LEO MAKARIOS paused in the shadows at the top of the
flight of wide stairs leading down to the vast hall of
Schloss Edelstein, one hand curved around the newel post
of the mas- sive carved wood banister, his powerful
physique relaxing as he surveyed the arc-lit scene below
with a sense of satisfaction.
Justin had chosen well. The four girls really were
exquisite. He stood a moment, looking them over. The
blonde caught his eye first, but despite her remarkable
beauty she was too thin for his tastes, her pose too
tense. He had no patience with neurotic women. The
brunette beside her wasn't too thin, but for all her
glorious swathe of chestnut hair her expression was
vacant. Leo's gaze moved on. Unintelligent women irritated
him.
The redhead's pre-Raphaelite looks were stunning indeed,
but they had, Leo knew, already caught the attention of
his cousin Markos, under whose protection the girl was
living. His gaze moved on again to the final girl.
And stopped.
His eyes narrowed, taking in the picture she made. The
hair was sable. As black as night. The skin was white. As
pale as ivory. And the eyes were green. As green as the
emeralds she was wearing. Wearing with an air of such
total boredom that a sudden shaft of anger went through
him. What business had any female to look bored when
wearing a Levantsky necklace? Did she not realise what a
miracle of the jeweller's art the necklace was? And the
earrings and the bracelets and the rings she was adorned
with?
Evidently not. Even as he watched her lips pressed
together and she gave a conspicuously heavy sigh, placing
one hand on her hip and very obviously shifting her weight
from one leg to the other beneath her long skirts.
Leo stilled, the anger draining out of him. As she'd given
that heavy sigh her breasts had lifted. Already lush from
the tightly corseted black gown she was wearing, the
movement had made their soft dove-white mounds swell
delectably.
Through Leo's lean, powerful frame a familiar and pleasur-
able sensation started.
So the sable-haired, green-eyed beauty was bored, was she?
Well, he would be happy to remedy that.
Personally.
He started to walk down the stairs.
Anna felt her mood worsening. What was the hold-up now?
Tonio Embrutti had gone into a huddle with his assistants,
and she could hear the static hiss of vituperative
Italian. She gave another sigh, feeling the low-cut
décolletage digging in. She hated wearing it — it was far
too revealing, and it invited the usual sleazy male
attention she tried to avoid.
Her lips pressed together again. Mentally she forced
herself to go through one of her karate katas. It both
calmed her and reassured her, knowing she could fight off
any physical ha- rassment — even if she couldn't stop men
leering over her.
She shifted her weight again minutely in the heavy dress.
Modelling wasn't as easy as people thought it was, and she
could tell that the two amateurs here — Kate and Vanessa —
were finding it hard and tiring. Anna's eyes travelled to
them. The brunette, Kate, looked vacant without her lenses
in — but at least, thought Anna, it meant she couldn't see
the lecherous looks aimed at her. The redhead, Vanessa,
had other protec- tion — word had gone round that her
boyfriend was the cousin of the guy who'd set up this
shindig and owned this medieval mansion. Though why, Anna
mused, a Greek should own a castle in the Austrian Alps
was beyond her. Maybe he just wanted to be close to the
private Swiss bank he kept his loot in.
He certainly had a whole load of cash, that was for sure.
Schloss Edelstein was vast, perched halfway up a mountain
and surrounded by forests and snowfields.
Anna's bored expression lightened suddenly with remem-
bered pleasure. The view from her bedroom was
breathtaking: sunlight sparkling on the pristine snow,
down to the frozen lake below, ringed by mountains. Very
different from the view of the gasworks she'd had when she
was growing up.
But then Anna had been lucky, she knew — spectacularly
lucky.
Spotted in a shopping mall when she was eighteen by a
scout for a modelling agency, she'd been incredibly
suspicious at first. But the offer had proved genuine. Not
that it hadn't taken non-stop hard work to succeed at
modelling. Now, even though she was not in the supermodel
bracket, and at twenty-six was already facing up to her
limited remaining shelf-life, she made a living that was
light-years away from what she'd been born to.
