is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and

bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant

success with readers worldwide. Since her first

book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a

chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare

treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may

have missed. In every case, seduction and passion

with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

The Heiress Bride
Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘SOONER or later, you will surely choose to marry someone,’ Sander Christoulakis pointed out, his emphasis of that last word reluctant. ‘Why not Ione Gakis?’

Alexio made no response. On one level, he could not believe that this peculiar conversation was actually taking place. Once he would have laughed in his father’s face at the very idea of an arranged marriage. But, for almost two years, Alexio had been living in a hell of grief from which he only escaped when he buried himself in work. In a desperate attempt to obliterate the yawning emptiness inside him, he had flung himself into a series of wild affairs but no miracle recovery had followed. Indeed, if anything, those shallow sexual entanglements had left him with a sour taste in his mouth.

‘It is an honour that Minos Gakis should have approached our family with the offer of his daughter,’ Sander continued with quiet persistence, watching his volatile son with hopeful measuring eyes for his reaction. ‘He has a very high regard for your business acumen and his health has been troubling him. He needs a son-in-law whom he can trust.’

Alexio was grimly amused by that clever speech, which suggested that a marriage arranged between families rather than by the young people concerned was as common an event as it had once been in Greece—for it was anything but. He was also marvelling at how the attention of one of the world’s richest men appeared to have blinded his astute father to less palatable truths. ‘Minos Gakis is an evil bastard and a thug. You know it and I know it.’

‘Nevertheless, his daughter, Ione, is a well brought-up and decent young woman,’ Sander continued with determination, convinced that only such a marriage would have the power to remove his son from the partying, headline-grabbing lifestyle that was currently breaking his adoring mother’s heart. ‘I see no reason why—given time—you shouldn’t find happiness with her.’

No reason? Bitterness hardened Alexio’s lean, powerful face, his brilliant eyes darkening. He could no longer imagine being happy with any woman. But Crystal, the woman he had loved beyond any other, was undeniably gone. But then the issue of his late fiancée was not a subject his father would care to tackle, for the older man was no hypocrite.

Alexio’s conservative Greek parents had hated Crystal and had refused to accept her as a bride for their only son. Her wild-child reputation and chequered past had offended their sensibilities. When he had put an engagement ring on her finger, his father had been outraged and his mother had wept, and for months afterwards Alexio had cut his parents out of his life. Only in the wake of Crystal’s death had the divisions begun to heal and, even then, only because he had initially been in such a haze of despair that he had been incapable of rousing himself to the effort of rejecting his family.

Yet since then every business deal he had touched had turned to solid gold. He was now infinitely richer than his father had ever been for, while Sander had inherited his shipping fortune and merely conserved it, Alexio had gone into venture capital and software development, taking risks that his more cautious father would never have countenanced. It was ironic that only his own massive monetary gains in recent months could have put him in a position where the billionaire tycoon, Minos Gakis, would consider him as a potential son-in-law.

‘I have never even met Gakis’s daughter,’ Alexio said drily.

‘You have,’ Sander contradicted immediately, his brows pleating. ‘According to Minos, you met her when you spent the night on Lexos.’

In his turn, Alexio frowned, but even more darkly. A couple of months back, his yacht had run into difficulty in rough seas off the coast of the island of Lexos and he had radioed for permission to dock there, for Gakis was notorious for the brute henchmen he employed to guard his private island from unwelcome visitors. As it had transpired, Alexio had been made very welcome, indeed lavishly entertained by the reclusive tycoon, but it had been an evening almost surreal in its ghastliness.

Although he was well into his sixties, Minos had had a mini harem of beautiful bimbos staying in his palatial villa and Alexio had been invited to choose one of those women to complete his night’s entertainment. He had been revolted by how very willing the fawning females involved had been to satisfy the older man’s jaded tastes. Even so, Alexio had not made the dangerous mistake of discussing Minos’s proclivities with anyone on his return home. Minos Gakis would make an implacable enemy and only a fool would risk awakening the ruthless older man’s wrath to no good purpose by talking out of turn. And when it came to anything that might threaten his thriving business empire, Alexio Christoulakis was no fool…

Surely one of those bimbos could not have been Ione Gakis? Beneath his father’s bewildered scrutiny, Alexio vented a humourless laugh at that unlikelihood for, though Gakis was far from being a likeable character, he was not unhinged. But, plunder his memory as Alexio did, he could not recall meeting any other woman that night. Apart from the housekeeper who had shown him to his suite while he’d still been seething with thwarted fury over her employer’s offensive amusement at his guest’s refusal to sleep with a whore.

‘Let me refresh your memory,’ Sander Christoulakis breathed in some discomfiture, evidently having hoped that his son would recall the young woman without the prompting of the photograph he now set down on the table.

Alexio focused on the photo with incredulity and instant recognition. He muttered a sudden curse and reached for it. Having been taken in profile, it was not a very good shot, but he remembered that submissive bent head, that pale hair pulled back in a severe style and those fragile facial features.

‘I thought she was the housekeeper!’ Alexio confessed with a sound of frank disbelief. ‘She behaved like one, not like the daughter of the house! Gakis snapped his fingers and she appeared and he spoke to her as if she was a servant. That timid little thing was Ione Gakis?’

‘Minos did say that she’s quiet and shy.’

‘Colourless and mousey,’ Alexio countered with ruthless bite, but a faint dark line of colour now scored his sculpted cheekbones and he swung away for, even in the mood he had been in that evening, he had not been impervious to her natural appeal.

He remembered her all too well: the delicacy of her fine features, eyes as green as emeralds and as startling and unexpected in a Greek woman as her fair colouring. A beauty without artifice and the absolute antithesis of the voluptuous and artificial party girls paraded before him by his host. He had never made a pass at a servant in his life but only her silent formality and his own innate sense of fair play had haltered him.

‘I understand that Ione has hardly ever been off that island. Her father believes in keeping his womenfolk at home,’ Sander Christoulakis remarked with the wry fascination of a man who had a wife and two daughters, who thought nothing of flying all over Europe merely to visit friends or shop.

‘At some time in the future, I may well consider a marriage of convenience,’ Alexio conceded, his beautiful mouth hardening on the smouldering reflection that Ione Gakis should have immediately identified herself to him. ‘But I have no interest in marrying Gakis’s oddball daughter. At the very least I would like a wife with some personality.’

‘A little personality can go a long way.’ Unwilling to surrender what he saw as a fantastic opportunity for his son, Sander argued with greater vehemence. ‘And before you criticise Ione Gakis for what she lacks, ask yourself what you have to offer a woman.’

‘In what way?’ Alexio intoned very drily.

‘If you have no heart to give, only a fortune hunter will want to marry you,’ the older man warned in frustration. ‘Your current reputation as a womaniser is sufficient to make most of our friends extremely reluctant to let their daughters come into contact with you.’

‘But then I’m not in the market for born-again virgins or ambitious social climbers. So they’re very wise,’ Alexio drawled with dismissive contempt.

Sander Christoulakis suppressed a heavy sigh. He had done his utmost to persuade his son to consider the benefits of such a business alliance, hoping that the challenge of becoming involved in the vast network of Gakis Holdings would tempt Alexio as nothing else might have done. He had also believed that Alexio might be drawn by the sheer practicality of a marital arrangement that would demand so little from him on a personal basis. Spelling out the very obvious benefits of marrying a young woman who would one day inherit all that her father possessed would not have made the smallest impression.

