Defying Drakon Read online

  Gemini studied his bent head, noting the way his hair had started to curl slightly as it dried in the warmth of the restaurant. The sharp angles of his face were softened by the warm glow of candlelight, and the silky dark hair visible at the base of his throat where his shirt was unbuttoned instantly made her remember how that soft pelt went all the way down to his—

  ‘Gemini?’

  A blush warmed her cheeks as she raised her startled gaze to meet Drakon’s glittering black one. ‘Anything,’ she answered abruptly. ‘All the food here is good.’

  Those dark eyes continued to study her for long, timeless seconds. Tense, still seconds, when even the chatter of the other diners faded into the background and there seemed to be only Gemini and Drakon in the room, and she found herself totally unable to look away from that compelling gaze.

  Gemini had hoped that if she ever saw Drakon again she would find she had got over whatever madness had possessed her the last time she had seen him—well, the last two times she had seen him! That she would be able to look at him, speak to him, spend time with him and see him for the arrogant, powerful man that he was. And it was impossible not to see those things in him. Unfortunately she knew he was also dangerously seductive; he only had to touch her, kiss her, to send her over the edge of self-control. Something that had never, ever happened to her before, but seemed to happen constantly with him. As she’d said, he was extremely dangerous…

  She straightened, determined to break the sensual spell that once again threatened to engulf and claim her. ‘So, how has your week been?’ she asked with brittle brightness.

  ‘Busy.’ Drakon put down his menu. ‘Yours?’

  She shrugged. ‘The same.’

  ‘There have been no more visits from your stepmother?’

  Gemini gave him a cool look. ‘I’m sure Max has duly reported that there haven’t.’

  Drakon’s mouth thinned. ‘Markos informed me that you were less than pleased at Max’s watchfulness.’

  ‘Did he?’ she mused. ‘Didn’t seem to make much difference to the outcome, did it?’

  Drakon sighed heavily. ‘Would you rather I had left you completely at the mercy of that woman’s vindictiveness?’

  ‘Once again, I would rather you had asked first,’ she said pointedly.

  He raised dark brows. ‘And if I had done so?’

  ‘I would have assured you that it wasn’t necessary.’ She waved an elegant hand. ‘You were the reason Angela went off the deep end in the first place, and with you out of the picture…’

  Drakon gave a humourless smile. ‘Unless it has escaped your notice, I have returned.’

  As if any woman could be unaware of the presence of Drakon Lyonedes! The man only had to enter a room in order to dominate it. A point that was ably demonstrated only seconds later, when Benito came to take their order and completely deferred to Drakon throughout the entire conversation.

  ‘What?’ he prompted when he saw Gemini frowning across the width of the table at him once they were alone again.

  She shook her head. ‘You totally ruined my usual couple of minutes of flirting outrageously with Benito when he comes to take my order.’

  Drakon’s brows rose. ‘You flirt with the waiter?’

  ‘I flirt outrageously,’ she corrected. ‘And Benito is the owner of the restaurant, not the waiter.’

  He glanced across to where the dark-haired, handsome young man was passing their order to a shorter, portly man to take to the kitchen, before resuming his place behind the desk at the entrance to the restaurant. ‘You come to this restaurant because you like to flirt with the owner?’ His gaze was hard and glittering when he turned it back to Gemini.

  ‘No, I come here because the food is excellent—and I like to flirt with the owner,’ Gemini added with a teasing smile.

  Drakon failed to see anything in the least amusing about her obvious attraction to Benito. ‘Your usual male companions must find that very…unflattering.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked.

  Drakon scowled. ‘The men you usually bring here on a date.’

  She sat back on the seat, her brows mockingly high. ‘I wasn’t aware this was a date.’

  It wasn’t. At least it hadn’t been Drakon’s intention that it should become one when he had decided he and Gemini must meet again this evening. And yet the two of them were sitting together in a cosy Italian restaurant. At a secluded table for two. With a lit candle in its centre. And an evening of possibilities stretching before them. Yes, it certainly had all of the ingredients of a date, he recognised heavily.

  He shrugged. ‘For the sake of appearances let us say that it is.’

  For the sake of Gemini’s sense of self-preservation she would rather say that it wasn’t! Admittedly she had been the one to instigate this evening’s meeting taking place at a restaurant rather than her apartment, as he had stipulated through his assistant.

  But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She had made her own arrangements for the evening because she had resented Drakon’s arrogance in issuing that instruction through a third party!

  Except she didn’t seem to have thought it through as thoroughly as she ought to have done. Hadn’t even considered that the two of them sitting here, talking and eating a meal together, would take on all the appearance of a date. Which was a bit late in the day when you considered she’d already allowed him to make love to her. Twice!

  ‘I do hope you intend to give poor Max a couple of hours off, at least, while we eat dinner?’ she said sweetly.

  Drakon instantly recognised her deliberate attempt to remind him exactly why she would never consider their having dinner together as being a date—his arrogant high-handedness in having her watched over by his security team.

  ‘Poor Max?’ he queried.

  She nodded once their first course had been delivered to the table and the waiter had departed. ‘I’m sure you pay him and the rest of your security team well, but even so it must still have been very boring for them to just sit outside my apartment for the past three days and nights.’

