Mia’s Scandal (2 page)
The engine hissed; the silver bonnet shuddered—silence returned like a numbing blow to the head. Pushing back into his seat, Nikos stared out at her with his heart pounding like a hammer and his fingers still clamped to the
wheel. He had not believed he was going to stop in time. He wasn’t even sure that he
had.
He continued to sit in a state of near-total shutdown, waiting for her to give him a clue by making some kind of movement—by stepping back to show he hadn’t hit her or to drop down to the ground in a smashed heap!
Theos,
she’s beautiful, his stupefied brain fed to him, then compounded the observation by feeding a rush of hot blood down his front. It gathered in his loins like a neat shot of testosterone. Reacting to it with an explosive force of anger he thrust open the car door and threw himself out.
‘What the hell do you think you are playing at!’ he raked out in full blistering fury. ‘Do you have a death wish or something? Why the hell didn’t you move out of my way—?’
It took every bit of Mia’s numbed strength just to breathe in and out. Her eyelashes finally gave a flutter of life and she managed to raise her eyes up from the car to focus on him instead. It came as a second shock to find she was staring at the most beautiful man she had ever seen in her life.
And he was striding towards her like a gladiator going to war. Only this gladiator had a black overcoat hanging from his impressive wide shoulders and wore a frighteningly elegant steel
grey three-piece suit beneath. His shirt was white, his tie a silky slither of smoke down his front.
Reaching the corner of the car he stopped to rake a downward glance at how close he had come to her fragile legs. Fire lit his eyes just before he reached out, clamped his hands around her waist and bodily plucked her off the ground. He was so intent on what he was doing he didn’t seem to hear her sharp gasp of shock, or the heavy thud as her suitcase dropped from her taut fingers and hit the ground. The next thing Mia knew she was up close and staring directly into a pair of deep dark polished-mahogany eyes beneath startlingly straight thick eyebrows as black as the hair on his head.
‘You stupid fool,’ he roughed out, skin the same rich gold tones as ripening olives stripped so pale it accentuated his strong jaw set as hard as a clenched fist. ‘Say something, for God’s sake. Are you all right?’
Like a plastic doll jerked by hidden strings, Mia gave a shaky nod of her head. ‘You—you almost killed me,’ she whispered.
‘I
avoided
trying to kill you,’ he corrected. ‘You should be thanking me for my fast reactions and skill.’
‘You think it is skilful to drive like a lunatic,
signor?’
‘You think it is clever to stand stockstill in the middle of a private driveway while a car hurtles towards you,
signorina
?
’
he shot right back.
As if only just realising he had hold of her, he muttered something, then twisted around before dumping her back on solid ground away from the lethal bumper of his car. The sheer unexpectedness of the whole shocking incident jolted Mia’s paralysed reflexes into action by forcing her to make a grab at his arms to steady herself when she almost toppled off the high heels of her boots. He braced his arms. Mia stared down at the amount of solid muscle and mighty male strength her fingers were clutching at and snatched them away again.
Feeling her legs go strangely hollow she turned away from him, saw her suitcase lying like a battered victim on the ground a few feet away from them and went to straighten it up.
Pushing his hands into the pockets in his overcoat, Nikos watched her stoop to catch hold of the handle in her trembling fingers and could not stop his eyes from surveying the attractive shape of her derrière moulded to the fabric of her skirt.
Nice, he thought, then frowned darkly as another rush of heat shot down his front. Spinning away, Nikos took a frowning glance at his wristwatch. He was late, he saw. He had a plane
to catch. He had just come away from one of the worst situations he had ever had to deal with, and he was standing around here admiring the rear view of the woman he’d almost just flattened into the ground with his car!
A sound of self-disgust escaped him. ‘Try walking down the side of the drive from here,’ he said loftily, then strode back the length of his car. ‘And just for the record,’ he added as he opened the door. ‘If you’re the new housekeeper they’re all anxiously awaiting at the house, I think I should warn you you’ve gone over the top with the get-up.’
Straightening up from dusting off her suitcase, Mia blinked. Housekeeper…Get-up…Over the top…? She needed time to translate what he’d said so it would make some sense to her.
Then it did make sense. He thought she had come here to Balfour Manor dressed like this to take up the position of housekeeper.
