His hard mouth set into a grim, clenched line, Bastien said nothing. He could not count on her loyalty. She was a woman, not an employee, and she might well want to punish him for the choice he had offered her. That gave her a good motive, and she had certainly had the opportunity that night to pass on news of his acquisition plans for Dufort Pharmaceuticals.
Worst of all, the damage was done now that the facts were out in the public domain. Either he paid through the nose to acquire a company which was no longer the bargain it had been or he decided to back off altogether.
‘You have cost me a great deal of money,’ Bastien told her harshly.
‘You don’t listen. You haven’t listened to a single word I’ve said in my own defence, have you?’ Lilah accused, her eyes flaring an almost other-worldly blue with suppressed rage. ‘But I’ll say it one more time...not guilty. I didn’t gossip about your business plans or pass them on to anyone who could profit from knowing about them. I made two separate phone calls after leaving the hotel suite—one to my father and the other to my stepmother. On neither call did I mention your business discussions. The journalist who approached me was a gossip columnist, not a financial reporter...’ Her voice trailed off as she studied his lean, darkly handsome face, which was shuttered and forbidding. ‘You’re still not listening to me...’
Seething resentment was flaming up through the temper which Lilah was struggling to keep under control. Her hands closed into punitive fists. Even before she had answered his charges she had clearly been judged and found guilty, which was hideously unfair.
‘Tell me, do you distrust all women or just me?’ she slammed.
‘Women are very clever at establishing a man’s weaknesses and playing on them,’ Bastien countered.
‘And your only weakness is protecting your profit margins?’ Lilah folded her arms defensively and breathed in slow and deep. ‘What you really need, Bastien, is a proper challenge.’
The lush black lashes enhancing his gorgeous eyes lifted, to reveal glittering dark gold chips full of stark enquiry. ‘Meaning...?’
‘All bets are off between us until you find out who did betray your trust and you clear my name.’
‘Diavelos...what are you trying to say?’ Bastien demanded curtly.
‘No sex until you sort this out,’ Lilah told him in the baldest possible terms. ‘I refuse to sleep with a man who thinks I’m some sort of thief and fraudster.’
Dark colour accentuated the exotic line of Bastien’s supermodel cheekbones. ‘That is not what our agreement entails and nor is it an accurate version of what I said to you.’
‘Stuff the agreement!’ Lilah flung back at him wildly. ‘You can’t make the kind of accusation you just made and then act like it shouldn’t make a difference to me. You check out every employee who was there that night, and anyone else who knew about your interest in that company, you find out who sold you down the river...and then you apologise to me.’
Bastien sent her an incredulous glance, dark eyes flashing the purest gold, pride and anger etching taut hard lines into his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Apologise?’
‘Yes, you will apologise—even if it kills you!’ Lilah launched at him full volume, all control of her temper abandoned in the face of such wanton provocation. ‘You have deeply insulted me, and I refuse to accept that kind of treatment. And, by the way, you can keep this...’ Digging the diamond pendant out of her pocket, Lilah set it down on the table. ‘I didn’t ask for it, I don’t appreciate it, and I will not wear it again unless you apologise to me!’
‘Are you finished?’ Bastien demanded wrathfully. ‘I don’t do apologies.’
‘Fortunately it’s never too late to learn good manners!’ Lilah stated without hesitation, before turning on her heel with Skippy following close behind like a shadow.
She walked out to the shaded terrace for the breakfast Stefan had promised her.
She was trembling when she collapsed down limply into a seat by the table, but she didn’t regret a word she had said to Bastien. She had to be tough to deal with him or he would roar over her like a fireball and burn her to ashes in his wake. Bastien had questioned her integrity, and Lilah was proud of her integrity. She was no angel, but she didn’t lie, cheat or defraud, or go behind people’s backs to score or make a profit, she thought angrily.
It shook her that he could misjudge her to such an extent even after they had become lovers. And that she should even have that thought warned her that she was still being very naïve about the nature of their relationship. Their bodies had connected—not their minds. Bastien did not know her in the way she had always assumed her first lover would know her. But did that excuse him for assuming on the flimsiest of evidence that she would sneakily sell confidential information about his business plans?
