Expectant Bride

‘I’m afraid that item is sold out, sir,’ he was told acidly.

‘Take it off the dummy, then,’ Dio instructed the woman, whose badge proclaimed her managerial status.

‘Mr Alexiakis!’ Ellie hissed, cringing with embarrassment.

On the clear brink of making a deflating retort, the older woman’s mouth fell open when she heard that name and took a better look at the tall black-haired male towering over Ellie. ‘M-Mr Alexiakis?’ she stammered in incredulously.

‘Yes, the owner of this chain of shops,’ Dio confirmed, surveying the unfortunate woman with menacing disapproval. ‘Tell me, do your staff usually stand around chatting when there are customers requiring attention? And since when has a display been more important than making a sale?’

‘You’re quite right, sir. Please allow me to assist you,’ the manageress muttered unevenly, her discomfiture unconcealed.

‘This lady needs lingerie. Pick some out for us.’ His attention falling on the shoe racks, he dragged Ellie across to them. ‘What size are you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life.’ Ellie was trembling with rage and chagrin. ‘Is this the way you normally behave in public?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded with ringing impatience. ‘We don’t have time to waste. Choose some shoes.’

In the background the manageress was struggling to strip the shorts outfit from the mannequin with hands that were visibly trembling.

In a sudden move of desperation, Ellie stretched up and heaped all the garments into his arms instead. ‘Why don’t you just go over to the checkout and wait for me there?’

‘I’ll stay here to expedite matters—’

‘You are not standing around while I choose undergarments!’ Ellie hissed up at him, like a viper ready to strike, infuriated green eyes flaming bright as jewels. ‘I don’t need so much stuff either.’

Black eyes scorched down into hers. ‘I’m paying you to do as you’re told—’

‘If I have to put up with you, it’ll need to be plenty!’

His brilliant gaze literally shimmered, a dark flush of colour accentuating the savage slant of his sculpted cheekbones. Incredulity emanated from him in waves. Nobody speaks to me like that—’

‘Oh, stop throwing your weight around,’ Ellie told him witheringly.

‘I—’

‘You’ve behaved atrociously from the moment we walked in here,’ Ellie condemned fiercely. ‘Go over to the checkout and keep quiet, and try not to terrify the life out of anybody else!’

Turning her back on him, unperturbed by the rasp of Greek invective Dio Alexiakis was audibly struggling to restrain, Ellie chose a pair of high-heeled black sandals and tried them on. They fitted. She passed them to him without a backward glance before joining the ashen-pale manageress at the lingerie section and hurriedly selecting a nightdress and some sets of bras and briefs. Argument, she sensed with a shudder, might well lead to further public mortification. She would leave the clothes behind when she was finally free of the dreadful man. And already the mere thought of another thirty-six hours in Dio Alexiakis’s domineering and boorish radius daunted her.

He handed the blue dress and the shoes back to her. ‘Put them on,’ he commanded with studied insolence.

Cheeks adorned with flags of outraged scarlet, Ellie stalked into a cubicle. He had no manners. He was incredibly confrontational, unnervingly uninhibited and outspoken. As for the way he reacted when he got a taste of his own medicine back—well, he went up in flames like a rocket! When she emerged again, the entire staff were engaged in wrapping the rest of the purchases. Never had Ellie been more grateful to leave a shop.

‘I suppose you want to go in there,’ Dio condemned with unconcealed exasperation as he surveyed a busy outlet which sold cosmetics and toiletries.

‘No…no, I’ll manage fine!’ Ellie swore in haste. ‘Prehistoric man cleaned his teeth with a twig. Maybe I’ll pick one up somewhere on the way.’

Dio dealt her an arrested glance. And then he really shocked her. He flung back his imperious dark head and laughed with spontaneous amusement. Ellie simply gaped, heart-rate speeding up, pulses jumping. His even white teeth flashed against bronzed skin, dark, deep-set eyes gleaming with appreciation. Humour drove all brooding darkness from his lean, powerful face, leaving her bemusedly conscious of just how stunning he was in the looks department.

‘I’m not into shopping,’ he confided huskily, as if she might not already be aware of that reality. ‘Other people usually do it for me.’

Her complexion uncomfortably warm, Ellie dragged her attention from him and studied the floor, but that Mediterranean dark and devastating face was still imprinted in her mind’s eye. He really was spectacular. That stark acknowledgement, that very thought, seriously unsettled Ellie. Dio Alexiakis wasn’t making the tiniest effort to impress or please her. Yet somehow he still made her effortlessly aware of his high-voltage male sexuality. She didn’t like that sensation, didn’t like the unease and tension he provoked inside her.

