November Harlequin Presents 1(121)

It was the sound of her laughter that caught him first. A light, bubbling sound, it seemed to reach out into the atmosphere and curl around his senses, soft and low. Just for a moment his footsteps slowed, bringing him to a halt a couple of stairs from the bottom as he paused, allowing himself to reconsider.

So what was wrong with a little flirtation—a sensual distraction from reality? They were both adults and she was as attracted to him as he was to her. She hadn’t pulled away from his touch, in fact she had wanted more from him. He had seen it in her eyes. In the way that that luscious pink mouth had parted on a faint gasp. So what if he couldn’t offer her a future? He didn’t think she’d care about that. She’d obviously stayed around for the past year, so she must be happy with what they had.

Her laughter came again, but this time something in the sound grated on him. It sounded different, changed. Was that a flirtatious note that had slid into it?

From nowhere it seemed as if a cloud had invaded his mind. His mood changed, shifted, darkened, his whole body stiffening in the aggressive reaction of a bad-tempered dog that had just seen a stranger invade his territory.

Slowly, silently, he took a single step downwards towards the hall.

From this position he could see into the room, see where Becca was sitting at the table, a glass of some clear liquid in her hand. She was leaning back in her chair, looking so very much more relaxed than at any moment in his room upstairs. Her dark hair fell in seductive disarray around her beautiful, animated face. She’d taken off her lightweight jacket too and it hung, half on and half off the back of the chair, one sleeve dangling onto the floor. She was looking at someone else, those stunning, sea-coloured eyes fixed on whoever it was opposite her, across the table. And she was smiling.

That smile caught on Andreas’ nerves. Caught and held and twisted. He found himself torn between two totally contrasting sensations. In one moment he experienced a real delight in seeing that smile, seeing the way it lit up her face, the way it curved the fullness of her lips, softening the kissable mouth and making it infinitely more tempting than before, and at the same time endured something else. That ‘something else’ was a feeling that was the total opposite of delight, totally at war with pleasure. Without knowing where it had come from, Andreas suddenly found that he was filled with a black fury, racked with a terrible sense of hatred that had him clenching his hands into hard fists at his sides, biting down fiercely on his bottom lip to stop himself from speaking and letting the savage anger that crouched inside him out into the open.

‘I never thought of it that way,’ Becca said and even her voice was very different from the way it had sounded before. It was light and easy, relaxed and touched with a hint of flirtatious teasing. ‘But now that you’ve explained it—it makes total sense.’

‘Of course it does,’ a second voice put in. A deeper, thickly accented voice. A male voice and one that Andreas recognised at once.

It was Leander’s voice. Leander his PA. Leander, his young, tall, dark and handsome PA.

A terrible sense of jealousy ripped through him, driving away all sense of rationality, all hope of calm. His jaw tightened, clamped into a thin, hard line until it ached and he could feel the rage rising in him like lava in a volcano, boiling up to the surface and threatening to spill out over the top, engulfing everything in a blazing, burning flood of fire.

Another slow, silent step downwards moved him to a position where he could see fully into the room. He could see where Leander lounged against the wall, long legs crossed at the ankles, dark face smiling, a glass in his own hand.

‘Never argue Greek legends with a Greek,’ the younger man said now, waving his drink in the air to emphasise his point, his smile seeming to Andreas’ watchful gaze to be intimate, almost conspiratorial.

‘I won’t,’ Becca said and the gleam of amusement in her face, the smile she directed at Leander twisted a knife deep inside Andreas.

He could feel his head start to pound, his breath becoming raw and uneven. He didn’t ask himself where the rage was coming from, just accepted it as right, as the way he should feel. Wasn’t this why he had told himself she had to go? That she was trouble if she stayed around?

He’d had enough.

Taking the last two steps down in a single jump, he marched into the room, his black mood showing in every stride, every movement. His attention totally focused on Becca, he saw the way that her head swung round, eyes widening in sudden confusion.

And guilt? Perhaps there was a touch of it. Certainly her face went white enough to make it seem that way.

‘OK, that’s it,’ he snapped, watching her eyelids flutter, her long dark lashes dipping to conceal her gaze just for a moment in a reaction to his appearance that she couldn’t disguise.