Good enough for the House of Drakos, her father would have said.
She continued wandering across the ballroom, marveling at the magnificence of the hotel.
It had been a crumbling Victorian-style mansion with out-of-date plumbing and bad interiors, but in three months Marquez Holdings Inc. had renovated it into a world-class destination for the nouveau rich that were pouring into Drakon, thanks to Gabriel Marquez’s interest.
The ruthless real estate mogul was a guest of the palace of Drakon, and had been in Drakon for three months to oversee his company’s investment in Drakon.
Casinos, luxury resorts that rivaled the King’s Palace in style and ambience, mountain escapes, a world-class racing circuit—the map of Drakon was changing under Mr. Marquez’s and her brother Nik’s deft guidance.
A modern-day Midas, as the media called him, Eleni wouldn’t have believed the transformation of the building Gabriel Marquez had wrought if she hadn’t visited it herself almost a year ago.
Taking a sip of her chilled champagne, she looked down over the lush gardens. The scent of roses was thick in the air; a clock struck midnight at the old church in the city’s main square.
She took a longer sip than was wise, felt the bubbly kiss her throat cold and sighed. It was a sound that seemed to come from the depths of her lonely soul.
The night stretched empty in front of her again.
“Why the long sigh, querida?”
The deep, slumberous voice sent a shiver down Eleni’s spine that rivaled the tingles in her throat. Heart beating faster, she turned, bracing her hand on the balcony balustrade. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your—”
“Stay.”
With the one command, he made her spine lock. Even her father, who had been a bossy, hard-to-please man, had never ordered her around like that. “Excuse me?”
“Stay and keep me company,” the man repeated, not even a little taken aback by her stiff tone.
With his back to the wall, the man was huge. Like a bouncer at a nightclub, he was tall and powerfully built.
A veneer of power clung to his frame. Unlike the other men at the ball, no mask covered his face. Only shadows.
His blue-black hair framed his face in thick, unruly waves. The fine white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, clung to lean muscle. The breadth of his frame sent tremors through Eleni.
She couldn’t stop her gaze from traveling down his length. One foot crossed over the other and stretched the fabric of his trousers, revealing the hard musculature of his thighs.
Eleni swallowed the strange anticipation that seemed to rise in her throat. He pushed off from the wall.
She barely swallowed the soft gasp that rose to her lips.
Roughly chiseled masculine planes, a wide, sensuously cruel mouth and a nose bent in the middle—it was Gabriel Marquez, the very man she’d been mooning over for months. The man who reminded her she was a woman every minute she spent in his company. The desire and need that she’d thought had disappeared with Spiros still burned bright in her.
The ruthlessness that had made Gabriel a legend in boardrooms across Europe screamed from every inch of him.
Her heart pumped faster as she waited for him to recognize her.
His dark slate-gray eyes studied her. He’d never so much as rested his gaze on her in three months of long meetings and numerous requests she’d dealt with. Not once had he shown any awareness that she was a woman.
No, then she was Princess Eleni Drakos, the facilitator for his firm, the grease between his company and the palace. But now she was a masked stranger, and something flared in those depths. Something that made her aware of how thin the silk of her dress was, of how tightly her skin seemed to be stretched.
“Such a wealth of regret and—” he paused while his gaze seared her “—need from a beautiful woman’s lips…it feels like a challenge to any man.”
“It wasn’t…need,” she retorted instantly, somehow negating what she had meant to say.
“Come, querida, isn’t the idea of the masquerade to be open about our innermost desires while we hide our outward selves?” He traced the lower edge of her mask with a finger. Sensation zoomed from the spot. “You’re safe behind that mask.”
When his finger continued its journey back down and reached the indent over her upper lip, Eleni grabbed his wrist. If he touched her mouth… “Why aren’t you wearing one?” she asked, wishing she didn’t sound so breathless.
“Because I don’t have to hide myself to express what I want. Nor do I need to validate myself by hiding from the world who I am.”
Arrogance dripped from his every word. But why not? There wasn’t one single woman in the palace who hadn’t lost her breath over the sight of him.
