‘You darkened mine. Oh...yes, before I forget...’ Angelos withdrew something small and gold from his pocket and tossed it carelessly on the bed beside her.
Stunned, Maxie focused on the bracelet which she had pawned.
‘ “Ice Queen in pawnshop penury” ran the headline in the gossip column,’ Angelos recounted with a sardonic elevation of one ebony brow as he watched Maxie turn brick-red with chagrin. ‘The proprietor must’ve tipped off the press. I found the ticket in your bag and had the bracelet retrieved.’
Wide-eyed and stricken, Maxie just gaped at him.
Angelos dealt her a scorching smile of reassurance. ‘You won’t have to endure intrusive publicity like that while you are with me. I will protect you. You will never have to enter a pawnshop again. Nor will you ever have to shake your tresses over a misty green Alpine meadow full of wild-flowers... unless you want to do it for my benefit, of course.’
Maxie simply closed her eyes on him. She didn’t have the energy to fight. He was like a tank in the heat and fury of battle. Nothing short of a direct hit by a very big gun would stop his remorseless progress.
‘Silence feels good,’ Angelos remarked with silken satisfaction.
‘I hate you,’ Maxie mumbled, with a good deal of very real feeling.
‘You hate wanting me,’ Angelos contradicted with measured emphasis. ‘It’s poetic justice and don’t expect sympathy. When I had to think of you lying like a block of ice beneath Leland, I did not enjoy wanting you either!’
Maxie buried her burning face in the pillow with a hoarse little moan of self-pity. He left her nothing to hide behind. And any minute now she expected to be hauled out of concealment. Angelos preferred eye-to-eye contact at all times.
‘Get some sleep and eat plenty,’ Angelos instructed from somewhere alarmingly close at hand, making her stiffen in apprehension. ‘You should be well on the road to recovery by the time I get back from Greece.’
Maxie’s teeth bit into the pillow. Her blood boiled. For an instant she would have sacrificed the rest of her life for the ability to punch him in the mouth just once. She thought he had gone, and lifted her head. But Angelos, who never, ever, it seemed, did anything she expected, was still studying her from the door, stunning dark features grave. ‘By the way, I also expect you to be extremely discreet about this relationship—’
‘We don’t have a relationship!’ Maxie bawled at him. ‘And I wouldn’t admit to having been here in your apartment if the paparazzi put thumbscrews on me!’
Angelos absorbed that last promise with unhidden satisfaction. And then, with a casual inclination of his dark, arrogant head, he was gone, and she slumped, weak and shaken as a mouse who had been unexpectedly released from certain death by a cat.
Maxie finished packing her cases. While she had been ill, Angelos had had all her clothes brought over from Liz’s. The discovery had infuriated her. A few necessities would have been sensible, but everything she possessed? Had he really thought she would be willing to stay on after she recovered?
For the first thirty-six hours after his departure she had fretted and fumed, struggling to push herself too far too fast in her eagerness to vacate his unwelcome hospitality.
The suave consultant had made a final visit to advise her to take things slowly, and the shift of nursing staff had departed, but Maxie had had to face that she was still in no fit state to look after herself. So she had been sensible. She had taken advantage of the opportunity to convalesce and recharge her batteries while she was waited on hand and foot by the Greek domestic staff...but now she was leaving before Angelos returned In any case, Liz was coming home at lunchtime.
Two of Angelos’s security men were hovering in the vast echoing entrance hall. Taut with anxiety, they watched her stagger towards them with her suitcases. Neither offered an ounce of assistance.
‘Mr Petronides is not expecting—’ the bigger, older one finally began stiffly.
‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of this!’ Maxie thumped the lift button with a clenched fist of warning.
‘Mr Petronides doesn’t want you to leave, Miss Kendall. He’s going to be annoyed.’
Maxie opened dark blue eyes very, very wide. ‘So?’
‘We’ll be forced to follow you, Miss Kendall—’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, boys,’ Maxie murmured gently. ‘I would hate to call in the police because I was being harassed by stalkers. It would be sure to get into the papers too, and I doubt that your boss would enjoy that kind of publicity!’
