Indeed, only a very sad, total loser would sit feeling sorry for herself when she was surrounded by so many positive reminders of what sacrificing her pride had achieved. And she wasn’t a loser, she told herself angrily, and she wasn’t going to make a big dramatic deal out of what couldn’t be changed. So she had had sex with Bastien—that was all it had been and she could live with that reality.
Sliding out of bed, she walked naked into the dressing room and extracted a robe, knotting the sash at her waist with impatient hands.
As she walked back towards the bathroom, Bastien emerged from it, lean bronzed hips swathed in a towel. Crystalline drops of water sprinkled his hair-roughened chest and his thick black hair curled back damply from his brow.
Seeing her out of bed, he frowned. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping.’
‘No. I need to shower.’ To wash his touch and the memory of it away, Lilah thought frantically, colliding with smouldering golden eyes framed by velvet dark lashes and feeling her heart skipping an entire beat. A shadow of faint black stubble accentuated his hard masculine jawline and his beautifully modelled sensual mouth.
As Delilah attempted to sidestep him, Bastien shot out a hand to enclose her wrist and force her to a halt again. ‘You were amazing, glikia mou,’ he husked.
Mortification drummed up hot below Lilah’s skin, but she lifted her tousled head high. ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,’ she admitted prosaically, tugging her wrist free to continue on past into the bathroom.
Taken aback, Bastien blinked. How to damn with faint praise, he reflected grimly, thrusting open the communicating door between the bedrooms to stride into his own. And how very typical of Delilah to sting him like a wasp.
Well, what else had Bastien expected from her? Lilah asked herself as she washed. Compliments?
She had told him the truth, even though she knew that she hadn’t been strictly fair. He could have been more selfish and less careful with her in bed. To give credit where it was due, he had made an effort not to hurt her. Unfortunately his consideration in that respect could not eradicate the ugly fact that Bastien Zikos had blackmailed her into his bed. Yes, she had made the choice to accept his unscrupulous deal, but he could not expect her to start treating him like a much-appreciated and personally chosen lover, could he?
Lilah fell into an exhausted sleep, but Bastien was awakened by a phone call at an ungodly early hour of the following morning and given the kind of news that wrecked both his day and his mood.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘DELILAH!’ BASTIEN GRATED from the doorway. ‘Get up—I need to talk to you...’
Wondering what she had done to deserve such a rude awakening, Lilah opened her eyes only wide enough to peer at the pretty miniature alarm clock adorning the bedside cabinet. It was barely seven in the morning.
Blinking rapidly, in an effort to get her brain functioning again, she swallowed back a yawn and struggled to focus on Bastien’s tall, powerful figure by the door that appeared to communicate between her room and his. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked sleepily.
‘We’ll discuss it when you get up,’ Bastien framed darkly, glittering dark eyes settling on her with chilling distaste. ‘I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes.’
Exasperated, Lilah rolled her eyes. In mega-bossy mode, Bastien infuriated her—and she refused to be ordered round like an unruly schoolgirl. On the other hand, something bad had clearly happened, and he evidently thought she was involved in it in some way—because why else would he have looked at her as if she had just crawled out from under a stone? Even so...he expected her downstairs within five minutes? In his dreams!
Scrambling out of bed, she went into the dressing room and searched through innumerable drawers to find her own humble clothing, from which she selected denim shorts and a simple white tank top to deal with the early-morning heat she could feel in the air. Following a quick shower and the application of a little light make-up, Lilah stalked downstairs in flat canvas shoes, ready for whatever Bastien might choose to throw at her.
With a noisy scrabbling of his claws on the hallway tiles, Skippy hurled himself at Lilah’s knees. Stefan informed her that Bastien was waiting for her in his study and directed her down a corridor. Breakfast, he added helpfully, would be served out on the terrace.
Bastien was lodged by the window of a large, imposing book-lined room with his broad back turned towards her. Muscles flexed beneath the taut, expensive fabric of his jacket. He swung round, and she was irritated that she immediately noted that his dark designer suit acted as a superb tailored frame for his wide shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful thighs.
