The Savakis Merger (19 page)

He stepped close, drawn to one that depicted a pine-fringed beach with water the colour of Callie’s eyes. He could almost reach out and touch the sea.

A squiggle of gold in one corner caught his eye. C.M.

Callie’s work? Could it be?

He moved back, stunned. Callie had done this? He went from one piece to another. On each were the same initials.

Callie said she sewed. But she’d been so reticent he assumed she made little doilies like those his mother sewed.

Astounded, he pivoted. These belonged in a gallery.

Why did she hide her talent like this?

Curiosity got the better of him and he moved to the vast desk, taking in catalogues, business cards of artisans who worked in glass and wood and timber. Swatches of fabrics. And beside them a much thumbed folder. A business plan.

Damon was so engrossed he didn’t feel a qualm about sitting down and leafing through the document.

Half an hour later he flexed his shoulders and leaned back in the chair, closing the last page.

What a mystery his lover was.

She had outstanding talent. Even he, a philistine when it came to the decorative arts, recognised her genius for creating mood and sensation through her fabric scenes.

Her business plan for an upmarket home-furnishings boutique was careful and well thought out. She’d made a few potential mistakes, but had done a professional job.

Where had she learned about starting a business? Her husband?

Unlikely. Yet she’d acquired the skills she needed.

She was some woman.

Pride warmed him at her determination to start her enterprise. It reminded him of his own drive to learn and succeed in business.

He glanced round the room, bright and welcoming and warmly sensuous. Like Callie.

He reached out and brushed his hand across a padded box upholstered in silk, with a beaded flying fish leaping across the top. Instinctively he knew Callie had made it. His hands curled around its soft edges, its glittering decoration.

Sitting in her space, Damon felt the warmth, the vibrancy, the secret something that drew him to Callie as to no other woman.

She’d turned his ideas about women on their heads.

Like the day at Mikrolimano when she’d entertained his guests. He’d known she’d be the perfect hostess. He hadn’t hesitated in asking her, though he’d never invited any previous mistress to do so.

Nevertheless he’d been curious about her response to so much male interest. She’d been friendly but not too friendly. She’d spent most of her time laughing with the women and seemed almost oblivious of the stir she caused till later when she’d snapped at him.

Because she thought him like her husband? Something about her marriage was at the heart of her reserve.

For Callie wasn’t the woman he’d first thought.

Prickly, independent, intelligent, fabulously responsive. She never pandered to his ego. She’d stood up to him time and again. She continually refused his gifts. She engaged his mind as well as his libido.

Callie was anything but a calculating man-eater.

She turned him inside out. For the first time he was no longer focused solely on the next merger, the next business triumph.

He wanted more. More of Callie.

‘YOU mustn’t let business take up all your time, Damon! Say you’ll come to Kefalonia.’

The woman’s gilded nails wrapped around Damon’s sleeve and tugged him into contact with her over-abundant, unnaturally firm breast. It was as enticing as cuddling up to an overblown beach ball.

She turned scarlet lips up and her extravagant perfume closed like a fog around him.

‘It will be a very select house party, Damonaki,’ she purred, leaning still closer, as if her spouse wasn’t just on the other side of the crowded theatre foyer. ‘My husband won’t be there till the weekend but I’ll devote myself to entertaining you. Privately,’ she added suggestively.

Her talons gripped tighter and he read the acquisitive glitter in her eyes.

Revulsion rose.

A swift glance at the throng around them made him swallow the curt retort hovering on his lips.

‘I won’t be available next week. Besides, my companion—’

‘Callista Manolis?’ He noted the barely restrained jealousy in the bottle-blonde’s tone. ‘She doesn’t run your life. Not a strong, decisive man like you.’ Her knee edged up his thigh. Bile filled his throat.

‘Or,’ she tilted her head speculatively, her mouth slackening in an expression of breathless excitement he found abhorrent, ‘if you bring her we could have some fun. The three of us together.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’ The cool, cut-crystal tone interrupted before he could give voice to a pungent, earthy response.

