Not that Harry could have understood the words even if he had been speaking slower. She stood up from where she’d been seated on a wooden lounge, enjoying the peace of the balmy Mediterranean night. “The temptation to say ‘I’m sorry, but it’s all Greek to me,’ is almost overwhelming—you do realize that, right?” she asked the man.
He continued his dancing-gesturing-babbling routine, this time adding a peculiar plucking motion with the hem of her linen tunic.
She glanced around, wondering if she’d misunderstood. “Am I not supposed to be here? Is this garden off limits to us? Derek said it was the garden area on the other side of the house that was for guests only. Did I get that wrong?”
The little man—and he was little, at least a good ten inches shorter than her solid six feet—evidently grew distressed at her inability to understand, and grabbed her wrist, hauling her toward the massive bulk of the house.
“Is Timmy in the well?” she asked, a little smile curling her lips before her gaze moved from what must surely have been one of the servants to the house itself. “Only house doesn’t quite cut it as a description, does it? It’s more like a palace. Houses don’t have wings—palaces do. And I defy you to find a house sitting by its lonesome on its very own Greek island. No, sir, this is a palace pure and simple, and although I’m sure you have a good reason for dragging me to it, I should point out that the only people who are staying in its palatial confines are guests, and I’m with the band. We have the little bungalow on the servant end of the island. Hello? You really don’t speak a word of English, do you?” Harry sighed.
The man continued to drag her through a very pleasant garden, filled with sweet-scented flowering Mediterranean shrubs unfamiliar to her, attractive hedges, and pretty neoclassical statues. The night air was balmy, the heavy scent from some flower mingling with the sharper and, to her mind, more pleasing tang of the sea. It was everything she imagined a rich man’s private island paradise should be. Well, with the exception of the wizened little man attached to her wrist.
“I couldn’t just sit quietly somewhere? ” she asked the man, whose fingers were locked like steel around her wrist. “I promise that I won’t bother anyone. I don’t think I could—I’m so jet-lagged, I can’t even think straight. Look, that’s a nice little bench right over there in the corner next to the statue of the guy with a really big winky. I won’t be in anyone’s way. I’ll just go sit and contemplate his gigantic genitals, and all will be well.”
“Harry!” A man appeared suddenly at a window, hanging out of it and waving frantically. “There you are! Hurry!”
“Derek, what are you doing in the house?” Harry thinned her lips at the sight of the young man. “You said we weren’t supposed to go near it while the guests were here.”
“That doesn’t matter now! Hurry up!”
“If you think I don’t have anything better to do than to fly halfway around the world to bail your butt out of trouble because you can’t follow a few simple rules—”
“No, it’s not me.” He pulled back inside the window. “It’s Cyn! She’s been attacked!”
“What!” The fury in her bellow took the little man still attached to her wrist by surprise, for he dropped her hand as if it was suddenly made of fire. Adrenaline shot through her with a painful spike—adrenaline and a fury that almost consumed her. She leaped forward, easily hurdling the low stone balustrade of a patio area as she bolted for the nearest entrance to the house, wrenching open a pair of French doors. She didn’t stop to apologize to the small group of people standing around a pool table, racing around the men and women in elegant evening clothes, making a beeline for the door that was bound to lead to a central area of the house.
The little servant trailed her as far as a marble-tiled corridor, where he veered off to who knew where. Harry didn’t care—her mind was blank except for the horror of the words that kept repeating in her head. It’s Cyn! She’s been attacked!
“Harry, thank God—” Terry emerged from a side hall, gesturing toward a curving staircase, his face tight with worry. “We didn’t know where you were. She’s up here.”
Harry ground off a good layer or two of enamel as the pair of them leaped up the seemingly endless stairs, one distracted part of her mind finding it ironic that now, of all times, she should be thankful for her height and long legs. “What happened?” she managed to get out as they crested the stairs, and Terry pointed to the left.
He cast her a worried look, but said nothing. Derek almost collided with her as he burst out of a room. “In here! Harry, you have to do something! The bastard . . . he . . . he . . . !”
