She swallowed. ‘I should go.’ Her voice emerged as a tremulous whisper.

‘Why not stay?’

There must be a good reason. Probably dozens. But his sexy smile decimated her ability to think logically.

Dimitri’s voice thickened with desire. He did not understand what it was about this woman that made his body ache? All he knew was that Louise was like a fever in his blood, and the only cure was to possess her and find the sweet satiation his body craved.

He pulled her into his arms and his heart slammed against his ribs when he felt the tips of her nipples pressed against his chest. ‘I want to take you to bed and undress you, slowly. I want to lay you down and kiss every inch of you—,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘And then I want to take you and make you mine, and give you more pleasure than you’ve ever had with any other man.’

About the Author

CHANTELLE SHAW lives on the Kent coast, five minutes from the sea, and does much of her thinking about the characters in her books while walking on the beach. She’s been an avid reader from an early age. Her schoolfriends used to hide their books when she visited—but Chantelle would retreat into her own world, and still writes stories in her head all the time.

Chantelle has been blissfully married to her own tall, dark and very patient hero for over twenty years, and has six children. She began to read Mills & Boon® as a teenager, and throughout the years of being a stay-at-home mum to her brood found romantic fiction helped her to stay sane! She enjoys reading and writing about strong-willed, feisty women, and even stronger-willed sexy heroes. Chantelle is at her happiest when writing. She is particularly inspired while cooking dinner, which unfortunately results in a lot of culinary disasters! She also loves gardening, walking, and eating chocolate (followed by more walking!). Catch up with Chantelle’s latest news on her website: www.chantelleshaw.com

Recent titles by the same author:

BEHIND THE CASTELLO DOORS

A DANGEROUS INFATUATION

AFTER THE GREEK AFFAIR

THE ULTIMATE RISK

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Greek’s Acquisition

Chantelle Shaw

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

ATHENS at two-thirty on a summer’s afternoon baked beneath a cloudless sky. A heat haze shimmered above the steps leading to the entrance of Kalakos Shipping, and the glare from the sun seemed to set the office block’s bronzetinted glass windows aflame.

The automatic doors parted smoothly as Louise approached them. Inside, the décor was minimalist chic, and the air-conditioned atmosphere was as hushed as a cathedral. Her stiletto heels reverberated excruciatingly loudly on the black marble floor as she walked up to the desk.

The receptionist was as elegant as the surroundings, impeccably dressed, her face discreetly made up. Her smile was politely enquiring.

‘My name is Louise Frobisher. I’m here to see Dimitri Kalakos.’ Louise spoke in fluent Greek. One of the only good things to come from her nomadic childhood was that she had developed a flair for learning languages.

The receptionist glanced at the appointments diary on the desk and her expertly shaped brows drew together in a faint frown.

‘I’m sorry, but Mr Kalakos does not appear to have an appointment with you, Miss Frobisher.

Louise had planned for such a response. ‘My visit is on a personal, not a business matter. I assure you Mr Kalakos will be delighted to see me.’

The statement strained the truth thinner than an overstretched elastic band, she acknowledged. But she had gambled on the fact that Dimitri had a reputation as a playboy, and that with luck the reception staff would believe she was one of his—according to the gossip columns—numerous mistresses. That was the reason she was wearing a skirt several inches shorter than she had ever worn before, and killer heels that made her legs look as if they went on for ever.

She had left her hair loose for once, instead of bundling it into a knot on top of her head, and she was wearing more make-up than usual; the smoky grey shadow on her eyelids emphasised the deep blue of her eyes and her scarlet lipgloss matched exactly the colour of her skirt and jacket. The diamond fleur-de-lis pendant suspended on a fine gold chain around her neck had been her grandmother’s. It was the only piece of jewellery she owned, and she had chosen to wear it in the hope that if her grand-mère, Céline, was looking down on her she would send her good luck.

She had read somewhere that confidence tricksters were successful because they acted with absolute self-assurance. And so when the receptionist murmured that she would just check with Mr Kalakos’s PA, Louise laughed and tossed her blond curls over her shoulders as she strolled towards the lift. Many years ago she had visited Kalakos Shipping, when her mother had been Kostas Kalakos’s mistress, and she felt certain that Dimitri now occupied the luxurious office suite on the top floor of the building that had once been his father’s.

‘There’s no question that Dimitri will want to see me. And I promise you he won’t want us to be disturbed for quite a while,’ she drawled.

The receptionist stared at her uncertainly, but to Louise’s relief she made no further attempts to detain her. However, the moment the lift doors closed her bravado disappeared and she felt as awkward and unsure of herself as she had been at nineteen. She could recall as clearly as if it had happened yesterday the bitter confrontation that had taken place between her and Dimitri seven years ago, and the memory of his anger and her humiliation induced a churning sensation in the pit of her stomach.

The lift seemed horribly claustrophobic, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to stay calm. Dimitri represented her best hope of helping her mother, and it was vital she remained composed and in control of the emotions that had been see-sawing between apprehension and anticipation at the prospect of coming face to face with him again after all this time.

She should have expected that getting past his PA would prove to be far more difficult than the receptionist in the downstairs lobby. To give Aletha Pagnotis—her name was on the door of her office—due credit, she did phone through to her boss and relay Louise’s request for five minutes of his time.

The request was met with a blank refusal.

‘If you could tell me the reason for your visit, Miss Frobisher, then perhaps Mr Kalakos will reconsider his decision,’ the PA murmured, after half an hour had passed and she was no doubt as tired of having a stranger sitting in her office as Louise was tired of waiting.

Her reason for wanting to see Dimitri was too personal and too important to discuss with anyone but him, but it suddenly occurred to Louise that on Eirenne she had been known as Loulou—the nickname her mother always called her by. And because she had a different surname from Tina maybe Dimitri did not realise her identity.

His PA looked mystified as she double-checked the new message Louise asked her to give to her boss, but she duly disappeared into his office.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee assailed Dimitri’s senses and told him without him having to check the platinum Rolex on his wrist that it was 3:00 p.m. His PA served him coffee at exactly the same time every afternoon. Aletha had been with him for five years, and she ensured that his office ran with the smooth efficiency of a well-oiled machine.

‘Efkharistó.’ He did not lift his eyes from the columns of figures on his computer screen, but he was aware of her setting the tray down on his desk. Subconsciously he listened for the faint click of the door to indicate that she had left the room.

The click did not come.

‘Dimitri—if I could have a word?’

Frowning at the unexpected interruption, he flicked his gaze from the financial report he was working on and glanced at his PA. ‘I asked not to be disturbed,’ he reminded her, impatience edging into his voice.

‘Yes, I’m sorry … but the young woman who arrived earlier and asked to see you is still here.’

He shrugged. ‘As I explained earlier, I don’t know Louise Frobisher. I’ve never heard of her before, and unless she can give a reason for her visit I suggest you call Security and have her escorted from the premises.’

Aletha Pagnotis read the warning signs that the head of Kalakos Shipping was becoming irritated. Nothing was more likely to trigger Dimitri’s temper than disruption to his routine. But running a billion-pound business empire must put huge demands on him, she conceded.

At thirty-three, Dimitri was one of the country’s most powerful businessmen. Even before he had taken up the reigns of Kalakos Shipping, after the death of his father, Dimitri had set up an internet company which specialised in selling designer goods to the rapidly expanding Asian market, and within only a few years he had become a self-made millionaire. His drive and determination were phenomenal, and his brilliance and ruthlessness in the boardroom legendary.

