. Blundering into a chair, she almost fell but righted herself awkwardly, grabbing at the back of the seat for support.

‘Leave it!’ He flung the order at her, rough-voiced, dark-toned, but she couldn’t listen to him.

‘I have to answer it…I have to!’

Not daring to look into his face, fearful of the anger and outrage she would see there, she whirled around, heading for the door. She could have sworn that a cynically mocking, ‘Coward…’ floated after her as she fled into the hall.

The heavy wooden door resisted her efforts and it was only as she struggled with it that it suddenly dawned on her that she might need to sort out her appearance. Angelos’s urgent hands had tugged at her shirt, pulling it from the waistband of her trousers, and his fingers had tangled in her hair, twisting it into ruffled knots.

With hurried movements she made a few frantic attempts to improve matters, smoothing down her hair. She was still tucking back her shirt when the stiff bolt on the door finally gave way and she was able to yank

it open, blinking in the sudden light as she stared into the paved courtyard.

A man stood there, his hand already raised to press the bell again. A middle-sized, middle height, fair-haired man who looked at her in some surprise, a faint frown drawing his brows together. Her brain seemed to have slipped out of focus and she could barely see him, let alone recognise him, though she had the dreadful feeling that she really should…

‘Jess?’ His voice was puzzled, questioning. ‘Are you all right?’

And it was the sound of her name that brought her back into the real world, seeming to hit her in the face like a bucket of cold water dragging her away from the sensual delirium that had possessed her and bringing her up sharp with shock. Only one person in the world called her Jess in spite of her constant protests that she really preferred the full version of her name. It was something that had always niggled her and she supposed that it would never change.

‘Chris…’ she managed on a gasp. ‘I’m sorry—I…’

Dear Lord, no! How could she admit that in the moments after she had got the door open she hadn’t known quite who he was? How had Angelos managed to scramble her brain so completely with one kiss that she hadn’t been able to recognise her fiancé?

‘I…I was busy and I didn’t hear the bell…’ she managed, hating herself for the lie, hating Angelos for putting her in the position of having to make it.

Hating the way that she suddenly felt as if her fiancé was a stranger to her—someone she didn’t know, who didn’t belong in her world.

Guilt had done that to her, she realised. Guilt at the way that she had let Angelos kiss her, hold her. And it had all meant nothing to him. He had stated his aim right from the start…

‘Let’s test this…’ he had said, challenging her assertion that she was engaged to be married to a man that she loved.

And she had been so confident that she could prove that assertion and meet any test he could throw at her. She’d told herself with foolhardy assurance that she would meet him, match him, be able to pass his test with flying colours. She had even convinced herself that she would be able to fling some nicely calculated barbed remarks in his face to prove how unmoved she was and to even the score after their last encounter.

Instead of which she had fallen right into his hands like a ripe plum just ready for the picking, He had baited his trap with care, even warning her it was there, but she had still tumbled headlong into it like a naïve, unthinking fool.

And she didn’t like the way that made her feel.

She felt dirty, tainted, guilty. Once more it seemed that the malign influence of the Black Angel had reached out to invade her world and damage everything that was good in it.

CHAPTER FIVE

THEsun had already disappeared far below the horizon when Jessica finally arrived back home…

…Back tothe Manor House . She forced herself to amend the thought with a painful twist of her heart. This house was no longer her home and it never would be home to her again.

So where would she be able to call home? she wondered as she crossed the polished wooden floor of the hall, letting the big oak door slam to behind her with a resounding bang. She didn’t care if it disturbed Angelos, or dragged him away from whatever plans he was making to run the estate in the future. The heavy, echoing, almost sepulchral sound suited her gloomy mood and the depths of her new despair.

She hadn’t thought that today could get any worse, but she had been proved wrong. In fact it had gone downhill further and further with every moment that passed until now she had no idea which way to turn or where she might possibly end up. The future stretched ahead of her like a long, dark, dismal tunnel with no hint at all of any light at the end.

‘You’ve been out a long time.’

Angelos’s voice she had expected—she had fully anticipated that he would complain about the noise—but she hadn’t expected him to appear in the doorway of the library, a powerful dark form silhouetted against the light, and comment on her late return in a voice that sounded as critical and reproving as that of any parent. More than any parent, she reflected. Marty had never been like that.

‘I’ve been out all day, to be precise,’ she flung at him in a tone that made it plain she considered it no business of his. ‘Not that that has anything to do with you.’

If she expected to rile him, then she failed. She couldn’t see the expression on his shadowed face but his voice was quite calm and even when he replied.

‘I wasn’t sure if you planned to be home for dinner or not, so I asked Mrs Henderson to save something for you. Have you eaten?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

She forced herself to say it though the truth was that she hadn’t touched a thing since—since the night before, she realised on a wave of shock. She’d left the house without breakfast and, after the way things had developed, she hadn’t been able to even think of putting food in her mouth. She would probably have choked trying to get it down—or brought it straight back up again as soon as she’d swallowed.

Angelos had changed his clothes, she realised. No longer dressed as casually as he had been earlier in the day, he was now wearing a fine white shirt and black trousers, a tailored jacket fitting his broad frame perfectly. The more formal clothing took her by surprise, making her pause to wonder if he had been expecting someone—and if so, who?

‘The boyfriend not with you?’

Angelos leaned one powerful shoulder against the door frame as he spoke, obviously relaxing in order to have a chat—and equally obviously

determined not to take the broad hint in her tone and leave her alone as she wanted.

‘Fiancé,’Jessica corrected automatically, fighting back the gasp that almost escaped her at the twist of pain deep inside as she did so. The terrible sense of betrayal was too new, too raw to allow her even to probe it herself, let alone reveal anything about it to the Black Angel.

‘And no, he’s not here. I didn’t think it would be exactly—proper to bring him back here without your permission. This is your house, after all.’

‘You don’t need my permission. And I would have been intrigued to meet him.’

The deliberate emphasis on that ‘intrigued’ caught on something raw in Jessica’s thoughts, but when she turned sharply to stare at Angelos his expression was bland and unrevealing, giving nothing away.

‘I don’t think that will happen for a long time. I won’t be inviting him back here…’

And not for any reason that Angelos might possibly expect.

‘And you’re getting married very soon—how long is it till the wedding?’

‘A month.’

Jessica had to force the words out, flat and low. The wedding day was

supposed to be exactly a month from today. She had been so excited, so happy when she’d planned it. The future had seemed so bright, so full of promise. Now it simply seemed as if she had been stacking up her dominoes ready for fate to come along and knock them down.

First Marty, then Manorfield and now…

‘Mr Atkinson wasn’t what I expected.’

‘You were spying on me!’

It was a splutter of indignation—at least that was how she prayed that he heard it. The truth was that she hated the thought of those black, knowing eyes watching her awkward greeting of Chris, the struggle she had had to regain any degree of composure after the kiss that had sent her brain into meltdown. She could only imagine the grim satisfaction he had gained from seeing her stumbling behaviour, her awkward words.

And, even worse, she could imagine just what he would be thinking, the interpretation he would put on her flustered behaviour.

‘But are you engaged here…?’ he had said, touching her heart. And that was even before he’d kissed her. So what had he read in her face, in her eyes, that had told him something different?

‘Hardly spying,’ Angelos drawled and the faint touch of laughter in his voice stung with deliberate mockery. ‘The side windows of the conservatory look out over the courtyard. I could not miss seeing you.’

‘So what did you expect?’

‘Not some middle-aged father figure, that’s for sure!’

‘He’s not a father figure! And he’snot middle-aged! He’s—he’s…’

But she couldn’t go any further. The memory of Chris’s face, the bitter sting of his words destroyed her ability to think, to speak.

‘He’s what?’ Angelos challenged, leaving her in no doubt that he had caught the hesitation in her voice and was aiming right for the chink in her emotional armour that he believed he had found.

If only he knew. If only he realised that he had no need to attack.

‘He’s not like you!’ she snapped, not caring if she avoided the truth or even out and out lied. She only knew that she’d had enough of Angelos and his questions, of the cynically mocking tone, the sardonically raised eyebrow.

She’d had enough of today altogether and all she wanted was to head upstairs and retreat to the sanctuary of her bedroom.

Except that her bedroom was no longer the refuge she thought it. It wasn’t even hers any more; it belonged to Angelos and, in spite of his offer that morning, she really didn’t think that he would be prepared to let her stay for anything other than the bare minimum of time it took her to find somewhere else to live.

And, after today, that was going to be much harder than she had ever imagined.

But Angelos had moved on that last question, coming out into the hallway so that he was now between her and the big curving staircase that led up to the first floor. To escape, she would have to get past him and right now that felt as attractive a prospect as edging her way past a hungry tiger, one that was just waiting for its prey to come close enough to pounce.

‘In fact he’s the exact opposite—he’s…’

She couldn’t get any more words out, finding instead that anything she might have wanted to say had tangled up in a knot at the base of her throat and was threatening to choke her.

He’s kind and honest and totally straightwere the things she would have said—sheshould have been able to say! They were the things she would have flung at Angelos even that morning, and she would have known— would have believed that they were true.

But this afternoon had shown her that they too would have been a lie. That the love she had believed Chris had for her was nothing but a pretence, a cynically calculated ploy to get what he wanted, using her along the way.

‘I need a drink.’

Head down, bitter tears stinging her eyes, she blundered past Angelos’s

watchful figure, heading into the unlit sitting room and crossing to where the cabinet was still filled with a selection of Marty’s favourite wines. For a moment she thought that the corkscrew would be beyond her but there was already a bottle of red wine opened and she splashed some of it into a glass, lifting the drink to her lips as Angelos appeared in the doorway.

Immediately reality gave her another hard slap in the face with a reminder of just what her position was here now.

‘Oh—I’m sorry—’ The sarcasm of her tone took any real apology out of the words. ‘I suppose I should have asked…’

A lift of Angelos’s broad shoulders shrugged off her defiant statement.

‘Be my guest. It was your stepfather’s wine in the first place.’

Which, as another pointed reminder of just how things had changed since yesterday—was it really only twenty-four hours?—couldn’t have been more calculated to stick the knife in yet again. It was certainly more than enough to close Jessica’s throat against the reviving swig of wine she needed and let only a small sip trickle through.

‘I could pay you for it, if you like.’

‘Oh, now you’re being ridiculous! As I told you this morning, you can stay here as long as you need—until you get settled. Which I suppose will be when you become Mrs Christopher Atkinson.’

Jessica managed an inarticulate sound that he could interpret as agreement with what he’d said if he wanted. But another thought drove the discomfort from her mind.

‘How did you know his name?’

‘I made it my business to know. Besides, do you think that Peters—or Mrs Henderson hasn’t filled me in on all the details of your soon-to-be husband? I am given to understand that he’s considered a very good catch.’

Which was a remark guaranteed to drive Jessica to snatch another unwary gulp of wine.

The whole of the Manorfield estate and the villages beyond had been looking forward to the wedding, and Marty had invited as many people as he could to the event, even though she was now forced to consider just how he had planned to pay for it. Perhaps he had thought that the money Angelos had provided would be enough. Or perhaps he had expected that there would be more where that had come from.

Marty, it seemed, had gambled on more than just the horses.

‘That isn’t why I…’

She couldn’t complete the sentence—why I’m marrying him. To do so would be to lie outright. And neither could she admit that her wedding was now never going to go ahead. That all her plans had been built on a lie. And so she clamped her lips tight around her glass, pretending to drink some more wine.

‘That isn’t why you’re marrying him,’ Angelos finished for her. ‘No, you’re marrying him because he’s the opposite of me.’

Hearing it thrown back at her like that, laced with black cynicism, made Jessica shiver inwardly. Suddenly those words, declared in anger, simply to shut him up, seemed to come back at her with a new and sharper ring to them. Recalling everything she had liked so much about Chris, she couldn’t help but compare him with Angelos and wonder…

No—it was impossible—it was ridiculous. It was just not true.

She wasn’t going to give it another moment’s thought.

‘Well, you wouldn’t want me to say I fell for him because he was solike you, now, would you?’

‘I might find it easier to believe.’

The outrageous arrogance of the calm statement took her breath away.

‘Oh, you egotistical pig! Do you really think that every woman you meet must think the sun shines out of you? Can’t you believe that there might be one woman somewhere who doesn’t think you’re sex on legs?’

‘You?’

‘Yes, me! Can’t you understand that I…? What?’ she demanded when he shook his head in adamant rejection of what she was saying, his face hidden in the growing shadows.

‘I’ll never believe you when you claim there’s nothing between us. Not after the way you threw yourself at me…’

‘I was young! And pretty damn stupid…’

‘And then there was what happened earlier.’

‘What happened earlier…’

Jessica’s fingers clenched tight around the stem of her wineglass as she struggled with the impulse to throw its contents right into Angelos’s darkly triumphant face.

‘Was a mistake—a great big mistake. It meant nothing…’

‘Nothing?’ Angelos queried, the derisive gleam in his dark eyes mocking her desperate assertion. ‘Forgive me if I do not believe you—but nothing is not what it felt like to me.’

‘There was nothing—nothing. How could there be anything when I detest you, when you make my skin crawl when you touch me?’

‘What is this, Jessica? All this anger, all this rage, just because you didn’t get the house—or Manorfield. All this because you didn’t get what

you thought was coming to you.’

‘It isn’t like that at all.’

He made her sound so horrible—so greedy and mercenary, as if the money, the house was all that mattered to her.

‘I’m sure you won’t understand this, but I thought that in Marty I’d found a family, somewhere I belonged, someone I belonged with.’

‘Oh, I understand that far more than you’ll ever know.’

‘Then you should understand that it isn’t just because you have the house —it’s because you have everything—everything. And I’m left with nothing! Less than nothing.’

‘You have your fiancé—the life you plan to live with him—the life you claim you want—that’s still there. You still have that. I can’t imagine that Mr Opposite-of-me Atkinson would be too happy to hear himself described as less than nothing.’

‘He won’t give a damn!’

Beside herself with anger and hurt, needing desperately to lash out, Jessica didn’t care what she was saying. She didn’t even really know what the words were until they left her lips and she heard them out loud, seeming to crackle and spark in the darkness between them.

‘He won’t give a damn! He won’t even be here from tomorrow! Instead, he’ll be…He’ll be…’

Suddenly hearing what she was revealing, seeing how much she was giving away to this man, the Black Angel, who had already taken so much—too much—from her she choked to a halt and froze, unable to go on.

‘He’ll what, Jessica?’ Angelos asked when the silence stretched out around them, growing deeper with each second. ‘He’ll be what?’

But Jessica couldn’t answer him. Her vocal cords seemed to have seized up; she couldn’t open her mouth or swallow or manage a single sound. All she could do was stand there in silence and shake her head desperately, unable to go any further.

‘Jessica…’

Angelos’s voice had a low warning note in it and then, when she still stood there tongue-tied, suddenly he moved, crossing to a switch and flicking on the light, revealing her standing still and pale in the middle of the room, blinking painfully in the suddenly harsh brilliance.

‘Tell me.’

‘No.’

Once again Jessica shook her head, keeping her eyes stubbornly averted, fixed on the pattern on the carpet in front of her.

‘Tell me…’

It was a command, totally autocratic, totally sure that he would be obeyed. Well, he could command her all he liked. Everyone else might jump to obey his orders, provide whatever he wanted, but she wasn’t one of them. And not with this. Never, ever with this. He had too much already. She was not going to let him know that he had taken this away from her too.

‘Jessica…’

To her horror, his voice came from close by. Too close by.

He had moved so quietly that she hadn’t heard him come and now he was standing right beside her, big and dark and, oh, so powerful. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the fine black silk of his jacket, the immaculate white cotton of his shirt, the leather belt cinched around his narrow waist.

After she had left Chris she had walked for miles, not caring where she was going, not even following any path. She had tramped for hours across the hills, through the woods, only coming back when she was just too tired, too worn in body and heart to continue any more. And her clothes showed unmistakable signs of every hour she had been away. Her shoes were muddied, her shirt crumpled, her trousers flecked with spots of damp and stains. Beside his crisp, clean elegance she felt scruffy and worn, distinctly grubby and she tried to withdraw into herself, like a small, miserable rabbit retreating into the darkness of its burrow. But it didn’t work. She couldn’t hide away from the reality that oppressed her.

‘Your fiancé will be what tomorrow—or where?’

Angelos’s voice was almost shockingly soft in a way that she had never heard before. He sounded like a completely different person, someone she didn’t know.

‘What has happened? What has upset you?’

And, as he spoke, he reached out and touched her. He curled one hand around the top of her arm, just above her elbow, and held her. Very lightly, very gentle; his touch was so soft that she could barely feel it and if it hadn’t been for the warmth of his palm reaching her through the sleeve of her shirt she wouldn’t have known it was there.

‘Tell me—you have to tell someone.’

If he hadn’t touched her she might have been all right. She might have held it all together and fought back her feelings, keeping her emotions firmly in check. And then she could have turned and told him that there was nothing she wanted to say—nothing that was any of his business. She might even have been able to walk from the room, keeping her head high, her dignity intact.

But he had touched her. And the gentleness of it, together with the softness in his voice destroyed her control.

‘Chris…Chris is not my fiancé any more,’ she managed with her voice only trembling a little as she forced the words out.

As she spoke she lifted her head, looked up into his face, into the deep dark pools of his eyes where she felt she could almost see herself reflected, ridiculously small and lost in a world that was no longer the one she knew or recognised.

‘He broke off the engagement.’

She didn’t know what she had expected from his reaction, only that she had expected some response, not just the strangely controlled inclination of his head, the almost distant look in his eyes.

‘Not because of—’

‘No. I never told him about that.’

Jessica jumped in on him before he could say something more about the way he had kissed her that morning—and the way she had kissed him right back. Just to think of it threw her into such a whirlpool of confusion that she felt as if her mind had blown a fuse and she couldn’t even begin to think straight.

‘It might have been easier if I had. But it was worse than that.’

Far worse.

The grip on her arm tightened for a moment, then eased off again. It was as if he sensed that she could cope with so much and no more; one step over an invisible line and she would go to pieces. So he held back, but that hand on her arm told her that he was there.

‘How?’

And now, although she was still looking up into his face, into his eyes, it wasn’t his jet-dark gaze that locked with hers, but Chris’s lighter bluegrey eyes that she could see before her. The cool stare that she had once thought of as soft, even gentle, but which today she had seen grow colder and more distant with every word she had spoken.

In the end they had been the eyes of a stranger.

‘He broke off our engagement…’

She knew she’d said this before and she expected some sort of dry comment on that fact but Angelos simply nodded and waited, his gaze still holding hers. And somehow it was his silence and stillness that gave her the courage to draw a deep breath and go on.

‘He—he said he’d heard rumours that something was up—the village was buzzing with your arrival and he wanted to know who you were and why you were here. You’re the only thing people are talking about, apparently.’

She even managed a laugh and watched as Angelos’s sensual mouth twisted in wry response. But still he didn’t speak, only waited for her to find the words to go on.

‘Of course I had to explain about Marty’s will—and about the gambling— how he’d lost everything and how you’d helped him—bailed him out.’

It was harder to speak now. In her mind she could see how Chris’s face had changed, the way that any light had died from his eyes and his whole body had stiffened, his hand tensing in hers.

‘He wanted to know what this meant for us—for me. And when he found out that I wasn’t going to inherit—that there would be no money, no house…that was when he…’

‘He was only marrying you for your money.’

It was a harsh statement, not a question, but still Jessica found herself nodding, the words suddenly tumbling out unrestrained because now she had to get the story told. Had to have it all out in the open, vile and sordid as it was.