“You sound far too sure of your appeal.”
He shrugged. “I am Gabriel Marquez, Ms….?”
Eleni racked her brains for a name that had no association with her or the House of Drakos. She’d taken every precaution not to betray her identity at this ball tonight, including arranging it so that she was thought to be still in Paris by her staff and even by her brother Nikandros. Only Mia knew she was here. And the last thing she wanted was for this man to figure out who she was, especially now that he was staring at her with such male interest that she felt heady and drunk.
“You didn’t think of a fake name before you decided to come to the ball tonight?”
A taunt in his question brought her gaze to his. Humor lurked in his eyes and Eleni felt something in her loosen at the sight of it. The twitching curve of his bold mouth unraveled a hidden streak she didn’t even know she had. “A name was not required for the goal I had in mind.”
His gray gaze gleamed with pure delight. “Now you make me more curious. Still, I would like a name to call you as I figure out what specific goals you had in mind for tonight. And how I can help you succeed in achieving them.”
Awareness flooded every inch of her body and Eleni stood shaking in its wake. His bold eyes swept over her face, stilling for a second more on her mouth. His nostrils flared and a wave of heat seemed to emanate from him.
He was attracted to her, she realized with a sudden leap of her heart. The man who had never given her a second glance was attracted to her.
“Cinderella,” Eleni whispered, after a moment’s thought.
His eyes crinkled at the corners and warmth filled his eyes. It was such an unfamiliar, unusual expression on his usually serious face that Eleni stared hungrily. The man was gorgeous, but his smile made him breathtaking. “And is it the cruel stepsisters and stepmother that you’re hoping to hide from tonight, Cinderella?”
A smile came to her easily. As easily as the giddy response. She felt like a teenager, bantering and flirting with the boy she’d been sneaking glances at for a few months. Wild and beautiful and wanted, as if she were any one of those women who were even now skillfully laughing and flirting with available men, women who knew the cues and their own worth, women who would spend the night in a lover’s arms.
Women who hadn’t been waiting their entire life for a man who’d promised the world. Women who had the guts to go after what they wanted instead of mourning a man who was long gone from her life.
She hadn’t thought Gabriel Marquez would be the one who’d seek her out, but in her wildest dreams, wasn’t this what she wanted? So why not take what she’d come for? Why not live for the moment?
Why not believe in the fantasy that she was beautiful and desirable and confident, and that the fire she saw in his eyes was all for her?
“You were right on the first guess,” she said, jumping into the moment with both feet.
A vertical line formed between his brows, his arms coming to the balcony to cage her. “You sound familiar, Cinderella.”
Shoulders rigid with tension, Eleni fought to keep her face straight. Was it the way she had said his name? Or was her disguise not enough to hide who she was?
The levity disappeared from his eyes, leaving them stone cold. “Did you come to the ball looking for me, Cinderella?”
That set her back up like nothing else could have. Lifting her chin, she met his gaze square. “You think a lot of yourself, do you not?”
“Women seek favors of me all the time,” he said, the taunt back in his tone. “One does become a little jaded.”
“It must be nice to believe the world revolves around oneself.”
He threw his head back and laughed, sending trails of pleasure whispering over every inch of her skin. The broad shoulders shook with his laughter, which was a deep, masculine sound. Sleek grooves appeared in his rugged face, rendering that hard face a little beautiful.
“The more I listen to you, the more I like you. Tell me truly, have we met before?”
“In passing maybe,” she offered, skating the line between truth and lies. “But I’m too much beneath your notice even if you’d seen me.”
“I doubt I would forget you.” The cage of his hands shrank around her, teasing her nostrils with the scent of him. Sandalwood and musk and something so essentially masculine it made her want to throw caution to the winds and burrow into his skin. “So if it’s not a beastly family, who are you hiding from tonight, Ella?”
She flinched at the way he shortened her name and wished fervently that the shadows had hid it from him. Her brother Nik had always called her Ellie and so did Mia. To hear it fall from Gabriel’s lips—it was thrilling and dangerous like nothing else.