Kate Proctor - No Mistress But Love

Frowning, she shook her head. It was completely irrational of her to feel even a single twinge of guilt. A platonic relationship was what she and Tim had agreed on while they were here—Tim because he was still nursing wounds from a particularly hurtful relationship, and she because…Her thoughts stalled uncertainly. Because, to be perfectly frank, she seemed to have a problem where men were concerned, she told herself bluntly. At fifteen she had lost her heart to the local Romeo, whose callous remarks about her adolescent podginess—which had clung to her with relentless tenacity until she was almost twenty—had left her with a cripplingly negative self-consciousness towards her appearance. Despite the claims of her beautiful mother and her equally stunningly beautiful sister, Joanna, seven years her senior, that such a period of fatness was no more than an unfortunate family trait, she had protected herself so assiduously from the potentially hurtful attentions of males that, when they had eventually begun determinedly seeking her out, her total lack of even the most basic of experience had brought complications she had never even dreamed of to her life. Which was why, she reasoned ruefully, she had welcomed the allegedly broken-hearted Tim so wholeheartedly into her chaotic life. Tim hadn’t drooled with what she considered to be the blatant insincerity of other men, she remembered, and—until he had shown his true colours here—neither had he tried to lure her into his bed, the sole aim, she had become convinced, of just about every man with whom she had been coming into contact.

‘A year or so out of the London rat race—that’s what I need, and what I honestly think you could do with too,’ was how Tim had first introduced the subject. ‘There’s a job going on one of the Greek Islands, managing a super de luxe hotel, which I thought I’d try for… Interested?’

‘Very,’ Lindy had laughed, ‘except that I know absolutely nothing about hotel management.’

‘No problem—I know enough for the two of us.’

She realised now that she hadn’t really taken his suggestion that she should join him seriously, because her first thought had been how she would miss his availability as an escort whenever she needed one—an escort she could trust not to start making physical overtures as the evening progressed. But she had encouraged him in seeking the job, she reminded herself, her face clouding as she remembered to what extent…even then, the signs were there, she thought angrily—if only she had had the sense to read them. But it was her own pig-headed stubbornness that had been her downfall and led her to all this, she reminded herself harshly. The more sceptical her friends had become, the more protective she had felt towards Tim.

‘Lindy, don’t be so naïve!’ they had chorused. ‘He has to be expecting a darn sight more than friendship from you, carting you off to some remote Greek island for a year—especially when he’s told them all you’re his wife!’

‘How many times do I have to explain that was a misunderstanding?’ she had protested—and one she hadn’t been in the least happy to hear of. ‘It wasn’t until he’d got the job that Tim realised it was for a married couple.’

‘Yet he was the only one traipsing back and forth to Greece for interviews,’ it had been pointed out to her with such open scepticism that she hadn’t dared admit even to her closest friends that it had been her money—her entire savings, in fact—that had financed those trips.

His excuse for borrowing from her had, at the time, been plausible enough, but nothing could alter the fact that he had made no attempt to repay her to date.

Lindy moved from the desk to the window, half closing her eyes against the glare of the sun as she opened the blind. She had closed her ears to the advice of good friends because she had felt sorry for Tim and because she had always yearned for travel and adventure, and this job on Skivos had promised both.

But the gentle—and, to be ruthlessly honest, slightly pathetic—Tim with whom she had arrived had gradually disappeared. In his place had appeared an unpredictably moody, unrecognisably different person against whom she had, soon after their arrival, had to lock her bedroom door of the suite they shared. And she was now beginning to wonder if his tale of a broken heart had been simply that—a tale calculated to breach the defences she had erected against men.

She gave a sudden shrug of dismissal—it didn’t really matter because, whatever way she looked at it, she had been well and truly deceived and it was her own stupid fault. The real Tim Russell was bad-tempered, drank far too much and was a womaniser. She paused for an instant before adding gambler and cheat to her list of his attributes, then rolled her eyes in exasperated disbelief. And now he had lost her in a game of poker, she added further to that list before beginning to chuckle weakly as her irrepressible sense of humour belatedly sprang to life and got the better of her.

She reached up and closed the blind, her amusement faltering as a picture of the man to whom she had been lost leapt to her mind…a man who had stirred such strangely primitive feelings within her that they had distracted her from giving her problems with Tim the attention they most certainly warranted; powerful and conflicting feelings of excitement and apprehension that had been laying siege to her right from the very first moment she had caught sight of him.

Without even pausing to knock, Lindy flung open the door to the palatial suite of rooms Niko Leandros occupied on the top floor of the building.

‘Where are you?’ she demanded, marching straight into the centre of the almost spartan elegance of the drawing-room.

‘If it’s me you’re looking for—I’m here,’ drawled Niko’s voice from behind her.

Lindy spun round, the angry words she had been about to hurl at him dying on her lips as she caught sight of him.