‘His business has been doing badly for some time. I knew he was in trouble but I didn’t know how bad it was. Or how deeply in debt he actually is.’

Another shaky, uneven laugh escaped from her, a sound of bitter disbelief.

‘That seems like the story of my life right now—first Marty, now Chr…’

But saying her ex-fiancé’s name was now beyond her and her voice broke on the word, unable to go on.

‘Now him,’ she managed at last after breathing in deeply and swallowing

hard. ‘A—apparently the only real attraction I had for him is that I was Marty’s stepdaughter and that eventually I was going to inherit. And, until that happened, he knew that once we were married Marty would never let my husband’s business go to the wall. So that was why he wanted the wedding as soon as possible—he needed a ring on my finger before his creditors closed in. And I th-thought that he just couldn’t wait to marry me. That he was desperate to get me into his life—into his bed.’

She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t bring herself to voice the final humiliation. But it seemed that Angelos didn’t need to hear it. His cool, clear mind had assessed the situation, taking it through to the bitter conclusion with intuitive accuracy.

‘He had another woman.’

‘Yes.’ It was just a whisper, a thin thread of sound. ‘Those trips to London —the ones he couldn’t possibly get out of—he has a mistress there. He said she was more of a woman than I’ll ever be and he wanted her for sex and me—me for the money.’

The tears she had been fighting all evening—all day, really, she had refused to let them fall—came now, tumbling in a silent stream down her cheeks so that she could taste their salt on her lips.

Angelos swore fluently in savage Greek as her wineglass was taken from nerveless fingers and dumped unceremoniously on the coffee table. His grip tightened on her arm as he swung her round until she was hard up against the strong wall of his chest, her face pressed against his shoulder, her nose in the soft cotton of his shirt.

‘No tears,’ he muttered roughly. ‘No tears. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth a single tear from your eyes.’

‘I know…’ Jessica sighed into his shirt, sniffing inelegantly. ‘I know…but I thought…he didn’t even want me—want me sexually. Not really. He said that his lover was—’

The words snapped off, dying in shock, as Angelos moved again, pulling her away from her hiding place against his chest and holding her so that he could look straight into her face, his hands on her shoulders, his dark gaze intent.

‘The man is a worthless rat—and, even worse, he’s a fool. A lying fool.’

His unexpected vehemence sparked a tiny involuntary smile on to Jessica’s lips, one that wobbled, faded when she saw the blaze of sincerity in his eyes and heard it echoed in his voice.

‘He’s a fool who doesn’t know a beautiful woman when he sees one.’

‘Thank you for the compliment…’ Jessica began but he silenced her with an autocratic shake of his head.

‘No compliment. I never flatter. You know how I feel about you. I told you —you’re no longer a little girl.’

Long fingers brushed away the tracks of the tears, erasing the marks they had made on her skin.

‘So no tears for a man who is not—and never was—worth it.’

‘He betrayed me.’

‘Then get angry.’

Angelos’s thumb smoothed a line over her left cheekbone, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. She felt as if she were drowning in the pools of his eyes, losing her self and all sense of her surroundings. The silence of the evening beyond the windows, the fact that there was only the two of them in the house, isolated, alone, made it feel as if they were suspended in some little bubble of time, away from all the rest of the world.

‘What is it they say? That living well is the best revenge?’

‘You’re right.’

‘Then live well—and forget him.’

She tried another smile, slightly more successful this time.

‘Thank you…’

Impulsively she leaned forward, pressed a swift kiss against the lean plane of his cheek, inhaling that citrusy scent again, the warm, slightly musky aroma of his skin. Under her lips the faint rasp of beard was rough against her skin and she welcomed the essential maleness of it, her heart

kicking slightly against her ribcage.

Chris had never made her feel this way, she realised with a sense of stunned shock. He had never been able to make her feel so intensely aware of the fact that she was a woman with just a look, just one touch.

But Angelos had done it that morning. He had kissed her and she had gone into meltdown, discovering a whole new sensuality that she had never experienced before. She had felt only that he was male and that everything about him called to everything that was most female in her.

It was as if she had been sleeping all this time, like Snow White, and Angelos had woken her with his kiss.

This morning she had told herself that she had been caught off balance. Angelos had made a move when she had least expected it, when still raw and disoriented from all that had happened. A series of blows to her mood and her equanimity had knocked all sense of reality out of her head, and she had responded in a way that would never have happened at any other time. In any other circumstances.

But here she was in another time, other circumstances, and it was happening all over again.

And the really disturbing thing was that she knew from Angelos’s sudden total stillness, the way his breathing had changed, deepening and taking on a ragged edge that matched the uneven throb of her pulse inside her veins, that he was feeling it too. He was every bit as aware of her as a woman as she was of him as a man.

She only had to turn her head to face him and she would read it in his eyes.

The question was—did she have the nerve to do so? Because, if she did, she would then have to answer another deeper, darker question.

Just what the hell was she going to do about it?

CHAPTER SIX

‘JESSICA…’

If she had had any doubt that Angelos was feeling the same way as she was, then the way that he spoke her name would have driven any such thoughts right out of her mind. His voice had deepened, roughened until the sound seemed to be forced from a desperately sore throat. It was so husky that it sounded as if it was fraying at the edges.

On his tongue, her name was a blend of emotions, a sound of sensual response, of encouragement and interest, but it also held a note of warning, a hint of the need for care. Never before had she been so aware of his very personal way of speaking her name and the unusual lilt that his accent gave to the sound.

And if she had felt that they were isolated and alone before, now it was as if the world had closed in on them until they were the only people in existence, in an environment that had been stripped right down to its basics.

To a man and a woman and the most primitive, most basic—most essential —connection there could be between them.

The connection of need. Of hunger.

Of sex.

Lust swirled in the atmosphere like the heat from a smouldering fire, needing only an extra bit of kindling, a breath of air to burst into a blazing inferno of need.

‘Jessica—be sure that you know what you are doing. What you are inviting. Only do this if you want…’

Angelos broke off abruptly as, unable to resist the temptation, she kissed him again. She had only had such a small knowledge of the taste of his skin, the scent of his body, and yet it was as if she was already seriously addicted to them. She needed the tang of his flesh on her lips, on her tongue. The intensely personal fragrance of it was making her heart thud heavily, sending her blood pulsing and heating every one of her senses. This time the feel of him against her lips was not enough. She let her tongue slide out to touch his cheek, revelling in the faint abrasion of bristles against its sensitive tip.

And suddenly, in a rush of understanding so profound that it made her head reel, her heart lurch, she knew that he had been right—so very, very right—when he had quoted the line about living well being the best revenge. She had arrived back at the house feeling low and desolate, seeing no light in her future at all. And yet, from the moment that Angelos had taken her in his arms and held her, everything had changed. It was as if she had been wearing blinkers and had suddenly ripped them

off, seeing life in a whole new way, in fresher, clearer focus.

And what she saw was so exciting and stimulating, it made her want to reach for it. She had been engaged to Chris for six months and never once in all that time had he ever made her feel likethis .

‘What am I inviting?’ she questioned, murmuring the words against his jaw.

‘You know…’ It was a low, husky growl.

‘Do I?

If she had been about to say anything more, then it was cut off, crushed back down her throat as he turned his head and captured her teasing mouth, crushing it under his own with a force that obliterated thought and sent her senses soaring.

The world swung around her, almost knocking her off balance so that she grabbed at his powerful shoulders for support. An action that just brought her closer to him, pressed against the hard length of his body at breast and hip and thigh as Angelos plundered her mouth, bruising her lips with the force of his passion.

‘That…’ he said at last when the need to breathe forced him to lift his head. ‘That is what you were inviting and you damn well know it.’

That and a whole lot more, Jessica had to admit, even if only in the privacy of her thoughts. Because the truth was that, held close this way,

she could be in no doubt as to what else she had been inviting. The heated evidence of the arousal she had sparked in Angelos was hard against her stomach, making her nerves quiver in apprehensive response.

Apprehensive because the power of his assault on her mouth revealed the force of the passion she had unleashed and the recognition of that force made her mind split in two with contrasting feelings.

One part of her welcomed it, something vital and female in her soaring and singing at the thought that here was a man who wanted her—for her. A man who wanted her as a woman and with no thought at all at this moment for what she could give him or bring to him in inheritance. Angelos Rousakis had no need of anyone to give him anything. He was complete in himself, rich and powerful beyond any of her imaginings—and yet, right at this moment, this man wantedher .

But at the same moment there was a fearful tremor that knotted her insides with the recognition of the fact that she had never ever encountered anything or anyone like this before. The few casual relationships she had had while growing up had been relaxed and uninvolved. Even her engagement to Chris, she saw now, had been a lowkey affair with no real passion between them. The reasons for which she now knew.

But this, she recognised as Angelos took her mouth again,this was another thing entirely. This made her tremble all over, made her legs weaken beneath her. She was adrift on a storm-tossed ocean, lifted high on foaming waves that could just as easily drop her down with sickening speed, into the darkest, deepest abyss. And, if that happened, then those waves would close over her, drowning her completely. She was totally unprepared for the force of those feelings, as naïve and innocent before them as she had been when she had first seen Angelos all those years before, tumbling headlong into a wild and foolish crush that had

turned her world upside down and inside out.

And the truth was that she didn’t care. For the first time in a long, long while she felt wonderfully, truly alive. Alive in a way that her relationship with Chris and everything about it had never been able to make her feel. And the most important thing was that she felt like a woman, fizzing with the real excitement that being female could bring, burning with the real heat of a woman’s sensual need.

And so she let her mouth open further under Angelos’s. She let her tongue tangle with the play of his as she gave herself up to the need that was throbbing in her veins. And she let her body melt against the lean, toned lines of his, loving the way that his arms held her, the brush of a strand of hair against her forehead, the heat and scent of him that enfolded her totally.

‘Yes,’ she whispered when at last she snatched a chance to speak. ‘You’re right. That is what I was inviting. This…’

She took his mouth in a slow, sensual kiss, slicking her tongue along his lips and nibbling lightly with sharp white teeth on the fullness of the lower one, making his breath catch in his throat in response.

‘And this…’ The words were spoken against his neck as she trailed her kisses down over his jaw, the strong lines of his throat and into the hollow revealed by the open neck of his shirt where his pulse jumped and throbbed, betraying the effect she was having on him.

‘Jessica…’

His hands tightened round her, then abruptly released her again. But, just as she was struggling with a sense of bitter disappointment, she realised that the release was only so that he could touch her in more places, stroking over her arms, down her back, big hands, long-fingered, warm-palmed, splaying out across her buttocks, easing her even closer to the heat of his hunger for her.

A hunger that she felt too, pooling deep between her legs. A hunger that made her impatient for more so that when he tugged at her shirt, pulling it free from the waistband of her trousers, she made no move to pull away, instead nestling closer and pressing swift, encouraging kisses along his exposed collarbone.

The touch of his hands on her bare skin made her draw in her breath on a sharp, gasping cry, combining her delight and her disbelief that this was happening all in one sound.

Was it possible that this devastating man really wanted her? She could hardly believe it, but it was what she needed so much. She needed to feel his touch, know his possession. She wanted this, even if just for one night. One night that would wipe away the wounds left by Chris’s callous rejection. After that, let the future take care of itself.

‘I think we could be a bit more comfortable…’

Angelos swung her off her feet as he spoke and carried her over to the big velvet-covered settee that stood against the wall. As he deposited her on the cushions, he came down with her, his hands already busy with the buttons on her shirt, tugging them open, peeling the material away so that it exposed the soft flesh of her breasts in the pale pink bra.

The sensation of his mouth on her skin was almost shocking in the delight it gave. Jessica felt as if this was what she had been waiting for for so long—all her life, it seemed. Certainly ever since the moment she had first set eyes on him in the Manorfield stables all those years before. Her head fell back and she closed her eyes, the better to feel the tantalising sensations that trailed over her skin from that wickedly knowing mouth as he kissed his way down from her throat and over the soft curves below. For a moment he didn’t trouble to remove her bra, but kissed her through the fine silk, swirling his tongue over a straining nipple, moistening the material so that it clung to her sensitised skin. The next moment she was choking on a cry of delight as his mouth closed fully over her, teasing at first, then suckling hard. He even let his teeth scrape lightly over the silk-covered nipple, making her arch against him in heated delight.

‘Angelos…’

Her hands were in his hair, wildly clutching, holding his head close to her, keeping his mouth where she needed it. She only eased her hold on him when, having flicked open the front fastening of her bra, he used his teeth to move the loosened cups to one side, allowing his lips and tongue and teeth unrestricted access to her bare skin. And if she had thought that the sensations of his caress through her clothing were intense, now she felt close to swooning in delight as he gave the same attention to the exposed skin, creating stinging pleasure waves that seared their way down from this tiny focus point to the most intimate spot between her legs, where now she burned for his possession.

As if he sensed her need, he shifted slightly, let his hands move lower, stroking, caressing as they went until they were stopped by the tight waistband of her trousers.

For a moment she held her breath, waiting for him to open the fastening,

move lower still. But, just as he had with her breasts, so now he subjected her to more delightful torture of waiting, caressing and teasing her through her clothes, cupping her so that the heat of his broad male palm reached her through the cotton, adding to the already burning need that pulsed at her most intimate core.

‘Angelos!’

It was a cry of protest, of hunger, of need. She wanted more than this. Needed his touch more intimately. Neededhim more. And even when she lifted her hips from the cushions, pressing herself against his hard fingers, it was not enough. The pleasure of his touch was blunted by the folds of material between them and it was not his touch she wanted buthim . She needed to know the full truth of his most intimate possession and only that would satisfy her.

They weren’t close enough. He was still fully clothed for one thing, frustrating her need to touch him all over, to know the sensation of skin on skin, her naked body against his. She didn’t have his skill with the buttons, her eyes still closed as she dealt with them blind, but after a few moments tugging and twisting they were open and she heard his soft laughter deep in his throat as he helped her at last, shrugging off his jacket and then his shirt, barely pausing in his attentions to her breasts as he did so.

‘And these will have to go…’

Kneeling up, he slid down the zip on her trousers, then, hooking his fingers at the loosened waistband, eased them down her legs, taking the pale pink knickers with them. That tormenting mouth followed the path of her clothing, kissing its way down the exposed skin from her waist, along her thighs, right to her toes, then back up again, lingering on the

cluster of curls between her legs, making her cry out in shock and wonder as her hands reached down to clutch at his dark head once more.

‘This is what you were inviting…’

Angelos pressed harder, hotter kisses down towards the most feminine part of her. Strong hands eased her thighs apart, thumbs smoothing over the hidden cleft, making her catch her bottom lip between her teeth and bite down hard in an effort to hold back the need to urge him on, to plead with him, beg him to take her now.

She wanted the fulfilment she knew was waiting for her just over the horizon, still out of reach. And she wanted it now. But at the same time she wanted to drag out this most intimate torment of waiting to its fullest, to experience everything that this man could give her. To know the full truth of being a woman in the hands of a man who truly knew how to make love to her. A master of his craft—a master of passion—a master of pleasure.

And it was when those strong fingers stroked the innermost core of her that Jessica felt she was truly beginning to know the meaning of pleasure. Beyond thought, incapable of doing anything but respond to him, she could only open herself up to his touch, submit totally to his control. Her own control was gone, lost, blasted away on the explosions of pleasure that his touch had triggered off all over her body, so that now she was abandoned to pleasure, heedless of anything else. And when his tongue swirled over the hidden bud of her clitoris, already sensitised almost beyond endurance by the touch of his powerful fingers, she gave herself up to the mind-blowing shock of fulfilment that had her open her eyes wide, and her whole body was thrown into a spasm of total gratification.

‘Angelos!’

His name was a wild, soaring moan of abandonment, all thought of what her tongue might express torn away from her on the waves of delight that pulsed through her.

‘Oh, yes, dear God, yes! You are so right…’

Another spasm of ecstasy had her gasping for breath before she could continue. She heard Angelos make a rough, dark sound in his throat, then he moved suddenly, taking her in his arms and holding her tight against him as she rode the wave of stunned sensuality.

‘Oh, yes…’ she managed again, her lips pressed against his cheek, her body molten against his. ‘Yes! Living wellis the best revenge…and this is truly living…’

But, even as she spoke, she felt the change in Angelos’s mood, the sudden stiffening of his long body beside her. The words died in her throat as she sensed the terrible change in the atmosphere, the sudden destruction of the heated passion, the soaring pleasure that had gripped her.

‘Ochi!’

Angelos moved suddenly and shockingly, his caressing hand snatched away, his proud dark head flung back, and he pushed himself to a sitting position and then, appallingly, jackknifed off the settee and on to his feet. Standing like this, he towered above her, big and dark and disturbingly powerful. Jessica risked one terrified glance into his

dangerously furious face and then flinched away again, burying her face in a cushion, with her eyes closed for good measure.

‘Ochi!’he snarled at her again, his normally near-perfect grasp of English deserting him in the throes of the icy-black rage that burned in his eyes. ‘No! No way! I am not a substitute for any man.’

‘Substitute…Oh, no!’

Sheer horror brought her eyes wide-open again, her whole body shaking in panic and reaction to the cruelly abrupt end to their lovemaking. Tremors of fulfilment were still shaking her body, shockingly combined with the need for more than the delights she had experienced, the longing for the total satisfaction of his full possession.

A possession that was to be totally denied her as, ruthlessly ignoring what must be his own body’s still clamouring demands, Angelos stooped and snatched up his jacket and shirt from the floor. Flinging them on, he stamped his feet into the shoes she had never even noticed him kicking off in the height of their passion.

‘Angelos—please—no…’

‘I will not be used for your revenge on your rat of a fiancé!’

‘Angelos—no—it was never like that…’

She struggled to sit up but the cushions underneath her were too soft to give her full support and she only succeeded in writhing in a wild ungainly

struggle that got her nowhere as Angelos whirled on his heel and headed for the door.

‘Please…’

But she was talking to the empty air as his powerful, furious stride carried him away from her and out of the room, the door slamming loudly behind him.

‘Angelos…’

Even though she knew he couldn’t hear her, or if he could then he was not going to listen, Jessica still called out after him as she stumbled to her feet and started to rush after him. But, tripping over the tangle of clothes on the floor, she was reminded of her embarrassing state of undress and the impossibility of running after him like this.

But her trousers and underwear were knotted together and she was still struggling to get them fit to put on when she heard the main door in the hall bang hard against the wall as if Angelos had wrenched it open with a strength and force that revealed every burning degree of the fury that gripped him

‘Wait!’

She knew it was useless but still she had to try. She had managed to get her trousers back on, abandoning the knickers as useless time wasting, and she was still pulling them up and struggling to fasten them as she ran on bare feet out into the hall and towards the main door that was still coming slowly to full closure. ‘Angelos!’ she yelled after him in the vain

hope that he might hear her, but deep inside she knew it was already too late.

A fear that was confirmed as she reached the far side of the hall, got her fingers on the door handle…only to hear the full-throated growl from the engine of Angelos’s powerful car as he swung it away from its parking space out in the courtyard and roared off down the drive at breakneck speed.

But still she couldn’t stop herself from wrenching open the door and stumbling out into the darkness of the night.

‘It wasn’t like that…Please—it wasn’t like that at all…’ she cried despairingly, knowing that there were only the owls in the trees or perhaps a whirling bat flying through the air to hear her as she watched the red tail-lights of the car disappear down the winding drive and out of sight into the darkness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEgrandfather clock that stood in the hallway was chiming yet another hour as Jessica prowled restlessly round the library, checking once more out of the window in the hope that there might at last be some sign of Angelos’s return. Her ears strained to hear the sound of his car engine, her eyes hunting for the gleam of his headlights in the pinkish light of dawn but to no avail. She’d followed exactly the same routine only a few moments before and there had been nothing to see. There was little point at all in trying again.