She was already convinced that Bastien did not hold a very high opinion of women—at least not those who shared his bed. She shuddered as she remembered the cold, heavy feel of that brilliant glittering diamond at her throat the night before. Did he believe that expensive gifts of diamonds would excuse bad behaviour? Had other women taught him that?
Nibbling little bites of a chocolate croissant and sipping fresh tea, Lilah tried to be realistic about Bastien. He was incredibly good-looking and incredibly rich...and incredibly good in bed, she affixed, hot-cheeked. For many women his wealth alone would be sufficient to excuse almost all character flaws. Not that it would bother Bastien that she was unwilling to overlook those flaws, Lilah reflected ruefully, because Bastien was only interested in sex.
And every time she came back to that salient fact it was like crashing into a solid brick wall, which concluded all further speculation.
Having eaten, she asked Stefan for a bottle of water and went off to explore, with Skippy bouncing in excitement round her feet. She could not contemplate sitting around in the chateau submissively, as if she was waiting for Bastien to vindicate her or justify her very existence.
The gardens surrounding the chateau were typically French and formal, lined with precise low box hedges and sculpted topiary set off with immaculate paths, weathered urns and gravel. She balanced like a dancer to walk the edge of an old stone fountain, sending shimmering water drops down into the basin below.
From above, Bastien watched her from a window in the huge first-floor salon. Delilah was larking about like a leggy child, while repeatedly throwing that damned stupid squeaky toy for her even sillier yappy little dog. Delilah outraged his sense of order—because he did not like the unexpected, and in every way she kept on tossing him the unexpected.
He was willing to admit that she was not behaving like a guilty woman. At the same time he knew women who could act the most legendary Hollywood stars off the screen. His own mother had always put on an impressively deceptive show for his father, who had adored Athene to the bitter end.
But while Anatole had been easily fooled Bastien had always had a low opinion of human beings in general, and he preferred hard truths to polite lies and social pretences. He had also learned that the richer he became, the more people tried to take advantage of him, and he was always on the watch for false flattery and sexual or financial inducements.
In fact, when anyone injured Bastien he hit back twice as hard to punish them and teach them respect. He was not weak. He was not foolish. He was not forgiving. That had been his mantra growing up, when he had had to prove to his own satisfaction that he was stronger than the feeble but kindly father he loved. No woman would ever make a fool out of Bastien Zikos as his mother had made a fool out of his father.
His mother, Athene, had ridiculed his father, calling him ‘Mr Sorry’, because every time Anatole had visited his mistress and his son he had invariably been grovelling and apologising for something, in a futile effort to keep the peace in the double life of infidelity he led. That was why Bastien was unaccustomed to making apologies of any kind. To his way of thinking, apologies stank to high heaven—of weakness, deceit and cowardly placation.
But at that precise moment Bastien was shocked to acknowledge that he had not thought through the likely consequences of choosing to confront Delilah immediately about the newspaper leak. Shouldn’t he have kept his suspicions to himself until he had established definitive proof? Why the hell had he lost his temper with her like that? Loss of temper meant loss of focus and control, and invariably delivered a poor result. That was why he never allowed himself to lose his temper. Yet on two separate occasions now he had gone off like a rocket with Delilah. Naturally she was playing the innocent and offended card—what else could she do?
‘I’ll check out every member of your team,’ declared Manos, his chief of security, in receipt of his employer’s instructions. ‘I’m aware that Miss Moore had the opportunity, but somehow she doesn’t seem the type.’
‘Is there a type?’ Bastien asked drily, his attention locked to the sway of Delilah’s shapely derrière in those tight, faded shorts and the slender perfection of her thighs below the ragged hems.
His fingertips tingled at the idea of trailing those shorts off her slender body and settling her under him again. He cut off that incendiary image and hoped she wasn’t planning to leave the grounds dressed in so provocative an outfit.