‘Minos will be insulted by a flat refusal,’ Sander pointed out ruefully. ‘He wants you to meet with him and discuss the proposal. What harm could that do?’

Alexio regarded his parent with the grim dark eyes that his business competitors had learned to respect but, whether he was prepared to show it or not, his interest had already been ignited by his recollection of that night on Lexos. ‘I’ll think it over.’

Fierce strain in her jade-green eyes, Ione checked her reflection with care in the mirror, for so formal a summons from her father was rare and intimidating.

Her pale blonde hair was scraped back from her equally pale face. Her dull dark blue dress barely hinted at the shape of the slim young body beneath and the hemline fell to below her knee. In a crowd nobody would have noticed her and that was exactly how her father believed his daughter ought to look: modest, unobtrusive, sexless. That his ideas were fifty years behind the times and out of place in a wealthy, educated family meant nothing to him for he boasted of his peasant roots and saw no reason why the outside world should intrude on his feudal island kingdom.

Indeed, Minos Gakis was a positive god in his own household. A domineering controlling man with an explosive temper that could turn to violence in the space of a moment and, to him, a woman would always be a lesser being and a possession. While she was still a very young child, Ione had learned the correct code of behaviour to observe in her father’s radius and she knew well how to control her tongue and keep her head down in a storm. On more than one occasion, after all, she had seen her late mother being battered by the older man’s fists, and as she’d grown up, no matter how hard Amanda Gakis had tried to protect her daughter from similar treatment, she too had suffered from his brutality.

Her bedroom door opened with jarring abruptness and without the polite warning of a prefatory knock. Flinching, Ione spun round just as her father’s sister, Kalliope, appeared, her thin, sallow face sour.

‘Why are you always looking at yourself in the mirror?’ Kalliope snorted with derision. ‘It’s foolish when you’re so plain. But then, had you been born a Gakis, you would have been a beauty.

Accustomed to the older woman’s gibes, Ione resisted the dangerous temptation to ask what had gone wrong in Kalliope’s own case, for even the kindest person would have been challenged to find attraction in those sharp features. As for that crack about her not having been born into the Gakis family, Ione was too well accustomed to the knowledge that she had been adopted to rise to that bait and give the older woman reason to complain to her brother that her niece had been rude to her.

Kalliope observed her brother’s every household rule with religious fervour and received considerable satisfaction from reporting those unwise enough to transgress those rules. Furthermore, she liked Ione far less than she had liked Ione’s mother, for, while Kalliope had continued to rule the roost over the gentle English bride her brother had taken as a wife, she had found their adopted daughter, Ione, a tougher nut to crack. Ione might not answer back and might show her aunt superficial respect. But ever since the day four years earlier, when Ione had been dragged back kicking and screaming defiance from Athens airport, there had been a silent stoic determination in the younger woman’s clear gaze that made Kalliope feel like an angry, frustrated mosquito trying to sting an indifferent victim.

‘Your father has exciting news for you,’ Kalliope informed her curtly.

As Ione crossed the reception room beyond her bedroom in step with her aunt her pace slowed as apprehension gripped her. ‘I shall look forward to hearing it.’

‘Yet you’ve been such an ungrateful daughter,’ Kalliope told her with harsh disapproval. ‘You don’t deserve what is coming to you!’

What was coming to her? Her aunt’s resentment was unconcealed and Ione’s curiosity flared even higher, but the sick knot of anxiety in her tummy only tightened. She could never be in her father’s presence without feeling fear and he was not a man given to doling out treats. Indeed, Ione had often wondered if her father reaped a mean pleasure from ensuring that she was invariably denied what she most wanted. But then he did not love her, he had never loved her, and, soon after her adoptive mother’s death, he had enjoyed telling her why she had been adopted.

Amanda Gakis had given birth to a son, Cosmas, within a year of her marriage but, in the following seven years, she had not managed to conceive again. Desperate for a second son, Minos Gakis had learned that sometimes after a woman had adopted a child her unexplained infertility could subsequently end in her becoming pregnant. In those days, the popular view had been that, having satisfied her longing for a baby, a woman might stop fretting and relax and conception was then more likely to take place. Sadly, however, Ione’s arrival in the family had neglected to deliver the required result for her mother had not become pregnant again. As her father had regarded his adopted daughter as no more than the means to that hopeful end, there had been little chance of her securing much of a hold on his paternal affections in that disappointing aftermath.

Her aunt left Ione standing in the echoing marble hall outside her father’s office suite. Kalliope knew as well as Ione did that she would be kept waiting. Taut with strain, Ione gazed out the window, untouched by the gorgeous view of the bay that the villa overlooked. Golden sunlight and blue skies reflected on the shimmering seas of the Aegean far below. Lexos was a beautiful island and the huge, fabulous house in which she lived possessed every comfort that wealth could buy. Unfortunately, nothing could compensate Ione for the reality that she was as much a prisoner in her father’s home as a criminal in an isolation cell.

The freedom she craved was as much out of her reach as it had ever been. In four endless years she had not been allowed off the island, for her father no longer trusted her. Her attempt to run away had been ill-judged and foolish, a wasted opportunity, she reflected with bitter hindsight, for she had not planned it well enough and had merely forewarned her father of her intentions.

At the time, she had been receiving regular orthodontic treatment in Athens, and it had been relatively easy to slip out of the dental clinic past her unsuspicious bodyguards and dive into a taxi to head to the airport. But she had not had the foresight to check the timetables in advance and had not had the wit to just buy a ticket for the first available seat on any international flight. No, her goal had been London and she had sat around like a fool awaiting that flight only to be cornered and forced from the airport by her bodyguards before the plane had even landed. She shuddered at the recollection of the welcome home she had received from her outraged and incredulous father, who had never dreamt until that day that she might dare to try and escape his bullying tyranny.

After all, her mother never had. But then any spirit Amanda Gakis had ever had had been crushed out of her by her husband’s sneering verbal attacks and even more punishing fists.

‘Where would I go?’ her adoptive mother had once asked Ione with open disbelief when her teenage daughter had suggested that leaving her abusive marriage was the only solution to her unhappiness. ‘How would I live? Wherever I went, your father would find me. He would never let me leave…he loves me too much!’

Love, Ione thought with a pained cynicism far beyond her years. Love had made a victim of the beautiful mother she had adored. Love had been one of Amanda’s favourite excuses for the violence she had accepted as her lot in her life, along with the stress of her husband’s workaholic ways on his temperament and her own inexcusable stupidity. She had blamed herself. Even while she had lain terminally ill, she had blamed herself for lingering long enough to distress and inconvenience her husband and her son.

Eyes stinging as she realised just how much she still missed the woman whose love had cocooned her from the worst of her father’s abuse, Ione stiffened with dread as the older man’s smooth executive assistant emerged with a surprisingly unctuous smile on his face.

‘Miss Gakis…come this way.’

Minos Gakis stood below his own flattering portrait in the lofty-ceilinged room. He was a big thickset man with an imposing presence but he had yet to recover the weight he had shed while he was being treated for cancer. Indeed, although his illness had been a well-kept secret and had been successfully treated, his harsh features looked even more lined and gaunt to her than they had months earlier and his complexion was the colour of putty. For the very first time, it occurred to Ione that his recovery seemed much slower than might have been expected for a man of his former health and vigour.

‘Are you well, Papa?’ she heard herself ask in instinctive dismay, for it had been several weeks since she had seen him as he had been abroad on business.