And yet she just could not keep still.

It had been like this all through the night. Ever since the moment that Angelos had stormed out of the house, she had been unable to settle, unable to concentrate on anything. She had paced up and down the hallway, half longing and yet half terrified that she would hear the sound of the car and know that he had come back. He had to come back so that she could explain to him that she had not meant her wild, foolish words in the way that he had taken them. But, knowing the mood in which he had left, she dreaded actually confronting him and seeing his face, reading the fury in his eyes. She suspected that, no matter how hard she tried, he would never believe her. But she had to try.

She’d seen that look in his eyes—the black fury, the total contempt, the absolute rejection of everything about her—once before, on that dreadful night when Marty had found them together. And then, so much younger and more naïve, she hadn’t acted on it. Instead, she’d reacted out of fear—being so desperate for her stepfather’s approval—and pain as a result of the bitter hurt of Angelos’s stinging rejection of her that she had lashed out unthinkingly.

She had been knocked for six from the first moment that she had seen Angelos at work in the stables. Nothing in her few immature connections with the boys she knew had prepared her for the sheer physical impact of a fully adult male, dark and dangerous and oh so sexy.

She’d followed him round like a puppy, had tried to flirt and been so bad at it that she had blushed and stammered her way through any conversations she had had with him. She’d even bought tickets for a show, claiming they’d been a gift, and invited him to join her. He’d said that he had to work but that night she’d seen him walking back from the pub with Lucille, one of the maids. He’d taken the girl into his flat, where she could just imagine what sort of ‘work’ they’d be doing.

Burning with humiliation and jealousy, she’d determined that she would show him.

She’d got hold of the spare key to his flat, gone up there when she knew he was out, wearing just some brand new underwear under her coat. She’d had a long, nerve-racking wait until she’d heard his footfalls, heavy, weary, coming up the stairs. Then, just as he’d come into the room, she’d stepped forward into a patch of moonlight and thrown her coat off.

His reaction had been far from welcoming.

‘Go away, Jessica,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone.’

But of course she couldn’t do that. Having nerved herself to get this far, she wasn’t going to back down, not unless she had to. And so she flung herself into his arms, pressed her mouth against his, insisting that she was all woman, every bit as much a woman as Lucille. And, just for a moment, she could have sworn that he responded.

But then he wrenched his mouth from hers, grabbed at her arms to push her away.

‘Don’t delude yourself, child,’ he flung at her in a voice thick with contempt. ‘I have no interest in you in that way at all. I don’t play with little girls.’

In her mind she could see the scene all over again. The way that the light had flicked on so shockingly unexpectedly, and the appalling tableau that it had revealed. Herself in Angelos’s powerful arms, her hair mussed into tangled disarray, her inexpertly applied lipstick smudged all over her

face, her only clothing the white lace knickers and bra—one strap falling down over her arm, almost at her elbow.

And she could still hear her stepfather’s shocked voice, the fury that threaded through the words, as Marty bellowed, ‘Just what the hell is going on here?’

For a second her mind went blank in total panic. The next moment she reacted in unthinking fear and desperation. Pushing hard at Angelos’s chest, she struggled in his arms, frantically trying to get away.

‘I didn’t mean to…’ she said. ‘I never wanted to—he made me…’

And it was on those words that Angelos let her go, flinging her from him as if her touch defiled him, so that she spun halfway across the room, stumbling hard against the arm of a chair as she came to a clumsy halt. One corner rammed into her naked thigh, making her head spin with pain, her eyes blurring with instinctive reaction to the throbbing bruise so that she heard her stepfather’s roar, saw the blow he aimed at the younger man’s jaw, through a haze of distress.

‘Get out of here and don’t come back…’

She had tried to convince herself that Angelos had less than her to lose. That as a man, and older than her, he was more likely to be able to shrug off the unpleasantness of the night, to turn his back on things—on her— and walk away without a mark on his arrogant hide. His skin was too thick, his pride too strong to feel the pinpricks of the petty arrows she had fired at him and that Marty had taken up and used as weapons too.

Now, older and more experienced, there was no way she could look at it like that. She’d been stupid, immature, totally selfish. She’d thought only of herself and of putting herself in a good light, and she’d never stopped to think of the possible consequences for Angelos. And she should have done. She should have told Marty the truth so that at least he could have offered Angelos his job back. She doubted that he would have taken it— but at least she should have tried to make reparation.

She still should. Even if Angelos had made a brilliant success of his life after Marty had fired him, she had still been responsible for him being thrown out without a job or a reference—without even a roof over his head.

And now she knew how that felt.

She knew one other thing. And that was, whether he listened to her or not, this time she had to stay and face him. Then, she had let Marty bundle her up in his jacket and half walk, half carry her away and back to the Manor House where, after making sure that Angelos had not actually harmed her, he had given her brandy ‘for the shock’ and stayed with her until the fierce spirit had taken effect and she had fallen asleep.

When she had woken she had been told that Angelos had gone. That he had left Manorfield for good and she had nothing to worry about any more. And, weak as she had been, the mental lacerations of Angelos’s rejection of her still burning in her soul, she had accepted that and had hoped that it was true.

Now, she could no longer let that easy explanation satisfy her. Angelos was back with a vengeance and she had to face him this time. She couldn’t run away again.

If he ever came back.

Once again, she made the weary trek to the window and looked out. The dawn was almost complete now, the sky a glowing pink, and the old saying, ‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd take warning’ echoed ominously inside her head. Never mind the shepherds. She strongly suspected that the warning implied in the sky’s bright colouring was just for her.

She wasn’t going to watch from the window any longer, she told herself. All the watching and waiting in the world wouldn’t bring Angelos back to the house any quicker than he wanted to come so there was no point in staying there, staring out into the brightening dawn. Besides which, the last thing she wanted was for him to drive up to the house and see her standing there, watching for him.

Sighing, she made her way back into the library and curled up on the settee before the big fireplace there. The leather was old and worn, the stuffing battered from long wear so that it was far from the most comfortable place she could sit. But there was no way she was going to be able to settle in the sitting room, not with the settee there holding such shocking memories, reminding her of how she had lost all control, abandoning sanity completely and giving herself up to Angelos’s sensual mastery. And, by doing so, she had given him a power over her that she knew he would never forget—and neither would she. She would only have to look at him to remember how it had felt to be in his arms, feel his touch, his kisses. Just the burn of his eyes on her would reawaken the fiery need that she had experienced in response to his caresses. And he would be able to look into her eyes and know just how she was feeling because, now that she had let him know the truth of how much she hungered for him, she would never, ever be able to hide it from him again.

And a night without sleep wouldn’t help either.

If she had any sense of self-esteem then she would go upstairs now and try to pick herself up. A shower and a change of clothes might give her some mental strength with which to face Angelos when he came back.

If he came back.

Oh, of course he would come back. He had gone to so much trouble to get his hands on this place; there was no way he was going to abandon it just because of a complete loss of his temper.

A huge yawn took her completely by surprise and had her blinking suddenly heavy eyelids as she fought against the thick waves of tiredness that swept over her.

She really should get cleaned up, make herself look respectable…

She really should…

Her eyes had closed before she had completed the thought and exhaustion swamped her completely, taking her consciousness with it.

The idea had been to drive far enough and fast enough to work off some of the black rage inside him and to calm down enough to be able to think.

At least that had been the plan, Angelos told himself as he steered his car through the main gates and headed up the drive in the light of the early morning. But the truth was that, far from evaporating, or even easing, the blazing fury had compacted, set in a cold, hard mass deep in his heart, sitting there like a lump of black stone, irremovable and unbreakable. And the realisation that the way that Jessica had behaved had driven him out once again, away from the house he owned—hishome— just as she had done years before, only darkened his mood even more, making him determined that this time she was not going to get away with it.

This time he was the one in charge. He was the one with all the cards in his hand, cards he fully intended to play against her just as soon as he got back inside. This time, it would be Jessica Marshall who would find herself thrown out of house and home. That had been his plan all along and only a temporary mental glitch had distracted him from his purpose for a moment.

But not any more, he resolved as he drew the car to a halt outside the house and yanked on the brakes. This time, Lady Jessica would be out of here and on her way before she even knew what had hit her. And he would be only too pleased to see the back of her for good.

The door he had slammed behind him so furiously last night was unlocked and standing just a tiny bit open, swinging inward at his touch in a way that made him frown darkly. Had she gone already, leaving the place open and exposed to possible robbers when she left? Certainly the house was silent and apparently empty, his footsteps echoing loudly on the wooden floor.

‘Jessica?’

No response. So had she packed and gone? The thought should have pleased him, fulfilling the dark ambition he had set himself, but instead it simply made his displeasure so much worse, deepening his anger at the way that he had been deprived of the satisfaction he’d planned.

Satisfaction of more than one kind, he remembered grimly. Because, even now, hours after savage fury had put an abrupt end to the sexual satisfaction every sense had craved, his body still ached with hungry frustration, each tightly stretched nerve screaming a protest at the way he had slammed the brakes on their arousal and forced them under brutal control once again.

If Jessica had gone, then she had thwarted him in all ways, snatching away his need to demonstrate his power over her, the way that he now had the upper hand and he fully intended to use it.

‘Jessica?’

Louder this time, but there was still no response, the name seeming to swirl in the air, disturbing the stillness, the silent atmosphere of the apparently empty house.

Cursing with fluent savagery in Greek, Angelos was about to head upstairs for a much-needed shower when an unexpected sound finally caught his ear. It was soft and barely audible, so much so that he might not have caught it if he hadn’t been listening intently, looking for just something like that. It came to him as he placed his foot on the first step, making him freeze instantly, waiting, listening again—trying to grasp whatever it was that had tugged at his attention.

There it was again, faint and almost inaudible. A tiny sound, just a sigh or

a breath, coming to him from behind the open door into the library.

At once he changed direction, stepping back down off the stairs and turning to cross the hall.

‘Jessica?’

At first he thought that he had it wrong. There seemed to be no one in the library and it was as still and silent as the rest of the house. But then that sigh came again, drawing him across the room to look over the high back of the big leather chesterfield, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the figure of the woman lying there.

She was sprawled half on and half off the seat, as if she had just tumbled there as sleep claimed her, having no time to settle into a comfortable position. Her limbs, softened in sleep, were loose and relaxed—hell, everything about her was softened by sleep. Those clear, often icy, blue eyes were closed and the long, lush lashes lay in dark arcs above cheeks that were faintly flushed with warmth. Those cheeks still bore the tracks of the tears she had shed for her no good rat of a fiancé, making savage anger burn in him at the memory of how she had tried to replace the other man with him, using his kisses, his caresses to erase the memory…

Damn it, no! He did not want to remember that.

Jessica’s burnished chestnut hair was wildly tousled by what seemed to have been disturbed sleep and fell in tumbling disarray over the cushions, several tangled strands of it straying across her cheeks, stirring faintly with each breath she took. Her full pink mouth was very slightly open, revealing just a glimpse of white teeth and, as another of those soft

sighs escaped her, his own mouth moistened, remembering the taste of her lips, the play of her tongue against his.

It was a memory that went straight to his loins, hardening him in an instant, and the hard kick of sensuality that gave him had his fingers tightening over the curved back of the chesterfield as he fought for control.

It didn’t help that from this position he could see how the green silk shirt that Jessica still wore was only roughly buttoned up, as if she had dressed in a rush and not totally successfully. The way that a button had been shoved into the wrong hole pulled the blouse open at the neck, and lower, exposing the creamy flesh of her breasts and making it clear that right now they were unconstrained by any bra. The lacy garment must have been discarded somewhere. Perhaps in the other room, where he had tossed it in the heat of their lovemaking.

‘Ochi!’

Shaking his head fiercely, he dragged himself back from the edge of the mental cliff he was on before he tumbled headlong into the heated waters of the sensual waves that foamed beneath it, losing his rational control altogether. This was not what he wanted. He was going to wake Jessica, deliver the news that she was not wanted here, that there was no home for her at the Manor House and that she should pack her bags and be on her way. And he didn’t give a damn if she had anywhere to go or not.

As if sensing his presence, Jessica sighed again and shifted slightly on the settee. The movement sent a waft of the intensely personal perfume of her skin upwards towards where he leaned on the back of the chesterfield. Inhaling it put his senses on to instant red alert, his blood

heating and pounding through his veins so fast that it made his head swim.

Not wanted.The words in his own thoughts hit him like a hard slap in the face. Notwanted . Who the hell was he trying to kid?Not wanted was the furthest thing from the truth about this situation. The real truth was that he wanted Jessica like hell. He always had done, right from the moment that he had seen her as a teenager when she had come to the stables where he had taken a temporary, lowly job in order to find out as much as he could about the man he had just learned was in fact his father. He had wanted her then and he had had to fight against showing her just how he felt about her. Those moments when she had thrown herself into his arms, soft and willing and wearing only the scraps of white lace underwear, had been hell on earth as he had resisted the hunger he felt for her.

But there had been reasons then why he could not give in to the burn of desire. Reasons that now no longer existed. If he still wanted Jessica, then he could have her.

If he still wanted—Hah!

His harsh laugh cracked in the air, making the woman on the chesterfield stir again in her sleep. Of course he still wanted her. He had wanted nothing else from the moment that he had walked into the room filled with middle-aged mourners and seen her there, vibrant and glowing in all the true beauty of the woman she had become. He had known then that having Manorfield alone was not enough. It would never be enough. He wanted the estate and he had worked and planned for years to make it his. But, deep in his heart, and in the most basic, most essentially male parts of his make-up, he knew that that would never be enough.

He would never be satisfied until he had the lady of the manor in his bed as well. And kept her there until he had had his fill. Until he had appeased the frustration and hunger of the first time they had met—and all the years in between.

‘Who?’ Jessica stirred uneasily, struggling up from the clinging depths of sleep as some sound reached through the stillness of her mind and started to tug her awake. ‘Angelos?’

‘Right here,agape mou .’

The drawled words with their cynical edge jolted her out of any last remaining drowsiness and into full and wary wakefulness. Her eyes snapped open, looking straight up into his watchful gaze, dark as a starless sky at midnight.

‘You came back!’

‘This is my house. Where else would I go?’

As a reminder of their different positions in the world and her recently totally changed status, it was like a slap in the face. She needed to sit up properly, as she suddenly felt too vulnerable lying there while he leaned against the back of the chesterfield, big and dark and dangerously overwhelming. His black eyes might be hooded and faintly shadowed from lack of sleep, his strong jaw line darkened by the night’s growth of beard, but he was still the most lethally overwhelming man she had ever met. Looming over her like this, he was just too big, too strong—too everything for her peace of mind.

But her limbs had stiffened from lying in tortured positions on the settee and she had to struggle to make them move in the way she wanted. And all the time Angelos simply watched her with that distant, hidden look in his dark eyes. The steadiness of his gaze seemed to focus like a laser on the sensitive skin of her face, burning deep below the surface as if he was probing her thoughts, as well as her appearance.

Unnerved by the close scrutiny, she shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, plagued with pins and needles as the blood rushed back through her body. Knowing she desperately needed to attend to the way she looked, to tame the tangled mane of her hair that fell so messily around her face, she smoothed her hands over it, catching painfully on several knots, then tried to straighten her crumpled clothing.

Tugging her shirt down simply made matters worse because it was only then that she realised the way that some of the buttons she had fastened in such haste last night had been pushed into the wrong holes. The garment was badly bunched up at the front, the hem hanging messily uneven around her waist and the neckline gaping widely. But she couldn’t bring herself to try to make the adjustments it needed. For one thing, doing so would mean she had to unbutton her blouse before she could refasten it properly, exposing even more of herself to Angelos’s dark scrutiny. Especially as the movement of her breasts and the rub of the material of her blouse against her nipples had just brought home to her the memory of the way she hadn’t bothered to dress fully in her haste to go after Angelos last night.

And then there was the other, more disturbing fact that she didn’t actually have the strength to drag her gaze away from the almost hypnotic power of his eyes but stood, transfixed, like a rabbit facing the gleaming gaze of a sleek black hunting cat.

‘Back to Greece?’

She didn’t dare to admit that at one point in the long night she had feared he might actually do just that. That he might have walked out of her life for good and that she would never see him again. But that had been in the darkest hours before the slow dawn, when she had sat alone in the still silent house, facing up to the way that her life had changed so dramatically over the past few days and wondering just where she would go from here.

‘And leave you in possession of the Manor House?’ Angelos queried and, to her shock, there was actually a faint note of humour on the question, a hint of laughter in his voice. ‘I think not. You cannot get rid of me that easily,kyria .’

‘The idea never entered my head!’ Jessica snapped, knowing deep in her heart that it was true. She had been thinking more of his return, of the moment that he would walk back through that door, and the fact that she would have to face him all over again. That image had overridden every other consideration and it had been all she had been able to focus on in her thoughts.

‘I’ll admit that I was surprised to find you still here,’ he said now, disconcerting her yet again. Had he thought that she would have packed and gone while he had been out? That she would have fled into the night without looking back?

OK, if she was honest, she’d actually considered it once or twice. But the knowledge that she had to see him one more time, if only to explain to him that he had totally misinterpreted her reaction earlier, had kept her where she was, sitting on the edge of her seat, with her hands clenched into tight fists in her lap, or pacing to and from the window, hoping for a sign that the damn man was returning.

‘I could answer that in the same way as you just did.’ Irritation flared fiercely inside her giving the words a snap she hadn’t intended. ‘Where else would I go? As you’ve pointed out, this is your house now and I’m not welcome here. But, believe me, if there was anywhere else I could go, I’d be out of here like a shot—you wouldn’t see me for dust! I would have gone yesterday if I could have done, but then things…’

She faltered, lost her train of thought as a rush of memory made her head spin shockingly.

She’d actuallyforgotten about Chris and the appalling way that he’d treated her. She’d forgotten about his lies and his betrayal—the other woman he’d been seeing all the time he was supposed to have been engaged to her. Yesterday she’d been shattered, devastated, unable to think straight, and yet somehow during the night something—someone— had pushed all those thoughts and concerns from her head and replaced them with others.

With thoughts and concerns abouthim .

Dazedly, she shook her head, unable to believe her own thoughts. What was happening to her? Just a few short days ago she had believed that she loved Chris enough to marry him—to be with him for the rest of her life. Oh, she’d known it was a quiet sort of love, a friends into lovers, built on mutual respect sort of love—but she had believed it was love. And now, today…

‘No?’ Angelos questioned, interpreting her shake of the head in a very different way from the one she had meant. ‘No, you won’t be going now or no, you won’t be staying?’

‘I wouldn’t be staying if I had any choice. I know you want me out of here —out of your life. I know…’

The sentence died on her lips as this time it was Angelos who shook his dark head with such total determination, such purpose that it stopped her dead in shock.

‘If you think that, then you know nothing. Did last night not tell you anything? Did you not realise what it meant?’

‘Oh, I know what it meant…’

Agitated fingers went to her hair again, tugging at the tangled strands, then she tried to straighten her blouse once more, pulling it towards her waistband and fighting to tuck it in. But each time she got one uneven edge straight, another would pull lose until eventually she gave up again with an exasperated exclamation of frustration.

‘It meant that you wanted me. That—to put it bluntly, because blunt is the only thing that you seem to understand—you wanted to get into my pants. That you wanted sex with me and that was all.’

‘No…’ Angelos inserted, dark and low, but, suddenly finding that her tongue was freed from the restraints that the shocks of the past few days had imposed on it, Jessica ignored the interjection and carried on right over it.

