Mediterranean Seduction. Кэрол Мортимер
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‘Yes, really!’ What had she done? Charlotte wondered angrily. ‘You owe me an explanation!’
‘What?’ The single word left his lips on an explosion of breath.
‘You heard me.’
‘I don’t owe you a thing!’ he snarled back.
‘I don’t want you at the villa!’ Charlotte assured him. ‘Not in this mood.’ When he tried to catch hold of her again, she snatched her arm away.
Iannis answered that by swinging her off the ground into his arms. Binding her arms to her sides, he strode into the villa, marched down the shady passageway and shouldered open the door into her bedroom.
Charlotte wasn’t sure whether she kicked herself free or if he chose to drop her down on the bed. She didn’t wait around to find out. Moving to the door, she stood beside it, tense with anger.
‘Out!’ She stood her ground when he took a fast, angry step towards her. ‘What are you going to do now, Iannis?’ she demanded furiously. ‘Hit me?’
He looked shocked. ‘I have never laid a finger on a woman in my life,’ he said coldly, ‘and even you could never push me that far.’
As they stood confronting each other, eyes blazing, Charlotte believed him. But that neither excused nor explained his behaviour. ‘Are you going to tell me what this is about?’
‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me?’ Iannis countered harshly.
Suddenly all she could remember was the words of love he had spoken to her, his tenderness, the safe harbour she had found in his arms. ‘I think you’d better get out,’ Charlotte said, horrified to hear her voice starting to shake.
‘Not until you have explained this,’ Iannis said coldly, picking up her digital camera and brandishing it in her face.
‘My camera?’
‘And,’ he said, striding past her out of the room and indicating that she should follow him, ‘this.’
‘What?’
Stalking into the kitchen, Charlotte saw he was standing over the table where she had left her work.
‘This,’ he said again, turning to look at her.
Charlotte rushed to guard her manuscript. ‘Did you imagine I don’t work for a living? I’m a journalist—’
‘A journalist?’ he echoed sarcastically. ‘Is that what you call yourself? So, what’s this?’ Holding up her camera, he cocked his head as he waited for her reply.
‘As we’ve already established,’ Charlotte said acerbically, ‘that is a camera.’
‘I mean, what were you doing with it?’
He made a sound of disgust and Charlotte was horrified to see him starting to remove the film card. ‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed angrily.
But Iannis was too fast for her. Catching hold of her wrists in one fist he held her still. ‘I’m removing the film card,’ he said evenly.
‘How dare you?’
‘Oh, I dare,’ he said easily, and, slipping it onto the palm of his hand, closed his fingers around it.
‘You can’t steal that—’
‘Watch me.’
‘Give it back to me this minute or I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ Iannis demanded harshly. ‘Call your lawyers?’
Charlotte stalled a moment in bemusement as he let her go. No one in their right mind would call in lawyers to retrieve a film card with—what?—twenty shots taken. Pictures she would still have time to replace before she returned home the next day. But it was the principle that inflamed her most of all. Iannis couldn’t just walk into her bedroom, pick up her camera and steal all the photographs she had taken on Iskos.
‘Well?’
His curt question was the last straw. She snatched the camera away from him, and tried to get the film card out of his hand too.
‘Not so fast,’ Iannis warned, seizing hold of her again. He held her so close their breath mingled. ‘You haven’t given me an answer yet,’ he reminded her coldly.
‘Keep the damned photographs,’ Charlotte hissed furiously, whipping her face away because it hurt too much to see the change in him. ‘I can get plenty more where they came from!’
‘I bet you can,’ he agreed bitterly. ‘But you won’t be taking any more pictures of me.’
Charlotte’s heart banged against her ribcage. Was he going to leave the island—leave her?
‘Did you really imagine that temporary access to my body gave you rights over my life?’
Charlotte’s lips moved, but no sound came out. ‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ she said at last, shaking her head in stunned disbelief. ‘Did you have to think long and hard how to hurt me most, or does it just come naturally to you?’ And if that was the case then it was over between them, she realised. She hadn’t come to Iskos to lick her emotional wounds only to leave with a fresh set.
‘I hurt you?’ Iannis demanded with a snarl of derision. ‘I’m surprised you have the gall to accuse me of doing such a thing when you have sunk so low.’
The series of verbal blows left Charlotte dumbstruck. ‘If I had any idea what you were talking about,’ she said at last, hoarsely, ‘then perhaps I could defend myself.’
‘Try this,’ Iannis said coldly, holding some crumpled sheets of paper up in front of her.
Taking them from him, Charlotte blenched as she read the notes for her article. ‘These are just some notes I made for an article I’m writing—a draft—’
‘A draft?’ he said derisively. ‘So you didn’t finish it?’
His face told her he already knew the answer to that.
‘So?’ he said when she remained silent. ‘You don’t even bother to deny it?’
Of all the emotions washing over her, it was guilt that made Charlotte feel the most wretched. ‘Perhaps I should have discussed it with you first—’
‘Perhaps?’ Iannis echoed incredulously. ‘And now?’
‘I wrote it, and I stand by it,’ Charlotte said. Her voice was soft and steady.
The laugh Iannis gave was short and contemptuous. ‘And how much money will this little effort make you?’
Was money all he cared about?
‘I said,’ Iannis repeated, and his voice was tight with fury, ‘how much do you hope to make from this, Charlotte? Enough to make you feel better when you realise how much damage you’ve done to me?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Charlotte protested. ‘This won’t damage you, Iannis. It will make people sit up and wonder where their own lives are going wrong. You’ve got it all—can’t you see that?’
He laughed in her face, and then shook his head. ‘You really don’t understand anything, do you, Charlotte? You just don’t know what you’ve done.’
‘Of course I know what I’ve done,’ Charlotte said, defending herself fiercely. ‘Looking for stories like this one is what I do every day of my working life—’
‘I bet it is,’ Iannis snarled. ‘Go on.’
He made Charlotte feel as if she was standing on a cliff-edge and he was about to push her off. ‘I have written an article,’ she said, ‘and it’s a good one, according to my editor—for which I will be paid enough to cover my bills back home.’