Lynne Graham
THE PETRAKOS BRIDE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

PROLOGUE

SURROUNDED by fawning celebrity guests and reverential relations at his engagement party, Giannis Petrakos felt as claustrophobic as a lion in a circus ring. His great-grandmother was beckoning him. The old lady was famous for her forthright opinions, and he guessed that she was eager to tell him what she thought of his fiancée. Grim amusement assailed Giannis; as one of the richest men in the world, he had learned to prize the sheer rarity value of such honesty.

Tiny in stature, Dorkas Petrakos settled snapping black eyes on her darkly handsome great-grandson as he towered over her. ‘Krista is a very beautiful young woman. Every man here envies you.’

Giannis inclined his arrogant dark head in acknowledgement of the obvious, and waited for the axe to fall.

‘But what sort of mother will she make for your children?’ Dorkas enquired.

Giannis almost winced, for neither he nor Krista was ready to settle down to that extent. It had never occurred to him to consider his fiancée in the light of her maternal instincts. Perhaps in a few years they would have a child. But if that did not happen Giannis was prepared to choose a suitable successor to inherit his power and fortune from his extensive array of relatives. When it came to reproduction he had not a sentimental bone in his body.

‘You think that doesn’t matter. You think I’m out of date and out of touch,’ the old lady opined, with a hint of aggression. ‘But Krista is vain and selfish.’

His stubborn jawline tensed; such strong censure of his chosen bride was unwelcome. It struck him as unfortunate that just at that moment Krista should once again be visibly revelling in being the centre of attention. His fiancée could not pass a mirror or a camera without striking a pose. Blessed with turquoise eyes and white-blonde hair, Krista, with her stunning beauty, had attracted notice from the instant that she’d strolled into the public eye as a teenager. Heiress to the Spyridou electronics empire, and the only child of doting parents, Krista had been indulged from birth. How could his great-grandmother possibly understand her?

No two women could have had less in common. Born the daughter of a fisherman, Dorkas had grown up in grinding poverty and had held fast to her unpretentious values. Her refusal to conform to the ever more snobbish standards of her descendants and her blunt tongue had ensured that she was widely regarded by them as a social embarrassment. But there had always been a special bond between Dorkas and Giannis, formed most unexpectedly when he’d been a wildly rebellious teenager bent on self-destruction.

‘You say nothing. But if you lost all your money and your fine houses and cars and aeroplanes tomorrow, would Krista still be by your side?’ the old lady asked him drily. ‘I think she’d run so fast you couldn’t catch her!’

As he rose to leave his great-grandmother Giannis almost laughed out loud, for in such a scenario Krista would only be a burden, awash with self-pity and recrimination. She was, undeniably, the product of her rarefied luxury environment. Did Dorkas truly believe that it was possible for him to find a woman impervious to the draw of his fabulous wealth? But the implication that Krista, however affluent in her own right, had an eye to the main chance touched his ego like the sting of a tiny needle sliding below the skin.

With a nod to his security chief, Nemos, to protect his privacy, Giannis strolled out on to the roof terrace. He enjoyed the fresh air while he questioned the bleak edge that had overtaken his mood. After all, he had no doubts about marrying Krista Spyridou. How could he have? Everyone regarded her as the perfect match for him. She had a classy pedigree and she was a terrific hostess. They belonged to the same exclusive world and she understood the rules. No matter what happened there would not be a divorce. In that way the Petrakos power-base of wealth and influence would be protected for another generation.

Yet Giannis did not forget that at nineteen years old, to the horror of his family and hers, he had dated Krista Spyridou and dumped her. The most beautiful girl in the world, he had discovered, seemed to have little else to offer. Indeed, he had decided that she was as cold as charity in bed—and out of it.

‘Please don’t wreck my hair…’ That had been a favourite refrain.

‘I really, really need my beauty sleep…’

‘If you must…’

‘I hate getting sweaty…’

Krista would never set his bedsheets on fire with enthusiasm, Giannis reflected wryly. Her lack of passion had been a deal-breaker when he was an idealistic teenager, powered by Dorkas’s assurance that his perfect woman was out there, just waiting for him to find her. Well, nobody could say he hadn’t looked. In fact, Giannis had packed in more than a decade of riotous womanising before reaching certain cynical and unapologetically selfish conclusions: his perfect woman did not exist. Also, he now saw Krista’s flaws as positives that would ensure his marriage made the minimum possible impact on his lifestyle.

He was used to doing exactly as he liked when he liked. Marriage to Krista wouldn’t change that; she would not cling or inflict unreasonable expectations on him, nor would she throw screaming tantrums demanding attention, love or fidelity. She would never care enough to do so. And what better wife could be found for a workaholic male who thrived on the high-powered pressure of business than a wife happy for him to keep his sexual options open? Krista would be much too busy pampering and clothing her perfect body to feel neglected by her billionaire husband.

As soon as Giannis rejoined the party Krista sped to his side, to beg him to share another photo opportunity. Not an ounce of his impatience showed on his lean, aristocratic face. Although he detested publicity, he was prepared to allow her her way at their engagement celebration.

Relieved by his lack of objection, Krista tucked a hand over his arm and became chatty. ‘Is that horrid old crone in the corner from your tribe or mine?’ she asked with a giggle.

Giannis glanced across the exquisitely furnished room and his eyes stilled on the little old lady dressed in unrelieved black and sitting erect. Horrid old crone? As Dorkas seldom left the island of Libos she was rarely recognised outside the family circle. His brilliant but semi-veiled dark eyes flashed smouldering gold.

‘Why?’

‘She actually asked me if I could cook. Hello!’ Krista rolled her eyes with the supreme scorn of a young woman accustomed to being waited on hand and foot. ‘Then she asked if I would be waiting for you when you got back from the office! As if…’ she mocked. ‘Someone should’ve left that old biddy at home. She embarrassed me. I do hope she won’t be at our wedding.’

‘If she isn’t, I won’t be either.’ His response was smooth as silk.

Giannis watched his fiancée take a few seconds to comprehend what he was telling her. Shaken, Krista gave him an appalled look. Her long manicured nails dug into his sleeve in a panic before he could walk away. ‘Giannis, I—’

‘That old lady is my great-grandmother, and worthy of your deepest respect,’ Giannis delivered with cold emphasis.

Aghast at having offended him, Krista grovelled. To the list of her flaws he added the sins of vulgarity and insincerity.

CHAPTER ONE

IN THE best of moods, and ready for her second day temping at Petrakos Industries, Maddie bounced on to the bathroom scales and stilled to look hopefully down at the gauge. She winced at the reading. Possibly it hadn’t been a good idea to jump on them. She got off again. Shedding her nightdress and her watch, she reset the weighing machine and stepped on as lightly as possible. Disappointingly, the weight was identical.

‘You can’t keep body and soul together on that salad stuff,’ old Mrs Evans who lived on the ground floor had opined, when Maddie had joined her and her daughter for a delicious three-course Sunday lunch, complete with all the trimmings, just a couple of days earlier.