He slid his arm free and turned towards the newcomer.

‘Callie,’ he murmured appreciatively. The sight of her, elegant and sexy in a high-necked, bare-shouldered black dress, was like a sip of pure spring water after swallowing something toxic.

Damon reached out and she slipped her hand into his. Warm, supple, it fitted perfectly. He was growing accustomed to this sense of rightness, having her with him.

‘Damon and I have plans for that week,’ Callie said, looking down from her superior height.

‘You don’t know which week we were discussing,’ the other woman said. Her stiff facial muscles tightened more as she stared up at Callie.

Callie favoured Damon with a brief, knowing smile that made his heart drum faster. Even here, now, at this premiere event, he responded to the promise in her gold-flecked gaze.

‘All Damon’s weeks are booked up,’ Callie asserted. ‘Aren’t they, Damon?’

Surprise transfixed him as that sultry, bedroom voice emerged from Callie’s pink-glossed lips.

The only time he heard that tone was when they were alone and he’d driven her to the extremity of pleasure. Instinctively his body tightened.

‘If you say so, glikia mou.’

He enjoyed the novelty of her playing the vamp. Usually she was reserved at events like this. As if the company of A-list celebrities and their cronies wasn’t her style.

He leaned close and inhaled her fresh scent. It reminded him of sunny days and long, languorous loving.

Was she jealous? Was that why she’d appeared at his side?

The idea pleased him immensely. Though he had her in his bed every night and the passion between them was a palpable force, part of her remained steadfastly closed to him.

He chose lovers who understood he wanted no emotional entanglements. But with Callie he found himself wanting more than physical gratification. The realisation unsettled him and he shoved it aside.

‘Well,’ huffed the other woman. ‘Far be it from me to come between a happy couple.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘But don’t forget, Damonaki,’ she pressed close again, her mouth a wet pout, ‘you’re welcome any time.

You’d find my hospitality memorable.’

She turned and undulated her way through the crowd.

Instantly Callie’s hand tugged, as if to be released. He firmed his grip.

Anger simmered in her green stare.

‘Nice friends you have, Damonaki.’ She didn’t conceal her disgust, almost spitting out the ridiculous pet name. Yet she stood straight and proud, as if unfazed by that gross little scene.

‘Jealous, lover?’ Her lips flattened and he relented. ‘The rescue wasn’t necessary but thanks. One day her poor sot of a husband will find her propositioning someone and there’ll be hell to pay.’

‘He doesn’t know?’

Damon shrugged. ‘Probably. But if it’s under his nose he’ll have to do something about it and break a lifetime’s habit of ignoring what he doesn’t want to see.’

Was it any wonder he despised so many of society’s ‘best’ people?

‘Are you ready to go?’ Looking at her in that dress made him want to strip her out of it. It was time they were alone.

‘Don’t you want to stay?’

Damon’s lips firmed. For all Callie’s abandon in his bed, his shower, on his sofa or even, on one memorable occasion, on his vast dining table, it was he who initiated intimacy. She still maintained that air of aloofness.

It tried his patience, even as it turned him on.

He released her hand, his fingers sliding over her wrist to the sensitive pleasure point at her inner elbow. She shivered, her nipples peaking through the silky fabric as he caressed her.

‘Let’s go home.’

Home. Damon’s huge penthouse had become home. More than Alkis’

soulless mansion had been.

That was what had changed, Callie realised as Damon ushered her out to the waiting limo, his arm protective around her.

The deep freeze at her very core had begun to thaw.

Damon had done that. He mightn’t trust her fully, might view her as a source of convenient sex, but he was more generous than any man she’d ever met. Generous with his time and himself, in ways that, to a woman used to being dismissed as an ornament, made something warm and soft burgeon inside.

Her weakness for him terrified her but she couldn’t break away. Hadn’t been able to since the morning he’d challenged her to walk out on him.

