The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

Mia told herself quickly. But—

      But what?

      Exasperated with herself, she decided her best choice while she was feeling so unsettled was, ‘I think I would like to look around some more.’

      With a nod of his dark head he led the way towards the back of the house. Half an hour later she’d been shown an all-purpose gym and an indoor swimming pool, a very elegant dining room, two more less formal sitting rooms and a huge rear garden that was a blaze of colour from the early summer flowering bulbs. Not once did Nikos rest so much as a hand on her, yet she quivered inwardly all the time as if he was threatening to do it.

      It was the fault of the kiss, she told herself. The knowledge that he had come at her out of nowhere with it and so could easily come at her out of nowhere with something else.

      He was volatile—unpredictable. The kind of man who was a law to himself. He fascinated and unnerved her in equal measures, and her awareness of his close proximity played like a bow across the taut string of her nerves, which in turn kept every sense she possessed honed on him.

      ‘It’s a very big house for just Lukas to look after,’ she remarked eventually. ‘You have no other staff?’ She hadn’t seen a single other person.

      ‘Plenty, but they know not to be around when I’m here,’ Nikos said.

      Because, as he’d already said, he liked his own space—which should not surprise her since she was able to live in the service flat at his London apartment because he usually kept it empty.

      His mobile phone rang then and, after taking the call, he murmured, ‘Excuse me, I have to deal with this,’ and strode off towards his study, talking in Greek.

      It was like being let off for good behaviour. Mia felt herself almost deflate with relief. Working closely with him was taxing. Fighting with him was taxing! But being treated to a whole hour of his graciously polite side had worn her out!

      How did he manage to switch his moods on and off like a light switch? How did he go from impatient boss to hot, angry kisser with serious possessive tendencies that made her insides flip over to amiable companion?

      Passionate, pre-calculating, domineering and dangerous, she listed, quivering despite not wanting to react at all.

      What mood was he going to treat her to next? The urban sophisticate wearing his social mask while a Balfour hung on his arm?

      He was tying her emotions in knots with his quick-change mood swings. She needed something to do to take her mind off him.

      Fortunately Lukas appeared as if by magic to offer her the promised refreshment. ‘It’s such a beautiful day, perhaps you would enjoy sitting out on the terrace? I’m sure Mr Nikos will not be long.’

      Mr Nikos could take as long as he liked, Mia thought as she followed Lukas across one of the rear sitting rooms and outside. The moment she relaxed into a cushioned chair and the warmth of the sun touched her face, she felt homesick for Tuscany and Tia Giulia’s peeling pink farmhouse and the rickety wooden furniture they used like an extension of the old-fashioned kitchen throughout the long summer months.

      Lukas unfurled a huge canvas umbrella, suddenly dousing her in shade. She knew he’d meant well but she’d been happier to close her eyes and bake for a little while, something she had not had the opportunity to do since she’d arrived in England.

      Just something else she missed about Tuscany.

      ‘Something cool to drink or would you prefer coffee or tea?’ enquired Lukas.

      A sudden imp inside her made her want to demand a large shot of vodka, just to see how Lukas would react. She had never, ever tasted vodka but the house, Lukas and all of this polite care and attention did not fit with the cool, tough, impersonal if-I-can-do-it-myself-I-will nature of Nikos Theakis.

      ‘Something cool,’ she said meekly, smiling wryly to herself.

      ‘Coffee for me, Lukas,’ a third voice instructed.

      Nikos strode out of the house and into the sunshine, then paused for second, lifting up his face as if he’d missed the sun too. His sweater had gone and he’d rolled back the sleeves of his checked shirt, revealing strong muscled forearms smattered lightly with fine black hair that made his skin look deeply tanned.

      For a timeless moment Mia was held transfixed by his sheer bronzed beauty. A telling little flame flickered into life low down.

      Then he tilted his chin down again and she dragged her eyes from him, feeling shaken inside and momentarily defenceless against these surges of attraction she kept on experiencing.

      ‘They’re going to slap a no-fly zone over the D’Lassio estate for the evening to stop the uninvited press from flying overhead,’ he was telling Lukas, ‘so can you make sure my pilot knows we need to leave to arrive before seven o’clock?’

      With a nod Lukas left them alone on the terrace. Mia fixed her eyes on the garden where an elegant Greek goddess stood gently pouring water from an urn into a circular pond. So tranquil, she thought, when there was nothing tranquil about the man who must have had the pool and the goddess positioned there.

      ‘So, what do you think?’ He came to take the seat beside her, lazed back and stretched out his long legs.

      ‘About the house? You must already know that it’s very beautiful.’

      ‘I purchased it last year from a business acquaintance, who needed some heavy cash fast,’ he imparted casually. ‘The idea was to sell it on but the current housing market made me decide to hang on to it for a while.’

      ‘That explains it, then,’ Mia murmured.

      He turned his head to look at her. ‘Explains what?’

      ‘Did Lukas come with the house?’ she responded with a question of her own.

      ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, and she nodded her head.

      ‘The decor and the furnishings?’

      His eyes started to narrow, and Mia felt that needling spark of electricity filter into the air. She had to moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue before she could go on. ‘Your—stamp is not visible here.’

      ‘Stamp,’ he prompted.

      ‘This is a—how do you say it…quintessential—? Sí, this is a quintessential model of an Englishman’s country home.’

      ‘What do you know about quintessential Englishmen?’ Nikos laughed. ‘You’re a Tuscan farm girl with a donkey called Tulio for a best friend.’

      ‘I have half-English blood,’ Mia defended that comment.

      ‘For all you know I might have half-English blood too,’ Nikos tossed back.

      Widening her blue eyes, she asked, ‘Do you—?’

      ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘But you couldn’t know that. You’re making assumptions about me without being in possession of all the facts. That’s dangerous around me, cara.’

      And Mia knew he was right. Then again, everything felt as if it had a dangerous element to it since she’d woken up this morning.

      And when she could not manage to break eye contact with him, Mia knew it was getting worse.

      Chapter Six

      MIA turned to look at herself in the full-length mirror and felt the now almost-permanent quiver going on low in her stomach quicken like mad.

      The dress had once belonged to Bella. She’d spent half the morning shortening the long flow of its near-sheer iced-blue silk skirt. But it was the rest of the dress that made her senses quicken. The strapless style of the bodice draped lovingly around the thrusting shape of her breasts, then went on to hug each slender curve of her body with band after band of exquisitely intricate pleating all the way down to her thighs before the sheer silk flowed