Loe raamatut: «Response»

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SIENNA saw him walk past her office as she paused to fit a new sheet of paper into her typewriter, and even though it was merely his outline she saw through the frosted glass she was interested enough to turn discreetly in her chair and pull open one of the filing cabinet drawers so that she would be facing the door should he decide to walk in. He paused outside, no doubt studying the notice on the door, and Gillian, who owned and ran the agency, crossed her fingers and hissed across at her, ‘Here’s hoping!’

Her wish was granted. The door opened inwards smoothly and Sienna had a handful of seconds to assimilate the powerful combination of a face that was distinctively hard-boned, its sensual impact deeper by far than any mere handsomeness, before amused grey eyes rested with brief comprehension on her half parted lips and dazed expression.

‘Miss Forbes?’

He was addressing Gillian, who smiled and looked equally dazed, leaving Sienna free of his careless scrutiny and at leisure to admire the way the dark wool suit fitted his broad shoulders and to note the leisurely grace with which he folded his tall frame into the chair Gill indicated.

‘Your agency has been recommended to me by an acquaintance,’ Sienna heard him saying as he extracted a small piece of cardboard from his wallet and handed it across to Gillian. ‘I’m in London on business, and unfortunately my secretary’s mother has been taken ill and she has had to fly back to New York. I can’t cancel the business meetings I’ve arranged, and I’m hoping you’re going to be able to supply me with an adequate replacement. I understand you specialise in multi-lingual secretaries with excellent shorthand and typing speeds. I appreciate that it’s short notice, but….’

As she turned back to her typewriter Sienna’s fingers trembled, and she witnessed their betrayal with a certain amount of wry self-mockery. She had been working for Gillian for six months. Before that she had worked at home, translating her father’s books, doing his research, typing his manuscripts…. She sighed. Her father’s death had been a sad but not totally unexpected blow. Gerald King had had a weak heart for years, and as her brother Rob had reminded her at the funeral, he had had a very good innings. ‘Dad was over seventy, Sienna,’ he had told her gently, ‘and this is the way he would have wanted to go—quickly and relatively painlessly.’

Sienna knew that Rob was right, but she still missed her father. She had worked with him since she left university, quite content with the calm flow of life in the sleepy Cotswold village where they lived. Gerald King was an expert on Mediaeval history and had taught at the local university prior to his retirement. His books were always well received in academic circles, and Sienna knew with hindsight that Rob was right when he claimed that her life with their father had been at times an unnatural one for a girl in her early twenties. But now that was all over. There had been sufficient money for her to stay on in Waterford-on-the-Hill had she wished, living in the cottage which was willed to Rob and herself jointly, hut Rob had told her that she was far too young to bury herself away in the sleepy Cotswold backwater, and it was at his suggestion that she had taken the job with Gillian working for her agency as a freelance temporary secretary. It was her private belief that Gillian and Rob were in love, but neither of them seemed prepared to admit it.

Rob was a busy foreign news reporter working for one of the national papers, and he had met Gillian at university. Four years older than she was herself, Rob had always seemed very much the older brother during her teens, but nowadays they met as equals and there was a growing bond between them. Although he scoffed at it, Sienna considered that her brother was more like their father than he realised. In Sienna’s eyes her father had always possessed a quality she could only describe as ‘gentlemanly’—nothing to do with birth, accent, or academic achievements, but something that went much deeper than that, an old-fashioned gallantry and consideration for other people that everyone around him responded to, and Rob possessed it as well. He might prefer to assume the role of the hard-bitten tough journalist, but Sienna had seen him when he thought himself unobserved, helping others with that same quiet, almost self-effacing manner which characterised their father.

Only last night he had challenged her to deny that he had been right when he insisted that she come to London, and she had been forced to admit that he was. He had been on the point of leaving to cover another story and they had met briefly in the hall of his flat where she was staying until she was able to find somewhere for herself. She had often wondered if having her living with him cramped his style. There was no evidence that the flat had ever been shared with anyone else, but Rob was a virile and very attractive man of twenty-eight and she was not naïve enough to assume that as his sister she was the only female in his life, or that he would restrict himself to chaste goodnight kisses outside his dates’ homes.