Perhaps the ‘salad stuff’ would have been safer? Or possibly the bar of chocolate she had eaten on the way home from the supermarket the night before had been an over-indulgence too far? Could extra weight go on that fast? In truth, the long hours she worked just to pay the rent raised her healthy appetite to starvation proportions, and she still did not earn enough to eat well. Her despondent green eyes travelled across the expanse of her full-breasted, generous-hipped reflection. Generous mouth tightening, she looped impatient fingers through her torrent of long red hair, then anchored it back with a clip and got dressed at speed.

The black jeans and white blouse had a closer fit than she liked over her opulent curves, and she frowned. When a fire had broken out at her last address she had lost almost everything she possessed. Although she was trying to build up a new wardrobe by buying from charity shops, it wasn’t easy on a low income. As she turned away from the mirror her attention fell on the photo of her late sister by her bed, and she scolded herself for being so precious about her appearance when she was lucky to have her health.

‘Look on the bright side,’ had been her grandmother’s most constant refrain while she was growing up.

‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ her grandfather had often chipped in with determination.

Yet Maddie and her grandparents had known a lot of heartbreak in their lives. Suzy, Maddie’s beloved twin, had been diagnosed with leukaemia soon after the girls’ eighth birthday. The stress of coping with Suzy’s illness had destroyed their parents’ marriage. Their paternal grandparents had taken charge, supporting Suzy through her gruelling treatment, her period of remission, and finally the last stages of her life. And ultimately it had been Suzy’s fierce determination to get the most out of the time she’d had left that had taught Maddie the importance of hanging on to a cheerful outlook.

As she waited at the bus stop Maddie was struggling to subdue a juvenile tingle of excitement while she wondered if this would be the day she caught a glimpse of the legendary Giannis Petrakos again. Honestly, when she thought about him she felt more like a schoolgirl than a twenty-three-year-old grown-up! It was embarrassing to recall that she had once cherished a newspaper photo of the startlingly handsome Greek shipping tycoon. But she had been a teenager, and she’d developed a hopeless crush on him.

Petrakos Industries was a towering contemporary office block in the City of London. Maddie had never worked anywhere quite so imposing before, and the standards demanded of the staff were equally high. Even though she was only a temp, and generally entrusted with only menial tasks, her lack of qualifications had produced frowns on her first day. As always, she tried to compensate by being very hardworking and enthusiastic. She would have done just about anything to get a permanent job with such a company, because a decent salary would make a big difference to her life.

‘Another five hundred jobs are being moved to Eastern Europe to cut costs,’ a female voice lamented outside the room where Maddie was engaged in inputting onto a computer database. ‘The press will go mental over it—’

‘Petrakos Industries is in the top three most successful companies in the world,’ male tones chipped in reprovingly. ‘Giannis Petrakos may be a ruthless bastard, but he’s invincible in business. Don’t forget that his shark-like instincts are likely to deliver us an even bigger bonus this year.’

‘Do you ever think about anything other than money?’ the woman censured. ‘Petrakos is a super-wealthy guy with about as much human emotion as a piece of granite.’

Maddie was tempted to go to the door and protest that point. But in her guise as an unwilling eavesdropper she knew she could scarcely do so. What was more, while she might long to sing Giannis Petrakos’s praises, it was certainly not her place to talk about his private endeavours. Suppressing a sigh, she returned her attention to the database.

After lunch she and her agency co-worker, Stacy, were sent to the top floor to help out. A brunette manager called Annabel told Stacy that she would be serving refreshments at an afternoon meeting.

‘I’m a temp, not a waitress!’ Stacy declared pugnaciously.

‘Your role as a temp is to do as you are asked,’ Annabel retorted crisply. ‘Petrakos Industries requires a high degree of flexibility from all employees—’

‘I’m not an employee…I’m a temp—and I don’t serve the tea—’

‘Not to worry,’ Maddie slotted in hastily, keen to bring the battle to an end before Stacy argued both of them out of a job. ‘I’ll do it.’

In receipt of that offer, Annabel defrosted only marginally, and angled a pointed look of disapproval at Maddie’s jeans. ‘The company dress code doesn’t allow jeans, but I suppose you’ll have to do.’

‘You should’ve slapped that madam down hard for being so cheeky about your clothes,’ Stacy opined the minute the two girls were alone. ‘You’re doing her a favour.’

Maddie grimaced. ‘It was a fair comment. But with my skirt in the wash I only have jeans left to wear.’

‘I bet she’s just jealous of your looks,’ Stacy contended with scorn. ‘Those men walking out of the lift couldn’t take their eyes off you, and she didn’t like it.’

Maddie went red with embarrassment. ‘I think she was just uptight about the meeting.’

‘You should make the most out of what you’ve got,’ Stacy told her impatiently. ‘With your face and body, I’d be coining it in as a glamour model or a lap dancer.’

Inwardly cringing at the concept of that amount of naked exposure, Maddie said nothing. Sometimes she thought she had been born into the wrong body, for she was very uncomfortable with the masculine notice awakened by her hourglass curves.

As she crouched down to remove a china tea-set from the cupboard where it was stored, Annabel thrust wide the door to issue further instructions. ‘Mr Petrakos will be present at the meeting. When you enter the boardroom, serve the refreshments quietly and quickly.’

Striding past in advance of his personal staff, Giannis caught a glimpse of the redhead just before the boardroom kitchen door flipped shut on her. In that split second a razor-sharp image of her imprinted itself on his brain: bright hair that gleamed like beaten copper and gold against her pale alabaster skin and fell in splendour halfway down her spine; the luscious pout of voluptuous breasts that segued down into an improbably tiny waist and then flared out again into the ripe fullness of a very feminine derrière.

A powerful wave of testosterone-charged response assailed Giannis. He always controlled his sexuality, and he was startled by the heady rush of blood to his groin. He assumed his response was a rude reminder of a private truth: he liked women with a little more flesh than the very slender models who invariably came his way. Even so, that disruptive surge of sexual arousal irritated him, and he banished the image of her from his mind. Most probably, he acknowledged, he just needed a woman.

Taut with nerves at the prospect of finally seeing Giannis Petrakos again, Maddie immediately doubled up the amount of coffee in the flask she was preparing. Very strong and very sweet: that was how he liked it. For just a moment memories took over and she smiled, but she blinked back the tears that were pricking at the back of her eyes.

Under cover of the spirited dialogue taking place round the vast conference table, she eased the trolley into the boardroom and gently closed the door. Only then did she allow herself to look in the direction of the male poised by the windows, and even though she had promised herself that she would simply steal one tiny glance, she was transfixed. In the tailored perfection of a black pinstripe business suit, he looked downright magnificent.

If anything, Maddie conceded rather dizzily, he was even more staggeringly beautiful than when she had first seen him. Nine years had eradicated all trace of the boy from his lean strong face, and his powerful muscular frame had filled out. But he still held his proud dark head at an imperious angle that she instantly recognized, and his eyes were unforgettable. As dark as bitter aloes and set deep below straight ebony brows. His gaze was coolly trained on the current speaker. He had incredible eyes: in certain lights or when he laughed they were the same colour as gilded bronze.

‘Why aren’t you serving?’ someone hissed in her ear.

