“You’re more attracted to me than you are to Max.” He said the words flatly, yet there was a wealth of challenge in them, and he looked at her as if daring her to deny them.
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. She arched her eyebrows at him provocatively. “You think so?”
“You know you are,” he insisted. “There’s been a spark between us since day one.”
This time she opened her mouth and didn’t shut it, still trying to formulate the words. She gave a careless, dismissive shrug. “In your dreams, Savas.”
But Sebastian didn’t wait. “You want proof?” He closed the space between them so that she had to tip her head up to look at him. His mouth was bare inches away. She could see the whiskered roughness of his jaw, could feel the heat of his breath.
She swallowed. She blinked. She waited.
And the next thing she knew Sebastian’s lips came down on hers.
Award-winning author Anne McAllister was once given a blueprint for happiness that included a nice, literate husband, a ramshackle Victorian house, a horde of mischievous children, a bunch of big, friendly dogs, and a life spent writing stories about tall, dark and handsome heroes. ‘Where do I sign up?’ she asked, and promptly did. Lots of years later, she’s happy to report the blueprint was a success. She’s always happy to share the latest news with readers at her website, www.annemcallister.com, and welcomes their letters there, or at PO Box 3904, Bozeman, Montana 59772, USA (SASE appreciated).
SAVAS’ DEFIANT
MISTRESS
BY
ANNE McALLISTER
CHAPTER ONE
“I WAS thinking little square boxes with silver and rose jelly beans in them.” Vangie was saying breathlessly into the phone.
Sebastian, who wasn’t listening, had his attention on the computer screen in front of him. His sister had been rabbiting on in his ear for nearly twenty minutes. But truthfully, she hadn’t said anything important in the last three weeks.
“You know what I mean, Seb? Seb?” Her voice rose impatiently when he didn’t reply. “Are you there?”
God help him, yes, he was.
Sebastian Savas managed a perfunctory grunt, but his gaze stayed riveted on the specs for the Blake-Carmody project, and his mind was there, too. He glanced at his watch. He had a meeting with Max Grosvenor in less than ten minutes, and he wanted everything fresh in his mind.
He’d worked his tail off putting together ideas for this project, aware that it would be a terrific coup for Grosvenor Design to get the go-ahead.
And it would be an even bigger coup for him personally to be asked to head up the team. He’d done a lot of the work. Using Max’s ideas and his own, Seb had spent the past two months putting together the structural plans and the public space layout for the Blake-Carmody high-rise office and condo building. And last week, while Seb had been in Reno working on another major project, Max had presented it to the owners.
Still he’d had a big hand in it, and if they’d won the project, it made sense that that was what today’s meeting was about—Max asking him to run the show.
Seb smiled every time he thought about it.
“Well, I wondered,” Vangie was saying, undeterred. “You’re very quiet today. So…what do you think, Seb? Rose? Or silver? For the boxes, I mean. Or—” she paused “—maybe boxes are too fussy. Maybe we shouldn’t even have jelly beans. They’re sort of childish. Maybe we should have mints. What do you think of mints? Seb?”
Sebastian jerked his attention back at the impatient sound of his name in his ear. Sighing, he thrust a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Vangie,” he said with just the slightest hint of impatience himself.
What’s more, he didn’t care.
This was Vangie’s wedding, not his. She was the one tying the knot. And since he never intended to, he didn’t even need to learn from the experience.
“Why not have both?” he said because he had to say something.
“Could we?” She sounded as if he’d suggested having the Seattle symphony play the music for the reception.
“Have what you want, Vange,” he said. “It’s your wedding.”
It was, to Seb’s mind, fast becoming The Wedding That Ate Seattle. But what the heck, if it made his sister happy—for the moment at least—who was he to argue with her?
“I know it’s my wedding. But you’re paying for it,” Vangie said conscientiously.
“No problem.”
Where family was concerned, Seb was the one they all turned to, the one who offered advice, a shoulder to lean on and a checkbook that paid the bills. It had been that way ever since he’d got his first architectural job.
“I suppose I could ask Daddy…”
Seb stifled a snort. Philip Savas begat children. He didn’t raise them. And while the old man had plenty of money—the family’s considerable hotel fortune residing in his pockets—he didn’t part with it easily unless it was something he wanted. Like another wife.
“Don’t go there, Vange,” Sebastian advised his sister. “You know there’s no point.”
“I suppose not,” she said glumly with the voice of experience. “I just wish…it would be so perfect if he’d remember to come and walk me down the aisle.”
“Yeah.” Good luck, Seb thought grimly. How many times did Vangie have to be disappointed before she learned?
Seb could pay the bills and offer support and see that his siblings had everything they needed, but he couldn’t guarantee their father would ever act like one. In all of Sebastian’s thirty-three years, Philip Savas never had.
“Has he called you?” Vangie asked hopefully.
“No.”
Unless Philip wanted to foist a problem off on his responsible eldest son, he couldn’t be bothered to make contact. And Seb was done trying to make overtures to him. Now he glanced at his watch again. “Listen, Vange, I’ve gotta run. I have a meeting—”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bother you. I’m sorry to bother you all the time, Seb. It’s just you’re the only one here and…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes, well, you should have got married in New York. You’d have had all the help you could use then.” When Seb had come out to Seattle after university, it had been expressly to put a continent between himself and his multitude of ex-stepmothers and half siblings. He didn’t mind supporting them, but he didn’t want them interfering in his life. Or his work. Which was the same thing.
His bad luck, he supposed, that when Vangie graduated from Princeton and got engaged, her fiancé, Garrett’s, family was from Seattle, and they decided to move here.
“It will be wonderful. I can see you all the time. Like a real family!” Vangie had said at the time. She’d been over the moon at the prospect. “Isn’t that great?”
Seb, who had given up any notion of “real family” by the time he’d reached puberty, hadn’t seen anything to rejoice in. But he’d managed to cross his fingers and give her a hug. “Terrific.”
In fact, it hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared.
Vangie and Garrett both worked for a law firm in Bellevue. They spent time with each other and with their own set of friends and he rarely saw