She came to, with a start, realising that she had been completely lost in her thoughts, flushing to find herself being scrutinised by two pairs of eyes, Gillian’s rather puzzled and her companion’s openly amused. But it was an amusement that was shot through with something else; and a something else that made her blood tingle, a curious heady excitement spiralling through her body. She had experienced sexual chemistry before, for heaven’s sake, Sienna chided herself, but she was forced to admit, rather ruefully, that it had never before been as potent as this. Something she had once read flashed briefly through her mind ‘… she would have followed him to the ends of the earth dressed only in her petticoat….’ Someone had once written that about Mary, Queen of Scots and her love for charismatic and dangerous Bothwell, and in that instant, as her sherry-brown eyes met comprehending mocking grey ones, Sienna knew exactly how Mary had felt.

‘Mr Stefanides needs a multi-lingual secretary to work for him while he’s in London, Sienna,’ Gillian repeated. ‘I’ve just told him you’re the only girl we have free at the moment….’

‘You want me?’

The moment the words left her lips, Sienna flushed pink with mortification. Heavens, did she need to make herself sound even dumber than she most undoubtedly looked?

‘If you are agreeable.’ The grey eyes darkened an unmistakable message in their depths, leaving her more flustered than she had been before. Her pulse started to thud heavily under her skin, her fingers automatically lifting to the hollow at the base of her throat, toying with the gold chain she always wore, the breath leaving her lungs on a stifled gasp as lean brown fingers reached out, touching the chain, examining the gold medallion suspended from it. Just for a second his fingers brushed against her skin and the whole world seemed to tremble. ‘Apollo, the sun god. Did you buy this in Greece?’

It was an idle, almost absent question, and perfectly feasible, because the medallion was exactly the sort of thing a discerning tourist might bring back from a Greek holiday, but as he let the gold drop back against her skin, still warm from his touch, Sienna shook her head, too bemused by the feelings surging up inside her to concentrate properly on what she was saying.

‘It was a gift,’ she managed, wondering if her tongue really had swollen so much that it made it difficult for her totalk, or if there was some other reason for the husky uncertainty of her voice. ‘My brother brought it back for me last year.’

He took a step back and she wondered why she should suddenly feel such a chill, as though the warmth of the sun had suddenly been removed from her body. She glanced out of the window, half expecting to see that the cool April sunshine had given way to cloud and was faintly bemused to see that it hadn’t.

‘Sienna, Mr Stefanides would like you to go with him now,’ Gill was saying, but his smooth, accentless voice cut into her words, his ‘Alexis, please,’ bringing a delicate pink to Gillian’s cheeks as well as her own. ‘My car is on a meter,’ he added, glancing at his watch, the wafer-fine broad gold strap catching Sienna’s eye, and her stomach muscles clenched down against the sudden surge of desire to see more of his body than the few inches of muscles and dark tanned skin exposed beneath the immaculate cuff of his shirt. What on earth had happened to her?

Through her bewilderment she managed to retain enough of a hold on sanity to be wryly amused at her own reaction. Heavens, she hadn’t thought it was possible for her to experience this… this intensely physical desire for a man that went far beyond merely looking at him and finding him attractive. It was all she could do to prevent herself from reaching out and touching him, from telling him her most intimate thoughts and desires. She found herself mentally stripping him as she listened to the arrangements he was making, her scrutiny of him in no way lustful, but a silent adoration of the male beauty she knew with some deep-seated instinct his clothes cloaked. When he left she managed to croak something; some response which she hoped didn’t betray the disorder of her senses, and when he had gone she sank back down into her chair, her brown eyes wide and dazed, her whole body strangely weak.