Maddie unfroze, and jerked as though she had been slapped. As she reached for the first cup and saucer Giannis Petrakos glanced at her, and she stilled again. Her tummy flipped and her heart began to thump, making it hard for her to breathe. For the space of a heartbeat her surroundings vanished. All she was conscious of was the unfamiliar heaviness of her breasts, the dryness of her mouth, and the almost painful little twist of sensation making its presence felt low in her pelvis. She lowered her lashes in an instant of genuine confusion. It shook her that it took an almost physical effort to force her attention back to her task.

Coffee—strong, black, sweet, she reminded herself, while she wondered what on earth had come over her. And then, guessing, she felt a giant wave of shamed pink colour spreading up from her throat all the way over her dismayed face to her hairline. My goodness, she would never dare to look at him again! Dragging in a jerky breath, she poured his coffee, almost absentmindedly added four heaped spoonfuls of sugar, stirred it, and forced her feet in his direction.

Giannis had been bored, but now his ennui had fled. Had he not seen her again, he was sure he would not have thought of her. But her presence a scant twenty feet away put paid to that possibility. In a fluid movement he sat down at the table. Was she a private caterer? Or a member of the caterer’s staff? Looking at her, he speedily lost interest in the finer details of her identity. Although she was decidedly pocket-sized in the height department, she had a gorgeous face, and the lushness of her full pink lips was a fitting match for the striking symmetry of her abundant curves. Her eyes were the colour of the green glass he had collected as a kid from the seashore. His shapely mouth curled as he recalled his exquisite mother’s ridicule at receiving such a childish gift, but when he read the tiny curvaceous redhead’s reverent gaze that unpleasant recollection of his disturbing childhood totally vanished.

Maddie set down his coffee with a hand that was shaking so badly he put out his own to steady her wrist and ensure there was not an accident.

‘Be careful,’ Giannis admonished.

It was only necessary to maintain the contact for seconds, but it was long enough for the faint floral scent of her fair skin to flare his nostrils. And that fast he got hot and hard again. In the startled quick upward glance she gave him he registered just how vulnerable she was. So close to him, she scarcely dared to breathe, and he found that knowledge incredibly exciting. He imagined tugging her down on to his lap, opening the shirt stretched to capacity over her ripe breasts and using his mouth and his hands to toy with the prominent crests that made faint indentations through the fine cotton. The strength of that erotic imagery surprised him, and he suppressed the fantasy with fierce disdain. Since when had he hit on the equivalent of a tea lady? He took a sip of the strong sweet brew in his cup, but the tension in his aroused body stubbornly refused to subside.

Warm all over, and trembling, Maddie backed away. What a clown she felt! What must he think of her for staring at him like that? Naturally he had noticed her gaping at him like a silly schoolgirl. How could he not have? He had braced her wrist with his fingers when he saw the cup wobbling on the saucer and told her off. A sidewise glance reassured her that nobody else appeared to have noticed his intervention, or his reproof. Relieved, but mortified by the poor showing she had made, she mustered her wits and hurried to serve the rest of the table.

‘This coffee is undrinkable,’ a man complained with a grimace, and was speedily backed up by his neighbour.

Consternation assailed Maddie.

‘On the contrary—it’s the first decent coffee I’ve had in this office,’ Giannis said in an impatient tone of dismissal. ‘Let’s get on with the presentation.’

More flustered than ever by the critical comments, Maddie was quick to respond to a harried signal from Annabel Holmes that urged her to speed up the delivery of refreshments. In her eagerness to do that, and to contrive an escape from the conference room, Maddie caught her foot on an exposed wire. Stumbling, she pitched forward on to the carpet, and the laptop computer that had been jerked off the table when she tripped crashed down with her.

For split second there was total silence. Giannis studied the prone redhead with sardonic disbelief. She looked like an exquisite work of art but, being human, she had a fatal flaw: on the move, she was an accident waiting to happen.

‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’ one of the executives demanded in a tone of anguish.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Maddie gasped, staring in dismay at the computer.

‘The USB memory stick has broken in half,’ the man groaned, crouching down to assess the damage. ‘I’ll have to get another copy of the presentation e-mailed over, sir.’

Raw impatience filled Giannis, because he was on a very tight schedule. Not content with almost scalding him with the coffee, the redhead had just single-handedly wrecked the entire meeting. ‘How could you be so incredibly clumsy?’ he murmured in icy wonderment.

Horrified by the damage she had caused, and devastated by that personal rebuke, Maddie scrambled hurriedly upright and said tautly, ‘I really am sorry, sir. I didn’t see the wire.’

At that moment Giannis wondered what it was about her pale, delicate features that struck an eerie chord of familiarity with him. Whatever—a hint of tears had given her green eyes a soft radiance. An identification tag dangled from her shirt, but Giannis couldn’t read it. He studied her from below the black screen of his dense lashes, his brilliant dark eyes glittering. Her pouting mouth reminded him of a crushed strawberry. ‘And you are…?’ he queried drily.

‘Maddie…er…Madeleine Conway, sir.’ Catching an urgent, dismissive jerk of the head from Annabel, who clearly wanted her to get out, and fast, she retreated back to the trolley and made a hasty exit.

Maddie felt so hot and flustered and furious with herself that she had to splash her face with cold water to cool down. Having actually got to meet Giannis Petrakos, she had contrived to make the worst possible impression on him. Her nerves had made her inexcusably ham-fisted. She winced at the suspicion that he might have seen the involuntary tears of dismay that had briefly filled her eyes when she’d realised the extent of the damage she had caused. How professional was that?

She felt even more uncomfortable about the way she had behaved around him. Being a touch naïve and inexperienced when it came to men now struck her as being a hanging offence. However, she had had little opportunity to be anything else when, from her teenage years right through to her early twenties, she had been restricted by her responsibilities at home. A social life had been impossible, school-friends had fallen away because she had never been free to go out. Though in some ways she had grown up older than her years, because she had spent so much time with her grandparents, when she’d moved to London to find work, after her grandmother had passed away, she had discovered that she was uncomfortably out of step with her peers. Sex as casual as a takeaway meal and heavy drinking ran contrary to the mores she had been taught to respect.

But Maddie was also honest enough to admit that until the moment she had looked across that conference room and seen Giannis Petrakos she had genuinely not known what it was to be strongly attracted to a man. In that instant her brain had turned to mush and her body to an alien entity that reacted with responses she had not known she had. The strength of that physical pull had taken her by surprise, and even in retrospect it shocked her. That disturbing awareness of the more private parts of her body still lingered like a secret taunt, to remind her that she had sexual responses that paid little heed to common sense or self-control. Could he have guessed why she was staring at him? The suspicion made her cringe. While he had to be accustomed to attracting female attention, he was entitled to expect more prudent behaviour from an employee.

‘Miss Conway?’ Annabel Holmes murmured from the doorway. ‘A word, if you please.’

Maddie paled and turned obediently away from the trolley she had been clearing to face the manager.

‘Are you sure you’re all right? That was quite a fall you had,’ the other woman remarked rather stiffly.

‘I’m great—only my dignity dented,’ Maddie asserted awkwardly. ‘Were you able to hold the presentation?’

