Mediterranean Millionaires

Finishing the call, Hope returned the phone to her bag. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell her best friend that she had been called a whore. She was too afraid that Vanessa might secretly think that Elyssa had had some justification for voicing that cruelly humiliating opinion. Emerging from the cloakroom, she saw that Ben was now lounging up against the wall a few feet away.

‘Let’s talk…’ he urged, holding out a languid and rather wavering hand, which made her suspect that he was drunk. ‘Who stole your big happy smile? I want you to tell me what’s wrong. Van would kill me for walking by on the other side.’

Cheeks hot with self-consciousness as envious female eyes locked to her, Hope hurried over. ‘Shush…there’s nothing wrong…please keep your voice down—’

Ben locked both arms round her as much to keep himself upright, she suspected, as to prevent her walking away. ‘Would you like me to take you home?’

‘Thank you but no—’

‘I got droves of women,’ Ben confided lazily, bloodshot green eyes mocking her as she blushed and attempted to tug free of his hold. ‘Do you think I could seduce you away from your Greek billionaire?’

‘No chance. Nothing and nobody could,’ Hope swore with fervour.

‘Never say never…it’s like challenging fate.’ Scanning her pale, troubled expression, Ben sighed and dropped an almost paternal kiss down on top of her head. ‘You’re way too sweet and straight for Nicolaidis.’

Andreas was the restive centre of a crowd. He was bored: even at a distance she could tell. His stunning dark golden eyes picked her out when she was still moving towards him. Lean, extravagantly handsome face intent, he abandoned his audience without hesitation and strode forward to intercept her. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.

‘When the dialogue turns to gold prices and pork bellies, I feel a bit surplus to requirements.’

‘Let’s go, pedhi mou.’ Closing a determined hand over hers, Andreas trailed her in the direction of the hall and remained wonderfully impervious to every fawning attempt to slow down his progress. ‘We should never have got out of bed…’

As he hurried her down the steps into the cool night air the shameless sexual sizzle in his skimming appraisal made her tummy clench and her mouth run dry. Suddenly everything that had upset her seemed utterly unimportant. She loved him to death. What else mattered? In a spontaneous movement, she stretched up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to a bronzed cheekbone and she breathed in the heady male scent of his skin with the delight of an addict.

‘Andreas? Please wait,’ a soft voice interposed from behind them in Greek. ‘I need to speak to you.’

Andreas tensed, ebony brows drawing together. He tucked Hope into the waiting limousine with scrupulous care and an apologetic smile. ‘Give me five minutes…I’ll say your goodbyes for you.’

Elyssa’s approach had made Hope tense as well, but she was grateful to be released from the challenge of dealing with his volatile sister again. She had been surprised at how quiet and hesitant the brunette had sounded until it occurred to her that perhaps Elyssa intended to confide in her brother and admit that all was not well in her marriage. Hope liked that idea, for she felt bad about withholding what she had seen from Andreas. After all, he was very attached to his sister and her two young children. Cynical he might be, but Hope was convinced that he would make considerable effort to keep his sister’s family together.

Perhaps Elyssa, who had married when she was still very young, had allowed a flirtation to get out of hand. Whatever, Hope reminded herself that the situation was none of her business. But even so the whole wretched tangle was liable to put Andreas in a very bad mood. Andreas was not tolerant of female mistakes in the fidelity line, Hope reflected ruefully. More than once she had heard him pass distinctly judgemental comments on that score.

It was fifteen minutes before Andreas joined her. In the artificial light his vibrant olive skin tone had an unusually pale aspect. His brilliant eyes were dark and screened to a brooding glitter. Convinced that his sister had told him what had happened, Hope was unsurprised by his silence during the drive back through the city streets. He was fiercely loyal to his own flesh and blood and he had never discussed Elyssa with her.

When Hope recognised the tension in the atmosphere, she thought she had to be imagining it. Then doubt crept in. Had Elyssa accused her of snooping? Surely Andreas was too sensible to pay credence to that far-fetched idea? Her brow tightened even more with tension.

In the lift on the way up to the apartment, she met bold dark eyes cold as the Atlantic in winter. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked instantly.

‘Why are you asking?’ Andreas murmured sibilantly.

Hope had never heard that daunting inflection in his rich dark drawl before. Entering the hall, she kicked off her shoes as was her wont and hesitated.

‘Hope…?’

Slowly she turned round and stared back at him. Andreas was still lodged at the far side of the spacious hall. Lethally tall and exotically dark and sexy, he looked so drop-dead gorgeous he took her breath away. Yet her sense of being under threat at that moment was so intense that she felt slightly queasy.