Hard, dark golden eyes zeroed in on her, and involuntarily, Lilah paled at the intensity of that tough, questioning scrutiny.
Mouth curling, Bastien scanned her appearance in the worn shorts and casual top, neither of which had featured in her officially sanctioned new wardrobe. The adolescent outfit combined with her long, tumbled hair and only a touch of make-up made her look very much like a teenager. Admittedly, though, an incredibly pretty teenager.
Pretty...an old-fashioned word which didn’t belong in his vocabulary, Bastien reflected in exasperation at his lack of concentration. Hot would be a more appropriate word, and from the top of her curly dark head down to her pert breasts, tiny waist and slim sexy legs and the very soles of her tiny canvas-shod feet, Delilah looked amazingly hot.
He tensed, reluctant to embrace that thought, but his body was already doing that for him, reacting with libidinous enthusiasm to her presence.
‘What’s this all about?’ she asked in apparent innocence.
In answer, Bastien crossed the room and lifted his tablet from the desk top. ‘This!’ he bit out wrathfully.
Lilah moved closer to stare at the British newspaper headline depicted on the screen.
Dufort Pharmaceuticals to join Zikos stable?
‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lilah pointed out, although she had the vaguest recollection that she had heard that company’s name mentioned during Bastien’s deliberations with his staff that first evening in the hotel in London. Unfortunately, since she had not really been listening, she had not the foggiest idea why Bastien was so annoyed.
‘Someone leaked confidential information to the press that night in London...and I believe it was you!’ Bastien breathed with raw emphasis.
Lilah’s spine snapped straight as an arrow, her blue eyes rounding with disbelief as she tipped her head back to look him in the eye. ‘Me?’ she spluttered incredulously. ‘Are you nuts?’
His cool, sculpted mouth hardened. ‘You’re the only person who left the suite during my discussions with the team that evening. According to my sources, someone tipped off the press halfway through that evening. The bodyguard accompanying you saw you making several phone calls. You also had contact with a journalist.’
Her soft mouth had fallen open in shock, because she could barely credit what she was hearing. How dared he accuse her of being some sort of business spy when he had shared a bed with her the night before? How dared he?
Her colour rose even higher when she recalled that he had actually slept apart from her, and she replied curtly, ‘I can’t believe you’re serious. Why would you suspect me of stealing confidential information? Why would anyone want to leak it?’
‘The tip that I’m planning to buy Dufort Pharmaceuticals is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds on the open market.’
‘But I didn’t leak it. I didn’t discuss it with anyone,’ Lilah remonstrated. ‘Why would I have? Apart from anything else, I’m not interested in that information and I wasn’t really listening to what you and your staff were talking about... I was watching TV.’
‘You were present throughout. You heard everything,’ Bastien reminded her obdurately.
‘At least four members of your staff were present as well! Why are you picking on me?’ Lilah demanded in a furious counter-attack.
‘I have absolute faith in my personal team.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it, but obviously your faith is misplaced in at least one of them,’ Lilah pointed out thinly. ‘Because I can assure you that I didn’t sell any information about your business dealings to anyone.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ Bastien admitted harshly, because he had looked at the evidence from every angle and the conclusion that Delilah had sold the information made the most sense.
Lilah set the tablet back down on the table. ‘Well, I’m not playing the fall guy, here, so you have a problem. I suggest you stop wasting time suspecting me of doing the dirty on you and search out the real mole. Why would you suspect me anyway? I’ve got too much to lose in this situation.’
‘How?’ Bastien gritted, unimpressed, and particularly outraged because he had wakened to the phone call forewarning him of the press release with a powerful craving to enjoy her small slender body again.
‘You gave my father a job, which means a lot to him. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise his continuing employment,’ Lilah argued vehemently. ‘I’m not an idiot, Bastien. If I betrayed your trust you wouldn’t stick to our agreement.’