Hurt gathered like a tight ball in her stomach. In all her life she had never felt hit so hard or so low. With the chilling cast of wounded dignity freezing her composure, she turned and walked herself and her suitcase around the bonnet of his fancy
over-the-top
supercar without bothering to offer him a single glance.
Housekeeper…Mia pushed out a strained
bitter laugh. She’d learnt to speak English while
housekeeping
for an ancient English professor who’d owned a villa not far from her home. He had paid her to keep his house clean and cook for him, and he had let her use his library and his computer so long as she typed up the pages of his endlessly long and boring tome. The English language course had been thrown in free of charge. Then she would walk the two kilometres back home and work on her school studies before spending the evening assisting Tia Giulia with the sewing she took in to help subsidise the meagre income
Tia
made growing cut flowers to sell in the nearest market town.
She usually wore sensible flat shoes and faded old jeans or one of the couple of dresses she had for the hot Tuscan summers. For the first time in her life she was wearing something new, not handmade out of a cheap bit of fabric she’d bought from a market stall. And that horrid man in his elegant silver car and his elegant silver suit and his elegant grooming which put him right at home here on the Balfour estate shattered her hard-worked-for self-confidence with just a few words.
Nikos narrowed his eyes as he watched her walk off down the driveway—hogging the middle of it like a defiance aimed exclusively at him. His lips gave a wry twitch. Instead of
getting in his car and driving off, he stood and watched her for a few more seconds, drawn to do so by the graceful movement of her long curving figure, and her spark of spirit and the lingering echo of her throaty accent—Italian by the fire in it, he mused.
And young, he tagged on.
As in too young to be anyone’s housekeeper?
The first seeds of doubt began to scratch at his conscience. Had he got it wrong and just insulted one of Oscar’s daughter’s friends?
Then it hit him what he was doing, and his frown came back as he climbed into his car and drove off down the drive. Whoever she was, he hoped she knew what she was walking into at Balfour Manor or she was in for one hell of a shock when she arrived.
Mia was already in shock because she’d just caught her first glimpse of Balfour Manor.
Nothing she’d read or seen on the Internet had prepared her for the sheer beauty of what she was looking at. Nestling in its own shallow valley, the stone-built house was at least ten times bigger than she had envisioned it to be, with row upon row of long casement windows glinting in the pale sunlight.
Trepidation began to fizz through the fine layers of her skin as she followed the driveway
down into the valley and around the side of a pretty lake sheened like frosted glass. The closer she came to the house, the more intimidated she felt by it. It was huge. A grand stately home with tall palladium columns supporting a circular-shaped entrance, which dwarfed her courage along with her height as she walked between them and set her suitcase aside by a wall by the door.
Well, it was now or never, she told herself, and felt real trepidation clutch at her chest as she stepped in front of the heavy oak door.
Was she really certain she wanted to do this?
No, she wasn’t any longer, but to turn away now, she knew she would regret it for the rest of her life because she would never find the courage to do this a second time.
On that stark piece of counselling, Mia reached out and gripped the old-fashioned bell pull and gave it a wary tug, her fingers lowering to her side again where they curled into her palms as she waited for someone to answer the door.
Nothing in her entire life had ever felt as frightening as this did.
Nothing had ever been as important to her as this.
Tense, trembling, eyes wide and wary as she watched the door start to open, the very last
person she expected to see appear in its aperture was Oscar Balfour himself.
Taller and so much more dauntingly striking than she had envisaged him with his snowwhite hair and neat goatee beard. When he frowned down he looked so terribly grim and austere she almost turned and ran. If he asked her if she was the new housekeeper she would run—she would, she decided.
But he didn’t say it. He said, ‘Hello, young lady,’ and offered her a smile.
It was a nice smile, a kind smile which reached deep into the blue of his eyes.
Eyes the same colour blue as her own.
Eyes to which Mia clung.
‘Bon
…
bon giorno, s-signor…’
Too nervous to stop herself from greeting him in Italian, she gulped and switched to stammering English. ‘I don’t know if y-you know about m-me but my name is Mia Bianchi? I have been told that you are my father…’
F
OR
the first time in three long hard-travelled months, Nikos Theakis strode in through the doors belonging to his London offices and instantly claimed the full attention of every person present in the slick modern granite-and-glass foyer.