‘I can see that my caring, compassionate daughter will be sadly missed in this household,’ Minos responded with cutting amusement.

Embarrassed colour washed over Ione’s pallor and only a second later did she begin wondering where she could possibly be going that she might be missed. Hope sprang up in her in so fast and strong a surge that her knees trembled as she stood there. Had he finally forgiven her for trying to run away? Was he now willing to consider allowing her to lead a more normal life?

‘After all these years, you are finally going to be of some use to me,’ the burly older man informed her with satisfaction.

Ione stiffened, recognising the foolish aspect of her wild hopes of being permitted a life of her own. When had her father ever done anything that had pleased her? He had broken down at her mother’s graveside, but her surprise and relief that he had shown that amount of humanity had been ruined by her painful memories of the mental and physical damage he had inflicted on a woman who had never hurt another living soul by word or by deed.

‘I have found you a husband,’ Minos announced and paused for effect.

The shock of that revelation rocked Ione on her feet and, though she struggled not to betray any reaction, a faint gasp was muffled low in her throat. Her heart was racing but her keen mind was racing even faster. A husband? Why on earth would he find her a husband? There had to be a reason. It would have to be of profit to him in some way. She knew better than to utter a single question or exclamation for he would react to either response as if she had been impertinent.

‘Speak when you are spoken to,’ had been a lesson etched into Ione’s soul during childhood. ‘A respectful daughter does not question a parent.’

The silence lay like concrete slowly setting her feet into greater rigidity while she waited for him to speak again. A husband, she thought with dazed incredulity. Why had she not foreseen such a possibility? Well, principally she had not anticipated the development because she was painfully aware that her father revelled in keeping his family at his beck and call and wholly dependent on him in every way.

‘If Cosmas had not died,’ the older man stated with harsh exactitude as he referred to her older brother, who had been killed when his private plane had crashed the year before, ‘I would have scorned any thought of making such a marriage for you. But you are all that I have now and some day you will inherit Gakis Holdings.’

If his first announcement had shaken her, that second made her lips part in shock and she whispered, ‘I’m…to be your heir?’

He vented a sardonic laugh. ‘Who else is left? In the eyes of the law, you are my daughter even though you do not possess a single drop of my blood.’

Yet she was proud that she was not a Gakis, relieved that she need never fear the taint of his genes, and she stood there lost in her own increasingly frantic thoughts. She did not want to inherit Gakis Holdings. His huge international business empire was the monster that had created his unfettered power. Enormous wealth had made him untouchable. Without hesitation, he destroyed those who antagonised him and his sphere of influence stretched terrifyingly far and wide. Time and time again the greed of others had protected him for he bribed those who might have exposed his corrupt business methods…or even what went on in his own home.

Perspiration beaded her short upper lip as she registered the peculiar direction of her thoughts at that particular moment. Her father had just told her that he had found her a husband. Why wasn’t she thinking about the shattering statement? As the silence buzzed around her she felt faint and sick and the sound of her own heartbeat seemed to be thundering in her own ears.

Suddenly she understood why she could not dwell on the news that she was to be married off like some medieval bride without any right to have a say in her own future. What was the point of agonising over what she could not prevent? For if she defied him, he would hurt her and harm what mattered most to her. He was remorseless and the process of intimidation would begin the instant she voiced a word of objection. He had turned her into a coward, a lousy, grovelling thing without the guts to take on a fight she knew she could not win.

‘I’m impressed,’ Minos Gakis informed her with a quietness of tone that sent a cold shiver down her rigid spine. ‘You know your place in life now. That’s good, for I won’t take any nonsense over this matter. As your father, I know what is best for you.’

‘Yes, Papa,’ she muttered sickly.

‘Don’t you even want to know who your husband will be?’ he mocked, revelling in her submission to his dictates.

‘If you want to tell me,’ she intoned half under her breath.

‘Alexio Christoulakis.’

Her knees almost gave beneath her in shock. She glanced up and encountered her father’s cold look of amusement. ‘Alexio…Christoulakis?’

Slowly, painfully slowly, her triangular face drenched with colour for she recalled the night she had met Alexio Christoulakis with too great a clarity for comfort. Her long, naturally dark lashes dropped again to conceal her transfixed gaze. Alexio Christoulakis…the numero uno womaniser, who seemed addicted to making headlines in both the business section and the society pages. The guy who didn’t like to sleep on satin sheets and who had insisted she changed them even though it had been the early hours of the morning. The guy whose bride-to-be had drowned in a drunken moonlit swim. The guy who had treated her like a maid and barely registered that she was human. The guy who was so achingly beautiful to look at she had stared and stared in spite of herself every chance she had got…

‘I’m not surprised that you can hardly credit your good fortune,’ Minos Gakis murmured unpleasantly. ‘But I’m sure I don’t need to add that you need not look for fidelity from him. This is a business arrangement. He will take the place that your brother once occupied and as your husband he will become part of this family.’

With his every successive word the blood in her veins chilled more. He was spelling out the brutal facts. She would only be the means by which Alexio Christoulakis could be put in a position of trust as a son-in-law.

‘He’s brilliant, single-minded, strong. It took a lot to persuade him to agree to this alliance. But I need him. When he arrives tomorrow, you will do whatever it takes to keep him content. Is that understood?’ her father pressed coldly.

Pinning bloodless lips together, she nodded jerkily. ‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Even when you become his wife, your first loyalty will remain with me. You will not tell him that you are adopted. The Christoulakis family take great pride in their family tree. You will not embarrass or offend them with the news that you were born illegitimate or reveal that you have a twin sister, who is nothing more than a common prostitute. Nor will you again seek contact with her. Is that also understood?’

A faint shudder rippled through Ione’s slight frame until she pulled herself taut again. Bitter revulsion and anger currented through her but it was backed by despair. She saw how her future was being mapped out: a future that would be as confined and empty as the present. He expected her to marry a stranger and spy on him for his benefit. He was demanding that she go on living a lie for he did not want it to be known that macho Minos Gakis had adopted his daughter, rather than sired her himself. And to drive the knife in harder, he abused the twin she had never met, scorning her sister for her lifestyle. Hatred made her very lungs burn and she turned her head away.

‘Answer me, Ione,’ he growled.

‘Yes, Papa. I understand,’ she said with all the expression of a robot.

The instant the interview was at an end, she headed straight for the gymnasium. There she changed into an exercise outfit and embarked on a rigorous training session to empty her taut, shivering body of stress. She overdid it and exhausted herself, finally slumping down on a mat, damp and shaking, to stare at the floor. And it was only then, at the last expected moment, that she finally grasped why she should be greeting the announcement of her approaching nuptials with joy and relief…

The minute that she left the island with her bridegroom would simply be the countdown to her eventual escape from the whole darned lot of them! Ione flung back her pale blonde head and her laughter suddenly echoed across the big empty gym. Alexio Christoulakis would be her passport to freedom, not her future keeper, not yet another lord and master in her life.

Having had experience of one bullying, aggressive male, she had no intention of accepting a second. But it was essential that Alexio marry her just to get her off Lexos. Not even her father was likely to suspect that she might choose to walk out on her bridegroom after her wedding. Especially not when it came to a male as eligible and good-looking as Alexio Christoulakis, who was rumoured to be the top pin-up in girls’ schools across the globe.

