Page 8 of Vows of Revenge

His veiled gaze rested on her a moment longer. Had she obviously dressed herself up to the nines, glammed herself up for him, he might well have ventured, over a leisurely dinner and increasingly intimate conversation, to speculate that the night might end with her going down to his stateroom to spend the night with him.

A woman who was interested in him that way, and in whom he had made clear a similar interest from himself, would have given signs of it—indicated that she found his attentions of that nature welcome to her and invited more of them. Until a mutual understanding of their respective willingness to take things further had been arrived at.

Kassia Andrakis, dressed down and unadorned, was showing no sign at all that she expected dinner with him to be anything other than what it purported to be. True, she was no longer flustered and awkward, as she’d been at the dig, but nor was she showing any visible awareness of him as anything other than a potential sponsor. No sign at all that she found him attractive as a man.

Should he be put off by that? He dismissed it out of hand. However composed she was being now, her initial reaction to him at the dig had been sufficiently revealing to him—he had no need to doubt it. But right now he wasn’t even trying to get her to see him in that way. Coming on strong to her at this stage would be crass.

Worse, it might arouse her suspicions.

Because there was one thing he was discovering about Kassia Andrakis and he was clearly going to have to take it into account. She was no idiot. Oh, not just because she was a professional archaeologist, who obviously knew her stuff inside out, but because right from the start he had seen that she was perfectly prepared to assess, judge and downright challenge him on his apparent interest in her field and his declared intention of considering sponsoring it.

Disarming her wariness—and the assessing acuity she directed at him—was going to take some finessing.

His veiled gaze rested on her a moment.

He’d known from the start that Kassia Andrakis was nothing like the women he usually consorted with—and not just because the only reason for his own interest in her was her father’s business plan and his own plans to thwart Yorgos Andrakis by the method he’d selected. No, Kassia Andrakis was different from his usual type of female inherself, not just in the circumstances of who she was and why. And therefore she had his attention—more so, he was finding, than he’d originally assumed.

Seducing her, he was starting to realise, was not going to be a simple case of showering flattering compliments upon her. She was a woman unused to receiving them and he was a man whose sexual interests were usually blatantly targeted at glamorously beautiful females. No, a far more subtle approach was going to be needed to disarm her—charm her into his bed.

A disquieting glint showed in the depths of his veiled gaze.

It will be a challenge...

The glint in his eyes deepened. And challenges were something he always found satisfying to achieve.

After all, his whole life had been a challenge. He had challenged the poverty into which he’d been born, changing it through determination, ambition and a hell of a lot of dogged hard work into riches.

So, he mused consideringly, keeping his speculative gaze on her as she ate, maybe Kassia Andrakis was not his usual type of woman, and maybe she was dowdy and unglamorous, and maybe her calm composure was showing no sign at all of responding to his masculinity, but for all that there might be something more enjoyable about seducing her than simply getting the result he was set on.

His thoughts coalesced. It might even be enjoyable for itself...as a challenge he would relish.

He was looking forward to taking it on.

Quite definitely...

That glint was back in his eyes, and he felt a sense of enticing anticipation...

Kassia was just beginning to feel her edge of acute wariness dissipating. Maybe she was getting used to Damos Kallinikos. He was being polite and making conversation, continuing to tell her about his time crewing on rich men’s yachts.

‘In some respects it was tougher than working on merchant ships,’ he said dryly. ‘Because you were on call twenty-four-seven, and rich men can be very demanding employers.’

She nodded, making a face as she did. Her father was inconsiderate of anyone who worked for him, and he would never dream of thanking them or showing any appreciation of their work and efforts.

She let her eyes rest on Damos Kallinikos for a moment across the table. She’d already noticed that he said please and thank you to his crew members, and passed the time of day with them pleasantly. That was to his credit, surely?

Her eyes flicked away again. She was conscious that she was not looking at him very much, or for very long—and she knew exactly why. Even though he was not, of course, focussing any kind of masculine attention on her—that was par for the course with her and men—that did not stop him being ludicrously good-looking. Whatever it was that made a man attractive, Damos Kallinikos had it in spades—and then some.

And then some more—

She dragged her thoughts away. No point assessing him in that respect. No point thinking how lethally attractive he was to her sex, with the way his dark hair feathered across his brow and his long eyelashes dipped down over those wine-dark eyes, or how his mouth curved into a half-smile that was tinged with a caustic humour as he regaled her with a particularly capricious demand by a yacht owner.

Their main course was being presented to them—chicken fillets in a wine sauce with saffron rice—and she got stuck in. Absently she lifted the wine glass that Damos Kallinikos had filled, and took a mouthful.

‘What do you make of it?’ he asked her.

‘It’s very good,’ she said politely—because it was. ‘Not that I know much about wine,’ she went on. ‘What is it?’

‘A viognier varietal,’ came the answer. ‘One of my vineyards has been experimenting...developing a vine that grows well on the volcanic soil here in the Aegean. I’m glad you like it.’

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