When Krista Spyridou called Giannis that same day, his jet had stopped off to refuel in Paris.
‘I’ve come up with a new theme for the wedding,’ his fiancée announced happily.
Giannis grimaced.
‘Antony and Cleopatra!’ Krista gushed.
‘What a killer precedent that would be,’ Giannis told her. ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’s marriage was bigamous.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ she wailed. ‘They didn’t show that in the movie I saw.’
‘Anthony already had a Roman wife.’ Impatience gripped Giannis as Krista lamented that news as seriously as if he had just informed her of a death. Had he ever seen her read a book? Discuss anything remotely intelligent? Giannis frowned. She had yawned when he’d taken her to visit an archaeological dig at one of his properties in Athens. The sheer depth of her ignorance was starting to irritate him.
By the time Giannis arrived at his remote fortress hideaway in Morocco the sun was casting arrow-shaped shadows through the intricate window screens. He spoke to Hamid in Arabic. Ascending the winding staircase, he strolled into the master bedroom suite as smoothly as a leopard on the prowl, and came to a halt only when he saw Maddie lying on top of the vast bed. Her flame-coloured hair was streaming like a banner of silk off the pillows, her pale, delicate profile marked by the prominence of her voluptuous pink mouth. Her low neckline exposed the deep cleavage between the snowy white slopes of her full, round breasts. The rich, ripe curve of her bottom strained against the fine silk fabric. The instant rush of blood to his groin almost hurt. He was enthralled by her sex appeal and the intensity of his desire.
‘Maddie…?’ he murmured, using the diminutive for the first time.
Shifting position, Maddie opened her eyes and saw him standing several feet away. Her breath snarled up in her throat. He needed a shave. The shadow of dark stubble over his strong jaw, however, only enhanced the hard masculinity of his lean bronzed features. She raised herself on one elbow. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’
Giannis took off his gold silk-lined jacket and tossed it on a chair with easy grace. ‘I was held up in Paris…my apologies. But it’s wonderful to find you here waiting for me, glikia mou.’
For a split second Maddie didn’t quite follow his meaning, and then his confident path round the very grand and elegant room pitched her brain back into gear. ‘This is your room…er…your bed?’
A wolfish smile slashed his wide stubborn mouth. ‘You sound like Goldilocks.’
Her colour heightened because she felt very foolish. ‘I didn’t realise. I should’ve guessed.’
The gilded bronze brilliance of his gaze glinted below his dense black lashes. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve flown halfway round the world to be exiled to a guest suite?’
Picking up on that measured tone of male disbelief, Maddie scrambled up on her knees, anxious to take the heat out of the situation. ‘No, I’ll use a guestroom—’
‘Over my dead body,’ Giannis incised without hesitation, when she dared to float that proposition. ‘You stay. We share. At the very least I will hold you in my arms through the night.’
‘But I thought—’
His stubborn jawline clenched. ‘And I thought otherwise,’ he cut in with ruthless purpose. ‘So we must compromise. I’m a very physical guy, and it is possible that you are asking me to be something I can’t.’
Although her face was hot, Maddie breathed in very deep and looked levelly back at him. ‘You have such a forceful personality,’ she told him gently. ‘But I’m sure you don’t mean to put pressure on me.’
The silence simmered like a cauldron on the boil. An almost imperceptible rise of dark blood warmed the imperious slant of Giannis Petrakos’s classic cheekbones. ‘Naturally not.’
‘Of course, if you feel I’ve come out here on false pretences, ‘Maddie added uncomfortably, ‘I’ll understand if you think I should leave.’
It was a very rare experience for Giannis, but that unexpected suggestion totally silenced him. She was not voicing her offer as a threat that he could condemn as sexual blackmail. She appeared genuinely awkward and unhappy, and that contrived to touch both his strong pride and his sense of honour. He was too macho a man to like the suggestion that he might use his potent strength of character to ride rough-shod over her reservations about sleeping with him again. Irritated though he was, he was still not prepared to let her go and replace her with a more sycophantic female. Madeleine Conway had haunted his thoughts for the best part of an incredibly frustrating week, and the past few days had only been rendered bearable by the knowledge that she would be waiting for him in Morocco.
‘Ohi…no, that will not be necessary,’ Giannis conceded in a driven undertone, his lapse into his native Greek an indicator of his more volatile mood.
‘I don’t want to leave…this is the most fabulous place,’ Maddie confided, glancing up at him from beneath her silky lashes.
Her feet shod in the light embroidered slippers she’d discovered by the bed, Maddie went out to the sun-baked terrace. The heat of the day was now ebbing. A great stained glass dome of rich jewelled colours formalised a shaded seating area that was furnished with sumptuous sofas and a marble table already set with fine porcelain and crystal. Offered a drink by Hamid, she opted for fruit juice and curled up on an opulent cushioned couch to catch up with a newspaper article she had begun reading on her flight.
‘What are you reading about?’
Black hair still spiky from the shower, Giannis was strolling towards her in tailored cream chinos and an open-necked striped shirt.
Maddie named a British politician who had been caught cheating on his long-suffering wife for the second time in as many months. ‘I hope his wife chucks him out.’ Shaking her bright head, she sighed, ‘Infidelity is so sleazy.’
Lean, darkly handsome face uninformative, Giannis came to a slow halt. ‘Not always.’