‘Phew!’ Gillian rolled her eyes and grinned, ‘That’s what I call a man! You know who he is, don’t you?’ she demanded, suddenly practical, too excited to notice Sienna’s lack of response. ‘He’s only Hellas Holidays! Do this job well, Sienna, and the agency could be made! You heard him say we were recommended to him—now if we can get him to recommend us to his millionaire friends. Just think, working on board someone’s huge yacht, flying over to Athens to take half an hour’s dictation…. Hey, dreamer,’ she chided gently, ‘wake up! Where were you?’

Sienna flushed vividly, wondering what on earth her friend and employer would say if she admitted exactly where she had been, which was in bed with Alexis Stefanides. She was still totally bemused by the whole thing. She had never, ever met a man who generated such a reaction inside her. Oh, she had had boy-friends, but none of them had ever been serious and never in a thousand lifetimes had she ever imagined or wanted to imagine the sort of intimacies with them that her body seemed to crave to share with the tall Greek.

‘Pull yourself together, he’ll be back in five minutes. He wants you to go straight to the Savoy with him—he’s got a suite there, apparently. And he’s paying well. Just at the right time too. I haven’t got anything else for you for the rest of the week. Just pray that his business keeps him in London for at least a few days,’ Gill told her. ‘We could do with the money.’

A few days! Sienna shivered, suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of her reactions. She felt hot and cold, shivery and excited, her brown eyes glittered feverishly in the triangular piquancy of her face, her blonde hair—the only thing she had inherited from her Scandinavian mother—curled softly on to her shoulders, her slender, five-foot-five frame trembling visibly as she tried to control her rioting emotions. It had happened, something she had never dreamed would ever happen. She had fallen in love at first sight.

She shivered again, trying to tell herself she was being stupid; that her reactions were totally ridiculous, reminding herself that she wasn’t a teenager but a woman, but it was no good. Something elemental and deep-rooted inside her had sprung to life and she knew with an instinct that overrode caution and common sense that this feeling which had suddenly overwhelmed her was what she had been born for; pre-ordained in her fate, unavoidable; Nemesis, and on that thought she surrendered herself to it, trying and failing to banish from her mind tantalising thoughts of Alexis Stefanides kissing her, touching her, her flesh quivering deliciously as she remembered the brush of his fingers against her skin. And she was the girl several of her dates had dismissed as cold and frigid! It almost made her want to laugh aloud, but then hadn’t she too half agreed with them, thinking that physical desire and passion were emotions she was incapable of feeling. And now this torrent of feeling and need; this hunger and total abandonment of pride that would take her to his side at the slightest indication that that was where he wanted her to be.

A sudden thought struck her, her lips forming the words almost before she was ready. ‘Is he married?’

Gillian frowned. ‘Where have you been? Don’t you read your papers? No, he isn’t,’ she relented, seeing her face. ‘But, honey, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking—forget it. I know he looks like the archetypal Greek god, but he’s all too human. He also has a reputation for being cruel and arrogant. He’s notorious for his women, Sienna, but when he marries I suspect it will be to a girl of his own race; a dutiful Greek virgin.’ She held up her hand. ‘Okay, I know, or at least I suspect, you qualify on one count, and I can see the effect he’s had on you. I don’t blame you, honey, he is pretty overwhelming, but you’re Rob’s sister, and in many ways a little innocent still….’

‘I’m twenty-four,’ Sienna reminded her dryly, ‘two years younger than you.’ She broke off as she saw Alexis Stefanides returning, picking up her handbag and taking her coat off the stand by the door, hoping she looked more composed than she felt, ready to match his social smile with one of her own, but when he opened the door, he simply stared at her, and there was such hunger and open desire in the unsmiling look he gave her that her insides turned to jelly. It was as though his body spoke to hers and hers replied in a language that was beyond words. ‘I want you,’ he said, and hers replied, ‘I know, and your wanting is mine.’