Tall and dark, blessed with the kind of lean, hard, powerful body of a peak trained athlete, the air around him positively vibrated with excess energy as he moved, bringing forth a flurry of, ‘Good morning, Nikos,’ that sounded breathless and charged.
That he had the same effect everywhere he went said a lot about the man’s personality. He was sharp, smooth, determined and driven. Working for him was like catching a ride on a rocket ship to the stars. Exciting, breathtaking, teeth-chatteringly scary sometimes because he took major risks others shied right away from.
He was committed and focused and famously never, ever wrong.
Today he was frowning, the two straight black bars of his eyebrows drawn together across the bridge of his arrogantly straight nose. The lean golden cut of his classical Greek features locked in concentration on the conversation he was involved in via his mobile telephone. His acknowledgement to the greetings therefore consisted of a series of distracted nods of his glossy dark head as his long stride took him across the foyer and into one of the waiting lifts.
‘In the name of
Theos,
Oscar,’ he swore softly, ‘What kind of game are you trying to set me up with here?’
‘No game,’ Oscar Balfour insisted. ‘I’ve thought this through carefully, now I am asking you for your support.’
‘Asking?’
Nikos pounced on the word with lethal satire.
‘Unless you’re too big and important now to help out an old friend…’
Stabbing a long finger at the top-floor button, Nikos shrugged back the brilliant white shirt cuff so he could check the time on his wafer-thin multifunction platinum watch, then bit back the desire to curse. He had been back in the country for less than an hour after spending weeks flying around the world like a damn
satellite, putting together a rescue package for a crisis-embattled multiconglomerate which did not deserve to go under because its international investors had turned chicken and pulled the plug on their loans. He was tired, hungry and seriously jet-lagged but upstairs in his boardroom awaited a group of anxious people desperate to hear the final results of his toils.
‘Stop trying to pull my strings,’ he flicked out impatiently.
‘I’m flattered that you think I still can,’ Oscar drawled.
‘And stick to the point,’ he added, well aware that Oscar was the ruthless, cunning cut-throat king of manipulation so using that kind of invert flattery on him was wasted. ‘Instead, tell me what in hell’s name you expect me to do with one of your spoiled-to-death daughters?’
‘Not bed her anyway.’
About to stride out of the lift into the hushed luxury of the top-floor corridor, that short cool evenly delivered statement froze Nikos to the spot for a second, the acid-bite affront hoisting up his proud dark head.
‘That was not even remotely funny,’ he denounced with icy cold dignity. ‘I have never rested so much as a suggestive finger on any one of your daughters. It would be—’
‘Disrespectful to me—?’
‘Yes!’ Nikos incised, for no one knew better than Nikos himself how much he owed to Oscar for turning him into the person he was today. Maintaining a respectful distance between himself and Oscar’s beautiful daughters was a simple matter of paying honour to that debt.
‘Thank you,’ Oscar murmured.
‘I don’t want your thanks,’ Nikos dismissed, and started moving again, covering the length of the corridor with the elegant grace of his long restless stride. ‘And neither do I want one of your decorative daughters cluttering up my offices pretending to be a proficient PA just to please you,’ he tagged on. ‘Why this sudden decision to put them to work anyway?’ he asked curiously as he pushed open the door to his own suite of offices.
His secretary, Fiona, glanced up from her computer screen and beamed him a welcome-back smile. Indicating to his mobile, Nikos gave a series of instructions via a long-fingered hand which the experienced Fiona showed she understood with a nod of her curly blonde head, leaving him free to shut himself inside his own office knowing the group of people waiting for him in the boardroom would be informed of his delay.
It was only as he shut the door behind him that he picked up the silence hanging heavy on the phone. It made him frown again because
Oscar Balfour possessed a brain which functioned at the speed of light so silences of any nature were unusual enough to cause Nikos a pang of concern.
‘Are you all right, Oscar?’ he questioned cautiously.
The older man released a sigh, ‘Actually, I feel like hell,’ he admitted. ‘I have started to wonder what the past thirty years of my life have been about.’
