CHAPTER 3

           With an inner shudder of distaste, Lara stepped out of the elevator, outraged by the direction of her thoughts. She had come here without allowing herself to think of what she had to face at journey’s end but the eerie familiarity of her surroundings was like a razor twisting inside her.

          Three years ago, Lara had stalked along this corridor in a rage to confront Christophe Moreau. And even this length of time after the event it was quite impossible for her to explain how she had very nearly ended up in his bed.

          The two of them... like animals… Her clothing half off, his hands on her body, her hands on his… Obscene, she reflected with a stab of revulsion. And had it not been for the noisy entrance of the chambermaid into the lounge next door to the bedroom, that disgusting incident might’ve gone considerably further than it had.

          Youth had given her an edge… Youth often knew no fear. That had been her strength at the beginning. She really hadn’t realized what she was up against. Christophe, a merciless, arrogant man. The usual businessman/shark… Superbly clever, insidiously calculating, and terrifyingly dangerous.

          Fear might’ve protected her, but Lara hadn’t learned to fear him until it was far too late. But she was scared now, scared enough to please even the most merciless sadist. Not scared for herself... but for her father. Lara came to a halt in front of the door and briefly closed her eyes.

“Crawl,” she whispered to herself. “That’s what he wants. And if he gets what he wants, maybe destroying Dad would seem less appealing.”

          Lara knocked and braced herself. It was opened almost immediately by a young man.

“Come in, Miss Miller,” he said gravely.

          The lounge of the suite was unchanged. Her fluttering gaze fell on a white sofa…

          ‘It started there,’ she thought and felt her skin burning.

          She heard Christophe say something in Greek. Being the product of a marriage between a French and a Greek, Christophe was equally at home in either language. His voice was pretty harsh, whatever he was saying.

          Her spine stiffened. He strolled into view and the door slid softly shut behind her. Lara couldn’t take her eyes off him. He repelled her. Every earthy, oversexed inch of him absolutely repelled her and there was a certain deadly attraction to that amount of revulsion…

          Christophe moved with the grace of a prowling tiger. He had the face of a dark fallen angel and the stunning magnetism of a very physical male. She studied the dark planes of his impassive features, the clear golden eyes set beneath winged black eyebrows and the savagely high cheekbones which lent such fierce strength to his face. Her gaze glossed over the stubborn jut of a decidedly Greek nose and the wide perfection of his narrow mouth before hurriedly falling away.

“I bet he’s a voracious lover,” her mother said throatily the first time she met him. “He has an incredible sexual charge. I could feel it fifty feet away... Any woman with hot blood in her veins would. Not you… I think you’re just broken. There’s ice in your veins.”

          Lara shivered. Because of Christophe’s coldness, the hot blood in her veins was chilling fast. Although he betrayed nothing visually, she could feel that. And for some reason, she couldn’t understand that made her feel physically cold and threatened. The silence was drowning her being so, she talked.

“Why did you invite me here?”

“Take off your coat.”

          Her tongue crept out and moistened her dry lower lip.

“I’m not staying…”

“Go, then,” he replied with a dismissive flick of one lean hand. “You’re just wasting my time.”

          Lara’s teeth clenched. She undid her sash, dropped the coat off her shoulders, and cast it aside.

“I asked you why you invited me here.”

“I wanted to look at you.”

          Burnished golden eyes skimmed over her slender figure, resting on the surprisingly full thrust of her breasts above her tiny waist and sliding with insulting cool down over the feminine swell of her hips.

          She had never been at ease with her own body. Her voluptuous curves and her shiny blonde hair drew male eyes like beacons. Both attracted the wrong kind of male attention. She looked like her mother and she despised that awareness.

          If she hadn’t possessed a distressingly opulent shape and unnaturally bright hair which ironically was entirely natural, Lara would never have caught Christophe’s attention three years ago.

          Her eyes glittered like brilliant sapphires as she withstood his inspection with her chin as high as she could hold it.

“Would you like a drink?” he drawled.

“No, thank you.”

          He poured himself a glass of champagne.

“I hate to celebrate alone but I understand that you’re afraid of touching alcohol around me. I’m surprised you’re still that naive,” Christophe remarked softly.

“What are you celebrating?”

          She ignored the dig about alcohol, drawing on every scrap of icy dignity she possessed.

“You’re a widow, chérie,” he delivered with smooth emphasis.

          Lara was shattered by his frankness, brutally reminded that Christophe had no inhibitions and, similarly, little respect for ordinary standards of decent behavior.

“My father…”

          Christophe straightened to his full six feet three inches and shifted a silencing hand, dark golden eyes gleaming over her pallor.

“He stole from me and his employees. We know that. Do we really need to discuss it?”

“Do you have to be so coldhearted?” Lara demanded, abruptly unfreezing from the spot to move forward in unconscious appeal. “He made a huge error of judgment…”

“The prisons are full of people who make huge errors,” he incised, his nostrils flaring. “Theft… Such a sordid crime and yet so personal…”

“P-personal?”

