The Greek Tycoon's Secret Child (10 page)

And when she caught Dominic's eye she felt as though he had read her mind and was amused at the conclusions she was reaching. That the lines between people had only ever been in her head. Weird.

Then they were fussed over, shown to their table, handed menus that were like scrolls and required rolling down.

‘Mmm. Scallop mousse!' Mattie feigned sophistication. ‘Halibut, seared, with a drizzle of wild-mushroom compote! All my favourites!'

Dominic sat back and looked at her with amusement. He could have watched her forever.

And, under that languid gaze, Mattie felt suddenly and unexpectedly shy. Where had the tough, hostile woman gone? He certainly hadn't changed. He was still out of her league and she told herself firmly that it would be better all round if she remembered that.

‘So,' he said lazily, ‘halibut, seared, with the mushroom compote today. What tomorrow?'

‘You must think I'm a little ridiculous. All this fuss just because I'm getting out there in the real world. Well, not
real
, but…'

‘You're grabbing your opportunities. Nothing ridiculous about that.'

‘I guess the women…you socialise with have never had that dilemma.' Mattie smiled and was relieved when his attention was diverted by the arrival of the waiter to take their orders.

‘No,' Dominic said truthfully. ‘Most of them are just content to squander their opportunities. Naturally, I meet women in the course of work, career women who have worked damned hard to make their way to the top, women who command respect at the highest level, but equally I meet those whose ambition in life is to meet and marry a rich man who can support their extensive shopping habit for the rest of their lives.'

‘And which do you prefer?' Mattie asked curiously.

It was a question that was spared an answer as wine was brought to their table, the Chablis he had promised, and poured into glasses.

‘I don't categorise the women I find attractive.'

‘Well, that's a non-answer if ever I heard one,' Mattie said dismissively, and Dominic grinned. ‘And don't forget we made a deal…'

‘A deal?'

‘That's right.' She finished her glass of wine and watched as he poured her another.

Mattie had never been much of a drinker. She could feel the first glass go pleasantly to her head, eating away at the nervousness she had felt earlier on.

‘I gave you my potted life history when we last met. Or, should I say, when you last appeared uninvited at the house? And you promised to give me yours.'

Starters were brought to them, which she barely noticed because she was so busy concentrating on the man sitting opposite her.

Dominic caught her eye over a mouthful of smoked salmon and looked at her. ‘I thought you'd already summed me up. Or so you insisted on telling me every time we met. I thought you knew my potted life history.'

‘Where did you grow up?'

‘Greece and England. Greece for the holidays, England for the schooling. I was boarded from the age of eleven.'

‘What was it like?' School had been a nightmare for her. She had loved the work, had been good at it, but the necessity to bend to peer pressure had been acute and she could see, in retrospect, that she had wasted her education. Reading books and studying were things that had had to be done covertly. Not that her parents hadn't encouraged her, but she sailed past their lectures on the importance of a good education with the blithe disregard of someone who was the lynchpin of teenage social life. The prettiest girl with the cutest boyfriend.

Now she listened enviously as Dominic chatted about his own school experiences, making her laugh as he told her stories about the other pupils there. Even at that age, he had already learnt to take for granted the fact that he
would achieve at school, move on to university, reach the highest echelons of professional life.

And she found herself telling him about her own school days. The girls who had smoked behind the bicycle shed. The boys who had drunk. The truancy. The teenage pregnancy that had caused such a stir at the time. No knives, no actual violence, the school really hadn't been that rough, but a lot of giggling in the back at the cool kids who made a point of slouching in their chairs and making ridiculous remarks just to see how far they could push a teacher.

Somewhere along the line, she realised with a little start, they had managed to finish the first bottle of wine and were now well into the second.

She hadn't felt as relaxed as this in a long time. She ate her fish, told him that it was not really any better than fish and chips from a certain place she knew in Shepherd's Bush.

