Mia’s Scandal by Michelle Reid Page B

evil eye to say I don’t feel like being nice to you any longer, and so he isn’t.’ She added a self-explanatory shrug. ‘The lights have changed colour,’ she pointed out.
    ‘A donkey,’ he breathed, steering the car into a right turn, then accelerating up the street. ‘Grazie, cara,’ he said with grim sarcasm, and swung the car off the street into a small car park by the banks of the river, killed the car engine and climbed out.
    Mia hugged a pleased smile to herself as she watched him stride around the car bonnet with his golden good looks pronounced by the savage look on his face.
    So she’d just insulted him and ruined his day.Good, she thought, because he had ruined hers too with his nocturnal activities splashed all over the papers!
    Did she have the right to be angry about that?
    She did not care if she had no right—she just did!
    She hated him. She hoped Lois Mansell was the worst lover he had ever bothered to bed. And she was not jealous! she told herself furiously, she was just—
    He pulled open her door for her with more angry strength than the beautifully designed piece of equipment required. As she carefully manoeuvred her high-heeled shoes over the sill of the car, his grim impatience with her transferred to the long fingers he clamped around her arm to help straighten her up. Arriving in front of him with more impulse than was necessary, she ended up almost flattened against him, which shocked her enough into glancing up.
    Their eyes clashed—his slightly narrowed and glinting golden warning shots for her to take care what she did or said next, hers sparking with bright blue defiance which dared him to make one of his cold, cutting comments gauged to knock her back down to size.
    But he went for a different kind of attack. He relaxed the corners of his hard, clipped mouth, slid a hand around her exposed nape, thenlowered his head and captured her mouth with a hard, hot, plundering kiss!
    Astonishment thrilled through Mia. It was so shockingly unexpected and so shockingly intimate she was unable to do anything but just let him explore the contours of her mouth with a sensual fluency that glued her to the spot.
    Knocked completely for six she staggered dizzily when he lifted his head again. Breathless and shaking and unable to focus on anything, she just stared up at him through a thick misty glaze.
    ‘Different mood, cara ,’ he purred down at her like his very own feral cat. ‘I sincerely hope that Tulio is not so adventurous.’
    His meaning shocked a gasp from Mia. As if he felt he deserved her reaction Nikos nodded his dark head, then let go of her and turned abruptly to glare at the young man who had approached them without her being aware of it.
    ‘Get the bags out of the boot and give them to my pilot, then take the car back,’ he instructed, tossing the keys at the other man.
    Still much too stunned to take in the bit about his pilot, Mia slung a swift glance at whoever it was Nikos was talking to, saw it was the man from accounts she had lunched with yesterday and also saw that his eyes were standing out in shock.
    Heat poured into her face like a scorching flame. It was bright sunny daylight, and Nikos Theakis had just kissed her full on her mouth in front of another member of his staff!
    ‘You—you did that on purpose!’ she hissed at him shakenly.
    Nikos claimed one of her hands and walked her away from the car. ‘He needed showing where he stands with you.’
    ‘Stands with me?’ Mia gasped out. ‘I don’t understand this stands with me,’ she told him, having to hurry to keep up with his long stride.
    ‘He was the date that stood you up last night.’
    ‘He was not my date!’
    ‘He was your date,’ he insisted. ‘And I have just made my point.’
    ‘Will you please explain what it is you are talking about?’ Tugging hard on her captured hand she pulled them both to a stubborn standstill in front of a white building with glass entrance doors. Hot, mortified, her