Ione began to smile, soft mouth curving as she flung herself back on the padded mat and started to plan. When she reached England she would find her sister, Misty, for although it had been more than four years since that letter had arrived from her twin she still remembered every line of the address on it. Fossetts, her sibling’s foster home had been called, and surely from that point it would be a simple matter to trace Misty even if she no longer lived there. Yet her own sister knew nothing about her, not even her present name, Ione acknowledged ruefully. At birth Ione had been given the name Shannon, but Amanda Gakis had chosen a new name for her adopted daughter. However, when she did finally get to meet her long-lost twin she really would have to work out some very tactful, very, very kind way of persuading her elder sister that she did not need to be the victim of rich, using, abusing men.

As the helicopter came in to land over Lexos, Alexio was thinking about the disconcerting meeting he had had with Minos Gakis forty-eight hours earlier and the commitment he had made in agreeing to marry Ione.

After having advanced an extremely advantageous business partnership that had taken Alexio by surprise, Gakis had laid all his cards on the table. In telling Alexio the truth about his health, the older man had to a very great extent put himself in Alexio’s power, for the news that the billionaire tycoon might only have a few months left to live would send shock waves crashing through the business world and cause a steep fall in the value of the shares in Gakis Holdings, making it vulnerable to a takeover bid.

The Gakis empire ran only with Minos Gakis at the helm. His senior executives had been picked not for their ability to think on their feet but for the efficiency in following orders without question. Minos did indeed need a second-in-command, a son-in-law bound by family ties to hold the fort while he went into hospital for further treatment. For if he did not emerge again, what would happen to a daughter raised like a convent novice on an island and without the smallest grasp of what the real world was like? A young woman who would inherit billions and become the target of every smooth-talking greedy fortune hunter across the globe?

But without a doubt, Gakis was sick in more than body, a father jealous of his precious little girl’s affections, for why else should he have raised his daughter in such unnatural isolation? Almost twenty-three and never had a boyfriend? Was Minos Gakis crazy? Didn’t he realise that his daughter would fall madly in love with the first man who gave her some attention?

That’s likely to be you, Alexio’s intelligence told him and, even though women who clung and looked at him with adoration turned him off big time, the shadow of a faint smile touched the corners of his strong mouth. Ione would be his wife, after all, and she had not looked like the demanding type. Different horses for different courses, he reflected with cool confidence. If she loved him their marriage of convenience might well run a great more smoothly. But what kind of a woman allowed herself to be bartered off like a commodity?

The ‘commodity’ in question was engaged in equally careful thought at that moment. Ione was working out how she could best put Alexio at ease and lull him into a false sense of security. After all, she did not want him succumbing to an attack of cold feet and spoiling her plans, and she had not forgotten her father’s admission that it had taken a great deal to persuade Alexio into marrying her. She would have liked to show him that she could be a lot more presentable in appearance than her current circumstances allowed. Unfortunately that option was barred for her father might well lose his temper if she appeared wearing the cosmetics and the more flattering outfits that she sometimes put on to cheer herself up in the privacy of her bedroom.

Unfortunately, the only thought in Alexio Christoulakis’s head when he first looked at her would be…sex. Her nose wrinkled. He would wonder what she would be like in bed; he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He was Greek, he was very oversexed. And he had made an outsize fool of himself two years ago over a greedy little tart of a show-off with nothing else going for her but her ability to show her boobs and bare bottom off in public on a monotonously regular basis. Face it, she would be dealing with a very basic, testosterone-driven male, who left his supposedly brilliant brain outside the bedroom door. And here she was looking as plain and sexless as it was possible to look and he might well take fright. So she had to draw him in…somehow, ensure he got the impression that, no matter how devoid of instant appeal she might seem, the wedding night at least was likely to be a wow.

Of course, she didn’t plan on sticking around for the wedding night, but he could have no suspicion of that reality. But then, he deserved all that he had coming to him, didn’t he? What kind of a man agreed to marry a woman as part of a cold-blooded, callous business deal? A sexist, domineering, ruthless, power-hungry, insensitive pig!

As Alexio Christoulakis emerged from the helicopter he was gilded by bright sunlight. The selfish, spoilt pig who had demanded that she change his wretched bed sheets at two o’clock in the morning, Ione reminded herself as she stood like a small, rigid statue by her burly father’s side.

But she had chosen to forget the sheer raw impact of Alexio in the flesh and the closer he got, the less she breathed and her chest tightened, for he was so incredibly good-looking. The golden light shimmered over the luxuriant blue-black hair cropped to his arrogant head, accentuated his superb bone structure, the stunning dark, deepset eyes, the bold brows, aggressive jawline and wide, charismatic mouth. His pearl-grey business suit was cut to fit wide shoulders, lean hips and long, powerful thighs that required no helpful enhancement from his tailor. He strolled towards them not one whit put out by a reception committee and a situation that would have filled ninety-nine out of a hundred men with a sizeable degree of discomfiture.

Her own heart was hammering with nervous tension and, had she not been holding herself taut with the self-discipline of years of training, she would have trembled. His vibrant self-assurance infuriated her, but on another level she could only be impressed by that show of strength, that cool, contained tough front. One wrong move, one word out of place and her father would ruin him. Didn’t he realise that he was walking into the lion’s den? Didn’t he appreciate that if he married into the Gakis family he would be selling his soul to the devil?

‘Ione…’ Alexio looked down into eyes the same shade as precious jade, the most unreadable female eyes he had ever met, utterly empty of any impression, and the smooth and polished greeting ready on his tongue somehow died there. She had the pale, still face of a madonna, possessed of pure, perfect symmetry and…untouchable. At a distance she had looked like a doll, now she bore a very close resemblance to an ice statue: frigid from head to toe. The wedding night promised to be a real challenge.

‘Alexio…’ Ione squeezed out his name in acknowledgement, straining with all her might to get enough oxygen back to manage that feat.

Alexio watched the flow of warm pink colour burnish her cheeks, the uncertain flutter of her silky brown lashes and the brief relaxation of her taut lipline into soft, sexy fullness as she spoke. As he noted the tiny pulse beating out her tension below her delicate collar-bone, he recognised that she was neither indifferent nor cold, but raw with nerves and struggling to hide the fact. A primal sense of satisfaction lancing through him, his slow, dangerous smile curved his handsome mouth…

CHAPTER TWO

‘BRING us coffee…’ Minos Gakis rapped out to Ione the instant the three of them entered the air-conditioned cool of the villa.

Conscious of Alexio’s veiled surprise at that harsh demand, Ione reddened. It was an effort at that instant to recall what mattered most, for somehow being treated like an object of derision in Alexio’s presence hit her even harder than usual. However, suppressing her embarrassment, Ione pushed her head up high and lifted her slight shoulders back. Praying that her father was too busy talking to notice, she walked down the long marble hall with small, slow, measured steps that made her slim hips sway in what she hoped was a subtle but enticing manner.

She knew how experienced women practised such small visual wiles on the male sex. Goodness knew, she had had ample opportunity to observe the behaviour of the voluptuous giggling blondes her father brought over to Lexos when he entertained. Of course, on such occasions she was supposed to behave as though she were quite unaware of what went on in her own home and keep to her own wing of the villa, but as the years had passed Minos Gakis had become less discreet. She had often seen those women basking round the pool and had watched them switch on the seductive charm to attract lustful male visitors. Her soft mouth tightened with helpless distaste.

Engaged in listening to his host, Alexio watched Ione progress down the hall, a faint hint of a frownline marking his winged black brows as he questioned his own reluctance to take his attention from her. The fluid slowness of her walk attracted his gaze first to the intrinsically feminine curve of her derrière and then to the soft rise of her hemline above her slender, shapely legs. She moved with the grace of a dancer but it was another, far more disturbing quality that caused the sudden startling ache of fullness in Alexio’s groin.