Aletha sometimes had the feeling that he was trying to prove something to his father, even though Kostas had been dead for three years. The rift between father and son had been public knowledge, and she had always thought it a pity that they had never resolved their differences.

Whatever was behind his motivation, Dimitri set himself a demanding work schedule, and paid his staff generous salaries to see to it that his life ran like clockwork. Ordinarily she would not have bothered him about a visitor who had turned up without an appointment and refused to explain why she wanted to see him. But beneath the Englishwoman Louise Frobisher’s quiet determination Aletha had sensed an air of desperation, which had prompted her to ignore Dimitri’s orders that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

‘Miss Frobisher has asked me to tell you that you knew her several years ago by her nickname—Loulou. And that she wishes to discuss Eirenne.’

Aletha was sure she had repeated the message correctly, but now the words sounded rather ridiculous, and she braced herself for an explosion of Dimitri’s anger.

His eyes narrowed and he stared at her in silence for several seconds, before to her astonishment he said tersely, ‘Inform her that I can spare her precisely three minutes of my time and show her in.’

It was so quiet in the PA’s office that the ticking of the clock seemed to be in competition with the thud of Louise’s heart. The window offered a spectacular view over the city, but the Athens skyline did not hold her attention for long. Her nerves were frayed, and the sound of a door opening made her spin round as Aletha Pagnotis reappeared.

‘Mr Kalakos will see you very briefly,’ the PA said calmly. She was clearly intrigued by the situation but far too professional to reveal her curiosity. ‘Please come this way.’

Butterflies leapt in Louise’s stomach. If you act confident he won’t be able to intimidate you, she told herself. But the butterflies still danced, and her legs felt wobbly as she balanced on her four-inch heels and entered the lion’s den.

‘So, when did Loulou Hobbs become Louise Frobisher?’

Dimitri was seated behind a huge mahogany desk. He did not get to his feet when Louise walked in and his expression remained impassive, so that she had no idea what he was thinking, but he exuded an air of power and authority that she found daunting. Her brain also registered that he was utterly gorgeous, with his dark, Mediterranean colouring and sculpted features, and as she met his cool stare her heart jolted against her ribcage.

After his PA had slipped discreetly from the room Dimitri leaned back in his chair and surveyed Louise in a frank appraisal that brought a warm flush to her cheeks. She fought the urge to tug on the hem of her skirt to try and make it appear longer. It wasn’t even that short—only an inch or so above her knees, she reminded herself. But her elegant, sophisticated outfit, yes, a little bit provocative—chosen deliberately in the hope of boosting her self-confidence—was very different from the smart but practical navy suit she wore every day to the museum.

Unlike her mother, who had been an avid attention-seeker, Louise was quite happy to blend into the background. She wasn’t used to being looked at the way Dimitri was looking at her—as if she was an attractive woman and he was imagining her without any clothes on! Her face burned hotter. Of course he was not picturing her naked. That wasn’t a glint of sexual awareness in his olive-green eyes. It was just the sunlight slanting through the blinds and reflecting in his retinas.

He had found her attractive once before, whispered a voice in her head. And if she was absolutely honest hadn’t she chosen her outfit because she’d hoped to impress him—to show him what he had lost? Once he had told her she was beautiful. But that hadn’t been real, her common sense pointed out. It had been part of the cruel game he’d been playing with her, and the memories of what had happened between them on Eirenne were best left undisturbed.

‘Are you married? Is Frobisher your husband’s name?’

The curt questions took her by surprise. Dimitri’s face was still inscrutable but she suddenly sensed an inexplicable tension about him.

She shook her head. ‘No—I’m not married. I have always been Louise Frobisher. My mother called me by that silly nickname when I was younger, but I prefer to use my real name. And I was never Hobbs. I was given my father’s surname, even though Tina wasn’t married to him. They split up when I was a few months old and he refused to support her or me.’

Dimitri’s face hardened at the mention of her mother. ‘It doesn’t surprise me to hear that your father was one of a long list of Tina’s lovers. You’re lucky she even remembered his name.’

‘You’re hardly one to talk,’ Louise shot back, instantly defensive.

In truth Tina had not been the best parent in the world. Louise had spent much of her childhood dumped in various boarding schools, while her mother had flitted around Europe with whichever man she’d hooked up with at the time. But now Tina was ill, and it no longer mattered that as a child Louise had often felt she was a nuisance who disrupted her mother’s busy social life. Even in today’s world of advanced medical science the word cancer evoked a feeling of dread, and the prospect of losing her mother had made Louise realise how much she cared about her.

‘From what I’ve seen in media reports you relish being a billionaire playboy with an endless supply of beautiful mistresses. I accept that my mother isn’t perfect, but are you any better, Dimitri?’

‘I don’t break up marriages,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ve never stolen someone’s partner or wrecked a perfectly happy relationship. It is an irrefutable fact that your mother broke my mother’s heart.’

His bitter words hit Louise like bullets, and even though she had nothing to feel guilty about she wished for the millionth time that her mother had not had an affair with Kostas Kalakos.

‘It takes two people to make a relationship,’ she said quietly. ‘Your father chose to leave your mother for Tina …’

‘Only because she chased him relentlessly and seduced him with every trick in her no doubt extensive sexual repertoire.’ Dimitri’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Tina Hobbs knew exactly who my father was when she “bumped into him” at a party in Monaco. It was not the chance meeting she convinced you it was. She knew Kostas would be there, and she managed to wangle an invitation to that party with the absolute intention of catching herself a rich lover.’

Dimitri’s nostrils flared as he sought to control the anger that still burned inside him whenever he thought of his father’s mistress. The first time he’d set eyes on Tina Hobbs he had seen her for what she was—an avaricious harlot who attached herself like a leech to any rich man stupid enough to fall for a pair of big breasts and the promise of sexual nirvana.

That was what had got to him the most. The realisation that his father hadn’t been as clever or wonderful as he had believed had hurt. He’d lost respect for Kostas, who had been his idol, and even now he still felt a hard knot inside when he remembered how his illusions had been shattered.

Anger filled him with a restless energy, and he scraped back his chair and jerked to his feet. He frowned when Louise immediately edged backwards towards the door. It wasn’t her fault that her mother was a greedy, manipulating bitch, he reminded himself. Louise had been a child when Tina had met Kostas—a gawky kid with braces on her teeth and an annoying habit of staring down at the ground as if she hoped she would sink through it and become invisible.

To tell the truth he hadn’t taken much notice of her on the occasions when he had visited his father on the Kalakos family’s private Aegean island and she had been staying there with her mother during the school holidays.

It had been a shock when he had gone to the island that final time—after the row with his father—and the girl he had known as Loulou had been there alone. Only she hadn’t been a girl. She had been nineteen—on the brink of womanhood and innocently unaware of her allure. He’d had no idea when exactly the awkward teenager who had been too shy to say a word to him had transformed into an articulate, intelligent and beautiful adult. For the first time in his life his usual self-assurance had deserted him and he had found himself struggling to know what to say to her.

He had resolved the problem by kissing her …

Dimitri hauled his mind back to the present. Trips down memory lane were never a good idea. But as he stared at the unexpected visitor who had interrupted his tightly organised work schedule, he acknowledged that in the past seven years Loulou—or Louise—had realised the potential she had shown at nineteen and developed into a stunner.

