‘Very difficult.’ And then her eyes sparkled in a way that Rebecca had never seen them do before as her voice dropped into a kind of ecstatic whisper. ‘And absolutely bloody gorgeous.’
If difficult was an understatement, then so was gorgeous, Rebecca decided when she met him later that day. She found herself startled by the man’s overwhelming charisma as well as his astonishing good looks.
If someone had said, ‘Bring me the most delectable man in the world,’ then Alexandros Pavlidis would have been the list-topper. If you wanted tall, dark, ruggedly handsome—with a coldly irresistible air about him—then Pavlidis ticked all the right boxes.
The Greek was terse to the point of rudeness, and he operated at the speed of light—the retinue who were following his tall, black-clad figure into the small departure lounge almost having to run to keep up with his long-legged stride.
And it didn’t escape her notice that every woman who worked in the building found some kind of pretext to try to catch a glimpse of him.
But it wasn’t her job to swoon over customers. Her manner had to remain benignly courteous and respectful. Whatever he asked for, she brought. She did not attempt to engage him in any kind of conversation and her entire dialogue with him was confined to politely answering his requests.
He began to use Evolo regularly for his European trips, since apparently he had sold his own private jet fleet for environmental reasons, and his work took him all over the globe. Rebecca tried not to be so heart-poundingly aware of him, but it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t quash the excitement she always experienced when she saw his name on the passenger list.
And even though she did her best to disguise it a kind of unspoken awareness began to sizzle between the two of them—because nothing could disguise chemistry, no matter how hard you tried. His black eyes would narrow thoughtfully when he saw her, and her heart would leap whenever he dealt her his rare, slow smile.
But she remembered Vanessa’s words about discretion and boundaries and quickly turned away from it. Even if it wasn’t forbidden to date the clients—was she really considering herself the kind of woman that someone like Xandros would date?
Yet her apparent lack of interest seemed to inflame him. He went out of his way to engage her in conversation and surely it would have been discourteous not to have joined in?
‘What are you doing once we land?’ he asked her one dark, starry night as the plane touched down in Madrid.
‘I’m having an early night,’ she answered.
‘Ah!’ His black eyes glittered with sudden understanding, for this would explain her inexplicable resolve not to flirt with him. He felt a slight pang of disappointment, but it was quickly followed by the inevitable rush of challenge—for there was no rival who could not be easily dispatched if Xandros wanted something. ‘And who is the lucky man?’
Rebecca felt colour tinge her cheeks. ‘Mr Pavlidis!’
‘Ne, agape mou, what is it?’
Why did he call her that? Didn’t it mean ‘darling’, or something? ‘Will that be all?’
‘Ochi,’ he said roughly, for he had seen her blush—something which was as rare as the rose-coloured Starlings which sometimes appeared on the Aegean islands. ‘It will not be all. I want you to have dinner with me. In fact, I demand it.’
Maybe if she had agreed to his request then it would have all been over before it began, but Rebecca did something that few women ever did. She said no.
When a man had everything—he wanted what he couldn’t have, and Xandros wanted Rebecca. He wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted a woman for years and he was forced to pursue her—something which was almost alien to him. Even when he’d first arrived in New York as an unsophisticated eighteen-year-old, women had fallen eagerly into his arms.
‘What harm is there in dinner?’ he mused, the next time they flew together. It was a late winter afternoon as the luxury jet began its descent towards Paris and the early-setting sun was lighting the sky with its fiery blaze. Coal-black eyes mocked her. ‘Do not worry.’ His voice was like silk, embroidered with sardonic thread. ‘You have turned me down enough times to impress me, agape mou. And now that we have established your fine reputation, you can see there is no reason for us not to enjoy one another’s company.’
It sounded unbearably tempting. Rebecca tugged unnecessarily at the neat jacket of her Evolo uniform. ‘But I’m not supposed to mix with the customers, Mr Pavlidis,’ she said.
‘Says who?’
‘Says my boss.’
‘This would be Vanessa?’ he queried, his eyes narrowing.
‘That’s right.’
He nodded, as if satisfying himself of something. Or someone. ‘Vanessa has her own agenda,’ he drawled softly. ‘And I’m not proposing that we ride off into the sunset together,’ he added sarcastically. ‘I just think Paris is not a city to be alone in and that it would be agreeable to have a little company. Mmm? What could be wrong with that?’
His black eyes glittered with enticing question. In her heart, Rebecca knew that he wasn’t being straightforward with her; she suspected he had an address book crammed with the numbers of beautiful and willing women no matter how many cities he visited. But she had held out for so long against her feelings for him and in that moment she felt defenceless against the full onslaught of his charm.
‘Just dinner?’ she verified breathlessly.
‘If that is what you want,’ Xandros returned, his smile careless.
It hadn’t been ‘just’ dinner, of course. For how could you not let a man like Xandros kiss you at the end of it when you had been longing for him to kiss you since the first time you’d set eyes on him? And then? Her battle had been with herself rather than with him. Her sense of what was right and proper vying with her heart and her body’s desires.
She had lost the battle. Of course she had ended up in bed with him. He was a powerful, virile man who would not be satisfied with a chaste kiss at the end of a first date—and for the first time in her life, neither was she.
Rebecca had never felt so physically vulnerable beneath a man’s caresses as she was to Xandros. She hated herself for her easy capitulation that night and yet she couldn’t stop herself. Her hungry body’s need overrode everything else—ruthlessly quelling the voice in her head which demanded to know whether he would respect her after this.
And to Xandros, her only spoken objection was a practical one. ‘No one from work must know,’ she told him urgently as his hand began its inevitable and longed-for journey up her inner thigh.
‘Why should they?’ he breathed, peeling off her panties with a low moan of delight.
‘Because … oh … oh … Xandros! Because people …’ She closed her eyes, and swallowed. ‘They talk,’ she whispered eventually.
‘Then we won’t give them anything to talk about,’ he assured her silkily, his fingers working ruthlessly against her hotly aroused flesh, feeling it yield to him. ‘No one will know a thing. We will keep it secret, ne? Our little secret …’
But weren’t secrets wrong? Wasn’t that making it sound as if he wanted to keep her hidden away—like something furtive, to be ashamed of? Rebecca tried to pull away, but the lure of his embrace was too strong to resist, the gentle caress of his fingertips too tremblingly intense. ‘Xandros?’ she tried, one last time.
‘Ochi,’ he negated fiercely. ‘Say nothing! Do nothing but stay here in my arms when you know that this is what we both want!’ And he kissed her into willing submission.
Yet even at the height of her very first orgasm, Rebecca was aware of a sharp twist of pain in her heart. That her surrender could be her emotional undoing, and that