The Konstantos Marriage Demand

So why was he taking her up to his office instead of having Security eject her—forcibly, if needed—from the building?

He wasn’t prepared to admit even to himself that the decision had anything to do with the instant physical response he’d felt in the first moments when he’d seen her. And now, in this small compartment, with the tall, slender lines of her body, the sleek, shining mane of dark hair and the porcelain smooth pallor of her skin repeated over and over in the multitude of reflections in the walled mirrors, it was so much worse to handle. The scent of her skin came to him on a waft of air with each movement she made, and when she shook back that smooth bell of hair it was mixed with a soft, herbal essence that made his head and his thoughts spin. Primitive hunger clawed at him deep inside, and the clutch of desire that twisted low down made him shift uncomfortably, needing to ease the discomfort.

Thankfully at that moment the lift came to a halt and the heavy metal doors slid open on to the grey carpeted corridor that led to his office. Deliberately Nikos stood back and gestured to indicate that Sadie should precede him, refusing to allow himself to look anywhere but at the top of her shining dark-haired head as she moved past.

‘Left,’ he said sharply, then swallowed down the rest of the directions as to how to reach his office. Because of course she didn’t need them. She knew the way to what had once been her father’s office probably better than he did, and she was already heading in that direction without any help from him.

She’d made a faux pas there, Sadie admitted to herself. She’d probably infuriated him by not standing back and waiting for directions but setting out at once in the right direction. But she’d just turned to the left automatically, following her path from so many other times in the past. She could only be grateful for the fact that walking ahead of Nikos gave her a moment or two to adjust her expression unseen, to control the sudden waver in her composure, the instinctive tightening of her mouth at the faint shiver that ran down her spine.

She had to remember that she no longer belonged here. That she wasn’t on her home territory but in Nikos’s domain. This was where he belonged now, where he ruled like some king of ancient Greece, absolute monarch of all he surveyed.

Absolute monarch—and possibly a tyrant too? She didn’t know what Nikos was like as a boss, but he had to be a ruthless and highly efficient one. It had only taken him five short years to turn round the fortunes of the Konstantos Corporation from the weakened position in which his father’s wild gambling on the stock exchange had left it. He’d turned the tables on her father, exacting a brutal revenge for the way Edwin had treated him in the past.

‘I’m sorry…’

Carefully she adjusted her pace so that she was no longer leading but had made space for Nikos to walk alongside her, take the lead if he preferred. But he didn’t take advantage of the change. Instead he stayed just behind her, a dark, looming shape at her right shoulder. Impossible to see. Impossible to judge his mood.

He was so close that she could almost feel the heat of his body reaching out to her. The scent of some cool, crisp aftershave tantalised her nostrils with thoughts of the ozone tang of the clear blue sea off the shores of the private island that the Konstantos family had once owned. That island had been part of the property empire Edwin had taken from them, so she supposed that it must now be once more back in Nikos’s hands—unless her father had sold it on to someone else.

Her conscience gave an uncomfortable little twist at the thought, knowing how much Nikos had loved that island. It had meant as much to him as Thorn Trees, the old house that had been part of her family for so long, meant to her mother. So surely he would understand why she had come here today.

‘Here…’

The touch of Nikos’s hand on her arm to bring her to a halt outside a door was soft and swift, barely there and then gone again, but all the same the faint brush of his fingers against her elbow sizzled right the way through to her skin underneath the fine navy wool, making her almost stumble in reaction. She had known that touch in the past, had felt it so intimately on her body, on her hungry flesh without any barrier of clothes. She’d felt his touch, his caress, his kiss along every yearning inch of her, and now, like a violin fine-tuned to a maestro’s hand, she felt herself quiver deep inside in shivering response as much to her memories as to the heat of his hand that barely reached her in reality.

‘I know!’

Unease pushed the words from her, as she faked impatience and irritation as an excuse to snatch her arm away from his hand as she twisted the door handle with unnecessary force and wrenched it open.

‘Of course you do.’ Nikos’s response was darkly cynical, the rough edge to his voice a warning that she had overstepped the mark as he reached a long arm across her shoulder and pushed at the door. ‘But allow me…’

Could the words be any more pointed? Could he make it any plainer that he was emphasising the fact that he owned this place now? That he, and not she, was in the position of power. Very definitely in charge.

And she would do well to remember that, Sadie told herself, pulling her scurrying thoughts back under control, forcing herself to take a couple of deep, calming breaths and remind herself just why she was here. She needed Nikos on her side and she would be foolish to anger and alienate him before she had even had a chance to put her case.

‘Thank you.’

Somehow she managed to make it polite, careful. Not quite the polite, submissive murmur she suspected would be more politic, but politic was beyond her. Her heart was pounding, ragged and uneven, so that her breath was jerky and raw. Tension, she told herself. Pure, unadulterated tension. She was nervous about what was coming, fearful about what she had to say and the way he might receive it.

It couldn’t be anything else, she told herself. It had to be that, could only be that. She wasn’t going to let it be anything else that was affecting her in this way. But with the heady scent of clean male skin in her nostrils, the brush of his hand along her neck as he reached for the door, the memory of those long ago sensual touches and caresses coming so very close to the surface of her mind, she knew that something else was knocking her dangerously off balance. Something she didn’t want to look at too closely for fear of what she might find.

‘Come in.’