He ran his eyes over her, taking in her long honey-blond hair which was parted on one side so that it curved around her heart-shaped face and fell halfway down her back in a tumble of glossy curls. Her eyes were a deep sapphire-blue, and her red-glossed lips were a serious temptation.

Desire corkscrewed in his gut as he lowered his gaze and noted the way her fitted scarlet jacket moulded the firm thrust of her breasts and emphasised her narrow waist. Her skirt was short and her legs, sheathed in pale hose, were long and slender. Black stiletto heels added at least three inches to her height.

He trailed his eyes slowly back up her body and lingered on her mouth. Soft, moist lips slightly parted … He felt himself harden as an image flashed into his mind of slanting his lips over hers and kissing her as he had done many years ago.

Louise’s breath seemed to be trapped in her lungs. Something was happening between her and Dimitri—some curious connection had made the atmosphere in the room almost crackle with electricity. She could not look away from him. It seemed as if an invisible force had locked her eyes with his, and as she stared at him she felt her blood pound in her ears, echoing the frantic rhythm of her heartbeat.

When she had walked into his office her first thought had been that he hadn’t changed. He still held his head at that arrogant angle, as if he believed he was superior to everyone else. And although he must be in his thirties now there was no hint of grey in his dark-as-ebony hair.

But of course there were differences about him. In the seven years since she had last seen him his sleek, handsome, could-have-been-a-model-in-an-aftershave-advert looks had grown more rugged. His face was leaner, harder, with razor-sharp cheekbones and a square jaw that warned of an implacable determination to always have his own way. The boyish air that she remembered had disappeared, and now he was a blatantly virile man at the prime of physical perfection.

Now that he was standing she was conscious of his exceptional height. He must be four or five inches over six feet tall, she estimated, and powerfully built, with the finely honed musculature of an athlete. Superbly tailored grey trousers hugged his lean hips, and at some point during the day he had discarded his tie—it was draped over the back of his chair—and undone the top buttons of his shirt to reveal a vee of darkly tanned skin and a smattering of the dark hair that she knew covered his chest.

Memories assailed her—images of a younger Dimitri, standing at the edge of the pool at the villa on Eirenne, wearing a pair of wet swim-shorts that moulded his hard thighs and left little to the imagination. Not that she had needed to imagine him naked. She had seen every inch of his glorious golden-skinned body. She had touched him, stroked him, felt the weight of him pressing her into the mattress as he lowered himself onto her …

‘Why are you here?’

His abrupt question was a welcome interruption to her wayward thoughts. She released her pent-up breath on a faint sigh.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘That’s funny,’ he said sardonically. ‘I remember saying those exact words to you once, but you refused to listen to me. Why should I listen to you now?’

Louise was startled by his reference to the past. She’d assumed that he would have forgotten the brief time they had spent together. They had been magical, golden days for her, but she had meant nothing to him—as she had later found out.

She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say. I’m putting Eirenne up for sale—and I thought you might want to buy it.’

Dimitri gave a harsh laugh. ‘You mean buy back the island that belonged to my family for forty years before your mother persuaded my father on his deathbed to amend his will and leave Eirenne to her? Morally, it is not yours to sell.’ He frowned. ‘Nor do you have the right to sell it. Kostas named Tina as his beneficiary, and the island belongs to her.’

‘Actually, I am the legal owner. My mother transferred the deeds into my name and I can do what I like with Eirenne—although Tina is in agreement with my decision to sell it.’

The first part of that statement at least was true, Louise thought. Her mother had been advised by her accountant to transfer ownership of the island for tax purposes. But Louise had never regarded Eirenne as hers, and her decision to sell it was a last resort to raise the huge sum of money needed to pay for Tina to have lifesaving pioneering medical treatment in the U.S. She had not discussed it with her mother, who was too ill to cope with anything more than getting through each day. Tina’s chances of survival were slim, but Louise was determined she would have a chance.

She held Dimitri’s gaze and tried not to feel intimidated by the aggression emanating from him. ‘The island has been valued at three million pounds. I’m prepared to sell it to you for one million.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

She understood his surprise. The real-estate agent had clearly thought she was mad when she’d told him she was prepared to offer the small but charming Greek island set amid the turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea for considerably less than its market value.

She shrugged. ‘Because I need a quick sale.’

She did not attempt to explain that she had never felt comfortable with the fact that Kostas Kalakos had left the island to her mother rather than to his family. For one thing she doubted Dimitri would believe her, and for another she did not want to bring personal feelings into what was essentially a business proposition. She needed to sell Eirenne and she was sure Dimitri would be keen to buy it. End of story.

‘I know you tried to buy the island from my mother shortly after Kostas died, and she refused to sell it. Now I’m giving you the chance to own it again.’

Dimitri snorted. ‘Let me guess. Tina wants you to sell Eirenne because she has spent all the money my father left her and has decided to cash in her remaining asset.’

His comment was painfully close to the truth, Louise acknowledged heavily. Since Kostas’s death her mother had lived an extravagant lifestyle, and failed to heed warnings from the bank that her inheritance fund was running out.

‘I don’t intend to discuss the reason for the sale. But if you turn down my offer I will advertise Eirenne, and I’ve been told that it should attract a lot of interest.’

‘Interest, possibly. But in case you hadn’t noticed the world is in the middle of an economic recession and I doubt you’ll sell quickly. Businesses in the leisure industry won’t be attracted to Eirenne because it isn’t big enough to be developed as a tourist destination—thankfully.’

Dimitri’s words echoed what the real-estate agent had told Louise. ‘Buying a private island is not a top priority for most people right now. Even billionaires are being cautious in this uncertain economic climate, and it could be months before a buyer comes forward.’

Panic coiled in her stomach. Her mother did not have months.

Dimitri studied Louise speculatively, curious when he saw the colour drain from her face. She gave the impression of self-confidence, but he sensed a vulnerability about her that reminded him of the younger woman he had known seven years ago.

She had been in her first year at university, just stepping out into the world and brimming with enthusiasm for life. Her passion for everything, especially the arts, had captivated him. Although he’d only been in his twenties, he had already been jaded by a diet of sophisticated socialites who fell into his bed with a willingness that he’d begun to find tedious. But the Loulou he had met on Eirenne that spring had been different from any other woman he’d ever known—just as she had been different from the shy teenager he’d largely ignored on the few previous occasions when he had seen her at his father’s villa.

He had been intrigued by her new maturity, and they had talked for hours. Not pointless small-talk, but interesting conversations. As the days had passed he’d found that he valued her friendship and her honesty as much as he was entranced by her beauty, which was not just skin-deep but truly came from within her.

He had thought he had found something special—someone special. But he had been wrong.

Dimitri was conscious of a faint feeling of regret, which he immediately dismissed as he slammed the door on his memories.

‘There’s more to this than you’re telling me,’ he guessed intuitively. ‘Why are you prepared to sell the island for significantly less than it’s worth?’

When she did not reply he shrugged dismissively. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I am no longer interested in Eirenne.’ He shot her an intent look. ‘It holds too many memories that I’d prefer to forget.’

Louise wondered if he deliberately meant to hurt her. He could have been referring to his father’s affair with her mother, of course. Kostas had left Dimitri’s mother to live with Tina on Eirenne. But somehow she knew he had been talking about more personal memories—of the few wonderful days they had spent together and that one incredible night.

