The Thirty-Day Seduction. Kay Thorpe

Pandrossos was gone from the terrace when she reached it, her place taken by a younger version who eyed the newcomer with a total lack of welcome.

      “You must be Florina,” said Chelsea, extending a smile herself. “I’m Chelsea Lovatt, a friend of Dion’s.”

      “Why are you here?” The question was abrupt.

      Chelsea kept the smile going. “Your brother invited me. He’ll be out in a moment. We’re going to have a swim.”

      The striking face failed to relax. “Dion treats our home as a hotel! He has no right to bring people here without first asking permission.”

      “Your mother didn’t seem to mind,” Chelsea felt bound to respond, and saw the other’s expression sour even further.

      “My brother can do no wrong in her eyes, but that does not make what he does right.”

      Sibling jealousy, Chelsea concluded, feeling some sympathy. Sons were all-important in this country. Florina was a year or so older than her brother—of an age when she might be counted as being well and truly on the shelf marriage-wise. Waiting for her cousin to make a move wouldn’t have helped. In all fairness, the man should surely clarify his intentions.

      Dion’s arrival was a relief. If he registered his sister’s lack of enthusiasm for their new guest he refused to acknowledge it.

      “I’ll race you six lengths of the pool,” he challenged Chelsea, having already sampled her prowess in the water. “And this time I will win!”

      Laughing, she slid out of the white shirt and kicked off her sandals, then followed him to the pool-end to pose with him in the classic position. They entered the water in perfect unison, surfacing within seconds of each other and striking out powerfully.

      Chelsea had given up competitive swimming on leaving school, but she had kept up the practice because it was one of the best ways of keeping fit. She had little difficulty keeping pace with Dion over the first lengths, and would have beaten him by a short head over the last had her more charitable instincts not caused her to lose just enough ground for him to touch a couple of feet in front. Pandering to male pride, maybe, but it meant far more to him than it did to her.

      “You win,” she said in mock resignation, treading water.

      Curly black hair sparkling with water droplets, perifania restored, Dion could afford to be generous. “Only just. You swim faster than any other female I ever encountered! It took me by surprise the first time.”

      “I know.” Tongue tucked firmly in cheek, Chelsea made a wry grimace. “I suppose I’ll just have to settle for second best when it comes right down to it.”

      She turned to swim across the width of the pool to where a metal stepladder extended down into the water, this time using a more restful breast stroke. The sight of the man now seated with Florina on the terrace brought her to an abrupt halt only halfway up the steps. It was too late to drop back into the water because he was looking right at her, mouth taking on the fast-becomingfamiliar slant as she vacillated.

      He got to his feet to take a towel from the nearby rack and bring it across. Except that instead of placing the towel where she could reach it and retiring again, he opened it up and held it out invitingly, dark eyes cynical.

      “Are you coming out?” he asked. “Or did you change your mind after all?”

      “Coming out.” She suited her actions to her words, hauling herself the rest of the way up the ladder and accepting the towel without looking at him directly. Dressed now in beautifully tailored cream trousers and dark brown silk shirt, he was no less disturbing. “Don’t let me splash you,” she tagged on, hoping he would back off and give her room to breathe.

      “Water will do me no harm,” he said. “Why did you allow Dion to win just now?”

      Feeling considerably more confident with the towel wrapped securely about her, Chelsea raised a pair of innocently widened blue eyes. “Why would I do that?”

      “Because of what you hope to gain, perhaps?”

      Her brows creased. “Gain?”

      “You’re far from ingenuous, so don’t try playing the part for me,” Nikos returned hardily. “Dion may see no further than your face and body, but I’m not so easily blinded. You have a purpose in giving way to him the way you just did-a purpose in being here with him at all, in fact.”

      Her heart jerked, then steadied again. There was nothing to suggest that he’d guessed the truth. If she read him correctly, his suspicions lay in quite another direction.

      “If you think I’m after joining the family, you can forget it,” she said bluntly, abandoning discretion for the moment. “Dion won the race on his own merits. Please don’t try spoiling it for him by suggesting anything other.”

      The strongly carved features took on a disquieting expression. “The only suggestion I might-”

      He broke off as his cousin hauled himself out of the water at Chelsea’s back, obviously not prepared to continue the discussion-if it could rightly be called thatin front of the younger man.

      “We didn’t expect you until later,” said Dion, sounding somewhat less than welcoming to Chelsea’s ears.

      “I have matters to discuss with your mother,” Nikos answered, adding with a certain irony, “If a reason is needed.”

      His glance came back to Chelsea for a fleeting moment, the message clear to her if to no one else: he hadn’t finished with her yet. Then he was moving away, shoulders powerful beneath the brown silk, back tapering down to waist and hip. A hard man in every sensecertainly not one to be trifled with. Chelsea found herself beginning to regret ever having begun this quest.

      Hardly a gainful attitude for an ambitious journalist, she rallied. The harder the battle, the more worthwhile the victory. If it all came to nothing in the end, at least she could console herself with the thought that she hadn’t given up at the first hurdle. It was up to her to rid Nikos of this notion that she had designs on his cousin for starters.

      “What was he saying to you?” asked Dion, jerking her out of her introspection.

      “Nothing much,” she returned lightly. “I think I’ll go and finish unpacking rather than get back in again. I’d like to wash my hair, if there’s time.”

      “We eat at nine,” he said. “That gives you almost two hours still.”

      “Time to spare then.”

      Sitting alone again, Florina watched her coming with baleful expression. Chelsea gave her a smile in passing, wondering if she was to shoulder the blame for Nikos’s disappearance. If he’d wanted to return to the other’s side, he would surely have done it.

      She saw no sign of him as she made her way to her room, although there were plenty of doors he could be behind. With her own door safely closed, she stood for a moment viewing her image in the long dressing mirror across the room, trying to see herself the way Nikos obviously saw her—coming to the conclusion that he had met so many predatory women in his time he probably took it for granted that they were all at the same game.

      One thing he could rely on, she had no designs in that direction where he was concerned. She’d as soon stick her head in a tiger’s maw!

      Showered, hair washed and dried, she fingered through her travelling wardrobe. Consisting, apart from shorts and swimwear, of two crease-proof shift dresses, three skirts, one silky trouser suit and various tops, the choice was limited. In the end she settled on one of the shifts, in a blue almost the same colour as her eyes, contenting herself with a dab of pale pink lipstick and the merest touch of brown mascara. Her only jewellery was a simple gold chain and matching bracelet, which was all she had brought with her.

      Weather permitting, meals were always served outside during the warmer months, Dion had already advised. It was still only eight-twenty when she left the room,