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to track her down, buy up her father’s debts, and try and buy rights to her and her body along with those debts? The very idea of that made her dizzy and plunged her brain into even greater turmoil. ‘It’s immoral...it’s blackmail.’

      ‘It’s definitely not blackmail. I’m giving you the benefit of a choice you didn’t have before I came through that door,’ Nikolai Drakos fielded with glittering cool. ‘That choice is yours to make.’

      ‘Like hell it is!’ Ella fired back. ‘The choice you’re offering is totally unscrupulous.’

      ‘When did I say I had scruples?’ Nikolai asked almost conversationally. ‘I want what I want and I want you in London to take out and show off.’

      ‘But...why?’ she interrupted, helpless in the grip of her desire to know that answer. ‘Why pick me? I said no that night...was that all it took to fire you up? For you to suggest this?’

      ‘I’m not going to answer those questions. I don’t need to,’ Nikolai told her without apology. ‘My motivation is my own. Either you want to consider the option I’ve offered or you don’t. It’s entirely up to you.’

      ‘But a mistress...!’ A driven laugh fell from Ella’s convulsing throat because she was struggling to accept that he could have confronted her with such an insane choice. ‘Don’t you understand that even if I wanted to say yes I couldn’t?’

      He frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘My father wouldn’t live with himself if he knew I was sleeping with a man just to get him out of trouble! No, the mistress option is a total impossibility as far as I am concerned.’

      ‘That’s for you to decide.’ Nikolai settled a business card down on the desk. ‘My phone number. I’ll be staying at the Wrother Links Hotel until tomorrow.’

      ‘I’ve already made my decision and it’s a no,’ Ella hastened to tell him.

      Nikolai flashed her a slow wicked smile that radiated charisma. ‘Think about it properly before you say no but if you discuss it with anyone else, I’ll withdraw the offer,’ he warned her smoothly. ‘It’s a strictly confidential option.’

      ‘You know, you can’t simply ask a woman you don’t know to live with you,’ she bit out, fit to be tied at his sheer nerve and nonchalance.

      Black curling lashes screening his shrewd gaze, Nikolai shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I believe I just did.’

      ‘But it’s barbaric!’ she exclaimed. ‘A complete cheat of a supposed offer!’

      Nikolai sent her a gleaming sideways glance. ‘No, the real cheat was you kissing me the way you did last year and then saying no and acting as if I had grossly insulted you,’ he murmured with lethal quietness.

      ‘You did insult me!’ Ella flung back, her cheeks hot as fire while she wondered if her refusal that night had started off his whole chain reaction. What else could possibly be driving him?

      Nikolai straightened lazily as he opened the door. ‘If you take offence that easily, maybe it’s just as well that the answer is no.’

      Strangely that wasn’t what she wanted to hear and she didn’t understand that truth, nor the feeling that his departure was somehow a low point rather than something to be celebrated. She watched the limo drive off, her thoughts miles away, trailing back down the timeline to the moment she had first met Nikolai Drakos...

      * * *

      Her stepmother’s best friend, Ailsa, had been a wedding planner and when one of Ailsa’s part-time workers had taken ill, Joy had insisted that Ella step in. Ella could have declined but she had been too well aware that if she crossed the older woman Joy would throw a tantrum and rain down misery on the whole family. And she had always hated listening to her stepmother torment her father with nasty, sneering comments. When Ella had arrived at the country house that evening she had been startled to be asked to park cars rather than wait tables as she had dimly expected. And, truth to tell, with an advanced driving test under her belt and a love of fast cars, parking the luxury models driven by the wedding guests would have been fun, had her foot not slid off the pedal of that McLaren Spider, causing the wing of it to be grazed against an overhanging bush.

      Nikolai had started shouting and Ailsa had come running out to smooth over the incident. Unfortunately, Ella’s immediate apology had had no effect and Ailsa had made a big deal out of supposedly sacking Ella simply to comfort Nikolai. That was when Nikolai had suddenly cooled off, dismissed the matter and insisted that he didn’t want Ella sacked before striding into the house to join the rest of the guests.

      It had been much later that night before she’d seen Nikolai again. She had been outside the ballroom listening to the DJ playing for the evening party while half dancing to the beat of the music to keep warm in the cold. And when she had heard something behind her, she had spun and he had simply been standing there watching her, dark eyes glowing golden as melted caramel in the reflected lights.

      ‘If you want your car, you can fetch it for yourself,’ Ella told him.

      ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t allow you behind the wheel of it again,’ he admitted, strolling almost soundlessly closer to gaze down at her. He had moved very quietly for such a big male. ‘When do you finish tonight?’

      ‘I’m finished now. I’m waiting for a lift home from one of the bartenders.’

      ‘Could be a long wait,’ he murmured softly.

      ‘Could be.’ Lifting her head, Ella shook her hair back from her face because the breeze was blowing it into her eyes.

      ‘You have gorgeous hair,’ he breathed.

      ‘Thank you...’ In the light flooding through the windows behind her, she could see his lean dark features with clarity and all she could think at that moment was that he was definitely the most gorgeous man she had ever come across.

      ‘And stunning eyes...but, you’re a rubbish driver.’

      ‘My shoe slid on the pedal. I have an advanced driving test.’

      ‘Don’t believe you.’

      Ella lifted her chin. ‘Your problem, not mine.’

      ‘My problem is that I want you,’ Nikolai said boldly. ‘I saw you dancing by the window and it gave me a high.’

      Sharply disconcerted, Ella reddened. ‘Oh—’

      ‘Oh?’ he mimicked with derision. ‘That’s it, that’s all you’ve got to say?’

      ‘What do you want me to say?’ Ella rolled her eyes expressively. ‘I’m not looking for a man right now.’

      ‘And I’m not looking for a woman... I’m looking for one night,’ Nikolai admitted silkily, lean brown fingers reaching up to curl into the fall of her hair and urge her closer than she would have chosen to be, had she been in her right mind.

      As for that, what happened next proved to her that she was not in her right mind when Nikolai was around her because he closed his other hand to her spine and tilted her forward into sudden searing contact with his long, hard body. Within seconds he was kissing her as she had never been kissed before, forcing apart her lips with the hard pressure of his, sliding in his tongue, and sending such a jolt of wild excitement through her that her head swam and her knees buckled. He was passionate and demanding and all-male hungry, every sinuously sexual movement of his lean hips and powerful thighs against her warning her that a kiss could be almost as sizzlingly intimate as a naked embrace.

      He lifted his handsome dark head and the chill of the night air on her back contrasted with the heat of his powerfully aroused body against hers. Immediately, Ella remembered who she was and where she was and the chill on her skin slivered inside right down to her stomach, and sickened her.

      ‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said tartly, pulling free and starting to walk away.

      ‘You

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