‘Would you please just go away, Drakon?’ She avoided looking at him directly as she reached up and self-consciously flushed the toilet for a second time before lowering the lid and using it as leverage to rise shakily to her feet. ‘It’s bad enough that I allowed that woman to upset me enough to actually make me physically sick, without the added humiliation of having you witness it,’ she muttered, and she picked up her toothbrush and toothpaste and left the bathroom without so much as a second glance in his direction.
Drakon rose slowly to his feet and threw the damp flannel back into the sink. He concentrated on drawing in deep, controlling breaths in an attempt to dampen down the worst of his own anger at the scene he had walked in on a few minutes ago. His hands clenched into fists at his sides as he fought the need to slam one of them into the mirror inset into the wall over the sink.
Following the veiled insights Gemini had given him into Angela Bartholomew’s true nature, he had expected the older woman to come straight to the florist’s shop and confront Gemini. But, even knowing that, Drakon hadn’t been prepared for the scene of violence he had walked in on earlier.
Or his own reaction to it…
A haze of red had literally passed in front of his eyes on seeing Angela’s hand raised with the obvious intention of striking Gemini, and for the first time in his life Drakon had actually felt himself tempted into using violence against a woman.
He hadn’t done so, of course. That would have been totally against his nature, as well as his parents’ teachings. But it had taken every ounce of his self-control not to shake Angela until her perfectly straight white teeth rattled in her vicious head!
Instead he had taken a tight hold of the woman’s arm and escorted her from the shop, closing the door firmly behind her before informing Gemini’s wide-eyed assistant that her employer was indisposed and probably wouldn’t be downstairs again for the rest of the day.
Coming up the stairs to Gemini’s apartment and finding her collapsed on the floor of the bathroom, and then having his offer of assistance totally rejected by her, had brought a return of that furious red haze.
So much so that Drakon knew he still didn’t have his emotions completely back under iron control when he went in search of her.
Gemini looked up warily as Drakon joined her in the sitting room. She had already hurried into the kitchen and washed her face and cleaned her teeth, but still felt mortified by the scene he had witnessed downstairs, as well as her own physical and embarrassing reaction to it.
But she was even angrier with Drakon for having been the real cause of Angela’s vehemence. ‘What are you doing here, Drakon?’ she demanded dully. ‘Isn’t it enough that I’ve had to listen to your mistress insult both my father and myself this afternoon, without having to now suffer your company, too?’
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. Those black eyes glittered darkly. ‘I believe I assured you last week that that woman is not, and never will be, my mistress,’ he bit out harshly.
Gemini gave a disbelieving snort as she stood beside the unlit fireplace. ‘Have you told her that?’
‘I have no need to tell a woman such as her something she is already only too well aware of,’ he said arrogantly.
‘Could we please stop the lies?’ Gemini pushed the length of her hair back from the paleness of her face. ‘We both know that Angela only came here at all today because you told her I’d seen you last week.’
That nerve in his jaw pulsed even harder. ‘Markos was the one to tell her about that.’
She looked stunned. ‘What?’
Drakon sighed at her look of hurt disbelief. ‘In self-defence. He had no idea of the trouble it would cause when he did so.’
Gemini stared across at him incredulously. ‘You really expect me to believe that?’
He rose up to his full height, appearing every inch the arrogant billionaire industrialist he was in one of his expensively tailored dark suits, pale grey silk shirt, and a darker grey silk tie. The darkness of his hair looked as if it had received a trim since the last time she had seen him.
‘I am no more in the habit of lying than you have assured me you are,’ he told her coldly.
‘I just find it a little hard to believe that Markos needed to tell Angela anything out of self-defence,’ she said sceptically.
Drakon looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Apparently she had just propositioned him. Markos was so taken aback by the suggestion that he fell back on his brief acquaintance with you in order to change the subject.’
The first part of that statement sounded a lot like the Angela Gemini now knew far better than she’d ever wished to. It was the second part of the statement that sounded so improbable. ‘Your cousin implied that he and I are involved in an attempt to deflect Angela’s interest in him?’
Drakon’s jaw tightened. ‘I believe Markos might have implied that it is you and I who are involved, and that he is also acquainted with you.’
That would certainly explain the arrival of the wrathful Angela. ‘And exactly how did he think telling her something like that was going to succeed in saving him from what I’m sure was Angela’s less than subtle proposition?’
‘Markos obviously had no idea of the animosity with which Angela regards you.’ Drakon’s nostrils flared. ‘Apparently I was her real target, and Markos only second choice. I believe he merely hoped to distract even those second-hand attentions by drawing attention to our own acquaintance.’
Gemini stared at Drakon wordlessly for several seconds. The directness of that unwavering dark gaze challenged her to continue disbelieving him. Which she found she couldn’t do. The explanation was so ridiculous—and sounded so exactly like something Angela would do—that Gemini couldn’t help but believe it.
She felt some of the tension leave her body as she gave a rueful sigh. ‘Poor Markos.’
‘Poor Markos?’ Drakon repeated incredulously, knowing that at this moment in time he could cheerfully have pummelled his cousin to a pulp—something he hadn’t done since they had been children together—for being the cause of Angela’s verbal and physical assault on Gemini.
Gemini nodded. ‘I like Markos.’
Drakon noted grimly that she did not say she felt that same liking for him. Not that he could exactly blame her. So far in their acquaintance Gemini had believed him to be involved in an affair with her father’s widow, to be responsible for denying her the right to purchase her family home, and to add insult to injury he had then proceeded to make love to her against the wall of a lift in Lyonedes Tower!
No, unfortunately he had no one but himself to blame if Gemini’s feelings towards him were more than a little ambivalent.
Drakon looked up as she gave a sudden splutter of laughter. ‘Sorry—I was just imagining Markos’s panic when Angela propositioned him!’ she explained at his questioning look.
‘Certainly not his finest hour,’ Drakon acknowledged dryly. ‘Although he did at least have the good sense to come to me immediately after she had departed and inform me of what he had done,’ he added with a frown. ‘I am only sorry I did not arrive soon enough to prevent the unpleasantness of your stepmother’s verbal attack.’
‘You at least stopped the physical one.’ Gemini gave a shrug of her slender shoulders. ‘And the verbal stuff was no worse than some of her other outbursts, actually. Better in some ways, because for the first time I actually learnt a little of what motivates her.’ She grimaced. ‘Not a pretty story, I’m afraid.’
And not one she intended sharing with him either, Drakon guessed. Not that he had any wish to know anything more of Angela, or the reasons she behaved in the way she did. His only concern was Gemini—not the unpleasant woman whom her father