The Ultimate Revenge

‘You really have no idea who you are playing with, do you?’

Wasn’t that the truth?

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9ed40464-1d56-52fd-95b5-b3ad60994581)

PIA PULLED THE double doors to her suite closed behind her and fought the urge to slump against the carved wood. Bad enough that she raised her fingertips to the corner of her mouth to chase the faint echoes of his kiss, shimmering over her lips like an iridescent butterfly.

Old habits truly did die hard, because for the first time in years she was second-guessing herself—and that really didn’t bode well. Suddenly spending time with Nicandro Carvalho seemed like a bad, bad idea. But what alternative did she have? Wait it out until he struck again? God only knew what havoc he’d wreak next, and she could not let that happen. Not in her world.

‘Pia?’

She jumped clean off the floor, then flushed guiltily like an idiotic schoolgirl who’d just had her first kiss from a long-time crush and her big brother had been spying on her. She didn’t want to think how close to the truth that was.

‘Where did you come from? I thought you were escorting our nefarious burglar to his suite?’

Jovan watched her warily from where he sat looking incongruous—his large frame stiff and upright—perched on the edge of her delicate gold silk daybed.

‘Mission accomplished.’

Oh.

Pia’s eyes shuttered at the concern marring his face. He wanted to ask if she was okay but he wouldn’t. He didn’t like making her feel weak. Emotional. Not when she was supposed to be a machine. But therein lay the problem. Machines didn’t tremble with the touch of man’s hand, at his finger breezing down her arm. Machines didn’t suffer a glitch after a soft evocative kiss from his warm lips. And machines certainly didn’t stare into his eyes and feel something close to longing, wishing for the impossible.

For one heart-stopping moment she would have done anything to kiss him back. Anything to feel his scorching heat melt some of the ice inside of her—ice that was so terribly, terribly cold. But Pia knew that surrendering to meaningless brief moments could shower you in a lifetime of regret, and he’d chosen the one route to her bed with a guaranteed outcome of failure and causing her maximum levels of pain.

He was using her. To get to Zeus. To Q Virtus. Ignorant of the fact he’d already been in Zeus’s company for most of the evening. If it wasn’t so humiliating and didn’t exhume such loathsome feelings of worthlessness she would laugh. Sorry, Nic, I’ve already learned my lessons in love. Pia could spot a seduction routine a mile off and erect her barricades with ease.

Being used for the Merisi fame and fortune years ago had thrown her hard-earned self-respect to the wolves—with a little help from her father’s constant stream of berating anger during the miserable aftershocks of her affair.

‘Women are weak fools with vulnerable hearts, Olympia. You think he wanted your body? Your mind?’ he’d hollered, as if the idea that any man could desire her for simply being Pia was unfathomable. ‘True lust is greed for money and power. Surrender to a man and he will strip you of your fortune and glory and leave you as nothing more than a whore in his bed. Trust no man. Not even me.’

That her hollow, cold flesh should now answer to the practised tongue of a Don Juan with criminal tendencies who was quite possibly trying to take her down could only be the cruel joke of a universe that despised her.

Now she had to drag him across Europe for the next few days, on a schedule that was impossible to change, trying to delve into the intricacies of his mind while he tried to delve into her knickers.

Not in a million years.

She’d just have to keep her head on straight and her eyes on him. The man could hardly kick up a storm if she was watching over his shoulder, and it would give her plenty of time to unearth what game he was playing and why.

The anxiety of it all—the possibility that she was in danger of having everything she’d worked so hard for taken away—made her feel sick to the stomach. And that’s not the only thing that has you rattled, a little voice said. She told that voice to hush up.

‘You look tired, Pia,’ Jovan said.

She was. Bone-deep tired. But machines weren’t supposed to get tired. So instead of crawling into bed she tried to pretend that she didn’t ache all over, lifted her chin, strode towards her office and got back to business.

‘I’m fine. You worry too much.’

That wasn’t fair. He cared about her and she would be for ever grateful for that small mercy in her life. It would have all been so easy if there’d been flames of attraction between them, but there wasn’t so much as a flicker—never mind the high-voltage current that was still racing through her body from—

No, no, no. She was not going there.

