‘Then, Nadine, we will eat, I promise.’ He shot his girlfriend a brilliant smile, and a brief glance at Ted. ‘With your permission, of course, old man?’ he asked while clasping Eloise’s hand and urging her to her feet, not waiting for an answer.
‘Nadine is going to die of hunger if you don’t feed her soon,’ Eloise tried to joke, as Marcus slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her firmly against the long powerful length of his body.
He was taller than she remembered; she had to tilt her head back to look up at him, but that was a mistake. The years had been kind to him, and close up he was even more staggeringly handsome than she remembered. An aggressively virile, sophisticated male, he exuded an aura of raw sexuality that the formal tailored dinner suit and white silk shirt did nothing to hide, and it terrified her.
‘Nadine’s hunger is never for food,’ he returned, a mockingly sensual smile curving his wide mouth. ‘She is a model; she doesn’t eat enough to feed a bird. You, on the other hand, are every man’s fantasy of the female form.’ His hand at her back slowly stroked up her spine and just as slowly down to settle rather low on her bottom, while his other hand clasped hers and held it firmly against his broad chest.
‘Are you implying I’m fat?’ she said with mock horror, fighting to appear the sophisticated woman when inside she was quaking.
Marcus let his gaze drop to the firm thrust of her obviously braless breasts against the gold fabric, and then back to her face. ‘God forbid! You have the perfect figure. Full and fat are not the same thing.’ And the hand he had held firm against his chest somehow contrived to be held against hers, his knuckles brushing against the soft upper swell of her breast.
She should have been horrified. She had never been this close to a man in four years, never wanted to be. But now, to her utter amazement, she felt her nipples harden against the fine silk of her top, and she had to drop her eyes to his chest to mask the sudden flare of desire that heated her face. A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was racing, and she was appalled yet secretly thrilled by her helpless response to his innately sensual masculinity.
‘I do believe you are blushing, Eloise,’ Marcus teased as he moved her expertly around the floor to the sexy soft tones of a well-known Barry White recording.
‘It’s hot in here.’ She made herself look up at him.
Marcus’s perceptive black eyes ran over her now scarlet face, and deliberately he tightened his arm around her, bringing her into impossibly close contact with his long, lean length. He felt the tremor in her body, and he fought to mask the cynical smile of masculine satisfaction that threatened his oh, so caring features, even as he fought to mask his own body’s instant arousal. He dipped his head and whispered softly in her ear, ‘And getting hotter by the minute.’
He was flirting with her, Eloise knew, and she should have been angry, but the reverse was true. The slender fingers of her hand flexed, curved into his broad shoulder, and clung. His warm breath, his hard body, the softly murmured words all conspired to turn Eloise’s bones to mush; her legs felt wobbly, and her heart felt as if it would burst. It was as if the trauma of the past had been swept away and once again she was the adolescent teenager, totally besotted by the sophisticated overpowering charm of Marcus Kouvaris.
‘Your girlfriend,’ Eloise got out. What was Marcus trying to do to her? And in the middle of the dance floor with Nadine watching. ‘Nadine,’ she choked.
‘Forget Nadine. I did, the moment I saw you again,’ Marcus declared throatily, and observed the deepening colour in her cheeks with a cynical cool. God! The woman could blush on demand, but nothing of his thoughts showed on his chiselled features as his gaze roamed over the perfect oval of her face. ‘Why did you leave me without a word, Eloise?’ he asked softly, his dark eyes looking soulfully down into hers.
‘But I thought you left me.’ In shock at her own reactions, she answered honestly. ‘I waited ten days for you to contact me. Then we had to leave.’ She hadn’t wanted to, but her mother had insisted. ‘But I left you a note with my address and telephone number with the maid.’
‘My father died from the heart attack, and by the time the funeral was over it was two weeks before I could return to the villa. It was empty, no sign of a maid or a letter.’
‘I’m sorry about your father.’ Eloise’s green eyes shaded with compassion.
‘Yes, well, it was a few years ago now.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘But I definitely never received a note from you, Eloise, believe me.’
With his hand stroking her back, and his expression sincere, she believed him. ‘I do. These things happen,’ she mumbled.
‘I guess the time wasn’t right for us then.’ He squeezed her gently and her pulse rate went into overdrive. ‘But the past is past and I am delighted to have met you again. I often wondered what happened to you,’ he said smoothly.
Wondered? Some understatement; a bitter smile tightened Marcus’s mouth. When he’d returned to the island and found her gone, he’d ruefully conceded she was the one that got away and tried to dismiss her from his mind. He didn’t chase after women, they chased after him, but she had haunted his dreams for years. It was only after Theo’s death and he was left with settling the man’s affairs that he had hired someone to find her sister Chloe, and only recently he had discovered Eloise Smith was the daughter, not the sister, of the devious late Chloe Baker. Seeing her with Ted had finally cured him of the romantic picture he’d carried in his head of an innocent young girl forced by her wicked mother into fraud! The gods must be laughing, he thought irreverently. But he allowed none of his thoughts to show. He eased her slightly away from him.
‘I would love to see you again and catch up with what you are doing.’ He gazed down into her beautiful face. ‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night?’ He held her closer, one long leg easing between hers, as he moved her skilfully in a turn. ‘Please.’ He watched the green eyes widen with a mixture of fear and excitement, and almost laughed out loud. She had good reason to fear him, the devious little witch—but her sort could never resist a challenge, he knew; he’d met enough in his time.
‘Will your girlfriend mind?’ The friction of his hard thigh against hers, even through the thickness of their clothes, was enough to send every nerve in her body hay-wire and Eloise said the first thing that entered her bemused brain.
‘Not at all. Nadine and I understand each other; we are casual friends, nothing more.’ And, easing her slightly away from him, he added, ‘But I’m forgetting your boyfriend, Ted.’ This time, Marcus could not keep the hard edge of cynicism out of his tone. ‘Will he object to you dating another man?’
Eased from the close contact with his lithe body, Eloise did not know whether to be relieved or aggrieved. He aroused a host of sensations she had never thought she would experience again and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Relief won.
‘You’re kidding.’ She chuckled. ‘Ted is a charming man but he isn’t my boyfriend. Tonight is a business dinner, nothing more.’ That Marcus could imagine even for a moment that she would go out with a man old enough to be her father was ludicrous, and consequently she told him the truth.
‘In that case, give me your telephone number.’ His eyes narrowed on her laughing face and his large body tensed as he let her go. Was she up to her late mother’s tricks, and so sure of success that she had readily admitted her involvement with Ted Charlton was simply business? Marcus needed to know more, but this wasn’t the right time to question her, with Nadine waiting at the table for him and Ted watching Eloise like a drooling fool.
Eloise felt the sudden tension in his body, just before his arm fell from her waist; her puzzled gaze shot to his but his expression was bland. Then she realised it was because the music had stopped.
‘Your number, Eloise?’ Marcus murmured as, with one hand lightly in the centre of her back, he urged her towards the table.
Still in a state of shock at the unexpected meeting and her own response to Marcus, Eloise reeled off her number. ‘You will never remember it,’ and added, ‘but our company, KHE, designer jewellery, is in the directory.’
She did not see his strong handsome face harden into disgust at the mention of designer jewellery, or the flare of white-hot fury in his dark eyes, as he stood behind her and pulled out her chair. By the time she was seated and she had recovered some slight control over her racing pulse and scattered nerves enough to join in the general conversation, and finally look at Marcus, he was all urbane charm and about to leave with Nadine.