The Greek's Blackmailed Mistress

Go and speak to Xan Ziakis in the hope that there was a streak of mercy beneath that designer suit and that frightening reputation for ruthless aggression and financial self-aggrandisement? Some hope, she mused wretchedly, feeling horribly weak and small and powerless. Xan Ziakis was feared in the City of London for his refusal to ever play as one of a team and his disdain for alliances, temporary or otherwise. He worked alone and her mother had never seen any evidence of a woman having been in his penthouse. Maybe he was gay...

No, not him, Elvi decided, shifting quietly beneath her duvet, remembering with shame a period when she had been almost obsessed by a need to see him daily. She didn’t like to think about it but a sort of juvenile crush had engulfed her when she first saw Xan Ziakis. Not before time, she told herself drily; after all, life might have been all swings and not much roundabout throughout her unsettled and unhappy adolescence, but she was now twenty-two years old even if she was still almost as innocent as a child. Even so, she still recalled the single scorching appraisal Xan Ziakis had given her months ago and the flame that had leapt through her like a soaring torch along with the surprise of its effects on her body. No, he definitely wasn’t gay, she was convinced. But the shock had been that a man who looked as he did could look at her that way.

She was no show-stopping beauty and she bore not the smallest resemblance to the giraffe-legged bone-thin models she had seen on his arm in images on the Internet. Five feet two inches tall, she had white-blonde hair down to her waist, blue eyes and the sort of generous curves that made buying clothes a nightmare. She kept her hair long because the unusual colour was the one thing she liked about herself. As for the big breasts, the overly large bottom and the thick thighs, anyone was welcome to them. If only she had been the gym-bunny type, she reflected, but she hated gyms, hated dieting, hated getting on the scales and loved her food far too much. He must have been looking at the boobs, she thought ruefully.

Would the boobs get her into his presence? Embarrassed by her own thoughts, she winced, but she wasn’t in a position to be precious about what it might take to get a meeting with Xan Ziakis. He was a very powerful, influential and wealthy man, whose staff probably guarded access to him as if he were a solid platinum trophy to be seen only by the fortunate and equally rich and important few. So, approach him at home? Or at his office?

He was way too private in his lifestyle to be approached at his penthouse. It would have to be the office. Shortly before dawn when Sally had fallen into a restless sleep, Elvi crept out of bed, having finally decided what to do next. Since she doubted the likelihood of Xan being willing to grant her a personal interview, she would write him a letter, telling him what she needed to say. It was worth a try, she thought limply, and better than doing nothing. Only just, her intelligence warned her.

On Daniel’s laptop, she began to tell their family history, but only after humbly apologising for both troubling Xan and the theft. She wished it had been possible to tell him the truth but, like her mother, she reckoned it would be too dangerous to put Daniel back in the suspect corner. If she told Xan Ziakis the truth, he could easily drop the charges against her mother and instead pursue her brother and, even worse, he could then use the very letter she was writing against her family. Maybe writing anything down on paper was too dangerous, she thought fearfully, stopping in her task several times with a chill on her skin as she tried not to envisage even worse consequences coming their way.

But what other option did she have? Appealing to a man who might well have no heart was the only road she could take, and only then, if he was willing to see her, would she see him and plead her family’s case to the best of her ability. Having to lie and state that her mother must have succumbed to an inexcusable moment of temptation distressed Elvi, but since Sally had already owned up to the theft with the police she didn’t have much choice. She begged him to drop the charges because he had got his valuable artefact back. Did Xan Ziakis have any compassion? Was it possible that a man who had so much could be decent enough to be human and caring too?

The letter in an envelope squarely marked ‘private and confidential’ in one corner, Elvi waited on the pavement outside the Ziakis headquarters at eight that same morning. An assistant in a craft shop, she didn’t start work until nine. And, according to her mother’s idle chatter over the months, Xan Ziakis had a schedule that ran like clockwork. He left the penthouse at eight and travelled by limousine to his office seven days a week. Seven, she reflected wryly, a man who worked every day of the week for his success. Well, she could hardly criticise his work ethic.

The big black limousine drew up. The driver only opened the door after another car drew up behind and four men in dark suits sprang out. Looking on in dismay, Elvi registered that Xan Ziakis was guarded by a ring-of-steel protection before he even got a polished shoe out of his limo. Even so, she moved forward, her legs turning strangely wobbly as Xan himself emerged into daylight, blue-black hair gleaming like polished silk, his flawless bronzed cheekbones taut below dark deep-set eyes, his lean, powerful body encased in an elegant suit that fitted him like a second skin, and there she froze.

‘Get back!’ someone said to her and, disconcerted, she retreated several steps still clutching her envelope.

Her quarry stalked on into the building...out of sight, out of reach, and she felt sick with failure, her face drained of colour, her eyes bleak.

A man appeared in front of her then, an older man, and there was something vaguely familiar about his craggy face. ‘Is that letter you’re gripping about your mother?’ he asked bluntly. ‘I work for Mr Ziakis too—’

‘Oh,’ Elvi said, taken aback by his approach. ‘Yes, it’s about Mum—’

‘Then give it to me,’ he urged. ‘I’ll see that it reaches the boss’s desk.’

