‘I don’t see any caring queue outside that door ready to take my place...and what have you got to snivel about?’ Angelos demanded with stark impatience as he strode down the hall. Then he stopped dead, meshing long fingers into her hair to tug her face round and gaze accusingly down into her bemused eyes. ‘I smashed my way in only because I was aware that you were ill. Decency demanded that I check that you were all right.’
‘I do not snivel,’ Maxie told him chokily.
‘But the only reason I came here tonight was to return your “something on account” and to assure you that it would be a cold day in hell before I ever darkened your door again—’
‘So what’s keeping you?’
But Angelos was still talking like a male with an ever-mounting sense of injustice. ‘And there you are, lying on the floor in a pathetic shivering heap with more spots than a Dalmatian! What’s fair about that? But I’m not snivelling, am I?’
Maxie opened one eye and saw one of his security men watching in apparent fascination. ‘I do not snivel...’ she protested afresh.
Angelos strode out into the night air. He ducked down into the waiting limousine and propped Maxie up in the farthest corner of the seat like a giant papoose that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Only then did Maxie register that the limousine was already occupied by a gorgeous redhead, wearing diamonds and a spectacular green satin evening dress which would’ve been at home on the set of a movie about the Deep South of nineteenth-century America. The other woman gazed back at Maxie, equally nonplussed.
‘Have you had chickenpox, Natalie?’ Angelos enquired almost chattily.
Natalie Cibaud. She was an actress, a well-known French actress, who had recently won rave reviews for her role in a Hollywood movie. It had not taken Angelos long to find other more entertaining company, Maxie reflected dully while a heated conversation in fast and furious French took place. Maxie didn’t speak French, but the other woman sounded choked with temper while Angelos merely got colder and colder. Maxie curled up in an awkward heap, conscious she was the subject under dispute and wishing in despair that she could perform a vanishing act.
‘Take me home!’ she cried once, without lifting her sore head.
‘Stay out of this...what’s it got to do with you?’ Angelos shot back at her with positive savagery. ‘No woman owns me...no woman ever has and no woman ever will!’
But Angelos was fighting a losing battle. Natalie appeared to have other ideas. Denied an appropriately humble response, her voice developed a sulky, shrill edge. Angelos became freezingly unresponsive. Strained silence finally fell. A little while later, the limousine came to a halt. The passenger door opened. Natalie swept out with her rustling skirts, saying something acid in her own language. The door slammed again.
‘I suppose you thoroughly enjoyed all that,’ Angelos breathed in a tone of icy restraint as the limousine moved off again.
Opening her aching eyes a crack, Maxie skimmed a dulled glance at the space Natalie had occupied and recently vacated. She closed her eyes again. ‘I don’t understand French...’
Angelos grated something raw half under his breath and got on the phone. He had been ditched twice in as many days. And, wretched as she was, Maxie was tickled pink by that idea. Angelos, who got chased up hill and down dale by ninety-nine out of a hundred foolish women, had in the space of forty-eight hours met two members of the outstanding and more intelligent one per cent minority. And it was good for him—really, really good for him, she decided. Then she dozed, only to groggily resurface every time she coughed. Within a very short time after that, however, she didn’t know where she was any more and felt too ill to care.
‘Feeling a bit better, Miss Kendall?’
Maxie peered up at the thin female face above hers. The face was familiar, and yet unfamiliar too. The woman wore a neat white overall and she was taking Maxie’s pulse. Seemingly she was a nurse.
‘What happened to me?’ Maxie mumbled, only vaguely recalling snatches of endless tossing and turning, the pain in her chest, the difficulty in breathing.
‘You developed pneumonia. It’s a rare but potentially serious complication,’ the blonde nurse explained. ‘You’ve been out of it for almost five days—’
‘Five...days?’ Maxie’s shaken scrutiny wandered over the incredibly spacious bedroom, with its stark contemporary furniture and coldly elegant decor. She was in Angelos’s apartment. She knew it in her bones. Nowhere was there a single piece of clutter or feminine warmth and homeliness. His idea of housing heaven, she reflected absently, would probably be the wide open spaces of an under-furnished aircraft hangar.
