CHAPTER THREE

      WHEN Alexei had first blazed into Victoria’s life she’d been just nineteen—an ordinary catering student living on a stingy grant, taking extra jobs whenever she could. When many girls her age had been out partying, she’d found herself putting prawns into hundreds of little pastry cases. Or sprinkling glistening little black caviar eggs onto smoked salmon—if it was a particularly upmarket party.

      Very occasionally she’d be required as ‘front of house’, as a waitress—expected to tie her hair back and don a smart uniform, and waft around glorious rooms offering trays of canapeés to the great and the good and the extremely rich.

      The night she’d met Alexei she’d had no idea what the party was for or who the guests were. It had been just another function in a golden ballroom in a glorious house overlooking St James’s Park. The central London location had been as fancy as you could find—and the guests had more than done it justice. There’d been lots of thin women wearing some serious jewellery, and very loud men who’d given a whole new meaning to the word ‘lecherous’.

      Victoria had been so busy handing out champagne and blocking murmured innuendoes that she hadn’t even noticed the exotic-looking man with the exceptionally dark hair on the other side of the room.

      Alexei had been bored. He’d been at the tail-end of a globe-trotting trip which was a reward from his father for his first-class degree from Harvard. He had recently travelled to Paris, Milan and Madrid—as well as Prague and Berlin. The achingly familiar taste of Europe had reminded him just how much he had missed it, but he couldn’t wait to get home. To Greece.

      He hadn’t been sure at just what point the waitress had imprinted herself on his consciousness and set in motion all the complex factors which determined desire and sexual chemistry. She wasn’t particularly to his taste—she was fair, when he liked his women dark—but she’d moved with exquisite grace, despite the faintly old-fashioned silhouette of her hour-glass figure.

      He’d watched her weaving her way in and out of the crowd, the way she’d managed to make the commonplace movement of offering a tray into some intricate, music-less dance. And the fact that every man in the room must want her—had that fuelled his determination to have her—he who could always have the pick of any woman he chose?

      Come here, he’d willed her. And—as had happened during so much of a life which many called charmed—she’d chosen just that moment to obey his silent command.

      Had the intent gaze fixed so unwaveringly in her direction made Victoria look up to find herself imprisoned in an enchanting ebony blaze? Had it been his height or his very foreignness which had made her own glance linger for a fraction longer than entirely necessary?

      And she’d found herself blushing—stupidly and infuriatingly blushing. As if no man had ever looked at her like that.

      Because no one had. Well, certainly not a man like that—not in a way which had made the breath catch in her throat and her stomach curl into a warm mush of pleasure.

      But she’d deliberately turned away—and that had been the necessary reaction to him. Because Victoria had long ago accepted the unrealistically romantic side to her nature, which she reined in as if it were a dangerous animal for fear of what havoc it could cause were it released.

      For Alexei, the back turned on him—with the fold of fair hair pleated against a long, slender neck—had been tantalising. The very gesture of rejection had been as appealing as the woman herself. Later—much later—he would reflect on the significance of this, but for now his hormones were raging around his bloodstream in a torrent of longing.

      He had waited for her to come to him—as come she must. Not simply because she was there to provide a service for the hosts, but because he had compelled her to do so. And it was working. It always worked.

      Her face had been flushed and almost defiant as she’d drawn near.

      ‘At last,’ he murmured.

      ‘Canapé, sir?’

      He waved he plate away impatiently. ‘What time do you finish?’

      ‘That’s a very impertinent question, sir.’

      ‘I’m a very impertinent man,’ he breathed, and smiled a smile which would have been perfectly at home on the face of one of his forebears—those gods of myth and legend. ‘If I promise to behave like a … gentleman—’ his black eyes mocked her ‘—and to deliver you home before the break of dawn, will that make a difference?’

      Victoria hesitated, sensing he was trouble, and yet …

      ‘Nine o’clock,’ she said crisply. And she turned and walked away, telling herself that he wouldn’t bother turning up and that it was probably a party game he played to pass the time—seeing how many women would agree to meet him.

      But he was waiting for her at the staff entrance, looking sombre and yet enticingly dependable in a dark overcoat with its collar turned up against the unseasonably chill wind.

      ‘Shall we eat something?’ he questioned. ‘Or does working with food spoil your enjoyment of it?’

      It was a perceptive question, which naturally only added to his appeal. ‘Sometimes. But I’m not hungry,’ she said.

      ‘Me neither.’ Well, not for food. But you couldn’t tell a woman whose name you didn’t even know that the only thing you wanted to eat was her.

      It had none of the ingredients for a suitable romance—certainly not from Alexei’s point of view. She was English, and poor, and not particularly well educated. On the plus side she was very beautiful—and still a virgin. But that incredulous discovery carried with it the burden of responsibility. To his astonishment and annoyance, he discovered a nagging conscience—realising that he could not simply bed her and then abandon her! In fact, she had none of the qualities he was looking for in a partner—and he wasn’t even looking for a partner!

      But Alexei was failing to take into account something he hadn’t thought could happen to him—for emotion wasn’t high on his list of priorities. And when it did finally happen, he didn’t recognise it. He tried to deny it. Until his denials sounded hollow—even to his own ears.

      He had fallen in love.

      The most overwhelming feeling of his life—passion which defied description. And—perhaps because he had always been cynical about its existence—it hit him harder than most. He was too much in its thrall—and hers—to even try to fight it.

      One night he buried his face in her scented hair as she clung to him, both of them aching and frustrated as they broke off from kissing.

      He knew that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her—and he knew what he had to tell her before that happened.

      ‘I love you, Victoria, agape mou.’

      Her heart gave a wild leap of joy, but she looked up at him crossly. ‘You don’t have to tell me that just because you want to go to bed with me! I’m going to sleep with you anyway.’

      ‘Are you?’ he murmured.

      ‘You know I am.’

      He dipped his head and his lips tingled as he brushed them provocatively against hers. ‘Then perhaps I will make you wait.’

      ‘Wait?’ Flagrantly, she pressed her body against his, freed by his declaration to start to explore her sexuality properly. ‘Wait for what?’

      ‘Until I make you my wife,’ he said a little unsteadily—not sounding