He drew back his shirt-cuff and glanced at his watch. ‘Your three minutes are up. A member of my security staff will escort you from the building.’

‘No … Wait!’ Shocked by his abrupt dismissal, Louise jerked forward and reached out to prevent him from picking up the phone on his desk. Her fingers touched his and the brief contact sent a quiver of electricity shooting up her arm. She could not restrain an audible gasp and snatched her hand back.

She felt his eyes on her, but she was so shaken by her reaction to him that she could not bring herself to meet his gaze. She was stunned by his refusal to buy the island. She had been sure he would agree.

Her mind whirled. If Dimitri did not want to buy Eirenne she could advertise it at the same below-value price she had offered it to him. But there was still no guarantee that it would be sold quickly, and time for Tina was running out.

She pictured her mother’s painfully thin face the last time she had visited her. The slash of bright lipstick Tina still applied every day with the help of a nurse had looked garish against her grey skin.

‘I’m scared, Loulou,’ Tina had whispered, when Louise had leaned over the bed to kiss her the day before she had flown to Greece.

‘It’s going to be all right—I promise.’

She would do everything in her power to keep the promise she had given her mother, Louise vowed. Somehow she had to raise enough money for Tina to have that treatment in the U.S., and her best chance of doing that was to persuade Dimitri to buy back the island that she believed in her heart should be his.

That was why she had offered Eirenne to him for less than it was worth. Her conscience was torn between wanting to help her mother and a desire to be fair to Dimitri. The figure she had quoted him would cover Tina’s medical costs at the specialist cancer clinic in Massachusetts, and would leave enough for her to live on once she was well again.

She had to believe it was going to happen, Louise thought emotionally. She refused to contemplate that Tina would not survive. But Dimitri’s declaration that he was not interested in the island was a serious blow to her hopes.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I THOUGHT you would jump at the chance to own Eirenne.’ Louise prayed that Dimitri could not hear the desperation in her voice. ‘I remember you told me it meant a lot to you because you’d spent happy times there as a child.’

His jaw tightened. ‘They were happy times—for me, my sister and my parents. We spent every holiday on Eirenne. Until your mother destroyed my family. Now you have the gall to want me to buy back what should have been mine? My father had no right to leave our island to his whore.

‘I presume you would give the money to Tina, so that she can continue to fund her extravagant lifestyle?’ His lip curled in disgust. ‘What kind of sucker do you take me for? Why don’t you suggest she finds herself another rich lover? Or do what every other decent person does and find a job so that she can support herself? That would be a novelty,’ he sneered. ‘Tina actually working for a living. Although I suppose she would argue that lying flat on her back is a form of work.’

‘Shut up!’ The vile picture he was painting of her mother ripped Louise apart—not least because she could not deny there was some truth in his words. Tina had never worked. She had lived off her lovers and shamelessly allowed them to keep her—until a richer man came along.

But she was her mother, faults and all, and she was dying. Louise refused to criticise Tina or allow Dimitri to insult her.

‘I’ve told you—I am the legal owner of Eirenne and I’m selling it because I need to raise some capital.’

He frowned. ‘You’re saying the money would be for you? Why do you need a million pounds?’

‘Why does anyone need money? A girl has to live, you know.’

Unconsciously she touched the diamond fleur-de-lis pendant and thought of her grandmother. Céline had not approved of the way her daughter lived her life, but she would have wanted her granddaughter to do everything possible to help Tina. Louise had even had the pendant valued by a jeweller, thinking that she could sell it to raise funds for Tina’s treatment. But the sum she would have made was a fraction of the cost of medical expenses in America, and on the jeweller’s advice she had decided to keep her only memento of her grandmother.

She flushed beneath Dimitri’s hard stare. The contempt in his eyes hurt like a knife in her chest, but it was vital that she convinced him she was selling the island for her own benefit. If he guessed that Tina needed money there wasn’t a hope in hell he would agree to buy Eirenne. She was not being dishonest, she assured herself. She was giving Dimitri the opportunity to buy the island that had once belonged to his family at a bargain price. It was no business of his how she chose to spend the proceeds of the sale.

‘From what I remember of Eirenne it is a pleasant enough place, but I’d rather have hard cash than a lump of grey rock in the middle of the sea,’ she told him.

Dimitri felt a sensation like a lead weight sinking in his stomach. It was stupid to feel disappointed because Louise had turned out like her mother, he told himself. Tina Hobbs was the ultimate gold-digger, and it should be no surprise that her daughter shared the same lack of moral integrity.

Seven years ago he would have sworn that Louise was different from Tina, but clearly she was not. She wanted easy money. From her appearance—designer outfit and perfect hair and make-up—she was obviously high-maintenance and had expensive tastes. Her necklace was not some cheap trinket. Diamonds which sparkled with such brilliance were worth a fortune.

How was she able to afford couture clothes and valuable jewellery? Dimitri frowned as the thought slid into his head that perhaps a man had paid for her outfit in return for her sleeping with him. Her mother had made a career out of leeching off rich lovers, and he was sickened to think that Louise might be doing the same.

Seven years ago she had been so innocent, he remembered. Not sexually—although it had crossed his mind when he had taken her to bed that she was not very experienced. At first she had been a little shy with him, a little hesitant, but she had responded to him with such ardent passion that he had dismissed the idea that he was her first lover. Sex with her had been mind-blowing, and even now the memory of her wrapping her slender limbs around him, the soft cries of delight she had made when he had kissed every inch of her body and parted her thighs to press his mouth to her sweet feminine heart, caused his gut to clench.

Her unworldly air had probably been an act, Dimitri thought grimly as he dragged his eyes from her face and turned to stare out of the window. Even if she had been as sweet and lovely as he’d believed all those years ago, she was patently her mother’s daughter now.

So why was he so fiercely attracted to her? The question mocked him, because however much he hated to admit it he felt an overwhelming urge to stride around his desk and pull her into his arms. He felt a tightening in his groin as he imagined kissing her, pictured himself thrusting his tongue between her red-glossed lips and sliding his hand beneath her short skirt.

Gamoto! He cursed beneath his breath. The girl Loulou he remembered from years ago had gone for ever. Perhaps she had never existed at all except for in his mind. He had made her out to be special, but he had been kidding himself.

The woman standing in his office was beautiful and desirable—and he was a red-blooded male. He wasn’t going to beat himself up because she fired him up. But he was not some crass youth with a surfeit of hormones. Louise was off-limits for all sorts of reasons—not least because she was history and he had no wish to revisit the past.

Confident that he had regained control of his libido, he swung round and regarded her dispassionately. His first instinct when she had offered to sell him Eirenne had been to tell her to go to hell. But now his business brain acknowledged that he would be crazy to turn down the proposition. The island was easily worth double the amount Louise was asking. He did not know why she was prepared to sell it for less, and frankly he didn’t care.

Three years ago his lawyers had contested Kostas’s will and argued that Eirenne should remain the property of the Kalakos family, but to no avail. There had been no legal loopholes and Dimitri had had to accept that he would never own the island he believed was rightfully his. Now he had the chance to buy it at an exceptionally good price. He would be a fool to allow his pride to stand in the way of a good deal.

‘I need some time to consider whether or not I want to buy Eirenne,’ he said abruptly.

Louise hardly dared to breathe, afraid she had misheard him or misunderstood, and that the fragile thread of hope he seemed to be offering would be snatched away. A few moments ago he had told her he was not interested, but now, miraculously, he appeared to be having second thoughts.