Callie was hooked on the passion blazing between them. It made her feel bliss.

More, it made her feel she was no longer alone against the world.

Damon wasn’t generous as her husband had been, with easy gifts that proclaimed his ownership. Callie had made sure of it, refusing his offer of a designer dress, a glittery trinket from an exclusive jewellery house.

She would live within her means.

The recent, wonderful news that her trust fund had been restored fed her determination not to depend on a man’s money again. More, she’d prove to herself she was capable, that she amounted to more than a woman whose sole accomplishment was as a man’s trophy. She was hard at work on her plans, investigating commercial locations and sourcing products.

The suddenness of her lawyer’s news still stunned her. She could barely believe her uncle had restored what he’d stolen. Had her lawyer pressured him somehow?

Her relationship with Greece’s most eligible tycoon was based on sex, not profit. It still shocked her that she wanted him so badly, so constantly, but she found a curious dignity in their arrangement. An equality.

Both were victims of an attraction they couldn’t resist.

Damon had been piqued and curious when she didn’t live up to her reputation of grasping money-grabber. His first gift, an oyster silk negligée that shouted ‘mistress’with every stitch, had resurrected her fury at being manipulated into his bed.

That argument had ended with the silk in shreds and Damon smiling with feral pleasure as for the first time she took a dominant role in lovemaking. He’d looked up at her, moving above him as the world spun in kaleidoscope colours, and huskily threatened to buy her lingerie every day.

Callie’s lips twitched at the memory.

Even her pride couldn’t force her to relinquish this passionate relationship. Especially since she enjoyed being with Damon. He made her feel good about herself. Amazing when he’d originally forced their relationship and she’d wanted to hate him!

‘What are you smiling about?’ Damon tugged her close on the limo’s back seat, his arm around her shoulders, his fingers a warm imprint on her bare flesh.

Desire ignited. It erupted, a tangible force, shooting darts of heat to her breasts and womb.

She put her hand on his muscled thigh and felt a judder of reaction as Damon’s muscles tensed.

In this they were equals. Her smile widened.

‘Nothing important. Tell me,’ she turned to look him in the eye, ‘who was that woman? Not an old flame?’

She was too old for Damon with her surgically enhanced face. She was vulgar. She was wrong for him in so many ways.

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ His mouth twisted. He lifted her hand to his mouth, licking across her palm and up her wrist, creating an earth tremor of rapture.

Callie’s mouth slackened and her pulse accelerated. She leaned nearer, grateful for the privacy screen between them and Damon’s driver.

‘I didn’t think your taste ran to anything so obvious.’

Damon cradled her hand to his face. Her heart kicked as his tongue swirled at the centre of her palm. Hot wires of tension snagged tight inside and her eyes fluttered closed.

‘And you know all about my taste in women.’

Callie’s eyes popped open to meet his impenetrable stare. She couldn’t tell if he was serious or sarcastic.

Too late she realised she’d left herself open to a hurtful retort. Hadn’t he accused her once of being obvious in her efforts to attract him?

Her fragile sense of well-being cracked.

‘You intrigue me,’ he murmured. ‘Once I would have lumped you in the same group as her, with the morals of an alley cat.’

Callie stiffened and jerked her hand away, but he recaptured it easily, holding it between both of his.

‘She’s always on the prowl for fresh meat, a new lover she can corrupt with her tawdry charms.’

Numbly Callie shook her head, waiting for him to make a cutting remark about her own character. She should be inured to jibes. Hadn’t she parried them endlessly before?

Yet after the intimacies of these recent weeks, the idea of such ravaging scorn cut her to the quick.

‘They sicken me, the rich bitches who get what they want, no matter the cost to others.’

Damon wasn’t looking at her. He stared at the streets of Athens, still crowded at this hour. Callie sensed it wasn’t the city he saw. His thumb rubbed absently over her knuckles.