‘Been doing your homework?’
Lifting her chin, she said, ‘To improve my education is the reason why I am here with you, is it not?’
The direct challenge. Nikos arched an eyebrow because he had not expected her to make it. Like a fool playing a very dangerous game he held on to her deep blue eyes and piled the pressure on the constant tug of sexual awareness that was always present between them now.
She looked away first.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s move on to where the real action is.’
The work angle of action, Mia saw the moment they stepped inside a vast reception room already crammed with high-end glittering people. The networking started almost straight away. Nikos kept her at his side as he walked the room, rarely needing to make an effort to gain attention because people were more eager to meet him. It was the quality of the man and his billionaire kudos, his entrepreneurial brilliance, his stunning good looks and his casually presented charm. He handled people with a low-key edginess that made them work all the harder to earn themselves an impressed glance or an approving smile.
Smooth, Mia described as she soaked him in like the rest of them.
Then he ruined it for her when he turned to her and said, ‘OK, this is where I leave you on your own for a while.’
Like a kick in the gut she instantly turned as white as parchment. Nikos released a sigh, catching her by the shoulders and turning her to face him.
‘All you have to do is circulate and listen. If you know what they’re talking about, join in. If you don’t know what they’re talking about, then ask questions,’ he relayed as if it was really that simple. ‘People don’t mind being asked questions. In fact, they like to show off their knowledge. What they don’t like is someone pretending to know what they’re talking about when they don’t. OK?’
Pressing the tremor out of her lips Mia nodded.
‘And you’re a Balfour,’ he reminded her. ‘The people here know you are a Balfour and they’re going to just love to welcome you into their group on the strength of your name alone. In fact it’s going to be them hoping to impress you so you will remember them to Oscar.’
‘Not to you?’
‘To me too,’ Nikos agreed. ‘If they ask you anything too personal shoot them down the way you like to do to me,’ he went on. ‘You have spirit, Mia, use it to your advantage. Always be polite. Always be aware of how much you’re drinking. I will come and find you in, say, half an hour when we are due to go into dinner.’
Glancing down at the fine silver watch circling her wrist which Tia Giulia had bought her for her last birthday, she said, ‘OK,’ with only a tiny scared tremor showing in her voice.
Nikos heard it though and released a sigh.
‘It’s OK—really,’ she said and straightened her shoulders. ‘This is work—yes? I have to treat it that way.’
Still he hesitated, giving her the impression he wanted to say something else, and for some reason Mia found herself holding her breath.
Then he instructed, ‘Don’t bolt,’ and walked away.
For the next half-hour Mia braved the sharp jaws of socialising. Like Nikos had said, it was easier than she expected because people did recognise her instantly and it tended to be them drawing her into their conversation rather than her needing to butt in.
Nikos wished he’d found it easy to walk away from her but he hadn’t. He felt as if he’d abandoned a puppy on the fast lane of a motorway. But he needed to speak to some people about Lassiter-Brunel. During Mia’s research exercise she had—admittedly unwittingly—exposed some business issues that were bothering him. OK, he reasoned, so he had pulled out of the deal they were trying to broker, but he’d done that for personal reasons. It was only this morning when he had gone back to the office to look through Mia’s file that he had picked up on other things that troubled him.
She was good at ferreting, he acknowledged with an inner smile. But other colleagues in the same business might not have a ferret that looked so beautiful Brunel would let his professional guard slip to the point anyone would question whether he was as reputable as he made out.
Hearing himself using Mia’s choice of word made Nikos grimace at the same momen
t that a set of slender long fingers coiled around his arm. ‘So you’ve been landed with Oscar’s little cuckoo,’ a mocking voice purred.
Glancing down Nikos found a smile for the beautiful but dangerous socialite-cum-gossip-columnist Diana Fischer who’d sidled up against him.
‘Who would have believed Oscar could be such a deliciously secretive dark horse,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps it’s as well that the scandal broke after poor Lillian departed to the afterlife. Imagine her horror if she’d been here to discover that the man she had been married to for twenty years had still been busy sowing his wild oats right up to and beyond their marriage.’
She was fishing for knowledge, timing details, that Nikos was not going to reveal. Setting his teeth together behind the relaxed line of his mouth, he drawled, ‘Still enjoying playing the heartless bitch, Diana?’
‘I’m heartless?’ Her lovely green eyes opened wide. ‘Tell me, Nikos, how many hearts have you broken since you became sexually active?’
‘I was referring to your lack of respect for the dead.’
‘I adored Lillian,’ Diana declared. ‘Everybody did. I thought I was being sympathetic towards her.’ She pouted up at him. ‘After all, who would want to find out that her husband had been laying into another woman?’