          Involuntarily, Lara stammered.

“It was for your sake alone that I bought ‘Miller Engineering’ at an inflated price. What you might call a gesture of good faith towards your family… Good faith?”

          A choked laugh fell from her lips as she studied him with unhidden loathing and disbelief.

“You don’t know what good faith is. It was blackmail. You tried to put pressure on me by playing on my family’s financial position…”

“I was demonstrating that I look after my own,” Christophe cut in with ruthless precision.

“Your own?” she repeated with revulsion. “I was never yours!”

          A winged ebony eyebrow was elevated.

“Chérie, you were mine the first moment our eyes met but you were too stupid and weak to face that reality…”

“How dare you!”

“No! How dare you enter this room where you lay with me and try to deny what happened here between us?” Christophe demanded with blistering contempt.

          Lara wanted to hit him. She wanted to scream back from the depths of her humiliation. But she wouldn’t allow herself to be drawn.

“My father…” she said very deliberately.

“Was the most sheltered employee I have ever had,” he interrupted. “I allowed him complete autonomy over a company which was no longer his and in return, I expected loyalty, not common theft.”

“He can sell his house and pay back every penny!”  Lara said furiously. “Isn’t that enough for you?”

“Your family home carries two mortgages. Why do you think he stole?” Christophe returned drily. “I’m done with this argument.”

“He’s desperately ashamed of himself.”

          She hadn’t known that the house was mortgaged. She concealed her dismay with difficulty.

“Enough with this subject. It’s boring.” Christophe said and sent her a grim glance. “I have no interest in your father except as a means to an end. You can’t influence my judgment with sentimental pleas. There is no sentiment in business.”

“So, you simply brought me here to gloat?” Lara gathered with flashing eyes and a look of glowing scorn. “You make me sick, Christophe. I will stand by my father through whatever you throw at him…”

“You like weak men, don’t you?” he said silkily. “Men who need mothering and support, men who make you feel that you’re the one in the driver’s seat. Maybe if I’d wept and plucked violin strings instead of demanded, you would’ve come to me instead...”

“Don’t be gross.”

          Lara was trembling with a rage that was becoming increasingly hard to control.

“I would never have come to you. I hated you for your primitive way of looking at a woman…”

“I’m not primitive.”

          The insertion was immensely quiet but the temperature had shot up.

“I have Greek blood.”

          For a split second, Lara was tempted to laugh. Such unconcealed pride and arrogance dwelt in that assurance! But then she clashed with golden eyes that burned with the ferocity of a tiger about to pounce and all desire to laugh was stolen from her.

          Instantly the alarm bells rang in a frantic peal inside her head. That ferocious, utterly terrifying temper... She found herself instinctively glancing around to measure the distance to the door.

“And you’re not my equal, Lara. You proved that three years ago!” he shot at her. “Most conclusively did you prove your stupidity…”

          Her small hands clenched into fists.

“If you call me stupid just one more time, Christophe, I won’t be responsible for what I do!”

“Spare me the dramatics,” he murmured with a brilliant, slashing smile. “If I push a little more, will you rip off my shirt and beg me to take you the way you did the last time?”

“How can you talk to me like that?”

“Easily,” he said and spread two very expressive hands. “I have no respect for you. What did you expect?”

          The rage was beginning to gain on her self-control. Lara was having a very tough time holding it in.

“You behaved like a whore…”

“You, bastard!” she positively spat at him, powered by a tremendous wave of aggression.

“You were true neither to me nor to Anderson,” Christophe drawled with caustic bite. “He offered marriage. I offered something less secure. You went for the wedding ring. And you lost.”

“I married the man I loved... I didn’t lose anything!” Lara slung back hotly, her adrenalin pumping madly through her veins.

          He threw his darkly handsome head back and laughed uproariously.

“Are you telling me that you didn’t think of me in the dark of the night? That you didn’t crave the passion I alone could give you? If you’d responded to him the way you responded to me, he’d have run away from you in terror!”

          Lara launched herself at him like a lioness. Two incredibly powerful hands snapped around her wrists and held her back. An insolent smile curved his hard mouth.

“You dress like a fifty-year-old maiden but you’re a little animal at heart, aren’t you, chérie? I scratch the surface of that lady-like exterior and I find teeth and claws. I like that. It excites me…”

“You filthy pig... Shut up!” Lara screamed.

“And it excites the hell out of you too!”

          Long fingers hauled her closer as she attempted to kick him. He caught both flailing hands in one large male hand and pinned them behind her back, forcing her closer, staring with sardonic amusement down into her blazing blue eyes and pressing a long muscular thigh against her stomach as she twisted and tried to apply a well-aimed knee.

“All that howling sexual frustration just begging to be released. I could take you now! Here... Up against the wall, on the floor, anywhere and you’d love it!” Christophe asserted with rawly offensive confidence. “Is that what you want?”