‘Ready?’ Now he smiled, but at Gill, not her. ‘I’m not sure how long this will take, but you can invoice me at this address when I return Sienna to you.’ He handed her a piece of paper with an address written on it and then held open the door so that Sienna could precede him through it. His hand on the small of her back seemed to burn right through the thin wool suit she was wearing. Rob had insisted on her buying an entire new outfit when she came to London, and this just off-white neat, collarless jacket, cropped short at the waist with its complementary softly pleated skirt had been one of her first buys. It was by Alexon, and although Gillian had directed her towards the Separates Section of the large London stores, Sienna had soon discovered that she had a natural sense of taste and flair for clothes, although she had been careful to bear in mind that hers was the wardrobe of an executive secretary and must reflect that image. At home she had nearly always worn pleated skirts and toning jumpers from Country Casuals, the same sort of clothes her mother had always chosen when she had been a university lecturer’s wife.

Kristal King had died when Sienna was fourteen. She had missed her mother dreadfully at first, but she had already been a boarder at the school her parents had chosen for her and gradually she learned to live with her loss. Now suddenly, following Alexis Stefanides out into the brilliant spring sunshine, she wished very badly that she was alive, wanting someone to talk to about the wholly unexpected emotions she was experiencing.

Did all women feel like this about the right man? The man who had the power to turn their universe upside down? It was a startling discovery that far from being the rather sexually cool person she had always considered herself she was capable of such deep and diverse needs. Just looking at him, studying the way his hair grew thick and dark into the nape of his neck made her shudder in sensual reaction her fingers already imagining the feel of his hair against them, the heavy thud of his heart against hers.

She started to tremble again and was startled by the sound of his voice as he stood up having unlocked the car, and opened the passenger door for her. ‘Please get in….’

The words were said with cool formality, but there was nothing cool nor formal about the way he was looking at her, and suddenly Sienna was reminded of her twenty-first birthday party and the way she had felt after consuming two glasses of champagne, only this time the bubbles of happiness really did seem to explode inside her. She shook her head slightly as she obeyed him and slid into the sleek interior of the waiting Mercedes, as though still half believing she was caught up in some fantasy daydream, but that notion was firmly dispelled when Alexis got in beside her, turning to her with a smile that set her pulses racing.

‘The seat-belt mechanism is automatic,’ he told her softly. ‘Here, let me help you.’

He took the belt from her nerveless fingers, quickly slotting it into place, half leaning across her, her body intimately aware of the hard warmth of his, her eyes lifting from the deft, skilled movements of his fingers to the dark planes of his face. A faint stubble darkened his jaw, and her heart lurched spectacularly, her fingers itching to reach out and touch his skin, motivated by an irresistible urge to discover if his jaw felt as tough as it looked. Outwardly he bore all the trappings of wealth and sophistication; all the hallmarks of a man well used to the luxuries that money could buy, but it was the man within that drew Sienna; and she knew that wealthy or not he would still have drawn her in the same way, and not just her, she admitted on another lurching heartbeat; he possessed the sort of sexual magnetism that few women would be able to resist. Suddenly she wanted to know everything there was to know about him, and was close to tears to think of all the years when she hadn’t known him; as a child; an adolescent; a young man, and she shivered fitfully, the tension in her body communicating itself to him as he completed his task and straightened up, his arm brushing briefly across her breasts.

The contact only lasted a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for Sienna to feel the immediate response of her body, and to gauge from Alexis’ sudden tension and inheld breath that he was aware of it too. He turned towards her, his eyes resting on the soft swell of her body concealed by the fine wool of her jacket. His glance lifted to her face his eyes dark and hot, the desire she could feel surging inside herself mirrored in their depths, his attention drawn to linger again on the thrust of her breasts.

Her mouth was as dry as parchment, and Sienna knew that if he chose to he could make love to her here and now and she would glory in his possession of her womanhood. He turned, fastening his own seat-belt, his knuckles gleaming faintly through the tautness of his skin as he set the car in motion, and Sienna knew that there hadn’t been a thought or emotion she had experienced since meeting him that he hadn’t known of and shared.

