Expectant Bride

At that silken reminder, a frank look of dismay leapt into Ellie’s eyes. She stared back at him with a sinking heart. She did have perfect recall of what he had said, but had intended to play dumb and keep that news to herself. However, he had tied her in verbal knots and tripped her up. He had a mind like a steel trap, she conceded furiously. Keen, suspicious, quick and deadly in its accuracy.

Dio Alexiakis glanced at the slim gold watch on his wrist and then back at her. ‘Allow me to show you the bigger picture here, Ellie. As long as this deal goes down on Wednesday, you and your foolish friend will still be gainfully employed in this building. But until Wednesday comes, you’re not moving out of my sight!’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’

‘Naturally, I’ll pay you well for the inconvenience—’

‘Inconvenience?’ Ellie interrupted in a hopelessly squeaky voice.

‘I assume you have a passport?’

‘A passport? Why are you asking me that?’ she gasped.

‘I have to fly to Greece tonight. Keeping you under surveillance to ensure that you make no phone calls will require you to fly to Greece with me,’ he delivered with perceptible impatience.

‘Are you absolutely mad?’ Ellie mumbled shakily.

‘Do you live alone or with your family?’ he questioned.

Transfixed by her own bewilderment, Ellie muttered, ‘Alone, but—’

‘A winged ebony brow rose at that news, black eyes briefly welding to her beautiful face. ‘You surprise me. Where do you keep your passport at home?’

‘In my bedside cabinet, but why—?’

Dio Alexiakis punched out a number on his mobile phone. ‘I don’t see any alternative to a trip to Greece,’ he informed her in a sardonic aside. ‘I could lock you up without a phone, but I think you’d be even less happy with that option. And I can hardly ask my household staff here in London to keep you imprisoned while I’m out of the country! You have to accompany me of your own free will.’

Free will? What free will? Ellie’s lower lip finally dropped away from her upper as she appreciated that he was deadly serious. In the simmering silence she listened to him talk at some length on the phone in what she assumed to be Greek, his tone brusque, commanding. She heard her own name mentioned and tensed up even more.

‘But I…I swear I won’t tell anyone a word of what I heard!’ she protested feverishly as he came off the phone again.

‘Not good enough. By the way, I’ve just instructed one of my staff to open your staff locker in the maintenance department and extract your keys.’

‘You’ve what?’ Ellie flew upright, angry colour lighting her cheeks.

‘Your address is in your personnel file. Demitrios will pick up your passport and bring it to the airport.’

Eyes wide with incredulity, Ellie snapped, ‘I don’t think so…I’m going home right now!’

‘Are you? It really is do or die time, Ellie,’ Dio Alexiakis advanced with a measuring look of challenge. ‘You can walk out through that door. I can’t stop you. But I can sack both you and your friend, and believe me, if you walk out, I will!’

Halfway to the door, Ellie stilled with a jerk.

‘I think it would be much more sensible for you to accept the inevitable and come along quietly. That is, assuming you’re the innocent party you say you are,’ he completed softly, studying her with brilliant black questioning eyes.

‘This is crazy! Why would I risk my job by telling anyone what I overheard?’ Ellie demanded starkly.

‘That information could sell for a great deal of money. I think that would supply sufficient motivation.’ Dio Alexiakis strode to the threshold of the inner office he had emerged from earlier. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Coming where?’ Ellie muttered.

‘I have a helicopter waiting on the roof. It’ll take us to the airport.’

‘Oh…’ He might as well have admitted to having a dinosaur waiting on the roof. She could not have been more taken aback. ‘A helicopter?’ she repeated weakly.

Seeming finally to appreciate that she was paralysed by sheer disbelief at what he was calmly demanding of her, Dio Alexiakis strode back across the room, closed a powerful hand over hers and urged her in the direction he wanted her to go. Pausing only to lift a heavy dark overcoat off a chair-arm, he hurried her across a palatial office with huge corner windows and pressed her through a door on the far side of the room.

‘This can’t be happening to me,’ Ellie whispered dazedly as she stumbled up a flight of steps.

‘That wish cuts both ways,’ he drawled curtly from behind her. ‘I have no desire for company on this particular trip.’

As he reached a long arm past her to open the steel door at the top, a blast of cold spring air blew her hair back from her face and plastered her thin overall to her slight body. She shivered violently. Having already donned his overcoat, Dio Alexiakis side-stepped her to stride towards the silver helicopter and the pilot stationed by its nose.

‘Hurry up!’ he shot at her over a broad shoulder.

‘I haven’t even got my coat!’ Ellie heard herself shriek at him, losing her temper with a suddenness that shook her.

He stopped dead and wheeled round. With an air of grim exasperation and quite unnecessary male drama, he began to shrug back out of his coat.

