going to let some governess bully him!
“Of course not,” he said. “Because if you leave,” he told the blonde, though he slanted a gaze Mari’s way, “she knows I’ll have to kiss her again instead.”
“Again?” the blonde echoed nervously. She tugged her hand out of his and stepped back, looking from Nikos to Mari, an increasingly worried expression on her face. “I...think maybe you should settle this between yourselves,” she said quickly, edging toward the door.
“Excellent idea,” Mari said, moving toward her.
“Terrible idea,” Nikos disagreed. Didn’t Debbie’s Dollies have any backbone? “Come back here.”
“Keep right on going,” Mari suggested, herding the blonde ahead like a sheepdog nipping at the heels of a ewe. “Thomas, would you show Miss... Miss.. ?”
“Truffles,” the blonde supplied nervously.
“Would you show Miss...Truffles the way out, please?” Mari said quite pleasantly, though Nikos was sure he could hear a hint of a smile when she said the ridiculous name. He gritted his teeth. Surely even a blonde with very little brain could have thought of a better moniker than that!
“And give her something for coming all this way,” Mari added.
“You stay right here,” Nikos commanded. But the blonde wasn’t listening to him. She fumbled to open the door. Mari opened it for her.
“He doesn’t need to give me anything. We have his credit card number,” the blonde said nervously.
“You’re not charging me! You didn’t do any—”
“We’re supposed to charge whether or not they—” Truffles-the-blonde apologized to Mari. She wasn’t even looking at him! “For the, um, er...house-call, y‘know?” she said a little desperately.
“Of course.” Mari nodded sagely. “Makes perfect sense.”
“The hell it does!” Nikos shoved himself up, trying to get out of the chair. “You can’t give my money away like that!”
She turned and gave him a blithe smile. “I didn’t. You did.”
“Come along, miss,” Thomas said smoothly, taking the blonde by the arm. He gave Nikos a hard level look over his shoulder and a slow despairing shake of his head as he steered the woman down the path. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Nikos wasn’t sure if Thomas meant the blonde or him, but judging from the look on the old gardener’s face he had a pretty good idea.
The door shut. The silence was deafening.
Used to prevailing in arguments about bedtime, homework and when to allow a friend to sleep over, Mari found it a little difficult to pretend that she commonly vanquished women of the evening—as Aunt Bett called them—in the course of her work.
It’s not much different than a sleepover, she told herself firmly, then rolled her eyes.
Surreptitiously she wiped damp palms on the sides of her navy skirt and drew several steadying breaths before she shut the door after Thomas and ‘Miss—she still smiled as she thought the name—Truffles, and turned to face the ire of Nikos Costanides head on.
Big mistake.
The sizzle she’d felt from his kiss seemed to arc right across the room and hit her between the eyes. He was slumped back into his chair again, glaring at her, looking for all the world like a sulky child who’d just had his treat taken away, and she could feel her palms dampen and her mouth dry out. There was some deep primitive response going on inside her, too, that she didn’t really want to focus on.
‘Hormones, dear,’ her Aunt Bett would have said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And doubtless Uncle Arthur would have winked at her.
Well, now was not the time for hormones!
No matter how curious she was, she couldn’t simply jump a man she didn’t know. A man she probably didn’t even want to know!
What, she wondered, were you supposed to do if these suddenly wide-awake and raring-to-go hormones aimed you at entirely the wrong man?
Go slow, she cautioned herself. Learn as much as you can about the phenomenon. Then, once she understood it better, she could transfer the feeling to someone more suitable than Nikos Costanides.
Right now the thought of what he and Miss Truffles would be doing if she hadn’t arrived set a blush on Mari’s cheeks. Was that why he’d been so eager? she wondered with sudden dismay. Had he been primed for any woman, and simply let it all out for her?
Now there was food for thought.
She slanted a glance at him again, wondering just what sort of man he was. Surely he didn’t routinely hire “women of the evening” and parade them past his father and family!
If he did, it was no wonder his father was out of patience with him.
“You don’t look like you’d have to hire that sort of thing,” she said now.
Nikos blinked. Then, “I don’t,” he said flatly.
“Then why—?”
He plucked irritably at the fabric on the arm of the chair. “Think about it,” he growled at last.
Mari tried. She thought about everything that had happened since she’d knocked on the door, expecting Stavros Costanides and his four-year-old son and getting a virile man clad only in a bath towel instead. A virile man in a bath towel who’d said, “About time,” and then hauled her into his arms and kissed her!
She hurried past that part of the memory before it could affect her equilibrium again. But as soon as she did, she had to back up and go over it again, because somehow she suspected it was the key.
Obviously he’d mistaken her for Miss Truffles. But why was he waiting to kiss Miss Truffles? It wasn’t as if he knew the woman, for heaven’s sake!
Mari was sure he’d never seen her before in his life. Anyway, even in Mari’s non-existent experience, a man didn’t lie in wait to kiss a woman he hired by the hour.
Unless, perhaps, he was doing it for effect.
Effect. On whom?
She remembered the gathering at the poolside. There had been a lot of women, a few children. And his father.
She remembered seeing him there, starting to go over to talk to him, but then him shaking his head and waving her on. Waiting. Watching.
For Nikos to open the door. To meet his nanny. To blow sky-high?
Perhaps. Or maybe to be amenable then to another “discussion” with his father. Yes, she was willing to believe that was what Stavros had been doing.
And Nikos?
She suspected that, for all their differences, he was his father’s son.
“What were you trying to prove?” she asked.
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I was trying to get him to damned well throw me out!”
“Ah.” Flaunt the hooker in front of the family and watch Daddy take action. She understood now. But... “He’s keeping you prisoner?”
Nikos lifted the cast. “I can’t drive. As soon as I can, I’m out of here.”
“I see.” She did. Sort of. She wondered what Stavros was playing at, hiring her, then. Nikos was certainly not going to be wearing the cast another six months.
“I doubt it,” he said flatly. “He’s a manipulator.”
“And you’re not?”
He frowned. “I’m only doing this in response to what he’s done.