“I’ll kill whoever it is,” she ground out, her blood running icy at the thought of whatever atrocity had occurred. She shoved Derek aside and entered the room, her breath ragged, her heart about ready to leap from her chest. She’d heard the phrase “seeing red” before, but had never thought it could be taken as literal. For a few seconds, though, she swore everything in the room had an ugly red tint to it. It was obviously a bedroom; a quick glance took in the usual occasional chairs, a large bureau with matching wardrobe, and a big bed swathed in some sort of filmy draperies that fluttered in the breeze drifting in through open French doors. Her attention narrowed to the bed as she dashed to it, immediately taking into her arms one of the two huddled, sobbing figures there.
Dimly, she was aware that there was another person in the room, but his identity faded to insignificance. “It’s all right, Cyndi. I’m here now,” she said, her fury rising as the younger woman sobbed onto her shoulder. “You’ll be OK. We’ll make whoever did this pay.”
“He’s evil! He’s horrible!” Cyndi pulled back, tears spilling over already red and bloodshot eyes. She was naked, a sheet clutched to her bare breasts, her face unmarked but blotchy from the tears. There were some nasty-looking raw marks on her neck and chest, but it was the petulant purse of her lips that suddenly chimed a warning bell in Harry’s brain.
“What happened? Did someone attack you?”
Cyndi drew in a long, trembling breath and glanced over Harry’s shoulder. “Yes. Well . . . more or less. He dumped me, Harry. Dumped me!”
Harry blinked for a few seconds. “He what?”
“Dumped me, cruelly and . . . and . . . viciously. I came up to his room, and I thought we were going to hook up, and everything was going along very nicely, and before we could get down to, you know, really doing it, he told me to leave. Just like that!”
Harry passed a shaking hand over her eyes. Slowly, her heart rate dropped back to reasonable levels “So you weren’t attacked?”
“Verbally I was. He told me that he didn’t want to have sex with me, and that I should leave because he wanted to sleep.” Cyndi gestured at the bed. “If it’s not verbal abuse to entice someone to your bed, and get them naked, and then kiss them all over before telling them to leave, I don’t know what is!”
“He enticed you?”
“Yes! Not so much in words, but he looked at me several times tonight, and a woman knows what that look means,” Cyndi said with a peculiar lofty coyness. “He wanted me. So I came up here, and then everything was really nice until he went totally crazy and told me to leave. That’s just not right, Harry. It’s traumatizing! You have no idea how traumatizing it is to have fabulous sex and then be told to leave because someone wants to sleep. I’m not a slut! I should sleep here, too!”
Harry took a deep, deep breath to keep from strangling the young, self-centered girl in front of her, reminding herself that her whole purpose in being there was to watch over the kids and see that they came to no harm. Her eyes lit on the red marks on Cyndi’s chest, and a little spurt of anger burned in her stomach.
She turned, moving aside the hovering forms of Terry and Derek. Amy had moved to cling to the latter, her eyes huge and wary. A man leaned drunkenly against the wall, dressed only in a pair of obviously hastily donned pants, the waistband undone, his face slack and devoid of emotion as he watched her walk
toward him. He was a little taller than she was, obviously of Greek ethnicity, with dark eyes and hair, and what in any other circumstance would have been a classical sort of beauty that she would have to have been dead not to appreciate.
“I don’t know what the hell you did to her to leave those marks, but I feel it’s important to point out that she’s only eighteen years old. Couldn’t you have gotten her out of the room without touching her?” she asked, fighting with the need to yell at both Cyndi and the randy stallion before her. He had to have been a guest at the party for which the band had been brought out at great expense to entertain, but at that moment, Harry couldn’t have cared less if he was the owner of this vast palace of sin—she just wanted to get Cyndi out of there without any further drama.
“I—” The man blinked at her, swallowed visibly, and shoved himself away from the wall to take a step forward. “The little bint threw herself at me. She was in my bed, waiting for me. I didn’t screw her, if that’s what you’re all hot and bothered about.”