She'd learned a lot along the way. Not just how the other
half lived — which had opened her eyes big-time — but
about how to survive in one of the toughest careers
around. And do it without letting the slime get to you.
Because slime, she had swiftly discovered, was a big, big
feature of a fashion model's world. Some of the girls, she
knew, did every drug they could, and slept with every man
who could help their career. And a lot of the men in the
fashion world weren't any better either.
Not that everyone was like that, she acknowledged. Some
people in the fashion world were fine — there were
designers she respected, photographers she trusted, models
who were friends. Like Jenny, the blonde of the quartet,
her best friend, draped now in white, with a diamond tiara
and bracelets up to her elbows.
Anna's eyes narrowed.
Jenny didn't look well. She'd always been thin — what
model wasn't? — but now she was on the point of looking
emaciated. It wasn't drugs — Jenny didn't do drugs, or
Anna would not have been friends with her. She hoped it
wasn't just under- eating — especially not if some jerk of
a photographer had been telling her to shift some non-
existent weight. Illness? A shudder went through Anna.
Life was uncertain enough, and you could die in your
twenties all right. Hadn't her own mother not made it past
twenty-five, leaving her fatherless baby daughter to be
brought up by her widowed grandmother?
Whatever it was that was pulling Jenny down, Anna would
try and catch some time with her, when today's shoot had
fin- ished. If it ever did. At least the huddle around
Tonio Embrutti seemed to be ending. He was turning his
attention back to the models. His little eyes flashed in
his fleshy face, which a cul- tivated designer stubble did
not enhance.
"You!" He pointed dramatically at Jenny. "Off!" Anna saw
Jenny stare. "Off?" she echoed dumbly. The photographer
waved his hands irritably. "The dress. Off. Down to the
hips. Peel it off. Then I need the hands crossed over in
your cleavage. I want to shoot the bracelets. Hurry up!"
He clicked impatiently at a hovering styl- ist and held
out a hand for his camera from his assistant.
Jenny stood frozen. "I can't."
The photographer stared at her. "Are you deaf? Remove your
dress. Now!" The stylist he'd pointed at was obediently
undoing the fas- tenings down the back of Jenny's dress.
"I'm not taking the dress off!"
Jenny's voice sounded high-pitched with tension. Anna saw
Tonio Embrutti's face darken. She stepped for- ward to
intervene.
"No strips," she announced. "It's in the contract." The
photographer's face whipped round to hers. "Shut up!" He
turned back to Jenny. Anna walked up to her, putting a
hand out to stop the stylist. Jenny was looking as tense
as a board.
Another voice spoke. A new voice. "Do we have a problem?"
The voice was deep, and accented. It was also — and Anna
could hear it like a low, subliminal tremor in her body —
a warning.
A man had stepped out of the shadows consuming the rest of
the vast hall beyond the brilliantly illuminated space
they were being photographed in.
Anna felt the breath catch in her throat. The man who had
stepped into the circle of light was like a leopard.
Sleek, pow- erful, graceful — and dangerous.
Dangerous? She wondered why the word had come into her
mind, but it had. And even as it formed it was replaced by
another one.
Devastating.
The breath stayed caught in her throat as she stared,
taking in everything about the man who had just appeared.
Tall. Very tall. Taller than her.
Dark hair, olive skin — and a face that could have stepped
out of a Byzantine mosaic. Impassive, remote, assessing.
And incredibly sexy.
It was the eyes, she thought, as she slowly exhaled her
breath. The eyes that did it. Almond-shaped, heavy-lidded,
sen- sual.
Very dark.
He spoke again. Everyone seemed to have gone totally
silent around him. He was the kind of man who'd have that
effect on people, Anna found herself thinking.
"I repeat — do we have a problem?" He doesn't like
problems — he gets rid of them. They get in his way...
The words seemed to form in her mind of their own
accord. "And you are...?" Tonio Embrutti enquired
aggressively. Stupidly. The man turned his impassive heavy-
lidded eyes on him. For a moment he said nothing.
"Leo Makarios," he said.