‘So in my book that makes you only after one thing—just like every other

man—just like Chris—’

‘No!’

It was a roar of fury, breaking over her head like an icy black wave, cutting off her tirade, stopping it dead. Or that was the impression that she gave, Jessica acknowledged. She wasn’t going to let Angelos see that she had really choked to a halt on the recollection that he wasn’t just like Chris at all. At least Angelos had truly wanted her, even if only sexually. Chris had been lying through his teeth all the way along. He had never wanted her at all, not even in his bed. ‘Don’t you dare say that I am like the snake you were engaged to. Don’t even think of comparing me to him. I am nothing like…’

‘Nothing like?…Nothing like?’

The acid burn of pain that was eating away at her heart put a black cynicism into her tone, one that expressed her total scepticism better than any words could ever do.

‘So are you trying to claim that if we had…if I had let you…if we had slept together last night, that it would been more than just a one-night stand? That when I woke up in the morning, you would have still been there? That you wouldn’t have just had your fun and hightailed it out of there…’

‘Yes!’

The force of the single word, the vehemence with which it was spoken, together with something fiercely intent in Angelos’s face, stopped her mid-sentence once again, only able to stare at him in confusion and

disbelief.

‘Yes,’ Angelos repeated even more emphatically this time. ‘And no. Yes to the fact that I would still be here in the morning. No, I would not have left before you woke. No, I would not have—high…’

Unexpectedly, his normally near-perfect English let him down and the little failure suddenly made him seem so much more human, so much more fallible, somehow giving a surprising edge to his words, making her listen to them even more closely and actually allow them to sink into her mind.

‘Hightailed…’ she supplied faintly, not wanting to distract him, knowing a sudden desperate need to know exactly what he was going to say next. She found that she was holding her breath tight and forced herself to let it go, expelling it in a soft sigh that she didn’t care if he heard.

‘I would not have “got into your pants”…’ His grimace of distaste at the expression said more than his words about the way he felt about her accusation. ‘And then left in the morning.’

‘You wouldn’t?’

‘I would not.’

And he meant it. Fierce pride drew his shoulders straight, brought his head up. It blazed in the depths of his eyes, was stamped into the rigid set of his jaw. He was insulted—outraged—that she would even suggest it. And because of that Jessica suddenly found that she was shaking in apprehension, trembling all over as she waited to hear what he would say next.

‘And why not?’

‘Why not? Because I want more than one night with you—because what we have between us will not burn itself out in just a few short hours.’

‘It—it won’t?’

The trembling was getting worse now. From feeling that he had walked out on her for good, she had veered to the belief that he didn’t want her anywhere near him and from there to thinking that he wanted her out. Now he was saying that he still wanted her—and wanted her far more, for far longer than she had ever dreamed.

‘Oh, Jessica…’

Angelos’s tone was almost gentle in its mockery and he took a step forward, closer to her. Lifting a hand, he let the backs of his fingers trail down the side of her face, from her temple, over her cheekbone to the fine line of her jaw and then along to trace the shape of her quivering mouth. And she saw how his eyes darkened and deepened as he watched her shiver of response.

‘Do you doubt it? Can you find any reason why it would not be true?’

And of course she couldn’t. Looking into his face, into his eyes, as she was, she could see nothing but sincerity and total conviction in what he was saying. She didn’t know just what it meant, only that for now, for today, he meant exactly what he was saying.

But she couldn’t find any words to answer him. All she could do was shake her head in stunned silence, her tongue seeming frozen inside her mouth.

It seemed that that was enough. A small smile crossed Angelos’s sensual mouth, brief, fleeting. If she had blinked she would have missed it. But she saw it and the way that her senses reacted to that faint warmth in his face, every nerve twisting in instant response, her heart kicking under her ribs and her pulse picking up a beat or two, told her just how much it meant.

And that warned her how deep she was in.

So deep that the waters of sensuality were almost closing over her head, cutting her off from the world she knew and all sense of reality that she understood.

For now, for this moment, there was only Angelos and the spell he was weaving around her.

And Angelos wanted her. He wanted her for more than one night.

What we have between us will not burn itself out in just a few short hours…

A small spark of hope lit in her bruised heart, warming and easing the pain that had torn at it so much in the past few days.

‘Angelos…’ she began, her voice trembling.

But he brushed aside her stumbling beginning with an arrogant flick of his hand and suddenly moved away again, crossing to sit astride the broad leather covered arm of a nearby chair, one foot on the buttoned seat, the other on the floor, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

‘So now perhaps we had better talk about that job I’m offering.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

THATjob?

So now perhaps we had better talk about that job I’m offering.

The words swung round in Jessica’s head, making her feel as if the world was spinning round her so violently that she had to grab at the back of the chesterfield for support. If he had slapped her hard in the face, she doubted that it could have had much more effect than his sudden withdrawal and the coolly careless words he had just tossed at her.

Was she hearing right?

And which part of what she had heard was the right one?

Had she been imagining the darkly sensual, ‘what we have between us will not burn itself out in just a few short hours’? Or was the brusque, businesslike declaration that they had better talk about a job the reality

and the other Angelos just a figment of her imagination?

She didn’t know and couldn’t begin to guess. And the expression on the face of the Angelos who sat just a short distance away from her, proud dark head slightly angled to one side, deep-set eyes watching her closely, was totally enigmatic, giving nothing away.

‘You’re offering me a job?’

‘I already did—remember. Yesterday, before you set out to meet your fiancé.’

Oh, she remembered all right. She remembered him saying something about offering her a job and then adding that he didn’t want her to go. But then he had moved closer. He had told her that he was definitely not playing this time—and then he had kissed her. And, from that moment on nothing else had registered in her mind. Only feelings—feelings of hunger and desire—an overwhelming need for this man in a way that she had never, ever experienced in her life before.

A desire that in the shifting fortunes, the total upheaval of the past couple of days, was the one and only constant in her life. It was the only thing that had remained consistent when her inheritance, her belief in the sort of man she had thought Marty to be, and finally her own trust in the man she had thought she was going to marry had been totally shattered until her existence was completely unrecognisable as the life it had once been.

‘We didn’t exactly discuss any details,’ she managed warily. ‘So what is it that you have in mind?’

‘I thought I could offer you a job on the estate.’

Angelos pushed himself up from his seat and stretched lazily, the movement flexing his broad shoulders, drawing the crumpled white shirt tight against the hard contours of his chest. The fine material was tugged loose at his narrow waist and, as his arms lifted, she caught a tantalising glimpse of toned olive skin, lightly hazed with black body hair. Her mouth dried in response to the memory of the way it had felt to have the warmth of that skin, the faint rasp of the crisp hairs against her own flesh as she had writhed underneath him in the grip of the mindblowing ecstasy of her orgasm.

She was grateful for the way that he turned his back on her, strolling away to the wide bay window to stare out at the wind tossed trees edging the huge green lawn. At least this way she didn’t have to worry about the wave of hot colour that she could feel flooding her cheeks at her memories. She had little doubt that his astute mind would put two and two together and come up with the reason why she was reacting in that way.

‘I understand that you’ve become quite knowledgeable about the place.’

‘Marty was teaching me…’

Was there anything he didn’t know? She couldn’t take her eyes from the tall, powerful figure by the window, hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets, his dark head lifted as he studied the glorious view. His long legs were slightly apart, feet planted firmly on the worn, polished boards of the library floor. She’d seen him like that before, she recalled, on the first day when he’d arrived back here, the day of Marty’s funeral. She’d watched him as he’d stood in much the same position but in the other

room and she’d thought then that he’d looked like the lord of all he surveyed.

If only she’d known. If only there had been some sort of warning that the thoughts her imagination had come up with were in fact the truth. If only Marty had given her some sort of hint as to what was happening so that she might have been better prepared. She might at least have had a chance of looking for some sort of employment to provide for herself in the future, so that she wouldn’t have been left floundering and at the mercy of whatever Angelos had planned for her.

‘And did you enjoy that?’

‘Oh, yes—I was finding it fascinating. We had great plans for the North Copse and for the farms over by Felpersham. We wanted to modernise their…’

Her voice failed her as she watched him nod slowly, his dark gaze still fixed on the distant horizon. A tiny spark of hope flared in her heart, making her snatch in her breath on a sharp gasp.

Was it possible? Was she dreaming or was Angelos actually beingkind ? Could he really be planning to offer her some position helping to manage Manorfield in the way that Marty had once dreamed that she would? Was it possible that she could still stay on in some capacity on the estate that she loved? And maybe even work with him at the same time?

Her mind spun at the thought but if she had been challenged she wouldn’t have been able to say if it was the hope of staying on at Manorfield or the thought of working with Angelos that had the strongest effect on her. She only knew that her heart seemed to be racing high up in her

throat, making it difficult to breathe through the tension in her chest and her lungs.

‘I have plans for the Felpersham farms too.’

Now she really was struggling for control. If only he would turn around so that she could see his face, read something from his expression, the look in his eyes. After a couple of days of being on a wild and crazy emotional roller coaster, rushing upwards in hope one moment, only to plunge desperately downwards the next, she had lost all sense of being able to judge what was coming and so anticipate how to react or nerve herself for bitter disappointment. And she could read nothing at all from the long, straight line of his back, the arrogantly held dark head.

‘You do? Great. Is that—what plans?’

‘But they won’t concern you.’

Angelos swung round as he spoke and, from longing to see his face, she now could only wish he had kept his head averted.

Because she read her fate in his eyes, in the grim set of his mouth. The icy blaze of his glare seared over her, seeming to take with it several much needed protective layers of skin and she shivered as she felt a freezing hand of fear reach out and twist in her heart. Suddenly she knew without hope of redemption that any dream of Angelos planning to bekind was just that—a dream—a delusion—an impossibility.

There was no trace of kindness in that face. No touch of it warmed the bleak jet eyes. Whatever he had planned for her, it was not the misty

edged future that she had foolishly let herself imagine for a moment.

How could she have ever let herself dream like that? This was Angelos— the Black Angel—she knew what he was like. She should have been forewarned and so forearmed.

‘No?’ she managed, imposing a ruthless control to keep her voice as firm as she possibly could.

‘No.’ Angelos shook his head, shrugging away the question with supreme indifference. ‘Things like that do not concern the stable hands. It is none of their business.’

Stable hands.

Twice Jessica opened her mouth to say something and both times her voice failed her.

Stable hands.

She should have known what was happening; she should have seen it coming. She knew what Angelos was like, and she knew why he was here. He had come to take over Manorfield because, by doing so, he would have the last laugh. He would have his revenge on her for the appalling events of his last stay here and the fact that she had had him thrown out of his job because of the way she had reacted in fear and panic. But, just for a few foolish minutes, she had been weak enough to wonder. She’d actually let her thoughts wander into dreamland. Because Angelos had told her that he wanted her so much she had allowed herself to imagine that that meant more than it did.

But all he had said was that he wanted her. And that was all he had meant. It didn’t mean that he cared in any other way or that he was going to really help her. It didn’t mean that he had forgotten or forgiven the things that had happened between them in the past.

Quite the opposite. Finding that she was at his mercy, with no one to help her and nowhere else to go, it seemed he had seen the perfect opportunity to add an extra twist to the knife and make his revenge even more exquisite.

‘What has this got to do with the job that you’re offering me?’

Angelos’s smile was slow and cruel, the gleam in his eyes brightening in a way that made her stomach lurch sickeningly. Never before had she felt so much like a small, quivering mouse caught on the end of a cat’s cruel claws.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me,’ Jessica flung at him and saw the swift, dark frown that drew his black brows sharply together.

It was a small triumph but a very necessary one. If he meant what she believed was in his mind then she was going to make him say it. He was going to have to come right out and state exactly what he had planned; she wasn’t going to make things easy for him by putting words into his mouth. When her outraged common sense screamed at her that she was still being foolish enough to cling desperately to a hope that hedidn’t mean what she thought he had, she pushed it away as strongly as she

could.

She didn’t need that sort of foolishness undermining her determination to handle this situation with as much dignity and control as possible.

‘Perhaps you’d care to explain.’

That actually earned her a microscopic glimmer of a smile, one that quirked up the corners of his mouth for a second and was gone. And it was only when it disappeared and she felt the sudden rush of cold that followed that Jessica realised how the tiny response had warmed the atmosphere, easing it subtly.

‘Always the lady of the manor,’ Angelos drawled, strolling over to the table where the drinks from the night of the funeral still stood. Unscrewing a bottle of mineral water, he poured himself a glassful, concentrating wholly on the action and not sparing her a single glance or, apparently, a hint of a thought.

In another man she might have thought that he was reviewing what he planned to say, organising his thoughts and rehearsing the words, but she knew that that was not at all likely where Angelos was concerned. He already knew exactly what he was going to say and he would have planned it all already, aiming for exactly the result he wanted. The studied pause was just for another effect, dragging it deliberately to keep her waiting and on edge.

‘I offered you a job…’

Drink poured, he lifted it from the tray and took a slow, considering

swallow. And, as he did so, his eyes locked with hers across the top of the glass, holding her transfixed with a force so strong that she felt her mouth drying in the impact of it and her throat seemed to have become paralysed, unable to swallow to ease the discomfort of it.

Knowing—or rather suspecting that she knew what he was going to say— didn’t ease the sense of apprehension because of it, she discovered.

‘And I’ll keep my word. But I’m not sure you’ll like what’s on offer. You see, I’m afraid that there is only one position free on the estate at the moment.’

I’m afraid—piffle! Jessica retorted in the privacy of her thoughts. If he’d said he was sorry, it couldn’t have been any more hypocritical or cynical. And they both knew it. They were just playing a mind game where neither of them was actually prepared to admit it.

‘And that is?’

‘The only thing I need is a groom—a stable hand, to be precise. That is the only job I have a vacancy for.’

She had known it. From the moment he’d mentioned that word, she’d known just where his mind was going. He wanted his revenge on her and he had seen the way to make it perfect by turning the tables exactly, putting them both into the opposite positions in which they had been years before. Then she had been, as he had always accused her of being, something close to the lady of the manor. The adored, pampered— possibly, yes, she was prepared to admit it—probably the spoilt stepdaughter to Marty, who had so wanted children of his own. And he had been the hired help, the casual labourer, employed to work in the

stables, mucking out the stalls, grooming her horse and having him saddled and ready for her when she had wanted to go out riding.

Now he was the man in charge and what he planned was that she…

The thought died, her mind blowing a fuse as she realised another point, another twist of the screw that tightened the painful trap she was in, moving her distress up another notch—a deliberate, calculated notch, she was sure. Angelos must know just how she would feel when she realised this—and it would have added to the effect he was aiming for.

Charlie. Her beautiful Charlie. The wonderful purebred Arab stallion that Marty had bought for her twenty-first birthday. The horse she totally adored. She normally spent every moment she could with him, grooming him or exercising him, showing him…

But the sale had been completed in Marty’s name. Charlie’s documents still listed him as the property of the Manorfield estate and no transfer had ever been made—no transfer had ever needed to be made, at least that was what she and her stepfather had assumed.

So that now, in the eyes of the law, her beloved stallion was legally the property of whoever owned the Manorfield estate. In other words, Charlie belonged to Angelos, to the bloody Black Angel. She suspected that Angelos had been well aware of this fact and had used it to tighten the knot in the ropes in which he had her trussed up cruelly, adding to her distress at the way that he had taken every last thing that she loved and valued from her.

The cold-hearted, calculating, conniving…

‘You bastard!’

To her astonishment, Angelos’s response was another smile. Wider this time and more definite, but no warmer than the earlier one. If anything, it was colder, harder, definitely without a trace of amusement in it.

‘If you want to insult me, Princess, at least use some term that I might actually find offensive. I am a bastard, I know that. I’ve known it since before I was old enough to walk. Certainly before I was old enough to understand just what the word meant and to wonder about the other bastard in my life—the father who seduced my mother, left her pregnant and then went back home to marry the woman he was engaged to.’

Jessica hadn’t known that. The thought that they had something in common caught her up short for a moment but, seeing the look on her face, Angelos shook his head reprovingly.

‘Don’t try it, Princess—don’t go claiming that you feel sorry for me in the hope of getting me to be a little more generous. It won’t work.’

‘I wasn’t going to try any such thing,’ Jessica flung at him. ‘I should have known this would happen—that you wouldn’t really have a job to offer. At least not one that I could seriously consider taking. I wouldn’t touch this one with a forty foot bargepole.’

‘You wouldn’t?’ Angelos’s carved mouth twisted cynically as he nodded. ‘I rather suspected that that might be your answer. So it’s just as well I have a second idea for you.’

‘Another job?’

Jessica bit down hard on her bottom lip as she thought back over her response to his first offer. Was it possible that she had got this all wrong and that he really did have another job to offer her? What if he had just been testing her to see if she would react in what he called her ‘lady of the manor’ way to a job that he would believe she’d think well beneath her? Certainly her response would have made him believe that was how she felt. Somehow, Angelo had the knack of always putting her on the wrong foot whatever she said or did.

‘Another position, certainly.’ Angelos nodded.

‘And that is…?’ Jessica prompted when he paused, sipping some more of his water in another deliberate delaying ploy, she was sure. ‘Angelos!’

‘I don’t want to rush things,’ he told her when she almost stamped her foot in impatience at his slowness. ‘After all, it’s not every day I do this.’

‘Do what?’

Still he paused, taking another swallow of the water before putting the glass aside on to a table.

‘Dowhat ?’

‘Ask someone to come into partnership with me.’

If he had reached out and slapped her hard in the face she couldn’t have reeled back more sharply or felt her head spin more sickeningly. She should have known that it would be a joke. A very black, very cynical joke. He had never had another job to offer her at all. He had just meant to torment her for turning down the stable job—the job that he had once had to take from Marty.

‘Oh, ha, ha, ha!’ She faked the laugh with cynical contempt, swinging away from him and putting as much distance between them as was possible. She even moved to put the bulk of the big chesterfield in the way so that it acted as a shield against him, if he should decide to move forward. She could just imagine that he might try to prove that this was a good idea by trying to kiss her as he had done twice yesterday.

He would kiss her to show her that they had—what was it he had said?— unfinished business between them. He would be so sure that he could kiss her into submission, leave her gasping for more and only too willing to accept the insulting proposal he had just tossed at her. And then, of course, if she showed any sign of yielding or even showing him that it had made her think at all, then he would take great pleasure in withdrawing the partnership idea in a flash—no doubt laughing at her for being fool enough to even consider believing it in the first place.

So she must never let him suspect that she had actually believed that he was in any way serious at all. Because he wasn’t, of course. He couldn’t be. There was no way he could mean this travesty of a proposal; no way that he wanted her as a partner for a moment. He was just doing this to torment her. To torture her with the idea that there might be another way for her to have a future—a life that included being able to stay on the Manorfield estate that she loved and even still have her horse and her old way of life given back to her.

But it would all be just a lie.

There was no way she would ever want to be his partner—not like this.

CHAPTER NINE

‘VERYfunny, Angelos.’

A sudden uncomfortable sting that resulted from her reaction—not like this—to Angelos’s proposal actually hitting home in the most worrying way made her voice harder and sharper than she had ever meant. Her mouth twisted cynically as she faced him defiantly, her chin coming up, her jaw firming.

‘Now you’ve had your joke so I hope you enjoyed it. You really didn’t think I’d fall for it.’

‘No joke,’ Angelos inserted quietly, but so firmly, so apparently sincerely that it made her feel as if the ground had suddenly lurched under her feet so that she grabbed at the back of the chair for support.

‘Oh, come on! Don’t try to claim that you actually meant that farce of a suggestion!’

