Defying Drakon. Carole Mortimer

to bear. Angela had made it obvious to Gemini that she resented any time father and daughter spent together—to the point that she’d ensured it rarely happened. It had been an attitude that was never visible whenever Miles was present. Angela’s behaviour then had been sickeningly kittenish as she’d continued to wrap her much older and totally smitten husband about her manicured, sexy little finger.

      In the circumstances, was it any wonder that Angela had enjoyed implying to Gemini that she had managed to capture the interest of someone like Drakon Lyonedes—a man half Miles’s age and probably a dozen times richer?

      Knowing Angela as well as she did, Gemini thought the other woman believed it was only a matter of time, anyway, until she made the fabricated affair into a reality. So what did it matter if she’d exaggerated the situation to Gemini now? And if it didn’t happen who was ever going to contradict Angela’s claims when the man himself was so utterly elusive?

      Except Gemini had now met Drakon, and she felt extremely foolish for having believed the other woman’s boast about his being infatuated with her. Gemini had no doubt Angela was lying to her; Drakon Lyonedes wasn’t the type of man to be infatuated with any woman. Besides, being so arrogantly self-assured he obviously never felt the need to lie about any of his actions—least of all his involvement with a woman!

      ‘Am I right in assuming this information was given to you by your stepmother?’ he prompted harshly.

      Gemini flinched at the disgust underlying his tone. ‘Perhaps I misunderstood her.’ She gave an uncomfortable lift of her shoulders. ‘I—She mentioned how…nice you were.’ Sexily gorgeous had been her exact words, actually, but Gemini really couldn’t bring herself to tell him that! ‘Maybe I just let my imagination take that a step further than Angela actually intended—’

      ‘I believe you assured me earlier that you do not lie?’ Drakon cut in.

      She winced. ‘I try not to, no…’

      ‘Then do not do so now,’ he advised her coldly.

      ‘I believe I said I might have been mistaken,’ she said uncomfortably.

      ‘And do you really believe that?’

      ‘What I believe is that Angela was trying to hurt me by boasting of how quickly she had replaced my father in her bed,’ Gemini acknowledged shakily. ‘You must have thought I was completely off my head this morning when I started rambling on about the affair you were having with Angela.’ She offered him an embarrassed smile.

      He gave a derisive snort. ‘Not completely, no.’

      ‘You’ve never been intimately involved with Angela, have you?’

      ‘No,’ he confirmed.

      ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry!’

      ‘Here—drink some more of your wine.’ Drakon moved to pick up Gemini’s glass and handed it to her, inwardly seething at Angela Bartholomew and the lies she had told her stepdaughter. In order to hurt her? No doubt. For himself, Drakon took exception to any woman claiming to have a relationship with him that simply did not, never had and never would exist. Especially in the case of the voluptuous Angela Bartholomew.

      Would he resent it quite as much if it had not been the intriguing and beautiful Gemini to whom that lie had been told?

      Drakon didn’t even want to think about the implications of that question, let alone find an answer for it! ‘Not everything your stepmother told you about me was a lie. Lyonedes Enterprises is