  Yes, Drakon had read Max’s daily reports with interest, noting that Gemini spent her days in her shop and her evenings and nights alone in her apartment. ‘You are correct. I do pay them very well,’ he said. ‘And I believe you very kindly offered Max some variation in your routine when you closed the shop yesterday afternoon.’

  She gave a mischievous grin. ‘He told you about that?’

  Even in reading Max’s e-mailed report Drakon had been able to pick up on the older man’s discomfort at having to follow Gemini into a large beauty salon, where she had proceeded to have her hair styled, then a manicure and a pedicure, before disappearing into a private room in order to have various parts of her delectable body waxed.

  ‘He may never recover from the experience,’ Drakon commented.

  Gemini had actually come to like and respect Max Stanford during the past few days—had even invited him into the shop a couple of times for coffee when she’d thought he might be in need of a drink. She just hadn’t been able to resist teasing him a little when it came to the usual relaxing way she spent her Thursday afternoons off. Besides which, she had been fully aware of the fact that, as with everything else she had done the past three days, he would report her movements to his employer.

  She eyed Drakon quizzically. ‘And not you?’

  He shrugged those broad shoulders. ‘My mother usually spends her Saturday afternoons in the same way, I believe.’

  His widowed mother, Gemini knew, had lived alone in Athens since the death of her husband ten years ago. In fact, she knew quite a lot more about Drakon now than she had three days ago; the internet was a marvelous although potentially dangerous thing, offering any amount of information on someone as famous as him.

  Such as the extent of his business interests around the world, as well as his extreme wealth. He owned homes in New York, London, Hong Kong, Toronto and Paris, as well as a private island in
the Greek Aegean—although how he ever found the time to live in most of those homes was a mystery to her when he obviously worked so hard adding to the Lyonedes millions.

  She also knew that he was thirty-six years old. And single. With not so much as a hint of an engagement in his past…

  She eyed him curiously now. ‘Are you and your mother close?’

  ‘Very,’ he said economically.

  ‘And you and Markos are close too?’

  ‘Like brothers,’ he confirmed.

  ‘I noticed that.’

  Drakon raised dark brows. ‘You find it strange that I not only feel affection for my family but also engender a return of that affection?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ she dismissed lightly. ‘Why would I? I’m sure you’re a very attentive son, and the closeness between you and Markos was all too obvious when I saw you together last week.’

  The slightly wistful note in Gemini’s voice reminded Drakon that her twin brother had died before she’d even had a chance to know him, and that with the death of both of her parents she now had no family of her own that she might call on for affection. Or protection.

  ‘Try your ravioli before it goes cold,’ she encouraged, as if she were aware of his thoughts and felt uncomfortable with them. ‘Benito’s father is the chef, and his spinach ravioli is to die for.’

  Drakon, guessing that she was deliberately changing the subject, forked up some of the ravioli and found it to be every bit as excellent as she said it was. ‘This is good.’ He nodded his approval, not having realised how hungry he was until he bit into the succulent food.

  ‘Would I lie to you?’ Gemini grinned her satisfaction at his obvious enjoyment.

  Drakon stilled, not quite sure how to answer that comment. Or if he should answer it at all. It had been his experience over the years that most women did indeed lie, and usually for the same reason.

  Initially to pique his interest, and afterwards to hold that interest.

  Gemini had been honest—brutally so on occasion—from the very beginning of their acquaintance. Something else that made her so different from any other woman he had ever known.

  In fact, the whole evening turned out to be something of a surprise to Drakon as they ate more delicious food prepared and cooked by Benito’s father. They discussed such far-ranging subjects as films they had both seen—in his own case privately, because he hated to go to noisy and overcrowded public cinemas—agreed the merits or otherwise of books they had both read, and discovered that they both had a love of opera.

  ‘When Daddy was alive he and I would attend the opera together once a month,’ Gemini told him wistfully.

  ‘But not your stepmother?’

  ‘The only thing Angela liked about the opera was being able to dress up and show off the latest piece of jewellery my father had bought her,’ Gemini said. ‘Luckily even that wore off after the first couple of times, so my father and I were able to go alone together after that. Our monthly visit to the opera was the one thing he flatly refused to give up, even though Angela was so demanding of his attention.’

  A stubbornness her father had no doubt paid a high price for, Drakon recognised with a frown, once again wondering what sort of woman Angela was that she had wanted to possess and own Miles to the exclusion of his only child. Certainly she was a woman he knew he wanted nothing more to do with than was absolutely necessary.

  ‘What is your favourite opera?’ he asked.

  ‘Any and all of them,’ Gemini answered without hesitation.

  Drakon nodded. ‘It’s something that you either love or hate, is it not? Markos and I were lucky enough to be introduced to that love at an early age by our parents. We were both a little wild during our teenage years, and my mother was determined to instil at least some measure of refinement into us before it was too late,’ he told her with a smile.