He was standing in an archway leading off the large room, aggressive masculinity managing to ooze from his every pore, despite the expression of mild boredom adorning his handsome features. His hair was tousled and damp, threatening almost to curl against his head, and the whiteness of the walls and the short towelling robe encasing his tall, athletic body served only to accentuate the golden sheen of his skin and the hirsute darkness of his long, perfectly proportioned legs.

The sight of him, even fully clad, was usually enough to knock the breath from her, Lindy admitted to herself with fatalistic candour, but it was the sight of his legs that now froze the anger in her—or, to be precise, the sight of his right leg, down the outer side of which, from as much of its thigh as was visible right down almost to his calf, ran livid, knotted scar tissue.

‘There’s more, if you’re interested,’ he murmured mockingly, his hands moving to the belt of his robe as his eyes noted the path of hers. ‘Though I feel it only fair to warn you that this is all I’m wearing.’

‘I’m perfectly aware that convalescence can be a very boring time for some people, especially those used to active lives, Mr Leandros——’

‘Niko—I thought we’d agreed.’

‘All right—Niko,’ ground out Lindy from between clenched teeth, the anger stifled in her by the sight of that terrible scar swiftly rekindling. ‘But I’d be grateful if you’d stop trying to amuse yourself at my expense. And you can start by moving my things back into my room—I mean, Tim’s and my suite.’

She stood her ground as he began walking across the mottled marble of the floor towards her, determined to conceal the feeling of intimidation now joining the morass of other sensations assailing her. He drew to a halt scarcely a foot from her at the moment when her nerve was about to desert her completely.

‘No, your things will not be moved,’ he informed her, the sudden darkening in his eyes as they met hers creating a jangling mixture of fear and excitement within her that held her rooted to the spot. ‘But yes, I shall be amusing myself at your expense. You see, my goldenhaired Lindy, it’s quite some time since I’ve had a woman,’ he declared, his eyes boldly proprietorial as they swept the contours of her body.

‘Had?’ she squeaked, fear all but wiping excitement out of existence in her. This certainly wasn’t the type of adventure she had been seeking in coming to this island!

‘Had the pleasure of a beautiful woman’s company,’ he amended with blatant insincerity.

‘I know for a fact that’s a lie!’ retorted Lindy incautiously. ‘Women have been coming to this island in their droves ever since you arrived—and every single one of them stunning!’

‘Yes, but they’re too easy,’ he countered lightly. ‘They’re not as discerning as you are—they all see me as just as beautiful as they are…whereas you see me as disfigured and worthy only of your pity.’

‘Niko, honestly, I——’ She felt her teeth jar with the sudden force with which she clamped her mouth shut. This was a subject over which she was far too sensitive, she warned herself angrily; she knew perfectly well he was merely amusing himself at her expense, yet she had just been on the verge of trying to console him with the fact that she found his looks little short of perfect!

‘No—don’t try to salve my pride, Lindy,’ he murmured with mocking innocence. ‘You can’t imagine how intriguing I find it to come across a woman repulsed by my marred looks.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t mean to imply I found you repulsive!’ she blurted out spontaneously, and immediately regretted her outraged forcefulness. ‘Well, not really,’ she added, desperately seeking a face-saving balance, but all too aware that she had not succeeded.

‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured, reaching out with both hands to clasp her head, his fingers twining into her hair. ‘The challenge you present excites me more than you can imagine.’

With his fingers now playing in blatant sensuality in her hair, and with the fresh after-shower aroma of him bombarding her senses, Lindy was having more than a little difficulty concentrating on his words. She was having considerable difficulty concentrating on anything. She was as good as in his arms, she thought dazedly—all she had to do was raise her own, now hanging limply at her sides, and she would be in the embrace of the most exciting, most desirable…

‘I’ve always been a firm believer in the saying ‘beauty is only skin deep",’ he continued, his words cutting off the torrid meandering of her thoughts.

‘So have I,’ she agreed in strangled tones—the ugly duckling in a family as good-looking as hers tended to set great store by such sayings.

‘And, as you’ve only seen me in my present unfortunate state, you’ll just have to take my word for it that women used to find my looks irresistible before my accident.’

Lindy’s eyes flew to his, filled with suspicion. He had to be joking—hadn’t he?

‘I see what difficulty you’re having in believing how incredibly beautiful I once was,’ he murmured, his facial expression and his tone equally deadpan.

It was the infinitesimal chance that he actually might be serious that made her pause to take stock before verbally tearing into him. He was Greek, she reminded herself, and from what she had heard Greek men were a pretty macho lot…but one thing she had never heard of was a macho man describing himself as beautiful! Ah—but she had heard something of his having an English mother…or was it grandmother? She let out an involuntary groan of pure exasperation with herself. Since when were Englishmen given to extolling their own physical attributes so extravagantly? Any fool would have accepted immediately that he was joking at her expense!