‘But we won’t be rivals.’ Aristides leaned forward, his plump hands splayed on the polished wood. ‘If my plans go as I expect, Damon Savakis will be more than a business associate. He’ll be a member of the family.’
The sound of voices at the poolside stopped Callie in her tracks. Her cousin Angela and Damon Savakis. No other man could unsettle Callie with the low rumble of his laughter. His deep tones made something shiver into life in the pit of her stomach.
Only yesterday, with her face pressed to his broad chest, she’d felt his lazy amusement bubble up and emerge as a deep chocolate caress of sound. Through a haze of sensual satiation it had made her feel vibrantly alive.
Her fingers clenched as desire pulsed again.
She was a fool. He’d used her for cheap amusement in the most calculating way. She’d taken him at face value, believing he, like she, had been blown away by an attraction too strong to be denied.
She suspected with Damon Savakis nothing would ever be simple.
His behaviour last night punctured that foolish daydream. He’d found her amusing. Her confusion and distress had added spice to the evening.
How piquant, having his lover and soon-to-be-fiancée together.
She knew his reputation for meticulous attention to detail. Impossible that he hadn’t known who she was on the beach. Members of the Manolis family would have been basic research.
But he’d kept his identity a secret, enjoying the joke on her. Seducing the woman dubbed the Snow Queen must have been diverting to an appetite jaded by over-eager women. Watching her squirm last night had been a bonus to a man who revelled in power.
The sort of man she detested.
She straightened her shoulders.
‘Good morning, Angela. Kyrie Savakis.’ She bestowed a brief smile as she approached the table where she and Angela often shared a meal. No chance now of a private chat. They’d missed their opportunity last night when Uncle Aristides called her to him. Afterwards Callie hadn’t found Angela. She hated to think of her alone and distressed.
‘Sorry I’m late. I didn’t realise we had a guest.’
‘Kyrios Savakis is staying with us for a few days,’ Angela said quietly, sending a shiver of apprehension down Callie’s spine.
A few days! This got worse and worse.
‘He arrived for breakfast.’ Angela sounded calm and relaxed, a perfect hostess. Only someone who knew her well would realise her discomfort, her fingers busy pleating the linen tablecloth, her body a fraction too poised.
Callie’s heart stalled as guilt smote her. She hadn’t thought of her poor, shy cousin acting as hostess alone. She’d slept late after a night grappling with what her uncle had conceded about their bleak financial situation. Reliving the horror of discovering Damon’s identity and true character.
‘Your uncle kindly invited me to sample more of your hospitality,’ a deep voice murmured from across the table.
Did she imagine a wry emphasis on the last two words? As if he referred to a service she might personally provide?
He couldn’t be so crass. Could he?
Slowly Callie turned to face him, ignoring the escalating thud of her pulse.
He looked disgustingly self-satisfied. Like a man whose appetites had been sated. Callie was horrified at the drift of her thoughts. She forced a smile to her lips, hiding her shudder of reaction as she drank in the sight of him.
Despite her anger, he looked good enough to eat.
If you had a taste for danger.
He wore a white shirt open at the throat, designer jeans and an expression that proclaimed him utterly at home as he leaned back in his seat.
‘I was about to show Kyrie Savakis the guest bungalow,’ Angela explained.
The guest bungalow? Thank heaven. At least they wouldn’t share a house.
‘Please, call me Damon. Kyrie Savakis makes me feel like I belong to your father’s generation. There’s no need for formality.’
But there is, Callie thought, sliding a glance at Angela.
Even after a night coming to grips with her uncle’s outrageous plot, Callie couldn’t suppress horror at how history repeated itself so appallingly. Her skin crawled. It was a nightmare that he’d use such a scheme a second time.
‘Thank you, Damon. Please call me Angela.’
‘Angela.’ He bestowed a brief smile then turned to spear Callie with his dark, questioning gaze.
‘Technically speaking, you do belong to another generation.’ Callie said before he could speak to her. ‘You’re in your late thirties, aren’t you?