‘What makes you think that I did not?’

His tone implied that she was a total fool to think anything else. That even an idiot could have seen that he was being genuine. So much so that for a second she was forced to snatch in a deep calming breath as she

studied him closely, trying to see some glimmer of humour or at least mockery in the darkness of his eyes. Something that would tell her that she had been right all along in believing that he was just playing with her like a cat toyed with a mouse until it tired of the game and reached out a deadly claw to deal the final, fatal blow.

Disturbingly—frighteningly—she could see nothing at all of that. All she could read in his face was a straightforward, direct openness. Which could only have one possible meaning and that was that he was totally straight in what he was saying. But he couldn’t be—could he?

Even as she allowed the question into her thoughts she pushed it away again. It was impossible! She wasn’t even going to consider it.

‘It wasn’t even a serious proposal!’ she hedged desperately. ‘So what kind of relationship are you suggesting?’

‘I need to drag the Manorfield estate into the twenty-first century. To do that, I need the cooperation of the locals—the villagers—the tenant farmers. They’re all traditionalists, people who have lived here for years, where their families have lived for centuries. They do things the way they’ve always done them, dealing with the people they’ve always dealt with. Until now, that has been Marty and his family—his father and his father before him. But now everything has changed.’

‘Yes,’ Jessica muttered bitterly. ‘You changed it. You came into our lives and took over Manorfield and now nothing will ever be the same in any way ever again.’

‘Not the same, perhaps—but it can come close.’

‘It can? How?’

The look he turned on her was a blend of exasperation and pure impatience. How can you not know? that look said. How can you not see what is right in front of your face?

‘If we blend the old and the new—work together on it. Marty lost his grip on the reins in his last years. He was addicted to gambling and deeply in debt and he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. The whole of Manorfield is going downhill fast. It needs hard work, money and time to build it back up again. I have the money and I have the time—as long as I have the loyalty of my workers—the confidence of my tenant farmers.’

‘But…’ Jessica put in when he paused for breath because there obviously was going to be a but, and now at last she thought she could see what was coming.

‘But they don’t have that confidence in me. To them I am a stranger, coming in from nowhere—a foreigner who has usurped the family line, who has taken the inheritance from the one they believed was entitled to it.’

‘Me…’ It was just a breath, a barely formed sound.

‘You,’ Angelos confirmed deeply. ‘You are the one they expected to be Marty’s heir. I own the estate but in the eyes of the villagers, the tenants, you are the one with the legal right to it—the right of convention and tradition. You may not have been Marty’s blood relative but in their opinion you are the closest he ever had to one. The one with the moral right to the estate. The one they expected to be working with.’

‘So this arrangement…’

‘Would combine the best of both worlds. With you by my side, I could still link to that tradition they expected to follow and with my money and your knowledge we could build Manorfield back up to the way it used to be. Make it successful, profitable all over again.’

Dear God, she was almost tempted. He made it sound so wonderful, as if so much was possible. And with Angelos at the helm she had no doubt that it would be. She had always loved Manorfield so much and she knew it would almost break her heart to leave it. If only…

‘This partnership…’ she tried again. ‘It would be just the business arrangement…’

She broke off abruptly, unable to go on as he shook his dark head in adamant rejection of that last sentence.

‘Not just business,’ he said deeply. ‘Not just business but pleasure as well.’

‘Pleasure?’ Jessica found that the word caught in her throat, choking her so that she couldn’t get it out. ‘What pleasure?’

Once again Angelos turned that frankly sceptical look on her face, his eyes lighting with total disbelief that she could possibly be so naïve.

‘What pleasure?’ he echoed softly, his voice becoming husky and rough on the word. ‘What pleasure could there be but sexual,agape mou ? This would be both a business and a sexual partnership. That way, we would have the very best of both worlds.’

‘A sexual partnership—you’re asking me to be yourmistress !’

The bitterness that ate into her soul with the realisation that, just for a few moments, she had been fool enough to let herself think he was actually offering her a genuine partnership made her voice shake in shocked disgust.

‘What else?’ Angelos tossed at her. ‘You surely did not think that I was going to go down on one knee and ask you to marry me?’

The image of him doing just that, of being able to look down on his raven dark head, see him look up into her face, those stunning black eyes locking with hers and holding them, but in a way that was so very different from the way he’d held her mesmerised earlier closed her throat and prevented her from speaking. To her horror, she found that she was trembling in reaction to just the thought of it, and her heart had lurched into a rapid, uneven pulse that made her chest rise and fall in rough, frantic breaths.

‘I’m not looking for a wife—but as a mistress you would suit me well.’

‘Never! No way!’

Her response sounded too sharp, too nervous, even in her own ears. She knew that she sounded as if she was protesting too much and with a

terrible sense of despair she knew that Angelos must recognise that too.

‘You could at least do me the courtesy of being honest,’ Angelos rapped back. ‘I am offering you a chance to stay on at Manorfield and you cannot even give me a truthful answer.’

‘I…am,’ Jessica managed but she knew that the revealing pause, the way that she couldn’t meet the accusing glare in his eyes but dropped her gaze to the floor told its own story.

‘Little liar.’

It was soft and deadly.

‘You know that what burns between us is something special. Something that few people ever experience in their lifetime.’

‘I…’ she tried but he ignored her attempt at an interruption, the words sweeping over as if she had never opened her mouth.

‘You deny yourself as well as me if you try to pretend that there is nothing.’

‘I’m not pretending!’

‘No?’

For the first time since he had started this shattering conversation, Angelos abandoned the cool, controlled mood that had held him still, apparently relaxed, at the opposite side of the room. He moved so fast that she barely saw him coming and, as his sudden fast stride towards her had been the last thing that she had been expecting, he took her totally off balance as he caught hold of her hands and swung her round to face him, hauling her into the confines of his arms as they clamped tight around her, holding her prisoner against his broad chest.

‘No?’ he muttered roughly. ‘Still so determined? Then it seems you need a reminder. A reminder of what it takes to change you from a hissing, spitting cat into the temptress who was in my arms last night. The woman who went up in flames—burning with a fire so hot that it practically ate us up alive. The woman who forgot about anyone and everyone else, who forgot about the world because she knew that when we two are together we have all the world—there is no need of anyone or anything else.’

‘I…’ Jessica tried, struggling impotently against the powerful grasp.

She was also fighting against a terrible sense of despair, she knew. The thought that, deep down in her soul, she knew that he was right. It was all so true. Even now, even like this, when she knew the real truth, she still couldn’t stop herself, stop her weak, foolish heart from responding to the dark litany of seduction that fell from those sensual lips.

Even knowing that it was only seduction didn’t help. Somewhere inside was a needy part of her that responded to his words like a flower opening to the sun. He didn’t love her; he wasn’t making any declaration of anything other than sexual hunger and yet it touched that equally starving part of her. The part that needed to be truly wanted by someone. To be special, central to their life even if only in this most basic, most primitive way.

And he was right about what happened when they were together. Right about the way that the world disappeared, evaporating into a cloudy haze through which she could see nothing, hear nothing, sense nothing…

Nothing but the Black Angel who held her so close.

His scent was all around her; she took it into her with every breath she inhaled. The heat of his body pervaded hers, warming her blood and setting her pulse racing. She knew that her face had turned to his, that her mouth was there for him even before his dark head lowered to take it.

And she was lost. As she sank into the kiss, as her lips parted and her eyes closed she felt the dark tides of sexuality rise up to drown her once again, sweeping away all resistance, all sense, all hope of selfpreservation. Because he was right, she acknowledged as she felt herself going down, down, down for the third time. What burned between themwas special. It was unique, and it was so searingly powerful that she would never, ever be able to resist it.

It was what she had been born for—the reason for her existence. Her rational brain might scream at her to fight it—that this path led to danger, to heartbreak, to the total destruction of all that made herself, but, even as it did, the most instinctive, essential, most female part of her yearned to give herself up to this hugely elemental force. She wanted to dive deep into those boiling, tossing waves and drown, never surfacing to reality ever again.

‘Yes…’ Angelos’s mutter was warm against her mouth, his breath blending with hers, the taste of him a powerful aphrodisiac on her tongue. ‘This is the woman I meant—the woman I want. This is the woman you are with

me and only with me.’

‘Yes…’

There was no way she could hold back the admission. No point at all in even trying to do so. He must know how she felt, must understand his victory and it was impossible to even think of hiding it from him. She was molten in his arms, limp with the need that was shuddering through her, her mouth yielding to the plundering force of his. And when his hand cupped the softness of one breast she moaned deep in her throat and pressed herself harder against the warmth of his palm…

And then suddenly it was all over.

Suddenly the heat and the passion had stopped; the force field she had felt all around her had evaporated and he was no longer there.

He had given her one last punishing kiss—and then he had put her from him, moving away to the far side of the room so that once more the chesterfield was between them and she was on her own.

The sudden, terrible rush of cold air against her heated body was a shock to her system, leaving her shivering in a very different response to the heated hunger of just moments before. And without the strong support of Angelos’s arms she felt lost, bereft and very much alone.

‘Now will you tell the truth?’

The question was rapped at her, each word fierce and cruel as bullets

from a gun as she struggled to clear her mind, blink her eyes back into focus. All she could see was a dark blur standing watching her but she could feel the challenge that issued from him, that was directed straight at her.

‘Now will you admit that what is between us is stronger than sense, stronger than thought?’

Jessica managed an inarticulate sound that might have been agreement. Her whole body was one big ache of frustration and her heart was racing so much that she felt it would burst out of her chest, breaking her ribs. But as she snatched in several deep, calming breaths she at least found that her vision had cleared and she could see the man standing before her.

She could see the way that the challenge in his voice was mirrored in the tilt of his head, the gleam in his dark eyes. She saw the curl to that beautiful mouth that told her he thought he had her exactly where he wanted her and she felt her bare toes clench in fury, digging into the carpet. Too late she remembered how she had meant to speak to him about the past. She had meant to apologise for what had happened between them all those years before, to try to explain. That was, after all, why she had waited for him—why she had sat up late into the night, watching for his car coming back so that she could talk to him.

But not now. Not any more. This man didn’t deserve to be talked to or to have any concessions offered him. She would rather die than apologise now.

‘Stronger than sense, certainly,’ she managed, wincing as her voice croaked embarrassingly. ‘That much is definitely true.’

The sound of her voice, rough and husky, made Angelos frown. Reaching down, he picked up the glass of water he had placed on the table and held it out to her.

‘Do you want a drink? You look hot.’

Hot with embarrassment, Jessica thought to herself. Hot with anger at what he’d said. And yes, at first, hot with the hungry passion that his kisses, his caresses had aroused—that too. But not now.

Now all that heat had evaporated and what it left behind was something that made her blood run cold, until she shivered in miserable reaction. But the ice that had entered her heart was the ice of freezing anger, bitter betrayal. And that was what she held on to to give her strength.

It kept her upright, made her put out a hand to take the glass he offered. It even let her manage a small, taut smile. One that any fool could see was not in the least sincere, the faint curl of her lips not in the least reflected in the chill of her eyes.

‘Thank you.’

She took the glass carefully, making every effort to ensure that she only touched the glass and no part of his hand. With her nerves still jangling in a combination of frustration and cold anger, just the brush of his fingers against hers would be more than she could take. Another rush of physical hunger like the one she had just endured would reduce her to a quivering wreck. And she was determined that Angelo would never see her in that state. She sipped on the water gratefully, feeling the cool liquid slide welcomingly down her constricted throat, easing the

discomfort there.

‘So now have you made up your mind?’ Angelos asked. ‘What do you say to my proposal?’

‘Yes, I’ve made up my mind.’

Jessica was delighted to find that her voice was every bit as calm and controlled as she wished. She even managed to sound quite relaxed, even pleasant, and that was obviously what Angelos thought too because she saw the way the faint tension in the broad shoulders eased and a tautness in the muscles of his strong jaw lessened perceptibly.

‘I know exactly what I want to say to your proposal.’

She took a couple of careful steps towards him as she spoke. She needed to get this just right, with no room for a mistake. She would only get one chance to make her point.

He was looking into her face with dark intent eyes so he had no idea what was coming. She could almost see the glint of triumph in their depths, see the beginnings of a smile of victory.

She let him enjoy it for a couple of heartbeats longer as she paused, drew in a breath and slowly turned the glass in her hand as she did so. When she had it positioned just right she smiled sweetly, straight into those watchful black eyes.

‘This is my answer…’

With a quick, neat movement she lifted the glass and tossed the contents right into his arrogant, knowing face, feeling a glorious sense of delight as she watched him blink hard in shock as the cold water showered over him, drenching his face and hair, soaking into the white shirt where it was open at his throat.

‘That’s what I think of you and your proposal!’ she declared, the vehemence of her tone leaving him in no doubt at all that she meant exactly what she said. ‘I’ll never be your mistress—I’d rather take the stable job any day.’

For a second the flare of cold anger in his eyes terrified her so that she moved on to her toes, poised ready for flight if he so much as took a step towards her. But Angelos simply blinked hard to clear the moisture from his eyes. Then he wiped the back of his hand across his face to clear even more of the wetness away.

And then, suddenly, shockingly, he smiled.

A cold-hearted, cold-blooded, darkly ruthless smile.

‘I rather thought you might,’ he drawled cynically, taking her breath away with the total lack of emotion in his response. ‘Somehow I thought that would be your answer. And that’s fine by me.’

And while she was still struggling to cope with the reaction that was the exact opposite of the one she had been expecting, while her mouth was still opening and closing, opening and closing, without ever managing to make a sound, he turned on his heel and took several long, swift strides

away from her, heading for the doorway. He was almost into the hall when he suddenly paused and looked back at her over his wet shoulder.

‘The job’s yours—you can start tomorrow.’

CHAPTER TEN

JESSICAdropped the last bundle of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow and laid the big fork on top of it. Straightening wearily, she rubbed her hands across her face and sighed.

‘That’s you done, Saracen.’

She patted the big bay stallion on the side of the neck before picking up the wheelbarrow again.

‘All nice and clean again.’

Once out in the main stable again, she carefully bolted the door to Saracen’s stall and stretched carefully, easing muscles that were tired from unaccustomed physical work. She was worn out.

Well, at least that meant she might sleep tonight, she told herself. And that had to be a blessing. It had only been three days since she had started working in the stables, but three nights without sleep had started to really tell on her. And she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Angelos had come back into her life. And that was in spite of being in the comfort of her own bed in her own room in the Manor House.

‘In Angelos’s room, in Angelos’s bed, in Angelos’s Manor House, damn it!’ she muttered to herself as she wheeled the barrow to the far end of the stables and out through the open door into the stable yard. Nothing in Manorfield was hers except for her clothes and the personal possessions in the drawers in her—in the room she slept in, she amended fiercely.

When he’d given her the job, she had fully expected that Angelos would insist that she also lived in the flat over the stables as well. That, she was sure, would have been his perfect revenge. A total turning of the tables on her as he forced her to live in the tiny apartment that was little more than a bedsitter with a bathroom—the place where he had lived seven years before when he had come to work at Manorfield in exactly the job she had now. She had resigned herself to taking on his position while he had hers—in charge of Manorfield and living in the big house. And she had little hope that things would be any other way, especially after she had refused his suggestion that she become his mistress and flung both it and the glass of water in his face.

So she had been stunned when in fact Angelos had told her that she could stay on in her room in the house, at least until the stable flat was renovated.

‘It’s not fit to house a dog,’ he told her when she had to talk to him in order to discuss just what the job involved and exactly what the conditions and pay were going to be. ‘The whole place wants ripping out and starting again.’

‘You’ve been up there?’

Jessica was frankly stunned. The idea of him going back to the cramped quarters he had lived in, the scene of her inept abortive attempt at

seduction when she had still been a teenager sent a sudden shiver down her spine. What had been going through his mind as he’d prowled around the three small rooms? Had he remembered her standing there, dressed in nothing but white lacy underwear and a ridiculously high pair of heels? She had thought that she had looked so sophisticated, so sexy. Now, with hindsight, she knew that she had only looked ridiculous and gauche, a million miles away from the sort of woman he had wanted—probably still wanted.

‘I took a look up there the other day.’

Catching the expression on her face and seeing the way that her teeth worried at the softness of her bottom lip, he laughed softly, cynically.

‘It was not a nostalgic visit for old times’ sake, if that’s what you were thinking. I checked the place out when I went on a tour of inspection of the whole estate. That was when I saw that it was in such a mess.’

‘You had to live there.’ She couldn’t hold the words back. ‘I thought you’d make me.’

‘But that was Marty’s decision. I can’t hold that against you.’ Not like so much else, his tone said. ‘It’s not fit for anyone to live there.’

‘No one has since you left here,’ Jessica managed, struggling not to remember the way that for so long she had had to fight with herself not to think about the dark, shabby rooms above the stables each time she had come to visit the horses or go out riding. In fact, there had been a long period when she had thought that she would never be able to walk past the door to the stables flat without recalling the brutal humiliation of Angelos’s rejection of her.

She should have told him she was sorry about that, her conscience reproved her. She really had behaved very badly, even allowing for the fact that she had panicked. But the Angelos who had come back here, trampling over everything, taking over everything, wasn’t someone she could apologise to, not after seven years. And now, with his outrageous demand that she should become his mistress…

And there was one of the reasons why she had been kept awake all night. The moment when he had asked—no, not asked, declared—that she should be his mistress played over and over in her thoughts every time that she lay down and closed her eyes. And in the darkness and the silence of the night the memory of that moment—and the ones that had followed it—had grown worse and worse each time she’d looked at it.

And each time she’d faced the truth.

Because the truth was that she had almost said yes.

No, Jessica, face facts. Shewould have said yes if he had left it a moment longer. If he had just held her, kissed her in that passionate way just a little longer. She had been in over her head, drowning, and if he hadn’t abandoned her, leaving her exposed to cold reality, then she very much feared that she would have given him the answer he had wanted.

And, as a result, she could now be living in luxury instead of worrying how she would ever be able to pay the bills that were coming in after her cancelled wedding to Chris.

‘No!’

Aiming a hard kick at a loose pebble, Jessica sent it bouncing over the stone flags to hit the opposite wall and ricochet back the way it had come.

‘No!’

Now, she shuddered at the thought of being in a sexual relationship with Angelos but seven years before, when she had been deep in the throes of a heady adolescent crush on the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, that would have been all that she could have dreamed of and more. But she wasn’t a teenager any more. She knew that there had to be more to a relationship than just fiercely blazing sex appeal. Though she had to admit that the pull that Angelos had on her senses was almost impossible to ignore.

Which was another reason why she had found it so hard to sleep.

Just being in the Manor House, in Angelos’s company, seeing him every day, watching him as he walked about the house or simply sat in the study going over every document relating to the place in his relentless determination to make Manorfield a successful concern again, was so disturbing to her peace of mind that she didn’t know how to handle it. It seemed that she couldn’t get away from him if she came to work either because then he was in the grounds, or even the stables—she had been stunned by how many times he came to the stables. In the end, when she managed to escape to the sanctuary of her bedroom and even if she did fall asleep then her dreams were haunted by the dark, powerful, shockingly sensual image of the man she had privately named the Black Angel.

Behind her a horse whinnied and, turning, she saw a familiar big grey head hanging over the half door into one of the stalls. Immediately her expression softened and she stepped forward with a smile, holding out a hand to him.

‘Charlie…’

Softly she smoothed the arching neck, rubbed in just the right spot behind the pricked ears and heard the sound of his hooves on the stone as he moved to butt her lightly in response.