‘I’m afraid not. There was a delay, and Mr Petrakos had another appointment. He’s never here for long, and when he is his schedule is packed. Mistakes are an inconvenience and an annoyance that he doesn’t forget,’ Annabel breathed tautly. ‘I messed up by asking you to do the refreshments—’

‘No, I’m the one who messed up!’ Maddie protested in dismay.

‘I’m afraid Mr Petrakos has a low tolerance threshold for screw-ups. I’m pretty sure I’ll be forever associated with that ruined presentation in his mind.’

Guilt assailed Maddie in an even more powerful wave. ‘Surely not…I mean, I’m sure he’s a reasonable guy.’

A humourless laugh fell from Annabel’s lips. ‘You’re suffering from the Petrakos effect, aren’t you? All our hearts beat a lot faster the first time or so, but now mine just goes into panic mode when he’s around,’ she confided heavily. ‘He may be drop-dead gorgeous, but he’s cold as ice below the surface and he expects perfection. If you don’t shape up, he ships you out fast.’

Initially ready to argue with that hard assessment of Giannis Petrakos, Maddie bit down on her tongue—because she had already learned for herself that he did not suffer fools in silence. She apologised again, for she could see that the brunette was sincerely worried about her future employment prospects.

Annabel shrugged and told her not to worry about it. ‘That’s the joy of being a temp,’ the other woman added. ‘You’ll be out of here tomorrow and starting a clean sheet someplace else the next day.’

With a heavy heart, Maddie cleared the abandoned cups from the empty conference room. Surely Annabel Holmes was wrong about Giannis Petrakos, and was overreacting to an unfortunate blunder? But some highly successful business magnates were reputed to be total slave-driving tyrants in the office, Maddie acknowledged unhappily. And what did she really know about Giannis Petrakos as an employer? Was the other woman’s career likely to suffer as a result of Maddie’s clumsiness? If that was the case, wasn’t it her duty to speak up on Annabel’s behalf and ensure that she herself took the blame? Grovel in the hope that his memory of the unfortunate incident was forever associated with a very clumsy temp instead?

Tomorrow she would make every possible effort to speak to him. Perhaps when he arrived in the morning—or later—she’d be able to just manage to catch him on his own for a moment. She could always make him a cup of coffee and use that as an excuse to interrupt him. A couple of minutes would be all she needed. It was wonderful how a few well-chosen tactful words could smooth over an awkward episode…

CHAPTER TWO

GIANNIS woke hot and aching from an erotic dream and cursed with rare savagery. Maddie, the graceless little redhead, had hotwired his libido. What was it about her? The lure of forbidden fruit? The prospect of sex at the office? He had never had it, but had often thought about it.

Over the past decade he could have fulfilled that fantasy time and time again. Yet, in spite of the fact that innumerable female staff had made sexual approaches, he had never responded. He had withstood the ones who’d stripped off just as easily as he had rejected the looks, and the verbal and written invitations. In fact all those workplace come-ons had exasperated him, because he was first and foremost a businessman. He was a firm believer in enforcing the rules that kept his staff keen, disciplined, and motivated to deliver only their very best. By no stretch of the imagination could his shagging the temp do anything but damage that streamlined operational efficiency, Giannis told himself grimly.

On the other hand, he mused over breakfast at six, there was no reason why he should not pursue the temp once she had moved on from Petrakos Industries.

In the act of mulling over that fact, and its possibilities, on his chauffeur-driven journey through the London traffic, Giannis got a distinct cold chill down his spine. Why was he thinking about Maddie Conway so much? Why did he even remember her name? It was weird. He was acting weird. Since when had sex been a big deal to him? All his needs in that department were met by two highly sophisticated beauties, one in London and another in Greece. Both understood his requirements to the letter, and met them with the utmost style and discretion.

He set up a meeting over lunch with his English mistress. Obviously he was suffering from sexual frustration.

At noon, Maddie felt a yawn creeping up on her. She had been given a heap of photocopying to do, and it was so tedious that she could have fallen asleep standing up. Stacy’s moans made the chore no more enjoyable.

‘We always get the jobs nobody else wants to do,’ Stacy complained bitterly. ‘Filing or running messages.’

‘I’m not qualified to do much else,’ Maddie responded

‘I honestly think that uppity cow Annabel sat down last night to work out a list of boring stuff to land us with.’ Stacy restocked the photocopier with paper in a series of vicious movements.

Maddie lifted her head as she heard steps on the stairs outside the door. ‘She’s really okay…’ Her voice lost strength and ebbed without her awareness when she focused on the male coming to a halt just outside the door.

Lowering the mobile phone from his ear, Giannis Petrakos glanced casually into the room on his way past, and then came to a momentary halt.

‘Is there anyone you don’t like?’ Stacy was demanding in a tone of irritation, her back turned to the door. ‘It’s not normal to always be saying nice things about everybody.’

Maddie parted her lips to laugh off that response, but no sound came out—because incisive dark, deep-set eyes were surveying her from the doorway. She couldn’t move, couldn’t break that visual connection. A strange sense of exhilaration gripped her. Her heart was racing so fast it seemed to be pounding in her eardrums. Her skin prickled and tightened round her bones. And then he swung away and strode down the corridor, leaving her limp and drained and in shock again. For goodness’ sake, what was wrong with her? He had only looked in her direction for a couple of seconds and she had stared back at him as if she was paralysed! Couldn’t she have at least smiled and acted as if she had more than one brain cell?

She would have liked to tell him that she would never forget how happy he had made her sister, but her grandmother’s gratitude at the time had made him uncomfortable, and not for worlds would she have repeated that mistake. In any case, she acknowledged ruefully, it was most unlikely that after so many years he would even remember her late sister.

‘Hello? ‘Stacy snapped her fingers loudly right in front of Maddie’s face, to recapture her co-worker’s attention. ‘Anybody home?’

In his office, Giannis was engaged in the unfamiliar task of questioning his own actions. His lean, fiercely handsome features were taut with incomprehension. Emerging from the boardroom, he had shaken off his phalanx of support staff and had traversed the entire top floor of Petrakos Industries. He had looked into rooms he had not even known existed. Why? Why had he done that? For the first time in his life he had done something that he did not remember deciding to do, and he had done it for no good reason.

He was exasperated by the suspicion that he might have been prompted by a subconscious desire to see the red-headed temp again. And he was annoyed that her Titian red hair, smooth alabaster skin and full breasts had stood up so well to a second, more critical scrutiny. In fact, dressed in a simple white shirt and a narrow black skirt that could only showcase her dazzling curves, she had looked more ravishing than ever. That acknowledgement seriously rattled him.

He was on the way to his mistress’s apartment when Krista called him.

‘I’ve decided on an Ancient Greek theme for our wedding,’ his fiancée trilled in high excitement. ‘You said you wanted a traditional wedding. What could be more traditional than the ancient gods?’

‘They were pagans,’ Giannis said drily.

‘Who cares about that? Piety is deeply unfashionable. Our wedding will be the society event of the year. You can play Zeus, the king of the gods, and I can be Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty—’

‘According to Homer, Zeus and Aphrodite were father and daughter.’ As Giannis had not the slightest intention of getting tricked out in a tunic and cloak to make a fashion statement out of what he considered to be a private and serious event, he hoped that nobody told her that Adonis had been one of Aphrodite’s many lovers.