Seconds later, Ione moved out of view and slumped back against the cold corridor wall, all of a quiver from the stress of a masquerade she found demeaning. But she had to try to engage Alexio’s interest and convince him that she was content to marry him, for if he suspected otherwise he might change his mind and, if he did so, even her father couldn’t force him to marry her and all hope of her getting off the island would be lost. She shivered at that awareness. Yet to attempt for the first time ever to attract a man and to do so in her father’s vicinity demanded a degree of courageous subtlety she feared she did not possess.

She had worked so hard at forgetting just how unnerving a personality Alexio Christoulakis was, Ione acknowledged uneasily as she collected the already prepared coffee tray. His arrival had shaken her up a lot more than she had expected. With reluctance, she recalled their first brief encounter.

That night a couple of months earlier she had been relieved to be mistaken for an employee, for it was humiliating to be treated like a servant by her father in front of his discomfited guests. Alexio had been in too much of a rage to be more discerning, she recalled abstractedly. Dark eyes blazing gold with fierce pride, aggressive jawline hard as iron. And she had had a very fair idea of what hoops her father had put him through for his own amusement.

But she had still been struck as dumb as a tongue-tied schoolgirl when she’d first laid eyes on Alexio Christoulakis. Even though she had seen those same lean, dark, handsome features in the magazines she read, he had always looked so impossibly cool and reserved. She had not been prepared for a male so vibrant and so volatile in the flesh that raw energy literally sizzled from him.

And when he had called her back to change those satin sheets that her aunt believed to be the last word in sophistication, she had had no need to make that her own personal task for the villa had staff on duty twenty-four hours a day. Yet inexplicably she had hurried off to fetch fresh linen. When she had returned to his bedroom, he had been standing by the open doors onto the balcony, exuding a ferocious tension that had sent her own sensory processes into overload.

Guilty as a sneak thief but unable to resist her own fascination, she had kept on stealing covert glances at him. It had taken her for ever to make up the bed again, for her hands had been all fingers and thumbs. But he had seemed indifferent to her lingering presence and her lack of dexterity. Only once had their eyes met head-on and her mouth had run dry as she’d fallen victim to those spectacular golden eyes. A split second later he had swung away as though he were alone and had strode out onto the balcony where he had remained until she had departed again.

As she emerged from that unsettling recollection, perspiration beaded Ione’s short upper lip. As she entered the main salon with the laden tray, she could see the shaded, vine-encrusted loggia outside where her father was seated in regal splendour and her heart sank at his choice of location. Evidently impervious to any fear of heights, Alexio was lounging back against the low retaining wall that was built into the very edge of the cliff, the relaxed angle of his lean, powerful frame pronounced.

Ione’s hands clenched bone-white round the tray handles as she attempted to blank out the panoramic view and forestall the sick sense of dizzy terror that always threatened her in the loggia.

His keen gaze narrowing with questioning force on her drawn face, Alexio straightened and strode forward. ‘Let me take that for you.’

Dismayed that he had broken off the conversation to offer her assistance, Ione froze. She collided with gleaming dark golden eyes fringed with dense black lashes and her heart seemed to crash inside her. He detached her death grip from the tray and strolled back to set it on the stone table. Screening her bemused gaze, she edged as close to the house wall as she dared to reach the table and serve the coffee.

‘You’re afraid of heights,’ Alexio murmured.

Minos Gakis said drily, ‘She must overcome it.’

Conscious of her father’s annoyance that she should have interrupted their dialogue, Ione breathed jerkily, ‘It’s foolish, irrational. I mustn’t give way to it.’

Alexio studied her. She was making a valiant effort to control her fear but she was as white as a sheet and the coffeepot was shaking in her hand. And her father? He was smiling. Alexio had a sudden primal desire to tip his host out of his seat and suspend him upside down over that fearsome drop to kill that smile. It was an urge that shook him.

Ione sank down into the closest chair and struggled to get a grip on herself again. Accustomed as she was to being ignored in her father’s company, she focused on Alexio while the two men talked business, and she reflected on what a poor impression she must have made in betraying her terror of heights. Hardly the right way to connect with a male once fabled for his taste in dangerous sports. He had the most amazing eyelashes, she thought, losing her concentration to momentarily dwell on the lush black sweep visible in his hard, angular profile.

As Alexio sent her a winging glance, brilliant dark golden eyes flaring into connection with hers, a surge of inflaming heat tremored through Ione in a shock wave of response. Her teeth set together as her breath caught in her throat and she tore her attention from him again. Highspots of colour formed over her cheekbones as she fought her own instinctive reaction to his raw masculinity with shamed and angry resentment.

She had no intention of following in her unfortunate mother’s footsteps and letting her body rule over her brain. So he was gorgeous, but what was that worth? She had recognised her own foolish susceptibility three months earlier and had despised herself for her weakness. A womanising louse like Alexio Christoulakis figured nowhere in the future she craved. No man was going to break her heart. No man was going to control her. Once she had her freedom, if anybody broke hearts, it was going to be her. That ambition in mind, Ione curled back into her chair, arched her back a little and shifted her slim legs to let her hemline ride up ever so slightly.

Conscious of her every move, Alexio was entertained by her attempt to portray herself as a sensually exciting woman by exposing an inch of flesh above her knee, and he was equally conscious that her every provocative move was studied. Was she trying to turn him off the idea of marrying her? Or turn him onto it? Whichever, he was already appreciating that that smooth madonna face was deceptive.

Angling her blonde head back, Ione lowered her lashes and let the tip of her tongue slide out to dampen her lower lip. His gaze zeroed in on her, black lashes screening his shimmering eyes to linger on the darting pink tip moistening her full, inviting mouth. Amusement ebbing, his lean, hard body clenched on a surge of sexual hunger strong enough to infuriate him. Why was she playing games with him?

Minos Gakis rose upright, his heavy movements betraying his weariness. ‘I must attend to business, Alexio… Ione will entertain you. We’ll discuss the wedding arrangements over dinner.

Ione was startled by that speech. If wedding arrangements were to be discussed, then their marriage was already a foregone conclusion. As it seemed that Alexio must have agreed to marry her even before he’d arrived on Lexos, her attempts to make herself seem more attractive had been a ludicrous waste of time and energy. On Alexio’s terms, her true worth lay in her Gakis surname and her future dowry, not in her looks or her individuality. Her cheeks blossomed with chagrined colour. Once again she had been made to feel the sting of her own essential unimportance, but she realised that it would be unwise to suddenly abandon the act she had been putting on for his benefit.

‘Shall we go inside?’ Alexio drawled, taking charge with all-male decisiveness.

But for the reality that sitting out in the loggia was a punishment to her, Ione might have disagreed. Looking up at him to note how very, very tall he was from that angle, and filled with almost childish resentment by the intimidating nature of that fact, she got up with a nod.

Sudden angry suspicion gripped Alexio as he stood back to let Ione precede him indoors, his glinting appraisal resting on her undeniably sensual gliding walk across the terracotta tiles. How did he know that Ione Gakis wasn’t a raving nymphomaniac with a father desperate to marry her off before she engulfed the family in scandal? If that were the case, the Gakis billions would be equal to preventing the spread of damaging rumours, but not the most optimistic of men could hope to hide such a shame for ever. The constant references to Ione’s shyness and her protected upbringing added to her dowdy appearance might just be ploys to convince him that she was what her father said she was. But how could he know for sure? How did he know he wasn’t being suckered into marriage with a woman who might try to make the Christoulakis name a laughing stock?