In a daze Elvi looked up and saw the kindness in his gaze. ‘You’re—?’

‘Dmitri,’ he supplied, twitching the letter out of her loosening grasp. ‘I know your mother. I can’t promise that the boss will read it or anything but I can put it on the desk.’

Elvi blinked. ‘Thank you very much,’ she murmured with warmth.

‘No problem. She’s a lovely lady,’ Dmitri told her, walking off again at speed and vanishing into the building while tucking her letter into a pocket.

And Dmitri, whoever he is, doesn’t think Sally Cartwright’s a thief, Elvi realised as she climbed on a bus to get to work and mulled over that surprising encounter. Just as well, considering that she had frozen like an ice sculpture when she saw Xan Ziakis, not that she thought his bodyguards would have allowed her anywhere near him, because someone had told her to get out of the way. Dmitri? One of the other three men?

It didn’t matter, she decided as she stocked shelves of knitting wool at work. The letter might land on Xan’s desk but, as Dmitri had said, that didn’t mean he would actually bother to read it or even more crucially respond to it.

But in that Elvi was mistaken. Xan was so disconcerted by the unexpected sight of his head of security covertly sliding an envelope onto his desk, when Dmitri clearly thought he was unseen, that nothing would have kept him from opening up that letter out of sheer human curiosity. Xan skimmed down to the signature first: Elvi Cartwright. He knew that name well enough and he also knew he should’ve been prepared for the tactic in such a situation. Instantly he wanted to crumple the letter up and bin it without reading it. That would have been the cautious way to deal.

Even so, although Xan was very cautious with women, he couldn’t bring himself to dump the letter unread. A couple of months ago, he had noticed her, well, really, really noticed her, he acknowledged grimly, and he had instructed Dmitri to find out who she was, assuming that she lived in the same apartment block. He had, however, learned that she was his maid’s daughter, which had naturally concluded his interest. Billionaires did not consort with the daughters of their domestic staff. The gulf was too immense, the risk of a messy affair too great.

And yet, all the same...the letter still unread, Xan drifted momentarily into the past, recalling Elvi Cartwright with intense immediacy. The shining pale-as-milk hair, the wonderful blue eyes, the crazy natural glow of her, not to mention the extraordinary fact that she looked very different from the sort of women he usually slept with and yet, inexplicably, one glance at her turned him on harder and faster than any of them.

She was a bit overweight, he supposed abstractedly; hard to tell when he had only ever seen her in a loose black jacket that swamped her. Very short in stature, not his type, absolutely not his type, he told himself sternly as he shook out the letter, more concerned by Dmitri’s bizarre involvement in its delivery than by what it might say. If he couldn’t trust his head of security, who could he trust? Why had Dmitri got personally involved in so tawdry an incident?

Xan had a scientific approach to everything he read. Elvi’s use of English was far superior to what he would have expected and then he began reading and what he read was most educational from his point of view even if, by the end of it, he couldn’t think why she expected him as the victim to want to do anything about Sally Cartwright’s self-induced predicament.

Inevitably he studied the situation from his side of the fence, where all the power lay, and the sort of ideas that had never occurred to Xan Ziakis before when it came to a woman began very slowly to blossom. Xan, who never ever allowed himself to succumb to any kind of unwise temptation. Xan, who usually policed his every thought, suppressing any immoral promptings to concentrate more profitably on work. And once he let those bad ideas out of the box they created a positive riot in his imagination, raising the kind of excitement that only a good financial killing usually gave him...and that was it, Xan Ziakis was seduced by erotic possibilities for the first time in his life.

Xan folded the letter with a dark forbidding smile that his opponents would have recognised as a certain sign of danger and threat. He would give his quarry a couple of days to stew and wonder and then he would get in touch...

CHAPTER TWO (#uc455c4bc-5b02-59a8-8715-07af1ee825bb)

TWO ANXIOUS DAYS in which she never allowed her phone to stray from her pocket passed for Elvi and on the third day, at the point where she had almost given up hope entirely, it finally rang.

One of Xan Ziakis’s staff invited her to a meeting late that afternoon. Distracted by what lay ahead of her, she pleaded a dental appointment with her employer to finish early and worked over her usual lunch break instead. She got through her working hours on autopilot while anxiously rehearsing speeches in the back of her brain, only to discard them again when she tried to picture herself saying such things to a stranger. She would have to be lucid and brief, she told herself, because Xan Ziakis was unlikely to give her more than ten minutes of his time.

Seated in the plush quiet waiting area on the top floor of Ziakis Finance, Elvi was a bundle of nerves. How likely was it that he would even consider dropping the theft charge? Very unlikely, she reckoned, because what would be in that for him? But he could be a really good person, a little voice whispered. What were the chances? her brain scoffed, unimpressed by such wishful thinking. Xan was a merciless financier renowned for his profit margins. Every single thing he did during his working day was focused on gaining an advantage...and what did she have to offer?