Fifteen minutes later, Giannis greeted his English mistress. Sex, he was convinced, would restore him to the cool rationality of his normal self. Over the past twenty-four hours he had become increasingly aware that he was not himself. Not a male given to solemn self-examination, he found himself furiously intolerant of his undisciplined thoughts, disturbed sleep and edgy behaviour.

Unfortunately, the instant he laid eyes on the beautiful blonde model he realised that he no longer found her attractive. All of a sudden, and for no reason that he could understand, she left him stone-cold. What was more, he found himself making an unwelcome comparison between her and Maddie Conway. For a male who functioned on pure logic, such perverse mental ruminations were deeply disturbing. Duly informed that their arrangement had run its course, the blonde accepted the news with good grace, since she was well aware that she would receive a generous financial settlement.

Giannis got back into his limo, having enjoyed neither the release of sexual tension nor the indulgence of an appetising lunch. Even his impatience felt unfamiliar, for his personal life, like his working day, was highly organised and designed to meet his every expectation. He liked the framework of his existence to be predictable. In his choice of Krista as a bride he had left nothing to chance, because he knew that she would never demand more than he was prepared to give. The sole surviving offspring of selfish and irresponsible parents, he took no risks in his private life. He satisfied his high sex drive with the minimum of fuss and emotion and, while he might specialise in the superficial in his relationships, he had never slept around.

In short, lusting after a sexy little red-headed temp at the office was decidedly not his style. She did not share his background or his place in society. She was not even his type—his usual preference was for leggy blondes. Yet her translucent ivory complexion, verdant green eyes and luscious pink mouth had become imprinted on his brain with the efficiency of a rampantly destructive computer virus, Giannis reflected in angry frustration. He was determined to repress such unruly promptings. It would be an act of crass stupidity to seek intimacy with an employee, however temporary. Even if she had looked at him with a wondering air of reverence that, he had to confess, he found stupendously appealing…

By late afternoon, Maddie appreciated that she had little time left in which to seek out Giannis Petrakos and say her piece about the laptop débâcle. In less than an hour she would be leaving the Petrakos building, and tomorrow she would be working someplace else. Having heard Stacy getting her instructions prior to taking over the switchboard, she knew that the Greek tycoon was in his office and that his calls were being diverted. She wasn’t going to get a better chance to speak to him.

Unfortunately, she was stopped during her passage upstairs and sent to pick up some papers from another floor. She had to wait until they were ready, and by the time she delivered them back there were only twenty minutes of her working day left. In the galley kitchen she hastily took out a cup and saucer and made coffee exactly the way Giannis Petrakos liked it.

She moved down the corridor as fast as she dared. She no longer knew if he was even still in the office, and there was no time to find out. Her stomach felt as though it was lodged somewhere near her throat. Balancing the coffee in one hand, she knocked on the door of his office. There was no answer. Afraid that she would be noticed and intercepted before she could see him, she depressed the door handle with a perspiring palm.

‘Can I help you?’ A man the size of a skyscraper had appeared out of nowhere and materialised at her elbow when she’d least expected it. His accent was foreign, his craggy dark face cold. She shot a nervous glance up at him, wondering who he was.

‘I’ve made some coffee for Mr Petrakos. Who are you?’

‘Nemos. I take care of Mr Petrakos’s security.’ The older man rested his attention on her name-tag, and then surprised her by pressing open the door for her entry. ‘Go ahead, Miss Conway.’

The office of the CEO of Petrakos Industries was a vast space, with a strikingly contemporary décor, but it was frustratingly empty. At a loss, Maddie hovered until she heard a slight noise through an open door on the other side of the huge room.

A pulse beating suffocatingly fast in her throat, she went through that door and found herself in a connecting hallway. With a frown, she looked to right and left.

‘Who is it?’ a familiar accented drawl enquired with impatience.

Taut with concern at the suspicion that she might once again be acting as an irritation, Maddie turned to the left to answer his query. ‘I’ve made you coffee, Mr Petrakos…’

One step through that door and Maddie appreciated her mistake, coming to a stricken halt as she realised she had entered some sort of dressing area lined with mirrored closets. Her dismayed gaze whipped over a unit on which a monogrammed silver clothesbrush had been abandoned She realised that a bathroom lay through the communicating door a mere instant before Giannis Petrakos himself strode into view, with his black hair still damp and spiky from the shower. His white shirt was hanging open to display a sleek muscular wedge of brown chest. His feet were bare beneath the hems of his immaculately tailored trousers. Obviously she had interrupted him while he was getting dressed.

‘Oh…oh, my goodness. I’m so s-sorry!’ Maddie stammered in intense mortification.

Taken aback by her appearance, because his bodyguards were highly efficient at protecting his privacy, Giannis surveyed her. He was astonished that she could have bypassed his security team. But, as appreciation of her beauty flamed through him and unleashed an instantaneous sexual response, his aggressive hunting instincts took over. He decided that only fate could have set up such an opportunity. After all, she had entered his private quarters without invitation, and they were alone where no one would dare to disturb him.

‘I thought this was another office…I had no idea.’ Too embarrassed to look directly at him, Maddie was engaged in swiftly backing out again. ‘Please excuse my intrusion.’

‘But you brought coffee? For me? ‘ Giannis treated her to a stunning smile and stretched out a lean brown hand to signify a welcome. ‘How very kind.’

The megawatt impact of that unexpected smile curving his wide sculpted mouth dazzled Maddie. Her tummy executed a back-flip without warning, and all the oxygen in her lungs seemed to vanish. She would not let her attention dip below the level of his angular jaw. She knew she had stuff to say to him, but her memory had suddenly become one giant horrendous blank.

‘Mr Petrakos…excuse me,’ she managed breathlessly.

‘No.’ Giannis was studying her, and discovering that her emerald-green eyes had a breathtaking clarity. He found the contrast between her white skin and copper hair exotic and unusual. Every time he saw her he registered something new to savour.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Maddie was amazingly aware of the appraisal of those intense gilded bronze eyes. While it made her feel self-conscious, she very much liked that visual attention. In fact a whole host of alien sensations were striking her all at once. The most basic was that that lean dark countenance of his had a fatal fascination for her. She stared, and she couldn’t help staring, taking in every individual feature with a fervour she couldn’t deny. The sleek tawny planes of his high, hard cheekbones accentuated the dramatic dark brilliance of his gaze, while his arrogant nose and the rougher shadowed skin round his wilful passionate mouth lent a tough, masculine edge to a face at risk of being hauntingly beautiful.

‘I said no—you are not excused,’ Giannis extended lazily, as he eased the cup and saucer from her paralysed grip and set it down on a polished cabinet. ‘I want you to stay and talk to me.’

‘Talk?’ Maddie echoed in confusion, striving valiantly to recover her concentration. ‘Of course, you want to know what I’m doing in here—’

‘Possibly I’ve already worked that one out,’ Giannis murmured, with the husky amusement of a male accustomed to frequent feminine overtures.