In the act of stepping forward as the lift doors folded back, both men froze into frustrated stillness. Maxie dragged her luggage into the lift.
‘A word of advice,’ the older one breathed heavily. ‘He makes a relentless enemy.’
Maxie tossed her head in a dismissive movement. Then the doors shut and she sagged. No wonder Angelos threw his weight around so continually. Everybody was terrified of him. Unlimited wealth and power had made him what he was. His ruthless reputation chilled, his lethal influence threatened. The world had taught him that he could have whatever he wanted. Only not her...never ever her, she swore vehemently. Her mind was her own. Her body was her own. She was inviolate. Angelos couldn’t touch her, she reminded herself bracingly.
The housesitter vacated Liz’s house after contacting her employer for instructions. Alone then, and tired out by the early start to the day, Maxie felt very low. Making herself a cup of coffee, she checked through the small pile of post in the lounge. One of the envelopes was addressed to her; it had been redirected.
The letter appeared to be from an estate agent. Initially mystified, Maxie struggled across the barrier of her dyslexia to make sense of the communication. The agent wrote that he had been unable to reach her father at his last known address but that she had been listed by Russ as a contact point. He required instructions concerning a rental property which was now vacant. Memories began to stir in Maxie’s mind.
Her father’s comfortably off parents had died when she was still a child. A black sheep within his own family even then, Russ had inherited only a tiny cottage on the outskirts of a Cambridgeshire village. He had been even less pleased to discover that the cottage came with an elderly sitting tenant, who had not the slightest intention of moving out to enable him to sell up.
Abandoning the letter without having got further than the third line, Maxie telephoned the agent. ‘I can’t tell you where my father is at present,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I haven’t heard from him in some time.’
‘The old lady has moved in with relatives. If your father wants to attract another tenant, he’ll have to spend a lot on repairs and modernisation. However,’ the agent continued with greater enthusiasm, ‘I believe the property would sell very well as a site for building development.’
And of course that would be what Russ would want, Maxie reflected. He would sell and a few months down the road the proceeds would be gone again, wasted on the racecourse or the dog track. Her troubled face stiffening with resolve, Maxie slowly breathed in and found herself asking if it would be in order for her to come and pick up the keys.
She came off the phone again, so shaken by the ideas mushrooming one after another inside her head that she could scarcely think straight. But she did need a home, and she had always loved the countryside. If she had the courage, she could make a complete fresh start. Why not? What did she have left in London? The dying remnants of a career which had done her infinitely more harm than good? She could find a job locally. Shop work, bar work; she wasn’t fussy. As a teenager Maxie had done both, and she had no false pride.
By the time Liz came home, Maxie was bubbling with excitement. In some astonishment, Liz listened to the enthusiastic plans that the younger woman had already formulated.
‘If the cottage is in a bad way, it could cost a fortune to put it right, Maxie,’ she pointed out anxiously. ‘I don’t want to be a wet blanket, but by the sound of things—’
‘Liz...I never did want to be a model and I’m not getting any work right now,’ Maxie reminded her ruefully. ‘This could be my chance to make a new life and, whatever it takes, I want to give it a try. I’ll tell the agency where I am so that if anything does come up they can contact me, but I certainly can’t afford to sit around here doing nothing. At least if I start earning again, I can start paying back Angelos.’
If Maxie could’ve avoided telling Liz about the housesitter and her own illness, she would’ve done so. But Liz had a right to know that a stranger had been looking after her home. However, far from being troubled by that revelation, Liz was much more concerned to learn that Maxie had been ill. She was also mortifyingly keen to glean every detail of the role which Angelos Petronides had played.
‘I swear that man is madly in love with you!’ Liz shook her head in wonderment.
Maxie vented a distinctly unamused laugh, her eyes incredulous. ‘Angelos wouldn’t know love if it leapt up and bit him to the bone! But he will go to any lengths to get what he wants. I suspect he thinks that the more indebted he makes me, the easier he’ll wear down my resistance—’