LITMIR.BIZ

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language she’d acquired—and now her brain balked at forming sounds out of the alien writing. But at least it gave her mind something to do—something other than just going round and round in an ever-tightening loop.

      I ought to just stand up and walk out. Not care that he’s refused to see me. Not sit here like a lemon with some insane idea of door-stepping him when he leaves! Because he might not leave—he’s got a flat here, somewhere up above his damn executive suite. And anyway the lift probably goes down to an underground car park, where he’s either got one of his flash cars or a chauffeured limo waiting. There’s no reason he should walk past me…

      So she should go, she knew. It was pointless just continuing to sit here, with her stomach tying itself in knots and her feet slowly starting to ache in their unaccustomed high-heeled shoes.

      But I want what I came for. I won’t go back empty-handed until I’ve done everything I can to get it!

      Determination gave strength to her expression. What she wanted was rightfully hers—and she’d been cheated of it. Cheated of what she had been promised—what she needed. Needed now, two years later, with imperative urgency. She could afford to wait no longer. She needed that money!

      And it was that thought only that was keeping her glued to the grey leather as the slow minutes passed. Pointless, she half accepted, and yet the deep, deep sense of outrage she felt still kept her there.

      She had sat for almost two hours before she finally accepted that she would have to throw in the towel this time around. Sinkingly resigned, Vicky knew that, stupid as she would look, she would just have to get to her feet and leave. People had been coming and going intermittently all the time, and she knew she’d been on the receiving end of some half-puzzled, half-assessing looks—not least by the receptionist. With a sense of bitter resignation she folded up the last of the newspapers and replaced it on the table. Useless—quite useless! She would just have to think of some other way of achieving her end. Quite what, though, she had no idea. She’d already done everything she could think of, including looking at the possibility of taking legal action, which had been promptly shot down by her lawyer. A face-to-face confrontation with her husband had been her last resort. Her eyes flashed darkly. Not surprisingly, considering that Theo Theakis was the last person on earth she ever wanted to see again!

      Which was why, as she picked up her handbag from the floor and prepared to stand, bitter with defeat, her stomach suddenly plummeted right down to her heels. Right there in front of her appeared a bevy of suited figures, gracefully exiting one of the lifts and sweeping forwards across the marble floor to the revolving doors of the Theakis Corp’s London HQ.

      It was him.

      She could see him. Her eyes went to him immediately, drawn by that malign awareness that had been like doom over her ever since that first fateful encounter. Half a head taller than the other suits around him, he strode forward, his pace faster than theirs, more impatient, as they hurried to keep up. One of the group was talking to him, his expression concentrated, and Theo had his face half turned towards the man.

      Vicky felt herself go cold.

      Oh, God, don’t do this to me! Don’t, please!

      Because she could feel it again—feel that tremor in her veins that Theo Theakis could always set running in her whenever she looked at him. It was as if she was mesmerised, like a rabbit seeing a fast car approaching and not being able to move, not being able to drag her eyes away.

      She’d forgotten his impact, his raw physical force. It was not just his height, or the breadth of his shoulders and the leanness of his hips. It was not the fact that he looked like a billion dollars in a charcoal handmade suit that must have cost thousands of pounds, with his dark, sable hair immaculately styled, or that his face seemed as if it was planed from a fine-grained stone that revealed every perfect honed contour. It was more than that—it was his eyes, his dark, fathomless eyes, that could look at her with such coldness, with such savage fury, and with another expression that she would not, would not, let herself remember. Even now, when he wasn’t even looking at her, when he was half focussed, clearly impatient, on what was being said to him. She saw him give a brief assenting nod, and look ahead again.

      And that was when he saw her.

      She could see it happening. See the precise moment when he registered her presence. See the initial flash of disbelief—followed by blinding fury.

      And then it was gone. Just—gone. As she was gone from his vision. Gone from the slightest claim on the smallest portion of his attention. He had simply blanked her out as if she did not exist. As if she had not been sitting there for nearly two whole hours, waiting. Waiting for him to descend to ground level, where the mortals dwelt in their lowly places, far, far from the exclusively rich, powerful people that made up his world.

      He was walking past her, still surrounded by his entourage. Any moment now he would be past the sofas and out of the sheer glass door, which one of the group was already hurrying to hold steady for his august passage. Very soon he would be out of the building he owned, the company he owned, and away from the people he owned.

      She surged to her feet towards him.

      She saw his head turn, just by a fraction. But not towards her. He gave one of the suits flanking the outer edge of his entourage an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Vicky saw the man peel off from the group, cross behind it with a swiftness that was as soft-footed as it was unanticipated by her, and intercept and block her path exactly where she would have been level with her target.

      ‘Get out of my way!’ It was a hiss of fury from her. It was like a spot of rain on a rock. The man didn’t move.

      ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said. His eyes didn’t meet hers, his body didn’t touch hers—he just stood there, blocking her way. Letting Theo Theakis get away from her and stride off with total and complete unconcern for the fact that he had taken something from her that was not his to take and had kept it.

      Her self-control was at breaking point. She could feel it snapping like a dry twig beneath her high heels. She felt her hand arch up, gripping the soft leather clutch bag she was holding like some kind of slingshot, and with every ounce of muscle in her arm she hurled it towards the man who was walking past her, walking out on her. Totally stonewalling her.

      ‘Speak to me, you bastard! Damn well speak to me!’

      The handbag bounced off one of the suits’ shoulders, falling to the ground. The bodyguard in front of her caught her arm, too late to stop her impetuous action, but in time to force it down, not roughly, but with the strength his profession required of him.

      ‘None of that, please,’ he said, and there was a slight grimness to his mouth—presumably because, she thought, with a glance of vicious satisfaction, he hadn’t expected a ‘nice young Englishwoman’to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

      Not that it had done her the slightest good at all. The entourage just kept going—hastened, even. Though the man at the centre did not change his pace by a centimetre. He simply walked out of the building and disappeared into the sleek black limo that was waiting at the kerb. The car moved off. He had gone.

      You swine, thought Vicky, trembling all over. You absolute, total swine.

      She had never, ever hated him so much as at that moment.

      Theo let his gaze rest silently, impassively, on the newspaper clipping that had been placed in front of him. He was at breakfast in his London apartment, and on the other side of the table his private secretary stood, uneasily waiting for his employer’s reaction. It would not be good, Demetrious knew. Theo Theakis hated anything about his private life getting into the press—which was ironic, really, since the life he led made the press very interested in him indeed, even though they could never get much information on him at all.

      Theo Theakis managed his privacy ruthlessly. Even when the press could smell a really juicy story bubbling beneath the expensive surface of his tycoon’s existence, Theo would remain calm. Eighteen months ago, when rumours had started to circulate like buzzing wasps about just why his apparently

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