Penniless and Purchased. Julia James

that she was standing on the threshold of something significant.

      Deliberately, quite deliberately as she walked into the room, she did not do what every instinct was trying to compel her to do and let her eyes go to the tall, dark figure standing across the room. She could see him at the periphery of her vision, but she wouldn’t let her eyes fly to him.

      Her father was greeting her warmly. Almost as if he were relieved at her arrival. The disquieting thought distracted her. She went up and kissed him on the cheek, then turned to their guest.

      ‘Mr Kazandros.’ She smiled.

      For a moment he didn’t answer her smile. For a moment his face was expressionless. Sophie found herself wondering at it. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, he was greeting her in return.

      ‘Miss Granton.’ He gave a small bow of his head, very foreign. It reminded her of Vienna, where everyone had seemed so formal all the time. She gave a light laugh.

      ‘Oh, please, do call me Sophie. Miss Granton makes me sound like someone in Jane Austen! Probably a maiden aunt.’

      Something moved in his eyes. ‘Unlikely,’ he said, his voice very dry.

      But she wasn’t paying a great deal of attention. As she’d let her gaze go to him, to greet him, exhilaration had swept through her. She hadn’t been imagining it! He really was as drop-dead, gulpingly gorgeous as she’d first thought! How could she even have thought there might be any flaws? There were none—absolutely none! He really, really was just shiveringly fantastic!

      And he definitely was no boy. This was a man—a man who moved through the world, doing business, driving incredible cars, sophisticated, assured, skilled, experienced.

       Experienced.

      The word repeated itself in her head. With connotations that made her breath tighter. She found her eyes moving to his mouth.

      Sculpted, mobile.

      Experienced.

      She felt heat beat up in her throat. He’d know how to kiss fantastically…

      Her father was saying something, and she forced herself to listen.

      ‘Your usual orange juice, pet?’

      He was crossing over to the drinks cabinet against the other wall. She took a little breath.

      ‘Oh, I think I’ll have a Bellini tonight, please, Daddy.’ Immediately she wished she hadn’t said ‘Daddy’ like that.

       It makes me sound like a little girl.

      She didn’t look at Nikos Kazandros in case she saw the thought in his eyes. She didn’t want him to think of her as a little girl.

      Her father paused by the cabinet. ‘Sophie, pet, there’s no champagne open. I don’t want to waste a bottle on a single drink. Have something else.’

      She was momentarily stymied. Then she recovered. She looked back at Nikos Kazandros. He had that veiled look on his face again.

      ‘What are you drinking, Mr Kazandros?’ she asked, eyeing his shallow glass, which he was holding with long, squaretipped fingers. Her voice had a breathless touch to it.

      She could see the switch being thrown again. The veiled look was gone.

      ‘Nikos,’ he said softly, as if he were speaking only to her. ‘If I am to call you Sophie.’ A smile, tantalisingly brief, as was the quiver that it engendered in her, hovered at the corner of one mouth. ‘And I am having a martini—very dry. It is an…acquired taste.’

      ‘Sophie, you’d hate it, believe me,’ said her father from the drinks cabinet.

      ‘A sweet martini can be very palatable,’ suggested Nikos.

      She smiled. ‘Perfect!’ she said. ‘There you go, Daddy. A sweet martini for me, please!’

      Oh, damn, she’d said ‘Daddy’ again, and again her gaze flicked to Nikos Kazandros—no, Nikos, she amended, and felt a little thrill, as if of triumph—to see whether he thought her childish. But the veiled look was back on his face. She wondered at it, but at the same time realised she was glad of it, too, because it seemed to give her the opportunity to look at him, as she wanted to, without actually falling headfirst into his gaze, because his eyes were not quite meeting hers.

      But they were on her face, though. And more than her face.

      They’d flicked downwards, she could see—only for an instant, but it was enough. Enough to tell her, again with a little thrill of triumph, that she had not pulled out all the stops in vain.

      The peach-coloured cocktail dress she wore was one of her very favourites. There was something about the colour that just absolutely suited her skin tone and her hair. The material was so light it skimmed her body, but outlined it, as well. It wasn’t at all overtly revealing—but somehow it seemed to indicate an awful lot. The hem was a little way above her knees, yet it lengthened the line of her legs incredibly. The bodice was not tight, but she knew it gave her a very flattering bust, and made her waist look even more slender than it was.

      It had been incredibly expensive, even for her budget, but because she loved it so she got good value from it, wearing it over and over again.

      But never so gratefully as now.

      Now, as Nikos Kazandros’s experienced eyes flicked over her—how many women had he looked over to judge whether they were good enough to interest him?—she knew, with every ingrained feminine instinct, that what he saw he liked.

      Liked a lot.

      Her lips parted, and her smile was one of mingled gladness—and relief.

       I want him to like me.

      He was a world away from her. Not just because she was still a student, and he was a man old enough to be doing business with her father, but because, for all her more-than-comfortable existence, it was obvious just from looking at him that Nikos Kazandros’s stalking ground was the kind of glamorous watering holes that littered the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the Alps and the Indian Ocean islands. Fashionable clubs in fashionable cities, with the kind of exclusive membership that filtered out anyone not sufficiently rich, sufficiently sophisticated. The world of serious money and serious spending. That was the world Nikos Kazandros belonged to.

      For a moment she felt dismay fill her, knowing the distance between them was too great.

      Then his eyes flicked back up to meet hers again.

      The veil was gone. And in its place—

      Sophie’s breath stilled in her body. Completely. As if oxygen were no longer necessary to her survival.

      Because it wasn’t. The only thing necessary to her survival at this moment was the look that Nikos Kazandros was pouring into her eyes.

      She had heard the expression ‘the world stopped turning’—now she and knew what it meant. For one incredible, timeless moment she just gazed back at him. Feeling everything stop.

      Then, from a long way away, she heard her father’s voice.

      ‘Sophie?’

      She blinked. The world started again. Her father was there, holding out her sweet martini to her. She took it and dipped her head, wanting only to take a large gulp of the drink.

      There was heat in her throat, and not from the alcohol. From a different source of intoxication. Far, far more powerful.

      Powerful enough to sweep her away, for ever, into a different world, from which she knew, with a strange, vague sense of fatality, she might never, never return.

      And from which she knew she would never want to.

      Slowly, she raised the glass to her lips, as if toasting that fate. Her eyes went back to his. They were veiled again, but she knew why now. Didn’t mind. She smiled, lips parting