Disconcerted by that reply, Maddie blinked and then coloured. ‘I’m sure you appreciate that it was entirely my fault that the presentation couldn’t be held. I wasn’t looking where I was going—’

Giannis closed a hand over hers, unlacing her taut fingers and spreading them within the hold of his in a calming gesture. ‘You’re very nervous.’

Something like a flock of butterflies had broken loose in Maddie’s tummy. The warmth of his hand on hers, the smooth brush of his fingertips against the sensitive inner skin of her wrist, was making her tingle all over. While surprised by the ease with which he touched her, she was warmed by it as well. Even believing that he meant nothing by that minor intimacy, she found it a challenge to catch her breath. ‘That’s why I tripped yesterday—’

Uninterested in the topic she was striving to follow, and single-minded as always, Giannis shrugged back the cuff of his shirt to reveal his Swiss platinum watch. ‘In ten minutes you will no longer be in my employ,’ he spelt out. ‘Do I have to wait that long to kiss you?’

Her green eyes opened to their widest extent. She was utterly silenced by that question.

‘I would never trouble an employee with unwelcome attention,’ Giannis completed softly.

With a handful of words, spoken with the utmost calm and cool, he had plunged her into shock. Do I have to wait that long to kiss you? He was telling her that he found her attractive, and she was astonished by that concept. He felt the same way she did? A sense of joy followed on that thought, and blew away her usual caution.

‘Madeleine…?’ Giannis prompted, registering his own level of ardour with a faint stab of unease.

Even the way he said her name sent a delicious frisson travelling down Maddie’s taut spinal cord. She was so tense her muscles literally ached. ‘It’s…it’s not unwelcome,’ she heard herself tell him unevenly.

‘I did not think it would be, glikia mou.’

Giannis approached her with the skill of a very experienced male, but beneath the surface he was aware of a pulse of desire that ran much hotter and stronger than he was accustomed to. Off-balance at that suspicion, he saw there was the faintest tremor in the long brown fingers he curved to her narrow shoulder to draw her to him. It was a struggle to master the fierce passion that prompted him to crush her hungrily to his lean, powerful frame. He liked the telling dilation of her pupils and the slight audible catch of breath in her throat when he lifted his hand to undo the clasp at the nape of her neck.

‘My hair…’ she said in surprise as he let the clasp fall. She scarcely knew what she was saying, for she was at such a height of expectation she could barely formulate a single thought, never mind a sensible sentence.

Giannis tugged the silky tangle of long hair round her triangular face, rejoicing in the freedom to do so. The sensual contrast between the wine-red strands and the pearlised perfection of her skin delighted him. ‘It’s magnificent…you should always wear it loose.’

‘It would get in my way,’ she muttered with a nervous laugh.

‘But I want it to get in mine.’ Giannis laced brown fingers into the bright strands and lowered his proud dark head.

Maddie could barely wait for him to kiss her, and her keenness embarrassed her. It did not seem quite nice for her to be so eager, but she couldn’t help it. Deep in her pelvis there was a hard, tight knot of anticipation, and it was a challenge to keep her feet still. Heart racing inside her chest, and barely breathing, she leant almost imperceptibly forward.

When the tip of his tongue traced the full, sultry curve of her lips she shivered. He delved between with a dark, demanding eroticism that flamed through her slim body as efficiently as an arrow hitting a bullseye. Her head swimming, she fought to contain her response. Her slim fingers clenched in on themselves. Her body went rigid even while she was achingly conscious of the stinging heat pinching her nipples tight, of the scratchy and delicious awareness prickling over her entire skin surface. She wanted to grab him but she wouldn’t let herself.

‘I could devour you,’ Giannis growled, his dark golden gaze ablaze as he laced one powerful hand into her tumbling copper hair to tug her head back.

Adrenalin was pounding through her veins like an electric charge. Meeting his eyes, she felt a kind of elation fill her, linked with the charged sense of readiness holding her fast. He buried his hungry, masculine mouth against the delicate skin of her throat, probing and nipping the tender spots with a sure and sensual skill that made her gasp. With his other hand he pressed her into closer connection with his lithe, rock-hard frame. By the time he claimed her ripe pink lips she was on fire for that kiss, craving it. The great wild whoosh of excitement engulfed her like a bonfire.

‘You’re amazing,’ he told her thickly

‘So are you…’ Green eyes bright as stars, Maddie looked up at him, acknowledging the astounding sense of connection she was feeling. It made no sense, but it was there, and her every nerve-ending seemed to be jumping up and down and staging a celebration. She needed his support because she was dizzy, and her legs felt as weak and insubstantial as twigs. Momentarily she recalled the other men who had kissed her. She had never felt anything more than the mildest satisfaction, and more often than not it had been an endurance test in embarrassment.

‘I knew you would be,’ Giannis swore, bending down to push an arm below her hips and haul her up into his arms without any noticeable effort.

Maddie vented her astonishment in a gasp.

When he kissed her again she speared her fingers into his luxuriant black hair and opened her lips to the erotic plunge of his tongue. The world spun in a multi-coloured haze of excitement behind her lowered eyelids. She shivered violently, and his arms tightened round her before he brought her down on a cushioned surface. The surprise of that move made her lashes lift, and she focused in bewilderment on the unfamiliar room and on the bed upon which she lay. Uncertainty and a slight hint of panic made her tense.

Giannis rested fluid tanned fingers along her delicate jawbone to turn her attention to the compelling force of his dark golden gaze instead. ‘I want you, glikia mou.’

‘Yes…’ Although that truth struck her as the most extraordinary thing since time began, she believed him absolutely, and it made her feel incredibly happy and blessed. The hunger etched in every angle of his lean, extravagantly handsome face thrilled her. It unlocked something inside her, blurred all ability to reason, and she acted on instinct when she stretched up and found his beautifully shaped mouth again for herself.

He raised her up and removed her shirt without her even having been aware that it had been unbuttoned. Before she could take fright he locked his urgent mouth to hers again, and unhooked her bra. Unremarked, the garment fell away. An almost inaudible moan was wrenched from low in her throat as the swollen buds of her distended nipples were grazed by the hair-roughened expanse of his hard, muscular chest. With a groan of satisfaction he curved his hands to the voluptuous creamy curves of her breasts.

‘I love your body, glikia mou,’ he growled against her reddened lips.

While she sucked in a panting breath, assailed by a sense of disbelief that such intimacy could possibly be taking place, he cupped the ripe, honey-soft swells and kneaded the lush rose-pink nipples already pouting for his attention. She quivered and gasped in helpless response, her breath rasping in her throat. A pulse of sweet, seductive pleasure began to beat at the heart of her. Such consuming sensuality had never touched her before, and she had no resistance whatsoever.

Giannis looked down into her lovely face with intense appreciation. He liked her lack of guile and affectation. She made sex so simple he was enthralled. Her bemusement, her unhidden surprise at what she was feeling, made him suspect that she might not be anything like as experienced as his usual partners. Unexpectedly he found that conviction the hottest turn-on he’d had in years. He kicked out the little voice at the back of his mind that suggested he should be more circumspect. He had not felt so fiercely aroused since he was a teenager. And she had come to him freely. What harm could there possibly be in taking his pleasure?