The knowledge was so unfamiliar and so heady that she sat silent as he manoeuvred the large car through the heavy lunchtime traffic, sending up a mental prayer of gratitude to whoever it was who directed her fate that she had been permitted this glorious enchantment. It was awesome to think of the faint threads of chance from which so much human happiness dangled. If Alexis hadn’t been recommended to try the agency; if she hadn’t been there….

‘We’re here.’ His cool, faintly husky voice broke through her thoughts. A doorman opened the car door and she stepped out, vaguely aware of Alexis saying something to him and the crisp crackle of new notes, and then they were stepping into the foyer, and Alexis was directing her towards the lift, his lazy, long stride covering the thickly carpeted ground so quickly that she almost had to run to catch up with him.

He had a large suite at his disposal and someone had set up a desk with an expensive electronic typewriter and a small computer keyboard and VDU. There was another desk with three telephones and an in-tray stuffed full of papers. Sienna took most of it in in one single glance; after all, apart from the luxurious surroundings it was the sort of background she was now familiar with; the typewriter was a make she knew and had worked on before, and the computer presented no problems if she was required to use it. Mentally blessing Rob’s forethought in insisting on sending her on a three-day computer course when she first arrived in London, she started to slide her coat from her shoulders, tensing when she felt Alexis’ hands on her arms, his warm breath stirring the hair at the nape as he bent to assist her.

She was trembling and she couldn’t stop; one part of her mind still bemused and half inclined to be appalled that she could feel like this; that she could be so ready to turn into his arms and let herself become part of him on such a short acquaintanceship, but the older, eternal womanly core of her urged her to follow her instincts to listen to what her heart was telling her and ignore the restrictions of generations of programming.

Suddenly she was fiercely glad that there had been no one else; no other touch to sully the pleasure she would find in Alexis’ arms; a primaeval and intense need to give herself to this man and this man alone.

He removed her coat and hung it up on the stand by the door, while Sienna watched him, her body as attuned to his as the gazelle’s to the hunter, quivering finely, every nerve ending aware of his presence and the frisson of pleasure it caused against her skin. When he returned to her he took her in his arms, simply holding her, looking down at her for several seconds, while Sienna returned his regard, knowing what he was reading in her face and eyes and making no attempt to hide her love and adoration from him.

‘Tell me that it’s true what your eyes are saying to me so eloquently; tell me that there’s never been any man you’ve felt about the way you feel about me.’ And then before she could respond his lips were brushing hers, lightly and then not so lightly as he felt her immediate response, her mouth parting eagerly, hungry for the hard possession of his.

If it was possible to become intoxicated by sheer happiness then that was what must have happened to her, Sienna thought dizzily as Alexis’ lips left hers, travelling teasingly across her face; touching lightly against her fluttering eyelashes, closing her eyes, exploring the tender curve of her jaw; his fingers pushing aside her hair, his hands tightening their grip as he felt her involuntary response to the caress of his tongue and lips against her ear and the soft column of her throat, her body arching shamelessly against him as she responded with blind instinct to his touch.

At last his mouth returned to hers, touching, taking, possessing. Her hands slid under his jacket and found the hard muscles of his back, her body glorying in the sudden aroused tension of his; in the way he held her against him, his hands moving down to her thighs, pressing her into his body, and then slowly releasing her as he ended the kiss. He took a step away from her and smiled down into her flushed, bemused face, his thumb softly probing the mouth his had just bruised with such devastating hunger. ‘So…’ he said softly, ‘it has begun….’

‘You… you felt it too?’ Sienna asked hesitantly, groping for the right words to describe her feelings and aware that those she had chosen were hopelessly inadequate to describe them. Two hours ago she hadn’t known that he existed, and now… now she was so deeply in love with him that nothing else mattered but him.