‘How much time?’ She did not want to push him, but Tina needed to start the treatment in America as soon as possible.

‘Three days. I’ll contact you at your hotel. Where are you staying?’

‘I’m not—I arrived in Greece yesterday evening and I’m leaving tonight. I can’t be away from home for too long.’

Why not? Dimitri wondered. Did she live with a lover who demanded her presence in his bed every night? Was he the same man who had bought her the diamond pendant that sparkled so brilliantly against her creamy skin? Heat surged inside him—an inexplicable feeling of rage that boiled in his blood. It was none of his business how Louise lived her life, he reminded himself. He didn’t give a damn if she had an army of lovers.

‘Give me details of where I can contact you,’ he instructed her tersely, handing her the notepad and pen from his desk.

She quickly wrote something down and handed the pad back to him. He glanced at her address and felt another flare of anger. Property in the centre of Paris was expensive. He knew because a couple of years ago he had purchased an apartment block on the Rue de Rivoli to add to his real-estate portfolio.

She could have a well-paid job, his mind pointed out. He shouldn’t leap to the assumption that she allowed a man to keep her just because her mother had always done so. But she had told him she was selling Eirenne because she needed the money. So, had a rich lover grown tired of her? She would have to have a damn good job to afford the rent on a prime city-centre address so close to the Champs-Elysées.

Incensed by the thoughts ricocheting around his brain—about a woman he had not the slightest interest in—Dimitri strode across the room and pulled open the door for her to leave.

‘I’ll be in touch.’

Louise’s eyes flew to his face, but she could read nothing in his hard expression. Patently their meeting was at an end. The next three days were going to seem an eternity, but she could do nothing now except wait for Dimitri’s decision.

‘Thank you.’ Her voice sounded rusty and her legs felt as unsteady as a newborn foal’s as she walked out of his office. As she passed him, she caught the drift of his cologne, mingled with another subtly masculine scent that was achingly familiar even after all this time. She hesitated, swamped by a crazy urge to slide her arms around his waist, to rest her head against his chest and feel the beat of his heart next to her own as she had done a long time ago.

Of their own volition, it seemed, her eyes were drawn to his face, and just as when she had first entered his office some unseen force seemed to weld her gaze to his. Unconsciously she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. Theos, she was a temptress—and he was a mere mortal with a healthy sex drive. Despite his determination to ignore the smouldering chemistry between him and Louise he was conscious of an ache low in his gut, and his mouth twisted in self-disgust when he felt himself harden.

For the space of a heartbeat he almost gave in to the temptation to pull her back into the room, close the door and push her against it, so that he could grind the swollen shaft throbbing painfully beneath his trousers against her pelvis. It was a long time since he had felt such an urgent, almost primitive desire for a woman. He prided himself on the fact that he was always in control, always coolly collected. But he did not feel cool now. Molten heat was surging through his veins, and as he stared into her sapphire-blue eyes every sensible thought in his head was overruled by a sexual hunger that was so strong it took all his considerable will-power not to succumb to it.

‘Antio.’ He bade her goodbye in a clipped tone, his teeth gritted.

The sound of Dimitri’s voice shattered the spell. Louise tore her eyes from his. She discovered that she had been holding her breath and released it on a shaky sigh. She forced her feet to continue moving, and the instant she stepped into the corridor she heard the decisive snick of the door being closed behind her.

For a few seconds she leaned against the corridor wall and dragged oxygen into her lungs, conscious of her heart hammering beneath her ribs. She was shocked by the effect Dimitri had had on her. He was just a man, she reminded herself. Sure, he was good-looking, but she had met other handsome men and hadn’t felt as if she had been hit in the solar plexus.

She had never met another man as devastatingly sexy as Dimitri, a voice in her head taunted. No other man had ever turned her legs to jelly and evoked shockingly erotic images in her mind that caused her cheeks to burn as she hurried into the lift. Seven years ago she had been utterly overwhelmed by Dimitri, and she was dismayed to realise that nothing had changed.

Dimitri walked back across to his desk and drummed his fingers on the polished wooden surface. He could not forget the expression of relief that had flared in Louise’s eyes when he had told her he would consider buying the island. Maybe she had debts and that was why she needed money in a hurry, he brooded. That would explain why she couldn’t wait for a buyer who would pay the full value of Eirenne.

He dropped into his chair and stared at his computer screen, but his concentration was shot to pieces and his mood was filthy. Sexual frustration was not conducive to work productivity, he discovered. With a savage curse he gave up on the financial report, snatched up his phone and put a call through to a private investigator whose services he used occasionally.

‘I want you to check out a woman called Louise Frobisher—I have an address in Paris for her. The usual information. Where she works—’ if she works, he thought to himself‘—her friends …’ his jaw hardened ‘…boyfriends. Report back to me in twenty-four hours.’

It was past midnight when Louise arrived back at her apartment in the Châtelet-Les-Halles area of Paris. Ideally located close enough to the Musée du Louvre that she could walk to work, it had been her home for the past four years, and she let out a heartfelt sigh as she walked through the front door. Her flat was on the sixth floor, in the eaves of the building. The sloping ceilings made the compact interior seem even smaller, but the view over the city from the tiny balcony was wonderful.

The view was the last thing on her mind, however, as she dumped her suitcase in the hall and kicked off her shoes. The past forty-eight hours—in which she had flown to Athens and back again, and had that tense meeting with Dimitri—had been tiring, not to mention fraught with emotions.

As she entered the living room Madeleine, her Siamese cat, stretched elegantly before springing down from a cushion on the wide windowsill.

‘Don’t give me that look,’ Louise murmured as she lifted the cat into her arms and Madeleine fixed her with a reproachful stare from slanting eyes the colour of lapis-lazuli. ‘You weren’t abandoned. Benoit promised he would feed you twice a day, and I bet he made a fuss of you.’

Her neighbour, who lived in the flat below, had been a great help recently, offering to feed Madeleine while Louise spent time with Tina at the hospital. She would visit her mother after work tomorrow. For now, she knew she should eat something, but her appetite was as depleted as the interior of her fridge. A quick shower followed by bed beckoned, and half an hour later she slid between crisp white sheets and did not bother to make even a token protest when Madeleine sprang up onto the counterpane and curled up in the crook of her knees.

Sleep should have come quickly, but it eluded her as thoughts chased round inside her head. Seeing Dimitri again had been so much more painful than she had been prepared for. It had been seven years, she reminded herself angrily. She should be over him by now—was over him. And what was there to be over, anyway? The brief time they had spent together had hardly constituted a relationship.

But as she lay in bed, watching silver moonbeams slant through the gap in the curtains, she could not hold back her memories.

She had gone to Eirenne for the Easter holidays. Her friends at university had tried to persuade her to stay in Sheffield, but she’d had exams coming up and had guessed she wouldn’t get any studying done if her flatmates planned to hold parties every night. Besides, she had planned to spend her nineteenth birthday with her mother.

But when she had arrived at the island she’d found Tina and Kostas about to leave for a holiday in Dubai. It wasn’t the first time Tina had forgotten her birthday, and Louise hadn’t bothered to remind her. All her life she had taken second place to her mother’s lovers. At least she would be able to get her assignment finished, she’d consoled herself. But she had been lonely on Eirenne with only the villa’s staff for company, and she had missed her new university friends.

