LYNNE GRAHAM - The Greek's Blackmailed Mistress

Stop it, stop with the negative inner talk , she urged herself just as the svelte receptionist uttered her name in the same low-pitched tone that everyone who worked on the top floor seemed to use. Elvi rose stiffly from her seat, full of apprehension but struggling to appear composed because she knew that that was necessary. She couldn’t afford to get emotional with such a self-disciplined man.

In his office, Xan was on a high because he was finally getting to meet her . The woman he had wanted, the only woman he had wanted in years that he couldn’t have, but now that her mother was no longer his employee, and that connection was at an end, he no longer had to consider that aspect. That was done, dusted, in the past as far as he was concerned. Now he could move forward freely. Admittedly she was still of much lower status than he or her predecessors in his life had been but did he really have to be so particular about the women he took to his bed? He straightened his jacket and leant back against his designer desk as the door opened.

The office was the size of a football pitch, probably supposed to intimidate, Elvi decided, inching in from the doorway like a mouse trying to evade a hungry cat before she threw back her shoulders, straightened her back and lifted her chin, determined not to appear either weak or too humble.

‘I’m Elvi, Sally Cartwright’s daughter,’ she declared quietly, battling to stand her ground as Xan Ziakis angled up his arrogant dark head, his classic nose as high as his perfect cheekbones to look directly at her.

Behind her the door closed, locking them into uneasy silence. Involuntarily Elvi connected with dazzling amber-gold eyes screened by criminally long and distinctive lush black lashes. She had never been close enough to him to see those eyes before, nor had she realised quite how tall he was, while even his formal business suit failed to conceal the power in his wide shoulders and muscular torso, not to mention the virile strength of his long thighs as he stood braced against his desk. He was drop-dead beautiful and at that moment she wasn’t at all surprised that for a little while she had succumbed to a pathetically juvenile crush on him. She’d been far from being a teenager, and that crush had mortified her pride.

‘Xander Ziakis,’ he matched, extending an elegant lean brown hand.

At least he had manners, Elvi conceded feebly as she advanced to shake that hand, finding his grasp warm and her own cold with nerves, goose flesh erupting beneath her top as nervous tension threatened again. That close to him she could hardly breathe as a faint tang of some exotic designer cologne infiltrated her nostrils.

‘Take a seat, Elvi,’ he instructed, angling his head in the direction of the chair in front of him.

‘I don’t think I would be comfortable sitting down while you’re still standing,’ Elvi confided, stepping back but avoiding the chair, wondering if he was always as domineering, deciding he very probably was when she caught the flash of surprise in his gaze before he cloaked it. She reckoned everyone did exactly what they were told in his radius.

Disconcertingly and with a gleam of humour lightening his dark eyes, for he was rarely challenged, Xan slid back behind his desk and waited for her to sit down as he had told her to do.

Outmanoeuvred, Elvi took a seat and rested her bag on her lap to hide her trembling hands.

‘Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?’ Xan proffered politely.

‘Some water if it’s not too much trouble,’ Elvi framed, watching as he pressed a button and gave an order to some employee. Thirty seconds later, a moisture-beaded tumbler of water was clutched between her restive hands and she sipped, wetting her dry lips.

Xan studied her in fascination, because she was much more controlled than he had expected and possibly ten times more attractive close up than he had forecast. In reality he had been prepared for disappointment, having only seen her so fleetingly in the past. But there she was in front of him with skin that had the natural lustre of a pearl, eyes as blue as the Greek sky, dainty features and white-blonde hair falling like a cloak to her waist. And then there were the fabulous hourglass curves with that tiny waist, the amazing feminine bounty at breast and hip she had hidden beneath that awful coat. Not overweight, glorious , Xan decided hungrily, wondering if it would even occur to her that he had been forced to sit down because her body made him hot as hell. He thought not, for there was nothing even slightly flirtatious or inviting about either her clothing or her attitude, and he wasn’t accustomed to that lack of interest in the women he met. This one hadn’t even bothered to put on make-up, he registered in mounting surprise.

‘Why do you think I offered you this appointment?’ Xan enquired with innate ruthlessness, because he doubted his reading of her character from her appearance and behaviour. He didn’t trust women. He had learned not to trust women through the experience of growing up with several unpleasant stepmothers and the conviction had been rubber-stamped by his first love’s change of heart the instant she realised his family fortune was gone.

‘I don’t know, which is why I am here,’ Elvi said truthfully. ‘Obviously you read my letter—’

Xan lounged back in his chair and lightly shifted an eloquent brown hand as if in dismissal of the letter. ‘Why would I want to do anything for a woman who stole from me?’ he asked bluntly.

In receipt of that acerbic enquiry, Elvi lost colour. ‘Well, maybe not want —’

‘That’s the problem,’ Xan interposed before she could even finish speaking. ‘I don’t want to help her because I believe that those who break the law should be punished—’

‘Yes, but —’ Elvi began afresh, thrown on the back foot because before her mother had been charged with theft she would have agreed with him on that score.

