‘That is generally what tyrants tend to do,’ offered Nat drily.
Emma shook her head. For all her outward anger, she had been deeply unsettled by her encounter with Zak Constantinides. He had made her feel stuff she wasn’t used to feeling and that had been bad enough. But even worse was the fact that he had forced her to look at the past, a place which she’d hoped she’d left behind for ever.
And the trouble with looking back was that it made you start to pick away at the present—and to wonder if this was the way your life was meant to be. Since their meeting she’d felt … unsettled. As if the odd, quiet calm before a storm had suddenly descended on her. ‘You’ll never believe what he suggested.’
‘What?’
She stared into Nat’s more traditional inky-black eyes. ‘Only that I go and work in one of his other hotels!’
‘Which hotel?’
‘He didn’t say, but what he meant was any hotel that isn’t the Granchester—preferably somewhere in a different country. Anything to get me as far away from you as possible—because, apparently, I’ve got my gold-digging hooks into you.’
‘He can’t look at a woman without seeing dollar signs in her eyes,’ commented Nat wryly. ‘Though, to be fair, he’s seen enough examples of that particular breed in his time. What did you tell him?’
Expelling a slow breath, Emma sat back in her seat and looked around. She loved this little Italian restaurant.
It wasn’t far from the Granchester and was just about affordable as long as you stuck to one course, which she insisted was all they needed—as well as always splitting the bill fifty-fifty, much to Nat’s amusement.
They often ate here, depending on the current state of Nat’s love life. If it was full-on passion, then their meetings tended to be erratic—but if he’d discovered that his latest goddess had feet of clay, then they became more frequent. Nat hadn’t been ‘in love’ for quite some time—and so they’d seen quite a lot of each other. It was easy and it was comfortable and up until this afternoon’s meeting with Zak she had been more than happy with the arrangement. But now? Now she felt as if she had been woken from a bad dream and couldn’t quite remember what had frightened her so much.
‘I told him he could keep his job,’ she said, in reply to his question. ‘And I told him to go to hell.’
There was a pause while Nat looked at her with an expression on his face she’d never seen before. ‘You told Zak to go to hell?’
‘Actually, I implied that hell was too good for him.’
Nat started laughing. ‘I wish I could have seen his face.’
Emma took a quick sip of wine, because thinking about Zak’s face wasn’t remotely good for her blood pressure.
‘Well, I hope I never see him again,’ she said quietly, even though her heart leapt at the memory of those intense pewter eyes and hard lips. ‘He can keep his job and his outrageous attempts at manipulation. Who the hell does he think he is that he can move people around as if they’re pieces on a chequerboard? I’ll hand my notice in and go freelance again. There’s loads of work in London at the moment.’
Nat frowned. ‘But you don’t know where the job is, do you? Think about it. It could be great, Em. New York, maybe—you know that Zak has an amazing hotel on Madison, near Central Park? Or in Paris, maybe—he owns a sumptuous place on Av Georges V, right down from the Seine.’
‘I know all about your brother’s impressive property portfolio, Nat—and I’m not remotely tempted.’
There was a pause. ‘Not even as a favour to me?’
‘A favour to you?’ Putting her glass back down on the table, Emma narrowed her eyes. ‘How does that work?’
He shrugged. ‘Think about it. Zak’s a control freak who likes to keep an obsessive brotherly eye on me.’
‘I know. Why is that?’
‘Because he’s terrified that some scheming beauty is going to get her hands on the Constantinides fortune and bleed it dry. It’s happened before. My theory is that he hates women. Actually, scrub that—he does hate women.’ He saw the question in her eyes and gave a grimace. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m not interested in Zak’s story,’ she said quickly because she didn’t want to ‘understand’ the man. What was there to understand, other than that he was a tyrant? ‘It can’t be that different from yours, surely?’
‘Oh, I think it was worse. He was older, you
see—and he bore the brunt of my parents’ divorce.’ Nat shrugged. ‘And he thinks the women I meet are only after me because of my wallet. Not realising that my abundant charm and prowess in bed are what keep them flocking into my arms! He thinks that one day I should go back home and marry a suitable and beautiful Greek woman.’
‘And what do you think, Nat? Is that what you want? Or aren’t you allowed an opinion?’
‘Actually, I haven’t ruled anything out,’ said Nat unexpectedly. ‘All I want is the freedom to live my life as I see fit until the time comes when I want to settle down. And that’s where you come in, Em. Or, rather, where you could come in.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’