‘Get Laurent from Paris on the phone and tell him I’ve found him a new concierge. Then ask Clarissa Knight to pack her bags and come to my office. She’s wanted to be based near her mother for months and this is the perfect opportunity. With a bit of luck she’ll find some fresh eye-candy in days, and Mr Carvalho will be reduced to a distant memory. Just make sure Mr I’m-Sex-Incarnate-and-I-Know-It doesn’t see her leave.’

It was far too dangerous to keep her here, bewitched under Carvalho’s spell. No doubt he’d promise her the world for more secrets, and if the girl thought Pia was casting her out of a job and had convinced herself in love with the Brazilian bad-boy anything was possible.

Even Pia—who’d been vaccinated against the Nicandros of the world—had sensed him drizzling charm all over her as if she were a hot waffle. Clarissa wouldn’t have stood a chance. Had he slept with her? Devoured her over and over again? And why that imagery made her feel queasy was anyone’s guess.

‘You are going soft in your old age, Pia,’ Jovan said.

The only thing going soft was her breasts.

‘I’m not so vain that I can’t admit to fault. The girl is far too sheltered to be surrounded by Q Virtus players, some of who are no better than vultures preying on female flesh, but she needed the extra money to send home and I caved.’

While those were the facts it wasn’t the entire truth, and she knew it. The truth was Nicandro had used the girl, and it left a bitterly sour taste in Pia’s mouth. She was utterly disappointed in him—and that was highly idiotic, because it meant she’d placed him on a pedestal just from what she’d read of him, meant her emotions had been engaged. Fool.

‘Of course you caved. The girl genuinely needed you. I know you hate to admit it, but you like being needed.’

‘No, I don’t.’ Did she?

‘Okay, you don’t. So, do I have the pleasure of escorting him to the airport?’ Jovan asked, with no small amount of enthusiastic glee, as he walked towards her desk, where she was standing shuffling papers from one towering pile to another.

The fact she was making a mess to avoid this subject didn’t go unnoticed.

Oh, hell, this was not going to go down well.

‘No.’ And since she didn’t have the energy to tell Jovan he’d be escorting them both—together—and then deal with the inevitable fall-out—which was so unlike her it was frightening—she said, ‘I’ll explain later. Get going or you’ll miss Laurent.’

Jovan did a quick U-turn and headed towards the door—and the action popped a memory like some maniacal jack-in-the-box. Nicandro’s swift volte-face. One minute the consummate charmer, the next a predator. The lobisomem she’d seen from the start.

Strange, that all it had taken was one scan of his membership request, one perlustration of his past, one glance at the nebulous depths of his eyes and his moniker had bitten into her brain. Lobisomem: werewolf. A survivor despite or perhaps in spite of his origins. A lord of the night. His darkness a phantom entreaty to her soul.

But for several heartbeats in that room there’d been such violent anger in his eyes. A change so swift, so absolute, she’d felt the sharp edges of panic for the first time in years.

Where had it come from, that vitriol mutating his gorgeous whisky-coloured eyes to black pools of hate? Indifference she might have understood—but hate? Such a strong emotion. Made him appear dangerous. Deadly.

At first she’d thought his abrupt one-eighty had something to do with her diamonds—the only gift her father had ever given her, the only time he’d ever shown her he cared. It was the only possession she’d ever truly adored. Yet Nicandro had stared at them with a look of abject horror. It was the why that was bugging her. Yes, large black diamonds were extraordinarily rare—hers was one of a kind—but the way he’d gone on you would think it was an evil eye, some kind of black art mumbo-jumbo.

Rubbing at the aching spot between her eyes, she decided it was nigh on impossible to figure him out.

‘Jovan, before you go, what’s the name of that private investigator we occasionally use?’

He stilled beneath the archway leading back to the main suite and looked over his shoulder at her keenly. ‘We have several. Though it’s usually Mason, who tows the legal line—or McKay, who has no compulsion about being morally corrupt if given the right incentive.’

Another crook. Wonderful. Bad enough she was hearing rumours of Q Virtus being associated with the Greek mafia. Did she have Mr Carvalho to thank for that one too? She’d thank him, all right. With a swift knee-jerk in his crown jewels.

When she had the proof. If it was him.

So foolish, Pia. You’re still hoping there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this—an explanation that has nothing to do with Nicandro Carvalho, aren’t you? She couldn’t answer that question and not hate herself.