‘And will I get to make that judgement myself?' Dominic asked lazily.

‘Oh, no!' Mattie laughed, looked at him from under her lashes in a way that she knew was provocative. ‘It'll all go downhill if the posh set decide to descend on it.' But there was no rancour in her voice, and when he laughed she heard herself laughing along.

‘I could dress down,' Dominic told her with exaggerated gravity. If a nuclear bomb had been detonated he would have been unaware, because all he could see was this exhilarating creature sitting in front of him, with her mobile, animated face and her expressive, slender hands.

‘Hah. I bet you've never dressed down in your life before.'

‘Jeans? Sloppy shirt? Running shoes? I could do that.' He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘'Course, it would re
quire a shopping trip…' He knew she would be amused, would laugh, and he wanted to hear her laughter.

He signalled for the bill, still keeping his dark eyes firmly fixed on her face.

Mattie regretfully thought that the evening was over. ‘I could get a taxi back to my place,' she said as he signed a credit-card slip. ‘You don't have to drop me back.'

Dominic looked up at her and their eyes met with an understanding that sent a charge of electricity running through her.

‘This has a
déjà vu
ring about it,' he murmured, standing up and waiting as she followed suit.

‘We can't…' No use pretending that she couldn't read the intention in his eyes. Or, for that matter, understand the answering response it aroused in her. But alarm bells were ringing in her head. Bad enough enjoying his company because that was only one dangerous step away from becoming addicted to it. But to sleep with him…

‘Why can't we?' Dominic murmured.

She felt the gentle pressure of his hand on her elbow as he escorted her to the door and had to clutch the wildly scattering strands of her common sense with an excited, frightening, hot feeling of being sucked under.

‘Frankie and I have just finished with one another,' she said, pleading to herself and to him as well. ‘I'm not on the market for another relationship.'

‘Why should we fight what we feel? I'm going to call a taxi for both of us. I'm over the limit.'

‘What about your car?'

‘It'll wait here. I'll send my driver to collect it.'

‘Which is why we can't become involved with one another!'

‘Because I have to leave my car here overnight?'

‘You're deliberately misreading me!'

‘And you're deliberately trying to find excuses. Why?' He bent towards her so that she could breathe him in, that clean, masculine scent that made her suck her breath in sharply. ‘Why are you so scared?' There was dark amusement in his murmured question.

‘I don't want involvement,' Mattie protested weakly. Now the taxi was slowing down for them.

‘What sort of involvement are you talking about? A man hanging around your neck like a dead weight? Having your freedom of movement restricted? Or, worse, dictated to? You had that with him, or have you forgotten? Believe me, I'm not looking for involvement either.'

The taxi stopped and Dominic's head dipped for him to give the cab driver his address, then he looked at her and shot her a slow smile that made the insides of her stomach curl.

“‘To be or not to be…?'”

Mattie shuffled into the seat, sliding along to accommodate him. Hot, slick excitement was pulsing in her veins. She didn't quite know why she was arguing. For every argument she raised, he countered it with a response that was utterly reasonable.

‘Do you prefer the safety of living with a man you pity and shutting yourself off from all other experiences? Habit can be a destructive thing, Mattie. In your case, the habit of being put down, stepped on, having your wings clipped.'

‘Frankie didn't…' Oh, but yes, he had. He had wallowed in his own misfortune and used her pity as a battering ram against her. He had exhausted her, laughed at her aspirations and watched her slave to make money
to grab a career for herself while he drank away whatever earnings that he could, without bothering to rouse himself enough to go and look for a job. He had been selfish, although his selfishness had had the same quality as a child's selfishness. That was probably why she had been able to handle it.

Dominic, however…

Mattie glanced sideways at him, met his eyes and shivered.

Dominic Drecos was no child. He was all, one hundred per cent man. He could hurt her in a different way. She knew that at some instinctual level, but at that same level she knew that he was an irresistible force.