One afternoon, bored with her studies, she had decided to ride around the island on her pushbike. Eirenne was a small island, but on previous visits she had never strayed far from the grounds of the opulent villa that Kostas had built for his mistress.

The road that ran around the island was little more than a bumpy track and Louise had been carefully avoiding the potholes when a motorbike had suddenly shot round the bend and swerved to avoid hitting her. In panic she had lost her balance and fallen, scraping her arm on the rough ground as she landed.

‘Theos, why weren’t you looking where you were going?’

She had recognised the angry voice, even though she had only met Kostas’s son Dimitri a handful of times when he had happened to visit his father at the same time as she had been staying on Eirenne. She had never really spoken to him before, although she had overheard the arguments he’d had with Kostas about his relationship with Tina.

‘You nearly crashed into me,’ she’d defended herself, her temper rising when he grabbed her arm none too gently and hauled her to her feet. ‘Road hog! Some birthday this is turning out to be,’ she had added grumpily. ‘I wish I’d stayed in England.’

For a moment his unusual olive-green eyes darkened. But then he threw back his head and laughed.

‘So you do speak? You’ve always seemed to be struck dumb whenever I’ve met you.’

‘I suppose you think I’m over-awed by you,’ she said, flushing. Not for the world would she allow him to know that since she was sixteen she’d had a massive crush on him.

He stared down at her, his eyes glinting with amusement in his handsome face. ‘And are you over-awed, Loulou?’

‘Of course not. I’m annoyed. My bike’s got a puncture, thanks to you. And I’m going to have a lovely bruise on my shoulder.’

‘You’re bleeding,’ he said, noticing where she had scraped her arm. ‘Come back to the house and I’ll clean that graze and fix your tyre.’

‘But the Villa Aphrodite is that way,’ she said in a puzzled voice when he turned in the opposite direction. ‘Where are you staying, anyway? I haven’t seen you around. I thought Kostas had banned you from the villa after your last row with him.’

‘It suits me never to set foot inside that tasteless monstrosity my father has built for his tart.’ The anger returned to Dimitri’s voice. ‘I’m staying at the old house my grandfather built many years ago. He named the house Iremia, which means tranquillity. But the island is no longer a tranquil place since your mother came here.’

Leaving his motorbike by the side of the track, he pushed Louise’s bicycle. She followed him in silence, daunted by the rigid set of his shoulders. But his temper had cooled by the time they arrived at the house, and he was a polite host, inviting her in and instructing his butler to serve them drinks on the terrace.

The house was nestled in a dip in the land, surrounded by pine trees and olive groves so that it was hidden from view. It was not surprising that Louise had never seen it before. Unlike the ultra-modern and to Louise’s mind unattractive Villa Aphrodite, Iremia was a beautiful old house built in a classical style, with coral-pink walls and cream-coloured wooden shutters at the windows. The gardens were well-established, and through the trees the cobalt-blue sea sparkled in the distance.

‘Hold still while I put some antiseptic on your arm,’ Dimitri instructed after he had led her out to the terrace and indicated that she should sit on one of the sun-loungers.

His touch was light, yet a tiny tremor ran through Louise at the feel of his hands on her skin. His dark head was bent close to hers, and she was fiercely aware of the tang of his aftershave mingled with another subtly masculine scent that caused her heart to race.

He glanced up and met her gaze. ‘I hardly recognised you,’ he said, his smile doing strange things to her insides. ‘The last time I saw you, you were the proverbial ugly duckling.’

‘Thanks,’ she muttered sarcastically, flushing as she remembered the thick braces she’d worn on her teeth for years. Thankfully she’d had them removed now, and her teeth were perfectly straight and white.

As a teenager she had been slow to develop, and had despaired about her boyish figure, but in the last year or so she had finally gained the womanly curves she had longed for. However, she still lacked self-confidence, and Dimitri’s comment hurt. She tried to jerk away from him, but instead of releasing her arm he trailed his fingers very lightly up to the base of her throat and found the pulse that was beating frantically there.

‘But now you have turned into a swan,’ he said softly. ‘Ise panemorfi—you are very beautiful,’ he translated, although he had no need. She spoke Greek fluently.

That had been the start of it, Louise thought, turning her head restlessly on the pillows. That moment when she had looked into Dimitri’s olive-green eyes and made the startling discovery that he desired her. That had been the beginning of a golden few days when they had become friends, while the awareness between them had grown ever more intense.

When Dimitri had learned that she was spending her birthday alone he had insisted on taking her to dinner on the neighbouring island of Andros, which was a short boat ride away from Eirenne. It had been a magical evening, and at the end of it, when he had escorted her back to the Villa Aphrodite, he had kissed her. It had only been a brief kiss, no more than a gossamer-light brush of his lips on hers, but fireworks had exploded inside her and she had stared at him dazedly, her heart thumping, longing for him to kiss her again.

He hadn’t, but had bade her goodnight rather abruptly, so that she had wondered if she had annoyed him in some way. Maybe he regretted kissing her because she was the daughter of his father’s mistress? she had thought miserably. But the next morning he had arrived as she was sitting disconsolately by the pool, facing another day on her own. He had invited her to go to the beach with him, and the day that had seemed so bleak suddenly became wonderful.

They had swum and sunbathed and talked about every subject under the sun—apart from her mother’s affair with his father. Dimitri never mentioned Tina.

Over the next few days Louise’s faint wariness had faded and she’d grown more relaxed with him, so that when he’d kissed her again—properly this time—she had responded with an eagerness that had made him groan and accuse her of being a sorceress who had surely cast a spell on him.

It had seemed entirely natural for him to take her back to the house in the pine forest and make love to her one long, lazy afternoon, with the sun slanting through the blinds and gilding their naked bodies. He had been so skilled and so gentle that losing her virginity had been a painless experience.

Dimitri had been unaware that it was her first time, and she had been too shy to tell him. She had responded to the stroke of his hands and the exquisite sensation of his mouth on her breasts, teasing her nipples until they were as hard as pebbles, with a passion that had matched his. It had been perfect, their bodies moving in total accord, until simultaneously they had reached the zenith of sensual pleasure.

She had spent the whole of that night with him, and each time he’d made love to her she had fallen deeper in love with him.

The following morning he had walked her back to the Villa Aphrodite.

‘Come and swim in the pool,’ she had invited. ‘No one is here.’ By ‘no one’ she had meant her mother.

Dimitri hesitated. ‘All right—but afterwards we’ll go back to Iremia. I hate this place. I assume Tina chose the décor,’ he said sardonically, glancing at the zebra-print sofas and the white marble pillars that were everywhere in the villa. ‘It just goes to prove that no amount of money can buy good taste.’

His dislike of her mother was evident in his voice, and Louise felt uncomfortable, but then he smiled at her and the awkward moment passed. They swam for a while, and then he carried her out of the pool and laid her on a sunbed. She had wound her arms around his neck to pull him down on top of her—when a shrill voice made them spring apart.

‘What do you think you ‘re bloody well doing? Take your hands off my daughter! ’

All these years later Louise could still hear Tina screaming at Dimitri as she tottered across the patio in her vertiginous heels, quivering with fury so that her platinum-blond beehive had seemed to wobble precariously on top of her head.

‘It’s bad enough that Kostas cut our trip short with some excuse about needing to be at a meeting in Athens. But to find you here, preying on Loulou, is the last straw. You have no right to be here. Your father banned you from the villa.’