‘Your father was a little premature in his reference to wedding arrangements,’ Alexio imparted, smooth as velvet. ‘I did tell him that you and I would have to talk before anything could be finalised.’

Ione stiffened, her nervous tension reawakening in a dismayed surge as she registered that she still had to win him over. Flustered, she muttered unwarily, ‘I should’ve guessed. Papa…Papa can be impatient. He makes assumptions.’

‘Which of us doesn’t?’ Alexio rested a light hand to her spine to guide her out of the bright sunlight into the vast salon and she was so ridiculously aware of his touch, his very proximity, that she imagined she felt his fingers burn through the dress fabric into the taut skin of her back. ‘But you intrigue me. I’m not sure what to make of you.’

Something akin to panic shrilled through Ione. What was that supposed to mean? Intrigue? Didn’t that suggest something covert? Did he suspect that her efforts to attract him were just one big empty pretence? How could he not? How could she possibly have believed that she could fool a guy who had slept with dozens of women into crediting that she would ever be a wow in bed?

‘You don’t know me,’ Ione pointed out tightly, an unsteady hand sliding down over her dress to smooth it as she braced herself to try and redress the damage by reassuring him. ‘But I can be anything you want me to be.’

The fall of silence that greeted that impulsive announcement was instant and it worked on her nerves like a chainsaw.

Taken aback by that startling assurance, Alexio frowned, dark golden eyes narrowing below winged ebony brows as he stared at her.

‘I just don’t know what you want from me yet,’ Ione stated, gathering steam from the sheer level of fear holding her rigid, for if she had blown any hope of him wanting to marry her with her silly play-acting, she had nothing left to lose. Not only would her father lose his head with her, but she would also be buried alive on Lexos for years to come.

‘What I want from you?’ Alexio prompted in fascination, having recognised the spark of panic in her wide green eyes before she’d veiled them and the extent of the tension keeping her so still.

‘I need to know what you want,’ Ione told him again. ‘Maybe you don’t want me interfering in your life if we get married. That’s fine. I won’t. You don’t need to worry about that. I’m a very practical person. Very quiet too. You’ll hardly know I’m there. Once I know what you like, everything will be as you expect it to be.’

A shaken surge of angry compassion stirred in Alexio. Anger at her father for giving her the impression that such assurances would be necessary and compassion that she should feel driven to humble herself in such a way for his benefit. ‘I have only one question that needs an answer. Do you want to be my wife?’

Eyes lowering, Ione trembled, compressed her lips, parted them again. An obvious question, one she should have foreseen but harder to answer than she could ever have dreamt, for by nature she was not a liar. And when she lifted her lashes and collided with the dark golden intensity of his questioning gaze, her breath feathered in her throat and her breasts seemed to swell inside her cotton bra. Embarrassment scythed through her as her nipples tightened into straining buds and an arrow of heat speared low in her pelvis. Yet still she could not take her eyes from his lean, dark, devastating features.

‘Ione…I’m aware that your father has a forceful personality. If you feel in any way pressured into this—’

‘Oh, no!’ Ione broke in hurriedly, keen to make that denial for she could now see the direction in which the dialogue was going. ‘How could you think that?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Alexio said with the frankness that as a rule he only employed within his own family circle, his brilliant gaze pinned to her with penetrating force. ‘I’m getting mixed signals from you.’

Sentenced to stillness by the sheer mesmeric effect of those beautiful eyes, Ione murmured half under her breath and without really knowing where the words had come from. ‘I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.’

Darker colour accentuated Alexio’s fabulous cheekbones for he had not expected that emotive a declaration. ‘Why?’ he heard himself say as if what she had just said was still not enough, though it was.

‘I had a picture of you in my locker at boarding-school.’ Her fair skin drenched with pink as she forced out that statement. ‘Everybody had a pin-up. You were mine.’

Initially disconcerted at the news that he had been the focus of a schoolgirl crush, Alexio suddenly found himself smiling, and it was a smile full of so much natural charisma that it turned Ione’s knees to cotton wool beneath her.

Gotcha, Ione thought with intense satisfaction in spite of that smile. He had fallen for it. And why not? The target of admiring and awestruck women all his adult life, he was accustomed to flattery. Actually, it had been one of her classmates who had languished over him at fifteen. Ione had thought love from afar was childish and a waste of energy and had kept cute photos of her dog inside her locker.

‘I suppose we have to start somewhere,’ Alexio conceded with a husky laugh of amusement.

Losing every suspicion of her motives, he castigated himself for the wildness of his own suspicions about her morals in the loggia. Her honesty was refreshing but naive. But then, after the sheltered life she had led, her naivety was understandable. In times to come, though, she might look back and hate him for having listened to that gauche little declaration, for what did he have to offer her in return? In the material line, nothing, and he didn’t like that. Indeed, he had already decided how best to deal with that potential problem.

‘I believe that our marriage will work best if you settle your future inheritance on any children we might have and we live on my income,’ Alexio spelt out without hesitation.

Suddenly, Ione was grateful she had no plans to become a kept woman. He was so Greek: he wanted a dependant wife. How dared he suggest that she consent to that kind of an agreement merely to conserve his precious male pride? In her place, what man would agree to such an arrangement? It did not seem to occur to him that she might already be wealthy in her own right, yet Ione had inherited considerable funds from both her mother and her brother. As for having children with him, since the possibility was not going to arise, she didn’t even think about it.

‘Ione…I appreciate that that will be a very difficult decision for you to make, but I would like you to give serious consideration to the idea,’ Alexio continued with level cool.

‘I’ll think about it,’ Ione responded with castdown eyes. Love in a cottage Christoulakis-style? Had she been born of Gakis blood and truly intending to be his wife, at that point, all negotiations would have broken down. But money had no power over her, for immense wealth had brought her adoptive family nothing but misery.

His strong jawline clenched, dark golden eyes challenging. ‘Your father will disapprove but I won’t allow him to interfere in our marriage. You must accept that too.’

‘Yes, of course.’ But at that aggressive announcement of intent, Ione almost released a shuddering sigh of relief over the escape she was planning on. What Alexio had just said was grounds for a battle royal. Minos Gakis was no fond parent, but he set great store on his own pride and he would be outraged if his daughter was seen to live in anything less than a palace. But then the situation would never develop, she reminded herself impatiently, for her relationship with Alexio would not last beyond their wedding day. Furthermore, Alexio was only dictating terms for what was essentially a business deal rather than a marriage.

‘I need you to voice your own opinions.’ Exasperation currented through Alexio as she stood there like a slender statue revealing nothing of her thoughts.

No, he didn’t. Since when had impervious demands required opinions? Ione regarded him from below curling brown lashes, green eyes cloaked, for every time she looked at him she was struck anew by his lethal dark attraction. ‘But I agree with everything you’ve said.’

‘You must have requests to make of me,’ Alexio informed her.

‘I would love to spend our honeymoon in Paris,’ Ione dared, her low-pitched voice a tad uneven for so much was riding on his response. ‘I believe you have a house there.’

‘I also have a very beautiful villa in the Caribbean.’