‘There is no saving exception in my book,’ Xan Ziakis sliced in again. ‘I felt more sorry for you growing up with an alcoholic parent than I feel sorry for her.’

Elvi’s hands tightened around the glass cradled between her hands and she forced herself to sip again; she wanted to slap him and shut him up because he wasn’t allowing her to get in a word in her mother’s defence. ‘We don’t need your compassion!’ she heard herself snap back and then she bit her lip hard, knowing she shouldn’t have responded in that tone for there was truth in that old adage about catching more flies with honey than vinegar.

‘But you chose to ask for my compassion,’ Xan reminded her with dogged purpose. ‘And I have to wonder, what’s in it for me?’

‘You have your jade pot back?’ Elvi suggested shakily.

‘But I don’t. It’s police evidence at this moment in time,’ Xan told her gently.

Elvi breathed in deep and slow, battling to think straight while he sat there as cool as a block of untouchable ice, and then she clashed with eyes that flamed over her like a fire and realised that his apparently glacial outlook had given her a mistaken impression of him. For a split second as her chest swelled on that breath, his gaze had dropped revealingly below her chin and she was shaken that he could be quite as predictable as most of the men she met. Her boobs were playing more of a starring role than she was, she thought bitterly.

‘My mother has been punished,’ Elvi argued, taking another tack in her growing desperation. ‘She’s been arrested and that was frightening for her and more than enough to teach most people a hard lesson. She has also lost her job and her good name—’

‘Elvi...’ Xan leant across his desk to interrupt her again.

‘No, don’t cut me off this time!’ Elvi urged impatiently. ‘Tell me why you can’t drop the charges—’

‘I’ve already answered that question,’ Xan reminded her with finality.

Enormous blue eyes fixed on him hopefully. ‘But don’t you think that making a benevolent gesture would make you feel good?’

Xan could not believe how naïve she was and he almost laughed. ‘I don’t have a benevolent bone in my body,’ he admitted without embarrassment. ‘I’m a hard-hitter. That’s who I am.’

‘Well, I didn’t come here to repeat the sob story I already put in my letter,’ Elvi assured him with cringing dignity as she started rising from her seat. ‘So, if that’s your last word—’

‘It’s not. You don’t listen very well, do you?’ Xan shot back at her in exasperation. ‘I asked you what would be in this benevolent gesture for me and I do have an option to offer you—’

Taken aback at the very point where she had felt that she was getting nowhere with him, Elvi sank slowly back into the chair. ‘You...er...do?’ she queried dubiously, her eyes openly bemused by the concept.

‘It’s simple and unscrupulous,’ Xan warned her without hesitation. ‘I want you. Give yourself to me and I will drop the charges.’

Elvi’s lower lip parted company with the upper one as she stared back at him in complete astonishment, not quite willing to believe he had actually said those words to her. Give yourself to me. He meant sex. What else could he mean? I want you. The most enormous sense of shock engulfed her. It wasn’t simply unscrupulous, it was filthy, and she was shattered that he could sit there behind his rule-the-world desk and dare to offer her such an offensive escape clause on her mother’s behalf. What world did he live in? What kind of women was he accustomed to dealing with? It was a horrific suggestion no decent woman would accept.

‘I finally appear to have silenced you,’ Xan remarked with unhidden amusement.

And it was that glint of amusement in his extravagantly handsome face and the energy of it in his accented intonation that set free the tide of rage inside Elvi. She flew upright like a rocket and her hand jerked up and she flung the glass of water over him. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped at him furiously. ‘I’m not a slut!’

Xan shook his dark head, water droplets rolling down his lean, dark, dangerous face. Never had he been attacked in such a way, but it didn’t show because he did not move a single muscle. He gazed broodingly back at her, disturbed by her passionate nature but already wondering how that seeming flaw would play out between his sheets. Obviously he was bored with the identikit mistresses who had met his physical needs for years, but that rational, unemotional approach worked for him, he reminded himself, staving off the risks of more personal entanglements. ‘I didn’t suggest that you were, but there’s a vacancy in my bed at present and I would be happy for you to fill it for a couple of months—’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be happy to fill it!’ Elvi snarled back incredulously. ‘A vacancy ? Is that how you think of sex?’

‘It is a need like hunger, an appetite that must be met,’ Xan responded levelly, his hard, dark gaze locked to hers like a laser beam that made her body as hot and perspiring as if she were under a spotlight. ‘If it makes you feel better, I wanted you the first time I saw you waiting in the foyer of my apartment block. I found out your name then and your connection to my maid. Doing anything about the attraction would’ve been inappropriate at that time—’

Elvi studied him in helpless wonderment. ‘I don’t believe this... I don’t believe any of it!’ she gasped. ‘You don’t even know me—’

Xan lounged back in his seat, damp but disciplined. ‘I don’t need to know you to want to have sex with you. I’m more about the physical than the cerebral with women,’ he admitted smoothly.