Picturing this big tough larger-than-life investment tycoon with his snowwhite hair and neat goatee beard and the pride of his long aristocratic heritage stamped onto every facet of him—
‘You’re missing Lillian,’ Nikos murmured.
‘Every minute of every hour of every day,’ Oscar confirmed. ‘I go to sleep thinking about her and spend the night dreaming about her, and I wake up in the morning searching for her warm body next to mine in the bed.’
‘I’m—sorry.’ It was a grossly inadequate response to offer, Nikos knew that, for Oscar Balfour was still grieving the recent loss of his wife. ‘It’s been a tough time for all of you…’
‘With one death and two raging scandals following hard on the back of a world financial crisis which threatened to turn us all into beggars?’ Oscar let out a dry laugh.
‘Tough
doesn’t cover it.’
Since Lillian Balfour’s swift and untimely death three months ago, the great Balfour name had been rocked by scandal after scandal. From the moment Oscar took it upon himself to announce that he had a twenty-year-old daughter no one previously knew about, anyone with an axe to grind on a Balfour had come creeping out of the woodwork to air any grievance they might have. In short, Nikos mused, for the past few months the Balfours had been featuring in their very own no-holds-barred fly-on-the-wall documentary. It might not have been by consent but it had been scandalously spicy.
‘You survived the crisis pretty well intact,’ Nikos went for a positive note.
‘So I did,’ agreed Oscar. ‘As you did.’
About to walk to his desk, Nikos found himself diverting across the room to go and stand in front of the large framed photograph of his home city he had mounted on the wall. If he narrowed his eyes he could just make out the murky dark spot down in the bottom corner, which represented the slum area of Athens where he’d spent the first twenty years of his life living by his wits from hand to mouth.
A nerve twitched along his hard jaw line, the rich colour of his eyes shadowing with his thoughts. Being street poor was as good an incentive he could come up with for working
like a dog to ensure he would never be poor again, he pondered bleakly. And without the good fortune of an accidental meeting with Oscar, he would probably still be down there, living that same hand-to-mouth existence—with the odd spell in prison thrown in for good measure, he tagged on with a stark honesty that made him grimace.
This one man, this brilliant and shrewd, cunning-as-a-wily-fox Englishman had seen something in the arrogant young fool he had been back then, gone with his instincts and given him the chance to pull himself free of that life.
Made suddenly aware of the fine silk expense of his Italian suiting and his handmade shirt and shoes, Nikos turned to walk over to the plate of glass which gave his spacious top-floor office its famous London city views. He owned several other office buildings just like this one in the major capitals, along with the homes to complement his high-status lifestyle. He had the private yacht, the private plane, the personal investment portfolio to rival any out there…
The poor boy done good,
Nikos quoted silently from a recent article an Athens newspaper had written about him.
Shame, he thought, about the scars he kept so deeply hidden inside even Oscar knew nothing about them.
‘However, my daughters did not have a clue that there even was a world banking crisis,’ Oscar’s voice arrived in his ear once again. ‘You’re right, Nikos, I’ve spoiled them. I indulged their pampered princess lifestyles to a point of parental abandonment, and now I’m reaping the rewards for my neglect. I intend to put that right.’
‘By cutting them off from your money and sending them out into the big bad world to sink or swim on their own—?’ Despite the gravity in the conversation Nikos released a dry laugh. ‘Trust me, Oscar, that’s overkill.’
‘Are you questioning my judgement?’
Yes, Nikos thought. ‘No,’ he deferred to the deep respect he held for this man, ‘of course not.’
‘Good,’ Oscar said. ‘Because I want you to take Mia under your wing and teach her everything she needs to know to survive as a Balfour.’
‘Mia—?’ Nikos repeated, needing a moment to connect with the unfamiliar name. ‘Is she the—’ He bit his teeth together, but too late.
‘Is Mia—
what
?’ Oscar demanded.
‘The—new one,’ Nikos described with what he thought was credible diplomacy considering the sensational way she had been outed as a Balfour.
‘You can use the term illegitimate without of
fending me, Nikos,’ drawled Oscar. ‘Though I cannot be certain that Mia will feel the same way. She’s—different than my other daughters…To put it bluntly,’ Oscar sighed out, ‘Mia just is not coping well as a Balfour. I think living in London and working alongside you will be good for her—teach her some self-confidence and toughen her up.’