“Bint!” Cyndi roared, and would have lunged at the man but for the sheet in which she was still tangled. “You bastard! I’m not a bint. Terry, what’s a bint?”
“I don’t care who tried to seduce whom—you should have known she’s too young. You’re just lucky she’s legal. And obviously you were playing a bit too rough if you left those sorts of marks.”
“I’m wounded!” Cyndi cried, grasping at that thought. “He hurt me! He’s a beastly, horrible man who hurt me and abused me! I think I may faint.”
“You’re not hurt, you little—” The man wisely bit off the word as Harry frowned. “I didn’t hurt her.”
“Oh my God, I’m bleeding!” Cyndi cried in a dramatic voice, and clutched at Terry. “I need to go to the hospital!”
“Look, this has gone far enough. I just want you to promise to stay away from Cyndi for the rest of the weekend, OK?” Harry said with an attempt to take control of the situation.
The man scowled at her. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? I bet you planned all of this with that little bint, didn’t you? What a setup you had, getting your friend there to screw me and then pretend she’s been attacked. What’s next, blackmail? You can just drop that idea, because there’s no way I’m going to fall for your little scheme.”
With every word, anger built in Harry. Oh, she knew full well that Cyndi was milking the situation for everything it was worth, just as she knew that Cyndi had pursued him and not vice versa, but his slander left her itching to punch him in the nose. Behind her she heard the whispered hush of the door opening, but she ignored it, saying simply, “Who am I? I’ll tell you who I am. I’m your worst nightmare.”
“I don’t know.” He leered in that sloppy way drunks had. “I’m willing to give you a try. Bet you know a few things that your little friend doesn’t.”
The man reached out and grabbed her breast. Harry saw red again before she knocked his hand away, stomped as hard as she could on his bare foot, swiftly bringing up her knee into his groin, and, when he doubled over with a scream, punched him as hard as she could in the eye. Still doubled over, he snapped his head back, his face frozen in shock and pain for a moment before he fell over backward.
“What the hell is going on here?” a voice roared from behind Harry.
She spun around to behold an absolutely furious man coming toward her. She blinked at the sight of him, amazed for a moment that such a glorious specimen of male beauty existed outside the pages of glossy fashion magazines. He was taller even than the man she’d just knocked out, a good six inches taller than her, with a broad expanse of chest that wasn’t at all disguised by a black silk shirt open at the neck, revealing a bronzed stretch of skin that she suddenly wanted to lick. The little indentation where his neck met his collarbone beckoned to her with an unholy fascination, and she stared bemused for a moment, wondering what on earth her mind was doing demanding that she taste this strange—if terribly beautiful—man.
“Who are you? ” he demanded, his black eyes blazing with a fury that looked familiar somehow. “What the hell did you do to my brother?”
“Your brother?” Suddenly, all the rage and anger and fury filled her again with righteousness. “I was seriously considering beating him to a bloody pulp. You’re a big guy—I’ll let you help if you like.”
His ebony gaze raked her over in a manner that left her both hot and cold at the same time, instantly dismissing her as not being worth his consideration. He shoved her aside and marched over to where the other man moved groggily against the wall. “I believe the phrase is ‘over my dead body.’ Get up, Theo.”
“You want on my list, too? Fine,” Harry snarled, and would have rolled up her sleeves except the fawncolored linen tunic she wore was sleeveless. “You can be second. Go ahead, Theo. Get up so I can knock your block off.”
The big, incredibly handsome man hoisted his brother to his feet, one of his lips curling. “You’re drunk.”
“Not drunk,” Theo protested, his eyes glazed. “Barely had anything. That little bitch—”
Harry moved faster than she had ever moved, intent on slapping the word right off his lips, but the other man caught her as she lunged toward his brother.
“Who the hell are you?” he snarled, his arm like steel around her waist.
“I already used the ‘your worst nightmare’ line,” she yelled at him, her fingers curling into a fist. “But you’d better believe I am!”
