myself before I slither behind the wheel of my car and disappear into the night?”
“Yes,” she said. “Eat something. You’ve had too much to drink and are in no condition to drive. In fact, you should be spending the night here.”
“Why, Emily, is that an invitation?”
“No,” she said crushingly. “It’s an order, and should you be foolish enough to decide otherwise, I’ll kick you where it’ll hurt the most.”
She probably weighed no more than fifty-four kilos to his eighty-five, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in spirit. He had no doubt that, given her knowledge of male anatomy, she was more than capable of inflicting serious injury. Which should have deterred him. Instead the thought of fending her off left him so suddenly and painfully aroused that, for the first time, he questioned the wisdom of his plan of attack. She was the one supposed to be at his mercy, not the other way around, but so far, she remained utterly indifferent to his charms. He, on the other hand, was anything but impervious to hers.
Damaris came back just then to serve spinach-stuffed breast of chicken and ziti, a welcome diversion, which allowed him to wrestle his wayward hormones into submission and redirect his energy into more productive channels. “Why did you allow my father to coerce you into letting him travel, when he’s clearly not up to it?” he inquired casually, once they were alone again.
“I did my best to dissuade him,” Emily said. “We all did. But the only thing he cared about was coming home to Greece, and nothing anyone said could convince him to wait. I think it’s because he was afraid.”
“Of dying?”
“No. Of not dying in Greece.”
That Niko could well believe. Pavlos had always been fanatically patriotic. “So you volunteered to see him safely home?”
“It was more that he chose me. We got to know one another quite well during his hospital stay.”
An hour ago, he’d have rated that little morsel of information as yet another sign of her ulterior motives. Now, he didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm for the task. Emily the woman was proving a lot more intriguing than Emily the fortune hunter.
To buy himself enough time to reestablish his priorities, he switched to another subject. “What happened to you after your parents were killed?”
“I was sent to live with my father’s sister. He was thirty-six when he died, and Aunt Alicia was eleven years older. She and Uncle Warren didn’t have children, but they were the only family I had left, so they were more or less stuck with me. It wasn’t a happy arrangement on either side.”
“They mistreated you?”
“Not in the way you probably mean, but they never let me forget they’d done ‘the right thing’ by taking me in and would, I think, have found a reason to refuse if they hadn’t been afraid it would reflect badly on them. Of course, the insurance settlement I brought with me sweetened the deal by defraying the cost of putting a roof over my head and keeping me fed and clothed for the next nine years.”
“What happened then?”
“The summer I graduated high school, I applied to the faculty of nursing, was accepted and moved into a dorm on the university campus at the end of August. I never went ‘home’ again.”
“But at least there was enough insurance settlement left to pay your tuition fees and other expenses.”
She shook her head. “I scraped by on scholarships and student loans.”
Caught in a swell of indignation he never saw coming, he stared at her. Whatever else his father’s sins, he’d never tampered with Niko’s inheritance from his mother. “Are you telling me they spent money on themselves, when it should have been held in trust for your education?”
“No, they were scrupulously honest.” She started to add something else, then seemed to think better of it and made do with, “The settlement just wasn’t very large to begin with, that’s all.”
Something about that answer didn’t sit right, either. Wasn’t the whole point of insurance to provide adequate recompense to beneficiaries, especially minors? But although the subject bore investigation, he decided now was not the time to pursue it and asked instead, “Do you keep in touch with your aunt and uncle?”
“A card at Christmas about covers it.”
“So they have no idea you’re here now?”
“No one has,” she said. “My arrangement with Pavlos was strictly between the two of us. If my employer knew what I’d done, I’d probably be fired.”
Which wouldn’t matter one iota, if Niko’s first impression of her was correct and she’d set her sights on a much more rewarding prize. What she earned in a year as a nurse wouldn’t amount to pocket change if she married his father.
Wondering if she had any idea how potentially damaging her revelation was, he said, “Then why take the risk?”
“Because your father was alone in a foreign country without friends or family to look after him when he was released.”
“He had a son. If you’d thought to contact me, I could have been there within twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe,” she said gently, “he didn’t want to bother you.”
“So he bothered a perfect stranger instead, even though doing so might end up costing her her job. Tell me, Emily, how do you propose to explain your absence from the hospital?”
“I won’t have to. I took a three-month leave of absence and scheduled it to coincide with his discharge.”
“A noble gesture on your part, giving up your holiday to look after my father.”
“Well, why not? I had nothing else planned.”
Except setting aside an hour a day to polish your halo! Struggling to hide his skepticism, Niko said, “All work and no play hardly seems fair. We’ll have to see what we can do to change that.”
A sudden gust of wind rattled the French doors, making her jump. “Just being here is change enough. If the weather ever clears up, I’m sure Pavlos won’t begrudge me the odd day off to see the sights.”
“Count on both,” he said, recognizing opportunity when it presented itself. “And on my making myself available to act as tour guide.”
“That’s nice of you, Niko.”
No, it’s not, he could have told her. Because whatever her motives, his were anything but pure. And because he’d meant it when he said he wasn’t a nice man.
They passed the remainder of the meal in idle conversation, interrupted only by intermittent bursts of rain at the windows, but before coffee was served, she’d run out of things to say and was wilting visibly. Even he, unscrupulous bastard though he undoubtedly was, felt sorry for her. The long transatlantic flight would have been tiring enough, without the added strain of looking after his father. So when she set aside her napkin and begged to be excused, he made no attempt to stop her, but left the table himself and walked her to the foot of the stairs.
“Good night,” she murmured.
“Kali nikhta,” he returned. “Sleep well.”
She was perhaps halfway to the upper landing when a brilliant flash of lightning arrowed through the night. Almost immediately, the electricity failed and plunged the house into darkness.
He heard her startled exclamation and the click of her high heel hitting the edge of the marble step as she stumbled to a halt. “Stay put,” he ordered, well aware how treacherous the staircase could be to the unwary. Once, when he was still a boy, a new housemaid had slipped and broken her arm—and that had been in broad daylight. But he’d grown up in the villa;