Playing the Greek's Game

‘Really?’ He heard the lie in her voice and a steely determination entered his body as he noted that all the blood had drained from her face, leaving it almost translucent in its whiteness. He could see the fine blue tracery of veins at her temple and, for some bizarre reason, he found himself wondering whether the skin on the rest of her body was as delicate.

Furious with himself for his wayward thoughts, he hardened his voice. ‘You just happen to persuade one of the world’s sharpest businessmen to give you a permanent contract in his hotel? A lot of people might wonder why that had happened and then leap to the very obvious solution.’

Emma flinched at the insinuation. ‘Then a lot of people wouldn’t know what they were talking about!’

‘They say there’s no smoke without fire.’

‘“They” say a lot of things, Mr Constantinides—but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the right things.’

‘But now Ciro D’Angelo is off the scene. He sold me this hotel and has gone back to live in Naples,’ he continued, leaning forward by a fraction because he wanted to see just how she would react to his next charge. ‘And since then, you have grown increasingly close to my younger brother.’

Emma felt her body stiffen as the distance between them diminished and she caught a faint but intoxicating drift of sandalwood. Was he aware of the impact which his powerful proximity could have on people? she wondered. And did he use it like a weapon in order to intimidate them, as he was intimidating her now? She suspected he did. ‘You mean Nathanael?’

‘I have only one brother, Miss Geary.’

Her heart was beating very fast, but she was determined not to crumble. What had Nat told her? That his older brother was used to getting whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And he didn’t care who he had to squash in order to accomplish that. ‘And what if I have? Surely getting close to someone isn’t a crime?’

‘Not a crime, no,’ he agreed evenly. ‘Although when a woman who makes it her business to cultivate relationships with rich men, starts hitting on Nat—it doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘I don’t intend to rise to your insulting inference that I’m some kind of gold-digger. Surely your lawyers didn’t advise you to take that line of questioning, Mr Constantinides?’

Her cool defiance made his hackles rise and he tightened his knuckles against the shiny surface of the desk. Had Nathanael been foolish enough to blurt out just how much money he was due to inherit? And wouldn’t a woman with a track record like hers have seen the green light beckoning and rushed straight in?

Zak felt his mouth tense, felt the painful thunder of his heart as he thought about the little brother he had protected all his life. Whom he had done his best to shield from the harsher aspects of existence after the heartbreaking start he’d had. Only now he was discovering that it was impossible to protect someone completely unless you locked them in a room and threw away the key … and nobody could ever do that to Nat. ‘You’re wasting your time, Miss Geary.’

‘Wasting my time?’ she repeated blankly.

‘That’s right.’ His voice lowered and he could feel the breath thicken in his throat, could feel it pushing the words out as if they were dry stones. ‘You see, it doesn’t matter how wide you open those big green eyes or shake your pale hair—Nathanael isn’t in the market for any kind of serious relationship.’

If his whole demeanour hadn’t been so deadly serious, Emma might have laughed at just how wrong he had got it. Yes, she’d grown close to Nat and, yes, she counted him as one of her dearest friends. Since his older brother had taken over the Granchester, they’d hit it off like peaches and cream and had always been there for each other. True, he had once made a pass at her—but she suspected that had been more out of habit than desire. Almost as if he’d thought it was expected of him. And once she’d batted him away and told him that she wasn’t interested—just as she’d once told Ciro she wasn’t interested—they had gone on to forge a friendship which was relaxed simply because there was no sexual tension.

Emma had found comfort and solace in their innocent companionship. So what right did this tyrant brother have to tell her to lay off?

She found herself wishing she’d been able to speak to Nat before she’d come up here—but he’d been in a meeting. And suddenly Emma found herself wondering whether her urgent summons had been timed to coincide with Nat’s temporary absence.

‘And is Nat aware of what you’re saying to me?’ she questioned slowly. ‘Does he know that you’re making decisions on his behalf? Because although he works for the family business—I really think he should be the one to decide on his fate and the people with whom he associates, not you.’

‘He is not in the market for any kind of relationship,’ he repeated as if she hadn’t spoken—although the spark of fire in her eyes made him realise that she would not easily be deterred. And that maybe it was time to let her know the truth. Or rather that he knew the truth. And perhaps then she would start seeing things his way, the way that people inevitably did. ‘But especially not with a woman like you.’

Emma stilled, all her bravado crumbling as the fear she’d suppressed now started rising. Rising and rising and skittering over her skin. Making her feel all dark and icy as she read something dangerous in the depths of his steely eyes. And something told her that she had been rumbled. That you could try to run from the past but you could never completely escape from it. ‘A woman like me?’ she whispered.

He saw her guilt and a vice-like clamp of triumph gripped him. ‘I wonder why you don’t work under your married name. Is there a reason for that? A reason why you seem to have airbrushed your past from your CV?’ he questioned, looking down at one of the sheets of paper before him. ‘Because isn’t your real name Emma Patterson—and weren’t you once the wife of the rock-star Louis Patterson?’

Emma felt the blood drain from her face and the fingers which had been loosely clasped in her lap now dug painfully together. Yes, it was the past all right—come back to haunt her just as she’d always feared it would. Had she been naive to suppose that she could lose herself in the present—like everyone said you were supposed to—when the dark tentacles of an earlier life were always waiting to pull you back?