Even that one little thing, he had to argue about, Ione thought fiercely. He couldn’t help himself. An inability to give way gracefully to any will other than their own was the essential flaw in all ruthless, successful men. Well, whether he liked it or not, he was going to Paris. He had to take her to a city so that she could leave him. Staging a nifty vanishing act from a potentially remote Caribbean villa might well prove to be too great a challenge for her.

In some surprise, Alexio picked up on the antagonistic sparks in her silence. ‘We could go sailing.’

‘I get seasick,’ Ione lied in a wooden little voice that concealed her panic at what was an even worse suggestion.

Paris. Paris where he had spent so much time with Crystal, Alexio reflected in instinctive recoil, but then he looked at Ione and, seeing the anxious light in her upward glance, he felt like a selfish bastard for denying her what appeared to be her heart’s desire. ‘Paris it is, then…’

Her smile, the smile she had not let him see until that moment, lit up her whole face to a startling degree. While he gazed into her shining green eyes and experienced a tightening sensation in his groin that was becoming all too familiar in her vicinity, he decided that it would be healthier to make new memories of one of his favourite cities.

‘Let me show you round the picture gallery,’ Ione suggested, daring to take the lead now that her battle was won and her worst fears vanquished.

Instead and without warning, Alexio reached for her and drew her close, his lean hands linking with hers and then releasing them to glide with smooth expertise up to her slim shoulders. ‘First…’

No, no, no, no! Screamed through Ione’s brain. Touching was absolutely not allowed. She stiffened, froze from head to toe, putting out defensive signals that a blind man could have sensed.

‘You don’t need to be nervous,’ Alexio soothed in his dark velvet drawl, that roughened timbre setting up a chain-reaction echo down her rigid spine. But he knew he was lying. Every time she froze around him, he wanted to smash down her barriers, storm an attack through her defences and watch those beautiful eyes drown in him, cling to him, hunger for him.

She collided with smouldering golden eyes that made her head spin and her heart skip a beat in shock. She meant to step back out of reach but instead she found herself concentrating on just catching her breath. It shook her even more to feel her body wanting to push forward into the hard, all-male muscularity of his, for the rigorous control that had always been her saviour was nowhere to be found.

‘Alexio…’ Her own voice sounded strange to her, almost placatory.

He brought his wide, sensual mouth drifting down onto hers and then, with rueful amusement sounding deep in his throat, he pried her sealed lips apart with the tip of his tongue and explored the moist interior of her tender mouth. As the explosion of sensual sensation hit her she shuddered in its grip, her slim body alternately tensing and dissolving in the storm of physical feelings firing through her skincells. Crushed against the unyielding wall of his chest, her breasts pinched tight into throbbing peaks and the ache that stirred at the very heart of her almost hurt.

Alexio lifted his arrogant dark head to gaze down into her dreamy, bemused eyes with a sense of achievement entirely new to him. ‘Am I the first?’

Having yet to regain mastery over herself in that moment and stunned by her own galloping heartbeat and excitement, Ione mumbled. ‘The first to kiss me? No…’

In an abrupt movement, Alexio freed her. Who was she trying to kid? She hadn’t even known how to kiss until he had shown her! But the dreaminess in her eyes had dissipated and she had lost colour. Indeed, she spun away from him as if he no longer existed for her and, registering that withdrawal, he immediately suspected the most likely cause.

‘Who was he?’ Alexio demanded, seized by a sudden dark anger that inflamed him into an instantaneous reaction.

Pale as death in the aftermath of that unwise admission, Ione could have bitten her own tongue out. Wounding memories were attacking her from all sides, but fear had risen uppermost again. If her father found out that she had mentioned Yannis, he would be furious. She did not consider Alexio’s anger abnormal. Her father was a hypocrite too, preaching female purity one moment and taking solace with tarts the next.

‘He was a fisherman’s son. It was over two years ago. He k-kissed me. That’s all,’ she lied shakily.

Alexio’s lean, powerful hands closed back into fists and slowly uncoiled again. Why shouldn’t she have kissed someone else? And it was such a pathetic little confession that he was momentarily ashamed of himself for forcing it out of her. He could not explain the strength of his own irrational anger, and then he looked at her afresh and noted that she had turned a sort of sickly shade, her eyes refusing to meet his. That seething anger came out of nowhere at him again. He recognised that he wasn’t hearing the whole story and was torn by a primitive desire to drag all the rest of it out of her as well, for her pallor told him that that fisherman’s son had been a major event in her life.

CHAPTER THREE

‘LET’S go and see those pictures,’ Alexio breathed in a raw undertone. So he was unaccustomed to the experience of a woman reeling out of his arms to think about another man. But, in the circumstances, he knew his anger was unreasonable.

Ione was trembling. ‘Please don’t mention what I said to my father.’

Alexio flung her an astonished glance from his brilliant eyes and his jawline hardened. ‘Of course not.’

Ione led the way to the ultra-modern picture gallery but her tummy was still churning. Yannis had been her first and only love and it had been sweet and innocent and harmless until the day that she’d been followed and her father’s henchmen had forced her to watch as Yannis had been beaten to a pulp. Soon afterwards his family had left the island. She would never forget what her foolishness had cost him.

And what even greater foolishness it had been to admit to her bridegroom that she was not quite untouched by human hand! He was now thinking that she might not be a virgin. As she watched him view the magnificent paintings, which she believed ought to hang in a museum where at least they would be appreciated as something other than an investment, she recognised the lingering tautness in his strong, bronzed profile. Like her father, he was the contemporary equivalent of a caveman, who wanted a bride no other man had ever dared to touch. And wouldn’t he just love it if she questioned him about his all-too-numerous affairs? Even so, she was puzzled that he had once intended to marry a woman like Crystal Denby, whose reputation had been far from spotless.

But then Crystal had been totally, fantastically gorgeous, Ione conceded with wry acceptance. A woman blessed with such undeniable attributes got away with a great deal more than a plainer one. It must feel really good, she thought with rueful longing, to have that kind of power over a man.

‘I’m sorry about the way I questioned you downstairs,’ Alexio remarked in a driven undertone, swinging round without warning to level dark-as-night eyes on her triangular face. ‘I have no right to question your past.’

His apology surprised her but she immediately sensed that he wanted to know more about Yannis, was indeed expecting and inviting her to respond with further details. Angry defiance stirred in her and only with the greatest difficulty did she resist the temptation to ask if he wanted to tell her about his lost love. Instead she simply nodded agreement in silence.

Even though she had thwarted him, grudging admiration assailed Alexio. His wide, sensual mouth slashed into a wolfish smile of acknowledgement that exuded such innate masculine power over her that she found herself smiling dizzily back at him without even thinking about it.

‘I brought you this…’ He drew a ring from the pocket of his beautifully tailored jacket. ‘It’s the Christoulakis betrothal ring, but if you don’t like it it’s not a problem. You can choose your own ring if you prefer to do so. I will admit upfront that my own mother considered it too old-fashioned for her taste.’

Attacked by sudden discomfiture, Ione studied the diamonds that glittered below the gallery lights. A family betrothal ring, an heirloom. A stab of guilt pierced her for, whatever she might think of his motives, he was on the level about their marriage and she was not. ‘It’s beautiful…’ she muttered and she made herself extend her hand in acceptance lest she betray herself.

Alexio reached for her hand and threaded the ring onto her wedding finger. ‘I may not love you but I will do everything in my power to be a good husband,’ he asserted.

