The Silver Bride

You're going to believe what you want to believe. Suit yourself!' 'You can't blame me for taking every possible precaution.'

That confident assertion filled Stella with furious resentment. Who did he think he was kidding? Without hesitation, he had used his infinitely superior power like the weapon it was! The fact that she was eager to make the best of a bad situation didn't alter that brutal reality.

Don't you dare try to justify yourself!' she warned him. 'Tell it like it is. If you weren't who you are and I wasn't who I am, I wouldn't be here! If Grace and I didn't need our jobs, I would have told you exactly where to go—' 'I can imagine,' Dior slotted in silkily. '

And, you know, dragging me along on a trip like this...well, it's not exactly a dream treat, is it? No offense or disrespect intended, but I'm not heavily into funerals,' Stella confided. A disconcerting flare of amus.e.m.e.nt lit Dior's steady closely inspect. 'My father would have adored your irreverence!' Her full mouth softened. 'Was he one of the good guys?' All his tension returned, his amus.e.m.e.nt fading as quickly as it had come.

In silence, he slowly nodded, bronzed features setting hard. He swung away and she wished she had kept her stupid, clumsy mouth closed. Just for a little while he had emerged from his brooding reserve and contrived to forget what lay ahead of him. A knock sounded on the door. It was time to move on again. Under the growing heat of the sun, they walked out across the tarmac to board a small plane.

Does a dream treat? Stella cringed at the recollection. How could she have been that tactless? Now he was wishing she would vanish again! So why should it bother her that he felt like that? After all, how did she expect him to feel? The plane flew out over the gleaming waters of the Aegean. In a silence filled only with monotonous engine noise, Stella's eyes grew heavier and heavier.

She sank lower in her seat and slid into a deep, dreamless sleep. Feeling incredibly languid, Stella took her time about waking-up again.

But she frowned in sleepy disorientation when she finally focused on her surroundings. She was lying on the capacious back seat of an enormous limousine with tinted windows.

With a thick, expensive metal clunk, the passenger door opened. A black-haired young man backed by bright golden sunlight gaze down at her with patronizing amus.e.m.e.nt. 'So you're Dior's latest woman... I've got to hand it to my cousin. He's got a taste. No wonder he kept you out of the sacred heaven, meaning where they pray.

Some of his late mother's relatives are pretty narrow-minded.I'm Luke Valles.' Tensing with annoyance under the earthy glide of the eyes trailing over the slender length of her exposed legs, Stella pulled herself hurriedly upright and tugged down the skirt which had ridden up while she slept.

I am not Dior's woman!' she snapped. 'Nice to have a piece of good news today.' With a c.o.c.ky grin on his handsome face, Luke Varies slid in beside her and closed the door. 'So, if you don't belong to Dior, what are you doing waiting outside the cemetery for him?' Stella compressed her ripe pink mouth into a rigid line.

I just work for him...OK?' 'Oh, it's very much OK with me...' Impervious to her frozen expression, Luke stretched out a confident hand to finger the silvery fall of hair lying against her flushed cheekbone and whispered, 'You are a real babe—' The passenger door opened again, this time framing Dior.

He took one look at the intimate scene he had interrupted and smoldering fury blazed in his spectacular eyes. He reached in a powerful hand, closed it over the younger man's shoulder and hauled him out of the limo to shoot a raw flood of guttural Greek down at him.

Luke Valles backed off, struggling to reassert his cool by smoothing down his jacket, but his shaken face was red as fire. As Stella sat there, immobilized by sheer shock at Dior's extraordinary behavior, Luke sent her a fiercely accusing glance.

She said she wasn't yours...do you think I'd have come on to her if she'd told me the truth?' Lean, strong face cold and hard as bronze, Dior swung into the limo and slammed the door without another word. Black contemptuous eyes flamed over Stella. 'I didn't bring you here to behave like a tramp!' he told her with splintering derision