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he told her huskily, easing her narrow skirt down below her hips, then casting it aside.

So are you, she longed to tell him, and her face warmed. She trembled, lost in her wondering admiration of him and yet incredibly shy as well. But he brushed her hand away when she made a sudden fumbling attempt to cover the brazen bareness of her breasts. Lest she had any thought of repeating that attempt, he lowered his tousled black head to skilfully entrap a pouting rosy crest between his lips. With a whisk of his tongue he teased the tormented peak to a rigid point of aching need.

Maddie didn’t know what had hit her. Her spine arched up off the bed. Her hips discovered a sinuous beat in tune with the swollen dampness between her legs. He sat up to discard his shirt, and in the midst of the exercise he kissed her fiercely. She was electrified by the erotic feel of his erection against her lower thigh. The barrier of his clothes could not conceal his bold masculine arousal.

‘Feel what you have done to me,’ he rasped, taking her hand and curving her fingers to the blatant bulge of his manhood. ‘I ache for you…’

Surprise and excitement engulfed her as he pushed against her hand with an earthy need that shocked her. But it was a shock that she found insidiously attractive. ‘Giannis…’

He reacted to the sound of his name on her lips by reaching for her again with a savage impatience that thrilled her. ‘I can’t resist you,’ he groaned, pinning her half beneath him to plunder the luscious fullness of her mouth while he scooped up her knees and dexterously skimmed off her panties.

Maddie tensed, suddenly feeling wildly and dangerously naked and vulnerable. What was she doing? What on earth was she doing? A little voice screamed at the back of her head. She might have adored Giannis Petrakos on sight when she was fourteen—but did that mean that the first chance she got she went the whole way with him? Threw away the whole rule book and slept with him?

Long fingers flirted with the feathery Titian curls that covered her feminine mound and she froze, all thought and debate instantly suspended. Her entire body clenched taut with seething anticipation.

‘Take it easy, pedhi mou,’ Giannis urged raggedly, struggling to rein back a hunger that he still found unnervingly strong. But he had a stronger need to live up to the expectant wondering look he had seen in her gaze the day before.

He found the tantalising triangle between her thighs and she shivered helplessly, crazily aware of the tenderness of that secret place. So hot, so damp, so tense she almost physically hurt with longing. Her intense response made her jerk and squirm as he explored the swollen pink folds and stroked the tiny hidden bud, releasing a storm of sensation that made her cry out and gasp. An erotic flood of feeling sent her out of control and took her to the edge of a desperation she had not known existed.

‘I can’t stand it…’ she framed, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow, barely knowing what she was saying while she was entrapped in this world of sensual torment.

Hotter than he had ever been for the ultimate completion, Giannis needed no second invitation. He slid with hard, fluid grace between her slender thighs. With an urgent groan of satisfaction his bold shaft forged a passage into her tight, honeyed channel. At the same instant as he plunged through the fragile barrier of her resisting flesh a startled whimper of pain was dragged from her. Bemused by that slight obstruction, he stilled, uncertain and incredulous, to stare down into her darkened green eyes in question.

‘Theos mou…Madeleine—this cannot be.’

For an instant the real world intruded, and she recoiled from the thoughts threatening at the back of her mind. A dark pulse of voluptuous yearning was still pounding through her unbearably tense body. The simmering heat created by his passionate invasion was firing up again now that the initial discomfort had ebbed. He felt astonishing. She shut her eyes tight, told herself it was far too late to be worrying, and wrapped her arms round him in silent encouragement.

A shudder racked his lithe, powerful body and then he gave way, withdrawing from her only to surge back into her again in even more powerful possession. Excitement electrified her in a seductive wave, and she tilted up to him in sinuous welcome. Control fell away, shattered by the tight coil of pressure in her pelvis that made her crave him like a drug. He slammed back into her, hot and hard. She cried out in delight. Once begun, the delirious pleasure surged higher and higher, and time lost all meaning until finally she reached an explosive physical crescendo. Glorious waves of ecstasy racked her trembling body in ultimate release and she sank into a shell-shocked reverie.

Giannis stroked the vibrant coppery hair back from her smooth white brow. He pressed his mouth there very softly, and then wondered what he was playing at—because he had never been into all that fake, lovey-dovey cuddling stuff. Stung by that awareness, he lifted his handsome dark head again as if he had been burnt. The instant she shifted away from him, however, he automatically pinned her back beneath a hair-roughened powerful thigh. He wanted more of her. More and more and more, he acknowledged in a sensual daze of anticipation.

He had never had sex that amazing. Something that had become a rather boring routine, like a morning shower, had suddenly become full of exciting erotic possibilities again. She was a magnificent discovery. With subtle movements he shifted her across the mattress and covertly kicked aside the sheet so that he could examine it. There was a bloodstain on the linen. She had been a virgin. A one hundred per-cent-genuine virgin.

On one level he was sincerely shocked that he had taken advantage of so inexperienced a girl. On another, he’d hit a total erotic high and felt very smug about the fact that she had surrendered her innocence to him. Not much given to pointless regrets, Giannis suppressed the rare guilt factor and revelled in the erotic high instead. He had found her, he had awakened her…she was all his. He decided not to comment. Why make a big deal of it if she didn’t?

The phone by the bed lit up and vibrated. Giannis answered it. It was Nemos, reminding him that the jet was on standby for his flight to Berlin.

Listening to the swift exchange in Greek, Maddie was depth-charged out of her stasis and fully and fatally restored to awareness again. Consternation gripped her. She was genuinely appalled and confused by what she had allowed to happen between them. Raised by a grandmother who had taught her to believe that it was a woman’s job to set the moral boundaries with a man, she immediately felt that most of the blame had to be hers.

Only as Giannis cast aside the phone did he register a reality that shook him out of his complacency. His ebony brows pleated in displeasure. ‘The condom split.’

Sitting up, desperate to make an escape and already measuring the distance to the door, Maddie froze at that information. She had still to look anywhere near him.

‘Are you using anything that might prevent conception?’ Giannis enquired without expression, picturing the potential impact of such a calamity and barely managing to repress a shudder.

In no fit state to deal with the risk of an accidental pregnancy, Maddie had turned pale as parchment paper. It seemed to her that the punishments for her wanton misconduct were already piling up thick and fast, threatening to bury her alive. What was shame and humiliation in comparison to a life-changing event like conceiving a child?

‘No,’ she muttered tightly.

Giannis noticed that she was as far away from him as she could get and still be in the same bed. ‘I’m sure we’ll be okay. Accidents do happen, but there’s no reason why this one should lead to a disaster.’

‘I’m sure,’ she agreed hastily, but her mortified sense of hurt had deepened. No, she didn’t want to be pregnant either, but his response underscored her cringing belief that she had made the biggest ever fool of herself and acted like a slut. Naturally it would be a disaster if someone like her got into the family way because of someone like him. She reached down to snatch up her shirt, which was lying on the floor, and dug her arms jerkily into it. Her only thought was of flight.