‘Stop finding excuses for the man,' he now said impatiently. ‘You may have gone back a long time with him, but that didn't stop him from being a noose around your neck.'

‘You're so cold and calculating,' she murmured.

‘I'm realistic. We're both adults and we're attracted to one another. More to the point, neither of us is looking for commitment and marriage. Are we?'

‘I definitely am not,' she said fiercely. ‘You needn't fear that you might become tangled up with a woman who's totally unsuitable for you.'

‘Is that what you think?' It was taking all his massive self-control not to reach out and touch her. He couldn't remember ever wanting a woman as much as he wanted her, or being forced to control himself the way she did.

‘That there would be no chance of wanting a serious relationship with you because your background isn't the same as mine?'

Mattie gave a cynical little toss of her head. ‘Not,' she said, ‘that it makes any difference to me. Just trying to clarify the situation.'

‘You mean you wouldn't be hurt if you thought that that was the case?'

The minute he said that, homed in with his usual accuracy on that vulnerable side of her that she had grown so accustomed to keeping under wraps, Mattie's hackles rose in immediate self-defence.

‘Why should I be?' She shrugged. ‘I've been pointing out our differences from the first moment we met. Just call it satisfying my curiosity.'

‘And, as I've told you every time you've begun with your tired old arguments about us coming from the opposite sides of the tracks, your background makes no difference to me.' He gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘Maybe it's because I'm not English so I haven't been inculcated with all that rubbish about social class. No, I don't want involvement because…'

‘Because what?'

He looked at her in silence for a few fleeting seconds and then raked his fingers restlessly through his hair.

‘Potted history, please,' Mattie told him. ‘You're very good at dodging questions you don't want to answer and I'm tired of it.'

‘You're…
what
…?'

‘Well, you can't blame a girl for wanting to know just a bit about the man who wants to get her into bed.'

Dominic laughed and looked at her appreciatively. ‘I'm beginning to think you put on that
me-working-class-girl
act just to get your own way. Am I right?'

‘Bad relationship?' Mattie pressed. ‘Some poor woman got a little too involved and became the proverbial noose around your neck, which is what you accused Frankie of being?'

‘You turn me on.'

‘You're changing the subject.' But those four words made her breasts ache and her body go to liquid.

Dominic looked at her thoughtfully, shifted a bit so that he was leaning against the side of the car, looking directly at her. If there was one thing this woman wasn't it was coy, and he was discovering, to his amusement, that he liked that.

‘Six months ago I broke up with a woman called Rosalind.'
And you are the first person I'm talking to about this,
he could have added, but didn't. ‘We had been going out for nearly a year and over that year she changed from an easy-going, enjoyable companion into a clingy, possessive woman who wanted to know my every move.'

‘Which must have been a serious blow to a free spirit like yourself,' Mattie said drily, and in the darkness of the car Dominic flushed darkly at the well-honed dart.

‘Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice?'

‘If the cap fits… So then what happened?'

‘Do I have to go into the details?'

‘Yep.' She was enjoying this. ‘What's good for the goose and so on and so forth.'

‘Spare me the proverbs.' He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and wondered, not for the first time, why he was so taken with a woman who seemed to see a hurdle and automatically assumed it was there to be demolished.

‘Spare me the evasion.'

‘Well, if you must know, she began making calls to the office. Not just one call a day, or two, but literally dozens. In the end, I had to instruct my personal secretary to block them. When I tried to speak to her about it, she would cry. That famous fallback that women use with such alacrity when it suits them.'

‘Excuse me. The women
you
know.'

‘And you've never shed a tear?'

‘Not as a form of emotional blackmail,' Mattie said with distaste.

‘Well, she did. Later on, there was worse. Later on, she moved from tears to anger. Didn't I want to be with her? Eventually, I told her that it was finished, at which point she began stalking me. I would get home in the evenings to find her car parked outside, where she would be waiting for me to get home. It was a nightmare.'