He stopped her fist just as she was about to punch him in the nose, shoving her backward into the small clutch of people next to the bed. His black-eyed gaze crawled over all of them. “You’re not on the guest list. What are you doing here?”
“They’re the band,” Harry said, jerking her thumb toward where the four of them, Cyndi now standing in the sheet, pressed together in silent amazement. “The one your sister hired for her eighteenth birthday, assuming you are the owner of this house of debauchery.”
The man’s eyes returned to her, scorn just about dripping from his voice as he said, “You look a little old to be in a teenage band.”
“I’m not old,” she said, straightening up. Behind the man, Theo collapsed into a chair, slumping over to rest his head in his hands with a pathetic groan. She narrowed her eyes on him, wondering if she could distract his brother long enough get in a really good punch. “I’m only thirty-three, and I’m their manager. Kind of. By proxy. I’m a writer, really, but I’m acting as their manager because Timothy’s appendix burst, and Jill had to stay with him because she’s about due to pop any minute with their first child, and there was no one else to watch over the kids, so she asked if I would do it for just this one gig. And idiot that I was, I thought, How hard could it be to watch over things while they played for some obscenely rich oil billionaire’s party? No one told me your brother was a drunkard who doesn’t have the common sense God gave a potato bug!”
Harry glared at the man as he glanced from his brother to the huddled girl, now thankfully silent, taking in her disheveled appearance, before his eyes narrowed on Harry. “I made my money in real estate development, not oil.”
She stared at him for a second. “Does that matter?”
“It does if you’re going to consider the source of my wealth as material for an insult. As for this situation—” He gestured with distaste at Cyndi. “Theo has never had to force a woman into his bed. Usually, it’s the other way around.”
“Of course he asked me,” Cyndi said with a sniff and jerk of her chin. “He smiled at me twice, and winked once, and then he brushed my arm when I walked by him. I’m not dense, you know! I can tell when a man wants me! So I came up here to wait for him, because it’s clear he thinks I’m steaming hot.”
Harry closed her eyes for a moment, then took Cyndi by the arms, fighting to keep from shaking her. “I don’t even know where to start, Cyndi.”
“Start with what? I’m not the one who’s wrong here. Theo is!” Cyndi answered with yet another right
eous sniff.
“I thought so. This wouldn’t be the first time some enterprising young lady has tried to, shall we say, benefit financially from Theo’s lack of common sense,” the irritating man said.
“Bullshit!” Harry snapped, releasing Cyndi to march over to the man. His eyebrows rose at the obscenity. She couldn’t remember what his name was—it was one of those long names with a seeming abundance of vowels—but she vaguely remembered hearing Jill mention something about him being on some world’s-most-eligiblebachelor list. If his appearance was anything to go by, she could certainly believe that. “I’m willing to admit that Cyndi has shown a huge lack of intelligence this evening—”
Cyndi gasped, outraged.
“But neither of us is trying to blackmail your precious brother. It was just a case of a young girl—a very young girl who is just barely legal, I might point out—obviously being dazzled by the situation and making some bad judgment calls.”
“I’m not dazzled,” Cyndi protested. “I’m hurt! I’m bleeding all over!”
The man made a disgusted noise and looked like he wanted to roll his eyes.
“There’s no actual blood, Cyndi,” Harry pointed out. “Although I will admit that your playmate was far too rough with you. And although that’s not a crime, it’s certainly not a pleasant little roll in the sack!”
“No crime has been committed, other than that of poor judgment,” the man snapped at her implication, his scowl shifting for a moment to one of surprise as Harry poked him in the chest when she spoke.
“She’s got marks all over her upper chest! Just look at her! What sort of a man does that?”
Iakovos Papaioannou couldn’t believe the Amazon in front of him had had the nerve to poke him in the chest, just as if she had the right to chastise him. For a moment, he was speechless at her utter and complete disregard for his consequence as she continued to lambaste him, throwing the most absurd accusations at his head.