‘Madeleine—’

In frantic haste she was gathering up her discarded apparel, a glow of shamed pink illuminating her downbent face. ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she muttered in apologetic interruption, eager to forestall the threatening intimacy of discussing anything with him and to make good her escape. ‘I’ll be totally fine.’

Unaccustomed to being interrupted, Giannis sprang out of bed just as Maddie vanished into the bathroom. The door closed. Elegant brows lifted in surprise, he heard the lock turn.

Behind the door, Maddie was engaged in the act of feverishly reclothing her shivering body. Her hands were all fingers and thumbs and her mind was throwing up distressing images and unwelcome realities. She had just gone to bed with a man she barely knew. And whose fault was that? She had made one mistake after another, right from the moment she had failed to conceal the fact that she found him incredibly attractive. Naturally he had registered that, and was it any wonder that he had got the wrong impression of her? When she’d had the effrontery to enter his inner sanctum with the offer of a coffee he hadn’t asked for, he had interpreted her approach as an invitation. A sexual invitation, she conceded sickly. How could she have been so utterly stupid? An arrestingly handsome and wealthy male must often receive such physical advances—and what young, single guy said no to such an opportunity?

As silently as she could, she released the lock, opened the door and crept out.

Giannis collided with wide green eyes full of dismay, and registered that his continuing presence appeared to be unwelcome to her. As no woman had ever looked at him in that way, he assumed that the impression was misleading. ‘I have a flight to catch.’

‘Of course,’ Maddie mumbled, striving to edge past him.

‘We’ll talk when I get back to London,’ Giannis declared, even while knowing he had not the slightest intention of breaking his lifetime rule of never, ever discussing anything in the way of relationships with a woman.

‘I—’ Before she even knew what she planned to say, long brown fingers framed her flushed cheekbones.

His black hair still enticingly tousled by her clutching fingers, he bent his arrogant dark head and claimed a brief, devouring kiss that momentarily silenced her. ‘I’ll call you,’ he told her with customary casualness.

‘No…no, don’t,’ Maddie countered tightly, her lips tingling and her cheeks burning with colour. She was furious with herself for standing still and accepting that final kiss without so much as an attempt to turn her head away.

Halfway into the bathroom, Giannis paused, frowned, and turned his bold profile back to her, wondering if he had misunderstood.

‘I know you must want to forget this happened,’ Maddie added in an uneasy rush.

‘Not in this case. I’ll be in touch, glikia mou.’ And with that indolent reply, Giannis dealt her a wolfish smile of amusement and headed back into the shower.

His confidence was unshakeable: women always responded to him with eager encouragement. She’d hardly been able to meet his eyes, but her soft mouth had surrendered beneath his in an indisputable response. Had she thought he needed an excuse not to see her again? He almost laughed out loud while he marvelled at her naivety. Possibly she was feeling a little overwhelmed by him, and the swift passage of events. She would get over that sensitive streak soon enough, he reflected with innate cynicism. With his input her ordinary life would, in the near future, change into something very much more stimulating. She would be the starring attraction in his bedroom for quite some time to come…

CHAPTER THREE

EMERGING from the CEO’s office suite into the corridor, Maddie was relieved to discover that the majority of the staff had already gone home. At a fast trot she collected her bag and her jacket, and was about to get into the lift when she was intercepted by Nemos.

‘Mr Petrakos asked me to ensure that you get home safely,’ the Greek security man informed her. ‘A car is waiting downstairs at the side entrance.’

Startled by his appearance, because in spite of his size he moved with remarkable stealth, Maddie was still more dismayed at the unexpected offer of a lift home. An agonised flush blossomed in a betraying burst of scarlet beneath her fair skin. She could not bear to think that anyone else might have guessed what she had so lately been engaged in.

‘No, thank you,’ she gasped in an agitated undertone, and, as Nemos gazed down at her in frank surprise, she hurriedly slid past him and into the lift before the doors could close again and leave her marooned.

Maddie didn’t breathe again until she had left the building. She knew that she would never willingly set foot in Petrakos Industries again. All the way home on the bus she was tormented by the aftermath of shock—regret and self-loathing.

What on earth had possessed her to behave in such a way? To give her body to a guy who was almost a stranger?

Yet Giannis hadn’t felt like a stranger, and it seemed to her that foolish false sense of familiarity had stifled all her wit and common sense. She had behaved like a starstruck groupie, she thought painfully. Nine years had passed since she first laid wondering eyes on Giannis Petrakos. She had been just fourteen years old when he’d visited her sister Suzy in hospital. At the age of twenty-two, when—ironically—he’d been getting loads of bad press for being a wild and womanising hell-raiser, he had been quietly giving considerable time and cash to the cause of terminally sick children.

Born though Giannis had been, into a world of unimaginable wealth and privilege, he had sat down to chat to Suzy as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. When he’d discovered that Suzy idolised the lead vocalist in a famous boy band, he had brought the singer to the hospice where Suzy had spent her final weeks. He’d made her sister’s wildest dreams come true. Suzy had been so thrilled that she had still been talking about that momentous day right up until a few minutes before she died.

Maddie had never forgotten how happy Giannis Petrakos had made her twin. Now she recognised how she had idealised him and begun imagining that she knew him when she did not. She felt she had been too quick to seize on Annabel’s concerns as an excuse to approach Giannis and talk to him alone. Why hadn’t she immediately backed off when she’d realised that he was only semi-clothed? His apparent interest in her had gone to her head like strong spirits. She had not had the strength of will to withstand temptation. And he had been unutterably, wildly tempting. The dulled throb between her slender thighs lingered to remind her of her weakness and her sense of shame increased. Passion had made her betray her values.

Only as Maddie reached her bedsit did she remember the accident with the contraception, and her skin turned clammy with instinctive fear. She could only hope that Giannis would be proved right in his belief that there would be no repercussions in that field. She was appalled at the idea of conceiving after the equivalent of a one-night stand with a male who would regard the development as a calamity. Any child forced to deal with such wounding knowledge of its beginnings would have a right to be disgusted with her. How the mighty have fallen, she reflected, with painful new self-knowledge.

The days passed for Maddie at a painfully slow pace. She was restless, worried and unhappy. The sense of peace she had taken for granted had been replaced by inner turmoil. Nothing that she was feeling was quite what she felt it ought to be, either. Every time her phone sounded she jumped and snatched it up. Either it was a call from the temping agency or from the supermarket where she did weekend shifts. When she finally grasped the fact that she had been waiting to see if Giannis would phone, she was even angrier with herself. It was already painfully clear: she had been bedded and discarded as if she had no more worth than an old newspaper.

The following Saturday morning, however, someone rapped on her door. Looping her tumbling hair back from her face as she answered it, she stilled in astonishment when she recognised that her caller was Giannis’s security chief.

‘Mr Petrakos wants you to join him for lunch,’ Nemos announced with precision. ‘He’ll pick you up in an hour.’

Her delicate brows pleating, Maddie stared up at the big man. It took her a few seconds to absorb that most unexpected message. Not so much a message as a royal summons, she registered, watching Nemos clatter back down the stairs again without even waiting for her response. Evidently there was a strong assumption that nobody ever said no to an invitation from Giannis Petrakos.

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