Angela is just eighteen.’
Dark brows inched together, then his lips quirked in what looked suspiciously like humour rather than annoyance. ‘I’m thirty-four, since you’re wondering,’ he murmured.
‘Really? So—er—young?’ Callie arched her brows as if in surprise. She knew when he was born. She’d looked him up on the net last night. He was too old for Angela. As well as the years between them, there was a gulf of experience and expectation that would never be breached. Callie knew it from bitter personal experience.
‘Old enough to know my mind, Callie.’ The sound of her name on his lips sent a shock wave trembling through her, like the silent aftermath of a sensory explosion. ‘May I call you Callie? Or would you prefer Callista?’
She’d prefer neither. Both were far too intimate, especially when he used that smoke and velvet tone guaranteed to seduce a woman out of her senses in thirty seconds flat.
Yesterday just the sound of his voice and the slumberous promise in his eyes had her eager for his touch.
‘I…’ It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to use her full name, when she caught Angela’s anxious gaze. ‘Of course, call me Callie.’
She was only Callista to her uncle, who managed to invest the syllables with disappointment and disapproval.
‘Thank you, Callie.’ His ebony eyes gleamed with a light she couldn’t interpret. His expression sent awareness tingling through her blood. It took a moment for her to realise Angela had turned to talk to one of the staff.
‘Would you excuse me?’ She rose from her seat. ‘There’s a phone call I need to take.’
Callie saw the blush on Angela’s cheeks and knew Niko must have rung. The son of a local doctor, he’d loved Angela for years. He was building his tourism business, hoping to win Uncle Aristides’ approval for their marriage.
Callie knew better than anyone Aristides would never countenance his daughter marrying a local boy, no matter how decent or how much in love they were. Money and status were what mattered to her uncle.
Her gaze shifted to Damon Savakis, lolling in his seat sipping coffee. She felt anxiety shimmy down her spine, knowing what Aristides planned for his daughter.
With those dark good looks and air of leashed power, Damon could model for a pasha of old, accustomed to sumptuous luxury, sensuous pleasures and unquestioning obedience. He’d devour poor Angela in one snap of his strong white teeth then seek amusement elsewhere. As he’d found it yesterday, seducing Callie then playing games of innuendo through the long evening while she squirmed and suffered.
One sacrificial lamb in the family was enough! Callie had performed that function for the Manolis clan years ago. They couldn’t demand another.
She refused to watch her uncle ruin his daughter’s life with an arranged marriage as he’d ruined hers. Especially when Angela had a chance for happiness with an honest, caring man. That sort of man was as rare, in her experience, as a snowstorm on Santorini.
‘Don’t hurry, Angela. I’ll look after our guest.’
‘That sounds promising.’
‘Pardon?’ Callie turned to find Damon surveying her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
‘I like the idea of you,’ he drawled, ‘looking after me. What did you have in mind?’
Heat danced in that calculating expression. His gaze trawled down to her jade top gathered in a knot below the bust, and lower to her bare midriff. Fire blazed over her skin as if he stroked his callused palm over her flesh.
Only yesterday…
Callie shoved back her chair, ignoring the juice she’d poured. ‘Showing you the guest bungalow,’ she said in a voice that was almost steady.
When he looked at her that way she couldn’t prevent the surge of reaction as her body came alive.
She wished she’d worn something other than lightweight trousers and a skimpy top. If she’d known he was here she’d have opted for a full-length tunic dress. But the gleam in his eyes told her it would have done no good. He remembered what she looked like naked.
Just as she remembered him.
He stood, his long, athletic frame unfolding from the chair. She had instant, dazzling recall of how he’d looked yesterday, all burnished skin and honed, hard-packed muscle.
She drew a shuddering breath and looked away, trying to control the riot of hormones clamouring for gratification.
‘Ah, Callie, is that all?’ One long finger traced the side of her neck and she jumped, jerking out of reach. ‘I’d hoped for something a little more…intimate.’
‘You—’ she sucked in a ragged gasp ‘—are pushing your luck!’
