LITMIR.BIZ

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all over the world.’

      Shock rippled over her skin. Stay focused, she told herself. You can do it. You were trained in the art of staying focused.

      She kept her voice casual. ‘I didn’t realise—’

      ‘That I was rich enough?’

      ‘Well, there’s that, of course.’ Her smile felt as if it were slicing her face in two. ‘Or that you had an interest in jewellery and watches.’

      Loukas touched the tips of his fingers together and stared into eyes which were the exact colour of aquamarines. As always, not a single strand of her blonde hair was out of place and he remembered that even after the most strenuous sex, it always seemed to fall back into a neat and shiny curtain. He looked at the pink gleam of her lips and something dark and nebulous whispered over his skin. Jessica Cartwright. The one woman he’d never been able to forget. The woman who had unravelled him and then tied him up in knots. His pale and unexpected nemesis. He expelled a slow breath and let his gaze travel over her at a leisurely pace—because surely he had earned the right to study her as he would any other thing of beauty which he’d just purchased.

      As usual, her style was understated. Classy and cool. A streamlined body, which left the observer in no doubt about her athletic background. She’d never been into revealing clothes or heavy make-up—her look had always been scrubbed and fairly natural and that hadn’t changed. He had been attracted to her in a way which had taken him by surprise and he’d never been able to work out why. He noticed how her white shirt hugged those neat little breasts and the subtle gleam of pearls at her ears. With her pale hair pulled back in a ponytail, which emphasised her high cheekbones, he thought how remote she seemed. How untouchable. And it was all a lie. Because behind the false ice-maiden image, wasn’t there a woman as shallow and as grasping as all the others? Someone who would take what they wanted from you and then just leave you—gasping like a fish which had been tossed from the water.

      ‘There’s plenty you don’t know about me.’ His mouth hardened and he felt the delicious rush of blood to his groin. And plenty she was about to find out.

      ‘I don’t understand...’ She shrugged her shoulders and now her aquamarine eyes were wide with question. ‘The last time I saw you, you were a bodyguard. You worked for that Russian oligarch.’ She frowned as if she was trying to remember. ‘Dimitri Makarov. That was his name, wasn’t it?’

      ‘Neh. That was his name.’ Loukas nodded. ‘I was the guy with the gun inside his jacket. The guy who knew no fear. The wall of muscle who could smash through a plank with a single blow.’ He paused and flicked her a look because he remembered the way she used to run those long fingers over the hard bulge of his muscles, cooing her satisfaction as she touched his iron-hard flesh. ‘But one day I decided to start using my brains instead of just my brawn. I realised that a life spent protecting others has a very limited timescale and that I needed to look towards the future. And, of course, some women consider such men to be little more than savages—don’t they, Jess?’

      She flinched. He could see the whitening of her knuckles in her lap and her reaction gave him a rush of pleasure. Because he wanted to see her react. He wanted to see her coolness melt and to watch her squirm.

      ‘You know I never said that.’ Her voice was trembling.

      ‘No,’ he agreed grimly. ‘But your father said it and you just stood there and agreed with every damned word, didn’t you, Jess? You were complicit in your silence. The little princess, agreeing with Daddy. Shall I remind you of some of the other things he said?’

      ‘No!’ Her hand had flown to her neck, as if her fingers could disguise the little pulse which was working frantically there.

      ‘He called me a thug. He said I would drag you down to the gutter where I came from, if you stayed with me. Do you remember that, Jess?’

      She shook her head. ‘Wh—why are we sitting here talking about the past?’ she questioned and suddenly her voice didn’t sound so cool. ‘I dated you when I was a teenager and, yes, my father reacted badly when he found out we were...’

      ‘Lovers,’ he put in silkily.

      She swallowed. ‘Lovers,’ she repeated, as if it hurt her to say it. ‘But it all happened such a long time ago and none of it matters any more. I’ve...well, I’ve moved on and I expect you have, too.’

      Loukas might have laughed if he hadn’t felt the cold twist of rage. She had humiliated him as no woman had ever dared try. She had trampled on his foolish dreams—and she thought that none of it mattered? Well, he was about to show her that it did. That if you betrayed someone then sooner or later it would come back to haunt you.

      He picked up a gold pen which was lying on his desk and began to twirl it between his thumb and forefinger, his eyes never leaving her face.

      ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the past we should be concentrating on, but the present. And, of course, the future. Or rather more importantly—your future.’

      He saw her shoulders stiffen. Did she guess what was coming? Surely she realised that anyone in his position would set about terminating her contract with as little fallout as possible.

      ‘What about it?’

      He heard the defensiveness in her voice as he twirled the pen in the opposite direction. ‘You’ve been working for the company for—how long is it now, Jess?’

      ‘I’m sure you know exactly how long it is.’

      ‘You’re right. I do. I have your contract here in front of me.’ He glanced down at it before looking up again. ‘You joined Lulu right after you gave up your tennis career, yes?’

      Jessica didn’t answer straight away because she was afraid of giving herself away. She didn’t want to show anything which might make her vulnerable to this very intimidating Loukas. Given up her tennis career? He made it sound as if she’d given up taking sugar in her coffee! As if the thing she’d devoted her entire life to—the sport she’d lived and breathed since she was barely out of nappies—hadn’t suddenly been snatched away from her. It had left a great, gaping hole in her life and, coming straight after her break-up with him, it had been a double whammy she’d found difficult to claw her way back from. But she’d done it because it had been either sink or swim, and very soon after that she’d had Hannah to care for. So sinking had never really been an option. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

      ‘So why don’t you tell me how you got the job, which I understand surprised a lot of people in the industry, since you had zero modelling experience?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you sleep with the boss?’

      ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she snapped, before she could stop herself. ‘He was a man in his sixties.’

      ‘Otherwise you might have been tempted?’ He leaned back in his chair and smiled, as if he was pleased to have got some kind of reaction from her at last. ‘I know from my own experience that sportswomen have particularly voracious sexual appetites. You in particular were pretty spectacular in bed, Jess. And out of it. You could never get enough of me, could you?’

      Jessica willed herself not to respond to the taunt, even though it was true. She felt as if he was toying with her, the way a cat sometimes toyed with a dragonfly just before its sheathed paw finally stilled the chattering wings. But for the time being she would play along. What choice did she have when the balance of power was so unevenly divided? Flouncing out of here wasn’t an option, because this wasn’t just about survival—it was about pride. She might have got the job by chance, but she’d grown into the unexpected career which fate had provided by way of compensation for her shattered dreams. She was proud of what she’d achieved and she wasn’t going to toss it all away in a heated moment of retaliation, just because the man asking the questions was the man she’d never been able to forget.

      ‘Do you want an answer to your question?’ she asked quietly. ‘Or are you just going to sit there insulting me?’

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