In receipt of that little speech, Ione gritted her teeth together. Well, it was just as well that she had no intention of hanging around to test him out on that unlikely promise! Like any other woman, she deserved to be loved and she intended to be loved by someone one day. In the meantime, she would be playing the field with loads of different boyfriends. Well, if she could get one to start with, she conceded, climbing down from her mental soapbox to allow that until she had tested herself out on the dating scene she had no idea how much man appeal she might possess.

Although a boyfriend who kissed as Alexio did would be a very good start, she acknowledged. Without a doubt, his sexual expertise had roused her own much too enthusiastic response. However, seeking to deny him that small intimacy would have been a major mistake on all fronts. And it had only been her hormones that had got carried away, she told herself in consolation. Since she had been deprived of almost all the natural learning experiences that she should have had with men, she might even qualify as being sex-starved. So, why should she be ashamed of the wild excitement she had felt beneath that hard, hungry mouth of his? There had really been nothing at all personal in her response to him.

‘Ione…’ Alexio began, studying the smooth perfection of her shuttered face and yet far-away gaze and endeavouring to fathom what had stolen her attention from him yet again.

‘Alexio…how are you? Ione should have brought you to me immediately,’ a coy female voice shrilled from the entrance to the gallery.

Sprung from her introspection by the sight of Kalliope heading for Alexio with a delighted smile on her thin face, Ione breathed in deep. She need have no further concern as to how to occupy Alexio, for her aunt, who adored young, handsome men, was more than equal to the task. And over the following hour, while he endured Kalliope’s voluble enquiries about every single member of his family near and far, Alexio demonstrated the most perfect manners, patience and courtesy.

‘You don’t deserve a husband from a good family.’ Kalliope shot her niece a look of angry resentment as the two women walked back to their own wing of the villa to change for dinner. ‘If Alexio Christoulakis knew the truth about your background, nothing would persuade him to marry a girl from the gutter!’

For once, in receipt of her aunt’s venom, Ione felt only a weary compassion. Her mother had once told her that, twenty years earlier, Kalliope had fallen in love with one of her brother’s executives, but Minos Gakis had reacted in fury and had refused his permission for them to marry. Kalliope had dutifully accepted his decision and now she was in her fifties, still unmarried and bitter over the lot life had dealt her.

But at least her aunt still had her life, Ione reasoned with a superstitious shiver as she selected another dull dark dress from her wardrobe. Cosmas had not been so fortunate. The night that her brother had crashed his plane, he had been under enormous stress and his resulting lack of concentration had killed him. If anything, Cosmas had been even more afraid of their father than she was.

Cosmas had had the Gakis head for business laced with their mother’s sensitivity. Her eyes stinging as she thought about the big brother she still missed a great deal, Ione promised herself that, no matter what it took and regardless of what deception might be involved, she would do what Cosmas had been too scared to do: she would break free, she would escape before her self-will was crushed as his had been.

The first course of the lavish dinner had been served when Minos Gakis announced that the wedding would have to take place within two weeks as business commitments would keep him out of the country during the following month. Ione’s startled gaze shot to Alexio, who seemed to be absorbing the news with a lot less surprise than she was. His lean, strong face was not even tense. Indeed, he shot her a long, lingering glance from heavily lidded dark golden eyes that burned hot colour into her cheeks and made her hurriedly look away.

‘The ceremony will, of course, take place here on the island,’ Minos decreed and he turned to study Alexio with a half-smile. ‘I see no reason why you and Ione should not then take up residence here.’

Shock powered through Ione and her fork fell from her nerveless fingers with a clatter.

‘In her own home, my daughter would have the company of her aunt while you are abroad and she would also enjoy the continued security of a full protection team.’

‘No…no!’ Ione gasped in horror, driven into defiance by the stricken conviction that such an arrangement could only have been planned from the outset.

Even as her dismayed aunt dug warning nails into her thigh below the table, Ione’s red-faced father was flying out of his chair like a jet-propelled steamroller and raising a punishing fist as he roared down at his daughter in a rage, ‘What did you say to me?’

Mutely awaiting the blow about to descend and white as milk, Ione jerked as the crash of a chair falling backward sounded from the other side of the table.

‘If you lay one finger on her, I swear I’ll kill you!’ Alexio thundered with a raw aggression more than equal to his host’s.

A silence beyond any silence that had ever fallen in the Gakis household fell at that point. Nobody had ever challenged Minos Gakis like that. Sheer disbelief had paralysed the older man’s heavy features as he slowly turned his big greying head to focus on his challenger. Ione wanted to throw herself across the table and stuff the tablecloth in Alexio’s big, stupid macho mouth before he got himself beaten up. What madness had come over him? Where were his much-vaunted brains when he most needed them? Her father had said that he needed Alexio but her father would still throw him off the island and destroy him sooner than swallow such an insult.

Minos surveyed the younger man with outraged dark eyes and hissed. ‘So you think she’s your property now…eh?’

‘Yes.’ His lean, powerful face rigid, the surge of pure black rage that had powered Alexio was still in the ascendant.

With an abruptness that made his female relatives flinch, Minos Gakis threw back his head and laughed with a derisive appreciation that curdled Ione’s quivering tummy. She would call the police. No matter what it cost her, if he let his henchmen hurt Alexio, she knew that this time she would call the police and inform on her own father.

But a split second later, she could only watch with a dropped jaw as her father dealt Alexio a considering look of ironic approval. ‘You’re a man not unlike me. Possessive, protective of what’s yours. Well, then, you keep your mouth shut from now on!’

Ione just closed her eyes, still sick from the threat of the violence that had so nearly exploded upon them all and equally sick with humiliation. The men resumed their seats. Alexio skimmed a probing glance at Ione and asked himself if he had been guilty of a crazy overreaction, for she did not seem grateful for his intervention. He had believed that her father had been about to hit her, but it was more probable that the older man had only been waving an angry fist in the air. After all, Ione had just sat there and would surely not have done so had she feared a blow. What grounds did he have to suspect Minos of abusive behaviour? And much might be forgiven of a man fighting terminal illness and looking death in the face, Alexio reminded himself with all the discomfiture of a young and healthy male.

‘I feel unwell. Please excuse me,’ Ione muttered chokily.

‘Yes, go,’ her father growled in a tone of disgust. ‘You have already done your utmost to spoil our meal!’

Ione rose on knees that felt like jelly and left the room. Her head was pounding fit to burst and all courage was failing her. Alexio would agree to them living at the villa after their wedding. Why shouldn’t he? Such an arrangement would be very convenient for him. After all, it would give him complete freedom and he wouldn’t need to feel guilty about leaving her for long periods with her own family. Would there even be a honeymoon trip now? Alexio hadn’t wanted to go to Paris in the first place and her father would soon persuade him that a honeymoon was a waste of business time and energy. Tears running down her convulsed face, Ione stumbled into her bathroom and stared at herself in the vanity mirror.

What an idiot she had been to believe that she could escape her father’s control of every aspect of her life! He had been way ahead of her in the planning stakes and she had been stupid not to foresee that likelihood.

Ever since that letter from her twin sister had arrived within months of her eighteenth birthday, Ione’s mail had been vetted and scrutinised. Her sibling, Misty, had wanted contact with her and Ione’s father had been furious that the social services had unsealed the adoption records to aid such an approach to his adopted daughter without his consent. Ione had not been allowed to answer that letter and she only knew that her sister was or had been a Sicilian tycoon’s mistress because that had evidently featured in a more recent newspaper story that had come to her father’s notice. She had not seen that article herself. Her father had simply informed her that the sister she longed to be reunited with was a whore.

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