Andreas strolled fluidly towards her. Brilliant dark eyes flashed shimmering gold. ‘Did anything happen tonight that you would like to tell me about?’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_cbd5117f-274d-5277-a1b7-e4147b4842e9)

HOPE gulped. Why was Andreas acting as if she had done something wrong? She had no desire to whinge about Elyssa’s unkindness or indeed to tell tales about the younger woman. Yet if Andreas knew that she had seen his sister with another man, why was he making a mystery of that embarrassing event?

‘No, nothing comes to mind,’ Hope answered uneasily, wishing she did not feel quite so guilty about keeping quiet on Elyssa’s behalf.

‘You were seen with Ben Campbell,’ Andreas imparted icily, but there was a dauntingly rough and unfamiliar edge to his intonation.

Disconcerted by that reference to Ben, Hope turned pink and shifted uncomfortably, but she could see no reason to be the slightest bit apologetic on that score. ‘Yes, I did speak to Ben for a couple of minutes.’

‘Finlay, my brother-in-law, saw you with him. You were in Campbell’s arms.’

That particular choice of wording sent a stab of sincere annoyance travelling through Hope. Could something so minor and innocent in every way be responsible for causing so much bad feeling? She had not even met Elyssa’s husband. But she could not help thinking that there was surely something rather mean-spirited about a man capable of reading anything suspect into her brief chat with Ben. ‘It wasn’t quite as you make it sound—’

Andreas elevated a black brow. ‘Wasn’t it?’

Her usual calm chipping away at an ever-faster rate, Hope stared back at him in an effort to comprehend the mystery of his unusual behaviour. He had never shown signs of being unreasonably jealous or possessive. Now all of a sudden he was acting like a stranger. ‘Of course it wasn’t. For a start there were at least half a dozen other people nearby,’ she pointed out. ‘Ben wasn’t even flirting with me, he was just fooling around.’

His lean bronzed features remained maddeningly uninformative. ‘Was he?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Andreas,’ Hope continued with gathering force, for a cascade of little mental alarm bells was beginning to go off inside her head. ‘Ben probably put his arms round me because he had to hang onto me to stay upright. He was rather merry. There certainly wasn’t anything else to it. In fact, I’m finding it very hard to believe that we’re having this conversation.’

‘We’re having this conversation because five minutes after Finlay saw you getting cosy in public with Campbell, Elyssa surprised you getting cosier still in private,’ Andreas delivered with grim clarity.

Hope stilled, the animated pink draining slowly from her shaken face. ‘Say that again…’

‘Surely I don’t need to repeat it,’ Andreas said, his disgust unconcealed. ‘You went into a private room with Campbell.’

A tiny pulse had begun to go bang-bang-bang at Hope’s temple and she was so stiff she might have been fashioned out of stone. ‘I did not go into any room to be alone with Ben—’

Something flashed in his hard, dark gaze: a sizzle of golden fury. ‘This is grubby…this is beneath me!’ Andreas incised with a raw, slashing derision that cut her to the bone. ‘At least admit the truth. When such behaviour is witnessed, there is no scope to lie or make excuses.’

‘But I’m not lying or making excuses,’ Hope fielded breathlessly, for sheer shock was making her feel as if she had been punched squarely in the solar plexus. ‘What am I supposed to have been doing with Ben?’

‘You were kissing him—’

‘I wasn’t!’ Hope gasped. ‘Your sister is—’

Andreas spread his arms in a sudden violent movement that shook her into silence. ‘Don’t offend me even more by daring to question my sister’s integrity. She saw what she saw. You abused her hospitality and embarrassed her.’

‘I did not…I swear I did not,’ Hope muttered in bewilderment, her head swimming with too many thoughts at once. As she finally grasped how cruelly manipulative and unashamedly deceitful Elyssa Southwick had been, she felt sick to the stomach. For an instant she was simply shattered that someone she barely knew could be prepared to tell a lie of such appalling magnitude about her.

‘Elyssa was very upset and she didn’t know what to do. But after discussing the matter with her husband, she decided that I had a right to know that you were behaving like a slut behind my back!’ Andreas bit out rawly, his wintry cool and control starting to crack.

Hope trembled. ‘But it’s not true. Not a word of it is true—’

‘I want to hear you admit the truth before I leave. You owe me that at the very least,’ Andreas growled.

Even as she saw that her world was falling apart, Hope was sickly fascinated by the callous ruthlessness that Elyssa had employed to bring about the destruction she had threatened. ‘I’ve been a real fool,’ she mumbled in a daze. ‘I always try to overlook other people’s mistakes and not stand in judgement because I know I’m not perfect either. But I overlooked one very dangerous fact…your sister is as clever as you are and it seems she decided that I was a threat to her security.’

His handsome mouth curled. ‘That’s offensive nonsense. Have the decency to leave Elyssa out of this unpleasant business.’