She might be only twenty-one, but it was over a year since Ellie had gone out on a date. Men, she had decided, were a waste of precious time and effort, and she hadn’t once regretted that decision. She didn’t consider herself a man-hater, but she did get a secret kick out of jokes that suggested the male sex was useless and increasingly surplus to female requirements. After all, by and large, that had been Ellie’s experience from childhood.

As Dio urged Ellie at speed through the crowded terminal, he rested a lean hand lightly on her taut spine to keep her moving. She stiffened defensively. ‘Excuse me,’ she heard herself say stiltedly, stepping back, suddenly determined to escape him, even if it could only be for a little while.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.

‘The ladies’ cloakroom,’ Ellie framed with frigid emphasis. ‘Are you planning to come with me?’

His aggressive jawline squared. ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’

Pointedly dumping the carrier bags she was loaded down with at his feet, she began to walk away.

‘Ellie…’ He extended a comb to her with a sardonic look. ‘Maybe you should do something with your hair while you’re in there.’

Gritting her teeth at the realisation that she hadn’t taken the time to check her appearance in the shop, and strongly resisting an unusually feminine urge to start smoothing her hair down, Ellie vanished into the cloakroom.

It was the work of a moment to tame her bright hair back into a straight heavy fall just below her shoulders. She frowned at her reflection, noticing the animated pink in her cheeks, the surprising sparkle in her eyes. The dress had a cool simplicity she liked, but it wasn’t her style.

Her full pink mouth tightening, Ellie studied the expensive silver comb he had given her and recalled the ease with which he had accurately assessed her dress size. But then that had not been a surprise to her. At twenty-nine years of age, Dio Alexiakis was an unrepentant, totally unreconstructed womaniser. Naturally he was, Ellie reflected cynically. Men with money and power lived in a buyers’ market of all too willing women. Dio was a real babe magnet, and he knew it. He had undoubtedly never had to worry too much about honing the rough edges from his less than presentable manners.

But, even so, she was to get a free trip to Greece. Private jet, five-star luxury all the way. The drawback? Dio Alexiakis breathing down her neck. An adventure, she told herself staunchly. Even with him around it ought to be more fun than polishing endless floors.

Heavens, she realised abruptly, she’d have to ring Mr Barry. Tomorrow morning her boss would be expecting her to open up as usual. He never turned in until noon, and when he found the shop still locked up he’d go straight upstairs to her bedsit and hammer on the door, thinking she had fallen ill. Regardless of Dio’s embargo, she had to phone Mr Barry, and as she could hardly tell the older man the truth, she would have to lie to excuse her absence.

Carefully concealing herself behind a pair of large, gossiping women, Ellie slipped out of the cloakroom and lunged breathlessly at the public phone only a few yards away. Dio Alexiakis was now standing in the centre of the busy concourse, talking on his mobile phone, his attention conveniently distracted.

Ellie dialled the operator. Since she had no cash on her at all, she would have to request a reverse-charge call. But just as the operator answered, Dio turned his dark, arrogant head. She crashed the receiver back on the hook, but she wasn’t quick enough. Dio saw her before she could put some space between herself and the phone.

Ellie froze like a criminal as glittering black eyes locked to her in instantaneous judgement, his lean, strong face darkening as he strode towards her. And Ellie, who knew all too well what it felt like to be irritated or bored by a member of the male sex, discovered for the first time in her life what it felt like to be scared…

CHAPTER TWO

EYES as dangerous as black ice scanned Ellie’s pale face. ‘The instant I allowed you out of my sight, you rushed to the phone to pass on the information you overheard. You have betrayed my trust!’ Dio Alexiakis condemned with scantily suppressed savagery.

Even trembling, and with her stomach knotted light with apprehension, Ellie was fascinated by the volatile charge of that explosive Mediterranean temperament and that innate sense of drama. Both were so utterly foreign to her.

‘Mr. Alexiakis—’ she began, keen to disabuse him of his eagerness to assume the worst.

‘You have made your choice. So be it.’ Dio surveyed her with cold, lethal menace. ‘I will destroy you for this.’

Ellie’s tummy performed an unpleasant somersault. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she protested feverishly. ‘I only got as far as dialling the operator!’

With a look of thunderous derision, Dio swung on his heel and strode away, outrage etched in every line of his lean, tight, powerful body.

For an instant, disconcertion froze Ellie to the spot. Oh, yeah, just drag me out to the airport on your stupid helicopter and then dump me with no money and a very nasty threat! Only unfreezing as fear for her co-worker Meg’s future job security assailed her, Ellie raced after Dio Alexiakis, hating him like poison.