  Gemini somehow couldn’t imagine the controlled and haughty Drakon Lyonedes as ever being wild. She was surprised at how quickly and enjoyably the evening had passed, with Drakon proving to be an interesting as well as an entertaining dinner companion. To the extent, she now realised, that she had become so charmed by his company she had completely forgotten the reason they were having dinner together at all this evening!

  ‘So.’ She sat back with a smile as they lingered over their coffee. ‘Will you be letting Max off the hook now so that he can go back to his usual duties?’

  His long eyelashes lowered over suddenly guarded dark eyes. ‘We won’t complete on the purchase of Bartholomew House for another ten days.’

  Gemini gave a sudden pained frown at the reminder that his company was buying her family home with the intention of turning it into a hotel. Something she had certainly forgotten in the last enjoyable three hours or so.

  ‘So Max stays?’ she said stiffly.

  ‘For the time being, yes,’ Drakon confirmed.

  ‘It’s time I asked Benito for the bill.’ She smiled across at the owner of the restaurant. ‘And please don’t even suggest paying,’ she added warningly as she sensed he was about to do exactly that. ‘I prefer to pay my own way, thank you very much.’

  Drakon was annoyed at the realisation that by introducing the subject of his purchase of Bartholomew House he had succeeded in bringing about a return of her feelings of resentment towards him.

  Had that perhaps been his intention all along in order to keep her at a distance?

  Pleasant and enjoyable as this evening had undoubtedly been, it had also confirmed that Gemini was unlike any other woman Drakon had ever met. To the extent he had found himself completely relaxing in her company. He had even talked of his family and his work with her—something he had never done before with any woman. Admittedly she had been just as open with him, but nevertheless he still found the experience slightly disturbing in a way he could not entirely explain.

  The sooner this situation between Gemini and her stepmother was resolved, the sooner he could return to his own previously uncomplicated life!

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I ENJOYED this evening,’ Drakon admitted once he had parked his car beside the pavement outside Gemini’s shop and apartment, their journey from the restaurant having been made in complete, brooding silence.

  He sensed that she had once again deliberately erected barriers between them—which was what he had intended, was it not? But having achieved his objective, he now found himself wishing for a return of that previously animated Gemini…

  ‘Will you allow me to take you out to dinner tomorrow evening as my way of saying thank you for tonight?’ he asked gruffly.

  The streetlamp outside allowed him to see the frown between her brows as she turned to look at him.

  ‘Wouldn’t that rather defeat the whole object, when I took you out to dinner this evening as my way of saying thank you for dinner at your apartment last week?’ she said slowly. ‘We could go on saying thank you like this for ever!’

  For ever was not something Drakon had ever considered with any woman…

  Nevertheless, it was very necessary that Gemini spent tomorrow evening with him, at least. ‘I thought we could have an early dinner and then perhaps we might attend the opera together?’

  Pleasure instantly glowed in those beautiful sea-green eyes before the emotion was very firmly brought under her control and she gave him a chiding look. ‘That isn’t playing fair, Drakon!’

  After their conversation earlier it had never been his intention to play fair! It was important to his plans for this weekend that Gemini spend tomorrow evening in his company. If he had to use what she considered unfair means in order to achieve that end, then so be it.

  ‘So, what is your answer?’ he prompted tensely.

  ‘Isn’t it a little late to get tickets for tomorrow—? No, of course it isn’t,’ Gemini answered her own question as Drakon merely raised those mocking dark brows at her; of course he could obtain tickets for the opera—for tomorrow or any other evening!

  She knew it would be m
adness on her part to agree to spend another evening with Drakon—she enjoyed his company too much, found him far too dangerously attractive to be able to continue resisting the impulse she felt to simply lose herself in him.

  And yet…

  She hadn’t attended the opera since her father had died—had wondered if she would ever be able to do so again when it would hold such painful emotional memories for her. And yet the thought of going to the opera with Drakon, of sharing that enjoyment with him when their earlier conversation had revealed how much he also loved it, was simply too much of a temptation for Gemini to be able to resist.

  ‘I would love to go to the opera with you,’ she accepted huskily.

  ‘Good.’ Drakon nodded his satisfaction with her answer. ‘Is six o’clock too early for me to call and collect you so that we might enjoy an early supper together first?’

  Saturdays were always Gemini’s busiest day of the week, but she didn’t have a wedding or a party to provide floral arrangements for tomorrow, and no doubt Jo would be happy to shut up shop just this once, while her employer went upstairs to get ready for her evening out.

  ‘Six o’clock sounds perfect,’ Gemini said, happiness bubbling up inside her at how much she was already looking forward to seeing him again tomorrow.

  Only because he was taking her to the opera, she told herself firmly. It had absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that she had enjoyed his company so much this evening she felt a slightly hollow feeling inside at the thought of parting from him.

  And if she really thought she could fool herself, then she was being totally delusional!

  Not only had she been completely physically aware of Drakon all evening, but she had enjoyed his company and conversation in a way she never had with any other man. He was intelligent and well read, as well as lazily charming when he wished to be, and she had found it heart-warming when he’d talked so affectionately of his family.

  All of which meant Gemini was now seriously in danger of falling even deeper under his spell.

  Who was she kidding? If she became any more deeply attracted to him she was likely to go up in flames at his slightest touch!