Nikos was still keeping to that excessively polite tone, the one that warned her that she was in the presence of real danger. That she was trapped with a dark and menacing predator, one that had simply been biding its time before it decided to turn and pounce. And once inside this office, in the privacy that he had declared he was determined on, with no one close at hand to hear or to intervene should she need them, that surely would be the moment that he finally resolved to attack.

That thought made her legs suddenly weak as cotton wool beneath her as she stumbled into the room, coming halfway across the office before they gave up completely and brought her to nervous halt, not knowing what to do next. And as she stood there, her thoughts whirling, trying to find some way of beginning, an opening that would start her off on the path to saying what she had come to say, the words to ask for what she needed so badly, she felt Nikos brush past her. He strode towards the big desk that dominated the room, his movements brusque and controlled, his long body held taut with some ruthlessly restrained emotion. And it was as he swung round to face her that she saw the dark expression etched onto his stunning features and felt her heart lurch painfully just once, before it plummeted downwards to somewhere beneath the soles of her neat patent court shoes.

Anger. The whole set of his face was tight with icy fury, his golden eyes blazing with it. Away from public scrutiny, from everyone else who might see them together, hear what he had to say, he had thrown off the careful veneer of civilised, cultured politeness. The real Nikos—dark, primitive and very, very angry—was exposed in total clarity, without any pretence to mute the shocking impact of the rage that gripped him. A rage that was directed straight at her.

The predator had decided to pounce—and this time he was very definitely going in for the kill.

Chapter Two

‘YOU LIED!’ NIKOS said, flinging the accusation at her almost as soon as the door had swung closed behind her, shutting them in together. ‘You lied about who you were—gave a false name.’

‘Of course I did!’

Sadie prayed that the control she was forcing into her voice kept it steady. She hoped that she had at least held it down so that it didn’t go soaring up too high under the influence of the panic that was tying her insides into tight, painful knots.

‘I had to. What else could I do? If I’d given my real name then there’s no way you would have ever agreed to see me, would you?’

‘You’re damn right I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have got across the threshold. But the fact remains that you are here—and that you lied in order to get here. Which means that you have something you want to say. Something that is important enough for you to use that lie in order to get to say it. So what is that, I wonder?’

The look he turned on her seemed to sear right through her, the blaze of his eyes so intense that Sadie almost expected to see her clothes scorch and burn along the path that it traced over her body.

Nikos was behind his desk, and he leaned forward to stab one long finger down on a button by his phone. Sadie heard a woman’s voice, faintly blurred by the nervous buzzing in her head, respond almost immediately.

‘No calls.’ It was a command, and clearly one he meant to have obeyed. ‘And no interruptions. I am not to be disturbed until I say.’

And if the secretary or PA goes against those instruction, then she’s a braver woman than I am, Sadie told herself. But the next moment any other thoughts fled from her mind as Nikos nodded his satisfaction and turned his attention back to her.

‘So why are you here?’

‘I…’

Faced with that arctic glare, the ferocious bite of his demand, Sadie found that in that moment she couldn’t actually recall precisely why she was there, let alone form her response into any sort of coherent argument. One that might actually impress him, persuade him on to her side when she knew that he was guaranteed to take the opposite stance, simply because he was who he was and she was the one doing the asking.

She was suddenly very glad of the expanse of polished wood of his desk that came between them, acting as a barrier between the powerful dynamic force that was Nikos Konstantos.

It was totally irrational, but when he glowered at her like that she suddenly felt as if the room had shrunk, as if the walls had moved inwards, the ceiling coming down, contracting the space around her until she felt it hard to breathe. She felt trapped, confined in a room that had suddenly become too small to hold them both.

She had been shut in with him in the lift, in a far smaller space, but somehow, contradictorily, this seemed so much worse. Now Nikos seemed so much bigger, so much more powerful, dominating the space in which he stood and holding her captive simply by the pure force of his presence.

Or was it about the room? Because it was the office that had once been her father’s? But there was no sign at all of the previous occupant. Every last trace of anything that was personal to Edwin had been removed and replaced with something much more modern, more stylish—and much more expensive. Even in the good days of Carteret Incorporated the office had never looked like this.

The heavy, dark desk and chairs had all been removed and replaced by modern furniture in a pale wood. Thick golden rugs covered the floor, and in the window area there was a comfortable-looking settee and armchairs for relaxing.

It spoke of Nikos Konstantos of Konstantos Corporation. The man who had taken everything her father had thrown at him and refused to go down under it. He had seen everything his own father had worked for snatched away, had stared bankruptcy and total ruin in the face and still come out fighting. And in five short years he had built up his business empire to what it had once been—and then outstripped that. The Konstantos Corporation was bigger, stronger, richer than it had ever been. And it had swallowed up Carteret Incorporated and absorbed it whole on its way to the top.

And Nikos was the Konstantos Corporation.

As she hesitated, Nikos shot back the cuff on his immaculate white shirt and glanced swiftly and pointedly at his watch.

‘You have five minutes to explain yourself—and that is more than you would have had if I’d known it was you,’ he stated curtly. ‘Five minutes. No more.’

Which was guaranteed to dry Sadie’s tongue, make it feel as if it was sticking to the roof of her mouth, and no matter how hard she swallowed, she couldn’t quite force herself to speak.

‘Could—could we sit down?’ she tried, looking longingly at the cream cushions on the padded chairs. Perhaps with her attention taken off the need to concentrate on keeping her legs from shaking so that she could stay upright she might manage to put her thoughts—and the necessary arguments to convince him—into some sort of coherent order.