‘I know, Charlie—I know you’re really mine,’ she told him, fishing in her pocket for the pieces of apple she kept there just for him. ‘And so do you. You really don’t belong to Mr Angelos “I own it all” Rousakis—but how can I prove it? The terms of his agreement with Marty say all land, buildings and livestock…’

She’d checked it. She’d even asked Simeon Hilton to go through it with a fine tooth comb, to see if there was any way out. But of course there hadn’t been and her beloved stallion was the property of the Black Angel like everything else. Just as he had wanted to make her too.

‘But at least as long as I’m here—as long as I have a job in the stables—I can take care of you…’

‘So that’s why you agreed to the stable hand job—’

The voice—dark, rich, masculine and achingly familiar—came to her from the open door into the yard, making her start in shock, then instantly still again as Charlie shifted restlessly in the straw.

‘I didn’t see you were there, sir.’

She made a point of putting an edge on to the last word—a satirical edge that twisted the single syllable and turned it into something that was the very opposite of the form of courtesy it was supposed to be.

‘No, you were too busy with your handsome friend here.’

He was right beside her now and she fought with the stinging sense of awareness that burned along every nerve as he reached out a hand and patted Charlie’s neck, strong, tanned, square-tipped fingers splayed against the soft grey hide.

‘Not that I’m surprised. He really is a very fine animal.’

Jessica could only nod silently, keeping her eyes forward and focused on Charlie. The sensual responsiveness she felt at seeing the hand that was on the horse’s neck was bad enough, but the fact that his arm brushed hers as he moved made those already sensitive nerves twist in sharp response. The formal businessman or the competent estate manager of the past few days had vanished and in his place was someone she had not seen since the days when their positions had been totally reversed and Angelos had worked here in the stables instead of her.

His plain white T-shirt was startlingly pale against the warm olive of his skin and the long, muscular, whipcord lean arms exposed by the short sleeves were lightly hazed with black hair that touched her skin as he moved. She could remember how she had loved to focus on those arms when she had watched him mucking out the stalls as she had just been

doing. Hidden behind a stack of hay bales or from up the ladder in the loft, she had loved to observe the play of muscles along his forearms, the way that they had bunched and flexed at his shoulders as he had lifted heavy forkfuls of dirty straw into the wheelbarrow or strewn fresh bedding across the floor of the stables. To her then, Angelos had been raw, earthy, sex on legs and she could never have imagined that the powerful businessman, all immaculate, crisp shirt, silk tie and perfectly tailored suit could ever even have existed.

To herthen …

Oh, who was she trying to kid?

There was nothen about it at all. She had felt that way from the moment she had first seen Angelos and fallen under his sensual spell and she still felt that way now. Nothing that had happened had changed a thing and she doubted if anything ever would. The seven years that had passed might not have existed, and Angelos had the ability to reduce her to the level of a naïve adolescent simply by existing.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see that the loose-fitting T-shirt was teamed with worn denim jeans that sat low on his narrow hips and clung like a second skin to the long, powerful thighs. The scent of his skin tantalised her nostrils and she didn’t dare to look into his face, knowing that the dark, carved features that had haunted her dreams every night were already etched on to her memory in a way that could never be erased.

‘So he’s actually yours.’

That broke her resolve not to look at him, bringing her eyes round to him

in a rush of shocked confusion.

‘You—you heard?’

‘I heard.’

Angelos kept his attention focused on Charlie as he spoke, smoothing his hands down the long neck, over the powerful shoulders. When the horse turned his head towards the newcomer he smiled and let the animal nuzzle his open palm.

That smile twisted something deep inside Jessica’s heart. Just for a moment he had reminded her of someone else, someone…

Her breath caught in her throat as she realised that the person she had been thinking of was Marty. With the evidence of her stepfather’s love for her in the beautiful animal before her, he had obviously been in her mind and that had brought her thoughts to make the connection, even though he and Angelos couldn’t have been physically more unlike. But, in the circumstances, the older man had come to mind.

‘But then, of course, I had already guessed.’

‘You had?’

Her thoughts were whirling now, confusion clouding her mind as she fought back the stinging tears that the memories of Marty had brought to her eyes. Through the blur she saw Angelos nod slowly, his eyes still on the big horse.

‘This guy is not your stepfather’s style—Saracen over there now, he was obviously Marty’s mount. Solid, dependable, strong. But this one here— what’s his name? Charlie? He’s just the sort of animal that Marty would buy for someone he loved for a very special occasion. What was it? A birthday?’

‘My twenty-first.’

Was that strangulated sound really her own voice? Jessica couldn’t believe how peculiar it sounded after she had forced it past the sudden constriction in a painfully dry throat. Where was he going with this? Was he going to use it as another weapon in his psychological war against her? Would he gloat over the fact that she had no documentation, no proof, or simply dismiss her claim with an arrogant wave of his hand and a curt declaration of,Tough!

‘I’ll get Simeon on to it.’

‘What?’

The words didn’t make any sense. They had been talking about Charlie, her twenty-first, Marty…

‘Well, obviously your horse is not meant to be part of the estate. I’ll get Simeon to make sure that your ownership of him is recorded and made legal. Then you will know everything is in order.’

Jessica could hardly believe what she was hearing.

‘You—you believe me. You accept that Charlie is mine.’

‘Of course. Why would I not?’

Joy was bubbling up inside her, spilling out of her heart and flooding her thoughts. After the past few terrible days when it had seemed that everything was going wrong and that everything she loved or valued had been taken from her, the unexpected reprieve brought a rush of delight to her head like a brilliant light, dazzling and blinding her.

Under its influence and not thinking of the possible consequences, she flung her arms around Angelos’s neck in a spontaneous gesture of delight and hugged him tight.

‘Oh, thank you! Thank you!’

His sudden absolute stillness should have warned her but she was beyond noticing, beyond caring.

‘You couldn’t have done anything that made me happier.’

Under the assault of her delight, Angelos put out his arms to steady her, to keep both of them balanced. At least, that had been his original intention. But, from the moment that his arms closed around her slender frame, he knew that his plan had changed totally. Support was the last thing in his mind, as was anything steady.

‘Jessica…’

As her lips headed for his cheek again he turned his face so that their mouths met, hot and hard and instantly responsive. He didn’t even have to kiss her before she was clinging to him in a very different way, her whole body softening in his arms, swaying towards him, melting against him.

And instantly it was as if the present had faded away, evaporating on the wave of heat that swept through every inch of him, taking him back through time, to the moment when he had been here in the stables like this, settling the horses for the night, and then he had gone upstairs to the poky flat above and found her waiting for him.

That memory was so very much in his mind because he had been up to the flat only a couple of days before. He had looked round the small shabby rooms, remembering how she had looked on that night, with her tall, leggy, still not fully developed figure in the stretchy white lace bra and knickers that she had so obviously thought made her look sophisticated but which, in fact, only made her look so very young.

Ridiculously young.

Impossibly young.

Dangerously young.

Ruinously young.

He had tried so hard to keep his distance, but she had ignored every

warning, every command to stay away.

‘Don’t you think of me as a woman?’ she’d asked. ‘Because I am a woman—a real woman—and I’ll prove it.’

And then she had thrown herself into his arms. And he had been lost. His determination to hold back, to push her away, had evaporated in a heartbeat and he had been totally unable to hold back.

Just as he was unable to do so now as he took her mouth with his, lips crushing lips, tongues tangling. His heart was pounding and sexual need flared, hot and demanding, sending the blood racing to harden him in between one hungry beat and the next. And he knew that Jessica must feel it too, he knew that the way she was crushed against him, the way that her mouth met his kiss for kiss, the way her hands tangled in his hair, fingers twisting in the strands as she pulled him closer, held him just so that she could kiss him even more deeply, even more passionately.

I am a woman—a real woman…

The words pounded in his head, taking on a new depth, a new importance with every repetition. Because he was only too aware of the fact that the body beneath his caressing hands was that of a fully grown woman, no longer an adolescent barely out of childhood. And that this time there was no need at all to hold back.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

STILLholding her tight against him and with his mouth claiming hers, Angelos kicked backwards at the open door, giving a small grunt of

satisfaction as he heard it thud into the opening, shutting out the light and the rest of the world. And then he was half walking, half carrying Jessica away from the occupied stalls, further into the back of the stables to where the piles of fresh clean straw stood stacked ready for the rest of the mucking out. A clean horse blanket hug from a hook on the wall and he snagged it one-handed as they went by, the other hand still keeping Jessica close to him.

Not that she needed any keeping. If anything, she was welded to him more closely than he could ever have held her and the way that one hand was still twisted in his hair, the other clamped hard against his back, meant that he was almost as much her prisoner as she was his. And as the need to keep hold of the blanket forced him to loosen his grip on her she took advantage of the fact, sliding the hand at his back under the loose hem of his T-shirt, teasing fingers caressing the skin of his back.

Her touch made him writhe in pleasurable response, his eyes half closing so that he almost stumbled on the uneven stone floor.

‘Jessica,agape mou …careful, you’ll have us over…’

Her laughter against his lips, into his mouth sent another erotic charge along every nerve, heightening every sense.

‘Isn’t that what you want—what we both want?’

‘You know it is—but not like this…let me…’

Somehow he managed to get the blanket down over the fresh golden straw, spreading it out as much as he could while both his view and his

movements were hampered by her clinging form. Those wicked hands were now underneath his T-shirt, one finger-walking up his spine, and the other dancing tormentingly around the waistband of his jeans, slipping under the leather belt, first at the back and then sliding around to the front. He knew when she felt the heat and force of his erection through the denim by the way she stilled for a heartbeat, and snatched in a sudden, raw breath.

Just for a second it seemed as if his heart stood still, as if he had gone back seven years and was just waiting, expecting the woman in his arms to stiffen in panic, to push him away. He almost felt that in a moment the light would come on and…

But if he needed any proof that the woman he held now was not the girl who hadn’t been able to cope with her own sensuality seven years before, then it was there in the way she relaxed again, the smile he could feel against his mouth and the way those teasing, tantalising hands returned to touch him intimately again, stroking their way along the line of his zip. And this time her laughter had a newly sensual edge to it, one that deepened, grew stronger as she heard his own harshly indrawn breath in response.

No, this was no unknowing, wary child-woman any more. This Jessica was all woman through and through and for a moment Angelos closed his eyes as he offered up a silent prayer of thanks for that fact.

He didn’t know if she caught the betraying movement or if somehow the fact that his attention was distracted reached through to her or simply that she caught her heel on an uneven stone but suddenly, with a swift twist, Jessica was falling back on to the blanket, her clutching hands taking him with her. And as they landed on the cushioned bed of straw, with her soft curves underneath him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her hips cradling the heat and hardness of him, he knew that this

could only have one possible ending and that was the one that he had been dreaming about all these years.

‘This time we finish this,’ he muttered against her throat, feeling the frantic pulse that raced and fluttered under the pressure of his lips. ‘This time you’re mine and mine alone. Nothing and no one else comes between us.’

This time you’re mine and mine alone.

Jessica felt her heart rate kick up another notch or two as the husky, possessive words sounded in her ears.

Mine and mine alone…

He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to send her spirits soaring, lighten her heart. Once again, the feeling that she was wanted and wanted only for herself went straight to her head like the most potent of wines, adding to the delirium of need that had already taken possession of her and sending it spinning out of control. If she had thought that she had known sexual hunger, burning desire a few days before then it was as nothing when compared with the white-hot passion that blazed through her as she gave herself up once more to Angelos’s kisses. She was so lost in need that she barely felt him tug open the cotton shirt she wore, sending buttons flying off into the shadows by the wall. She only knew that he had dispensed with her bra and his T-shirt as well when she felt the heat of his skin, the faint abrasion of his chest hair against the aching, tender flesh of her breasts, the erotic sensation making her moan with pleasure and press herself closer, intensifying the pleasure for both of them.

Her own hands, urgent and clumsy with need, fumbled with the heavy buckle on his belt, a furious mutter of frustration escaping her as she failed to unfasten it again and again. Angelos’s soft laughter sounded in her ear as he laid gentle fingers over hers, easing her impatient movements.

‘Allow me,kardia mou …’

He took her mouth again as she flung her hands apart in exasperated submission and she felt the laughter deep in his throat as he finished the job swiftly and efficiently, shrugging himself out of his jeans and tossing them aside.

The dry straw underneath the rough blanket rustled and cracked as he came down beside her again, this time kissing his way down from her mouth and along her arched neck to the spot where her pouting pink nipples seemed to demand the attention of those warm lips, the caressing tongue. But, even as he gave them the caresses they hungered for, he was busy too, easing off her jeans, taking her knickers with them and adding them to the pile of discarded clothing on the floor beside them.

One hand slipped down, teasing between her thighs, a muttered imprecation escaping him in his own language as he felt the heat and moisture at the core of her, the way that she was burning up with need for him.

‘You’re so ready…’

‘Yes…’

It was almost all she could manage. If he touched her again, then she would lose control, lose herself, lose all ability to speak, and there was something she had to say—something shemust say so that he knew it was him she was ready for, that his was the possession she sought—and no one else.

‘Yes, Angelos—yes. I’m ready foryou ,’ she muttered against his ear, needing to make sure that he caught every word, that he knew just what was on her mind. ‘It’s you that I want—only you and no one else. I want you to take me now—take me and make me yours—because I am yours— yours and yours alone…’

Her ardent declaration broke off on a cry of response as, needing no further urging, he lifted his powerful body over her, muscular legs coming between hers to part them and open her to him. Looking up into the deep dark eyes that burned down into hers, Jessica saw the glitter of passion in them, the burn of colour over the wide, strong cheekbones. And she met that smouldering stare with all the openness and courage she could muster, needing him to know that she was totally aware of who he was, and the he was that man she wanted.

‘Come into me, Angelos,’ she pleaded huskily, arching up against him, encouraging, enticing, inviting. ‘Come into me—take me—lo—’

The final word was choked off suddenly, breaking into a high, keening sound of wild delight as he took her at her word and came into her in one long, slow powerful movement. Her head went back, her hands clutching at his powerful shoulders above her as she gave herself up to the sensation of being filled by this man, being made complete by him and completing him all in the same moment. She took his groan of pleasure into her own mouth and deliberately encouraged more with a wicked little twist to her hips, laughter bubbling up inside her as his sudden gasp revealed how well she had succeeded.

‘Jessica—agape mou…you feel amazing!’

‘So do you, my darling…’ She let her tongue circle the shape of his ear as she whispered the words up close. ‘So do you.’

This was a new Angelos—a man she had never seen before. A man whose mouth had softened as he kissed her, whose eyes were lit from within, creating a glow that emphasised the vibrant darkness of his dilated pupils. A man whose whispered words were rough and intimate, for her alone, for the way that they were alone in this private world, in the tiny universe of two that they had created for themselves.

‘Angelos…’

Once more she pressed her mouth against his, once more she lifted her hips, rocking herself back, away from the heated force of his erection, then back again, slowly down the length of him.

‘Jessica…’

This time her name was a groan of surrender and as he made it she saw his face change dramatically. Every muscle tightened, his mouth firming as his jaw clenched, and she saw the soft glow fade from his eyes, to be replaced by a fierce, glazed determination as the heat of passion overcame him, took him over. The next thrusts into her willing, waiting body were wild and powerful, lifting her and taking her with him into a world where only the senses mattered, only their bodies and the storm of pleasure they were creating between them.

Already the first traces of orgasm were fluttering inside her, swelling, growing stronger and more insistent with every move she made. And Angelos too was losing control, his breath coming harshly, in raw, ragged snatches as he muttered her name again and again and again.

And it was that sound, the sound of her own name coming from between clenched teeth on a growing, rising litany of need and passion and satisfaction, the realisation that she and she alone was responsible for this stunning, powerful man losing control so completely, was the final push that thrust her right over the edge and into the oblivion of ecstasy, his name a long, keening sound of delight on her lips.

Through the heated clouds of bliss that filled her mind she felt Angelos’s own fulfilment follow close behind. The long body that she held so close tightened again, thrust again, then shuddered to total satisfaction, finally collapsing, limp and satiated on top of her, his head on her breasts, his mouth just managing to press one final breathless kiss on the softness of her flesh.

It was a long time before his racing heart slowed, before his raw breathing eased. But at last some sense or normality returned, the sweat that slicked their bodies dried and, as it did, Jessica stirred, half opened her eyes and then instantly closed them again, unable to cope with the reality of what had just happened. Not daring to look into Angelos’s face to try to find out what he was thinking, not knowing where they went from here, she retreated into the darkness behind her closed eyelids, unable to suppress a faint shiver as tiny icy footprints of uncertainty trailed their way over her skin.

‘Sorry…’

For one dreadful moment she thought that Angelos was saying he was sorry for having made love to her, but instead it seemed he thought her reaction was from genuine cold and he reached for his discarded T-shirt, pulling it over her and tucking it in. He then folded his arms around her, holding her close, resting his chin on the top of her head.

‘One thing, Princess,’ he said, and the commanding tone made her stiffen, a new sense of fear skittering over her skin. ‘Don’t call me sir again. Ever.’

The sense of release was so sudden, so shocking that Jessica didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. When she had still been expecting some declaration that this had been a mistake, something that should never happen again, the throwaway, dry comment caught her off balance, leaving her unsure how to respond.

‘Did I really say that?’ she asked, searching back in her memory to the time before the firestorm of passion had taken possession of her mind, leaving her incapable of thought and only able to feel.

‘You did—and made it sound like the worst possible insult that you could ever throw at me. If we are to be lovers then words like that have no place in our relationship.’

‘Then in that case I promise never again…’

Jessica was not quite sure how she managed to keep her voice remotely even and non-committal when her heart was doing crazy things inside her chest, jolting violently and seeming to be beating way up in her throat.

If we are to be lovers…he had said, and those words had such an

ambiguous meaning that she didn’t know how to handle them, how to feel about them at all.

If we are to be loversat least meant that they had some sort of future together, for a while at least. But only for a while.Lovers was a temporary state, quite unlike the partnership he had offered as an alternative to the stables job.

But, being brutally realistic, that ‘proposal’ had been purely motivated by business reasons, with nothing emotional behind it. Would she really be prepared to settle for so little?

Even as she asked herself that question, the answer that sprang into her mind shook her right to the depths of her soul.

Loverswas motivated by lust, the partnership proposal by financial considerations. Which was the worst, the most difficult to accept? The terrible thing was that, right now, she was prepared to accept either of them if it meant spending more time with Angelos in the future. But it seemed that the partnership had been a once-only proposal.Lovers was all that Angelos was prepared to offer to her now. Andlovers was what she would have to accept if she was to have anything at all.

Thinking back over the things she had said, the things she had almost let slip in the heat of passion, she could feel hot colour flood her body, shivers of near panic threatening to take a hold once more at the recollection of how unguarded she had been and what her own unthinking words had actually revealed. She was so glad that she had never finished that final sentence. That she had lost control so totally that she had not been able to complete what she had been about to say.

‘Come into me—take me—’ she had said.

‘Come into me—take me—’love me , she had been about to go on.

And she knew that those were not the words he wanted to hear. That love was not what he wanted from her.

But love was what she felt, she now realised. Impossibly, foolishly, crazily, dangerously, she had fallen madly in love with Angelos. Or perhaps she had always loved him. Perhaps, from the very first moment that she had seen the Black Angel here, in the stables where he had just stamped his sexual mark on her and made her his so conclusively, she had always been his. Perhaps that was why she had been stupid enough to think that she could marry Chris and be satisfied with him. What was it Angelos had called her ex-fiancé in response to the accusations she had flung at him in her anger and pain—? Mr Opposite-of-me.