‘Don’t you dare talk to me about rights.’ Dimitri’s anger had been explosive as he’d leapt to his feet and faced Tina.

The row that had followed had been a vicious exchange of words. Louise had said nothing, but her mother had said more than enough.

‘Do you think I don’t know what’s in your nasty, vengeful mind?’ Tina hissed to Dimitri. ‘It’s obvious you decided to try and seduce Loulou to get at me—out of some misplaced revenge for your mother.’

‘No!’ Louise interrupted desperately. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ Tina laughed mockingly. ‘So Dimitri has told you about his mother, has he? That she took an overdose and that he blames me for her death? Has he also told you that his father has disinherited him because of the way he has repeatedly insulted me?’ Tina continued relentlessly. ‘Or that now he is no longer in line to inherit a fortune the woman he hoped to marry has dumped him? This has everything to do with me—doesn’t it, Dimitri? You hate my guts, and the only reason you’ve been sniffing around my daughter is because you want to cause trouble.’

Tina’s accusations sent a cold chill down Louise’s spine. Her mother had always been over-dramatic, she reminded herself. Dimitri couldn’t have been pretending to be attracted to her. He had been so attentive, and the passion between them had been so intense that she had even begun to think—to hope—that he was falling in love with her.

‘It’s not true. Is it?’ She turned to Dimitri, pleading for his reassurance, but inside her head doubts were already forming. She had not even known his mother had died, let alone the tragic circumstances of her death. Not once in the past few days had he mentioned it.

She had thought they were friends, and now they were lovers. But Dimitri had turned into a hard-faced stranger and the coldness in his eyes froze her blood.

‘Yes, it’s true.’

His harsh voice broke the silence, and like a pebble hitting the surface of a pool his words caused shockwaves to ripple through the tense atmosphere.

‘My mother took her own life because she was heartbroken that my father had divorced her and thrown away the love they had shared for thirty years for a worthless whore.’

He stared contemptuously at Tina, and then turned and walked away without saying another word. He didn’t even glance at Louise; it was as if she did not exist. And she watched him go, paralysed with shock and feeling sick with humiliation that she had been nothing more to him than a pawn in his battle with her mother.

‘Don’t tell me you were falling for him?’ her mother said, when she caught sight of Louise’s stricken face. ‘For God’s sake, Lou, until recently he was engaged to Rochelle Fitzpatrick—that stunning American model who is regularly on the covers of the top fashion magazines. He wasn’t really interested in you. Like I said, he just wants to cause trouble. A while ago Dimitri overheard me telling Kostas how keen I am for you have a good career,’ Tina continued. ‘He knew I would be upset if you dropped out of university to have an affair with him. I imagine he thought that if you fell for his flattery he would be able to turn you against me. And of course his ultimate goal was to cause friction between me and his father.’

Tina prattled on relentlessly, unaware of the agonised expression in Louise’s eyes. ‘It’s lucky I came back before he persuaded you into bed. The villa staff told me he’s only been hanging around for a couple of days. Go back to university and forget about Dimitri.’ She gave Louise a sudden intent look. ‘You’re clever. You can make something of your life. You don’t need to rely on any man. And if you take my advice you’ll never fall in love like I did with your father. I swore after him that I’d never let myself care about any man ever again.’

Shaken by Tina’s reference to her father, whom she had never known, and traumatised by the scene with Dimitri, Louise left Eirenne within the hour. She hadn’t expected to see him again, but as she climbed into the motor launch that would take her to Athens she was shocked to see him striding along the jetty.

‘Loulou … wait!’

Wearing bleached jeans and a black tee shirt that accentuated his incredible physique, he looked unbelievably gorgeous, and it struck her then that she’d been mad to believe he could have been attracted to her. He could have any woman he wanted, so why would he want an unsophisticated student whose looks could at best be described as passable?

Overwhelmed by self-doubt, she instructed the boatman to start the engine.

Dimitri broke into a run. ‘Theos! Don’t go. I want to talk to you about what I said up at the villa.’

‘But I don’t want to talk to you,’ she told him stonily. ‘You made everything perfectly clear.’

She felt a fool, but she’d be damned if she would let him see that he had broken her heart. The boat engine roared, drowning out Dimitri’s response. He looked furious as the boat shot away from the jetty, and shouted something after her. But she didn’t hear his words over the rush of the wind, and told herself she did not care that she would never speak to him again.

She had been unaware when she had left Eirenne that a few weeks later she would urgently need to talk to Dimitri …

Louise tossed restlessly beneath the sheets. She sat up to thump her pillows and flopped back down again, wishing the bombardment of memories would stop. Tiredness swept over her, and her last conscious thought was that in a few short hours she had to get up for work.

She must have fallen into a deep sleep at first, but towards dawn the dream came. She was running down a long corridor. On either side were rooms like hospital rooms, and in each room was a baby lying in a cot. But it was never her baby. Every time she went into a room she felt hopeful that this was the right one—but it was always someone else’s child looking up at her.

She ran into the next room, and the next, feeling ever more frantic as she searched for her baby. She was almost at the end of the corridor. There was only one room left. This had to be where her child was. But the cot was empty—and the terrible truth dawned that she would never find her baby. Her child was lost for ever.

Dear God. Louise jerked upright, breathing hard as if she had run a marathon. It was a long time since she had last had the dream, but it had been so real she was not surprised to find her face was wet and that she had been crying in her sleep. For months after the miscarriage that she’d suffered, three weeks after discovering she was expecting Dimitri’s child, she had dreamed that she was looking for her baby. And each time she had woken, just as now, feeling a dull ache of grief for the new life she had carried so briefly inside her.

Seeing Dimitri again yesterday had triggered memories buried deep in her subconscious. She had never told anyone about the baby, and had struggled to deal with her sense of loss alone. Maybe if she had been able to confide in someone it would have helped, but her mother had been totally absorbed in her relationship with Kostas, and as for Dimitri—well, it was probably better that he had never known she had conceived his child.

No doubt he would have been horrified. But she would never know how he might have reacted, because he had refused to speak to her when she had plucked up the courage and phoned him to tell him she was pregnant. A week later, when he had finally returned her call, she had switched off her phone. There hadn’t seemed any point in telling him she had lost his baby. At the time there hadn’t seemed a lot of point in anything. The weeks and months following the miscarriage had been desperately bleak, and she had just wanted to stay in bed and hide from the world, she remembered.

She had told herself it would not have been ideal to bring a fatherless child into the world. She knew only too well what it was like to grow up with only one parent, to feel the nagging sense of failure that perhaps it was her fault her own father had rejected her. She had tried to convince herself it was for the best that her pregnancy had ended. Yet even now, whenever she saw a child of about six years old, she imagined what her child would have been like and wished she could have known him or her.

Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. There was no point in dwelling on the past. She stroked Madeleine’s downy-soft, cream fur. ‘At least I’ve got you,’ she murmured to the cat. And Madeleine, who seemed to possess an intuition that was beyond human understanding, gently purred and rubbed her pointed chocolate-coloured ears against Louise’s hand.

CHAPTER THREE

‘ON THIS tour of the Louvre you will be able to admire some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, including the Wedding Feast at Cana, the Venus de Milo, and of course, the Mona Lisa.’

Louise addressed the group of visitors who were assembled in the Hall Napoléon, beneath the spectacular glass pyramid. One of her duties as a visitors’ assistant was to give tours in both French, which she spoke fluently, and English. Her group this afternoon seemed to be mainly American and Japanese tourists, who nodded and smiled to show that they had understood her.

