The Heiress Bride. Lynne Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ time ever to attract a man and to do so in her father’s vicinity demanded a degree of courageous subtlety she feared she did not possess.

      She had worked so hard at forgetting just how unnerving a personality Alexio Christoulakis was, Ione acknowledged uneasily as she collected the already prepared coffee tray. His arrival had shaken her up a lot more than she had expected. With reluctance, she recalled their first brief encounter.

      That night a couple of months earlier she had been relieved to be mistaken for an employee, for it was humiliating to be treated like a servant by her father in front of his discomfited guests. Alexio had been in too much of a rage to be more discerning, she recalled abstractedly. Dark eyes blazing gold with fierce pride, aggressive jawline hard as iron. And she had had a very fair idea of what hoops her father had put him through for his own amusement.

      But she had still been struck as dumb as a tongue-tied schoolgirl when she’d first laid eyes on Alexio Christoulakis. Even though she had seen those same lean, dark, handsome features in the magazines she read, he had always looked so impossibly cool and reserved. She had not been prepared for a male so vibrant and so volatile in the flesh that raw energy literally sizzled from him.

      And when he had called her back to change those satin sheets that her aunt believed to be the last word in sophistication, she had had no need to make that her own personal task for the villa had staff on duty twenty-four hours a day. Yet inexplicably she had hurried off to fetch fresh linen. When she had returned to his bedroom, he had been standing by the open doors onto the balcony, exuding a ferocious tension that had sent her own sensory processes into overload.

      Guilty as a sneak thief but unable to resist her own fascination, she had kept on stealing covert glances at him. It had taken her for ever to make up the bed again, for her hands had been all fingers and thumbs. But he had seemed indifferent to her lingering presence and her lack of dexterity. Only once had their eyes met head-on and her mouth had run dry as she’d fallen victim to those spectacular golden eyes. A split second later he had swung away as though he were alone and had strode out onto the balcony where he had remained until she had departed again.

      As she emerged from that unsettling recollection, perspiration beaded Ione’s short upper lip. As she entered the main salon with the laden tray, she could see the shaded, vine-encrusted loggia outside where her father was seated in regal splendour and her heart sank at his choice of location. Evidently impervious to any fear of heights, Alexio was lounging back against the low retaining wall that was built into the very edge of the cliff, the relaxed angle of his lean, powerful frame pronounced.

      Ione’s hands clenched bone-white round the tray handles as she attempted to blank out the panoramic view and forestall the sick sense of dizzy terror that always threatened her in the loggia.

      His keen gaze narrowing with questioning force on her drawn face, Alexio straightened and strode forward. ‘Let me take that for you.’

      Dismayed that he had broken off the conversation to offer her assistance, Ione froze. She collided with gleaming dark golden eyes fringed with dense black lashes and her heart seemed to crash inside her. He detached her death grip from the tray and strolled back to set it on the stone table. Screening her bemused gaze, she edged as close to the house wall as she dared to reach the table and serve the coffee.

      ‘You’re afraid of heights,’ Alexio murmured.

      Minos Gakis said drily, ‘She must overcome it.’

      Conscious of her father’s annoyance that she should have interrupted their dialogue, Ione breathed jerkily, ‘It’s foolish, irrational. I mustn’t give way to it.’

      Alexio studied her. She was making a valiant effort to control her fear but she was as white as a sheet and the coffeepot was shaking in her hand. And her father? He was smiling. Alexio had a sudden primal desire to tip his host out of his seat and suspend him upside down over that fearsome drop to kill that smile. It was an urge that shook him.

      Ione sank down into the closest chair and struggled to get a grip on herself again. Accustomed as she was to being ignored in her father’s company, she focused on Alexio while the two men talked business, and she reflected on what a poor impression she must have made in betraying her terror of heights. Hardly the right way to connect with a male once fabled for his taste in dangerous sports. He had the most amazing eyelashes, she thought, losing her concentration to momentarily dwell on the lush black sweep visible in his hard, angular profile.

      As Alexio sent her a winging glance, brilliant dark golden eyes flaring into connection with hers, a surge of inflaming heat tremored through Ione in a shock wave of response. Her teeth set together as her breath caught in her throat and she tore her attention from him again. Highspots of colour formed over her cheekbones as she fought her own instinctive reaction to his raw masculinity with shamed and angry resentment.

      She had no intention of following in her unfortunate mother’s footsteps and letting her body rule over her brain. So he was gorgeous, but what was that worth? She had recognised her own foolish susceptibility three months earlier and had despised herself for her weakness. A womanising louse like Alexio Christoulakis figured nowhere in the future she craved. No man was going to break her heart. No man was going to control her. Once she had her freedom, if anybody broke hearts, it was going to be her. That ambition in mind, Ione curled back into her chair, arched her back a little and shifted her slim legs to let her hemline ride up ever so slightly.

      Conscious of her every move, Alexio was entertained by her attempt to portray herself as a sensually exciting woman by exposing an inch of flesh above her knee, and he was equally conscious that her every provocative move was studied. Was she trying to turn him off the idea of marrying her? Or turn him onto it? Whichever, he was already appreciating that that smooth madonna face was deceptive.

      Angling her blonde head back, Ione lowered her lashes and let the tip of her tongue slide out to dampen her lower lip. His gaze zeroed in on her, black lashes screening his shimmering eyes to linger on the darting pink tip moistening her full, inviting mouth. Amusement ebbing, his lean, hard body clenched on a surge of sexual hunger strong enough to infuriate him. Why was she playing games with him?

      Minos Gakis rose upright, his heavy movements betraying his weariness. ‘I must attend to business, Alexio… Ione will entertain you. We’ll discuss the wedding arrangements over dinner.

      Ione was startled by that speech. If wedding arrangements were to be discussed, then their marriage was already a foregone conclusion. As it seemed that Alexio must have agreed to marry her even before he’d arrived on Lexos, her attempts to make herself seem more attractive had been a ludicrous waste of time and energy. On Alexio’s terms, her true worth lay in her Gakis surname and her future dowry, not in her looks or her individuality. Her cheeks blossomed with chagrined colour. Once again she had been made to feel the sting of her own essential unimportance, but she realised that it would be unwise to suddenly abandon the act she had been putting on for his benefit.

      ‘Shall we go inside?’ Alexio drawled, taking charge with all-male decisiveness.

      But for the reality that sitting out in the loggia was a punishment to her, Ione might have disagreed. Looking up at him to note how very, very tall he was from that angle, and filled with almost childish resentment by the intimidating nature of that fact, she got up with a nod.

      Sudden angry suspicion gripped Alexio as he stood back to let Ione precede him indoors, his glinting appraisal resting on her undeniably sensual gliding walk across the terracotta tiles. How did he know that Ione Gakis wasn’t a raving nymphomaniac with a father desperate to marry her off before she engulfed the family in scandal? If that were the case, the Gakis billions would be equal to preventing the spread of damaging rumours, but СКАЧАТЬ