Modern Romance June 2016 Books 1-4. Maisey Yates

in. The desk in the room was scattered with papers, a laptop sitting open on it. She got a glance at the columns of figures on the screen before the employee closed it down and gathered the papers into a file to take his leave.

      ‘Mr Drakos will be with you shortly,’ he assured her as he departed.

      Ella stared out of the window at the renowned golf course and, in an effort to steady her leaping nerves when she heard a sound somewhere behind her, she said, ‘Do you play golf?’

      ‘No. Not my game,’ Nikolai proclaimed as he shook out his shirt. ‘Why are you here, Ella?’

      Ella spun round and focused in consternation on Nikolai’s incredibly well-defined muscular abs and stomach as he pulled on a shirt. Clearly he was fresh from the shower with his black hair still curling damply and his hard-boned jaw clean-shaven, but the bronzed expanse of naked male flesh on show above the belt encircling his lean hips sharply disconcerted her. Cheeks warming, she glanced away. ‘Is it inconvenient?’

      ‘Let’s call it unexpected,’ he replied, his brilliant dark eyes resting on her.

      Well, there was nothing of the seductress in her appearance, Nikolai acknowledged wryly. He had assumed she would dress up but she hadn’t made the effort, which for some strange reason irritated him. Wasn’t he worth that much effort? In the shower he had reminded himself that approaching Ella Palmer had always been a long shot. After all, if she had already had one rich man in the palm of her hand why would she accept another dictating terms to her? And yet the fact remained that, astonishingly, Cyrus was evidently not coming to his supposed future wife’s rescue and had taken himself off on a long trip to China. Maybe the tip-off Nikolai had received about Cyrus’s marital plans was rubbish, maybe Cyrus was simply playing with Ella...as he did in the initial stages of his games with such women, when he played the honourable respectful male to perfection to lull any suspicion of his true intentions.

      ‘The unexpected doesn’t always have to be bad,’ Ella fenced while he buttoned his shirt. Her cheeks were hot because the little peepshow he had unthinkingly subjected her to had made perspiration break out on her skin below clothes that suddenly felt too tight and constricting.

      ‘I believe you’re acquainted with Cyrus Makris,’ he remarked.

      Startled, Ella glanced at him. ‘Yes. He’s a family friend. I was engaged to his nephew, Paul, until he died,’ she told him, wondering how he had known about her acquaintance with Cyrus before a vague association occurred to her. ‘Your name... I should’ve guessed. You’re Greek as well, aren’t you?’

      ‘I am. Would you like a drink?’

      ‘No, thanks.’ Ella simply wanted to get what she had to say said and then run. ‘Can’t stay long anyway. I left my dog outside in the van.’

      ‘So...?’ Nikolai prompted, watching a strand of bronze hair fan out across her white throat as she lifted her head high, her pale skin accentuating the luminous green of her eyes and the succulent pink of her lips. He tensed, fighting the incipient throb at his groin with annoyance.

      ‘Would...?’ Ella breathed in deep and straightened her spine. ‘I’m here to ask if one night would do.’

      ‘One night of what?’ Nikolai queried blankly.

      ‘You know, sex, for goodness’ sake!’ Ella launched back at him in furious embarrassment. ‘I mean, if that’s all you want, I hardly need to go to London and live with you for it!’

      Nikolai surveyed her in shock and it took a great deal to shock him. ‘Let me get this straight...you’re offering me a night of sex instead?’

      ‘Don’t make it sound so sordid!’ Ella lashed back at him.

      ‘It wasn’t me who made the offer. No, the night of sex wouldn’t meet my...requirements.’ Nikolai selected the word and voiced it smooth as silk. ‘I also assume by that offer that you’re not a virgin?’

      ‘And why would you think I was at my age?’ But Ella thought better of lying because there was always the hope that the truth would be a total turn-off for him. ‘Actually, I am inexperienced but...’

      Distaste at the entire conversation was filling Nikolai. Of course she had assumed he wanted her for sex. What else was she supposed to think? But he wasn’t a ball of sleaze like Cyrus, who treated women like toys he enjoyed breaking. And as it occurred to Nikolai what a challenge making that offer must have been for an innocent like her, he almost swore and had to fight back an angry sense of discomfiture. For the very first time he appreciated that he had recklessly plunged himself into a scenario that was not at all his style.

      ‘One night won’t work for me,’ Nikolai admitted in a driven undertone.

      Ella’s heart was thumping at what felt like a mile a minute behind her breastbone. Relief and dismay assailed her in equal parts. Naturally she was very relieved not to be asked to immediately deliver on the shameless proposition she had just made, but she was taken aback by the speed and power of his repudiation as well. What did he really want? What on earth more could he possibly want or expect from her?

      ‘Then I only have one other...suggestion to make,’ she murmured tightly. ‘You marry me.’

      ‘Marry you?’ Nikolai exclaimed after an unnervingly protracted pause while he studied her with incredulous force. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

      She had finally got an honest and true reaction out of Nikolai Drakos, Ella realised, and a curious feeling of triumph mingled with her mortification. The idea of getting married had shattered him, scoring colour along those amazing high cheekbones, widening his stunning dark-fringed golden eyes. Evidently he had not been prepared for that idea.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘IT WAS A purely practical suggestion from my point of view,’ Ella told him curtly.

      ‘You need to change your point of view,’ Nikolai retorted with sardonic bite.

      Her face was burning with embarrassment and her hands had closed into tight little fists of restraint. If he couldn’t be more frank about exactly what he needed from her, then he could take the rough with the smooth and it would be his own fault. ‘I can’t. You would have to marry me to persuade my father that it was acceptable for you to write off his debts. He’s no freeloader.’

      ‘There is no way that I will marry you to get what I want!’ Nikolai cut in with a raw edge of impatience to his dark deep drawl.

      ‘Then that concludes our discussion,’ Ella stated without heat, simply desperate to escape the opulent hotel suite and forget that she had ever met him. As her father had said when he had put the family home on the line and lost it, well, at least he knew he had tried. Well, she now knew what it was like to try hard and still fail too.

      ‘Diavole, Ella!’ Nikolai bit out as she reached the door. ‘There has to be another way!’

      Ella spun round. ‘No, there honestly isn’t. My father couldn’t live with the idea that his daughter would move in with some man to clear his debts.’

      His melted caramel eyes suddenly flashed as brilliant a gold as sunlight. ‘You have the rare ability to make everything sound sleazy!’

      ‘No, you just don’t like plain speaking...unless it’s you doing it. And you talk in riddles. You asked me to be your mistress yet you say no to the chance to sleep with me.’

      ‘Obviously I want more from you than sex. I can get sex anywhere, any time,’ he assured her dismissively.

      Frustration roared through Ella. ‘I’m not a secret heiress, am I?’

      ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

      ‘I thought I might be the sixth cousin of some distant relation who’s worth a fortune and that you had found out and that maybe—’