Chapter One #2
Stowing away on his private jet had been a bonkers idea from the start but the potentially scary part—in which she’d imagined she would be caught before she boarded and thrown in jail—had gone surprisingly smoothly.
Which didn’t say a lot for aviation security, but she would lament that observation another day.
The second, scarier part was still ahead of her so she needed to stay calm for a little bit longer.
She dropped her forehead onto her knees, practising the yoga breath-control she’d striven to master through turbulent years when the slightest misstep could set tempers flaring. Banishing her to the dark.
Thankfully, those years were behind her. She just needed to do this one last thing for Agnes Adamis—her ‘surrogate mother’—the woman who’d opened her heart and arms to Vayle when she’d needed it most.
Bonkers or not, it was the very least she could do.
Agnes could’ve returned to Greece after her husband Tolis’s death, as she’d strongly hinted at doing, but she’d stayed with Vayle and helped her through her own complicated grief after she’d lost the father with whom she’d had a fraught relationship.
Even Agnes’s confession immediately after the meeting that Nelios’s treatment of them was her fault—that their past history had led to this—hadn’t dissuaded Vayle from pushing back against this billionaire’s bullying tactics.
Hell, it’d only spurred her on. She knew a thing or two about bullies—her father had been one, hiding behind illness to make everyone’s life an absolute misery.
Whatever Nelios Petralis was hiding behind to treat Vayle and the woman she held dear like this—the woman who, shockingly, also happened to be his mother—she would hold him to account, if it was the last thing she did.
Purpose reasserted, she eyed the timer. Many more hours yet.
It wouldn’t hurt to close her eyes, stay calm and just breathe. Breathe. Breathe…
She wasn’t sure what woke her but the sound was far too close. Adrenaline roared through her system, making her jerk and… Argh!
‘Oh…oh crap! Oh God!’ The deadly cramp gripped her hamstring like vicious teeth sinking into her flesh and had her crying out a second time.
She scrambled out of the wardrobe on her hands and one knee while desperately trying to straighten her other leg and flex her foot to ease the wildly spasming muscle. It didn’t budge. Hell, it got worse…
‘Ah, there you are. I was wondering how long you intended to nap.’
Vayle froze, her stunned gaze falling on a set of feet. Bare masculine feet. Dry mouthed, her eyes moved up, inch by inch to bare, thick hair-roughened calves…bare knees…
Oh my God.
She should’ve averted her gaze then, and stopped this comedy of errors dead in its tracks, but no. Her stupefied gaze kept climbing. Climbing…
The tiniest layer of tension punched out when, thankfully, her gaze met the edge of a pristine white towel. But that dissipated quickly as another savage spasm ripped through her leg. She dropped and rolled over at his feet, her hands scrambling to grip her muscle.
‘What is wrong with you?’ the dark, unfortunately familiar voice bit out.
She winced. ‘Cramp. Help, please!’ Vayle couldn’t believe the tears that sprang to her eyes. She never, ever cried, no matter what. So what was this? Maybe she was more sleep-deprived than she’d thought.
No; going without sleep was another talent she could claim to possess.
She’d always needed to keep one eye open in case George Lancaster—the vicious half-man, all monster, who’d biologically fathered her, and the man with a temperament trickier than mercury—had decided to torment her while she was asleep and unguarded.
She’d learnt to withhold her tears and her protests, her silent defiance and lack of engagement eventually outlasting his sometimes hours-long rants.
She’d been through some of the worst emotional torture a human being could withstand without shedding a single tear, and yet here she was, crying over a cramp.
Teeth gritted, she dropped onto the plush carpet, noting that he hadn’t moved a single muscle to help her. Bastard. Lying on her back, she lifted her leg and tried to massage the spasm out of her calf but the more she tried, the worse it seemed to get.
‘Are you serious right now?’ The words were muttered incredulously.
Her eyes opened, helplessly drawn back to him, and she was granted an even more disturbing sight.
Nelios Petralis’s entire body, clad in just a towel. His wet, damp hair fell over his face as he glowered at her. His unshaven jaw clamped tight. And his far too sensual lips were thin with disapproval.
Even upside down he was beyond spectacular, virile in a way that left zero doubt as to his rampant maleness, his dominance at the top of the food chain.
