The Wealthy Greek's Contract Wife(3)

Lizzie turned back towards the flattened ground where the apartments had   been, shock holding her immobile as she saw the man standing on it,   watching her.

‘You're trespassing. This is private land.'

He spoke English! But the words he had spoken were hostile and angry,   challenging Lizzie to insist with equal hostility, ‘Private land which   in part belongs to me.'

It wasn't strictly true, of course, but as a partner in the apartment   block she must surely own a percentage of the land on which it had been   built? Lizzie didn't know the finer points of Greek property law, but   there was something about the attitude toward her of the man confronting   her and challenging her that made her feel she had to assert herself   and her rights. However, it was plain that she had done the wrong thing.   The man unfolded his arms, revealing the outline of a hardmuscled  torso  beneath the dirt-smeared tee shirt tucked into low-slung jeans  that  rode his hips, and strode towards her.

‘Manos land can never belong to anyone other than a Manos.'

He was savagely angry. The hardness of the gaze from golden eagle eyes   fringed with thick dark lashes speared her like a piece of helpless   prey.

Lizzie stepped back from him in panic, and lost her footing as she stumbled on a rough tussock of grass.

As she started to fall the man reached for her, hard fingers biting into   her jacket-clad arms as she was hauled upright and kept there by his   hold on her. The golden gaze raked her with a predatory male boldness   that infuriated her. He was looking at her as though … as though he was   indeed a mythical Greek god, with the right and the power to take and   use vulnerable female mortal flesh for his own pleasure as and when he   wished. Sex with a man like this would be dangerous for the woman who   was drawn to risk herself in his hostile embrace. Would he take without   giving, or would he subjugate a woman foolish enough to think she could   make him want her by overpowering her with his sensuality and leaving   her a prisoner to it whilst he remained unmoved? That mouth, with its   full bottom lip, suggested that he possessed a cruel sensuality that   matched his manner towards her.                       
       
           



       

Lizzie shivered, shocked by the inappropriateness and the unfamiliar   sensuality of her own thoughts. She tried to concentrate on something   practical.

Somehow as he'd moved he'd also found time to push back the protective   hard hat he was wearing, so that now she could see the thick darkness of   his hair. She was five foot six. He was much taller-well over six   foot-and of course far more powerful that her. Lizzie could see that the   effort of holding her had hardly raised the biceps in his powerful   arms, but that didn't stop her from trying break free of him.

He stopped her with contemptuous ease, pulling her closer to him. He   smelled of earth, and hard work, and of being a man. From somewhere deep   down, in the place where she kept her most special memories, she had a   sudden mental image of being held in her father's arms in the garden  at  her parents' lovely house in Cheshire, laughing in delight as she  looked  down from that height to where her mother was kneeling beside  her two  younger sisters. Those had been such wonderful years-years when  she had  felt safe and secure and loved.

But this man was not her father. With this man there would be no safety, no security, and certainly no love.

Love? She was so close to the dirt-streaked tee shirt that she could see   the dark shadow of his body hair through it. She could almost feel the   force of his hostility towards her. And she felt equally hostile to  him.  That was why her heart was banging into her chest wall and why her   senses were recoiling from the intense awareness of him that his   proximity was forcing on her.

What kind of awareness? Awareness of him as a man? Awareness of his   maleness? Awareness of his sexuality? Awareness that within her   something long denied, something starved of the right to express itself,   was pushing against the barriers she had erected against it. Because  of  this man?

No, of course not. That was impossible. Her heart was thudding even more   frantically, pumping adrenalin-fuelled denial through her veins. Why   was she reacting to him like this? She had no interest in his sexuality.   She must not have any interest in his sexuality. She must not want to   stay here in his arms.

The panic caused by her own feelings had Lizzie demanding fiercely, ‘Let go of me.'

Ilios wasn't used to women demanding to be set free when he was holding   them-quite the opposite. Normally women-especially women like he knew   this one to be: selfish, shallow, self-seeking women who cared nothing   for others-were all too keen to inveigle themselves into situations of   intimacy with him. Which was, of course, why he felt so reluctant to   release her.

When she pulled back against him the movement of her body released the   scent she was wearing, delicate and light. Deep down inside him   something visceral and unfamiliar jerked into hot molten life. Desire?   For a woman like this? Impossible. He released her abruptly, stepping   back from her.

‘Who are you?' Lizzie asked unsteadily, struggling for balance both physically and emotionally.

‘Ilios Manos,' Ilios told her curtly.

This man was Ilios Manos? The man who had sent her that letter? Lizzie's   heart thumped into her ribs, its sledgehammer blow fired by shock.

‘Ilios Manos, the owner of this land on which you have no right to be, Miss Wareham,' Ilios told her grimly.

‘How do you know who I am?' The question had been spoken before Lizzie could stop herself.

‘Your name is on your suitcase strap,' Ilios pointed out curtly,   gesturing towards the brightly coloured strap wrapped around the handle   of the small trolley case she had abandoned in the shock of discovering   that the apartment block had gone.

‘What's happened to the apartments?'

‘I gave orders for them to be knocked down.'

‘What? Why? You had no right.' Her shocked disbelief deepened her anger,   and also in some illogical way her awareness of him-as though she had   developed some unwanted new sense designed exclusively to register   everything about him and make her intensely receptive to that   information. From the way the narrowing of his eyes fanned out fine   lines around his eyes to the shape of his mouth as he spoke and her   extreme awareness of the powerful maleness of his body.

‘I had every right. They were on my land. Illegally on my land.'

Lizzie struggled to clamp down on her awareness of him.

‘The land belongs to my partner, Tino Manos, not you.'

‘My cousin has ceded his right to the land to me.'

‘But you can't just knock down a block of apartments like that. Apart from anything else, two of them belonged to me.'

‘Yes,' he agreed, ‘they did.'                       
       
           



       

There was something about the way he was looking at her that made Lizzie   feel extremely uneasy-as though she had unwittingly stepped into some   kind of trap.

‘Tell me, Miss Wareham, what kind of greed makes a person ignore the   normal rules of law to grab at something even when they know it must be   fraudulent?' His voice was deeply cynical, his whole manner towards her   menacing and iced with bitter contempt.

‘I … I don't know what you're talking about.' Lizzie protested truthfully.

‘Of course you do. You were in partnership with my cousin. You have said   so yourself. You must have known about the building regulations that   were broken, about the suppliers and workmen left unpaid in order to   build the apartments at a minimum cost to your partnership, and for the   maximum ultimate profit.'

‘No, I didn't,' Lizzie insisted. But she could see that he didn't believe her.

‘Have you any idea of the damage your greed has caused? The hardship it   has inflicted on those you cheated? Or do you simply not care? Well, I   intend to make sure that you do care, Miss Wareham. I will make sure   that you pay back everything you owe.'

Ilios was angrier than he could ever remember being. His cousin had   systematically tried to cheat him and manipulate him at every turn, and   now Tino was even daring to challenge his legitimacy to what was   rightfully his. Ilios could feel his fury boiling up inside him. His   cousin might not be here to pay for what he had done, but his partner in   crime, this Englishwoman who actually dared to lie to him, was here,   and she would bear the brunt of his fury and his retribution, Ilios   decided savagely.