The Demetrios Virgin. PENNY JORDAN
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walked in. He was seated at the bar, which was now being besieged by a crowd of young men who had come in just ahead of her. He could have stayed in and eaten in the office block’s penthouse apartment—or even driven to the closest of their new acquisitions—but he had already endured two lengthy phone calls he would rather not have had this evening: one from his grandfather and another from Athena. So he had decided to go somewhere where neither of them could get in touch with him, having deliberately ‘forgotten’ to bring his mobile with him.
He hadn’t been in a particularly good mood when he had arrived at the wine bar. Such places were not to his taste.
He liked good food served in comfortable surroundings where one could talk and think with ease, and there was also enough Greek in him for him to prefer somewhere more family centred and less of an obvious trawling ground for members of the opposite sex.
Thinking of the opposite sex made his mouth harden. Athena was becoming more and more brazen in her attempts to convince him that they should be together. He had been fifteen the first time he had been exposed to Athena’s sexual aggression, and she had been twenty-two and about to be married.
He frowned as he watched Saskia. She was standing just inside the doorway, studying the room as though she was looking for someone. She turned her head and the light fell on her smoothly glossed lips.
Andreas sucked in his breath as he fought to control his unwanted reaction to her. What the hell was he doing? She was so damned obvious with that almost but not quite scarlet lipstick that he ought to be laughing, not…Not what? he asked himself caustically. Not wanting…lusting…
A strong surge of self-disgust lashed him. He had recognised her, of course. It was the girl from this afternoon, the one the receptionist had congratulated on her early departure from work. Then she had been wearing a minimum of make-up. Now…He eyed her lipsticked mouth and kohl-enhanced eyes grimly. She was wearing a suit with a short skirt…a very short skirt, he observed as she moved and he caught sight of the length of her sheer black tights-clad legs. A very, very short skirt!
As the turned-over waistband of her once respectably knee-length skirt made its presence felt, Saskia grimaced. Once she had found Mark she fully intended to make her way to the cloakroom and return her skirt to its normal length. It had been Lorraine, of course, who had insisted on shortening it.
‘I can’t go out like that,’ Saskia had yelped.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Lorraine had derided her. ‘That’s nothing. Haven’t you seen pictures from the sixties?’
‘That was then,’ Saskia had informed her firmly without letting her finish, but Lorraine had refused to give in and in the end Saskia had shrugged her shoulders and comforted herself with the knowledge that once Lorraine was out of sight she could do what she liked with her skirt. The cardigan too was making her feel uncomfortable, and unwittingly she started to toy with the first of its unfastened buttons.
As he watched her Andreas’s eyes narrowed. God, but she was obvious, drawing attention to her breasts like that…And what breasts! Andreas discovered that he was starting to grind his teeth and, more importantly, that he was totally unable to take his eyes off Saskia…
Sensing that she was being watched, Saskia turned round and then froze as her searching gaze clashed head-on with Andreas’s hard-eyed stare.
For a breath of time Saskia was totally dazed, such was the effect of Andreas’s raw masculinity on her. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry, her body…Helplessly transfixed, she fought desperately against what she was feeling—against what she was not allowed to feel. For this was Megan’s Mark—it had to be. She could not really be experiencing what her emotions were telling her she was experiencing, she denied in panic. Not a woman like her, and not for this man, Megan’s man!
No other man in the place came anywhere near matching the description Megan had given her as closely as this one did. Mentally she ticked off Megan’s euphoric description of him—one Saskia had previously put down to the near ravings of a woman besottedly in love. Gorgeous, fantastically good-looking, sexy…Oh, and he would be wearing a blue shirt, Megan had told her, to match his eyes. Well, Saskia couldn’t make out the colour of his eyes across the dimly lit distance that separated them, but she could certainly see that Megan had been right on every other count and her heart sank. So this was Megan’s Mark. No wonder she was worrying so anxiously that he might be being unfaithful to her…A man who looked like this one did would have women pursuing him in droves.
Funny, but Megan hadn’t mentioned the most important thing of all about him, which wasn’t just that he was so spectacularly and sexually male but that he emanated a profound and intense air of authority that bordered almost on arrogance; it had struck Saskia the moment she had looked at him. That and the look of discreet male inspection quickly followed by a reactive resultant look of contemptuous disapproval.
That look…How dare he look at her like that? Suddenly all the doubts she had been harbouring about what she had agreed to do were vanquished.
Lorraine was right to be suspicious of such a man’s motives, especially where a naive, gentle, unworldly girl like Megan was concerned. Saskia didn’t trust him one little bit. Megan needed a man who would appreciate her gentleness and treat her correspondingly. This man was powerful, daunting, awesome—and looking at him was, as Saskia was beginning to discover, something of a physical compulsion. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. But that was just because she disliked him so much, she assured herself quickly, because she was so intensely aware of how very right Lorraine had been to want to test his loyalty to Megan.
Determinedly quelling the butterflies fluttering in her stomach, Saskia took a deep breath, mentally reminding herself of what she had read in the article Lorraine had thrust under her nose. Then she had been horrified, repulsed by the lengths the girls hired by the agency were prepared to go to in order to entice and entrap their quarry into self-betrayal. It had even crossed her mind that no mere man could possibly find the strength to resist the kind of deliberate temptation those girls offered—everything from the most intense type of verbal flattery right up to outright offers of sex itself, although thankfully offers had been all they were.
A man like this one, though, must be used to women—attractive women—throwing themselves at him. ‘He dated so many girls before he met me,’ Megan had said innocently.
Saskia would just bet that he had. Megan was a honey, and Saskia loved her with a fierce loyalty, but even she had to admit that her friend did not possess the kind of glamorous instant eye appeal she suspected a man like this one would look for. But perhaps that was what he loved about her—the fact that she was so shy and homely. If he loved her…Well, that was up to Saskia to prove…or disprove…wasn’t it?
With the light of battle shining in her eyes, Saskia made her way towards him.
Andreas watched her progress with a mixture of curiosity and disappointment. She was heading for him. He knew that, but the cool hauteur with which she not only ignored the interested looks she was collecting from other men as she did so but almost seemed not to notice them, was every bit as contrived as the unfastened buttons of the top she was wearing. It had to be! Andreas knew the type. He should do. After all, Athena…
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Saskia apologised as she reached Andreas’s side and ‘accidentally’ stumbled against him. Straightening up, she stood next to him at the bar, giving him a winsomely apologetic smile as she moved so close to him that he could smell her scent…Not her perfume, which was light and floral, unexpectedly, but her scent,…the soft, honey-sweet headily sensual and erotic scent that was her. And like a fool he was actually breathing it in, getting almost drunk on it…letting his senses react to it…to her…
Lorraine had coached her on her best approach and Saskia had memorised it, grimacing with loathing and distaste as she did so.
Andreas forced himself to step back from her and put some distance between them, but the bar was crowded and it was impossible for him to move away altogether, so instead he asked her coldly, ‘I’m sorry…do I know you?’
His