No, thank you. Not only wasn’t she interested in marriage, she wasn’t interested in getting involved, even temporarily, with a man who thought of women as responsibilities. That was just a polite way men had of saying they had the right to dictate what women did with their lives.
Demetrios wasn’t her husband, he wasn’t her lover, he wasn’t anything but her boss and he’d already tried caging her. He’d tried to install her inside his house; he’d put a stop to her going off on her own at lunchtime. He wanted to watch her every move.
Did he actually think she’d let him do that? Treat her as if she were his property, except for the times he treated her as if she were invisible? Nothing but a grunt when she boarded his stupid helicopter each morning. Another grunt at night. Not that they returned to his island together all that often. He was too busy at night in Athens, doing whatever it was he did with whomever he did it. His secretary, maybe, and never mind all that stuff about not mixing business with pleasure.
The woman looked at him as if he was the most desirable man on the planet.
He wasn’t.
He was a walking ego. A self-important ruler of his own little kingdom. He was a man who thought he was irresistible to women.
Well, he wasn’t. Not to her.
Sam burrowed deeper into her coat and bent her head against the wind.
She’d seen right through him from day one. It was a damned good thing she hadn’t fallen into the trap and gone to bed with him. The nerve of him, to speak to her as he had just now. To look at her the way he’d been looking at her all afternoon, as if he’d finally remembered she was a woman, as if he were weighing the possibility of throwing everybody out, locking the door, backing her into a corner and doing things…
Hot, delicious things.
Sam shuddered again. She didn’t want any of that. Not from him.
A horn blared as she stepped off the curb. A car flew past and she jumped back but not in time to prevent a wall of cold, dirty water from drenching her from head to foot. She glared after the car and muttered a phrase that described exactly what she thought of the driver in the Greek she’d learned on the streets.
Mr. I-Am-The-Law Karas would have been surprised at how much Greek she’d picked up since she’d come here. She listened; she learned. That was what linguists did. Now she knew lots of polite words—and lots of impolite idioms. That had been one benefit of those lunchtime walks, until Demetrios had decided to leash her. So she’d known what to call the idiot driver who’d just soaked her to the bone.
More to the point, she knew what Demetrios said just before he’d overturned his chair.
A sto dialolo, he’d snarled. To hell with it.
If he meant, to hell with their arrangement, she agreed. Completely. She had no business here. Saying she’d work for him had been stupid. She should have stuck to Plan A, told him to take his job and stuff it, just as she’d intended.
Dammit, the puddles were ankle deep. There had to be a taxi around here. If only she knew where she was but everything looked different at night. Everything felt different, too.
The back of her neck prickled and she picked up her pace.
No, she didn’t belong here, not just in Piraeus but in Greece. She should never have let Demetrios turn his job offer into a challenge. Even that kiss…
Okay. So the kiss hadn’t been his idea, it had been hers. And it had been stupid, just as it had been stupid to let him touch her, but the temptation to give him a taste of what he’d never have, had been too strong to ignore. He’d deserved that little lesson. He was too sure of himself, accustomed to taking what he wanted though, dammit, there was something incredibly sexy about all that macho ego…
And that was crazy.
Hadn’t she always made it a point to avoid men who thought they owned the world and all the women who inhabited it? Hadn’t she always known what such a man would be like as a lover? That he’d be dominating, and possessive, and jealous?
And incredible.
Sam’s pulse beat quickened. She couldn’t forget that morning, when he’d put his hands under her robe as if he had the right to do whatever he wanted to her. With her. It was wrong. The way he’d made her feel was wrong, but she’d relived the moment a hundred times. A thousand times. All she had to do was close her eyes and she felt him touching her, the sensual roughness of his fingertips, the drugging heat of his hands and his mouth…
A horn screamed into the silence of the night as she stepped off the curb. Not again, she thought…
Tires shrieked as they clawed for purchase on the rain-darkened road. Sam looked up, blinded by headlights. A car was bearing down on her. She cried out, stumbled back. The car fishtailed, spun; she tripped over the cobblestones.
The car came to a stop just as she sank down, shaking, on the curb.
A door slammed. Footsteps pounded towards her. A dark shape bent over her and hard, angry hands closed on her shoulders. A stream of Greek words blistered her ears.
She had almost killed herself, the man was saying.
Sam looked up. His face was masked in shadow. “Seenghnómi,” she whispered, “I’m sorry…”
It wasn’t enough. She could feel the heat coming off him, the unbridled male fury. His hands tightened on her and he drew her to her feet.
A different kind of fear kicked in, a fear born not of her brush with death but of this enraged stranger.
“No,” she said, struggling against him. “Don’t! I’ll scream!”
“Scream all you like,” Demetrios said grimly, and he swept her into his arms, carried her to his car, and dumped her inside.
CHAPTER SIX
DRIVING a car, especially one with four hundred and eighty-something horses under the hood damned near begging you to let them run free on the twisted streets of an ancient city, was not a good idea when your gut was churning with anger.
Demetrios knew that. He also knew that it was better to let out his emotions this way than to pull to the curb, turn to Samantha and confront her. She had done something so stupid that it had nearly cost her life. No, it would not be wise to stop the car. If he did, he’d shake her until her teeth rattled…
Or pull her into his arms and unleash his bottled-up rage in a kiss that would make it clear she’d had no right to run away from him, that he would not permit her to do such a thing again.
At least he could still think clearly enough to know that taking either action would be a mistake, so he slammed the car into gear and stepped hard on the gas.
“I could have run you over,” he said as they sped through the darkness. She didn’t answer. That only made him angry enough to drive a little faster. “What did you think you were doing, huh? Stepping off that curb w
ithout so much as looking? Did you think you were in a jungle in Borneo?” He drew a deep, ragged breath. “You should not have been walking these streets to begin with. I told you they were not safe, told you and told you…” He clamped his lips together, tightened his hands on the wheel, fought for self-control. “Are you all right?”
She was soaked. She was shivering. And her ankle hurt. “Yes,” she lied, “I’m fine.”
“Anything could have happened to you. Why did you do something so foolish? Why did you run away?”
“You wanted to argue. I didn’t.”
“I did not want to argue,” he said grimly. “I wanted to talk to you, that’s all.”
“We had nothing to talk about.”
Nothing to talk about? She’d spent the day flirting with another man and they had nothing to talk about? Demetrios’s jaw tightened.
“I am your employer. If I wish to discuss something with you, I will do so.”
Hell. He sounded like an idiot. Samantha had to think so, too, but she said nothing. That only egged him on.
“Do you hear me? Do you understand what I’m telling you? If I wish to talk to you, if I wish you to remain behind after the others leave…” He paused, frowned. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
But she had said something in a papery whisper. An apology? She’d done that already—had she really offered it in Greek? At least, he thought coldly, she understood how close she’d come to being seriously hurt.
Samantha, hurt.
A hand fastened around his heart. He considered pulling over, taking her in his arms, telling her that she’d had no right to scare him…
“It’s too late to show contrition,” he said coldly.
Only the purr of the engine and the rumble of the tires on the cobbled streets broke the silence.
“What you did was stupid.”
Still, she remained silent. His frown became a scowl. Why didn’t she respond? Was she just going to let him call her stupid, give her orders? No. That wasn’t Samantha.
Something was wrong. For the first time, he looked at her. Thee mou! His mouth went dry. She was huddled in her seat, head back, eyes shut. He could hear the labored hiss of her breath.