At eighteen, she had fallen in love with Angelos and then, after the way he had treated her, knowing that the love she felt was too dangerous, too destructive, her self-preservation instinct had kicked in and made her choose a man who was as far away from the Black Angel as anyone could ever be. But she should have known that such a man could never satisfy her; that he would always have been found wanting, even if he had never betrayed her in the way he had. Once Angelos had come back into her life she could never have looked at any other man, let alone married him. She had been branded for life with Angelos Rousakis’s own personal stamp of intense sexuality and forceful maleness and no other man could ever match up to it.

Beside her the straw rustled as Angelos adjusted his position, stretched lazily and raked both hands through the black strands of his hair, smoothing them back into place after her hands had tangled them so

frantically in the throes of ecstasy.

‘I have to go…’

He was looking around, reaching for his discarded clothes. He wanted to be up and gone, his distracted attention said that.

‘Go where?’

‘Something’s come up. That’s what I came to tell you….’

Instinctively, Jessica clutched at the T-shirt, wanting to hug it close to her as if by doing so she could hold him with her even though he was on his feet, snatching up his jeans. Already she felt that he was on his way, putting her and the passion they had shared out of his mind as he focused on the other things he had planned.

‘I have to go to Greece. Business I have to attend to.’

Greece—but that was so far away. Too far away.

‘Are you coming back?’

Angelos paused in fastening his jeans, his hand stilling on the zip. Turning his dark head, he looked her straight in the face, the long, level stare seeming to search right behind her eyes, looking deep into her soul.

‘I don’t know—you tell me. Am I coming back? Do you want me back?’

Did she?

Did she have to ask? The answer was there at the top of her head in an instant. If she had had any doubts, then just the way she felt, the dreadful sensation of her heart tearing in two at just the thought of being parted from him for a moment told her the truth.

‘Yes.’ Oh,yes . ‘Please come back.’

The look he gave her was strange, unfathomable, his eyes clouded and opaque. It was as if he was debating something in his mind, weighing up pros and cons in some invisible scales.

Then, ‘I have a better idea. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘You…’

The answer was yes. Of course it was yes. Yes, please. But don’t bite his hand off, Jessica, she warned herself. You’re not eighteen any more, so don’t act as if you are. Play it as cool as you can manage.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she managed as airily as was possible while lying naked on a bed of straw with only a T-shirt—his T-shirt—to cover her. ‘You see, I’ve just started this new job and I don’t think I could take leave of absence so early.’

She must have managed somehow to catch just the right tone, just the right mood. To her surprise, his sensual mouth actually quirked up at the corners into a quick flashing smile.

‘How about if I speak to your employer? I’m sure I could persuade him to give you a couple of days off.’

‘But won’t you be working? You said you had business to attend to.’

‘I do, but that won’t take all my time. I’ll have some time off—for relaxation.’

For relaxation, read sex, Jessica admitted to herself. But she’d come this far, had admitted that she would take whatever he would offer her and not look for anything more.

‘Well, if you can persuade my employer…’

‘Consider it done. You’d better start packing.’

It was quite a promotion, Jessica reflected as she forced herself to follow his example and collect up her scattered clothes. Stable hand to mistress in the space of a morning. The problem was that she couldn’t switch from lover mode to business as swiftly and easily as Angelos obviously could.

And there was no promotion at all that could take her any closer to where she really wanted to be—in his heart.

CHAPTER TWELVE

JESSICAturned away from the sea and started walking across the sand, heading back towards the long, low, white-painted villa that stood on a small rise overlooking the ocean. The afternoon sun was just starting to sink towards the far horizon; soon Angelos would be home and their time together, that relaxation time he had spoken of, would begin as it had done on every evening in the week they had been in Greece.

This was her favourite part of the day. The time when, for a while, Angelos threw off the concerns of Rousakis International and became just Angelos, the man she loved.

There, she’d said it again, at least in the secrecy of her own thoughts. It was actually becoming less scary each time she did so. Back home, in England, and particularly at Manorfield, the idea of loving him had seemed terrifying, dangerous, with no hope of any possible future, but here, in the sunshine of the small jewel of an island in the Dodecanese, everything seemed to have developed a softer edge, become less tense and more at ease. Here, after a day spent wandering the beaches or simply relaxing by the pool, she could almost convince herself that she was on holiday here and that her relationship with Angelos—hot, passionate, but ultimately uncommitted—was nothing more than a wonderful holiday romance which she should concentrate on enjoying for as long as she possibly could.

It had about as much chance of surviving for very long as most holiday romances, she admitted to herself as she left the beach and began climbing up the small steep path worn into the hillside. She knew that Angelos wanted her sexually; he never made any secret of that. They had spent most of their time together either in bed or recovering from the long passionate lovemaking sessions that had left both of them

exhausted. But he had never said a word about any other sort of feelings, or shown any sign of making their relationship anything more than it already was.

And she would be a fool to ask for more.

She had told herself that she would be satisfied with what she had, and she would damned well do that. Even so, it became harder and harder to cope with each day that passed.

Angelos was late tonight. There was no sound of his approach; no sign of the helicopter circling in the sky.

Catching her own thoughts, Jessica gave a small laugh, shaking her head as she walked into the cool air-conditioned rooms of the villa. It was only a week since she had travelled here with Angelos and yet already she was growing that bit accustomed to the things that had first shaken her sense of reality on arrival.

Things like the helicopter that regularly flew Angelos where he wanted to go instead of driving, or even being driven. Of course, being on an island, the helicopter was more of a practical necessity than a luxury, but the first thing she had had to adjust to was the fact that this island actually belonged to Angelos. The island and the personal jet they had flown out to Athens in, the helicopter that had met them at the airport and ferried them to the island. In the end she had felt like Cinderella, snatched away from her place by the fireside and transported into a fairy tale world where she only had to ask for something and, Angelos being the generous lover that he was—it was granted.

Ask foranything …she reminded herself, recalling the scene just two days

after their arrival on the island that had proved exactly that.

Angelos had come back from Athens with a bundle of mail, couriered to him from Manorfield. Amongst all the others had been a couple of letters for her—letters that had made her gasp aloud and turn pale when she had read them.

‘What is wrong?’ Angelos caught her reaction and put his own mail down to study her face. ‘Jessica—tell me…’ he commanded when her hesitation clearly told him that she was about to brush off her reaction in some way.

‘Just some bills…for the wedding,’ she added reluctantly, seeing from the way he kept his eyes on her face that he knew there was more, and that he expected her to tell him.

‘Bad?’

‘Bad enough…’

She knew that her voice shook because she was looking back at how much money Marty had wanted to lavish on her and knowing a sense of horror at the thought of him doing that while all the time he and Manorfield were going under fast.

‘If only I had known the position Marty was in then I’d have gone for something much simpler. But he insisted. And, of course, even though the wedding’s been called off there are still bills to be paid…What?’ She broke off sharply, staring in astonishment at the hand he held out.

‘Give them to me,’ Angelos commanded. ‘I’ll pay them.’

‘No—I can’t…’

‘Of course you can.’

He dismissed her protest with an arrogant flick of his wrist.

‘Can you afford to pay them? Obviously not…’ he commented as her eyes went back to the frightening figures detailed in red and she knew that her face had lost all trace of colour. ‘Let me deal with them.’

‘No…’

Angelos’s sigh was a perfect blend of resigned patience and total exasperation. ‘Jessica, don’t be so damn stubborn. I will pay them. Why not? I paid all the rest.’

That stunned her totally, her head going back, eyes widening in shock.

‘You—when—why?’

Angelos shrugged off her question with one shoulder. ‘They came to Marty, so they were part of the estate…’

Once again he held out a hand for the bills. ‘I paid those, I’ll pay these.’

‘But I can never repay you.’

The frown that snapped his dark brows together was cold and frightening, sending a shiver of apprehension running down her spine.

‘Did I ask for repayment? What is it, Jessica?’ he asked when she still hesitated. ‘Do you still hold some attachment to your former fiancé—is that it?’

‘No! How could you think that?’

She doubted if she had even spared Chris a thought in the past few days. Angelos had so completely erased him from her memory, replacing him totally in her thoughts that it was as if he had never existed.

‘Then give me the bills—it is worth paying them to know that you are free of all ties to him.’

And the subtly implied threat behind the words left her with no alternative but to hand them over, knowing that not to do so was to risk Angelos suspecting that there was some secret reason why she didn’t want to do as he said.

But where was Angelos now?

Jessica stepped out of the shower, where she had rinsed the sand from her body and the sea water from her hair after her swim earlier.

Reaching for one of the fresh huge, soft towels that were piled on the bathroom cabinet, she swathed herself in it and wrapped another around her hair before padding into the bedroom and starting to get ready for the evening.

She always showered, changed her clothes and did her hair ready for dinner when Angelos arrived home. He had never told that she had to dress for dinner, but somehow it always made her feel a little better if she did so. It made her feel less like a freeloader, someone who was only taking the luxury and the comfort that Angelos’s island home provided and offering nothing in return. At least he had a relaxed, stylish and welcoming partner to come back to.

And when, as happened every night, she felt a twinge of discomfort at the thought that she was like some old-style concubine, bathing and perfuming her body in preparation for the attention of her lover, like some handmaiden in a sheikh’s harem, then she pushed it away, refusing to let it settle and take root. There was some truth in the image, but not a total truth. She had chosen this path, it was her free decision and so, she acknowledged with a glance towards the huge king-sized bed that she had shared with Angelos on every night since their arrival here, with a faint snort of wry laughter, she had made her bed and she was very definitely going to have to lie in it.

After putting on white lacy underwear and spending a few minutes blowdrying her hair into a sleek, smooth style that hung loose on her shoulders, Jessica crossed the room to the huge built-in wardrobes that lined one wall. When she had first reached the island from England, her small case full of clothes had barely made any sort of impact on the enormous hanging space, but almost every time that Angelos came back from Athens or wherever he went every day, he had brought at least one gift for her—sometimes more. Perfume, jewellery and sometimes clothes, so that now when she opened the big mirrored doors she was faced with a choice of stunning designer outfits, the sort of thing that she could

never have afforded to buy for herself, even when Marty had been alive.

Sighing, Jessica reached for a dress, a beautifully cut, totally simple fulllength slip dress that she knew, from one try-on, set off her colouring and figure wonderfully. The deep turquoise silk flattered the light tan she had acquired from her days in the sun, and the fine material just exposed the tops of her breasts, clinging to every curve on its way down to fall in soft, flowing folds that swirled around her ankles when she moved. It was stunning—spectacular—but she would have traded it and every other gorgeous, expensive gift he had given her for one moment of real feeling, one trace of true love.

But that was a fantasy—and here and now was reality. And the only thing she could let herself deal with was reality. Even to dream of anything else was laying herself open to worse heartbreak with every second that she let herself indulge in the vain hope.

The hanger that held the dress had stuck for some reason and Jessica had to tug at it, twisting it slightly to get it out.

‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘Comeon !’

Another tug and she had it in her hands but the jerky movement had dislodged another hanger, sending one of Angelos’s jackets tumbling to the floor—the jacket he had worn out to work only the day before.

‘Darn it!’

Tossing the turquoise dress on to the bed, she bent to pick up the linen jacket before it could crease. But, as she did so, she heard a rustle and a

thud as something fell from one of the pockets and she had to kneel down to scrabble amongst the shoes on the rail to find what it was.

‘Double darn…’

Her ability to talk, to think, deserted her as she brought out the pen and a couple of envelopes that had fallen to the floor. Envelopes addressed to Angelos…but to Angelos at Rousakis International—and they were both addressed in handwriting that was disturbingly, painfully familiar to her.

‘What?’

Sinking back on her heels, she stared at the long white envelopes, their English stamps, the postmarks actually from the village post office just down the road from Manorfield. And, if she had doubted the evidence of her eyes, then there on the back of each one, printed carefully and neatly, impossible to deny, was the name and address of the sender.

Chris Atkinson’s name and address.

For a long moment Jessica simply stared, unable to believe what she was seeing. But no matter how hard she looked, or how hard she blinked again and again, trying to clear her vision so that she could focus on the words in front of her, they still read exactly the same.

Christopher Atkinson…

Why was her ex-fiancé writing to Angelos? And one of the dates on the postmarks wasbefore the date of Marty’s funeral.

Before Angelos had come to England.

And before Chris had ever broken off their engagement.

Jessica’s vision blurred again and her hands trembled as she tried to pull one of the letters out from the envelope. The paper shook in her hand and the words danced before her eyes as she tried to make head or tail of it.

Dear Mr Rousakis…received yours of the 23rd…Thank you for your cheque…

Why—just why—would Chris receive any cheque from…?

‘What the hell are you doing?’

It was Angelos’s voice, dark and raw with fury, and, glancing up in shock, she saw that he was standing in the doorway, face as black as a storm cloud, eyes glittering with the suppressed fury she could hear in his tone. Because he had been working, he was wearing the steel-grey suit he had put on that morning, but the silver and black tie had been tugged loose at his neck, the top buttons of his darker grey shirt unfastened to reveal the long, tanned column of this throat, a hint of black hair on his chest. The helicopter must have landed while she had been blow-drying her hair and she hadn’t heard it. Then he had come upstairs, silent and unobserved.

‘I said—what the hell are you doing, going through my jacket pockets?’

Angelos demanded again.

‘I…I…’ Jessica stammered but then, swiftly rethinking as she remembered just what was in the letters she had read, she switched her tone from defensive to attacking. ‘No—you tellme just what the hell is going on. Why is Chris writing to you? What were youpaying him for?’

If she had hoped to catch him off guard, she didn’t succeed. Angelos blinked just once, then spoke in a coolly dismissive tone.

‘I told you—there were bills for your planned marriage that came to the Manorfield estate, some of them from Atkinson.’

It all sounded perfectly reasonable, so why did something still nag away in the back of her head, telling her there was more to this than Angelos was letting on?

‘So now, if you’ll let me have my property back…’

The black ice of his eyes, the controlled anger in his tone, almost convinced her. She had actually folded up the letter, was pushing it back into the envelope, when remembrance struck, reminding her of the real truth.

‘No…’

Hastily she scrambled to her feet. He was too big, too powerful, too totally overwhelming towering over her like this. He was making her feel overawed just by standing there and it made it impossible to think

straight. And she had to think straight because there was something going on here that she really didn’t understand.

Something that she knew she needed to understand.

‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently, sending her hair flying around her head. ‘No, that isn’t right…Chris…these letters…One of them was written before Chris broke off our engagement. Before you ever came to England. What did my fiancé have to say to you before…?’

Breaking off, she studied the man before her with eyes suddenly sharpened by a new sense of awareness, a disturbing rush of reality. He hadn’t moved—she would have sworn that even his expression remained exactly the same and yet there was a new air of tension about him, of withdrawal, as if he had actually taken several determined steps well away from her.

‘Just why would you even be in contact with Chris before you came back to Manorfield? You knew his name…’ she cried as memory struck again, with bitter recollection. ‘Why? And just what else did you know about him?’

‘I told you—I’ve watched what was happening at Manorfield for years.’

‘You’ve done more than watch! You paid Chris—paid him for what?’

‘I paid your wedding bills.’

‘But this is different!’

At the back of her mind there was suddenly a nasty, creeping memory of Angelos saying, ‘It is worth paying them to know that you are free of all ties to him.’ But, with her thoughts so jittery and unsure, she couldn’t find a way to make this fit with what was happening now. And the sight of Angelos, dark and glowering as he stood in the doorway, didn’t help her to think any straighter.

‘I—I’m sleeping with you—what did Chris do for you?’

Angelos’s harsh crack of laughter made her flinch inside, it was so coldly, brutally cynical, with no trace of any humour in it.

‘Well, he sure as hell isn’t pleasuring me…’

‘Then why…?’

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Angelos moved. Striding into the room, he crossed to the bed and snatched up her short white cotton robe that lay there and tossed it at her. Her hands came up instinctively to catch it.

‘Put that on,’ he commanded. ‘If we have to have this conversation, then at least cover yourself up. That way, I might actually be able to think straight.’

‘And why do you need to think straight?’ Jessica challenged, ignoring the command to dress. ‘What is it that you have to hide?’

Something flared in his eyes—something dark and dangerous and infinitely threatening to her fragile grip on her self-control. Just for a second there was something else as well, something that she couldn’t grasp or recognise before he blinked hard and it was gone and he was back in control again, expression carefully blanked off, eyes opaque.

‘We had an argument like this once before, Princess,’ he drawled cynically. ‘With you dressed—or should I sayundressed —very much as you are now…’

His burning gaze seared over her exposed body in the white bra and knickers and she felt as if it had scoured off a much needed protective layer of skin wherever it had touched. It was a look that stripped away years too, taking her right back to the night in the tiny flat above the stables when she had tried so gauchely to seduce him. He had scorned her then and the memory of his rejection was enough to reduce her to a similarly uncertain state all over again.

‘And I lost that one—’

‘Lost!’ Jessica cut in on him, her voice rising sharply. ‘Oh, come on, yes, I was wrong—and selfish—to make you lose your job. But it was a job that you really didn’t need, apparently.’

‘Apparently?’ Angelos questioned and a strange, inexplicable note twisted his voice on the question in a way that made all the hairs at the back of her neck lift in wary, apprehensive reaction, though she had no idea exactly why.

‘Well, look at this…’

The wild gesture of her hand took in the luxurious bedroom, the open door that led to the superbly fitteden suite bathroom and, out beyond the balcony, the huge oval swimming pool, the gardens—the island itself.

‘You’re hardly desperate for money—you own the island, for heaven’s sake! So are you telling me that even seven years ago you actuallyneeded a job as lowly as being a stable hand for my stepfather?’

She didn’t know what she had expected his response to be, but his silence was all the answer she needed. It was what he wasn’t saying— what he couldn’t say that gave him away.

‘You see!’

‘It depends what you mean by “needed”,’ Angelos said at last, pushing one strong hand through the shining darkness of his hair. ‘But no, I didn’t take that job for the money.’

‘Then…’

Honesty forced Jessica to break off, rethink. A guilty conscience pushed her into the words she should have said far sooner than this.

‘Angelos, I admit that I didn’t behave the best way that night and I’m so sorry. I’ve felt so bad about it ever since. I was young, I was foolish— selfish—naïve. I know I didn’t tell the exact truth but I wasscared . I couldn’t bear to see how Marty would react if he thought that I’d led you on—that I was responsible for the way he found us. He was the closest thing I had to a father—I thought of him as my dad…’

‘I can understand that,’ Angelos put in roughly, but Jessica needed to go further, make him really understand.

‘But I admit that I also told myself that you’d be able to handle it. You were so much older than me—more worldly.’

‘And that made it all right that you should take everything?’

‘No, of course not. But you admit you didn’t need that job, Angelos!’

‘I didn’t just lose the job. I lost my honour—and…’

His voice scared her. It was so low and cynically ominous that it made cold shadows of fear skitter across her skin. And his face was just a closed off mask—rigid, withdrawn, totally distant. Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was heavy, oppressive, like the heat and pressure that developed before a violent storm. And yet Jessica felt shiveringly cold. So cold that she now reached for the white robe he had flung at her and hurried herself into it. She felt too exposed—too naked—with his eyes on her now, and she desperately needed the extra protection the white cotton provided.

‘Honour? But—but there was no dishonour in flirting with me—kissing me, Angelos. I wanted that. I know Marty was furious, but…’

‘There was when I had given my word that I wouldn’t come near you. That I would—as Marty said—keep my hands to myself and my thoughts locked inside my head.’

‘Marty made you promise that?’ Jessica managed, too stunned to put much strength into her voice.

A swift, curt nod was Angelos’s silent confirmation of her words.