‘Don’t waste your time!’ Ellie snapped, temper leaping even higher at that display of grudging gallantry. ‘I wouldn’t wear your stupid coat if I had pneumonia!’

‘So freeze in silence!’ Dio Alexiakis launched back at her at full throttle, black eyes flashing like forked lightning.

Ellie squared her slight shoulders. Only the frank fascination of the watching pilot persuaded her to put a lid on her anger. Quite untouched by a slashing response that would have intimidated ninety per cent of the population, and keeping her wind-stung face stiff as concrete, Ellie stalked past Dio Alexiakis and climbed gracefully into the rear seat of the helicopter.

‘I’ll buy you some clothes at the airport,’ the abrasive Greek slung at her as he swung in beside the pilot. He turned his head towards her, putting his hard, classic profile into stark view, adding thinly, ‘We’ll have plenty of time to kill. Waiting for your passport to arrive will probably cost the jet its take-off slot!’

‘You are so gracious,’ Ellie framed in an unmistakable tone of sarcasm, and his brows drew together in disconcertion a split second before the deafening whine of the rotor blades shattered the tense silence and she turned away again.

This is not happening to me. This cannot be happening to me, Ellie told herself all over again as the helicopter first rose in the air and then went into a stomach-churning dip and turn to head out across London. Having employed the equivalent of blackmail, Dio Alexiakis was now set on practically kidnapping her! What choice had he given her? No choice! How could she possibly run the risk of getting Meg fired? The older woman didn’t have the luxury of a second salary to fall back on, and her husband was disabled.

But was she herself really any more independent? Ellie asked herself tautly. If it had simply been a question of survival, she could have managed without her earnings as a cleaner. After all, she had a day-job as well, and a healthy savings account. In fact, Ellie lived like a church mouse, squirrelling away every penny she could, willing to make just about any sacrifice if it meant she could attain her ultimate goal.

And that goal was buying the bookshop where she had worked since she was sixteen. However, if the steady flow of savings into her bank account ceased just when she was on the brink of asking for a large business loan, her bank manager would be most unimpressed, and her ambition to own the shop she loved would suffer a serious, indeed potentially fatal setback. Right now, with her elderly boss becoming increasingly eager to sell and retire, time was of the essence.

Dio Alexiakis was paranoid, absolutely paranoid, she decided helplessly. A spy? Did he read a lot of thrillers? So a cleaner had accidentally entered his precious inner sanctum and overheard him discussing confidential business plans. A cleaner who didn’t have permission to work on the top floor, a little voice reminded her. A cleaner who shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t even have entered that office, caught sneaking out from behind a door looking guilty as hell…

OK, Ellie conceded grudgingly, so she must have looked a bit suspicious in those circumstances. But that still didn’t justify his outrageous insistence that he couldn’t trust her out of his sight for the next thirty-six hours. And to demand that she travel abroad with him into the bargain was, in her opinion, proof of sheer insanity!

That wasn’t his only problem either. The way Dio Alexiakis had looked at her a couple of times had infuriated her. Even in the midst of what he had clearly seen as a very serious situation, Dio had still been eying her up like a piece of female merchandise on offer. Compressing her generous mouth into a most ungenerous line, Ellie ruminated on that fact.

Ricky Bolton had been hard enough to tolerate, refusing to take no for an answer and convinced that he only had to persist to wear her down. That she had experienced that strange sense of disorientation when Dio Alexiakis had looked down at her didn’t surprise Ellie in the slightest. This arrogant Greek had merely incited a stronger sense of revulsion than even his subordinate did. But then he was one of those very earthy guys, she decided grimly, the sort who couldn’t look at any reasonably attractive woman without wondering what she might be like in bed!

Quite impervious to Ellie’s growing antipathy, which she expressed in frigid silence, Dio Alexiakis marched her through the airport to a busy shopping area. Striding straight into an exclusive boutique, he headed for a rack of lightweight black skirt suits. Dumping the smallest size available into Ellie’s startled arms, he snatched a hat, purse and long black gloves down from the display shelf above and added them.

The remainder of the tastefully concocted display fell flat on the stand. Flushing to the roots of her hair beneath the aghast scrutiny of the saleswoman surging forward, Ellie whispered in a mortified undertone, ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘Shopping,’ Dio Alexiakis delivered succinctly, quite indifferent to the staff eyes now trained on their every move. Like a steamroller, he headed for another rack, to pull a blue cotton shift dress from a hanger and stuff it with equal unconcern into her dismayed grasp. A long black coat was thrust at her in the same careless fashion. Then he paused by a severely undersized candy-pink shorts outfit on a dummy. With an imperious inclination of his dark head, he hailed the frozen-faced older woman already moving their way. ‘We’ll have this as well.’