‘I felt it too,’ he confirmed, still keeping that small, tantalising distance between them. ‘Together we will make the world rock and feel its hushed tremble, my little virgin. When I make love to you and my body finally possesses yours it will be as though we are immortals, gods, and not mere human beings, but as yet you know nothing of the pleasure that will be ours. No other man has shown you what I shall show you. I shall be the first.’

He said it with such assurance that she held her breath, staring wonderingly into his face. It was as though he had always known her; as though he knew everything there was to know about her, and so all she did was murmur slowly, ‘and the last….’ And then watched his eyes darken, with the same kind of wonder and awe with which she had listened to carols being sung on Christmas Eve as a child, the lump in her throat threatening to render her completely speechless. Alexis saw her reaction and laughed deep in his throat, a husky, satisfied sound, and she knew that the fact that she was still a virgin was pleasing him.

‘Ah, yes, we shall be lovers, you and I,’ he promised her, ‘but not today… not yet. First we shall enjoy the anticipation a little, and I shall try to school myself to playing the suitor rather than the lover. Also there is work to do, because I wasn’t lying about my need for a secretary.’

Work? After this? Sienna stared mutely at him, but as she discovered as the day progressed he hadn’t been joking. Marvelling at his ability to change from lover to employer, she tried to follow his lead and concentrate on the detailed dictation he was giving her, all the time acutely conscious of the maleness of him; the way his trousers moulded the strong muscles of his thighs; the breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest in the clinging silk shirt that seemed to mould itself to his body.

In that afternon Sienna gained a brief understanding of how diverse his business interests were: he wasn’t just the Chairman of Hellas Holidays, he also had an interest in an international airline, in villas on the islands, which he owned and let out, in olive groves, and even a vineyard in the Napa Valley in California. That had come to him through his mother, who Sienna deduced from the brief comments that he made had been half Italian and half American, which no doubt accounted for his height, and less swarthy complexion than she might have expected. It also explained the grey eyes which were so totally unexpected and devasting in the pure symmetry of a face which had its beginnings in the very best of the ancient sculptures.

They worked without pause until six o’clock. Sienna felt limp and drained when they had finished. Alexis had dictated consistently in English, but she had translations to make into French and German, and she was relieved when he told her that she would have the best part of the following morning to work on what he had just given her.

‘I shall be in meetings for most of the morning.’ He saw her face and smiled, and the dying rays of the sun streaming through the windows lingered against his skin casting shadows that gave him a faintly cynical, predatory air, and one which was totally at odds with the man Sienna thought him to be. She shivered in spite of herself, faintly repelled by the transformation, the cold, almost detached air with which he seemed to be studying her, but then he moved and it was gone, and she laughed inwardly at her own folly. It had been a trick of the sunlight, nothing more, and she forgot that he was a man who came from a land that was more used to harsh sunlight then gentle shadows, she forgot everything as he came towards her, pulling her out of her chair, gently removing her pad and pencil from nerveless fingers, framing her face with his hands as he studied her wildly flushed features.

‘Tomorrow I must work, but we still have tonight. Will you let me take you out to dinner?’

Would she? Sienna moistened her lips and trembled as she saw the flaring reaction of his eyes to the gesture and felt its echo in his body.

‘No, I am not going to take you to my bed tonight,’ he muttered accurately reading her mind… ‘but one night, not so very far from now when you are ready for me, I shall.’

I’m ready now, Sienna wanted to tell him, half appalled by her own immodesty and hunger, but he was already releasing her, putting her away from him, smiling at her as he asked politely, ‘Will you be able to be ready by half past eight? I’ll book a table for nine. Aristotle, my chauffeur, is waiting downstairs to take you home. Unfortunately I am expecting an important call from New York, otherwise I would go with you. Do you live alone?’

With a shock Sienna realised it was the first personal question he had asked her. Somehow exchanging past histories had seemed irrelevant, but now she managed to murmur, ‘No… with my brother, but he’s away at the moment. He’s a reporter. Our parents are dead, and Rob very kindly took me in when our father died. I used to work for him, you see, and when he died I just didn’t know what to do with myself.’