He didn't say it loudly, thought Anna. He didn't say it
por- tentously. And he certainly didn't say it self-
importantly.
Yet there was something about the way the man who owned
Schloss Edelstein, whose company owned every jewel that
she and the other three models were draped with, and who
owned a whole heap more besides spoke. Something about the
way he said his name that almost — almost — made her feel
sorry for Tonio Embrutti.
Almost, but not quite. Because Tonio Embrutti was, without
doubt, one of the biggest jerks she'd ever had the
displeasure to be photographed by.
"Yes," she announced clearly, before the photographer
could get a word out. "We do have a problem."
The heavy-lidded eyes turned to her.
How, she found herself thinking, could eyes that were so
impassive make her feel every muscle in her body tighten?
As though she were an impala — caught out on a deserted
African plain, with the sun going down.
When the big cats came out to hunt.
But she wasn't an impala, and this Leo Makarios was no
leopard. He was just a rich man who was having a fun time
getting his latest rich-man's toy some media attention.
Starting with publicity photos, courtesy of four models
specially hired for the purpose.
But not hired to strip. "Your photographer," she said
sweetly, "wants us to breach the contract." Her voice
changed. Hardened. "No nude work. It's in the contract,"
she informed him. "I made sure it was. Check it out."
She went on standing protectively beside Jenny. The other
two girls — the amateurs — had, she noticed, instinctively
closed in on each other as well. Both were looking uneasy.
Leo Makarios was still looking at her.
She was looking back. Something was happening to her.
Something deep down. In her guts. Something she didn't
like.
Slime. Was that it? Was that what it was about the way Leo
Makarios was looking at her that she didn't like?
No, she thought slowly. Definitely not slime. That she
could handle. She'd had to learn how, and now she could.
But this was worse. What Leo Makarios was doing to her hit
somewhere completely different.
She could feel it happening. Feel the slow, heavy slug of
her heart rate. Feel the blood start to pulse.
As if for the very first time in her life.
Oh, no, she thought, with the kind of slow-motion thinking
that came with great shock. Not this.
Not him.
But it was.
Leo let his eyes rest on her.
She wasn't looking bored now.
Two quite different emotions were animating her face,
though she was, he could see, trying not to let the second
one through.
The first emotion was anger. The girl was angry. Very
angry. It was an old anger too, one that was familiar to
her. But the second emotion was coming as a shock to her.
He felt a surge of satisfaction go through him. She might
be hiding it, but he'd seen it — seen the tell-tale minute
flaring of her pupils as her eyes had impacted with his.
The satisfaction came again, but he put it to one side.
He'd attend to it later — when the time was appropriate.
Right now he had other matters to deal with.
He flicked his eyes to the blonde. Yes, definitely the
neurotic type, he thought. Tense and jittery, and the type
to give any man a headache. She was fantastically
beautiful, of course, but he didn't envy the man who had
the handling of her.
"Let me understand," he said to her. "You do not want this
shot? The one Signor Embrutti desires?"
The girl was almost trembling she was so tense. She shook
her head.
Tonio Embrutti burst into a fusillade of staccato Italian.
Leo halted him with a peremptory hand.
"No breast shots. Not for her. Not for any of them. Their
clothes stay on — all of them," he spelt out, for good
measure.
His eyes moved over the four girls, resting momentarily on
the redhead. A smile almost flickered on his mouth. He
could just imagine his cousin Markos's reaction to seeing
his mis- tress's naked charms paraded in the publicity
shots accompa- nying the launch of the rediscovered
Levantsky collection — long-hidden in a secret Tsarist
cache in the depths of Siberia and recently returned to
the commercial world courtesy of a shrewd acquisition by
Makarios Corp.
Markos would have beaten him to a pulp for allowing it! If
he could land a punch, that was, thought Leo, with dark
humour.
Not that he would give him cause to — or any man who had
an interest in the girls here.
His eyes flicked back to the sable-haired model. Was she
taken? Just because she'd responded to him it didn't mean
that another man didn't have his marker on her. She
wouldn't be the first female to think she'd do better
trading up to a Makarios.