A Tycoon To Be Reckoned With. Julia James

might well be acquainted with any number of people influential in all sorts of areas...including opera. She just could not afford to jeopardise what nascent reputation the festival might build for her—not with her entire future resting on it.

      She thought rapidly. ‘Look, Philip, I know this might sound confusing, but can we stick to me being Sabine, rather than mentioning my opera singing?’ she ventured. ‘Otherwise it gets...complicated.’

      Complicated was one word for it—risky was another.

      Philip was looking disconcerted. ‘Must I?’ he protested. ‘I’d love Bastiaan to know how wonderful and talented you really are.’ Admiration and ardent devotion shone in his eyes.

      Sarah gave a wry laugh. ‘Oh, Philip, that’s very sweet of you, but—’

      She got no further. Philip’s gaze had suddenly flicked past her. ‘That’s him,’ he announced. ‘Just coming over now—’

      Sarah craned her neck slightly—and froze.

      The tall figure threading its way towards their table was familiar. Unmistakably so.

      She just had time to ask a mental, What on earth? when he was upon them.

      Philip had jumped to his feet.

      ‘Bast! You made it! Great!’ he cried happily, sticking to the French he spoke with Sarah. He hugged his cousin exuberantly, and went on in Greek, ‘You’ve timed it perfectly—’

      ‘Have I?’ answered Bastiaan. He kept his voice studiedly neutral, but his eyes had gone to the woman seated at his cousin’s table. Multiple thoughts crowded in his head, struggling for predominance. But the one that won out was the last one he wanted.

      A jolt of insistent, unmistakable male response to the image she presented.

      The twenty-four hours since he’d accosted her in her dressing room had done nothing at all to lessen the impact she made on him. The same lush blond hair, deep eyes, rich mouth, and another gown that skimmed her shoulders and breasts, moulding the latter to perfection...

      He felt his body growl with raw, masculine satisfaction. The next moment he’d crushed it down. So here she was, the sultry chanteuse, making herself at home with Philip, and Philip’s eyes on her were like an adoring puppy’s.

      ‘Bastiaan, I want to introduce you to someone very special,’ Philip was saying. A slight flush mounted in the young man’s cheeks and his glance went from his cousin to Sarah and back again. ‘This...’ there was the slightest hesitation in his voice ‘...this is Sabine.’ He paused more discernibly this time. ‘Sabine,’ he said self-consciously, ‘this is my cousin Bastiaan—Bastiaan Karavalas.’

      Through the mesh of consternation in Sarah’s head one realisation was clear. It was time to call it, she knew. Make it clear to Philip—and to his cousin Bastiaan—that, actually, they were already ‘acquainted.’ She gave the word a deliberately biting sardonic inflection in her head.

      Her long fake lashes dipped down over her eyes and she found herself surreptitiously glancing at the dark-eyed, powerfully built man who had just sat down, dominating the space.

      Dominating her senses...

      Just as he had the night before, when he’d appeared in her dressing room.

      But it wasn’t this that concerned her. It was the way he seemed to be suddenly the only person in the entire universe, drawing her eyes to him as irretrievably as if he were the iron to her magnetic compass. She couldn’t look away—could only let her veiled glance fasten on him, feel again, as powerfully as she first had, the raw impact he had on her, that sense of power and attraction that she could not explain—did not want to explain.

      Call it. She heard the imperative in her head. Call it—say that you know him—that he has already sought you out...

      But she couldn’t do anything other than sit there and try to conjure up some explanation for why she couldn’t open her mouth.

      Into her head tumbled the overriding question—What the hell is going on here?

      Because something was—that was for sure. A man she’d never seen before in her life had turned up at the club, bribed a waiter to invite her to his table, then confronted her in her dressing room to ask her out... And then he reappeared as Philip’s cousin, unexpectedly arrived in France...

      But there was no time to think—no time for anything other than to realise that she had to cope with the situation as it was now and come up with answers later.

      ‘Mademoiselle...’

      The deep voice was as dark as she remembered it—accented in Greek, similar to Philip’s. But that was the only similarity. Philip’s voice was light, youthful, his tone usually admiring, often hesitant. But his cousin, in a single word, conveyed to Sarah a whole lot more.

      Assessing—guarded—sardonic. Not quite mocking but...

      She felt a shiver go down her spine. A shiver she should not be feeling. Should have no need of feeling. Was he daring her to admit they’d already encountered one another?

      ‘M’sieu...’ She kept her voice cool. Totally neutral.

      A waiter glided up, seeing a new guest had arrived. The business of Bastiaan Karavalas ordering a drink—a dry martini, Sarah noted absently—gave her precious time to try and grab some composure back.

      She was in urgent need of it—whatever Bastiaan Karavalas was playing at, it was his physical presence that was dominating her senses, overwhelming her with his raw, physical impact just the way it had last night in her dressing room. Dragging her gaze to him set her heart quickening, her pulse surging. What was it about him? That sense of presence, of power—of dark, magnetic attraction? The veiled eyes, the sensual mouth...?

      Never had she been so aware of a man. Never had her body reacted like this.

      ‘For you, mademoiselle?’ the deep, accented voice was addressing her, clearly enquiring what she would like to drink.

      She gave a quick shake of her head. ‘Thank you—no. I stick to water between sets.’

      He dismissed the waiter with an absent lift of his hand and the man scurried off to do his bidding.

      ‘Sets?’ Bastiaan enquired.

      His thoughts were busy. He’d wanted to see whether she would disclose his approach to her the previous evening, and now he was assessing the implications of her not doing so.

      He was, he knew, assessing a great deal about her... Predominantly her physical impact on him. Even though that was the thing least relevant to the situation.

      Or was it?

      The thought was in his head before he could stop it. So, too, was the one that followed hard upon its heels.

      Her reaction to him blazed from her like a beacon. Satisfaction—stabbing through him—seared in his veins. That, oh, that, indeed, was something he could use...

      He quelled the thought—this was not the time. She had taken the first trick at that first encounter, turning down the invitation he’d so expected her to take. But the game, Mademoiselle Sabine, is only just begun...

      And he would be holding the winning hand!

      ‘Sa...Sabine’s a singer,’ Philip was saying, his eyes alight and sweeping admiringly over the chanteuse who had him in her coils.

      Bastiaan sat back, his eyes flickering over the slinkily dressed and highly made-up figure next to his cousin. ‘Indeed?’

      It was his turn to use the French language to his advantage—allowing the ironic inflection to work to her discomfiture...as though he doubted the veracity of his cousin’s claim.

      ‘Indeed, m’sieu,’ echoed Sarah. The ironic inflection had not been lost on her and she repaid it herself, in a light, indifferent tone.

      He