She lifted her chin, summoning the veneer of composure she’d perfected over the last few years. Ruthlessly she ignored the effervescent sensation of burgeoning desire and strolled to the edge of the terrace, back straight and face composed. It horrified her to discover how difficult it was to don her defensive armour. Only when she had her voice under control did she pause.
‘The guest quarters are this way.’
Damon watched her precede him down the lawn. Her hips swayed seductively and his hungry gaze focused on the delicious curve of her derriere, shown off perfectly by tight white trousers. Had she worn them to tease? Even in the bright sunlight he saw no panty line to mar the snug fit of cotton against flesh. Did she wear a thong or was she naked beneath the trousers?
Heat roared through him in an infuriating surge. Wasn’t it enough she’d kept him awake all night? He’d been angry at how she’d used then rejected him, yet needy for another touch, another taste of her gorgeous body. Even the fact that she’d snubbed him hadn’t doused his libido.
‘Are you coming?’ She stopped and half turned, showing her patrician profile. Even with her hair in a high pony-tail she looked as if she’d stepped from the pages of a glossy magazine, the sort his mother enjoyed. Beautiful, privileged people leading beautiful, privileged lives.
Privileged himself now, with more money and power than a man could ever need, still Damon felt the gulf between himself and such people. It was a gulf he’d consciously created, resisting the artificial lure of
‘society’.
He enjoyed his wealth, made the most of what it bought him and those he cared for, but he’d vowed never to succumb to the shallow posturing and brittle selfishness of that world. He’d seen enough as a kid when his mother cleaned villas owned by some of the country’s wealthiest families. When as a teenager he’d worked there and learned first-hand about the morals of the upper classes.
Damon was proud of his roots, unashamed that he’d succeeded by hard work and perseverance, not inherited wealth. He’d long ago learned the high-class world of the ‘best’people hid an underbelly of greed, selfishness and vice. The last thing on his agenda was attraction to a woman who epitomised that money-hungry shallowness. A woman who’d inherited the Manolis family values.
The fact that he still wanted her annoyed the hell out of him.
‘I’m right behind you, Callie.’
He strode to where she waited, mirroring her body with his. He was close enough to feel warmth radiate from her. He leaned forward, head inclined to inhale her scent.
If he’d hoped to discomfit her he was disappointed. With a swish of her pony-tail she led the way in a long-legged stride, riveting his gaze. It took a moment to realise that instead of the rich perfume she’d worn last night, the scent filling his nostrils was the intoxicating fragrance she’d worn yesterday: sunshine and musky, mysterious female.
Lust jagged through him, a blast of white-hot energy.
It confirmed the decision he’d come to last night—there was unfinished business between them. She couldn’t brush him aside like some nonentity when she’d had her fill.
‘Your colouring is unusual.’ He followed her, eyes on the swing of dark-honey hair as it caught the light. He’d picked her for a foreign tourist when he’d first seen her.
She shrugged. ‘Maybe I dye my hair.’
‘Ah, but Callie, we both know you don’t.’ The golden-brown triangle of hair he’d uncovered when he stripped away her bikini bottom yesterday had been the genuine thing. ‘I’ve seen the proof, remember? Up close and personal.’
He let satisfaction colour his voice and wasn’t surprised when she slammed to a stop ahead of him.
For a moment she stood still, her shoulders curiously hunched. Then she swung round and met his gaze. Not by the slightest sign did she reveal embarrassment. Her eyes were the colour of cool mountain water, her expression bland. No doubt she was free and easy enough not to feel discomfort discussing personal details with her latest paramour.
What a merry dance she must have led her husband. Had he died trying to satisfy her? Or had he been forced to watch her with younger men who gave her what he couldn’t?
‘Just as I know your colouring is black as sin,’ she murmured. ‘So what?’
Her brows rose as if she was bored.
‘It’s uncommon for Greek women to be so fair.’ He stepped close enough to see the smatter of gold shards in her irises, like spangles of sunlight amongst the green.