She rolled onto her side, as if that would dissipate both his overwhelming presence and the tearing ache in her flesh. Neither happened. Another cry tore past her guard and Vayle wanted to disappear. To find the strength to get up and fling herself out of the nearest opening.
Because this was mortifying… And agonising. And possibly her own fault for not hydrating enough. But she’d been too nervous to eat, never mind drink, once she’d made up her mind about her contingency plan for tackling Nelios Petralis.
‘I’ll do whatever I can to get his attention,’ she’d said to Agnes.
‘Even stow away on his plane if I must. Actually, that might be the only option. He’s building his latest hotel in Buenos Aires and he’s flying there tonight.
I’ll have several hours of his undivided attention to make him see sense. ’
Agnes’s tear-filled argument against Vayle’s wild plan had nearly dissuaded her.
But the other woman’s clear anguish when she’d insisted that she deserved everything Nelios Petralis—her own son—was doing to her had filled Vayle with a deeper purpose.
Intensely hot billionaire, with a body carved like the best of Greek gods or not, Vayle would not let him get away with this.
So here she was, sprawled on her back, contemplating her choices and writhing in agony while… Her breath punched out of her when a strong pair of hands gripped her flailing leg.
‘Stay still.’ The instruction was cold and terse, the very opposite of the warmth that bracketed her when he planted her bare foot against his abs.
She froze, less in line with his command and more in reaction to the sensation of the searing skin-to-skin contact.
Captive, she watched as, with two fingers, he dug into her calf muscle, right at the epicentre of her agony.
Vayle gasped as her muscles spasmed in opposition…
for several seconds…then gave way beneath the pressure.
Her moan of relief was unguarded, bouncing above the sound of the humming aeroplane engines to fill the room.
The muscles beneath her foot clenched and unclenched, his dark gaze narrowing on her face as he continued to tend to her.
She couldn’t help herself. Another moan threatened as relief poured through her, her agony subsiding.
But with the lessening of one trauma came the resurgence of what she faced. Why she was here.
Nelios’s deadly gaze told her that reality would come with a great reckoning. She attempted to remove her foot from his skin, but one hand dropped over the top of her foot, keeping it flush against him.
‘It’s a little too late for retreat now, Miss Lancaster.’
Several things fell into place then. His comment about her taking a nap when she’d tumbled out of his wardrobe. His lack of surprise.
He’d known she was here all along.
She tried once more to free herself. Displeasure flashed across his face as he held her still. ‘Your cramp hasn’t subsided. And, as entertaining as it is to watch you flop about on my floor, I have better things to do. Stay still,’ he repeated, ‘And let me finish.’
Dear God. The rumble of his voice… The power behind it… The towering magnificence of him… He was indeed a Greek god come to life, complete with all the bells and whistles of furious thunder and incandescent lightning. She was shocked she hadn’t been incinerated beneath the force of his wrath.
And yes, he was angry. It was there in the stiff shoulders and clenched jaw. Or…was it something else? Because beneath the arctic gaze there was something mesmeric, shimmering with heat, with awareness. Striations of white-hot heat. Of attraction…?
No. Absolutely not.
Pain, and then the beginnings of relief from it, was addling her brain.
She dragged her gaze over his shoulder, pinning it to the ceiling as she tried to ignore everything but the countdown to tackling her task.
To letting him know unequivocally what she thought of him and his bullying tactics.
Then, maybe, to striking some kind of deal. Because she couldn’t lose.
‘That’s how you’re going to play it?’ he mused dryly. ‘Pretend I don’t exist? That’s going to make it difficult for you to achieve your ultimate goals, is it not?’
Her gaze darted to him. ‘What do you know about my goals?’ she asked hesitantly, feeling him out.
A muscle twitched in his cheek. ‘I’m assuming you didn’t stow away on my plane for the sole purpose of taking a nap in my wardrobe and inconveniencing me and my driving need for a shower for over two hours?’
The apology on the tip of her tongue dried when she realised he was mocking her. Had he truly needed to shower hours ago, he would’ve taken one. He’d showered exactly when he’d needed to, all the while being aware she was hiding amongst his clothes.
A flush built in her face but Vayle refused to look away. ‘If you knew I was in here, then why…?’
‘Why did I not do something about it? Where would the fun have been in that?’