‘If you would like to follow me, we will go first to the Denon Wing.’

Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a figure striding across the hall and she waited, assuming the man wanted to join the tour. But as he drew closer her heart performed a somersault beneath her ribs.

What was Dimitri doing here? Yesterday had been the third day since she had visited him at his office in Athens. By midnight, when he hadn’t contacted her, she had assumed he had decided not to buy Eirenne, and she had spent all night worrying about how she was going to raise the money for her mother’s treatment.

The rest of her tour group were already climbing the stairs when he halted in front of her. The glint of amusement in his olive-green eyes told her he knew she was shocked to see him, and to her irritation she felt herself blush as if she was still the schoolgirl who years ago had had a huge crush on him. She hated the effect he had on her, but good manners forced her to greet him with a cool smile.

‘Did you want to see me? I’m just about to conduct a tour of the museum, so I’m afraid I can’t talk to you right now, but if you give me your phone number I’ll call you as soon as I’m free.’

‘Don’t let me interrupt you.’ He indicated that she should follow her tour group, and fell into step beside her as she headed towards the stairs.

‘So you realised your dream,’ he murmured.

She gave him a startled glance—and immediately wished she hadn’t made eye contact with him when her heart gave a jolt. He was even more gorgeous in real life than in the image of him that she had been unable to dismiss from her mind for the past three days. She was supremely conscious of his height and his toned, muscular body as he walked beside her. He was wearing a suit but no tie, and the top couple of his shirt buttons were undone to reveal the tanned column of his throat. The dark stubble shading his jaw added to his raffish sex appeal.

Louise choked back a slightly hysterical laugh as she imagined his reaction if she gave in to the crazy urge to reach up and press her lips to the sensual curve of mouth. She bit her lower lip and the sharp pain brought her to her senses. ‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ she said shortly.

‘I remember you studied the history of art at university, and you told me your ambition was to work at an art museum. I think you spent some time as volunteer at the National Gallery in London while you were a student.’

‘I’m sure I bored you to death, talking about my career plans.’

She was embarrassed to remember how unsophisticated she had been at nineteen. No one had ever taken much interest in her before—her mother had always been too busy with her own life. She had been dazzled by Dimitri, and had lapped up his attention like a puppy desperate to please its master, she thought painfully. It was a surprise to hear that he had actually listened to her.

‘I assure you—you never bored me, Loulou,’ he said softly.

His use of her nickname took her back in time—to seven years ago when she had been young and heartbreakingly naïve. She remembered the old house among the pine trees on Eirenne, the feel of warm sunshine on her skin, and Dimitri whispering her name reassuringly as he drew her down onto a bed and slanted his lips over hers. ‘I want you, my lovely Loulou.’

She snapped back to the present. ‘Please don’t call me that. I prefer to use my proper name rather than a childish nickname.’

‘Louise is certainly more elegant,’ he agreed. ‘It suits you.’

Dimitri turned his head and subjected her to an unhurried appraisal, taking in her honey-blond hair swept up into a chignon and the functional navy-blue uniform that all the Louvre’s visitors’ assistants wore. She looked neat, almost demure, with barely any make-up other than a slick of pale pink gloss on her lips. Unlike when she had visited him in Athens, she was not dressed as a femme fatale today, but her plain clothes could not disguise her innate sensuality. Desire uncoiled in Dimitri’s gut and he had to fight the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her temptingly soft mouth.

Flustered by the hard glitter in Dimitri’s eyes, Louise tore her gaze from him and increased the speed she was walking at so that she could catch up with the group of visitors ahead of her.

‘Well, anyway, after I gained my degree I did a post-grad in Museum Studies, which included a three month placement at the Louvre, and I was lucky enough to be offered a permanent position.’ She frowned as a thought occurred to her. ‘How did you know I work here? I’m sure I didn’t mention it.’

‘I had a private investigator check you out.’

‘You did what?’ She stopped dead and glared at him. ‘How dare you? ’

‘Quite easily,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I needed to be sure you are the legal owner of Eirenne and that you have the right to sell it.’

It was a reasonable explanation, Louise acknowledged grudgingly. But the idea that an investigator had been nosing around in her private life was horrible, and it made her feel like a criminal. Another thought struck her. What if his sleuth had found out about her mother’s illness and learned that Tina’s only chance of survival was to have expensive specialist treatment in America? Had Dimitri discovered why she needed a lot of money as quickly as she could lay her hands on it?

She focused on what he had said a moment ago and looked at him uncertainly. ‘When I didn’t hear from you yesterday I assumed you had decided not to buy Eirenne.’

‘I haven’t made a decision yet. I require a little more time to think about it.’

‘Oh …’ Louise’s breath left her in a whoosh as relief flooded through her.

Dimitri was clearly interested in buying the island—otherwise he would have told her straight that they did not have a deal. The lifeline for her mother which last night had seemed out of reach was still a possibility. She sagged against the wall, struggling to regain her composure, and did not see the intent look he gave her.

‘It infuriates me that the only way I can regain ownership of my birthright, which should never have passed out of the Kalakos family’s possession, is to buy it back,’ he told her harshly. ‘But my grandparents are buried on Eirenne, and my sister is distressed at the prospect of losing it for good. It is for Ianthe’s sake more than anything else that I am still considering your offer, but I need more information regarding the sale. We’ll discuss the details over dinner tonight.’

He hadn’t lost any of his arrogance, Louise thought ruefully. It clearly hadn’t occurred to him that she might not be free tonight. But he was calling the shots. If he had asked her to meet him on the moon at midnight she would have done her best to get there, because he had given her hope that her mother might have a chance of beating the disease that was ravaging her body.

They had reached the Pre-Classical Greek Gallery, where ancient sculptures were displayed on marble plinths. At the far end of the gallery, at the top of a wide staircase, stood the majestic Winged Victory of Samothrace. The group of visitors had paused and were waiting expectantly for Louise to begin the tour.

She glanced at Dimitri. ‘I don’t finish my shift until seven-thirty tonight.’

‘I’ll meet you at eight-fifteen at La Marianne on the Rue de Grenelle. Do you know it?’

Louise had heard of the exclusive restaurant, which had a reputation for serving the finest French cuisine and charging exorbitant prices. It was not the sort of place her salary would stretch to, she thought ruefully.

‘I’ll be there,’ she confirmed. ‘Now, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.’

She turned and walked away from him, fighting an uncharacteristic urge to burst into tears. She rarely cried. Ever since the miscarriage few things had seemed important enough to cry about. But her emotions seemed to be all over the place. Meeting Dimitri again had brought back painful memories.

She wished she did not have to see him again. But perhaps tonight he would agree to buy Eirenne. The sale would be dealt with by their respective lawyers, Dimitri would return to Greece, and maybe, if she tried hard enough, she would forget him, she told herself. But the assurance rang as hollow as her footsteps on the floor of the gallery.

Pinning a smile on her face, she joined her group of visitors and began the guided tour, leading them first to view the paintings in the Grande Galerie. Usually she enjoyed giving tours, but to her dismay Dimitri had joined the group, instead of leaving the museum as she had expected him to do. He made no attempt to talk to her, and appeared to listen intently to the information she gave on various artworks. She tried to ignore him and concentrate on the tour, but she found his presence disconcerting—especially when she glanced at him a couple of times and discovered his olive-green eyes were focused on her