She plucked a piece of tapestry wool off a black-trousered knee and shed her jacket to reveal the long-sleeved blue tee below because she was too warm. It was a waste of time approaching the wretched man when she was already virtually drowning in a sense of defeat, she told herself furiously. He was a rich, privileged guy, who lived a life far beyond the imagination of other, more ordinary mortals. He would not understand where she was coming from unless he had a reformed alcoholic in his own family circle. He would not appreciate the challenges Sally Cartwright had already overcome in her efforts to rebuild her life, nor could he even begin to imagine the misery of the ‘lost’ years that Elvi and Daniel had lived through with their mother.

Stop it, stop with the negative inner talk, she urged herself just as the svelte receptionist uttered her name in the same low-pitched tone that everyone who worked on the top floor seemed to use. Elvi rose stiffly from her seat, full of apprehension but struggling to appear composed because she knew that that was necessary. She couldn’t afford to get emotional with such a self-disciplined man.

In his office, Xan was on a high because he was finally getting to meet her. The woman he had wanted, the only woman he had wanted in years that he couldn’t have, but now that her mother was no longer his employee, and that connection was at an end, he no longer had to consider that aspect. That was done, dusted, in the past as far as he was concerned. Now he could move forward freely. Admittedly she was still of much lower status than he or her predecessors in his life had been but did he really have to be so particular about the women he took to his bed? He straightened his jacket and leant back against his designer desk as the door opened.

The office was the size of a football pitch, probably supposed to intimidate, Elvi decided, inching in from the doorway like a mouse trying to evade a hungry cat before she threw back her shoulders, straightened her back and lifted her chin, determined not to appear either weak or too humble.

‘I’m Elvi, Sally Cartwright’s daughter,’ she declared quietly, battling to stand her ground as Xan Ziakis angled up his arrogant dark head, his classic nose as high as his perfect cheekbones to look directly at her.

Behind her the door closed, locking them into uneasy silence. Involuntarily Elvi connected with dazzling amber-gold eyes screened by criminally long and distinctive lush black lashes. She had never been close enough to him to see those eyes before, nor had she realised quite how tall he was, while even his formal business suit failed to conceal the power in his wide shoulders and muscular torso, not to mention the virile strength of his long thighs as he stood braced against his desk. He was drop-dead beautiful and at that moment she wasn’t at all surprised that for a little while she had succumbed to a pathetically juvenile crush on him. She’d been far from being a teenager, and that crush had mortified her pride.

‘Xander Ziakis,’ he matched, extending an elegant lean brown hand.

At least he had manners, Elvi conceded feebly as she advanced to shake that hand, finding his grasp warm and her own cold with nerves, goose flesh erupting beneath her top as nervous tension threatened again. That close to him she could hardly breathe as a faint tang of some exotic designer cologne infiltrated her nostrils.

‘Take a seat, Elvi,’ he instructed, angling his head in the direction of the chair in front of him.

‘I don’t think I would be comfortable sitting down while you’re still standing,’ Elvi confided, stepping back but avoiding the chair, wondering if he was always as domineering, deciding he very probably was when she caught the flash of surprise in his gaze before he cloaked it. She reckoned everyone did exactly what they were told in his radius.

Disconcertingly and with a gleam of humour lightening his dark eyes, for he was rarely challenged, Xan slid back behind his desk and waited for her to sit down as he had told her to do.

Outmanoeuvred, Elvi took a seat and rested her bag on her lap to hide her trembling hands.

‘Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?’ Xan proffered politely.

‘Some water if it’s not too much trouble,’ Elvi framed, watching as he pressed a button and gave an order to some employee. Thirty seconds later, a moisture-beaded tumbler of water was clutched between her restive hands and she sipped, wetting her dry lips.

Xan studied her in fascination, because she was much more controlled than he had expected and possibly ten times more attractive close up than he had forecast. In reality he had been prepared for disappointment, having only seen her so fleetingly in the past. But there she was in front of him with skin that had the natural lustre of a pearl, eyes as blue as the Greek sky, dainty features and white-blonde hair falling like a cloak to her waist. And then there were the fabulous hourglass curves with that tiny waist, the amazing feminine bounty at breast and hip she had hidden beneath that awful coat. Not overweight, glorious, Xan decided hungrily, wondering if it would even occur to her that he had been forced to sit down because her body made him hot as hell. He thought not, for there was nothing even slightly flirtatious or inviting about either her clothing or her attitude, and he wasn’t accustomed to that lack of interest in the women he met. This one hadn’t even bothered to put on make-up, he registered in mounting surprise.

‘Why do you think I offered you this appointment?’ Xan enquired with innate ruthlessness, because he doubted his reading of her character from her appearance and behaviour. He didn’t trust women. He had learned not to trust women through the experience of growing up with several unpleasant stepmothers and the conviction had been rubber-stamped by his first love’s change of heart the instant she realised his family fortune was gone.

‘I don’t know, which is why I am here,’ Elvi said truthfully. ‘Obviously you read my letter—’

Xan lounged back in his chair and lightly shifted an eloquent brown hand as if in dismissal of the letter. ‘Why would I want to do anything for a woman who stole from me?’ he asked bluntly.

In receipt of that acerbic enquiry, Elvi lost colour. ‘Well, maybe not want—’