‘Aren’t you?’ he persisted.

She swallowed. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Yes, I am.’

He lifted his gaze—only now it was cold and condemnatory as it sliced through her like a pewter sword. ‘Your ex-husband died through drug abuse,’ he said harshly. ‘So tell me this, Mrs Patterson. Are you a junkie, too?’

CHAPTER TWO (#u6ff35b71-8a91-520d-8553-4172b09c1232)

THE words of Zak Constantinides hit Emma like a hail of bullets. Words she thought she’d left behind a long time ago. Words like junkie and abuse—and all the terrible associated memories which came with them.

Fighting against a rising tide of nausea, she stared at her boss as the Greek angrily repeated his charge against her.

‘Do you take drugs, Miss Geary?’

‘No—no! I’ve never touched them—never! You’ve got no right to accuse me of something like that!’

‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve got every right to protect my brother from women with dodgy pasts!’

With an effort, Emma sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to control her ragged breathing but she could do nothing about the wild acceleration of her heart. ‘I was married to a man who abused drugs and alcohol, Mr Constantinides,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I had no idea of that when we met. I was very young and I made a mistake. Have you never made a mistake?’

Grimly, Zak shook his head. Not with relationships he hadn’t, no—he made sure of that. And the occasional slip-up in business had been far too minor to ever qualify as a true mistake. But this was different. Very different. He was known for his old-fashioned and traditional values and he was proud of them. And a woman who had lived the life that Emma Geary had lived would certainly never be welcomed into the arms of his family.

He began to pull a series of photos from an envelope on his desk and Emma’s face blanched as she fixed her eyes on them. They were old photos. Very old photos—but she recognised them instantly.

‘Recognise these?’ drawled Zak Constantinides.

She forced herself to look at the image which was on top of the gleaming pile he had spread over the desk, like a croupier fanning out a pack of cards. It was of her and Louis on their wedding day.

The press had gone mad—but then, it had been a big story at the time. A nineteen-year-old nobody marrying a rock-star more than twice her age. Emma flinched as she looked at her face in the photo, marvelling at how young she’d been. She’d worn a garland of wildflowers in her hair and a floaty dress of silk chiffon. Her blond hair had hung almost to her waist and the overall effect had been that of some kind of flower fairy who had wandered into the city by mistake. Or at least, that was what Louis had said. He’d even written a song about it on their honeymoon, between slugs of the bourbon bottle, which was never far from his side.

‘Of course I recognise it,’ she said flatly, her fingers straying to the other pictures—forcing herself to confront them as if to demonstrate to Zak Constantinides that she wasn’t afraid.

But she was afraid. She was afraid of the pain which the past could still provoke. She studied the familiar images of her and Louis leaving restaurants—with her supporting her husband and trying desperately not to let the waiting press see his lurching stagger. Some of the shots were of the interiors of once-iconic nightclubs, which had long since disappeared. The blonde girl in the thigh-skimming dress dancing wildly on the podium now seemed like a stranger to her. She had tried so hard to please Louis. To be what he’d wanted her to be. It was what her mother told her that men desired. It was only afterwards, at the sordid end to the marriage, that Emma realised that her mother was the worst possible role model she could have adopted.

‘You must have gone to a lot of trouble to get these,’ she said, praying that her voice wouldn’t betray her with a tremble. ‘It’s nearly ten years ago.’

‘Ten years is nothing—and information is always easy to find if you look in the right places.’ Slightly appalled at his own sudden jerk of lust, he pushed one of the photos out of sight—the one which showed the disturbingly distracting image of her shaking her bead-covered bottom in time to the music. He swallowed. ‘But you must admit that you aren’t my number-one choice as prospective sister-in-law.’

She saw the sudden tightening of his features and knew that she could not let him browbeat her like this. ‘Do you always assume that marriage is on the cards whenever your brother dates? Isn’t that what’s known as jumping the gun?’

‘I base my assumptions on experience,’ he responded acidly. ‘And I know women well enough to understand the lure of vast amounts of money. The Constantinides name is usually enough to guarantee instant devotion from the opposite sex.’

‘Even in your case?’ she flared.

‘Even in mine,’ he conceded.

She heard the sarcasm in his voice and was just about to leap to her own defence. To tell him that he’d got it completely wrong and that she and his brother were nothing more than good friends. But something stopped her and she recognised it as the desire to want to hurt him back. To attack him as he had just attacked her by delving into her painful past. It bothered him to think she was in a relationship with his brother, did it? Well, good! Let it bother him a bit more until she had the chance to speak to Nat herself.

‘It’s very difficult for me to tell you exactly what I think of your outrageous accusations since you happen to be my employer,’ she said quietly. ‘And you seem draconian enough to try to fire me if I speak my mind.’

‘On the contrary.’ He scowled. ‘Your English employment laws seem designed to protect the employee instead of the boss and therefore I can’t give myself the satisfaction of firing you unless you do something so outrageous that you really give me no choice.’

Briefly, she wondered whether hurling the pottery jar of pencils at his smug face would qualify as grounds for dismissal, but she kept her hands planted firmly in her lap.