‘You’re very lucky Mr Petronides found you in time,’ her companion continued earnestly, dragging Maxie back from her abstracted thoughts. ‘By recognising the seriousness of your condition and ensuring that you got immediate medical attention, Mr Petronides probably saved your life—’
‘No...I don’t want to owe him anything...never mind my life!’ Maxie gasped in unconcealed horror.
The slim blonde studied her in disbelief. ‘You’ve been treated by one of the top consultants in the UK...Mr Petronides has provided you with the very best of round-the-clock private nursing care, and you say—?’
‘While Miss Kendall is ill, she can say whatever she likes,’ Angelos’s dark drawl slotted in grimly from the far side of the room. ‘You can take a break, Nurse. I’ll stay with your patient.’
The woman had jerked in dismay at Angelos’s silent entrance and intervention. Face pink, she moved away from the bed. ‘Yes, Mr Petronides.’
In a sudden burst of energy, Maxie yanked the sheet up over her head.
‘And the patient is remarkably lively all of a sudden,’ Angelos remarked as soon as the door closed on the nurse’s exit. ‘And ungrateful as hell. Now, why am I not surprised? ’
‘Go away,’ Maxie mumbled, suddenly intensely conscious of lank sweaty hair and spots which had probably multiplied.
‘I’m in my own apartment,’ Angelos told her drily. ‘And I am not going away. Do you seriously think that I haven’t been looking in on you to see how you were progressing over the past few days?’
‘I don’t care...I’m properly conscious now. If I was so ill, why didn’t you just take me to hospital?’ Maxie demanded from beneath the sheet.
‘The top consultant is a personal friend. Since you responded well to antibiotics, he saw no good reason to move you.’
‘Nobody consulted me,’ Maxie complained, and shifted to scratch an itchy place on her hip.
Without warning, the sheet was wrenched back.
‘No scratching,’ Angelos gritted down at her with raking impatience. ‘You’ll have scars all over you if you do that. If I catch you at that again, I might well be tempted to tie your hands to the bed!’
Aghast at both the unveiling and the mortifying tone of that insultingly familiar threat, Maxie gazed up at him with outraged blue eyes bright as jewels. ‘You pig,’ she breathed shakily, registering that he was getting a kick out of her embarrassment. ‘You had no right to bring me here—’
‘You’re in no fit state to tell me what to do,’ Angelos reminded her with brutal candour. ‘And even I draw the line at arguing with an invalid. If it’s of any comfort to your wounded vanity, I’ve discovered that once I got used to the effect the spotty look could be surprisingly appealing.’
‘Shut up!’ Maxie slung at him, and fell back against the pillows, completely winded by the effort it had taken to answer back.
While she struggled to even out her breathing, she studied him with bitter blue eyes. Angelos looked soul-destroyingly spectacular. He wore a beige designer suit with a tie the shade of rich caramel and a toning silk shirt. The lighter colours threw his exotic darkness into prominence. He exuded sophistication and exquisite cool, and at a moment when Maxie felt more grotty than she had ever felt in her life, she loathed him for it! Rolling over, she presented him with her back.
Maddeningly, Angelos strolled round the bed to treat her to an amused appraisal. ‘I’m flying over to Athens for the next ten days. I suspect you’ll recover far more happily in my absence.’
‘I won’t be here when you get back...oh, no, Liz’s house has been left empty!’ Maxie moaned in sudden guilty dismay.
‘I had a professional housesitter brought in.’
Maxie couldn’t even feel grateful. Her heart sank even further. He had settled Leland’s loan. He had paid for expensive private medical care within his own home. And now he had shelled out for a housesitter as well. If it took her the rest of her life, she would still be paying off what she now had to owe him in total!
‘Thanks,’ she muttered ungraciously, for her friend’s sake.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Angelos said with considerable irony. ‘And you will be here when I return. If you’re not, I’ll come looking for you in a very bad mood—’
‘Don’t talk like you own me!’ she warned him in feverish, frantic denial. ‘You were with that actress only a few days ago...you were never going to darken my door again—’