‘He said he’d seen the way I looked at you—the way I couldn’t take my eyes off you—and that that wasn’t going to happen. Not between you and a stable boy.’

He’d seen the way I looked at you.So now, of course, she was looking back and seeing Angelos’s behaviour—that coldly cynical behaviour—in a very different light. She was seeing his deliberate flaunting of Lucille, his callous rejection, that cutting ‘I don’t play with little girls’, as something that Marty had clamped down on fast.

‘You—you fancied me?’ she managed and winced as Angelos gave another of those cold, mirthless cracks of laughter. ‘Did Marty get that right?’

‘Completely right.’

Once again Angelos raked a hand—both hands—through his hair and Jessica had the strangest feeling that he was doing it just for the moment when his face, and particularly his eyes, were hidden from her underneath his palms. She could almost sense him adjusting his expression behind their shield.

‘I did more than “fancy” you. I wanted you like hell. And you were always there—always hanging round the stables. You were so damn persistent; I

couldn’t get rid of you. You think you were easy to give up, Princess? Think that I could just switch off the way I felt and forget about it? But I’d given my word.’

You think you were easy to give up, Princess? Think that I could just switch off the way I felt and forget about it?

Jessica was starting to feel as if she were on a wild emotional roller coaster ride. One moment those words were lifting her spirits way up high at the thought that he had felt that way. The next they were plunging way, way down with his use of that ‘were’ and the realisation that everything he was talking about was in the past. Nothing of what he said touched the present.

‘But you didn’tneed the job. So why do as Marty said?’

Something flickered in those deep dark eyes, alerting her to the fact that she had unknowingly come close to the real heart of things—to the real problem. And suddenly she was hearing over again in her head Angelos’s words of just moments before.

I didn’t just lose the job. I lost my honour—and…

But she had cut him off before he could complete the sentence.

‘“…a job…my honour—and…”?’ she said carefully, her heart twisting when she saw his dark frown and knew she’d hit the mark. ‘And what Angelos? What else did you lose?’

If she’d needed any proof that she was closing in on the real reason behind all this then it was there in the way that he swung away from her, paced across the room and then back again, finally coming to rest beside the huge French windows that opened on to the balcony overlooking the sea. Behind him, the slowly setting sun turned his long, powerful body into nothing but a silhouette, totally black, his face and its expression hidden from her.

‘Think about it,’ he flung at her. ‘Think about why something would matter so much that you’d follow any path, obey any stupid, tyrannical rules if you thought it would get you what you wanted. Why did you lie about me?’

‘But that was because of Marty. Because I loved him. As I said, he was the closest thing I had to a father…’

Some change in Angelos’s position, a sudden movement, as if he had been stung, caught her attention. Every instinct springing to red alert, she moved, adjusting her position so that she was no longer blinded by the sunset but could once again see his face clearly. And the change in him shocked her. He looked drawn and tense, harsh lines round his nose and mouth, and new shadows seemed to have appeared under his eyes.

‘Angelos…’

‘You were afraid of losing the man who was the closest thing you had to a father; I understand that so well. And do you know why I understand? Because I was afraid too—afraid of losing the man I knew to bemy father.’

Because I was afraid too—afraid of losing the man I knew to be my father.

‘No!’

Jessica felt as if his words had taken all the strength from her legs so that they would no longer support her. Unable to stay upright, she staggered back and sank down on to the bed, shaking her head in desperate denial.

‘No…’

But, even as she said it, she was remembering the way that Angelos had looked when Marty had appeared, the way he had lost colour until even his eyes seemed washed out and pale. The way he had taken everything the older man had thrown at him.

‘Are you saying that Marty was your father?’

She didn’t need an answer. It was there in the cold, bitter set of his face, the way that his eyes were shuttered against her.

‘Marty couldn’t have children…’

‘Marty’swife couldn’t have children. Marty certainly could. He had a short affair with my mother when he was visiting Greece. I was the result. But by the time she found out she was pregnant he had already gone home and married the woman he’d been engaged to all the time. I didn’t know that until she died. In one of our very last conversations she finally told me who my father was. That was when I came looking for him.’

‘Why didn’t just you tell him who you were?’

‘I didn’t want to just announce it cold. That’s why I took the job—any job. I needed to see how the man treated his servants. How he treated anyone. And, besides, at that stage I was not totally sure that I would even want to acknowledge him—or if he would acknowledge me. I wanted to get to know him and have him get to know me. So I came to Manorfield.’

She couldn’t doubt his story any more. The truth of it was etched into his face. And in the back of her mind was the image of the day in the stables when, seeing Angelos with Charlie, she had suddenly thought him so like Marty—so like hisfather .

‘And you found me there, installed as Marty’s adopted child, in the place you should have occupied. You must have been furious.’

‘I might have been if it hadn’t been you. But I took one look at you and I wanted you. I fell in love three times that day—with my father—with Manorfield—and with you.’

Fell, Jessica noted miserably. Past tense again.Fell in love. And her own foolish, selfish way of behaving had destroyed all that.

‘I wanted you but at the time I wanted my father more. I would have done anything he ordered just for a chance to get to know him.’

And she could understand that, couldn’t she? Wasn’t that how she had felt herself when Marty had come into her life, the only father figure

she had ever known?

‘And, besides, I thought that if I waited—played it safe—then maybe one day I could have it all. Have Marty and Manorfield—and eventually you.’

‘Instead of which, I messed it up for you. Angelos, when he told you to get out—why didn’t you just say…?’

‘I did. After you’d gone. When he took you back to the house, I followed. I waited until he had you settled for the night and then I forced my way in and I told him. He didn’t believe me. He said he always believed that it was his fault he and his first wife couldn’t have children and besides…’

Angelos paused, his mouth twisting. He was obviously having trouble saying what came next.

‘He said that no son of his would ever force himself on a young girl the way that I had done to you.’

‘The way that I’dclaimed you’d done. Angelos—I’m so, so sorry.’

She longed to go to him, to put her arms round him, hold him, ease the bleakness from his eyes. But everything about him—the steps he took away from her, his expression, the tautness of his muscles, his very stance—screamed silent rejection of her and anything she tried to say or do.

‘Now I see what you meant about what I took from you.’

She understood everything. Every last, savage bit of it.

‘You thought that I had taken everything from you and so, in revenge, you set out to take everything from me. And you succeeded. You took my home, the inheritance I thought was mine. You bought off my fiancé so that he broke our engagement. You even took my self-respect when you made me your mistress.’

‘I didn’t see you fighting me off when I took you in that bed last night.’

Angelos’s angry gesture took in the wide king-sized bed where she had spent every night held in his arms, her limbs entwined with his. The memory stabbed at her, making her want to fold her arms around her body, to protect herself from the pain. Instead she lashed out again in self-defence.

‘Just because you can make me want you doesn’t mean you can make me care!’ she flung at him as he moved towards the door. ‘You’ve brought me as low as you wanted—so I hope you’re satisfied. All that I want to know now is—have you achieved all you set out to do? Have you had enough?’

‘Enough?’ Angelos echoed the word, his voice dark with the cynical contempt that flared deep in his eyes. Long fingers grasped the door handle, pulling it open as he spoke. ‘Have I had enough? The answer to that, my dear Princess, is no—never. Where you are concerned, nothing will ever be enough. But for tonight, yes. Tonight I’ve had as much as I can take.’

It was a deliberate exit line, that much was obvious. He was determined to go—to get out of here as fast as he could. And Jessica didn’t have the

strength, mental or physical, to try to call him back.

She didn’t dare, she acknowledged as the door slammed to behind him. If he stayed she would only say something that would give herself away completely. If he had said anything more, pushed any harder, then she would have been unable to hide from him just how much he had really taken from her.

And that he had succeeded far better than he had ever dreamed.

But the one thing she must never let him know was the way that he had also taken her heart. If he was to realise that, then his triumph would be darker and deadlier than ever.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ITtook Jessica just five minutes to reconsider.

At first she paced up and down the room, fighting back bitter tears, struggling to find a way to handle the pain that Angelos’s callous words had inflicted on her. If she could have found a way off the island, she would have packed her bag and left. But the fact that there was only the helicopter that would take her anywhere, and that was at Angelos’s command, totally under his control, forced her to stay where she was. It was when she realised that her actions were so like the ones when Angelos had walked out on her that night at Manorfield, that she suddenly came to a halt, new found resolution flooding through her.

That night she had known what she must do. She had told herself that she would face Angelos, that she could no longer play the coward and hide

behind the beliefs she had let shield her from reality seven years before. Then she had let Marty treat her like a child, putting her to bed while Angelos faced the full impact of what had happened.

She couldn’t do that now. She was not a child any more. And she couldn’t hide behind Marty’s protection.

She had to go to Angelos and face him as an adult. Admit that she had been wrong—so very wrong—in the way that she had behaved. Only then could she go into the future knowing she had done her best to put things right.

Flinging aside the white robe, she grabbed the turquoise silk dress and pulled it on. It was hardly the thing for a hunt through the house, but at least it gave her a little extra self confidence that she would need when she found Angelos. If she could find Angelos.

In the end it didn’t take her as long as she had feared. Looking out of the bedroom window, she saw his dark figure down below her on the beach, hands pushed deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched as he stood at the edge of the sea, staring out at the far horizon. There was something about his stance that reminded her of the last words he had flung at her.

But for tonight, yes,he’d said.Tonight I’ve had as much as I can take.

…as much as I can take.Not as much ofyou as I can take.

It wasn’t much, but it was all that she had to go on.

The beach was growing dark when she made her way down there. In the shadow of the cliff, she could hardly see a thing and for a moment she hesitated, unsure of quite where he might be now.

‘Angelos…’ Her voice was weak, strained, the sound of his name breaking in the middle.

At first there was no response, just the still silence broken only by the faint lapping of the waves. But then she heard his response from further down the beach.

‘I’m here.’

There was no welcome in the words, but then she had hardly expected one. But at least they were not openly aggressive. And he hadn’t told her to get the hell out of there, which was what she had most expected.

‘What do you want?’

He was still standing at the edge of the shore, his shoes kicked off and the sea water lapping at his bare feet. But he didn’t seem to give a damn about the damage that the salt water was inflicting on the fine material of his trousers and his dark eyes were fixed on her face. In the shadows she could barely read their expression so she couldn’t tell if there was anything there to encourage her to go on or not.

She had her chance. She had to take it.

Swallowing hard, she forced the words out.

‘I’ve come to apologise—really apologise for everything that happened between you and Marty. You say you lost your father but the truth is that I lost him for you. If he’d asked me again then I’d have told him the truth. But he didn’t. He just said that you had left, spitting vengeance and vowing never to return. He said we were never to talk about it again, so we didn’t.’

Angelos was so still that he might have been part of the cliff behind him, at one with the sand and the sea, but in the moonlight she caught the faint grimace that twisted his sensual mouth.

‘He was right about the spitting vengeance—and the vow never to return,’ he admitted. ‘I meant every word of that at the time. I was only twentythree, hot-headed and arrogant as hell. I truly believed that I would never, ever want to be in contact with him again. But I always kept a close watch on what was happening at Manorfield and a few years down the line I reconsidered. That was when I started bailing Marty out. I hoped that this time, when he saw how I could help him, that I could support him, that maybe this time he’d listen.’

Angelos’s dark eyes closed briefly and he dashed the back of his hand across them, bringing it away glistening faintly. Jessica’s heart twisted agonizingly inside her, the pain made all the worse by knowing that if she tried to comfort him he would only reject her.

‘I never thought that he would die of a heart attack before I could ever get to talk to him.’

Perhaps because of the darkness that hid the details of his expression from her, she could hear the pain of loss in his voice as never before.

‘You kept an eye on Manorfield and so you knew everything that was going on.’

Jessica had almost forgotten about the letters she had found but now she had to know the truth about absolutely everything. Deep inside she knew a desperate wish that she had been wrong, that she’d misread the dates when she’d looked at them. But Angelos’s reaction earlier had taken that hope away. And with a terrible creeping sense of dread she suddenly felt that she knew what it meant.

‘You were watching Manorfield and you knew what was going on. You knew about me—and about Chris. And you paid him a lot of money before you even came to England. What did you pay for, Angelos? What did you buy from him?’

‘Your freedom.’ It was cold, stark, irrefutable. ‘I paid him to break off your engagement—to leave you free.’

‘Free for you?’

She couldn’t believe how bitter the words were in her mouth. They burned like acid on her tongue.

‘You wanted it all—Marty, Manorfieldand me and you set out to ensure you got it all. How you must have hated me. But of course I understand. I destroyed your chance with your father and…’

‘No—it was not like that.’ Angelos shook his dark head violently. ‘Never

like that!’

‘You paid Chris to break off our engagement. You bought him off. There was never any other woman.’

‘Oh, but there was. I knew all about that and I used it to get him to agree. He wasn’t good enough for you, Jessica. He only wanted what he could get from you because you were the heiress to Manorfield. He was going to marry you and then walk out once you’d paid off all his debts with the settlement Marty was going to give you.’

‘Unlike you, who didn’t even trouble to marry me to get what you wanted! And you saw it as the perfect way to get your revenge. You wanted Chris out of the way so that I was free—free for you to move in on me.’

‘No.’ Angelos kicked out at the lapping water as he flung the single word at her but she was hurting too much to be able to understand his dark anger.

‘Why not? I can see how things were. I took your father away from you— you must have hated me for that.’

‘Hated…’

Angelos’s laughter was hard, brittle, seeming to shatter the air around them so that Jessica almost expected to see the word fall in tiny splinters of ice into the sea.

‘Dear God, but I wish I could have hated you—it would have been so much

easier.’

‘Easier?’

Was she hearing things? Had the pain in her heart made her start to imagine what Angelos might say?

‘Easier than what?’

The look he turned on her reminded her of nothing so much as the one a wild animal in a corner might turn on the pursuers that had it trapped. It was savagely furious, defiant…and desperately lost.

And suddenly she knew instinctively that she had to press him on this. That this was the only chance she had to find out what was really going through his mind.

‘Easier thanwhat , Angelos?’

‘Thanlove, damn you !’ It was almost torn from him. A sound of desperation, an admission of defeat. ‘Than bloody well loving you. Loving you so much that I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t act rationally, couldn’t make any decisions…’

Once again he shook his head in despair at his own behaviour.

‘That was the thing that was hard. Hating you would have made things so much easier. I thought I hated you when I came back to Manorfield. That

I wanted revenge for the way you’d taken my father from me—but I was wrong. So wrong.’

Jessica’s throat had tightened painfully. She felt as if someone was twisting their hands around it, cutting off her ability to speak—to breathe. She didn’t dare to say a word, to risk interrupting him and perhaps stopping the flow of what he was saying. She desperately needed to know just what hewas saying and the possible repercussions it might have for her.

‘What I wanted was you. It always had been—always will. I let my need for my father get in the way the first time—and because you were so very young. But I thought I had time…’

Angelos’s voice cracked on the words and once more he dashed an angry, revealing hand over his eyes.

‘Marty’s death showed me that we can never be sure of how much time we have with anyone. That was why I had to come to Manorfield. At first I thought it would be enough to call in Marty’s debts from here—to know that I owned Manorfield and that you were out…But I had to go to Marty’s funeral and as soon as I saw you I was lost. I’ve never been able to get you out of my head. I’d always wanted you and I still did.’

Jessica had to speak now. She had to know…

‘So you didn’t pay off Chris for revenge?’

She knew that Angelos had understood the importance of the question because of the way he suddenly stilled as she asked it. The way that his

deep, dark eyes went straight to hers and held them.

‘Revenge—no. I knew what he was up to and I couldn’t let him get away with it. I couldn’t stand by and let him treat the woman I love—’

‘Loved?’

She had to force herself to say it. She needed to know the full truth. Without it, she felt that her heart would stop beating, her brain cease to function. She needed to know if he was talking about the past—or— please, God—the present.

‘The woman you once loved—or…’

The words tangled up in her throat as Angelos moved forward at last, stunning her by reaching out to take her hand, hold it close to his chest.

‘The woman I loved—still love now and always will love,kardia mou . Jessica, you have my heart—my soul—all that is good in me. Damn it…’

He broke off on a raw, self-deprecating laugh that tore at something in Jessica’s own heart. Instinctively, she reached out a hand towards him, wanting to touch him, soothe him, assure him…but she hadn’t completed the action before he started again and she froze, leaving her hand halfway between them like an incomplete lifeline, waiting to be finished.

‘You even have all the worst of me. I love you and I can never stop loving you. You have everything—all that I am. And, to prove it…’

He was reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket, but now Jessica had to stop him. Now she had to complete the gesture, moving forward to put her hand over his, stop his action. With her fingers resting where they were, just above his heart, she could feel the frantic race of his pulse that told the truth of what he was saying, with no words being needed.

‘No, Angelos—don’t—not until I’ve told you…’

Once again his stillness told her that he recognised the importance of the moment. That and the burning darkness of his eyes that were fixed on hers in the moonlight, reading what she was about to say in the strength and the calmness of her gaze. But she still needed to say it because, along with a faint lightening of the shadows in his eyes, there was also a touch of something raw, something uncertain, something desperately vulnerable as he opened himself up to her in all the strength of his feelings.

‘I don’t need any proof, Angelos. Not from you. Not when I can see what is in your heart—and when I know what is in mine. I love you too, my darling. I love you with all that is in my heart, all that…’

She got no further because Angelos reached for her, pulled her to him, brought their mouths together in a long, hungry, searing,loving kiss that made words superfluous because it said everything and left nothing at all unsaid about the way they felt for each other.

It was a long, long time before either of them could bear to move apart, and even when they did their foreheads still rested against each other, their hands still linked, keeping them together.

‘I still have something to give you,’ Angelos managed, his voice husky and raw.

‘You’ve given me everything,’ Jessica could only whisper. ‘What more could I want when I have you?’

But what he put into her free hand made her stare in blank bewilderment and confusion, unable to believe what she saw.

‘Angelos…these are the deeds to Manorfield and all that’s in it. What…?’

‘It’s yours, my love. Manorfield is yours.’

‘But you love the place almost as much as I do…’

Jessica broke off as Angelos laid a gentle finger across her mouth to silence her.

‘I thought I did, but I realised that I loved you more. And it was being at Manorfieldwith you that I wanted. If you weren’t there, then the place wasn’t a home…’

His voice deepened, became rich with a sincerity of love that brought tears to her eyes. ‘Without you, nowhere was a home. These past few days, coming back to you on the island, I’ve learned where my true home is—and it’s with you, wherever you are. In your arms I know I’ve come home. So today I came to a decision. I was going to give you Manorfield, so that you knew you always had a home, no matter what—and then…’

‘Then…’ Jessica prompted softly when he hesitated, looking deep into her eyes, and his grip on her hand tightened, revealing the strength of feelings he was keeping inside.

‘Then I was going to ask you—to marry me. To share my life and my home, wherever I was, for however long we live. So tell me,agape mou —if I asked you that—Iam asking you what your answer would be.’

Looking up into his intent, loving face, Jessica smiled softly and leaned forward to press a long, lingering kiss on his mouth. She knew that her answer was in that kiss but still she had to say the words, wanting him to know that her love for him was every bit as deep and as powerful as his for her.

‘Angelos, darling, I am already home. My home is with you, my life is you— and without you I am only half alive. It’s your love that makes any place my home, and your love that makes my life so complete. And so, my love, my beautiful Black Angel, my answer is yes. Yes, I will marry you.’

ISBN: 978-1-4268-2397-8

BEDDED BY THE GREEK BILLIONAIRE

First North American Publication 2008.

Copyright © 2008 by Kate Walker.

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