‘I purchased it last year from a business acquaintance, who needed some heavy cash fast,’ he imparted casually. ‘The idea was to sell it on but the current housing market made me decide to hang on to it for a while.’
‘That explains it, then,’ Mia murmured.
He turned his head to look at her. ‘Explains what?’
‘Did Lukas come with the house?’ she responded with a question of her own.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed, and she nodded her head.
‘The decor and the furnishings?’
His eyes started to narrow, and Mia felt that needling spark of electricity filter into the air. She had to moisten her lips with the tip of her tongue before she could go on. ‘Your—stamp is not visible here.’
‘Stamp,’ he prompted.
‘This is a—how do you say it…quintessential—? Sí, this is a quintessential model of an Englishman’s country home.’
‘What do you know about quintessential Englishmen?’ Nikos laughed. ‘You’re a Tuscan farm girl with a donkey called Tulio for a best friend.’
‘I have half-English blood,’ Mia defended that comment.
‘For all you know I might have half-English blood too,’ Nikos tossed back.
Widening her blue eyes, she asked, ‘Do you—?’
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘But you couldn’t know that. You’re making assumptions about me without being in possession of all the facts. That’s dangerous around me, cara.’
And Mia knew he was right. Then again, everything felt as if it had a dangerous element to it since she’d woken up this morning.
And when she could not manage to break eye contact with him, Mia knew it was getting worse.
Chapter Six
MIA turned to look at herself in the full-length mirror and felt the now almost-permanent quiver going on low in her stomach quicken like mad.
The dress had once belonged to Bella. She’d spent half the morning shortening the long flow of its near-sheer iced-blue silk skirt. But it was the rest of the dress that made her senses quicken. The strapless style of the bodice draped lovingly around the thrusting shape of her breasts, then went on to hug each slender curve of her body with band after band of exquisitely intricate pleating all the way down to her thighs before the sheer silk flowed to her feet, elevated by the daintiest pair of crystal-studded high-heeled mules.
‘Oh, my,’ she breathed, stealing the expression Sophie had used on the phone that morning because it suddenly made a whole lot of sense.
Sparkling crystal droplets danced amongst the tight pleating, accentuating the shape of her body when she moved or even as she breathed. She’d coiled her hair into a loose pleat at her nape and her skin glowed smooth gold against the pale blue of the gown. A fabulous teardrop diamond necklace, given to her by Oscar, rested on its fine gold chain just above the sloping fullness of her breasts, and matching earrings sparkled at her ears. She had hoped to look elegant and sleek and sophisticated but what she’d seemed to have achieved was—alluringly sensual. She even felt sensual, in places she did not dare think about in case she made herself blush.
But she was chewing on her rose-coloured lip gloss and frowning uncertainly because she was just discovering that it was one thing to imagine herself dressing like this to impress a certain man, but it was quite a different sensation to realise she was seriously shocking herself.
Nikos was standing in the hall talking into his mobile phone when Mia appeared at the top of the staircase. As he glanced up and caught sight of her, the deep base tones of his voice stopped midsentence and he froze, his dark eyes flaring momentarily before he hooded them over with his long eyelashes, his gaze running in a slow sweep that allowed him to take in every sleek curvaceous inch.
Theos, I’m in trouble, was the only thought he was able to register as a familiar heat flared low in his groin and somehow managed to mess with his breathing at the same time.
Then he became aware that he still held his phone to his ear and he turned his back on her while he finished the call and, at the same time, grabbed a tight mental grip on his rampaging libido.
This weekend is about work, he reminded himself.
Yeah, tell that to the kiss you can still taste.
Just watchi
ng the way he’d shut down his expression and how his strong jaw had clenched before he turned away was enough to tighten the knot of anxiety toying with Mia’s stomach. He’d done it again, and beaten her up with his silent criticism. She didn’t know whether to get angry or to weep.
She’d reached the last step before he turned around again, wearing his cool urban face. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘Something urgent Petros needed to discuss with me before we left.’