‘No way, my friend,’ Nikos refused coolly.
‘You can escort her to a few functions,’ Oscar continued as if Nikos had not spoken. ‘Show her how to play the social scene.’
‘If she isn’t coping within the safety of Balfour Manor, then what you’re suggesting is the same thing as throwing her to the wolves,’ Nikos pointed out. ‘Take my advice and send her to one of the many matronly widows you know in London and let them teach her how to cope as a Balfour. I am a lone wolf, Oscar,’ Nikos stressed. ‘I always work alone and I
eat
the vulnerable.’
Another short silence sang down the phone line, only this one did not carry the heavy weight of grief like the last one had done. This one carried the stark chilling coldness of Oscar’s sudden change of mood.
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘we had already established that you don’t
eat
my daughters.’
‘I was not referring to—’
‘Don’t make me remind you that you owe me this, Nikos,’ Oscar interrupted. ‘Now I’m calling in the debt.’
Recognising the outright challenge which effectively pinned him to the floor with lead weights, Nikos tried for a last-ditch appeal. ‘Oscar…’
‘Are you going to refuse to do this favour for me?’ Oscar cut in.
‘No,’ Nikos sighed out in heavy surrender. ‘Of course I’m not refusing you.’
As Oscar had pointed out, he owed him—big time.
‘Good. Then it’s settled.’ Oscar sounded warm again. ‘And I thought that since you don’t like live-in staff invading your private space, she could use the staff apartment attached to your London penthouse.’
Like a cornered animal Nikos thundered out, ‘You mean you want me to
babysit
her as well as give her a job?’
‘She will be with you tomorrow—be nice.’
Be nice, Nikos mocked as he tossed his mobile phone down on the top of his desk with more violence than the essential piece of equipment deserved, then turned to sink his lean hips onto the desk’s polished edge.
In the act of honouring a moral debt he owed to Oscar, he had just agreed to compromise his
own business values. A growl of bubbling frustration vibrated against his chest at the same moment a knock at his door heralded Fiona’s appearance as she stepped into the room.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she murmured quickly, seeing the glowering frown pushing his flat black eyebrows together. ‘But one of the Miss Balfours is down in reception asking to see you…She mentioned something about needing a spare set of keys to your apartment—?’
Nikos froze, as for the first time in his adult life he felt the rising tide of a hot blush try to destroy his legendary cool. What Fiona was really saying was that Oscar’s new, shy, not-coping-very-well cuckoo had just strolled into his reception and made an announcement which effectively placed them in an intimate relationship!
She was not even supposed to arrive here until tomorrow. He had not even met her yet! Now the foolish woman had just set this whole damn building alive with hot and spicy speculation about the two of them!
Miss damn Balfour wasn’t just foolish, she was outright dangerous!
Nikos leapt upright. To hell with being
nice,
he thought furiously as he strode right past the very curious Fiona and back down the corridor. In his experience you were not
nice
to a danger
ous substance. What you did was treat it with cold hard respect while you carefully disposed of it.
Mia was standing by the reception desk already locked tautly into regret for blurting out what she had said in the
way
she had said it, when she saw the doors to one of the lifts slide open and a tall, dark, screamingly familiar man stride out.
Surprise closed her brain down for a second. She actually trembled on a moment of pure skin-tingling shock. His height, his colouring, his long hard body locked inside a crushingly elegant designer-cut business suit—it was the man who had almost run her over on the driveway of Balfour Manor on the day she had first arrived. Even the way he was coming towards her like a man on the war path screamed shocked recognition at her and filled her with the cowardly urge to start backing off.
‘Oh,
Dio,’
she was unable to stop herself from gasping when he came to a stop an arm’s length from her. ‘It’s you.’
His sentiments exactly, Nikos thought grimly. For he was suffering from the same stark shattering shock of recognition he could see written on her face, though he possessed the self-control to keep his shock under wraps.
Still, he did not seem able to prevent his eyes from making a thorough sweep of her tumbling-loose glossy-black hair and her simple white T-shirt with a short pale blue skirt. And she was wearing flat shoes, he noticed without wanting to. A pair of soft gold leather pumps which reduced her in height but did nothing to spoil the length of her fabulously long golden legs.